A/N: Skipping ahead in time and being vague about some stuff (like what jobs Cass and Brooke have because… I just don't care about that right now. Enjoy a weird mixed chapter of sorrow, nostalgia and also cozy/fun Autumn/Halloween stuff. Also, did Daphne's house have a fireplace? IDK. It doesn't matter. We only see the inside of her house for like .2 seconds on the show, so I'm totally making up what it all looked like. I also don't live in KS and have never lived in KS so I'm… making up the weather, which I know I could check using a weather app but IDC because I'm making it super autumn-y in this fake version of KS because I want to.
Seven
Brooke followed Castiel into their new—rented—home. It had taken months to reach this point, most of it spent job hunting for work that could at least somewhat support them in this house with no prior job experience or college degrees. Brooke had had jobs in the past, before she'd gotten back into Hunting, but that had been fifteen years ago and the entire world was different now. And she was different.
Daphne had lowered the rent for them from what it had been with her previous tenant, Chris, with the understanding that if they got better-paying jobs at any point, she would raise it to match. It was fair, and Cass and Brooke didn't mind paying rent. After so many years gaining money illegally, it felt kind of nice to make an honest living and have to pay bills.
Okay, no one enjoys paying bills, but they grinned and bore it, anyway, because it was just part of entering normal society.
Brooke went into the kitchen and dropped the box she'd been carrying onto the tile floor and then went back out to the car to get more boxes. She and Cass passed each other a few times as they went back and forth, but they really didn't have much stuff. Mostly clothes and toiletries, though they had gone out and bought some other essentials. Still, it only took forty-five minutes to unpack and put away everything they had, and most of that was spent deciding where everything should go.
They had almost no furniture and no decorative items. What furniture they did have had mostly been taken from the bunker, which had been totally emptied out by her and all the boys before they'd thrown the key inside and shut the door on the place forever.
The house felt… empty. Nothing like what it had felt like when they had lived there with Daphne so many years ago. Brooke found herself standing in the living room, spinning slowly in a circle, frowning slightly. She'd thought she would be happier having finally reached the point of independence, living alone in this house with Cass. But, immediately, the lack of Daphne and Peter's company made her go cold in her bones.
"Are you all right?" Castiel asked, coming up to her and pulling her close.
She rested her cheek against his chest, the top of her head tucked underneath his chin. "You know, we were… alone for a long time," she began. "Neither of us… really belonged anywhere, with anyone besides each other. Living here with Daphne was the first time I felt like I had a home. But when we left it, and remembered who we were we just… went back to the same patterns. We lived from motel room to motel room… until the bunker."
Brooke took a breath, lifting up her head. "This house, with Daphne in it, and then the bunker, are the only two places I ever felt I belonged." She hesitated, then added, "Well, Bobby's house, too, in the very beginning, but…" She felt tears sting her eyes and blinked rapidly, recalling that his house had been burned down, let alone that he'd been murdered by Dick Roman.
Castiel gazed down at her, concern and love in his eyes. He touched her face, waiting.
"Anyway," she went on, quickly, "I just thought I'd feel different finally getting to live here again. But it's not the same without Daphne in it."
He smiled a sad kind of smile, nodding in understanding. "Yes, I feel the same way. It feels a little lonely in here, doesn't it?"
She nodded.
"I'm sure that'll change, with time," he said, his smile shifting to one of hope. "We'll get used to the space. We'll make it… ours."
Brooke turned in his arms and gazed around the living room again, staring at the empty wall space above the fireplace and mantel. "What would you put there?" she asked. "A TV? A painting?"
"Hmm… I feel a television would be the most practical, simply for entertainment value, but…" He shrugged.
Brooke walked over to the fireplace, leaning down to look into it. Daphne had had people come and do a few things around the house before she let Brooke and Cass move in, including having someone clean the chimney and sweep up any old ashes in the grate. "We should have a fire," Brooke said, turning toward her husband. "I think it would cheer us up."
Castiel nodded. "We'll need to get some wood first."
"Great. We need to go to the grocery store, anyways."
So, off they went.
