Chapter Text
Castiel ran his thumb over the address Sam had given him, looking up for the third time to confirm that he was, in fact, at the right place; Dean might have called it “stalling,” but he called it “verifying his location.” He let out an unsteady sigh before finally pushing on the heavy doors that lead inward, resisting the urge to certify where he was for a fourth time. A woman—the receptionist, he presumed—looked up as the gust of air shuffled the papers on her desk, greeting him with a warm smile.
“You must be here for Dr. Martin. Castiel, yes?”
“Yes,” he confirmed, a bit startled by the instant recognition. He stood awkwardly in the entryway until the receptionist beckoned him forward, pushing a clipboard across the large desk she sat at as he stepped tentatively towards her.
“She’s finishing up with another patient now, but she’ll be ready in just a moment. While you’re waiting, if you could fill out these forms,” she gestured towards the clipboard again and handed him a pen, still beaming, “that would be great.” She turned back to her computer, and Castiel took the clipboard and went to sit but was halted as the receptionist spoke again. “Oh! One last thing: could I get your last name? I don’t believe I caught it during our phone call.”
“I don’t—” And then he caught himself, because he had been getting good at that. “Novak. Castiel Novak.”
“Wonderful.”
He gave her a small nod and a smile before sitting down in one of the lobby chairs, crossing his legs while his foot bounced idly. The lobby itself wasn’t very large, furnished only by a couple of chairs and side-tables, all varying shades of beige or green. There was a mini-fridge at one end, with a water-cooler and what looked like a plate of cookies to accompany it, but considering Castiel didn’t like the taste of most things he let his eyes flick back to the form he had been given. He started scanning the first page, snorting as he realized he didn’t have answers to half the questions asked, if not less. He had told Sam that he wanted to go alone, but now he was musing that he probably should have taken him up on his offer to tag along, so he could fill this paperwork out for him. Sam was a lot better at lying on the legal front than he was, mostly because he understood the human legal system and the intricacies of social security and Castiel didn’t.
He flipped to the next page, finding the questions to be much more manageable than those on the first, so he started there instead.
What life factors lead you to consider therapy?
He figured just writing “having emotions” and moving on was enough, because whoever ultimately read this form was probably not interested in the word for word transcription of the conversations he had had with Sam that had led to this point. Well, emphasis on their most recent conversation. Whatever. Moving on.
Have you ever been to therapy before?
Beating up the people who wronged him was therapeutic, but he had been told that was not therapy, per se, so he wrote “no.” Next question.
How did you first hear about this office?
Oh. That was easy.
Sam.
Castiel was interrupted in his writings by the feeling of a heavy presence standing over him, and he looked up, disquieted. A woman dressed in tight leather was walking past him, dark brown hair hanging loosely down around her exposed shoulders. The shift caught her attention and she narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, as if sensing the same strangeness he did, before continuing out the door.
“Castiel?”
Without time to process the bizarre encounter, Castiel flicked his head in the opposite direction, finding a short, kind-looking woman with cascading blond hair and glasses standing in the space between the lobby and the hall. Her small frame was shaped by an elegant blue dress and white cardigan, and she smiled at him with the warmth of a campfire, inviting him to greet her. He stood and made his way over, shaking her hand stiffly. Physical contact with strangers was probably his least favorite part about acting human, even if this one appeared harmless enough. “Yes.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Linda.” She released his hand and nodded towards the clipboard. “I can take that. No worries if you didn’t finish—you can always do the logistical stuff after session.” Castiel handed her the paperwork wordlessly, just smiling again and giving a minute nod of acknowledgement. She led him to the end of the hall and into her office, which looked, as far as Castiel could gather, very inviting: afternoon sunlight poured in through the window, rays of gold fanning out over the couch he assumed he was meant to sit on and the small table that sat in front of it. On said table was a box of tissues, a water pitcher, and a bowl of mints—therapy essentials, apparently.
