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Dean’s dead and in the Roadhouse when he sees him .
A shock of black hair, a glimpse of a tan trenchcoat is all it takes for Dean to start hurriedly striding towards the end of the bar to grip a shoulder.
“Cas?,” Dean croaks out, barely a whisper. Please, please let it be him , he thinks - he can’t have left off like that with Cas. A memory unbidden rises, Cas’ tear stricken face as he confesses to Dean that he is the one thing he had thought he could never have, that happiness was just in the being .
Wrong, it’s wrong , his mind has been repeating unhelpfully on a loop since that time, along with another thought, You should have told him. Dean hadn’t thought that he’d ever be able to say his words, that he’d ever see Cas again, but here he is, in Dean’s Heaven (and it made sense - why not? What heaven of his could there be without Cas?).
The man doesn’t appear to have heard him yet. Dean feels his heart leaping into his throat, wets his lips and tries again.
“Cas, I’m - “ The shoulder twitches underneath his hand and he lets it fall. The man turns and all of a sudden, Dean feels his heart crash back down. It’s Cas’s face, lines and blue eyes and all, and yet different . Dean wants so badly, but he’s seeing the small differences now and knows, this is not his Cas. Dean notices now, the lack of world weariness, the neater press of the shirt and tie, the tidier hair.
“I’m sorry, Dean.” Jimmy speaks and confirms it. On a closer look, Jimmy doesn’t have the avenging furrow between the eyebrows ever present on Cas’s, and he doesn’t gaze at Dean like he knows him inside and out and still somehow loves him, he doesn’t look at Dean the same way -
I know. I know how you see yourself, Dean, echoes again. An I love you rings in his head and all of a sudden, it’s Cas, disappearing again, the liquid smoke of the Empty dragging him into nothingness. Dean feels hot, pinpricks of tears threatening to escape the corners of his eyes.
“It’s me, Jimmy. And oh - judging by your face, I guess you were expecting Castiel? I actually haven’t seen him in Heaven since I’ve died; I thought he’d still be on Earth in my body?”
“No, Cas is -,” Dean rubs his face with one hand, feeling the slight growth of his whiskers pricking his palm. His tongue feels thick somehow, heavy in his mouth and he can’t bring himself to finish the statement and so cuts off abruptly. “- Sorry, I don’t know what I was expecting.”
Jimmy tilts his head, the frown growing deeper, turning his lips down at the corners. Dean knows he has to put a stop to whatever (right) conclusions Jimmy’s starting to form in his head. Honestly , fuck, Dean thinks, what must he look like for Jimmy, just a passing acquaintance, to notice? Dean’s dead, but still not ready to share this with a stranger. So he blurts out the first excuses that come to mind.
“It’s just that I just recently died.” Bad start , but Dean blathers on, “Just, you know, I’m still just a little dazed from the newness and hoping to find old friends here in Heaven. ‘S my mistake, sorry, I gotta - I gotta go.” Dean’s stumbling and he knows, needs to put a hard stop to it.
“Nice seeing you and all.” There, Dean’s done. He quickly turns his back before Jimmy can respond and rushes now towards the exit, boots tap-tapping across the floor. Dean feels the lean-to of the wooden door and presses against it, hears the click of the bar as he pushes it open and he stumbles out into the twilight.
Dean drives. It’s a perfect summer’s night, like the ones of his youth when he and Sammy would go out into the woods to light some sparklers that he’d gotten with one of his fake licenses, claiming to be of legal age. It was one of those times he’d treasure with Sam, just them -
His heart wasn’t narrower then, but his family was smaller then - just Sam and Dad and most days Dad just wasn’t there - off on hunting some witch or chasing some ghouls or whatever.
Dean inhales and scents sweet grass and pine. He’s not going fast; it’s a leisurely drive, thirty or forty miles per hour, on a road that’s mostly a straight shot with some gentle curves that cut around old growth forest that thins and deepens rhythmically. He catches some cricket chirps on the wind and the familiarity of it starts to comfort him, reminding him of other many nights spent crisscrossing states like this. Dean still feels new and unsettled here though, like those first few nights of sleeping in a new bed in a new town he’d just moved to in his youth.
The roads in Heaven seem to adjust to his mood and desires and this one is no different. It’s an easy drive, a pleasant one that lets him distance himself from mistaking Jimmy for Cas and affords him time and space for new thoughts to surface to be turned over like stones in the palms of his hands.
