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Castiel has always known that there are things that Dean can’t say.
Honestly, that doesn’t bother him. There were so many things that Castiel couldn’t say, either. Or, rather, knew that he shouldn’t say.
Castiel knows his truth in a way that, he thinks, few angels will ever bother to: if there is nothing else that his years of being a friend to the Winchesters, falling for the Winchesters, has taught him, it is to understand himself, and not just his duty.
Duty is cold and sterile, and it can hurt him. But it can’t wound him the way understanding does.
These are the things Castiel understands of himself.
He likes people, sometimes even when they feel they don’t deserve it. Maybe especially when. They are the ones who are rarely liked: the weird and the quiet and the random, the fierce and the fighter. He understands this: he’s one of them.
He is grateful that the universe—and he will not thank Chuck for this—gave him the chance to be a father. But for the first time, Castiel sees how people fail their children with caring, as he knows he failed Jack. For the first time, he understands how responsibility can fight with that incredible, indelible need to protect. And it will always lose. He doesn’t think God’s plan had anything to do with the choices Castiel made, when it comes to Jack.
He still doesn’t know if he would have made any that are any different, even knowing what he does now. He doesn’t think that makes him a terrible being: only a father who thinks the best of his son.
He still thinks humanity is good, too. He still thinks humanity is capable of such kindness.
He loves Dean Winchester with a quiet, awful certainty. Not even Dean’s cruelty and his anger can efface that light from Castiel’s being, and he thinks he will love his flawed, beautiful human until the leftover radiation of the stars is all that remains of the universe.
Castiel doesn’t need words to express these things—they simply are. They are not for saying.
Until the choice to say them becomes a question of Castiel holding his heart secret and quiet and safe, or saving Dean’s life.
And then, really, it’s no choice at all.
He sees the look on Dean’s face when Castiel, finally, in moments that he knows will be his last, confesses the truth that has brought him the most pain and the most joy in his long, long existence.
He looks at Dean, and thinks that he still looks so beautiful, even careworn and afraid, with the years and the fears worn into his face, now. Dean’s soul is patched with pain and streaked with sorrow, but it is still as fine as the first time that Castiel saw it gleaming in Hell. It’s no longer easy for him to see it—as faded and weak as Castiel is, he has to strain the shallow boundaries of his grace to turn his eyes in that direction—but he allows himself the indulgence of it.
One last time. Just this last time.
Castiel says, “Everything you have ever done, you have done for love. You’re the most caring man on earth,” because he believes it: he sees love where others only see anger and violence. Even if he were the only one who knew this, he would still say it—and he knows that the other things that he says aloud are true. He knows that others look at Dean and see his love, as torn and terrible as it can sometimes be.
But Castiel says “I love you,” because he thinks that no-one has ever said that to Dean without strings attached—the mother who wasn’t who she pretended to be; the father who made a weapon out of a boy; the woman who loved a man but couldn’t love a monster; and the brother who doesn’t know how to let Dean live any more than Dean knows how to let Sam go.
Castiel sees Dean’s pain, there, when he says his truths. He sees the hint of stunned betrayal in Dean’s face, that Castiel would say these things he never should have said. The how dare you twists the corners of Dean’s eyes. Dean will not permit himself to be loved—not by Castiel, at least.
For Dean, there’s no joy to be found in this knowledge.
That isn’t what Dean means when he says “Cas, don’t do this,” but Castiel hears it anyway.
Castiel knows, then, in those last instances, that he’ll never hear the little words back. That Dean will not; that he cannot. That he does not.
It hurts. Despite everything, it does hurt. But it wasn’t as if Castiel ever dared to hope Dean would.
(Did he?)
Castiel’s own words echo in the small space, even as softly as he said them, even with the air around them booming rhythmically with Death’s rage. They don’t have much time. They don’t have any time at all.
“Happiness isn’t in the having. It’s in just being.”
It’s in being able to say goodbye.
Dean’s face is the last thing Castiel sees in the mortal world. Castiel always suspected it would be: that when his life ended, when he gave up all, it would be in the service of one man. Metatron said it once, and he meant it in mocking: “You draped yourself in the flag of Heaven, but ultimately, it was all about saving one human, right?”
It was true then, and it is true now—the first time, every time, and this, his last time. Castiel would not have had it any other way, and he doesn’t look away from Dean’s beautiful, hurt, beloved face as he dies.
Castiel never looks away.
The Empty takes him. It laughs, mocking him even as it swallows him, its amusement shrill enough to make his ears bleed. It lets him keep what tiny fragments of grace he has left to him, no doubt to impress on him his own powerlessness. But Castiel wipes the trickle of his own blood from his earlobes and the side of his neck, and smiles back into the void of an empty, brittle, angry world. He is deaf and blind, his tympanic membranes shattered. But he still smiles.
The world around him stalls, staring at his expression—as much as something that has no eyes and no attention can stare. It doesn’t realize yet that it hasn’t won.
“You took me in my moment of perfect happiness,” he tells it, taking a deep breath he doesn’t need any longer, “and you spared me more grief than I would have ever survived.” His tearful smile widens, and it’s not a nice one. “You saved Dean Winchester. And for that, I will always be grateful to you. Thank you.”
Because Castiel tries to be kind, to be good. He does.
But he also knows he is capable of being an asshole, and he is dead. For all that he is glad of the circumstances, he does not feel like being nice to the being that made him that way.
The Empty’s next screech can’t hurt him anymore. Doesn’t hurt him anymore, because, Castiel realizes, he no longer believes that it can. He wraps his trench coat around him, and sinks backwards into his new, barren world.
