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It was Wednesday.
Castiel had a craving for norimaki. The Sushi Bar didn't open until noon and he doubted Biggersons were adding raw fish to their menus any time soon.
He approached the Kino Royale at 10am on his walk back from a development show house, which had plastic wrapped furniture and an unfortunately early cleaning crew. There was a trickle of young and strangely costumed people entering the cinema.
LOTR Marathon
Apparently for $40 you could see The Hobbit, three additional movies, and partake in a soda foundation and endless nachos. The day was cloudy promising rain. Castiel wandered in.
"Hey trenchcoat dude." The pimpled ticketseller greeted him. "Didn't guess this would be your gig? But it does contain subtitles." The youth nodded sagely.
Castiel handed over his money and made his way along to receive his complementary soda and breakfast nachos (with egg). Lunch nachos would have chicken and evening nachos ripped beef.
He wordlessly passed his cardboard tray of nachos to a tall man in a bearskin who had inhaled his own portion. "This orc thanks you." The man called after Castiel as he made his way into the darkened theatre.
Castiel slept through most of The Hobbit, which was surprising and subsequently annoying when he overheard his fellow viewers' enthusiasm as he retrieved another soda during the interval.
The tug of sleep was inescapable. In his moments of lucidity Castiel wondered if his body was trying to catch up on all the additional hours he had been denying it.
The girl with the pointed fake ears in the row in front of him was sniffling as she pulled back from her wizard-hatted boyfriend, "Denis, please listen to this part."
Castiel concentrated on the movie in response. He read the promised subtitles of the strange invented language. The immortal Arwen asked her human lover if he remembered when they first met, and Castiel hand burned with the imprint of Dean's soul.
When Aragorn spoke of how his lover promised to bind herself to him forsaking immortal life, Castiel gasped as a profound bond was made manifest in this cinematic art form before his eyes.
The next words seared into him, hotter than holy fire, branding him, flaring his grace in an instant, so that mutters of an electrical power surge grumbled through the audience. Sidelights flickered and the sound stuttered on the stereo speakers.
"I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone."
Castiel was riveted to his seat as the elf handed the mortal her glowing pendant. Her grace. The lover took it under protest, but it was given with free will and undying love.
The air was thick and cloying. The cinema too small and confining.
Castiel reeled insensible the scene replaying itself in his mind. The words all spoken in the crafted Elvish, then in English, then by his own voice in Enochian but not to Aragorn.
When the final scene of the final movie played, a different pimpled youth asked Castiel to leave so that he could shut down that screen for the night. The muffled sound of car crashes and gun shots came through from the neighboring movie, and Castiel looked up. The place was deserted. The screen white. The late night attendant, who sometimes waved Castiel off, was standing at the end of his row with a garbage bag and a litter picker.
"What happened?" Castiel's voice was hoarse again from disuse and dehydration.
"They saved the world."
"They always do." Castiel stood. He drained the last third of his room temperature gas-less soda. "What about the lovers?"
"Huh? Oh you mean Aragorn. Did you not watch the movies?"
"I may have drifted."
"But before. Have you not seen them before?"
"This was a new experience."
"She becomes mortal and they end up together. But seriously did you dig the battle scenes?"
Castiel was not intentionally rude but he avoided the irrelevant question and made his way out onto the rain dampened street.
He stumbled into the late night Biggersons and ordered a coffee. . There was an angel outside. The angel tablet thrummed.
Castiel summoned his vestige of grace and when he blinked he was in the derelict graveyard. The cats were absent, away on feline business he supposed. He waited for the host to make an appearance but the night passed second by ticking second and no garrison member appeared. No pawn of Naomi came close.
"I know they have found me." He said to the fountain as the morning dew made patterns on the grass stems. The armless and nose-less angelic representation remained stone and unmoving. There must be stone funerary angels in graveyards across the world. Each one subtly different from another.
There are Biggersons in every town in the States. Sometimes more than one. All the same. Identical.
If he could use the tablet's desire to evade detection….
In Santa Fe he borrowed a cell phone and called Tess Blair to apologize for his absence.
In Lincoln he used the joint's pay phone to try one of Dean's cell numbers but he got a recording of Dean's strange attempt at humor and the voice telling him to leave a message. He hung up.
