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By the time everyone else calls it a night and heads off to bed, it's well past midnight. Eileen is the last to go, pressing a kiss to the top of Sam's head before she smiles and leaves the map room. Sam smiles up at her, his eyes a little watery, like they have been every time he's looked at Eileen since they got her back from wherever Chuck zapped her and the rest of the world. Dean grins a little, watching them. And his heart aches a little, too.
Sam looks carefully at him after Eileen leaves. Dean can feel himself starting to bristle slightly in response. Sam's been giving him that look almost non-stop, ever since he and Jack came bursting into the Bunker to find Dean huddled on the storeroom floor with blood on his jacket and his head in his hands.
"It's really over," says Sam reflectively, picking at the label on his drink. They've all been saying it, one after another for the blurry past six hours, as if the repetition will finally force it through their sleep-deprived brains.
Dean tips his beer towards Sam. "To somehow," he says, echoing that last toast from two days—three days? time feels hazy and indistinct, fraying at the edges—prior, during the tight, brief calm of the storm's eye.
Sam laughs a little. "To somehow."
There's a beat of silence, as they both stare into the distance, contemplating—well, Dean doesn't know what Sam's contemplating. Life, probably. Life with Eileen, now that they're free of the supreme puppet-master overlord. As for Dean, he's determinedly contemplating nothing at all, thank you very much.
Sam, predictably, ruins it with an awkward throat-clearing that Dean has unfortunately learned over the years always heralds an Uncomfortable Discussion. He opens his mouth to say good night and make his escape, but Sam beats him to it.
"Dean, about..." Sam says. "About what Cas said."
Dean stills. He resists, with a masterful exertion of willpower, the urge to throw his beer at Sam's giant head. "Don't."
"Dean."
"Don't, Sam." His heart is a raw, flayed thing. He thinks of Cas's face, upturned, shining with tears. Thinks of the way the Empty had gleamed and writhed, as it absorbed Cas and turned him into nothingness.
Sam is arraying his features into one of his infinite varieties of bitchface. Dean knows this one. It's the I'm going to have to be the adult here one. Dean hates that one, because what right does Sam have to be the adult? Dean was always the adult. Dean never got to not be the adult. Dean's been the adult since he was five goddamn years old.
"We have to talk about it," says Sam.
In retrospect, Dean really, really regrets telling Sam what Cas had said. Any other time, he would've known better—but he'd had nothing left of himself to mortar into any semblance of a wall, when they'd found him in the Bunker. He'd blurted it all out to Sam and Jack, numb with it, with the weight of Cas's last words. Cas's handprint cooling on his shoulder. Cas's absence a corrosive void under his ribs.
"There's nothing to talk about, Sam." Dean tilts the bottle to his lips and drains it.
"Dean, he told you he loved you—"
"Yeah, and then he died, Sam!" Dean clenches his hand around the empty bottle to keep it from shaking. He can't stop seeing it in his head. Cas's face. The Empty. Cas just—dissolving. Melting into nothing, as if he'd never existed. It plays on loop in his head. I love you. Gone. I love you. Gone. Rinse, repeat. "That was his grand deathbed confession, yeah? Lay it all out and then kick the fucking bucket."
He's furious with Cas, he realizes. Has been furious, in a small place in the the back of his mind, ever since it happened. Furious that Cas said that—all that—in the thirty seconds before peacing out of existence and leaving Dean with—nothing. An empty room, and a mind blank with shock, and that cold feeling of panic tightening like a vise around his lungs.
Sam sets his jaw. He looks deeply unhappy, and deeply stubborn. Dean winces, because it's extremely evident that whatever Sam has to say, it's going to be said and there's nothing Dean can do to avoid it.
"Dean, you and Cas—"
"There is no me and Cas, Sam!" Dean doesn't know why it's suddenly so hard to breathe. Doesn't know why his chest is suddenly tight, like he's back in that room, on the floor, shaking with grief. "He—we're not—it's not—it's not like that. And Cas got it, okay?" The one thing I want, it's something I know I can't have. "He knew that. He wasn't—he wasn't expecting me to—he knew I didn't—that I don't—"
He's stammering, his heart clenching inside his chest, and Sam just keeps looking at him with those huge sad eyes, and Dean's sick of it. He's sick of it. Sam's face is quiet and kind and knowing and Dean wants to scream that there is nothing to know, nothing to tease out and unearth here, because how Cas—how Cas feels or felt about him changes nothing, it doesn't mean—it doesn't mean that Dean—it doesn't mean that Sam can look at Dean like Dean is a fucking puzzle that he's solved a long time ago. Sam doesn't know jack shit about it.
