The week passed and Claire and Chuck had become quite comfortable with his home. They ate his food and camped out wherever they wished. Dean was craving a little space to himself when he came home to a note, hastily scrawled and left on the dining room table. Gone out for burgers and brews. Text if you want some. -Claire and Chuck

"Oh thank God," Dean muttered out to the empty room. He walked over to the stereo and turned on some music. He tossed his outer layers of clothing into his bedroom and went into the kitchen to make a sandwich. The week had been rough. The sleeping arrangements were the most difficult. He really only had the one bed in his room and the couch. Since he had chosen a solitary life, the couch being there for the rare visitor, he was largely unprepared for much company. Chuck tipped the place into the too full category. He was, though, trying to not be a problem.

They went out on Wednesday and picked up a blow up mattress from the Walmart. Now Chuck was camped out at the foot of Dean's bed on his own little mattress. It was annoying. Dean had trouble ignoring the creaky noises that were made every time that Chuck moved. He considered tossing the thing out into the space behind the couch, but thought that it might make Claire uncomfortable then.

Dean carried his sandwich to the dining room table and ate with the music cascading around him, filling the room with a false mirth that he didn't entirely feel. He wasn't sad. His home was too full of life for that lately. He wasn't happy though. He was too worried for that. He knew where all of this was heading, and it was clawing away at him. Claire was here, and with her around, he saw the potential for happiness and the joy that comes from being close to someone you care about.

Chuck was here too, and though he didn't feel much that was deep for the little writer that could, he wanted him to be happy. He brought the great potential for pain though with his visions and his eyes so full of hope. Dean had trouble even looking at him sometimes. If Chuck had his way, they'd already be on the road toward his coordinates. Dean had already vetoed that plan more than once. Claire had even weighed in with a 'we should totally just go there,' to which Dean just said an emphatic, 'no.'

This was their week. He was now just three weeks away from finals at the college. They could wait for him to do his real damn job before they headed off on their little adventure. That was how he thought of it too. He was worried about thinking of it in any other way. He heard the hope in Claire's voice the other night. She was hoping that this would be the bridge to Cas. Chuck was hoping that this would be the bridge to God. Dean was just hoping that he could keep from hoping for anything, but the dreams lately were a sign. They were all full of Cas, and impossible scenarios that never happened and never could.

Dean tried to direct his mind down safer paths each night when his head hit the pillow. He'd remember darker moments and losses cycling through his mind on repeat. But as consciousness slipped away, oh, what dreams did come. Dean knew Cas in those dreams as he had never known him in life, the shape of Cas' thigh fit squarely into his hand. Their mouths slipped easily into lazy dances pressed to each other, languidly moving to some soft song that only they could hear. Everything in the night was Cas and him, and everything was good until the morning.

The sun burned away all of his temporary hopes, all of his love, all of his dreams. It was 9:30 and he was toying with the idea that going to bed early might get him into a deep enough sleep that he wouldn't wake up during Chuck's tossing and turning. Just three more weeks. He kept telling himself that somehow all of this would be over in three weeks. He had not called Sam this week. Every time Claire tried to hand him the phone to talk to Sam, he was on his way out the door for classes or to pick up dinner. He wasn't avoiding him, he wasn't.

Having finished his sandwich, Dean changed into his sweats and settled into his bed. If he was lucky, Claire and Chuck would stay out late. He stared off at the ceiling and clamped down the thoughts of Cas, hoping that his dreams wouldn't be of the usual sort. He had been asleep for maybe an hour, when he was awoken by a pillow, pummeling him in the dark. He sprang back after the first twack and landed on the floor beside his bed. "What the Hell?" he yelled.

"You son of a bitch. You couldn't even talk to me for five minutes this past week." The pillow was swinging down again to knock his head off. "Do you know what I've been thinking? Do you?" Now that Dean's eyes had adjusted to the dark and his brain was sufficiently awake enough, he recognized Sam. The pillow was swinging toward him again. He reached up to block it.

"What the Hell, Sam? Stop." Dean caught the pillow and yanked it away from Sam. "What are you doing here?"

"You know damn well what I'm doing here. You don't want to talk with me. You don't return my calls. Claire tells me what all you've been investigating, and well I've put two and two together."

"I'm not following."

"Yeah, right you're not. I know what's happening with you Dean and you're just one tiny step away from losing it. You always shut me out when you think you're gonna fall apart." Sam threw himself down on the bed and stared down at him. "Well, I'm not letting you do it. You talk to me. You don't get to shut me out."

Dean huffed out a hard breath of air and leaned back against the closet door. "I'm fine."

Sam reached for another pillow and held it threateningly, "Try again."

"I'm freaking out."

"Better. Now tell me what's going on."

Dean rolled his head back along the rough edge of the door slats. "I can't believe you drove all the way out here for this."

"Well I did. Now spill." Sam folded his hands in front of him and leaned onto his legs. He gave Dean 100% of his attention.

"I don't know where to begin."

"Try beginning with what you think is gonna happen. Claire seems to think that this case, the light and all, is connected to Cas."

