Fic: My Galvanized Friend
Title: My Galvanized Friend
Rating: PG-13/R
Pairing/Characters: Dean/Castiel; Dean, Castiel, Sam, mentions of others (spoilers for 5x06.)
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for 5x06. Vague sexuality. Drunk!Dean.
Words: 2,364
Summary: Dean isn't the best teacher, but he's the only one Castiel's got. Dean's okay with that.
A/N: Mostly for kitsu84, who cracked the whip and demanded penance for my transgressions, but also for my entire flist and anyone who may have been traumatized/nauseated/broken by my brief moment of what-the-fuckery. We're all on the same page now, bbs. ♥
Unbeta'd because I wrote it in like an hour, pffft.
Wizard of Oz: Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
The Tinman: But I still want one.
~ ~ ~
Dean isn't even shocked when it happens.
It's half past two in the morning and he's slumped over the steering wheel caught in the middle of a self-motivational monologue about how he can do this, he doesn't have far to drive, he's good, when the air ripples and suddenly Castiel is just there. Perched in shotgun, turned at a perfect angle where there's just a crescent-sliver of his face, all tired-shadowed and worry-creased, highlighted under a sickly yellow streetlamp spill.
"Dean," he says, maybe because he's worried, maybe just in acknowledgment of his arrival; Dean doesn't know and he doesn't ask. Instead he scoops up the ten-ton weight of his head and throws it back until he's sitting up straight, then blinks unsynchronized eyes at the form slouched beside him.
"You're -" he swallows and it feels like he's been eating glue for the past five hours, instead of drinking his fucking face off with every kind of whisky imaginable in this shithole roadside bar. A laugh shakes out of him in a rough hiccup. "You're swimmin', Cas."
The frown on Castiel's face deepens even more somehow, his lips tightening to a grim, perfect line. "How long have you been here?"
Dean laughs again because he can't think of anything better to do, and voicing his concerns about whether he should sleep or puke or play a wild card and try to drive back to the motel doesn't seem like good conversation. "I d'know, a while. What're you - how'd y'find me?"
"You're drunk," Castiel sighs. There is disappointment in the words. Dean can't figure out why that bothers him so much.
But it remains that he can't deny the truth of Castiel's observations, so he laughs again. "Hyeah, I'm -... I needed'a get away for a minute, y'know? Gotta - Sam's such a drag sometimes. He didn'want me t'come out."
Castiel glances downward behind a blink, then back up to pin Dean into place with a stare solid as the alcohol spin in Dean's head and the curve of the wheel under his hands, the cold solidity of the steel cage around them. "You're fighting," he says, only vaguely a question.
Dean drops his head back with a grand sigh, anchor-weight settling in the back of his skull with the shift. "Nah," he paws a hand through the air clumsily. "S'just a stick'n the mud, y'know? Even more'n you." He snorts, but the humor seems lost on Castiel. He only stares idly and waits for more words to form themselves from the musty, bourbon-spiced air of the interior.
When Dean shifts again, the anchor clunks into his right temple. "S'a joke," he mumbles. "You're not all that bad, Cas." A hand floats out and lands on Castiel's knee with a dull clap. The fingers there are white, pale streaks of void color against the black of Castiel's slacks, and they're long, and it takes Dean a minute to realize that - oh, they're his.
His hand on Castiel's knee. His fingers clutching loosely at the fabric and feeling out the subtle bumps of bone beneath.
It doesn't make any sense. He doesn't know how it got there.
He pulls back with a sudden draw of breath, playing it off as a friendly pat as best he can. He coughs and holds onto the wheel and tries to squirm out of the crosshairs Castiel has firmly affixed to his face.
"You're a cool cat," he says pointlessly, to tie off the conversation.
The next time he turns, the space between them seems shrunken by several inches, but Dean chalks it up to the alcohol. He forces a smile even as his stomach lurches uncomfortably. "Take me home?" he slurs, as his eyes sink shut and don't reopen.
A faint pressure skirts along his collar, skimming just inside the rim in a warm tickle. Dean abstractedly thinks fingers, but since when has Castiel ever touched him like that? That doesn't make any sense either.
"Where would you like to go?"
Castiel's voice is low and closer than Dean remembers it being before. A fainter smile curls his lips as he says, "Wherever y'want."
