.fic: As we go along (Deanna/Cas) PG13 | 2,400
As we go along (girl!Dean/Cas) PG13 | 2,400
Quite some time ago, I swore to insight2 and several other people that I would write girl!Dean. Well, the other day, 22by7 asked for something to do with Deanna, Cas, and going for ice cream, and I girded my loins and wrote this. It's always-a-girl!Dean, who, let's be honest, is awesome. Post-war, some references to 5.02 and 5.04, with kissing.
As we go along
The world didn't end, and sometimes that freaks her out. Why, she has no idea, except sometimes she'll be doing something every-day - washing her hair, trying to decide between sausage and bacon, cleaning her guns - and it'll hit her, bang, out of nowhere, a bolt from the blue. She never had to say yes, and there's this moment of astonished silence in her brain, then almost a giddiness that makes her almost want to laugh. She has to swallow it back, and she can feel it shudder just under her skin. Sometimes it puts a bounce in her step that stays for hours, and that Sam says makes her extra-obnoxious to deal with, but other times she goes quiet and has no idea what the hell to do.
Cas, though, Cas is always quiet. Even for him.
"Don't know," she says to Sam one evening. "I'm just worried about him, is all."
Sam smirks at her defensiveness, and doesn’t bother looking up from his laptop. "You could try talking to him," he says, and the emphasis he puts on talking makes Deanna want to bang his head on the table, hard. "He's probably just confused," Sam continues, softening into his emo, let's-talk-about-our-feelings setting. It's just as bad as the teasing, and definitely more awkward. "I bet he needs time to work things out for himself."
"Thank you, Dr. Phil." She listens, attention at half-mast, while Sam babbles about the case, a haunted mansion - really, an actual haunted mansion like at Disney World - and the irritable Victorian widow who's supposed to be doing the haunting. "You should talk to him," Sam says, out of nowhere. "I bet we could get in as art or architecture students." He blathers on about the case some more. "You really should."
Only, Deanna doesn't do talking, and she doesn't do waiting, either. Only, not doing one requires that she do the other, it seems like. Cas won't talk to Sam, at least, not about anything gooshy and heartfelt - unless it's Cas's heartfelt irritation, which he's more than happy to express. And she's pretty sure Cas, impatient as he can be, can also outlast her in the waiting department. So that settles it, pretty much; she leaves Sam to the research, the big sap, and calls up Cas, who's been out "walking." He does that a lot.
"No," she says, when Cas asks if she wants him to come back, "let me know where you are, and I'll pick you up."
It's a crazy reversal of their old routine, as she hops in the Impala and heads east to find him, through a series of small, old neighborhoods that belongs to the city's old manufacturing days, the houses fronted by giant oaks and maples, a venerable brick school. And there's Cas on the corner, as promised, and he'd be an ordinary guy in jeans and t-shirt. Only the way he holds himself isn't quite right, and when he bends down to look at her the eyes that peer at her through the Impala's open window are way too old, and they give her that jolt every single time.
"Get in," she tells him, which he does cooperatively enough. And without a word. He settles in, hands folded between his knees, and looks out the window. Every now at then she'll catch those eyes straying to her, like he's wondering what this is all about. Maybe he is, no mind-reader anymore, one of the ten thousand changes he's probably still trying to handle.
"Where are we going?" he asks. His voice hasn't changed, is still delicious and rough and something she loves to hear.
"It's a surprise." Deanna navigates the Impala through more neighborhoods, some of them run-down, some of them just old. A few billboards and old brick buildings crumbling at the corners, families out together. Her heart twists a bit, Never had to say yes, and it means these people can be here right now, most of them wrapped up with each other, but a few glancing up to watch the big black car as it glides past. Eventually the road winds its way to a parking lot and whitewashed building, the parking lot inching its way toward being full with hungry office workers and holiday kids from the amusement park up the street. Through the Impala's open windows she can hear the carousel music, and the roller-coaster roaring.
