Sam Winchester dies in the early hours of a quiet Sunday morning.
Dean isn't certain how long he sits by his bedside and listens to the monotone sound of his father's heart flatlining, but the room has shifted from a dark blue glow to bright and sunlit by the time awareness comes back to him.
The beeping of the EKG had become a constant in the house in the last month, melding into the background along with the chirping of the birds outside the window or the sound of the air conditioner keeping the rooms hospital-cool.
He thinks the abrupt change of the rhythm should be overtly discernible, a shock to his senses. Except that, for a long while, the only sound he can think of is the sigh of relief his father took along with his last breath.
Dean lets go of his father's hand, tries to think of the warmth of his last gaze rather than the coldness of his fingers.
Emily is sniffling in the doorway, having made her way from the kitchen, holding a tray of food that won't be eaten. She gives Dean a teary smile when he finally stands and meets her gaze.
"I should make some calls," he says, and stays where he is.
Emily nods and then embraces him, cries quietly into his shoulder. Dean feels the fabric of her nurse's scrubs on his cheek.
Emily had entered their home when the doctors had all but signed his father's death certificate. But like always, Sam Winchester had beat the odds, taken a breath too many and here they were, almost a year later.
Emily had known his father for less than a year and yet here she was, sobbing into his shoulder like she was his daughter and not a hospice nurse.
That's dad for you , Dean thinks, easy to love.
He takes one last look at his father, frail and pale and so unlike himself. Sunshine pours through the window, reflecting off of the framed photos haloing his form, a testimony of the long and enormous life of Sam Winchester.
"He would hate this," Jake says, takes a sip of his tea from a ridiculously oversized mug. Of course Jake Collins Banes is drinking tea at a wake, of fucking course, but then, to Dean's horror, he starts heating up said tea, with the glowy fucking eyes thing that he always does.
Dean has to shove him hard because what the fuck.
Jake turns to him and has the galls to look indignant.
"The Conners are still here, jackass," Dean says and nods towards his increasingly uncomfortable looking neighbors from a few miles down the road, who are standing out like a sore thumb in their black Sunday church clothes among a sea of flannel and profanity.
"My tea got cold."
"Then go heat it up like a normal person."
"Normal huh? Discriminating against witches now? I thought better of you Deano, I get enough shit from these purist hunters already " Jake announces, but thankfully stops.
Dean sighs, or groans, he's not sure, it's been a long day. A long day of shaking people's hands, accepting condolences and listening to the ' your father was a great man' speech.
"You're right," Dean says. Enough time has passed so that Jake gives him a puzzled look. "He would hate this," Dean clarifies.
He's never seen this many people at his house before. Ever. Not even the time his dad had invited all his hunter friends over for Dean's 11th birthday party because all of his classmates were a no-show and Dean had finally realized; so what if he was too weird to have normal friends? He bet none of the guys on the football team knew a single werewolf or got to play with Claire fucking Novak's knife collection.
Dean has to take a swig of his beer when he feels his throat closing up.
There's impossibly more people filing in through the doors and Dean doesn't recognize half of them.
The grand, fancy, and crowded event that this day is turning into is so unlike his dad that the uneasiness at the pit of his stomach is starting to shift into full blown guilt now. He would have wanted something small and discrete. Intimate.
"Honestly dude," Jake says, takes a huge bite of an eggroll, and finishes with his mouth full "you told fucking Garth 'piping tea' Fitzgerald and expected word not to get out?"
Fucking Garth. Garth whose mouth seems to get bigger with old age and who's been alternating between telling outlandish stories about his dad (that are probably true let's be real) to anyone who will listen, and crying into his wife's shoulder since the fire in the pyre dimmed out.
Dean's hands had shook when he'd thrown the matches in and they haven't stopped since. Jake hasn't commented on it, just resupplied them with more beer and Dean's thankful for it.
Dean sighs, leans his head against the wall that he and Jake are currently crammed in front of - because there's no fucking room in his fucking house was it always this small jesus - and closes his eyes.
He must give off some major woeful vibes then or whatever because Jake nudges him lightly with his shoulder.
"Hey," he says, "I'm betting 90% of these fucks are here 'cus your dad saved their asses."
Dean studies the room for a while. It's bustling with sound and laughter. Aunt Anne is busy carrying impossibly more food out from the kitchen and then reprimanding her sister for taking almost one-third of its contents into her own plate. Claire laughs in her face but Dean can see her bloodshot eyes from across the room.
"I mean, shit, we sure are," Jake continues and nods towards his dads on the couch.
"They look like they're having fun," Dean says. Max Banes, dad's unlikeliest of friends, sits on the couch, his husband's fond eyes on him. Max must be telling a funny story by the looks of it (probably about how they met if experience has taught Dean anything) because he's built up a big audience around himself, their laughter carrying through the room. Dean can count the number of times he's seen him without a smile on his face on one hand.
