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Having been alive for thousands upon thousands of years, seen empires fall and cities crumble, Castiel is familiar enough with endings. He can still recall, for instance, the end of Lucifer, as he fell, fiery and furious down into the Pit, and Michael’s cries, as they echoed through the Host. Castiel remembers Michael’s mourning as a thunderstorm that shook the skies apart to cry for days with rain.
He remembers the end of Anael, before she became Anna, bursting apart to build a new life upon the Earth.
He remembers the end of Anna, too.
He remembers his own ends, playing on repeat in his mind at night still sometimes, in harsh, vivid swaths of white and black. He remembers with sharp clarity, as well, all the endings he wreaked upon others. The end to innocence, if he ever really had it.
But Castiel knows his lore as well as any Winchester, schooled by human civilisations down the centuries, and knows what myths and stories say of endings. To die, after all, is to be reborn.
The words “get lost” still ring in his ears for hours after they are uttered. But no, Castiel decides, clenching his fists against the bathroom counter, face wet from splashing water against his face, a cool, refreshing feeling. He was born again to this not long ago yet, feet routed to the earth and heart yearning for a man of it. He refuses to lose it.
The next life can wait; Castiel is not done with this one.
When he sees Dean stalk off, Castiel debates whether to follow him. That could also mean, however, walking into an even more disastrous conversation than the one they just left, and so Castiel stays put. For anything this important, for Dean, he can be very good at waiting, and perhaps he could do well with some time by himself, too.
He sits on the edge of their bed and stares at the black screen of the TV across from it. He wonders briefly whether any of the shows he likes might be on (he has become engrossed, as of late, in every iteration of Law & Order, much to Dean’s hyperbolic disgust—“procedural cop shows, Cas, come on!”), then decides he could be making much better uses of his time. He doubts he will be able to get to sleep alone before Dean comes back, anyway, and so he stands up, stretching his stiff legs, and goes next door to find Sam.
Castiel doesn’t bother knocking, which is perhaps rude, but then again, Dean has elected not to be here to tell him off for it. Sam, mercifully, is in no compromising position to make Castiel’s unannounced entrance awkward, and looks at Cas as though he is unsurprised to see him. Sam, Castiel supposes, has many years on him when it comes to arguments with Dean.
“Don’t over think it, Cas,” Sam says when Castiel sits down, noting Castiel’s taut expression. “Dean is just… Dean.” He sighs. “Sometimes pushing people away is his defence mechanism, because it validates his self-doubt if they don’t come back. It’s a twisted way of proving himself right, and at the same time never giving them a chance to make the first move to leave.”
“But I will always come back for him,” Castiel says. No matter how many times he needs to leave, Castiel knows this simple truth as if it were ingrained in the marrow of his bones. As long as free will is his to wield, he will always come back, tethered as he is by the string of their souls.
“But maybe that’s just it, Cas,” Sam says, sympathy painted across his face. “Dean doesn’t want to think that he’s holding you down. That he’s your last resort.”
“He’s my only resort,” he points out. It’s not entirely true, for Castiel is, if nothing else, at least resourceful, but he has little idea where else he would go, at this point. More importantly, though, he has little desire to figure out another option. The fire in his veins does not strain for heaven, not like it once might have, not like it once did before he knew what to call this place (in Dean’s arms, in Sam’s friendship, with Kevin and Charlie and the wide range of things he has yet to experience). He knows now, though, for he thinks of it as home.
Sam frowns, as if that was the wrong thing for Castiel to say. “Cas, Dean can’t believe you’re actually choosing him if you don’t have any other choice. No matter how much he’ll want to believe it, he won’t be able to. And I know my brother, okay? He wants to. I don’t know what you guys have said to each other, but I can see he wants you so much that I think you leaving now would break him more than when you died.”
“In case you forgot, it is Dean that just left me, technically speaking,” Castiel feels the need to defend. For an argument that caused Dean to walk off into the night, Castiel can’t claim very much participation in it. He never got the chance to say much of anything at all.
But Sam shakes his head. “You know that’s not what I mean.”
