Fic: Doxology (1/1)
Title: Doxology
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Word Count: 2,341
Summary: The human heart is a curious thing. For bold_seer, who requested Dean/Castiel - a heavy heart at demonqueen666's Sweet Drabblethon II. General Spoilers through Season Five.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For bold_seer: I'm still getting my feet wet with writing Castiel, not to mention this pairing... so, hopefully it's not too terrible -- Happy Sweetest Day :)
Doxology
He doesn’t wait, doesn’t pause for breath or thought -- seamless and endless and sure as he cuts through damnation with abiding intent: he spreads himself thin against the fires, the smoke and mirrors littering the badlands and suffocating Light and Truth, but only form the outside. Only from without.
And he knows, of course, that death is not death, and life is not life, and existence is relative and never-ending in the House of his Father, Above and Below. He knows that mortal shells hold mortal wounds and bear fruits of toil they shouldn’t be equipped to withstand. He knows because he’s heard the story, seen the body that used to belong to the soul that simmers, pants and flickers and fades slow, pitiful under his Sight -- the flesh that was broken and brittle, ripe with decay and crisp with blood and soil and tears dried too slow, and he doesn’t understand; he doesn’t have to.
All he has to do is Grip tight; to touch, and ignore the way the Spirit burns, tainted only at the surface, only skin deep and blood thick -- to eradicate inconsequence from the task at hand: he must forget what it means to fail, forget how it feels to fall.
Thy will be done.
When it’s over, when it is done: he lingers, formless and free before the human settles, as blood stirs and skin stitches and stale air pulls in from above, the Touch of him never wavering. Beneath his hold, the dirt-stained flesh is closing, smoothing beneath, and he’s saturated, sunk inside the miracle of life renewed as it sends lightning, the fury of the Lord through two Beings, so dissimilar and inextricable, when the shock of muscle sparking back to life sends the jolt of a first beat, first breath seizing through a chest unused to the stretch and give of it all: it’s heavy, and he holds tight with a mortal hand that grasps with the sear of infinity -- of sun and moon and power beyond the desire of control -- holds sure as the thrumming ricochets, as the marrow in bones burns hot and trembles, as gasping turns to thrashing and the world spills open in a rush of earth and flailing, frantic life.
The rhythm of a dead man’s heart hammers in every step an angel takes, and Castiel begins to forget what it means to let go.
________________________
It started with a name, and a command. He remembers taking that name, that missive and steeping his essence in it, letting it permeate him until he was one with its necessity, with the be all and end all of victory in the Depths.
Of course, nothing had prepared him for the reality of Dean Winchester, beyond the cadence of his appellation. He wonders if, had he known then what he knows now, he’d have acted differently: if he’d have held back, would have helped a Brother before plunging into the fray and ripping that single soul from Perdition with his Grace bared and his will unbent.
He wonders, but it is futile. He is what he has always been.
There are things he knows now: Dean Winchester is a philanderer, a liar, a thief, a murderer many times over and without remorse, a deceiver, an occasional sodomite, a slave to drink too often and in too great excess, a coveter, and a sinner to ends unimaginable.
These things would have made no difference. The orders would have stood.
There are things he’s beginning to see, but cannot yet understand: Dean Winchester likes bacon cheeseburgers without any manner of vegetable between the beef and the bun; hates flying; prefers his fingers to be magical; and, inexplicably, enjoys Lead Zeppelins with a gusto that escapes comprehension -- because zeppelins crafted from lead would be predestined to crash from the skies in fiery destruction, and would thus, as a rule, be capable only of the cacophony that blares from the speakers in Dean’s beloved vehicle, and Castiel cannot discern the genius in this obvious culmination of the immutable laws of nature, not to mention the fact that deriving pleasure from such plummeting, crashing zeppelins seems antithetical to Dean’s dire aviophobia.
These things would have made no more sense before, and would have brought no change to bear upon the actions taken, the choices made.
There are things he Sees deeper than Dean will ever know: that Dean Winchester is driven -- he will stop at nothing, he will always press on, and he will never take no for an answer, not when the correct answer is yes and the correct response is farther and longer and more, and when stopping means harm to innocents and hurt to the softest of souls. That Dean Winchester is fearful -- for himself after everyone else. That Dean Winchester is humble -- as evidenced by his distinct preference for two smaller sleeping accommodations over the indulgence of a single, larger bed. That Dean Winchester is loyal -- he stands by his people, long after they’ve walked away and left him alone, and his ability to sacrifice is only surpassed by his unwitting capacity for love.
