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Time does not exist in the empty, so Castiel is gone for both only a moment and also for an eternity. He is able to hold both of these truths at the same time, spliced and overlapping.
Time first takes on new meaning for Castiel right after he meets Dean Winchester. He’s never spent much of it on earth, before now, and being incorporeal and eternal tends to bend the limits of existence. Only in a body, only grounded and rooted, does time start to mean anything to him.
He does not know how long a minute can be until he feels it drag out before him, endless as the highway. He does not know about how days can blur into weeks until his body and mind are not fully synchronized, not in some kind of theoretical physical sense, but in the human way. The way working eight hours behind a register at a Gas N Sip feels more like two days, and a single day spent sleeping feels like twenty minutes.
He wonders, many times over the years, if the human perception of time is not the more accurate one. If angels instead are the ones with a perception that is skewed and flawed.
Being with Dean seems to bend time into a circle, where all moments are either spent with him, or waiting to return to him.
In all this time, Castiel has been a lot of things. Castiel has been radiowaves. Castiel has been pure light. Castiel has been the first fall of rain over a desolate planet where no life existed.
But he’s never been Dean Winchester’s.
Not really, not in the way he wants, not in a human way.
It could be said that, human or angel, he belongs more to Dean than God and Heaven, but Castiel gives all of it up, in the end, anyway.
So to find himself back here, on earth, alive and very much an angel again feels a bit like the song of time skipping on a record player. It is both the past and the future. It is somehow undeniably the present.
For a long time, he’s been walking blind. Cut off from so many of his senses, from so much of his angelic nature. Suddenly, it’s like his eyes are wide open. He has all of the extrasensory perception of an angel but it’s layered over something far more human than it ever was, years spent in a body, years spent loving in a human way.
They are in a barn, no, they are in the barn, the same place that Castiel first made himself known, physically at least, to Dean all those years ago, and Dean is there and Sam is there, and it is storming. The roof leaks.
“Holy shit, it worked,” Sam says.
Dean says nothing at all. He is looking at Cas with bright, green eyes and he is not speaking and he is crying.
It looks like maybe he’s been crying for a while. His face has that raw and swollen look that happens to humans when they’re spent, when they’ve run through hours or days or weeks with little sleep and too much weeping.
The rain on the roof is very loud. The heart in his body is very loud.
Sam stays back, the evidence of a ritual at his feet, but Dean is walking toward him. Dreamlike, substantial, human.
They are a few feet apart and then they are a foot apart and then there is barely any space between them.
Dean reaches up, touches him on the jaw, his eyes move to cover him, he looks both very young and also older than Cas has ever seen him.
“Cas?” His voice, when he speaks, is a road rash.
“Dean.”
A question, an answer. Then there are hands on his coat and Dean is pressing his face into his chest and he is shaking, he is crying; big, wet sobs that soak into the material of the suit that Cas has been reborn in. The rain falls so, so heavy above them. Cas is aware of each individual droplet.
Sam waits, quiet and patient. And Castiel holds onto Dean, thunderous animal that he is, as he readjusts to the turn of the earth beneath his feet.
They drive, if not straight home then at least away from the barn.
Castiel can feel the distance between the earth and the moon as they drive through the night. He can feel the car beneath them, the way that the gas sparks and fuels the cogs, the turn of the wheels, the groan of the transmission when they change gears. He can feel the magnetic pull on the tides of his blood from the moon. He can feel the theoretical equation of gravity that holds him here.
Sam is driving, Dean is beside his brother, and Castiel is in the back. But when they stop for gas after an hour or so, Dean looks at Sam and shakes his head, gets into the backseat with him, crawls in silence. Sam says nothing at this, just keeps pushing them forward into the night.
Dean doesn’t seem to want to take his eyes off of him, keeps watch over him like a sheepdog at his flock. Eventually, his hand creeps out in the quiet dark and he grazes Cas’ fingers with his own.
