A/N: And here it is! At long, long, agonising last. Thank you all so much for your patience. I sincerely hope it's been worth it.
If you felt like I wrote like a fever dream before, that's nothing on this chapter, hahaha. Sorry if it's not at all lucid, even by my standards.
Fun fact: I nearly called this story 'Everything Stays' - though I think I've told you all that before. Anyway. Enjoy, I love you lots.
Chapter 59 - Everything Stays
Not quite haunted, but certainly graced by ghosts of the past, Castiel is moved to sit on the roof he and Dean spent so much of their adolescence upon. From it seem to spring memories upon memories of the hours Dean and Castiel spent here, memories shooting up like sunflowers, some with their petals soured and dried, others with their faces turned full-glorious to the sun-dimming sky, proud and bright in a growing darkness.
This house—the great white house which seemed so imposing when Castiel first laid eyes upon it, the spectre of the mother he had lost, its white walls a reminder of the blankness of all their lives now, of the absence of Amelia Novak from them all. This house, now home, has been steeped in memories and moments, and now the walls are no longer blank, now it is no longer imposing. Now it cradles Castiel and curls around him all the joys and regrets of his childhood. If he is haunted, here, he is glad for it.
Stepping out onto the roof and sitting down with a crate of beers, his thoughts turn more naturally to Dean. Not even out of being reminded of him, in the very being of this house, or the very act of sitting on this roof, or even in the crate of beers he has placed beside him—in the shadows of the green house opposite his own, Castiel can make out the gleaming shape of Dean's Impala pulled up.
Dean is visiting Mary. Castiel wonders why, hopes everything is alright. Perhaps they have patched things up, properly, since Mary ran from Sammy in the hospital.
He opens a beer and tips it back, slowly. The walls of his mind are traced by the shadows of Dean and Castiel sat, here, almost eleven years ago, now, discussing what their last year in high school together would look like—
And wait—that's a thought.
Castiel pulls out his phone, a frown twining between his brows. The screen, blinking up at him in a cold blue light so unlike that of the gently receding sun, confirms the twisty, intuitive sensation in Castiel's gut.
July ninth.
Today is ten years since his and Dean's fight. And so much has happened between now and then.
Castiel's head darts back up to look at the green house opposite him. The lights are on, one in the living room, one in the kitchen. If Dean is there, Castiel wonders what he's thinking, how he's feeling. Castiel used to dread this day, every year—with a dread like death—used to wish he would not mark it but inevitably, always, would. Like clockwork, like the clockwork of a terrible machine.
He counts no longer, but even one year ago—only a year—he would have felt the day looming like the promise of a horrible sickness, a replica of the storm that raged that whole night, on the ninth of July ten years ago, looming with grim promise on the horizon.
Now Castiel has no reason to count. He knows how Dean feels and knows how Dean hurt, knows what was sacrificed that night in the hope of what Castiel might stand to gain. But Dean doesn't know his portion.
And so, inevitably, Dean must be counting.
Which explains the curious amount of radio silence over the past few days: Dean has been dreading this.
Castiel, upon discovering the reason Dean wasn't making a move—that he thought Castiel was dating Balthazar—should have said his piece and told Dean everything, before Dean had a chance to go and get himself concussed. The memory at least makes the writer smirk—after it was discovered that Dean was okay, and after two weeks of careful watching, after several days of having to wake Dean up every two hours, Dean is recovered. And the waking Dean up part was really no problem—it has meant sleeping over at Dean's so much Castiel could almost kid himself into believing they were actually in a relationship. Neither Dean nor Castiel acknowledged the silliness of Castiel staying round, when Dean could just as easily have got Sam to do this, from the room next door.
But sleeping next to Dean again was too good an opportunity to pass up. Dean seemed to think so, too.
Castiel sighs, leaning back, and taking a long sip from his beer. He fears that he and Dean are caught at just the wrong places on the grids of no self-confidence, and unassertiveness, to ever be able to make a successful move on one another. Either that, or they will be caught, infinitely, on a loop of wrong place, wrong time, with one another. Last week the poetry book he wrote for Dean was sent to him by his publisher. It sits on his dad's old desk, waiting like a promise that may never be kept. Perhaps Castiel should just send it to Dean with a brief, explanatory cover note. This would be both the easy, and the lazy way out.
But no—half of these problems were created by Castiel's inability to share his feelings in the right way, at the right time. Realistically, the sting of what happened ten years ago could have been avoided if Castiel hadn't framed his confession of love to Dean in terms of going or not going to England, something he claimed was translatable as loving or not loving someone. What was Dean meant to think?
Of course, this isn't the whole of it—at least half of it was caused by, as Balthazar would call it, Dean's 'gay panic'. Years of internalised homophobia, implemented by his father, and years following this of his mother never acknowledging or apologising for it. And on top of this, Dean still hasn't come out to his mom.
Or even to Castiel, as far as Dean can remember.
The base of the sky, where the sun is sitting, is the colour of the bright sunflowers Jimmy planted in his garden. The clouds are like paper-thin petals blown across it.
Castiel isn't startled by the sound of a suddenly closing front door, but it certainly draws him sharply from his meditations, from him haunting his own past, recent or otherwise.
It is the door of the green house opposite.
Dean has stepped out into the dimming air.
Castiel watches the other man, who takes in deep and shaky breaths and seems both anxious and relieved; buzzed with something bitter like the tang of blood, and, finally, free from some great burden.
Castiel wants to run his story alongside Dean's.
The clouds above, in the lowering sun, have turned from petals to golden tongues, and lick the sky.
Castiel can hear Dean's breathing from across the street: the man is feasting upon air, licking it like the clouds do the heavens, licking and lapping and gulping. He scrubs at his eyes and takes another bite of air, and Castiel realises, Dean is crying.
He wants to run his story alongside Dean's.
"Dean," He speaks out, into the twilight, out to the street, as Dean steps towards his car. He starts, but not unpleasantly; he is drawn sharply from his thoughts and motions just as Castiel was drawn, a moment ago. Dean looks up, not aimlessly, but certainly with wonder, before his eyes alight on Castiel, sat upon the roof.
"Cas," He says, and in the word is all eternity, is the fold of a body pressed close in darkness but not quite touching, not quite touching perfectly. A voice, a form, stung with longing, stung with a barren hope for more.
He wants to run his story alongside Dean's. He wants their endings to align. And their middles. And their everything, from this moment until their last.
Castiel doesn't know what he should say. He doesn't know what he was going to say.
Dean looks up at him. Even all this way away, Castiel can make out the shimmer of his eyes in the promise of darkness. He can hear the struggling, hungry, erratic sounds of Dean's breathing.
"Are you okay?" He asks, gaze like an arrow shot, at Dean. Being himself the arrow, Castiel cannot exactly change his course, not when fate and perhaps even God were the bow and the archer.
Dean's expression struggles for a moment. He wavers, then swallowing, shrugging, he nods.
"I'm okay," Dean confirms, and Castiel believes it, in the strange way you must believe words which are certainly not yet true, but will be; words which are a promise, spoken like a promise, words which don't exist in the present but certainly in the future.
"Join me?" He asks, and Dean swallows again, throat rippling and constricting as the sun sets its tone to a pale, sturdy yellow.
He nods, and, practically jumping across the street, is down Jimmy's garden and clambering up the front porch, up onto the railing, up one of the pillars, and onto the roof in the time it takes Castiel to be reminded of Dean's teenage form doing the exact same thing, in years lost to time though not to memory.
Dean's form works in opposite motion to the sun, his muscles tensing and rising as the sun relaxes into the sky, resting on the horizon.
Dean, up on the roof and looking at Castiel, looks like an old and weathered building. A house made skeletal after a hurricane. Something in his features indicates he has withstood a storm which in any case left him gutted and bare, but ready for repair. Ready for restoration. Ready for healing.
"Are you okay?" Castiel asks again, and realises he has stood up as he has said these words. He and Dean face one another.
"I'm," Dean takes a breath, and stares at Castiel. It seems as though he's waiting for something. Dean has always given this impression; both flighty and intense, focussed and absent, even as a child he was like a man waiting for a train. "I'm so glad you're here, Cas," Dean says, voice crackling like pinewood in a fire. "It's so good to see you."
Castiel nods slowly, a little confused, but Dean has taken a step forward and twined his arms around Castiel's bewildered frame. The way Dean moves, the way Dean coils, is like each fiber of his body is intent on finding its match and destination in Castiel. It is as though Dean knows the way by heart, but nevertheless is being led there blind. Like the train Dean was waiting for, even as a child, has Castiel as its final stop.
"I'm glad to see you, too, Dean," Castiel answers, hands faltering in finding a place on Dean's back. "As I always am."
And Dean just stays there, for almost a minute, body curling around Castiel's, face turned inward toward Castiel's neck, face dampening it with delicate pearls of tears, but Dean's body remains calm, remains still, save for the limbs which twine and twist around Castiel's.
Castiel doesn't know what's wrong, if anything is wrong—he isn't sure, and suspects that Dean isn't feeling great, considering the fact that, if nothing else, he hasn't been on speaking terms with his mother for the past seven months, and has just left her house teary-eyed and shaken. But something in the cage of Dean's body isn't distraught, just… wrung out. Worn out. Needing home.
Well. Castiel has always wanted to give that to Dean.
He tightens his limbs around Dean's body, and it seems that this, in the promise of assurance and constance and presence it holds, is enough for Dean to finally feel safe enough to pull back. He takes a stuttering, but obviously grounding breath, and looks at Castiel.
"What're you doing up here, all alone?" He asks. Castiel smiles at the squeeze Dean's palms offer his shoulders before finally, properly, slipping away.
"Thinking of all the times I was up here, with you," He answers, honestly, and Dean's gaze turns tender. "Care to sit?"
"Always," Dean says softly, "always."
A curious response to an invitation to sit down—but then, would Castiel ever have Dean other than as, curious and unpredictable, he is?
They sit, there, legs dangling over the edge of the porch, leaning back on their palms. Dean sighs shakily.
"Something's wrong," Castiel states, peering searchingly at his friend. Dean no longer feasts on air, as he did when first out of his old house. His breaths come in, low and long and slow, but still thin and silvery like before. Instead of eating, he drinks with each blade of breath.
"Yeah…" Dean nods distractedly, staring with a delicate worry twined across his features, at the green house opposite. They're sat in the exact same spot, in the exact same position, as they were ten years ago. The memory of it shrouds round them—at least, to Castiel's impression, it does. Dean is miles away, images flicking across his removed gaze. But the memory of that night, ten years ago, twists and twirls about the pair like a fine white mist caught in winds. Of what? Transformation? Renewal? Not regret. But they are haunted, nonetheless. Something shifts in Dean's expression, the suggestion of clarity, of change. He seems to draw back with a thought, but doesn't move at all. "No," He shakes his head. "Actually. No. Not wrong."
"Oh…" Castiel squints, uncertain. Dean swallows, still absorbed by his own thoughts, or not the thoughts themselves, but the paths that they are tracing.
"Not wrong any more," He elaborates, though this hardly helps. "Not any more."
"So things are…"
"Put to right," Dean's answer is smooth with certainty, but spoken slowly, as though still stung with shock.
"That's good…" Castiel says, but doesn't follow whatsoever.
Dean leans back on his palms and hums a tune Castiel recognises, notes whispered from his past like a voice calling his name, but blown over by wind, the winds of time and change.
"Good…" Dean nods in agreement, repeating the word, tasting it, rolling it around his mouth. "Yeah," He nods with a faint, corner-quirked smile. "Yeah. It is good. It's good." He turns to Castiel and smiles again, face blossoming now with the promise of his own, returned, immediacy. "How are you, Castiel?"
Castiel's throat constricts around something tight and pulsing.
"It's strange when you use my full name," He answers, though doesn't answer.
"Strange?" Dean repeats. Each moment he becomes more lucid. Sliding from abreaction to attention. Castiel nods in confirmation, and Dean twitches out a laugh. "How?"
"Strange, unfamiliar. You began the trend of calling me Cas, now I could count on one hand the people in my life who still call me Castiel."
Dean's expression is unreadable.
"—Which is a good thing," Castiel clarifies. "'Cas' is familiarity, is intimacy, to me. That's what it translates as—'Cassie' was always patronising; I've never liked it, I never will,"—Dean seems surprised by this confession—"'Castiel' seems either cold, professional, now, or reserved for older siblings and other family members. Especially when I'm in trouble."
Dean's face makes the expression of a laugh, though no sound comes out.
"So," Castiel continues, "even though I really think of myself in terms of 'Castiel', I am Cas. Or, where I'm Cas, it's where I know I belong. Does that make sense?"
"How many of these have you been drinking?" Dean asks, picking up an empty beer bottle discarded beside Castiel. A laugh coughs out of him, he shakes his head affectionately.
"Clearly too many to think to do the polite thing and offer you one," Castiel says, reaching behind him to pick up the crate of remaining beers. "Would you like one now, though?"
Dean pulls a beer out from the crate.
"Just like old times."
Castiel hums.
Silence for a moment.
Then Castiel prompts, "You were at your moms'?"
Dean tenses—just a little, the way that frost clings delicately to the windows of the tall old buildings in Edinburgh.
"But you feel that I'm being invasive," Castiel states, softly but flatly. Dean shakes his head.
"No," He says. "If—if anyone was to be invasive, I'd want it to be you." Then he's silent, thinking. He starts up, "I'm not sure what I wanted out of it. I wanted it out. I'd tried, before—a lot, but especially—especially the night Sammy overdosed. Before, I mean—when I'd—before I got drunk. I tried to talk to her, to get it… to say—" He sighs and shakes his head. "She didn't let me. This time," He breathes in, long, heavy, "I didn't let her not let me. I probably didn't get it out very well. You know how I am—sometimes my thoughts are all—" He waves his hands in vague, stumbling motion, "tangled up, confused. My words come out that way, too. Messy. Sentences come too early, it's in the wrong order or I interrupt myself. It's not methodical like you. Messy head, messy words." He taps his temple. "But I got it out."
"Dean, I'm not following you at all."
"It's been ten years," Dean says, looking hard at Castiel. "Ten years, tonight."
Castiel nods.
"Did you know that?" Dean asks.
Castiel nods again.
"I did."
Dean stares. His gaze is a lance and it clenches through the air at Castiel. They are ghosts of themselves—or, no—ten years ago, they were the ghosts of themselves, now. The shimmering, flickering quality of the moments before Castiel's heart was hurled into the ash alongside Dean's, ten years ago, were the qualities of what that moment was: an apparition. No longer haunted by themselves, by their past, it is as Castiel realised just before he saw Dean: they have been haunting themselves, their own past. Time has worked backwards.
The moment, paralyzed around them, shimmers like glass.
"Do you think about it?" Dean asks, voice loosening the shimmer around them. Castiel is given the sensation that Dean repeats his question, but he doesn't. Only silence follows; silence and Dean's blunt knife of a stare.
"I don't know," Castiel answers. He swallows. Dean looks upset. "I think about—I think about so much. About my mom, about my dad. I miss them. I worry about my brothers. I worry about your brother. I—I think about you. I miss you. I think about you, all the time. But—but that moment? It didn't happen in a vacuum. I can't think of it in a vacuum. Not any more. Barely, even then. I think about that moment, and I think about when we first met, and how messy your hair was. How—how that summer morning, bright and blazing, smelt like a promise. I can't think of grasstains without thinking about… about covenants. I think of that moment, and I think about the first time I saw you, since that moment. I mean the first time I looked at you, since our fight. Stood in my kitchen, like the first time we met. The kitchen even smelt the same—those—those cookies you made, both times. The ones with nutmeg. I think of that moment, and I think of the missed moments—how I didn't come to the treehouse, when you asked me. How I should have been there. How I should have ran there, how my pride and obstinacy kept me, how I haven't even apologised for that—"
"Cas, you don't need to—"
"My dad told me to go," Castiel confesses, laughing breathlessly, unsure of why he is sharing this. "My dad told me—he literally instructed me to go. I was so angry—he never normally told me what to do. I guess he must've felt pretty strongly about us."
Dean stares. His lips are cracked, the top layer of soil in Kansas in midsummer.
"He came," Dean says, voice crackled. "He—uh, he came and told me you weren't coming. Came and said he was sorry—tried to ask me what happened. I got angry, too. Shouted at him. Started crying, I think. I've—not since he died—" Dean flushes, "but a lot, after that… I tried to persuade myself that he'd hidden my note. That he'd seen it, and kept it from you. Thought I could somehow blame him for all of that—that, blaming him, it would mean that it wasn't because of you, wasn't because of me. Wasn't either of our faults. If he'd kept it from you, then my words would've still been enough, then you would've wanted to see me enough, to come to the treehouse and forgive me." He looks down and shakes his head. "Sometimes I think about that—about the way I treated Jimmy, when I was sad or angry or some moody teenage brat. It makes me feel so ugly."
"That's what grief does," Castiel answers. "I think that way, all the time, too."
Dean looks sad.
"But don't let those memories mire you in doubt," He continues. "My dad loved you. I have to remind myself that he loved me, and I him, when I get to thinking that way. And he knew that, and he had two teenage sons before I was a teenager, and knew what they were like. Not rising to being lashed out at—that's part and parcel of fatherhood. He was a good dad—but, also, he was so happy to be a dad. Even in those moments. Remember that."
"It's so…" Dean licks his lips, looking down. "He was so different, to the kind of fatherhood I was used to…" Dean swallows, gaze fixed on the folds of his own hands. Castiel doesn't know what to say to this, and so is completely silent. "I… I'm feeling so out of love, with so much of my childhood, right now. The past few years, I've been so out of love with it—with my house, my parents… The kind of dad Jimmy was," he licks his lips and lets out a sour kind of laugh. "I was always so jealous of you, for it. Is that bad?" He looks up at Castiel, who still cannot answer, but fortunately at least manages to shake his head minutely. "It is," Dean disagrees. "And not like—it wasn't resentment. But I was so jealous. Especially—" He stops, and shakes his head, looking away, out onto the street and out toward the green house, again. "I… I kept on blaming myself, 'cause things only started going wrong when they—when I—" Dean's eyes are stung with tears. He stops talking.
Castiel can do nothing because this hurts too much—they're both so close, and still Dean is so afraid, and Castiel can do nothing because this is the kind of pain Castiel only got the aftertaste of, a tang of blood in the mouth that he kissed. Dean had his teeth punched in.
"It's, uh," Dean wrinkles his nose and his throat makes a sharp, constricting noise which he coughs around, "it's hard for me to separate what was done—what they did, and didn't do—from who I was. Who I am." He looks up at Castiel sadly. "I'm sorry I'm not making any sense."
Castiel leans close and considers kissing Dean, considers grazing his lips across Dean's dark mouth, wonders what Dean would taste like when neither of their mouths were stung stupid with strong spirits. But he doesn't kiss. He hugs Dean tight. He squeezes. He revels in Dean's face pressed into his neck.
"You don't need to make sense with me, Dean," he states. "You be as complicated and muddled up and messy as you need to be. I'll do the translation. I'll do the untangling." Dean breathes, hot and teary, against the skin of Castiel's neck. "Come as you are, Dean," Castiel says, voice unable to raise itself above a breathless whisper. "Come only as you are. I'd never have you any other way."
"I wanna go to the treehouse," Dean states.
Castiel pulls back with a frown.
"The treehouse?"
Dean nods, flushed.
"I wanna go."
"Why?"
"I wanna go," Dean repeats, and tugs on Castiel's hand in suggestion that they jump down from the roof.
"No chance," Castiel shakes his head in reference to jumping down to the lawn, pulling Dean back. "I'm not eighteen any more, and don't feel like risking a broken ankle. And if we're going to go, I've got to lock up and get my keys, at least. Anna's out."
"Where?" Dean asks, as Castiel begins to clamber back in through his bedroom window.
"Jo's."
"Oh," Dean hums, following after Castiel. "So you're home alone?"
Castiel makes a noise of confirmation as they make their way down the stairs of the house, a little too embarrassed to turn to Dean and confirm this any further. There's something too suggestive in the phrase, and Dean seems to think so too, because he sounds flustered when he, rather clumsily, changes the subject.
"Should we drive, or walk it, to the treehouse?"
Castiel hums thoughtfully.
"I'm not sure," he shakes his head. Opening the front door, and looking out at the sky, he suggests, "walk it? It's such a nice night."
Dean licks his lips and looks up at the sky, too. It seems have been swept with darkness in the time it took them to make their way back down through the house.
"Hm." He's obviously unconvinced. "Sure."
"What?"
Dean shrugs, and makes his way down the garden path.
"It'll be nice to walk with you, I guess."
"You guess?" Castiel repeats, raising his eyebrows at his friends.
"We'll have more time to talk," Dean nods, not picking up on Cas's incredulity.
"Something's really thrown you off tonight, hasn't it?" Castiel asks. Dean falters in a frown.
"What do you mean?"
"Your head's in the clouds. Usually it's me who's distant. Well," Castiel amends, "usually when you're distant, it's in a different way."
Dean pulls a questioning expression, encouraging Castiel to elaborate.
"When I'm distant," he explains, "nothing is wrong, I'm just deep in thought, and also generally socially unaware, which doesn't exactly help—"
"You're not socially unaware," Dean shakes his head disbelievingly. "You—just—you're different. You don't care about social conventions in the way most people do. Most people are boring, by the way. You're not—you're all… organic. Even if you're awkward, sometimes. But you're just thoughtful, and you get lost in your own thoughts, and there's a difference between that and being socially unaware."
"Well—anyway," Castiel supresses a beam out into the creeping darkness at Dean's words and how unnecessary albeit delightful they are, "when you're distant, it's usually because there is something wrong. I always worry when you're lost in your own thoughts. When you were like that, when we were kids, it was never a good sign, and it's the same now that we're adults. But now, your distance feels different. You're a different kind of lost in thought. It's not such a bad one. Why is that?"
"Goddam it," Dean shakes his head, an embarrassed smile on his features. "I wish you made it easier to hide from you, Castiel."
"So what are you thinking about?"
"Mm," Dean winces, pressing his lips tight together as the pair lope along in the twilight, "thinking about maybe isn't the right way of putting it."
"Alright, then, what's got you so distracted?"
"Ha," Dean laughs. "Maybe later."
"Well, I hope you're okay."
"I'm definitely okay," Dean nods. "Just… I'm maybe good, even. Just a different kind of good, I don't know, than most people would…" He laughs a one syllable laugh out into the evening air. "Heh. It's difficult to explain. But… I'm starting to feel good, again. Or maybe even good, for the first time, in this way—not the first time in a long time, just the first time, ever."
Castiel peers.
"I really hope so. I'm glad, if that's the case."
"Feeling okay is a weird thing."
A frown braids Castiel's features.
"How do you mean?"
"I hardly know when I'm feeling okay, doing okay, it's been so long. It's so weird, to stand at the edge of a doorway, and not know which side of it you're on."
