Archive of Our Own

And God said “Let there be beings of light and fire and holy justice. Let them stand guard over the Heavens and the Earth, and let them follow my will and my divine command.” And God called the beings “angels,” and bestowed upon them the gift of unity, of completeness, and He looked upon them and He saw that it was good.

(“Yeah, and then he fucked off for eternity and left you to fend for yourselves,” mutters Dean. “There a point to all this?”)

It was the thirteenth day.

Technically speaking there had been events before this, when the nothingness separated into the darkness and light, when creation was born, but Castiel wasn’t there for that bit.

And then God (hospital lighting, polished bone, a white light that devours all hues) tasked the angels with watching over the Earth in its infancy, when it was nothing but disconnected clouds and gases and rocks gravitating slowly into one ball of mass. There was Light and there was Dark, and there was land and Heaven and Hell and Leviathan, and then there was Purgatory, and if Castiel is being honest, the timeline has always been somewhat difficult to put into human terms, seeing as it took place when there was no time at all.

And the Darkness (warmth of the womb, mud of the earth) was caged by Her counterpart, and She was locked away in the great act of imbalance. And throughout all this the angels lived with each other as great spheroids of flame, and they made the stars and the galaxies and waited for the first children of mankind, and they lived together and talked together and built together, and were content for many years.

(Dean opens his mouth as if to speak, and then shuts it. “Sorry,” he says, and so Cas keeps going, his hands tight where they clutch onto the shopping cart).

Then, in the early days of the Earth, war broke out in Heaven. Many angels were killed in the skirmish. Michael battled against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back in denunciation of the divine plan, but he was not strong enough, and the dragon was hurled down from Heaven and sealed inside a cage protected by six hundred and sixty six seals, and the dragon was thwarted.

Approximately 10 billion years since The Beginning, Heaven’s ranks were replenished and Castiel was created. Plans (divine, ineffable, objectively fucked up) were made and the word of God was written, and Heaven flourished. It would be a long, long time before any other angels died.

And then Castiel had stood beside a lake, and watched as a fish crawled onto the bank.

“Careful of that fish, brother,” Uriel had said. “Big plans, for that fish.”

And Castiel had looked at the fish as it clambered clumsily on its fins, spluttering as it fought to live and forge itself a new path, to mutate into the species that would become known as homo sapiens, watching as the fish attempted to boldly go where none had gone before.

(“Nice,” says Dean).

In hindsight, this was the beginning of the end.

There were many years in-between. The angels passed them in service of the great plan, and they developed culture and friendship and purpose as one, together always in harmony. They observed over mankind, from cell to fish to primate, from orrorin tugenensis to Australopithecines to homo habilis, they watched language created. Castiel watched the hominids split pebbles and use them as tools, he saw fire used in Koobi Fora, he received revelation that Eve had been born. He was told of Cain and Abel, he stood witness to wars fought in their Father’s name, in Narrm he watched a man coat his fingers in ochre and draw upon the rock.

Five trillion days since the beginning, give or take, Castiel laid a hand on Dean Winchester and was born.

Five thousand days after that, Cas is contemplating pancake mix in a Costco and all but ten of his brothers and sisters are dead.

“Just so you understand,” he says, as they come to a stop so he can read the packaging, “why the candles would not be a good idea.”

“Jesus,” says Dean, and looks uncomfortably at the ten-pack of blue and white striped candles in his hand. He’s been carrying it for a while now, turning it over and fiddling with the plastic tag. The loose wheel on Cas’ cart keeps spinning on the linoleum even as he stops moving, hovering half an inch from the ground, a fault in the supermarket’s foundations. “How many days have I been around?”

“Just over 15 thousand.”

Dean blows out a breath.

“No wonder you don’t get my jokes,” he says. “Talk about the gay age gap.”

“Mm,” Cas says.

It’s Quiet Tuesday in the year 2022 AD, between the hours of ten and eleven am, which is when Castiel likes to visit. He finds the over-packed aisles disconcerting, the store so loud that it makes his palms sweat and his mouth dry, but he likes it on these days. He likes the liminality of the place, the way it’s separate from society but not quite, in a way that reminds Cas of his time spent travelling between the Biggerson’s restaurants. He is everywhere and nowhere, both a part of humanity and outside of it, which is fitting. It’s usually the only time he’s certain he exists.

Dean’s quiet for the rest of the trip, mulling over Cas’ words, and he keeps getting distracted and having to pull out the folded piece of notepaper from his jeans, running his thumb over the ink to remind himself of their purpose. He sways into Cas’ space and then leans out of it.

In the frozen aisle, he hooks his finger in Cas’ beltloop to tug him to a stop. Cas obeys.

“Hey,” he says, and jerks his head at the fridge. “How ‘bout a cheesecake? You like those, right?”

Cas smiles at him.

“Yes. Thank you.”

Dean shrugs. They’re getting better, but it’s not perfect. “No big. Can get rid of these, in that case.”

He holds up the candles.

“Alright,” Cas says, and points them back in that direction, now that the list is all crossed out. Dean, he knows, will want to come back closer to the weekend for the cheesecake ingredients, after he’s had time to find a recipe. “Maybe we could get sparklers, instead.”

“Yeah? That could be fun.”

Cas isn’t really certain that he needs a birthday party, but Dean’s has passed, and Sam and Jack and Eileen’s also this year, and so when Jack had asked when they were celebrating Castiel’s, it seemed better to name a date.

That said, he still feels like an imposter, here in the supermarket picking out food for it, discussing candles. Birthdays are a human phenomenon, and Cas is stuck in the limbo of being human enough to warrant one, and angel enough that the whole spectacle feels redundant. He doesn’t have a birth date, and if he ever did, he lost track of the exact day a long time ago. He’s probably hovering somewhere around the four billionth anniversary if they go by human years, but as Cas has just proven, 4 billion candles won’t fit on a cake.

At the checkout, Dean slips the credit card into Cas’ palm.

“Hey, can you do this?” he asks, resting one hand on Cas’ shoulder, and Cas’ alarm bells start to ring. “I forgot the paprika, I’ll be right back.”

“Of course,” says Cas, like he hasn’t long since clued into what Dean’s doing. He appreciates that it’s necessary, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it, or that he can’t be petty about it. He’d told Sam as such after the first time, and Sam had grimaced in sympathy and pronounced exposure therapy a bitch. Cas heartily agrees.

Dean squeezes his arm, fingers tightening on a muscle Cas used to be able to name, and then disappears back into Costco. Cas sighs and deposits their groceries onto the conveyor belt, leaving a respectable foot of space between theirs and those belonging to the woman ahead. He stacks them neatly with the heaviest items first, to make it easier for the cashier to pack, and recites the pin number over and over in his head, digging the card into the skin of his fingers.

Cas has faced down entire armies, and it’s interacting with the cashier that always proves his downfall.

There’s a clock over near the exit that Castiel can’t read, because his body’s eyes are failing. He can’t hear the sound of the hands, either, not unless he concentrates and slips onto the other plane, but then it’s not really hearing, anyway. Still, though, he watches the blurred circle representing the clock’s face and manages to conjure up a convincing ticking sound in his mind instead. The human brain is remarkable.

One, seven, three, eight. The first time Dean had left Cas to fend for himself, Cas had accidentally said it aloud as he keyed it in. He understands now that he’s not meant to do that.

“Hi, how are you?” asks the cashier, Marcie, and smiles politely at him, because he’s one of many faces that she’s seen today and she doesn’t actually care how he is. Her eyes are tired, but Cas smiles back anyway.

“Good, thank you,” he says, and fidgets as she starts scanning the washing powder, the tinned chickpeas, the pack of lean beef. “How are you?”

“Good, thanks,” says Marcie, by rote. Humans tend to do that, he’s noticed. He supposes he does the same. She passes the barcodes over the scanner, has to do it three times for the bread, not quite managing to line it up right. She laughs, a little self-conscious.

“Ha, sorry,” she says, eyes flicking up and then back down as she finally does it. Her embarrassment suggests that she feels this one clumsy act betrays her right to be behind the desk, a tiny chink in her armour that nonetheless brings the bridge of her illusion of competence toppling down. Castiel doesn’t know why she’s apologising; surely all it takes is one look at him to realise that he is a man who never even built a bridge in the first place.

“It’s alright,” he says, because that’s what Dean says to him. Marcie smiles again, bagging three packets of chips.

“Having a party?”

“Yes.” And then, because it’s polite to talk to people; “It’s my birthday.”

“Oh, happy birthday!” says Marcie. When she grins, the piercing in her lip glints under the fluorescents. “Got any plans?”

“We’re having a party.”

“Nice,” she says, and keeps scanning their items. They are getting close to the end, and Castiel looks around for Dean, who will undoubtedly make an appearance at the last moment, because he has this act down to a science. It takes Castiel a great effort not to let on that he knows he’s being managed, but if he lets on, then they’ll have to talk about it, and Castiel doesn’t want to talk about it.

“Sorry, sorry, just—”

That’s Dean, squeezing past the man waiting to be served next, appearing breathless at Cas’ side, slamming the paprika onto the belt with fanfare. “Forgot that one.”

He throws Marcie a winning grin, so blinding that Cas almost softens, especially when Dean turns it on him, relaxing a little and sinking into Cas’ side like he belongs there. In a stunning turn of cosmic events, he does. He fills out the gaps in Castiel’s reality and makes the mimicry more successful, smoothing over the places in Castiel that make human eyes stick and prickle.

“Survive without me?”

Cas rolls his eyes but doesn’t move away. “I managed.”

Dean jerks his head at him and says, to Marcie, “It’s his birthday.”

“On the weekend,” Cas adds. “Sorry.”

“No worries,” says Marcie, and Cas thinks that maybe he’s getting a little better at assimilating into permanent human life, if he’s apologising for things he’s not actually sure warrant one. Marcie breezes past it because she presumably doesn’t think twice about these kinds of transgressions. “That’s sixty two dollars, fifty seven.”

Cas still has the card. “On card,” he says, and Marcie swings around the machine, so that he can insert the card and key in the pin. Dean taps his fingers on the conveyor belt.

“Excuse me,” Cas says, while it’s processing the payment. “What do you call this?”

“Hm?” asks Marcie, and looks where he’s pointing at the machine, and then hesitates. “Oh. Um. Do you know, I actually have no idea. A card reader? Sorry.”

