A Hole in the World

by anneliese-michel

Dean Winchester never wanted to go home again. Going back to Lawrence meant people who knew what he was, who didn't buy into the lie. But with a tragic accident, he's back and dealing with the death of his father, the social stigma and objectification of being an out Omega, and the lingering aftermath of a long-ago crime.

40. Hold On

Innocence dyin' in so many ways
Things that you dream of are lost
Lost in the haze
Hold on, Baby Hold on
'Cause it's closer than you think
And you're standing on the brink
Hold on, Baby Hold on
'Cause there's something on the way
Your tomorrow's not the same as today

- "Hold On," Kansas

Emmanuel and Daphne met at the lake when he was swimming and she was jogging, and she just knew he was the one the moment their eyes met.

Emmanuel and Daphne were married at his family estate by Castiel in a cozy, casual little ceremony a week after they met, and it only took a week because Emmanuel had to ask her father for her hand, and then they flew her parents in to attend. Not that they needed to do any of that, they were mates.

Emmanuel and Daphne do missionary work overseas on his summer breaks, and help all the underprivileged people of the world.

Emmanuel and Daphne probably adopt orphan kittens, too, and give all the local children toothbrushes on Halloween, and volunteer at the soup kitchen, and live their perfect life in their perfect house as the perfect Alpha/Omega pair.

Daphne looks at Emmanuel like the sun shines out of his ass, which would be hard for her to tell because he's busy worshiping the ground she walks on.

...Or it could be that Dean's a little bitter, and jaded. He can't be jealous of this life they have-it's the antithesis of everything he's ever wanted. But here is someone who looks and sounds exactly like his boyfriend, living the life that Cas should have. A life Dean would beat his own brains out with one of Emmanuel and Daphne's Martha Stewart Living vases if he tried to live in for a day. This is Castiel's fairytale fantasies in living color, starring the clean-cut Castiel-alternative and a woman who bears enough passing resemblance to Dean that he's starting to wonder if mates have some freaky sort of genetic specifications, or if the twins both just have a thing for green eyes and nice lips.

He wants his phone to ring, wants news from the trial even if it's bad, just because this is suffocating him. And he feels like a complete dick for it, because Cas is sitting beside him on the love seat and clearly struggling, but for different reasons.

It's sad how many ways two people who are almost completely identical, save for superficial details, can find to not look at each other. Emmanuel is holding Daphne's hand in his as they all talk, looking at her knuckles as he strokes his thumb over them again and again, rolling the wedding ring on her finger. Castiel, for his part, shoots pleading looks at Dean for help when he falters in conversation again, and they haven't even gotten past introductions for Dean and on to what they're really avoiding.

Neither Castiel nor Emmanuel can mention Jimmy by name, and be the first to reopen that old wound. Any other day, Dean would turn on the charm and try to help bail Castiel out. Right now, he wants a case of beer and a rock to climb under.

Daphne squeezes her husband's hand in hers and gives Dean a meaningful look before rising to her feet. "Why don't I get us drinks. Dean, can you come help me in the kitchen?"

Despite resenting feeling like he's being sent out 'just the girls' to fetch drinks, Dean rises to his feet with a nod, ignoring Castiel's kicked puppy face at being left. Cas needs to talk to his brother if he's going to fix this, if he's going to be able to slide back into this kind of life. So Dean claps him on the shoulder once and follows Daphne into the kitchen, where she's pulling out the ice tray from the freezer, and a container of powdered lemonade.

(Because Emmanuel and Daphne probably don't drink, either. God, Dean would kill himself living this way.)

"I'm sorry you're seeing Emmanuel like this. He's usually very outgoing." Daphne begins, her voice quiet enough that it won't carry to the living room, and Dean feels his eyebrows rise sharply at that image. He thinks they may have very different concepts of 'outgoing,' and that wasn't the impression Cas gave him of his remaining twin. "He was surprised when Castiel called. It's been a long time since he left. We don't talk about him, much, and his other brothers know it's a sore topic."