Cas lets her herd him inside, through the screen door and a knot of kids in shorts and t-shirts. The smell is, well, Cas wouldn't call it heavenly but she will: grease and starch, warm because it's an old New York building and had been built back before air conditioning. Her tank top starts to stick between her shoulder blades, right where Cas is pressed up close because of more people crowding in.
"It's ice cream," she informs him, and pushes past an indecisive cluster of kids - hey, life lesson: you snooze, you lose - and orders three scoops. Chocolate-peanut butter, vanilla, Snickers. "Cas?" She has to nudge him, and he looks at her with such bewilderment she has to order for him. "He'll have vanilla, strawberry, and cherry," she tells the be-pimpled teenager behind the counter, who sighs heavily, like she's just told him to, you know, save the goddamn world, and starts to fill a cardboard cup with ice cream.
Sighing again, the kid takes her money and gives her the change. He could be related to the kid Deanna vaguely remembers from the last time she was here, back when she was twelve and Sam was a runty seven-year-old, petulant when Dad had gone off on another hunt. They'd taken the bus out here on almost the last of Deanna's pocket money, and snuck into the amusement park so Sam could ride the carousel, and then they'd had to split a single scoop of chocolate. Her fingers had been sticky, and she'd been thirsty, and Sammy had been in raptures.
She tells Cas this as they wander over to the park, a thin strip of green pressed up hard against the lake and the sea wall. The sky's that wide, limitless blue and it holds only sunlight and a breeze that takes the edge off the heat. It runs right down to the horizon, and the choppy waves out on the bay reflect it, whitecaps here and there where the wind has stirred the water up, and it's cool enough that when they sit, Deanna doesn't feel too bad about sitting closer than usual.
Cas gets a few minutes to eat in peace, puzzling over his ice cream silently, licking his lips in a way that isn't distracting Deanna from the fact that they have to Talk. "It's good," Cas says with his strange, soft emphasis, and Deanna has to grin. "Yeah, well, it's ice cream. It's supposed to be."
"It's very…" Cas lets the thought hang for a moment, takes a big bite and Deanna can see when the cold hits him - a full-body shudder, his face twisting and nose wrinkling in a way that Deanna refuses to think of as being cute, not when a seven-thousand-year-old being does it. "It's very cold," Cas finishes breathlessly. He coughs and shakes his head again, and Deanna has to laugh. "You gotta go slow," she says, she who Sam has sometimes compared to a Hoover, that's how fast she eats, and Cas scowls a bit at the admonishment.
"Sam thinks we should talk," she says, when Cas looks like he's recovered.
If anything, Cas's habitual silence deepens, and great, he's not going to help her out. She sighs. "Look, I hate this as much as you do, believe me, but you're kind of freaking us out here. I mean, you're being weird, even for you." She tries a smile and earns the tiniest flex of Cas's mouth. "What's up?"
Cas shrugs, the gesture odd and unexpectedly human even now. He sets his empty ice cream cup down on the bench beside him, and turns to look at her from the corner of his eye. They're still that crazy, sad, liquid blue, and she can't figure out if she's happy that hasn't changed. Don't ever change, she'd told him once, and it's a relief to think that he might have lost his abilities and lost his family, but he's still her Cas, stubborn and clueless and loyal in a way that doesn't quite match up to any definition of loyalty she knows.
"I've lost everything," Cas says hoarsely, and maybe there's a bit of mindreading left. Deanna has to swallow against the guilt, way to be selfish, Winchester, because Cas had been trying to keep himself whole even as his brothers and their stupid fight were pulling him apart. She tries to say his name, but he keeps going, "I… my brothers, my home. They're gone."
"You've got a home," Deanna says, and she can't be concerned about being all sloppy when she finds she means it. "With me. And Sam." She adds Sam on fast, because it's true, Cas seems to have forgiven Sam and god knows the two of them geek out together all the time, but mostly she means it for herself.
