destiel

He’d always known it would end like this.

No matter how many monsters, how many deaths and lost souls and broken hearts, Dean had told himself he would be okay, him and Sammy would make it out because that’s what they always did, that’s all they knew how to do, and that nothing would change as long as they had each other-

But now, they don’t have each other.

Dean had known it would come to this.

Always.

Maybe he should care. Dean doesn’t hurt, can’t feel the weight of fear that used to hang heavy in his stomach, can’t bring himself to care about what happens to this God-forsaken existence. He doesn’t feel emotion, not truly, but he knows he’s alive, in one sense, at least. He’s not the man he used to be- Hell, he’s not even a man- but he knows he’s alive because the adrenaline courses through him like acid-

He’s alive-

And he’s ready-

But it isn’t enough. It will never be enough.

War tears through the skies, ripping the air in flurries of white light and screams, a light so bright it’s almost a sound. Although he’s not himself, although he’s not Dean, his memories are unaware of his shift in character: they stay the same, and the worst thing about them, the almost painful thing about them, is that they feel for him. He is cold and empty, but when the images flick through his vision they provide him with happiness, longing, a bittersweet desperation at the loss of his weakness and the gain of his invincibility. Things that are just out of reach. He is not the Dean he once was, but somewhere, in the recesses of his mind, he wishes he was.

It’s a strange sensation for a demon.

The battle between angels and demons was inevitable; each side just needed- wanted- a leader. Dean thinks back to the time before the mark of Cain, before he bestowed any of this crap upon himself, before Cas became his enemy- not through choice, but through default. An angel could not love a knight of Hell, but a human? An angel with a human doesn’t sound as preposterous to Dean now as it did then, and maybe he should’ve taken the opportunity to have Cas when he could have had him. But it’s too late now. Too late for the angel to still love him and too late for any hope of redemption.

Still, the human part of him wonders.

In the midst of chaos, Dean is stood, unobserved. He is above the fighting, too important for that, and so he watches as multitudes of angels and demons and creatures from the deepest recesses of Heaven and Hell he’s never even seen slaughter and yell with the bloodiest of rage. The planet is torn, and Dean remembers the apocalypse that never happened, where two brothers and a fallen angel saved the world. He doesn’t know these people anymore, nor does he understand why they would protect this insignificant blot upon the universe. Because, in the scale of things, nothing that he ever did mattered. Saving billions of people was no use when it would come to this anyway. None of it was worth it. Not loosing his brother, nor loosing himself- nothing.

He was nothing-

But now, he’s something.

He smiles.

A memory washes over him, one that is unexpected and shattering, that he didn’t even think he would remember-

But he does-

The old Dean remembers, clinging onto what shreds he has left of himself, and it’s strange that his memory would choose to drag this up, at this time, in this place, and still Dean finds himself drawn from the violence around him to the moments that were seared into his brain, the moments that sear into him now-

The motel room was impossibly dingier than any the brothers had previously visited, but it was shelter, it was a place to sleep. Something that Dean hadn’t had a good night’s worth of in a while. He told himself he didn’t need sleep.

That he didn’t deserve it.

Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t. Who was Dean to say? It was at times like this, simple times when Sam had popped out to get some food or scavenge some supplies that Dean would allow himself to lie down on the bed, to think. Thinking was dangerous, and as the hopelessness of his life washed over him like the deepest of oceans, he wondered why he was even alive at all. There was more than this- surely, there was more than this. But whatever it was, Dean knew he couldn’t find it. No matter how many lives he’d saved, how many demons and monsters and things he and Sam had wiped out of existence, it didn’t make up for those lives that slipped through his fingers. Including his own life, he supposed. Dean was as worthless as the dirt he walked on. There was an emptiness in him, a hole so heavy, tugging and pulling and heaving at his chest, that sometimes he doubted if he could even move at all. He always did, though. He always trudged through, at first for Sammy, and then, and much to Dean’s surprise, for Castiel, too.

