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“Hey, man, you okay?”
He blinks; his vision clears after a couple of seconds, and he realizes he is still where he was the night before; huddled in the doorway of a shop front, his coat pulled over him to keep warm. He must look a sorry sight – disheveled, dirty; lost.
The stranger who spoke is leaning down towards him, and in his outstretched hand is a ten dollar bill. “Get yourself some breakfast,” he says gently, and Castiel realizes he has been taken for a vagrant; and then he realizes, further, that this stranger isn’t necessarily wrong in his assumption.
Guiltily, he takes the money, but he doesn’t use it for food, however much his stomach complains.
Castiel is going home.
He takes a bus as far as the next town over, the art of trading money for things still half-eluding him; he works on instinct, taking cues from the look people give him when he says something wrong; he says please, and thank you, perhaps more often than necessary. For all these people know, he’s just another stranger; a rumpled businessman down on his luck; a taxman or a lawyer, turfed out of his office into the world. Their smiles are polite, and hesitant; Castiel hasn’t encountered a mirror in several days, and supposes that after all this duress, he must look at least slightly… disheveled. He knows his tie hangs askew, and tries, in vain, to fix it; his hands slip and fumble on the material in a way they never had to, before.
Lights are still tumbling from the sky, days later.
Castiel finds himself by a roadside, thumb outstretched in the way he once saw in a film, late at night. No one stops for him, and he doesn’t really blame them; he fits, quite neatly, the archetypal stranger who haunts the highways – he looks dangerous in the dusk, lit only by the headlights of passing vehicles, and his clothes suggest wanderer, not safe. Besides, these days, he knows few people pick up hitchhikers, no matter their creed; male or female, young or old.
He stands by the roadside, nonetheless, in hope. His thumb points towards his brothers and sisters, their flames burning tiny, miles and miles away.
Occasionally he will see one, and kiss his fingers, and hold them outstretched for them, to the sky; he wishes them safe travel. (He hopes they will forgive him).
Eventually, someone stops; a talkative man called Timothy, a rosary strung around his car’s rear-view mirror, the seats smelling faintly of cigarettes. Timothy, Castiel ascertains quite quickly, is a Christian, is middle-aged, and lives alone. He carries with him the air of the befuddled – the unfortunate. Castiel thinks, wryly, that perhaps he stopped because he sensed a kindred spirit; but this is not the case. In reality, he stopped because he thought it was the right thing to do.
“Where’re you headed?” the man asks him, as soon as they start off down the highway. Castiel looks at him; his profile is squashed with age, his nose long and half-hooked. He is growing a beard, but it is growing in unevenly, longer in some patches than others. There are wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, like there are at Castiel’s.
“Kansas.” Castiel tells him without hesitation, and Timothy whistles.
“You’ve got a ways to go, then, yet,” he says. Castiel nods. Timothy looks at him, and smiles, adding, “Any reason why Kansas? If you don’t mind me asking.”
For a moment, Castiel hesitates. The world around them is dark; the headlights of the car carry only enough light to show him the first few feet in front of the car, and in a way, that is the hugest difference for Castiel, so far, between being Angel and Fallen. Before, he knew the machinations of things – or at least, tried to know them. Now, he lives to a degree of immediacy which sometimes overwhelms him. He doesn’t know what’s coming next, if he’ll even reach Kansas, vulnerable as he now is. He has no money, and his hunger is so strong that it wavers from painful to nauseating with each hour.
But he knows he has to go home, even if he doesn’t know what waits for him there; and home, in Castiel’s newest reality, is (he hopes) now in a bunker, hidden in the depths of the sunflower state.
“I’ve got family there,” he replies, voice coming out softer than he expects it to. He thinks, briefly, of Dean.
Timothy drops him off two towns over. Castiel thanks him profusely, gets out, and walks around the car – and then hears the man’s voice call him back.
“You got anywhere to sleep, tonight?” he asks. Castiel shakes his head. Timothy frowns. “I don’t live too far from here, friend. I have a couch you could rest on.”
The offer is tempting, certainly; Timothy is an older man, short, not very threatening; he’s a kind man, too, from what Castiel can garner, and he’s given Castiel no reason to fear him. But the relative weakness of his form frightens him, and though he doesn’t think this stranger could (or would) hurt him, he doesn’t want to invite the possibility. He shakes his head. “Sorry. I don’t think that’s wise.”
Timothy nods, sadly, and leans over to his glovebox. He fumbles in it for a moment – raises his head to say, “Hold on one second.” And then delves back in again, emerging moments later with something clutched in his fist. He holds his hand out to Castiel, out of the window.
“Be careful,” Timothy says, cryptically, and Castiel looks at his closed fist, perplexed. Timothy moves his hand – Castiel takes the cue, and holds out his palm, open. Into it, to his surprise, the man drops a handful of bills, and some coins.
“Thank you,” Castiel murmurs in disbelief, curling his hand around the money.
Timothy smiles at him, sadly. “We’ve all been where you are, friend," he says softly.
