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She could hear Cas’s voice as she approached the beaded curtain that filled his doorway; the door itself was open. “So, in this way, we're each a fragment of total perception—just one compartment in that dragonfly eye of group mind,” Cas said, sounding lighter than she could remember hearing him, almost like Jimmy’s voice, the poor bastard, and what the hell was he talking about anyway? “Now, the key to this total, shared perception—it's, um, it's surprisingly physical.”
Deanne parted the curtain and peered into the relative dimness of the cabin. Castiel was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, wearing a loose cotton shirt and pants. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week; his cheekbones stood out sharply. There were four women sitting around him, looking at him adoringly. Icons and statues decorated the room, a scattering of traditions that she could name and several she couldn’t. The whole scene was so bizarre she stopped short, thought about going out to check she had the right cabin, but Cas had seen her.
“Oh,” he said. “Excuse me, ladies. I think I need to confer with our fearless leader for a minute. Why don’t you go get washed up for the orgy?” The women nodded and stood. They all pushed past Deanne, who was feeling distinctly unable to move; she’d just heard Cas mention an orgy, a word she’d have bet money he didn’t even know. “You’re all so beautiful,” Cas said. He too got to his feet and twisted his arms behind his back in a motion that she took a few seconds to identify as a stretch, because Castiel was stretching.
When he turned to face her expectantly, Deanne scrabbled together just enough wit to ask, “What are you, a hippie?”
“I thought you’d gotten over trying to label me,” Cas said. That kicked her brain back into gear; she was going to have to explain the whole past-her thing.
“Cas. We’ve got to talk,” she said, just as Cas’s face took on an expression of confusion.
“Whoa. Strange,” he said. She couldn’t have agreed more, but somehow she didn’t think he meant what she did, so she asked, “What?”
“You…are not you,” Cas said. He was staring at her, but his gaze lacked his usual intensity. “Not now-you, anyway.”
“No,” Deanne said, and then ran the sentence over again in her head. “Yeah. Yes, exactly.”
Cas asked, almost casually, “What year are you from?”
“2009,” Deanne said. Cas kept staring, and it was honestly starting to give her the creeps because it wasn’t his usual kind of staring, which she had gotten used to out of having no choice. “Who did this to you?” he asked. “Was it Zachariah?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Cas—”
“Interesting,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken, and then he put his hands on the sides of her head and kissed her. Deanne froze. This was nothing like the ozone tang she remembered; Castiel tasted like whiskey and weed, and this time he knew what he was doing. Really knew. Her eyes fluttered closed for a second, but this was so wrong…
She broke the kiss and backed up. “Whoa, Cas,” she said. She caught a glimpse of hurt in his face before he covered it, and shook her head, determined to get back on track. “Look, yeah, it’s friggin’ fascinating, but I need you to strap on your angel wings and fly me back to my page on the calendar.”
Cas raised his eyebrows at her and actually chuckled. “I wish I could just strap on my wings, but I’m sorry—no dice,” he said. He was still looking at her, but with the taste of his mouth still on her lips it was easier to work out why his eyes were wrong.
“Wait—are you stoned?” Deanne wondered exactly how much pot it would take to get an angel too baked to fly, trying to ignore the small, scared voice in the back of her head pointing out that Cas had never grown a beard before, had never lost weight before.
With an expression of Well, duh that Deanne couldn’t have done better herself, Cas said, “Uh, generally, yeah.”
“What happened to you?” she asked, hearing the uncertainty in her own voice. Cas snorted and waved one hand. “Life,” he said.
Deanne turned and fled, pushing through the beaded curtain. She just wanted to get back to her...her other self's cabin and hide. This was all too freakin' much and she was pretty sure that if she met Ellen in an eyepatch or Anna with a katana and a leather duster or a good-guy version of the Trickster or something, she was going to just sit down and start babbling.
Behind her she heard the click of the wooden beads and Cas's hasty footsteps. “Deanne,” he said, and she hunched her shoulders and kept walking, walking fast but she wasn't running from him. Wasn't running from the way he'd looked at her. Castiel, however, was perfectly willing to run; he caught up with her one cabin short of her goal and grabbed her arm. She stopped rather than bruise herself on his grip.
“Deanne,” he said again. He circled her to look into her face. She couldn’t make herself meet his eyes.
“I can’t be out here, Cas,” she said. “The other me is out on a mission. People’ll see me.”
