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spn fic: vanishing point (castiel/balthazar; r)
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slinkymilinky is doing a Dean and Cas's infinite playlist thing, which you should totally check out and contribute to.
Here's that Castiel/parrotfish fic I was tweeting about. This was one of the fics I meant to finish during the post-6x16 hiatus, then I didn't, and when canon started up again, I put it off and put it off because there was so much new stuff coming out per episode that I didn't want to be immediately jossed. Well, canon has finished and so have I! Despite the fic containing long walks on the beach, room service, and shower sex, it has quite failed to be shmoop. I mean, it's basically vacation fic. Except, y'know. Not.
Thank you toswitchbladesis and viridian_magpie for betareading.
Vanishing Point
Supernatural. Balthazar/Castiel, Sam. R. Spoilers through S6.
Set during the first half S6. Basically the most drawn-out and desultory chase scene ever, plus sex. ~3000 words
Castiel names the dead as they walk down a beach outside of Montpellier. Balthazar walks in the waves, pants rolled up to his knees. Castiel walks beside him, pants neat as ever, and does not get wet. Tabris, Raguel, Sandalphon, Baruchiel: these are angels from their garrison, and Balthazar has loved each of them.
"Help me stop this," Castiel says, and Balthazar's response is an indulgent chuckle.
Haniel and Nuriel and Temeluch. Balthazar remembers the war against Lucifer, and Nuriel's bright flame beside him, Temeluch's battle cry.
"You still remember how to fight," Castiel says, and it's almost a question. "Being a warrior, you remember what that's like."
"I can't possibly forget." He smiles wryly. "Maybe that's the curse of it. Humans can forget their purpose; angels cannot, no matter how far we've strayed from grace."
"Evidence seems to point to the contrary," Castiel grumbles.
Balthazar resists rolling his eyes. He rests his hand on his brother's shoulder and sighs, "Ah, Castiel. How is it that we've come to this?"
In an instant, Balthazar has twisted Castiel around and thrown him down to the sand, holding him there with a knee on his chest and pinning his wrists to the ground. Castiel is wide-eyed, open-mouthed, but there is a spark in his eyes that is perhaps the flash of sudden hope, and Balthazar finds himself unnerved for it. Castiel has a weakness for last-minute hope. It will be the death of him.
"Balthazar," Castiel breathes, and Balthazar bends down to whisper in his ear.
"I remember how to fight, brother," he says. "I remember many things."
+
Sometimes Balthazar convinces Castiel to stay the night, and he would still be awake in the morning, sitting on the edge of the bed. The sheer curtains shiver in the breeze, and through its gossamer Castiel can see the city, the skies all scraped.
Balthazar has taught himself to sleep. Angels don't need sleep, but he claims to find it relaxing. Castiel doesn't understand this. He remembers sleeping from his days as a mortal two years and lifetimes ago. He didn't like it. He had dreamed, and he didn't like his dreams.
This week they are in Macau, and the penthouse suite is littered with the debris of room service: melted ice in a champagne bucket, half-empty bowls of congee and its array of toppings, open bottles of alcohol, a platter of fruit (Balthazar likes papayas, but Castiel prefers oranges), and half-eaten chunks of black forest cake. Castiel has noticed that Balthazar never finishes anything he eats. He picks at food like a bird, taking his time to savor the taste and report his findings to Castiel. "A little briney," he said of the congee, "but better for it. A little too much shrimp maybe, not enough fried onions?" Then he spent the next half hour experimenting with topping ratios as Castiel tried to convince him to hand over the weapons.
"I think maraschino cherries are my least favorite kind of cherries," Balthazar mused when he moved on to the cake. "There are golden cherries in Washington, Cas, and if ever one day you find me there, we'll try some."
"I'm not interested in fruit," he said.
Balthazar streaked icing across Castiel's nose. "Perhaps you should be."
