Chapter Text
1970
“I still want to tell people,” Dean says, into the curve of Castiel’s arm, and Castiel tenses.
They are sitting side by side on the bed in the spare bedroom at Bedford—the room unofficially designated as Dean’s, while Castiel is allowed to sleep in Inias’ old room. The rooms are separated by a bathroom and a study, which means that creeping down the corridor across creaking floorboards to spend the night together is out of the question. Every morning, Castiel goes down to greet Eleanor, says that he will offer Dean a coffee, and then he comes to him. He sits beside him. Today, he hooks his arm around Dean’s neck to pull him into his side, resting his cheek against Dean’s shoulder.
He exhales. He doesn’t immediately shoot the idea down. He says, “Alright,” and his voice is tight, but he’s trying.
He has already said what he thinks, a thousand times over. The people who matter already know. The people who don’t know don’t matter—or they matter too much, in which case, they can’t risk it. The possibility of losing everything is too enormous, hanging jaggedly over their heads. This is even putting aside the fact that it would feel like sending Dean into an ambush without reconnaissance.
“If it goes badly,” Dean says, because he is fluent in Castiel’s silences, “we don’t live here anyway. And nothing bad’ll happen to me, ‘cause there’s enough guys there I trust to take my side. Benny, for one.”
“Two amputees against the 116th infantry,” Castiel says. “Forgive me if I’m not reassured.”
Dean huffs his breath. “I can kick the ass of any of those idiots, even with one leg. Hell, gimme a wheelchair and I’ll still wipe the floor with them.”
Castiel says nothing. He still remembers leaving Lawrence with a black eye and a split lip. He knows that Dean has not forgotten, either.
“You’re coming by later, anyway,” Dean reminds him. “If it goes south, I’ll come get you. We can meet by the church, come straight back here. And if I’m not there to meet you, then everything is fine.”
Castiel still doesn’t answer.
“Everything will be fine,” Dean says. “They’re good guys, mostly. I trust enough of them. It’ll be okay.”
Castiel is quiet for a long moment. Then he says, “Word will get back to Eleanor.”
Dean falls quiet.“I dunno. I mean, who’s gonna tell her?” he prompts. “What, you think the Baker guys are gonna put out a bulletin? You think Zeddmore’s gonna hire a town crier? Or Miller’s gonna go knocking on doors—”
Castiel pulls away from him. Bedford is only home to a few thousand people; everyone knows everyone. It only takes one person to go back to visit their parents or their sister or a childhood friend, somewhere they might get asked about the reunion. How is everybody? Well, we found out— Castiel rubs at the knuckles of his right hand.
“I’m just saying,” Dean tries. “I don’t know that telling the guys means that necessarily she’s gonna find out. And besides, would it be so bad?”
Castiel goes back and forth on this with some frequency. Privately, he thinks that if Eleanor can forgive him for killing her son, she will probably forgive him for being a hom*osexual. Then again, what if it colours her memory of her only child? Castiel as the corrupter, the wicked boy who took her son and led him to the far side of the world and left him shattered on the street, who kept her in the dark for weeks rather than admit to his failures. He has already let her down so many times. He doesn’t think he can break her heart again.
Dean lets out his breath. He presses his face into the crook of Castiel’s elbow, and at last, in a soft voice against his shirt sleeve, he says, “Okay. I won’t say anything. We can—pretend.”
“I don’t want to pretend, either,” Castiel says quietly. “I just—” He cuts himself off. He swallows hard. As usual, he can’t decide what he wants. It’s all too tangled up together. He wants Dean. He wants to be normal. He wants to be happy.
“Look,” Dean says, and he turns to face him. He cups Castiel’s jaw in his hand. “I won’t say anything unless you tell me to. I promise you. I’ll go and I’ll lie through my teeth to every f*cking one of them, and I’ll act surprised when I see you, and we’ll make small-talk, and I’ll talk about my girl—”
Castiel rolls his eyes. “I’m sick of your girl,” he mutters.
Dean grins. “What? You don’t like Kathleen?” he teases, rubbing his thumb over Castiel’s cheekbone. “That’s gonna hurt her feelings.”
“Good.” Castiel is being grouchy on purpose, now, partly so that Dean will push at him until he smiles. He tilts his face into Dean’s palm. “f*cking Kathleen. Will Kathleen rewire the lamp for you, so I don’t have to?”
“She might do,” Dean says lightly. “She’s good with her hands.”
Castiel narrows his eyes at him. Dean’s smile spreads wider.
