Chapter Text
It was raining heavily in the darkest hours of the night. Dean Winchester turned up his coat collar against the downpour and sent a quick glance up and down the wide, deserted street, before ducking into a smaller and grimier alley.
People were loitering in doorways, wearing coloured sashes over their clothes. Their whispers as Dean passed by seemed to mimic the steady patter of the rain on the cracked cement pavement. Dean hesitated, then approached a tall, auburn-haired woman glaring at him from her perch on a rickety wooden chair.
“You see red?” she snapped at him, irate, as he ducked under the cover of her porch. Above where the woman was sitting, there was a metal sign which said Naomi’s Place in rusting red letters. Beneath that was a dimly lit oil painting of a forest, mud-splattered and cracked.
“Lower spectrum, up to yellow,” Dean confirmed. He looked the woman over; her skin was smooth, her clothing neat and formal. Her eyes looked grey to Dean; he wondered if they were green, as he’d been told his own were. He looked down at the woman’s sash, which was also washed clean of colour to Dean’s eyes.
“You see blue?” he asked hopefully. The woman, Naomi, shook her head.
“Green,” she said. Dean shrugged. Blues were pretty rare; he hadn’t really expected to find one working here.
“I’ve only got thirty dollars,” he said, twisting the bills in his gloved hands.
Naomi pursed her lips.
“That will only be good for thirty seconds. One fingertip only,” she cautioned, and Dean nodded, swallowing hard around the lump in his throat. He hated this, hated it utterly, but could not keep away. He handed over his payment, and slid his white glove off his left hand. Naomi reached out one finger, and Dean paused before touching the tip of his index finger to hers. He closed his eyes, allowed the shudder of unfamiliar contact to pass. When he opened them, he looked straight at the oil painting behind Naomi.
As he watched, the grey of the trees in the scene started to change. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, light strands of green started to bleed into the leaves; as Dean watched rapturously, they became more and more vibrant, until the whole forest was glowing like an emerald held up to the setting sun – a little dark, but green, definitely green, and so completely beautiful that it took Dean’s breath away –
“That’s all you get,” Naomi said, pulling back. Dean lifted his hand up to his eyes, ostensibly to rub away the slight afterglow that sharing colours often left. If Naomi noticed that his fingers came away wet, she didn’t comment on it.
“Thank you,” Dean said, pulling his glove back on. Naomi nodded curtly, and Dean turned away, disappeared into the rainwashed night.
**
Dean knew that he was luckier than most. Being able to see more than one colour was unusual, and his eyes covered the whole of the lower spectrum. None of his friends could see more than two.
That said, all of Dean’s friends had found partners to share their colours with. Sam had Jessica. Garth had Bess. Charlie had Dorothy and Gilda – between those three, they had the whole of the upper spectrum covered. Once, Charlie had brushed her little finger against his, accidentally, whilst they’d been gaming; the first and only time he’d caught a hint of the colour blue. It had looked like cold, and smooth, and calm, Dean thought. He’d lain awake that night, and the one after, consoled himself as best he could flicking through books illustrated for lower-specs – trying to enjoy the warm, burning hues that he knew so well, and failing. Dean had always worn his gloves since then, even at home.
Flopping down on his bed, Dean closed his eyes and tried to remember green. It had looked alive, Dean thought. It had been hard to tell in the flickering light outside Naomi’s Place, but it had seemed vivid and powerful. He rolled over, flipping open his laptop. Greeted by the red welcome screen, he quickly logged into his profile on colourmatch.com; one new message, from a good-looking guy who saw purple. Dean sighed, and closed the laptop.
He knew that he should settle down with a nice person who filled a gap in his spectrum; none of his friends could see all the colours, even with their partners, and they were perfectly happy. But the thought of that left Dean feeling angry and lonely, furious with the part of himself that yearned for something more. He could settle. He should settle. But in his heart of hearts, in the reddest centre of his red, red heart, Dean knew that he wouldn’t settle.
He stripped quickly, set his alarm for seven-thirty. His shift at the station started at eight, so that would give him enough time for a quick, colourless shower before going to work.
**
“Dean! There’s my man,” said a loud, confident voice. Gordon walked over, clapped Dean hard on the shoulder.
“Gordon,” said Dean warily, checking his yellow helmet for any flaws before replacing it in his locker.
“You see Mayor Crowley on TV last night? Opened the nuclear plant up on the hill,” Gordon said, sprawling into one of the Fire Station’s comfortable armchairs. Gordon could see red and orange, like everyone at the Fire Department – it was a requirement for the job.
“Nope,” Dean replied shortly, taking out his black jumpsuit to fold it more neatly. “I was out.”
Gordon leaned forward, grinning.
“Visiting a Chrome-whore again, Dean?”
Dean froze, his lip twitching slightly in a half-snarl. He hated that sharing colours with a stranger was so clandestine, so grimy. He shoved his jumpsuit back into his locker roughly.
“What was it this time? Green? Or did you manage to find yourself a blue?”
Dean slammed his locker door.
“Easy, Dean. Just a bit of fun,” Gordon said in a calm, mock-soothing tone, holding up his gloved hands placatingly.
“Whatever. We get any calls today?”
“Nope,” Gordon said, just as the phone rang. “Make that yes. You get it.” He propped his feet up on a nearby coffee table, and picked up a newspaper with Mayor Crowley’s face splashed across the front, slicing the ribbon outside his new nuclear plant.
“Fire Department,” Dean growled into the phone. “Yes. Yes. Address, please? We’re on our way.” He replaced the phone on its hook and headed for the door, punching Gordon on the shoulder as he passed. “Time to go,” he said. “Big blaze downtown, offices of Chroma Airlines. I’ll drive.”
**
The fire was huge. Dean had never seen one so big, red flames licking high above the caved-in ceiling, grey smoke almost invisible against the colourless sky. The atmosphere was airless, people running around and shouting, desperately searching the crowd for missing loved ones. Dean shouldered his way through to the front of the throng as Gordon and the rest of the crew began unwinding the fire hose as fast as they could.
“Is there anyone left in the building?” Dean demanded of an official-looking woman with a clipboard. She shrugged helplessly, her face smeared with soot.
“I – I don’t think so,” she said weakly. “I’ve seen everyone, I think, I…” her voice tailed off; her knees almost gave way.
“Whoa, there,” Dean said, swooping an arm under her shoulder to catch her. “What’s your name? Pamela? OK, Pamela, go and sit down, alright? The ambulance will get here real soon.”
The woman nodded shakily and began to wobble away. After a few steps, she halted abruptly and turned.
“Castiel,” she said, her tone confused and concerned, barely audible over the roar of the fire. Gordon and the crew were working on dousing the flames, but it looked like slow work. “Castiel. He was hoping to join our flight crew, I interviewed him, and he was with me when the fire alarm sounded, but… I lost sight of him. I haven’t seen him out here.”
Dean put a gloved hand on her forearm reassuringly.
“I’ll find him,” he said. “I’ll get him out. It’s my job.”