"That's, um, very profound," Castiel muses, "though I'm still not sure I follow."
"Like, with your dad, you know you're gonna miss him forever. People don't understand grief. I can't imagine the crap you've been given this past year. I can't imagine the crap you went through with your mom. And people who've never lost someone, or never lost a parent, specifically, don't get it. They think it's something you get over. As if you ever could. But it's more like losing a limb. Or—or your eyes, or… it's big, and it's forever, is what I mean. You live, and—and sometimes it doesn't feel much like living, or even surviving, or getting by—but you live, and you live without. There's never that 'with', again. There never can be. It never grows back. You have to learn to tie your laces, learn to walk, learn to cook, learn to stand up from sitting down, learn to climb the stairs, all without an arm or a leg or what have you. And sometimes you have phantom itches—you hear a phrase they used to say a lot, or someone laughs in the way they used to laugh, or the first notes of a song they used to listen to come trembling through the air—and then you're overwhelmed, you're sad or you're furious or you're overcome with this bittersweet taste in your mouth.
"And sometimes you have a dream where they're still there, a dream where you have both your arms or your legs, a dream where you have both your eyes and you can see; a dream where they're back and it's good, and then you wake up and it hits you, it hits you so hard it breaks you all over again, you start grieving all over again, you can't face the day let alone the week, the month, the year, the rest of your life without them. You cry and want to punch a wall and you can't tell anyone because they have all of their limbs and they wouldn't get it, and maybe the person you want to talk to most about it is the person you can never talk to again, the limb that was cut off, the person who's dead.
"And other times you have dreams where they're back but it isn't an 'all is well' kind of 'they're back'; it's dreams where they're back but still dead and they're somehow speaking to you beyond the grave, an apparition, or dreams where they're dying and you can see them dying and you know they're dying and you know how it ends and you know you can't help. And those dreams, they're dreams about losing the limb all over again, and you wake up haunted and hollow but you still kind of crave those dreams, crave and dread them because you can't stand saying goodbye forever and you can't stand not seeing them but you can't stand having to say goodbye forever, over and over, in your dreams, and you can't stand seeing them, either, because it's agony. It's agony. All of it's agony."
Castiel tries to swallow back his tears as Dean speaks, but finds that he can't.
"Yes," he nods, unable to stop the crackle in his voice as he speaks, unable to raise his voice to something audible. "Yes," he nods again. "That's it."
"And I—I feel a lot of that for Jimmy. But he wasn't my dad. And I didn't have a good relationship with my dad, so when he died, it was so different to the kinds of broken you must be feeling, right now. I don't know how you did it, Castiel, how you keep on doing it. The guy was incredible, and so are you."
"That's very kind…"
"No, it's very true. But anyway, what I mean is, grief is all of that, and more. So what is 'okay', let alone 'good', after that? After all of that, and knowing that there is no final destination of 'healed', just a long and constant road of 'healing', what's the point? What's the goal?"
"I guess it's just that," Castiel shrugs. "The healing, the process, the road itself."
"Which is so fucking unsatisfying," Dean shakes his head sourly.
"Yes," Castiel agrees. "But then it's death. Words are not enough. Rhetoric is not enough. Thoughts are not enough. It's so big, and so sad, and the only thing that is comforting is the knowledge that we all need comfort from it, which is also harrowing."
"Kids are comforting," Dean shakes his head again.
"Pardon?"
"Kids are comforting," Dean says again. "I feel sad about—about Jimmy, about Jess, about John… I think about my kids. The kids I teach, I mean. I think about the kids of our friends and relatives. I think about all the things they're learning about themselves, the world, how life is this process of unfolding for them, right now. How the world is blossom, and the world is blossoming. That makes me feel happy. Thinking about the open, as well as the close. And how even at the moments of closing, of folding up, are so many moments of openings, for so many little people out there. It's hope. Thinking about childhood, when you're having to face grief, is thinking about hope."
Castiel swallows around something ripe lodged in his throat.
"Maybe it's just a case of arrested development…" Dean mumbles, catching himself and suddenly embarrassed for his speech. "You ever think how weird it is, I have my dad's accent, when he died when I was fourteen, and I grew up here?"
"What do you mean?"
"The time that I was in college, in Texas, everyone there thought I was a local. Couldn't believe I'd grown up somewhere you couldn't throw a stone at from Houston. It's my dad's accent. I didn't just let it bleed into mine, I bathed mine in it. Wanted to be like him so bad… and then, was so afraid of being like him. Was so afraid of failing him."
"And what did that accent represent?"
Dean snorts.
"Yeah, don't English Literature this up, Cas. It doesn't have to represent anything."
They've reached the forest and trudge through it, now.
"But you brought it up. You brought it up, in relation to childhood, in relation to development, in relation to grief."
"Right," Dean sighs. The cover of the trees shrouds them in darkness, he turns his phone light on as they make their way down the trampled, dirt path, sticks and small branches splintering under their feet. The air smells like the top layer of soil. "I guess… I don't know. I guess a lot of things froze for me, the night my dad died. I had a lot of trouble moving past them—and still do—'cause, like—the word closure is so corny, and I hate it, but—I didn't get any closure on a lot of things with him. Sometimes I wish he was still alive, so we could just talk it out, so I could've seen him change his mind about stuff. If he ever would. And that's the thing—other times I'm glad he's not still alive, 'cause I think, if he hadn't died, I never would've seen him change his mind about stuff, and it would've killed me. I would've seen him, forever, never changing, and I would've been so afraid—so afraid, to say who I was, in front of him, even if he already knew it in his heart…" Dean looks up at the sky, shrouded as it is by trees. The white cold light of his phone snags underneath his jaw. "I know I'm being vague," he says, voice trembling.
"I said to come as you are," Castiel reminds. "I'll figure the rest out."
Silence for a cluster of seconds.
"So I think a lot of things froze, when my dad died, which included a lot of—a lot of progress, and acceptance, for me. All aimed inward, all introspective. I struggled a lot with even standing to see myself as I was. But—but all I mean by that, in bringing it up in this context, is, maybe that's why I connect children and childhood with grief, so much. And love to be around them, especially in the face of grief. I guess sometimes I feel like the frightened little boy I was, all those years ago—when my dad first…"
"I understand," Castiel nods, though Dean hardly seems to hear him.
"But the accent thing," he laughs, dryly, "I guess it's all about kinship, isn't it?"
"Um—run that by me again?"
"It's about kinship," Dean repeats. "I wanted to feel—to be—accepted by my dad. There were days I felt like I wasn't his son. Felt like he didn't want me as his son. Putting on his accent—until it became my accent—was a way I could literally take on his person, his background, his family. If I shrouded myself in all of that stuff, I was his kin, right? I was one of his own."
They cross the stream.
"The stepping stones are still here," Castiel comments, not able to glance back at Dean as he speaks. "Which bodes well for the treehouse itself."
"Aw, fuck," Dean lands on the other side of the stream a beat after Castiel. "That's a good point—will it still be there?"
"There's only one way to find out," Castiel shrugs, taking a hold of Dean's wrist and pulling him further through the forest. Strange—when they were kids, it always seemed to be Dean pulling Castiel along, Dean steeling and stealing Castiel.
"I hope it is," Dean says. "I—I'd be so sad if it was gone."
"Why?" Castiel asks, glancing back at his friend.
"You wouldn't be sad?" Dean raises his eyebrows, voice grazed with something offended.
"A little," Castiel shrugs again. "But… I don't know. We'd still be friends, you know. A location, a structure would be gone, but not the thing itself."
Castiel realises suddenly that this undermines a lot of his thinking about buildings and homes and structures, especially in regards to memory, the memorial. Were the treehouse to be gone when they arrive there, both Dean and Castiel would not be able to help reading some ill and ugly omen in it.
"But—we did so much, in there. It meant so much. That's why I didn't go back to it, all those years—until now. It hurt too much."
"The last time you were there was…"
"The night before you left," Dean answers, eyes made watery pearls in the cold light of his phone torch, "when—when Jimmy came, instead. Coming back here, after that… I guess it hurt a little too much," he laughs, but it's emptied out even as it escapes his throat. "So I didn't. Coming back to the treehouse—it would be like remembering—everything. And I wanted to forget. So I tried to forget."
Castiel slips his hand down from Dean's wrist to his hand, and squeezes.
"You don't need to forget any more."
"You must've thought so little of me, those nine years…"
"And yet I think so much of you, now."
Dean presses his lips together. Castiel squeezes Dean's hand again. Dean squeezes back.
They've approached the clearing in which the treehouse stood. Dean shines his light up to the big tree that once held it—
—and is, crooked and soft with age and beautiful against the sky, holding it still. Castiel's heart jumps,—Dean's seems to as well, by the sharp change in pulse beneath Castiel's fingertips.
It's questionable as to whether it's safe to venture up and inside—in the dark, the tree still looks strong, and the building sound, but time has softened the lines of cut wood and what once was sharp and straight is now twined against the years, warping gently.
Dean looks at Castiel.
Castiel looks at Dean.
A breathless laugh—of joy, of wonder, of being rushed headlong into the ecstatic terrifying feeling of being a teenager again—escapes both their lips, in the same beat.
The ladder has been replaced—rope, where once there was wood—but neither of them seem to care, with the smiles they are wearing.
"Race you up there?" Dean grins, and, leaping forward, has reached the foot of the ladder before Castiel can call out in distress—
"Dean—no!—what if it's not safe?"
"Sounds like something a loser would say!" Dean calls back, and Castiel, fuming, sprints after him, clambering after Dean up the rope ladder.
"Hey!" Dean shouts down, but has already reached the trap door—his hands fumble at it, now, trying to push it up and open, "quit wobbling it! Stop climbing! You're making me—"
"You mean stop doing this?" Castiel asks, and rocks his weight back and forth on the ropeladder. Dean curses above him as he sways, fingers slipping before shoving the trapdoor open and clambering up.
Castiel follows up after him, but Dean holds the trapdoor just over his head, threatening to let it swing shut on top of him.
"Don't you dare," Castiel shakes his head seriously, but can't stop the laugh rising in his chest.
"What, like you shouldn't have dared rocking the ladder like a maniac?" Dean raises his eyebrows. Castiel scrambles up before Dean has the chance to lock him out.
"Ass," he shakes his head, faux-frustrated. Dean smirks.
"Now we've just gotta hope the place doesn't collapse around us," he comments, glancing up at the roof, which, surprisingly, doesn't have any planks missing.
"How safe is this?" Castiel asks.
"What, like I'd know?"
"Out of the two of us, I think you're the one more likely," Castiel points out. Dean smirks and shrugs in acquiescence. He leans back against the walls of the treehouse and folds his hands in his lap, closing his eyes.
"Smells like it used to," he states, taking a deep breath.
"Uh-huh?"
"You can't notice it?"
"I guess not."
Castiel shuffles to sit beside Dean. Pointedly beside, not opposite.
"You ever get it, where you smell something, and it reminds you of a whole period of your life, and then suddenly you're there, you're inhabiting the body, inhabiting the mood and inhabiting the moment of that time, how it felt and how you felt. You literally step into your old self, even if it's just for a moment?"
"Yes," Castiel answers with a laugh, "during shiva, when you came over with those cookies."
Dean smiles gently, eyes still closed, head rolled back against the treehouse wall.
"What did you think of me, then?" He asks. "The moment you saw me, what did you think? And what did you think of me?"
Castiel shrugs, but realises that Dean, with his eyes closed, cannot see it. A million answers to this question teeter out into the darkness ahead of them.
"I don't know," he says. "I was angry." Will it do good to be this honest? It's terrifying and blunt but honesty is what, consistently, Dean and Castiel's relationship has lacked, the past two decades. Perhaps being frank will do it, and them, some good. "I was angry with you, and I was angry that you were there. It was stupid to assume that you wouldn't be there, of course—you and my dad were so close. But I wanted to monopolise grief over him, I think. I didn't want you to have it. I didn't want to share mourning Jimmy with you."
Dean nods slowly, sadly, lifting his head from the wall of the treehouse and opening his eyes gradually. He carries with him the grim sense of finality a man on death row must feel at his last meal.
"That's fair," Dean says, voice diminished. He looks at Castiel. "Is it how you feel, now?"
"What—do I feel angry with you, now?" Castiel asks, eyebrows raised indignantly. "I've told you so many times, Dean, we're friends again, and I've forgiven you—"
"No, I mean," Dean shakes his head, "do you feel—when I talk about Jimmy, do you feel like you're having to share your dad? Share grief over him? Parcel out your mourning to someone who doesn't deserve it?"
"It's not that you don't deserve it, Dean—you do—"
"But I'm not his son."
Castiel presses his lips together and swallows. Dean stares.
"No," he admits. "You're not, biologically, his son. But you were a big, and joyful, part of his life."
"Only because of you."
"And he was a big part of your life," Castiel frowns. "That's what matters. Jimmy's fine, now—forget the hows or whys of any of us being part of his life; we're the ones who have to live without him. If living without him hurts, we have a right to mourn. Some of his patients come to his funeral, to shiva—they're not exactly the traditional bereaved, are they? But they felt, and I expect feel, his absence. They miss his guidance, just like the rest of us. Maybe less acutely—but would you tell them they didn't have a right to grieve? That in coming to shiva, they were imposing on our mourning? That in talking about how they missed him, they were stealing our right to sadness?"
"No, of course not—"
"There are times I feel jealous over my dad," Castiel admits. "There are times I want to jealously guard the right to sadness for him. But these are feelings, ugly though not illegitimate feelings, kicked up by motion in the murky depths of grief. Things rot down there, and sometimes they get dredged up. They're not pretty, but they're not wrong, but they're not right, either. They're there and they're part of missing my dad. And besides, the age difference between me and my brothers—you're the one I turn to, when I need. More than them. You're the one I feel gets it the most. So even when I want to jealously guard the right to grief—which I'm not the gatekeeper of, so can't—you're the one I want to talk to, other than my dad, when it kicks in, kicks me. It's either you, or a blank page, I'll use to untangle my thoughts, my feelings. And I used a blank page so much I produced a whole poetry collection on it."
Dean smiles, a little warmed.
"The most amazing poetry collection I ever read."
"'You read many?" Castiel asks. Dean smirks and pushes him lightly.
"Alright, so I'm not exactly an expert."
"Your praise means more to me that any critics'," Castiels says, honestly.
"You've gotta get your priorities sorted, if that's true."
"I don't think so," Castiel shakes his head.
"You think about your mom, often?" Dean asks. Castiel sputters slightly at the question.
"Um—why?"
"Just, new griefs stir up old ones."
"Right," Castiel nods.
"We never really spoke about her."
"We spoke about her when I needed to."
"You need to, now?"
Castiel pauses, uncertain.
"I'm not sure," he answers, honestly. "I… I haven't spoken about her, in a long time. Even with everything that happened, this year. Obviously losing my dad… somewhat amplified the absence of my mom… made her absence more apparent… I suppose you really notice the absence of a parent when both of them are gone." He looks down at his hands, turning them slowly in his lap. "I miss her in strange ways—I—it's not easy to say, or, I suppose, for a listener to understand. Perhaps I don't understand. It's like looking at a puzzle, which you've put together without the help of the image it should be, and seeing several missing pieces. And you don't know what they look like, you don't know where each would go individually, though you can see which places are empty. But you don't know what they, or what the puzzle itself, should or would look like, when complete. It's strange, not knowing yourself, and knowing you don't know yourself because something which should have been there, never was. Or was, and then wasn't. But it wasn't there long enough for you to know or understand it. That's how I feel about my mom. If I imagine her face, I can only see the characteristics, not the character. If I imagine her voice, I can only think of the memories I knew were memories when I first encountered them—you know? I can only recall by recalling those times I tried to remember.
"She feels removed by so many steps. I miss her, but I know that what I'm missing is the stories I told myself about her, the stories of our memories. It's all incomplete. Gabriel and Michael know what they're missing. When they think of her, it's as a person. When I think of her, it's as a figure. It's dangerously close to an archetype. I guess I'm sad that that's how I think of her, sad that I'm missing out on memories, and sad that I could forget so many. And angry that I could forget in the first place. I don't like what that says about me. I don't like that it's in me, to forget so much stuff about her. I still miss—still need—the tenderness and warmth that she provided. I know I've missed it, missed out on it, my whole life. Estranged. That's what it is. That's what it is, to lose a parent—a mother—when you're so young. To live the rest of your life estranged from yourself."
Dean looks so sad the sky could rip open and still the rain wouldn't match his tears.
He leans in toward Castiel and hugs him tightly. This time, Castiel is the one with his face buried into Dean's shoulder. In spite of the sadness of this conversation, and the sadness it has dredged up, and the sadness of the shadow of grief which looms over both of them, always, now, Castiel cannot help but think of how much he likes the smell of Dean's neck, the softness of it, the short hairs on it, silky and rough.
Apparently, both of them were far too absorbed in this moment.
"—so then they—" A voice sounds at the trapdoor, and then it rips sharply into a scream of fright. "AH!"
Dean and Castiel spring back from each other in shock.
"Krissy, are you okay?!" A voice from the foot of the ladder, on the earth far below them, sounds.
"Krissy?!" Dean balks, eyes bulging in a way Castiel will have to tease him about later.
"Mr Winchester?!"
"What?" A different voice, this one on the ladder a little below Krissy, sounds.
"Krissy?" Dean repeats.
"Krissy, what's going on?" The first voice, from the ground below, asks.
"Mr Winchester!" Krissy exclaims, this time out of delight, and not shock.
"Wait—Mr Winchester's up there?"
"What?"
Krissy glances at Castiel, then does a double take.
"Castiel Novak?!"
"Who?"
"Krissy, what the fuck is going on?" A new voice, from the ground, asks. Several other voices echo in agreement.
"Yeah, and get a move on!" The voice, just below her on the ladder, exclaims.
"I'm moving, Aiden, so get off my dick!" Krissy shouts back town, and clambers up, properly.
"Krissy," Dean sputters, as Krissy sits herself down on the floor of the treehouse opposite them and hangs a torch from the ceiling. In this light, Castiel can make out the perfect redness of Dean's features. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here?" She repeats with a laugh, as the voice from the ladder—Aiden—clambers up and emerges from the trapdoor. "What are you doing here?"
"Mr Winchester?" Aiden asks, incredulous, heaving a suspiciously heavy looking backpack up and dropping it with the clatter of bumping glass objects on the floor in the centre of the group. "What are you doing here?"
"Woah, this is weird," another head appears at the trapdoor, and balks at the sight of Dean. Castiel begins to recognise these students—these are the students from the class he witnessed Dean teaching! "And—is that—" the head—boy, rather—sputters, looking over to Castiel, whose face heats. Aiden has crawled over to Krissy and sits beside her.
"It is!" Krissy exclaims in answer, wearing a mouth-splitting grin. "Castiel Novak!"
Kevin's eyes go wide.
"Dude, your chin's hitting the floor," Aiden laughs. "Close your mouth."
"Just because you don't know who Castiel Novak is," Kevin frowns, but climbs up properly into the treehouse.
"I do, too," Aiden glares. "He's that guy who visited our school."
"That guy," Kevin repeats with a scoff.
"Guys, what's—" A girl appears at the trapdoor. Castiel recognises her immediately—she was the sweet and unbelievably shy girl from Dean's music class. She makes direct eye-contact with Castiel, and after what Castiel must assume is a moment's processing, flushes furiously, eyes bulging, hands withdrawing.
"Mr Winchester's up here!" Aiden grins. "And with that writer guy!"
"Writer guy," Krissy mutters under her breath, and smirks. "Try bestseller, Aiden."
"What're you doing up here?" Kevin asks, looking over to Dean. "Both of you?" He glances at Castiel, only a little embarrassed.
"What the fuck is going on up there?" Another voice sounds from below, on the ladder. "Hurry up, Lena—it's getting cold, and anyway, I hate the dark. Don't leave me out here."
"Damn, this is gonna be a tight squeeze," Aiden comments, and Krissy smirks again.
"Seven people on the floor of a treehouse?" She asks. "Easy-peasy."
"Lena, come in," Kevin reminds softly, as Lena continues to stare at Castiel. Her gaze flutters, and she remembers herself, and flushes further, and moves in jerky, butterfly movements, mouth clamping shut. She pulls herself up into the treehouse and moves away from the trapdoor, sitting, or rather shrinking, beside Kevin.
It's already cosy, Krissy taking no embarrassment in sitting elbow to elbow beside Castiel and smiling almost too amiably at him. Then, turning from cosy into snug—no, tight—the last face and voice appear at the trap door.
"Come in, Eddie," Krissy encourages as the teen still half on the ladder hesitates, staring, perplexed, at Dean.
"What the fuck," he mumbles, frowning, but pulls himself up a moment later. "Mr Winchester, what are you doing here?"
"Yeah!" Krissy exclaims, as the other teens all echo agreement. "Why're you here? And why're you with a famous writer?" She grins. "And why're you guys alone?"
"Wait, you weren't on a date in our treehouse, were you?"
"No, Aiden," Dean flushes, furiously. "This—isn't a date. And what are you guys doing in our treehouse?"
"This isn't your treehouse," Eddie frowns, confused. "We found it, in eighth grade."
"Yeah, and we built it, in fifth grade," Dean counters, gesturing to himself and Castiel—who isn't sure he wants to be dragged into this: some strange turf war between a teacher and his students—and over a fucking treehouse.
"What?"
"Seriously?" Kevin looks excited by this, as does Aiden, while the other boy—Eddie—seems reluctantly impressed. "How did you do it?"
"Well," Dean admits, cooling after a moment and remembering himself—and evidently, the fact that he is not seventeen, "my dad helped," he confesses. "But only where necessary. Cas and I did most of the legwork."
This definitely isn't true.
"Cas?" Krissy repeats, smiling in a way Castiel isn't sure he likes. "You call him Cas?"
"Uh—" Dean flushes.
"The famous writer, bestseller," Kevin joins in, grinning, "to you is Cas?" He turns to Castiel. "Are you okay with that nickname?"
"Well, I've had it almost as long as I can remember, so—"
"Oh, so Mr Winchester didn't give it to you."
"No, Dean did give it to me—"
"Dean!" Krissy exclaims, excitedly clapping her hands and stamping her feet in a way Castiel isn't sure he likes; it thunders the entire treehouse.
"Damn, Krissy, cool it, do you want to get us all killed in a treehouse accident?"
"So you guys have known each other for a while, huh?" Kevin turns back to Dean and Castiel and smiles encouragingly, as though he were coaxing a rescue dog out of its cage.
"Uh, yeah," Dean admits, but Krissy just rolls her eyes, tutting loudly.
"They said they'd been friends, when Castiel visited our classroom, that one time," she reminds.
"So you guys are good friends, then?" Aiden grins.
