Chapter 8: One Last Thing
In Room 11, Dean lay asleep, tangled in his covers, though his thrashing had long since stopped. Castiel straightened the sheets and blankets—Dean rolling onto his stomach and mumbling, Cas. I dreamed your wings. Freakin’ rivers of rainbows, man. Colors within colors, feathers within feathers. Ad naus-nauseam. When they fluttered, they glittered like rainbow jewels.
“Multidimensional fractal rainbow-light geometry, Dean.”
Huh. Awesome.
Castiel huffed a quiet laugh. “Go back to sleep, Dean.”
He retrieved the pillow Dean’s Hell-nightmare had hurled halfway across the room, and he tucked it beneath Dean’s cheek. For a heartbeat, he let his fingers linger, tracing the warmth of Dean’s skin through the pillowcase.
And then, Castiel stood very, very still.
The stars, the galaxies, the nebulae—the entire Cosmos—revolved rapidly in their orbits. Above, below, all around them. And when the rose-gold constellation of Scutum, the Shield, glowing with the soft fire of constancy, vibrated at the exact same frequency as Castiel’s True Form, then Castiel kissed his first two fingers and—
He couldn’t say the words aloud. But he could dare this—
—he pressed them lightly to Dean’s forehead.
And for the first time that night, his hand stayed steady.
“Sleep well, Dean.”
My dearest, my darling.
He slipped from the room.
And the door, as it closed behind him, made no sound at all.
*