Well I guess
You took my youth
I gave it all away
Like the birth of a
New-found joy
This love would end in rage
- "Cemetery Gates," Pantera

Dean doesn't figure the heavens opened up to weep over John Winchester's memory so much as the clouds decided to take a dump on everyone who dared to show up for his funeral.

The summer rain that's been threatening to fall since dawn finally mixes with the ash cover of the day, and the resultant sludge-like precipitation drips like muck off of the cheap plastic awning the cemetery provided for the service. As they stand in front of Mary Winchester's tombstone at Stull Cemetery, John Winchester's name now engraved above hers, Dean figures he should do the romantic thing, the optimistic thing, and think that it's great that they're finally together again . . . but that's bullshit. They're just stuck in the ground in the same damn place, a memorial to senseless tragedy and how it only takes one to trigger a perpetual motion machine of people screwing themselves up. And that's what it came down to, in the end. There's no one to blame for John's death but John, no crusade, and no investigation that the boys can do into his death. It's just the inevitable conclusion of a downward spiral that's been ongoing since the fire, and hit terminal velocity five years ago.

Dean is the sole pallbearer. Of course he is: the cremation casket is a metal air-tight capsule no bigger than a mason jar, everything that was his father seared down to its base components. It slides into the base of the tombstone and then Dean sticks the brass plate engraved with a cross over it. Sometime after they leave, someone from the funeral home will come drill it into place, and that's it. That's the actual burial. Everything else is just cookie-cutter words from a funeral-home provided minister, and an old retired Marine in dress blues that could use to be hemmed playing Taps on a single bugle, also arrange for to honor John by the funeral home.

When it's not raining, they insist they'll stick a small flag there too. Semper frikkin' Fi.

He expected people coming to metaphorically piss on his father's grave because of how he died, but the group of them Ellen had warned might show had apparently been rained out. Small favors. What there is instead is worse. A slow line of black cars that files into the cemetery as they're wrapping up, trailing deeper in, and as he holds the umbrella over Jo to let her into her car without getting slimed by the rain he squints until he sees another awning, identical to the one they had been under, and umbrellas popping open like mushrooms in the rain, a slow-moving mass of people, and he can hear a child crying, the kind of hiccoughing sob that can't be faked and is impossible to really contain.

Of course their funeral is on the same day. Of course it's in the same cemetery. Why wouldn't it be?

Sitting in the driver's seat, staring out of the windshield with her door still open, Jo reaches out and squeezes Dean's hand without breaking her stare at the distant funeral. He knows she can hear the crying too, is thinking the same thing he is.

After all, both of them had been just old enough to remember the funerals that ended their respective happy childhoods. Dean and Sam had held her hands when they put Bill Harvelle in the ground. He'd just held Sammy through Mary's funeral, curled into a folding chair and around his infant brother, staring numbly.

Dean squeezes her hand back and lets out a shaking breath, nodding slightly at her concerned look up at him. "You should get home, Jo. Go read a book, or sharpen your knives, do whatever it is you do when you're not tormenting drunks. Hell, go get laid." Anything to get her out of here.

"What she's doing is helping me cook dinner." Ellen has joined them, now, holding her own umbrella as Sam stands behind her with Jessica tucked against his side, sheltering her with another one. "You three are invited, your boyfriend too if you're bringing him. Got potatoes, a ham . . . threw some bacon into the green beans for you, even."

She's trying to tempt him with food, a home-cooked meal like he hasn't had in years, and he tries to muster up his usual enthusiasm for her cooking and just. . . can't. Even he can tell how flat he sounds. "That sounds great, ma'am. I just. . . I should get the Impala first, get her to the garage so I can work on her tomorrow, then we'll do that."

Ellen frowns sadly at him for a moment, before dipping her umbrella to the side, stepping under the shelter of his, and hugging him. He wraps his free arm round her shoulders, accepting the embrace until she breaks it and nods, brisk, maternal. "You do that. Then you come 'round and I'll see if I can't put a pie together too for you."

