When I wake, Cas is in my arms.

     It feels like a dream. Feels like I need to wake up again. I close my eyes and try to, but no, he's still there. His back is to me, his hair smelling fresh of my shampoo. I burrow my nose in the locks, inhaling deeply, enjoying the scent of me on him. I can feel his chest rising slowly and evenly under my arm, which is slung across him. He's very much still sound asleep. I lift myself up onto my shoulder just enough to peak over Cas at the digital clock. It's only a little after six.

     Cas's schedule comes to mind suddenly, and I remember he has work. I give him a shove.

     He wakes groggily, turning over in my arms so he's facing me. "What was that far?" he says as he yawns. "What happened to sleep for a thousand years?"

     "You have work," I say.

     "Huh?" He rubs at his eyes. "No, I told them I got snowed in somewhere."

     "Oh," I say, wondering when he even did that.

     He blinks at me. "You remember my work schedule?"

     I avoid his question. "I made pizza."

     He frowns. "I haven't lost that much weight."

     Hot guilt rises in my throat. I blurt, "I shouldn't have said that. It wasn't even true. I just thought if I came from a place of concern you wouldn't listen to me."

     Cas is blushing? He glances away. "You're probably right." His eyes return to my face quickly thereafter. "Wait, is this why you've been giving me all of those meals? Under the guise of testing recipes? It is, isn't it!"

     He's laughing, so I haven't broken the spell just yet. I laugh, too. He goes, "You're more cunning than I am."

     "That's because you're too honest," I say quietly, affection evident in my voice. It's what I like about him.

     "And you're not?" he asks, his tone making it sound rhetorical.

     I shake my head. "No, I'm not."

     He pulls a face. "You're a lot more honest than you were five years ago."

     "I'm tired of hiding," I tell him seriously.

     He looks away. "Did you hide a lot?"

     "Yes."

     "Why the change?"

     You, I think, but don't say. You changed me.

     I heave a breath. "You spend your whole life hiding and you realize you've missed out on most of your life. You were too busy trying to keep yourself in the shadows that the shadows are all you ever saw."

     "Is that what it was like with me? Living in shadows?"

     I reach out, holding his face. "No," I say definitively, determined. "You were light. You were like the North Star, and I chased that. All I wanted was to be in the light with you."

     Cas is kissing me before my words have even settled in the space between us, reaching up and cradling my face. He stops unexpectedly. Unexpected because kissing that doesn't lead to sex is a new thing for us.

     "All I can think about is that pizza right now," he says. "Okay, not all I can think, but definitely mostly."

     We head downstairs and I ask Cas to let the dogs outside as I pop the two pies back onto the pizza stone in the oven and reheat them. I feel lighter than I have since Cas got back. Since Cas left. Since I left.

     I busy myself pulling out the same peach juice from earlier. That's a weird thing to drink with dinner but I don't keep carbonated beverages in the house. Cas comes back in with the dogs. There's snow dusting the bottom of the sweatpants. I furrow my brows. "Tell me you didn't go out there barefoot," I say.

     "I did not go out there barefoot," he responds, unable to maintain a straight face. "I ran out there barefoot. Delta thought she could outrun me. And, fun fact, she fully can."

     He sounds more like Cas than I've heard him sound like Cas in two months.

     "Socks," I say, pointing upstairs. "Before you get frostbite and I have to saw off your foot."

     "Could your delicate sensibilities handle such a task? Or would I need to 127 hours it?" He's trudging back up the stairs, ever the good listener.

     "Ah, a movie reference I actually know."

     When Cas comes back downstairs, the pizzas are warm and steaming on the island. I've already cut into them and set out plates. "This peach stuff is like ridiculously good," he says as he sits, sipping from the glass.

     "Ms. Vivvie's got the sauce," I say the sentence feeling immediately foreign as it comes out of my mouth. Rumi always says people have the sauce, usually though, it's Harry Styles she's referencing as she stares longingly at her phone.

