#brokeback mountain ily so much bro i think imma throw up | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

roger-that-cap · 2 months ago

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the wings (of an angel)

Summary: After Jack comes and blesses the Winchesters with Castiel's presence after his heartbreaking departure, Dean is still emotionally constipated, and he can hardly get a word out around Cas. So, he decides to show Castiel Brokeback Mountain. This unravels everything.

Warnings: Dean’s emotional constipation, emotions, that’s about it y’all I’m not torturing these two anymore than necessary

Destiel is very close to my heart! I hope I can give them a better ending than the one that they got. The title comes from "The Wings", my favorite song from the soundtrack of my equally beloved Brokeback Mountain.

this is a destiel fic!!!

word count: 8.8k!

Castiel came back on a Thursday.

It was a random Thursday, and before Castiel, there was nothing special about it. It was a quiet Thursday with no interruptions for Dean Winchester, who was rotting in bed. There was nothing that required his or Sam’s urgent attention, and while that was nice, it also meant that he was allowed to dwell in the privacy of his room.

There were a lot of things for Dean Winchester to be upset about. He was forty something years old with nothing to show for it besides gnarly scars and fucked up memories. He was living in a bunker that shouldn't have existed, living a life that didn’t really exist at all in the eyes of the government, rarely ever talking to normal people. But he had his brother and everyone else in their circle (mostly dead), who were never normal people either, so he figured they understood him enough.

A normal person had normal regrets, like choosing the wrong college, or moving to the wrong city, or taking the wrong job offer. They had the type of regrets that a person could live with. Things that they could fix. But Dean had regrets that involved people dying bloody. He had regrets that had to do with people being dragged off to Hell or trapped in Purgatory, or dying for him in with tears in their eyes. He had regrets that revolved around Sammy, about dragging him back into the hunt ages ago, even though he knew that nothing could have changed what was written for them back then. It all still felt like little daggers in his heart.

Dean Winchester had a lot of regrets. But one of his biggest, and definitely the one that he supposed was his most secret regret was not saying a word when Castiel left him.

It had been sudden. Or at least, that was what Dean told himself. That the confession was unexpected, that he couldn’t put his thoughts on track, that he was scared out of his mind and that he knew death was inevitable, so he couldn’t figure something out. But he knew it. He had been seeing it in Castiel’s eyes for quite some time, and there was a point where every day, he counted it as a blessing that the tensions lurking around every damn corner weren’t addressed.

But Dean knew.

Dean turned his television off and got out of his bed at 3:48 in the afternoon. He knew Sam would probably be in the kitchen, making a smoothie and reading a book, or something equally nerdy that made Dean laugh at him sometimes for absolutely no reason. That was just what Sam did. Dean walked down the hallway without a word, giving Sam a nod when he saw him at the kitchen table.

“Oh, look who-” Dean looked up at Sam. Whatever Sam was going to say, he immediately shut it down, and looked back toward his book.

Sam always knew when Dean wasn’t in the mood, and usually, it meant that Dean was thinking about the past. And strangely enough, Sam could usually tell which part of the past he was thinking about. Sam would be able to guess if it was Lisa and Ben and the normal life he lived that he was mourning. He would know if Dean was reminiscing over Cassie, or mourning Jo and Ellen and Bobby. Sam could typically sense when Dean was thinking fondly of their few nice childhood moments, and he knew when Dean was romanticizing the moments they had on the road, the few and far between moments that were full of laughter.

But he always fucking knew when Dean was thinking of Castiel.

Castiel wasn’t someone that ever fully left Dean’s mind. He was always floating around in it like the entity he was, always present even if he was in the back of his mind. It was the way he spoke, the way he entered his and Sam’s life in a flurry of lights and power, the way he exited many times leaving them both broken in different ways. It was the way that he would command a room, it was his certainty, the way he always showed up for him, the way his eyes were so blue, the way he always did what he believed was right (even if it wasn't), and it was his caring personality even when it was clearly not what he was made for. And most of all, it was his death.

Castiel’s death was something that he hated to think of, but he allowed himself to be tortured nonetheless. He would never forget the look in the angel’s eyes, or the sinking feeling in his own gut when he realized what road his words were traveling down. He would never forget that Cas was crying, that his voice was shaking like he was scared yet free all the same, like there was a physical weight on his shoulders that was shaken off just by speaking. Could Dean have felt that weight fall off, too? Could they have shared that look of fear and relief together if he had just admitted it years ago?

He would never fucking know. And that was why he was stomping around the kitchen.

“Hey,” Sam said cautiously.

“Hey,” Dean said in return, and he hated that with that one word, Sam was already watching him with that stupid, concerned frown on his face. Dean plopped down at the table with his bowl of cereal, and he stared off into space, thinking about everything and nothing.

Dean ignored the looks Sam gave him as he ate his cereal. He pretended to be focused on something on his phone as the minutes passed, waiting for Sam to mention something that would no doubt set him off. He heard his brother clear his throat and his shoulders tensed, and when he looked up at Sam, Sam was already giving him his apologetic, puppy dog eyes, the ones that told Dean that he was about to pry.

The sound of wings flapping in threw both hunters into action, and whatever Sam was about to say was wiped clean off the table. Dean whipped around and saw a familiar face and a hand raise in a singular greeting. Jack was there, smiling, yet looking peeved at the same time. “Hi. There’s something I’ve been wanting to make right.”