“Take a seat,” Linda said, gesturing towards the couch while she took a seat in the chair opposite it and the table. Castiel did as instructed while she did a quick flip-through of the paperwork in her hands, explaining, “I like to start my introductory sessions by reviewing these forms, as a way to ease into conversation.” The papers fell back against the clipboard, and she pulled a pen out of her pocket. “I noticed that you simply wrote 'having emotions’ for why you decided to reach out to a therapist. Could you elaborate on that?”
Castiel shrugged noncommittally, an action he had picked up from doing research with Sam. “There isn’t much to elaborate on. I am experiencing a range of human emotion that is unprecedented, and I am unsure of what to do with it.”
“Unprecedented how?”
“I have not had them before,” he answered, trying to maintain his patience, “and I do not understand why I have developed them. Also, quite frankly, they’re rather irritating.”
Linda tilted her head, considering. “Oftentimes, we repress our emotions when we feel it is unsafe to express them, due to a fear of being judged or punished. Allowing your emotions to ‘develop,’ as you have phrased it, could be an indication that you are in a position where you feel you can be vulnerable.”
“I have no vulnerabilities,” Castiel said, confused. “It is not a matter of repression and expression, Dr. Martin—Linda. It is a matter of these feelings coming into existence, and I am seeking your counsel in hopes of finding an explanation for them.”
“An explanation for why you are feeling, or what?”
That gave him pause. He hadn’t really considered the latter, but now he figured that it might actually be a bit more useful than the former, considering his current situation. “Well, both, I suppose. They don’t seem to be going away anytime soon, so I admit that it would be worthwhile to make sense of them.” And then, more to himself than to Linda, he added, “I could control them then, at the very least.”
His therapist smiled at him warmly, as if pleased by this minute progression forward. “You said that these feelings you’re having are new to you. What makes you think, then, that they’re permanent?”
“I have had limited experience with them before coming to Ea—Kansas.” Oops. “Muted, skeletal versions, I guess you could describe them. Bare essentials. But, since choosing to stay, they’ve grown. Insurmountably, at times.” He gave a wry chuckle, once again thinking of his most recent conversation with Sam. “Logically speaking, then, the conclusion is that as long as I am here, I will have them, and I have no intention of leaving.”
“I would like to unpack this ‘insurmountability’ in a moment, but...” She narrowed her eyes, giving him a bemused expression. “Kansas?”
“Yes. I’m, uh—I’m here on business.” Technically, he wasn’t lying. He and the Winchesters had made the long trek out to Los Angeles for a hunt, one that had been, ah, interrupted by a little mishap. Nothing much, of course, but Sam thought it prudent enough to sit him down and ask if he was okay. He was fine, really. It was his vessel at fault, he had consoled, but Sam had simply shaken his head and handed him the phone number for the office of one Dr. Linda Martin. “Only if you want to,” he had added, patting his shoulder in an unusual act of comfort, “but I think it might help.”
And so now he was here, because Sam was usually right about things that might be helpful.
“Do you plan on staying for a while?” Linda prompted. “In L.A., I mean.”
“Truthfully, I’m not sure. Had all gone according to plan, I likely would have departed a day or so ago, but my life quite often doesn’t.”
“Right,” she murmured, jotting something down. “The reason I ask is that patients typically invest in therapists...a little closer to home.”
“Oh, the distance isn’t a problem,” Castiel clarified.
“Oookay. Is there any particular reason you decided to seek out therapy while on business, rather than waiting until you returned to Kansas? Something to do with this idea of ‘insurmountability,’ perhaps?”
Castiel frowned, pouring himself a glass of water to keep busy even though he knew he wouldn’t drink it. This dialogue had always been inevitable—it’s why he was there in the first place, after all—but that didn’t make him feel any more prepared. “A couple of days ago, I experienced a...call it a work-related dilemma,” he started, drumming his fingers on the glass as he sat back into the couch. “One of my...coworkers was injured, rather severely, and for several moments I was unable to amend the situation. Another coworker suggested my reaction to the affair might be worth discussing with someone more well-equipped than he was.”
“Would that second coworker happen to be the ‘Sam’ you mention in your preliminary forms?”
“Yes, actually,” Castiel answered, giving a small smile. “And the first coworker is fine, now.”