They have never talked about that year, not really, not yet, but Castiel will admit he is curious about what Dean did in the year Castiel spent living as someone else. There is some irony, perhaps, in that the last words Castiel said to Dean before the Leviathan overtook him completely, was “run”.
“What should I do then?”
“God, I don’t know,” Sam drags a hand down his face, leaning back in his seat in the only armchair in the room. “You think me and Dean are perfectly healthy?” he laughs self-consciously. “I like to think we’ve gotten better, but even I don’t know, some days.” He looks out the window then, as if to spot Dean coming back, but it would be far to dark to see, either way.
Sam sighs again when he turns back to look at Cas. “But I think maybe you just… let him have space. He probably needs to figure shit out just as much as you.”
Castiel considers this, as he looks at the tall man before him, so tired—like his brother—before his time. He knows he is difficult to deal with; he’s a poor example of an angel, fallen or otherwise. It’s a wonder Dean is willing to put up with him most days, but it’s a wonder Sam is, too, after all Castiel did to him, after all he did to everyone. “You are a good man, Sam,” he says. “And a good brother.”
Sam huffs through his nose, self-effacing, but his lips quirk up in a smile at their corners. “Thanks, Cas. Don’t feel like it most of the time, but thanks.”
Castiel smiles in solidarity. “Well, as Dean might say, join the club.”
Sam laughs. “Please don’t tell me you think of Dean as a brother.”
“Of course,” Castiel says, brow knotting together as he peers at Sam. What else would Dean be? Dean would positively balk at the term lover, and boyfriend is somewhat too trite. They are not married, although Castiel does wonder…
No, if anything, Dean is Castiel’s family, and that’s a good enough term for him. It’s certainly Dean’s favourite.
Sam stares, unsure of what to say to that. “Um.”
“I have noticed,” Castiel begins, “that the word ‘brother’ to Dean, like ‘family’, means more than just a relation. It’s the word for a relationship in which he would do anything for they who deserved the name. One for whom he would die for, and love until death. In this way, Dean and I are like brothers.”
He pauses, and tilts his head with a mischievous glint in his eye. “In matters of physical intimacy, however, we are perhaps not.”
“Yeah, that’s all I really need to hear about that,” Sam claps his hand on his thighs, eyes shut in embarrassment at Castiel’s frank reveal.
Castiel can’t quite resist prodding a little further. Dean has maybe influenced him too much. “You’re quite sure you would not like to hear of the feats of flexibility my tongue—”
“Nope!” Sam exclaims, standing up. “Nope, nope, no. Shut up. God, and I thought Dean was terrible.”
Castiel smiles again, only somewhat apologetic. “I have been told by him that I have no shame when it comes to sex.”
“Yep, changing the conversation!” Sam strides across the room to the bathroom, and slams it shut.
He stays with Sam for a few hours longer, mostly talking about the case. It should be no surprise that Sam is generally easier to work with over Dean, mostly for the fact that they are not mutually distracted by their attraction to the other. With Sam, Castiel can at least get straight to business (if Dean were here, he might joke, with a leer and a wink, that him and Cas can get down to business pretty easily too).
They go through every disappearance report again, but their thoroughness yields little in the way of actual leads. The victims seemingly have no connection at all, except that they live in the same town. Maybe it isn’t the disappearances they should be looking at.
Castiel flips through their report printouts, sprawled across the motel room table. “One of the reports also detailed a robbery, didn’t it?” he asks Sam, curious. Dean would be proud of him, he thinks, for acting on a hunch.
“Um, yeah,” Sam says, helping him shuffle papers. “Norman… Norman Redmond?” He speed reads through the report in question to confirm. “Yeah, the day after his wife reported him missing she also reported that an antique astrolabe had been stolen from his study. Huh. Who steals an antique astrolabe?” He asks, handing Castiel the paper.
“I imagine they might be worth a lot, depending on the age and condition,” Castiel says, but that’s not particularly what concerns him at the moment. “It is strange, though, that there would be a significant break-in possibly the same night Mr. Redmond originally disappeared.”
“But how can we know that? The theft being reported a day after his disappearance doesn’t mean they even happened close to each other, necessarily.”