A gap of rich silence and four points of soft pressure on his face, mapping out the curve-sweep of his cheekbone, the angle of his jaw and the concavity beneath his lip. "Dean, I don't," breaks the soundless streak, Castiel's voice tight on the edge of a whisper. "I don't know. You have to tell me."
"Well...where d'you usually go when y'flutter off all - angelic n'shit?" Dean licks at his lips as the not-quite-touch slips lower to trace every intricacy and detail of his throat, his Adam's apple that jerks with a reflexive swallow, the quarter-inch of collarbone peeking out of his shirt. "You got like a house? Lil' angel igloo off somewhere, Cas?"
"I have no home, outside of you."
Dean parts his lips to say...something he hasn't quite formulated yet, but Castiel's palm fits to the slope of his forehead and in a quick bright flash and a swirl of inertia, he's safe and warm under a scratchy blanket on a bone-hard mattress, with Sam snoring one bed over and the ghosts of gentle fingers tingling along his skin. He gets halfway through a, "thank you, Cas," before he's asleep.
~ ~ ~
Pancakes. Pancakes with extra syrup and a generous heap of butter melting on top. Side order of bacon and half a pot of coffee, black. Dean swears that if he could buy a patent on it he'd market it as the world's best hangover cure and make millions. Sam just rolls his eyes and tells him to chew with his mouth closed, then makes a laundromat run.
He's just beginning to consider the damage possibly done to his liver over the course of one night when Castiel flutters in from dead space. Dean knocks the TV volume down and soaks through another forkful of pancakes. "Well if it ain't G.I. Joe, come to life."
Castiel looks briefly displeased, but it passes as he lowers carefully onto an edge of the bed at Dean's feet.
"Pancakes?" Dean asks through a mouthful. Castiel swings a stern glance over his shoulder, but when Dean holds out a syrup-dripping fork with a grin, his expression softens.
"No thank you."
"Your loss." Dean tosses back another bite and cranks the volume back up.
It's quiet for a long time before Castiel finally asks, "What is this you're watching?"
"Dude," Dean's face falls. "It's Tom and Jerry. Come on."
Castiel blinks.
"You can't tell me that in all your infinite angelic wisdom, you've never seen Tom and Jerry."
"I usually have more pressing concerns."
Quick sideways cut of eyes and Dean's grinning like a madman. Castiel's blind groping through halfbreed territory into humanity isn't something that sits well with Dean - particularly with his DeLorean trip with Zachariah less than a month fresh on his mind - but the addition of sarcasm into Castiel's arsenal is something Dean considers a triumph instead of a red flag. He's slowly emerging as a layered creature with real curves and soft spots, instead of some mindless automaton kept on Heaven's shortest leash. Dean might not ever say it to Castiel's face, but it makes him proud, in a skewed sort of way, to know this thawing is due mostly in part to him.
The rest of the bacon disappears and Tom and Jerry segues into Johnny Quest, which has never held Dean's interest much so he turns it off.
"Any news on the kid?"
Castiel stares at the knot of his hands between his knees and answers, "No. But I didn't expect there to be."
Dean sets the takeout box aside, works his tongue around his teeth for a long stretch. "So you were really gonna kill him, huh?"
"I had no choice."
"Man, you gotta stop sayin' that," Dean half-laughs. Castiel looks up, curiosity sewn into the crease of a frown between his eyes, the thin part of his lips. "You're out on your own now, Cas. You got all the choices in the world."
He looks away again, pointedly.
"Could you have killed him, though?"
Castiel doesn't answer.
"I don't think you could've," Dean says quietly. Judging by the quick fidgets of Castiel's body - subtle jerks and twitches of his hands rubbing together, tension pulling into his shoulders - Dean's hit the nail on the head. He sighs. "Relax. I won't tell. You can keep your hardass exterior intact another day."
Dean putters around as if Castiel isn't even there, not in disregard but rather companionable silence. He's lost tally of the months it's been since they blurred over the line dividing awkward tension from easy company, enjoyable company - friendship, even - but Dean is grateful for it. There are no snipping fights or arguments with Castiel, no landmines to navigate around; not like with Sam. And it's silly and ridiculous to lay claim to anything as mighty and incomprehensible as an angel - even a rogue, not-quite one - but Dean tends to think highly of his tendency to consider Castiel his.
