Archive of Our Own

Entrada.

When Castiel sees the amulet hanging from the jewelry rack in Orlando’s Emporium, he knows right away what it is. This is what Joshua used to talk to their father. It is a perfect replica of the one Dean once wore around his neck, cast by Joshua after The Fall. Even with his angelic eyes Castiel can barely tell the difference and the necklace’s warm familiarity is like greeting an old friend. He did it. He found a way to communicate with God. The joy Castiel feels in that moment fills him to the brim. He is hopeful for the first time in ages.

If being with Sam and Dean has taught him anything, it is that things don’t always go to plan. In fact, they mostly don’t. It is rare when things pan out.

The necklace doesn’t work. His father never answers.

It no longer serves a purpose, but Castiel can’t find it in himself to throw the necklace away. Though Dean disposed of its brother in that motel waste bin all those years ago, Castiel still thinks of it as Dean’s property. The amulet is a way to communicate to God, yes, but it will always be a symbol of Sam and Dean’s brotherly love for one another no matter its original purpose. Castiel means to give the amulet to Dean when he returns to the bunker to replace the one the hunter has lost, but in the whirlwind of events that follow, he forgets all about it.

The days following Mary’s death are hard for Castiel—harder than perhaps all his former millennia combined. Dean’s anger boils away under the surface, always one biting word away from the edge. The hunter can barely stand to look at him, and Castiel knows that if he were to try and give the amulet to Dean now, he would most likely throw it away again. So, he thinks, if Dean does not want the necklace, then Castiel will care for it.

If he’s honest, the necklace is not just a metaphor for Dean’s bond to his brother. To him, at least, it’s more than that. To Castiel, the necklace symbolizes Dean himself. The hunter initially gave it to him so that he could find his father and end the apocalypse. Dean hadn’t wanted to give it to him, but had done so anyway at his request. That alone had warmed his heart—knowing that Dean trusted him enough to hold onto something so important to him.

This isn’t the case any longer.

Finally, living under the same roof is too painful to bear, and Castiel leaves. He takes the necklace with him, a guilty indulgence.

Away from the bunker, the amulet becomes his lifeline. Its power is perhaps the strangest he has ever encountered. It seems connected to Dean somehow, and perhaps that should alarm him, but instead Castiel finds it reassuring. Sometimes, if he is very quiet and concentrates very hard, he can just barely make out the sound of Dean’s heartbeat. He pushes the last remnants of his grace into the artifact in a desperate attempt to boost the signal, until it feels as though his ear is pressed right up against the hunter’s chest. The knowledge that at any given moment he can hold the necklace in his hand and know that Dean is alive and well makes the days away from his hunter easier to bear.

The amulet becomes precious to him—more so than breathing, since drawing breath isn’t required to keep his vessel alive. Whenever he feels lonely, Castiel only has to take out Dean’s necklace and hold it in his fist next to his heart. Feeling Dean’s heart beating strong gives him the strength he needs to keep going every time.

Even once Castiel returns to the bunker and his friendship with Dean starts to feel a little like it used to—though he doubts it will ever be quite the same as it once was—he tells himself that he has no more need for the necklace, that he should present it to Dean as he had originally planned. Still, he hesitates, worrying about how the gesture will be received.

After weeks of hemming and hawing over whether he should tell Dean about the necklace, Castiel finally decides to keep it. His room at the bunker is mostly bare, but the few personal items he does own go in a small wooden box in his dresser drawer. The necklace will feel right at home among the other two items in the box. One is the mixtape Dean gave to him. The other is the photo of them all in Bobby’s living room. The negative of Bobby’s camera is yet another thing Castiel has saved from the waste bin. He’s glad he did. It is a good picture. It is his only picture of Dean.

The necklace is special to him though. It connects him to Dean in a way that makes him feel close to the hunter—in a way he hasn’t since before Mary’s death—since before Purgatory and the Leviathans. Castiel wonders if his love for Dean Winchester will ever be free of the years of lies and betrayal that sticks to it and suffocates it like The Empty.

It just so happens that the answer to that query, incidentally, is yes.

It turns out that saving Dean Winchester’s life through the power of his undying love is what sets his heart free. It’s a shame he only gets to experience that freedom for a breath before The Empty swallows him in darkness. Castiel should have liked to have felt it for just a moment longer.

Uno.

When Castiel next draws breath, he finds himself blinking up into bright green eyes.

"Dean?” Castiel croaks, struggling to sit up. A wave of dizziness hits him and he lies back down.

“Hey, hey. Cas—cool it. Give it a minute.”

His head is pillowed in Dean’s lap. He can feel Dean’s strong hands holding him—one at the back of his neck, the other gripping his right hand tightly. Dean’s calm, soothing voice flows over his eardrums like whiskey pouring from the bottle to the glass. It fills him up with a sigh.

“Dean, what happened? How am I…how am I alive?” Castiel asks.

A quick glance around tells him he’s in the bunker, in the library. Littered around them on the floor is a circle of what looks like blood mixed with herbs. His nose picks up the pungent scent of yarrow and the minty tang of oregano, clearly ingredients in whatever spell Dean used to pull him from The Empty. Dean’s face above him is etched in concern, his brow pulled together tightly. He looks exhausted, like he does when he has just returned from a particularly tough hunt, but relieved. Castiel can see the weary lines that pull at the corners of his mouth but also the laughter lines around his eyes. Dean hesitates before answering.

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is you’re back,” Dean says to him.

Castiel feels his eyes narrow. That kind of an answer is never a good thing. He shoves himself out of Dean’s lap and into a sitting position so that he can pin the hunter with a look.

“Dean. What did you do?”

His voice is low and grating, almost a growl. If he finds out the hunter did something reckless like make a deal or use some soul-sucking magic, so help him—

“It—okay, look, it was the only way—” Dean starts to say, holding up his hands in defense.

“What did it cost you, Dean!?” Castiel demands.

“Y-your grace,” Dean blurts out, “It cost you your grace.”

Dean pulls something out from under his shirt. Attached to a cord around his neck is a small vial that glows an icy, iridescent blue.

“I had to remove it. It was the only way to get you out of that place,” Dean explains to him. His voice is thick. “I mean, I wasn’t sure you…if you would be okay with it but…well, I couldn’t exactly reach you to ask so… I made the call for you.”

He doesn’t go so far as to apologize, but Castiel can hear the words “I’m sorry,” in the tone of his voice.

“Oh. Is that all?” Castiel says, blinking. He lets out his breath in a relieved laugh and holds out his hand for the vial.

Dean pulls it away.

“You can’t,” Dean says, sounding choked. He holds the vial out of Castiel’s reach, “If you put it back, The Empty will—”

“Ah. Yes, of course. It would find me and take me,” Castiel finishes for him, nodding. It makes sense. As a human, The Empty has no claim on him. As an angel, he is connected to it through his grace. Were he to join with his grace again, The Empty would no doubt come for him.

Now that he’s said his piece, Dean tugs the string holding the vial over his head and holds it out to him. Castiel pushes his hand away and shakes his head.

“I have no need for it any longer,” he says, “You keep it.”

It is only fair, after all.

Dean nods and slips the cord back around his neck. Castiel blushes a little, seeing his grace dangling as it does over Dean’s heart.

Human memory is strange. The sight of his grace dangling over Dean’s heart brings the words he spoke to Dean just before his death rushing back to the surface. I love you. He never expected he would have to face Dean after saying those words and now here he is sitting so close to the hunter that he can feel the warmth radiating off of him. The memory plays in Castiel’s head like an old movie reel that’s seen far too much wear and tear over the years—chunks of it are missing. He vaguely remembers Dean saying something to him before The Empty took him, but the memory is fuzzy...

Then abruptly the fog parts and the words Dean spoke to him just before his death ring with stark clarity in his mind.

“Don’t do this, Cas.”

It is all suddenly far too much for Castiel’s new human self to handle. His hands begin to tremble. He pushes himself to his feet like he can’t get away quick enough.

“Cas—” Dean starts to say something, but stops. He pulls in a breath, looks at Cas like he wants to say something but doesn’t know how. Castiel is afraid of what those words will be, and cuts him off.

“I…think I had better go lie down,” Castiel says shakily.

Something crosses Dean’s face that looks a lot like guilt from where he’s standing, but it’s gone before he can attach it to anything.

“Yeah,” Dean says, getting to his feet, “Guess you probably feel pretty weird after…after everything.”

Castiel nods, muted by words he wants to say but is too afraid to. He steps away from Dean instead and turns toward his room.

Dean shadows Castiel down the hall, makes sure that he isn’t about to collapse before leaving him on his own. His hand rests in the small of Castiel’s back, comforting, and it’s a nice gesture, Castiel thinks, that Dean still cares this much about him after everything they’ve been through—that he still risked his life to rescue Cas from The Empty despite knowing how he really feels about the hunter. He wishes it didn’t hurt so much. He wishes Dean touching him like this didn’t feel quite so much like he’s drowning blindly in The Emptiness all over again. He steps out of reach, clearing his throat.

“I, ah… Dean, about what I said before…”

Dean pulls his hand away as though Cas’s words have bitten him and gets a panicked look on his face.

“Cas, it’s fine. I get it,” he rushes to say, “We’re good.”

Castiel nods, gulping down the emotions rising in his throat. He pushes the door to his room open, finding himself unable of answering. The realization that Dean doesn’t feel the same way about him aches in a way he thought for sure was just humans being overly dramatic. But oh, it does hurt, like The Empty is happily sucking up his misery with a straw—and for one fleeting moment, Castiel wonders if this is all just an elaborate scheme that The Empty has cooked up—some new torture to get back at him for defying it—and whether he’s really back or if he’s still trapped in that black void.

Castiel feels the panic grip him at the thought and reaches for the corner of his dresser to keep his feet.

“Cas!? Hey, you sure you’re okay there, buddy?” Dean asks. His hand starts to reach for Cas, but he stops halfway, as though afraid to make full contact.

Emotion burns at Castiel’s throat and he can feel the tears clawing behind his eyes. He attempts to settle the rapid thumping of his heart as he looks back at the hunter.

“Yes, Dean. I am fine.” He pauses. “Thank you. For rescuing me.”

“Course, Cas. You’re family,” Dean tells him.

Family.

For the first time since he awoke, Dean smiles at him—something broken and faltering—and Castiel feels both happy and heartbroken and stunningly lonely all at once.

“Well, if you’re sure you’re okay, I’ll just… I’ll leave you to it,” Dean says awkwardly, lingering by the door.

Castiel nods at him, putting on a brave front, but he can’t bring himself to answer.

With one final nod, Dean closes the door behind him and leaves Castiel in solitude not a moment too soon. The crushing weight of his newly human emotions comes crashing down, and Castiel collapses to the floor of his bedroom and weeps.

He isn’t sure exactly what the tears mean. Are they relieved? Sad? Both? His human body feels weaker than he can ever remember it feeling, his emotions frayed. He feels vulnerable and small without his grace. What’s more, the memory of Dean holding him just minutes ago has him craving his touch like a thirsty man lost in the desert.

He remembers the necklace almost as an afterthought.

Castiel climbs up to his knees and reaches for the top drawer of his dresser. The necklace is there where he last left it, in the small wooden box where Castiel keeps the items most dear to him. Castiel drags the box down to the floor with him and leans back against the dresser, opening it in his lap.

The bright bronze of Dean’s amulet gleams back at him much like the hunter’s own smile. It does not fail to occur to Castiel that everything in this box is linked to Dean somehow—that Dean is the most precious thing to him—and he doesn’t think that will ever change. Castiel lifts the necklace out of the box by the string and twirls it once, twice, three times around the width of his hand so that the pendant hangs in the middle of his palm. Castiel brings it to his lips and closes his eyes.

Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

The familiar sound of Dean’s heartbeat reverberates in his ears and against his lips, calming him instantly. The power of the amulet is strange, he thinks, for perhaps the seven millionth time since learning of its unique abilities. It is how he’s able to both hear and feel Dean through the pendant, like he is switching back and forth between a color picture versus black and white. It is often disorientating and confusing.

Castiel focuses in on Dean’s heartbeat, letting it reverberate through him and wash him clean just as he allows all the emotions he’s feeling to run through him—the crackling ache of rejection and the suffocation of longing come first, followed by a thick shroud of loss and the biting sting of regret. Last to come is the grief, pulling him under the surface of his mind like a concrete shoe. He’s not sure what he’s mourning exactly, whether it’s for the loss of his grace or because he knows that happiness is now truly and forever out of his reach.

The sound of Dean’s heartbeat in his ears deepens and blurs into the background until he can no longer hear it, and then Castiel feels a surge of something through the pendant that is absolutely not his own.

Happiness.

Or, to be more accurate, how happiness might feel tightly wound in a thick coating of guilt, like saran-wrap, only barbed and twisted with regret.

But whose happiness? Because it certainly isn’t his.

The feeling ebbs to a muted throb. The power of the amulet, whatever it is, seems linked to his concentration. Castiel has encountered enough magical artifacts to know how they work. He draws his attention back to the sound of Dean’s heartbeat and holds his breath.

A churning flood of guilt wrapped tightly in happiness surges up his arm, its power like an electric shock. Castiel stares down at the amulet in his hand as the cog wheels of his mind slowly clunk into place. Dean’s amulet… Dean’s heartbeat—this Castiel has already confirmed. So then does that mean…?

Dean’s feelings?

That isn’t possible… is it?

