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The cabin was bathed in golden light. The bleak, blue-gray landscape of a broken war-torn world could not penetrate this honey-warm chamber. At least for tonight. In this moment, they were safe. That’s all they could do now, live moment to moment, take each day as it came.
Time had started to lose its meaning. The clocks were all stopped. Days, weeks, months bled together. Dean kept time counting the days since Detroit. 592 days. It was sometime in December now. The weather reflected that too. Outside, a blanket of fresh snow covered most of the camp. Icicles hung from the lip of the porch roof big as angel blades, threatening to spear anyone who dared pass beneath them.
Dean did not think of icicles or angel blades as he lay in bed, cheek pressed to Cas’s shoulder, both of them enveloped in the warm light coming off the fire. Smoke drifted up in a long plume from Cas’s lips while Dean’s fingers danced over skin. He traced lazily up Cas’s arms, across his own line of sight at the shoulder, over to protruding collarbone, down the center of his chest, palm spreading wide, fingers stretching to ripple over ribcage and the tattoo there, then down, down, down to that sharp hip bone and—
A loud burst of radio static interrupted him from going any farther. Cas rustled at the noise, turning to his bedside table, or well, Dean’s table, where the radio sat. They’d ended up on opposite sides after the night’s activities. Cas repositioned the joint between his fingers, then reached for the radio dial, Dean moving with him, reluctant to lose contact.
They kept the radio on in case of emergencies. Phone-lines and cell service hadn’t survived the apocalypse so most communication these days came in through radio.
Bobby and a group of others from camp were working on gathering intel up north. Some of the guys had gone out a few days ago on a reconnaissance mission. Dean had stayed behind because Cas wasn’t doing too hot. Not very leaderly of him, but they could manage without him.
Though if the recon guys were calling in now, there would be little Dean and Cas could do from a distance and in this weather. Still, they kept the radio on to know what was going down rather than be in the dark.
Fine-tuning the signal, the choppy bursts of static began to take shape and with the voice came music. It wasn’t a call for help, but a song that had snuck its way onto the airwaves. Some rogue disc-jockey out there in the wasteland bringing Christmas to the apocalypse. In their warm bubble Frank Sinatra crooned,
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles, will be out of sight
Cas turned back to Dean and smiled.
Candle-light twinkled in his eyes bringing a softness to his face that belied the pain that more often etched his features these days.
Falling was agony. Cas had tried to describe it to Dean. Every act of rebellion, every choice that brought him further from God’s fold was torture to his celestial body. Still, Cas stayed and endured the slow stripping of his angelhood. For Dean.
“Dance with me,” Cas said, that easy smile still lighting his eyes.
Dean grumbled by force of habit. He did not dance. And he was comfortable and loose-limbed, still basking in the post-coital glow. But Cas had asked for something. Cas who never asked for anything. And Dean longed to give him something, anything, after all Cas had given him.
It wasn’t a contest, Dean knew, but still he couldn’t help feel like he was always coming up short. Cas had given him everything, given up everything for him, and most days all Dean could give in return was his broken and battered body. Not much of a gift for all it had been used up already.
The least he could do here was dance with the guy.
So he grumbled, but let Cas tug him up by the hand and lead him to the center of the room. Dean plucked the joint from Cas’s other hand and brought it to his own lips. Dean had never been the stoner-type, couldn’t have been, not when John was alive. But the weed helped Cas cope. Dulled some of the pain. And Dean liked to help Cas.
Dean spread his palm wide over Cas’s shoulder blade. The flesh was unmarred but Dean knew celestially there was a wound where there had once been a wing. They curved toward each other, pressed their naked bodies together. They must look ridiculous, swaying in a lazy circle like this around the room. He could imagine their silhouettes in the window, illuminated in a square of yellow light against the backdrop of the blue night, but there was no one around to bear witness to this scene.
