Work Text:
Dean’s heart pounded painfully in his chest. He was barely able to keep himself grounded at the moment. His mind kept replaying it...that black tar reaching out for Castiel...his Cas, gone. Nothing left behind but a bloody handprint.
Did Chuck plan that? Starting and ending with a handprint, some full-circle bullshit?
He clenched his jaw and tried to say something. But the words wouldn’t come.
Jack wasn’t coming home.
...Jack wasn’t coming home?
They hadn’t been on the best of terms at first; he would be the first to admit he’d been a bastard to the poor kid. No one wanted to be born from Lucifer.
But he was the last real tether to Cas. It was in his face, his mannerisms, his nature. The physical resemble was kinda creepy, too. Dean had the idea that Jack had done that on purpose* before he was born. Maybe as a way to bond with Cas and distance himself from Lucifer?
He blinked; he had to pay attention. Because Jack was explaining that he was...the new Chuck?
The 3-year-old Nephilim was going to be Heaven’s top dog? He was going to be God?
Sam said something, Jack responded. Dean didn’t hear it. It didn’t didn't compute. He felt this sudden pit in his stomach; he’d felt it when leaving Lisa and Ben behind.
Dean didn’t have Castiel, and now Jack was leaving too.
“I’ll be around,” Jack said with a gentle smile. “Just not as hands-on.”
Dean moved forward, stoically, robotically, until he had grabbed Jack in his arms and hugged him, trying to put his worry and love into that hug. He tried to get all of his thoughts together: Don’t go dark side, stay with us, help me, bring Cas back, I’m begging you, kid.....please...
Jack grinned when Sam hugged him afterward. “Did you...bring back everyone…?” Sam asked hesitantly.
He stared at Dean pointedly. “Sometimes our prayers are answered.”
Dean tried not to let it show on his face how his heart had jumped into his throat at that look. Does he mean….
“What happens now is up to you guys. Welcome to your new story,” Jack said, and then he disappeared.
*****
When they returned to the bunker, Sam let out a yelp of surprise and happiness that had him bolting down the stairs to the map room. As Dean came in, he heard Eileen’s excited yell for his brother. He saw their tear-filled reunion as Sam picked her up and spun her around in his arms. They kissed frantically and desperately.
Sam deserved some happiness and a goddamn break.
Dean’s hands tightened around the railing. Where was Cas? Jack said he was back...didn’t he?
Emotions stole his breath as he waited but heard nothing in the bunker. No rustle of wings, no tap of Cas’s shows on the concrete floor. He could just tell the angel wasn’t home.
Dean turned and quietly escaped the bunker. It was amazing how a place so big could suddenly feel so claustrophobic. He sat in the Impala to gather his thoughts.
He wiped a few tears from his eyes and cleared his throat. Dean even went so far as to close his eyes and bring his hands together. He prayed.
Cas, If you’re out there. If Jack brought you back. You better come here because I’ve got something to say to your feathered ass. I need you to come back, Cas, please. I can’t...I can’t do this without you.
I know I’m shit at this, but I told Chuck I would kill Sam to bring you back. You gotta know what that means. Castiel, Angel of Thursday, I’m gonna bring you home one way or another. Do you understand me? Please, Cas...
There was no sound, no change in the air around him that told him Cas and popped into the car. It was the kind of silence that couldn’t hide the sound of a heart breaking.
“Cas, please, say something?” His hands cradled his face, and he was lost in his grief once more.
*****
The memory of black ooze swallowing his best friend's tear-stained face tortured him. He still couldn't stop Cas, he still couldn't say anything, he couldn't stop it, he couldn't save Cas, he couldn't, he--
He jerked backward and hit his head on the roof of the Impala. His back was sore and his face hurt, and his eyes felt fuzzy. He'd cried so hard and so long he'd passed out hunched over the steering wheel. Looking at his cell phone, he'd been out for over an hour. Nothing from Sam yet. Probably enjoying Eileen's miraculous return.
Jack lied. Where's Cas? How could he give me false hope like that...
Something made his phone ding. It was a new message; he'd have ignored if it wasn't for the name on the ID.
No, God, not again... He sniffed and wiped his hand across his face. He took a deep breath and opened the single text message, with a single word.
From: Cas
To: Dean
B a R N
Dean blinked and stared at it for a good few seconds. It could have been a trick or a trap; the last time he thought it was Cas, it's had been Lucifer's smug face.
But...his instincts were screaming that this was real. He prayed it was real. Please, please, please...
