Inherent

I stood inside the church with a grimace. It still made me a bit nauseous, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it once was. In about ten minutes, the cramps would be unbearable but that left us plenty of time.

I perched on the back of a pew and turned to face him.

"Alright, Cas," I said. "Don't come in here."

Castiel took a deep breath and stepped forward.

One Year Earlier...

I wasn't sure how to feel about Earth yet. On one hand, there were things like Classic Rock albums (which had the added bonus to irritating people if put on repeat), there were things like very enthusiastically consenting women (and the occasional shy but willing man), there were hamburgers and milkshakes and hot showers and fresh pizza dripping with grease. These were all excellent things. Great, glorious, wicked things. But then there was that angel.

I didn't think he was all that bad at first. He just sort of glared at me whenever we were in the same area. That meant I had to taunt him, of course. Sarcastic kisses were blown, and some priests were seduced before he did it.

That awesome stripper joint with the even awesomer pizza? Yeah. Shut down. Fucking feather-assed bastard.

I arranged getting caught sucking a politicians dick.

He somehow turned my favourite Nazareth album into Patsy Cline. Patsy Cline. (Okay, to be fair, she wasn't that bad. But I was expecting Hair of the Dog and got I Fall to Pieces.)

…

I found another strip club sometime after that. We'd been doing a good job of leaving each other alone since the incident with the gargoyles on the local church.

But I was sitting there, enjoying the show as usual, when he walked in.

Obviously, he wasn't there for the entertainment, so I stood up and stepped between him and the manager quickly; before this place found itself under some sort of health violation.

"Excuse me," he said to the manager when he saw me coming.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

He stood up straighter and adjusted that damn tie that he always wore.

"This is a house of sin. What do you think I'm doing?"

I rolled my eyes. "You say sin, we say 'job'."

"Regardless, I need to shut it down."

"Why?"

"My boss said I had to."

Well, that was kind of the begin-all-end-all for angels wasn't it? But I was done with him, so I just told him fine and to do what he had to do.

But I also told him that maybe he should follow the stripper with the cross necklace home.

…

I was in a McDonalds the day after. He walked in, looking exhausted in a way that humans can't manage until their soul is wrung in Hell.

"You followed her home?" I asked. I poured more ketchup on my napkin.

He nodded and sat down across from me miserably.

"And what have we learned?" I asked with fake condescension.

"Learn?" he asked.

I ate another fry.

"Your faith is misplaced."

He was silent for a long moment.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he eventually asked.

I scoffed. "You would've believed me if I told you she's a stripper who's in that line of work to support her kid? That she believes in God? That she begs his forgiveness for her job when all she wants to do is support her kid?"

He looked down at the hands clasped on his lap.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"What are you apologizing to me for? Go apologize to her."

He stood up slowly.

I started eating my cheeseburger as he walked away. His wings were held a little higher than before.

…

I'm not sure how he found me again. It was getting cold and I was on vacation. It was two weeks since our last little visit.

I was sitting on the wet sand of a beach, watching a few stragglers pack up late as I pulled the tide in and ruined sandcastles and erased massages written into the sand.

"I've never asked your name," he said from behind me.

"Dean," I said. "Well, that was my name." I didn't bother turning around.

"I'm Castiel."

There was a brief silence as we both realised a name exchange was pointless, considering it would do little more than burn our tongues.

"Right," he said awkwardly. "I found that girl a different job."

"What girl?" I asked. I knew perfectly well, of course.

"You know what girl."

I turned to look at him. "I have no idea," I said pointedly.

He got it. Demons actually caring, keeping up, or checking in? Nope.

"Oh, my mistake," he covered smoothly. "If you knew though, then you would want to know that she is content now."

"Yes, I'd be quite happy to know that."

"But only if you cared, of course," he said with an obvious secretive wink.

I rolled my eyes at his failure at discretion.

I tried to shoo him off after that, but he sat down on the sand beside me.

…

Our relationship was complicated but it became easier. I pretended to despise his feathery guts and every few days he'll pretend to make an attempt at exorcising me. If something he did had an unexpected affect, I'd point it out jeeringly and he would fix it gratefully.

…

He asked me one day what I do on Earth because he's never seen me really do anything besides piss people off, sleep, and eat.

I shrugged and told him I have lots of sex too.

I offered (half-jokingly) for him to participate sometime, but he noticed I was only half joking. He looked away.

…

"I'm sorry about your Nazareth album."

"Fuck off, I'm still not sorry about the gargoyles."

We were sitting on the beam of a building in construction. I was supposed to push a worker off later (orders from Hell), and Castiel was supposed to save him (not orders from Heaven).

…

"Why didn't you kill him?" Lucifer hissed.

"Tried. That angel saved him."

Lucifer gave me a disbelieving look, but I was dismissed.

…

"This is the fifth time in two weeks," Castiel said.

"Well, someone really wants him dead," I replied.

The snowbanks were up to our waists. Lots of black ice on the road. A particularly large spot of black ice going down a hill leading to a stop sign, which was across the road from a frozen lake. But it wasn't frozen enough yet to withstand a car's weight.

Castiel stood by the stop sign, already planning how to save him.

"Should I save him?" he asked.

I glared. Code for: 'yes', but could easily be seen by onlookers to mean 'go ahead and try, I dare you.'

…

"How did you get construction done short notice?" I asked, my breath fogging in the air.

