chrysalis
DONE. Been procrastinating on this for weeks, but here it is at last.
Apparently I ship Sam/Castiel now. Huh. Who knew?
Summary: Sam and Castiel find each other, and it isn’t profound, or tragic, or beautiful. They prefer it that way. Sam/Castiel.
Words: ~2,200
Warnings: SPOILERS for s9 uptil 9.05: Dog Dean Afternoon, because that is when I started writing this thing. A bit AU-ish, set some indefinite time in the future. Very minimal swearing, a lot of awkwardness, metaphor-abuse, present tense.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Supernatural or any of its characters.
chrysalis
One of Castiel’s most prized possessions is a calendar he picked up from where he works. It holds pride of place on the rickety old refrigerator he managed to purchase second-hand, the edges a little frayed, a little water-marked. He finds the practice of marking days and weeks and years reassuring when once he found it baffling; the false idea of forward movement that it lends is sometimes the only thing that keeps him going. (He once spent hours staring at a clock, counting down second after second until his eyes burned and his shoulders stiffened and grated like chunks of stone. It was hypnotising. It was humbling.)
once, time was putty in his hands; a fluid thing that looped upon itself with dips and unexpected pockets where whole universes existed. reshaping time is the closest he’s ever felt to god.
Sam Winchester comes stumbling into his apartment on a Tuesday, at precisely five-seventeen in the evening.
He looks unwell-his cheeks are hollow, his eyes are lost in shadow, and his gait is unsteady. Castiel catches him as he stumbles, and almost recoils, for Sam’s skin is hot, like he’s burning from the inside. He’s breathing in fast, shallow gasps, and his eyes are rolling like he’s not quite sure where he is.
Castiel stands there for a long time, feeling lost, feeling Sam slip from his grasp to sink to the floor. It’s five-twenty-three before he remembers he can’t work Heaven’s wonders through his hands anymore, and that he can use them for something else. He hooks them under Sam’s shoulders, drags him over to the sofa, and lays him there awkwardly.
“Sam,” he says, pressing his hand against Sam’s face, pushing sweat-slicked strands of hair out of his eyes. “Sam, can you hear me?”
Sam tosses his head in his direction, and his gaze focusses briefly. “Cas,” he rasps, and actually smiles, though it’s a wasted effort when he can barely draw in a breath. “Sorry to… barge… just… needed to… crash.”
“You need medicine,” Castiel tells him. “And probably water. Would you like some water?” He gets to his feet, grabs a bottle of water from the fridge, thrusts it into Sam’s hand, and starts rattling through his kitchen drawers. He pulls out several bottles of little round pills-he’s not quite sure of their names; he has them segregated according to purpose, labelled in neat, precise Enochian. (While he has no problem reading English-or, any language ever spoken, really-writing is still beyond him. His hands are stiff and clumsy from all the centuries he’s created things by just being, wanting.)
By the time he turns to Sam with the bottle marked ‘Fever’, the water-bottle has slipped from Sam’s hand, condensation soaking into the carpet. Sam sounds worse, his breaths grating in and out of him, but he’s grinning, and he says, “Look at you, Cas-I mean, just look at you.” Castiel isn’t sure whether it’s admiration or derision in Sam’s voice (isn’t sure which of those he deserves), but he pushes on. He shakes out a pill onto Sam’s shaking hand, watches him swallow, and sits beside him, helplessly twisting the bottle in his hands, hearing the pills rattle.
there was a time when he understood every molecule of every cell of sam’s body; when he could reach in and merely instruct every one of them that the danger’s past, that it needn’t destroy itself in pursuit of an unseen enemy. the body is constantly in conversation with itself; healing it once used to be nothing more than making it learn a new language.
Now he depends on chemical messengers to do the talking for him-messengers made by unreliable, clumsy, miraculous human hands.
(It’s amazing just how many things he puts his faith in as a human. Faith in God seems no less fickle than the faith humans put in each other, both consciously and unconsciously; life is an unending prayer for survival.)