Behind her, Sam stares at his brother before turning Jessica in his arms, and he presses his lips to Jessica's forehead lightly. "Jess, you wanna ride with them? I'll go with Dean, drive the other car back, but you should get somewhere dry." It smells like a set-up, like being cornered again, but Dean's too numb to argue it when Sam slides into the passenger seat of the Explorer and waits for him. Standing under the umbrella as Jo's car eases away, he looks out over the cemetery one last time at the funeral of the couple, and then to his mother and father's gravestone as the cemetery workers pack away the awning efficiently in their wake. As he watches, the gray viscous rain begins to fall onto the now exposed stone.

Ashes to ashes.

xXx

They make it off of the turnpike, over the river and through downtown before Sam's contemplative silence finally breaks. Dean was more comfortable with the silence: Sam learned to grieve from him and from John's almost militaristic parenting, and that meant bottling things up. Trouble is, his little brother had apparently picked up 'talking things out' somewhere along the way, and Dean swears Stanford had only encouraged that bad habit.

"You're not really going back for dinner with us, are you?"

Dean shrugs, non-committal, and uses the excuse of driving to keep his eyes away from his brother. "I'm not hungry."

Sam stares at him like that's the scariest sentence ever uttered by man, like he's about ready to tell his brother to pull over so they can hug it out, like he's planning to take all sharp objects away from Dean before he does something stupid because clearly missing one meal is enough to mean he's gone off the deep end.

"I'm fine, Sammy. Why don't you ask whatever it is you really wanted me alone for? We're going to be there in just a couple minutes."

"You're really putting a time limit on any potential serious conversation, Dean?"

"Your flight's day after tomorrow. We'll see each other before then. In theory we're supposed to talk on the phone at least every week, though we've seen how much life-changing important information doesn't turn up over that. So for now, yeah. Damn right I am. Tick frikkin' tock."

Sam sighs loudly, like air rushing from a flat tire, and hunches into himself in the passenger seat, unknotting his tie. "You should come back to California with us, Dean." Dean opens his mouth, but Sam speaks over him. "Wait, before you blow me off again. It's not . . . it's not like here, Dean. I mean, it's not paradise or anything, but it's a damn sight better than South Dakota or Kansas for progressive. . ."

"When are you gonna give up on this idea that I'm just looking for some sunny happy place to let my freak flag fly, Sam? I'm fine with my life, okay?"

"Yeah, I can tell that by you calling yourself a 'freak' every chance you get. You're right, you sound fine." Dean's silence is stony, and Sam grimaces, trying again. "I just don't like you being so far away, and alone okay?"

"You mean you don't like the idea of not being able to keep an eye out for me. I don't need to be protected. And I'm not alone. Bobby's family, Sam. You're the one living on the other side of the country without any family."

"I'm trying to build a family." Sam's voice is quiet, serious, and his eyes huge and earnest. "I'm trying to build a family, and I want my brother there. I miss you, Dean. I'm going to have a kid, and I'm just. . ." Sam turns away, head tilted back, eyes to the ceiling, voice lowered, and Dean knows he's doing it because they're Winchesters and they're not supposed to cry. Whether or not they ever listened to that edict is another matter entirely, but they learned to hide it from others. "The only thing I could think of for the longest time after I found out about the baby was just. . . 'don't let me be the kind of father Dad was.' And then all of this, and I feel like shit about thinking that way, but it's true. I can't be that."

"You won't be." Dean knows what he means, in both counts. He's dropped his voice to match Sam's, quiet in the stillness of the car, as if he has to hide from the dead, from a memory. They're driving away from their father's funeral, and they shouldn't be thinking this way, but he needs Sam to know the truth of it, needs to assuage his fears because that's his job, that's always been his job. "It's not in you, Sam. You're gonna be great."

Sam's laugh is wet with unshed tears, and he shakes his head slightly. "Yeah, I know that now, Dean. We turn out like the people that raised us. And for me, that means you. I want to be the kind of parent to my kid you were for me, and I want you to be there for that. Because I know you're going to be an awesome uncle too, and I want to see that."