It tries to show him a reality. Castiel doesn’t know if it’s his reality, but it is a reality: Sam and Jack desperate, searching, the world wrecked and sterile and empty of humans around them. They’re gone—they’re all gone, all the humans that they have spent their entire existence, that they have spent their souls, trying to protect—all their friends. God’s shadow looms closer and closer, like a shroud.
Dean—Castiel’s beloved Dean—is hunched on the floor of what was once their home, his face in his hands, shoulders shaking with sobs. His grief has a weight, and claws. Castiel’s blood is drying on the shoulder of his jacket. The phone by his foot rings, and rings, and rings.
Castiel’s heart pangs, twinges, just once. Just once. He holds that hurt of it close in both hands and cradles it to his cheek, hot and soft and brilliant as the arc of sunspots.
The pain has always been part of loving his family, as well. Jack. Sam. Dean. Castiel knows he doesn’t get to choose between joy and pain when it comes to the way he loves, and who he loves.
And then Castiel smiles again.
If the Empty and God and the Darkness, the powers that are and ever shall be, think that so little as that will defeat the Winchesters? Then they are fooling themselves.
Castiel closes his eyes—he probably doesn’t have eyes anymore—in the dark-of-nothingness, and is content in the decision he’s made. He would not have made any other. Given a thousand choices, he would have said “I love you” every single time. He would have said it over and over and over until the disbelief left Dean’s eyes.
It's in just saying it.
Not in having it returned.
The regrets kiss his shoulders and his face lightly, like small dark butterflies. Castiel flicks them away, and lets himself dissolve.
*_*_*_*
He jolts awake to pain, to fire, but there’s nothing that should be able to burn him, here. His mouth tastes of blood and bitter, resinous myrrh, and he’s breathing—but he doesn’t have to breathe—and he’s hurting—but how can the emptiness hurt, when he doesn’t believe in its power to hurt him anymore?
There’s pressure on his mouth and his nose and the back of his neck when he shouldn’t even have any of those things anymore: he is intangible, he is nothing. But this does not feel like nothing. A curve of warm lips slots against his, and then draws away. Breath is sticky and wet on the soft inside of where Castiel’s mouth is a little open.
It’s not his own.
Castiel opens his eyes.
Green eyes full of fury stare down into his from too close—so close that if one of them were to turn, their mouths would brush again. Dean’s mouth is wet and bloodied, and the corners of his lips are fragrant, anointed. There’s a hand curved around the back of Castiel’s neck, fingers gripping rough and tight. Castiel realizes that he can feel calluses, and the small flicker of muscle as Dean adjusts.
Castiel realizes that his own chest aches. Emotion is a storm through his core, so violent that he feels the tiny fading remnants of his grace squirm and flash in his eyes, in his mouth.
Oh. Hope can hurt. Having can hurt.
Blood—Dean’s, he realizes now—is bitter, sour salt on his lips. Dean kissed him.
It can’t be Dean. No. The Empty can’t have Dean. That was not their deal.
Castiel opens his mouth, but he has no voice here, with the Empty awake and watching. Dean grabs him by the wrist and squeezes—once, twice, three times, tight enough that bones that Castiel shouldn’t have creak. “Say ‘yes,’ Cas,” Dean says, from far away. His voice is harsh, and a command. “You sonofabitch, you say ‘yes’ to me, or so help me—"
It can’t be Dean. Dean is alive. Dean is saved, and he is not here in Castiel’s quiet, empty hellscape.
But the man hovering over Castiel’s shade looks angry and afraid. He is silhouetted by the darkness around them, but there is a flush to him, a glow hovering over his skin of something fierce and alive. He looks like Dean.
He looks like Castiel’s Dean Winchester, like the Righteous Man worn by a decade and more without rest, without respite: angry and afraid and always so, so determined.
Castiel, as he always does, as he always will, says “Yes.” It wrenches out of him, because he shouldn’t have a voice anymore.
But he has voice enough for this.
And over him, Dean screams.
The light that fills Castiel is so blinding and painful and terrible that Castiel cries out, too, soundless. This is his punishment, he realizes, dimly, wracked and awash with agony, for being so weak, still. How could he believe that it was his Dean, for even a moment? The Empty knows where the cracks in Castiel’s chassis are, and it is wrenching him open with them.
The radiance shreds him. He feels his small fragments of grace come unmoored, blazing from him, excruciating as dying all over again. Senses he shouldn’t have anymore are a tumble of myrrh and blood and skin, the tangle of his favorite trench coat around his thighs, the feel of a rough-callused hand inside his. His tie whips him across the face.
But the howling around him is the awful noise of an entire world screaming before the door slams shut.
And it is over.
*_*_*_*
Castiel reunites with his body in pieces.
He breathes, but it is air. His heart beats, and his lungs struggle. Blood rushes dizzily through his brain, and his eyes throb in their sockets in an unfamiliar rhythm. He is tightly wrapped in clothing, uncomfortably so, and fabric twists underneath his body, the edge of his trench coat caught under one of his knees. He is supported on his elbows. His back creaks as he shifts his knees wider. He hurts, but the hurts are ordinary ones.
This is the bunker; the noise of the air filters thrums in the background. Bedsprings squeak.
Castiel looks down, because he registered, but he did not believe.
He is lying on top of Dean. They are too close. Dean’s lips are still bloodied, and smears of a dark, thick oil gleam on the corners of his mouth and stain the shallow crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. His eyelashes are long and rich. He smells of blood and sweat and stress, musky with it, his armpits stained. The vaguely unpleasant scent of a male, human body almost overwhelms the lush, dry, resinous earthiness of myrrh, the peppery astringency of frankincense.
Castiel blinks.
The Bible gets many things wrong, sometimes comically so, but it does get some things right. Frankincense is a mediator of Heaven and Earth. Myrrh is for death, embalmment, and healing.
Then Dean’s face twists in fury, and that, that is familiar.