Sam makes a strange choking sound, and before Castiel can sufficiently gather his wits, is vomiting over the edge of the sofa. Foul-smelling sop is soaking into his already-stained carpet, mixed with blood and bile, and Castiel crouches by the puddle and sighs. Certain bodily fluids are more cumbersome than others; he almost misses the days when he had so much trouble with urine.
“Sorry,” Sam rasps.
“You have nothing to apologise for, Sam,” Castiel says, fetching the tattered remains of an old sweatshirt and dropping it on the puddle of vomit. “It is my understanding-and bitter experience-that certain impulses are harder to control when unwell.”
Sam makes a startling, high-pitched sound that Castiel supposes is a laugh. “Unwell!” he snorts.
Castiel tentatively prods the edge of the sweatshirt with his shoe. The smell is revolting. “I suppose Dean is unwell as well,” he says off-handedly. “Should I be expecting him here soon?”
Sam’s only answer is to vomit over Castiel’s shoe.
-
Slowly, excruciatingly slowly (hyperbole is still something Castiel is getting familiar with; it’s a typically human conceit that he finds he rather enjoys), Sam gets better.
Dean never arrives; Sam is particularly… recalcitrant when asked anything about his brother. He will only tell Castiel that he isn’t dead or in any immediate danger; for everything else, he glares and turns away. Castiel stops asking after a while because he recognises this peculiar song-and-dance: once, all his brethren had bet their millennia of existence on it. Sam and Dean are fighting. For them, it’s as natural an act as breathing or eating or urinating or vomiting, and Castiel trusts that it will be resolved just as naturally.
or it will end with the end of the world. he can barely remember the time when he dealt with such grand, sweeping absolutes like they were everyday occurrences, now that feeding himself everyday has become mission in itself.
He comes back one day to a most delightful smell, and finds Sam stirring something in a pot over the stove Castiel has never used before. Sam’s pale and shaky, but this is the first time he’s gotten off the sofa without Castiel’s help, and Castiel can’t help but feel glad.
“Hey,” Sam says. “I found a packet of spaghetti in the cupboard-I mean, I don’t know if you were saving it for later, but it was just, uh, a week away from expiry, and I thought maybe-”
“Thank you, Sam,” Castiel tells him, smiling. “I’m actually quite fond of spaghetti. It is why I bought it.”
Sam looks amused. “You’ve had it before?”
Castiel frowns. “I’m… not sure.” There’s a sense-memory of the sharp taste of spices sliding over his tongue, and further, images of a worn oak table, phantom faces framed by blonde hair, and contentment, and the security that comes from knowing exactly who you are, and where you come from-but he can no more hold onto them than he can hold air. “I suppose I must have.”
Sam laughs. “Well,” he says, picking up a bowl, “you haven’t tried spaghetti until it’s been nuked in,” he sniffs, “mostly stale sauce.”
“I understand,” Castiel says. “Cooking is an act of purification; I trust you know what to do, Sam.”
To his astonishment, Sam laughs long and hard at that, until he’s gasping, muffling coughs in his sleeve. “Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, sure I do.”
They eat. The spaghetti is a strange glop of uneven consistency that burns Castiel’s tongue and leaves a peculiar aftertaste; it’s also the best meal that Castiel’s ever had. Sam barely manages three bites before his face turns an extraordinary shade of green, and he’s dashing to the bathroom to retch. Castiel waits politely for a few minutes, decides Sam is probably too sick to eat anymore, and ladles the spaghetti from Sam’s plate onto his.
A few minutes later, he looks up from his meal to find Sam sitting across from him, pale-faced and… moist, but smiling. He hesitates, wonders if he should offer Sam anything, but is too hungry to think about it much longer. Sacrifice seems an extraordinary thing: it goes against every impulse of the human body, which clamours that only it should be taken care of. He can scarcely believe the fraternal bonds that humans cultivate, in spite of everything that they are-he has been thrown into this world like an infant, still finding and testing his limits, too busy trying to take care of himself that he can barely comprehend taking care of others.
But when Sam says, “I’m glad you like the food, Cas,” he wonders if perhaps the distinctions between caregiver and the one who is being taken care of is actually that simple; wonders if the distinction exists at all.