"Of course," Castiel smiles, surprised by how obvious he feels this should be. "Dean and I grew up together. We were best friends. We still are."
Dean stares.
He doesn't look embarrassed, for the first time in this interaction.
He looks like a man who has lived in the dark and is seeing starlight for the first time. Haunted and confused and filled with glittering wonder and hope.
"Best friends?" Two people repeat the words—Dean, who's voice is barely above a whisper as he says these words, so fortunately for him, only Castiel hears them escape, trembling with joy and awe, from his lips—and Lena, who has spoken for the first time since entering, and has a beautiful, shy, empathetically curious stare drawn upon Castiel.
"Yes," Castiel repeats with a smile. "The very best."
"Mr Winchester," Kevin laughs, smiling too, and warm with affection and confusion, "you never told us that. Why didn't you ever tell us that?"
"Because," Dean sputters, coming to himself, "there's a little something, Kevin, called boundaries, which is part of something else called safeguarding—I don't know if you've ever heard of it—which, speaking of, means I shouldn't be hanging out in a treehouse with a bunch of my students—"
"Ex-students," Krissy points out, smugly. "We just graduated. Remember?"
Dean falters.
"Right," he frowns. "But I should still probably—" He shuffles, about to get up, but Eddie grins and closes the trapdoor.
"We graduated, dude," he reminds. "What rule are you breaking? We're not your students, any more, and you're not our teacher. I don't even know why we're calling you Mr Winchester, at this point."
Dean still shuffles, looking uncomfortable.
"I'm not so sure…" He murmurs, uneasy.
"You guys have all graduated?" Castiel turns back to the group. They confirm.
"We're all going our separate ways, soon," Kevin says. "So we're trying to get as much time with each other, as a group, as possible before then."
"It's such a weird feeling," Krissy shakes her head seriously, drawing her knees up to her chest, "knowing we'll be plastered all over the country, barely able to see each other…"
"You'll find opportunities," Castiel shrugs, trying to sound reassuring. "After all, what are vacations for?"
"I guess you and Mr Winchester managed to stay buddies all this time," Aiden states, with no idea of how much of a loaded conversation this is.
"Yeah," Dean murmurs, brow furrowed, not making eye-contact with anyone but rather staring at the ground.
"How long is that?" Krissy grins. "fifty, a hundred years?"
Castiel chuckles, shaking his head.
"No, try ten, since graduation. But Dean and I have been friends since we were four."
"Woah," Aiden grins.
"That's pretty impressive," Krissy admits, leaning back and resting on the heels of her palms. "What's your secret?"
Castiel glances at Dean. Dean looks back at Castiel.
"Any thoughts?" Castiel asks.
Dean could say any number of things, now. It looks, in fact, as though any number of things really do flash across his eyes as he gazes back at Castiel. But then he settles on one like it's gravity that pulls him to it.
"Forgiveness," Dean states, finally, still looking at Castiel. Then he looks back to his ex-students. "Cas and I wouldn't be where we are today, if it weren't for forgiveness. His, to be exact."
"That's not true—" Castiel tries, but Eddie interrupts him.
"What, forgiveness, and not modern technology? Not Facebook? Not mobile phones? Not Instagram?"
"Now, Eddie," Dean smiles, shaking his head, "you know I don't have Instagram."
"We do," Krissy confirms, matter-of-factly. "We've looked you up. You just aren't there."
"Why've you looked me up?" Dean frowns.
"'Cause we look all of our teachers up, duh," Aiden rolls his eyes.
"And what kind of loser doesn't have Instagram?" Krissy asks.
"The kind of loser who's a generation older than you," Dean mimics her voice, pretty well, actually, at which the rest of the group burst out laughing—well, Lena giggles shyly behind her hand—and Krissy smiles good-naturedly.
"How come there are safeguarding rules against hanging out with your students in a treehouse, but not against being a dick to them?"
"Ex-students," Eddie points out. "And there are rules against being a dick to your students."
"Yeah, tell that to Mr Wright."
"Aw fuck, yeah, that guy is an asshole."
"I don't wanna hear you guys bitch about my coworkers," Dean presses his fingers to his ears and raises his voice above the group.
"Well, he is," Krissy states, voice high with a light defensiveness and agitation, but Dean shakes his head again.
"I don't wanna hear it, that's such a—I don't know—conflict of interest? Is that what it is? Is it a conflict of interest, Cas?"
"Well," Castiel shakes his head, smirking, albeit affectionately, "it's maybe a—"
"But he is a dick," Aiden states, nodding his head seriously. "Not like you, Mr Winchester. One time he gave me a detention just for—"
"Buttering me up isn't gonna stop me minding when you badmouth the people I work with, right in front of me," Dean presses his fingers in his ears again, almost comically. "So don't you try it. I'm serious."
"But you were our favourite teacher," Krissy beams, rocking side to side. Eddie laughs and joins in in agreement.
"You were! You were, like, the only one—"
"I see what you guys are doing, and it sure as hell isn't gonna work—"
"We're not trying to do anything, Mr Winchester," Kevin states. "At least, I'm not. You really were our favourite! We always looked forward to your lessons, we thought you were so cool, and you always made us laugh."
"You were also so understanding, if we handed something in late," Aiden grins. Dean rolls his eyes.
"Trust me, Aiden, it got to a point this year where if you handed an assignment in, at all, I was so surprised I counted it as early."
"And you always made detentions for missed assignments so fun," Aiden shoots back in response, giving Dean finger-guns, which is what finally makes Dean laugh.
"Alright, you guys," he chuckles. "Consider me buttered up. Enough, now."
"No, we're really gonna miss you," Kevin says, and Dean flushes, brushing the comment off.
"I said I was already buttered, Kevin. C'mon, you're not gonna get higher grades from appealing to my vanity, any more."
"We're being honest, Mr Winchester," Aiden laughs. "We really mean it. School days with your classes in were pretty okay."
"Oh, pretty okay, huh, Aiden?" Dean repeats, chuckling. "Wow, praise indeed. Thanks for that. I'll try not to let my head get too big."
"Shut up," Aiden laughs.
"No, seriously—I get that you're worried that the fame will change me, but—"
"Was Mr Winchester always this much of an asshole?" Aiden turns to Castiel and asks. Castiel chuckles.
"Yeah, pretty much," he admits. Dean gasps theatrically in response.
"Cas!" He exclaims.
"What?" Castiel laughs. "You disagree?"
"No, but you said it."
Krissy wrinkles her nose affectionately and watches Dean with what he seems to think is too much knowing intuition, because he swallows thickly and turns the conversation elsewhere.
"Anyway, you guys are gonna be fine, staying in contact with each other. It's easier than ever, to be friends long distance, so don't even worry about it."
"Wow, subject change, much?" Aiden raises his eyebrows. The group snickers.
"He was just annoyed at being called out for being a dick," Krissy states. Lena, quiet as ever, continues to watch the group.
"How did you become friends?" She asks, at last, staring at both Castiel and Dean.
Dean swallows and glances at Castiel self-consciously.
"I… Probably, sort of, threw myself at Cas, a little bit," he admits with a flush. "We were four. Soon as I met him, I wanted to be his friend. I knew I did."
Castiel smiles. His fingers, just the very tips, graze Dean's jacket for a moment. He barely thinks about it, but realises at the coarse touch of weathered denim on his skin. Dean watches, green eyes flickering a million questions.
"We were neighbours," Castiel answers, glancing at the others. "I moved into a new town, a new city, a new—everything. I was a very sad and melancholy child. But not when Dean came along. He'll always undersell the importance of his friendship to me. But it's meant everything."
Damn it, if this isn't a biggest enough clue for Dean. But of course it isn't. He only stares down at the wooden floorboards and creaks out an eventual smile to accompany his glittering eyes.
"Well… It's getting late. And you guys are dying to have the beers that are obviously stowed in Aiden's bag. So. Me and Cas'll get out of your hair."
"Don't go!"
The teens look genuinely upset.
Lena has teared up, possibly Krissy, too.
"What if this is the last time we ever see you?" Krissy asks, voice wrought with a new emotion Castiel hasn't yet seen—or heard—in her.
"It won't be," Dean laughs softly, but the look in his eyes is kind and reassuring. "It won't be," he repeats.
"You don't know that—"
"What, are you gonna start singing To Sir, With Love as I climb down the ladder?" Dean raises his eyebrows. Eddie snorts. "You'll all come and bug me, in future years, I'm sure. Come visit the school. Wait a couple of months, and you can add me on Facebook—if you guys even use that. I'd say drop me an email, but I don't want to exacerbate the dinosaur jokes. When you can legally drink, come hear me play at The Roadhouse."
"What, the cruddy bar?"
"Yes, the cruddy bar," Dean repeats, rolling his eyes. "And not that cruddy, thank you, Eddie." Dean softens. "Anyway, before then, yeah, you really can email me whenever. For advice, for an update, for music recommendations, whatever," he smiles. "I know it's not exactly Instagram, but it does the trick, and you get used to people not being able to like your messages."
"Really?" Lena asks, quietly.
"Really," Dean confirms. "You all have my work email. But I'll send you my personal one, as well. Okay?"
"Okay," Kevin nods with a steeling smile, eyes warm. Dean returns it.
"I'm gonna miss you guys," he confesses. "Don't tell anyone, but you were kind of my favourite class." Dean makes his way, awkwardly, and with a lot of hassle, to the trapdoor, which is finally, reluctantly, opened for him.
"Really?" Aiden grins. Dean smirks and rolls his eyes.
"Duh. Who else would keep me on my toes like you guys?" He asks. "You were the best." He glances over to Castiel. "You comin'?" He asks.
"Of course," Castiel confirms. "Right after you."
Dean grins.
"Alright, you guys," he smiles, all warmth, nothing at all but warmth and, maybe, a glimmer of nostalgia prompted by a band of High School friends warming the night with each other's company. "I'll see you around." They look sad. "I promise I will," he reiterates, before beginning to make his way down into the long stretch of darkness below. "I'll miss you. Be good. Have fun. You're gonna do great."
Castiel follows after his friend.
Down on the ground, Dean scrubs at his eyes. Castiel watches and doesn't quite know what to do.
"I think they really love you, you know," he states. Dean twitches a smile, but doesn't quite seem to buy it.
"Maybe," he hesitates. "I really love them," he confesses. "Love them all," he adds. "If it weren't for the kids I teach…" He sighs and shakes his head. He takes a moment, then looks back at Castiel. "Shall we?" He asks, gesturing to the route back home. Castiel smiles, suddenly nervous, and nods.
"I guess so," he confirms, wondering what other excuses he could possibly invent to keep him from going back with Dean and pinning him up against the walls of his home. They begin to walk back. Dean looks upward, squinting at the sky through the layers of foliage above them. "They love you too, you know," Castiel says, but Dean isn't listening. He frowns.
"Air smells stung," he says, muttering the words out more than anything. Castiel is nonplussed.
"Stung?"
The earth beneath their feet seems to bounce back at the pressure of their footfalls, all fertile and organic, not like most of the ground in Lawrence, where dust and grit clings to the soles of Castiel's shoes. Here there's something new, and old, more promise than ground.
"Electric," Dean says, as if this clarifies anything. "Like it's gonna rain."
Castiel chuckles and shakes his head.
"Rain…" He murmurs. "Of course."
Their entire year—their entire grieving process—has been punctuated by it.
"You don't believe me?"
"How can you tell?"
"Storm's comin'," Dean shrugs. "I can just tell."
Then, stung by his own words and the memory of them on his lips, ten years ago, his gaze shoots away, face falling.
"You think so?" Castiel asks, determined not to let Dean's thoughts turn sour and sorrowful with regret for something Castiel has long since forgiven him for, and would forgive a thousand times over, knowing and loving as he knows and loves now. "I'm not so sure," he looks up at the sky, squinting to see it through the folds of leaves above them.
Dean twitches a smile, letting out a beautiful, delicate breath that raises the hairs on Castiel's neck.
"Nope," he shakes his head. "I can feel it."
"You've gotten old, Dean," Castiel chuckles. "You're an old man, now, staring up at the sky so suspiciously, muttering about storms." He catches his lip between his teeth; even in the dark, Dean's eyes shimmer; even in the midst of Castiel's grief, he still finds himself loving Dean.
"Shit, it sure feels like it," Dean smirks back. All Castiel can think of is how much he would like to grow old with Dean; to see him on the front porch of his house—the big white house of both of their childhoods—on lazy summer afternoons, leaning back, maybe sleeping, maybe watching the world, maybe writing music. To see Dean knelt down on the living room floor with their kids—then their grandkids—playing and talking and helping and laughing, softly encouraging like Castiel knows Dean can, does, with every child he encounters. To see Dean in the kitchen, bleary-eyed, coffee cup in hand, leaning back against the kitchen counter and greeting Castiel with a lazy, smug, 'Mornin' Sunshine'. And Castiel wonders how he could find the words to reply with all the love possible, all the love in the world.
Dean smiles at Castiel, and Castiel watches, and watches, and thinks that one or both of them is going to say something—say it all—but a plash of rainwater lands square between his brows.
"Ha!" Dean exclaims with an animated grin. "Told you! I told you! I told you!"
Castiel rolls his eyes, and is about to retort with something biting and sarcastic, but the drops multiply—and in an instant, heaven's vault has opened and rains down on them.
"I told you!" Dean exclaims again with a laugh, and Castiel scowls.
"I heard you the first three times, Dean—" Castiel pushes his friend lightly, Dean tangles their hands a moment then pulls away.
"But I said—"
"Yes, well, you don't have to sound so happy about us getting soaked—"
"We're not soaked yet," Dean shakes his head.
"But we will be—"
"Come on, you grumpy little dude—"
"I'm not little—" Castiel frowns, but Dean has taken a hold of Castiel's hand again and tugged him, hard and firm and warm, into a run—and they both run; stupidly, hand-in-hand, in the rain and slippery mud, not letting go of one another even when both threaten to slip and fall. Dean laughs again, a little manically, into the open air.
"This is stupid," Castiel calls over the rain just as Dean nearly slips for the third time, jumping and skidding to regain his balance and laughing manically into the wind, which bites back against them and whips around them like the sea. "This is stupid!" He repeats, calling louder, but Dean grins and shakes his head.
"Not stupid," he pulls at Castiel's hand, and mud and sodden dust spatter up the backs of Castiel's jeans. "It's fuckin' fun, where's your sense of adventure?"
"Where's your fear of death?"
"You're just jealous that I can run faster than you."
"That's not it at all," Castiel shakes his head, "and anyway, you can't."
"You wanna bet?"
"I'm not—I have nothing to prove—"
Dean wrenches his hand free of Castiel's and begins to sprint, feet pounding against the wet earth, while yelling quickly over his shoulder 3-2-1—GO!
"Hey!" Castiel bellows, but Dean is already a good stretch ahead of him, and yelling his laughter up into the heavy clouds. "Hey!" Castiel calls again, feet slamming into the soil as he races to catch up with Dean. "You're a cheat, you're a fucking cheat!"
"I am not!" Dean yells back over his shoulder, cackling as the two of them tear through the woods and the flood and the smell of sodden earth and trees happy with rain—and—and the two of them, happy with the rain, as well. Just like Jimmy would be. Just like Jimmy always managed to be. Happy with the rain. "You're just jealous that I'm faster than you!"
"You are not!" Castiel shouts, voice leaping ahead of him as his feet begin hammering against the dusty, now sodden, ground. The rain creates a new, tinnitus sound around them—or perhaps it's the rate of Castiel's heart; not from the running, but from being with Dean, in a thunderstorm, all over again, when ten years ago, they were in one of these, together—or, maybe not together, not together enough—it was the rain that marked their fragmentation, it—
He's caught up with Dean.
"Try not to fall!" Dean shouts over the rain. "Remember when you jumped in front of my car—"
"You nearly hit me with your car—" Castiel corrects, and knows he's wrong, and Dean makes an indignant noise against the rain, which nearly drowns him out.
"Truce?" Dean calls, water running over his neck. Both of them are drenched, and muddied, and disgusting, and Dean is beautiful.
"Just because I'm winning!"
"You wish!"
"Say I'm faster than you!" Castiel shouts.
"Never!"
They've reached the stream and neither know what to do—the way of crossing it is already risky; stones made slick with the downpour, and the way around this is obviously not to do what they both, grinning and shouting angrily at each other, end up doing—which is to leap, full force, at the first stone in one swift and uniform motion, together.
They both slip and fall, obviously, into the stream, and yell—Dean the loudest, of course—and he pushes and pulls Castiel back down as he attempts to get up in the knee-high water, and the water spills into his mouth and he spits at Dean as Dean shrieks laughter and Castiel feels young, so young again, and Dean looks it, his shoulders are no longer slumped and slumping, he's no longer burdened; he beams and is childish and childlike and joyful in the way he deserves to be, to be able to be.
"You're an asshole!" Castiel shouts, but can't stay angry at Dean, can't stop wanting to kiss Dean.
"We were already wet," Dean points out with a laugh, helping Castiel up.
"Yes, but now, if you wrung me out, I could fill a pool."
Dean laughs as they trudge heavily back onto ground.
"We were already wet," he repeats.
"You were jealous I was winning."
"Hey, you jumped for that rock just the same as I did."
"No, I did it with grace. You move with about as much grace as a three-legged elephant."
"I bet you've never even seen one of those," Dean shoulders Castiel softly. "For all you know, they could be very elegant."
"They aren't famed for it."
"Well, you aren't famed for being funny, but I know you're just about the funniest guy there is."
Castiel smiles, heart aflutter at the compliment.
"You think so?"
"Funny looking," Dean grins, and breaks into a run again, inhibited by the slick earth and his own sodden, heavy clothing.
"Oh, you're so dead!" Castiel shouts after him, and begins running, and they run and push and pull and shove and prod and hug and ruffle one another's hair like wild, ecstatic teenage boys again, and banter and laugh until, as though it is the shortest journey in the world, instead of what has realistically been the journey of a revisiting of whole years of their lives, they are back onto their street—their old street, and standing at the gate of their—wait, no, Jimmy's—wait, no, their, all of their, old house. Home. Together. Again.
They look up at it.
And in the image of the big white house and its beautiful but somehow blank front, they look back at themselves.
"Home," Castiel says, and Dean flickers.
"What?" He says, looking over to Castiel.
"Home," Castiel repeats, though he hadn't meant to say it the first time, he says it and means it now. "We're back. Shall we go in?"
"Sure," Dean nods, blinking dumbly a moment. No, not dumbly. Distantly. And now, Castiel can make vague traces around the outlines of what it is Dean is thinking about, where before he could only hope.
"And dry off?"
"Yeah," Dean nods again as Castiel unlatches the gate, a ringing, pure, metallic clink against the organic and ubiquitous patter of water on ground.
"We could light the fire."
They walk down the path toward the porch.
"Yeah," Dean's expression lights with something all softness and breathtaking love. "Jimmy would like that."
"He would," Castiel agrees.
"He loved lighting that fire."
"He shouldn't have lived in Kansas."
"He should've lived in Scotland, like you," Dean smiles.
Castiel hums. They've stopped in front of the door. Castiel holds onto his keys from inside his pocket, loosely in his hand, running his damp thumb over their rounded head.
"He loved the rain," Dean murmurs.
"Yes," Castiel nods. "He really did."
"Does it rain much in Edinburgh?"
Castiel chuckles.
"Yes, I'm sure you'd think it does. But you get pretty used to it."
Castiel pulls the keys from his pocket. He looks down at them.
"You seem like you don't want to go in," he smiles, but there's something nervous and puzzled in it, to Castiel.
The porch shelters them from the rain. It runs thickly off its edges and this, and the sense of burning and growing intimacy, intimacy burning, earthy and warm with growth, between them, makes it feel as though they're in a cove somewhere, safely tucked away from the rest of the world. Three walls of water surround them, and one wall of a house.
"I—" Castiel swallows. "A house can mean a lot of things."
"Right," Dean's lips twitch. "Here," he smiles as Castiel continues fumbling, taking the keys softly from Castiel's hands, "let me?"
"Okay."
Dean's fingers graze against Castiel's and linger a moment longer than necessary.
Not for the first time in Castiel's life, he looks at Dean in wonder.
The past falls all around them like so many drops of rain.
The past and the future shimmer like rippling waters, and the waters are the present, and the waters are the now, and the waters are their history, and their story, and the waters are Dean taking the keys from Castiel and unlocking the door as Castiel murmurs "Thank you…" and Dean snorts and both of them are taken aback by the sound and smell and taste of the past, which is a past neither—well, at least not Castiel—regrets.
"No problem," Dean clicks the lock open, looking down at the keys with an affectionate, haunted smile. The smile of grief. The smile of grief comforted. "You know, I was so scared of coming in here, the first day of shiva."
They walk through the door together, pressed shoulder to shoulder, fingers nearly weaving together for a moment, and—and what does Dean think this means? How is Dean explaining this in his head, right now? Castiel can't help but wonder: Dean Winchester, the boy who was convinced his love for Castiel was unrequited, then believed himself unworthy, then—and still now—unable to believe that Castiel could ever forgive him for the nine years they spent apart. Now, Castiel would wait any amount of time, if it came with the promise of spending the rest of forever with Dean. Dean is and always will be the bigger infinity.
"I could tell," Castiel laughs.
"Uh-huh?" Dean chuckles wryly. "What did you think of me?"
"Honestly?" Castiel asks.
"I won't hold it against you," Dean grins, but he looks nervous.
"Take your shoes off," Castiel nods down to Dean's battered and soiled boots as he toes his own shoes off. Dean rolls his eyes and acquiesces.
They make their way, dripping from the rain and the stream, into the living room. Castiel glances at the mirror Dean cracked, all those years ago, while racing down the stairs.
"I was annoyed by how much I still felt for you," Castiel answers, and is, honestly, flustered by his own honesty. Which is to say nothing for how Dean seems to feel.
Dean sputters, then manages to change the conversation so entirely, so tactlessly, that Castiel cannot help but laugh.
"So you know—this year—it's been the wettest year on record. In Kansas. The wettest. So much rain."
Castiel laughs, shaking his head, frustration and adoration blossoming in him.
"Just," Dean reddens, skin still so damp, "Jimmy would've loved it. It's weird that it was this year. Jimmy would've loved it."
"Yes," Castiel agrees, brows knotting softly together as he gazes at Dean. "Yes he would have."
"It's like he's gone, but he's not. Like he's still here. Like how rain is just—just water coming back down. You know?"
"Um," Castiel frowns, and tries not to smile, and tries not to cry.
"Like we learnt in school. It's just water that's evaporated, coming back down to earth. And that's just like Jimmy. And that's just like grief."
"I hope you're not offended by how strange I find you."
"You're one to talk."
Castiel shakes his head as he takes logs out of the basket for the fire and tosses them in.
"Strange and wonderful," Castiel states, but Dean isn't paying attention.
