Fic: Impossible Angels
Title: Impossible Angels
Author: twfftw
Rating: PG
Genre: Humour, Friendship
Spoilers: For season five generally, but especially for 5.21 and 5.22 - like, REALLY A LOT.
Pairing: None (Characters: Dean and Castiel)
Word Count: 3,204
Warnings: Language, drinking, angel mockage.
Summary: Sometimes, we all just need a friend.
More spoilery summary (and notes) below the cut.
Spoilerish summary: The new sheriff of Heaven looks to Dean to provide him with a friendly ear and a shoulder to lean on. And alcohol. Plenty of alcohol.
Notes: So this is a totally self-indulgent fixit a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. (And, hopefully, the death of my vicious case of writer’s block).
Inspired by a comment_fic prompt that I foolishly didn’t bookmark at the time--
EDIT: The prompt was "Supernatural, Dean/Castiel, "You really suck at goodbyes, you know that?" (reunion, plz)," posted by x_shorty1013_x (well of course it was; prompts are her superpower). It's here, along with an earlier fill by pyrebi, which I swear I didn't see before finishing and posting this (but which explains why the prompt wasn't on the lonely list), and which is totally awesome. Much thanks to the lovely hrtslkths for tracking this down!
Lightly beta’d. Angel names from here, http://www.angelsghosts.com/angel_names, lightly crosschecked.
Disclaimer: Not mine. But you knew that.
Impossible Angels
“Where are you?”
“Cas?”
“Where are you?” Castiel grips the small plastic phone tightly, fighting off the edge of his true Voice that wants to bleed into his words.
“I- Nebraska, the Happy Trails motel off the I-80, near- Cas, is that really you?”
Castiel has landed in the room before Dean finishes speaking.
“Yes, it’s me. You should not have given your location if you were unsure.”
The cool splash of holy water against his cheek is not unexpected. He dries it with a thought and turns to Dean.
Dean stares back at him, eyes wide and mouth open, his empty flask dangling from one hand, his cell phone from the other.
“Cas...” Dean says, then abruptly he seems to come back to himself; he drops the bottle on a nearby table and snaps the phone shut, taking a quick step forward. "Cas, what is it? What's wrong?"
“Everything,” Castiel tells him. “The angels are...” he struggles to find the word. “Impossible.”
There is a long moment of silence. “The angels are impossible,” Dean repeats.
“Yes,” Castiel says. “Half of them won’t do anything I say, and half of them won’t do anything unless I have said to, and-”
“I’m sorry Cas,” Dean interrupts, frowning. “I don’t-- The angels are impossible?”
“Yes,” Castiel insists. Dean still looks confused, so he adds “I was hoping you would have alcohol,” in an attempt to clarify the situation.
“You were hoping...” Dean starts, then abruptly interrupts himself.
“Let me get this straight. You’ve shown up here out of nowhere, after three months with no word, because your brothers are being dicks and you want to cry into a beer about it?”
His tone is flat and controlled. Castiel is not sure what emotion he is concealing; he might be able to determine it if he focused, but at the moment he is distracted by the fact that--
“It has not been three months.”
It has been a matter of weeks at most, he’s sure of it. Admittedly, it can be difficult to track Earthly time from Heaven, and dealing with his brothers has demanded much of his attention, true, and recent events have made it difficult to attend to anything beyond his own frustration, but...
But surely he cannot have been so mistaken.
“Oh, I’m sorry, two months and twenty-whatever days,” Dean says, and Castiel realises that he is indeed that mistaken.
And that the emotion in Dean’s voice is unquestionably anger.
This gives Castiel pause. Truthfully, it leaves him at a loss. It had never occurred to him that he would come to Dean and Dean would push him away. They have been so far beyond that for so long now that he simply never considered it; did not consider anything beyond the fact that he could not spend another moment with his brothers. That he wanted--
He wants, to be with someone who will look at him without reverence or fear or hate. Who will listen to his words out of interest, not obligation. Someone in whose presence he can call Raphael foolish, or hidebound, or a dick, and who will agree, or disagree, without attaching great import to the exchange. Someone who will call him Cas without a second thought. Someone who will offer him food and drink and other absurd unnecessaries for no reason beyond that he can, and that he believes, perhaps, that they will bring Castiel pleasure. Someone who requires nothing of him, nothing from him, anymore.
