#garthboy

“Woah, woah. Who said anything about death?”

The angel’s head rose, his heavy-lidded eye drooped like running ink.

“Doubting, it’s a death sentence. In heaven— I— Without grace–” the sentence was full of starts, that from the get-go were also stops. There was nothing to be said.

The human reached out his hand once again, a pale mimicry of the angel’s healing touch.

“Hey, we can get this patched up. Find someone to zap you back.”

The touch was cooling on the cosmic skin.

“You know it doesn’t work that way.”

The human held tighter.

“We always find a way. Look at me; to hell and back, thanks to you.”

“Well, I was an angel. You’re a man.”

The tension in the human’s body sprang. He recoiled.

Silence.

Calloused flesh press tentatively against a thigh.

Softly “Yeah, and maybe you will be too.”

The angel remembers the human mechanism of breathing. The dawning of creation in the drawing of a breath. Lungs. Diaphragm. Heart. Blood. Roaring in his ears. Pounding.

“Somethings are worth fighting for, you know. You taught me that.” the thickness is spreading to the angel’s throat.

“Well, maybe some things are worth falling for.”

The bed under them shifts and groans.

“What are you fighting for?” the human presses on.

“Heaven”

The human lets out a brittle laugh.

“Heaven, hell. Same circus, different monkeys.”

The angel frowns.

“You still fight.”

The human’s hands were hot now. Seering through the fabric to his skin, burrowing into his meat and muscle.

“Yeah, yeah,”

The angel stood shaking.

“So,” the human repeated, “why fight?” as he rose to the angel’s side. He plants his hand firmly on the angel’s side.

“Humanity, you know, we’re not all bad.”

The room shudders. The rain outside dripping in slow motion.

“I know.” the angel’s breathing stills.

The human’s index finger trails up his neck.

“Human’s though, we have to breathe.” he pressed.

An inhale, and with it, the whispered words of another’s breath against his neck. Sliding into his skin, it says. Castiel. A breath out, deep. Cas.

“Yes, breathing, I know.”

The human nods his head into the curve of the angel’s neck. Lips warm and silk slide against the angel’s, as hands travel down towards the blades of his shoulder.

The world in fast motion. The slick of feathers falling away, supplanted by the wire antenna of a motel television, a pack of cigarettes crushed under wingfall, crumpled burger wrappers and stained napkins, the blare of a horn, the bright, bright blinding headlights, the lips, pressing into his spine.

Each feather falls, accompanied by the vertebra clicking into place. The heart lubing and dubing. And the breath-

“Dean.”

“I know,” the human nods. His hands slipped below fabric, searing into Cas.

“Dean”

“I know, Cas.”