Fic: Save Me With Your Siren Song
Title: Save Me With Your Siren Song
Author: xxkaytayxx
Rating: PG-13
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Castiel. AU
Spoilers: Nothing specific, just vague references to themes throughout all seasons.
Warnings: None
Word Count: about 6500
Summary: Castiel’s just treading bloody water until Dean gives him a reason to start swimming. This is a companion piece to Seal Me Up and Sell Me Out, but it can be read as a stand alone.
Castiel used to go to church everyday. He’d wake up early, a little while after the sun shrugged off its own misty blankets, and spend an hour on his knees with his hands clasped in prayer. Sometimes it was less, but usually it was more.
God was always something different to Castiel, something tangible, a glorious Being, yes, but one that really listened to each of his questions and qualms. He wasn’t raised that way particularly; it hadn’t been imprinted with permanent ink into his bones and soul upon birth. God was simply introduced into his life, and He took root.
Mass to other people was bothersome and an obligation; to Castiel it was a privilege. He sat in the second row back, always in the same spot, and the great stained glass windows would bathe him in colored, candied love. For the hymns, there was only one elderly woman who stood before them, wrinkled and in the same polka-dotted dress. She could barely hold a note for over two seconds, but she would stand there all alone, and Castiel would think that she sounded like a choir of angels.
Castiel hasn’t been to church in three months. At first it just trickled down, and he found himself missing a day here and there. It was easy at first to pass it off as something trivial and banal; he had a late shift and his body was too battered and aching to get up in time. The reluctance hits him with a sharp, painful shock, when he wakes up and finds himself staring out, unable to get his legs to move. He just doesn’t want to go.
Now Castiel can admit the truth. The thought of God does nothing for him anymore.
It’s two a.m., and the waiting room is like a sepulcher dripping with antiseptic. The television sounds like a jagged, splitting funeral dirge, and Castiel sits in one of the stiff chairs and watches the blood drip from his hands. He can barely see any skin under there, just furious, glaring red and black, soggy chunks of something much, much worse.
There’s no family. They had left over an hour ago, after he stumbled out into this white washed grave and told them he failed. Their mother, sister, daughter, wife; she isn’t coming back with them tonight.
Castiel’s been walking these halls for years, but lately he feels less like a doctor and more like a transparent, empty ghost.
When Castiel was young, he had three brothers who he loved, and who loved him. They lived with his parents in a small, unassuming house, and it was cramped but comfortable. He was the youngest, and as such, he should have been allowed to float along with his delusions longer, but in the end, they cracked apart when he was eleven years old.
It’s all tacked on the corkboard of his mind in flashes. He sees one brother, blue eyes narrowed and blond hair a dusty mess. A plate crashes next to his head and he barely flinches, even with his father standing with the strength of a morbid, enraged demigod, shouting and accusing, condemning and righteous. It’s the look in his other brother’s brown eyes, sorrow but not pity, grief but acceptance. It’s the way the door slams when Castiel peeks down from the behind the staircase, too shocked to cry, and how he loses both his brother and his father in that moment.
Distance can have many different meanings.
There’s an overused expression that claims that in some damning cases, there’s blood that never can be washed clean. Castiel snorts in distain whenever he hears it, but the fact is, it’s true.
Castiel stands in the shower, dark, drenched hair plastered to his head, letting the drops slip into his eyes and burn them. The water slides down his face, the pale planes of his chest, giving up at his feet. It wails at its failure and glares at Castiel as it escapes his curse by slinking down the drain.
Castiel’s been through more surgeries than he can count, and sometimes he wonders if there’s a junkyard completely filled with his soiled gloves and rusty-tainted scrubs. Maybe he should be buried there, underneath all those people he has failed, and Castiel wonders if he still believes in Heaven or Hell anymore.
No one ever means for it to happen. It’s one of those processes that sneak up on someone and then hit him across the face one day, laughing cruelly and watching him cry for the first time.
When you break it down, Castiel becomes a surgeon because he wants to save people. It’s simple and pure, and whenever anyone asks why he chose the life he has, he answers that way because it’s a fact. They smile and praise him, but it means nothing. He appreciates the gesture, but he did it for a higher purpose than plastic smiles and phrases that become more and more wooden upon repeat.
At the beginning, he feels driven, something unseen and beautiful pulsating within his soul, urging him onwards with kind whispers and furious passion. He looks out at the world and sees something radiant and amazing, flawed but still shining. He walks into the hospital in his fresh white coat, ready to give his everything to take on this world and save a few souls from leaving it.
Every success causes warmth to seep through him, sunny and fulfilling. Each sudden, unseen mistake, each death, sends him reeling like a physical blow.
But then it happens. Weeks pass, years speed by, waving maliciously at him as they race around the corner, and one day Castiel walks out of surgery with pieces of a human being splattered across his chest and finds he doesn’t care.
There’s no pain, no bitter, trench-like furrows of disappointment, no regret. He just sits in that waiting room, watching blood pool on the floor, and feels nothing.
When Castiel was thirteen, he started volunteering at the hospital. The urge to simply give was like a gaping, eager void within him, and he was content to fill it. He was assigned to the gift shop, and a week later he was standing behind a small, scratched register in a baggy blue uniform.
The thing about spending those six hours a week in the gift shop was that it actually, truly meant something. Sure, Castiel spent some of his time stocking candy, replacing empty little cardboard containers with chocolate and sugary, too sweet pieces. He watered flowers, trudging the oversized, plastic watering can into the men’s bathroom and ignoring the stares from patients who weren’t used to the way things were there. He opened boxes and boxes of merchandise and labeled them with overpriced prices, nodding as the bored girl behind the counter popped gum and complained about her college classes.
But, there were moments. Sometimes he delivered gifts to patients, and the condensation from the vases would wet his hands as he rode the elevator. He found the room, searching for one little person, one room out of a plethora of ones that looked just like it, and when he put those flowers down, that smile he received meant something. When he rang up orders of teddy bears and small, stuffed dogs, Castiel watched the children smile for the first time since they walked in, finally getting a moment of peace while Grandma, or Grandpa, or even Daddy struggled for his life upstairs.
Castiel loved it there, and stayed until college, even while others just remarked that he was wasting his time in a tiny room full of clichéd plush and glass. He cherished those moments where he brought someone out of the darkness, and when he left, it was only because he wanted to find a way to vanquish that darkness on a higher plane.
That’s why he became a doctor.
When Castiel starts realizing that his soul is dying, he tries to ignore it and go on. He’s just been working too long and too hard; he’s just too desensitized to it all, but he’ll bounce back. But his faith stays dead, and when he looks at his patients, he just sees dummies with hearts that might go on or might sputter and falter. Whether he succeeds or fails is just a part of his day, and it means nothing.
It’s in the acceptance that Castiel starts slipping. The moral high ground crumbles underneath his pitiful, human weight, and he doesn’t fight to keep it solid. He allows himself to fall through the growing cracks, and the thing about knowing how to save the human body is that he also knows the best way to destroy it.
He slips down, down, down, and on the way he grabs the thin necks of bottles, downing alcohol and wondering the omniscient why. It’s not hard to get his hands on leaves and ground things that warp his mind when he burns them and sucks the smoke in, and he sits in his apartment and wonders if the world is burning yet.
Out of the blue, his long-lost, shunned, rotten betrayal of a brother calls him. Castiel answers the phone with a beer in his other hand, listening to a soft voice that used to read him the sweetest stories when he couldn’t sleep. Up until this point, he always upheld his father’s demand to stay far, far away, where he couldn’t be tainted and changed, and he still hangs up. For the first time though, his care for his family’s demands is just a faded, dying habit, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Castiel really wanted to finish his beer and collapse, he might’ve actually gone to that café for a meeting. He might’ve given in.
