"Hello, Dean."
The voice on the phone isn't one that Dean recognizes, except for the part where there's only one person it could be. But that doesn't make sense either. It's impossible.
Dean drives, and feels like his soul is somewhere else, hovering just outside of where his knuckles whiten against the steering wheel, outside of the rigid tension in his back and the gnawing feeling in his stomach. He's got a death hangover in a very literal sense and this isn't helping any. Nothing about their lives has ever obeyed any kind of logic, but this… this requires a hope Dean hasn't been able to feel since he watched his mother disappear, since he wrapped his closest friend in stolen bedsheets and watched him slowly burn to ash. Nothing in Dean's life that leaves ever comes back right, and never without a price.
He's afraid to ask what the price of this might be.
Next to him, Sam is similarly quiet, and he can tell he's thinking the same things Dean's trying not to. Dean turned off the music to answer his phone and never turned it back on, and the silence sits heavily between them. Sam clears his throat, and the suddenness of it almost startles him.
"You're sure it was Cas?"
"I… I don't know. It sounded like him."
"But you said it didn't sound like him."
"Well, no, not like… not like he usually sounds, but other than that," Dean says, feeling a little foolish about it. He doesn't know how he knows, he just… does. Except for how he keeps doubting himself.
"What if it's a trap, or—"
"I mean, knowing our luck, it probably is," Dean grumbles, "but Christ, Sammy, we have to find out. It's Cas."
"Right," Sam says, relenting. "You're right, of course."
He doesn't speak for the next twenty miles, the quiet only breaking again so he can gently direct Dean down the side roads the voice on Dean's phone claimed would take them to where Castiel theoretically waits for them.
They find the spot in the early hours of the morning— a payphone and a woman dressed like she belongs on the damn Titanic, waving a little handkerchief off the starboard bow or whatever, one relic of a bygone era next to another. Sam and Dean share a look, a wordless acknowledgement to be on their guard as they step out of the car.
She's very still, brown hair piled on her head under a green velvet hat, her long beige skirt settled around her feet. He's about to ask who the hell she is, what the hell she thinks she's playing at— but then she squints, like she's trying to look past Dean's eyes to see right into him, and her head cocks birdlike, just so, and it tugs at something under his ribs, blooming into an ache that feels as good as it hurts, because somehow, it's him. It's Cas.
"Cas, is that really you?" Dean feels like his heartbeat is roaring in his ears. He can hardly focus on anything else but trying to find the evidence that it's really his friend in this unfamiliar body. Sam looks at him like he's nuts, and maybe he is, but he can't explain why he knows what he knows. The woman nods wordlessly, as though she can't explain it herself.
"What're you— That's not Cas, Dean, it's… who are you?" Sam has a hand at his side, ready to grab whatever knife he's got stashed the second this encounter goes south.
"It's me," the woman says, the same voice Dean heard over the phone. Her register is much higher than the Castiel he knows, but there's something to the quality of it, to her cadence, that recalls his manner of speaking. "This body is… a vessel I took briefly, a hundred years ago. I'm not sure why this is the form I woke up in… I thought perhaps you'd done something."
"Done what?" Sam keeps his voice low, but his frank disbelief is evident. "Cas is dead. We burned him. He shouldn't be able to…"
"Maybe that's why," Dean says, eagerly seizing on any explanation. "Because we burned his body, so he needed… I mean he had to get one somewhere."
"Frances Krawczyk died of Spanish Influenza in 1918 and was buried in a mass grave in New York. It doesn't track, given where I… woke up. All I know is that I was dead," says the woman, and it raises the hair on Dean's arms. "But then I... annoyed an ancient cosmic being so much that he sent me back."
"I don't even know what to say." Sam looks agitated, and Dean can tell he isn't quite buying it. He doesn't know why he is. Maybe because the day before he'd woken up to his seventh straight morning with a hangover and decided he didn't care if he ever woke up again, and the promise that he might get Cas back after all makes him think there's a reason to wake up tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.
"I do," Dean says, and tugs the woman—Cas, he tells himself, this chick in her funny little hat and her theater geek getup is Castiel, the best friend he's ever had—into a tight hug. "Welcome home, pal."
