Chapter Text
The Righteous Man, Castiel decides, is perhaps not serious enough to the tasks required of him.
He mocks and grandstands in the face of not only danger itself, which could perhaps be excused as a defense mechanism of sorts, if one was feeling generous, but the very threat of it itself - and Castiel knows at once how horrifically terrified the Righteous Man is.
He held that trembling fear inside of himself, after all.
He jokes, constantly, and though Castiel is fluent in the languages of all of his Father’s creations, he is deaf to this one - but he does not need to know the language of innuendo and pop-culture references that the Righteous Man speaks to recognize the jester he is so desperately playing.
Dean Winchester is scared to the bone. And he does not cower in that fear.
It is… interesting.
The commander in Castiel has no patience for it. He was made to obey his superiors, to be obeyed by those beneath him. And certainly humans are well beneath him. The commander in Castiel demands respect from his underlings, from humans deemed important to Heaven’s plan, through any means. He threatens the Righteous Man, threatens to cast him back into damnation eternal if his obstinance continues, and looks on his face to watch the unabashed spark of fear that cannot bear to hide behind another infernal joke -
Amd sees instead parted lips and dilated pupils, and a pulse point beating, rapidly thrumming at the skin on this Righteous Man’s neck, and some unknown facet of Castiel that has lived only in the shadows of his grace from creation up until now finds himself suddenly ravenous.
That urge to bite at the pulse point of Dean Winchester, to lick at his heart rate and swallow the Righteous Man whole, was probably the beginning of the end.
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Despite his threats, Castiel's duties since pulling the Righteous Man from the pit have been almost entirely relegated to watching over him.
He has no qualms with this. He is, in fact, perhaps even pleased.
His superiors have no need to know about this phenomenon.
And Castiel finds it pleasing, to hold onto these secrets.
The Righteous Man is angry, most often, when he isn’t joking, and he lives with a weapon at his back that his hand itches for.
A weapon that he flinches from just as much as he craves it.
It’s a confusing characteristic in what should be heaven’s greatest weapon, apart from perhaps the Sword.
As fascinated by the Righteous Man, he is equally perplexed, equally frustrated. Castiel attributes these thoughts to lack of exposure to humankind. He’s been faithful to his assignments, kept to his post and watched over this species and the small little world they keep, but in his millenia of watching, he has never seen one quite like the Righteous Man.
A man deemed holy with no faith, a man deemed holy with no prayer in him. A man deemed Righteous with torture running in his blood.
Even now, that torture calls to him, sings to him in his sleep, and Castiel keeps guard over him as he thrashes, and in the Righteous Man’s mind, he is torn between pulling away and reaching for it.
His blood sings for blood, and it tortures him, how delighted he was in hell by that.
But still, remarkably, his soul is pure.
It is, to his great shame, what Castiel watches, instead of the demon blooded boy sleeping in the bed beside him. Though Castiel’s goal is undoubtedly the same.
It concerns Heaven, he’s been told, how close the Righteous Man is to the abomination, how much the Righteous Man trusts the thing. It would not do well for the Righteous Man to be corrupted again.
His orders were to protect the Righteous Man from the boy with the demon blood - they did not say how to go about it. They did not say he couldn’t devote his attentions to the Righteous Man, and not the abomination.
And though he is doing as he was told, he can’t help fall into the gentle lull of singing late night crickets outside their stained motel room in between counting the Righteous Man’s breaths and watching the twisting soul beaming brighter than stars Castiel’s brothers and sisters have made, and Castiel can’t help but be overtaken by the gentle song of night and reach out to settle the soul, calm it, and carefully pulls the nightmares away from the Righteous Man, and he leads him gently into a peaceful rest - and shivers, a useless human reflex on him that he can’t suppress in this quiet moment, at the full sigh the Righteous Man lets out.
And this too, is for the Righteous Man’s betterment, Castiel tells himself. Even if he is unduly stubborn and not stoic enough to perform what Heaven plans for him, he is, in the core of him, good, and to protect that core from distress is surely in keeping with his orders, to give him peace in the dark blue room, made deeper by the night, small glimmers of light shining in horizontal rectangles lining the far corner of the room, a light blue that doesn’t quite bloom white, and watch him breathe, deep and full beside his monster-brother, without even the distress of knowledge of what he allows the sleep in the bed beside his own.
The Righteous Man, Castiel finds, is enrapturing, pulling at Castiel’s grace, tugging at it angrily, insistently, demanding attention with his grandstanding, his arguments, and even now - silent but not still, wriggling lightly in his sleep, he demands Castiel’s attention, and Castiel is helpless to allow it, invisible in the room, burning, burning hot, and thinks, for just a moment, thinks that perhaps if he had taken the Righteous Man as his own vessel, late his grace ravage and consume, made Heaven’s vessel his own instead, burrowed into that handprint Castiel burned into his shoulder and lived in there - some urge to burrow into the home of the Righteous Man and eat him whole from the inside out, and the blasphemy burns Castiel raw from the inside and ozone leaks into the stale air.
