It’s not long, the time between when Sam drags Dean out of the other dimension, the alternate universe, the whatever the fuck, and when Cas follows, but it feels like forever to Dean. Each breath he drags in scrapes along his inner walls like sandpaper on sandpaper. It does nothing to distract him from Cas not being here. Being there, with Lucifer, alone. The not knowing, the fear…
Cas returns after too long, and Lucifer is hot behind him, wielding Cas’ own angel blade. The jab rips through the fabric of the trench, and Dean sees the point appear, gleaming in the moonlight, having missed Cas by an inch.
Cas throws an elbow up, a move Dean taught him, and sends Lucifer stumbling back through the portal just as it closes.
Then, they’re alone. Together and quiet. Kelly is giving birth in the house behind Dean, and Mary’s with her but she’s never delivered a baby before, and who knows where Sam ran off to, but none of that matters because Cas is here.
Cas closes the distance between them and pulls Dean closer and down an inch by the collar of his jacket, crashing their lips together. That’s what it is. A crash. The wild sea meeting the shore. A collision. The longest game of chicken where they both lose. Or they both win. It’s years in the making, years overdue, hungry and consuming.
Dean pulls back, gasping, and the only reason Cas lets him, he suspects, is because he’s human and he needs to breathe.
Cas’ grip on his collar tightens. “Okay?” he asks, urgent and demanding, voice stripped and bare and wanting.
Dean hears what isn’t said. This is how it is, now. How things have been meant to be.
Soft as surrender, Dean says, “Okay.”
They kiss again, gentle, like they’ve got all the time in the world. But they don’t. Dean’s gaining lucidity faster this time. His cheeks wet, and the kiss tastes like salt. The harder he clutches Cas the further away he gets. The more aware his mind becomes.
Dean doesn’t draw back to breathe, he’d rather not. He never wants to stop. Never wants to wake up. But he does. Eventually, he always does.
Sometimes it’s the light filtering in from the stained, flimsy motel curtain that does it. Sometimes it’s Sam opening or closing a door somewhere in the bunker, trying to be quiet and succeeding mostly, but Dean has always been a light sleeper. Sometimes it’s Dean’s own alarm; he still has a job to do.
What it never is, what it will never be again, is Cas’ voice. Or his gaze, heavy like a touch. Dean will never know what it is to wake up with his face buried in dark, coarse hair, with a strong, tan arm slung around his waist, or with soft lips touching his, coaxing him out of sleep.
Because when the moonlight hit the tip of Cas’ angel blade, it was bloody. And when Cas hit the floor, he never got up again.