“You sonofabitch, you goddamned sonofabitch,” Dean snarls, and yanks Castiel down into his arms, an awkward, delicious sprawl. Hands grapple at his shoulder blades, at the back of his neck. Castiel’s elbows splay out awkwardly on either side, unmoored by the contact. Even through the layers of Castiel’s garb, Dean is so warm, and the coarse, fuzzy material of his flannel scrapes against Castiel’s buttons. “Don’t you ever, don’t you ever do that again, or so help me—”
Dean doesn’t finish. Instead, he pounds on Castiel’s back with enough force that Castiel’s whole body jolts with it. One. Two. Three.
“That hurts!” Castiel exclaims, more in surprise than actual pain. He blinks at the rough sound of his own voice. It echoes on stone, on cement. He had no voice, in the Empty. That was the point.
“It better!” Dean retorts. “Living hurts.” He shoves at Castiel’s shoulder, firmly enough that it twists them. “Now get the hell off me! You’re heavy.”
They are in the bunker. They are in Dean’s bedroom: Castiel recognizes the guns and swords on the wall, the little pictures on the desk, the crowded flutter of hunting paraphernalia and the pile of dirty laundry shoved into the corner, behind the closed door.
They are home.
This is a trick, an illusion. It must be.
Would he have imagined Dean pushing him off, pushing him away, if that were the case, though?
Castiel rolls off and almost topples himself to the floor as the separation of that bewildering contact leaves him alone in his own skin again. He catches himself on the edge of the bed, barely.
There is something different. Something—something bright is coiled deeper than Castiel’s flesh. Something rolling and white-capped as foam on waves twists in his throat, worming its way hot behind his eyes. It hurts—it burns. Castiel sits back down on the edge of the bed and trembles, gripping the mussed fabric of the comforter underneath him. His fingers dig into polyester. What is happening to him? This isn’t possible.
“Cas?” Dean says, behind him. The soft foil of his voice crackles across Castiel’s nerves, hot and bright as a shower after having been cold for so long. When Dean puts a hand on Castiel’s shoulder, Castiel folds his arms around his own midsection and curls around them, ducking down and trying not to hyperventilate as he holds himself in. Dean’s fingers on his shoulder feel so good. “Buddy, are you okay? Shit. It’s been a long few months for you, hasn’t it? Look, do you maybe need something to—"
“Dean?” Castiel gasps into his knees, terrified—truly terrified. He looks down at his hands, so close to him that they must be covering his face. There’s a thin, spiderweb-fine, beautiful tracery of something under his fingers that’s not any color that the human mind can contemplate. His eyes hurt as he watches it move and flicker, alive and lovely. When he looks up, when he strains to see, Dean’s equivalent glows at him in that familiar, familiar way. “Dean, why do I have a soul?”
There’s a long pause behind him.
“Oh. Yeah, uh, about that.”
*_*_*_*
Castiel is not human, and he will never be truly human. When his vessel is stripped of its grace, when it is hungry and sweats and has to urinate, he calls himself human, because he has a human’s needs. Because he feels rather than just observes, and because it makes other people more comfortable to think of him as human when he is vulnerable that way.
But he does not have a human’s mind, and he will never have a human’s understanding of growth and aging and emotion. His being is ichor and radiation, and his grace is power. He is more a tangent wave (he does not fit in to the oscillations of sines and cosines) than he is a person. He has spent his existence soulless, and does not sleep. When he does, it is because his vessel—no, not his vessel, his body—Is exhausted, not because his mind must be refreshed.
It’s not why Dean doesn’t (can’t) love him, Castiel doesn’t think. But it is yet another mark of his own alienness.
None of that explains what the Winchesters are telling him.
“Dean Winchester. Do you mean to tell me,” he begins, slowly and deliberately, his fury held so tightly behind his teeth that it is a harsh bass vibrato in his voice, “That you deliberately fractured your soul?”
Castiel has been angry quite a few times in his existence, but this, he thinks, almost certainly takes the cake.
(It also says something that he is spending the first few minutes of being alive again, unbelievably alive, furious with at least one of the impossible humans that he loves. Possibly, from the way Sam is watching them with something that almost looks like amusement, both of them.)
“It’s not a fracture if you mean it to happen!” Dean answers, eyes narrowing, arms crossed over his chest and knees thrown wide apart in defiance. He slings his body lower in the chair, as if he might slip out of it and into violence at any second. It’s a stance that is shiveringly familiar, because defiance is Dean’s default: it’s been that way since Castiel told him “You should show me respect” and watched, to his bewilderment, Dean’s eyes flickering to his mouth, instead. “Look, Cas—"
Oh, no, there will be no conciliatory ‘look, Cas’ here.
“It is absolutely a fracture if it involves breaking something into two pieces that was never meant to be broken!” Castiel retorts, hotly, talking right over him. It’s foolish to clutch at his chest (he knows that’s not where the soul lives, anyway; it infuses every moment of someone’s being, every cell of their existence) but he slaps a hand hard to his breastbone instead. (Ouch.) “Dean, take it back!”
Doesn't Dean understand? Doesn't he know what this means? If Castiel dies—a soul can't survive if half of it is gone from the world.
“No!” Dean shouts back. “Goddammit, Cas! It was the only goddamned way we could get you out!”
“He can’t take it back anyway,” Sam answers, both hands spread peacefully in front of him in what Castiel thinks is an effort to soothe them both. It is a rotten effort, all things considered. “His soul is already inside you. And besides, I don’t think there’s a way to put back together what’s been—”
“Fractured?” Castiel snarls.