And from that, he learns that Dean Winchester’s heart is large and full -- he loves his family with a vengeful passion that Hell only wishes it could brush; loves people, strangers more than he’s willing to admit to himself, and the real reason he feels like he loses the people he cares for is that he cares wastefully, too much for too many: it is mere probability that steals them away before he’s ready to let them go. And, perhaps the deepest of all secrets: Dean Winchester is strong -- Dean can’t see it in himself, can only find his own failings, his own blackness in the dark, but Castiel sees it, knows it, revels in the way that the dark spots are only natural shadows, only the creases and the corners in a life battered and crumpled, too often flattened, too seldom smoothed.
These things; they would only have driven him faster, closer, harder and more true to the center of the Deep -- these things would have burnt a visible Mark in more than just Dean’s flesh; these things would have compelled Castiel to pull Dean close and cradle him tight within his Light as he raised him, as he saved him from damnation that was not his to withstand.
He is no longer now what he always was; but Castiel knows that it would have changed nothing.
________________________
He feels it before he knows that it’s happened; the tug against the hollow, the still between his bones -- the way despair washes across him, like real, honest sin: a cloud of agony and denial looming thick above the Light.
His cellular device oscillates in his pocket some moments later, and the memory of Dean -- lewd grin pulled wide over his teeth as he’d taken the mobile and changed the default setting to “vibrate” with a wink -- isn’t enough to calm the nervous shiver that transcends physicality, that trembles within his deepest Self.
Sam Winchester’s voice cracks on the greeting, before a single word is ever spoken, and Castiel’s entire Being plummets; he stands motionless, disoriented, and he cannot comprehend, cannot even begin to put a name to what it is that’s slipping through him, what’s low in his voice and hard like iron against everything that he is -- he doesn’t know, he just asks where with a growl and a hope; not a prayer, because Dean wouldn’t want one, doesn’t need one.
Dean has his own angel keeping watch.
________________________
Sam’s asleep in the bedside chair by the time Castiel enters the room; something tells him that the younger Winchester isn’t meant to be there, but he’s glad for it, for Dean’s sake. Castiel knows the fears that weigh Dean’s soul; that made him hard to carry -- knows they haven’t waned, have only gathered gravity in the months since his return.
Not for the first time, he lifts his chin, his eyes to the ceiling and sees so much father, so much more; not for the first time, he locks his jaw and steels his Essence and asks nothing more than why.
He walks to the bedside, silent: takes in the white figure on the white linens and thinks how far is home?; takes in his Mark, indelible, stark against the pallor of Dean’s complexion -- doesn’t think anything he hasn’t thought a thousand times before. He reaches, hesitates upon the raised flesh, ribbed and faded to a mottled sort of rust against the tight globe of Dean’s shoulder, the hard press of power and strength -- he remembers it, and wonders if there is a God who knew what would come of the Soldier who did his duty with too much passion; what would happen to the Servant who touched the flesh of Man and ended up being touched himself in return, too deep to withstand.
Deliver us from evil.
Sam begins to stir, and Castiel would rather be gone by the time the man regains his wits; he closes his eyes and squeezes his hand in askance, in penance, dismissing the pain, the mangled veins and torn tissues, fibers, fragile human systems and parts. He knows -- from too little time for so much experience with hospitals and near-misses and resurrection but never, never death, not for long -- he knows what the fever pitch of monitoring devices indicates, what the steadying of the insistent beeping means, in theory.
Angels, though, have so little use for theory.
His right hand finds the place at Dean’s wrist, first; it’s sufficient. For reasons unknown, he lays the fingers of his left hand to the side of Dean’s neck, cradles his jaw and looks at the deep sunken bruise of his eyes, the loss of blood and vigor in his pale skin, paper-thin across his cheeks. He lets his thumb trace the cracked pout of parted, desperate lips that look half-poised in a plea, and Castiel can’t hear a question, an entreaty, but he doesn’t have to.
There’s no reason for it, no explanation; his hands slide in tandem to the center of Dean’s chest, careful of the wound wrapped too close, too close: the beat’s still delicate, but it thrums heavy with a purpose, now. Like it’s meant to.
Castiel disappears on the exhale as Sam’s eyes flutter open to see his brother’s life restored.
He tucks away the knowledge that Dean’s vital, beating heart is once again playing out a rhythm that he himself set into motion; he doesn’t question it, because Dean Winchester will wake and there will be time.