“Me and Kathleen,” Dean declares, insufferably proud of his f*cking make-believe mistress. “I’ll tell everyone the story about how we met at the community potluck. And I’ll see you and I’ll call you captain, and I’ll ask how you’re doing. And I’ll buy a drink.” He pats Castiel’s cheek with patronising fondness. “And I won’t even throw it all over you.”
Castiel sighs. “I don’t want that.”
“I mean, sure, I can throw it—”
“The pretending,” Castiel interrupts, squinting at him. “I don’t want to pretend. We had years of that.” Technically, they’re still pretending, in some places. The college where Castiel teaches part-time thinks he’s a widower; some of Dean’s co-workers at the factory assume that he has a wife, and he has never corrected them. It feels different, somehow, pretending with Baker, like rewinding by twenty years and putting his uniform back on, like climbing back into the foxhole that they’ll bury him in.
Dean’s smile fades at the corners, his expression becoming something soft and rueful.
Castiel regards him, silent and serious, for a long time, before he finally says, “I trust you.”
With a comically exaggerated grimace, Dean reels back, claps his hands to his knees. “Well, that’s a whole lotta responsibility—”
“I mean it,” Castiel says. “I’ll follow your lead.”
At that moment, Eleanor’s voice rings out from downstairs. “Boys? I’m making eggs. Are you hungry?”
“Always, ma’am,” Dean shouts back, delighted. Then, to Castiel, “That’s my cue.” He leans in and presses a kiss to Castiel’s temple. Castiel retrieves his cane for him, and they go down together.
***
Castiel lets himself in through the mud room and rests the grocery bags against the panelled siding while he toes his shoes off. He shakes the rain off his coat before he hangs it up, and wipes a hand over his damp face, smooths back his hair. The weather is unpredictable this time of year, but he would rather that he go in the bluster and rain than Eleanor.
She's in her seventies now, and she’s by no means frail or incapable, but they like taking care of her when they can. Whenever they visit, Dean cooks big meals that Eleanor can keep in her chest freezer, and Castiel runs errands, does grocery shopping, stands in line at the post office, returns books to the library, back and forth across town. It’s not far, at least, to the greengrocers and the butchers. He doesn’t mind, not least because it takes his mind off the reunion tomorrow, which he is trying hard not to think about.
Castiel lets himself into the living room, and is only distracted briefly by the photographs on the mantel. He finds it difficult to walk past it without pausing.
They are grainy sepia pictures from the last fifty years: Inias as a bright-eyed Boy Scout; Inias costumed in an unfortunate hat for the school play; Inias looking smart and sensible the day he enlisted, his garrison cap neatly ironed. In every photograph, there is the same dark-haired figure. Castiel adjusting his tie, or glancing at someone beyond the borders of the frame, or standing with bruised hands clasped neatly in front of him, or mud-splattered in his cross-country whites, or smiling on leave in London. The older they get, the more front and centre Castiel gets to be in the picture.
In the middle of the mantelpiece is the formal, official photograph of Inias from when he graduated officer training; beside it is Castiel’s, but his own portrait is hard to focus on when it also sits next to Inias’ Purple Heart.
As always, Castiel stops and looks at it. Whenever he comes back here, he struggles to reconcile that this is what Inias is reduced to. A little medal in a little box. Thank you for your service.
He puts down the grocery bags so that he can straighten the Purple Heart on the shelf, and then he hears someone say his name.
Castiel lifts his head, puzzled, but the voice carries on in a smooth murmur from another room. He isn’t much for eavesdropping these days, and so he goes to join them in the kitchen. Their voices become clearer as he approaches, and he puts a hand on the half-closed door to push it open.
“—doesn’t want me to visit, does he?”
Eleanor’s voice is soft and sad, and Castiel goes no further. He holds still.
“Uh.” Dean’s voice is faltering, uncertain. He knows as well as Castiel does why Eleanor can’t come to visit: there’s only one bedroom. There is no pretence in their house out West. “I’m sure—” The clatter of dishes. A spoon against crockery. “—talk to him. If you want.”
A moment of silence. The clanking of something on the stove. Castiel is about to push the door open.
“Does he have anyone out there?” Eleanor asks. “Anyone special, I mean.”
Castiel freezes.
Whatever Dean says in response, Castiel doesn’t hear it. His voice is too low, too quiet. His words rise and fall, but they are drowned by the rushing in Castiel’s ears, the quickening thump of his pulse.
“I just worry about him,” Eleanor says then, and something tightens in Castiel’s throat. “He’s always been—lonely.”
Castiel’s jaw flushes hot with embarrassment, irritation biting under his skin in response. He knows that, obviously, but it’s different having someone tell Dean about it.