“Removed,” Dean huffs, and sinks his chin lower against his chest. It is not an attractive look. He glares at Castiel, his face so tired, still streaked with sacred oils. “It’s fine. I don’t feel any different.” He hauls himself back onto his feet with one hand on the edge of the table and grunts, “I’m gonna go wash my face, I smell like I should be using a patchouli to wash or some shit.”
“Patchouli’s a plant,” Castiel answers, snippily. He’s not sure why he feels the need to say that.
“Yeah, whatever. You’re welcome,” Dean snaps back, and storms out. His boots echo in the stone-lined space of the bunker—of his home. Of their home.
Guilt is a familiar feeling, as Castiel watches Dean’s back retreating.
“I chose,” he says, helplessly. His words echo in the span of the Vault. “I chose to save him. I knew what it would cost. He didn’t have to—you didn’t have to—"
The soul inside him—half of Dean’s soul, half of a diamond that was never meant to be split into two—aches and burns, throwing itself against the remnants of Castiel’s grace.
If he strained his senses, would Dean’s soul flicker more dimly than Sam’s, now? Would Castiel’s Righteous Man be diminished, for what he has done?
The gentle look that Sam’s giving him from across the table, when Castiel turns back to look at the younger Winchester brother, is, somehow, almost worse. “Yeah, of course, Cas,” he answers, kindly. “But guess what? You chose, and so did we.”
Sam is smiling. He looks tired, too, Castiel thinks—worn, even in victory. His sleeves are pushed roughly up to his biceps, and his hands are marked to the elbow with streaks of soot from likely was the ritual that sent Dean to the Empty. Castiel can smell the blood they used, the iron-rich roasted-meat scent of it when it burns. Both of them have a bandage on their left wrists from where they must have cut deeply; both of their hearts are beating a little too fast with blood loss.
For him. They did this for him.
“Welcome back, Cas,” Sam says, softly.
Castiel puts his face into his hands. He does not remember having emotions being so volatile.
He does not remember crying feeling so horribly, horribly naked, either.
Castiel hears it when Sam leaves, and comes back with a glass of water, placing it by his elbow.
He feels it when Dean returns and drapes a blanket over his shoulders, throwing one end of it up and over until it envelops his torso like a rough, wooly shawl.
“Thank you,” Castiel says, hoarsely, pulling the coarse wool higher against his face, his cheeks. He feels it scrape on his thin scruff as he burrows into it all the way up to where he’s sure his eyes are puffy and red; they feel so, and it is uncomfortable. He doesn’t want to look up at Dean; he’s not sure what he’ll do if he does. The love Castiel is feeling is so ripe and full he’s likely to burst like a fruit if he meets Dean’s eyes. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
He is, of course, not talking about the blanket. But he knows how Dean’s mind works, how it is easier for him to deflect than to accept.
“Yeah, you got that wrong,” Dean says, and it’s warmer than the anger he stormed out with. “Drink your water.”
Castiel does what he says, automatically. The water is cool, and mineral with old pipes, but it is refreshing. He finishes his glass and looks up. The pain of meeting Dean’s eyes is nearly overwhelming, and it is glorious. He never thought he would have this agony again—not like this. “You gave me half your soul,” Castiel whispers. “Dean, I—”
Dean looks away, and Castiel stops short.
Oh. Yes, of course.
There are the sacrifices they make, and then there are the things they do not speak of.
Of course.
“You’re family, Cas,” Dean says, almost absently. Almost by rote. He pats the crown of Castiel’s head—the only part of him that is out of the blanket covering his shoulders and his arms and most of his face. Once, twice.
Thrice.
Castiel swallows his love, again, and it feels familiar going down—achy and quiet. It settles in his core like a smooth pebble dropped in the middle of a pool, not leaving many ripples behind it. Dean’s soul, inside him, twirls like an asteroid before it settles, too.
Castiel has many things to learn, in the days that come.
His grace is so weak, and it fights with the soul inside him; in the end, it’s easier to learn how to do laundry than it is to attempt to refresh his clothing. He wears Henleys, now, and jeans, but no flannels. His trench coat is hung up in the closet, but he still wears it out.
Castiel learns about washing machines and dryer sheets with Dean leaning against the folding table, heckling him gently, and coming around him to check how much powder he’s placed into the machine’s slot.
“Really, Dean, that’s completely unnecessary,” Castiel growls. There was a time when he would have been able to count the grains of detergent.
“Buddy, I had to fight you into using a measuring cup the last time you tried to cook,” Dean retorts. He’s taken the compression bandage off his left wrist (Sam is still wearing his) and the cut is straight, but it is long and deep, the edges held together by thin dental floss stitches. It will almost certainly scar. Some spells require arterial blood; for it to require arterial blood from two is unheard of. But Castiel’s recovery from the Empty is unheard of, too. “You flood the place with suds, you ain’t got the mojo to clean it up, and you really don’t want to find out just how much you hate mopping yet.”
“Why would I hate mopping?” Castiel asks, curiously.
“Everyone does,” Dean mutters, ominously. “Here, lemme show you how to fold.”
They fold side by side, Dean’s elbow brushing and bumping against his. It’s the best torture that Castiel’s ever experienced. But he also thinks it’s ridiculous that Dean doesn’t think the corners should line up, because if that’s the case, what’s the point of folding?
Dean grins sideways at him as Castiel, pointedly, reaches over and adjusts one of Dean’s pile of flannels so that the bottom layer of the fold isn’t showing. “Cas, man. Welcome back,” he says.
It’s a strange and completely unnecessary thing to say, as Castiel has been back for a week, now. But he feels the welcome of it, and the twirl of Dean’s soul inside him. “Thank you,” he says, gravely. “But you’re still wrong.”
Dean laughs and thumps him on the small of his back.
Once, twice, thrice.
Much to his relief, Castiel still remembers sign language. He still remembers how to read Armenian, how to run his fingertips down Braille. He would miss that very desperately, he thinks, if the world were closed to him in that way.
