Chapter Text
Gradually, you start letting the people you love back into your life. Mom first, then Sam, and then the rest. You hate to muddle Jess and the twins in with ‘the rest’, but truth is, you needed to feel like a grenade without a pin for a little while longer.
It’s your coma, you think. You still haven’t gotten over it, even though you are physically fine. But you’ve never really been mentally fine, have you? Dad knocked that out of you long before he was on a hunting trip and hadn’t been home in a few days.
You’ve never been hugged as long as when you let Mom back in. She showed up five minutes after your call, freshly baked pie in hand, and happy and sad at the same time.
“You had me so damn worried, young man,” she admonishes in a stern, cracking voice. “Don’t you ever do that again, okay?”
You nod with as much meaning as you can muster, though the heavy sigh Mom exhales seems to see right through it.
“Now, tell me all about it.”
After retrieving two forks, the both of you fall on the couch with the pie between you, and you tell her about it. You tell her about how your work schedules were never in sync, about how you hated yourself because you had to force love into your heart, about how Carmen was too good for you.
“I didn’t deserve her,” you find yourself saying on more than one occasion.
Mom’s lips thin when you say that. “Stop that. Stop telling me that. Stop telling yourself that. Honey, it’s not about whether you deserved her, it’s about her happiness. Was she happy when you were together?”
“I guess,” you shrug.
“Then you deserved her.”
“But it doesn’t work like that. I mean, I wasn’t always happy when we were together, so did she deserve me?” You pause to huff a bitter breath. “Who am I kidding, no one deserves me. I’m not saying that I’m too good for anyone, I’m saying that if I was a toy in a box of cereal, a kid would pull me out and be like ‘this? This is what I get for eating all that cereal? I deserve more than this’. Carmen was that kid, and I was that toy.”
“Dean…”
Mom puts aside the pie to reach across the couch and hug you again. You put an arm around her shoulders to pull her to your chest, and sigh through your nose.
Affection. Warmth. You’ve missed it.
“You don’t believe all that, do you?” Mom asks. “About being a crappy toy in a cereal box?”
“Sometimes.” Most of the time.
“Then I have to say this – as much as I loved Carmen, you need to find someone to be with who you think treats you like the prize you are.”
Carmen did treat you like a prize. You knew it then, and you know it now, and that’s why you thought and still think you didn’t deserve that. But with your mom both understanding and misunderstanding in the way moms do, you don’t flog the dead horse.
So you tell her that you’ll try to get back out there, and you bond over Dr Sexy, forkfuls of pie in your mouths when you aren’t talking about how his cowboy boots make him sexier.
“What about you?” you ask Mom through crumbs. “You gonna find anyone else to treat you like a prize?”
She blushes. “...There was someone a while back.”
Pie falls out of your mouth and into your lap. “And?”
“And it didn’t work out.” Mom shifts, uncomfortable. You stick an arm up so she can fall into the dip between your shoulder and your collarbone, and she does.
“Wanna talk about it?”
Mom sighs, and starts to talk.
His name was Saul, and Mom met him after your accident. Carmen and Jess had set her up with an online dating profile unbeknownst to her, as Mary always mentioned getting back out there romantically on their days out.
With you in hospital and in a critical condition, she had found solace in speaking with Saul online, whose niece had been in a coma for years.
After you resurfaced, his niece died, and Saul broke it off for the sake of his vulnerable heart.
“I thought I was falling in love again,” Mom whispers as a tear waters the crumbs in the foil below her.
In true Winchester style, you say nothing. Instead, you kiss her temple, and switch to Hoje É Dia de Maria, where you lose yourselves in the lives of others.
Sam visits you the next day, after you’ve texted him an apology, and he brings you beer, movies, and the fiercest hug you’ve ever had.
“I know you probably don’t want to talk about it, so I thought we could get kinda drunk and make fun of movies,” he says, caution still running rings around his pupils.
“Sounds perfect, Sammy.”
He doesn’t protest the nickname you didn’t mean to give him, but your stomach does. All the same, you can’t bring yourself to rectify it, and Sam goes about picking the first film to watch.
“I missed you,” says Sam as he flicks through the language options. He’s so casual about it all, like he declares these kind of things doing mundane tasks all the time.