He can't agree with that assessment. He tried with Sam, he really did, and he'd give anything for his baby brother. He gave him up, even, to California and to Stanford, because it was better for him. Because Dean is like John, like the man who raised him; the paranoia, drinking away his problems, burying himself in work, destroying the people around him, but the entire time he was trying and Dean could see it, could respect the struggle. Even the success Sam's giving him of raising him, that was orders from his father first. Take Care of Sammy. Dean had managed to idolize John even while sheltering his brother from his flaws, until five years ago. By then he had patterned himself so tightly off a picture he'd built of his dad that he can't break free of it, and his father's criticisms ring in his ears even now.

Dean is damaged goods in every possible way and he knows it. He knows that Sam knows it, too, he just doesn't want to admit it. So he gives the answer he needs to, the answer he's given every time his brother has hinted that he wants to subject himself to that again in his new, better life.

"My life's in Sioux Falls, Sam. My job, Bobby, everything."

"My future is in California. It's the houses I'm looking at with Jess, it's the law firm, and her teaching job, and the school districts we're checking out thinking about the baby." Dean's known that Sam's path was towards that happy apple pie future he wanted for years, knew it from the day he held the thick Stanford envelope of Sam's acceptance letter in his hands and carried it in to him, his heart in his throat because that was it, Sam was getting away, getting somewhere good enough to deserve him. "Your life's in South Dakota, Dean . . . but where's your future?"

Dean doesn't have an answer for that. The question sits between them, heavy and painful and telling, because Dean doesn't see any future for himself. Just trying to keep himself alive until he isn't any more.

And that breaks Sam's heart.

xXx

Dean half-waves goodbye as Sam drives away in Ellen's Explorer, standing beside his tarp-covered car, his baby. After a moment, he finds her bumper with his shoe, climbing up onto her hood, the ease of familiarity thrown off by the slippery material beneath him until he finds his usual perch. It's uncomfortable at first, humidity and heat and something digging into his ass, until he strips off his suit jacket, rolls up his sleeves, and empties the pockets of his dress slacks, resting the contents on the hood. He watches cars splash through the puddles on the street outside of Castiel's apartments, their windshield wipers smearing the rain and tires throwing out sheets of water as he tries to gather his thoughts, anchoring himself on the familiar shape of his Impala beneath him.

Car keys and cell phone. They sit next to him like a choice, a decision, not just possessions he carries every day. He rubs the pad of his thumb along the edge of his key, the dips and curves of it, thinking. And then he reaches for the phone, bringing up the contact list, his thumb hovering over the entry Castiel put in for himself. First name, last name, address, email address, cell phone, work phone. Every possible way he could contact Castiel, laid out in front of him as a blatant invitation. He could leave. Use the keys, take the car, and see himself out of Castiel's life the way he should have when he left the hospital. Or he can call, ask if he can come up, and try to figure out what it is that keeps drawing them back together.

Sam thinks he should be planning on having a future? He can't even figure out what the fuck he's doing in the present.

His finger hovers over the Call button, but he changes his mind at the last moment and takes the coward's route. It's fitting. After all, he's sitting on a car in the guy's parking lot instead of going up to his door. There are only two feasible outcomes if he goes to Cas. Either he'll be brought back in out of the rain, and he'll just go with whatever happens without thinking about what the fuck is actually going on, or he'll finally be turned away like the fuckup he is.

He has to know first, he has to figure things out with enough distance that he can protect himself.

Ellen called you my boyfriend. Just realized that I didnt correct her.

He hits send on the text before he can second-guess himself again, and lays back on the car, head against her windshield, legs stretched out along her hood and eyes closed, resting the cell phone on his chest. He tries to keep his head clear, tries to let it all bleed away, but it's not going well and his mind is racing, concocting possible responses from Cas ranging from dismissive to mocking to something worse, something genuine that Dean won't get to keep.

When the phone buzzes against his chest he keeps his hands steady as he turns it over to see the glowing screen, and he has to blink at the simple response, trying to make sense of it for a moment.

Am I?

Four characters. Castiel gave him four characters to work off of, text with no inflection and he can still imagine the head tilt, the earnest need for Dean to tell him an answer. Hell, it's the virginity question all over again, and he doesn't have a rule of thumb to fall back on for Cas this time. Dragging his hand down his face, Dean's response is slow to come to him.

It's more complicated than that.

Castiel's response is quick, buzzing the phone in his hands before he has the opportunity to set it back down. Castiel has to be staring at his phone, waiting on Dean's messages, hanging on a word. It's terrifying to think what he says matters that much to anyone.

