FIC: Pray the Timeless Days (SPN, Castiel/Amelia, Castiel/Dean)
Pray the Timeless Days
by Isos Arei
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: Het (Castiel/Amelia), Slash (Castiel/Dean)
Rating: R
Spoilers: for Season 4
Notes: A tangent to the story And No Sacred Place
Summary: Of course she can tell that he's not Jimmy.
***
When the Apocalypse starts, Amelia Novak doesn't notice.
To be fair, just a few people in the world were aware beforehand that it was even coming, and only Dean and Sam Winchester among them are there to mark the exact moment when Lucifer rises. And then again, when he does, not even those few people can tell, at first, if there's any real difference between the hell on earth that was, and the hell on earth that is. Amelia, therefore, can hardly be singled out. She is very busy, after all, with a daughter to rear, a mortgage to pay, more books to write because the royalties she receives were fine when they had Jimmy's salary to rely on too, but now will not be enough for Claire to go to college. Anyway, what qualitative difference does it make to Amelia Novak whether Lucifer walks free, when her husband has already sacrificed himself twice in the cause?
But when Lucifer rises, the powers of heaven wane -- and some weeks later the angel Castiel shows up on Amelia's doorstep asking for her help.
***
Of course she can tell that he's not Jimmy. She knows her own husband. Jimmy is the one who smiled at her every day for a week across five rows of long tables in the library, making sure she really smiled back before asking that Saturday if he could take the seat next to hers. It's Jimmy she studied with long into the evenings, Jimmy whom she bounced ideas off for her writing class, Jimmy who ordered them six-alarm buffalo wings and sixty-four-ounce sodas and popped in VCR tapes of La Femme Nikita when she got tired of memorizing things for exams. In the quiet hours of the night, it was Jimmy who made love to her, doing so in the same way he did everything else -- assuredly and without hesitation, but with such consideration for her every need, her every unspoken want, that she wondered if it were possible that they had always known each other, except she'd only forgotten somehow. If Jimmy had not asked her to marry him, she would have asked him to marry her.
Castiel is not Jimmy.
But when she looks in on them -- Castiel, almost still as he sits at Dean's bedside, but his fingers knit and unknit in the same way Jimmy's used to whenever he was worried -- it is very hard not to see her husband again for a fleeting, painful moment. She wishes then for many such moments.
Castiel turns his head and she does not retreat fast enough into the darkness of the hallway. She is wondering what to say to excuse herself, but he has moved so quickly that he is already in the doorway. "Mrs. Novak, we are very grateful for your help," he says. His eyes are not like Jimmy's.
"Yes, of-- of course," she is saying to him. "Please, you should call me Amelia."
Castiel nods and says, "Amelia," but it is not better, only painful in a different way.
***
The last and first time Amelia saw Castiel, he was telling Dean Winchester in no uncertain terms that he served the will of heaven, and was beholden to no man. But this brush-off was a monologue compared to what he'd said to her, which was exactly nothing, and she'd been too shell-shocked from her own ordeal, and Claire's, to stop him from leaving.
When he turns up at the front door, Amelia cannot decide what surprises her more: to see Castiel after she was so sure their paths would never cross again; or that he's supporting Dean's weight against him, distress so clear on his face that he looks in shock.
"I drove all night, Mrs. Novak," he says, and the agitation is in his voice as well. "Can you take us in?"
Dean opens his eyes just then, slurs out "Sorry to darken your doorstep" with an attempt at a smile, and passes out again.
Amelia looks from the bruises on Dean's face to the beaten-up Buick in her driveway. Without hesitation she turns to Castiel and says, "Let me help you with him."
***
Even though his body feels like a lead weight to her, it's easier getting Dean into the downstairs guest bedroom than Amelia thinks. While she can see Castiel exerting the effort, he's much stronger than human, and he bears Dean onto the single bed without the jarring movements, the fits and starts, that she imagines would normally be involved in situating an unconscious full-grown man into such a small, discrete space.
"Do you have a first aid kit?" he asks, and she nods even though, if Dean's face alone is anything to go by, they should be heading to the hospital right now. "And scissors," he says.
Castiel is bent low, his mouth by Dean's ear, when she returns with these items, and she catches "--really need you to stop moving, Dean." He doesn't look up, at first, but he thanks her. After a moment he also says, "A metal basin filled with cold water, and a towel, please."
