Archive of Our Own ^beta

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

There is a tree that grows in between the Winchester and Milton houses, close enough to climb out onto from the windows of two bedrooms, one in each house.

Before the houses belonged to the Winchesters (on the left) and the Miltons (on the right), the tree had been much smaller. The branches hadn’t yet reached the windows when it was dug up from a forest with care; ten feet tall and brought to the house on the right. It was painted white in those days, owned by a soft-spoken woman named Miriam, who wanted shade in the heat of summer. She smiled, patted the bark, and said it would do just fine. And so it did.

About fifty years later, a woman named Grace Milton, who was house-hunting, found the old white house with creaky floorboards, and decided she loved it. She placed one gentle hand on the doorframe and the other on her swollen stomach. “So, Michael,” she whispered, for she knew her child was a boy, “do you like it, too?”

The Miltons moved in a week later, and Grace painted the walls outside of the house blue.

A few years after Michael and her second child Luke were born, Grace Milton went out to the tree in the backyard. The branches had gotten quite long by now, and a sturdy bend in one came close to a window on the second floor. She smiled, and thought of her baby boys, sleeping in their beds. Touched her stomach, and thought of filling her house up with children – children who would climb this lovely tree.

“Thank you,” she said, to no one, really, or perhaps to the tree – and then wandered back into the house, sighing, when Luke broke the silence by starting to cry.

“Papa?” he kept repeating, hand clenched in Grace’s shirt. “Papa?”

“Shh,” she whispered. “Papa will be home soon, sweetheart.”

Her heart ached, because she knew he wouldn’t be home for days. But Luke seemed to accept it, and fell asleep against her chest, his cheeks wet.

Six months later, another boy was born. Rather than cry, he giggled at her, constantly. She was quietly grateful for a happy baby, and Luke seemed calmer, too; he would watch Gabriel in his crib as he cooed with intense eyes.

“Hush now, Gabriel,” she told him, smiling, and he kept giggling, waving his fists at his brother. “Mama’s right here.”

Gabriel was a whirlwind rather than a child once he could walk – nothing was safe in the kitchen, and Luke just laughed and laughed and encouraged him. Gabriel idolized his brothers and did everything they told him to, and in turn they played with him on the lawn outside and with pots and pans in the kitchen. The house was loud and busy and Grace loved it.

She was pregnant again within three years. It seemed whenever her husband was home, he would spend more of his time making more babies than appreciating the ones he already had. But she dismissed the thought as soon as it came; she didn't want to be bitter.

When the twins were born, she took the moment of peace after all the pain to hold them both and sing to them. They were quieter than Gabriel, Luke, or Michael had been; a boy and a girl, with matching blue eyes.

She named them Castiel and Anabiel.  She’d always loved angel's names – her father had, too. She told her babies a story about their grandfather, whose ashes were scattered across a forest now. “He grew into the ground and became part of the trees,” she whispered, and Anabiel cooed at her, and Castiel yawned. “And he loves you so, darlings.”

And she relished the quiet, relished her babies, but couldn’t wait to bring them home and show the others their new brother and sister.

Five children filled the house with noise and laughter. Grace adored every second.

Even when her husband was away, she had her children, and she poured her love into them and vowed to be the best mother she could. To be as good as her father – as incredible and as loving and as good.

She wished they could have known their grandfather, and that they could know their father better, but she knew that in the long run, she would have to be enough.

In those days, before the Winchesters had come to Juniper Street, the tree in the backyard was Gabriel and Anna and Castiel’s tree. They went there whenever Luke came home from school looking as angry as a ten-year-old could with a bruise on his face after a fight and with Michael trailing behind him, looking around to make sure that no one else was coming after his little brother. People laughed at Luke, and called him Lucifer when he lost his temper, and Luke said he hated them. Castiel supposed it wasn’t right to hate people – Mama had told them that – but he felt bad for Luke all the same, since the other children were so mean.

Father didn’t like it when Luke got into fights, and Michael never defended Luke to Father even though he always did defend him at school, when the other kids were rude to him. Castiel would look back on that later as the very beginning of a long and spiraling rift, between Luke and Michael or Luke and Father or all of them and Father, but that didn’t matter for them, not then. They never saw it, because they had the Tree.

Gabriel was seven and could climb the highest, so he hid his best candy in the hollow bits of the trunk up towards the top. But the twins were satisfied with climbing together, five years old and tiny; holding hands to help each other up the lower branches and then jumping off one at a time to land on the trampoline. It seemed they had wings in those hazy days when Gabe still liked the Tree – it seemed like flying when they jumped just right and then bounced on the trampoline, so, so high, screaming with laughter. Those were the first days, the christening of the Tree (which was Anna called it, after, when she was feeling nostalgic).

There were shouts of “Again, Anna, again!” and “Gabe, Gabe, jump with us, jump with us,” and then in the end, always, there was Gabe: coming to them and taking both their hands in his and jumping, jumping, jumping, laughing all the way down – shouting “Come on, guys, let’s really fly!”

Sometimes they played that they had wings, and Castiel and Anna climbed a little higher every day.

Soon Gabe lost interest. At nine years old he was much too old, he said, for stupid, baby things like climbing trees, so he would take his brand-new bike (a birthday present, with no training wheels, which everyone knew meant he was old enough to ride around the neighborhood, by himself) and the Tree passed on to the twins.

They stayed home and played their falling, flying game and comforted themselves by saying that, well, whatever was out There in the rest of the neighborhood probably wasn’t as great as the Tree. Gabe was just a big old fibber, and, well, it couldn’t be as great as he said because remember how he lied about not having any KitKats left? He was a big old liar, obviously! And they were going to first grade in the fall, anyway. They were old, too! They were six!

Six seemed awfully small sometimes. But they had each other; they were twins, they never fought, and they walked in time, hand in hand. Mama chuckled at them and kissed their foreheads most because Gabriel wrinkled his nose, and said kissing was gross.

Mama assured him that someday he wouldn’t think so, then asked him about school.

He said school was whatever.

“What does that mean?” Anna asked. Gabe grinned at her.

“Not telling.”

“Mama,” Anna said, crossing her arms, “Gabe is keeping secrets again.”

“He’s just a meanie,” Cas told her, and kissed her forehead, because Mama was in the kitchen and couldn’t do it herself.

Anna laughed and hugged him. “You’re my favorite brother.”

The next summer, when they were older by a whole year and knew everything there was to know about school, (though Gabriel insisted that they didn’t know anything because first grade was just baby stuff and fourth grade was hard,) the New People moved into the house next door. The house next door was a little scary. It had broken windows and worn paint and Luke had told the twins never to go inside, because ghosts lived there, but the New People looked sort of nice. The Mother of the New People had pretty blonde hair and the Father of the New People had a big smile and carried his youngest son on his shoulders when they walked.

They had one son who was eight and one who was five, and Cas and Anna spied on them from the Tree as they unloaded their moving trucks. Both sons had brown hair and big smiles.

“Do you think they’re nice, Castiel?” Anna whispered. “Do you think they’ll like us, maybe?”

“Should we say hello?” Castiel whispered back, the two of them perched in one of the middle branches like tiny birds, gripping each other’s hands. “Maybe we should tell them about the ghosts.”

“They look too nice for ghosts to hurt them,” Anna disagreed. “Gabe said ghosts only hurt you if you’re bad, right?”

“He said if you don’t clean your room they come get you,” Cas worried. “Do you think the New People clean their rooms?”

The Mother of the New People looked up and saw them, then smiled.

Castiel and Anna climbed out of the Tree and ran inside.

Later, when he and Anna and Gabriel and Mama were standing on the New People’s front porch holding some cookies – Michael and Luke hadn’t wanted to come – Castiel looked up to make sure the Tree was still there. He sometimes he thought that if people didn’t look at things often enough they would vanish. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Father, and though Mama assured him Father was real, he thought that perhaps he hadn’t been looked at enough and so now, he couldn’t be looked at at all.

He watched the Tree carefully as the door was opened and as Mama said, “Hello, I’m Grace Milton, and these are my children. Welcome to the neighborhood!”

“Oh, I remember these two,” the New Woman laughed, smiling down at Castiel and Anna, who stood closer together, nervous. “Come in, please, I’m Mary Winchester. John, we have guests! My husband, that’s him – John.”

Castiel looked over and saw a boy with green eyes standing next to his mother in the doorway. Gabriel was craning his neck, trying to see the inside of the house. Anna was holding Castiel’s hand and watching the New Woman – Mary Winchester – no, Mrs. Winchester, Mama had told him it was polite to call people by last names if they were grown-ups. The boy smiled.

Castiel, who never smiled, smiled back. The boy’s smile widened and he stepped up to them and said, “My name’s Dean. I’m eight!”

“I’m Gabriel,” Gabe said importantly, sticking out his hand to shake like Father did when grown-ups came over. “I’m ten. I’ve got a really neat bike, it’s super fast!”

“I’m Anna,” Anna said.

“No, you’re not,” Gabriel cackled. “You’re Anabiel. ’S what it says on your birth certify-cut.”

“Gabe, if Anna likes to be called Anna then we will be accommodating,” Mama said, ruffling his hair. “Come on, we’ll go and meet Miss Mary’s other son, Sam.”

Anna scampered inside along with Gabe and Mama, but Castiel stayed with Dean in the doorway. It felt odd, for a moment, not to be standing with her – usually his life was a comfortable pattern of  twins, twins, twins, and usually being apart from Anna made him feel strange and offbeat – but he liked standing here, with the New Boy. He didn’t feel odd, looking at him, this stranger – freckles on his face and an upturned nose and green eyes.

“I’m Castiel,” he said. “I’m seven. Anna is, too. We’re twins,” he added, because that was an important part of his existence, and he supposed it always would be. “And we live next to you.”

“Cool,” Dean said. “You know what we should do someday? We should put a tree house up in that neato tree. It’d be awesome, and my dad can help us.” Dean pointed excitedly at the Tree, looking at Castiel as if waiting for his opinion.

Cas was surprised. No one had ever asked him something like that before and actually cared what he thought. Gabe and Luke and Michael were older, so they didn’t care about his opnions, and Anna just knew without asking. But he liked it. He liked this boy’s smile and freckles and the way he wanted to ask.

Castiel glanced at the Tree and imagined a clubhouse in it, full of comics and ginger ale and candy in hidden spots that even Gabriel wouldn’t ever find.

“I would like that, Dean,” Castiel said, and Dean laughed.

“You’re weird,” he said. “I like you. You got weird hair like a cat and weird eyes like an alien. I like them too.”

“Thank you,” Castiel said in as grave a tone as he could muster. “I like your freckles, Dean. It’s like connect-the-dots.”

(Castiel was very, very fond of connect-the-dots.)

(Even fonder after he met Dean Winchester.)

