Archive of Our Own ^beta

There was once a time when Castiel was so filled with the grace that he carried in the blood beneath the skin of his palms that all that was needed to heal a wound or ease a grief had been the touch of his hand.

Nora is not blind.  She notices the field dressing on his arm as soon as she starts the morning shift.   "What happened, Steve?" she asks.  "You didn't have this on last night."

He shrugs. This injury is nothing he can explain to Nora's satisfaction.  He says, "I fell."  That much is true.  He adds, "I landed badly."  He thinks that this has proven to be true as well.

Nora comes over to where he is standing in aisle three, restocking cans of cat food.  She reaches out with her hand, and Castiel stares at her with bemusement until she pauses and asks, "Can I take a look?"  

He nods, and she places her hand very gently on his arm, touching the splint Dean had purchased for him at Walgreen's, the gauze that Dean had wrapped around his palm in the parking lot after walking out of the store armed with a plastic bag filled with antiseptic and bandages. She touches his unbandaged fingers, and he winces.  His fingers have swollen overnight.  He's finding it difficult to move them back and forth the way Dean had asked him to the night before.  

"I'm sorry," Nora says.  She lets go of his arm.  "Bet that hurts like a bitch."

Dean had said that, too. Castiel slowly sets another can of Friskies on on the shelf, in front of all the other cans he has already stocked.  It had been difficult to maneuver the heavy boxes of stock into the utility cart during his morning shift, with only one usable hand.  He has become aware of just how awkward it can be to do all the things one has only just learned how to do with two perfectly workable hands using only one.  Like brushing teeth.  He has been amazed at the difficulty of squeezing out an acceptable amount of toothpaste with only one usable hand to actually hold the toothbrush.  In the end, he resorted to holding the handle of his toothbrush in his mouth and using his free hand to apply the toothpaste.  His aim had been perhaps a shade less accurate than he had initially realized.  There are streaks of dried toothpaste on his vest.  He hopes Nora doesn't notice.  The vest does not belong to him.  He says, "It's not that bad, really."

"Did you have to go to the E.R.?" she asks.

"No," he says.  Dean had scoffed at the suggestion of doctors and hospitals, when Castiel had asked about them.  You're a hunter now, he had said to Castiel.  You gotta get used to doing this kind of thing by yourself.  The more you stay outta hospitals, the better.  He had shown Castiel how to rewrap the bandages and reattach the splint, but Castiel hasn't tried to do any of those things on his own yet.  "It's only a sprain," he says.  "I'm fine."

"Okay, well," Nora says.  "You should go to a doctor.  You might've broken something."

He just shrugs again. Dean had seemed to think that he would be all right. "It's okay."

"You don't have to be here," Nora says.  "You don't look like you're feeling that great."

"I don't get sick leave."

"Yeah, I know," Nora says.  She is looking at him oddly.  "I know that.  But if you don't feel good, you should be at home, resting." 

He shakes his head.  It makes him feel anxious, being fussed over like this.  Dean hadn't.  His blatant unconcern over Castiel's injuries had been reassuring.  This is different.  He doesn't know what to make of it.   He tries to smile at her.  "Oh, I'll be all right."

She hesitates.  "If you're sure," she says. "As long as you're okay."

Dean had said he would be fine.  Dean had bought him a meal from Arby's and let him eat curly fries with his right hand in the front seat of the Impala, while Dean had squeezed antiseptic on the wound in his palm and bound it up tightly.  Castiel says, "I am."

--

His hand does not improve.  The swelling in his fingers is not going down. His wrist aches with more sharpness the longer his shift goes on. He bumps his left elbow sharply against the cash register as he counts out a customer's change, and the resulting crack of pain in his wrist brings tears to his eyes.  

He waits until the customer leaves and takes his fifteen minute break.  He sits down on the folding chair in the back office and takes shallow, gasping breaths as he holds his arm up close to his chest. The sharp pain subsides after a while into a dull throbbing.  He feels like he could cry in relief.