His confidante, his shoulder, his friend, his one real and solid contact outside of bloodlines and complications.
Dean likes having the guy around, is what it is, and sure he might think of him as a responsibility now that he's strayed from the fold and all, but it's not an unwelcome obligation. Dean wouldn't be adverse to having another pair of hands to shoot, or another belly to fill, or another seat kept warm in the Impala. He wouldn't be adverse to that at all.
"I couldn't."
The words come out of nowhere; Dean looks up from bundling his dirty clothes into his duffel. "What?"
Castiel sighs as he stands, the sound heavy and strained. "The boy. I couldn't have killed him. In another time, yes, but now I -..." His hands sink into his pockets, a slow slouch that mirrors the vague shame building into his features, and those eyes that seem too bright with how the morning refracts into them.
Dean hums thoughtfully as he is drawn in a subconscious pull into Castiel's space, closer, closer until they are only inches apart. Since the last warning reminder, Castiel has respected Dean's boundaries more implicitly; he has not crowded close to him in cramped motel bathrooms again, or stood close enough to catch the faint puffs of his breath with each word. The last thing Dean expected was to miss it.
"It's called a conscience. Get used to it."
Castiel's eyes widen momentarily. Dean tries for a smile, but only ends up with an uncomfortable half-smirk. He sinks his own hands into his pockets and glances off to the side, because he can't quite seem to stop looking at Castiel's face otherwise.
"Gets in the way sometimes, but it's nice to have as a backup."
This time Castiel is the one to look away - a downward sink to his eyes that reeks of shame and a guilt heavier than anything Dean could comprehend.
"Hey," he says, calling Castiel's attention upward again with the bend of one finger under his chin. "For what it's worth, I'm real damn proud of you."
In a sudden shift of moment Dean tries and fails to calculate, Castiel is intimately close, inches away, their lines nearly flushed from chest to knees. His fingers - whisky-fogged memory of warmth skimming his face, dipping in his collar, safety, no home outside of you - slip into Dean's hair and claim a loose grip. When he speaks, Castiel's voice is drawn low and carefully measured, but thrumming with a secret pulse, something barely contained. Dean thinks this is perhaps what it feels like to be in the presence of an angel's emotions.
"In my life I have never once asked for a thing besides the love and grace of my father. But -," he chokes on a breath almost, pushes along to rest his fingers in a loose curl behind Dean's ears. "Dean, please. You have to help me with this."
He decides defining it is pointless, or pinning down the precise instant when his hands gravitated to fit into the subtle bend of Castiel's waist, smaller than he imagined, slender and soft under the intimidating trench coat and indomitable presence. When Castiel asks, Dean very nearly hears the physical click of his last pieces slotting into place, the glue of Castiel rolling over his myriad jigsaw scars to hold him together.
Because this, this is how it should be. Whole and complimentary and complete, for the both of them. Learning and teaching alike, shaping and reshaping, destroying and saving.
It couldn't ever be any other way. Dean's just wondering why it took so long.
~ ~ ~
Dean pins him to the mattress and acquaints him with the weaker shudders of human experience, navigates the varying peaks and currents of feeling meets feeling, because with the gentleness he uses to touch Castiel's body, the two are intrinsically tied.
When Sam gets back they are both sufficiently sated and re-dressed. Sam lifts a skeptical eyebrow and asks what Dean did now, but Dean only flips his bag onto his shoulder and heads for the door. He stops in the threshold and tips a look over his shoulder at Castiel, wide-eyed wreck of expectant confusion all across his face.
"You know we've got an empty back seat, right?" Dean offers.
He doesn't confer with Sam on the decision to add a welcome third wheel, but Sam only continues to pack his things in silence as if it was never said, which Dean interprets as approval. Even still, he's not going to make any promises he wouldn't have pulled the older brother say-so card and tossed Castiel kicking into the back seat if it had become an issue.
Castiel stands and brushes awkward hands along his thighs. "I wouldn't want to impose," he says flatly.
"Cas, get in the damn car," Dean says, but behind a wide smile rich with a spectrum of secrecy he looks forward to teaching.
Castiel reflects a perfect mirror of it behind his own foreign smile, and follows Dean outside.