He probably does, too. And Jess. You picture the both of them exchanging I love you’ s and I missed you so much baby’ s while serving up dinner and while one’s on the toilet, and it’s just disgusting how at ease they are with saying how they feel and you don’t wish you could do that at all.
Not in the least.
“Missed you too,” you mutter, and out of the corner of your eye, you see a beam worthy of the sun.
You’ve been invited around to the Winchester-Moore’s for dinner, where Jess is stirring pots on rotation, Sam is tossing a salad in front of you, Erica’s collaging on the living room floor, and Johnny’s reading some book in a foreign language while he toes his sister’s cuttings every so often. They bicker while their parents seem none the wiser, until you nudge their dad and comment, “Just like us, huh?”
Sam does that thing where he frowns incredulously and minutely, and you go back to drinking your root beer.
Dinner is served, and the conversation for the entire meal is how the twins have been doing. You hadn’t realised it was so long since you’d seen them. They’re all grown up. Well, for twelve, anyway.
“I want to be a graphic designer, like Ivan Chermayeff,” Erica announces through her ham. “He’s really cool.”
“Ugh, he’s like, eighty,” says Johnny, for which he earns a kick under the table.
Jess points her fork between the both of them. “Settle down. We have a guest.”
Rolling his eyes, Johnny whines in a cracking voice, “But it’s only Uncle Dean!”
Ever the peace-keeper (as you were around him and Dad), Sam instructs his son to tell you what he wants to do when he grows up.
“I don’t know. I like languages, so maybe I’ll be some kind of translator.” He shrugs.
It’s times like these when you can’t believe it’s not real, that they’re not real. No expense has been spared where it comes to those kids. They’re completely original characters, with their own dreams and motivations. Their own faces. You read somewhere that all the unfamiliar faces you see in dreams are faces stolen from crowds you walk through, as your brain can’t create new faces, but you’re sure that Johnny and Erica are new to your mind – even if they are morphs of Sam and Jess.
They’ve both got their parents’ narrow eyes, ever so slightly slanted upwards at the far corners, and ski-slope noses. While Erica’s is more pinched than her brother’s, Johnny’s is rounded at the end. And of course, Jess’s curls are still winning out over her husband’s straight locks, so the twins both have darkening spirals, though Johnny’s are tighter and springier. They’re pretty gorgeous kids, actually.
If you and Carmen had ever had kids, they’d have been pretty gorgeous too. Killer cheekbones, strong jawlines, huge eyes the colour of black coffee, and perfectly straight hair. Hell, they would have won the genetic lottery.
Still, no use in dwelling on what if’s, could be’s, one day’s, or if only’s. They’re what got you into this mess to begin with..
“Don’t worry about figuring out a career now, kiddo,” you reassure Johnny though he doesn’t particularly need it. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do til I was twenty-seven. So just do what makes you happy, alright?”
It’s somewhat quieter around the table after that, but in the gap between clearing the table and dessert, Johnny sidles up to you, biting his lip.
“Don’t go to the upstairs bathroom, okay? We put plastic wrap under the seat.”
You high-five him, thank him for the advice, and wait for the inevitable.
A yell comes from upstairs not ten minutes later, and you take great pleasure in confusing Sam and his wife.
Mom’s sick, and it’s not fair.
She went for a CT scan a couple of weeks ago, and they called her in as soon as they got the results.
Mom’s sick, and it doesn’t make sense.
The whole damn idea of your wish was that she didn’t die, so why the Hell is the Djinn backing out now?
“You son of a bitch,” you mutter over and over and over as your fingers wipe your cheeks over and over and over. “You damn son of a bitch.”
Though there’s no cure for what she has, there’s only a small chance that it’ll kill her, so you guess that makes it a little better. In the meanwhile, you don’t know if it’ll ease up or worsen, so everything has to be played by ear.
The twins come visit her twice a week: after school on a Wednesday, and with Sam and Jess on Sundays. It’s nice, getting all the family together. Even if it’s just because no one knows what the next week for Mom’s going to be like.
This should be enough for you to kill yourself, but you have to stay with Mom. You have to try and make it better by cooking for her and hugging her and drawing baths for her. You move in for a time and take the time off work to look after your mom. You’re good at looking after people; it’s what you’re paid to do (only part time, now) and what you were brought up to do. Looking out for and after Sammy has always been your priority, so it’s no problem to switch the focus to your mom, especially when Sam is doing better than ever.
