Archive of Our Own

“It’s Lucifer.”

Both of the brothers freeze where they’ve been moving around on the front bench, about to make their way out of the Impala now that it's parked. Castiel imagines a chill seeping into the cabin, a fog that chokes up the air vents and that wraps curling fingers around each of their necks. Powerless to stop it, and powerless to make the inanimate emotionlessness of it feel any sort of empathy that could sway it in their favor.

Lucifer is a selfish creature to the point that even his cruelty is aimless, and, more still, completely unpredictable. There is no game plan to make. The car is silent. Castiel’s stomach thrills to nausea.

“Come again?” Dean’s voice is the first thing brave enough to break the quiet. Still, none of them move.

“It’s Lucifer.”

“Are you sure?”

And it is with sickness that Castiel responds, “Yes, I’m sure.”

More silence.

Castiel’s eyes drift to the back of Sam’s head where his long hair curls at the end, just brushing the edge of the neckline of his jacket. His shoulders have started to rise until they’re unnaturally close to his ears, and Castiel can hear where his heartbeat is frantic and measly. It makes Castiel want to reach a hand out from this angle to wrap around the base of Sam’s neck and squeeze until all of that tension goes away. Until Sam is smiling again, floppy and loose while he complains that the Wendy’s they stopped at put too many onions in his salad even though it's obvious that he doesn’t actually care that much. It’s the principle, he’d say like that explained everything, while Dean would roll his eyes and respond, I thought you loooooved your vegetables, Jolly Green.

He wishes he could drive them all back home. Back the road they came down, the Impala shifted into reverse so that they wouldn’t even have to see the idea of Lucifer in the rearview mirror. As though they were all an old film reel that could be rewound until the state of Georgia is behind them and this whole thing is nothing but a bad dream.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel says to the soft hair on Sam’s head.

From his spot on the middle of the bench looking forward, Castiel can see where Dean raises his hand, clenched into a fist, in the left periphery of his vision. He almost expects Dean to bang it against the steering wheel. Instead, he just raps it once, twice, against thin air, and then drops it to his side again.

Dean takes a deep inhale.

“You’re not going in here,” he says. Even though he’s not addressing anyone in particular, it’s obvious that he’s talking to Sam. And when Sam turns to look at Dean with his chin jutted forward and his eyes sharp, Dean shakes his head. “No. Sam, you’re not going in there.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

“You’re gonna stop me, then?”

Dean tilts his head to the side in the way he does when he’s angry, and it makes Castiel shift in the backseat. He really wishes the brothers wouldn’t fight. Let’s just go home.

“You can’t be serious,” Dean bites. “This isn’t time to fuck around and find out, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed that or not.”

“I’m not sitting in the car like a damn dog while you and Cas get killed out there.”

Castiel shifts again.

Dean grits his teeth. “Cas, tell Sam he’s not going.” He doesn’t take his eyes off Sam when he says it.

“I-”

“Exactly.”

“Sam can make his own decisions, Dean.”

Dean finally turns so that his face is no longer in profile and he’s looking at Castiel over his own right shoulder. He’s scowling in something closer to irritation than to fury. “What, so you’re taking his side on this?”

And if Dean wants to be a bitch, Castiel can be a bitch, too.

He guffaws once in his throat. “Yes. Actually, I am. Sam knows his own limits and deserves to have them respected, especially in a situation like this. Of course I don’t want him to go. Frankly, I don’t want any of us to go. It’s not like this sort of thing normally ends in our favor. But if Lucifer has some poor person trapped in there, I don’t see another choice. And if Sam wants to come with us, he’s coming.”

Dean’s lips pull up in distaste but he doesn’t argue any further. He just grunts.

“And I’m coming with you,” Sam says with finality.

Dean shakes his head. “I don’t like it.”

“None of us likes it,” Castiel mutters.

Sam pops the passenger door open and starts climbing out. Just like that, the conversation ends as quickly as it had started. Castiel follows suit, scooting across the smooth leather of the bench until he pulls the latch of his own door and sticks his right leg out of the opening, then the left. The movements are still so awkward and uncoordinated. Sitting cramped inside of this little moving box with wheels and then trying to crawl out of it. He feels a certain fondness for the Impala, but mostly he just misses his wings.

Mostly, he just feels himself falling through the gaps of the in-betweens. No longer holy and not even human. An exotic animal to gaze at through museum glass.

He sighs as he stands upright fully, Jimmy’s dress shoes sinking ever so slightly into the damp grass and the mud underneath it. He hears Dean’s door open and shut as well, and then all three of them stand gathered around the safety of the Impala. The moment is holding its breath for all of them now. Even the sky refuses to keep dropping rain even though the clouds are heavy and gray over them.

Together they stare towards the abandoned warehouse that waits for them like a terrible, terrible omen. Castiel can’t help but feel cheated, as he has all of the ‘equipment’ to experience fear and yet his body does not shake from it. He wishes he was shaking right now. Shaking with the panic he feels at the thought of seeing Lucifer again, because, at the very least, it would be proof of the emotion.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sam swipe his palm down the thigh of his jeans, and there is a tremble in his fingers when he does it. Castiel knows that men aren’t supposed to hold each other's hands, even if they are friends, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to reach out to Sam now. There’s not much he can offer with the way his grace is waning, but at the very least he would like to offer comfort. But just because he would like to doesn’t mean he should. Again, just another aspect of humanity that he lags to grasp. What is appropriate to do versus what he wants to do, and why that dissonance is so painful.

“Should we get a game plan together?” Dean asks like it’s more of a courtesy than an actual question.

And surely enough, Sam answers, “Would it even matter if we did?”

Dean puckers his lips so tight that they pop when he releases the pressure. “Cas, you got anything you wanna add?”

He just shakes his head, still staring at the warehouse. “Lucifer isn’t as strong as he used to be. His power is depleting with the rest of the angels.”

“Okay, well, we’ll just have to work with it.” Dean lets out a long breath. “Ready?”

Sam doesn’t answer as he sets an expectant pace for all three of them as he starts towards the warehouse.

Castiel is slightly surprised when Dean doesn’t just follow after him, huffing and puffing in resigned irritation. Instead, for just a second, his eyes meet Castiel’s where they both remain standing still. Dean looks worried and Castiel feels worried and so they share a moment of worry between them in this quiet prologue before Hell breaks loose.

Dean doesn’t need to say anything for Castiel to recognize this as a check-in. The slight raise of Dean’s eyebrows practically speaks for itself. You good?

Castiel nods. Dean nods back. In this unspoken agreement, they finally start following Sam’s path where the man is a few yards ahead of them already.

The warehouse is large and looming in front of them, only getting bigger and more dreadful as they draw nearer to it. Castiel’s grace can feel the full abrasion of Lucifer’s presence and it turns his vessel- body- stiff with the urge to run away. Grab the brothers, it says, and get them somewhere safe.

But neither Sam nor Dean slows down, so Castiel does not slow down either.

When they finally stand together in front of the rotting wooden door to the very right of the warehouse's long outer wall, seemingly the only visible entryway, they all pause again as they stare at it. Castiel hears Dean inhale as he reaches for the doorknob.

“Alright. Well,” he says. He then looks up from his own hand to evaluate Sam’s face and then Castiel’s. Whatever he sees makes him change course from his original thought, because all he finishes with is, “Mind your P’s and Q’s.”

With that, he twists the doorknob and enters through the warehouse’s threshold like he’s walking into a bar and not his own possible demise.

Sam follows suit while Castiel rounds out the line.

Usually, Jimmy’s body breathes without much of Castiel’s input, similar to the unmediated rhythm of a ticking clock. In this second, however, breathing feels too loud, like too much of a vulnerability, and Castiel shuts down the buffering oxygen flow as he fully enters the building.

He’s not sure what he expected to see, though perhaps he had some morbid ideas rattling around in his head. Maybe blood, maybe holy fire, maybe some poor soul strung up at the hands of the Devil.

But Lucifer stands alone in the center of the warehouse. When he sees them enter, he smiles like he’s been waiting for them.

Castiel wants to shake. Shake. Shake. His hands are so still.

His entire being is stuffed into a body one thousand times too small. And he feels what this body should feel. Emotion that he was not built to process but that this little body was. And still, the damn thing won’t shake.

“Gentlemen!” Lucifer calls merrily. “So glad you could finally join me. I’ve been waiting here for hours now. I was-” He frowns. “Well, I was starting to think you weren’t gonna show.”

“What is this?” Dean says.

Brave Dean. Castiel has gotten a front seat to watching that bravery, at every step, when even Castiel was stirred by fear. When Castiel had seen so much and known so much, huge and unkillable, Dean’s courage had still made Castiel look cowardly in comparison. It is beautiful. It is miraculous. It makes Castiel want to throw his arm out across Dean’s chest and step in front of him in protection against whatever Lucifer’s reaction may be to the taunt.

But Lucifer doesn’t lunge for the fight. He just clicks his tongue and says, “That’s no way to greet a friend, Dean.”

“Did I miss a lesson in slang? ‘Cuz last time I checked, friend didn’t mean someone who wants to rip your guts out and then feed ‘em to you.”

“Now, are you talking about me or yourself?”

“Does it matter what direction the torture goes in?”

Lucifer sighs. “I guess not.”

Castiel decides it’s time to stop ‘beating around the bush’. He is too anxious to not have answers at this exact moment. The sooner they know what Lucifer wants, what his angle is, the higher chance they have of escaping unscathed.

“You’ve been killing people here. Why?”

Lucifer’s eyes drift to Castiel for the first time. That face. It is dreadful.

“Castiel, right?”

“Don’t play stupid. I know you know who I am.”

“Wait, have we met before?”

Castiel’s brows furrow as he growls, “Yes, we-” and then he stops when he realizes that Lucifer is trying to get a rise out of him on purpose. “Clearly you lured us here. What do you want?”

“Can’t we just catch up? Chat? I mean, it’s not like we’re brothers or anything,” Lucifer exaggerates. “For instance, you don’t even know that I came to Georgia for the irony of it. Like the song! I’ve been listening to human music and- just- really sinking my teeth into the culture. Color me impressed by the creativity there. The Devil Went Down to Georgia by- Who was it?” He snaps his fingers and his smile falls to a frown. “Think. Think. Who was that?”