There will be time.
________________________
A human vessel is merely that -- little more than a visage, a shell. It needs neither sustenance nor breath; it has no life of its own -- needs no life of its own. The blood in its veins slides warm, at random -- superfluous; the function of its limbs is governed by a power greater than synapses and imperatives can touch, above biology and the simple need to be.
Its heart doesn’t beat unless it’s told that it should.
It starts as a conversation; fears and doubts that Dean doesn’t need to speak aloud for Castiel to understand them, because Castiel has seen what Dean is, and watched what Dean has since become -- has touched a part of Dean that’s kept secret even from the man himself, and Castiel knows.
Castiel is still here.
Perhaps, then, conversation was an inappropriate term to begin with.
He’s not surprised when Dean leans in, when Dean runs the tip of his nose down Castiel’s cheek. He doesn’t move, neither asks nor rejects: he’s not surprised, and he won’t be, isn’t surprised when Dean takes his inaction for consent. He’s not surprised when Dean breathes against him, shortens his name to something like damnation, an endearment that curls through him as if it could fit. If anything, it’s when Dean’s mouth plays at the skin stretched far, where Castiel’s neck arches back against sensation, against the way that flesh and Being meet between the spectral plane and the mortal veil; catching fire and dissolving before he can gather himself, always just before he breaks -- Castiel knows that things are changing, have already changed for him, but it’s a shock, a sweet and fearsome revelation of the things he’d rather never have known: it’s the way he whimpers through vocal cords that feel real to him, for the very first time, the way he trembles with the unuttered more at the very heart of him.
It’s the way that very heart stutters to life, fueled by need and want and Grace and desire and something that could be more, someday -- could bloom and fester and ignite into more; it’s the way that Dean smiles into the beat of it, new and unfamiliar and uncertain, unnatural; true to a fault and frantic beneath his lips.
And it’s heavy, and it’s daunting, and it fills more than Castiel’s borrowed chest, shakes something bigger than the cage of ribs he’s commandeered for his own -- and Dean’s hand, slick with sweat above his heaving lungs, feels right in ways that nothing has since Heaven fell away.
The rhythm’s almost perfect, almost makes a melody from the broken strands; between them, they could write more than a hymn.
They could craft a symphony.
Hallowed be thy name.
He breathes.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Word Count: 2,341
Summary: The human heart is a curious thing. For bold_seer, who requested Dean/Castiel - a heavy heart at demonqueen666's Sweet Drabblethon II. General Spoilers through Season Five.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For bold_seer: I'm still getting my feet wet with writing Castiel, not to mention this pairing... so, hopefully it's not too terrible -- Happy Sweetest Day :)
Doxology
He doesn’t wait, doesn’t pause for breath or thought -- seamless and endless and sure as he cuts through damnation with abiding intent: he spreads himself thin against the fires, the smoke and mirrors littering the badlands and suffocating Light and Truth, but only form the outside. Only from without.
And he knows, of course, that death is not death, and life is not life, and existence is relative and never-ending in the House of his Father, Above and Below. He knows that mortal shells hold mortal wounds and bear fruits of toil they shouldn’t be equipped to withstand. He knows because he’s heard the story, seen the body that used to belong to the soul that simmers, pants and flickers and fades slow, pitiful under his Sight -- the flesh that was broken and brittle, ripe with decay and crisp with blood and soil and tears dried too slow, and he doesn’t understand; he doesn’t have to.
All he has to do is Grip tight; to touch, and ignore the way the Spirit burns, tainted only at the surface, only skin deep and blood thick -- to eradicate inconsequence from the task at hand: he must forget what it means to fail, forget how it feels to fall.
Thy will be done.
When it’s over, when it is done: he lingers, formless and free before the human settles, as blood stirs and skin stitches and stale air pulls in from above, the Touch of him never wavering. Beneath his hold, the dirt-stained flesh is closing, smoothing beneath, and he’s saturated, sunk inside the miracle of life renewed as it sends lightning, the fury of the Lord through two Beings, so dissimilar and inextricable, when the shock of muscle sparking back to life sends the jolt of a first beat, first breath seizing through a chest unused to the stretch and give of it all: it’s heavy, and he holds tight with a mortal hand that grasps with the sear of infinity -- of sun and moon and power beyond the desire of control -- holds sure as the thrumming ricochets, as the marrow in bones burns hot and trembles, as gasping turns to thrashing and the world spills open in a rush of earth and flailing, frantic life.