     Cas outright cackles. "Whoa, look at you with the lingo."

     I roll my eyes. "Tasha says I need to stop acting like a boomer."

     He laughs again. "You don't really give off boomer vibes, though. More like that forgotten generation that literally no one knows what to call but is before millennials." I watch as Cas pulls a slice of the Margherita and tucks into it, taking such a large bite that grease rolls down his chin and he gets sauce in both corners of his mouth. "Wow, delicious, monumental, truly outdone yourself," he says around the food in his mouth.

     "Try the squash," I say with a chin nod toward the other pie.

     He glances from it, to me, and back; hesitates, before reaching for a slice with his free hand and trying it. "Oh," he says, surprised. "Oh, wow."

     "Oh wow, bad? It's a new recipe."

     "Oh, so I'm just the guinea pig? No, it's good. The garlic makes it. I'm surprised the squash isn't sweeter? Are you going to make this for your After Hours?"

     I shrug. "I don't know. Pizza feels juvenile, maybe? That's not the word I'm looking for. Just for how much the tickets are, I can't reconcile serving pizza."

     "Maybe as a first course?" Cas suggests, distracted as he double fists the two slices, alternating bites, in true Cas fashion. "How did After Hours even start? What made you think of that?"

     "Ashley and I were talking about me finding something that I enjoy."

     "You don't enjoy baking? Private Weston's?" he asks.

     "It feels more like something I have to do than I want to do."

     "Wow," Cas says, surprised. "I always thought... I mean, you obviously don't have to explain if you don't want to. But I just thought Private Weston's was your passion."

     Cas and I never talked about Weston. Cas didn't ask, but I didn't bring it up, either. So a lot of that is on me. For the longest time, it was hard to even say his name. But time has done what time does best and dulled the pain to a near-nothingness.

     "It was Weston's passion," I say finally. "His mother baked, mostly breads, I think, and so he spent a lot of time growing up in the kitchen. One day, my whole squad's driving into Panjwaii. This our third tour together? We're moving bases and there's nothing but road for miles, just empty road. The dullest kind of ride, which you didn't really complain about because boring beats the alternative. But we'd played every car game you could imagine by this point. So one of the guys, Martins — he starts talking about what he's going to do when he gets out. Then everybody starts talking about their plans. Weston says he's going to open a bakery that only sells cupcakes. Everybody rips on him. You know the guys are talking about going to strip clubs, benders through Vegas, and Weston's like yeah cupcakes."

     Cas stares at me wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

     I say, "That was Weston, though. He didn't care what anybody thought of him or what anybody had to say. He was going to sell cupcakes after the war and no one amount of shit he got for it was going to stop him."

     "This is the first time," Cas whispers. "You've literally never told me anything about him, before."

     I swallow uneasily. "Is that a bad thing? Should I not—."

     "No," Cas responds quickly. "No. I'm just — you've never talked about him. I'm just taken aback. By all means, keep going."

     "Well, his name was Michael," I tell Cas. "He was good, so much better than all of us. I feel like people always say things like that about the dead but this was just true. Weston never made the kinds of jokes we did. He never had anything mean to say about anyone, even our enemies. He was the kind of guy you wanted on your team. And he had an excellent eye. He was our sniper. He said his dad knew he'd be a great shot when he'd gotten him a bow and he shot the hat right off of his head. Grew up in nowhere New York. That's what he always called it, too. Nowhere New York, where there's nothing and no one for miles."

     "Does it hurt?" Cas asks suddenly. "Thinking about him? Talking about him?"

     I shake my head. "No," I tell him honestly. "It did, once. But I've spent enough time working on it that it doesn't anymore."

     Cas nods, says, "And you two were together?"

     "Yes, but not like how you'd imagine. It was the potential for something great, not necessarily that in itself. I loved him but I couldn't get close enough, not in that kind of space."