**
Inside, the building was an inferno. The fire had seized hold of the lower floors; through the visor of his oxygen mask, Dean could see the red and orange flames making their spitting, inexorable way towards the last safe set of stairs that he’d been able to locate. He took a few deep breaths, then began to run.
He pounded up the stairs, his heart beating hard in his chest. The smoke was filling his vision; he was sweating profusely, burning up inside his black jumpsuit. At the top of the stairs, he hesitated. Left or right?
“Hello?” he shouted. “Anyone here? Castiel?”
He paused, listening hard. There was a loud crash as a crackling section of ceiling collapsed on the other side of the lobby in which he was standing, and there was the ever-present thunder of the blaze, and – had that been a distant cry?
Dean moved towards the back of the building, following instinct as much as his senses. He pushed aside sparking debris, crawled through a destroyed doorway. A crisped filing cabinet fell through a gap in the ceiling above, missing him by inches; one of the drawers snagged his jumpsuit as the thing fell, and by the time Dean unhooked it, the red-hot metal had sizzled a hole right through the material, leaving his shoulder exposed. He pressed on grimly, leapt a gaping hole in the floor. When he kicked open the next door, he sucked in a sharp, surprised breath.
The fire had burned right through the wall of the building, leaving the room he was in open to the grey sky; the ceiling was mostly burnt away, and the carpeted floor of the room above had been reduced to ashes, leaving only the rusting metal struts beneath. Holding on to one of the struts, feet braced against another, was a man. He was several feet above the flooring where Dean was standing, too far to fall safely. He hadn’t seen Dean yet, and he was scanning the floor directly below him, looking panicked. Dean could see the high red spots on his cheeks. He coughed violently, his eyes streaming. Dean ran forward, and the man almost let go, letting out a low, gravelly cry of fear.
“Whoa, whoa!” Dean said, ripping off his oxygen mask, looking up and exposing his face to the searing heat, the smoke. He grimaced, rubbed at his eyes with his gloved hand. “It’s OK, look, it’s OK! I’m a fireman, I’m here to help!”
“I can’t get back up!” the man called, his bare knuckles white. “I fell! Please –” he coughed again, slipped a few inches lower down the metal strut. It creaked worryingly. Dean considered running up to the next floor, trying to pull the man upwards to safety – but then the bar that the man was standing on started to bend under his weight. There was no time. Dean held out his arms.
“OK, you’ll have to – it’s Castiel, right?” The man nodded, looking down into Dean’s eyes desperately. “OK, Cas, my name is Dean and I’m gonna get you out of here. You’re gonna let go, and I’m gonna catch you. You’re gonna have to fall, alright? You ready?”
Cas shook his head desperately.
“I can’t do it!” he called down, clutching on tighter to the metal bar with his hands, wedging his feet at the join of two struts. “I –” he broke off, spluttering for breath.
“Yes, you can. You can, Cas!” Dean shouted, as Cas shook his head again. “I’m right here, I got you!”
Cas hesitated for a long, long moment before nodding; he looked sick with fear, but Dean watched with approval as he flattened his mouth in determination.
“Right. On three. One, two –”
Cas dislodged his feet from the metal strut, so that he was only holding on by his fingers. He hung there for a second, and Dean could see the flames licking at the ceiling over his head – it could collapse any moment.
“Come on, Cas!” he called, arms out, legs braced. Eyes wide open, Cas took a deep breath, and let go of the bar. He fell in a flurry, coat flapping around him, and landed squarely in Dean’s arms but flailed a little in his panic. Dean curled his arms up, bringing Cas in close to his chest, and then Cas’ hand crashed into his shoulder – exactly over the place where his jumpsuit had been melted.
The instant Cas’ bare palm collided with his skin, Dean’s world exploded into colour.
Suddenly, the sky was a violent blue, terrifyingly huge and vivid, and the trees down below were a shocking green, and his own skin looked different, and the smoke had blue mixed in with the grey and the people down below were wearing purple and pink and green and blue and the sky, oh god, the sky, Dean couldn’t breathe –
“D-Dean!” Cas yelled, as they fell together to the floor, legs and arms entangled. “The flames!” He looked petrified, far more than before; Dean realised that for Cas, the greyed-out fire had just become a furious, reddish hell-beast, yowling and roaring in vermillion rage. He put his hand on Cas’ shoulder, seeing his own veins standing out blue for the first time. Scrambling, both of them undignified and terrified, Dean pulled Cas to his feet.
As soon as he was standing, Cas snatched his hand back, eyes wide with fear and a strange intensity – somehow, even now amidst the flames, sharing colours was deeply personal, and Dean felt as though his guts had been casually strung out on the floor for Cas to inspect. Looking up, he watched the blue sky fade quickly back to grey, whilst the fire around them retained the feverish scarlet tones that he knew so well.
“Can you walk?” he demanded. “It’s not gonna be easy getting out.” He mentally calculated; he’d been here perhaps three or four minutes. The steps might still be intact, if they hurried. “Scratch that, can you run?”
Cas nodded, his expression of fierce determination back in place. Dean found himself reaching out to touch a gloved finger to Cas’ smudged cheek. Cas looked surprised, but didn’t pull away.
“Let’s go,” Dean said, grabbed Cas’ hand, and ran. Cas kept pace as they hurtled down burning corridors. “Hold your breath!” Dean yelled, weeping, realising too late that he’d left his oxygen mask back at the ledge. “Down, down, down! We have to crawl!”
It seemed achingly slow, but they pressed forward. At one point Cas reached forward and slapped at Dean’s head, quickly dislodging a small piece of smouldering paper that had been about to set Dean’s hair on fire. In the brief burst of colour from the contact, Dean saw that Cas had blue eyes, filled with smoky tears. He tried to speak, but his throat had closed, so he gestured forwards with a frantic hand.
The stairs were half-eaten by fire, but Dean figured that if they stayed close to the wall, they should be OK. Gordon and the fire crew had managed to put out the worst of the blaze downstairs, so the smoke wouldn’t be such an issue. He turned to Cas with an encouraging expression, and saw that the guy was sitting down, hunched over, his eyes streaming, looking desperate and lost. Dean made a quick decision.
“Come on, Cas,” he croaked, pretty sure that his words couldn’t be heard over the fire, but hoping that the sound of his voice would be reassuring. He turned around and pushed Cas backwards, slinging one arm beneath his shoulders and sliding the other under the bend of his knees. His lips thin, teeth gritted with the effort, he lifted Cas and carried him down the stairs. On the last step, he stumbled; a part of the ceiling nearby had crashed, sending Dean careening left. Cas tumbled out of his arms, and Dean hit his head hard on the bannister before collapsing on the floor. He groaned, tried to raise himself, and felt exquisite pain blossom in his side.
“Dean?” he heard Cas say, his voice like sandpaper.
“Cas,” he replied, trying to stay calm. Talking made his eyes water, and his lungs seemed to be full of cotton wool. “I think I might have cracked a rib, I fell weird. Can you…”
Cas had already moved; he rolled Dean gently over on to his back. He held up a twisted, blackened piece of welded plastic and metal that could once have been a stapler.