Castiel continues to stare dazedly at the amulet. He’s only ever been able to feel Dean’s heartbeat through the necklace, and even then he had to concentrate and push his grace into the amulet to get it to work.

This is very strange. It has never done this before.

Now that he’s keyed into it, it’s not that hard to get in touch with the emotions coming from the amulet—from Dean, if his suspicions are correct. Whereas before finding Dean’s heartbeat was like attempting to pinpoint a small boat in a hurricane, now it is like flipping a light switch.

Castiel holds the amulet in his fist and rests his forehead against it, ‘listening’ as it were, to the emotions coming through it.

The emotions appear one by one. Happiness fades to guilt, then longing. A deep sadness lingers for a long time. Castiel sits with it, allowing his own sadness to blend together with that of the amulet’s. He feels strangely close to his hunter as he does, as though Dean were right there in the room with him. Of course, Dean would never allow for that, and perhaps that is why they were doomed from the start—neither of them understand the ‘right’ way to deal with this sort of situation. Castiel can’t fault Dean for rejecting something they both failed to see from the beginning when everything he’s learned about human emotion has come from the hunter himself. So, instead, he sits with Dean’s grief from afar while he yearns to be closer. It is the least he can do.

The happiness takes a long time to return, but does so softly, eases in—like a mountain stream flowing through a meadow. Guilt rears its head like a groundhog and butts back, and they gain a sort of middle ground as the two emotions vie for dominance. While they hold the line, the sadness creeps in again like a leaky faucet and starts to fill every corner with its touch.

On the heels of this sadness comes something new. Anger. It hurtles into the foreground like boulders barreling down the side of a mountain, ripping away everything in its wake. It roars and burns and screams inside the confines of its magical prison, throwing itself against the metal bars of its cage like a rabid beast.

Castiel gasps and drops the amulet.

The feeling vanishes in an instant, like air being sucked out of a vacuum, and as Castiel stares down at Dean’s necklace, he somehow just knows. He had it right before. It is Dean whose emotions he’s feeling through the necklace. The anger is unmistakably Dean’s. Castiel would know, having been on the receiving end of it far too many times.

Castiel can feel what Dean is feeling.

Much as Castiel wishes he could spend the rest of his short human life holed away in his room, he eventually does need to resurface. His human body has needs that his angelic vessel did not, and he feels oddly betrayed by this realization. It’s absurd that after hours of sitting on his bedroom floor expending emotion, letting the tears flow from his eyes until he feels hollowed out and achingly empty, that he can be this goddamn hungry.  

Castiel slips the necklace into his pocket before deciding to venture out for sustenance. He does this partly to bolster his courage, but more than that, the discovery of the amulet’s newfound power is far too compelling to leave behind. He wishes to confirm his suspicions are correct, that it really is Dean he is feeling through it. With the amulet’s comforting presence weighing in his pocket, Castiel climbs shakily to his feet and staggers out of his room.

He finds Dean in the kitchen nursing a beer, his phone out on the table in front of him. There is something bubbling away in a large pot on the stove that Castiel suspects is for their dinner later and he sniffs to see what it is. He detects a hint of cayenne and the nutty aroma of slow-cooked beans and concludes that Dean must be trying out another new chili recipe, and if that is the case, then it won’t be ready for another couple hours at least. This means Castiel will need to find something else to sate his hunger in the meantime.

“Hey, there he is,” Dean calls from his seat at the table, interrupting Castiel’s survey of his food, “How’re you holding up?” Dean asks him.

“I’m…fine. Dean, what…” Castiel trails off, distracted. After the intense experience with the amulet, everything feels heavy yet distanced in a way that’s surreal.

He touches the amulet in his pocket in a sudden need to feel grounded and connected to something, and gets a confusing swirl of emotions for his troubles that are nearly impossible to read. The only ones he is able to name are the ones he is most familiar with, happiness and guilt. Castiel lets go of the pendant feeling slightly sick to his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel blurts out, letting out a weary sigh. He’s sure his eyes are red from crying, but he can’t bring himself to care about that at the moment.

“What? Why are you apologizing?” Dean asks him. He blinks at Castiel in surprise.

“No…it’s nothing,” Castiel says, “Never mind.” He’s not making any sense. He attempts to deflect away from how strange he is acting. “Where’s Sam?” he asks, “And Jack?”

“Sam’s on a hunting trip with Eileen,” Dean tells him. He wiggles his eyebrows at the surprised look on Castiel’s face. “Yeah, that’s a thing now. Guess you’ve missed a lot, huh?” He pauses and adds, “Oh and uh, Jack’s the new God so he’s…y’know, topside.” Dean gestures skyward with his beer bottle.

“He—what?” Castiel sputters out.

“Yup, kid took on Chuck. With some help from yours truly, of course,” Dean replies.

“Of course,” Castiel echoes as he attempts to process everything Dean has just told him. “I assume Chuck is dead?” he asks after a minute.

“Reduced to the sniveling pathetic pissant that he is,” Dean corrects. He scratches at his nose and seems almost embarrassed by the words that come out next. “I uh…let him go.”

“You let him live,” Castiel clarifies, because it’s an important distinction and Dean deserves it to be made.

Dean shrugs and drops his eyes to his beer, fiddling with the peeling label.

Castiel touches the necklace in his pocket again. Embarrassment burns over a slow pulse of peace and contentment, mirroring the look on Dean’s face. Any doubt he had about the necklace’s power vanishes. Castiel feels a tug of longing for the man now systematically ripping off the beer label. That Dean spared Chuck’s life—Castiel’s father—following what Castiel confessed to the hunter tells him that not all of what he said was in vain. Dean might not feel the same way about him, but the bond between them is still just as profound as it was the day he pulled Dean from the pits of hell.

“Thank you, Dean,” he says quietly.

Dean pulls his eyes up from his beer and meets his timidly.

“Yeah, Cas. Anytime. You know that,” he says.

Dean smiles at him then, soft and genuine, and Castiel offers one back without thinking. He stares into eyes that shine like sun filtering through the underside leaves of a maple tree in June—deep green and flecked with gold. They are beautiful, Castiel thinks to himself, Dean is beautiful.

He could watch Dean like this for hours, Castiel thinks.

Then his stomach gurgles so loudly it startles him and the moment is lost.

“Um…is there anything to eat?” he asks.

An amused grin stretches across Dean’s face.

“Been waitin’ all day for you to ask me that. Allow me.”

The hunter shoos him out to the common area to wait for his lunch and ten minutes later comes out with a plate and a glass of milk. On the plate is…

“Peanut butter and jelly!” Castiel exclaims, leaping for the sandwich. He shoves the biggest bite he can in and groans, rolling his eyes to the ceiling as the mixture of gooey roasted nuts, sweet jelly and soft, doughy bread hits his tongue.

Dean chuckles and sits down opposite him, grinning and watching him eat. Castiel shoots him a look of adoration and gratitude from across the table.

“At the expense of sounding clichéd, this is heavenly,” he says when his mouth is clear. The sandwich is exactly what he needed. Castiel smiles down at his lunch feeling goofy and high on life for the first time since returning to it. “In fact, I might just eat this every day for the rest of my infinitesimal human life.”

Dean laughs again.

“I’ll make sure to stock up the next time I’m in town.”

The hunter grows quiet. He fiddles with the corner of a book either he or Sam left open on the table and struggles to say what’s on his mind. Castiel chews slowly and waits for him to speak.

“I uh…’m sorry if this is hard for you,” Dean starts, “I mean, it can’t be easy with everything you’ve been through and now to top it all off, you’re human again…”

Castiel stops chewing and swallows. The sandwich seems hell-bent on lodging itself in his throat, and he’s forced to take a few long gulps of milk before he is able to speak.

“Dean, it’s okay. I understand,” he says in broken, halting sentences, “You don’t need to apologize. I don’t regret what happened.” He pauses and adds, “Even if…things didn’t go exactly as I had hoped.”

Dean frowns and glances up at him, then averts his eyes again.

“Yeah, well, I do,” he grumbles under his breath.

Before Castiel can answer, Dean pushes to his feet and leaves him with his peanut butter and jelly.

Dos.

After a few days of being back at the bunker—being alive and human again—Castiel figures out a few things about his new life.

First, being human sucks.

Second, being human is admittedly easier this time with Sam and Dean around to help him. And more importantly, feed him.

Third, he and Dean do not talk about what Castiel told him before The Empty swallowed him whole.

Castiel wants to talk about it, but he’s afraid to. He wants to ask why Dean feels so guilty, but he can’t do that without revealing the necklace. The social cues he’s getting from Dean following his return from The Empty have all been mixed and confusing. Dean has a new habit of touching him on the arm or bumping him with his shoulder only to move away in the next second. To be truthful, the touching isn’t new. Castiel is used to Dean’s small displays of affection. It is one of the countless things he loves about his complicated, beautiful hunter. What’s new is that Dean tends to immediately go stiff and pull away as though Castiel has burned him.

Castiel touches the necklace when this happens to try and eke out the hunter’s feelings for him but finds a confusing swirl of emotions for his troubles. Guilt, as always, is strongest. Longing, sadness, loss, anguish, fear, insecurity, hesitation—and under it, almost like a whisper—happiness, joy, and just a dusting of hope.

Castiel wishes he knew what it all meant.

He shuffles into the kitchen one morning after about a week following his revival to find Dean at the stove shuffling a large, cast iron pan sizzling with bacon. Castiel squints at the noise through bleary, sleep-addled eyes and runs a hand through the mess of bedhair atop his head. Bedhead? Castiel wonders. No, he’s pretty sure it’s called bedhair.

He sinks down into the chair and drops his head to the table with a loud plunk.

“Mornin’ sunshine,” Dean tosses over his shoulder with a grin.

Castiel glares at him from where his head rests on the table and grunts, “Coffee,” in his general direction before scooping his face into the circle of his arms.

Less than a minute later, there is the sharp tink of porcelain against the table and Castiel raises his head to find Dean pushing a steaming cup of java toward him. He grabs it like a man lost at sea would grab hold of a life raft and he more sinks into the coffee than pours it down his throat.

Castiel drops his head back to the table once he has drained the mug to its last drop and groans out from the circle of his arms.

“Thank you. I needed that.”

Dean chuckles at him and runs a hand through Castiel’s hair.

“Hey, no worries. I can’t imagine this is a picnic for you,” the hunter says gently.

“Yes, now I understand the necessity of caffeine and why you were so fixed upon drinking it when we were at the place with the cowboys,” Castiel mumbles, still half delirious with sleep and Dean’s touch.

Dean starts to run his hand through Castiel’s hair again, but freezes halfway through when he says that. Castiel freezes with him. Neither move nor breathe for a long beat.

Then Dean jerks his hand back, clears his throat and says as though nothing is out of the ordinary, “Guess it’s gonna take you a while to get used to being human again.”

Castiel grunts in response and lifts himself up off the table so that he can speak to Dean properly. He feels off-kilter and unnerved from the ghost of Dean’s fingers brushing against his scalp and the horribly contrasting feeling of his rejection.

“It has been…challenging in many ways,” Castiel says haltingly. It’s the truth, after all.

Dean shoots him a sympathetic look and gets up, moving back to the stove where he’s cooking to tend to his breakfast. Castiel watches him, blue eyes trailing over his shoulder blades and down the muscular planes of his back, still feeling the whisper of his fingers through his hair. A low ache starts in his belly and quickly moves south. Dean shakes the frying pan and his forearms bulge, and Castiel thankfully catches the noise that rises in his mouth as little Cas stands suddenly to attention.

Castiel shoves his hands in his dead-man robe (Dean has the monopoly on them, but he gave this one to Cas) and pulls it around his waist to hide his arousal. His fingers brush the pendant in his pocket and Castiel feels a rush of something that this time tumbles out of his mouth in a surprised—and frankly, horrified—gasp.

Dean’s head jerks back to look at him.

“Dude? You okay? No offense, but you look like you seen a ghost.” The hunter chuckles at his poor attempt of a joke and peers at Castiel in concern.

“No. I—I’m fine. It’s nothing,” Castiel insists, pulling the robe around him closer.

He makes the mistake of crossing his legs, because suddenly Dean is laughing at him and he’s not sure why until—

“Dude, don’t tell me you like, never had morning wood before?”

Castiel blinks at the question and gulps.

“Wh-what?” he croaks.

“Morning wood. It’s a thing,” Dean says, half turning toward him, “A human thing,” he corrects with a grin. He points down to where his sweats are clearly tented below his waist. “See? I’ve got one too. It happens. Usually…uh, yeah. Usually around now.”

Dean gestures vaguely at the frying pan and Castiel blinks, wondering what in fuck’s sake the hunter is referring to.

“Yes, well. It is uncomfortable,” Castiel grumbles, “And unwelcome. Excuse me.”

He rises to his feet and starts to put his hands back in his robe pockets before he remembers the amulet. His fingers brush against it and the resulting twinge of hurt and sadness (although he’s not sure what reason Dean has to feel that for), not to mention the unfortunate pulse of arousal from the thing, has him scurrying from the room.

He’s really not proud of what he does next.

Unfortunately, these sorts of uncomfortable instances continue. One of the downsides of carrying the necklace around with him is that Castiel sometimes catches Dean in certain…moods that he would really not care to know about. Castiel has known for pretty much the entire time he’s been acquainted with Dean that the hunter has an abundantly healthy sex drive, but it’s one thing to know this and another entirely to walk into the room and touch the necklace and feel the arousal coming off of the man while he is say…watching a movie about cowboys.

