The Soul Burns Brighter Than The Sun

Chapter 3: Hot Girl Summer Vacay

Life back in the bunker is fine. Okay , it's a little weird. Eileen started living here semi-permanently a week or so ago, and the only reason they didn't bring her on their little excursion to Colorado was because she was out on her own case. Sam had texted her, letting her know they were leaving and what was happening, but she said she'd wait for them to come home.

So it's Eileen and Sam, and Dean and Cas living in the bunker, which is double the normal amount of people living there, so Dean supposes he should be happy that his whole family is alive and well.

Well. They're alive, at least.

Dean doesn't know what to do with Cas, so he tries to avoid him. But it's a large bunker with few places to be, so he mostly does a shitty job of it. To be fair though, he doesn't even know if he wants to avoid Cas. All he knows is that Cas is in love with him, and Dean...Dean doesn't know what to do with it.

Over the course of his pathetic love life, he's been in enough failed relationships to know that this one isn't gonna be the one –they piss each other off too much. Even if it is the one, it still doesn't matter because Cas deserves better. If Dean just gets Cas to realize that, maybe Cas will move on from him romantically, and hopefully they can stay friends.

There's also the fact that Cas forced Dean to live without him. Goodbye Dean, and then shoving him to the side. Dean still feels it, it's worse than anything Alistar did to him on the rack. It's worse than feeling his own knife carve into soul after soul. He feels it, right in his sternum, in every sigil that Cas carved in Dean's ribs. Every day for six-ish months, Dean felt the pain of Cas's death.

The problem with being human is that you're only supposed to die once, and Dean's died more times than he can count. Someone coming back from the dead isn't supposed to be something you feel. How do you recover from the pain of losing someone forever? What do you do when you get them back?

That's also the problem with Dean loving Cas and Cas loving him. Angels live forever, but if Cas ever dies, Dean will never see him again. Sam and Eileen will see each other in Heaven, under the white lights of the pearly gates, they'll embrace each other even after they've both been buried and gone rotten in their graves. If Cas dies, Dean will never see him again. He'll roam around in heaven but he'll never see Cas's blues or his wide crinkly smile, and that's not heaven at all. It's hell.

When you lose someone you love, the wound doesn't heal. It might close up and you might be able to pull the mask over your face and pretend better, but the gaping, bleeding, hole in your chest is still there.

What happens when someone you love comes back from the dead? What do you do when you're the one who left everything unsaid? Every day for six months, Dean wished he had said something, wished he had done anything, but Cas is back, and now Dean doesn't know what to do. He spent six months missing his best friend. What the hell would he do if Cas died and Dean had to live the rest of his life knowing what Cas's lips taste like? What his chest feels like against his own? Knowing what it feels like to have Cas smile against his mouth as they kiss?

That's the thing about coming back from the dead. Everything stays the way it was because you already know what it feels like to lose them.

Sam announces one day that they should all take a vacation together–to celebrate Cas's return, and the fact that they literally beat God. "We deserve to be fat, happy and sunburned." He reasons.

Which, that's all cool and dandy, but now Dean's stuck driving the Impala with Cas in the front seat next to him, and there's not even Sam's mop of a head as a buffer because he and his girlfriend are in Eileen's car up ahead.