Still, the simple fact is, it’s not possible to self-destruct without anyone noticing, because in the end, everyone has tells and there’s always someone who catches them. Most of the time, it’s people on the street who pass by with their own haunting sorrows, and the most one gets is a look of pity or disgust. Both are worth nothing. In Castiel’s case, it’s a coworker, and at first that’s almost worse.
Castiel’s always been seen as a little eccentric, too serious, straight and on the mark. He used to carry a Bible in his pocket some days, and when he talked to patients about the Lord and faith, they actually believed him.
These days, though, he finds himself turning up late or not at all. Castiel chases after time, but it eludes him, dancing around him, spinning into a whirl of smoke when his hands reach out. Once he’s in the hospital, he’s still as efficient as ever, but the heart is gone, and one day Castiel’s trudging towards the door when a hand reaches out to touch his arm.
He sees startling red hair in the corner of his own red-rimmed eyes, and Anna whispers, “Castiel,” before he jerks himself away, glaring. He knows, he knows, but he just starts running, and she doesn’t follow.
The pavement is hard underneath his shoes, which are too professional for melted rock and which dig into his feet after only a few minutes. It’s a warm night, and Castiel sweats with the exertion, and underneath it from the guilt he’s been pushing down, staining his shirt and making his face shine in the streetlights.
Eventually, he stumbles to the stop next to a sleepy little coffee place that he’s heard of before, unique because it gets it’s real business due to the casual, humble art gallery awkwardly attached to its side. Those streetlights shine on him relentlessly, and he wishes they would just blow out and let him stay in the darkness.
Castiel staggers up the steps and practically trips inside, feeling mortal and trapped. With the shreds of his dignity dragging on the carpeted floor behind him, he walks up to the counter and orders coffee, collapsing at a table when he has Styrofoam heat between his hands.
Lifting his cup to take a sip, Castiel eyes catch on a corner of a color, and his arm stops its movement as if someone had reached down and restrained it while he looks.
It’s a painting, giant in size and scope, and before Castiel notices, he’s on his feet and already standing in front of it, looking up with his mouth softly parted.
It’s dark, out of place against the bright walls of this shop, one of a kind against the bright pieces that line the other walls. The bold, rash strokes reveal a man, dressed plainly and standing before a mirror. The expression on the man’s face is guarded, but little lines here and there reveal tension, and the eyes are painted in such a way as to reluctantly bare the soul.
The man’s reflection is a warped, twisted thing, identical until one reaches those eyes, which in the mirror are black and shining with smoky evil. The reflection is smirking, its expression proud and boastful, and Castiel only notices that he’s dropped his coffee when the lids snaps open upon hitting the floor and splashes his feet. He doesn’t even feel the burn as it spreads into his socks, and the little gasp from the girl behind the counter barely reaches his ears.
Then she’s suddenly thrusting napkins into his hands, picking up his cup kindly, and Castiel finds himself apologizing repeatedly in a low voice, even while his eyes stay fixed on the painting. He barely pays attention as he heads home, and a taxi almost plows him across the street.
But when he gets to his respectable apartment that he can’t even remember last paying the rent for, so lost he’s been, Castiel slowly sits on his bed and thinks, really thinks, for the first time in months. The painting is a constant veil before his eyes, forcing him to face truths he’s been burying, shining a light upon his soul, and while he used to bask in such a thing, now he cringes in shame and rage.
At one point he even gets up to look in the mirror, fingers dusting on a stubbled cheek and widening his blue eyes. Maybe it’s just the drugs still working their way out of his system, but he almost sees black in the corners.
When Castiel was in tenth grade, he found himself in American History II. He’d always been a good student, dedicated and focused, appreciating the knowledge in his polite, disciplined way. He listened to the teacher babble and preach until they got to the Civil War, and Castiel turned to that page of his textbook with a churning, poisonous feeling in his stomach. He looked at the tear on page 256, the blocky, ugly letters proclaiming, “The War That Drove Brother Against Brother,” and he almost threw up in the middle of Room 106.
His teacher went on and on, battles and battles taking up days and days, and he sketched numbers of dead on the board with relish. He called it a fantastic war, one of tragedy and romance in the fact that it tore a country in two and ended with freedom. The boy next to Castiel nodded along enthusiastically while the girl behind him slept.
Castiel didn’t say anything, just clamps down on his self-control and took notes so placidly that no one would’ve noticed a thing even if they cared to look. He received a perfect score on the unit test, but he stared down at the stapled pieces of paper in his hand, the scathing red smile, and tossed it in the trash.
Because that’s what all those lectures were; pure and utter garbage. Because Castiel knew, he knew, that that war wasn’t beautiful, darkly romantic in its opening and close. It didn’t start for anything pure, for rights and hope. It started because one family couldn’t get along, because both sides wanted control and only one could have it. So it split into two jagged, selfish pieces, leaving so many lost in the crossfire, forced to choose and take sides.
Castiel knew, and still knows, what it’s like to stare at the eyes of a brother and sees hatred. The next day his teacher smiled at him in the hall in greeting, and Castiel walked by as if he sees nothing.
Castiel’s fall was steady but slow, and in contrast, this inquiring, righteous glow that is abruptly unleashed on his soul is so sudden it burns. There’s no concrete explanation, but Castiel feels like that painting showed him his true being, and he was found wanting. He picks up a beer and chokes on it, looks at everything tarnished and downright illegal that he’s collected and runs to the bathroom before he can choke on months of killing himself slowly.
He needs out, so Castiel decides to move.
Castiel has more than enough money to purchase something classy and exorbitant, but that’s never been his style, even at his worst. Instead he settles for a sixth floor apartment in a respectable building several blocks from the hospital and dozens more from his old one. He leaves behind the alcohol and the drugs, but it’d be a lie to say he magically recovers into something whole again. He starts forcing himself back to work on time, upholding his commitments where he’s supposed to be saying lives, but Castiel still feels jaded, like a ghoul going through the motions.
Fine, he won’t allow himself to spiral down, down, down, but that doesn’t mean he has the strength to climb back up all those stairs.
There’s only one other occupied room on his floor, but Castiel never sees whoever lives there. He knows that manners would call for him to cross over and introduce himself, but he keeps putting it off and eventually never does.
When Castiel had been working in the hospital for only four months, a little girl was brought in covered from the chest down with blood, a father and a mother frantically running after. Her rich blonde hair was untouched, and her pale skin was angelic and clean. If Castiel kept his eyes up, he would think she was sleeping, and when she awoke she would join God’s ranks and praise Creation.
Instead, he slipped on those ubiquitous gloves and listened as the nurses told him she needed blood, because those multiple stab wounds had been careless enough to let all of her own seep out. The father was on him in a moment, hair wild and eyes crazed, shaking him and shouting, “Take mine! Give her mine!” while his wife covered her face with pale hands and just shook.
The girl lived, filled with her father’s blood, but the man died from an infection that Castiel still can’t truly explain. When the mother and daughter left, the girl looked at Castiel with so much hatred that, for a moment, his heart stopped.
That was the first time he collapsed on one of the benches in the hospital corridor and thought, “I failed.”
Castiel steps into the hallway, closing the door behind him quietly, adjusting his tie. He’s about to shuffle down the stairs when he looks across the hall to find the other door open. He’s about to continue on when something yellow catches his eye, and he walks over to the doorway, hands in his pockets in an awkward way, to see a puddle of paint spreading over a stained floor. His gaze lifts, and his breath catches.
Castiel’s inside the room without a thought, not even noticing when his shoes squelch in the paint that’s victoriously celebrating the fact that it got him here.
He’s staring at a painted man, tall and thin, dressed like someone important and respectable, good. But somehow, in the way his long hair is drawn, in the colors that swirl around his head, Castiel knows that this man makes the artist angry, but not only that, but sad.
