Chapter Text
It’s a long and empty road, lit only by streetlights that flare at the windows like a silent heartbeat, like the silent heartbeat of Castiel’s mommy who has gone away and cannot ever come back, will never come back. Silent like the earth. Silent like stone. Silent like ash.
Gabriel is silent, expression blank, leaning against the darkened pane next to his seat, curled away from his family. Castiel’s daddy has put on soft music but he’s crying silently in the driver’s seat and his shoulders are stiff in a way that lets Castiel know he doesn’t want his children to notice his tears. Gabriel has noticed, but glares out of the window and says nothing, jaw set stubbornly. Castiel learnt a new word this week: resentment. Gabriel has been bitter and short with their dad over the past few weeks. Everything he does and says is stung with bile. Castiel can tell it makes Jimmy even sadder. Jimmy was already sad and heavy with the sadness.
Michael isn’t here. He said college was too busy but Castiel can tell it’s not because of that. Michael bristles every time the new house is mentioned. He touched the frame of the front door a little too long when he left it for the last time, about to return to college, after their mommy’s funeral. Castiel caught him glancing up sadly at the face of the house, fingers curling around the wooden frame like he was trying to hold onto something that couldn’t be touched. And though he helped Jimmy with packing all the boxes, loading them into the car, he didn’t stay to unpack them. Just shuffled things away and came downstairs with his bag to go back to college and some very red eyes.
The leaves are beginning to turn. Castiel is going to miss driving down the roads of their old home and seeing them turn from green to gold to ruddy brown, a rainbow of age and change. Will there be trees in their new home? Will they have leaves which turn rich and wistful colours which make Castiel, only a little boy, feel a happy kind of longing?
He doesn’t know. He isn’t sure.
Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, a time of confidences
Castiel’s father is still crying silently.
He’s started singing this song to Castiel as a lullaby. His voice gets choked and heavy when he does.
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories; they’re all that’s left you
The song sounds like it’s whispered out of the car stereo. It fills the empty spaces of the family—the empty space which Castiel’s mommy should be sitting in.
What do people do when they are very sad, like this? All through shiva Castiel sat on a low chair and saw grownups crying and heard Uncle Zachariah say things that made Jimmy’s face set into something ugly, made him get up and leave the room, eventually made him get up and leave the home his wife died in, taking his children with him.
Castiel hasn’t seen the new house. Michael had stayed and looked after Castiel during the week their daddy and aunt Amara had been moving the big things in—lots of furniture so that their old house had felt like a skeleton, emptied of its skin and organs. Gabriel had been angry he hadn’t been trusted with looking after Castiel, on his own. Gabriel has been angry about a lot of things. Castiel’s dad says this anger is part of a bigger sad. Castiel thinks he just feels the bigger sad. The world has grown too loud and Castiel feels very quiet. Like no noise he could ever make again would make a difference. Like no words he could ever say would change the sad, or make it happier. He misses the softness of his mother’s voice when she was happy and healthy.
He looks out of his window, too. Jimmy had said they’d be at the new house in time for dinner, but they hit traffic and now it’s late and dark. Castiel finds himself glad the first thing he’ll do when he arrives in the strange new place they’ll live in, without his mommy, is fall asleep and maybe forget for a little while. Even if it’s just a little while. He wants to forget. All he wants to do is forget.
And then, all he is afraid of is forgetting.
He wants Michael to be here to hold his hand when they park in front of the new house, which looms, scary, in his mind. He knows Gabriel will not be the one to take a hold of his fingers and squeeze them comfortingly, with a serious expression, brows set like heavy bars across his face. His biggest brother is good at comfort, but was too sad to stay and comfort Castiel, in the end.
He hasn’t seen the new house yet but he imagines its mean face: windows glaring out at him like a scowl, bricks meeting too closely and yet rooms too wide and gaping to feel welcoming.
He looks out of his window and imagines that some kind of wispy, magical bird is gliding alongside the car, dodging streetlights and approaching vehicles and fire hydrants, diving and swooping and silent and happy. This bird is happy to be travelling, and it never had a home to leave in the first place. This bird hatched from an egg and never saw or met its mother so could never feel such a gasping, breathless sadness when she died. It wouldn’t even know it if she did.
Castiel wants to slip into not knowing, too.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Gabriel says, words suffocating the silence of the heartbeat-streetlights and the heavy darkness pressing on the car and the quiet music Jimmy has been crying to.
Jimmy sighs gently.
“You’ve said.”
Gabriel thumps his head softly against the window, over and over.
“I know that you’re angry, Gabriel,” their daddy says, softly.
“Do you?” Gabriel’s words come out hard and grated. The muscles in his jaw are wound up tightly.
“And I’ll say again that I’m sorry.”
“Means a lot,” Gabriel rolls his eyes.
“And that you’re allowed to be angry.”
“Wow—that’s—that’s amazing, dad,” Gabriel’s words are acidic. “You’re an emotional mastermind—good thing you became a therapist, huh? You could help anyone. Oh, wait.”
Jimmy’s hands clench tight around the wheel.
Everything is bleeding away.
“Try to get some sleep, Gabriel,” Jimmy says, voice trembling even as it stays even. “You’re tired.”
“Stop patronising me.”
“And you,” Jimmy glances in the mirror to Castiel, ignoring Gabriel’s comment. “We’ll be there in a little while, yet.”
“Yay.” Gabriel grumbles. His eyes are sad. Castiel can tell his eyes are sadder than his words are angry.
Jimmy’s eyes are sad, too.
The music carries on playing, soft and sad and quiet.
The whole world has gone soft and sad and quiet.
Someone must be able to help. Why can’t Castiel’s father make it happier? Normally he can, normally he makes Castiel smile and feel warm and safe—but normally the sad isn’t like this…
Castiel wakes up when the car slows down. They’re on a road with little in the way of streetlight. The moon is the brightest thing in the sky—and the warm, yellow lights coming out from the face of a little, cosy house on the street. The windows look like eyes and the house seems to smile in understanding, turning its friendly gaze to welcome them to a new and unfamiliar land. Castiel’s daddy stops the car.
“Is this it?” Castiel asks, looking up at the warm smiling house. He likes the look of it. Quiet hope lights gently in his chest, a tiny flame, a promise, a prayer.
