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For Dean, Heaven was miserable.
It figures that even in literal paradise Dean couldn't manage to just do what he was supposed to do. Even with no evil left to fight he just couldn't fucking relax. He couldn't even do nothing right.
He was driving, of course he was driving. What else was he supposed to do? His life's purpose had suddenly become entirely obsolete, he had left behind his little brother, and Jack was busy running the entire universe. But not alone, apparently. Dean tried to push down the unconscious sting in his chest at the thought of Castiel, tried not to feel betrayed that Cas hadn't even come to see him. Tried to pretend he didn't know why. But the truth is that there was a weight on his chest that had been since before he had even known Cas.
It started when he was 9 and saw his dad's face when a bartender kissed another man in the alley behind a restaurant. When he was 14 in the locker room and watched some poor kid get his head shoved in a toilet for holding another boy's hand. Right and wrong had never mattered; Dean had a duty. A responsibility to be whoever his dad told him he needed to be. It went without saying that that person's gaze couldn't linger too long on another boy or wonder what his friend's lips would feel like against his own. What Dean wanted had never mattered before, so why would it now?
But then Dad died, and Dean met Cas. Castiel had singlehandedly upended Dean's entire worldview. Showed him a world he couldn't have ever even fathomed. Made incredible sacrifices to protect Dean and his brother. Sat next to him at the dinner table and treated him like he was someone who mattered in the vast planes of existence. Cas had seen him do horrible things, had taken the worst of his anger and shame, and had still loved him. And it terrified Dean.
Dean had never been so comprehensively understood by another person. He had never felt so accepted as when he was in Cas' presence. Cas saw every dark, disgusting part of Dean and still chose him every time. Cas' love was unconditional in a Disney-movie way. In a way that Dean wouldn't believe even existed if he hadn't seen it himself. All that love, all that goodness and selflessness, for him.
Dean didn't deserve it. He hadn't deserved it the first time when Cas gripped him tight and raised him from perdition. He didn't deserve it the last time when Cas selflessly chose him once again and paid the ultimate price for it. And then Dean had gone and died like a month later. Christ. He really was the ultimate screw-up.
The worst part was that Cas just assumed that Dean didn't love him back. And he had every reason to. Dean had never been good to him. Not nearly as much as he deserved after everything he'd done for Dean. Because Dean was a coward. He was so cruel that his best friend's true happiness was the idea of being able to express his love without the fear of what the consequences would be. Dean hated himself for a lot of reasons, but he hated himself most for letting Cas die without ever hearing that he was loved. And now Dean was dead, and Cas was alive. And he wanted nothing to do with Dean.
So Dean was driving, because his Heaven held his childhood abuser and lacked the only people he had ever really loved. Dean drove, because he was alone.
***
There was a barn on the side of the road. Typically this wouldn't be cause for any sort of hesitation. But he was in Heaven, and there'd been no sign of life since he left Bobby. But there was a barn on the side of the road, and Dean recognized it.
There were still sigils painted on the outside. Old, crudely drawn. Drawn by him. He found himself standing suddenly outside the doors. He didn't even remember deciding to pull over. But he found himself standing outside the doors terrified more than anything that it would be empty.
He steeled himself and pushed open the doors. And there he stood, alive. Castiel, Angel of the Lord, facing away from Dean with his head bowed. "Hello Dean."
Dean felt as though all the air had been pushed from his lungs. He could barely breathe, let alone speak. "Cas…"
Cas turned slightly and surveyed Dean over his shoulder. He looked younger than he did when Dean last saw him, more guarded. Dean wondered for a moment if this was just a memory from that first night. But then their eyes met and he saw the glint in Castiel's and knew that this wasn't the case.
"You died." Cas had always been blunt.
"So did you," Dean countered.
"I chose to."
"Maybe I did too." Something flickered across Cas' face. An expression he hadn't ever seen before on him. Dean cast his eyes to the ground, unable to handle Cas' piercing gaze any longer. When Dean glanced back up to his face there was an assuredness there.
"No. You wouldn't do that. Not to Sam, not ever."
Dean felt his temper rising, and he wasn't even sure why. What right did Cas have telling him who he was and how he felt? "Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do."
Cas' gaze narrowed dangerously. "Go to hell."
"Bring me back yourself if you're so inclined." Dean hated himself, hated Castiel. He had imagined a million times what he's say to Cas if he ever got the chance again, but he couldn't make himself stop being a dick to him. Why did it always have to be like this unless someone was about to die?
Cas was clearly growing increasingly exasperated. "Dean—"
"No—you know what? No. You don't get to do that. You don't get to sit here and pretend to know what it's like to lose you. You don't get to understand what it feels like to watch you leave every time and be terrified when you come back that it won't last. You don't what it's like feeling this…this hole inside of you that no one else seems to see understand. To watch the whole world move on, you—you just can't!"