“OK,” he said, nodding soothingly. Deanne had the distinct impression he was trying not to scare her. “Just come back to my cabin, you’ll be out of sight.”
“Cas,” she said, and didn’t know where to go from there.
“Come on, Dee,” Cas said, and she tensed; Cas never called her Dee. He seemed to catch on that that was an issue, which just made things weirder, because since when did Castiel pick up on social cues like that? “I’m sorry,” he said. “Just come on. You’re right, we shouldn’t stay out here.”
Deanne bit her lip and allowed herself to be led back to his cabin. Once they were inside he closed the door, an operation that took some shuffling of statues; Deanne stood in the center of the room while he did it, trying to get a grip. When the door was shut he turned to her, looking her up and down like he was trying to memorize every detail.
“2009, huh?” he asked at last. “When in 2009? I mean did Sam…is Lucifer…”
Deanne said, “Uh. Early October. So yeah, Jack’s out of the box. Haven’t seen Sam in about a month and a half. You and I summoned Raphael a week, week and a half ago.” That wasn’t all they’d done, but Deanne was just not going to worry about that right now. “The other night Sam called me and told me about the vessel thing.” She was firmly not thinking about that. “Then I went to bed and when I woke up I was here—or now, I guess, and Zach showed up and told me I had to let Michael in or there would be consequences, because that’s not rapey at all. I went to Bobby’s first but…Jesus, Cas, is he dead?”
“Yes,” Cas said bluntly. “Almost two years now. We were at his place to pick up some of his library. The rest of us were upstairs and some looters showed up.” He produced a grim little smile that, for all its darkness, looked more like the Castiel she knew than any other expression she’d seen on his face so far; that was Cas deciding to get his smite on. “They thought he was alone. We got them all. You gut-shot the one who killed him, took the bastard almost four hours to die.”
Deanne felt faintly sick. She was fine with the idea of killing the guy who’d killed Bobby—more than fine, delighted—but letting him die slowly of a gut wound?
Almost under his breath, Cas said, “Damn. You should see your face, Dee, I forgot what it was like when you gave a shit.” Normally, hearing Cas curse would have been awesome, but right now it just pushed her further off balance.
“I need a drink,” Deanne said firmly. She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself, but either way she was not ready to listen to this shit sober.
Castiel laughed, a jagged sound that scraped her ears like a rasp, and clapped his hands. “What was I thinking? I’m a bad host. Sit down.” He waved at the archway that led to a kitchenette; there was a table in there, and two straight-backed chairs. Deanne pulled one out from the table and spun it to sit straddling it, her arms folded on the back—in her experience, there was no other way to be even kind of comfortable on such things. Cas, meanwhile, pulled out two tumblers from a cupboard and set them before her. They didn’t even roughly match. “I didn’t kill the whiskey,” he said. “Or do you want something else?”
“No, that’s great,” Deanne said. It'd do till she could work out how to get the hell out of Bizarro-land, anyway. Cas gave her an uncomfortably knowing look, but didn’t say anything; he went and fetched a half-empty bottle from the main room and poured them two fingers each.
Cas collapsed into the other chair, picked up one of the glasses and held it out. “To old friends,” he said. His eyes, still too bright, held a challenge she couldn’t begin to read. Deanne grabbed her glass and clinked it on his, but didn’t repeat the toast before downing half her drink. It was horrible, raw and harsh; Deanne honestly didn’t care. She’d had worse. Still, she had a rep to maintain, so she said, “Crap, Cas, this tastes like kerosene. I didn’t at least teach you about good booze?”
“You did, but it’s not like that’s simple to get these days,” Castiel said easily. “Got a bottle of scotch I was saving for your birthday, but hey. This is a special occasion too, right?” He started to get out of his chair. Deanne grabbed him and he stopped, staring down at her hand on his. “Don’t,” she said. “This is fine—” and cut off short when he looked back up at her.
“I miss you,” Castiel said, so soft she almost couldn’t hear him. And there, there was the Cas she knew; his eyes were red-rimmed but they were his eyes, always too intense no matter what else. “I’m right here,” Deanne said, none too steadily.
“For how long?” Cas asked, like he didn’t want to know the answer.
“Zach said three days. It took me most of two to get here, so…a little more than a day, I guess, if he shows up on time.”