“It’s gonna be okay,” you tell her every time she looks teary. “I promise.”
And every time, she cups your face, and her eyes shine as she says, “You are my little angel.”
“‘M not so little anymore,” you reply sometimes, and she always makes the effort to laugh when you do.
“You don’t know because you don’t have kids, honey, but you’ll always be my baby. Just like Johnny and Erica will always be babies to Jess and your brother. It’s a parent thing.”
And every time she says that, your heart feels as though it’s been hollowed out with a rusty scoop.
The first week you live with her, she’s breathless all the time.
The fifth, she’s breathless, tired, and can’t walk properly due to the painful lumps on her shins.
The tenth, you’re woken up every night by her dry coughs.
By the time you’ve been living with Mom for seven months, the doctors have prescribed steroids, and on more than one occasion have you caught her crying in clothes that pull at the buttons.
You call Jess, and Jess takes her out for a treat day. You don’t know what they do, but Mom comes back with a smile on her face and shopping bags in her hands, so you’re happier.
You pray that Mom will be happier too.
She smiles when she catches your eye, but when you only look at her from the corner of your eye, she isn’t happier. She holds pictures of your dad to her chest and reads cards that seemingly come from nowhere and rubs her lumps while staring at blank walls.
You pray that Mom will feel better not just in her body, but in her mind, and after a year, her symptoms miraculously ease up a little. She still has to take the steroids, but she’s getting better. She’s getting better. Breathing is still a little too difficult for her, but she’s getting better.
And you wonder if it’s because you prayed.
You’re clearing your head, that’s all you’re doing. You’ve finally moved back to your own place now that Mom’s capable of living on her own again, so Sam’s been chewing your ear off about Johnny and Erica, and how neither of them seem to understand what a curfew is, and you’ve been saying the same stuff you’ve always said: as long as they’re still doing well in school, and they’re not off their face every night, then they’ll be fine. They’re fourteen, it’s what teenagers do. They like to push boundaries.
God knows that’s what Sam did. Your Sammy, that is. He stayed up to all kinds of hours reading non-research books with a torch under his sheets, and ran away to learn Law at Stanford . It doesn’t get more rebellious than that in the hunting Winchester family.
So your phone is off, and you’re walking at a brisk pace through empty lamplit streets. You’re getting on, you need to keep the burgers and bacon sandwiches off somehow. Granted, lifting gurneys with the dead weights of the weak on helps, but you have to be in top condition to keep up with the whippersnappers.
You snort. Whippersnappers. You can’t say you ever thought that you would say that unironically.
Slowing down to watch the sky, you sigh when you can’t see the stars for the fog. You and Sammy used to watch the stars on the hood of your baby, a case of beer in the cooler, and your cassettes in their boxes. It’s the one thing you haven’t tried to recreate with the Sam here – no, one of the two things, counting the Fourth of July fireworks you set off together.
You slow right down to a stop, and lean against a lamppost, still looking upwards. You wish you could see the stars, you wish you could see the stars, you wish you could see the stars…
Nada.
Something catches your eye. The spotlight you’re standing in is flickering, and though your immediate thought is to grab the salt, you just hope instead.
Swoosh .
Your heart skips a beat, and you turn around.
“Hey,” you say in an awed breath. The lamplight the angel appeared in casts his handsome face in flickering oranges and yellows, and there’s a different kind of confidence to his stance. Castiel is different. ‘Cas’ seems more befitting to him, now.
“Hello, Dean.”
You’ll never get tired of him saying that, not when now he says it with a secret smile. What does he know that you don’t? More than you can comprehend, most likely.
“How long has it been?” he asks, searching your features for new wrinkles.
“Three years and five months.”
Not that you’ve been counting. That long must be nothing to an angel, to one who has lived for millennia. Three years and five months must simply be a blink for Cas, maybe even half of one. To him, you’re probably two blinks, maybe three if you live long enough. Your heart spasms, not fond of the thought that it is so insignificant to the one it so greatly...likes.
Cas steps closer, his rigid shoulders drooping. “I could explain the speed of time here to you with a series of partial differential equations, but I’m unsure as to whether you would appreciate that.”
