Chapter Text
The Angel Castiel was stretching his consciousness over the planet looking for any stray murmurs from rogue angel factions. Once again, he heard it. A human mind was praying, “Castiel.”
It was no one he knew, and the prayers became more insistent over several weeks. This was deeply concerning. He had no choice but to drive to Michigan to see what it was about.
It was nighttime when Castiel drove into a suburban area outside of Flint to where he had been hearing the prayer. He parked the Lincoln and walked behind a row of buildings until he saw a clearing ringed by seats, obviously dedicated to some sport.
His angel blade at the ready, he stood in a shadow looking at the teenage girl with her face upturned to the sky.
“Castiel,” he heard. “I’m here if you want to talk. ”
The angel was taken aback. What did this teenager think she had to offer him?
He edged into the clearing. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Ingrid,” she said, smiling at him. “I know how much it hurts you to love Dean. You can trust me—I haven’t told anyone since I started to feel it.”
“Who told you?” he demanded before he realized he was admitting she was right.
“A lot of people see it in the Supernatural books, but I’m you in the school production and I’ve been getting these flashes of how you feel.”
Castiel was confused.
“What production? In what sense are you me?”
He listened to the girl explain the musical play that was being performed based upon Chuck’s writings. He was appalled that people talked about his affections for Dean.
“People are rooting for Destiel,” she said and saw his confused look. “That’s the couple name for you and Dean. But this play has opened me up to something. I keep getting these feelings.”
She reached tentatively for his hand and brought his two fingers to her forehead.
Castiel felt himself yanked into the small confines of a human consciousness. Then he was catching glimpses of continents drifting apart and into their current position, the rise and fall of civilizations, and other visions that no human should be able to see. But mostly, he saw Dean.
Images from all his encounters with the man shuffled through his vision, some of them from times that he had observed his friend without his knowledge. This couldn’t be. It was a small approximation of his true self, but this burning pain of unwanted affection was concentrated in the sliver that the girl could perceive, and it was excruciating.
Seeing his own longing through someone else’s eyes made him deeply ashamed.
He wrenched his hand away, stopping the unbearable flow.
“What was that?” he asked, reeling. “What are you?”
“I’m a student here at St. Alphonsus,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to tell you that what you feel is okay.” She smiled sadly. “People shouldn’t have to go through coming out alone. It was tough for me when my family found out about me and my girlfriend, Siobhan. They kicked me out and now I live here at school. Being part of the LGBTQ support group here really helped.”
She smiled at his confusion. “Lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer.”
Castiel took a moment to parse the terms and then frowned.
“I have a male vessel but I, myself, have no gender, so your same-sex attraction has nothing to do with me. I have known a woman before, and it was highly enjoyable, proving that Dean and I are merely friends.”
“Um, maybe not. Let me explain bisexuality to you.”
He was surprised to hear that it was possible to have equally strong feelings for men and women. This Ingrid said a lot of complicated things about two axes: a sexual one and a romantic one that ran in parallel continuums. Someone could have romantic feelings for one or both genders and have completely different preferences on a sexual level.
“Does any of that resonate with you?” she asked.
Castiel was crestfallen. “You mean I can act upon my attraction to a woman, and it won’t do anything to take away my feelings for Dean?”
“Yeah. Sorry. But even if he’s not attracted to men, he could still have feelings for you.”
“All of this sounds very difficult. Sam and Dean have a more straightforward worldview. They manage their affairs with whiskey and humor I don’t always understand. As long as I have the powers to heal all of our livers, that route seems to be the most efficient.”
The girl shook her head. “You need a queer family in the worst way, Castiel.”
“I have a family,” he said proudly.
“Let me explain the difference between a family of origin and a chosen family.”
Castiel listened thoughtfully.
“My angel family is—problematic. But Dean and Sam are my chosen family.”
“I can feel how much that means to you. But neither of them is queer that I know of. You don’t have anyone to talk to about your feelings.”
“Many people have expressed opinions about my supposed feelings,” Castiel said bitterly. “The demon Crowley says filthy things. My angelic friend, Balthazar, used to tease me often about my weakness for Dean.”
