whose wings, though tattered... (Dean/Castiel, 2200 words, pg-13)
I am not sure if the Dean/Castiel brings out the angst in me, or the angst in me brings out the Dean/Castiel.
whose wings, though tattered, shall carry me home
(Dean/Castiel, implied Dean/Sam, past character death, 2200 words, pg-13)
Title from Cruxshadow. This may be icky in concept to some.
There is a breeze moving across the field. It stirs the long grass in lapping waves like the sea. Castiel runs his fingertips through it and remembers flying.
Dean is sitting on the steps of the house, cleaning guns that he can no longer shoot. It has been three years since he was a soldier. But his hands are still deliberate and practised on the smooth metal. They are beautiful to watch. Dean's brow is furrowed as he studies his handiwork, as if he is thinking. It is three years since Dean stopped thinking. He exists on the surface. They both do.
Sunset is coming on, rosy gold and comforting. Castiel walks back through the grass, which swishes around him like the rush of air, and remembers feathers and flight and freedom.
Dean looks up at him and smiles, shielding his eyes against the last blaze of sunlight behind Castiel. "Pizza?"
"If you want," Castiel says.
Dean smiles as easy and uncomplicated as a child.
:::
Castiel raises the hem of his shirt and watches in the silver-grey reflection of the ageing mirror as Sam's back is bared. The wound was cauterised when Castiel took possession of the body, both where the scaffolding slammed in alongside Sam's spine and where it broke through his belly.
In all other respects, Sam is exactly as he was the day he died, strong and healthy. Sam is exactly how Dean's stopped mind would remember him.
Castiel turns this way and that to examine the burnt black mark on Sam's body. He does this sometimes to remind himself that it is not him that Dean needs or wants.
:::
Dean is laughing. Castiel's hands pause in the middle of chopping vegetables. Dean laughs until he stops. The knife rests, poised among the carrots and broccoli. There is silence. Dean howls in misery and Castiel abandons the knife and the vegetables and the simmering pot of soup and goes to him.
Dean is staring out of the scruffy sash window and he is howling. The noise is high and unnatural and horrible. Castiel does not look out of the window because he knows Dean is not seeing anything that is there. He gathers Dean to him, shushing him, kissing his temple and his hairline and his cheekbone.
"Shh, it's okay," he whispers, "it's okay. I'm here. You're safe. I've got you."
Dean clings to him. His hands are as clumsy as an old man's. He presses his face into Castiel's breastbone and Castiel does not have to tell Sam's heart to beat. His arms close around Dean and he is aware of Dean's fragility in human terms, no longer simply in the incomparable context of a heavenly being against an earthly one. Dean is hot and shaking, moaning, and Castiel can feel the sweetheart-bow of Dean's lips pressed open on his chest even through the thick flannel of his shirt.
"Sammy," Dean says.
"I'm here," Castiel says, and Dean settles into him. "I'm here," Castiel says and it's not a lie because he's trying to be.
:::
Once Castiel accepts what Dean needs, it requires a multitude of little sins. It requires this, sometimes: kissing Dean gently over and over until he smiles, touching Dean and handling him until he makes those small, pleased noises, fucking him in a slow, powerful pulse of sweat and silk and flexing muscle until Dean is too exhausted to fight sleep.
It is two o'clock in the morning and the foxes shriek outside like startled babies. Dean is asleep on his side and Castiel has left the bed in order to sit and study him.
There is a statue of a granite angel that stands watch at the gate of a cemetery in Rochester. It has stood there for many years. Its face is tilted downwards and the rain has carved tearstains down its cheeks. And Castiel is reminded of it when he looks at Dean. He is reminded of the angel's beauty, and of its lines worn away and damaged.
Leaning forward, he smoothes the pad of his thumb down Dean's philtrum, over the soft swell of his mouth, coming to rest on the fullness of his lower lip.
The first time Castiel took pleasure from touching Dean, he thought it was an echo of Sam. He thought it was a memory left behind in the bones. He was unfamiliar with the sensation and it was only when he sought it out, fascinated and addicted, that he realised. This is not something he's taken from Sam. This belongs to him.
The foxes scream and the clock ticks on towards three in the morning, and Castiel wakes Dean with a kiss, so that he may kiss him again.
:::
There is a fairytale about a mermaid who falls in love with a prince. She promises away her voice and follows the prince ashore, and every step she walks is over knives and broken glass and fire.
