Welcome you beautiful bastard!

Everything’s slowing down. Even the pain. Even the panic.

Sam’s voice joins in, urgent and scared. You try to move, to reach for either of them, but your body is numb.

This is it, you realize.

You’re dying.

You can feel your soul detaching, unmoored, weightless. You see the ceiling of the abandoned church above you, a shattered stained glass window letting in streaks of moonlight. Dust floats in the air like snow.

You wonder if you’ll haunt this place.

Then..

“Y/N.”

Castiel’s voice cuts through the fog like a blade of light.

You see his face above you. Pale. Determined. Blue eyes shining with something desperate.

“I’m sorry,” he says. And you barely have time to register the way his hand presses against your forehead before the world disappears.

It’s not blackness.

It’s light.

It burns.

And then you’re gone.

The light is endless. Not warm. Not cold. It is simply… everything. A breathless, searing presence that wraps around every nerve in your body and pulls you into a place that has no shape, no sound, just him. Castiel isn’t speaking. He doesn’t need to. His presence vibrates through you like a stormcloud threatening to split. He is in your veins, your lungs, your bones, coiled inside your soul like he belongs there. But it doesn’t feel like possession. Not exactly. Not yet. You think it should hurt. It doesn’t.

What hurts is the memory of dying. The fear. The knowledge that this, whatever this is, was the only choice left.

You open your eyes and find darkness.

Your lungs seize in a gasp, like you’ve surfaced from deep water, and you lurch upright before your body remembers how. Air claws at your throat. Sweat beads along your temple. The couch beneath you groans as you move. You know this place, the Men of Letters bunker, but it feels foreign, unfamiliar. Distant. Like seeing it through someone else’s eyes.

Then you realize you have.

You know things you shouldn’t. You feel things you shouldn’t. The weight of thousands of years clings to your ribs. It’s a whisper in the back of your skull, memories like feathers brushing your mind, falling, falling, falling from Heaven.

Castiel’s fall.

You close your eyes hard and squeeze your fists against your temples, like pressure might silence the thoughts that don’t belong to you. But one of them flares brighter than the rest: your name, spoken like a vow. Y/N. His voice in your chest, not your ears. You gasp again, this time softer, and look around.

Dean is in the war room just down the hallway, speaking to Sam in that harsh, too-loud voice he only uses when he’s trying to keep himself from falling apart. You can’t make out the words. You don’t care.

Because he’s there.

Castiel is sitting in the corner chair. Trench coat abandoned on the table beside him, sleeves rolled, hands folded between his knees. He looks like a man waiting for judgment. Like he already knows the verdict.

His eyes meet yours.

And you don’t breathe for three whole seconds.

You see the lines under his eyes first. The tension in his jaw. The faint shimmer of remorse in every breath he doesn’t take.

“You’re awake,” he says.

The sound of his voice, real and quiet and his, shatters something inside you. You feel it crack down your spine like thunder.

“What did you do?” you ask.

His expression doesn’t change, but you see the flicker of pain in his eyes. “You were dying.”

“You possessed me,” you whisper, and even as you say it, it doesn’t taste right. Too clean. Too simple. It doesn’t account for the after.

“There was no time,” he says. “I..yes. I entered your vessel. It was the only way to heal you before…before you slipped away.”

Your body trembles once, subtle and deep in the bones. You grip the edge of the couch like it might anchor you. “And now?”

Castiel stands. His shoulders are taut, unreadable. “I left.”

“Did you?”

The words escape before you mean to say them, but you know they’re true. He didn’t fully leave. You feel him. Not like another person riding shotgun in your head. It’s subtler than that. He’s… in the seams. In the places that cracked open when you almost died. He left a part of himself in you, and now your soul remembers him like a scent that never fades.

His eyes drop to the floor. “Not all of me,” he admits.

You breathe in deep, and it rattles in your chest. “What does that mean?”

“I didn’t take all my grace with me when I left.”

