A/N
If you read this before 3/17/22, I suggest re-reading the last scene, or specifically from Cas's entrance at this line: "Now, back in the present, in the bunker, as if on cue, the angel wandered into the room..."
See author's note at the end of this chapter, or at the beginning of chapter five for an explanation.
###
Two weeks later
Diner in Lebanon, a few miles from the bunker
"So I was thinking," Lisa said as she picked at her slice of apple pie. "After we're done here, we could catch a show at that theatre on the edge of town."
Dean glanced up at her, his mouth chock-full of cherry pie. She thought he might choke on his pie, but somehow he managed to chew and swallow the mess of crust and fruit and sugar that had threatened to overwhelm his mouth. He mumbled out a "What?"
"I think they're playing something with superheroes," she said, rummaging in her purse for her wallet.
Dean wiped his mouth with a napkin. "You mean a movie?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
She laughed, but this moment between them was beginning to feel awkward, uncomfortable in a way she couldn't quite put her finger on. There was something wrong with Dean, something bruised and battered, something off.
He hid it well though. Now he raised his eyebrows at her and smiled like she was crazy. "We're kind of busy, if you haven't noticed, Lis."
She raised her brows right back at him. "You're on your third slice of pie. Just how busy do you think you are?"
"First, there's always time for pie. Second, I'll finish my pie, but we're on a deadline to save the freaking world, again, going up against the literal God, capital G, and I ain't happy about it, but there doesn't seem to be any getting around the fact that the world just won't stay saved. And I don't know anybody else who's stepping up. And you want to take the time to go see a superhero flick?"
Lisa rolled her eyes. "Dean. You've been on a deadline for weeks, kept me in that bunker for most of it, kept me from my work, kept Ben from his school, and nothing's happened. I'm not saying the world doesn't need saving. I'm not even saying you don't get to go be a hero. But I don't think it's happening tonight. And I don't think anybody's getting saved by you sitting around waiting for something to happen."
Dean sighed. A weary sigh. "If you want to make out in a movie theatre, away from Cas's freaking annoying habit of walking into our room without knocking, we might as well take Baby for a spin and find a motel somewhere. I can promise you a much finer time than you'd get in the back row of seats."
"How is that romantic?" Lisa snapped, going from empathy to pissed off in a second.
He shrugged. "How is a movie theatre romantic?"
"I was just thinking. Dean, maybe I'm crazy but I'm thinking that this is our first date in a decade. You could treat me like a lady, and take me to dinner and movie. A proper date. I'm not asking for flowers, or tickets to the ballet, or even a chick flick. I'm just saying, there's a superhero movie at that dive theatre we drove by when I convinced you to take me to a grocery store."
Dean broke out laughing. "Wait. Lis, is this supposed to be a date?"
She was so close to getting up and walking out on him. "It's dinner without your brother along, or your angel tagging along with his inability to respect anyone's, and particularly your personal space. Also, you might notice that we left the bunker without the son of Lucifer, or our son, both of whom would also cramp the romance of it all. I mean, Dean, sometimes you're really dumb for a smart guy."
"Huh."
"This is as date-like as you and me have come, since there's been a you and me. This time around, I mean." Lightbulbs were flashing on in her mind. She was beginning to see what the problem was with this specific scenario, why he was oddly oblivious to social norms. "Dean, when was the last time you were on a date?"
"Depends what you'd call a date."
She cleared her throat. "What does that mean?"
"If you'd count hustling a game of pool and going home with a girl who's lookin' on, admirin' the shark..."
Her heart sank a little further. "No, I would not count that as a date. And ... gross. You actually behave like that? At your age?"
Dean yelled out for another piece of pie instead of responding.
"You know," Lisa murmured, "we haven't had the awkward exes talk."
"The what?"
"It's been a decade, Dean. We have to get to know each other again. I want to know about your life, though I have to say, I did think that by age forty you would have grown past sleeping your way through a list of bimbos you met hustling pool."
A solid minute passed in silence.
"I'll go first," she said, taking a long sip of her beer. "I broke up with a dentist named Mark six months ago. He would be the latest."
"Congratulations."
"Now your turn."
"No."
"Fine. Be that way. Before Mark, there was a lawyer. We actually lived together for a few months before I found out he had a gambling problem. After he sold some of my mother's jewelry on E-bay. Though to be fair to him, he didn't leave me to go off hunting monsters with his brother who had recently come back from Hell without a soul. But, still, unacceptable. And before loser-gambler-guy, I had, I don't know, maybe a three or four year dry spell. Before that I dated a couple guys, casually. And before that, there was the guy I was dating a few months after you, the one who was killed by a demon."
"I'm sorry about that, Lis."
"I'm not bringing him up to make you feel guilty. I'm just, I don't know, trying to air my dirty laundry. If we're going to do anything long-term, we might as well level with each other."
