Fic: An Ordinary Life (Gen, PG-13)
Title: An Ordinary Life
Charaters: Dean, Castiel, and Sam (Gen, mostly, with hints of Dean/Castiel)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Terminal illness, character death (it's not as depressing as it sounds, really).
Word Count: ~10,000
Notes: I wrote this for a friend in March 2010, toward the end of season 5, when the boys were hunting Lucifer, the apocalypse was wrapping up, and Castiel was losing his grace. It was supposed to be the end of the show, and this was my version of the ending. Five seasons later, they've made 200 episodes. Go figure, eh? I figured, in a moment of nostalgia, that I should finally post this.
Summary: In a post-apocalyptic world that Team Free Will saved, everyone knows Carver Edlund's books are real, and a new generation of kids grows up reading them. Cas is one of those kids.
Cas's parents named him after the angel who helped Dean and Sam Winchester save the world. He knows two other boys with the same name, but Cas likes to think he's special because his eyes are just as blue as everyone says the real Castiel's eyes are, and his hair is just as dark and messy. He wants to be just like his namesake when he grows up, even though he's never met him and doesn't even know his whole story yet.
Carver Edlund is still working on that, putting out two or three Supernatural books a year. It's the series Cas and all of the other children born after the end of the apocalypse have grown up with.
When he's seven, Lucifer Rising finally comes out, and Cas's babysitter, Ben, takes him to the midnight release party at the local bookstore. Or, more accurately, he sneaks Cas to the release party long after his bedtime, which has Cas bouncing delightedly in the car on the entire way there and Ben threatening to take him home if he won't keep his seat belt on. They both know Ben will get into trouble with Cas's parents for this, but they both also know that a few sweet words and a smile from him will have them sighing and giving up on their anger. No one can stay mad at Ben when he smiles at them, least of all Cas's parents.
He's lived next door to them since before Cas was born, and throughout the first year of Cas's life, whenever he had screaming fits that woke the neighbors and couldn't be calmed down, it was Ben who came over and whispered while he held him and immediately had Cas smiling through his tears. And whenever Cas couldn't fall asleep in his crib when it came time for his afternoon nap, Ben took a break from working in his garage and sprawled out on the couch so Cas could curl up on top of his chest and nap with him. Cas's parents swear up and down that they don't know what they would've done without Ben, and Cas loves hearing that because it makes him feel like he and Ben were always meant to be best friends, even though Ben is older even than Cas's parents.
All the other boys in Cas's class have best friends their own age, but he doesn't care because Ben is the best best friend ever. Besides, no one else's best friend drives a big black car just like Dean Winchester's infamous '67 Impala, and no one else is getting their copy of Lucifer Rising until after school tomorrow. A few years ago Ben single-handedly turned Cas from that quiet, weird kid that everyone picked on into the coolest kid in his class who everyone wanted to play with, but Cas still likes playing with Ben the best.
Especially when playing with Ben involves sneaking out of the house after bedtime.
"Can we read it tonight?" he asks as they get out of the car, taking Ben's hand and tugging him toward the bookstore.
"Oh, come on. You're already getting me into enough trouble as it is."
"It was your idea," Cas points out.
Ben glares down at him until Cas giggles. "Please? Just one chapter?"
"Cas-" Ben starts plaintively, but then his phone rings. It turns out to be Cas's parents, and Cas giggles some more. Ben just gives him a slightly betrayed look before answering it.
***
They don't get to read Lucifer Rising until after Cas gets out of school the next day. As soon as the final bell rings, Cas is dashing out to the Impala, breathless with excitement.
"Whoa," Ben chuckles as he gets in. "Easy there, buddy."
But Cas isn't listening. He's pulling the book out of his backpack and flipping through it, trying to find as many mentions of his own name as he can. He likes all the Supernatural books, but he especially likes reading about Castiel. It's not just because they share a name; Cas likes Castiel because he's a fallen superhero, the kind Cas fantasizes about being himself.
When they get home, Cas climbs into Ben's lap and reads aloud to him, just like Ben used to read these books aloud to Cas when he was younger. It's slow going and Ben still has to help him with the occasional word, but by the time Cas's parents are due to come home from work, they're already at the part where Zachariah and Castiel trap Dean in the green room.
"He still hasn't stopped being mean to Dean," Cas says with a small frown as he cranes his neck to look up at Ben.
"Yeah," Ben agrees with a wry twitch of his lips. "What a dick."
"But he still likes Dean, right?"
"I reckon so, yeah."
Cas looks away and frowns again, saying quietly, "Dean doesn't like him anymore, though."
"Aw, I dunno about that," Ben says. "Seems to me like Dean wouldn't be so angry with him if Cas hadn't disappointed him, and Cas wouldn't have been able to disappoint him if Dean didn't liked him."
It takes a moment for Cas to wrap his mind around that, but then he thinks he gets it. "Kind of like Mom and Dad still love me even when they get mad at me?"
"Exactly like that." Ben sounds pleased. "In fact, no one makes you more angry than your own family."
"Castiel isn't Dean's family," Cas points out.
Ben shrugs behind him. "Maybe not yet, but I have a feeling he will be."
This one, Cas can't wrap his mind around. "They're never going to be related."
"You don't have to share blood to be family," Ben says gently.
"Oh." Cas thinks about this for a while, then turns his head to look up at him again. "Can we be a family, then?"
It earns him a crooked smile and a ruffle on the head. "Yeah, Cas. We can be a family."
***
Nothing makes Cas more proud of being named after Castiel than reading about the angel rebelling against all of Heaven out of loyalty to Dean. He's glowing over it so much he doesn't even mind the cliffhanger at the end of the book. Everything will be alright, he knows; all three of them survived to end the apocalypse, after all.
Which means... "Castiel's gonna beat up archangels," he breathes. "Whoa."
Ben makes a funny face, like he's going to disagree, but then he hesitates and says instead, "I guess we'll see in a few months, won't we?"
"He'll do it, you see," Cas tells him confidently. "And then he'll save Dean and Sam from Lucifer."
"Yeah?" Ben just sounds amused now, mostly. "Then what'll happen?"
Cas ponders this for a moment. "Then Dean and Sam will make up, and the three of them will kick everyone's butts."
"That easy, huh."
"Well," Cas amends, "maybe after Castiel beats up the archangels, he'll make them help. They can take on the Four Horsemen, while Dean, Sam, and Castiel fight Lucifer. After they win, they can get rid of Zachariah too and live happily ever after, like they're doing now."
Ben chuckles. "Who needs Carver Edlund when you've got it all figured out?"
"I still like reading the details," Cas allows. "Like Castiel not knowing what a pair of balls are." He giggles and adds, "I bet some of the girls in my class don't know either."
"If any of them ask, don't show them," Ben advises. Then he adds, "Where your teacher can see."
"I won't," Cas promises solemnly. Then he suddenly shivers and announces, "It's cold."
He tries to press closer to Ben, who's sitting beside him on the couch, but Ben nudges him and points to a sweatshirt blanket draped over the other end of the couch. Cas gets up to grab it, and when he brings it back, Ben takes it from him and wraps it tightly around him, so that only his head is sticking out. Then Ben lifts Cas into his lap and...
Tickles him half to death. Cas shrieks with laughter and squirms wildly, but he can't get his arms free of the blanket and Ben laughs evilly as his fingers move up and down Cas's sides, saying in a growly voice, "Gotcha, you can't get away from me now." Cas can't string any words together to reply in between all the shrieking and trying to catch his breath, until Ben eventually takes mercy on him and stops.
Cas collapses against him, out of breath but still giggling, and Ben asks smugly, "Warm now?"
"Uh huh," Cas replies with a nod, and settles even more comfortably in his friend's arms.
"Oh no you don't," Ben says sternly. "You are not falling asleep on me again and making me carry you back home again, you little brat."
"Shhh," Cas whispers, and Ben heaves a long-suffering sigh but quiets. "Home is just next door. And I'm an angel, not a brat."
Ben snorts and mutters under his breath, "Not mutually exclusive in the least." But he brings a hand up to Cas's hair, and his fingers are gentle now as they stroke though it. Cas sighs happily and drifts off to thoughts of superhero angels fighting legendary battles.
***
Castiel doesn't beat up any archangels. In fact, it's quite the opposite, Cas finds out six months later. He isn't too dismayed; Castiel does come back, after all, and he does get to beat up a couple of angels after all, even if they aren't archangels. Actually, Cas is pretty happy with the way things turned out, because this means Castiel is invincible. If anything happens to him, it's alright because he'll just come back.
He tells this to Ben's younger brother, Wes, who has brought his family over from New York for a weekend visit.
Wes smiles down at him from an impossible height (for the first few years of Cas's life, he thought Wes was Ben's older brother because it didn't make sense that the younger brother should be taller). It's a faint smile and almost seems more sad than it is happy, but his eyes shine with warmth, so Cas smiles back. He's always liked Wes and wishes they would visit more often than once every couple of months, but Ben says he runs his own family law firm and that it keeps him busy. Once in a while, if Cas is really good and does all his homework in advance, Ben talks Cas's parents into letting Cas go to New York with him. Cas likes Michigan well enough, but he likes New York even more, especially since Wes has a really big house with a pool.
Watching Ben and Wes together - bickering and wrestling and messing with each other like kids - often makes Cas wish he had a brother of his own, but he knows his parents went through enough doctors and even more trouble just to have him. Besides, he has something of a little sister in Mary, Wes and Amy's daughter.
Cas spends most of the weekend playing with Mary. She's a couple of years younger than him but every bit as fierce as they run around between Cas's house and Ben's, pretending to fight demons and other monsters. In fact, she doesn't even cry when she falls and scrapes her knee on the sidewalk. She only hugs her knee and looks annoyed.
"Are you okay?" Cas asks worriedly as he drops to his knees next to her, trying to see if she's bleeding.
Mary nods. "Of course, I'll always be okay. Uncle Ben says there's an angel watching over me." She says it with such matter-of-fact confidence that Cas smiles.
"C'mon, then," he says, taking her hand and pulling her to her feet. He leads her into his house so he can ask his parents for a band-aid.
***
Every year, Cas dresses up as Castiel for Halloween. And every year, Ben looks momentarily startled when he opens his door to find Cas standing on his front porch in full costume, never mind that he's the one who buys Cas a new trench coat and suit every few years when he grows out of his old ones.
This year is no different. But the moment passes quickly, and when Ben says, "Hey, Cas," it's somehow softer than usual.
They always go trick-or-treating together, and it's one of Cas's favorite nights of the year even though Ben always steals at least half of his hard-earned candy by the end of it. It's kind of unfair because Ben can put way more candy in his mouth at once than Cas can (they once had a competition and thinking about it still makes Cas feel a little sulky), but Cas doesn't mind because he likes sharing his candy with Ben. Actually, he wouldn't even eat nearly as much candy as he does if it wasn't for Ben and that blissful look he gets on his face whenever he eats something unhealthy that invariably makes Cas want to eat it too. Left to his own devices, Cas is more of a fruits and vegetables kind of kid.
What's even more fun than eating the candy is playing with it. He and Ben take turns tossing Skittles into each other's mouths (or just at each other in general) and have a bowling tournament with gumballs and chapstick (Cas has a lot of chapstick, thanks to Ben).
They have to stop when Cas's candy-induced tummy ache sets in, but even that's not so bad because Ben sits Cas in his lap and rubs his tummy and they spend the rest of the night watching cartoons together.
***
Cas is twelve when he finds out Jimmy had a brain tumor. He isn't worried because he knows everything will be okay in the end and this will get fixed just like everything else, even though Castiel has stopped being able to suppress it.