"My family wasn't much like yours," he confides, leaning forward a bit to rest his elbows on his thighs. Under his t-shirt she can see the lean, articulated length of his torso, the tremble of his belly when he exhales. "We weren't close. What held us together were our orders, and after those were gone…" He sighs. "They were still my brothers and sisters."
There's really not much to say to that. Cas had outlasted all of them, and killed some himself, and he'd done that for her. He'd said as much on several occasions, but that had been right in the middle of the end of the world, and she'd never been able to get her mind around that. In the soppy romance movies Sam likes, the ones she doesn't watch, when guys say things like I did it - all of it, for you there's usually crying and rings and kissing. There isn't a disheveled guy in a trench coat glaring down at you, crackling with power enough to bring the walls down around your ears.
"You've got me," Deanna mutters, her voice small and uncertain. She touches Cas's left hand, slides her fingers through where his fingers are folded together, a liberty she's never really allowed herself. His fingers, the soft cup of his palm, are rough on the edges.
"And," she says, hypnotized by how his fingers play across hers, Cas looking down at their joined hands now with his odd, intense concentration, "it's like… it's like a mission, right? Just another thing to do." Her entire life's been a mission: look out for Sammy, watch out for Sammy, try not to kill Sammy, save Sammy, Sam Sam Sam, only Sam's gone through the dark too and come out the other side, and aside from making sure he knows he's still her geek loser younger brother, there isn't anything left for her to do. "You just… you have to be human." And maybe she has to be something else, something not-Sam's-guardian.
"I know what I have to be," Cas says firmly, "but I… I'm not entirely sure how to do it."
"That's called being human, most days," Deanna tells him, and the words are cold comfort, she knows. And Cas knows that too, going stiff and quiet again. "Seriously, Cas, you should know by now… Things work out. You know, we make it up as we go along?" I didn't have to say yes, and there she goes again, the disbelieving laughter bubbling up in her throat, and Cas turns to her, surprised and a bit irritated at her laughing at him. That only makes it funnier, because annoyed-and-puzzled Cas is the best, that big, ancient brain trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.
"We'll work it out," she says, and has to - she has to, she's not a saint and it's been two long years, and Cas is right here and it's either keep laughing and then have to explain herself, or turn so she can lean into him, and touch his face, and guide it down to hers.
His mouth is slow, hesitant, closed as she licks at him until she makes an impatient get with the program noise, and he opens up to her. And oh, yeah, this is perfect and she doesn't bother to muffle the sound she makes, it tastes delicious, like the chocolate on her tongue and the strawberry on Cas's. Cool, slick, Cas's tongue careful against hers, and then he huffs softly and moves, and she has him now, the utter, still focus of him, his teeth sharp on her lower lip and then his tongue stroking into her mouth now, the soft huff of breath through his nose and the rumble of a sigh, right at the edge of content, she can feel in his chest.
The hair at the nape of his neck curls softly around her fingers, a little longer now than it was when they'd first met, even right after Cas lost the last of his power. He shudders and sighs, shift of muscle and tendon under unexpectedly delicate skin, and touches her in turn, the bare skin of her upper arm, one finger sliding under the strap of her tank top, across her collar bone. And she wants to move, can feel her spine bending, an arc to encourage him to keep going, and her mind, unencumbered by clothes or the fact they're in wide-open daylight with people around, wants to race on and on.
She has to stop, because it's either that or suffocate, or maybe climb on top of him and do something that definitely doesn't qualify as family entertainment. The disappointed sound he makes is worth it, and his eyes - glazed, hazy, a bit surprised and a lot intent - sets something throbbing in her. It leaves her aching, and a bit stunned.
"Deanna," Cas says, and her name is a question she answers with another kiss, slower, meaningful, a promise somewhere in it.
"There are some good things," Deanna tells him when she makes herself stop again. Her mouth tastes sweet and strange. "Lots of good things," and Cas's face, smiling enough for lines at the corner of his eyes, a shy look away like she's caught him at something, says he agrees.