When she comes back with a clean wash-cloth and the largest stainless steel mixing bowl she has, careful not to slosh the water around, Castiel has cut open Dean's t-shirt completely down the front and is starting on one of the sleeves. All across Dean's chest and abdomen there is a horrible brand, symbols written thick in raised and bruised flesh.
"Oh my god," says Amelia, and some water splashes out of the bowl before she can set it down on the night-stand.
Castiel looks up at her then. His expression is inscrutable but his voice is uneven. "This sigil should never be drawn on human flesh," he says, as if this explains it all.
Amelia watches as Castiel finishes with the other sleeve and sets the scissors down. He opens the first aid kit, extracting a bottle of salts and the vial of the tincture of iodine. These he empties into the water in the bowl, speaking as he does so words that sound much older than the snippets of ancient Greek she and Jimmy once learned together in Classics. Impossibly old words, and wild, but contained by a voice that is again steady and deep. Even though the room is quite comfortable, the fine hairs on her arms stick straight up.
In the middle of these preparations, Dean wakes up again, and with a great effort manages to look down at himself. "Well, that's gonna leave a scar," he says, wincing as he touches shaky fingers to his chest.
Castiel holds Dean's wrist still when he says, "I will not permit it to," but it is his gaze that is holding Dean's attention. When Dean relaxes, Castiel lets go, then dips his hand into the bowl. "This will hurt," he says to Dean.
"Is that all?" says Dean, cavalier, but when the water tips onto his abdomen from Castiel's cupped hand, his eyes go white and he arches up in pain. When his body slumps back down, it is because he is once more unconscious.
Castiel dips his hand into the bowl several more times and methodically wets the raised skin until Dean's entire torso is slick with water and the sheets beneath his body are damp with the runoff. When Castiel sits back, Amelia notices another mark, on Dean's shoulder -- not more of the garish symbols, but faded and in the clear shape of a hand. "Here too," she says to Castiel.
He looks up at her as if she's just hit him across the face -- his eyes are so hard -- but after he regards her for a long, sharp moment, he says merely, "That is not the same," before turning his attention back to Dean.
As Amelia leaves the room, Castiel is drying the sweat on Dean's forehead with the wash-cloth.
***
Amelia is glad that Claire is at summer camp, even though her heart still clutches a little bit every time she thinks about it. She doesn't know that Castiel, in keeping with his promise to Jimmy, has put a protection on the Novak home that truly makes it safe as houses, or as close to safe as can be in these times. Nor does Amelia know that Claire, having been a vessel whom Castiel both chose and left willingly, is as safe as she can be in these times, wherever she might go.
What Amelia knows is that she cannot refuse aid either to the angel who inhabits the body of her husband or to a man who risked his own life to save her family; but there's no need at all for Claire to be caught up in this, or to be in the house if something should go wrong again. The other thing she knows now is exactly why Jimmy didn't much feel like saying grace anymore when he came back to her for that one day.
***
"Will he be okay?" she asks Castiel. They are sitting at the little kitchen table, the picture of domesticity -- Amelia in her cotton sleepwear, her hair in a loose ponytail, a mug of hot tea in her hands -- except it's four in the morning, there's a beaten and unconscious man in the other room, the angel Castiel is hardly her husband, and the mug of tea is just so she has something to do with her hands instead of reflexively shielding her eyes, or maybe reaching across to smooth the lick of hair that would always stick up on Jimmy's head in the morning.
"I've done what I can for Dean," says Castiel. "If it's not enough, then he will not recover."
Amelia puts her hand on Castiel's. It's just her instinct -- because even if his presence in the kitchen is like the sun somehow contained in an earthen vase, she sees that his pain is all too human. "Tell me," she says, curling her fingers under his. "Tell me what happened."
He is startled at first, and she thinks he will pull away or become angry, but his eyes seem so weary just before he closes them for a moment. And then he looks at her steadily, and he tells her, in that gravel voice, of what has passed since the last and first time they crossed paths.
How the Morningstar rose again, and how the Host faltered. How he risked all and lost much to aid the brothers Winchester (how he would do it again). How they each continued in the war, a fight at a time, one good life saved at a time, the tide of the Apocalypse held back one drop at a time. How this put an ever-widening target on all their backs, until Sam Winchester, flung from a rooftop, literally broke his back, and how his brother was despondent when they had to leave him in Sioux Falls to recuperate as best he could.
