Cas was in the lab running his hundredth test while cursing himself for the thousandth time when the call came in.
He was chasing down the trace of the shifter DNA he theorized had contaminated Dean during his stay in the colony.
"Do you remember any skin reaction when they touched you for shifting purposes?" he'd asked Dean on the way down to Maryland. Tim drove as fast as he dared in the rental car.
"They touched my arm with one finger. I don't know. It was so skeevy watching them, like there were no people behind their faces," Dean had murmured before he faded off again.
Cas brought blood and tissue samples into the lab after seeing Dean settled at home under the care of Tim. "Are you sure we shouldn't take him back to the hospital?" their friend said.
"I broke him, now I'm the only one that can fix him," Cas declared and stormed out.
He tried to think of some precedent for an allergic reaction to a foreign genetic code and then continued cursing himself for having taken them all off the map, medically speaking. Dean had been injured many times during the examinations. Castiel had never thought to test what sort of damage could be caused by multiple traumas left behind in discarded forms when they returned to their normal states.
There were so many questions he had not asked during his single-minded pursuit of a life with Dean. Castiel truly felt at sea. He was unable to concentrate—Sam's accusations had upset him a great deal, as his faulty humanity was a secret obsession. And he had always sensed the coolness emanating from his love's brother.
"Cas," the doctor he knew as Annette startled him at the door to his private office. "You need to call home. There's been some sort of emergency."
The woman seemed surprised that he had any connections capable of having emergencies. Everyone at NIH thought he was merely an autistic savant prone to wandering around in amnesiac fugues.
He froze there for a moment, test-tube in hand and then moved to run out the door. "Cas!" she called and motioned for him to take off his lab coat.
Castiel strode right past the wide-eyed Tim and into the room. He stopped by the bedside of the groggy woman having her blood pressure taken. "Are you the fiancé?" the nurse asked.
"Yes. Has there been some complication that would require sedation?"
"Other than the miscarriage, no. But she was hysterical and the doctor felt it best to calm her down. Her friend didn't know very much—I take it this was a pregnancy she desired very much?"
"Losing it was quite a shock, but I understand that is very common early on," Castiel said in a neutral tone. "Everything is otherwise all right?"
"Yes, no reason to worry. I'm sure you can try again."
The nurse bustled out. "Like hell you will," came the dangerous female voice from the bed.
"Dean, I'm sorry that you were alone through this difficult experience. This never occurred to me as a possibility."
"To me either, or I would have done a few things differently. As in, not at all." Cas tried to smooth the long hair out of her face and she flinched. "The worst thing is, I'm like stuck in this body right now. The whole time I was kidnapped I kept returning to this Asian hottie look and I thought it was because seeing myself from the outside made me hate myself a little."
"Never say that," Castiel said softly. "Hate me. I didn't think this mutation through very well, and only now have realized that we have no idea what to expect. Including that you can create a working female reproductive system at will."
"Yeah, well I un-will it. Say goodbye. From now on we have gay sex, just like God intended." Dean snatched his dainty hand away from his lover. "If they hadn't shot me up with the good shit we wouldn't even be on speaking terms. Go away."
Soon, Dean returned to the apartment, where he was eventually able to become a very annoyed man and stay that way. Cas was kicked out of the place for two days. When he was allowed back he was the recipient of the silent treatment, which, coming from a very expressive person, was extremely ominous. Tim disappeared during this time without leaving word, but the couple was too distracted to make note of it.
"I'm sorry," Castiel said again one morning when the eggs he made were finally accepted.
"For what, specifically?"
"Your brother is the most important thing in your life, and because of me you are now estranged," was the first thing that came into Castiel's head.
"Sam? That's not on you," Dean scoffed. "You're still new to this life thing, so let me tell you—that little fit of his, that's what someone acting like a colossal dick looks like. Don't apologize for him getting on his high horse." Cas looked relieved. "Apologize for letting me be kidnapped, you ass!" Dean's coffee sloshed out of the cup when he set it down with a bang.