Dean bowed his head and brought their lips together, exhaling smoke into Cas’s mouth. It was always better this way, Cas said. Dean could give him this. He could give him better.
They circled closer to the radio, Sinatra reminiscing on those Happy golden days of yore as Dean set the joint down on the ashtray on the nightstand.
Faithful friends who are dear to us,
There was no friend more faithful than Cas.
Will be near to us once more.
And Dean wanted him nearer. Now with both hands free, he drew Cas ever closer, gathering him up in both arms, and nosed his face into the crook of his neck, rubbing back and forth tickling and then kissing, nibbling, and licking.
Cas half-sighed, half-laughed as Dean licked a stripe up the column of his neck. “Dean.”
“Mhmm?” Dean said, smiling against Cas’s skin. This was easy. It was always easy when it was just the two of them. No world, no apocalypse, no wrathful angels, no devils, no war or pestilence. No death. Just them. Just two heartbeats pulsing as one, fingers dancing over skin, lips joining together, limbs tangling with each other, knobby knuckles brushing against cheeks. Just a dance in the middle of a quiet room. Just this easy feeling. This feeling that lit Dean up, this feeling that he had not dared speak out loud. Had dared not name. This feeling that maybe was both their downfall and salvation.
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Dean thought of the entry at the very back of his journal. He’d written it two days after Detroit.
we all make it out of this alive, he’d scrawled, hoping that to put it down in ink would make it true. i’ll save him, he wrote next, meaning Sam. Then, and keep him, for Cas. He wasn’t going to lose anyone. It wasn’t an option. Soon they all would be together again. But fuck fate. Fate had no place here. His smile slipped away, brows creasing as that familiar cocktail of fear and doubt crept back in. They could choose their path, he reminded himself. He had to believe that. He had to believe their actions could still make a difference.
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow,
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
They slowed as the song drew to a close, the final line drifting through the air before vanishing like smoke. The silence that followed crackled. Static from the radio, the splintering of wood in the fireplace. They were skin to skin, just breathing each other in. Cas smoothed Dean’s hair back, looked at him in that way that made Dean feel split open like a book with a cracked spine. It was too much sometimes, that look and all it signified. Dean leaned in then, catching his lips and closing his eyes, just to let himself hide away from all that devotion.
Then, the radio hissed and popped back to life with another song. O’ Holy Night. They began to sway again, though their movements were threaded with melancholy. It didn’t take much to notice the way Cas curled in on himself as the song spoke of the world in sin and error pining and the overall religious overtones.
Dean kissed his cheek. Fall on your knees. Cas slumped against Dean’s chest. O hear the Angel voices! He shuddered, a sob. Dean held him up. Held him, his angel. O night divine. He smoothed Cas’s hair back like Cas had done for him, tilted his face up to look at Dean.
“You’re still an angel, Cas.”
Cas gave him a rueful smile. “That’s not true.” Tears fell gracefully down his cheeks. Dean pressed his thumbs to them. “My grace is so depleted, it will never replenish. I have —” Cas looked away, shook his head once. “I have maybe a few months left, and then. And then I’ll have fallen completely. For good.”
“You’ll still be my angel, then,” Dean insisted. He couldn’t stand to hear Cas talk like this. Cas had always been the one carrying the hope between the two of them.
Cas’s eyes shone sadly, the gold of the candle lights twinkling for a moment before he lowered his gaze and leaned forward to press their cheeks together. The soft rasp of stubble on stubble. “I won’t be useful to you anymore,” he murmured.