Castiel thinks, for a moment, that the man's not really speaking to him at all. Timothy lifts his now-empty hand to Castiel’s, closing it briefly around his fist. “Stay safe. Get home,” he says, nodding emphatically.
Castiel, blindsided by his kindness, guilty for his suspicion, nods dumbly. “I will,” he assures him, and means it.
The money Timothy gave him isn’t a lot, but it is more than enough; he buys a burger and a drink from a fast food chain and eats it as he walks; then, on a whim, he stops at one of the town’s convenience stores and buys the smallest, cheapest, simplest cellphone available.
He sits outside the store on a low wall that surrounds the parking lot, a bottle of water at his side, and the change from Timothy’s money rattling around in his inner pocket. He turns the phone in his cupped hands.
He knows Dean’s number. One of them, anyway. Knows it by heart, however few phone conversations they’ve actually carried out. Without really thinking about it, he types it in, and, not without a fumble, uses his thumbs to press the buttons; saves it. The phone is tiny in his hands; the screen, light blue, even smaller. The number on the screen looks almost oddly, starkly black.
He breathes in deeply, opens up a blank message, and types, Dean.
He stops; deletes the word. He stares at the screen a little longer.
The hunger in his stomach has been quelled, so this is something different. He feels as if he’s being chewed up from the inside, as if acid is churning in his gut. He swallows, and tries again.
Hi, Dean.
But that’s too familiar, too close for him, the syllables awkward and alien. He deletes it. Next, he tries, It’s Castiel. Just that, but again the words feel wrong; everything feels wrong, and out here, exposed to the elements, his coat no longer enough to keep him warm, he wants to say so many things and also never wants to speak again.
Dean, he writes, again, It’s Cas.
I’m coming home.
He deletes the message, stands up, and prepares to start walking again.
In Colorado, on a bus, sweating, Castiel pulls the phone from his pocket again – he pulls off his coat, folds it, and puts it on the seat next to him. Already, his clothes are showing signs of wear and tear; the pockets of the coat are loose-threaded from being on the road, from having his hands shoved roughly into them; his shirt is filthy, missing buttons; his pants are scuffed and ragged at the knees, from where he has tripped, and fallen, Grace no longer balancing him.
He smells, too; he hasn’t washed, hasn’t cleaned his clothes, and he’s well aware of the filth that clings to him, making the other passengers eye him with distaste. His shirt is yellowed with sweat, and in the small of his back, it sticks to him. The inner rim of his collar is greyed.
On the phone, he writes, It’s hot. The land is so flat out here.
He types, I hope you’re both alright.
Then, Being human is much dirtier than I imagined.
That’s not technically true; he knew how filthy humanity could be; knew it of Dean and Sam, after all; but he’d never considered how it might feel.
It feels, mostly, stifling, and wet. Sweat pools in the backs of his knees, against his pants; in the creases of this thighs, under his arms, at the back of his neck. It is everywhere, humanity, and he stinks with it, literally now rather than figuratively. He finds himself dreaming of bathing, though he’s never done it before.
He leans his head back, and pushes the phone back into his coat, beside him, without sending the text.
He doesn’t know what reception will greet him, when he finally reaches Kansas. If they’ll let him in; if they’ll even want him.
Slipping unwillingly into sleep, Castiel turns his head in, towards his own shoulder, and breathes hot against his own skin. It floors him that he has his own skin now, inches and inches of it, and in a way he never considered, it fascinates him.
Against the window, the hot sunlight bleeds against the glass, onto his crown. He eyes the horizon from lowered lashes.
It streams past, flat, and endless: America, stretching out to the sun, blue-skied and golden-grassed and harsh as sunshine, and this, now; not the universe, not the air above, not time itself; this tiny corner of the universe, this flat, proud, shamelessly young land; this is his home.
He takes a breath, sharp, and for a moment he doesn’t smell the stink of himself; he inhales sunlight, inhales the deep water of the sky.
Out of the window of the buses he takes, he sees snatches of the world.
He finds that he likes travelling like this, though it is lonely. To stave off solitude, he writes messages into his phone. It’s an old thing, so its battery is hardy, but he worries that with his constant use, it will peter out by the time he reaches his destination.
A hundred and twenty miles away, he writes, There is a dog running alongside the bus. With his hand on the window, he traces its passage along the road. He deletes the message.
Seventy-five miles away, he writes, Dusk is perhaps my favorite time of day. Light fades from the horizon like a slow wash of ink blooming on paper; the world turns indigo without Castiel’s notice, though he watches the process with wide, attentive eyes. The message, again, remains unsent.
Fifty miles away, he writes, I’m so sorry. He deletes it. He writes, There is a man on this bus, snoring loudly. I can’t sleep. Again, it is erased.
Twenty miles away, snug in the bosom of Kansas, he writes, I miss you. And sits with the phone clenched in his palm, sweating a wet sheen onto its plastic back, hands going numb with the tightness that his fingers grasp it. He stares at the message, instead of out the window; his thumb flirts with the ‘send’ button, but does not press down.