If there is one thing he has learned about the hunter since discovering the power of the necklace, it’s that Dean does the below the waistband salute a lot.

It’s not like Castiel is trying to catch Dean in his ‘awkward boner’ moments, but it happens enough where it has become unavoidable.

Still, it’s awkward, and Castiel does his best not to linger when he feels one of Dean’s moods coming on.

The next time it happens is when Castiel walks in on the hunter cooking breakfast the following morning. He comes up behind Dean and looks over his shoulder to where the bacon is sizzling happily, oil popping and bubbling up in the cast iron pan.

“Bacon again?” he says, half in amusement and the other in light disapproval. He and Sam keep trying to convince Dean to eat healthier now that Cas is human and can’t unclog his arteries every other month.

“Hey, I made it this far,” Dean tells him, glancing over his shoulder, “I think I’ve earned the right to eat whatever I want after saving the world…how many times was it? If I go out on saturated fats, I’m calling it a win.”

“Hm,” Castiel hums, shifting against him. A light smile graces his face.

He loves these small domestic moments with Dean, regardless of how complicated things are between them. Or maybe that’s just him. Dean doesn’t seem affected by his feelings as much these days. He doesn’t move away from Castiel at times like these as much as he used to. In fact, they’re just as close as they’ve always been, perhaps more so. They still don’t talk about what happened, but neither is Dean pushing him away. That’s alright. That’s okay. Castiel can live with that.

“Dude, personal space much?” Dean says suddenly, breaking the silence.

Castiel abruptly realizes how close he is standing to the hunter and practically falls back a step—away from Dean, because he is dangerously close to doing something he will regret.

“I have made you uncomfortable,” Castiel forces out, “My apologies.”

“Nah, we’re good,” Dean says, shrugging it off.

An anguished feeling from the amulet loops once over on itself, like how a pancake might feel being flipped. A pleasant glow runs through the center of the feeling, and it is confusing and wonderful and nauseating at the same time. Castiel drops the amulet in his pocket and gulps the rush of feelings back down. His hand shakes when he draws it from his pocket, and he has no desire to touch the pendant for the remainder of their interaction.

Some of what he is feeling must have bled through to his expression, because suddenly Dean looks nervous.

“Cas? You okay?”

“Dean, tell me something,” Cas says slowly, choosing words carefully, “Is it possible for a human to feel contradicting emotions at the same time?”

“Huh? Yeah, of course,” Dean answers, “Why?”

Again Castiel sorts through his databanks of knowledge for an appropriate lie.

“There was a movie in Metatron’s collection that I didn’t understand. I believe it was called Inside Out.”

Dean chuckles nervously.

“You really got a lot of useless crap up in that noggin of yours now, don’t you?” Dean says.

Castiel smiles at him softly.

“No, I don’t see it like that,” he replies.

“Well, ain’t you just Sally Miss Sunshine,” Dean teases, and Castiel feels a blush rise to his cheeks. He gives in and touches the amulet in his pocket again and finds Dean’s emotions less confused than before—the hunter seems happy and at least somewhat more at peace. There’s still a slow churn of guilt and anguish, however, and a fluttering of nervousness. Castiel holds back a sigh and drops the pendant, watching wistfully as Dean brings his attention back to his breakfast.

Castiel had hoped the necklace would help him to ascertain Dean’s feelings for him since learning of its unique abilities, but that plan seems to have backfired. The emotions mean nothing without proper context. It is like attempting to break a code without a key in a language that is completely foreign to him and after weeks of this, Castiel is no closer than when he started.

For the first time since he got back, Castiel thinks that leaving him to The Empty might have been kinder.

After a number of minutes watching Dean’s shoulders as he cooks, Castiel wanders back over to the hunter for a closer view. He’s interested to see the process by which limp pieces of fatty meat become edible and stares down at the pan in fascination. Again he doesn’t realize how close he is—how he is practically breathing down Dean’s neck—until the hunter calls out softly to him.

“Cas.”

Castiel startles a little and takes a step back. His fingers brush the necklace in his pocket, and a jolt of something electric pulls at him—a wave of desire that rips a gurgle from his throat as it hits. Castiel drops the necklace as though it has burned him and stumbles back another step.

Dean notices his odd reaction and shoots him a questioning look. There’s something akin to panic on his face.

“Cas? You sure you’re okay there, buddy?” he asks.

Castiel draws a deep breath and nods, attempting to hide whatever it is he’s feeling.

“Yes,” he croaks.

Perhaps he got it wrong. Perhaps the necklace is malfunctioning? Though, Dean did warn him that these things tended to happen around this time of the morning. Castiel brushes his fingers against the necklace tentatively just to be sure and confirms his suspicions. Now that he glances to the front of Dean’s pants, it’s pretty obvious. Perhaps he should lead with his eyes going forward rather than rely on the necklace…though he should be careful not to be caught staring at Dean’s cock. Even he knows that is a serious social faux pas.

Castiel takes three robotic steps over to the coffee maker and pours himself a cup with shaking hands.

Calm down. He tells himself. It’s not like he hasn’t caught Dean in inappropriate moments before. In fact, when he was an angel, there had been times… well, until they’d figured out the celestial equivalent of a tie on the door handle, that is.

He glances over his shoulder at Dean and finds the man hunched over the frying pan. Whistling.

Is it the bacon? Castiel wonders. He feels his eyes go wide and blinks. Could Dean be this attracted to his breakfast? The thought is ridiculous.

“You…really like bacon, don’t you,” he comments, testing out the idea. He takes his mug in hand and makes his way over to the door.

Dean glances back over his shoulder and gives him a strange look.

“Uh…yeah? It’s not like that’s news or anything,” the hunter says.

Castiel just nods, sends him a look that’s both incredulous and a little worried for his friend’s mental health, and absconds with his coffee back to his room.

Because now he is turned on too, but it has nothing to do with breakfast meat.

Now that he knows what to look for, Castiel finds that Dean has awkward moments like the one in the kitchen frequently and after a couple more unfortunate encounters he does his best to avoid the kitchen in the morning if Dean is in there. This means sacrificing his morning coffee, which Castiel rectifies by sleeping in later. Dean has started teasing him for being lazy, but it doesn’t bother him as much as the alternative. 

It’s also inevitable that Castiel starts to notice patterns in Dean’s behavior and emotions after a few weeks of carrying the necklace around with him. As always the hunter is infuriatingly complicated, and sorting out his emotions is a sticky web that Castiel wonders if he will ever be able to unravel.

He’s in the library eating a sandwich and doing research on werewolf mating habits for a case one morning when the next realization hits. Dean wanders in with a cup of coffee and glances around like he’s looking for someone. He smiles when he sees Cas and walks up to where the ex-angel is spread out on the floor, a book opened in front of him. Dean takes one look at the plate resting next to his knee and raises an eyebrow.

“Peanut Butter and Jelly again?” the hunter comments, crouching down next to him, “You do know that’s not normal breakfast food, right?”

Castiel just takes a large bite of his sandwich and grins at him.

Dean smiles a little to himself and then holds out his mug.   

“Gonna need to wash that down with something,” he says.

Castiel nods his agreement and takes the offering.

“Thank you, Dean,” he says when his mouth is clear.

Dean’s smile grows. Castiel touches the pendant in his pocket and feels a gentle glow of happiness flow to him when he does.

It occurs to him abruptly that Dean is happy to have him here. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering Dean risked his life to get Castiel back from The Empty, but for whatever reason it does. He feels a smile slide across his face automatically, stuck there like the peanut butter has stuck to the roof of his mouth.

That Dean still wants him here despite everything feels like a godsend, feels like relief, and Castiel thinks that it is enough. He can truly accept his feelings being one-way as long as he and Dean can remain friends.

“What’cha smiling for, Cas?” Dean asks him then.

Castiel shakes his head, looking down at the book in front of him in an attempt to keep the smile to himself. He tries to erase it from his face, but it won’t budge.

“I ahh…thought of a funny joke,” Cas says to cover it up. He thinks quickly, sifting through his own database of jokes for something suitable.

“Well? Don’t leave me in suspense. What was it?” Dean asks, sitting down opposite him. He’s already grinning.

Castiel finds the joke he wants to use.

“Why was the bee so hard to understand?”

Dean barely tries to think of the punch line before saying, “Uh, I dunno. Why?”

“It was a mumble bee,” Castiel says. Actually, he mumbles the last part. He thinks it will deliver the joke better.

Dean blinks and then sputters in laughter. In the next breath he is bent in half and wheezing in hysterics. Castiel chuckles nervously, supposing he did a good job of covering up the truth of why he was smiling.

Remembering the necklace, Castiel grips it suddenly. Sure enough, he can feel the waves of hilarity bubbling through Dean. A laugh breaks out of his mouth. He covers it with his hand and squeezes the pendant tighter in his pocket, as though that might help stem the emotion coursing into him. Castiel lets out another laugh, then another, and before long he has joined Dean completely.

Castiel grips the hunter’s upper arm as he bends over in laughter. Dean hunches over onto his forearms, pounding at the floor with his fist.

The laughter continues until they are both exhausted by it and then they lay side by side on the floor completely spent. Castiel closes his eyes and feels the warmth where Dean’s shoulder touches his. In the hand still holding the pendant, he can feel Dean’s radiating happiness warming his palm.

“Dean?” Castiel says to him then.

“Hm?” Dean murmurs, sounding sleepy.

“I am happy to be your friend,” Castiel tells him, and it’s the truth.

“Same here, buddy,” Dean says back.

There’s a spike in the joy coming from the pendant, followed immediately by something else—something that makes Castiel’s stomach flop over: Nervousness? Exhilaration? Guilt? Longing? He doesn’t understand the torrent of emotions. They are swirling and confusing and potent, and he has never felt anything like it before. He drops the pendant in his pocket and instantly the feeling vanishes, leaving him hollow and aching.

He’s glad Dean has his eyes closed and cannot see him. Castiel gulps and draws a shaking breath. He has the sudden and irrational desire to touch Dean in some way, whether on the arm or to run his fingers over his face, tracing the outline of his bright green eyes or the sculpted curve of his lips. He resists and feels the ache of it low in his abdomen. The pendant seems to have triggered a physical reaction from his vessel—his body—that is uncomfortable and inconvenient. He sits up suddenly and gets to his feet.

He can’t think of an excuse for why he is leaving so abruptly, so instead he plays up the clueless angel card, (which he supposes he’ll eventually have to stop using, considering) grabs the plate with his sandwich and his book and says, “Good morning, Dean.”

Castiel practically scurries from the library with his sandwich and book, ignoring the look of stunned confusion Dean throws him as he makes his exit. When he reaches the safe confines of his room, he lets out a sigh of relief and promptly closes and locks the door.

Castiel disposes both the plate and the book on the desk—one on top of the other—and collapses down on the side of the bed with a whooshing sigh. He rests his forearms on his knees and takes three deep breaths in an attempt to still the fervent beating of his heart. He can feel the hardness between his legs beneath his PJ’s. He grips himself through the fabric with a grunt to rearrange things and relieve some of the pressure. His human body is having none of it. It wants sex—it wants it now, and in his newly human state, Castiel is a slave to its needs at times like these. He shoves his pants and boxers around his thighs and falls back to the mattress with a groan.

Tres.

Castiel takes to spending more time in the library in the following weeks. The reasons are threefold. One, he likes to read. He greatly prefers it to watching television, possibly because when he is reading he is reminded of how it felt to be an angel. His own world is so narrow these days, limited and confined by his body’s five physical senses with just a trace of the sixth sense that once led Castiel in his experience of the world. In books, at least, he can find some semblance of the omnipresence that he used to be able to feel. His human existence doesn’t feel so small when he sinks into the worlds hidden beneath their pages and that realization is a comfort to him. It makes being human more bearable.

The second reason is that now that he is human, he is pretty much useless as a hunter. Dean has promised to help train him to where he can hold his own on a hunt when he is ready (which he has been trying to tell Dean is now, but the hunter disagrees.) So, for now Castiel is grounded—quite literally in fact—and research is really the only way he is able to help. It’s not so bad. Castiel enjoys it.

That Dean sticks around to ‘help’ while Sam and Eileen go out on hunts is also nice. Not that he needs to be babysat, but it’s one of the ways Dean shows that he cares and that means a lot to him. Or—well, he tries. Castiel has caught him numerous times doing a completely different kind of research.

The third reason is more personal. The library seems to be the safest area in the bunker and the place where he is least likely to run into Dean in one of his ‘moods’. Of course, he should really know by now not to expect the ‘norm’ when it comes to his hunter. Dean always finds new ways of surprising him.

The next time he finds Dean with an unfortunate woody is when the hunter stumbles upon him while he is in the library cataloguing some new additions that Sam and Eileen found out on a hunt earlier that week. He’s mouthing the title of the book as he writes it down on the small library calling card just as he hears the rustle of fabric and looks up to find Dean standing there in his dead man robe and dead man slippers looking down at him. Castiel’s eyes drop unceremoniously to the front of his robe and he feels his cheeks burn at the realization that Dean is at half-mast and clearly aroused.

“You… ahh… How is the research coming on the location of that vampire nest?” Castiel asks quickly to subvert any suspicion on his part.

Dean gives an exaggerated shrug.

“You know how it is.”

The tone in his voice is telling. Castiel grunts.