Cas let out a breath that sounded like he’d been punched. “A little more than a day,” he repeated. “All this time, and now I’ve got a little more than a day.”
“Cas,” Deanne said, and that was when she realized she could feel him trembling. “Cas, I’m serious. What happened?”
“Zachariah happened,” he said, all the false cheer and bravado gone. “The Apocalypse happened. You happened, Deanne, and you’re the part I should regret the most. But I don’t.” He looked down at their hands again. “All the rest of it comes from you, and I don’t regret it.”
“You should,” she said. Her voice was shaking now to match his. “It’s not just that you’re stoned, is it? Something’s really wrong.” Somehow she’d managed to screw Cas up too by dragging him into the trainwreck of her life and Sam’s. She remembered his voice, two months ago, years ago, saying And I did it, all of it, for you, and she just wanted to scream at him that she wasn’t worth it, whatever he’d given up.
“The angels left,” Cas said. “And my power, my Grace, just kind of drained away. And now, you know, I’m practically human. I mean, Dee, I’m all but useless. Last year I broke my foot, laid up for two months.” He met her eyes again, trying for a smile, but it came out a ghastly Joker grin. Deanne was still trying to breathe around the twist he’d put on the word ‘useless’, because she could hear her own inflection in it. She had told him that—that he was useless. And because he was Castiel, he believed her.
She tightened her grip on his hand and said, “So you’re human now. Welcome to the club.” It didn’t sound funny, or at least not funny enough to distract her from the image of beating her future self unconscious.
Castiel’s grin widened a bit. He said, “Thanks. Except I used to belong to a much better club. And now I'm powerless. I'm hapless, I'm hopeless. I mean, why the hell not bury myself in women and decadence, right?” Deanne wanted to close her eyes against his stare, but it would have been cowardice; she’d done this, so she could look at it. “It's the end, baby. That's what decadence is for. Why not bang a few gongs before the lights go out? But then that's, that's just how I roll.”
“OK,” Deanne said, even though it wasn’t. She stood, slightly awkward in her need to not let go of his hand; she could still feel him shaking, and it only got worse as she shoved the chair out of the way.
Deanne didn’t do chick flick moments. She hardly even hugged Sam except when one of them was just back from the dead. But she wasn’t going to let Cas tear himself up, not if there was anything she could do to distract him.
Cas drew breath to speak, but Deanne was faster. “Right now, you don’t have to miss me,” she said. “I’m right here, Castiel.”
“You never call me that anymore,” he said. Their faces were inches apart.
“Maybe she doesn’t. I’m not her yet.” Later, thinking about it, Deanne wasn’t sure which of them had moved; it might have been both. He still tasted like booze, but now she did too. After a few seconds she pulled away, just enough to meet his gaze. He smiled at her and said, “You’re supposed to close your eyes when you’re kissing someone, Dee.”
“Smartass,” she said, with no heat. She’d told him that, right before Raphael. “You kiss like me.”
“Who do you think taught me how?”
“You remember a lot from one lesson.”
Cas laughed at her, soft, but at least it was real laughter. “It wasn’t only one lesson. It’s been five years for us.” Which made sense; nothing like sex to deal with the tension after a bad fight, and she had an idea there’d been a lot of bad fights in the years she’d skipped.
“Deanne,” Cas said suddenly. She eyed him, hearing the start of a conversation she didn’t want to have. “You don’t have to—” Deanne rolled her eyes and kissed him hard, cutting off whatever ridiculous objection he was about to produce. He was just like Sam in that, overthinking everything.
“I know I don’t have to,” she said after a second, speaking into his lips. “How often do you see me do things I don’t want to do?” Cas laughed again, the tiniest breath, and said, “In that case, I do have a bed in here.” He had one hand under her shirts, his slender fingers running over the muscles of her back; she couldn’t remember when that had started, but she wasn’t going to object.
“Bed sounds good,” Deanne murmured. As they went through the main room Deanne gave the door a glance. “Are your, um, friends going to show up?” she asked, trying very hard not to sound judgmental about the prospect.
“People don’t bother me when my door’s closed,” Cas said, and kissed her again. He shoved her overshirt off her shoulders and she let it fall, then grabbed his shirt and tugged it up. They broke the kiss just long enough to take his shirt and her tee past their faces.