Once he starts touching him it seems he cannot stop. Fingers over knuckles, fingers on the inside of his wrist, trailing up to the crook of his arm, popping the button there to push them as far as he can get skin on skin with all the layers Cas is wearing. Calloused fingertips pressed to his pulse point as he breathes in time with it, too quick.
Castiel is more aware of Dean than he has been in years— more aware of him than he has ever been.
A lot of falling in love with Dean Winchester happened while Castiel was somewhat muted. And a lot of being somewhat muted made him feel more alive than he ever imagined. Now, it layers and blends into something new and familiar and loud. Now, he can hear the song of Dean’s blood through his veins. He knows the way Dean’s chest expands and retracts on each intake of breath the way he knows quick-math. He marks the way Dean’s throat bobs both because he can sense the motion of his mylohyoid muscle and because he knows that Dean sometimes swallows when he cannot speak. It is all of it at once.
The radio bleeds to static. The car hums its body weight against the press of the road.
“Cas,” Dean whispers.
The streetlights pass over them in waves, changing the shape of his face, sharpening and softening it as they roll between them.
Castiel can taste the way Dean’s heart quickens when he speaks, can smell the sharp scent of his skin as it changes. Every atom that makes up the man beside him is technicolor in the darkness.
There is nothing to say, the silence holds everything.
It’s too far to drive in a single night. Whatever the boys did, both Dean and Sam seem to be exhausted. So they pull into a roadside motel sometime after 2am. Castiel doesn’t think he will ever sleep again, cannot imagine it, and yet the only thing he can think of is the soft song of bed .
Sam is the one who goes to check them in. Sam is the one who comes back with keys, two sets, and then Sam hugs him, warm and fraternal. He claps Cas on the back and says, “Glad you’re back, man,” and then he touches Dean on the shoulder, hands him the other key and looks into his eyes. He gives his brother such a soft look that Cas looks away.
Then it’s just the two of them. Castiel is suddenly flush with the memory of everything that he said. He doesn’t think he would have said it, if he’d thought for even a moment that he would have to be here now, facing it down. But that was when he was a lot more human than he is currently.
Now, he looks at Dean and knows he would be content to love him, regardless. If Dean wants his love in a human way, he can give it. If he wants it in a physical way, he can give it. If he wants it in a comforting, quiet way, well, Castiel can give it. As long as he wants it at all, Cas will keep existing.
“Are you tired?” Castiel asks.
“Yes,” and he looks it. He looks bone weary.
“We can go in and sleep,” Castiel offers. They can talk about it tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day. They have all the days they want, now.
“I–” Dean starts, stops, swallows. Castiel watches the streetlight catch on each of his eyelashes. Dean looks away from him, and then back to him, and then his shoulders seem to steady, scapula flexing, clavicle sharpening. Castiel can feel the thrum of his energy, innate, warm. “I don’t wanna be away from you,” Dean confesses, church-voiced. “Ever again.”
The whispered admission hangs heavy between them. Castiel takes his hand and finds Dean’s face, cups his jaw, he trembles under the touch. Castiel can feel his breath start and stutter as he leans into his palm, unashamed.
The air around them is full of night sounds: cars racing in the near distance, a symphony of cicadas and field crickets and deadly kissing bugs, all woken by the moonlight.
“There is so much I want to say to you,” Dean says. “So much I should have said. As soon as you were gone I had the words, and it was too late. I’m sorry, Cas, I’m so sorry.” When he speaks again, his voice is very plain. There is no tremor, no hesitation. “I love you.” The words rise to meet the night. Castiel observes, through no human sense, how the sound waves coalesce and then dissolve into nothing. “I always loved you. I didn’t know– I didn’t think–” Dean breaks off, closes his eyes. He isn’t looking at Cas, and then he is. “From the minute I met you, all I wanted was to have you around. Wanted you on my side. Nothing in the world ever felt right. Just you.” Dean’s pupils are dilated, too big in the low light. “And I was okay with it, the way it was, if it couldn’t be more. But I do want more. I want–” Dean’s breath catches in his throat.