Dean ignored the tears pouring down his face, the shock on Castiel's. For once Cas just listened, and Dean just spoke. He needed to get this all out now or he never would. "My whole life I've never been enough. Not enough to save dad or protect Sammy from the world or stop people from getting hurt. Not enough to make anyone stick around. You are the only thing in my miserable goddamn life that ever made a lick of sense and you don't get to stand there and pretend to know what it feels like to lose that!" Dean could hear himself panting more than feel it. "You don't get to come in, and change everything—change me—and pretend it's nothing. Pretend I don't understand what's like to love something so much that you hate it…." Dean's voice felt hoarse. "That you fear it."
He met Cas' unreadable gaze. "My life never meant all that much to me until you came into it. I never thought it was valuable as anything other than a sacrifice. I never thought happy ever after was in the cards for me. But then it was and I was fucking miserable. Because my true happiness went fucking AWOL on me once again and I never got to say goodbye. 'I love you'… I fucking heard it every night when I finally fell asleep, every morning before my eyes even opened, every moment of the goddamn day while I watched the whole rest of the world keep turning. I watched moms take their kids to the park and Sammy hold his girl and his arms and laugh, and I couldn't breathe because you were gone and I didn't say it back. 'I love you.'… I cursed myself every day because I didn't say it back and then you were gone. I wanted to. I felt it every goddamn day." Dean felt himself breaking apart. Finally letting go of a decade of shame and anguish. There were tears in Cas' eyes but he didn't move, as though afraid to break whatever spell was finally allowing Dean to say all of this. "I love you." He said it like it was the simplest thing in the world. Like he hadn't agonized over it for twelve years. "I love you… I didn't choose to die. It just happened." He shook his head as if that could make the memory go away. "A freak accident."
Dean took a deep breath. "But I didn't fight it either." Cas squeezed his eyes shut. Dean watched tears from both eyes race to his chin. "My whole life has been a goddamn fight. Fighting for dad, fighting for Sammy, fighting for the world. But I sat there with a fucking nail through my chest and I realized that there was nothing left to fight for. Dad was gone, the world was saved and Sammy—" His voice caught on his brother's name. "Sammy would be okay. It would hurt, yeah. But he'd be okay. He was safe. He had Eileen…He'd be okay."
"I was tired of fighting so hard for a life I didn't even want. I was so tired of letting people down. So I just let it happen."
Dean looked up and started. Castiel was right in front of him. He looked down at Dean's right hand. He grabbed it slowly, palm up, and looked at it; Deciphered it as though it held all the answers to the universe and he wanted to learn every one of them. Castiel had always looked at him that way and it stopped his heart every time. Cas closed his hand into a fist and brought it to his lips. He kissed Dean's knuckles with so much care that he nearly sobbed. He couldn't conceive of a time in his life when someone had been so gentle, so loving to him. Cas looked into his eyes and Dean knew he understood. He returned to his full height but kept Dean's hand tight in his.
The weight of all that he had just said hit Dean and he suddenly felt profoundly awkward. "So, uh… what now?"
Castiel grinned. He reached the hand not holding Dean's under his trench coat and grasped something tied loosely around his neck. He pulled it off and Dean immediately recognized the vial that once held his grace.
"What—?"
"Now," thankfully Cas didn't let him filibuster any longer, "we go home."
Dean's exhausted brain took a minute to piece together what Castiel was implying. "You don't mean… Earth?"
Cas' eyes shone. "I do."
"But I'm dead." It was a lame argument, after everything they'd been through. But it felt somehow impossible that Dean could really be getting another chance. Another life. He looked at Castiel. Imagined Sam on Earth with a couple of kids running around an obnoxiously green backyard. Pictured himself old and gray in a rocking chair next to an equally old and gray Cas. He eyed the vial in the angel's hand again. He knew what it meant, what Cas was giving up. "Are you sure about this?"
"Yes."
Dean's heart was pounding. "But what about Jack? I thought he said Heaven wasn't allowed to interfere?"
"We aren't. And he told me as much, reminded me of those rules when I told him I was stepping down from my place in the hierarchy of Heaven."
Dean blinked. He wasn't sure he had the emotional capacity for much else at this point. "Stepping down?"
Cas smirked. He eyed the vial in his hands. "Stepping down. For good." He chuckled at whatever expression Dean was pulling. Dean barely heard it over the pounding of his heart. Was Cas really going to give up this part of himself. Over Dean Winchester Human Disaster of all people? Cas seemed to sense Dean slipping back into the recesses of his mind because he tugged on his hand. "I never particularly enjoyed my responsibilities in Heaven. I always preferred the experience of Earth and humanity. And in light of recent events, I decided it was time I retire. Finally spend my life the way I want to. After all, you only get one." Dean laughed and Cas beamed.
"And Jack is okay with all this?"
"He said he wants me to be happy, reminded me that I was not to interfere with any souls. But…"
"But?"
Cas winked at him, a gesture so unbearably human and so unbearably ridiculous on Cas that Dean couldn't help but smile too. He loved this man so much.
"But I've never been very good at following the rules."