He wants that; he needs it, to a degree he didn’t realise until this moment, when it seems it is lost to him.
“Time passes differently in Heaven,” he says slowly. It is true, and yet he finds himself unexpectedly uncertain that this truth will assuage Dean’s anger.
“Are you saying you haven’t been around for three months because you lost track of time?”
“Yes,” Castiel says. Dean is still looking at him, as if there is more Castiel ought to say, but he cannot imagine what that might be. He wishes that he could.
And then, unexpectedly, Dean laughs. “Jesus, Cas,” he says, and he is shaking his head, but he is smiling too. “Don’t ever change,” he says, and Castiel is filled with sudden relief.
Dean reaches out and puts his hand on Castiel’s shoulder, a familiar, welcome touch. But what follows is unexpected, as Dean attempts to use his grip to pull Castiel towards him. It doesn’t work: Castiel does not immediately recognise the cue to move, and Dean cannot hope to move him without his cooperation. But Dean, undaunted, moves for both of them, stepping into Castiel’s personal space until they are pressed flush together, chest to chest. Then he raises his arms and wraps them tightly around Castiel’s torso.
He doesn’t hold on for long. Just long enough for Castiel to understand, and to put his own arms carefully around Dean in return. Dean is warm where their bodies press together; up close, he smells of sweat and oil and leather. Castiel has seen him do this with others, but only very rarely.
He decides it is a compliment.
“Damn, I missed you,” Dean says quietly, close to his ear, then he strikes the space between Castiel’s shoulderblades one, two, three times with an open palm before stepping back, out of the loose circle of Castiel’s arms.
“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing around the small room. “I’ll grab us a couple beers and you can tell me all about impossible angels.”
Castiel seats himself on a chair by the table as Dean bends over a small refrigerator. Only as he’s reaching into it, presumably to retrieve the promised alcohol, does he seem to notice that he is still holding his phone. He straightens.
“Hold that thought,” he says, although Castiel has not yet said anything, then he opens the phone and dials.
“Hey, it’s me. Guess who dropped by? That’s right, Cas. Turns out he just let time get away from him up there on his cloud. I’d tell you to come join us, but since this is a voicemail, you probably won’t get it in time. Told you not to turn your phone off, Sammy.”
He folds the phone shut and places it on top of the refrigerator before bending back down to retrieve the beers, apparently oblivious to the effect his words have had on Castiel.
“Sam?”
Dean turns to Castiel, a bottle of beer in each hand, and smiles. “Lot can happen in three months, Cas.”
And apparently, much has.
Dean tells Castiel that he “really tried to make it work” with a woman named Lisa who has a young son, Ben - as Castiel understands it, Dean is not in fact Ben’s father, but was prepared to take on the role of father-figure - but that after five weeks, perhaps six, she had gently asked him to leave her home. “And you know, I got that. She has a kid, she has to put him first, and I was... Well, I’m not the greatest role model at the best of times.”
“Yes you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Anyway.”
Dean had travelled rather aimlessly on his own for some weeks, before at last making his way to Bobby’s.
Where he had found Sam.
Whether the cage intended to hold the angels had somehow freed their vessels, or whether the God who had seen fit to restore Castiel had also taken mercy on Sam and Adam, they may never know. But the youngest Winchesters had found themselves standing alive in Stull Cemetery, Kansas, not a day after it had been vacated by those who believed themselves the sole survivors of the confrontation with Lucifer and Michael.
Sam had immediately taken them both to Bobby’s. Once it had been established to even Robert Singer’s satisfaction that they were both entirely human, he had left Adam there to begin planning his new life - Adam is without other family, and had been dead for some time before the near-apocalypse - and gone in search of Dean.
He had found Dean at Lisa’s, had seen him through the window sitting down to dinner with her and her son. And he had, it seems, been so moved by the calm domesticity of the scene that he had left without revealing himself, had returned to Bobby’s, and had made both Bobby and Adam swear solemnly to keep the secret of his return.
“We had words about that,” Dean says, which Castiel interprets to mean they yelled at each other very loudly, for a considerable period of time.
Once tempers had cooled, Sam and Dean had set about planning their new lives “now that no one’s trying to plan them for us.” And, after considerable thought, Sam had decided he wished to return to his studies, to “give the whole normal thing another go.”