Castiel closes the distance between them, it’s hardly any at all. He leans down and kisses Dean.
His lips are soft, and they open for him without hesitation. Dean makes a small sound at the back of his throat and his hands flutter, bird-like, up to Castiel’s face, touch his neck and the shell of his ear, wind their way into his hair, tug softly.
Dean tastes very human, his tongue is strong and wet when it slides into Castiel’s mouth and he makes little animal noises against him as they kiss.
The thing is, Castiel is an angel . He’s all angel now, but too human too, from before, and it’s strange and he’s not used to it. He is not used to being this much. Their hair stands on end, static in the air like lightning is close. There are small electric shocks that zap between the thin skin of their lips as their mouths part and come back together.
He is no longer a wavelength of electromagnetic intent shoved into a vessel, he is no longer a muted, mostly human man. He is something new. He is all the radiation of a dying star made corporeal, and he is finding it hard to stay fully contained now that he has a full and vibrant grace, now that Dean is pressing against him, warm and solid. Hands roam over him, the ghost of fingers against his skin and he’s shivering, or the ground is, he can’t be sure.
The wind is picking up, strange and over-warm for a spring night. It rises in time with their breathing.
A truck horn cries out in the distance. Dean pulls back, but not too far. “Let’s go inside,” he whispers into the space between their mouths, and then takes Castiel by the hand and pulls him toward a room. Castiel notices that it’s a few doors down from the one that Sam went into, wonders if that was intentional. It doesn’t look like this motel is overcrowded.
There’s only one bed, which Castiel supposes would be fine anyway, since he doesn’t sleep, but he wonders what Dean must have said to Sam to have them pair off like this– in a single room, several doors down from each other. He burns with curiosity, but figures he will get an answer eventually. Sam did not seem surprised when Dean sobbed into his chest, when he crawled into the back to be closer to Castiel.
The door is barely closed behind them before Dean is kissing him again, desperate and fluttering. Castiel feels a bit like he’s caught a wild animal, jackrabbit legs batting against his ribs as he takes him in his arms. It’s been a while since Castiel could see Dean’s soul so brightly.
See might not be the right word. It isn’t visible with his eyes, but he can feel it, a song stuck in his head, colors at the back of his throat– bright and green and golden. There is so much more to him than he knows.
It’s been a strange night. It’s only now, here in the quiet, that he can feel reality start to settle on him. Dean. He has Dean. Dean loves him too and he’s back on earth and he’s strong and they’re together and Dean is warm and pressing against him with want.
This is real.
Castiel pulls back from the kiss and Dean, eyes closed, chases his mouth for a moment until his brain seems to catch up, and he opens his eyes.
“Oh, I missed you,” Castiel whispers. “I thought I would never see you again.”
Dean shakes his head. “I never believed that, couldn’t. Wouldn’t have been able to– to keep goin’. No way, Cas. It’s you and me. I’m sorry it took me so long, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when I had the chance. I love you.”
Castiel shivers, a very human response. His body aches like a body .
“What do you want, Dean?”
Dean blinks down at him, his lips are pink from kissing.
“You,” Dean says.
“Sex?” Castiel asks.
Dean’s cheeks pink, his eyes darken. Castiel catches the way his heart rate ticks up, blood humming.
“If you want,” Dean says, and he’s shy now, a little awkward about it. Castiel looks back at the single bed. Dean follows his gaze, smiles, chastened. “I want to,” he admits.
“You’ve thought about it,” Cas says, and it isn’t a question.
“For a long time, yeah.” Dean is very serious when he speaks, and Castiel’s curiosity is piqued.
He puts his hands on Dean’s hips, and Dean is pliant, easy to reel in. “Tell me.”
Dean looks at him. His throat works, and his shoulders stiffen. Muscles moving, infraspinatus and teres minor. He puts space between them, sits down and looks up at Castiel from the bed.