For long minutes they just stood at the foot of the bed, kissing. Cas ran his hands over her, finding every sensitive spot as if he knew exactly where they all were—which he did, and that was weird and frankly hot. Deanne had way less information to work with and had to fall back on trial and error, noting with some smugness that she didn’t seem to be making too many errors.
When she skated her fingers over the spot on his waist she remembered, Cas made a gratifying sound that was mostly inhale, bent slightly, and picked her up bodily with one arm around her thighs and the other across the small of her back. Deanne tried not to squeak in surprise as he dropped her on the bed. She’d never been a small woman, even if she wasn’t gigantic like Sam, but he handled her weight with casual ease; clearly Cas was still stronger than he looked, angel mojo or not.
Cas knelt to untie her boots. She hadn’t noticed him shedding his sandals, but he was barefoot now. “You wear too many clothes,” he said, glancing at her over the laces, half a smile on his lips. She grinned and said, “Could be worse. Could be a suit and tie. And trenchcoat.” Deanne remembered the first time; at about this point, he’d simply made their remaining clothes go away, and she could see him remembering too. To make up for it she unhooked her bra and shrugged it off, the grin spreading wider when his fingers stilled on the bootlaces for a second.
He pulled one boot off and made quick work of the other as Deanne ran her hand through his dark hair. Once the boots were off he stood and bent over her, hands on her shoulders to kiss her again. She bit his lower lip gently and he whined, the sound going straight to the pit of her stomach.
“I missed you, Dee,” Cas said quietly when they came up for air. “I missed you, and tomorrow you’ll be gone.”
“Don’t think about tomorrow,” she said, because there was nothing else to say. “Think about now. I’m here right now.” She pulled the drawstring of his pants out of its bow and shoved the waistband down. “Right here, Cas.” He was down to his briefs, and she trailed her hand along his waist and down to cup the heat of him in her fingers, drawing a low moan that made her shiver.
Deanne felt something in his mood change, then, and tilted her face up to try to draw him into another kiss. Castiel pulled back and she stilled, wondering what had gone wrong; after a second she identified his expression as speculative, rather than upset, and her eyes narrowed in confusion. “Wanna let me in on—” she started, but he put a hand over her mouth. “You don’t need to talk,” Cas said, lazy and as arrogant as she’d ever heard him sound.
Deanne blinked at him. Because one thing that her bar hookups never got to see was how much she liked it when guys got pushy in bed; Deanne was perfectly capable of getting off with plain vanilla sex, and it wasn’t a good idea to let someone you’d met an hour ago tie you to the bedposts, wouldn’t have been even if she were a guy. And it shouldn’t have surprised her that Cas knew about this too, except she sort of had the idea her future self was not so much with the sharing.
And there she stopped thinking, because Cas shoved her hard and suddenly flat on the bed, planted one hand in the center of her chest, and popped the button of her jeans with the other. Deanne squirmed, but yeah, stronger than he looked; it would take effort to get out from under that hand, and she honestly wasn't that interested in trying. He leaned over her and she thought he was going to kiss her, but instead he bent his head to speak directly into her ear. “Usually there’d be a lot of rules, but this is your first time so I’ll make it easy,” he said, his voice descending to the gravel-rough she was used to. “If you want it to stop, you tell me. Otherwise, you do what I say. Got it?” Distracted by her jeans moving down over her thighs, Deanne missed the question till he repeated it.
“Yeah,” she said, breathless. “Got it.” Cas bit her ear, just hard enough to sting, and said, “No talking, Deanne.” She tensed, but made herself relax again and reached for him, running her hands up and down his arms; she shifted her hips enough to let him get her underpants off as he went back to kissing her. He was only half on the bed, supporting his weight on one knee and the hand still warm on her sternum, and after a second he broke the kiss.
“Up,” he said shortly. Deanne glanced meaningfully down at his hand and back, and Cas gave her a half-smile as he moved it. She scooted up the bed until her head was within striking distance of the pillows and then put her hands over her head and stretched, chin up to bare her neck, back arcing off the mattress. She was rewarded with a catch in his breath, but when he spoke it was still the whiskey rasp that Deanne had been hot for pretty much since the first time she heard it, Castiel standing in a barn and telling her I’m the one who gripped you tight. “Keep your hands there,” he said. “It’s a good look for you.” Deanne pressed her palms to the rough wood of the wall and smiled at Cas as cheekily as she could manage.