“The Charlie Daniels Band,” Dean says flatly.

Lucifer laughs. “Right. The Charlie Daniels Band. And I mean, wow, what a way with story-telling.”

“Is this going somewhere?” Castiel asks through tight teeth.

“Don’t rush me,” Lucifer says. “Here I am talking about story-telling, and you’re ruining my monologue. Anyway- what are the odds of that happening, ya know? Completely fantastical, but here we are! The Devil’s literally in Georgia! How about them apples?”

He tilts his head in thought that seems all too calculated, even as his tone is nonchalant when he adds, “And all that talk about fiddles.”

Castiel’s stomach starts sinking slowly and then much, much faster. Lucifer locks eyes with him.

“Wait a second- Castiel, weren’t you a fiddle player?”

Dean actually laughs out loud behind him, so sudden that it echoes sharply off of all of the high ceilings and metal walls around them. Again, Castiel almost wishes he could shake. If he was capable of a cold sweat, the sort that lingers in the armpits and the hairline, he would be doing it. Instead, he is just frozen. Emotions that get stuck inside him, turning his intestines to paste.

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t know if he could, or even what he would say.

Because it had been so long now, since the first time that he smeared the name of his father in order to be closer to the humans and their silly, emotional hearts, that he had forgotten it altogether. That exact night- January 19, 1680- when it had been spitting snow but that hadn’t stopped the bundled up Italian men from rallying around one of the pubs, the late night cold being staved off by a burning fire, a copious amount of alcohol, and the sound of laughter. The sound of music playing.

It was shrill. Mournful and magnificent as Castiel had angled his eyes downward. He wanted to know them, down there. He didn’t understand- not why the human played and not why the angels laughed at them for doing so. No, Castiel didn’t understand any of it at all.

Especially not how metal strings attached to a hollowed out piece of wood could finally be enough to have him checking over his own shoulder before he stepped down onto Earth. He had found his vessel a hundred miles off in Rome, a young man at the age of twenty who had dark hair and dark eyes, just starting to grow facial hair that would be thick enough to pass off as a beard in a few months' time. His name had been Agnolo, and he had great splendor in his heart when Castiel had come upon him. He had said his mother had named him after the angels.

With a blink, Castiel transported them both to the little pub in the no-name countryside of Italy. He emerged from the crevice between the pub and the next building over, some sort of trading post or the likes, and he stood his fresh body next to the circle of hooting men. The one in the center of the commotion, closest to the blazing fire, was a man with wiry gray hair on his head and a violin held steady under the firm hook of his jaw.

The man made the instrument cry. Agnolo’s eyes turned damp and unnaturally wide, no matter how fitfully Castiel’s grace tried to keep the emotional turmoil in him at bay. All it had taken was a prolonged A Major chord to shake the holy power of it loose.

And when he asked if he may have a turn with the instrument, it had burned humanity into his fingertips the moment he touched it.

How naive he had been to think that Heaven had not been watching him.

“Cas? Playing the fiddle?” Dean says incredulously when it becomes obvious Castiel isn’t going to say anything. “What’s next, you’re gonna tell me the cow jumped over the moon?”

But Lucifer ignores Dean as if he had never said anything at all. No, his sharp eyes are locked gleefully onto Castiel’s face. Castiel wonders if it is terrified.

“No, no, you were, weren’t you? In Italy, right? I bet you got spanked really badly for that one.” Lucifer smiles. “But, you know, that’s why I always liked you so much, brother. You were one of the few who really knew how to have a good time.”

If Castiel were to puke the way he wanted to, his grace would not even allow the bile to rise from his stomach.

He holds himself steady in a way that he doesn’t feel nor believe as he says, “Is there a point to this conversation? Or any of this?”

“Yeah, there is. I’ve been getting… honestly, bored recently.”

A pause. “Bored…”

“Bored,” Lucifer exaggerates. “Killing people just doesn’t have the same ring that it used to. I think I’m building up a tolerance or something. So I thought, hey, why not sprinkle a few murders around and see if the Winchesters come running. Maybe that’ll cheer me up. And now here you are.” He smiles. “Wow.”

“So this was all some sort of game to you?” Dean’s voice is rough from behind Castiel’s left shoulder.

“Dean, Dean. It’s always a game to me, champ. I’m supposed to be the fun one.”

That makes Castiel laugh harshly in the back of his throat.

Lucifer scowls. “What, you don’t agree?”

“Uriel was the funny one. You were… Well.”

The words make Lucifer’s jaw tick. He purses his lips forwards and nods. “I see how it is. You don’t want to play my games with me. Maybe I just need to add some stakes to incentivize you.” And then he looks away from Castiel to say, “Oh, Sammy!” and Castiel goes cold.

“How have you been, kid? We haven’t caught up in ages.”

“I’ve been busy,” Sam responds dryly.

Be strong, Castiel wills, be strong. You’re very strong.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” Lucifer tuts. “I think the old proverb is right, unfortunately. It seems like you got… dull.” He looks between the brothers, and Castiel barely stops himself from standing directly in front of them. Lucifer should not even be allowed to lay eyes on them. “Both of you got dull. Ugh. Kids are so desensitized to violence these days. I guess it doesn’t really matter though, because I think Castiel is my best bet at entertainment.”

Panic seizes Castiel’s throat. He watches Lucifer snap his fingers and suddenly both Sam and Dean are held immobilized where they stand.

Dean shouts and Lucifer snaps his fingers again, silencing him.

“Do you ever shut up?” He asks. Then, sickeningly, he turns his attention back to Castiel. “Now that we have some decent bargaining chips, will you agree to play my game with me?”

“What game?”

“I already told you, it’s just like the song. We’ll have our own duel of fiddles at the hickory stump.”

The words make little sense to Castiel, but it doesn’t seem to matter because Lucifer doesn’t wait for a response before he snaps his fingers and suddenly two violins appear in the space, one at each of their respective feet. The violin beside Lucifer is stained a cherry-red, unnaturally vibrant in the dank gray space of the warehouse. And the violin beside Castiel’s feet…

It is the same one that he played in 1680.

He flinches when his eyes meet it.

“Awww, c’mon,” Lucifer says, “it’s nice, isn’t it? Your old friend.”

Castiel glares up from under the umbrella of his eyelashes and if looks could kill, Lucifer would be slaughtered. “So you want me to play the violin for you.”

“Not just play it. I’m looking for a little competition, not a riveting solo performance. Winner gets to decide whether the Winchester boys get creatively mutilated or not.”

There’s cold and awful dread settling inside of Castiel, but he doesn’t have the luxury of feeling it when there is so much at stake. So much on the line over a musical battle because Lucifer decided he was bored enough to stir up dust once again. We should have just gone home. We should have turned around. Dean could be making pasta for dinner right now.

“Since I’m the one proposing our duel, I’ll have some manners and offer to go first. That way you can know what you’re up against,” Lucifer says sarcastically. With that, he stoops over to retrieve his red violin and bow from the floor. “I’m thinking something freestyle. Or, no, maybe Beethoven? Bluegrass? The world is my oyster.”

He secures the base of the fiddle between his scruffy chin and his shoulder, rocking his head back and forth as if contemplating his choices. Then he laughs. “Sam, Dean, you guys referee for us.” When neither brother answers nor moves, Lucifer adds, “Aw, I’m just kidding.”

Then he starts up his song.

There is no slow start of a drawn bow. One moment the warehouse is silent, and the next a melody akin to a jig fills the room. Jumpy and haunting, Lucifer taps his foot to the beat against the concrete floor. The notes are high-pitched where they screech out. It vibrates radically against Castiel’s grace in a way that makes him want to cover his ears. Close his eyes. Grab the brothers and walk out of this place like he never walked into it.

The tune turns more rapid until Lucifer’s hand is a blur where he moves the bow. Barely even music anymore, the noise becomes closer to violence against the instrument than it does to playing it. There’s a grin across Lucifer’s face as he does it. His tongue sticks out between the set of his teeth and he watches the movement of his bow with the same vicious fascination as a sadistic child who hurts small animals for fun.

A hair on the bow frays off with a ping, but Lucifer pays it no mind as he transitions from his sawing motion back into something resembling a melody again. His finale is an exact replica of a portion of Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen. The low notes transcend into high notes so clear and radical that the air seems to peel.

Castiel grits his teeth and wonders what he is going to do. This is not a game that he can win, not because he is unskilled, but because Lucifer has control of the board in every way possible. It does not matter how well Castiel plays. It’s not about that. It’s about Lucifer’s boredom and his quest to cure it. He turns over his brain until it sloshes in his skull. Think. Think.

Just then, Lucifer plays the final long note of his performance. Holding his violin and broken bow out to the side, he bows dramatically.

“Thank you. Thank you all so much,” he says though no one is applauding. “I truly felt like that was a performance of a lifetime.” He stands upright once again. “Now, I believe it’s your turn, Castiel. Take it away.”

Under Lucifer’s heavy, watchful stare, Castiel stoops to pick up the old violin, the neck of it in his left hand and the bow of it in his right. He studies them, clenched in his fist. The wood is fine and polished, delicate and beautiful. Lighter than one might imagine.

When he rights himself, Lucifer makes a motion with his hand to indicate that Castiel should ‘get on with it’.

Clenching his jaw tight, he puts the blunt end of the fiddle to his neck and adjusts his chin to sit over the base of that smooth wood. It feels wonderful and that is terrifying. These days, he has done far worse against Heaven than playing a simple tune with a few drunken Italians, but that doesn’t stop this from feeling like maybe it was his first spiraling step towards his own demise. Would he have stopped himself, if he had known? Where would he have been if he had not eaten this apple?

Was it worth it to create something? To feel anything, any emotion, any awe, for even that split second?

That winter night when the angels had caught him in his human error, they had wiped him clean. He should not remember anything, yet the strings of this fiddle still fit snugly against the soft give of his fingerpads. The grip he has on the bow and on the neck of the instrument is familiar in a way he cannot explain. It reminds him of the smell of the Bunker, of Sam’s broad shoulders, of the crow’s feet at Dean’s eyes. Experiences that are completely removed from Heaven because they make Castiel feel, but that are home nonetheless, even as they turn their noses up defiantly to the idea of holiness.