The angel had appeared minutes after Sam’s departure with a rustle of feathers. Insignificant in the room, his trench-coat the same shade as the worn wallpaper, Castiel stood, simple and quiet. It was only then that Dean registered the tears on his own cheeks, wiping them away quickly with the back of his hands before sitting to smile at Cas, bashful, embarrassment flushing his cheeks.

Dean didn’t look him in the eye.

“Still haven’t got the grasp of knocking, I see,” Dean muttered, and the strain and weariness in his voice almost surprised him.

“Dean,” Cas started. As unfamiliar as it was to admit, Castiel yearned the sight of Dean’s eyes on his as Dean continued to avoid his gaze. The green of them was dull, Cas noted, shimmering wet in the evening light slicing through the window. He was tired. He was so tired.

“You look weary,” said Cas, and finally Dean looked at him, a smirk playing on his lips that didn’t quite reach his swollen red eyes.

“Not looking too bad yourself,” Dean retorted. He stood, barely brushing past Castiel as he reached for the half drained bottle of whiskey on the table, taking a swig that licked flames down his throat. It had a familiar taste, a warm sensation. Perhaps this is all Dean really had- his drink.

His drink and his stupidity.

“Why are you here, Cas?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“We haven’t seen you in weeks, and now you show up?”

There was only silence.

Cas shifted on his feet, not daring to look anywhere but out the window. The sun was setting, stars pricking the blossoms of pink and orange that flooded the sky, and Castiel couldn’t understand how there could be anything more beautiful than the earth he fought so hard to protect, and the earth that he left for his own race. Except maybe the fractured and bleeding soul beside him.

As he abandoned the earth, he abandoned this man.

His stomach tightened.

“It was civil war up there, Dean,” and still after years of inhabiting the vessel he had come to know as his own, Castiel struggled to control the regret dripping like honey from his words- “I had to do what I could-”

And still he found difficulty in believing his own excuses.

“And what about me, huh? And Sam?”

Dean knew, somewhere in the deepest recesses of himself, that any angel could not love humanity over their own- we were too reckless and fickle, angels too powerful and righteous. But there was a spark in him for Cas, for the hope that maybe, for once in his God-forsaken life, that things would go his way- that Cas would love and protect Sam and himself for all the angel was worth, and that nothing else would matter because Cas had them-

Cas had Dean.

“Dean, I’m sorry-”

“We needed you. You were our friend, and you left us here, Cas. I needed you.” And the words that tumbled from Dean’s lips were so heavy that he cringed under the weight of them. He couldn’t help himself, couldn’t help the words falling from his mouth like the tears falling from his eyes, and he set down the whiskey, his vision blurring, and as much as he didn’t want Cas to see his world crashing around him in an avalanche of desperation, as much as he didn’t want to feel, he couldn’t control it. “What happened to us being family? You were my only hope, Cas, I swear to God you’re the only thing I hoped could get me and Sammy out of this mess. And you left me like I was nothing, you know?”

Cas was made of guilt, and the guilt made of him. It was not within his power to win Dean over with kindness and understanding, because Cas didn’t understand himself, and so he couldn’t touch Dean with words nor actions- maybe he didn’t deserve to. But with Dean crumbling beside him, Cas swore he could hear his own heart tearing in two.

“What’s the point, Cas?” Dean mumbled, exhaustion closing his eyes and furrowing his brow. “I aint seeing no fucking point to this anymore, because whatever I do, whatever we do, it just fucks us over and we haven’t helped anyone. Me being here… what does it all mean, really?”

Cas had been here long enough to know when a question didn’t desire an answer, mainly because the speaker didn’t believe there was one. It didn’t mean the question shouldn’t be answered, though.

“It means everything” said Cas. He willed himself to look Dean in the eye, and was surprised to find nothing but wide-eyed confusion, except for maybe the slightest fleck of gold within the forest of Dean’s eyes.

“What?”

“Your existence means everything, Dean.” Cas swallowed hard. “To me.”

And suddenly, Dean felt his world turn.

