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He hadn’t meant to make it a habit, but it didn’t really matter what he’d intended, because it was now. The first time had been an accident, if anything. He’d showed up to send him back, to see the deal his mother made, how his fate was sealed, how Sam’s predicament came to be. He had expected him to be asleep, and he was. He found him there, the warm dark of the hotel room wrapped around him like a blanket, though he slept on top of the actual motel bedding, fully clothed. He had expected him to startle and wake, instincts honed to a sharp edge at this point, but even when he sat down beside him, he remained asleep, and uncharacteristically peaceful.
He found himself staring, letting himself get lost remembering how it felt to rebuild the body now dozing before him. Every pore, every crease, every dimple and mole and freckle, every atom and molecule, more familiar to him than anything else in all of creation. There was a peculiar allure to admiring Dean, not only the handiwork that went into repairing and remaking him, but Dean himself, a being who existed independently of Castiel before his rescue from Hell. It was like peering into the windows of a house you renovated with loving care, wondering what the family who called it home might be like. If, in this analogy, Dean is a house, is he home to Dean alone? Who else lives in his heart, in his mind? His brother, Castiel could assume, had a home there, and perhaps Bobby. Dean seemed to keep more than a little distance from the uninitiated, and that had to be lonely. Castiel, whether he wanted to admit it or not, could relate. He wondered where, in all creation, he himself could call home, if not Dean, the man he built with his own two hands.
This thought, so blasphemous, jolted through him with a powerful burst of shame. Dean did not belong to him, and the bond they shared was not an invitation to insinuate himself into Dean’s life. Castiel had a home already – Heaven – and the idea that he would feel more at home with Dean, in Dean – or his heart – was beyond profane. He quickly turned away from his sleeping form, reminding himself of his place, of his role in all of this. If Dean belonged to anyone, it was Michael, as much as it soured his spirit to imagine Dean as anyone’s vessel. Dean’s body never seemed to be truly his own, and the idea of him being made a vessel set something twisting and writhing in Castiel’s grace, something sick and aching. All the more reason to be ashamed of coveting Dean – how much better was he than the rest of the Host, if he looked at his body and all he saw was a place to make himself comfortable?
Just then, Dean began to stir, grunting and whimpering. His distress was palpable, and it changed the minute electrical charge of the air, giving it a sharp acrid tang. Though souls on the Earthly plane were not nearly as vibrant as they were in Heaven and Hell, Dean’s soul still managed to communicate well enough, and even without looking upon him, Castiel knew it was tearing at itself in a frenzy, disoriented by the sudden onset of a nightmare. It wasn’t difficult to guess that Dean was dreaming of Hell, but knowing didn’t make it any easier to bear witness to. With a flick of his grace, without even needing to touch Dean, he snapped him into consciousness. He felt him shift on the mattress, reacquainting himself with his surroundings, and with Castiel’s presence.
“Hello, Dean. What were you dreaming about?” He turned to look at him, making a point not to let his gaze linger too long. He wondered what part of his term in Hell was plaguing him.
“What, do you get your freak on by watching other people sleep? What do you want?” Dean did his best to sound indignant, affronted. Beneath it, Castiel detected a warbling shame, a relief at having been awoken from the nightmare, and a confusion as to what it meant about Castiel, who he was loath to trust. He had wasted enough time here already, and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t want to spend any more time speaking with Dean than he had to. There was something about talking to him that never ceased to frustrate him. No matter how well he planned the interaction, Dean always managed to subvert it, to find a way to wrest control away from him. He was not in the mood for it, and he had work to do.
“Listen to me. You have to stop it.”
“Stop what?” He touched Dean’s forehead, gently, and refused to allow himself to dwell on the thrill that ran through him when the pads of his fingers connected with his warm brow.
+++
It was hard to resist, after that. And after all, who did it hurt, if he watched over him? He’d been charged with monitoring the brothers, with ensuring that they neither meddled in the work of Heaven nor came to harm at the hands of Hell and its minions. Granted, the Host had likely not intended him to take his charge to such an extreme, but it was hardly outside of the realm of acceptable behavior in times of divine warfare for angels to sit watch over humans of holy import. Still, had the others known how it made him feel – indeed, that it made him feel anything at all – they would do more than merely take issue with the practice.
