[fic] balder12: Everyone Is Trying to Get to the Bar
[ Dean/Castiel ]
Title: Everyone Is Trying to Get to the Bar
Writer: balder12
Status of work: Complete
Characters and/or pairings: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Warnings, kinks & contents: [Click to read]temporary character death (only the one implied in the summary); angel-on-angel violence
Length: 8400
Summary: Dean still has enemies in Heaven. True!form Castiel to the rescue!
Reccer's notes: So, this is really cool, and canon-divergent from the end of S7. I like trueform angels, and balder12 has imagined a particularly neat form for Castiel, starting with the ophan-style wheels studded with eyes, and then building on that with elements that make perfect sense, even as they seem completely alien. It's not just that, though, of course - it's Castiel rescuing Dean from trouble in Paradise, and fighting his way free to keep Dean safe (and to survive, himself), and it's the two of them connecting, strengthening the ties between them (and coming to a new kind of understanding, later). It's complications in Heaven and not being able to catch a damned break, even in the afterlife. It's awesome :).
[Short excerpt]
He was starting to think that maybe he should stop walking around in the open, unarmed, like an idiot, when something appeared over the hill ahead, round and glowing with cold white light, like a spectacular moonrise. Then Dean saw that it had eyes. Hundreds of eyes, in every imaginable color, faceted like jewels, that covered the wheels within wheels of its spherical body. It was an infinite series of intersecting rings, that spun constantly in all directions, like a gyroscope. The rings looked almost like steel, but the substance was pearlescent and, like an oil slick, contained all of the rainbow within it. The monster left a smear of light behind it that reminded Dean of a slug’s trail.
It wobbled slightly as it floated forward, and occasionally shot out a gleaming, metallic whip that it would wrap around one of the trees, and use to reorient itself. It was so much bigger than the trees that when it did this, it sometimes pulled them up by the roots. It was easily the size of a skyscraper. Dean had seen a lot of monsters in his time, but none like this. This thing could stomp Tokyo.
Dean had frozen when it appeared, and now it stopped, all of its hundreds of eyes fixed on him. He came to his senses and ran for the tree line. Several of the metal whips came flying out after him. He expected them to slice right through his flesh. Instead, they coiled around his limbs velvety soft, but muscular and irresistibly strong. They pulled him off his feet and into the air in an instant. He kicked and tore at them without effect.
Dean.
It was the voice he’d heard in the back of his head his entire life, hijacked by an outside consciousness. And yet he knew, with absolute certainty, that the person talking was Castiel.
“Cas!” He shouted, struggling against the whips to look around.
Yes, it’s me. Stop fighting.