“You fell on this,” he said, his breaths quick and raspy.
“We’ve gotta get out of here. The fire… upstairs…” Dean coughed. “Let’s move.”
Cas helped pull Dean to his feet, and tugged Dean’s arm over his shoulders so that they could support each other. Slowly, painfully, they left the building.
“We’ve got two people here!” came a shrill voice immediately, and Dean felt Cas being tugged away from him.
“No – no, wait,” he said, but they were pulling him sideways, sitting him down and fastening a cold mask around his face; suddenly he could breathe, light and shallow but enough to stop his head from spinning. He glanced left, and saw that Cas was sitting right next to him on the low gurney.
“H-hey,” he said, attempting to smile, his words barely distinguishable behind the mask.
Cas was still panting, obviously trying to pull himself together.
Dean bit his lip.
“Up there, when you grabbed my arm…” he said, and then broke off. He was tired, and Cas looked completely exhausted. This wasn’t the right time.
“We’ll be taken to a hospital, OK? Get cleaned up, make sure there isn’t too much smoke damage.” Cas’ eyes were wide and unfocused; Dean put a light hand on his shoulder. “After that, do you – do you want to grab a bite?”
Cas stopped staring into the middle distance, focused in on Dean’s face. Dean stared into his grey eyes, tried to recall the exact shade of blue that they’d been when Cas had touched him. It was impossible; it had happened too fast.
“Y-yes, Dean,” Cas said eventually. “I would like that.”
They sat together on the gurney, waiting to be taken away.
**
The next morning – a cold, blustery spring day – found Dean and Cas sitting opposite each other in a coffee shop.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet,” Dean said, taking a gulp of his hot chocolate, aware that his tone was oddly formal. God, he was nervous, and he had no idea why.
“It’s no problem. I’m very grateful, Dean. You saved my life. Also, you have cream on your nose.” Dean hurriedly brushed it away, blushing slightly.
“Right, right. How’s your breathing?”
“Much improved, thank you. And your rib?”
“Just a small fracture,” Dean said, smiling ruefully. “Not as bad as I thought. Enough to get me a couple weeks off work, though, so. Bless that stapler.”
Cas smiled slightly, sipping his espresso.
“Look, I hope you don’t mind me getting straight to business…” Dean began.
Cas nodded seriously.
“You want to talk about the colour share,” he said.
“Yeah. I mean, I don’t know about you, but… it felt like I could see every colour.”
“I was a little distracted at the time,” Cas said, with a touch of sarcasm. “I remember a lot of red and orange.”
“Yeah, I go all the way along the lower spectrum,” Dean explained. “Browns, reds, oranges, yellows.”
Cas nodded thoughtfully, drinking a little more coffee.
“I’m a full upper spectrum,” he said, and Dean sucked in a breath. He’d hoped, of course, but he hadn’t been sure. A Blue alone was rare, but a full upper spectrum was more so. “Do you think our spectra match exactly?”
“As in, is there a gap in between us, which neither of us can see?” Dean asked.
Cas nodded again. The bustle of the coffee shop behind them was quiet and soothing, keeping the conversation light.
“I can see green,” Cas said. “That joins with yellow. But we might have trouble with the spring greens.”
“Well,” Dean said, swallowing down his nerves, “I guess there’s only one way to know for sure.”
Cas raised his eyebrows.
“You want to…”
Dean shrugged.
“Only if you do,” he said gruffly.
“Yes,” breathed Cas, with a hunger that struck a chord in Dean’s soul. “Yes, I do.” Dean glanced around; a few couples were colour sharing, their hands clasped tight together across the table. He removed his gloves carefully, trying to disguise the way that his fingers were shaking.
“This is terrifying,” Cas observed without inflection. Dean smiled hesitantly in agreement, proffering his bare fingertips. This was only the second time in over five years that he’d touched someone without having to pay, and the first had been yesterday. He swallowed, his throat still raw from the smoke and heat of the blaze.
Cas extended his own hand, reaching across to hover millimetres away from Dean’s expectant digits. He looked up into Dean’s eyes – Cas would be able to see their green, Dean realised – and then he pressed their whole hands together, palm to palm.
Since he was looking into Cas’ eyes, they were the first thing to turn this time around. They were stunningly beautiful, the blue making Dean’s heart skip and squeeze tightly in his chest; and Cas’ lips were full and pink, his skin softer in tone than anyone else’s that Dean had ever seen – and then Dean cast a glance around the coffee shop, and realised that a lot of people’s skin looked like that, he just hadn’t been able to see it properly.
Cas was staring out of the window, his eyes sticking to the red traffic lights, orange signs, a passing yellow car. Dean risked a glance outside himself, almost knocking himself breathless.
“The sky, it’s just… it’s so blue,” Dean muttered, and Cas smiled.
“Your hair is nice,” he said, transferring his attention back to Dean. “I like it. It looks a little like how hot chocolate tastes.” Dean took a sip of his drink, rolling the malty cocoa over his tongue.
“I like your eyes,” he replied. “They’re wonderful. Um, the blue, that is. The blue is wonderful.”
“Thank you, Dean,” Cas said, and Dean could see the red blush rising on his peach cheeks, beneath his downcast blue eyes. He’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life, Dean realised, swallowing too much hot chocolate at once and choking a little.
“So, uh,” Dean said, to cover his mistake, “what do you do, Cas?”
Cas shrugged.
“I’m unemployed,” he said. “I just finished doing a PhD in physics, and now, I…” he tailed off.
“What?” Dean pressed, rubbing his thumb ever so slightly against Cas’.
“I wanted to become a pilot,” Cas said quietly, looking down at his coffee cup.
“A pilot? But dude, don’t you have to be –”
“Full spectrum,” Cas cut in quickly. “Yes, I know. But I thought that upper half might be enough. Chroma Airlines said no, but the woman who interviewed me, Pamela, she gave me this.” He fumbled in his pocket with his free hand, pulled out a folded piece of paper and pushed it across the table to Dean. Dean opened it one-handed.
“Air Rescue,” he read out loud, scanning the application form. “You wanna be an Angel?”
“I’m sorry?” Cas said, looking startled.
“The Air Rescue unit. We call them the Angels, you know, because they swoop in and save the day.”
Cas smiled.
“Then, yes,” he said. “I want to be an Angel.”
“It’ll be impossible for you to pass the colour test, though, man,” Dean said, frowning down at the application. “This woman, Pamela, I think she just gave you this to get rid of you. The tests are hard. We had one for the Fire Department, and it was tricky – and that’s just for lower spectrum, which I can see all of. You really think you can pass?” Whilst they’d been talking, Dean and Cas’ hands had relaxed so that their fingers were now interlinked, each one’s digits filling the gaps between the other’s.
Cas’ mouth twisted.
“No,” he said honestly. Dean gave his hand a light squeeze, enjoying the extra burst of vibrancy that the blues and greens around him received when he did so. “It’s impossible. It’s just, I’ve wanted to be a pilot for so long, Dean. I love the feeling of flying, and I want to help people.” He shook his head, as if to clear it of self-pity. “But it’s unfeasible,” he said simply. “I’m not enough.”