Both Winchesters were in shock. They hadn't seen Jack since he became God, growing up and making them all proud. Dean admired him for trying to right the wrongs of someone who was much older than him, inheriting issues that had nothing to do with him. It was something that he wasn't unfamiliar with. But as Dean saw him for the first time in a long time, Dean’s cereal was falling out of his mouth, and he got a sinking feeling in his gut that something was about to break the peaceful quality of their day.

Sam was the first to speak. “Jack, hi,” he said, giving him a genuine smile. “It’s been a while.”

“I’ve been very busy,” Jack said rather matter-of-factly, and Dean cracked a chuckle. “I’ve been trying to set something right.”

“What is it, kid?” Dean asked, rubbing his forehead, and then all of a sudden, Jack was grinning.

“It’s kind of a gift? Here. This.”

Dean thought he died, right then and there. His eyes went wide as the new addition materialized in front of his eyes, and as he felt the surge of an energy that he knew in this life and in every version of the afterlife.

Castiel.

Dean couldn’t breathe. He found that he wasn’t even trying to as he looked at Castiel in the same old vessel, the same old long, brown trench coat, with the same eyes and the same posture like there wasn’t a second that he had been gone. As if he had never been shrouded in darkness and taken away. Castiel was looking around the bunker slowly like he had missed it, and then his head turned, and Dean was hit with stunning blue eyes that had watched over him in his dreams and cried in his nightmares.

“Here,” Jack said, grinning from ear to ear. “This is right. I know it is.” And then, in a way that made Dean’s heart drop to his stomach, the angel kid looked at him specifically with some all-knowing, omnipotent look, and said, “you’re welcome.” And then he was gone like he had never been there, but his gift was still right in the middle of the bunker kitchen.

“Cas?” Sam whispered, and Dean could only watch in shock as his brother moved forward to hug the angel.

Dean couldn’t believe his eyes. The hunter in him allowed his brain to work despite his own shock and emotions, and he realized that Cas didn’t seem surprised to be back at all. He wasn’t adjusting, he didn’t look shocked, and he certainly didn’t look like he had just woken up from sleeping in the Empty.

How long ago had Jack pulled him from the Empty?

Dean exhaled quietly, but his breath was shaky as he watched Sam and Castiel pull away from each other. He couldn’t hear what they were saying because blood was rushing through his ears and his thoughts were screaming at him. He swore he could hear his own heart beating. And then, seemingly in slow motion, both his brother and the angel turned to him.

This was something he had never really allowed himself to imagine, yet something he had let his thoughts wander to a thousand times. What reuniting would look like, and what it would feel like. Who would have the guts to speak first? What would be said? Would it all be the same as it was before? The thoughts were racing around in his head as he and Castiel stared at each other right in front of Sam, who was silently watching the entire exchange. It was reminiscent of all the years before, and Dean thought he was about to throw up.

Dean took a quick look at the clock, as if the numbers on the clock would jump out at him in code to tell him it was a dream. His heart jumped when he saw that the analog had stopped completely, not even the second ticker still trucking on. His eyes turned to the clock above the stove, a simple one with easy numbers for a quick glance, and he saw that it was blinking, as if there was a power outage. It was 4:01.

“Hello, Dean.”

God. That was what Dean had hoped for and dreaded all at once. It was what he had been begging in the privacy of his room to hear ever since he left. That gravelly, inquisitive voice. The two words that started something in him years and years ago. Those two words flipped his life upside down all those years back, and there they were again with the same damn inflection and all, churning his gut and changing his life yet again.

Dean swallowed, and he looked away from the blinking numbers to face his dream and his dread all the same. He looked Castiel in the eyes, and he found that he couldn’t read the angel’s eyes. “Hi, Cas.”

For a moment, not a single one of them moved. It was like the air in the room had been kidnapped and taken for ransom, but nobody was even reading the note left behind. The elephant in the room was there and stomping around, loud and in charge, acting more like a bull ready to knock them all over instead of hiding in the corner.

“You look well,” Castiel said after that long, agonizing pause, and Dean swallowed. He felt like it was dirt that he was swallowing. The same dirt that threatened to suffocate him years ago when he crawled out of a shallow grave with a cross planted over it.

“Yeah, you too, Cas,” he said, ignoring the fact that he wanted nothing more than to run over and grab him, embrace him just as hard as he did all those years ago after he found him in Purgatory. Like Castiel was his lifeline. But Dean also knew that if he touched Castiel that he had a good chance of falling apart, of begging him to answer if he had truly meant what he said before he was snatched away from him.

So he turned back to his cereal instead.

“Dean,” Sam scolded, “that’s it?”

“What do you mean?” Dean asked gruffly, and he was thankful that his back was turned, because his eyes were burning with tears.

“He just came back,” Sam said, “he just came back from the dead. I know that’s… kind of a common thing for us, but come on, man. This is huge. This is a win. A win we weren’t even aware of was still on the board.”

Dean closed his eyes for a moment. He took a deep breath from his nose, and he forced himself to smile, but he knew that it was the fake one that looked more like a bite than a grin. “Welcome back, man. It’s good to have you.” Sam looked like he wanted to say something else, but Dean put his bowl in the sink and walked over to Castiel, sighing once and clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “Glad you’re here.”

And then he walked to his room, his head throbbing and his heart aching with every step.

Dean was in his room until Saturday morning. He had food and drinks in his room, and a bathroom attached to it, so he had no need to venture out. And he wasn't sure if he hated the idea of leaving his room, or wanted to so much that it made it a bad idea.

