“Dreams Shall Never Die” - Part One
Fandom: Supernatural
Title: “Dreams Shall Never Die”
Pairing: Mention of past Sam/Ruby. Mention of/implication that Lucifer is attempting to “woo” Sam. Can most easily be read as preslash Dean/Castiel.
Rating: Uhm, probably a borderline PG-13-ish, maybe (?)
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Supernatural, more’s the pity (seeing as how they belong to Kripke and to the show’s writers)! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .
Summary: Sam Winchester’s dreams have been invaded by Lucifer - wearing the guise of his dead girlfriend, Jessica, no less - and so he’s a little freaked out by the whole concept of sleeping and dreaming, at the moment; fortunately, that doesn’t stop a certain resurrected angel of the Lord from visiting him in his dreams - even resorting to putting him to sleep, in order to facilitate such visits - to ask for input and advice on dealing with Dean Winchester . . .
Warning: Apparently, I am writing an on-going series of linked stories, (mostly) in response to the individual episodes of season five. This particular story is meant to function both as a kind of sequel to the previous three stories I’ve written for Supernatural, “What Dreams May Come,” “Unless First We Dream,” and “Dreams Are Free,” and as a sort of continuation of and between-the-scenes addition to season five’s fourth episode, “The End.” Given how this seems to be working out so far, while some specifics this story will likely be Jossed as soon as next Thursday and the fifth episode (“Fallen Idol”) roll around, the series itself will adapt and continue with a response to that episode. I have no idea how long this series will last, at the moment, but I expect it will, at some point, move out of the realm of dreams into the physical world. Just not quite yet, okay? (Though probably in the next installment, if I don’t get the piece that’s chronologically set prior to season five altogether typed up beforehand!)
Author’s Notes: 1). As with the other three stories in this series, I have no idea where this story came from. Most of it came to me in between watching the fourth episode and turning in for bed that night, though I didn’t get to write most of it until the following Saturday because I was still working on getting some notes down for a different story in this series (dealing with Castiel’s attempt to apologize to Dean for various threats to send him back to Hell). Aside from the whole Castiel visiting Sam in his dreams thing, it’s canon-compliant (as far as I can tell) up through the fourth episode of season five (and could be considered at least semi-spoilerish for the show up through that episode) and I suppose could be read as (kind of) gen, though frankly the vibe that I get from Castiel when I’m writing in this particular ’verse feels anything but gen and Sam’s pretty damned sure that an angel of the Lord is not only in love with but adores and reveres his brother and that his brother’s in the first stages of learning how to have enough faith to return the sentiment.
2). As I’ve said before, Supernatural is a supremely odd show in that the main characters never seem to have (or to keep) any romantic attachments or possible romantic attachments that aren’t either broken by death or else what some would consider blasphemous/unnatural in some way. This is one of the few ’verses I consider myself a fan of that I’ve never even been tempted to seriously ship, before, for precisely this reason.
Until very recently, there was really no one on the show to ship, except the brothers (apologies to fans of the character, but I’ve been waiting for Ruby to betray Sam from day one, so it never occurred to me to seriously ship that couple. And it’s kind of beside the point, now, all things considered), and, while I totally get the whole “epic love story of Sam and Dean” aspect of the show, honestly, I’ve never been able to see this as a functional romantic ship, in the context of the actual show. The brothers are a couple - are partners - in every sense of the word except the romantic one, and, as much as the show likes to play with the fact that outsiders often read their intensely close relationship as romantic, as they have no other context from their own (fairly) normal lives within which to fit such an obviously strong bond, I honestly don’t think that Kripke and the writers mean for viewers to assume that the Winchester boys are actively pursuing an incestuous relationship behind closed doors and in between the scenes of the show.
Which, again, isn’t to say that I have anything against the Wincest pairing so often found in the fandom (I am an AU girl at heart and fic that actively resists cultural norms is usually my favorite kind. I’ve read some damned good Wincest fic that barely changed anything in the basic natures of the characters, as presented on the show, and some even better AU where all of the changes were beautifully accounted for by the aspects of the boys’ lives that differed from their lives on the show): it’s just to say that I personally consider it much more of an AU ship, when the pairing is also romantic, than a canon-compliant one. So I’ve never really considered myself to be a shipper of any particular pairing for this show, even though I tend to be a diehard OTPer (and/or whatever one might call a functional relationship with multiple partners) when it comes to my fandoms.
With the (fairly) recent appearance of Castiel on the show . . . well, let’s just say that the dynamic of the show began to shift radically, from the moment he and Dean met (and I don’t just mean in the flesh!). There are many fans of the show who have responded to this shift by pairing Dean with Castiel (I’ve seen Dastiel and Destiel both used as portmanteau couple names for the ship); however, until recently (and to be perfectly honest, I’m still not entirely sure about this), I’ve avoided embracing this ship, mainly due to the fact that it’s (mostly) seemed to be painfully one-sided (on top of which, frankly, it disturbs the ever living crap out of me to even approach the notion of a God who would deliberately send an angel to a human, all the while knowing that the essential nature of the two beings involved could only result in pain, Dean too scarred by his life/afterlife/second life to even be able to recognize love and faith when it is offered to him and Castiel having no choice - as a creature whose sole purpose is essentially to experience love and to glorify the divine and faithfully praise God by worshiping all of His creation - but to love).
That Castiel is devoted to Dean (perhaps far too much so) I cannot even begin to argue. That Castiel . . . feels something for Dean that he should not (according to his angelic comrades-in-arms and superiors) - something that is, at the very least, highly irregular for an angel to experience towards a mere human - is also glaringly obvious, especially given the outcome of the season four finale. That Dean cannot grasp/comprehend the depth of Castiel’s attachment to him, doesn’t understand such a level of devotion to himself (seeing as how he has no faith in himself and still cannot even begin to believe that he deserved to be saved, is worthy of salvation, of being raised from Hell, much less capable of stopping the end of days) or even seem to have an inkling that there are ramifications to the fact that Castiel, as an angel of the Lord, is essentially built for faith and devotion and following and has willingly chosen to follow Dean, and is also apparently blindly oblivious to the fact that Castiel’s feelings for him have increasingly seemed to have little to do with the fact that Dean is the only one who can stop the Apocalypse and Castiel has been ordered to protect him, so that he will eventually be able to do as has been prophesied and defeat Lucifer, has also seemed pretty damn patently obvious, to me.
Or at least so it seemed until lately, when I began to get a feeling that there just might be more going on underneath the surface of Dean and Castiel’s . . . relationship (for lack of a better word) than was immediately obvious and to suspect that Kripke et al might deliberately be using the connection between Dean and Castiel - the choice Castiel made, in Dean’s favor, and the reasons why, and the possibility that Dean might one day choose Castiel (and, by extension, his God) back, willingly, for reasons of his own - to enrich the show’s already hugely complex background and mythology.
After viewing the first episode of season five and promptly finding myself compelled to write out my first Supernatural fanfic (and finding, much to my surprise, that I kept instinctively identifying it as Dean/Castiel preslash - if preslash of a somewhat more spiritual than physical nature - even though Dean hardly appeared in the story at all), reflecting on my own confoundment at having written such a thing, and then viewing the second episode of the new season, I found myself quite suddenly having to sit down and seriously contemplate the possibility that Dean/Castiel (of some form or another) could end up being the penultimate ship of the show . . . and that this probability would likely end up having a direct and profound impact on the ultimate outcome of the show, especially regarding the possibility that another way might be found to defeat Lucifer and avert the destruction of the Earth, so that Dean won’t be forced to give in to the faction of angels that, so far, has largely been represented by such amoral individuals as Zachariah and Raphael.
Because of this, the Dean/Castiel ship - or at least some version of it - is rapidly becoming a lot more important to me. I’m honestly not sure, yet, if I’m seeing things that are really there or not or what the hell I’m really doing, floundering about in this fandom, grasping at possible ways to smooth a path between Castiel and Dean. (I feel kind of like I’m stumbling around in the dark with an armful of nitroglycerin, which is more than a little disturbing.)
The whole thing still kind of freaks me out - there are consent issues here that are just . . . freakin’ insane. Angel of the Lord, y’all. Inherent lack of free will plus the whole created to worship and glorify adore thing. And Dean Winchester, poster boy for, well, using free will as a convenient excuse to stomp all over monsters, demons, corporate angel asshats, and assorted other company - and I’m seriously, seriously confounded by the fact that, while their connection so far largely seems to be more mental/spiritual or even emotional than physical (much less sexual), that handprint of Castiel’s is still blazoned on Dean’s arm like a mark of ownership, where he gripped him tight and raised him from perdition, not to mention worried as hell over the fact that, while Castiel appears to be becoming more human (especially this season), Dean’s capacity for self-blame and self-loathing are still such that any alteration to the angel’s apparent nature is (upon reflection) entirely too likely to make Dean panic over the possibility that he’s corrupted/lessened/damaged Castiel.