It is morning and Castiel is thinking about the war. He is thinking about Crowley up to his elbows in monster viscera, and how Purgatory is a dying dream. He keeps Dean on the periphery of his thoughts. The Winchesters weigh too heavy on him to be inspected too carefully these days, and Johael has already become too suspicious of Castiel's regular sojourns to earth. He is grateful that the cherub is too meek to directly question a commander. For all that their side is preaching equality and transparency, habits of hierarchy are hard to break. The cupids still avert their eyes and mutter honorifics when Castiel passes and he has grown weary of insisting that they stop.
Through the window, the sun rises higher and the sky slides from grayish mauve to blue. Behind him, Balthazar is dreaming of stars. Castiel recognizes what some humans call the Horsehead Nebula, and in this dream, Balthazar and Anael blaze through its constellations, singing hosannas and shining with unfettered love for God. He finds himself drawn to his brother's dream, trailing along its edges before he realizes what he's doing, and stops. Too late. His intrusion is noticed.
"I loved her, you know," Balthazar says. He opens his eyes and Castiel resists the urge to look away. "She understood better than any of us."
"We all loved her," Castiel says. "We love all our brothers and sisters."
Balthazar chuckles. "We're allowed to have our favorites."
Castiel says nothing.
"For a time, you were hers. Did you know that?"
He looks away.
"You ask so many questions, Cas, but you always ask the wrong ones."
"Here's one," he snaps. "Why won't you give us the weapons? Why do you insist on hiding when our brothers and sisters are dying as we speak?"
"Cas—"
"You're forcing my hand."
"To do what?" Balthazar reaches across the bed for him, but Castiel stands and steps away.
"I should go," he says.
"Ah, yes, love 'em and leave 'em. The Castiel special."
"There is nothing special about this."
Balthazar raises his eyebrows. "Do you wish there was?"
Castiel spreads his wings and flies.
+
Balthazar died in the Garden of Eden.
Eden was once a place of plenty and great beauty, but it has decayed since the Fall. The riverbeds were dried up, the trees petrified, the vines withered, and the flowers dead. Between the shadows drifted the translucent forms of extinct creatures. Whether they were ghosts or Platonic ideals, Balthazar couldn't say. Eden was refuge to the lost and forgotten these days, and perhaps that should've been a sign. Angels avoided this place. It was sacred and full of ill omen. No one suspected that Raphael would co-opt the Garden for his troops. No one believed that any angel would. Balthazar and his comrades pursued Raphael's soldiers across the celestial plains and hesitated only a moment before following them into Eden's dense thickets. Superstitions have no place in warfare, after all, but perhaps the chill he felt then was not fear, but instinct.
It was a trap.
"Fall back!" Samaqiel commanded, but it was too late. Grace flared in time with death, blinding, painful, and with each death, Balthazar could see Eden's shades watching from behind the trees.
Remiel once fought at Balthazar's side against the Nephilim, but now her blade was at his throat. Her expression was sorrowful and full of defensive intent, and she ignored his cries of sister and please. She was strong, but in the end Balthazar was faster. He dodged her blow and grabbed her wing, twisting it. She screamed. Remiel sobbed his name, and Balthazar killed her before she could say his name a second time.
In the end, Balthazar was the only survivor on either side.
He was surprised to find that his next thought was What now? And the longer Balthazar stood there, battered, bruised, the louder the question became. The shades drew closer and he did his best to ignore them, trying to focus on the present and the decision building within him, the one that had been simmering for a long time. He tried to push Remiel crying his name out of his mind, but he couldn't.
Balthazar was an able warrior, but weeks from now, he would reflect that perhaps his power came from his staunch belief in his capacity as an instrument of God. He could do no wrong simply because God had willed it to be so. Then along came Castiel, Lazarus risen, proclaiming that God's will was only their own will, and then all of Heaven was turned upside down. What were creatures made for servitude to do with a proclamation like that? If God's will was their own, then were they all gods?