-end-
Quite some time ago, I swore to insight2 and several other people that I would write girl!Dean. Well, the other day, 22by7 asked for something to do with Deanna, Cas, and going for ice cream, and I girded my loins and wrote this. It's always-a-girl!Dean, who, let's be honest, is awesome. Post-war, some references to 5.02 and 5.04, with kissing.
As we go along
The world didn't end, and sometimes that freaks her out. Why, she has no idea, except sometimes she'll be doing something every-day - washing her hair, trying to decide between sausage and bacon, cleaning her guns - and it'll hit her, bang, out of nowhere, a bolt from the blue. She never had to say yes, and there's this moment of astonished silence in her brain, then almost a giddiness that makes her almost want to laugh. She has to swallow it back, and she can feel it shudder just under her skin. Sometimes it puts a bounce in her step that stays for hours, and that Sam says makes her extra-obnoxious to deal with, but other times she goes quiet and has no idea what the hell to do.
Cas, though, Cas is always quiet. Even for him.
"Don't know," she says to Sam one evening. "I'm just worried about him, is all."
Sam smirks at her defensiveness, and doesn’t bother looking up from his laptop. "You could try talking to him," he says, and the emphasis he puts on talking makes Deanna want to bang his head on the table, hard. "He's probably just confused," Sam continues, softening into his emo, let's-talk-about-our-feelings setting. It's just as bad as the teasing, and definitely more awkward. "I bet he needs time to work things out for himself."
"Thank you, Dr. Phil." She listens, attention at half-mast, while Sam babbles about the case, a haunted mansion - really, an actual haunted mansion like at Disney World - and the irritable Victorian widow who's supposed to be doing the haunting. "You should talk to him," Sam says, out of nowhere. "I bet we could get in as art or architecture students." He blathers on about the case some more. "You really should."
Only, Deanna doesn't do talking, and she doesn't do waiting, either. Only, not doing one requires that she do the other, it seems like. Cas won't talk to Sam, at least, not about anything gooshy and heartfelt - unless it's Cas's heartfelt irritation, which he's more than happy to express. And she's pretty sure Cas, impatient as he can be, can also outlast her in the waiting department. So that settles it, pretty much; she leaves Sam to the research, the big sap, and calls up Cas, who's been out "walking." He does that a lot.
"No," she says, when Cas asks if she wants him to come back, "let me know where you are, and I'll pick you up."
It's a crazy reversal of their old routine, as she hops in the Impala and heads east to find him, through a series of small, old neighborhoods that belongs to the city's old manufacturing days, the houses fronted by giant oaks and maples, a venerable brick school. And there's Cas on the corner, as promised, and he'd be an ordinary guy in jeans and t-shirt. Only the way he holds himself isn't quite right, and when he bends down to look at her the eyes that peer at her through the Impala's open window are way too old, and they give her that jolt every single time.
"Get in," she tells him, which he does cooperatively enough. And without a word. He settles in, hands folded between his knees, and looks out the window. Every now at then she'll catch those eyes straying to her, like he's wondering what this is all about. Maybe he is, no mind-reader anymore, one of the ten thousand changes he's probably still trying to handle.
"Where are we going?" he asks. His voice hasn't changed, is still delicious and rough and something she loves to hear.
"It's a surprise." Deanna navigates the Impala through more neighborhoods, some of them run-down, some of them just old. A few billboards and old brick buildings crumbling at the corners, families out together. Her heart twists a bit, Never had to say yes, and it means these people can be here right now, most of them wrapped up with each other, but a few glancing up to watch the big black car as it glides past. Eventually the road winds its way to a parking lot and whitewashed building, the parking lot inching its way toward being full with hungry office workers and holiday kids from the amusement park up the street. Through the Impala's open windows she can hear the carousel music, and the roller-coaster roaring.