Lucifer’s eyes are watching him with a cold amusement as he waits for Castiel to make move in their duel. A chess piece on a chess board filled only with the opposing color.

“Let’s hear it then, Johnny.”

And Castiel takes a breath, and he thinks about the Winchester brothers stuck in place behind him, helpless to do anything but watch. He thinks about how much he loves them- even at their worst, even at their best, he loves them. It’s a love that tears the holy right out of him, just like this exact violin had all those years ago. So he will win this battle for them and make this instrument cry with the love he feels for them.

He settles the bow gently against the strings and pulls it down on a long, sweet note that sings its way to the highest points of the warehouse’s ceiling. The mechanics of the instrument are lost on him, but it doesn’t matter so much that he cannot technically play as it does that he is being called to create. Much like speaking a language, his grace fills in the gaps in his knowledge for him.

The movement comes from his shoulder which serves as a pulley for the rest of his arm, where it begins to push and glide against the sensitive membrane of the strings. Again, a long note is drawn from the body. Another, then another, until a melody of light starts to emerge. He closes his eyes against the weight of Lucifer’s gaze as the weight of the violin becomes more and more familiar. When it sings out against his bow, he almost wonders if the reason he was so punished for playing on the winter night was because the Heavens knew just how addictive the power of creation could be.

Because creation does not have to be sinister. It can be emotion brought out into the world for others to hear. He wants Sam and Dean to hear this. It is for them.

He sends the instrument higher, faster, tighter, as he spins his song. The collar of his dress shirt presses against his neck and the blazer of his suit pulls tight over his shoulders when he draws his elbow back and he is an animal on the hunt as he turns Lucifer into his prey. Opening his eyes, he locks in on Lucifer’s face.

Castiel takes a step forward. His melody quickens like giving chase.

Lucifer watches with intrigue at Castiel’s approach but doesn’t move from his spot in an effort to seem unintimidated. Good. That is crucial to Castiel’s slowly raveling plan.

Another step. One more. He and Lucifer are quite literally toe to toe where the very ends of their shoes touch each other. Lucifer must find it funny because he laughs just inches from Castiel’s face.

But it is Castiel who makes the fiddle cackle. Jumping, shrieking, awful, joyful peels.

And on the next down sweep of the bow, Castiel allows his angel blade to manifest inside of his coat sleeve, where the hilt falls into the grip of his fist from the gravity of the angle at the exact moment that he drops the bow. The wood of the bow clatters to the ground, but there is no time for reaction from any surrounding parties because it is on the upstroke of what would be his next note played that he plunges the blade through the flesh of Lucifer’s stomach and up until the tip of it sits below the hard shell of Lucifer’s sternum. Castiel’s left hand is still wrapped securely around the neck of the violin.

He doesn’t have a moment to lose on calling out to the brothers, and so it is with a weak cough of his grace that he forces their eyes shut. The supernova of Lucifer would surely blind them. It is enough to have even Castiel squinting, as Lucifer’s vessel coughs as though it were a real human dying before it explodes into the light of hellfire. It’s as though a bomb had gone off, a shockwave sent out from the precise square footage of the vessel that had contained the Devil. Castiel’s own vessel’s teeth rattle with it, while his grace clings to Jimmy’s skull in order to stop itself from being stripped cleanly away from the body.

Behind him, Sam and Dean shout in confusion and fear. The air rings with scald and divine radiation. He pulls his angel blade back towards himself and Lucifer’s vessel falls.

Suddenly, everything is silent again.

“Cas?” Dean cries out.

When Castiel fully opens his eyes, he’s surprised to see that the warehouse around them has been unphased by the decimation that had just occurred. Not even the spiderwebs in the rafters seem out of place. He looks downwards and Lucifer’s vessel is crumbled at Castiel’s feet. The burn of magnificent wings scars the floor, so huge that the singe of them crawls up onto the metal of the warehouse's wall as well.

“Cas!”

It’s Sam this time. The call snaps Castiel back into his body with a start and he turns to the brothers and drops the violin to the ground as something like relief starts to unravel inside of him. Relief so giant, so unbelieving of what has just occurred, that he is unable to grapple with it at this exact moment. He forces it at bay while he raises a hand in a power of grace that allows Sam and Dean to open their eyes.

Once they are free to see again, both Sam and Dean look around the warehouse frantically. Castiel rushes to them.

“Are you alright?” Castiel demands.

Dean’s eyes take in the burn of Lucifer’s wings on the floor, on the wall, and when they land back on Castiel’s face they’re wide enough to bulge. “What the fuck just happened?”

“I-” Castiel thinks he knows what happened. He thinks that he hopes, but there’s no way this was it; that this completely unnecessary and arbitrary meeting that only even occurred because the Devil himself was bored resulted in the killing of Lucifer once and for all. “I believe Lucifer is...”

“You-” Sam interrupts. He leans to the side slightly to peer around Castiel in order to see where Lucifer’s vessel is now laying in a heap. “Cas, did you just kill Lucifer? Because- Because he looks pretty dead.”

Castiel shakes his head. “He was cocky. Too cocky. He didn’t see it coming. It was- I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You did good, is what you did,” Dean finally says, like he’s shaking himself out of a trance. He’s still staring at the burnt scars of Lucifer’s wings. “That was- Christ.”

“Loud,” Sam clarifies.

“Loud,” Dean agrees.

“Yes. We need to go.” Castiel looks at their surroundings. The warehouse, Lucifer’s body, the wing marks, and the two violins lying prone on the cement floor. “It’s only a matter of time before the nearby neighborhoods start looking for the source of the blast. I don’t particularly want to be here when they find it.”

The brothers nod in tandem as Castiel extends both of his hands to help each of them stand respectively. Once they are upright, Sam claps him on the shoulder.

Dean wanders over towards Lucifer’s body just to kick it as if to make sure it’s dead. When it doesn’t move, he kicks it harder out of spite. Then Dean’s eyes rove from the corpse until they land on the fiddle Castiel had dropped just a second ago.

“The fiddle of gold,” Dean says, voice somewhere between awe and amusement as he walks to it. He bends to pick it up and inspects it for damages, rotating it between his hands. “Well, you beat the Devil, Cas, so- Guess it’s yours now.”

Before Castiel can respond to that, Dean is already hoofing it towards the door they entered through, the neck of the violin held in his right fist. “We can leave the other one for the cops to find. I’m sure that’ll be a real headscratcher, huh? Bird-Man Killed By Mozart. Some new podcast material for the folks who like that sorta thing.” He turns over his shoulder, “Are you guys coming or what?”

Castiel shares a look with Sam, who rolls his eyes, and they walk out after Dean into the cloudy light being cast onto the world.

As they sludge through the muddy grass leading them back to the Impala, Castiel cannot help but hope that this is one of the many things the brothers will not talk about. When something happens on a case that is either benign enough or haunting enough that no one mentions it once it is all said and done. Ahead of him, the violin sways back and forth with the motion of Dean’s arm with each step that he takes. Castiel doesn’t think this will be one of those unspeakable things, but he can still hope.

Alas, it’s only after piling into the Impala and driving a good ten miles out of the radius of danger that Dean throws a look over his shoulder to Castiel in the backseat. “So when were you gonna tell us you’re classically trained?”

“That was awesome,” Sam enthuses. “Ya know, now that I’m not being held hostage and terrified for my life. I think that was Top 5 coolest things ever done with a violin. And unlike Dean, I actually listen to enough classical music to know that.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re a fucking dweeb.”

Sam reaches over to flick the underside of Dean’s nose, which makes the whole car lurch as Dean jerks the steering wheel. He rights it into place while he curses under his breath before smacking Sam over the head. As if nothing had happened, he continues, “Cas, we should get you on Oprah as a child prodigy.”

“Yeah, but- seriously- what was Lucifer talking about? When were you in Italy?”

Castiel is silent because he wants to be silent. The violin is sitting upright on the middle of the front bench between Dean and Sam so that the scroll and tuning pegs of it stick up like the head of a person. It taunts him because it is a beastly thing at the same time that it is nothing more than a complex interweaving of different pieces of wood.

“Cas?” Dean says. He’s peering back through the rearview mirror.

“Lucifer did not challenge me to a violin duel by happenstance,” Castiel finally answers bluntly.

He stares forward through the front windshield as they speed down some forgettable state route. The rain that had been hesitant to fall is starting to come down now. Little pinpoint dings against the roof of the Impala. Dean turns the windshield wipers on like an afterthought.

“I was in Italy shortly after the violin was invented. I was- curious. I shouldn’t have been. I wasn’t supposed to be able to feel something as… mundane as curiosity. It was the first time I came to Earth without direct orders from Heaven.” His jaw is tense. His eyes are wide, unseeing against the blur of the increasing rain. “They-“ He stops. “It got me sent back to… ‘Bible Camp’. Lucifer knew this. His idea of fun was forcing me into a situation where I had no choice but to relive my original sin against Heaven.”

Now, it is the whole cabin that’s quiet.

“Geez,” Sam says with genuine sympathy. He eyeballs the instrument beside him. “And this was the same violin you played?”

“I don’t know how Lucifer dug it up, but yes, it’s the same one I played in Italy.”

The car is silent again.

Then, from the driver’s side, “Do you want me to pull over and bust it to toothpicks against the guardrail?” Dean’s tone is too casual for the very real threat that Castiel understands it to be.

He stares at the scroll as he genuinely contemplates Dean’s offer. But he is not regretful over the way he has fallen from Heaven or how this violin becomes a symbol for that crash, he is just left Othered by it. He is not devastated by his choices, he is just lost.

He wonders how far away from home the little violin is. Probably just as far as Castiel himself.

It’s with that thought that he finally says, “No. No, we should keep it.”

Dean’s eyes flick to him in the mirror again.

“You sure?”

“Yes, I… I did enjoy playing it. That was part of the problem in the first place.” He follows it up with a joke because that is what you’re supposed to do when you say something too honest and it makes you uncomfortable. “Not to mention it’s the fiddle that defeated the Devil.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees like he’s warming to the sentiment after being so cold, “you’re right. Not every day you get a trophy to go along with a big win. Maybe we’ll put it on one of the display shelves in the library or something.”

“Get a plaque,” Sam adds.

“Ooooooh, see, now that’s good. That’s classy.”