"Long-term?"
"It's a possibility, right?"
He looked like he wanted to bolt.
"Dean?"
He gulped and murmured, "You could do a lot better than me, Lisa."
"Bullshit."
"You wanta watch a movie, fine. Let's go to a movie. Superhero movie, fine. Hell, I'd sit through a chick flick at this point. What's the girliest shit playing?"
"I gave you my awkward ex list, now you can give me yours."
After a ridiculously long pause, he said, "It's been a while."
"Okay. Can you give me a name?"
"Of what?"
"Your last girlfriend. Just tell me something. Anything. I know the monster stuff you've been up to in the last ten years. I know about God and his sister. I know that you and Sam are just as joined at the hip, but maybe not as toxically codependent as you used to be. But the personal stuff? I don't know anything. And I'm telling you, whether you see it or not ... Dean, I see a future with you. A possibility at least. I—dammit, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm in love with you. All over again."
His mouth was gaping open. When he finally spoke, his voice was extra deep and gravelly. "Lis ... I'm not good for people. Especially not for you."
"Bullshit."
"There's stuff you don't know. A lot. Stuff I've done."
"Dean, you are harder on yourself—"
"Lisa, please—"
"Please what? Tell you you're broken and damaged, that you don't deserve me? Or any shot at happiness."
"There's shit you don't know!"
"So tell me!"
Dean looked like he might throw up. "Okay, Lisa, let's go over my greatest hits."
She folded her arms and tried to look tough. "Good. Let's do it."
He laughed, but it was a bitter laugh. Not a trace of humor in the sound, or anywhere on his face. "There's the time I turned into a demon. And of course the whole Mark of Cain business that led to the demonhood. I said yes to Michael. I've gotten just about everybody I ever cared about dead."
"Dean!"
"Shut it and listen. My dad literally sold his soul for me. I said some shit to my mom that I'd like to take back. Shit to Jack just last night that was, well, not nice at all and possibly unwarranted."
"Dean, you can't beat yourself up about everything that leaves your mouth. You're only human."
He rolled his eyes. "Easy for you to say. You weren't there. And when you were there, when I shoved Ben, you threw my ass out on the street. So, where were we? Okay, let's not forget about how I was the one to go get Sammy from Stanford and pull him back into the life he'd almost got out of. My fault his girl died."
Her mind and her insides were rolling, trying to process this litany of confusing sins, possible sins, who knew whether any of these things even counted as things he'd done wrong. This was all more than she could understand or process, and she was afraid, more than she'd been before the conversation started, that maybe she wasn't equipped to deal with Dean Winchester. As a partner, or a co-parent. But when she said, "I don't care about that," she meant it. She couldn't believe that he was the terrible, nasty, dangerous person he was convinced that he was. "I mean, I care that it happened to you. But I don't—"
Dean laughed. A harsh, bitter laugh. "Lisa, you're my last girlfriend. That's how not normal my life is. You want to air your dirty laundry and it's a few guys you've been with. I was a freaking demon. I spent forty years in Hell. I've—"
"What?" Lisa was shaking now, feeling foolish and cruel for making him dredge up any of this old pain. For making him relive his traumatic past. But somehow, she couldn't just shut her mouth. "How is it possible for forty—when was this?"
"After the changelings. Before I showed up on your doorstep again."
She scrunched up her face, trying to understand, and failing the test. "The thing where you sold your soul for Sam? The reason you have that weird handprint scar on your shoulder because Castiel, 'angel of the Lord'—" She raised her fingers into air quotes, lowered her pitch, went monotone, and growled in her best Cas voice. " 'Gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.' "
He nodded, laughing in spite of himself. "Nice impression."
"Dean! That was about two years, between when I saw you. Not forty. Trust me, I'd have noticed if Ben was forty-eight when you showed up again. Besides the fact that you already told me, when I pried it out of you one night, that you'd spent four months dead before the whole raised from perdition and all of a sudden angels exist business."
Dean smiled a small, sad smile. "That's the thing with civilians. You don't get it. You won't, look it's not your fault, but this is just one of those things that you're not going to get because you don't get my world."
A lightbulb flashed on inside her head. She couldn't stop herself from grinning and pounding on the table in triumph. "I get it. Time in Hell, it doesn't pass the same way. You were there for four months, but that's just how much time passed on Earth. For you, it felt like forty years. Hell, it might have literally been forty years."
He raised his brows and nodded, looking impressed.
"That must have been awful, Dean."
"Don't."
The waitress brought over two more slices of pie, set them both in front of Dean with a nervous look, and scuttled back over to the counter. Poor woman—Dean had been raising his voice more and more throughout their conversation. Lisa had been too. They must be freaking out the rest of the people in this tightly packed diner.