“Oh,” says Cas. He tries not to be irked by these things, because deleting the knowledge of what a relatively unimportant machine is called in favour of remembering the way Jack smiled at 5:02pm on a Wednesday four weeks ago is infinitely better, but it bugs at him. “That’s alright.”

They load the shopping back into the cart and return to Baby, even though bringing the Impala on the grocery run always means that they need to spend a good minute or two rearranging the weapons in the back to make room (they tend to migrate out from beneath the false bottom, for whatever reason). They’re not used as frequently as they once were, but Cas thinks removing them would shatter something Dean isn’t ready to, so he hasn’t pushed. Luckily, though, the trunk has plenty of room for both the food and the various items of killing, stabbing, and occasional maiming. The wonders of the modern world.

“You know, they advertised this model originally as providing people with more room for groceries,” Cas says as Dean rummages around in there, lining bags of salt up against the sides and then rearranging the shotguns to match, clearing room over the devil’s trap. “They targeted women and mothers, of course, because it was the sixties, but it’s rather come in handy, don’t you think?”

“Don’t blaspheme about my baby, Cas,” says Dean. He rubs an affectionate hand on Baby’s paintwork, consoling. “He didn’t mean it, sweetheart.”

“I’m stating a fact.”

“Where’d you read it? If it was on Twitter, it wasn’t real.”

It had, in fact, been on Twitter.

“Someone wouldn’t just go on the Internet and lie, Dean,” Cas says, something he heard Claire say, and delights in the way Dean closes his eyes, bracing his hands on the trunk for a second.

“I know you’re fucking with me,” Dean says, to himself, but then he sneaks a one-eyed glance at Cas anyway, just to check. “I know you are. You are, right?”

“Yes, Dean.”

“Heh,” says Dean. “I got you all figured out, buddy.”

“Of course.”

“Shut up,” says Dean, but he’s grinning. Castiel grins back, and then Dean steps away from the trunk so Cas can push the cart right up to it, to make loading the bags easier. They all slot into Baby’s trunk neatly, because both of them are adept by now at gauging how many purchases will actually fit in the car before they have to start loading up the backseat. Dean’s hands brush against his as they do.

“I’m not sure I approve of the implication that suggesting Baby was intended for a female owner is the equivalent to blasphemy.”

“Oh, Jesus,” says Dean, as they close the trunk and he slides behind the wheel, Cas in the passenger seat. “Are you wearing your religious or gender studies hat, right now?”

“The latter, I think.”

“‘Kay, well I only meant that Baby’s way too badass to spend her life doing the grocery store run.”

He revs the engine to prove this point, even though Baby is, currently, on the grocery store run.

On the way home, Cas does a Google search on his phone to find out what the card reading machine is called, and he finds out that the answer is ‘point of sale terminal’. Versions of the machine that can’t process contactless payment are called magnetic strip readers. Cas will probably forget that by the next time he goes to the store, but it’s nice to know for now.

*

The first thing that happened, Cas wasn’t around for, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t proud. He is, tremendously so. Several months have passed since, perhaps even over a year, since Cas has mostly given up on keeping track. It would be, he suspects, much like a human trying to keep note of time in seconds. At a certain point it becomes redundant.

Essentially it has been a long time since The Beginning, and a much smaller but far more significant time since The Rebirth, and things have changed.

Dean drives them home to a house, not the bunker. It’s pleasant. The path up to the porch is overgrown, weeds crowding in on the pebbles because even though Cas weeds them out regularly, they just keep coming back. He refuses to use a chemical killer to squash them out; he’s become quite fond of their perseverance. There are two little iron bee stakes near the bottom of the steps, and Cas smiles at them every time he passes, and Sam’s Subaru is parked in the drive next to Eileen’s red Valiant.

“Hey,” calls Sam when they enter, the smell of stew coming from the kitchen. Cas likes Dean’s food the best (he is biased), but Sam’s stew is perfectly edible, and it’s nice for Dean to have a warm meal to come home to and not have to dive immediately into cooking. “How was the store?”

“Cas is having cheesecake,” announces Dean. Cas puts his bag of groceries down, then wanders up the stairs to find Jack, grazing his hand across Dean’s back as he goes. His voice follows him up. “Did you know he’s like, a trillion days old?”

The stairs creak under Cas’ boots, and he stops in his room to take them off, sitting on the bed and untying the laces methodically. He knows, logically, that his fingers aren’t any clumsier than they were before, but they still feel it, as his ability to process detail slips from him. There was a time when he could pinpoint, identify and feel every atom that made up his skin and the shoelace, and the places where they touched. In comparison, his fingers move over them now like rough ocean waves. When the boots are off, he tucks the laces back inside and places them neatly under the bed, because Dean likes things in their place and will get grumpy if he trips over them again. Cas wriggles his toes, and sees that his left sock has a hole in it. Time was he’d have noticed that before now, too.

Cas doesn’t mean to lament, not really. He usually tries not to, especially in front of Dean, but Sam says it’s important to grieve, so Cas does it on occasion. Sulks about being out of place, of being the ‘punching bag’ of the universe. The plain blue socks balled up in the back of the sock drawer tug urgently at his attention, but he ignores them.

He frowns at himself. That’s morbid. He’s being morbid. He pushes himself to standing and also takes off his coat, hanging it on the back of the door next to Dean’s green one, and then wanders down the hall to Jack’s room.

“Knock, knock,” Cas says, and from inside:

“Come in!”

He turns the handle and feels a smile glide across his face. Those come quicker now, too, to all of them. Jack tugs his headphones down around his neck, looking up from his computer and spinning around on his chair. He’s twelve today, his arms and legs oddly stretched out in comparison to the rest of him in a way that makes Cas ache, more so than when he’s three or his usual twenty-something, even more so than the time Jack decided to spend the day as a sunflower on the kitchen windowsill. He’s growing so fast.

“Hello,” Cas says, as Jack pauses his game. It isn’t dark outside yet, but his fairy light garland has already been switched on, the stars glowing yellow on the wall behind the screen, and it has a soothing effect on Cas’ eyes. “We bought pop tarts.”

“Cool,” Jack says. Cas sits down on the bed and feels himself relax, neurons triggering his body to relax into safety. He still feels like a foreigner out in the real world, but here, in their home, humanity fits like a glove. He nods at the screen.

“How is Jack’s World?”

Jack hums. “Good. I added a garden to the roof of my house, see?” He unpauses the game to show him, fingers on the keyboard. Cas recognises the renderings of a poppy and blue orchid. “And then I started planting trees all over the mountain. I’m going to make pathways between them out of wood. I want it to look like one big tree-house.”

“That sounds nice,” Cas says. “How long will those take to grow?”

“It depends. You have to make sure the sapling has enough light. Sometimes they grow really quickly, and then sometimes it can take half an hour. Probably they’ll be finished by the time I’ve eaten dinner.”

“So soon,” Cas says, and then smiles. “Well, I’ll look forward to seeing it, when it’s done.”

“Thanks,” Jack says. “Do you think we could plant an oak tree in the backyard?”

“Of course.” Cas watches the little mouse icon move across the screen as Jack jumps around in his tiny universe, and finds himself relieved that it’s this that he’s God of, where his most pressing responsibilities are taking care of his nice farmyard of animals and not the fate of humanity. “It’ll take a bit longer than thirty minutes, though.”

Probably, anyway. Cas isn’t sure.

“That’s alright. Did you know honey bees can do maths?”

Cas didn’t; he wonders if maybe they could find room for some hives. “Then we could have a bee school,” Jack suggests, and Cas likes the idea of that.

They meander down to dinner when called, but in the interim, Cas sits in the bedroom of his son and wonders at it all; that they could fight and claw their way to this peace, this freedom, and furthermore hold on to it. He watches Jack’s profile slowly illuminate with the blue light from his screen, more pronounced as it grows dark, and thinks, not for the first time, that he would take them all inside himself if he could. The four of them are so small, so fragile; it’s miraculous they ever made it this far, Cas’ little family.

This is what they don’t tell you, about humanity: it hurts.

At the dinner table, Dean throws his arm along the back of Castiel’s chair, fingers alternating between resting on Cas’ shoulder, neck, and the wooden back. It’s ridiculous, because Dean’s right (and free) hand has a tremor, and he’s dropping stew everywhere when it fails to reach his mouth, all so he can touch Castiel. Sometimes Cas loves him so much that he is convinced he is dying of it.

He’s asked, before, why Dean’s meals taste best, and at the time Dean had grinned at him, bright and lovely and easy.

“It’s simple,” he’d said, and nudged Cas’ elbow where he was helping by chopping up celery, tossing a wink his way as well. “Yours’ve got the secret ingredient.”

And Cas had asked what the secret ingredient was, but Dean had gotten too flustered to answer, and his cheeks had turned pink.

“Well, you know,” he’d said, which wasn’t helpful at all. Through his recent foray into pop culture and context clues, Cas had whittled it down to meaning either love or marijuana, but he’d thought Dean wouldn’t be so embarrassed about the second.

Regardless, Sam’s stew is still very nice.

“Okay, so, wait,” Sam says now, leaning eagerly forward with his elbows on the table. “I can’t believe I’ve never asked you this, but like, how much of the bible’s true? Is the universe actually way older than the Earth, or did everything pop into being at the same time? Do you have the entire history in your head? Did— dude, was Jesus real?”

Cas doesn’t want to have this conversation. “Who?” he says, and that sets Dean off enough that the mission is accomplished.

*

On Wednesday, Jack is four again. Cas still gets a little jolt of surprise at seeing him like this, transported back to the night shortly after his return from the Empty when he got woken up by a panicked Dean clutching forty pounds of Cas’ child in his arms, his eyes wide and frightened in the dark of the bunker.

“I swear I found him like this,” Dean had said, as Jack giggled and tugged at the hair on Dean’s head, attempting valiantly to climb up onto his shoulders. Cas was still groggy from the whole ordeal of being resurrected for the umpteenth time a few weeks ago, but the spike of adrenaline rushing through him had made short work of that one.

Now, at breakfast time, Jack sits on the kitchen counter and swings his small legs, dutifully peeling a banana for their pancakes. Cas sips at his coffee and tries to wake up. When he first came back, the first time after Kelly, this is more like what he expected. Not that he anticipated that Jack would choose to change his age and form at whim once given a safe enough place to do so, but being greeted with a fully grown Jack, while understandable, was not something they covered in What to Expect When You’re Expecting. The research he did into human children, the doula class, that was all in preparation for this specific Wednesday morning scenario.

