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Tall redwoods clipped past their periphery as the Impala cut through the Sierra Nevadas on Interstate 80. Dean, infirmed, read in the backseat. Castiel, in shotgun, heard an occasional click of the tongue and, rhythmically, the soft scratch of a turned page. Sam drove on Castiel’s left, brows furrowed.
Every once in a while, voice low, Dean would recite a passage of the anthology to Jack. Castiel saw Jack smile and blink through the rearview mirror, only faintly understanding but eagerly holding onto every word. At one point Dean let out a chortle. When Jack leaned over, he explained, “This guy, Arnold Friend,” his fingers traced a line on the page, “as accurate a Lucifer as I’ve seen.” He had passed by other descriptions of gods and devils with a similar laugh.
They touched past Sacramento and arrived at Santa Rosa by sundown. Sam steered them into a suburban neighborhood washed white with wealth, into a nondescript cul-de-sac with a Spanish street name. A man in a dark blue sweater and neat jeans came out. He clasped Sam’s hand in a wide swing. The man had thinning black hair and a square jaw softening comfortably into middle age. Of course, this must be Sam’s friend, Castiel realized. College buddies, Sam had said. They had matriculated at the same time. But Sam looked older, less worn than lean. He had a sharpness that cut into this dusk-soaked, civilian tableau.
When Sam returned to the driver’s seat with a ring of keys, Dean and Sam exchanged a quiet, somber look. Jack was reading Dean’s book now, his eyes wide. Sam gunned the engine. Castiel manned the navigation system and caught Dean’s eyes on his own.
Sam brought them to a heavyset cabin close enough to the sea and the forest that brine mixed with the smell of greenery. The ocean seemed just beyond a few snatches of ferns. Helped by Jack, Dean dragged his broken leg out of the car. There was a chill in the autumn air, and Dean cursed sharply: the string of blasphemies fell like biblical verses from his lips. Castiel regarded this with a usual, quiet astonishment. When their eyes met, Dean shrugged. “We still need something to curse at,” he said, even though they were functionally living in a godless world.
Castiel took his time arranging his duffel. Dean and Jack and Sam went in, and the eyes of the house lit up yellow. Castiel slung his backpack over his shoulder. It was a small house further dwarfed by the surrounding redwoods. The driveway snaked around the back, the outer edge shorn off into a cliff tangled with dark brambles. Where Castiel stood was like the lip of a bowl, and at the bottom were gold and orange houses that piled into a small town. Alone by the car, staring into that miniature world, Castiel rolled the words in his mouth, testing.
“Fuck,” he finally said. “God damn it. God fucking damn it.”
While they had watched the bunker crunch and collapse into itself, the greater world remade, Dean had asked, through the pain of his newly broken leg, “Now what next?” None of them knew, so Sam picked a random number from their contacts. Roy Chang had continued to live in the vicinity of their alma mater all these years, and conveyed a kind of masculine obligation for his rescue from a ghoul infestation years ago. He offered them lodging.
Castiel’s room—the leftover of Dean and Sam’s so-called “dibs”—was a square space tucked by the top of a narrow staircase. A window faced the back of the house, where the town below was visible. Castiel had given Jack the slightly larger room across from him, and Sam had taken the one down the hall. Only Dean slept on the ground floor, on the account of his leg. He lived directly below Castiel, though Castiel could hear nothing from Dean, hours after the house had settled down.
Dawn had not yet arrived when Castiel woke the next day. The bare wooden furniture of the room gleamed purple under the moonlight. He did not mean to wake up this early; he did not like to see the stars, for they reminded him of angels. He closed his eyes until the warmth of sunlight, like the weight of a palm on his cheek, woke him.
The house was silent, but in a way that was weightless. When he entered the narrow kitchen, only Dean was there. His right leg, bound in a cast, was propped up on a kitchen chair whose upholstery cracked at the seams. A half-glass of orange juice and a plate spotted with pie crumbs rested by his elbow. He was reading a different book this morning.
“Hey,” Dean said in greeting, without looking up. “Breakfast on the counter.”
“Sam made these?” Castiel asked. He poked at the unevenly cooked eggs—half sunny-side, half burnt—with some suspicion.
Dean laughed. “No. Jack, actually. Sam was teaching him before they left.”
“Oh,” Castiel said, surprised. “Where to?”
“Sammy wanted to get some of our IDs in order.” Reading the confusion that must be on Castiel’s face, Dean’s smile widened. “Forge them, Cas. Again. But he needs a printer, obviously, and this house is too tech-bro-spiritual-retreat to have even that. Jack wanted to check out the library.”
“I didn’t realize he liked reading.”
“Apparently as of yesterday.”
“He got it from you,” Castiel said, wry. He meant to reference what had happened on the car ride, with Dean’s copy of the short story anthology, but Dean must have picked up some other meaning in his words. He turned away from Castiel. An almost panicked movement.
“What about you?” Dean asked. “Plans? For the day.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“No?”
“I haven’t given much thought,” Castiel corrected. “I—I need to reevaluate things.”
Dean’s expression was flat as a plank, washed of emotion.
“My purpose,” Castiel said. “My direction.”
There was a feeling in his chest that Castiel recognized as calm. He had at last finished his mission, he thought. Reached the end of his usefulness. There was nothing more he could give to the Winchesters, and that was a freedom of some sort. Calm. Castiel had never known it before, all those years, just as a windswept man would not recognize how close he was to hypothermia until he reached a fireplace.