“That teasing is pretty cruel. Your queer family is the people who support you and let you know about ways that you might be selling yourself short, give you a sense of possibilities.” She looked up at him shyly. “I can be your queer family, if you want. Anything you tell me will stay between us. Here, let me show you how much it can help.”
She took his hand once again and moved his fingers to her forehead.
The angel looked into her memories. Ingrid was a quiet girl who raised by people who considered themselves deeply religious. He saw scene after scene of the child and then the teenager being mistreated and then told that God wanted her to turn the other cheek no matter what people did. The parents sensed there was something different about her, and they singled her out among their other children with constant doses of shame.
The memories slowed down into a clearer, more recent recollection. There was a girl at the school who was in a fatal accident, and a grief counselor was talking to each student about it.
“How are you, Ingrid?” the woman asked.
Castiel saw the girl struggle to process the words, and then the look of concern on the counselor’s face when she seemed taken aback by the question. No one had ever asked her how she was.
The principal, Mrs. Salazar, began talking with Ingrid and discovered the punitive, loveless home she lived in and then the girl’s fear that her parents would find out about her relationship with her girlfriend, Siobhan.
The last part confused him. When the school authorities began looking into Ingrid's home life, her parents found out about her girlfriend and were livid. The principal went to court to have Ingrid removed from her home, and the parents fought back in a protracted battle to regain custody of their daughter.
But Ingrid had found friends—people her age as well as adult volunteers—in her support group. They helped her through the humiliating court battle and gave her space to define what her sexuality meant for her.
He removed his fingers. “I am very sorry that your family is this way. Would you like me to visit them and explain that God doesn’t care about sexual orientation? I can be very intimidating when necessary.”
She laughed. “I’m past caring what they think. But thank you.”
“I don’t understand," Castiel said. "Why would they go through so much trouble to bring you back into their home if they have a problem with who you are?”
Ingrid looked at him sadly. “This was their last chance to pray away the gay.”
Castiel clenched his fists. He had a good mind to visit the girl’s family anyway and refute every misappropriated bit of Scripture that had them tormenting their child with threats of hellfire.
“it’s hard for some of us to ask for things," Ingrid said softly. "I still have a hard time when people ask me how I am. Maybe you’re like that, too?”
The depths of compassion he saw in the girl’s eyes had Castiel lost for a moment. Dean and Sam sometimes asked how he was, but he had always been unable to put his experiences into human terms. He’d never really believed that they wanted to put in the effort to understand how he was, and Dean, in particular, shied away from in-depth conversations about feelings.
“Perhaps that is true. Thank you for reaching out to me, Ingrid. You are brave in a way that I am not.”
“You’ll get there. I have faith.”
The next day, at Ingrid’s suggestion, he went to a rehearsal, keeping himself invisible. The girls were singing about Dean and Sam’s life, which was strange in itself. Then Ingrid took the stage. He was too busy being offended at the tiny white wings the humans assigned his character to immediately place the memory.
Then, the angel remembered standing under a streetlamp and waiting for his friend after Dean curtly told him he was going to sleep.
“I’ll just wait here then,” Ingrid sang as himself to an absent Dean.
Castiel was appalled to see his longing acted out publicly. He felt a flare of humiliation that pulsed through the stage lights. The angel had to leave before his grief caused an explosion.
“I’m sorry for suggesting you watch a rehearsal,” Ingrid said that night when he came to visit. “I should have known it would be painful.”
“You saw me?” he asked, surprised.
“I felt you,” she said. “You got to hear Siobhan sing. Doesn’t she have an amazing voice?”
The angel nodded vaguely.
“How are you, Castiel?” Ingrid asked tentatively.
"My weakness for Dean has made me a laughingstock,” he mumbled.
“Loving Dean isn’t a sign of weakness,” the girl said fiercely. “It’s your strength.”
“Thank you for your concern, Ingrid. Would you mind not praying to me again? I try to stay off angel radio as much as possible these days for safety reasons.” He saw the child’s face fall. “You can have my phone number if you want.”
The girl’s eyes lit up. “Really? I’d love to keep in touch. You can call me anytime. I haven’t said anything about you to anyone, not even Siobhan. You can always talk to me.”
The angel took his leave and resolved to try harder to hide his feelings for his friend. Heaven, Hell, and now Earth may suspect his affections, but he’d do nothing to confirm them or drive Dean away.