Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dean is sitting on the couch, in Bobby’s living room, an empty journal on his lap, a pencil in his hand. He stares at the blank page of the stupid thing he bought on a whim, because he only had one year left to live, but he couldn’t use. Knowing you’ll end up in Hell and get tortured forever does number to your creativity, even more so when you learn this forever actually means until you’ll be turned into a demon.

Dean doesn’t know where to start. He used to doodle on every free space on pages that his pens could find. Sometimes, he even filled whole pages. But then, one day, the urge to draw stopped seizing him. Today is the first time his fingers itch since his return. Maybe because he’s so old—way older than his body looks. Maybe because of all the things he saw, all the things he did. How can you find and convey beauty when you carry such corruption inside you? When you know that souls exist and what yours did?

Dean remembers Hell. He doesn’t remember how he came back.

Mostly.

When he sleeps, sometimes, flashes come back to him. He awakes with the echoes of those memories in his mind. They get weaker and weaker in the awake world, until all Dean has left is the reminiscence of an absolute light, stronger than the light of the sun. The same kind of light that the one that surrounded Cas when he showed off his wings, that day, in the barn.

The same, stronger.

That’s how Dean knows it’s fake. Those so-called echoes are nothing more than his brain making up stuff to create a complete story, not liking the gap in his memory between Dean torturing a soul on the rack and Dean opening his eyes in a coffin, his soul tucked inside the protective shell of a body, his body heavy around him and the world so tangible. (His brain being bothered by so little is weird: Dean’s memory is a fleeting thing since he’s seventeen.) His brain is only stuffing whatever it knows inside this gap.

The whole stuff’s probably obsessing him because his dumb ass is warming up to Cas too. Dean knows Heaven didn’t save him for his sole sake. He feels it deep in his bones and he will find out what they want from him—hopefully, before it’s too late. Dean feels in the very same way that Cas is earnest. How ironic. The guy is possessing some poor bastard and threatened to send him back to Hell—to send him back to Alastair. And here Dean is, in the middle of the night, wanting to draw him, longing to recall how he saved him, instead of trying to sleep. Dean is wondering what’d happen if he let his hallucinations roam freely... would it lead to his rescue? would he remember it? would it feel as real as Alastair whispering in his ear?

(This line of thoughts is treacherous. He can’t allow it today or ever. Dean knows that if he yields to Alastair one more time—even to that Alastair, who’s nothing more than a shadow from his brain—he’ll never wrench himself free of him ever again.)

Dean forces himself to put Alastair aside. He thinks back about the barn, about his not-really-first meeting with Cas. That’s something tangible, that he can picture. Dean presses his pencil on the page and starts the outlines but his heart isn’t in it. That’s not what he wants to draw, and what’s the point of drawing if you have to force yourself?

Dean focuses on the wings’ shadows and everything seems to stop. The pencil lead crashes on the paper, almost going through it.

He has four wings.

Dean doesn’t know where the thought comes from, but there’s such certainty woven in it that he doesn’t doubt it for a second.

Cas has four wings.

Dean’s mind comes back in the present, focusing on the page. He finds himself loathing the doodle. Dean lets go of the pencil and tears off the page. It’s not Cas—not the one Dean wants to draw, the one who rescued him. It’s nothing more than... an echo, like the light filling in dreams.

Dean grits his teeth and shreds the sheet. He’s unable to tell if he has ever been that much frustrated about a drawing before.

Dean dusts the bits of paper off himself and watches them cover the floor. He’ll take care of it before Bobby wakes up.

Dean focuses back on the page, almost entirely white. He knows what he wants to draw. He feels so in the deepest parts of him. Dean closes his eyes and tries to bully his mind into giving him what he needs. All he can see is the light.

Dean opens his eyes, drops everything and leans down on the couch. He doesn’t know where to start or where to go. Why persisting?

Dean rubs a hand on his shoulder, feeling the handprint in his flesh.

He didn’t have hands, this part of his mind chimes in.

Dean tells it to shut up.

(He wonders how Cas gripped him tight and burnt this mark on his shoulder if he doesn’t have hands.)