"She's wrong. If Cas could have been saved, I would have known it."

"How? I mean you weren't exactly in full on research mode after he died."

"I just would have." Dean looked away, trying to press back the guilt that was scratching at him. He didn't do any research in the first days that followed Cas' death. He couldn't do much of anything. It didn't negate the fact that he had reasons for feeling like he had failed Cas. "You remember how he said that we shared a" Dean raised his hands and made air quotes, "a more profound bond?"

Sam nodded and said, "Yeah, I remember."

"Well, that wasn't just words. I could feel him."

"You mean like feeling the chill when a spirit is in the room?"

"Not quite. I mean," Dean stammered for a moment, not sure how to explain it all. "When he pulled me up from Hell, he left a little grace in me. Also, apparently, some of my soul was claimed by him. He carried it in him. It's part of why I felt so guilty about not fully realizing that he had given his vessel to Lucifer."

"None of us knew. I mean, he had us all fooled."

"Yeah, well I should have known. I mean, I knew that something was off, but I didn't know that it was that bad. I should have known." Sam reached down and gave his leg a pat. "Well, when he…" Dean couldn't say the word died. He choked back a swallow instead and said, "I felt him go. I felt it like everything was getting sucked out of the room. I felt empty. I couldn't breathe. He was gone and I, I failed him. No amount of research was gonna fix it."

"And now?"

"Now, they want to go back to where it all went down. I'm not going with them. I'll help with the research, but I'm not going with them."

"Have you told them yet?"

"Not exactly. Claire thinks that we should have left yesterday. Chuck too for that matter. He thinks that God wants us there and she thinks that it will all lead to us getting Cas back. I know that we won't get any of that. I can't get my hopes up. I'm barely hanging on here."

"So, that's why you cut me off?"

"It was too much. I didn't know what to tell you."

"Dean, sometimes it's just the talking. If you don't tell me what's going on, I will assume that it's going down like it did before. I'll assume that you're one step away from the bottle and another from the grave." Sam came down to the floor next to him. "I can live with you not hunting. In fact I prefer it. What I can't stomach is you dying on me. We've both done enough of that."

Dean let Sam pull him into a sideways hug. He didn't cry, but he felt the pin-prick of tears itching at the edges of his eyes. "I never really got to say goodbye to him like I wanted to. I just fell apart and held him. He never knew. He'll never know."

Sam held him and said, "He knew. He always knew."

"He didn't. He wouldn't have let Lucifer in if he had known. I never got to tell him." A single tear escaped, and Sam kept him in his arms, adding a gentle rocking motion to accompany the hug.

"I think you're wrong. After all, if you could feel him when he passed, then he surely felt every bit of caring that you had for him. He had to know, Dean. There's no way that he didn't."

Dean mounted several silent arguments but gave none of them a voice. Instead, he let Sam comfort him. He had needed it for years, though he'd never have admitted it. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Whatever you can."

"What if I can't do anything?"

"Then you can't. It will be fine."

"I loved him, Sam. Don't I owe him more?"

Sam didn't answer right away. "What would Cas say?"

"I honestly don't know. Something selfless. I think I owe him more than what he'd ask for though."

"Like I said before, you give what you can, and the rest will just work itself out. You don't have to go with us to the site, and you don't have to be involved in this business either." Sam waved his hands out at the rest of the room to indicated all that had been happening with Claire and Chuck. "They can come home with me and do their research in the bunker. In fact, that is likely what we'll be doing."

"Oh." Dean muttered.

"Unless you don't want that." Sam leaned away to better look at him.

"I've grown accustomed to certain things."

"So what do you want?"

"I don't know." Dean got up and straightened out the bed. "Can I sleep on it?"

"Yeah, you got room for two more in your crowded place?"

"Uh, two more?"

"Yeah, me and Alex."

"Oh, does Claire know?" Dean asked.

"Not yet? Where is she?"

"Out with Chuck getting beers and burgers. She should be home soon."

"So, you got another one of these blow-up beds?"

"Not at the moment, but I guess you could take half of my bed. Just keep your giant limbs in your half. Claire will likely share space with Alex."

Sam looked down at the bed that was not particularly large enough for them and said, "Well, I guess this'll have to do for one night."

Sam was not an ideal bed partner. Now, in their more advanced ages, they had grown far more cranky about personal space than they had before. Dean made an effort toward keeping in his space with a corpse pose, while Sam turned his back to him and faced the closet door. They surely heard Chuck when he stumbled in later that night and the awkward rumble of voices in the living room that came from Alex and Claire.

Chuck seemed to almost toss himself down onto the mattress where he quickly took to snoring a fumey bit of noises into the dark. Sam seemed to deal with it better than he did. He was soon asleep at Dean's side. Dean maybe managed a few hours. It was enough though to get him to the morning.

Sunrise was just starting to burn through the curtains of his bedroom window. Dean threw his legs over the side of the bed and rolled out the kinks in his shoulder blades. He got up and looked down at the snoring mass of Chuck on the floor, because that's where he was, not on the mattress at all. Well, his one leg was on the mattress. The rest of him was wedged into the tiny space between the mattress and the wall beneath the window.