Sam is full of poisoned blood. It prickles and cuts, like wearing a suit of steel wool. Mostly, Castiel can breathe through the pain now but it is always present. He is rereading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe on the tattered couch in the living room, sunlight turning the air muzzy, when Sam's blood suddenly boils in his veins. It scalds him, sets him on fire, and his screams bring Dean running.
It is too much for him to be in the world with this kind of pain. Instinct tells him to get away, get away, abandon the vessel, run back home, back to Heaven.
Somehow, he remains. The room is bright and spinning. Castiel's blood is a toxic ache that eats at him from inside. Dean hunches over him, concerned and protective, and he cradles Castiel's head in his lap, rocks him and strokes the hair from his face. Dean's voice is low and his hands are cool on Castiel's fevered skin. He lets himself be comforted.
"Hey," says Dean. He looks down at Castiel, smiles when Castiel is able to look back at him. "There you are. God, don't worry me like that. What'm I s'posed to do without you?"
Castiel sits up slowly. Dean's arms stay around him, steadying and supporting him. The spine of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is cracked open under Dean's knee. Castiel tugs at it ineffectually and Dean grins and pulls it free for him.
"There you go," he says. "Jeez, Sammy, such a geek."
A different, though no less familiar soreness rises up in Castiel, and both are associated with being Sam Winchester.
In the fairytale, the mermaid loses the prince to someone else. Unable to kill the prince, she attempts to destroy herself and is instead taken up by God. Surprisingly, it is generally considered a happy ending.
:::
The last leaf on the branch trembles in a gust of wind and is plucked free. It drifts down and catches in Castiel's hair as he gathers the laundry from the clothesline. In the distance, the clouds are thick and black. Dean's navy blue t-shirt has come unstitched at the hem. Castiel fingers the unravelling thread.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Hello, Uriel," Castiel says. He folds the t-shirt neatly. "It's going to rain."
He turns around. Uriel's vessel is a middle-aged woman with sad blue eyes and lines around her mouth.
"What are you doing?" Uriel says again.
Castiel begins to take his socks from the line as he answers. "I'm helping Dean." One of his socks has worn through on the heel.
"Dean Winchester's lost his mind and you're wearing his dead brother in order to engage in an unnatural relationship with him. How exactly is that helping? What you're doing is wrong, Castiel."
"I couldn't stop it from happening but I can stop it from hurting him. He needs someone. He needs Sam."
"You're not him!"
Thunder growls from far away. The first flecks of rain touch Castiel's face. He gathers the laundry together and turns towards the house.
"I know that," he says.
Uriel follows close behind and the fierce expression sits oddly on his vessel's naturally worried face. "Then you also know you have to stop this. Come away. Nature will takes its course with Dean and then, maybe, he'll be with his brother again."
"You're suggesting I let Dean waste away and die, insane and alone? No."
The vessel's hand is small and prematurely wrinkled. The nails are ragged and a little discoloured from too much housework. But there's Uriel's strength behind it as he grabs Castiel's arm. There's another shudder of thunder and Castiel's wings snap loose and stretch out into the crackling air.
"You have crossed the line," Uriel says. "You give me no choice but to-"
A bullet skims through the scant space between their faces and splinters the doorframe. Across the yard, Dean lowers his gun and looks at Uriel.
"I don't know the lady you're possessing but she seems nice. Be a real shame for me to have to kill her just 'cause you won't take fuck off and die for an answer." He walks towards them, gaze still fixed on Uriel. "Get the fuck away from him and get the fuck off our property and don't come back."
More thunder announces the storm's approach. Uriel looks between Castiel and Dean and his vessel is so entirely unsuitable for expressing his wrath, too meek and mild to hold such self-righteous fury.
Then he's gone.
Dean climbs the steps to stand in front of Castiel. Castiel's wings shiver as Dean looks them over thoughtfully. Then he turns to the door, pauses to run his fingertip around the bullet hole.
"Fucking angels," Dean says. "C'mon, Sammy, Baywatch is on."
:::
Two days after Uriel visited, Dean still addresses the space around Castiel's shoulders when he speaks. His gaze lazily travels the empty air, not searching so much as speculating. Castiel feels strangely self-conscious and he begins to hunch over, one more thing he shares with Sam Winchester besides the body and the brother.
The storm that came with Uriel has not left and rain batters the living room windows. The room is dull, lit up only by the bright flickering colours of the cartoon on TV. Dean says he likes the cartoons they show in the early mornings of the weekend but really he seems to like the tradition of it. They sit on the couch and Dean props himself up against Castiel, legs slung over Castiel's lap or his shoulder nudged against Castiel's belly, and Castiel reads and smiles and responds to Dean's occasional commentary.