“I’m so happy we can talk like this,” Eileen tells him, her fingers flying. Her lips are all mischief. She doesn’t vocalize, when she talks to him. “I don’t mind the other way, but Sam’s sign language is pretty bad.” She looks around dramatically, like Sam might be close enough to watch the flight of her hands.
Castiel laughs. “You could teach him?”
Eileen rolls her eyes. “No, thank you. He’ll learn on his own. Have you ever tried to teach a Winchester anything?”
Castiel wrinkles his nose. She has a very good point.
“But I’m glad you’re back,” she answers. “I’m so glad I get to know you. Dean was a complete wreck, when you…” she narrows her eyes and can’t quite finish her thought. She wobbles her hands in the air.
“That’s a good a sign as any I’ve seen for The Empty.” He finger-spells the words of it. “Do you remember anything of when…” and he stops, too, because he’s not calling Chuck ‘My Father’ anymore, either.
They both chuckle, together, shaking their heads. There’s no vocabulary, not really, for the things that they share. And, ultimately, it doesn’t matter.
They’re here. They’re alive.
Miracle comes scampering in, running infinity signs between and around Castiel’s legs and Eileen’s. What a name for a dog; Castiel wouldn’t have thought, but he wouldn’t have thought that Dean would have ever adopted one, either, much less one that he carries tossed over his shoulder or goes out to play with him first thing in the morning.
Dean comes puffing in after the lovely, fluffy, golden-eared mass of love and licks that is his new pet, red-faced and with sweat gathered at his temples, gleaming along the line of his neck. He hasn’t shaved yet this morning, and his scruff looks like thin, pettable fur.
Castiel tries not to stare. It’s not very hard. He has a lot of practice at it.
Eileen toasts him with her cup of coffee. “Good walkies?” she asks, out loud. “Did you mark all the right trees today?”
“Very funny,” Dean answers, out loud—and signs, at the same time. “Everyone’s a comedian.”
Castiel blinks. Those motions are… more expert than he expected.
“Yeah, Dean’s better,” Eileen tells him, her wrists urgent. “Don’t tell Sam.”
Castiel’s response to that gets drowned in Miracle attempting to climb into his lap, as if forgetting he’s approximately four feet of fluff in about sixty pounds of dog. Dean doesn’t try to rescue Castiel from the storm of love and adoration and rather terrible breath, and eventually, Castiel finds himself on the floor, playing tug of war. He looks up just as Dean steals his coffee cup and takes a swig.
“Hey!” Castiel complains.
Dean looks into the coffee mug, his lips curling upwards in distaste. “You put sugar in your coffee? Cas, man, what’s wrong with you?” he grumbles, putting the mug down with a thump.
“It’s my coffee,” Castiel retorts. It’s a little vexing that it takes him two hands to hold the rope that Miracle is trying to wrestle with. “And I’m here on the floor with your dog.”
Miracle tilts his head to the side and lets go of the rope. Castiel reels backwards, falling onto his elbows. His ignominy is finalized by Miracle darting over and attempting to lick his forehead.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dean says, breezily. He clicks his tongue, and Miracle hops to his side, relieving Castiel of the effort of fighting off the impending tongue bath. “You just love you an angel, don’t you, Miracle? Yeah, you do.”
Castiel glares at him from the floor, but Dean just laughs. He holds out his hand to Castiel, and Castiel takes it, letting Dean lever him back to his feet. Dean doesn’t let go right away, though; he circles an arm around and thumps Castiel between the shoulder blades. Once, twice, three times.
The hug is startling: spontaneous, unexpected—all the sweeter for it. Dean is sweaty and musky, and he clearly hasn’t showered. But it’s not the same as the last time. Castiel fights to not turn his face into it and just inhale. The soul inside him jitters.
“So what’s for breakfast?” Dean asks, disengaging them before Castiel loses the battle with himself—as if him hugging Castiel, just like that, is normal, and easy, and something that they just do.
“It’s your turn to cook, and I’m hungry,” Eileen reminds him, smugly. She follows Dean into the kitchen—but not without throwing a judgmental eyebrow at Castiel.
“Not even a hello kiss?” she signs, urgently, behind Dean’s back, frowning. “That’s not nice.”
Castiel has no idea what she means by that.
Miracle pants at him, the piece of thick, knotted rope they were using to play at tug-of-war coiled on the floor in front of him, and raises one paw as if to shake.
“You are as strange as your owner,” Castiel sighs, “And coming from me, that’s saying a lot.”
But he takes Miracle’s paw. They shake, solemnly.
Castiel is still an angel, and he was once a strategist. He knows patterns, and he knows rhythms. It’s been a month, and he can’t fail to notice this one.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Whenever Dean passes him by—whenever he’s near—he touches Castiel. He squeezes a shoulder or bumps a hip. He nudges, he pats. Castiel supposes that that, in and of itself, is not abnormal: that’s something Dean has always done. He finds comfort in physicality. It is part of why, Castiel thinks, Dean is so attractive to the opposite sex (his own as well, but that’s neither here nor there). There is something about a man who thinks that the simplicity of touch is something to be valued.
But never with this sort of rhythm, before.
Once, twice, thrice.
Is this a dream? A signal? A message? From where?
Is he still in the Empty? But he doesn’t think the Empty would not allow him this much pleasure, even if it is planning to rip it out from under him. Domesticity requires more creativity—more banality—than he thinks such a creature can understand. The Empty would not have him do laundry and learn how to manually change oil.
Castiel seeks out Sam, late in the evening. He’s in the middle of his biggest current project: finishing the archiving of the Men of Letters artifacts. (He got turned into a screech owl last week. That was… interesting. Castiel thought that he was very cute.)
