He'd avoided Ruby all day, skulking like a criminal through the back aisles of the library in the hopes of avoiding anyone she might have told about him, which by now meant most of the staff and even casual visitors to the library. It was a small town and in the last three years he had been one of only two new arrivals to the place. Gossip travelled fast and this was groundbreaking, perversion and morality warring in one of the most potent scandals the place had ever experienced.
Castiel had grown more nervous and more paranoid with every hour, until finally he'd been a wreck of self loathing and humiliation, greater even than the week proceeding his flight from his last home, and from Dean.
Thankfully, Father Milton is already in the church when he gets there after work. Castiel walks slowly through the pews and greets him calmly, but his heart is hammering.
"Castiel, you sounded terrible on the phone...what happened?" Gabriel holds his shoulders and looks him in the eye.
"I need to confess." He can't get the dead tone out of his voice.
Gabriel sighs.
"Castiel, we've been doing this for three years, if you can't bring yourself to tell me the full extent of..."
"I can." Castiel takes a deep breath. "I...I haven't told you that, before I came here, I sinned. I gave myself over to my...sickness, and with a boy from my parish." He throws the words out, feeling them trip over each other in their rush; he can't wait for the confessional booth, which reminds him so much of everything he betrayed. He can't stop the words from coming out, finally, now they have the chance. "He was struggling with this, with feeling like this and I...I wanted him so much, and he wanted me, more than any other boy or...he just wanted me, so I..." He shakes his head as the flow of words dries up.
"How old was he?" Gabriel asks, his voice keenly level, but his eyes betraying his distress. "Castiel tell me the boy's age."
"He was seventeen."
Gabriel visibly relaxes.
"And you had intercourse with him?" he asks gently.
Castiel nods shamefacedly. "I let him...I..." The words choke him and he can't find ways to express how it was Dean who took him, but that it was he who was at fault in this. Never Dean.
Gabriel wraps his arms around his shoulders, and holds him as Castiel shakes and struggles with himself.
"Oh Castiel..."
Tears well up and burn down his face, and he finds that the priest's woe and speechlessness hurts him more than recriminations and disgust. He cannot bear to be this thing, pitied and reviled in equal measure, he cannot stand to be allowed even this small reprieve. He is a monster, and three years of denial and secrecy have only protected him from the world's eyes.
"Castiel." Gabriel steps away from him and guides him to a hard wooden pew to sit, sliding in beside him. "Tell me how it started." He says gently.
Castiel breathes carefully, controlling himself until he can be sure the words will come out without a sob, that they will come out at all.
"He confessed to me." He folds his fingers over his knees. "I offered him help, but he told me that...he confessed a desire for me, and I should have turned him away, towards someone else...but I didn't." He exhales shakily. "He said it had to be me, that he needed me...I so wanted to be needed, and I thought I was strong enough not to think of him, like that."
Gabriel waits patiently.
"We began to meet outside of service, in my office. I told him my own methods for controlling the impulse, and it seemed to work for him..."
"What happened then?" Gabriel asks softly.
"I had an accident." Castiel murmurs, tonelessly. "I used to take ice baths to stop myself from...well, to stave off desire, and he had been having such an effect on my that I'd stopped eating...trying to make myself spiritually strong. But I lost consciousness in the bath...I think I might have drowned if he had not sought me out...he saved me." A small smile curves Castiel's lips, almost instantly quashed. "He tried to take care of me." He mutters thoughtfully.
"Did he?"
Castiel nods. "He brought me food and he made sure I took care of myself. After a while he started to show me his music, films I'd missed growing up the way I did...I used to read to him."
"And how long did this go on for?" Gabriel asks, wondering how and why Castiel managed to sustain such a relationship.
"Months...I found him to be good company...I enjoyed his presence more than I should...and when he asked me if he could stay with me...sleep in my bed that night, I said yes." His voice has gone very quiet. "He slept next to me and nothing happened, we were so careful."
"When did you become physical with him, Castiel"? Gabriel asks gently.
"He told me he trusted me...that we could share the same space without worrying that one of us would slip." His brow furrows. "He undressed for me."
Gabriel watches the other man struggle with the memory that clearly brings him incredible happiness, and the knowledge that it had ruined him thereafter.
