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Somehow, the drive home is even more solemn with Mary behind the wheel. Dean’s pretty sure his nose is close to broke in several places, Sam is more or less shellshocked, and Mary… Mary hasn’t looked Castiel straight in the eye since Ramiel burst into ash. From over the front bench, Castiel can see her white knuckling the steering wheel with her eyes set hard on the road, soft rock playing melodically through the speakers. Maybe it’s just the circumstances, but Castiel can’t help but feel something odd about it all, down to his very core.
“Does it look broken?” Dean asks and turns to Castiel, a tissue held up to where a stray blood drop fell at one point.
No, there’s nothing wrong, Castiel wants to say—you’re overreacting. You’re distracting yourself because you don’t want to accept what just happened. After all, Dean just watched him gag on gangrene and whatever else was rotting him away from the inside, despair written into his eyes, his very touch, his soul at its deepest.
But there’s more to it than that, more that Dean isn’t willing to mention. And honestly, Castiel doesn’t want to remember much of it, either. On his supposed deathbed, he revealed his true weakness, and now he’s alive to live in the aftermath, in the car with his family—his all too human family—with a sick feeling in his stomach, and not from the gaping wound the lance left him with. Gaping no more, there’s still a scar, though, faint as it may be. A reminder of his mortality, a near brush with death that no one could’ve saved him from.
Life is fleeting, Castiel tells himself. Make the most of it, because the next time, he won't be as lucky.
In the last vestiges of winter, the bunker sits cold when they return, lights steadily pulsing on with the flick of a switch, circuit boards springing to life. Sam fiddles with the HVAC unit before he and Mary make their way to the kitchen, Dean following their footsteps until he stops, hands in his pockets. Defensive, probably, from what Castiel can presume; but more than anything, he’s probably wondering if Castiel will stay. Admittedly, after the end of hunts or near death experiences, Castiel has always left, either by wings or his car, now sitting in the garage next to the Impala and an old Chevy truck.
But this time, he can’t bring himself to go; whether out of self preservation or the all too human need to be around someone breathing, he doesn’t know. “I need a shower,” Castiel mentions to Dean when Dean looks back, the formerly pensive expression on his face softening to relief. “You should get some ice.”
That relief turns to humor faster than Castiel can comprehend. “You smell like a barn,” he shoots back, venomless, and bumps Castiel’s elbow when he passes. There’s a pause on his tongue, words Castiel knows he wants to say but can’t bring himself to, even at half past two in the morning. “See you in the morning?”
With a crooked grin, Castiel nods and leaves for the bathroom.
Gratefully, the shower is enough to silence the white noise ringing in his ears, constantly grating on his nerves on their drive back. The body wash Sam left in the stall smells of clovers and cedar, odd yet endearing, and it leaves his skin clean of blood and dirt and rot, all previously clinging to him like it belonged there. I could’ve died, he thinks, staring up into the spray, uncaring how much it stings. It feels human, real, grounding him into his feet and the water streaming through his tones and down the drain, clear. He could have died, not for the first time in millennia, but this time, he knows God wouldn’t restore him.
This time, his death is finite, and it’s terrifying. And for the first time, he realizes in his Grace and at his core, he doesn’t want to leave the earth, he doesn’t want to leave his family, ever again.
Sam and Mary have long since gone to bed by the time Castiel gathers himself from the bathroom floor and shrugs on a pair of sweatpants and a shirt he doesn’t recall bringing in. They’re ratty when he pulls them on, washed too many times and fraying around the knees, but still soft against his abused and battered flesh; his skin, his flesh and blood, no longer spilling through his fingers, pouring from between his lips. Here, he’s clean, free of the damning effects of the lance and whatever else ails him.
Yet, he still longs, but for what, he doesn’t know.
The kitchen sits quiet as he pads through the hall on bare feet, every bedroom door closed and lamps either off or turned down low. Dean is still awake though, at ten past three; given the adrenaline, he doubts Dean will fully fall asleep until the afternoon, probably wherever he is at the time. As of now, he’s the only one with open eyes, and Castiel can’t stand to listen to his own thoughts and the voices of the many who’ve threatened him over the years, all ringing in his ears.
Dean isn’t reading, or sitting at the desk scribbling away as he normally does in the evenings, or even listening to the MP3 player in his desk drawer. He isn’t… doing much of anything, other than sitting on the bed in flannel pajamas, staring at his hands. Slowly, Castiel closes the door behind him and treads nearer, cautious of startling him. So vulnerable, yet so out of reach, skittish in a way Castiel has rarely seen him. This time, the close call wasn’t Dean’s—it was the man who admitted with his last dying breaths that he loved him, Dean, his family. Three words Dean won’t admit to truly listening to, down to his very essence.
“When you said you loved us,” Dean says when Castiel slides onto the left side of the bed, crossing his ankles beneath his thighs, “was that…”
“The truth, yes,” Castiel admits. He’s grown bolder in the last few weeks, months, maybe even years, more willing to admit his faults, his intentions, his feelings. But that doesn’t make it any less painful to say; never once had he planned to tell any of them, but he’s grown tired of seeing Dean and Sam trip over each other while racing to the bullet. If they die now, they’ll never come back—and where they’ll go, Castiel may never be able to reach them again. He can’t return to heaven—he can’t follow them to Hell.
