october drabbles
Author: miscellanium
Characters: Jimmy, Castiel, Dean (two Dean/Cas)
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Spoilers: 4x20, 5x04, 5x22
Word Count: 1300
Notes: Posted in the order they were written, first to last, during the month of October; some have been selected for inclusion in longer fics
Castiel watched as Dean bowed his head and opened his mouth to trace a wet hot yes on the palm that belonged to Jimmy, Jimmy who was begging no inside his head because that was the only place where he could be heard. Jimmy's voice was a pocket of silence in the global cacophony of Castiel's perception, easy to miss because it was always there. Now, though, his emotions could bleed through the angel's grace, no longer faded but ill-fitting after so much time on Earth, and Castiel stiffened, pulled away, and vanished, leaving Dean with answers he didn't want.
-
Like being chained to a comet, he had said, but that was just him trying to be poetic, bravado in the face of whatever the fuck was happening. He decides later, as Castiel grabs another soul and starts shredding, that a roller coaster is more like it-the kind that’s just a little too fast, that makes a person wonder if this is how they’ll die. The inexorable pull onward is the same, the weight of the angel’s electric grace pushing everything else to the edges. Whenever the acceleration becomes too much, he closes his eyes and thinks of falling.
-
This is a colder Heaven than he remembers. The wings that surround them block out light, warmth, comfort. Your only purpose on Earth comes from here, the archangels say. Castiel makes eye contact with none, thinking of Dean Winchester and doubts. James Novak is empty and free, alone on a bus heading to a wife and daughter who have almost forgotten how it hurts and to the demons next door. This is where you began, Zachariah says, this is where you will see it end. Look, they command, and when Castiel hesitates they hold his face and force him down.
-
Jimmy opens his eyes to darkness. A dream, he thinks. Then there's a rumble and the pins-and-needles static electricity comes flooding back and he remembers. Not aware, but at the same time not unconscious, and listening to himself he's reminded of that weekend at college with all the pot and alcohol. Another rumble, this one deep enough to make his teeth hurt-his teeth, physical and real-and the flash of light is Castiel opening his eyes. Something's distracted the angel, something big, but all Jimmy can see is a knife and blood and he can't close his own eyes.
-
Castiel could see the bloodlines, families of vessels waiting to be filled, generations of them lighting up Earth like fireflies. Any of them, Zachariah said, because Dean Winchester is the Righteous Man and humanity is nothing in the face of Heaven’s plans. But time, so linear for the flesh-bound, held no luxury for the newly commissioned soldier. Dean’s destiny began in a shallow grave outside James Novak’s hometown, and so it was a matter more of convenience than fate. Because he had prayed for his life to have some divine purpose, Castiel assured the human, he would not be missed.
-
The dull ache of blood and wrongness was numbed by seeing Claire look at him like a stranger, the way he had looked at her a year ago and told her I am not your father. He knew what carrying an angel could do, how it could bring sadness and pain that was nothing like the glory their priest spoke of every Sunday. As you wish, she said, then without warning the current that was grace passed through them both. The last thing he saw as Castiel descended and his vision darkened was her eyes, bright with life and fear.
-
Jimmy Novak was no longer alive. Castiel had held him closely against Raphael, but the strain of coexisting in the face of banished grace meant the angel was unprepared against Lucifer, and so they died. Castiel said farewell to Jimmy before the gates of Heaven, quiet now with so many gone. By way of eulogy, the angel reached out and saved a small piece of the man’s soul, that which had been his rock, to weave into his wings. Jimmy Novak may not have been the righteous man, but he was a good man, and he would not be forgotten.
-
He doesn’t always mind waking up. They’ll be somewhere peaceful, Castiel an electronic hum behind his eyes as they witness something old, terrifying, full of impossible beauty, and it’s hard to miss what he left behind. He’s learned to like the pain too, reveling in the burn of the sun forty feet above ocean waves, anticipating the weird pull of grace knitting torn flesh back together. The battles between faith, free will, and destiny drag on, and since Jimmy’s already been an audience to his own failures and disappointments he’s content now to watch Castiel make destruction into an art.
-
Castiel shifts, his shoulders tensing, muscles suddenly throbbing with an ache that jolts down to his bones. Jimmy’s kind of glad he can’t see through his own eyes, turn his own head, because he can sense something ancient and cold unfolding behind him, stretching out through dimensions and time. Angel wings are fucking terrifying, Jimmy knows now, yet he still wants to feel the freefall of flight, hear pinions beating the air as he’s taken away.