“Uh-huh,” Jimmy confirms, killing the engine, and Castiel feels the hope glow a little brighter. But his daddy glances back at Castiel and sees which direction he’s looking in. “No, Cassie, sorry—not that one.”
Castiel frowns and looks over to his father.
“Huh?”
“This one,” Jimmy gestures with his thumb, in the opposite direction to the friendly house. Castiel follows the gesture and finds himself looking at something hulking and angry with grief against the black night and clouds silvery from weeping moonlight. It looks like it holds a secret and Castiel’s heart does something strange in his chest when he lays eyes upon it, it’s half a pang, half a break. This isn’t a happy house. This is a house which has seen hurt, held it, maybe even caused it. He shakes his head softly. This is a house which knows that it will see and hold still more hurt. Castiel can tell.
“No,” he says, lips pulled downwards, unable to help it. His eyes prickle uncomfortably. Through the itch of his gaze Castiel can make out steps up to a front porch like jaws. The house is open mouthed and weeping and hungry.
The house is some shuddering, bleak, gray thing against the night sky.
Gabriel gets out with a huff, slinging his bag over his back.
“Gabriel,” their dad sighs, “can you help a little more with the unpacking?” As Gabriel makes his way away from the car.
Gabriel huffs again and takes the bags Jimmy holds out to him.
Castiel stays put. He watches the house. The house watches him.
He’s startled by his father appearing at his door, knocking at the window.
“Castiel?” He asks, knuckles sounding softly at the glass. Castiel turns to look up at him. His dad wears a smile like a mask. “Do you want to get out?”
No, Castiel doesn’t.
He glances back at the friendly house. A silhouette moves in front of its yellow lights. He watches and, in the darkness, can make out that the house is painted green. Like trees on leaves in a forest.
He opens the car door, feeling inexplicably braver.
“Gabriel is angry,” he says, picking up his own little backpack and getting out the car. “Sad, as well.”
“I can tell,” Jimmy answers. “I’ll talk to him this evening.”
Gabriel does like talking. What will Jimmy talk to him about?
“Maybe about video games,” Castiel suggests, looking up to his dad, who closes the car door for Castiel. “He likes those.”
For the first time in the interaction, his daddy smiles for real.
“That’s true,” he chuckles. “Thanks for the suggestion, Cassie.”
His hand reaches to ruffle softly at Castiel’s hair. It almost makes Castiel smile. He wonders when he’ll feel like he’s able to, again. He wonders if he’ll ever smile, and mean it, again.
He hopes so.
They climb the steps of the jaw-porch together. The hall is big and gaping. The kitchen is like a stomach. The living room is like a raw and beating heart. Castiel’s daddy leads him upstairs, opens the door to Castiel’s new bedroom for him: Castiel enters with heavy features and looks up at each of its four walls. The ceiling is high, like it’s trying to run away from the house. Castiel can’t blame it. The walls are too far apart. The room is hungry. The yellow light from the house across the road makes a pale amber haze on the carpet and is the only thing affording the room any sensation of warmth. Everything else is cold. Will Castiel ever feel warm again? Will Castiel ever feel home again?
His answers come when he meets the little boy from the green house.
He is renamed ‘Cas’ by his new friend, his first friend, and grows into the name, heart flowering nervously, but there’s something… a promise… which steadies him, in the new title. Dean is loyal and loud. Castiel is Dean’s Cas. Others begin calling Castiel by this name but it is Dean, it is always Dean, who gave him that name. It will always be Dean’s name for him, a promise which everything that Dean does shows Castiel he intends to keep. Even if the promise came from Dean’s crooked teeth and slight lisp not quite being able to sound out Castiel. It’s a promise of friend, forever, a wordless promise which again, Castiel grows into. A title to a new story, a title for Castiel he hadn’t been able to consider, not until now. A promise of friend, forever, and more.
They have a sleepover just like Dean suggested, a week after Castiel first arrived at the big white house. And then they have another, two nights later. Castiel’s head feels less vast and lonely around the other boy. Life is no longer a reel of unanswered, unanswerable questions.
The boy with bright green eyes and freckles and crooked teeth likes listening to Castiel telling stories and Castiel is only too happy to tell them. He tells Castiel he’s maybe the cleverest person he’s ever met. It makes Castiel glow. They draw and colour in—Castiel usually plants and bees, lots of bees, and Dean cars, mainly the black car his daddy drives. On Castiel’s birthday Dean gives him a card and in the card is a picture of a bee driving the black car—Castiel doesn’t want to say that bees can’t drive—and also a picture of the two of them, smiling and holding hands. Underneath this picture are the words, is the label, Best FrendS. Castiel also feels so warm inside he doesn’t even tell Dean that he spelt ‘friends’ wrong. Dean thinks they’re best friends? It makes Castiel glow.
He also gives Castiel a stuffed bumblebee toy with a round, smiley face and fuzzy body and Castiel takes it everywhere with him and this makes Dean smile so much, so wide, so pretty, that Castiel would take it everywhere with him even if bees weren’t his favourite animal.
Castiel doesn’t know anyone in the neighbourhood so his first birthday party in the new house is just him, Dean, his dad, and his brothers. Michael visits the new house from college and is taken aback by Dean’s energy but smiles at Castiel’s excitement over Dean’s birthday present to him, and smiles wider when he sees Dean’s card and spots Dean’s words underneath the picture of him and Castiel. It’s the first time Castiel’s seen Michael smile since…
The house stops being unfriendly. Castiel isn’t sure, doesn’t know, when this starts. The kitchen becomes a sunny place which he and Dean and his dad will sit in, decorating cupcakes, Gabriel coming in to steal some before Castiel shouts at him to stop it and Gabriel runs away, laughing maniacally. The living room becomes a space for watching cartoons or playfighting with Dean or sitting and reading in silence. The dining room is where they sit and draw and chatter for hours, hours, hours. The study is where Castiel’s daddy works and where Dean will sometimes get bored and burst into, asking for cookies or for Jimmy to read them a story. The front door is what Dean will swing open, unannounced—the only warning the clattering of the front gate being flung open and the thump-thump-thump of Dean racing up the front porch steps. Castiel’s bedroom is where Castiel shares stories with Dean, his own stories, and where Dean with his big and beautiful eyes like two little green planets made of plants turned into glass will stare, enchanted, enchanting, mouth slack before he exclaims something about how good Castiel’s stories are.