Cas lets her herd him inside, through the screen door and a knot of kids in shorts and t-shirts. The smell is, well, Cas wouldn't call it heavenly but she will: grease and starch, warm because it's an old New York building and had been built back before air conditioning. Her tank top starts to stick between her shoulder blades, right where Cas is pressed up close because of more people crowding in.
"It's ice cream," she informs him, and pushes past an indecisive cluster of kids - hey, life lesson: you snooze, you lose - and orders three scoops. Chocolate-peanut butter, vanilla, Snickers. "Cas?" She has to nudge him, and he looks at her with such bewilderment she has to order for him. "He'll have vanilla, strawberry, and cherry," she tells the be-pimpled teenager behind the counter, who sighs heavily, like she's just told him to, you know, save the goddamn world, and starts to fill a cardboard cup with ice cream.
Sighing again, the kid takes her money and gives her the change. He could be related to the kid Deanna vaguely remembers from the last time she was here, back when she was twelve and Sam was a runty seven-year-old, petulant when Dad had gone off on another hunt. They'd taken the bus out here on almost the last of Deanna's pocket money, and snuck into the amusement park so Sam could ride the carousel, and then they'd had to split a single scoop of chocolate. Her fingers had been sticky, and she'd been thirsty, and Sammy had been in raptures.
She tells Cas this as they wander over to the park, a thin strip of green pressed up hard against the lake and the sea wall. The sky's that wide, limitless blue and it holds only sunlight and a breeze that takes the edge off the heat. It runs right down to the horizon, and the choppy waves out on the bay reflect it, whitecaps here and there where the wind has stirred the water up, and it's cool enough that when they sit, Deanna doesn't feel too bad about sitting closer than usual.
Cas gets a few minutes to eat in peace, puzzling over his ice cream silently, licking his lips in a way that isn't distracting Deanna from the fact that they have to Talk. "It's good," Cas says with his strange, soft emphasis, and Deanna has to grin. "Yeah, well, it's ice cream. It's supposed to be."
"It's very…" Cas lets the thought hang for a moment, takes a big bite and Deanna can see when the cold hits him - a full-body shudder, his face twisting and nose wrinkling in a way that Deanna refuses to think of as being cute, not when a seven-thousand-year-old being does it. "It's very cold," Cas finishes breathlessly. He coughs and shakes his head again, and Deanna has to laugh. "You gotta go slow," she says, she who Sam has sometimes compared to a Hoover, that's how fast she eats, and Cas scowls a bit at the admonishment.
"Sam thinks we should talk," she says, when Cas looks like he's recovered.
If anything, Cas's habitual silence deepens, and great, he's not going to help her out. She sighs. "Look, I hate this as much as you do, believe me, but you're kind of freaking us out here. I mean, you're being weird, even for you." She tries a smile and earns the tiniest flex of Cas's mouth. "What's up?"
Cas shrugs, the gesture odd and unexpectedly human even now. He sets his empty ice cream cup down on the bench beside him, and turns to look at her from the corner of his eye. They're still that crazy, sad, liquid blue, and she can't figure out if she's happy that hasn't changed. Don't ever change, she'd told him once, and it's a relief to think that he might have lost his abilities and lost his family, but he's still her Cas, stubborn and clueless and loyal in a way that doesn't quite match up to any definition of loyalty she knows.
"I've lost everything," Cas says hoarsely, and maybe there's a bit of mindreading left. Deanna has to swallow against the guilt, way to be selfish, Winchester, because Cas had been trying to keep himself whole even as his brothers and their stupid fight were pulling him apart. She tries to say his name, but he keeps going, "I… my brothers, my home. They're gone."
"You've got a home," Deanna says, and she can't be concerned about being all sloppy when she finds she means it. "With me. And Sam." She adds Sam on fast, because it's true, Cas seems to have forgiven Sam and god knows the two of them geek out together all the time, but mostly she means it for herself.