The angel has been losing more and more of his powers, and it makes Cas a little sad, but on the bright side, it means Castiel will be spending more and more time with Dean and Sam, so there will be more of him in the rest of the books.
True to his prediction, there's a whole chapter at the end of the current book about Dean and Sam taking Castiel to the hospital.
"What does 'inoperable' mean?" Cas asks.
Ben looks up from his laptop (they stopped reading the books together a couple of years ago, when Cas decided he was too old to sit in Ben's lap like a child, though he still likes to bring his homework and books over to Ben's place after school and spend the rest of his afternoons there). The expression on Ben's face is unreadable, but his voice is neutral. "It means the tumor is in a place where the doctors can't safely operate on him to remove it."
"Oh." Cas thinks about this for a moment, then shrugs. "Well, maybe we'll find out in the next book how they got rid of it, then."
Something flickers across Ben's face, but he turns back to his laptop without saying more, and Cas returns to reading the last few pages.
***
The next book comes out five months later, but they still don't find out how Castiel got rid of the brain tumor. Sam and Dean don't even fret over it too much because there are so many other things to fret over, and also because the tumor isn't cancerous and doesn't seem to affect Castiel. He knows it's there and can feel it growing against his will, but it doesn't hurt or anything.
"Why were they so worried in the last book if it doesn't even affect him?" Cas wonders aloud. "It can't even kill him because Castiel's still at least sort of an angel, he said so."
Ben shrugs. "Sometimes it takes a while before people start showing symptoms, and those symptoms can be pretty shitty."
"Mom says you swear too much."
"She's just lucky I tried not to do it too much when you were younger," Ben tells him with a faint snort.
Cas grins and returns to his book.
***
Turns out, Ben was right about the symptoms. A couple of books later, Castiel starts getting migraines.
Cas thinks it's sweet, how Dean and Sam always take such good care of Castiel when he's weak and vulnerable in his agony. They do their best to make him as comfortable as they can, and once Dean even drives for half an hour through a pouring storm to buy him some Advil.
"You did that for me once, remember?" Cas says to Ben. "When I had that huge fever and Mom was freaking out."
"Yeah, well, at least it worked on you. Cas, not so much." There's a beat before he amends, "Castiel, I mean."
Cas glances down at the book in his lap. "Yeah, he says something about it being because he's an angel. Shouldn't they have known?"
"They might've guessed, but it was still worth a shot, I'm sure," Ben says with a shrug.
"I'm glad he has good friends," Cas decides.
For a moment Ben doesn't reply, but then he says, "I'm glad too."
***
The migraines only get worse, and it actually upsets Cas to read about them sometimes. It's not the descriptions of the pain itself that bother him (Cas is old enough to know that Carver Edlund's prose is cheesy); it's Castiel's frustration and fear. His migraines are debilitating enough that he becomes a liability if he has one during a hunt, and when Castiel isn't having a migraine, he's dreading his next one. Even Dean is afraid of what it means for his guardian angel to be curled in on himself and begging God to make it stop.
"Is there really nothing they can do?" Cas asks, feeling frustrated himself. He's long since stopped thinking of Castiel as an invincible superhero, but it still unsettles him to read about the angel being so helpless. It's like when Cas's grandma died and he caught his dad crying.
"They said at one point that he could fall and be reborn," Ben offers cautiously.
Cas brushes it aside impatiently. "Yeah, but he'd never do that."
"Never?" There's something under Ben's light tone, but when Cas glances at him, Ben's expression is only mildly curious.
"If he did that, he'd have been a baby and he wouldn't have been able to help them save the world," Cas points out.
"But 'never' extends past saving the world."
"Surely if they hadn't figured something out by then the angels would have fixed him?" It's what Cas assumes, anyway.
Ben snorts. "If you think the angels would be that generous then we have not been reading the same books."
Cas frowns at that. "What, then? You can't tell me he's still got this brain tumor? It's been years since the stuff in these books happened!"
"Probably not," Ben concedes as he looks away.
Why Ben thinks Castiel might choose to fall is beyond Cas, but he doesn't dwell on it.
"Anyway, Castiel promised Dean and Sam he wouldn't abandon them like that unless they wanted him to, and they'll never want him to. They don't think he's useless, even if he does, and besides, he's their friend."
"Ice cream break?" Ben asks abruptly. "You've been bent over that book for hours, it's bad for your eyes."
Cas perks up. "Yeah!" There are few things that can tear him away from Supernatural books, but ice cream is one of them. He and Ben made a pact to try every flavor at Ben & Jerry's before the end of the year, and they're only about halfway to their goal (never mind that it's still March).
Ben gives him a fond smile and for once doesn't tease him about the way his voice cracked. "Come on, then, kiddo."
***
Being bent over books for hours is bad for his head, too, Cas discovers when he gets a headache from doing hours and hours of homework.
"My head hurts," he whines to Ben, who's helping him with his homework.
He doesn't expect Ben to widen his eyes in alarm and lean in close, one hand already on Cas's shoulder. "How bad is it? Do you feel dizzy?" he asks urgently.
Cas blinks at him, bewildered. "Um," he says, and pauses. "It's not that bad. Jeez, you're acting like I've got a brain tumor or something."
Ben immediately relaxes but makes a face. "Not funny, Cas."
Actually, Cas agrees. They're between Supernatural books at the moment, but he still thinks about Castiel and his brain tumor a lot. In fact, he spends more time wondering about that than he does wondering about how Lucifer was finally defeated.
"I still think the angels probably healed Castiel before they left," Cas says thoughtfully. "But I feel sorry for all the people who don't have it that easy and who have to live with it."
"Yeah," Ben agrees flatly. "Me too." Cas glances at him, surprised by his tone, and Ben softens it. "I think it's bedtime for you; you should get some rest."
"But I haven't even finished my homework," Cas protests.
"I'll write your teacher a note."
Cas grins, and Ben gives him a wink. "Okay," he agrees happily, getting up and shoving everything into his backpack.
Ben walks him to the door, and Cas says, "Night, Ben," as he lets himself out.
"Happy wet dreams," Ben calls after him. He watches from his porch until Cas is safely inside his own house, but at least he can't see Cas's faint blush, which Cas is grateful for.
***
If Cas was unsettled by Castiel being helpless where it concerns his pain, it's ten times worse when Castiel's depression sinks in.
"I don't think I want to be like him anymore," he tells Ben, who's tinkering under the hood of a Jeep. It's not because Castiel himself keeps getting weaker and weaker; it's because his will keeps getting weaker and weaker.
"No, you probably don't," Ben says absently. "Cas had a crap life. You have everything."
Sometimes Ben calls him that, Cas has noticed, and it's still weird to him. He's Cas; Castiel is Castiel. But he lets it slide, as usual. "I bet it's better now, though, wherever he is. I bet he still hangs out with Dean and Sam and enjoys being human."
Ben glances up at him briefly before returning to his work. "Yeah," he agrees softly. "I bet."
***
"Dean and Castiel," Cas pauses to say in the middle of reading the next book. "They punched each other."
Ben's automatic response is, "Castiel punched Dean first."
Cas frowns. "Yeah, and it came out of left field."
"It was the brain tumor," Ben tells him. At Cas's questioning look, he elaborates, "It changes a guy, sometimes, if he's got a huge ass tumor in the frontal lobe of his brain. That's the area involved in personality and higher thinking and things like that."
"How do you know?" Cas asks. Ben is a mechanic, after all.
Ben's eyes slide away and he busies himself by cutting into the pie Cas brought over straight from his mom's oven. "I did some research."
Cas tilts his head thoughtfully. "Is that the reason for his depression too?"
"Probably." Ben presses his lips together. "All part of the package."
"That's not fair. He's fought so hard for Team Free Will and now a stupid tumor is turning him into someone he doesn't want to be?"
"Life's not fair," Ben shrugs. "But on the bright side, at least there's pie."
Something occurs to Cas as Ben slides a plate over to him. "It didn't hurt Dean's hand, when he punched him back."
Ben takes a bite of his pie and keeps his eyes on the rest of his slice. "If you keep reading, I think you'll find that that's what made him feel the worst."
***
Cas lives for fourteen years without having been to a single ballgame, until Ben decides that has to change. He takes Cas to a baseball game, Detroit Tigers vs. Cleveland Indians.
It's a nice day out, but truth be told, Cas would rather lounge in a park with the book he started reading the night before. He doesn't particularly care for ballgames, nor does he understand baseball beyond the rules Ben briefly summarized for him. But Ben is clearly enjoying himself, so Cas feigns interest for his benefit.
Ben isn't getting any younger, but when the Tigers make a home run and he hollers in victory around a mouthful of fries, he seems to. The hollering with his mouth full thing is a little gross, but Cas smiles anyway.
Just to annoy Ben, he roots for the Indians. Just to annoy Ben even further, he gloats when the Indians win.
"You don't even like baseball," Ben sulks. Cas opens his mouth to protest, but Ben talks over him. "Come on, Cas, if you'd daydreamed about your nerdy books any harder they would've appeared in little cloud-shaped thought bubbles above your head."
Cas looks away, embarrassed to be caught, but Ben only laughs. "Don't ever change."
***
Cas does change, and Ben apparently finds that amusing. "If I didn't know any better," he says with a smirk, "I'd say you're getting your angst all over everything because you've got a crush."
Cas can feel his cheeks warm, and Ben grins. "So who's the pretty lady?"
"I don't, um," Cas begins uncomfortably, shifting on his feet.
Ben doesn't miss a beat. "Okay then, who's the cute guy?"
"What?" Cas glances at him, startled and wondering if he's really that hopelessly obvious.
"I've suspected for years," Ben tells him with a vague hand wave.
"Oh," Cas says stupidly, but for some reason this helps him relax and feel a lot better. "Um, it's Zach Galen."
Ben wrinkles his nose. "Seriously? That rich dick who always struts around like he owns the place?"
Cas frowns. "He doesn't-"
"He does," Ben assures him, and shakes his head. "I don't know what you see in him, Cas."
"He's nice to me," Cas insists, and thinks about the way Zach smiles at him when Cas helps him with his homework.
Ben sighs. "I'm going to kill him if he breaks your heart."
***
"I'm going to kill him," Ben growls when Zach breaks Cas's heart.
"Ben," Cas says, tiredly and dejectedly. He's really not in the mood for this again.
Ben rolls his eyes. "Then lighten up. You're sixteen, Cas, getting dicked over by some douchebag is more of a requirement for your age than it is the end of the world."
"I know," Cas replies quietly, looking away. "I just didn't think it would hurt this much."
They're both silent for a moment, before Ben nudges his arm and says, "My girl will make you feel better, I bet. Wanna take her out for a spin?"
Cas glances at him in surprise. "Seriously? You never let anyone drive her. The last time I asked you threatened to cut my hands off."
"Which is why you should take advantage of my inability to disfigure a kicked puppy and go now before I change my mind," Ben replies, handing him the keys.
For the first time in two days, Cas feels a tug at the corner of his lips. He takes the keys with a grateful, "Thanks, Ben," and is almost out the door before he pauses and turns back around. "Come with me?" he blurts. At Ben's questioning look, he adds, "You know, just so you can make sure I don't scratch her up." What he really means is, I don't want to be alone with my thoughts, and he thinks Ben understands.
"Alright," Ben agrees, grabbing his leather jacket and following Cas out. "Probably better this way, else I might've gotten jealous my girl was out with another guy and been forced to kill you."
***
It takes Cas a few months to get over Zach, and he hates to admit it but it actually helps that Ben is always ready to remind him of all the reasons Zach sucks whenever he gets down. He combines the most unflattering words in quite creative ways that make Cas glad he's on Ben's good side.