It continues like this as the rain comes down; Dean and Sam throwing ideas at each other about what to do with the 17th-century violin, asking Castiel which of their hair-brained schemes would suit it best. And when Castiel looks down at the hands he has clasped together in his lap, there is no tremor where there ought to be one.

He smiles. Everything is as awful and exhilarating and terrifying and beautiful and as okay as the two brothers in the front seat, safe.

…

The Bunker is always friendly in its welcome, but this time around Castiel doesn’t know if he’s ever been so relieved to walk down those winding metal stairs into the Map Room.

Home and safe. All three of them. Minus one Devil. Plus one fiddle.

The math is interesting.

There’s a bounce in Dean’s step as he bumbles around the library, muttering about measurements and needing wood and nails and tools. Clicking his tongue as he thinks out loud about the trophy shop in town that does all the trophies for the local high school football team, and whether or not they do custom plaques.

All of them seem lighter in general as the truth of what has happened sinks in. Lucifer is finally dead. It feels impossible, and yet Castiel knows the sickening curl of ash and decay that occurs when an angel’s grace is annihilated, and he knows what happened earlier today in that warehouse was exactly that.

So the celebratory drinking starts, something that even Castiel gets in on. Warm in the safety of the concrete kitchen. Sam toasts to him on the first round of beers. “To Castiel, the best damn fiddle player and most badass angel in the garrison.”

“That’s right,” Dean agrees as their bottles clink

Three days later when Castiel walks into the library, the violin sits on a homemade shelf on display amongst the book stacks. A plaque is screwed into the center of the wood that reads The Fiddle of Gold.

…

Things slow down. A week passes in relative silence in terms of great threats or vampires in need of staking in some obsolete town in Connecticut. Perhaps they are all riding so high on Lucifer’s death that not even Dean has started to feel stagnant yet. Usually, the six day mark of relaxation is when he becomes antsy, when his eyes start scanning news articles online looking for something to scratch the itch. Or maybe just something loud enough to drown out the noise in his own head.

But Dean seems content to pad around the Bunker in his slippers and his robe well into the afternoon, only changing when he needs to run out for groceries or to pick up a package for Sam from the post office. As for Sam, he goes for his runs and reads his one-thousand-page book about the intricacies of the judiciary system and smiles easily.

It’s very good. Castiel sticks around more than he leaves, trying to soak up this precious stillness hanging in the air. When he does fly off, it’s only for a few hours before the siren song of Dean and Sam watching The Andy Griffith Show calls him back in.

And every time he walks through the library, he avoids looking at the violin too directly.

Out of his periphery, it taunts him. Not in ridicule, but in the way that he itches to pick it up again. It had been so lovely to hold it, even in the drastic circumstances that had brought it back into his hands.

What is stopping him from playing it now? Nothing more than his own shame most likely. But shame is big. Just a single word, but with a power to leave even the strongest men frozen, quaking, stomping every frayed piece of themselves back into place. Castiel is no better. He is no braver.

But his emotions ache in his chest every time he scans the bookshelves looking for something written in Enochian, knowing that the violin is just there over his shoulder. It takes another four days for his courage to get the better of him.

A moment that’s quiet, just past eight in the evening on a Sunday, has his steps hesitating to a halt in front of the instrument. He looks around the room, left then right, as if someone would have shown up in the two seconds that he’s stopped to consider the fiddle. Like if there was someone there, they would be catching Castiel in the act of something heinous.

It’s with this unshakable feeling of someone watching- someone is always watching, or at least they used to be- that he swipes the violin and bow from the display and holds each piece in either hand. Okay. Alright. Lightning has not yet struck him where he stands.

For a moment, all he does is hold them. They have a specific weight and feel that is unique to this exact instrument alone in its splendid craftsmanship. Never before has he had time alone with it like this. Free to study it to his heart’s content, or to even play a note on it. Play an entire concerto. There’s no longer anyone to punish him or look at him strangely for these desires.

Still, he finds himself stalling for another full minute before checking over his shoulders again- checking for what, he’s not sure. Only then does he raise the violin until it rests just below the hinge of his jaw.

He takes a breath. He closes his eyes. He pulls the bow downward against the violin’s strings.

F4.

Again, he lifts the bow and places it down. Another long, low note. It sounds solemn. But, so what if it is? Who is to say that Castiel is not solemn? That he is not mournful of what has happened to him and what it has shaped him into; just off-kilter from what is considered to be understood or acceptable from either side of the war he comes from. He exists in uncanniness. He feels, but he doesn’t shake.

The violin trembles in his grip for him as he makes it sing out his ache.

What interesting irony that the little instrument that caused all of this suffering is what he’s now using to express it?

He allows his body to slump just slightly in meditation as he continues playing his song. Maybe it’s not even his, exactly. Now that he’s hearing the notes out loud, they’re strangely familiar, almost like he can taste the remnants of its origins on his tongue. When he shifts his thoughts from side to side to search through all of the information that Metatron had forced into his mind, he finds the little piece that seems to have wormed its way up through his subconscious.

Just then, footsteps make their way around the corner and towards the two short stairs at the base of the library. The noise makes Castiel pause mid-draw so that the note is choked off from the echoing wood of the room. It’s Dean who appears a few yards down in the doorway. He’s not wearing his robe, but he’s wearing a soft t-shirt and dark gray sweatpants, slippers firmly on his feet. Castiel is nestled in the back corner, so that Dean’s eyes have to rove from a distance as he takes in the sight in front of him, and Castiel doesn’t move because he doesn’t know if he wants Dean to see him like this or if he wants to run away.

“Came back to the fiddle, huh?” Dean calls, friendly.

Castiel clears his throat. “Um. Yes.”

“What song was that one?”

“I believe it’s called Mercy, written by someone named Max Richter.”

Dean’s eyebrows raise as though in commentary on the song's very specific and apt name, but he doesn’t actually speak on any of the thoughts he’s having out loud. Maybe that itself is a small mercy.

Castiel is just about to lower the instrument when Dean says, “Don’t stop on my account. Mind if I listen in?”

And the thing is, Castiel doesn’t. Dean’s company is a pleasure, it is just- shame is a peculiar thing in the way it curls up. It’s trying to make a home in his throat right now at the thought of Dean seeing him in this weakened, fallen state, where he holds the trinket that caused him enough curiosity to disobey in his hands like it is nothing.

“No, I don’t mind.”

For a moment, Dean looks at him a little more thoughtfully. He makes a gesture over his shoulder. “I can leave if you want.”

“I truly don’t mind, Dean.”

Satisfied, it’s only then that Dean approaches in a shuffling manner. Across the length of the floor, over to one of the chairs that he pulls out from under the table nearest to Castiel. He wiggles as he gets comfortable, and then he settles over the creaky wood like a blanket.

It’s with a hesitant grip that Castiel raises his bow again. He knows rather obviously that he’s fully dressed, but he feels naked when he starts playing for the second time. Expression of any type is terrifying in that way, he supposes. Look at me, it says, and see what I am telling you without telling you. The lonely melody creeps from his fingers again.

He finds himself rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet with each broad movement. As though he’s trying to play the violin with his whole body instead of just his hands. It's a strange feeling. I won’t cry, but maybe you could cry for me.

“Cas,” Dean interrupts abruptly between the time that Castiel picks his bow up to end one note and to start the next. “Are you okay?”

The air seems to vibrate just as much with the sudden silence as it did with the violin’s music. Castiel freezes before he draws the bow again. The way that Dean says the word ‘okay’ does not imply immediacy but seems to reference something larger, something more abstract.

Are you okay?

Of course I am not. None of us are. That is an understood, and life continues on dragging all of us by the lobes of our ears and the tips of our tongues and the beds of our fingernails unapologetically. It is hard to feel particularly bad for your own suffering when you’re surrounded by the suffering of those you care about.

And Dean’s gruff voice, stunted expressions at Castiel’s awkward hurt.

The moment that Castiel had laid hands on Dean’s soul in Hell, he’d known him. At least, to the extent that Castiel could rationalize and understand the deep emotion of Dean’s memories when Castiel himself was incapable of empathy. Even after Dean was raised, when Castiel was so curious, he would poke into Dean’s brain and just… observe. There had been so many thoughts. It had been so messy. It had been so warm.

Dean had told him to stop once he figured out Castiel was doing it. Even with Dean’s original insistence on distance all those years ago, it doesn’t change the fact that Castiel still has every one of Dean’s memories prior to the age of 29 retained inside of him. He has begun to wonder if it would be possible to forget them out of respect for Dean, but Castiel still remembers the exact moment the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs hit the Earth to the last microscopic detail, and so he doesn’t think he will be forgetting the short wishlist of gifts Dean made up for his sixth birthday. A list of only two things scribbled onto a scrap of paper that had gotten crumpled up and thrown into a motel trash can to forever be forgotten about. Castiel remembers, of course, and he knows exactly which landfill in Arizona it had deteriorated in.

Just like he remembers the cases of Dean’s early 20s, specifically the unfortunate occurrences when children had gotten wrapped up in the mayhem. Those were always Dean’s worst cases, until the echo of the memory of them sat like a sour candy underneath Dean’s tongue. He was so young himself even though he hadn’t thought of it that way at the time. He’d looked at those children and felt immense guilt over the fact that he couldn’t offer them more than a chance at survival and some fleeting comfort.

He’d drive away from those cases in those no-name towns and as he looked forward through the Impala’s windshield, he’d fantasize about scooping all of the children up, every one, the dozens, and taking them with him to somewhere safe. A big house in the Kansas countryside with an impossible amount of rooms. An entire motel that he bought out and renovated, that had a little lake behind it where the kids would giggle and catch tadpoles in the summer.

Castiel feels a strange mixture of shame, embarrassment, and wilted hope when he realizes that in this moment all he wants is Dean at 23. Wants Dean to look at him kindly and give him a hug the way he used to get down on his knees to hug those wayward children. Wants there to be something in Dean’s expression that isn’t just awkward condolences. Wants Dean to look at him and see him, give Castiel something to cling to as he crumbles.

But he isn’t bleeding and his grace isn’t depleting, so he is fine.

Yes, I’m fine.

Yes, I’m fine.

“I-” Castiel starts, but the rest of the thought won’t come out.