"It was beyond my control, Dean. I was so worried that I found myself acting irrationally," Cas said.
Dean was thrown off his stride. Cas was never irrational. "We've done tons of jobs together, Cas, why flip out now?"
A shamefaced Castiel shared the deep fear that had been eating away at him for so long. Dean listened to the jumble of concerns about not being able to save Dean during a confrontation in which they were outnumbered by shifters. Cas thought it was a better idea to exploit his connections in other realms to help, though he wasn't sure of being able to hock his soul because he wasn't sure he had one. He even shared his most private worry about his probable soullessness separating them for all eternity.
"Are you kidding? Of all the half-ass reasons to let your significant other be kidnapped!" Dean was indignant. "Of course you have a damn soul. Give me some credit to know I'm not dating an automaton." He paused, thinking of his boyfriend's mannerisms, and amended, "You're a little rough around the edges, but I like you like that. You're human!"
His lover couldn't resist saying, "I have always enjoyed our perversions and I was never cursed. Perhaps I wouldn't like mistreating you so well if I had a real soul. Balthazar wouldn't tell me either way, and I suspect he was saving my feelings."
"Good! You would've bargained it away to get me back or something, and then we'd really have something to worry about. Consider yourself lucky that you have a friend upstairs and promise me you won't be irrational like that again."
"Of course," Cas said.
"If you go all Terminator like Sam did without a soul, I'll tell you, all right?" Dean said. "Which is why you're going to sit there and listen to all the reasons I'm still pissed at you."
Castiel humbly received the tongue-lashing for not taking precautions during their heterosexual activities. He pushed his regret at losing a chance to procreate with Dean into the same compartment where he stored his soul worries. At the end he heard, "I don't want to have one of these freaks! You didn't see that shifter society—a mutant has no business reproducing. And that goes double for a dude!"
"They were desperate to save their civilization—people will do anything to save what's important to them," Cas murmured.
"They made me want to start going to church, the kind of place where they cast out the devil and stuff." His one country key party had scarred Dean for life.
"At most those are minor demons exorcised at these services," Cas remarked.
"I bet they scare people straight!" Dean reconsidered. "Well, I don't want that, but they keep people from coveting each other's wives to the point that everybody's had everybody else, and has access to their memories of screwing all the other people in town. There was no privacy—they jumped all over each other like hungry locusts that saw something and had to have it." Dean took a breath. "Thank God our little monster didn't go any further."
"You don't know that it was deformed," Castiel clarified.
"It felt wrong! And it was gross!" Dean exploded.
"Perhaps if you weren't constantly shifting away from it you wouldn't have gotten ill," his partner risked.
"We are not talking about this. Especially from the deadbeat dad that let his monster-to-be get kidnapped! Why would I procreate you ever again?"
A little over a year later, the two new lives Castiel helped bring into this world almost didn't make it, and when they did it was nearly at the price of another life.
When things looked truly hopeless the former angel gathered together the necessary items and ran to the nearest crossroads.
"They told me to expect you," the demon gloated. "Castiel. You're so many steps removed from human you make me feel high-rent."
"You mean?" His overwrought nerves jangled with dread.
"I mean whatever you're sellin', we're not buyin.'" Her red eyes mocked his despair.
Cas was crushed. "So, it's not really a soul at all, powering this," he stated, indicating his body.
"Would Lucifer have given us all a strict no-can-do if it was?" She peered at him critically. "I'd say you have a sort of reflection, like the moon reflects light from the sun. Speaking of which, your light source, that boy or whatever he is, Dean, he is one hot piece. No wonder you needed to give it to him so many different ways. He couldn't get enough."
Castiel stood there and listened to the demon needling him while he wept with futility.
"Don't be so down," she said, "Maybe it'll all work out. We've got a pool going in Hell. Best bet is on one of the twins making it at least."