Castiel's head tucks up against Dean's neck easily, and it doesn't even jostle her hat, which seems to be pinned to her hair. Dean's a little bit startled to find she's taller than he's used to— almost as tall as Dean is. Taller, with the hat. Her arms close around his back, just as stiff and awkward as Cas ever was, though he's— she's—Dean's got a headache—Castiel has gotten better at them, the longer he's spent occupying a physical form. Cas hugs like he's still not sure he's allowed to, most of the time. But now, Dean hears a little sigh, feels the puff of warm breath against his shoulder, and the body in his arms relaxes an inch, and it feels good. So damn good. He breaks it off before he makes it weird. Or weirder. Sam trusts Dean enough to follow his lead, or maybe he just loves group hugs too much to pass one up, though he still looks bewildered.
"How long was I gone?" New-Model-Cas asks, once Sam's released her.
Dean hates the way he can feel his voice breaking when he answers, "Too damn long." If he's not careful, he's gonna do something he regrets, like cry. He's just tired, he tells himself, tired and trying to process too much at once. He's been awake for like, twenty-two hours. He's gone a day or more without proper sleep plenty of times, but he died yesterday, so he figures he's got an excuse to be a little off his game.
The original plan was to keep pushing until they got to Lebanon, but that's not happening now. It's another fifteen minutes to get to the edge of town where they might be able to find a flophouse that rents to folks like them at 3 AM. Dean steals glances at Cas in the rearview the whole way, cheeks heating when her eyes catch his in the reflection. They're blue, he notices, just as blue as before, and he turns back to the road, his grip tightening on the wheel.
"Last time I had a girl with a skirt that long in the backseat, we were just coming off a salt and burn in Mennonite country," Dean jokes, hoping it'll pierce the tension.
"Oh my god, Dean," Sam groans. In the mirror, Castiel's eyes narrow.
"Don't judge me," Dean says, digging his grave further. "Besides, I'm pretty sure every member of our immediate family has christened the backseat of this car. It's like a Winchester rite of passage."
"No, shut up. I'm taking away your talking privileges," Sam says. "You're only allowed grunts and gestures now. Shouldn't be too much of a stretch for you."
"You see the—" Dean starts to say, but Sam interrupts him, ah-ahing him into silence. Dean starts and is stopped three more times before he seals his hand over Sam's mouth and shoves him to the side. "You see the kind of treatment I get from my own brother?" Sam slaps his hand away, grousing at him like a brat. Dean looks in the mirror to catch Castiel's attention again, only to find her beaming softly at him. They're pulling into the parking lot of a by-the-hour motel, and the guttering floodlight at the main office catches her eyes, dancing.
"I missed the two of you," she says. "Very much."
Dean's throat closes, and he stares at his hands while Sam twists around in his seat to tell Castiel that they missed her, too.
The room available to them is predictably disgusting and only has one sagging queen in it, but he and Sam have shared before, and Castiel doesn't need sleep, so it's fine. It's dark as hell out, so hopefully no one's around to see two grubby men and a woman in a halloween costume walk into a by-the-hour motel together.
"Sorry, Cas," Dean says, tugging off his boots and leaving them in the middle of the floor. Sam's not much better. He caught some z's during the car ride, but not enough. "Just a few hours of you watching us sleep like a creeper and we'll be back home."
"It's okay, Dean," Castiel says, and it's still just… so weird to hear Castiel's words in some stranger's voice. It's the way she says his name, he thinks, that just sounds so familiar it hurts. He just needs time to adjust to this, and it'll be fine, he's sure. Just as long as Cas is safe with them.
"There's a few new episodes of The Life and Times of Martin Luther," Sam says, and he tosses his old iPod to Cas, who catches it one-handed and regards it like it's something worth getting excited about. "They've released like, three or four since… Well." Dean's already half-asleep, slumping face-down on top of the covers, still wearing his clothes. Couple of fucking nerds.
"Thank you," Dean hears Cas say, and then he doesn't hear anything at all until Sam's snoring wakes him four hours later. Dean flexes his hands, runs his tongue over his teeth, blinks the gunk out of his eyes to find that Castiel is indeed watching him sleep. He's gotten used to that, too, more or less, but he's not used to the new face, and for a second he wonders if he drank too much and took home a historical reenactor from a haunted house job or something, before his brain catches up to his eyes and a blush creeps up his neck.