The question changed shape. It was no longer What now? but What if?
"Don't you see?" said Castiel's voice at the back of his mind, a memory. "You're free. We're free."
"But our Father--"
"No, not our Father, Balthazar. Ourselves." Then Castiel's voice went soft, incrementally, as if the realization was occurring to him as he spoke. "We only have ourselves. Everything is yet unwritten."
And so Balthazar unwrote himself.
+
The first time Castiel ever took a shower was at a motel in Iowa, at Sam's insistence, two days after Dean left them for Michael.
Without grace, his vessel – his body – decayed. He ached and itched and sweated. He thirsted. Castiel had his first taste of coffee in a diner outside of Fort Dodge, and it was not at all pleasant. Sam made a face at how much sugar he spooned in, but said nothing. Castiel was constantly irritated; they both were. He drank more whiskey, then spent half the next day miserable in the passenger seat as Sam drove them through the midwestern landscape, radio playing softly in the background to soak up the silence. "You should really take it easy with that stuff," was all Sam said. "Dean and Bobby are bad enough."
He had the thought that he might feel better recovering in a cool quiet place, somewhere that wasn't the stifling constant motion of the Impala. Castiel recalled a glade in the Hengduan mountains that he sometimes returned to this past year whenever he needed respite, but the thought of being alone sickened him more than the hangover, so he stayed. The little voice inside him that usually wondered whether he should've challenged this or that order was now asking him if he should've just left Dean in the green room, if perhaps he never should've confessed his weaknesses to the righteous man on a park bench on All Souls Day, as if he could be trusted with them.
At some point, Sam said, "Look, man, no offense but you're getting a little pungent."
The motel bathroom smelled of disinfectant. There were questionable stains in the tub, and the cold water seemed reluctant to leave the showerhead. When Castiel finished and walked out, Sam said, "You still have soap in your hair."
It's easier to appreciate something when you're not trapped in it. All the times he defended humanity. All those times he was defending this. Castiel just toweled off the leftover foam and Sam moved on, talking about where he thought Dean might be.
But this, this is different.
"I told you you'd like it," Balthazar murmurs.
The showerhead rains a steady pressure on them both, warm and distracting, almost as distracting as Balthazar himself.
It's so very easy to provoke Balthazar into this. He is the very picture of naivete, thinking he understands something just because he enjoys it. The year Castiel spent falling into humanity will never leave him, and he finds himself now putting the lessons to good use. How to feel. How to follow the impulses of the body, and how to lose yourself in it. How to make recklessness a habit, and how to throw yourself against walls. It occurs to Castiel that perhaps they are not lessons; perhaps they are preemptive strikes. They have followed him into both war and love.
Balthazar smiles against his cheek. "You do like it, don't you?"
Whatever he's doing with his hands is making it very difficult for Castiel to reply. "Yes," he breathes. "Yes."
And even after the shower, Balthazar is insatiable, he is relentless, pushing Castiel down to the bed and kissing him as he pushes inside. Castiel cries out, clinging to the confines of this vessel for the escape that it offers, losing himself in sensation, in being pursued by nothing more wicked than lust and longing and the shifting sands of common ground.
"Give up the war, brother," Balthazar says when they've finished. Always he says this. "It'll end nowhere good."
"No."
"We'll go where Raphael won't find you, where they can't hunt you down, and you can have your new beginning, Cas, this new beginning that you keep talking about."
And always Castiel replies, "No."
Balthazar rolls over to him, slides over his body like fog rolling into his harbor and pinning him to the bed. "You've only just found me. I would not lose you again."
In the end, for all his bombast and chicanery, Balthazar is just another angel who misses his family. It fills Castiel with relief, with dread. They are not so different. They never will be. He says, "Then don't let go."
+
Today, Balthazar announces, they are going swimming.
