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495 words - croatverse - in which vessel ethics bring out the worst in dean; in which castiel believes only in the inevitable.
"why'd he do it?"
castiel has been waiting all night for this question, and he's ready for it, and he doesn't so much as flinch at the snarl in dean's voice. he just keeps breathing into dean's shoulder, blinking against his neck - the catch of eyelashes against skin makes castiel's throat tighten, but these days there's only so much water in him and his eyes and mouth and tongue are always evaporating, or something like that, and he can't stop - sets the bottle of whiskey by their feet and waits for what comes next.
"not - I mean jimmy."
wrong. dean is supposed to say sam, and castiel knows how to answer that question, at least, knows how to cover dean's body with his own so that there's nothing to say. this is cheating, this is foul fucking play. castiel exhales long and shaky and tries to line up the words in his head but they're written in the wrong language, in white light and the click of gears, and they swim out from under his tongue when he reaches for them. the alcohol helps. it goes down burning golden and if he doesn't think too much he can name the colors he's thinking of. that's what he doesn't say: maybe jimmy novak missed those same colors, missed the symbols aching in the back of castiel's mind and had been missing them all his life.
"he chose this," castiel says instead, which is probably closer to what dean's asking, anyway. "I don't know, dean. because he thought it would keep his family safe. because he thought it was the right thing. because I asked. it's irrelevant now."
dean jerks like there's something massive crawling under his skin, shoves castiel away with a twist of his shoulder. castiel lets him.
"no it's fucking not. there's always a trick. what did you do to him?"
"free will."
"bullshit. people don't walk out on their families like that."
castiel's fixes dean with a bleary stare and doesn't bother to fight the heat clawing up his gut. his head is buzzing, throbbing.
"no, you're right. but people walk out every day. you do it because you're scared, or you're not scared enough, or because you're god and you don't give a fuck, or -" he smiles horribly. "- or, or you're an angel and you think there's such a thing as making history up."
dean watches him blankly, all the feeling drained from his face so that there's nothing but cold green flint in his eyes. something sharp and bright has been pushing up between castiel's ribs in increments for a while now. he's speaking too fast, tongue tripping over the words -
"it's just a body. borrowed carbon. you think this is stolen, dean, but it wasn't me who took it. why would I want this, why would I want -"
dean punches him in the mouth, and for a blissful second castiel sees color again.
718 words - au pre-dean/cas schmoop - in which there is missing context; in which cookies taste better at 3 am, anyway.
They’re sitting on the floor of Cas’s apartment, propped up against the couch, bottle of cheap wine between them. Beer bottles cluster around their feet like beached jellyfish. Cas sits loosely cross-legged, knees hooked over each other as he slides gradually downward with each swig - of course he does, a measure of absurd propriety even in the way he sways toward Dean as he talks, like bravado, like the world’s least appropriate talk show host - and Dean compensates, leans back on his elbows and lets his legs sprawl obscenely across the walnut flooring that Cas’s parents paid for. Their feet slant together, all convergent lines under the coffee table, Dean’s socks to Castiel’s clean bare ankles.
The two of them are incongrous, a tangle of rough red cheeks and messy hair and slack mouths in an otherwise perfectly geometrical space. The walls are too orange in the dim light, casting a glow across the tops of Cas’s cheekbones and making Dean roll his head restlessly against the cushions. There’s music somewhere, a melancholy hum prickling at the stereo, but Dean can’t quite fix it in his mind.
“Martha Stewart,” Cas says suddenly and lurches into Dean’s space, “That’s what I meant. Makes the rest of us look bad, she’s -” he gropes for the bottle, and finding none settles for slumping against Dean’s shoulder. “Hate her. Who the hell has time to keep chickens anyway. Dumb fucking chickens.”
Dean stares at the side of Cas’s head, sloe-eyed and bleary.
“I’d keep chickens for you if you wanted chickens,” he mumbles, tongue stirring clumsily in his mouth.