"We're gonna have to get you some different clothes," he mumbles, rolling up and out of bed. Sam stirs behind him, limbs creaking when he stretches awake.
"Ah," Cas says eloquently. She's sitting in a battered chair that looks like it might collapse under her at any moment, her hands resting in her lap, her skirt arranged tidily around her legs. Sam's iPod has been wrapped up in its own headphone cord, next to her hat. "Yes. I suppose I would… stick out."
"You can borrow something for now, if you want. I don't… I never really got how clothes worked for you guys."
Dean tugs his travel bag onto the bed and fishes out his spare pair of jeans and a blue flannel that he deems acceptable after a sniff test. Across from him, Sam makes a strangled noise and turns around rapidly.
"What?" Dean says, but when he turns to hand the clothes to Cas, he gets it, because she's undressed all the way down to some gauzy white something or other that would look like an old lady's bathing suit if it were made of something a little more substantial. "Oh, wow, okay, you're just going for it then, huh." Sam's being a drama queen, because it's not like Castiel's naked or anything; underwear from way back when sure leaves a lot to the imagination. He tosses his clothes to Cas, and she unfurls the folded jeans, studying them with narrowed eyes.
"I have no idea if those are gonna fit right, but we can stop and pick up something else on the way home," Dean says. "You'll draw less attention in 'em at least."
Cas has turned her attention to herself, staring down at her own hips. She frowns, shaking her head, then it's Dean's turn to startle and whirl around to preserve Castiel's dignity, because she yanks on a few laces and slips that little white number she's wearing right off her shoulders. He'd seen Castiel with his shirt off in the past, but this is— Cas looks—
"You don't have to turn around," Castiel says, and Dean can hear the rustling as she steps into his jeans. What is she wearing under them if not— no, no, he can't think about that, that way madness lies. He's already going to have to live the rest of his admittedly probably not very long life knowing what Cas looks like with breasts. "I'm not embarrassed by nudity."
"Yeah, Cas? Well, we are," Dean says, his voice strained. Sam clears his throat, his shoulders hunched. Apparently that's the best argument he can muster to back Dean up.
"There's nothing inherently shameful about the human female form," Cas continues, and oh my god, Dean wishes she would stop talking. "In many of your cultures it's very common to—"
"Okay, well, in this culture we wear shirts, and we give our friends a heads up before we go full Mardi Gras." Dean turns back around to find that Cas is buttoning up Dean's shirt and looking at him with that particular set to her mouth that usually means Dean's being fucked with. He regrets ever teaching Cas what a sense of humor is.
"If it comforts you, I don't need a string of beads in exchange for the view."
Before Dean can stop himself, he's giving her a once-over. It was hard to tell the actual shape of Castiel's body under all the layers, but he can see now that she's kind of long and narrow, and his jeans fit well enough over her hips, though they bunch up around her feet and sag at the waist. The flannel is big on her, and she unbuttons the sleeves to fold them up around her elbows. It's— it's uncomfortably hot, is what it is, recalling any number of women who've stolen Dean's shirts after they spent the night together. Dean is convinced women absolutely know how hot that is, but he doesn't think for a second Castiel does. For all that they're joking about her tits right now, there's no way Cas could know that his own baggy, shapeless clothes on a beautiful woman—yeah, Dean can admit that Cas is beautiful, it's just an objective fact and it doesn't mean anything, thank you very much, though she's only kind of a woman—his clothes on a beautiful, kinda-sorta woman really does it for him.
Cas tugs the pins from her hair, which tumbles down—her hair does things like tumble now— and rests in messy waves against her shoulders, giving her a bit of a bed-rumpled look.
They have to get Cas her own clothes, now, before he thinks anything else he can't un-think.
Dean and Sam eat a gas station burrito and a gas station granola cup, respectively, and wait while Castiel selects a new uniform, which turns out to be pretty close to her old standard: sensible slacks and a blazer, sensible shoes, a white button-up, presumably some underwear more suited to this century, and a beige coat to complete the ensemble. For all that she's Heaven's little rebel, Cas really is a creature of habit. She comes out of the store with an overfull bag, still wearing Dean's overlarge shirt, apparently perfectly content to head all the way home before giving Dean his damn pants back.
