Chapter 5: Old Wounds
His runic chanting must’ve blown the backup generators too. Not only did the ruby emergency lights still skulk along the walls, casting lurid shadows, but the indoor temperature had plummeted eight degrees—the concrete bunker groaning in icy-white tones on this wintry Lebanon night. Dean gave no sign he noticed. He unbuttoned his flannel overshirt and reached for another beer, finished with the five Castiel had pushed toward him. Sweat, alcohol-induced, glazed his rubied cheeks.
And the last glimmer of blue had faded from his eyes. He and Dean were entirely separate. Again. No wondrous Oneness. No ecstasy of WingSong lifting their hearts and spirits aloft. No warm brush of tattered feathers against soul-light, no harmonic bond spiraling them beyond Time.
Castiel’s fingers curled into the blanket at his waist. Tighter. Tighter. As if that could wring from him his unspoken words. I love you. From my core to my outermost Self, from one raggedy wingtip to the other. With all my Grace, with all my Song. Can that not be enough?
“Go on,” Dean said. “How did you end up—?” He scrubbed at his eyes, as if ridding them of the last trace of Heaven. “Wait. Hold that thought. I got the munchies.” He pushed up from his seat, swaying—
Leaving. Again. No!
Castiel’s wings arched in the ether, as if to fling him on an interception course. So he could—
What? Drag Dean’s sorry soul back to his chair?
“Something salty?” Castiel said, his voice quavering. “Beer nuts?”
With waves of his hand, he summoned a can from a kitchen cupboard and floated it onto the table in front of Dean. Beer nuts. Not numinous Bliss, but beer nuts. Not Timelessness, but the crush of air and gravity—and an echo of coral-and-lavender GraceSong calling back from the ether, fainter, fainter…and dwindling away like the final note of a psalm.
Dean lifted his eyebrows. “Ah, c’mon, Cas. You reading my mind again?”
About Timelessness? Was Dean, like he, thinking about GraceSong? “Um—what?”
“Nuts.”
“Nuts ?” Castiel tilted his head and squinted. “Oh. Beer nuts. Mind-reading. Like in—”
In the barn, their first meeting: You don’t think you deserved to be saved.
“I’ve learned to respect your mental privacy, Dean. But this time—not possible. Your brain is blinking ‘beer nuts, beer nuts’ like a motel marquee.” In hot pink, behind his forehead.
“My brain is…? For real ? Never mind, don’t wanna know.”
Dean plopped back down, popped a handful of nuts into his mouth, spoke and chewed. “Grippin’ and raisin’. You. How.”
Right. No talk of GraceSong. Safe topics. Battles, rescue.
“I—I don’t know. I wasn’t supposed to… Destiny?”
“Bullcrap.” The word spat through the air like a gunshot. “Destiny’s bullcrap. You know that. I was destined to be Michael’s yes-man. Sam, Lucifer’s. Mortal combat. End of the frickin’ world. Angels had our whole damn destiny carved in stone—and those bastards tortured us, used family against us, trying to force us to live it. And it didn’t work.”
“And I was destined to sit on the sidelines, while you ushered in ‘Paradise.’ And it didn’t work.”
Castiel smoothed his hands, his vessel’s hands, over the table’s oak grain, his gaze tracing its waves and color variations. “But perhaps destiny is woven deeper into the texture of the Cosmos than all of Heaven’s plans.”
“Yeah, right.”
Castiel’s hands stilled.
Even then, Dean, before I gripped you, your soul called to me. Bright, swirling tones—like a newborn spiral galaxy flung into my Grace. White-hot at your core, flaring crimson and flame-red, wreathed in trailing wisps of gold, meadow green, and amethyst—that same amethyst I still hear in your voice when you speak gently to me. Your tones resonated with my WingSong—as if you’d struck a tuning fork. I couldn’t understand why, or what that meant, but—
“All I know is, after Anna’s failed attempt to rescue you, she signaled a retreat—yet another failed sortie, yet another order to return to Heaven. But—”
“Nah, ya gotta lemme guess. You”—Dean circled his finger in the air ’round and ’round, and then stabbed it at him, Dean’s arm weaving from side to side, as if Castiel were a moving target—“Castiel, the Angel of the Lord who never learned to color between the lines, refused.”
Color between the lines? What lines? And why should angels color between them? And was Dean drunk already, what with all these exaggerated gestures? After only eight beers?
