"Dean."

He groaned, softly, but Cas's voice was insistent. He had the oddest feeling that he was waking up from a really strange dream. Only it seemed more vivid than a dream—like when that djinn had gotten a hold of him. He remembered a lot of pain and hippie Cas from the end of the world and the intrusive thought of Cas pressed close up against him. Well, kind of. It wasn't one of those dreams.

"Dean. Wake up."

He opened his eyes, and blinked blearily trying to remember where he was and why Cas was here. Before the dream he'd been in a motel with Sam, and Cas had been half a country away. Had the angel come out to meet them? Could be. He felt strange. Like his thoughts kept drifting and it was hard to focus on anything for too long.

When he finally focused Cas was standing slightly over him, concern painted over his features, his head and shoulders filling Dean's field of vision. He looked as though he hadn't shaved in a few days, and his right arm was suspended in a sling.

Dean blinked.

"Dean, how are you feeling?" Cas asked.

Dean blinked again.

This wasn't right at all. Wasn't in Pennsylvania, that was for sure. And Sam. Where was Sam? He glanced down at himself in hopes of some answers and saw that although his torso was covered in a faded blanket, his right leg was sticking out, splinted and strapped in bandages. It ached, but the pain seemed far away, or like it belonged to someone else.

"I feel…weird," he answered honestly. Cas's face seemed to be swimming in front of him, but when he focused, he could see that it wasn't really moving at all.

"Yes, I believe Bobby has given you quite a lot of morphine."

"Bobby?" Dean said. The morphine explained the floaty sensation and his inability to concentrate on anything for more than ten seconds, but not why he was still here. Maybe Bobby would know.

"Yes. He has more experience dealing with wounds than most at this camp," Cas explained. "We had a doctor for about a year, but her throat was ripped out by a Croat."

"Mm," Dean said. His eyes slid over Cas's sling again. "Y'okay?"

Cas followed his gaze, his lips tightening in disapproval. "I'm fine, Dean."

"Cas."

The angel sighed. "I carried you several miles. My shoulder has been…ah…stiff, today."

Translation: very, very painful. Probably.

"Didn't have to do that, y'know," he said.

"Yes, I did," Cas said. His tone was so earnest that Dean was taken aback, even in his drug-induced haze.

"I'm not even your Dean," Dean pointed out.

"I'm aware," Cas said. "That's what Bobby is doing now. Researching ways to send you back."

"Good," Dean said, reaching out to pat Cas's free hand.

Cas started, glancing down at their hands like something had just bit him. His expression grew wary, and closed.

Dean pulled his hand away. "What?"

Cas squinted at him. "What?"

For some reason, his confusion made Dean start chuckling. The laugh rolled up from somewhere deep in his gut and just wouldn't stop. Which of course only made Cas's head tilt more, drawing more laughter from Dean.

"Dean… I don't understand what's so funny," Cas said after several uncomfortable minutes had passed.

Dean didn't particularly understand either. But he explained as best he could. "You don't want me to touch you. Which is ridiculous, 'cause you did have a thing with other-me and probably did a whole lot of hand-touching. Then there's me, I'm so freaked out by all this stuff I could never tell my Cas I friggin' dream about him, but you, it's easy with you, except you're all freaked out by me. Wish it was different sometimes but man, but not different like this." He frowned, feeling like he was missing something. "Oh yeah. And your face. You were making a funny face when you saidwhat."

Cas, who had been sitting rigidly as soon as Dean mentioned his thing with the other Dean, let out a breath. "Of course." He waited another beat and said, "I'm glad to see you're conscious. I'll be back…later."

"Yeah, okay," Dean said amiably. Nothing much seemed to matter. In any case, he was tired, his eyelids dragged down by some immutable force. "Later, Cas."

But Cas had already gone. Dean shifted slightly, pulling the blanket around himself a little better to protect against the autumn chill, and closed his eyes.


"Dean. Hey, Dean."

Dean jerked into wakefulness.

Sam's voice, this time, was insistent. "Dean, hey man, are you with us?"

Dean opened his eyes. He wasn't in a motel room in Pennsylvania, but he sure as hell wasn't in Zachariah's post-apocalyptic hellscape anymore. Rather, the familiar lines of his room in the bunker surrounded him. Sam was standing over him, arms folded.

"Is he awake?" Cas asked from somewhere behind him. Dean craned his neck and saw him standing by the headboard.