You blink. “Your grace? But I thought…after Metatron, you don’t-”

“This grace is borrowed. Stolen.” He looks up, and now there’s fire in his expression. Anger, grief, shame. “I thought I could control it. I couldn’t. When I pulled you back, part of it… stayed. In you. I tried to remove it, but your body, your soul, it held onto it.”

You wrap your arms around yourself, chilled. “So I’m… what? Part angel now?”

“No.” He says it quickly. “You’re still human. Entirely. But some of what I am, what I was…is inside you. It will fade. Eventually.”

Your head spins. Not from fear. From weight. From the knowledge that something celestial is knotted inside your bones and you didn’t ask for it. Didn’t consent to it.

You sit with that.

You sit with him.

And then you ask, softly, “What did you see?”

Castiel’s breath hitches. He turns away from you for the first time, as if the answer is too heavy to speak facing forward. “I saw everything. Every memory. Every scar. Every time you prayed and no one answered. I saw the first time you held a weapon. The first time you wanted to die. The first time you chose to live again. I saw your mother’s hands. Your first nightmare. I saw the day you met Dean. And the way you looked at him like he was your last chance.”

Your throat is tight. You hadn’t expected him to answer. Not like this.

“And then I saw the way you looked at me.”

You don’t speak.

He doesn’t ask forgiveness. He just lowers his head, and for the first time, Castiel looks small. Like he’s trying to fold himself into something less monstrous. Less divine.

“I didn’t mean to take it all,” he says. “But I couldn’t bear to let you go.”

The silence that follows is vast.

“I still dream,” you whisper. “Even now. But they’re not mine.”

He nods, slowly. “No. They’re mine.”

You step forward. “I saw angels falling. I felt the wind. The light. The fire. You were afraid.”

He doesn’t deny it. “I still am.”

There’s a pause so thick you could choke on it. Then you say, “You said you left me. But you didn’t. Did you?”

His answer is not in words. It’s in the way he looks at you like he’s been carrying your name in his mouth for centuries. In the way his hand trembles before he reaches up to his own chest, as if checking to see whether you are still inside him, too.

And maybe you are.

Maybe that’s the cost of this kind of salvation.

You don’t ask him to leave. You don’t ask for distance. Instead, you step closer. He doesn’t move. His gaze follows you like a tether.

When you stop in front of him, you whisper, “Next time, ask.”

He nods once. “I will.”

But you both know that if it happens again, if it’s your life on the line, he won’t.

Because angels don’t pray. They act.

And Castiel has already decided that your soul is worth damning himself for.

You feel his grace flicker inside your chest like an aftershock.

And for the first time since you woke up, you feel safe.

You hate that.

You hate that you want to feel him again. That the part of him inside you makes your own thoughts feel less alone. That your soul, cracked open and bared to Heaven, has started to ache when he’s not near.

But it’s the truth.

And even now, you think he knows it.

Because his hand twitches like he almost wants to reach for yours.

He doesn’t.

Neither do you.

Not yet.

He doesn’t touch you.

But he thinks about it.

Not in the crude way humans often mean it. Not with desperation or lust or anything so small. His longing is older. Purer, in a way that terrifies him.

Because Castiel has touched the face of God and felt nothing. He’s stood at the edge of time and watched stars blink out one by one. He’s borne witness to miracles and catastrophes, creation and decay, and never once has he ached for any of it. But when he looks at you, fragile, bruised, still holding pieces of him inside you like shards of forgotten light, he feels that ache everywhere.

Your soul is louder now. He can feel it even when you leave the room. Like a hum beneath his ribs. The part of him he left inside you didn’t just heal your body. It bound him to you. Not completely. Not magically. But intrinsically. Like recognition.

Like belonging.

You don't understand it yet. You barely look at him without suspicion lingering behind your eyes. You still feel the wrongness of what he did, even if it saved you. And he knows that. He carries that guilt with the same reverence he once carried a sword.

But you haven’t pushed him away.

Not entirely.

And that, somehow, is worse.

Because you speak to him softly now. Ask him questions you wouldn’t before. You stand a little too close when you’re angry, and much too close when you’re not. You press your palm to your chest when the grace flickers inside you like static, and your eyes find him every time it does. Like you know he’s still there, watching. Waiting.

