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Sam sat down across the table from Jack. “I have a very weird question for you. If you don’t want to answer, don’t feel obligated, this is just me being curious and wanting to know everything and now that I think about it I probably know the answer anyway, but can I still ask?”
“Uh, sure?” Jack put down the pencil he was toying with. “What’s on your mind?”
“When you eat, do you taste different foods, or does it taste like molecules? I know you like nougat, so I’m guessing it’s the first one, but…” Sam set down the jar of peanut butter he was carrying. “Castiel told me once that food all tastes like molecules to him now, and I was going to make lunch for the three of us, and the peanut butter made me think of that.”
Jack picked up the peanut butter, staring at it curiously. “It tastes like food. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m half human, and food is a human thing? Why peanut butter?”
“Because when Castiel was human for a few months, he fell in love with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It’s one of the things he missed about being human, although he didn’t want to go back to it. I think you’ll love them, too. Sound good for lunch?”
“Yes. Please.” Jack handed Sam back the peanut butter and followed him into the kitchen. “Why was Castiel human for a time?”
“He’d been tricked by another angel, who stole his grace to power a spell that ejected all the angels from Heaven. Eventually, we found remnants of his Grace hidden in a library, so he’s all right now. Well. You know what I mean. Obviously he’s not all right now.” Sam spread peanut butter on the sandwich, trying to fight back the tears.
“You cared about him a lot. Almost as much as Dean. Why? Castiel wasn’t family, was he?”
“If you’re talking about the strictest blood, marriage, or formalized adoption only family… no, he wasn’t. Our family’s never really worked that way, though. Bobby Singer made it a point to teach us that family doesn’t end in blood… and when we met the Campbells, he taught us it doesn’t begin there, either. That’s important, Jack. Family is the most important thing there is, but you get to choose who your family is. Me and Dean, even if we somehow learned that we weren’t blood, we’d be brothers. Cas wasn’t blood, but he was family. Castiel may not be your blood, but he’s a perfect choice for your father, and it would mean a lot to your mom that you accepted that.”
“And Lucifer may be my blood, or my grace or whatever you call it with angels, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept him as my family? I can turn my back on him?”
“Exactly. Dean and I did with the Campbells… Mom’s father and various others we met. Some of them were okay, but Samuel Campbell had no problem selling us to the King of Hell to get Mom back.”
“I thought Crowley was your friend.”
“Crowley… was complicated. By the end, yes, I suppose he was our friend, sort of, but then? No. We’d worked together to defeat Lucifer, but that was just a means to an end for both of us.” Sam sighed. “Things with Crowley were… he was definitely more Dean’s friend than mine, after the time he took Dean off for a summer of being a demon.”
“Dean was a demon?”
“Yeah, another long story, one I hate remembering. He made a deal that involved him turning into a demon when he died, then he died and found out about that part of the deal. I cured him, but he was still gonna turn into a demon the next time he died, so we had to figure out a way to get him out of that deal. Which we did, but that caused its own problems, which is how we ended up here. A long series of breaking one thing to fix another.”
“Am I one of those things?”
“Not if I can help it.” Sam slapped the peanut butter side of the sandwich onto the jelly side and cut it in half. “Lucifer getting out to be on Earth to create you, yes, that was. I don’t think that you being created was necessarily a bad thing. You have a chance to be better than anyone would have expected of you, and you’ve already taken one of the biggest steps toward that in accepting your mom’s choice to call Castiel your father.”
Months later, Jack stood in the kitchen watching Castiel fussing with some beef. “If it all tastes like molecules to you, how do you know what to cook?”
“Humans write down recipes, which I follow, modified by advice from Dean or Sam and my knowledge of their preferences. For example, this burger. For Sam, it’s pure beef with seasonings. For Dean, I would mix some onions into the beef, since he loves his burger with extra onion.” Castiel added some pepper to the beef. “Of course, if Dean were here, he’d cook the burgers. He’s a much better cook than I am.”
“Does Sam ever cook?”
“He’s capable of it, but if Dean’s around he lets Dean take care of the food, and if Dean’s not around…” Castiel waved a hand toward the library, where Sam was buried in research on how to force an archangel out of its true vessel without harming the vessel. “Sam often forgets that he requires nutrients, or that beer and protein shakes do not provide sufficient nutrition for his health.”
“So you learned to cook for Sam,” Jack said.
“Yes.”
“Can you teach me?”
“I can teach you some things, yes. It’s a good skill. You don’t require food the same way humans do, but especially now, food will allow you to conserve what little grace is left to you. That grace likely will grow back.”
“Has yours?”
“To some extent. It would come back faster if we could stop having apocalyptic or archangel trouble, but in all the time I’ve known the Winchesters, I’ve never been able to say that.”
“That sucks. What do you think will happen once we get Dean back?”
Castiel shrugged. “It will depend what ends up happening to Michael. If we simply exorcise him, he’ll still be out there somewhere, and we’ll have to deal with him. If we can find a way to capture or contain him, or send him back to his world, or kill him, that way will likely have some kind of hidden cost that we find out about weeks later. I’m hoping for peace for once, but not too hard.”
“Cas? Can I ask you something?”
“Technically, you just did.”
“Oh. Can I ask you something else?”
“You just… yes, Jack. Ask away.”
“Is there any chance that my fathers will ever be family? Like in the absolute strictest definition possible?”
“Unlikely. That would require Sam or Dean to marry me, and I would not marry Dean and can’t imagine Sam having any interest in marrying me.”
“Why not? You two love each other so much… you learned to cook for him, when it would have been easier to simply bring him food.”
“I had hoped, once, many years ago, that after bringing him out of Hell I would be able to court him and, eventually, win his heart. I screwed that up, and screwed up by first not trying to fix it and then breaking it when it got fixed, and then it was too late. He’s forgiven me, but…”
“I don’t know what strange definition of forgiveness they teach you in Heaven, Cas, but when I forgive people, that’s it. It’s behind us. It’s in the past," Sam said. Castiel turned to stare at Sam. "You wanted to be with me? Seriously? Even with everything I’ve done?”
“Of course, that’s ridiculous, who would want to be with a man who would willingly give more than anyone could reasonably ask of him to protect the world?” Castiel turned back to Jack. “And there you have it. The reason it’s unlikely we’ll ever be together. Neither of us believes we deserve such happiness.”
“Your burger’s burning,” Jack said. “And you’re both wrong. You two deserve to be happy, and being with each other is what would do that best for you.”
“It’s not that easy, Jack,” Castiel said, doing his best to rescue the hamburger. It was a little overdone on one side, but not inedible. At least, not by Sam’s standards.
“Why not?” Sam asked. “Just this once, this one thing… why can’t it be that easy? You want it, I want it, Jack approves, Dean will approve once he gets over the confusion… why not?”
“Well, there’s your mother…”
“If she wanted a say in who I dated, she should’ve tried harder to build a relationship with me before getting sucked into the Apocalypse World. It was always Dean she called, always him she texted. I know she was doing her best, but some mom privileges, she’s gonna have to earn.”
“Then… maybe it can be that easy. Unlike cooking a burger properly. I’m sorry.”