“You were watching porn again, weren’t you,” he admonishes. Dean starts to deny it but Castiel quirks his eyebrow and sets the hunter with a look that says he isn’t fooling anybody.

Dean huffs and averts his eyes.

“Whatever. I’ll get it done. How’s the cataloging coming?” Dean asks.

“It’s tedious. My fingers hurt. My fingers never hurt before, when I was an angel, but they hurt now. My knees too. And my neck and back,” Castiel says. He huffs in frustration. “In fact, everything hurts, which is absurd because I haven’t been stabbed or poisoned or knocked unconscious once since becoming human.”

Dean laughs at his long-winded complaint.

“It’s called getting old,” the hunter says brightly. He sits down in front of Castiel cross-legged, and Castiel stiffens a little at the opening part of his robe. He really hopes Dean has his boxers on underneath but does his best to avert his eyes just in case he doesn’t.

“Yes, well, it ‘sucks’,” Castiel grumbles at him, air quotes and all. It never fails to bring a smile to Dean’s face, which is why he does it, really—anything to see his beautiful hunter smile. “You promised to train me,” he adds after a minute, “And I am not ‘getting any younger’, as the saying goes.”

Dean snorts in amusement and shrugs his shoulders.

“Yeah, alright,” he says, still smiling, “Was gonna ask if you maybe wanted to take a break anyways.”

Castiel smiles back at Dean, lost in his beauty, in the light that shines behind his eyes. Even without his grace he can still detect a flavor of Dean’s soul, and he knows with certainty that his brothers in heaven who are no longer with them had it so utterly, tragically wrong—humans can feel as profoundly as celestial beings. Arguably more so. In his short time as a human, Castiel has felt things of a depth he never even thought was possible.

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” he says.

Dean has turned a corner of the garage into a makeshift training/workout area. He’s got a couple of weight machines—purchased with Charlie’s magic fund—and a set of free weights. There’s a jump rope, medicine ball, and even a set of yoga mats (he suspects these are Sam and Eileen’s). Beyond this is a large, fifteen-by-fifteen blue gym mat. It’s clear that Dean put as much thought into this ‘room’ as he did his own and the Dean Cave. There’s even a boxing bell and an electronic scoreboard attached to the far wall.

He sets Cas up with some boxing gloves. He’s got a collection of different sizes, so it is clear this isn’t Dean’s first time training someone. A steady stream of hunters once came and went within these walls, though not as much anymore. These days the monsters are keeping pretty quiet.

Castiel knows four hundred and seventy eight different fighting styles—a number of which did not originate on this Earth—from his time as a warrior of heaven, but Dean still insists on walking him through how to correctly throw a punch.

“Look, you need to learn how to fight like a human,” the hunter says when he catches Cas rolling his eyes, “Cuz if you fuck it up, you ain’t going through the guy like Superman. You’re going to break your wrist and probably get yourself killed.”

So, Castiel huffs and puts up with it, allows Dean to show him how to rotate his wrist as he extends his arm so that his fist hits at a slight angle. The hunter draws his hand along the inside of his forearm while one hand holds his fist out, pointing out how the bones in his arm align so that it can safely absorb the impact of his punch.

He thinks to mention to Dean that at one time he was able to blow out a candle with a punch from three hundred feet away. Now he can’t even do it at a foot, so he keeps his mouth shut.

It’s fascinating, Castiel thinks, listening to Dean like this, watching how he moves. He’s a natural-born teacher, and clearly he enjoys it. Castiel does not have Dean’s necklace on him, nor would he be able to touch it with the gloves on his hands regardless, but he doesn’t need a magical pendant to see the happiness and ease on the older hunter’s face. Castiel thinks that over time Dean might even retire completely and spend his days training the next generation of hunters to come. Castiel thinks he’d like to be around to help with that.

“Okay, I think we’re ready to get this show on the mat,” Dean says, concluding his instruction on the proper way to punch.

He tells Castiel to come at him with a right-left jab and takes up a stance opposite him. Castiel brings the gloves up to his ears and hops on his feet, loosening his stance. He throws himself forward on the right punch and aims for Dean’s jaw.

Dean dodges around behind him easily and catches him under the armpits before he can tumble over.

“Woah, Cas, hey! You’re gonna injure yourself coming at me like that!” the hunter exclaims.

Castiel looks at him from over his shoulder and just says, “What?” because none of that made a lick of sense to him. Also, Dean holding him like this is extremely distracting.

“You’re throwing yourself around like you’re an angry elephant. You gotta remember you’re like, this scrawny human now,” Dean tells him.

Castiel frowns at him.

“I am not scrawny,” he insists, indignant. “And I am not acting like an angry elephant,” he adds with a huff, “If anything I am a peaceful elephant. Who needs to relearn how to defend himself.”

He’s pouting a little, he’s sure, but his pride is taking a bit of a beating here today. He used to be this badass six-winged big-as-the-Chrysler-Building wavelength of celestial intent and now he’s…well, he’s human. A tiny, insignificant, unimportant human. But he is not scrawny, damnit.

Dean just gives him a look and then swoops down and lifts him off his feet at the knees. Castiel yelps and clings to his back as he’s tossed unceremoniously over the hunter’s shoulder like Dean were picking up a rake while Dean just laughs at him in great, bursting guffaws. Castiel rolls his eyes from his current upside-down orientation and grunts.

“Dean, put me down.” The hunter doesn’t at first, so Castiel wiggles a little in his grasp. “Dean,” he complains, “You’ve made your point. Now please put me down.”

“Yeah, alright. Hold your horses, Tumbleweed.”

Dean finally grants his request and hefts him back over his shoulder. It’s a long, slow slide down to the ground.

Castiel swallows hard and feels his Adam’s apple grate against the inside of his throat. His tongue has gone the texture of sandpaper and his mouth feels like he’s been eating cotton balls for a month. Dean holds him and just stares into his eyes for a long moment—Castiel isn’t sure how long. He once could have counted the exact denomination down to the millisecond, but as a human he finds himself lost in it, drifting along in a timeless emerald sea.

Then Dean is clearing his throat and pulling away and Castiel sways to keep his feet. His knees feel weak, the blood suddenly pulsing in his ears. He feels a low tug below the waist.

‘Keep it together!’ he chides himself.

Dean takes a position three feet away from him and raises his gloves.

“Hands up,” he says.

Castiel mimics his movements and brings his gloves up to his ears. He takes a deep breath and then nods to Dean to let him know that he is ready.

“Remember, come at me light and easy,” Dean instructs, “Keep your center of gravity rooted or you’re gonna lose your balance and leave yourself open.” He hops on his feet, gesturing for Castiel to come at him.

‘Lightly. Right,’ Castiel thinks to himself as he focuses forward.

His next attempt is better, but according to Dean he’s still throwing himself too far forward. He comes around to show Cas the right posture, standing behind him and fixing the set of his hips, the width of his feet, and the orientation of his shoulders.

“Don’t slouch,” he chides.

“The gloves are heavy,” Castiel grumbles. He’s not proud of how whiney he sounds, and he blushes and sets his jaw at the amused grin Dean shoots him in response.

He grunts and drops his voice.

“Don’t slouch. Got it. Anything else?”

Dean’s smile quirks a little on one side.

“Keep your elbows in.”

The hunter knocks his elbows in tight to his torso and then takes his position, again hopping on his feet. Castiel mimics him again and rushes forward with a right-cross jab combo. Dean blocks both and deflects to the right, around Castiel’s back again. The hunter’s left foot hooks his just behind the ankle and sweeps forward, knocking him off balance. Castiel crashes to the mat with a whump and then Dean is on top of him, pinning him to the ground with a forearm at his throat and one hand wrapped around Castiel’s wrist. He’s straddling Castiel, their bodies pressed together from groin to chest, and Dean’s face is but inches from his own. He can feel the warm rush of Dean’s breath, feel the heat of his sweat rising from his skin through his damp t-shirt.

Castiel feels a lurch below the belt and the telltale swell of arousal that follows. He’s in trouble. He taps the mat fervently.

“Dean, let me go,” he says gruffly, attempting to sound irritated.

He struggles a little in Dean’s grasp, which turns out to be a huge mistake. Where once he could have lifted the hunter as though he were a pebble from a stream, now he’s one solid mass of muscle. Dean shifts above him and a drag of something runs the full length of him. Castiel freezes immediately and his eyes go wide. He can feel where his hardness is pressed up against Dean’s inner thigh, and should the hunter move…

Dean wiggles his hips. Castiel drops his head back to the mat with a whimper.

“Dean, please,” he pleads.

Dean freezes because suddenly he realizes it too. He immediately surges to his knees and un-straddles Cas, who rolls over onto his side and curls his knees in toward his chest. He covers his face with his hands and groans.

“I’m sorry, Dean, I—!” He moans again, his words muffled by his hands. “It—it’s not you, it’s just—the adrenaline and—t-this body. I’m sorry, I—I don’t have much control over this.”

Stuttering noises that aren’t words, more like sounds, reach his ears first, and then Dean finds his voice and says, “Naw, Cas, I’m sorry. That was—shit. I keep forgetting you’re like…” He trails off and then finishes weakly with, “Uh…h-human.”

Castiel keeps his eyes averted and his body turned away as he pushes to his feet.

“Yes. Well. I think I’ll stick with research for the time being,” he says, ripping off his gloves. He tosses them into the bin with the others and beats a hasty exit.

Dean finds him again some hours later in the library (surprise, surprise), and even though practically half a day has passed since the incident earlier, Castiel still feels his face heat up as Dean saunters into the room with his hands loosely stuffed in his pants pockets. He can’t stop thinking about how Dean now knows the feel of his cock against his leg, and of how he now knows how good it feels having Dean pin him down like that. Castiel ducks his head and focuses intently on the book in front of him, wishing he still had the ability to disappear in the blink of an eye. Never has he felt so trapped, so caged in by his emotions—by his body. It’s horrible, he concludes. This part of the human experience he could certainly do without.

“So, uhh… I came over to ask if you wanted to maybe take a break,” Dean says, cutting into his thoughts.

Castiel blinks and snaps out of his daze with resounding grace, which is ironic considering his grace now hangs around Dean’s neck. It surprises him that the hunter still wears it. Castiel’s eyes follow the small vial necklace as Dean shifts in front of him, watches as it resettles against the hunter’s sternum. Over his heart. He touches the one he has in his pocket and feels the familiar swirl of guilt-wrapped-fondness. It is beginning to wear on him.

“A-ahh…” Castiel stumbles, dragging his eyes away from his grace, “What do you have in mind?”

“Nachos ‘n Netflix,” Dean says, grinning down at him, “What’dya say?”

Castiel looks at Dean with a squint, reading the sincerity on his face. The movie is a gesture of friendship, he realizes, and an apology all in one. He smiles in relief.

“I say…throw in a real meal and you’ve got a deal,” Castiel replies.

Dean grins at him and nudges his arm with enthusiasm.

“You got it! How’s hotdogs sound?”

As they argue about what to eat, Castiel feels the tension ease from his shoulders. Despite how embarrassing the morning’s training session, it doesn’t seem to have put Dean off from him or injured their friendship in any way. And that is good, because Castiel isn’t sure he could stick around if it had.

They end up ordering pizza to go with the nachos. Sam and Eileen join them—in fact, this little get together was Sam’s idea. Something about spending time as a family. Castiel catches Eileen’s flush when Sam says it and shares a smile with her. He remembers the first time Dean included him in that label, how elated and grateful he felt. It’s a good feeling, even now. He just wishes it meant something slightly different in Dean’s case.

And…well, if wishes were kisses, as the saying goes.

Dean has replaced the pair of recliner chairs with a pair of reclining sectional couches, (thank you, Charlie) angled toward the TV in a wedge and separated by a small end table in the middle. There’s a pair of tables on each far end of the couches as well. It’s a very nice upgrade, Castiel thinks.

Sam and Eileen finally get back with the pizza and join them. The pizza boxes get thrown on the larger table behind them, and they settle plates in laps while they eat and try to decide on a movie.

“It’s gotta be something post-2016,” Dean declares before anyone can make a request.

“Why?” Eileen asks, clearly lost. By the look on Sam’s face, he seems confused too. Castiel knows just how they feel.

“Since I have seen them all, thanks to Metatron, I will leave the choosing up to you three,” he says.

“Yeah, but that was…what? Four years ago? So anything from the last few years isn’t in your memory banks,” Dean says. He knocks playfully on Castiel’s head. “Ergo, anything past 2016 is fair game.”

Castiel blinks. Sam’s mouth drops open, he notices, and even Eileen looks impressed.

“Oh. Well…yes, I suppose you’re right,” Castiel says. He can’t believe Dean thought to make that consideration for him. He’s…hell, he’s floored. He stares at Dean, dumbstruck.

Eileen’s on her phone already, looking up movies.

“Got one!” she declares, signing with her left hand at the same time. She holds up her phone. “I’ve always wanted to see this one.”

Dean leans over where Cas is seated on the side of the couch closest to Sam and Eileen’s couch and squints at the small screen.

 “Dude. A Dog’s Purpose?” Dean says, “Seriously? Can’t we pick something we can all enjoy? Not some chick flick?”

“It’s not a chick flick, it’s about dogs,” Eileen says, “And I think it looks cute.” She bats her eyes at Dean mockingly and says, “You’re…manly enough to handle the cute doggies, Dean, yeah?” She softens her r’s and asks it like she’s talking to a toddler.

Dean scowls at her and signs quickly, “That’s not what I meant!”

