Written because of reasons. Thank you Miss Elucidation.
There is a girl in 1944, and she has blue eyes.
Dean sees her from between the bars of his cell, iron painting stripes against her pretty, nondescript face and her brown, nondescript hair. She's standing stiffly by the door, her shoulders drawn up and back and her head cocked to the side as she listens with an intense frown to the officer laying a condescending hand on her shoulder.
He leans against the cement wall, the cold seeping through his wool coat, and he entertains the thought of flirting with her and denies it, because even if he gets out of here, he's not sure he has it in him to make it worth her time.
And he rubs a tired hand against his face, and he feels crows' feet and laugh lines and frown lines and wonders when he got so damn old.
Once Ness springs him he sees her again. He's walking down a street, one of those shadow dark and sulfurous yellow ones where everything echoes when all you want is quiet. He catches a flash of movement down the street, a flourish of tan fabric in a pool of lamplight, and before his mind catches up with his feet he's sprinting after it.
He slows when he sees a woman's figure, and he thinks the anger he feels flaring up inside him is at himself, but he's angry at so many things and so many people now it's getting kind of hard to tell. Dean sees the woman's face when she turns around nervously, and he recognizes her pretty, nondescript face and her brown, nondescript hair. Curls are springing free from her neat bun now, falling around her cheeks, and when he meets her eyes his heart drops into his shoes, because she's wearing a knee-length trench coat cinched at the waist, and her eyes are heart-stoppingly, ethereally blue.
"Sorry," Dean tells her. "I thought you were someone else."
The woman does not seem to relax, her posture the same rigid pose Dean had saw her hold the other night in the police station. She's petite, short and curvy, but the way she holds herself makes her look like a coiled spring. The suspicion in her eyes does lessen somewhat though, and she replies in a curiously monotonous voice, "It is alright."
"You uh, want a walk home?" Sam would definitely give him the face for that, but Dean knows how dangerous it can be out here and old habits die hard, and because she has gorgeous eyes and hey, it's been a while since he's gotten lucky.
There's a slight wrinkle in her brow as she tilts her head to the side, considering him. "Why would I need an escort?" she inquires, because inquires is the only word you can use when someone asks you a question in that voice, Dean thinks.
Dean shrugs, a quick smile twitching at the corner of his lip even though with every passing second his body is screaming at him to run run run because you're gonna end up regretting this. "Dangerous felon just escaped from jail," he says casually.
She appears to consider for a moment, then nods curtly. "I suppose that would be acceptable." She turns on her heel and begins walking, not waiting for him. She holds her hands loose and ready by her sides, like a fighter, Dean thinks curiously.
"I saw you in there the other day," he says, taking a few quick steps to catch up with her. "The jail, I mean."
She glances back at him, then tugs the belt of her trench coat tighter around her waist. "It was a family matter," she replies shortly. "A brother of mine…had…" She runs the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip. "He'd taken justice into his own hands, and had unfortunately neglected to deal with the consequences."
"Batman, huh?" Dean says, laughing a little as he shoves his hands into his pockets.
"I don't understand that reference," she replies, and Dean stops in the middle of the sidewalk.
"What did you say?" He's standing in the shadow midway between streetlights, and a dog is starting to bark inside one of the houses on the street, he thinks, maybe, because all he can really hear is the buzzing between his ears.
The girl stops and turns to face him, a look of vague frustration crossing her dispassionate face. "I said I don't—"
"What's your name?" Dean demands. He walks up to her, pulling her chin up until she looks into his eyes. She reaches up with a soft, manicured hand and forces his away with shocking strength.
The girl drops it politely and steps back. There's a long moment where Dean just can't look away, because in 64 years a man in a long coat is going to walk in from the night in a flurry of sparks and change Dean's life.
"My name is Catherine Novak," she says, haloed in cheap electric light, and in Dean's mind the shadows of wings rise up behind her.