"That's not—" he huffs, bending down next to Castiel. "That's not how you—"
"Who died and made you fire king?" Castiel raises his eyebrows, and Dean bubbles out in laughter.
"Lest we forget who made all the fires on our camping trip, Castiel," he reminds. Castiel smiles.
"My mistake."
He watches Dean make a little pyramid of firelighters and newspaper and logs in the fireplace.
"Here we go," Dean grins, lighting it.
Warm amber flames tumble upwards and are dyed blues and greens by the firelighters and the ink of the newspaper before licking across wood.
They both lean forward, watching it a moment. It bathes the walls and Dean's skin orange. Castiel watches as the gold in Dean's irises dances to the same song of the fire and, though it hardly seems surprising at this point, falls a little deeper in love with his best friend.
"This was a good idea," Dean blinks softly. Castiel hums in agreement and wonders if his friend has any idea how Castiel is watching him. "It's just like when we were young."
"We're still young," Castiel chuckles. Dean finally glances back at him.
"I don't often feel it."
"But you do now?" Castiel asks. Dean smiles a soft smile and nods.
"I do."
"Why?"
"I often do, when I'm with you."
Castiel leans to graze his shoulder against Dean's.
Dean shifts to cross his legs beneath him and sit down properly.
"Damn, I'm soaked," he wrinkles his nose, picking at his jacket, limp with rain.
"Me too," Castiel smiles.
He thinks back to the first day of shiva and thinks of how Dean looked at him, then. Like he could barely look at him. Now Dean's gaze is a beautiful, painful mix of their beautiful and painful pasts and present; memories of them laughing and reading and exploring and talking late into the night, memories of them crying alone and hurting one another without realising it, memories of them healing, slowly, then all at once, memories of them still healing, and the moment of them still healing, even now. Dean's gaze dances like the firelight but is as steady and penetrative as the rain.
"We should get these clothes off," Dean states, tugging off his jacket, then freezes, realising what he's said. He balks, skin flushed, so flushed that it practically evaporates the remaining water off it. "I mean—"
"Yes," Castiel agrees, unable to stop the thrill this chases through him, "we should. The fire'll dry them out—we could hang them up—"
Dean nods blankly, filled with wonder, and slips his jacket off properly.
"Yeah…" he nods. "Yeah."
Castiel wonders how much he should go for, and Dean hesitates a moment, too, but underneath his t-shirt his skin clings to the fabric, both still sodden, so it's not as though the tee succeeds in hiding anything, anyway.
"What were you talking with your mom about?" Castiel asks when they settle back down, both tragically still dressed in clothing that seems pointless for myriad reasons, now. Dean looks at the fire, unable to look at Castiel. Silence. A long break of silence that lies steadily between them like an empty road. "It was a fight?" Castiel asks, guesses, and Dean shrugs, shaking his head.
"I don't know what to call it," he confesses. "I don't know how to feel about it." A pause, in which Castiel doesn't want to speak, because he knows Dean has more to say, and he knows that if he interrupts, Dean's next thoughts and words will be stilted, inorganic. Better to let them flow their natural course. "I don't know what it was," Dean says, "apart from necessary. It felt necessary. It felt long overdue. Three years overdue. Ten years overdue. Hell—when did we meet?" He asks, looking up at Castiel. "It was twenty-five years overdue. Only—four year old me wouldn't have been able to have that conversation with her, anyway. Wouldn't have understood. And eighteen year old me wouldn't have been able to, either, I don't think. She didn't exactly give me room. And me two years ago—even then, I don't think I had the resources for it. But I do, now."
"Resources?" Castiel raises his eyebrows. "You do, now?"
"Yes. You," Dean smiles, sad and scared, but brave, still so brave. "I have you, now."
Castiel nods.
"Completely."
This should be hint enough. And it certainly does seem to leave Dean a little breathless, he pulls back minutely for a moment, blinking, before continuing.
"I—um—I said some things that I needed to say to her, that's all I mean, though. Things that I've needed to say, for a long time—so it was hard—and I feel so shaken—you can probably tell," he laughs self-consciously, and again, Castiel wonders if now really would be the best time to kiss Dean, or if he should wait, wait even longer, wait all over again, because Dean is so obviously so emotionally exhausted, is vulnerable with exhaustion. "But I said them. And I feel better. And worse. And tired—but like—like rebuilding is finally possible. Redemption. You know? It's never simple." Castiel nods and takes a hold of Dean's hand while Dean laughs self-consciously. "I'm not making any sense—"
"You don't need to," Castiel shakes his head. "I've known you a while. I can fill in the blanks. I understand."
Dean looks at Castiel and squeezes his fingers softly.
"What did you say to her?" He asks quietly, hopeful and breathless.
Dean shakes his head.
"It's complicated… And messy…"
"I'm not going anywhere."
Dean pulls his hand away and begins fiddling with his own hands.
"I… I told her a lot." He looks up at Castiel. "Cas—a lot of this," he looks hopeless, and then he looks as though he's at war inside himself, a war to find the right words, or perhaps he's already found them, and it's a war to bring them into being. "A lot of this isn't gonna make any sense—and—and it'll not make sense, because of things I've said to you in the past, and—and I'm sorry—and I'm sorry for saying those things—and those things weren't true—and you have to belive me—the things I'm saying, now, they're true—and I hope you don't hate me—but I can't keep living among lies, and I can't keep living among ghosts—and I said this to my mom—"
"Said what?" Castiel asks, and hopes that his voice is steadying, but has a feeling that it's shaking as much as Dean's hands are as they fumble in his lap.
"I said—I said I've had to be mother and father to Sam—that it wasn't fair—that I'd grown up too fast and been made to learn and confront things about myself in a way that—she'd done things—she and my dad had done things—" Castiel can actually make out the hammer of Dean's heart in the pulse point of his neck, it flickers sharply and looks painful and Dean's wince seems to confirm this discomfort. He puts a hand on Dean's shoulder and Dean glances down at it and seems unsure if he should pull sharply away or lean into it. In the end he just sits, stock-still, and continues, though his frame is trembling. "—Had done things that'll hurt me, forever—and I'm worried that they'll hurt me, forever—and she might not have been, like… active participator in it, but she was silent, all the way she was silent and silent is complacent and complacency is being an accomplice, I think, I've realised—I've never—I could barely even tell Jimmy about this," Dean confesses, looking up at Castiel, and his eyes are stung with tears, "but he figured it out—you know how amazing he was—it's—you're amazing, too—you're so much like him, you carry so much of him in you—it was our last conversation, I think, before he—" Dean swallows and Castiel has to look down and blink out the water and salt from his eyes.
"Jimmy figured it out, I barely had to say it, and I miss him—it was so comforting, knowing how he was, with you, even though he was religious—"
Castiel knows what's coming. He's essentially been able to rehearse this conversation with Dean before, though he barely realised then that it was only a practice run. Now, he has to be present and he has to believe Dean, whatever he says, whatever he confesses, because trust is what Dean deserves more than anything, now—trust, and love, and all the kindness in the world.
"I said it wasn't fair," Dean states, "and I said it wasn't fair I'd had to outsource parenting, look for fatherhood and motherhood in Jimmy, for myself, and then perform it, for Sammy, when mom failed him, too. I said it was torture for me, and I meant it. I said what my dad did was torture for me and I'll carry it forever, that it'll rot at me forever. There isn't a cure for that kind of thing. Not completely. It's chronic, now. It's a disorder. She wasn't the cause but she could've stopped it, she could've stopped it and she never did, she never tried, it—I—felt like she never even once—" Dean shakes his head, silent, beautiful, poisoned tears streaming onto his face and running down his cheeks. But if the tears are poison, then crying them out is not just good, it's right. It's necessary. Like Dean said.
"I said I hated her," Dean shakes his head, blinking out what seems like a thousand more tears. "I said I hated her. And then—and then I said I loved her." His voice cracks, and it's like the saddest music Castiel has ever heard. "I can't help it," Dean looks upwards, at the ceiling. "I can't help any of it. I can't help it, just like I can't help…" And he trails off, and Castiel looks at him, but Dean doesn't look back, not yet. Castiel's heart is thundering in his chest. Dean makes a frustrated noise and trembles and more water leaks from his eyes. "This should be easier," he shakes his head, "this should be easy; I should be able to do this, I should be able to say this to you—"
"Dean—"
"No, Cas," Dean shakes his head, "it's not gonna make any sense, but you have to listen, you have to trust me—please, please, trust me—I wouldn't lie, not now—"
"Dean—" Castiel tries to find Dean's hands, but Dean pulls away a moment—before realising and clasping back at Castiel's hands, tight and fierce and almost painful and with all the passion, all the brokenness of a hurt little boy, bullied by the man he called father.
"And I said I understood," Dean says, words trembling as they fall softly out of his mouth, his voice rasping. "I've—I've stood in silence, too. I've—I've bitten my tongue. I've lied. Not for the same reasons, but—I've hurt people I loved, thinking I was doing the right thing. Thinking it was a choice between lying and hurting them, or telling the truth, and ruining things, and then, in the long run, hurting them, more. And anger—anger's right—but I can't hold onto it forever. It hurts too much. And it's poisoning me. And I said that. And I said that I wanted to be well, whatever that looked like. And I said that I forgave her, because I couldn't not, because I wanted to heal. Because she's my mom, and I need one. I forgave her. For all of it. Everything. I said that we could start over. Me and her and Sam, if he wanted, but he'd have to want to, too, that I wanted her to fight, but I wanted her to look at me, and see me, and say that she could see me, and—and stop biting her tongue, and closing her eyes—and see me. I need her to—I said I needed her to really look at me, and see me, please." Dean blinks, eyes red, healing, agonising healing, in his expression. "I need her to see me."
Castiel stares. His heart is frantic and trembling like a hummingbird inside a cage too large for it, beating its wings desperately against bars and singing of far off hills which are just in sight, if only in the mind.
"And did she?" He asks. Dean's lip trembles. He blinks.
"Did she what?" His voice is rough.
"Did she look at you? Did she see you?"
Dean shrugs and looks away.
He stares at the carpet.
Castiel watches the tongues of fire tremble across his features and make the shadows on his face dance with one another.
"I say all this, because," Dean says slowly, looking at the carpet still, "without hope, you—you've gotta understand. I say all of it without hope because I know what I did, ten years ago, and I know how it hurt you, and you being friends with me, again, is more than I could have ever hoped for—but it's got to be said, you know?" He laughs nervously and looks back up at Castiel. His hands fiddle, anxious, with one another, fingers moving quickly like tiny animals. He blinks out a few lonely, desperate tears. Tears which are honest and without hope but which take comfort in their own honesty. "I've… It's been twenty… twenty-five years, and I've bitten my tongue, and tried to shake it off, tried to quit it—quit—tried to hide it—I said nothing, and then I said—and then I lied, but… It's… You have to know…"
"Know what, Dean?" Castiel asks. His heart is beating like music against his chest. The tips of his fingers feel numb. The entire world has turned into an inward breath, long and drawn out and it feels like it's never-ending. White mist has descended on everything, on all the world, on all his senses, white, sugary, terrifying mist like clouds moving swiftly over the face of the moon, dyed by its light. It clashes with the amber flickering firelight, this sense of swirling silvery sweetness, the cold filling him, the warmth pricking his heart, the tinnitus of his own pulse or perhaps the melody of his and Dean's twenty-five year dance together, back and forth, friendship and love and hurt and two continents and an ocean and the light between two oceans between them. Time, the greatest distance between two places, has separated them, and now it has brought them together; time and death. The silent symphony between them builds and it builds and still Dean is saying nothing, seems unable to say anything, looks at Castiel, terrified, swallows, brows sloped beautifully upward, the hammering of his heart visible at every pulse-point on him, each of which Castiel has the overwhelming urge to press his mouth to, to suck, to kiss, to stroke and cry and tell Dean that it will all be better, that all of it will be better, that Castiel will love him for ever and ever, until the earth is dust and decay in starlight.
"Cas…" Dean says, and can't finish the sentence. Castiel watches and Dean stares, terrified, back, like a frightened animal in the middle of a forest on fire. "I'm—I think—I think I'm not—what I mean," he makes a frustrated noise and scrubs at his eyes. "I—I think I'm—queer—and I—I know that I—please believe me—I know I haven't given you any reason to believe me—"
Castiel takes a hold of Dean's frantic hands. The song has risen to a cacophony between them, beautiful and haunting; all the songs Dean has ever played and written and made, all of the songs that remind Castiel of Dean, all the songs that remind Dean of Castiel, this is the soundtrack of their lives; this is the moment the melody is loudest, most devastating, and Castiel has to hold Dean to steady himself through it.
"Cas," Dean tries, desperate, eyes shimmering.
Castiel remembers ten years ago. Castiel remembers one year ago. Castiel remembers everything.
"I know, Dean," he states, and Dean blinks, confused, a few tears eking out onto his perfect, freckle-spattered cheeks.
"What?" Dean squints, nonplussed—and fuck, if it doesn't make Castiel fall even deeper in love with the other man, if it doesn't swamp him with adoration he can't overcome, he could never overcome, he never wants to overcome. Crap, Dean is an idiot, a perfect, beautiful, kind, kindred idiot.
"I," Castiel laughs, but it comes out breathless and almost like a cry, "I know—I have—" he's struck by the flaming lance of an idea in an instant. "Wait," he says, and springs up, and runs to his dad's study, where he'd left the copy of the poetry collection dedicated to Dean sat perfectly in the middle of his dad's old desk, but somehow is still fumbling with excitement and fear, and grabs it, and rushes back, and sees Dean staring at the doorframe, terrified, holding onto his hands and looking ready to bolt any instant.
Castiel bends and places the collection in Dean's hands, holding them, holding the collection. Dean doesn't even look down at it, just stares at Castiel.
"I know," Castiel says.
"What?"
Dean looks more scared than confused, now.
"I know," Castiel repeats. "You told me. Months ago, you told me. When your brother overdosed, the night I drove you to hospital. You were drunk, and you couldn't remember the next morning, and I didn't know what to do, and I'm sorry," Castiel is reminding himself of Dean; his part of their song, his harmony, is rising and rising and his voice is cracking and his heart is hammering and all of it, all of it, all of their lives and all of their sorrows have been building to it, been building to this moment, for twenty-five years, for nearly thirty years, really. "I'm sorry, I didn't know what to do—so I said nothing, and I waited for you to heal, because—because I wanted you to heal, more than I—more—" He growls, clutching at straws. He feels more like Dean than ever. "You were drunk, and you told me how you felt," he explains, "and you—you gave me your notebook, full of songs and poems—and you gave me your mixtape, and you kissed—"
Dean looks terrified.
"Oh, God," he says, expression numb, jaw slack, eyes wide. "Oh God—"
"And I read them, and they were beautiful—and I listened to the mixtape, and I know I shouldn't have, and I'm sorry—"
"I kissed you," Dean shakes his head, running a desperate hand through his hair, "I don't even…"
"You kissed me," Castiel confirms, "but I—"
"I'm so sorry, Cas," Dean blinks, more tears springing onto his cheeks, "I'm so sorry—I know you were dating Balthazar, I knew you were with Balthazar—I never would have—if that's why you guys broke up—I'm so sorry—"
Castiel rocks back.
"What?"
"Balthazar—"
"Balthazar and I were never dating," Castiel cocks his head to the side. He'd forgotten—forgotten that Dean had thought that. He keeps forgetting. "We—we're just friends," he laughs. "We were always just friends."
"You," Dean blinks, "what?"
"You kissed me," Castiel laughs, breathless, "and I—I'm sorry—I should confess, I kissed you back—I never wanted it to end," he laughs again, chest clearing and now feeling like it's turning into a vacuum with all the air being expelled from it, frustrated and endeared and forever enamoured, Castiel continues, "I never wanted it to end, but you were drunk, and I—part of me couldn't believe you, still," he confesses, "and I'm sorry—"
"You kissed—you kissed me back?" Dean blinks again. His mouth hangs open and is, even now, especially now, so utterly perfect and kissable.
"I kissed you back," Castiel confesses with a soft laugh, squeezing Dean's hands. Dean looks numb with disbelief.
"You—you—you never wanted it to end…"
"Never," Castiel squeezes again, and Dean shakes his head.
"I don't—Cas—I don't understand—"
Castiel laughs and finds he cannot help it.
"Look at the book, Dean," Castiel huffs, shaking his head, heart like a butterfly inside of him. Dean seems to steel himself and finally looks down as Castiel slips his hands out of his friend's so Dean can read.
Dean mouths the word on the cover, single and simple and bright as the sun. Bright as Dean.
Honeybee.
"For—" Dean looks up, then down, then up again, then down, all disbelief and joy and fear, maybe too much fear, just now, to quite make room for the joy, yet. "That's what you—is—you wrote this for—"
"Look at the dedication page, idiot," Castiel smiles. "And if you're not sure after that, take a look at the poems."
Dean turns to the dedication page, and his soul seems to start back. He shakes his head and his eyes dance and shimmer with misty waters, swirling amber and silver. The rest of the world is static and hung under a blanket of darkness. It's just them. It's only them. Castiel almost mouths the words himself as Dean reads them. He knows what it says. Knows it by heart. Wouldn't be surprised if he knew the whole damn collection by heart, so much has he pored over it, by now.
To Dean.
I still do,
and always will—
with all of my unworthy heart.
The universe swirls like silvery water.
The song is stilling, waiting.
Dean's jaw opens then closes, caught between speech and gasping for air.
Dean's fingers move across the letters. Then he flips to the cover of the book. His fingers graze the title. Then he turns, frantically, through the collection, eyes scanning the poems, each word, each line, eyes swimming with tears until he can't read for them and has to blink them out and Castiel watches, adoring and terrified and enamoured, as ever, for ever, for always and forever. They're surrounded by the past, and it dances around them, and they're surrounded by the future, and it sings and beckons them, and twirls and spins while Dean and Castiel, sat on the floor of the living room like so many countless times before, stay static and face one another, each waiting for the other shoe to drop. Dean shakes his head and puts a hand over his mouth and Castiel worries, suddenly, that Dean is about to reject him, again. But when Dean looks up, all Castiel's doubts are washed away. Dean's gaze is like the tide. Falling and rising and ever pulling Castiel in deeper and ever certain, ever steady, ever a promise. Quiet. Not silence. Not for the music, not for the sound of Dean's breathing, and they're close enough that Castiel can almost feel it, can almost feel the soft, warm inhale and exhale of Dean Winchester on his skin.
And Dean, as ever, is a perpetual idiot and dork and wonderful human. When he speaks, Castiel thinks his words will carry the weight of all the ages on them, thinks that Dean will say something incredibly profound or moving or even just pertinent.
"So the rain out there was pretty bad, huh?" He asks, and Castiel opens his mouth and finds he can't even answer, can't even laugh though all his insides are beaming and laughing and thrumming with it, with the ridiculousness of Dean, with his own adoration for Dean, and he sighs and shakes his head and beams and his eyes are glassy and he wants to remember this moment for ever and ever, for ever and ever and he doesn't know how it happens and maybe it's better this way, it feels right after the violence and ferocity of their first kisses, they somehow end up twined together and their mouths have met and they're kissing, at last, at long last, they're in each other's arms and soaked to the bone and so in love with one another and there's no more fear, no more walls, only tears staining both of their cheeks and mingling together as Castiel's fingers run through and clasp Dean's sodden hair, and Dean's hands frame Castiel's jaw, and Dean's tongue is in Castiel's mouth, and his lips are soft against Castiel's and the hunger in Castiel is still there and the music has risen but the music has fallen, too, the song is seeping around them and into them and dissipating into everything and becoming everything, indistinct, like rain on skin or mist on moors, and they pull apart, breathless, gasping, eyes stinging, hearts soaring, hearts breaking, hearts healing, becoming teenagers again, becoming themselves again, inhabiting bodies new with truth and love, and they stare and can't believe, and Dean is the first to speak.
"It's so amazing you got published, by the way," he states, breath rugged, shaking his head. "You're so talented—"
Castiel laughs, cannot stop himself. The next kiss he gives Dean is fierce and rough and they laugh and cry into it, and try to speak while each tells the other to shut up, and neither of them can believe it, and both of them can believe it, because it's the truth, finally. It's the truth.
And it's the culmination of nine years of pain, and another year of patience, of waiting, of hurting softly and steadily like a heartbeat through it all, and the kissing turns and grows and Dean's hand slips down to Castiel's sodden shirt and fists it tight and hungry, squeezing rainwater out of it, and Dean ends up on Castiel's lap, and then he pulls Castiel on top of him and they're kissing by the fire and all the colours in the world, new, unseen and uninvented colours are flashing in the back of Castiel's skull, and Dean tugs at Castiel's shirt but can't at this angle, get it over his head, and Castiel pulls back and says,
"It's—it's probably better if I just take this off—because—you know—of the fire—it'll just dry easier if it's off and—"
"Yeah," Dean nods, apparently barely able to pay attention. "Yeah—yeah, totally."
Castiel sit back up, legs either side of Dean, and pulls off his shirt, and Dean follows him, sitting up underneath Castiel and moving his lips over the new skin there, still damp, kissing at it so that new pinpricks form and Castiel shivers and gasps, breathless, and it's like they're starting again, it's like they finally get to start again, Castiel finally understands the words renewal and rebirth and redemption, and there is so much grace in all of this, and Dean kisses and grazes his hands over skin he's never, neither of them have ever, touched, neither of them have touched one each other like this before. Dean is fascinated, unable to stop, apparently, Castiel is in heaven, but after what seems like hours he grows impatient and growls and pushes Dean back and pulls Dean's shirt off and murmurs something like,
"It's only fair you take yours off, too," at Dean's inquisitive, amused look, and he kisses Dean's chest, returning the favour, obsessed with Dean's collarbones and his shoulders and his pecs and his bellybutton, and Dean laughs and Castiel remembers how ticklish he is and they kiss and tease and explore like they're young again and it's their first time, uncertain and excited, and they push and pull and it turns into wrestling then laughing then soft kissing again, kissing as delicate as eyelashes, kissing as delicate as disbelief, kissing as hard and passionate as the truth.
Dean keeps murmuring that he can't believe it, mouth breathless against Castiel's, and Castiel hums and agrees each time, because neither can he, neither can he.
It's been hours, maybe, and their bodies have slotted together and the kissing has grown and changed and reiterated over and over, into passionate and sensual and soft and timid, and both of them are hard and aching, and they grind against one another and their lashes flutter and their eyes roll and they leave bruising grips on each other's flesh and breathlessly moan, their voices a new chorus in the song, How long has Castiel been waiting to do this? And how long has Dean been waiting to do this? They ask each other seriously and rhetorically and giggle and bite kisses into each other's necks and run their tongues along the other's jaw and nothing has ever, ever been so perfect.