“You callin’ me stupid, Cas?” You say it with half a smile, just so he knows you’re kidding. No matter your qualifications in your dreams, you only really have a GED, and high school seems so long ago. Equations aren’t something you put effort into back then; it was all about chasing monsters and chasing tail.
“Of course not,” Cas says with a genuine, gentle glint in his eye. They’re dark in this light, shadowed by his brows, but you can still see the light in them. The grace.
“As the time you have left in the real world runs out, the time you experience speeds up. A mere thirteen minutes have passed for me, but an estimated 1,793,485 minutes have passed for you here.”
It’s got to be weird for him, seeing you age three years in thirteen minutes. It’s weird for you, that’s for sure. His vessel is perpetually thirty-five, Jimmy Novak’s body frozen in time while Castiel uses it for a higher purpose. He’ll never panic about his first grey hair, never embarrassedly buy wrinkle cream so he can hang onto his youth a little longer, never bend over and worry if he’ll ever get back up. All these are in the cards for you, but not him. Castiel’s future is amongst the stars. He’ll probably fall in love with another angel and have angel babies, and teach them how to fly and not let them watch any movies and completely forget about you, because you’re just a blink of a mud monkey.
Unless he falls.
“Has an angel ever fallen?” you blurt, only surprising him slightly with the sudden change of subject.
Spider legs fan across Cas’s cheekbones, and orange illuminates his mouth when he says, “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she fell in love.”
The spiders scurry away as his eyes meet yours, and a smile tugs at those orange lips while you try to decipher the look he’s giving you. It’s the kind of look your mother would give you sometimes, all proud and full of adoration, eyes shining with memories of you.
Maybe Cas won’t forget you, after all.
“How – how did she do it? Fall, I mean?”
“She ripped out her grace. I’m not sure what happened to her, but I can feel her grace here still. On the Earth, somewhere. She could have been reborn as a human, but…” Cas gives what you think might be an attempt at a shrug.
“You miss her.”
“As much as an angel can miss someone, yes. Anna was the leader of my garrison, and one of the few I would call a friend. I never understood why she would give up Heaven for humans before, but now...now I think I do.”
You think about asking what the catalyst was, but ultimately decide against it. You’ll only be disappointed.
Cas brusquely changes the subject. “How are your family?”
“They’re good, yeah.” You shove your hands in your pockets as a chilly breeze curves your way. “The twins are coming into that rebellious teenage stage, so Sam and Jess have their hands full. Mom got sick for a while, but she’s getting better now.” Seeing your huffed laugh in the air, you continue, “You’d hope she’d be better forever, right? I mean, her being alive is the whole reason I’m here, the whole reason I stayed. I never wanna lose her, not even to old age.”
She’s only seventy-eight, and looking good for it too, apart from the scare you had a couple of years ago. The blonde stripped out of her hair long ago, and while she still dyed it for a time, it’s all grey and white now.
“And you? How are you? And how’s Carmen?”
You kick a plastic bottle that blew your way and avoid his gaze. “Carmen and I broke up a long time ago, Cas.”
Nearly four years ago to the day. The wind pricks at your eyes, and you clench your jaw and blink rapidly.
“I’m sorry to hear that. You...you never told me.”
You shrug, hands still in pockets. “You didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell. Didn’t think it was that important, anyway.”
“Your life is always important to me.”
“‘s that so?”
“Yes,” Cas replies fiercely. Its a glimpse of how he is when he’s not around you. It’s the china lid to the butter dish he is, and only you’ve lifted it to see the butter. People would be surprised, angels would be surprised that the butter’s all soft and gooey, because Cas has been left in your sun for too long.
“Dean, look at me. Please.”
You glance up. He’s inches away. There was a time that you would have reminded him about the personal space rule, but that time was long ago, before you were married. Before he was Cas .
His fingers just graze the side of your face, and it’s so hard, so hard not to lean into the ghost of a touch that you have to squeeze your eyes tight.
“Your life is of the utmost importance to me. Perhaps it has a different meaning to me than it did when I first visited you, but I would give everything for you. I have, already, given so much for you. For you to stay here awhile longer. And I would give more.”
Would you fall? is on the seam of your lips, but you lick it away.