"Yeah, I'm gathering that." Obviously the happy couple hasn't been kept up-to-date on the full extent of Cas's crappy life changes, and he's pretty sure Cas wouldn't have been able to fully spit out what was going on when he called.

It doesn't matter, though. Sweet as Daphne seems to be, she doesn't miss the undercurrent of sarcasm to Dean's words, and her look at him is sharp. "Castiel disappeared when Emmanuel needed him the most, Dean. I'm glad you've brought him back, and I hope they can fix this. But after eight years, it's a lot to ask for him to move past." She takes a breath, composing her beatific expression again but somehow her defensive retort, that bite of protective anger, makes her more real than the custom-ordered Omega bride she'd seemed before. It was all creepily Stepford until that, and now that Dean's seen the flaws he needs to dig at it a little because that's just who he is. He may have been called in here to 'help,' but there's not a lot he can do. Lemonade is a one-person job. So he needles, because that he can pretty much count on as a life skill.

"Cas kept a picture of Emmanuel and Jimmy in his living room, until recently."

"Oh? And what happened recently to change that?" Daphne is barely paying attention, stirring the drink, on her high horse to defend her husband still and unswayed by the fact that as much as Emmanuel tried to forget Cas, Cas made himself remember the brother he lost, and the brother he let down. She takes the bait about 'recently,' and is prepared to run with it.

"He got arrested, charged for assault, his house broken into and his stuff ripped up, including the picture, and he was fired from his job and then evicted for trying to do the right thing by a guy he just met." Dean offers her a smile that may have more teeth than genuine cheer. "For starters. But up until all that, yeah, he kept the picture."

Saved by the bell. He holds up his vibrating phone indicatively, and points at the porch without change of expression in the face of her shocked stare. "I gotta take this. It's our criminal defense lawyer."

Seriously why the hell would people think he's the kind of date to take home to the family?

He slips past Cas and Emmanuel in the living room, and out the front door to settle onto one of the porch steps, before taking the call. "Sammy. What's the verdict?"

Sam sighs, and Dean swears it's the longest five seconds of his life. "No verdict yet. I was calling to tell you that the defense rested. The jury's out, now."

Waiting on a knock again, then. At least Crowley got his part over with in the morning instead of dragging it out the whole rest of the day. Leaning his forehead against the bannister, Dean tries to figure out if he feels any relief over that. "How bad was it?"

"I thought you didn't want to know any details." There's a gentle note to Sam's voice, a worried one, that grates at Dean and is probably all the answer he really needs.

"I don't want any details. But maybe I should, and hell it can't be worse than meeting the family." His lies are getting more transparent, but given the circumstances Sam doesn't call him on it this time. "Unless you're about to tell me he trotted out a few dozen of my former 'clients...'"

It's his biggest fear, what he most dreaded from taking this stand, and he's trying to make light of it. Because if you make smartassed comments about the worst case scenario, it doesn't hurt as much when everything goes to shit. Or people don't realize it hurts you.

"Three." Sam finally sighs. "And Alastair's accountant. I convinced Ellen and Jo to stay at the bar this morning, though, so they missed the worst of it. But Henriksen handled it well-he..."

"Unless he got them slapped in cuffs too, Sammy, I'm still not really not up for you singing his praises. He made a deal on the other guys already." He was wrong. The jokes didn't help. His little brother sat through three guys talking about raping him repeatedly, and him uselessly begging for it. Some bean counter got up there and gave numbers, tried to quantify just how whorish Alastair's pet whore really was. And now it's all public record. Resting the edge of his phone against his forehead for a moment, eyes closed, Dean tunes out the buzz of Sam trying to comfort him with words, gut churning and the taste of bile rising in his throat.

"I gotta go, Sammy." He croaks, interrupting whatever Sam is saying. "Just... text me when we have a verdict."