“I don’t know,” he says, but Castiel thinks that he does. He stays quiet and still. Gives Dean space to say it, if he wants. “It’s hard to pinpoint a moment. Saw you, that first time, and you were fearsome and powerful. Worthy, I remember thinking. Worthy adversary, worthy of my full attention. It’s complicated for me. Wanting men.”
“I know.”
“It’s easier with you, always was. I didn’t think it could be like this, though. I didn’t know. If I’d have known, Cas, I swear… I wouldn’t have told you no. Years ago, a decade ago. I wouldn’t have told you no.”
Castiel comes to stand between Dean’s open legs, leaning down to kiss him, to put him out of his misery. He knows this isn’t easy for him to talk about. Kissing, well, that’s easier for him.
Their shoes make heavy sounds as they’re kicked off. Dean has hands all over him. He tugs Castiel down into bed and they roll, body to body, mouth to mouth.
They begin to shed layers; outside, rain starts to fall.
Castiel’s coat is on the floor, and Dean is working buttons open, fingers quick and calloused. He keeps kissing Castiel as he does it, until eventually, frustrated, he pulls back to look at what he’s doing, to work quicker. Hands pushing fabric, tugging at tie and flannel and undershirts, and then they are chest to chest. Rib to rib, heart to heart.
Castiel thinks of Adam, the biblical one, pulling a rib from his own body and making Eve. He thinks of Zeus cutting open the top of his head and pulling out Athena, fully formed. Parthenogenesis.
Castiel mouths at Dean’s shoulder, grazes his teeth gently across freckled skin and he can feel Dean harden against his thigh.
Dean is so, so beautiful. Castiel has seen him in so many ways, full of joy and laughing, terrified and trembling. He’s seen him cry, for myriad reasons, he’s seen him racked with anger. He’s seen him slip from himself, unearthly and wrong.
He’s never seen Dean like this. Beneath him, he’s hard in his jeans, pressing hip to hip. Castiel slides one clothed leg between his thighs and Dean makes a new kind of sound, a moan in F minor. The rumble of his vocal chords against one another slide down through Castiel’s bones. He hitches his body up, grinds the heavy weight of his thigh back against the ridge of Dean’s erection and gets a throat bared to him as reward.
Pulse-point, jugular, carotid artery. A good place to press a knife— to an enemy. Castiel presses his mouth there instead, sucks gently until he can taste the bruise.
Hands on buttons, zippers; pants being pushed and kicked down legs. Castiel fumbles, presses a hand to a calf, feels the wiry hair and the strong muscle there as he drags his palm up, the soft and slightly damp back of Dean’s knee, the dry, sturdy expanse of his thigh.
Everywhere his fingers travel, skin and small hairs rise. Muscles jump, blood rushes: he warms.
Castiel pulls back to look down at a naked Dean. Pink and gold, dusted with freckles and scars that stand out like flat, white lace or riven his body in raised red. Soldier’s skin. Beautiful.
Dean is very hard. His cock is full and stiff and leaking, just a little, at the tip. Castiel is right there with him, but the feast for his eyes it’s enough to gorge himself on. It’s too good, just watching. He isn’t sure how he’s going to survive touching, too. He feels full of energy– uncontained. He isn’t sure he fully trusts himself like this, might end up with a light-leak, grace spilling warm and sticky between them.
He shudders, pushes back in.
Castiel kisses Dean everywhere he can reach. First the soft meat of his belly, feels it flex and twitch under his tongue. He licks up his ribcage, breathes out against the partial shape of a skeleton. He knows he’s left a mark on the very marrow of this man already. He takes a nipple into his mouth and feels Dean leak a little more precum when he worries it with his teeth.
“Cas,” Dean whimpers. He’s tugging at his hair, pulling him to get at Castiel’s neck and jaw, tooth and tongue, uncoordinated and desperate.
