burying cas (post-12x23)
dean decides to bury cas’s body in his grave from long ago-the one where sam buried him when his soul went to hell. he doesn’t really know why he does it; dean of all people knows that you have to burn the body. but he’s watched too many of his loved ones burn: his dad, bobby, kevin, charlie. (and that’s kind of how this all started anyway right? with his mom on the ceiling?) deep down he thinks that it might be because he already watched the grace burn out of cas’s eyes.
sam comes with him and every now and again he gives dean a look. he ignores it.
about halfway through digging sam asks if they should get a casket. he ignores it. cas would not have wanted a casket. cas would probably like to let his body become part of the soil or some stupid shit like that.
dean, attempting to distract himself, wonders if jimmy novak is watching this from heaven.
it’s late at night when they finish digging and sam decides to take a nap. he tells dean they’ll continue tomorrow then sits shotgun in the impala and falls asleep. dean knows that sam is also trying to distract himself but he doesn’t know how sam can sleep in the car when cas’s body is in the backseat, smelling like blood and sweat and dirt.
what he does know is that he won’t be sleeping tonight so he waits for a while before getting up and heading to the car. gingerly, he opens one of the back doors and carries cas’s lifeless body in his arms, slowly closing the door with his hip. he tries not to think about how cold cas feels in his hands, how stiff the joints are getting.
it’s difficult to get cas down to the actual grave and he struggles for quite some time. once he finishes, he just sits down there with cas, thinking of what to say. he wants to say goodbye, but at the same time, that’s the very last thing he wants to say. so dean just stays there, in a hole in the ground, for countless hours.
as the sun rises, he hears sam shout for him. he ignores it. sam finds him anyway, only a few seconds later, and when he sees dean, he opens his mouth to say something but decides against it. instead he holds out a hand to help dean up.
dean looks at the hand and then back at cas. he sighs, almost frustrated that he still can’t reply to those three small words that cas said in that barn not too long ago. he tries damn hard to say something, anything, but in the end, he just presses a small kiss to cas’s forehead and turns to grab his brother’s hand.
sam forces him to go and sleep in the car; he probably knows that dean won’t be able to shovel the dirt back onto the body.
a few hours later, sam finally asks. “why there, dean?”
he ignores it.