“True,” Castiel concedes, but he’s not ready to give up on this coincidence yet, lest it not actually be coincidence. “But what if the other disappearances also had object disappearances connected with them? Even if only reported weeks later. Can we check if the victims’ houses were also victims of robbery within, say, a month of each other?”
Sam sighs, and rubs his eyes, the night of work draining on him. Castiel feels this too, weighing on the set of his shoulders, making him slouch in his chair and hold his forehead in his hands as he reads on through reports. Not for the last time that night, as he blinks back the burning desire for sleep, he wonders when Dean will be back so he can take the break his body desperately needs.
“Nothing better to do at this point,” Sam says. “Yeah, we can try.”
Castiel wakes up with the imprint of his rumpled sleeve on his cheek. It’s still more or less dark out when he sits up, blinking blearily out the window into the early morning fog, though light is beginning to peak through the clouds. As consciousness slowly returns to him, and his muscles wake up enough to ache, it occurs to him he must have passed out sometime in the middle of the night.
He looks around the room for any hint of Dean’s return, but only finds Sam, sprawled out on top of the nearest bed spread.
Right. This isn’t even their room.
He stumbles out of the chair, his body slightly behind his brain in waking up. He needs coffee.
But first, he needs to find Dean.
The air outside is cool and thick with the heavy moisture of the foggy dawn, and Castiel’s feet fall silently on pavement of the walk outside the motel room doors. The only sound this early in the morning is the distant swell of the tide.
He opens the door to their room without knowing what to expect. He knows he hopes Dean returned over night, but then again, he doesn’t know how he feels that Dean did not come to find him first, before passing out.
He has little time to worry about that, however, for when he enters their room to find it empty, just as he left it. Something very wrong thumps in his heart, and rises in his throat. Something very wrong indeed.
Sam and Castiel are both are down by the beach within the hour, squinting into the thick, cloudy distance, trying to find the trace of where Dean might have wandered off to. They’d checked with the motel desk, of course, asking if they had seen any trace of him. Sam suggested on the spot that they might check the local bar next, just in case, though the manager at the desk claimed to not have seen him when he was there himself last night, either.
The thing about beaches is that footprints are liable to be wiped clean by the rising waters, and so they have to walk for awhile before they reach a place where the sand reaches high enough up the shore to be untouched by the tide. Cliffs rise in the distance as the land builds up higher, and Sam suggests that maybe Dean found some sort of cave to crash in over night. It’d be extremely uncomfortable for him, but considering their histories, not entirely unheard of. They’ve slept in worst places, Sam shrugs.
Indeed, when they reach the rocks, Castiel quickly spots an opening, where the walls are dark and damp as they recede into blackness.
“Ominous,” Sam says to break the silence. Castiel nods, jaw clenching, as they both step forth into the cave’s mouth. He doesn’t know if he wants Dean to be here either, and what dangerous fate awaits.
Castiel knows he is now restrained by human limitation, but perhaps he will always be too much of something else, for he can feel something about this place before he sees the light at the end of the literal tunnel. Sam or Dean might simply call this him developing a hunter’s instinct, and maybe they would be right, but the hair on Castiel’s skin rises in warning long before Sam raises his guard himself.
They both hear the voices at the same time.
“Are you here for him, or for us, I wonder?” whispers a formless voice, light and lyrical. Both Castiel and Sam search around in the darkness to see, but they are soon blinded by the growing light bouncing off the walls in front of them. Neither of them have any doubt as to whom “him” refers.
Dean.
His fingers twitch for a phantom sword. “If you have harmed him in any way—” Castiel growls, shoulders squaring. But his threat is cut off by a different voice chiming into the cryptic choir.
“You will do what, human?” it taunts.
Castiel lurches forward, though towards what, he doesn’t know. His blood is burning, heart pounding with adrenaline and fear. What would it be like to die, right now, right here?
Sam, though, holds him back, a firm hand on his shoulder. He speaks into the light. “What do you want?”
“We want that which was stolen from us,” the first voice says, tangible anger coiling through their ethereal tone. The image of an astrolabe filters in to the forefront of Castiel’s mind in that moment, and something clicks into place. Perhaps the precious pearl is related too…?