And finally, how enemies of the Host, not having the ability to separate Castiel from his vessel, made the sigil that would strip him of his ability to appear anywhere at will; and how, to ensure this aim would be achieved, they raised the sigil on the person of Dean Winchester.
"That this could cost Dean his life was just an unexpected benefit," Castiel says.
It's unmistakable, the way he looks at Amelia. He wants her forgiveness, without even realizing that he's asking. She knows because he has the exact same expression on his face that Jimmy did the time when they went to Atlantic City and Jimmy knocked on their hotel room in the middle of the night to confirm that he'd lost his mind and blown seven hundred dollars that they didn't have at the slot machines. But she can't set it right this time, can't just glare at Jimmy as she yanks on her jeans and a jacket, and make it all back plus three hundred more at the dice table. The whole thing is absurd and upside-down -- sigils and traps, demons and angels in Pontiac, hell, and heaven, and war.
Amelia becomes exceptionally aware of two things: that she's holding Castiel's hand, and that Castiel loves the man in the other room the way she loves Jimmy.
She can't begin to determine whom the ache in her heart is for, but just at that instant she has no absolution to give to Castiel.
From the guest room issues the sound of Dean's voice, shouting "Sam! Sammy-- no!" and Amelia is already halfway out of her chair, but Castiel says, "No, he's dreaming and won't be woken."
The moment from before is gone. Castiel draws into himself and lapses back into the silence that he doesn't seem to think is odd or that could possibly be making Amelia uncomfortable. She gets up to heat her cold tea, not that she wants it, but it's better than sitting there staring at him.
Amelia putters around the kitchen as long as possible without producing any actual food. At last she can't take the quiet anymore, and says, "Are you sure I can't get you something to eat?"
"I don't require food," says Castiel.
And then she does stare at him. Somehow she can accept that Dean Winchester has lately spent forty years in hell, but she can't reconcile Castiel's appearance with the words that have come out of his mouth. Because Jimmy liked food a lot. It didn't matter whether he prepared it himself or it was made for him, whether it was a greasy bacon cheeseburger or organic bell peppers in three different colors at $4.99 a half-pound. If it tasted good, he wanted some, and usually seconds.
Just as she realizes (her face is warm) that Castiel is staring back, he says to her, "Perhaps a sandwich would be nice." His eyes narrow as he thinks. "Perhaps-- 'cold cuts' if you have them."
Amelia smiles at him. "Great, I can do that." And she goes a little overboard: multi-grain bread, a bit of the mustard with the seeds in it, two slices of tomato, some portobello mushrooms, baby spinach leaves.... Here she pauses, distracted by whether angels can eat smoked ham (and she realizes that she's not focusing on the bigger picture, but it's good not to focus on the bigger picture because that way lies madness), but smoked ham is what she has, and that's what she piles onto the spinach leaves, followed by some lettuce, a slice of pepperjack cheese, and the upper slice of bread. By habit she divides the sandwich into two triangles and places them on a large plate. This she sets in front of Castiel.
"Thank you," he says. "It's... very tall."
It's not something Jimmy would say at all but she can't help laughing a little as if it were, and tells Castiel he's welcome. She doesn't ask, but goes back to the refrigerator to pour a glass of milk for him. And after another thought -- clearly she's not going back to sleep this morning -- she also fixes herself a bowl of cereal.
So they're seated together again, she and the angel Castiel. He doesn't comment particularly about the ham but offers a stoic, "This is a good sandwich." The milk he drinks without seeming to come to a specific decision about it first, which Amelia finds strangely comforting. For a while she is content to sit there, eating the bowl of frosted wheat, even wondering whether the paper's been delivered because she usually likes to read it when she's having breakfast. Better to enjoy the semblance of normality, and the (beyond) odd but welcome company she's keeping, than to go where she knows she has to go.
She lasts almost all the way through Castiel's sandwich (in fairness he's not a slow eater, but her frame of reference is a little skewed), and she's certainly finished every shred of wheat in the cereal bowl and even tried the mug of tea refilling tactic, but as the first hints of sunrise make the curtains lighter and spill into the kitchen around their edges, Amelia can't hold out anymore.
"How exactly does it work?" she asks Castiel. "Is he-- Where is Jimmy?"
Castiel sets his glass down and looks straight at her. "He is with me," he says.