Dean watched Cas’ mouth form a hard, stubbornly-brave line, just like it had the day before, during the fire. He looked down at their joined hands, thinking hard. There had to be some way that Cas could do this –
The idea hit him like a freight train, so huge and obvious that he was shocked he hadn’t seen it coming.
“Cas,” he said. “I have… a crazy idea.”
**
Two days later, in the darkest hours of the night, Dean lay sprawled on the comfortable blue sofa in Cas’ house. Cas was sitting beside him on the floor, their hands linked over his shoulder; he’d lit the lamp, casting a purple light over the small, neat lounge.
“So, that one’s the fuel gauge,” Cas said, pointing to a dial on the diagram in the textbook spread across his knees. “And that one is…?”
“Uh, the altimeter?” Dean hazarded, earning himself a smile.
“That’s right. You’re improving.”
“Mmm,” Dean said, allowing his tired eyes to fall closed. “Listen, Cas, is it OK if I crash here tonight?”
“Of course, Dean,” Cas replied, tightening his grip ever so slightly on Dean’s hand. He continued to read his book whilst Dean dozed, happily slipping in and out of consciousness, his perception fuzzy, Cas’ hand a warm, strong anchor.
“Hey, Cas,” he said after a while, “do you dream in colour?”
Cas paused in his reading, looking across the room at his bookshelves, but Dean could tell by the far-off quality in his eyes that he wasn’t really seeing them.
“No,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of it before. But I don’t dream outside my half of the spectrum.”
“Do you think…?” Dean began, and then broke off. What he’d been about to suggest was way over the line, no matter this curious new intimacy between them.
“I don’t know,” Cas replied, as though Dean had finished the question. There was a pause.
“We should try it.”
Dean looked up at the ceiling, taking a deep breath in and out.
“Yeah, we should,” he said.
By tacit consent they stood, moving together towards Cas’ bedroom. When they entered, Cas pulled open a drawer and wordlessly handed Dean a raggedy old t-shirt and a pair of plaid pyjama bottoms. Dean went to the bathroom and then rinsed his mouth with Cas’ mouthwash; when he returned to the bedroom, he crawled into the wide double bed, pulling the covers over his legs and sticking his bare feet out at the end, whilst Cas brushed his teeth. He twisted the corner of the covers nervously. His hand felt strangely empty without Cas’ fingers between his own. He swallowed hard. He was getting in pretty deep, pretty fast, he realised with a pang of worry. What if this was flaring too fast, like a flame rising to life, devouring its kindling, and dying just as quickly?
When Cas returned to the bedroom and slid between the sheets, hand already reaching for Dean’s, Dean could imagine wanting nothing else at all for a very long time. He didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it didn’t seem like a kindling sort of thought. More like a hot coal, smouldering and burning on and on.
“Is this OK?” he asked, wanting to check.
“Yes, Dean,” said Cas, smiling in his small, reassuringly-familiar way before turning and flicking off the green lamp. In the darkness, they lay facing each other; after a moment, Dean rubbed a small circle against Cas’ knuckle with his thumb.
“Mmm,” Cas sighed. “Goodnight, Dean.”
“’Night, Cas,” Dean replied, hoping that Cas would chalk his throaty tone down to sleepiness. The way Cas stroked his index finger down the back of Dean’s hand told him that he had probably not got away with it.
He closed his eyes, allowed his mind to relax, not clinging to the rocks of individual thoughts, but letting himself swim in the slow-moving stream of random reflections. He saw Cas, the way he narrowed his eyes when he concentrated; how he twitched his nose in mixed amusement and annoyance when Dean made a stupid joke; the strange way he walked, arms held still by his sides, as though he hadn’t ever quite figured out how to do it properly. Dean thought about how Cas was so passionate about flying, and wondered if he was perhaps not built for the earth, but for the air. The thought gave him a kind of sharp, happy pain in his chest; he dug his face into his pillow, relinquishing the image. He thought of Cas at his most grounded, when he looked at Dean with a lingering smile, warmth melting his ice-blue gaze.
With his hand clasped around Cas’, Dean found that he could perfectly recall the exact shade of Cas’ eyes. He hummed happily, and fell asleep.
**
When Dean woke up, he was stretched out across the bed as usual: legs spread apart, one arm hanging over the edge. He blinked his eyes open slowly, wondering at the magical, eerie glow to the light – and then remembered the hand still wrapped up tight in his own, and realised that this was what mornings weresupposed to look like. Beside him, Cas began to stir.
Dean propped himself up on one elbow to watch. Cas squeezed Dean’s fingers, began smiling before he’d even opened his eyes.
“Morning, Dean,” he said, his voice grumbly with morning roughness. His eyes flickered open.
“Mornin’, Cas,” Dean replied. Cas stared up at him, his expression wondering.
“Crazy light, right? I’ve never seen anything like it,” Dean said.
“Yes,” Cas murmured. He raised his other arm, then aborted the action, letting it flop back down to rest on the bed.
“Did you dream?” Dean asked. Cas took his time answering – was he flushing pink? Dean’s mouth dropped open.
“Yes,” Cas said, “I did. In all of the colours.”
Dean nodded, resisting the urge to run his hand through Cas’ bedhead.
“Me too,” he said. “I’ve never slept so well in my life. Anyway, uh. Breakfast?”
They rolled out of bed, briefly letting go of each other’s hands. The afterglow of Cas’ touch meant that Dean’s vision remained technicolour, however, and this time it lasted longer than ever before.
**
“You will be silent whilst the test is taking place. You will not look at another candidate’s test sheet. You have exactly one hour to answer every question. Please do not…” Dean leaned over towards Cas as the invigilator for the Air Rescue Application Exam continued to read the rules from a list in her hand.
“We good?” Dean asked softly. Cas met his eyes, and nodded. They were sitting at the back of the room, at neighbouring desks.
“This is never going to work,” Cas had said that morning as he made them coffee.
“Sure it is. I’m gonna make it work,” Dean had replied confidently, tapping his little finger against Cas’.
“You may now begin,” the invigilator said, snapping Dean back to the present. He flipped open his paper, and read the first question.
The plan was just to get Cas through the test. Once that was done, Dean would go back to his job as a fireman – he didn’t even need to answer any of the questions on this paper, it wasn’t important whether he passed or failed. Still, after studying with Cas for the past three days solid, he found he knew a surprising amount about planes. He began to scribble something down for the first answer.
After around half an hour, he left the technical questions behind, turning the page to reveal the colour test. Bubbles of colour floated in a square – red, orange, yellow and varying shades of grey.
What do you see? The question at the bottom of the page read.
Nothing at all, Dean wanted to write. He cast a surreptitious glance over at Cas, and saw that he was on the same question. Catching his eye, Dean nodded.
