When Dean left the War Room, half empty bottle of beer in hand, he had every intention of shutting himself up in his room, blasting some Metallica at a mind numbing volume, finishing his beer and probably the rest of that bottle of cheap whiskey under his bed before passing the fuck out. No dark thoughts, no lingering guilt, no impending fucking doom. No voices to haunt him, to taunt him. A brief moratorium granted by harsh, dissonant chords and a blessed, drunken haze.

As it were, Dean's beer sits on his nightstand, forgotten. His headphones are pressing against his ears, but he never quite got around to pressing Play. His thoughts are a violent fog, crowding in around him, obscuring even the most well-lit corners of the room. A siren song, a sinister melody, a loop of damning promises are wrapping around his edges, pulling him back under.

The Mark is gone from his arm, but the specter of darkness remains a schism within his soul.

A soft knock at his bedroom door draws him back to the surface, his heart skips a beat. Blinking away the haze and pulling the headphones off, Dean drags his body to sit more upright against his headboard and tosses the headphones to the floor.

He opens his mouth to speak, clears his throat roughly when he doesn't make a sound. He tries again. "Yeah," his voice is clear, and if it sounds the tiniest bit tremulous, he's happy to pretend that the vibrations are lost within the grain of the heavy wooden door.

The knob twists slowly, the door creeps inward. Cas stands at the edge of the threshold, a soft, sheepish smile on his face. The trench coat and jacket are gone, his hair sticks out in every possible direction, a casualty of nervous fingers running across his scalp. Dean focuses extremely hard on ignoring how fucking adorable Cas is sometimes. It's a constant struggle that he constantly loses.

"Hey," Dean says, awkwardly breaking the awkward silence between them.

It seems to jolt Cas into action, stepping over the threshold and shutting the door behind him. The sheepish smile is still firmly in place. Cas is shuffling his weight side to side, hands deep in his pockets, and Dean internally rolls his eyes at himself for the inappropriate thoughts crossing his mind. This is goddamned ridiculous.

Finally, Cas shrugs his shoulders and lifts his gaze to meet Dean's.

"Sam said I should give you some time."

Dean squints his eyes at Cas, very aware of how uncertain he is about how long he's been sitting here, lost in the furor of his thoughts. But Cas is being shifty, and that makes him suspicious.

"Ah," Dean leans over, presses the button to illuminate the screen on his phone. "A whole twenty minutes."

When Dean shifts back against the headboard, a smirk creeping across his face, Cas drops his head, smiling a little wider.

"The first fifteen minutes were considerably productive," he takes a few steps closer to the foot of the bed. His smile has turned a bit dry, whether from uncertainty or embarrassment, Dean isn't sure. It's still cute as fuck. "Sam taught me how to use the coffee machine."

Dean nods solemnly, conveying his understanding. The important things. Of course.

"And the last five?" he asks, although he's absolutely certain now, given the blush deepening the color of Cas' cheeks.

"They were spent oscillating out in the hallway."

Dean bursts out laughing. It's probably not even that funny, but he really doesn't give a shit. It's Cas, and it feels really fucking good to see this guy look almost bashful, to watch the smile on his face grow, to watch his barely suppressed laughter shake his shoulders.

They lock eyes. Dean is still chuckling when he pats the mattress beside him, "Make yourself at home, Cas."

He watches Cas' eyes widen as they travel to the empty space beside Dean. But he composes himself quickly, a casual smirk intact as he closes the distance and flops down onto the bed. Dean is not one hundred percent certain what the fuck he just got himself into.

Dean glances down at the space separating them as Cas shifts back to lean against the headboard, kicking his feet up like honey just got home from a long ass day at work. He notices Cas lost his shoes along with his trench coat and jacket somewhere between the war room, the kitchen, and here. Dude's just missing the beer and the remote to complete the picture and that's just fucking strange.

It's really strange. And it is goddamned perfect.

Cas catches his eyes from his (astonishingly) relaxed position, a wry smile quirking his lips, "We should, probably, talk," a brief shrug punctuates the last word, his eyes roll up towards the ceiling.

Dean huffs out a laugh as Cas shifts his eyes back toward him, that fucking smirk still firmly in place. Goddamnit, Cas.

He leans forward, rests his arm across his left knee and studies the sheets. He knows there no escaping this, that time is up, but he was hoping for more than a five second reprieve. He can feel the anxiety surfacing, feel his skin begin to crawl. So much needs to be said, so many stories have to be told. All of them, for years, have been trying to build a house of cards with the same old fucking deck. They're still working on the foundation and they ran out of friggin' cards a long ass time ago.