“What is it exactly that you do, Castiel?” Linda was giving him a funny look again, as if she was trying to piece together something entirely separate from the surface-level topic of their conversation.
“I work for the FBI,” he replied, before realizing that was probably not something an actual FBI agent would say so openly. “I can’t really go into the specifics, of course.”
“Of course.” She didn’t seem at all shocked, instead jotting something else down and transitioning back into their previous point of discussion. “This ‘reaction’ you had to your injured coworker seems to be the inciting incident for your visit with me today. I imagine that in your line of work, injuries received on the job are not uncommon; what made this one different?”
Castiel mulled over that for a moment, trying to figure out how to phrase the situation without including mentions of his frail divinity. “Most injuries are...simple. Need a couple stitches, maybe, but typically don’t run deep enough to be of any serious consequence. This one had the potential to be unfixable.”
“And that frightened you.”
“Yes,” he admitted, almost startled by how willing he was to do so. That was probably the first time he had even acknowledged the possibility since the whole event had occurred. “Very much.”
“So you reacted in a way driven by terror, which was new to you because such strong feelings are not something you are accustomed to experiencing.”
“That...sums it up quite well, actually.” Castiel was becoming almost unnerved by the emotional aptitude of this therapist. Though, that was what they were paid to be, wasn’t it?
“How exactly did you react?”
He started drumming his fingers on the glass of water again, taking a tentative sip just so he wouldn’t have to talk. “I believe it would be called ‘panic,’” he finally said, still looking at the glass instead of Linda. She stayed quiet, encouraging him to continue, which he did so begrudgingly. “Irregular breath patterns, tinnitus, blurry vision.” He cut himself off before he could say more, hating the way the memory leaped to the forefront of his mind with vivid willingness. “I’m sure this is not unusual for you to hear, Doctor, or Sam would not have steered me in your direction.”
“You had a panic attack,” she clarified, once it was clear Castiel was not going to be independently forthcoming of much else.
“That is what he called it, yes.” He set the glass down. “A brief bodily malfunction, truly. I don’t understand why he made such a to-do about it.”
“He was concerned for you,” Linda said gently. “Panic attacks are brought on by extreme levels of stress and anxiety, such as a coworker you deeply care about sustaining a potentially fatal injury.”
“Yes, but I fixed it,” Castiel grunted, hoping to end the tedious discussion there. It had taken a lot of frantic scrambling, tugging at the tangled mess of his grace that still hadn’t sorted itself out, but he had healed Dean. It was fine, and he was tired of everyone telling him it wasn’t. That he wasn’t. “The ordeal is over now, and the odds of it happening again are inconsequentially small.” He didn’t know that, if he was being honest, but maybe if he said it enough times to enough different people it would be.
Linda wrote something down and then tapped her pen against the clipboard thoughtfully, looking at her notes before looking back up at Castiel. “We started this session with a discussion of vulnerability, which you dismissed as a possibility for your newfound emotions. Is it possible that these coworkers, Sam and...”
“Dean,” Castiel supplied.
“...are points of vulnerability for you?”
He scoffed.
“Part of building meaningful relationships is allowing ourselves to feel vulnerable,” Linda continued, undeterred by his less than enthusiastic response. “The ability to let our guard down around those close to us is an important and needed part of being human.”
“But I’m not—” human. The fallen angel sighed, shaking his head. “It’s different, for me.”
“It’s only different because it’s new, and, as a consequence, you might feel exposed rather than soothed.” Castiel gave a hesitant nod in agreement. “But, the fact that you have allowed yourself to be expressive around them—your coworkers—indicates positive progress.”
“How?” he asked, tilting his head in confusion.
“Surely you haven’t felt only panic around them,” Linda surmised. “I can imagine you wouldn’t have chosen to stay in Kansas if that was the case—assuming they are also part of living in Kansas.”
“You are correct,” Castiel agreed, uncertainty hedging its way into his voice, “but I don’t understand half of what I do feel, and it is even more perplexing that it is hu—my coworkers who are drawing these emotions forward, considering they aren’t particularly emotionally apt themselves.”