Cas and Dean extended their hands, keeping them low and out of sight of the invigilator. With their little fingers wrapped together, the formless bubbles on the page resolved themselves into a clear shape: a lion, roaring. Dean scrawled the answer and flipped the page.
Cell phone.
Tree.
Vending machine.
Sailboat.
T-Rex.
Dean turned the last page, and saw a red and purple airplane soaring through a twilight sky. He smiled, and wrote the answer. Beside him, Cas did the same. They pulled their hands apart, folded them neatly on the top of their desks.
“Are you finished?” the invigilator asked, walking over to them. “I’ll mark them right now. You can wait outside.”
In the corridor, Dean and Cas sat together on the uncomfortable, worn old chairs, lacing their fingers together out of habit. Dean found himself staring at the green emergency exit sign, briefly lost in the intensity of its colour. He was getting used to seeing upper spectrum, but slowly.
“That went well, right?” he asked, snapping out of it. Cas nodded.
“I believe so,” he replied. “I saw you writing answers to the first section as well.”
“Yeah, well,” Dean said with a shrug, “might as well. Thought they might get suspicious if I turned up and didn’t write anything. We don’t want them looking into this too hard.”
“That’s true,” Cas said. “And you might pass.”
Dean laughed.
“I’m not a big one for passing tests,” he said. “Don’t have the patience.”
Cas tilted his head, pulling the confused, slightly cynical expression that Dean was coming to associate with being called out on his own crap.
“You’ve studied with me every hour of the past three days,” he said. “And didn’t you tell me that you aced your fireman’s exam? You don’t have to play dumb, Dean.”
“I know,” said Dean defensively, annoyed. “I’m not!”
Cas was silent.
“Shut up, Cas.”
Cas still said nothing, looking unconcerned.
“Look, it’s just how things work, alright?” Dean said angrily. “You tell someone you’re clever, and they just go out of their way to prove that you’re not.”
Cas looked into Dean’s eyes, faintly astonished.
“Who does that?” he demanded.
Dean shrugged.
“My dad, I guess,” he mumbled.
Cas frowned.
“He was wrong to do that, Dean. You’re clever, and it’s a good thing. You should be proud of yourself.”
Dean didn’t reply, but he curled his fingers tighter around Cas’, swallowed hard.
“Castiel and Dean?” the invigilator had stepped out of the exam room. Dean and Cas stood up, letting their hands fall back to their sides. Dean watched half the colours in the room fade away; he stepped closer to Cas so that the backs of their hands were touching, bringing back the upper spectrum.
“Yes?” Cas said.
“If you’d like to step this way.”
She led them down a long corridor, stopping outside a plain white door and knocking twice before pushing it open. Sitting at a large, mahogany desk in a room plastered with flying memorabilia was a bearded man with cool, blue eyes. Dean and Cas stepped forward at his beckoned instruction, and the door swung closed behind them.
“Dean and Castiel,” the man said thoughtfully. “My name is Cain, and I’m the one in charge around here.”
“Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Dean said, smiling widely despite his anxiety. Did this mean Cas had passed?
“You boys did very well on the test,” Cain said, his tone inscrutable.
“We studied hard,” Dean offered.
“I’m sure you did. I’d like to try something here for a second, though. Dean, if you could just sit down in the corner, behind Castiel? Now, Castiel, I’m going to show you a picture up on the screen over there. If you could just tell me what colour the car is?”
A cartoon car popped up on the interactive whiteboard screen behind Cain’s desk. It was a muted, rusty red.
Cas’ fingers twitched, as though seeking Dean’s across the room. Dean wanted to give Cas a sign, but there was no way Cas could see him.
“Orange,” Cas guessed finally, a note of defeat in his voice. Cain’s eyes flickered in triumph.
“That’s what I thought,” he growled, transferring his attention to Dean. “You, Dean Winchester, are on record at the Fire Department as a lower-spec, yet you passed the test with full marks, just like Castiel. Did you really think that you wouldn’t get caught?”
Dean’s heart was somewhere low in his chest, heavy with disappointment.
“Look, Cas just wants to be a pilot!” he said, standing up and moving over to the desk, leaning his hands on the wooden surface. “He’s the best! Like you said, he passed the exam, he knows an airplane back to front and upside down. It’s all he wants to do, and he can’t do it because of the stupid colour restrictions! You can’t tell me that you’ve got enough recruits, there aren’t enough full-specs in the city for that. Take Cas! He’s brilliant, he won’t let you down, I swear…”
Cain held up a placating hand, stilling Dean’s speech. Dean backed away from the desk, moving to stand next to Cas.
“Castiel is very good –” Cain began.
“He’s the best,” Dean insisted, and Cas reached over and took his hand, squeezing it hard.
“– and so are you, Dean. But you’re not eligible to fly with the Air Rescue team.”
Dean shook his head furiously.
“Ignore the dumbass rules! He’s –”
“However,” Cain interrupted with a stern look to quell Dean’s interjection, “there may be one thing I can do. I’d like to try something.” He clicked a few times on his computer mouse, changing the picture on the screen to an image of the colour spectrum, wide and stretched so that as many hues as possible were clear and distinct. “When you look together, is any part of this greyed-out?”
Dean and Cas cast each other a glance before squinting hard at the picture. Paying special attention to the green and yellow where their spectra crossed, Dean stared hard, searching for even the thinnest strip of colourless pixels. When he looked across and met Cas’ eye again, he knew they had the same answer.
“No,” they replied together.
“It’s all there, even the yellowy greens,” Cas said, sounding slightly wondering. Cain nodded silently, steepling his fingers.
“Sit down, boys,” he said. Cas perched on the chair in front of the desk, while Dean dragged the seat in the corner over to sit beside him.
“Do you have any idea how rare it is to have a combined full spectrum?” Cain asked, frowning. “It’s incredibly rare. There’s always some greying, whether in between your spectra, or at either end if one of you can’t see all the way to the highest or lowest frequency of your colours.”
Cas was nodding; Dean attempted to concentrate, but he was too on edge.
“What’s this have to do with us?” he demanded tersely.
“This is to do with you,” Cain said with a scowl, “because it means that between you two, you’re a perfect full-spec. And that means…” he paused, then seemed to relent. “That means that if both of you agree, you can go together to Air Rescue training.”
Dean gaped.
“We could fly the plane together?” he heard Cas ask, as though through a layer of cotton wool.
“You’d have to,” Cain responded. “It would be mandatory for you to share your colours at all times. Dean?”
Dean swallowed, hard.
“I – I didn’t –” he stuttered, and then looked over at Cas’ face. It was absolutely glowing with sudden, irrepressible, unexpected joy and expectation, waiting for Dean’s answering happiness, and faltering when it was met with hesitancy.
“Dean?” he said, tapping his index finger curiously on the back of Dean’s hand. Dean clutched on tight, looking down at the floor.
“What do you say, Dean?” Cain pushed. “You’d have to give up your job at the Fire Department, but Air Rescue pays a hell of a lot better. After those test results, we’d make it worth your while to be here.”
There was a long pause.