He doesn't give Sam the opportunity to respond. Sitting on the steps of suburbia, he's torn for a moment between going back inside and pretending nothing just happened while he lets Cas's family drama wash over him, and just getting in the car and driving. He needs away from his own head, from the sibilant voice whispering in his memory, telling him how he looks like a good bitch strapped to a breeding bench, how if he doesn't eat his slop out of the bowl on the floor before him, he'll still be drugged but Alastair will have to up his number of clients to satisfy his little slut's appetite, encouraging them to knot his mouth because Dean-o chose a protein diet for the day. He worries at the corded choke collar around his neck whenever he can, not for freedom but because it's already so close to a noose that if he can catch it just right against the rack maybe it'll finish the job for him, because he isn't allowed hands let alone sharp tools.

"Dean? ... Dean!" Cas is kneeling on the sidewalk in front of him, hands on his shoulders as Dean blinks himself slowly back to the present. Even in the warm summer sunlight he's freezing, a cold sweat on his skin, the back of his neck irritated from yanking at his shirt collar, trying desperately to breathe.

Castiel slides one hand up his shoulder to press two fingertips to his racing pulse, and Dean tries to shrug him off and fails because Castiel with a mission is frikkin' intense and determined.

"Are you okay?" Now that one definitely isn't Castiel. Emmanuel's voice doesn't have the same grave, rough undertone of Castiel, in the same way he doesn't seem to carry as many creases around his eyes, or as much weight on his shoulders as he moves. It's a strange moment to notice the difference, to know that he'll never mix the two of them up because Emmanuel's known grief but hasn't known guilt and pain the way Cas has, and that changes a person.

"Swell. 'S a nice day out."

Plus, Cas wouldn't ask such a stupid question and expect a real response.

"We'll be in momentarily." Castiel's words are a dismissal, and if Dean were his brother he'd probably make a smartassed comment about who's house it is anyway, but Cas has a way of getting what he wants. He watches his brother lead Daphne back inside like they're interlopers on a private moment, before turning worried eyes back on Dean.

"I'm fine." Dean's strangled-sounding words are ignored as the bullshit they are as Cas settles next to him on the step, an arm around his waist. Cas is breathing slowly, deeply, and without realizing it Dean finds himself patterning off of it the way he's supposed to, and it helps the encroaching darkness recede, helps ease the burn of his lungs enough that he figures he can handle this now without being babysat. "Go back to your visit."

Dismissal doesn't work as well for Dean as it did for Cas, because Cas knows he's full of shit and refuses to be dismissed. And because Cas has seen this all before, seen Dean fight his way back out of this place coming out of nightmares, and trying to dig these thoughts out of his skin when his Heat hit him. Never on a brightly lit summer morning, flanked by mesh-protected flower beds that look like they should burst into Disney-esque song, but Dean's fucked up issues are a road show again, so why not.

"I'd rather sit here with you for a minute, until you can come save me from my visit." Castiel murmurs with an air of confession, and Dean knows he's partially trying to play him, but the words are at least sincere. He finds his head resting against Cas's shoulder, guided there by Cas's hand against his back, and after a moment he gives up and allows Cas's unobtrusive care, how he catches Dean's hand and rubs circles into his palm with the pad of his thumb as if he's chasing the tingling feeling of cords tying his circulation off.

"It's not that bad. They seem... nice."

"They are exceedingly nice." Castiel agrees readily, but it's what he doesn't say that has Dean finding the motivation to brace himself against the bannister again, raising an eyebrow at Cas and waiting for an end to that thought, as Castiel stares at the Impala parked on the street and lets Dean reorient himself. "...I think it would be easier if he could just hate me for abandoning him. But he doesn't do conflict. And I don't deserve his unconditional forgiveness."

Trust Cas to just lay it all out there, the brutal truth of how he sees things boiled down to as few words as possible. Dean doesn't know what to say to that, because he knows what Cas means. After a few moments, he nudges Castiel, shoulder bumping against his. "If it makes you feel better, the missus is holding a grudge on his behalf."

Castiel's laugh is startled out of him, and even worried and tired and so guilty he can't stand himself, Cas is beautiful in the sunlight and against this backdrop... "That shouldn't make me feel better."

"Eh. Go with it." Dean advises, and he braces his hands to the step to push himself to standing, only to find Cas isn't joining him in it.