Castiel pushed these puzzles out of his head.
“Father had commanded we save you—His bidding superseded all.”
“Back when you believed in all that God crap.”
“Given that moment’s great import, I’m not sorry I believed in all that ‘God crap.’”
Castiel selected a beer nut, touched it to his tongue. Ugh. Molecules of mustiness. Worse than Sam’s smoothies. He flicked it to the floor with the rest of the debris. “We—my unit and I—swerved in formation to fly back with Anna. But”—I couldn’t abandon your resonating soul to even one more Hell-second of suffering—“a plan of attack flashed into my mind: unorthodox; desperate, really. And I, um, ‘stomped on my brakes.’ I called out on angel radio and put it to the lesser angels under Anna’s command—and to any others who would follow me—that we make a suicide run.”
“Suicide?” Dean took a quick gulp of beer. “And the Few and the Proud disobeyed their superiors and let you play kamikaze with them?”
Few and Proud? Kamikaze? Castiel searched Metatron’s download. Kamikaze: Japanese pilots plunging to certain death.
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Seven thousand.”
Dean choked on a nut. “Seven thousand ? You got seven thousand to follow you. To rescue me ?”
“I…” Castiel rubbed his brow with his thumb and forefinger. “I can’t tell you how many times in my long life I—”
He straightened up and restored the military stiffness to his shoulders—as if facing yet another angelic court-martial. “Got busted down in rank. For insubordination. For improvisation. For—”
Oh.
A coloring book. For human children. Teaching them to follow rules?
“—not coloring between the lines?”
Dean didn’t reply. He just frowned and mouthed the words seven thousand, over and over.
“Likely more times than I even know,” Castiel said, “given Naomi’s gloat that she’d repeatedly ‘reset’ me—”
Her whirring drill; the thin, yellow scream of his Grace as she drove the reprogramming into him; all the terror, all the despair, his flight feathers shedding from his wings in a useless bid for escape—
Not now! He slammed the mental file cabinet marked “Naomi” closed and locked these images inside it.
“B-but I kept working my way back up. Many angels knew of my reputation. Some, I suspect, silently approved. Nearly all were as frustrated as I at our failure to free you. These seven thousand—approving of me or not—trusted me to get the job done.”
“Your first command?”
“No. But by far the largest to that date.”
And the most significant, ever. A mission not given but seized. A sudden rush of brilliant golden Grace warmed his insides, bursting outwards in melodious chords and unfolding in a rainbow of colors.
“Goddamn.”
Something zapped across Dean’s eyes. A look wary and sharp. The same look he’d worn when Castiel first flared out his wings of storm: Wind rattling. Thunder crashing. Lightning splitting the air, painting the air electric blue and black. And in the lightning’s glare—
WingShadows. Perfect, immense WingShadows, thrown against the walls. Spanning the barn’s width. Looming up to the ceiling, far above their small human forms.
What had Dean made of him, back then? A creature who smote and saved at God’s Will?
No. More simply: a monster he needed to kill—but didn’t know how.
“It’s only me, Dean.” Castiel said.
Dean shifted in his seat and huffed a laugh. “Yeah. Cas, the friendly angel.” He downed more beer and wiped away a foam moustache with his shirtsleeve. “It’s just— You give the word, and all these angels… I’m so used to you being my friend, I sometimes forget how powerful a warrior you are.”
Castiel glanced toward Heaven, away. “Never that. And these days, even basic angelic abilities… Take telekinesis—cans of nuts are about my limit.”
Dean offered him the can. He shook his head.
“Still super-strong, Cas. Still super-smitey. And I don’t know what we’d do without your healing powers.”
“You’d heal more slowly.”
“And much more painfully. Or not at all.”
The casual compliment prickled across Castiel’s skin. Pleasurable; torturous.
Dean again rocked back in his chair and balanced it on two legs. “So, I’m trying to picture this. Seven thousand angels dive-bombing Hell—in meatsuits?”
“In our True Forms. Vessels wouldn’t survive Hell’s conflagrations. We angels fought as packets of Light and Intelligence, and the demons”—Castiel’s mouth twisted on the word, as if it tasted as foul as the beer nuts—“as streaks of Smoke and Malice.”
“That can’t be right. When I was in Hell, I saw—”
“—what your limited humanness enabled you to see. Not True Forms.”