###
Hours later, after dinner (pre-made spiced pumpkin/squash/whatever soup simmered on the stove and some crunchy bread for dipping), Brooke returned to the living room with two mugs of herbal tea for herself and Castiel. This level of domesticity and comfort seemed almost sickening to her after years of hardship and living on crap take-out food, but she thought that if anyone deserved a disgusting level of normalcy, it was her. And Castiel. And Sam and Dean. And all the rest.
Castiel was sitting on the simple grey loveseat near the fire, writing in a book. It was one of the heavy, leather-bound tomes that had once been full of magical lore that they'd taken from the bunker. When Jack had gotten rid of all the monsters in the universe, and all the magic, he'd also erased all the real knowledge associated with such things. Folklore and myth had remained, so as not to erase cultures, but real information about the real monsters associated with such things had vanished.
Castiel had taken almost all of the now-empty books, saying that it seemed a waste of paper to let them rot in the bunker forever. Now, he was writing in one, one leg folded neatly over the other to give himself a small table upon which to place the book as he wrote. There was a simple lamp turned on beside the loveseat; it set his dark brown hair aglow from the back. Brooke smiled at that image of him, imagining a nonexistent halo hovering over his head.
But he was not an angel anymore. And she no longer held any of his Grace within herself. Her smile faltered, and she went to him and hovered the mug of tea somewhere near his face.
He glanced up and smiled at her. "Thank you," he said, and set down his pen, taking the proffered mug and sipping its contents.
"What are you writing?" Brooke asked, and then hesitated, wondering if maybe he was creating a personal diary or something. "I mean—you don't have to tell me."
Castiel stared up at her in surprise, like, I don't?
She made her own face, one that probably made her look a bit constipated. "We're not… mind-melded anymore. There's nothing magical tying us together. We can… we can keep secrets from each other now." She swallowed.
Castiel shook his head, slowly. "One of the things I learned, watching Sam and Dean for so many years, was that secrets are bad and only lead to… bad things." He set his mouth in a firm line. "You are my wife; you have been all along. I won't begin to keep secrets from you now."
Brooke couldn't help but feel relieved, and finally allowed herself to sit down beside him. "Good," she said.
"Besides," he went on. "I-I…" His voice broke and he took a shaky breath and pressed his forehead to hers. "I miss you so much, Brooke. In here. In my head. It hurts. I have to remind myself to speak out loud."
"I know," she whispered. "Me too."
It was a conversation they'd had many times in the past several months.
"So…" He cleared his throat, shifting his grip on his mug of tea. "Telling you everything… it's the closest I can get to feeling like it did before."
Brooke blinked tears away. "Yeah."
They were silent for a long moment, their heads still pressed together, breathing each other in.
Then, Brooke asked, "So, what are you writing?"
He pulled back to show her, shifting the book in his lap diagonally so that she could read it easier. "I… I've begun to lose my earliest memories," he began.
"What?" Brooke interrupted him, alarmed.
But he was already shaking his head, quickly, as if she had misunderstood. "It's all right," he tried to reassure her. "I—well—I wasn't expecting it, but now that it's started to happen, I'm not surprised. I've been alive for billions of years, which means I have billions of years' worth of memories. But now I'm just a human, and my human brain can only retain so much information. So I'm… beginning to forget. Not everything, like I said. Just earlier memories. Things that happened as little fish began to crawl out of the ocean. Things that happened as I watched proto-humans roam about. So I'm writing it down, before it all goes away completely."
Brooke touched his face, cradling her mug in her other hand. "I'm sorry you're forgetting."
"No," he murmured, with a smile. "Don't be. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to endure if it means you and I get to live the rest of our human lives in relative peace. I don't need to remember being an angel a billion years ago. I just…" He took a breath, his voice catching. "I just need to remember you… and Sam and Dean… and Jack. My family." He kissed her gently, and then pulled away to show her the book. "But.. I thought I might as well put these empty books to use and write down what I can while I still remember."
Brooke studied the writing. It was in Enochian, which she pointed out.
"I didn't want to forget that, at least," Castiel explained. "Writing my journal this way will help me retain the language."
"We could speak it to one another, as well," Brooke said, switching to Enochian, which still sounded strange in her human throat.
"I would like that," he replied, switching to the language of angels as well. Though, the literal translation of his words had been something like, This event would bring me great joy.