That summer was different that the other summers, because Anna and Cas were not thetwins, they were not AnnaandCas, they were not a joined-together We; they were simply two I’s who shared a bedroom and were twins and cared about each other very much. Except, of course, when Anna said the cat couldn’t sleep on Cas’s bed when it was his turn, not hers.

"Anna, no, he slept on your bed last night and he likes me better, anyway, so there!" Cas would huff, and Anna would scrunch her face up like she was going to cry and hold the cat closer to her chest. 

"You're a fibber!" she'd cry, turning around and leaving furiously. "I don't ever wanna talk to you again!"

(Then they wouldn’t talk for a few hours until one of them apologized, and they would share Cas’s bed that night so the cat could sleep with both of them.)

Sometimes Cas would find himself missing it, that old connection, that old feeling of We and Us instead of I and Me, but it would always pass easily, because now he had Dean, and that old feeling of twins had shifted into this new feeling of best friends, and Castiel didn’t mind the exchange.

They built the tree house that summer, and Dean’s father and mother helped them, and Mama made lemonade and brought them out to everyone with a wide white smile on her face. Cas helped by hammering nails and dragging beanbag chairs and a rug and a cabinet into the tree house with some difficulty, and Dean built a secret compartment into the floorboards and said they could hide cool stuff in it. Cas loved the idea, and the first thing they hid was a KitKat (which melted in the heat, but whatever).

Though Anna was always welcome, she stopped liking the Tree as much once she, too, learned to ride without training wheels and was allowed to go on bike rides around the neighborhood with Gabe. Castiel could ride, too, but he liked the Tree and he liked the tree house and slowly, the Tree became Dean and Cas’s.

Dean liked Star Wars and Star Trek and Lord of the Rings and Castiel liked Harry Potter and those were the games they played in the tree house, and summer was long and full of lightsabers and magic and boldly going where no kid had gone before.

Even though Dean was a year older, they were in the same grade, because Dean started kindergarten late. When Cas asked why, he said because his Mama and Dad were moving around a lot, and even though he was five, they’d been on a trip and he hadn’t started. He didn’t seem to mind very much, so Cas didn’t mind either.

A lot of people asked Dean that year if he wanted to be best friends, but he would shake his head and say, proudly, “Cas is my best friend!” and Cas would beam to himself behind his glasses and be glad, secretly, that Dean just belonged to him.

(He knew that was selfish, and Mama had told him that being selfish was bad, but he couldn’t bring himself to mind when he was the first person Dean came to with new Superman comics.)

They took the bedrooms that faced the Tree so they could climb across the wide, stretching branches and into the tree house at any given moment. Dean gleefully made a sign the summer after second grade that read KEEP OUT SAMMY THIS MEENS YOU!

Castiel crossed out MEENS and wrote MEANS.

“You’re such a geek,” Dean said, rather fondly, but Cas huffed and crossed his arms.

“I’m not a geek,” he grumbled. Boys at school sometimes called him a geek. When he’d told Mama, unsure what it meant, she’d said that of course he wasn’t, with a soft worried look on her face. He’d gathered, after that, that being a geek was bad.

“Are too.”

“Am not!” Cas said, and tackled Dean to prove it. “You’re just a bad speller, so, whatever, Dean!”

Dean rolled over, effectively pinning Cas on the floor of the tree house, and laughing when he kicked his legs and growled.

“Say uncle!”

“No, get off!”

“Say uncle, and I will!”

“Fine, fine, uncle,” Cas grumbled, and Dean rolled off, still laughing. Cas turned his back and grabbed his ginger ale.

There was a long moment of quiet, then –

“You’re not a geek,” Dean said.

Cas felt the corner of his mouth turn up.

“But you are a huge nerd,” Dean teased, and the smile vanished from Cas’s face, and he left the tree house.

“Cas,” Dean shouted, “Cas, wait up, Cas!”

Cas slammed the front door of his house with as much force as he could muster and went to his room and didn’t answer Anna when she asked him what was wrong. He threw himself onto his bed and hugged his pillow, and wondered why Dean would be so mean.

(That was the first time they had a fight, but it was stupid, especially since Dean came to Cas’s house the next day with a sheepish apology and enough sleeves of quarters to have a really awesome time at the arcade, and Cas was inclined to forgive him for anything if it meant he’d have a chance to beat Gabriel’s high score on the Pac-Man machine.)

(Dean said Pac-Man was lame, but whatever, it wasn’t like Dean knew anything about it.)

In third grade a girl named Charlie moved to the neighborhood and she had a purple bike with different speeds and she liked Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and then they met a girl named “Joanna Beth Harvelle, But Call Me Jo,” in school and things were good, very good, for a very long time.

Charlie liked The Tree and sometimes she came up only to hang out the window and talk about what ifs for hours on end with Castiel and Dean.

“What if this was a magic tree house like in those books?” she would say, “What if we were wizards? What if vampires were real – but not stupid vampires – cool ones, like Dracula? What if someone had a time machine and came back and met us and took us to the future?”

And sometimes Castiel felt brave enough to add his own.

“What if we had wings? What if we could fly?” he would ask, thinking about the old days when he and Anna would jump out of the Tree and land easily on the trampoline, and Charlie would laugh.

“That would be awesome,” she would answer, enthusiastic.

And sometimes Dean would chime in too – “Well, what if we hunted monsters and saved the world? Wouldn’t that be cool, guys?”

“What kind of monsters?” Cas would ask him, and Dean would shrug.

“All kinds of ‘em.”

Jo lived with her mother, Ellen, above a restaurant called The Roadhouse downtown. Sometimes they would go there instead of The Tree and play games and pretend they were grown-ups and drink Cokes and eat French fries that were burnt on the edges – Jo said they were the ones her mom didn’t sell, so they were allowed to eat them for free. Sometimes Anna went with them, and sometimes Gabe did, too, but usually when Gabe went it was to wink clumsily at girls and eat ice cream. But Anna liked to play darts, and she liked French fries, and Charlie and Jo liked Anna, so everything worked out.

That summer, the one after third grade, was great. Cas and Anna came home bubbling over with stories to tell Mama and didn’t notice when she looked a little worn at the edges. She still kissed their foreheads, and when she did, everything was fine.

Fourth grade passed in a sort of blur. They had different teachers, and Castiel liked school and Dean didn’t, and Dean complained loudly at the times when Cas would rather read than play, although Dean said stubbornly that they were too old for playing.

“God, Cas, we hang out, okay?”

And Cas would hum a “Yes, Dean,”and go back to his book.

Charlie liked dodgeball and pretending to be queens and kings and knights on the playground and she knew all the history answers, and Jo hated math but was amazing at soccer, and Dean discovered baseball in winter and started Little League in the spring. Cas and Anna sat together on the sidelines and cheered for them, clapping until their hands were pink. 

They went to Jo’s soccer games, and to Dean’s baseball games, and sat in the stands with Sam and Charlie and Anna and cheered when they scored. They would go to the Roadhouse after and eat more burnt fries and Cokes, and Sam came too, and Benny and Victor from Dean’s baseball team came, and Bela and Krissy from Jo’s soccer team came too, but only sometimes, and even then only long enough to say congratulations and give Jo a hug and then to go. Bela had green eyes, but they didn't seem as nice as Dean's, and Krissy made fun of Dean, and punched him on the shoulder. Cas didn't like them much.

“I wanna be the knight!” Dean shouted. Charlie frowned, a crease between her eyebrows. Cas was sitting on top of the monkey bars, carefully balanced, Anna next to him.

“I’m the knight, stupid,” Charlie huffed. “You’re the – the handmaiden.”

“What’s a handmaiden?”

“It’s the person who helps the queen and stuff,” Charlie said, then brightened. “Hey! I should be the queen!”

“You can’t be the knight and the queen!”

“Says who?”

“Says me!” Dean shouted. “That’s no fair! You’re breaking the rules!”

“Can I be a fairy? With wings?” Anna asked, and Charlie beamed at her.

“Sure!”

“No fair,” Dean grumbled.

“Do you wanna be a fairy too, Dean?” Charlie giggled.

“No way!” Dean huffed. “That’s girl stuff. I wanna kill dragons.”

“I’m gonna kill a dragon,” Anna said happily. “With magic. And we’re gonna fight in space because I can fly and so can the dragon.” She giggled, and poked Cas in the side. “That’s you, Castiel. We both have wings, and you try and fly away, but I come to get you!”

Cas giggled too and slid off the monkey bars to run away, Anna following him. He tried to growl, like a dragon would.

“Give chase, handmaiden!” Charlie shouted, and she and Dean ran after him too.

Dean tried to hide his smile afterwards, saying that fairies were lame, but Cas knew the truth.

Fourth grade was the year Cas managed to read beyond the first Harry Potter book without Gabriel’s help, and the year passed in a blur of Dean and Charlie and Jo and wizards. Cas often got in trouble for reading under the desks in class when the teacher was trying to talk about boring stuff like math, and all Cas wanted was to find out what was going to happen to Harry, Ron, and Hermione next.

He was relieved when the summer started. More time to read. He’d finished Harry Potter already, and he’d found one called Eragon that looked like it was about dragons and he’d stubbornly tried to read it, but it was too complicated. This wasn’t something Cas ever liked to admit, because Gabriel and Luke would make fun of him, so he just told Luke it was boring and resorted to raiding Gabriel’s bookshelves until he could go back to the library.

He’d always liked summer better than school. Summer meant Dean was happier, and though a happy Dean was likely to pull stupid pranks, Cas liked him better smiling. Dean’s freckles were darker and his hair lighter in the summer, and he would laugh at Cas all the time, but not in a mean sort of way, just in a way that meant he thought it was dumb to read so much when there were much cooler things to do.

But that was how they were, Cas thought. Sometimes they baffled each other, but they would always be friends, anyway. 

“How do you play pool?” Cas asked Dean one afternoon, when business was slow and Ellen kept pushing the bangs off her face in the heat. Sam was off back at the Winchester’s house, after Dean had told him that he wasn’t allowed to hang out with them today; Anna was riding her bike, probably in the woods, though it was far too hot for that. Charlie was at home – she had air conditioning – and Jo was up in her room, probably sleeping or something. Dean and Cas were hovering at the Roadhouse, because it was too hot to be in The Tree today, or even to be at home, or to read.

They’d played darts a lot, but never before had they tried pool – there were always big burly-looking men hovering around the pool tables, and they never felt brave enough to go up there before. But all the burly men were gone today.

“I dunno,” Dean said, frowning. He was ten now, and they would be going into fifth grade in the fall, and Castiel was still nine and an inch shorter than Dean, something Dean liked to gleefully remind him of.

They were lying on their backs on the floor, Cas trying to hold a Superman comic up so he could read it. His arms didn’t seem to be working right. It was irritating.

“We should,” Dean started, then frowned, like forming words was too much effort. “We should go play pool, Cas.”

“I wanna go swimming,” Cas grumbled. “Doesn’t anyone have a pool in this stupid town?”