Fragments of the Hell Rescue tumbled through Castiel’s thoughts: Dean, in the distance, Alistair’s torture apprentice, slicing a demon knife through a soul. Dean, nearer now, shrieking as Castiel hurtled toward him, terror pouring off him in acid-green spikes—unable to make human sense of a purely ethereal entity beyond his ken.
And then had come the “grippin’ and raisin’.”
Dean poked his tongue into his cheek. “You telling me you’re really a little ray of sunshine?”
“More like…” Could he describe himself in a way Dean might want to see? Might want to Sing with, as they had in GraceSong? And this time, this time, give himself to it fully, heart and soul?
“…a winged column of Light. I can also appear much as the ancient Prophet of God, Ezekiel, described.” With a finger, Castiel traced a rudimentary gyroscope on the table. “‘A wheel inside a wheel, sparkling like diamonds.’ Only, more like, a wheel inside a wheel inside a wheel, ad infinitum, spinning in all the infinite directions and dimensions—”
“—ad nauseam.”
“Um, what?”
“All that gyrating? Sounds nauseating.”
“Oh.” His Grace flickered, dulled.
Then: “Oh. I get it”—a tidal wave of amusement swept through him—“you’re making wordplay! Clever.”
“Yup, clever me—Sammy would be proud. Go on. You’re nauseously gyrating and…?”
“Blinding like the sun.”
“And earsplitting like an air raid siren.” Dean gave his head a brisk shake, like a cat shaking out a burr lodged in its ear.
Maybe that description hadn’t done the trick.
“And the Wisps of Smoke?” Dean said.
“Gnarled, necrotic human souls. Vestiges of their decaying faces lay superimposed on their vaporous essences. And their elongated mouths are stretched wide in silent, eternal screams. Much like that figure in the Edvard Munch painting—Munch must’ve visited there.”
“Jesus.” Dean paled, his golden-red freckles stark against his skin. Beer number nine rushed to his lips. He gulped it down. “I thought maybe I’d hallucinated ’em—I got glimpses of the demons’ True Forms before that Hellhound dragged me off.”
“Dean, I could—” Castiel reached out his first two fingers. To heal. To absorb Dean’s torment. To…to touch, to open a conduit of Grace between them again. Just for a moment. “I could take away—”
“No!” Dean smacked Castiel’s hand aside. “My nightmares make me, me!”
Absurd. Inarguable. Unmistakably Dean. Castiel rubbed his hand, the sting traveling to his core. And then out again. Out through all those wheels inside wheels. And into the longing surrounding his True Form like an impenetrable nimbus.
Dean grabbed for number ten and rocked his chair to and fro on its back legs. “So you, Castiel the Brave, led the Charge of the Light Brigade—”
“With Uriel’s and Balthazar’s help.”
Castiel chose two of Dean’s empties—Uriel and Balthazar. He positioned them on the table about a foot apart and glided them outwards along precise, deadly hyperbolic curves.
“Their units drew off the demonic main forces to the metaphoric left and right. I alone slipped through the middle—”
Oh, for his wings!
His luminous wings, patterned in fierce black and white bars like a hawk’s!
To flash. Swerve. Dart. Curve—
And Sing with the full splendor of WingSong!
As he had during the battle for Dean!
Castiel curled his fingers like talons. “And I gripped you. I had you.”
He had Dean: His GraceLight blazing. Wings flaring. Dean’s soul safe in his Center, Dean’s bright, swirling tones resonating with his Song—their harmonics strengthening him.
“I—” He snatched up another bottle and banged it down onto the table, like he was sealing Dean’s soul inside his body.
“I rescued The Righteous Man.”
Dean abruptly stopped rocking. The front legs of his chair thudded to the floor.
“And I sped away, Dean.” Castiel lifted his chin. “Faster than any angel has ever flown. If Father had ‘clocked me,’ I would’ve set a record, never yet beat.”
Dean frowned at his bottle. “And the other angels?”
Half-torn images of combat and chaos roiled across Castiel’s mind:
Snakes of Smoke twisting, coiling, screaming through Hell—fifty, a hundred, a thousand—swarming a single Warrior of God—
Angels dodging, and then banding together, swooping in. The Light of their combined Grace smiting—
Putrid smells, broken Songs, burning wings—
Angels falling—
Angels falling—
Angels falling—
Grace extinguished.