"That's it?" Dean pulls a face as Cas shows them what she picked out. "New body, new you! Don't you wanna mix it up a little?"
Castiel frowns down at the pile of clothes in her arms. "There's nothing wrong with the way I dress."
"Nah, there's nothing wrong with it, if you like H&R Block chic. I'm just saying, if I was reborn as a hot chick I'd want to show off a little."
The matching looks Sam and Cas give him make his cheeks burn.
"What?" Dean tosses his hands indignantly. "You're telling me if you were a woman you wouldn't want to look hot?"
"I can honestly say I haven't give it much thought, Dean," Sam says, looking like he's about to ask Dean if there's anything else he wants to admit to, and Dean doesn't want to give him the satisfaction, so he climbs inside the car and turns the music up before Sam can open his pinched little mouth again.
Castiel's new wardrobe is paid for with the help of Charlie's skeleton key, the hacked charge card she'd set up for them a few years back, which hasn't failed them yet. Dean thinks about her every time he gets groceries, now. Usually that means he ends up throwing a little bottle of something top shelf into the bag along with their supplies and drinking half of it in her honor, praying she's somewhere in Heaven reliving the time she scored with Aeon Flux at SDCC or something.
On the drive home, Castiel asks about Jack, about what happened while she was gone. They give her the cliffnotes version, about how Jack had emerged almost fully grown, how angels and demons alike seek his power. Sam tells her of the difficulties Jack has had mastering them. He tactfully leaves out the parts where Dean straight up threatened the kid.
"He helped us hold a funeral," Sam says. "For you and Kelly."
Castiel breathes out shakily, her voice strained. "I wish his first day on Earth hadn't been so… so violent. So full of loss. It must have been so difficult for him."
"He, um. He also told me he chose you as his father."
Dean steals a look back to find Castiel's eyes shining. She looks… she looks heartbroken and terribly proud all at once. Dean feels guilt squeezing the breath from his lungs. He had originally thought of Castiel as a victim of brainwashing, courtesy of the antichrist. With everything that's happened since then, he's been forced to wonder if Jack really isn't actually just a lost kid with good intentions and too much strength to get a handle on. Castiel really believes in him, for reasons Dean will never really be able to understand. Maybe he owes it to both of them to try a little harder.
In exchange, Castiel tells them of the Empty, the void where beings like her find their final rest. It sounds kind of like how Dean had pictured death, honestly, before he knew that Heaven and Hell and everything that went along with them were real. There are worse things than sleeping quietly forever, Dean thinks. A day or two ago he would have welcomed it. But Castiel had not slept peacefully, had heard a voice call out her name in the darkness and, in defiance of a millennia of dead silence, woke up.
"I wonder if it may have been Jack. If his voice had the power to call me home," Castiel says. Dean tries not to remember a choked-out prayer behind a restaurant or split knuckles on a wooden sign, how he'd begged and pleaded and wept for Cas to return. The scabs have long healed over, but his hands flex against the steering wheel remembering the ache.
Jack is engrossed in something he's pulled up on the laptop when they arrive back at the bunker, and Dean wonders with a flare of anxiety if they should be setting up, like, parental controls or something on it. At the very least, he now knows how to clear his browser history (thanks again, Charlie). It takes him a minute to notice Castiel, but when he does, his face brightens in instant recognition, despite the fact that they've never officially "met" in person, as far as Dean can fathom it. Angel bullshit is still a little far out of his comprehension despite how much of it he'd had to field over the years. He's got questions, but he's not alone in that, and more than anything he just seems overwhelmingly happy.
"I'm surprised you knew it was him— uh, her?" Sam turns pink, floundering a little as Cas and Jack part from a tight embrace. Maybe the first Jack's ever had, Dean thinks guiltily.
"Of course I knew him," Jack says. Dean doesn't think he's ever seen the kid look this content. "He and I spoke before I was born."
"Oh," Sam says, like that makes any kind of sense. Fucking angels. "Sorry, I guess we didn't really, uh, ask how you want to be referred to, Cas."
"I don't have a preference," Castiel says, still too busy smiling at Jack, taking in the face he hasn't been able to see until now. "Gender has never had the same importance to angels that it does to humanity. If my appearance means it's easier for you to think of me as a woman, it makes no difference to me."