He distracted Dean again, offering his own problems up the way Dean once begged him to, even before they really knew each other, before he even knew Cas's first name. Cas knows it's a hell of a lot easier for Dean to handle other people's problems than it is for him to examine his own. It doesn't mean Cas's focus has shifted, though: blue eyes intent on Dean, he cocks his head to the side in a silent question, and Dean knows what he's asking. He wants to know about Dean's mental state, about the trial, about what happened to send him back into the sex torture dungeon in his own damn head, about the tenuous state of their relationship that's turned into a yo-yo of pushing Cas away and reeling him back in, and Dean's not ready for a long talk about any of that. Besides, it's all the same answer.

"Jury's still out."

Lips setting into a grim line, Castiel stares at him a moment longer before nodding, and he lets Dean lead him back inside.

xXx

Of all the trainwreck ideas to ever be offered with a smile, the idea of finishing their trek across Illinois by going back to the family estate and having dinner with all of the family they can drum up tonight rates up there, for Castiel, with Dean cheerfully arresting himself.

It is not going to go well. Emmanuel and Daphne have to know that, had to know it when they walked back inside from the porch to Emmanuel hanging up on Michael, the arrangement made for them.

He can't tell if it is penance for his abandonment, or he's been invited into one of the inner circles of hell. On the hour drive between Champaign and Pontiac, he doesn't know if he should worry most about dinner with his brothers, or about meeting his father for the first time, or about seeing Claire and Amelia after eight years, or about how Dean won't talk to him about what triggered a full-blown panic attack (though he will carefully avoid those words in Dean's presence, aware enough of Dean's pride to know it would shut him down again).

"What're you thinking?" Dean is watching him carefully out of the corner of his eye as he drives.

"I am trying to decide if in Dante's model of hell I would fall into the first round of the Ninth Circle of Hell, with those who betray their families, in the Eighth Circle with heretics and hypocrites, or into the Seventh Circle with the wrathful and violent." Castiel pauses for a moment, brow creasing as he draws on old memories of reading the Divine Comedy. "And what Dante considered sodomists, come to think of it."

"I think we have a winner." Dean drawls, and Cas turns his head in time to see Dean's eye roll at Castiel's melancholic thought process. It was partially true. His mind is churning through many thoughts, and that was the easiest one of them to put together in that moment. "I'll meet you there. It'll be a party. All the bar fights and sex."

"You wouldn't go to Hell." Castiel watches the street signs roll past as they enter a familiar neighborhood he hasn't been in for years, resting his temple against the sun-warmed glass of the window, and his complete certainty throws Dean for a moment. "Besides, what you're describing isn't hell, its yesterday. And I think we should probably limit the bar fights from now on."

"But not the sex?" Dean quips, because he needs to say something to break out of his own thoughts, and because Cas's train of thought unnerves him. Cas believes this kind of crap—he believes in Hell and Heaven and God and Dean's certain admittance into heaven. He wants another smartassed deadpan Cas comment in return, something that will give him a good distraction and veer them out of religion and into the safer territory of their sexcapades, but Castiel is in one of his contemplative moods and doesn't respond for a long time.

He's lost in thought until they're parked in front of a familiar house, his eyes roving the slightly run-down appearance of one of the few places that ever felt like home to him. Because Jimmy made it his home, offered a room to him any time he wasn't living off of the church, had him say Grace over supper with them and named him Claire's godfather. No matter how many places Castiel's lived in the intervening years, it took Dean for anywhere to feel like home after that. For his apartment to not feel empty, or for a run-down converted office over a mechanics' shop to seem welcoming.

Cas doesn't know what Dean's looking for, what it will take to convince him that he wants this relationship, but he knows this. "If you told me tomorrow that you never wanted to have sex with me again, I would honor that. And I would still want to be with you."

He doesn't give Dean time to cheapen that by throwing one of his meaningless jokes at him, designed to give him time while he processes. Sliding out of the car, Cas folds Jimmy's coat over his arm and makes his way up the familiar sidewalk toward the house, hesitating when he can see Claire through the dining room window with books spread out before her. Once he's on the first step, he spots a mop of unfamiliar brown hair he can see only from the back.