Except, that is, when the topic of his late sister comes up and his eyes go a little hollow.
Dean thinks it's what bonded Jake and him together: the heavy ghost of a sibling that both their fathers carried.
Jake rolls his eyes, "When are they not having fun?" And then as if to prove his point, Max leans in to give his husband an affectionate kiss on the cheek.
Jake groans. "I'm putting them in a home as soon as I can."
"Is that gonna be before or after you move out of their home?"
"I'm in a transitional period of my life, dickwad."
Dean snorts. Thank god for Jake Banes.
"What I'm trying to say is," Jake continues, "all of this" he makes a hand movement indicating the ' everything' that's currently happening in the cramped living room, "was inevitable for Sam. Fucking. Winchester ."
The Conners have reached their discomfort level, it seems, they're making their way to him, or trying to, through the crowd.
"Our deepest condolences once again, son," Mr. Conner says. Mrs. Conners gives him a hug and a call if you need anything, sweetheart , and then they're making their exit from, what is most definitely, the weirdest wake they've ever been to.
"Oh thank fuck," Jakes says, his eyes glowing, and then there's steam rising from his mug.
Later, when the guests slowly file out, and Dean manages to convince the ones that are left, the ones that matter the most and are giving him worried glances, that yes, he's fine and no he doesn't need company, and he definitely doesn't need a soothing witch massage, thanks very much Jake, he's left alone in the house.
The house that, only an hour ago, had seemed so small and cramped and now feels huge and quiet and empty. But it isn't empty, it's filled to the brim, every corner of it, with the ghosts of his father and his mother and the time with them that he won't ever get back.
Maybe he should have taken Jake up on that offer, he's getting all dramatic again.
His first instinct is to turn off the lights, go to his childhood bedroom (that's become his regular bedroom again in the last year, really) and shove it all down deep, knock out and sleep.
Screw consciousness.
But he doesn't. He sits with it.
He pours himself some whiskey and sits on his dad's favorite old squeaky armchair. It looks weird when it's empty.
Dean has spent years watching him sit here, looking at his thousand yard stare and wondering what in the world he can do to get a glimpse inside his head for just a moment.
It faces the window, the long expanse of land and trees outside in view, mom's old garden that Dean hasn't had time to fend to, the little birdhouse that Dean had built in third grade still attached to a branch visible beyond the glass.
If he turns his head slightly to the right though, which his father only ever did when he thought no one was watching, his gaze falls on the mantelpiece, at the gallery of photos displayed on the walls. Most of the people in those photos are gone now. Most of them have always been gone for Dean.
Maybe he won't have to sit here and gaze searchingly now, he thinks, Maybe now, when he calls for Dean, the right one will answer.
He wakes to a high pitched, ear-piercing shrill, vibrating in his ears.
In his ears and the whole fucking house . Literally. It's shaking with it, the windows quaking, the photos he fell asleep looking at are falling to the floor and shattering in mid air before they can reach the ground.
He almost falls off the chair himself and only has enough time and sense to reach sweaty palms to his ears and duck under their dining room table, before the giant crystal chandelier meets the ground where his body was a second ago.
Mom would be pissed, he thinks, absurdly.
And then, as abruptly as it had started, the noise is gone.
What the fuck.
He moves his hands away from his ears and sees blood. That's gonna have to wait.
Dean moves in record time, fetches his gun from under the table, checks the perimeters, inspects the wardings, the salt lines ingrained into the flooring, the devils trap, the fucking anti-fairy emblems.
Sam Winchester was a fucking paranoid.
The EMF shows fuck all.
What the actual fuck.
Dean would think he'd dreamt it all, a grief induced nightmare or some other therapy shit that Gertie was going on about when she was trying to get him to let her stay. He'd think maybe it was a fucking hallucination, except that the living room looks like a hurricane has just passed through it and also because the Winchesters don't do 'maybes'.
He takes out his phone to call Jake. Witch mojo is the last resort because he's definitely not letting his father's house be fucking breached or haunted or whatever is happening, a day after his death. What a fucking joke.
A terrifying and thrilling thought briefly crosses his mind before he reminds himself that his dad had a hunter's funeral.
"You must be Dean."
Dean drops the phone, turns, gun cocked and aimed in the voice's direction.
The stranger slowly raises his hands, "forgive me for the intrusion," he says, "It's been a long time, and it is not easy to be in this world without a vessel."
"Who the fuck are you?" Dean says and then slowly, he feels his own eyes go wide. He looks to the man in the trench coat standing before him and then to his left at the same face staring back at him from a shattered frame on the mantelpiece
"My name is Castiel," the man says, "I'm an angel of the lord."