He knew Dean did not tell Sam or Jack about the words that were exchanged in that bunker, when Death was at their door. That was good; those words were meant for Dean alone. Castiel knew also that at some point they must address what was said—if only because, after all, Castiel had died over it. They had lived the past week on the road in tentative calm, hesitantly welcoming in their happy ending. But was it a happy ending? Was there truly no more to come? They were all braced, the four of them, against happiness. Happiness that had only been like a Trojan Horse for so many years, a prelude to more violence.
“That is,” Castiel added, when a curl of doubt crept in, “if you will have me for now.”
“Of course. Of course we will have you.”
“Alright.” Castiel did not know where to look now. “Thank you.”
Castiel finished his eggs and bacon in silence, in a seat diagonally across from Dean’s. He was conscious of Dean’s eyes on him for a good few minutes until Dean finally returned to his book. It was East of Eden, Steinbeck.
“Purpose,” Dean said at one point.
“Yes.”
“I disagree. You know what I think? I think,” he said, and Castiel could not help but smile, “I think we’re done with purposes. I think we should do more things in our lives without purposes. Without direction.”
“Nothing we are meant to do,” Castiel agreed, “only what we choose to.”
“This Shack,” as they were all lovingly dubbing it, was truly as Dean implied an anachronistic artifact. Human again at last, Castiel had newfound appreciation for the ingenuity of human sewer systems: on the first day, at Castiel’s query, Sam had bent his face with embarrassment toward a pit that was their temporary outhouse.
For days Castiel followed Sam in and out of the Shack with chores. Castiel fought and conquered the plumbing, threaded back the wiring, and nailed back shingles and wall panels. Sam hauled in groceries that contained all shades of green and just enough red meat to keep Dean from hobbling toward the Impala himself, and fussed over Dean’s broken leg terribly. Castiel drove Jack to and from the library—in the Impala, with Dean’s reluctant blessing. The librarian, Maria Jimenez, called him “Jack’s dad” and was fond of handing him pamphlets for library events.
One hazy morning, after dragging his fingers through soap and water, Castiel finally looked at himself in the mirror. He could see nothing of his grace, his wings, or the angelic dimension where his true form would have pushed past these dense log walls and suffused the entire cabin with fiery majesty. Flesh and bone and skin and miniscule hairs. He wore Jimmy Novak’s face now.
No— He blinked, swallowed, and looked at himself again. He wore his own face. Jimmy Novak had forgiven him, given him absolution, and was in true Heaven now. This body, for the better or worse, was Castiel’s—it was a part of him.
He volunteered to chop up firewood that day. In the backyard, he forwent gloves to feel the uneven heft of the axe in his hands. It was an old axe, the dark blunt head tapering into the rounded blade, the groves of the bleached wooden handle threatening splinters. It was an object that promised violence—it reminded the bearer of their own mortality.
He placed a thick log on a stump. He swung down the axe. The log split unevenly—the smaller slab danced from the chopping block and almost struck Castiel’s waist. Castiel hopped backwards, panting, and laughed. There was the smell of pine.
He did a little better with the second log. With the third, he did worse, missing it altogether. By the sixth, he was splitting them evenly on the first stroke, and passably on the second. By the tenth, he was proficient, His muscles were braided with strain.
This was the human phenomenon of improvement through practice, he thought. Learning. Practice made perfect. By the twentieth log he was heated all over and smelt the damp scent of sweat. He took off his shirt and continued his task.
It was dull, rhythmic work. It felt like music. A steady, hollow beat of the axe against the block. His involuntary grunts. Life hummed in the woods around him: shivers of leaves, a dozen warblers’ high song. Even the silence itself has a deep, mountainous reverberation. A thousand voices in a single choir. With this music his reveries soared and faltered—for days now he had found himself thinking of Meg. Memories like strips of torn magazines: How she bent her wrists primly, a little mocking, when she reached for him. Clarence, deliberately elongated, teasing, dark brows rising in innocence. Sulfur and perfume, when he pressed her against the cement wall. The way she fingered a blade; the way she leaned on one leg and cocked her head. “A little good,” she had said of herself. “A little bad,” she had said of him. How would she have reacted, if she knew they had faced Chuck? Of course, she might have said. Of course your arrogance would exceed God.
Gone, now. He had tried to look for her in the Empty, but she must have been sleeping. Like the rest of the angels and demons and immortals there at the end of Chuck’s reign, she either chose to rise into Heaven or dissolved into the fabric of the world, a form of reincarnation. He had hoped she would choose Heaven, but he imagined now her mournful eyes: I have weighed down my soul so, Clarence. I have lived too long.
He closed his eyes, almost as a habit, almost as a prayer. When he was done, he rested the axe. Dean sat facing him behind the narrow kitchen window. But this time when their eyes met, the other man’s expression was startled out of inscrutability. Dean lifted a hand abruptly, like a greeting, but his eyes darted away from Castiel at once. Before Castiel could reciprocate, Dean had turned his face away and stood on his crutches. His mouth was moving. Then Sam, clutching a stack of dishes, replaced Dean in the window. He saw the pile of firewood by Castiel’s side and raised a thumb in approval. Castiel smiled back.