Dean is the first to suggest climbing out onto the roof outside Castiel’s bedroom.
Castiel is afraid but as ever, bolstered by Dean and filled with the strange simultaneous need to impress him.
They clamber out and Dean says they probably shouldn’t tell Jimmy about this. He laughs as he says this but Castiel still feels nervous.
But Dean takes a hold of Castiel’s hand and sits them down, over the edge of the roof, looking out at their road, the trees, the fields, then hills, loping in the distance.
“This is the coolest,” he grins, and Castiel watches him, and the low sunlight hitting his face, and thinks, maybe it is. “It’s so pretty.”
The look Dean’s wearing is so enchanting it could probably make anything beautiful. Maybe Dean has magic in him. His gaze is like a spell.
“Yes,” Castiel agrees, but he’s distracted by the curl of Dean’s thick brown eyelashes. He wants to trace the shape they make against Dean’s hands so Dean can see how pretty they are.
“Let’s do this all the time.”
“What?”
“Sit out here,” Dean turns to Castiel, grinning. “Let’s sit out here, all the time.”
“Okay,” Castiel says, and would say okay to anything with how happy and excited Dean looks.
“It’s my new favourite place,” Dean says, “in the whole world.”
Castiel twitches a smile.
“That’s nice.”
“Is it yours?” Dean asks.
“Pardon?”
“Is it your favourite place in the world? Where’s your favourite place?”
Castiel thinks.
He thinks of his old house. It feels more distant now, than it used to. He loved it so much—and loves it, still—but less painfully than he used to. And this place—he’s stretched his limbs out into it, and found it cradling him, welcoming him. Not the mean and angry structure he’d thought it was, when he first laid eyes on it. Just… grieving. Like Castiel was grieving. He thinks of the beach his dad took him and Dean on a road trip to last month, for a mini vacation, and how the spray and salt made him blink and beam, and how Dean lit up as he danced against the surf. He thinks of the forest he and Dean walk through and their plans to build a treehouse there, some day.
He thinks of Dean.
“I don’t know,” he shrugs, and finds himself smiling. “Wherever you are, I suppose.”
Dean’s expression changes.
He hand finds Castiel’s and squeezes tight.
“Really?”
Castiel laughs.
Well, where else would he want to be? Dean really does make it that simple. He always has.
“Of course.”
They grow together like the trees which twist and dance in the forest they spend so much time in. Their lives are punctuated by each other’s presence. Castiel’s life is measured by the grins Dean offers him; the quiet moments they share at night, whispering secrets to each other; the notes Dean pushes over to him in class, which Castiel has to cover his mouth when reading to stop himself from laughing as Dean grins and winks at him; the times Dean reaches out to take a soft hold of Castiel’s hand or, as they grow older, ruffle at Castiel’s hair.
The seasons shift like stars turning their course in the sky, years roll like the tide but Dean’s friendship is the pulse of Castiel’s little life and the carrier and cause of some of its happiest moments. He teaches Castiel baseball, football—Castiel loves it when he does this because he will stand close to Castiel, close enough that the heat of his body pulses onto Castiel’s skin, filling his lungs with warmth and giving new meaning to expansion—and he’ll cover Castiel’s hands in his own and say No, Cas, like this, words wrapped in soft affection and expression riddled with it. He’ll manhandle Castiel—not hard—standing behind him and adjusting his arms or stance, Castiel’s soul radiates bliss in these moments, though it will take years for him to understand why.
Castiel grows worried as they grow older that Dean, naturally charismatic and obviously beautiful, will abandon him for more popular, interesting, cooler company and classmates. But Dean is loyal and surprises Castiel with his loyalty every time Dean brushes off the louder and more dynamic socialites in favour of company with Castiel, even one on one, sometimes especially one on one with Castiel. Dean carves out an entire friendship group for both him and his best friend and makes sure Castiel has a place right next to him in this little space in their lives.
He shows Castiel music and listens to him talking about books with a delicate smile playing at his dark pink lips, lopsided at a warm secret Castiel is not in on. He teases Castiel for his dress sense, especially as they get older, but will often steal his tees and Castiel repeatedly finds his ripped jeans in Dean’s drawers, and they end up in at least three arguments about whose they were in the first place. This isn’t to mention socks, which get to a point of indiscernibility that the only socks Castiel is certain are his are the sets Dean buys him, one day, as a joke, one pair of which is covered with images of tiny books and fountain pens, and another with bumblebees.
Castiel still regularly catches Dean wearing the latter of these.
For some reason it doesn’t remotely piss him off.
Realising that he’s in love with his best friend is the strange ecstasy of flying and falling at the same time. Half hope, half fear: rapture and dread are made synonymous and yet Dean is the very rhythm of litany, the sound of praise.
Dean is set apart from every other figure in his life like someone anointed: looking at him is like standing on holy ground.
And with Dean the mirror Castiel’s life stands in front of, he finds himself on holy ground every day.
Whatever it is Dean feels for him Castiel is blessed for it, and knows he is. This friendship is like the foundations of a house. There are very few things which are an equivalent bedrock to Castiel.
Family—which Dean essentially is to the Novaks, anyway, and Dean, and writing, and nature, and literature. If Castiel were to make his own hierarchy of needs it would look remarkably like this. His life has become a good one and he almost didn’t realise it. A good one? Does this describe it? Could it ever? Castiel is blessed.
Even as he feels hot presses of fear in the mornings he wakes up to Dean and his suddenly-obvious adoration for the other boy requires he steal out of the room and into the bathroom. Even as coils of jealousy sour his blood at the sight of others clearly enamoured with Dean—though why shouldn’t they be?
It almost feels like a betrayal when Castiel begins to consider studying abroad. But Dean is perpetually supportive—and Castiel oughtn’t be surprised, not after all these years, not after Dean’s repeated proof of loyalty, his remarkable abilities as an encourager and first-audience to his stories, for so many years. When would Dean not support Castiel, selflessly, unquestioningly, in pursuing his aspirations until the very end?
No. It’s no surprise. Dean, the pillars and vertebrae of Castiel’s life. Support is part of his role, apparently, though be never asks thanks for it. Never resents Castiel for the suggestion that his life should uproot itself and fly from Dean, five thousand miles across a gaping, isolating ocean.