"I don't swim," Castiel says, and Balthazar laughs at the disdain in his voice. If ever there comes a day when Castiel will choose the option of not being a wet blanket, Balthazar will eat his most expensive hat.
"Fine, we won't swim," he concedes. "We'll just take a walk."
This is how they find themselves on a secluded stretch of beach and, side by side, they walk into the sea. Castiel's trenchcoat billows out behind him, his hair dancing in the current. They walk in silence, ignoring the fish that flit around them. Castiel's tie floats upward, and Balthazar reaches over and fingers the knot, pulls it until it comes undone. Castiel turns to him, frowning, and his eyes are the same color as the water, like they are just two holes through which Balthazar can see the sea. He takes his tie from Balthazar and puts it in his pocket.
Castiel is tired; it's plain to see. It used to be that he came to Balthazar only to make another bid for the weapons or convince him to join the war, but these days he seems to come for escape. From what, Balthazar can only imagine. In this mood, Castiel is averse to touch, to food and drink, and to conversation, yet he sticks around. Balthazar scarcely knows what to offer him. Usually he would just go his own way, and lets Castiel follow.
This time, Castiel has followed him to Cebu. In a posh hotel watching the Travel Channel on hi-def one night, Balthazar had learned that the Coral Triangle is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. Seventy-five percent of all coral species can be found under one percent of the earth's surface area, said the narrator over a montage of riotous color, corals, fish, crustaceans. Balthazar was transfixed. He decided with relish – free will, how wonderful! – to go there at once. A few days later Castiel found him occupying someone else's beach house, eating dried mangoes and drinking beer for breakfast, watching the tide roll in.
A banded sea krait winds past them and Balthazar idly reaches out and touches it. The krait strikes, sinking its fangs into his palm, lethal to a normal human, but Balthazar merely shakes it off. It curls away through the water like a gymnast's ribbon. Why, Balthazar wonders, couldn't humans have evolved to live in the sea? He finds it preferable to move through water. It is perhaps the closest humans will ever get to flight outside of that ridiculous contraption, the airplane.
The water's surface is very far above their heads, filtering the sun to a white stain. Around them, everything is blooming. The blue tints the reds and yellows, greens, oranges of this shifting underwater world. His vision blurs and Balthazar blinks, then realizes it's only a jellyfish, barely bigger than his hand and floating translucently in front of his face. He flicks it with his fingers, and it bobs away.
Castiel drifts from his side and Balthazar keeps him in his peripheral vision. The trenchcoat trails behind him, and the sunlight through the water's surface casts rippling shadows on it. A parrotfish drifts close to him, unafraid, and Castiel frowns. The parrotfish stares back. From here, it looks like the two are engaged in some vital confrontation. Castiel lifts his hand and touches its fin, a delicate gesture. Here is Castiel the rebellion leader, Castiel the twice-risen, Castiel the traitor and the hero, playing with fish in the sea.
Balthazar floats to him and Castiel looks up. He gauges Castiel's reactions as he drifts closer, and when Castiel does not move away, Balthazar cups his face and leans in to steal a kiss. Down here you can only taste the sea, but Balthazar can feel something else, that spark of grace from Castiel's mouth as he tangles his hand in Balthazar's hair. Something so familiar it aches.
Suddenly Castiel stiffens and nudges him. Balthazar opens his eyes, and Castiel gestures with his head to the left. A scuba diver hovers over a cluster of brain coral, staring at them with wide eyes. Balthazar waves at her and winks, and then he takes Castiel's arm and they vanish.
+
In the darkness of a bedroom somewhere in Prague, Balthazar says, "You can't win this war, Cas."
"You don't know that. Nobody knows that. That's the point."
The sheets rustle. Someone's arm reaches out and a hand settles over a hip. Two bodies shift closer.
Balthazar says, "I think sometimes you forget the point."