"Cas was a guy, now he's a chick," Dean says, wishing the conversation would end, because it's starting to make his head spin a little again. "Or she's a chick. Whatever, that happens all the time, right?"
"Broadly speaking, I was never 'a guy'," Castiel says, finally turning away from Jack, who takes in the conversation with all the placid attentiveness of a mathlete in Calculus. That answer rubs Dean the wrong way for a reason he can't really pin down, making him bristle.
"Yeah, but you were— I mean, you were in a guy suit, so for all intents and purposes—"
"Just because someone is assigned male doesn't mean they identify as a man," Sam says, sounding one thousand percent like he's quoting something.
"'Assigned male'?"
Sam blushes all the way to his ears. He looks like he knows he's about to say something Dean will never let go, which is absolutely true. "Yeah, like, when you're born. Or uh, reborn, I guess, in this case? I dunno, I took Women's Studies one semester."
"'Women's Studies'?" Sam rolls his eyes while Dean grins, shaking his head triumphantly. "I knew it, I knew you only went to that school for the pussy."
"Dean—!" Sam gapes like he swallowed a frog, and that only makes Dean laugh harder. "It wasn't— Don't say that shit in front of—" Sam hisses, and then tries to reel back his reaction, trying as he's done a hundred times before not to let Dean get a rise out of him. He is blessedly unsuccessful. "That's exactly the kind of thing you don't want to say in a Women's Studies class."
"Got it. I'll just clear out before you guys bust out the hand mirrors to study your vaginas or whatever."
Sam practically shoves Dean out of the room, apologizing to Castiel and Jack as he goes. Dean thinks they're just horsing around like they've done a million times before until Sam stops in the hallway, looking at Dean like he's seriously about to lay into him.
"Woah, okay, Sammy, sorry I said anything about your little girls only bookclub—"
"Dean, shut up for like, a second. Please?" Dean shuts up, but that doesn't mean he has to be happy about it. Sam hunches down to speak to him in a hushed but fervent tone, one hand on his shoulder and the other splayed in an attempt at a calming gesture. "Look, can you just… can you please be cool about this?"
"'This'? You mean Cas? At what point did I indicate that I wasn't cool about this? I think I'm taking it pretty damn well, all things considered."
"Okay, you say that, but then you're also making all these shitty jokes about it! Cas just got back, we shouldn't be making him—uh—making him uncomfortable with, you know, how he looks. What— who he is. Whatever. And—" Sam makes a frustrated sound and lowered his voice even further. "I know you don't like Jack..."
Dean can feel the humor draining out of him with every second that this conversation refuses to end, but that really does it. "I don't like Jack?"
"You told me you were going to kill him, Dean," Sam hisses.
"Okay. And that was then, and we've had some time to get used to each other. What does Jack even have to do with any of this?"
"Jack is a kid. A weird, literally brand spanking new kid, who's still learning about the world, and we're the ones who have to, you know, look after him and teach him, and—"
"You're saying I'm a bad example," Dean says, and knows he's correctly intuited the direction this conversation is going when Sam makes that little tight-mouthed face he makes. "For Lucifer's son?"
"Yes, Dean, I don't want you to be a weird dick about… about this kind of thing in front of the mega-powerful half-angel teen-baby, okay? Please don't take this the wrong way," Sam says, in a tone of voice that clearly indicates he thinks Dean has already taken it the wrong way. "I know you're not like… I mean, I know this is just… Dad's shit."
Dean's fingers flex, then make a fist. "What shit is that exactly?"
"You know exactly what shit. The shit that made you call me Samantha all the time. The shit that made you say you hate glam rock and pretend you haven't seen every episode of that Dr. Sexy show." Sam sighs, and Dean can picture his pitying expression even though he absolutely cannot look him in the eye right now. "You say all that stuff cause you think you have to, but you don't mean it. Like... I know how much you loved Charlie."
"Don't," Dean says, his voice catching. "Do not bring her up."
"Why not, Dean? I'm trying to say I know you're not some intolerant—"
"No, don't. I don't need to hear anything else."