(Surely, Cas had thought, the first time this happened, the research meant he should be fine with this development. He’d done the reading, he was prepared for this, he was just a little… blindsided. It didn’t help that it was three weeks after Cas had stopped being dead.

“It’s just for fun,” Jack had said, his big eyes rotating soulfully from Cas to Dean to Sam and back again. “I mean, I am three, so I just thought— I mean, it is weird, my sense of object permanence is…”

He’d trailed off, getting absorbed in tearing apart his peanut butter and jelly sandwich with his hands and trying it piece by piece instead. Dean had let out a slightly hysterical noise that Cas had thought was meant to be a laugh.

“You good?” Sam asked, even though Cas was sure that the same disconcerted expression was plastered across all three of their faces. They’d crowded around Jack, sitting on the countertop and kicking his bare feet against the drawer, and Cas’ own chest had been tight and Dean had started to look a little manic.

“I—yeah, sure, I mean, why not?” said Dean, and he’d run his hand through his hair. “God’s dead, we adopted a kid, Cas is—”

He’d stopped, his expression flickered.

“—here,” Dean had finished, gruffly, “so it’s— of course it’s—fine—”

“You’re worried,” Jack had said, proving to be very wise even when he was three. Although, Castiel mused, he’d been three the day before, too, he just more adequately represented the fact in this body. “I’m fine. I can change back whenever— see?”

Sam had yelped).

After pancakes, he and Jack go out into the garden to tend to a sapling that sprung up overnight, and also to tend to the first ripened strawberries that have started to appear on the vine. Cas aids him in pulling on his yellow rubber boots and little hat and then hefts him up onto his shoulders, Jack shrieking all the while.

Settling onto the ground, Cas lets his toes sink into the soil, the grass and dirt likely to stain his jeans and Cas not caring at all. He checks for grey mould first, touches each of the flowers and budding strawberries individually. It likely doesn’t do anything, and he likes the smallness of tending to them the human way, but it feels— lucky. Compassionate. Jack inspects them all too, his small hands gently lifting leaves when appropriate. He finds the biggest one, the one Cas has been gently convincing him to leave just one more day for two weeks now, and smacks a kiss to it, laying his claim. Cas ruffles his hair.

Today, Cas does most of the fiddly jobs himself, with Jack preferring to play in his square of the garden bed. He submerges his hands into the dirt and leaves them there for long periods at a time, wiggling his fingers in the Earth.

Cas likes the garden. He likes the house, too, but the garden is beautiful with its wide open space, the trees near the end of it and Cas’ raised garden beds cramped awkwardly along one side. It’s bright out, early sunlight basking the world in clear tones of eggshell, not yet too warm to need a hat even if Dean insists UV rays will push through cloud regardless (as if Cas can’t see them doing so, can’t see them kissing the bridge of Jack’s nose now that Jack has tugged his hat down to hang around his neck— Cas expects nothing less). He takes a moment to breathe in the new air, to circulate it around his body.

Sometimes Dean will come to help, like today, and sometimes Sam and Eileen, too. Usually Dean comes out with some sort of excuse, like coffee for Cas or pretending that he needs an ingredient, as if he needs the excuse to admit that he wants to spend time with them. Cas tries to take the unspoken things on faith, to read between the lines Dean straddles.

“Hey, buddy,” says Dean to Jack’s gleeful squeal of delight, squatting down beside them. He meets Cas’ eyes over Jack’s head, and his face is so warm and so lovely. “Whatcha doing?”

“Watering,” explains Jack, and holds the plastic can out to Dean to help. Cas is fairly sure that his body is bursting at the seams.

“Oh, thanks, kid,” says Dean, and takes it. He lets it drop to the ground instantly, as if it weighs a ton, and Cas fights to keep the smile from his face as Jack giggles, Dean going further with the farce by trying to stand with it, making sure the base of the can never lifts further than an inch from the ground.

“Dean,” laughs Jack, and Dean says, visibly straining, “I’m not doin’ anything, man! This thing weighs a ton of bricks!”

“Put your back into it,” Cas says, warmly, and Dean’s voice cracks at the next. “I’m trying!”

He collapses on the ground with a huff, gesturing at Jack. “You’re gonna have to do that one, bud. My old man body’s too frail.”

He swoons against Cas, who jostles him off with an exaggerated eyeroll. Dean just commits to the joke even more and winds up with his head in Cas’ lap, one arm thrown over his eyes like he’s just fainted. “This makes it very difficult to garden,” Cas says seriously, but the softness of Dean’s face likewise softens his voice, and he knows Dean doesn’t believe him. Not a single part of him could bear to give this up.

Not yet, thinks Cas. Not yet.

*

He discovered, quickly, that he doesn’t like the mornings. His body is slow to wake up, and there’s an odd sluggish quality to the blood in his veins that he supposes is brought on from the duration of time spent horizontal. He can get up whenever he wants, he’s a being of immense willpower, it’s just that he very often doesn’t want to. The comforts of a warm bed were not common knowledge among the angels, but if they had been, there probably would have been a lot less issues.

That’s what Dean jokes, at least, the first time he bugs Cas into giving this explanation, and Cas is inclined to believe him. It is very nice.

He doesn’t enjoy the feeling of being trapped in his body, being tied to it the way that he is without his grace. It’s not— pleasant. He misses it even as it burns in his periphery, the knowledge that he could take it back if he would only sacrifice this. The vial inside the socks inside the drawer demands to be looked at, and still Cas ignores it.

This life that’s been built, with the house and the garden and Sam and Dean and Jack (and sometimes Eileen) under the one roof, it’s a human life. There is, hesitantly, room for an ex-angel. Cas doesn’t know what it would look like for a full one.

Not that Cas isn’t an angel still, but his true form, the plane of existence he’s spent most of his creation living in, those things grow steadily removed from him. It’s complicated. Beyond human comprehension, even.

There was a thought experiment that Cas read about once that he feels is applicable. He’d told Sam about the feeling, tried to put into words the uneasy disquiet that just wouldn’t go away, and Sam had frowned at him, a trio of puzzled wrinkles appearing in his forehead. Cas had begun to feel that he had overshared, and that perhaps he should keep these sorts of things to himself, but then Sam had put down his coffee, held up a finger, and said: “I did this at Stanford. Hang on.”

He’d trudged off to retrieve his iPad, and then the two of them spent the morning hunched over is as Sam showed him how to hack into the scholarly databases. He pointed out how to use the search criteria, and then he gave Cas a copy of Daniel Dennett’s Where Am I?

Cas read it. He thought about it. He talked about it with Dean.

Well, it was more like Dean pestered him until Cas gave him attention, but Dean is less fond of the semantics.

“Hey,” Dean had said, handing him a coffee, one warm palm resting on Cas’ shoulder blade. “Your eyes are gonna go square, you know. You’ve been reading that all day.”

“I’m aware,” Cas had said, and Dean had smiled at him, like he did when he thought Cas being blunt was funny even if Cas wasn’t trying to be. Cas had squinted up at him, sipping at the coffee and then setting it down.

“If I took your brain from your body,” he said, “and kept it in a vat in a lab, transmitting signals to your body via radio, where would you exist?”

Both of Dean’s eyebrows shot up. “Come again?”

“Where would you exist?” repeated Cas, and then closed his eyes when Dean’s hand drifted higher, fingers curling in the hair at the nape of his neck. He tilted his face up towards Dean, the iPad dropping to his knees. “Are you aware of your consciousness existing in the vat, or do you still perceive yourself as being within your body?”

“Uh,” said Dean. “I dunno. You’re not gonna go all Bill Cortner on me in my sleep and start cutting out my brain, are you?”

“No,” sighed Cas. “I used to be the brain in the vat.”

Dean’s thumb brushed against his ear. “Okay,” he said, kind of quiet. It was a warm silence, welcoming, and so Cas kept talking, reaching out blindly to hook one finger in Dean’s belt loop.

“Before,” Cas said, “When I was— wholly angel, you might say. I controlled this body like the brain in the vat. My consciousness, if that’s what you want to call it, it existed in my true form, on the fourth plane. But the longer I have inhabited this body, the more that I have made it my own, I start to— I exist within it, now. Not in the vat, though my true form is still there.”

Dean’s fingers stilled. “Is that bad?”

“I don’t know,” Cas had said, honestly, “but it’s different.”

Dean had hesitated, his hand heavy on Cas’ neck, and then he’d said, almost like he was unsure whether it would be welcome, “You’re still you, though, man. You know that, right?”

“I know,” Cas had said, and he did. Whatever he is, whatever he becomes, he is still Castiel, for better or worse. He’s always known that.

The point, though, is that there was a certain familiarity to existing on the fourth plane that so far Cas has only found replicated in the early mornings, swaddled up warm and loved and at one with the duvet, and he finds it very, very irritating when he is asked to leave it.

“Come on, you dick,” says Dean from outside Cas’ cocoon, his shape a vague shadow when Cas tries to blearily look at him through his lashes. He can smell coffee and breakfast, which is something, at least, but Dean is stubbornly out of reach, hovering over by the door, illuminated by the hall light. “If I have to get up at ass o’clock, so do you.”

Cas grunts. “Incentivise me,” he says, eyes falling closed again, and practically senses Dean roll his own.

“Jesus Christ,” Dean mutters. “You’re such a cranky pants at 4am.”

He stomps back out of the room and down the stairs to the kitchen, which Castiel knows from the echo of his footfalls, the creak of the floorboards at the bottom. He has learned this house quickly, catalogued its quirks and groans and the places where it shifts in the summer, when the laundry door starts to jam shut. There’s a loud squeal throughout the house as someone turns on the bathroom tap, the pipes banging near Castiel’s head. Dean keeps saying he’ll fix it, and then he keeps getting distracted by building Cas new chicken coops and gardening beds.

(That might be because Cas offers rewards, for those ones. The pipes don’t really bother him so much, not like they do Dean, and he wants the extra garden beds ready for radish season).

“God dammit,” says Dean, on cue from downstairs, the early hours be damned.

“Sorry!” yells Jack, so he must be a grown up again today. The sound travels down the hall and in through the open bedroom door, and Cas does smile, just a little, into the pillow.

He does eventually force himself to get up. It takes far more strength than he once would have expected. It’s especially hard when it’s still dark outside, and it feels wrong, to meander down to the kitchen and find breakfast ready to go, the overhead lights on and night’s inky blackness still pressing against the windows. Dean looks up from the stove when he enters, an exasperated pinch to his brow.

