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You've read the Bible, cover to cover. Every verse, every line. You've read it in bits and pieces over the years, alone in empty motel rooms at two in the morning, when you set down the remote on the nightstand and don't know what else to do. Can't sleep, no one to call, so you'll lean over the side of the bed and open the drawer in the nightstand and there's always one there, just when you're out of ideas and with no where else to turn. You'll never say you've read it, from beginning to end. You have.
There are lines that stay with you. There are verses that float into your mind every now and again, you don't know why. Sometimes when you wake up one of those verses will be waiting for you, the first thing you think of in the gray morning light: Jesus wept, you'll think, and it'll be the only thing you can think of until you've had one or two cups of coffee. Jesus wept. It will stay with you all day, echoing back at you. Jesus wept.
What does it mean? but you don't know. Just that they are always there, a verse or two, underneath all your other thoughts, like a heartbeat. You forget it's there, most of the time, until everything goes black and you're afraid for your life and you can hear it in your ears and beating under your skin. You know the story. He's weeping for a man that he had loved. Jesus wept.
--
Castiel is standing at the window when you wake up. He is holding back the curtain, he is illuminated by the dim glow of a streetlight, and you are blinking up at him with a verse in your mind: Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. You know this verse, backwards and forwards. It is the verse that is always in your mind when you are looking at him. What does it mean? you wonder, but as usual you pretend you don't know.
I am going to die, Castiel says, and you start shaking your head, refusing to listen; no, no.
Don't say that, you tell him. It doesn’t have to be true.
Castiel smiles a little and says, I wish it was just that simple, and there is that verse again, echoing somewhere under your skin.
If am going to die tomorrow, Castiel says, then I want to spent my last night on earth with you. He says it like a simple fact, but you can hear the question in his voice. He holds his head up high, back armor-straight. He’ll never beg, and that is why you will never ask him to.
--
The first time you read Revelations, it seemed like a science fiction novel. Dragons, portents, the end of the world: It's practically Lovecraft, you once explained to Sam. Now you read it, and read it again, and again, and with every reread the story sounds less than fiction and more like the world outside.
If everyone has a chapter of Revelation in their book of prayers, then this is yours: Here with him, at the end of the world.
--
He is sitting on your mattress, so close that your knees touch. There are tired lines around the corners of his mouth that you know weren’t put there by smiles. He is saying, It's almost gone. My grace, what is left of me. And when it goes, so will I.
What will happen to you, when you die? you ask. You think of all the places that Death rules over, all the shadowlands you have heard of. Heaven, purgatory. Fairyland. You don't guess there's much difference between most of these places: They're all just places you go when you die, to linger for a time until a Winchester pulls you back into the world. You just want to be able to find him, wherever he ends up. But Castiel glances at you sharply, a swift glance through his lowered lashes, and so you don't ask him the question you're really wondering about, you're not asking, Will you go to hell?
I have no soul, Castiel says. No heaven, no hell. Nothing. Once my spirit leaves this body, there will be nothing left of me. This is what Castiel doesn’t say: I will go to the edge of the dark, and I will look inside. And then I will fall, but this time nothing will stop the descent.
The mattress is too soft for this conversation. You stand up and walk over to the window and you watch the neon glow of the motel sign flicker on. The sign says NO VACANCY. It makes you think of an empty church and stained-glass windows illuminated by the bone-white glow of empty moonlight.
You look at him, and you don't see a halo or wings. There isn't any angel left in him. You see fear, and anger, and a certain wetness in his eyes, and you know that Castiel doesn’t want to die.
You have a verse in mind: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. I can keep him, you're thinking. It's stupid. It makes no sense. You're just thinking if you can hang on to him tight enough, you can keep him forever. Just by loving him more than anything else in the world. Just by loving him enough. This is how you've always done it. You love things enough, and they'll never leave.
--
You have a verse in mind. This is the verse: Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder, so you place your hands on his chest. Underneath your fingers, you can feel the lapels of his trenchcoat, the warmth bleeding through the crisp white dress shirt. You think you might just feel his heart, beating underneath your palm.
I don’t know what to do, Castiel tells you, quiet. I don't have much time left.
You have hours, and you want days, weeks, years. You should have listened to those verses months ago, the ones that murmured about lips and kisses in your ears. Now you don't have any more time to waste, so you close the empty space between your body and his, and you pull him close. His hand goes on the back of your head, his cheek belongs against yours, and his eyes flutter shut in the lonely hollows of your face.
You take his face in your hands, feeling his skin warm with your touch. You run your fingertips over the fine bones underneath, and you brush away the tear sliding down his cheek.
You have a verse in mind. Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.
You whisper in his ear, like a prayer: I love you. You seal the covenant with the truth of your love spilling from your lips, and you breathe your spirit into him. You tell him this is where he’ll find you, in this moment, if he's wrong and he makes it to heaven after all, and you pray he’ll understand.
--
You hold him until the end. Not the end of the world, not just yet. Just the end of his and yours, the one that could have been.
This night isn’t anything like you expected. He doesn’t whisper words of love in Enochian; he doesn’t talk at all. He just clings to you. He shivers, trembling against you, so you hold him tight, as tight as you can. He clings to you the way your own soul must have clung to him, back in the pit, and for am moment you are lost in he wonder of what it feels like to be someone’s savior. It mostly feels like holding Castiel steady against your chest, his ear against your heartbeat. You wonder when it was he started needing you so badly.
You hold him and you kiss him. You kiss him hello, and you kiss him goodbye, and you kiss him I’ll-save-you, and you kiss him I’ll-never-let-you-go. You kiss him once for every morning you never woke up beside him, and once again for every night you never laid down at his side.
You kiss him, an apology for every fight you ever had, and for all the fights you never had to the chance to start of finish.
You kiss him for every passing year, for every gray hair on his head and your own, for aching bones and crinkles around his eyes; you kiss him for springs and summers and winters and falls, for the garden he’ll never plant and the songs you’ll never sing and the flannel shirts you’ll never let him borrow.
You kiss him for the thousand years you’ll never spend together, and a thousand more you’ll never share after that.
You have a verse in mind: The verse goes like this: Love is patient. Love is kind, so you kiss him until the sun rises, until the light shines through the curtains. Love is patient. Love is kind. This is the verse, the line, the chapter, the page.
--
When you close your eyes for the last time, you have a verse in mind.
--
At the end of it all, there is an empty church, there are stained-glass windows illuminated with a blinding light. The pews are empty, but there are aisles lined with crimson carpet and vases filled with roses. Your heart has never felt so light.
There at the altar is someone, waiting, and love is patient.
No halo, no wings: Just a familiar man with a weary smile and dark hair lifted up by some passing wind, reaching out to you with an open hand. You sigh and let go of everything else, and at the same time you step forward, and love is kind.
You're here, you say. You reach out to touch the rose in his lapel pocket.
I’ve been waiting for you, he says, and the smile he wears is filled with happiness; a smile you’ve only ever caught hints of before. There are lines in the corners of his eyes, there are lines around his mouth.
Are you ready? he asks.
Yes, you say. You take his hands in your own and hold them tight. So this is it, you say. Eternity, right?
He ducks his head with a smile. If that’s all right with you, he answers.
You want to laugh, you want to cry, because this will never be the future you’ll never get to have with him, after all. But this is something else, something you’ve longed for your entire existence. Something you never imagined you’d ever find.
You have a verse in mind. To every thing there is a time. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
This is his time to laugh, and this is your time to dance, so you pull him close to your chest.
This is the verse.