Onscreen, an anthromorphised cheetah is wrestling with a heavily muscled man in skintight red latex. Castiel goes back to The Talented Mr Ripley, turns the page, frowns as Ripley dumps Dickie's body in the water, and then realises that Dean's face is towards him and not the TV.
He looks up. "What is it?" he says.
Dean is studying each invisible quill of Castiel's wings. Castiel is used to Dean seeing things that are not there. He is not used to Dean seeing things that are.
Dean's gaze does not move. "Show me."
The anthromorphised cheetah has won. The man in red latex is escaping in a futuristically designed aircraft. Castiel suspects he will be back; he was in the last episode he saw too, after all. Dean is still looking at his wings as if he can see them.
It took a second after Sam Winchester died, while Dean was still screaming, for Castiel to make his decision. He is a creature of the greater good. Dean needed his brother more than he needs Castiel. Castiel would have fallen if that was what Dean needed. He would have become human for Dean.
Dean only needed his brother and now Castiel can't even give him that.
"Show me," Dean says again.
The room gets darker as the shadow of Castiel's wings fills it. They spread out and out and out. Dean watches them. When they are fully extended, they give one slow beat and the air shivers, and Dean's eyes snap to Castiel's face. He twists around where he sits, coming awkwardly to straddle Castiel's knee. His hair needs brushing and he is still warm from their bed. He puts his hands on Castiel's - Sam's - face, fingers slipping into his hair and his thumbs at the corners of Castiel's eyes, and peers inside him.
Then he leans in and he kisses Castiel. He doesn't close his eyes while he kisses him. He licks Castiel's mouth opens, tilts his face to better angle their mouths and kisses him. He is thoughtful and careful in kissing him but it is not a chaste kiss.
The movement of Castiel's wings is steady and hollow like a heartbeat.
At last, Dean allows breath between their mouths. He doesn't say anything; he just looks inside Sam's eyes to where Castiel is looking back at him. It might be the first time that he's seen Castiel inside there or maybe, maybe, Castiel thinks, the blind have led the blind. He will never know because he will never ask.
Because the next thing Dean says is as he's getting to his feet. "Want me to fry some bacon for your breakfast, Sammy? C'mon, it's Saturday, live a little, clog up a few arteries."
Castiel's wings are still a wraithlike presence in the room when Dean goes to the kitchen but Dean does not see them.
~end
whose wings, though tattered, shall carry me home
(Dean/Castiel, implied Dean/Sam, past character death, 2200 words, pg-13)
Title from Cruxshadow. This may be icky in concept to some.
There is a breeze moving across the field. It stirs the long grass in lapping waves like the sea. Castiel runs his fingertips through it and remembers flying.
Dean is sitting on the steps of the house, cleaning guns that he can no longer shoot. It has been three years since he was a soldier. But his hands are still deliberate and practised on the smooth metal. They are beautiful to watch. Dean's brow is furrowed as he studies his handiwork, as if he is thinking. It is three years since Dean stopped thinking. He exists on the surface. They both do.
Sunset is coming on, rosy gold and comforting. Castiel walks back through the grass, which swishes around him like the rush of air, and remembers feathers and flight and freedom.
Dean looks up at him and smiles, shielding his eyes against the last blaze of sunlight behind Castiel. "Pizza?"
"If you want," Castiel says.
Dean smiles as easy and uncomplicated as a child.
:::
Castiel raises the hem of his shirt and watches in the silver-grey reflection of the ageing mirror as Sam's back is bared. The wound was cauterised when Castiel took possession of the body, both where the scaffolding slammed in alongside Sam's spine and where it broke through his belly.
In all other respects, Sam is exactly as he was the day he died, strong and healthy. Sam is exactly how Dean's stopped mind would remember him.
Castiel turns this way and that to examine the burnt black mark on Sam's body. He does this sometimes to remind himself that it is not him that Dean needs or wants.
:::
Dean is laughing. Castiel's hands pause in the middle of chopping vegetables. Dean laughs until he stops. The knife rests, poised among the carrots and broccoli. There is silence. Dean howls in misery and Castiel abandons the knife and the vegetables and the simmering pot of soup and goes to him.
Dean is staring out of the scruffy sash window and he is howling. The noise is high and unnatural and horrible. Castiel does not look out of the window because he knows Dean is not seeing anything that is there. He gathers Dean to him, shushing him, kissing his temple and his hairline and his cheekbone.
"Shh, it's okay," he whispers, "it's okay. I'm here. You're safe. I've got you."