The house cradles them. The house that has witnessed so much. The house that has meant so much. The house that means so much. The house that became a home, after so much hurt, amid so much grief, after Castiel thought he would never find a home again, not here. Twice.
And it's home. It's home because of Dean. And it always will be.
And he always will be.
Chapter 59
Not quite haunted, but certainly graced by ghosts of the past, Castiel is moved to sit on the roof he and Dean spent so much of their adolescence upon. From it seem to spring memories upon memories of the hours Dean and Castiel spent here, memories shooting up like sunflowers, some with their petals soured and dried, others with their faces turned full-glorious to the sun-dimming sky, proud and bright in a growing darkness.
This house—the great white house which seemed so imposing when Castiel first laid eyes upon it, the spectre of the mother he had lost, its white walls a reminder of the blankness of all their lives now, of the absence of Amelia Novak from them all. This house, now home, has been steeped in memories and moments, and now the walls are no longer blank, now it is no longer imposing. Now it cradles Castiel and curls around him all the joys and regrets of his childhood. If he is haunted, here, he is glad for it.
Stepping out onto the roof and sitting down with a crate of beers, his thoughts turn more naturally to Dean. Not even out of being reminded of him, in the very being of this house, or the very act of sitting on this roof, or even in the crate of beers he has placed beside him—in the shadows of the green house opposite his own, Castiel can make out the gleaming shape of Dean's Impala pulled up.
Dean is visiting Mary. Castiel wonders why, hopes everything is alright. Perhaps they have patched things up, properly, since Mary ran from Sammy in the hospital.
He opens a beer and tips it back, slowly. The walls of his mind are traced by the shadows of Dean and Castiel sat, here, almost eleven years ago, now, discussing what their last year in high school together would look like—
And wait—that's a thought.
Castiel pulls out his phone, a frown twining between his brows. The screen, blinking up at him in a cold blue light so unlike that of the gently receding sun, confirms the twisty, intuitive sensation in Castiel's gut.
July ninth.
Today is ten years since his and Dean's fight. And so much has happened between now and then.
Castiel's head darts back up to look at the green house opposite him. The lights are on, one in the living room, one in the kitchen. If Dean is there, Castiel wonders what he's thinking, how he's feeling. Castiel used to dread this day, every year—with a dread like death—used to wish he would not mark it but inevitably, always, would. Like clockwork, like the clockwork of a terrible machine.
He counts no longer, but even one year ago—only a year—he would have felt the day looming like the promise of a horrible sickness, a replica of the storm that raged that whole night, on the ninth of July ten years ago, looming with grim promise on the horizon.
Now Castiel has no reason to count. He knows how Dean feels and knows how Dean hurt, knows what was sacrificed that night in the hope of what Castiel might stand to gain. But Dean doesn't know his portion.
And so, inevitably, Dean must be counting.
Which explains the curious amount of radio silence over the past few days: Dean has been dreading this.
Castiel, upon discovering the reason Dean wasn't making a move—that he thought Castiel was dating Balthazar—should have said his piece and told Dean everything, before Dean had a chance to go and get himself concussed. The memory at least makes the writer smirk—after it was discovered that Dean was okay, and after two weeks of careful watching, after several days of having to wake Dean up every two hours, Dean is recovered. And the waking Dean up part was really no problem—it has meant sleeping over at Dean's so much Castiel could almost kid himself into believing they were actually in a relationship. Neither Dean nor Castiel acknowledged the silliness of Castiel staying round, when Dean could just as easily have got Sam to do this, from the room next door.
But sleeping next to Dean again was too good an opportunity to pass up. Dean seemed to think so, too.
Castiel sighs, leaning back, and taking a long sip from his beer. He fears that he and Dean are caught at just the wrong places on the grids of no self-confidence, and unassertiveness, to ever be able to make a successful move on one another. Either that, or they will be caught, infinitely, on a loop of wrong place, wrong time, with one another. Last week the poetry book he wrote for Dean was sent to him by his publisher. It sits on his dad's old desk, waiting like a promise that may never be kept. Perhaps Castiel should just send it to Dean with a brief, explanatory cover note. This would be both the easy, and the lazy way out.
But no—half of these problems were created by Castiel's inability to share his feelings in the right way, at the right time. Realistically, the sting of what happened ten years ago could have been avoided if Castiel hadn't framed his confession of love to Dean in terms of going or not going to England, something he claimed was translatable as loving or not loving someone. What was Dean meant to think?
Of course, this isn't the whole of it—at least half of it was caused by, as Balthazar would call it, Dean's 'gay panic'. Years of internalised homophobia, implemented by his father, and years following this of his mother never acknowledging or apologising for it. And on top of this, Dean still hasn't come out to his mom.
Or even to Castiel, as far as Dean can remember.
The base of the sky, where the sun is sitting, is the colour of the bright sunflowers Jimmy planted in his garden. The clouds are like paper-thin petals blown across it.
Castiel isn't startled by the sound of a suddenly closing front door, but it certainly draws him sharply from his meditations, from him haunting his own past, recent or otherwise.
It is the door of the green house opposite.
Dean has stepped out into the dimming air.
Castiel watches the other man, who takes in deep and shaky breaths and seems both anxious and relieved; buzzed with something bitter like the tang of blood, and, finally, free from some great burden.
Castiel wants to run his story alongside Dean's.
The clouds above, in the lowering sun, have turned from petals to golden tongues, and lick the sky.
Castiel can hear Dean's breathing from across the street: the man is feasting upon air, licking it like the clouds do the heavens, licking and lapping and gulping. He scrubs at his eyes and takes another bite of air, and Castiel realises, Dean is crying.
He wants to run his story alongside Dean's.
"Dean," He speaks out, into the twilight, out to the street, as Dean steps towards his car. He starts, but not unpleasantly; he is drawn sharply from his thoughts and motions just as Castiel was drawn, a moment ago. Dean looks up, not aimlessly, but certainly with wonder, before his eyes alight on Castiel, sat upon the roof.
"Cas," He says, and in the word is all eternity, is the fold of a body pressed close in darkness but not quite touching, not quite touching perfectly. A voice, a form, stung with longing, stung with a barren hope for more.
He wants to run his story alongside Dean's. He wants their endings to align. And their middles. And their everything, from this moment until their last.
Castiel doesn't know what he should say. He doesn't know what he was going to say.
Dean looks up at him. Even all this way away, Castiel can make out the shimmer of his eyes in the promise of darkness. He can hear the struggling, hungry, erratic sounds of Dean's breathing.
"Are you okay?" He asks, gaze like an arrow shot, at Dean. Being himself the arrow, Castiel cannot exactly change his course, not when fate and perhaps even God were the bow and the archer.
Dean's expression struggles for a moment. He wavers, then swallowing, shrugging, he nods.
"I'm okay," Dean confirms, and Castiel believes it, in the strange way you must believe words which are certainly not yet true, but will be; words which are a promise, spoken like a promise, words which don't exist in the present but certainly in the future.
"Join me?" He asks, and Dean swallows again, throat rippling and constricting as the sun sets its tone to a pale, sturdy yellow.
He nods, and, practically jumping across the street, is down Jimmy's garden and clambering up the front porch, up onto the railing, up one of the pillars, and onto the roof in the time it takes Castiel to be reminded of Dean's teenage form doing the exact same thing, in years lost to time though not to memory.
Dean's form works in opposite motion to the sun, his muscles tensing and rising as the sun relaxes into the sky, resting on the horizon.
Dean, up on the roof and looking at Castiel, looks like an old and weathered building. A house made skeletal after a hurricane. Something in his features indicates he has withstood a storm which in any case left him gutted and bare, but ready for repair. Ready for restoration. Ready for healing.
"Are you okay?" Castiel asks again, and realises he has stood up as he has said these words. He and Dean face one another.
"I'm," Dean takes a breath, and stares at Castiel. It seems as though he's waiting for something. Dean has always given this impression; both flighty and intense, focussed and absent, even as a child he was like a man waiting for a train. "I'm so glad you're here, Cas," Dean says, voice crackling like pinewood in a fire. "It's so good to see you."
Castiel nods slowly, a little confused, but Dean has taken a step forward and twined his arms around Castiel's bewildered frame. The way Dean moves, the way Dean coils, is like each fiber of his body is intent on finding its match and destination in Castiel. It is as though Dean knows the way by heart, but nevertheless is being led there blind. Like the train Dean was waiting for, even as a child, has Castiel as its final stop.
"I'm glad to see you, too, Dean," Castiel answers, hands faltering in finding a place on Dean's back. "As I always am."
And Dean just stays there, for almost a minute, body curling around Castiel's, face turned inward toward Castiel's neck, face dampening it with delicate pearls of tears, but Dean's body remains calm, remains still, save for the limbs which twine and twist around Castiel's.
Castiel doesn't know what's wrong, if anything is wrong—he isn't sure, and suspects that Dean isn't feeling great, considering the fact that, if nothing else, he hasn't been on speaking terms with his mother for the past seven months, and has just left her house teary-eyed and shaken. But something in the cage of Dean's body isn't distraught, just… wrung out. Worn out. Needing home.
Well. Castiel has always wanted to give that to Dean.
He tightens his limbs around Dean's body, and it seems that this, in the promise of assurance and constance and presence it holds, is enough for Dean to finally feel safe enough to pull back. He takes a stuttering, but obviously grounding breath, and looks at Castiel.
"What're you doing up here, all alone?" He asks. Castiel smiles at the squeeze Dean's palms offer his shoulders before finally, properly, slipping away.
"Thinking of all the times I was up here, with you," He answers, honestly, and Dean's gaze turns tender. "Care to sit?"
"Always," Dean says softly, "always."
A curious response to an invitation to sit down—but then, would Castiel ever have Dean other than as, curious and unpredictable, he is?
They sit, there, legs dangling over the edge of the porch, leaning back on their palms. Dean sighs shakily.
"Something's wrong," Castiel states, peering searchingly at his friend. Dean no longer feasts on air, as he did when first out of his old house. His breaths come in, low and long and slow, but still thin and silvery like before. Instead of eating, he drinks with each blade of breath.
"Yeah…" Dean nods distractedly, staring with a delicate worry twined across his features, at the green house opposite. They're sat in the exact same spot, in the exact same position, as they were ten years ago. The memory of it shrouds round them—at least, to Castiel's impression, it does. Dean is miles away, images flicking across his removed gaze. But the memory of that night, ten years ago, twists and twirls about the pair like a fine white mist caught in winds. Of what? Transformation? Renewal? Not regret. But they are haunted, nonetheless. Something shifts in Dean's expression, the suggestion of clarity, of change. He seems to draw back with a thought, but doesn't move at all. "No," He shakes his head. "Actually. No. Not wrong."
"Oh…" Castiel squints, uncertain. Dean swallows, still absorbed by his own thoughts, or not the thoughts themselves, but the paths that they are tracing.
"Not wrong any more," He elaborates, though this hardly helps. "Not any more."
"So things are…"
"Put to right," Dean's answer is smooth with certainty, but spoken slowly, as though still stung with shock.
"That's good…" Castiel says, but doesn't follow whatsoever.
Dean leans back on his palms and hums a tune Castiel recognises, notes whispered from his past like a voice calling his name, but blown over by wind, the winds of time and change.
"Good…" Dean nods in agreement, repeating the word, tasting it, rolling it around his mouth. "Yeah," He nods with a faint, corner-quirked smile. "Yeah. It is good. It's good." He turns to Castiel and smiles again, face blossoming now with the promise of his own, returned, immediacy. "How are you, Castiel?"
Castiel's throat constricts around something tight and pulsing.
"It's strange when you use my full name," He answers, though doesn't answer.
"Strange?" Dean repeats. Each moment he becomes more lucid. Sliding from abreaction to attention. Castiel nods in confirmation, and Dean twitches out a laugh. "How?"
"Strange, unfamiliar. You began the trend of calling me Cas, now I could count on one hand the people in my life who still call me Castiel."
Dean's expression is unreadable.
"—Which is a good thing," Castiel clarifies. "'Cas' is familiarity, is intimacy, to me. That's what it translates as—'Cassie' was always patronising; I've never liked it, I never will,"—Dean seems surprised by this confession—"'Castiel' seems either cold, professional, now, or reserved for older siblings and other family members. Especially when I'm in trouble."
Dean's face makes the expression of a laugh, though no sound comes out.
"So," Castiel continues, "even though I really think of myself in terms of 'Castiel', I am Cas. Or, where I'm Cas, it's where I know I belong. Does that make sense?"
"How many of these have you been drinking?" Dean asks, picking up an empty beer bottle discarded beside Castiel. A laugh coughs out of him, he shakes his head affectionately.
"Clearly too many to think to do the polite thing and offer you one," Castiel says, reaching behind him to pick up the crate of remaining beers. "Would you like one now, though?"
Dean pulls a beer out from the crate.
"Just like old times."
Castiel hums.
Silence for a moment.
Then Castiel prompts, "You were at your moms'?"
Dean tenses—just a little, the way that frost clings delicately to the windows of the tall old buildings in Edinburgh.
"But you feel that I'm being invasive," Castiel states, softly but flatly. Dean shakes his head.
"No," He says. "If—if anyone was to be invasive, I'd want it to be you." Then he's silent, thinking. He starts up, "I'm not sure what I wanted out of it. I wanted it out. I'd tried, before—a lot, but especially—especially the night Sammy overdosed. Before, I mean—when I'd—before I got drunk. I tried to talk to her, to get it… to say—" He sighs and shakes his head. "She didn't let me. This time," He breathes in, long, heavy, "I didn't let her not let me. I probably didn't get it out very well. You know how I am—sometimes my thoughts are all—" He waves his hands in vague, stumbling motion, "tangled up, confused. My words come out that way, too. Messy. Sentences come too early, it's in the wrong order or I interrupt myself. It's not methodical like you. Messy head, messy words." He taps his temple. "But I got it out."
"Dean, I'm not following you at all."
"It's been ten years," Dean says, looking hard at Castiel. "Ten years, tonight."
Castiel nods.
"Did you know that?" Dean asks.
Castiel nods again.
"I did."
Dean stares. His gaze is a lance and it clenches through the air at Castiel. They are ghosts of themselves—or, no—ten years ago, they were the ghosts of themselves, now. The shimmering, flickering quality of the moments before Castiel's heart was hurled into the ash alongside Dean's, ten years ago, were the qualities of what that moment was: an apparition. No longer haunted by themselves, by their past, it is as Castiel realised just before he saw Dean: they have been haunting themselves, their own past. Time has worked backwards.
The moment, paralyzed around them, shimmers like glass.
"Do you think about it?" Dean asks, voice loosening the shimmer around them. Castiel is given the sensation that Dean repeats his question, but he doesn't. Only silence follows; silence and Dean's blunt knife of a stare.
"I don't know," Castiel answers. He swallows. Dean looks upset. "I think about—I think about so much. About my mom, about my dad. I miss them. I worry about my brothers. I worry about your brother. I—I think about you. I miss you. I think about you, all the time. But—but that moment? It didn't happen in a vacuum. I can't think of it in a vacuum. Not any more. Barely, even then. I think about that moment, and I think about when we first met, and how messy your hair was. How—how that summer morning, bright and blazing, smelt like a promise. I can't think of grasstains without thinking about… about covenants. I think of that moment, and I think about the first time I saw you, since that moment. I mean the first time I looked at you, since our fight. Stood in my kitchen, like the first time we met. The kitchen even smelt the same—those—those cookies you made, both times. The ones with nutmeg. I think of that moment, and I think of the missed moments—how I didn't come to the treehouse, when you asked me. How I should have been there. How I should have ran there, how my pride and obstinacy kept me, how I haven't even apologised for that—"
"Cas, you don't need to—"
"My dad told me to go," Castiel confesses, laughing breathlessly, unsure of why he is sharing this. "My dad told me—he literally instructed me to go. I was so angry—he never normally told me what to do. I guess he must've felt pretty strongly about us."
Dean stares. His lips are cracked, the top layer of soil in Kansas in midsummer.
"He came," Dean says, voice crackled. "He—uh, he came and told me you weren't coming. Came and said he was sorry—tried to ask me what happened. I got angry, too. Shouted at him. Started crying, I think. I've—not since he died—" Dean flushes, "but a lot, after that… I tried to persuade myself that he'd hidden my note. That he'd seen it, and kept it from you. Thought I could somehow blame him for all of that—that, blaming him, it would mean that it wasn't because of you, wasn't because of me. Wasn't either of our faults. If he'd kept it from you, then my words would've still been enough, then you would've wanted to see me enough, to come to the treehouse and forgive me." He looks down and shakes his head. "Sometimes I think about that—about the way I treated Jimmy, when I was sad or angry or some moody teenage brat. It makes me feel so ugly."
"That's what grief does," Castiel answers. "I think that way, all the time, too."
Dean looks sad.
"But don't let those memories mire you in doubt," He continues. "My dad loved you. I have to remind myself that he loved me, and I him, when I get to thinking that way. And he knew that, and he had two teenage sons before I was a teenager, and knew what they were like. Not rising to being lashed out at—that's part and parcel of fatherhood. He was a good dad—but, also, he was so happy to be a dad. Even in those moments. Remember that."
"It's so…" Dean licks his lips, looking down. "He was so different, to the kind of fatherhood I was used to…" Dean swallows, gaze fixed on the folds of his own hands. Castiel doesn't know what to say to this, and so is completely silent. "I… I'm feeling so out of love, with so much of my childhood, right now. The past few years, I've been so out of love with it—with my house, my parents… The kind of dad Jimmy was," he licks his lips and lets out a sour kind of laugh. "I was always so jealous of you, for it. Is that bad?" He looks up at Castiel, who still cannot answer, but fortunately at least manages to shake his head minutely. "It is," Dean disagrees. "And not like—it wasn't resentment. But I was so jealous. Especially—" He stops, and shakes his head, looking away, out onto the street and out toward the green house, again. "I… I kept on blaming myself, 'cause things only started going wrong when they—when I—" Dean's eyes are stung with tears. He stops talking.
Castiel can do nothing because this hurts too much—they're both so close, and still Dean is so afraid, and Castiel can do nothing because this is the kind of pain Castiel only got the aftertaste of, a tang of blood in the mouth that he kissed. Dean had his teeth punched in.
"It's, uh," Dean wrinkles his nose and his throat makes a sharp, constricting noise which he coughs around, "it's hard for me to separate what was done—what they did, and didn't do—from who I was. Who I am." He looks up at Castiel sadly. "I'm sorry I'm not making any sense."
Castiel leans close and considers kissing Dean, considers grazing his lips across Dean's dark mouth, wonders what Dean would taste like when neither of their mouths were stung stupid with strong spirits. But he doesn't kiss. He hugs Dean tight. He squeezes. He revels in Dean's face pressed into his neck.
"You don't need to make sense with me, Dean," he states. "You be as complicated and muddled up and messy as you need to be. I'll do the translation. I'll do the untangling." Dean breathes, hot and teary, against the skin of Castiel's neck. "Come as you are, Dean," Castiel says, voice unable to raise itself above a breathless whisper. "Come only as you are. I'd never have you any other way."
"I wanna go to the treehouse," Dean states.
Castiel pulls back with a frown.
"The treehouse?"
Dean nods, flushed.
"I wanna go."
"Why?"
"I wanna go," Dean repeats, and tugs on Castiel's hand in suggestion that they jump down from the roof.
"No chance," Castiel shakes his head in reference to jumping down to the lawn, pulling Dean back. "I'm not eighteen any more, and don't feel like risking a broken ankle. And if we're going to go, I've got to lock up and get my keys, at least. Anna's out."
"Where?" Dean asks, as Castiel begins to clamber back in through his bedroom window.
"Jo's."
"Oh," Dean hums, following after Castiel. "So you're home alone?"
Castiel makes a noise of confirmation as they make their way down the stairs of the house, a little too embarrassed to turn to Dean and confirm this any further. There's something too suggestive in the phrase, and Dean seems to think so too, because he sounds flustered when he, rather clumsily, changes the subject.
"Should we drive, or walk it, to the treehouse?"
Castiel hums thoughtfully.
"I'm not sure," he shakes his head. Opening the front door, and looking out at the sky, he suggests, "walk it? It's such a nice night."
Dean licks his lips and looks up at the sky, too. It seems have been swept with darkness in the time it took them to make their way back down through the house.
"Hm." He's obviously unconvinced. "Sure."
"What?"
Dean shrugs, and makes his way down the garden path.
"It'll be nice to walk with you, I guess."
"You guess?" Castiel repeats, raising his eyebrows at his friends.
"We'll have more time to talk," Dean nods, not picking up on Cas's incredulity.
"Something's really thrown you off tonight, hasn't it?" Castiel asks. Dean falters in a frown.
"What do you mean?"
"Your head's in the clouds. Usually it's me who's distant. Well," Castiel amends, "usually when you're distant, it's in a different way."
Dean pulls a questioning expression, encouraging Castiel to elaborate.
"When I'm distant," he explains, "nothing is wrong, I'm just deep in thought, and also generally socially unaware, which doesn't exactly help—"
"You're not socially unaware," Dean shakes his head disbelievingly. "You—just—you're different. You don't care about social conventions in the way most people do. Most people are boring, by the way. You're not—you're all… organic. Even if you're awkward, sometimes. But you're just thoughtful, and you get lost in your own thoughts, and there's a difference between that and being socially unaware."
"Well—anyway," Castiel supresses a beam out into the creeping darkness at Dean's words and how unnecessary albeit delightful they are, "when you're distant, it's usually because there is something wrong. I always worry when you're lost in your own thoughts. When you were like that, when we were kids, it was never a good sign, and it's the same now that we're adults. But now, your distance feels different. You're a different kind of lost in thought. It's not such a bad one. Why is that?"
"Goddam it," Dean shakes his head, an embarrassed smile on his features. "I wish you made it easier to hide from you, Castiel."
"So what are you thinking about?"
"Mm," Dean winces, pressing his lips tight together as the pair lope along in the twilight, "thinking about maybe isn't the right way of putting it."
"Alright, then, what's got you so distracted?"
"Ha," Dean laughs. "Maybe later."
"Well, I hope you're okay."
"I'm definitely okay," Dean nods. "Just… I'm maybe good, even. Just a different kind of good, I don't know, than most people would…" He laughs a one syllable laugh out into the evening air. "Heh. It's difficult to explain. But… I'm starting to feel good, again. Or maybe even good, for the first time, in this way—not the first time in a long time, just the first time, ever."
Castiel peers.
"I really hope so. I'm glad, if that's the case."
"Feeling okay is a weird thing."
A frown braids Castiel's features.
"How do you mean?"
"I hardly know when I'm feeling okay, doing okay, it's been so long. It's so weird, to stand at the edge of a doorway, and not know which side of it you're on."
"That's, um, very profound," Castiel muses, "though I'm still not sure I follow."
