CHAPTER ONE

I love it when I wake up in the morning and don't have to save the world, Dean thought.

It was eight o'clock on a perfect late September morning. Dean was standing by the coffee machine in Bobby's kitchen – no, his kitchen – and focusing every fiber of his being on that ecstatic experience of taking the sanctified First Sip. Black, of course, the way all good coffee deserves to be drunk. Outside the window, a few red and gold leaves fluttered lazily down from the trees bordering the car lot, and the sunlight was almost blue with bright purity. Sam wasn't up yet, so Dean had the morning to himself. It was a good feeling, even if there was still an aching hole somewhere inside him that marked Bobby's absence.

Logically, it was to be expected that most hunters wouldn't make it to old age, but for years some part of Dean had clung like a child to the knowledge that somewhere, his substitute father-figure was manning the phones, doing research, drinking whiskey, something, anything. And now the simple fact that he wasn't anywhere, wasn't doing anything, still made Dean's throat close up at the most unexpected moments. He was dealing, sure. He'd had plenty of experience at grieving. But that didn't mean it got any easier.

Somehow, though, the fact that Bobby had left Singer Auto to the boys was a comfort. To be in the familiar space made Dean feel safe, although of course he wouldn't admit that to anyone. And it provided them a badly-needed center point around which everything else seemed to be changing these days. Together, the brothers and Castiel had achieved the unachievable: peace on Earth. Well, relatively speaking.

After having learned that Lucifer, as a former angel, still apparently had his grace, they had come up with their plan in a matter of days. Sam had discovered an old binding ritual that a nervous Castiel had confirmed would work to lock an angel's grace within a physical object. The set-up had taken weeks and had been one of the scariest jobs they'd ever done, but in the end the source of all Lucifer's power had been locked into the demon-killing knife (it was more durable than a human-made object), rendering him almost completely harmless. Castiel had then taken the knife and hidden it in Heaven – the one place where Lucifer would be utterly unable to come find it. Having their leader bridled in this fashion had terrified all the lower-ranking creatures of Hell, and since then, supernatural evil in the world had (knock on wood) effectively vanished.

Castiel, meanwhile, had ended the war in Heaven and established peace among the angels, gaining a new level of respect from all of his brothers and sisters. Those who had previously been leery of his relationship with the humans had changed their mind upon seeing that it hadn't caused him to "go soft", and many of them had even agreed to patrol the Earth and check that demon activity was staying at a minimum.

All of which meant, in a nutshell, that the Winchesters had hardly anything left to do. From time to time they would still get reports of an angry ghost or the like, but their lives had generally become pretty quiet. When they heard, after Bobby's death, that he had left them his house and land, they decided to temporarily make it their home base while they figured out what to do next. Dean had picked out a few of the less beat-up cars as "fixer-uppers" and was eventually planning to sell them, once he'd made them good as new again. Sam, meanwhile, seemed determined to avoid thinking about returning to school, preferring to spend his time cataloguing Bobby's immense and unorganized library.

In the past weeks, the two of them had settled into a routine, punctuated by ever more frequent visits from Castiel, who was still sorting out some heavenly bureaucracy but seemed to want to regularly check up on the brothers' emotional state, knowing how much Bobby had meant to the two of them. Sam had commented to Dean the other day that he was starting to get the impression Cas actually missed the gruff old man too, or else why would he constantly be dropping in on them at home? His visits had been becoming longer and longer, and although the angel really had nothing to do, he sure did a lot of it at Singer Auto these days.

Dean drained his cup, and heard the floorboards upstairs creaking in protest – Sam must be up. Dean refilled the percolator, not bothering to change the coffee grounds. Sam liked his coffee weak, for some inexplicable reason.

Soon his younger brother entered the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. "Morning, Dean. Coffee?"

"Brewing. Feel like frying up some eggs?"

Sam grumbled but obligingly opened the refrigerator and started digging around in it. Dean leaned against the counter, holding his still-warm coffee mug in both hands, and blatantly enjoyed doing nothing. He'd cooked enough meals for his brother when they were kids, he reasoned. It was time for Sammy to return the favor.

Just as the eggs were finished, a rustle of wings came from the study and Castiel appeared in the door to the kitchen.

"Hey, Cas," Dean greeted him. "If I didn't know you don't need to eat, I would accuse you of having suspiciously good timing."

Castiel narrowed his eyes at Sam's slightly crispy eggs and didn't comment. "Hello Dean, Sam."

Sam started scraping the eggs onto two plates, and Dean re-evaluated his opinion that his brother ought to be the new cook. Oh well, they were hot and greasy, and that was good enough for him. He dug in.

"Sure you don't want any, Cas?" Sam asked.

"No. Thank you." All the same, the angel advanced, pulled out a chair, and sat down with them at the table.