In Brooklyn he ordered a cheese burger. He ate one in Kleinfeltersville.
In Dearborn he spilt his milkshake.
His coat was dry of the substance when he used the restroom in Decatur.
He first sensed Ion in Fort Worth.
He knew they were getting closer when he smelled them in Atlantic City.
By the time he came upon the devastation he was weary and heartsore. Burned out eyes spoke of the futility of it all.
He wondered how much of his existence he had forgotten and if Naomi would erase Dean from his mind.
He had never been so happy to see Crowley but he kept his expression schooled.
As the bullet worked its way through his mortal flesh, he sucked air. This air of this day, that somewhere on this continent Dean also breathed.
He almost grinned at Crowley's assumption that touching the tablet broke the connection with Naomi. The tablet had caused a flare in his grace but his ultimate disobedience of a direct order was the kicker. Unfortunately the demon's inaccurate reasoning had brought him stumbling to the correct location.
When the tablet was ripped from him, he wondered if it would kill him.
If he was dying then he couldn't leave without laying eyes on Dean once more. If Dean was asleep he would watch over him. If he was with his new man, then Castiel would not interrupt. If he was with Sam, he would chance bidding farewell to both brothers. It didn't truly matter what Dean was doing, where he was, or who he was with, Castiel's focused narrowed.
Ion was rabbitting on about his rebellion. The words were like Babel. Castiel experienced pain more profound than when he fell onto a trawler off Delacroix, as he pushed his own fingers into his flesh.
'For Dean,' he thought as his fingertips found the angel bullet.
A flush of victory when he held the weapon, moved to a splinter of regret for his traitorous sibling as he forced the bullet into the other angel's brain.
Now that he was unguarded, he knew he would not remain free for long. He needed to take his chance. He needed to find Dean before his injuries proved more than his remaining grace could knit.
Could human bodies cope with a tablet sized hole?
Modern medicine had astounded Castiel in its invention. He had once observed as Dean watched an episode of Dr Sexy where a man had been impaled on a garden gnome. The patient had survived and was well enough to go home after the advertisement.
Maybe there was hope, if he could get to Dean.
He didn't know if he could locate the hunter using their bond, but he had to attempt it.
"Dean." He intoned placing all intent he could muster into the word. Silently on the human plane but at sonic volume on the celestial he boomed the Enochian word for bondmate.
The tarmac was wet and rough under his cheek. He ached down to his very bones from the impact. His blood pooled on the dark asphalt.
It hadn't worked.
He was in the middle of nowhere. On a deserted road. Alone.
Why had he not risked it, said something, gambled on holding or losing Dean? The potential loss had always outweighed the chance that Dean would respond to his affection.
In a broken whisper he spoke into the night, "Dean I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all eternity without you."
He had never told his charge that he needed him too. Needed him so completely that it filled Castiel. Departing grace did not leave the angel empty, it made room for this.
Need bursting from him without its receptacle to accept it.
Castiel grieved.
He saw the river in Purgatory. The dry leaf bank. The grey tree trunks. Black leviathan goo on his filthy clothes. The desolation. The guilt. The necessity to keep himself apart from Dean for his own safety.
Would Dean understand that he has used the same reasoning now?
The dark trees that lined the road morphed into the Purgatory trees. The day that Dean and the vampire had found him played in his mind. The hug. Being held in Dean's arms, as if he was the most important being in existence, instead of the least deserving of his attention.
Dean had said those words then. He needed him.
In the crypt, Dean's (beautiful) face marred by the beating from Castiel's own fists, and still Dean pleaded that he needed him.
I need you Dean.
Need you…
Dean…
Dean…
A beam of light and the roar of the engine.
The car stopping.
His heart rising to fill his throat with hope.
"A little help here."
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Another Author's Note:
I was listening to Set The Fire To The Third Bar by Snow Patrol ft Martha Wainwright as I wrote this. "I'm miles from where you are, I lay down on the cold ground I, I pray that something picks me up And sets me down in your warm arms" It is a beautiful song of two lovers separated by distance. Here is a link if anyone wants to imagine Cas and Dean in the lyrics and singers watch?v=bfa9yxCpWoA