"—Dean, would you please just— I'm trying to—"
"End of conversation, Sammy!" Dean shouts, and Sam recoils an inch, his mouth clicking shut. "Jesus fucking Christ." Dean turns, marching toward his room, yanking the door open, and tossing his bag inside before continuing down the hall. "I'm taking a shower."
"Dean, come on…"
"I'm taking a shower," Dean says, "so I don't set a bad example by telling you to fuck off where the kid can hear."
Of course, once he's in the shower, seething and cursing while he shuts his eyes against the spray, there's nothing standing between Dean and his thoughts, which ramp into overdrive and veer right off a cliff before he can stop them, starting at fuck Sam, fuck him for bringing up Charlie, fuck him for acting like he has any idea what he's talking about, fuck him for talking about Dad like it's his fault he was raised a certain way, and devolving until it loops back around, and Dean's calling himself a pig and an asshole and a dumb fucking moron.
Sam's always been the one who knows how to relate to people at their lowest. Mr. Sensitive who doesn't drink too much and make an ass out of himself at bars, who crying girls relax around like he's the physical embodiment of a tub of Chubby Hubby, who takes Women's Studies and eats salads and listens to podcasts about Martin Luther's theses. And it'd be one thing if he were anywhere else but here in the shit with Dean, if he'd gone off to Stanford like he planned and became a bigshot lawyer, working pro bono to defend the rights of innocent puppies or something, but he's not. He's still just Dean's goofy baby brother, too earnest and open-minded, always ready to believe in something Dean never would've thought up on his own.
Dean keeps going over it in his head. If he's setting a bad example now, the example he set for Sam growing up was a million times worse. But somehow, that kid turned out all right. How was it that Sam could have clashed with their dad as much as he did, been as sensitive and bookish and gentle as he was when they were being trained to fight a war that would never end, while Dean was the one Dad was always disappointed in? He tried so hard to be what it seemed like John Winchester wanted him to be, and what had that ever gotten him?
He's been thinking about their dad a lot, these days, about how much Dean hears his voice coming out of his mouth when he talks. Ten years ago he might have said that was a good thing. Now there's Jack, looking at him like Sam used to look at him when they were little, like he was looking for Dean's approval, or his guidance, and he can feel his dad's lessons taking over again: Kill monsters. Protect Sammy. Avenge Mary. Nothing's more important than family. What would Dad think if he knew about Jack? Hell, what would he think about Cas?
Something ugly and cruel in him whispers, What about Benny?
Dean slaps himself once sharply, scrubs the last of the soap out of his hair like he can wash his thoughts down the drain along with it. Dad's gone, he tells himself, and wherever he is, it doesn't matter what the hell he thinks anymore.
Toweled off and wrapped in his dead guy robe, Dean balls up his dirty clothes, hauling them back to his room so he can get some laundry together. He stops short in the hall when he sees that Castiel is in his doorway, standing statue-still. She's changed into her new clothes, and the effect is a little eerie, like someone just took the old Cas and hit the make-me-a-lady button on him. Dean clears his throat.
"Something you need?"
She startles a little, stepping back and turning to him with her chin tucked down guiltily. "I'm sorry… I wanted to return your clothes." Now that she's turned toward him, Dean can see his jeans and flannel folded neatly in her arms.
"Took a shower," Dean says, and points at his wet hair to emphasize. Castiel nods, then finally seems to catch on that she needs to step aside to let Dean into his own room. Of course, rather than step back, she just invites herself inside, hovering near Dean's desk while he takes his clothes back and empties his travel bag so he can refill it with dirty laundry. "Anything else?"
Castiel doesn't answer right away, so Dean looks back up to figure out what's got her so preoccupied. She's got her finger on the lip of an empty bottle, one of many littering the surfaces in Dean's room. Looking around now, it paints a pretty damning picture. The trash bin is overflowing, there's a row lined up over the headboard, a few on the dresser, and even more scattered on the floor by his bed.
"It was a bad couple of months," Dean says by way of explanation, his jaw working as he tries not to let it show just how bad it really got. "It's fine."
"It's not fine, Dean," Cas says, and steps toward him, brow furrowed, reaching out as if she might touch him before she freezes, her arms hovering uselessly at her sides. Her eyes are focused on his with Castiel's typical intensity. It's uncanny, seeing all these familiar gestures play out in an entirely unfamiliar body.