"Like, with your dad, you know you're gonna miss him forever. People don't understand grief. I can't imagine the crap you've been given this past year. I can't imagine the crap you went through with your mom. And people who've never lost someone, or never lost a parent, specifically, don't get it. They think it's something you get over. As if you ever could. But it's more like losing a limb. Or—or your eyes, or… it's big, and it's forever, is what I mean. You live, and—and sometimes it doesn't feel much like living, or even surviving, or getting by—but you live, and you live without. There's never that 'with', again. There never can be. It never grows back. You have to learn to tie your laces, learn to walk, learn to cook, learn to stand up from sitting down, learn to climb the stairs, all without an arm or a leg or what have you. And sometimes you have phantom itches—you hear a phrase they used to say a lot, or someone laughs in the way they used to laugh, or the first notes of a song they used to listen to come trembling through the air—and then you're overwhelmed, you're sad or you're furious or you're overcome with this bittersweet taste in your mouth.
"And sometimes you have a dream where they're still there, a dream where you have both your arms or your legs, a dream where you have both your eyes and you can see; a dream where they're back and it's good, and then you wake up and it hits you, it hits you so hard it breaks you all over again, you start grieving all over again, you can't face the day let alone the week, the month, the year, the rest of your life without them. You cry and want to punch a wall and you can't tell anyone because they have all of their limbs and they wouldn't get it, and maybe the person you want to talk to most about it is the person you can never talk to again, the limb that was cut off, the person who's dead.
"And other times you have dreams where they're back but it isn't an 'all is well' kind of 'they're back'; it's dreams where they're back but still dead and they're somehow speaking to you beyond the grave, an apparition, or dreams where they're dying and you can see them dying and you know they're dying and you know how it ends and you know you can't help. And those dreams, they're dreams about losing the limb all over again, and you wake up haunted and hollow but you still kind of crave those dreams, crave and dread them because you can't stand saying goodbye forever and you can't stand not seeing them but you can't stand having to say goodbye forever, over and over, in your dreams, and you can't stand seeing them, either, because it's agony. It's agony. All of it's agony."
Castiel tries to swallow back his tears as Dean speaks, but finds that he can't.
"Yes," he nods, unable to stop the crackle in his voice as he speaks, unable to raise his voice to something audible. "Yes," he nods again. "That's it."
"And I—I feel a lot of that for Jimmy. But he wasn't my dad. And I didn't have a good relationship with my dad, so when he died, it was so different to the kinds of broken you must be feeling, right now. I don't know how you did it, Castiel, how you keep on doing it. The guy was incredible, and so are you."
"That's very kind…"
"No, it's very true. But anyway, what I mean is, grief is all of that, and more. So what is 'okay', let alone 'good', after that? After all of that, and knowing that there is no final destination of 'healed', just a long and constant road of 'healing', what's the point? What's the goal?"
"I guess it's just that," Castiel shrugs. "The healing, the process, the road itself."
"Which is so fucking unsatisfying," Dean shakes his head sourly.
"Yes," Castiel agrees. "But then it's death. Words are not enough. Rhetoric is not enough. Thoughts are not enough. It's so big, and so sad, and the only thing that is comforting is the knowledge that we all need comfort from it, which is also harrowing."
"Kids are comforting," Dean shakes his head again.
"Pardon?"
"Kids are comforting," Dean says again. "I feel sad about—about Jimmy, about Jess, about John… I think about my kids. The kids I teach, I mean. I think about the kids of our friends and relatives. I think about all the things they're learning about themselves, the world, how life is this process of unfolding for them, right now. How the world is blossom, and the world is blossoming. That makes me feel happy. Thinking about the open, as well as the close. And how even at the moments of closing, of folding up, are so many moments of openings, for so many little people out there. It's hope. Thinking about childhood, when you're having to face grief, is thinking about hope."
Castiel swallows around something ripe lodged in his throat.
"Maybe it's just a case of arrested development…" Dean mumbles, catching himself and suddenly embarrassed for his speech. "You ever think how weird it is, I have my dad's accent, when he died when I was fourteen, and I grew up here?"
"What do you mean?"
"The time that I was in college, in Texas, everyone there thought I was a local. Couldn't believe I'd grown up somewhere you couldn't throw a stone at from Houston. It's my dad's accent. I didn't just let it bleed into mine, I bathed mine in it. Wanted to be like him so bad… and then, was so afraid of being like him. Was so afraid of failing him."
"And what did that accent represent?"
Dean snorts.
"Yeah, don't English Literature this up, Cas. It doesn't have to represent anything."
They've reached the forest and trudge through it, now.
"But you brought it up. You brought it up, in relation to childhood, in relation to development, in relation to grief."
"Right," Dean sighs. The cover of the trees shrouds them in darkness, he turns his phone light on as they make their way down the trampled, dirt path, sticks and small branches splintering under their feet. The air smells like the top layer of soil. "I guess… I don't know. I guess a lot of things froze for me, the night my dad died. I had a lot of trouble moving past them—and still do—'cause, like—the word closure is so corny, and I hate it, but—I didn't get any closure on a lot of things with him. Sometimes I wish he was still alive, so we could just talk it out, so I could've seen him change his mind about stuff. If he ever would. And that's the thing—other times I'm glad he's not still alive, 'cause I think, if he hadn't died, I never would've seen him change his mind about stuff, and it would've killed me. I would've seen him, forever, never changing, and I would've been so afraid—so afraid, to say who I was, in front of him, even if he already knew it in his heart…" Dean looks up at the sky, shrouded as it is by trees. The white cold light of his phone snags underneath his jaw. "I know I'm being vague," he says, voice trembling.
"I said to come as you are," Castiel reminds. "I'll figure the rest out."
Silence for a cluster of seconds.
"So I think a lot of things froze, when my dad died, which included a lot of—a lot of progress, and acceptance, for me. All aimed inward, all introspective. I struggled a lot with even standing to see myself as I was. But—but all I mean by that, in bringing it up in this context, is, maybe that's why I connect children and childhood with grief, so much. And love to be around them, especially in the face of grief. I guess sometimes I feel like the frightened little boy I was, all those years ago—when my dad first…"
"I understand," Castiel nods, though Dean hardly seems to hear him.
"But the accent thing," he laughs, dryly, "I guess it's all about kinship, isn't it?"
"Um—run that by me again?"
"It's about kinship," Dean repeats. "I wanted to feel—to be—accepted by my dad. There were days I felt like I wasn't his son. Felt like he didn't want me as his son. Putting on his accent—until it became my accent—was a way I could literally take on his person, his background, his family. If I shrouded myself in all of that stuff, I was his kin, right? I was one of his own."
They cross the stream.
"The stepping stones are still here," Castiel comments, not able to glance back at Dean as he speaks. "Which bodes well for the treehouse itself."
"Aw, fuck," Dean lands on the other side of the stream a beat after Castiel. "That's a good point—will it still be there?"
"There's only one way to find out," Castiel shrugs, taking a hold of Dean's wrist and pulling him further through the forest. Strange—when they were kids, it always seemed to be Dean pulling Castiel along, Dean steeling and stealing Castiel.
"I hope it is," Dean says. "I—I'd be so sad if it was gone."
"Why?" Castiel asks, glancing back at his friend.
"You wouldn't be sad?" Dean raises his eyebrows, voice grazed with something offended.
"A little," Castiel shrugs again. "But… I don't know. We'd still be friends, you know. A location, a structure would be gone, but not the thing itself."
Castiel realises suddenly that this undermines a lot of his thinking about buildings and homes and structures, especially in regards to memory, the memorial. Were the treehouse to be gone when they arrive there, both Dean and Castiel would not be able to help reading some ill and ugly omen in it.
"But—we did so much, in there. It meant so much. That's why I didn't go back to it, all those years—until now. It hurt too much."
"The last time you were there was…"
"The night before you left," Dean answers, eyes made watery pearls in the cold light of his phone torch, "when—when Jimmy came, instead. Coming back here, after that… I guess it hurt a little too much," he laughs, but it's emptied out even as it escapes his throat. "So I didn't. Coming back to the treehouse—it would be like remembering—everything. And I wanted to forget. So I tried to forget."
Castiel slips his hand down from Dean's wrist to his hand, and squeezes.
"You don't need to forget any more."
"You must've thought so little of me, those nine years…"
"And yet I think so much of you, now."
Dean presses his lips together. Castiel squeezes Dean's hand again. Dean squeezes back.
They've approached the clearing in which the treehouse stood. Dean shines his light up to the big tree that once held it—
—and is, crooked and soft with age and beautiful against the sky, holding it still. Castiel's heart jumps,—Dean's seems to as well, by the sharp change in pulse beneath Castiel's fingertips.
It's questionable as to whether it's safe to venture up and inside—in the dark, the tree still looks strong, and the building sound, but time has softened the lines of cut wood and what once was sharp and straight is now twined against the years, warping gently.
Dean looks at Castiel.
Castiel looks at Dean.
A breathless laugh—of joy, of wonder, of being rushed headlong into the ecstatic terrifying feeling of being a teenager again—escapes both their lips, in the same beat.
The ladder has been replaced—rope, where once there was wood—but neither of them seem to care, with the smiles they are wearing.
"Race you up there?" Dean grins, and, leaping forward, has reached the foot of the ladder before Castiel can call out in distress—
"Dean—no!—what if it's not safe?"
"Sounds like something a loser would say!" Dean calls back, and Castiel, fuming, sprints after him, clambering after Dean up the rope ladder.
"Hey!" Dean shouts down, but has already reached the trap door—his hands fumble at it, now, trying to push it up and open, "quit wobbling it! Stop climbing! You're making me—"
"You mean stop doing this?" Castiel asks, and rocks his weight back and forth on the ropeladder. Dean curses above him as he sways, fingers slipping before shoving the trapdoor open and clambering up.
Castiel follows up after him, but Dean holds the trapdoor just over his head, threatening to let it swing shut on top of him.
"Don't you dare," Castiel shakes his head seriously, but can't stop the laugh rising in his chest.
"What, like you shouldn't have dared rocking the ladder like a maniac?" Dean raises his eyebrows. Castiel scrambles up before Dean has the chance to lock him out.
"Ass," he shakes his head, faux-frustrated. Dean smirks.
"Now we've just gotta hope the place doesn't collapse around us," he comments, glancing up at the roof, which, surprisingly, doesn't have any planks missing.
"How safe is this?" Castiel asks.
"What, like I'd know?"
"Out of the two of us, I think you're the one more likely," Castiel points out. Dean smirks and shrugs in acquiescence. He leans back against the walls of the treehouse and folds his hands in his lap, closing his eyes.
"Smells like it used to," he states, taking a deep breath.
"Uh-huh?"
"You can't notice it?"
"I guess not."
Castiel shuffles to sit beside Dean. Pointedly beside, not opposite.
"You ever get it, where you smell something, and it reminds you of a whole period of your life, and then suddenly you're there, you're inhabiting the body, inhabiting the mood and inhabiting the moment of that time, how it felt and how you felt. You literally step into your old self, even if it's just for a moment?"
"Yes," Castiel answers with a laugh, "during shiva, when you came over with those cookies."
Dean smiles gently, eyes still closed, head rolled back against the treehouse wall.
"What did you think of me, then?" He asks. "The moment you saw me, what did you think? And what did you think of me?"
Castiel shrugs, but realises that Dean, with his eyes closed, cannot see it. A million answers to this question teeter out into the darkness ahead of them.
"I don't know," he says. "I was angry." Will it do good to be this honest? It's terrifying and blunt but honesty is what, consistently, Dean and Castiel's relationship has lacked, the past two decades. Perhaps being frank will do it, and them, some good. "I was angry with you, and I was angry that you were there. It was stupid to assume that you wouldn't be there, of course—you and my dad were so close. But I wanted to monopolise grief over him, I think. I didn't want you to have it. I didn't want to share mourning Jimmy with you."
Dean nods slowly, sadly, lifting his head from the wall of the treehouse and opening his eyes gradually. He carries with him the grim sense of finality a man on death row must feel at his last meal.
"That's fair," Dean says, voice diminished. He looks at Castiel. "Is it how you feel, now?"
"What—do I feel angry with you, now?" Castiel asks, eyebrows raised indignantly. "I've told you so many times, Dean, we're friends again, and I've forgiven you—"
"No, I mean," Dean shakes his head, "do you feel—when I talk about Jimmy, do you feel like you're having to share your dad? Share grief over him? Parcel out your mourning to someone who doesn't deserve it?"
"It's not that you don't deserve it, Dean—you do—"
"But I'm not his son."
Castiel presses his lips together and swallows. Dean stares.
"No," he admits. "You're not, biologically, his son. But you were a big, and joyful, part of his life."
"Only because of you."
"And he was a big part of your life," Castiel frowns. "That's what matters. Jimmy's fine, now—forget the hows or whys of any of us being part of his life; we're the ones who have to live without him. If living without him hurts, we have a right to mourn. Some of his patients come to his funeral, to shiva—they're not exactly the traditional bereaved, are they? But they felt, and I expect feel, his absence. They miss his guidance, just like the rest of us. Maybe less acutely—but would you tell them they didn't have a right to grieve? That in coming to shiva, they were imposing on our mourning? That in talking about how they missed him, they were stealing our right to sadness?"
"No, of course not—"
"There are times I feel jealous over my dad," Castiel admits. "There are times I want to jealously guard the right to sadness for him. But these are feelings, ugly though not illegitimate feelings, kicked up by motion in the murky depths of grief. Things rot down there, and sometimes they get dredged up. They're not pretty, but they're not wrong, but they're not right, either. They're there and they're part of missing my dad. And besides, the age difference between me and my brothers—you're the one I turn to, when I need. More than them. You're the one I feel gets it the most. So even when I want to jealously guard the right to grief—which I'm not the gatekeeper of, so can't—you're the one I want to talk to, other than my dad, when it kicks in, kicks me. It's either you, or a blank page, I'll use to untangle my thoughts, my feelings. And I used a blank page so much I produced a whole poetry collection on it."
Dean smiles, a little warmed.
"The most amazing poetry collection I ever read."
"'You read many?" Castiel asks. Dean smirks and pushes him lightly.
"Alright, so I'm not exactly an expert."
"Your praise means more to me that any critics'," Castiels says, honestly.
"You've gotta get your priorities sorted, if that's true."
"I don't think so," Castiel shakes his head.
"You think about your mom, often?" Dean asks. Castiel sputters slightly at the question.
"Um—why?"
"Just, new griefs stir up old ones."
"Right," Castiel nods.
"We never really spoke about her."
"We spoke about her when I needed to."
"You need to, now?"
Castiel pauses, uncertain.
"I'm not sure," he answers, honestly. "I… I haven't spoken about her, in a long time. Even with everything that happened, this year. Obviously losing my dad… somewhat amplified the absence of my mom… made her absence more apparent… I suppose you really notice the absence of a parent when both of them are gone." He looks down at his hands, turning them slowly in his lap. "I miss her in strange ways—I—it's not easy to say, or, I suppose, for a listener to understand. Perhaps I don't understand. It's like looking at a puzzle, which you've put together without the help of the image it should be, and seeing several missing pieces. And you don't know what they look like, you don't know where each would go individually, though you can see which places are empty. But you don't know what they, or what the puzzle itself, should or would look like, when complete. It's strange, not knowing yourself, and knowing you don't know yourself because something which should have been there, never was. Or was, and then wasn't. But it wasn't there long enough for you to know or understand it. That's how I feel about my mom. If I imagine her face, I can only see the characteristics, not the character. If I imagine her voice, I can only think of the memories I knew were memories when I first encountered them—you know? I can only recall by recalling those times I tried to remember.
"She feels removed by so many steps. I miss her, but I know that what I'm missing is the stories I told myself about her, the stories of our memories. It's all incomplete. Gabriel and Michael know what they're missing. When they think of her, it's as a person. When I think of her, it's as a figure. It's dangerously close to an archetype. I guess I'm sad that that's how I think of her, sad that I'm missing out on memories, and sad that I could forget so many. And angry that I could forget in the first place. I don't like what that says about me. I don't like that it's in me, to forget so much stuff about her. I still miss—still need—the tenderness and warmth that she provided. I know I've missed it, missed out on it, my whole life. Estranged. That's what it is. That's what it is, to lose a parent—a mother—when you're so young. To live the rest of your life estranged from yourself."
Dean looks so sad the sky could rip open and still the rain wouldn't match his tears.
He leans in toward Castiel and hugs him tightly. This time, Castiel is the one with his face buried into Dean's shoulder. In spite of the sadness of this conversation, and the sadness it has dredged up, and the sadness of the shadow of grief which looms over both of them, always, now, Castiel cannot help but think of how much he likes the smell of Dean's neck, the softness of it, the short hairs on it, silky and rough.
Apparently, both of them were far too absorbed in this moment.
"—so then they—" A voice sounds at the trapdoor, and then it rips sharply into a scream of fright. "AH!"
Dean and Castiel spring back from each other in shock.
"Krissy, are you okay?!" A voice from the foot of the ladder, on the earth far below them, sounds.
"Krissy?!" Dean balks, eyes bulging in a way Castiel will have to tease him about later.
"Mr Winchester?!"
"What?" A different voice, this one on the ladder a little below Krissy, sounds.
"Krissy?" Dean repeats.
"Krissy, what's going on?" The first voice, from the ground below, asks.
"Mr Winchester!" Krissy exclaims, this time out of delight, and not shock.
"Wait—Mr Winchester's up there?"
"What?"
Krissy glances at Castiel, then does a double take.
"Castiel Novak?!"
"Who?"
"Krissy, what the fuck is going on?" A new voice, from the ground, asks. Several other voices echo in agreement.
"Yeah, and get a move on!" The voice, just below her on the ladder, exclaims.
"I'm moving, Aiden, so get off my dick!" Krissy shouts back town, and clambers up, properly.
"Krissy," Dean sputters, as Krissy sits herself down on the floor of the treehouse opposite them and hangs a torch from the ceiling. In this light, Castiel can make out the perfect redness of Dean's features. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here?" She repeats with a laugh, as the voice from the ladder—Aiden—clambers up and emerges from the trapdoor. "What are you doing here?"
"Mr Winchester?" Aiden asks, incredulous, heaving a suspiciously heavy looking backpack up and dropping it with the clatter of bumping glass objects on the floor in the centre of the group. "What are you doing here?"
"Woah, this is weird," another head appears at the trapdoor, and balks at the sight of Dean. Castiel begins to recognise these students—these are the students from the class he witnessed Dean teaching! "And—is that—" the head—boy, rather—sputters, looking over to Castiel, whose face heats. Aiden has crawled over to Krissy and sits beside her.
"It is!" Krissy exclaims in answer, wearing a mouth-splitting grin. "Castiel Novak!"
Kevin's eyes go wide.
"Dude, your chin's hitting the floor," Aiden laughs. "Close your mouth."
"Just because you don't know who Castiel Novak is," Kevin frowns, but climbs up properly into the treehouse.
"I do, too," Aiden glares. "He's that guy who visited our school."
"That guy," Kevin repeats with a scoff.
"Guys, what's—" A girl appears at the trapdoor. Castiel recognises her immediately—she was the sweet and unbelievably shy girl from Dean's music class. She makes direct eye-contact with Castiel, and after what Castiel must assume is a moment's processing, flushes furiously, eyes bulging, hands withdrawing.
"Mr Winchester's up here!" Aiden grins. "And with that writer guy!"
"Writer guy," Krissy mutters under her breath, and smirks. "Try bestseller, Aiden."
"What're you doing up here?" Kevin asks, looking over to Dean. "Both of you?" He glances at Castiel, only a little embarrassed.
"What the fuck is going on up there?" Another voice sounds from below, on the ladder. "Hurry up, Lena—it's getting cold, and anyway, I hate the dark. Don't leave me out here."
"Damn, this is gonna be a tight squeeze," Aiden comments, and Krissy smirks again.
"Seven people on the floor of a treehouse?" She asks. "Easy-peasy."
"Lena, come in," Kevin reminds softly, as Lena continues to stare at Castiel. Her gaze flutters, and she remembers herself, and flushes further, and moves in jerky, butterfly movements, mouth clamping shut. She pulls herself up into the treehouse and moves away from the trapdoor, sitting, or rather shrinking, beside Kevin.
It's already cosy, Krissy taking no embarrassment in sitting elbow to elbow beside Castiel and smiling almost too amiably at him. Then, turning from cosy into snug—no, tight—the last face and voice appear at the trap door.
"Come in, Eddie," Krissy encourages as the teen still half on the ladder hesitates, staring, perplexed, at Dean.
"What the fuck," he mumbles, frowning, but pulls himself up a moment later. "Mr Winchester, what are you doing here?"
"Yeah!" Krissy exclaims, as the other teens all echo agreement. "Why're you here? And why're you with a famous writer?" She grins. "And why're you guys alone?"
"Wait, you weren't on a date in our treehouse, were you?"
"No, Aiden," Dean flushes, furiously. "This—isn't a date. And what are you guys doing in our treehouse?"
"This isn't your treehouse," Eddie frowns, confused. "We found it, in eighth grade."
"Yeah, and we built it, in fifth grade," Dean counters, gesturing to himself and Castiel—who isn't sure he wants to be dragged into this: some strange turf war between a teacher and his students—and over a fucking treehouse.
"What?"
"Seriously?" Kevin looks excited by this, as does Aiden, while the other boy—Eddie—seems reluctantly impressed. "How did you do it?"
"Well," Dean admits, cooling after a moment and remembering himself—and evidently, the fact that he is not seventeen, "my dad helped," he confesses. "But only where necessary. Cas and I did most of the legwork."
This definitely isn't true.
"Cas?" Krissy repeats, smiling in a way Castiel isn't sure he likes. "You call him Cas?"
"Uh—" Dean flushes.
"The famous writer, bestseller," Kevin joins in, grinning, "to you is Cas?" He turns to Castiel. "Are you okay with that nickname?"
"Well, I've had it almost as long as I can remember, so—"
"Oh, so Mr Winchester didn't give it to you."
"No, Dean did give it to me—"
"Dean!" Krissy exclaims, excitedly clapping her hands and stamping her feet in a way Castiel isn't sure he likes; it thunders the entire treehouse.
"Damn, Krissy, cool it, do you want to get us all killed in a treehouse accident?"
"So you guys have known each other for a while, huh?" Kevin turns back to Dean and Castiel and smiles encouragingly, as though he were coaxing a rescue dog out of its cage.
"Uh, yeah," Dean admits, but Krissy just rolls her eyes, tutting loudly.
"They said they'd been friends, when Castiel visited our classroom, that one time," she reminds.
"So you guys are good friends, then?" Aiden grins.
"Of course," Castiel smiles, surprised by how obvious he feels this should be. "Dean and I grew up together. We were best friends. We still are."
Dean stares.
He doesn't look embarrassed, for the first time in this interaction.
