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After Castiel dies, Sam is afraid to leave Dean alone.
He knows his brother well. He knows that Dean is trying to hold it together in front of him. He knows about the bottle Dean’s been keeping under his bed. He knows that these days, when Dean locks himself in his room, it’s not to watch porn; it’s to drown in whiskey and Led Zeppelin. Sometimes, he worries that if he leaves Dean alone, Dean might drink himself to death.
But they run out of milk, of all things, and though Dean drinks his coffee black, Sam prefers his with milk. One afternoon, Sam declares that he’s going for a grocery run. He asks Dean if he needs anything and gets a grunt in response.
Dean’s never hungry anymore.
So, Sam goes out. He grabs a carton of milk, a package of bacon and a pecan pie. There’s a part of him that wants to wander through the aisles for a little while longer because he’s so tired of feeling caged by the bunker.
Dean’s grief over Castiel leaves no room for Sam’s.
He stops to brace himself against one of the shelves, squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath.
He walks up and down the aisles again—one, two, three times each.
He picks up things he doesn’t need along the way.
When Sam returns to the bunker, the first thing he hears is the sound of breaking glass.
He rushes down the stairs. The grocery bags are forgotten by the door as he catches sight of Dean seated on the floor beside the map table. Sam hesitates, taking in the sight before him. There are shards of glass and what appears to be spilled whiskey on the bunker floor.
He stares blankly up at Sam, green eyes bloodshot. He’s drunk and in pain, and he says, “Broke a fuckin’ bottle.”
And then he collapses in on himself.
The dam breaks and words begin to pour through. Every wall Dean spent his whole life building crumbles before Sam’s eyes.
“He didn’t know,” Dean says despondently, “he didn’t know because I never told him because I’m a fucking coward! He tol’ me he loved me—Sammy, he said it, he said it an’ I never said anything back, jus’ stood there lookin’ dumb, an’ I—an’ I—” He breaks off, chest heaving.
Sam pads over to him and sits down on the floor. Dean peers up at him with watery eyes, tears clinging to his eyelashes, and suddenly they’re teenagers all over again. A distant memory prickles the back of Sam’s mind—a memory involving a drunk sixteen-year-old Dean, the name ‘Robin’ falling loosely from his lips. Sam has never asked about that; all he knows is that it was around the time Dean returned from Sonny’s Home for Boys.
At twelve years old, Sam didn’t quite know how to comfort Dean when he got like this—but he does now.
His eyebrows pull together as he searches for the right words. He swallows the lump in his throat. “Dean—he knew,” he says in earnest. Dean immediately looks away and scoffs, but Sam continues: “No, no, Dean—look at me. Listen to me. He knew.”
“How d’you know that?” he asks, disbelief rolling off his tongue.
“Because it was obvious, Dean. Anyone with eyes knew.”
“Then why didn’t he ever… why didn’t he jus’ make a fuckin’ move if he knew?”
Sam smiles sadly. “He was waiting for you,” he answers in a small voice; as soon as the words leave his mouth, he knows that this is the truth. This has been the truth from the moment Castiel rescued Dean’s soul from Hell and began to question all that he had ever believed. “He spent century after century waiting for you. He would’ve waited for you forever, Dean. You were his everything.”
Dean puts his face in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees. Choking back a sob, he says, to no one in particular, “I’m so damn stupid. ’M sorry Cas, so sorry. So sorry.”
“No, no, you’re not getting me,” Sam says. He meant to make Dean feel better, not worse. “Cas fell from Heaven because you showed him that he could choose free will and do the right thing. What you two had… there was nothing unrequited in that, Dean, it was there. It was there, and you knew it, and he knew it, and I knew it. So you never told him you loved him—so what? And yeah, it was never physical, but it didn’t need to be. Everything you did for each other… that was enough for Cas, Dean.”
They sit in solemn silence for a long time, with nothing filling it but Dean’s ragged breathing. All this time, through everything that they’d experienced, Dean had been suffering in silence—and it wasn’t just about Castiel, it was about Dean’s struggle to accept himself.