No matter the goodbyes, this love has been forever.
Or so Castiel thinks.
A storm ravages through his and Dean’s lives as rain rips onto the streets and houses of Lawrence.
The strangest thing of a storm is that afterwards, there’s no stasis. The sun rises on skeleton frames of homes and lives in a way which proves that sometimes, progress is discourteous. Castiel is left on the roof which was Dean’s favourite place in all the world, which had been his favourite place in all the world as long as Dean was there. Castiel is left on the roof staring at the warm green house which once had a friendly face and now which mocks him, laughs at him with the silhouettes at its windows ripping curtains shut in wordless acts of rejection and severance.
Perhaps the storm doesn’t ravage through Dean’s life—Dean emerges unscathed because apparently losing Castiel as a friend is not as terrible a thing as spending time with a boy who has admitted love to you, apparently the mortification of your best friend having a queer crush on you is worth sacrificing the friendship over—all fourteen years of it. Fourteen years of what Castiel had believed was beautiful and trembling with purity and now can only think of with bitterness-laced-pain. What a thing to believe fourteen years of your life have been burnt away on a love who hates you for loving them. Who would rather break you, bury you, than let you land gently. Castiel is made afraid of falling and the men and women who enter his life after this rejection find him all wall, no heart—or perhaps his heart is the wall, now, and several accuse him of having this organ made of stone. They don’t realise the raw pang this causes his supposedly stone heart which feels remarkably like tender, innocent, ordinary flesh and blood in those moments.
But what is he meant to say? Sorry, I find myself still healing from a wound you will believe I should have recovered from, years ago, but which I worry will rot at me until my last breath.
No matter the goodbyes, this love has been forever.
The morning of his flight to England, Castiel packing the last of his things with his heart fluttering nervously in his throat, he waits, ears prickling with the desperation to hear a knock at the door. To hear Dean, on the morning which will mean reparation or dismemberment, to hear Dean ready to weld together the broken pieces of their souls by saying a goodbye which acknowledges the weight of these fourteen years. He aches for it. The poets never speak of the anguish of losing a friend. Why do they never speak of it? Lost love is seen as worthy subject, but why only if that love is romantic? Dean and Castiel’s love has sprawled out in so many more directions than just romantic. Apparently it never was romantic, not for Dean.
This isn’t the goodbye Castiel imagined.
What did he imagine?
In his weaker, more fitful moments, prior to the fight, he dreamt of teary goodbyes at the airport perhaps containing a confession and a kiss, the softest, surest embrace imaginable. Two heads bent close together as they both admitted it was the other, all, all, all along: always the other.
Now he just hopes for a goodbye, any goodbye at all.
A word, a gesture, would be enough.
His dad appears at his door. Jimmy’s eyes are filled with apologies.
“Castiel,” he says, voice gentle with sorries, “we need to get your bags in the car. It’s time to go.”
Castiel finds his throat is too closed-up to swallow. He shakes his head fitfully and looks about his room, pretending to scan it for things he might have forgotten. Really, he’s just about to cry.
“I’m not quite ready yet,” he says, unsteadily, and wonders with a pang of sympathy how it was Michael felt, moving home after their mother died and having to say goodbye in a manner he never imagined, at once to home, security, and the happiness of childhood and all its most precious memories. Forced into growing up suddenly without a chance to take a steadying breath.
“Castiel,” Jimmy says, face washed with sad sympathy.
“He should be here,” Castiel finds himself saying, unable to stop himself from saying it. “He should be here—he said he’d be here—he always said he’d be here—”
His breath starts stuttering out and the tears are on his face, wracking his body before he can stop them. Jimmy is in the room and hugging him close in an instant and Castiel can’t even hear his assurances that everything will be okay, his head is pitching about with the thoughts he told me he’d always be here for me, he said we’d always be friends, he said best friends, he said he’d say goodbye to me, he said he’d wait, why did he lie, why isn’t he broken by this, too, is this how he wants it to end, he wants to go through with this, does he really want to go through with this?
Castiel doesn’t want to leave like this.
Jimmy lets him wait an extra half hour but it’s no use, and now they’re pushed for time, and have to go—and it hurts even more, because Castiel suffered the indignity of waiting, and still Dean didn’t come. Absence is the most silent of rejections, and the coldest.
The journey to the airport is quiet, his dad puts the radio on and offers small snippets of conversation, but Castiel barely entertains them. At the airport in bustling space and cold hard daylight Jimmy offers him an unusually tight hug—usually his hugs are warm, but not this hard—and tells Castiel how proud he is of him.
“I know this isn’t the goodbye you wanted,” Jimmy says, evenly but still sad. “But we can never plan for those. Better to say how you feel as you feel it, hey? That way there aren’t any words unsaid.”
Castiel looks down, thinking he doesn’t really have the luxury of time until he needs to board, to be able to listen to one of his father’s strange meandering life lessons.
“Right,” he nods.
Words left unsaid—surely things would be better, if Castiel had never confessed everything to Dean in the first place. Surely easy ignorance is better than the sharp press of sudden knowledge.
“So I’ll say I think you’re brilliant, absolutely brilliant, no matter what,” Jimmy speaks over Castiel’s troubled, watery thoughts. “I’m so proud of you. I love you, so dearly, Castiel. No matter what.”
Castiel looks up.
“You too,” he shudders out, heart in his throat.
“I’ll see you soon.”
“I hope so,” Castiel smiles.
One last hug. And then the next frontier.
England is colder than he imagined. He imagined a romantic chill but as the weeks wane into October and November in Cambridge, the cold bites at his bones. Sometimes it feels as though he can see the cold winds swirling down the streets. Old buildings are made pale by pale light, Castiel spends evenings inside warm and crowded pubs with sticky tables and stronger beers than he’s used to. He makes friends, and good friends, but none of them are the kinds of friends who would sit out on a roof with him for hours, teach him how to throw a football, lie about their favourite kind of bee just to make friends with Castiel in the first place. He works, he works hard. He sits in beautiful rooms with academics and is half fear, half excitement as they uncover words with meanings brand new in old texts. Dean doesn’t call.