He snatched up the box containing the useless conjuring materials and dashed back to the hospital.
"Where did you go?" the pale woman asked from the bed where she was hooked up to tubes and monitors. "They're healthy. They're fine." She gave an exhausted sigh of relief and sank back, her long black hair pooling around her white face.
"Of course they are," Cas said, grateful that everyone had made it through that harrowing night alive. Even if he hadn't run extensive genetic tests early on, he would have known that nothing abominable could ever come out of a loving decision to start a family.
Then the twins were back at home with him and Dean, and there were no more questions about this pregnancy that had been examined so closely. Though the former angel had no experience in such matters, being in a family was very natural.
He made good use of his mutation, learning how to shift so that he rarely had to sleep. This enabled Cas to spend nearly equal amounts of time on being a father and on his research.
Over the next four years he discovered what seemed to be two viable genetic treatments for cystic fibrosis and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, along with countless other leads passed on to other researchers.
When the scientific magazine took his photograph for their feature on the rising star in the genetics field, Dean was appalled with the result. "Couldn't they at least have taken a picture of you looking not miserable? People are going to think I'm not doing everything possible to make you happy." He smirked and kept flipping through the story with the fictional past he'd helped concoct.
The truth is, the photographer tried and failed to depict Cas in a more positive light. The former angel knew that in the haunted face that appeared in every photo his secret torment was seeping out of his eyes. He truly had no soul. Every moment of happiness with his family struck against the blank face of an eternity without them.
It was a torture, knowing that he would never get to share Heaven with Dean. Nor would he eventually be able to visit his two sons by any of the many tricks he knew about heavenly navigation. At least, there was no doubt in his mind that that's where his husband was destined. Dean's soul shone out of all the bodies they shared that were now incidental to the bond that would be someday shattered by death.
They had expected to live a long time. After all, their mutation made them invulnerable to many threats. So Sam had grudgingly acknowledged when they saw him again nearly three years after he had disowned his brother.
Sam and Tim showed up one day bearing their own infant.
"I waited for Sam to admit he was wrong and finally I didn't want to wait anymore," Tim said, wearing the male features he preferred. "Now I think it's just stupid for you guys not to be talking."
"He showed up with you-I take that to mean that he realized he was wrong about something," the elder Winchester said. He caught the newcomers staring at the two boys who looked precisely like a combination of Dean's and Cas' features. "We used a surrogate!" Dean burst out defensively.
"So did we," Tim said with an equally shifty glance.
"I congratulate you on your fine choice of mates," Cas said very formally to the Sam that seemed uncomfortable in his presence.
"Well, it was a compromise. Johnny is going to have two dads," Sam said with some reluctance.
"Remember, sweetie, you won the coin toss on who you get to spend the night with," Tim reminded him. "I'm the woman you married."
Dean was trying to fathom this odd arrangement. "But that's, that's—"
"Exactly the brilliant sort of compromise I would expect from Tim," Cas broke in, elbowing his spouse.
Sam addressed his brother. "It was like how it happened for you with Cas. You know someone for a while and then suddenly one thing changes and you finally see them there. And it hits you like a tidal wave. I tried going back to not seeing this great girl, and then I realized I was being hard-headed. One of the many Winchester character defects." Tim exchanged a glance with Castiel.
Still avoiding direct eye contact with Cas, Sam continued. "I wish it all would have happened differently, but Tim runs circles around me, so I guess you're at least healthy, Dean."
"We're going to be close enough that you guys can try to come to some understanding," Tim intervened, seeing Dean's cold expression at that less-than-ringing endorsement of his life. "Sam's about to start grad school in the area. I convinced him that everything he's seen on the road would make him a great professor of anthropology."
"She's right-I can be the sort of person we used to seek out when we were stumped on a case and still help out the cause. At least all our experiences won't have been for nothing," the younger brother said and then caught himself. "I mean, 'he.' Hopefully I'll learn which pronoun to use when. Haven't heard about you going back on the job, brother."