Then Sam too was gone. A breeze rolled through the clearing and reminded Castiel of his shirt.
A week, and Jack came into the house, face flushed with hope, like a child finally set on his Christmas present. He told them he wanted to attend the local community college.
“Look at this. I got it from the library.” With that exaltation, he unfurled a flyer. A young, dark-browed woman in a cardigan clutched books to her chest. Slogans in ten different colors assaulted the eye, proclaiming in ugly san-serif “50+ Different Programs!” “Find Your Dream Job!” “Hours That Fit Your Schedule!” and, in screaming red at the bottom, “APPLY NOW!” Jack’s finger, inadvertently or not, pressed down on the words “You Are Valuable.”
Castiel said yes right away. Jack hugged him, and Castiel clasped one hand over his back. Sam worried at the flyer a little, posing hypothetical scenarios rapid-fire and then answering them just a quickly: What about high school transcripts? Well they could ask Charlie to help hack into a few school districts. Did Jack understand the state university transfer system? Sam supposed they would need a sit-down on this at some point—God, Jack needed to start with remedial math—this wouldn’t do, Sam would have to set a study schedule, nothing but Cal or LA for Jack, even if San Diego had a great engineering program—
“I’m not sure about this,” Dean said from the far end of the kitchen table. He sounded sorry.
Jack only gave a muted nod. “Because we don’t know how long we’ll have this place.”
Sam looked immediately livid. “What’re you saying, Dean?” Sam asked. He placed a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Are you forbidding Jack from going to college—”
“No,” Dean said. “But I don’t see the point in enrolling him now when we might be on the road again in a week—”
“But we won’t. The danger is over, Chuck is gone and there are no more demons, or angels, or—”
“Jack,” Castiel said. “What do you want?”
Jack rolled up the paper neatly before answering. “It’s fine.” His smile exuded painful understanding. “I think Dean is right—it’s premature.”
He left the room. Sam gave Dean a vicious glare and followed him out.
Dean was preoccupied with his coffee. Castiel settled into the chair at the other end of the table and broke the silence first.
“It was inevitable,” Castiel said. “Maria has been fond of him for some time. She was pushing the pamphlets at him every day. She believes she is rescuing a wayward soul.”
“I want him to go,” Dean said. “This isn’t like Stanford again, no matter what Sam thinks. But— God, it hasn’t even been a month.”
There was a slim laptop by Dean’s elbow. A dozen browser tabs were open—most of them local news. Referring to them, Castiel asked, “Have you found anything?”
Dean closed his laptop immediately. “Nah.” He looked guilty. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
Castiel decided not to mention the newspaper clippings by Dean’s feet, dismemberments of Sam’s daily delivery. “Old habits die hard.”
“Sometimes.”
Castiel tilted his head to a side, a question.
“Well,” Dean said, “sometimes it is like this: Jack gone, you and Sam out of the Shack. I sit here, and I read about a disappearance in Humboldt County. I don’t think much of it. But I remember the victim’s profile: late 20s, male, white, geometry teacher, loves to play the electric guitar.”
“I see.”
“The next day, I look through the papers. I read about a missing person’s case in Oregon, not too far away, that has gone unsolved for years. I don’t think much of it either, until I go and look at her bio: late 20s, female, white—not a geometry teacher but an algebra teacher, no guitar but she played drums for a local band. I remember what I read the day before. Now I also see she had a kid named Tim. I remember another case Sam and I dealt with, years ago, in Nevada: young mom, kid named Tim, kidnapped by a coven of vampires—”
“These are just coincidences,” Castiel said. “Passing similarities.”
“I know, I know.” Dean swallowed and clicked his tongue in frustration. “It’s my head, Cas. I can’t stop thinking about the fight around the corner. I was built for this, you know. Hunting.” He laughed. “Monster hunting.”
“And now there are no more monsters,” Castiel said, understanding at last, “but you are still running on those instincts.”
“Yeah,” Dean said. Then, “I will be the first in line at the registrar for Jack once we find a good place to stop, I swear. I just need more time—to find a safe space. We can head back to the Midwest, maybe, or settle in somewhere in Colorado—once I know there is nothing left in the corner to gank us. I just need more time.”
“I know.” At Dean’s incredulous look, Castiel said, “I understand. I think Jack does too—not just from gratitude.” Because Dean had saved him in the end, when Chuck, vengeful, brought down the bunker with himself. Jack’s life for Dean’s broken bone. “It may really be too early. It would be safer to wait a little.”
Dean shifted his right leg. He seemed strangely unconvinced—though unconvinced by Castiel’s own concession or Castiel’s support for his argument, Castiel could not tell. But he did not pursue the point.
Dean was squinting against the fading sunlight. Rounded shadows dappled his lovely face. Castiel caught himself in admiration again when Dean asked, “When you fell—”
“Which time?”
Castiel meant for it as a joke and Dean understood it as a joke. Laughing, Dean said, “The first time. The last time. Any of them.”
“What about it?”
“How did you make your way out—out of who you are?” Dean asked. “Out of being an angel.”
How did he? No answer came to his mind immediately, but that, Castiel realized, was because he had never tried. He never chose not to be an angel, and had fought against losing his grace, the burning of his wings, every single time. But there were periods too where he was human—now was one. He remembered experiencing human misery, but he was not miserable now. Far from it. So what was the difference? What was different about the choices he had made—?
