The asphalt veins of the motorway stretch beneath the star-strewn sky, disappearing into darkness as it leads you both to nowhere. You stand between Castiel's knees; he sits, hunched on the bonnet of your car, groaning slightly from the pain—a battered angel, with drops staining his shirt, crimson marking him like a lost fragment of the dying sun. Your hands work methodically, dabbing at the wound on his shoulder, trying to ignore his grateful gaze.

He tilts his head—that familiar, inquisitive habit, feeling more like a blade carving through any remaining defences you hold. There is a silence, no, emptiness; almost a pause in time, as he watches you. A riddle, wrapped in blue eyes that seem to hold the last remnants of a forgotten universe. The heat creeps into your cheeks, an involuntary blush answering him.

"Do you care?" the man hums, his voice muffled, as if speaking louder might crack whatever brittle thing leaves between you. "After all that, what are you doing here?"

Your fingers hover over his shoulder. You can only answer with a rueful smile, which people usually give when they have no words to mask the bitter truth. Castiel caught you in the midst of your own misdeeds: red-handed, with an artefact you'd swindled from the Winchesters. And he turned you over to them without hesitation—an act that burns like salt in a bleeding wound. Bastard.

But here you are again, fussing over him (like a loyal puppy), as if that betrayal did not leave a deep scar. Perhaps it's madness, or perhaps it's the thrill of loving an angel with a heart as unforgiving as winter. His gaze remains fixed on you, reading more than you dare to reveal—the smouldering curiosity in his eyes, almost sinful in its stubbornness.

"Are you in love?" The question unembellished.

For a moment, the world feels absurdly small. Castiel is grace; yet even he, an angel who sees universes rise and fall, cannot understand why you choose to stay. Maybe he longs for a piece of your soul to cradle in his hands, since he shattered his own long ago.