So, in short (not to repeat myself or anything, but) I really have no clue what I’m doing here or where this story came from or why I seem to think it’s a good idea to pursue this crazy idea of mine in what is apparently a nascent between-the-scenes series in the making, given that it follows on the heels of the previous stories my insane muse bullied me into writing. I get the feeling that I’m going to end up regretting allowing myself to be bullied and pulling out handfuls of hair whilst trying to figure out what in the hell this thing really is and just what Dean and Castiel truly are to one another. In the meantime, though, since I’ve no intention of trying to puzzle this out any further right now, allow me to point out that, though this specific story (like the one preceding it) is canon-compliant up through the fourth episode of season five (at least to a point, inasmuch as it follows the events of the show), the between-the-scenes nature of the story means that it can, technically, also be read as AU. And, in any case, I have a strong suspicion that this story won’t precisely remain all that canon-compliant once the next episode has come out. So . . . readers might want to take this with a grain of salt. (In fact, freakin’ huge handfuls of salt might not be entirely out of line.) Okay?
3). In the episode “The Monster at the End of the Book,” Sam and Dean both responded to the notion that fans of Chuck’s books about them ship them romantically (despite being aware that they’re brothers) rather negatively, in the actual show. And (much like Dean, who’s declaration of TMI regarding Sam’s confession about his sex life with Ruby was extremely vehement) Sam’s consistently behaved on the show as though he’s pretty much wholly uninterested in (and at least somewhat disturbed and/or grossed out by any specific knowledge of) the details of his brother’s sex life. Thus, I believe that Sam’s mental musings on the topic of Dean and Castiel as a possible romantic couple are in character, and I hope that no one will be offended by that! I’m not trying to insult anyone here, folks! I’m just trying to keep things as close to canon as I can, including the personality quirks and opinions of the characters!
4). Erhm, despite Sam’s ginormous tendency towards stupidly destructive levels of self-centeredness (which is, as mentioned in the notes for the previous stories, the reason I’ve always primarily been a Dean girl and not a Sam girl), I do not believe that he is actually a bad (much less an evil) person - just a little bit spoiled and selfish and occasionally phenomenally stupid. He’s human, in other words, folks. And, given how much he cares about his brother - how hugely protective of his brother he can (when not being a selfish dick or addled by power and demon blood and desire for revenge at all costs) be (which only makes sense, given that Dean’s pretty much all he has) - it only makes sense that Sam would have a vested interest in keeping his brother happy, as well as healthy, sane, and safe (at least as much as possible). So I think it’s safe to say that not only would Sam react ferociously, pitilessly, and relentlessly, if he ever suspected someone capable of hurting his brother to be planning to cause Dean harm of any kind (be it physical, mental, or emotional), he would also do his level best to take time out from his own problems (even one as huge as apparently being Lucifer’s chosen vessel) to help anyone he suspected of being capable of making Dean happy and/or of making Dean’s life easier. Even (or perhaps especially) if the individual in question were actually an angel capable of dragging a soul up out of Hell and putting it back into a miraculously healed and living body . . .
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“Dreams Shall Never Die”
Sam Winchester is pretty freakin’ sure he’s not dreaming.
Well. Pretty sure. Mostly sure. As sure as he can be, all things considered.
When he’d woken from the dream where Lucifer revealed himself, he’d hurriedly packed his things, called Bobby to find out where Dean was the last time they spoke and whether or not Bobby knew if he might’ve moved on since then, and made one quick pit stop at an all hours combo gas station and quickie mart before leaving town. Without any fake credit cards to fall back on (and really, what’d he been thinking, burning those along with the IDs? That being able to afford to travel would drive him back to hunting?), he’d had to swipe the bottles of overpriced caffeine pills and energy pills, while stocking up on munchies for the road. As soon as he made it back to the old clunker he’d boosted three states back (switching tags half a dozen times between there and the town he’d so briefly settled in, for safety’s sake), he’d taken entirely too many of both kinds of pills, chased with a Red Bull he’d actually paid for, to make absolutely sure he’d keep his focus and not be tempted to stop for a nap anytime soon.
He’s been alternating between swilling coffee and chugging soda ever since (even though it’s slowed him down, some, having to stop constantly for refills and to either find a public toilet or a place isolated enough he can pull off the side of the road and piss in the ditch), and, even though he finally had to give in and pulled off the road to find a motel for the night (just to rest, not to sleep!) when his eyes started refusing to focus properly and he found himself drifting off the side of the road for the third time in a row, he still hasn’t really stopped moving. He’s been pacing restless circles around his room ever since he got out of the shower, too antsy and jittery even to sit still long enough to turn on the TV.
He’s terrified of sleeping. He can feel his heart racing in his chest, rabbit quick and erratic, and he can’t tell for sure if it’s residual adrenaline and fear still hanging on from the dream (from what Lucifer said to him about how he’ll inevitably give in) or from the energy supplements and caffeine he’s been ingesting to stave off the need for slumber. Castiel’s supposed to be contacting him sometime this evening about how things went with Raphael - he promised to come as soon as he could, but the summoning is supposed to’ve happened at sunrise and Cas has been keeping in touch with him by way of Sam’s dreams, so it’s not like he can just drop in whenever he wants to (though if all else failed, Cas is clever enough he could probably get Sam’s number and give him a call, if he absolutely had to) - but Sam’s far too spooked to even think about trying to sleep, even for Castiel’s sake, though he desperately wishes he knew what was going on with Cas and his brother.
Cas and his brother. There’s a whole other nest full of nasties, just waiting to spring out on unsuspecting passers-by. God knows he can’t exactly blame either one of them (and it’s not like Dean even has an inkling yet just what it means, for him to be claiming Cas as his angel. His brother may not be stupid by any stretch of the imagination, but Dean’s the most stubborn person he knows, and he has denial down to a fine art. Unless God makes an appearance as a burning bush and declares Dean forgiven and beloved of Heaven and blesses a union between him and Castiel, Dean isn’t likely to get with the program any time soon. In fact, even if God were to do that, Dean’s first reaction might be to throw water - or beer, or . . . other things, possibly far less hygienic - on the burning shrub), but the thought alone is enough to give anyone a migraine, and Sam’s not exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment, so he tries not to think about it too much, for fear of giving himself an aneurism.
He’s suspected for a while that Castiel’s interest in Dean isn’t exactly . . . normal for an angel (even one charged with busting someone’s soul out of Hell, putting that soul back in his body, regenerating that body and giving it new life, and then acting as that resurrected person’s guide and guardian on the path to ending Armageddon), so it’s not like being given confirmation of that’s been too terribly shocking. (Though his gradual cottoning to the sheer depth of Castiel’s feelings for and loyalty to Dean sure as hell have been nothing but one series of shocks piled one upon the other.) It’s just, well . . . it’s just so phenomenally beyond insane to even contemplate the idea of his brother being in love (of Dean being able to trust someone - anyone! - enough to open up enough to really let that person in), much less being in love with a freakin’ angel of the Lord (and Sam doesn’t give a shit what Castiel says about Nephilim and consent and love being the greatest act of worship of God’s creation, it can’t possibly be as easy as all that), that he’s not sure if he’s ever going to completely adjust to the idea.
It’s not because Castiel’s in a male body, although, okay, yeah, honestly? That is kinda weird. (Especially given the fact that Castiel’s vessel - the body that temporarily housed him, prior to his murder, which was apparently entirely physically recreated for him, when he was resurrected - seemed to be quite happily married, before becoming host to Castiel. Sam wonders sometimes if Jimmy suffered much, before the end. He’s pretty sure Jimmy didn’t come back from what the archangels did, at Chuck’s house. But he’s afraid to ask, in case the man’s somehow still in there, somewhere. It just - it makes Sam’s head throb painfully, to even think about the possibility. He feels bad for Jimmy and his family, to be sure, but Jimmy still being there in that body is just one more complication that they really don’t need right now.) After all, Dean’s pretty damn firmly heterosexual, about ninety-seven percent of the time.
