To Ship or not to Ship.....The Dean/Cas Question Part 1.
I have been madly in love with these two since the very first scene with Castiel, but have never been too sure on just what to make of their relationship….comrades in arms, broken and lost souls finding common ground, a hero and his angelic boyfriend…..a conversation on FF got my thoughts going about it so I thought I’d put some of them down here and try and make sense of it all….no offense with the occasional light hearted tone I really do love both of them, was just in a bit of a weird mood when I wrote some of this….oh and I added some pretty pics to make the babble a little more digestible….
Where to start…I guess at their very first meeting…now there’s a story to tell the grandkids….well you see kiddies I was in hell and this angel dude gripped me tight….well maybe not that sounds a little too much like some sort of prison fic. Anyway, Dean has been rotting in hell for forty years when all of a sudden he finds himself back in his casket six feet under with no idea of how he got there. Castiel being slightly clueless and more than a little impatient figures he did the hard part surely Dean can manage to get out of a measly box, right, and wanders off to do whatever it is he does when he’s off on his own.
Clueless Dean, after escaping his coffin, reunites with his family, and they decide to try and figure out who got him the fuck out of perdition.
After some hijinks including the burning out of the dear Pams eyes and bursting of Deans eardrums, the Bobster and still baffled Deano decide to summon the damn thing even though they have no idea what it is. Always a good idea.
Here we start the boy meets angel, boy treats angel like a dick, angel ignores him story, and it’s the start of a beautiful relationship/friendship/thingy.
Right from the start there was an unusual dynamic between the two. Dean has always been the big brother who feels he has to save everyone, but yet doesn’t believe he is worth saving himself. Yet in this case he was the one who was saved, from hell no less, and even more by an Angel of the Lord of all things. He’s baffled, mystified, and otherwise clueless as to why an angel would have gone to all that trouble just for him. Cas right from the beginning could see into Dean and see how worthless he thought he was. He may not have immediately given a fuck, but he saw it none the less.
So from day dot the relationship was different to the others in Dean’s life. Well obviously it’s an angel, but apart from that, Dean would never let himself be vulnerable in front of anyone, yet this angel could read him like a book, and see his inner most demons. Leaving Dean a little on the back foot with the ball firmly in Cas’s court.
The Cas we meet in this first scene is alien, unknowable, and absolute in his trust in heaven and therefore his righteousness. Dean’s sarcasm and insolence barely registers as Cas calmly ignores him and explains who he is. I’m sure the rather ominous “we have work for you” did little to reassure Dean, he certainly wasn’t all puppy eyed about his rescuer after their meeting. While this scene may have entrenched Cas deep in many a fan girl’s heart (including this one...) with his badassery, Dean was significantly less impressed though perhaps a little in awe, with a pinch of fear.
I think Dean’s lack of self worth was perhaps the first thing that intrigued Cas. Here was this guy who was meant to be the one to stop Lucifer, yet his low opinion of himself and blatant disbelief or disrespect of God must have been very curious, not to mention irritating, bewildering and other wise exasperating.
The next time Dean and Cas meet up is once again a pretty tense scene. I mean Cas does threaten to throw Dean back in the pit if he doesn’t show him some respect (ooh I like it when Cas gets all controlling…) but Dean has always sort of had a thing for those who stand up to him so this perhaps doesn’t worry him as much as it should. Though it is fun to actually see Dean baulk at someone.
Twice in this scene he seems to realise pissing an angel off might not be a good idea. When he tells Cas “if you say God works in mysterious ways so help me I’ll kick your ass”. No sooner are the words out then he suddenly realises who he just said them to, which gives him pause for a split second. And when Cas gets up in his face with the “you should show me some respect” line, the look on Dean’s face is again priceless. He realises he has this bad ass mutha fucker in his face and maybe that’s not such a good thing…
Already in this scene there is an interesting chemistry between them. A sort of frustration on Cas’s part with having to deal with Dean smart mouth, and Dean actually taking a step back from someone out of forced respect. Both have such strong forceful personalities it’s inevitable that they will butt heads. It’s a tug of war at times with who will get their way, a battle of wills. Dean’s pure stubbornness and Cas’s impatient get it done now and done my way attitude.