However, while the problems of Sam having a criminal record and being legally dead were apparently easily dealt with, the problem of his life in the “real world” missing five years was not, it seems, so easily solved. After some effort, Bobby had put the Winchesters in touch with a man in Oklahoma who supposedly would be able to provide both physical documentation and computer records to support whatever explanation for those missing years Sam cared to give.
“Sam's thinking some lost years in Europe, make it look like he deferred officially and it was the school that screwed up the paperwork,” Dean explains, swallowing a mouthful of beer. “Me, I say involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. Much more believable. What do you think?”
“Sam is going to school.” Sam Winchester, abomination, one true vessel of the fallen angel Lucifer, is not trapped forever in a cage of fire, locked in endless combat with his beloved brother-enemy Michael.
He's going to law school.
Dean shrugs. "It's what he wants. I think he deserves to have what he wants."
There is a hint of challenge in his eyes as he looks at Castiel. Castiel lets it pass. He doesn't disagree.
"And you?"
"I don't know what I want," Dean says, misinterpreting the question, perhaps deliberately. “Right now, I’m just kind of... living in the moment. I mean, I guess I was before, just staying alive, but I don’t know, I’m kind of enjoying it now. I don’t have to have a big plan, I don’t have to have things figured out twenty steps in advance, I don’t have to stay ahead of anybody. I’ll get Sam settled, and then...” He shrugs, takes another mouthful of his beer. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll see.”
He looks at Castiel then, and though he is not quite smiling, Castiel can tell somehow that his claims of contentment are true.
“What about you?” Dean asks, leaning back - somewhere in his own story he had bent over in his chair to put his elbows on his knees, leaning in towards Castiel. Now, he leans back, relaxed, ready to take in another’s words. “You were going to tell me about impossible angels.”
And so Castiel tells him about his return to Heaven. About how becoming the ‘new sheriff in town’ had not been quite as straightforward as he had hoped, despite Michael’s absence and his own continued survival lending weight and authority to his account of events. About his early fears that there might be all-out revolt in Heaven itself - fears that, thankfully, came to nothing. About the ways in which Raphael continues to subtly undermine him even as he appears to submit to his authority.
“Passive-aggressive bastard.”
“ ‘Passive-aggressive’?”
“Ask Sam, he’s an expert.”
About how Shoftiel sneers at his every suggestion and continually invokes the way things used to be.
About how Briathos keeps insisting there must be a way to free Michael while leaving Lucifer imprisoned - and that they ought to try.
“Well, that’s a bad plan.”
“You would know.”
“Hey!”
How Dardariel seems to have forgotten that he survived extremely well under the rule of an absent father and a neglectful general, and to now have a question about the correct usage of every single moment of his existence.
How Kabshiel seems incapable of so much as grooming her wings without direct orders from Castiel.
How Gazardiel, having been assigned a few simple tasks on Earth, had managed to inadvertently terrorize large portions of eastern Tennessee.
“Wait, that thing with the purple river and the wall of fire, that was you guys?”
“I’d prefer not to discuss it.”
How Suriel had had to be sent back to the hospital from which she had exorcised a restless spirit to heal all the patients injured in the process.
How, in short, half the angels still won’t do anything he says, and half the angels won’t do anything unless he has said to, and half the angels try to follow his instruction to use their own judgment -
“That’s three halves.”
“I am not bound by your mortal rules.”
“Whatever dude, you just can’t count.”
-and thereby cause more problems than the other halves - thirds - put together. Though they are the angels who have embraced the spirit of the new Heavenly order, he is finding that beings who have never before experienced free will tend to have extremely poor judgment.
“I don’t know,” Castiel sighs, looking down at his beer (it doesn’t seem to be affecting him as strongly as he remembers, unfortunately). “I suppose I thought hunting would come more naturally to them.”
“Wait, hunting?” Dean says, straightening abruptly out of his sprawl. “You’re teaching them how to hunt?”
“Yes,” Castiel says. “Didn’t I mention that?” Perhaps the beer has affected him more strongly than he suspected.
“No,” Dean says emphatically. “I think I would have remembered that part.”
“Oh. Well. I am teaching the angels to hunt.” He shrugs, lifting his shoulders up and down, mimicking a gesture he has seen Dean make when he is uncertain. “Angels are... powerful. Our Father’s standing order to keep things running smoothly - it isn’t enough. Without enough to do, they - we - get... restless.”
“Start picking fights just to have something to do?” Dean’s mouth twists sardonically.