Sam knows his brother’s done some experimenting - Dean’s bragging rights have never known any bounds, and, back when they were both still in school, Dean getting jerked off or sucked off by the school’s most popular, handsomest, or prettiest-mouthed jock was almost as good a cause for bragging as banging a cheerleader, if only because it usually made Sam squirm and blush and stammer even more than the (sometimes entirely too painfully literal) blow by blow commentary on the cheerleaders would - but he also knows that the experimenting didn’t seem to carry over past school and that it was never all that serious, anyway. (Dean didn’t turn anyone down based on gender, but he never deliberately sought men out. In school, they always sought him out. He just didn’t say no to them. In retrospect, Sam thinks he really should’ve noticed then how starved for affection Dean is and how shaky a sense of self-worth he has.) And he knows just how much Dean appreciates beauty and the female form. It’s probably a good thing that Castiel’s human form is handsome and that angels don’t really have gender, outside of their vessels, or else there’d very likely be some serious issues involved in getting Dean to ever accept Castiel’s love for him . . . or, well, more serious issues than there already are, anyway.
He really wishes he could believe that it might be as easy as Dean noticing that Castiel is . . . well, that he’s handsome and hopelessly devoted to and in love with and believes in Dean, not to mention that he desires for Dean to return at least some part of the overall sentiment Cas feels for him. The thing is, though (well, on top of the fact that he’s never known of anything in their life to be that easy, ever), even though he wants it to happen (and God, but the world really is a bizarre place when he’s seriously rooting for a freakin’ rebellious angel of the Lord to win the heart of his brother), he can’t quite visualize how it would ever even happen. It’s not that he physically can’t imagine Dean and Cas together (not that he wants to imagine the two of them together, because, okay, ew! That seems entirely too much like something those weirdo fans of Chuck’s books who didn’t seem to care that Sam and Dean were brothers because they were so determined to think about them and even write them as lovers would spend a lot of time doing, thinking up outlandish erotic fantasies featuring Dean and Castiel to pass the time between their forays into brotherly incest). It’s just . . . well, it’s just that every time he tries to think about it, he keeps getting hung up on the memory of how exceedingly careful the two always seem to be to avoid touching each other, except when absolutely necessary.
Castiel looms (somehow, despite his relatively average stature). Castiel stands far too close for human comfort. Castiel doesn’t seem to understand the concept of personal space or to comprehend the fact that it generally makes people nervous, edgy, and irritable if someone else is standing close enough to share the same breath of air. Yet, Castiel rarely, if ever, willingly touches anyone, even Dean. Especially Dean, maybe. That’s one of the first things he’d noticed, actually, when he first met Castiel. The angel would stare and he would stand far too close, but he would not reach out to touch or willingly permit Dean or Sam or any other (even Anna, even when she obviously wished to try to reach out to him) to come close enough for physical contact. The few times Sam has witnessed any kind of contact - any touch not related in some way to immediate danger and a need to intervene, to rescue - between Castiel and Dean, it’s been through fabric, layers of trench coat and suit jacket and button-down shirt or of heavy leather or denim jacket and soft cotton or flannel or both guarding against skin meeting skin.
He’s always thought that’s weird, because Dean’s all hands and feet and careless touches (and Sam’s got the marks to prove it, from all those kicks under a million and one different diner tables and friendly headlocks in a billion and one different motel rooms and parking lots, Dean making contact and reassuring himself, thus, of Sam’s continued presence in his life) and he’ll get right up in other people’s faces and start shoving at shoulders when he’s pissed and a lot of the time around Dean Castiel would be constantly almost wringing his hands, like he desperately wanted to circle his fingers around Dean’s wrists and press stillness and calm into him by sheer dint of force and concentrated will (an instinct Sam more than understands, having lived with Dean’s particular brand of explosive temper and immovable stubbornness for basically all of his life, minus those years at Standford and those terrible four months when Dean was in Hell).
Sam’s seen Dean touch Castiel before - usually to show him how to do something or to correct him or guide him towards more seemingly normal human behavior - but there’s almost always been a sense of deliberation and hesitation in the actions, as though Dean’s consciously trying to avoid making any real contact with the being responsible for pulling him out of Hell and resurrecting him in a body made strong and new and whole again by the angel’s power. And Castiel has, for whatever reasons, apparently taken his cue in this matter from Dean, constantly standing close to him (too close, really. Far too close for anyone - except for Dean, apparently. Of course. Naturally. Because God forbid that anything in their lives should ever be easy! - to mistake Castiel’s desire for closeness for anything other than a soul-deep need to express his love for and devotion to Dean in some recognizable fashion) but refraining from touching.
This apparent reluctance on both Dean’s and Castiel’s part to touch one another doesn’t exactly bode well for any kind of strengthening or deepening of the relationship between them. (It’s especially troublesome considering the fact that Sam suspects Dean is more than a little touch-starved, not to mention starved for affection. His brother is a very tactile person - always has been. In fact, Sam suspects that Dean spends so much time chasing after women out of sheer skin hunger and lack of understanding as to any other way to try to fill that need - and their life hasn’t exactly been conducive to kindness, gentleness, or even simple human skin to skin contact not involving blows or other forms of injury. The forty subjective years Dean spent trapped in Hell probably would’ve been torturous even without the actual torture. It can only have made things worse . . . probably a lot worse, if Dean’s obvious desire to avoid touching Castiel - like his very touch might do harm to the angel - is anything to go by. Castiel seriously has his work cut out for him, and sometimes Sam wonders if it might not be more than even a miracle could accomplish, to fix all of this.) In fact, it makes Sam wonder (again. Still. More than before) if Castiel really understands just what’s involved in the human concept of love, of freely choosing to give one’s heart and to love another being with the whole of one’s heart and soul.
Castiel believes. Castiel has faith. Castiel trusts. Castiel reverences. Castiel adores. But Sam’s not sure Castiel really gets the all too fickle and complicated human concept of love. Dean’s started to choose Castiel back. He’s beginning to learn how to rely on and trust in the angel. One of these days, he may even discover that he’s accidentally developed some faith in Castiel, not just as an angel and an ally but as an individual who’s willingly chosen to stand with Dean. It’s even possible that his loyalty might eventually transmute itself to love. But even if that were to happen, Sam’s not entirely sure that Castiel (for all his unwavering faith in and unstinting adoration of Dean) would know how to respond to that love in a way that Dean would understand to mean that the angel is in love with him.
He really wants to believe that this could work out. But just because he wants to believe something, that doesn’t mean that Sam can convince himself it would be feasible. Truth to tell, he’s not really sure if it’s stupidly naive (it’s Dean. When has he ever trusted anyone enough to offer up his heart on a platter?) or just realistic (it’s Castiel. A freakin’ angel of the Lord who went to his death for love of and loyalty to Dean and was apparently rewarded for his faith with a new life and remade human body to act as his vessel on Earth, so he could continue at Dean’s side) to hope that (if they all live long enough) the still mostly one-side relationship will one day grow into something worthy of being labeled a full-blown love affair. Honestly, most of the time Sam feels like someone stumbling around in the dark in a room he’s never been in before with a poorly balanced tray filled with cups of unstable nitroglycerin, when he tries to get a handle on how Dean might react to actively being romantically wooed by his angel. That’s just another of the many reasons why he usually tries very hard not to think about it too much.
Of course, there’s not a whole lot else to think about now. (Except Azazel and Lilith and Ruby. Except the Apocalypse. Except Lucifer, for God’s sake, and he is not, not, not going to think about what could possibly make him give in to the Morning Star and Father of Lies.) He can fret about the likelihood of Dean putting himself between Castiel and Raphael (or at least standing so close to him that the archangel wouldn’t dare to strike out, for fear of hitting the one supposedly destined to be the Sword of Michael and cut Lucifer down in the final battle); he can worry about state of the world, as it spirals seemingly ever downward towards an end he fears will be far worse than anything foretold of in any holy scripture or prophetic writing; he can agonize over Bobby and the other hunters, who are even far more overmatched in this battle than the Winchester brothers; or he can drive himself a little bit more crazy wondering whether or not it’s feasible to hope Castiel’s belief (his adoration) and Dean’s capacity for caring (usually more about others than himself) might one day collide in such a way as to permit a meeting of more than just minds between the two.
(Sometimes he catches himself wondering if he shouldn’t just bash his head in against the nearest solid surface and be done with it. Then he has to face the fact that he can’t tell if the thought is serious or not, and has to clamp down with all his might on the urge to start laughing until he howls and never stops. He is . . . entirely too fragile, some days. It’s why he removed himself from the hunt, even though he knew Dean might never forgive him. He’s of no use to anyone if he gives in to that traitorous urge to curl up in a corner and wail and howl and scream until he can’t remember a time when the sound of his own voice deafening him wasn’t the norm. And he’ll never be able to forgive himself if Dean were to get hurt because he was busy having a weak moment. He’s done more than enough damage already, without adding that to the list.)
