"High again, are we? It's becoming a pattern." Castiel is on the floor. He can't remember exactly when he got there, but he knows how. He'll always know how. There's nowhere else to end up when your wings get cut. He blinks his eyes open blearily. There's a familiar face staring down at him, and his expression doesn't hold pity or disgust. Only the terrible aching empathy of being the last left.
"Come to ask us to hide you?" Castiel asks, as though he has the power to make that decision. Dean would shoot Crowley where he stands. Crowley's mouth twists into something that could have been a smile, once. It's all ash, now.
"Do I need a reason to visit my favorite angel?" Castiel should probably get off the floor. He's naked, and he's cold, and he was human long enough to love and lose hot showers. Then again, whenever Crowley usually shows up while Castiel is nude, they end up fucking. He stays longer when they have sex. He doesn't taunt Castiel for the way he clings.
"Compared against who? Lucifer?" Crowley stiffens at the name. Castiel doesn't. So goes their mutual senses of self-preservation. "You shouldn't call me that, anyway."
"You are what you are," Crowley argues.
"Until I'm not," Castiel says back, "and I'm not."
He waits for Crowley to snipe at him again. It never comes. Something splintered and horrible as rotting driftwood lodges in Castiel's gut. "Why are you here, Crowley?"
"Like I said, isn't it enough to want to see you?" Castiel stands up to get a better look at him. He's more well kempt than anyone else in the Apocalypse. All that lingering hellfire in his body has to be good for something other than running away, and Crowley uses it to iron his suits. "You are the one who leaves the devil's trap open." In the very first end days, that invitation had been open to any demon who dared. Now, Crowley's the only one who it would keep out.
Castiel is still alive for the sake of loyalty. Crowley is still alive for- He might call it cleverness. Castiel would call him a coward and mean it as a compliment. Most of the people who made it past the end of the world were cowards. The brave ones all got themselves killed.
He'd never want Crowley to be brave or loyal.
"Don't go." It's a useless thing to ask of him, and so Castiel says it with very little hope. Crowley was never an angel. He's hardly even been a friend. He has been a constant, and even, at times, someone who makes the dying world a little brighter. Now, in his eyes, Castiel sees the same fear he's seen in infected men before they're shot to spare them the virus.
Crowley says nothing but wraps him in a hug so hard it bruises Castiel's ribs. Castiel holds tight, until he can't, and he doesn't.
He never sees Crowley again.