Before he can put a voice to that thought, however, Sam cuts in again. “What about what you stole from us?” he says very reasonably, but his tone is tight, accusing, too. Castiel knows that when his brother is in danger, Sam is a weapon only waiting to go off. They make a good pair, this way, he thinks.
“He was a thief, like the rest of them,” the voice grows louder, and through the haze of their supernatural glow, bouncing off the cave walls, Castiel thinks he can almost make out the outline of a face. He pointedly does not think about the fact that if he still had his grace, there would be no success in their obfuscation. He would have seen right through to them.
“None of us have been here for more than a few days,” Castiel says, stepping forward. “How would he have had time to steal something while escaping your notice?”
The bright silhouette draws nearer. “If he was not a culprit, then why did he have our treasure on him?” it asks as it comes into focus, as the glow around them dims.
As Castiel had thought, it was merely a trick. What comes out of the back of the cave is a tall, thin creature, accompanied by two others, nearly identical, behind them. Dressed in an airy film of white cloth that looks aged and ragged, their skin gleams in a murky turquoise that favours its green hues—perhaps why they had been mistaken for sea monsters by superstitious sailors along the coast. Castiel recognises this species, though he has not seen one in the flesh in quite some time.
“They’re sea nymphs,” he says to Sam over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off their pack. He knows them to be a stealthy, sly species full of mischief, but deadly if crossed. Without knowing it, they all seemed to have crossed them.
“Ah, astute, this one is,” the one to the right says, as it practically glides across the stone floor. Its grey eyes are piercing in their stare, but Castiel meets it stoically.
“I’m far more than that,” he challenges. He has no weapon on him, but he spots a long sliver of a sword in one of the nymph’s hands. If he can wrestle it from them without much injury, he’s sure he can vanquish the rest of them. He never bothered to ask, but Castiel is also pretty confident Sam came equipped with a gun.
“You? You are nothing but a human like the rest of them—they who stole our treasure,” the leader hisses.
“Pirate nymphs, great,” Sam bites sarcastically. “What’s with pirate monsters, lately? First vampires, now this.”
If Castiel were inclined to be reasonable right now, he might tell Sam not to provoke them, but Dean is still missing, and the nymphs are not relenting—he is beyond reason. This might also provide him with a good distraction.
Before any of the green, glowing water dwellers can make their retort, Castiel is moving. Fast, sharp, he strikes the one with the sword with a quick fist to their temple, and watches them fly to the ground, sword clattering to the floor with them. As Castiel swipes up the weapon for himself, Sam is next to him, firing once at the middle one, injuring them in the chest.
The far nymph, the shortest of the three, growls as their kin go down, and lunges at Castiel. But Castiel is older, wiser, and better. He twists on the spot when the creature runs at him, just out of their reach, and twirls around to slash the side of their thigh open.
It cries out, shrieking this shrill sound that echoes horribly in the dark chamber. It lunges at Castiel again, but still, he is faster. He dances around their swings, and evades their sharp claws, glinting in their glow-light. His soldier instincts might have been forced to change their scope, but they are still sharp. The blade he carries is even sharper.
He manages to get the jump on the nymph after a few more minutes of struggle, fighting on his own now that Sam has ventured deeper into the cave to find Dean. Castiel pins their arms behind their back with one arm as he holds the edge of the blade at their neck.
“Where is he,” Castiel demands, voice commanding as he can make it. The nymph writhes in his arms, struggling to break free. “You have killed enough people here, and you may kill more in the next life if you wish. But first, you will tell me,” he growls, tightening his hold. The blade breaks their skin, dripping blood down their collar, onto their dirty shift. If these nymphs have been hoarding treasure, it occurs to Castiel their their clothing might indeed be made of an old sail. Or perhaps a new one, stolen off a lost boat.
Before the nymph can answer however, Sam returns from the shadows with a body in his arms, limp and unmoving.
Castiel clenches his jaw so fast he bites the inside of his cheek, and he can taste blood pooling in his mouth as the slays the sea creature, slitting their throat. It drops to the cold floor with a dull thump. Castiel thinks he should feel pain from the cut, from his aching muscles, but he does not. All he can feel for one terrifying, hopeless moment, is the stark, frightening absence of Dean.