Castiel's only reply is a kiss on his temple, and one more on his cheek. Balthazar presses their mouths together and closes his eyes, and then they don't think about the point of anything for a while.
slinkymilinky is doing a Dean and Cas's infinite playlist thing, which you should totally check out and contribute to.Here's that Castiel/parrotfish fic I was tweeting about. This was one of the fics I meant to finish during the post-6x16 hiatus, then I didn't, and when canon started up again, I put it off and put it off because there was so much new stuff coming out per episode that I didn't want to be immediately jossed. Well, canon has finished and so have I! Despite the fic containing long walks on the beach, room service, and shower sex, it has quite failed to be shmoop. I mean, it's basically vacation fic. Except, y'know. Not.
Thank you to
switchbladesis and viridian_magpie for betareading.Vanishing Point
Supernatural. Balthazar/Castiel, Sam. R. Spoilers through S6.
Set during the first half S6. Basically the most drawn-out and desultory chase scene ever, plus sex. ~3000 words
Castiel names the dead as they walk down a beach outside of Montpellier. Balthazar walks in the waves, pants rolled up to his knees. Castiel walks beside him, pants neat as ever, and does not get wet. Tabris, Raguel, Sandalphon, Baruchiel: these are angels from their garrison, and Balthazar has loved each of them.
"Help me stop this," Castiel says, and Balthazar's response is an indulgent chuckle.
Haniel and Nuriel and Temeluch. Balthazar remembers the war against Lucifer, and Nuriel's bright flame beside him, Temeluch's battle cry.
"You still remember how to fight," Castiel says, and it's almost a question. "Being a warrior, you remember what that's like."
"I can't possibly forget." He smiles wryly. "Maybe that's the curse of it. Humans can forget their purpose; angels cannot, no matter how far we've strayed from grace."
"Evidence seems to point to the contrary," Castiel grumbles.
Balthazar resists rolling his eyes. He rests his hand on his brother's shoulder and sighs, "Ah, Castiel. How is it that we've come to this?"
In an instant, Balthazar has twisted Castiel around and thrown him down to the sand, holding him there with a knee on his chest and pinning his wrists to the ground. Castiel is wide-eyed, open-mouthed, but there is a spark in his eyes that is perhaps the flash of sudden hope, and Balthazar finds himself unnerved for it. Castiel has a weakness for last-minute hope. It will be the death of him.
"Balthazar," Castiel breathes, and Balthazar bends down to whisper in his ear.
"I remember how to fight, brother," he says. "I remember many things."
+
Sometimes Balthazar convinces Castiel to stay the night, and he would still be awake in the morning, sitting on the edge of the bed. The sheer curtains shiver in the breeze, and through its gossamer Castiel can see the city, the skies all scraped.
Balthazar has taught himself to sleep. Angels don't need sleep, but he claims to find it relaxing. Castiel doesn't understand this. He remembers sleeping from his days as a mortal two years and lifetimes ago. He didn't like it. He had dreamed, and he didn't like his dreams.
This week they are in Macau, and the penthouse suite is littered with the debris of room service: melted ice in a champagne bucket, half-empty bowls of congee and its array of toppings, open bottles of alcohol, a platter of fruit (Balthazar likes papayas, but Castiel prefers oranges), and half-eaten chunks of black forest cake. Castiel has noticed that Balthazar never finishes anything he eats. He picks at food like a bird, taking his time to savor the taste and report his findings to Castiel. "A little briney," he said of the congee, "but better for it. A little too much shrimp maybe, not enough fried onions?" Then he spent the next half hour experimenting with topping ratios as Castiel tried to convince him to hand over the weapons.
"I think maraschino cherries are my least favorite kind of cherries," Balthazar mused when he moved on to the cake. "There are golden cherries in Washington, Cas, and if ever one day you find me there, we'll try some."
"I'm not interested in fruit," he said.
Balthazar streaked icing across Castiel's nose. "Perhaps you should be."