Dean scrubs his free hand through his hair and grits his teeth. "Why the hell are you even bringing this up now, Sam?"
"Because you—" Sam starts, and stops. He swallows. "Because," he says carefully, "because Chuck's gone, Dean. And—and I know how Eileen felt, okay? I know she was worried about what was—about what was real. But Chuck's gone, and if you—if you were worried—if that was why—that's gone now. You don't have to—"
"Oh, it's gone now?" Dean feels like he's on the verge of hysteria. "It's gone now, Sam? Just like that? Chick-flick endings all around, right?"
Sam looks at him and looks at him. Miserable, urgent, determined. "Okay, Dean. Whatever else—whatever else there is in the way—I just want you to know, it doesn't—"
"There's not something in the way, Sam." Dean's face feels hot. He clenches one hand into the meat of his thigh. "I'm not—that. That isn't—that's not how I—I don't—because I would know, okay?" The words are tumbling out of him in no particular order, rushed and panicked. "I would—I would know, if I—if I was—"
"Dean." Sam twists his hands together on the table. He shoves his stupid bangs out of his face. "I know. What—what you had to do. When we were kids. What you did, for me. For us."
Dean goes cold all over. Because Sam can't. Sam can't know. There's no way he could know. Dean was careful, he was always so careful— "What the—what the hell are you talking about."
"When Dad used to just—leave us alone. For weeks. I know he didn't—I know he didn't always leave enough money for you to—"
Dean shoves his chair violently away from the table. "Stop." He feels heat rising in his face even as the whole rest of his body feels frozen, like his limbs don't belong to him. There's a sudden roaring in his ears, as if he's teetering on the edge of the sea. He thinks of alleyways and bathroom stalls. Dampness seeping through the knees of his jeans. His own face glimpsed in dirty mirrors, unrecognizable.
"I'm just saying," Sam is stumbling. "That if you—if you—"
"Sam, stop. Fucking stop—"
"—if you think that—that that's why, Dean." Sam takes a huge, shaky breath, his eyes pleading silently. "It's not. If you think that it—makes you wrong somehow, the way you did when Amara was affecting you, it doesn't. None of that was your choice, not Amara, not—not whatever you had to do when we were kids, none of that is what this is."
"My choice?" Dean forces out, with numb lips. He pushes himself to his feet, stumbles backward from the table, from Sam. "My choice?" It was always his choice. (He never had a choice.) He made all the choices. He was the adult. (He never had a choice.) He doubles over, trying to breathe. He wants to scream, he wants to leave, he wants the floor to open up and swallow him. It doesn't, of course, and he's stuck here, pinned under Sam's gaze as Sam knifes him open. As Sam flays the armor off him, then the skin, the muscle. Opens him down to the bone.
"Please stop," he begs. He straightens up, tries to get air into his lungs. "Stop, Sam, I can't—" He can't stand it. He can't survive it. He can't—not knowing that Sam knows—that Sam knew—all along—
It strikes him that Cas must have known, too. The way Cas knew everything about Dean. Cas knew everything about Dean and he still—he still said those things—
"I'm sorry," says Sam, and his voice cracks. "I never—I should've, but I—I didn't think you would ever want to talk about it—"
Dean hears a wild, low sound, a mockery of a laugh, and realizes that he's the one making it. He's never wanted to talk about it. He certainly doesn't want to fucking talk about it now.
"—but I have to say it now," Sam pleads, looking up at Dean, "because I need you to know that it doesn't—that I don't—that it doesn't matter to me. It doesn't—it doesn't make me think less of you. It would never make me think less of you. And this wouldn't, either. This wouldn't matter to me, if you, if you and Cas...you know that, right?"
"What," Dean manages. He doesn't know—he doesn't know what Sam is saying.
"Because I know what—what—" Sam's chin wobbles. "I know the things Dad used to say."
"Dad didn't—" Dad didn't know. Of course Dad hadn't known. If Dad had ever found out—Dean trembles. "He didn't know—"
"I know, I know he didn't, but he still—the things he would say—" Sam covers his eyes with one hand. When he pulls it away, there's a tear wobbling in his lashes. "I just—Dean, I'm not Dad. Okay? I just want you to know. I'm not Dad."