“You know, he would struggle to make friends, he would… struggle to ask for help—”
A short burst of Dean’s laugh, politely deprecating. “Don’t I know it.”
“I don’t mean to overstep, here—” The jingle of cutlery, the rattle of the drawer. Castiel loses the rest of the sentence. “—good for him, too. I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. You’re a very dear friend to him.” The sound of the drawer closing again. Footsteps. Voices turned away from the door, reduced to a rolling murmur of half-understood sounds, like a language he barely knows.
Castiel still has not moved. He doesn’t know what to do.
Dean’s voice is a hesitant murmur.
The faucet runs. Eleanor responds. Dishes rattle again.
Dean says, “Sure.”
Eleanor says, “I know that he is important to you. I can’t tell you how thankful I am, sometimes, that he has you.”
Castiel’s outstretched hand, now frozen against the door, has tugged his sleeve back. His eyes fall, just for a second, to the faint pink scar that runs vertically from the heel of his hand until it disappears into his sweater. He swallows.
He misses Dean’s answer in his distraction, but his voice is low and warm. The only sounds, then, are the dishes and the water and feet shifting across the floor tiles. There is a long pause. The conversation might be over. It’s hard to say. The silence stretches.
A clearing of someone’s throat. “Dean,” Eleanor says carefully. “I don't mean to accuse you of anything, but—a long time ago, his mother told me some things about him that I won’t repeat today.”
Castiel’s hand jerks back from the door as though burned.
It is strange, how fast his body runs sick and cold with dread, the prickle of adrenaline under his skin, how the back of his skull beats hot and tight, and his hands come to fists.
It’s alright; they have an escape plan. They travelled light, only planning to stay for a few days either side of the reunion. Castiel has unpacked little other than a toothbrush and tomorrow’s dress shirt; he wanted to let the creases drop. He had offered to iron Dean’s. He thinks it might be in the parlour, but they can leave it behind, if needed. A shame—it’s a nice shirt. Castiel can buy him another. They will miss the reunion altogether now, but there will be others. The important thing is that they can be gone within minutes. They have left their whole life behind before, and they can do it again. They need never come back.
After a beat, Dean says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and his voice is clear and calm.
The kitchen is deathly quiet.
“No,” Eleanor says. “Of course not.”
There is no distracting movement now. Inside that room is only stillness and a tension that Castiel can feel in time with his pulse.
Dean says something. Castiel is listening so hard for Eleanor’s voice that he misses Dean’s, and he loses the thread of what he was saying.
Then, Eleanor again, her words clipped and cool. “She suggested that I might be more wary of letting Inias associate with him, that’s all. I told her—”
Castiel isn’t conscious of making any explicit decision to go in. The door handle is in his hand, and then he is standing in the doorway, and Dean and Eleanor are looking at him.
Dean pulls himself up oddly, like some ancient urge to come to attention, and Eleanor’s hands curl together at her chest. She says something, and Castiel doesn’t hear it. He isn’t processing much of anything right, exactly.
He just says, “When?” and his voice comes out strangled.
Eleanor says, “Cas, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were—”
“My mother,” Castiel says, still motionless in the door. “When?”
Her expression is tight, unhappiness in the creases at the corners of her eyes. Her hands twist together. “When you enlisted together. I’m sorry.”
Castiel doesn’t know what to do with this information. It was nearly thirty years ago, and he had thought himself long past this grief, only to find it now chiselled open and raw. He thought, foolishly, that there was nothing else his mother could do to hurt him. He feels seventeen years old again, furious and heartbroken and desperate to be seen. He feels like he is going to throw up. He feels like he wants to hit something. He feels like he wants to start running and never stop.
His hands are shaking. There is a sharp sting at the back of his nose and behind his eyes, and his throat is closing off. Distantly, he is aware of the tension pulling taut in his shoulders and spine, knows that he needs to calm down, but he can’t remember how.
At last, he manages, “You never told me.” His voice is steady and calm, when he feels anything but.
On the stovetop, the kettle starts to rock and clank, steam curling from the lid. Eleanor looks at him with heartbreaking uncertainty. “I didn’t think you would appreciate me giving any further voice to baseless rumours.”
Castiel blinks hard. “No. Thank you.” Then, without thinking, before he can stop himself: “What if they weren’t?”
Behind her, Dean goes still.
Eleanor hesitates. “Weren’t what?”
He looks past Eleanor, at Dean, who is silent and unmoving on the far side of the kitchen, whose face he cannot see quite clearly from here, but he recognises the decisive, solid stance, the set of his shoulders. Ready for orders.
