oh look a thing
“You sure you’re okay?” said Sam, gently, for the fifth time.
It was justified, after all—Castiel’s hands were shaking badly enough that Sam had to reach out, and guide the bread knife for him.
“I am,” said Castiel, and meant it. Lucifer was gone; and if his body was having difficult adjusting, it was no more than was to be expected. His mind was free, and contented. “I am… better than I have been in many years, Sam.”
“Okay, well, good.” Sam plonked the raspberry jam in front of Castiel, and smirked. “So, Dean said he’s leaving the case and driving straight back home. Should be here in about six hours.”
“Yes,” said Castiel, and his hand stilled on the knife. “Sam… yes, he told me. He prayed to me many times a day, when Lucifer was inside me.”
“Mm, pro tip,” said Sam, settling into the chair opposite him. “Don’t put it like that around Dean.”
“Sam,” Castiel said stubbornly, “he confessed things to me that he has never said before. He said—”
“That he’s been in love with you for years?” said Sam softly, with a smile in his eyes. “That he’s been hating himself all that time because he thinks he isn’t worthy of you, and because he thinks he’s betraying me? That I told him two years ago that he should go for it, that you’d be good for him—hell, that we should go for it and that I’d be all for it, if he wanted it that way–and that he shut me right out and has refused to talk about it ever since, except for hints and a few vague allusions over the last year like he thought he was being so subtle, considering it? Dean’s not quick when it comes to these things.”
“… oh,” said Castiel. “Well, no. Not all of that. But the most important parts,” he added, consideringly, “yes. I think he told me all that mattered.”
“Okay,” said Sam, leaning back in his chair, still smiling, but with a hint of nervousness in the way his hands rubbed back and forth along his denim-clad thighs, back and forth. “Okay, then. And you..?”
Castiel looked him over thoughtfully, while he folded his bread in half, and fitted it in his mouth, and chewed, and swallowed. Sam’s eyes were wide, and gentle, and beautiful; and there was so much more behind them than Castiel could ever understand.
Castiel smiled, and looked down at his plate. There was a smear of pinkish red around one rim, and Castiel mopped it up with the end of his crust.
“You, Sam Winchester,” he said, “deserve better than any human being I have ever known.”
“You still believe that you are the abomination they told you you were, don’t you?” said Castiel. “Something was slipped into your blood, like a virus, and years later it was cleansed away, but you have clung to that idea as if it meant something, anything at all, about who you actually are.”
“Cas,” said Sam, and shook his head.
“Don’t,” said Castiel, and stood up, leaning carefully on the edge of the table, laying his hand over Sam’s cheek. “I won’t have it, Sam. You are the best and brightest man I know; and you will hear me.”
Sam looked up, with wondering, glistening eyes.
“Huh,” he said, little more than a breath; and Castiel leaned down, and kissed him.
By the time Dean reached home, the circle was complete.
And Castiel already knew what it felt like to be rimmed.