They slide together and their cocks catch, heads grazing. Dean groans, fingernails biting little half moons into Castiel’s back.
Castiel gets a hand between them, presses them shaft to shaft and squeezes. Less jerking and more just holding but Dean keens, wild animal that he is, and his legs shift to press heels into Castiel’s ass, pulling him closer.
The halogen glow of the lights above them hums and flickers, weak and yellow.
Castiel’s breath comes sharp and quick. Does he even need to breathe? He isn’t sure, but it’s involuntary anyway. He is run ragged. Dean beneath him, Dean straining and wet, color rising in his chest to make every freckle stand out. Castiel wants to wring him out.
“Cas, I need,” Dean cuts off, staining. Cas moves his hand quicker over them and Dean tucks his chin to his chest, trying to look between their bodies, to see the place where they touch and connect.
They kiss, and where their mouths meet a sort of feedback loop begins, his own want blending into Dean’s want, his own thoughts blending in Dean’s thoughts. He can feel them, both of them, the parallel sparks of pleasure; there is no place where one ends and the other begins, they simply exist.
Dean cries out against his mouth, eyes wet and wide when he looks up at him. “How?” he asks, and Castiel knows that he feels it too.
“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. Doesn’t care right now, is rapidly losing himself to this. Something that should be so human, but seems to instead be otherworldly between their overwarm bodies.
It’s not exactly that he can hear Dean’s thoughts, not clear or in words, but he can feel his want, feel an ache and desire that is deeper and more shameful. Not his– Dean’s.
Castiel rolls them so they’re on their sides, belly to belly. One hand in Dean’s hair, and one between his legs, leaving his straining dick behind to trail fingers up behind his balls and press against the flat bit of skin there, and then further.
Dean’s eyes fly open, Castiel can feel how much he wants this. Still, he wants him to say it, wants to be sure.
“Please,” Dean whispers, eyes bright. “I want it, Cas, want your fingers.”
And oh, he does. His want bleeds into Castiel too and he’s frantic with it. Castiel can feel that Dean knows the feeling, aches for it in a way that is familiar. That he wants something he’s given himself in private.
His grace can do a lot of things, but he’s never used it like this. Used it to soften, to wet, to relax. He presses one finger against Dean’s hole and it takes him in, slippery and hot. Dean hikes his leg up over Castiel’s hip, spreading himself.
“Good,” they say at the same time, Castiel as praise and Dean as affirmation.
They stay close, cocks trapped between their bellies as Castiel takes his time, stretches the rim of him, softens him slowly with first one and then two fingers.
Behind his open eyes there is a map of Dean’s anatomy. Of bones and muscle and mind, of scraped knees from when he was seven and terror from when he was ten. There is a decade of desire, too, and Castiel finds it nearly effortless to crook his fingers just so and press into the small bundle of nerves inside of Dean. He responds, open mouthed, electric and loud: a new kind of music.
Castiel takes his time. He pushes, gentle, and then rougher, and then teasing, and Dean is losing it beneath him. His cock is leaking– steady and sticky between them, like Castiel is pushing it out from the inside and he does, over and over and over until he can feel that he wants— no needs. He needs more.
Dean, trembling. Dean, flush and wet lipped, wet tipped, bright eyed and awed.
Castiel pulls three fingers out of an oppressive and perfect heat and grabs Dean’s hip. He kisses him, and then he eases Dean onto all fours. It’s so easy, when they can feel one another like this, physically, mentally. They flow like water. He slots himself between his spread cheeks, just feeling, just rubbing up against him and then Dean leans back and they’re lost in kissing again, endless and fevered.
It’s Dean who reaches behind him to take Cas in hand, to guide him, presses the head of his cock against the heat of his hole. He can’t get the angle right from where he is, straining on one wrist, but Castiel understands.
Castiel can feel both the hollow ache and the stretching fill alongside the tight, slick heat that pulls him in. He can feel Dean’s belly clench and the matching uptick of their hearts and the lights above them glow brighter, humming.