He dreams now, dreams of you. Not stolen memories. Not echoes of your pain. His dreams. And they are quiet, always. Simple. You, sitting on the stairs. You, laughing at Dean with your chin tipped to the side. You, asleep beneath a blanket with your fingers curled against your throat like a child. You don’t speak in these dreams. You don’t need to. The silence between you is its own language, and Castiel understands it perfectly.

There’s a moment, in one dream, where your hand brushes his. No intent. No urgency. Just contact. Skin to skin.

He wakes up shaking.

It isn’t desire, exactly, not the way Dean would call it. It’s yearning. A need so total it eclipses everything else. He wants to protect you, yes. But he also wants to understand you. To memorize the curve of your mouth when you frown. To trace the way your soul flares when you lie. To know every thought you’ve ever had, not to own them, but to honor them. To kneel at the altar of your existence and swear he would never deserve to touch it again.

But he already has.

He’s been inside your soul.

He knows the shape of your hope and the weight of your grief. He knows which memories you bury and which you cling to. He knows what it felt like the first time you held someone as they died, and the sound you made when you realized you couldn’t stop it.

He carries those memories like prayers.

He shouldn’t want more.

But he does.

He wants you.

Not just to protect. Not just to serve. Not just because he made a choice in a desperate moment.

He wants to be known. By you.

Wants you to look at him, not with pity, not with fear, not even with gratitude, but with that softness he’s seen you give Sam when he’s overwhelmed, or Dean when he’s pretending not to cry. That human gentleness. That silent permission to stay.

But Castiel is not gentle. Not really. He is wrath in a borrowed body. He is a soldier who forgot how to stop marching. His hands were made for killing. His voice was forged in Heaven. He is not built for softness. Not for love.

And still…

He finds himself watching you when you sleep.

Just for a second. When he’s certain you won’t wake.

The grace inside you hums differently when you dream. It mirrors your heartbeat. It calls to him. And sometimes, just sometimes, you whisper his name in your sleep.

Not loudly. Not pleading. Just… soft. Like it’s the safest word you know.

Castiel doesn’t breathe when that happens.

He doesn’t move.

Because if he does, if he breaks that fragile moment, he’ll ruin it. Ruin you. And he’s already taken so much.

So he stays still. He listens to the sound of your breath. He lets the longing rise and crest and fall inside him like a wave.

And when he can no longer bear the ache, he slips quietly from the room.

Not because he doesn’t want to stay.

But because he wants it too much.

And Castiel knows, when angels want something, they destroy it.

So he waits. Not for forgiveness. Not for permission.

He waits for you.

Because if you ever reach for him again, truly reach, he won’t have the strength to say no.

And in the quiet, shadowed corners of the bunker, with your name etched into every corner of his grace, Castiel lets himself hope for the one thing he’s never dared to ask for:

That one day, you might want him back.

It begins with your jacket.

You leave it draped across the back of a chair in the library, absent-minded. A small, careless thing. You’d come in from the rain, exhausted, soaked to the skin after a salt-and-burn gone sideways. Castiel hadn’t gone with you, Dean hadn’t asked, and Castiel hadn’t volunteered. He knew better than to impose himself now.

But he watched the door until you came through it.

You didn’t see him. Or maybe you did and said nothing.

Your voice was tired when you told Sam you were going to shower. Just your voice, no bitterness. No fight. And that worried him more than anything.

Because exhaustion, for you, was rare. Even battered, bloodied, you were always present. Always fighting. But now, your voice had nothing left in it. Like something inside you had finally bent too far.

So you left the jacket, and Castiel found himself beside it.

He tells himself he shouldn’t touch it.

He touches it.

The fabric is damp, heavy with water and smoke and the faint scent of salt. But beneath it, beneath all that, is you. And something inside him stutters. It’s not carnal. It’s not human. But it’s real.

Because in that moment, all he can think is I carried you once.

Not in the physical sense. In the soul-deep, eternal sense. He held your life between his hands and pressed you back into being. He breathed borrowed grace into your dying lungs. He knows you.