Just like that.

“Cas?” Dean scolded himself for whimpering the name, wondered if he could live with only ever saying that one word, only ever thinking that one word, and the possibility of a life with no fear and no loneliness seized his chest with a lightness that was enough to lift the world off his shoulders-

A brightness swelled within him as bright as the blue sky of Castiel’s eyes, and no matter how much darkness swamped Dean, he would always have this. He would always have Cas.

The angel reached to wipe the tears from Dean’s cheeks. Freckled and rough, he touched Dean’s skin, tentatively at first, as slight as a moth’s wing. Dean daren’t move. Didn’t want for this moment to fade as he expected it to, as these moments always did. All that mattered was Cas’s hand at the side of his face, calloused fingers feeling, exploring Dean’s skin without moving at all, and he lost himself in the angel’s eyes. He was feeling Cas, his warmth and solidity and realness, and maybe this was enough to keep Dean going-

Keep him going forever-

Because the words that tumbled from Cas’ lips were enough to shatter him and rebuild him anew-

“I think I’m in love with you.”

And Castiel kissed him.

Dean was stunned, frozen, Cas’s lips crushed to his own with an uncomfortable force, but still his breath hitched, his stomach threw loops around itself-

Cas’s lips soft, reassuring without the need for words, and as Dean feels himself slipping away his mind is overthrown with the image of a smiling angel, of all that he hoped to love in this impossible world-

They never mentioned that night again.

Cas’s hot wet kisses lavished along his jaw, across his shoulders, trailing the dimples of his back, the way they had moved together as if they had always been one. Tracing every possible inch of Cas’s skin, memorising the hair growth and muscle and contours beneath his fingertips, feeling the groans shudder through the both of them, not quite knowing who the noises belonged to, being as close to Cas as he ever could be and still it wasn’t enough-

It was more of Cas than he had now, though.

Attempts to push aside the urge to cry. Dean knows this isn’t his urge, but rather the urge of the memory, of the man he used to be, because demons don’t have emotions, not emotions that tear at his chest the way these ones do. He tells himself he doesn’t need Cas, not really. Has meaning now without the angel by his side. However, a meaning he never wanted, more than he ever needed and yet not enough. What he wanted was the one thing he denied himself, after that one night-

His eyes mist.

He can’t do this.

He can’t.

Legs collapse beneath him, rubble, sharp and brutal, slicing his hands from the fall. Dean doesn’t feel this pain, too busy dwelling on the black hole inside of him, sucking and pulling at everything he is.

He is emptiness.

Until, in the midst of screams that shatter the world like glass, the smallest shift in the breeze sets his heart racing-

Cas-

And Dean wills himself to look up-

And there he is stood.

A hand heavy on his shoulder, blood seeping from broken skin to stain Dean’s jacket. A hand squeezing his heart.

Cas’s eyes are the same. Despite the scars that litter his skin, the blood that trickles from his hair and his clothes, Dean looses himself in the sky of Castiel’s eyes, cloudless like the summer’s sky he’ll never see again.

Unconsciously, he flicks the ink wells of his eyes back to green. Back to himself.

There are few words to be spoken between the two of them. Understanding is poignant in the air between them, if not understanding of the mess they’re in then at least understanding of each other. The basest of which each of them were, truly.

Dean stands, shaking, not from convulsions of the earth beneath him but from the convulsions of his own heart, thumping with an intensity so loud he can’t hear himself think-

Not that he wants to think.

And so Dean finally, finally, lets himself go.

Dean throws his arms around Cas, pulling him to himself tightly, almost too tightly despite still not being close enough, and the angel holds him steady, firmly, sobs raking through Dean’s entirety as they’re swallowed in the world’s end.

“I’m sorry, Cas.” Means it with all that he is, words spluttering from his lips because they’d been needing release for so long now, so long a time without Castiel here, in his arms.

“I forgive you.”

The world shatters, and they hold each other.

It would always end like this.

And maybe, just maybe, it was all enough.