Not that Ben needs any excuses to call Zach an oily piece of rectal-scum, but he gets one anyway when a new Supernatural book comes out and Zachariah the angel tries to break Dean's back in an effort to break his will. It's a close call, and if Castiel had shown up with his angel-killing knife twenty seconds after he did it would have been too late, but he manages to drive Zachariah away with it.
Dean, of course, is grateful for the save, and this cheers Cas up immensely because it's the first time in a couple of books now that Dean and Castiel actually have an amicable moment together. A flare of that old pride he had in Castiel comes back and he hopes this convinces Castiel that he's not useless.
It does, but only for a very short while. Castiel finally loses his ability to fly at the end of the book, and it's not just one step forward, two steps back. It's more like one step forward, ten steps back, and it's so bad Dean actually holds him through a migraine and doesn't let go even afterward.
Cas sighs and, for the first time, looks forward to the series concluding soon so that he can see everything get fixed up.
Sometimes, he worries that not everything will be fixed as perfectly as he used to think they would. Ben tells him he's way too fucking emotionally invested in these people, and Cas is inclined to agree.
***
Stanford is Cas's dream school, and when he gets his acceptance package in the mail, he's ecstatic.
After sending messages to his parents at work, he bursts into Ben's house, breathless with excitement. Wes is visiting, and they both look up from their beers.
"I got in!" he crows, waving the package around for emphasis.
Ben's face breaks out into a grin. "Stanford?"
"Yeah!"
"That's my boy," Ben says proudly, as he comes over to give Cas a solid clap on the back. "Told you you would."
Wes is also smiling enthusiastically. "Congrats, man, that's awesome. You'll love it there."
"You think so?" Cas asks with interest. "Have you been there?" He's pretty sure Wes went to Yale.
The smile on Wes's face slips for just a moment, but then it's back so quickly Cas thinks he might have imagined it. "I, yeah, a couple of good buddies of mine went there."
Ben glances between the two of them and declares, "Time to introduce you to beer, Cas." He grabs another bottle out of the refrigerator, opens it for Cas, and holds it out to him. Cas takes it gingerly, and Ben winks. "Just don't tell your parents, okay?"
"No, of course not," Cas says solemnly as he takes a sip. "Then they might think you're a bad influence on me or something."
It gets a laugh out of Ben, and Wes asks him, "So, do you like Indian food? There's this amazing restaurant called Darbar that we used to go to..."
Cas spends the next half an hour or so listening to Wes talk about all the awesome places to eat and things to do around Stanford and wondering if those places are even still around. Ben spends that time watching them both with a soft, unguarded expression, something closer to quiet contentment than Cas has ever really seen on him.
The realization takes Cas by surprise, but he can see now how true it is. Whenever Ben isn't putting on a shit-eating grin or smiling fondly at someone in particular, he has this look about him that can only be described as faintly wistful. Of course, Cas only knows what expressions Ben has when they're together, but he's pretty sure Ben's spent more time with him in the past seventeen years than he has with anyone else.
It gives him a pang to know he'll be leaving for college soon, and Stanford is so far away he won't even be able to visit that often.
Something Ben said to him years ago comes back to him now, about not having to share blood to be family. Sitting here in Ben's kitchen with Ben, Wes, and a beer (which Cas secretly thinks is vile), Cas really does feel like he's part of their family. He doesn't see too much of Wes anyway, but he has no doubt he'll miss Ben just as much as he'll miss his parents.
***
The last book hits stores in the summer before Cas leaves for college, and it only reinforces the feeling that his childhood is really drawing to a close. Cas has never in his entire life not had a new Supernatural book to look forward to, and now he holds the very last one in his hand. He almost can't imagine what it'll be like after he finishes reading it, like he'll be a different person or something.
It's a surreal feeling, holding the payoff to what has been for him a lifetime of emotional investment.
Just for old times' sake, he curls up on Ben's couch to read it while Ben sits beside him with his own copy.
In some aspects, this last book is very satisfying. Dean, Sam, and Castiel defeat Lucifer on their own terms, triumphing over both Heaven and Hell by the force of their will alone. Cas has always rooted for free will, so this is more reaffirming than he can say. And he's so proud of these three for standing between humanity and impossible odds that he actually trembles with adrenaline through the chapter on the final battle.
But that's where the satisfaction ends.
After Lucifer is killed, it's like the story just stops. The angels leave without a single sign to mark their departure except for Castiel's anguish at their sudden absence, the media catches on that it's no longer the end of the world, and swarming reporters drive Dean, Sam, and Castiel underground.
"That's it?" Cas asks blankly when he reaches the end. "They save the world, change their names, the end?" He keeps expecting more pages to appear under his fingers, but there's only the 'About the Author' blurb on the dust jacket explaining that Carver Edlund's visions stopped when the angels left.
Ben glances over, having already finished reading it himself. "Not what you expected?"
"No!" Cas says vehemently. "The world is saved, that's awesome, but we already knew that. What about them?"
"They found new lives?" Ben offers.
"Castiel still has Jimmy's brain tumor!" Cas is so helplessly angry he's practically growling. "He's been at the end of his rope because of that thing for so many books now and it's consumed not only him but who he is, and the story ends without dealing with it at all?"
Ben sighs. "This isn't fiction, Cas. It's a story about someone's real life. You can't expect all the loose ends to be tied up in a neat bow; life doesn't work like that."
"I know, but-" Cas looks away, frustrated and feeling so stupidly let down after years and years of expecting to see Castiel get his happy ending. After a moment he deflates and says in a small voice, "I just want to know what happened to him."
A warm hand lands on his shoulder, and Cas looks up into Ben's warm green eyes. "I'm sure they figured something out."
It's at least a little reassuring, because Cas has always trusted Ben, but he's still nowhere near mollified. He doesn't know if he'll ever be, and that thought casts a shadow over his mood for the rest of the day.
***
"I wrote to Carver Edlund," Cas confesses to Ben the night before his flight to Stanford.
They're having his mom's pie again, and Ben glances up with a forkful halfway to his mouth. He doesn't seem surprised. "Yeah?"
Cas nods. "I know he doesn't get visions about them anymore, but I thought maybe he still keeps in touch with them? So I gave him a letter for Castiel. That was over a month ago."
Ben puts the forkful of pie in his mouth and carefully waits for Cas to continue.
"I never heard back. Not that I expected to, I'm sure he gets hundreds of letters a day and it was a complete shot in the dark anyway, but-" Cas sighs. "I can't stop thinking about it."
"Time to get on with your own life, kid," Ben tells him between bites of pie. "Tomorrow you start a new one. Forget about Castiel's."
"Have you?" Cas can't help but ask. Ben has always been reserved when it comes to the Supernatural books - even more reserved than usual - but Cas can tell he cares about the people in it too.
Ben gives him a small, humorless smile. "I'm old and haven't got much more to do with my life that I haven't already done. I can afford to sit around reminiscing about shit."
"So that's a 'no', then."
"Whatever," Ben replies with a roll of his eyes. "You better get to bed before your princess ass oversleeps and you miss your flight in the morning."
He's right, Cas knows, but he doesn't want to leave. Ben's house feels just as much like home as his own house does, and Cas knows how much he's going to miss coming here after school almost every day.
But he also knows how Ben feels about chick flick moments. So he says, "Okay," and when he stands up, Ben gives him a hug.
It's their first hug in years, since Cas decided he was too old for hugs, and Ben pats him on the back. "Be good," he says roughly. "And if you're not good, don't get caught."
Cas pulls away with a lopsided smile. "Okay," he says again, and because he doesn't want to actually say goodbye, he doesn't.
***
His life becomes a whirl after that. College is fast-paced and demanding in a way that high school never was, and Cas immerses himself in his studies. He majors in English, and he loves it.
Thanksgiving is the first chance he gets to go home, and he's disappointed because Ben is visiting Wes in New York.
But he gets to see Ben over Christmas break, and by then he's wearing glasses so Ben chuckles and calls him a little nerdy dude with glasses and ruffles his hair. The motion knocks his glasses askew, but it's alright because that just makes Ben's grin widen.
They still keep in touch while he's at Stanford, of course, since Ben is only ever a phone call or an email away, but it's good, seeing him in person. The only thing that saddens Cas is that now that he only sees his parents and Ben once every few months, and Wes even less frequently than that, sometimes they're noticeably older when he does see them again.
He doesn't dwell on it too much, just like he doesn't dwell on Castiel too much, these days. Of course he still wonders what became of Castiel sometimes, especially when he's in the mood to be nostalgic, but just as Ben advised, he has gotten on with his own life. Between his classes and his new friends, Cas really doesn't have the energy to focus on too much else.
Before he knows it, he's finished his first year at Stanford and found a summer job at one of the campus libraries. It's a welcome break after the stress of papers and exams, but the summer passes quickly. Then another academic year starts and Cas throws himself into his books all over again.
***
In his junior year of college, Cas falls in love with a guy named Dean. The irony of their names doesn't escape him, but there are so many guys his age named Dean that he supposes the coincidence shouldn't surprise him.
Dean is a business major. He's generous and sweet and always up for having a little fun, and he coaxes Cas out of his dorm room at night when he should be studying and likes to make out with him in any dark corner he can push Cas into. He leaves Cas exhilarated and breathless in a way that Zach never could, and he's always there for Cas in a way that Zach never bothered to be. Cas knows early on in the relationship that Dean is it. He's the one. So Cas lets Dean be his first.
He brings Dean home for Christmas, and something complicated flits across Ben's expression when Cas introduces them. But then Ben smiles and tells Cas, "I see you found a looker. Nice job. But I'm still gonna kill him if he-"
"Ben," Cas says, embarrassed, and both Ben and Dean grin at him. They end up getting along famously, and if they bond over making Cas blush, well, Cas can't begrudge them that (much).
Ben isn't the only one who enjoys embarrassing Cas in front of his new boyfriend.
Cas's mom tells Dean that his name is practically the first thing Cas ever said, and Cas huffs at her. "I thought you said 'daddy' was my first word."
"Sure," his mom agrees, "that was your first real word, but the first thing you ever said was a 'dee' sound." The memory brings a smile to her lips. "It happened when Ben was holding you, and you should've seen the surprised look on his face. We were all pretty excited that you'd started trying to talk, of course, but Ben was actually glowing that night. I've never seen him like that. And the entire time you kept touching his face and saying 'dee' and laughing, over and over again."
Dean thinks it's adorable, and for the rest of the night, every time Cas says his name, it gets a little chuckle out of him. (Although he does stop chuckling later, when they're alone in Cas's car and Cas breathes his name in a very different kind of way.)
Everyone loves Dean, and Cas loves him most of all, so after they graduate from Stanford, they find jobs in the same area and move in together. They bicker and have their fair share of fights, just like any couple, but nothing ever comes between them that they can't get over, so Cas is happy. Then same-sex marriages are legalized across the country and he gets to ask Ben to be the best man at his wedding, and that makes him even happier.
Once in a very long while, he lies awake and watches Dean sleep and wonders if Castiel ever found happiness. He likes to imagine that Castiel is with Dean Winchester in a mirror of what Cas has with his own Dean, but he thinks sadly that it's not very likely. The thought always has him holding on to Dean through the night a little more tightly than usual.
***
When Cas and Dean decide to adopt a son, Cas doesn't even have to think about it. "Can we name him Ben?"
"Sure," Dean agrees, because he knows how much Cas loves Ben and anyway, he's never been the kind of guy who had his heart set on any particular baby name.
Ben has always been awesome with kids, Cas himself included, but Cas never realized just how awesome that was until he's watching Ben and Ben Jr. together. It pains him that he and Dean chose to stay in California rather than move back here because he would have liked to let his son grow up with Ben just as he did, but they have jobs and a house and friends out there, so it wouldn't make sense to uproot their lives just for this.