The next scene when Cas pops in to watch Dean sleeping (hee hee….hmm uncontrollable urge to giggle, couldn’t help that sorry...) reminds us that Cas knows what Dean experienced in hell, an important factor in their relationship. “What were you dreaming about” such a simple line but it does allude to some interesting facts. Dean was in hell for forty years and Cas having been the one to pull him out has some idea what he experienced. Perhaps the only one who could actually understand and console Dean about this. He also knows about the torturing (more on that later) and the first seal (again more on that later). Yet even with this knowledge there are still hints even at this stage that he likes Dean, he’s intrigued by him.
Next up, Cas, who has a severe dislike for explaining things, with not much more than a “you have to stop it” sends Dean time tripping back to 1973. A trip that is enlightening not only to Dean but also Cas, as it provides him with an insight into Dean and his desire to protect his family. Dean also notices that Cas is allergic to straight answers, cause he likes to be all brooding and mysterious and knows it frustrates a certain bowlegged human.
The conversation they have in the car about how if Dean changes things all the people he, Sam and their father saved will die is interesting. You can almost see Cas trying to understand Dean’s motivations, and how much it pains Dean and how torn he is between saving his family and saving all those people. If Dean had been able to save his parents and remembered everything how would he have dealt with that decision, how heavy would the guilt have weighed on him? Even though Cas knew that destiny couldn’t be changed, seeing the struggle Dean had with this gave him an insight into the sense of family and right and wrong that drives Dean.
Then when Dean sees Mary has made the deal, Cas is there (the look on both Dean and Cas’s faces still makes my heart skip a beat...). It’s the first time we really see Cas feeling something for Dean. He sees the pain Dean is in and perhaps on some level understands. The way he places his hand on Dean’s shoulder, reaching out to him, they sort of share a moment there before he zaps them back to the future. This is probably the most bonding moment they share in the first three episodes. Dean’s pain is so raw in that moment and he lets Cas see it. Both Cas and Dean always express so much without saying anything, that to me there was so much shared in that look. It’s unusual for Cas to go around touching people so I feel he was offering comfort with that touch, it was more subtle then the fingers to the forehead he usually uses.
When they come back to the present Cas tries to sort of console Dean in that angelic fashion of his by saying he couldn’t have changed it and not to be too hard on himself. But then moments over and the impatient Cas takes over and gets to his point, and back to his lovable threatening self, “stop him or we will”.
Their bond is only in the early stages in these first few scenes so I think I’ll leave it at that for this bit. There’s a foundation here that they begin to build on. It was Cas that alerted Dean to Sam’s shenanigans, which in some way starts to build trust between them, and they share some moments that are very telling in Dean’s journey through the rest of the season. Cas is also only just starting to interact with humans and though he is in many ways innocent in the ways of humans he has shown there is more to him then is immediately apparent. Sure he’s this impatient bad ass angel but there’s much more beneath the surface. The age and experience of Castiel adds to the dynamic. Dean can hardly just brush him off, he’s been around for what, thousands of years? He may at times be a little confused by these strange things called humans, but his knowledge and experience is far beyond that of Dean and Co.
I’ll start looking at the next scenes with them in another post. From here things start to get more interesting as their bond grows....though it’s hardly smooth sailing, they seem to prefer the bumpy winding backtracks....but that’s what makes them so interesting....
Comments more then welcome (Though if i disagree I may ignore you..hee just kidding would LOVE some discussion...)
There's probably much more I could have said but there's still the better part of 2 seasons left to go through with a lot of my favourite scenes still to come....
Part 2 Here
Screen caps by me