Enochian was quite stuffy, after all.
###
It was autumn, and Brooke kept thinking about the fact that she wanted to do everything possible with her husband to celebrate the season. Before now, holidays and the changing of seasons had never been something she'd paid much attention to. As a Hunter, the idea of celebrating Christmas or some other cheery holiday had seemed incongruous with the rest of her bloody, murder-filled life. And, having lived with and around Sam and Dean for the last fifteen years, she was even less inclined to celebrate certain days of the year; they were not the most celebratory of people.
But now, she and Castiel could do… whatever they wanted. And that prospect excited her like nothing else had in a long time.
"I found a wreath for the front door," the former angel said, breaking her out of her thoughts.
She looked up from the aisle she was standing in to see him coming back towards her from wherever he had been. He was holding an autumn wreath, complete with fake orange, red, and yellow leaves, twigs, and red berries. There were miniature pumpkins interspersed throughout it, as well. Brooke smiled widely. "It's perfect."
"Do you think so?" Castiel asked, smiling down at the wreath in his hands.
"Absolutely."
His eyes twinkled a little. "Well, good," he said, and he placed the wreath into the shopping cart that Brooke had been pushing along.
They didn't have much money, so they were shopping at a dollar store. Most everything here was cheap and plastic, but neither of them cared. Brooke had been shopping for things at dollar stores and Goodwills her entire life. Hunting had never afforded her any money—what little she had was mostly stolen—and she had grown up with an understanding of what it was like live within her means.
The fact that they were decorating for the season at all was a technical waste of money, but not if made them happy and filled the new house up a bit. They had lived in a brightly-lit cozy bunker full of 50's-era furniture for the past several years, so Brooke was willing to drop some cash on anything that would make their new place feel less empty. Other things in the shopping cart included candles, some small plastic pumpkins, decorative plates, and some autumn-leaf garland to drape over the mantelpiece above the fireplace.
They went home and set it all up in the living room, and then sat down on the loveseat and smiled around at the lit candles and little orange pumpkins sitting on the old wooden coffee table they'd gotten from Goodwill.
"It'll look better at night," Brooke said. "With all the candlelight and the fire in the dark."
Castiel smiled.
"I'll make some coffee," Brooke said, standing up. "Was gonna get us some Starbucks, but their Pumpkin Spice Lattes taste like sugary chemical crap, so I'll make us our own fancy drinks. Got some ingredients from the grocery store the other day."
Cass laughed. "All right. I'm sure whatever you make will taste better than a five-dollar cup of coffee from Starbucks."
"Damn straight!" she called, from the kitchen.
He laughed again.
###
Castiel stopped and looked around for about the tenth time in the last fifteen minutes. "I think I've realized," he said, "that my excellent sense of direction was specifically an angelic power. I don't have a sense of direction."
Brooke couldn't help but laugh, glancing around at the tall rows of corn surrounding them in this corn maze that she'd dragged him out to. Just another thing on her mental list of stuff to do with him to celebrate autumn. Stuff he'd never gotten to do before. She had not expected him to immediately get lost. "It's okay, Cass," she said, coming closer to him and reaching down for one of his hands. "I have an excellent sense of direction. Lucky for you." She winked.
He gazed at her lovingly, the irritation wiped from his face. "All right," he replied, touching her face. "I'll follow you." A smirk lifted one corner of his mouth. "Whither thou goest."
###
Brooke flopped backwards onto the couch, sighing dramatically. "Okay, I'm bored," she complained.
"We've only been doing this for ten minutes," Castiel said, his voice low, not taking his eyes off the puzzle spread out on the coffee table. It was one-thousand pieces and it looked like an autumnal forest, colorful trees, leaves on the ground, and squirrels holding nuts in their little paws.
"We're never gonna finish this thing," Brooke said, and then huffed and sat back up again, hovering over the puzzle once more, picking up pieces, putting them down…
"We will," Cass replied. "With the correct attitude."
"Okay, Dad," she muttered, though it was good-natured.
Castiel set down the puzzle piece he was holding and very slowly turned to look at her, his back ramrod straight, one eyebrow raised perfectly. He lifted his chin, staring down his nose at her, the firelight flickering on his face, making him look rather ominous. His eyes were dark and molten in the low light, and appeared almost black, as opposed to blue.