Dean’s eyebrows furrow where he’s watching Castiel and he leans forward in his chair. “Cas?”

A pin drops inside of him.

“I am not fine.” His voice wavers as he says it.

Now, Dean looks alarmed. Castiel is unsure of what to do with that reaction so he does nothing at all. The way his throat has started burning with his confession and the way his eyes grow damp is unfamiliar. Oh, he is crying. It’s a strange mechanic that has never happened in this vessel before. He didn’t even know it was possible. Just like the shaking, he assumed tears were another human side effect that his grace would keep at bay.

One of the droplets finds the valley beside his eye and moves with the gravity of his facial structure until it falls off of the tip of his nose and onto the ground. Another tear follows closely behind. They make him feel alien at the same time that they make him feel at home. They make him feel like he is feeling anything at all. And so it bursts out of him when his leaking eyes turn into a sob. He brings his right hand up- he’s still holding the violin’s bow- and he presses the backs of his knuckles to his mouth to suffocate the gasping. The bow sticks out sideways from the odd angle as though it is the shaft of an arrow that has found its way directly into his head.

His eyes clench shut as he chokes a noise that’s pitiful to his own ears, but he doesn’t know how to make it stop.

There’s a touch to the sharp bend of his elbow and his eyes startle open. Dean’s concerned expression is a picture through the blur of Castiel’s tears.

“Hey, okay,” Dean says evenly. “Alright. Let me take these off your hands.” He reaches for the bow held in Castiel’s right hand as well as the violin still clutched in his left, and Castiel lets go of the items unthinkingly when Dean tugs.

He turns to set them on the table behind him carefully before facing Castiel again.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel apologizes. He scuffs at his face with his now unoccupied palms.

“Sorry? Christ, Cas, you got nothing to be sorry for. Just- Can you tell me what’s going on?”

Castiel shakes his head. How could he explain it? How could he speak around the lump in his throat?

“I don’t-” But then he chokes.

“Okay, man, hey, it’s okay. Cas, it’s okay, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.” When Castiel doesn’t respond, Dean continues, “Do you need to sit down? I know you don’t technically need to breathe, but it might feel better if you did. Can you do that for me? Just take, like, a big old breath.”

Yes. This is good. Castiel can do things when someone else tells him to, especially when that someone else is Dean, the way that one would follow the guiding voice of a meditation tape. And so he breathes so deeply it makes his shoulders move backward with it.

“Now come here.”

Before Castiel has time to process the words or respond to them, Dean is clapping a hand over his bicep and bringing him into a hug.

Dean is always warm and solid in the metaphorical sense, but right now the literal sense is no different either. Two strong arms that wrap around the top of Castiel’s back, a firm chest to match Castiel’s own firm chest, and isn’t that something all on its own that is worth writing sonnets about? Castiel certainly thinks so.

Stubble pressed and prickly against his ear, the molecules of the chemicals in Dean’s aftershave. They don’t smell particularly good to Castiel the way they smell good to humans, but he’s come to associate the scent of lingering spice and clinical alcohol with Dean and therefore it is a wonderful smell. He’s never been so close to it for so long. He closes his tender eyes and breathes in deeply even though, as Dean pointed out, he doesn’t necessarily need to. Pressed close like this, Castiel can feel the answering rhythm of Dean’s breath, the way it pushes his stomach in and out so that every one of Castiel’s inhales is one of Dean’s exhales and they are molds of each other. Back and forth. Castiel breathes.

“Okay?” Dean asks, less like an actual question and more like a request. “Alright. You’re good.” Then, more quietly, “You’re alright.”

And Castiel’s tears have dried up because as it turns out, sometimes when you are upset the best medicine is being held. Maybe Castiel is Other in a way that is obtrusive when he steps into a room, but his shape fits very comfortably here. One more second, he thinks. He knows Dean will let go. But I don’t feel like an outsider here. One more second.

It turns out that luck is on his side because he gets an entire three more seconds before Dean’s arms finally fall loose. He takes a step back so that there’s enough space between them to look Castiel in the eyes. The moment isn’t awkward the way Castiel feared it may be, but it’s charged and serious nonetheless.

“Come sit down,” Deans says and then doesn’t wait for a response before he himself sits down in the chair he had abandoned a minute ago.

Slowly, Castiel maneuvers himself into the chair across the table from him. The violin lies there between them. It’s just aged wood, Castiel tells himself.

“Talk to me, man. You’ve been on edge ever since the Lucifer-sanctioned Battle of the Bands. And don’t tell me it’s nothing because you already said it wasn’t nothing.”

“I just…” His tongue is thick. “Feel…”

Dean is looking at him encouragingly. Where is trust, where is home, where is the soft cushion that accommodates the sharp edges of his shattered shape if not here? If not in Dean’s presence, where suddenly they are both flawed and understood by each other. The closest to belonging that Castiel will ever get.

“Lost.”

Dean frowns and traces one of his fingers absentmindedly along a divet of grain in the wood of the table, but he doesn’t say anything. Just watches Castiel.

“I’m obviously considered an abomination in the eyes of Heaven, and I no longer have my wings. But I’m not human, either. I don’t bleed the way humans do- and I’m not apathetic the way Heaven would like me to be. This vessel is mine, but… there are ways that my grace affects it that make it feel like it’s not truly under my control. Without my grace, I’m not myself. With my grace, I feel-” He cannot bring himself to say Alone because he knows it will upset Dean. And really, much of the situation isn’t Dean’s fault or job to fix in the first place. “I feel all the ways that I’ve become something I was never supposed to become. That I have been molded into something that was never supposed to exist. It’s… a bad feeling. Lonely.”

Dean’s fidgeting has stilled as Castiel’s words trail off, but his eyes are still locked on him. His jaw clenched when he swallows, but his voice is steady when he says, “Do you regret it? Ya know, falling.”

“No,” Castiel answers. It’s the truth. “I won’t say that there wasn’t a point where I questioned it, but I never regretted it. I think I- I think I almost regretted more the fact that I didn’t regret it,” he chuckles softly, melancholically. “I’m not so much repentant as I am feeling helpless to circumstance.”

“Don’t know if I’ve read enough dictionaries to get what you mean.”

“Just- I feel resentful for my situation. Resentment for my father, and the fact that he had no greater plan of destiny and peace, and if he did, that means that it was always my destiny to do things wrong. There was no path I could have taken to avoid my own persecution.” He tilts his head as he considers it. Then he sighs. “Like Frankenstein’s monster.”

Dean’s eyebrows twitch and he frowns. “You mean the green guy with the bolts in his neck?”

Castiel pulls a face probably close to disgust and definitely close to confusion. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

“Ya know? The Halloween monster? It-” and then Dean catches Castiel’s expression and says, “Never mind. What Frankenstein are we talking about then?”

“The novel written by Mary Shelley in 1818,” Castiel says dubiously. “It’s a classic from what I understand.”

“Hmm. Yeah, that rings a bell. Probably some assigned reading I didn’t do in high school. What’s that have to do with your Sunday Blues?” The word choice itself seems almost joking, but Dean says it with seriousness. His eyes gentle.

It’s the open concern on Dean’s face that makes Castiel take a deep breath before saying, “The story revolves around Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who chooses to rob graves in order to collect body parts from people who have passed away so that he can use them in his experiments. He ends up creating a creature from them and bringing the creature to life. Once he realizes what he’s done, and that the creature is sentient, he flees from it. The creature considers Frankenstein his father who he wishes to reconvene with because he is the only caretaker the creature knows. Through time, the creature realizes that he appears monstrous and disfigured to humans in a way that makes them attempt to hurt or kill him. He has no one to blame but Frankenstein, his creator.” Castiel looks off to the side. “Deserted by a father who made him in a way that Othered him from everyone else.”

In Castiel’s periphery, Dean nods. “Sounds familiar.” His tone is humorous at the same time that it’s very sad.

Castiel turns back to face him again. “Yes, it does.”

There’s a moment where neither of them says anything. Not quite looking at each other, not quite looking away. For these precious few seconds, they exist vulnerable together.

“Cas, listen,” Dean breaks the silence. “I know I’m not good at the talking stuff. If I had any sort of understanding about life advice, I probably wouldn’t have been in about half of the tight squeezes I’ve wiggled out of in my life. But, uh, I’m a good listener. I got two working ears and everything. We get busy and things get pushed to the sidelines, but if you ever need to talk. Just let me know okay? I’m sure I can spare a few seconds between the world ending and the next rerun of Lost Boys to make sure your head’s screwed on right.”

Dean watches for Castiel’s reaction like what he just said is extremely important, even more, that Castiel understands and absorbs it. Perhaps it should be obvious that Dean cares for him, but at this moment he feels the rays of that care warming his face. Basking under the promise that he will be supported.

“Thank you, Dean.”

In lieu of a direct response, Dean looks down at the violin that still rests on the table between them and juts his jaw out at it. “If this thing is wigging you out, we don’t have to keep it. I’ll take the shelf down.”

Castiel sighs. “No. I- I believe I’ve made my peace with it.” Shyly, he adds, “Plus, I enjoy playing it.”

“And you’re not too bad at it either, Street Girl.” At this Dean stands up, signaling the end of their conversation. “Now, I’m gonna go make myself some hot cocoa. You want one, or are the molecules not up to snuff?”

The truth is, the molecules in hot chocolate aren’t anything special. Castiel much prefers the chemical compounds in organic foods, or, rather strangely, the powder mix that comes in a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese. But what are molecules even important for when Dean is offering to make Castiel a warm drink because that is how he shows his care? That Castiel would take anything that Dean made for him because Deam made it for him, and so those unsatisfactory molecules have been satisfied by a type of love.

“A hot cocoa sounds wonderful.”

“Good,” Dean claps his hands together and turns to jog down the two stairs that lead out of the library.

Just like that, Castiel is alone with the violin once again. He touches the scroll of it with the tips of his fingers.

“You’re not so bad.”

…

It’s late Tuesday night when Castiel begins to make his rounds. The darkness brings about a boredom, when not even people with sleeping schedules as dysfunctional as Sam and Dean are awake. He had been sitting semi-peacefully in the library for a period of time, but then it had seemed that the violin hanging on the wall had been staring him down in some bid to play, and with the brothers turned in for the night, he’s fearful of waking them.