He settles for visiting as often as possible, though truth be told, it's not that often. Certainly not as often as he'd like.
***
Wes dies of a heart attack when he's seventy-one, and Cas flies home for his funeral. (Wes and Amy moved to Michigan to be closer to Ben after they both retired.)
Ben is still kneeling there in the grass long after the funeral ends, long after even Amy and Mary have gone, and it has to be hurting his knees but he won't move.
Cas comes up behind him to rest a hand on his shoulder, and when Ben looks up at him, it's the closest to crying Cas has ever seen him. His eyes are too bright and he's trembling faintly, but all he says is, "At least it was an okay death."
Cas has no idea what that means, but he stays with Ben until he's finally ready to go and helps him to his feet. Then Ben drives them both back to his place in his huge, beautiful car, and for a moment there in the Impala, it feels just like old times.
The illusion is destroyed when Ben gets out of the car and makes his way slowly into the house like it pains him to walk, and it strikes Cas suddenly that Ben is old. He's old and he probably doesn't have that many years left himself, which is a thought that makes Cas ache even when a corner of Ben's mouth lifts a little at the sight of the perfect apple pie on his kitchen counter. They both know it's from Cas's mom, and Cas tries to distract Ben from his thoughts by talking to him about anything and everything while they share the pie.
It only sort of works.
***
After Wes's death, Cas hears from his parents that Ben withdraws almost completely. He never leaves the house unless Cas's parents force him to join them for dinner, and he even stops going for drives in his beloved Impala.
Cas can still get laughs out of him once in a while when he visits, and he starts a tradition of driving Ben around in the Impala, but his parents tell him that if Ben seems to be in a good mood, it's only because Cas is around. Unfortunately Cas is only around a few times a year, and the rest of the year, apart from when Amy or Mary visit, Ben is much more melancholy. He's lonely, it's obvious to everyone, and Cas feels like shit because Ben was always there to cheer him up throughout Cas's life, but now Cas can't be there for Ben because he has his own family to look after and his own life.
He voices this to Ben during one visit even though he knows it won't be well-received, and Ben stares. "Is Dean turning you into the girl in the relationship or something? Decided he likes vagina after all and made you grow one? Honestly, Cas."
Cas sighs and can't quite meet Ben's gaze, so he looks around the house instead. It's dustier than it was when he was a kid, and none of his own things are scattered around the place, but not much else has changed and it makes Cas wistful to think of all the years he spent running around this house driving Ben batty. He feels a sudden surge of affection for the old man and opens his mouth to say, "Ben-"
"I know, kid," Ben replies, with a roll of his eyes, but Cas is sure he does know, so he lets it slide. For some reason, he likes that Ben still calls him 'kid' sometimes.
"Ben didn't like the Supernatural books," Cas says after a while, because talking to this Ben about Supernatural still seems like the most natural thing in the world, even if he is over forty.
Ben chuckles. "They're not actually very good, are they?"
"They're still my favorite," Cas replies, a touch defensively.
"You threw a tantrum over the ending."
"It was not a tantrum," he protests, "I was disappointed that so many integral threads of the plot were left unresol-"
Ben snorts. "It was a tantrum. And like I said, those books aren't fiction."
"That's why it bothers me," Cas replies heatedly. "If it was fiction, I could make up my own ending and tell myself that's what happened. But I can't."
For a few moments Ben just regards him silently, before he finally asks, "You're still thinking about this?""
Cas sighs and looks away. "Occasionally," he admits, more quietly now. "What was it you said, I'm way too fucking emotionally invested in them?" He lets out a short, self-deprecating laugh. "Probably, but it's hard not to be when they saved the world and I grew up reading about their lives."
Ben doesn't reply this time, and Cas shakes his head. "Whatever, I've accepted that I'll never know. Carver Edlund has fallen off the map so I couldn't try to ask him again even if I wanted to, and he was the only link to them."
"I don't suppose it would help if I told you to have faith that things worked out okay for Castiel?" Ben asks wryly.
"It might if I thought you had any," Cas deadpans.
Ben shrugs, and his lips form something that isn't quite a smile. "I think things worked out okay."
***
Not even two years after Wes dies, it's Ben's turn.
Cas still hates saying goodbye, and he can't tell Ben he loves him because Ben threatened to haunt his ass if Cas turned the end of his life into a chick flick moment, so instead he just drives. They're in the old Impala again, and Ben is leaning back in the passenger seat with his eyes closed.
Since it takes too much effort for Ben to say much, Cas does most of the talking. He tells Ben about his family and his job because Ben has always been interested in his life, about all the places in the world he's visited that Ben never saw, and he's even got some girl-on-girl porn on his laptop because he thinks it might cheer Ben up. (That gets a crooked leer out of the old guy, at least.)
There's nothing out of the ordinary about this drive to mark it as their very last one, until Cas is in the middle of talking about Dean building them a deck and Ben catches his wrist in a surprisingly tight grip. His eyes are wide open now. "You're happy, right?"
Cas blinks. "What?"
"Just answer the question, Cas," Ben says gruffly. He watches Cas intently, like his answer will make all the difference in the world.
So Cas humors him. "Yeah, Ben. I'm happy." Apart from the sudden, frantic feeling that something vital is slipping through his fingers like sand even as they speak, Cas is happy. He has everything he's ever wanted in life.
Ben nods and lets go of his wrist and closes his eyes again. "Good."
"Wait-" Cas is suddenly panicked that this is it, but Ben manages to wave vaguely.
"I'm still listening, kid."
So Cas keeps talking, and he'll never know the exact moment that Ben died, but he likes to think it was while Cas was telling him a lewd joke. When he realizes Ben isn't ever going to respond to him again, Cas pulls the car over and kisses Ben's forehead and finally says, "Goodbye, Ben."
The silent tears don't come until later, when he's wrapped up in Dean's arms and held tight through the night.
***
Ben is cremated and buried with Wes, just like he wanted, and he leaves most of his money and possessions to Amy and Mary, such as they are.
But he entrusts the love of his life to Cas, and Cas sits in the passenger seat and turns Led Zeppelin up too loud and smiles. As long as he doesn't look over at the empty driver's seat, he can almost imagine Ben there, fingers tapping against the steering wheel in time with the music.
***
The day after Ben's funeral, Cas gets a letter. It's addressed to him at his parents' house, which is odd since he hasn't lived there in years, and there's no return address. The letter is typed, but there's a handwritten signature at the bottom that Cas stares at in absolute awe.
He takes the letter and sits inside the Impala and says conversationally, "You have the shittiest timing ever, you know that? But never mind, I'll read this to you anyway. It's a letter from Dean Winchester."
No one replies, of course, so Cas starts reading. "Dear Cas, Castiel isn't here to answer your letter, so I've taken the liberty of doing so myself. Don't ask me why I waited so many years - I work in mysterious fucking ways, okay?
"There was no magic hand wave for Castiel's brain tumor. After we killed Lucifer, Sam and I dragged Cas all around the country to every promising doctor and their grandmothers, but no one could do anything for him. Eventually he got tired of it all and told us where we could shove it whenever we tried to tell him about some new treatment someone was experimenting with. Cas picked up a lot of my language in those months, but that's the least of his personality changes the tumor caused, I guess.
"Anyway, after we gave up on finding a treatment, Sam went back to hunting until he met the damsel in distress of his life, and it was corny as hell but it's Sam, so what can you expect? It ended up working out for the best, actually, since she already knew what he did and so spared him some awkward confessions.
"But Cas and I were done with hunting, so we found a temporary apartment and then just never bothered to leave. He was a terrible roommate. No, seriously. Imagine your worst college roommate and multiply that by ten, and that was Cas. We tried to make it work, we really did, but he woke me up every night because he couldn't sleep, bitched at me constantly, and did nothing around the house because the one time he tried to cook, he had a seizure and almost set the entire building on fire. The seizures were actually pretty rare, but his migraines became more and more debilitating as time went on, and he got crankier and crankier. Not that I blamed him - I knew it was because of the tumor and it wasn't his fault at all - but that didn't stop me from wanting to strangle him half the time. This was a guy who would've done anything for me, and I for him, but take the end of the world out of the equation and we turned on each other.
"Still, that's not the reason I told him to say 'fuck you' to his life and just fall and be reborn. If there'd been even a drop of happiness in Castiel's life, I would've swallowed the rest of the shit without complaint and never let him go. But there wasn't. I'd be damn proud of myself if I could get him to not look 100% miserable once a month. The only reason he was still hanging on was so that I wouldn't end up left in the dust, and I couldn't stand that. He'd already given me everything he'd ever had - literally - so I thought the least I could do for him was to let him go. He was a stubborn son of a bitch, and it took him over two years to make the choice to fall. Not even telling him that I just didn't want to be burdened by his sorry ass anymore helped because he knew I was lying through my teeth. That was the hardest thing I ever said in my life (not counting that 'yes' to Alastair, I guess, but that's a different story) and I never tried it again.
"In the end, there wasn't anything in particular that made up his mind, no stupid speeches or killing blows. His motor skills and coordination had been failing for some time and he stumbled and fell a lot in those last few months, but he always narrowed his eyes and got back up. Except the last time, he didn't. It wasn't even because he broke anything, because he didn't; Cas fell trying to get out of the shower and just didn't get back up. He was only human, after all. I don't know how long he was there for, but that's how I found him when I got back from getting groceries, sprawled out on the bathroom floor and whispering 'sorry' over and over again.
"You know, I'd held a naked ex-angel once before in my life, and I liked it, but this was not like that at all. I pulled Cas into my lap and held him and told him it was alright, and that I'd be okay. He'd be reborn, and I'd hunt his ass down and make him keep me company, and I'd have a good time, watching him grow up. I'd even be happier that way, living the life I'd always wanted vicariously through him, complete with trick-or-treating and candy eating contests and all the time in the world to try every flavor of ice cream there is. When I promised to take him to a ballgame, he actually smiled a bit and told me he'd probably hate it. It was the first smile I'd seen on his face in longer than I could remember.
"Then he asked me to find a psychic and make him remember who he really was, when he was old enough, because he didn't want to forget me, and he wouldn't let it go until I agreed to do it. After I did, he kissed me. Now, don't go getting any strange ideas - it wasn't some wet, porny make-out session - it was just a press of his lips to mine, and I never did figure out why he did it, if it was just another thing that fucking brain tumor made him think was a good idea or if it was something he, Castiel, actually wanted. I guess it doesn't matter.
"He screamed when he ripped out whatever was left of his grace, and he glowed before the light went out.
"Cas made a pretty shooting star, like the girl he was, and after I buried his body, I left our apartment and followed him north.
"I did get to watch him grow up, just like I promised I would, but I never gave him his memories back. Cas had to know I was lying when I said I would; he always saw straight through me. There were times when I considered it, I admit, if only to ask him why he fucking kissed me, but in the end, I never did it. This was the only shot at a normal life he'd ever have, and he deserved it, so who was I to fuck that up for him? I'm glad I resisted the urge.
"He had an awesome childhood, went to a great college like the nerd he is, found a good job, got hitched, and has 2.5 kids, give or take 1.5. So for the purposes of this story, I'm going to end with: And he lived happily ever after.
"I hope this answers your question, even if it wasn't the answer you expected.
"Signed, Dean Winchester."
After Cas stops reading, a thick silence falls in the car. He watches a dust mote float gently down onto the dashboard and thinks about Ben and himself and wonders if maybe...
But he isn't that eight year old who wanted to be an angel anymore, and it's just a fleeting fantasy. At the end of the day, he's just some guy who's glad to finally know how the story ended.