\o/
Rating: PG-13/R
Pairing/Characters: Dean/Castiel; Dean, Castiel, Sam, mentions of others (spoilers for 5x06.)
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for 5x06. Vague sexuality. Drunk!Dean.
Words: 2,364
Summary: Dean isn't the best teacher, but he's the only one Castiel's got. Dean's okay with that.
A/N: Mostly for kitsu84, who cracked the whip and demanded penance for my transgressions, but also for my entire flist and anyone who may have been traumatized/nauseated/broken by my brief moment of what-the-fuckery. We're all on the same page now, bbs. ♥
Unbeta'd because I wrote it in like an hour, pffft.
Wizard of Oz: Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
The Tinman: But I still want one.
~ ~ ~
Dean isn't even shocked when it happens.
It's half past two in the morning and he's slumped over the steering wheel caught in the middle of a self-motivational monologue about how he can do this, he doesn't have far to drive, he's good, when the air ripples and suddenly Castiel is just there. Perched in shotgun, turned at a perfect angle where there's just a crescent-sliver of his face, all tired-shadowed and worry-creased, highlighted under a sickly yellow streetlamp spill.
"Dean," he says, maybe because he's worried, maybe just in acknowledgment of his arrival; Dean doesn't know and he doesn't ask. Instead he scoops up the ten-ton weight of his head and throws it back until he's sitting up straight, then blinks unsynchronized eyes at the form slouched beside him.
"You're -" he swallows and it feels like he's been eating glue for the past five hours, instead of drinking his fucking face off with every kind of whisky imaginable in this shithole roadside bar. A laugh shakes out of him in a rough hiccup. "You're swimmin', Cas."
The frown on Castiel's face deepens even more somehow, his lips tightening to a grim, perfect line. "How long have you been here?"
Dean laughs again because he can't think of anything better to do, and voicing his concerns about whether he should sleep or puke or play a wild card and try to drive back to the motel doesn't seem like good conversation. "I d'know, a while. What're you - how'd y'find me?"
"You're drunk," Castiel sighs. There is disappointment in the words. Dean can't figure out why that bothers him so much.
But it remains that he can't deny the truth of Castiel's observations, so he laughs again. "Hyeah, I'm -... I needed'a get away for a minute, y'know? Gotta - Sam's such a drag sometimes. He didn'want me t'come out."
Castiel glances downward behind a blink, then back up to pin Dean into place with a stare solid as the alcohol spin in Dean's head and the curve of the wheel under his hands, the cold solidity of the steel cage around them. "You're fighting," he says, only vaguely a question.
Dean drops his head back with a grand sigh, anchor-weight settling in the back of his skull with the shift. "Nah," he paws a hand through the air clumsily. "S'just a stick'n the mud, y'know? Even more'n you." He snorts, but the humor seems lost on Castiel. He only stares idly and waits for more words to form themselves from the musty, bourbon-spiced air of the interior.
When Dean shifts again, the anchor clunks into his right temple. "S'a joke," he mumbles. "You're not all that bad, Cas." A hand floats out and lands on Castiel's knee with a dull clap. The fingers there are white, pale streaks of void color against the black of Castiel's slacks, and they're long, and it takes Dean a minute to realize that - oh, they're his.
His hand on Castiel's knee. His fingers clutching loosely at the fabric and feeling out the subtle bumps of bone beneath.
It doesn't make any sense. He doesn't know how it got there.
He pulls back with a sudden draw of breath, playing it off as a friendly pat as best he can. He coughs and holds onto the wheel and tries to squirm out of the crosshairs Castiel has firmly affixed to his face.
"You're a cool cat," he says pointlessly, to tie off the conversation.
The next time he turns, the space between them seems shrunken by several inches, but Dean chalks it up to the alcohol. He forces a smile even as his stomach lurches uncomfortably. "Take me home?" he slurs, as his eyes sink shut and don't reopen.
A faint pressure skirts along his collar, skimming just inside the rim in a warm tickle. Dean abstractedly thinks fingers, but since when has Castiel ever touched him like that? That doesn't make any sense either.
"Where would you like to go?"
Castiel's voice is low and closer than Dean remembers it being before. A fainter smile curls his lips as he says, "Wherever y'want."