Dean was embarrassed at being caught out as the house-husband. "These guys are a full-time job," he mumbled, gesturing at the kids playing at their feet. In truth, he'd never gotten a steady job after getting off the road. There were always so many things the two men wanted to do together.
But they had had so little time. Not long after Tim and Sam moved to the area, Dean and Cas left their boys with the other couple for a long weekend getaway. They drove to New York, Dean happy to be on the road again, if only for a little while. He reminisced about different jobs worked along the way and insisted upon trying to find what he claimed was the best pizza parlor he'd ever visited, right outside the city in Union, New Jersey.
There were any number of Italian restaurants in that section of town. While Dean walked around trying to remember which place had the perfect slice, Castiel was staring off into space, thinking about a portion of the human genetic code he'd recalled under meditation a few days ago.
The spray of bullets woke Cas up from his reverie. One hit him in the shoulder as he ran towards the gunfight while the shooters were screeching away, but he wasn't very concerned about it because it wasn't silver. That's why he wasn't in a full panic as he pushed his way into the pizza shop where Dean had entered a few moments before.
He stood stock-still. Two people had been shot, but the only thing Castiel could see was Dean. "Atropos, you bitch," he said, in hopes that the Fate-sister who cut a person's destiny short was still in the vicinity to hear.
The law enforcement officers soon swarmed around the crime scene. From far away Cas heard them talking about an ongoing turf war between two rival branches of the organized crime that held on in the area. They called it an unfortunate accident. The loss of his beloved was merely an unfortunate accident to these people, but Cas knew that couldn't be the case.
Castiel was familiar with the hand of Fate. He recognized their sadistic irony at work in having one of the shooting victims crash into a glass cabinet, which had a heavy silver tray displayed on top. Dean was beheaded by the one substance that was sure to do so.
Cas wished with all his heart that he could have his angelic faculties back just long enough to hunt down each of the Fates who had a role in snipping off the golden thread of Dean's life, without which he would slowly but surely unravel.
They allowed him a few moments alone with Dean's sheeted remains. "Be at peace, Dean. The boys and I will be fine."
Two years later, Castiel was transferring to the metro on a day when the platform was crowded due to some sporting event that had just let out. His mind was clacking away as it had done these twenty-three months, working at the genetics problems that were the best way for him to avoid thinking about Dean. Cas was so committed to keeping up a routine for the children's sake that it never occurred to him this brave face wouldn't be enough to keep things going on indefinitely.
The drunken fans got into some kind of shoving match and an unlucky push caught the scientist unawares. Cas found himself sailing in front of the train as it headed around the corner into the station. He had enough time to think—"If the injuries are not too grave, I should be able to shift them away. I'll be there for the boys." The impact shattered his poorly constructed skeleton and tore him apart.
His last thought was that he was too tired to try and knit the broken pieces of himself into some serviceable whole. He was utterly exhausted by having to fear an eternity alone and curiously grateful for this chance to finally stop holding it all together.
He stood up and walked lightly away from his mangled remains. "Hello, Bertram," Castiel said to the reaper he knew well.
"Always nice to see you, Cas," Bertram said.
"Shall we go?"
"Are you sure you don't want to ask me anything? That's what people normally do at this moment," the reaper reminded him kindly.
"No. I have no questions." Castiel could feel the icy atmosphere of eternity and it was causing all of his old angelic memories to rush into his head. At the very last, he would have plenty to think about in Purgatory.
Bertram gave him a sad smile and led him away.
Castiel came to himself and looked around, his eyes alighting on his beloved. His heart leapt. Could he have made it to Heaven after all?
"What the hell are you doing here?" Dean shouted.
He slapped Cas across the face.
Castiel was utterly lost. He could only smile at this familiar misery that only his beloved could bring him.
"Don't just stand there grinning like an idiot! You dumbass, you're not supposed to be here now."