Cas gets out of the car and goes back to his own life.
Charaters: Dean, Castiel, and Sam (Gen, mostly, with hints of Dean/Castiel)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Terminal illness, character death (it's not as depressing as it sounds, really).
Word Count: ~10,000
Notes: I wrote this for a friend in March 2010, toward the end of season 5, when the boys were hunting Lucifer, the apocalypse was wrapping up, and Castiel was losing his grace. It was supposed to be the end of the show, and this was my version of the ending. Five seasons later, they've made 200 episodes. Go figure, eh? I figured, in a moment of nostalgia, that I should finally post this.
Summary: In a post-apocalyptic world that Team Free Will saved, everyone knows Carver Edlund's books are real, and a new generation of kids grows up reading them. Cas is one of those kids.
Cas's parents named him after the angel who helped Dean and Sam Winchester save the world. He knows two other boys with the same name, but Cas likes to think he's special because his eyes are just as blue as everyone says the real Castiel's eyes are, and his hair is just as dark and messy. He wants to be just like his namesake when he grows up, even though he's never met him and doesn't even know his whole story yet.
Carver Edlund is still working on that, putting out two or three Supernatural books a year. It's the series Cas and all of the other children born after the end of the apocalypse have grown up with.
When he's seven, Lucifer Rising finally comes out, and Cas's babysitter, Ben, takes him to the midnight release party at the local bookstore. Or, more accurately, he sneaks Cas to the release party long after his bedtime, which has Cas bouncing delightedly in the car on the entire way there and Ben threatening to take him home if he won't keep his seat belt on. They both know Ben will get into trouble with Cas's parents for this, but they both also know that a few sweet words and a smile from him will have them sighing and giving up on their anger. No one can stay mad at Ben when he smiles at them, least of all Cas's parents.
He's lived next door to them since before Cas was born, and throughout the first year of Cas's life, whenever he had screaming fits that woke the neighbors and couldn't be calmed down, it was Ben who came over and whispered while he held him and immediately had Cas smiling through his tears. And whenever Cas couldn't fall asleep in his crib when it came time for his afternoon nap, Ben took a break from working in his garage and sprawled out on the couch so Cas could curl up on top of his chest and nap with him. Cas's parents swear up and down that they don't know what they would've done without Ben, and Cas loves hearing that because it makes him feel like he and Ben were always meant to be best friends, even though Ben is older even than Cas's parents.
All the other boys in Cas's class have best friends their own age, but he doesn't care because Ben is the best best friend ever. Besides, no one else's best friend drives a big black car just like Dean Winchester's infamous '67 Impala, and no one else is getting their copy of Lucifer Rising until after school tomorrow. A few years ago Ben single-handedly turned Cas from that quiet, weird kid that everyone picked on into the coolest kid in his class who everyone wanted to play with, but Cas still likes playing with Ben the best.
Especially when playing with Ben involves sneaking out of the house after bedtime.
"Can we read it tonight?" he asks as they get out of the car, taking Ben's hand and tugging him toward the bookstore.
"Oh, come on. You're already getting me into enough trouble as it is."
"It was your idea," Cas points out.
Ben glares down at him until Cas giggles. "Please? Just one chapter?"
"Cas-" Ben starts plaintively, but then his phone rings. It turns out to be Cas's parents, and Cas giggles some more. Ben just gives him a slightly betrayed look before answering it.
***
They don't get to read Lucifer Rising until after Cas gets out of school the next day. As soon as the final bell rings, Cas is dashing out to the Impala, breathless with excitement.
"Whoa," Ben chuckles as he gets in. "Easy there, buddy."
But Cas isn't listening. He's pulling the book out of his backpack and flipping through it, trying to find as many mentions of his own name as he can. He likes all the Supernatural books, but he especially likes reading about Castiel. It's not just because they share a name; Cas likes Castiel because he's a fallen superhero, the kind Cas fantasizes about being himself.
When they get home, Cas climbs into Ben's lap and reads aloud to him, just like Ben used to read these books aloud to Cas when he was younger. It's slow going and Ben still has to help him with the occasional word, but by the time Cas's parents are due to come home from work, they're already at the part where Zachariah and Castiel trap Dean in the green room.
"He still hasn't stopped being mean to Dean," Cas says with a small frown as he cranes his neck to look up at Ben.
"Yeah," Ben agrees with a wry twitch of his lips. "What a dick."
"But he still likes Dean, right?"
"I reckon so, yeah."
Cas looks away and frowns again, saying quietly, "Dean doesn't like him anymore, though."
"Aw, I dunno about that," Ben says. "Seems to me like Dean wouldn't be so angry with him if Cas hadn't disappointed him, and Cas wouldn't have been able to disappoint him if Dean didn't liked him."
It takes a moment for Cas to wrap his mind around that, but then he thinks he gets it. "Kind of like Mom and Dad still love me even when they get mad at me?"
"Exactly like that." Ben sounds pleased. "In fact, no one makes you more angry than your own family."
"Castiel isn't Dean's family," Cas points out.
Ben shrugs behind him. "Maybe not yet, but I have a feeling he will be."
This one, Cas can't wrap his mind around. "They're never going to be related."
"You don't have to share blood to be family," Ben says gently.
"Oh." Cas thinks about this for a while, then turns his head to look up at him again. "Can we be a family, then?"
It earns him a crooked smile and a ruffle on the head. "Yeah, Cas. We can be a family."
***
Nothing makes Cas more proud of being named after Castiel than reading about the angel rebelling against all of Heaven out of loyalty to Dean. He's glowing over it so much he doesn't even mind the cliffhanger at the end of the book. Everything will be alright, he knows; all three of them survived to end the apocalypse, after all.
Which means... "Castiel's gonna beat up archangels," he breathes. "Whoa."
Ben makes a funny face, like he's going to disagree, but then he hesitates and says instead, "I guess we'll see in a few months, won't we?"
"He'll do it, you see," Cas tells him confidently. "And then he'll save Dean and Sam from Lucifer."
"Yeah?" Ben just sounds amused now, mostly. "Then what'll happen?"
Cas ponders this for a moment. "Then Dean and Sam will make up, and the three of them will kick everyone's butts."
"That easy, huh."
"Well," Cas amends, "maybe after Castiel beats up the archangels, he'll make them help. They can take on the Four Horsemen, while Dean, Sam, and Castiel fight Lucifer. After they win, they can get rid of Zachariah too and live happily ever after, like they're doing now."
Ben chuckles. "Who needs Carver Edlund when you've got it all figured out?"
"I still like reading the details," Cas allows. "Like Castiel not knowing what a pair of balls are." He giggles and adds, "I bet some of the girls in my class don't know either."
"If any of them ask, don't show them," Ben advises. Then he adds, "Where your teacher can see."
"I won't," Cas promises solemnly. Then he suddenly shivers and announces, "It's cold."
He tries to press closer to Ben, who's sitting beside him on the couch, but Ben nudges him and points to a sweatshirt blanket draped over the other end of the couch. Cas gets up to grab it, and when he brings it back, Ben takes it from him and wraps it tightly around him, so that only his head is sticking out. Then Ben lifts Cas into his lap and...
Tickles him half to death. Cas shrieks with laughter and squirms wildly, but he can't get his arms free of the blanket and Ben laughs evilly as his fingers move up and down Cas's sides, saying in a growly voice, "Gotcha, you can't get away from me now." Cas can't string any words together to reply in between all the shrieking and trying to catch his breath, until Ben eventually takes mercy on him and stops.
Cas collapses against him, out of breath but still giggling, and Ben asks smugly, "Warm now?"
"Uh huh," Cas replies with a nod, and settles even more comfortably in his friend's arms.
"Oh no you don't," Ben says sternly. "You are not falling asleep on me again and making me carry you back home again, you little brat."
"Shhh," Cas whispers, and Ben heaves a long-suffering sigh but quiets. "Home is just next door. And I'm an angel, not a brat."
Ben snorts and mutters under his breath, "Not mutually exclusive in the least." But he brings a hand up to Cas's hair, and his fingers are gentle now as they stroke though it. Cas sighs happily and drifts off to thoughts of superhero angels fighting legendary battles.
***
Castiel doesn't beat up any archangels. In fact, it's quite the opposite, Cas finds out six months later. He isn't too dismayed; Castiel does come back, after all, and he does get to beat up a couple of angels after all, even if they aren't archangels. Actually, Cas is pretty happy with the way things turned out, because this means Castiel is invincible. If anything happens to him, it's alright because he'll just come back.
He tells this to Ben's younger brother, Wes, who has brought his family over from New York for a weekend visit.
Wes smiles down at him from an impossible height (for the first few years of Cas's life, he thought Wes was Ben's older brother because it didn't make sense that the younger brother should be taller). It's a faint smile and almost seems more sad than it is happy, but his eyes shine with warmth, so Cas smiles back. He's always liked Wes and wishes they would visit more often than once every couple of months, but Ben says he runs his own family law firm and that it keeps him busy. Once in a while, if Cas is really good and does all his homework in advance, Ben talks Cas's parents into letting Cas go to New York with him. Cas likes Michigan well enough, but he likes New York even more, especially since Wes has a really big house with a pool.
Watching Ben and Wes together - bickering and wrestling and messing with each other like kids - often makes Cas wish he had a brother of his own, but he knows his parents went through enough doctors and even more trouble just to have him. Besides, he has something of a little sister in Mary, Wes and Amy's daughter.
Cas spends most of the weekend playing with Mary. She's a couple of years younger than him but every bit as fierce as they run around between Cas's house and Ben's, pretending to fight demons and other monsters. In fact, she doesn't even cry when she falls and scrapes her knee on the sidewalk. She only hugs her knee and looks annoyed.
"Are you okay?" Cas asks worriedly as he drops to his knees next to her, trying to see if she's bleeding.
Mary nods. "Of course, I'll always be okay. Uncle Ben says there's an angel watching over me." She says it with such matter-of-fact confidence that Cas smiles.
"C'mon, then," he says, taking her hand and pulling her to her feet. He leads her into his house so he can ask his parents for a band-aid.
***
Every year, Cas dresses up as Castiel for Halloween. And every year, Ben looks momentarily startled when he opens his door to find Cas standing on his front porch in full costume, never mind that he's the one who buys Cas a new trench coat and suit every few years when he grows out of his old ones.
This year is no different. But the moment passes quickly, and when Ben says, "Hey, Cas," it's somehow softer than usual.
They always go trick-or-treating together, and it's one of Cas's favorite nights of the year even though Ben always steals at least half of his hard-earned candy by the end of it. It's kind of unfair because Ben can put way more candy in his mouth at once than Cas can (they once had a competition and thinking about it still makes Cas feel a little sulky), but Cas doesn't mind because he likes sharing his candy with Ben. Actually, he wouldn't even eat nearly as much candy as he does if it wasn't for Ben and that blissful look he gets on his face whenever he eats something unhealthy that invariably makes Cas want to eat it too. Left to his own devices, Cas is more of a fruits and vegetables kind of kid.
What's even more fun than eating the candy is playing with it. He and Ben take turns tossing Skittles into each other's mouths (or just at each other in general) and have a bowling tournament with gumballs and chapstick (Cas has a lot of chapstick, thanks to Ben).
They have to stop when Cas's candy-induced tummy ache sets in, but even that's not so bad because Ben sits Cas in his lap and rubs his tummy and they spend the rest of the night watching cartoons together.
***
Cas is twelve when he finds out Jimmy had a brain tumor. He isn't worried because he knows everything will be okay in the end and this will get fixed just like everything else, even though Castiel has stopped being able to suppress it.