A gap of rich silence and four points of soft pressure on his face, mapping out the curve-sweep of his cheekbone, the angle of his jaw and the concavity beneath his lip. "Dean, I don't," breaks the soundless streak, Castiel's voice tight on the edge of a whisper. "I don't know. You have to tell me."
"Well...where d'you usually go when y'flutter off all - angelic n'shit?" Dean licks at his lips as the not-quite-touch slips lower to trace every intricacy and detail of his throat, his Adam's apple that jerks with a reflexive swallow, the quarter-inch of collarbone peeking out of his shirt. "You got like a house? Lil' angel igloo off somewhere, Cas?"
"I have no home, outside of you."
Dean parts his lips to say...something he hasn't quite formulated yet, but Castiel's palm fits to the slope of his forehead and in a quick bright flash and a swirl of inertia, he's safe and warm under a scratchy blanket on a bone-hard mattress, with Sam snoring one bed over and the ghosts of gentle fingers tingling along his skin. He gets halfway through a, "thank you, Cas," before he's asleep.
~ ~ ~
Pancakes. Pancakes with extra syrup and a generous heap of butter melting on top. Side order of bacon and half a pot of coffee, black. Dean swears that if he could buy a patent on it he'd market it as the world's best hangover cure and make millions. Sam just rolls his eyes and tells him to chew with his mouth closed, then makes a laundromat run.
He's just beginning to consider the damage possibly done to his liver over the course of one night when Castiel flutters in from dead space. Dean knocks the TV volume down and soaks through another forkful of pancakes. "Well if it ain't G.I. Joe, come to life."
Castiel looks briefly displeased, but it passes as he lowers carefully onto an edge of the bed at Dean's feet.
"Pancakes?" Dean asks through a mouthful. Castiel swings a stern glance over his shoulder, but when Dean holds out a syrup-dripping fork with a grin, his expression softens.
"No thank you."
"Your loss." Dean tosses back another bite and cranks the volume back up.
It's quiet for a long time before Castiel finally asks, "What is this you're watching?"
"Dude," Dean's face falls. "It's Tom and Jerry. Come on."
Castiel blinks.
"You can't tell me that in all your infinite angelic wisdom, you've never seen Tom and Jerry."
"I usually have more pressing concerns."
Quick sideways cut of eyes and Dean's grinning like a madman. Castiel's blind groping through halfbreed territory into humanity isn't something that sits well with Dean - particularly with his DeLorean trip with Zachariah less than a month fresh on his mind - but the addition of sarcasm into Castiel's arsenal is something Dean considers a triumph instead of a red flag. He's slowly emerging as a layered creature with real curves and soft spots, instead of some mindless automaton kept on Heaven's shortest leash. Dean might not ever say it to Castiel's face, but it makes him proud, in a skewed sort of way, to know this thawing is due mostly in part to him.
The rest of the bacon disappears and Tom and Jerry segues into Johnny Quest, which has never held Dean's interest much so he turns it off.
"Any news on the kid?"
Castiel stares at the knot of his hands between his knees and answers, "No. But I didn't expect there to be."
Dean sets the takeout box aside, works his tongue around his teeth for a long stretch. "So you were really gonna kill him, huh?"
"I had no choice."
"Man, you gotta stop sayin' that," Dean half-laughs. Castiel looks up, curiosity sewn into the crease of a frown between his eyes, the thin part of his lips. "You're out on your own now, Cas. You got all the choices in the world."
He looks away again, pointedly.
"Could you have killed him, though?"
Castiel doesn't answer.
"I don't think you could've," Dean says quietly. Judging by the quick fidgets of Castiel's body - subtle jerks and twitches of his hands rubbing together, tension pulling into his shoulders - Dean's hit the nail on the head. He sighs. "Relax. I won't tell. You can keep your hardass exterior intact another day."
Dean putters around as if Castiel isn't even there, not in disregard but rather companionable silence. He's lost tally of the months it's been since they blurred over the line dividing awkward tension from easy company, enjoyable company - friendship, even - but Dean is grateful for it. There are no snipping fights or arguments with Castiel, no landmines to navigate around; not like with Sam. And it's silly and ridiculous to lay claim to anything as mighty and incomprehensible as an angel - even a rogue, not-quite one - but Dean tends to think highly of his tendency to consider Castiel his.
