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Castiel finds peace outside the bunker, on the concrete steps that lead down to the stoop, a quiet place where he can listen to the wind and the trees and look up to see blue sky.
He’s alive again. Has been, for about 22 hours. They’d had a welcome-back party last night, in which Dean had poured everybody, even Jack, some of his best whiskey, and Sam had gotten so drunk he’d fallen off his chair.
Castiel hadn’t gotten drunk, himself. When Jack had revived him, he had gifted him with new grace, and unlike Castiel’s former grace, this one was hot, precarious, passionate. It felt almost human in its changeableness. With it, Castiel still hadn’t been capable of drunkenness, but he had felt… energized. Powerful. Exuberantly joyful and yet painfully sorrowful, all at once. It was, he had told himself, his true happiness, to be surrounded by his family, despite the sober feeling, despite the grief at what he could never have.
Perhaps that’s what it meant, after all, to be alive; to see the man he loved again, to be hugged tight by him, to be told, We missed you, man. To have his heart broken every time Dean looked his way, or didn’t look his way; every time Dean touched him, or didn’t touch him.
Castiel reminds himself to be grateful to be alive, to be happy to no longer hide. (Would that he’d stayed hidden.)
No. No more cowardice.
Be.
Around him, the trees grow.
Castiel breathes air into new lungs. How many times had this body been rebuilt? How could he be new, and yet feel so old?
Eyes closed, Castiel listens.
A car on a distant highway plays a country song.
A song sparrow trills.
A frog croaks for its mate.
The wind blows through the leaves.
The trees grow.
With a shriek, the bunker door opens. Boots tap down on concrete. The door bangs shut. A body climbs onto the step beside Castiel.
This new grace is unruly, jumping at the proximity of the body, flaring embarrassingly towards it.
“You hiding out or something?” Dean asks.
“No,” Castiel lies. “It’s peaceful out here.”
Dean is uncharacteristically quiet for a moment before saying, “Guess it’s nicer if your ass is made of angel dust.”
“You don’t have to be here.”
“No, I— I want to be.”
Castiel gives Dean a skeptical look.
Dean throws him a smile. “Best seat in the house. Or, out of the house. Bunker.”
Beside his “best friend.”
Castiel couldn’t regret confessing his feelings to Dean Winchester, because doing so meant that Dean was alive and well.
Still, it hurts, to be so vulnerable, to have this thing offset the balance of their friendship, to know Dean must be uncomfortable because of it, too.
Dean was trying.
He shouldn’t have to.
A woodpecker pecks in a tree northwest of them.
“You know, that was a whole lot you dropped on me, before you left,” Dean says.
Castiel hadn’t expected to come back.
“We didn’t get a chance to, uh. Talk about it.” Dean’s looking at him, but Castiel can’t meet Dean’s eyes for more than a second or so; his new grace is too wild, flaring up at the sight of green eyes, at the shape of Dean’s brow, at the movement of his lips, making Castiel feel hot and tingly.
It was easier to look away. It wasn’t like concrete was uninteresting, when you thought about it.
Dean goes on. “I mean, you. You really meant all that— everything you said?”
“I did.”
Dean picks at his jeans. “I’ve been trying to make it real. All that stuff about me being, you know. The fifth element or whatever.” There’s a pause. “Been trying to treat Jack better. Help out more. Buy some white duct tape, make myself a little outfit.”
“I told you your strengths, not your inadequacies.”
“Yeah, well. You’ve always seen the good in me, you know? More than there is. But I want to— I want to live up to that. How you see me.”
“You don’t have to change.”
“I know.” Dean’s kindness was only making the whole thing more embarrassing. Hopefully he’d be done soon. “I, uh. I want to. You make me want to.”
It was too much to take. “Dean. I came out here to be alone.”
Dean falls quiet. Castiel has been rude, now. He refuses to make eye contact. It’ll break him, if he looks. He focuses on concrete.
“You wanna talk about it?” Dean’s voice is firm, now. Tightened by anger.
“What?”
“Whatever it is you’ve got stuck up your ass.”
Castiel rolls his eyes.
“Look, I’ve been through it, too, alright? So has Sam. Whatever happened down there— It feels stupid, but it helps to talk about it.”
Even angry, he was still being so kind. “The Empty isn’t Hell, Dean. I wasn’t being tortured.”
Dean listens quietly, green eyes open, surrounded by the matching forest. Castiel could find peace in those eyes.
