Chapter Text
Wake up, before you die.
Rather, before someone kills you.
It's an ugly thing, waking up to the prospect of your own mortality. The graying feathers of your life spreading feeble again, to beat into the darking sky once again and strive, aching and spilling feathers upon the dust-ridden earth, to touch amongst clouds one more time.
One more time.
One more time.
And on, and on.
Sleep is a poison, a siren song– though, Sirens rarely sing anymore, if the journal is any indication. The journal, the pages, the endless books of stories, ghost stories, pretend stories.
Except.
Pretend is, apparently, subjective.
And subjective only means there's either knowledge of the dark and dangerous things behind the curtain, or there isn't. And in that case you live a peaceful life. A normal one.
A normal life.
That must be something, truly.
There's been no such thing, no such life, not since the Tablets and the journals and those pages, pages, pages.
Always a spell, always a cure, always something, never quite the finish line.
There is only a finish line in the horrible, soul-tearing realization that it never ends. Ever.
So, on we beat, against the current. That's from a book. Isn't it?
The only books that take any precedence anymore are the legends, the myths, the myths that slither out of the night to wind around innocent people and squeeze away their lives until they're nothing but a cold case.
Innocent people.
People who have no business getting dragged into things– and then they die, then they're gone, forever gone.
Because, what?
Their time ran out?
That's just fate?
Bad luck?
The plot?
Because, what?
For whose benefit?
It isn't their fault, it's never their fault. It was never her fault. She did nothing wrong. She–
"Hey. You okay, Kevin?"
Sam Winchester, the picture of apologetic care.
Deep eyes, immensely worried– what color are they, today? A careful green, pale and unobtrusive, rimmed with something just a little too bright to be brown.
Sam's eyes are strange, and beautiful, and Kevin wonders if he was born with them.
If something outside of Sam changed those forever shifting eyes.
Kevin rubs his own eyes, vision trembling. He shrugs, as if to push away that gently radiating concern before it can reach him.
"Just thinking."
It's true, anyway.
Though– sometimes it hardly felt like thinking at all, more like the thoughts that rattled around his brain were coming from outside, feeding in through his ears and flushing into his head.
Maybe they're prophecies, maybe they're visions. He can't escape them.
(He'll never run far enough.)
Sam nods, like he knows. He probably does. Kevin sometimes wonders if Sam's mental powers go beyond lifting objects– those strange and maybe ominous powers that sometimes bubble out without his control, until his mug is floating around his head like an orbiting moon.
Can Sam read his mind? Can Sam tell what he's thinking? What twisted, wrenching things he's replaying in his head again?
If he does, Sam doesn't mention it.
(He's grateful for that, anyway.)
"All right," Sam inhales, turning his laptop around so that the screen is facing Kevin, displaying a particularly nasty shot of some crime scene, not far from where they are. "You want to tell me what you think about this?"
"Ew." Kevin leans close, the usual flutter of disgust barely noticable anymore. Or maybe it's just always there, now. "Are those arrows?"
The photograph does indeed reveal arrows, bright bolts of gold struck cruelly into the heart of a young woman, pinning her to the blood-darkened trunk of a tree.
"Yep, and get this– there's some sort of writing on them. I can't make it out."
Sam squints at the screen, enhancing the picture as close as he can. It doesn't serve much, the standard graininess of small town security footage muddling together any nuance.
Kevin can't make the words out. He's so tired, his eyes are so tired, he hasn't looked up from his spell book for hours. If he crams enough knowledge into his head, maybe it will drown out anything else. It won't. Will it? Could it? (He doesn't dare hope, anymore.)
In a sudden and slightly manic attempt to relieve them of their studying, "We could go check it out. I mean. Just to get a look at that writing."
Naturally, Sam is skeptical, eyebrows raising a little. Kevin hates going to the scene. He hates the smell of blood and the pale, still faces and the eyes that seem to watch him through The Veil.
The chatter and flash of cameras, as if someone's soul isn't tumbling away, out of their bodies, led by the cold hand of a Reaper to some new plain.
It's...one thing that his wearied, hardening shell can't seem to shut out.
Sam acquiesces. "We should let Dean know, first."
Right, naturally.
There's no particular desire in Kevin's mind to see Dean Winchester at the moment, but he's not really opposed to seeing anyone at this point, not if it keeps him from being isolated.
Alone.
With his thoughts and the memories and the ghosts and the journal and the shuttered windows, always shuttered tight.
He pulls on thick boots, a size or three too big– he doesn't mind so much. He can crush the dust and the ghosts beneath the thick, salt-crusted heels.
(They're sturdy and splashed with grease or more likely blood from the last time Dean wore them before handing them off to Kevin.)
Sam is speaking hushed and hurried over the phone, still bent over a book of local legends.
"...So, we're going to go check it out. It definitely seems like an us thing, I mean— engraved golden arrows. Right. We'll see you there."
Sam hangs up the phone after a moment– is it strange to imagine that they're family, for a breath?
Not the family that they are, bound by spilled blood and resewn skin and horrid things that could never be unseen, but were made just a little more bearable when the cloud is spread somewhat thinner, when there's someone there to commiserate.
No, but the family that they could be– in some unlikely universe. One where Sam is simply a little annoyed, not carrying sisyphean weight on his shoulders. Where they're going to meet up with Dean for a concert, or to take a hike or something. Not to read ancient text off an arrow presently struck through a woman's heart.
It must be unusual, to be so normal. Kevin can hardly remember the feeling.
"Dean's on his way." Sam supplies, gathering up any pertinent bits of lore and sweeping them into his computer bag.
A brief pause.
"He said Cas is with him."
♪
It's a plain mug of coffee that ends the whole damn world.
Or maybe it only starts The End.