He looks like a man who has lived in the dark and is seeing starlight for the first time. Haunted and confused and filled with glittering wonder and hope.
"Best friends?" Two people repeat the words—Dean, who's voice is barely above a whisper as he says these words, so fortunately for him, only Castiel hears them escape, trembling with joy and awe, from his lips—and Lena, who has spoken for the first time since entering, and has a beautiful, shy, empathetically curious stare drawn upon Castiel.
"Yes," Castiel repeats with a smile. "The very best."
"Mr Winchester," Kevin laughs, smiling too, and warm with affection and confusion, "you never told us that. Why didn't you ever tell us that?"
"Because," Dean sputters, coming to himself, "there's a little something, Kevin, called boundaries, which is part of something else called safeguarding—I don't know if you've ever heard of it—which, speaking of, means I shouldn't be hanging out in a treehouse with a bunch of my students—"
"Ex-students," Krissy points out, smugly. "We just graduated. Remember?"
Dean falters.
"Right," he frowns. "But I should still probably—" He shuffles, about to get up, but Eddie grins and closes the trapdoor.
"We graduated, dude," he reminds. "What rule are you breaking? We're not your students, any more, and you're not our teacher. I don't even know why we're calling you Mr Winchester, at this point."
Dean still shuffles, looking uncomfortable.
"I'm not so sure…" He murmurs, uneasy.
"You guys have all graduated?" Castiel turns back to the group. They confirm.
"We're all going our separate ways, soon," Kevin says. "So we're trying to get as much time with each other, as a group, as possible before then."
"It's such a weird feeling," Krissy shakes her head seriously, drawing her knees up to her chest, "knowing we'll be plastered all over the country, barely able to see each other…"
"You'll find opportunities," Castiel shrugs, trying to sound reassuring. "After all, what are vacations for?"
"I guess you and Mr Winchester managed to stay buddies all this time," Aiden states, with no idea of how much of a loaded conversation this is.
"Yeah," Dean murmurs, brow furrowed, not making eye-contact with anyone but rather staring at the ground.
"How long is that?" Krissy grins. "fifty, a hundred years?"
Castiel chuckles, shaking his head.
"No, try ten, since graduation. But Dean and I have been friends since we were four."
"Woah," Aiden grins.
"That's pretty impressive," Krissy admits, leaning back and resting on the heels of her palms. "What's your secret?"
Castiel glances at Dean. Dean looks back at Castiel.
"Any thoughts?" Castiel asks.
Dean could say any number of things, now. It looks, in fact, as though any number of things really do flash across his eyes as he gazes back at Castiel. But then he settles on one like it's gravity that pulls him to it.
"Forgiveness," Dean states, finally, still looking at Castiel. Then he looks back to his ex-students. "Cas and I wouldn't be where we are today, if it weren't for forgiveness. His, to be exact."
"That's not true—" Castiel tries, but Eddie interrupts him.
"What, forgiveness, and not modern technology? Not Facebook? Not mobile phones? Not Instagram?"
"Now, Eddie," Dean smiles, shaking his head, "you know I don't have Instagram."
"We do," Krissy confirms, matter-of-factly. "We've looked you up. You just aren't there."
"Why've you looked me up?" Dean frowns.
"'Cause we look all of our teachers up, duh," Aiden rolls his eyes.
"And what kind of loser doesn't have Instagram?" Krissy asks.
"The kind of loser who's a generation older than you," Dean mimics her voice, pretty well, actually, at which the rest of the group burst out laughing—well, Lena giggles shyly behind her hand—and Krissy smiles good-naturedly.
"How come there are safeguarding rules against hanging out with your students in a treehouse, but not against being a dick to them?"
"Ex-students," Eddie points out. "And there are rules against being a dick to your students."
"Yeah, tell that to Mr Wright."
"Aw fuck, yeah, that guy is an asshole."
"I don't wanna hear you guys bitch about my coworkers," Dean presses his fingers to his ears and raises his voice above the group.
"Well, he is," Krissy states, voice high with a light defensiveness and agitation, but Dean shakes his head again.
"I don't wanna hear it, that's such a—I don't know—conflict of interest? Is that what it is? Is it a conflict of interest, Cas?"
"Well," Castiel shakes his head, smirking, albeit affectionately, "it's maybe a—"
"But he is a dick," Aiden states, nodding his head seriously. "Not like you, Mr Winchester. One time he gave me a detention just for—"
"Buttering me up isn't gonna stop me minding when you badmouth the people I work with, right in front of me," Dean presses his fingers in his ears again, almost comically. "So don't you try it. I'm serious."
"But you were our favourite teacher," Krissy beams, rocking side to side. Eddie laughs and joins in in agreement.
"You were! You were, like, the only one—"
"I see what you guys are doing, and it sure as hell isn't gonna work—"
"We're not trying to do anything, Mr Winchester," Kevin states. "At least, I'm not. You really were our favourite! We always looked forward to your lessons, we thought you were so cool, and you always made us laugh."
"You were also so understanding, if we handed something in late," Aiden grins. Dean rolls his eyes.
"Trust me, Aiden, it got to a point this year where if you handed an assignment in, at all, I was so surprised I counted it as early."
"And you always made detentions for missed assignments so fun," Aiden shoots back in response, giving Dean finger-guns, which is what finally makes Dean laugh.
"Alright, you guys," he chuckles. "Consider me buttered up. Enough, now."
"No, we're really gonna miss you," Kevin says, and Dean flushes, brushing the comment off.
"I said I was already buttered, Kevin. C'mon, you're not gonna get higher grades from appealing to my vanity, any more."
"We're being honest, Mr Winchester," Aiden laughs. "We really mean it. School days with your classes in were pretty okay."
"Oh, pretty okay, huh, Aiden?" Dean repeats, chuckling. "Wow, praise indeed. Thanks for that. I'll try not to let my head get too big."
"Shut up," Aiden laughs.
"No, seriously—I get that you're worried that the fame will change me, but—"
"Was Mr Winchester always this much of an asshole?" Aiden turns to Castiel and asks. Castiel chuckles.
"Yeah, pretty much," he admits. Dean gasps theatrically in response.
"Cas!" He exclaims.
"What?" Castiel laughs. "You disagree?"
"No, but you said it."
Krissy wrinkles her nose affectionately and watches Dean with what he seems to think is too much knowing intuition, because he swallows thickly and turns the conversation elsewhere.
"Anyway, you guys are gonna be fine, staying in contact with each other. It's easier than ever, to be friends long distance, so don't even worry about it."
"Wow, subject change, much?" Aiden raises his eyebrows. The group snickers.
"He was just annoyed at being called out for being a dick," Krissy states. Lena, quiet as ever, continues to watch the group.
"How did you become friends?" She asks, at last, staring at both Castiel and Dean.
Dean swallows and glances at Castiel self-consciously.
"I… Probably, sort of, threw myself at Cas, a little bit," he admits with a flush. "We were four. Soon as I met him, I wanted to be his friend. I knew I did."
Castiel smiles. His fingers, just the very tips, graze Dean's jacket for a moment. He barely thinks about it, but realises at the coarse touch of weathered denim on his skin. Dean watches, green eyes flickering a million questions.
"We were neighbours," Castiel answers, glancing at the others. "I moved into a new town, a new city, a new—everything. I was a very sad and melancholy child. But not when Dean came along. He'll always undersell the importance of his friendship to me. But it's meant everything."
Damn it, if this isn't a biggest enough clue for Dean. But of course it isn't. He only stares down at the wooden floorboards and creaks out an eventual smile to accompany his glittering eyes.
"Well… It's getting late. And you guys are dying to have the beers that are obviously stowed in Aiden's bag. So. Me and Cas'll get out of your hair."
"Don't go!"
The teens look genuinely upset.
Lena has teared up, possibly Krissy, too.
"What if this is the last time we ever see you?" Krissy asks, voice wrought with a new emotion Castiel hasn't yet seen—or heard—in her.
"It won't be," Dean laughs softly, but the look in his eyes is kind and reassuring. "It won't be," he repeats.
"You don't know that—"
"What, are you gonna start singing To Sir, With Love as I climb down the ladder?" Dean raises his eyebrows. Eddie snorts. "You'll all come and bug me, in future years, I'm sure. Come visit the school. Wait a couple of months, and you can add me on Facebook—if you guys even use that. I'd say drop me an email, but I don't want to exacerbate the dinosaur jokes. When you can legally drink, come hear me play at The Roadhouse."
"What, the cruddy bar?"
"Yes, the cruddy bar," Dean repeats, rolling his eyes. "And not that cruddy, thank you, Eddie." Dean softens. "Anyway, before then, yeah, you really can email me whenever. For advice, for an update, for music recommendations, whatever," he smiles. "I know it's not exactly Instagram, but it does the trick, and you get used to people not being able to like your messages."
"Really?" Lena asks, quietly.
"Really," Dean confirms. "You all have my work email. But I'll send you my personal one, as well. Okay?"
"Okay," Kevin nods with a steeling smile, eyes warm. Dean returns it.
"I'm gonna miss you guys," he confesses. "Don't tell anyone, but you were kind of my favourite class." Dean makes his way, awkwardly, and with a lot of hassle, to the trapdoor, which is finally, reluctantly, opened for him.
"Really?" Aiden grins. Dean smirks and rolls his eyes.
"Duh. Who else would keep me on my toes like you guys?" He asks. "You were the best." He glances over to Castiel. "You comin'?" He asks.
"Of course," Castiel confirms. "Right after you."
Dean grins.
"Alright, you guys," he smiles, all warmth, nothing at all but warmth and, maybe, a glimmer of nostalgia prompted by a band of High School friends warming the night with each other's company. "I'll see you around." They look sad. "I promise I will," he reiterates, before beginning to make his way down into the long stretch of darkness below. "I'll miss you. Be good. Have fun. You're gonna do great."
Castiel follows after his friend.
Down on the ground, Dean scrubs at his eyes. Castiel watches and doesn't quite know what to do.
"I think they really love you, you know," he states. Dean twitches a smile, but doesn't quite seem to buy it.
"Maybe," he hesitates. "I really love them," he confesses. "Love them all," he adds. "If it weren't for the kids I teach…" He sighs and shakes his head. He takes a moment, then looks back at Castiel. "Shall we?" He asks, gesturing to the route back home. Castiel smiles, suddenly nervous, and nods.
"I guess so," he confirms, wondering what other excuses he could possibly invent to keep him from going back with Dean and pinning him up against the walls of his home. They begin to walk back. Dean looks upward, squinting at the sky through the layers of foliage above them. "They love you too, you know," Castiel says, but Dean isn't listening. He frowns.
"Air smells stung," he says, muttering the words out more than anything. Castiel is nonplussed.
"Stung?"
The earth beneath their feet seems to bounce back at the pressure of their footfalls, all fertile and organic, not like most of the ground in Lawrence, where dust and grit clings to the soles of Castiel's shoes. Here there's something new, and old, more promise than ground.
"Electric," Dean says, as if this clarifies anything. "Like it's gonna rain."
Castiel chuckles and shakes his head.
"Rain…" He murmurs. "Of course."
Their entire year—their entire grieving process—has been punctuated by it.
"You don't believe me?"
"How can you tell?"
"Storm's comin'," Dean shrugs. "I can just tell."
Then, stung by his own words and the memory of them on his lips, ten years ago, his gaze shoots away, face falling.
"You think so?" Castiel asks, determined not to let Dean's thoughts turn sour and sorrowful with regret for something Castiel has long since forgiven him for, and would forgive a thousand times over, knowing and loving as he knows and loves now. "I'm not so sure," he looks up at the sky, squinting to see it through the folds of leaves above them.
Dean twitches a smile, letting out a beautiful, delicate breath that raises the hairs on Castiel's neck.
"Nope," he shakes his head. "I can feel it."
"You've gotten old, Dean," Castiel chuckles. "You're an old man, now, staring up at the sky so suspiciously, muttering about storms." He catches his lip between his teeth; even in the dark, Dean's eyes shimmer; even in the midst of Castiel's grief, he still finds himself loving Dean.
"Shit, it sure feels like it," Dean smirks back. All Castiel can think of is how much he would like to grow old with Dean; to see him on the front porch of his house—the big white house of both of their childhoods—on lazy summer afternoons, leaning back, maybe sleeping, maybe watching the world, maybe writing music. To see Dean knelt down on the living room floor with their kids—then their grandkids—playing and talking and helping and laughing, softly encouraging like Castiel knows Dean can, does, with every child he encounters. To see Dean in the kitchen, bleary-eyed, coffee cup in hand, leaning back against the kitchen counter and greeting Castiel with a lazy, smug, 'Mornin' Sunshine'. And Castiel wonders how he could find the words to reply with all the love possible, all the love in the world.
Dean smiles at Castiel, and Castiel watches, and watches, and thinks that one or both of them is going to say something—say it all—but a plash of rainwater lands square between his brows.
"Ha!" Dean exclaims with an animated grin. "Told you! I told you! I told you!"
Castiel rolls his eyes, and is about to retort with something biting and sarcastic, but the drops multiply—and in an instant, heaven's vault has opened and rains down on them.
"I told you!" Dean exclaims again with a laugh, and Castiel scowls.
"I heard you the first three times, Dean—" Castiel pushes his friend lightly, Dean tangles their hands a moment then pulls away.
"But I said—"
"Yes, well, you don't have to sound so happy about us getting soaked—"
"We're not soaked yet," Dean shakes his head.
"But we will be—"
"Come on, you grumpy little dude—"
"I'm not little—" Castiel frowns, but Dean has taken a hold of Castiel's hand again and tugged him, hard and firm and warm, into a run—and they both run; stupidly, hand-in-hand, in the rain and slippery mud, not letting go of one another even when both threaten to slip and fall. Dean laughs again, a little manically, into the open air.
"This is stupid," Castiel calls over the rain just as Dean nearly slips for the third time, jumping and skidding to regain his balance and laughing manically into the wind, which bites back against them and whips around them like the sea. "This is stupid!" He repeats, calling louder, but Dean grins and shakes his head.
"Not stupid," he pulls at Castiel's hand, and mud and sodden dust spatter up the backs of Castiel's jeans. "It's fuckin' fun, where's your sense of adventure?"
"Where's your fear of death?"
"You're just jealous that I can run faster than you."
"That's not it at all," Castiel shakes his head, "and anyway, you can't."
"You wanna bet?"
"I'm not—I have nothing to prove—"
Dean wrenches his hand free of Castiel's and begins to sprint, feet pounding against the wet earth, while yelling quickly over his shoulder 3-2-1—GO!
"Hey!" Castiel bellows, but Dean is already a good stretch ahead of him, and yelling his laughter up into the heavy clouds. "Hey!" Castiel calls again, feet slamming into the soil as he races to catch up with Dean. "You're a cheat, you're a fucking cheat!"
"I am not!" Dean yells back over his shoulder, cackling as the two of them tear through the woods and the flood and the smell of sodden earth and trees happy with rain—and—and the two of them, happy with the rain, as well. Just like Jimmy would be. Just like Jimmy always managed to be. Happy with the rain. "You're just jealous that I'm faster than you!"
"You are not!" Castiel shouts, voice leaping ahead of him as his feet begin hammering against the dusty, now sodden, ground. The rain creates a new, tinnitus sound around them—or perhaps it's the rate of Castiel's heart; not from the running, but from being with Dean, in a thunderstorm, all over again, when ten years ago, they were in one of these, together—or, maybe not together, not together enough—it was the rain that marked their fragmentation, it—
He's caught up with Dean.
"Try not to fall!" Dean shouts over the rain. "Remember when you jumped in front of my car—"
"You nearly hit me with your car—" Castiel corrects, and knows he's wrong, and Dean makes an indignant noise against the rain, which nearly drowns him out.
"Truce?" Dean calls, water running over his neck. Both of them are drenched, and muddied, and disgusting, and Dean is beautiful.
"Just because I'm winning!"
"You wish!"
"Say I'm faster than you!" Castiel shouts.
"Never!"
They've reached the stream and neither know what to do—the way of crossing it is already risky; stones made slick with the downpour, and the way around this is obviously not to do what they both, grinning and shouting angrily at each other, end up doing—which is to leap, full force, at the first stone in one swift and uniform motion, together.
They both slip and fall, obviously, into the stream, and yell—Dean the loudest, of course—and he pushes and pulls Castiel back down as he attempts to get up in the knee-high water, and the water spills into his mouth and he spits at Dean as Dean shrieks laughter and Castiel feels young, so young again, and Dean looks it, his shoulders are no longer slumped and slumping, he's no longer burdened; he beams and is childish and childlike and joyful in the way he deserves to be, to be able to be.
"You're an asshole!" Castiel shouts, but can't stay angry at Dean, can't stop wanting to kiss Dean.
"We were already wet," Dean points out with a laugh, helping Castiel up.
"Yes, but now, if you wrung me out, I could fill a pool."
Dean laughs as they trudge heavily back onto ground.
"We were already wet," he repeats.
"You were jealous I was winning."
"Hey, you jumped for that rock just the same as I did."
"No, I did it with grace. You move with about as much grace as a three-legged elephant."
"I bet you've never even seen one of those," Dean shoulders Castiel softly. "For all you know, they could be very elegant."
"They aren't famed for it."
"Well, you aren't famed for being funny, but I know you're just about the funniest guy there is."
Castiel smiles, heart aflutter at the compliment.
"You think so?"
"Funny looking," Dean grins, and breaks into a run again, inhibited by the slick earth and his own sodden, heavy clothing.
"Oh, you're so dead!" Castiel shouts after him, and begins running, and they run and push and pull and shove and prod and hug and ruffle one another's hair like wild, ecstatic teenage boys again, and banter and laugh until, as though it is the shortest journey in the world, instead of what has realistically been the journey of a revisiting of whole years of their lives, they are back onto their street—their old street, and standing at the gate of their—wait, no, Jimmy's—wait, no, their, all of their, old house. Home. Together. Again.
They look up at it.
And in the image of the big white house and its beautiful but somehow blank front, they look back at themselves.
"Home," Castiel says, and Dean flickers.
"What?" He says, looking over to Castiel.
"Home," Castiel repeats, though he hadn't meant to say it the first time, he says it and means it now. "We're back. Shall we go in?"
"Sure," Dean nods, blinking dumbly a moment. No, not dumbly. Distantly. And now, Castiel can make vague traces around the outlines of what it is Dean is thinking about, where before he could only hope.
"And dry off?"
"Yeah," Dean nods again as Castiel unlatches the gate, a ringing, pure, metallic clink against the organic and ubiquitous patter of water on ground.
"We could light the fire."
They walk down the path toward the porch.
"Yeah," Dean's expression lights with something all softness and breathtaking love. "Jimmy would like that."
"He would," Castiel agrees.
"He loved lighting that fire."
"He shouldn't have lived in Kansas."
"He should've lived in Scotland, like you," Dean smiles.
Castiel hums. They've stopped in front of the door. Castiel holds onto his keys from inside his pocket, loosely in his hand, running his damp thumb over their rounded head.
"He loved the rain," Dean murmurs.
"Yes," Castiel nods. "He really did."
"Does it rain much in Edinburgh?"
Castiel chuckles.
"Yes, I'm sure you'd think it does. But you get pretty used to it."
Castiel pulls the keys from his pocket. He looks down at them.
"You seem like you don't want to go in," he smiles, but there's something nervous and puzzled in it, to Castiel.
The porch shelters them from the rain. It runs thickly off its edges and this, and the sense of burning and growing intimacy, intimacy burning, earthy and warm with growth, between them, makes it feel as though they're in a cove somewhere, safely tucked away from the rest of the world. Three walls of water surround them, and one wall of a house.
"I—" Castiel swallows. "A house can mean a lot of things."
"Right," Dean's lips twitch. "Here," he smiles as Castiel continues fumbling, taking the keys softly from Castiel's hands, "let me?"
"Okay."
Dean's fingers graze against Castiel's and linger a moment longer than necessary.
Not for the first time in Castiel's life, he looks at Dean in wonder.
The past falls all around them like so many drops of rain.
The past and the future shimmer like rippling waters, and the waters are the present, and the waters are the now, and the waters are their history, and their story, and the waters are Dean taking the keys from Castiel and unlocking the door as Castiel murmurs "Thank you…" and Dean snorts and both of them are taken aback by the sound and smell and taste of the past, which is a past neither—well, at least not Castiel—regrets.
"No problem," Dean clicks the lock open, looking down at the keys with an affectionate, haunted smile. The smile of grief. The smile of grief comforted. "You know, I was so scared of coming in here, the first day of shiva."
They walk through the door together, pressed shoulder to shoulder, fingers nearly weaving together for a moment, and—and what does Dean think this means? How is Dean explaining this in his head, right now? Castiel can't help but wonder: Dean Winchester, the boy who was convinced his love for Castiel was unrequited, then believed himself unworthy, then—and still now—unable to believe that Castiel could ever forgive him for the nine years they spent apart. Now, Castiel would wait any amount of time, if it came with the promise of spending the rest of forever with Dean. Dean is and always will be the bigger infinity.
"I could tell," Castiel laughs.
"Uh-huh?" Dean chuckles wryly. "What did you think of me?"
"Honestly?" Castiel asks.
"I won't hold it against you," Dean grins, but he looks nervous.
"Take your shoes off," Castiel nods down to Dean's battered and soiled boots as he toes his own shoes off. Dean rolls his eyes and acquiesces.
They make their way, dripping from the rain and the stream, into the living room. Castiel glances at the mirror Dean cracked, all those years ago, while racing down the stairs.
"I was annoyed by how much I still felt for you," Castiel answers, and is, honestly, flustered by his own honesty. Which is to say nothing for how Dean seems to feel.
Dean sputters, then manages to change the conversation so entirely, so tactlessly, that Castiel cannot help but laugh.
"So you know—this year—it's been the wettest year on record. In Kansas. The wettest. So much rain."
Castiel laughs, shaking his head, frustration and adoration blossoming in him.
"Just," Dean reddens, skin still so damp, "Jimmy would've loved it. It's weird that it was this year. Jimmy would've loved it."
"Yes," Castiel agrees, brows knotting softly together as he gazes at Dean. "Yes he would have."
"It's like he's gone, but he's not. Like he's still here. Like how rain is just—just water coming back down. You know?"
"Um," Castiel frowns, and tries not to smile, and tries not to cry.
"Like we learnt in school. It's just water that's evaporated, coming back down to earth. And that's just like Jimmy. And that's just like grief."
"I hope you're not offended by how strange I find you."
"You're one to talk."
Castiel shakes his head as he takes logs out of the basket for the fire and tosses them in.
"Strange and wonderful," Castiel states, but Dean isn't paying attention.
"That's not—" he huffs, bending down next to Castiel. "That's not how you—"
"Who died and made you fire king?" Castiel raises his eyebrows, and Dean bubbles out in laughter.