He should have expected it was Jimmy at the Roadhouse, not Cas. After all, Dean had seen the Empty, seen it take Cas away, Cas who even after all this time was still an angel, no matter how often Dean forgot now, after years of seeing Cas slightly rumpled as always, sitting across from him in the mornings. Cas, making him coffee. Cas, arguing for Jack’s life, for Dean, for Sam, for free will and choice, for pushing forward always with another way, no matter what the odds.
Dean knows that angels and demons don’t die like humans because they aren’t like humans.
And yet - in that moment back there under the lamps of Ellen’s bar - Dean had felt desperately certain it was him, because he had wanted it to be. He was damned if he was gonna leave unfinished business like that between them.
Damnation in Heaven still, what a thought.
Dean drums his fingers on the wheel and turns the volume dial up as Robert Plant croons lines from Stairway to Heaven and the guitars start to crescendo.
He had really thought - thought for all this time that Cas, being an angel, wouldn’t, couldn’t know love, not like humans did. And yet now to know - to realize only in Cas’ last moments that Cas had in fact loved him for some unfathomable reason had hurt. Maybe Dean had sort of known before, though unsure that it wasn’t simply an illusion borne from his own desperate wants, but he hadn’t felt sure enough until Cas had opened his mouth and started with “The only thing I want is what I can’t have.” And Dean was scared, scared and elated and sick with nerves that he would get confirmation ( and he did) and then the Empty had just swallowed Cas up, and he hadn’t - hadn’t had the chance to tell him that -
And then Cas was gone. Again. Dean’s sick of this shit, sick of Cas just leaving him again and again and -
Cas bursting in a shower of guts, Dean feeling the wet spray of blood, snapped out of existence by Raphael and again by Lucifer, only to reappear miraculously resurrected, like it never happened. They’re up against Lucifer and it’s the Apocalypse and Dean’s not willing to let him nor Sammy be vessels to play out Chuck’s sick Abel and Cain redux part infinity storyline.
Dean’s mind flashes forward.
A trenchcoat floating in the water, Leviathans streaming into the sky . Cas reappearing as the faith healer Emmanuel and rescuing him from demons. Cas, in remorse, saving Sam, transferring Sam’s Hell-induced insanity into himself, falling into a coma.
The memories flick quicker and quicker now, like an old timey projector.
Cas pushing him into the portal between Purgatory and Earth, forcing Dean to leave Cas behind. Cas returning to him somehow freed from Purgatory. Cas getting himself into trouble and dying impaled on a blade and Dean making a deal with Gadreel to resurrect him.
Cas’ death again at the hands of Lucifer at yet another angel blade and Cas returning once again somehow from the Empty.
Cas, who’s returned again and again but Dean guesses, not this time.
Dean still can’t understand it. Can’t understand this finality, when Cas has always returned somehow. It’s been a pattern before, why shouldn’t it continue now?
Dean purses his lips into an o and exhales. The sky’s been darkening as he’s been driving and now it’s full night, a soft velvety black skyscape dotted with brilliant tiny stars with a bright yellow moon that skims the tops of the trees casting long thin shadows in the moonlight.
It’s a nice drive, Dean thinks to himself and shoves the remaining wisps of longing back down into the depths of his mind. Might as well make the most of it.
Time does pass differently (weirdly) in heaven. Right now, Dean notices, it skips a bit. Like a dream, one moment he’s in Baby, driving along moonlit winding roads, and the next, it’s morning again, the sun streaming bright and yellow against parking lot dirt. Dean gets out of his car, stretches and squints.
He’s back at the Roadhouse again somehow and this time, it’s better. There’s an older man, grizzly with a cap sitting on the front porch, and Dean feels his heart lift, at least somethings are right in this place.
It’s Bobby . Dean feels the swellings of hope and comfort again as he walks over to take a seat, in one of those rickety wooden chairs Ellen had gotten as a pair at some hunter’s moving sale (Hunters were a pretty itinerant bunch and thrifty too).
“Well,” Dean starts out, feeling his lips twitch into a smile, “at least I made it to Heaven.”
“Yep,” grouses Bobby.
“What memory is this?” Dean remembers the last time he was in heaven, when Sammy and him got shot dead by some angry hunters. He had been searching for Joshua the angel of Eden then, to learn how to contact God and stop the apocalypse (rich now, thinking back on it). Heaven back then had been a series of memories customized for each person to be repeated over and over again.
Another one of Chuck’s bright ideas.
“It ain’t, ya idjit.” Bobby goes on to explain, “That kid of yours, before he went...wherever, made some changes here. Busted my ass out. And then he...Well, he set some things right. Tore down all the walls up here. Heaven ain’t just reliving your golden oldies anymore. It’s what it always should have been. Everyone happy. Everyone together.” Bobby goes on, pointing as he goes.