Brooke felt the breath catch in her throat, and her heart pounded in her chest. "You sure you're not still an angel?" she breathed, caught in the desire to prostrate herself before him. He looked, in that moment, majestic and terrifying and… attractive.
"Now, now," he growled, slowly, and spread his hand, gesturing toward the puzzle. "A little patience goes a long way."
"I'm not a patient person," Brooke said, still feeling a little light-headed as she stared up into his face.
"No," he conceded, eyes boring a hole straight through to her soul. "You're not."
And then she was kissing him, puzzle forgotten, one hand tangled in his hair, tongue in his mouth.
He made a sound deep in his chest, then stood up, and began to pick her up into his arms.
"No, wait, wait!" she said, suddenly.
He stopped, looking at her in confusion.
"Can you even… I mean…" She did not want to finish her question, afraid of embarrassing him, and still half-expecting him to already know what she was going to say, despite their lack of telepathy.
But he did not. "Can I even what?" he asked.
"C-Can you even… still… lift me?" she said, making a face as she asked it to show that she felt bad for doubting the strength of his arms. His human arms.
He blinked at her. "I…" The word was drawn out, lingering in his mouth as he thought about her question. "Actually, I'm not sure," he admitted, his brows furrowing. "Here," he said, and led her away from the couch and coffee table. "Let's try it out here, where it's safer."
Brooke laughed a little. "Okay." She wrapped both arms around his neck.
"Do you trust me?" he asked her, and his face was so serious that she felt herself melt a little.
"Of course I do," she murmured.
He nodded, once. "All right." He bent his knees, placed one arm behind her own knees, and lifted. Everything went well, and seemed normal. There she was, cradled in his arms. "Well," he said, "I can lift you. I… I'm not sure how far I could carry you, but I can lift you."
"Are you callin' me fat?" she teased.
"Of course not!" he said, his face a mask of hurt and shock.
"Oh my God, I know!" she said, laughing.
"Oh." He smiled then, and gently lowered her to her feet. "Sorry. Sometimes, now, I can't tell when you're joking. No telepathy."
She nodded. "Me too. Well…" She paused, laughing a little. "I'd say Me too, except that you don't make jokes."
"No," he said, in mock seriousness, his brows drawn together, chest puffed out. "I'm much too surly for that."
Brooke burst out laughing.
###
Castiel frowned in concentration as he measured out just the right amount of vegetable oil for the pumpkin muffins they were making.
Brooke couldn't help releasing a small laugh. "You almost look angry," she said, watching his face.
He glanced up from pouring the oil into the bowl with a startled expression. "Do I?"
"A little. Or maybe constipated."
He made a face at her, then.
"Now you look angry."
He laughed.
There was a comfortable silence for a moment as he cracked two eggs against the side of the mixing bowl and poured them in. Then he said, "I miss being able to measure things with… angel powers. Somehow I knew exactly what was needed to make delicious food without ever having to use measuring cups."
"Well, yeah," Brooke said, "but when you were an angel, you couldn't eat whatever you made. Isn't this better? You work harder for the food, but now it tastes good."
He smiled and said, "True." And then he sighed. "Still. It seems whatever talents I had before were all due to… being an angel. I'm not sure what good I am now."
Brooke shook her head at him, touching his face, and he rested the whisk against the inside of the mixing bowl. "It's an adjustment for everyone," she murmured. "Not just you—or me. Sam and Dean, Eileen, Jody and all the rest. All of the Hunters, everywhere in the world. We're all going through this change. And…" She stopped, for a moment, looking past her husband, to somewhere far away. "Sometimes I wake up wondering if all of this was a dream. Wondering if the monsters will… will come back. Wondering if all this was some kind of sick joke, and Chuck is still God."
"Me too," Castiel said, quietly. "When it first happened—when Jack became God and he… explained everything to us… It all felt right, like I knew that he was telling the truth. But now, it's been months, and that feeling of certainty is… going away."
She nodded in understanding. There was silence for a moment, and then she whispered, "I don't know if I could… if I could deal with that, if I wake up one morning and the world's gone to shit. I think I'd just lay down and die."