For the first time, Lisa wondered what the residents of Lebanon thought of the Winchester brothers and their odd, not-human sidekicks. Lebanon was a small town, the kind of place where everybody knew everybody, and people looked out for each other. The kind of place where there was enough boredom and monotony for a scene like this dinner she and Dean were having to turn into exciting gossip.
She wondered whether Dean had a reputation around Lebanon, for being an asshole, or difficult, or just plain weird.
But he needed to understand that he was not a villain, or even particularly screwed up. "You understand how rare that is, Dean, don't you? How rare you are? You saying yes to Hell, to save your little brother. Most people don't do that. I love my sister, but I wouldn't sell my soul for her."
"Which is the right attitude, Lis. That's exactly my point."
She shook her head and held up a hand. "You think you don't deserve me? I don't have one tenth of your ... your ... it's not just courage. You are good. You are intrinsically good."
Dean rolled his eyes.
She barreled on with her original point, her original reason to open up the conversation to things beyond Ben, killing God, and pie. "Dean, this thing about not having had a girlfriend in ten years. That's sad. Not going to lie. But I also know how you live. I know that you don't have the luxury of being with someone steady like that, I know what you and I had was—"
He smiled at her. A real smile. A kind smile. He grabbed her hand, and she was warmed by her reaction to his touch. He felt like home. Despite all his warnings, Dean Winchester was home for Lisa. He was family. And he was right. "You and me, Lis. We were real. It was hard and fucked up sometimes, but it was real. And it was good, some of the time, a lot of the time. That kind of commitment, I never had that before, or since. It's not something I'm prepared to do again. Ever."
"Dean!"
He shook his head and smiled that sad smile again. "You were an anomaly for me. That whole life, it wasn't what I was supposed to have. It was apple pie, and we don't get that. Not me and you. Not Sam and Jess, or even Sam and Eileen apparently. I can think of one or two hunters that get it, who I've ever met, and I've met a lot. And generally, it's after they retire. But retirement, it's not in the cards for me."
"Dean!"
"Lisa, let me finish. That whole year, it wasn't everything you wanted it to be, maybe not what you actually remember. I mean, it's not that I didn't love you, course I did, but I was itching for the road, some of the time. I wanted to make it work, to come back between jobs. I wanted to be what you wanted me to be. But I'm a hunter. And you're not. I love you. But I love hunting. I love my brother. I'm never going to be the man you want. I'm never going to play apple pie, not again."
"And I don't get a say? You and me, the future. It's all in your hands? Free will, that's just for you, Dean?"
Dean sighed. He furrowed his brow and looked at her, like he was waiting for her to go on.
She wanted to slap him. Lisa reached out for a fork, took a bite of his pie, which he somehow hadn't touched or really looked at. Then she got another forkful and held it out to him, nudging it into his mouth. As he chewed the cherry pie, she could see some of his icy cold demeanor melting. "Dean freaking Winchester. You don't get to decide what I think, or what I should think. You don't get to decide what I think about you."
Dean began scarfing up the pie. Eating had always been his defense mechanism.
"I love you. I love the guy who spent forty years in Hell. I don't know all the details. I don't know about all this stuff you regret, or these people who you think you got killed, or any of the crap you've gotten up to between when you lived with us and today. I'm guessing that somebody who gets turned into a demon does some bad stuff. I'm not giving you a blanket 'that's all okay, you're perfect.' But I am telling you that I know you. I know how you treated Ben all those years ago, how you are with me. I know you loved me. I know what you gave up for me. That guy who's supposedly all fucked up and un-loveable, that guy is responsible for the best year of my life."
"Lis—"
"Shut up, Dean. You are deeply, deeply good. Do I wish that Ben had a father who wasn't in a fight with God? Sure. That would make life simpler. Frankly, it was a hell of a lot simpler when we didn't remember you. Do I wish you drank less? Definitely. Am I grossed out by the way you pick up women while hustling pool. Yeah. Would it be easier for me if Sam just didn't exist? Yes again. I mean, Dean, you come with baggage. But I couldn't wish for Ben to have a father who was a better man. And I've never loved anyone like I loved you.
"I thought—well, all those years ago when you came to us, after Sam, I thought we really would be a family, and now, I'm here. And I don't want my memory wiped. I don't want you to take off again. I don't want to go back to being a regular person. I can handle the weird. I can handle the crazy. I want us to, I don't know, try to make it real again."
Dean had this look on his face, like there was a glimmer of hope rushing around inside that alcoholic brain of his. And a slight, barely there smile. It made him softer, all over.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"I'll try. But I'm warning you, you might not like it."
"Fine."
"Fine."
Lisa looked at him. trying to figure out how to forward from here. "Why don't you tell me something, anything that's real. But not supernatural. Just life stuff. I mean who are all these people you talk to? It seems different this time."