"Can we just skip this part?" Dean sighs. Castiel's head tilts in question, the furrow between her brows deepening. When she does that, Dean just wants to poke her right between them until she relaxes. "The part where you follow me around looking like a kicked puppy for a few weeks until you apologize for dying in front of me and we go back to being—" Dean swallows. "You know, friends."
Cas does touch him then, gripping his shoulder. A droplet of water falls from his ear and onto the back of her hand.
"I am sorry, Dean. That I wasn't here for you. You and Sam, and Jack. The way things went at the end… I wish—"
"I told you to skip it," Dean says gruffly, patting her hand and pushing it away in the same gesture. "We're good."
"You aren't though. Not really." Cas sighs in frustration, her eyes scanning the room again, like she can see the whole terrible scene playing out. The drinking, the nightmares, and the really bad days, when Dean went looking for jobs hoping for one that might turn out to be fatal. "I wish you would take better care of yourself."
"Yeah, well, that's a two way goddamn street, pal," Dean says. It comes out much harsher than he means it to, and Castiel flinches away from it, which is satisfying in the way that pressing on a bruise is.
"How did this turn into a fight?" Castiel asks. She looks more sad than angry.
"I don't know, isn't that usually how it goes with us?" Dean says, rubbing at his forehead, already feeling the anger drain out of him. He means it as a kind of tension-diffusing joke, but it just comes out tired, and Castiel isn't laughing. "Look, just, please don't worry about me. Things got pretty bad, but… you know, you're back now. Problem solved." Dean looks anywhere but at her, wishing he could just shut the door on this topic forever, but Cas just keeps staring at him. When she gets laser-focused like this, it's easy to remember she used to burn peoples' eyes out of their skulls pretty regularly.
"I know it's hard for you," Castiel says, "to talk about your feelings."
"Enough. Between you and Sam I've had enough feelings talk to last me a year. I'm done. I'm also hungry as shit. I'm gonna see if the ham in the fridge is still any good. You come along if you want, Lassie, but I'm not talking about anything more serious than the virtues of yellow mustard versus dijon." Dean storms out before she can give him an answer.
Dean proceeds to methodically construct a ham sandwich the size of his head in utter silence. Castiel does follow him into the kitchen after a moment, sitting at the little table and watching Dean putter away, like she honestly has nothing better to do. She watches him check the bread for mold and staleness, watches him take half the contents of the fridge out and clutter the countertops. Dean slathers one slice of bread with mayonnaise and two with mustard; lettuce, tomato, thin-sliced red onions, deli ham, and swiss cheese are stacked and pressed into two tiers. The sandwich is sliced diagonally into two triangles, a picture-perfect cross-section.
Castiel doesn't enjoy food like he did when he was human, but Dean has impressed upon him the importance of triangles when eating a sandwich in the past. Castiel had proceeded to talk about the mathematical beauty of triangles, which Dean supposed was Cas's way of appreciating Dean's culinary artistry. He's about to appreciate getting a good solid bite out of that cross-section when Jack wanders in.
"Hello!" He waves. It occurs to Dean that the kid is a little like Castiel's cartoon sidekick, when he's not being completely terrifying. Then again, Cas is pretty good at being terrifying too.
"Jack," Castiel says by way of greeting. Her smile isn't as easy as it was at their first meeting, and Dean tries not to feel like a dick about that too.
"Hey kid," Dean says, then pauses, looking down at his unplated lunch. "You hungry?"
So that's how Dean ends up making two high-stacked ham and swisses. He slides the first onto a plate and hands it to Jack, then makes a second for himself while Jack eats. And it's… it's actually nice. It's weird, but it's nice, to have Cas back, for Jack to have someone he can talk to that seems to be meeting him on the same level, who can relate to him in a way Dean can't. Jack chatters happily with Cas about the things he's learned since he was born, the things he and the Winchesters have done together, and he smiles, and eats the sandwich Dean made, and tells him it's a very good sandwich. Dean supposes there are worse ways to spend an afternoon.
And when Sam walks in, startled to see the three of them calmly eating lunch together, and Dean tells him he's welcome to join, but he can make his own damn sandwich, he has the good sense not to say another word on it.