Castiel laughed, a kind of strangled sound in his throat. "I'd probably lay down and die with you."
They smiled at one another, though their eyes were sad.
And then Castiel turned and began mixing the pumpkin muffin batter again. The sweet smell wafted up from the bowl.
Brooke swiped a finger inside and brought it to her mouth with a smile.
###
"Why did you drag me here, again?" Castiel asked, rolling his eyes as he and Brooke slowly made their way through the haunted house. A man in zombie clothing and makeup popped out at them and he eyed the Halloween creature skeptically. "The makeup looks professional, but zombies aren't even real monsters."
"Technically no monsters are real anymore," Brooke replied, moving past the man in the zombie costume, who was looking distinctly annoyed at having failed to frighten them.
"You know what I mean," Castiel growled.
"You're supposed to get into the spirit of things, Cass," Brooke admonished.
All around them, lights strobed and creepy noises came out of the speakers hidden behind and inside the props. There must have been about a million fog machines in here for all the fog that pooled in the air and around their feet.
The former angel sighed, moving closer to Brooke so that she could hear him over all the noise—several girls screamed somewhere ahead of them, the group that had come in right before them. "I suppose I'll have to side with Sam on this," Castiel said, leaning close to Brooke's ear. "Maybe I just don't like Halloween."
She made a face. "But it's such a good holiday!"
A man with fake stitches all over his bald head appeared in front of them, waving a saw-less chainsaw about and laughing maniacally. He moved smoothly out of their way as they approached, since this wasn't one of those haunted houses where the actors were allowed to touch you.
"Maybe you'll like handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters better than this."
"Yes," Castiel muttered, lowly. "Or perhaps I'll simply scare them away with my social awkwardness."
"What?" Brooke yelled, unable to hear him over the tinny sounds coming from the speakers.
"Nothing," he called back, and resigned himself to going through the rest of this fake haunted house.
###
A/N: This section goes back and forth between Brooke and Cass' perspectives because… I suck at writing, I guess lmao. But I didn't want to change it because I like it how it is.
After the failed attempt at getting Castiel into the Halloween spirit by making him go to a haunted house, Brooke had stuck with simpler things. Taking nature walks and pressing beautiful autumn leaves in between the pages of heavy books to preserve them. Picking up pinecones to decorate the house with. Finding recipes for soups and chili and baked goods. He seemed to enjoy these softer activities much more, and for that, she loved him.
Currently it was a little past eight p.m. and they were sitting side-by-side on the love seat, reading in front of a cheery fire. Castiel was reading a book about gardening, something he'd told Brooke he wanted to get into in the spring. Brooke was reading some fiction novel about a woman who'd left her shitty husband to go live in the mountains with her dog. It'd been the first thing to catch her eye during her visit to the library.
She smiled while reading and said, "The dog in this kinda reminds me of you, Cass."
"Mm?" he replied, in a tone that suggested he wasn't really paying attention. Then, after a pause, he said, "Didn't… Rowena compare me to a dog once?"
Brooke looked up from her book, scrunching her eyebrows. "Did she? I mean, that sounds like her."
"Something about… telling me I was… like a dog who thought he was people."
She laughed. "I remember now. That was before we liked her."
Castiel smiled a little, though his eyes never looked up from his book.
Brooke gazed at her husband for a moment, noting once again how strange it was that he had de-aged. He looked like he could spread his wings at any moment and half-blind her with angelic light, because his vessel had been so young when she'd first met him. It was an odd feeling, knowing that they'd been together for so many years, yet seeing his face now unmarred by age or worry. The only thing missing from the facade was the spiky hair; she smiled as she remembered it.
As if on cue, reacting to her memories of a time long past, an ominous rumble of thunder rolled across the sky overhead, the sound shifting from right to left. Brooke lifted her eyes and stared at the ceiling, trailing the sound. It went away after several seconds, but then a bright flash of lightning lit up the night, followed immediately by a BOOM! of thunder, very close.
The rain began right after this, a torrential downpour from what had previously been nothing.
Brooke found herself very slowly moving to glance at her husband.
His eyes, too, were moving away from his book, and making their way to her face.
They each glanced at the other out of the corners of their eyes.
