Fic: Daughter of Man (girl!Dean/Castiel)
Four days! And of course this close to the finish line, I get sick. Boo. :(
Previous ficlets here.
Title: Daughter of Man
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Dean(na)/Castiel
Spoilers: Through 4x17
Length: ~2,000 words
Summary: Written for medie as part of this gift exchange. She wanted always-a-girl!Dean through a lens of Genesis 6, which I then twisted up with the fallout from “It’s a Terrible Life.” She kicks the shoes off on the way to the car.
Note: Huge, HUGE thanks to aesc and bmouse; without their incredible amount of help and handholding, this story would never have been finished.
Daughter of Man
She kicks the shoes off on the way to the car. They were probably expensive-they don’t look anything like the ones she’s always ignored at Payless-but right now, she really can’t say she cares about wasting Heaven’s dime. She drops them into the first trashcan she passes and enjoys the feeling of gravel ripping into the pantyhose stretched over the soles of her calloused feet.
Fucking pantyhose. Jesus Christ.
Sam’s waiting for her by the car. He’s changed out of that puke yellow shirt and back into his regular clothes, and she’s tempted to raid the trunk, strip off and shimmy into something of her own in the backseat as she’s done plenty of times before. But more than that she just wants to get as far away from here as possible. So she preempts any attempt at smartassery on her baby brother’s part with a firm “Shut up” and slides into the Impala. Leans back against the leather, cranks some Zeppelin up high, and for the first time in weeks, Deanna breathes.
Fucking control top pantyhose. She thumps the steering wheel in time with John Bonham’s beat. Angels are such dicks.
They don’t drive very far before stopping for food. Deanna’s so hungry that she feels a little lightheaded; she’s been dizzy for days. Next thing she knows she’ll be swooning-she’s lucky, she supposes, that she didn’t faint from hunger while she was trying to gank that ghost. Leaving Sam to have to catch her or some shit. She scowls at the thought; scowls as she tears off the tattered hose, pulls a pair of boots out of the trunk, and yanks them on over her bare feet. In the diner, she’s aware of people staring, gawking at the crazy lady wolfing down a BBQ cheeseburger, wiping her fingers straight onto her powerbitch suit. Fuck them, she thinks, grinning in the face of their glares.
Sam’s eyeing her warily as he picks at his salad; he better not start. Doesn’t matter that he may mean only the best…he better not fucking start.
Sam keeps his peace and they drive some more, put enough distance between themselves and those strangers back at Sandover. And the rundown motel they finally decide to stop at looks damn good in comparison to what they left behind, the steel and chrome sterility of her fake apartment. Deanna drops her duffle bag on the sagging motel mattress and lets out a sigh: home sweet home.
Sam’s apparently less enamored, however, because he doesn’t do anything more than steal first shower-bitch-before heading out again. Not even bothering with an excuse anymore. Deanna slides to the edge of the bed, still in rumpled and torn clothes that are not her own, her blissful reunion with the Magic Fingers at its end. She stares at the closed door for a moment before pushing herself back onto her feet. Time to wash this Chanel stink off of her.
She hasn’t even made it to the bathroom door when she feels the air in the room become charged; she turns around, and there’s her angel, blue-eyed and solemn. They’re quite a pair, the two of them in their matching corporate drag. It’s almost funny, Deanna thinks, but she doesn’t smile. She watches Castiel’s Adam’s apple bob; on him, it’s very nearly a look of shocked surprise.
“Long time no see,” she says, coldly.
“I was cautioned not to interfere,” Castiel replies. His gaze on her feels hot, worse than the stares at the diner. She fights the urge to fold her arms across her chest. She is not ashamed, not of this. Never of this.
“Well then you get a gold star.” She’s not entirely sure what to do with her hands: she has no pockets to play with, worn denim to rub her restless thumbs against. She picks absently at a cuticle; her nails are all weird and smooth, long enough to form carefully curved points. Angels gave her a manicure. Christ.
“You can tell your boss thanks for wasting our time. I thought we were trying to stop the apocalypse here-does he really not have anything better to do than play house?”
“Zachariah thought-well.” Castiel stops with a sigh, looks down. “You know what he thought.”
Deanna sneers. “Apparently the consensus is that I’m not measuring up. Well, this is old news, Cas. I’m pretty sure I broke that story a long time ago.”