He went back to his pie, tilting his head, quizzical. "What do you mean?" he said through pie.
"You have friends."
"I had friends before."
"Weren't they all dead?"
Dean glared at her.
Lisa felt her insides curdle at her total lack of sensitivity. "Sorry."
"Whatever. Not everybody was dead."
"Oh?"
"There was Cas back then."
"I never met him. I don't think you talked to him the entire year."
"Yeah, he was busy plotting a war in Heaven and being shady, pulling people up without their damn souls."
"What?"
"Anyway, you met Bobby."
"Only once you and Sam went off on a hunt and you thought we needed protection." She could almost feel his hackles coming up. "Dean, I'm not saying that—look this seems better, your life now. You seem, better. Castiel is an actual friend to you, right? Not just some alien creature who helped you out. He's your friend. I know you knew other hunters, but nobody ever called you up to talk. I know you talked to Bobby every so often, but it was gruff and distant, and you weren't laughing with him like you were laughing with someone named Claire last night."
He took a deep breath, looked pensive, ate the other slice of pie, and finally wiped his mouth with a napkin. Tapping his fingers on the table, looking at her, and then off to the side, he said, "I mean there's people. I guess, somewhere along the way, it became different. My dad, he had this thing where he never trusted other hunters. And some of that, a lot of that, there's reasons for it. There's some bad sons of bitches in this business. He had a few that were friends, who were good to him, good to us, he was mostly good to them, if he didn't piss them off, and if it weren't for Bobby and Pastor Jim, I don't think Sam and me would've made it. I mean, once I was ten or so, I could handle Sam on my own for a few days, but before that—"
"Your father left you alone with your small brother when you were ten?" She wanted to be sick.
Dean shrugged. "Lis, you don't understand the life. You really don't."
"That's child abuse."
Dean began tapping his fingers on the table in a faster, more impatient rhythm. "The point is, growing up, we didn't know that many people, and most hunters, it was a thing of, stay away. But at some point ... I don't really know how it happened, but yeah, shit is different from ten years ago."
Lisa smiled at him, her heart softening a bit, relieved that something not depressing had occurred since last she knew him. "That's good."
He raised his brows and said, "Maybe. Really, it's more people with targets on their back, more ways somebody can get to me. There's a reason why my dad—"
"Your dad was—"
Dean shook his head. "I know he messed up, a lot, but when it came down to it, he was there when we needed him."
"What I was going to say, what I tried to say ten years ago when you shut me down and decided it was better to drink all night—is that your father was probably depressed. Angry. He probably didn't want people to see that, or push his buttons and make him feel things more, and if I remember he argued with and alienated the people he did let in. It's a defense mechanism. And it makes sense. But that doesn't mean—"
Dean looked like he was going to crumple into the seat, but then he straightened up, shook his head as if he was not going to have this conversation, and stood up, motioning for her to come with him.
"Dean!" she shouted as she ran after him. "Are you just not going to tell me anything?"
"I'm gonna take you to the damn movie."
"Dean!"
"You don't know anything about him. And it's bad enough I've got Sammy talking shit about the man who kept us alive. And sane. And, you know what, maybe he could have made some other choices, but then I don't know who that Dean Winchester is. And I know who I am." They were at the car. He turned towards her. "I'm good with who I am. I ain't gonna stand here and pretend like I should be somebody else."
"I'm not—"
"My dad raised me to be a hunter. And some people might not be okay with it. But I am. What I do matters. It's not respectable. It's not safe. It's not what you want for the father of your kid. But it's who I am."
Lisa smiled. She reached up, ran her fingers through his hair, tousling it. "I'm good with who you are. I promise." She kissed him lightly on the lips.
He looked surprised but he returned the kiss. Then she grabbed his shoulders and pushed him against the Impala. He laughed as he slid onto the car, and then she was straddling him, rubbing her body up against his, touching him everywhere, kissing him everywhere. It was like they were teenagers, making out in a parking lot. And then Dean was pulling her into the back seat, and it really was a teenage dream.
She remembered this backseat. She remembered tangling her limbs with his back when she was nineteen and in college, and utterly transfixed with this rough but sweet man. This man who made her laugh, who made her scream with delight. She'd spent so many days and nights after he left the first time—fantasizing about Dean Winchester, wondering where he was, who he was.
Fantasizing about what it would be like to see this car again, to hear it rumbling up the street before she even got a glimpse. And then when she was pregnant with Ben, wondering if the enigmatic Dean Winchester could be her baby's father. If he'd been conceived in this very backseat.
Tonight, Lisa would have done anything in that backseat, diner parking lot or not, but Dean somehow managed to pull himself together, jump into the driver's seat, and find them a nice deserted spot, off an old gravel road. Then he hopped back onto her, and he was yanking his jeans down, and she was pulling his shirt off because she wanted to see all of him, and soon they were naked and laughing and a jumble of skin on skin.