It’s then that Sam speaks. “He’s alive,” he says, voice shaky as Castiel’s heart feels, shuddering in his fragile human chest. “He’s alive but he… he’s not good. They took their revenge out on him alright.”
As Sam comes closer, Castiel can see Dean’s cheeks are still rosy with life. His shirt, however, is soaked with blood.
Dean comes to briefly in the motel room, as Sam is diligently stitching him up, but is practically unintelligible. Castiel thinks he hears his name murmured, but that could jut be his own wishful thinking.
Once cleaned, both Sam and Castiel ascertain that though the wound down his side—made most likely by the sword Castiel had himself stolen—was no longer life threatening, it was deep, and Dean had indeed lost a lot of blood. He would be faint for the next few days, at least, not helped by the clear evidence of a concussion, probably sustained as he fell, injured, onto that harsh, damp floor.
But it was not a grave, Castiel thinks as they pack up while Dean sleeps.
“It was not a grave,” he whispers under his breath, as he helps Sam carry Dean to the Impala, to lay him down in the back.
It was not a grave.
It’s a morbid mantra, but it’s a comforting thought that stays with Castiel as they travel the long road back home.
They arrive back at the bunker in the middle of the night, late enough that by the time they have Dean set up safely in his room to recover, Sam crashes almost immediately the moment he enters his own. Castiel remains by Dean’s side, collapsing in the desk chair next to it.
It’s in that position that he wakes up the next morning, neck sore. In fact, his whole body is sore. Castiel guesses sleeping in a chair several nights in a row will do that to you. It almost feels that it’s his bones that creak, and not the metal of the chair, when he shifts and makes Dean stir.
“Sam? Cas?” Dean croaks, voice quiet and cracking with dryness and sleep.
“I’m here,” Castiel tells him, heart leaping as he shifts closer. Softer, he asks, “Would you like me to get Sam?”
“No—“ Dean’s voice breaks. “Water.”
“Ah, yes. Of course.” Castiel goes across the room to the small sink and fills the glass Dean keeps there. “Here,” he says, as he perches the edge of the cup against Dean’s bottom lip, and helps him sip. Dean lays back down when done with a groan.
“Fuck,” he grinds out, shifting so the weight is off his bad side. Groggily, he squints his eyes at Cas, pupils unprepared for the light. “What happened?”
Castiel stays near by the edge of the bed, but continues using Dean’s desk chair instead of disturbing him by joining him on the mattress. He also cannot be sure he would be welcome, were Dean at his full conscious capacities. Their last conversation, after all, concluded with Dean telling him to ‘get lost’: Castiel can’t be sure Dean won’t stand by that request indefinitely. But of course, until the sentiment is firmly reiterated, he will be here.
“You injured your right side fairly badly,” he says, not divulging too many details when Dean so clearly wants to go back to sleep. “What do you remember?”
Dean frowns, straining his brain as he attempts to coax it into waking up faster. “Nothing after the motel, and the beach….” he pauses, as if something just came back to him. His eyes widen as his memory rebuilds. There it is. “Aw shit, Cas—”
“Dean,” Castiel interrupts. That subject needn’t be touched now; Dean’s healing period deserves to be peaceful. “It can wait.”
Ever stubborn, however, Dean then tries to sit up on his own. “I didn’t—” he tries, but is stopped in mid breath by a stab of pain that he can’t help but hiss at. “Fuck.”
“Dean,” Castiel pushes him gently back down with a hand upon his shoulder. “You need to rest. I’ll be here when you wake again; we can talk about this then.”
“You make a good nurse, Cas,” Dean smiles, eyelids already drooping. “Bedside manner’s getting better.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ve always had the sexy nurse thing going for you though, so there’s that.”
“Sleep, Dean.”
“Yeah, whatever,” he says, but with that, is sound asleep again within in minutes. Castiel doesn’t remove his hand, though, for awhile after, transfixed as he is by a different memory than the one hanging over both of them now.