“We have pool,” Dean laughed, and pointed vaguely, “right there.”

“Stupid, that’s not what I meant,” Cas groaned, trying to whack him with the comic and missing.

“It’s so freaking hot,” Dean muttered. “Why’s it so freaking hot? It’s stupidly hot.”

“It’s summer,” Cas mumbled, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “I’m really sleepy.”

“It’s like noon. You loser, did you stay up all night reading again?”

“No,” Cas lied.

They tried to get up and teach themselves pool, but Ellen, finally having had enough of them, shooed them out onto the street, when they walked to Charlie’s house and begged her on their knees to let them share the air conditioning.

In middle school Dean kept playing baseball and Cas was constantly in the library, taking three books home over weekends and building blanket nests in various rooms of his house to read them in, in silence. Anna and Dean were the only ones not scared to interrupt him while he was reading. Anyone else, even Gabriel, received a glare that meant death. Cas could be very, very good at revenge, when he wanted to be. (Just ask Gabriel about the chipmunk incident.)

Benny and Victor began to join them at lunch, and Jo made friends with a girl named Sarah Blake who liked art and liked to talk to Anna about music no one else listened to. Their lunch table was loud and bustling and their little group was so much bigger than it had been but Cas decided he would be all right, as long as he had Dean, and Anna, too.

Sixth grade was the year Mama fell over and passed out while wrapping presents in December, and Anna came in to school with red lining her eyes and slid into Cas’s bed at night, shaking. Mama’s pretty hair started falling out and her eyes went dull and Cas’s hands shook when he tried to climb trees.

Dean tried to help but it was clear he was uncomfortable, and Cas stopped going to him, saving him from having to try. Somewhere in his head, he thought this was kinder. After all, who really wanted to deal with this? Cas didn’t, Anna didn’t; certainly Dean didn’t. So Cas didn’t force him. He didn’t go to talk to him. He just left things alone, and went home early, and stopped going to lunch, opting to call Mama and make sure she was all right instead.

Going to school in itself only served as a reminder of Mama, who had loved to hear about school, and sometimes even his friends made him feel sick, because they all had mothers that were healthy and fine, and so Cas stopped paying attention. Things became either too quiet or too loud and blurry around the edges, and he stopped answering questions that he knew the answers to, and perfected the quiet answer of "I'm fine," because he didn't want to trouble anyone.

He was sent to the office of the principal, Ms. Moseley. Anna went, too. They held hands, even though they were too old for that.

“Are you two all right?” Ms. Moseley asked. “Because I know two good kids like you, good students, don’t just fall off the face of the Earth.”

Cas didn’t say anything.

“Mama’s sick,” Anna blurted, and covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook, and Cas watched her, wanting to comfort her but all of a sudden realizing that he wasn't sure how.

“I see,” Ms. Moseley said.

No, you don’t, Cas wanted to shout. No, you don’t. Because she couldn’t, she couldn’t possibly – no one could understand this, the force of it, how it crushed your shoulders down and made you blink too often and made your mind whirl with terrible, desperate possibilities. How every time you closed your eyes, you saw your mother’s face, broken and empty and pale.

Anna squeezed his hand.

“I’m scared,” she said, finally, and then Cas felt ashamed, because he’d forgotten about Anna and how she must have been hurting. He could see it in her eyes that her world was just as loud and blurry as his was, and he wanted to hold her and promise her everything would be okay, but the time for that had passed. They both knew it wasn't true, and Anna had never liked lies.

Ms. Moseley said they could come down any time when they thought it was getting to be too much.

Cas’s hands shook the whole rest of the day, making it hard to write. He bought Anna an ice cream on the way home and tried not to think about it too hard when Dean and Benny and Sam and Jo rode their bikes right past them without stopping on the street, laughing together.

Gabriel got quiet. They all did, tiptoeing around the house. Mama cried, and said she missed when they could be noisy without hurting her. She’d used to love their noise, the noise of a home, a family.

She got worse. The doctor said they could try chemotherapy. Mama had been afraid to, before; afraid the radiation from the chemo would make her sicker.

Cas’s hands didn’t stop shaking for two days, and he stayed home from school, terrified he might be getting sick, too.

One day Mama was in the hospital, and it all got to be too much, and Cas didn’t go to school when Michael told him to. Instead, he crawled up into the tree house he’d built with Dean when he was seven (and Mama had brought out lemonade, why was every last thing a reminder?) and sat in a corner. Even as he tried desperately not to think, to clear his mind and make it blank, terrible thoughts kept popping up.

She was going to die. Oh God, his mother was going to die. The air was too thick and tasted of salt, and he thought, briefly, of the sea.

He wrapped himself in a blanket that he didn’t recognize that smelled, distantly, like Dean, and curled up on one of the beanbags on the wood floor of the tree house. He wasn’t waiting, exactly. But at the same time, he ached for someone to find him.

Dean found him, curled up with silent tears streaking his face, after school was over.

“Cas?” he said, alarmed, and Cas turned his head away.

Dean slid his arms around him. They sat there together all afternoon, and after a while Cas stopped shaking, but Dean didn’t let go.

“I’m sorry,” Cas kept saying, ashamed.

“It’s okay,” Dean kept answering, “It’s all gonna be okay, Cas. I’m here. It’s good.”

Cas’s mind moved in great crashes of thunder or maybe waves about Mama and her hair that was gone and the cancer that was eating away at her body and how warm it was sitting there with Dean holding him. He decided they were something like an island, something strange, like a world behind a mirror where everything was quiet.

Finally, one day, Mama went in for surgery. It was a Thursday. It was spring. The birds were all too quiet and Cas moved like he was walking through mud and Anna was too pale and the teachers all sent him sympathetic looks.

Dean sat with Cas all day for that day, too. He went with him to all his classes, never mind that some of them were ones they didn't share; Dean was a warm presence at his side, and Cas was grateful for it.

In the end, Mama came out breathing, the worst of the cancer cut away, and Cas cried again, and Dean did too, both of them laughing at the same time.

She’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive, crashed through Cas’s head for hours. Maybe only for a little while. Maybe only for a few years. But it was alright. She was alive.

Dean stayed with them during the celebratory dinner of mac and cheese that Gabe cooked.

By seventh grade things were better. Mama was feeling stronger and kept telling them not to worry with more and more sincere smiles on her face. Anna and Cas and Gabe still doted on her, though, and Michael called her from college and Luke called from wherever he was – Luke less frequently than Michael.

Cas stopped calling her during lunch and started going back to the lunch table instead. He was welcomed back openly, everyone asking how Mama was doing, and for a little while he relished in the feeling that maybe, everything could work out. That things could be normal again.

But then he realized that Dean and Benny and Victor had in-jokes that Cas didn’t understand, and Cas decided he might as well find some more friends too, because obviously Dean had them, and that was fine. It was totally fine (it wasn’t). That was how he met Meg Masters, which, in hindsight, was probably a mistake, but she was nice at first and wickedly funny and never asked him if he wanted to try her drugs. Her eyes were dark and sharp and she had an easy way about her that Cas wanted to learn how to echo. It must be a great skill to be able to not care, at least sometimes.

He did try some weed once in December, hanging out with her and Lilith and their friend Brady after school. He didn’t really like Brady and was unsure about Lilith, but he did like Meg, and he decided he would just deal with it, and when they passed a joint around he shrugged and took a drag.

It was sort of gross, even if the feeling was nice, and anyway, Anna noticed. She told him, on no uncertain terms, that he was never to ever smoke weed again or she swore she’d tell Michael (who at nineteen was now the official head of the house). Michael would probably send Cas to reform school as fast as you could blink, so Cas promised.

Luke was at reform school, or he had been, for a time. Cas knew it wasn’t the place for him.

But then in March, a week before he turned thirteen, Meg kissed him in an empty classroom. Cas didn’t feel anything except vague discomfort, and then terror, because he found he couldn't feel anything for her, which was odd in of itself, but he also panicked, because Meg was his friend, and he didn't want to hurt her.

She pulled away, looking confused, and wounded. "I thought . . ."

He blinked, and looked at his feet, and then turned and ran and never spoke to her again (which probably wasn’t the best thing he could have done but come on, he was like thirteen). He got used to her puzzled, angry looks in the halls and felt guilty about abandoning her, but then she confronted him and punched him in the nose after school, which he guessed made them even.

 (Dean was ready to friggin’ murder her, I don’t care if she’s a girl but Cas convinced him that he’d earned a punch in the nose.)

He and Meg made up, eventually. Cas explained and told her that he was sorry. She accepted it but said he was still a dick. He supposed he deserved that.

After that, he and Meg weren’t friends any longer. It made him sad, but Dean seemed cheerful.

Charlie went out for two months in eighth grade with a girl named Gilda who was tiny and had pretty, curly hair, and liked Doctor Who and queens and knights, and Charlie subsequently got obsessed with the TARDIS and the Doctor and a few other things that no one understood until she made them watch the show. Sam was the only one who really liked it, and after that she and Sam had marathons at her house and Dean gave them noogies and called them geeks, fondly.

Dean went out for half a year with a girl named Lisa until she broke up with him in January. They’d had a very sweet relationship, and Cas didn’t know why they’d broken up, but then again, he’d never asked. He supposed they just didn’t work; that was how it happened sometimes, didn’t it?

The two of them had parted as friends, but Cas knew Dean was upset anyway from the way Dean climbed up into the tree house and sat there until Cas found him. It had become a meeting place after the day with Dean finding Cas shaking with his mind thundering – and Cas was glad of that, glad that there was still one place in the world that they could go, a sanctuary. One last place where it was just them, in the center of a big old world under a big blue sky.

When Cas found him, Dean didn’t cry, and they didn’t talk about it – it was nothing that monumental. They simply talked about Batman and Superman and debated about who was better, like the old days of the Tree and sunlight and elementary school promises of Cas is my best friend!

Cas felt ashamed afterwards for enjoying it so much, but he had to admit that he missed the days before Dean was busy with baseball and girls.

In eighth grade, a boy named Balthazar kissed Castiel in an empty hallway when Balthazar was skipping class to get a burger and Cas was fetching a notebook from his locker. His mouth was warm, his hand gently cupping the side of Cas’s face, and after he pulled away he smiled, soft and casual. Cas was breathless. He'd definitely felt something then.

"Been wanting to do that for a while," Balthazar said. "Fancy a burger, Castiel?"

Cas found that he cared more about a burger at the moment than about his math class.

Balthazar was funny and kind and felt to Cas like light personified; he liked to laugh and smile, and Cas liked the way he’d kiss him – like it was easy, like it was right.

Meg noticed, of course, and found him after class.

"I saw you with that boy from England today," she said.

Cas's finger fumbled on his notebook. "Oh. Yes."

Meg rolled her eyes. "I'm not gonna punch you again, idiot. Just--was that, you know, that that why?"