“No.”
Castiel’s voice is firm, but Deanna overrides him. “No? They may not tell you much, but you must have gotten that memo. It’s pretty clear that I’m not the,” and if her voice hitches it’s only so she can inject the appropriate amount of sarcasm into the next words: “righteous man you want.”
“No, that’s not the consensus.” Suddenly his eyes are on her again, searching, strong. He hasn’t moved any closer, but it feels like he’s right in front of her. “I have faith.”
She laughs, a low, whiskey-burn chuckle. “Faith? In who? In this girl, your pervy boss’ little dress-up doll?” She slinks closer, forces herself right up in his face. “Do you like me like this, Cas?” she whispers. “Do I look like someone you can imagine saving?”
He doesn’t look away from her. “I did save you,” he says.
Rage burns up inside her like acid reflux. “I never asked you to! I never asked for any of this!”
“God doesn’t give us what we ask for,” Castiel says, and oh, she hates it how he can stay so calm. “He gives us what we deserve.”
“And what,” she spits, “He gave you me? Is that what you deserve?”
“I-” Castiel drops his gaze, and there’s a flicker of something there, a flutter. “I can only hope…”
Deanna sees her opening. “You do,” she says, pressing forward again. Steels herself, puts her hand on the angel’s shoulder and runs it up toward his neck. Forcing him to look. “You like this. Me.” She tugs at his collar. “Would you even know what to do with me, Cas?”
Castiel swallows and glances Heavenward. “It is forbidden for the sons of God to lie with the daughters of men.”
Deanna drops her hand, lets her jaw set firm. “Because we’re corrupt.”
“Because it is forbidden.”
“Wow.” She steps back. “That’s some circular angelic logic right there. Don’t you make yourself dizzy?”
She’s had more than enough of this-all of this. She reaches around and starts tugging at her hair-it’s up in some weird sort of knot that she doesn’t even know how to do. It’s a relief to free it, feel it tumble loose to her shoulders, relieving the painful tightness at her scalp. She can feel Castiel watching her, like her every movement is being weighed and analyzed and filed away. She’s not being deliberately provocative anymore but she just can’t make herself care.
The silk blouse has sweat stains underneath the arms. It clings too tightly to her wrists and it’s a relief to shake it off. The bra underneath is some ridiculous lacy thing; she’s discovered Victoria’s Secret and apparently it is extreme itchiness. She lets out a little huff of disgust and bends her arms behind her back.
The clasp sticks for a moment, then comes apart. She wrenches the bra off her shoulders in a way that’s unkind to the straps and drops it on the floor. Shimmies out of the skirt and lets it fall beside it, kicks them both out of the way. In her underwear (which matches the bra, seriously) she walks to her duffle and opens it up, already fantasizing about a tank top and a pair of shorts. But what’s right on top is Sam’s necklace, curled against its cord. Deanna feels a pang: of relief at being reunited with it, of not until now having noticed its absence.
Gently she pulls the cord over her head, letting out a breath when she feels the cool metal slip between her breasts.
She’s surprised to hear an answering sigh, a sharp intake of air from somewhere over her shoulder. She turns, and for a second, as she moves, she thinks she glimpses something on Cas’ face, something greedy and raw and wholly human-a look she’s seen on the faces of men she meets in bars, who she knows just how to smile back at. But by the time she’s facing him fully it’s gone. His features are back to being an impassive mask, his whole body still and solemn, save a momentary flutter of his hands before he tucks them away, like a pair of magician’s doves, deep in his coat pockets.
“I should let you rest,” Castiel says. His voice sounds, impossibly, rougher than usual. He won’t meet Deanna’s eyes.
“So that’s it?” she surprises herself by saying. Something about the angel’s sudden…self-consciousness? is making her self-conscious. Blindly, she digs a cotton tank out of her bag and pulls it over her head. “We’re finished?”
Castiel doesn’t move. He doesn’t move, so it must be her imagination that he looks like he’s teetering, wavering like a mirage. For a moment, the space of a breath, Deanna thinks that he’s about to step closer, destroy the space between them, and Deanna…Deanna honestly can’t even begin to know how she feels about that.
It’s all in her head, though-all in her oft- and recently-once-again-fucked-over head; it must be, because all he does is give her one last long, unknowable look. And all he says is, “We are far from finished, Deanna Winchester.”