“Exactly. Hunting is necessary, and valuable, and helps Man without interfering with free will.”
“You’re teaching the angels to hunt,” Dean stares at nothing in particular, apparently considering this new information. “That’s... that’s pretty awesome, Cas.”
Castiel was already confident that he had made a good decision; he is surprised how strongly Dean’s approbation affects him. “I thought so.”
“You need somebody to field train them?”
“No,” Castiel replies, confused. “They are all well-versed in the ways of demons, and are trained warriors with little need of mortal weaponry.”
“Well sure,” Dean says, “but how many of them can hold an FBI badge right side up?” He takes a long swallow of his beer. “Lore’s all well and good, but what you need for a good hunt is information. To get information you have to talk to people. To talk to people, you have to blend. Know what I’m really good at?” he asks, and abruptly Castiel understands that Dean is offering his own assistance training the angelic hunters.
“Blending?” he replies.
“Blending,” Dean agrees, tipping the mouth of his beer bottle at Castiel in acknowledgement before taking another long draught. Castiel thinks about his suggestion. He thinks about the hunter-angels he has trained. He thinks about how it took Ubaviel and Verchiel perhaps twenty minutes to exorcise the poltergeist he had assigned to them, and how it took him another hour to coax the terrified family they were meant to be helping out of their basement after Ubaviel at last called for his help.
He thinks maybe Dean has a point.
“You may be right,” he admits, and is surprised to find the admission costs him nothing. The tension and frustration he has been carrying with him for days, for weeks - for two months and twenty-whatever days - has eased away, vanished without his noticing. He no longer feels taught and drawn, balanced on a knife-edge; he no longer feels likely to assault the next angel who asks him if now is an acceptable time to polish their armour.
Perhaps it is the alcohol, but he doesn’t think so; in fact, despite his earlier forgetfulness, he isn’t sure the alcohol is affecting him at all.
“I don’t think this is working,” he tells Dean, peering down into his almost-empty bottle.
“Probably not,” Dean agrees. “Now that you’re all angelled up again, beer isn’t going to cut it. Next time you’re planning to drop by, give me a little warning, I’ll bring my friends Jack and Jose.”
Castiel blinks. “How would having more people present aid me in becoming intoxicated?”
Dean laughs into his drink. A long moment passes before he relents and explains, “They’re not people, Cas, they’re kinds of alcohol.”
Castiel frowns. “You do that on purpose, don’t you?”
Dean shrugs easily. “Sometimes,” he admits with a smile.
Castiel considers this for a moment. “Don’t ever change, Dean.”
Dean laughs again, sounding startled and pleased.
Angels do not enjoy things; things are good or they are bad. Enjoyment does not enter into it. But Castiel thinks he enjoys Dean’s laugh.
He drains the last of his beer and sets the empty bottle on the table, letting the damp condensation linger on his fingers for a moment as he pulls them reluctantly away. He would like to stay and savour this feeling of calm and contentment, but he has already stayed away too long; there are too many things in Heaven that require his attention. He must--
--find out why Dean’s fingers are wrapped around his wrist.
“Dean?”
Dean is looking at him with suddenly narrowed eyes. “You’re about to leave again, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “You really suck at goodbyes, you know that?”
“No.”
“Well, let me explain it to you.” Dean gestures with his free hand. “First of all, you have to actually say goodbye. And you have to give the other person a chance to say goodbye too. You can’t just zap away because you think the conversation is over.” He raises his eyebrows pointedly. “Could be they disagree. And you have to--” He hesitates, then continues in a slightly more subdued tone, “--you have to say if you’re coming back.”
“Of course I am coming back, Dean,” Castiel says. It hardly feels like a necessary thing to say, but Dean stares into his face for a long moment before he at last releases Castiel’s wrist and sits back.
“Yeah, well, you better,” he says. “And you better not stay away for three months, either, now that I know your cell phone gets reception in Heaven.”
“I won’t, Dean,” Castiel assures him. “Goodbye, Dean.”
“Bye Cas. Come back soon. Sam’ll be pissed he missed you.”
“I will.”
Having fulfilled Dean’s requirements, Castiel goes. It occurs to him, as the familiar feeling of Heaven closes around him, that Dean’s assumption is incorrect: Castiel had called Dean from Earth, as he does not, in fact, get cell phone reception in Heaven.