After Dean had worked his way through a couple of eggs, he decided it was time for some breakfast conversation, seeing as Castiel hadn't said another word and was just watching him eat with those unnervingly blue eyes. "So, Cas." Dean took a swig of orange juice. "How're things upstairs? Got the heavenly engines up and running again?"

"Yes." Cas ducked his head and gazed at the tabletop, seeming a bit lost.

"Well that's good, right?" Sam said encouragingly. "You should be proud of yourself. You averted what could have been a complete disaster."

"That's true. Everything's going very well in Heaven now. I don't..." Castiel paused and knitted his brows. Finally he said, seeming surprised by his own words, "I don't really know what to do with myself."

"Huh." Dean forked the last remains of his breakfast into his mouth and chewed reflectively. "They don't need you at the wheel as long as it's smooth sailing, right? That's great, take a load off."

"What do you want to do, Cas?" Sam asked.

The angel sighed, sounding very human, and sat back in his chair. "I don't know. That's the problem. I'm so accustomed to... working. Fighting. All that. I feel like something's missing. I need something... but I don't know what."

"Maybe you need a special someone in your life," Dean joked. "Any lady angels you got your eye on?"

Castiel met his eyes with a slightly vexed expression. "Dean. You know we do not actually have genders."

"Right, well, my point still stands."

"Or maybe you should just travel around, explore the world," Sam suggested. "I mean, if you haven't already seen it all."

"I've seen most of it," Castiel replied. "And I don't wish to initiate intimate relations with another angel, Dean," he added pointedly. "That is a very human idea of entertainment."

"Fine, whatever, I was just trying to help," Dean said with a shrug, gathering up his dishes and taking them to the sink. "If you want to make yourself useful, you could help Sam sort through all Bo– all the books here."

"Hey, that's an idea!" Sam brightened at this thought. "I could use your help identifying some of the older texts, Cas. I can recognize most of the languages, but I can't read them well enough to figure out what they're about."

Eventually Castiel acquiesced to this plan and trailed off after an enthusiastic Sam, while Dean was left to do the washing up. He didn't mind, though, and found himself humming some Zeppelin as he contemplated getting out to the garage and taking his first real look at that gorgeous old Mustang he'd discovered under a tarpaulin in the back of the barn the other day. The chassis was pretty beat up, but a peek at the engine had been promising, and Dean couldn't wait to get it out of that dusty back room into the light and really give it a once-over.

When he finally got to work, the first problem turned out to be that the hood latch was broken. It would be an easy fix, though. He prodded the latch assembly and peered closely, trying to figure out whether he wanted to replace the whole thing or not.

"Hello, Dean."

He jumped, and the hood fell shut. Damn, the mechanism for holding it open was evidently broken, too. Dean sighed, and swung around to face the unexpected angel. "Hi, Cas. What's up, did you get tired of Sam that fast? I thought you'd have fun geeking out with him."

"No... I just..." Castiel's hands hung by his sides, and he gave off a distinctly frumpy and useless aura that had somehow intensified since breakfast half an hour ago.

"You just what?" Dean turned back to the car and gingerly lifted the hood, hoping the sudden drop hadn't further damaged the latch assembly.

"I wanted to see what you were doing," Castiel finished, his voice sounding more gravelly than ever.

Dean raised an eyebrow to himself, and carefully let the hood down again before turning back around. "Okay, listen up dude, you need to find a hobby or something. This is just getting ridiculous. Do you seriously have nothing to do in Heaven? Or, you know, anywhere else?"

The angel seemed to deflate a bit. "No, I don't."

"Well look, it's not like we don't want you around – you're our friend, you're always welcome – but you have got to figure out something to do with yourself."

"I don't know what there is to do," Castiel confessed. "I've always had orders to follow. Now I don't anymore."

"All right." Dean pointed a finger at him. "In that case, I've got new orders for you: go have fun. I can't stand to see you moping around here anymore. I know the Earth isn't as big for you angels as it is for us, but it's still a pretty cool place full of all sorts of crazy shit. Go take some risks, meet some people, just look around. You can travel at the speed of, like, thought, it shouldn't be hard for you. And, who knows–" he shrugged and started pulling on his work gloves– "maybe you'll find out what it is you need. At the very least you can come back and tell us some awesome stories."

Castiel stared at him for a moment and then slowly nodded. "All right, Dean. If you think I should do this thing, I will."

"Cool." Dean returned his attention to the car, and when he next glanced up, the angel was gone.

At lunchtime Sam was peeved, and asked where Cas had gotten to. Dean briefly summarized the conversation they'd had in the garage, and Sam huffed that he could have just sent Castiel back inside to keep helping him with the books. But Dean knew that Sam understood why he'd done it. Everything was changing right now, not just for the brothers, but for Castiel too. Deep down inside, a tiny part of Dean felt bad about sending him away, but mostly he just hoped the experience would be a good one for Cas. He assumed the angel would continue to drop in from time to time and regale the Winchesters with tales of his travels and encounters. About this, however, Dean was very wrong.