If they died, where would he go? Who would he be?
Why did he go through all of this just to watch them die?
In the lull, Dean doesn’t look up; he continues to look at his palms, occasionally flexing his fingers. Castiel’s chest aches with the need to say something, to reach over and touch him, to do anything other than sit there and watch the cogs turn in Dean’s head. “You don’t have to say it back,” Castiel offers, low. He lays his palms on his knees, open, an invitation to anything Dean might have to say. “I meant it. You, your brother, Mary. You’re… all I have in this world.” He stops to swallow, barely cognizant of the heater buzzing overhead. “If I were asked to change anything about it—meeting you, fighting at your side, loving you, the creating of existence itself—I wouldn’t.”
Through his nose, Dean lets out a long sigh, his eyes slipping shut. “You make it sound so easy,” he mumbles. “Like… love is something that’s normal. That it doesn’t hurt when you see the people you care about die.” Briefly, he sniffles, rubbing the back of his hand over his not-broken nose. “…I didn’t wanna see you die,” Dean admits. “I thought if I ignored it, if I told you you’d be alright… Then maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe we’d walk out of there and I’d make breakfast without feeling like I was gonna have a fuckin’ coronary just because you were bleeding.
“You started… choking on yourself.” This time, Dean turns away, arms wrapped around himself, and Castiel can’t help but reach out to him, placing a hand over his knee and gripping tight. He’s warm through his pants, always so warm, something Castiel can ground himself to. “I thought you were gone, Cas. I thought, this is it, I’m gonna lose you again. And this time, God ain’t gonna bring you back just because I asked pretty please.” Faintly, he shivers; Castiel strokes his thumb across the curve of his knee. “…Is that what it feels like?”
Castiel blinks, narrows his vision. “What what feels like?”
“Love.” With haggard eyes, Dean looks to him, lips turned down. “Is that what love feels like? Like… I can’t look at you now, without seeing what you looked like, and I… Don’t you ever make me see you like that again.”
Somehow, he knows he should feel ashamed, for hurting Dean like that. But it’s not his fault—what Dean feels is on his own behalf, and whatever happens to Castiel is by his own hand as well. Neither he nor Dean can prevent death, they can only take what hand they’re dealt and accept it, welcome it with open arms when the time comes. As long as he has anything to do with it, Castiel never wants to feel that way again, to burden others with his life, to sadden them with his death.
But by God, he wants it all the same.
“I didn’t want you to watch me,” Castiel says, choking back the realization and masking it with something close to stern; Dean doesn’t notice either way, just looks back down to his hands. This time, Castiel stops him, pressing his hand to Dean’s flushed cheek, burning hot against his palm. “I told you to leave, but you’re so… obstinate. You’ve never changed, no matter how long I’ve known you.”
“You though,” Dean says; reaching up, he places his hand over Castiel’s, threading their fingers together. “…You’re different. Almost… human.”
“I feel.” Castiel grips his hand tighter, pulling it away to kiss Dean’s knuckles; if anything, Dean burns brighter, red cheeks highlighting the greens of his eyes. “Everything you feel, the ache of watching your family die, the pain of love and loss, the agony of knowing everything will come to naught in the end… You taught me that. You taught me heartache and sorrow, but you also taught me the joy that accompanies it. The memories, the warmth of the sun, the—”
Without so much as a warning, Dean surges into his field of vision and kisses him, warm and dry, but everything he’s ever desired nonetheless. Shock encompasses him until his Grace settles within his chest, outwardly flowing into the skin against his. Castiel returns the kiss with tenderness, moaning when Dean fits their lips just right, too chaste to feel real.
Maybe this is a fever dream, and Castiel really died in the barn. Maybe Dean is mourning the loss and sitting at his bedside, thinking of all the ways he could have prevented it, took the lance instead. Maybe Sam is preparing the pyre, and Mary is weeping over the son she never had.
Maybe he doesn’t exist at all, and never did.
“I hate it,” Dean whispers against his lips, their noses touching; he doesn’t open his eyes, yet tears still spill through, only furthering the ache in Castiel’s heart. Too fresh, too real, too… much. “I hate it, knowing that you’re just like the rest of us. That you’re gonna blip out one day and I’m not gonna be able to fix it. I hate…” He stops to sob, dropping his forehead to Castiel’s shoulder. This time, Castiel doesn’t restrain himself; he holds Dean in his arms and buries his face in Dean’s hair, still smelling of dirt and blood, yet him all the same. “I hate that you made me feel like this, like losing you’s gonna be the one thing that kills me.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Castiel says, muffled, “if I outlive you, I’ll never forget you.”
“Don’t die,” Dean barks, close to an order yet still drowned in emotion, tugging at every one of Castiel’s all at once. This is love, he thinks. Love is pain, and terror, and adoration, and everything he both fears and desires. And despite Dean’s façade, despite the terror in Dean’s heart, he knows he feels the same. “Don’t die, you son of a bitch. Not unless I can be there too.”
It may be a joke; Castiel can’t tell, the humor falling flat, lifeless. “I love you too,” Castiel says against Dean’s ear. “I’ll never stop.”
“Don’t.” Turning his head, Dean kisses Castiel’s neck, wet and open mouthed. “Don’t stop.”
Fingers fisted into the back of Dean’s shirt, Castiel nods. “I wouldn’t, even if I could.”