“There he is,” he says, drawn out, and Cas yawns, rubbing at his eyes. This, adjusting to his body’s needs, has been another hurdle. The small remnants of grace within him will only contribute to so much; it makes sense to supplement it with human methods where he can, so now he eats and drinks and sleeps and needs oxygen to keep going, feels the effects when he doesn’t get enough of it. He pads over to Dean and presses himself up against the long line of his back, curling his arms around his waist and pressing his face into the material of his t-shirt. Dean freezes for half a second before relaxing, and lets out a soft huff.

The human contact is also very nice.

“Mornin’,” says Dean, quietly, and much more politely than before. He rests one hand on Cas’ wrist, turning his head to kiss whatever part of Cas’ he can reach, which happens to be his hair. “Sleep alright?”

“Mm,” says Cas. “Better, if I didn’t have to get up at ass o’clock.”

Dean laughs, a bright, bubbling thing that has a smile curving across Castiel’s face. He sighs and lets Dean go, trudging over to the coffee pot and pouring it out into his mug, the novelty one Eileen brought him shortly after they all moved out from the bunker. It’s a miracle of human invention; at first appearance it’s a pair of tired eyes, and then, when heat is added, they change to look wide-awake. The first time Cas used it, Dean had ended up bent double over the similarity, his laugh filling up the kitchen like it does now, joyous and free. It’s a fond memory.

He drinks from it now whilst Jack comes downstairs, a lot more awake than Cas or even Dean, going so far as to already be dressed.

“Someone’s excited,” says Dean, and Jack beams.

“It’s like an adventure,” he says, and Cas watches Dean grin, a warmth in his belly that has nothing to do with the coffee. He joins Jack at the table while Dean switches off the appliances, grumbling about where the hell is Sam, I told him it was ready, the pancakes are gonna go cold. The footsteps from upstairs indicate that Sam is, at least, awake, and this is confirmed when the tap goes off again. Dean groans, long and loud.

“I swear to fuck,” he says, dropping the maple syrup on the table with a bit more force than necessary. The whistling is loud and shrill, before turning fog-horn like. “This is—”

He stops, hesitates, then covers Jack’s ears with his hands. Jack is unphased.

“This is what I get for thinking with my dick and prioritising the coop,” hisses Dean, at Cas, and Cas hides his grin in his coffee.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t fix the taps,” he says, blandly, and Dean rolls his eyes.

“I like it,” Jack says. Dean releases his ears, slumping into the seat beside him. “It’s like living at a shipyard.”

“Exactly,” mutters Dean.

Sam comes down, then, Eileen following along after arriving home yesterday, her long hair somehow looking neater than Sam’s, which looks as though a pair of hands have been run enthusiastically through it. Cas signs hello to them both, and Eileen smiles like she always does when she sees him with the mug. Cas is very grateful for her, both for her place in his life as his own friend and on Sam’s behalf. She is a delight and she is funny and she is witty, and Cas likes her very much.

“Good morning,” she signs, and then spreads honey onto a piece of toast, plucking it from the toast rack in the middle of the table. It’s a kitschy ceramic object with painted daisies that Sam thinks should belong to somebody’s grandmother, and Dean told him to shut the fuck up about. It does its job, anyway. Eileen holds the toast in her mouth while she signs. “How do we feel about being up so early?”

Cas levels her with a look, which she grins at. “Don’t tell Sam, but I’m starting to think the lore won’t be worth it.”

Eileen laughs. What a miracle, thinks Cas, that he can be responsible for such acts of joy; that’s two in as little as ten minutes. He feels a smile split across his face.

“So,” Sam says, “Is it too late to call this off and go back to bed?”

“Yes,” says Dean, and presumably kicks Sam in the shin, going by Sam’s wince. “This was your friggin’ idea, dude. You want our help, fine, but the sooner we get there the sooner we can come back, and I wanna be back for seven.”

“Project Runway,” Cas intones, solemn, and delights in the way Dean goes pink.

“Snitches, Cas,” he mutters, and Cas trades a look with Sam.

“My apologies,” he says, “I was under the impression that everyone at this table was proud of you for admitting you enjoy things outside the hunting lifestyle.”

“Yeah, Dean,” says Sam, “I think it’s cute you’re embracing your gay side.”

“Jesus Christ,” says Dean, pained. “I don’t have a gay side.”

Cas raises his eyebrows, but Dean gets there first. “Shut up, Cas,” he says, and Cas lets him have that one, swallowing his coffee instead with a shrug. He’s sure Dean knows what he was going to say, anyway, judging by the flush on his neck.

“I like Project Runway,” says Jack, and Eileen high-fives him. “Me, too.”

“‘Course you do,” grunts out Dean, and Cas grins.

“Aw,” Sam says.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Cas can’t reach Dean’s hand under the table, but he pushes his knee between Dean’s own, sliding his calf alongside Dean’s. His shoulders relax ever so slightly. Cas smiles and leans back in his chair. This is his family, and it’s astounding, sometimes, that Cas used to apply the term to his brothers and sisters in Heaven, to his father. Bobby Singer’s long ago words have been proved true many a time over, that family doesn’t end in blood; that it’s messier and harder and so much better than anything else Cas has ever imagined.

*

This morning, the five of them are driving back up to Lebanon to pick up some resources for Sam, the plan being to pile them into Sam’s station wagon and Cas’ truck for maximum storage space. Sam keeps claiming that he only needs the essential lore materials at the house, but what exactly comes under that definition seems to expand with each day, and this is the third such trip they’ve all made in the past month. Cas and he have started constructing a library in one of the spare rooms, so that probably admits some sort of defeat on Sam’s part.

Before they can go, Cas makes himself another flask of coffee to ensure that he’s capable of driving the distance and safeguarding he and Jack’s safe arrival. Admittedly the cold air helps with this as well; Cas’ body responds accordingly, shivers working up his spine and fingertips tingling, his brain shocked awake. He forces Jack into adding an extra layer under his jacket and also into wearing a hat and gloves, since the truck’s heating is not the best and the parenting books were very precise on the dangers of exposure in young children.

“We don’t want you getting a cold,” says Cas, pulling on his own gloves, and Jack gets his out from the cupboard near the door. His hat is bright orange with a picture of a goose knitted into it at the front, courtesy of Fran down the road, who leads Castiel’s knitting group.

“Damn right,” agrees Dean, even as he stands in his usual number of layers, scrubbing at his scruff speculatively in the mirror above the hall table. Cas stands out of view of it.

“Put on a scarf, Dean.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are forty three, you’re not invincible.”

“Cas—”

“Scarf, Dean.”

“Fine, fine,” says Dean, and trudges back off upstairs. “Jesus, if I wanted a nagging wife…”

Jack hovers patiently by Castiel’s side, and Cas loops the ties extending from the ear flaps into a bunny knot for him, even though Jack is perfectly capable. Jack grins.

In the car Jack plugs his phone into the installed stereo since Cas has no qualms about embracing modern technology. It’s why, when opportunities like this arise, he sometimes prefers driving by himself rather than in Baby, to enjoy the freedom of music choice that the AUX cord offers. It’s hard to get Carly Rae Jepsen on cassette.

Admittedly, Sam also has this capability in his Subaru, which Dean is probably putting up a fuss about as they speak, but it’s nice, always, to spend some time with Jack. Jack pulls Spotify up onto his phone, and sets the music to play through the speakers.

It’s in a genre that Cas believes is called ‘pop punk’. He understands from Dean that this is an absolute affront to human ears, but Cas doesn’t think it’s too bad. In saying that, though, Cas has seen Dean bobbing his head along to this style of music, so he took the statement with a grain of salt.

“Who’s this?” he asks Jack, and indicates to follow Sam into the left lane. The music is garage band like and the lyrics vaguely concerning, but Jack looks happy enough. Possibly he’s going through the ‘rebellious’ phase the parenting books warned of.

“It’s a band called Simple Plan,” says Jack, and then, to Cas’ amusement, takes a photo of the Subaru’s tail lights, leaning forward and resting his arms on the dash so it isn’t too shaky. Cas assumes he is probably snapping a chat to Claire. “Claire recommended them, remember? She says it’s a teenage rite of passage.”

“Ah,” says Cas. That explains it.

They stop for a proper breakfast just outside of Lebanon, crowding all five of them into a diner booth, the waitress kindly bringing over a spare chair to place at the end. Cas decides to try the waffles. Dean grins at him when he does, their shoulders pressed together in the booth, and Cas feels something hot and burning inside his chest when he smiles back.

If he concentrates, Cas can slip his attention back to the fourth plane, can see the tendrils of Dean’s soul curling around him in the diner. His own wings, Fallen though they are, loop around their little seating area, overlapping with Jack’s, protecting them all in the best way he knows how.

“Hey, kid,” says Dean, gesturing at where Jack sits opposite beside Eileen. “What d’you say you and me switch the rest of the drive? You can rescue me from Sam’s crappy music.”

He signs as he says it, almost by rote, at this point, and though it’s choppy (he isn’t quite as fluent as Castiel and Sam, and simultaneous communication is hard enough as it is), Cas loves him tremendously for it. Sam’s expression is warm despite the insult.

“Oh, like you can talk, man,” he says, hands moving. “You were singing along, I saw.”

The diner is too hot compared to the temperature outside, and the back of Cas’ neck is starting to itch, a prickling sensation sinking down over his shoulder blades. His shirt sticks to his skin, and it’s not like how Dean describes the feeling, this is— Cas can feel, suddenly, every fibre, all six million of them, and he can feel the threads of micro plastic and grit and dirt and dead skin, and if he really thought about it he could probably identify their sources by touch alone. Grace is meant to buffer this sort of thing, so he shouldn’t— Cas’ vessel is starting to panic, chest and lungs constricted, and Cas promised he would protect it, he swore to its owner and its daughter, and now he’s failing in that, too.

Jack tugs on him. He’s incandescent, kaleidoscopic; his six heads zero in on Castiel instantly; halting in their grinding rotation to beam directly at him, and he extends a hand Cas recognises as coma berenices, clutching at Cas’ fourth wing, his own nephil grace a soothing familiarity.

Cas forces himself out of the vat and into his body. Across the table, Jack’s worried. Cas shakes his head. Jack narrows his eyes.