The journal fills, almost unconsciously.

His hands are filling the pages, his mind clings to the pictures, but, sometimes, he has the impression it’s not really of his making.

(Not completely. He’s a hunter. If he felt something sketchy, he’d be the first to investigate. He wouldn’t sit around until it passes or gets the better of him.)

Some shapes make no sense—there are curves, angles, strange perspectives—but others are easy to read. Two shapes to be precise: eyes and wings.

The eyes are numerous. They all have the same form, but are differently sized. Dean doesn’t like the result. He doesn’t do justice to them. Using only black and grey feels like an insult towards those eyes, but he’s unable to find the right shade of blue to paint them. They’re often too dark, seldom too light, and none of them is ever bright enough.

As for the wings... Dean never draws them wholly. All his drawings are close-up filled with feathers but he loves them, even though he’s sure he got them wrong. He checked several books about birds, to improve his wing representations, and bird feathers aren’t ruffled that way, like sleepy-tousled hair. Yet, he doesn’t try to correct his drawings. As wrong as they are anatomically, the wings feel right. Dean has the impression they’re the only element he got right.

When he’s alone and bored, and flips through those drawings, he wonders if there’s any chance he got one thing right about Cas’ true visage. He’d ask him, if it didn’t feel like exposing himself too much.

But he and Cas spend more and more time together, with Sam’s out of the picture, and Dean can’t help but think more and more about how they met, in the beginning. He longs to ask Cas if he remembers, if he can tell him.

If he can show him.

The question hardly brushes his mind that Dean remembers Pamela. She was a psychic and she didn’t even face Cas in the real world. If she has been unable to stand his true face, with her eyes closed, then Dean would be unable to. Maybe he’d die because of it.

Dean still has his imagination. And the drawings.

He’d like to know what Cas looks like under the mask of skin and flesh that used to be called Jimmy Novak though.

The journal is like the weapons. Like Baby. Dean can’t bring them into this new life. They’re too tied to hunting and of everything that exists out of the awareness of normal people.

Of course, Dean keeps them all within reach. It’s not because he wants to adapt to this new life that he forgets monsters and hunting exist. He knows hunting won’t forget about him. Dean can step back, but he’d never be out. Never be free.

Cas doesn’t give a sign of life, neither in flesh, nor through his dreams. Dean doesn’t dream about the fragments of what happened right after Hell and right before the tomb anymore. There’s no mark left on his shoulder.

It looks like this fellowship, this start of friendship was a one-way street.

Dean mourns.

And he can’t draw to settle his thoughts.

Cas disappears and there’s nothing left of him.

Black stains over water that dissipate. A drenched and bloodied trenchcoat.

There’s no body to touch, no whispered—hoped, prayed—‘maybe angels don’t need to breathe’.

But there’s no body to burn and no wing-shaped outline on the ground neither. It makes what happened to Cas less real.

Dean picks up the trenchcoat, feeling like Cas is dead and yet being sure he can come back. At any time.

He lifts his face. The reservoir waters are still. No silhouette walks out of it.

His hands clutch on the fabric. It doesn’t mean anything.

When Dean has time to draw, the following days, he fills the pages with such a deep black that no light can shine through it. Neither a wing nor an eye appears. Cas disappeared. Consumed. And Dean doubts more with every passing day that he’d resurface. The Leviathan tore him apart. They devored him from inside.

Soon, Dean has to lock the Impala away. He leaves the journal with her.

He takes the trenchcoat with him, though. It’s not a choice. It’s a need. If... If... Cas could need it.

There was no body. No grave or pyre. Nothing.

Cas could need it.

Dean is back from Purgatory, and he’s alone.

Well, Sam’s here, asking him about that place all the time, suddenly interested. He wasn’t so interested when Dean needed someone to bust him out. He abandoned him in that horrible place, with every monster of the land after him, and didn’t spare a thought on him.

It’s not even the first time he acts that way.

Dean stomps down on what he feels. He can’t allow it. He’s a hunter, not a person. What he wants or feels doesn’t matter.

(Except for one person.)

If only freeing himself from his regrets about Cas was as easy as pretending his other emotions don’t matter.