Dean snatched a robe off of the hook on the back of the door, slipped it on, and went out to get some coffee. Lately, Claire had been beating him to the coffee making. He could hear tiny sleep sounds coming from the living room, and he assumed that they were both still asleep. The coffee pot was off and entirely empty.

He quietly began setting it to brew. While he waited, he tipped his head around the corner to look over at the couch. Only Alex was there, curled into a tight ball, very much asleep. Claire was missing from the scene. Dean looked out the sliding glass doors toward the balcony, though, and saw her out there, staring at the sunrise. He didn't go out to her right away. Instead, he finished brewing the coffee, scooped in some sugar into two mugs, gave them a stir, and then moved out to join her.

As he opened the door, she turned to him. The light from the rising sun gave her hair a warm summer glow. Her lip curled up into a half grin that her eyes didn't share. He balanced the mugs in his one hand and used the other to slide the door closed behind him. He moved to her side and handed her a mug. She curled her hands around it and went back to leaning onto the balcony wall.

Dean took a sip of his coffee, and Claire did the same. They moved in a kind of synchronicity. "Not enough sugar," she said.

"Figured you'd need it to be a little on the strong side after your night out partying with God's holy vessel."

"Judgement much?"

"Much judgement." Dean winked at her and she rolled her eyes. She drank more of her coffee.

"Didn't you take an angel of the Lord to a brothel?"

"Touché."

"Ooo, throwing a little French into the morning banter, saucy." Her smile seemed genuine now. She glanced back at the door and said, "You got a rather full house now."

"Yeah, it was rather unexpected."

"Was it?" She got a look that Dean couldn't quite read.

"You think I knew about this?"
"Well, you were trying to get me to talk to Alex again."

"Yeah, but I've been pretty upfront with you on everything. I didn't know that they were going to show up. Plus, I wouldn't have signed up for the beating that Sam gave me to let me know that he was here and unhappy with me."

"Oh, that sucks." She turned back to the sky. The sun was eating up the night and the sky was becoming too bright for the stars to shine through. Some of them were still there though, the brightest ones. "This is my favorite time."

"Really, sunrise?"

She looked at him, eyebrow raised. "Yeah. What, you don't like a good sunrise?"

"I like the night better."

"Really? Hunters don't like the night. You've lost your street cred old man." Claire wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him close.

It was cold, but Claire was radiating warmth. "Even when I was a hunter, I liked the night. The night is when we typically saved people. The night is a nice bit of symbolism."

"You might have to explain that one. I always associated darkness with evil, but what do I know, I dropped out of college." She laughed and he gave her a little squeeze.

Dean sipped at his coffee and then said, "It's not all darkness. The darkness just makes us notice the light. And that light is important. It's eternal. It took each little spot of light years to get to us. Yet it just kept on sailing through that darkness. Some of those stars started shining thousands of years ago, and we are only just now getting to appreciate them." He kissed her head and said, "The night reminds me of the vastness of the universe and of all the things that I need to take the time to appreciate. The night time is my favorite time."

"You make a convincing argument. The night too me has been a time of work and loss. I've never lost so much in the daylight."

They held each other and their thoughts. They let the sun burn away the rest of the night in front of them. "Did you work things out with Alex?"

"Or made things more complicated. We shared that bed out there. I'm a bit more sober now, and I'm not sure that we solved anything."

"Don't get to the end of your life with a bunch of regrets. You'll feel better if you can solve this thing with her."

"Sounds like you might know a thing or two about this."

"Yeah."

"We'll be okay. I just feel like if you are with someone, they kinda need to have your back. They can't be doubting you. It's about trust. I've earned that."

"You have. Did you get your apology?"

"I did."

"Then accept it."

"I do. I'm just an ornery cuss. I get it from you."

"I didn't contribute to your gene pool." Dean laughed a little.

"Yeah, but some guy once told me that family don't end with blood, and it don't even begin there either. You've given me a lot, even if you aren't my blood. You're my family." Her lips curled up into a grin and she added, "And you're totally responsible for my orneriness."

The sky was bright now, and the stars could no longer be seen. He would miss her when she left. He cast a glance at Claire, and thought again of how proud he was of her. She was a hunter, unmatched by anyone. She was smart and capable. She had risen above her circumstances and had made something great of herself. He was happy to claim her as family and happy to be claimed in return. "Since we're family, you think maybe I could get promoted from the gramps title? I mean, I'm not that old."

She tipped her head to the side and seemed to consider her options. "Okay." She paused again and added, "Pops." She punched him lightly on the arm. Dean was okay with the promotion, maybe even rather happy with it.

AN: Hello All, thank you so much for reading this far. I appreciate the couple of comments that you've all left behind. Also the favs and follows too have been most appreciated. If you are impatient for more of this story, I have posted up to the 18th chapter on Ao3. I believe that after I finish Lil Chorus for the Dying, I might stop posting here and post exclusively over there. Just want to give you all a heads up. Let me know if there is a pressing or good reason not to do that. I'm not entirely sold on my plan yet. Much love to you all.