Years upon years, the same old shit. Good intentions gone bad. Lies on top of pretense. Bridges burned before they were ever crossed. And every time they try to rebuild amidst the cosmic fallout, the cycle restarts and there's just no way to get off this goddamn ride. And he's tired. God, he's tired.

Dean smiles blankly at his hands. He's picking at his fingers, fidgeting with his watch, restless in his urge to move, to get back to work, to fix what he has broken. To lay some concrete in that goddamn foundation.

"I wouldn't even know where to start, man," he says, turning his head to meet an infinite sea of blue that gives him pause. He chokes on his levity, swallows down his pretense.

Neither of them have ever exactly been rhetoricians, but over the years, they've created their own particular brand of esoteric language, communicated in glances, touches, and a lot of stares. It's weird. But it's their thing. It's his thing with Cas.

Still. Words are probably good.

Eyes focused on his fidgeting hands, Dean inhales sharply, parts his lips to try out the whole words thing. To tell Cas that he knows about Sam's deal with Rowena. To tell Cas that the world wouldn't be facing Apocalypse III: The Final Cut if it wasn't for him. To tell Cas that he hasn't slept in days because all he can see, all he can hear, is The motherfucking Darkness telling him they're bound, whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean.

Instead, Dean rubs at his brow and says, "We've got…so much work to do. And we got nowhere to start. Every option we have is bad, and choosing one of them is just gonna end up more bad," he sighs, shoulders slouching, allowing the lingering weight of defeat to finally settle in. "This. Cas, this is gonna get ugly. And it's gonna cost lives, no matter what choices we make," he pauses, closes his eyes, shudders as he drags air into his lungs. He whispers, "I don't think I want to do this anymore, man."

He takes in more air, the burden dragging him down, suffocating him agonizingly slowly. Dean glances back toward Cas, sitting upright now, pulled taut, looking every inch like he's aching to reach out to Dean.

Dean can see the intention, the want, the wet shine of Cas' eyes in the dull yellow light. The smirk has been washed away in the shit storm Dean just rained down on the moment. He would lament the loss of pretense, could very possibly regret shining the sun upon the twelve elephants in the room. But he's fucking tired of pretending.

His heart and his mind are torn in two very different directions. He could close the distance between them, throw out the old and busted playbook, give up on this particularly cursed house of cards and start something new. Or he could respect the chasm of everything between them, never walk out along the proverbial ledge with the hope for something different, something good. It would be safer. Easier. Family may not end in blood, but this family – their family. In the end, they're all gonna die bloody. And that particular brand of fear is abiding.

Dean doesn't move. And Cas won't move.

Deadlock.

It's absurd, really. They're like two lighthouses. An ocean lay between them and they are both rooted, immoveable, perpetually sending signals out across the sky just to let the other know that they're alive.

But their ocean – it is life and it is purpose. It is comprised of everything they are, everything they ever wanted to be. Their words are muted by the cresting waves, but the intensity of the surge speaks the depths of their devotion. It is a recondite language, elucidating their ebb and flow - the violence and placidity in the nature of the tides

They are immoveable objects, but everything between them is an unstoppable force.

Eventually, something has to give.

Fuck me. I need sleep.

Dean squeezes his eyes shut, bringing a hand up to massage the bridge of his nose, a futile attempt at staving off the worsening ache pressing against his skull. He(gently) shakes his head, takes a few slow, calming breaths, tries to clear his mind. Tries to shake it off.

He cracks his eyes open, catching Cas watching him in his peripheral.

Shake it off, Dean chuckles to himself. He can't shake this shit. Not ever.

Cas is the first to break the silence.

"Dean, if anyone on this Earth deserves peace, it's you," his eyes are so goddamned earnest, his voice is the epitome of conviction. And all Dean can do is shake his head, hunch in on himself further. He knows exactly what Cas isn't saying. He can feel the displacement in the space between them as Cas sways a fraction of a damned inch closer. "But you can't just give up. I won't. Let you." Dean Winchester, you deserve to be saved.

Dean smiles blankly at his hands, wets his lips and nods his head, hearing the message loud and clear. He knows they've had this conversation before, more times and in more ways than he would rather remember. But this isn't that. This isn't about being weak or faithless or friggin' irredeemable. This is about being tired. Tired of the merry-go-round. Tired of going around and around and around in fucking circles, making different variations of the same goddamned choices that gets one or all of them killed.