He wanted to see Castiel. He thought about walking by at night just to check and make sure that he didn’t hallucinate his arrival. He wanted to see the blue of his eyes, hear his awkward tone, watch him look at cracks in the walls or dips in the table like they were lost works of art. He thought about waiting outside of the room that he most definitely moved back into, just to hear him shuffling around in there. But he gritted his teeth and sat in his room at his desk instead, not willing to indulge himself even in the smallest regard.

But finally, on the Saturday after that fateful Thursday, Dean rubbed his forehead and plopped down on the floor with a piece of paper. He felt like a teenage girl, sitting on the floor and writing up a fucking pros and cons list, but it had to be done. He couldn’t avoid Cas forever. Life wouldn’t let him, and neither would his heart.

His handwriting was the worst it had ever been as he wrote quickly. He wrote about the things that he had seen with Cas, about the things he had done with Cas. For the first time in a while, he let the emotions take him over while he had the protective four walls of his room. And, just like he suspected, he reached the conclusion that avoiding Castiel wasn’t helping him at all.

They had been through too much together for Dean to act like Castiel wasn’t back.

So, at seven in the morning, Dean took a shower, cleared his head as best as he could, and left his room. He was cautious as he walked down the hallway, like he was expecting a fucking wendigo to pop up in the middle of the bunker. It was stupid, and it was pissing Dean off with how on edge he was because he was scared to face his best friend.

He was on his way to the kitchen for coffee and some food. It was early enough for Sam to be running, and he didn't think Cas left his room that early, either. He was sure that he would be fine, but that safety net left immediately the second he saw Castiel's bedroom door open.

Dean stood still. He knew that wouldn't help him, but he did it anyway. As if Cas could sense his energy, he turned around, and there they were at a silent stalemate in the hallway.

“Hello,” Castiel said, and Dean wondered why he didn’t say his name. "You’re up early.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, rubbing his face. “Um…” he paused, taking a long look at Cas, who was as patient as ever. The words were on the tip of his tongue, tugging at the back of his mind until he finally just said them. “Do you want to watch a movie?”

Castiel didn’t look shocked, but he didn’t look like that was what he had been expecting, either, and Dean wondered what it was he was expecting. “A movie?”

“I just uh, thought we were long overdue for a movie,” Dean said gruffly, scratching a hand over the back of his neck. "We used to watch 'em all the time."

Dean remembered, and he knew that Cas did, too. Dean would almost always be the one to choose, and it would be either some big franchise movie that was absolutely disgraceful to not have seen, or some western movie.

“Movies,” Castiel mused, “I missed those.”

Dean missed them, too. They weren't the same to him anymore, and deep down, he knew why. “Cool,” Dean said, clearing his throat. “Meet me in the movie room, then. Later tonight. Eight."

Dean watched Castiel look back at him in silence, pure silence, and for a moment, Dean wondered how on earth he had survived without that wordless, uncomfortable stare. “Okay, Dean.”

It gave him chills. He ignored it with everything that he had. “Great,” Dean said nonchalantly, nodding his head at the angel, and then turning on his heel and leaving Castiel alone yet again, leaving without food and without coffee.

Dean Winchester sat in the movie room thinking about what the hell he was going to choose for about twenty minutes before he finally started to browse. Nothing was really catching his eye as he scrolled, knowing that most of the movies were either going to bore him (which would mean that he would start looking at Castiel), or make no sense to Castiel (which meant that Cas would ask questions, and Dean would have to look at him anyway).

One of those random memories he often had implanted into his head started spinning around rolling around like a hamster wheel. He sighed as Purgatory ran through his mind, thinking about the fear he had turning into anger and unleashing a monster inside of him much worse than anything else down there. He thought about how the sun seemed to shine down in Purgatory for just a moment when he and Benny finally found Cas. And from there, his mind jumped chapters and went to the time when he and Castiel were cowboys, dressed in full gear together driving around in the Impala. He cracked a smile at the memory, and then the memory of something else settled deep in his gut.

Brokeback Mountain.

He remembered the first time he saw it. He would never forget it, actually. He had a few extra dollars, and thinking it was a typical western film, he went all by himself. Thirty minutes in, he had realized that the movie was about two gay cowboys. At first, his whole body rejected the idea, and he was so uncomfortable, something deep inside of him was threatening to peek out with every minute that the movie played on. He stormed out that night, leaving with an angry expression on his face a little less than halfway through, cursing the fact that he wasted his money.

He remembered feeling a nagging pull to finish the movie weeks later. It was already out of theaters, but that didn’t stop him. He found the DVD at a rundown store that was happy to let him borrow it one day, popped it in, and played it all the way through. And he would never tell a soul, but he cried. He fucking cried.

And he never let himself revisit the feeling again.

Dean was looking at the remote in his hands, contemplating. Would it be a good idea to show it to Castiel? What message was he trying to send? He didn’t know, and he was almost sure that he would never know how his own mind worked. With a shaky hand, Dean typed in the letters, and almost like it was a stroke of Jack’s work, the movie had three different showtimes. Three. And one of them was playing at the exact time they had said they would watch the movie.

There was no backing out.

“It’s just a cowboy movie,” Dean muttered to himself. “He knows I like cowboys, it’s no big deal. We’ve watched cowboy movies before.”

But even as he tried his best to rationalize his choice, he wrestled with it. Was it bold? Would it be obvious? Would he lie and tell Cas he hadn’t seen it if he asked? Would they look away in shame during the sex scenes? And the worst possibility crept into his already tortured mind, would they watch the movie, look at each other, know, and never speak about it?