Given all the crap on his mind and the things he’s done and everything he’s seen and been through, sometimes (like right about now) Sam sincerely wonders why he’s not an absolute raving lunatic yet. He’s pretty sure anyone with a less weird childhood would’ve broken under the strain of all of this by now, and, given what absolute dicks most angels have proven to be so far, in the back of his mind, he can’t help but wonder, sometimes, if maybe Zachariah and his lot didn’t deliberately arrange for Azazel to notice his mother’s family and start this whole damned blood feud that set his father and Dean and himself on the path of hunting and destroying all of the evil creatures of the world, just to prepare him and Dean for this, to make them capable of dealing with this without breaking all the way under the strain.
He knows that Castiel was ordered to take Dean back in time, to act as a witness to the beginning of Azazel’s interest in his family, and that Castiel sincerely believes it was just so that Dean would understand the full range and gravity of events, not so that he would alter or effect the outcome of events in any way. But he also knows that Dean’s presence in the past seems to have acted as a catalyst of sorts, guiding events in such a way as to bring their mother’s family into contact with Azazel when he might never have even noticed them, otherwise (at least not then, not just yet. Maybe not never, is the niggling thought he can’t quite manage to keep from recurring). He can’t help but wonder if the angels needed Dean to go back, to cause those events to happen, as a part of their plan to bring on the Apocalypse, so they could arrange to have their war with Hell. If that’s the case . . . well, Sam’s already pretty much thoroughly disappointed in, disillusioned with, resentful of, and righteously furious with Zachariah and his cronies. If he finds out this is the case, he’s going to have no choice but to declare open war on them.
And isn’t that a lovely thought. A dual all-out war with the Hosts of Heaven and the forces of Hell and no real choice but to figure out a way to burn both of them down to the ground, if they want to survive (much less win this thing). He wonders if Castiel’s thought of that yet, or if he’s still hoping that somewhere along the line his brothers will wise up and stop fighting them and let them join sides, so they can stand united against Hell. He’s been so busy running that he’s not really sure if even Dean’s gotten quite that far in his chain of thought, yet (though he suspects Dean may have realized it, when he learned what the archangel did to Cas. The look on his brother’s face . . . Sam would’ve been afraid, even if he’d been an archangel. Hell, Sam would’ve been afraid even if he’d been the Devil himself!). But if they’re going to need to stop thinking (hoping) that they can deal with Heaven by simply hiding until for the angels to wise up and start acting like real angels (like Cas), then they’re going to need to start learning ways to kill angels, or at least to banish them from their vessels and throw them back into Heaven, like Alastair tried to do that one time with Castiel.
And won’t that just be a lovely conversation to have! “Hey, Cas, you know that really bright silvery thing you carry around that you used to kill two of your brothers when you saved me and Dean from Zachariah giving us cancer and torturing us so he could make Dean gave in to Michael? Well, Dean and I need some of those, so we can start killing angels too. Oh, and it’d be nice if you could teach us that spell to send angels back to Heaven, just in case there are any you think might be worth saving, to try to win over to our side. And hey, have you seen Anna lately? Being rebellious and all, she’d probably be a good recruiting idea, to help guard our backs, just in case anything bad ever happens to you and we need some angelic mojo to save our asses.”
The urge to violently knock his head against the nearest solid surface (repeatedly, until he can’t remember what it is that got him so upset anymore) starts to surface from the back of his mind, where he’s banished it, and he’s paused in his pacing to scowl darkly, blankly, at the floor, so he doesn’t immediately notice that he has a visitor.
“Sam. You look troubled. Should I come back at another time?”
Holy freakin’ mother of - ! “Cas! Don’t - don’t sneak up on a guy like that! Human hearts can fail, under enough stress or shock, you know?” Sam jumped so far that he didn’t stop moving until his shoulders hit the nearest wall, and he’s not entirely sure he’d still be vertical if it weren’t for the wall at his back. His heart’s beating so violently that it kind of hurts, and he’s massaging at it absently (and, okay, maybe all those pills plus even more caffeine wasn’t the brightest idea he’s had lately) when he remembers that Castiel only visits him like this in his sleep, and that he most emphatically does not want to be asleep right now. “Wait - wait! When did I fall asleep? Are you - ?”
Castiel blinks at him, apparently startled and confused by the violence of Sam’s reaction to and apparent panic over his appearance. “I promised that I would tell you how the summoning went. And you need your sleep, little brother. I encouraged your body to shake off the effects of the caffeine you’ve ingested and to ease into slumber, when you paused in your pacing to sit on the edge of your bed. I had to push harder than normal. You may not recall sitting down.”
“Don’t leave me asleep, unless you can put me too far under for anyone or anything else to get to me!”
Castiel blinks again, the tilt of his head eloquently proclaiming his confoundment and surprise. “Is there something wrong, Sam?”
“Is there something - ? Yeah, you could say that.” Sam’s laugh is so ragged he finds himself pressing a hand to his mouth, as if to hold the noise in, in case it should finish disintegrated into tears.
Castiel takes two steps closer, peering up at him with a concerned frown. “Do you wish to tell me? Is there anything I can do to help?”
Sam scrubs the hand that’s been pressing his lips painfully back onto his teeth across his face, shoulders bowing so he doesn’t have to meet that worried blue gaze. His voice is smaller and shakier than he’d like, but at least it doesn’t break or crack as he asks, “Can you keep your brothers from sneaking into my dreams? Permanently?”
Castiel steps even closer, face turned up at an almost painful looking angle to let him seek out Sam’s gaze, close enough that Sam’s eyes almost want to cross from the effort of meeting his eyes. “Sam. Has Zachariah or one of the archangels been troubling you?”
“No. Your other brother, though . . . he’s a different story.” That ragged laugh escapes him again, sounding even closer to a sob this time, and he turns his head away, pressing the heels of his hands across his eyes, so he won’t have to look at those suddenly furiously protective eyes or think about how much he wishes Castiel could protect him from this.
Castiel’s shock is almost a tangible thing, and the silence stretches uncomfortably long before he finally breathes, “My other brother . . . Lucifer has visited you?”
Sam determinedly doesn’t look at the angel. “Is it true?”
Painfully, awkwardly, Castiel tries to reassure him rather than answer him directly. “Sam. An angel cannot take a vessel without consent - ”
“Is. It. True?”
His voice achingly gentle, Castiel quietly tells him, “The convergence of your family lines and the taint of the demon blood . . . it makes your body particularly suited to hold one such as he. It does not mean that you must let him in, Sam. Lucifer cannot take you against your will, any more than Michael can take Dean unless he first agrees. He is still too much of an angel for that to be a possibility. If you will not consent to become his vessel, then it will never happen.”
Sam has to gulp after a breath, and it sounds entirely too much like a sob, in the quiet of the room. “He seems awfully sure it will happen.”
Firmly, Castiel replies, “Zachariah believes that he can force Dean to consent to being Michael’s vessel. It does not mean it will happen.”
“I - I’m not as strong as my brother, Cas. I’m not - I - I don’t - ”
Castiel shocks him by reaching out and placing a hand - firm but gentle and surprisingly warm, the skin hot enough that he can feel not just the slow crawl of power that always seems to be leaking out of the angel’s human body but heat from the touch, burning through him all the way down to the bone - on his right shoulder, gripping him tight enough that he knows the gesture is meant to be an offer not just of comfort but of grounding, anchoring, like Sam could center himself around the weight and heat of Castiel’s hand on him. “You are a righteous man, Samuel Winchester. You desire only to do good. You have made mistakes, yes, but humans, being fallible, tend to do so. This does not mean that you are weak. You are strong, Sam. If you refuse Lucifer, he will have no choice but to turn away from you. He cannot force you, in this.”
He can feel the prickling in his eyes that usually presages tears, and so he blinks, rapidly, fiercely trying to stave them off. “It’s just - I - Cas, are you sure - ?”
Castiel’s hand tightens a fraction. “I am positive. The rules still apply. He does not cease to be an angel, in this, just because he was cast out of Heaven. He cannot possess you against your will, as a demon might be able to, were you unprotected. I promise you that he cannot.”
“I - alright. Alright. Okay. But what if - if he - Cas, I didn’t know it was him, until he changed form and told me who he was. If he comes to me wearing - wearing you - ” Sam flounders, gesturing helplessly towards Castiel’s human body.
“There are ways to ward against the invasion of dreams. The simplest would involve symbols of power - protective sigils, similar to a devil’s trap or an anti-possession rune - to bind you safely within your body as you sleep and to lock others out of your mind. I can teach you this, Sam. It would not be difficult,” Cas quickly responds, clearly still hoping to reassure him.