The jerking motion Castiel makes is more human than angelic, but the Righteous Man sleeps gently on, light snores ringing out from him, and when Castiel flies in a panic from the room, he leaves nothing disturbed.
He lands on rough untended gravel and his ankle catches on the parking block outside the room just beside the one the brothers occupy, and when he stomps his foot firmly on the stable ground the crickets stop, and Castiel can hear them retreat from the angel, leaving him the privacy of the motel parking lot, stood distantly beside the lone black car, reflective and shiny with lamp light.
There is no life in the parking lot. Even the buzz of telephone lines roped high at the edges of the motel that march steadily forwards into the heart of the city the brothers sleep in the outskirts of, quiets.
It occurs to Castiel, that he is the thing that causes life to flee. He does not incur the joy of abundant life at his fingertips, for all that he may be a creature of creation, life finds fear in divinity, the perception of it, and confined as he may be in this foreign body, he is beyond the simple understanding of singing bugs, of things so simple as electric signals traveling in the air, and they flee from the small giant hunched into a human. From the voice that sings eternal even when he doesn’t push the mouth he rests in the speak.
It might be nice to - to call them in, call them forward, live in a forest that blooms brightly for the want of it, instead of the fear, to cause the feeling the Righteous Man surely does, to tug and pull and insist and demand the attention of the very air around him, because surely, were he here, the crickets would sing symphonies, neon lights would glow brilliant, birds flocking to the scene.
Castiel has not been to Earth in so very long, but he wonders if in his enjoyment of the planet, he has ever been treated to the revelry of unabashed life.
Castiel does not return to the room. He stands invisible and still and yawning open, with only a borrowed heartbeat to listen to, and discovers the feeling of want. He wants, desperately, to be something the crickets sing for.
Even the stars seem dull, dimmed by the peach glow that rests at the horizon of the late night curtain of night sky, and they do not glow brighter for Castiel.
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Castiel stays alongside the Righteous Man even when he is not ordered to interact with him and deliver revelation unto him, overseeing his progress and safety for Heaven’s means.
Heaven sings praises of Castiel’s devotions to his mission, but Castiel isn’t sure if that’s what this is. The Righteous Man’s soul continues to bloom brighter than Castiel thought humans were capable of, and Castiel wonders, quietly, secretly, what it means that he loves his brother so dearly while Heaven regards him firmly as an abomination.
(What does it mean, if humanity shows more love, more forgiveness, more grace than his Father, his kin, than himself? Castiel finds himself, more and more, asking himself, who is wrong, who is weak, and he finds himself, more and more, struggling to pretend he does not envy the depth of feeling the Righteous Man feels.)
Still he is allowed to watch over the Righteous Man, and his superiors do not take note of his distractions.
It is too much to watch him sleep at night, to watch his soul writhe in torment. It is even too much to see the man overtop the soul, to see his brow crease, his fists tense, reaching for a weapon he cannot grasp with no idea if he means to harm or to protect himself, and so Castiel, from the safety of the outside of whatever room, be it the home of the older man with a frown pressed firmly into his face and a beer never far from his hand, or the ratty ones that have changed hands so many times the fingerprints of others lay crusted with dirt and oil stripe the wallpaper and sparse furniture, stands outside, letting his grace reach forward towards the Righteous Man’s soul and wisp lightly over it, moving it to lay gently down inside the body that holds it, and imagines the way that body molds into the mattress he lies on, the breath, something deeper than a death rattle, something bigger, something with more weight, more importance, that he will let out, and tries desperately not to imagine putting foreign fingertips to that parted pink mouth and feeling the breath on him, the damp heat; tries not to imagine parting his own lips above the Righteous Man’s and breathing that damp heat in, taking in and feasting on that life and letting it sit vibrant in his lungs, because he knows that would not be enough.
There is something about the Righteous Man, something that makes feasting not enough. Castiel would devour him whole, and the strength of it scares him.
He thinks this - this feeling, that’s what it surely is, is want, and Castiel does not know how to want. He suspects his appetites would be voracious to anyone else, appalling should his superiors learn of it, and he guards these desires closely within himself.
So Castiel does not think of these things, scared that he might burst in to watch the Righteous Man, that he may indulge these desires, and scared more that the Righteous Man might let him, might call him Cas softly in the night beside his brother’s snores and offer him the same absolution he offers the abomination, Sam, begrudging and gruff as it maybe, and look up at him from his bed with eyes holding colors they shouldn’t in the grayscale of deep night, his chest open and empty, a perfect space for Cas to curl in and hold him warm.
He tries, very very hard, not to think of these things, and sits outside in the death of noise and wishes for something so much as a breeze to rustle the browning weeds that sit dry at his feet. They don’t reach for him when he bends down to touch them, and maybe Castiel should wish to make beautiful lilacs bloom for him, but he cannot help but want not to create but breathe life into what is already here, dying, uncared for and forgotten.
Castiel wants to be a being that cares, and he doesn’t know how, and it constricts his vessel’s throat.
He doesn’t know how to make the weeds grow for him.