The TV turns on, channels shifting, one after another.
Castiel looks down at the broad expanse of Dean’s back, elegant as a cathedral. He kisses the knots of his spine, feels the warmth of the blood under his skin. He thinks of bread and wine, and then thinks that this is closer to worship than anything he ever felt in Heaven.
He pulls out just an inch or so, feeling every ounce of tension, and then drives back in, gentle, steady.
Dean falls down onto his forearms, unable to support his own weight on his wrists and the angle changes, pulls Castiel in deeper, presses that place inside of him that is hot and charged. Dean whines, throws his head back, and then angles it so he can look back and meet Castiel’s eyes with his own. They burn.
“Cas,” he says, voice reverent. “You– you’re–”
And he is. Castiel knows that what Dean is seeing is not what he’s used to. That he’s a little less Cas and a little more Holy , a little unearthly. He just can’t keep it all in right now, like this. Dean’s wonder and awe rolls back up into him, texture and color in the darkness.
It’s storming now, the rain kicks against the window, a dark shaped animal. The TV is burning through channels too fast, glowing behind them, picking up only small pieces of sound.
In the distance, a tornado siren sings.
Castiel is fucking Dean, using the full weight of his body for leverage and draping himself over the broad back of the man beneath him. He nips at Dean’s jaw, tugs gently at his hair, hears his own name whispered in the hot air between them.
Dean’s body moves in ripples and waves, the muscles under his skin tighten and release. Castiel is inside of him, and he thinks of rebuilding him, and he thinks of wanting him, and touching him, and not having him, missing him for an eternity, and he makes a desperate little sound as he leans in to taste him again.
He hauls Dean up, pulling him closer yet again, back to belly, thighs straining over thighs, and he sucks at the hollow below his ear, whispers to him in enochian, and then in english. Beautiful.
Castiel has seen heaven, and it has nothing on Dean Winchester getting fucked.
They’re too in sync, breath becomes breath, heat becomes heat. Castiel holds Dean around the middle, hand to heart.
Behind them, the TV blurs to static. The lights spark, and then go dark. All electricity cuts out, and Castiel wonders for a blind moment if it’s out in the whole motel– if it’s out in the whole city.
The windows shake, the ground might, too, he isn’t sure. All he knows now is Dean, the inside of his body, the outside of his skin, the wet slant of his mouth, the sharp crest of his nails and the way his own name sounds whispered against his lips.
They’re going to come, they’re going to come together, and Castiel is going to come inside of him. He thinks about pulling out, can hear Dean beg him not to at the back of his mind, sinew praying, core trembling.
“I got you,” he whispers, because Dean needs to hear it. Dean’s had his own hand around his cock since Castiel hauled him backward but he pushes his hand out of the way to touch him himself, velvet hot and hard as the iron weapons they use.
He’s quick fingered, fist moving faster against Dean’s dick than the rest of him does inside of him, mismatched and polyrhythmic.
“Cas,” Dean says, and it’s a warning, it’s a plea. It is the first humans gathering around a fire, worshipping the sun. It is the carve of canyons rending the earth. It is small animals taking flight.
Somewhere nearby, lightning strikes, once, then twice, then again. The thunder that follows is deafening, it could crack glass.
Dean’s back arches as he comes, earth-core hot, over Castiel’s fist, and Castiel follows within a split second, pushing into him as Dean releases out.
It’s dark in the little motel room, but he feels like they are glowing, bodies growing cool in the damp air. Phosphorescence.
Dean tips his head back and they kiss again, unhurried, disconnected from the march of time. Castiel drags a hand down Dean’s back and pushes enough grace into him to ease the burn of muscles, to keep him soft and pliant as he pulls out of his body. To clean him without a word.
Dean tugs at him, pulls him to lay not alongside of him but on top of him, burying his face into Castiel’s armpit and breathing there.