An hour later, right on time to cut through Dean’s thoughts that were starting to toe the line with being debilitating, Castiel walked into the movie room. He looked at the snacks on the tray that Dean had, and when he smiled at it, he missed it, Dean’s heart skipped a beat.

“What are we watching?” Castiel asked, sitting not too far from him on the couch, and Dean told himself that Cas couldn’t hear his heart that seemed to be skipping every other beat. Castiel was too far. But he was entirely too close.

“Just some cowboy movie that I saw was playing,” he said nonchalantly, “you know how I like them.” He took the quietest deep breath of his life, and he pressed on the movie.

“Ah, yes. You love old westerns.”

Dean didn’t know how to tell him that it wasn’t too old, and that it certainly wasn’t the western type of film he was thinking of. So he kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the screen as he pressed play, and his hand anxiously reached for the popcorn as a distraction.

Dean was thankful that he had seen the movie before, because for the first ten minutes, he was focused on anything but what was on the screen. He was thinking about what was going to go down between them after the movie ended like his life depended on it.

They hardly spoke as the movie played on. Castiel was watching intently, and Dean wishes that he hadn’t been sneaking side glances and looking at him so often, because he knew the second Castiel understood what it was that they were watching. There was no disgust on his face or in his body language, but why would there be? Castiel wasn’t afraid of intimacy or sexuality, of course he wasn’t. He was free of that. Dean would never forget the moment that he watched the angel free himself of it. That was Dean’s cross to bear.

But still, Dean waited for the other shoe to drop. Waited for a question, waited for Castiel to start either laughing or assuming. He knew in the back of his mind that Cas wouldn’t laugh, but his worries wouldn’t quiet down as they watched Jack and Ennis have sex for the first time. Instead of laughing or looking upset, Cas just watched without a word. No smile, no frown, nothing.

That terrified Dean.

The tension was tangible in the air through the silence, and Dean swore he could almost see it. He had heard Castiel exhale after Jack Twist’s monologue, and his heart skipped a beat as his thoughts went wild.

How much of that did Castiel relate to? Did he relate to it at all? Sure, they never had sex, but what they did was worse, if Dean was forced to think about it. Saving each other, mourning each other’s deaths, the glances, the blatant stares, the bickering, the concern that they had for each other, the bond that they originally shared that came from the first time Castiel touched him. From the very start, there had been something there that neither of them had been brave enough to point out. And for what?

All those stares, for what? All those indirect moments, all those hidden feelings, for what? All that time wasted, all the time Dean was preparing to throw away again despite them already losing so much. But above all those thoughts, there was one that was ringing like an alarm in his head.

The end of the movie was coming, and Cas had yet to say a single word to him.

Dean’s head turned to Castiel for just a moment, even though he didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to make it obvious. But Castiel was looking straight at the screen, watching it like he was the third person in the scene, looking at the two cowboys like he knew them personally, watching like he had been their quiet, omniscient third wheel for years. Dean looked away.

The end of the movie came, and Dean’s chest tightened as he saw Ennis open the closet, and he closed his eyes for the briefest of moments when he saw the god forsaken shirt and picture. It reminded him all too well of when Castiel died after releasing the Leviathans, and when he would take his trench coat from car to car, holding onto the hope that he would eventually come back. Keeping a piece of him, despite the betrayal. He clenched his jaw as the memory and the pain of all the times he lost Castiel hit him in the chest. It never got easier. He remembered how Jack Twist basically begged Ennis to open his eyes and his heart to what was so obvious between them, and Ennis never could. Dean saw their life on the screen. And as the screen went black, he let himself sigh.

The silence was killing him. The only sound in the room was the sad guitar playing, and the lump in Dean’s throat got bigger as the sadness of the movie and guilt of his own actions caught up to him. "That was…” Castiel said, and Dean’s heart stopped. “Terribly sad.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, his voice hoarse. “It’s sad.”

“And you’ve… seen this before?”

Dean cleared his throat and took a long drag from his beer bottle. “Yeah.”

More silence. More of Castiel’s beautiful eyes staring back at him like he was a book full of ancient texts. Hard to read, but not impossible. And Castiel knew every fucking language on planet earth. “Why did you show me this, Dean?” Castiel asked, and Dean’s heart jumped.

“It was movie night.”

Cas was patient. He tilted his head to the side, like he was genuinely curious. There was no innocent look in his eye, though, which was an expression that Dean had come to know from when they first started to feel the strings of fate intertwine between them. Castiel wasn’t confused. He was analyzing. “Why did you pick this movie?”

For a moment, Dean thought about aborting the mission. He thought about clamming up and getting all pissy again, insisting that Cas was poking around for doors that led to nothing. But he looked at the screen and saw the credits rolling, and he heard that damn music, and then he saw Castiel.

He was looking at Dean like he had the answer to every prayer.

“Because I wanted you to see it,” he ground out, his voice all defensive, but neither of them were shocked. That was how Dean always sounded before someone struck emotional gold with him. He always gave one last snap of his sharp teeth before letting the vault open. One last sickening growl before keeling over and dying, leaving the safe unlocked. This was no different.

“Why?” It was the gentlest Dean had ever heard the angel speak.

“Because I…” Dean trailed off as the words got stuck in his throat, thick and weighing heavy. “Because I wanted you to know.”

“Know what, Dean?”

