Chapter Text
Cas never thought he would end up here, looking at videos of people dancing to Doja Cat with his son. He never thought it possible.
It’s a quiet morning in the bunker. Sam and Dean had left the night before to talk to some Illinois hunters about life after the supernatural, and in their absence, Jack is excitedly showing him a new app that he downloaded on his phone. Cas doesn’t understand it, of course, but he’s always happy to listen. He’s been living here for almost a week now, just him, Jack, Sam, and Dean, ever since he was rescued from the Empty. Ever since Chuck was defeated and Jack had taken his power, ever since life returned and the world became still.
The thought alone almost brings him to tears.
He remembers that night in the bunker, Billie pounding on the door and the threat of the Empty looming near. It’s easy to assume that moments like these are life-changing, that they force you to stare into the face of adversity and transcend your fear, but Cas knows now that this isn’t always the case. He's been in love with Dean Winchester for twelve years, and hiding it for eight; some instincts can’t be beaten.
And so, that night, he looked Dean in the eyes and told the truth—just not the whole truth.
He told Dean how angels weren’t supposed to have bodies; they were supposed to have vessels, and they weren’t supposed to have feelings, either, but somehow Cas had both. And his body—it had its own feelings, its own desires, that Cas couldn’t understand for the longest time, because he was afraid to face the consequences of what they might mean. He said that Dean, in all his loud, messy selflessness, helped give him courage.
He told him how the Empty made a deal to take his life at a moment of pure joy, and how one of the greatest joys he could imagine was living openly as himself, as a man, as an angel, as gay .
And then the emptiness took him.
And then love brought him back.
* * *
“Look!” Jack’s voice is muffled by a mouthful of breakfast cereal. “This person made a dance to Kesha! You like her, right?”
Cas glances over from where he’s refilling his coffee to see a young woman, no more than twenty-five, moving her arms in odd angles on the screen of Jack’s phone. “Kesha is very talented,” he agrees.
“I want to learn that dance,” Jack says wistfully, and Cas makes a mental note to check if this “TikTok” thing is age-appropriate.
He takes a seat at the kitchen table across from his son, taking a small sip from his mug to test the temperature. “Maybe one day.” He sets the mug down; too hot. “I wanted to ask you something. Your time in the bunker so far. Has it been alright?”
Jack hesitates. “Sam and Dean were very understanding,” he says at last.
“But?” Cas asks.
“But you were gone.”
Cas can feel his heart break, but he tries not to show it. “Oh, Jack. I’m so sorry,” he says softly. “I’m sorry I had to leave you. But I’m here now, and now we can focus on our family, our future. That’s what I was hoping to talk about.” He takes a steadying breath. “How would you feel about finding a house somewhere?”
“A house?” Jack tilts his head, confused. “We’re already in one.”
“Outside of the bunker, I mean.”
Jack’s eyes go wide with shock; he even puts down his phone. “What? But you just got here! Everyone’s here, and—and…,” he knits his eyebrows together, thinking, “and what if Dean—”
“Dean and I discussed this, actually,” Cas interrupts. “We both agree that the bunker isn’t fit for a child. And now without any imminent disasters, there’s no reason to stay. There’s no guarantee that Sam and Dean will stay here, either.”
Jack looks scandalized at the thought, and Cas considers his next words carefully: “From what I understand, hunting vampires and petty monsters… it may not be the life for them anymore. I imagine both of them will need some time to figure out their future. As for me, my future is raising you.”
He waits for a response, but Jack says nothing, just picks up his phone again and starts scrolling without actually looking.
“Why don’t you like TikTok?” he says suddenly.
Cas blinks. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t seem to like the videos I show you.”
“Jack,” he says gently, “I always enjoy hearing about your interests, but I don’t think ‘TikTok’ dancing is for me.”
“There’s more than just dancing though.”
Jack’s face is set, and for some reason, this seems important to him. Cas sighs; they’ll have to discuss the move another time. “Alright. What else is there?”