“It’s not fair to make Dean quit his job,” Cas said suddenly, as though his conscience had just won a battle against his happiness. “I can’t ask him to do this. Is there any other way –”
Dean gritted his teeth.
“I’ll do it,” he said, pasting a falsely happy smile on his face. “It sounds like an excellent opportunity. I’ll give my notice to the Fire Department tonight.”
Cain smiled, his bushy beard twitching. “Excellent. You boys come in tomorrow, eight o’clock sharp. We’re gonna take you flying.”
Cas smiled and nodded, walking out of the room with a distinct bounce in his step. Dean followed, looking slightly green.
“You better be careful,” Cain called after them. “I only ever knew one other pair who had a full spectrum between them, and it didn’t end well.”
Dean gave him a grim look of understanding before the door swung closed.
Inside his office, Cain picked up a photo on his desk, showing a pretty brown-haired woman laughing next to a young man with a short beard. He ran his finger over the woman’s face, a mixture of sadness and longing on his face.
“You better be careful,” he repeated softly, though Dean and Cas could not hear.
**
“I can’t believe that worked!” Cas said, striding out of the front door of the Air Rescue office building, swinging his and Dean’s hands backwards and forwards happily.
“Yeah, I thought we were totally smoked,” Dean agreed, allowing a little of Cas’ infectious joy to wash away his fears. Cas, though, sensed the edge to his tone and stopped walking.
“Dean,” he said seriously. “Listen, I – I know that it was an unfair request, making you drop your job like that. I appeared in your life four days ago and now I’m asking you to be my – co-worker, for a very long time.” Dean nodded mutely, scuffing his shoes on the grubby pavement. “If you’d wanted to carry on at the Fire Department, I’d have understood.”
Dean shook his head.
“It’s not that, Cas,” he said quietly. “It’s really not. The past few days have been awesome, and I’d love – I mean, it’d be cool – I wouldn’t mind working with you every day.”
Cas pressed his fingers down on Dean’s, opened his mouth to speak.
“Thing is, though,” Dean went on, his voice even smaller, “I’m scared of flying.”
Cas’ mouth fell open.
“You’re scared of flying,” he repeated disbelievingly. “But… but, Dean, it’s –”
“Don’t you tell me I’m irrational,” Dean warned, “don’t you do that. Thousands of feet in the air in a tin can? I’m pretty sure we can agree that it’s not exactly safe.”
He started to stride off moodily, but Cas grabbed his shoulder, pulled him to a stop.
“You said yes!” he said, accusatory and upset. “You made me think that this was possible! Dean, why didn’t you just tell me back in Cain’s office that you weren’t going to be able to do it?”
Dean pulled his hand out of Cas’ grasp, allowing his world to fade back to greys and reds.
“I never said I wasn’t going to do it,” he said hotly. “I just said I was scared. But whatever, you know? This is your life’s dream and all that crap. I’m still in.” He stared at the floor with a mulish expression, refusing to look up and meet Cas’ eye.
“Dean,” said Cas, and then stopped, apparently lost for words.
“It’ll be fine,” Dean said. “I’ll be fine. You do the flying, and I’ll sit next to you with my eyes closed. That’s how we’re gonna do it for the next fifty years. And then I’m gonna retire somewhere underground.”
He brushed Cas’ hand off his shoulder, ignoring the brief flare of azure in the sky above.
“Where are you going?” Cas demanded.
“Home,” Dean shot back. “Unless you’d rather I came back with you again?”
“Actually,” said Cas, looking furious, “I would.”
“Fine,” Dean snapped.
“And I want to hold your hand on the subway.”
“Well… good,” Dean growled.
“And I’m getting us take-out for dinner.”
“Sounds delicious.”
“Pizza sound good?”
“Perfect. I’m still mad at you, though.”
**
“Hey, Cas?”
Dean was sleepy and full of pizza, lying flat on Cas’ couch and squidging his full belly with the fingers of one hand.
“Yes, Dean?” Cas replied softly, flipping the page of his textbook.
“Do you wanna watch a movie, or something?”
Cas turned to look at Dean, puzzled.
“Wouldn’t you rather I knew as much as I could about airplane safety, for tomorrow?” he asked, teasing slightly. Dean shook his head.
“I – I think you’re gonna do great, whether you study or not,” he said gruffly. “And I wanna watch Star Trek with the colours in. I want to see Spock’s blue shirt. And I hear Kirk’s eyes are a kind of blueish-grey, so we’re gonna pause it on his face every now and then, just to see.”
Cas nodded seriously.
“Oh, man, and then I wanna watch Avatar! Can you imagine seeing it with all the colours?”
“I have seen neither Star Trek, nor Avatar,” Cas admitted.
“What – dude, that’s insane. How?”
“The incomplete colours used to frustrate me,” Cas replied simply.
“Well, they can’t anymore,” Dean said, getting up off the sofa and relinquishing Cas’ hand briefly while he grabbed the TV remote. “You got Netflix?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“No sweat, we can use mine, hang on…”
Halfway through the first episode of Star Trek: the Original Series, Dean felt himself dozing off. Cas, on the other hand, was watching the screen with rapt attention. Dean smiled to himself, and then lifted a small cushion out from behind his back, and threw it onto Cas’ lap.
“Dean, what –” Cas began, and then Dean laid his head softly on the cushion, stretching his legs out on the sofa.
“It’s either this way round, or you get my feet on you,” Dean said comfortably, “so be grateful.”
“I am,” Cas said, heartfelt enough to earn himself a playful pinch on the wrist from Dean’s hand, still intertwined with his own at a slightly awkward angle behind Dean’s back. Sensing Dean’s discomfort, Cas trailed his hand up Dean’s arm, bringing it to rest just above Dean’s ear, tucked into the soft, short hair there.
“Whoa,” said Dean. “The colours are even more intense, this way.” The blues, greens and purples seemed to be almost incandescent.
“Really?” asked Cas, and Dean stretched an arm out blindly behind him, reaching for the side of Cas’ head. His questing fingers touched skin, and after a second he realised that they were resting on Cas’ lips. He pulled them away, but not too fast, tucking them instead behind Cas’ ear.
“See?” he said, his voice rough.
“Yes, I see,” Cas replied, his tone full of wonder.
That night, they fell asleep with their hands resting lightly on each other’s cheeks. Their dreams were even brighter than they had been before.
**
“Just relax, Dean,” Castiel said for the hundredth time that day. Dean was gripping the sides of his co-pilot chair, his heart thumping hard against his ribcage.
“I’m fine,” Dean growled, wondering if he were going to be sick. They taxied across the airstrip, making for the start of the runway. All of the other Angels were already in the air, starting their training with other full-spec co-pilots. Dean and Cas were, of course, the only trainees who couldn’t see every colour alone.
“What, so he’s like your wooden leg?” a tall, blond Angel called Balthazar had joked to Dean earlier on, whilst they’d been waiting to be assigned their pairs. “You do the talking, he does the walking?”
“We’re a team,” Dean had replied, wanting to leave it at that.
“I didn’t know they let half-sights into the squad nowadays,” another Angel had said; he was tall, black and authoritative.