He touched her, really touched her, and she was on fire. It was a different kind of fire than the last few weeks. They'd had some hot sex in his room in the bunker, but it had been quiet sex, biting her lip to not cry out and be overheard by his brother, his angel, their kid, or the freaking kid of Lucifer. She'd been restraining herself for weeks, because oh Lord, Dean was the kind of lover that tore you apart and then stitched you back together.
Now, in this deserted spot along the road, Lisa let herself go. She moaned and screamed and writhed and cried out his name, and her excitement just seemed to fuel his. He was quiet while he worked over her body, patient, intent. But after her third orgasm, he cupped his hands around her face and said, "You know I love you, Lis. And I'll tell you that you're wrong for wanting me, but damn if I don't want you."
He kissed her, and now it was a slow and patient kiss. It was a kiss that could last centuries. When she came up for air, she said, "You know this is where we did it the very first time."
He laughed. "I remember. You were so bendy. You are so bendy." Looking up at her, he seemed open. Happy. Free, in a way she hadn't seen in years. "God bless yoga."
She wanted to draw out the moment, but Dean moaned, grabbed her, frantic, almost desperate. As they rocked and writhed together, she saw his eyes go wider and wider, his expression lighter and lighter, as if years were shed with the ecstasy and simplicity of sex. He looked incredibly young. Vulnerable. Untouched by the horrors of the world.
###
Later that night in their bed in his room at the bunker, she snuggled close to him, wanting to be close for closeness' sake, for warmth, for the simple intimacy of the moment. Maybe because it was dark, Lisa dug up the courage to ask a question that had been stuck in the back of her head, so far back that she hadn't thought about it when she was grilling Dean earlier. Not consciously. Though maybe some part of her had been wanting to ask this particular touchy question.
"Dean?" she murmured, tracing her fingers over his bare chest. He looked down at her and raised an eyebrow. "Actual relationships aside," Lisa said softly, "is there anyone I've met, or who I might meet, who I should be aware of?"
"Aware of how?" he said, laughing just a bit, almost under his breath. His whole body and being—his mood seemed lighter than before.
"Maybe somebody you fell in bed with after a hunt? Or a friends and benefits situation? Those women you talk to on the phone sometimes? Jody. Claire. I think there's someone named Donna."
He laughed again, a deep, rumbly laugh. A belly laugh. "Oh, you are so off on those three. Just friends. I promise. Nothing more. And Claire, she's really young. She's Cas's, not his daughter, because you know that's not really a thing with angels. But she's ... his vessel's daughter. Cas basically screwed over her family, so he wanted to look out for the kid. And then, well, I tried to help out because he was making everything worse by trying to help. She's not much older than Ben. A kid sister, niece type of situation. I know it's ridiculously complicated, but that's who Claire is. Family. Jody and Donna, they're family too, in a way. No romantic shit there."
Lisa smiled, relieved, but she realized they were just getting closer to her real question. "And Cas?"
"What about him?"
She somehow managed to blurt out the words. "If there were something, if there had ever been something between you guys, it's fine. I just want to know. And I don't want to be getting in the middle of anything." Now she found herself holding her breath, waiting, not sure what Dean was going to say, or how he was going to react.
Dean got very still. Then he sat up, almost tossing her off him. "Are you kidding me?"
"Dean. I'm saying it's fine, I know how easy it is for a friend to be a lover, just for a night. Or a weekend. I just don't want to be the one person in the dark about this."
"He's a friend, dammit," Dean said, bristling visibly. Palpably. "He's a he. What the fuck are you even talking about?"
"He's not a he. Not really. He's an angel. Angels don't have genders, right? He could be in a different body and—"
"Well, he's not in a different body. And he's my best friend."
Lisa raised her brows. She couldn't stop the interrogation now. She had to know, one way or another. "Castiel stares at you, Dean."
Dean rolled his eyes. "He's not human. He just doesn't get how he's supposed to act, how he's not supposed to stare."
"He doesn't stare at anyone else like that. And he's attached to you in a way that he's definitely not attached to your brother."
Dean shrugged and leaned back against the bed frame.
Lisa pressed on, feeling like she had to press on. If they couldn't talk like this, it wouldn't be worth being here, or worth trying for them to be a them. Wimping out on asking the hard questions, or hiding her darkest feelings from Dean—that had been her mistake a decade ago.
"Look, you're attached to him too," she murmured. "It's obvious that he's important to you. And that's fine. And if it's been more than friendship, that's fine with me. I'm sure that hunters aren't the most tolerant bunch, so if this is a part of your life that you don't talk about it, if people don't know, I get it. I just don't want to be clueless. Or be unkind to him. We're basically all living together, Dean!