"Why what?"

"Why you didn't. You know. Like me. Because you like boys."

"Oh," Cas said, again. "I guess so."

"You mean you don't know?"

"I don't even know if I like him," Cas admitted. "I think I do. But sometimes I wonder if I'm right."

Meg raised an eyebrow. "You are too weird," she muttered. "A hot British boy starts kissing the hell out of you, and you can't decide if it's tru wuv or not."

Cas glared at her.

"Look," she said, shrugging, "way I see it, this is practice, Clarence. You like him? Great. You don't? Whatever. In the meantime, you get to make out." She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "Is he at least a good kisser?"

"I'm not answering that," Cas mumbled, blushing, and Mag laughed, patted his shoulder, and walked away.

It was true, he couldn’t put a finger on what he liked about Balthazar – or even if he liked him at all – but it was nice to have someone who liked him, who wanted to kiss him. And he’d of course known since Meg that he wasn’t exactly interested in girls – and it wasn’t like there were an abundance of boys who wanted to date other boys – and Balthazar was a very good kisser. So Cas didn’t want to let go.

Meg's advice was only occasionally sound, but Cas decided to take it, this time.

Anna cornered him one day to ask why he hadn’t been coming to lunch, and when he told her, she considered him, head titled.

“Bring him to meet us,” she ordered.

“But I thought,” he started. Anna just looked at him, with an eyebrow raised so far that it almost touched her red hair.

“I didn’t know if,” and he tried again, and then stopped. It seemed stupid now.

“Please. We don’t care. Any of us,” she scolded. “Bring him.”

Balthazar had gotten along with all of them well. Dean seemed to like him, but mostly talked to Charlie and looked away when Balthazar got called to the office and kissed Cas goodbye.

Cas didn’t know what it meant.

“Are you – do you not like him?” he asked Dean the next day, walking home from school.

“He’s all right,” Dean shrugged. “I just think you could do better.”

Cas considered that.

“Seeing as I don’t exactly have people throwing themselves at me,” he told Dean, “I’m doing pretty well.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Dean said, pushing a hand through his hair. “Look, Cas I just think you could do better than him.”

Dean was looking at him as if he was trying to will him into realizing something.

Cas didn’t understand, and then Dean turned away, and Cas wondered if it had just been his imagination.

Balthazar moved back to England at the end of the summer before freshman year. Cas supposed he should have been upset, but he just felt mildly disappointed. Balthazar didn’t seem too bothered, either.

“I really did like you once, you know,” he said ruefully, at the airport. “Then I realized. Let me know when you do.”

He hugged him goodbye, and got on the plane, leaving Cas to puzzle over the cryptic statement.

When high school started, nothing changed the way Cas had always thought that maybe it would have. High school had seemed something odd and all-encompassing, but really, it was just school. Cas didn't know whether to be disappointed or not. But everything was exactly the same as last year, and finally he decided he was glad.

Dean was still his best friend. Anna was still his sister. Gabe was still looking for an apartment over an empty shop that he wanted to fix and make into a bakery. The Winchesters still smiled at Cas like he was family when he came over after school. And the Tree was still there, towering above them, and though Cas no longer thought in labels and titles like he did when he was little, the Tree remained titled, remained important. Somehow that only seemed natural, though Cas couldn’t decide why, exactly.

High school was no more difficult than middle school. The classes, the teachers; all of it was pretty much the same. Cas was glad of that, too, because things were changing after all, outside of school, and they were making things complicated.

Dean started going on more dates. Girls would ask him as lunch or in the halls, and he would nod and ask for times and places and Cas would feel odd. He supposed that he was happy for Dean, but he missed the days back in elementary school, of the Tree, of sunlight, of him and Dean as the only people in a very big world. He decided he probably just missed being little, of not having to worry quite so much.

He wrote that one down and sent it in an text to Balthazar, who responded with “You really are delightfully oblivious, aren’t you?”

Cas didn’t know what he meant, and told him so. Balthazar sent back a winky face.

Dean leaned over his shoulder. “I thought you guys broke up.”

“We did,” Cas told him, wondering why that mattered, then thinking about the winky face and understanding. “He’s just being himself, I guess.”

Dean flopped down on Cas’s bed and picked up a comic from the stack on his desk. “Dude, Aquaman? Seriously? He’s so lame.”

“He isn’t,” Cas argued.

“He’s, like, lord of the fish, dude. That’s his only power. Talking to fish.”

“I wonder if you could teach poetry to fish,” Cas mused. “I think it would be hard.”

Dean gave him an amused look and exchanged the Aquaman comic for a Superman one.

“Still lame,” he declared, and proceeded to read the entire comic without saying a word as Cas finished his homework.

“Cas,” Anna said, a few weeks later. “I’m joining cross-country.”

“Congratulations,” Cas told her. Anna had always liked running; this would be a good fit for her.

“You’re joining with me.”

“I am?”

“You are,” she nodded.

“Well,” Cas said; considered it. “All right.”

“Faster than a speeding bullet!” Dean shouted when he told him, up in the tree house the next day. “More powerful than a locomotive!”

“Please be serious,” Cas laughed, covering his face.

“Okay,” Dean said, “You are seriously going to be the fastest kid at tryouts. You always used to win when we played tag and manhunt and capture the flag and stuff.”

“I’m faster than you,” Cas muttered, doubtfully, picking at the hole over the knee of his jeans. He remembered playing manhunt; it had mostly been in June, when the fireflies lit up the night and the air was hot but not stifling. He had won an awful lot, now that he thought about it.

“And Jo,” Dean countered, “and Anna, and Sam, and Charlie, and Benny, and Victor, and –”

“I get the point,” Cas said, covering his smile with a hand again.

“Knock ‘em dead, buddy,” Dean told him, and clapped him on the shoulder.

He found he liked it more than he expected – it reminded him of the old days, jumping off The Tree with Anna, pretending to fly. Running with her was like flying again.

She dragged him out on Saturday mornings to run in the woods and they stopped for pancakes on the way back, and laughed at how fast their savings were running out. Who knew pancakes were so expensive?

At least Ellen gave them a discount.

In February, Dean’s Uncle Bobby moved into town and bought a garage off of someone – Cas didn’t know who. The garage had been well known for being cheap as hell and people began to grumble about the higher prices before they realized that the old garage owner couldn’t fix cars worth shit, anyway.

This was how Dean explained it on the way to school one morning, and Cas laughed at how indignant he sounded. He went on to explain that his uncle’s wife died, which was why he moved here, to be near family. “They never had any kids,” Dean said, “I always wondered why, but my dad told me he was scared.”

“Why would he be scared?” Cas asked.

“I dunno,” Dean said, “guess I’ll ask him someday.”

Dean got a job working on the cars, and sometimes Cas came along and did his homework and listened to Dean explain how engines worked.

It was boring, but at the same time, incredibly interesting.

(The interesting part had more to do with the fact that it was Dean explaining than anything he was actually saying, though.)

Gabe’s bakery opened with a lot of pomp and splendor in June, and he named a cupcake “School Sucks” and claimed that it was a celebration of education. Dean laughed for five minutes straight and Cas worried about his oxygen intake, while Anna simply rolled her eyes and ate three of Gabe’s Teacher’s Pet cupcakes.

Cas’s favorites were the Little Green Men cupcakes, which had food coloring which turned them green and small alien heads drawn on top. “Made them just for you, Cassie,” Gabe cackled.

“Alien cupcakes for the social alien,” someone laughed from within the crowd of kids, and Cas flushed red, embarrassed for half a moment, mouth too filled with cupcake to answer.

Dean slung an arm around his shoulders. “Can I have some?” he asked, and Cas nodded, handing him a piece and feeling grateful for the distraction.

“You know Victor was just kidding,” Dean said, later.

“Yes, I know.”

They kept walking, Cas still silent. Dean twitched, shifting his shoulders.

“No, I mean, we like you how you are, okay?” Dean added, and the corner of Cas’s mouth turned up. Dean groaned.

“You fucker! You made us have a chick flick moment and you weren't even mad,” he accused, pointing a finger at Cas, who was by now only barely hiding his grin.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” he chuckled, meaning it. “You’re just very amusing when you’re worried.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Dean huffed.

“You were,” Cas said, smiling at him.

“Whatever,” Dean said, and Cas saw a shadow of a smile on his face as well, “you nerd.”

Cas laughed until he had to hold onto Dean for support.

Over the summer, he and Anna went running every morning, so often and so long that Dean complained about never seeing them. Anna just shook her head at him and Cas shrugged. It couldn’t be helped, he supposed. They had to run sometime, didn't they?

The Roadhouse was full to bursting with kids, and Jo started working as a waitress there and telling them that they’d never get food again if they gave her cheap tips, and was just scary enough to pull it off. Dean and Benny practiced baseball in the park, and Charlie got interested in role-playing games and didn’t leave her house for a week, until they unceremoniously came to get her and dragged her to the pool that had been built for the town last summer, where she commandeered a creative game where pool noodles were swords and the inflatable floats castles that needed to be defended.

They started playing manhunt again at night, after Dean suggested it, when all the streetlights had gone out and the streets were inky black.

“Cas,” Dean hissed, grabbing his arm.

“What?” Cas breathed back, careful not to let Jo hear them – sometimes it seemed like she had supersonic hearing, especially while playing manhunt.

“Let’s hide together,” Dean said, tugging him along. “I found a good spot in the woods.”

They rushed through the woods, listening to the sound of Jo counting to fifty as it got softer and softer.  Once they were far enough, they broke out into a run, Dean holding onto Cas’s arm, though Cas pulled into the lead eventually.

“Here,” Dean said, panting and stopping, pointing to a hollow under the roots of a tree that had fallen over.

“Just like in the Lord of the Rings,” Cas whispered, and tugged Dean down with him to hide.

It always took a little while for whichever two people were it – in this case Jo and Charlie – to stop counting and get looking. And it was dark with a shaft of moonlight falling over Dean’s face, making his eyes shine green in the stillness. They just looked at each other for a moment, and then Dean chuckled.

“I shoulda picked the hiding spots when we were little,” he teased. “I’m way better at it.”

“This is great,” Cas agreed. The woods were eerily quiet in the darkness. Cas wondered if Anna would ever consider running at night instead of the morning. “How did you find it?”

“Looking for you,” Dean said. “I figured I should go find you because we hadn’t hung out in a while and there’s that new Marvel movie and stuff, you know? And so I went to look for you, but I didn’t see you, and instead I found this.”

Cas blinked. “You were looking for me?”

“Yeah,” Dean mumbled, shrugging. “I was bored. Sammy just reads all the time, he’s a nerd like y –”

“Shh,” Cas hissed, pressing a hand over Dean’s mouth. “Someone’s coming.”

He could feel breath on his palm, and the fact of it was distracting somehow.

They listened in the still, dark quiet for a moment.