“Then there’s no problem,” Eileen signs back.

It’s clear by the way she then crosses her arms that she’s standing her ground. Sam shoots Dean a look.

“Come on, man, give it a try,” the younger Winchester says.

Dean rolls his eyes and looks to Cas.

“You wanna weigh in here, bud?” he asks.

Castiel detects a hint of interest in Dean’s voice and smiles secretly to himself. He knows Dean is still upset about having to give the dog Miracle back to his owners (once Jack snapped them back to existence, that is), and there was also that time with The Colonel, so he knows Dean has a soft spot for man’s best friend. He’s long since gotten over the one that tried to kill him.

“I agree that it sounds…cute,” Castiel says, which earns him a lopsided smile from Dean that makes his ears go warm.

The necklace in his pocket is a warm glow of happiness and a slow tug of longing. Castiel wonders about that, wonders what Dean might be longing for.

He holds the pendant and watches for a moment as Dean says something to Sammy, who turns to Eileen to get her opinion. He feels the tug again when Sam swoops down for a kiss and the couple laughs, Eileen craning her neck back as she looks up at Sam. Dean’s eyes shift to meet his, and for a moment the hunter just looks at him. His eyes seem to ask a question, but Castiel doesn’t know what he’s trying to say, and he most likely has zero answers for Dean anyway. He’s about the worst person to look to for advice on how to meet the right person and fall in love. All of his relationships have ended in blood spilt, literally.

They bring up the movie and settle in, beers and pizza within reach. Sam’s got control over the remote and thus steers this ‘party boat’ of theirs, according to Dean. He’s got the subtitles on for Eileen, and an arm slung around her shoulders. Eileen sits snuggled into Sam’s side, balancing her plate on Sam’s other leg as she eats. Watching them gives Castiel an ache in his chest that burrows deep. He looks to Dean, who’s eating pizza with two hands on the far side of the couch and sighs a little to himself.

The movie progresses. It’s good, Castiel thinks to himself, and surprisingly accurate. Beside him, Dean finishes his pizza and sets his empty plate on the end table, stretching and letting out a contented ‘I’m full and feel great!’ kind of a noise. It’s cute, Castiel thinks, smiling to himself, and curls up on the opposite end of the couch.

He doesn’t feel the chill in the room much in the way a frog being boiled doesn’t realize he’s being slowly stewed alive. That’s the funny thing about being human—sometimes Castiel can forget all about his body, only to wake up later and find it not at all how he remembered. The movie is so good that Castiel doesn’t realize he’s cold until Dean yanks something out from behind his head—a quick glance identifies it as a blanket—and tosses the far edge over his lap. He settles in closer to where Castiel is sitting with his feet to the side and tucked into the seam of the couch to keep warm, and tucks the blanket in around him.

“You’re cold, right?” he asks.

Castiel blinks at him, dazed, then nods.

“Thank you, Dean,” he says, the words thick and slurred because he’s suddenly forgotten how to form his mouth around them.

Sam shushes them from across the room, and Castiel settles back into the couch. Dean’s sitting closer to him now though, he notices.

It is difficult to concentrate on the movie after that. Dean is pressed up against his side and what’s more, Castiel is angled into Dean because of how he has been sitting on the couch. He’s leaned awkwardly against the hunter’s shoulder with his shoulder and really, no matter how deprived for physical contact Castiel is, it’s really fucking uncomfortable.

He’s about to pull away when suddenly Dean’s arm pulls out from under where his is pinned and drops it around his shoulders.

“Better, right?” Dean asks.

Castiel doesn’t trust himself to speak this time, just nods.

Because now he is tucked into Dean’s chest with Dean’s arm around him and… and the hunter is warm and he smells good…

Oh. Castiel should really stop thinking along these lines and watch the movie before he gets himself in trouble again.

Castiel pulls his attention back to the movie. He’s not sure how much of it he really watches. Mostly he’s aware of how good it feels to have Dean next to him like this. He didn’t realize this kind of cuddling could be a gesture of friendship, but he’s glad that it is.

That is, until he catches Eileen signing something to Dean that makes the hunter’s face go red. He knows this because he had been watching Dean out of the corner of his eye rather than pay attention to the movie. Castiel turns to face the hunter fully, then swivels his head to Eileen in time for her to sign something far too quickly for him to catch. He picks up ‘cute’ and ‘friends’ with a question mark following it and feels his eyes narrow. From behind her, Sam laughs.

“Shut up, Sammy,” Dean snaps at his brother. When Sam doesn’t, Dean yanks off one of his socks, balls it up in his fist, and lobs it at his brother.

Sam sputtering with a face full of Dean’s dirty sock is one of the more memorable moments of the night.

Castiel is still not sure if Sam knows, if Dean has told him about Castiel’s confession. He doesn’t think so. He thinks Sam would have come and talked to him about it by now if he knew. The younger Winchester would want to make sure Castiel was ok. Since he hasn’t done this, Castiel has to conclude that Dean hasn’t told him. He’s grateful for this. He doesn’t think Sam looking at him with pity and trying to get him to sign up for online dating apps would necessarily help him feel better.

Dean, having effectively won whatever the disagreement with his brother, shifts next to Castiel and then tugs at his sleeve.

“I wanna stretch out,” the hunter mumbles in explanation. He starts to pull Castiel down on the couch, then goes still and asks, hesitantly, “You cool with that?”

Castiel nods and allows Dean to finish pulling him down to lay stretched and spooned together on the couch.

At first, he barely dares to breathe. He wants to check the amulet, but it is in the pocket currently pressed into the couch, and reaching for it now would mean moving away from Dean. So instead Castiel lays rigid, watching Dean from the corner of his eye. The hunter reaches for his beer on the table and takes a casual sip. Castiel turns his attention back to the movie and relaxes by millimeters per minute.

The dog dies. Of course the dog dies. In every single one of the dog movies in Metatron’s collection, the dog dies. Dean’s arm tightens around him and he hears a sniff, then a whimper. Castiel looks over to find Dean with tears gushing down his cheeks. He catches Cas watching him and mutters a, “Shut up,” and swipes them away.

Five minutes later, Castiel is crying too.

Because the dog just came back to life.

They’re all crying by the end. It’s hard to tell who is crying harder—Sam or Eileen—but Castiel knows that Dean has him beat by liters, he’s sure.

They break to the kitchen for donuts (the vanilla kind with the chocolate coating that Castiel has become so fond of) and when Sam and Eileen leave to continue the nights activities alone together, Dean nudges Castiel’s arm and gestures back toward the Dean cave.

“Wanna watch something else?” he asks.

There’s a sequel, so they watch that too. It’s not as good, but then again, Castiel already knew how it was going to end even without Metatron’s help.

Dean cries anyway when the dog dies. So does Castiel. He thought that knowing the dog was going to die would make it better, but it doesn’t seem to have helped at all.

“Why is it always so sad when the dog dies?” Cas asks Dean with the tears still wet on his cheeks. He throws up an irritated hand toward the TV, which is now rolling the credits. “We knew the dog was going to die, and it’s still sad. Tell me, why is that?”

“Dude,” Dean says from behind him, “Cuz they know how to get you,” he explains, “They spend all movie gettin’ you to love that dog, so that when the inevitable comes—” Dean throws up his hand as well and slaps it down against his thigh to make his point. “There you go. Happy?”

“Not particularly, no,” Castiel tells him.

He must sound a little down, because Dean nudges him softly and says, “Hey, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Castiel replies. He tucks his chin in against his hand where it’s curled up into his chest. Dean’s arm is around him, and he’s warm. He doesn’t want to move.

Dean seems to be waiting for him to say something more, but when he doesn’t the hunter asks, “Wanna watch one more? Something happier this time?”

Castiel nods and smiles a little. Dean maneuvers the remote around and pulls up Charlie’s Magic Movie Stash (her title, not Dean’s). Castiel sees something that catches his eye and points to it.

“That one. Can we watch it?” he asks.

Dean clicks on it and brings up the title information.

“Isn’t this one in your databanks?” he asks.

“Yes,” Castiel says, “But I have never seen it.”

Dean doesn’t question it, just clicks the play button. Castiel knows it’s not something the hunter would typically watch, but he seems to be approaching Castiel with caution since that morning so he must still feel bad.

Castiel is crying by the end of this movie as well. It’s a happy feeling though—nobody dies. His heart is left feeling a little lighter.

Dean curled up against him and fast asleep may have something to do with that. When Castiel finally goes to wake him, he mumbles something incoherent and burrows deeper, clutching at Castiel’s t-shirt and pulling him closer. His nose buries itself in the back of Castiel’s neck.

Castiel leans into his touch feeling warmth bloom in his chest and thinks…it’s enough. He doesn’t require any more than what they have together, right here. A friendship. It’s more than that, of course—what they have is a bond that goes soul-deep. Castiel’s handprint forever blazed in every facet of every molecule of Dean’s DNA and the untethered glory of Dean’s soul seared into the backs of Castiel’s optic nerves from when he pulled Dean from hell. He’s not sure any ‘girl’ Dean could meet and fall in love with could ever come close to what they’ve been through together.

So really, it’s enough.

Cuatro.

Just when Castiel thinks he is safe from awkward moments with Dean (he continues to get up late to avoid Dean’s time with his bacon and they haven’t trained since the first failed attempt), life with the semi-retired hunter reminds him how laughable this delusion is. On this particular day, Castiel finds Dean in the garage washing Baby. The hunter has AC/DC cranked up to deafening, and if it were not for the feet of thick concrete walls that separates the bunker from the rest of the outside world, Castiel is sure the entire town of Lebanon, Kansas would be able to hear his music.

Castiel steps around the car to find Dean vigorously scrubbing the hood. He’s wearing the short shorts that he always wears when performing this ritual, and they mold the hunter’s backside admirably well as he leans over Baby, unknowingly showing off one of his best assets.

The pun brings a smile to Castiel’s face. He turns around and leans against the hood of the Impala and watches as Dean furiously scrubs at the car with his sponge—a small indulgence on his part. Dean feels his presence and glances over at Cas, a light smile on his golden-tanned face. He puts down the sponge and steps over to the stereo, turning it down so that they can chat. There is a cooler by the stereo and he grabs a couple of beers from it, pops the caps off with the penknife in his pocket, and hands one to Cas as he leans against Baby’s hood with a contented, “Ahhh.”

They drink in amiable silence as the stereo cranks out one rock hit after another. When the first beer is gone, Dean pushes off the hood and tosses Castiel a sponge.

“Here, you may as well be useful,” he teases, “Mr. ‘I slept in again’ Lazybutt.” Dean gives Castiel a look. “I mean, seriously, dude? Eleven?”

Castiel slaps the sponge on the windshield and shrugs.

“I was comfortable,” he says.  

They finish up with Baby and when they are done Dean grabs more beer from the cooler. They drink sitting next to one another on Baby’s hood, and Castiel finds he is so very grateful that he still has this with Dean. Things between them these last couple of days has felt easy in a way that it hasn’t in years. Castiel had thought the other night watching movies was a one-time fluke, but this tells him otherwise.

Castiel soon loses count of how many beers he has drunk. They’ve gone through almost the entire cooler between the two of them and Cas is keeping pretty steady pace with Dean, so he estimates it is somewhere between a six and a twelve pack. Castiel knows he is well past the point of what could be considered responsible drinking habits and will more than likely regret this later, which is saddening because it reminds him of how much weaker he has become without his grace. Still, he is happy to be able to share in this human moment with his friend. Just the fact that the world isn’t ending and they can find the time to sit here and share a leisurely afternoon together is testimony to how much has changed. There was a time that Castiel would not have believed it to be possible.

Castiel admires Dean’s long, tanned legs from where they are stretched out across Baby’s hood. Everything feels comfortably fuzzy to him and it is a wonderful glowing feeling.

“I like those shorts,” Castiel says suddenly. He blinks, surprising himself. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

With a jolt he realizes that he is gripping the amulet in his pocket and has been for Jack-knows-how-long. He can feel Dean’s buzz-induced euphoria through the pendant swirling with his own.

Dean looks surprised too. His mouth drops open and his face flushes bright red.

“Dude, that’s not something you can just come out and say,” Dean tells him.

“Why not? It is the truth,” Castiel replies defensively, drawing his shoulders in tighter around him as though he still had use of his wings. Now that he has said it, he feels he must stand his ground or otherwise admit to the weirdness of his comment.

“Bec—” Dean gulps and a flash of something flits across his eyes. “Because, Cas, you just don’t.”

“I don’t understand. I thought lending compliments was something friends do,” Castiel says obstinately, “And I wished to compliment you on how nice your legs look in those shorts.”

“Yeah, well, it sounded like a come on,” Dean mumbles.

The guilt hits Castiel like a slap to the face following this admonishment and he ducks his head in shame.

“Ah. Yes, I…I see how you could take it that way,” Castiel says, admitting defeat. Even he has to agree that Dean has a point. His voice sounds robotic to his own ears as he says, “My apologies. I did not mean to make you uncomfortable.”

Castiel has a sudden and powerful impulse to touch the amulet in his pocket, but he’s afraid to. If he feels Dean’s disgust through their connection, he’s not sure that he can bear it. He lowers his eyes, his joy from before sinking down into misery. This is the closest Dean has come to acknowledging Castiel’s feelings for him since his return from The Empty.

“I won’t make a compliment like that again,” he promises.

“No, Cas—hey, it’s fine. I don’t mind,” Dean says quickly.