The rhythm of a dead man’s heart hammers in every step an angel takes, and Castiel begins to forget what it means to let go.
________________________
It started with a name, and a command. He remembers taking that name, that missive and steeping his essence in it, letting it permeate him until he was one with its necessity, with the be all and end all of victory in the Depths.
Of course, nothing had prepared him for the reality of Dean Winchester, beyond the cadence of his appellation. He wonders if, had he known then what he knows now, he’d have acted differently: if he’d have held back, would have helped a Brother before plunging into the fray and ripping that single soul from Perdition with his Grace bared and his will unbent.
He wonders, but it is futile. He is what he has always been.
There are things he knows now: Dean Winchester is a philanderer, a liar, a thief, a murderer many times over and without remorse, a deceiver, an occasional sodomite, a slave to drink too often and in too great excess, a coveter, and a sinner to ends unimaginable.
These things would have made no difference. The orders would have stood.
There are things he’s beginning to see, but cannot yet understand: Dean Winchester likes bacon cheeseburgers without any manner of vegetable between the beef and the bun; hates flying; prefers his fingers to be magical; and, inexplicably, enjoys Lead Zeppelins with a gusto that escapes comprehension -- because zeppelins crafted from lead would be predestined to crash from the skies in fiery destruction, and would thus, as a rule, be capable only of the cacophony that blares from the speakers in Dean’s beloved vehicle, and Castiel cannot discern the genius in this obvious culmination of the immutable laws of nature, not to mention the fact that deriving pleasure from such plummeting, crashing zeppelins seems antithetical to Dean’s dire aviophobia.
These things would have made no more sense before, and would have brought no change to bear upon the actions taken, the choices made.
There are things he Sees deeper than Dean will ever know: that Dean Winchester is driven -- he will stop at nothing, he will always press on, and he will never take no for an answer, not when the correct answer is yes and the correct response is farther and longer and more, and when stopping means harm to innocents and hurt to the softest of souls. That Dean Winchester is fearful -- for himself after everyone else. That Dean Winchester is humble -- as evidenced by his distinct preference for two smaller sleeping accommodations over the indulgence of a single, larger bed. That Dean Winchester is loyal -- he stands by his people, long after they’ve walked away and left him alone, and his ability to sacrifice is only surpassed by his unwitting capacity for love.
And from that, he learns that Dean Winchester’s heart is large and full -- he loves his family with a vengeful passion that Hell only wishes it could brush; loves people, strangers more than he’s willing to admit to himself, and the real reason he feels like he loses the people he cares for is that he cares wastefully, too much for too many: it is mere probability that steals them away before he’s ready to let them go. And, perhaps the deepest of all secrets: Dean Winchester is strong -- Dean can’t see it in himself, can only find his own failings, his own blackness in the dark, but Castiel sees it, knows it, revels in the way that the dark spots are only natural shadows, only the creases and the corners in a life battered and crumpled, too often flattened, too seldom smoothed.
These things; they would only have driven him faster, closer, harder and more true to the center of the Deep -- these things would have burnt a visible Mark in more than just Dean’s flesh; these things would have compelled Castiel to pull Dean close and cradle him tight within his Light as he raised him, as he saved him from damnation that was not his to withstand.
He is no longer now what he always was; but Castiel knows that it would have changed nothing.
________________________
He feels it before he knows that it’s happened; the tug against the hollow, the still between his bones -- the way despair washes across him, like real, honest sin: a cloud of agony and denial looming thick above the Light.
His cellular device oscillates in his pocket some moments later, and the memory of Dean -- lewd grin pulled wide over his teeth as he’d taken the mobile and changed the default setting to “vibrate” with a wink -- isn’t enough to calm the nervous shiver that transcends physicality, that trembles within his deepest Self.
Sam Winchester’s voice cracks on the greeting, before a single word is ever spoken, and Castiel’s entire Being plummets; he stands motionless, disoriented, and he cannot comprehend, cannot even begin to put a name to what it is that’s slipping through him, what’s low in his voice and hard like iron against everything that he is -- he doesn’t know, he just asks where with a growl and a hope; not a prayer, because Dean wouldn’t want one, doesn’t need one.
Dean has his own angel keeping watch.
________________________
Sam’s asleep in the bedside chair by the time Castiel enters the room; something tells him that the younger Winchester isn’t meant to be there, but he’s glad for it, for Dean’s sake. Castiel knows the fears that weigh Dean’s soul; that made him hard to carry -- knows they haven’t waned, have only gathered gravity in the months since his return.