Continued in the next post, due to the LJ’s blamed word/character limits!
Title: “Dreams Shall Never Die”
Pairing: Mention of past Sam/Ruby. Mention of/implication that Lucifer is attempting to “woo” Sam. Can most easily be read as preslash Dean/Castiel.
Rating: Uhm, probably a borderline PG-13-ish, maybe (?)
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Supernatural, more’s the pity (seeing as how they belong to Kripke and to the show’s writers)! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .
Summary: Sam Winchester’s dreams have been invaded by Lucifer - wearing the guise of his dead girlfriend, Jessica, no less - and so he’s a little freaked out by the whole concept of sleeping and dreaming, at the moment; fortunately, that doesn’t stop a certain resurrected angel of the Lord from visiting him in his dreams - even resorting to putting him to sleep, in order to facilitate such visits - to ask for input and advice on dealing with Dean Winchester . . .
Warning: Apparently, I am writing an on-going series of linked stories, (mostly) in response to the individual episodes of season five. This particular story is meant to function both as a kind of sequel to the previous three stories I’ve written for Supernatural, “What Dreams May Come,” “Unless First We Dream,” and “Dreams Are Free,” and as a sort of continuation of and between-the-scenes addition to season five’s fourth episode, “The End.” Given how this seems to be working out so far, while some specifics this story will likely be Jossed as soon as next Thursday and the fifth episode (“Fallen Idol”) roll around, the series itself will adapt and continue with a response to that episode. I have no idea how long this series will last, at the moment, but I expect it will, at some point, move out of the realm of dreams into the physical world. Just not quite yet, okay? (Though probably in the next installment, if I don’t get the piece that’s chronologically set prior to season five altogether typed up beforehand!)
Author’s Notes: 1). As with the other three stories in this series, I have no idea where this story came from. Most of it came to me in between watching the fourth episode and turning in for bed that night, though I didn’t get to write most of it until the following Saturday because I was still working on getting some notes down for a different story in this series (dealing with Castiel’s attempt to apologize to Dean for various threats to send him back to Hell). Aside from the whole Castiel visiting Sam in his dreams thing, it’s canon-compliant (as far as I can tell) up through the fourth episode of season five (and could be considered at least semi-spoilerish for the show up through that episode) and I suppose could be read as (kind of) gen, though frankly the vibe that I get from Castiel when I’m writing in this particular ’verse feels anything but gen and Sam’s pretty damned sure that an angel of the Lord is not only in love with but adores and reveres his brother and that his brother’s in the first stages of learning how to have enough faith to return the sentiment.
2). As I’ve said before, Supernatural is a supremely odd show in that the main characters never seem to have (or to keep) any romantic attachments or possible romantic attachments that aren’t either broken by death or else what some would consider blasphemous/unnatural in some way. This is one of the few ’verses I consider myself a fan of that I’ve never even been tempted to seriously ship, before, for precisely this reason.
Until very recently, there was really no one on the show to ship, except the brothers (apologies to fans of the character, but I’ve been waiting for Ruby to betray Sam from day one, so it never occurred to me to seriously ship that couple. And it’s kind of beside the point, now, all things considered), and, while I totally get the whole “epic love story of Sam and Dean” aspect of the show, honestly, I’ve never been able to see this as a functional romantic ship, in the context of the actual show. The brothers are a couple - are partners - in every sense of the word except the romantic one, and, as much as the show likes to play with the fact that outsiders often read their intensely close relationship as romantic, as they have no other context from their own (fairly) normal lives within which to fit such an obviously strong bond, I honestly don’t think that Kripke and the writers mean for viewers to assume that the Winchester boys are actively pursuing an incestuous relationship behind closed doors and in between the scenes of the show.
Which, again, isn’t to say that I have anything against the Wincest pairing so often found in the fandom (I am an AU girl at heart and fic that actively resists cultural norms is usually my favorite kind. I’ve read some damned good Wincest fic that barely changed anything in the basic natures of the characters, as presented on the show, and some even better AU where all of the changes were beautifully accounted for by the aspects of the boys’ lives that differed from their lives on the show): it’s just to say that I personally consider it much more of an AU ship, when the pairing is also romantic, than a canon-compliant one. So I’ve never really considered myself to be a shipper of any particular pairing for this show, even though I tend to be a diehard OTPer (and/or whatever one might call a functional relationship with multiple partners) when it comes to my fandoms.
With the (fairly) recent appearance of Castiel on the show . . . well, let’s just say that the dynamic of the show began to shift radically, from the moment he and Dean met (and I don’t just mean in the flesh!). There are many fans of the show who have responded to this shift by pairing Dean with Castiel (I’ve seen Dastiel and Destiel both used as portmanteau couple names for the ship); however, until recently (and to be perfectly honest, I’m still not entirely sure about this), I’ve avoided embracing this ship, mainly due to the fact that it’s (mostly) seemed to be painfully one-sided (on top of which, frankly, it disturbs the ever living crap out of me to even approach the notion of a God who would deliberately send an angel to a human, all the while knowing that the essential nature of the two beings involved could only result in pain, Dean too scarred by his life/afterlife/second life to even be able to recognize love and faith when it is offered to him and Castiel having no choice - as a creature whose sole purpose is essentially to experience love and to glorify the divine and faithfully praise God by worshiping all of His creation - but to love).
That Castiel is devoted to Dean (perhaps far too much so) I cannot even begin to argue. That Castiel . . . feels something for Dean that he should not (according to his angelic comrades-in-arms and superiors) - something that is, at the very least, highly irregular for an angel to experience towards a mere human - is also glaringly obvious, especially given the outcome of the season four finale. That Dean cannot grasp/comprehend the depth of Castiel’s attachment to him, doesn’t understand such a level of devotion to himself (seeing as how he has no faith in himself and still cannot even begin to believe that he deserved to be saved, is worthy of salvation, of being raised from Hell, much less capable of stopping the end of days) or even seem to have an inkling that there are ramifications to the fact that Castiel, as an angel of the Lord, is essentially built for faith and devotion and following and has willingly chosen to follow Dean, and is also apparently blindly oblivious to the fact that Castiel’s feelings for him have increasingly seemed to have little to do with the fact that Dean is the only one who can stop the Apocalypse and Castiel has been ordered to protect him, so that he will eventually be able to do as has been prophesied and defeat Lucifer, has also seemed pretty damn patently obvious, to me.
Or at least so it seemed until lately, when I began to get a feeling that there just might be more going on underneath the surface of Dean and Castiel’s . . . relationship (for lack of a better word) than was immediately obvious and to suspect that Kripke et al might deliberately be using the connection between Dean and Castiel - the choice Castiel made, in Dean’s favor, and the reasons why, and the possibility that Dean might one day choose Castiel (and, by extension, his God) back, willingly, for reasons of his own - to enrich the show’s already hugely complex background and mythology.
After viewing the first episode of season five and promptly finding myself compelled to write out my first Supernatural fanfic (and finding, much to my surprise, that I kept instinctively identifying it as Dean/Castiel preslash - if preslash of a somewhat more spiritual than physical nature - even though Dean hardly appeared in the story at all), reflecting on my own confoundment at having written such a thing, and then viewing the second episode of the new season, I found myself quite suddenly having to sit down and seriously contemplate the possibility that Dean/Castiel (of some form or another) could end up being the penultimate ship of the show . . . and that this probability would likely end up having a direct and profound impact on the ultimate outcome of the show, especially regarding the possibility that another way might be found to defeat Lucifer and avert the destruction of the Earth, so that Dean won’t be forced to give in to the faction of angels that, so far, has largely been represented by such amoral individuals as Zachariah and Raphael.
Because of this, the Dean/Castiel ship - or at least some version of it - is rapidly becoming a lot more important to me. I’m honestly not sure, yet, if I’m seeing things that are really there or not or what the hell I’m really doing, floundering about in this fandom, grasping at possible ways to smooth a path between Castiel and Dean. (I feel kind of like I’m stumbling around in the dark with an armful of nitroglycerin, which is more than a little disturbing.)
The whole thing still kind of freaks me out - there are consent issues here that are just . . . freakin’ insane. Angel of the Lord, y’all. Inherent lack of free will plus the whole created to worship and glorify adore thing. And Dean Winchester, poster boy for, well, using free will as a convenient excuse to stomp all over monsters, demons, corporate angel asshats, and assorted other company - and I’m seriously, seriously confounded by the fact that, while their connection so far largely seems to be more mental/spiritual or even emotional than physical (much less sexual), that handprint of Castiel’s is still blazoned on Dean’s arm like a mark of ownership, where he gripped him tight and raised him from perdition, not to mention worried as hell over the fact that, while Castiel appears to be becoming more human (especially this season), Dean’s capacity for self-blame and self-loathing are still such that any alteration to the angel’s apparent nature is (upon reflection) entirely too likely to make Dean panic over the possibility that he’s corrupted/lessened/damaged Castiel.