The angel has been losing more and more of his powers, and it makes Cas a little sad, but on the bright side, it means Castiel will be spending more and more time with Dean and Sam, so there will be more of him in the rest of the books.
True to his prediction, there's a whole chapter at the end of the current book about Dean and Sam taking Castiel to the hospital.
"What does 'inoperable' mean?" Cas asks.
Ben looks up from his laptop (they stopped reading the books together a couple of years ago, when Cas decided he was too old to sit in Ben's lap like a child, though he still likes to bring his homework and books over to Ben's place after school and spend the rest of his afternoons there). The expression on Ben's face is unreadable, but his voice is neutral. "It means the tumor is in a place where the doctors can't safely operate on him to remove it."
"Oh." Cas thinks about this for a moment, then shrugs. "Well, maybe we'll find out in the next book how they got rid of it, then."
Something flickers across Ben's face, but he turns back to his laptop without saying more, and Cas returns to reading the last few pages.
***
The next book comes out five months later, but they still don't find out how Castiel got rid of the brain tumor. Sam and Dean don't even fret over it too much because there are so many other things to fret over, and also because the tumor isn't cancerous and doesn't seem to affect Castiel. He knows it's there and can feel it growing against his will, but it doesn't hurt or anything.
"Why were they so worried in the last book if it doesn't even affect him?" Cas wonders aloud. "It can't even kill him because Castiel's still at least sort of an angel, he said so."
Ben shrugs. "Sometimes it takes a while before people start showing symptoms, and those symptoms can be pretty shitty."
"Mom says you swear too much."
"She's just lucky I tried not to do it too much when you were younger," Ben tells him with a faint snort.
Cas grins and returns to his book.
***
Turns out, Ben was right about the symptoms. A couple of books later, Castiel starts getting migraines.
Cas thinks it's sweet, how Dean and Sam always take such good care of Castiel when he's weak and vulnerable in his agony. They do their best to make him as comfortable as they can, and once Dean even drives for half an hour through a pouring storm to buy him some Advil.
"You did that for me once, remember?" Cas says to Ben. "When I had that huge fever and Mom was freaking out."
"Yeah, well, at least it worked on you. Cas, not so much." There's a beat before he amends, "Castiel, I mean."
Cas glances down at the book in his lap. "Yeah, he says something about it being because he's an angel. Shouldn't they have known?"
"They might've guessed, but it was still worth a shot, I'm sure," Ben says with a shrug.
"I'm glad he has good friends," Cas decides.
For a moment Ben doesn't reply, but then he says, "I'm glad too."
***
The migraines only get worse, and it actually upsets Cas to read about them sometimes. It's not the descriptions of the pain itself that bother him (Cas is old enough to know that Carver Edlund's prose is cheesy); it's Castiel's frustration and fear. His migraines are debilitating enough that he becomes a liability if he has one during a hunt, and when Castiel isn't having a migraine, he's dreading his next one. Even Dean is afraid of what it means for his guardian angel to be curled in on himself and begging God to make it stop.
"Is there really nothing they can do?" Cas asks, feeling frustrated himself. He's long since stopped thinking of Castiel as an invincible superhero, but it still unsettles him to read about the angel being so helpless. It's like when Cas's grandma died and he caught his dad crying.
"They said at one point that he could fall and be reborn," Ben offers cautiously.
Cas brushes it aside impatiently. "Yeah, but he'd never do that."
"Never?" There's something under Ben's light tone, but when Cas glances at him, Ben's expression is only mildly curious.
"If he did that, he'd have been a baby and he wouldn't have been able to help them save the world," Cas points out.
"But 'never' extends past saving the world."
"Surely if they hadn't figured something out by then the angels would have fixed him?" It's what Cas assumes, anyway.
Ben snorts. "If you think the angels would be that generous then we have not been reading the same books."
Cas frowns at that. "What, then? You can't tell me he's still got this brain tumor? It's been years since the stuff in these books happened!"
"Probably not," Ben concedes as he looks away.
Why Ben thinks Castiel might choose to fall is beyond Cas, but he doesn't dwell on it.
"Anyway, Castiel promised Dean and Sam he wouldn't abandon them like that unless they wanted him to, and they'll never want him to. They don't think he's useless, even if he does, and besides, he's their friend."
"Ice cream break?" Ben asks abruptly. "You've been bent over that book for hours, it's bad for your eyes."
Cas perks up. "Yeah!" There are few things that can tear him away from Supernatural books, but ice cream is one of them. He and Ben made a pact to try every flavor at Ben & Jerry's before the end of the year, and they're only about halfway to their goal (never mind that it's still March).
Ben gives him a fond smile and for once doesn't tease him about the way his voice cracked. "Come on, then, kiddo."
***
Being bent over books for hours is bad for his head, too, Cas discovers when he gets a headache from doing hours and hours of homework.
"My head hurts," he whines to Ben, who's helping him with his homework.
He doesn't expect Ben to widen his eyes in alarm and lean in close, one hand already on Cas's shoulder. "How bad is it? Do you feel dizzy?" he asks urgently.
Cas blinks at him, bewildered. "Um," he says, and pauses. "It's not that bad. Jeez, you're acting like I've got a brain tumor or something."
Ben immediately relaxes but makes a face. "Not funny, Cas."
Actually, Cas agrees. They're between Supernatural books at the moment, but he still thinks about Castiel and his brain tumor a lot. In fact, he spends more time wondering about that than he does wondering about how Lucifer was finally defeated.
"I still think the angels probably healed Castiel before they left," Cas says thoughtfully. "But I feel sorry for all the people who don't have it that easy and who have to live with it."
"Yeah," Ben agrees flatly. "Me too." Cas glances at him, surprised by his tone, and Ben softens it. "I think it's bedtime for you; you should get some rest."
"But I haven't even finished my homework," Cas protests.
"I'll write your teacher a note."
Cas grins, and Ben gives him a wink. "Okay," he agrees happily, getting up and shoving everything into his backpack.
Ben walks him to the door, and Cas says, "Night, Ben," as he lets himself out.
"Happy wet dreams," Ben calls after him. He watches from his porch until Cas is safely inside his own house, but at least he can't see Cas's faint blush, which Cas is grateful for.
***
If Cas was unsettled by Castiel being helpless where it concerns his pain, it's ten times worse when Castiel's depression sinks in.
"I don't think I want to be like him anymore," he tells Ben, who's tinkering under the hood of a Jeep. It's not because Castiel himself keeps getting weaker and weaker; it's because his will keeps getting weaker and weaker.
"No, you probably don't," Ben says absently. "Cas had a crap life. You have everything."
Sometimes Ben calls him that, Cas has noticed, and it's still weird to him. He's Cas; Castiel is Castiel. But he lets it slide, as usual. "I bet it's better now, though, wherever he is. I bet he still hangs out with Dean and Sam and enjoys being human."
Ben glances up at him briefly before returning to his work. "Yeah," he agrees softly. "I bet."
***
"Dean and Castiel," Cas pauses to say in the middle of reading the next book. "They punched each other."
Ben's automatic response is, "Castiel punched Dean first."
Cas frowns. "Yeah, and it came out of left field."
"It was the brain tumor," Ben tells him. At Cas's questioning look, he elaborates, "It changes a guy, sometimes, if he's got a huge ass tumor in the frontal lobe of his brain. That's the area involved in personality and higher thinking and things like that."
"How do you know?" Cas asks. Ben is a mechanic, after all.
Ben's eyes slide away and he busies himself by cutting into the pie Cas brought over straight from his mom's oven. "I did some research."
Cas tilts his head thoughtfully. "Is that the reason for his depression too?"
"Probably." Ben presses his lips together. "All part of the package."
"That's not fair. He's fought so hard for Team Free Will and now a stupid tumor is turning him into someone he doesn't want to be?"
"Life's not fair," Ben shrugs. "But on the bright side, at least there's pie."
Something occurs to Cas as Ben slides a plate over to him. "It didn't hurt Dean's hand, when he punched him back."
Ben takes a bite of his pie and keeps his eyes on the rest of his slice. "If you keep reading, I think you'll find that that's what made him feel the worst."
***
Cas lives for fourteen years without having been to a single ballgame, until Ben decides that has to change. He takes Cas to a baseball game, Detroit Tigers vs. Cleveland Indians.
It's a nice day out, but truth be told, Cas would rather lounge in a park with the book he started reading the night before. He doesn't particularly care for ballgames, nor does he understand baseball beyond the rules Ben briefly summarized for him. But Ben is clearly enjoying himself, so Cas feigns interest for his benefit.
Ben isn't getting any younger, but when the Tigers make a home run and he hollers in victory around a mouthful of fries, he seems to. The hollering with his mouth full thing is a little gross, but Cas smiles anyway.
Just to annoy Ben, he roots for the Indians. Just to annoy Ben even further, he gloats when the Indians win.
"You don't even like baseball," Ben sulks. Cas opens his mouth to protest, but Ben talks over him. "Come on, Cas, if you'd daydreamed about your nerdy books any harder they would've appeared in little cloud-shaped thought bubbles above your head."
Cas looks away, embarrassed to be caught, but Ben only laughs. "Don't ever change."
***
Cas does change, and Ben apparently finds that amusing. "If I didn't know any better," he says with a smirk, "I'd say you're getting your angst all over everything because you've got a crush."
Cas can feel his cheeks warm, and Ben grins. "So who's the pretty lady?"
"I don't, um," Cas begins uncomfortably, shifting on his feet.
Ben doesn't miss a beat. "Okay then, who's the cute guy?"
"What?" Cas glances at him, startled and wondering if he's really that hopelessly obvious.
"I've suspected for years," Ben tells him with a vague hand wave.
"Oh," Cas says stupidly, but for some reason this helps him relax and feel a lot better. "Um, it's Zach Galen."
Ben wrinkles his nose. "Seriously? That rich dick who always struts around like he owns the place?"
Cas frowns. "He doesn't-"
"He does," Ben assures him, and shakes his head. "I don't know what you see in him, Cas."
"He's nice to me," Cas insists, and thinks about the way Zach smiles at him when Cas helps him with his homework.
Ben sighs. "I'm going to kill him if he breaks your heart."
***
"I'm going to kill him," Ben growls when Zach breaks Cas's heart.
"Ben," Cas says, tiredly and dejectedly. He's really not in the mood for this again.
Ben rolls his eyes. "Then lighten up. You're sixteen, Cas, getting dicked over by some douchebag is more of a requirement for your age than it is the end of the world."
"I know," Cas replies quietly, looking away. "I just didn't think it would hurt this much."
They're both silent for a moment, before Ben nudges his arm and says, "My girl will make you feel better, I bet. Wanna take her out for a spin?"
Cas glances at him in surprise. "Seriously? You never let anyone drive her. The last time I asked you threatened to cut my hands off."
"Which is why you should take advantage of my inability to disfigure a kicked puppy and go now before I change my mind," Ben replies, handing him the keys.
For the first time in two days, Cas feels a tug at the corner of his lips. He takes the keys with a grateful, "Thanks, Ben," and is almost out the door before he pauses and turns back around. "Come with me?" he blurts. At Ben's questioning look, he adds, "You know, just so you can make sure I don't scratch her up." What he really means is, I don't want to be alone with my thoughts, and he thinks Ben understands.
"Alright," Ben agrees, grabbing his leather jacket and following Cas out. "Probably better this way, else I might've gotten jealous my girl was out with another guy and been forced to kill you."
***
It takes Cas a few months to get over Zach, and he hates to admit it but it actually helps that Ben is always ready to remind him of all the reasons Zach sucks whenever he gets down. He combines the most unflattering words in quite creative ways that make Cas glad he's on Ben's good side.