He remembers fire. Cold, hot, icy flames of impossible pain writhing around them as he pulled Dean Winchester, his Righteous Man, from the pit. Though the ability is lost to him now to do it, Castiel could still recount with perfect detail how to piece his body back together, stitch his soul—still so beautiful, no matter the scars of hell—like sinew to bone, back to its proper place. The mark that Dean’s skin once bore, as a token of Castiel’s talent and heaven’s designs, is gone now, lost like Lucifer. But Castiel still remembers making it, the way he sought out his shoulder (though he could have made the mark anywhere), allured as he was to its soft, strong curves, and the idle thought, to steady him.
He remembers watching from above as Dean Winchester took his first breath of life after forty years without air, and how the world shook for years from its tremor. Castiel is still shaking. But he holds Dean’s shoulder, and the desperate beating of his own human heart slowly steadies.
It’s another day before Dean wakes up again, but already his wound is scabbing nicely, though the flesh around it is still red and tender. Sam takes over at his bedside for awhile, after much coaxing, imploring Castiel to at least eat something and shower.
He finds he has little appetite, but but he brews himself some tea when he comes out of the shower, at least. Castiel has discovered that though his beverage bias does stray towards coffee, he does enjoy the relative lightness of tea as an evening alternative. Dean mocked him for it, when he first requested their cupboards be stocked (“What are you, the Queen? In America we drink coffee,” to which Castiel responded testily, “Coffee is hardly an American invention. The grounds you purchased last week were from Columbia,” and so Dean resigned himself to putting “tea” on their shopping list), but Sam was happy, and thoroughly supported Castiel diversifying his palette.
When he returns to the room he finds Dean awake, propped up on pillows and talking amiably with his brother. He pauses in the threshold for a moment, hot mug of tea steaming in his hands, to watch the two of them without true intrusion. If Castiel is doing better these days, dealing with his place in the world and his duty towards his mistakes, then Sam is too, he thinks. Both him and Dean are, together.
They notice him quickly enough, for though Castiel likes to think he is as stealthy as he’s ever been, even without the ability to remain physically invisible, Dean’s senses are even more honed to him of late, it seems. That thought sends pleasant feeling zipping through his veins.
“Hey, Cas,” Dean says, as Sam smiles in his silent greeting. “That for me?” he asks, tilting his head at the mug in Cas’ hands.
Castiel looks down at the curls of vapour still rising from the liquid’s surface. “No,” he says, wry but honest.
“I take back every I said about your bedside manner,” Dean accuses, but he’s grinning as he says it.
“Perhaps I should leave its side and simply get on the bed then,” Castiel deadpans, which apparently is Sam’s cue to make his exit.
“Yeah, bye, totally not doing this with you again,” Sam groans, rising from the desk chair.
He stops before he steps out completely though, turning back just long enough to say, sincere and serious, “I’m glad you’re back,” and disappears down the hall before either Dean or Cas can ask exactly who he means.
Castiel remains standing in the middle of the room, somewhat awkwardly, dressed in an old shirt of Dean’s and yesterday’s jeans. Dean looks at him appraisingly. “You know,” he says, “I’m not gonna break in half if you come on up here. I feel kinda bad that I basically kicked you off your own bed ‘cause I was stupid enough to get my ass kicked.” He pats the empty space beside him, and winks once for good measure. Castiel rolls his eyes.
Setting his mug down on the bedside table first, he climbs up next to Dean to sit with his back against the headboard.
“How are you feeling?” he begins with. It’s straightforward. Safe.
“Kinda groggy still, but better, yeah. Didn’t die, so… there’s that,” he tries for levity, but it brings back a memory Castiel would rather forget.
Castiel’s fist clenches against the covers. “I thought…” he pauses, taking a breath. “For a moment, I thought I’d lost you.”
Dean has the terrible idea to take that as an accusation, and Castiel immediately feels terrible himself when Dean says, “I’m sorry,” as if he should be blamed if Castiel was in some sort of mourning.
“You needn’t apologise for my panicked assumptions,” he shakes his head. That is the opposite of what he meant by his admission. He’d hoped Dean would hear instead how very much Castiel cares.
“No I’m—” Dean continues, undeterred. “I’m sorry for walking away. I was just so pissed, man, that I… overreacted maybe.” He shrugs, looking away. “I needed air.”