Dean came to the conclusion first. His ears pulsed pink. Ah, of course. It was love. For Sam, for Jack. For Dean. Love, the acceptance of it, and the willingness to stay and see it through.
“You and Sam helped,” Castiel said. “And now, of course, with Jack too. What you need is to be with family.”
Northern California was remote enough, Castiel gathered, from all of the losses and devastation of hunting that Dean and Sam had suffered through over these years. But it was far from an island, and so there came the visits. The first were from some of their oldest friends: Kevin Tran, a watery smile, with his father’s ring in the same chain as a pendant with his mother’s picture; Not-Charlie and Not-Bobby, who had come to discuss, with some futility, a way back to home; Donna, just to bear sweets.
When they left, Dean hugged each and every one of them tight to his chest. He looked at them, clapped them sturdily on the shoulder, and said, “Be safe out there.” Castiel thought it looked like a blessing.
There were hunters too with whom they were less familiar. They arrived, in a daze, in the most beaten-ups cars and heaviest pickup trucks, to ask them what had happened over in Kansas on the first day of November.
Sometimes they were angry, their fingers twitching for the gun at their belt like an occupational spasm. These men feigned lunges at Sam but more often Dean as though they could not help themselves. Sometimes Castiel stepped in, and they would fall back—they recognized something in Castiel even now, something mighty and righteous. But their voices rose when Sam would explain the end of the supernatural; they could not believe him. For seven years they had hunted those damn vamps, they would say. Or it was fifteen years, and ghosts up the Appalachian; or since they were born, covens that littered the South. Now there was nothing but their own memories.
In the conversations that went well, Sam would sit them down and tell them that the war was over—there was nothing left to hunt—they needed to go back to their families, return as civilians. What they wanted, Castiel learned, was for someone to reassure them that the supernatural existed—that the things they had hunted, that had driven their clothes to rags and forced them out of their homes and stretched their skin into bright scars, were real.
In conversations that did not, spittle flew, mugs were broken, the old screen door slammed and bounced away from its frame, and the hunter flew out their house like a vengeful spirit. Dean rarely spoke. Something like distaste held his tongue—or maybe shame. But when the house was theirs again, he would clasp his brother’s shoulder: “You did your best, Sammy.” Then he would pull out a lawn chair in the backyard and read. Kerouac, Vonnegut, Ginsberg.
Jody and Claire visited for Thanksgiving. They brought gifts for the Shack, in advance of Christmas: ammo, a cassette deck, and Ohioan pierogis. In return, Jody and Claire received a knitted woolen scarf (courtesy of Sam’s ongoing craft phase) and a leather journal, respectively. The journal was Castiel’s idea. It had been his first time giving a gift—he thought to give Claire a stuffed teddy bear, which (or so his reasoning went) would bring much comfort in these turbulent times. But Dean had said Claire was too grown for that, so it had been the journal.
After dinner, Jody, very drunk, was laughing on the other side of the kitchen with Sam and Dean about an old wendigo case. Castiel watched nervously as Claire turned the gift in her hands. Just as he was about to blurt out an apology for the gift—what was he thinking, a journal? Absolutely substandard of a gift—Claire asked, “Do you think—do you think my parents are still up there?”
Castiel looked at her. She was staring at the half-carved turkey that Sam and Jack had consulted dozens of YouTube tutorial, on spotty broadband, to prepare.
“When I was in Heaven last, I saw your father,” Castiel said. “Your mother would be with him.”
“That’s not what I’m asking, you know.”
“Heaven exists,” he said. In the corner of his vision, Meg was smiling. Clarence, she said. “Jack and I felt our connection all the way until he and I turned mortal. There is no doubt in that.”
“But it is impossible to enter it before you die?”
“Yes,” Castiel said, uncomfortably. “There are no immortals left in this world now who can testify otherwise.”
The corners of her eyes scrunched up. “But how can I know that you’re right? How can I have faith?”
At this he was contemplative. What ran through his mind, however, was the cool, imperial stations of Heaven. His brethren aligned not in space but in mind. Dogma that they had mistaken for faith—how thin the veneer of certainty it all now seemed, how forgettable in face of truth, and mortality, and love.
“You don’t have to,” he said. Claire’s head snapped toward his. “I do, but I cannot expect you to. What is more important is—who do you love still in this world?”
“Jody, of course. You and Dean and Sam and Jack, and also—” She blushed, and he knew not to pursue.
“Then there’s the answer. There is where your faith should lie,” he said.
She had stopped fidgeting with the journal. She said, “That sounded like a sermon, you know. You should consider a career as a preacher,” and laughed at his expression.
Castiel found Dean halfway out the front door one morning, and for a stark moment thought Dean was leaving them. But no; Dean wore a jacket and brought no bag. Castiel was calmed and asked if Dean was going on his usual walk to the beach. Without Sam?
“Yeah. Think Sammy’s been up all night. Didn’t want to wake him.” Dean had on a wide grin. “I reckon he’s, you know. Texting Eileen, being all shy about it. It’s actually kind of cute—for a teenager.”
Castiel was surprised but glad. He liked Eileen, and they had been through much together.