Then he’s gone, and she’s alone in a strange motel room, wearing another girl’s underwear.
Her fingers are still curled around the hem of her tank top from when she was tugging it down. Suddenly even the thin, worn cotton feels confining, the room too hot, too close, even with Cas gone from it. She strips off again, fully this time, and walks naked into the bathroom. She sets the shower to icy cold and steps under the spray, tilting her head back. The water feels amazing, but she can’t quite get comfortable in her own skin again, can’t fully shake the pantyhose/scratchy bra/judging stare itchiness from her system. She lets out a growl of frustration and steps, dripping, back onto the cool tile. A quick run of the comb through her hair and a couple moments spent tugging jeans and a sports bra and that damn tank top back on and she’s ready to go out again. They keys feel good against her hip and even better in her hand. Music on, windows down, she really lets her baby loose. The wind whips through her hair, drying it in messy waves.
“I have never understood the temptation.”
She senses him a second before he appears, which is probably the only reason she and Castiel don’t end up finished, wrapped firmly around a tree. “The thrill of the open road, Cas,” she says, adding, a little snappily, “Total freedom. No douchebags breathing down your neck, telling you what to do.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Deanna can feel his gaze on her even without looking away from the double yellow lines zipping past. “My brothers…the ones who saw that the daughters of men were beautiful. Their sin did not make sense to me.”
Deanna bites her lip and eases off the gas a bit. “You’re a real boyscout, Cas, I know.”
“I just want you to understand.” There’s a slight hitch, a hesitance to his voice; it reminds her of when he sat down beside her in the sun, told her he was not a hammer, that he had doubts… “I have never before been tempted,” he says. “Never.”
Deanna can’t help it: her gaze flickers over. Castiel is looking at her like he expects her to be able to read his mind, like he thinks she has the ability to see inside him the way it sometimes feels like he can peer into her. Like with a glance she can render him naked before her.
Slip that trench coat off his shoulders and-
“Gotcha, Cas,” she says, looking back out at the road ahead, headlights cutting through the endless darkness. “No temptation here.”
Continued in Whomever They Chose.
NOTES:
1. Genesis 6: Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
Previous ficlets here.
Title: Daughter of Man
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Dean(na)/Castiel
Spoilers: Through 4x17
Length: ~2,000 words
Summary: Written for medie as part of this gift exchange. She wanted always-a-girl!Dean through a lens of Genesis 6, which I then twisted up with the fallout from “It’s a Terrible Life.” She kicks the shoes off on the way to the car.
Note: Huge, HUGE thanks to aesc and bmouse; without their incredible amount of help and handholding, this story would never have been finished.
Daughter of Man
She kicks the shoes off on the way to the car. They were probably expensive-they don’t look anything like the ones she’s always ignored at Payless-but right now, she really can’t say she cares about wasting Heaven’s dime. She drops them into the first trashcan she passes and enjoys the feeling of gravel ripping into the pantyhose stretched over the soles of her calloused feet.
Fucking pantyhose. Jesus Christ.
Sam’s waiting for her by the car. He’s changed out of that puke yellow shirt and back into his regular clothes, and she’s tempted to raid the trunk, strip off and shimmy into something of her own in the backseat as she’s done plenty of times before. But more than that she just wants to get as far away from here as possible. So she preempts any attempt at smartassery on her baby brother’s part with a firm “Shut up” and slides into the Impala. Leans back against the leather, cranks some Zeppelin up high, and for the first time in weeks, Deanna breathes.
Fucking control top pantyhose. She thumps the steering wheel in time with John Bonham’s beat. Angels are such dicks.
They don’t drive very far before stopping for food. Deanna’s so hungry that she feels a little lightheaded; she’s been dizzy for days. Next thing she knows she’ll be swooning-she’s lucky, she supposes, that she didn’t faint from hunger while she was trying to gank that ghost. Leaving Sam to have to catch her or some shit. She scowls at the thought; scowls as she tears off the tattered hose, pulls a pair of boots out of the trunk, and yanks them on over her bare feet. In the diner, she’s aware of people staring, gawking at the crazy lady wolfing down a BBQ cheeseburger, wiping her fingers straight onto her powerbitch suit. Fuck them, she thinks, grinning in the face of their glares.