“I’m crushing you,” Castiel says after a minute.
“I want to be crushed,” Dean says. “I want to feel you as much as I can.”
Castiel allows it for a bit, but he’s wary of letting his full weight fall and he’s spent, if not physically then emotionally, so after a few minutes he slides away just enough to lie half on Dean and half on the bed, curling over him.
“Don’t ever leave me again,” Dean says, after a few minutes of breath-catching and touching. His voice is raw. “I won’t survive it, Cas. Not again. I don’t wanna do this anymore, hunting, saving the world. The world can end tomorrow for all I care, I just want to spend whatever time we have left together. I think we earned it.”
“The world won’t end tomorrow,” Castiel promises. “It’s different here, now. Hard to explain.”
“Yeah. That’s Jack’s doing. It’s– I think it’s okay for us to be done. There are new, young hunters who can handle whatever salt and burn pops up. We served our time. I want the quiet. I want time in the sun, by the sea. Can we have that, now?”
“Yes.”
The clock is out, the storm batters the side of the building but it’s softening now, and they sleep, tangled up, and pay it no mind.
In the morning the day is clear and bright, but there is evidence of wind damage all over. The power has not come back on, and as they drive through town Castiel realizes that oh, it was not just the motel. Not just the city. He worries that it might be the entire state.
The radio fades in and talks about a storm that came out of nowhere, that seemed more electricity than rain. Sam, now in the backseat, meets Cas’ eyes in the rear view mirror and then looks away.
They have to drive for more than an hour to find a diner that is open.
The paper at the counter says FREAK LIGHTNING STRIKES OUCHITA FOREST, EXPERTS BAFFLED.
The lady who pours their coffee tells them they were visited by UFOs the night before, that she saw lights in the sky and felt the ground shake. That they are saying some new kind of crop circle has made itself known in the pattern burned into the trees. Castiel insists they go look.
They eat, first. Eggs, bacon, waffles. Castiel has coffee, sips it dutifully and without need, all ritual and no reliance. Sam makes Dean laugh, and looks relieved at being able to do so. Castiel quietly flexes and tests his grace, tries to configure all of this energy into something more easily contained. Dean holds his hand, right there on the table, no qualms at all.
After, they drive to the edge of the national park. There are rangers, there are news vans. Dean and Sam lie to them, flash FBI badges with ease and then they are allowed past the yards of yellow tape.
Castiel looks at the trees in wonder. They have all been burned with the same pattern, identical branching forks, lightning-like, from base to top.
“Did we do this?” Dean whispers to Castiel, while Sam is crouching in the dirt.
Castiel looks at him, debates telling him about how the pattern burned onto the trees is a perfect match for his own vascular system, that he can pinpoint which of these lines would run from Dean’s heart to his throat.
“Yes. I believe so,” he admits.
Dean looks at him like he is a wondrous thing.
“Will it always be like that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, I mean, I think I can– work on it. I just– I didn’t know. I had no idea I could, that we could…”
“Yeah,” Dean breathes, and Castiel can tell he wants to kiss him. He doesn’t, not until they’re back in the car at a stop sign, pulling out onto the main road, far from the eyes and cameras lining the edge of the woods.
They kiss for too long, until Sam clears his throat and Dean looks back, sheepish and pink cheeked, and then they are on the road again. Just a few hours and they will be home.
The radio hums, falls on a bit of static before it stutters back into a song and Dean smiles, sings along. The sun in his face paints him green and gold.
Castiel thinks about what Dean said last night. Thinks about taking him to the sea, how he might look with salt water drying to crystals on his eyelashes and thinks again of worship, praying on his knees, blind devotion to a father he didn’t know and clear eyed devotion to a lover he would follow to the edge of the earth, and beyond.
Time means nothing to Castiel except that it keeps him here with the man he loves, heartbeat by heartbeat, pressing forward into a life that will be softer, and kinder, and more alive than he ever could have dreamed.