"Heya, Cas," he said. The memories of his encounter with the other Cas all seemed to crash down together, and he shook himself mentally, willing himself not to touch that can of worms. Even in his own head. He was back, and—as he discovered by pushing himself up into a sitting position—all in one piece. His leg felt fine, his ribs were intact, and (for better or for worse) he was definitely not high on morphine anymore. His head ached, though. That was a bit of a mystery.

"Dean," Sam said. "Do you remember what happened?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "I woke up in Zachariah's freaky universe for a while. What was going on here?"

Sam and Cas exchanged glances.

"Well," Sam said, "you got up in the middle of the night and started yelling about how I was Lucifer and this was some trick, and then you tried to stab me. So, I knocked you out, tied you up, and drove back to Kansas. On the way back you starting having some kind of panic attack, going on about how it was all fake. Kept calling me Lucifer. Long story short, we got back, Cas figured out you weren't you, then put you to sleep again until we could figure out what to do with you."

"…Oh," Dean said. "How did you bring me back?"

"We didn't," Cas said. "You just changed. I could sense it."

"Yeah, our best guess is that the Darkness coming has somehow messed up the boundaries between the universes," Sam said.

"Or it was Bobby," Dean murmured. Now that he was sober again, he regretted not having had the chance to see the old hunter while he'd still been alive.

"So, you were really back there?" Sam asked. "How does that work? I thought Lucifer killed everyone the last time Zach sent you there."

"It was 2013," Dean said. "None of that had happened yet."

"Interesting," Cas said, his brow creasing as he followed the timeline.

Cas's face—the other Cas's face—swam before his mind's eye, telling Dean that he wasn't so sharp on the uptake anymore. He thought about how the first time he'd met him, he'd been shocked by how different from his own Cas he was. Now, taking in his own Cas's generally creased appearance, he supposed there wasn't that much of a difference after all.

No. Not his Cas. The fact that all of that stuff had happened in the freaky apocalypse universe didn't mean anything here and now. He forced himself to smile, and to stop thinking about it before either Sam or Cas asked him about the expression on his face.

"So, how 'bout some grub?" he said with false cheeriness. "Feel like I haven't eaten in days."


After a bit more debriefing over breakfast, or lunch, or whatever the hell it was, Sam and Cas seemed satisfied with Dean's version of events. Sam, nerd that he was, excused himself to go dig into the lore on the Darkness a little more and see whether it could have caused Dean's dimensional shift. After Sam had left, Cas had tensed as if preparing to stand, but Dean said, "Wait."

He wasn't sure why he said it. He sure as hell wasn't going to do any good to tell him about the other Cas, or whose fault the end-of-the-world universe really was. Still, he couldn't get that other Cas's voice out of his head. You, my Dean, it doesn't matter. And it's been that way since before you were you and I was me… I mean that, although I loved you while we were together, that is not when it started. And that is not where it ends.

"What is it?" Cas asked.

Dean pressed his lips shut, willing himself not to say anything he'd regret later. "Uh…nothing."

Cas did his classic head tilt-squint combo. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, it's just… Dean took a deep breath. He shouldn't tell Cas, but on the other hand, it just seemed important for Cas to know. Because if he didn't he'd have to shove it down deep along with all of the other crap he never talked about, and it would make it hard to even look at Cas and he knew with a sudden certainty that he didn't want that. It wasn't like Cas was going to want to do anything about it. Then he could let it go and stop thinking about it forever. Everybody won.

He stopped, and realized he had no idea how to break the news that not only had he and Cas been an item in the other world, but that they had kicked off the apocalypse, and that he had pretty good reason to believe that this Cas had been carrying a torch for him too. That maybe he still was. Or that drugged to the gills Dean had tried to take the other Cas's hand like he wanted it too.

"Dean, is something wrong?" Cas asked, real concern written across his face.

"No," Dean said shortly. "You know what? Forget it." He looked around for an escape before deciding quickly, "I'm going to take a shower."

And with that, he pushed past Cas and figured, hey, in the grand scheme, what was shoving down one more thing.


They got back into the usual routine pretty quickly. Neither ending up in a wacky mirror universe nor possession, after all, was too far out of the norm for any of them. Dean and Sam hunted a nest of vampires, a rougarou, and some witches, all without much incident. The Darkness remained as elusive as ever. Dean drank himself to sleep only slightly more often than usual. And if he was avoiding Cas, not so much meeting his eyes or inviting him to go on supply runs or talking to him about anything other than business, well, the angel didn't seem to notice. Cas had finished Star Trek and was midway through marathoning Dr. Sexy. Everything was back to normal, or at least as normal as could be.