Sam’s eyeing her warily as he picks at his salad; he better not start. Doesn’t matter that he may mean only the best…he better not fucking start.
Sam keeps his peace and they drive some more, put enough distance between themselves and those strangers back at Sandover. And the rundown motel they finally decide to stop at looks damn good in comparison to what they left behind, the steel and chrome sterility of her fake apartment. Deanna drops her duffle bag on the sagging motel mattress and lets out a sigh: home sweet home.
Sam’s apparently less enamored, however, because he doesn’t do anything more than steal first shower-bitch-before heading out again. Not even bothering with an excuse anymore. Deanna slides to the edge of the bed, still in rumpled and torn clothes that are not her own, her blissful reunion with the Magic Fingers at its end. She stares at the closed door for a moment before pushing herself back onto her feet. Time to wash this Chanel stink off of her.
She hasn’t even made it to the bathroom door when she feels the air in the room become charged; she turns around, and there’s her angel, blue-eyed and solemn. They’re quite a pair, the two of them in their matching corporate drag. It’s almost funny, Deanna thinks, but she doesn’t smile. She watches Castiel’s Adam’s apple bob; on him, it’s very nearly a look of shocked surprise.
“Long time no see,” she says, coldly.
“I was cautioned not to interfere,” Castiel replies. His gaze on her feels hot, worse than the stares at the diner. She fights the urge to fold her arms across her chest. She is not ashamed, not of this. Never of this.
“Well then you get a gold star.” She’s not entirely sure what to do with her hands: she has no pockets to play with, worn denim to rub her restless thumbs against. She picks absently at a cuticle; her nails are all weird and smooth, long enough to form carefully curved points. Angels gave her a manicure. Christ.
“You can tell your boss thanks for wasting our time. I thought we were trying to stop the apocalypse here-does he really not have anything better to do than play house?”
“Zachariah thought-well.” Castiel stops with a sigh, looks down. “You know what he thought.”
Deanna sneers. “Apparently the consensus is that I’m not measuring up. Well, this is old news, Cas. I’m pretty sure I broke that story a long time ago.”
“No.”
Castiel’s voice is firm, but Deanna overrides him. “No? They may not tell you much, but you must have gotten that memo. It’s pretty clear that I’m not the,” and if her voice hitches it’s only so she can inject the appropriate amount of sarcasm into the next words: “righteous man you want.”
“No, that’s not the consensus.” Suddenly his eyes are on her again, searching, strong. He hasn’t moved any closer, but it feels like he’s right in front of her. “I have faith.”
She laughs, a low, whiskey-burn chuckle. “Faith? In who? In this girl, your pervy boss’ little dress-up doll?” She slinks closer, forces herself right up in his face. “Do you like me like this, Cas?” she whispers. “Do I look like someone you can imagine saving?”
He doesn’t look away from her. “I did save you,” he says.
Rage burns up inside her like acid reflux. “I never asked you to! I never asked for any of this!”
“God doesn’t give us what we ask for,” Castiel says, and oh, she hates it how he can stay so calm. “He gives us what we deserve.”
“And what,” she spits, “He gave you me? Is that what you deserve?”
“I-” Castiel drops his gaze, and there’s a flicker of something there, a flutter. “I can only hope…”
Deanna sees her opening. “You do,” she says, pressing forward again. Steels herself, puts her hand on the angel’s shoulder and runs it up toward his neck. Forcing him to look. “You like this. Me.” She tugs at his collar. “Would you even know what to do with me, Cas?”
Castiel swallows and glances Heavenward. “It is forbidden for the sons of God to lie with the daughters of men.”
Deanna drops her hand, lets her jaw set firm. “Because we’re corrupt.”
“Because it is forbidden.”
“Wow.” She steps back. “That’s some circular angelic logic right there. Don’t you make yourself dizzy?”
She’s had more than enough of this-all of this. She reaches around and starts tugging at her hair-it’s up in some weird sort of knot that she doesn’t even know how to do. It’s a relief to free it, feel it tumble loose to her shoulders, relieving the painful tightness at her scalp. She can feel Castiel watching her, like her every movement is being weighed and analyzed and filed away. She’s not being deliberately provocative anymore but she just can’t make herself care.