Amelia recalls losing control of her body, seeing herself hit Claire, shooting Jimmy (she still flinches at this), and all throughout, shouting and shouting and shouting like she was trapped in one of those soundproof enclosures used in the stupid beauty pageants she watched as a girl.
"I don't know what that means," she says when the memory passes.
Castiel is watching her carefully. "It's not like what you experienced," he says. "He is with me."
"Can he hear me, then?"
"He-- The way I-- You can't really understand it unless you are a vessel," Castiel says.
"Oh, you walk in mysterious ways, do you?" says Amelia. She's trying to keep it light (if she doesn't she's going to get upset and this is too important), but Castiel is already frowning slightly at her. She tries a different approach: "Claire said--"
"It was different with her," says Castiel at once, and the conversation, such as it is, stops there for a while.
But even if he's not budging on that issue, Amelia's not letting go this easily. She tries yet another approach. "Castiel," she says (his eyes narrow upon hearing his name), "can I have Jimmy back?"
"You remind me of someone I once knew," he says abruptly, looking at her in a way that, for a moment, is just like how Jimmy would look at her when they were alone, or were about to be alone. Which is ridiculous, and totally inappropriate, and also, annoyingly, kind of a turn-on.
"That answers my question exactly how?" Somewhere in the back of her mind the nuns at her old Sunday school are chastising Amelia for her flip tones, only now she's not mouthing off about squeezing two each of millions of animal species onto one tiny ark, but sticking her chin up to an actual angel, and one whom she's personally seen in the act of smiting. At least she hasn't crossed her arms like she really wants to.
Castiel considers his next words with his eyes fixed on Amelia. Finally he says, "Jimmy is needed. He must have told you, I can no longer walk among humans without causing great harm."
From the guest room comes the sound of Dean coughing violently, followed by a string of words that make no sense together. Castiel looks so pained that Amelia stops herself from supplying the retort that he's set up so neatly for her. Instead she says, without any edge, "And how long is Jimmy needed for? Is he needed right now?"
"You know about the sigil, what it---" Castiel appears almost ill. "You know what it did to me. If I leave my vessel now, I don't think I'd be able to come back, and I have to be here. Jimmy-- He serves a greater purpose. It's too big a risk."
It's more or less what she was expecting, even if the details aren't quite the same.
Amelia nods and gets up from the table. She pushes in her chair, takes her mug and her empty bowl and puts them in the sink, excuses herself, makes it all the way upstairs to her bedroom, and even manages to close the door quietly behind her before the first tears even fall.
***
They never made up properly when Jimmy came back to her for that one day. Sure, from Jimmy's perspective, she did apologize to him, and Amelia takes comfort from that for his sake. Perhaps that is all that should matter. But from her perspective, there's no closure whatsoever. The memory is tainted by the fact that she wasn't in control of any part of herself, and could only watch as the demon inside her kept her from expressing how sorry she was -- for calling Jimmy a lunatic and other choice words, for not believing in him, for not being there for him. And when she came back to herself, Jimmy was too busy dying, and moments later Castiel was there again. So really, her last real interaction with Jimmy that day only involved more of her telling him (screaming at him) that he was sick and that he should get away from her.
***
Amelia wakes up with a jolt at two-thirty in the afternoon. She doesn't recall feeling sleepy, or even getting in the bed, but she immediately remembers that she's left two... unusual people downstairs.
She washes up as quickly as possible and grabs a sundress out of the closet, stops for a second to wonder whether she should put something else on over it or maybe change into jeans, then tells herself she's crazy because why shouldn't she go about her business just as much as possible, including wearing whatever she would normally feel like wearing in her own home?
When she's part of the way down the stairs she has a moment of irrational panic that Castiel and Dean have left, and she rushes the rest of the way. She heads first for the guest room and is relieved to find Dean there, mumbling something in his sleep.
"Did you rest well?" Castiel says behind her in the hallway.
Amelia jumps half out of her skin but forces herself to be calm. "Yes, thank you," she says, turning around to face Castiel. He is standing a little too closely now because he didn't step back when she turned, and she can't ignore the faint hint of the cologne that Jimmy always used to wear because she'd told him once that she liked it. "How is he?" she asks, turning back toward Dean and also using the opportunity to step a little ways out of the hallway and into the guest room.
"Sometimes he's in a great deal of pain, and sometimes when he wakes up he doesn't know where he is."
"Is he going--"
"I don't know."
Amelia turns once more to Castiel. "What can I do?"