Ten miles away, the bus stops, and Castiel gets out.
He’s so close to the bunker, now, that he can walk the rest of the way. He knows where it is; the route is ingrained in his mind, as definite as the memory of the first and only morning he spent there; waking in Dean’s bed with Dean snoring in his chair beside him, where he’d slumped the night before.
He doesn’t remember what he felt, exactly, but he remembers light, remembers that morning-time sensation, heat bleeding through the cracks of everything, a warm pressure settled over his ribs.
In a way, it’s what he’s chasing. He stops in the gas station bathroom that the bus stop is close to, and splashes cold water on his face, though it does little for him; his eyes are ringed with dark circles, rimmed red and overtired. His hair is a greasy wreck; his facial hair is growing out again, unkempt with his days on the road, no razor. It’s soft beneath his fingers when he scrubs at his face with his hands.
He smells, and he is dirty; he looks the picture of the veritable vagrant now, and he thinks, with a bitter smile at himself, that he’d probably be offered more than ten dollars to solve his current state.
He prods at his face; his face. Runs a hand through his filthy hair, pushes experimentally at the flesh around his jaw, pulling his mouth into a strange facsimile of a smile. He’s not presentable – about as far from it as it is possible to get – and the fact makes him nervous, somehow; makes his gut squirm, to arrive on the Winchester’s doorstep, to see Dean, not looking his best.
But there’s no one around, now, to give him anything; nothing that will improve his current state, and vanity will surely be something he can indulge in later. His money is gone, his coat is filthy, and he hangs it, and his suit jacket, over his arm as he walks along the side of the road, the sky darkening once again. His shoes are wearing out from use, the soles starting to splay like tongues at the toe.
It has been three days since his brothers and sisters started falling from the sky, and they are still falling, now, in dribs and drabs, like slow rain. When each plummets, he salutes; he has long since given up counting.
When he finally arrives, he stands in front of the bunker doorway. The familiar black car is parked outside, and though he can no longer feel the memories inside her, feel her soul, she’s a small comfort.
Finally, he is where he wants to be, and he is terrified. His hands push into his pockets, searching for stability, finding nothing; a penny, a bus ticket. Fluff.
He digs in his coat, instead, and finds the cellphone; the millions of unsent messages, their varying levels of banality.
Breathing in deep, standing inches from the doorway, he types out another one.
Hello, Dean.
If only to keep with tradition.
He stands there, then, imagining the text message’s progress through intangible space; the transfer from his handset to Dean’s own. He imagines the ten letters scrambling, reforming, scrambling again, winging their way down the stairs of the bunker, down the hallways, twisting through doorways, turning around pillars.
He imagines Dean, bed-tousled, turning in his sleep. His mouth half open – his eyes blinking in the dimness as the phone at his bedside jumps to life.
In all his imaginings, Castiel almost forgets himself – when his phone rings, he is so surprised that he drops it to the ground.
He drops himself to his knees after it; scrabbles at the gravel to pull it into his hand again, finds it dirty and scratched, still ringing its strange, tinny little version of Fur Elise.
He holds it in his hand for a second, a millisecond more, and then answers it. Draws it to his ear, and takes in halting, shaky breaths.
“Cas?” The voice on the other end is stricken with disbelief. “Cas, is that – who is this?” The voice goes from hopeful to distrustful to terrified, in the space of seconds. Castiel almost laughs. He’s missed him, this, so much.
“Dean,” he croaks, and realizes how long it’s been since he’s spoken out loud. “I’m—” he laughs. “I’m outside,” he finishes, quietly, and Dean hangs up the phone.
It’s silence then, too long, and Castiel’s pessimistic heart seizes up. He wonders if Dean is simply going to leave him here, until he goes away of his own volition; or if the door will open and he’ll surge out, and knock Castiel to the ground in his ire.
He could, now; he’s probably stronger than Castiel. The playing field, far from leveled, has been tipped the other way.
The door does open, too slowly by far, and the sliver of light that floods onto Castiel widens too, too slowly; his heart pounds relentlessly in his chest.
And then Dean stands there in the doorway, not sleep-ruffled at all. He looks frantic; his feet are bare. There’s a knife in his hand, but when he sees Castiel, it goes limp between his fingers.
“Where’s Sam?” Castiel asks him, the question coming up without his permission; Dean stares.
“Asleep,” he says, quickly, and takes the entirety of Castiel in with his eyes. He steps forward. “You look like shit.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Dean swallows, as if he doesn’t know what to say. “Are you—?” He makes a motion with his hands; lifts one, and brings it to rest against the other palm, as if miming an extended, silent clap.
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
“I thought so, too.” But he’s smiling, and it’s inappropriate, and Dean obviously thinks so as well, because he looks utterly perplexed.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I’m not.”
“Yeah, I—“ he steps forward, abortively, then steps back again. His hand is tight, white-knuckled, on the edge of the door. “I can see that, Cas.”