Cas’s trenchcoat flaps in the cold wind, the ties blowing round to flick your legs. You grasp them and tug on them, pulling Cas towards you a little more. Just a step.
I don’t want you to go, is the thought you loudly direct at him. Stay. I need you.
He sighs, and somehow it’s heavier than the wind.
“I must go.”
You give a small nod, and with great difficulty swallow the lump in your throat. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”
The wind pricks at your eyes again, but you’re afraid that if you blink, your cheeks will be wet for hours after Cas leaves. So your eyelashes flutter, and so do the nerves in your white lips.
He looks to the sky before he flies, and just before the air thins, you ask in a tiny voice, “Will I see you again before I...before my time is up?”
“I sincerely hope so,” Cas says gravely.
And he’s gone.
And it occurs to you that he might not make it in time.
And you blink.
“Mom,” you start, and she looks at you as though she knows what you’re building up the courage to say, and it only helps you say the words, “I think I’m in love.”
She beams. “I knew it. What’s her name?”
“Um... his name is Cas.” You swallow a bundle of nerves and meet her smiling eyes, which haven’t clouded with disappointment.
“How wonderful, Dean. You must bring him to meet me! That is, if you’re not embarrassed of your old mom.”
You slide your hands over her wrinkled fingers. “Of course I’m not embarrassed, but see, I can’t bring him to meet you.”
“Why not?” Her upside-down frown has righted itself, and her hands tremble under yours.
“It’s just that…”
You can’t come up with a valid excuse that’s not 'technically you can’t see him because you’re a figment of a dream I’m having therefore he can only appear to me’ .
Until you can.
“Uh, we met online, and he’s kinda technophobic. He can barely type, let alone work a webcam.”
“That’s cute,” Mom says, a smile framing her words. “You must really love him if you can put up with his two-fingered typing.”
“I do. I really do.”
She just looks at you then, and you swear you’re four years old again and you just declared your love for the girl next door, only this time Mom’s not humouring you with that soft smile.
“So where does he live?” she asks with that tone in her voice that means she won’t rest until she knows everything about your beloved.
“All over the place, really. He’s a, um, traveling business man.”
When you first came into this world, you never thought you’d find it this easy to lie to your mother. It’s second nature now. Before Cas topped up your memory glass, before you knew you were living a lie, your nose never grew. Now, you’re lucky if you can use a lamppost to scratch the tip of it.
“Well when he travels to Kansas, tell him I’d like to meet him. I’m sure your brother would, too.” Mom gives you a pointed stare, and you nod to satisfy her.
She gets up on wobbly feet and bats your helping hands away. One day, she won’t slap you away when you go to help, and that will be the day that you think the most about ending it here. Her frail hands reach into cupboards to pull out ingredients, and it’s when she plucks the pastry brush from the cutlery drawer that your stomach reacts with a happy murmur.
“What kind of pie are you making?” you ask, joining her at the counter.
“A celebratory pie,” she says, emphasising her words with a spoon. “It’s not every day your son tells you he’s in love.”
“So if I tell you I’m in love tomorrow, will you make me another pie?”
Mom stares you down and boops you on the nose with the spoon. “Don’t push your luck, young man.”
You grin cheekily, and she doesn’t hide the slide of her mouth from stern to smiling.
“Love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, my little angel.”
Little does she know that you will be too busy in Hell to ever become an angel.
He flies into your living room as soon as you’ve sat down to watch Alas, Poder y Pasión, and your pulse quickens as the plot thickens.
“Cas! You made it!”
You throw yourself at him and pull him into a tight hug, one he does not reciprocate. His hands are limp at his sides, his chin awkwardly stuck between your collarbone and armpit, and you laugh into his neck.
“This is a hug, Cas. It’s what humans do when they say hello, or goodbye, or when they see someone they haven’t seen in a long time. We hug people when we missed them, or when we’re going to miss someone, or just to be affectionate.”
“Oh,” Cas says, muffled. “How do I... hug...back?”
You don’t say a word, you just find his arms and put them around you. When they’re snug around your waist, you comb your fingers through his hair and lead his head upwards, so his chin is hooking your shoulder now. You leave your hand in his thick, dark hair for a few moments, savouring the faux-familiarity of his hold.