"I don't know," he says again, his eyes unfocused for just a moment. Then he looks back at her. "I borrowed some of your towels, and took one of the shirts folded in the dresser." Castiel nods toward the room. "For him. I hope that's okay."
"Of course," she says, now recognizing the shirt Dean's wearing.
"Also, there's water all over the floor of your guest bathroom, but I will attend to it."
"What--"
"Dean didn't cooperate with the bathing," says Castiel. "I cannot work miracles."
Amelia shouldn't laugh. She knows he is being serious, but his voice right then is too much like Jimmy's deadpan and she can't help it. Then she sees that Castiel is smiling.
"Just tell me if you need anything," she says to him before leaving.
***
Amelia doesn't think her editor will accept either "angel in body of husband" or "man in mortal danger occupying guest room" as reasons why she's not going to make this week's deadline, but what can she do? No useful words are coming out of her head, not even when she switches from her laptop to good old pen-and-paper.
She's already left the study twice. The first time she found Castiel slouched on the living room sofa, looking exhausted and profoundly alone before he noticed her and sat up straighter. Amelia had stopped herself from offering him a change of clothes (he'd already removed the trenchcoat and the jacket, and loosened the tie) when she realized that anything else she could give him would still have belonged to Jimmy, and wouldn't remind her any less of him. Instead she'd settled on asking whether Dean needed any food or drink, to which Castiel had replied that plain water was the only thing safe for Dean to consume until he became well -- if he became well. She could have sworn Castiel was somehow amused by this thought, despite its morbid nature.
The second time she left the study it was because Dean was shouting like he was being tortured. When she'd gotten closer to the guest room, she'd heard Castiel's slow and deliberate voice, saying things that somehow calmed him down. It had felt like she was intruding on a very personal moment, which was not something she particularly wanted to process, so she'd turned right around and gone back to the study.
Now it's quarter past eight and she's got about a page of total nonsense in which the word 'bathtub' somehow appears four times. She knows when to concede defeat when it comes to writing, and heads to the kitchen to make herself a late dinner while she calls Claire.
***
At one-thirty in the morning, Amelia becomes fed up with tossing and turning in bed and decides to go downstairs. It's not easy initiating conversation with Castiel but she's mostly over the intimidation (unless she thinks too hard about it); and so what if she's crazy but she finds it soothing to talk with him. So, too, it seems to her that he enjoys the interaction in his way, and it's not as if Dean is in any shape to provide coherent discussion.
The lights are on in the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, but she doesn't see or hear Castiel downstairs. (That's like Jimmy too, the inability to remember to shut off the lights when they're not in use.) But she thinks she hears Dean, pain carried in his voice and in his labored breathing, and she worries even though Castiel has told her numerous times that there's nothing more she can do beyond providing this safe space for his hoped-for recovery.
From the kitchen she can see that the door to the guest room is half open, and soft light from the bedside lamp casts a dim halo into the hallway. Still Amelia does not hear Castiel, and she begins to fear something is wrong. On the way to the guest room, she looks into the study, and he is not there either.
But at the door of the guest room, Amelia stands stock still because her brief search has ended.
Castiel is lying next to Dean under the thin summer quilt. One arm and shoulder support his own weight. His other arm is completely obscured under the quilt, but the strong, repeating motion of his hand between Dean's legs could not be more clear. Perhaps elsewhere on his person Dean is indeed in pain, but not there; and his breathing is indeed ragged but not from the effects of the sigil.
"God-- Cas," Dean says, the curve of his neck catching shadows and light as he tilts his head back. He reaches up for Castiel's face but he doesn't have fine control, so it ends in a clumsy brush of fingers across the temple.
Castiel's entire body seems to tighten at the touch, and when it relaxes his breath is more rapid and shallow, but his hand beneath the quilt resumes its determined rhythm in counterpoint to Dean's half-cries and strangled invocations.
Amelia doesn't know what to do with herself. It is not like this is entirely unexpected, but the concept and the realization are epochs apart. The heat rushing through her body is from embarrassment and anger, thoroughly shot through with a sort of shocked arousal. Harder to understand is the sharpness of her longing -- for what she doesn't even know, but it makes her actually put the heel of her hand over her chest.
That's the gesture that Castiel catches in his vision. He turns his head toward her and his expression clearly says, Wait, do not speak yet, and she's suddenly furious with him for it, and furious with herself for complying. While Castiel's eyes are fixed on hers, Dean calls out "Cas--" once more (Castiel's gaze softens a moment, Amelia's breathing hitches) and his body goes very, very still, then relaxes swiftly into sleep.
