Dean is tired. Exhausted, even. Too tired of losing the people he loves without saying to them what he needs to say. 

And, oh, he thought he’d lost his biggest chance yet when Castiel had been killed. It was final enough that he can’t stop staring now. Castiel is sitting at the war room table like he’s always been there, and never left. Sipping coffee with a strange face. He doesn’t like it, but will almost always have a cup if either Sam or Dean are because he believes that pleasures such as coffee should always be shared. Sam once said food and drink taste better when shared, and Castiel probably took that to heart.

“I love you,” Dean says roughly, only half way through his first cup and still too sleepy for his stubborn-fucking brain to be able to stop him. 

Castiel blinks at him and says nothing.

Dean scrubs a hand over his mouth. “I mean, I’m in love with you,” he clarifies. “Like… the… uh, the not brotherly way.”

Castiel contemplates him with a neutral expression for a long time. Dean can’t help but think he’s at least glad the look of mild disgust from the coffee is gone, because if he won’t say anything, at least he isn’t breaking Dean’s heart with the wrong facial expression.

Dean clears his throat. He’s not sure what he’s about to say, but silence is inappropriate right now.

“I killed you,” Castiel says, horrifyingly even-voiced. “A hundred times. A thousand times.”

Still too sleepy to process, Dean says, “huh. Did you? I don’t remember anything like that, man.”

Castiel places his mug carefully on the table. “It was in Heaven. With Naomi. Back when she was…” The only sign of his shame is the slight cant of his eyes to the left.

Dean nods quickly. He remembers that part.

“I had to kill you that many times to be able to do it without hesitation.”

With a heavy sigh, deflating in his chair, Dean says, “what’s that got to do with anything?” His morbid curiosity wants him to ask what it was like the first time. And then the thousandth, but that’s only because he’s starting to panic that he hasn’t got an answer.

Until he has. “It has everything to with anything. I had to kill you that many times because no matter how much Naomi dug into my brain or reprogrammed me over the millennia, I still loved you enough to hesitate a thousand times.”

It might have been said with little inflection, in the way soft confessions often are, but Dean’s brain still begins to tingle. He holds his hand out, testing the truth of it, and Castiel takes it. Threads their fingers together. “Thank you,” he says stupidly, though heartfelt.

Castiel smiles. “You’re welcome.”