His first year ends. Then his second. His father tells him that Dean has dropped out of music school and Castiel cannot begin to untangle the murky swirl of feelings this dredges up in him.
He knows that Jimmy is seeing and talking to Dean, regularly, and this makes him taste a bitter tang of resentment. And… jealousy?
No.
Not jealousy.
He actually finds himself in a reasonably serious relationship with a girl in his third year: she’s pretty and smart and studies Classics and likes to slide hand-written lines of Latin poems with the translation underneath over to him while they work in the café opposite King’s College. These are love poems and it makes Castiel squirm in his seat even though the sentiments they describe are not alien to him, are only alien to him in this relationship.
She grows angry and resentful at his stagnant heart and calls him robotic, a fucking freakish machine which singes Castiel’s nerves enough to stagger him away from any kind of attempt at a rebuttal. He can’t say yes I do feel, I feel, I feel so much I’m sorry it’s not for you I wish it was for you.
Something inside of him calls across the vast expanse of the Atlantic and is never given an answer.
Jimmy is on call, literally on the phone, for many of Castiel’s breakdowns, there to coach and counsel him gently through the tumult of his final year, the belief that he isn’t good enough, could never be good enough, never deserved his place here and doesn’t belong.
He graduates with a first class degree which he believes in entirely thanks to his father’s love, and all his supervisors speak to him as though in a few years, he’ll be sitting where they’re sitting, teaching young eighteen to twenty-something year-olds about beautiful wrought words in books and asking them to create their own.
This is what he does: he continues a trail of academia, determined to travel the length of the UK and see and understand the country in its entirety—part of this is an act of rejection to the city of Lawrence and everything it did to hurt him. Part of it is joyful exploration of a land he’s starting to understand—reclaimed marshes of Cambridgeshire and rugged hills of Durham; heaving smoggy vibrant London and finally elegant, icy Edinburgh. He begins dating again, a man, during the bluecold months of his doctorate, and Jimmy speaks about this man as though he’s a turning season, the frosted-grass on the mornings between autumn and winter.
Castiel resents this and yet, in the back corner of his mind, thinks of the man in almost precisely the same way, which hardly helps.
He meets Balthazar who bitches at him and nags him to move from academia into the more lucrative spheres for English graduates, but Castiel never does, surprised by the joy of sitting in infectious excitement with a frightened undergrad who grows slowly more confident upon the realisation that Castiel isn’t socially aware enough to be unkind, and isn’t bored enough with literature to find any of their tense, plucky comments uninspiring. He leans into the role of eccentric academic, or tells himself that he does, to soften the sting of his own strangeness—but his students regard him affectionately and buy him plants and enamelled insect pins at the end of their time with him, each year. He goes on long roaming walks in the hills and peaks around Edinburgh and occasionally feels pinches of loneliness, knowing he must look like some strange wild beast of a man with his tattered trenchcoat and scruff covering his jaw.
Balthazar, in many ways, the opposite, the utter antithesis of the green eyed boy from the small green house Castiel grew up alongside, becomes one of Castiel’s closest friends. Castiel writes and writes and is published and Jimmy is all joy, nothing but an electric storm of joy and pride, when he calls to congratulate Castiel. But all Castiel can do is look at the empty spaces on the dedication pages of each of his books and think of how they’re the vacuum which contains a missing name, missing person, missing favourite place in the whole world. His best first audience no more.
He and his father write letters to each other. Jimmy is much better at remembering to do this than he is, but in any case, he loves it. He doesn’t visit home as much as he feels he should, and is in the process of organising a break back in Lawrence when visiting home becomes a necessity, anyway.
Michael calls him.
It’s both a surprise, and embarrassing, when Michael calls him, because Castiel is in Temple when it happens and Michael tries not to use his phone on Saturdays, anyway. Castiel ducks out, with several embarrassed whispered apologies, and picks up outside.
“Michael,” he sighs, “I was in Temple.”
“Dad’s dead.”
When Castiel was three years old his mother had a manic episode and ran out into a busy street, shouting and crying while Jimmy tried desperately, shouting and crying in a different way, to pull her back, hold her away from the tide of cars veering and blaring their horns. Castiel tries not to think about this, or the fact that he was watching, or the fact that he can still remember.
The wind barrels down the Georgian street he stands on, at the top of the steps.
When Castiel was four years old his dad had to sit him down on his bed and talk to him about the messiness of the human brain and how some brains grow riddled and wrought with messiness, more so than others. Castiel asks and is that mommy’s brain? And Jimmy answers yes, Castiel, but I promise it’ll be okay.
“That’s not funny,” is all Castiel can think to say, and wants to shout, but Michael doesn’t joke much, and wouldn’t joke about this—unless this is a very poorly placed attempt at humour.
“I’m—I—I’m not joking,” Michael stammers out, voice like the ravaged forms of buildings after a hurricane. “I don’t know how to—”
When Castiel was nearly five he been taken suddenly away from his home while his mommy shouted and cried somewhere inside and he had to stay at his Uncles and Gabriel said he didn’t like their Uncle and that Castiel shouldn’t listen to what he said, whatever he said, and he spent his time stubbornly with Castiel and refused to let anyone near his younger brother.
Castiel thinks suddenly of the time difference between UK and the U.S. and worries about how early it must be.
“Why are you awake, Michael? It’s what—five—”
“Castiel,” Michael says, and the tears are like a wind blowing through his voice, barrelling all the way to Scotland and up the Georgian street in the middle of Edinburgh. “Aren’t you—didn’t you hear me?”
When Castiel was nearly five Jimmy opened the front door to their house-now-motherless with hollow eyes and thanked Zachariah for taking care of his sons, but he said so in a way that Castiel knew wasn’t thankful, and Jimmy’s eyes were red and ravaged and beneath them were dark craters Castiel would become well acquainted with, in the years to come, and Zachariah said something Castiel didn’t understand but his dad definitely did, because he tugged Castiel and Gabriel inside and closed the front door and went into the kitchen and sat at the table and cried and cried and Gabriel started kicking at the walls and Jimmy didn’t stop him.
“I don’t understand,” Castiel shakes his head, eyes suddenly full, but the problem is, he does understand. He wishes for the first time in his life that he was incapable of both speech and understanding, so that these strange and mangled words would only be strange and mangled nonsense and would stop speaking some terrible, unthinkable reality into being. He wants Michael to stop talking, stop saying it, take the words back because as soon as they’re said, they become true. Jimmy Novak, dead. Castiel’s dear, beloved, father. The best man Castiel has ever known.