"And if you have feelings for him, or anybody else, I just want to know. All cards on the table. But I promise, I'm not judging anybody. I'm not mad at anybody. I won't tell Ben, if that's what you're worried about. And it wouldn't change the fact that I am freaking in love with you."
Dean laughed, a rough, bitter laugh. "For fuck's sake, Lisa. I'm not screwing my best friend. I'm not thinking about screwing my best friend." But something in his voice—it worried her. She did believe Dean, she really did, when he said nothing had happened between the two men. Or more precisely the man and the angel.
But still, something was going on inside Dean's head. There was more to this story. Lisa had a feeling that this new life she'd jumped into, it was going to be even more complicated than she'd imagined.
Dean let out a dramatic sigh, threw the covers off, pulled on a pair of jeans and a flannel, and stormed out of the room.
###
It was almost four o'clock in the morning in the bunker. Sam and Ben were asleep. Lisa was asleep. Dean had checked on her three times.
Dean had been alone for hours, sitting up drinking, pissed and confused and betrayed somehow. This night, it had been going better than good. Lisa had been everything he'd ever imagined, had opened herself up in a way he'd never dare to hope for. He'd glimpsed a future with her, with Ben. He'd pictured, not an apple pie life, but a life that didn't end bloody. Or, at least, a life where he had a chance to not end bloody.
A life with a home. Not a picket fence. But a bed like they used to share in her old house, the kind of bed with a memory foam mattress, an actual comforter, and pillows she'd picked out.
The occasional barbeque. A guest room for Sam, when he'd been on the road with his brother for weeks and it just made sense for Sam to tag along to Dean's house. He'd pictured a life that included going home to a house that wasn't just Lisa's but was also his. Though, to be on the safe side, he should stay off the mortgage paperwork. Better to not have anything that could tie this fantasy life back to the Dean Winchester who'd been a fugitive and then been dead, and then a fugitive again, and then, if he remembered correctly, dead again. Best to avoid awkward questions from realtors.
But still, a house. A master bedroom he could add on to, bring a few things from his world. Devils traps everywhere, of course. Laying all the risks and the dangers out in the open, not hiding any of his crap from Lisa. Well, hardly anything.
And then she'd ruined his stupid fantasy. Because she just had to bring up her very weird-ass theory that he was sleeping with his best friend. Which was literally insane and not true, and he didn't know why he even cared because it didn't have a smidge of truth to it, so he should have just laughed it off.
But she wasn't wrong about the looks Cas gave him. He'd been laughing those off for years. Laughing off Crowley's stupid taunts, the jokes made by all sorts of idiots. Still, Cas's gaze on him was something, meant something. Something more than Cas just being a weird-ass individual, an angel who didn't understand social morays and personal space.
Cas did look at Dean in a particular way that was only ever directed at Dean.
And Dean couldn't deny that he watched Cas sometimes. That he felt the pull. He felt the profound bond. And he wasn't sure it was brotherly. But at the same time, he felt such a pull towards Lisa. He loved Lisa. And he wasn't freaking gay. Not that there was anything wrong with dudes screwing dudes. Dean just didn't happen to be one of them.
There had been this one night when he was drunker than drunk and young. Maybe around the age of twenty-two. Sam was just off to college, being a selfish brat. Dean spent that year pulling job after job with his old buddy Lee. And one night they'd gotten into his dad's secret liquor stash, without John Winchester knowing. They'd gone camping, for some reason, just the two of them. Job was over. It was a perfect summer night.
They'd built one hell of a campfire. Roasted 'smores, ingredients of which Dean had lifted from a Piggly Wiggly. Lee had his guitar and goaded Dean into singing. Dean had really sung, sung out, his real voice, not the pretend-bad singing voice he belted out for everybody else. Even his brother thought Dean was crap at singing.
But Lee was different. Dean wasn't afraid of making a fool of himself in front of the other hunter, a young guy, just his age. Dean had started singing old folk songs he never would have admitted to anybody he knew the words to.
Lee was strumming, and then chiming in on the girl's part in one song. They were singing a duet and Dean was grinning. Lee leaned in. He kissed Dean Winchester on the lips, before Dean could pull away. A soft kiss. Dean was almost too drunk to react. And it was a sweet kiss. It felt warm and homey and if he'd been a little more drunk, he might have leaned in. He might have placed his hands on Lee's waist. But he was just sober enough to shake his head hard. "No, man. I don't swing that way."
"You sure?" Lee said.
Dean gulped and then he threw up, and he never found the moment to tell Lee that he had no idea what he wanted from him. Lee helped him to his sleeping bag so he could lie down and sleep it off, but making sure he was on his side in case he puked again. Careful not to touch Dean in any kind of intimate way. They never talked about it again. And nothing like that ever happened again, even with Castiel and his weird-ass looks. Dean had stuffed the memory, almost twenty years old, down so far that he'd almost forgotten it had happened.