He wants to un-know you. For your sake. For his.

But he can’t.

He sits in the chair and holds the jacket in his lap for a second too long.

And then he hears your footsteps in the hall.

He doesn’t move in time.

You walk in, towel-drying your hair with one hand, wearing a loose t-shirt and sweatpants that don’t belong to you, probably Dean’s, by the size. Your eyes land on him, and they narrow, not unkind but surprised.

And then they drop to your jacket.

To his hand still resting on the shoulder of it.

Your lips part.

Castiel doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t make excuses. He simply meets your gaze and waits for you to speak.

But you don’t.

Instead, after a long breath, you step further into the room and sit across from him.

You lean forward, elbows on your knees, studying him the way he studies galaxies.

And then you say, “Do you ever wish you hadn’t done it?”

It takes him a moment to answer. “No.”

Your throat bobs. “Even though it changed everything?”

“It saved you.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

His voice is lower now. “I would rather carry the weight of what I did than live in a world where you don’t exist.”

Something in you stumbles at that. Your face softens. And the room falls quiet.

Castiel wonders if you can hear it, the thunder of his longing.

Because it’s louder now. Less contained.

You’ve been different these last few weeks. Not open, not exactly, but unguarded. Less careful. You watch him longer. You ask more. You let the silences stretch out like bridges, instead of breaking them.

You’re still angry. Still haunted. But you choose to be near him.

And that, more than anything, undoes him.

Because he can feel the moment approaching. The moment when all the tension he’s buried beneath borrowed grace and dying light will fracture. It’s close. So close. He sees it every time your eyes linger on his mouth instead of his hands. He hears it in the way you say his name now, not reverent, not distant. Human. Soft.

He almost breaks that night.

Because you fall asleep in the chair across from him.

Head tilted. Breathing slowly. And when you shift in your sleep, the grace inside you pulses, reaching for him like a hand in the dark.

And Castiel, who has resisted war and wrath and temptation unimaginable, leans forward.

He doesn’t touch you. Not yet.

But he kneels in front of the chair, lowering himself as if in prayer, and watches the shape of your breath. His hand hovers above your knee, inches from contact.

His mouth opens. No sound.

Because what could he possibly say?

I am no longer an angel of the Lord. I am something smaller now. But everything I am, I left inside you.

He shouldn’t speak.

But he does.

Just barely.

“I think I was made for this.”

You stir, just slightly. Not awake. Not quite.

His voice is almost nothing. “Not Heaven. Not orders. Not grace. Just this. You.”

And then, your head shifts. Your eyes flutter.

He vanishes before they open.

Not out of fear.

Out of devastation.

Because if you had looked at him in that moment, with anything other than complete understanding, he would have fallen all over again.

And this time, he wouldn’t survive it.

He tries to stay away after that.

For three days, he doesn’t enter a room if you’re in it. Doesn’t speak unless spoken to. Avoids the sound of your voice like it might burn through what little self-control he still possesses. He patrols in the early hours. Answers prayers without comment. Watches the sky from the roof of the bunker as though the stars will give him permission to feel what he already does.

They don’t.

They never have.

On the fourth day, Dean corners him in the hallway with a sideways glance and a half-hearted scoff. “You and Y/N have a fight or something?”

Castiel doesn’t answer.

Dean shrugs. “Could’ve fooled me. She’s been quiet. Weirdly quiet. And that’s saying something.”

Castiel almost tells him. Almost says I’ve made her a vessel and I ache when she breathes. But he doesn’t. He just nods once and disappears.

By sunset, he's in the war room, pretending to read a lore book he’s already memorized, when your voice hits him from behind.

“You don’t have to avoid me.”

It’s not angry. Not accusing. Just honest.

And it hurts.

He closes the book. Doesn’t turn around.

“I wasn’t avoiding you,” he lies, gently.

You step closer. He hears it, the soft sound of your socked feet on the stone floor. You stop a pace behind him.

“So what are you doing?”

Castiel lifts his eyes to the book. Blank pages. Meaningless ink. “Trying not to want something I can’t have.”