“See, Raphael, together they make a full-spec,” Balthazar had explained, chucking under Cas’ chin. “It’s adorable.”
A tall, beefy Angel had walked past, scowling.
“Couldn’t you have left your boyfriend at home, Castiel?” he’d demanded. “Or were you scared he’d urinate on the carpet?”
“Uriel,” Cas had acknowledged grimly, at the same time as Dean had said angrily,
“Cas isn’t –” and then had stopped himself, because he’d suddenly lost all desire to finish that sentence. He’d spent every night of the past week in Cas’ bed, holding his hand every hour of the day. His era of isolation was over: no more gloves in the house, no more colourmatch.com, no more visiting shady back alleys to get his green kick. He’d never been this happy in his life, airplanes notwithstanding, and he’d been thinking a lot about Cas, and their strange relationship, and where it was going. The way that this simple denial had stuck in his throat was, Dean had thought, fairly damning.
Dean was jerked back to the present. They’d halted, facing a long, tarmac airstrip. Cas turned to Dean, who looked whiter than a sheet to Cas’ eyes, despite the fact that their hands were linked over the central joystick.
“Dean,” Cas said softly.
“Mmm?” Dean replied, not taking his too-wide eyes off the runway stretching out before them.
“Do you remember when I was in the fire, and I didn’t want to fall?”
Dean turned to look into Cas’ face, and nodded once.
“Yeah,” he grunted. “I remember.”
“You told me I could do it. You said, ‘I’m right here, I got you.’”
Dean sat silently, waiting for Cas to make his point.
“This time, we’re going to fly. And I’m right here, Dean. I’ve got you.”
Dean felt the tightness in his chest loosen a little. Sure, flying was the scariest thing in the world, no questions. But this was Cas. If anyone had asked, he would’ve said that he’d trust Cas with his life; that was exactly what he was being asked to do right now, exactly what he’d asked Cas to do the first time they’d ever met.
“OK,” he said, his voice grainy with nerves, but with an edge of steely certainty. “Let’s go.”
Cas squeezed his fingers, once, and then threw levers, twisted a dial, eased the throttle forwards. The plane started to move, slowly at first but then faster and faster as they raced down the airstrip, Dean yelling over the roar of the engine as he felt the wheels lift off the ground, and suddenly they were airborne, the greens and greys of the land slipping out of sight so that all Dean could see was bright, pure azure, intense and glowing, filling his vision and his mind, making him feel that mixture of sharpness and calm and space that was so exquisitely blue. They levelled off, and Dean whooped loudly, his arm in the air. Cas was grinning beside him, his eyes on the dashboard, flicking up every now and then to look at the sky or Dean.
“Cas!” Dean called, just because he could – because he was up here, in the sky with Castiel, and he wasn’t afraid.
Cas turned to him, and Dean saw tears in his eyes even as he bit down on his lip to stop it from quivering slightly.
“Is it good?” Dean yelled. “Is it what you wanted?”
Cas nodded.
“It’s better,” he shouted back, fixing his gaze on Dean’s eyes for another few moments before turning back to the dashboard. “It’s so much better.”
**
“Hey, Cas,” Dean said, and Cas smiled. “What?”
“Whenever we’re sitting here and you say, ‘hey, Cas’, there’s normally a large question coming,” Cas replied, pressing his fingers down on Dean’s lightly.
“Oh, really? Well, I was just gonna ask if you had any chocolate milk in the fridge,” Dean said, eyes wide and innocent.
“No, there isn’t. You drank it all. But ask your original question, Dean.”
Dean, looking suitably chastened, swivelled on the sofa so that he was facing Cas, sitting cross-legged.
“You know the afterglow?” he began.
“You’re referring to the glow of your colours that I get when we’re not touching, but we have been for a while beforehand?”
“Yeah. Do you think it lasts longer when we’ve been touching a long time?” Dean asked.
Cas considered.
“No, not really,” he said. “It’s thirty seconds, at most.”
Dean nodded his agreement.
“What about when we’ve been touching somewhere that’s… not hands?” Dean pressed on, trying his hardest not to blush, knowing full well that he was failing. Cas, however, answered seriously.
“You mean when you touched my… neck?” he asked thoughtfully. “I don’t know, because I was still touching you with my hand for a long time after that.”
Dean nodded.
“But when you took your hand off my head, later on,” Dean said, “the afterglow lasted for ages. At least five minutes.”
Cas tilted his head pensively.
“Look, I’ll show you,” Dean said, so Cas twisted on the sofa to face him, making sure not to brush his folded knees against Dean’s and throw off the results. Dean rested his hand lightly against the side of Cas’ head, burying it in the fluffy hair. Cas blinked once, long and slow.
“OK,” Dean said, removing his hand, “tell me how long the afterglow lasts. Uh, you need something red…” he cast his eye over the lounge.
“Your lips,” Cas said quickly, and then flushed. Dean looked down at his hands to hide the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, warm and strong.
“Sure,” he said, when he’d recovered. “My lips. Do they look red to you?”
Cas nodded, still obviously embarrassed.
“Normally, when you’re not holding my hand, they look mostly grey with a little pink,” Cas said slowly. “But I can see them perfectly.”
Dean attempted to ignore the fact that Cas knew the shade of his lips, both with and without full-spectrum vision.
“Still?” he asked after a few more moments.
“Still,” Cas confirmed.
“So, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been touching,” Dean mused out loud, trying to distract himself from the way that Cas’ intense gaze was focused entirely on his lips. “It matters where.”
“I expect that the more intimate the place,” Cas suggested, “the longer the afterglow.”
Dean considered this for a moment.
“I need a shower,” he said.
**
Cas and Dean were lounging in the Air Rescue base, a little apart from the other trainee Angels. The TV was blaring, and they watched it absent-mindedly; both of them were more focused on the points of contact between their joined hands than the digital screen, but neither of them said so.
“Mayor Crowley’s anniversary as the leader of the city will be celebrated today with a parade, fireworks, and a flyover by our favourite heroes, the Air Rescue Angels,” said the reporter, twisting her mic nervously in her hands whilst maintaining a glossy smile. Dean rubbed Cas’ pinkie between his own index finger and thumb.
“What is that?” he demanded, as the screen was suddenly filled with thousands of brightly-coloured pieces of paper, falling in spirals and obscuring everything else in front of the camera.
“Confetti. It’s a parade,” Cas explained.
Somewhere in the building, a phone rang; Dean almost leapt up to get it, before remembering that he wasn’t at the Fire Station anymore.
Good thing too, he thought to himself, looking over at Cas’ placid face as he watched the TV. He’s much better-looking than Gordon.
Cain burst into the room at that moment, looking furious and harried.
“There’s an emergency,” he barked, and the trainee Angels all sat up. “All the Angels are at that damn ceremony, and meanwhile someone’s up at the nuclear plant needing our help. Two of you are going to have to go.”
He scanned the room for a brief moment.
“Dean and Castiel, go and get ready.”
