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Dean isn’t sure when life had begun grinding to a halt. It started slow at first, seconds taking a little longer to tick by, minutes turning lazily into hours, evenings creeping into nights. He can almost see it now – time crawling by like he isn’t even there, never sparing him a backward glance. Everything else is the same. He drives, he eats, he hunts. On occasion, he’ll exchange a few words with Sam, but most of their car rides are silent – a thick, velvet curtain of unease hanging between them. He doesn’t know when this all started.
That’s a lie.
He knows it’s a lie.
Because it all started the moment he found a tattered trench coat floating in a lake.
********
“So we’ll check the hospital in the next town over. Someone’s bound to have noticed something suspicious. Am I right?”
“We’ve lost its trail, Dean. We can’t keep checking every hospital on the planet.” Sam’s voice is gentle, but there is an undercurrent of firmness there. They’ve had this conversation before.
“Fucking sea monster killed Cas, Sam. We can’t just forget about it,” Dean grinds out, his knuckles white against the red-and-white checkered pattern of the diner’s table cloth.
“No, Dean. It didn’t,” Sam enunciates clearly, his eyes boring into Dean’s.
And Dean wants to snap back, to ask what the hell his brother means. Except he already knows.
“The Leviathan didn’t kill Cas. It destroyed him. Consumed him,” Sam plows forward. “He isn’t coming back, Dean. His Grace can’t be in Heaven or Hell or anywhere else, because it just isn’t there anymore. He doesn’t exist.”
Dean understands why this is important. At least, Sam has tried to make him understand. Some shit about carrying around false hope or something.
Dean isn’t really hungry anymore.
********
It hurts to jump back into the flow of time. But eventually, he decides enough is enough, and kicks time in the shins. He pushes himself forward. He buys pie, tinkers with the Impala’s engine. He even talks to Sam.
Sam keeps telling him that he isn’t asking him to forget Cas. He’s just asking him to move on. Some days, he wants to lash out in some misguided effort to make his brother understand why he can’t do that. But Dean knows that Sammy is grieving too. He sees it in his the tight set of his brother’s jaw, in the way his eyes drift off to the place right above Dean’s shoulder, as if he’s expecting the angel to appear behind him any second.
And no amount of pie-eating and booze and car parts can stop him from noticing that look.
********
They’ve stopped at Generic Motel #2453. Sam is snoring away in their room, his hair still matted with dirt from the last hunt. By all rights, Dean should be there next to him, dirty and aching and too tired to take a shower. But he isn’t. He’s standing out in the parking lot, leaning back against the Impala and breathing in the night air.
He thinks that if his life were a proper movie, the air would be cool and crisp. Instead, it’s just mildly humid and filled with car exhaust.
He’s alone in the parking lot.
And then, suddenly he isn’t.
A second before the voice speaks, Dean is aware of the presence. He doesn’t dare to call it familiar, because Sam has been indoctrinating him against false hope for five months now, and wouldn’t it be a shame to let all that convincing go to waste?
“Dean.” The voice is low and raw, somehow managing to put a world of meaning into the one syllable that is his name.
Dean does turn then, bracing his hand on the Impala’s trunk, because he’s suddenly not sure that he can support his own weight.
The angel is wearing a white, slightly rumpled shirt and black slacks. His hair is askew and there’s a prominent scar running across his cheekbone. Dean wonders idly how that came to be there.
“Dean,” he repeats, and now there’s a slight edge of uncertainty in the voice, as if he isn’t sure what to expect from the hunter.
And damn him, Dean doesn’t know what to expect from himself either. Sure, the whole thing is probably some exhaustion-induced hallucination, but Cas just looks so real… As real as he had looked as God forcing them to bow down to him. And just as real as he had looked on the numerous occasions he’d appeared in the passenger seat of the Impala. In one moment, two long steps take Dean around the side of the car and in the next, he has his hands wrapped tightly around familiar shoulders.
For once, Dean is thankful for time’s tendency to drag on.
He hears someone croak out “Cas” over and over and realizes belatedly that the voice is his own. His fingers are fisted in the back of Castiel’s shirt, nails practically digging into the man’s shoulder blades. They are so obviously not hugging. This… This is just an expression of manly appreciation.
When they finally pull apart, Dean is loath to let Cas go. He doesn’t mind the lack of personal space between them now, because this will make it that much easier for him to grab onto the angel if he even thinks of disappearing. Not that Dean could actually prevent it. Still, it’s the principle of the matter.
Dean knows he should say something now, but nothing comes to mind. All he wants to do is grab his angel again and chant “you’re here, you’re here” like an excited school-girl on crack. Somehow, he thinks that will ruin his manly image.
Fortunately, Cas speaks first, and the words coming out of his mouth are the last Dean would expect.
“I cannot expect you to forgive me, Dean Winchester.” The words are crisp and clear, just like the night air should have been.