But still he thinks of the beauty of this world and how he wants to partake in it, and he finds himself, in the privacy of night, reaching to take from it - a flower petal his grace leaves eternally bright purple, a leaf left forever green, a feather left discarded. He presses them gently in large trenchcoat pockets and thinks, this isn’t what angels were made to do, to claim, to take possession of objects, but there is a thrill in thinking his petal, his leaf, his feather. There is thrill in holding pieces of the world with him, in keeping them.
And still, his mind does not quiet. These things stray fearfully away from him, and Castiel does not know what it is that would call them to him. What would make him a beacon of safety. He does not know what it is about the world, about the Righteous Man, that calls him, but he is called, and he responds, again and again, he answers the call, quietly, privately, even if only in his head. He answers.
He stands still outside and watches a world that does not touch him and thinks, he would make a home of this - of this world, of the Righteous Man. He would make a home of him, he would - he would lie in the swallow of his throat, curl into the hollow beside pulsing arteries and beat blood for them, he would let the Righteous Man sleep full, sleep well, because Castiel knows, the Righteous Man hungers too, soul twitching for want, want of anything and everything, and Castiel itches to sate it, and he thinks of ways to say it, to think it, but they tangle in his head and he is left a pit of feelings with no way to let themselves out, and they buzz in his head, and Castiel is overwhelmed.
Castiel has not been on Earth in so very long, and this must be why. He must not be equipped to handle this, but he lingers in it all the same. He does not report his failings to Heaven.
He lets his grace soothe out the tension in Dean’s soul, and isn’t sure why he wants to linger there, too. He does, he does, he does, and he lets himself, hand twisting at the smooth black rock he thinks might be his favorite thing he’s collected, and he lingers at the soul of the Righteous Man.
_______
It isn’t Castiel’s idea to force the Righteous Man to torture Alastair, but he can’t argue against it. He can only stand and watch Uriel push and prod at the Righteous Man, and knows if he interjects, if he objects, if he says No, it will be disobedience, and they’ll know, and he - he’ll lose the rock in his pocket, the petal, the leaf, the feather.
He cannot even calm the Righteous Man’s soul, under Uriel and Heaven’s scrutiny, and is forced to watch it curl and writhe in confused torment, and thinks, not this. We can’t ask him to do this.
Even when they’re alone, Castiel doesn’t know how to calm him, this human that lives in fear and baits it that doesn’t joke now, just threatens and pleads and seems to know, that there are many answers he can give to this request, this order, and “no” is not one of them.
And, in the end, it is not Heaven, it is not Castiel, it is not the Righteous Man, but the abomination-brother that peels the truth from the demon, from his blood, and the Righteous Man, lays bloody and tormented for nothing.
And Castiel doubts fiercely. Doubts in heaven’s ability to stop it, stop all of it, and what great things they have to lose - Dean Winchester, and his bleeding soul, and his love for his brother who possesses more power than he should, and crickets that flee from angels, and cities that burn brighter than stars, and a petal, a leaf, a flower, a smooth little rock - and he fears what he may do with this doubt.
But still he guards it. Guards it closely from Heaven’s watchful eye.
He is not allowed to heal the Righteous Man, and he says - he says he is sorry, and he feels it. He feels, feels the burning in him, and if this is what it is the feel then Castiel does not want it, doesn’t want to look on at the suffering of that soul, at the bruising and blemishes of a man who cannot so much as turn his head.
He doesn’t think the Righteous Man cares much for his apology, bitten off slurred swearing, and Castiel aches. He aches in unseen places at the broken voice, and, in a moment he doesn’t understand, won’t understand until years later, stood in a ring of holy fire, hiding by a river in Purgatory, stuck somewhere between Heaven and an old crypt, holding a demon in his arms and willing it calm, being subjected to shows about cowboys he doesn’t understand, untangling lines jangling in his head onto journal paper that read I would make a home of you, that read, Are you brave enough? , sitting at the edge of a lake with his best friend and child, offers Dean the smooth black rock he had gently picked up in a lonely night somewhere along the eastern seaboard of the Continental US and says, “This is all I know to do,” and flees before Dean can ask questions, letting the stone sit on his lap and flying from the room, thinking that if this is what caring is, he still isn’t doing it right.
All he can do is keep trying. He doesn’t know how to do that either.
Outside the hospital, Castiel’s chest heaves unnecessarily, and on the white and gray stone the hospital keeps instead of patches of bright green grass, grass that looks dull beside the shades of green Castiel has learned the world can hold, he staggers beside a dying weed burst through the small rocks. He folds his vessel over itself, squatting visibly on the rocks, and when a finger brushes the hopeless little plant, it blooms alive at his touch, and curls into the palm of his hand, letting itself be held.
Castiel doesn’t know the word yet, but the small weed lets itself be loved into health and life, and it sings with it, and there in the hospital carport, crickets sing for Castiel.
_______
In his hospital room, Dean curls his hand lightly around the smooth black rock left on his lap, and feels his lips tug into something between a frown and a smile, and lets it rest warm between his fingers, and feels the weight of whatever Cas is trying to feel, whatever regret and sorrow and doubt sit in his palms. And something more, something heavier, something he doesn’t know how to name, and forgives him.