His confidante, his shoulder, his friend, his one real and solid contact outside of bloodlines and complications.
Dean likes having the guy around, is what it is, and sure he might think of him as a responsibility now that he's strayed from the fold and all, but it's not an unwelcome obligation. Dean wouldn't be adverse to having another pair of hands to shoot, or another belly to fill, or another seat kept warm in the Impala. He wouldn't be adverse to that at all.
"I couldn't."
The words come out of nowhere; Dean looks up from bundling his dirty clothes into his duffel. "What?"
Castiel sighs as he stands, the sound heavy and strained. "The boy. I couldn't have killed him. In another time, yes, but now I -..." His hands sink into his pockets, a slow slouch that mirrors the vague shame building into his features, and those eyes that seem too bright with how the morning refracts into them.
Dean hums thoughtfully as he is drawn in a subconscious pull into Castiel's space, closer, closer until they are only inches apart. Since the last warning reminder, Castiel has respected Dean's boundaries more implicitly; he has not crowded close to him in cramped motel bathrooms again, or stood close enough to catch the faint puffs of his breath with each word. The last thing Dean expected was to miss it.
"It's called a conscience. Get used to it."
Castiel's eyes widen momentarily. Dean tries for a smile, but only ends up with an uncomfortable half-smirk. He sinks his own hands into his pockets and glances off to the side, because he can't quite seem to stop looking at Castiel's face otherwise.
"Gets in the way sometimes, but it's nice to have as a backup."
This time Castiel is the one to look away - a downward sink to his eyes that reeks of shame and a guilt heavier than anything Dean could comprehend.
"Hey," he says, calling Castiel's attention upward again with the bend of one finger under his chin. "For what it's worth, I'm real damn proud of you."
In a sudden shift of moment Dean tries and fails to calculate, Castiel is intimately close, inches away, their lines nearly flushed from chest to knees. His fingers - whisky-fogged memory of warmth skimming his face, dipping in his collar, safety, no home outside of you - slip into Dean's hair and claim a loose grip. When he speaks, Castiel's voice is drawn low and carefully measured, but thrumming with a secret pulse, something barely contained. Dean thinks this is perhaps what it feels like to be in the presence of an angel's emotions.
"In my life I have never once asked for a thing besides the love and grace of my father. But -," he chokes on a breath almost, pushes along to rest his fingers in a loose curl behind Dean's ears. "Dean, please. You have to help me with this."
He decides defining it is pointless, or pinning down the precise instant when his hands gravitated to fit into the subtle bend of Castiel's waist, smaller than he imagined, slender and soft under the intimidating trench coat and indomitable presence. When Castiel asks, Dean very nearly hears the physical click of his last pieces slotting into place, the glue of Castiel rolling over his myriad jigsaw scars to hold him together.
Because this, this is how it should be. Whole and complimentary and complete, for the both of them. Learning and teaching alike, shaping and reshaping, destroying and saving.
It couldn't ever be any other way. Dean's just wondering why it took so long.
~ ~ ~
Dean pins him to the mattress and acquaints him with the weaker shudders of human experience, navigates the varying peaks and currents of feeling meets feeling, because with the gentleness he uses to touch Castiel's body, the two are intrinsically tied.
When Sam gets back they are both sufficiently sated and re-dressed. Sam lifts a skeptical eyebrow and asks what Dean did now, but Dean only flips his bag onto his shoulder and heads for the door. He stops in the threshold and tips a look over his shoulder at Castiel, wide-eyed wreck of expectant confusion all across his face.
"You know we've got an empty back seat, right?" Dean offers.
He doesn't confer with Sam on the decision to add a welcome third wheel, but Sam only continues to pack his things in silence as if it was never said, which Dean interprets as approval. Even still, he's not going to make any promises he wouldn't have pulled the older brother say-so card and tossed Castiel kicking into the back seat if it had become an issue.
Castiel stands and brushes awkward hands along his thighs. "I wouldn't want to impose," he says flatly.
"Cas, get in the damn car," Dean says, but behind a wide smile rich with a spectrum of secrecy he looks forward to teaching.
Castiel reflects a perfect mirror of it behind his own foreign smile, and follows Dean outside.
\o/