It’s almost exactly like the first time you hugged him in your coma dream. Though Cas kissed you first, you hugged him when you saw him next, and he completely froze like the deer in headlights he was. Like the deer in headlights he still is. It was, and still is adorable.
Your nose buries itself in his neck like a burrowing rabbit, and draws in a lungful of his scent.
But Castiel doesn’t have a scent. You breathe him in again, but all you smell is clean, unpolluted air. It must be his grace doing its thing.
You pat him on the back twice, and part. He blinks up at you, like he expects something else, something more, but you don’t meet those expectations. You won’t. You can’t. Either one of those three.
“How are you?” Cas asks. He’s asked that—or a variation of that—every time he’s seen you since you woke up in the hospital.
“Better for seeing you,” you reply genuinely.
He looks down, and you only manage to just catch it, but he represses a blush.
Castiel repressed a blush. Because you’re better for seeing him.
You grin with glee and quickly stroke the back of your hand down his ever-so-slightly pink cheek.
“How are you?” you ask. A strike of doubt flashes in your mind, and you add, “Have I ever asked you how you are?”
“I don’t think you have.”
Horror follows the doubt. “Wow, I’m kind of an awful person, huh?”
“Not at all,” Cas reassures with a small smile.
The tiny smile puts a blush on your face, so your eyes shy away from his and find something else to focus on that’s not how handsome he is.
Like his tie.
His backwards tie.
You remember a time where you might have rolled your eyes at it, but now you just smirk and fiddle with it.
“This is backwards, you know that, right?”
Cas frowns down, his hands hovering over his chest. “No. The function of a ‘tie’ eludes me. Why are they worn?”
You shrug. “To look smart, I guess. They’re professional.”
“But why? What classifies them so?”
He sounds just like Erica and Johnny when they were four, but this time you can’t direct Cas to his dad. You don’t think God would like to be interrupted just to be asked the function of a tie.
So you shrug again, and truthfully say, “I don’t know.”
You fiddle with his tie again, shifting it this way and that to get it right, but it’s no use. It’s needs to be completely redone. Your nimble fingers slide the tongue out of the knot, and straighten out the twisted material.
“Are you gonna remember how to do it if I teach you?”
“Most likely, but I do not particularly care to remember.”
You snort at his honesty. “You’re not even gonna care if it matters to me?”
Cas’s eyebrows quirk. “Why would the state of my tie be of importance to you?” he asks.
“It’s a part of your brand, part of what makes you Castiel. Without the tie, you’d look...I don’t know, weird. Like a bit of you was missing.”
“Do what you wish with it, and I shall retain the information,” Cas acquiesces with a sigh.
He sounds like a cute little robot, grumbling about human customs but warming to them all the while.
You show him how to tie a simple knot, the old over-over-under-up-and-through, and pat your handiwork once you’ve tightened it.
“There,” you say proudly. “Not bad, huh?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Cas dryly replies, and you can’t help the laugh that your heart starts.
You pat it again, and slide your fingers down the material. It’s nylon-y, like if you scratched it it would give a high-pitched wobbly whine, and it’s weirdly silky on the underside for such a cheap tie. Without thinking, you tug on it and place a kiss on Cas’s stubbly cheek.
He balks, and represses a blush again. “Um, what was that?”
Surely he knows what a kiss is? Isn’t he supposed to have studied humanity from afar? Didn’t he once mention taking down Sodom and Gomorrah? You think sometimes he just plays dumb, because he’s noticed that you like telling him things about humanity (meaning you, really) and teaching him the little things. It’s probably why he let you tutor him in the simple tie knot, too.
You’ve never really bought into the whole ‘playing dumb to get boys’ thing, but this one, you can get behind. No one else has played that card and been an angel. With the other girls, it was irritating because they should know the common sensical things they were claiming not to, but with Cas...he’s not even the same species as you. He can go from otherworldly and fiercely intelligent to cute and confused within a second, and for some reason that does it for you.
Softly, you explain, still gently grasping his tie, “It was a kiss, Cas. It’s what humans do when they like someone, when they’re fond of ‘em.”
“You’re...fond of me?” Cas’s tender eyes are big and wide, and his ears wiggle in his hair. Damn angels, being more aware of every muscle in their vessel’s bodies and utilising them to wiggle their ears all adorably.