She turns to go -- she has nothing to say to Castiel -- but he's already in the hallway with her, his hand on her bare arm. Her body shivers when she thinks of what he's just been doing with that hand.
"Amelia," he says, and it's so hard to maintain her resolve at the sound of her name unprompted from his lips.
"What, Cas?" she says. "What greater purpose are you serving now?"
"It's a comfort to him," says Castiel. His voice, while steady, is shaded still with his own apparent arousal in tending to Dean.
"And for you," Amelia says, taking his hand off her arm.
There's no right thing to say, but that's the wrong thing, and Castiel's eyes go cold.
"You shouldn't presume to know anything about me," he says. "I am not your husband."
Amelia has nothing and everything in the world to say to that. The line between composure and losing all control of herself is exceedingly fine, and she turns her back on Castiel without another word before she can put that to the test.
***
There's a knock that she answers, and Castiel stands outside her door, at the threshold to the bedroom that she and Jimmy would not share again.
"I'm sorry" is all he says, and the way he bears his body is perilously close to how Jimmy used to after their rare fights.
Amelia's not sure what exactly he's apologizing for -- she thinks it might be for everything -- but it doesn't matter because there again is the faint trace of Jimmy's cologne. The scent evokes so many memories -- it turns out, all there would be of her memories of him -- and she finds herself reaching, pulling herself closer to Castiel.
He lets her get closer.
She knows his body so well, knows exactly how he will feel within her, the press of his fingers into her skin, the friction of his hips sliding against the inside of her thighs.
But first he only kisses her. She parts her mouth for him, and finds that he even tastes like Jimmy. And he kisses the side of her neck just below her ear, and the hollow at the base of her throat, and her bare shoulder where the thin strap of her camisole never stays put. Everywhere he touches her she feels beautiful.
Amelia remembers the first time she slept with Jimmy, how her hands fumbled on his shirt, not because she was that nervous, but because she was only used to undoing buttons on clothing she was wearing. Jimmy didn't rush her, but kept his hands resting on the small of her back, letting her take the lead until she was comfortable letting him take the lead.
Castiel's fingertips press against her back just so, and she knows that they will yield if she shows the slightest hesitation, but that the firmness of the touch will increase if she leans forward just a little. And so she leans forward, more than just a little, and Castiel sighs into her hair, and she knows that he is not Jimmy but her body cannot tell the difference.
Now Castiel slides one arm around her waist, pulling her so closely that their hips press together, and she can feel exactly how ready he is for her. He tilts her chin up, touches her cheek, runs his thumb across the swell of her bottom lip. And, all his focus bent on her alone, his gaze so still she imagines the planet itself must stop whirling, he says one thing: "Be sure."
Of course she knows her husband. Every gesture, every glance from his eyes, the touch of his strong hands against her body, the sound of his voice in the morning. Castiel is not her husband, so when she encircles her arms around him, she doesn't tell him, her eyes bright with tears, "I've missed you so much," and "I thought of you every single day." Neither does she question Castiel as to why he does this, why his breath against her ear quickens and slows when she shivers within his embrace. Instead she pulls him with her, backward toward the bed, which seems to tilt up to receive them more than they lie back upon it.
Starlight and moonlight fall without sound through the slats of the window-blinds.
Castiel slides a hand beneath the waistband of her sleep shorts, and Amelia fights the urge to squirm under him but she's always liked the slight roughness of those palms against her skin. She arches into his touch, and the intensity of her longing is so keen that it is a physical pain in her chest.
When she reaches up, trying to push his unbuttoned shirt off his shoulders, he stops and sits back, and in moments has divested himself of everything getting in the way of his bare skin pressing against hers. Amelia sits up too and takes her camisole off but becomes distracted by the play of shadows across the body she knows so well. She thinks it may be a trick of the light but Castiel seems to have a brightness from within.
But then he's kissing her again, his tongue flicking against her lips, and at the same time he pulls off her sleep shorts so that they are bare before each other, just a man and a woman -- but at the dawn of the world and not perhaps the twilight -- sharing a moment of happiness while the glittering stars spin overhead.