"He was so careful with me." Castiel practically whispers, seemingly unaware or uncaring of Gabriel's presence, his office and station, he has never spoken of this out loud before and his chest is painfully tight, like he will never be able to get it all out, this feeling, these memories, as if there aren't enough words for the suffering and joy of it.
"So gentle and...and I let him be with me...I'd never been with anyone." His fingers clench and he shakes his head. "I wanted him so much...and it was my fault, my fault that I let him in, I let him take me and then...and then he was a sinner, just like me."
The next thing he becomes aware of, in the swimming cold nausea that fills him in the wake of his confession, is the weight of Gabriel's arm around his shoulders.
"He forgives you, you know."
Castiel closes his eyes.
"God forgives you, if you need it. If you deserve it...and you never meant to hurt him."
Castiel shakes his head.
"It's forgiven. Now let it go." Gabriel insists gently. "You can let it go."
Michael shows Dean into the atrium of the church, they stop at the stoup and Dean dips his fingers into the water, making the sign of the cross like he's never been away. The building is so still and silent, like the outside world has stopped and calmed for this place.
It's been an age since he was in a place like this, and yet he cannot be calm in a place like this, a place so redolent of incense and smoky fabric and Castiel. It reminds him of Sunday Masses spent watching him lead the hall in prayer, unbearably tight and wound with longing as he watched Castiel's mouth move with the words, pale fingers tapping the edge of the lectern.
"You ok?" Michael taps him on the shoulder and Dean realises he's been frozen, looking at the icon above the small vessel of holy water.
"Yeah, fine...so where's this priest of yours?"
"Somewhere around...I'll go check his office." Michael smiles slightly. "I'll be back in a second."
"Not going anywhere." Dean mutters more to himself than Michael's back.
He sighs and looks up at the carved ceiling, eyes following the ridges of the wood down to the stone supports, shaped like faces looking down. He's closes his eyes, trying to martial together a prayer.
"Please God...just make it stop. Let it be over." Is all he can manage, all he can think of. He needs to forget, to let go and to be able to do what Castiel wanted – marry a woman and live his life the way he was supposed to.
Gabriel hears the doors of the atrium open, footsteps as two men appear in the shadow of the main door. He'd forgotten his meeting with Michael, and his friend in definite need of help. He squeezes the shoulder of the man next to him, still shaking with overwrought emotion.
"Castiel...I have a visitor to speak with."
"Forgive me for overstaying...I'll go." Castiel straightens weakly. "Thank you Father..."
"Actually, it might benefit you to stay, the two of you appear to be suffering in much the same way, perhaps meeting will help you to progress..." he sighs. "also...you taught this boy, the one from your old parish, a very harsh doctrine, one which has tortured you, and probably him for quite some time – think of this as a way to make it right. You can help me to end someone's suffering."
Castiel seems to think on it, mind filling with all the ways in which this conflicts with what he has always believed to be true. But perhaps, perhaps he can grow to accept this part of himself, to realise that it is not a perversion, and maybe that will help him to control it, to hold it back from the surface by embracing it, not fighting it.
He nods. "I believe that would be the right thing to do."
Gabriel stands, gesturing towards the front of the church. "Excellent, then I will find Michael and his guest and we can talk."
Castiel stands and walks meekly at the priest's side as they cross the cool floor of the church. A blond boy meets them halfway, cutting through the pews as he approaches from the vestry.
"Father!" he shakes Gabriel's hand and grins at him before turning uncertainly to Castiel. "I'm sorry, did I...?"
"This is Castiel, he'll be joining us this evening." Gabriel says firmly, but warmly. Michael smiles at Castiel then, bright and untroubled.
"Great, it might make things easier if it's not just me, Dean's kind of...uncomfortable with me right now."
He hears the name and the world goes still. Surely it cannot happen like this, not now, not here of all places.
Gabriel realises that Castiel is no longer walking with him, and turns to look at him.
"Castiel? What's wrong."
Castiel shakes his head dumbly, frozen to the spot.
Gabriel raises a hand to touch his arm, but Castiel backs away like a spooked deer.
The voice is quiet, but Gabriel still turns towards it, seeing clearly for the first time, the boy standing by the door.
"Cas...?"