"Lest we forget who made all the fires on our camping trip, Castiel," he reminds. Castiel smiles.
"My mistake."
He watches Dean make a little pyramid of firelighters and newspaper and logs in the fireplace.
"Here we go," Dean grins, lighting it.
Warm amber flames tumble upwards and are dyed blues and greens by the firelighters and the ink of the newspaper before licking across wood.
They both lean forward, watching it a moment. It bathes the walls and Dean's skin orange. Castiel watches as the gold in Dean's irises dances to the same song of the fire and, though it hardly seems surprising at this point, falls a little deeper in love with his best friend.
"This was a good idea," Dean blinks softly. Castiel hums in agreement and wonders if his friend has any idea how Castiel is watching him. "It's just like when we were young."
"We're still young," Castiel chuckles. Dean finally glances back at him.
"I don't often feel it."
"But you do now?" Castiel asks. Dean smiles a soft smile and nods.
"I do."
"Why?"
"I often do, when I'm with you."
Castiel leans to graze his shoulder against Dean's.
Dean shifts to cross his legs beneath him and sit down properly.
"Damn, I'm soaked," he wrinkles his nose, picking at his jacket, limp with rain.
"Me too," Castiel smiles.
He thinks back to the first day of shiva and thinks of how Dean looked at him, then. Like he could barely look at him. Now Dean's gaze is a beautiful, painful mix of their beautiful and painful pasts and present; memories of them laughing and reading and exploring and talking late into the night, memories of them crying alone and hurting one another without realising it, memories of them healing, slowly, then all at once, memories of them still healing, and the moment of them still healing, even now. Dean's gaze dances like the firelight but is as steady and penetrative as the rain.
"We should get these clothes off," Dean states, tugging off his jacket, then freezes, realising what he's said. He balks, skin flushed, so flushed that it practically evaporates the remaining water off it. "I mean—"
"Yes," Castiel agrees, unable to stop the thrill this chases through him, "we should. The fire'll dry them out—we could hang them up—"
Dean nods blankly, filled with wonder, and slips his jacket off properly.
"Yeah…" he nods. "Yeah."
Castiel wonders how much he should go for, and Dean hesitates a moment, too, but underneath his t-shirt his skin clings to the fabric, both still sodden, so it's not as though the tee succeeds in hiding anything, anyway.
"What were you talking with your mom about?" Castiel asks when they settle back down, both tragically still dressed in clothing that seems pointless for myriad reasons, now. Dean looks at the fire, unable to look at Castiel. Silence. A long break of silence that lies steadily between them like an empty road. "It was a fight?" Castiel asks, guesses, and Dean shrugs, shaking his head.
"I don't know what to call it," he confesses. "I don't know how to feel about it." A pause, in which Castiel doesn't want to speak, because he knows Dean has more to say, and he knows that if he interrupts, Dean's next thoughts and words will be stilted, inorganic. Better to let them flow their natural course. "I don't know what it was," Dean says, "apart from necessary. It felt necessary. It felt long overdue. Three years overdue. Ten years overdue. Hell—when did we meet?" He asks, looking up at Castiel. "It was twenty-five years overdue. Only—four year old me wouldn't have been able to have that conversation with her, anyway. Wouldn't have understood. And eighteen year old me wouldn't have been able to, either, I don't think. She didn't exactly give me room. And me two years ago—even then, I don't think I had the resources for it. But I do, now."
"Resources?" Castiel raises his eyebrows. "You do, now?"
"Yes. You," Dean smiles, sad and scared, but brave, still so brave. "I have you, now."
Castiel nods.
"Completely."
This should be hint enough. And it certainly does seem to leave Dean a little breathless, he pulls back minutely for a moment, blinking, before continuing.
"I—um—I said some things that I needed to say to her, that's all I mean, though. Things that I've needed to say, for a long time—so it was hard—and I feel so shaken—you can probably tell," he laughs self-consciously, and again, Castiel wonders if now really would be the best time to kiss Dean, or if he should wait, wait even longer, wait all over again, because Dean is so obviously so emotionally exhausted, is vulnerable with exhaustion. "But I said them. And I feel better. And worse. And tired—but like—like rebuilding is finally possible. Redemption. You know? It's never simple." Castiel nods and takes a hold of Dean's hand while Dean laughs self-consciously. "I'm not making any sense—"
"You don't need to," Castiel shakes his head. "I've known you a while. I can fill in the blanks. I understand."
Dean looks at Castiel and squeezes his fingers softly.
"What did you say to her?" He asks quietly, hopeful and breathless.
Dean shakes his head.
"It's complicated… And messy…"
"I'm not going anywhere."
Dean pulls his hand away and begins fiddling with his own hands.
"I… I told her a lot." He looks up at Castiel. "Cas—a lot of this," he looks hopeless, and then he looks as though he's at war inside himself, a war to find the right words, or perhaps he's already found them, and it's a war to bring them into being. "A lot of this isn't gonna make any sense—and—and it'll not make sense, because of things I've said to you in the past, and—and I'm sorry—and I'm sorry for saying those things—and those things weren't true—and you have to belive me—the things I'm saying, now, they're true—and I hope you don't hate me—but I can't keep living among lies, and I can't keep living among ghosts—and I said this to my mom—"
"Said what?" Castiel asks, and hopes that his voice is steadying, but has a feeling that it's shaking as much as Dean's hands are as they fumble in his lap.
"I said—I said I've had to be mother and father to Sam—that it wasn't fair—that I'd grown up too fast and been made to learn and confront things about myself in a way that—she'd done things—she and my dad had done things—" Castiel can actually make out the hammer of Dean's heart in the pulse point of his neck, it flickers sharply and looks painful and Dean's wince seems to confirm this discomfort. He puts a hand on Dean's shoulder and Dean glances down at it and seems unsure if he should pull sharply away or lean into it. In the end he just sits, stock-still, and continues, though his frame is trembling. "—Had done things that'll hurt me, forever—and I'm worried that they'll hurt me, forever—and she might not have been, like… active participator in it, but she was silent, all the way she was silent and silent is complacent and complacency is being an accomplice, I think, I've realised—I've never—I could barely even tell Jimmy about this," Dean confesses, looking up at Castiel, and his eyes are stung with tears, "but he figured it out—you know how amazing he was—it's—you're amazing, too—you're so much like him, you carry so much of him in you—it was our last conversation, I think, before he—" Dean swallows and Castiel has to look down and blink out the water and salt from his eyes.
"Jimmy figured it out, I barely had to say it, and I miss him—it was so comforting, knowing how he was, with you, even though he was religious—"
Castiel knows what's coming. He's essentially been able to rehearse this conversation with Dean before, though he barely realised then that it was only a practice run. Now, he has to be present and he has to believe Dean, whatever he says, whatever he confesses, because trust is what Dean deserves more than anything, now—trust, and love, and all the kindness in the world.
"I said it wasn't fair," Dean states, "and I said it wasn't fair I'd had to outsource parenting, look for fatherhood and motherhood in Jimmy, for myself, and then perform it, for Sammy, when mom failed him, too. I said it was torture for me, and I meant it. I said what my dad did was torture for me and I'll carry it forever, that it'll rot at me forever. There isn't a cure for that kind of thing. Not completely. It's chronic, now. It's a disorder. She wasn't the cause but she could've stopped it, she could've stopped it and she never did, she never tried, it—I—felt like she never even once—" Dean shakes his head, silent, beautiful, poisoned tears streaming onto his face and running down his cheeks. But if the tears are poison, then crying them out is not just good, it's right. It's necessary. Like Dean said.
"I said I hated her," Dean shakes his head, blinking out what seems like a thousand more tears. "I said I hated her. And then—and then I said I loved her." His voice cracks, and it's like the saddest music Castiel has ever heard. "I can't help it," Dean looks upwards, at the ceiling. "I can't help any of it. I can't help it, just like I can't help…" And he trails off, and Castiel looks at him, but Dean doesn't look back, not yet. Castiel's heart is thundering in his chest. Dean makes a frustrated noise and trembles and more water leaks from his eyes. "This should be easier," he shakes his head, "this should be easy; I should be able to do this, I should be able to say this to you—"
"Dean—"
"No, Cas," Dean shakes his head, "it's not gonna make any sense, but you have to listen, you have to trust me—please, please, trust me—I wouldn't lie, not now—"
"Dean—" Castiel tries to find Dean's hands, but Dean pulls away a moment—before realising and clasping back at Castiel's hands, tight and fierce and almost painful and with all the passion, all the brokenness of a hurt little boy, bullied by the man he called father.
"And I said I understood," Dean says, words trembling as they fall softly out of his mouth, his voice rasping. "I've—I've stood in silence, too. I've—I've bitten my tongue. I've lied. Not for the same reasons, but—I've hurt people I loved, thinking I was doing the right thing. Thinking it was a choice between lying and hurting them, or telling the truth, and ruining things, and then, in the long run, hurting them, more. And anger—anger's right—but I can't hold onto it forever. It hurts too much. And it's poisoning me. And I said that. And I said that I wanted to be well, whatever that looked like. And I said that I forgave her, because I couldn't not, because I wanted to heal. Because she's my mom, and I need one. I forgave her. For all of it. Everything. I said that we could start over. Me and her and Sam, if he wanted, but he'd have to want to, too, that I wanted her to fight, but I wanted her to look at me, and see me, and say that she could see me, and—and stop biting her tongue, and closing her eyes—and see me. I need her to—I said I needed her to really look at me, and see me, please." Dean blinks, eyes red, healing, agonising healing, in his expression. "I need her to see me."
Castiel stares. His heart is frantic and trembling like a hummingbird inside a cage too large for it, beating its wings desperately against bars and singing of far off hills which are just in sight, if only in the mind.
"And did she?" He asks. Dean's lip trembles. He blinks.
"Did she what?" His voice is rough.
"Did she look at you? Did she see you?"
Dean shrugs and looks away.
He stares at the carpet.
Castiel watches the tongues of fire tremble across his features and make the shadows on his face dance with one another.
"I say all this, because," Dean says slowly, looking at the carpet still, "without hope, you—you've gotta understand. I say all of it without hope because I know what I did, ten years ago, and I know how it hurt you, and you being friends with me, again, is more than I could have ever hoped for—but it's got to be said, you know?" He laughs nervously and looks back up at Castiel. His hands fiddle, anxious, with one another, fingers moving quickly like tiny animals. He blinks out a few lonely, desperate tears. Tears which are honest and without hope but which take comfort in their own honesty. "I've… It's been twenty… twenty-five years, and I've bitten my tongue, and tried to shake it off, tried to quit it—quit—tried to hide it—I said nothing, and then I said—and then I lied, but… It's… You have to know…"
"Know what, Dean?" Castiel asks. His heart is beating like music against his chest. The tips of his fingers feel numb. The entire world has turned into an inward breath, long and drawn out and it feels like it's never-ending. White mist has descended on everything, on all the world, on all his senses, white, sugary, terrifying mist like clouds moving swiftly over the face of the moon, dyed by its light. It clashes with the amber flickering firelight, this sense of swirling silvery sweetness, the cold filling him, the warmth pricking his heart, the tinnitus of his own pulse or perhaps the melody of his and Dean's twenty-five year dance together, back and forth, friendship and love and hurt and two continents and an ocean and the light between two oceans between them. Time, the greatest distance between two places, has separated them, and now it has brought them together; time and death. The silent symphony between them builds and it builds and still Dean is saying nothing, seems unable to say anything, looks at Castiel, terrified, swallows, brows sloped beautifully upward, the hammering of his heart visible at every pulse-point on him, each of which Castiel has the overwhelming urge to press his mouth to, to suck, to kiss, to stroke and cry and tell Dean that it will all be better, that all of it will be better, that Castiel will love him for ever and ever, until the earth is dust and decay in starlight.
"Cas…" Dean says, and can't finish the sentence. Castiel watches and Dean stares, terrified, back, like a frightened animal in the middle of a forest on fire. "I'm—I think—I think I'm not—what I mean," he makes a frustrated noise and scrubs at his eyes. "I—I think I'm—queer—and I—I know that I—please believe me—I know I haven't given you any reason to believe me—"
Castiel takes a hold of Dean's frantic hands. The song has risen to a cacophony between them, beautiful and haunting; all the songs Dean has ever played and written and made, all of the songs that remind Castiel of Dean, all the songs that remind Dean of Castiel, this is the soundtrack of their lives; this is the moment the melody is loudest, most devastating, and Castiel has to hold Dean to steady himself through it.
"Cas," Dean tries, desperate, eyes shimmering.
Castiel remembers ten years ago. Castiel remembers one year ago. Castiel remembers everything.
"I know, Dean," he states, and Dean blinks, confused, a few tears eking out onto his perfect, freckle-spattered cheeks.
"What?" Dean squints, nonplussed—and fuck, if it doesn't make Castiel fall even deeper in love with the other man, if it doesn't swamp him with adoration he can't overcome, he could never overcome, he never wants to overcome. Crap, Dean is an idiot, a perfect, beautiful, kind, kindred idiot.
"I," Castiel laughs, but it comes out breathless and almost like a cry, "I know—I have—" he's struck by the flaming lance of an idea in an instant. "Wait," he says, and springs up, and runs to his dad's study, where he'd left the copy of the poetry collection dedicated to Dean sat perfectly in the middle of his dad's old desk, but somehow is still fumbling with excitement and fear, and grabs it, and rushes back, and sees Dean staring at the doorframe, terrified, holding onto his hands and looking ready to bolt any instant.
Castiel bends and places the collection in Dean's hands, holding them, holding the collection. Dean doesn't even look down at it, just stares at Castiel.
"I know," Castiel says.
"What?"
Dean looks more scared than confused, now.
"I know," Castiel repeats. "You told me. Months ago, you told me. When your brother overdosed, the night I drove you to hospital. You were drunk, and you couldn't remember the next morning, and I didn't know what to do, and I'm sorry," Castiel is reminding himself of Dean; his part of their song, his harmony, is rising and rising and his voice is cracking and his heart is hammering and all of it, all of it, all of their lives and all of their sorrows have been building to it, been building to this moment, for twenty-five years, for nearly thirty years, really. "I'm sorry, I didn't know what to do—so I said nothing, and I waited for you to heal, because—because I wanted you to heal, more than I—more—" He growls, clutching at straws. He feels more like Dean than ever. "You were drunk, and you told me how you felt," he explains, "and you—you gave me your notebook, full of songs and poems—and you gave me your mixtape, and you kissed—"
Dean looks terrified.
"Oh, God," he says, expression numb, jaw slack, eyes wide. "Oh God—"
"And I read them, and they were beautiful—and I listened to the mixtape, and I know I shouldn't have, and I'm sorry—"
"I kissed you," Dean shakes his head, running a desperate hand through his hair, "I don't even…"
"You kissed me," Castiel confirms, "but I—"
"I'm so sorry, Cas," Dean blinks, more tears springing onto his cheeks, "I'm so sorry—I know you were dating Balthazar, I knew you were with Balthazar—I never would have—if that's why you guys broke up—I'm so sorry—"
Castiel rocks back.
"What?"
"Balthazar—"
"Balthazar and I were never dating," Castiel cocks his head to the side. He'd forgotten—forgotten that Dean had thought that. He keeps forgetting. "We—we're just friends," he laughs. "We were always just friends."
"You," Dean blinks, "what?"
"You kissed me," Castiel laughs, breathless, "and I—I'm sorry—I should confess, I kissed you back—I never wanted it to end," he laughs again, chest clearing and now feeling like it's turning into a vacuum with all the air being expelled from it, frustrated and endeared and forever enamoured, Castiel continues, "I never wanted it to end, but you were drunk, and I—part of me couldn't believe you, still," he confesses, "and I'm sorry—"
"You kissed—you kissed me back?" Dean blinks again. His mouth hangs open and is, even now, especially now, so utterly perfect and kissable.
"I kissed you back," Castiel confesses with a soft laugh, squeezing Dean's hands. Dean looks numb with disbelief.
"You—you—you never wanted it to end…"
"Never," Castiel squeezes again, and Dean shakes his head.
"I don't—Cas—I don't understand—"
Castiel laughs and finds he cannot help it.
"Look at the book, Dean," Castiel huffs, shaking his head, heart like a butterfly inside of him. Dean seems to steel himself and finally looks down as Castiel slips his hands out of his friend's so Dean can read.
Dean mouths the word on the cover, single and simple and bright as the sun. Bright as Dean.
Honeybee.
"For—" Dean looks up, then down, then up again, then down, all disbelief and joy and fear, maybe too much fear, just now, to quite make room for the joy, yet. "That's what you—is—you wrote this for—"
"Look at the dedication page, idiot," Castiel smiles. "And if you're not sure after that, take a look at the poems."
Dean turns to the dedication page, and his soul seems to start back. He shakes his head and his eyes dance and shimmer with misty waters, swirling amber and silver. The rest of the world is static and hung under a blanket of darkness. It's just them. It's only them. Castiel almost mouths the words himself as Dean reads them. He knows what it says. Knows it by heart. Wouldn't be surprised if he knew the whole damn collection by heart, so much has he pored over it, by now.
To Dean.
I still do,
and always will—
with all of my unworthy heart.
The universe swirls like silvery water.
The song is stilling, waiting.
Dean's jaw opens then closes, caught between speech and gasping for air.
Dean's fingers move across the letters. Then he flips to the cover of the book. His fingers graze the title. Then he turns, frantically, through the collection, eyes scanning the poems, each word, each line, eyes swimming with tears until he can't read for them and has to blink them out and Castiel watches, adoring and terrified and enamoured, as ever, for ever, for always and forever. They're surrounded by the past, and it dances around them, and they're surrounded by the future, and it sings and beckons them, and twirls and spins while Dean and Castiel, sat on the floor of the living room like so many countless times before, stay static and face one another, each waiting for the other shoe to drop. Dean shakes his head and puts a hand over his mouth and Castiel worries, suddenly, that Dean is about to reject him, again. But when Dean looks up, all Castiel's doubts are washed away. Dean's gaze is like the tide. Falling and rising and ever pulling Castiel in deeper and ever certain, ever steady, ever a promise. Quiet. Not silence. Not for the music, not for the sound of Dean's breathing, and they're close enough that Castiel can almost feel it, can almost feel the soft, warm inhale and exhale of Dean Winchester on his skin.
And Dean, as ever, is a perpetual idiot and dork and wonderful human. When he speaks, Castiel thinks his words will carry the weight of all the ages on them, thinks that Dean will say something incredibly profound or moving or even just pertinent.
"So the rain out there was pretty bad, huh?" He asks, and Castiel opens his mouth and finds he can't even answer, can't even laugh though all his insides are beaming and laughing and thrumming with it, with the ridiculousness of Dean, with his own adoration for Dean, and he sighs and shakes his head and beams and his eyes are glassy and he wants to remember this moment for ever and ever, for ever and ever and he doesn't know how it happens and maybe it's better this way, it feels right after the violence and ferocity of their first kisses, they somehow end up twined together and their mouths have met and they're kissing, at last, at long last, they're in each other's arms and soaked to the bone and so in love with one another and there's no more fear, no more walls, only tears staining both of their cheeks and mingling together as Castiel's fingers run through and clasp Dean's sodden hair, and Dean's hands frame Castiel's jaw, and Dean's tongue is in Castiel's mouth, and his lips are soft against Castiel's and the hunger in Castiel is still there and the music has risen but the music has fallen, too, the song is seeping around them and into them and dissipating into everything and becoming everything, indistinct, like rain on skin or mist on moors, and they pull apart, breathless, gasping, eyes stinging, hearts soaring, hearts breaking, hearts healing, becoming teenagers again, becoming themselves again, inhabiting bodies new with truth and love, and they stare and can't believe, and Dean is the first to speak.
"It's so amazing you got published, by the way," he states, breath rugged, shaking his head. "You're so talented—"
Castiel laughs, cannot stop himself. The next kiss he gives Dean is fierce and rough and they laugh and cry into it, and try to speak while each tells the other to shut up, and neither of them can believe it, and both of them can believe it, because it's the truth, finally. It's the truth.
And it's the culmination of nine years of pain, and another year of patience, of waiting, of hurting softly and steadily like a heartbeat through it all, and the kissing turns and grows and Dean's hand slips down to Castiel's sodden shirt and fists it tight and hungry, squeezing rainwater out of it, and Dean ends up on Castiel's lap, and then he pulls Castiel on top of him and they're kissing by the fire and all the colours in the world, new, unseen and uninvented colours are flashing in the back of Castiel's skull, and Dean tugs at Castiel's shirt but can't at this angle, get it over his head, and Castiel pulls back and says,
"It's—it's probably better if I just take this off—because—you know—of the fire—it'll just dry easier if it's off and—"
"Yeah," Dean nods, apparently barely able to pay attention. "Yeah—yeah, totally."
Castiel sit back up, legs either side of Dean, and pulls off his shirt, and Dean follows him, sitting up underneath Castiel and moving his lips over the new skin there, still damp, kissing at it so that new pinpricks form and Castiel shivers and gasps, breathless, and it's like they're starting again, it's like they finally get to start again, Castiel finally understands the words renewal and rebirth and redemption, and there is so much grace in all of this, and Dean kisses and grazes his hands over skin he's never, neither of them have ever, touched, neither of them have touched one each other like this before. Dean is fascinated, unable to stop, apparently, Castiel is in heaven, but after what seems like hours he grows impatient and growls and pushes Dean back and pulls Dean's shirt off and murmurs something like,
"It's only fair you take yours off, too," at Dean's inquisitive, amused look, and he kisses Dean's chest, returning the favour, obsessed with Dean's collarbones and his shoulders and his pecs and his bellybutton, and Dean laughs and Castiel remembers how ticklish he is and they kiss and tease and explore like they're young again and it's their first time, uncertain and excited, and they push and pull and it turns into wrestling then laughing then soft kissing again, kissing as delicate as eyelashes, kissing as delicate as disbelief, kissing as hard and passionate as the truth.
Dean keeps murmuring that he can't believe it, mouth breathless against Castiel's, and Castiel hums and agrees each time, because neither can he, neither can he.
It's been hours, maybe, and their bodies have slotted together and the kissing has grown and changed and reiterated over and over, into passionate and sensual and soft and timid, and both of them are hard and aching, and they grind against one another and their lashes flutter and their eyes roll and they leave bruising grips on each other's flesh and breathlessly moan, their voices a new chorus in the song, How long has Castiel been waiting to do this? And how long has Dean been waiting to do this? They ask each other seriously and rhetorically and giggle and bite kisses into each other's necks and run their tongues along the other's jaw and nothing has ever, ever been so perfect.
The house cradles them. The house that has witnessed so much. The house that has meant so much. The house that means so much. The house that became a home, after so much hurt, amid so much grief, after Castiel thought he would never find a home again, not here. Twice.
And it's home. It's home because of Dean. And it always will be.
And he always will be.