Dean scoots a little closer to Cas until they are pressed up against one another from shoulder to knees. He touches Cas’s arm a little hesitantly and then settles it fully just above his wrist, half-covering his hand. Castiel stares down at it and tries to ignore how close Dean is and how distracting the feel of his bare thigh is pressed up against his. The golden fuzz on Dean’s bare legs rustles against the soft denim of Castiel’s jeans as the hunter shifts his weight and continues.

“Look, I’m fine with it, really. I meant like, for people other than me. If you told that to any other dude, he’d either punch you out or…” Dean trails off and Castiel waits impatiently for him to continue.

“Or?” He asks when Dean doesn’t do so right away.

Dean takes a deep breath and smirks at him a little.

“Or you’ll find yourself with more than you can handle,” Dean tells him. Castiel detects an innuendo in the comment, but he doesn’t know exactly what it means.

“Is that a sexual reference?” he asks to clarify.

Dean drops his face into his hand and groans.

“Why do I even bother,” he says to himself. Then he turns his head and looks over at Cas with a fond smile.

Castiel does touch the pendant then. What he feels is something warm and affectionate. Love. Perhaps not the same as how Castiel feels for Dean, but it’s something.

Following their conversation in the garage, Castiel thinks he might eventually come to accept Dean’s less-than-romantic feelings for him. Their friendship is starting to feel like how it used to, and Castiel is hesitant to hope that things will be better than they were before he decided to play God and open the doors to purgatory. With how well things are going it’s certainly within the realm of possibility. In any case, he feels a hell of a lot better now than he did before.

That is, until Dean asks if he wants to go bowling with him, Sam, and Eileen.

It turns out bowling is fun. Castiel has never bowled before, but there are many movies in his databanks that involve the sport so he has an idea what to expect, and Dean has promised to show him how to play so that he doesn’t make a fool of himself.

It’s the kind of place that allows for alcohol, which is pivotal in relieving the tension Castiel feels from Sam and Eileen calling this family outing a “Double Date,” the entire car ride over, with both he and Dean doing a poor job of convincing them that it “Isn’t like that!” and, “We’re just friends!” So really, the bar conveniently located only a few lanes down from theirs is a welcome sight.

They grab a round and set up their lane, spreading out in the horseshoe of seats bordering their home base for the evening. Sam is at the screen setting up their team names and clearly takes certain liberties in doing so.

It’s the new couple versus him and Dean, and in the part of Castiel’s human brain that likes to torture him with the impossible, it does almost feel like a double date. Dean hands him a neon green bowling ball and holds up his own bright swirling blue choice for Castiel to see. The hunter smiles at him when he does this, and Castiel smiles back.

Several hours later, Team Destiel is currently several points behind Team Saileen. It’s mostly Castiel’s fault for getting so many gutter balls. At least he is doing better than last game.

Castiel blames the beer. It’s infinitely easier to ascribe the reason for his clumsiness to the alcohol rather than on how distracting it is to be around Dean like this—laughing and drinking and generally having a good time together. Things feel like they used to between them, though now that he thinks about it, there was never time to have silly family outings like this before when it was Apocalypse Now every other week.

“Look, we need a spare to win this,” Dean says encouragingly in Castiel’s ear, patting him on the shoulder, “Remember what I showed you.”

Castiel nods weakly because he does remember. The problem is that the memory of Dean teaching him how to throw a bowling ball is overshadowed by the one of Dean’s body pressed up against his back from shoulder blades to thighs, and the memory of the hunter’s powerfully muscular figure curled around his ass makes him feel hot all over.

He walks to the head of the lane and holds up the ball, taking a deep breath to try and calm down. He ends up lobbing the thing unceremoniously into the gutter and groans in frustration.

Dean comes up behind him with another ball and hands it to him.

“I’m sorry. I’m not very good at this,” Castiel says with a bit of a pout.

“Hey, no worries. We’re here to have fun,” Dean tells him.

Castiel looks up into brilliant green eyes and feels a pang of desire low in his abdomen. For once, Dean holds his gaze, and Castiel searches them for an answer to the question he’s been asking since he got back from The Empty.

He doesn’t find it, but he does feel a little braver for having looked. He takes a deep breath.

“Perhaps you would be so kind as to…show me again,” he says.

His voice is pitched lower than it normally is. Surely it could be called seductive or flirtatious, although Castiel’s track record with either of those things is a bit of a train wreck. Still, he’s somewhat buzzed and frankly tired of being so damn careful around Dean.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Dean stutters out in agreement. In the next moment he shoots Castiel a dirty smirk. “I’ll show you how to handle your balls anytime.”

That’s not the answer he expects by a long shot.

“Dean, are you flirting with me?” Castiel blurts out.

“What!? No! Why the hell would I—?” Dean sputters.

In an instant, Castiel realizes what happened. Dean is joking around like they used to, before Castiel confessed he had feelings for the hunter. Of course Castiel had to remind him of this and ruin the moment.

In an attempt to salvage the good mood, Castiel says, “It was a joke, Dean. ‘Chill it.’”

Dean winces as though what he just said is physically painful.

“Dude, again with the air quotes?”

He grins at Castiel and nudges him in the arm with his elbow. Cas meets his smile and nudges back.

Dean shows him the proper bowling form once more, as promised. This time Castiel allows himself to relax into the line of Dean’s body. He leans into the hunter’s touch as he draws Castiel’s arm back with the ball and then forward.

Castiel lets go without really meaning to. He is following the momentum of Dean’s arm pushing his like a pendulum—which is unfairly distracting by the way—when suddenly the bowling ball is speeding down the center of the lane. Castiel holds his breath.

The ball hits the middle pin in an explosion that rattles the rest of them like a meteor crashing to earth. All the pins go down.

“You did it! Holy crap, Cas—you did it!”

Dean is jumping on him and hugging him and thumping his back then, shouting “We won! Take that Samantha!” as he laughs boisterously in his brother’s direction. Castiel hears Sam say, “It doesn’t count! You cheated!” beyond the buzz of euphoria in his ears. Dean’s arms are warm around him, his mood infectious.

Hidden away in his pocket, Castiel touches the necklace and lets Dean’s elation rush through him like a drug. It hits him like a shot of tequila on an empty stomach and goes straight to his head. He hums something unintelligible into the circle of Dean’s arms that has the hunter pulling him back by the shoulders in concern. He smiles at the hunter, drunk riding on the coattails of his happiness.

“Cas? Cas, hey. Buddy, you okay?”

Castiel smiles at him giddily.

“I am wonderful, Dean. How are you?” he asks.

Dean laughs. “Shit. You’re like, happy-drunk aren’t you? Who’da thought you were this much of a lightweight, huh?”

Castiel opens his mouth to correct the hunter and tell him the real reason he is so happy, but he stops himself. Something must cross his face, because suddenly there’s an awkward tension between them that has Dean pulling back and letting him go completely. Before he can let it go, Castiel feels a pang of guilt come from the necklace.

His mood is instantly ruined but he hides it well, smiling and laughing along with everybody else for one last game—a tiebreaker.

There’s still a steady pulse of guilt coming from the necklace, although now it seems to float in a pool of warm contentment. It’s better, Castiel thinks to himself wryly, but it’s also indicative of something. The answer to a question that Castiel has been asking this whole time. He drops the necklace, not sure he is ready to accept it yet.

They go to the bar for more drinks halfway through the final game. They’re losing again, but Castiel honestly doesn’t care because he’s content to be here with Dean despite everything, drinking and laughing carefree like old friends. He wishes it could last.

Dean nudges him in the arm as they approach the bar, rousing him from his less-than-savory thoughts.

“Hey. Hey, Cas, what’dya think of him?” Dean asks him in a hushed voice. Castiel blinks at the hunter slowly and then follows where Dean is pointing to a young man sitting at the bar. Castiel looks back to Dean and blinks again, still not getting it.

“I don’t understand. Am I supposed to have an opinion? I have never met that man before,” Castiel says.

Dean makes a show of rolling his eyes.

“I mean like, do you find him…y’know. Hot,” Dean says. He licks his lips, nervous.

“Oh,” Castiel says, glancing back at the man briefly. He frowns. “No, not particularly,” he says.

“You’re kidding,” Dean blurts at his nonchalant answer. “Seriously? Cas, come on, dude could be a movie star with that face.”

“I suppose,” Castiel agrees, but only because he hopes it will conclude the conversation. Unfortunately no, because Dean just takes it as incentive to introduce him.

“Hey,” Dean says to the man at the bar, nudging the guy’s arm and then steering Cas in between them, “My friend thinks you’re hot. He’s kind of a weirdo, but would you maybe bang him anyway? I promise he’s not like, bad weird.”

Castiel isn’t sure which reason for wanting to punch Dean in the face in that moment takes the cake—the fact that Dean is trying to prostitute him off to a stranger knowing full well how Castiel feels about him—or the fact that he insults Castiel while doing it.

He tears away from Dean before the stranger has a chance to respond and storms out of the place.

Dean catches up to him just as he makes it to the edge of the parking lot. He’s grabbed the car and now crawls alongside Castiel in Baby, halfway hanging out the window.

“Cas, come on, get in. I’ll bring you back,” Dean says.

“I’ll walk, thanks,” Castiel says through clenched teeth. He re-crosses his arms around him and huffs in anger, refusing to look at Dean and—more so—resists the urge to touch the necklace so that he can ascertain whether Dean is truly sorry or not.

“Caas,” Dean whines at him. He sighs and slumps back in his seat. “Come on, don’t be a dick. You were the one who…” Dean trails off and sighs again, scrubs a hand over his face. He glances back at Cas. “Whatever. It’s fine. I’ll just follow you back like this, how’s that?”

Castiel clicks his tongue and heaves a heavy sigh, rolling his eyes to the heavens. Jack save him from this insufferable idiot, he thinks briefly before stopping. Dean breaks with him and grins as he puts Baby in park because he knows he’s won. Castiel stalks around the front of the car and throws open the car door in agitation, collapsing into the passenger side seat. He stares straight through the windshield and refuses to look at the hunter.

“Well, are we going home or would you rather idle here polluting the Earth unnecessarily?” Castiel snaps at him, slumping back into his seat. He crosses his arms over his chest again and turns to pin Dean with what he hopes is an indignant glare.

Dean sighs one last time and puts the car back in drive.

It’s dead silent on the way back to the bunker.

The front door to the bunker explodes inward on its hinges as Castiel storms through it yelling at the hunter who follows in his wake.

“Dean, I said drop it!” Castiel shouts behind him.

Dean catches the door with a swear and slams it behind him, jogging to keep up with Cas who—despite now being human—is still surprisingly fast.

“Cas, come on,” the hunter nags, close on his heels as Castiel reaches the bottom of the stairs, “Look, just—calm down for a hot minute and talk to me?”

Castiel rounds on the hunter and pushes his face in close to Dean’s.

“What would you have me say?” Castiel growls at him, his eyes narrow and piercing. He turns away with a deep frown and tugs his coat off vehemently, tossing it into a chair.

His hand reaches up out of habit to loosen the tie around his neck, until he remembers he no longer wears a tie. He’s in one of Dean’s old Henley’s and a ragged pair of jeans that is left over from the last time Castiel was human. The unfamiliar shirt feels suffocating around his neck so Castiel pops the first couple buttons to give himself some air.

“Maybe you can start with why you’re so upset?” Dean suggests. For once, he’s dropped the attitude and sounds a little lost, like he’s starting to realize he fucked up in some big way but doesn’t know what it is yet. This only serves to make Castiel angrier, because while he knows Dean can be insensitive at times, the fact that he is in love with such a clueless ape has him seriously questioning his own sanity.

“Where should I begin?” Castiel bites back at him. He sinks into one of the chairs around the map table and glares down at its surface.

Dean sits across from him like he’s sitting down to a peace negotiation. He even holds out his hands in surrender.

“I’m just tryin’ to understand,” he says.

Castiel doesn’t answer right away. He continues to glare down at the table instead. He wants to tell Dean to figure it out. He’s tired of always being the one to pour his heart out in front of the hunter with nothing to show for it. 

“Look, Cas, I’m sorry,” Dean says after a minute, “I wasn’t thinking. Guess I should’ve asked if you wanted to be set up. That is why you’re mad, right?”

Castiel nods once but refuses to look up. He takes a deep breath.

“I’m not ready,” he says bluntly.

Dean’s silent for a long moment, soaking that in.

“Yeah, okay,” he says finally on an exhale, “Guess I thought it was getting better.”

“It’s going to take longer than a few weeks, Dean,” Castiel grunts at him.

“Right.” He can practically hear Dean frowning at him from across the table. “Well if there’s anything I can do to help—”

“I think you have ‘helped’ enough,” Castiel bites back.

He glances up at Dean now and finds the hunter looking at him with this lost, sorry expression on his face, like he’s pitying Castiel and it just serves to make him angrier. This time, however, the anger is directed at himself, not Dean.

Castiel heaves a sigh and gets up.

“Good night, Dean.”

In the time it takes to walk from the map room to his bedroom, Castiel comes to an important decision.

He wavers in this decision for precisely three days, during which time he does his best to avoid running into Dean in the bunker. He tries to convince himself that he is overreacting, that in time things between them will smooth out again—that he is capable of overcoming his feelings for the hunter and that things can go back to the way they were before the end of the worlds.

Eventually Castiel is forced to admit defeat. He can’t do this. He can’t live under the same roof as Dean and his guilt and rejection and awkward boners any longer. He needs to get out—to get far away from Dean so that he can clear his head and attempt to piece back together the shattered remains of his newly human heart.