“So, come on,” says Dean, over a half hour later, in the kind of faux-casual voice that means he’s been gearing up for this. He and Jack did switch cars in the end, although Dean’s still complaining about the music, so his excuse has been rendered useless. Cas put on Beyonce, but Dean’s the one humming along. “What got you the squint of death from Jack?”

Cas focuses on driving. Dean normally does when it’s the two of them together, but not today— that was a condition, that Cas be allowed to wield his car. “I didn’t realise you noticed,” he says.

Dean snorts, fitting his palm against Cas’ right hand, which is not currently helping with the driving at all. He lines their fingers up and makes an approving sound. “I noticed,” he says. “Spent the last decade of my life dodging it from you, I’ve got a sixth sense.”

Cas frowns at the car ahead and tries to determine if that’s possible.

“See?” says Dean. “You’re doing it right now.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are.”

“You’re looking out the window,” defends Cas, since Dean is. He does some quick calculations, but Dean should not be able to see Cas’ reflection from that angle, not unless he really does have eyes in the back of his head, and he doesn’t, because Cas would know. He must be guessing.

“Doesn’t change that I know you’re doing it,” says Dean, pleased. He turns back to face him, eyes lighting up. He reaches out and pokes Cas’ eyebrow, the one closest to him, an action too irritatingly similar to Rowena. “Gotcha,” he says, pleased. “So, spill. What’d you do to Jack? Forget to sneak him his Fantales?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Cas does, of course, know what Dean’s talking about. Dean blows out a breath, puffing out his cheeks until he bears a remarkable resemblance to sphoeroides lobatus.

“Fine. Is it a big three?”

Death, deal, or dumb.

“No.”

“Okay, then.” Dean refocuses on their hands, leaning close. He’s so relaxed, these days. Cas watches the lines by Dean’s eyes deepen as he smiles, pressing their fingertips together. “Dude, do you know your hands are huge?”

Because Cas is still a little tetchy, he bites out: “Jimmy’s hands.” Dean squeezes them.

“Oh,” he says. “Nah, man. These are all you. And I’d know, they’ve stitched me up enough. One hundred percent bona fide Cas.”

His grin’s widened, now, but it softens again around the corners, and his thumb traces circles over the knuckle of Jimmy’s, Cas’, index finger. “That what’s bothering you? Is it a, uh— a vat day?”

Cas doesn’t say anything. Dean purses his lips, looks between Cas and the Subaru ahead, contemplative.

“Okay,” he says, and nods. “You wanna pull over and do the— the thing?”

“Dean,” says Cas, even though he does want to pull over and do the thing. Dean grins again like he knows what Cas is thinking, crowds in even closer, so their thighs touch. Cas focuses on the road.

“I’m serious, let’s get a little roadside-nookie action. Bet I can make you feel good.”

“We’ll be late to help Sam.”

“Screw Sam,” says Dean, lightly. He knocks their joined hands into Cas’ leg. “Seriously, Cas. You’re important too.”

Castiel is sitting in a car and the vinyl has finally warmed up under his body, and Dean is offering everything, and Cas doesn’t want to give this up, he doesn’t. He wants to hold onto it as long as possible, wants to hold Dean and Sam and Jack and Eileen suspended safe from the bite of human time, but just like in the ABBA song, he can’t. “I love you,” Cas says.

“Yeah, I know,” says Dean, with that pretty pink stripe lighting up under his freckles. He pulls back just far enough to remove intent, and settles back so he’s comfortable. “You’re not so bad yourself,” he says, and he squeezes Cas’ hand tight when he does.

At the bunker, enough dust has started to cover the unused surfaces that Cas can see Dean getting twitchy just being here, his fingers occasionally darting out like they would to reach for a brush. Sam gives them all a list of the latest books deemed essential, and the stuff that has to be moved out of the way to get them. Lucky for Dean and Cas, their job is removing the curse boxes obscuring the way in and out of the storage room. Oh, joy.

Not so long ago, Cas could’ve picked up these curse boxes with ease. Now, he has to squat down beside them with Dean, count to three, and then both of them need to use their body strength to heft them up and onto the waiting shelf, and it’s hard. Castiel is puffing, his cheeks are red, his chest feels tight and he doesn’t like that it isn’t easy. He once lifted an anvil without a sweat. Dean’s knees are cracking like crazy.

“Jesus Christ,” Dean pants, leaning forward with both hands on the shelves, his face flushed. There’s an exhilarated little grin on his face, and his eyes are bright. It almost softens Cas’ irritability towards his very human strength. “Why the fuck couldn’t the ghosts be allergic to carbon fibre?”

“Outta the way,” puffs Sam, as he and Eileen and Jack haul another box over. Cas steps away so they can also lift it onto the shelf, wanting to help but thinking that this would be a case of too many cooks. They all stare at it for a couple of seconds.

“Is that it?” asks Eileen, sort of hopefully.

“Least one more,” says Sam. “But then we can start moving stuff to the Subie.”

“Dude,” says Dean.

*

At home, Cas strips off in the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror.

He understands that humans have certain hang-ups about their bodies. This has been true, to some degree, for a very long time, and to some extent it isn’t just limited to humans, either. There’s a reason certain birds develop brighter feathers, and Zachariah, even, had often boasted of his true form’s lion’s head. Pride exists in all creatures.

Cas’ body is stolen from a dead man.

Even that, though, isn’t quite true, not any more. Cas runs his hand over the scars of the sigil he once carved into his chest, rests his palm over the Enochian script that rests blocky on his abdomen. The white line above his heart. He owes Jimmy Novak this form, yes, but it is also Castiel’s own; it’s not a house he resides in, not anymore. It’s an extension of himself as much as the truck is, as much as the trench coat.

The tattoo hurt, he remembers that, but it also felt good. Cas checks his watch; it’s nearly midday, which means there’s plenty of time. He’s sure he’s passed a tattoo parlour on his trips to the supermarket.

It’s different, taking care of this body manually rather than with his grace. He tries to treat it with care in respect to its owner, nourishing it and exerting it in equal measure, easing the joints when they ache, and also out of gratitude— this has been his home a long while, has seen him through much. This is the form Dean fell in love with him through, that he rebelled through, that Jack came to know him as his father through. He suspects that he’ll always have partiality to it. Now Jimmy’s hands rest gently on his belly, rising and falling with Cas’ breath, his fingers curling in the hairs there. He clothes himself again.

Cas hesitates only once in this process, stopping with the keys half turned in his truck to text Claire, an odd sense of obligation and guilt rolling round in his stomach.

Hello, Claire, he writes, with a waving emoji. I’m thinking (he includes the thought bubble for emphasis) of getting a tattoo (a needle and shocked face, to represent the new idea), do you have any suggestions? (a crab, the sun, and a rainbow to get her thinking). Love, Cas (he signs off with a heart, like usual). 

The three dots pop up for a moment before disappearing, the little tick at the bottom of Cas’ message telling him she’s read it, so he waits to hear her thoughts. They are, as normal, succinct and vaguely dismissive.

idk dude its your body, she replies, and then the bubble crops up for a few more seconds as she writes out her thoughts. bumblebee. a zombie. CLAIRE NOVAK KICKS ASS in big letters on your forehead

Cas grins at the phone.

Noted, Cas says, again with a heart, thank you. I’m having a birthday party on the weekend (cake and a present) if you and Kaia (two girls holding hands) would like to come (eye emoji). He hopes this is casual enough to not raise her hackles.

It must be deemed acceptable because Claire responds with a single thumbs up, and something in Cas eases just slightly. He always finds himself relieved to have gotten through a conversation without scathing either of them further. He switches the car on and moves it into drive, thinking.

In the tattoo parlour, Jodi the tattoo artist quizzes him on his last tattoo, wondering where it was placed, when it was done, if he’s a novice when it comes to caring for it. Cas lifts the hem of his shirt and gets a disapproving raised eyebrow when she spots the signs of old scars, and she is very thorough in her explanation of proper care.

“Now, this spot might be a little awkward for you to reach, so’ve you got someone who can help you out?”

“I’m sure my partner will be willing,” Cas says. “He’s very particular about cleanliness.”

Jodi grins at him. She has very pointed canines. “What else are they good for, huh?”

He suspects this is probably a joke. When Jack phones, Jodi lets him put the phone on speakerphone so that he can answer but not disturb her work. Afterwards, she smiles at him.

“You a father?”

Cas thinks of the blue socks. “A poor example of one,” he says.

The tattoo doesn’t hurt as much as he expects. It’s a presence on his skin, yes, but more prickly than anything, a slight discomfort similar to what he experienced when Garth convinced him to have his teeth checked. It eats at him the whole way home, a slight tenderness to his skin when he moves his shoulder, and still when he clomps up the stairs in his sandals. There’s music coming from the room down the hall, the makeshift library, and voices. Cas hesitates, torn between following it and putting his things down in his room.

He settles on his room, placing the new tube of anti-septic cream on the dresser in front of the framed photos of himself, Sam, and Jack, and of Dean and Mary. Dean is so young, just a boy, but behind it there is another photo, from Mary’s last birthday, with her two grown up sons on either side of her. His shoulder twinges when it moves, sore like a sunburn.

He looks at his own fingers, looped around the handle of the sock drawer, and tries to remember that it’s just a part of being human: that sometimes things hurt even when they’re good.

*

“You look like a sailor,” says Dean later, sounding delighted with himself and his life. He runs his hands over Cas’ skin, around the edges of the tattoo, knees resting against Cas’ hips. His touch is light, almost reverent, fingertips smoothing over the shaved skin. He kisses Cas’ bare shoulder.

“I hope this hasn’t uncovered another fetish,” Cas says, and Dean snickers.

“Darlin’, I think you’re my fetish.” He plants another kiss higher up. Then another and another, working his way up Cas’ neck, arms sliding snug around his belly. Cas migrates his hands from resting on the bed to Dean’s thighs, reaching around behind him. “But if you wanna put on a little outfit, you be my guest.”

Cas grins, gaze tilted to the ceiling. “As long as there aren’t hats involved.”

“You and your vendetta against hats,” Dean grumbles, and kisses his ear again. “Okay, up ya get, my knees are gonna get stuck.”

Cas dutifully lets go and stands from the bed, twisting to help Dean. He extends his knees a few times, stiff from the kneeling, and it’s not fair because Cas was in such a good mood, but there’s the humanity again, the fragility and the brittleness. He wants to press his fingers to Dean’s forehead, wants to heal his skin with a wash of grace.