“Ennis.” For a moment, that was all he could say as he gathered his thoughts, tried to tell himself that it was only Cas, it was only his angel looking at him, staring at him like he knew his soul. Like he needed to know his soul. “He loved Jack Twist.”

Castiel blinked. “It seems like he did, yes.”

Dean shook his head. “It seems like he did” wasn’t enough. That wasn’t concrete. Dean was fucking sick to his stomach, and he needed Castiel to know that there was no question about how Ennis Del Mar felt about Jack Twist.

“I wanted you to know that he did, even though Ennis never really—he never really said any of that sappy shit back. But Ennis knew. He knew Jack loved him. And he showed him he loved him back sometimes, in his own fucked up way. They argued, and he screwed up a few times, but he did.”

It was silent for a few moments, and Dean wondered if he truly had said too much. He wondered if he had cut himself open and showed his soul too quickly, and then he remembered that this was the angel that had dragged him from Hell. This was the angel that had touched his soul, mended it. This was the angel who had seen him and all his flaws and crimes and sins, and still…

What was there to be hesitant of?

“That’s very interesting, Dean.” Castiel sat back on the couch, just looking. Waiting. Expecting. Like he knew.

And that was when Dean panicked.

“Alright, well,” Dean said, giving him a tight smile. His panic almost never showed on the outside. “I’m tired. I know you don’t sleep and all, but-”

“Goodnight, Dean.”

He expected more of a fight than that. He was certain that Castiel would have said something, brought something up, but he seemed to know Dean just as well as he knew himself. Castiel was always good at reading him. He always knew when Dean’s cup was running dry.

Dean hovered for a moment, and for a split second, he wondered if he was making the wrong choice in not saying anything. But then he just gave him that tried and true Winchester smile again. “Night.”

His feet felt like they were chained to the couch as he walked away.

Dean Winchester avoided Castiel again. He wasn’t sure what there was to say. He wasn’t sure what Cas wanted him to say. So, he decided to say nothing. Even better, he decided to not even cross paths with him, at least until Dean remembered how to hold his tongue and rein in the burning sensation in his chest every time he saw Cas.

Sam was noticing. He kept giving Dean looks, kept giving him his own version of the cold shoulder. It didn’t bother Dean at first, but when Sam really started to lay it on him, he didn’t want to see Sam, either.

He loved his brother. He really did. But Sam had this thing where he did everything in a healthy manner. He ate healthy foods. He went running in the mornings. He drank hot tea to cleanse. He grieved as healthily as he could. He even worked through emotions as best as possible.

Sam would have already said something. In fact, Sam would have never been in the situation Dean was in. Not even close. He would have never had that in between, will-we-won’t-we period of time. He would have told whoever it was on the other side of the door that he liked them, loved them, and that he wanted to move forward. Sam was bold. Sammy was smart. He would have never done this to begin with.

But now that Dean was in it, Sam was adamant on trying to help him. And by help, he practically bullied him with glares, trying to make him look progress in the face. He wanted to push him forward into spilling his guts.

And that just wasn’t Dean.

Dean had no idea what Castiel was doing. Dean knew what he was doing, and that was sitting in his room and thinking about Castiel’s reaction to the stupid fucking movie. He could still hear the small exhale that Cas let out, like someone had punched him just enough to shock him.

Dean thought about that for an entire hour.

On the third day of him dodging around Castiel’s flighty schedule, Dean ran into Sam.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked as Dean went for the fridge. Beer first, like always.

“Grabbing a beer. What, you want one?”

“What are you doing with Castiel?”

Dean didn’t let it bother him. He knew better than that, and he knew better than to try and change the subject. All he could do was stall. “I haven’t seen him today.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam said, crossing his arms. “You haven’t seen him in a while.”

Dean scoffed. “A while? Don’t be dramatic.”

“It’s been like, three days.”

Dean gave his brother a mischievous face, and he knew Sam wasn’t playing when he frowned instead of rolled his eyes. “Are you spying on me, Sammy?”

“You need to fix this, Dean.”

Dean opened his bottle, and he went to the pantry. “Fix what?”

“Your situation with Cas,” Sam said exasperatedly, and Dean gave a halfhearted grunt.

“What about it? We’re good.”

“You’re good?” Sam repeated with his brows raised, ready to challenge whatever came out of Dean's mouth.

“Yeah,” Dean said slowly, “I didn’t know that we had to play Scrabble every day at the kitchen table to let you know we’re friends. I’m glad he’s back.”

“Dean, you love him.”

And the world came to a screeching halt.

It was the first time that Sam had outright told Dean that he knew exactly how he felt toward Castiel. He processed the words, and he didn’t even have the time to be shocked at his smartass brother, because Sam kept going.

“You love him, and this is honestly ridiculous. Everyone on Chuck’s– fuck, Jack’s green earth knows it, too. Everyone who’s ever met the two of you. Everyone.”

Everyone? “Sam-”

“It’s mutual,” Sam droned on, as if this wasn’t the dilemma of Dean’s existence he was speaking about, “it’s very mutual. So what in the hell is the problem?”

Dean was speechless for a moment. All he could do was stare at Sam, stare at his little brother who he raised himself, as he was getting lectured by him. “It’s not what you think it is.”

“Really? Because I’m pretty sure I heard you two watching Brokeback Mountain, of all movies,” Sam retorted, and just as Dean set his jaw, getting ready to defend the movie, Sam started talking again. “And it’s a great movie. But… you can’t tell me you didn’t choose that for a reason.”

“It was on cable.”