He thinks, ‘This is it,’ because he knows that style, that emotion and depth. It shocked him out of the muck and grime, sprayed cold water on his body and spirit, woke him up when he wanted to keep sleeping. Castiel feels his heart racing, and as he stares at this painting, the other flashes back like a mirage.
Someone says something, but Castiel is so entranced that at first he’s deaf and blinded by his discovery. Then, his brain catches up and deciphers,
“What the fuck, man?”
As he hears footsteps come up to him, Castiel falters and turns, “You left your door open.”
The face of the man watching him warily is already familiar, because it’s staring at its black-eyed reflection in a coffee shop turned art gallery a few streets down. It’s the light brown hair, the green tinted eyes that have a dam built behind them that’s already leaking. The man just shrugs and heads into what must be his kitchen, and it hits Castiel that this is the artist, the human being that somehow saved him.
Castiel’s eyes flicker down as the man opens his fridge, and he skims past the painting to see what look like fancy invitations on the floor, words printed in pompous swirls. He makes out ‘Congratulations’ and ‘Stanford’ before everything catches up with him, and before he can think, Castiel runs. It seems like he doesn’t breathe until he’s in surgery, elbows deep in a man who should’ve been getting married that day.
Even as he’s cutting and slicing, red squirting on his face and dripping down his nose, silence in the room besides his own even breathing and the slither of leaking blood, Castiel can’t keep his thoughts off two paintings and a man.
As Castiel cleans up afterwards, he can’t help but think, “My father would be disgusted with me.” That’s not the first time he thinks it, but it’s the first time in a long while that he cares.
Castiel trudges home, tired and with his nose still filled with the cloying, permeating scent of death. Paintings fade in and out as he tries to fall asleep, chasing away the itch for beer or something worse. He opens his eyes, stares up at the ceiling and wonders how deep the level of sin is where one shouldn’t be allowed to pray anymore.
He envisions the man’s face, the way a splatter of green had dried right above his left eyebrow. No real thoughts come to him, nothing he can touch or name, but something in his soul twitches, and that shocks him into sleep.
The next day, Castiel finds himself at the door, knocking and feeling something like purpose flooding through him. He feels stiff, nervous until the door opens, and asks, “May I come in?” when the man’s confused face peeks out. Then he’s inside, sweating nervously under layers of messy suit and trench coat but in need of that mild but enhanced protection.
Castiel turns to look at the man after a few seconds, and that strange little fluttering in his soul returns. He stares, taking in the raggedy, paint speckled clothes, the defensive stance and the tense lines around the man’s mouth. It hits him, just as he begins, “I saw your work.”
At those words, the man starts to look even more uncomfortable, like an animal trapped by a cage that erupted out of the darkness and caught it by surprise. He still sounds snide and sarcastic when he replies, “You mean when you broke into my apartment?”
“You should not have left your door open if you did not want people to enter,” Castiel answers automatically, not giving the response much thought. Instead, he focuses on that feeling that’s spreading through him, familiar and yet so long lost that it’s overwhelming.
He wants to save this man. For the first time in what seems like an endless, torturous eternity, for the first time since his flame sputtered out and he ran this gauntlet of drugs and depression, Castiel wants to save.
The man presses, ““Look, pal, do you want something or not? Cause otherwise-“ and all Castiel can think is that this man has somehow lit up the dank, dark basement dwelling inside of him, that these paintings are somehow the key to it all, and somehow, Castiel knows that this man needs him.
“I want to watch you,” Castiel replies, needing more of this, this connection and this awakening, this everything. “I want to see you work.”
There’s a span of a few seconds before, “You have a name?” Castiel gives his own easily.
“Well, Castiel, this isn’t some kind of-“ but Castiel interrupts because there is something higher here, something higher and greater, something that called him a few weeks ago like a siren and which led him here.
“There is something in your work that I have been called to,” Castiel states. It comes out blatant and true, even though it’s still new to him. “I would not bother you in any way. I simply wish to observe.”
Tension tightens in the man’s shoulders, and when he says “No,” Castiel feels something within him deflate. Instead of leaving, as the man obviously wants, Castiel takes a little piece of time, throwing out social grace and carving that little moment greedily for himself, takes in this creature, and decides that this is not over.
Throughout his life, Castiel’s never fallen into pure, human love before. When he was younger, he was too full of God, too full of that simple, religious adoration that overtook all else and made it look pale in comparison. More recently, he just stopped caring, and even though he’s fallen into bed with whoever caught him when smoke filled his senses and sent him reeling, the true act of love has always eluded him.
A few days later, Castiel is forcing himself up the stairs, tired and battered from too many hours, and as he turns to head towards his room, something pulls him back. He finds himself staring at the man’s door, at the plain wood that’s hiding a whole world from him, and something whispers in his ear and wraps around his wrists to drag him forward. He tries the scratched knob, and the door slips open silently, like it’s happy and trusts him with everything. The man’s oblivious, standing before a wide, empty canvas, and Castiel robotically steps inside and slides against the wall to the floor.
He sits there and watches, forcing his eyes open even while they burn from lack of sleep. It’s beautiful and graceful, but ugly, too, because when this man paints, his brush is like a sharpened knife. He drags it across the canvas and it’s like he’s dragging it across his chest, and the paint is like blood that’s welling up and staining. It’s grotesque and captivating, and Castiel just sits there entranced. For so long, he’s been a man with a withered, dry husk of a soul, and here’s a man with so much tucked inside that it’s oozing out like a flood.
Suddenly the man turns his head, and he sees Castiel. His eyes widen, and his chest is heaving, as though he’s been running for miles and miles. Castiel knows his place and leaves, falling asleep feeling even more drained than before.
Once, when Castiel was still in school, he was walking down an unimportant street when a large hand grabbed his wrist and threw him into the wall. His head hit brick, and then there were hands in his pockets, searching frantically until they found his wallet. Cool air hit Castiel’s face as his assailant fled, feet splashing in puddles full of both rain and stinking desperation.
Castiel simply caught his breath and watched the man flee, shaking his head. He would have given it all to the man if he had only asked.
His hours at the hospital have always been varying and disjointed, and Castiel hasn’t had a fixed schedule for longer than he can faithfully remember. He can be staggering home at dawn or around five p.m., like so many other ordinary people. There’s simply no way to tell.
Something strange starts happening, however, each time he makes his way up those stairs. Usually, he just goes into his apartment, sleeps, eats, tries to read or make sense of things, but sometimes, he feels something in the air, like a song that plays along his skin instead of in his head. When that calls him, he makes his way to the man’s door, and Castiel sits in the back and watches him make something gorgeous and hideous at the same time. He watches this man paint as if he was conducting music, grand gestures and angry jabs, biting his lip or throwing empty bottles full of paint until they crack and splatter.
Castiel observes this tornado in human form, until one day the whirlwind stops, turns around and speaks.
“I’ve got enough beer. If you want one.”
Castiel already has the front door open, gripping the wood with one hand tightly, but he turns and nods. He keeps himself blank and guarded, but his heart starts pumping faster, and he sits at the small table the man gestures at. A beer is placed in his hands, and Castiel looks down at it. A short time ago, he knew the shape of this thing. He knew the way the glass could feel in every situation, all the different ways it could burn his throat and damn him. He still does, but Castiel feels the bottle like it’s an awkward, uncomfortable weight.
Liquid drips down the side, and Castiel makes patterns in it, little symbols that he used to know, every now and then glancing at the man who paints. The man drinks his beer, and the little line between his brow stays ingrained into his skin.
This becomes a regular habit, and when they start talking, Castiel learns the man’s name is Dean.