But he’s fairly certain he can change that.
Author: twfftw
Rating: PG
Genre: Humour, Friendship
Spoilers: For season five generally, but especially for 5.21 and 5.22 - like, REALLY A LOT.
Pairing: None (Characters: Dean and Castiel)
Word Count: 3,204
Warnings: Language, drinking, angel mockage.
Summary: Sometimes, we all just need a friend.
More spoilery summary (and notes) below the cut.
Spoilerish summary: The new sheriff of Heaven looks to Dean to provide him with a friendly ear and a shoulder to lean on. And alcohol. Plenty of alcohol.
Notes: So this is a totally self-indulgent fixit a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. (And, hopefully, the death of my vicious case of writer’s block).
Inspired by a comment_fic prompt that I foolishly didn’t bookmark at the time--
EDIT: The prompt was "Supernatural, Dean/Castiel, "You really suck at goodbyes, you know that?" (reunion, plz)," posted by x_shorty1013_x (well of course it was; prompts are her superpower). It's here, along with an earlier fill by pyrebi, which I swear I didn't see before finishing and posting this (but which explains why the prompt wasn't on the lonely list), and which is totally awesome. Much thanks to the lovely hrtslkths for tracking this down!
Lightly beta’d. Angel names from here, http://www.angelsghosts.com/angel_names, lightly crosschecked.
Disclaimer: Not mine. But you knew that.
Impossible Angels
“Where are you?”
“Cas?”
“Where are you?” Castiel grips the small plastic phone tightly, fighting off the edge of his true Voice that wants to bleed into his words.
“I- Nebraska, the Happy Trails motel off the I-80, near- Cas, is that really you?”
Castiel has landed in the room before Dean finishes speaking.
“Yes, it’s me. You should not have given your location if you were unsure.”
The cool splash of holy water against his cheek is not unexpected. He dries it with a thought and turns to Dean.
Dean stares back at him, eyes wide and mouth open, his empty flask dangling from one hand, his cell phone from the other.
“Cas...” Dean says, then abruptly he seems to come back to himself; he drops the bottle on a nearby table and snaps the phone shut, taking a quick step forward. "Cas, what is it? What's wrong?"
“Everything,” Castiel tells him. “The angels are...” he struggles to find the word. “Impossible.”
There is a long moment of silence. “The angels are impossible,” Dean repeats.
“Yes,” Castiel says. “Half of them won’t do anything I say, and half of them won’t do anything unless I have said to, and-”
“I’m sorry Cas,” Dean interrupts, frowning. “I don’t-- The angels are impossible?”
“Yes,” Castiel insists. Dean still looks confused, so he adds “I was hoping you would have alcohol,” in an attempt to clarify the situation.
“You were hoping...” Dean starts, then abruptly interrupts himself.
“Let me get this straight. You’ve shown up here out of nowhere, after three months with no word, because your brothers are being dicks and you want to cry into a beer about it?”
His tone is flat and controlled. Castiel is not sure what emotion he is concealing; he might be able to determine it if he focused, but at the moment he is distracted by the fact that--
“It has not been three months.”
It has been a matter of weeks at most, he’s sure of it. Admittedly, it can be difficult to track Earthly time from Heaven, and dealing with his brothers has demanded much of his attention, true, and recent events have made it difficult to attend to anything beyond his own frustration, but...
But surely he cannot have been so mistaken.
“Oh, I’m sorry, two months and twenty-whatever days,” Dean says, and Castiel realises that he is indeed that mistaken.
And that the emotion in Dean’s voice is unquestionably anger.
This gives Castiel pause. Truthfully, it leaves him at a loss. It had never occurred to him that he would come to Dean and Dean would push him away. They have been so far beyond that for so long now that he simply never considered it; did not consider anything beyond the fact that he could not spend another moment with his brothers. That he wanted--
He wants, to be with someone who will look at him without reverence or fear or hate. Who will listen to his words out of interest, not obligation. Someone in whose presence he can call Raphael foolish, or hidebound, or a dick, and who will agree, or disagree, without attaching great import to the exchange. Someone who will call him Cas without a second thought. Someone who will offer him food and drink and other absurd unnecessaries for no reason beyond that he can, and that he believes, perhaps, that they will bring Castiel pleasure. Someone who requires nothing of him, nothing from him, anymore.
He wants that; he needs it, to a degree he didn’t realise until this moment, when it seems it is lost to him.
