Thursday's Child
Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursdays child has far to go
1.
Castiel witnessed the birth of time. He saw the waving light of the first glimpse of the universe as it swept forward, he felt the breath of the word of god pass over him. He sang with the angles, their voices giving shape to the glory and the joy of creation. When the balanced tipped, and the word of god trembled, Castiel sang a song of violence, and fought for things he had no way to understand: freedom, love.
The history of man passed like glittering moments of agony, lines of light and love cut through the smoke of demons both real and imagined. The darkness of the devil, and men themselves. Castiel watched, the lives of men hummed and with the truth of revelation in all his songs of glory and violence he was a warrior and he did not wonder. He shone. He obeyed.
He was obeying the word when he folded his wings and dove to hell, past the howling chaos, its atmosphere of despair into its sky of chains and hooks, its oppressive air of screams as sharp as knives. The word flew with him and shone its light on WInchester.
His skin was blood, his body a nervy knot of scars, always in motion. His hands were shape sifters, his hands were murderous bricks, knives, claws. He breathed a steam of death from a chest lashed, flayed, hard with muscle. His arms heaved, agony inflicting agony. The light of the word cast him in bright and shadow, softened the hard edges of his motion, and Castiel saw his eyes. Green, shining softly in the crushing throb of hell. So fair and gentle a pain for so horrible a place. In his face Castiel saw everything, he saw the birth of time in a bright expanding ring of creation, he saw the glimmering oceans of fire and metal that covered the earth, he saw the galloping of steppe ponies on mongolian plains, spears in the hands of their riders. He saw a battle as old as time itself, resolute, playing out in his eyes.
Green. Beautiful.
Green was the colour they killed in hell, and for the first time in eons Castiel felt a wave or relief, a wave of joy at the work he did as the hand and weapon of God. Freeing Winchester made him want to sing, the sight of his green eyes made him want to scream with a voice as sharp and blinding as his light, but he did not. He had precious little time, so he only closed his hand on Dean's shoulder, his light and joy searing them both, scaring deeper then flesh, deeper then bone, as he pulled him free from perdition.
2.
Winchester did not know how to see him, did not know how to hear him. Pulling him from hell had been almost impossible, his body his sole, his screams slick with blood. His grave was lonely, a forest in the dark. He waited, watched the men with the green eyes claw his way out of the dirt and clay. His knuckles bloody, his nails black with earth, dirt in his hair.
Dust to Dust. Castiel thought. Not any more.
The man could claw his way out of a grave but he could not see an angel, he could not hear its voice. Castiel took a vessel, a man borne on thursday, a man of temperance with a steady voice in prayer and a will to grant all Castiel required: permission.
He stood before Dean, the truth on his lips, the shadow of his wings on the empty hollow of a barn. Castiel once stood in the passing light of god, he received revelation, the word of his father that could burn galaxies to black. He was light himself, a torch, a manifestation of the word. He was a thought of god, beyond modesty. But Dean WInchester, who somehow held the history of world in his face, whose existence made Castiel more certain then god. And standing before him made Castiel feel naked as only a human could.
Alone.
Lost.
The Angel's voice sounded like a thousand voices speaking as one in the dark, gravel and gold. His wings reached into the darkest corers of the barn, only their shadows, the whisper of their sound. His face was a wide territory of contradictions. Handsome but childish, sensual but structured, somehow both empty and full. Perfect, all knowing, and lost. If not for the trail of dead bodies, the eyes burned away and the meaty acrid smell of their smoke, Dean would have thought innocent. Grace. Dean did not think he had ever used that word before, but now he could almost taste it. It was in the angel's walk, in the light that seemed to fall after him, in the carelessly beautiful face.
Dean would deny it. He would pace his agnostic denial, following it through a thousand different blind places. All of his disbelief rooted in a simple thought. I am not worthy. Castiel knew he would not belief, there had been so few that god called who came willingly. A crazy girl once who was given to flames, but that was a long time ago. But he did not know that Dean's disbelief was building a cage over a deep part of him that shone, that warmed and charged with joy. An angel with black wings, for him.
Their lives would roar like avalanches across fate and prophecy. Would it have made a difference then, if they knew how many would die, how many times they would die, how twisted and frayed the rope of their lives would become. There would be days in Purgatory when they would tremble at the brush of their hands, lost in the silver light where every moment was slow and empty. Perfect. Savage. It had almost been enough to make Castiel forget.
In Purgatory there would be long mist filled nights where Castiel could hear all manner of smoke howl and he would wonder if all that he had done went back to that moment in the barn, where he claimed Winchester as his, protected by his word.
By deed.
By choice.
The first choice of so many choices. None of that had happened yet, as they stood in the barn, Dean knife in his shoulder, its hilt still warm from the touch of Dean's hand as Castiel pulled it out slowly. There was only a man with green eyes and a will and a gravity that Castiel did not understand.
That slide of his smile, closed like a fist, honed on the hardness of Winchester eyes.
Dean
Dean.
3.
"Please...I can't...I need some help. Please?"
Dean praying to someone or something else. Something nameless and far away, something Castiel didn't even think Dean believed in. Something that wasn't him. Cass was amazed by the precision of the pain, the cold that encased his heart.
Dean's voice was rough and heavy. He wanted to hear him again, to try and recapture the sound of him, to hear his pleading, to understand it. He opened his mouth with the intention of saying something, to comfort him, to let him know that though god maybe missing, Dean had heaven by his side. But nothing came. The wave of cold rolled over him and he stood still and invisible, as it crashed.