Castiel’s vessel dragged in a shuddering breath. He watched it from above, from somewhere near the ceiling. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong in Heaven.
Too many memories. Too many Songs silenced.
Glug. Dean, downing more beer.
Dean.
Dean.
A faint resonance of crimson and sun-white rose toward him, tugged at his Song—
Reeled him in.
Castiel slammed back into his vessel. He straightened slowly, his insides whirling, images of those lost—Bariel, Mitniel, Sabiel, Bahram, so many, many more—tangling in the fragile mesh of vessel and Grace. His breaths came in ragged little gasps, every heartbeat a blow.
But—
But Dean—Dean was here. And he, he was here.
Here.
“It was the most complex extraction we’d ever undertaken,” he said, wrestling his vessel’s voice back under his control, “the stakes the highest possible for both sides. The battle—ruinous, savage, each side vying to shatter the other’s will—raged for Hell-years. Once I’d gripped you, the remaining troops closed up behind me, smiting any and all attackers, till I had you safe.”
“Great. Had me safe.” Dean’s gaze stayed fixed on his bottle’s label, his thumbnail scrubbing at it. “So, how many?”
Too drunk to remember? “I told you, seven thousand.”
“I mean, how many ended up committing suicide for me?”
Dean’s voice was soft, muted—steel wrapped in velvet.
No. No! A wild, violet-white warning cry blared high in Castiel’s Grace. How had he missed this? The thud of Dean’s chair. The shift in Dean’s tone. At his words: The Righteous Man.
A phrase he’d meant to honor Dean. He should’ve known better.
The Righteous Man: the term angels used to denote the vessel, the tool, of Michael. Too late to restate that. Too late to go back and gloss over other details he should’ve. Details Dean would, as he always did, latch onto and take responsibility for, even though he could in no way be held accountable. Just as he had with Anna only minutes ago—shouldering guilt for every fall, every backdraft, piling them on to his nightmares.
Castiel infused his words with calming silver tones. “Dean, they were volunteers. Warriors. Kamikaze pilots.”
Gone. Gone.
“How many, Cas? And don’t lie !”
Castiel rushed out, “Nearly all but Balthazar and Uriel,” and the words scattered around him like shrapnel. Maybe by saying it fast, Dean wouldn’t fully register—
Or maybe it’d hit harder. Castiel shoved himself back, trying to force his vessel’s molecules through his chair, to vanish from the room—
Dean bolted to his feet. The spell bowl and chair clattered to the floor. “All seven thousand! You kidding me? After Alistair damn near killed me, in that fuckin’ hospital, you told me angels laid siege, fought, not that—”
“You didn’t need to know. What good would it have done for you—”
“Seven thousand ! What made you think—any of you—that I was worth— Oh, right.”
Dean shook back his shoulders, a soldier at attention, a parody of Castiel’s own posture. “God commanded it. And you mindless soldier ants marched lockstep, eager to burn for his latest pet project—even though by the time you reached me, you knew I’d already fuckin’ broke the first seal!”
Castiel’s wings snapped out to their full extent, every feather bristling.
“Don’t.”
He swept out of his seat, got nose-to-nose with Dean, letting the blanket fall to the ground. “Don’t you dare dishonor their sacrifice by mocking them.” Not when he still carried their deaths in his wings, not when the last tones of their Songs were entwined in his Grace. “Those angels believed you’d liberate all of Creation from the tyranny of Hell.”
Angels falling, angels falling, angels falling—
—their Songs rippling with the gold and purple tones of triumph and loss: Dean Winchester is saved.
“You all believed lies!”
“Doesn’t matter. You were worth saving. Obviously. You thwarted—”
“Whose commands were you really following, Cas?”
The whirring drill; the thin, yellow scream of his Grace—
“Doesn’t matter. You were worth—”
Dean stalked away, paced around the debris, a wildcat caged by invisible bars. Three quick steps— Pivot. Three quick steps— Pivot. “You ever find out? Zachariah’s? Naomi’s? Some other unnamed higher-up with a hard-on for the bloodiest heavyweight prizefight of all, Michael ‘v’ Lucifer? And all of your Heaven cheering them on! My world going up in flames!”
Dean stopped. Whirled on him. “If I hadn’t poisoned you with my ‘soul touch,’ you yourself would’ve followed through with the Apocalypse. You wouldn’t have cared.”