The old barn, warded from every evil thing on the planet. The place where he’d meet Cas all those years ago…
He burned the Impala’s rubber on the road surface, on his way to find his angel as fast as humanly possible.
****
It was night when he pulled up to the barn, driving through overgrown weeds and grass almost as tall as him.
His phone flashed with dozens of calls and texts from Sam. He ignored them all.
Though the place was silent and eerie, he still grabbed his knife, gun, and large flashlight. The wooden walls were rotting away. The beam of light passed over the doors, which were still hanging off the hinges from Cas's dramatic original entrance. As he walked into the dilapidated barn, his mouth dropped open in shock.
There was a hole in the aluminum roofing. His flashlight beam illuminated a pile of tan fabric on the floor in the middle of the barn.
“Cas!” Dean yelled out. He ran to the crumpled figure and placed the flashlight to shine on them. There was a cell phone laying on the floor next to a limp hand.
Dean fell to his knees and moved the body so he can see Cas’s face. It had blood leaking from his lips, but he seemed alive. He was breathing, at least. “Cas! Wake up, please, it’s me!”
Cas didn’t move, and Dean pulled back his trenchcoat and opened his jacket to feel for injuries. His hands felt all over, but he didn’t feel any broken bones, a fucking miracle in itself. He could tell there was some swelling, though, probably some bruised ribs, maybe a couple cracked ones. Blood from his lips had gotten onto the front of his white dress shirt.
Cas’s hand suddenly moved and grabbed his own. Blue eyes, bleary and bloodshot, stared up at him.
"Dean," Cas said in a relived yet rough groan. He looked at Dean's hands on his chest. “Aren’t you supposed to take me to dinner, first?”
Tears fell from the corners of his eyes as Dean scooped Cas into a back-breaking hug. He didn’t care that his voice cracked when he spoke. “You stole my line, you dumbass.”
“I learned from the best,” Cas whispered into Dean’s neck. He could feel the angel’s hot breath on his skin; Their arms locked around each other in a tight hug.
Though he didn't want to let him go, Dean leaned back so he could look at Cas better. “What happened, Cas?”
Cas swayed as he sat there for a moment, his face scrunched up as he tried to think clearly. He licked his dry lips and Dean found himself distracted.
“You happened, Dean. I was fading in the Empty--losing myself when I heard your prayer. Your prayer was a beacon, Dean. I just...followed it. I’m not sure...all I know was that in my rush to escape, I got confused--”
“And ended up here, instead of the Bunker, right?”
Cas nodded. He looked around the barn, the wooden boards rotting and splintered. The symbols that Dean and Bobby had painted, able to trap anything except what the hunters hadn’t considered: an angel of the Lord.
He stood up and helped Cas get back to his feet. He was still woozy, so Dean grabbed the flashlight then slung one of Cas's arms over his shoulders and walked them to the car.
He helped Cas slide into the front seat of the Impala. Once they were inside they sat for a moment. Dean turned the light off and let it drop to the floorboards. Dean listened to Cas’s huffs of breath.
"How did you get out, Cas?"
Cas closed his eyes and leaned his head against the glass of the passenger side door. He pulled open the top buttons of his shirt, showing Dean the little bloody wound at the base of his neck.
“Not sure how the thought just came to me, but If I have no grace--”
“--You’re not an angel,” Dean finished. “It spat you back out?”
“With extreme prejudice,” Cas muttered, shifting with a groan. “Not sure how I survived the landing, though.”
Dean grinned and pulled Cas into another hug. “It’s like you said when we first met here. Good things do happen.”
“Is Dean Winchester trying to remind a celestial being that miracles happen?”
"Ironic, I know." Dean didn’t care how Cas was here. He was here. In the passenger seat of his Impala, in pain and probably pissed at being human again but goddammit Cas was alive.
“We defeated Chuck.”
Cas opened his eyes and looked at him. “How?”
Dean smiled and puffed his chest up. “We didn’t kill him. We outsmarted him. We outsmarted God, and then we left his sorry ass in our rearview mirror.”
Cas's jaw dropped in shock. “What?”
“He’s human. And I didn’t kill him, Cas. Because that’s not I am, as a close friend told me.”
Cas looked away from him then. “Dean, I want you to know that I stand by what I told you. But if you don’t...I find that I don’t mind. I’m just happy to have told you.”
Dean couldn’t deal with the wobble in Cas’s voice.
“Don’t you dare flake out of me, Cas. Not now. Not after I failed again.”