This past year was a death row sentence, sitting on a cell block and waiting for the end. But somewhere between buying yet another second chance at life and giving in to his archaic fucking form of addiction, Dean learned a thing or two about life. He learned about what it means to actually save someone, whether they deserve it or not. He watched good men become monsters, he heard the stories of men and women who changed their lives entirely, with nothing to go on but faith. He faced the absolute worst of himself. And he did things. Things he'll never forgive himself for.

But there were moments, in all of that. Moments when saving people wasn't just about destroying the monster. It was about saying the right thing, making the right call. It was about giving people hope, something to believe in, when their entire worlds were crumbling to ash at their feet. Saving people, is a completely separate entity from hunting things. John left that part out of the Monster Hunter Bible School sessions.

He glances up at Cas, who is looking particularly verklempt. Dean knows he's probably bracing himself, expecting some heartbreaking sermon on the Edict of Dean Winchester. Thou shalt never pull my sorry ass out the fire.

Dean almost wants to laugh. Almost.

Instead, he bites his lower lip and dips his head. "I mean, this is my life, Cas. Hunting. Saving people-" an empty grin spreads across his face. "It does sound a hell of a lot better on paper," he drops his eye back down to his hands, gaze carving a path along his veins to the spot where the Mark should be. Used to be. Should have never been. "But really, it's all just a fucked up, sadistic game. And none of us are ever gonna learn the fucking rules.

"There ain't nothing free in this world. We've all learned that the hard way. Every life saved comes at a price. And it eats at you-" he pauses. Dean can feel the intensity of Cas' stare rattling his bones as he clenches his left hand down on his forearm. "There's hardly any line between us and them anymore, Cas," he turns his head to search Cas' eyes. "You have got to see that by now, man."

Dean watches the bob of Cas' Adam's apple, watches Cas' eyes shift away from him, making an admirable effort at conjuring a different answer out of thin air. In the end, Cas slumps back against the pillows, finally allowing the weariness of the past couple of days settle in.

Cas sets his jaw. He can't tell Dean he's wrong, but he wants to believe in something else. And that's good. That's real good.

"I have made more bad choices than I could ever hope to repent. I know. Good intentions-" Cas pauses. He smirks, locks his eyes with Dean's. There is a tilt to Cas' head, a squint in his eyes. And Dean knows that Cas is catching up. "I have been afraid of myself, for a long, long time. I have been afraid for Sam. I have been endlessly afraid for you," Cas says, plucky as you like, yet his hands are fiddling with the buttons of his shirt and there is the smallest tremor in his voice. He's so goddamned human. So beautifully fucking human. "I'm afraid of what we're all capable of. So much so, I…I think I forget. I think we all forget. The purity of good intentions. Of the lives we do manage to save."

Dean nods, "We can't live our lives waiting to become the things we hunt. Can't live our lives waiting to die. That's what eating at us, man," Dean sighs, rubs his forehead unconsciously. The exhaustion is pulling at his edges, but he's not ready to give in just yet. "I want to live, Cas. I want to hunt and I want to do whatever I can to save this godforsaken rock. And we're gonna find a way. We're gonna find a way to be whoever we are and we're gonna fucking find a way to live - and I mean really fucking live - while we do it. We've missed out on too much as it is," he inhales, feels the weight of his own words settle in silence between them. It feels right. Calm. "I am so damned tired of missing out on life."

A huff brings his attention back to Cas. Dean takes in the curve in the set of his lips, the pride emanating from his eyes. He and Cas are on the same page. And that. That is a fucking accomplishment.

Achievement unlocked. Now the hard part – putting all the rhetoric into some goddamned action.

Dean pulls his other leg in, angling his body toward Cas. The space between them – a couple of inches of wrinkled, white linen sheets – it is infinite, nebulous, it's taunting him. But there's a gleam in Cas' red-rimmed eyes now. A challenge.

The space between them is vast, daunting. It's another death sentence. It is salvation.

Action. For the first time, Dean thinks about crossing the ocean.

Dean thinks of Cas' head cradled in his hands, of the relief that spread through him as those devastatingly blue eyes focused on him, dulled by weariness, by burden. But alive. As close to whole as Cas ever seems to get.

He thinks of the tenderness of his hands against Cas' skin. He had forgotten that his hands could be gentle amidst all the violence. He thinks of Cas' fingers clutched tightly into the fabric of his jacket, driven by pure, unadulterated desperation. Seeking stability, stillness – calm in the aftermath of the storm.