“Think she’s gone?” Dean breathed, lips moving against Cas’s hand. It tickled, sending shots of adrenaline into Cas’s bloodstream. Dean reached up and wrapped a hand around Cas’s wrist, as if to pull his hand off, but then he didn’t move. Cas felt Dean’s thumb trace the inside of his wrist and shivered; it tickled. That was all. It just – it tickled.

“No,” he whispered, and the words felt odd coming out, dizzy and strange, “not yet."

"Okay," Dean breathed, and Cas's thumb moved on his face, tracing his cheekbone. Dean shut his eyes, and Cas felt him lick his lips, felt his tongue dart out against his palm - 

"We should – we should go,” Cas blurted, jumping up, pulling his hand away. "We should -"

Dean was still on the ground, looking at him, puzzled, eyes huge in the dark. Cas dashed away, making for home base, and heard Dean behind him a few breathless seconds later.

His skin felt warmer where it had been touching Dean’s. He put it down to the chill of the night, unusual for summer. That was all.

They snuck through the woods and made it to home base without saying another word. Cas’s mind kept going back to the moment just after he removed his hand, to Dean staring at him in the dark, eyes wide and green, to the moment of stillness just before, to Dean’s mouth warm against his palm.

He breathed in, out.

He refused to think about it any longer. Night was weird; it made you feel stupid things and do weird stuff. That was all. Dean probably hadn’t even noticed.

A few weeks later, the fair came to town, and they all went, shoving food at each other and riding the Ferris Wheel. Dean drove them there, even though technically he had no license, but no one really cared; he was a good driver after all, better than Gabriel even, who’d been doing it for years.

Dean won the bottle toss and gave away his bear to a kid on the street, as was the tradition ever since the year he decided he was too old for bears. Jo aggressively rode the bumper cars for three turns in a row until parents started complaining, and Sam practiced his now well-developed dart skills on the balloon popping games. Benny played a lot of skee-ball and kept going back to the gumbo stand, Victor laughing at him. Benny got him back later by volunteering him for the dunking booth without his knowledge.

Charlie vanished and came back after a while looking rumpled and pleased, clutching a phone number from the girl who ran the hot dog stand. Victor and Benny picked her up and seated her on their shoulders, proclaiming her the queen of getting ass.

Charlie said solemnly that this honor, of course, was well deserved, and this was, after all, the only thing she had ever wanted to be queen of.

Gabe’s cupcake stand was crowded all day, and Cas and Anna were roped into helping twice. Both times, Meg Masters came by to buy cupcakes, laughing at Cas in his uniform. Anna flicked icing at her and Meg waved goodbye to them amicably. Cas supposed he was finally truly forgiven – that was how Meg expressed those things, after all.

Cas fell asleep in the front seat of the car on the way home, and woke up with his head settled on Dean’s shoulder, and pulled back, apologizing profusely. Dean just laughed it off and said, “You looked beat, man, it’s cool,” before driving away, Sam peacefully snoring in the backseat. Cas watched as Dean lifted his phone to take a picture of Sam as he slept, chuckling to himself, and waited until the car was out of sight to open the front door. Cas and Anna slid up through their quiet house and fell into bed with their clothes on, and Cas felt strangely melancholy.

The fair signaled the end of summer. He felt more upset at this particular summer ending than he ever had previously.

Sophomore year was fairly average. School, classes, work – Cas felt stir-crazy for the first half of the year, wondering if they would ever do anything interesting. Even chemistry, which he’d thought would be at least mildly fun, was terribly boring. Dean often complained about not getting to blow stuff up and said grumpily that he couldn’t wait for physics.

They were in a lot of the same classes, as were Cas and Anna, and Cas, Dean, Charlie, Benny, and Jo were all in the same lunch period. Cas hardly went to the library at lunch, anymore.

Sam, who’d just entered eighth grade, was impatient for high school and liked to argue with Dean about stupid things or things that mattered or anything, really. Dean had always talked about Sam with combined fondness and irritation, and now was no different; even as he was talking about Sam’s good grades, he’d just as quickly add on another story about how much of a little brat he was.

Cas wondered if this was how Gabriel had talked about him and Anna when they were younger. He asked one afternoon, and Gabe laughed, and ruffled his hair, and said, “What do you mean, back then? You’re still a piece of shit.”

It was strangely comforting. Some things never changed.

He and Anna, together, beat the state record for the relay in November, and with the team cheering them on, Cas understood a bit of what had made Dean join Little League in third grade. 

Though Cas supposed that they already had a team, in a way, him and Anna, when their friends took them out to the Roadhouse and toasted them with Cokes and French fries, and they played darts, just like old times.

That Christmas, their father came home.

Castiel left the house and went next door to Dean’s the moment he heard the car pull in, knocking at eight at night when it was dark and flurries of snow were swirling. Anna was just behind him.

“Father came home,” Cas said, and that was all Dean needed to hear before he moved aside to let them in.

“You wanna watch Star Wars?” he asked, and Cas gave him a wobbly, clumsy hug, suddenly feeling unworthy of having a friend like Dean who knew just what to do. He didn't let go for a few seconds, clinging to his friend, wanting the reassurance of a warm body like he was back in middle school and Mama was sick all over again. Dean mumbled something into his hair, but he didn't catch it, just breathed out, shuddering, and clung to him tighter.

Dean’s cheeks were red when they pulled away from each other.

Cas and Anna collapsed on the couch as Dean made popcorn and yelled for Sam; Sam ran down the stairs two at a time and grabbed half the popcorn for himself before he saw them – probably just sitting there looking pitiful. He stopped.

“Are you two okay?” he asked, and Anna nodded, then shook her head. Cas shrugged.

“Their dad came home,” Dean explained. “We’re gonna watch Star Wars.”

“Cool,” Sam said, and gave them a look of soft understanding, and Anna relaxed against Cas’s side.

Cas was too overwhelmed to think, and fell asleep on the couch, jut breathing in, out, steady; Dean’s arm around his shoulders and Anna’s hand tight in his.

The next morning, Anna and Cas walked back to their own blue house, and Cas glanced up at the Tree where it towered, still there after all this time, even though it had been ages since he'd really looked at it; really seen it. Things didn't vanish when you didn't look at them, Cas thought, sadly, glancing up at the branches as they whistled in the winter wind. They vanished when they didn't care enough to stay.

Father was standing in the hall when they got home, and they could hear the faint sounds of pots clanging in the kitchen. Mama must have been stress-cooking; she did that often.

"Children," Father asked, "where were you last night? I wanted to have dinner together."

“You wanted,” Anna murmured, voice cracked and harsh and angry. Cas squeezed her hand, trying to calm her down, not wanting a disagreement. Not now. Not early. Not with Mama here, she could get sick again if she got too stressed -

Father looked at them with displeasure. “I had thought you two would have grown out of that silly behavior,” he said, too calm, looking at their joined hands. Cas just held on tighter.

“Good morning, Father,” he said. “I’m sorry we weren't here last night. We were invited to Dean’s to sleep over.”

Father grunted. “Just you two?”

“No,” Cas lied. “Many of our friends were there. As was Dean’s brother, Sam. And his parents.”

“Hmm,” Father muttered, glancing at the table, where the remains of breakfast was laid out. Cas and Anna sat down quietly. He could see Anna fairly shaking with anger, but they both said nothing, and ate their eggs.

“Anna,” he repeated, for perhaps the third time. “Anna.” The fourth. “Please. Please just calm down.”

“What,” she snapped, rounding on him. “It doesn’t make you angry? Mama was sick, Cas, Mama’s still sick and he couldn’t even be bothered to come home then, and so why would he come back now? We don't even know him, Cas, we haven’t even seen him in years! What does he want from us? Why is his job so much more important than his family? Why doesn’t he love us enough to stay?”

“Mama says he does,” Cas tried, tying to get her to see; maybe he was cold and he was always away but he was their father, he must love them somewhere, somehow; he must. Anna barked out a laugh that seemed too sharp and cynical for her throat.

“Mama lied, Castiel. Everyone lied. He doesn’t love us. He doesn’t give a shit!”

She storms out of his room and down the stairs, shouting out “I’m going to Gabe’s,” at the door.

Cas stood still, and slowly, sat down on his bed.

There was a long, breathless moment of quiet, when he didn’t know what he was thinking or what he wanted to say.

“You son of a bitch,” he whispered, finally, pressing his hands to his face. “You – I believed in you. Where did that get me?”

Because he had; he'd believed, however stupidly, that their father cared, that someday he would come home and things would be alright, and this was Christmas, and Father was home, and this was all he'd ever dreamed of, it had to be, but maybe even if he did come home it would still be too cold and too little and too late. Maybe Father really didn't love them, maybe what he felt was some sort of quiet obligation to the woman he'd married and the children she'd raised. And Cas had been an idiot, and daydreamed about a father who would care. And now - 

Now it was just emptiness, glaring and sharp, where all that love should have been. Now he felt stifled when they were even in the same room -

He placed his head in his hands, remembering Father's quiet raised eyebrow at him and Anna - I'd thought you would have grown out of that silly behavior - but how could they when their mother was sick and they were terrified and they were all the other had left and Cas couldn't breathe, his body feeling too small and too big all at once. The world was swirling again, the air thick and salty, like when Mama - 

When Mama was sick - 

Oh God.

His phone buzzed, shattering the quiet.

From: Dean
    so how r things

Cas called him, fingers trembling.

He answered on the first ring.

“Cas?”

“Just talk,” Cas whispered, hand still clenched tight in his hair, tugging at the roots, his brain screaming, full of white noise that buzzed with he doesn’t love us, he doesn’t love us, he doesn’t love us.

“Cas,” Dean started. “What –”

“Please,” Cas mumbled. “Please, just – just talk about something. Anything. Something stupid.”

“Sam’s got this crush on this girl Ruby at his school, and I think she’s bad news.” Dean tried, and Cas shook his head.

“Something happy,” he corrected, fingers loosening a little, just at the sound of Dean's voice.

“Okay,” Dean said.

There was a soft silence.

“Remember when we were little, and you wanted to climb that big rock Mrs. Rosen had in her backyard, and she was away for the weekend, so we tried it, except you couldn’t reach the handholds so we borrowed her plastic chair, and you stood on it and you got five feet before you got scared and tried to jump off,” and Cas relaxed into the peace of Dean’s voice in his ear, “and you landed on the chair and it broke? And remember the time . . .”

He fell asleep in between Dean’s words, and when he woke up the call had ended and there was a suitcase in the front hallway monogrammed with Father’s initials.

“I don’t think he’ll come back,” Mama whispered into Cas’s hair, when he hugged her. “I don’t want him to.”

“Are you getting divorced?” The question came from Anna, meek after her outburst yesterday.