"My family wasn't much like yours," he confides, leaning forward a bit to rest his elbows on his thighs. Under his t-shirt she can see the lean, articulated length of his torso, the tremble of his belly when he exhales. "We weren't close. What held us together were our orders, and after those were gone…" He sighs. "They were still my brothers and sisters."
There's really not much to say to that. Cas had outlasted all of them, and killed some himself, and he'd done that for her. He'd said as much on several occasions, but that had been right in the middle of the end of the world, and she'd never been able to get her mind around that. In the soppy romance movies Sam likes, the ones she doesn't watch, when guys say things like I did it - all of it, for you there's usually crying and rings and kissing. There isn't a disheveled guy in a trench coat glaring down at you, crackling with power enough to bring the walls down around your ears.
"You've got me," Deanna mutters, her voice small and uncertain. She touches Cas's left hand, slides her fingers through where his fingers are folded together, a liberty she's never really allowed herself. His fingers, the soft cup of his palm, are rough on the edges.
"And," she says, hypnotized by how his fingers play across hers, Cas looking down at their joined hands now with his odd, intense concentration, "it's like… it's like a mission, right? Just another thing to do." Her entire life's been a mission: look out for Sammy, watch out for Sammy, try not to kill Sammy, save Sammy, Sam Sam Sam, only Sam's gone through the dark too and come out the other side, and aside from making sure he knows he's still her geek loser younger brother, there isn't anything left for her to do. "You just… you have to be human." And maybe she has to be something else, something not-Sam's-guardian.
"I know what I have to be," Cas says firmly, "but I… I'm not entirely sure how to do it."
"That's called being human, most days," Deanna tells him, and the words are cold comfort, she knows. And Cas knows that too, going stiff and quiet again. "Seriously, Cas, you should know by now… Things work out. You know, we make it up as we go along?" I didn't have to say yes, and there she goes again, the disbelieving laughter bubbling up in her throat, and Cas turns to her, surprised and a bit irritated at her laughing at him. That only makes it funnier, because annoyed-and-puzzled Cas is the best, that big, ancient brain trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.
"We'll work it out," she says, and has to - she has to, she's not a saint and it's been two long years, and Cas is right here and it's either keep laughing and then have to explain herself, or turn so she can lean into him, and touch his face, and guide it down to hers.
His mouth is slow, hesitant, closed as she licks at him until she makes an impatient get with the program noise, and he opens up to her. And oh, yeah, this is perfect and she doesn't bother to muffle the sound she makes, it tastes delicious, like the chocolate on her tongue and the strawberry on Cas's. Cool, slick, Cas's tongue careful against hers, and then he huffs softly and moves, and she has him now, the utter, still focus of him, his teeth sharp on her lower lip and then his tongue stroking into her mouth now, the soft huff of breath through his nose and the rumble of a sigh, right at the edge of content, she can feel in his chest.
The hair at the nape of his neck curls softly around her fingers, a little longer now than it was when they'd first met, even right after Cas lost the last of his power. He shudders and sighs, shift of muscle and tendon under unexpectedly delicate skin, and touches her in turn, the bare skin of her upper arm, one finger sliding under the strap of her tank top, across her collar bone. And she wants to move, can feel her spine bending, an arc to encourage him to keep going, and her mind, unencumbered by clothes or the fact they're in wide-open daylight with people around, wants to race on and on.
She has to stop, because it's either that or suffocate, or maybe climb on top of him and do something that definitely doesn't qualify as family entertainment. The disappointed sound he makes is worth it, and his eyes - glazed, hazy, a bit surprised and a lot intent - sets something throbbing in her. It leaves her aching, and a bit stunned.
"Deanna," Cas says, and her name is a question she answers with another kiss, slower, meaningful, a promise somewhere in it.
"There are some good things," Deanna tells him when she makes herself stop again. Her mouth tastes sweet and strange. "Lots of good things," and Cas's face, smiling enough for lines at the corner of his eyes, a shy look away like she's caught him at something, says he agrees.
-end-