     "Because it was wrong?"

     "Because it was dangerous," I say. "It's hard to get close to someone when you're in survival mode. You're doing everything you can to not be vulnerable. And when you're with someone, you're vulnerable almost all the time."

     Cas stares at me thoughtfully, digesting what I've just said. "Do you want to tell me what happened?" he asks. "I understand if you don't."

     "When Weston died, it was as unexpected as it wasn't. We weren't in a hot territory. You know, it was supposed to be a neutral area. Mostly women and children who'd lost their homes in the war. We weren't under attack. Everything about it was routine until this kid steps out of a building and he's crying. He's small for his age, so he looks like he's five, but he's too tall, so maybe eight or nine. All the kids we saw were like that, war ravaged. And there's this vest strapped to him that hangs over his shoulders, lopsided. He's entirely too small for it. The weight of it looks like it'll topple him over. Nothing about the vest is remarkable, but we all know what it means.

     "Its instinct to run. Deeper than instinct, somehow. It's training, its drills. We've all been prepped for this moment. We've, in fact, lived through many of these moments. And though we wear protective gear and helmets that close — there's no way. We say this thing, when we're talking about what it's like — we'll say it'll turn you into pixie dust. It decimates you. And so every one of us is running. That's what I'm thinking, at least. That every one of us is running in the opposite direction. Except Weston, who's trying to calm the kid down. That's the last thing I remember, Weston with his arm stretched out, saying something I can't hear in farsi. We all only knew a few terms, so it had to have been it's okay or don't move, maybe. I might have turned back or stopped completely, I don't know. Jack was there. And my memory comes to with him on top of me, holding me to the ground, saying over and over, don't look."

     Cas looks hurt for me, like he lived through the moment just as much as I did. I shake my head quickly. "It's okay," I say. "I know it sounds bad. I mean, it was. But I've accepted it now. Unexpected endings are still endings. Maybe they're just more definitive when you don't get a say, when you don't see it coming, when you don't get to say goodbye."

     He asks, unexpectedly, "Did you get shot before or after that?"

     "After," I respond. "It ended my tours. Although I healed fine from the injury, I don't have the range of motion I need to pass the physical. I think it's part of the reason I received a cross."

     "And you haven't seen your father since you enlisted, right?" This question also feels out of left field. Maybe Cas is seizing the opening, asking the questions he's always wanted to but never did.

     I nod my head. "No, I haven't. He was still with Dolores when I left, but she eventually left him. That was actually the cause for a lot of strain in our relationship. Dolores and mine. She wouldn't leave him and he was abusive to her. If he'd touched Amelia, I like to think I would've killed him. But she left him shortly after I enlisted. No one's heard from since."

     Cas sighs. "I feel like these are things I should've known five years ago."

     I frown. "You never asked about any of it."

     "You were not really forthcoming with information," he responds, his tone edgy but not that pointed. "I thought it I asked you were just going to dodge my question, get all closed off."

     I'm embarrassed. Or maybe it's shame. I regret that it took me this long to be able to say these things to him. "These were things I was still working through with Ashley. I had a lot of guilt about leaving Dolores and Amelia in that situation. I enlisted because I wanted to prove something to my father, but I also just wanted to get away from my life. But I was the one who also protected them from him. Leaving them felt like I was abandoning them and in an environment that wasn't safe."

     Cas stares at me hard. "But you realize now that wasn't your responsibility."

     I laugh quietly. "Yes, Cas, I have come to realize that."

     He glances behind him, at the living room, which is dark now that nightfall has settled in. "Well, they're probably not gonna plow and salt the roads till tomorrow morning."

     I don't know what this means. It's not like I'm going to kick him out or if there is even a question of if he can spend the night. "You can pick a movie," I say, standing up. "But pretty much any movie you've mentioned in your letters, I've seen."

     Cas grins, and I think that I am so lucky to be able to see it again. I'll never take it for granted the way I once did.