Don’t look at me like that, he thinks as he stands to stretch his legs. How about tomorrow?

So Castiel leaves the violin’s frowning face behind as he walks through the doorway at the side of the library that leads to a long hallway of doors. He’s careful to keep his steps quiet as he wanders. Down a stretch, around a corner.

Ahead of him, just then, the sixth door on the left cracks open with a gentle creak, and Castiel’s body tenses when he realizes that it’s Dean’s bedroom. He feels anxiety for the unknowns that flit through his mind in that exact second, ranging from being sorry if he had woken Dean up and complete panic if something were actually wrong. Stopping in his tracks with it, he watches as the door swings open all of the way and Dean steps out into the yellow light of the hallway. To Castiel’s surprise, Dean is still wearing the same jeans and navy blue Henley he had been doning earlier in the day, as if Dean never really went to bed even though it’s two in the morning.

Dean looks in his direction when he catches Castiel in the periphery of his vision and-

His whole face is settled into sad, disastrous lines while his eyes are ringed red. If possible, his expression falls even further when his gaze lands square on Castiel’s face.

“Dean.” Castiel is quick to close the distance between them in long strides while his chest pulls painfully tight in increasing worry. “Are you alright? What happened?”

Up close, Dean’s face is more open than Castiel has seen it in years. The wetness of his eyes shines, and when he opens his mouth, he shakes his head when nothing comes out.

Castiel raises a hand so carefully when he rests it on Dean’s elbow in comfort. He squeezes the tense muscles there, hidden by the Henley’s fabric.

“Dean?” he prompts again.

And then Dean is looking at Castiel like he really sees him. Jaw clenched and throat bobbing, really perceives him outside of categories such as friend or angel or ally. Where Castiel is whole and feeling right in front of him, and Dean seems to perceive all of it all at once until Castiel is caught by it, forgetting that he was comforting Dean just a second ago.

“I read it,” Dean finally says. He doesn’t even blink. “Frankenstein. I read it.”

Castiel goes cold in a sort of shock. “Oh.”

Dean just keeps looking at him and Castiel isn’t sure what to say. The stillness is broken when Dean turns his arm up at an odd angle to grab the wrist of Castiel’s extended hand. Wrapping a fist around it, Dean tugs, urging Castiel into motion as he follows Dean back into the bedroom he just came out of.

Once they’re both over the threshold, Dean lets Castiel go and turns around to close the door with a solid click. He wipes a tired hand down the bottom of his face and Castiel watches the way the motion makes his crow’s feet strain. His eyes are still flushed pink. He looks unwell.

When he doesn’t immediately say something, Castiel breaks the silence. “What’s wrong?”

Dean’s eyebrows jump to his hairline. There’s some emotion just behind his eyes, just out of reach, and if Castiel didn’t know better he’d almost say it was fear. “What’s wrong? I don’t know, maybe the fact that you sit me down and tell me you relate to some character from a book written in the 1800s, and when I actually read the damn thing, it’s the most depressing fucking story on the planet besides All Dogs Go To Heaven?”

There’s a pause between them where they simply look at each other. And here again, just another moment where Castiel can’t seem to understand what is expected of him. Dean is waiting for a response as if a question was asked, but Castiel sees no question, just Dean’s upset expression.

“I don’t… I’m sorry.”

Dean’s expression falls further. He runs a hand through his hair.

“We should sit.”

It’s completely unprompted, but there’s no time for Castiel to ask about the change in the conversation’s pace because Dean is already walking towards him and then past him in order to sit on the foot of the bed. He pats the mattress to his left once in invitation

Castiel sits gingerly, being sure to leave at least five inches of space between their thighs. He opens his mouth to speak, but when nothing comes out, he wets his lips and tries again. “The story upset you.”

Dean puffs a harsh breath before he pushes his mouth forward. “Yeah, Cas. It did.”

Oh. He’s done something wrong without even realizing it. What a terrible fate, the dread of confusion. Of course he didn’t mean to upset Dean, and maybe if Castiel would have just closed his mouth and sat on his hands the way he was supposed to, none of this-

“I’m supposed to look after you,” Dean says.

Castiel’s train of thought stops so abruptly that it fumbles.

“And I’m supposed to look after Sammy. I’m supposed to make sure everyone is good, ‘cause that’s what I do, and it’s what we do. And I know you haven’t been feeling right in your skin, sure, I got eyes. But I didn’t realize- I guess I didn’t realize how bad it was.”

“That’s an incredible amount of pressure to put on yourself for something that I never shared with you, nor that you were to blame for.”

“It’s not about blame. It’s about you being-” Dean makes a large and vague gesture with his hands before they fall into his lap again. “Feeling like this.”

Castiel regards him. The ache of him. He’s festering like a bruise just under the skin. A sort of agitation has built up, the type that comes from somewhere deeper before it surfaces in a way that’s just off the mark of what it’s really trying to say. Dean speaks in codes. His own emotions become riddles with answers that are only found if you dig.

“May I be so blunt as to say I think this is about something else? That you’re… ‘beating around the bush’.”

Dean continues looking straight ahead at the wall in front of him and the desk pressed up against it. A moment of silence that is being allotted by each blink of Dean’s eyes as he contemplates what he will claw out of his own insides to show, and what he believes is too dangerous to bring out to the light of day.

“Why’d you have to know me so good?” Dean finally asks.

“Maybe I try to look after you as well. Like you said, it’s what we do.”

Another pause, and there’s just enough delicate seriousness between them that Castiel can feel the pressure against his ear drums.

“Back when everything was happening with Heaven, the uh- the Big Time- I was trying to get you to go on a Bond mission for us to get some info from the other side. You told me you wouldn’t go back to Heaven because you didn’t wanna see what you did to it.” Castiel feels suspended as a creeping suspicion sinks in. Dean’s throat bobs. “You told me you were afraid you’d kill yourself.”

Castiel can’t help but feel that looking at Dean any longer is too much, so he mirrors the position Dean takes, staring straight ahead at the wall, the desk. The wood of it is an aged and outdated yellow color. On top of it are books and paper strewn about. More importantly, there are headphones. There are cassette tapes lined up neatly that Castiel recognizes to be in alphabetical order because as much as Dean likes to pretend he doesn’t care all he does is care.

“Yes, I remember.”

“When you took down Lucifer, the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was his wings deep-fried into the concrete.”

This makes Castiel turn to face him again, unsure of where Dean is going with this. And Dean’s eyes are closed now as shakes his head minutely. His eyebrows are pulled into a furrow like he’s picturing the scene even though there are weeks and hundreds of miles between what happened that day and now.

“I thought they were yours. I thought he offed you.” Dean’s top lip curls back, almost as though in disgust. His teeth clench as he says, “The pit in my stomach.” A pause. “I can’t… I don’t want you to be miserable. I don’t want you to feel like you’re barely scraping by. And if something were to happen to you, and I didn’t do anything to stop it?”

He’s shaking his head harder. Castiel frowns in sympathy as he watches the way Dean’s eyes open to reveal the way they’ve grown damp and irritated again. As if feeling the gaze, Dean pinches his eyes between his thumb and middle finger

Castiel thinks about the implications of what Dean is saying without actually saying it. He thinks about the hardships Dean himself has been through, and how easy it would have been to snap under all of that pressure. And if he would have snapped, what would Castiel have done? A world without Dean Winchester would be more than solemn, it would be hopeless.

“I think I understand.”

Dean finally looks at him through those unshed tears. He studies Castiel’s face like it will give him answers, or maybe like his gaze is consuming everything from Castiel’s chin to his forehead in flighty curiosity. They abandon Castiel for a brief second as they glance towards the closed door of the bedroom before returning again.

“Things have been pretty quiet, huh?” he asks from seemingly nowhere, and the tone he uses almost sounds like he’s speaking more to himself than to Castiel.

But Castiel ignores the odd tone as he agrees, “They have been. It’s nice. I now know more about the fictional scandals of Mayberry, North Carolina than I thought possible.”

Dean finally looks away at this. He blusters a fragile and wet laugh as he shakes his head again. Castiel thinks he will speak again, but all he does is pull his bottom lip fully into his mouth as he watches his own fingers twiddle in his lap.

Castiel knows better than to interrupt, though, because even this silence is part of the conversation. Part of Dean’s process of thinking, and then feeling, before eventually saying if he so decided to allow himself the freedom of expression. Many days he does not. It is a tragic thing to watch, but even after all of these years together, Castiel has yet to figure out a fool-proof way to ease Dean’s burden.

When Dean breathes in through his nose, Castiel goes still in anticipation.

“I ain’t-” Dean’s voice is thin and high. It shakes like he is a boy instead of a man. “I ain’t ever been so scared.”

It takes effort for Castiel to keep his face open when all he wants to do is frown in deepening concern. Because this is not what he expected Dean to say. Dean’s bravery proceeds him to the point where Castiel could count on one hand the number of times that Dean has even hinted at being afraid, but now he is announcing it for the world to hear.

Maybe Castiel can acknowledge that is only for him to hear.

And the way that Dean’s grammar has slipped as well, into the comforting mother tongue of his early twenties. A result of neglecting his own studies so that Sam could excel mixed with the social isolation Dean experienced in the time after Sam left for Stanford. Where Dean became a punching bag for himself, where he believed he was not good enough- smart enough- to speak the way others did, and it was a brand he wore to remind himself that he was Other.

It wasn’t until Dean was in his thirties that his stilted talk began to even out. But how much of that is true change of speech and how much of it is rigid conditioning? Castiel thinks that maybe even something as simple as consciously fixing his own double negatives is just another mask that Dean wears.

He watches Dean’s pale skin that stands stark against the pink rims of his eyes, and he sees no mask at all. Just the tip of Dean’s nose turning red.

“What are you afraid of?” Castiel risks letting his voice go low. He leans just two inches closer and ducks his head to try to better catch Dean’s gaze.

Dean turns to him. His eyes are wide and pinpoint focused against the wet of his unshed tears.

The worry that Castiel has been holding back very nearly rears its head, only stopped by the fact that Dean raises a hand to palm at Castiel’s cheek. It’s a warm, sweaty cradle.

Castiel’s eyebrows raise in alarm. Stuttering shock that tumbles over glee and lands itself straight into grief.