* * *
Once second: darkness, eternal, unyielding. The next: blinding light, and the feeling of being ripped apart at the seams and slowly put back together. And then, he’s home.
He feels himself enveloped by warmth, almost knocked over with the force of it; before he can open his eyes and get his bearings, he knows who it is.
“Cas,” Dean breathes, “Cas, you’re back. You’re here. I got you, shh, I got you.” It’s only because of the last comment that Cas realizes his body is shaking. He can't stop it.
“You… rescued me?” he asks, voice hoarse.
“We all did. Me, Sammy, Jack. We love you, Cas, I—we love you so much,” his voice breaks, he’s crying, they’re both crying, “and we got you now. I got you. You’re home.”
* * *
Most of the popular TikTok users fall under a niche, Cas learns, dedicated to a specific type of content. Jack describes the app as having different “corners,” which confuses him at first, since it’s not a physical place, until he realizes that it’s almost like heaven: a constantly moving body made up of infinite, yet separate pieces. There’s TikTok for books, TikTok for clothes, TikTok for dancing—each viewer experiences a slightly different thing, depending on their preferences and what they've watched before. There’s also a delightful amount of videos about frogs. Cas likes those.
Eventually, however, he notices a few videos tagged with “LGBT,” and he asks Jack to show him that corner of the app.
There’s a wealth of videos, Cas is surprised to find. Jack starts swiping through the tag, going slowly so that he can take in each one. Some are funny, some are sweet, and some are admittedly sexual—he makes Jack skip past those and wonders for a second if that makes him a “homophobe.” Together, they end up on TikTok for almost three hours, hearing tales of first love, laughing at caricatures of straight people, and learning about all sorts of things, like “gay hands.”
It’s not a physical location, but Cas thinks it just might be his favorite place.
* * *
The idea is Jack’s, ultimately. While Sam and Dean are away, they develop a routine of scrolling through videos together as they eat breakfast—usually, that is, until Jack gets bored and lets Cas keep watching on his own.
By the third day, Cas is using Jack’s phone to scroll through, quote, “gay TikTok” when he sees another video about religious guilt. He mentions off-handedly how he wishes there was a way to speak with these people—maybe tell them how beautiful it can be when faith and self-acceptance are seen as one. Jack just looks at him for a second, eyebrows furrowed together in thought, and says: “Why don’t you?”
And that’s how he ends up here, perched on the end of Jack’s bed trying to figure out how to be TikTok famous. They decide to make a new account and set it up on Jack’s phone, since his old account had its For You page messed up from touring the entire app—and since Cas is still a little hopeless when it comes to technology.
“Username?” Jack asks.
“Castiel.”
He frowns. “Taken.”
Cas bristles; who could have beaten him to his own name? “You can put Cas, then.”
“Taken.”
“What?” Jack nods solemnly, and Cas lets out a sigh. “Those were my only two ideas.”
They both look up and pause, trying to remember the names of other users in case they can steal an idea. Cas didn’t understand half of what he read on that app, frankly, so he draws a blank, but Jack’s face seems to light up with a thought.
“Oh! Lots of people name themselves after something they’re interested in, or just something that makes them happy,” he says. “Like a color or a food. I remember tons of strawberry usernames.”
Cas thinks for a second. “PB&J. That makes me happy.”
Jack nods approvingly. “Cas-p-b-j,” he says, typing the letters into his phone. “Sweet! Onto the next step.”
The next step, of course, is making the actual video.
Cas thinks back to all the different TikToks he’s seen in the past three days. Some are intricate, with shifting camera angles and quick transitions, while others are no more than a person staring at the camera with a caption in front of them, usually music in the background. He and Jack decide that simple is best for their first attempt, so they go with the latter style.
The process is surprisingly easy, Cas thinks. Jack films him looking into the camera for about ten seconds; they opt for no music, partly because Jack says that nothing should detract from the message and partly because Cas can’t think of a good song. Once it’s finally ready—Jack needed a moment to figure out how to put text over the video—Cas takes the phone and starts to write.
“Love is the ultimate good,” he mutters under his breath as he types, then stops when he sees Jack shaking his head.