Cas seems to consider it for a moment, then tips his head away and grabs another ginger cookie from the tray. An earlier batch sits abandoned on the kitchen table. For all that Dean is handy with a wrench, he can’t be trusted around a spice cabinet. Lesson duly learned: a tablespoon of cinnamon is definitely too much. Cas’s mockery was worth it for the grin on his face, sharp eyes and teeth and the corners of his mouth slanting upward, predatorial. I told you there was I reason I stick with the recipe. Dean had grinned fuzzily at Cas: can’t improve on perfection.
“I should get a cat,” Cas says through a mouthful of cookie. “Chickens are poor company.”
“Don’t need a cat. Got me, haven’t you? I’m great company. Fucking awesome.”
Dean twists against Cas, rolls onto his back languidly, cat-like. He’s smirking up at Cas through half-lidded eyes, empty bottle of wine still dragging heavy and cool in his fingers. Cas blinks back at him, focuses, re-focuses. The tightness gathering around his eyes is almost a smile as he lifts one palm, lays it on Dean’s stomach.
“You’d make a terrible pet.”
Dean shuffles his shoulders against the couch and lets Cas rub his belly, which is probably a little weird, but everything’s too warm and hazy for him to bother protesting.
“The best,” he slurs.
“My parents want me to give up the bakery, you know.”
“Mmp.”
“Go back to school or whatever. Michael’s a professor, d’I tell you? Theology. He’s miserable. Not insufferable, he’s insufferable too, but just miserable. Dad’s got his... got his hooks in. Whatever.”
Dean tries to catch Cas’s eyes but can’t find them in the blurry halo of his face. Blue eyes, like a young wolf’s. They’re flickering out from under Dean’s gaze, the edge of them snagging brittle and tender in his ribs.
“What do you,” Dean manages, “um. What do you want?”
Cas stares at him for a moment - or in the general vicinity of him, at least - before wobbling to the bathroom and throwing up in the sink.
~600 words - anna drabbles for womenlovefest
01. in anna's dreams, she ascends like a snake through her skin, peels back the jaws and is free. children run fingers through the grooves in her bark and birds tuck their heads under her chin, but their eyes are beady and the children's fingers are too smooth, so she looks away, upwards into herself and the snow and the sky. she knows the map of her branches without touching - doesn't need a textbook to describe the miracle of her body. she is growing out, out, out. her roots wind through the earth towards a name, and she wakes up unable to find her breath, heat between her legs and mind ablaze.
02. anna swallows the light bursting at her fingertips, and feels herself pushed inside out. wings unfurl in her stomach, tearing holes in the cartography of her body - wrenched outwards as sails on which she is a hawk, a flying fish, a luna moth, breathless with god's grace and yearning with all six wings toward the sun. she can feel these selves writhing in her mouth, ancient shreds of memory caught on the hooks of her teeth when she ripped the fire out of herself (like embalming, spat her organs out into the dirt and let them grow wild), and now the threads reel her back in. the roughness between bones erupts. anael becomes a forest, a litany of branches, roots and tongues tangling in her blood and gasping and clawing and raking at the film collected on her grace until she is only light.
03. anna used to make-believe that she was a kelpie queen among humans. the monster was an urge in anna's gut, would lick at her heart as a dog does its master's hand and off they would go. it wanted to drink anna's blood and run barefoot through her veins, through the clatter and sway of cornstalks and through the clouds, piled high and bright in the october sky. there was no bridle that could hold them.
other times, anna was a fallen angel. her grace entered the earth through the soles of her feet and spanned miles ahead like an arrow in the hot earth. she traced the silver path of it for hours, ran like a hare or a stag and let herself crackle with movement. how right it was that she should discover herself here. her wings could only kick dust in the faces of startled cattle where they dragged, but she had discovered other forms of flight: in the whip of red hair clinging to her shoulders and lips and tongue, the dirt under her fingernails, the breeze chasing the backs of her callused heels.
this body, her body, was capable of many other wonders. it bucked when she touched it, became a wild horse rearing against her fingers, so she knotted her fingers in its mane and rode a crest of thrashing legs into adolescence. when "girls shouldn't" became a chorus, anna stomped her hooves. the brook horse was frantic within her, screaming and dragging her teachers into the water, because I am not a girl, I am and there was a menagerie of beasts leaping on her tongue in answer but not one of them enough to contain her.