It’s not. Cas wormed his way under his skin—inside his soul. Dean couldn’t forget anything about him in a million years, couldn’t pretend not to take even if the world was collapsing around them.

He doesn’t want to, anyway. If he can be selfish about one single thing, he wants it to be Cas.

Dean waits for Sam to rent a motel room to retrieve his journal. Sam didn’t find it. It’s still where he hid it. Dean exhales a relieved sigh. Owning something so personal without somewhere private to store it is risky. Of course, it wouldn’t be if Sam could respect other people’s boundaries and privacy. But he can’t. He has to make everything about him somehow.

Dean brushes the cover. He needs to draw. He needs to bring Cas back, in a way.

He slides the journal inside his jacket and waits. This part of Cas and of their story only belongs to them. Dean wouldn’t let anyone spying on it.

Dean opens the journal to a new page as soon as Sam falls asleep. There’s still the risk that his brother awakes and starts poking about the journal like he does for Purgatory, forces the matter until he can read it even if it means stealing it from Dean, but Dean can’t wait longer.

He forbides himself to look at his previous drawings. Nothing should influence him. He wants his new drawings to be pure, like Purgatory. He wants them to be an ode to Castiel.

Cas isn’t coming back this time. It’s different from that time with the Leviathan.

Dean doesn’t have a trenchcoat to mourn him over.

Cas’ image followed him out of Purgatory. Maybe it’s his ghosts—do angels have ghosts—, probably nothing more than a hallucination.

He finally has a hallucination of Cas, but not the one he was hoping for. What he wanted to see...

It’s too late. Dean would never have another chance to ask him. All he has left is his imagination.

Dean closes his eyes. He remembers Cas saying he’s the size of the Chrysler Building and he’s a celestial wavelength or whatever. That’s all he knows about his true visage—that and the light. Dean tries to picture a being from these few clues, in Purgatory. Something attacks his heart. Everything would have been so much easier if Cas has been his true self there. Dean could believe he made it.

What a pity angels have to use vessels.

(Well, Dean thinks they’re forced to. If they could walk as giants on Earth, why would they bother to interact with humans at all? They’d have destroyed them with their own hands, right?)

Of course, there are inconveniences in this scenario too. This version of Cas is unable to hide, his light being a beacon for the monsters... But that happened in their reality, too. They had talked about it, one evening. Dean had asked Cas why monsters were running after him and how they knew how to find him. It had been useful when he had needed a trail to follow to Cas but, as soon as he had been at his side, it had been a matter to settle. It was turning Cas in a target and Dean loathed this with his whole being.

“I’m an angel in a land of abominations,” Cas answered.

“You told me that much. But why?” Dean has whispered.

Cas and he were sitting shoulder to shoulder, Benny in their eyesight, pretending to not pay any attention. Dean wasn’t sure if he could trust him yet, or should get rid of him at the second they’d be out of Purgatory... but he shrugged it off. Benny hadn’t lead them to the portal yet and Dean had all the time in the world to get rid of him. He didn’t have to think about it now.

Thinking about this wasn’t as important as Cas. Nothing was.

“I’m an angel. My power is celestial, heavenly. It doesn’t belong here. Like you don’t belong here either.”

“I don’t have power.”

“Your soul. It shines brightly. It’s the only thing that shines here besides me.”

Cas stared at him saying so, and Dean remembered he could see his soul. It’d have embarrassed him, at another time, but they were in Purgatory. Dean had no time for shame there. He only felt a deep unfairness—Cas could see him, and he couldn’t see Cas. He reached out for Cas’ face and touched it with his fingertips. Cas didn’t move away and something relaxed in Dean. Cas was the only being he wanted to be close to, to touch. He was the only thing safe in the whole universe.

“Can they see you?”

“No more than they can see your soul.”

The answer made him happy. Dean thinks he’d have gone feral if Cas answered any other way. He wonders if Cas knew.

It doesn’t really matter. Cas isn’t here anymore.

Dean forces his mind back in the present. He despises how Purgatory still has its claws in him. Being here and now is so hard, even more than when he came back from Hell.

