Chapter 69.
Life around humans brought good things and bad to an angel. Human pain was rough and jagged and cruel and just being around it hurt constantly until the angel managed to learn how to dampen the signal. Human art, human music, touched something deep within. Castiel loved so many kinds of music and dancing to it brought in another dimension of emotion.
As for human touch, on a human vessel's human body, that was something almost overwhelming. Cas was beginning to understand that his coat did indeed have some of the qualities of armour. It reduced the intensity of sensation when someone touched him. It shielded him from a little of that human contact. That was, he told himself, why the feeling of hands on his arms, his shoulders and his waist when he was wearing only a thin cotton shirt was so powerful. He simply wasn't used to it.
Sadly, that didn't explain why looking into her eyes made him lose track of his thoughts or why when she smiled, he smiled too.
He loved the music, simple though it was. For a mind as complex as his, there was a lot to be said for simplicity, a good melody, a lightness and joy, the simple faith one brother had in another, the undemanding friendship offered by a woman who didn't see his uncertainty as aloof arrogance.
He held her hands, loving the feeling of her fingers on his flesh, wondering how such innocent contact could feel so close to erotic, but then, to celestial beings, the sensations that surged, moment by moment, through a solid, earthy, human body were always close to overwhelming. They were heady and exciting and distracting and terrifying and he had believed he had learned to live with them, to ignore them to a degree.
It was going to take a little more work to ignore Jules. At every step of the dance, he felt more alive and more intoxicated and he told himself that this was why he did not dance much and he reminded himself that he could have no possible future with her or with any human woman, but he had been so lonely for so long and he knew that she knew what he was and she had called him her friend.
As he was thinking that, another friend danced past with his son. Sarah smiled at him and he smiled back. Sarah hugged him a lot. She held his hand a lot. No amorous connotations ever entered his head. Dancing with her was sweet and fun, but nothing like dancing with Jules.
He watched Jack and Sarah dance off down the long line of dancing couples and he saw that they were playing it for laughs. Jack, whose talent for acquiring skills was impressive, had worked hard not to acquire too much skill at this. As he made comical missteps, the people around him laughed and smiled and loved him a little more.
"You look happy." said Jules, pulling his attention back to their dance.
"I am." he said, knowing that any angel who saw him would be appalled at how he had allowed human feelings to become his own. They had been taught to ignore the needs that came only from the humanity of their vessels and his vessel now contained no human soul. He had no excuse.
Humanity, though, had taught him to think for himself, to want things beyond obedience to the will of Heaven. The human corruption that angels could see at work in his life felt more pure and holy than Heaven ever had or ever could. God had told them to bow before his humans and Cas could think of five humans in this building alone before whom he would fall to his knees without hesitation, had one of them not threatened to hamstring him with his own angel blade if he even thought about it.
"Do I talk too much?" said Jules.
"No, I think I talk too little." said Cas, "I'm sorry. I find the intensity of your presence overpowering."
"That doesn't sound good." she said.
It wasn't good. He knew that. It was dangerous and distracting and unfair to her and unwise for him and he knew that Dean would tell him to go for it anyway and Sarah would say that he was afraid because he didn't understand emotion enough and not because the world would end if he let himself feel something so intense and so wonderful. He looked into her beautiful eyes and he knew he needed to be very careful, for her sake more than his. He reminded himself that he would not survive a fight with Michael. There was no point in trying to be human, when he was very soon likely to be dead.
"We stand no chance around humans." he said, "We were intended to protect from a distance, not to be a part of their lives. Nobody told us how to deal with these feelings."
"What feelings?" said Jules.
"I don't know." he said.
"Good feelings?" she said.
He wondered how his feet knew what to do all the time, when his head was anywhere but on the dance floor. He was confused and anxious and there were fifteen arguments going on inside his mind, but Jules was holding his hands and her smile gave him the same sense of wonder as a sunrise and she cared how he was feeling.
"They feel good to me." he said, with absolute honesty.