What? What ? Castiel’s mind scrambled and tripped, trying to piece together Dean’s thought processes. First, Dean’s distressed over angel deaths, and now he’s accusing Castiel of—
A tremor passed through his Grace.
Even now, after all our Songs, you still believe your soul only poisoned me? That your ‘poison’ rewrote my purpose? That I had no say in this?
Castiel made fists, held them rigid at his sides. “You’re wrong. I told you back then: I’m not a hammer. I always believed humanity was my Father’s most beautiful creation. I would’ve mourned the loss of so much life. I would’ve mourned your loss.”
Dean fixed cougar eyes on him. “You would’ve gotten over it.”
“Because I’m nothing but a friggin’ angel? Dean, you are the most stubborn man—”
No. No. Don’t go there. Don’t escalate things. Dean’s intoxicated, not thinking straight. Stick to the factual. Castiel forced his fists to relax.
“I know my nature, Dean. It would’ve taken me time, maybe a long time. But I would’ve found a way to rebuild your world.”
Castiel smoothed his feathers and folded in his wings. “And returned you and Sam to it.”
“Sure. And while taking a whack at that, what new horrors would you’ve unleashed?”
Castiel’s hand clutched his belly. A gut punch.
He deserved it.
He faltered backwards and slumped into his chair. He said nothing. What was there to say? This was the crux of it. This was why Dean couldn’t love him—he’d made too many terrible mistakes. Out of his blinding pride.
Believing that, since God had resurrected him after Sam thwarted the Apocalypse, he must be meant to rescue Sam from the Cage. Believing that those few earthly moments Sam shared the Cage with Lucifer and Michael—years, for Sam—must’ve temporarily warped Sam. And so not realizing—for nearly an entire year!—he’d brought Sam back soulless.
Believing that…
So many more.
But he couldn’t lose Dean’s friendship, he just couldn’t. He’d be lost—and alone—in the way that mattered most.
Dean gathered his jacket and the warded box. Walked away.
Castiel pressed his eyes closed.
Dean’s footsteps slapped away, slapped away toward the exit…
“Dean,” Castiel breathed. A plea. An appeal. A prayer.
The footsteps stopped.
“Dean, I’m sorry. All I ever do is fail. And say my useless sorries.”
Silence.
The bunker’s air pumps wheezed. A branch tap-tapped against an upper window. Blood swish-whooshed through Dean’s heart.
Castiel lowered his chin to his chest and crumpled inward, like the collapsed core of a once-luminous star.
Time slowed. Not dissolved, just…slowed.
Each moment taking an eternity to pass, one into the other, as if the giant pendulum of the Cosmos could barely drag itself forward.
And then Time stopped.
A still point. A breath held by the Universe.
And then…
And then in that timeless moment, in that forever of suspension, in that point of stillness where the silence between them threatened to harden into a cold and final wall…
Something shifted.
Something wafted and eddied in the air…
A prayer answered.
A breath shared between them.
Soft as a feather stir.
Intangible as the mysteries of Dean’s soul.
“Frickin’ hell,” Dean muttered. “What am I doing?”
His footsteps returned.
“Cas, I… Jeez, now you’re shaking even more.”
Dean settled a hand on Castiel’s nape. Castiel kept his eyes pressed closed and leaned back against the touch—lightly, only lightly. For one quiet moment, he could almost believe he was the human and Dean the angel, offering a touch of healing Grace.
Almost believe they could release their burdens. Shuck off gravity. Float into the sky.
Dean’s hand drifted along the top of his shoulders. “I make mistakes, too, Cas—too, too many to count. That ‘Soulless Sam’ year? I totally blew it. So wrapped up in saving him, I didn’t listen to you. Didn’t try to understand what you were up against in the War in Heaven. Didn’t refuse to lose you, the way I always refuse to give up on Sam. You’d earned that. Without your ‘Hey, Assbutt,’”—and Dean’s air quotes rang out like tiny bells tinkling in a warm breeze—“without your flipping off Zachariah and the rest of them mooks, we would’ve been screwed. Time after time, Cas, you’ve done your choosing us over Heaven—and we haven’t thanked you enough.”