“That’s not how it works,” Castiel says, and Jimmy knows the angel doesn’t-can’t-mean anything by it but he’s human so it hurts.
-
Castiel never came back. Whenever Ben found Dean outside in the early morning, staring up at nothing, he just laughed, said he was walking off a nightmare. Lisa stayed quiet, knowing he didn’t dream anymore.
A year later, they start again. He’d been expecting the ones of Hell, of Sam, but the one with the shapeshifter-
First it’s a blonde girl, speaking Enochian, familiar in a way Dean can’t quite place. Then it peels its face off to reveal Jimmy-Cas-breathing his name like the angel’s trying to bring him home, and Dean jerks awake in a cold sweat.
-
When Sam fell, part of Dean fell with him, creating a hell on earth that Lucifer could never hope to match. Castiel was not meant to survive but to conquer, and this new hush hurt in a way he didn’t want to understand. His mind was empty, Jimmy’s soul fed on, consumed by chaos. They lived somehow in the wasteland but he never could. So, the slide of drugs down his throat, the profane touch on bare shoulders, as he watched Dean burn out when all he could do was fade away, collapsing into the black hole of his grace.
-
He was used to the cold, but the wind was different here. It didn’t blow over plains so much as howl through the alleys of glass and stone, and he never thought he’d miss North Dakota but here he was in the university bookstore staring at a rack of cheap coats and he just wanted to go home.
“Need some help? Amelia, photojournalism.”
He turned around, wary and insecure.
“Jimmy, advertising maybe. And I can’t decide.” He’s talking about more than just the coats, and when her smile said she knew he fell in love a little bit right then.
-
The second time he woke up he couldn't stop crying. He didn't try to get up, had no reason to move because he had nowhere to go. The burn and tear of his muscles where wings had forced their way through was still there, eternal like everything else he had never planned to be. Castiel would come back, always come back-
"It's over," the angel said, leaning over him and still wearing his face, so he turned and pressed his face into the grass, tried to remember his daughter's eyes, felt each blade and wondered why he couldn't stop breathing.
Characters: Jimmy, Castiel, Dean (two Dean/Cas)
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Spoilers: 4x20, 5x04, 5x22
Word Count: 1300
Notes: Posted in the order they were written, first to last, during the month of October; some have been selected for inclusion in longer fics
Castiel watched as Dean bowed his head and opened his mouth to trace a wet hot yes on the palm that belonged to Jimmy, Jimmy who was begging no inside his head because that was the only place where he could be heard. Jimmy's voice was a pocket of silence in the global cacophony of Castiel's perception, easy to miss because it was always there. Now, though, his emotions could bleed through the angel's grace, no longer faded but ill-fitting after so much time on Earth, and Castiel stiffened, pulled away, and vanished, leaving Dean with answers he didn't want.
-
Like being chained to a comet, he had said, but that was just him trying to be poetic, bravado in the face of whatever the fuck was happening. He decides later, as Castiel grabs another soul and starts shredding, that a roller coaster is more like it-the kind that’s just a little too fast, that makes a person wonder if this is how they’ll die. The inexorable pull onward is the same, the weight of the angel’s electric grace pushing everything else to the edges. Whenever the acceleration becomes too much, he closes his eyes and thinks of falling.
-
This is a colder Heaven than he remembers. The wings that surround them block out light, warmth, comfort. Your only purpose on Earth comes from here, the archangels say. Castiel makes eye contact with none, thinking of Dean Winchester and doubts. James Novak is empty and free, alone on a bus heading to a wife and daughter who have almost forgotten how it hurts and to the demons next door. This is where you began, Zachariah says, this is where you will see it end. Look, they command, and when Castiel hesitates they hold his face and force him down.
-
Jimmy opens his eyes to darkness. A dream, he thinks. Then there's a rumble and the pins-and-needles static electricity comes flooding back and he remembers. Not aware, but at the same time not unconscious, and listening to himself he's reminded of that weekend at college with all the pot and alcohol. Another rumble, this one deep enough to make his teeth hurt-his teeth, physical and real-and the flash of light is Castiel opening his eyes. Something's distracted the angel, something big, but all Jimmy can see is a knife and blood and he can't close his own eyes.