It doesn't have to be. Do you want that?

Bullshit. It is complicated.

Dean's not entirely stupid. Just because he doesn't want to acknowledge it doesn't mean he hasn't figured out that they're apparently so 'compatible' that every time he gets near Cas his brain short-circuits. He was fucking nuzzling the guy's arm before he even knew his first name, let some random doctor hold him up while he broke down over his father, when he should have pushed everyone away. And Cas . . . hell, Deanknew it was hitting him even harder. Dean's a fucking Omega. He pushes out enough 'fuck me' vibes that it's screwed up his life.

They romanticize the crap out of this on television. It's the classic 'love at first sight' story, but with scent and contact, and its crap. This is what he's supposed to want. The best any Omega is supposed to hope for, really, some Alpha to claim them, fuck them, knot them, breed them, and take care of them like the prized personal property they are. It's just a prettier wrapping for the same stupid hormonal bullshit, chemicals and pheromones and biology that shoves him into Heats. Every time he comes near Cas, it's like his entire body is betraying him, rebelling, and he's fucking Cas up too.

But if that were it, if it were just that, he'd have bolted for good by now. He's not a damned slave to his own biology.

The trouble is he likes Cas. The guy who tucked in and cared for his father and was gentle, even knowing what he'd done. A guy who blushed at the drop of a dime and sometimes stuttered through awkward conversations, but was inherently a quiet badass who apparently had issues with bullies. He doesn't understand the kind of faith that would make someone sign up to be a priest, but he respects it, envies it a bit. He wants to know Cas, wants to unravel the expansion-pack past he's picked up in that picture and in Cas's casual allusions because he seems interesting, and unexpectedly deadpan funny, and unconsciously gorgeous. Dean already wants to teach him to cook and god does he want to teach him about how great sex can be, and he wants to crawl into bed with him every night and wrap around him, be held in return.

So from his perspective . . . of course he wants Cas. What's not to want? But what would Cas be getting out of that? A broken, used up Omega so terrified of being made into someone's bitch again that he has no idea of how to be someone's boyfriend. A man who carries so many scars that there's no chance of him being capable of anything healthy, who in the course of a few days has manage to irreparably screw up Cas's life already.

Thunder rumbles and the rain is falling in earnest now, but it's cleaner. Just a normal summer storm, settling in to drench them all and wash away the ash. The message on his screen has sat long enough that the phone went dark, and he has to unlock it again to answer. He feels bad for making Cas wait.

You shouldnt want me.

Somehow, he knows not to even bother putting his phone down. The answer comes so quickly that it seems to ride on top of his own, the answer popping up beneath his insistent, instinctual, unscripted, the vibration buzzing in his cupped hands, but the sentiment seems to travel past that, emotions like a current through wires lighting him up.

I should. And I do.

Cas is a dumb sonuvabitch for a genius. With a huff of cynical, rueful laughter, Dean lets his thumbs fly across the keys on the screen, sending his confession off to a guy who he knew was damned used to confessions, trained to take them at face value.

I have no idea what I'm doing, Cas.

And with that timid confession, Dean is fairly certain he just ended up in a relationship. It's going to be a huge mistake. He knows there's no chance that this is going to work out for either of them. He can't stay in Lawrence. He's not safe here. It's more than just the asshole Alpha rapists he has to worry about, and the thought of it twists his guts in knots. He can't stay in Lawrence, and Lawrence is where Cas lives and works. This is going to end badly. He's going to get invested, start to care, and it's going to shred him and fuck up Cas.

There is no happy ending to his story. No more than there was for his father. He's not built for it.

Neither do I. We'll figure it out.

It's a promise, but not necessarily one Cas can keep. The intent behind it, though, is still warm and comforting, a hope of acceptance and comfort, and he wants to wrap himself in it the way he cups the phone between his hands, as if he could hug Cas through the tiny screen of his phone. He isn't expecting it to buzz again so soon, not when he hasn't responded.

Are you going to come upstairs now?

Dean squints at the screen suspiciously, and then barks a laugh, and again that one moment of genuine, hard-won humor is enough to shake off the fears. He responds quickly, already knowing the answer.