-
A week later, Sam shaves his head, and finds a job.
They’re having Chinese takeout for dinner that night (Castiel insisted that Sam cook, of course, but Sam could only laugh), and Castiel is frequently distracted from his dinner by the light bouncing off Sam’s bare scalp. Sam’s head has a peculiar shape-oblong, a little dented in places. There are a few criss-crossing pink scars-old wounds, long-healed.
Castiel wants to run his fingers over them.
He spends a long time flustered by that urge; it doesn’t help when Sam, noticing his struggle with the noodles, leans over, and tries to teach Castiel how to use the chopsticks. Sam’s skin gleams-
“I found work today,” Sam’s saying. “I’m uh, a bouncer now. At Alfredo’s, down the street.”
Castiel envisions Sam bouncing off tables, like some crazed toy. “Is that a… sport? A kind of entertainment?”
“What? No!” Sam snorts. “It’s kind of like… security. I stand watch, make sure things are under control.”
“I see.” Castiel nods. “Is… baldness a job requirement?”
Sam looks like he wants to laugh, then frowns and blinks. “No? I guess I just… don’t want to be recognised. I just-” Sam shakes his head. “Need to be… different. Because I want to.”
Castiel understands.
-
Dean calls on the first day of the third week, and asks if Castiel’s seen Sam.
“I-” Castiel hesitates; Dean sounds worn-down and worried, but also healthy, and Castiel isn’t sure if he wants Sam to leave yet. “I haven’t seen him, Dean, I’m sorry,” he says.
“Oh.” There’s a long, long silence, then Dean says, “Thank you, Cas. Really.”
“You’re welcome, Dean,” Castiel says, and means it.
-
When Sam isn’t cooking or working, he’s at the library. He comes back everyday with an armful of books and sheaves of notes written in alternating Latin, English, and Enochian. Castiel asks him about it only once; Sam tells him he’s helping Kevin translate the angel tablet.
“We can reverse this,” Sam tells him like Castiel stills needs reassurance and encouragement, like Castiel doesn’t still believe.
Faith has never been Castiel’s problem.
There’s a day in the fifth week-it’s a Sunday, precisely eleven twenty three in the morning and Castiel’s just returned from his shift and sprawled on his bed. He checks to make sure that nobody is there with a lazy sweep of his head, then closes his eyes, runs one hand over his stomach and under the waist of his pants-
“Cas, have you seen the-oh shit, sorry-”
Castiel snaps open his eyes to see Sam already turning away, still stammering apologies, and makes a split-second decision, because this is something he knows; this is something he can give Sam.
“Sam,” he says, hoisting his pants back up and getting off the bed, “Sam, wait.”
Sam turns, saying, “It’s okay, Cas, you don’t have to-” and then Castiel is reaching up and kissing him.
It’s certainly a difficult angle due to the height differential; Castiel finds he’s slobbering over Sam’s lower lip and jaw more often than not. It’s… hard and messy, nothing like the times with Meg and April, but not entirely without pleasure.
When he finishes, Sam’s staring at him, his mouth slightly agape, lips still gleaming with spit.
Castiel feels a tendril of panic sneak its way up his spine. “I’m… sorry?”
Sam turns and walks away.
-
On the fourth day of the eighth week (the fifth day of the second week after Sam stops talking to Castiel), Sam drops next to Castiel on the couch and hands him a bowl of chilli.
Castiel takes it without a word; this arrangement is uncomfortable, but not unfamiliar. Even as an angel, he recognised this as a form of punishment; as a human, he understands it. It’s a peculiar ache, gnawing and relentless, made worse by the fact that there appears to be no anger behind it-just confusion, and distance.
There’s a warm sensation on Castiel’s hand, and he starts. It’s Sam’s hand, long, ink-stained fingers curling over his. Castiel imagines he can see the faint imprint of his own hand on Sam’s from four years (centuries) ago, when he grabbed Sam and carried him out of the Cage. He had erased the mark later to avoid suspicions. Now, however, it’s Sam’s around his, and when Castiel looks up, Sam’s smiling.
Castiel smiles back.
Finis