Not that Ben needs any excuses to call Zach an oily piece of rectal-scum, but he gets one anyway when a new Supernatural book comes out and Zachariah the angel tries to break Dean's back in an effort to break his will. It's a close call, and if Castiel had shown up with his angel-killing knife twenty seconds after he did it would have been too late, but he manages to drive Zachariah away with it.
Dean, of course, is grateful for the save, and this cheers Cas up immensely because it's the first time in a couple of books now that Dean and Castiel actually have an amicable moment together. A flare of that old pride he had in Castiel comes back and he hopes this convinces Castiel that he's not useless.
It does, but only for a very short while. Castiel finally loses his ability to fly at the end of the book, and it's not just one step forward, two steps back. It's more like one step forward, ten steps back, and it's so bad Dean actually holds him through a migraine and doesn't let go even afterward.
Cas sighs and, for the first time, looks forward to the series concluding soon so that he can see everything get fixed up.
Sometimes, he worries that not everything will be fixed as perfectly as he used to think they would. Ben tells him he's way too fucking emotionally invested in these people, and Cas is inclined to agree.
***
Stanford is Cas's dream school, and when he gets his acceptance package in the mail, he's ecstatic.
After sending messages to his parents at work, he bursts into Ben's house, breathless with excitement. Wes is visiting, and they both look up from their beers.
"I got in!" he crows, waving the package around for emphasis.
Ben's face breaks out into a grin. "Stanford?"
"Yeah!"
"That's my boy," Ben says proudly, as he comes over to give Cas a solid clap on the back. "Told you you would."
Wes is also smiling enthusiastically. "Congrats, man, that's awesome. You'll love it there."
"You think so?" Cas asks with interest. "Have you been there?" He's pretty sure Wes went to Yale.
The smile on Wes's face slips for just a moment, but then it's back so quickly Cas thinks he might have imagined it. "I, yeah, a couple of good buddies of mine went there."
Ben glances between the two of them and declares, "Time to introduce you to beer, Cas." He grabs another bottle out of the refrigerator, opens it for Cas, and holds it out to him. Cas takes it gingerly, and Ben winks. "Just don't tell your parents, okay?"
"No, of course not," Cas says solemnly as he takes a sip. "Then they might think you're a bad influence on me or something."
It gets a laugh out of Ben, and Wes asks him, "So, do you like Indian food? There's this amazing restaurant called Darbar that we used to go to..."
Cas spends the next half an hour or so listening to Wes talk about all the awesome places to eat and things to do around Stanford and wondering if those places are even still around. Ben spends that time watching them both with a soft, unguarded expression, something closer to quiet contentment than Cas has ever really seen on him.
The realization takes Cas by surprise, but he can see now how true it is. Whenever Ben isn't putting on a shit-eating grin or smiling fondly at someone in particular, he has this look about him that can only be described as faintly wistful. Of course, Cas only knows what expressions Ben has when they're together, but he's pretty sure Ben's spent more time with him in the past seventeen years than he has with anyone else.
It gives him a pang to know he'll be leaving for college soon, and Stanford is so far away he won't even be able to visit that often.
Something Ben said to him years ago comes back to him now, about not having to share blood to be family. Sitting here in Ben's kitchen with Ben, Wes, and a beer (which Cas secretly thinks is vile), Cas really does feel like he's part of their family. He doesn't see too much of Wes anyway, but he has no doubt he'll miss Ben just as much as he'll miss his parents.
***
The last book hits stores in the summer before Cas leaves for college, and it only reinforces the feeling that his childhood is really drawing to a close. Cas has never in his entire life not had a new Supernatural book to look forward to, and now he holds the very last one in his hand. He almost can't imagine what it'll be like after he finishes reading it, like he'll be a different person or something.
It's a surreal feeling, holding the payoff to what has been for him a lifetime of emotional investment.
Just for old times' sake, he curls up on Ben's couch to read it while Ben sits beside him with his own copy.
In some aspects, this last book is very satisfying. Dean, Sam, and Castiel defeat Lucifer on their own terms, triumphing over both Heaven and Hell by the force of their will alone. Cas has always rooted for free will, so this is more reaffirming than he can say. And he's so proud of these three for standing between humanity and impossible odds that he actually trembles with adrenaline through the chapter on the final battle.
But that's where the satisfaction ends.
After Lucifer is killed, it's like the story just stops. The angels leave without a single sign to mark their departure except for Castiel's anguish at their sudden absence, the media catches on that it's no longer the end of the world, and swarming reporters drive Dean, Sam, and Castiel underground.
"That's it?" Cas asks blankly when he reaches the end. "They save the world, change their names, the end?" He keeps expecting more pages to appear under his fingers, but there's only the 'About the Author' blurb on the dust jacket explaining that Carver Edlund's visions stopped when the angels left.
Ben glances over, having already finished reading it himself. "Not what you expected?"
"No!" Cas says vehemently. "The world is saved, that's awesome, but we already knew that. What about them?"
"They found new lives?" Ben offers.
"Castiel still has Jimmy's brain tumor!" Cas is so helplessly angry he's practically growling. "He's been at the end of his rope because of that thing for so many books now and it's consumed not only him but who he is, and the story ends without dealing with it at all?"
Ben sighs. "This isn't fiction, Cas. It's a story about someone's real life. You can't expect all the loose ends to be tied up in a neat bow; life doesn't work like that."
"I know, but-" Cas looks away, frustrated and feeling so stupidly let down after years and years of expecting to see Castiel get his happy ending. After a moment he deflates and says in a small voice, "I just want to know what happened to him."
A warm hand lands on his shoulder, and Cas looks up into Ben's warm green eyes. "I'm sure they figured something out."
It's at least a little reassuring, because Cas has always trusted Ben, but he's still nowhere near mollified. He doesn't know if he'll ever be, and that thought casts a shadow over his mood for the rest of the day.
***
"I wrote to Carver Edlund," Cas confesses to Ben the night before his flight to Stanford.
They're having his mom's pie again, and Ben glances up with a forkful halfway to his mouth. He doesn't seem surprised. "Yeah?"
Cas nods. "I know he doesn't get visions about them anymore, but I thought maybe he still keeps in touch with them? So I gave him a letter for Castiel. That was over a month ago."
Ben puts the forkful of pie in his mouth and carefully waits for Cas to continue.
"I never heard back. Not that I expected to, I'm sure he gets hundreds of letters a day and it was a complete shot in the dark anyway, but-" Cas sighs. "I can't stop thinking about it."
"Time to get on with your own life, kid," Ben tells him between bites of pie. "Tomorrow you start a new one. Forget about Castiel's."
"Have you?" Cas can't help but ask. Ben has always been reserved when it comes to the Supernatural books - even more reserved than usual - but Cas can tell he cares about the people in it too.
Ben gives him a small, humorless smile. "I'm old and haven't got much more to do with my life that I haven't already done. I can afford to sit around reminiscing about shit."
"So that's a 'no', then."
"Whatever," Ben replies with a roll of his eyes. "You better get to bed before your princess ass oversleeps and you miss your flight in the morning."
He's right, Cas knows, but he doesn't want to leave. Ben's house feels just as much like home as his own house does, and Cas knows how much he's going to miss coming here after school almost every day.
But he also knows how Ben feels about chick flick moments. So he says, "Okay," and when he stands up, Ben gives him a hug.
It's their first hug in years, since Cas decided he was too old for hugs, and Ben pats him on the back. "Be good," he says roughly. "And if you're not good, don't get caught."
Cas pulls away with a lopsided smile. "Okay," he says again, and because he doesn't want to actually say goodbye, he doesn't.
***
His life becomes a whirl after that. College is fast-paced and demanding in a way that high school never was, and Cas immerses himself in his studies. He majors in English, and he loves it.
Thanksgiving is the first chance he gets to go home, and he's disappointed because Ben is visiting Wes in New York.
But he gets to see Ben over Christmas break, and by then he's wearing glasses so Ben chuckles and calls him a little nerdy dude with glasses and ruffles his hair. The motion knocks his glasses askew, but it's alright because that just makes Ben's grin widen.
They still keep in touch while he's at Stanford, of course, since Ben is only ever a phone call or an email away, but it's good, seeing him in person. The only thing that saddens Cas is that now that he only sees his parents and Ben once every few months, and Wes even less frequently than that, sometimes they're noticeably older when he does see them again.
He doesn't dwell on it too much, just like he doesn't dwell on Castiel too much, these days. Of course he still wonders what became of Castiel sometimes, especially when he's in the mood to be nostalgic, but just as Ben advised, he has gotten on with his own life. Between his classes and his new friends, Cas really doesn't have the energy to focus on too much else.
Before he knows it, he's finished his first year at Stanford and found a summer job at one of the campus libraries. It's a welcome break after the stress of papers and exams, but the summer passes quickly. Then another academic year starts and Cas throws himself into his books all over again.
***
In his junior year of college, Cas falls in love with a guy named Dean. The irony of their names doesn't escape him, but there are so many guys his age named Dean that he supposes the coincidence shouldn't surprise him.
Dean is a business major. He's generous and sweet and always up for having a little fun, and he coaxes Cas out of his dorm room at night when he should be studying and likes to make out with him in any dark corner he can push Cas into. He leaves Cas exhilarated and breathless in a way that Zach never could, and he's always there for Cas in a way that Zach never bothered to be. Cas knows early on in the relationship that Dean is it. He's the one. So Cas lets Dean be his first.
He brings Dean home for Christmas, and something complicated flits across Ben's expression when Cas introduces them. But then Ben smiles and tells Cas, "I see you found a looker. Nice job. But I'm still gonna kill him if he-"
"Ben," Cas says, embarrassed, and both Ben and Dean grin at him. They end up getting along famously, and if they bond over making Cas blush, well, Cas can't begrudge them that (much).
Ben isn't the only one who enjoys embarrassing Cas in front of his new boyfriend.
Cas's mom tells Dean that his name is practically the first thing Cas ever said, and Cas huffs at her. "I thought you said 'daddy' was my first word."
"Sure," his mom agrees, "that was your first real word, but the first thing you ever said was a 'dee' sound." The memory brings a smile to her lips. "It happened when Ben was holding you, and you should've seen the surprised look on his face. We were all pretty excited that you'd started trying to talk, of course, but Ben was actually glowing that night. I've never seen him like that. And the entire time you kept touching his face and saying 'dee' and laughing, over and over again."
Dean thinks it's adorable, and for the rest of the night, every time Cas says his name, it gets a little chuckle out of him. (Although he does stop chuckling later, when they're alone in Cas's car and Cas breathes his name in a very different kind of way.)
Everyone loves Dean, and Cas loves him most of all, so after they graduate from Stanford, they find jobs in the same area and move in together. They bicker and have their fair share of fights, just like any couple, but nothing ever comes between them that they can't get over, so Cas is happy. Then same-sex marriages are legalized across the country and he gets to ask Ben to be the best man at his wedding, and that makes him even happier.
Once in a very long while, he lies awake and watches Dean sleep and wonders if Castiel ever found happiness. He likes to imagine that Castiel is with Dean Winchester in a mirror of what Cas has with his own Dean, but he thinks sadly that it's not very likely. The thought always has him holding on to Dean through the night a little more tightly than usual.
***
When Cas and Dean decide to adopt a son, Cas doesn't even have to think about it. "Can we name him Ben?"
"Sure," Dean agrees, because he knows how much Cas loves Ben and anyway, he's never been the kind of guy who had his heart set on any particular baby name.
Ben has always been awesome with kids, Cas himself included, but Cas never realized just how awesome that was until he's watching Ben and Ben Jr. together. It pains him that he and Dean chose to stay in California rather than move back here because he would have liked to let his son grow up with Ben just as he did, but they have jobs and a house and friends out there, so it wouldn't make sense to uproot their lives just for this.