“You searched for it on cable, Dean. You searched for it, and you know it,” Sam said, and Dean breathed sharply through his nose. “I know you, Dean. And so does he.”

“I’m not trying- just stop, Sam.” Dean was starting to clam up again. “I don’t know-”

“I know what you were trying to say.”

“There was no subliminal fucking message,” Dean scoffed, and Sam nailed him with one of his bitch-looks, that one that could set Dean off within seconds if he was having shitty day already.

“I know exactly what you’re trying to say to him, Dean,” Sam gently firmly, but his eyes were gentle. His eyes were the same as when he would talk to a victim during a hunt. “And I think you should just say it outright. It’s been a long time coming, Dean.”

“What are you- what are you saying?”

“Tell him. Tell him how you’ve been feeling for years. Just say it.”

Dean’s stomach was churning. He couldn’t look Sam in the face. He couldn’t look it in the face. “Don’t give me that, Sam.”

“Can you imagine how he feels?” Sam asked, and Dean’s face dropped. “He told you everything. He confessed to you, Dean. He told you. Now he’s back, and he remembers. And I didn’t have to be there to know that you said nothing back.”

“You don’t know shit, Sam.”

“I do,” the younger Winchester fired back instantly. “I know you. And I know you said nothing back. I’m not blaming you, I’m sure that you were shocked. Even though I know you knew.”

Dean opened his mouth to deny it, to say that he was completely blindsided, but his lips didn’t work, and neither did his tongue. It was a lie, and everyone knew it. He closed his mouth and he watched Sam nod at him, like he knew that Dean had chosen to actually be transparent.

“But now he’s here, now is your chance, and you haven’t said anything. Everyone knows you want to. Why don’t you?”

Why didn’t he? Dean didn't know. He never forced himself to think about it, either. “Sam, it’s none of your goddamn business.”

“It is when I know you mourned him every day he was gone,” Sam said sternly. “It is when I know you mourned more than him being gone. There was regret that you were feeling, too. Regret about your silence. Regrets about wasting time, about never saying anything about the things that were so clearly there. Now you don’t have to. Jack just gave you two another chance, Dean.”

Dean turned around, hot on his own heels, about to start grumbling to himself and cursing out his brother when he heard Sam talk again.

“Just think. Ennis?” Dean stopped in his tracks as if that were his given name, as if it were a gunshot to his back. “Ennis never got a second chance after he left. This has gotta be around your fourth.” Dean stood still with his back to Sam still as the lump in his throat grew. “Why would you sit in silence and ignore what you have when you have another chance and such a clear path to happiness?”

Dean clenched his jaw and started to walk away, and the sound of his boots clicking on the bunker floor made the end of the conversation final.

It didn’t take long for Dean to get hungry after he stormed out on Sam. He was starving, but he didn't want to leave his room. He was certain that there was someone that he didn’t want to talk to waiting for him, and he didn’t want to talk at all. Sam or Cas, he just didn’t. His room was his best fucking friend.

The hunger was making him crabby. He was already in a bad mood, he had been ever since he left the movie room. But it had only blossomed into something nastier, something warped with misplaced anger and anxiety.

Dean was bouncing off of the walls with all of his unchecked emotions, and oppressive thoughts, and he knew what he had to do.

He needed to go to the bar.

He wasn’t sure if the plan was to just get drunk or to pick some chick up, even though he was rusty. He hadn’t done it in a while, and he ignored the reasoning for that because it circled right back to the thing he was running from, yet again.

Dean stopped in his tracks when he saw the very reason he was going out to get drunk sitting at the table, reading a book. Judging by the way it looked, it was some kind of lore book. Dean wanted to walk right by him, maybe just give him an awkward wave and pretend that it wasn’t awkward, but Castiel looked up at him.

“I’m going out,” Dean said, eager to speak first. If he spoke first, he could control where the conversation traveled to, and hopefully that meant he had a shot at being the one to end it, too.

“Okay,” Castiel said, and something about his tone made Dean’s insides twist up. “Have fun, Dean.”

Dean. There it was.

Dean.

Dean’s name meant nothing to him. Not a lot meant anything to Dean anymore, but in the same sick and torturous time loop, not a lot didn’t weigh on his mind. But his name. His name, when it comes from that god forsaken angels' mouth. That one syllable could convey so much, it said so much more than a hundred of Dean’s sharp words ever could. It had him whipping around, still carrying his flannel.

“Why do you say my name like that, man?”

Castiel looked up from his book. He looked mildly startled. “What?”

“You always say my name like that,” Dean said, taking a step closer. It both killed him and awoke his soul. “Why do you do that?”

“That’s your name,” Castiel said slowly, and then he narrowed his eyes. “Are you okay, Dean?”

“Are you- are you trying to make me feel bad, or something?” Dean asked, face screwing up as he took another step forward, setting the keys to the Impala down on the table. “What’s your end goal, here?”

“I have no ulterior motive,” Castiel said cautiously, “I’m just here, Dean.”

He was there. Just there. Just existing. Just in Dean’s mind when he was awake, and when he was dreaming. He was just in his nightmares and in his long list of regret in dark blue ink, underlined and circled a thousand times. He was a permanent member of the what-if club in Dean’s mind, and he had the nerve to say that he was “just there”.

“What do you want?”

Cas looked positively concerned. He slowly stood up, and Dean’s entire body tensed, and when he realized that what he wanted was a hug, he nearly ran. “Dean, are you feeling alright?”