Are you watching me, Cas?

It explains the speed of the responses, and he swears he can hear an answering laugh this time, the distant buzz of a phone vibrating now that he's listening for it past the sound of the rain. Cas is sitting on the stairs up to his apartment, watching Dean. He knows it, should have guessed all along.

Will you call me creepy again if I say yes?

Dean laughs again and nods emphatically, knowing Castiel can see it now. He types his response as lightning cracks, thunder fast on its heels, but he doesn't jump and is smiling at his screen.

Probably.

This time he knows he hears a laugh, and there's a brief pause, likely Cas typing, before the splash of footsteps through puddles. He gets the buzz of a response and looks to that, rather than try to place the direction.

Then no. Of course not. You should probably move to your left, though.

And then Castiel is clambering up next to him onto the car, careful over the tarp as he sits down shoulder to shoulder with Dean, who shifts to make room for him. In the short walk from the stairs to the carport he's managed to become soaked, and rain water has saturated the cuffs of his pajama pants from sitting with his feet on the concrete walkway. Rolling his eyes, Dean flings an arm around Cas's shoulder, pulling him in closer and Castiel laying back against the windshield beside him, warm and solid and his now.

And he's Cas's. For however long they make this work.

"Stalker." Castiel huffs a laugh at the accusation, and curls a possessive arm around Dean's waist. Dean's pretty sure they shouldn't be cuddling in a parking lot in a storm, but he doesn't want to move yet. There's something primal and beautiful about an early summer storm, setting the hair on the back of Dean's arms standing up, and as fragile and new as whatever he has with Castiel is, it feels like they're protecting each other against the elements now.

"We're pretty fucked up, you know." Dean observes, and Cas shrugs slightly, not denying it but not bothered by it, either.

"A little unorthodox, maybe. I'm sorry for staring. I saw Sam pull away, and I was worried you were going to disappear on me again."

"Thought about it." Dean admits, and he knows Castiel already knew that. It's not hard to catch a pattern when you get the same response every time.

"I still have your bag. When I woke up, it was still there on the dresser, and I told myself you'd have to come back for it eventually." Castiel pauses, lips pursing slightly, and Dean can tell he's more hurt than he's letting on about being ditched again. "You could have told me you wanted to go alone, Dean. I would have respected your wishes. You didn't have to . . . do any of that, just to get rid of me."

Cas has a point, and he knows it. He's also wrong about part of it, too, and Dean needs him to understand. "Cas, all that? The shower, everything. . . ?" Cas blushes. It's fucking adorable, and Dean brushes his lips against Castiel's hairline, shaking his head. "I wanted to do that. That wasn't just a diversion."

"Good." Cas shifts in place when he realizes how emphatic that was, how much it sounded like he was asking for more of the same, and closes his eyes. "I mean. . ."

Dean snorts in amusement, and it disappears into the sound of the storm, and the lightning cracks almost on top of them, so bright that it leaves an after-image burned on Dean's eyes when he blinks. "Shoulda gone in earlier. But I keep invading your life, and I just. . ."

"You're not invading. But if it makes you more comfortable. . ." Cas is reaching past him on the car, scooping up Dean's keys and sliding off of the car, tugging the weighted tarp akimbo beneath his movement. "Come here, Dean."

Dean blinks in surprise, picking up his phone and his jacket, and by the time he slides off of the car Castiel is beneath the tarp, opening the door and ducking into the dark, cool interior of the Impala.

Dean follows him in, sliding onto the seat and closing the door behind him, and then he keeps sliding, turning in place to straddle Castiel's lap on the seat, cupping Cas's face in his hands and kissing him, slow and deep and claiming.

Everything is cool blues, the lights of the carport and the flashes of lightning shine through the thin tarp, and give it the sense of being underwater, narrowing the world down around them. It's comforting, the smell of leather and the familiarity of this car, and it grounds Cas in his life to have him here, like this. The hands resting on his thighs are warm and powerful: still and settling, not groping and desperate. This isn't about sex. Theyaren't about sex. Cas lets the kiss speak for him, pouring himself into it, and this time Dean doesn't try to yank him back.

Together they wait out the storm.