Dean clings to him. His hands are as clumsy as an old man's. He presses his face into Castiel's breastbone and Castiel does not have to tell Sam's heart to beat. His arms close around Dean and he is aware of Dean's fragility in human terms, no longer simply in the incomparable context of a heavenly being against an earthly one. Dean is hot and shaking, moaning, and Castiel can feel the sweetheart-bow of Dean's lips pressed open on his chest even through the thick flannel of his shirt.
"Sammy," Dean says.
"I'm here," Castiel says, and Dean settles into him. "I'm here," Castiel says and it's not a lie because he's trying to be.
:::
Once Castiel accepts what Dean needs, it requires a multitude of little sins. It requires this, sometimes: kissing Dean gently over and over until he smiles, touching Dean and handling him until he makes those small, pleased noises, fucking him in a slow, powerful pulse of sweat and silk and flexing muscle until Dean is too exhausted to fight sleep.
It is two o'clock in the morning and the foxes shriek outside like startled babies. Dean is asleep on his side and Castiel has left the bed in order to sit and study him.
There is a statue of a granite angel that stands watch at the gate of a cemetery in Rochester. It has stood there for many years. Its face is tilted downwards and the rain has carved tearstains down its cheeks. And Castiel is reminded of it when he looks at Dean. He is reminded of the angel's beauty, and of its lines worn away and damaged.
Leaning forward, he smoothes the pad of his thumb down Dean's philtrum, over the soft swell of his mouth, coming to rest on the fullness of his lower lip.
The first time Castiel took pleasure from touching Dean, he thought it was an echo of Sam. He thought it was a memory left behind in the bones. He was unfamiliar with the sensation and it was only when he sought it out, fascinated and addicted, that he realised. This is not something he's taken from Sam. This belongs to him.
The foxes scream and the clock ticks on towards three in the morning, and Castiel wakes Dean with a kiss, so that he may kiss him again.
:::
There is a fairytale about a mermaid who falls in love with a prince. She promises away her voice and follows the prince ashore, and every step she walks is over knives and broken glass and fire.
Sam is full of poisoned blood. It prickles and cuts, like wearing a suit of steel wool. Mostly, Castiel can breathe through the pain now but it is always present. He is rereading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe on the tattered couch in the living room, sunlight turning the air muzzy, when Sam's blood suddenly boils in his veins. It scalds him, sets him on fire, and his screams bring Dean running.
It is too much for him to be in the world with this kind of pain. Instinct tells him to get away, get away, abandon the vessel, run back home, back to Heaven.
Somehow, he remains. The room is bright and spinning. Castiel's blood is a toxic ache that eats at him from inside. Dean hunches over him, concerned and protective, and he cradles Castiel's head in his lap, rocks him and strokes the hair from his face. Dean's voice is low and his hands are cool on Castiel's fevered skin. He lets himself be comforted.
"Hey," says Dean. He looks down at Castiel, smiles when Castiel is able to look back at him. "There you are. God, don't worry me like that. What'm I s'posed to do without you?"
Castiel sits up slowly. Dean's arms stay around him, steadying and supporting him. The spine of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is cracked open under Dean's knee. Castiel tugs at it ineffectually and Dean grins and pulls it free for him.
"There you go," he says. "Jeez, Sammy, such a geek."
A different, though no less familiar soreness rises up in Castiel, and both are associated with being Sam Winchester.
In the fairytale, the mermaid loses the prince to someone else. Unable to kill the prince, she attempts to destroy herself and is instead taken up by God. Surprisingly, it is generally considered a happy ending.
:::
The last leaf on the branch trembles in a gust of wind and is plucked free. It drifts down and catches in Castiel's hair as he gathers the laundry from the clothesline. In the distance, the clouds are thick and black. Dean's navy blue t-shirt has come unstitched at the hem. Castiel fingers the unravelling thread.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Hello, Uriel," Castiel says. He folds the t-shirt neatly. "It's going to rain."
He turns around. Uriel's vessel is a middle-aged woman with sad blue eyes and lines around her mouth.
"What are you doing?" Uriel says again.
Castiel begins to take his socks from the line as he answers. "I'm helping Dean." One of his socks has worn through on the heel.
"Dean Winchester's lost his mind and you're wearing his dead brother in order to engage in an unnatural relationship with him. How exactly is that helping? What you're doing is wrong, Castiel."
"I couldn't stop it from happening but I can stop it from hurting him. He needs someone. He needs Sam."
"You're not him!"
Thunder growls from far away. The first flecks of rain touch Castiel's face. He gathers the laundry together and turns towards the house.