Dean, balancing on one crutch, was struggling with the doorknob. When he almost slipped Castiel gripped him by the shoulder (“Cas,” Dean grumbled) and held the door open. “Would you like it if I accompanied you?” Castiel asked. He was dubious about Dean’s plan to scale the hilly roads if he could not even manage a doorknob.
Dean hesitated, but invited Castiel along. Castiel lent him a shoulder on the other side of the threshold, and Dean accepted the help as he crossed over.
The winds were ferocious on their short trek by the highway. Castiel was glad that he had donned his old trench coat. “Nostalgic,” Dean remarked. With the wind and the occasional car that scuttled past too fast, Castiel reached over to steady him often—more than either of them would have expected. Castiel could feel the other man’s fine trembles and warmth in short moments like these. Then Dean would stand and thank him, and Castiel knew to draw away. But they reached the hilly hiking trail, and Dean snatched at one of the lapels of Castiel’s coat when Castiel loosened his grip. So there Castiel’s arm stayed, around the broad expanse of Dean’s shoulders, their entire way down the slope.
Beneath their feet, dirt turned to sand. The path broke into a small, rocky cove: two cliffs rising to the sky to embrace the sea. They made their way down to the thin strip of beach where dead kelp and white-gray pebbles mingled with coarse sand. Waves rose and pounced upon the cliffs like lionesses in hunt; then, their strides broken, they slinked as foam toward land. The sky was churned gray, but here too the winds are calm. Castiel admired for a second the rough beauty of the seascape; Dean too. Then Dean led the two of them around the outer edge of the cove in what appeared to be a routine route.
Castiel asked Dean if he had fished here. The idea seemed new to Dean. He chuckled, and he told Castiel no, he hadn’t. “Though I should.” It was just that he hadn’t fished much at sea, he said. Castiel asked that surely it couldn’t be too different? And Dean said, Maybe, but there was the weather, and there was the water, and there was the fish.
Dean’s voice came from his chest, so that when he laughed, the laugh came from his entire torso. Whenever he, Castiel, and Sam were in their most dire straits, Dean’s eyes would shine with the righteous fury that had made Castiel so sure, years ago, that this must be the man who was Michael’s sword. But now Dean’s voice was soft, and though the light was low and the wind beat at their backs, his eyes seemed to glitter with mirth as he answered Castiel’s questions. Often he tilted his face toward Castiel’s, as if he wanted to make sure that Castiel was still listening—that Castiel was still there. So perhaps Castiel’s hand held Dean’s elbow a little more than necessary. Perhaps his fingers lingered at Dean’s waist. Dean leaned farther into Castiel each time, so where was the harm except to Castiel himself?
Dean asked, “Do you remember, all those years ago, when you popped into my dream?” and Castiel did not need to ask which one. A different scenery, he replied, and Dean said, yes.
Dean said, “Knowing what you do now, do you ever regret—choosing what you did?”
Castiel observed again the waters before them. The waves rolled turbid to the beach, but water outran sand and gathered, clear, like poured glass by their feet. Castiel knew Dean did not think of it in this way, but for Castiel, that moment on the dream-pier was the beginning of it all: his first doubts. It had ignited into Castiel’s first flash of consciousness, and so from it grew life. What Castiel had before that first fall was existence, he told Dean now. Not life. Castiel’s human memory confirmed it: every day the name of an angel from the garrison seemed to flitter from his mind. Or one of their great battles, or an angelic hymn. But Castiel remembered every moment from the past seventeen years.
The way back to the Shack was routed through that village at the bowl’s bottom. They went to the grocery store to pick up some food, for Sam, who had been whipping himself into a frenzy with chores ever since they arrived. At checkout, Patricia Clark, a friend of Maria’s, glanced from Castiel to Dean. Merrily she said, “Ah, so you’re the one our Cas has been talking about all this time,” and Castiel, though he knew it to be anatomically impossible, thought his veins were pumped so full of hot steam that he was liable at any moment to launch into the stratosphere.
So it became this: for the next couple of weeks, every once in a while, he would bump into Dean by the front door, or Dean would find him in the yard. Dean would tell Castiel that Sam was otherwise engaged, so could he accompany Dean on the walk, if he is down for it? And of course Castiel said yes. But throughout it all Dean’s voice would go low as if he were catching a cold, and he could not seem to meet Castiel’s eyes.
It was all very confusing. Once, Castiel saw Sam give him not one but two thumbs-up behind Dean, quick shakes of the head and a finger on his lips when Castiel looked to speak. These were, Castiel supposed, part of the “pranks” that Sam and Dean were always playing on each other. Dean would come back from these trips and tell Sam to jump off a cliff—a statement that was obviously in jest because, of course, Dean loved Sam very much.
Sometimes he and Dean had conversation after conversation on their walks. Sometimes they were silent, when Castiel was contemplative, or when Castiel knew Dean to be contemplative. They walked the same route every day. Castiel thought the dirt paths looked just slightly wider for it. Dean commented once that liking the routine was a sign of age, chuckling in self-deprecation. But Castiel recalled the repetition of the strokes he had made to cut up firewood, how he had felt more alive with each axe stroke. Practice made perfect. Maybe they were just practicing for something, Castiel told Dean, and to Dean it felt new each time still because he had never experienced something like this. Like what? Dean asked. Then he fell silent, as though he had caught the answer, alive and wriggling, in his bare hands.