Dean feels something warm and wet roll down the side of his face.
Sam levers himself up from his chair, strides around the map room table like a force of nature. "I never wanted you to have to take care of me. I never wanted you to, you shouldn't have had to, but you did it anyway. Even when I was a dick about it, even when I was a stupid kid. You've never stopped taking care of me, you've never stopped wanting me to live, and I want you to live too. Dean, I want us both to live and I want you to be happy and we both know who it is that makes you happy."
"Sammy," Dean whispers. He puts his hands over his ears, moves them to his face. Presses his knuckles against his eyes. "I can't do this."
"No, Dean." Sam won't stop moving toward him. Sam won't stop talking. "Don't run away from this. Please."
Dean backs up until his spine hits the wall. He can't breathe. He can't think. His heart is beating too loud, too loud. This isn't a monster he can kill. This is just himself. He only knows how to run away from himself.
"Dean, I've known you your whole life," says Sam, moving closer, his eyes enormous in the warm lamplight. His voice is suddenly achingly, unbearably gentle. "I've watched you with Cas for years. I've watched the way you look at him for years."
Sam stops in front of him, lifts his hands to take Dean by the shoulders. Dean wrenches half-heartedly against his little brother's grip. Sam holds on.
"I know you, Dean. I know you the way you know me. I know you the way Cas knows you. I know you the way—the way you won't let yourself know yourself."
Dean shakes his head mutely. He thinks he might have lost the ability to speak.
"You love him," says Sam. His voice is clotted with tears. He holds Dean, his hands so incredibly steady on Dean's shoulders. Dean wonders how Sam is so steady, with the whole room shaking the way it is. "You love him, Dean."
Dean chokes. His heart is a wave, breaking on a shore. His heart is back in the storeroom with Cas's earnest voice confessing things that no one should ever confess to Dean. His heart is in pieces, held between Sam's giant palms.
Somehow his hands are curled in the fabric of Sam's shirt. Somehow Sam is holding him up.
"You don't know everything," Dean gasps out, the words tripping over a sob. He shoves at Sam's stupid immovable frame, which is a terrible idea since Sam is the only thing keeping him upright currently. "You don't know everything, dammit."
Sam gathers him up, gathers him close. "Yeah, but I know this, you jerk."
Dean breathes for a moment. A small eternity. In. Out. He feels Sam's arms around him. He feels Sam's heartbeat in his ear.
"Bitch," he mumbles finally, into Sam's flannel-clad shoulder.
Sam laughs quietly. He pulls back, smiles at Dean. His face is streaked with tears. "I'm gonna...I'm gonna go to bed, are you gonna be alright?"
Dean nods. He swipes his hand ineffectually over his eyes. "Yeah."
"You should," says Sam carefully, "maybe—"
Dean makes a miserable sound. "I think the moment for that would've been right after Cas told me he loved me, Sam. You know, before he fucking died." I love you. Gone. I love you. Gone. "Don't you think it's a little too late at this point?"
"No," says Sam, and he smiles again, and he squeezes Dean's shoulders, just a little. "I don't think it's too late at all."
*
Dean's a coward, so he absolutely does intend to go to straight to bed and not deal with any of this shit tonight. Sam can whine about it all he likes. But his feet betray him and somehow he ends up standing in front of the door to Cas's room.
It's not shut—it's open, just a few inches. Not like an invitation, exactly. But like a possibility. Like a hope.
There's no sound from inside. Dean steels himself and pushes the door open.
Cas looks up as the door swings wide. Blinks in surprise. "Hello, Dean."
He's sitting at his desk, a book open in front of him. Dean guesses he wasn't doing much reading, though, since when the door opened he'd been staring absently into the wall instead of down at the pages. He looks none the worse for his time in the Empty—that was part of the deal. Chuck for Castiel, unharmed. One angel, in exchange for the Empty's sole remaining rival. (The Empty probably thinks it got a hell of a bargain on that one, Dean thinks.)
Dean tries to speak, finds that his mouth is far too dry to create sounds. He swallows, tries again. "Hey, Cas."
Cas's hair is mussed, his eyes dark in the lamplight. He'd been quiet, after the Empty returned him—hugged each of them fiercely after the initial shock wore off, asked a few bewildered questions, smiled with slowly increasing earnestness throughout their celebratory drinks before retiring to his room early. He hadn't really met Dean's eyes, through all of it. Which had been fine with Dean, who was busy doing his best to not look at Cas at all.