“No,” Mama answered. “He thinks he owes me, for the years we were married and the years I was sick, and I don’t want someone else, not yet. You kids are what I need. Maybe someday – but right now your father’s money pays the hospital bills, and well. We need that, don’t we?”

“So he’s only our father legally, then,” Gabe said, from the doorway, face sober. “He just gives us the money we need and gets to keep his stupid fucking image clean. No divorces.”

“I suppose you could put it that way, but I wish you wouldn't swear, Gabriel.” Mama smiled, looked down at Cas, brushed the hair off his face “Don’t cry, darling. Things’ll turn out all right. We have each other, we're lucky for that.”

The words held a sense of finality that made Cas feel better.

His kissed Mama’s forehead, and she chuckled, the sound watery.

He and Gabe and Anna all wrapped their arms around her, and she cried silently, for the endings, for the beginnings. For the husband that she’d finally managed to let go of. For the years of sickness beating away at her body.

Her children held on.

What else could they do? They were broken and mending all at once and Mama was crying and what could they do?

Gabe chuckled, but the noise was watery.

"Worst Christmas ever," he said, and Mama began to laugh.

The shadow of Father’s departure was a surprisingly easy thing to get used to, and it wasn’t long before Cas was smiling without thinking about it. That Christmas had been, by far, the worst of his life, worse than the one when they realized Mama was sick, but everyone made up for it on New Year’s, hunched in the basement eating popcorn and playing Monopoly until midnight, as was a Milton tradition. Even Michael came home, and he hugged Mama for a long time, and promised that he would always be here for her if she needed him, then looked over at the rest of them, even Anna, who he often fought with, and said “The same goes for all of you, okay?”

They all nodded, quietly amazed at how much Michael cared.

Dean and Sam were there, too – Cas was the shoe, and Dean was the race car, and Sam got Boardwalk and Anna got Park Place but Gabriel won.

By the time school started again Cas felt better; Anna seemed to think the same, and apart from a few sad, quiet smiles in the wrong places, everything was as it had been. They’d been dealing with Father’s shit, as Anna put it, for almost sixteen years – why should now be any harder?

Dean turned seventeen in January and had his license by March, simple enough after taking the required classes - he'd known how to drive forrever. He inherited his father’s beloved Impala (or half-inherited it, whatever – he could drive it, and it was cool to be able to ride to school or the movies instead of walking or taking a bus.)

This did get them a certain amount of fame, as Dean was the only sophomore with a car. (Technically, he should have been a junior by now, if it weren’t for his unfortunate late enrollment. Cas, honestly, wasn’t inclined to care. He liked having Dean here.) Dean tended to ignore the attention. Everyone else followed his lead.

According to Victor, girls liked guys with cars.

Dean was getting asked out more. Not that Cas really noticed, or anything.

Something was different about Anna.

It was a few weeks after Father left and she’d gotten her smile back, but with an odd, secretive tilt to it that Cas didn’t recognize.

He was watching Anna in the garden when he realized what it was. She was laughing loudly, head tipped back, sitting on the grass next to Mama’s garden, with Dean next to her, and Dean was telling a story with his hands. Anna patted him on the arm and said something with a sympathetic tip to her mouth, and Cas understood. It filled him with an odd sort of dread mixed with apprehension mixed with bafflement, and yet it seemed to be the only thing that made sense.

Anna had a crush on Dean.

It was an odd idea, but not implausible, and it made Cas oddly jealous. He puzzled over that for a while before finally deciding that, well, Anna was his sister, after all, and Dean was his best friend, and he didn’t want to share them any more than he had to. It was like the days in kindergarten when he and Anna tugged their desks together and sat curled close at story hour, and in second grade when Dean would seek out Cas automatically on the playground. He didn’t want them to belong to each other, he decided, more than they belonged to him. That must be what it was.

But what he wanted was irrelevant. It was of course what they wanted that mattered most. He watched them talk, and laugh, Anna with her back to the house. He thought he recognized Dean’s flirty smile.

He wondered if there was a way to tell Anna that he was okay with it.

He watched them over the next few weeks and noticed things, like the way Dean would stop to talk to her, the way she seemed to comfort him sometimes as Anna was known to do, the way they seemed to share something, like a secret. The way Anna shook her head at him, amused and affectionate, the way Dean leaned closer to her to talk sometimes. It made him ache, to be excluded, but he tried to get used to it.

After all, he knew it would only happen more, and more, and more.

Alone leaves a sour taste in your mouth, Cas thought, and walked to class, wondering what the etiquette was for knowing your two favorite people in the world liked each other. And how you could possibly deal with being left behind and alone when they had secrets.

He struggled for a few days with how to phrase it, then finally decided just to spit it out. Anna appreciated bluntness. It was probably one of the things she liked about Dean, he thought, morosely.

“Anna,” he blurted, on one of their morning runs. “You know it’s all right. With me. If you want,” he stopped, willing himself to press out the words, despite his overall compulsion not to. If Anna and Dean would be happy, that was what mattered, not him being silly and selfish. It’s not like anything would change. Dean would still be his friend, after all. It would be fine. “If you want to gooutwithDean.”

The last four words blurred together, but Anna understood. And to his great surprise, she laughed.

“Oh, sweetie,” she gasped finally, eyes sparkling, “I don’t have a crush on Dean Winchester.” She bumped him with her shoulder, friendly. “You’re looking at the wrong Milton.”

He frowned at her. “I don’t understand.”

She laughed again, soft. “You will,” she promised, and started to run again, her feet pounding steadily.

It was spring.

Almost summer.

Just like two years ago, when Balthazar had said, “Until I realized,” Castiel was struck with the feeling that everyone else knew something he didn’t.

Summer came quicker than anyone expected, and with summer jobs and running in the mornings and the fair and manhunt, it passed the same way, quicker than they could count. Cas really didn’t remember anything of significance from that particular summer except that it was fun, that as always, it was filled with books, and sunshine, and Dean, and Anna, and that he was sorry when it ended.

When junior year started, everything slowed down. Maybe it was the laziness of fall and the beginning of a new year, all the clean paper and notebooks and pencils that weren’t worn down, but everyone seemed cheerful, calm. It was a nice change, Cas thought. Dean, especially, seemed to be enjoying school – he excelled in Physics and Auto Shop and talked Cas’s ear off about cars and mechanics whenever he could. He didn’t seem to care that Cas didn’t care. Cas wondered if this was how friendships were for everyone.

Maybe not. Maybe this was just how it was between him and Dean.

Cas, personally, liked English and wondered at maybe writing books like the ones he had adored all his life. Or at just learning about them, teaching other people to love them like he did. Even selling them. Just something where he could have books nearby.

He told Dean this.

“Librarian,” Dean suggested. Cas wrinkled his nose.

“That’s so –”

“You?” Dean suggested, and Cas slapped him in the head with the pillow that had been sitting on the couch next to them.

“Assbutt.”

Dean choked. “Assbutt? Seriously?”

Cas gave him a helpless shrug, and Dean collapsed in laughter.

Anna joined an art class for the hell of it and took to watercolor painting like a duck took to water. She also joined the school newspaper and ran the ranks there like the champion she was, moving from tiny articles to front page ones within a month, and signed up to work for the school’s Acceptance Club and liked to talk about things like gay rights and feminism and misogynistic assholes. Cas listened to her the way he did with Dean, and learned, and was proud of her for knowing so clearly what her rights and wrongs are and what she wanted and how to get it. Sometimes he didn’t understand, but she always helped him to, and he decided that that was the way they were.

“I want to be a journalist,” she told him one afternoon, face glowing as she jogged up the porch steps to meet him. She’d stayed after for the newspaper, and sat down on the porch swing smelling of printer ink and deadlines.

Cas considered writing that down. It was sort of good.

“What about you?” she asked, when he didn’t answer.

“I don’t know,” he said, because, truly, he didn’t. She smiled, and patted his arm.

"You'll know it when you find it," she said confidently, and he wondered how she could be so sure.

Anna took to braiding feathers into her hair and started to talk about traveling and adventures and experience and about going to college abroad. Gabe laughed at her, but not in a mean-spirited way.

“Teenagers!” he sighed, dramatically.

Anna huffed, hands on her hips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Not telling,” Gabe said, mischievous. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Anna glanced at Cas, and maybe some old nostalgia took her over for a moment, because she smiled. “Cas,” she whispered, exaggeratedly, “Gabe is keeping secrets again.”

Cas laughed. “He’s just an asshole.”

Anna grinned, and kissed his forehead. “Still my favorite brother,” she proclaimed, and went up to refill her coffee.

Dean started talking about going on a road trip before senior year.

He seemed to have it all planned out; just him and Cas and the Impala and a box of tapes. When Cas wrinkled his nose – “Tapes, Dean, really?” – Dean just looked at his feet and mumbled something.

“What?” Cas asked, and Dean shrugged.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

Cas gaped at him for a second.

“Of course I do,” he said. “You idiot. I just don’t want to listen to tapes.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Well, there is no way in hell I’m putting an mp3 player in my baby.”

Cas considered that.

“Weighing the pros and cons,” he said finally, “I think an awesome road trip outweighs the tapes.”

Dean’s smile was brighter than summer.

“Cas,” he said, “just, never change.”

“I’ll do my best,” Cas assured him, wondering what had sparked this sudden bout of fondness, but not questioning it. Dean slung an arm around his shoulders.

“Come on,” he said, “Sammy’s at home with that Jess girl. Let’s go bug them.”

“What happened to Ruby?”

“Old news, apparently,” Dean shrugged. “Anyway, I like Jess better. She’s pretty awesome, for a girl who’s my baby brother’s girlfriend.”

They were quiet for a moment, just walking.

“So,” Dean added, “you see the trailer for The Winter Soldier yet?”

Cas nodded furiously, brightening. “They have Falcon! And Black Widow! It’s going to be so cool.”

“I know,” Dean beamed. “It’s gonna be awesome.”

Gabe’s bakery started booming in town around the same time Cas and Dean started talking about the road trip, and he bemoaned the fact that Cas couldn’t work for him over the summer loudly whenever Dean was nearby. Dean clapped him on the back and told him to man up before leaving the shop and a sputtering Gabe.

“Respect your elders!” Gabe shouted, but too late, as Dean was already gone.

“You need some politer friends,” Gabe grumbled playfully, elbowing Cas as he passed.

“You need a politer face,” Cas mumbled, and Gabe cackled, tilting his head back.

“At least your shitty comebacks’ll never change,” he said, patting Cas on the back, and Cas ignored him in favor of going to the back and mixing more frosting.

For their birthday in March, Gabe bought Anna a secondhand motorcycle that was black and silver and fast. Anna absolutely loved it and thanked him a dozen times and promised to let Cas borrow it whenever he wanted, (which he thought would be never in your life until he rode it once with her and realized it felt more like flying than running ever had). The wind in your hair and on your face was incredible, and so he started riding with Anna to school sometimes, on the mornings when he was tired or melancholy. Dean just laughed and ruffled his already messy hair into complete dishevelment.