Another time they were at the cove; Dean skipped rocks across the water, unsuccessful because the waves were choppy, but not displeased about it. Castiel sat on a rock. A crab came up to Castiel’s sand-speckled loafers and poked at the ridges curiously. It was scarcely bigger than a thumb, blue-gray like a bruised nail, very small and alone. It then seemed to notice Castiel and dashed away. Castiel’s eyes followed it until it disappeared within the crevices of two flat brown rocks like church doors. Castiel marked how agile the creature was, how alert, across this terrain which must from its perspective be like little hills. The miracles of God’s creation, Castiel thought. Ten minutes later, Dean found Castiel weeping where he sat.
Another time Dean almost slipped on the way down the hill. He gripped Castiel’s hand. Even after he regained his balance, they did not let go of each other.
A week. When Dean cried out in the middle of the night, only Castiel heard. It was a soft sound, and his room was directly above Dean’s. Castiel rushed down the staircase at once to find Dean on the bed, sweat beading at his brows, straining to put his crutches against the wall. Castiel took it from his hands. He accepted Dean’s thanks with a quick nod.
“You were outside?” Castiel asked.
“Yeah,” Dean said, voice raspy. “Went out for a walk. Couldn’t sleep.”
“Why is it?”
“Thinking. I woke you?”
“I was also awake.”
“You too? Thinking.”
“Yes.”
He was easing the crutches against the shelf, between the window and Dean’s bed. When he turned back, he saw that Dean had moved closer to him, sitting at the edge of the mattress. His legs were stretched out over the gaudy floral duvets Sam and Castiel had spent hours beating the dust out of that first week. He looked up at Castiel. Moonlight swam in his eyes, quicksilver.
“Cas,” he said, “I wanted you to know that—God.”
“What is it?”
“I wanted you to know that I am too. I’m in love with you.”
The words dropped into the quiet clarity of the night like a pebble in a pond.
Castiel felt as though his world was expanding with each breath.
Around them, dust motes hung suspended in time.
“Cas?”
“For how long?” Castiel asked.
“For,” Dean said, looking away, “I don’t know. It’s not— One day years ago I woke up and I realized it— Before Jack, before the Leviathans— It wasn’t one of those big moments at the end of the movie where fireworks went off and lightning rained down—”
“Dean—”
“I saw you go down, Cas. I saw you go down to the Empty and I cried like a kid and I thought I would never see you again—”
“I didn’t know—”
“Cas, I— Tell me if things have changed.”
Plea. Defiance. Worry. Fear. Now, love. The complicated interplay of emotions—Castiel thought he had understood, but like all the other times, there had simply been more to learn.
“Cas, please—”
Dean’s face oriented toward his like a binary star. Castiel locked his fingers around Dean’s and pulled himself down to the bed. They kissed.
Dean was trembling when he touched Castiel, which was unexpected. When they undressed each other, they did so in an embrace. The tighter Castiel’s hold onto Dean, the less Dean trembled. “I love you,” Castiel told him, and Dean tensed up, Pavlovian, as though expecting a hellhound to pounce upon him or the Empty to take Castiel again. Castiel repeated the words. He laid kisses into the cut of Dean’s jaw, and finally Dean let out a quiet exhale. Then, chuckling, he pressed Castiel down the mattress by the shoulders and kissed him back as though in relief.
Dean, naked, all skin and long lines of muscle, was self-conscious in front of Castiel. One moment he was bravado and promises; at the next he shied from the window and the light. He repeated Castiel’s name: “Cas, can you—ah,” “Cas, hold my—yes,” then, a litany, “Cas, Cas, Cas.” When Castiel moved to reach for condoms away from the bed, Dean’s hand reached out to cup the curve of his thigh, and knee, and shin, and ankle. “You there, Cas?” he would ask, gruff, in the dark. And Castiel would say yes, yes he was, and return to his side.
When they fucked, Dean pressed his head into Castiel’s shoulder. And there was that tenseness again; there was Dean, rolling his hips down at Castiel’s as if to urge him faster. But Castiel maintained his pace and his hold on Dean. He told Dean that he was immovably beautiful, and good, virtue seeping through his skin into the bones of him, the arteries and veins and atoms. He told him he loved him. His shoulder was wet with Dean’s tears. “God, Cas,” Dean said, between gasps. “I’ve wanted you, for so long, for so long.”
Later, in the thickened air. The night outside as clear and bright as before, the birdsongs audible and a reassuring reminder of the world’s indifference. Castiel asked: Why did he wait so long to tell him? It was not as though Castiel had gone into the Empty wordlessly. By his side, Dean’s fingers ceased playing at Castiel’s hair. At first he was unsure that Castiel had been brought back whole, Dean said. Then he was unsure that Castiel’s feelings would still remain constant. But these were excuses, he realized. He thought he had always known, but was too scared to act.
They had four days of quiet—four days of fumbling around in the hallway while Sam and Jack were gone, Dean leering appreciatively at Castiel’s ass while Castiel made firewood, morning fucks and afternoon quickies and tearful confessions at night.
The levee broke with Jack. Dean had been making burgers, and Castiel had been so overwhelmed with love watching Dean’s smile that he had pulled him in by the front of his apron for a kiss. He did not notice Jack at the doorway—home early due to holiday library hours. Spotting the kiss, Jack had only smiled placidly.