So, in short (not to repeat myself or anything, but) I really have no clue what I’m doing here or where this story came from or why I seem to think it’s a good idea to pursue this crazy idea of mine in what is apparently a nascent between-the-scenes series in the making, given that it follows on the heels of the previous stories my insane muse bullied me into writing. I get the feeling that I’m going to end up regretting allowing myself to be bullied and pulling out handfuls of hair whilst trying to figure out what in the hell this thing really is and just what Dean and Castiel truly are to one another. In the meantime, though, since I’ve no intention of trying to puzzle this out any further right now, allow me to point out that, though this specific story (like the one preceding it) is canon-compliant up through the fourth episode of season five (at least to a point, inasmuch as it follows the events of the show), the between-the-scenes nature of the story means that it can, technically, also be read as AU. And, in any case, I have a strong suspicion that this story won’t precisely remain all that canon-compliant once the next episode has come out. So . . . readers might want to take this with a grain of salt. (In fact, freakin’ huge handfuls of salt might not be entirely out of line.) Okay?
3). In the episode “The Monster at the End of the Book,” Sam and Dean both responded to the notion that fans of Chuck’s books about them ship them romantically (despite being aware that they’re brothers) rather negatively, in the actual show. And (much like Dean, who’s declaration of TMI regarding Sam’s confession about his sex life with Ruby was extremely vehement) Sam’s consistently behaved on the show as though he’s pretty much wholly uninterested in (and at least somewhat disturbed and/or grossed out by any specific knowledge of) the details of his brother’s sex life. Thus, I believe that Sam’s mental musings on the topic of Dean and Castiel as a possible romantic couple are in character, and I hope that no one will be offended by that! I’m not trying to insult anyone here, folks! I’m just trying to keep things as close to canon as I can, including the personality quirks and opinions of the characters!
4). Erhm, despite Sam’s ginormous tendency towards stupidly destructive levels of self-centeredness (which is, as mentioned in the notes for the previous stories, the reason I’ve always primarily been a Dean girl and not a Sam girl), I do not believe that he is actually a bad (much less an evil) person - just a little bit spoiled and selfish and occasionally phenomenally stupid. He’s human, in other words, folks. And, given how much he cares about his brother - how hugely protective of his brother he can (when not being a selfish dick or addled by power and demon blood and desire for revenge at all costs) be (which only makes sense, given that Dean’s pretty much all he has) - it only makes sense that Sam would have a vested interest in keeping his brother happy, as well as healthy, sane, and safe (at least as much as possible). So I think it’s safe to say that not only would Sam react ferociously, pitilessly, and relentlessly, if he ever suspected someone capable of hurting his brother to be planning to cause Dean harm of any kind (be it physical, mental, or emotional), he would also do his level best to take time out from his own problems (even one as huge as apparently being Lucifer’s chosen vessel) to help anyone he suspected of being capable of making Dean happy and/or of making Dean’s life easier. Even (or perhaps especially) if the individual in question were actually an angel capable of dragging a soul up out of Hell and putting it back into a miraculously healed and living body . . .
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“Dreams Shall Never Die”
Sam Winchester is pretty freakin’ sure he’s not dreaming.
Well. Pretty sure. Mostly sure. As sure as he can be, all things considered.
When he’d woken from the dream where Lucifer revealed himself, he’d hurriedly packed his things, called Bobby to find out where Dean was the last time they spoke and whether or not Bobby knew if he might’ve moved on since then, and made one quick pit stop at an all hours combo gas station and quickie mart before leaving town. Without any fake credit cards to fall back on (and really, what’d he been thinking, burning those along with the IDs? That being able to afford to travel would drive him back to hunting?), he’d had to swipe the bottles of overpriced caffeine pills and energy pills, while stocking up on munchies for the road. As soon as he made it back to the old clunker he’d boosted three states back (switching tags half a dozen times between there and the town he’d so briefly settled in, for safety’s sake), he’d taken entirely too many of both kinds of pills, chased with a Red Bull he’d actually paid for, to make absolutely sure he’d keep his focus and not be tempted to stop for a nap anytime soon.
He’s been alternating between swilling coffee and chugging soda ever since (even though it’s slowed him down, some, having to stop constantly for refills and to either find a public toilet or a place isolated enough he can pull off the side of the road and piss in the ditch), and, even though he finally had to give in and pulled off the road to find a motel for the night (just to rest, not to sleep!) when his eyes started refusing to focus properly and he found himself drifting off the side of the road for the third time in a row, he still hasn’t really stopped moving. He’s been pacing restless circles around his room ever since he got out of the shower, too antsy and jittery even to sit still long enough to turn on the TV.
He’s terrified of sleeping. He can feel his heart racing in his chest, rabbit quick and erratic, and he can’t tell for sure if it’s residual adrenaline and fear still hanging on from the dream (from what Lucifer said to him about how he’ll inevitably give in) or from the energy supplements and caffeine he’s been ingesting to stave off the need for slumber. Castiel’s supposed to be contacting him sometime this evening about how things went with Raphael - he promised to come as soon as he could, but the summoning is supposed to’ve happened at sunrise and Cas has been keeping in touch with him by way of Sam’s dreams, so it’s not like he can just drop in whenever he wants to (though if all else failed, Cas is clever enough he could probably get Sam’s number and give him a call, if he absolutely had to) - but Sam’s far too spooked to even think about trying to sleep, even for Castiel’s sake, though he desperately wishes he knew what was going on with Cas and his brother.
Cas and his brother. There’s a whole other nest full of nasties, just waiting to spring out on unsuspecting passers-by. God knows he can’t exactly blame either one of them (and it’s not like Dean even has an inkling yet just what it means, for him to be claiming Cas as his angel. His brother may not be stupid by any stretch of the imagination, but Dean’s the most stubborn person he knows, and he has denial down to a fine art. Unless God makes an appearance as a burning bush and declares Dean forgiven and beloved of Heaven and blesses a union between him and Castiel, Dean isn’t likely to get with the program any time soon. In fact, even if God were to do that, Dean’s first reaction might be to throw water - or beer, or . . . other things, possibly far less hygienic - on the burning shrub), but the thought alone is enough to give anyone a migraine, and Sam’s not exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment, so he tries not to think about it too much, for fear of giving himself an aneurism.
He’s suspected for a while that Castiel’s interest in Dean isn’t exactly . . . normal for an angel (even one charged with busting someone’s soul out of Hell, putting that soul back in his body, regenerating that body and giving it new life, and then acting as that resurrected person’s guide and guardian on the path to ending Armageddon), so it’s not like being given confirmation of that’s been too terribly shocking. (Though his gradual cottoning to the sheer depth of Castiel’s feelings for and loyalty to Dean sure as hell have been nothing but one series of shocks piled one upon the other.) It’s just, well . . . it’s just so phenomenally beyond insane to even contemplate the idea of his brother being in love (of Dean being able to trust someone - anyone! - enough to open up enough to really let that person in), much less being in love with a freakin’ angel of the Lord (and Sam doesn’t give a shit what Castiel says about Nephilim and consent and love being the greatest act of worship of God’s creation, it can’t possibly be as easy as all that), that he’s not sure if he’s ever going to completely adjust to the idea.
It’s not because Castiel’s in a male body, although, okay, yeah, honestly? That is kinda weird. (Especially given the fact that Castiel’s vessel - the body that temporarily housed him, prior to his murder, which was apparently entirely physically recreated for him, when he was resurrected - seemed to be quite happily married, before becoming host to Castiel. Sam wonders sometimes if Jimmy suffered much, before the end. He’s pretty sure Jimmy didn’t come back from what the archangels did, at Chuck’s house. But he’s afraid to ask, in case the man’s somehow still in there, somewhere. It just - it makes Sam’s head throb painfully, to even think about the possibility. He feels bad for Jimmy and his family, to be sure, but Jimmy still being there in that body is just one more complication that they really don’t need right now.) After all, Dean’s pretty damn firmly heterosexual, about ninety-seven percent of the time.
