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The TV, which hasn’t been entirely right since—was that Crowley?—came crashing through and disturbed the peace, is acting up again.
Castiel fiddles with the rabbit ears. The hairs on the back of his neck are prickling, which strikes him as odd, given that he's not inhabiting a corporeal body.
Well, he is. A tiny corner of it; a remote bundle of neurons and their synapses, all the celestial energy that makes up Castiel consigned to the angelic equivalent of a timeout.
It's sort of serene.
The screen is still abuzz with static. He frowns, knocks his knuckles against the top of the TV set, and then feels his chest go hollow and cold with instant recognition.
Castiel knows Dean's hands on sight. Clipped-short nails, some ragged edges, every little nick of every little blade that’s turned into every little scar since that autumn when Castiel raised him from Hell shiny and clean. His fingers, thick and clever; the broad, square palms as they shift, restless, then settle. One hand clasping the other.
“Captain’s log, prayer number eleventy frickin’ billion.”
Dean’s fingers fold over each other, lacing into the gaps between his knuckles. His voice is quiet, a rumble that makes the television purr under Castiel’s tentative touch. He’s afraid if he moves too quickly, the channel will be lost again.
“Guess that means I’ve lost count,” Dean continues. The image stays on his hands, sharp focus on the fine golden hairs where they taper into his wrists. “I got no idea if you’re hearing these, but Cas—Castiel.” He chuckles, low. “Cas,” he says, as if he’s settling on the nickname. “I need you to come home.”
It’s silent. Castiel begins to think the vision is gone. Then Dean’s hands tighten on each other, his knuckles whitening.
“Please,” he adds. “I got nothin’ else. Just. Please, man.”
The image grays at the edges and then fades. Castiel stares at the blank screen for a long, long time.
It always smells like fresh-brewed coffee in here. The way Dean likes it, bitter and thick so he can cut it with sugar when Sam is looking away.
Dean’s not here. Castiel wishes he was, but he wishes for a lot of things. When Dean is here—or in their real kitchen, the one with Sam rearranging the pantry stock and piles of old newspapers and Dean’s robe hanging from a command hook on the wall by the coffee machine—the room comes alive with companionable energy. Dean whistles and hums and, if he really forgets himself, sings while he cooks. Sometimes Sam makes them all gather around while he reads a particularly absurd opinion column aloud. Castiel practices smiling, the expression coming more easily the longer he spends putting down roots.
More time has passed. He doesn’t know how much, but it may as well be morning. The bunker doesn’t get natural light, and neither does Castiel when he’s tucked so deeply inside Lucifer’s consciousness.
Castiel huddles around his steaming mug of coffee, savoring the first sip as he leans forward to press the TV’s power button.
Initially, there’s nothing. Just the familiar waves of gray and white. Castiel cocks his head to the side, takes a second drink of coffee, and touches his fingertips to the slightly rounded screen.
“Oh,” he gasps, the first he’s spoken aloud in what feels like days. The feeling rounds on him like a punch to the gut, like a fist wedged up under his ribcage and wrapped tight around his heart. Emotions aren’t meant to be physical like this—they’re intangible; they shouldn’t hurt.
This hurts, badly.
He doesn’t hear Dean’s voice, not as before. But he knows this sensation and he knows its source. Dean lives wholly present in his body. Dean feels his feelings all over, from happiness that sparks in his lungs and hands to disappointment dragging low in his belly.
These white-hot coils that ache as they tighten in his center are very nearly a summons. Dean is longing for him.
Castiel sucks in a breath he most likely doesn’t need. He presses his palm flat to the TV screen, careful not to knock the antennae from their position. He can’t lose this connection.
Faint impressions make their way to him, ghosts of ghosts. Dean is lingering in the shower, waiting for the water to turn cold so it will snap him out of—out of whatever’s wrong with him. Out of wanting Castiel back.
He’s not praying anymore. Just yearning, his forehead to the tiles and his eyes squeezed shut. Castiel can’t make out the words, but his mouth is moving.
His hands shaking, Castiel steps back. Coffee sloshes out of the mug and toward the floor, but he’s been sloppy imagining this room, and it doesn’t make it all the way down.
“Dean,” he says.
The TV shuts off, its job apparently finished.
Castiel dozes. He’s so tired, and there’s noise coming from somewhere, and he doesn’t want to hear. Doesn’t want to know. Watching Lucifer through eyes that used to be his grew old terribly fast. He’s paid attention through centuries, through millennia of battle and bloodshed. He did his part, gave himself to the destruction of the Darkness. He only wants to rest.
Thump. Crackle.
“—not even close.” Dean’s voice, threadbare. He’s anxious.
“You were pretty damn gung-ho about this last week!” That’s Sam, though he comes through a bit reedier. The antennae are attuned to Dean, to his aches and desires, and so Sam must be filtered through Dean’s awareness.
Castiel opens his eyes, his head pillowed on his arms where they’re crossed on the kitchen table. He’s bleary, his vision blurred and his thoughts slow. Lucifer always was so bright he dimmed the rest of them by comparison, and it seems he hasn’t lost that knack. Castiel certainly feels dull.
“I’m still—fuck, come on, I’m not compromising and you know that. I’m just saying this ain’t working. Crowley doesn’t know jack.”
“Then who does?” The TV’s screen is almost black, but indistinct shapes move across it if Castiel looks out of the corner of his eye.
Dean’s voice shakes minutely. He’s been drinking. “I don’t know. Fuck. I miss him.” A dizzying swoop of horror sears across the connection; he didn’t mean to say that so plainly, Castiel realizes.