Now, back in the present, in the bunker, as if on cue, the angel wandered into the room, sitting down too close for comfort. Cas began blabbering, without even a greeting for Dean, about some show he was bingeing on Netflix. Dean noticed the casual intimacy of the moment, and how it felt so normal. But the angel was, once again, too close. "Personal space, dude," Dean said as he turned to Cas. His friend gave him that intense look and backed up a couple inches. Those blue eyes were downright pretty.
"It is nice," his friend was saying, "being able to talk about insignificant things. With anybody. I never had that before I met you. I want to make sure that you know that I'm grateful. For you."
Dean swallowed. "Any news on the God front?"
Cas got a serious look on his face. Though it wasn't that different from his "it's Tuesday" look. "Angel chatter, but nothing that makes sense."
An image flickered into Dean's mind, the back of his mind, but it was there. And loud. He pictured himself standing up—crowding Cas until the other dude was inches away from the wall, his back to the wall. Dean imagined himself putting the other hand on the dude's other shoulder, pushing Cas up against the wall. Dean shivered.
"Dean?" Cas said, frowning. "Are you all right? Are you sick?"
Dean shrugged. "I'm ... Do you ever think about me?"
"Of course."
"It's just. Lisa said some things. And I'm so into her, I'm not trying to say I'm not into her."
Cas smiled and used overly dramatic air quotes. "I can tell you are 'into her.' And if you're asking me if I like her? She seems like an above average human woman who shows a remarkable amount of affection for a man who orchestrated having her memory wiped."
Dean snorted. "That's not what I'm asking you."
"Oh?"
"Cas," Dean murmured, not caring if he sounded stupid, because all his defenses had crashed down. He was not a hunter in this moment. Or the man his father had wanted. Or a bad ass. Or the tough-as-nails wise-ass Dean himself wanted to be.
His heart was pounding in his ears, but he was okay with that pounding. He felt alive, like he did on a hunt sometimes, when his life was on the line. This felt important. Vital. Necessary. So he let himself be stupid. He let himself be the son who his father would have been icked out by, best case scenario. Ashamed of, worst case. "Cas, do you ever think about me in a way that's ... you know?"
Cas looked confused. "I don't understand, Dean."
"I think you do." Dean's voice was extra gravelly.
"You'll have to clarify your meaning."
Dean had no idea what to say next, what he wanted, what he didn't want. He knew that he loved Lisa. He knew that Cas's profound bond was real, and that it went both ways. Dean knew that he'd been lying to himself about the way he looked at men sometimes. He knew that his father would hate this whole conversation, both the one he was having out loud with an angel and the one he was having in his own head with himself. He let his and Cas's words hang in the air until he gave up on trying to say or do anything, until he sank down into an armchair and guzzled the rest of his beer.
Cas, somehow sensing that Dean didn't have an answer to his simple question just sat down a few feet away and said nothing. They lapsed into a not uncomfortable silence. But then, of course, there was a voice behind him.
"Uh, Dad?" Ben said.
Dean groaned inwardly. The last thing he needed right now was the boy needing anything from him. But he plastered a fake smile on his face and said, "You can't sleep either?"
Ben shook his head.
"Want me to make you a bacon sandwich?"
Ben shook his head, looking nervous for some reason. Had he overheard their awkward conversation? "I'm not hungry."
"Do you need a bedtime story?"
The boy frowned. "How old exactly do you think kids are when they still need bedtime stories?"
Dean shrugged. "Fine. You want tea? Uncle Sam has some herbal shit, around here somewhere. Though, if you don't tell your mom, I've got some whisky that always does the trick for me."
Ben laughed but he shook his head. And held up a book. A book that looked suspiciously like the books of Death in Billie's library. "Dad! Shut up for a minute. I'm awake because I had a dream. An important dream."
"Go on," Cas growled, fussing with his clothes, smoothing down his shirt like his rumpled appearance suddenly mattered.
"It wasn't Death telling me what to do. It was somebody else. Something else. Some player, I don't know who. But they told me a bunch of stuff in my dream. I remember it word for word. I wrote it all down." Handing the oversized black book to Dean, Ben rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper he'd obviously torn from a spiral notebook. It was filled with cramped writing. "I've got it all, Dad. And the book, it tells a bunch of details. It's going to take a while to decode. It's in some language I've never seen before. I can read it, how cool is that?"
Cas snatched the book from Dean and flipped it open to a random page. "Enochian," he murmured. "Interesting that you could decipher even a glimmer of it."
Ben held up the college-ruled page with his dense scribbling all over the front and back. "We need the book, but they, whoever they are, they told me it was useless without a guide. That's what this is. Everything they said. It's going to take a while, but we know how to do it now."
"How to do what?" Dean and Cas asked in unison.