Gabe gave Cas a hundred dollars and drove him to a place a few towns over, a used book store. He came home with two bags full and thirty dollars left over which he used to buy a cheeseburger.

Gabe remarked sarcastically that Cas, at least, had his damn priorities straight. Cas ignored him. He knew what he wanted out of life, was that so bad?

Things, Cas thought, were as reasonably good as they could be where high school was concerned, and Cas was happy, mostly, though he did sometimes feel odd and lonely when Dean wasn’t around. He chalked it up to nothing; after all, he saw Dean all the time, and they’d be going to college soon, so they’d have to get used to not having each other around, right?

He ignored the way that thought made his gut churn.

Things became infinitely more complicated in the spring of junior year, when Cas was watching Dean laugh as Jo told an elaborate story, complete with lots of hand gestures and voice imitation, of an annoyingly perky teacher and John Crowley being his usual asshole self.

Cas couldn’t really remember now, but he thought the story was about trying to make a deal – maybe money or sexual favors for an A, but he wasn’t really listening at the time and didn't remember now. Crowley pulled all kinds of weird schemes together - you couldn’t possibly be expected to remember them all.

Really, it was a very average moment, nothing at all different about it from the usual.

But with Dean’s laugh came the jolting realization that Dean was beautiful.

This realization came hand in hand with the fact that Cas was sort of stupidly in love with the freckled connect-the-dots kid who shared the Tree with him, and oh, oh, this was what everyone meant, this was what everyone knew, that Dean was beautiful with freckles across his nose and eyes like a spectrum and he laughed like the world was ending with his body thrown into it and his hands were calloused and lovely and Cas wanted them on his skin and oh, oh, Cas loved him, and he felt like he might burst open with it all descending on him like this. He took a deep breath and looked down at his lunch tray and swallowed hard, trying to contain it, but it was hopeless.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dean shaking his head and waving his own hands around as he told a different, but no less morally corrupt, story about Crowley. Cas felt everything he’d either been ignoring or pushing back or just plain not realizing for years and years crash around his ears until they were ringing with it, and his hands ached to reach out and touch and he swallowed again, hard, hands shaking a little. His stomach jumped the way it had that night in the woods, with his hand over Dean's mouth and Dean's tongue wet on his palm and how had he been so stupid for so long? Everything seemed intense, terrifying, and he was in love with his best friend, and that meant he was in love with Dean, and Dean was an idiot who preferred Batman over Superman and loved his car too much and he was so kind and good and incredible and Castiel loved him. He looked up and he stared in almost-horror across the table at Anna, who gave him a smiling half-shrug that meant about time you noticed.

"I have to go," Cas blurted, and stood and half-ran from the table, from Dean, from his beautiful eyes and hands and smile that was fading as he looked at Cas, fading into confusion and worry and Cas wanted to kiss the frown from his face, no matter how cliche it sounded.

He went to the library, nodding a hello to the librarian and retreating to the back corner where no one ever went; starting to pace. He was fretting wildly, almost panicking, because Dean went out with girls, and Dean had gone out with Lisa, who was gorgeous, and most likely a cheerleader now, and she had probably kissed him, and he had probably kissed her back, and of course he wouldn’t want Cas – he didn’t – and Cas was very, incredibly sure that Dean would never, ever, possibly return his affections.

“You like him,” Anna said gently, later, as they were walking home. For the first time in a while, Cas wasn’t walking with Dean; he felt like he might do something stupid, like tell him.

“Yes,” Cas mumbled, looking at his sneakers.

“Hey,” Anna whispered, tilting his face up. “I told you we don’t care.”

“It’s not that,” Cas snapped. “Anna, this is Dean. What am I supposed to do?”

Anna said nothing, just looked at him with calm exasperation.

“I’ll have to forget about it,” Cas mumbled, walking quicker. “I’ll just forget about it.”

Anna sighed.

It didn’t work.

Cas still wanted to kiss Dean and press their bodies together in a hard line and go to the movies with him and find out what it felt like to touch him and hold his hand in the hallway at school or other things that were equally stupid, and it made so much sense, because Dean was his, Dean had always been his, but he supposed now that he hadn’t been, really.

He started running more, because running was simple, and it was the only thing left that didn’t make his mind rebel against him.

He came home panting and sweating after running miles and miles and sometimes he saw Dean with Jo or Charlie and veered around, taking longer routes back to his house.

“Never fall in love, Ezekiel,” he said later to his cat, an old, gray cat with vividly blue eyes. The eyes, he thought, were what caused them to pick him. With the exception of Gabriel, they all inherited Mama’s blue eyes.

Ezekiel made a soft, mewling noise at him.

Cas decided to take that as agreement.

“I mean, it’s not like I could have prepared myself for something like this,” he muttered. “For – whatever this is.”

Ezekiel sat on Cas’s laptop and stared at him.

“It’s Dean,” Cas sighed, helpless, running a hand through his hair. “Zeke, it’s Dean. What am I supposed to do with this? Dean’s – Dean’s beautiful, and I want to kiss him, and he’s straight, and oh my God, what am I doing?”

Zeke mewed softly again. This time it sounded more like pity than agreement.

Cas puffed out his cheeks and blew the air out slowly, then glared at Zeke.

“You have no idea how good you have it.”

“Cas?”

“Anna!” he stammered. “I was – I was just –”

“Talking to the cat?” Anna smiled, sitting on his bed daintily.

“No,” Cas informed her. “I was –”

“Yeah, okay,” Anna teased, and winked at him as she scooped Zeke onto her lap. He started to purr almost immediately, and Cas glared at him.

“Traitor.”

Anna and Zeke blinked at Cas at the same time, and he sighed and plopped down next to them. “What is it?”

“You do know you’re freaking out over nothing, right?”

Cas groaned and flopped face down into his pillow. He was being over-dramatic, he supposed, but he didn’t really care. “Why won’t you let me lose my mind in peace?”

“Why don’t you just tell him?” Anna said, sounding very reasonable. Cas decided she was most likely insane.

“You’re joking.”

“No,” she huffed. “I’m serious. Tell him.”

“I can’t tell him,” Cas yelped. “He’ll hate me!”

Anna rolled her eyes. “And you know that how?”

“I’m in love with him,” Cas grumbled. “You have to admit it will at least make things awkward. I just – I don’t want to ruin it. And I can forget about it, and he’ll – you know how he is. He’ll be guilty because he can’t.”

Anna sighed.

“God,” she said, standing and sitting Zeke on Cas’s back, “you’re both self-sacrificing idiots. You deserve each other.”

She left without another word, and Zeke moved to Cas’s head. Cas groaned into his pillow again.

“Seriously,” he muttered, voice muffled by the pillow, “absolutely no idea how good you have it, Zeke.”

BALTHAZAR, he wrote in a text, deciding to ask for more advice. I AM IN LOVE WITH DEAN WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO??

He wasn't expecting an answer, but got one almost immediately.

Cassie, are you just realizing this now? Balthazar's answering text read, and Cas gaped at the screen.

YOU ARE NO HELP AT ALL

I’m just saying. You were in love with him WHILE YOU AND I WERE DATING. You really didn’t know?

OF COURSE NOT WHY WOULD I BE TEXTING YOU IN ALL CAPS IF I HAD KNOWN BALTHAZAR

Well, surprise, I suppose. Winchester is a hot piece of ass and he's your best friend and you’re in love with him. Deep breaths, Cassie.

AGAIN, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO

You could always tell him.

DON’T BE RIDICULOUS

You really are oblivious, my friend. Talk to your sister, I suppose. She’s there; I’m not.

Castiel banged his head against his desk. Another text popped up.

Don’t bang your head against your desk. It’s going to be fine. Honestly, it’s like you think you’ve got a disease.

DEAN IS STRAIGHT. THIS IS A HOPELESS ENDEAVOR BALTHAZAR

Wow, breaking out the big words. Let me find my dictionary.

PLEASE STOP BEING SARCASTIC

Listen to me. Do you want my honest advice?

WHY DO YOU THINK I TEXTED YOU IN A PANIC

Tell. Him. The. Truth. The worst that can happen is he turns you down.

THAT’S WHAT ANNA SAID. BUT I DON’T WANT TO LOSE MY BEST FRIEND, BALTHAZAR.

Are you saying I have shit advice? I’m offended, Cassie.

I’M LEAVING GOODBYE

Think about what I said!!

There’s also always the option of waiting for him on his bed covered in whipped cream. Never distance yourself from that!!

Cas threw his phone across the room and vowed to never follow Balthazar’s advice. Ever.

He started to avoid Dean, because whenever he saw him nowadays he just thought about kissing him, which was firmly in the category of not something he should be thinking about. Dean seemed a little hurt, but Cas supposed he’d get over it. Anna kept rolling her eyes at him, and Balthazar kept sending him texts with steadily more creative ways of confessing his attraction to Dean. Cas decided that everyone he cared about was probably out to embarrass him.

Finally, Dean cornered him in a hallway between classes, and the scene was so close to the day way back in eighth grade when Balthazar had kissed him and then bought him a cheeseburger that it made Cas’s head swim with stupid, hopeful scenarios.

“What the hell, Cas,” Dean said, and Cas wanted desperately to be anywhere else, because Dean was so close, and he was really angry, and Cas really wanted to grab him and kiss him until his anger turned to joy, and Cas also really, really hated himself. He couldn't keep doing this, he had to stop, he had to teach himself how to stop, it wasn't fair - 

“I’m sorry, I’m just –” But there wasn’t really an explanation besides I’m in love with you and I’m trying to avoid it because I know you’ll turn me down, so he stopped.

“Is it your mom?” Dean asked, eyes widening in concern. “Is she getting bad again?” Dean looked so sincere, and Cas’s heart ached.  Stupid Dean, caring so much. Stupid Cas for loving him.

“No,” he whispered, “it’s me.”

Then he left; Dean stared after him, not understanding, and Cas wrapped his arms around himself tighter.

Cas took to sitting in the high branches of the Tree and running a lot more, because Dean never did either, and they helped him think. Dean claimed that when he sat in the Tree like that he looked like some sort of weird vulture, but Cas just chuckled softly, knowing it wasn’t meant cruelly. That didn’t stop him from staying up there, however. Dean still hung out in the tree house a lot, and Cas didn’t want to risk anything.

But then, one day when he was sitting there, Dean climbed into the tree house and yelled up to him.

“Get your ass down here, Cas, I’m serious, I wanna talk to you,” he yelled, and Cas sighed, and started climbing, because when it came right down to it, it was very hard to say no to Dean.

Dean looked at him.

Cas looked back.

Dean chuckled, ran a hand through his hair. “Shit, I never thought you’d really do it.”

“Well,” Cas said, and wasn’t sure what to say after that. “Here I am.”