“Why didn’t you come back here the second you came back, huh?” That wasn’t the question Dean wanted to ask, but he found that it was something he had been wanting to ask, anyway. Castiel blinked. “The second Jack brought you back, why didn’t you come?”

Castiel exhaled. “I didn’t think you’d notice.”

“Of course I did,” Dean retorted bitterly. “How long were you alive?”

“About a month,” he answered truthfully, and Dean’s heart skipped. “I was helping him. Jack is still very young-”

Dean shook his head. That was a good try, a good reason, but he knew Cas better than that. Cas would have checked in before flying off with Jack again. “Why didn’t you come home?”

Castiel’s eyes got hard, hard in that way that told Dean that he didn’t appreciate being backed into a corner. Hard in the way that reminded Dean that he was speaking to a celestial being.

“I didn’t know if you wanted me back, Dean.” The words broke something that had already been broken and mended a hundred times inside of Dean.

“What?”

Castiel nailed him with a look. “I didn’t know if you wanted me back, and I’m very positive that you can assume why I was unsure.”

Dean’s stomach lurched again. Why was he feeling so sick? Why was this guilt so much worse than guilt from situations that were much more dire? Why did this feel like a knife to the gut? “Why would I tell you that you couldn’t come home?”

“You know why,” Castiel insisted again, and Dean swallowed. “You know what happened.”

Dean shrugged his shoulders. “I mean, yeah. We both do.”

Castiel just looked at him for a moment, reading him with his eyes, and then, Dean swears he saw him roll them. “Go on, Dean,” Castiel said dismissively, “go to the bar.”

Dean scowled. “What?”

“I know you don’t want to talk about it. I know you want to forget about it. That’s fine,” Cas said, but there was the smallest break in his voice, the tiniest hint of exhaustion and sadness, and Dean knew that he was lying. “Go ahead. We don’t have to bring it up.”

Dean wanted to take the bait. He did. The thought of them trying to go back to the way it was with no consequences, no setbacks, and nothing but lingering stares and touches and unspoken affection seemed like heaven to him. But he knew that the limbo he would throw the both of them back into was hell, and it was a hell that they had been in for far too long for no reason at all. Castiel didn’t escape one shitty afterlife just to live another on earth.

“We don’t have to,” Cas repeated quietly, almost like a plea, a plea for them to pretend to be “normal” even if it broke them both, and something inside of Dean snapped.

“Yeah, we do.”

“We don’t.” If Dean didn’t know better, he would say that Cas almost looked afraid.

“No, you said it. You laid it all on the line, and I said nothing. And then you were gone,” Dean said, and it overtook him all at once. He put his head in his hands and took a deep, staggering breath. “Just like Jack fuckin’ Twist.”

Cas’s eyes went wide, like he couldn’t believe that Dean was going there. “Dean.”

“You said it, and I knew one day you would, but I never thought- I never thought I wouldn’t be able to answer you. I- I could have, but I couldn’t.”

The look in Castiel’s eyes was like a cut that always bled and a healing salve all the same. Gentle, bloody hands that sewed him up after wielding the knife themselves. “Dean.”

“I knew you did.”

“You knew?” Castiel asked slowly. “What did you know?”

The lump in Dean's throat was bigger than ever. “How it was. How you saw us.”

Castiel looked at him for a long time, and in the silence, Dean wished that he could read minds. Just for one night. Just for one person.

“You loved me.”

It was Castiel’s turn to look away. “It’s… just go, Dean.” Dean shook his head, and he pressed on the gas.

“I knew you did. I knew you did, I could feel it. And I-I did, too. I didn’t realize it until… until Purgatory. When I realized that even after you fucking unleashed Leviathans on the world and played me and Sam and Bobby like a goddamn fiddle… I wouldn’t leave without you. I didn’t know why, I couldn’t… but I know what that feeling was now. I know what that feeling when I had- I had the Mark of Cain was. I know why I didn’t kill you. I know you were my Collette.”

Castiel said nothing. He had tears in his blue eyes, too similar to Dean’s ongoing nightmare. But he said nothing. Dean wondered if this was how he felt all those months back.

“I cared about you. More than I ever should have. More than I thought I ever could have. I felt the bond, too. I never wanted to admit it, not even to myself, but I always felt that I knew you. And I- Cas,” Dean said, and he hated the way his voice cracked. “I hate myself for letting you leave that way. I hate myself.”

“Why do you hate yourself, Dean?”

“I just told you why, goddamn it!” He snapped, but Castiel didn’t look shocked at all. Castiel was never shocked by his tendency to bite the hand that fed him. Dean was a violent dog, one that didn’t want to clamp down his teeth, but he had been trained to, and Castiel had skin made of steel. “I just told you.”

“You don’t have to hate yourself for that, Dean.” Dean closed his eyes anyway, unable to look at him. “I knew that I wouldn’t hear anything back. I know you.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“But I knew what would happen. And I said it anyway.”

“But I wanted to say- I wanted to.”

“I know.”

“You couldn’t possibly know,” Dean hissed, turning his head to the side like that could shield him from his own words, and he wanted to crawl in a hole when he felt a hot tear run down his face. He wiped it off angrily, all signs of it gone instantly.

“What don’t I know, Dean?” There it was again. His name. Like it was a prayer. Like it was something to be cared for, something gentle. Like he wasn’t just a shell of himself, trying to glue himself back together with a child’s glue stick.

“You don’t know how I feel.”

Castiel made a face, the one that always told Dean that he thought he knew exactly what the problem was. “You never had to say it, Dean,” Castiel said quietly. “I know.”