He flicks his gaze away. Or, he could lie. He could take advantage of Dean’s expectations and pretend it was his experience in the Empty making him moody.
“I was dreaming, that’s all.”
“What, uh. What about?”
“Everything. Anything. Jack. Claire.” You.
Dean nods. “You know, they’re glad you’re back.”
“I know.” Claire was even coming to visit in a week or so.
“They missed you. Real bad.”
Castiel focuses on the concrete between his shoes. A leaf had left an imprint there. It had been a birch leaf, Cas figures, based on the oval shape and tapered tip.
Dean’s voice is soft. “I missed you, too.”
Cas looks. He can’t help it. He looks.
“I, uh. When you said you, you wanted—“
“—It’s alright, Dean. Nothing has to change.”
“No, that’s— it does. It has. Cas—“ Dean reaches out a hand and touches Castiel’s thigh, ever so gently gripping him there, and Castiel could fall, could fly through the forests in his eyes. Flocking to the spots where Dean’s fingers rest, lighting Cas’s thigh on fire, bursting from his skin, Castiel’s grace goes wild.
Dean doesn’t seem to feel it. He leaves his hand where it is, atop Castiel’s thigh. “—I want it to change. I want everything you said— I—“
Castiel reaches out with both hands and pulls Dean’s hand into his lap. He grips it tightly. It takes everything in him not to speak, not to ruin this somehow, not to belittle himself, or goad Dean, or get angry at nothing. He squeezes Dean’s hand.
Dean squeezes back. A second hand joins his first. They’re each gripping each other with both hands, now, the pile of appendages in Castiel’s lap ungainly with volume. Dean leans in close, terribly close. “You have me. You know you have me, right?”
Cas breathes in a shaky gulp of air.
“I love you so fucking much. And I’m so fucking pissed at you for leaving like that." Suddenly, Dean's eyes are red. "You were dead. You were dead, Cas. I needed you, and— and you were gone, and I can’t. I can’t.” Dean sobs.
Castiel doesn’t know what to say. Joy and guilt and grief rise in his core. Dean’s hands tighten around Castiel’s until Castiel loses blood flow, and it’s only grace now, pumping through his fingers. Castiel grips Dean tighter in return, careful not to hurt Dean with his new strength, careful that he can still feel the blood rushing under Dean’s skin. They hold each other, feeling too much. “You saved me,” Castiel manages to say, though his voice is rough in his throat. Jack’s grace is so confusing, not making this any easier. When his old grace had been at full strength, Castiel could easily shut off tears or emotion, could certainly speak through tears, if he even had any, but now— now he can’t stop feeling. “I’m here,” he manages to say.
“Fuck you,” Dean says through tears. Castiel blinks through his own. “Don’t you do that again. Don’t you ever do that again.”
“Dean.”
“Stay here. I mean it. If you— just stay.”
“I will.”
Dean releases Castiel’s hands and slumps down into Cas’s neck, fingers knotting in Castiel’s coat. Cas wraps his arms around him. They grip each other tightly for several minutes, on the concrete steps, listening to the birds, to the trees, to the distant hum of cars on the freeway. Castiel begins to doubt, and has to tell himself not to. After gathering his courage for several minutes, Castiel kisses Dean on the temple, using the touch to radiate a bit of grace into Dean, reducing the inflammation around his eyes, healing the cuts and scars he’d acquired in the last few months, cleaning out his veins, arteries, and liver, and repairing a strained ligament he finds in Dean’s knee that Dean hadn’t complained about.
Dean shudders, but doesn’t say anything. His face pushes against Castiel’s neck; Castiel can feel the flutter of Dean’s eyelashes. He can feel the press of Dean’s lips, tentative and moist.
Strange, to kiss and be kissed by Dean Winchester.
Strange, to sit here in dappled sunlight, safe.
“This is going to take some getting used to,” Castiel admits.
“‘sa matter?” Dean’s hands unball from the coat, he holds Cas in a more relaxed way, and pulls away just far enough to speak.
“Nothing. That’s what’s so strange.”
“Yeah.” Dean comes back forward, resting their heads together. “I know what you mean.”
Being this close is incredibly distracting; there’s the color of Dean’s skin, the small collection of freckles spangling his face, the translucent hairs on the apple of his cheek turning brown as they grow closer to his jaw, the wrinkles of a smile at the corners of eyes.