“Time passes differently in Heaven,” he says slowly. It is true, and yet he finds himself unexpectedly uncertain that this truth will assuage Dean’s anger.
“Are you saying you haven’t been around for three months because you lost track of time?”
“Yes,” Castiel says. Dean is still looking at him, as if there is more Castiel ought to say, but he cannot imagine what that might be. He wishes that he could.
And then, unexpectedly, Dean laughs. “Jesus, Cas,” he says, and he is shaking his head, but he is smiling too. “Don’t ever change,” he says, and Castiel is filled with sudden relief.
Dean reaches out and puts his hand on Castiel’s shoulder, a familiar, welcome touch. But what follows is unexpected, as Dean attempts to use his grip to pull Castiel towards him. It doesn’t work: Castiel does not immediately recognise the cue to move, and Dean cannot hope to move him without his cooperation. But Dean, undaunted, moves for both of them, stepping into Castiel’s personal space until they are pressed flush together, chest to chest. Then he raises his arms and wraps them tightly around Castiel’s torso.
He doesn’t hold on for long. Just long enough for Castiel to understand, and to put his own arms carefully around Dean in return. Dean is warm where their bodies press together; up close, he smells of sweat and oil and leather. Castiel has seen him do this with others, but only very rarely.
He decides it is a compliment.
“Damn, I missed you,” Dean says quietly, close to his ear, then he strikes the space between Castiel’s shoulderblades one, two, three times with an open palm before stepping back, out of the loose circle of Castiel’s arms.
“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing around the small room. “I’ll grab us a couple beers and you can tell me all about impossible angels.”
Castiel seats himself on a chair by the table as Dean bends over a small refrigerator. Only as he’s reaching into it, presumably to retrieve the promised alcohol, does he seem to notice that he is still holding his phone. He straightens.
“Hold that thought,” he says, although Castiel has not yet said anything, then he opens the phone and dials.
“Hey, it’s me. Guess who dropped by? That’s right, Cas. Turns out he just let time get away from him up there on his cloud. I’d tell you to come join us, but since this is a voicemail, you probably won’t get it in time. Told you not to turn your phone off, Sammy.”
He folds the phone shut and places it on top of the refrigerator before bending back down to retrieve the beers, apparently oblivious to the effect his words have had on Castiel.
“Sam?”
Dean turns to Castiel, a bottle of beer in each hand, and smiles. “Lot can happen in three months, Cas.”
And apparently, much has.
Dean tells Castiel that he “really tried to make it work” with a woman named Lisa who has a young son, Ben - as Castiel understands it, Dean is not in fact Ben’s father, but was prepared to take on the role of father-figure - but that after five weeks, perhaps six, she had gently asked him to leave her home. “And you know, I got that. She has a kid, she has to put him first, and I was... Well, I’m not the greatest role model at the best of times.”
“Yes you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Anyway.”
Dean had travelled rather aimlessly on his own for some weeks, before at last making his way to Bobby’s.
Where he had found Sam.
Whether the cage intended to hold the angels had somehow freed their vessels, or whether the God who had seen fit to restore Castiel had also taken mercy on Sam and Adam, they may never know. But the youngest Winchesters had found themselves standing alive in Stull Cemetery, Kansas, not a day after it had been vacated by those who believed themselves the sole survivors of the confrontation with Lucifer and Michael.
Sam had immediately taken them both to Bobby’s. Once it had been established to even Robert Singer’s satisfaction that they were both entirely human, he had left Adam there to begin planning his new life - Adam is without other family, and had been dead for some time before the near-apocalypse - and gone in search of Dean.
He had found Dean at Lisa’s, had seen him through the window sitting down to dinner with her and her son. And he had, it seems, been so moved by the calm domesticity of the scene that he had left without revealing himself, had returned to Bobby’s, and had made both Bobby and Adam swear solemnly to keep the secret of his return.
“We had words about that,” Dean says, which Castiel interprets to mean they yelled at each other very loudly, for a considerable period of time.
Once tempers had cooled, Sam and Dean had set about planning their new lives “now that no one’s trying to plan them for us.” And, after considerable thought, Sam had decided he wished to return to his studies, to “give the whole normal thing another go.”