"Pothole," he replied. Then he looked at the ground. "But I accidentally gave someone a flat tire."

I laughed. "Good for you," I said as I clapped his shoulder.

But he looked slightly sullen and just kept looking down, so I asked, "What?"

"Do you think we're inherently good or bad?"

"Huh?"

"Are you inherently bad and that's why you're a demon, or are you just inherently a demon, and that makes you bad?"

"I think you're inherently a feather brain and if you think about it too much, you'll give yourself a headache." I'd spent enough time trying to figure it out to know, but he didn't need to know that bit. "We're just lucky that guy took the suggested detour. That drunk guy on the news last night was on his usual route home."

I didn't notice Castiel looking at me wide-eyed as I finished speaking.

…

"I think you two are getting a little too friendly," Lucifer said.

"I'm trying to make him fall," I said. A good, plausible excuse.

Lucifer laughed. "You slipped, Dean. You said, we're lucky."

…

"My boss thinks I'm trying to make you fall," I said.

I looked down into my coffee mug. The snow would melt soon.

He was silent across from me.

We'd been coming to this place a lot recently. Good coffee. The servers didn't question us any more. I would leave without paying. He would lag behind and pay for both of us before he left. I couldn't have coffee in the company of an angel and then pay for the service, so I'd leave before I saw his 'glorious' deed of paying for both.

"Are you?" he asked softly.

I nearly choked. How am I supposed to explain that it's not that I want him to fall, I just want him to be on a level where we can be together in peace?

"You can't ask me that question," I said. "It doesn't have a 'yes or no' kind of answer."

Castiel looked down into his coffee, the cogs in his feather-brained head turning.

…

The ground was sickeningly wet under my feet. The product of melted snow and growing grass.

"What are you doing here?" I asked. I didn't care how many hints he dropped about it, if he wanted the church fixed from the gargoyle incident all those months ago, he could do it himself.

"I can't enter any residence if I'm specifically told not to. Not even a church. So, stand in there and tell me not to come in."

I gave him a look and pointed to myself. "Me demon. That Holy ground."

"How close can you get?"

…

The next time we tried it, I got halfway through the church graveyard.

But my boss was getting even more suspicious. The explanation of ' I wanna fuck him in a church' wasn't exactly working for him.

…

"There won't be enough time for me to get used to it and then for you to get used to it. My boss knows something's up."

"Your boss?"

I nodded. Since he was already piecing it together, there wasn't really a need to be so discrete.

"Can you say my name?" he asked.

"No."

"Have you tried?"

"Maybe."

He smiled.

…

"Do you think demons are inherently bad and angels are inherently good and that's the difference between us?" he asked one night.

We were on the church roof, sitting on a ledge of the steeple. I'd been inside the grounds for thirty minutes already.

"We've been through this, angel ass."

"I know but is it the difference between us?"

"I think demons question and angels have blind faith and that's the difference."

"But I question now," he said.

"Yeah, but you still have blind faith."

"Maybe in you, but not in God."

We were silent for a long time. The stars came and went. Sun touched the grass of the grounds and crept up the steeple to touch us.

I wasn't quite sleeping. More like dozing and thinking and daydreaming all at once. So, I didn't notice how sick I was until I came back down to Earth.

Castiel may have needed to help me get down.

…

"We need a plan B," I said.

"I think I can find us some help."

…

Her cross necklace glinted in the warm spring sun. I was still feeling really uneasy around the church because of last week, so the ex-stripper had been forbidding Castiel entrance and then he tried to enter. I kept her kid entertained. It wasn't so bad.

…

I think it was a few days later that she asked why we were doing this. Castiel was the one to explain.

"We want to see if we are inherently demons or inherently angels, or if there is something different underneath any good or bad we might have in us."

She laughed. "I think you two are completely your own and each other's."

I coughed and looked away, but I knew he was smiling.

…

"I tried saying your name, but I still can't," Castiel said, over an iced coffee.

I tried to stir the sugar settled on the bottom.

"Cas," I said. "That's as far as I can get."

"Then please call me Cas."

…

I stood inside the church with a grimace. It still makes me a bit nervous, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it once was. In about ten minutes, the cramps would become unbearable, but that left us plenty of time.

"Alright Cas," I said. "Don't come in here."

He took a deep breath and stepped forward.

He stepped in.

We looked at each other in surprise, then realisation, then unadulterated joy. Cas grabbed me and we sort of jumped around in a circle, yelling and shouting from excitement the whole time.

…

We stayed in there as long as we could and then spent the rest of the night under a tree on the grounds.

"You have blind faith in me too, you know," he said.

"I know," I replied.

…

"What do you mean, 'are you inherently good or bad'?" Lucifer asked.

"Exactly that. Am I good or bad because I am a demon or an angel, or am I an angel or demon because I'm good or bad?"

Lucifer chuckled. "Neither and both. You are 'inherently' whoever you choose to be. You are inherently whomever you are." After a moment he added, "And I won't stand in your way for choosing to be who you are."

...

"Castiel!" I called. I waved him to the table I was sitting at.

"Morning, Dean," he said with his usual smile.

The first of many mornings I would pay for our coffee.

…

Sometimes he paid and sometimes I paid. Sometimes he filled the sugar with salt and sometimes I'd get up before him and make breakfast.

We weren't inherently in love, but 'in love' was the conclusion we came to when we tried to figure out what we were if not inherently an angel or a demon. Simply in love.