“Hey,” says Dean, “what’s that look for?”

“Nothing.”

“No, it—come on.” Dean grabs his arms, running his hands up them. Cas’ hairs stick up in their wake. He ducks down to catch Cas’ eye. “What’s cooking, good looking?”

“This is good, right?” says Cas, ignoring the question. “I help. Like this. I take care of you and Jack. It isn’t— I know I’m not all that I could be. All that I was. But I’m still— it’s not selfish. Being like this. I help you.”

“Yeah, Cas,” says Dean. “Of course you do.”

Cas studies him. He looks at the fat around Dean’s jaw, the relaxed slant of his shoulders. He feels rough hands on his arms, but the touch is gentle and kind. He did this. Dean is not just alive, he is well-fed, well-loved. This is what Castiel’s humanity can do. And yet—the urge to cradle, to protect. The sacrifice of that ability in the name of receiving Dean’s love. Over the years, Cas has sacrificed many things for Dean. He has Fallen for the sake of a man who did not love him back, and now that love returned keeps him from getting back up.

“Good,” says Cas, and lays his hand on Dean’s belly. It burns like a stove under his touch. He ignores the crowbar prying at his shoulder blades.

“What’s going on, Cas?”

“Nothing,” Cas says, and sighs. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” Dean’s hands trail down his forearms, looping loosely around his wrists. “Is there… do you need anything else?”

“You,” he says, and Dean rolls his eyes.

“Flirt,” he teases. “Seriously, though.”

“I mean it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Dean. You can help by taking me to bed.”

Dean scrutinises him a while longer, thumbs pressing against the insides of Cas’ wrists. “Yeah, okay,” he says, finally. “One Love Doctor, coming right up.”

*

Two days before his birthday, Cas unwraps the pair of socks he keeps tucked away at the back of his drawer and looks at his grace. Not yet, he thinks, as the guilt and the loathing curdles around his guts. He looks at himself in the photograph, the distortion of the film around his face, and wonders how long he can justify the worth of this life as an asymptote over the safety of Jack and Dean.

*

Various online parent forums have assured Cas that Jack’s complete confidence in his indestructibility is a normal thing for human children and not just a side-effect of his nephil heritage. It is a hurdle all new parents must conquer, but the knowledge doesn’t ease Cas’ mind at all. Jack falls off things and takes tumbles and has already once fallen several feet from a tree branch, and half of the time he bounces upright with a great big grin to proclaim, hey, Dad, look what I did no matter what his age is that day. He’s going to send Cas to an early grave, and then Dean will kill Cas for dying on him and everyone will be miserable.

“‘S ‘cause he hasn’t learned to fear that stuff yet,” says Dean, when he notices Cas white-knuckling his trowel. Jack’s throwing himself from branch to branch of one of their trees with enough enthusiasm that Cas is surprised he didn’t just transform into a monkey for the day. Dean rubs a hand up and down his back, mindful of the new tattoo, and Cas wishes he would stop worrying enough to enjoy it. “So he’s all floppy when it happens and his bones just kinda bounce back. Fall out of a bunk bed asleep and you’ll be fine, but do it awake and tense and you’ll be in for a broken arm. It’s that kinda thing.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” says Cas, and Dean lets his hand come to a stop, resting warm and solid on Cas’ neck. He squeezes.

“It’s science, Cas."

“Hm,” Cas says. Two hundred and six bones in the human body, and all of them breakable in an insurmountable number of ways.

“Besides, you know him. He’ll fix himself up if it goes wrong, and if he doesn’t, the hospital’ll put him right. Hell, the kid might actually want a cast, now that I think of it. I always thought they were pretty cool.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” says Cas, “You’ve always been fond of looking like the movies.”

I could keep him safe, Cas thinks. I would lose this, but he would be safe.

“Could you help me up?” Cas asks. “I need to borrow you for a moment.”

*

He beats Dean to the bedroom, going straight for the sock drawer. His movements aren’t so polished; his fingers snag on the handles, the drawer sticks when he pulls. He is so very far away from it all, hiding even now. He fishes out the glass and tosses the socks away, useless.

Dean wanders in a second or two behind him, ignorant. “What’s up?”

“I want to give you something,” says Cas, holding the vial out of sight. Dean’s face turns delighted, a beautiful grin spreading across his face and brightening his eyes and cheeks. He leans back against the door like he’s anticipating Cas’ll pin him to it.

“Oh, yeah?” There’s a musical timbre in his voice. “Is it a sexy something?”

Cas holds out his palm.

It’s funny, how he can almost see the humour getting sucked from the room, as if it weren’t an intangible, abstract concept. Tangibility didn’t use to bother him, either. Dean swallows – Cas watches the way his stance slackens – and  he takes half a step forward. He doesn’t need a moment, it’s clear what this is. He says anyway, “Is that—?”

“Yeah,” says Cas, and looks down at it. He pushes it more insistently towards Dean, hand hovering in the air. “I want you to have it.”

“Dude.” Dean’s fingers stop just shy of brushing against the glass, not willing to touch the swirling grace trapped within. His eyes are very wide when they meet Cas’. “How long have you had this? How do you have this?”

“I’ve always had it,” says Cas.

“Since when?” asks Dean, sharp.

“Since always.”

“The Empty?”

“Yes.” Cas hesitates. “It wasn’t—it was complicated, leaving. You remember."

Dean shakes his head. “I remember the light show, sure. I don’t remember you catching lightning in a bottle.”

“Well, you wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want you to.”

Dean’s eyebrows shoot up, his eyes protrude slightly. Funny. Cas read something the other day about how eyeballs are shaped like pears, and was surprised. He should have remembered that from rebuilding Dean. He looks at the eyes now and can barely comprehend cradling them as he once did. “Come again?”

Frustrated, Cas draws away, Jimmy’s shoulders hiking. “I hid it,” he admits.

“In my head?”

“At the time.”

Dean closes his eyes, which Cas understands. He loses track of their conversations so easily. He can see the eyeballs flickering underneath the lids, the little twitches of Dean’s face as the words form and fall away.

“So—you—okay. So, you’ve got the God-juice on tap. You coulda taken it back, but you haven’t. Because it’s—because it’ll—it’s gonna take you away?”

His voice is baby-bird brittle and instinctive to soothe.

“No,” Cas says. “No, Jack made sure of that. But even when I knew that it was safe I still couldn’t take it back. And now—now I don’t want to.”

Dean looks at him. He’s said, before, that Cas’ gaze is like an x-ray machine, not helped by certain mind-reading-adjacent abilities that angels possess, but for Cas it’s always been the opposite. For all that he might have seen Dean, known Dean, Dean forgets that he knows Cas too, better than anyone. Cas has lied to him successfully before only when Dean didn’t want to believe him. He tries anyway.

“Bullshit,” Dean says. “You hate being human.”

“I’m not human—”

“Semantics. Graceless, depowered, whatever. You hate it.”

“That’s not true,” lies Cas.

“Oh, come on,” says Dean. “I’m not blind. Did you think I didn’t realise that you’ve been moping about, getting tattoos and shit ‘cause you didn’t have your grace and it was killing you? I live with you, Cas, I notice it when stuff like you Falling from Heaven happens.”

He looks at the grace again. “Except apparently you didn’t, so I don’t get it. You just felt like being miserable? Felt like throwing a pity party for yourself?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” says Cas, and Dean says, “Well you aren’t exactly being forthcoming on the details. What am I supposed to think when you’ve been lying this whole time?”

“I didn’t lie,” snaps Cas. “I did lose my grace, it’s here. And then you loved me, and I had to put it away, but I can’t—I can’t keep making that choice, not anymore. But nothing has to change. I’m giving it to you.”

He breathes in and our through his nose, tightens his grip on the vial. He could throw it, he could break the seal. He could—but he can’t.

“Bury it, put it in the ocean, I don’t care,” he continues. “Just take it. It’s a gift, Dean. It’s a gift.”

“Bullshit,” says Dean. “Fuck off,  Cas, it’s a leash around your neck and you know it. You think I want that? You think I want to be chaining you to my ankle and dragging you around my pathetic life? What the hell is your reasoning for that one?”

“It’s—easier.”

“Than what? Sticking with me for the hell of it?”

“Yes!” says Cas, and the dresser wobbles on the wooden floor. Did he hit it? “No, I’m— I’m not— I’m not explaining this very well.”

“Try better,” says Dean, and Cas glowers.

“I’m not human, Dean. I’m the—the round peg in the square hole.”

Dean hasn’t looked at him like this since—since—a long time ago. He told him once afterwards that Castiel had broken his heart. “You’re miserable,” he says, quietly.

“This is the happiest I’ve ever been,” says Cas, and the breath Dean lets out—it feels like he’s calling Cas a liar. And maybe he is.

“Sure,” Dean says. “Sure you are. That’s why you’ve had this Get Out of Jail Free Card hanging about the last two years.”

“That’s not what this is,” Cas says. “It isn’t—I’m absolute, with my grace. It’s not the same concept as a soul, not exactly, but it’s—it’s—”

He gives up. Human language is so finite. Dean pinches the bridge of his nose, and it’s silent in their bedroom. Jack’s laughter reaches up and through the window. Cas wants to sit down.

“So,” says Dean. “So if it’s not—if it’s so great, or whatever, why don’t you just… take it back? Why are you giving it to me?”

He looks at him. Cas wonders what he sees; if Cas’ body reads as guilty, as tired, or as stone. Dean’s eyebrows furrow.

“Oh,” he says, and laughs. “Jesus. You’re a sadistic son of a bitch, you know that?”

Cas flinches.

“Newsflash, I ain’t buying into this. You wanna blame me for being impotent, whatever, I’m not helping. I’m not gonna trap you here. If you want to fuck off, you can fuck off all by yourself.”

It takes three steps to stride up to Dean. He is still between Cas and the door.

“Move,” Cas says. “I am going to go and make a coffee.”

*

Their kitchen is green. The countertop was unanimously voted for from a selection picked out by Eileen, whose style everybody seems to like best. It has wooden handles that Cas likes because they feel nice in his palm, and he also likes how the coffee cups live on a shelf rather than in a drawer. There is big sink for washing up dishes, and for wetting hair.

Cas waits, selected coffee mug in hand, as Eileen runs water through the ends of her ponytail. Sam is also sitting in the kitchen, but he has the fancy noise-cancelling headphones that Dean said cost too much money fitted snugly over his ears, and his head pillowed on his arms. There are a pair of hair cutting scissors on the counter top and a broom propped up in the corner, ready for action. Eileen grins when she finally lifts her head up and sees him. She doesn’t jump as often any more, which is nice.