Angles did not form bonds, their affections were driven by word and song alone. Rank, revelation. Light grew in their presence but they no words for longing. Love and fear were equal in the house of the God and Castiel had no words to offer to the pull and tide of Dean's smile, to the feeling of the planes and acres of his body as he fought, or pulled Cass close and threw his arm around his shoulders. He could have sat still for all of time and watched the dance of the cosmos, watch stars grow and burn and collapse, but he had never been caught in the gravity of another persons smile, or their pain.
It was frightening; horrible sometimes, to think of how far they came together. The apocalypse about to close around them, the balance of the world, the motion of Gods careful clockwork grinding, sick and rusted, closing like a fist. Castiel watched as everything he knew, the songs he trusted, burned. All he wanted was to pull Dean from the flames, as he had before. As he always would. To close his wings around him.
Dean, the gleam in his green eyes not obliterated by the bleeding red of hell, the shine of every corrupt howl. He found Dean standing in the eye of hell's gale force despair, flexing his hands and arms in the work of survival and sin. He watched Dean lean against the impala, press his hands into the back, the black metal shine reflecting his face as well as his sorrow. Tears stood unshed in his eyes. Castiel could smell him, leather and gun powder and the smell of the sun on smooth stone, the smell of Dean's skin.
There was no word for wanting to lick the tears from his lashes, to taste him, so Castiel only watched. Watched the sorrow of loneliness do what all the weight and flying suffering of hell could not; break a warrior.
That was why the sight of him filled Castiel with visions of the creations first breaths, the blowing of the dust that made men, those ancient horses with their wise eyes. He contained every aspiration for good, for the safety and heaven of love, he fought for them as Castiel fought for the word of god, and as he often did when he thought of dean moving with grace in a fight, he thought that Dean's cause was more worthy. Creation held hope because human beings like Dean beat it into the world, pulled evil out.
The ice in Castiel's heart spread slowly until his fingers were tingling. He would do anything for Dean, except tell him that, he could come at his call and protect him and those he cared for, he would pull him from hell over and over, but he never told him the truth. He could hardly tell him self.
His secret defied everything he had been created to be. His actions professed it to heaven, but Dean Winchester did not know. And though he had fought legions in the waving flames of fire outside hell, though he had walked the rings of Jupiter and dipped his wings in its storms, he feared to speak the truth behind the only choices he ever made .
He loved the green eyed warrior he pulled from the Hell.
4.
"You could have prayed to me. I would have come."
"I wasn't praying to you, Castiel." Dean said, his voice thick, soft. His lips brushed Castiel's as he spoke. "I was praying for you. For this."
Dean raised his hand curled into a loose fist and brushed his knuckles across Castiel's rough jaw. There was no word for the feeling, the soft brush of Dean's skin against his, the way his smile changed his eyes, made them brighter. The tears in his eyes were gone, but the memory of them lingered on his lashes, caught the light meagre light.
"I am not the answer to your prayer." He said, stone faced. And Dean smiled, its was the most Castiel-like thing he could say.
"I am sorry Dean. I do not know what will happen, but I will always…" Even in a whisper Castiel voice was full, a chorus of voices hidden in the depths. Dean stopped his words with his mouth, closing off his voice and filling him with pleasure, a deep shock. It was not soft like Dean's hand along his jaw. It was hard and deep, Dean stepped closer and pressed their lengths together. A deep coil of heat filled Castiel's chest, he could feel the pressure of Dean's fingers, he wonderful soft strangeness of the inside of his mouth.
There were so many things that angels didn't have words for, and Cass wanted desperately to feel everyone one of them. He wanted to feel every part of Dean pass under his fingers, he wanted to own and know what he was protecting. Desire. He knew the word for that though he did not know if any angel other then lucifer had ever felt it. Desire. He pulled the hunter closer, the taste of him mixing with the night.
Dean never needed anything more than he needed Cass, its was more than comfort. It was solace and lust in hazy face of grief and hard truths. Surrender, confession. So much more. Dean wasn't empty, he was hopeless. Perhaps to famine it was all the same, the promise of satisfaction, the reason to keep eating, to keep fucking, was anathema to him. But Castiel, his mouth, his hands, the curl his his arms, the man and the angel and who they both were pressed against him, hard, and it was the most real thing Dean ever felt, more real then a fight more real then the chains and hooks of hell. Cass' body, hard and warm and full of light and wanting him.
They broke apart for just a moment and, their faces still close, hovering, breathing each others breath, standing perfectly still. Castiel's fear crushed against him, held at bay by the taste of Dean still on his lips. by his heavy lidded green eyes sparking, pupils blown wide.
"Cass, what you are, what you mean to me." Dean held CAss' face in his hands. The night swept and sparked as he closed his hands in the short curling strands of his dark hair. "Cass, you don't know. How could you. But you will, you will see. We haven't even begun. "
Cass knew he could not heal Dean's heart the way he healed his body with a touch. A kiss could not cure everything. The hardness in Dean would remain, his beautiful mouth set in a violent thin slash. The world was broken and needed healing and Cass knew the human he loved could never set aside a broken thing to bask in the wings of grace and human passion. But Cass knew as well, in the end, when god's clockwork turned them all to dust and myth, that their love for each other would survive the blood of Armageddons, purgatories, and human frailty. And so Cass was there, hanging on that kiss, both of them swinging from the cliff of risk, catching solace.