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He sits on the edge of the bed he shares with Dean at night, and considers his shoes, a new purchase. Boots, like Dean’s and Sam’s, a soft, chestnut-brown leather instead of the black he is accustomed to seeing whenever he looks down. They are also too small.
He is uncomfortable, and he suspects it has to do with his feet. They are imprisoned, limited; much like the rest of him, his feet have been confined into something far too small to fully contain him in his entirety.
The thought of going back to the store and picking out new boots wearies him to his core. But the thought of wearing the shoes he already possesses is unendurable.
“What’s wrong with you?” Dean asks when he staggers into the kitchen, carefully balancing on the sides of his feet. He has discovered that if he walks like so, he can avoid feeling his heels rub against the back of the boots. He doesn’t mind the half-laughing, half-incredulous look Dean throws at him: this way, the boots don’t pinch his toes.
“New shoes,” he explains, feeling resentful but not inclined to do anything to fix the problem. He supposes this is just another aspect of humanity to that wants enduring, like waiting in line to purchase groceries or the hour between Dean cooking dinner and when dinner is actually served. Humans, for the most part, wear shoes. He’s supposed to wear shoes. He always did before. He doesn’t understand why it has to be such a hassle now.
Dean frowns at him. “You sure they’re the right size, Cas?”
“Sam said they fit right,” he mutters. This is the last time he’ll trust Sam’s judgement, he thinks darkly. After all, Sam had encouraged him to buy that sweater, and Dean had laughed at that too. Sam, it seems, does not always have have the best of intentions towards Castiel’s dignity or comfort. “But I think he’s wrong.”
Dean crouches on the floor. He presses his fingers down on one boot, making Castiel’s toes curl up in horror. “No, I think they fit you okay,” Dean says. “Why do you think they’re too small?”
Castiel leans against the table and unlaces one boot. “Because of this,” he explains, and takes off the boot. His heels are cracking, blistered over, and his toes are rubbed red and raw. Dean whistles sympathetically.
“Cas,” Dean says, “Cas, buddy, you’ve just got to keep wearing ‘em. You’re gonna have to break them in first, before they get comfortable.”
Sometimes he has to step back. He once was able to consider the universe from every possible angle and several that weren’t, but now he does his best with what he has left.
No one has ever asked him how he did, not Dean nor Sam nor Kevin, but if they did ask him about it, he would try to explain it this way: Before, when he was an angel, he would simply find a corner, a place where two sides join together, and he would move towards it. His former means of flight, he would explain, was never anything more than finding the space where two lines meet, and slipping between.
Now, he sits in the corners of the bunker, and he watches the time pass.
Sunlight curves around the filigree of the iron bars in the windows, moving from one wall to another. He can follow the pattern for hours.
Dean doesn’t understand his fascination with the sunlight. His hands curve around Castiel’s shoulder the way light moves across the polished oak floors.
“You’re missing the show.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re not even looking at the tv,” Dean huffs. He is, though. Just not at what’s on the screen.
After dinner, Sam and Kevin pull out boxes filled with polished wood chess pieces carved from cherry and chestnut: rooks and bishops, queens and pawns.
“Might be cursed,” Dean warns them, stacking dishes and rounding up glasses from the table. “You never know with these boxes.”
"What else have I got to lose?" Kevin asks wryly. "My career? My relationship? My dignity?" He rolls his eyes at Dean. "I’ll take my chances."
Sam sets his chessmen on squares of ivory. Kevin places his pieces on squares of ebony. Castiel sits in a chair in one corner of the library and watches with interest. He understands games. Rules are something he understands very well.
Sam catches his eye and cracks a grin. Castiel thinks grudgingly that maybe he doesn’t resent Sam for the sweater anymore. Though he’s still annoyed about the boots. “You want a turn, Cas?” he offers, but Castiel shakes his head. Sam hesitates. “Do you know how to play?”
“Of course I do,” Castiel says, offended. He doesn’t, actually. He’s never paid attention to chess before. But if he watches Sam and Kevin play very intently, he will be able to figure it out. Rules are not complicated. Following them is the hard part.
He can hear Dean laughing from the kitchen. “He’ll beat your pants off if you let him play, Sam. Don’t challenge the nerd angel.”
“Well, okay, then. You can play the winner,” Sam says.
He watches Sam slowly track his chessmen across the board. Kevin may be a prophet of the lord, but he isn’t prepared for Sam and his strategies. Sam slaughters him.
Sam turns his chair towards Castiel. “Your turn,” he says.
He hesitates, but he shakes his head. “No, thank you,” he responds. He thinks he understands the rules, now. He just doesn’t think he’s ready to play.
He walks through the corridors of the bunker, footsteps slapping on cement basement floors, ringing out on the marble steps. He can fit in the darkness, still. Once he could step between the motes of dust and not leave a trace of himself behind. Not anymore, it seems. He leaves a wake of footprints on the dust-covered floors.
Dean comes looking for him. He always does. Castiel makes it easy on him; he slips into the light.
“What’s going on, man?” Dean asks. “Why hang out down here? We’re all upstairs.” He fits his shoulder against Castiel’s, his hip rocks into Castiel’s side. He sinks into Dean’s orbit without a second thought. This is a good fit. Unlike his boots.