“What?” demanded Uriel. “That’s insane. Neither of them is a full-spec. It’s unsafe.”
“They outscored you in the test, and outflew you yesterday,” Cain snapped.
“At least let one of us ride in the back of the plane,” Balthazar said, looking mildly concerned.
“There’s no room, with the stretcher in there,” said Cain. “This is the best way. Dean, Castiel, go.”
**
“Breathe,” Cas kept saying as they flew. “Breathe. Breathe.”
“I’m fine, Cas!” Dean called.
Cas looked over at him. “I know,” he shouted back. “I’m talking to myself.”
Dean paled.
“Cas, I’m not fine,” he yelled.
They were approaching the nuclear plant, just seventeen minutes after the call came in. Dean picked up the radio, pulled on the headphones.
“Nuclear Plant Room 2Y5, do you read me?” he barked into it.
The reply was crackly and distant, but definite.
“I read you!” came a woman’s voice. “I read you. We need help. We’re stuck in this room.”
Dean frowned.
“What?” he shouted.
“We’re stuck!” the woman repeated. “Dr Singer is very ill, and we can’t get out of the door because we can’t see blue to type in the passcode! We’ve tried but it hasn’t worked and if we get it wrong one more time, the whole place is going to go on lockdown! We need one of you full-specs to get down here…” her voice trailed away. Dean looked over at Cas in abject horror.
“They need a Blue,” he said, too softly, but Cas could read his lips. “They need you down there. But you can’t go, because I can’t fly the plane.”
“I could go down on the winch,” Cas said. “You’d just have to sit here and hold the plane steady –”
“No,” Dean insisted shakily. “I can’t, Cas, Jesus, I just can’t do it. We’re gonna have to think of something else, I just can’t do that, Cas…”
“There’s a sick person down in that building, Dean!” Cas snapped.
“I’m aware!” Dean retorted, pulling his hand away from Cas’.
“Do you have any better ideas for getting him out of there, then?” Cas demanded. Dean stared into his eyes, his wide, blue eyes – his blue eyes.
“The afterglow,” Dean said. Cas scrunched up his face in confusion. “The afterglow!” Dean yelled. “If you – if we do it right, there should be enough time for me to get down there and type in the code while I can still see blue!”
Cas was nodding slowly.
“It’s the best we’ve got,” he said. “We have to do this quickly. How do we make this last the longest?”
Dean ran his eyes over Cas’ body.
“Hand to head worked for about five minutes. I need maybe three times that,” he said desperately. “We can’t use our hands, it’s got to be –”
Cas leaned forward and kissed him, hard. He pressed his lips against Dean’s, forcing the kiss open, licking his way into Dean’s mouth; Dean gasped and pushed back, burying his hand in the long hair at the back of Cas’ neck. When Cas pulled away, the sky stayed a firm, clear blue.
“Go,” Cas breathed against Dean’s mouth. “Go.”
Dean went.
**
Inside the nuclear plant, alarms were ringing. Dean ran, following the signs for Room 2Y5, feeling his heart thumping and his breaths coming fast; his thoughts were panic-scattered in response to the sirens. His blue was slowly fading; the descent had taken longer than he’d anticipated because he’d been terrified, clutching the wire of the winch in a death-grip and yelling incoherent curses into the wind. The cheerful sky-blue sign over the door to the cafeteria looked distinctly jaded. Dean picked up the pace even further, hurtling along the corridors with no thought for his own personal safety.
He rounded the last corner, dishevelled and gasping. Through the glass panels set into the heavy metal doors to Room 2Y5, Dean could see a red-haired girl mouthing frantically at him, pointing to a reader on the wall at the side of the door.
“Two five one nine six seven,” she was saying, over and over again. “Two five one nine six seven.”
Dean approached the reader. He pressed it with a cautious finger, and a keypad appeared: the keys were violet on blue, the colours almost indistinguishable. Dean squinted, concentrating. If he got this wrong…
He cut himself off. He didn’t have time to waste. Castiel’s blue was still in his eyes, helping him to see. You can do it. I’m right here, Dean. I’ve got you. He swallowed.
Two five one nine six seven, he stabbed out, as fast as he could.
With a beep and a click, the doors swung open, and the alarms were stilled.
“Thank you, thank you,” the red-haired girl was yelling as she tumbled out. “Get him, get Doctor Singer! He had a heart attack, I think, oh god, please don’t let him be dead…”
Dean checked the man’s vitals, just as he’d been taught at the Fire Department.
“He’s alive,” he said grimly, “just. Let’s get him out of here.”
Together, Dean and the girl dragged the man out of the building.
**
“This is exactly why we were all concerned about those two!” Uriel was shouting at Cain, as Dean and Cas approached his office. “They’re a liability!”
“They saved the man’s life. Used their heads in a crisis,” Cain said calmly.
“They wouldn’t have had to use their heads if they’d both been full-specs! Now they’re being recognised as Rebel Heroes by the newspapers, but next mission they’re just going to get someone killed!”
“There won’t be another mission for them for at least another three months, whilst they train,” Cain said. “They have plenty to learn in that time. Right, boys?” he asked, as Dean and Cas rounded the corner and entered his office.
“Yes, sir,” Dean said respectfully. Cain clapped him on the shoulder.
“Well done, to both of you,” he said. “I’m proud of you. Castiel, I’ve seen the CCTV footage. The way you held your bird steady while Dean hauled the sick man up was masterful. I’ve never seen flying like it.”
Cas looked down at the floor, flushing happily. Dean squeezed his hand.
“And you, Dean,” Cain said. “The way you flailed around on that winch was a beautiful sight to behold. We’re going to have to work on that.”
“Yes, sir,” Dean repeated, grinning.
**
“So, um,” Dean said, at some point during the darkest hours of the night. They’d just finished an episode of Star Trek, and the title music was playing on repeat as they considered whether to watch another, or go to bed. “About today. The, uh. The thing, with the, um.”
“The kiss,” Cas said, and Dean could hear the effort he put into losing all inflection from his tone.
“Yeah, that,” Dean said. “Did you…” he trailed off, but this time Cas didn’t cut in and allow him to leave the sentence unfinished. He huffed. “Did you mean it?” he said, squinting at Cas in the light from the TV screen.
Cas turned to look at him.
“I did,” he said simply. “Did you?”
Dean pressed his lips together, so that he wouldn’t laugh out loud, or cry.
“Yeah, Cas. I meant it.”
Cas nodded, smiling and tapping his finger along Dean’s jaw, sending brief bursts of blue and purple swirling around Dean’s vision. When he reached Dean’s chin, he dragged his finger upwards, stroking along the bottom of Dean’s lower lip.
“Hey, Cas,” Dean said, in a cracking, roughened voice.
“Yes, Dean?”
“Do you think if we kissed for longer, we’d be able to share colours for longer?”
“I’m not sure,” Cas said. “We could find out.”
“And,” Dean said, pressing a finger against Cas’ lips, holding him back for a moment, “if we, uh…”
“I’m not sure,” Cas repeated. His eyes narrowed mischievously. “Let’s find out.”