"I never understood why you bought them if you never intended on using them."

"It's a human thing to do, buying stuff you don't need or want," Dean said, distracted with tuning the guitar in his lap. "Or an American thing." Judging by the ear-grinding sound it made, Cas surmised that might take awhile.

"We did want them -at least I did- but not to necessarily play them," Sam continued, sitting beside Dean on chairs they took from the kitchen. ("Dining room," Dean would insist. "The area here surrounding the table is henceforth known as the dining room. If this is our house then we're gonna make it the fanciest house we've ever lived in. Ya know, give Cas false expectations.") "We both played a little when we were kids so it's like a small reminder."

Dean snorted. "I learned. You played shadow."

"Don't let him fool you," he said ignoring Dean, looking straight past him to Cas resting on the sofa to their left. "Whenever I asked him to teach me a couple of chords he did it willingly. No begging, no mimicking."

"Exactly. You were trying to be me."

"What's so horrible about your brother looking up to you? I think it's fair to say, Dean, that he still does."

Dean and Sam shared a brief glance before diligently returning to tuning their guitars. The intimacy they had between them was easy enough to explain; the admiration both held for one another was a very different creature, which Cas found perplexing. To him they were one in the same, especially when one was in a relationship: are there not supposed to be admirable qualities in the one (more then one) you love? Isn't that in part what made you come to love them to begin with? Almost a decade on earth and there was still so much to learn about humans. Granted the Winchester brothers aren't like most humans. But maybe, because of that, they are the best to tutor Cas at a life of mortality. Not quite human meets not quite normal.

A short February day was coming to a close, the sky rosy in the large picture window behind the brothers. Dirty dinner plates and utensils sat in the sink (in the kitchen part of the kitchen), Dean's antediluvian well of knowledge trying to relieve Sam and Cas of guilt, that the "dishes aren't going anywhere" and will not rot by sitting there a couple of minutes. The cold ground outside was bereft of snow, much to Castiel's chagrin; the boys on the other hand were more appreciative as they reasoned Cas would somehow weasel his way out of shoveling the driveway. Cas was, of course, fully aware of his abuse of power and reveled in it anyway. What this power was he wasn't entirely sure. Dean said it was "the kavorka." Sam said "that's not a real word." Dean finalized that Sam didn't have a drop of it. No longer an angel, he still had the allure of one.

Sam, finally finished with tuning, strummed the strings as if they were made of fine china. "I'm not even sure if I remember any songs."

"It's like riding a bike." Dean was hunched so far over the guitar he was speaking more to it than either Cas or Sam. "You don't think you remember, but your body does. Play a couple of notes and the song should come back to you."

"Well, I might remember one song."

"So help me god, if it's 'Smoke on the Water' you're sleeping on the couch tonight."

Unable to resist Sam plucked a string.

"Really?"

And another.

"You're really going to risk it?"

Another twang of the guitar meant a positive answer.

"Alright kid, you're grounded." Dean lunged for Sam's guitar, his brother turning away and laughing, swatting back at Dean.

"Why must Sam not play that song?" Castiel had heard the song played on the radio many times since coming in contact with the Winchesters. There wasn't anything fundamentally wrong with it; a rock song like any other.

"It's one-" he slapped Dean's hand away "-It's one of the first songs people learn how to play."

"Nobody knows how to play it. They learn the first twelve notes, accompany it by going 'Dun dun dun' just to annoy people like me."

"Do you know the entire song, Sam?"

"'Course not."

Dean snickered. "Damn amateurs."

Petty, but such is their way; Cas shook his head. "Well is there a song both of you know?"

"I guess so. Back then there was only one guitar between us, and getting our hands on one at all was tough enough. So a well polished harmony and melody, rehearsed little diddy you'd hear on the radio isn't something you'd get." Finally resting his hands near his person, Dean looked to Sam and asked with surprising softness. "Did you even like playing or learning from me? I remember being a gigantic hardass to you. Most people woulda left splinters in my head if I treated them like that."

Sam didn't answer right away, those days of the past, his early life, must have bloomed one after another in his head – snapshots in a photo album. "It... wasn't really about teaching and learning. I wanted to do it because Dean did it, of course. But the crucial reason I did it was because it was something Dean and I could share that wasn't hunting or learning how to. Instead of disassembling and cleaning a gun, we spent time as normal kids, listening to and playing music and fighting about something that wasn't work related. We treated each other like brothers and not comrades."

"But I was such a dick, Sammy."

"Oh I was pissed back then, trust me. I would have gladly punched you in the balls. But I grew up. I got wise to how Dad treated you. He put so much pressure on you I have no idea how you could stand under it all. You had every right to have your bad days. But you never did hurt me, like say something you couldn't take back. With all the "I love you"s Dad peppered you with after the fact, could you say that about him?"

"Intruder" was a word that manifested itself in Cas's mind since joining the boys in their departure from "the life." They were together first: from the moment Sam was born over 30 years ago, they had a bond, even only as family. That was a milestone Cas would never catch up to.