But Sam had followed behind and bent his head into the kitchen. “What is it?”
“It’s nothing,” Jack said. “They are surprised, because I caught them kissing when they thought they were alone.”
A jolt of laughter from Castiel, all the tenseness gone. “Jack—”
Sam was an embarrassment of joy: “Finally, Dean, I told you—so many years, all the dramatics we could have avoided—” and went on like this until Dean, ears burning red, shoved a ketchupped patty into his mouth.
Eileen came to stay with them for the holidays, at Sam’s invitation. She and Sam spent much of the Christmas Eve meal signing shyly to each other across the table. Small talk, little compliments, agonizingly soft flirtations. While Jack was happily wolfing down his fourth burger, Dean asked Castiel if it seemed that those lovebirds were hitting home base soon. They speak about a future with each other tentatively, he told Dean.
Dean’s brows furrowed. Carefully he perused the narrow dining room: the roast chicken and mashed potatoes and greens that he had commandeered; Sam’s messenger bag tossed by the entrance, Jack’s books on partridges and the Dutch Old Masters and number theory in a stack below. Dean’s own copy of Joyce’s Dubliners nearby. The warm bulb of light overhead. A burn like an eye on the wall near the stove, from Thanksgiving, when Dean tried to teach Castiel how to cook. Castiel’s coat hanging by a nail in the foyer.
At night they dispensed with the guise that Castiel’s room had had any use lately, and lent it to Eileen. But Castiel doubted it would be used still. When everyone bid each other goodnight, Sam and Eileen remained at the top of the staircase. Sam was signing: a raised pinky; then the index finger and thumb; then the pinky and thumb. Eileen’s eyes swam with moonlight.
The morning after Christmas, Dean returned from the town clinic without his cast. A clean bill of health. He ate at the breakfast table with the rest of them but finished quickly. He wanted to get back into the Impala, he said. Drive around the area for a bit—feel what that was like again. He spoke to Sam, who rose from Eileen’s side out of his chair, almost in protest. But at the end of it Dean was facing Castiel.
The Northern California sun seemed to shine a little paler than anywhere else in the country. There was no snow, which seemed disappointing: both Sam and Eileen commented on it at different parts of the sparse morning. Castiel did not have the same cultural conception of winter, and so took their disappointment at face value. By noon, there was still no sign of Dean in the driveway, and the house was very quiet.
Castiel chauffeured Jack to the library. He then went into town to buy up some of the discounted Fuji apples and tortillas and flank steak. He wore the sturdy leather jacket that Dean had given him the day before, for Christmas. Patricia complimented his jacket, and Castiel complimented her on her headband, which had lost the cartoonish reindeer horns and now sprouted the four glittering numbers that indicated the upcoming new year.
“No pie today?” she asked, as Castiel bagged up the items. “For your partner.”
Castiel smiled, a smile that felt like paper. “No.” Then, compelled to give an explanation, “He’s out driving.”
“Where to?”
“Nowhere in particular, I think.”
Patricia snorted. “Men, am I right?”
She reminded him of the bowling game that Dean had been both charmed and coerced into accepting, with Maria and their spouses. “Next Friday, five p.m. sharp,” she said. “Of course Jack and Sam are perfectly welcome too.” And if Castiel was still looking for a job locally, Jeremy, her son and accountant, would be returning to college soon. She tapped the Help Wanted sticker on the counter. “Just give me a call. Anytime.”
On the way back to the Shack, Castiel made an illegal stop near the seashore, dangerously close to the cliff. He looked at the sea again—he loved looking at it, he realized. The wilderness in the waves, the geometry of the receding foam. In chaos, there was sense, and vice versa; the two commingled and were inseparable from each other. He loved the frail beauty of the salted air, loved the little cabin that was not theirs and the blaze of bunch grasses down the coastline. He loved sitting down for coffee with Patricia and talking about his day with Maria at the library. He loved the meals he shared with Sam and Jack and Dean; he loved seeing Dean’s smile. What a life they had made, he thought, in the past two months alone. What a life he was able to experience.
Then what was this fear he felt now? He thought, Dean leaving. And he himself leaving with Dean—and Jack, and Sam. He loved them enough, loved Dean enough, that he would do so. But that was not quite right. At the thought of leaving this place, he dipped into a shallow pool of gentle sorrow: cold, yet lucid. But what he felt now was fear, roiling and unsettled. It was more than just leaving this lovely place.
Outside, a wind was gathering. The clouds were thin but tinted the sky gray. Eileen’s rosary beads swayed where they wrapped around the rear-view mirror.
He was scared, he thought, that Dean leaving meant that Dean would leave him. Castiel stopped trembling—at once he swam in calm waters again, though the depths did not cease to terrify him. He was scared, Castiel repeated to himself, of Dean leaving him.
He examined this finding a little wondrously. Inspected it, like a pearl in his palm. He thought about those ten years of seemingly unrequited love for one Dean Winchester. What was a week in comparison, to the rational mind? No wonder he was terrified. He had already thought of those ten years as some dark and wintry place that he had escaped, into forever bliss. But those were extremes. He had been happy before, and he could be sad now. To expect all to be perfection would only bring great unhappiness. Dean Winchester would not leave him on a whim. That was not the man he had come to know.