It had been a near nightly practice for almost a month now, and on the nights when Castiel was too busy to attend to Dean, he could feel the desperate anguish of his soul from anywhere in the universe when a nightmare ensnared him. Knowing that he would not be suffering, had Castiel not been otherwise occupied, mired him in a sticky heavy darkness that he could only assume was what humans might describe as guilt.
So again, he found himself at Dean’s side, listening to air filling his lungs and being expelled again – nearly inaudible to humans, but to Castiel it was overwhelming. The experience was as vibrant and soothing as it might be for a human to sit at the seaside and listen to the ocean’s waves tumble into the shore, only to draw back and repeat the motion as it had since time immemorial. Most of the time, just listening to him breathe was enough to feel the strange and addicting calm, and he would content himself with sitting at the foot of the bed, his back to Dean, facing the door.
It had been a long time since he’d had a taste of peace like this practice provided him, and he knew it was from a place of weakness, of selfishness, that he found himself here, night after night. He hadn’t known this kind of peace since before Hell’s plot to break the seals began, since before he’d raised Dean from the Pit. For all that he’d seen in the eons he’d been extant, he could not understand why listening to one human’s unlabored respiration could bring him as much contentment as living in times of peace had done, and yet he could not argue with the result.
By that same token, feeling Dean drift into distress was unbearable. If listening to his gentle breaths was akin to watching the tide slide lazily through a glassy sea, then hearing his throat click, his whimpering gasping terror, sensing the frantic thrash of his soul – that made him feel like he was watching the vastness of the ocean draw back into itself, mounting a terrible and powerful wave, a tsunami that would leave blood in its wake. He would soothe these nightmares as fast as he could – within nanoseconds, usually – with just a brief touch of his fingers to Dean’s hand, or arm, or forehead, or cheek. He didn’t need to touch him to wield his grace in this way, but it was marginally easier, when he did. And he told himself that was the reason for these touches, and he told himself that the way his hand tended to linger was because he still wasn’t used to his vessel’s mobility, and he told himself that the way Dean seemed to curl into the connection, the way his face would slacken in relief, the way he would sigh or groan in delight, had no effect on him whatsoever.
Tonight, it was not enough to sit at the end of the bed, staring away from Dean, listening to the sweet rhythm of his breath. He felt restless – the three previous nights, he’d been unable to watch over the man, and his nightmares had ravaged him. Castiel had been busy with Uriel and others, trying to locate the coven responsible for trying to raise Samhain, with frustratingly little success. This lack of success, paired with how painfully aware he was of Dean’s mounting torment, put him further on edge than he had been since before he’d fallen into this perverse little habit. No, tonight, he needed to literally watch over him.
The motel the Winchesters were in on this night was particularly shoddy, and the room had no curtain, only some fairly damaged window blinds. Not that either brother was particularly sensitive to light when it came to sleep, but it meant that rather than sleeping in the warm darkness that Castiel was used to observing him in, Dean was bathed in the soft glow of a nearly full moon. The first night he’d done this, he’d been struck mostly by how well he knew Dean’s body, and how comforting it was to know something with such intricate certainty. He’d wanted to know what Dean was like, beyond the little frustrations he’d inflicted on Castiel.
That first night, Dean had appeared to him almost as two separate entities; body and soul, occupying the same space, but not synonymous. Now, having grown so much more familiar still, Castiel regarded him as a whole – as more than a whole. Dean was not just the union of a soul with the body that housed it, he was the thermonuclear fusion powering a star, two distinct elements building and releasing and building energy into light, radiating it outward as far as he could, as bright as he could, for as long as he could. Castiel had supervised the births of stars, had touched them with his grace, and that experience was insignificant in comparison to watching Dean’s chest rise and fall in the moonlight.
The futile search for the witch and their coven floated back into his mind, and as much as he wanted to sink into this moment free of such worry, he could not. He knew the Garrison had orders to involve Dean, to test him, with this seal, and while he understood the point of the exercise well enough, it made him irrationally hesitant. They would approach the Winchesters on this official business tomorrow, after they arrived in the town where the coven was at work.