“I have something that might help.” Linda set down the clipboard and pen and went around to her desk, rummaging through a couple of drawers before returning to her seat and handing Castiel a small notebook.
“What is this for?”
“To understand both what and why you are feeling,” she explained, “it could be useful to note descriptions of what emotions you experience and when. For example, you felt panicked when your coworker—Dean—was injured, but felt relieved when things turned out alright in the end.” Castiel began to nod in understanding, accepting the notebook and letting his hands fall back into his lap, finding comfort in absentmindedly thumbing the journal’s corner. “It may resolve some of your confusion, and give us talking points for our next session. Consider it therapy homework.”
“‘Homework,’” Castiel quoted, giving a small laugh to hide his confusion at the term. Linda gave a corresponding chuckle but didn’t elaborate, so he made a mental note to ask the Winchesters about ‘homework’ later. “Thank you. I’ll try my best to keep up with my entries.”
“I didn’t mean to imply it was mandatory,” the therapist replied. “Certainly, there’s no pressure to use it at all. Just a thought.”
“I agree that it could be in my better interests,” Castiel said. He lifted the notebook, gesturing. “I appreciate it.”
“I’m glad! Speaking of next sessions,” Linda stood up and walked back to her desk, opening her computer and typing for a few moments before continuing, “when would you like next time to be?”
Castiel gaped. He had no concept of a schedule, ever.
“I have this same day and time open next week, if that would work best?”
“Yes, that sounds most sensible,” Castiel confirmed. Linda nodded, clicking away at her computer for a few more seconds before closing the lid and looking back up.
“And done. You can always call or email me if you need to reschedule.” She smiled, going to open the door. “It was wonderful meeting you, Castiel. I look forward to seeing you next week.”
“You too, Linda,” he replied easily, bowing his head on the way out. It felt weird to call her by her first name, like they were old friends when in actuality they had just met, so he resolved to simply call her “Doctor” in the future. Not so formal that conversation would be stilted, but formal enough to where he could keep his boundaries.
He waved a cautious farewell to the receptionist as he finished that train of thought, about to leave the building, when he suddenly remembered he hadn’t finished the paperwork he had been given. He briskly made his way back down the hall, poking his head into Linda’s office.
“I didn’t finish the forms,” he announced, looking for the clipboard that had since disappeared. Linda looked up from where she was now sat again at her desk, evidently mid-phone call as she pulled it away from her ear and covered it with her hand.
“Oh! No need to worry about the forms. This is plenty, thank you.” She nodded at him with a pleasant smile, and then returned to her call. Castiel furrowed his eyebrows and tilted his head, going to say that he hadn’t even filled out the first and arguably most pertinent page, but Linda was too involved in whatever conversation she was having to notice that he was still standing there.
“Listen, Maze...”
He shook his head and left, walking down the block to find a bus station.
Castiel returned to the hotel room he was sharing with the Winchesters to find it curiously devoid of Dean, which immediately spiked some amount of what he was learning was “concern” in his chest. Sam was sprawled on one of the two beds, looking the opposite of that as he scrolled through something on his laptop, when he heard the door click and unclick with Castiel’s entrance. He glanced up, smiling when he saw his friend standing in the entry hall, hands in his pockets in typical Castiel fashion.
“Dean went to get dinner,” he explained before Castiel could ask. Castiel frowned.
“He really shouldn’t be—” he started, but Sam interrupted him.
“He’s fine, Cas,” he urged gently. “Really.” He motioned for his friend to sit. “How was it?”
“It was actually quite illuminating,” Castiel replied, sinking into the edge of Dean’s bed. “Thank you, for the recommendation.”
Sam grinned. “‘Course, man. I’m glad it helped. You gonna go again?”
Castiel nodded. “Next week, same day and time.”
“That’s good.” Sam moved to go back to scrolling, but Castiel interrupted him, remembering his query from the end of his therapy session.
“Sam, what is ‘homework?’”
To his surprise, Sam laughed, looking back up from his computer with a certain amount of amusement dancing across his features.