“You look happy,” Castiel says, still adjusting.
“Yeah.”
“You’re in love with me.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Castiel sighs out his disbelief.
“Listen, Cas.” Dean sits up straight. “There’s something else I— I’m sorry I— I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner, and I’m sorry I made you feel like, like you didn’t belong or like you couldn’t be happy or you weren’t worth the whole world. Because you are, man. You’re— I can’t handle it if you throw yourself away again.”
“Dean.”
“You’re family, man. How many times do I got to say it? You’re family.”
Castiel holds Dean’s hand in his own. He may start believing it.
“I told you, I want to do better. I want to do right by you. And, listen. I’m an asshole. I know I’m bad at this kind of thing. Relationships, I mean. I haven’t— I haven’t ever been with anybody for longer than a year, and you know how bad that broke. I just— I mean, I’m gonna try, I just—“
“—Dean.”
“—I want to make sure you think this through, before you get into something you regret. It’s not gonna be all sunshine and roses, you know? I mean, I kinda suck ass.”
“Shut up.” Castiel cups Dean’s chin and touches their lips lightly together. “I know you.”
Dean’s eyes are wide and sparkling.
“We’ve had plenty of conflicts in the past, and we’ve gotten through them all. I’m not worried abou—“
The kiss catches Cas mid-word.
Cas’s grace nearly explodes. It surges through him, bright and shining and hot, not with the piercing, so-hot-it’s-cold heat of his old grace, but with a warm, crackling, sun-heat. A just-kissed heat. A love-making heat. It jumps at the touch of Dean’s lips, it sparks at the touch of Dean’s tongue, it pops when Cas hears his own moan at Dean’s hand on his lower back.
Dean draws him closer, deepens the intensity of the kiss, and Cas can’t do this alone.
“Dean,” Cas warns, before pressing their lips back together, putting two fingers to Dean’s temple, and letting loose.
“Fuck,” Dean says as the circuit closes, as it’s in them both now, roaring brightly. Dean opens his eyes and they’re shining gold. “What— the fuck.”
Cas pulls them back together, trying to show Dean: this was him, now, was all. He’d changed, too.
Dean shivers with heat, pulls Cas closer, and as their tongues slide together the heat becomes glorious and manageable. It flows through them, beating with Dean’s heartbeat, brightened by Dean’s soul, Dean’s love. They kiss for what feels like not long enough but must be quite a while, their thighs pressed together as they sit on the step, Dean’s arm looped around Cas’s torso, Cas’s hand on Dean’s thigh.
Just as Castiel is beginning to think he could kiss forever, “Cas,” Dean whispers, “Cas, I think I’m high.”
“Oh.”
“Can— can you—“
“Sorry.” Hands shaking, Cas retreats back into his body, shuffling and shrinking his grace into what feels like an impossibly small vessel. “I think Jack gave me a bit too much.”
“The hell you say.” Dean leans his head back onto the walkway above the steps. He stretches his legs out straight in front of him. Staring at the sky, he whispers, “Fuck.”
Cas turns towards him. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It was too much for me, and I didn’t want to blow the bunker’s power supply, so—“
“Yeah, no, whatever. It’s cool.”
“Are you alright?”
“I think I’m tasting molecules.”
“You probably are.”
“The— the sky is still up, right? Tell I’m not gonna fall.”
“You’re not gonna fall.” Castiel places a hand on Dean’s shoulder, as if to hold him to the ground.
“Cool.”
Cas holds a finger in front of Dean’s face. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Too many. That’s too— too many.”
Cas withdraws his hand. “Close your eyes.” If Dean was seeing Castiel’s trueform, it could radically alter or even damage his brain. “Breathe.” Once Dean is breathing slowly, Cas takes his pulse, careful to keep his other hand on Dean’s shoulder to ‘hold him down.’ 150 beats per minute. Elevated, but certainly not dangerous. “How do you feel?”
“Hot. Dizzy.”
“I’m sorry. I was excited.”
“Yeah, no, yeah. It was. I am so hot.”
Castiel already knows Dean won’t allow him to take his temperature. “Jack will be able to help. I’ll go get him—“
“—Nononono.” Dean grips Cas’s arm just above where he’s gripping his shoulder. “It’s not bad. I’ll ride it out.”
“Are you sure your body can handle the pressure?”
“Trust me, I’ve had worse trips.” Dean breathes out. “Just stay.”