“Baseless,” Castiel says. Because, apparently, his own mother can expose him as a queer without a second thought, so what the f*ck does any of this matter? It doesn't matter if he isn’t safe here anymore. He wasn’t safe in his own house at seventeen years old, but then again, he wasn’t safe anywhere.
Eleanor takes a deep breath. She smooths her hands over her skirt. “Then I’ll tell you what I told her,” she says firmly. “I told her I would not encourage my son to mistreat hers. I said, I will not permit anyone to tell my family who they can associate with and who they can care about. If Castiel is planning to make my son sick, it’s already too late—”
Castiel flinches.
“—and if they are both sick,” Eleanor goes on, her voice clear and decisive, “I will love them until they get better, and if they don’t get better, I will love them regardless.”
Castiel says flatly, “I didn’t get better.” He can hear the way his voice gets low and mean, then, and he doesn’t know how to stop. He doesn’t know if he wants to. His heart is beating hot in his throat. He looks at Dean again, solid and sure on the other side of the kitchen. He breathes through his teeth, and he says, “I’m not sick.”
Eleanor steps towards him. Castiel takes a step back.
“There’s nothing—it’s not wrong,” he bites out, everything in him sharpening into anger, because he doesn’t know what other shape to let it take. His words are jagged and disjointed. “It’s not—”
“I know,” Eleanor says, and when she steps towards him again, he lets her.
Castiel drags in an unsteady breath. “I love Dean,” he says, his voice hard, louder than the space requires.
This close, he can see that Eleanor has tears in her eyes. “I thought that you might.”
“We’re—” His voice cracks. “He’s mine.”
Eleanor closes the last space between them, and when she takes his face in her hands, Castiel tenses. “I know,” she says. “Or—I suspected.”
Dean steps quietly aside and turns the stove off. It simmers, settles.
None of this makes any sense to him. For Eleanor to have discovered that he was queer in 1933 and said nothing, to have welcomed Castiel into her home despite it—for her to have suspected, and continued to invite Dean and Castiel regardless—it doesn’t make sense, and Castiel can’t make himself relax. He doesn’t understand her reaction.
Her hands on his face are gentle, comforting, although when she smooths a thumb over his cheek, for just a moment there is a hot, prickling flash through his nerves that makes him wince. Her expression is tearful, but her voice is soft. She isn’t shouting. She keeps saying the wrong things.
Castiel swallows hard. He still has the rapid-fire pace of his pulse in his throat and his ears, a wild drumbeat that he struggles to calm. He says, “Are you angry with me?” and his words come out smaller than he intended.
“I’m angry at myself,” she says, “for not saying anything sooner.”
Castiel says nothing.
Eleanor shakes her head, and she smooths his damp hair back from his forehead, and he is incapable of moving to stop her. “I was just—so afraid of being wrong. I know that you were never happy out here, I know that there isn’t much to bring you back this way,” she says, her voice thick. “I didn’t want to give you a reason to stop visiting.”
Castiel stares at her, silent and uncomprehending.
“All I have ever wanted for you is to be happy,” Eleanor tells him gently. “And I know it hasn’t been easy—but I think, finally, maybe you are.”
Castiel nods mutely.
Eleanor holds his face in two hands, and she looks up at him with a watery smile. “I told you,” she says. “There is nothing you or anybody else could do to prevent me from loving my son.”
The relief that rushes through Castiel makes his throat tighten and his eyes burn. He has already done so much to fail Inias; the thought of somehow turning his own mother against the memory of him is unthinkable. He clears his throat, then, and clarifies, “Inias wasn’t—like me.”
With a sigh, Eleanor just fixes him with a long-suffering look. “For heaven’s sake, Castiel.”
Castiel’s brow creases with a frown. Then: “Oh.”
He scarcely has time to process this, because she puts her arms around him and pulls him into a hug. Castiel has never been good at receiving hugs, holding himself awkwardly, but she settles a comforting hand on the back of his hand and squeezes him until he relaxes. She is warm and smells of something soft and sweet, and he exhales into the embrace, wrapping his arms around her.
“And as for you,” Eleanor says, abruptly, turning her head, “you great handsome lug. Get in here.”
Dean’s voice is full of delight when he says, “Yes, ma’am!” It takes him a second to limp over, and then Castiel is being vigorously squashed from all sides. He has Dean’s scruff rasping against his temple and Eleanor’s hair in his nose, and tears sting behind his nose and eyes. Without the need for any further words, they sway together in the middle of her kitchen, and the danger passes, and Castiel stands down.
***
