Dean spends weeks searching for Cas in heaven, stopping only to reunite with his brother. Time works differently on earth. Dean hadn’t even exhausted the main road before Sam grew old and died.
The whole time Dean refuses to pray. He won’t have another moment stolen from him to cowardice, knowing Cas can’t talk back. He refuses to still live as if he’s trapped in a bad American dream fantasy, he deserves to love freely now, Cas deserves to see his mouth say the words.
It’s only three days after Sam’s arrival when he starts entertaining the idea. Heaven is supposed to be perfect now, but every day the last remaining pit in his stomach grows. He’s always braced himself for a life without Cas, losing him time and time again, but he’s done with it now. He is loved, he is free, and why ever Cas is hiding, he’s going to face it head on.
He stops the car in the last strip of road he could remember to the best burger diner in Kansas, on the way home about 2 hours out. There’s mostly grass, cows, and what he thinks is an onion field.
“Cas?” He prays, hesitantly. He still doesn’t want to say too much right here.
“Sam and I made it to heaven, Bobby told me you were here. Now I don’t know why you haven’t come to visit but...”
Dean trails off, where does he start?
He kneels there for a moment, almost reverent, holding his breath. He doesn’t quite know what to do with this time, but he thinks of it as sealing an envelope. A weight feels slowly lifted from him.
As if compelled, the moment ends and he looks up to see a figure in the field. He blinks, trying to make it out. A smile breaks across his worn face, staring for a moment more before stumbling upright and running across the field.
The angel’s barely turned around to face the source of the noise before Dean crashes into him.
It’s not a carefully controlled hug with a little pat for good measure, it’s crushing and nearly knocks them over.
Before Cas can even reciprocate, Dean pulls away, also a little overzealously. He’s about to say something along the lines of “why are you here so soon?” Or “I’m sorry.” But he doesn’t. He doesn’t know what to do with Dean Winchester beaming at him. He never thought he’d see him again.
Cas freezes there blankly, and for the most part so does Dean. He planned pretty meticulously to say a lot of things, but none of it was that.
Dean figures he already derailed his whole speech before it even started, so he decides to just roll with it.
“Cas I don’t know how much of myself was controlled by Chuck. I don’t know why you love me, I don’t know who I am, I never have, but I’ve always wanted you here. I never bothered to figure out why, I didn’t care, I just knew I needed you.”
There’s a second where both are standing there and just beginning to process what’s being said. Cas stares ahead and blinks back tears, his mouth opens slightly to say something but stops. He finds that he’s stuck. He had stopped allowing himself to think of this, it wasn’t supposed to happen. Dean swallows and forces himself to look Cas in the eye.
It’s here that heaven seems to sway, holding its breath in the warm cloudless sun and the white noise of summer bugs. Dean finds himself wishing Cas would say something but changes his mind. The last time he spoke, he spoke for so long, he spoke a whole world Dean had barred from him into existence. He wove his whole being together and said he loved all of it. He had said enough.
And Cas seems to think so too. He flies forward, falling into Dean and burrowing into the crook of his neck. He’s laughing, crying, but still never utters a word. Every memory they’ve ever made together seems to shift like a settling house. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, they grip each other tight, smiling achingly, and swear they can hear the sound of a typewriter finally jam up forever.