However, while the problems of Sam having a criminal record and being legally dead were apparently easily dealt with, the problem of his life in the “real world” missing five years was not, it seems, so easily solved. After some effort, Bobby had put the Winchesters in touch with a man in Oklahoma who supposedly would be able to provide both physical documentation and computer records to support whatever explanation for those missing years Sam cared to give.
“Sam's thinking some lost years in Europe, make it look like he deferred officially and it was the school that screwed up the paperwork,” Dean explains, swallowing a mouthful of beer. “Me, I say involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. Much more believable. What do you think?”
“Sam is going to school.” Sam Winchester, abomination, one true vessel of the fallen angel Lucifer, is not trapped forever in a cage of fire, locked in endless combat with his beloved brother-enemy Michael.
He's going to law school.
Dean shrugs. "It's what he wants. I think he deserves to have what he wants."
There is a hint of challenge in his eyes as he looks at Castiel. Castiel lets it pass. He doesn't disagree.
"And you?"
"I don't know what I want," Dean says, misinterpreting the question, perhaps deliberately. “Right now, I’m just kind of... living in the moment. I mean, I guess I was before, just staying alive, but I don’t know, I’m kind of enjoying it now. I don’t have to have a big plan, I don’t have to have things figured out twenty steps in advance, I don’t have to stay ahead of anybody. I’ll get Sam settled, and then...” He shrugs, takes another mouthful of his beer. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll see.”
He looks at Castiel then, and though he is not quite smiling, Castiel can tell somehow that his claims of contentment are true.
“What about you?” Dean asks, leaning back - somewhere in his own story he had bent over in his chair to put his elbows on his knees, leaning in towards Castiel. Now, he leans back, relaxed, ready to take in another’s words. “You were going to tell me about impossible angels.”
And so Castiel tells him about his return to Heaven. About how becoming the ‘new sheriff in town’ had not been quite as straightforward as he had hoped, despite Michael’s absence and his own continued survival lending weight and authority to his account of events. About his early fears that there might be all-out revolt in Heaven itself - fears that, thankfully, came to nothing. About the ways in which Raphael continues to subtly undermine him even as he appears to submit to his authority.
“Passive-aggressive bastard.”
“ ‘Passive-aggressive’?”
“Ask Sam, he’s an expert.”
About how Shoftiel sneers at his every suggestion and continually invokes the way things used to be.
About how Briathos keeps insisting there must be a way to free Michael while leaving Lucifer imprisoned - and that they ought to try.
“Well, that’s a bad plan.”
“You would know.”
“Hey!”
How Dardariel seems to have forgotten that he survived extremely well under the rule of an absent father and a neglectful general, and to now have a question about the correct usage of every single moment of his existence.
How Kabshiel seems incapable of so much as grooming her wings without direct orders from Castiel.
How Gazardiel, having been assigned a few simple tasks on Earth, had managed to inadvertently terrorize large portions of eastern Tennessee.
“Wait, that thing with the purple river and the wall of fire, that was you guys?”
“I’d prefer not to discuss it.”
How Suriel had had to be sent back to the hospital from which she had exorcised a restless spirit to heal all the patients injured in the process.
How, in short, half the angels still won’t do anything he says, and half the angels won’t do anything unless he has said to, and half the angels try to follow his instruction to use their own judgment -
“That’s three halves.”
“I am not bound by your mortal rules.”
“Whatever dude, you just can’t count.”
-and thereby cause more problems than the other halves - thirds - put together. Though they are the angels who have embraced the spirit of the new Heavenly order, he is finding that beings who have never before experienced free will tend to have extremely poor judgment.
“I don’t know,” Castiel sighs, looking down at his beer (it doesn’t seem to be affecting him as strongly as he remembers, unfortunately). “I suppose I thought hunting would come more naturally to them.”
“Wait, hunting?” Dean says, straightening abruptly out of his sprawl. “You’re teaching them how to hunt?”
“Yes,” Castiel says. “Didn’t I mention that?” Perhaps the beer has affected him more strongly than he suspected.
“No,” Dean says emphatically. “I think I would have remembered that part.”
“Oh. Well. I am teaching the angels to hunt.” He shrugs, lifting his shoulders up and down, mimicking a gesture he has seen Dean make when he is uncertain. “Angels are... powerful. Our Father’s standing order to keep things running smoothly - it isn’t enough. Without enough to do, they - we - get... restless.”
“Start picking fights just to have something to do?” Dean’s mouth twists sardonically.