Or maybe it only feels that way.
But taking all and everything into account, lock, stock, and barrel, that chipped and ordinary mug certainly begins something.
Castiel is an angel, and expectedly does not drink coffee. Or consume anything, really, apart from the curious kind of observing he does, of his surroundings, as though he can see beneath graying layers of matter and drink it in as a strange and beautiful marrow.
But whether he drinks it or not, the life-altering coffee comes to him nonetheless—
In a butter yellow mug, held in Dean Winchester's hands.
"I get that you can't really taste it," Dean holds up a hand before Castiel can even think to say anything. "But anything's better than drinking alone, right?"
He holds up his own mug. Cracking ceramic that might have been a violet color at some point, now washed out like a flag left to scorch in the sun.
"Besides, it'll be good to get all caffeinated before we head over to Eudora."
"...Eudora?" Castiel repeats. It's a pretty name, he notices. It sounds familiar in Dean's mouth.
"Mm. Sammy called about a case over there. He and Kevin are already going to check it out."
Castiel reaches for the mug, swirling its contents passively and watching the steam rise.
The coffee is warm, and smells pleasant; like a forgotten memory... Maybe something that James –Jimmy– Novak had once known and loved, a home or at least a house, the light left on.
Olfactory senses are, he supposes as though from far away, the strongest triggers of memory... A memory not even his own, now strange.
Presently, a touch of Dean's hand flutters against Castiel's skin as the cup is passed, and a softly melting part of his soul glows with the contact.
"Thank you, Dean." He says carefully, as if he wants the tone and cadence of his voice to be like that coffee.
His eyes have gone like velvet again, shifting subtle navy to brilliant blue with a tilt of his head.
And damn him, Dean can't help but look; let the shreds of gold in his eyes melt and flow to the silver in Castiel's, prolong the joining of their vision until a bridge is built, spiry and fragile and gleaming like the sunlight outside.
Castiel is so close to crossing that bridge, he places a shaking step out, soul trembling, fingers closing around the silvery guardrail—
And Dean turns away, breaks the stare.
His vision flicks across the walls and windows and anywhere except Castiel, left clinging to the tattered and creaking remains of the bridge, debating whether it's worth hanging on at all.
He decides that it isn't, that he doesn't have the energy today, and he drops.
"No problem, Cas." Dean says haltingly.
No.
No problems at all, as water fills Castiel's lungs.
He sips his coffee.
It's awful.
He can't taste the familiar bitterness that the boys like so much over the absolute mess of caffeine compounds and intricate, twisting molecules.
He can picture them if he concentrates, and imagined that they must be sort of pretty.
Tangled together endlessly, and yet orderly and precise.
Complicated, but somehow clear.
Much like the structures that develop and tear down within Castiel's chest, the unfamiliar drum of his heart, the now predictable tremble of his breath–
How can something be at once strange and familiar?
Daylight reels Castiel back into alertness, sun spilling pale and infinite from behind the misty sheen of the morning.
Dean has since moved to collect his things from where he'd scattered them across the motel bed earlier that morning, before Castiel had blinked into existence in the still darkened dawn.
And Dean moves with that nearly paradoxical, ambling tautness that Castiel's presence seems to instruct him in, a hyper awareness of his skin and body and how his muscles thread and flex together.
Dean's legs are bent, bowed, even with the way he squares his shoulders (expectant) and tilts his chin (defiant).
It reminds Castiel of something, though he can't quite place it.
A vague itch in the back of his mind (or perhaps his vessel's brain?) finds some distant similarity to those first staggering steps out of a raging sea and onto the sloshing recesses of graying mud.
His Father's prized creation, the passion project that bore His Image above the glory of angels.
Castiel has watched those cracking mirrors, blessed children, watched them crumble and fade from the height of their beauty, even as they continued to advance towards the glittering ideal of personhood, all the while their souls turning to dust and decay beneath the veneer of favoritism.
Dean seems like he's trying a little too hard not to notice the way Castiel is watching him, fingers incessant, eyes clearly averted.
He is a portrait of precision, ambition, action, and it seems for a moment that Castiel is an obstruction, as simple as that.
Dean did not check in to the Eschalot Motel with the intent of Castiel's company.
(Other company, he could not say. Castiel did not want to think about other company.)
Dean would have been perfectly content with only himself. A movie and likely something to drink, fixing himself into a warm haze after that recent, jarring visit to his childhood home.
Dean's shoulder still aches from the ordeal, Castiel can tell by the way he walks.
Dean turns.
His pupils go wide for a brief moment, nearly blotting out the soft, glass green that he's grown dangerously used to seeing.
Dean's humanity, his bones and skin and all, it should have been less beautiful. Less distracting to look at than the pure supernova of soul that he was.
Of course there is no such luck.
"Well?"
The clatter of keys in Dean's hand is like the toll of a bell. A final knell, of sorts.
"Step on it, pal. We've got some corpses to look at."
And inwardly, Castiel smiles.
His presence is less obstruction, now.
It is part of the flow and swirl, a dip in the current.
He follows Dean outside, glancing placidly at their surroundings as he stows their equipment bag carefully in the trunk.
The asphalt crumbles under their feet and Castiel can almost, almost hear the earth sing, choked and muffled below sickening layers of blackened tar.
By the time he takes his rare place in the passenger seat, Dean has the radio on, something jangling and probably catchy.
[I've had the blues]
Dean is close and smells like coffee.
[The reds, and the pinks]
Castiel opts to look out the window.
[One thing's for sure:]
The road filters beneath them, dizzyingly fast as they peel out of the motel lot and onto the open road. Dean's very favorite place, Dean's home. Dean doesn't speak, and so neither does Castiel.
[Love stinks.]