Cas’s lips quirked. “You don’t need to talk to be a smartass, do you?” he asked as he settled next to her. She made big innocent eyes at him and shook her head, because really? Cas should know that. The effect was marred somewhat because she could feel him hard against her hip and it made her sigh; apparently his briefs had decided to spontaneously fuck off and die, and Deanne was really okay with that.
His hand had settled on her stomach, and now he stroked it up to her breast, his thumb rubbing across the nipple, the movement sending shocks to her spine that made her arch her back again. Then he bent his head and pulled the other nipple into his mouth, and Deanne choked back his name just in time. Cas murmured amused approval against her skin.
What he was doing with his tongue was distracting enough that she didn’t realize he’d moved his hand till he started brushing it along her thighs, light and teasing and she just knew it’d make her crazy sooner rather than later. Especially because he was carefully avoiding touching anything but the inner thighs.
They stayed just like that forever, Deanne hitching her hips up fruitlessly and Cas dragging his tongue back and forth over her nipple, and she kept enough of a hold on herself to not produce any actual words but she gave up on not making noise when Cas lifted his head and spoke.
“Mine,” he said, and she shivered. “As long as you're here, Deanne, you're mine.” His fingers trailed inward and settled gently over her and she whined in frustration and pushed up into his hand, because gentle was not what she was looking for. He chuckled and she opened her eyes (apparently they'd been closed, who knew?) and tried to glare at him. He smirked and rubbed down hard. Her head fell back into the mattress.
Last time (last time for her), he'd been going by “extensive knowledge of human anatomy.” This time, he knew exactly how to play her, when to pause for a second so she could catch her breath and when to be relentless, and she was panting like a runner and tense as a guitar string under his touch when the door crashed open and Deanne's own voice barked, “Cas, put your damn pants on, we've got a—shit.”
Cas froze. Deanne scrabbled for control, grabbed it, and sat up as fast as she could.
Her older self stood two steps inside Cas’s door, wearing an expression of dumbfounded hurt that was hardening into blankness even as Deanne watched. That expression needed a target before they’d get anything rational out of her, so Deanne threw herself on the grenade.
“Don’t you knock?” she snapped, and the other woman’s eyes left Cas to fasten on her, hooded and furious.
“Anything he’s got, I’ve seen,” the older Deanne said coolly. “Anything you’ve got I’ve seen. What the hell part of stay where I put you did you miss?”
“Screw that. You’d have done the same thing and you know it.”
“I have done the same thing.”
“I'm right here, Dee,” Cas said, though he sounded more tired than angry. He slid off the bed and padded over to the door, naked and completely unconcerned about it.
“Yeah, I can see that,” Deanne’s future self said as Castiel swung the door shut again. “What the hell were you doing? Did you think I just gave up on my mission today to come mess around?” Deanne started to protest but Cas held up a hand and she bit her lip. He cocked his head at the older version, the gesture much too familiar though he had one eyebrow hiked sardonically, and she said, “Fuck me, you knew. You knew, goddammit, Cas.”
“You’re damn right I knew,” he said; despite the words he sounded casual, amused. “How could I not? You want to be pissed about that, go ahead. Or you could get the hell over it and strip.” His sardonic tone made it a challenge, a gauntlet thrown on the floor between them. Deanne’s future self made a jerky movement that looked like it wanted to be heading for the door, stopped in the middle of it, and stood there for a long second, her fists clenching at her sides.
“Fine,” she said. “Fine, let’s do it your way.” Deanne let out the breath she’d been holding as the 2014 version of her yanked her overshirt from her shoulders and let it drop.
After that, things got a little nonlinear—that was a Sam kind of word, but it fit.
She remembered meeting her older self’s eyes, both of them naked as the day they were born, and having a moment of harmony so perfect it was like telepathy: Like this is the kinkiest thing I’ve ever done. She remembered wrapping herself around Castiel, her front to his back, while her older self settled in his lap. She remembered her hand tightening in someone’s hair as she came, and she didn’t know for sure whose it was and didn’t care. She remembered Cas shouting and shaking through his orgasm, and that the older Deanne was almost silent through hers.
Finally she was lying there, half-asleep, half on top of Cas and one arm draped over her older self’s midsection, when she heard the other woman say softly, “I got the Colt, Cas.”
Deanne tensed a little, and there was a long pause before Castiel said, “I’m so sorry, Deanne.”
“Yeah,” her older self said. “Yeah, me too.”