It’s impossible to dial numbers or send text messages on his phone with only one hand.  He discovers this when he receives a text message from Dean that only says how's the arm.  He tries to type a response, with his phone braced against his thigh and his right hand slowly touching buttons, but he can't hit the right letters.  He gives up.  He doesn't reply.  Dean can call him, if he is really so concerned.

His head starts to ache halfway through his shift. He doesn't much feel like smiling at the customers.  He doesn't feel like giving them a thumbs up after ringing up their purchases, not even with his good hand. Nora notices this, too.  She comes up to his his side.

"Are you sure you're feeling okay?" she asks, her voice low.  So the customers won't overhear.  "You don't have to finish your shift, Steve.  You can go."

He tries to taper down a sudden feeling of panic.  He doesn't know what he will do if Nora tells him that he has to leave.  Sometimes when his shift is over he leaves the gas station and walks around the shopping center across the street.  He wastes hours at the Wal-Mart and the Subway until it is one a.m., when he knows that the last employee has left and the gas station is closed for the night.  But he doesn't have the energy for loitering today.  

He shakes his head.  "I want to stay."  It isn't just the walking that he doesn't feel up for.  He wants the hours.  He needs the money.  If he keeps saving up, he may be able to afford a car soon.  Not a nice one.  Just something he could park somewhere and sleep in overnight and lock the doors and feel safe.  Somewhere to keep his extra clothes and his toothbrush.  Something like what Dean has.  Something that could get him home, someday.  If Dean ever asked him to.

Nora frowns at him.  Then she does something strange.  She places her hand on his forehead, underneath the unwashed, uncombed hair falling in his eyes.  The sensation is startling.  Her fingers are cool against his skin.  He remembers, suddenly, how warm Dean's hands had been, moving up and down his arm with quick, light touches. 

“You’ve got a fever, I think," Nora says.  "You really should go home.  Should I call your friend to come pick you up?”

He blinks.  His friend, he thinks. Nora must be talking about Dean.  "You mean Dean?" 

"Yeah," she says.  "Dean, is that his name?"

He looks away. "Dean is in Kansas by now."

"Oh," Nora says. "I thought-"

“I’ll be okay,” he says.  He doesn't say, My friend is already gone.  My friend has left me here.  I'm supposed to take care of myself.

"Steve," she says.  Her voice is very quiet.  She is being kind. Castiel has learned that she is just like that.  Kind.  She buys him coffee, the interesting flavored kind from Starbucks, every Monday morning.  She has never mentioned finding his sleeping bag or his toothbrush again, after the once. Now she just says, "Why don't you let me drive you over to my house so you can hang out on my couch for a while?"  She adds, "I bet my house is closer than yours."

He has fallen on his knees, in front of his brothers, he has looked into the face of his own destruction.  He feels defeated now in a way he has never felt before.  He says, "I couldn't."

Nora says, "Yes, you can."

--

He does not often heal with his hands.  Touching a wound is never a requirement for healing, not for agents of the divine.  But Castiel has found himself healing with the press of two fingers against a forehead.  He has never known why he feels the urge to create such a physical connection.  He has never understood why at times he feels drawn to such intimacy.

He has only healed a few humans by laying his hands directly upon them. A little girl in Arimathea, who had laid prone on a straw pallet, beaten to death by men who came from outside the city.  She had a broken spine and punctured lungs and only hours left to live.  

She had looked up at him with clear brown eyes as he stood by her bedside.  She was eight years old.  She didn't beg.  Her older sister had, quietly, to a power she did not understand and whom she only knew as her parents' god.  Their parents were dead.  They were all each other had left in the world, and Castiel found he could not look away.  

She had curled up by the child's dying body and whispered in her ear, Sister, I am here, I am here.  I will not leave you.  I love you.  You are my heart.

