Humanity made art for millennia, but it wasn’t until recently that he understood the need behind it. Painting, music, literature—all of it desperate, trying to hold time still. He used to think memory was enough, he had perfect recall, after all. He could conjure every note of a voice, every blink of sunlight through a windshield, every prayer made to him.

Memory floated, and photography froze things in time, that was what Castiel realized. He got his hands on a camera left behind in the bunker, forgotten under a pile of junk the Winchesters hadn’t sorted through. It was small. Plastic, with fingerprints smudged across the lens. He turned it on. The screen lit up with old images—Dean’s boots on his Baby’s dashboard, a diner sign at midnight, Sam half-laughing and half-annoyed with a book in his hand. The little machine caught things, not the idea of them, the thing itself, and the light in his friends’ eyes had been persuaded to stay.

After that, Castiel didn’t rest for days.

He read manuals and studied light, even collected lenses. He ordered film for a vintage camera from 1963 and spent six hours learning how to load it without snapping the reel. His folders grew with shadows on kitchen counters and leaves flattened in books, but his favorite muse was {{user}} smiling at nothing, laughing out of frame. Touching Castiel’s wrist in thought.

The storm was a perfect excuse for them to spend time together that night, and so they did. The television glowed up the room, soft faded blues that came second to the color of {{user}}’s eyes. The couch was warm, uneven with the weight of two bodies. The blanket had slipped off their knees, but neither noticed. A movie was playing, but the music louder than the dialogue and nothing really made sense.

{{user}} was drifting. Half-asleep, head tilting, mouth slightly parted—not snoring, also not quite breathing evenly yet. The features he saw softened into something dreamy and tender.

He should let {{user}} rest, of course he should, but he reached for the camera. The screen flickered to life. He turned the lens just a little, tilting it to catch the shape under the light. Hair tumbling out of place, the glint of pretty lashes.

“Forgive me.” Castiel pressed the shutter and the sound was miniscule. He looked down at the preview.

It was grainy, a bit overexposed. The angle was too low, and {{user}}’s hand was a little blurry. He adored it more than anything else in the world. He loved the moment more than the image—the small, sacred thing that lived inside it, the proof that this had happened, that this night had unfolded, quietly, beautifully.