The words dry up and die on Dean's tongue, and all he can do is stare at her, run his eyes over the blend of unfamiliar and painfully familiar features. A pert nose and smooth cheeks, wide, chapped lips and blue eyes that could melt the sun.
"Liar," he breathes, and the unfamiliar brow wrinkles into a familiar frown, and Dean thinks the laughter he hears might be his own, but he's not sure, because it's a little bit hysterical. "Cas."
The girl steps back, out of the light and stutters out a lie Dean doesn't even hear, because he's already crossing the gap between them, running his hands over her face and down her arms in their trench coat sleeves, and now he knows he's laughing, because of course the Novaks have always been vessels, and of course Cas would wear a trench coat, Dean bets he's worn trench coats in every single one of his vessels, all the way back to when he'd have to cut up a toga to make it work.
"Cas, Cas," he's saying, and that confused look on her—his—face is the maybe the third most beautiful thing Dean's ever seen, after Sam coming back to life and getting resouled. "Castiel." And at that there's a flicker of alarm in the beautiful blue eyes, because of course Cas doesn't respond to Cas yet, he won't do that for 64 and a half years.
"I do not know you," Castiel says in his female vessel's voice, and Dean shakes his head.
"Not yet, buddy, not yet, but you will," he says.
A single car rattles by on the empty street, and there is a slam as a storefront slams shut. A lamp down the street shudders out as Cas looks up at Dean.
"I do not understand," Cas says, and steps back out of Dean's reach, but Dean steps with him, keeps his hands on the small, soft hands that are nothing like the calloused pianists fingers of Jimmy's body.
"Look, I'm—" Dean frowns, his hands running back up the trench coat sleeves and settling on Castiel's shoulders. "How 'bout I walk you back to your place and we get a drink?"
"I do not drink," Castiel says, but begins walking again, his slender, female shoulder stiff under Dean's hand.
"One day you'll drink a whole store, show up shitfaced for the end of the world," Dean says. He watches the way Castiel walks now, and it's almost a march, he thinks. He remembers Cas as he saw him last, lean and exhausted, his movements jerky and feral.
He remembers watching the Cas fade out of those blue eyes, and watching something else rise up behind them.
Without warning, he pulls Castiel against him, arms wrapped as tightly as he can because he knows he can't hurt Cas, not like this. This isn't what he thought hugging Cas would be like, on the rare occasions when he'd considered it. This body is soft, feminine, and frankly kind of hot, and Dean can't help thinking of the hard lines of the vessel he knew Cas in best. But right now he doesn't care about the vessel, because no matter what he's wearing, Cas is Cas.
An awkward hand reaches up to pat his back and he lets go, but he keeps a hand on Cas' arm the whole way back.
In this vessel, Cas lives alone in an apartment above a store, and as Dean follows the angel up the rusty stair case nailed to the brick of the building, he can't help but watch the sway of Cas' hips. He doesn't think Cas can help it; that's just how this body moves, and it's weird, and it's kind of creepy and he kind of likes it and he's not sure if that makes him kind of gay.
"You're not from now," Cas says, turning on the light in his apartment and locking the door behind them both.
It's small, Spartan, with a kitchen, a chair, and a narrow bed pressed into the corner.
In his head, Dean hears another voice saying "You're not you. Not now you, anyway," and he shakes his head. "Future."
"How far?" Cas asks, shedding his—her?—trench coat. To Dean's vast amusement, Cas is wearing an ill-fitting suit jacket with wide lapels over a neat white button down and skirt.
"'Bout sixty years," Dean replies, wandering around the perimeter of the single room apartment, his fingers trailing lightly across the wall.
"I take it you're a charge, then? Not a vessel. You don't look like one of this bloodline." Oh yeah, it's definitely Cas. The voice isn't nearly as bone-vibratingly low, but it has the same inflections, the mouth makes the same shape around the words, as if it can't quite fit them.
"Yeah," Dean says after a minute, because sure, he started out as a charge. He feels Cas' eyes on him as he moves around the room, and without warning he's shedding his coat, his vest, his shirt and rolling up the sleeve of his undershirt, practically shoving the vivid red-hand print seared into his skin under Cas' nose.