Sam goes gentle. “Yeah,” he says, “me too.”
The legs of Castiel’s chair screech on the floor as he drags himself closer to the TV. He touches the edge of it, the dust collecting on the side without buttons. He touches his forehead to the screen. He wants a glimpse of Dean’s face, wants it badly, but the scene has faded and he’s left with nothing but the gnawing hunger of Dean’s unhappiness, sitting uneasily in the core of his imagined vessel.
Castiel doesn’t know how long it’s been since he stopped fighting back and took refuge here. He’s watched entire reconstructed episodes of Star Trek, managed whole marathons of How It’s Made from the scraps of his TV-watching career and his own vast stores of knowledge.
My story is over, he’d thought as he pulled this little television into quasi-existence from memory and nostalgia. And he’d been relieved, ready to drift in an undefined, over-long epilogue and let other stories unfold in front of him until Lucifer did away with him for good.
But.
“Cas,” the speakers hiss. They’re clogged with dust and Castiel hasn’t bothered cleaning them.
Dean isn’t finished. Dean is a never-ending story, stubborn and truculent and, beautifully and painfully, missing Castiel. Asking for him back. Longing so fiercely that when Castiel readjusts the antenna one last time, the staticky burst of noise echoes again and again and again. “Cas, Cas, Cas.”
Castiel freezes. He tips his chin up toward where there should be ceiling.
“Cas.” Dean’s hand, familiar fingerprints with whorls Castiel himself retraced into existence, presses to the inside of the screen. “Come home.”
Castiel opens Lucifer’s mouth and says, “Dean.”
Satisfyingly, Amara looks startled. At least, she does for the five seconds before Castiel pushes her aside and runs. Her surprise is all the shield he has, and so he uses it; he doesn’t quite have the hang of controlling his body’s limbs anymore, but dignity isn’t his concern.
“Dean,” he pants in explanation to the startled security guard whose nap he interrupts as he flees the warehouse. Always warehouses and churches, always these dilapidated buildings with histories bleeding into obscurity in the dirt around them.
Lucifer isn’t gone. The lightbringer doesn’t give up so easily. But Castiel can be a stubborn bastard too, and he hangs on tight to control as he runs. The movements get smoother and tighter and he gains speed and, when he reaches into the well of thrumming power that made Lucifer so good at suppressing Castiel into near-nothing, he borrows Lucifer’s wings.
Flying still comes easily. That’s angelic instinct, something he shares with Lucifer.
Kansas, flat and nearly square and beloved to him. The absolute middle of this country that Dean loves and that Castiel has grown fond of, rationality fallen completely by the wayside. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Lucifer writhes, trying to mock him for his sentimentality. Castiel doesn’t falter as he strides across the dusty highway toward his home.
“Come on, Dean,” he says, knocking hard at the door to the bunker. He doesn’t know the day, barely knows the time besides that it’s light outside and that with his luck, the Winchesters have gone off on a hunt. They don’t stop hunting, no matter what.
Give it a rest, Lucifer snarls. Castiel swallows hard and shuts him out.
There’s a pang in his chest, Dean hoping and then trying his damnedest not to hope, quintessential Dean, projecting so hard and so far that Castiel doesn’t need antennae to pick up on it, and then the door swings open and—
“Dean.”
“Holy shit,” Dean says.
He doesn’t ask if this is Castiel or Lucifer. He knows, and he sways forward, circles dark below his eyes and at least four days of stubble crowding his cheeks and jaw.
“Dean,” Castiel says one more time. The word rolls around in his mouth, smoothing off edges he hadn’t even known were there.
Dean gathers him up, crushing Castiel to him with his open mouth to the top of Castiel’s head, his fingers trembling and his heart stammering against his sternum with so much vigor that Castiel can feel its reverberations in his own body.
“I missed you too,” Castiel says.
Dean makes a noise Castiel can’t identify, like something raw tearing out of his throat. He’s still shaking, and Castiel wishes he could make it stop. He curls two fingers of each hand into Dean’s belt loops, hanging onto him and relishing the solid reality of him.
“You son of a bitch. You motherfucking asshole. Do you have any goddamn idea?” These venomless insults are how Dean shows his affection, and Castiel presses a smile to the slightly sweaty hollow of Dean’s throat.
“Listen,” he says.
“I’m gonna kill you,” Dean says. He uses the same tone he uses to tell Sam he’s gonna disown him for buying too many boxes of mixed greens.
“He’s not gone,” Castiel says. “Lucifer. He’s—I just—you might need to trap me. Us—him. Again.” The last time is filtering back into his memory, Dean’s firelit expression of terrified faith.
Dean tucks his chin tighter against the top of Castiel’s head. “Fine,” he says, “fine. But you’re gonna fight.”
“Yeah.” Castiel means it, and means it more when he hears Sam thundering up the stairs behind Dean. “I think—I don’t think this show is over.”
“Damn right it’s not.” Something frantic in his expression, Dean pushes Castiel back enough to look at him, to smooth shaking hands through his hair and to touch their mouths together, so soft and quick Castiel doesn’t know whether it counts as a kiss.
“Dean, is that—” Sam, disheveled and concerned.
“Yeah, just—here, give me—”
Castiel offers up his wrists for the cuffs, ready to follow Sam and Dean into the real bunker. “Thank you,” he tells Dean. “For wanting me. It guided me home.”
Color rises in Dean’s cheeks, but he smiles, right as the cuffs click and shut. “Stay tuned.”
Castiel promises that he will.