Probably because he’s wistful for the simplicity of Purgatory, while he couldn’t forget about Hell quickly enough.

Dean draws the forest as he remembers it. The pencil is perfect for this depiction of Purgatory. It’s a word devoid of colors.

He only leaves a large empty space, higher than the trees. Light.

It’s what they see, he thinks.

Part of him wants to destroy this page, and make this testament about Cas disappear. He’d rather picture him as a warrior, forcing Purgatory to kneel in front of him.

Except it’s something true about Cas, so Dean can’t destroy it.

He closes the journal.

“It was... pur,” he whispers.

Cas and he were side by side, fighting anything coming their way, without any complication, without a risk of betrayal. There weren’t Heaven or Hell. There weren’t Earth and mankind either. It was just the both of them against a whole world of monsters.

Dean would have been pleased to spend an eternity like this.

The Mark corrupts him from inside. Dean feels it. He feels the way his emotions are changing and he can’t stop it.

He paces in his room, stops and glances at the drawer where he hid the journal. His hands itch to find it. He doesn’tt move. He hid it there where Cas lost his wings as a reminder that Cas lost way more than he can grasp, then because he has no right to glimpse this part of Cas if he isn’t allowed to keep him in the bunker.

And now... now Dean can’t reach for the journal either. Cas has his wings back, but Dean is too corrupted. His eyes don’t deserve this.

He doesn’t know when those drawings became a part of Cas.

Dean can still feel the light pressing against his skin. He knows it’s the demon cure that turned him back into a human but, for the second time, Cas gripped him tight and saved him from Perdition. The Mark is still imprinted in his forearm, but Dean keeps feeling this comforting presence all around him. Something pure and holy wrapping him like a blanket—warm and safe and comforting.

Cas left the bunker and it twists something in him, but Dean has the phantom memory of his presence and his rescue. He’d cling to it as long as he can.

He wonders if he had felt this way right before his resurrection. What he wouldn’t give to retrieve this memory?

Dean fishes the journal out of his drawer and puts it on his desk. He opens it to a new page. No new image came to him... until this very moment: two wings folded around a human shape, like a cocoon. Those strange-feathered wings, gripping so tight they’re almost twisted backward.

Dean scoffs. Cas’ wings never held him like this.

They did. Twice.

Dean’s hand tightens around his pencil. This is wishful thinking.

Drawing is converting dreams on paper. He can indulge himself this.

So Dean draws a tiny human figure, trapped in two wings stronger than he’ll ever be, unable to move, while two other wings are spreading to bring him far away...

Dean’s pencil skids on the page. Cas didn’t take him anywhere this time. He only subdued the demon so he and Sam’d be able to deliver the cure. Is Dean starting to remember how he rescued him from Hell?

Dean resumes his drawing, afraid to allow the details to slip back in an unreachable corner of his mind.

Cas saved me.

He saved me again.

And Dean could almost tell himself that being turned into a demon was worth it. Almost.

Except Alastair’s shadow is closer than ever, breathing down his neck, holding his hand to teach him all he knows, whereas the memory of his rescue is nothing more than an echo, probably some wishful thinking to get away from Alastair.

Dean cannot not cling to this illusion. It’s his lifeline, the only thing able to keep him sane in this very moment.

Dean allows the pencil to run on the paper and tells him wild tales.

Dean is on Earth. He doesn’t bear the Mark anymore and he’s human. And yet, nothing is better. It’s getting worse if possible.

He’s bound to the Darkness, the evil sister of God—as powerful than God.

Dean clings to his illusion of Cas. It doesn’t matter if he’s tainted by the Darkness. He needs this. He clings to everything he can so he won’t fall under her power. Cas never stays with him so Dean cares for the next best thing.

Everytime he’s in his room, Dean fills pages with shapes.

Dean looks up from his journal. Cas is standing casually in the doorway of his room. Like everytime, it soothes something deep inside him.

(He knows it won’t last. It never does. But these fragments of Cas and domesticity give him the impression that everything is possible. That he can have everything.

That he is enough.)

Cas doesn’t talk so Dean resumes his drawing. Cas isn’t Sam. He never tries to spy on what isn’t meant for his eyes.