It is morning and Castiel is thinking about the war. He is thinking about Crowley up to his elbows in monster viscera, and how Purgatory is a dying dream. He keeps Dean on the periphery of his thoughts. The Winchesters weigh too heavy on him to be inspected too carefully these days, and Johael has already become too suspicious of Castiel's regular sojourns to earth. He is grateful that the cherub is too meek to directly question a commander. For all that their side is preaching equality and transparency, habits of hierarchy are hard to break. The cupids still avert their eyes and mutter honorifics when Castiel passes and he has grown weary of insisting that they stop.
Through the window, the sun rises higher and the sky slides from grayish mauve to blue. Behind him, Balthazar is dreaming of stars. Castiel recognizes what some humans call the Horsehead Nebula, and in this dream, Balthazar and Anael blaze through its constellations, singing hosannas and shining with unfettered love for God. He finds himself drawn to his brother's dream, trailing along its edges before he realizes what he's doing, and stops. Too late. His intrusion is noticed.
"I loved her, you know," Balthazar says. He opens his eyes and Castiel resists the urge to look away. "She understood better than any of us."
"We all loved her," Castiel says. "We love all our brothers and sisters."
Balthazar chuckles. "We're allowed to have our favorites."
Castiel says nothing.
"For a time, you were hers. Did you know that?"
He looks away.
"You ask so many questions, Cas, but you always ask the wrong ones."
"Here's one," he snaps. "Why won't you give us the weapons? Why do you insist on hiding when our brothers and sisters are dying as we speak?"
"Cas—"
"You're forcing my hand."
"To do what?" Balthazar reaches across the bed for him, but Castiel stands and steps away.
"I should go," he says.
"Ah, yes, love 'em and leave 'em. The Castiel special."
"There is nothing special about this."
Balthazar raises his eyebrows. "Do you wish there was?"
Castiel spreads his wings and flies.
+
Balthazar died in the Garden of Eden.
Eden was once a place of plenty and great beauty, but it has decayed since the Fall. The riverbeds were dried up, the trees petrified, the vines withered, and the flowers dead. Between the shadows drifted the translucent forms of extinct creatures. Whether they were ghosts or Platonic ideals, Balthazar couldn't say. Eden was refuge to the lost and forgotten these days, and perhaps that should've been a sign. Angels avoided this place. It was sacred and full of ill omen. No one suspected that Raphael would co-opt the Garden for his troops. No one believed that any angel would. Balthazar and his comrades pursued Raphael's soldiers across the celestial plains and hesitated only a moment before following them into Eden's dense thickets. Superstitions have no place in warfare, after all, but perhaps the chill he felt then was not fear, but instinct.
It was a trap.
"Fall back!" Samaqiel commanded, but it was too late. Grace flared in time with death, blinding, painful, and with each death, Balthazar could see Eden's shades watching from behind the trees.
Remiel once fought at Balthazar's side against the Nephilim, but now her blade was at his throat. Her expression was sorrowful and full of defensive intent, and she ignored his cries of sister and please. She was strong, but in the end Balthazar was faster. He dodged her blow and grabbed her wing, twisting it. She screamed. Remiel sobbed his name, and Balthazar killed her before she could say his name a second time.
In the end, Balthazar was the only survivor on either side.
He was surprised to find that his next thought was What now? And the longer Balthazar stood there, battered, bruised, the louder the question became. The shades drew closer and he did his best to ignore them, trying to focus on the present and the decision building within him, the one that had been simmering for a long time. He tried to push Remiel crying his name out of his mind, but he couldn't.
Balthazar was an able warrior, but weeks from now, he would reflect that perhaps his power came from his staunch belief in his capacity as an instrument of God. He could do no wrong simply because God had willed it to be so. Then along came Castiel, Lazarus risen, proclaiming that God's will was only their own will, and then all of Heaven was turned upside down. What were creatures made for servitude to do with a proclamation like that? If God's will was their own, then were they all gods?