“You don’t have to be useful. I don’t care about ‘useful’, Cas.” I care about you. The unspoken words hung in the air like the heavy scent of spicy incense that burned on Cas’ nightstand. Dean knew he should say more. He wanted to say more. He began to sway them again, soft soothing movements, cheek rubbing against cheek like a kiss without lips, the tender caress of his thumb between Cas’s shoulder blades, the fingers of his other hand tracing over the shoddy Enochian letters Dean had inked himself along Cas’s ribs. Protection from all the angels who still hunted Cas, who blamed him for Heaven’s downfall, who still felt echoes of pain ripple through the Heavenly host at each of Cas’s rebellions. Angels were tied together like that, that muted shared pain part of what kept them all in line for so long. No one wanted to feel the agony of disobedience. They hated Cas for bringing that pain upon them and maybe they hated him for his strength to endure it where others would have bowed in surrender.
“Listen, Cas, it’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.” Dean said the words like a mantra, like a prayer. He had not prayed in a very long time, but he needed to believe in something. And Cas had always been the one to receive his faith. Now was no different. “The guys, they’ll come back with a win for us,” he continued, his lips moving against Cas’s skin. “And we’ll save Sammy. And then the world. And you’ll be okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Cas drew back to look Dean in the eyes. “You can’t save everyone, Dean. Though you try.”
“And I’ll keep trying. I’m not losing anyone. I’m not losing you.” Dean held Cas’s face between his hands. “I can’t lose you too, Cas. I can’t. It’ll break me, man. I’m—I’m scared of what I’ll become if I lose you too. I’m scared—” Dean shook his head, bringing their foreheads together. “I’m so scared,” he whispered. “All the time.”
“Oh Dean.” Dean shut his eyes as Cas drew his head to his shoulder.
“I don’t know how to be this—this fearless leader when I’m so goddamn scared all the time, Cas. I’m scared it’s too late. I’m scared we’re gonna watch the whole world burn. That they’re all gonna die and it’ll be my fault. My fault for not saying ‘Yes’ to Michael, and my fault for not being good enough and strong enough to save everyone. And then—then Lucifer’ll come for us. And he’ll kill you first, just to make me watch. And then he’ll kill me.”
“I can’t take away your fear, but I do know you are good enough and you are strong and caring and resilient. I followed you into this broken world because I have faith in you. But even if you couldn’t save a single soul, I—I’d still follow you to the end, Dean, just to be by your side. I’ll go with you, anywhere, always.”
Dean was overcome with that feeling again, that feeling that thrummed in his chest all the time like a small and fragile bird without a song. But maybe he could sing, this time. Maybe he could put a sound to that feeling.
“Things are fucked out there and getting worse everyday,” Dean began, he voice scraping like sandpaper, rough and out of practice when it came to making big speeches and sweeping declarations. “But here? Just us? It makes sense. And you gotta know…the way I feel about you, when I’m with you…Cas, you know that I—You gotta know that I—” Dean drew a shaky breath, the words tangling into knots. His pulse jackrabbited with the fear of losing this.
“You don’t have to say it,” Cas said, as if to spare him some terrible burden.
Cas has said it though, before. Once. After the first time they’d slept together. And Dean had shut down spectacularly. Thrown up walls, and given Cas the message in big neon flashing signs that that’s not something they say to each other.
But that was bullshit. And it was Christmas, maybe, it was the apocalypse, and if there was one thing Dean could give him, it was this. Love was the whole point, after all.
“No. Listen to me,” Dean growled, gripping at the back of Cas’s neck, desperate and grasping at all the words he wanted to say. “You’re the only thing that still makes sense in this world. I’m a selfish son-ova-bitch. I wanna keep you, Cas. I wanna keep you safe. You and saving Sam are the only things that matter. And maybe that makes me a terrible leader to say. That I’d—that I’d trade any of those guys out there, if it meant keeping you but Cas,” he breathed the name, holy on his tongue. “Castiel,” an invocation, like a disciple calling upon their Lord. Their hearts thumped wildly against each other in the revenant pause between words. Then a heavy rasping breath and with the ferocity of gritted teeth because don’t you dare doubt it, came the words held close to his heart and silenced for too long, “I love you.” Dean pressed tighter against Cas’s forehead. “I love you,” he repeated, his heart lighter for it already, “and that’s why I need you. Not to be ‘useful’, not to be an angel. I just need you.”