The silence after that is so long it echoes.

When you finally speak, your voice is low. “You’re talking about me.”

He turns then.

And the way he looks at you, it could crack glass.

“Yes.”

You exhale like you’ve been holding your breath for hours. “Why can’t you?”

“Because I touched your soul without permission. Because I altered you. Because I made you carry a part of me you never asked for. And because wanting you on top of that would make me cruel.”

Your eyes are wet. Not crying. But raw.

“I don’t think you’re cruel.”

“You should.”

He steps forward now, slowly, like he’s approaching something sacred. His eyes never leave yours.

“I was not made for this,” he says softly. “I was not made to want. I was made to obey. And I have disobeyed Heaven, God, even myself, but nothing has undone me like you.”

Your hands tremble.

Castiel sees it.

He does nothing.

Because if he moves, if he breathes, if he reaches, it’s over. He will not survive it.

But then you close the distance for him.

Not fully. Just one step. Enough.

“Do you think I don’t feel it too?” you ask.

His heart, what’s left of it, shatters quietly.

“Every time you leave a room,” you whisper, “I feel it. That silence. Like something holy just left. You think I don’t hear it when the grace inside me wakes up at the sound of your voice?”

He flinches.

You keep going.

“I was angry. I was. But I’m not anymore. Because whatever you gave me that day…it didn’t just bring me back. It opened something. I can feel you even when you’re gone.”

He says your name like it’s the last word he’ll ever be allowed to speak. “You don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I think I do.”

“No.” He steps back, breath harsh. “If I break this…if I let this happen, you won’t come out of it the same. You’re human. You feel. You love. And I consume. I will burn you without meaning to.”

You reach for him.

And this time, he doesn’t stop you.

Your hand, small and trembling, brushes the side of his face. His eyes fall closed like the weight of your touch is too much. Like grace itself is bending under it.

“I’m not afraid of you, Castiel.”

He opens his eyes.

There is a storm in them now.

Not rage. Not wrath.

Longing.

Absolute.

And he shatters.

He takes your wrist gently, reverently, and draws your hand from his face to his chest, pressing it over his heart.

“I don’t have a soul,” he says. “Not in the way you do. But if I did…this is where it would live. And you’d be inside it.”

You can’t breathe.

Neither can he.

And for a long, perfect moment, nothing moves.

Then, with the softest voice you’ve ever heard him use:

“Tell me to stop.”

You don’t.

You whisper, “Don’t you dare.”

And that’s it.

That’s the breaking point.

He kisses you like a vow. Not desperate. Not greedy. Just full. Of all the things he’s never said. Of the light he buried in you. Of the war he lost when he realized he couldn’t stop loving you.

He moves slowly, like gravity is pulling him toward you and all he’s doing is giving in. His eyes fall to your mouth and then back to your eyes again, asking you one final time without words.

You answer by leaning closer.

When his lips touch yours, it isn’t rushed. It isn’t sharp or wild or hungry.

It’s devotion.

It’s the first time he’s touched something with the full intent of keeping it.

He kisses you like you might vanish. Like you’re made of glass and scripture. His hand comes up to cup the side of your jaw, his thumb brushing lightly beneath your cheekbone, and the contact sends a pulse of heat through both of you, grace and soul, meeting at the seam.

You inhale sharply against his mouth. Your fingers curl into his coat, holding on, not to pull him closer, not to demand more, but because your body finally has permission to feel him.

And Castiel feels it too.

Your heartbeat, steady but straining. Your breath, faltering like a prayer half-said. The way your lips part under his, like you’re offering him something you’ve never given anyone else, and you don’t even realize it.

He deepens the kiss, but only barely.

Because this isn’t about possession.

This is remembrance.

You, alive. You, whole. You, choosing him, even after all of it.

And when you finally part, the space between your mouths is so thin it hums.

He leans his forehead to yours.

Your breath is still trembling. So is his.

And in that moment, Castiel, angel, rebel, vessel of grace, knows peace for the first time in his existence.

Not in Heaven.

Not in order.

But here.