When Castiel was nearly five his father packed up the pieces of his broken heart and rejected rejection. They travelled down into a house which was always opening like a flower. His dad still cried a lot though they were cleaner tears and the only thing which brought them back to their old town was to place stones on Amelia’s grave and remember her in a way unsullied by relatives Castiel is glad to say he hasn’t seen for years.
One question keeps barrelling round his head like wind trapped down a terraced street with nowhere to escape to.
If both of your parents are dead, are you still a son?
“I’m so sorry, Castiel—I’m so sorry I’m not with you—”
When Castiel was nearly five he met the love of his life and his father welcomed this little boy with open arms glad to have life filled with something, someone, bright and hopeful where all things bright and hopeful had seemed dimmed forever.
“I—I—”
When Castiel was nearly five he learnt suddenly what it was to feel loneliness, real loneliness—and just as suddenly, what it was to find a soul whose soul matched yours, who could sit in silence or mourning or joy and make love the new essence of a life uprooted, drenched in mourning.
“I can book flights for you. I’ll get it all sorted. I’ll sort it out, Castiel—” Somehow Castiel doubts that Michael will, but being unable to brace himself for this crash, and there being no way of bracing oneself for something like this, anyway, his jaw stays wound tightly shut. “Just—just find somewhere to sit down,” as if this could ever be a useful suggestion, as if it could be anything other than ridiculous, as if anything could be anything other than ridiculous in the face of such a loss. “And—and I’ll bring you back home.”
Home.
Without Jimmy? Ever again?
Castiel doubts it.
He sits on the steps to Temple. He thinks of Jimmy at Michael’s wedding and feels jealous of the years Michael got that Castiel didn’t, the life events, the conversations. He feels jealous of everyone who had a conversation with his father that Castiel wasn’t present for, able to absorb and bask in the brightness of Jimmy Novak, a light on a dark earth. His body is wracked with sobs and yet he can’t cry, can’t breathe. What were their last words? Why didn’t Castiel visit sooner? Why has the whole world become an echo of the desolate and of questions fragile as ash?
The strangest thing of a storm is that afterwards, there’s no stasis. The sun rises on skeleton frames of homes and lives in a way which proves that sometimes, progress is discourteous.
Michael does as he promises. Castiel arrives back in Kansas in a rain which Jimmy would have loved, in a which drenches him to the bone. His very soul rains. He stands outside of his old bedroom a moment before stepping in and looks, not wanting to disrupt it. The moment he does, the room is no longer a time capsule of Castiel’s life when his dear beloved father was alive and able to watch dawn and find beauty and poetry in the rain.
He wants a hug. He wants a hug from someone who loves him and knows him and loves him in spite of knowing him. He wants his dad.
He wants his dad.
In the feverish fog of the next few months he learns of another heart that has loved him and known him and loved him in spite of knowing him. In the feverish fog of the next few months, he writes Jimmy a book of poems which are more like prayers.
This is the book of poems which Dean keeps on his bedside table, along with his copy of the book of poems dedicated to the boy with bright green eyes and freckles and teeth straightened by braces Dean never stopped complaining about; the book the colour of the sun, entitled Honeybee.
Dean will flit through it, sometimes, trace his fingers over the title page of Counsellor, the words which Castiel wrote at a time he couldn’t quite articulate his love, or thanks, to Dean in their entirety.
You asked for a signed copy. (Or perhaps I promised you one. I forget). Here it is.
I can say little more than thank you—really and honestly thank you—for everything, these past months. These past twenty-four years. I hope you know how dearly my father loved you. You were, by the end of it all, his fourth son. I hope you don’t forget it.
Nine years. You were never far from my thoughts, Dean Winchester: Often in my mind and always in my heart. Remember you were always in his, too.
Your friend, Castiel.
He catches Dean mouthing the words of the dedication to the other book. The confession of still, and always, with a whole heart utterly unworthy of the love it feels.
A long night is over. A long night is long over.
No matter the goodbyes, this love has been forever.
…
On Dean’s bedside table he keeps two books, always. Things get shuffled around and in the hecticness of life the other items which cover the furniture’s surface include: a pencil, and notebook to scrawl music into. This is important—music comes to him most often when he and Cas are kissing and touching in bed together. Dean’s best music has been written after their most intimate moments—he tries not to write during. Cas gets pretty impatient and exasperated when Dean turns suddenly from kissing to grab the notepad and to scrawl something messy. Candles, occasionally, to make the kissing and touching more romantic—though, of course, it always is. Coffee cups, which Cas always huffs at, and Dean wraps his arms round his husband’s waist and scatters kisses across Cas’s shoulders as he picks them up. When Elanor first comes into their lives, empty bottles for milk, dummies, then toys to distract her when she’s teething and screaming to high heaven.
Other books—books Cas recommends to him and smiles to catch Dean reading. A book of poetry by Tennyson, books by James Baldwin—Giovanni’s Room makes him weep and Cas winds his arms round Dean’s body late at night when Dean finishes it and tears drift down his cheeks.
Children’s books, for when Elanor and Jacob ask him to read to them. It’s difficult to find ones they both like—Elanor the verbal, Jacob the visual, have very different demands for a good story.
Pictures Jacob draws him which won’t fit on the fridge, because it’s already so crammed with his artwork.
The card Claire gives him on his fortieth birthday.
And then the wedding invitation for her and Kaia.
But always, always, two books. Dean knows for certain they’re the best books ever written. And one of them was written for him.
He remembers seeing it for the first time, on a night the world stilled into crystal. Could it have been a dream? He had to ground himself, then, with the sound of the rain, the raised lettering of the title, the way it felt beneath his fingertips, the droplets of water chasing down his neck as he read, the smoke and crackle of the fire. Honeybee. Castiel’s eyes hardly helped, looking into them nearly made Dean float off the face of the earth, they burnt with so much longing.
I still do, and always will.
And he still does, never makes Dean doubt it, called his own heart unworthy, unworthy of Dean which still nearly makes him laugh, nearly makes him cry—as if Castiel could ever be unworthy of anything, as if Cas’s heart doesn’t burn with enough purity to warm whatever it sets its affections on. Somehow, Castiel chose Dean.