“You remember when you didn’t believe in angels, don’t you, Dean? Do you remember that?” Sam offers with a small chuckle. “I do. There was a case once, with people who thought they were doing the work of angels. Killing for them. You were so adamant about the fact that angels didn’t exist.”
He pauses to draw his knees up to his chest. Even though Dean doesn’t look at him, he knows that he’s hanging onto every word.
“That was the first time you told me that mom used to say every night, before she put you to bed, that angels were watching over you,” Sam reminisces. “She had no clue that she was right all along, did she? But you, being the stubborn idiot you are… you didn’t believe in angels until an angel believed in you.”
Dean averts his gaze and licks his dry, cracked lips.
“Hey,” says Sam, “Dean, please. Don’t shut me out, not again. Let’s talk about him, okay? Tell me about him.”
“But… you know him, Sammy,” Dean says, and he sounds childlike in his drunkenness.
“Yeah, I know him,” he agrees, nodding, very deliberately avoiding using past tense. “But he’s something different to me than he is to you. Tell me about him. Did you give him that mixtape? The one you always listen to? The one in your room?”
“How d’you know ’bout that?” Dean asks. “Never told you that.”
“Because I’m smart,” Sam replies matter-of-factly.
For the first time in a long time, Dean breaks into a toothy grin. He sniffles and wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands. “Yeah, that’s right, Sammy.” Sam can see the hesitation in his eyes. “Yeah, I gave it to him. Never explained to him what it means. He carried it with him, though. I hadda take it out of his coat pocket before we… before…”
Before we burned Cas’s body, Sam’s mind supplies to fill in the blanks. Before the pyre.
Suddenly, as if to change the subject, Dean says, “’M not gay, y’know. Still like women.”
“I know that, Dean.”
At any other time, Sam would’ve rolled his eyes. Instead, a wave of pity rolls over him
Dean has spent so long piecing everyone else back together that he never had time to find himself.
“Sexuality is fluid, you know,” Sam ventures. “You don’t necessarily have to lean one way or the other. Swinging both ways doesn’t mean you’re a fraud or anything.”
Dean stares at him. A long stretch of silence passes before he says anything else.
“I didn’t… I…”
“What?”
“Didn’t know. That it was like that.”
“Well, why would you?” Sam reasons. “It’s not like Dad was the most liberal guy around. I definitely didn’t learn it from him. But I took a Gender and Sexuality course at Stanford once, and Jess had a friend who identified as bisexual.”
“Bisexual?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a look in Dean’s eyes that Sam’s never seen before—not lost, not found, but somewhere in between. “All this time, Sammy… thought I’ve been broken.”
“You’re not,” Sam insists. “I know who you are. You’re my big brother. You like a lot of women; you like some men. You love Cas. And that’s all there is to it.”
Dean lets out a watery laugh. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It is, though.” Sam holds his brother’s gaze and reaches out to pat his knee. “I promise it is. It’s okay, Dean. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Dean’s face contorts. He’s crying again. “But he’s gone, Sammy,” he whimpers, absently trailing his finger through the puddle of spilled whiskey on the floor. “I… I need him.”
“I know,” says Sam, because he doesn’t know what else to say. A tear slips down his own face. “I know.”
When Castiel comes back, Sam knows it’ll be different this time around.
Dean and Castiel look at each other and time stands still, holding its breath.
Then Dean surges forward with purpose, a man walking into a storm.
Noticing, Castiel moves to meet him halfway, the blue of his eyes nearly swallowed by his pupils. As always, he waits for Dean. He waits until he doesn’t need to wait any longer because suddenly, Dean is reaching for him to cup his face and bring their lips together.
When they break apart, their smiles are miles wide.
Sam hangs back, knowing that they need this space. There’ll be time for hugs and it’s good to have you backs later.
For now, Sam watches Dean and Castiel from afar—and goddammit, he feels like the universe is falling into place.