"I know that," he says.
Uriel follows close behind and the fierce expression sits oddly on his vessel's naturally worried face. "Then you also know you have to stop this. Come away. Nature will takes its course with Dean and then, maybe, he'll be with his brother again."
"You're suggesting I let Dean waste away and die, insane and alone? No."
The vessel's hand is small and prematurely wrinkled. The nails are ragged and a little discoloured from too much housework. But there's Uriel's strength behind it as he grabs Castiel's arm. There's another shudder of thunder and Castiel's wings snap loose and stretch out into the crackling air.
"You have crossed the line," Uriel says. "You give me no choice but to-"
A bullet skims through the scant space between their faces and splinters the doorframe. Across the yard, Dean lowers his gun and looks at Uriel.
"I don't know the lady you're possessing but she seems nice. Be a real shame for me to have to kill her just 'cause you won't take fuck off and die for an answer." He walks towards them, gaze still fixed on Uriel. "Get the fuck away from him and get the fuck off our property and don't come back."
More thunder announces the storm's approach. Uriel looks between Castiel and Dean and his vessel is so entirely unsuitable for expressing his wrath, too meek and mild to hold such self-righteous fury.
Then he's gone.
Dean climbs the steps to stand in front of Castiel. Castiel's wings shiver as Dean looks them over thoughtfully. Then he turns to the door, pauses to run his fingertip around the bullet hole.
"Fucking angels," Dean says. "C'mon, Sammy, Baywatch is on."
:::
Two days after Uriel visited, Dean still addresses the space around Castiel's shoulders when he speaks. His gaze lazily travels the empty air, not searching so much as speculating. Castiel feels strangely self-conscious and he begins to hunch over, one more thing he shares with Sam Winchester besides the body and the brother.
The storm that came with Uriel has not left and rain batters the living room windows. The room is dull, lit up only by the bright flickering colours of the cartoon on TV. Dean says he likes the cartoons they show in the early mornings of the weekend but really he seems to like the tradition of it. They sit on the couch and Dean props himself up against Castiel, legs slung over Castiel's lap or his shoulder nudged against Castiel's belly, and Castiel reads and smiles and responds to Dean's occasional commentary.
Onscreen, an anthromorphised cheetah is wrestling with a heavily muscled man in skintight red latex. Castiel goes back to The Talented Mr Ripley, turns the page, frowns as Ripley dumps Dickie's body in the water, and then realises that Dean's face is towards him and not the TV.
He looks up. "What is it?" he says.
Dean is studying each invisible quill of Castiel's wings. Castiel is used to Dean seeing things that are not there. He is not used to Dean seeing things that are.
Dean's gaze does not move. "Show me."
The anthromorphised cheetah has won. The man in red latex is escaping in a futuristically designed aircraft. Castiel suspects he will be back; he was in the last episode he saw too, after all. Dean is still looking at his wings as if he can see them.
It took a second after Sam Winchester died, while Dean was still screaming, for Castiel to make his decision. He is a creature of the greater good. Dean needed his brother more than he needs Castiel. Castiel would have fallen if that was what Dean needed. He would have become human for Dean.
Dean only needed his brother and now Castiel can't even give him that.
"Show me," Dean says again.
The room gets darker as the shadow of Castiel's wings fills it. They spread out and out and out. Dean watches them. When they are fully extended, they give one slow beat and the air shivers, and Dean's eyes snap to Castiel's face. He twists around where he sits, coming awkwardly to straddle Castiel's knee. His hair needs brushing and he is still warm from their bed. He puts his hands on Castiel's - Sam's - face, fingers slipping into his hair and his thumbs at the corners of Castiel's eyes, and peers inside him.
Then he leans in and he kisses Castiel. He doesn't close his eyes while he kisses him. He licks Castiel's mouth opens, tilts his face to better angle their mouths and kisses him. He is thoughtful and careful in kissing him but it is not a chaste kiss.
The movement of Castiel's wings is steady and hollow like a heartbeat.
At last, Dean allows breath between their mouths. He doesn't say anything; he just looks inside Sam's eyes to where Castiel is looking back at him. It might be the first time that he's seen Castiel inside there or maybe, maybe, Castiel thinks, the blind have led the blind. He will never know because he will never ask.
Because the next thing Dean says is as he's getting to his feet. "Want me to fry some bacon for your breakfast, Sammy? C'mon, it's Saturday, live a little, clog up a few arteries."
Castiel's wings are still a wraithlike presence in the room when Dean goes to the kitchen but Dean does not see them.
~end