But how could Castiel go on from here? There only lied uncertainty in this road ahead. Even if Dean loved him now, what if one day he would not? Even if he was willing to leave this place now, what if one day he would not?
Those thoughts wrenched him out of the car. Outside, Castiel’s loafered feet were made familiar with the rounded edges of the grassy cliff. He threw out his arms and the wind blew so hard against his person that he felt as though he could lean into it, like an embrace.
How lonely humans were, he had once told the angel who would later become Anna Milton. Look how they suffer. Even with their soulmates in the mortal plane, they must live individually within the confines of their own minds. They will never know the certainty of love as we have, from our Father, from each other.
But isn’t that faith? she had replied. For a second her face blended with Meg’s.
Yes, he had admitted.
And?
There is beauty in that.
Atop that cliff, Castiel screamed. He screamed into the sea wind, which muffled his thin mortal voice, which pushed him back against gravity that threatened to drag him to the waters and smash his bones into blood. He felt his smallness, in this world where there was no God. No narrative, no ending, just the incalculable, random collide of atoms that became both chance and fate.
But he was here too. At the edge of this continent, he felt that air pushing down his lungs and the chill freezing his skin and the strain in his throat and the wind molding the shape of him in space. He was here. He was here.
There were things in the world that he could love more than Dean. A place like this, perhaps. An idea. Even another human. Dean could too.
Perhaps they would arrive, this place or idea or mortal. Perhaps they would not. It was beyond Castiel’s imagination. He could not imagine loving someone, something, so much that his love for Dean Winchester would fade. Yet he was human now, and he had seen the inconstant way that humans lived out their lives.
But Castiel could wait in fear for these future enemies would tear down his happiness—or he could love Dean in the present.
When Castiel drove back home, he worried that the meat would have already expired. But soon he forgot his worries—the Impala was parked in front of their little wreathed door.
Jack opened the door for him and took over the groceries. He said, “Dean brought me back. He’ll want to talk to you.” In the dining room, Eileen and Sam sat curled up with each other on the loveseat, but stood and left when Castiel entered, Eileen’s hand tugging Sam’s. Jack left with them. Dean noticed Castiel from his seat. He laid aside a fold of glossy paper—the community college advertisement, Castiel recognized. All the sternness in Dean’s cheeks melted into a smile, and the love in his eyes shone so bright Castiel had to have been on a separate continent to have missed it.
He came up to Castiel and said, “Let’s stay here.”
Castiel said, “You’ve decided?”
“I have.” Dean wrapped his hands around Castiel’s. “And we can. I talked to Sam’s friend—he’s letting us have the Shack for as long as we want.”
“He is generous.”
“Yeah.” Dean laughed. “Well, more surprised that we haven’t left already than anything. Given how rundown it was when we first got here.”
Castiel thought: Let his heart not rise with the tide of relief. Let him temper his hopes.
But that was impossible, because he also thought: He could keep his life here, and the person he was growing into. And he would have Dean Winchester here with him.
The rims of Dean’s eyes had grown red. Dean was mincing his lips. He looked, Castiel noticed, tremendously, unspeakably sad. Castiel did not understand. With a palm on Dean’s cheek, he asked, “What is it?”
“You haven’t answered my question,” Dean said.
“What question?”
“You. Are you going to stay?”
Castiel had not even the chance to ask Dean whether he was serious. The pale sorrow in Dean’s eyes told him he was. He was taken aback. Had Dean, too, never known? All this time, had he been this uncertain about Castiel’s choices as he was? But he remembered now every time he had left Dean. In Purgatory. In Lucifer’s crypt, after Naomi. In the face of Death. That sorrow was familiar to him—he had been its author.
He wanted to say, “So often, I had left you.”
He wanted to say, “So often, you have come back for me.”
But those were not the words that Dean wanted—needed—to hear.
So he said, “Yes. I want to stay with you.”
And he said, “Dean, I—”
“Not asking for you to promise forever,” Dean cut in. “There are too many things— We’ve both seen too much— I would never ask that of anyone.”
Waves of memories. Purgatory, the rotten-sweet smell of the woods, the air trailing slimy fingers against his cheeks—Dean finding him by the waters, haloed. The tall barn in the town named Pontiac, hollow save for the old man Bobby Singer and the piercing light of the Righteous Man’s soul. Softly, a smile—around them the din of diner patrons, trapped in the plastic lid of this fast food restaurant—still, softly, his smile. At the edge of the continent, the surf shattering, the winds threatening to roll them up and toss them into the sea—their bodies pressed against each other’s.
“Would you allow me, then,” Castiel said, “to say that I want to promise an eternity?”
“With me?” Dean asked.
“Yes. For as long as you’ll have me.”
“But I want to too,” Dean said quietly. “Promise an eternity with you.”
Tipping into the Empty. The clarity he felt at that moment that was the same dogma he had ridiculed the angels for— Was that what he thought happiness was?
Blinking awake. The fury of Dean’s soul blazing a path through bodies of those who slumbered on, Michael’s sword in hand. He had seized Castiel’s shoulder and called his name. Castiel had thought, Oh, but of course he would come for me.
Castiel kissed him at last, sweet and quiet and slow.
“Then let us choose to stay with each other,” Castiel said, against Dean’s lips. “Every single day until eternity.”
“Nothing we are meant to do,” Dean echoed. “Only what we choose to.”