"How to get rid of Chuck. We don't exactly kill him. Well, it depends what you mean by kill. But this is how to beat him."
Dean felt a sense of wonder and hope and wellbeing flow through his mind and body, all the way to his fingertips and his toes. "Are you sure?"
Ben grinned and nodded. "Yeah. But we need three fathers and sons. There's you and me. There's Jack and Cas—"
Cas shook his head. "I have no biological link to Jack."
Ben shrugged. "According to them, you count. Something about you imprinting on him before he was born? Anyway, that's four of us. But we need two more."
Dean raised a brow. "Who else are we talking about?"
Ben bit his lip. "Did Uncle Sammy ever tell you about a woman named Jess?"
Dean's heart sunk. If anything depended on Jessica, they were toast. "She was his college girlfriend."
"Yeah, that's her."
"Ben, she got killed. Years ago. Demon did it, to get Sam back in the life."
Ben bit his lip so hard it looked like he might draw blood. "That's the thing, Dad. I don't think she is. Like, what they said is, Sam thinks this Jess lady is dead. But—"
Dean sighed. "Kiddo, she burned up on the ceiling of his room at Stanford. He saw it. I saw it. Jess is gone."
"I don't think she is," Ben said. "I don't know what happened. Maybe she was never dead. Maybe she got brought back. Like, that happens right? But somehow, she's around, and Uncle Sam, he's got a kid out there."
Cas was looking thoughtful. "Benjamin. You were told by a powerful entity who refused to identify itself ... that Sam Winchester has an heir with a woman he believes to be—"
"Knows to be!" Dean couldn't help interjecting.
Cas held up a hand, impatient. "Let's not get lost in semantics. This cosmic entity who is not Death ... has told you that not only does Dean Winchester have an heir, so does his brother?"
Ben nodded.
"And somewhere, buried in a book of Enochian, there are directions of some sort, which will allow three pairs of fathers and sons to enact something, a ritual perhaps? Something drawing on blood magic, perhaps, on the link between the generations, perhaps pulling power from your own storied bloodline along with Lucifer's son—"
Ben shrugged. "I guess?
"To kill Chuck. Or stop him in some sort of dramatic way?"
"Yes?" Ben's voice was smaller now, as if he was struck by the gravity of what he'd rushed into the room to say.
Castiel smiled and patted Dean on the back. Dean felt butterflies running all through him. "That's quite interesting."
Dean made his way into the kitchen. He grabbed three whisky glasses and his best bottle of bourbon. "This is more than interesting. This is amazing. I don't know how I'm going to tell Sammy, but this is the best news we've gotten in freaking years."
He poured the liquor into the glasses and handed one to his son, one to his angel. Bringing the third to his lips, he gulped down the elixir. "Good work, son."
Ben choked on his liquor. When he came up for air, he said, "I really just had a dream."
"You took notes," Cas said, sipping his drink even though Dean knew it tasted like molecules to him, that it wasn't actually pleasant or interesting to sample. "That was resourceful of you. And clever. Your father often discounts his intelligence, but it's formidable. I can see a bright future for you, Benjamin."
Ben nodded, looking pleased at Cas's praise.
Dean ran a hand through his hair, not knowing what he was going to do with all the implications of Lisa's words, with everything her clarity had dredged up inside him.
But knowing he wanted to savor this fucking win, this chance Ben had just brought them. And this boy in front of him! Damn, if his boy hadn't come through. "Son, this might be a damned cliché, but I'm proud of you." He held his glass up, motioning for a toast. When the other two had raised their glasses, Dean said, "To kicking Chuck's ass."
Ben and Cas grinned. And they all drank.
A/N
When I started this story, I wasn't sure if this was going to be a Dean/Lisa pairing or a Destiel pairing. I like both ships. But the farther I got into writing it, I felt sure that I wanted to explore Dean falling for Lisa again, even the possibility of a life they might share in the future. However, I think there's a good argument for Dean in canon being bisexual and for having an intense attraction to Castiel. So even once I knew that this was Dean/Lisa, I wanted Dean to reckon with his feelings for Cas, and for him to figure out who he is, so he can be authentic. I think in order to have any relationship work, he needs to be his authentic self and accept who he is, not who his father wanted him to be, or who a macho hunter should be. I hope it's clear in this chapter already that Lisa is going to help that journey, not hinder it, because she's completely non-judgmental about this issue, and is asking questions which force Dean to think about his sexuality, and specifically his feelings for Cas, in a conscious way. Dean, as we know, is far too good at suppressing his emotions.
In a previous draft, I had Dean impulsively act on his feelings for Cas by kissing him. That's why I revised and reposting this draft, where nothing physical happens. You can see more on this decision in my author's note on chapter five. But basically I decided that the kiss was a massive misstep and needed to be taken out.