He settles for visiting as often as possible, though truth be told, it's not that often. Certainly not as often as he'd like.
***
Wes dies of a heart attack when he's seventy-one, and Cas flies home for his funeral. (Wes and Amy moved to Michigan to be closer to Ben after they both retired.)
Ben is still kneeling there in the grass long after the funeral ends, long after even Amy and Mary have gone, and it has to be hurting his knees but he won't move.
Cas comes up behind him to rest a hand on his shoulder, and when Ben looks up at him, it's the closest to crying Cas has ever seen him. His eyes are too bright and he's trembling faintly, but all he says is, "At least it was an okay death."
Cas has no idea what that means, but he stays with Ben until he's finally ready to go and helps him to his feet. Then Ben drives them both back to his place in his huge, beautiful car, and for a moment there in the Impala, it feels just like old times.
The illusion is destroyed when Ben gets out of the car and makes his way slowly into the house like it pains him to walk, and it strikes Cas suddenly that Ben is old. He's old and he probably doesn't have that many years left himself, which is a thought that makes Cas ache even when a corner of Ben's mouth lifts a little at the sight of the perfect apple pie on his kitchen counter. They both know it's from Cas's mom, and Cas tries to distract Ben from his thoughts by talking to him about anything and everything while they share the pie.
It only sort of works.
***
After Wes's death, Cas hears from his parents that Ben withdraws almost completely. He never leaves the house unless Cas's parents force him to join them for dinner, and he even stops going for drives in his beloved Impala.
Cas can still get laughs out of him once in a while when he visits, and he starts a tradition of driving Ben around in the Impala, but his parents tell him that if Ben seems to be in a good mood, it's only because Cas is around. Unfortunately Cas is only around a few times a year, and the rest of the year, apart from when Amy or Mary visit, Ben is much more melancholy. He's lonely, it's obvious to everyone, and Cas feels like shit because Ben was always there to cheer him up throughout Cas's life, but now Cas can't be there for Ben because he has his own family to look after and his own life.
He voices this to Ben during one visit even though he knows it won't be well-received, and Ben stares. "Is Dean turning you into the girl in the relationship or something? Decided he likes vagina after all and made you grow one? Honestly, Cas."
Cas sighs and can't quite meet Ben's gaze, so he looks around the house instead. It's dustier than it was when he was a kid, and none of his own things are scattered around the place, but not much else has changed and it makes Cas wistful to think of all the years he spent running around this house driving Ben batty. He feels a sudden surge of affection for the old man and opens his mouth to say, "Ben-"
"I know, kid," Ben replies, with a roll of his eyes, but Cas is sure he does know, so he lets it slide. For some reason, he likes that Ben still calls him 'kid' sometimes.
"Ben didn't like the Supernatural books," Cas says after a while, because talking to this Ben about Supernatural still seems like the most natural thing in the world, even if he is over forty.
Ben chuckles. "They're not actually very good, are they?"
"They're still my favorite," Cas replies, a touch defensively.
"You threw a tantrum over the ending."
"It was not a tantrum," he protests, "I was disappointed that so many integral threads of the plot were left unresol-"
Ben snorts. "It was a tantrum. And like I said, those books aren't fiction."
"That's why it bothers me," Cas replies heatedly. "If it was fiction, I could make up my own ending and tell myself that's what happened. But I can't."
For a few moments Ben just regards him silently, before he finally asks, "You're still thinking about this?""
Cas sighs and looks away. "Occasionally," he admits, more quietly now. "What was it you said, I'm way too fucking emotionally invested in them?" He lets out a short, self-deprecating laugh. "Probably, but it's hard not to be when they saved the world and I grew up reading about their lives."
Ben doesn't reply this time, and Cas shakes his head. "Whatever, I've accepted that I'll never know. Carver Edlund has fallen off the map so I couldn't try to ask him again even if I wanted to, and he was the only link to them."
"I don't suppose it would help if I told you to have faith that things worked out okay for Castiel?" Ben asks wryly.
"It might if I thought you had any," Cas deadpans.
Ben shrugs, and his lips form something that isn't quite a smile. "I think things worked out okay."
***
Not even two years after Wes dies, it's Ben's turn.
Cas still hates saying goodbye, and he can't tell Ben he loves him because Ben threatened to haunt his ass if Cas turned the end of his life into a chick flick moment, so instead he just drives. They're in the old Impala again, and Ben is leaning back in the passenger seat with his eyes closed.
Since it takes too much effort for Ben to say much, Cas does most of the talking. He tells Ben about his family and his job because Ben has always been interested in his life, about all the places in the world he's visited that Ben never saw, and he's even got some girl-on-girl porn on his laptop because he thinks it might cheer Ben up. (That gets a crooked leer out of the old guy, at least.)
There's nothing out of the ordinary about this drive to mark it as their very last one, until Cas is in the middle of talking about Dean building them a deck and Ben catches his wrist in a surprisingly tight grip. His eyes are wide open now. "You're happy, right?"
Cas blinks. "What?"
"Just answer the question, Cas," Ben says gruffly. He watches Cas intently, like his answer will make all the difference in the world.
So Cas humors him. "Yeah, Ben. I'm happy." Apart from the sudden, frantic feeling that something vital is slipping through his fingers like sand even as they speak, Cas is happy. He has everything he's ever wanted in life.
Ben nods and lets go of his wrist and closes his eyes again. "Good."
"Wait-" Cas is suddenly panicked that this is it, but Ben manages to wave vaguely.
"I'm still listening, kid."
So Cas keeps talking, and he'll never know the exact moment that Ben died, but he likes to think it was while Cas was telling him a lewd joke. When he realizes Ben isn't ever going to respond to him again, Cas pulls the car over and kisses Ben's forehead and finally says, "Goodbye, Ben."
The silent tears don't come until later, when he's wrapped up in Dean's arms and held tight through the night.
***
Ben is cremated and buried with Wes, just like he wanted, and he leaves most of his money and possessions to Amy and Mary, such as they are.
But he entrusts the love of his life to Cas, and Cas sits in the passenger seat and turns Led Zeppelin up too loud and smiles. As long as he doesn't look over at the empty driver's seat, he can almost imagine Ben there, fingers tapping against the steering wheel in time with the music.
***
The day after Ben's funeral, Cas gets a letter. It's addressed to him at his parents' house, which is odd since he hasn't lived there in years, and there's no return address. The letter is typed, but there's a handwritten signature at the bottom that Cas stares at in absolute awe.
He takes the letter and sits inside the Impala and says conversationally, "You have the shittiest timing ever, you know that? But never mind, I'll read this to you anyway. It's a letter from Dean Winchester."
No one replies, of course, so Cas starts reading. "Dear Cas, Castiel isn't here to answer your letter, so I've taken the liberty of doing so myself. Don't ask me why I waited so many years - I work in mysterious fucking ways, okay?
"There was no magic hand wave for Castiel's brain tumor. After we killed Lucifer, Sam and I dragged Cas all around the country to every promising doctor and their grandmothers, but no one could do anything for him. Eventually he got tired of it all and told us where we could shove it whenever we tried to tell him about some new treatment someone was experimenting with. Cas picked up a lot of my language in those months, but that's the least of his personality changes the tumor caused, I guess.
"Anyway, after we gave up on finding a treatment, Sam went back to hunting until he met the damsel in distress of his life, and it was corny as hell but it's Sam, so what can you expect? It ended up working out for the best, actually, since she already knew what he did and so spared him some awkward confessions.
"But Cas and I were done with hunting, so we found a temporary apartment and then just never bothered to leave. He was a terrible roommate. No, seriously. Imagine your worst college roommate and multiply that by ten, and that was Cas. We tried to make it work, we really did, but he woke me up every night because he couldn't sleep, bitched at me constantly, and did nothing around the house because the one time he tried to cook, he had a seizure and almost set the entire building on fire. The seizures were actually pretty rare, but his migraines became more and more debilitating as time went on, and he got crankier and crankier. Not that I blamed him - I knew it was because of the tumor and it wasn't his fault at all - but that didn't stop me from wanting to strangle him half the time. This was a guy who would've done anything for me, and I for him, but take the end of the world out of the equation and we turned on each other.
"Still, that's not the reason I told him to say 'fuck you' to his life and just fall and be reborn. If there'd been even a drop of happiness in Castiel's life, I would've swallowed the rest of the shit without complaint and never let him go. But there wasn't. I'd be damn proud of myself if I could get him to not look 100% miserable once a month. The only reason he was still hanging on was so that I wouldn't end up left in the dust, and I couldn't stand that. He'd already given me everything he'd ever had - literally - so I thought the least I could do for him was to let him go. He was a stubborn son of a bitch, and it took him over two years to make the choice to fall. Not even telling him that I just didn't want to be burdened by his sorry ass anymore helped because he knew I was lying through my teeth. That was the hardest thing I ever said in my life (not counting that 'yes' to Alastair, I guess, but that's a different story) and I never tried it again.
"In the end, there wasn't anything in particular that made up his mind, no stupid speeches or killing blows. His motor skills and coordination had been failing for some time and he stumbled and fell a lot in those last few months, but he always narrowed his eyes and got back up. Except the last time, he didn't. It wasn't even because he broke anything, because he didn't; Cas fell trying to get out of the shower and just didn't get back up. He was only human, after all. I don't know how long he was there for, but that's how I found him when I got back from getting groceries, sprawled out on the bathroom floor and whispering 'sorry' over and over again.
"You know, I'd held a naked ex-angel once before in my life, and I liked it, but this was not like that at all. I pulled Cas into my lap and held him and told him it was alright, and that I'd be okay. He'd be reborn, and I'd hunt his ass down and make him keep me company, and I'd have a good time, watching him grow up. I'd even be happier that way, living the life I'd always wanted vicariously through him, complete with trick-or-treating and candy eating contests and all the time in the world to try every flavor of ice cream there is. When I promised to take him to a ballgame, he actually smiled a bit and told me he'd probably hate it. It was the first smile I'd seen on his face in longer than I could remember.
"Then he asked me to find a psychic and make him remember who he really was, when he was old enough, because he didn't want to forget me, and he wouldn't let it go until I agreed to do it. After I did, he kissed me. Now, don't go getting any strange ideas - it wasn't some wet, porny make-out session - it was just a press of his lips to mine, and I never did figure out why he did it, if it was just another thing that fucking brain tumor made him think was a good idea or if it was something he, Castiel, actually wanted. I guess it doesn't matter.
"He screamed when he ripped out whatever was left of his grace, and he glowed before the light went out.
"Cas made a pretty shooting star, like the girl he was, and after I buried his body, I left our apartment and followed him north.
"I did get to watch him grow up, just like I promised I would, but I never gave him his memories back. Cas had to know I was lying when I said I would; he always saw straight through me. There were times when I considered it, I admit, if only to ask him why he fucking kissed me, but in the end, I never did it. This was the only shot at a normal life he'd ever have, and he deserved it, so who was I to fuck that up for him? I'm glad I resisted the urge.
"He had an awesome childhood, went to a great college like the nerd he is, found a good job, got hitched, and has 2.5 kids, give or take 1.5. So for the purposes of this story, I'm going to end with: And he lived happily ever after.
"I hope this answers your question, even if it wasn't the answer you expected.
"Signed, Dean Winchester."
After Cas stops reading, a thick silence falls in the car. He watches a dust mote float gently down onto the dashboard and thinks about Ben and himself and wonders if maybe...
But he isn't that eight year old who wanted to be an angel anymore, and it's just a fleeting fantasy. At the end of the day, he's just some guy who's glad to finally know how the story ended.
Cas gets out of the car and goes back to his own life.