Cas let one of his hands lay on Dean’s forearm for a moment. It was weird because it wasn’t fleeting. It wasn’t a touch for healing. It was a...confirmation, of sorts. We are here, alive, together again.
“Dean, you brought me back. You didn’t fail me, you saved me.”
He looked away from Cas’s earnest eyes. “I failed you for being a dumbass with the emotional maturity of a jar of peanut butter.”
Cas’s lips quirked up in a little smirk. “Well...it’s a good thing I like PB&Js, then, isn’t it? Since I’m human again, I’ll get to properly enjoy them once more.”
Dean leaned into Cas’s space. “Cas...I…”
Everything felt so big, so monumental, he had to swallow. So many emotions vying for space in his brain, he could feel it turn his stomach.
Cas’s eyes softened. “Dean, we don’t have to talk about this. Can we just...go home?”
Dean shut his eyes at that. It would be so easy to turn the car around and go home. Never think about this again. Everything could go back to the way it had been. Nothing had to change. He wouldn’t have to try and label the weird nebula of emotions that Cas stirred up in his head.
So, instead, he decided to ignore his head. He decided to listen to his heart.
Dean snaked his hands around the sides of Cas’s face, cupping his cheeks in his palms. “You better have your ears on because I’m only going to say this once, got it?”
Cas nodded solemnly.
Dean took a steadying breath. “I do, too, Cas.” Then he pulled Cas in, and their lips touched for a chaste kiss.
The kiss was barely anything, but his brain was short-circuiting. It was so strange how Cas could take the most mundane of things and make them monumental.
He walked into a barn and changed a disillusioned man’s life for the better.
His lips barely touched Dean's, and yet the human's life was left reeling once more.
Dean pulled away and chuckled softly.
Cas looked at him. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, I was just wondering if you were going to make sparks fly again. Like you did when you walked into that barn that night.”
Cas's eyes darted over the bloodstained handprint, and he took it in for a moment. Then, he carefully grabbed the jacket as to not disturb it. His eyes were full of heat as they locked on Dean's.
“If sparks aren’t flying now,” Cas growled in a husky whisper. “Than I’m not doing this right.”
Cas grabbed Dean and frantically pulled them together. He pulled on the hairs on Dean’s neck and licked his way inside when the hunter gasped. Dean knew he had more experience than Cas when it came to sex, but holy shit Cas was clearly the one in charge at the moment.
For once, Dean let someone else be in charge and enjoyed the ride.
Eventually, they broke apart, each seeing how dazed they’d made each other. Cas's lips were puffy and his hair was even more of a mess. Dean was sure he could feel some hickies blooming along his well-nibbled jawline.
“I take it back,” Dean said with a laugh. “Definitely got some sparkage there.”
Cas sat up and his hands reached out for Dean again. The hunter saw his face scrunch up in pain, but he was trying to ignore it. Pushing through all the stoplights like they always did. Well, today was a day of firsts, it seemed.
Dean took one for the team, though he knew he’d be driving with his dick at an uncomfortable half-mast for a while. “Cas, look, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but...I’m not as young as I used to be. This ain’t happening here unless you want me to pull something.”
As far as lies went, it was probably the whitest one he’d ever told in his life. Like, newly fallen snow, white. And while he saw disappointment on Cas’s face, he also saw relief.
“Of course, Dean.”
They pulled away from the barn and got back to the main road. Dean stopped them before hitting the asphalt.
Cas, who had been looking out the door window, turned to look at him. “Dean?”
“I thought you’d like a consolation prize?” He held out his right hand, palm up. Cas looked at it.
“Come on, don’t leave me hanging.”
"Nothing about you is a consolation, Dean," Cas admonished gently. Still, he scooted across the leather seat until he could take Dean’s hand into his own. Cas’s hands were soft and uncalloused--they hid a deeper strength and power, just like Cas and his beloved trenchcoat. Mundane in appearance, yet hiding a literal badass underneath. Dean loved the contrast that made up Castiel.
“Also, I’m making an exemption to the rule,” Dean said.
“What’s that?”
Dean grinned. “Shotgun picks the music. On occasion.”
Cas’s grin was infectious. “I actually know what I want to listen to.”
“Alright, just don’t make me listen to dubstep or something.”
Cas rolled his eyes and reached into the inner pocket of his trenchcoat. He pulled out a familiar-looking cassette tape and pushed it into the tape deck. Then, he lay his weary head to rest on Dean's shoulder.
“Deans top 13 Zepp TRAXX” played for them as they drove towards home, and the open horizon that was their new story.