Dean adds details to the last wing—he loves drawing them—and shuts his journal. He drops his pencil on the table and turns around to face Cas.

“You draw.”

“Sometimes.”

Cas nods.

“I find it amazing. Art. You create—a divine act—but you don’t stop here. You have so many ideas, so much inspiration, that you have to use a whole system of classification. There are myriads of art movements and every artist has their own touch.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“Chaotic,” Cas retorts.

It rings like a compliment, in his mouth.

It makes Dean smile.

“Would you show me?” Cas asks, curiosity coloring his voice.

Dean refrains to say no, by reflex—those drawings are private as so few things are in his life—but it’s Cas. He’s in his home, in his room, and he’s asking this little thing from him. And if it makes him linger some more seconds... if it allows them to share a moment together... The math is quick.

Dean grabs the journal and throws it casually to Cas. Cas catches it. Dean rests an elbow on his desk.

“Go on.”

He forces his eyes away as Cas opens the journal. He knows how he’d stare otherwise. It’d be creepy.

“Dean...”

“It’s surrealism.”

If he got his art styles right. Dean never tried to learn them: he likes to study some oeuvres, some seemed to echo with his soul, and those feelings were enough for him.

“It’s me,” Cas exhales.

Dean’s head snaps up. Cas is holding the journal reverrently, his eyes studying each little grain of paper, making Dean self-conscious in a way he hasn’t felt in decades.

“You? How–?”

–is it possible? –I recognize you? –you recognize yourself?

Every question jumps in Dean’s mind at the same time. He fears to utter one of them and not getting the answer to the others.

Cas turns another page, engrossed.

“It’s you?” Dean asks.

Cas looks up at him. “It is.” He pauses, sadness brushing his features. “You didn’t know?”

“Yes. No. I– I thought of you, when I drew those but... I can’t see you. No human can.”

The image of Pamela’s burned eyes, the sound of her screaming and her sobbings, flashes through Dean’s mind. It’s always coming back to him in the most terrible timing—especially when Cas is concerned.

Cas looks back at the journal. For a second, Dean thinks he spots a shape around him—a shape with many eyes, primaries brushing the floor, not fitting entirely in the room... or the bunker. Dean blinks. The superimposition disappears. Of course. This is Cas. Old, regular Cas.

“You saw me, when I raised you.”

“I was dead.”

“Human souls have the same limits than human minds,” Cas explains, and the memory of Pamela once again storming inside Dean’s brain. Her eyes were closed and yet they burned because her mind reached out to Cas. “This is why I thought– I knew that you could see me. You could see me in Hell.”

“So?”

Cas closes the journal. He walks to Dean and hands it back to him.

“So it means you can see me.” Cas winces and corrects ruefully, “Us.”

Dean grimaces. “I don’t want to see them.”

The hint of amusement sparkles on Cas’ face.

“Good.”

Dean raises his eyebrows. He wants to believe it means something. It certainly doesn’t. He’s building castles on clouds, like he usually does.

Dean  retrieves his journal. Cas’ eyes track it, something like hunger lurking in his pupils, as if he didn’t see enough of his drawings. Warmth expands in Dean’s chest. He is the one who put that expression on Cas’ face.

He raises the journal.

“You want to look at it more?”

Cas hesitates. “It’d be vanity.”

“And?”

“I have too many flaws to allow myself to get this one, too.”

“You’ve got room before catching up with the other angels, for flaws.”

Cas tries to look stern—the human shouldn’t get away with insulting angels. He fails miles away, his expression remaining soft on the edges.

“Deannn.”

“You know I’m right.”

“You aren’t very kind.”

“They started it.”

Cas hesitates a little more, but he caves in and takes back the journal. He skims through it slowly. Dean hadn’t thought once in the many hours he worked on it that his drawings would mean something for Cas. They feel more valuable now. Especially since Cas confirmed they are him.

“I think this is the only art about one of us.”

“I saw paintings of Michael,” Dean points out reluctantly.

“He was wearing his vessel. This is only me, as I can’t appear on Earth. This is...” Cas raises his blue eyes on him. “A miracle.”