This close, Dean could not properly see Cas’s reaction to his words, but he felt the shudder of breath against his cheek, the gripping of fingers against his back and one hand retreating to reach for Dean’s shoulder, his left one, gripping tightly there at the raised flesh that marked their first point of contact.
Then Cas moved so they were looking at each other properly. His eyes shone bright with tears in the golden candlelight. “And I love you, Dean. More than you could ever know.” He winced then, a flare of pain creasing his features. Dean ducked into his line of sight, worry and fear warring over his own face.
“Cas?”
Cas shook his head. “I’m alright,” he insisted, then he smiled as two tears chased down his cheeks. “It’s the worst of my sins,” he said, taking one of Dean’s hands into his own, “for an angel to love someone else as they should love God. To love them more, and differently. To love as humans love, passionate and selfish and obsessive.”
Cas winced again, curled over as if to protect from another blow to his center.
“I hate to see you in pain,” Dean said, guiding them back over to sit at the edge of the bed. “I wish there was something I could do to stop you from hurting like this.”
Cas shook his head, swallowing and breathing slowly through the flash of pain. “There isn’t. Well. There is one thing that might—”
“What?”
Cas wet his bottom lip, pensive for a moment, as if he might not share. Then, “I could give it to you. My grace.”
Dean jerked his head back, shocked at the idea. He couldn’t even conceptualize it. “Your—how would that even work?”
“We would have to acquire a special vial to store it, first. Then, I would extract it. It will be painful, excruciating, but then I will no longer be connected to the host. And should not feel any more pain thereafter. Effectively I will be Fallen, but my grace will not be completely gone.”
“And you’d want to do this?”
“Yes,” Cas said simply and certainly.
“Okay, okay. And you—you want me to keep it?”
Cas’s eyes softened. “Of course.” Of course. Because Cas loved him and trusted him with this most sacred piece of himself.
Dean nodded once with surety. He could do that. He could keep Cas’s grace safe, wear it in place of his long-gone amulet. A new protective charm. He’d hold Cas, his essence, close to his heart.
“Okay. If you’re sure then, yes. I—I accept.” It felt like a vow. Yes, I will guard your life, your essence, your heart. I will carry it with me, I will carry it in mine.
Dean felt the gravity of this choice, the fragility of the moment. They were in freefall now. And it was terrifying, it was that heart-in-his-throat, stomach-swooping heady mix of fear-and-exhilaration. He swept in to catch Cas’s lips, a soft but desperate kiss, a first breath after drowning. They moved together as one, riding that edge of tender and aggressive. It was at once possessive and claiming and clingy. A whimper and a growl, teeth and tongue, fast and slow. The kiss undulated, moved in waves, and all throughout, Dean knew this was it. A deal sealed with a kiss. They’d given over wholly to each other.
This was the sort of thing people warned about, going soft, letting yourself fall, having something precious that could be taken away. It made you weak, it was a chink in your armour, something that could be used against you, exploited. Leaders shouldn’t have a weakness like that. But Dean was selfish, so damn selfish. He wanted Cas more than he wanted to be strong. He wanted to keep him more than he wanted to save the world.
And is that not what led them here in the first place? Did he not choose Cas over his brother? He chose to split off, chose to go with Cas when the road had forked, and that’s when Lucifer wormed his way in. The guilt of that choice still ate at him and yet. Dean wasn’t sure he’d choose differently. Because Sammy could still be saved, he believed it. Sam was a fighter and he was still alive in there, and they’d save him, but Dean wouldn’t trade Cas for it. He wouldn’t feed Cas into a meat grinder to save the world, he wouldn’t.
“This time next year…” Dean said, his words unspoken holding a promise.
Cas looked at him, blue eyes made gold and shining with faith. Wherever they went, whatever happened next, they’d do it together. It was their way. Of course, and always.