Dean thinks of everything they have been through – Hell, the apocalypse, lost faith, betrayal, Purgatory, abandonment, lies, pain, blood, tears. It is all so far, far removed from anything resembling a normal life. But it's all just so fucking broken, so utterly goddamned human, that it's the only thing left that still feels real. After everything. Despite everything.

Because of everything.

Dean thinks of everything he's ever wanted. Everything he's ever denied himself. He thinks of all the reasons, bullet points highlighted in bold, that he has forced himself to believe in the inadequacy of his worth, the danger that drips from every syllable of "I love you."

It's tiring. He's so goddamned tired.

Cas is still watching him. Immoveable. The ocean between them surges. Unstoppable. So he moves.

Dean shifts his body again, lists to the side and rests his head on Cas' thigh. He feels every muscle in Cas' body freeze, probably in shock. Understandably in shock. He draws his knees in and tries to release the tension, soaking in the warmth surrounding him. He can feel Cas breathing, feel every slow drag of breath, feel his stiffness ebb as each second grows longer. He can hear every gear grinding in Cas' mind. The fear is tangible. And the moment Cas is suddenly boneless against him, Dean knows that Cas understands he's made a choice.

A hand falls gently into Dean's hair. He closes his eyes, sucks in a breath, as the fingers trail through his hair. Tenuous. Loving. Dean knows that if he turned his head, the eyes staring back would speak every ounce of Cas' devotion. A part of Dean is rebelling against the purity of the touch. The part that subsists on self-flagellation, on self-hatred.

The touch burns. He tells himself that this is what it is to be cleansed.

This thing with him and Cas. It's an ache in a crack in his foundation, something that was broken open at some indeterminate point in time between resurrection and the end of the goddamned world. Since then, that crack has only expanded, the ache has suffused him, filling up the empty spaces. Knitting his essence back together, even as the chinks in his armor shattered the ground beneath his feet. Destruction and deliverance in the fall.

Right now. In this moment. With his head resting against Cas' thigh, his fingers clenched in the fabric of his pants, he is broken and he is falling. His own darkness is encircling his mind, the weight of their burdens are pressing in around them, the clock is ticking on the fucking countdown to the end. He is completely. Absolutely. Fucking overwhelmed.

"This is getting too big, Cas," he whispers, voice rough. He doesn't know if he means him and Cas, or the threat of The Darkness, or his chains to his legacy wrapping him up and pulling him back under, suffocating. All he knows is that he's tired, he's aching, and the soft scratching of blunt nails against his scalp is a balm to each and every source of his pain.

Broken and falling. Destruction and deliverance. Peace and freedom.

It's all the same fucking thing. A choice to live, a choice to die. A choice to rise, a choice to fall.

It is human to live, to try, if only to fail.

It's all they fucking got.

Cas brings up his other hand to rest lightly against Dean's temple, unmoving. Dean can feel the intention in the touch. He can feel Cas' guilt filling the silence of the room. He can imagine the ocean of words unspoken, past choices gone horribly wrong, calming beneath them as they bridge the distance between them.

Cas sighs against him, "I wish you would let me fix this."

He knows. Dean knows he can't change what happened. He can't absolve Cas of his guilt any more than Cas can absolve him of his own. Dean remembers Cas' desperate pursuit of penance, remembers that motel room confession back in Oklahoma City, remembers Cas' eyes, pleading at the business end of his own blade. Dean knows that if could lay hands on and take that kind pain away from Cas, he would. In a fucking second.

It's impossible, he knows. Cracks in the exterior are only a chapter in the story every man carries with him, told by the scars he wears across his heart. And a man is allowed to decide his own worth by the weight of his own heart, by the details that comprise the entirety of that goddamned story. But a man cannot decide his place in another person's story. He can't decide the weight of his worth in the heart of another. They have to be able to choose the burdens they carry.

Dean thinks he's starting to get it.

"I don't want you to fix it, Cas," he says. He twists his neck around to meet Cas' eyes, injecting every ounce of his conviction into his gaze, even if his voice is a trembling, delicate thing. "I want to change it."

He watches Cas' eyes widen minutely, understanding of the volumes spoken between Dean's words and the signals his eyes sent out across the sky saturating his Grace. Words are good. Words are friggin' fantastic.

But him and Cas – words are never going to be enough. They speak in their silence, in their stillness, in those in-between moments when it's just them. The calm is the bridge that carries them across the ocean. That brings them home.

Cas nods, a soft smile graces his features as he ghosts his fingers along Dean's jaw. It burns. It's fucking amazing. I don't want to lose this. Not ever.