"…A brand," Cas says cautiously. "An angelic brand. May I?" He looks to Dean for permission before laying a hand across the mark. Catherine Novak's hand fits neatly inside the print Jimmy Novak's body left and Dean can see by the expression on Cas' expressionless face that he can feel his own grace inside it. He draws back, looking troubled, and says, "Was I given orders to do this?"
Dean closes his eyes, because the Cas he knew was lean and exhausted and took orders from no one, least of all him. But that Cas is gone. He's dead. For a wild second, Dean thinks he should stay here, in 1944, with a Castiel who believes in his Father with all his heart and is wearing a pretty young girl, because when he goes back to his own time he's just going to lose him all over again.
"Yeah," Dean says. He rubs his hand over his mouth, palms catching on stubble. "I wanna –there's stuff I wanna say to you."
Castiel takes a seat on the end of the bed and folds his hands neatly on his lap, looking up at him expectantly.
"You—I—" Dean draws in a deep breath and holds it, wondering where to begin. "Thank you. You haven't done any of it yet, but you've done so much, for me, and for Sam, and for Bobby, and you—gave up a lot for me. Everything." Dean sits next to Cas on the bed. "And I'm sorry."
"I'm sure that I will forgive you," Cas says patiently.
Dean laughs, a little brokenly. "I'm sure you did, you son of a bitch. But I…I let you down. I broke so many promises…." He turns a little and meets Cas' eyes, which don't burn the same way they did when Dean knew him, and he thinks of one promise he can keep, and kisses him.
It doesn't feel like kissing Catherine Novak. It probably doesn't even feel like kissing Jimmy. It feels like Cas; it feels warm and fierce, like he's flying a kite in a storm and just caught a thunderbolt.
Cas will not die a virgin, because there is not much Dean can give him at this point, but this just happens to be one of his best skills, and he's never found a better use for it.
When Sam and Dean lived in the same town for more than a week, girls started to figure it out; both Winchester boys were good looking, but if you wanted flowers and poetry and romance, you went to Sam. Dean's never been good with words, but he speaks with touch with an impossible eloquence, and as he runs his hands over Cas' bare shoulders he says everything he can about missed opportunities and apologies come too late.
And Cas doesn't yet understand—of course he doesn't. He hasn't rebelled, or fallen, or fought and killed his brothers for the human leaning over him now. He's in a girl's body, keeping tabs on demonic activity in a dark corner of a dark city, and he hasn't known Dean Winchester. Cas knows love when he feels it, but in the sweat-slick slide of bodies, he can't tell if this is the kind of the love that will one day kill him or bring him to life.
Dean worships him, tells Cas he misses him in every way he knows how, says his name like a prayer. He kisses Cas' eyelids reverently, his hair tangled between Dean's fingers like a rosary.
Time passes, and they lay locked together beneath the sheets. Dean listens to Cas' slow breath, feels the beating of his heart in this girl's body. He tastes salt on his lips and he doesn't know if it's sweat or if he's been crying, and he kisses Cas' forehead.
He rises and dresses, because Sam is looking for him and because 68 years from now the Leviathans are still destroying the world.
"Dean," Cas says, and his voice is sleep-roughed and hoarse, a weak approximation of the growl he'll have one day. "You don't have to apologize anymore."
Dean pauses by the door, his hat in his hand, and wishes he didn't.
"I'll be seein' you, Cas."
In the year 2008, an angel receives orders to raise a man from Hell, and he smiles as he flies into the Pit, flames scorching his wings, because he knows he will be loved.
In the year 2009, a man and an angel sit in a decaying room on what both believe will be their last night on earth, and the angel tells his best and only lie, because this Dean is not ready to know.
In the year 2011, the last thing the angel Castiel sees before his vision goes black is the human Dean Winchester, and he is alright with that.
In the year 2014, the human Castiel laughs as the bottle of pills rattles in his hand, because once Dean loved him.