Dean shifts on his seat, heat creeping on his face.

“So? How come I’m seeing you?”

“Some humans, special humans, can see our true visages.”

“You told so when we met.”

A smile plays over Cas’ mouth. “You remember,” he says fondly.

“You made quite an impression.”

Cas straightens up, the smug bastard. It was a little late to worry about his vanity—not that Dean minds.

“So, those humans, how it works?”

Cas deflates at this. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

He shrugs.

“You’re the first I met.”

It’s Dean’s turn to feel smug. Out of the many many many humans Cas met, he’s the only one special enough to see him. It’s not something he should be proud of—he isn’t doing it on purpose—but he can’t help it. Any crumb feels like a feast, whenever it concerns their relationship.

Dean eyes the journal. There’s something else he can do—something no other human did according to Cas.

“You’d model for me? So I drew all of you?”

“The result would be the same.”

“How so?”

“You are still human. I think you can’t entirely comprehend my true visage. Your mind needs to have some... failsafe, in order not to break.”

“Oh.”

“Can I show myself to you?”

Dean’s heart skips a beat and his hands tightens. Is Cas really offering...?

“Yes,” he breathes out. “Of course.”

He may be thinking about it since they met in that barn, and longing for it since Cas has chosen to fight at humanity’s side.

Cas lays the journal gently on the desk, as if it’s a treasure. He retraces his steps to shut the door and turns around to face Dean. Dean’s heart pounds. Cas sheds his body like a shell. Absolute light fills the room, erasing the furnitures and the walls, seeming to replace the world itself.

Dean curls his hands into fists, refraining from raising them to shelter his face.

He keeps his eyes open.

Brightness surrounds him.

Glimpses appear, like in his dreams.

Ruffled feathers. Wings. One, two. Four shapes. Eyes. So many eyes. Unblinking. Focusing on him. An eye as big as him watching him and his own silhouette drawn in light blue shades. Light. Everywhere. A bright white with bluish reflections. More feathers. Ripples in the light. Wavelengths, his mind provides. Four huge wings– Pain shoots in his head. Fades as he watches the feathers and notices one eye looking at him. Dean lets out a laugh. There’s a carefreeness inside him. It’s Cas, everywhere. He couldn’t be safer than he is right in this moment.

The light withdraws, like the tide.

“No.”

The single syllable is full of loss.

“It’s okay, Dean,” says Cas’ voice.

And if Cas tells so, then it’s true.

“Close your eyes.”

Dean complies. He counts his heartbeat, waits for his mind to rearranges itself. Once he feels like himself again, he opens his eyes.

They are back in the room. Cas is watching him with an expression... Dean is pretty sure he has the same expression whenever Cas uses his powers.

He did nothing special though.

“You are a wonder.”

Dean lets out an embarrassed laugh. “Cas, buy a guy a dinner first.”

Like usual, the innuendo flies above Cas’ head. Or he’s ignoring it on purpose to let him down slowly.

Dean may never find it out.

“Your mind doesn’t fight what you see. It accepts and adapts. It’s following the tide.”

“Doesn’t sound good.”

“It is. All the others... They refuse to acknowledge their limits. They aren’t able to. Your mind does... but this is not the only reason why you’re able to see my true visage. There’s something else.”

“What?”

Cas cocks his head to the side, pondering about it.

“An awareness,” he ends up saying. “Your mind comprehends what I am and how to deal with it, without having to suffer the consequences beforehand. It translates what it can comprehend.” He pauses a little. “I’d never have imagined this skill to work like this. This is fascinating.”

“You think so?”

Cas nods enthusiastically. Dean can’t help but smile.

“I always wondered how it works. You are ‘four dimensional’ beings of flesh, as you say. We can’t be understood by any of your standards. The usual response, where it overwhelms your senses, is way more logical.”

“And you find logical stuff boring.”

“No,” Cas lies, as if it’s not one of the reasons he stays among them, humans.

Dean does what anyone would at his place: he scoffs.

“The strength of your soul is another factor,” Cas keeps going, refusing to take the bait.

“What?”