“Too stuffy!” Jack says. He quickly deletes it.
“Love is stronger than hate,” he tries, but deletes that too. He’s not sure if he believes that anymore, after everything he’s seen.
“Love is not always easy, but—“ He doesn’t know where he’s going with this one.
With a sigh, Cas puts the phone down. He thinks hard for a moment, trying to imagine an earlier version of himself, uncomfortable in his new vessel and his mutinous mind, and then he considers what that Castiel might want to hear.
He picks up the phone.
You are loved , he types. No matter who you are. I may not know you, but I am proud of you. He doubles back, replacing the word proud with PROUD in all caps. Then he adds a “pride flag,” as they’re called, and smiles.
* * *
The video blows up overnight. He’s woken up far too early by Jack jumping on his bed, shoving his too bright phone into Cas’s too sleepy face.
Ten-thousand views and counting. The number wakes Cas up a bit, and he looks up to see Jack grinning ear to ear.
“You’re famous!” he says, like it’s the most important thing in the world.
“You’re God,” Cas counters. Still, he can’t help flashing a small smile—until Jack flops down next to him and clicks on the comments, that is.
WHO IS THIS DUDEEEEEE , one user writes.
WHY IS HE STARING LIKE THAT , asks another.
Someone come get ur gay grandpa he’s on tiktok not blinking , says a user whose name contains words that Cas isn’t comfortable repeating. It’s the top-liked comment.
Jack at least has the decency to look sheepish. “Whoops?”
“Whoops,” he agrees.
Jack starts scrolling through comments at lightning speed.
“I’m seeing a lot of nazars,” Cas muses, “with lip emojis between them.”
“I think it’s supposed to be your eyes? ‘Cause they’re blue. This one is kind of funny: ‘Why does this look like it was shot in an apocalypse bunker?’ Because it was!” He laughs at his own joke. “Oh, and someone else says you look like you would eat people alive, but ask consent first.”
Cas frowns; he wouldn’t eat anyone, dead or alive. “Jack, I don’t think the video worked. These people sound afraid.”
“No!” Jack looks up, upset, then starts scrolling even faster, filtering through each comment in a millisecond. “That’s not true. I think—I think they like you! Look!”
Cas reads over his shoulder: “I can’t tell if I’m about to be hexed or hugged.” He raises an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“They mentioned hugging! Maybe I could comment that you give really good hugs?”
Cas sighs, resigning himself to his fate of the internet's latest laughingstock. “It’s alright, Jack. I think we’ve learned our lesson. Not everyone is meant to be behind a camera.”
But Jack isn’t listening—he’s holding his phone to his chest so Cas can’t see, and staring at it with wide eyes. “Twelve-thousand views. And, um. Some new comments.”
“What?” Cas tilts his head. “More nazars?”
“Nope,” Jack says.
“Are they afraid?” he asks.
“Nope,” Jack says, and with that, he rushes out of the room.
* * *
He gets a text from Dean later that day: The hell you mean you’re on TikTok?
Did Jack tell you already? he writes back instantly.
He did more than that , is Dean’s reply, followed by a familiar link. He clicks on it, and his own face stares back at him.
Oh. He’s really not sure how to feel about that; he hadn’t considered Dean, of all people, watching the video. He also hadn’t planned on keeping it a secret, exactly. He tells himself there’s nothing to be ashamed of. He’s grown attached to the TikTok app, and he’s more than ready to defend its honor if Sam and Dean try to make fun of him. As for the other thing—well, they already know his preferences, so to say, and Cas trusts them not to be upset over something as small as a rainbow emoji.
He just hadn’t considered Dean watching it.
Did you see the comments? he asks.
There were comments? Seconds later: I don’t know how any of that stuff works, man.
He breathes a sigh of relief. At least Dean won’t be able to tease him for scaring a bunch of teenagers by forgetting to blink.
Another text pops up. Why, what did they say?
Cas hesitates. Not sure, he lies, it’s all on Jack’s phone, then adds a couple of confused-looking emojis to drive home the point.