“D-”

But the shape of Dean’s name is cut off by the shape of Dean’s lips. They’re even warmer than the rest of Dean’s skin and they give like something gentle against the odds of Dean’s usual gruffness. As fleshy and human as the yellow light of Dean’s bedroom, as waxy as a candle flame. This moment is inescapable. Castiel kisses him back even as thinks This is so fragile, this is so impossible. Dean’s lips pucker out for a long, damp second, and then he is pulling away again. He takes Castiel’s rain sheet breath with him. Dean’s hand falls from Castiel’s cheek and slips back down into the safety of his own lap.

Inside Castiel’s chest, his heart races. You kissed me. Do you realize what you just did? But of course Dean does, as he watches his own hands before turning his neck to face the wall so that he doesn’t have to meet Castiel’s gaze. It is the type of body language that signals he could get up and run away at any moment.

“I am- I am afraid, too.” Castiel looks at the tip of Dean’s ear and the short hair just to the side of it. The only parts of Dean he can see. “I am afraid of you.”

This makes Dean whip back around to face him.

“I am afraid of your recklessness. I am afraid of the way that there are times you won’t look me in the eye.”

Dean has the common decency to look guilty at the words.

“I’m afraid of you pushing me away. I’m afraid that any move I make will be the wrong one because I don’t always understand what the wrong move is until I’ve made it. I’m afraid of how you’ll react if I reach out to you- if you won’t like it. That you don’t want me to reach out. But all I-“ Tears choke at Castiel’s throat. He can’t believe he is saying any of this. He can’t believe that Dean is actually meeting his gaze as he does. Dean is not elevated to a level of untouchable at the same time that he absolutely is, until saying these words aloud is something that Castiel has kept as a quiet, injured fantasy.

“I want to reach out to you. I care for you so dearly that sometimes it feels horrifying,” Castiel confesses.

Dean’s irises flicker as he looks back and forth between Castiel’s eyes, followed by his throat bobbing as he gulps. His face is set in seriousness. Finally, Dean looks away again. Not in the opposite direction like before, just down at his shoes.

“When I was reading that book,” Dean starts, and Castiel turns hot cold all over, “there’s a part where the monster’s watching the family through the window of their house. And he knows that he’s risking whatever connection he has with them by revealing himself, but he does it anyway. He still tries to make them get it. Is that what you meant when you said-… Is the family supposed to be me?”

It takes all of his bravery for Castiel to breathe, “Yes.”

Dean looks back up at him until their eyes hold and lock. “They beat the monster with a stick and he doesn’t fight back even though he’s strong enough that he could kill all of them.”

“Because he loves them.”

“Loves them enough to lay there and take it while they cane him?” Dean asks fiercely, angrily.

And they aren’t talking about the story at all, but Castiel still says, “Yes.”

Dean's face falls from a scowl into something incredulous, like he can’t believe what Castiel is telling him. “You-” But he stops himself like any word past that might be too painful.

Castiel watches when Dean stands abruptly from the foot of the bed, feels it when the mattress shifts under him from the loss of extra weight. Maybe Dean is walking to the door so that he can leave this conversation behind like something physical because Castiel’s truth has too much bite to it, so it is too difficult to bear. The same way that the monster didn’t stop the French family from his own exile, Castiel will not stop Dean either.

But Dean doesn’t leave the room. Two strides and then he turns on his heel and crosses in front of where Castiel sits again. Two more strides, a turn on his heel, he paces back and forth. On the third loop of this, Dean stops as abruptly as he started as he seemingly comes to some conclusion. He stands directly in front of Castiel now, so that Castiel has to look up to see his face. And that face is so honest and open that it glistens.

One of Dean’s legs gives, then the other, until he is kneeling at Castiel’s feet. It reminds him of the way the monster clung to the knees of the old man he loved while the family that he loved tried to tear the monster away.

“Dean.”

Gently, with eyes closed, Dean leans forward until he is resting his forehead on the jut of Castiel’s left knee so that his expression is hidden and all Castiel can see from this angle is the crown of his head. His skin leaks warmth through the fabric of Castiel’s dress slacks.

“You mean so much to me,” Dean says. It’s the bluntest form of communicated care that Castiel has heard come out of Dean’s mouth. No hidden motive or strategically placed words to hide the sentence's meaning. Below Castiel, Dean sniffles. “You mean- so goddamn much to me. I need you to get that. I need you to know that, okay? You’re the only one who makes me feel like- like things are gonna be okay. And I’m so- I’m so sorry that I ever made you feel like you didn’t belong here, or like I didn’t want you around. You’re my best friend.”

Castiel watches from the odd angle as Dean lifts a hand to swipe at his running nose. Listens as Dean takes a deep breath in like he’s trying to steady himself.

“I-” He starts just to stop. When he speaks again, it’s in a croak. “Sometimes… I have this dream where- where it’s me and you, just me and you, and we’re going grocery shopping together at that fancy store thirty minutes west of here.” The tone of Dean’s voice holds the words like a tiny terrified bird. “And… And in the dream, you’re holding my hand. And we go over to the deli together, where they have the lobster tanks, and you tell me about them. You know how many cones are in their eyes and how their claws work and- and the exact age they are to the day. I look over at you, and I tell you there was some myth going around that lobsters can’t die of natural causes even though they can. How that freaks me out because you’re not ever supposed to die either.” Dean’s bottom lip begins to wobble. “And you tell me that you’ll stay with me forever and you’ll never leave me.”

All Castiel can do is stare as he processes the words, sinking until they pet at his stomach lining. Dean is confessing something right now- so much in that one, tiny sentence. He is confessing that he dreams about Castiel. He dreams about them holding hands. He dreams about Castiel staying. He dreams about forever. And suddenly everything that Castiel thought he knew feels shifted on its axis.

The heat of Dean’s forehead leaves Castiel’s knee as he finally looks up at him. Red-rimmed eyes that turn over in earnesty.

Oh. Oh. They are both seeing each other, maybe even for the first time.

“I never want to push you away, Cas. Fuck. Never. That’s the scariest part.” A single wet tear falls from Dean’s left eye. “I want you to stay so bad I think it might kill me. But then you leave for Heaven, or you don’t tell us where you’re going and I just- All I got is a damn dream to hold onto. And I just want you to quit leaving.”

“Dean,” Castiel shakes his head. “I didn’t know. I just wanted you to ask me to stay.”

There’s a moment where Dean seems to absorb the words before breaking eye contact to look off to the side. He’s making a face like he’s thinking something but he’s not saying it. Unfortunately, it’s a common enough expression that Castiel can recognize it for what it is. The thinking into the feeling that doesn’t always end in the saying, but right now, anything other than honesty doesn’t feel like an option. Not when they’re so close to breaking through the membrane that’s kept them apart for so long.

“What is it?” Castiel prompts in a voice so quiet it’s just for Dean.

Dean turns to blink back up at him. Swipes a hand across his nose again as he gives a single, tired chuckle that’s more like a puff of air. “You gotta understand, man… No one ever stays.” The with me is unspoken, but it doesn’t need to be for Castiel to hear it anyway.

But I will, Castiel’s heart crows. Over and over, every day, we can keep choosing to stay with each other.

Neither of them has ever made a choice like this for themselves before. Maybe that’s why it feels so potent.

The affection inside of him is still frightening, but he tries to hold onto whatever bravery is left hanging in the air between them so that Dean can see it for what it truly is. Love that is rich, dark soil. Love that is not going anywhere.

“I would,” Castiel says like it’s the truth because it’s the truth, “and I don’t foresee that changing. I know exactly who you are and what you’ve done. I want to stay with you selfishly. I love you selfishly.” The words make Dean freeze. Castiel pays the stillness no mind, just continues with a sad, lopsided smile, “As if I couldn’t when I know that when you were six, all you wanted for your birthday was a light-up Scooby-Doo watch and a hug.”

Dean’s expression crumples. “Cas,” he breathes.

Very carefully, Castiel brings his hands to either side of Dean’s face to hold his jaw. His palms become a picnic basket for the weight of Dean’s head and the weight of Dean’s sorrows that need linger no longer. Maybe neither of their sorrows do.

Dean plants his own hands on Castiel’s knees in order to push himself up into a half-crouch at the urge of Castiel’s prompting touch. The position leaves them as a closed circuit feedback loop for each other. Their faces are mere inches apart now. The glow of Dean’s bedside table catches in his wet eyelashes and turns them amber. Catches the shelf of Dean’s upper lip and makes it shine.

There’s no mistaking what is happening in this moment, no miscommunication on either of their parts for what feels like the first time ever, and so maybe the reason they are both sitting inactive in each other’s orbit is because there is something worth savoring about knowing what will happen next. In a second, a minute, they will kiss. The very fact of it is reassuring enough to cut out the need to rush into contact.

Dean’s eyes flicker down to Castiel’s lips. Castiel’s stomach thrills.

Then Dean leans in to close the distance, making Castiel’s eyelids flutter shut in anticipation. But Dean isn’t kissing him just yet. Instead, he’s settled his nose alongside the length of Castiel’s so that they’re pressed together. It leaves Dean’s breath damp and hot on Castiel’s cupid’s bow. On Castiel’s knees, Dean’s hands tighten, and under Castiel’s hands, Dean’s chin shudders.

“I- uh-” Dean says honestly and unsurely. As small as the space between them. “I’ve never done this with a guy before.”

Oh Dean. Castiel’s chest will not be able to contain the swell of his heart, so big in fondness that it will shatter his own sternum.

“Neither have I,” he murmurs back.

Dean sucks in a breath before tilting his head just so to bring their lips together. It is, miraculously, even softer than the first kiss was. Movement where Castiel very rarely feels movement, cataloged by the million or so nerve endings that are bundled up alongside the blood vessels under the thin skin. And to think that Dean is feeling the same thing, the same vulnerable pink pleasure. Glory.

Because Castiel is not just kissing anyone, no, he is touching his own lips to Dean’s lips because that is what you do when simply existing next to each other is not intimate enough. When you need something that is closer. Romantic or sexual or wanting. Or love. Castiel kisses Dean. Or love.

They tilt their heads side to side against each other, looking for new angles and new ways to arrange the same puzzle pieces. Every unique catch sends goosebumps down Castiel’s forearms, and, oh, he didn’t realize his body could do that.