Castiel had stood invisible in the shadows of their house and watched the little girl take her last breaths, blood bubbling between her lips.  He watched her die.  He heard her sister wail, watched her rip her clothes and pull out her hair.  This is my grief, she had cried.  This is how I hurt.  Let God and the world know that this is what she meant to me.

He had listened to her cries for hours.  When at last she grew silent, he approached the bedside of the dead girl and laid his hands upon the sides of her face.  Live, he told her, and her spine was unbroken and her lungs breathed air again.  She cried out for her sister, and her sister was there, comforting her, holding her, cradling the child as an infant in her arms.  

She rocked the child, held her close to her heart.  She told the child, I loved you so much God brought you back to me, and Castiel did not correct her.

He has laid his hands on a slaughtered boy in Egypt. He has laid his hands on the face of an old man who cried at his touch. And he has laid his hand on Dean.  

At one time Castiel had only to place his hands on the vessel of a living soul, and fill them with spirit, to ease their hurt and comfort them, to heal their wounds.  Now he touches and that is all it is: a touch.  How useless, he thinks.  How useless.

--

Nora drives him to her house during her lunch break.  She stops at Burger King on the way and buys two combo meals and gives one to Castiel.  He crinkles the wrapper around the burger a little, but he can't really bring himself to eat it. The thought of burgers makes his stomach clench.

Nora unlocks the door and Castiel follows her inside.  She takes him by the shoulders and maneuvers him to the couch. 

"Sit down," she orders, and when he does, she takes a crocheted afghan off the back of the couch and spreads it over his lap. She brings him a bottle of aspirin, a glass of water, three different remotes. 

He picks up one of the remotes in his good hand and studies them, one by one. One is for the television. One is for the DVD player.  One doesn't appear to have any purpose other than controlling the volume level.  His head aches.  He misses the remotes of Dean's motel rooms. They had been simpler than this.  Nora brings him a box of animal crackers and a plastic bucket.

"Sick day rules," Nora tells him.  "You have to stay on the couch.  You have to watch cartoons.  If you have to puke, do it in the bucket.  You have to take your temperature every other hour and call me if you get worse. Got it?"

He blinks up at her.  "Yes," he says.  "I understand."

"Okay," she says. "Now take your temperature."  She stands over him while he does so.  Together they read the number: 101.3.  She looks down at the thermometer, a line creasing her forehead, and then asks to see his arm.  Castiel carefully peels off the splint.   Any movement of his arm causes more sharp stabs of pain.  He doesn't try to remove the bandage, but Nora doesn't ask him to. 

"Steve," she says, "are you sure it's only a sprain?"

His arm is hurting.  He really just wants to be left alone. Now that he is here, and on the couch, the thought of lying down and watching cartoons sounds very appealing. He closes his eyes. "Dean said."

"Okay, okay," Nora says.  She has him put the splint back on.  "Are you sure--"

"I'm fine," Castiel tells her wearily.  "Thank you," he says, and means it.  It is mortifying, being here, hurt and stranded on a stranger's couch.  But he doesn't have anywhere else to go.

--

He doesn't turn on the television.  He can't quite figure out the remotes.  Neither is he interested in pressing the matter.  He prefers to lie on Nora's couch, keeping his arm as close by his side and as still as possible, keeping his eyes closed in the soothing darkness.  

He isn't feeling better by the time he hears Nora's keys turn in the lock.  She is continuing to be kind. She doesn't wake him up in order to drive him back to the store for his evening shift.  Castiel is awake, but he keeps his eyes shut, and she doesn't ask him to get up. 

He hates this, taking advantage.  But his wrist is shooting off sparks of pain at every movement, and the couch is soft, and the house has central heating.  He has a blanket.  He doesn't want to leave.