Castiel walks into Room 436 at the hospital with the patient’s chart, only looking up after he’s looked over everything once more. He looks into frightened blue eyes, sees a pale face surrounded by hair that’s too dark, and Castiel finds himself caring.
He sits on her bed, and his voice is still gravely and low, but he explains what’s going to happen simply and plainly. He tells her he’ll do everything possible to help her through this, and that he has faith she’ll be alright.
Afterwards, he walks out of the room. He heads towards a window, stares out, sees everything and nothing, and all the little fragments in between. Castiel raises his eyes towards Heaven, and sees a benevolence there that had been lacking.
Anna walks down the hallway with another nurse, sees him and smiles. She touches his arm, and this time he doesn’t run like a coward. He smiles back at her, because Castiel is getting back to being Castiel again.
When he returns home, he feels the pull, but when Castiel opens the door, he finds Dean collapsed in a bottomless pool of his own raging pain and grief. There’s paint everywhere, some seeping as far as where Castiel is standing, touching his shoes. Dean’s covered, white flooding his hair as if he’s seen something ghostly and awful, blue dripping down his cheek. Castiel doesn’t know what happened, but he’d guess that all that raw emotion caught up with Dean somehow, judging from the ruined canvas and the body drowning in toxins on the floor.
Castiel doesn’t hesitate, uncaring as his pants drag in this relentless ocean of pigments when he leans down to lift Dean, grasping him around the shoulders and dragging him to where he believes Dean’s bathroom is. He’s graced tonight because he finds it easily, props Dean up and searches for a towel, which he fills with water and his own form of benediction.
Every part of Dean’s exposed skin is covered in paint, some dry and flaking while other patches are still as wet as a newly bled wound. Castiel ignores it all and focuses on Dean’s hands, taking them into his own.
He rubs the cloth over each of Dean’s fingers, over his palms and knuckles, from the most delicate parts to the roughest. This little part of Dean is all that matters here, because Castiel knows what it means to stare down at one’s hands and see secrets, guilt, and lies coated on them, sticky and greasy and forever.
When he’s done, when the towel is washed off as well and left to dry, Castiel sinks back down and stares into Dean’s bewildered, lost eyes. Here, with little light and just the darkness, with the paint covering parts of his face in both delicate and bold ways, Dean seems like a fragile, otherworldly creature. At the same time, for the first time, he’s static and laid bare in a different way, and he seems human.
Castiel reaches out a hand, and in a hushed voice says, “You’re drowning, Dean.” Dean’s face folds, cracks at that, and Castiel lets his hand make contact. Dean looks up at him as though he isn’t sure whether he should run or hold on screaming, but then his eyes flutter close and he falls forward.
Castiel catches him and does his best to carry Dean to his bed. For a little while, he watches over him, and the air crackles like it does with heat and power before a storm rages.
When he leaves, Castiel sees a paint-splattered answering machine with an angry red light blinking. The sight makes him inexplicably sad.
Dean saved Castiel, even unknowingly. Now it’s his turn to be saved.
It’s late, with the sky a dark black and the air humid and choking, promising heavy, cleansing rain, but Castiel abandons the building and walks down the street, his trench coat feeling like wings behind him, propelling him forward. There’s a church at the end of the street with the plainest white paint and the most modest windows. Castiel pushes at the doors and breathes out when he finds them open.
The inside is just as unassuming, with wooden benches and small wooden carvings on the walls showing the Savior, displaying saints. Behind the alter, which has a unadorned white cloth atop it, is the cross, hanging from string and promising everything.
Castiel walks up the aisle, the now threadbare carpet not enough to hide the creaking of aged wood, and he slips into the second row. He falls to his knees, lays his head on his folded arms, and tumbles into the best sleep he’s had in years.
Before he slips away, Castiel prays, “Thank you. I’m sorry.”
There was a point in Castiel’s childhood, when he was only a boy, where he was determined to become a priest. God was everything to him, the light and the music, the joy, and he so dearly wanted to dedicate his life to that, to faith and belief.
But one day, his father took him aside. His hand was a warm, heavy and comforting weight on his shoulder, and he leaned down to Castiel’s level. They were outside, and the sun shown down on them, and Castiel thought his father looked like an angel.
His father told him that he didn’t think that his path was one that led directly to the pulpit. Castiel tilted his head, feeling confused, and asked why. His father just smiled, squeezing Castiel’s shoulder.
“My son, I just think the Lord has a different, greater plan for you.”
At the time, Castiel was youthfully offended, but his father just picked him up and threw him into the air, and Castiel laughed, forgetting everything in his moment of flight, which lasted until his father caught him again.
Castiel wakes with the booming of thunder, and his head shoots up to see a priest smiling at him kindly from the doorway, hands tucked tranquilly into his robes. Castiel nods at him with respect before departing, giving the Son one last look before sliding through the doors.
As he strides up the street, running one hand through messy hair, he sees Dean rushing to another store at the other end. Without giving it much thought, Castiel does what he wants to and follows, uncaring of the puddles that litter the way. Water drips down from on high, racing down his collar and making him shudder slightly.
He finds Dean inside the art shop, and Dean must hear his squeaking wet shoes because his back tenses at Castiel’s approach, and he throws the supplies into his cart with more force. As Castiel follows him, he sees colors that Dean’s used before, brushes that he himself has seen gripped in Dean’s hands and adds them to the cart. Dean freezes for a second before glaring at him, but Castiel just looks back.
Dean pays, and they leave the rows of paint and canvas behind them, stepping out into the wet air. Once the door shuts behind them, Dean spins around, eyes fierce and words rough, “What the hell do you want?”
Castiel looks at him, really looks, past the hair slightly plastered to his forehead, the hands turning red from the pressure of all the bags he’s holding alone.
Sometimes, all it takes is one, tiny moment, and that’s all the world gives you. Castiel looked up in a coffee shop and saw what he was becoming, and he saw it because Dean was becoming something ugly and ruined, too. Castiel spent his days trying to fix people, getting broken down by the all the failures until he couldn’t even bring himself to blink an eye at a dead body with its insides still strewn out over the table, but when he looked at Dean, he saw something salvageable, something he wanted to tape back together and hold in place.
It’s strange, the way the world throws you while it spins on it’s axis, and Castiel can’t possibly explain that to Dean, so he simply states, “I see you.”
There’s a crash of thunder, and the rain starts pouring. Dean looks terrified and ready to bolt, and Castiel knows and steps forward, because some drowning men simply want to drown.
“I saw your work at the gallery,” Castiel mutters without really thinking, making that night seem vague and unimportant when it was everything, “and I was curious. It was…unusual.”
Castiel moves even closer, this time his mouth bursting with things that are so undeniable true, and he goes on, “When you paint, you are…different. You are a dark, driven thing, Dean, yet what you create is very beautiful because it is yourself. Your soul. You tear yourself apart for it, and you seem so uncaring of that sacrifice.”
“I am…drawn to you, Dean. I see you, and…”
Castiel finds himself laughing, and it’s bitter, because what a horrible way the universe works, breaking apart two men to cracks and ashes, only to force them together just to attempt to create something that can breathe and see.
Castiel closes his eyes and opens them again, taking the final step and baring it all, “You need to be saved.”
Dean’s lips are wet and cold when Castiel first touches them with his own, but he’s not timid, and truly, he’s not kind. He gives Dean no quarter, because he’s not losing this man, and more selfishly, Castiel wants him. There’s a pause at first, but then Dean’s responding, clutching at Castiel and dragging him against his chest, and Castiel remembers the warning that when a man is drowning, he often leeches on and takes others with him.
For Dean, Castiel would be glad to go. But here, now, Castiel is going to bring them both to the shore again.
A/N: A little voice in my head kept asking me a bunch of why’s about the Castiel from my first fic, and this is what it wanted me to tell. I’m a little uneasy about it, but I do hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to let me know what you think.