With the hand not holding her ponytail, she makes a circle over her chest with her fist. “Sorry!”

“It’s okay,” signs Cas. “You’re cutting your hair?”

“Only a little,” signs Eileen. “It’s too heavy on my head. I can do yours too, if you want.”

Cas considers it, reaching up to feel the curls at the back of his neck. It’s been growing longer for a while, but he hadn’t really noticed. He fills up the coffee pot. “Do you think it’s too long?”

Eileen shrugs. “Depends on if you like it that way. I think it suits you— you look relaxed.”

Cas frowns, and Eileen laughs. “In appearance only,” she clarifies. “Your attitude is very foreboding.”

“Dean and I are in a fight.”

“I know,” signs Eileen. She gestures at Sam. “Sam said.”

“He was listening?”

“Hearing people are very rude.”

“I tried to give him my grace,” Cas admits. “It didn’t… go very well.”

Eileen raises her eyebrows and holds up two ‘W’s, with her mouth making an ‘O’ in between them. It’s very funny, and even makes Cas smile. He bobs his left hand back and forth in a nod.

“Is that, like, an angel marriage proposal?”

Cas makes a face. “No,” he signs. “It was meant to… I don’t know. Make things easier. It’s complicated.”

Her mouth pulls down. “That sounds typical. What are you trying to tell him?” she asks.

It’s so big, to explain. He shrugs. Eileen cocks her head.

“Well,” she signs, “in my experience, it’s usually helpful to figure that out.”

Cas glares at her, but she just looks back.

“You are—very wise,” he admits, finally. Then, because he’s feeling petty: “Dean never says what he means. It’s annoying.”

Eileen grins. “Yeah,” she signs, “Hearing people are like that, too. My friend Marika, I saw her the other day, and she comes up to me and tells me how fat I’ve gotten.”

She places her hands on her belly, beaming. Like Dean, like all of them, she has softened around the middle. She copies the action Marika made, puffing out her cheeks and extending her hands beyond the actual reach of her stomach. “Then I told Sam and he said ‘have you?’.”

She rolls her eyes, only somewhat fondly. “It’s a very stupid habit. But I also have a feeling that right now Dean isn’t the only one not saying what he means.”

He scowls, and she grins. She can be very smug, Castiel’s friend. “Didn’t you face down entire armies, or something? It’s just Dean. I’m pretty sure he’d find a way to hang the moon in your bedroom if you asked.”

“Maybe,” Cas signs.

“So just ask,” signs Eileen, and pushes him in the direction of the stairs.

*

Carefully, Cas toes open the bedroom door, a buzzing in his ears. Dean is on the bed, but he hasn’t thrown anything across the room. Except for the socks, which the door pushes out of the way. He looks tired. Cas awaits his judgement.

“Are you just going to stand there?”

Cas stands there, and Dean rolls his eyes. He swears under his breath. “At least you came back,” he says, bitterly. Cas contemplates punching him.

“I talked to Eileen,” he says, and Dean looks up.

“Yeah? Who’s side is she taking in the divorce?”

Cas rolls his eyes. “We’re not divorcing,” he says. “You’re the one who’s being obtuse.”

Dean drags a palm over his face. “I’m not trying to be,” he says, “It’s not my fault you decided today was the day to drop the ‘actually I’ve had my grace this whole time and now I want you to have it and imprison me in my human body for all of time’ bombshell. It’s Friday, man. It’s TGIF cocktail day.”

Cas goes and sits next to him on the bed, resting the coffee on his leg. He fishes the grace out of his pocket again and watches it dance. Dean shifts next to him.

“Why do you still have it?” he asks, quietly. Not nearly as argumentative as before. “Why… I don’t get why you haven’t taken it back.”

The crucial question. He runs his tongue over his teeth. “I don’t want things to change.”

As if hearing him, the grace pushes against the vial, trying and failing to reconnect with the tiny remnants still housed in his body. Foiled by a few millimetres of glass. It’s pathetic.

“If you take it,” Cas continues, “then nothing has to change. I can stay here. I want—I want to stay here. Like this.”

“You just said you were miserable.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. And I’m not—I’m not gonna shackle you to me, man, even if I— even if knowing that you can’t—that you couldn’t—” He inhales. “Of course I don’t want you to leave, Cas. I never want you to leave. Jesus, if I could handcuff you to me forever I’d do it in a friggin’ heartbeat. But that ain’t—that’s not what this. This is you, Cas. This’d be me actively making your life worse. And I know I— I know I did it already, I know I’m the reason that— that we’re where we are, but. It’s different, man. I just— did you really think I’d say yes? Did you really— did you really think I’d do this to you?”

Cas closes his eyes. “I won’t need to sleep,” he says. Recites, really. He’s gone over this many times. “I won’t need to eat your cooking, I won’t need you to drive me places, you won’t need to look after me. You’re not hunting, you won’t need my grace. I’ll have everything I was and I’ll be useless to you, but without the—the creature comforts that I’ve become—accustomed to. Fond of.”

He shakes his head. Thinks of Uriel. “It’s a cowardly refusal,” he admits. “But, well.”

“Cas,” Dean says. “I—hey, look at me, you bastard. Why didn’t you tell me you felt like this? That I—that I still make you feel like this? I—sweetheart.”

He puts his head in his hands, and Cas blinks at the back of his head, the back of his neck, so suddenly exposed. After a second, he puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean laughs. Sort of.

He takes a ragged breath, twists his head so that he can look at Cas. “I’m not taking it,” he says, and sits up. “I—Cas. I didn’t hitch myself to you so I’d have someone to cook for. I cook for you because you’re— you, and I love you, and I don’t know what else to do to make up for the—the shit I put you through, you and the kid, and I look after you because I want you to be happy, and I need you anyway, Cas. I always need you, and not to pull my ass out of the fire, or to smoke out a demon every now and again. I need you to keep fucking breathing, man.”

“I didn’t know that,” Cas says, and Dean huffs.

“Yeah, I’m getting that picture.”

“This would’ve been easier if you just took the grace.”

Dean shakes his head. “You’re such a dick. Gimme that.”

He drains half of Cas’ coffee, then hands it back. “Are we good now?”

“I don’t know,” Cas says. “It—I can’t take it back. And you won’t take it. So I don’t know where that… leaves me.”

Dean frowns. “Did I not just say that you could take it back?”

“It’s not that simple,” starts Cas, and Dean says, “You’re kidding right? Can you just, like cool it, for five fucking minutes and explain what’s so bad about taking the grace back? You gonna stop loving me the second you get recharged?”

“Of course not,” says Cas, hotly, and Dean moves his head like the figure from pop culture that Charlie has stuck on the dashboard of her car (he can never remember the name).

“So then what the hell are we arguing about? You get your grace back, I get a boyfriend with awesome angel-powers, everybody wins!”

“It is not. That. Simple,” says Cas, and stands up. He puts the coffee mug on the dresser, next to the photos, and revels in the stomp of his feet. Anger is such a heady feeling. “There are ten angels in existence, Dean. Ten. There were thousands. Millions. And I— I destroyed them. All of brother and sisters, all that have died, their deaths are on me. And at least as this— this hybrid, this abomination, I can— I can pretend that it was fair. That I suffered too.”

Dean looks at him.

“You know,” he says, “if you don’t want to be miserable, you got a hell of a way of showing it.”

Cas freezes. And Dean pounces.

“That’s what this is about. This fucking— god complex of yours. Whether you’ve got your grace or not, it doesn’t mean shit. That’s what you’re scared of. That you’ll take your grace batteries and find out that you hate yourself not because you Fell, not because you can’t straddle the human angel three-way, but because of who you are.”

Cas stares at him, searching for— something. For the words to explain that this is on Dean, it has always been on Dean, from the minute Castiel laid a hand on him. He has sacrificed everything for him, his family, his species, his god, his happiness, all in aid of a man who has never accepted the worship, has never laid his own at Castiel’s feet, has never recognised Castiel’s cause for what it is. Castiel has rebelled, he has Fallen, he has accepted the fates of punishment and accepted the casualties and called them just, and through it all every action, every word, has been in service of Dean Winchester, and now Dean has the gall to say that it is not enough to worship, and that Castiel must live, too.

“I don’t hate myself,” he says.

“Could’ve fooled me,” says Dean. “Look, Cas, I get that it’s hard. I know that I’m an asshole, I know that I can— I know that I can cling pretty tight, I guess. And if you don’t wanna be here, if you wanna rocket up into space and exist as like, two buckets of soul and grace respectfully, we can talk about that. But I don’t—I don’t know how to fix this, man. I don’t have any coal I can touch to your lips and make it all better. But I—”

He takes a deep breath. “I haven’t found a bridge with you that I couldn’t cross, alright? So, that’s… that’s all I got. I’m here, Cas. Where are you?”

Cas swallows.

“I’ll think about it,” he says.

*

“Did you and Dean have a nice argument?” asks Jack later, without looking up from his phone. Cas sits down in the other beanbag, the red one with yellow stars, with a heavy sigh. Jack offers him a gummy bear, and Cas turns it over in his fingers, assessing.

“You shouldn’t eavesdrop,” he says, half-heartedly.

“You were yelling.”

“Yes, well. I was angry.”

“Was Dean?”

“We were both angry.”

“Was it about your grace?”

Cas startles. Jack looks up, concern on his young face. The tilt of his phone screen reveals that he’s texting his mother, which is both touching and worrying. A vision of Kelly arriving to take Jack away from the environment Cas has created suddenly appears, and then Jack flicks it away like the psychic equivalent of a slap on the wrist. It’s a fair reaction. If he has told Kelly about the argument, it’s most likely that Kelly will just invite Castiel out to brunch to talk about it. “You knew?”

“I could see it,” says Jack, which, of course he could. Oh, the foils of fatherhood. “I thought you would talk to me about it when you were ready.”

Cas looks away. “It wasn’t your burden to bear. It isn’t.”

Jack shrugs. “That didn’t stop me.”

It’s overwhelming, the love he has for him. His darling, brave boy. He presses his lips together.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Would you show me your tree house?”

“Sure,” says Jack. “If you like it, can we go and get that oak tree sapling? For the back garden.”

“Yes,” says Cas. “Yes, we can go tomorrow.”