Not that you’re jealous that you can’t wiggle your ears.
“Hey, if I was really fond of you, I’d ‘a kissed you right on the money maker.”
And Cas’s mouth could make a hell of a lot of money, you’re sure. You’ve pictured the curve of it thousands of times before; in the shower; when your hand slips beneath your underwear; at work when you’re bored, and many other times. You think of his lips and your body has the same reaction as if it were to gaze upon a chick with swinging hips and a low-cut top, and it used to freak you out, but not anymore. Castiel’s lips are too gorgeous to hate for anything.
For a few seconds, you consider kissing him on the money maker. You did it without thinking all the time when you were married, but this is a different Cas. A different kisser.
Heh. Maybe you’ll have to teach him how to kiss.
You lean forward, just a hint, and hope that Cas picks up on your reasons for invasion.
Of course he doesn’t. Personal space isn’t an issue for the angel.
However, the moment you lean back and look into his eyes again, he’s switched back to otherworldly. There’s no bewilderment there any longer, just a tired disappointment. Maybe he’s disappointed you didn’t kiss him, you think. But maybe he’s disappointed in you because you’re trying to distract him from his mission.
You weren’t trying to distract him at all. That didn’t cross your mind, not in the slightest. You were just trying to kiss him for the sake of kissing him.
“Dean…” he begins in that slow, disquieted tone of his, “I came here today to tell you something.”
Cas loves you Cas loves you Cas loves you Cas lov—
“I visited The Fates again.”
Oh.
“They showed me your future, and – what I saw, Dean, it was...upsetting. It was you dying, three times.”
Three times? You’re only meant to die once. Twice, technically, if you count your exit from this world as a death. But you frown as you realise that you should die three times, really. Once here, once at the claws of Hellhounds, and once when you die permanently.
It’s perturbing that death is so impermanent for you, ephemeral like a dry-wipe board pen masquerading as a sharpie.
But if three times is actually correct, why was it upsetting?
“I should clarify,” he says with a bob of his head, “you died three different ways in this life, this dream. And The Fates said that it was up to you which of those deaths was the true death.”
Cas is quiet for a long moment. He holds your eyes, imploring you to find the ball under the shuffled cups, but it would help if you actually knew what those cups looked like.
The angel tells you before you part your lips to ask.
“Either the Djinn drains you as you live out your last days, you kill yourself before that happens, or I kill you if you fail.”
You whistle lowly. It’s the first time since you met him that he actually sounds convinced he can kill you.
“The world needs Dean Winchester. Sam Winchester needs Dean Winchester.” Castiel’s face is all soft lines as he doesn’t say the one thing you want to hear, but it hardens in all his celestial majesty as he firmly tells you, “If I see you again here, I will finish my mission.”
The last time you’ll ever see him is either now, or when he kills you. You don’t know which is worse.
You grab his tie so he can’t fly away. “Cas, wait, let me—”
There’s no scratch of nylon as the tie disappears from your fingers. There’s no goodbye kiss.
Cas is gone. There is only Castiel, now.
And he’s gone too.
He appears again sixty-five days later, in your bedroom. You’ve been waiting for him, though you’ve been telling yourself you haven’t.
Castiel has now become one of the reasons you’re staying in this world, you slowly realise.
You don’t tell yourself he isn’t.
“What day is this for you?” you ask him, only mildly interested in how long you have left.
“The fourth.”
“So the last, huh?”
“Yes.”
Cas is always to the point. You’re going to miss having someone around like that. No lies, no dancing around or distracting...just what needs and wants to be said.
“When I’m dead, when the djinn’s drained my life force...I’m gonna miss you, Cas.”
He steels at your words. “You will not die at his hand, that is a promise.”
“But I am gonna die at the hand of the apocalypse?”
“Perhaps.” A line appears between Cas’s brows, and his lips look as though they want to worry at themselves.
“What’s eating you?”
Cas scans his vessel with confused eyes and then narrows them at you. “That is...a metaphor?”
A forbidden smile plays on your lips at that. “Yeah, Cas, it’s a metaphor.”
The smile drops when Cas speaks, always to the point.
“It’s time.”