“Souls are metaphysical power. Yours is one of the strongest I ever saw. Your ability to see our true visage is an almost impossible combination.”

“But it happens.”

“You happened. You’re a miracle.”

“I don’t mean– It happened before. That’s how you knew.”

Cas stills, in this very way he does when he forgets he’s inhabiting a human body, forgetting to breathe or to move. Dean never checked, but he’s pretty sure his heartbeat stops, too, in this kind of moments.

“I... You’re the first, to my knowledge. It was only a legend we told each other, the few times we wanted to talk about something else than the battlefield.”

“You have legends?”

“Not many. We’d rather keep busy.”

Dean nods slowly. He understands. This is a warrior mindset. There’s no time to waste with nonsense. You always have to be ready.

His eyes wander to the journal.

“Still. It’s a pity I can’t draw a real portrait of you.”

“Your drawings are perfect as they are. They show the way your mind works, which makes them even more beautiful.”

Cas’ expression betrays a heartbreaking sincerity. Hope whispers to Dean that it means something—a mistake that he does often and seems unable to learn from. Dean isn’t sure that Cas would give him the answer he wants, even if he found the right words. But he wants to find out. For the first time, there is a chance that things work. They defeated all their enemies, the Darkness and God’s relationship is fixed and no calamity fell onto them. It’s the perfect timing.

But Dean doesn’t know how to word his question. How you can try to reach out for something when you have been punished each time you tried to free yourself from the limits imposed to you before? He knows that Cas is outside those limits.

“Thanks,” Dean stammers.

“You’re welcome.”

Their conversation is done, so Dean shouldn’t be surprised to see Cas turn his back on him and open the door to leave. Dean wants to drag the discussion a little longer. Maybe he’d be able to find the words he needs then.

“You can take a look at those drawings whenever you want.”

Cas stops in the doorway to give him a smile. Dean wonders if he understands what he is offering to him. His need for privacy is very low, with Cas.

“You wanna watch a movie?”

“With pleasure.”
 

Dean’s body is leaning toward Cas. He regrets they’re settled in two armchairs. He’d like to lean on his shoulder and to fall asleep there.

(It’s for this very reason that he chose those furnitures. To prevent the... temptation. To respect Cas’ boundaries.)

The movie reaches its end too quickly, stealing him the perfect excuse to spend more time with Cas. Dean isn’t ready to let go of him yet.

“I’ve got a question. About the drawings.”

Cas nods and follows him to his room. His presence is comforting: nothing would dare to attack Dean when Cas is keeping watch.

Dean retrieves his journal. He bypasses the blackened pages, wondering if Cas understood them, and stops to the one he was searching for: a tiny human locked in two wings, while two other wings push at the air. He turns it toward Cas.

“Did it happen like this?”

The blue eyes soften. There’s a whisper and a movement of air in the room, as if Cas’ wings were moving.

I’m imagining things.

Dean would have noticed if Cas’ wings interacted that much with the world around them.

“You fought me,” Cas explains gently. Dean tries to not get offended at the fact he’s pretty sure it’s the tone people use to caw over kittens and puppies. “This is why I had to grip you tight.”

“Why I don’t remember it, since I can see you?”

“Your resurrection. Humans aren’t meant to see the moments between death and life.”

“We’re not meant to see angels either.”

“It’s different.”

They allow the silence to settle between them. Cas breaks it first.

“Can I do something else for you?”

I want you to stay, Dean thinks.

But Cas never fulfills this wish, even when Dean begs him on his knees.

“What you’re going to do now?”

“How so?”

“The Darkness isn’t a problem anymore, Lucifer is back in the Cage–”

“Thanks to you.”

Dean isn’t so sure. Cutting the Darkness’ speech about offering him something by a hopeful ‘Satan back in the Cage and not able to reach to anyone outside anymore?’ could have had other consequences, like reminding those cosmic entities that he can’t respect them to save this life and prompting them to endanger the world again. But Chuck nodded, snapped his fingers and left for faraway horizons with his sister—very faraway horizons, Dean hopes.

(So Dean hopes.)

“And you found God.”

“Not really,” Cas sighs.