Well, Dean stares at him now. He looks tired, like he always does. Rumpled, softer at the edges after ten years on Earth. A little bit creased with humanity.
God, Dean loves him.
I love him, Dean thinks. His hands are still shaking. Of course they are. He's fucking terrified.
Cas zeroes in on this immediately, because of course he does. He frowns. "Are you alright?"
"Fine," says Dean automatically. He almost laughs. He's hilariously not fine. He thinks he can hear his own pulse rocketing through his brain. He might pass out. He might honest-to-God pass out in this doorway, right now.
Cas slowly traces his eyes over Dean's face, probably taking in the last vestiges of tears that Dean's sleeve hadn't been able to scrub away. "Dean," he says, after a moment. "You know...what I said, before the...before. I said it, thinking that I was about to die. That those were the last words I'd ever speak to you—that it was the only way I could save you."
"So...what?" says Dean, and he registers with painful clarity that his heart is suddenly skipping a beat, that there's an abrupt swell of panic making his throat close up. "You...you didn't mean it?"
Cas tips his head up, surveys Dean. "I meant it," he says softly. "I meant it more than anything I've ever meant in my whole life. I just...what I mean to say now is, I didn't intend to make you uncomfortable. It wasn't my intention to invoke a...a response from you. And I wouldn't have...I wouldn't have..."
"You wouldn't have said it," says Dean. He braces his hands against the doorframe. Clenches and unclenches his jaw. "If you hadn't been about to die, you wouldn't have said it."
"I didn't want to make you uncomfortable," Cas repeats.
"You didn't want to make me uncomfortable," Dean echoes, feeling a little hysterical.
"Yes," says Cas, who is, now as ever, Dean thinks, an idiot, just as Dean is, and always will be, an idiot. "I know that you don't...return my feelings, in the same way, and that's alright, Dean, because as I said, happiness is—"
Dean is barely aware of crossing the room. He doesn't really register that his body moves. One moment he's rigid in the doorframe, trying to concentrate on not blacking out from the sheer fucking stress of this whole fucking ordeal, and the next moment he's standing over Cas, reaching out, reaching for him.
His hands are halfway to Cas's shoulders before he freezes there, arms trembling, breath catching in his chest. He's afraid to touch Cas. He's terrified to touch Cas. At the same time, he wants, very badly, to touch Cas.
He says, "You've got a damn shitty idea of happiness, Cas."
Cas frowns. "I—"
"Cas."
Cas closes his mouth. He folds his hands neatly on the desk, over the pages of whatever boring-ass arcane tome he was definitely not reading before Dean came in. He looks at Dean patiently, and he waits.
"I—I know you know a lot about me," says Dean quietly. He lowers his hands, curls them loosely into fists. "I know you know—what I did in Hell."
"Yes," says Cas.
"I know you know—what I—what I did growing up."
"Dean—"
"And," Dean steamrolls over the interruption, "the things—the things I've done all these years, the good and the bad, like you said. I know you—you probably know things about me that I don't even know about myself, yet."
There's a long, brimming pause.
Dean thinks to himself that it's absurd, really, that this is so hard. He just killed God, for crying out loud. He just killed freaking God, and somehow this is harder. To move one limb just a few inches. To make just a few tendons and muscles obey his stupid dumb heart.
He thinks of Sam, floppy-haired and earnest and crying. Sam as a kid, Sam as an adult, Sam every age at once. Sam so full of fury and fire and selfishness and generosity and faith. I want us both to live, Dean.
"I know you know a lot about me," he repeats, stalling for time just once more. Just once more. And then he moves his arm, and he moves his hand, and he moves the thumb and fingers that belong to a body that has done a lot, including kill God, including turn tricks, including hustle pool, including be loved. He takes Cas's hand. "But you don't know everything."
Cas turns his head, very slowly, to look at their joined hands. He looks back, very slowly, up at Dean.
"I love you," says Dean.
Cas doesn't move at all. Dean doesn't even think Cas is breathing. That's fine; Dean doesn't think he's breathing either. The light glitters gold in Cas's eyes, in his lashes.
"Say something," Dean croaks finally.
Cas slides his fingers through Dean's. "You're right," he says. "I had a damn shitty idea of happiness."
Dean laughs. It wells up in his throat like a river, warm and sweet and sudden, and he pulls Cas toward him and laughs and laughs.