The funeral is close to an actual church service, Dean discovers. Pastor Jim stands at the podium reading passages from different parts of the big red Bible in front of him. He talks about God and about Heaven and about eternal pastures. Dean shifts in his seat. He's never been good at this. The church itself is nice, though. Tall pillars on each side, the ceiling painted like the sky. Flowers bouquets everywhere, in preparation for today. The Mother Mary has rosaries bleeding down her front, shiny against her white marble chest. Up front, the casket is closed, with a bouquet of blue and white arranged on top. Some of the flowers are cloth, ones Dean and Sam and Adra can pluck out before they put Castiel in the ground.
There aren't as many people today as there were at Cas' wake. Charlie showed up around midnight the night before, rousing Dean from a fitful sleep. She called his phone until he woke, and proceeded to curl around him like a vine until he fell asleep. She's squeezed between Dean and Jo now, clutching a box of tissues and pressing shoulders with Jo. Tissues pile at Jo's feet. Her nose is irritated, red. She never looks at the coffin for too long.
Jim asks if anyone would like to say a few words about the departed. Dean clenches his fist in his lap, moves to stand. But Jo gets there first, her eyes steeling and her shoulders taut. Jim moves aside and she stands at the podium for a minute, gripping it with both hands.
"Castiel was a great… A great guy," She starts, "We would have lunch together at school, and Ash would have some kind of conspiracy he cooked up over the weekend. Cas would listen for a while and nod, and he'd have a comeback so sharp, Ash would thrown his hands up and admit defeat," A couple people in the crowd chuckle, "Ash said Cas must've stolen his notes, somehow, but I think he was just that smart," She pauses, shutting her eyes and swallowing hard. "I never had a brother. Thanks to my mom, Ellen, I never needed one. But Cas was… He was pretty fuckin' close, you know? He was pretty fuckin' close." She looks down at the podium, her mouth tilted into something like a smile. After a minute, she steps down. Everyone claps.
Charlie offers Jo a hug and Jo leans into it. Charlie murmurs something like, you did good, and rubs Jo's shoulder. Dean leans behind Charlie and presses his hand into Jo's back. She is shaking. Sam steps up to the stand, a little blue book in his hand.
"Hi," He says, blinking in the church's pale light. A couple people murmur back, and it ripples through the building, "Uh, I'm Sam. Castiel was… like a brother to me, too. He loved writing. I tried to write something of my own to honor that, but I'm not… I'm not as eloquent as he was, not by a long shot. So, I figured I'd read something somebody else wrote instead." He clears his throat and swallows, "He liked reading, too. This is The Fish, by Rupert Brooke." Dean gasps a small gasp. That blue book is from a lifetime ago. That was the one he picked up from Bobby's, right before that thunderstorm. When he texted Cas for the first time. Dean remembers the pull of the book, it's old blue cover. Castiel, so new to him then, intriguing in the same way. Sam reads the poem, and when it's done he closes the book and looks out to the audience. So much has changed since that first day. Sam smiles a quick, wet smile, and steps away.
Pastor Jim asks if anyone else would like to say something. The air in Dean's lungs is too tight, too high. The podium is empty, the Bible splayed open, waiting, red. Dean gets up. This is it. This is it. He balls his hands into fists. The podium creeps closer. The Bible is still open.
"Hey," Dean says. Expectant faces stare at him. Charlie gives him a thumbs up. Adra nods, a fraction of a thing, "When I was a kid," Dean starts, and the words spill from him. He doesn't think, just lets them go, "My mom died suddenly. I didn't remember her really well, and I was always afraid to ask. I didn't know her favorite color, or her favorite song, and for a while I didn't know her birthday. I couldn't ask her about it, so I didn't ask anyone else. 'Cause that would be like proof that she was gone, you know?" Dean thumbs at his ring. He squeezes it, "Castiel… Cas isn't like that. He wouldn't want to disappear like that. He'd want you all to know that he loved cheeseburgers, and gardening, and he thought Star Wars was overrated. He hated people who talked when they didn't have to," Dean grins in spite of himself, "And he was amazing. And he was ordinary. Castiel was… here," Dean settles on the word finally, pointing to his chest, "And he was here." He gestures out, to the church, to the sunlight streaming through the windows in broken chunks, to the people listening in the pews. Castiel is dead. But Castiel was here. "Thank you." Dean says, and steps down.
People mingle in every corner of the downstairs. In the living room, the Novak's old chess set was moved behind Cas' chair, to make room for the tray of food that no one's touching. Cheese cubes grow hard and get picked at. The finger sandwiches have been peeled apart and discarded. Wind blows outside, signalling a coming storm, knocking branches and petals around the garden. Adra and Dean covered the most vulnerable plants in big tarps and turned off the water in the fountain. Now the fountain ripples with the wind, sloshing over the sides and darkening the stone. Inside the house, a soft rock music plays, one of the CDs Dean got for his birthday. Dean sighs. He blinks sleep out of his eyes, but it doesn't stray far. It's been a long fucking weekend.
Adra stands by the mantle, talking with a very pregnant woman who gestures to the photos. Adra, her fingers pressed to her mouth, makes eye contact with Dean and he goes over, mini sandwich uneaten in his hand. Adra introduces Dean to the woman, although her name slips out Dean's brain as soon as Adra says it. Whatever. Dean swallows. The woman shakes his hand with both of hers, her eyes shining and brown. A beaded bracelet clinks on her wrist, the beads strung in rainbow order.