Amelia reaches for Castiel. His intake of breath is sharp when she wraps her fingers around him, and he is hard, so hot and hard against her hand, she hopes he can't see how much she's blushing. She knows what he will like, knows how much pressure to use as she tugs her hand along his flesh, knows where he is most sensitive and what to do to make him gasp her name out loud. But when he does, the sound still makes her go weak at the knees.
She scoots back on the bed and arranges the pillows against the headboard so that she can lie at an incline: she wants to be able to see. Castiel nudges her knees apart so that he can kneel between her thighs. He positions himself, his arms on either side of her, and when she looks up at him his eyes are dilated so widely that she trembles.
When he slips inside her, smooth as rain, she stops herself from crying out words that have no use to either of them. She's touched herself so many nights, quietly calling out his name, but it's nothing like the friction of him, pushing into her, sliding out of her, the heat of his body so very close to her, the throb of his heartbeat so strong she can feel it whenever he presses his skin against her. She thrusts her hips to meet his, the way he likes, and he whispers hotly in her ear, how good she feels, how much he wants her, just the way she likes.
There is a moment -- of flawless clarity -- when the whole world seems to fall away, and Amelia feels unburdened of grief and uncertainty, and she sees Castiel for who he is, not the shadow of her husband. For his part, Castiel is looking at Amelia with a mirror expression, and the ages seem to lift from his careworn face.
The next moment, she does cry out -- Castiel's name, and not Jimmy's. Her fingers twine in his hair as her body twists in pleasure. She feels him coming inside her, his heat spilling into her, and as he clutches her tightly to him, somehow she knows that he is not thinking of anyone else, but only of her.
***
Amelia is standing beside a little cottage on the banks of a great river. She is wearing a beautiful dress all of purple and red and swirls of gold, and the green grass beneath her feet is so soft that she almost wants to dance across it. The sun shines overhead, but it is not hot at all, and the light breeze carries with it the scent of flowers.
When she turns around Castiel is standing beside her. His posture is relaxed, open, and he is smiling when he greets her.
Because she doesn't feel her face flushing completely crimson after their night together, she surmises she is dreaming, but Castiel doesn't seem like a creation of her unconscious. She doesn't think that she would dress him in clothing as colorful as hers if he were, nor would he hand her two slim flowers of yellow and white.
"We have not left your home," he says to her. "This place... is a memory of mine."
"When--"
"A long time ago, I loved someone here." He looks at her, and his expression is very soft. "I still sometimes miss her the way you miss your husband."
She takes his hand now, and he squeezes back, but he's gazing directly at the bright sun overhead. When she looks up too, thinking she can if it's just his memory, she finds that she needs to shield her eyes from the glare.
The water of the river tumbles past, and the wind moves through the grass beneath their feet.
"I'm sorry I've taken Jimmy from you," he says at last.
"Castiel--"
"I promise you I will bring him back to you when this is over."
She thinks her heart will break for him, here in his own memory. But what she says is, "How can you make such a promise?"
He turns to her, and she will never be intimidated by him again, but in this peaceful place it seems she can feel his resolve building, strengthening with a will that far surpasses human. "I can make such a promise, Amelia," he says in that solemn voice. "And I can keep it. Your husband will come back to you, unharmed."
She leans close, kisses him once on the mouth, chastely. "And who will be here for you?" she says, putting her hands on his face.
Castiel smiles a half-smile at her. "The man in your downstairs guest room," he says. "He'll live."
***
When Amelia awakens, the afternoon sunlight is streaming in through her bedroom windows, and without checking she knows that Castiel and Dean are gone. Somehow she feels calm at the thought, even though she both knows and doesn't know what lies ahead for them.
Later when she goes downstairs to tidy up all the rooms, she will find everything exactly as it was before her guests arrived, except that the dresser will be short one of Jimmy's old shirts, and there will be a note placed beneath a clear plastic vase holding two yellow and white flowers in the middle of the kitchen table. The note will say, in Castiel's neat script, "Thank you, Amelia," and beneath that, "I won't let you wait too long."
She will call her daughter, who will grumble at her for calling during the middle of the day, and then she will open the refrigerator to discover a third difference, that almost all of the smoked ham and other various sandwich fillings are gone (but tucked next to the mustard bottle will be another note that says "Thanks!!" in a different hand). Amelia will sigh and decide that she might as well make a trip to the grocery store, but when she gets back home she will be inspired to write twenty-five straight pages of a new novel that her editor will love.
The book will be dedicated to "C."