Dean waves the details away.

“Point is... we did—you did—everything you decided to do in the beautiful room. So... what’s now?”

“I could go back in Heaven...”

“Or not.”

“Dean.”

“The angels alre always harming you.”

“It is my home.”

Dean squeezes his hands together. Maybe that’s the answer to his questions. If Cas is still seeing Heaven as his home, in spite of everything the angels did to him, it probably means that he hated to live at their side.

Dean flips through the journal to keep himself busy. If this is how Cas feels, he can do nothing against it. A drawing catches his attention. The tower of light in the forest.

“Your remember Purgatory?” he whispers.

“Obviously. I’m not the one who misremembered it.”

It’s said so casually that it hurts, as if Dean’s feelings don’t matter. The only reason he misremembered the ordeal was because Cas chose to let him go.

“I mean everything I said, there. I need you.” Dean feels a little self-conscious to say it so calmly, not urged forward by any pain Cas could be feeling. “I want to keep you home... Did you wonder what it means?”

“Earth,” Cas answers right away, his voice holding a distant note.

“Somewhere safe for you,” Dean corrects. “Heaven isn’t, so I’ll never see it like your home.”

“It’s my home nevertheless.”

“It’s the place you came from.”

“Isn’t it the same thing?”

“You know it’s not.”

Cas doesn’t answer. Dean can’t tell if it’s because he’s pondering about his words or refusing to believe them. Cas is shutting away, like he does when he doesn’t want Dean to be able to read into him. It hurts.

Dean’s eyes drop back to the drawing. It still feels weird to be sharing it with Cas—weird and comforting.

“I was jealous that you could see everything of me and that I couldn’t see everything of you.”

Dean used to believe that it’d allow him to own Cas a little, in the way Cas owns him, but it doesn’t change anything. He saw Cas and their relationship is still tipped the same way.

“When?”

“You can’t tell when I made the first drawing?” Dean teases him.

Cas takes the bait this time and offense shatters his mask. He’s a little touchy.

“Of course I can.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“You did the first drawing on September 27th, 2008.”

Dean can’t help but check the drawing to see if he somehow dated it. He didn’t. He glances suspiciously at Cas.

“You’re making this up?”

“You did the second on October 3rd... I’m rather disappointed that only seven of those drawings have been made on a Thursday.”

“Now, you’re just bragging.”

“You asked for it.”

“And you know enough about me to know I was kidding.”

Cas makes a serious face, but not quickly enough for Dean to not notice his amusement. Dean shakes his head fondly and puts the journal back in its drawer. How can he ask for more when he already has so much?

“What you’d advise me to do?”

“About what?”

“The path I should take. I’m an angel who doesn’t belong in Heaven after everything I did.”

“Having a personality that doesn’t suck and principles?”

“I don’t belong on Earth, unlike you.”

Dean scoffs. Cas tilts his head. Dean points at himself.

“I’m a hunter. And dead about... too many times to count. I sure don’t belong here either. You don’t have to decide now. You can take your time. I’d advise you to take a vacation, while you still can.”

“What about you?”

Dean blinks in surprise. “Huh?”

“Everything you told me works with you.”

Dean hasn’t thought about it. Stopping had been an unreachable dream for so long—almost all his life. It still feels out of reach.

“We could wander. Leave.”

“We?” echoes Cas.

“Besties on a road trip. How does that sound?”

“Very good,” Cas smiles.

Butterflies dance in Dean’s stomach. The balance is once again tipping to his favorite side: hope.

“We could plan something tomorrow, leave the next day and see... where it’d lead us. If you want.”

“I want.”

Dean would like to have something in his hand to fiddle with it. He sits on his bed.

“Well...”

“Do you want me to stay, tonight?”

His head snaps up to Cas. This part follows a different script, usually: Cas leaves and only offers his help when it deems it necessary. Kinda like their other interactions.

Dean doesn’t even think about the shadows or the nightmares waiting to haunt him when he nods yes.

They’re starting a new step of their relationship. He’s curious to see where it’ll lead, whether Cas shares his feelings or not.

Dean falls asleep in no time that night.