The silk blouse has sweat stains underneath the arms. It clings too tightly to her wrists and it’s a relief to shake it off. The bra underneath is some ridiculous lacy thing; she’s discovered Victoria’s Secret and apparently it is extreme itchiness. She lets out a little huff of disgust and bends her arms behind her back.
The clasp sticks for a moment, then comes apart. She wrenches the bra off her shoulders in a way that’s unkind to the straps and drops it on the floor. Shimmies out of the skirt and lets it fall beside it, kicks them both out of the way. In her underwear (which matches the bra, seriously) she walks to her duffle and opens it up, already fantasizing about a tank top and a pair of shorts. But what’s right on top is Sam’s necklace, curled against its cord. Deanna feels a pang: of relief at being reunited with it, of not until now having noticed its absence.
Gently she pulls the cord over her head, letting out a breath when she feels the cool metal slip between her breasts.
She’s surprised to hear an answering sigh, a sharp intake of air from somewhere over her shoulder. She turns, and for a second, as she moves, she thinks she glimpses something on Cas’ face, something greedy and raw and wholly human-a look she’s seen on the faces of men she meets in bars, who she knows just how to smile back at. But by the time she’s facing him fully it’s gone. His features are back to being an impassive mask, his whole body still and solemn, save a momentary flutter of his hands before he tucks them away, like a pair of magician’s doves, deep in his coat pockets.
“I should let you rest,” Castiel says. His voice sounds, impossibly, rougher than usual. He won’t meet Deanna’s eyes.
“So that’s it?” she surprises herself by saying. Something about the angel’s sudden…self-consciousness? is making her self-conscious. Blindly, she digs a cotton tank out of her bag and pulls it over her head. “We’re finished?”
Castiel doesn’t move. He doesn’t move, so it must be her imagination that he looks like he’s teetering, wavering like a mirage. For a moment, the space of a breath, Deanna thinks that he’s about to step closer, destroy the space between them, and Deanna…Deanna honestly can’t even begin to know how she feels about that.
It’s all in her head, though-all in her oft- and recently-once-again-fucked-over head; it must be, because all he does is give her one last long, unknowable look. And all he says is, “We are far from finished, Deanna Winchester.”
Then he’s gone, and she’s alone in a strange motel room, wearing another girl’s underwear.
Her fingers are still curled around the hem of her tank top from when she was tugging it down. Suddenly even the thin, worn cotton feels confining, the room too hot, too close, even with Cas gone from it. She strips off again, fully this time, and walks naked into the bathroom. She sets the shower to icy cold and steps under the spray, tilting her head back. The water feels amazing, but she can’t quite get comfortable in her own skin again, can’t fully shake the pantyhose/scratchy bra/judging stare itchiness from her system. She lets out a growl of frustration and steps, dripping, back onto the cool tile. A quick run of the comb through her hair and a couple moments spent tugging jeans and a sports bra and that damn tank top back on and she’s ready to go out again. They keys feel good against her hip and even better in her hand. Music on, windows down, she really lets her baby loose. The wind whips through her hair, drying it in messy waves.
“I have never understood the temptation.”
She senses him a second before he appears, which is probably the only reason she and Castiel don’t end up finished, wrapped firmly around a tree. “The thrill of the open road, Cas,” she says, adding, a little snappily, “Total freedom. No douchebags breathing down your neck, telling you what to do.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Deanna can feel his gaze on her even without looking away from the double yellow lines zipping past. “My brothers…the ones who saw that the daughters of men were beautiful. Their sin did not make sense to me.”
Deanna bites her lip and eases off the gas a bit. “You’re a real boyscout, Cas, I know.”
“I just want you to understand.” There’s a slight hitch, a hesitance to his voice; it reminds her of when he sat down beside her in the sun, told her he was not a hammer, that he had doubts… “I have never before been tempted,” he says. “Never.”
Deanna can’t help it: her gaze flickers over. Castiel is looking at her like he expects her to be able to read his mind, like he thinks she has the ability to see inside him the way it sometimes feels like he can peer into her. Like with a glance she can render him naked before her.
Slip that trench coat off his shoulders and-
“Gotcha, Cas,” she says, looking back out at the road ahead, headlights cutting through the endless darkness. “No temptation here.”
Continued in Whomever They Chose.
NOTES:
1. Genesis 6: Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.