“May I ask you something?” Castiel inquires. “It’s about Dean.”
“Oh, goodie,” Sam says, putting down a letter opener that he’s examining. He wears leather gloves to do this work, after that incident. Castiel is almost certain the letter opener is supposed to be a replica of the blade of Solomon. The Men of Letters had such strange conceits.
Castiel is almost sure that Sam’s being sarcastic. Almost. But Sam’s also smiling, a little, and brushing his hair behind one ear. He got it trimmed (Eileen made him get it trimmed by a professional) and it’s too short for him to tie back. It looks very good like this, Castiel thinks, curving along the straight line of Sam’s jaw, accentuating his cheekbones.
Though Dean will, of course, continue to endlessly complain about it.
Dean has strange ways of showing he cares, but Castiel supposes he knows that better than anyone.
“I could ask Dean,” Castiel answers, wryly, folding his hands politely in front of him. “But then we’d all have to deal with the fallout.”
Sam barks out a laugh, and holds out a defensive hand, palm out. “Wow, you’ve gotten really good with the casual threat. Okay, okay.” He gestures to the floor in front of him. Castiel sits, and pulls another half-filled box towards him. If he’s going to be intrusive, he might as well help. “What is it?”
Now that he has the chance to actually say it, Castiel honestly feels a little foolish. But he’s noticed it. He pull out the first of the small, crumbling brown cardboard boxes from inside the larger, metal-lined box as he’s gathering his words.
One, two, three.
It’s new, and things that are new are very strange and a little suspicious, coming from Dean—who drives an Impala older than he is, and listens to music from before he was born.
Finally, Castiel finds what he wants to say. “Has Dean been more…” except ‘touchy-feely’ isn’t the right word. Dean’s always spoken through contact. Pats and hugs and blankets thrown over shoulders in moments when the rage is so awful it feels like it’s burning his eyes. “…rhythmic?”
No, that wasn’t what Castiel meant to say. Hm.
Sam wrinkles his nose and groans. “Oh, no. Is he dancing to James Brown in the kitchen again?”
Again?
“I would pay good money to see that,” Castiel notes, a little wryly. Maybe a little too eagerly. Then he frowns, distracted. He doesn’t have any money, of course. “I should… get a job? Shouldn’t I?”
“I mean. If you want to,” Sam says, chewing on the inside of his cheek, thoughtfully. There’s a gentleness to Sam, these days, that Castiel hasn’t seen before. Maybe it has to do with Eileen? “But Charlie’s fund is still good. Even with the bits of it we were siphoning off to Other-Charlie and Stevie, and most of them prefer to be standing on their own right now. There’s plenty if you want to just… relax for a little while. That’s okay.”
Castiel blinks. “Is that what you’re doing?”
But no. Eileen is part of Sam’s gentleness—she is a good part of it—but Castiel thinks that perhaps a good bit of it has to do with freedom.
It has to do with no Apocalyse, no destiny. It has to do with driving into sunsets, literally, just to see how far the road will continue into a blood-red sun and purple sky before it fades into evening. (He and Dean did that the other day.) It has to do with art house films at the little Lebanon cinema that are so boring that two souls—well, one in two bodies, if they’re being literal—would fall asleep in the back row, surrounded by the smell of stale popcorn. (They did that last week. Castiel was trying to see if he likes art house films. He doesn’t, it turns out.)
That gentleness lingers around Dean’s shoulders, as well.
Castiel shakes his head, and recalls what it is he meant to talk about. It was not small-scale economics. “I… that wasn’t what I meant to ask about. I got distracted.” There’s a malachite amulet inside this box that makes the remnants of his grace tingle. He takes the notecard that Sam handed him and annotates it, carefully, noting the faded numbers on the moldy little box. He stuffs the cardboard into the garbage bag that Sam’s holding out. “It was… Dean’s been doing something strange.”
“Something new-strange, or something Dean-strange?” Sam asks, dryly.
Castiel gives him a wry look. The next box holds a short pearl necklace, and he can’t feel any sort of enchantment to it. The pearls are etched with tiny protection symbols, though: the lines are angular, runic—old Norse. A nice thought, but pearls don’t hold enchantment well: too porous. It’s still pretty, though. Castiel holds it up. “This,” he says, “would look very nice on Eileen. I think it would be a shame to put it away.”
Sam blushes very dramatically for someone the size of Jupiter. But, unlike his brother, he doesn’t huff or bluster or deny it. He takes the necklace quietly and sets it aside. “You, uh, were saying?” he mumbles. Still gruff, though.
Oh, the Winchesters.
“He’s been, um…” the more Castiel thinks about it, the more ridiculous saying it aloud feels. But he’s already started, and Sam has that certain intentness lingering around his shoulders that led this man to, once, attempt to seal the gates of Hell. Heaven help anyone who tries to defy a Winchester’s will; Castiel means that very literally.
“Squeezing me,” Castiel finishes, at a mutter. “Or patting me. Three times. Always just… well, it’s always just three times.”
He realizes, now, that it’s all just foolishness, and wishes that he hadn’t sat down; fleeing is so much easier when he’s standing. Bad enough that he loves Dean so painfully and so wholly: Castiel really wishes he were not trying to see something where there is nothing. And he certainly does not want to fly the flag of his futile emotions in front of Dean’s brother.
But Sam goes very quiet.
When Castiel looks up, Sam has taken his gloves off to hold the pearl necklace, and he’s studying the tiny runic protection symbols on it. He clears his throat and looks away. “Oh,” he says, softly. Then he smiles. Smirks? Grimaces? No, smiles. Maybe? Or all of the above?
Castiel frowns. He’s normally better at reading the Winchesters than this. Goodness knows, he’s had enough practice at it. “Sam?” he asks.