Castiel brushes his right thumb back and forth across Dean’s cheekbones just because he can. The breath out of Dean’s nose is hot against Castiel’s own cheek.

He keeps expecting the kiss to deepen, to flower into something more, but neither he nor Dean pushes it into that territory and so it stays shallow on the surface. As plush and comforting as a fleece blanket. Both of their lips are dry, but the spit is wet, and so the glide of it all is wonderful. Kissing Dean is wonderful.

The heat of Dean’s palms leaves Castiel’s knees when Dean reaches up to push at Castiel’s shoulders, a force that’s less pressure and more of Dean leaning his weight forward. Castiel goes with it unquestioningly until he’s lying fully on his back while his legs are still hooked awkwardly over the foot of the mattress. Dean follows so closely that their lips only part when the momentum of Castiel hitting the bed makes his head hitch for a moment. But Dean is solid and heavy lain across Castiel’s front. His hands find their way up into Castiel’s hair where they tangle into the strands, not pulling, just burrowing deep enough that Dean can graze the blunt edge of his fingernails over Castiel’s scalp.

It makes Castiel’s cheeks grow red.

That feels very nice, Dean. It doesn’t matter that Castiel isn’t saying it out loud, or that Dean doesn’t have the functions necessary to receive prayer. It is just the truth, and so it exists between them.

The kiss still doesn’t deepen even though their new position implies that it should. Castiel is content with how events are transpiring, and it seems Dean is as well. Everything is okay. Content enough that the nipping of lips, the tasting of breath, goes on for another five minutes and thirty-nine seconds. There is so much to discover just here on the surface. The bone-deep emotion of the simplicity in finally being able to touch each other.

The interruption of their activity before the six-minute mark comes in the form of Dean turning his head just enough to break the kiss. He mumbles, “I’m not pushing you away,” like this is a promise, like this is proof.

Castiel mumbles back, “And I don’t plan on leaving,” before catching Dean’s lips again. One more puckering kiss. Another.

He aches to hold Dean even tighter to his body. There’s so much warm skin hidden away and if their tongues have already touched then maybe…

His right hand leaves Dean’s jaw in order to venture downward, over Dean’s shoulder, the stretch of his Henley over the jutting blade, down further to the small of Dean’s waist where the navy blue fabric has begun to bunch up. Castiel touches his fingers just there.

“I would like- If I could-“

“Whatever you want, Cas.” Words pushed into Castiel’s lips. Said so casually, as though they are a second thought, like they don’t know the weight they hold or the invitation they extend.

Not that it truly matters. Castiel doesn’t want anything too frightful. He just wants to touch Dean’s hip. So he allows his fingers to crawl over the soft fabric until he can get a hold of its hem. From there, he rucks it up to expose the swell of soft, giving flesh that peaks above Dean’s waistband. With the new skin revealed, his fingers lay bare over it, then the flat of his palm, until he’s cradling Dean’s hip in lovely uninterrupted contact.

Dean sighs. Castiel sighs back. When Castiel starts a light petting of the skin, Dean begins trembling above him.

He pulls away from their kisses, alarmed, his head driving back into the cushion of the mattress.

“Dean?”

“Feels good.”

“You’re shaking.”

That makes Dean pause and pull away even further, far enough that Castiel can see the thoughtful frown on his face.

“I mean, so are you,” Dean says with some underlying attitude like he’s annoyed at Castiel for interrupting the very lovely thing they’re doing at the moment.

“What?”

“I said, ‘So are you’.”

That is not possible. Castiel cannot be shaking, he has never shaken before. Not even a minute tremor of his fingers at his worst moments. But when he actually stops moving to take stock of his body, he realizes that he can’t still himself completely. The shake of it is mostly in his hands, his arms, up to his shoulders. He cannot explain why this seems to slot the very last missing piece into place, or why he finally feels like maybe the neural pathways in this body are truly his. Yes, he is a strange creature, but he is no longer a lonely one. Dean has taught this body how to shake.

“Oh. You’re right.” Slowly, a smile spreads across Castiel’s face. It grows wider until it starts to collect wrinkles around its edges. He looks up at Dean. “I’m shaking.”

“Is that supposed to be a good thing?” Dean hedges.

“It’s truly wonderful.”

Castiel retrieves the hand that had just been exploring seconds ago and brings it back up- shaking- to Dean’s face so that he’s cupping Dean’s head in both of his hands once again. He’s giddy with it as he leans up to press his smiling lips to Dean’s nose, then his cheeks, his forehead, his stubbled chin, because suddenly he can. It is not just Dean’s mouth that he can kiss, but all of him. Every miraculous square inch of him.

“Cas,” and Dean is laughing open like a child, “Cas, dude, what-”

“Thank you. Thank you, Dean, so much.”

“What are you thanking me for, weirdo?”

“Does it even matter? All of it.”

At this, Dean’s laughter softens out until it’s nothing but a semi-awkward, semi-precious smirk. “Well in that case, uh, right back atcha.”

Dean leans to plant one more solid kiss on Castiel’s lips before he slips off the left side of Castiel’s body and cramps himself into whatever space is still left on the full-sized mattress. Dean’s hand trails away at its own pace though, where it eventually settles with the rest of his arm over Castiel’s middle like a seatbelt holding him in place. Then Dean closes his eyes in some sort of gentle peace, and Castiel is left breathless by the crescent line of Dean’s eyelashes.

When Dean’s eyes blink back open, they find Castiel’s. “I don’t think you should stand outside of the cottage anymore,” he says in the tone he uses when he’s saying something very meaningful but trying to cast it off as casual. “You catch my drift?”

Maybe? There seems to be some sort of implication happening, and by cottage, Castiel assumes Dean is speaking of the one featured in Frankenstein, but the details of what Dean means are fuzzy. “Yes…” Castiel trails off in a way that obviously means No.

“I’m saying you should stay in here now,” Dean clarifies. And then, like he’s remembered his nerves, he adds, “I mean, um, with me.”

And there’s that word again: Stay.

“I’d like that.”

Dean answers with a smile. It’s a good smile.

“Though you do realize this means Sam will be aware that we’re sleeping in the same room together? Are you sure you want that?”

“Well, he’ll probably be weird about it for about two weeks and then he’ll just be annoying about it for the rest of our lives. So it won’t be that different, since he’s already fucking annoying all the time anyway.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” but Castiel is laughing.

“Yeah, well, lyin’s a sin, so.”

“That’s true. It’s in the Bible,” Castiel agrees, and then things are easy and quiet once again.

On Castiel’s stomach, Dean’s thumb rubs back and forth over the fabric of his dress shirt. It wrinkles and then it smooths. Wrinkles then smooths. Castiel cannot decide whether it’s a tender touch or if there is more heat than just warmth to it. Maybe both things are happening simultaneously.

The answer becomes slightly more clear when Dean murmurs, “Guess we’re both a coupl’a sinners then.” He moves in for what Castiel assumes will be another kiss, but he assumes wrong because Dean’s face is aligned too far down for his target to be Castiel’s lips. Instead, Dean nestles close to mouth ever so gently at the tendon of Castiel’s neck.

It feels like a different type of promise. Castiel’s breath catches and his toes curl in his dress shoes.

“Yes,” he grunts.

Dean pauses for a moment.

“Stay with me,” he whispers desperately, in complete opposition to the laziness that had seemingly just settled over them. Here, hidden, he makes a last-ditch plea into the privacy of the crook of Castiel’s neck.

Castiel remembers everything, and so he rewinds his brain back through this evening, the miraculous lows and highs of it. And he says verbatim, “I’ll stay with you forever and I’ll never leave you.”

Beside him, Dean shudders. Then he keeps kissing Castiel’s neck.

…

Things go like this: Dean is right in the fact that Sam is extremely delighted and awkward about the new revelation of bedroom sharing, but his chin-scratching and wagging eyebrows soon devolve into him being an absolute pester. Moments where Castiel will be sitting at the little table in the kitchen while Dean makes his morning coffee, and Dean will lean over to kiss Castiel’s cheek just in time for Sam to come home from his run. At this Sam will gag and say something along the lines of, “Dude, stop getting your cooties all over the community spaces,” before carrying on like nothing happened at all. Lumbering over to the fridge to get some orange juice.

Things go like this: Dean’s bedroom becomes their bedroom quite suddenly. Castiel has trinkets now. A beautifully dimpled brown rock found in Arkansas. A pocket-sized hourglass from a flea market not far from here. A particularly attractive bottle of root beer that made Dean laugh so hard that he doubled over when he realized Cas was displaying it next to the alphabetically organized cassettes. He doesn’t move it, though, or try to convince Castiel to throw it away. It sits proudly with its bubbly green logo that exclaims O-So Key Lime.

Things go like this: There’s a hiccup in the plan because, of course, Castiel stays in Dean’s room with him, but with the oversight of the fact that Castiel doesn’t actually sleep. And also that full beds are ideal when Castiel wants to hold Dean but not as ideal when Dean wants to spread his limbs out and snore, all of him broad and all of him tall.

Things go like this: Dean doesn’t mind if Castiel brings the violin into their bedroom to tinker with in the odd hours of the night while Dean sleeps. In fact, some nights Dean puts in requests as though Castiel is a jukebox, and his grace provides him with all the information he needs to play Come On, Eileen. Other nights, like tonight, Castiel sits in the desk chair, turned so it is facing Dean’s prone form, and he draws a lullaby from the violin’s body. It soothes as it waxes and wanes with the rhythm of Dean’s breathing evening out.

Things go like this: It is not 1680 and it is not 1818, and this loneliness that Castiel thought to be unshakable has been loosened until the bolts of it fell off. Dean collects the rust in his rough hands. He’s still not great at the talking stuff, but he’s a good listener, and sometimes when his words won’t come out he uses his touch instead. Castiel is an excellent translator.

Things go like this: They drive to the high-brow grocery store that is thirty minutes west of them, just the two of them. Sam stays at home. They bumble through the aisles, hands not quite holding but always seeking, always grazing, pinky fingers looking for their promise friend. Dean’s skin is warm and his smile is warmer when he realizes this particular store carries the cereal brand he had one morning in North Dakota but could never find again. Castiel wants to nibble at his earlobe.

Things go like this: They name the lobsters in the lobster tank.