A/N: Finally, the end of this monstrous chapter! I'm going to go back to the structure I was doing before because I feel like it worked better – so it may be a few days before another update, but it'll be a bigger one.

But none of that's important. What's important is you, and how very much I love you. Seriously, you guys are the best and I love talking to you. It doesn't even have to be about this silly story, you can just PM me about anything. Want a good recipe for carrot cake or a soliloquy on why the oxford comma is such a vital piece of punctuation?

No? Really?

Oh.

The dark is quiet and close, shrinking the world down to just Dean and Cas, just the small porch they share. It's long past midnight and they're sitting together like they have nearly every night for the week since their impromptu dinner party.

Dean flicks the ash from his cigarette, a habit he only indulges when he can hide it from Lisa, and thinks about life, how cliché and strange and unpredictable it can be. He knows he's playing with fire with this friendship with Castiel; that he's a dumb son of a bitch that doesn't deserve it and probably can't handle it without something blowing up in his face. But he's never been much good at denying himself the basic pleasures of life, and he's never happier than in the small hours of the morning, in these little spaces of nostalgia and – even though Dean isn't ready to acknowledge it yet – hope.

And that's far too dangerous a line of thinking to continue, so he searches for something easy; banal. It'd be so much easier to talk if they weren't so busy avoiding the land mines that litter the space between them.

Fuck, Cas, I don't know what to say, and I know your reticent ass isn't going to start the conversation.

Uh, how 'bout them Bears? Great weather we're having right now?

Actually, the weather thing's not bad. Cas used to shudder and whine every time the temperature dropped below 70 and he always swore he'd live in California or Florida – one of those sunshiny places – until the day he died. Except that now he's here, in a state that's a snow-covered icebox eight months out of the year, expensive and hard and unwelcoming.

So Dean's gotta ask. "How'd you end up here, anyway?"

Cas' fingers curl tight over the arm of his rocking chair, the knuckles bleaching white. "My father died."

Dean nods, for once turning to look directly at Cas beside him. "I heard. I'm so sorry, man."

"Thank you." As terrible as it is to say, Cas hopes that playing the Dead Dad card will end the conversation.

It doesn't.

"But his place was out in California, right? So why Boston?"

Cas should lie, say something asinine about how he loves clam chowder and weird accents or that it's a great city for writers, but coming up with plausible excuses on the fly seems to be yet another of his social skills that have atrophied to the point of uselessness. So he tips his glass back and drains it, hoping the liquor will be burning through his veins by the time he gets to the end of the story.

"Do you remember Anna?"

Dean remembers that this is how Cas talks sometimes, in short phrases that are seemingly non sequiturs, so he doesn't blink at the random question.

"The redhead. The one who liked to come into the bar and talk theology with Ash."

Cas nods. "She was a philosophy major."

Dean snorts. "I remember. I used to give her so much shit about it, and then two years later Sam finally declared his major – fucking philosophy, of course, claiming it was as good a foundation as any for law school – and when Anna found out she told me that if I'd studied something more meaningful than how to market the latest running shoe I'd have learned that karma is 'quite frequently a bitch.'"

Cas shifts in his seat; he's getting around to making his point now. "Before Sam, though, you'd always tell her that she was wasting her money. You'd say, 'Everything you need to know about life is right there in that jukebox.' And then you'd throw quarters across the bar at her and tell her to turn on Springsteen or Led Zeppelin. 'All life's questions have already been asked in one song or another, and musicians have got as good of answers as anybody else.'"

Dean laughs, the memory coming back to him, foggy with time and how much he drank back then. "Man, I had forgotten about that. She would get so pissed; I can't believe she kept coming back to the bar."

"She was in love with you."

And it's been years since he's seen Anna, longer still since he and Cas were together, but Dean can still hear the burn of jealousy in his smoky voice at those words and it tugs at something – guilt, maybe, or regret – that Dean immediately has to stuff back down.

"When Dad passed, I went on a bit of a bender." Cas is picking at his ragged cuticles hard enough to make them bleed. "And I wound up back at Harvelle's – the new one though. This was a year after the place that we knew burnt to the ground."

Dean nods but stays quiet. Ellen has never told him that she saw Cas again.

"I was on a lot of stuff back then, anything I could get my hands on, really, and then I got plastered at the bar on top of it all...suffice it to say that it didn't end well.

"But before Jo kicked me out, I saw that jukebox sitting in the corner and I remembered what you said, about how you can find all the answers right there in the music. So I put my quarter in and I tried to turn on a song by Boston – I remembered that you listened to them a lot. But everything seemed to be swimming around and in triplicate and I couldn't really figure out what I was doing, so I ended up choosing a song called "Boston" instead.

"It was some emotional indie-pop thing, exactly the type of song you hate, but it sucked me in anyway. And it turned out to be all about wanting to run away, to start over here, in Boston."