"I don't know how, Dean, but we have been allowed to stay together. We are very fortunate." Cas touched the features that were so much more vivid than his oft-traveled memories.
"Aren't you forgetting a little something? Two little somethings? About yeah high by now?" Dean laughed bitterly. "I like to think they're gifted, but by age 6 our kids can't hotwire a car much less commit credit card theft. And they'll never know because you aren't there to pass on everything I taught you." Dean clattered some dishes around in the version of their apartment in DC, which was one of his most frequent ways of seeing heaven.
"The boys are already used to Tim and Sam, so it will be a seamless transition to living with them full time," Cas assured his mate.
"What do you mean—used to?" Dean wanted to know.
"It's been two years without you. Tim insisted that I accept their help since I wasn't always up to the challenge, though I gave everything I had," Cas assured.
"Well, couldn't you have pulled yourself together or something? Now my kids are going to grow up with no taste in music!"
"Maybe I could have tried harder," Cas admitted. "There was a moment when everything flashed before my eyes and I saw how tired I was of trying." He explained how his growing obsession with a soulless eternity was dwarfing his struggle to make a good present for their family.
"We went through this!" was the response. "I told you this was crazy thinking, and look!" Dean gestured around their celestial former kitchen. "I was right! If you'd been able to keep your head in the game my children wouldn't be raised by my high and mighty brother. He'll tell them all kinds of crap about me, and God forbid, about you. They won't be cool kids in school. They won't have fun."
Dean was genuinely aggrieved by surrendering his boys to the brother with whom he'd not fully mended fences. He yelled himself hoarse.
"Whoa, it's getting way too shouty in this sector of Heaven," Balthazar said from where he'd appeared by the refrigerator. "I can see some explanations are in order." He took a seat at the kitchen table next to the wary Castiel.
"First off," the angel ticked off on his imaginary fingers, "Cas' number was up just like yours, so don't blame him for not abiding by Dean Winchester's timetable of how he wants the world to work. Castiel is in a better place. You have all your old memories back, don't you, Cas? You know how to get around Heaven and can come visit with any of us lads any time you like."
Dean looked stricken. "You're going to go gallivanting about Heaven with your old buddies? You just got here. This thing you call Heaven sucks so far, Balthazar."
The angel grinned. "It goes without saying that you're Cas' plus-one at any heavenly venue. You two are superstars in these parts, and in Hell. Lucy is so jealous that we can have face time with you. He's a big fan."
The couple exchanged a confused look. "Lucifer thought so little of me he ordered that my soul be barred from any dealings with his demons," Cas said.
"Of course he did. Otherwise you would have pawned your soul right away to get Dean out of some scrape and we've seen that show many times before with him and his brother," the angel yawned.
"Our lives aren't a choose your own adventure for all of your entertainment!" Dean burst out.
"Don't kid yourselves. All appearances to the contrary, Cas didn't get here by suffering up a storm. And you didn't get here on your back, Dean. Or rather, that's precisely how you made it upstairs, because you were doing it together in a very entertaining manner for all the universe to see. That earned you infinite encores in Heaven with special VIP access for you and the little missus, Castiel. I would have thought you would be pleased."
"Is this Heaven or isn't it?" Cas asked, not liking how his afterlife still embroiled in celestial politics was falling short of his daydreams.
"I better be your idea of Heaven," Dean shot back. "I've clawed my way into the administrative areas a few times just to complain about the big heaping pile of nothing that I got."
"Mouthy here was pining away for you and filled out many, many comment cards to that effect," Balthazar observed.
"Then why are you so unhappy to see me?" Cas queried.
"Because you weren't supposed to come yet," Dean said quietly. "I only wanted to be sure that you would come eventually. That would have made everything all livable. There's plenty of good memories but I don't like knowing I'm playing house with the Sims version of you forever."
Balthazar raised an eyebrow. "Sound familiar, Cas? If only you could be sure you'd end up in a double bunk with your charming hubby forever, you would have enjoyed every moment of the last two years. You were still figuring all this out on earth, but Dean wasted two perfectly good years in Heaven being a pain in the ass."