Another flash lit up the living room from behind the curtains. Another BOOM! of thunder. The hairs on the backs of Brooke's arms stood up. "You're not doin' that… are you, Castiel?" Her voice came out as a whisper, warmth pooling between her legs, her heart rate increasing. There had been a time, many years ago, in which a sudden thunderstorm like this meant only one thing.
Castiel closed the book he'd been reading, his blue eyes very intense. Icy. Electric. "Would you like me to be doing it?" he asked, very calmly.
Several lustful thoughts flashed across her mind, and she expected him to react to them, before remembering again that he could not hear her thoughts. Even after so many months without telepathy, she still sometimes forgot. She swallowed, licked her lips, opened her mouth. He was staring so intently that she found herself tongue-tied. This had been so much easier when he simply knew her every whim.
Yet, even without telepathy, he seemed to understand certain things, like the fact that he was making it very difficult for her to find words. He breathed deeply through his nose and ordered, "Speak!"
The words tumbled out of her mouth so fast that they seemed to be one long word: "I want you to fuck me so hard!"
He hummed in satisfaction, though it came out as a growl and leaned against her on the couch, pressing her backwards into the arm. The books got in the way, so he plucked hers from her white-knuckled hands and placed them both on the coffee table. Then he turned back to her, noticing how wide her eyes were. "Tell more more," he said, leaning into her again, pressing his mouth to her neck, feeling the goosebumps raised there against his lips.
"W-What?" she asked, in a tone that suggested she was finding it very difficult to think coherently.
"Tell me what you want."
"I want your mouth," she breathed, tangling her fingers into his hair.
"Where?"
"Everywhere…"
So, he placed his mouth everywhere, removing her clothes as they got in the way. He kissed and licked and sucked his way down her body until she felt like every nerve was on fire.
Only half-coherent, she breathed, "It almost feels like… Grace."
Castiel paused, mouth hovering above one of her thighs, and looked up at her. "You miss it. My Grace." It was not a question.
She stared down at his face between her legs. "Always. Forever."
His expression softened for a moment, and he filed that information away in some part of his brain for later. He would have to think of new ways to make her feel that fire in her veins. Perhaps a feather for tickling…? That lubricant she'd told him about, once—the kind that felt warm and tingly on the skin?
"Please," she said, her voice husky.
And he remembered where he was, and took a deep breath through his nose, to smell her arousal. Without another thought, he dipped his head and took her with his mouth, and lost himself to his work, feeling her hands tangled in his hair, listening to her ragged breathing, tiny whimpers, the tremors in her body. This he knew, angel or not.
He knew her every sound, every movement. He knew when he was going too fast or too slow, too soft or too hard. Too much stimulation on her clit—not enough. He did not need to read her mind now. He could read her body. And very soon—sooner than he might have thought—she writhed beneath him and lifted her hips, pushing herself further against him, incessant.
"Castiel!"
The fingers in his hair tightened until he felt trapped there, between her legs. Her thighs pushed powerfully against his hands. She called his name again and again, and each time sent a thrill through his body that ended in an ache between his legs.
Her cries quieted, fingers loosening in his hair, now running through it gently, smoothing it out as best she could. "Thank you," she murmured.
He smiled a little, pulling away from her, standing up. "You're welcome," he said. And then, "Stay."
She groaned, shifting on the loveseat. "I'm not goin' anywhere."
He smiled again and went to the kitchen to wash his face and rinse out his mouth. He dried himself off with a paper towel, then returned to her with a glass of water.
She sipped it with a smile, watching him, then her eyes flicked up to the ceiling as another boom of thunder exploded overhead. "That's my cue," she said.
He looked at her curiously.
She met his eyes with a mischievous look and stood up. "Come on." She took his hand and began to lead him to the bedroom.
"Wait," he said. "I need to put out the fire if we're going to leave the room."
She sighed dramatically. "Okay, Mr. Safety First." Then she smiled, to let him know she was joking, and flounced off to the bedroom.
He came into the bedroom a few minutes later to see her lounging on their bed. She smiled up at him, saying nothing.
"You're cold," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and cupping one of her breasts. She was, in fact, cold to the touch, her nipples hard.
"Not for lo-ong," she replied, in a sing-song tone.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk.
He stood, and began to remove his clothes.