"Adra tells me you're one of Castiel's friends," The woman says, smiling a tight, sad smile. Dean takes a deep breath. The woman doesn't let go of his hand. He wants to pull away. Her eyes are wide, but not piercing the way Adra's are.
"Boyfriend," Dean admits, and it hurts, like an arrow piercing through his chest. His free hand he moves up to wipe his face, for the millionth time this weekend. The woman nods.
"My first wife had health complications a couple years into our marriage," She says. Dean nods, dumbly. He can't do this. He can't fucking do this.
"I'm sorry, uh," He says, and the woman's name escapes him. Pamela, she tells him, "I gotta go, Pamela, Adra." And he leaves, moving passed the clusters of people, passed Jo sitting at the island with Charlie and Ash, to Sam curled up in the corner by the bookshelf. He nudges the chair with his foot, and Sam blinks. Dean tells him he's leaving, he can't do this, and to get a ride back with Jo or Charlie. Sam looks at him and his hand twitches, but Dean sees him make a decision, nod, and curl back up. Dean thanks him silently.
Outside is sprinkled with warm droplets of rain. A shiver ripples through Dean. His car purrs to get started. He drives. The road is long and flat; the trees overhanging the road sway and loom. Far off, thunder rumbles. Dean pushes the gas pedal deeper into the floor. Legos rattle in the air conditioning. He's halfway to wherever when it hits him that he hasn't touched the radio. He can't bring himself to do it now, so he keeps on in silence. Rain splatters on the windshield, immediate and loud. Thunder rips through the sky. Dean flicks his headlights on. A couple cars pass him by going the other way, headlights flaring in his eyes. They're probably getting away from the storm. Dean huffs. The storm's all over town, there's no escaping it. But he can't tell them that, so Dean drives.
The Singer auto shop is a rusted out black hole where cars go to rot. Dean circles the two-story blue house, pulling around to the backyard, where the junkers sit and collect dust. Dean pulls up near the back door, turns off his headlights. The rain hasn't reached here yet, although it's close, judging by the the sky blanketed in grey. Dean is about to knock on the door when Bobby pulls it open and startles. His hair is combed again, and he's in a nice white shirt that Dean hasn't seen before.
"I was gonna come back," Bobby says immediately, crossing his arms over his chest, "I spilled somethin' on my shirt. Didn't want them to think I was a slob." Dean blinks, stares at his uncle until it clicks.
"I'm not… I don't care about that." It's Bobby's turn to blink, give Dean a once-over, and drop his arms back to his sides. He steps back.
"Well, c'mon in," Bobby says, a little resigned. Bobby goes back to the living room, pushes a pile of books out of the way with his feet. The air conditioner rattles, blowing cool air on Dean's damp skin.
"Can I…" Dean starts, words sticking in his throat. The couch by the window has a coat slung over the back, "I want to work on the car." His voice is small, barely above a whisper. Nothing else will come out. Bobby pauses, thinking.
"Alright," He says, "Bring 'er into the garage. I don't want you getting electrocuted in the storm." Bobby toes off his shoes and shirks his jacket tossing it over the couch. Dean nods, and goes out and parks the Impala in the garage. Soon after, rain pelts the roof. Bobby tells Dean he'll be inside if Dean needs him. Dean wanders in a little while later for a small wrench, and sure enough, Bobby's sitting at the desk in his living room, with his reading glasses on, squinting at a big old book. He points Dean in the direction of the toolbox sitting on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. When he asks if Dean needs anything else, Dean almost says no.
"Bobby," Dean says. He's stripped down to his undershirt, a thin black that does nothing to keep out the cold growing up around the rain. Bobby looks up at him, his face half-obscured by the lamp pouring over his book. Dean swallows the lump in his throat, "Does it always hurt this much?" Bobby opens his mouth a fraction. He pushes his glasses up.
"Not all the time," He says, finally, "Not forever." With a grimace, Dean takes the toolbox outside.
The garage is a poorly lit room with a concrete floor that seeps cold through Dean's shoes no matter what time of year it is. Rain drums the roof. An old radio sits in the corner, it's antenna sticking up at a precise angle, perfectly functional but turned off. On one side of the garage is a variety of wheels, bolts, other tools one might need to fix up a car. Dean parked the Impala on the other side of the garage that has garden shears, a rake, a wheelbarrow, and some mulch growing old in the corner. Things Bobby's wife left behind before she died, that Bobby hadn't the energy to box away. It smells like Eden. Sweat gleans down Dean's back. There's a crowbar near one of the Impala's wheels, almost completely under the car. Dean grits his teeth and slides the crowbar out from where it's been tucked away.
"Damn it, Castiel," Dean mutters. His voice is hard, "Why'd you have to get sick?" The crowbar is cool in his hand, smooth like the tongs used to poke and prod a dying fire. Castiel is gone. It's bullshit. Dean grinds his teeth. Castiel won't ever see this garage, won't watch Dean's sweat-shiny back as he fixes the accelerator and changes the oil. Won't get to have dinner with Bobby and their family- their fucking family- afterwards, "You son of a bitch," Dean grips the crowbar tighter, "I loved you, you know that?" He looks up to the sky, the torrential rain, "I fucking loved you!" Dean kicks the toolbox, bolts and screwdrivers flying everywhere, "Why did you have to leave?" Thunder shouts overhead, but does not answer. Dean kicks again, the toolbox, the Impala's front wheel. It doesn't help. Nothing fucking helps. Dean grips the crowbar tighter and swings towards the Impala's rain-streaked window. "Why?!"
The shattering glass sounds nothing like relief.