“Forgive you,” Dean echoes flatly. His mind has drawn to a complete halt and he’s fairly sure he isn’t capable of independent thought at the moment.
He sees the lines in Castiel’s face tighten, sees the angel take an unnecessary breath before he continues. “I have failed you. I have taken on power that was never meant to be contained in a vessel such as mine. I have turned my back on all that I believed and made a mockery of creation. Of God. It is because of me that further destruction has been unleashed on this Earth. Furthermore, I have failed you in leaving you. I ask for your forgiveness, though I have no right to it… Dean.” He speaks mechanically– a throwback to their first days together. But the last word, the soft “Dean,” is tacked on at the end of the litany with an inflection all its own. It’s gentle and adamant all at once - a question and a prayer set in stone.
“You idiot!” The exclamation catches Castiel off-guard and he flinches, shoulders hunching slightly forward. Dean can almost see the wings on his back folding in on themselves.
“You’re here. You were gone for six fucking months, and now you’re here. And you’re not some psycho God or some fucked up sea monster.” And then he is pulling Cas into a hug again - and hell, he’s man enough to admit that it is a hug after all – and clinging on for dear life.
“Dean, I do not-. I do not understand. I was-” Cas stiffens in his arms, confusion apparent in every muscle of his body.
“I don’t give a fuck what you were, Cas. You’re here now. With me. With us.” Dean remembers Sammy sleeping so close by and for a heartbeat all he wants to do is run into the room with Cas behind him and shake his brother awake. But then, he takes another look at Castiel and suddenly, he wants something else.
Something small, quiet, and private.
Cas waits out the embrace patiently and when he pulls away, his expression appears more relaxed, though there is still a pained weariness shuttered behind his eyes.
“How are you here, Cas?” Dean whispers, his eyes roaming the angel’s face, trying to memorize the oh-so familiar features all over again. His gaze zeroes in on the straight, slightly raised scar, and his hand rises to it on his own accord.
Castiel tracks the movement with his eyes, and Dean can swear the angel is holding his breath. The hunter’s calloused fingertips brush across the puckered skin in wonder. Dean realizes that he is holding his breath as well.
After a moment of strange silence, Castiel answers rather haltingly “I was remade, Dean. This- ” he pauses to touch two fingers to the scar, centimeters away from where Dean’s are still resting on his cheek “is merely a flaw in the design.”
Absurdly, Dean images a toy Cas being put together from spare parts, arms welded to torso and ears to head. Somewhere along the line, the adhesive holding together his face must have cracked. He laughs a little at that – a stilted breath pulled from his throat.
“You might be a demon, you know,” Dean says without thinking, only now realizing how completely careless he’s being in trusting something that looks like a dead friend.
“I am not,” the angel replies carefully, a crease forming between his eyebrows.
Dean chokes on laughter again and this time, he doesn’t even know what caused it.
“We’ll have to do the usual tests,” he adds after a bit.
“Of course, Dean.”
“You might be a hallucination too. Think you’ll pass the tests then?”
“I am not a hallucination,” Cas retorts matter-of-factly, beginning to appear mildly annoyed.
“Don’t move,” says Dean, sliding a few steps to his left until he is in front of the Impala’s trunk. Castiel freezes where he stands, though in retrospect, he hasn’t been moving all that much to begin with. Dean nudges the trunk open and digs around in the dark, throwing a glance behind him every other second to make sure the angel is still there. One hand finally hits upon what he’s looking for and he draws it out a triumphantly - a rumpled, yellow trench coat.
“Hallucination or not, you should at least look a bit more like Cas,” he says cheerfully, pressing the coat into the other man’s hands.
“I am not a hallucination,” the angel repeats, rather unnecessarily. Dean has already devised a sure-fire method of checking that. He’s pretty sure it’s the only test that will really matter. Faking a confidence he doesn’t feel, the hunter closes the distance between them, tilts forward, and time screeches, full-speed, into motion.
He’s kissing Castiel. He’s kissing his best friend. He’s kissing an angel who was God and then was dead and now isn’t.
One hand is cupping Castiel’s cheek and another has once again fisted itself in the angel’s shirt. There are arms wrapped tightly around him, holding on as much as they are holding him upright. Everything is moving so quickly, Dean’s head is spinning. Breath is puffing out between them, their tongues dancing some intricate dance. Castiel moans somewhere low in his throat, and Dean isn’t sure how to hold him any closer. The trench coat is pressed uselessly between then and the hunter now fervently wishes that he hadn’t gone and put it there in the first place.
In what seems like no amount of time at all, their lips are inches apart again, and Castiel is staring at him with what must be above and beyond even his usual intensity.
The words rumble from somewhere deep in the angel’s throat, an insistent “Do you forgive me, Dean?”
Dean still has about a million questions and can find a good handful of reasons to say no – all memories of fear and betrayal. But the reason for saying yes is the one standing right there in front of him. So, all he can do is nod mutely and kiss his angel as time zooms by around him.