*

Tomorrow is such a novel concept, thinks Cas as he wakes. He’s cocooned in his bed, the duvet curled around his shoulders and trapped under his left arm, and Robert Plant is crooning away in the bathroom. Cas can hear the edges of it through the wall, the distinctive sound of the pipes. When he rolls over, he sees that Dean has opened the curtains for him. The sunlight casts large blocks of yellow across the bed, and there is a bird drinking from the bird bath Cas set up on the windowsill.

Sam ruffles his hair when Cas shuffles into the kitchen, the rake of his heavy palm causing Castiel’s hair to stick up every which way. He’s yawning as he does it, and then he claps Cas on the back of the shoulder. All these human rituals, all these tiny things, and they happen every day, stretching out into the past and the future. This house is so full of love, and Cas can only see snippets of it.

Taking his grace back, it won’t fix this. He’ll still be an angel amongst the humans, something different, something new to them, but Jack was something new, once. Jack built the world, on Earth and in his game. It could never be undesirable, to be like Jack.

Castiel makes his coffee in the mug Eileen gave him, and thinks—with his grace, he would see her mark on it. He still can if he squints, but it requires so much effort. Graceless, it’s so much easier to use the human senses, to rely on touch and sight and taste and sound than the millions he had at his disposal before. He misses it. He has always missed it. It’s upstairs on the bedside table.

Eileen kisses his cheek as she moves around him to make her breakfast, and she kisses Jack’s too. He hopes she stays with them for a long time.

Cas walks back upstairs, and sits on the bed. He’s timed it well enough that the water shuts off a few minutes later, and then Dean shuffles in with his towel round his waist. He hesitates briefly in the doorway, taking in the vial in Cas’ palm.

“We’re not still on this, are we?” he asks, wearily. Cas shakes his head.

“No,” he says, and Dean relaxes a little.

“Good,” he says, and wanders in properly, closing the door behind him. “Can’t ambush a man naked, ‘s bad manners.”

Cas watches him rifle around in the drawers, watching his shoulder blades move under his skin. Him and Charlie went for fake-tans about two weeks ago, and the golden glow still clings to him. Cas still doesn’t really understand the appeal, and Dean didn’t seem to either, given all the lengths he went to to maintain absolute secrecy about it.

Dean drops the towel on the floor, pulls on his Scooby Doo boxers and gets halfway into a pair of jeans before he accidentally sticks his foot through the hole in the knee.

“Goddammit,” he says, hopping about a little. He kicks them off. Cas is so in love with him. When Dean leans back over the drawer to find another pair, Scooby Doo’s face stares back at Cas in a very disconcerting manner.

Dean wriggles into his jeans. “Right,” he says, and grins, salacious. “You enjoy the show?”

It’s a little manic, but Cas doesn’t mind. It always startles him when Dean looks back, when he sees Cas staring, because for so long it was something Cas did for himself. “Yeah,” Cas says. “You should do it more often.”

“See, now I know you’re kidding,” says Dean. “No one’s favourite strip tease involves Scooby Doo boxers.”

Cas squints. “Wouldn’t yours?”

Dean grins, properly this time. His wrinkles become more pronounced around his eyes, the sunlight glints off the silver at his temples. “If it was you, sure.”

The warmth is a million threads between them, and Castiel misses seeing those, too. He holds up the grace.

“I’m taking this back,” he says, and Dean nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “I mean, I kind of figured. Not that—” He frowns, “not that you have to, or anything. But I just, I dunno. I feel extra bad, knowing you’re trapped in your human suit and don’t gotta be.”

“I wanted—I needed your help. With it.”

It’s a lie, sort of. Dean doesn’t know how this process works, so Cas can rest assured that he doesn’t need to know all that Cas is asking, the meaning he’s ascribed to the act. Cas’ own private worship.

“Sure,” says Dean, still careful, “What’s up?”

Cas says: “I need you to give it to me.”

“Oh,” Dean says, and Cas watches him swallow a joke. “Like— to hold it?”

“Yeah.”

He looks a little suspicious as he takes the vial from Cas’ hand, like it’ll suddenly sprout a cord and loop itself round his neck. Cas puts his coffee cup down, shifts closer to the edge of the bed, and tilts his head up.

“Oh,” says Dean again. “You mean, like, now-now.”

“It seemed fitting,” says Cas. “It’s my birthday tomorrow, you know.”

He guides Dean’s hands to uncork the vial, and touches the divot under Jimmy’s bottom lip.

“Here,” he says, and watches the bob of Dean’s throat. The grace swirls around with excitement, singing.

“Is it gonna hurt?” asks Dean, suddenly, and Cas shakes his head. He can feel it now that it’s so close. Dean reaches for him, fits his palm around Castiel’s jaw in a mirror to all the times before and after, so maybe he does know a little of what Castiel is asking. The sanctity of communion. Dean was lost and Castiel found him, returned him to himself and made him whole. And now Dean does the same to him.

*

Dean is on the floor, leaning back on his hands, knees bent. He must’ve fallen. The glow is still fading from the corners of the room, bright white catching on the corners, and Castiel’s wings are so heavy on his back.

He breathes in as deep as he can, tastes everything in the air; every molecule, Dean’s apple-scented shampoo, the taste of his skin, the laundry detergent remnants on the sheets. He feels Jack downstairs without having to reach for him, feels the colossal heat from such souls as these burning so close to one another. He exists everywhere, at every time. He chooses to focus on Dean.

He’s breathing hard, saliva shiny on his lip. His eyes are wide and dark as he looks up at Cas, and he’s seen it before, has felt this feeling before, but it’s different now. When He cast down on idolatry, surely He did not foresee this.

“Cas,” Dean says, and Castiel understands the reflection, understands what Dean sees. The wings at Castiel’s back, the lightning in the air, the contradiction of reality. He pushes up onto his knees, his face reverent.

“You’re kneeling,” Cas observes, and Dean’s teeth are so white in his mouth when he smiles.

“Yeah,” he says. “I—You look—I didn’t know. Cas. I didn’t know. Jesus, I’m an idiot. I’m so sorry.”

Cas kneels, too. He tucks his wings away, revelling in the familiar comfort, revelling in them full and feathered, and feels himself calm a little. “Why are you sorry?"

“Dude,” says Dean, and his voice cracks. “You look so happy.”

Cas blinks. “Oh,” he says. Dean looks at him.

“You still want to stay?” he asks, ridiculously. Cas grins.

“Yes, Dean,” he says, and Dean holds up his hands, saying something nonsensical.

“Well, I dunno, you mighta decided— look at you, you coulda— whole world at your feet—"

“Exactly,” Cas says, and kisses him before the blush can properly take root.

*

The day is Castiel’s birthday.

He can’t be more specific than that; several billions years, several trillions of days, all of them some level of important. He remembers so many things; less than he ought, more than he should. Dean went with him to the supermarket this morning and Cas stood in the aisle with the spices and saw all of it, understood all of it, and Marcie even remembered that they were having a party and said ‘happy birthday’ again. Cas’ eyes are still failing, but he hasn’t fixed them, yet. He thinks he might try glasses first. He remarks this to Dean and Dean says:

“Totally. You should. Mm. You should do that.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, man. The, um. The glasses industry is a dying business, so. Wouldn’t wanna kill it just ‘cause you have angel mojo again. You could single-handedly save the world here, bud. Again."

“Hm,” muses Cas. “I didn’t know that.”

“You know, this is less fun when I know you’re humouring me.”

“I’m not humouring you. If the situation is as dire as you say, maybe you should come with me. I’m sure they’d make you look very distinguished.”

“Fucker,” says Dean, and loops their hands together on the bench seat.

Jack is absolutely bouncing on his feet when they get home, out on the front porch and making the little iron bees jump. He has one of Castiel’s ties looped round his neck, the blue and grey striped one that Claire likes. There are also too many cars in the driveway: the Subaru and the Valiant, as usual, but also Claire’s heavily bumper-stickered hatchback, and a blue Volvo that Mary picked up recently.

Right, thinks Castiel, blinking at them. The party.

“Sam says the surprise is the most important part,” explains Jack as he skips over, his Riverdale letterman draped over his shoulders. He holds up the tie. “He also says I’m not allowed to let you cheat and that you have to embrace the tradition of being led unsteadily into the room, and also any silly hats that Claire may or may not put on you.”

Dean bursts into laughter. “Atta girl,” he says, and claps Cas on the shoulder, bounding past.

“Where are you going?” asks Cas, and Dean holds up the shopping.

“I’ve got some of the missing ingredients,” he explains, not looking back, “Give us two seconds, Jack.”

Jack waits, trading a look with Castiel. After two seconds, he says, “Okay!” and holds the tie in front of Castiel’s eyes.

“This feels needlessly dangerous,” says Cas, dryly, as Jack ties it in a knot behind his head so that he can’t see.

“Nah, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”

He holds Cas’ hand, and guides him. “We’re going to go up the stairs now. I suppose I could’ve put the tie on closer to the door. But Claire and I did lots of decorating and also bought you a present that was a little bit hard to wrap, so we left it in the hallway. You can’t tell Dean, though. He got really invested in wrapping presents last night and watched YouTube tutorials and everything, it nearly made him cry. The door’s right here.”

He leads Cas over the threshold, and Cas feels it, the love contained within the walls, embedded in the foundations. Every happy day and the wine stain on Eileen’s bedroom carpet, the spell work of the devil’s trap under the rug, can taste the iron in the window frames. Jack is four and helping to make pancakes in the kitchen. An adult and researching the legend of King Arthur. Dean is passed out in front of the television and singing in the shower and complaining that his back hurts and that he still hasn’t fixed the damn pipes. He feels Sam as an interlocking series of troubles, then as a bright warmth when Eileen cuts his hair.

His family, thinks Cas, wondrously, as Jack leads him further into the house. The help is unnecessary, but not unwelcome. Cas knows his steps as well as anything. He can hear Claire whispering and hitting someone on the arm, possibly Dean. They are all doing a terrible job of acting as if they’re not there, even excluding the tell-tale cars in the driveway.

Jack removes the blindfold, and they all erupt in cheers of singing and laughter, clustered around a cheesecake simply filled with candles, covered from edge to edge in a way that surely means it would have been more effective to light the cake itself on fire. Cas laughs, and they all keep singing, Jack by his side and Dean across the room. Sam and Eileen and Mary and Claire.

Cas looks upon his family, and he sees that it is good.