Partida.

Castiel sits on the edge of Dean’s bed and spills cobalt-blue eyes over the four walls of the hunter’s room, flowing over every personal belonging that Dean has used to decorate them. He wishes he could just ask Dean about the things he’s been noticing with the necklace, but he’s afraid it will put yet another wedge in their friendship. There have been so many recently that he doesn’t want to risk another, terrified that it would be the one to ‘break the camel’s back’, so to speak. So instead he is here, sitting in the dark of Dean’s room, hiding out and aching for something he can never have while he works up the courage to tell Dean of his decision to leave. Even he knows this isn’t normal human behavior, but he can’t bring himself to care.

He wants so badly to stay. He knows that he can’t, that it will only continue to hurt if he does, but he still wishes things could be different. Castiel clutches Dean’s necklace in his hands as if in prayer as he leans out over the bed, resting elbows on thighs.

“Jack, am I doing the right thing here?” Castiel asks the empty room in a hush.

Suddenly there’s a shadow in the doorway and the light clicks on.

“Cas?” Dean says, sounding surprised, “What’cha doing in here?”

Castiel is so deep in his thoughts that Dean’s voice startles him and he jumps, nearly dropping the necklace. Castiel clutches it behind his back and looks up at the hunter with something like guilt and apprehension on his face.

“Nothing,” he deflects at first, then reconsiders, “Thinking.”

Dean moves into the room and sits down next to him on the bed. Their knees bump, and it sends a thrill through Castiel that has his breath catching. He ducks his head to hide the flush that rushes up his neck to his cheeks.

“’bout what?” Dean asks him.

Castiel doesn’t answer him at first. He stares down at his closed fist where the pendant of Dean’s necklace is warm against his palm. A steady pulse of guilt and sadness seeps through it and has been for the last three days since his and Dean’s ‘fight,’ as Sam and Eileen are calling it.

“Cas? You okay, buddy?” Dean asks him when the silence between them stretches into minutes, “You’ve been acting weird lately. Well, weirder than normal.”

“I am fine,” Castiel responds. He looks up at Dean briefly and offers a small smile to prove it to him.

“Well okay, but there is something on your mind,” Dean points out, “You’d have to be some kind of moron not to notice. So? What’s up?”

Castiel raises his eyes to the ceiling, feigning ignorance. Dean rolls his with a light scoff and nudges him with his shoulder.

“Knock it off. You know what I mean,” the hunter says.

The action settles him closer to Castiel, his whole body slotted against Cas’s side on the memory foam bed, sinking them together, and Castiel wonders if it will ‘remember’ this moment between them when it comes time for him to leave.

“It’s not still about the bowling thing, is it?” Dean asks after another minute of silence. “You can’t still be upset about that.”

“No, it—,” Castiel breaks off with a defeated sigh, “It’s not that.”

“So?” Dean presses, “What is it?”

Castiel remains stubbornly silent. The fact that Dean has noticed his odd behavior unsettles him, like worms writhing in his stomach, but the fact that he’s here attempting to talk things out with Castiel blooms a warm feeling in the center of his chest that the ex-angel can’t help but hold onto.

Castiel hangs his head and stares down into his hands. They are clasped together in his lap around Dean’s amulet and in that instant Castiel realizes it is time to tell Dean about it. He never planned on it. He planned on taking the necklace with him when he leaves. Now he knows that holding onto it will only hold him back, and that to be truly free of these feelings of unrequited love, he must let his attachment to it go. Telling Dean is the easiest way to do this.

Very slowly, Castiel unwinds his fingers from one another and opens his palm, tilting it to the side to show Dean.

“What the—? Where the hell did you get that!?” Dean blurts out, confused and uneasy. It’s pretty much the reaction that Castiel expected. Dean holds out his hand as Castiel drops it and catches the pendant in his palm.

“I found it a while back when I was searching for a way to restore Jack’s soul. I thought God might be able to help us if I could just get a message to him, so I went looking for the object that allowed Joshua to speak with him and found that,” Castiel tells the hunter. He ducks his head. “Clearly things didn’t work out as I’d hoped, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. I know it is just a replica, but it…”

It means so much to me.

He almost says it, but the words die on his tongue. Castiel sighs.

“I meant to ask if you would like it to replace the one you lost.” he says, “But then Mary died and I left…”

Castiel trails off and chances a look at Dean. The hunter’s forehead is pulled together in thought and there is a slight frown on his face, but without the pendant, Castiel has no idea what he is feeling. He takes a stab at it anyways.

“I have made you uncomfortable. My apologies,” he says. He makes to get up, but Dean stops him with a hand on his upper arm.

“Cas, wait,” he says thickly, but is unable to get any further than that. He clears his throat and tries again. “What’s going on with you?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Castiel says, quiet but bitter, his voice a low rumble of gravel rolling under the Impala’s wheels. He shakes his head. “I can’t do this, Dean. It’s too much.”

He sighs and closes his eyes, covering his face with his hands and drawing in an even breath to try and sort through his shambled thoughts. When he has done this, Castiel slowly drags his hands away and continues.

“I thought I could handle it, but I can’t.” He gestures to the necklace in Dean’s hand. “Anyway. I want you to have that before I go.”

“Go?” Dean blurts out, his eyes widening, “Go where?” When Castiel doesn’t answer him at first, Dean says it again. “Go where, Cas?” he demands.

“I don’t know,” Castiel rushes in to say. His voice is gruff, irritated, and it hides his unease well. He doesn’t want Dean knowing that it frankly terrifies him not to have a plan past get the fuck out of the bunker as soon as humanly possible. “Away.”

“Christ, Cas, I—I know things ain’t been that easy for you but… I mean I thought—I don’t know. Guess I thought things were getting better. Is it really that bad?”

“Yes,” Castiel tells him firmly, looking down. He refuses to meet Dean’s eyes and mumbles as he says, “I tried to put it behind me, Dean, I did. I’m sorry. I just… I can’t get over it. I don’t think I ever will.”

Dean goes very quiet next to him. After a beat he lets out a defeated sigh and leans out over his forearms.

“Yeah, well, you’re the one who decided you didn’t want this,” Dean says bitterly, “I mean, it’s not like it’s breaking news that I’m a notorious fuck-up in the relationship department, so it’s fine. I get it.” Dean drags in a breath, and it’s clear he’s doing his best to hold back tears. “I can’t really fault you for it, can I? After all, I did get you killed. Guess that’s not something you can bounce back from, huh?”

Castiel’s head swivels to face the hunter like an owl focusing in on a sound from deep within the forest, his brow pinched together in confusion.

“Dean,” Castiel blurts out, “What on Earth are you talking about?”

Dean looks over at him with a scowl.

“What’dya mean what am I—I’m talking about how you up and decided I’m not worth your fuckin’ time!” Dean bites at him, “And how you hate me now because I got you killed, and you blame me for losing your grace. Why, what the fuck are you talking about?” Dean rants obstinately—angrily.

“Dean, I don’t hate you. Quite the opposite,” Castiel rushes in to say, but Dean talks right over him.

“Yeah, well, you have a pretty messed up way of showing it!” Dean snaps at him, “I mean, what was that bull about not getting what you want—oh.” Dean breaks off suddenly. “Wait, you mean—?”

“I thought you didn’t feel the same.” The words fall out of Castiel’s mouth on his breath in a gasp, airy and soft. “But—Dean, you kept pulling away from me!”

“The hell are you—you’re the one who kept running away!” Dean argues, and honestly Castiel can’t for the life of him remember enough to ascertain which of them is right.

“Well, I’m sorry if you seemed more interested in your bacon than me,” he grumbles, and it’s absurd to bring up something so petty, but no matter how Dean feels about him, that one still stings.

“What? What the hell are you talking about?” Dean blurts out in surprise.

“You and your…morning wood. It always happens when you’re cooking breakfast, and I’m sorry, but I am not as casual as you seem to be about showing off my arousal,” Castiel explains, “It was uncomfortable. I didn’t wish to be intrusive, and I didn’t want you getting the idea that I am the kind of person to take advantage in those situations…” Castiel trails off, losing his original argument in the jittery feeling that now crawls under his skin.

“Huh?” Dean says intelligently, “But—Jesus, Cas—it ever occur to you the reason I get so turned on in the morning is ‘cuz of how deliciously fuckable your hair looks after you’ve just rolled out of bed?” Dean replies with a crooked grin.

That comment all but stops Castiel’s heart. His mind goes pleasantly numb, and suddenly absolutely nothing in his life makes a grain of sense.

“But—but if that is true then why—Dean, why on Earth did you attempt to hook me up?” Castiel stutters out.

“I figured it was the least I could do!” Dean insists, “I wanted you to be happy since I thought—well, you said you couldn’t find happiness with me.”

“When did I say that? I never said that!” Castiel argues with him.

“Sure you did. Right before The Empty took you,” Dean says with a frown.

“Oh, no I—I meant my happiness, Dean. With you. Not—wait—so that is why you tried to set me up?”

“I thought getting you laid might help,” Dean admits.

“I thought you were making fun of me!” Castiel yells back at him.

There’s a stunned beat of silence, and then they’re both laughing. Castiel holds onto Dean’s shoulder and Dean does the same with the one opposite so that they mirror one another as they fall together in hysterics. How they ever made it this far in their friendship—which they are both just now realizing is something more—is lost on the both of them. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the necklace’s power, Castiel is sure he would have never known how Dean really feels about him.

“Does this mean you’re still leaving?” Dean asks him hesitantly after a minute.

Castiel shakes his head.

“No. I think I have a good reason to stick around now,” he says. He looks to Dean, drops his gaze to the hunter’s lips briefly before raising them back to his eyes.

“Then you should keep this,” Dean says, echoing Cas’s words back to him regarding his grace. He drops the necklace into Castiel’s hand and closes his fingers around it. Through it Castiel can feel a peaceful glow of happiness.

“Dean, no,” Castiel says, and automatically tries to give him the necklace, but Dean pushes his hand away.

“No, really, it’s mine to give away,” he says.

Castiel knows Dean is quoting from Lord of the Rings, and he blushes.

His to give away. Like his heart.

“Besides,” Dean continues, shifting uncomfortably and drawing Castiel from his thoughts, “I uh, should’ve said this sooner, but I still have the one that Sam and I got from Chuck.”

Castiel blinks up at him in surprise.

“I thought you threw that away!” he blurts out, “Or Chuck took it and destroyed it.”

Dean shrugs and looks a little guilty.

“Nah, I kept it. Felt better holding onto it after what Marie said, but to be really honest I felt bad the second I walked away from that motel wastebasket. I was just too damn stubborn to go back for it.”

Castiel shakes his head and smiles.

Dean goes to his dresser and opens the first drawer. In the back corner behind his socks, he pulls out the original God-seeking amulet.

He holds it out to show Cas, and Cas touches it reverently, almost afraid of what he might find in doing so. But there’s nothing—no response—just the normal feel of cool, smooth metal and the familiar weight of it in his palm. He hands it back to Dean with a shrug.

“Perhaps Joshua did something to this pendant that is different from the original,” he offers as an explanation.

“Since I have no idea what you’re talking about I’ll take your word for it,” Dean says, replacing it back in his drawer.

“Oh. That’s right.” Castiel has yet to tell him about the necklace’s power.

Castiel brings his attention to the pendant in his hand. He means to tell Dean about it, even goes as far as to open his mouth, but is derailed momentarily when he feels a spike of arousal through the amulet. His eyes snap up to stare at Dean in surprise, his mouth dropping open. His eyes lower to Dean’s lips, which the hunter wets nervously under his appraisal.

“Cas?” the hunter says, a question on his tongue.

“Dean,” Cas returns. It’s not an answer, per se, but it feels like one. He feels a flutter through the pendant when he says the hunter’s name.

With a strength of will that he wasn’t aware he had, Castiel reaches out and takes Dean’s hand—feels the pulse of nervous energy through the necklace as he does—and drops the amulet again into his palm. Immediately the feelings he’s siphoning from the amulet vanish and their absence leaves him momentarily disoriented.

“What do you feel when you hold that?” he asks.

Dean shoots Cas a look that says ‘That is a really weird thing to ask’, but he peers down at the necklace seriously and considers his answer. After a moment the hunter shakes his head.

“I dunno, man, am I supposed to feel something?” Dean asks, “Because I just got a whole lotta nada going on here.”

Castiel nods. It is to be expected, after all.

“I see,” he says.

Dean presses the necklace back into his palm and the warmth of contact between it and Dean’s large hand covering his own sends shivers of joy from his fingers all the way down to his toes.

“Why, what do you feel when you hold it?” Dean asks.

And isn’t that ever a loaded question?

Castiel contemplates his answer.

“It depends,” he says at last, turning the pendant over in his fingers. He holds it up by the string and watches as it sways naturally from side to side before coming to rest in the air. “The feelings change.”

“Okay,” Dean says, probing. He’s trying to get what new nonsense his angel-turned-human is spouting, but he’s having a rough go of it at the moment by the sounds of things. “So? You getting anything now, ET?”

Castiel snorts at that, and as always there is the warm feeling of gratitude that he can understand the reference now with Metatron’s pop-culture download in his brain. If ever there was a silver lining to a shitty situation, then that is one of them.

Castiel pushes these thoughts from his mind and focuses in on the emotions coming from the necklace so that he can answer Dean’s question.