He hears Nora moving around the house, cooking dinner in the kitchen, feeding Tanya in her highchair.  Stopping in the middle of loading the dishwasher to wrangle a load of laundry, moving the wet clothes from the washer to the dryer.  She takes Tanya into the nursery and stays there for a while.  Castiel hears her singing and the baby fussing quietly, then going quiet.

Nora closes the nursery door behind her and walks around the house, locking the doors and turning off the lights.  She turns off the light in the living room, too. She stops by the couch on her way to her bedroom.  Castiel feels the light pressure of her hand as she reaches out to touch his forehead.  

Her hands stays there for a moment, then she touches his cheek.  She murmurs, "Steve.  Do you need anything? I'm about to go to bed."

He keeps his eyes shut and imagines that the hand resting on his head is Dean's hand.  That the voice asking him if he needs anything is Dean's voice. If Dean had taken Castiel back to his motel room and helped him turn back the covers and brought him a glass of water for his aspirin.  It could've been Dean doing this, if he had wanted to.  He opens his eyes.  He says, feeling gruff and ashamed, "Thank you. I'm fine."

"Okay," Nora says. "There's chili in the fridge, if you get hungry. I didn't think you were, though, or I'd have brought you some."

"I'm not," he says.  "Nora, I should go. I am inconveniencing you."

"Nah," she says. She smiles at him. "You're hurt.  It's okay.  Someone needs to take care of you.  So let me help."

He closes his eyes again.  He wonders if this is what it's like, having a mother.  Having a friend. Someone to count on.  "You are being very kind to me."

"Steve," she says.  She puts her hand on his forehead again, gently touching the hair on the side of his head.  "Steve, it's not going out of my way to show a little concern."

--

Castiel lies awake in the night with his arm throbbing and his teeth gritted.  He places his hand on his own forehead, remembering how Nora had touched him there.  But it doesn’t feel the same.  It doesn’t feel as nice.

When he sleeps, he dreams about the little dead girl and her sister, about how she had opened her eyes and stared up at him after he revived her.  She hadn't thanked him.  But her sister had praised a god the rest of her city refused to believe in.

He dreams that he had once laid his hands upon the bloodied body of an infant male, one of the many slaughtered children of Egypt.  He had laid his hands on the slashing wound in the infant's belly, on the child's slit throat.  Castiel repaired the holes on his body.  Filled him with blood. Whispered life into his ear, through his mouth, back into his lungs.  As he stood there, he had watched as the child's slit throat began to heal, stitching up on its own, as blood began to stir in the child's veins.

Castiel had touched the child's mother, a quick press of fingers to her temple. She had opened her eyes and looked up at him with fear, and awe.  

He said, Take your child and run.  She did.  She ran, pursed by the wrath of God.

He dreams of the nursing home, he dreams of an old man who had cried as Castiel healed him.  He was not dying, not yet.  He had no need of salvation.  But he was sick at heart and filled with despair.  He was alone.  His family had left him years ago.  

Castiel had placed his hand on the man's cheek.  He had touched the man's face, and the old man had closed his eyes and turned his face into Castiel's palm. He had wept.  His tears had slid between Castiel's fingers, down his wrist.  Castiel had wondered, he had been filled with awe.  This man was not asking for a miracle.  He was not searching for the divine.  

So why, Castiel wondered, why was he crying? 

--

Nora wakes him up the next morning with a touch to his good arm.  She has brought him the thermometer and a bottle of blue colored Powerade.  She has Castiel drink a forth of the bottle and take his temperature again.

"Okay," she says finally, when the thermometer continues to insist that his temperature is 102.2.  "I know you don't want to, but I really think I should take you to the emergency room."

He considers her words.  Dean hadn't offered to take him to the hospital.  Castiel had supposed, then, that Dean really thought he was all right. But Dean hadn't waited around to make sure.  

He takes off the splint.  It's more difficult a process than the day before.  His fingers are still swollen. "What's this for?" Nora's finger hovers over the bandage still wrapped around the palm of his hand.  Wordlessly he takes that off, too.  Nora takes his hand and cradles it gingerly between her knees.  She stares at the cut on his palm, looking grim.  