-
Castiel could see the bloodlines, families of vessels waiting to be filled, generations of them lighting up Earth like fireflies. Any of them, Zachariah said, because Dean Winchester is the Righteous Man and humanity is nothing in the face of Heaven’s plans. But time, so linear for the flesh-bound, held no luxury for the newly commissioned soldier. Dean’s destiny began in a shallow grave outside James Novak’s hometown, and so it was a matter more of convenience than fate. Because he had prayed for his life to have some divine purpose, Castiel assured the human, he would not be missed.
-
The dull ache of blood and wrongness was numbed by seeing Claire look at him like a stranger, the way he had looked at her a year ago and told her I am not your father. He knew what carrying an angel could do, how it could bring sadness and pain that was nothing like the glory their priest spoke of every Sunday. As you wish, she said, then without warning the current that was grace passed through them both. The last thing he saw as Castiel descended and his vision darkened was her eyes, bright with life and fear.
-
Jimmy Novak was no longer alive. Castiel had held him closely against Raphael, but the strain of coexisting in the face of banished grace meant the angel was unprepared against Lucifer, and so they died. Castiel said farewell to Jimmy before the gates of Heaven, quiet now with so many gone. By way of eulogy, the angel reached out and saved a small piece of the man’s soul, that which had been his rock, to weave into his wings. Jimmy Novak may not have been the righteous man, but he was a good man, and he would not be forgotten.
-
He doesn’t always mind waking up. They’ll be somewhere peaceful, Castiel an electronic hum behind his eyes as they witness something old, terrifying, full of impossible beauty, and it’s hard to miss what he left behind. He’s learned to like the pain too, reveling in the burn of the sun forty feet above ocean waves, anticipating the weird pull of grace knitting torn flesh back together. The battles between faith, free will, and destiny drag on, and since Jimmy’s already been an audience to his own failures and disappointments he’s content now to watch Castiel make destruction into an art.
-
Castiel shifts, his shoulders tensing, muscles suddenly throbbing with an ache that jolts down to his bones. Jimmy’s kind of glad he can’t see through his own eyes, turn his own head, because he can sense something ancient and cold unfolding behind him, stretching out through dimensions and time. Angel wings are fucking terrifying, Jimmy knows now, yet he still wants to feel the freefall of flight, hear pinions beating the air as he’s taken away.
“That’s not how it works,” Castiel says, and Jimmy knows the angel doesn’t-can’t-mean anything by it but he’s human so it hurts.
-
Castiel never came back. Whenever Ben found Dean outside in the early morning, staring up at nothing, he just laughed, said he was walking off a nightmare. Lisa stayed quiet, knowing he didn’t dream anymore.
A year later, they start again. He’d been expecting the ones of Hell, of Sam, but the one with the shapeshifter-
First it’s a blonde girl, speaking Enochian, familiar in a way Dean can’t quite place. Then it peels its face off to reveal Jimmy-Cas-breathing his name like the angel’s trying to bring him home, and Dean jerks awake in a cold sweat.
-
When Sam fell, part of Dean fell with him, creating a hell on earth that Lucifer could never hope to match. Castiel was not meant to survive but to conquer, and this new hush hurt in a way he didn’t want to understand. His mind was empty, Jimmy’s soul fed on, consumed by chaos. They lived somehow in the wasteland but he never could. So, the slide of drugs down his throat, the profane touch on bare shoulders, as he watched Dean burn out when all he could do was fade away, collapsing into the black hole of his grace.
-
He was used to the cold, but the wind was different here. It didn’t blow over plains so much as howl through the alleys of glass and stone, and he never thought he’d miss North Dakota but here he was in the university bookstore staring at a rack of cheap coats and he just wanted to go home.
“Need some help? Amelia, photojournalism.”
He turned around, wary and insecure.
“Jimmy, advertising maybe. And I can’t decide.” He’s talking about more than just the coats, and when her smile said she knew he fell in love a little bit right then.
-
The second time he woke up he couldn't stop crying. He didn't try to get up, had no reason to move because he had nowhere to go. The burn and tear of his muscles where wings had forced their way through was still there, eternal like everything else he had never planned to be. Castiel would come back, always come back-
"It's over," the angel said, leaning over him and still wearing his face, so he turned and pressed his face into the grass, tried to remember his daughter's eyes, felt each blade and wondered why he couldn't stop breathing.