It was lame, but Dean grinned like he was deliriously happy, and Cas wanted to see that look on his face forever.

“Awesome.”

They could talk just like they always had.

Cas didn’t know what he had been so afraid of. Of course, he had to watch himself, but it wasn’t scary, not this. It was just him, and Dean, and the Tree, just like always.

Dean was flipping through a book, scowling at it. It was homework, Cas thought. Then he smiled, vaguely, and looked up. “Hey, remember that time when we were ten and Charlie dared us to ride down the sledding hill on our bikes?”

“Yes,” Cas nodded. There was a reason the sledding hill was called the sledding hill – it was too steep to do anything but sled. “You almost broke your arm.” he added, remembering laughing from under his toppled-over bike while Dean screamed like a little girl.

Dean elbowed him in the side, and Cas noticed, helplessly, how close together they were sitting. “Come on, dude, I really thought I was hurt,” he grinned.

“I thought you were being a baby,” Cas muttered, and then Dean laughed, loud and enthusiastic.

And Cas snapped.

Cas leaned over and kissed him because God help him, he loved the way Dean laughed, maybe he always had; how he threw his whole body into it and tossed back his head and how his marvelous green eyes crinkled at the corners, and for a second, when he kissed him, everything toppled into place. And Cas breathed against Dean’s lips and savored it and wanted to reach and grab and hold on, forever.

He felt Dean’s mouth open in a surprised gasp under his.

And then Cas jerked away, nearly hyperventilating, pulling back and hiding his face on his knees; reaching up with one hand to grip his hair too tightly. His mind was screaming oh, God, I wasn’t supposed to do that and everything was moving too slowly, and he couldn’t stop thinking; how that now, Dean would hate him, and things would be awkward with their friends, and he would lose the best friend he’d ever had, and shit, fuck, fuck fuck fuck. . !

“Cas,” Dean breathed, and then there was a hand on his face and Dean was pulling him back in and gently pressing their lips together and nothing, absolutely nothing, made sense anymore.

Dean pulled back, and looked just as terrified and enthralled as Cas felt.

“Dean,” Cas managed, and his voice cracked embarrassingly.

“Is this okay?” Dean asked, and Cas almost laughed, because as if Cas could say no right now with his body thrumming and screaming yes yes yes yes.

Cas pulled him back in, sliding fingers into Dean’s hair.

Dean was kissing him. Dean was kissing him, and he couldn’t breathe, but it was in such a good way, now, the best kind of not breathing. And Cas thought maybe he could happily suffocate from kissing Dean, but then Dean pulled away and started laughing again, and Cas could feel the rumble of it where Dean’s chest was pressed against him. He could feel Dean moving where their chests pressed together, and Dean’s mouth was wet and red now, and so incredibly close. And Cas was allowed and that was both delicious and terrifying; he was allowed to look at Dean, at his eyes, at the way his face transformed when he smiled. At his mouth.  And he was allowed to think about Dean’s mouth against his, now. He was allowed to want it.

He thought that Dean was probably killing him as they sat here.

“Cas,” Dean said.

“Shut up,” Cas grumbled, petulant; now that he had this he didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to stop, just wanted to take and take and take until he stopped losing his mind. So he kissed Dean again, shutting him up, and Dean sighed and leaned happily into him, twining their fingers together.

Cas could hear the shaking of the Tree’s limbs above them, from the wind that was picking up, and wondered, wildly,  if the Tree was maybe orchestrating this the whole time. He’d long ago given up on the sentience of objects or plants or animals, but this was different. This was what brought them together when they were little, maybe it was something like fate that it should do so again, now.

Cas laughed against Dean’s mouth, this time; a muffled sound of pure happiness.

Somehow they shifted, and Cas’s back was pressed against the wood floor of the tree house, and Dean’s mouth was soft and hot, and apparently he was an expert at that cherry-stem-tying thing because damn, kissing him was excellent. Cas laughed giddily again against Dean’s mouth because this was everything he’d never let himself dream about ever since that moment in the lunchroom two months ago. Dean hovered over him, hands flat on the wood next to Cas’s head, and Cas wanted him closer and so he tried, threaded his fingers in Dean’s hair and kissed him hard, trying to pull him down, wanting to feel the hard lines of his best friend’s body against him.

Dean bit gently on Cas’s lower lip, murmured something that sounded like a muffled fuck, and pulled back, panting. Cas whimpered at the loss, missed the heat, and Dean’s warm breath, and the aching sweetness of kissing him; remembered tasting cinnamon on his tongue, and thought, briefly, of apple pie. He tried to pull Dean back. "Dean -"

“Cas,” Dean said, laughing, and his lips landed on Cas’s cheek instead of his mouth. Cas felt a frustrated noise rising in his throat. Dean’s mouth was reddened, and shiny, and Cas did that, and everyone would know that Cas did that when they left the tree house and Dean’s parents and brother saw him, God, Cas was going to make himself a medal.

“Why’d you –” Dean started, and Cas fought at not rolling his eyes, because he loved Dean, he did, but sometimes he could be very unobservant.

Though, considering it, if the way Dean had kissed him was any proof, Cas had been unobservant too.

“I would’ve thought,” he said, still breathing hard, because sometimes Dean leaned down and pressed a kiss to his neck, or his ear, and then pulled away before Cas could do anything about it. And scratch that, he was not unobservant, at least where it mattered, because he seemed to have already memorized the most sensitive places on Cas’s skin and it was very distracting. “I’d thought that would have been obvious, Dean.”

“No, I mean – I never knew is all. I would’ve done something sooner.”

That startled Cas enough that he forgot about Dean’s legs on either side of his hips and Dean’s mouth that was so soft and red and right there in front of him. “Wait,” he said, and Dean sat up and leaned back, looking confused and a little hurt and no, he was misinterpreting it, and no, that wasn’t – Cas made another frustrated, vaguely growl-like noise and asked, “How long have you –?”

“What, liked you?” Dean said, frowning. “Like, years.”

Cas felt his mouth go dry. Years.

Oh, God.

“Oh,” he managed to say, before he sat up too and climbed on to Dean’s lap, feeling the word years erase everything else from his mind, unsure of how to possibly express his ecstasy besides just touching Dean anywhere he could. The word years pounded along with his pulse, giddily, and he exhaled shakily, breath skating over Dean’s lips. Years. Years. Years.

They had so much time to make up for.

Cas kissed him again, fingers tight in his hair, tongue sweeping over Dean’s swollen lower lip and he felt Dean’s hands move to his hips and he breathed out “Dean,” harsh and feeling his voice crack. Dean pulled him closer, and all he could feel was the rise and fall of Dean’s chest under his layered shirts, moving sudden and hot against his own; Dean’s thumbs tracing his hipbones. Everything was a rush of heat and happiness and Dean, Dean DeanDeanDean, and he sucked in a breath hard.

God, they could have been doing this years ago–

“Jesus,” Dean breathed, voice higher than usual, and Cas leaned over to trace his tongue over Dean’s neck, not sure how to do this whole thing correctly, but wanting so badly he didn’t care. As he did it he fell in love with Dean even more, crazily, recklessly; with the noises Dean made in the back of his throat when Cas’s teeth scraped the bolt of his jaw, with the way his hands tightened on Cas’s hips like he was afraid he would stop. Cas smiled, and Dean pulled their mouths back together, and it was a mess of push and pull with their tongues tracing each other's mouths, sloppy and clumsy and the best damn thing Cas had ever felt.

And then an interruption burst into the tree house in the form of Sam, and Cas had never hated anyone more than he had in that moment.

“Dean, Mom says – oh my God.”

“Go away, Sam,” Cas started to say, but then Dean put a hand over his mouth. Which was both frustrating and a very nice sort of distracting, Dean’s palm warm and gentle against his mouth. Cas kissed it, unable to help himself, remembering the woods.

“I’ll be right there, Sammy,” Dean said, coughing, his ears red, and Sam ran back into the house yelling about jerks and brain bleach.

Cas came out the next morning to see Dean waiting for him by the Impala, and smiled so hard he thought he’d crack. Dean just grinned back, maybe bigger, and they stood beaming at each other for a full few moments until Anna coughed, kissed Cas’s cheek, and started walking towards the school. That made Cas start and realize and he grinned at Dean again, foolish and far too wide and showing too much gum, he was sure.

Dean kissed him the moment he slid into the passenger seat.

“Mmm,” he sighed. “I’m so doing that all the time now.”

“I don’t object,” Cas answered, still grinning. He couldn’t seem to stop.

Dean held his hand the whole way to school. It was just as good as the kissing, Cas decided, just in a different way. He didn’t mind if Dean did this all the time, either.

They kissed again in the parking lot, Cas’s hand finding its way over to cup the back of Dean’s head, and it was incredible, until they heard sharp tapping in the window. Dean groaned, dropping his head onto Cas’s shoulder.

“I’m sensing a pattern here,” Cas said, and Dean huffed a laugh against his neck.

Benny and Charlie were standing outside, looking thoroughly smug.

“Oh,” Cas mumbled.

Dean sighed his agreement. “They’re gonna be such assholes about this.”

Charlie leaned in the window. “That’s no way to talk to the Queen of Moondor, handmaiden.” She grinned, one side of her mouth tilting upwards. “So you two finally got your shit together?”

“Sort of,” Cas said. “Dean laughed and I kissed him by accident, and then he said he’d been in love with me for years.” The word years is still making him giddy, but that might just be Dean.

“Awww,” Charlie cooed, and Dean groaned again halfheartedly.

“This is nothing,” Benny laughed, leaning in the other window. “You should have seen his big gay freak-out when we were fourteen.”

Cas smiled.

“I swear to God, Benny –” Dean started, and Benny waved it off, unconcerned.

“Please, you know it happened, and anyway I’ve got evidence.”

He waved his phone at them, and Dean’s eyes widened.

“You kept the texts?”

Benny smirked cheerfully. “Who knew I’d ever need ‘em?”

Cas laughed until he couldn’t breathe, and didn’t let go of Dean’s hand until he had to, and thought that just maybe, nothing would really change.

Which was good. He wouldn’t lose anything.

He’d just have Dean now, to sit with at lunch and drive to the movies with just like he always had, but now it was different, incredible, better; now they could get cheeseburgers and Cas could kiss him halfway through a sentence just because he wanted to.

And of course Dean still teased him about being a nerd and Cas still thought Dean could be annoying, and sometimes things didn’t feel as though they’d changed at all. But sometimes it was like the world was lit up all around them, and The Tree was still there the way it always was, and they could still climb out and watch the stars and drink ginger ales, huddled together on the roof of the tree house. Cas was so damn happy he could die and Dean didn’t seem any different and Cas fell in love with how he smiled a million different times over the course of a week, and it was dizzy, and it was strange, and it was wonderful.

(That didn’t mean that things were perfect, but Cas had always been the kind of person who appreciated imperfections – especially Dean’s.)