“Rufus lives about 5 miles that way...With Aretha. Thought she’d have better taste.”
Bobby gestures to the west.
“Your mom and dad? They got a place over yonder.” Dean looks and sees gently cresting mountains and squints and thinks he maybe sees a small yellow house peaking out. There’s only one road out, he notes, and then remembers that it’s Heaven and maps don’t matter here. The roads take you to where you need to be anyways. It’s good to know that he has family here even if Cas isn’t and Dean starts to feel a little comfort in that.
“It ain’t just Heaven, Dean. It’s the Heaven you deserve.” Bobby pauses and leans in, pats Dean’s shoulder. “And we’ve been waiting for you.”
Bobby opens a cooler between their chairs and takes out a couple of beers, pops the caps off using the edge of the bench, and hands one over to Dean.
“So, Jack did all that?”
“Well...Cas helped.”
It’s quiet as Bobby takes a sip but Dean’s askew again, feels his heart leap into his throat, feeling audacity in hope. Cas - Cas is here and not in the Empty. Dean can finally see him again to tell him what he’s been thinking for hell, maybe at least a few years now.
His heart hammering, Dean takes a sip of the beer hoping to calm down a bit. He grimaces a bit at the taste; it’s slightly too bitter yet somehow watery, but Dean can pinpoint exactly why he’s tasting this.
“This tastes like the first drink I ever shared with my dad.” Bobby nods. Dean remembers a night after a difficult hunt when he was 16, his dad handing a beer over to him and telling him that he had earned it and Dean feeling thrilled at getting a rare “well done son” moment.
“Quality stuff?”
“No, it’s crap.” Dean’s lips quirk at the corners into a small smile. “But it was fantastic.”
“Just like this?” The inflection goes up at the end, a question. Dean thinks about Cas and sighs.
Could be better , Dean thinks, but says, “Almost perfect.” instead. He doesn’t know what gives him away, but Bobby nods, definitely knowingly in response.
“He’ll be along.” Bobby offers. “Time up here, it’s different. You got everything you could ever want...or need… or dream. So I guess the question is....” Bobby adjusts a bit in his seat, takes another sip and exhales before asking, “What are you gonna do now, Dean?”
Dean thinks about all the people he’d like to see that he hadn’t seen for so long - mom and dad, Charlie from his world, Ellen and Jo and Ash, Rufus...but he knows who he most wants to see first now.
(It’s Cas.)
Dean just has to find him, a definitely possible task now that he knows that Cas is here, in Heaven. Dean looks away from Bobby, looks at the Impala, parked. He looks back.
“I think I’ll go for a drive.” Dean sets aside his beer and stands up.
“Have fun.” Bobby’s face holds a hint of a smile. Dean turns and walks back to his car, unlocking the doors and sliding into the driver’s seat.
“Hey baby,” Dean pets the dash. He starts the car and turns on the radio and “Carry on Wayward Son” starts playing.
Carry on my wayward son~
There’ll be peace when you are done.
Fitting, Dean thinks. He’ll find Cas, and he’ll have peace when that is done.
Dean drives on, this somehow never ending road with the invisible hand of Heaven guiding his twists and turns - and feels a sense of calm wash over him. He has a mission now and he has hope. Cas is here , he knows, and he has nothing but eternity to find him. And if this is really the heaven he desires, he knows that Cas has to be in it.
The smell of pine whips through the breeze of the Impala’s open windows and Dean narrows his eyes as the forest seems to reshape into something familiar. A thought niggles at the back of his mind, half formed, but it disappears like smoke when he tries to tug at the thought. The forest composition changes a bit, from pines and elms into shaded big leafed maples and ash trees, and he squints to see an unfinished rocky bypath coming up ahead, a brown painted metal sign that indicates “Lake” and “RV lot and campsite” at the turn.
Dean takes the right into the gravel path - it reminds him of one of those thousands of little offshoots of small parks he’d take occasionally on long roadtrips, wanting a little diversion after a stressful hunt. The lake indicated by the sign ought to be pleasant enough, a destination unknown to most of America but a small delight for locals that needed escape from the cyclic nature of their lives once in a while.
He continues down the gravel path, maybe some five - ten miles (it’s pretty short) when it widens into a small dirt parking lot with a small outhouse and a wood sign with printed carved letters: “Lake 0.2 mi” and an arrow pointed at a small dirt path. He can already see glimpses of choppy steel blue waters and a wooden pier jutting into the lake from here. Dean parks the Impala and gets out -
He’s at the end of the pier (another time skip) and he’s sitting in a cloth folding chair, casting his line into the lake with a beer by his side, when Dean remembers -
Oh . He knows this place; he knows it from a dream and so he knows Cas has to be here , please.