Author: xxkaytayxx
Rating: PG-13
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Castiel. AU
Spoilers: Nothing specific, just vague references to themes throughout all seasons.
Warnings: None
Word Count: about 6500
Summary: Castiel’s just treading bloody water until Dean gives him a reason to start swimming. This is a companion piece to Seal Me Up and Sell Me Out, but it can be read as a stand alone.
Castiel used to go to church everyday. He’d wake up early, a little while after the sun shrugged off its own misty blankets, and spend an hour on his knees with his hands clasped in prayer. Sometimes it was less, but usually it was more.
God was always something different to Castiel, something tangible, a glorious Being, yes, but one that really listened to each of his questions and qualms. He wasn’t raised that way particularly; it hadn’t been imprinted with permanent ink into his bones and soul upon birth. God was simply introduced into his life, and He took root.
Mass to other people was bothersome and an obligation; to Castiel it was a privilege. He sat in the second row back, always in the same spot, and the great stained glass windows would bathe him in colored, candied love. For the hymns, there was only one elderly woman who stood before them, wrinkled and in the same polka-dotted dress. She could barely hold a note for over two seconds, but she would stand there all alone, and Castiel would think that she sounded like a choir of angels.
Castiel hasn’t been to church in three months. At first it just trickled down, and he found himself missing a day here and there. It was easy at first to pass it off as something trivial and banal; he had a late shift and his body was too battered and aching to get up in time. The reluctance hits him with a sharp, painful shock, when he wakes up and finds himself staring out, unable to get his legs to move. He just doesn’t want to go.
Now Castiel can admit the truth. The thought of God does nothing for him anymore.
It’s two a.m., and the waiting room is like a sepulcher dripping with antiseptic. The television sounds like a jagged, splitting funeral dirge, and Castiel sits in one of the stiff chairs and watches the blood drip from his hands. He can barely see any skin under there, just furious, glaring red and black, soggy chunks of something much, much worse.
There’s no family. They had left over an hour ago, after he stumbled out into this white washed grave and told them he failed. Their mother, sister, daughter, wife; she isn’t coming back with them tonight.
Castiel’s been walking these halls for years, but lately he feels less like a doctor and more like a transparent, empty ghost.
When Castiel was young, he had three brothers who he loved, and who loved him. They lived with his parents in a small, unassuming house, and it was cramped but comfortable. He was the youngest, and as such, he should have been allowed to float along with his delusions longer, but in the end, they cracked apart when he was eleven years old.
It’s all tacked on the corkboard of his mind in flashes. He sees one brother, blue eyes narrowed and blond hair a dusty mess. A plate crashes next to his head and he barely flinches, even with his father standing with the strength of a morbid, enraged demigod, shouting and accusing, condemning and righteous. It’s the look in his other brother’s brown eyes, sorrow but not pity, grief but acceptance. It’s the way the door slams when Castiel peeks down from the behind the staircase, too shocked to cry, and how he loses both his brother and his father in that moment.
Distance can have many different meanings.
There’s an overused expression that claims that in some damning cases, there’s blood that never can be washed clean. Castiel snorts in distain whenever he hears it, but the fact is, it’s true.
Castiel stands in the shower, dark, drenched hair plastered to his head, letting the drops slip into his eyes and burn them. The water slides down his face, the pale planes of his chest, giving up at his feet. It wails at its failure and glares at Castiel as it escapes his curse by slinking down the drain.
Castiel’s been through more surgeries than he can count, and sometimes he wonders if there’s a junkyard completely filled with his soiled gloves and rusty-tainted scrubs. Maybe he should be buried there, underneath all those people he has failed, and Castiel wonders if he still believes in Heaven or Hell anymore.
No one ever means for it to happen. It’s one of those processes that sneak up on someone and then hit him across the face one day, laughing cruelly and watching him cry for the first time.
When you break it down, Castiel becomes a surgeon because he wants to save people. It’s simple and pure, and whenever anyone asks why he chose the life he has, he answers that way because it’s a fact. They smile and praise him, but it means nothing. He appreciates the gesture, but he did it for a higher purpose than plastic smiles and phrases that become more and more wooden upon repeat.
At the beginning, he feels driven, something unseen and beautiful pulsating within his soul, urging him onwards with kind whispers and furious passion. He looks out at the world and sees something radiant and amazing, flawed but still shining. He walks into the hospital in his fresh white coat, ready to give his everything to take on this world and save a few souls from leaving it.
Every success causes warmth to seep through him, sunny and fulfilling. Each sudden, unseen mistake, each death, sends him reeling like a physical blow.
But then it happens. Weeks pass, years speed by, waving maliciously at him as they race around the corner, and one day Castiel walks out of surgery with pieces of a human being splattered across his chest and finds he doesn’t care.
There’s no pain, no bitter, trench-like furrows of disappointment, no regret. He just sits in that waiting room, watching blood pool on the floor, and feels nothing.
When Castiel was thirteen, he started volunteering at the hospital. The urge to simply give was like a gaping, eager void within him, and he was content to fill it. He was assigned to the gift shop, and a week later he was standing behind a small, scratched register in a baggy blue uniform.
The thing about spending those six hours a week in the gift shop was that it actually, truly meant something. Sure, Castiel spent some of his time stocking candy, replacing empty little cardboard containers with chocolate and sugary, too sweet pieces. He watered flowers, trudging the oversized, plastic watering can into the men’s bathroom and ignoring the stares from patients who weren’t used to the way things were there. He opened boxes and boxes of merchandise and labeled them with overpriced prices, nodding as the bored girl behind the counter popped gum and complained about her college classes.
But, there were moments. Sometimes he delivered gifts to patients, and the condensation from the vases would wet his hands as he rode the elevator. He found the room, searching for one little person, one room out of a plethora of ones that looked just like it, and when he put those flowers down, that smile he received meant something. When he rang up orders of teddy bears and small, stuffed dogs, Castiel watched the children smile for the first time since they walked in, finally getting a moment of peace while Grandma, or Grandpa, or even Daddy struggled for his life upstairs.
Castiel loved it there, and stayed until college, even while others just remarked that he was wasting his time in a tiny room full of clichéd plush and glass. He cherished those moments where he brought someone out of the darkness, and when he left, it was only because he wanted to find a way to vanquish that darkness on a higher plane.
That’s why he became a doctor.
When Castiel starts realizing that his soul is dying, he tries to ignore it and go on. He’s just been working too long and too hard; he’s just too desensitized to it all, but he’ll bounce back. But his faith stays dead, and when he looks at his patients, he just sees dummies with hearts that might go on or might sputter and falter. Whether he succeeds or fails is just a part of his day, and it means nothing.
It’s in the acceptance that Castiel starts slipping. The moral high ground crumbles underneath his pitiful, human weight, and he doesn’t fight to keep it solid. He allows himself to fall through the growing cracks, and the thing about knowing how to save the human body is that he also knows the best way to destroy it.
He slips down, down, down, and on the way he grabs the thin necks of bottles, downing alcohol and wondering the omniscient why. It’s not hard to get his hands on leaves and ground things that warp his mind when he burns them and sucks the smoke in, and he sits in his apartment and wonders if the world is burning yet.
Out of the blue, his long-lost, shunned, rotten betrayal of a brother calls him. Castiel answers the phone with a beer in his other hand, listening to a soft voice that used to read him the sweetest stories when he couldn’t sleep. Up until this point, he always upheld his father’s demand to stay far, far away, where he couldn’t be tainted and changed, and he still hangs up. For the first time though, his care for his family’s demands is just a faded, dying habit, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Castiel really wanted to finish his beer and collapse, he might’ve actually gone to that café for a meeting. He might’ve given in.
