Title: growing fonder
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: future!fic
Pairings: none stated
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 185
Point of view: third
Prompt: Castiel, "Absence is such a large house that you'll walk through the walls, hang pictures in sheer air."
Sometimes, after Dean has drifted away into dreams of Alistair's caress and Azazel's laugh, Sam will quietly ask Castiel to tell him of Heaven and all the wonders found there.
The images are still bright in his mind, though he lacks the words with his clumsy human tongue. He can still taste ambrosia, still feel the eternal spring breeze through the pure feathers of his wings, still hear how the choirs sang Father's praise, can still smell the untainted air of Paradise.
The lack is remote now, far enough away to no longer hurt, and he softly spins tales that he knows are lies, that Sam believes only because he wants to, and, too, Castiel knows, he is growing more human by the heartbeat.
Heaven's absence no longer aches. He fills up the wounds with apple pie and Led Zeppelin, with jokes and shared silence, with a road that stretches from one ocean to another (with two men who define brother better than any angel he ever knew).
He survived the war, and if the price is being cast out, so be it.