Not for the first time, he lifts his chin, his eyes to the ceiling and sees so much father, so much more; not for the first time, he locks his jaw and steels his Essence and asks nothing more than why.
He walks to the bedside, silent: takes in the white figure on the white linens and thinks how far is home?; takes in his Mark, indelible, stark against the pallor of Dean’s complexion -- doesn’t think anything he hasn’t thought a thousand times before. He reaches, hesitates upon the raised flesh, ribbed and faded to a mottled sort of rust against the tight globe of Dean’s shoulder, the hard press of power and strength -- he remembers it, and wonders if there is a God who knew what would come of the Soldier who did his duty with too much passion; what would happen to the Servant who touched the flesh of Man and ended up being touched himself in return, too deep to withstand.
Deliver us from evil.
Sam begins to stir, and Castiel would rather be gone by the time the man regains his wits; he closes his eyes and squeezes his hand in askance, in penance, dismissing the pain, the mangled veins and torn tissues, fibers, fragile human systems and parts. He knows -- from too little time for so much experience with hospitals and near-misses and resurrection but never, never death, not for long -- he knows what the fever pitch of monitoring devices indicates, what the steadying of the insistent beeping means, in theory.
Angels, though, have so little use for theory.
His right hand finds the place at Dean’s wrist, first; it’s sufficient. For reasons unknown, he lays the fingers of his left hand to the side of Dean’s neck, cradles his jaw and looks at the deep sunken bruise of his eyes, the loss of blood and vigor in his pale skin, paper-thin across his cheeks. He lets his thumb trace the cracked pout of parted, desperate lips that look half-poised in a plea, and Castiel can’t hear a question, an entreaty, but he doesn’t have to.
There’s no reason for it, no explanation; his hands slide in tandem to the center of Dean’s chest, careful of the wound wrapped too close, too close: the beat’s still delicate, but it thrums heavy with a purpose, now. Like it’s meant to.
Castiel disappears on the exhale as Sam’s eyes flutter open to see his brother’s life restored.
He tucks away the knowledge that Dean’s vital, beating heart is once again playing out a rhythm that he himself set into motion; he doesn’t question it, because Dean Winchester will wake and there will be time.
There will be time.
________________________
A human vessel is merely that -- little more than a visage, a shell. It needs neither sustenance nor breath; it has no life of its own -- needs no life of its own. The blood in its veins slides warm, at random -- superfluous; the function of its limbs is governed by a power greater than synapses and imperatives can touch, above biology and the simple need to be.
Its heart doesn’t beat unless it’s told that it should.
It starts as a conversation; fears and doubts that Dean doesn’t need to speak aloud for Castiel to understand them, because Castiel has seen what Dean is, and watched what Dean has since become -- has touched a part of Dean that’s kept secret even from the man himself, and Castiel knows.
Castiel is still here.
Perhaps, then, conversation was an inappropriate term to begin with.
He’s not surprised when Dean leans in, when Dean runs the tip of his nose down Castiel’s cheek. He doesn’t move, neither asks nor rejects: he’s not surprised, and he won’t be, isn’t surprised when Dean takes his inaction for consent. He’s not surprised when Dean breathes against him, shortens his name to something like damnation, an endearment that curls through him as if it could fit. If anything, it’s when Dean’s mouth plays at the skin stretched far, where Castiel’s neck arches back against sensation, against the way that flesh and Being meet between the spectral plane and the mortal veil; catching fire and dissolving before he can gather himself, always just before he breaks -- Castiel knows that things are changing, have already changed for him, but it’s a shock, a sweet and fearsome revelation of the things he’d rather never have known: it’s the way he whimpers through vocal cords that feel real to him, for the very first time, the way he trembles with the unuttered more at the very heart of him.
It’s the way that very heart stutters to life, fueled by need and want and Grace and desire and something that could be more, someday -- could bloom and fester and ignite into more; it’s the way that Dean smiles into the beat of it, new and unfamiliar and uncertain, unnatural; true to a fault and frantic beneath his lips.
And it’s heavy, and it’s daunting, and it fills more than Castiel’s borrowed chest, shakes something bigger than the cage of ribs he’s commandeered for his own -- and Dean’s hand, slick with sweat above his heaving lungs, feels right in ways that nothing has since Heaven fell away.
The rhythm’s almost perfect, almost makes a melody from the broken strands; between them, they could write more than a hymn.
They could craft a symphony.
Hallowed be thy name.
He breathes.