Still, the simple fact is, it’s not possible to self-destruct without anyone noticing, because in the end, everyone has tells and there’s always someone who catches them. Most of the time, it’s people on the street who pass by with their own haunting sorrows, and the most one gets is a look of pity or disgust. Both are worth nothing. In Castiel’s case, it’s a coworker, and at first that’s almost worse.
Castiel’s always been seen as a little eccentric, too serious, straight and on the mark. He used to carry a Bible in his pocket some days, and when he talked to patients about the Lord and faith, they actually believed him.
These days, though, he finds himself turning up late or not at all. Castiel chases after time, but it eludes him, dancing around him, spinning into a whirl of smoke when his hands reach out. Once he’s in the hospital, he’s still as efficient as ever, but the heart is gone, and one day Castiel’s trudging towards the door when a hand reaches out to touch his arm.
He sees startling red hair in the corner of his own red-rimmed eyes, and Anna whispers, “Castiel,” before he jerks himself away, glaring. He knows, he knows, but he just starts running, and she doesn’t follow.
The pavement is hard underneath his shoes, which are too professional for melted rock and which dig into his feet after only a few minutes. It’s a warm night, and Castiel sweats with the exertion, and underneath it from the guilt he’s been pushing down, staining his shirt and making his face shine in the streetlights.
Eventually, he stumbles to the stop next to a sleepy little coffee place that he’s heard of before, unique because it gets it’s real business due to the casual, humble art gallery awkwardly attached to its side. Those streetlights shine on him relentlessly, and he wishes they would just blow out and let him stay in the darkness.
Castiel staggers up the steps and practically trips inside, feeling mortal and trapped. With the shreds of his dignity dragging on the carpeted floor behind him, he walks up to the counter and orders coffee, collapsing at a table when he has Styrofoam heat between his hands.
Lifting his cup to take a sip, Castiel eyes catch on a corner of a color, and his arm stops its movement as if someone had reached down and restrained it while he looks.
It’s a painting, giant in size and scope, and before Castiel notices, he’s on his feet and already standing in front of it, looking up with his mouth softly parted.
It’s dark, out of place against the bright walls of this shop, one of a kind against the bright pieces that line the other walls. The bold, rash strokes reveal a man, dressed plainly and standing before a mirror. The expression on the man’s face is guarded, but little lines here and there reveal tension, and the eyes are painted in such a way as to reluctantly bare the soul.
The man’s reflection is a warped, twisted thing, identical until one reaches those eyes, which in the mirror are black and shining with smoky evil. The reflection is smirking, its expression proud and boastful, and Castiel only notices that he’s dropped his coffee when the lids snaps open upon hitting the floor and splashes his feet. He doesn’t even feel the burn as it spreads into his socks, and the little gasp from the girl behind the counter barely reaches his ears.
Then she’s suddenly thrusting napkins into his hands, picking up his cup kindly, and Castiel finds himself apologizing repeatedly in a low voice, even while his eyes stay fixed on the painting. He barely pays attention as he heads home, and a taxi almost plows him across the street.
But when he gets to his respectable apartment that he can’t even remember last paying the rent for, so lost he’s been, Castiel slowly sits on his bed and thinks, really thinks, for the first time in months. The painting is a constant veil before his eyes, forcing him to face truths he’s been burying, shining a light upon his soul, and while he used to bask in such a thing, now he cringes in shame and rage.
At one point he even gets up to look in the mirror, fingers dusting on a stubbled cheek and widening his blue eyes. Maybe it’s just the drugs still working their way out of his system, but he almost sees black in the corners.
When Castiel was in tenth grade, he found himself in American History II. He’d always been a good student, dedicated and focused, appreciating the knowledge in his polite, disciplined way. He listened to the teacher babble and preach until they got to the Civil War, and Castiel turned to that page of his textbook with a churning, poisonous feeling in his stomach. He looked at the tear on page 256, the blocky, ugly letters proclaiming, “The War That Drove Brother Against Brother,” and he almost threw up in the middle of Room 106.
His teacher went on and on, battles and battles taking up days and days, and he sketched numbers of dead on the board with relish. He called it a fantastic war, one of tragedy and romance in the fact that it tore a country in two and ended with freedom. The boy next to Castiel nodded along enthusiastically while the girl behind him slept.
Castiel didn’t say anything, just clamps down on his self-control and took notes so placidly that no one would’ve noticed a thing even if they cared to look. He received a perfect score on the unit test, but he stared down at the stapled pieces of paper in his hand, the scathing red smile, and tossed it in the trash.
Because that’s what all those lectures were; pure and utter garbage. Because Castiel knew, he knew, that that war wasn’t beautiful, darkly romantic in its opening and close. It didn’t start for anything pure, for rights and hope. It started because one family couldn’t get along, because both sides wanted control and only one could have it. So it split into two jagged, selfish pieces, leaving so many lost in the crossfire, forced to choose and take sides.
Castiel knew, and still knows, what it’s like to stare at the eyes of a brother and sees hatred. The next day his teacher smiled at him in the hall in greeting, and Castiel walked by as if he sees nothing.
Castiel’s fall was steady but slow, and in contrast, this inquiring, righteous glow that is abruptly unleashed on his soul is so sudden it burns. There’s no concrete explanation, but Castiel feels like that painting showed him his true being, and he was found wanting. He picks up a beer and chokes on it, looks at everything tarnished and downright illegal that he’s collected and runs to the bathroom before he can choke on months of killing himself slowly.
He needs out, so Castiel decides to move.
Castiel has more than enough money to purchase something classy and exorbitant, but that’s never been his style, even at his worst. Instead he settles for a sixth floor apartment in a respectable building several blocks from the hospital and dozens more from his old one. He leaves behind the alcohol and the drugs, but it’d be a lie to say he magically recovers into something whole again. He starts forcing himself back to work on time, upholding his commitments where he’s supposed to be saying lives, but Castiel still feels jaded, like a ghoul going through the motions.
Fine, he won’t allow himself to spiral down, down, down, but that doesn’t mean he has the strength to climb back up all those stairs.
There’s only one other occupied room on his floor, but Castiel never sees whoever lives there. He knows that manners would call for him to cross over and introduce himself, but he keeps putting it off and eventually never does.
When Castiel had been working in the hospital for only four months, a little girl was brought in covered from the chest down with blood, a father and a mother frantically running after. Her rich blonde hair was untouched, and her pale skin was angelic and clean. If Castiel kept his eyes up, he would think she was sleeping, and when she awoke she would join God’s ranks and praise Creation.
Instead, he slipped on those ubiquitous gloves and listened as the nurses told him she needed blood, because those multiple stab wounds had been careless enough to let all of her own seep out. The father was on him in a moment, hair wild and eyes crazed, shaking him and shouting, “Take mine! Give her mine!” while his wife covered her face with pale hands and just shook.
The girl lived, filled with her father’s blood, but the man died from an infection that Castiel still can’t truly explain. When the mother and daughter left, the girl looked at Castiel with so much hatred that, for a moment, his heart stopped.
That was the first time he collapsed on one of the benches in the hospital corridor and thought, “I failed.”
Castiel steps into the hallway, closing the door behind him quietly, adjusting his tie. He’s about to shuffle down the stairs when he looks across the hall to find the other door open. He’s about to continue on when something yellow catches his eye, and he walks over to the doorway, hands in his pockets in an awkward way, to see a puddle of paint spreading over a stained floor. His gaze lifts, and his breath catches.
Castiel’s inside the room without a thought, not even noticing when his shoes squelch in the paint that’s victoriously celebrating the fact that it got him here.
He’s staring at a painted man, tall and thin, dressed like someone important and respectable, good. But somehow, in the way his long hair is drawn, in the colors that swirl around his head, Castiel knows that this man makes the artist angry, but not only that, but sad.