It was all so unfair, even if he didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to express the sentiment. Why challenge Dean to make such a decision, when he was already known to be righteous, when he was only destined to fulfill his duty as Michael’s vessel – if ever it even became necessary? What did it matter if he had good judgement, if he had skill and strategic impulses that aligned with the Host? He wouldn’t be consulted by Michael, when the time came, to determine a course of action. Indeed, he hoped – prayed, even – that it would never come to that, that the seals could be protected from Hell’s designs and the apocalypse averted. The Winchesters might be useful allies in that mission, but it hardly seemed crucial to test their leadership skills. Perhaps this was more a test of loyalty? Regardless, it was too much pressure, too little gained from too much demanded.
All at once, staring at Dean, thinking about how little sense it made to ask so much of someone who could barely sleep through the night without divine intervention, how cruel it was that he was tied up in all of this, he found himself able to put a name to his misgivings, his frustrations, his hesitations – doubt. He doubted the will of Heaven. He doubted the mission, he doubted the leaders who issued the order, he doubted the God who appointed the leaders. He was so full of doubt, so overcome with unanswered and unanswerable questions, that it physically (metaphysically?) hurt, like he’d been scraped and stretched as flat and taut as he could be, smashed between planes, and his form had at long last become brittle under the strain. The intensity of the realization caught him so unaware that he flickered out of invisibility, incorporeality, for a moment, manifesting in his vessel on the bed beside Dean, back against the headboard, Dean’s face level with his thigh.
Before he had a chance to gather his resolve, to return to that covert state, Dean shifted beside him, curling against Castiel’s leg. Even though Castiel had released no comforting twinge of grace, Dean let out that same satisfied sigh as his fingers found purchase on Castiel’s knee. Now in a physical body, Castiel experienced the physical sensation of his emotions in addition to the incorporeal sensation in his grace. His chest tightened, and it felt as though his ribs were straining to contain some swelling weight.
Castiel knew many things. He knew of every type of animal, every type of plant, every type of organism that had ever existed on Earth. He knew the name, the visage, of every angel in Heaven. He knew the age and position of every star in the universe, the origin of every planet in the solar system. He knew the true history of human kind, from the moment it began, and had watched it unfold, uninterrupted. He had never known this kind of closeness – physical or otherwise.
Castiel had believed in only one thing, for as long as he had existed, from the moment he had come into existence. He had believed in his Father, and His will, and His plan, and His orders, and His creations. Castiel’s regard for humanity and their environs stemmed from this core belief, that his Father had been right to create humans, and right to treasure them. This regard was rooted in his belief in his Father, as all of his being, all of the things that made him who and what he was, were so rooted. Sitting here, beside Dean, feeling the warm insistent press of his fingers against his leg, through the thin fabric of his pants, Castiel no longer believed the will of Heaven was as just , as unimpeachable, as he had before. How could it be, if the will of Heaven was to bring this man suffering?
Perhaps the orders, to defer to Dean on the matter of the impending rise of Samhain, had a purpose, but not the purpose that Heaven intended. They stood to prove nothing about Dean – Dean, who Castiel was certain would do whatever was indeed righteous, whatever was just, even if Heaven and Hell both opposed him – and stood instead to prove far more about Castiel himself. Could Castiel submit to the will of Dean Winchester – and once given permission to submit to his will, rather than the will of Heaven, could he ever go back to listening to the cold, cruel orders of his superiors? If all it took was a simple caress to keep Castiel cemented in place beside Dean, how would he ever hope to resist when Dean inevitably defied and questioned Heaven’s orders?
This disturbing revelation wound itself around Castiel’s core, and the only thing that kept him from utter despair was the sight – the feel – of Dean, glowing in the light of the moon. He’d nuzzled his face into the side of Castiel’s thigh, huffing his warm satisfied breaths into the crease between his leg and the mattress. Would it really be so bad, to put a little trust in Dean? Not all of his faith – he wasn’t going to abandon Heaven, that would be unthinkable – but enough of it to quiet that part of him that knew, more clearly than he’d known anything in some time, that Dean was worthy of that faith. No, he thought. It wouldn’t be so bad. It wouldn’t be that bad at all.