The question changed shape. It was no longer What now? but What if?
"Don't you see?" said Castiel's voice at the back of his mind, a memory. "You're free. We're free."
"But our Father--"
"No, not our Father, Balthazar. Ourselves." Then Castiel's voice went soft, incrementally, as if the realization was occurring to him as he spoke. "We only have ourselves. Everything is yet unwritten."
And so Balthazar unwrote himself.
+
The first time Castiel ever took a shower was at a motel in Iowa, at Sam's insistence, two days after Dean left them for Michael.
Without grace, his vessel – his body – decayed. He ached and itched and sweated. He thirsted. Castiel had his first taste of coffee in a diner outside of Fort Dodge, and it was not at all pleasant. Sam made a face at how much sugar he spooned in, but said nothing. Castiel was constantly irritated; they both were. He drank more whiskey, then spent half the next day miserable in the passenger seat as Sam drove them through the midwestern landscape, radio playing softly in the background to soak up the silence. "You should really take it easy with that stuff," was all Sam said. "Dean and Bobby are bad enough."
He had the thought that he might feel better recovering in a cool quiet place, somewhere that wasn't the stifling constant motion of the Impala. Castiel recalled a glade in the Hengduan mountains that he sometimes returned to this past year whenever he needed respite, but the thought of being alone sickened him more than the hangover, so he stayed. The little voice inside him that usually wondered whether he should've challenged this or that order was now asking him if he should've just left Dean in the green room, if perhaps he never should've confessed his weaknesses to the righteous man on a park bench on All Souls Day, as if he could be trusted with them.
At some point, Sam said, "Look, man, no offense but you're getting a little pungent."
The motel bathroom smelled of disinfectant. There were questionable stains in the tub, and the cold water seemed reluctant to leave the showerhead. When Castiel finished and walked out, Sam said, "You still have soap in your hair."
It's easier to appreciate something when you're not trapped in it. All the times he defended humanity. All those times he was defending this. Castiel just toweled off the leftover foam and Sam moved on, talking about where he thought Dean might be.
But this, this is different.
"I told you you'd like it," Balthazar murmurs.
The showerhead rains a steady pressure on them both, warm and distracting, almost as distracting as Balthazar himself.
It's so very easy to provoke Balthazar into this. He is the very picture of naivete, thinking he understands something just because he enjoys it. The year Castiel spent falling into humanity will never leave him, and he finds himself now putting the lessons to good use. How to feel. How to follow the impulses of the body, and how to lose yourself in it. How to make recklessness a habit, and how to throw yourself against walls. It occurs to Castiel that perhaps they are not lessons; perhaps they are preemptive strikes. They have followed him into both war and love.
Balthazar smiles against his cheek. "You do like it, don't you?"
Whatever he's doing with his hands is making it very difficult for Castiel to reply. "Yes," he breathes. "Yes."
And even after the shower, Balthazar is insatiable, he is relentless, pushing Castiel down to the bed and kissing him as he pushes inside. Castiel cries out, clinging to the confines of this vessel for the escape that it offers, losing himself in sensation, in being pursued by nothing more wicked than lust and longing and the shifting sands of common ground.
"Give up the war, brother," Balthazar says when they've finished. Always he says this. "It'll end nowhere good."
"No."
"We'll go where Raphael won't find you, where they can't hunt you down, and you can have your new beginning, Cas, this new beginning that you keep talking about."
And always Castiel replies, "No."
Balthazar rolls over to him, slides over his body like fog rolling into his harbor and pinning him to the bed. "You've only just found me. I would not lose you again."
In the end, for all his bombast and chicanery, Balthazar is just another angel who misses his family. It fills Castiel with relief, with dread. They are not so different. They never will be. He says, "Then don't let go."
+
Today, Balthazar announces, they are going swimming.
"I don't swim," Castiel says, and Balthazar laughs at the disdain in his voice. If ever there comes a day when Castiel will choose the option of not being a wet blanket, Balthazar will eat his most expensive hat.