Kaia is immersed in their family without hesitation, even before the wedding or the engagement. Her and her foster mom Jody regularly come and stay and Claire gets into social work, which Dean couldn’t be more proud of, because if anyone would get it, would get the kids who need help the most, it’s Claire.
“So, Kaia, huh?” Dean asks Claire, one evening. They’re sat in the kitchen with hot chocolates and fresh cookies—they haven’t been able to bake with one another in a while, and might’ve, maybe, gone a little overboard today. Cookies, flapjack, white chocolate muffins, banana bread, regular bread. Claire is gonna have to take a lot of it with her, when she leaves.
“Dad, we’re getting married in one month,” Claire rolls her eyes, laughing. “Seems a little late to have this conversation.”
“She seems nice,” Dean says, grinning, and Claire punches his arm softly.
“Asshole.”
“I can’t believe you’d punch your old man.”
“Yeah, emphasis on the old.”
“Well, I’ve decided I like Kaia.”
“Uh-huh?” Claire smirks. “Not a moment too soon. We’re only gonna spend the rest of our lives together.”
“You nervous?” Dean asks, and can’t stop the warm smile on his features as he talks to his daughter.
Claire laughs.
“What’s so funny?” Dean asks.
“Dude, d’you ever wonder why I never really got in relationships, before Kaia?”
Dean shrugs.
“There might be a lot of reasons.”
“Sure, but there weren’t. Only really one.”
“What was that?”
“You and dad,” Claire says, and smiles, like this isn’t a really fucking worrying thing to say, or hear.
“What?”
“The two of you,” Claire laughs, “what, you think you’ve got the kind of love that comes around every day?”
Dean flickers a frown.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean growing up, learning how to love, in this house, means you get pretty fucking picky about the kind of love in your life. I was literally adopted by—what, I don’t know, two people, who were the love of each other’s lives. Every time I dated someone, before Kaia, I’d be comparing us to you guys.”
“That’s—that’s not good,” Dean worries, but Claire laughs again.
“It’s fine,” she shakes her head, “I was dating, I was having fun. I just didn’t want to commit, if I didn’t feel what you and dad feel.”
“And with Kaia, you do?”
Claire’s eyes crinkle at their corners.
“Yeah,” she nods. “With Kaia I do.”
“Damn—well, I’m sorry me and Cas made such an impression.”
“I’m not,” Claire laughs. “Imagine if I’d settled? Settled for less, I mean. For feeling less, than what I do for Kaia. Don’t you ever worry about what would have happened, if you and Cas never got together?”
“We very nearly didn’t, at a lot of different points,” Dean shrugs, but remembers how for a while he’d convinced himself he could live in the dimmed happiness of marriage and a life with Lisa. “But—yeah. I get it. Okay, so we did you a favour?”
“Past decade and a bit, you’ve done me a lot of favours.”
“How’re you gonna pay us back?” Dean grins.
“I’ll put you in one of the nicer homes, when the time comes,” Claire winks. Dean barks out a laugh.
“You’re a saint.”
“I can’t believe they used to call me a problem child.”
“Especially when there are so many more imaginative names for you,” Dean nods thoughtfully. Claire throws a piece of cookie at his face. “Hey!”
Claire snorts.
“So,” Dean says, softer this time, “you’re saying Kaia is your Cas, huh?”
Claire smiles.
“No, I’m saying Cas is your Kaia,” she answers, grinning.
Dean chuckles. He ruffes her hair. She barely even glowers in response.
Kaia and Claire come and visit plenty, staying often. Claire probably does this because she knows how soft Dean has gotten in his old age.
Staying over during Hanukkah, with Jack staying as well, and making Dean’s heart full enough to burst, Claire and Jack get into an argument over which of them is the favourite of the family. The kicker is both of them are accusing the other of being the preferred kid.
Dean sits back on the couch, too full of food to bother interjecting with a comment about how stupid and unhelpful this debate is. Besides, Cas has already made this comment about a dozen times, but apparently his stubbornness has rubbed off on these two kids, because they will not give it up.
“He taught you to drive before me!” Claire exclaims. “You’re two years younger than me, and he taught you to drive before me.”
“No,” Jack frowns his earnest you don’t seem to understand frown, “he taught me about cars. Part of that was learning a little about how to drive them.”
“What—how—how the hell is that different to what I just said?!”
“Dean taught you the drums—”
“You never wanted to learn—you said it was too loud—” Dean butts in quickly, finding this one a little unjust, but Cas shoots him a look that says don’t you dare get involved, even as his arm is slung around Dean’s shoulder and Dean leans into his side.
“And he takes you fishing!” Claire exclaims.
“You’re a vegetarian!” Dean speaks up again, exasperated, but Cas shoots him another look.
“When we were teenagers, Cas would always take you shopping—”
“You don’t even like shopping—”
“Yeah, shit, it’s almost like, I don’t know,” Dean groans, “we saw you both as individuals and tried to invest in you on your own terms—”
“Shut up, dad,” Claire rolls her eyes, then turns back to Jack. “Plus Cas takes you to museums at the drop of a hat, no notice—”
“That’s ‘cause he’s a dork, not ‘cause he prefers Jack to you—” Dean tries, but Castiel frowns at him.
“You get away with behaving worse than me,” Jack says to Claire, and yeah, okay, this one is definitely true.
“I pull off misbehaviour,” Claire shrugs, “you can’t.”
“Claire, what does that even mean?” Kaia asks, piping up and looking up from her phone for the first time in the argument, aside from when she glanced at Dean to roll her eyes, earlier.
“Yeah, Claire, what does that even mean?” Jack repeats, grinning.
“Shut up, Jack,” Claire rolls her eyes. “And Kaia, whose side are you on? I’m you wife.”
“This goes on any longer, and I’m filing for divorce.”
“Hang on,” Claire turns back to Jack, grinning. “Elanor.”
“Elanor?” Jack repeats, blinking.
“Elanor’s their favourite! Or at least, definitely Dean’s.”
Elanor’s sat next to the fireplace, surrounded by books, chattering quietly to herself as she reads them. She hadn’t even noticed the fight taking place two metres from her.