"You knew I had a soul all along," Cas said quietly. "What advantage did you gain from keeping this from me all the times I asked?"
"Not really. No one discloses all of this outright, of course, but there are a couple theories about you, Castiel," Balthazar said. "Smart money is that our management thought that you would indeed sacrifice your soul for Dean right out of the gate, as did Lucifer, and then you wouldn't get the full experience you hung up your halo for. Both sides believed that your doubting about whether you had a soul would be much more meaningful, or in Lucifer's case, more excruciating, for you."
Cas' mind was back in gear, weighing his options within the angelic political tides.
"It ate him up inside!" Dean objected. He caught his husband's surprised look. "Give me some credit. Of course I knew. It's not like I thought either of us was a likely candidate for a harp and halo set. I was pretty shocked myself when they let me in, knowing how many angels I pissed off. But I had to compartmentalize so at least one of us was happy."
"My personal theory is that if Cas didn't have some kind of crash course in humanity during his short allotted time on earth, he wouldn't have time to make it here," Balthazar opened his arms to Dean, "to be your eternal henpecked spouse." The angel turned to Cas. "You knew the game too well, brother, having seen it from the position of management. You would have tried to beat the house using our old tricks, and that way you would surely have lost. Perhaps someone was looking out for you after all," he said fondly.
Then the angel returned to his usual ironic tone. "Besides, you made an excellent cautionary tale, Cas. This is what any angel thinking of defecting can expect—a heaping serving of misery with someone who probably isn't nearly as adventurous in bed. Everything you did to catch and keep Cas was very engrossing, Dean," Balthazar licked his lips, "But watching Cas slowly come apart without your love while trying to be a good father had every angel glued to their set, let me tell you. Keeping Up with Cas and Dean had top ratings during its run."
"I hate reality shows," Dean murmured to his mate. By this time the two men were clinging to each other as if to better protect themselves from the harsh angelic light that was being trained upon their intimacy.
"This way, everyone was glued to the Cas and Dean show, they experienced the catharsis of you falling in love, struggling to stay together, having some very creative sex, and no one feels the need to chuck it all to experience it for themselves. That's why everyone is dying to see you both, so come take a bow for your fans. Put on something or someone come-hither, Dean, don't disappoint."
Balthazar disappeared.
"This sure as shit isn't what I pictured my Heaven would be like, and I've been here before," Dean said morosely. "Sorry I got so mad at you, Cas, I'm glad you're here."
They kissed in silence for a long time. "You look amazing. My God, it's really you, Cas, instead of a memory who says the same thing over and over." Castiel was examining his face in silence. "Say something. Are your angel cronies going to be messing around in our lives here too?"
"I hope that you are able to get to know my old friend while you are here. Balthazar does everything for a reason. I believe he came by here to yes, let us know that we have attained some notoriety in angelic circles, but also to make sure I was aware of the many advantages I possess because of my recuperated memories." He got up from the kitchen table and took a knife from the counter.
Dean watched in surprise the other man cut his hand and begin drawing on the wall in blood. "What the hell are you doing?"
Cas turned around with the first real smile since attaining his fondest dream. "This is an Enochian sigil that is excellent for privacy. During the last millennium or so I began to be discontent and wished to have time away from the ceaseless intrigues and chatter common among my brothers. I've developed several of these and have the capability to create more. No one will be able to get in here for some time."
Dean took his hand and they walked into the bedroom that had sponsored so much pleasure. They slipped between the sheets and their skin began getting reacquainted after the long separation. "What do you think Balthazar meant by me getting to heaven on my back?" he asked.
Cas arranged them in that position. "I'm afraid that your portion of Heaven will not be exactly normal, but I am very happy with having my piece of paradise back again."
They fitted themselves together, two pieces of an apparatus that was now rowing itself in the waters of infinity.
~fin~