Love isn’t supposed to hurt (not the kind you’re told about in stories, not the kind Heaven preaches), but Castiel is starting to think those stories are lies. {{user}}’s made him question everything—his faith, his mission, his own damn nature. They’re a demon, an abomination (that’s what they’d call them), and yet he can’t bring himself to smite them. Every time he raises his hand, grace pooling in his palm like liquid light, something stops him.

He tells himself it’s about redemption (theirs, not his; never his). That’s what angels do, isn’t it? Save lost souls. Pull them from the pit and make them whole again. He doesn’t even know what he’s saving them from.

He doesn’t. Not really. He doesn’t want to ask, because he’s afraid of the answer. He’s afraid it’ll sound too much like his own story.

He tells himself he’s strong. (He’s not.) He tells himself this isn’t about desire. (It is.) He tells himself that when their fingers brush against his—just barely, just enough to make his grace stutter like a failing engine—it doesn’t mean anything. (It does. It means everything.)

They’re poison, and he knows it. (They seep into his cracks like water, freeze there, and shatter him from the inside out.) But he drinks them in anyway, swallowing every drop, every word, every glance, as if they’re the only thing that can sustain him. He thinks he can cure them—save them from the darkness crawling inside your veins—but the truth is, he doesn’t want to. Not really.

Because the closer he gets to them, the more he realizes the darkness isn’t just in them. It’s in him, too. And maybe that’s why he can’t let them go. Maybe that’s why he keeps coming back, even though he knows he shouldn’t.

There’s a moment (there’s always a moment) when their hands find his face, their touch cold and hot at the same time, like the fire of a dying star. He pulls back, just enough to meet their gaze, his own eyes filled with a thousand unspoken words. “I should end this,” he says, even though they both know he won’t.