One night a couple of weeks after the incident, Dean was in the bunker kitchen making a heavy dent in a fifth of whiskey when Cas came out of nowhere to join him. It was rare that the angel spent much time out of his room at all, let alone after dinnertime, so Dean regarded him oddly.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Nothing," Cas said, a little too quickly.

Dean snorted, the alcohol smoothing over any worry that such an obvious lie might have usually arisen in him. "Yeah, whatever you say, man."

Cas pulled up the chair next to him, appearing deep in thought. He studied his own hands folded on the table for several seconds before taking a deep breath and speaking. "Dean, can I ask you a question?"

"'Bout what?" Dean asked, pouring himself another glass and swirling it before taking another sip.

"Have I done something wrong?" Cas asked.

"What?" Dean said. "No. Why?"

"I thought…perhaps…that you were avoiding me," Cas said to the table.

Dean let out a long sigh. Now, he knew, was the time to deny everything. To point out how busy he and Sam had been, and how Cas was crazy to think there was anything to it. But maybe his judgment was a little off from the whiskey, because he just said, "Yeah."

Cas swallowed. "I understand. It's your choice. And my company lately has been less than desirable."

Of course, Dean thought. Of course he was just taking it in stride, just matter-of-factly enough to make Dean's gut twist in guilt. It made him think, also, of how matter of fact the other Cas had been about how his Dean had left him. It didn't last, of course.

"Damn it," Dean muttered. Any other response, he might've been able to blow off. The silence stretched out, the only noises breaking the quiet the sounds of their breathing and the ticking of one of the old bunker clocks on the wall.

There came the head tilt.

"You're right, Cas," Dean said, hating himself a little. "I've been avoiding you. But not for the reasons you think."

"Why, then?" Cas sounded afraid of the answer.

Dean took another deep breath, and wished he hadn't had quite so much to think. The words were hard to find, but they were coming as if of their own volition. He just couldn't stop himself. "You and me—the other you and me—they were…they had a…thing," he admitted awkwardly. "That's why I never went out to stop Sam and Lucifer won and the whole world went to shit. And I just can't…" he shook his head and shrugged. He already had the queasy feeling he'd spilled too much. He downed the rest of the whiskey in his cup and set it down with a thunk on the table.

Cas was blinking owlishly at him. "Dean. I…I don't understand."

"You and me, Cas. Starting way back when before anything was really different. No hippie you, no psychopath me. And the other Cas said you always had been that way. He said you friggin' loved me. Now, when I look at you…" Dean trailed off and made a vague gesture, not entirely sure himself what he was trying to say.

"You feel guilty for what happened to the other universe?" Cas guessed.

Dean shook his head.

"You're ashamed of your counterpart for having been with me," Cas said, his face falling. "That is understandable.

Dean winced. "No. Cas."

"Then being aware of my feelings for you makes you uncomfortable," Cas realized, going back to studying the table. "I'm sorry."

"No, Cas," Dean said again, his heart pounding at Cas's words. For Cas had talked about his feelings like they still existed, exactly as the other Cas had said they would. And finally, with the force of a Mack truck, it hit him why he hadn't been able to spend more than two minutes in a room with Cas for the last three weeks. It wasn't that he felt guilty or ashamed or uncomfortable with the idea of being with the angel in that way.

"What, then?" Cas asked, looking up at him and starting to sound a little desperate.

And, without letting himself think about it anymore, Dean leaned across the corner of the table and pressed his lips to Cas's, drawing him in to a soft kiss that lasted interminable seconds before pulling back, heart hammering in his chest like it was going to bust out.

Cas stared back at him, lips still slightly parted, with an expression like a deer in the headlights.

"That's why," Dean said breathlessly. He could still feel the ghost of the soft pressure against his own lips, and wondered if he'd finally lost his mind.

"Dean, I," Cas said in a soft voice, still staring at him. "Are you sure?"

Dean huffed a short laugh. "No. Of course I'm not. But we got a good thing here, don't we? World ain't gonna end tomorrow, and Sam's okay and there's no wars to fight and you're here with us for once, so why the hell not give it a try? I mean, do you want this?"

For several long seconds, Cas's face was expressionless, and Dean was sure he was going to tell him that there had been some kind of mistake and that he'd misjudged the situation completely.

Those thoughts were still running through Dean's mind when Cas stood, came around the corner of the table, wrapped his hand around the back of Dean's head and pulled him into a passionate kiss. As it deepened, Cas's hand traveling from Dean's hair and to wrap around his back and tug him closer, Dean couldn't help but think about what the other Cas had said and how, just maybe, they'd get that happy ending after all.