“That year I certainly wasn’t worthy of your thanks—”
Dean’s grip on his shoulder tightened. “Did you hear me? I wasn’t your friend, I wasn’t your brother—and, hell, man, truth is, if I’d been in your shoes—uh, wings, whatever—I honestly don’t know what I would’ve done different. Sure, I’d have said my usual, ‘We’ll find another way’—”
Dean nabbed another beer, gestured toward the War Room, at the World Map lying in splinters on the floor, victim of the runes. “And then watched the world turn into one giant shish kebab. No idea how to stop friggin’ Ninja Turtle Raphael, no idea how to stop Lucifer and Michael from firing up the grill. You stopped it, Cas. Singlehandedly.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Hey, it’s not like Sam and me make the best calls, either. Me killing Death to save Sam? Sam turning around and letting loose the universe-swallowing Darkness to save me ? That tops you swallowing Leviathans to save Earth.”
“If only I hadn’t spit them back out. If only I hadn’t broken Sam’s wall. If only—”
“Enough, Cas.”
Dean snagged another beer, waggled it at Castiel. Castiel took it.
“If only,” Dean said. “If only, if only, if only. You, me, Sam—we could spend our lives kicking our asses clear to Kingdom Come with our ‘if onlies.’ Let’s not. Let’s screw up, try to learn, and move on. After all, you, me, Sam, Mom—we’re the best monster-fighting team the world has ever seen. We make each other stronger. Can’t lose that, ever.”
Something lit in Castiel. A low flame rekindled. Like the first flame of sunrise piercing the dark. “You mean that, Dean?”
“We’re good, man. Sorry I dredged up all that crap and flung it in your face. It’s just…”
A sigh, a grayish-blue sound, frayed around the edges, as if worn down by his unspoken thoughts, scraped out Dean’s throat and settled around the floor like a fog.
“Too many revelations in too short a time, tonight, buddy.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be. I tell you I want the truth, you give me the truth, and I turn around and kick you in the teeth. I’m apologizing to you. For…for everything.”
The glow of the flame spread through his Grace—a soft, warm, reddish-golden light. “You feel things deeply, Dean. Much more deeply than angels. I find this confusing at times, but mostly—”
I love you for it.
“Yeah, well, don’t sell yourself short. I seem to recall one time you felt deeply.” Dean rubbed his jaw, wincing. “Like, enraged. You kicked my ass good after finding out I was going to say yes to Michael.”
Castiel pasted on a frown, but the blue angel-light behind his eyes sparkled. “You deserved it.”
“I did. Yep, I did.”
Their chuckles rippled like silk, iridescing in the reddish-golden sunrise.
“Cas, I…” Dean’s fingertips traced along the top edge of Castiel’s trench coat collar. “I don’t know why I… I can’t go two seconds without getting angry at someone. Can’t enjoy a friend without saying crap and wrecking things. Like I—”
Dean’s hand stilled.
“Like I, I want to drive everyone away. Because…”
The word hung in the air. Bleeding. Raw.
Castiel turned in his chair. Dean’s other hand rose to clutch his forehead.
Reach up, take that hand, press a kiss to its rough-skinned palm, calloused by too many years of wielding blades and guns—
Castiel’s Grace surged toward the contact. He held his vessel still and crushed the impulse.
“Because,” Castiel said, his voice gentle, a light rain upon a garden in the red-gold dawn, “you figure they’re gonna leave you anyway. Like your father. Like Bobby.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Dean’s fingers riffled Castiel’s hair.
Dean riffled his hair.
Confusion, that same old confusion that arose whenever Dean seemed to violate his personal space rule, swirled over Castiel, a dust devil whirling up all those memories. Wasn’t hair-riffling an extremely intimate gesture? Could he ever dare perform that gesture on Dean?
No.
Like the Purgatorial beard-stroking, like Dean’s other touches, the gesture was probably only appropriate to a special moment, a special place, a special interpersonal dynamic. And he, Castiel the Defectively Humanized Angel, would never learn the rules. Or even if he did, they’d change that very moment—like constellations blinking out the instant he tried to chart them.
“We good, buddy? We moving on?”
“I’ll, I’ll drink to that. That’s the expression, right?”
“It is indeed, my friend. You need to get that one down pat.”
Dean latched onto another beer, and they clinked bottles. Castiel imitated Dean and quaffed his down in several large swallows. In unison, they clonked their empties onto the table, the sharp, orange sounds ricocheting off the walls.
Castiel pushed more beers Dean’s way.