“Concern,” he says after a moment, “Uneasiness. Fear. Nervousness.” He pauses and takes a breath. “Also joy. Excitement.” He pauses and adds, “…arousal.”

He looks up at Dean. The hunter gulps.

“Uh…okay? That’s weird,” Dean says.

Castiel casually leans his shoulder against Dean’s and feels the thrum of energy that runs through him from the necklace once again.

“There is an undercurrent of exhilaration now,” he says.

He wonders how long it will take for Dean to understand what is happening here. He looks at the hunter again, but this time he holds his gaze. Minutes tick by. The uneasiness seeping through the amulet grows, but it’s a good nervous, Castiel thinks, not a bad one.

He thinks about how easy it would be to kiss Dean right here and now. It would be so much easier than telling Dean about the pendant, about what he now suspects the hunter feels for him. He still wonders if he isn’t reading too much into it, though, projecting his own desperate fantasies onto the situation.

How he loves this human. This impossible, infuriating, beautiful human. So much he never wants to look away. He brings a hand up to cradle the side of Dean’s face and hears the hunter’s breath hitch. A powerful pulse of desire rushes through the pendant and this time it’s clear enough that Castiel can no longer deny what Dean is feeling.

Closing the distance between them is perhaps the easiest and hardest thing he has ever done.

Chapped lips brush against a smooth, curved mouth that drops open in a surprised gasp. Castiel holds them in question, waiting for Dean to bridge that final millimeter of space between them. When he doesn’t, Castiel starts to pull back, to turn his head away in shame.

Strong fingers grip his chin then and his head swivels back at Dean’s gentle tug. The hunter’s lips cover his in a brief, chaste kiss. Testing the waters. Castiel can feel the nervous pulse of his heart through the pendant, the terror that translates visibly on Dean’s face.

What if he got it wrong? What if Cas doesn’t want him? What if he does?

The flicker of hope in Dean’s eyes is all the invitation Castiel needs to press in closer, capturing Dean’s lips with his own in a kiss that is both fleeting and tender. An answer to a question.

Yes, I love you. Yes, I want to kiss you. I want all of you.

He means to pull away and say all of this out loud but Dean’s hand comes up to grip the back of his neck, bracing them together. He chases Castiel’s lips and succeeds in keeping the contact, dragging the ex-angel’s mouth open as he breathes into it. He touches his tongue to Castiel’s briefly, then slides it in past his lips as Castiel moans lightly at the new sensation. The hand not holding the necklace flies up to clutch at Dean’s shirt, and through it he can feel the hunter’s overwhelming desire. He breaks apart.

“Dean,” Castiel says hoarsely, attempting to catch his breath. The emotions whirling through him are too much, and he places the necklace down on the bed next to them so that he can at least separate his own from the hunter’s.

“Cas,” Dean answers, and somehow the tone of his voice is both patronizing yet endearing. Castiel is sure if he were holding the pendant, he would feel Dean’s fondness seeping through it. His hand twitches toward where it rests on the bed and he wants so badly to feel that but now is not the time. Now is the time to come clean.

“Dean, the necklace…” Castiel starts to say. He takes a deep breath. “It is connected to you. When I hold it, I can feel what you feel.”

“Wh-what?” Dean blurts out. He scoots back from Castiel, and the rejection would have hurt less had it not been for the kiss.

“I realize it is customary to pretend you don’t have those. Feelings,” Castiel says sarcastically, and how he finds the propensity for sass at a time like this is beyond him. Castiel’s lips tug into a frown as he drops his gaze to the good foot of space now between him and Dean on the bed and starts over. “I should apologize. I have been using the necklace for my own selfish purposes. I should not have done so.”

It’s difficult to say what he wishes to say. He really just wants to kiss the hunter again.

“So… you can tell what I’m feeling when you hold that… is that how it works?” Dean asks him slowly, voice thick like he’s struggling through molasses uphill.

Castiel nods. Dean picks up the necklace by hooking a finger through the string tied to the amulet, then takes Castiel’s hand in his and drops it into his palm. He closes Castiel’s fingers around the warm metal of the pendant and takes a breath, looking into Castiel’s eyes.

“What are you feeling now?” Dean asks him.

Castiel focuses on the pendant but keeps his eyes locked on the vibrant green of Dean’s irises. Through the amulet he can feel Dean’s heart thudding against his chest in slow, uneven thumps, like the engine of the Impala turning over on a cold morning. He’s nervous. But there is another feeling underneath it that feels warm and liquid and sunny. Castiel sucks in his breath.

“I would…call it love,” he says, the words falling from his lips in time to the slow beat of Dean’s heart.

The smile Dean gifts him is worth him saying it. Dean leans in again and kisses him, and this time Castiel feels his heart as though it bursts through the amulet and into his own. It is breathless, this feeling, and he gasps into Dean’s mouth, both surprised and aroused.

“Yeah,” the hunter says with a bit of a smirk when he pulls back, “I’d call it that too.”

“Dean,” Castiel breathes, arching up against the hunter impatiently, “Don’t stop.”

Dean chuckles low in his throat and nuzzles into his neck, placing one slow, lingering kiss just under his jawline.

“Never, angel,” he murmurs into Castiel’s skin.

“I am no longer an angel,” Castiel points out. He feels the rumble of his voice grate over his Adam’s apple where Dean’s mouth is now attached and tilts his head back to grant him easier access.

“You will always be my angel,” Dean replies. He pulls back and smirks at Castiel. “Thought you didn’t want me to stop?” he teases.

“I don’t,” Castiel tells him. He grabs Dean by the ears and pulls him in again.

“You are beautiful,” Castiel murmurs when he pulls back for a breath, “Oh, Dean, I love you.”

“Cas,” Dean complains, his breath hitching. His cheeks flush lightly, and from the necklace Castiel can feel the steady burn of embarrassment.

“What? It is the truth,” Castiel insists, leveling the hunter with a look, “And I am not going to curb my words just because you cannot accept it.” He pauses and moves closer to Dean, until their lips are all but touching. “You are beautiful, Dean Winchester, and I love you. Nothing you could ever do or say will ever change that, and I will say it as often as it takes, until the day you believe me.”

Before Dean can argue with him, Castiel pulls Dean in by the front of his Henley and covers his protest with a kiss.

It happens with a wish and a spark—Castiel’s last spark of grace in fact, dredged up from the depths of his human body. He wishes he could show Dean what he is feeling right now, wishes the hunter could fathom the depth of his love and appreciation. Castiel kisses him with all he’s got and knows it still won’t be enough to convince the hunter of how much Castiel feels for him.

His hand comes up to cover the vial of his grace hanging around Dean’s neck—not consciously, but perhaps drawn by that last spark. As soon as Castiel touches it there is a flash of blue light that burns hot like a comet for an instant before abruptly blinking away again.

Castiel and Dean both fall back from the kiss blinded and stunned. Dean is the first to recover.

“Cas?” the hunter calls worriedly, his voice an octave higher than normal, “What the hell was that?”

“I…I don’t know, Dean,” Castiel answers him, and his voice shakes.

Dean reaches up to touch the vial he has around his neck—the vial that holds the sad remnants of Castiel’s grace. Dean starts and Castiel feels a jolt run through the pendant he is holding. He looks up. Dean’s eyes widen considerably as he stares at Cas.

“What…” Dean croaks, still touching the vial around his neck. “What are you feeling right now?” He licks his lips, nervous of the answer.

Castiel tells him and feels the response of Dean’s emotions swirling inside of him—all of them impossible contradictions.

“That’s uhh… yeah. I think… I think I can feel you too,” Dean tells him. There is awe and fear in his voice that reverberates through the necklace.

Castiel sits up a little straighter at that, his interest peaked.

“You can feel me?” he echoes.

Dean nods slowly. He seems freaked out by the realization and touches the vial around his neck as though it might bite his hand off. A zing of stunned apprehension goes through the pendant in Castiel’s hand, wrapped in a numb bubble of wonder.

Castiel doesn’t let it settle. He kisses Dean before it can, pushing all what he is feeling, every ounce of his love through the small amulet in his hand. He feels as Dean gasps into his mouth and pulls away as though he were shocked. He stares at Castiel for a beat, his eyes wide and naked.

Dean doesn’t need to say anything for Castiel to know that he got the message. The ex-angel feels something rising in him from his core, something pure and feather-light that bubbles up from the center of his chest and stretches his lips into an impossible smile, and knows that for once he doesn’t need to say anything either.

“You’re…happy?” Dean asks him, cautious to believe it. There’s a tension of fear from the amulet that suggests the hunter might break should the answer be no, and behind that, happiness simmers tentatively, as though unsure whether it has permission to step into the foreground.

Castiel smiles warmly at his hunter and nods.

“Yes, inexplicably so,” he replies. His smile widens as his elation grows into a heady effect that has him feeling like he’s floating on top of the bed rather than sitting on it. He kisses Dean again, and feels it as the hunter’s disbelief comes apart like chains falling to dust. His heart, now freed, gallops within the insides of his chest like a wild stallion across an open plain.

“I thought… I mean, I never knew…” Dean tries to put what he’s feeling into words, but Castiel shakes his head and pulls him back in. The words aren’t necessary in the moment. Castiel has never been able to put the bond between them into quantifiable terms before, and he certainly isn’t going to succeed at it now. Dean doesn’t seem to mind the interruption. He melts into the kiss with a sigh.

“This is a fortunate outcome,” Castiel says as they pull apart slowly, lowering his eyes bashfully, “Should we need to work separate cases in the future or investigate different leads, or if I need to leave for any reason, we will have a way to communicate while we are apart.”

“We have that now, ‘case you forgot,” Dean tells him with a roll of his eyes, “It’s called a phone?”

Castiel chuckles and shakes his head.

“I meant emotionally,” he clarifies, “For every day we are apart, I will send my love to you through that pendant so that you do not feel so alone.”

“Cas.” Dean’s voice is thick and the emotions from the pendant churn in embarrassment. The hunter is still uncomfortable speaking openly about his feelings, after all.

Castiel ignores his internal struggle and slips the necklace over his head. He has never worn it before now because in his mind it has always been Dean’s. Now he claims it as his own. The pendant comes to rest in the middle of his sternum. Dean reaches out and touches it and Castiel feels the flood of love and affection from the man as he does.

“I suppose this means we ought to tell Sam and Eileen of the new parameters of our relationship,” Castiel says now that Dean seems to be finished freaking out. The hunter snorts at his choice of words and drops his hand. Moments later he is nosing into Castiel’s neck again and murmuring softly against his skin.

“You, ahh, wanna tell me about some of these parameters, angel?”

Castiel hums low in his throat and leans his head back to encourage Dean to continue but the hunter pulls away. He smiles weakly at Castiel, and there is a new edge of apprehension that runs rough like sandpaper through the amulet. Castiel blinks and sits up a little straighter when he realizes Dean is being serious.

“I… well, I assume this means… we’re a couple?” Castiel replies. He holds his breath. It is unnerving to know that Dean is able to feel his fear and uncertainty through the necklace.

“Sure but...I mean, is that what you want?” Dean asks him, “Cuz like, half an hour ago I thought you wanted nothing to do with me and now… I dunno, Cas, I’m still pretty fucking confused here.” The hunter licks his lips. “I mean, I can feel you and yet somehow I still got no idea what’s going on in that fluffy ex-angel brain of yours.”

Castiel snorts at that and rolls his eyes a little. He knows the feeling well.

“Of course it is what I want,” he says. He pins Dean with a look that asks, ‘What else would I want?’

“Yeah, okay,” Dean says, nodding his head, “Feeling you there.”

His lips quirk up on one side for a crooked smile that belies his eagerness. Castiel can feel it, though, through the necklace. He sends his own elation right back, and it’s enough where something between them breaks loose like a branch that holds the entire river behind it—the last defensive wall holding them back from what they truly desire.

With nothing left in question between them, they crash together like a two atoms binding in nuclear fusion—hands grabbing at clothes, lips and tongues and teeth fighting for dominance in a powerful chain-reaction of desire that explodes white-hot for a brief half-life before settling into a new element. The kiss deepens then, becoming tender and gentle like a warm summer’s rain falling on a country road. Dean’s fingers brush up Castiel’s spine and press between his shoulder blades, where his wings once were. A shiver goes through him as Castiel feels the remnants of his grace react from within the vial around Dean’s neck.

“Dean,” Castiel breathes into the hunter’s mouth, arching against him. The pendants around both their necks bump together, the soft chink of the amulet against the glass vial of Castiel’s grace. Pressed up against both their chests like this, the flood of emotions flowing between them makes him almost dizzy and delirious with happiness, arousal—gratitude. With their mouths on one another there is no question, no guilt—only love.

Dean pulls back some long minutes later with a sharp inhale.

“Damn, I don’t know which of us is feeling what right now,” Dean says with a deep flush to his face.

Castiel presses his lips back against Dean’s mouth in a slow and lingering kiss. Love and desire flows through him, pulsing in and out and between them. It crosses in the middle and runs back in on itself, over and over again—like an infinity symbol that gains in light and momentum over time, Castiel thinks—and he loves the image that comes to mind when he thinks about their love being an everlasting loop between their two hearts. He pulls back from the kiss and hums in contentment, his eyes smiling into Dean’s.

“I suspect we are feeling pretty much the same right now,” he says.

Dean considers that for a brief moment and then smiles back at him.

“Yeah,” the hunter says, “Full mood.”

Fin.