“Elanor!” Claire exclaims with a beam. She looks up, eyes bright.
“Huh?”
“How does it feel to be your dads’ favourite?”
Elanor shakes her head as though she feels a little sorry for Claire.
“They don’t have favourites,” she says, and goes back to reading.
Claire sighs, frustrated, and Jacob enters the room, sketchbook tucked under his arm and jam smeared around his face, which lets Dean know exactly where the kid’s been, this past half-hour.
“Jacob,” Dean groans, “I said no more sufganiyot—”
“Jacob,” Claire beams, but something in it sings mischief, “who do you think is Dean and Cas’s favourite?”
Jacob doesn’t hesitate.
“Me,” he signs, with a frown of, you didn’t know? before coolly picking up the pencil Elanor offers him. He clambers up onto the couch to sit next to Dean and begin his drawing.
Even Cas laughs.
…
There is a big white house which means home to a whole small clan of people. A house which meant pain for some of them, for a long time, a house which has held trauma and deceit but which is still, in the end, good. A house with big rooms and room to build dens and turn somersaults in. A house with a sprawling garden kept romantically and intentionally wild by a writer with dark scruffy hair slowly turning gray, piercing electric blue eyes framed by heavy brows around which, gradually, more and more lines are creeping in. A house with a bedroom with windows looking out onto the street, out of which you could, if you wished, clamber onto the roof of the porch and sit and watch the world go by, sit and chatter softly about the secrets of life or simply the anxieties of high school, could share a few beers, could confess a love undying wrought in friendship and kinship and a bond ineffable, could be broken, heartbroken, break a heart, break your own heart out of one part fear and another selflessness, could sit and restore the broken fragments of love and home with a single word, name, called out into the stretching darkness as you call across the street, could sit and look up at the stars filled with grief but the knowledge that, perhaps, you will be okay, though you don’t know how, only for the answer to come behind you in the form of your name said, again, on the roof of the front porch of the big white house, by the love of your life. You could, if you wanted, find your heart rising to your throat and all the stars stilling and singing and turning their gazes to watch a moment of complete magnitude in the little lives of two boys turned men: you could, if you wanted, pull out a box which had been hiding, waiting like a prayer, for months in the pocket of your coat and hold it out and ask the other to marry you as you hear trumpets echoing in the clouds around you. You could, if you wanted, say yes to the ring offered to you in return.
Who understands trauma better than the traumatised? This was the house in which an old man and woman lived, and loved, all their lives, until the end of their lives together—until the old lady had to go, had to leave, couldn’t stay and was sorry and found a new kind of sleep, a sleep to dream of a new world, and the old man moved away. And in moved Jimmy Novak, running, too, because his wife was resting somewhere he could not follow; and in moved Jimmy’s sons, in moved Castiel with dark hair and bright eyes and a troubled, thoughtful, sharp, gentle expression. And Dean’s heart moved into the big white house, that day, too.
This was the house that cradled them while they mourned, mourned the death of Amelia, then mourned the death of John and the poisoned role he played in Dean’s life, then mourned the death of Jimmy, and the death of their past and the old versions of themselves. This was the house that held and rocked them, sat shiva with them, sat with them while Dean drunkenly spilled his guts, while Mary called Castiel to say that Sammy was in hospital again, sat with them while Dean reconfessed and they, soaking wet beside a fire to warm their skin while they warmed each other’s hearts, kissed and peeled the wet clothing off each other’s bodies and cried for what couldn’t be believed, at long last, becoming truth.
This is the house they lie in, now, both nearly passed out on the couch, bundled up together with a tiny baby grandchild curled into Dean’s chest. For some unknowable reason, they thought hosting the family, the whole family, for the holidays would be a good idea. Kaia and Claire and a grandson Jimmy and another grandchild Maxi a baby Jody; Elanor and Jacob and Jack; Sam and Eileen and little Dean, not little any more—and, to be fair, they’re staying at Mary’s, and not in the big white house; Jo and Anna and their indescribably cool kid, Shai—but again, they fortunately stay at Ellen’s. But that’s still ten people sleeping under one roof. Cas hasn’t said I told you this was a stupid idea yet, but Dean knows for sure it’s coming.
But for now, they’re resting, while everyone else goes on a walk. Good riddance, Dean huffs to himself. They haven’t been hosting the equivalent of a small village for a week. Of course they have the energy for a hike.
The holidays in the years to come will be busier, Dean can already tell, and smiles at the thought, and lies in wonder at the thought. More partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, other halves, will come—Dean hopes they’re as brilliant as Kaia. More grandkids to spoil and dote over and feed homemade pastry to. They’ll cram into the house which has, and will, contain so much, so many little lives.
This is the house they lie in, now, Dean’s head tucked into Cas’s arm, and Cas’s breaths are coming softer and heavier and, Dean bets, will any minute turn into snores. Unconditional love is the strangest and gentlest gift of them all. The front door opens: the others are back. Dean’s eyes flicker. His right hand is on Jody’s tiny back, keeping her steady, keeping her safe. His other is woven with Castiel’s. Ellen enters first, walking stick in hand, Jo at her arm, and smiles with her glittering eyes as she spots Dean. Dean remembers the first time she saw Dean and Castiel together, as a couple—lying together on the couch of his shitty apartment, all those years ago.
It wouldn’t be a bad thing, she’d said to Dean, when the words had stuck on his tongue and he’d been unable to unpick them even though he’d wanted to, desperately, wanted to unpick them and himself and know that even in this unpicking he was still worthy of love. It’d be a good thing.
And it has been, hasn’t it? A good thing. The best thing. Fifty years of friendship with Castiel, and more to come. An act of building and rebuilding which has equalled healing. A little kingdom built from broken remnants of something lost, once, and then… redeemed. Found lying in a garden with grass growing over it. Weathered by rain and grief and years apart but still good. Burning with purity. Sacred, sacred the hand in Dean’s hand, the other in his hair; sacred the body beside Dean’s body; sacred the sorrow, sacred the joy, sacred the grief, sacred the dancing, sacred the rain at every interval. Castiel has run his story alongside Dean’s, through water, through fire. Dean isn’t as broken as he’d always thought.
God. Fifty years. A lot has changed. And yet Dean loves Cas just the same. Even if his heart soars all kinds of different.