Dean closes his eyes and prays.
Cas, if you can hear me, get your feathery ass down here.
A heartbeat.
A rustle of wings; Dean opens his eyes and turns to his right and this time Dean knows, this is Cas, not Jimmy; how could he have ever mistaken the two because this is Cas, tie askew and hair rumpled, smiling soft and gentle at Dean like Cas has been for years, Dean realizes, now -
“Hello Dean.” Cas says and Dean finally feels at peace.
“ Cas,” Dean breathes and stumbles out of his chair, hands coming up to desperately cradle Cas’ face, and Dean surges forward to press his lips into Cas’s, teeth clacking a bit in his rush to convey the depth of his feelings. Dean only hopes that Cas will understand that Cas could have him, could have this. Dean feels Cas startle, and then press back into Dean, hands dropping to his lower back, pulling him in.
The kiss goes on a bit longer until Dean pulls back, breathless and jittery while he remembers the words he needs to say.
“Cas, I - “ he chokes a bit, licks his lips, swallows and tries -
“I know.” Cas smiles, more cheeky this time with a slight twinkle in his blue eyes, lips a little kiss-swollen, cheeks a little red. “I love you, Dean.”
This time the words come out easier, tumbles out, made easier by Cas starting off with a reiteration, an affirmation of his love.
“And I, you. I mean, I love you.” Dean can’t help the small rush at the end, where the words aspire with the last of his breath.
Another heartbeat.
And then Cas reaches back, fingers skimming the nape of Dean’s neck, and pulls Dean into another kiss. This time, when they break apart, Dean can’t help the goofy smile that takes over his face, but then again Cas’s mouth is stretched just as wide in happiness. His heart pounds, thunder in his ears, and Dean’s a little bit breathless and sated, when a thought flits by.
“Hold on, Cas - did you just Han Solo me?”
Cas laughs.
Dean’s back at the Roadhouse again, smelling the same slightly stale stink of beer that’s familiar now, but this time, it’s different, better.
Dean feels whole.
Cas is here, and Dean’s flung an arm over Cas’s shoulder, beer in the other hand and he’s delivering one of his best jokes to Ellen and Jo and Ash behind the bar.
Sam and Eileen are here as well. Dean is pleased to learn that they’ve lived a long full life together after Dean’s death - had the chance to grow old, have grandkids and dogs like Sammy’s always wanted. ( Dean’s also a little horrified yet pleased to find out that Sammy’s named his kid Dean Jr.) Sam looks lighter now, then when Dean left him back then, in the barn where he died, and Dean’s happy about it, although it also means Sammy’s back to ribbing him again - Sammy’s first words after taking one look at Dean with Cas in Heaven being “It’s about time” and Eileen signing to Sam “Wow, so they never -” before they both collapse into tiny giggles.
Dean grouses at them a bit for that, but feels warmed by their responses.
Jack actually stops by from time to time now that he’s finished a lot of the work to rebuild Heaven. He bounces up to Dean at the bar and gives Dean a look and blurts out that he’s happy that Dean’s finally accepted this part of himself and he congratulates Dean on his relationship . ( Dean’s left a bit flustered and sputtering like he always has been when confronted with so much blunt honesty but Cas just curls him closer). And slowly Dean accumulates new faces at the bar in time - Claire, Kaia, Jody, Donna, Missouri, Pamela, etc. In Heaven, Dean notices, time between events seem neither fast nor slow but always appropriate. He builds his family again and visits those souls he’s lost too early, Charlie and his parents, Bobby and Rufus, the folks at the Roadhouse. Here is the Heaven he’s always wanted - an endless parade of cheery family dinners with the parents and outings on the lake with Bobby and hangouts at the bar with friends, soft cuddles on the couch and a warm bed with Cas, winding drives on roads that always lead to home.
And it’s another summer night, same as Dean’s first night in Heaven, when Ellen suggests taking another group photo, him and all his family, the new and the old. It’s a do-over of the grim last rites pic he’d had with Ellen and the other Roadhouse crew that he used to take out on occasion and stare at on sleepless nights back when he was alive and the others long gone and it feels right to do this again, in Heaven.
(It’s a do-over in a series of do-overs that’s been Dean’s Heaven.)
So when Ellen gestures and announces 10 seconds left on the timer after everyone Dean loves is squeezed tightly into frame - Dean smiles and pulls Cas close, the way he always wants and clasps their ringed hands together.
The camera light flashes.
And Dean is
happy
.