He thinks, ‘This is it,’ because he knows that style, that emotion and depth. It shocked him out of the muck and grime, sprayed cold water on his body and spirit, woke him up when he wanted to keep sleeping. Castiel feels his heart racing, and as he stares at this painting, the other flashes back like a mirage.
Someone says something, but Castiel is so entranced that at first he’s deaf and blinded by his discovery. Then, his brain catches up and deciphers,
“What the fuck, man?”
As he hears footsteps come up to him, Castiel falters and turns, “You left your door open.”
The face of the man watching him warily is already familiar, because it’s staring at its black-eyed reflection in a coffee shop turned art gallery a few streets down. It’s the light brown hair, the green tinted eyes that have a dam built behind them that’s already leaking. The man just shrugs and heads into what must be his kitchen, and it hits Castiel that this is the artist, the human being that somehow saved him.
Castiel’s eyes flicker down as the man opens his fridge, and he skims past the painting to see what look like fancy invitations on the floor, words printed in pompous swirls. He makes out ‘Congratulations’ and ‘Stanford’ before everything catches up with him, and before he can think, Castiel runs. It seems like he doesn’t breathe until he’s in surgery, elbows deep in a man who should’ve been getting married that day.
Even as he’s cutting and slicing, red squirting on his face and dripping down his nose, silence in the room besides his own even breathing and the slither of leaking blood, Castiel can’t keep his thoughts off two paintings and a man.
As Castiel cleans up afterwards, he can’t help but think, “My father would be disgusted with me.” That’s not the first time he thinks it, but it’s the first time in a long while that he cares.
Castiel trudges home, tired and with his nose still filled with the cloying, permeating scent of death. Paintings fade in and out as he tries to fall asleep, chasing away the itch for beer or something worse. He opens his eyes, stares up at the ceiling and wonders how deep the level of sin is where one shouldn’t be allowed to pray anymore.
He envisions the man’s face, the way a splatter of green had dried right above his left eyebrow. No real thoughts come to him, nothing he can touch or name, but something in his soul twitches, and that shocks him into sleep.
The next day, Castiel finds himself at the door, knocking and feeling something like purpose flooding through him. He feels stiff, nervous until the door opens, and asks, “May I come in?” when the man’s confused face peeks out. Then he’s inside, sweating nervously under layers of messy suit and trench coat but in need of that mild but enhanced protection.
Castiel turns to look at the man after a few seconds, and that strange little fluttering in his soul returns. He stares, taking in the raggedy, paint speckled clothes, the defensive stance and the tense lines around the man’s mouth. It hits him, just as he begins, “I saw your work.”
At those words, the man starts to look even more uncomfortable, like an animal trapped by a cage that erupted out of the darkness and caught it by surprise. He still sounds snide and sarcastic when he replies, “You mean when you broke into my apartment?”
“You should not have left your door open if you did not want people to enter,” Castiel answers automatically, not giving the response much thought. Instead, he focuses on that feeling that’s spreading through him, familiar and yet so long lost that it’s overwhelming.
He wants to save this man. For the first time in what seems like an endless, torturous eternity, for the first time since his flame sputtered out and he ran this gauntlet of drugs and depression, Castiel wants to save.
The man presses, ““Look, pal, do you want something or not? Cause otherwise-“ and all Castiel can think is that this man has somehow lit up the dank, dark basement dwelling inside of him, that these paintings are somehow the key to it all, and somehow, Castiel knows that this man needs him.
“I want to watch you,” Castiel replies, needing more of this, this connection and this awakening, this everything. “I want to see you work.”
There’s a span of a few seconds before, “You have a name?” Castiel gives his own easily.
“Well, Castiel, this isn’t some kind of-“ but Castiel interrupts because there is something higher here, something higher and greater, something that called him a few weeks ago like a siren and which led him here.
“There is something in your work that I have been called to,” Castiel states. It comes out blatant and true, even though it’s still new to him. “I would not bother you in any way. I simply wish to observe.”
Tension tightens in the man’s shoulders, and when he says “No,” Castiel feels something within him deflate. Instead of leaving, as the man obviously wants, Castiel takes a little piece of time, throwing out social grace and carving that little moment greedily for himself, takes in this creature, and decides that this is not over.
Throughout his life, Castiel’s never fallen into pure, human love before. When he was younger, he was too full of God, too full of that simple, religious adoration that overtook all else and made it look pale in comparison. More recently, he just stopped caring, and even though he’s fallen into bed with whoever caught him when smoke filled his senses and sent him reeling, the true act of love has always eluded him.
A few days later, Castiel is forcing himself up the stairs, tired and battered from too many hours, and as he turns to head towards his room, something pulls him back. He finds himself staring at the man’s door, at the plain wood that’s hiding a whole world from him, and something whispers in his ear and wraps around his wrists to drag him forward. He tries the scratched knob, and the door slips open silently, like it’s happy and trusts him with everything. The man’s oblivious, standing before a wide, empty canvas, and Castiel robotically steps inside and slides against the wall to the floor.
He sits there and watches, forcing his eyes open even while they burn from lack of sleep. It’s beautiful and graceful, but ugly, too, because when this man paints, his brush is like a sharpened knife. He drags it across the canvas and it’s like he’s dragging it across his chest, and the paint is like blood that’s welling up and staining. It’s grotesque and captivating, and Castiel just sits there entranced. For so long, he’s been a man with a withered, dry husk of a soul, and here’s a man with so much tucked inside that it’s oozing out like a flood.
Suddenly the man turns his head, and he sees Castiel. His eyes widen, and his chest is heaving, as though he’s been running for miles and miles. Castiel knows his place and leaves, falling asleep feeling even more drained than before.
Once, when Castiel was still in school, he was walking down an unimportant street when a large hand grabbed his wrist and threw him into the wall. His head hit brick, and then there were hands in his pockets, searching frantically until they found his wallet. Cool air hit Castiel’s face as his assailant fled, feet splashing in puddles full of both rain and stinking desperation.
Castiel simply caught his breath and watched the man flee, shaking his head. He would have given it all to the man if he had only asked.
His hours at the hospital have always been varying and disjointed, and Castiel hasn’t had a fixed schedule for longer than he can faithfully remember. He can be staggering home at dawn or around five p.m., like so many other ordinary people. There’s simply no way to tell.
Something strange starts happening, however, each time he makes his way up those stairs. Usually, he just goes into his apartment, sleeps, eats, tries to read or make sense of things, but sometimes, he feels something in the air, like a song that plays along his skin instead of in his head. When that calls him, he makes his way to the man’s door, and Castiel sits in the back and watches him make something gorgeous and hideous at the same time. He watches this man paint as if he was conducting music, grand gestures and angry jabs, biting his lip or throwing empty bottles full of paint until they crack and splatter.
Castiel observes this tornado in human form, until one day the whirlwind stops, turns around and speaks.
“I’ve got enough beer. If you want one.”
Castiel already has the front door open, gripping the wood with one hand tightly, but he turns and nods. He keeps himself blank and guarded, but his heart starts pumping faster, and he sits at the small table the man gestures at. A beer is placed in his hands, and Castiel looks down at it. A short time ago, he knew the shape of this thing. He knew the way the glass could feel in every situation, all the different ways it could burn his throat and damn him. He still does, but Castiel feels the bottle like it’s an awkward, uncomfortable weight.
Liquid drips down the side, and Castiel makes patterns in it, little symbols that he used to know, every now and then glancing at the man who paints. The man drinks his beer, and the little line between his brow stays ingrained into his skin.
This becomes a regular habit, and when they start talking, Castiel learns the man’s name is Dean.
Castiel walks into Room 436 at the hospital with the patient’s chart, only looking up after he’s looked over everything once more. He looks into frightened blue eyes, sees a pale face surrounded by hair that’s too dark, and Castiel finds himself caring.