"Steve," she says at last, "This cut looks infected."

"I put antiseptic on it," he tells her.

"Just look at it," she says.  He does.  The cut went deep. The flesh has been torn, and the pink, ragged edges of skin are beginning to seep with pus.  "Bet that's why you have a fever."

He knows that it is Nora's day off.  That she has plans: to get her hair styled, to go grocery shopping, to go out to lunch with her sister.  But she helps him put the splint back on. She calls her babysitter.  She drives him to the emergency room.

--

His wrist is not sprained.  His wrist is fractured.  The doctor on call at the emergency room pries off the splint Dean had placed on his arm and has it x-rayed.  He treats the cut on Castiel's palm and puts his wrist back in another splint and tells Nora that Castiel will have to come back in a week and have his arm placed in a cast. 

Nora is quiet, but she stays with him the whole time in the emergency room. She drives him back to Walgreen's afterward to pick up a prescription for painkillers. Castiel has given up thanking her.  He doesn't have the breath to thank for for everything she has done for him.

"Why didn't you go to a doctor before?" she asks as they're sitting in her car, Castiel holding his new paper back filled with prescription painkillers.  She sticks her keys in the ignition, but doesn't turn the engine over.  "Why didn't you just ask your friend to take you?"

Castiel just shrugs.  He doesn't feel like explaining.  He doesn't know if he can.  He hadn't wanted to ask.  He hadn't wanted Dean to say no, he didn't have the time, he had to get back to the bunker.  He hadn't wanted to hear that Dean was ready to go back to Sam, ready to go back to his own life..

Nora watches him take one of the painkillers from the hospital, swallowing it along with a mouthful of the Powerade.  He puts his hand on the door handle. He can't thank her enough.  He tries, though. "Thank you," he says.  "This was very kind of you."  

"Not so fast, mister," Nora says, and he stops. "I called your friend."

Castiel stares at her. "My friend?" he asks.

"Yeah." She looks away.  "Dean.  The one in your phone."

He is feeling almost angry.  She had no right. No right to open his phone and pull up his contacts and see that he only has three numbers there, Dean's and Kevin's and Garth's, because Dean hadn't even given him Sam's. No right to call Dean, as though Dean could be expected to drop everything just to come get him, like a child misplaced at a grocery store. 

She had no right.  But a part of him wants to cry with relief.

"He's on his way to pick you up," Nora says.  "He'll be here tonight."

--

Dean picks him up at Nora's.  "I’ll take him back to the hospital for his cast," Dean is saying to Nora. He smiles at her, the way he does whenever he knows that the person he is smiling at is angry and annoyed and he is fully expecting, more than merely hoping, to appease them.  "I’ll bring him back up there, one week from now, no problem, I'll take care of him," and Castiel is looking at him to see if, despite the fact he is no longer an angel, he can still catch Dean in a lie.  But he can no longer tell, it seems.

Dean drives him to a motel this time.  Not like the other night, when he had insisted on eating fast food in the Impala and driving aimlessly all around town until Castiel had asked him quietly to be taken back to the gas station.  Dean checks them into a room with two double beds and carries his duffel bag to their room, the keys dangling from his fingers.

Castiel picks a bed and sits on it.  Dean doesn't sit down.  He walks along the edge of their room, looking at the crown molding, at the dusty corners.  "A cast, huh," he says finally.  "Thought all you needed was that splint."

"It wasn't sprained," Castiel says.  "It was fractured. And the cut got infected.  Nora took me to the hospital."

"Let me see," Dean says. Castiel holds out his arm and Dean comes up close.  He kneels on the floor, right there in front of the bed, in between Castiel's legs.  "Does this hurt?" Dean asks.  He moves his hands slowly up and down Castiel's arm.

"Yes."