Sam is rubbing his lips. It’s such a strange expression on his face. “That’s, uh. Huh. That’s nice.”
Castiel narrows his eyes at him. “Is it?” he inquires. “Because your reaction is mixed between constipation and joy, and I don’t think those are supposed to be together.”
“No, it’s, uh. Something, huh.” Sam’s strange expression is starting to approach either hilarity or apoplexy, and Castiel is getting a little alarmed. Sam shifts upwards like he’s going to stand. “I need a drink. Actually, you need a drink? Yeah. Maybe we both need a drink.”
Castiel’s definitely alarmed, now. “I still haven’t acquired a taste for alcohol,” he objects, “and why would I need a drink over Dean patting my back?”
“It’s not, it’s… uh.” Sam settles back down and crosses his legs again. But at least he doesn’t attempt to get up and find any alcohol. “So, um, there was this girl,” Sam begins.
Castiel already suspects that either he’s not going to like this story, or it’s going to be hilarious. Many of the Winchesters’ stories are like that. “Uh-huh,” he drawls.
Sam raises an eyebrow at him and laughs. “It’s not like that,” he says, amused. “We were kids. Her name was Caitlin.” He considers. “I mean, she probably did have a crush on Dean, so I guess it is sort of like that, but that’s not what this is about.”
Castiel huffs, softly, and reaches for the next box. This is all jewelry; it’s always amazed him how much significance humans can imbue into a bit of soft metal, but he supposes that gold is rather pretty. He reaches for another index card, and jots down a description: amber amulet, Russian origin, Cyrillic spellwork in gold but effaced. The gold was too soft to hold the impression. He could probably figure out how to recharge this, but he suspects, from the few characters that he can still read, that it was some sort of a sex spell. (Why? Why?)
“Anyway, um, she told me about something little kids do when they hold hands. Three squeezes means ‘I love you.’” He grins. “Aww. Cas, that’s really kind of cute.”
Castiel doesn’t drop the amulet or crush it in his fist, but it’s close. He sets it aside on its index card, next to the malachite. “Yes, very cute.” Slowly, he reaches for the next box. His fingers tremble, just slightly. The soul inside him swirls to his corners, like an aurora borealis. It still feels so strange. “That must be wrong, though,” he says, and his voice is steady. “What other meanings can it have?”
The silence makes him look up.
Sam is staring at him. The pearls look small and round, pale and beautiful in his big, scarred hands. The vertical line of scab on his left wrist is healing. Castiel took the stitches out of it himself, last week. He will wear the mark of Castiel’s rescue on his body forever.
“What the—of course he loves you, stupid,” Sam says, wryly. “How the heck can you think he doesn’t love you?”
“That’s… not the same thing.” But, of course, Sam knows that.
Sam’s amusement fades slowly, like the way clouds burn away in sunlight. He frowns. “Do… he never told you what it… oh, no, of course he didn’t, of course,” he groans, letting his head fall back on his shoulders. “The two of you. The two of you are so impossible.” He speaks to a sky that they can’t see from the inside of their warded bunker, as if it’s going to answer him. “Jack, do you see this? Do you see this? I told you!”
“You’re not being very helpful,” Castiel grumbles. He doesn’t know how he feels about Sam complaining about him to their son. But he supposes that that is the sort of thing that people do when they have adult children. Or divine children, in their case.
“Cas,” Sam exclaims. “He turned over Heaven and Earth to find a way to get you back. He went to the Empty for you. Half his soul’s in you, because that was the only way to get you out through the same gate he used to come get you!”
Castiel suspected as much. It was painful for him, the intrusion of it; how much worse was it for Dean? Would Castiel have agreed—would he have said ‘yes’—if he had known?
“And he gave up.”
Castiel’s chin jerks upwards. “What?”
Of all the things he’s seen Dean do, that’s the one that Castiel cannot believe in. Dean does not give up. He cannot.
Sam is studying him, steadily. He has crossed his legs again, and rested his elbow on the crook of one knee. His cheek is pillowed on his fist, and his hair falls over the back of his hand. It really does look quite nice; he’s been maintaining it. “He gave up,” he repeats. “We both did. We gave up, we surrendered to Chuck. And he asked for you back. You, specifically.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to come back into a world without him in it,” Castiel blurts. He hates how naked he sounds, in that instant. It’s worse than the tears. “And you, of course, Sam,” he continues, hastily, but it’s too late.
“It’s okay,” Sam laughs, shaking his head. “It’s okay. You said it before. You’ve got a more profound bond. You pulled him out of Hell, and you fell for him. You died for him. He didn’t want to live without you. And he’s given up a big part of what makes him Dean, and it’s in you, now. And if you think he didn't know about the whole deal about him dying if you die, now, you're fooling yourself.” His smile crooks upwards. “Forget the little pats on the shoulder: really, Cas, I mean, come on. You think there’s a bigger '‘til death do you part' than that? 'You’re not this dense.”
“I’m not?” Castiel answers, dumbly.
“I hope not,” Sam replies, with a soft snort. “Only one of you can be.” He waves a hand, and the pearls clunk him in the forehead. “Ow. Anyway, um. You know Dean. Just because he can’t say it, doesn’t mean he can’t do it.” He shrugs, as if unaware that he is rearranging Castiel’s entire world. “He’s always been more about the doing, anyway, hasn’t he? So if someone’s gonna say something, it’s going to have to be you.”
Why does it always have to be Castiel?
Dean is already asleep, when Castiel comes in. He lets out one quiet, ruffly snore into the curve of his arm, the way he only does when he is content and safe. Miracle is curled into a donut on his dog bed, off Dean's side of the mattress.