“It’s, uh, something you get when you go to school,” he explained. “It’s just work you do at home, you know? Like a times table worksheet.”
“...Times table?”
“Bad example. If your therapist gave you ‘homework,’ that just means it’s something she wants you to do between now and the next time you see her.”
“Oh.” Castiel nodded sagely. “That makes sense. Thank you, Sam.”
Sam just shook his head with a small chuckle, turning to his computer once again. Castiel didn’t stop him this time, instead beginning to rummage through the stock magazines on Dean’s nightstand to find something to read. He found a National Geographic issue and tugged that one free; he had always found those to be interesting.
A few moments later, the door clicked and unclicked again, and shortly thereafter Dean appeared where Castiel had been standing a couple minutes prior. Castiel noted the relief he felt upon seeing him, and additionally noted that actually paying attention to how he felt wasn’t as “insurmountable” as he had initially thought. He thumbed the journal where it sat in his pocket.
“Wow, good to see I was so quickly replaced,” Dean teased, setting down two bags on the table at the end of their beds. “I got you their version of your bullshit veggie burger,” he said, nodding towards Sam as he began pulling things out, “and you a cheeseburger, bed thief.”
“You can have it back, Dean.” Castiel made a move to get up, but Dean shook his head and placed a cheeseburger in his hands.
“I’m kidding, buddy.” He sat down next to Castiel, taking a bite of his burger. “There’s fries on th’ table,” he added, mid-chew.
“What, you’re not gonna hand me mine, too?” Sam said accusingly, closing his laptop and setting it to the side as he stood up to grab his own dinner.
“Thought you were all ‘bout exercise,” Dean replied around another mouthful of burger. Castiel snickered a little, because it was nice to finally have something to laugh at, before taking a bite of his own cheeseburger with a content sigh.
It continued on like that for a while, banter and burgers and a general good time. When he knew Dean wasn’t looking, Castiel stole glances in his direction, watching him gesture animatedly with a fry or roll his eyes at some wisecrack by Sam. It was almost easy to forget that he had nearly bled out a few days prior when he looked so lively now, nose scrunched as he tossed his head back in an ineloquent snort-laugh (the offending joke going unheard by Castiel), but the bloody clothes still balled up in the corner of the room said differently. Since his Fall, Castiel had struggled a great deal with getting his damn grace to cooperate, and knowing it had almost cost Dean his life was something that scared him more than anything else ever had. What if he wasn’t able to pull himself together next time? What if Sam was run through, and Dean was yelling at him to fix it, but his powers were too far retreated for him to access, and—
Dean bumped his shoulder and he snapped out of it, realizing that his friends were starting on their second helpings while Castiel hadn’t even made it more than two bites into his first. “You think too much,” Dean said plainly, eyeing Castiel’s hands. He followed his gaze downward, finding that his fingers were white-knuckling his greasy dinner, and he bit back a bitter laugh. Yeah, he did. He thought way too damn much. “Case later,” Dean continued, knowing now that he had Cas’s attention, “Burgers now.”
“And fries,” Sam added helpfully, shoving one such ketchup-drenched potato stick into his mouth. It was a miracle he hadn’t gotten any on the hotel sheets. Castiel smiled slightly, and Dean relented, seeming to have decided that whatever Operation Cheer Up The Broken Angel he had been executing was accomplished. Cas smiled even more at that thought, and he relaxed enough to return to eating his cheeseburger. This one was underwhelming taste-wise, but he didn’t dare say it, shoulder still warm from where Dean had brushed against it. When had he started doing that? He could seldom recall a time where he and Dean—he and anybody, really—had had contact when one of them wasn’t injured or dying. Maybe he had looked like he was dying. Or maybe, he dared to consider, Dean had just wanted to.
The warm feeling spread to his chest, and when they had finished eating and the Winchesters had gone to bed Castiel took a seat at the hotel room desk. He found a pen in the top drawer and took the journal from Linda out of his pocket.
The situation with my grace is frustrating, but at least I have the Winchesters. I feel good talking to them. Happy, I believe is the word. Especially Dean.