He sits on her bed, and his voice is still gravely and low, but he explains what’s going to happen simply and plainly. He tells her he’ll do everything possible to help her through this, and that he has faith she’ll be alright.
Afterwards, he walks out of the room. He heads towards a window, stares out, sees everything and nothing, and all the little fragments in between. Castiel raises his eyes towards Heaven, and sees a benevolence there that had been lacking.
Anna walks down the hallway with another nurse, sees him and smiles. She touches his arm, and this time he doesn’t run like a coward. He smiles back at her, because Castiel is getting back to being Castiel again.
When he returns home, he feels the pull, but when Castiel opens the door, he finds Dean collapsed in a bottomless pool of his own raging pain and grief. There’s paint everywhere, some seeping as far as where Castiel is standing, touching his shoes. Dean’s covered, white flooding his hair as if he’s seen something ghostly and awful, blue dripping down his cheek. Castiel doesn’t know what happened, but he’d guess that all that raw emotion caught up with Dean somehow, judging from the ruined canvas and the body drowning in toxins on the floor.
Castiel doesn’t hesitate, uncaring as his pants drag in this relentless ocean of pigments when he leans down to lift Dean, grasping him around the shoulders and dragging him to where he believes Dean’s bathroom is. He’s graced tonight because he finds it easily, props Dean up and searches for a towel, which he fills with water and his own form of benediction.
Every part of Dean’s exposed skin is covered in paint, some dry and flaking while other patches are still as wet as a newly bled wound. Castiel ignores it all and focuses on Dean’s hands, taking them into his own.
He rubs the cloth over each of Dean’s fingers, over his palms and knuckles, from the most delicate parts to the roughest. This little part of Dean is all that matters here, because Castiel knows what it means to stare down at one’s hands and see secrets, guilt, and lies coated on them, sticky and greasy and forever.
When he’s done, when the towel is washed off as well and left to dry, Castiel sinks back down and stares into Dean’s bewildered, lost eyes. Here, with little light and just the darkness, with the paint covering parts of his face in both delicate and bold ways, Dean seems like a fragile, otherworldly creature. At the same time, for the first time, he’s static and laid bare in a different way, and he seems human.
Castiel reaches out a hand, and in a hushed voice says, “You’re drowning, Dean.” Dean’s face folds, cracks at that, and Castiel lets his hand make contact. Dean looks up at him as though he isn’t sure whether he should run or hold on screaming, but then his eyes flutter close and he falls forward.
Castiel catches him and does his best to carry Dean to his bed. For a little while, he watches over him, and the air crackles like it does with heat and power before a storm rages.
When he leaves, Castiel sees a paint-splattered answering machine with an angry red light blinking. The sight makes him inexplicably sad.
Dean saved Castiel, even unknowingly. Now it’s his turn to be saved.
It’s late, with the sky a dark black and the air humid and choking, promising heavy, cleansing rain, but Castiel abandons the building and walks down the street, his trench coat feeling like wings behind him, propelling him forward. There’s a church at the end of the street with the plainest white paint and the most modest windows. Castiel pushes at the doors and breathes out when he finds them open.
The inside is just as unassuming, with wooden benches and small wooden carvings on the walls showing the Savior, displaying saints. Behind the alter, which has a unadorned white cloth atop it, is the cross, hanging from string and promising everything.
Castiel walks up the aisle, the now threadbare carpet not enough to hide the creaking of aged wood, and he slips into the second row. He falls to his knees, lays his head on his folded arms, and tumbles into the best sleep he’s had in years.
Before he slips away, Castiel prays, “Thank you. I’m sorry.”
There was a point in Castiel’s childhood, when he was only a boy, where he was determined to become a priest. God was everything to him, the light and the music, the joy, and he so dearly wanted to dedicate his life to that, to faith and belief.
But one day, his father took him aside. His hand was a warm, heavy and comforting weight on his shoulder, and he leaned down to Castiel’s level. They were outside, and the sun shown down on them, and Castiel thought his father looked like an angel.
His father told him that he didn’t think that his path was one that led directly to the pulpit. Castiel tilted his head, feeling confused, and asked why. His father just smiled, squeezing Castiel’s shoulder.
“My son, I just think the Lord has a different, greater plan for you.”
At the time, Castiel was youthfully offended, but his father just picked him up and threw him into the air, and Castiel laughed, forgetting everything in his moment of flight, which lasted until his father caught him again.
Castiel wakes with the booming of thunder, and his head shoots up to see a priest smiling at him kindly from the doorway, hands tucked tranquilly into his robes. Castiel nods at him with respect before departing, giving the Son one last look before sliding through the doors.
As he strides up the street, running one hand through messy hair, he sees Dean rushing to another store at the other end. Without giving it much thought, Castiel does what he wants to and follows, uncaring of the puddles that litter the way. Water drips down from on high, racing down his collar and making him shudder slightly.
He finds Dean inside the art shop, and Dean must hear his squeaking wet shoes because his back tenses at Castiel’s approach, and he throws the supplies into his cart with more force. As Castiel follows him, he sees colors that Dean’s used before, brushes that he himself has seen gripped in Dean’s hands and adds them to the cart. Dean freezes for a second before glaring at him, but Castiel just looks back.
Dean pays, and they leave the rows of paint and canvas behind them, stepping out into the wet air. Once the door shuts behind them, Dean spins around, eyes fierce and words rough, “What the hell do you want?”
Castiel looks at him, really looks, past the hair slightly plastered to his forehead, the hands turning red from the pressure of all the bags he’s holding alone.
Sometimes, all it takes is one, tiny moment, and that’s all the world gives you. Castiel looked up in a coffee shop and saw what he was becoming, and he saw it because Dean was becoming something ugly and ruined, too. Castiel spent his days trying to fix people, getting broken down by the all the failures until he couldn’t even bring himself to blink an eye at a dead body with its insides still strewn out over the table, but when he looked at Dean, he saw something salvageable, something he wanted to tape back together and hold in place.
It’s strange, the way the world throws you while it spins on it’s axis, and Castiel can’t possibly explain that to Dean, so he simply states, “I see you.”
There’s a crash of thunder, and the rain starts pouring. Dean looks terrified and ready to bolt, and Castiel knows and steps forward, because some drowning men simply want to drown.
“I saw your work at the gallery,” Castiel mutters without really thinking, making that night seem vague and unimportant when it was everything, “and I was curious. It was…unusual.”
Castiel moves even closer, this time his mouth bursting with things that are so undeniable true, and he goes on, “When you paint, you are…different. You are a dark, driven thing, Dean, yet what you create is very beautiful because it is yourself. Your soul. You tear yourself apart for it, and you seem so uncaring of that sacrifice.”
“I am…drawn to you, Dean. I see you, and…”
Castiel finds himself laughing, and it’s bitter, because what a horrible way the universe works, breaking apart two men to cracks and ashes, only to force them together just to attempt to create something that can breathe and see.
Castiel closes his eyes and opens them again, taking the final step and baring it all, “You need to be saved.”
Dean’s lips are wet and cold when Castiel first touches them with his own, but he’s not timid, and truly, he’s not kind. He gives Dean no quarter, because he’s not losing this man, and more selfishly, Castiel wants him. There’s a pause at first, but then Dean’s responding, clutching at Castiel and dragging him against his chest, and Castiel remembers the warning that when a man is drowning, he often leeches on and takes others with him.
For Dean, Castiel would be glad to go. But here, now, Castiel is going to bring them both to the shore again.
A/N: A little voice in my head kept asking me a bunch of why’s about the Castiel from my first fic, and this is what it wanted me to tell. I’m a little uneasy about it, but I do hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to let me know what you think.