Author's Note: This week is looking like it'll be ripe for updates! I make no promises, but it's definitely looking good. :D
Once more, thank you everyone for the reviews. They mean a lot as a writer and I'm a critique slut anyways haha. So keep 'em coming, please and thankies!
N is for Name
Castiel is surprised at how much he's dimmed, how tarnished his wings have become. How far he seems to have fallen. Sometimes he'll stand in front of a mirror and stare intently at the fazing shadows; hesitant to appear even at full strength. It's becoming more and more difficult to summon their manifestation, whereas before, if he so desired, they'd be brought to bear with a mere whim of effort. His brow creases in concentration now, determined to see how long he can keep them visible.
It's never as long as he likes.
The shadows stutter, and wink out of existence. Castiel leans over the sink, head bowed between his shoulders.
Jody can't see his wings, although he knows she'd like to. Sometimes, he'll work some magic and she'll catch that fleeting shimmer of their outlines, work her fingers through downy layers of intangible silhouettes. He's often bemused by how much this pleases her, but allows it because it makes her happy. And the touch… that connection of another soul touching something only he's known in the spans of two millennia… it's special. It makes him feel less isolated and not so alone.
It first had started when she'd called him chicken wings, for no other reason than to show affection in her bantering way that he's come to enjoy so much. He'd replied, of course, that his wings in no way resembled that of a chicken's, and she'd told him to prove it. Always an enigma wrapped in a challenge, Jody Mills.
The nicknames had confused him at first. Now, he wants to smile at the familiarity of them. He likes them all. Likes how they roll off her tongue and into his thoughts with genuine warmth and affection when she speaks them.
He can hardly believe it, looking back. Remembering, in what seems like a lifetime ago, his brief encounter with one unassuming little human. When Bobby called on him after the dead had risen in Sioux Falls, asking that he look after the local sheriff. Castiel, not one to ask questions, had stood vigil over the woman's house as she'd grieved the loss of her son and her husband, invisible to human eyes, until dawn split the horizon. Never would he have imagined how he would be looking at her now. What she would be making him feel. That she would be the one to show him; to show him everything.
The Winchesters and Bobby Singer are (and were) his family. But he doesn't even know what to call this yet. He has his suspicions, but he's remarkably terrified. He's laid siege to Hell with nothing but his own sword and few brethren at his back, infiltrated Lucifer's Cage itself, alone, to salvage one single man. And yet this little slip of a thing, this unassuming human woman, sets him on edge like no one and no thing can or ever has. It's a little embarrassing, to be honest.
He's fairly certain she enjoys it, too.
Castiel kisses her name into the graceful curve of her neck and makes the word last forever, whispered like a prayer. Jody stirs in her sleep, sighing, her fingers curling reflexively around his just a little tighter. He says her name like it's the most important word in his vocabulary (and he has many languages), heavy with mystery and ripe with conviction. With her name, Castiel makes it sound like he has no choice but to love her, as if he were meant to, created by God just to find her and make himself whole.
The angel feels heavy with his own; so many emotions in one ridiculous, useless name. A name that has brought only trouble to everyone and everything. There are days he wishes he'd been called by anything else. Or perhaps that he'd never come to be at all.
"Cas?" her sleepy voice mumbles into the relative obscurity of the room, illuminated only by the soft glow of morning. It interjects his conflicted thoughts, shedding light to dark corners.
"Go back to sleep," he replies, low, smoothing a hand down her back. His fingers hover for a moment, still uncertain, still untrusting of the fact that he's allowed to touch her. That his flesh won't ignite upon contact; even though, in a way, it always does.
"Mmm… stay with me? You're a comfy pillow." Not giving him time to reconsider, she's already wrapped around him snugly, cheek molded against his chest.
He hesitates, sensations flooding his thoughts. "I should return to—" he begins, thinking it best to distance himself from the heavy emotions that are literally assaulting him from every angle. He still has trouble processing their weight, the sheer foreign nature of what he hadn't been designed to feel. Each new novel experience, all the continual swan dives into humanity, leave him a little more uneasy every time. That, and there are dangers beyond these walls. Dangers he can battle and defend against. She is so small compared to the world outside, and the horrors it contains. She'd raised him from a perdition that was, in ways, so much more crippling than the Hell many were familiar with. This had been of his own personal creation, his own condemnation, and he'll do everything he can to repay her. He needs to repay her.
But Jody's not letting go anytime soon. "Park it, mister."
Castiel relents, as he always will. Because when she says his name? Every syllable sounds like redemption. He stares at the ceiling in the mutual silence that comes, tracing the patterns there with tireless eyes and reveling in the feel of her body against his. "Sleep well, Jody."
Author's Note: I feel like I'm getting into a much better flow with things than I had been early on in this. Less stressed out with work and life, more time to sit back and do what I love; writing, of course. Always will be my first love. So thanks again guys for following this little experiment! We're working down into the second half of things now... FYI, there will be 28 chapters, not 26. The last two are surprises.