Sam knows his brother’s done some experimenting - Dean’s bragging rights have never known any bounds, and, back when they were both still in school, Dean getting jerked off or sucked off by the school’s most popular, handsomest, or prettiest-mouthed jock was almost as good a cause for bragging as banging a cheerleader, if only because it usually made Sam squirm and blush and stammer even more than the (sometimes entirely too painfully literal) blow by blow commentary on the cheerleaders would - but he also knows that the experimenting didn’t seem to carry over past school and that it was never all that serious, anyway. (Dean didn’t turn anyone down based on gender, but he never deliberately sought men out. In school, they always sought him out. He just didn’t say no to them. In retrospect, Sam thinks he really should’ve noticed then how starved for affection Dean is and how shaky a sense of self-worth he has.) And he knows just how much Dean appreciates beauty and the female form. It’s probably a good thing that Castiel’s human form is handsome and that angels don’t really have gender, outside of their vessels, or else there’d very likely be some serious issues involved in getting Dean to ever accept Castiel’s love for him . . . or, well, more serious issues than there already are, anyway.
He really wishes he could believe that it might be as easy as Dean noticing that Castiel is . . . well, that he’s handsome and hopelessly devoted to and in love with and believes in Dean, not to mention that he desires for Dean to return at least some part of the overall sentiment Cas feels for him. The thing is, though (well, on top of the fact that he’s never known of anything in their life to be that easy, ever), even though he wants it to happen (and God, but the world really is a bizarre place when he’s seriously rooting for a freakin’ rebellious angel of the Lord to win the heart of his brother), he can’t quite visualize how it would ever even happen. It’s not that he physically can’t imagine Dean and Cas together (not that he wants to imagine the two of them together, because, okay, ew! That seems entirely too much like something those weirdo fans of Chuck’s books who didn’t seem to care that Sam and Dean were brothers because they were so determined to think about them and even write them as lovers would spend a lot of time doing, thinking up outlandish erotic fantasies featuring Dean and Castiel to pass the time between their forays into brotherly incest). It’s just . . . well, it’s just that every time he tries to think about it, he keeps getting hung up on the memory of how exceedingly careful the two always seem to be to avoid touching each other, except when absolutely necessary.
Castiel looms (somehow, despite his relatively average stature). Castiel stands far too close for human comfort. Castiel doesn’t seem to understand the concept of personal space or to comprehend the fact that it generally makes people nervous, edgy, and irritable if someone else is standing close enough to share the same breath of air. Yet, Castiel rarely, if ever, willingly touches anyone, even Dean. Especially Dean, maybe. That’s one of the first things he’d noticed, actually, when he first met Castiel. The angel would stare and he would stand far too close, but he would not reach out to touch or willingly permit Dean or Sam or any other (even Anna, even when she obviously wished to try to reach out to him) to come close enough for physical contact. The few times Sam has witnessed any kind of contact - any touch not related in some way to immediate danger and a need to intervene, to rescue - between Castiel and Dean, it’s been through fabric, layers of trench coat and suit jacket and button-down shirt or of heavy leather or denim jacket and soft cotton or flannel or both guarding against skin meeting skin.
He’s always thought that’s weird, because Dean’s all hands and feet and careless touches (and Sam’s got the marks to prove it, from all those kicks under a million and one different diner tables and friendly headlocks in a billion and one different motel rooms and parking lots, Dean making contact and reassuring himself, thus, of Sam’s continued presence in his life) and he’ll get right up in other people’s faces and start shoving at shoulders when he’s pissed and a lot of the time around Dean Castiel would be constantly almost wringing his hands, like he desperately wanted to circle his fingers around Dean’s wrists and press stillness and calm into him by sheer dint of force and concentrated will (an instinct Sam more than understands, having lived with Dean’s particular brand of explosive temper and immovable stubbornness for basically all of his life, minus those years at Standford and those terrible four months when Dean was in Hell).
Sam’s seen Dean touch Castiel before - usually to show him how to do something or to correct him or guide him towards more seemingly normal human behavior - but there’s almost always been a sense of deliberation and hesitation in the actions, as though Dean’s consciously trying to avoid making any real contact with the being responsible for pulling him out of Hell and resurrecting him in a body made strong and new and whole again by the angel’s power. And Castiel has, for whatever reasons, apparently taken his cue in this matter from Dean, constantly standing close to him (too close, really. Far too close for anyone - except for Dean, apparently. Of course. Naturally. Because God forbid that anything in their lives should ever be easy! - to mistake Castiel’s desire for closeness for anything other than a soul-deep need to express his love for and devotion to Dean in some recognizable fashion) but refraining from touching.
This apparent reluctance on both Dean’s and Castiel’s part to touch one another doesn’t exactly bode well for any kind of strengthening or deepening of the relationship between them. (It’s especially troublesome considering the fact that Sam suspects Dean is more than a little touch-starved, not to mention starved for affection. His brother is a very tactile person - always has been. In fact, Sam suspects that Dean spends so much time chasing after women out of sheer skin hunger and lack of understanding as to any other way to try to fill that need - and their life hasn’t exactly been conducive to kindness, gentleness, or even simple human skin to skin contact not involving blows or other forms of injury. The forty subjective years Dean spent trapped in Hell probably would’ve been torturous even without the actual torture. It can only have made things worse . . . probably a lot worse, if Dean’s obvious desire to avoid touching Castiel - like his very touch might do harm to the angel - is anything to go by. Castiel seriously has his work cut out for him, and sometimes Sam wonders if it might not be more than even a miracle could accomplish, to fix all of this.) In fact, it makes Sam wonder (again. Still. More than before) if Castiel really understands just what’s involved in the human concept of love, of freely choosing to give one’s heart and to love another being with the whole of one’s heart and soul.
Castiel believes. Castiel has faith. Castiel trusts. Castiel reverences. Castiel adores. But Sam’s not sure Castiel really gets the all too fickle and complicated human concept of love. Dean’s started to choose Castiel back. He’s beginning to learn how to rely on and trust in the angel. One of these days, he may even discover that he’s accidentally developed some faith in Castiel, not just as an angel and an ally but as an individual who’s willingly chosen to stand with Dean. It’s even possible that his loyalty might eventually transmute itself to love. But even if that were to happen, Sam’s not entirely sure that Castiel (for all his unwavering faith in and unstinting adoration of Dean) would know how to respond to that love in a way that Dean would understand to mean that the angel is in love with him.
He really wants to believe that this could work out. But just because he wants to believe something, that doesn’t mean that Sam can convince himself it would be feasible. Truth to tell, he’s not really sure if it’s stupidly naive (it’s Dean. When has he ever trusted anyone enough to offer up his heart on a platter?) or just realistic (it’s Castiel. A freakin’ angel of the Lord who went to his death for love of and loyalty to Dean and was apparently rewarded for his faith with a new life and remade human body to act as his vessel on Earth, so he could continue at Dean’s side) to hope that (if they all live long enough) the still mostly one-side relationship will one day grow into something worthy of being labeled a full-blown love affair. Honestly, most of the time Sam feels like someone stumbling around in the dark in a room he’s never been in before with a poorly balanced tray filled with cups of unstable nitroglycerin, when he tries to get a handle on how Dean might react to actively being romantically wooed by his angel. That’s just another of the many reasons why he usually tries very hard not to think about it too much.
Of course, there’s not a whole lot else to think about now. (Except Azazel and Lilith and Ruby. Except the Apocalypse. Except Lucifer, for God’s sake, and he is not, not, not going to think about what could possibly make him give in to the Morning Star and Father of Lies.) He can fret about the likelihood of Dean putting himself between Castiel and Raphael (or at least standing so close to him that the archangel wouldn’t dare to strike out, for fear of hitting the one supposedly destined to be the Sword of Michael and cut Lucifer down in the final battle); he can worry about state of the world, as it spirals seemingly ever downward towards an end he fears will be far worse than anything foretold of in any holy scripture or prophetic writing; he can agonize over Bobby and the other hunters, who are even far more overmatched in this battle than the Winchester brothers; or he can drive himself a little bit more crazy wondering whether or not it’s feasible to hope Castiel’s belief (his adoration) and Dean’s capacity for caring (usually more about others than himself) might one day collide in such a way as to permit a meeting of more than just minds between the two.
(Sometimes he catches himself wondering if he shouldn’t just bash his head in against the nearest solid surface and be done with it. Then he has to face the fact that he can’t tell if the thought is serious or not, and has to clamp down with all his might on the urge to start laughing until he howls and never stops. He is . . . entirely too fragile, some days. It’s why he removed himself from the hunt, even though he knew Dean might never forgive him. He’s of no use to anyone if he gives in to that traitorous urge to curl up in a corner and wail and howl and scream until he can’t remember a time when the sound of his own voice deafening him wasn’t the norm. And he’ll never be able to forgive himself if Dean were to get hurt because he was busy having a weak moment. He’s done more than enough damage already, without adding that to the list.)
