005.

This is how Dean dies.

This is how the world ends.

They spend most of the hours before the apocalypse in the abandoned house that probably belonged to some nice family. There's a forgotten pool in the backyard, all filled with leaves and dead bugs, and an old inflatable ball that keeps, somehow, spinning in a circle. Dean spends a while staring out the window, at the pool, at the rows upon rows of empty suburban yards in the distance.

He looks into the mirror a few times, always surprised by his own reflection. The five o'clock shadow that he's been growing, the wrinkles under his eyes, his face puffy from the drinking. He looks a hundred years old, but he's only 45. Maybe 47. He hasn't kept track of his birthday since Sam died.

The world's going to end, and he can't stop it this time.

When he goes out into the stranger's living room, he finds Castiel kneeling on the trench coat he still wears. He's praying, which scares Dean a little for some reason.

"You think he's still out there?" Dean asks, kneeling with him.

He's quiet for a moment, like he's finishing up his prayer, then he curly says, "God still exists. He always exists,"

Dean chuckles softly. "Must be on vacation."

Castiel looks up sharply, like he's said something awful. But then his eyes loosen and he starts to chuckle, like laughing is a new concept. He bows his head and covers his mouth, but still laughs, and still looks so perplexed by it. Angels hardly laugh, but there are still remnants from the Hell wounds he took from Sam all those years ago, inflicting Cas's strange Angel mind.

"I don't know, Cas. If the whole world dies-"

"How can humankind mean anything?" Cas interjects, serious again.

"Well, we can't all fit in heaven, can we?" He's so tired.

Castiel doesn't try to answer at first. He tentatively raises his hand a few times, like he's about to say something. Then, he bows his head again, dropping his gaze to somewhere on Dean's forehead. He reaches out and grips the back of Dean's neck, seeming to copy the way in which Dean always grabbed him, or Sam, or Bobby, when he was going to say something really important.

"I believe…it's a plan," he says very slowly.

Dean stares back. He nods his head slightly. "Okay."

They watch the last sunset ever come across the hardwood floors of the house. They don't talk about God anymore, but they both think about it, very hard. Dean only wonders if he'll end up in heaven or hell. The answer is anyone's bet; a coin still turning in the air.

When it's dark, Cas turns on his side to look at Dean. The last bits of the moon will crash into the earth soon. The change in magnetism has pulled the oceans to the shores, the world is-half dead, a weak pulse of life. How demons and monsters could have managed this is beyond Dean. They stopped hunting a while ago, they stopped finding the answers to everything.

Dean takes Cas and handles him against his chest, sticks his face into the crook in his shoulder, smells deeply the last scent he'll ever smell and loves it with everything he has left. They take their clothes off, kiss every part. Dean has never had Cas this close. This is the I love you, the goodbye. The things they never said, or had to really say. Cas never knew exactly how to be when they had sex, he always lets Dean take him and move him and put him this way or that way, but tonight he keeps his hands in the same spot on Dean's arms, doesn't dare to move.

Dean, above all things, wants to not be numb now.

Later, when they are lying naked, Dean is close to sleep. Cas shuffles beside him, and Dean swears to God, he feels something brush against his stomach. The tickling, almost sharp drag of feathers. Wings, he's sure of it. A moment later, he feels nothing at all, nothing but Jimmy Novak's miraculously beating heart, and Castiel's soft prayers, still repeating.

Dean thinks it's a sign. This is one of his thoughts before he hears the impossibly loud sound of impact in the distance, and the ground shakes so that he can only close his eyes. He thinks something terribly clichéd, like here I come, Sammy.

And he wonders if he'll feel Cas's wings in heaven.