(His father's hair curls beneath his ears the way Cas's does when he needs to get it cut, and stands up in an unruly mess otherwise the way Jimmy's used to after a long day, too, the way Cas sees in the mirror every day when he doesn't feel like dunking his head under the faucet. Claire is as beautiful as her pictures over the years, the spitting image of her mother but with her father's eyes, but his father is sitting in that room and he still has no idea what to say).

Claire blows her hair out of her eyes in overblown pre-teen irritation as she leans over the lesson Chuck has put together, and it puts Cas in her line of sight as she raises her head. The decision to stay or run again is taken entirely out of his hands when she bolts from the table, and he's already hugging her before he's fully processed that she's thrown the door open and then her arms around him—it doesn't matter in that moment who she thinks he is, if he's confused her life again, he just needs this assurance that he didn't screw everything up.

Amelia is at the door moments later, older than he remembers her and for a moment stunned by him. And then he finds himself with both Novak women hugging him, Amelia with an arm around his shoulder and Claire still hugging her arms around his stomach.

On the sidewalk, Dean quirks his lips lopsidedly, the ache in his gut dampening his joy for Cas as he watches him find what Dean feared and expected all along on this trip. His home.

xXx

For her entire life, Castiel has lived vicariously through Claire's eyes. It started early enough that she wouldn't know to remember it: a few drawings folded up and sent to him overseas, her first crude attempts to make a crayon work for her. They made him smile even in a terrible place, and his brother knew they would. So they kept coming. Even after Jimmy was gone, Amelia kept the tradition going through Claire's messy block-printed Crayola letters, on to pink paper ripped out of a journal, and then once she got old enough Claire typed the messages up herself, increasing in length and sent to him through email whenever she needed to talk.

And Castiel made himself respond each time. Even when he had nothing to say about himself (which was usual), even when he was avoiding the entire rest of his family, he would comment on her life in return and made himself be there for her without being there for her. Children needed consistency, he'd read, and so Amelia was set up in his paycheck to receive an auto-draft, he grabbed greeting cards for Christmases and her birthday, and Claire remained the only person who he made the effort for. Because she had a grieving mother and no siblings of her own. Because Castiel's family scattered, and only a few even acknowledge her as part of it. Because she'd had a father just long enough to remember him, and then lost him.

Amelia sent him photographs every school year, and Castiel collected them all, his little treasure trove of proof that somewhere in the world there was something he hadn't screwed up. Of course, between him and Claire and their penpal relationship, on to him and Chuck and the general wonder that he has a father, it means there are a few generations in this house now who have no idea how to actually handle the images they've built of the ones before them, now that they're in the flesh.

Claire gets over it first. She's not a naturally talkative child, not in person, but Castiel gets immediately dragged into the house for the tour regardless, filling him in on superficial changes made over the years to the house, mostly. He doesn't have the heart to tell her that he knows this place well, and it's a good introduction for Dean who watches Cas let himself be hauled around by his arm hooked through Claire's. The room he used to have reserved for him is Chuck's study, now, and she glances down the hall to make sure they're clear, getting a surreptitious thumbs up from Dean as he keeps an eye out that earns him a shy conspirator's smile before she opens the door for Cas.

Paper is strewn everywhere, partially written manuscripts stacked haphazardly on tables, and Cas is fairly sure he can smell alcohol just with the door cracked. Dean and Castiel exchange a look, but have no time to discuss their impression of Chuck before they're faced with the man himself, the tour concluding in the living room where he sits nervously.

"Wow. You guys... Um. You really are identical, huh?"

Chuck Shurley, with the introduction of someone else into their home, seems to not know what to do with himself. He's lived with the Novaks for a couple years now, but with a new arrival he suddenly seems as if he's the one out of place in his own home. Or perhaps he's quailing under Cas's clear curiosity about him, that sends him staring too long, struggling to find the words to say, and torn between quiet horror and awe.