Cas swallows and blinks, his fingers twisted together so tightly he can't feel the ends of them, but he looks up at Dean anyway. And suddenly it's easy. It's always been easy to stare at him.

"You said the jukebox had the answers, Dean. I wanted to listen."

Dean is speechless; numb.

He'd believed for so long that when Cas left, he'd left everything about Dean behind. Wasn't that the whole point of leaving school, of running away? To escape the pain that Dean had put him through?

And if that's not true, if Cas didn't hate every fiber of Dean's being, if things weren't so irretrievably destroyed between them that Cas despises the memories, then why in the ever-loving mother of fuck is Dean now in a strange city and a mediocre relationship, sustaining himself with secret cigarettes, shots of whiskey, and stolen minutes in the dark with Castiel?

He reaches out for Cas' hand, totally over the careful eggshell dance they've been playing at. He needs Cas' side of the story - what really happened, why he left, why he wrote the things he wrote in that book if he hadn't been destroyed by their relationship.

And most importantly, why they're sitting in chairs on two different pieces of property instead of tangled up in the sheets inside one.

Cas can see it – the crack in Dean's usually carefully-constructed facade, the pain and longing and years of repression bubbling up to the surface – and he can barely breathe, petrified and desperate, not ready for this, sure that he's too broken to know what to do or say.

He's not even entirely sure of the details himself any more, not sure what's really responsible for the misery of the past few years, but he's beginning to suspect that it's been mostly self-inflicted.

He can't talk to Dean about that yet; he's got to figure out how to talk to himself about it first.

So it's a relief when the porch light clicks on over Dean's head, followed by the metallic sound of the door handle twisting open. They both straighten in their chairs and look away – Dean toward his opening front door, Cas as far into the distance as the closely populated street will allow.

"Babe? You okay?" Lisa's voice is rough with sleep, her tiny nightgown translucent in the overhead lighting.

"Yeah, Lisa, I'm fine. Couldn't sleep, that's all."

"Well, come back in, I'll make you some tea."

And Cas swears that time travel exists, because he's suddenly back in Harvelle's after the hurricane, watching Dean deny him as he walks toward an attractive woman.

Except that he's not.

This time Dean doesn't stand, doesn't follow her back inside. He reaches over to Cas, wraps one of those impossibly strong hands around the top of his shoulder.

"I'll be there later. I'm kind of in the middle of something here."

Lisa follows his gaze and finally sees Cas, sitting still at the edge of the circle of light.

"Oh, hey, Castiel. Sorry, you're so quiet I didn't even notice you there." She folds her arms over her chest, suddenly self-conscious in her flimsy clothing. "I'm going to head back in – you guys be careful; the mosquitoes are terrible this year."

As if to illustrate her point, one bites at Cas' ankle, and the sting is enough to jar him out of his frozen shock. He stands, clumsy in his haste, Dean's hand falling away as he stumbles around his chair and toward his own dark door.

"Yes, in fact I think it's probably time for me to return to bed. Thank you for your concern."

Dean's voice is ragged, too loud in the quiet night. "Cas, damn it, wait-"

"No, Dean, really. I think it's time."

Dean frowns, his hands curling into fists with frustration, but he can see the determination in Cas' eyes so he forces himself to let it go.

For now.

So they both move toward their respective homes, but Dean is sure to catch Cas' eye before the light goes out. He can't be sure, but he's always believed that they share some previously undiscovered language, transmitted solely through pointed looks.

Dean's says that he's sorry, that he wants to pick this up again as soon as possible.

Cas' says that he understands, but he's not sure that's a good idea.

And then the dual sound of closing doors. Dean stands at his for a long moment, his fingertips pressed to the smooth wood, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

But Cas is moving with purpose, flipping the lock behind himself and stalking up his stairs, not bothering with the light until he reaches his dusty, cluttered junk room. There, in the far corner, covered with an old laptop and stacks of blank notebooks, stands an antique desk. The top is covered in a thousand tiny scratches, the impressions of so many words written by generations of Novaks, including Cas' beloved father.

He hasn't touched the desk since he had it brought here when he sold his father's house. It was a symbol of everything that he'd lost – of family and writing and his history and career.

But as he looks at it in the moonlight, it's suddenly not so scary. Something has taken root in Cas in these past few weeks, something small and fragile but growing, bringing heat and warmth, easing the crushing weight that's been on his chest. He thinks he's excited. He thinks he's inspired. It's familiar and foreign, almost uncomfortable, but he feels free in a way he hasn't in a long time.

Cas pulls out the desk chair and settles in. He runs his fingers over everything, getting reacquainted, feeling like he's standing on the edge of something momentous.

He clicks on the desk lamp and blows the dust off the pile of composition books, cracking the spine of one open before him as he uncaps a pen.

And then, for the first time in more than half a decade, Cas begins to write.