Castiel doesn’t quite know why he and Dean are sharing a bed—only that they do. He hasn’t slept alone since they returned together. It’s a little too small for two grown men on their backs, but they both sleep on their sides.
Castiel likes it, so he hasn’t asked: he hasn’t had enough good things in his life that he knows how to question them safely. And as long as Dean sleeps deeply, dreams sweetly, Castiel can hope that the loss of a piece of his soul did not hurt him.
So they sleep back to back, their spines arching together, and shoulders bumping. Occasionally, Dean steals the blankets.
He's stolen them all already, today, and then shoved them to the side until they’re sandwiched between his legs and tangled over his torso. One hand is flung out from the nest of them and is settled behind Dean in a twist that looks vaguely uncomfortable, like a child putting his jacket on the chair beside him to reserve it for a friend. It was a favorite trope in many of the movies that Metatron put into Castiel’s head.
Castiel reaches down, unable to help himself. He touches the upturned curve of those vulnerable fingers. He squeezes Dean’s hand.
Without opening his eyes, Dean squeezes his back. Once, twice.
Three times.
Cas’s head spins, and he doesn’t know if it’s with realization, with pain, or with happiness. What if Sam’s wrong? What if this is just a strange reflex? What if this rhythmicity is just Dean’s nature, after all? The soul in him tries to crumple like a neutron star, and Castiel frowns down at his chest.
“Stop, you,” he tells it, at a whisper, rubbing his sternum.
What would it sound like if he said “I love you,” aloud, again? The Empty cannot have him twice. The only one who can be hurt by it is Castiel himself, and he has already said it before.
There is no one to hear at this moment but himself, and Dean’s dreams. Dean’s fingers are warm, tucked gently between Castiel’s. His palm has the calluses of a fighter, and Castiel wants to press his lips to them.
But Castiel jolts, yanking his hand back when Dean says, without opening his eyes, “Yeah, Cas. Okay, why’re you being weird?” Castiel’s beloved cracks open one sleepy green eye and turns to peer over his shoulder. “Get in here already.”
“You’re awake,” Castiel mumbles. He fights to keep from stuffing the hand he touched Dean with into the pockets of his jeans. He already knows that makes him look guilty.
Dean yawns and rolls onto his back, shuffling towards the opposite edge of the mattress and patting the empty space of the bed beside him. “Uh-huh,” he grunts. “Have been since you walked in.”
“Oh.” Castiel shuffles awkwardly in place, but he rids himself of the dark blue Henley and his snowy white socks, leaving himself in just his undershirt and Wal-Mart jeans. Then he lies down—falls down, really, his head landing on the pillow with an uncomfortable oof, shoulders flopping. He sleeps in jeans; he hasn’t tried the alternative. But Dean’s legs are bare, scattered with little flecks of golden-brown hairs and darted with freckles. He just wears his boxers.
Castiel curls on his side—he likes sleeping on his side; there is something about sleeping on his back that makes him feel like he’s strangling, and Dean tells him that when he does that, he snores. For once, he’s facing Dean.
Just because he can’t say it, doesn’t mean he can’t do it, Sam said. He’s always been more about the doing, anyway, hasn’t he?
“You got something on your mind,” Dean says, quietly. “What’s up?”
Dean’s left hand curves against Castiel’s shoulder, and he pats. Once, twice.
Three times.
Castiel swallows.
“I love you,” Castiel says, trying out the sudden shape of it on his tongue again.
It’s so hard to say those words again—the tremble as they come out, when they were so steady the first time. It’s strangely terrifying. Castiel knew that the first time was going to be awful: it was. He knew Dean would not return his feelings, but the fear of his own death and the hope of Dean’s salvation made that ache into something inconsequential. He loved Dean enough for the both of them.
Here, Castiel’s words echo into the silence, not into the fear of annihilation.
Here, Castiel says them knowing he will have to face the consequences of them, not simply reap their benefits.
Dean doesn’t look up. He’s studying Castiel’s shoulder, where his hand rests. He doesn’t respond. That old, familiar fear almost undoes Castiel, then.
But the soul inside him dances and dances.
Then Castiel says what he’s never said before—something he’s barely dared think before: softer, shyer, more uncertain. “I love you, too.”
It’s in just saying it.
But he has always known that there are things that Dean can’t say.
Dean breathes out, slowly.
He doesn’t deny it, any part of it.
When Dean curves over and presses Castiel into the bed, Castiel goes, the overlap of their bodies in this space so reminiscent of when Dean pulled him out of an eternity of nothingness—reversed, Dean’s weight is on his chest, splayed over his thighs, his hip. He is heavy, and it feels wonderful. Castiel can’t breathe, but he doesn’t want to try.
Then Dean is kissing him, soft and slow and tremulous, and Castiel breaks for it.
It’s not their first kiss. It might not even be their best. He hopes it isn’t, because that means that there are more in the future that will have that distinction.
But it’s very, very good.
Dean kisses him once, shaky small brushes back and forth, their lips catching and scraping because Castiel forgot, once again, about lip balm, and he has a small coarse patch under his bottom lip where he never gets his shave quite right. Twice, teasing, a small dancing peck at the very corner of Castiel’s mouth that Castiel has to chase after with a discontented grunt, Dean’s lips curving as he teases.
Three times.
Oh. Having Dean’s tongue in his mouth is very nice.
Castiel lets his head fall back to the pillow when his neck starts to hurt from trying to crane up, press in, get more. He smiles.
And Dean smiles back. “Heya, Cas,” he says, very softly. His voice is a soft burr in the room—their room, Castiel realizes, now. His thumb strokes the point of Castiel’s chin in a little rasp, back and forth. Castiel doesn’t need to count how many times. Not anymore. “Welcome home.”
Castiel knows the answer to that, too.
“Hello, Dean,” he says.
~fin~