“We’ve been missing you,” Dean murmurs, his breath in Castiel’s ear. “Come back upstairs. You can watch me kick Sam’s ass at Chinese checkers. Kid’s getting cocky. There’ll be no living with him if we let him win everything.”
Dean doesn’t altogether understand his attraction to the space in-between, that this wasn’t something that was cast out of him along with his grace.
“I’ll be there later.”
Dean presses his lips in the hollow of Castiel’s throat, then releases him. “Don’t stay down here too long. You’ll get moldy.”
“I won’t,” Castiel says.
He makes a practice out of slipping out of rooms unnoticed. He might’ve gotten away with it once before, even human, even though he no longer has the ability to slide between one dimension and the next. Except Dean notices.
“Where’ve you been all night?” Dean asks drowsily, curling around him soft and glad when Castiel lies down beside him on their bed.
He stares up at the ceiling, feeling Dean settle by his side like he’s always been there. “Being alone,” he explains. “Thinking.”
Dean doesn’t move away, but Castiel can feel him stiffen. He knows what Dean worries about. Dean worries Castiel will find a way to slip out of the bunker and out of his life. He wishes he could promise that he will always choose to stay, but sometimes in the early hours before dawn, he thinks that if he ever got the chance again, if he were ever able to find the way the light fractures through glass or the way lines move into each other, that he would slip out of his vessel and expand to such great heights that he would never fit back inside again.
“Be alone with me,” Dean says, and Castiel can’t explain that that’s not possible. He doesn’t want to be alone when he’s by Dean’s side. He wants to part of a new entity, a separate whole.
He could still slip away, if he wanted to. But sometimes he thinks that Dean might miss him, if he were to leave. So he doesn’t try.
Castiel stomps around the bunker in the boots.
“Poor baby,” Dean says when he catches Castiel limping wretchedly down the hall to the locker room. Castiel is sure he isn’t being genuine. Dean is smirking, but he looks at Castiel with soft eyes. He can’t believe a word Dean says when Dean looks like that. “You look like you’re in rough shape.”
“Yes,” Castiel tells him, panting, “I am.” Breaking in new boots, he’s discovering, is a difficult process. Every time he puts those boots back on the pain gets worse.
He walks the boots around the storage rooms, the war room, up and down the corridors, to the basement and back again. Finally he’s had enough, and he peels off the boots, wincing. Wearing boots has been the worst experience of his life so far. He’s bled through three pairs of Dean’s socks and into the heels of the boots, and even after he takes them he’s forced to limp around, because the blisters on his heels have started to dry, and walking around makes the scabs split apart.
Dean finds him in the library. Dean never stops looking for him, even now. He places a cardboard box and a small plastic bottle on the coffee table, and sits down on the couch next to Castiel.
He puts his hand on Castiel’s thigh. “Give ‘em here,” Dean says. His fingers gently stroke up and down Castiel’s knee. Castiel stares at him, uncomprehending, and Dean reaches out and pushes him back against the couch, skimming his hand down Castiel’s leg and taking hold of his foot.
He pulls Castiel’s foot into his lap, and twists open the small bottle, squeezing a thin clear gel on the tips of his fingers. He rubs the raw spots on Castiel’s heel, and it stings. The skin on his heel burns, ice-cold and painful.
Dean opens the box and takes out several bandages. He sticks them on Castiel’s heel, three in a row. “There,” he says. “Any better?”
Castiel closes his eyes. “It still hurts.”
“It’ll stop after a while,” Dean tells him. “You’ll get used to it sooner or later.” His hands haven’t stopped moving. He traces his fingers up and down the sides of Castiel’s foot, and he shivers.
Dean’s fingers are work-rough against his skin. “Give me the other one.”
Dean pulls out a pack of cards that night after dinner and smirks across the table at Sam and Kevin. “No more chess,” he says. “Kevin, man, your brain needs a rest from all the beatings Sam’s been giving you.”
Kevin looks at him sourly. “So, what, I should gamble away my inheritance to you guys by playing poker? No, thanks. I’ve seen you hustle pool, remember?”
“Okay, okay,” Dean says, “no poker, then. How about a nice high-risk game of Go Fish? Or, all right, something else. Any of you chuckleheads know how to play spades?”
Sam looks thoughtful. “We’ll need partners. Kevin?” He glances at Castiel. “What about Cas?”
Dean looks over at him, and Castiel doesn’t know what to say. He isn’t sure if he wants to play or not. He looks back at Dean, undecided.
Dean lets the cards slide through his fingers. “I want him,” Dean says, and shoots him a wink. Castiel smiles down at the table. “Cas, you can be my partner. You in?”
He thinks about it for a moment, about all that he could do at Dean’s side. Dean just shuffles the cards, waiting.
He turns and leans over to whisper conspiratorially in Dean’s ear, and Dean edges closer in order to hear. “Yeah,” he tells Dean. “I’m in.”
Dean kisses him awake, fingers tangling though his hair, before pulling back and sitting up. He army-crawls across the sheets, reaching for the two pairs of work boots tangled up together at the foot of the bed, and tosses one pair over to Castiel before diving under the bed in search of last night’s jeans and socks.
Castiel pulls on a pair of the what must be the most worn-out pair of jeans either of them owns, then socks. He slips a foot into one boot and laces it, then curls his toes inside it experimentally. No pain.
Dean pauses in buttoning up his shirt and looks up.
“See?” Dean asks, and Castiel does. “What did I tell you? Perfect fit.”