Because this man, with blue eyes and messy hair, long fingers and a scruffy beard, awkward in his own clothes as he raises a hand to wave at Cas without rising, is his father. But not by his own choice. And far, far too young by the looks of him relative to the age of his children.

He was probably still a teenager when Castiel, Emmanuel and Jimmy were bought and paid for; the crèche used him as a human incubator, tampered with their genetics while they were inside him, forced him to carry them to term. All of the physical characteristics he recognizes of himself in this man were probably what made his Alpha father subject Chuck to that, selected for the blue eyes to make sure his youngest offspring carried that trait, and for the familiar straightness of his nose, the dark hair and fair skin, a human being reduced down to selling points...

"Cas..." Dean's got him by the shoulder, pushing him down into Amelia's soft couch and settling in beside him, his hand bruising in its grip on Cas's as he lowers his voice to a whisper, hauling him in closer so it doesn't carry. "Chill the fuck out."

Of all the emotions he expected to feel when seeing his father for the first time, he didn't anticipate rage.

Amelia is perceptive and sympathetic. She rests a hand on Chuck's shoulder and leans in to say something to him, some reassurance that she isn't going far, and then calls a reluctant Claire to her side, the girl dragging her feet on the way to the kitchen to make lunch, as if she realizes that all the action will be happening without her.

The words that were so hard to spit out at Emmanuel's seem to spill from him as soon as Claire is gone from the room, as if he can't quite contain them. "I'm so sorry."

For not knowing he was here. For never looking for him. For being born, maybe. Castiel is glad to be alive, but he despises the way that came about.

"It's weird." Chuck agrees, and he palms the back of his own neck awkwardly, a motion so familiar that Castiel can't stop the wet-sounding laugh that burns and tears at him, because this is some piece of him that never fit in the rest of his family. Dean squeezes his hand as if he sees it too, or to remind him that he's not dealing with this alone, and Cas is so incredibly grateful for him in this moment, as Chuck begins again. "I mean, I spend a lot of time trying not to..." Chuck shrugs uselessly, as if words are his enemies when he's not trapping them on paper. "But I hang out every day with a kid who wouldn't exist if it weren't for that place, you know...? So. Weird."

And that's the question, isn't it? How do you live every day in the aftermath of something horrible, appreciating the good things in your life while knowing you wouldn't have them without the bad, too?

None of them know, but they're all struggling to find the answer.

"You wanna help tear that place apart?" The question could have been introduced better, but it's been an ulterior motive to Dean's role in this visit the entire time.

Chuck could help Dean and Sam tear a flawed system apart. Could-but Dean's not so sure he'll be able to, now, with the spike of anxiety and fear that seems to grip him at the question, and having gotten a look at how he lives like a hermit, hidden away by his writing. Cas, for his part, seems torn between the two of them-he wants to fight for Dean, but Chuck's sudden fear has him protective, too.

"I don't... I..."

"Lunch time!" Claire's smile is bright, infectious, and her joy brings warmth back into the room as she swings herself around the corner, hanging onto the doorframe. She's the living personification of two generations of grieving-what's left of Cas's brother in the world, and a sign of what was done to Chuck-but she's completely innocent of both tragedies. "Mom went overboard. There's leftovers and coffee and stuff. I think she's using you to clean out the fridge."

"Claire!" Amelia's scolding voice reaches them from the kitchen, but Cas is already on his feet, and they haven't been here long but it's clear she's had Cas wrapped around her finger for years already.

"You are so whipped." Dean teases Cas gently, pushing himself to his feet while Chuck grabs his book and his glasses and then moves to pass Claire into the dining room. It was a conversation they were all going to have to chew on for a while to really process, and Chuck seems glad to escape it. Cas, for his part, lingers by Dean as if he's trying to figure out how to say something when he's interrupted.

"So, should I call you 'Uncle Dean' or something?"

Apparently their romantic tension can be perceived even by preteen girls.

"Yes." Cas answers before Dean can, immediately on the heels of Claire's question, and his uncertainty melts into stubbornness as he turns away to follow his niece out of the room. "Yes, you should. All the time. He needs to get used to it..." there's a definite challenge to that, aimed at Dean behind him, before Cas slides into his excuse. "His brother is having a baby soon."