"Fine, we won't swim," he concedes. "We'll just take a walk."
This is how they find themselves on a secluded stretch of beach and, side by side, they walk into the sea. Castiel's trenchcoat billows out behind him, his hair dancing in the current. They walk in silence, ignoring the fish that flit around them. Castiel's tie floats upward, and Balthazar reaches over and fingers the knot, pulls it until it comes undone. Castiel turns to him, frowning, and his eyes are the same color as the water, like they are just two holes through which Balthazar can see the sea. He takes his tie from Balthazar and puts it in his pocket.
Castiel is tired; it's plain to see. It used to be that he came to Balthazar only to make another bid for the weapons or convince him to join the war, but these days he seems to come for escape. From what, Balthazar can only imagine. In this mood, Castiel is averse to touch, to food and drink, and to conversation, yet he sticks around. Balthazar scarcely knows what to offer him. Usually he would just go his own way, and lets Castiel follow.
This time, Castiel has followed him to Cebu. In a posh hotel watching the Travel Channel on hi-def one night, Balthazar had learned that the Coral Triangle is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. Seventy-five percent of all coral species can be found under one percent of the earth's surface area, said the narrator over a montage of riotous color, corals, fish, crustaceans. Balthazar was transfixed. He decided with relish – free will, how wonderful! – to go there at once. A few days later Castiel found him occupying someone else's beach house, eating dried mangoes and drinking beer for breakfast, watching the tide roll in.
A banded sea krait winds past them and Balthazar idly reaches out and touches it. The krait strikes, sinking its fangs into his palm, lethal to a normal human, but Balthazar merely shakes it off. It curls away through the water like a gymnast's ribbon. Why, Balthazar wonders, couldn't humans have evolved to live in the sea? He finds it preferable to move through water. It is perhaps the closest humans will ever get to flight outside of that ridiculous contraption, the airplane.
The water's surface is very far above their heads, filtering the sun to a white stain. Around them, everything is blooming. The blue tints the reds and yellows, greens, oranges of this shifting underwater world. His vision blurs and Balthazar blinks, then realizes it's only a jellyfish, barely bigger than his hand and floating translucently in front of his face. He flicks it with his fingers, and it bobs away.
Castiel drifts from his side and Balthazar keeps him in his peripheral vision. The trenchcoat trails behind him, and the sunlight through the water's surface casts rippling shadows on it. A parrotfish drifts close to him, unafraid, and Castiel frowns. The parrotfish stares back. From here, it looks like the two are engaged in some vital confrontation. Castiel lifts his hand and touches its fin, a delicate gesture. Here is Castiel the rebellion leader, Castiel the twice-risen, Castiel the traitor and the hero, playing with fish in the sea.
Balthazar floats to him and Castiel looks up. He gauges Castiel's reactions as he drifts closer, and when Castiel does not move away, Balthazar cups his face and leans in to steal a kiss. Down here you can only taste the sea, but Balthazar can feel something else, that spark of grace from Castiel's mouth as he tangles his hand in Balthazar's hair. Something so familiar it aches.
Suddenly Castiel stiffens and nudges him. Balthazar opens his eyes, and Castiel gestures with his head to the left. A scuba diver hovers over a cluster of brain coral, staring at them with wide eyes. Balthazar waves at her and winks, and then he takes Castiel's arm and they vanish.
+
In the darkness of a bedroom somewhere in Prague, Balthazar says, "You can't win this war, Cas."
"You don't know that. Nobody knows that. That's the point."
The sheets rustle. Someone's arm reaches out and a hand settles over a hip. Two bodies shift closer.
Balthazar says, "I think sometimes you forget the point."
Castiel's only reply is a kiss on his temple, and one more on his cheek. Balthazar presses their mouths together and closes his eyes, and then they don't think about the point of anything for a while.