“Exactly. Hunting is necessary, and valuable, and helps Man without interfering with free will.”
“You’re teaching the angels to hunt,” Dean stares at nothing in particular, apparently considering this new information. “That’s... that’s pretty awesome, Cas.”
Castiel was already confident that he had made a good decision; he is surprised how strongly Dean’s approbation affects him. “I thought so.”
“You need somebody to field train them?”
“No,” Castiel replies, confused. “They are all well-versed in the ways of demons, and are trained warriors with little need of mortal weaponry.”
“Well sure,” Dean says, “but how many of them can hold an FBI badge right side up?” He takes a long swallow of his beer. “Lore’s all well and good, but what you need for a good hunt is information. To get information you have to talk to people. To talk to people, you have to blend. Know what I’m really good at?” he asks, and abruptly Castiel understands that Dean is offering his own assistance training the angelic hunters.
“Blending?” he replies.
“Blending,” Dean agrees, tipping the mouth of his beer bottle at Castiel in acknowledgement before taking another long draught. Castiel thinks about his suggestion. He thinks about the hunter-angels he has trained. He thinks about how it took Ubaviel and Verchiel perhaps twenty minutes to exorcise the poltergeist he had assigned to them, and how it took him another hour to coax the terrified family they were meant to be helping out of their basement after Ubaviel at last called for his help.
He thinks maybe Dean has a point.
“You may be right,” he admits, and is surprised to find the admission costs him nothing. The tension and frustration he has been carrying with him for days, for weeks - for two months and twenty-whatever days - has eased away, vanished without his noticing. He no longer feels taught and drawn, balanced on a knife-edge; he no longer feels likely to assault the next angel who asks him if now is an acceptable time to polish their armour.
Perhaps it is the alcohol, but he doesn’t think so; in fact, despite his earlier forgetfulness, he isn’t sure the alcohol is affecting him at all.
“I don’t think this is working,” he tells Dean, peering down into his almost-empty bottle.
“Probably not,” Dean agrees. “Now that you’re all angelled up again, beer isn’t going to cut it. Next time you’re planning to drop by, give me a little warning, I’ll bring my friends Jack and Jose.”
Castiel blinks. “How would having more people present aid me in becoming intoxicated?”
Dean laughs into his drink. A long moment passes before he relents and explains, “They’re not people, Cas, they’re kinds of alcohol.”
Castiel frowns. “You do that on purpose, don’t you?”
Dean shrugs easily. “Sometimes,” he admits with a smile.
Castiel considers this for a moment. “Don’t ever change, Dean.”
Dean laughs again, sounding startled and pleased.
Angels do not enjoy things; things are good or they are bad. Enjoyment does not enter into it. But Castiel thinks he enjoys Dean’s laugh.
He drains the last of his beer and sets the empty bottle on the table, letting the damp condensation linger on his fingers for a moment as he pulls them reluctantly away. He would like to stay and savour this feeling of calm and contentment, but he has already stayed away too long; there are too many things in Heaven that require his attention. He must--
--find out why Dean’s fingers are wrapped around his wrist.
“Dean?”
Dean is looking at him with suddenly narrowed eyes. “You’re about to leave again, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “You really suck at goodbyes, you know that?”
“No.”
“Well, let me explain it to you.” Dean gestures with his free hand. “First of all, you have to actually say goodbye. And you have to give the other person a chance to say goodbye too. You can’t just zap away because you think the conversation is over.” He raises his eyebrows pointedly. “Could be they disagree. And you have to--” He hesitates, then continues in a slightly more subdued tone, “--you have to say if you’re coming back.”
“Of course I am coming back, Dean,” Castiel says. It hardly feels like a necessary thing to say, but Dean stares into his face for a long moment before he at last releases Castiel’s wrist and sits back.
“Yeah, well, you better,” he says. “And you better not stay away for three months, either, now that I know your cell phone gets reception in Heaven.”
“I won’t, Dean,” Castiel assures him. “Goodbye, Dean.”
“Bye Cas. Come back soon. Sam’ll be pissed he missed you.”
“I will.”
Having fulfilled Dean’s requirements, Castiel goes. It occurs to him, as the familiar feeling of Heaven closes around him, that Dean’s assumption is incorrect: Castiel had called Dean from Earth, as he does not, in fact, get cell phone reception in Heaven.
But he’s fairly certain he can change that.