Castiel looks down at Dean’s hands then, stressing the bedding draped over him with their anxious energy. Castiel aches to reach out to him, but he won’t—not yet. He needs the invitation just as much as he needs Dean alive enough to say it. “I understand,” he says instead.
Dean sucks in a shaky breath, and lets it out in a shaky laugh. “I suck at this.”
“If you do, it’s not any more than me.”
“That just makes us sound really sad, man,” Dean chuckles, gaze finally returning to Cas’ face, bearing a regretful smile.
“Perhaps we are sad people,” he says, and they are. They’ve been sad and sorrowful enough between the two of them to fill a thousand lifetimes. But they are strong, as well. Castiel has always believed this of Dean, and he’s learning, step by step, to truly believe this again about himself, too.
“God, that sounds even worse.”
“You make me happy though, I should say.”
Dean’s shoulder bumps his. “Yeah?”
“You’ve always made me happy, even before.” Before the fall, before letting go, before leaving, before forgetting, before dying and before betrayal—and always, always in between.
“You have a weird idea of happiness, Cas.”
“I’ve been told I’m a weird person,” he says fondly in return. They never had any hope of being normal, but that’s fine. They’re making it up as they go, right?
“Good weird, though,” Dean says, and smiles.
So does Cas. “I’m glad.”
They fall into a pleasant silence after that, just soaking up the other’s presence, until Dean breaks it with a last bitter plea. “Cas, I—I am sorry for… I don’t know. Me, I guess. I shouldn’t be your idea of happiness.”
Castiel is tired of hearing this, though, as much as he understands where the sentiment—the self-doubt and self-hatred—comes from. He might be hypocritical, in that tiredness, too, but that doesn’t stop him from despising the affliction in Dean. “And who makes that decree? Free will entitles me to choose my own idea of it, Dean.”
“Some free will God gave you, huh?” Dean sighs, still not quite convinced at Castiel’s conviction. But Castiel knows now that that is no slight against him, not intentionally, at least. For a second, Castiel aches for his wings again, just once, to envelop the man before him in all the warm radiance of his grace. All he has now, he supposes, is his newly growing soul, and only his hands and voice to reach him with.
But his voice does not falter when he says, “My Father has been gone for a long, long time. What freedom I have found now is all my own, no matter what choices have been denied me in the past. I am here because I want to be. Please believe that, Dean.”
Dean’s smile is small, sad. “I’ve lived my whole life believing everyone I love will only leave me. It’s been proven too many times for me to think anything else.”
“I know.”
“But I’ll try, Cas. I want to believe you. I—” he stutters, closing his eyes as he gathers himself. “I want you so much,” he says, finally, quieter—but it’s no longer a secret. Castiel moves his hand slowly over to take Dean’s under it, sliding his fingers over the backs of Dean’s rough knuckles so they can weave themselves into the crevasses.
Dean opens his eyes to meet Cas’.
“You have me.”
Castiel, he remembers many ends through many lifetimes—the crownings of kings, the conquests of queens. He’s seen whole languages lost, as the last of its users die. He’s seen many ends, but by that same token, he also knows the shape and colour of beginnings.
He’s seen deaths but also births, loss but also love. He’s died to be born again. He’s fallen and lost to fall in love. By now, Castiel knows intimately the flavour of beginnings.
He can taste their flavour, for instance, in his morning coffee—the start to a day. He can taste it in the crisp air on his routine run, and in the tangy, salty feeling in his mouth when he strains himself, lungs heaving, threatening to burst. They don’t though, for he’s intact when he gets home—home—and descends those stairs into the bunker’s war room, and spies Dean through the doorway, feet propped up on a table in the library, calmly and casually enjoying a glass of his own home made iced tea as he reads. Castiel finds the flavour of beginnings in the opening of Dean’s kiss, and in the lingering hint of lemon on his tongue.
He finds them here, too, today by his bed, the one that little by little, Castiel starts to think of as theirs. They have so many endings between them—harsh, bitter things that can still bring bile rising in the back of his throat if he thinks too much on them—but they have this, too. Finally, by the beginning of their new incarnation, they know respite.