Given all the crap on his mind and the things he’s done and everything he’s seen and been through, sometimes (like right about now) Sam sincerely wonders why he’s not an absolute raving lunatic yet. He’s pretty sure anyone with a less weird childhood would’ve broken under the strain of all of this by now, and, given what absolute dicks most angels have proven to be so far, in the back of his mind, he can’t help but wonder, sometimes, if maybe Zachariah and his lot didn’t deliberately arrange for Azazel to notice his mother’s family and start this whole damned blood feud that set his father and Dean and himself on the path of hunting and destroying all of the evil creatures of the world, just to prepare him and Dean for this, to make them capable of dealing with this without breaking all the way under the strain.
He knows that Castiel was ordered to take Dean back in time, to act as a witness to the beginning of Azazel’s interest in his family, and that Castiel sincerely believes it was just so that Dean would understand the full range and gravity of events, not so that he would alter or effect the outcome of events in any way. But he also knows that Dean’s presence in the past seems to have acted as a catalyst of sorts, guiding events in such a way as to bring their mother’s family into contact with Azazel when he might never have even noticed them, otherwise (at least not then, not just yet. Maybe not never, is the niggling thought he can’t quite manage to keep from recurring). He can’t help but wonder if the angels needed Dean to go back, to cause those events to happen, as a part of their plan to bring on the Apocalypse, so they could arrange to have their war with Hell. If that’s the case . . . well, Sam’s already pretty much thoroughly disappointed in, disillusioned with, resentful of, and righteously furious with Zachariah and his cronies. If he finds out this is the case, he’s going to have no choice but to declare open war on them.
And isn’t that a lovely thought. A dual all-out war with the Hosts of Heaven and the forces of Hell and no real choice but to figure out a way to burn both of them down to the ground, if they want to survive (much less win this thing). He wonders if Castiel’s thought of that yet, or if he’s still hoping that somewhere along the line his brothers will wise up and stop fighting them and let them join sides, so they can stand united against Hell. He’s been so busy running that he’s not really sure if even Dean’s gotten quite that far in his chain of thought, yet (though he suspects Dean may have realized it, when he learned what the archangel did to Cas. The look on his brother’s face . . . Sam would’ve been afraid, even if he’d been an archangel. Hell, Sam would’ve been afraid even if he’d been the Devil himself!). But if they’re going to need to stop thinking (hoping) that they can deal with Heaven by simply hiding until for the angels to wise up and start acting like real angels (like Cas), then they’re going to need to start learning ways to kill angels, or at least to banish them from their vessels and throw them back into Heaven, like Alastair tried to do that one time with Castiel.
And won’t that just be a lovely conversation to have! “Hey, Cas, you know that really bright silvery thing you carry around that you used to kill two of your brothers when you saved me and Dean from Zachariah giving us cancer and torturing us so he could make Dean gave in to Michael? Well, Dean and I need some of those, so we can start killing angels too. Oh, and it’d be nice if you could teach us that spell to send angels back to Heaven, just in case there are any you think might be worth saving, to try to win over to our side. And hey, have you seen Anna lately? Being rebellious and all, she’d probably be a good recruiting idea, to help guard our backs, just in case anything bad ever happens to you and we need some angelic mojo to save our asses.”
The urge to violently knock his head against the nearest solid surface (repeatedly, until he can’t remember what it is that got him so upset anymore) starts to surface from the back of his mind, where he’s banished it, and he’s paused in his pacing to scowl darkly, blankly, at the floor, so he doesn’t immediately notice that he has a visitor.
“Sam. You look troubled. Should I come back at another time?”
Holy freakin’ mother of - ! “Cas! Don’t - don’t sneak up on a guy like that! Human hearts can fail, under enough stress or shock, you know?” Sam jumped so far that he didn’t stop moving until his shoulders hit the nearest wall, and he’s not entirely sure he’d still be vertical if it weren’t for the wall at his back. His heart’s beating so violently that it kind of hurts, and he’s massaging at it absently (and, okay, maybe all those pills plus even more caffeine wasn’t the brightest idea he’s had lately) when he remembers that Castiel only visits him like this in his sleep, and that he most emphatically does not want to be asleep right now. “Wait - wait! When did I fall asleep? Are you - ?”
Castiel blinks at him, apparently startled and confused by the violence of Sam’s reaction to and apparent panic over his appearance. “I promised that I would tell you how the summoning went. And you need your sleep, little brother. I encouraged your body to shake off the effects of the caffeine you’ve ingested and to ease into slumber, when you paused in your pacing to sit on the edge of your bed. I had to push harder than normal. You may not recall sitting down.”
“Don’t leave me asleep, unless you can put me too far under for anyone or anything else to get to me!”
Castiel blinks again, the tilt of his head eloquently proclaiming his confoundment and surprise. “Is there something wrong, Sam?”
“Is there something - ? Yeah, you could say that.” Sam’s laugh is so ragged he finds himself pressing a hand to his mouth, as if to hold the noise in, in case it should finish disintegrated into tears.
Castiel takes two steps closer, peering up at him with a concerned frown. “Do you wish to tell me? Is there anything I can do to help?”
Sam scrubs the hand that’s been pressing his lips painfully back onto his teeth across his face, shoulders bowing so he doesn’t have to meet that worried blue gaze. His voice is smaller and shakier than he’d like, but at least it doesn’t break or crack as he asks, “Can you keep your brothers from sneaking into my dreams? Permanently?”
Castiel steps even closer, face turned up at an almost painful looking angle to let him seek out Sam’s gaze, close enough that Sam’s eyes almost want to cross from the effort of meeting his eyes. “Sam. Has Zachariah or one of the archangels been troubling you?”
“No. Your other brother, though . . . he’s a different story.” That ragged laugh escapes him again, sounding even closer to a sob this time, and he turns his head away, pressing the heels of his hands across his eyes, so he won’t have to look at those suddenly furiously protective eyes or think about how much he wishes Castiel could protect him from this.
Castiel’s shock is almost a tangible thing, and the silence stretches uncomfortably long before he finally breathes, “My other brother . . . Lucifer has visited you?”
Sam determinedly doesn’t look at the angel. “Is it true?”
Painfully, awkwardly, Castiel tries to reassure him rather than answer him directly. “Sam. An angel cannot take a vessel without consent - ”
“Is. It. True?”
His voice achingly gentle, Castiel quietly tells him, “The convergence of your family lines and the taint of the demon blood . . . it makes your body particularly suited to hold one such as he. It does not mean that you must let him in, Sam. Lucifer cannot take you against your will, any more than Michael can take Dean unless he first agrees. He is still too much of an angel for that to be a possibility. If you will not consent to become his vessel, then it will never happen.”
Sam has to gulp after a breath, and it sounds entirely too much like a sob, in the quiet of the room. “He seems awfully sure it will happen.”
Firmly, Castiel replies, “Zachariah believes that he can force Dean to consent to being Michael’s vessel. It does not mean it will happen.”
“I - I’m not as strong as my brother, Cas. I’m not - I - I don’t - ”
Castiel shocks him by reaching out and placing a hand - firm but gentle and surprisingly warm, the skin hot enough that he can feel not just the slow crawl of power that always seems to be leaking out of the angel’s human body but heat from the touch, burning through him all the way down to the bone - on his right shoulder, gripping him tight enough that he knows the gesture is meant to be an offer not just of comfort but of grounding, anchoring, like Sam could center himself around the weight and heat of Castiel’s hand on him. “You are a righteous man, Samuel Winchester. You desire only to do good. You have made mistakes, yes, but humans, being fallible, tend to do so. This does not mean that you are weak. You are strong, Sam. If you refuse Lucifer, he will have no choice but to turn away from you. He cannot force you, in this.”
He can feel the prickling in his eyes that usually presages tears, and so he blinks, rapidly, fiercely trying to stave them off. “It’s just - I - Cas, are you sure - ?”
Castiel’s hand tightens a fraction. “I am positive. The rules still apply. He does not cease to be an angel, in this, just because he was cast out of Heaven. He cannot possess you against your will, as a demon might be able to, were you unprotected. I promise you that he cannot.”
“I - alright. Alright. Okay. But what if - if he - Cas, I didn’t know it was him, until he changed form and told me who he was. If he comes to me wearing - wearing you - ” Sam flounders, gesturing helplessly towards Castiel’s human body.
“There are ways to ward against the invasion of dreams. The simplest would involve symbols of power - protective sigils, similar to a devil’s trap or an anti-possession rune - to bind you safely within your body as you sleep and to lock others out of your mind. I can teach you this, Sam. It would not be difficult,” Cas quickly responds, clearly still hoping to reassure him.
Continued in the next post, due to the LJ’s blamed word/character limits!