“Okay, Dean.”
Dean loosens his grip on Cas’s wrist and Cas loosens his grip on Dean’s shoulder and soon they’re holding hands. Cas keeps a finger on Dean’s pulse, monitors his breathing, and admires the way his face looks in the dappled sunlight. His own grace is still thrumming to the beat of Dean’s heart; it’s gathered in Castiel’s fingers where they intertwine with Dean’s; it calls to Dean in the same way Castiel’s heart does. He’s never been an angel like this before. He could get used to it.
“You wanna know something stupid?” Dean asks, eyes still closed.
“Do you want to tell me something stupid?”
There’s a smile playing at Dean’s beautiful, pink, just-kissed lips. “I still wanna kiss you.”
“That could be arranged.”
Dean shakes his head. “You’ll fuck me up again.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
Castiel leans down over Dean’s face. He brushes a hand through Dean’s hair to let him know he’s there. Dean’s lips are parted, his breathing still a little fast, heart rate climbing. He doesn’t protest Cas’s obvious intentions. Cas lowers himself until their lips touch and slowly presses a kiss into Dean’s mouth. His grace sparks and crackles through his lips to his fingertips and back again. Ready for it this time, Cas takes it slow, keeps the kiss chaste, and doesn’t share any grace with Dean. They kiss like that a few times, just lips and spit and the barest hint of tongue, before Dean turns his head away.
“You’re fucking me up.”
“No, I’m not.” Castiel is positive he had kept his grace to himself.
“You are.” Dean is smiling, and it’s infectious, as the implications of his words suddenly become clear. Dean was disarmed by a kiss from him. What a strange new power to hold. What a fortuitous circumstance. Dean’s keeping his head turned away, as if to hide his smile. It’s… cute.
“I am deeply in love with you,” Castiel says.
Dean squeezes his hand.
“I want to do this every day. I want to hold you every night.”
“‘Kay,” says Dean.
Castiel will hold him to it. He leans down and kisses the cheek Dean’s showing him, hears up close and personal the shuddering breath Dean breathes in. He pets through Dean’s hair and kisses his forehead, his eyebrows, his temple, his cheek again, his cheekbone, his jaw.
“Cas.”
“Hm?”
“What’s that sound?”
Cas listens. Other than their relatively rapid heartbeats, there’s nothing unusual. “What sound?”
“There’s a— a creepy sound. Like cracking.”
Oh. “That’s the trees growing.”
“What?”
“That’s the sound of trees growing. This forest is very young. That’s part of why I love it so much. When European settlers came to this region, they destroyed the forests for lumber. Only a hundred and sixty years ago was the forest service established to plant new trees.”
“Don’t tell me you were here a hundred and sixty years ago.”
“No. There was a display about it in the local library.”
“You fucking nerd.”
“I’m sorry you find the sound creepy. I’ve always found it inspirational. It’s easy to look at a tree, and think it’s unchanging. But trees grow. Just like humans.”
Dean is quiet, and they listen to the trees together as the effects of Castiel’s grace wear off. Dean’s heart rate returns to normal; he opens his eyes and sits up. Elbows on knees, he stares at the bunker door.
“Feeling better?” Castiel asks.
“Yeah,” Dean says, a roughness to his voice.
“You should drink some water,” Castiel advises. “Hydration is very important for humans, especially after a period of elevated heart rate.”
“Yeah.” Despite his statement, Dean remains sitting.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Castiel reaches over to inspect him more closely but Dean bats his hand away.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll just. Go in in a minute.”
Castiel considers this act of procrastination, considers what it might mean for Dean to go back home. He’d have to face Jack and Sam— particularly Sam—, a person who, when he was younger, hadn’t shied away from sexist and homophobic jokes, a person who meant the world to Dean, who Dean had raised, who Dean admired, a person who Castiel highly doubted knew about this aspect of Dean, despite having known him his whole life.
Castiel squeezes Dean’s hand and Dean squeezes back. They sit there for a few more minutes, surrounded by growing trees.
“I’ll go with you,” Castiel says.
Dean looks at Cas out of the sides of his eyes, processing this offer in his own time, in his own way. Then, his eyes wrinkle. He releases Cas’s hand and slaps his knees. “Well, what the hell are we doing sitting around out here? I can’t even feel my own ass.”
With a smile of his own, Castiel gets up off the steps and follows Dean through the door and into the place they call home.