Chapter 67.
Sam was careful not to rush to greet them when Cas and his mother returned. He didn't want Cas to work out that the whole thing had been intended to keep him from self-destruction and Mary had told Cas she didn't want to confide in Sam, so he had to pretend it was just two friends, going for coffee and no big deal as far as he was concerned.
He was relieved, though, when Cas soon arrived in the library, seeming like himself. Mary did not. Clearly. she had the sense to see that it would seem she was reporting back to Sam.
Cas walked over to Jules. She stood and he pulled her towards him by the belt of her jeans and drew her into a long and intense kiss. Sam smiled at the thought that Cas believed their relationship to be non-physical. That kiss alone bordered on the erotic and he felt pretty uncomfortable watching it.
"I'll go ... be somewhere else." he said.
"Mm-hmm." said Cas, still lost in loving liplock.
Jules gently broke off the kiss and pushed him back a step. "Don't go, Sam." she said. Sam noticed that she touched Cas's arm, reassuring him that he had not behaved incorrectly. Her understanding of his capacity for mistaken self-blame was helpful.
"I thought you two might wanna be alone." he said.
"No." said Cas, "I don't suppose there was any word from Dean?" He corrected himself quickly, "Or word of Dean?" The longing in his eyes was hard to endure. Sam wished he could give him any fragment of hope.
"I'm sorry." said Sam, "I would have told you. I would have called you."
"Yes, I know you would." said Cas, with resignation, "I just ... " His audible words died away, but in the back of Sam's mind, he said, "I can't give up."
"I know." said Sam, aloud.
Jules moved closer to him again. "Are you okay, Cas?" she said. Most people would not have heard how concerned she was, but Sam was becoming familiar with the change in her tone when Cas was making her uneasy.
Whether Cas heard it too was unclear, but they were suddenly looking into each other's eyes and again, Sam felt he shouldn't be there. He found it strange that Cas had never tried to open a mental link with her, but Cas thought she was uneasy about angel stuff and was always afraid of reminding her that he wasn't human. Sam didn't think it was an issue. The angel thing was a much bigger deal to Cas than to Jules.
Yes, she was a survivor of a cosmic war, but who wasn't. They had all suffered at the hands of angels, Castiel more than most. Jules was not as prejudiced as she had every right to be, but he suspected that the real problem was that Cas still felt completely unworthy of her.
Sam understood. It was hard, imagining a future with someone when haunted by such bad feelings about the past. When every choice ever made seemed to be wrong, it complicated every decision, but he saw how they gazed at each other, how Cas stood a little taller when she was near and how Jules lost the wary look when he was in sight.
There was every chance that Cas would still screw it up out of fear, sabotaging a relationship he felt was not allowed for him, just as another idiot had failed to say anything to Eileen because she was so awesome and he was burdened with old regrets, guilt and lack of faith in himself.
Cas spoke in little more than a whisper. "I'm fine. I enjoyed talking with Mary. I like Mary. I'm okay. I'm fine." He sounded like he was trying to convince both of them, but as he spoke, the certainty in his voice grew. Maybe it was the power of being close to her, maybe just saying the words.
"Good." she said. She touched her lips to his in the lightest of kisses. "Dean is coming back. You think that dollar store tree topper can beat a Winchester?"
Cas smiled uncertainly. "No, he can't."
"Of course he can't." said Jules, "In my world, we had no Winchesters. He won because we had no Winchesters, but even there, we were still fighting, still holding out. He thinks this world will be easier. This world has already defeated him and Lucifer once. Well, you, Dean and Sam did that."
"Our Michael was very different." said Cas.
"Still an archangel." said Jules.
"Jules is right." said Sam.
Cas had not taken his eyes off hers. Oddly, she never seemed uncomfortable with his steady eye contact. What seemed disturbing to most didn't bother her in the least. "Jules is always right." he said.
"Yes." said Sam, "She's right about you, too."
Cas turned to look at him, then back at Jules. "I hope so." he said.
"And I'm right about Dean. There's no way it ends like this." she said. She kissed him again. "Archangels are focused, you know. So much intensity and concentration. When we were fighting them, we found that a weakness we could exploit."
"I think it should trouble me that you have studied angelic weaknesses." said Cas.
"Does it?" she asked.
"Not nearly enough."
"You don't have the same weakness as Michael. He's a bugle. You're an orchestra."
"I don't know what that means, but I like it." said Cas.
"One day, my angel, you and I will get symphonic." she said. Obviously seeing the panic in his eyes, she touched his chest and said soothingly, "A time to every purpose under Heaven."
The fear faded away and he nodded.
"I need to trawl the archives again." she said, "You boys should talk. Cas, if you need me, for anything, just text."
He nodded again. When she had gone, he looked at Sam and said, "Something happened."
"With Mom?"
"With Jules. On the way over here, something happened."
"Okay. Good or bad?"
"She touched my leg."
"Okay." said Sam again.
"I don't mean by chance. She stopped the car and she put her hand on my thigh. Deliberately, Sam."
"Yeah, okay, I got that." said Sam, trying not to smile. That wasn't even first base. Dean would say it wasn't even parked near the ballpark. After billions of years, almost every day, celibate, that insignificant touch meant more to him than a weekend of wild sex would mean to any human. "How did it feel?" he said.
"Have you ever had every thought in your head focused on one small touch?" said Cas.
"Yes, humans get that a lot. Of course, we have fewer thoughts than an angel does."
"Yes." said Cas, "Of course, as she said, such focus is a weakness."
"She didn't mean that kind of focus."
"Nevertheless ... "
"No, Cas, no nevertheless. It felt good, right?"
"It felt incredible."
"But you freaked out?"
"A little." said Cas, "I don't understand why kissing, which is more intimate and more passionate, feels so easy and unthreatening and a hand on my upper leg is ... " He struggled to find the words. Sam knew he probably never would.
"It's good that kissing is fine." he said.
"Kissing is better than fine. Kissing is wonderful. And at night, Sam, we touch far more. She sleeps pressed up against me and it's so good and so uncomplicated."
"And you have no sexual thoughts at all?"
"I have thoughts like that all the time. Can women tell when we are imagining them naked?"
"No, or we'd never make it to the second date." said Sam, then he remembered he was talking to Castiel. "Cas, it's okay to think about your girlfriend naked. I think she'd be disappointed if you didn't."
"I don't want her to feel objectified."
"Is she an object to you?" said Sam, well aware that she was not.
"No."
"No. You love her. You're allowed to also desire her. It's pretty important in a relationship."
"But then I freak out." said Cas.
"Yeah. You may need to work on that."