“You can’t-” Dean turned away from his angel, shaking his head. “You can’t know. How?” Castiel started to walk closer, and Dean straightened up as the angel was close, too close for him to think.

“Because it’s all right here,” Castiel said, pointing a finger right into his chest, where his heart was. Dean swore that it grew wings and flew right out of his chest and into Castiel’s hands at that very moment. “Dean, you wear your heart on your sleeve. It’s so obvious when you care. That’s one of the things that I fell in love with.”

Dean’s automatic reaction was to curl into himself, to start shaking his head, to tell Castiel to not go there, to not travel to the depths that they both clearly knew were there. But he forced himself to stand still, to watch and listen even as his eyes continued to burn.

He wasn’t going to fuck it up again.

“I knew. I just needed to get it off of my chest, and I am so sorry that it’s something that has weighed on you this much since my departure.”

Sorry. He was sorry. Castiel was sorry? “What are you sorry for?”

“For leaving you in distress,” he said gently. “I suppose I never really thought about the aftermath. I just knew I had finally found peace in it. I guess my last act was just as selfish as it was joyful on my end.”

Dean could go on for days with reasons that Castiel was anything but selfish. Stupid, but he was never selfish. “If anyone’s the asshole, it’s me, Cas,” Dean said. “It’s me.”

“This is something you’ll hold on to, isn’t it? One of your many, debilitating regrets?” Dean couldn’t say. He didn’t want to. “You don’t have to. You carry so much, Dean. So much.”

Dean shrugged. “I fucked up. I have to live with it.”

“I forgive you.”

“You forgive me?” Dean repeated.

“For whatever situation you concocted in your head, I forgive you, Dean.”

Dean Winchester didn’t know what to say. Nothing he said would be enough. So, he just looked at Cas as if his eyes weren’t burning, and he nodded his head one time. Cas saw it though, he always did, and he closed the distance between the two of them in the middle of the bunker, hands slapping down on each other’s backs, like they hadn’t seen each other in years.

Dean’s whole body was tingling. Whether it was because he was hallucinating or because he was finally accepting something, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he swore he could feel the welt of Castiel’s handprint, the hand that had gripped him and raised him up. It was on his arm and branded into his ribs and on his ankle and on his heart. It was on his face, a strong yet gentle hand cupping his cheek. It was all consuming, and for the first time, Dean let it take him.

His hunter’s mind never turned off, though, and when he heard footsteps coming their way, he opened his eyes. He saw Sam come around the corner, and he knew the second Sam realized what it was he was witnessing. He watched his little brother’s eyes light up so bright with genuine excitement, and then he saw him wave like a little kid, give a thumbs up, and walk right back where he came from.

He wasn’t sure how long they just stood there, or who pulled away first. It didn’t matter. Not when they felt so connected. Neither of them spoke for a few moments, and Dean relished in it. It was known. It was unknown. It just was.

But still, Dean was a human. Dean was curious. “So, what do we do now?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We- is this something new?” Something they would have to label? Labeling was never Dean’s strongest suit, anyway. “What is this?” He asked, quickly gesturing between the two of them.

“That’s the beauty of that free will thing you showed me many years ago, Dean,” Castiel said, and when he smiled, Dean felt the same sun that came through dark trees in Purgatory come back for him. This time, they were both above ground, alive, and it was real. “It can be whatever we want.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Dean said, and he forced himself to look up from his shoes back to his angel again. And in that moment, the soft smile on Castiel’s face was enough to erase the memory of his teary eyes. “You’re right.”

“Maybe we should go to Canada.”

Dean frowned a bit. “Huh?”

“That’s where most of the movie was filmed,” he said, and slowly, the confused look on Dean's face changed, and his lips turned upwards into the smallest of smiles. “Some parts were filmed in New Mexico, but the mountain scenes were in Alberta. We can wear the hats, I’m sure you still have some, somewhere.”

The fondness that swirled inside of Dean’s chest was breaking free to escape. For the first time, he let it show on his face, and he smiled a beautiful, gentle smile at his angel. “We can go, Cas,” Dean said, “we can go anywhere.”

I hope you liked this story! At some points, characters might have been OOC, but I really enjoyed writing this. It’s so strange to be back posting on after almost two years, and back with a different fandom. One I’ve been in since I was… fourteen, I think? Strange that I’ve never written for Destiel before, but God knows I had a reason to.

This fic is so deeply personal to me because of an interesting relationship/friendship I had! It was extremely similar to the nature of Dean and Cas, and in turn, very similar to Jack and Ennis. More or less, the fall of that relationship is what caused me to write this. I started this in the middle of my heartbreak and as I end it, I’m feeling overall much better. I hope I was able to give Dean and Cas a better ending than I got. This is silently dedicated to my own personal Ennis, my cowboy who will never ever read this. P.S, if you can help it, never fall in love with someone who can't accept who they are. You deserve beautiful, unconditional love, and someone who will recognize the value of the love you share.

I really hope whoever is reading this enjoyed my first dip back into writing! I love Destiel so much, so I hope I did them justice! Also, these cute cowboy dividers were made by @saradika-graphics ! Y'all let me know if you think I should write more Destiel!

#my fics #destiel #fix it fic #supernatural #deancas #destiel fanfic #brokeback mountain #brokebacknatural #destiel fic #misha collins is my ghost writer #dean winchester #castiel #dean winchester x castiel #brokeback mountain ily so much bro i think imma throw up

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