"Okay," Cas says. "We'll do that."

Dean's lips quirk into a genuine smirk as he settles his head back down against Cas' thigh. He closes his eyes, allows the tension to drain away from this muscles, lets the serenity of the moment seep deep down into his soul. As Cas runs his fingers deftly through Dean's hair, his other hand falls to grasp Dean's forearm where it's curled against his chest.

Dean inhales sharply as Cas' thumb strokes across the patch of skin were the Mark used to be. Phantom fire licks at his skin and he shivers, burying his face into the fabric of Cas' pants. Dean's other hand grasps at the wrinkled sheets, grasps at Cas' arm as his thumb continues to massage circles around that exact spot.

He can feel something deeply embedded within him rebel against the touch, against the intentions. So many years, decades of life spent questioning his value, molding himself to fit impossible models, and failing every damned time. The question was never whether or not he wanted this, wanted Cas. It was whether he deserved him. He can hear the resounding No shaking across his core, but a stuttering whisper of Yes is pulsing through him, begging to be heard, pleading for respite.

The fingers still scratching lightly at his scalp are a blessing, a stark contrast to the pressure of the thumb against that spot of skin, setting him ablaze and he can't breathe. He can't think. It's just him and Cas and fucking flames consuming him, drowning out the dissonance of his thoughts, and this. This is breaking. This is falling.

This is deliverance.

He reaches back, catching the back of Cas' head, burying his fingers into the soft, short hairs. He twists his head, locks eyes with Cas and feels every damned inch of his heart slowly knitting back together with the intensity of Cas' gaze.

Dean's heart is racing, his lungs are aching for oxygen, the world is tilting and he's drunk on it, the frenetic energy devouring his well-worn facade. For the first time, in a long damned time, he feels alive.

"You know this ain't gonna be easy," Dean says. His voice is fucking wrecked. He is fucking wrecked. It is fantastic.

He's not even sure what he meant. Blanket statement, mostly. To all the shit they still have to deal with. To everything that will come. More bad choices. More lives lost. Good intentions gone wrong. Lies on top of pretense.

But the hardest thing, out of all of it, is always going to be altering their propensity for tearing up their own foundations. Burning their bridges before they can be crossed.

Dean made his choice. Houses made of cards aren't built to last. Fear is the heart of the ocean between them. Fear of something real, something lasting. Fear of love and adoration and the notion of forever being torn away at the edge of a blade or the barrel of a gun. Fear of feeling everything, and losing it. Being left with nothing. Being haunted by the ghosts of gentle touches, the soft press of lips against warm skin. Being haunted by the gravity of fingers clenched into the short hairs at back of the neck of the one person that could ever be worth shattering the entire fucking illusion. That kind of fear is visceral, abiding.

Dean's fingers tighten at the back of Cas' head. Those eyes. Those goddamned eyes.

Dean made his choice. The threat of pain, of loss – it will always be there. But he doesn't have to fear it.

Nothing was built to last forever. The transitory nature of life will take them all in the end. But the purpose of being given life is to fucking live it. And Dean is so damned tired of waiting for some abstract point in time when his real life will start.

He's alive. And he's been missing it. All these years.

This feeling. The immensity of the burn at each point of contact. The magnitude of Cas' gaze, the blue composing the rhythm of the ebb and flow of the ocean between them. They are lighthouses. They are distant galaxies. They are stars and the dark matter between them. And Dean made his fucking choice to bridge the gap.

Even if Cas is gone tomorrow. To have this moment. To have this stillness, to have this silence. To allow himself to feel the illimitability of love amidst the fire…

It was worth it. So fucking worth it.

It won't be easy. But Dean knows the wetness against his eyelashes and his grip in Cas' hair speaks the depth of his own conviction. They'll make the rest up as they go.

Dean drops his hand, turns over to burrow his head against Cas' thigh. The fingers in his hair resume their light scratching. The thumb on his forearm resumes its stroking. Dean hadn't even realized they had been frozen in the flames.

He allows the exhaustion to settle in, allows the gentle caresses to ease the aches, hush his reeling thoughts. He's drifting, content in the warmth surrounding him, but still aware of the threats and shadows creeping in around the edges, searching for the cracks. He's still afraid. But he's only human.

Dean clenches his hand into Cas' pant leg, shifting his back closer to the warmth of Cas' belly.

"S'not gonna be easy," he slurs, losing the battle with the haze of sleep.

He hears a distant chuckle. It's fond. It's fucking lovely.

"I'd be disappointed if it were."

Dean falls asleep smiling.