The things you two get up to when I’m gone, Dean writes back, and for such a small little string of words, it makes Cas’s chest fill with warmth.
The conversation shifts from there, and pretty soon Dean is sending him a photo of the Kansas state limit sign as he and Sam drive by. Cas hadn’t realized they were heading back early; the two of them must have driven straight through with no stops, if Dean’s tired enough to let Sam take the wheel.
Ready to come home , Dean says.
* * *
For some baffling reason, Jack insists that they make another video that night before Sam and Dean return. “It’s important,” he pleads. “Think of all the people you reached! Sixty-thousand views!”
The number is remarkable, Cas has to admit, but he’s not fully convinced. Jack assures him that the newest wave of comments is more positive, but he refuses to actually show Cas his phone.
What gets him to finally agree is simple—Jack looks almost heartbroken when he starts to say no—but he does manage to put his foot down on one thing. He’s speaking this time; no more staring. Five minutes later, before Cas can rightfully regret his decision, he’s standing in front of an unassuming grey wall in the bunker, and Jack is holding his phone with one hand and giving him a thumbs-up with the other.
He doesn’t really debate the message, not this time; he just conjures up that image of a young Castiel-Jimmy, confused and angry, and speaks:
“You are loved. And you are capable of loving others, in whatever way feels good and natural to you. Follow those feelings. Grow towards the people who make you feel right. And if you aren’t sure who those people are yet, be patient. Figuring that out is—” he pauses, looking for the words— “is called life.”
* * *
“Holy crap,” Sam says, leaning down to get a good look at the screen. “Does that say seventy-thousand views?”
Sam and Dean had arrived late that night, but Cas and Jack were committed to staying up for them—though even Jack, with how little he sleeps, was barely hanging on by the time they finally heard the front door open. Dean, Cas noted, ran to the bathroom without so much as a Hello to either of them, but Sam wasn’t so lucky; Jack was on him in a second, shoving his phone in Sam’s face and showing him their first TikTok.
Jack grins. “Yup. Watch!”
Sam watches, and Cas sees a multitude of different expressions flit across his face. “Um, that’s a sweet message, Cas. The videos, are they usually...,” he looks up at Jack, “silent like this? No audio or anything?”
“No, it’s okay,” Jack says, “you can still hear the background static and stuff, so it's not completely quiet.”
“What the hell is a caspuhbuhjuh?” Dean’s head suddenly appears between the two of them, his mouth stuffed with potato chips. “Is that a typo?”
“It’s Cas PBJ. For peanut butter and jelly,” Cas says from where he’s sitting, slightly irritated. What else would it be?
If he’s being honest with himself, though, some of his irritation comes from nerves—maybe even most of it. Before the Empty, he was terrified of what might happen if he acknowledged his own desire, if he shined a light on it and let other people look; now, his son and his two closest friends are crowded around a phone in front of him, staring down at definitive proof of his sexuality. On loop.
“Kinda creepy,” Dean says, and Sam smacks him on the arm. “ Hey! I didn’t mean it like that. Just the silent stare thing.”
“I sent it to you and you said it was good,” Jack pouts.
Cas shoots a death glare towards Dean on instinct, but this time, he doesn’t have to; Dean is already apologizing. “Hey, no, no, of course I like it! Great craftsmanship, kiddo. That camerawork?” He whistles approvingly. “It’s just, I mean, you know how your dad has an intense, uh... face.”
“Well, I think the meaning behind it is important,” Sam offers, shooting Cas a nervous look, but Cas just rolls his eyes. There’s nothing wrong with his face, at least not to his knowledge.
Jack seems mollified, at least, shrugging and putting away his phone. “We’re moving away from the silent thing for our next ones, anyway. Having Cas speak to his audience is much more personal.”
“Next ones ?” Sam says, at the exact same time that Dean chokes on a chip and splutters, “ Audience?”
“Yes,” Cas says defiantly, rising to the occasion. If this is his end, so be it. “We’re thinking of doing a whole series.”