No. You’re still not ready, you haven’t said goodbye, you haven’t found Carmen and apologised for everything, you haven’t bought the twins’ birthday presents yet, you haven’t hugged your mom today. There’s still so much you want to do, still so much you can do here. You’re better here, you like yourself here, and you don’t want to forget that.
You don’t want to forget Cas.
And you don’t have to.
“Cas, you could stay here, with me,” you babble. “Fuck the other angels, who cares about them? It could be just like how it was when we were married, please Cas, don’t – just don’t do whatever you’re about to do, please, I know you, and—”
“Stop it,” Cas says quietly. “Stop it. Do you not think that I have thought about you, about being with you, or that I have not weighed up staying with you versus staying an angel?”
You’re silent, and guilt creeps into your skin. How could you expect Castiel to fall for you? Though, a tiny voice says in the back of your mind, at least you know he loves you for sure now.
An overwhelming need to tell him you love him surges within you, and you can feel it bubbling inside you, can feel wings breaking through the chrysalises in your belly, so you open your mouth and let the butterflies out.
“Cas, I lo—”
You almost bite your tongue when Castiel’s mouth crashes into yours. It’s a clumsy kiss, with your teeth clinking together, but it’s also feverish and worshipful and delicate all at the same time. He nibbles on your pliable lips before licking over them, and you think he’s about to stop so you fist your hands in that stupid trenchcoat of his and pull him closer, kissing him hard.
You only let go when your knees stop feeling as though they’re going to buckle, and Cas’s forehead leans against yours as your hands lift to cup either side of his stubbled jaw. You remember doing this in your coma dream, stroking your thumbs along the drag of the coarse hair and rubbing the tips of your fingers in his messy hair, and it just feels right. His breath feels hot against your mouth still, and you’re certain that yours does his, too. The air is thin, which is no doubt due to the panting both of you are doing in the small space between your lips, and it only adds to the high you’re on.
“Dean Winchester,” Cas starts, and you close your eyes and wait for him to complete the words he interrupted. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
There’s a shing, the impossible awaited sound of a steel blade being unsheathed, and a sharp pain piercing through where the butterflies had broken free of their cocoons. You take in a quick breath and open your eyes, but you see nothing. No Cas, no bedroom; just darkness.
You blink again, and when your eyes focus, you find that you’re in a warehouse, with Sam and a half-dead Djinn at your feet. Your hands are in ropes now, gripping nothing, though you aren’t sure what they were holding before. You think it was something important.
A grunt comes out when you try and call Sam’s name. You grunt again in displeasure that your throat is dry, and you sway in your ties, barely able to hold yourself up.
Sam’s head snaps up, his eyes swimming with lost little boy tears. He scrambles to his feet, and his voice cracks when he says, “Thank God, Dean, I thought I lost you!”
“Yeah, well...no place like home, Auntie Em.”
Your little brother manages a watery smile. “Let’s get you down.”
He cuts through the ropes, then runs the Djinn through with the same knife. You feel a phantom wound in your stomach at the sight of it and instinctively your fingers fly to stop the blood, but there’s nothing. Perhaps you got the balls to kill yourself after all.
There was a girl, you remember, but looking around the empty warehouse, you don’t see her body, dead or alive. It leaves you emptier, like lungs puttering out their last breaths before taking another in. You breathe in on reflex, and you’re still empty. Something big is missing, but it can’t be, because Sam is here with his arm looped around your back.
Maybe it’s your ability to walk properly.
Sam insists on driving, something you haven’t got the energy to fight. You don’t talk, simply content for the while to listen to the roar of the Impala and Led Zeppelin filling the silence. But Sam, being the girl he is, swallows and starts to talk.
“I thought I lost you, I really did. You were out for days, and I was only there for one of ‘em. I’m – I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”
“S’fine, Sammy.”
“No, it’s not. Because while I was caught up with research, and then taken hostage by some demon, you were dying. And I knew, I knew that something had happened to you. I could feel it.” In a smaller voice, he admits, “I started praying, Dean. To God, to the angels, to anyone who could...who could divinely intervene if I couldn’t save you.”
You snort and find the energy to roll your eyes. “Good thing I got myself out then, huh?”
Sam keeps his eyes on the road.
“Angels, yeah right,” you scoff, shaking your head at Sam’s naivety. “As if an angel would ever save me.”
Dean Winchester Is Saved
