Dean has grown.
Through the paralysing fear and joy and awfulness of the moment, that's the first thing he notices. Dean, now nearly twenty-one by his reckoning, has filled out since his late teens, the last time Castiel had seen him. Now he's over a foot taller, wider in the shoulders and thicker in his limbs. Stronger, larger and yet still so similar to the sad, sunken eyed teenager who'd come to him on his final day at home.
"Dean." It's an acknowledgement, a greeting, an apology for being here.
In the resounding silence he could swear he hears his breath catch.
They're all frozen in place, Gabriel and his parishioner between himself and the man Dean has become. He can see Gabriel fitting it together, watching the tumblers fall into place as their secret is unlocked and broken open. The stranger, the boy who must be Dean's...friend? lover? What has the intervening time made of him? Looks between them, frowning, slower than Gabriel, not knowing Castiel's side of it – but guessing all the same.
"Dean?" he turns to his friend, the first to move. Wanting an explanation, a denial of something he does not yet fully comprehend.
Dean shakes his head, still staring right at him, eyes linking across the space between and refusing to let go. Castiel can't quantify the needs in him, he wants to run, towards and away from Dean, to touch him, to hold him, to strike him, to walk away from him and never think of him again, to take him back to his own tiny apartment, wrap him in his own quilt and never leave his side.
He wants Dean. The words that go in between those three simple ones change from minute to minute, second to second. But he wants, always.
"Castiel...what would you like to do?" Gabriel asks, quietly.
Castiel looks at him without any idea what he wants, and Gabriel reads it in his eyes.
"I meant what I said, you can make this right." Gabriel touches his shoulder gently. "If you'd like me to give you two some privacy..."
"Wait." The blond boy holds up a hand, barring their way, and Dean is still frozen mere paces away down the aisle, like the groom in a demented wedding ceremony. "What's going on?" He turns to Gabriel. "Father?"
"Michael...I think this is something they need to discuss in private." Gabriel says gently. "Perhaps you and I should let them speak."
Michael rounds on Dean.
"Dean? Who is this?" he asks, and Dean looks so pained, caught out and shocked from himself, that Castiel can barely stand the rising of the defensive impulse within him.
"Dean." Michael demands.
He can't answer, all this words are drying at the back of his throat. He'd recognised Castiel as he'd drawn closes, but now that he can see him clearly it's like a vice has clenched in his chest, he can't move, can't speak. Because it's Castiel. Castiel who he hurt, and lost and pined for.
Castiel who he was never going to see again. Standing right in front of him.
He doesn't know what to do, what Castiel wants him to do. Does he want Dean to go? To stay or to run or to lie for him? Once again he is seventeen, young and stupid and in need of guidance from the older man, directions on how they should proceed.
And there's Michael, demanding answers he cannot give without endangering Castiel, without smearing his own name.
And it's in that confusion that he finds the one word he needs.
"Castiel?" It comes out as a question, begging for help, for a sign as to what they should do to extricate themselves from this tangled mess.
The older man turns towards the stranger, the priest.
"Take him to my office." Gabriel says gently, and pushes Castiel slightly towards where Dean is waiting. Castiel walks towards him and each footfall is painful with suspense, what should he do when he reaches him? When they get to the office and are alone?
He walks stiffly beside Castiel as he crosses the church towards the priest's office, eyes on the flagged floor, shoe scuffs loud in the loaded silence. He's so close he could take his hand if he wanted, touch Castiel's arm, his face and neck. He doesn't, and the compulsion nearly breaks him there. Three years of being too far to touch, and now he can see what he has missed and he needs it back more than ever.
Castiel holds the door for Dean and then closes it behind them, shutting out the cavernous church and enclosing them in silence, in privacy. They stand awkwardly, facing each other, and Dean notices the small lines that crinkle the corners of Castiel's eyes, and the edges of his mouth. He's only thirty three, but the few years they've been apart have still wrought change in him.
Dean swallows the wave of misery that creates in him.
"I don't know what to say." Castiel says softly. His voice cracking a little and betraying him.
"Me neither." Dean fiddles with his cuffs, fingers rubbing the fabric. "I didn't think I'd see you again."
"Well, I didn't plan on this." Castiel murmurs sadly. "I didn't know that...that any of this would happen." He shakes his head. "I never planned you."
Dean looks up at him then and reads the tension in Castiel's frame. He hates it, that they are strangers now, who have wronged each other and left each other, forced together by coincidence.
That he can't help.
"Can I..." he stops, fingers clenching and unclenching nervously.
"What?" The older man murmurs.
Castiel's breath is knocked from him as Dean grasps him tightly, arms going around him as they had many times before, finding the places where they once rested so easily, now with the bulk and strength of age to shelter the smaller man within. Castiel stiffens, his entire body jerking at the unexpected assault, then he grasps Dean back and sobs a quiet sigh against his throat, where his face is buried. Dean inhales the scent of his skin, unchanged from their last day together.
"I missed you." He manages, adolescent anguish and the gut wrenching gear change of the evening finally catching up to him. Castiel just nods fervently against his collar bone, unable to answer in any other way. Dean knots his fingers in Castiel's hair and strokes, alternately pulling and soothing as he had once done, book in one hand and the other man's head in his lap.
"I don't even..." Dean stops trying to speak, blocks out the knowledge that he will have to release Castiel and watch him leave for a second time, the knowledge that everything and yet nothing, has changed since that first day of separation.
He holds onto him and lets Castiel's tears soak his shirt collar, clinging to the smaller man and wishing he was young enough to believe that Castiel could protect him from the pain he knows is coming.