Using kids against him. Now that's just fighting dirty. Dean's almost proud of Castiel for that.

xXx

True to Claire's word, lunch is massive; the combination of many dinners all brought out for them. Amelia seats herself where she isn't looking at Cas the entire meal, and seems a little haunted still, but despite the ghost of her dead husband in her thoughts she carries a clear affection for her brother-in-law as well.

Cas scowls at both she and Dean as talk of how well she cooks turns into discussion of how badly he does, much to Claire's delight, his failed attempts over the years in Dean's kitchen and Amelia's spurring laughter until Amelia accidentally says his name.

"Honestly, though, none of it's my recipe. The real cook around here was Jimmy..."

Suddenly Cas's mouthful of leftover chicken casserole seems harder to swallow, it's savory flavors dulled, and he forces the food down while staring at the pattern on the china plate Amelia's probably had in the cabinets since they were given as a wedding gift. What did he give them? He can't remember, and that gap feels like a betrayal, now, as he sits in Jimmy's home with the wife who watched him suffer, the father Jimmy will never meet, and the daughter Jimmy won't be able to watch grow up, forgetting pieces of his time with his brother.

"Well, Mom says I could burn water." Claire fills the silence, and for her the loss is a distant thing, just a fact of her life like her name, her age, or the color of her hair. "Guess I took after you." She pokes Castiel with the handle of her fork, and then steals the crescent roll from his plate, and like that, the moment moves on.

"Cas once melted a pot of mine, does that count?" Dean's leaned around him to grin at Claire, so natural with the girl that Cas wants to kiss him for helping move the conversation on, but he won't, because he knows things aren't entirely settled. "Forgot he'd put on water, and next thing I knew I'm coming up the stairs and there's molten metal on my stove and Cas is trying to put out a fire with a jug of milk..."

Cas objects over the peals of Claire's laughter. "That is not true. And if you'd just stayed downstairs another thirty minutes you would never have known..."

"What, that's how long it took for the metal to cool?"

No one at this table is on his side. As Cas's eyes land on his father, Chuck holds his hands up in protest. "Don't look at me. If I were cooking we'd be having powdered Mac N Cheese, Ramen and Jameson's."

"Nothing wrong with that." Dean flashes him a grin, naturally charming all of them, and he seems relaxed in his own skin for that moment.

But they're not allowed to keep that. Close as he is to Dean at the table, Cas knows as soon as Dean does that his cell phone is vibrating, and his smile dies immediately, the change drastic. "I... Uh. I gotta take this." Dean mutters, and he rattles the china slightly as he pushes out of his chair.

Castiel folds his napkin and rises as he does, shooting them an apologetic look.

"We'll be right back." He takes the steps down the back porch two at a time to catch up with Dean as he swipes his finger over the phone screen to answer and presses the speaker button for Cas's sake, walking to the far corner of the yard where a swing set sits, unused now but well loved in it's time.

"We're here."

"Shh." It's Charlie's hushed voice, and by the echo they're also on speaker phone, a bustle of noise around her and Dean can just make out Sam's voice, his lawyer voice. "Just a sec."

The FaceTime request beeps, and Dean accepts it impatiently, unreasonably annoyed that she won't just say what's happening. And then there's color on the screen, shifting, and the phone is being held over Charlie's head to see over others, giving them a canted, off-center look at Sam outside of the courthouse, the blonde reporter in front of him.

"...Justice for my brother, today. He's had to live with what they did to him for fifteen years, and it took them attacking him again for anyone to act. So ten years isn't enough-but it's a start..."

It takes a long moment for the words to process, and by then Charlie is rattling off terms like 'aggravated sexual battery,' and 'prior offenses,' and 'determinate sentencing' too quickly to really follow, promising more news in just a bit while apologizing for needing to run, but Dean has no real response for her. Cas has him swathed in a hug, and the phone is loose in his grip, and he's trying to wrap his head around it still.

He won.