He takes Castiel's hand in his own, carefully, and smiles up at him.  The smile makes tiny creases form in the corners of his eyes.  “Hey,” Dean says, “hey, hey, shhh."  He strokes his fingers over Castiel's arm, up and down.  Then he bends his head over Castiel's hand and kisses him, on his palm.

Castiel jerks his hand back.  The movement makes his wrist flare up again. "What was that for?"

Dean's shoulders sag, just a little.  "Nothing," he says.  "Just- you're supposed to kiss it.  When something hurts.  To make it feel better."

"It doesn't feel better," Castiel replies. "It still hurts."

"I thought it would help."

"Well, it doesn't."

Dean stares down at Castiel's arm.  He tucks his arms in close to his body. 

"You didn't want me," Castiel says. "You didn't even want to take me to the hospital."

"You didn't need me," Dean says.  

"Yes, I did. You left so you wouldn't have to see it."

Dean stops smiling, all at once.  He bows his head. "I shouldn't have left you," he says at last. A muscle jumps in his cheek.  "I shouldn't have left you like that.  I shouldn't have done that. I know."

"I understand," Castiel says.  "You wanted to go."

"No, Cas, that's not-" Dean puts his hands on Castiel's knees and grips them tightly.  "That's not how it was."

"Yes it was," Castiel says.  "You didn't want to have to stay.  You didn't want to have to take care of me."

Dean places his hand on Castiel’s forehead, and Castiel pulls away.  Dean’s hands are warm to the touch.  He would like to turn his face into Dean’s palm, to feel his eyelashes brush against Dean's fingers, to feel the warmth from Dean's hand soaking into his skin.  He closes his eyes.  He can feel Dean touching his cheek, then his forehead.  

“You’ve got a fever,” he says, sounding surprised.  

He feels like he is going to throw up.   He has been human long enough to know what that feels like.  He says to Dean, “You didn’t want me.”

"I did," Dean says.  He says it so quietly that Castiel can barely hear him. "I still do."

Castiel has always been a shade too proud, thinking that he, more than anyone else, understands Dean and his intentions.  Dean doesn't touch him.  This is what Castiel knows.  Dean has never intended to touch him.  Knowing that never used to hurt him, not like this.  It had never been anything he had expected.  But now Dean is laying his hands all over him, laying his hands all over Castiel's flesh-and-bone body.  Dean is laying his hands upon him like a blessing.  Like Castiel is someone he loves. Like Castiel is someone Dean would rend his clothes for, like Castiel is someone Dean would mourn long into the night.  Like Castiel is someone Dean would call back from the dead with only the sound of his voice. 

He understands now, why the old man had been crying.  It hadn't been about the grace Castiel carried inside his hands.  It had been about the touch of Castiel's hands on his battered and aching body. It had been about the feel of being touched by a gentle hand when for so long no one had bothered.  Castiel supposes that is why he is crying now.  He had not understood, before, what it meant to have pain, and to have that pain taken away by the touch of someone who cares.

Dean buries his face in Castiel’s chest.  He clutches Castiel's vest in his hands.  "Please don't cry," Dean is saying. "I love you. Please don't be mad. I never wanted to hurt you."

He thinks Dean might be crying a bit, too.  He thinks that if he could, he would take away the anguish in Dean's voice.  It's nothing he could ever heal as an angel.  Not this kind of pain.  But he is human now, and it does make a difference, being touched like this. Castiel can see how being touched by hands like Dean's might be enough to bring a soul back from the dead, all on their own.  Dean, laying his hands on Castiel's cheeks. Dean, laying his hands on the back of Castiel's head.  Dean, tangling his fingers in the polyester fabric of Castiel's blue vest.  

Castiel lays his good hand on Dean's head. He touches Dean like a blessing, like a lover, and Dean is sighing into his touch, turning his face into Castiel's palm.  He lays his hand on Dean's face.  He raises Dean's face to meet his own.