A life without him... Would life be so simple to continue should something catastrophic happen to him? "You're not here because we pity you," Sam would say. "We know you wouldn't stand for it. We want you here and so do you. Dean alone is fine, but you're what was missing. If it was just you and me it's still incomplete, right? We'd function as a couple but barely. I never thought a poly relationship for anybody could work out but it did for us. We function together as a whole better than separate. Just like how it was when we were in the business."

One cannot intrude when they are the third of a whole, the other 33%. The looks they shared between them were their own language, try as he might to decipher it, imprinted from being brothers and brothers-in-arms. Memories, and more importantly the shared emotions from their childhood another nuance to the lexicon. Cas wanted to learn it, to pick apart subtleties, but he pushed aside his petty desires and let the two have what was always theirs; it would remain theirs alone.

"Any requests?" Dean asked of both Castiel and Sam.

It took no time at all for Cas to cheekily suggest, "'Smoke on the Water?'"

"See what you started, Sam? Tonight I'll be tryin' to sleep and I'll hear him out here playing off-key and going 'Dun dun dun' and I won't sleep and I'll be cranky and you, you Sammy, might find all your clothes on the lawn."

Cas's eyes sparkled with good humor. "I promise I won't Dean. Well, list off a couple of suggestions and see if they're shared between you."

The next 10 minutes were spent playing opening chords of songs and having it either rejected or passed on due to both of them not having it memorized. As Cas figured, Dean shot down most of the songs Sam learned or partially learned because his "taste is as bad as the food you eat," which was a polite way of saying why the hell do you know that? Cas noticed inspiration strike Sam by the twitch of his eyebrows as he began to play... something Cas knows he heard somewhere before.

"Man, that's one of the first songs you tried to teach me. I'm surprised you remembered it. Hell, I'm surprised I remembered."

"That's why I picked it, so start playin' already."

It took a moment for Sam to catch up mentally and rhythmically before sliding himself into the song like it were a dance partner. The notes were sometimes off, though an insignificant amount for someone who has not picked up a guitar in over a decade. His eyebrows would draw in but never did he stop or become distracted by his errors, nodding a little as he caught up and correct himself.

Next to him, Dean melted into it, his stage-fright defrosting as his mind narrowed to focus on concentration. It stopped seeming so much like a chore -Cas nagged me into doing this- and more into something we wanted to do. Something he should have done.

"This song has lyrics..." Cas thought out loud. Loud enough for the two to pick up.

"Lyrics weren't part of the deal, babe." Dean nearly twisted his fingers into knots in shock. As he let the misstep slide, Sam must have felt the same way.

"We, um... we don't..."

"We don't sing."

"Sing in the way you would like us to," Sam attempted to smooth over Dean's edge.

Damn Winchesters. Cas would have to take matters into his own hands. He rose from the couch and stood behind Dean and leaned in close to Dean's ear. "'But I wonder does he know? Has he ever felt like this? And I know that you'd be here right now–'"

Dean's chuckle was husky. "When'd you learn the words?"

"'If I could have let you know somehow.'"

"You, um... Your voice is... pretty ni–"

"'I guess,'" Cas and Sam both interrupted, with voices off-key and several notches louder than they should be.

"You know you two are ruining a classic, right?" muttered Dean.

Still at Dean's ear, Cas reassured him that if he was anxious about singing then he didn't have to, a kiss planted at the top of his head with the intention of easing him. Although Dean said he wasn't going to, Cas's interference or not, his body language said that he was relieved.

Keeping with the pace of the song Sam took over. Clearly out of his element, his voice small and breathy, he gave to the best of his ability. Castiel didn't think he would; his tiny venture into the talent that was song singing was only to get Dean hot under the collar. Sam continuing was... pleasant.

"'Every rose has its thorn. Just like every night has its dawn.'" A wistful look to Cas begged him to join him, that Cas was the one who encouraged him in the first place and that he should continue. Cas gently shook his head and ran a hand slow, slow, slow, through Sam's hair, him leaning into it like always and never breaking eye contact. "'Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song. Every rose has its thorn.'"

You're doing just fine, Sam.

Laying back down on the sofa, Cas closed his eyes. Unless Dean felt inspiration and thought the best course of action was a guitar solo, the song would be ending soon. The boys would stop playing. Sam would stop singing. This one is different, the voice his ears hear compared to the one he did as an angel. They would sing to him and never know: their souls spoke, all souls spoke, in the language of song, much as angels did eons ago. Their song of union, not only a physical one, was as bright as a sun, one that spiraled and twirled with his grace, filling in spaces Cas didn't know he had lost – or ever had.

But that was the past. The songs are sealed, the senses dulled. And that was fine. He was still alive to hear them at all. Losing his grace was the smallest price to pay compared to losing one or both of his mates. They sang, all the time, only he had to interpret it as a human would: words, actions, even inaction. And yes, actual song.

Using an analogy more befitting of Dean, his life -how he saw it through his grace- was one album, his human life, his quiet life, his shared life, was the next, a different sound but just as good. And he was there to listen.

As the song concluded, Sam, in one last act of defiance, plucked the first two notes of "Smoke on the Water" before Dean stomped on his foot.

Quiet in the sense that none of them were hunting anymore.