[Fic] Domesticated | Chapter Three
Title: Domesticated
Author: kototyph
Artist: levanera
Summary: Being the only angel in the entire Pacific Northwest can be tiring, even if these days Castiel spends more of his time shoveling manure than fighting off the hordes of hell. It's an occupational hazard, unfortunately; he earns most of his living rehabilitating wild animals a few miles outside Spokane. Wild animals like Dean, for instance- a mountain lion who's entirely too smart for his own good. There's a man in Castiel's dreams named Dean too, but that part's just a huge coincidence.
The recommended quarantine time for new animals at Cold Creek is six weeks minimum, but all it takes is a poorly-timed flash flood at a sister sanctuary for the puma to be moved up the line for a new home. The new enclosure previously belonged to a grizzly bear (recently reintroduced to the wilds of the Canadian Rockies) and it's three times the size of the cat's current space, with any number of interesting rocks and logs and a beautiful gnarled oak growing up through the center Castiel knows the cat will love.
First, though. First he has to convince it to get back in the transport crate.
"Definitely raised a pet," Meg whispers. They watch the puma, crouched as if it were stalking wild deer, inch forward towards the McDonald's cheeseburger (stripped of onions, ketchup, pickle and anything else noxious to the feline digestive system) in Castiel's hand, held at the barely-cracked opposite door of the crate.
"Quiet," he tells her, and wiggles the burger enticingly. "Here, boy. Here, Snickers."
The puma yanks itself back from the crate with a vicious snarl, and after a startled pause the big cat staff break off into muffled peals of laughter.
"I think Snickers is a no-go, Mr. Novak," Andy says helpfully, and Castiel curses as he realizes that, once again, he'll have to do everything the hard way.
They do get the puma in the crate, eventually, with several more cheeseburgers sacrificed for the good of the cause (followed by lectures from every member of their veterinary staff on obesity and the dangers of feeding carnivores too many complex carbohydrates). Castiel keeps up a constant stream of nonsense noise, waxing rhapsodic about the many charms of Not-Snickers' new enclosure, and finally, the puma saunters into the crate as if it had intended to do so all along.
And refuses to get out again.
"What's the matter now?" Castiel asks beseechingly, crouching in the chilly mud next to the crate. "Look! Fresh air! Sunshine!"
"Well, I'm done," Meg announces, standing wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. "Give me a yell when he makes up his freaking mind."
There's general consensus from the other volunteers and they move off, leaving Castiel alone with what must be the most infuriatingly stubborn wild animal he's ever encountered.
He sighs hugely and slides down the side of crate, letting his head fall back to knock against the chipwood paneling. He hears the puma shift, snuffling at his hair through the crate vents, and he looks up at the overcast sky with a rueful smile.
"Whenever you're ready, then," he says, and closes his eyes.
"I'm dreaming, right?" the man says quietly, as if he's talking to himself. He gazes out towards the far shore.
"Dreaming?" Castiel asks. Yes, this must be another dream. Although Castiel's never had dreams so lucid.
"Things get a little confused," the man continues, setting aside the fishing rod in his hand. The rod, Castiel notes, that's still hooked onto the collar of Castiel's coat. "It's... it's like I'm half-asleep all the time. It's hard to tell what's real. Hell, the first few days I was sure it was all a dream. I barely remembered where I was, who I was."
"And... who are you?" Castiel feels compelled to ask, and the man looks back at him, a surprised arch to his brows.
"It's me, Cas," he says. "My name is-"
"What did you call him?"
The visitor starts, then looks around guiltily as the other tourists turn to see who Castiel is addressing. "Uh, what?"
"What did you just call him?" Castiel asks again, a little louder, and the visitor pulls his hands away from the chain link and rises from where he'd been kneeling next to the enclosure fence. On the other side of it, the puma yowls and rears onto its back legs, trying to fit its paws through the gaps in the metal to get at him.
"I, ah. Called him Dean?" the young man says, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. He's a head taller than most of the other guests, his souvenir Cold Creek sweatshirt a size too small and stretched tight over his broad chest. The female staffers have been making eyes at him all morning.
"Dean," Castiel repeats.
"Like... James Dean?" the man says awkwardly.
"... I see," Castiel says, although he really doesn't. "Please refrain from direct contact with the animals. The sanctuary isn't liable for any injuries received if you don't follow proper safety procedure."
"Sure, no problem. Sorry," the visitor says quickly, stuffing his hands into his pockets. The puma drops back to all fours and throughout the next part of Castiel's informational speech it paces, restless and agitated. The young man doesn't look back at it, for all appearances listening intently to Castiel's descriptions of mountain lion behavior in the wild, but the puma doesn't once take its eyes off him.
When the group moves on, it follows alongside them until it can't go any further, and Castiel watches it watch them until the enclosure disappears around a corner.
"James Dean was a film star, Castiel. Have you been living under a rock the past few decades?"
"These endless insults are why I so treasure our friendship, Balthazar," Castiel responds dryly. He's cooking himself dinner in his perfunctory little kitchen, standing at the sink as the water drains out of the pasta he's just boiled.
"Thank you, darling, I do try. And also, do you realize this is the second call time you've called me in as many weeks?"
"I am unfortunately aware," he sighs, shaking the colander.
"I'd like to get excited, but they've both been about a bloody cougar." A pause. "Is it too much to hope that's a euphemism and you've actually found yourself a woman?"
Castiel rolls his eyes and sets the pasta on the counter, turning to the stove and the reheated bottle of spaghetti sauce on the burner. "Balthazar, I'm hanging up now."
"I was only ask-"
It's a strange coincidence, certainly.
Castiel sits with his knees drawn up to his chin, head resting on his arms, and watches the puma bolt its evening meal. The new volunteers have all gone, the night staff are in the south pens monitoring a young Asiatic black bear's first birth, and Castiel is technically off-duty. It's just them in this corner of the sanctuary, the enclosure lit by a single yellowed halogen light.
The cat is licking the bottom of the bloody tray, and Castiel tries "Dean?" experimentally.
The cat looks up at him, ears pricked forward.
"Dean," he says again, and it licks its chops and trots up to the fence, rubbing a muzzle stained red against Castiel's palm when he lays it against the mesh.
"Cas!" the man with the fishing rod greets him, looking back over his shoulder with a broad smile.
"Dean," Cas says cautiously, and Dean gives him a thumbs up and motions him forward- away from the dock, up onto the grassy bank where a long black car waits, sleek and leonine. Two bottles of beer sit side by side on the roof.
"Y'know, I thought I was dead the first time I came here," Dean says, plucking one from the top of the car and settling a hip against the driver's-side door.
At the comment Castiel laughs, and Dean says, "What, you don't think this could be Heaven?"
"I've been to Heaven," Castiel says. He walks up off the rough planks and onto the rocky ground. He hesistantly leans against the hood, then sits, letting his legs swing through empty space. He takes the beer Dean gives him. "It's not nearly as... pleasant." The earthly spheres have a kind of ephemeral loveliness that is brief and all too fragile, compared to the eternal, sepulchral magnificence of Heaven.
"Seriously?" Dean says. He knocks his shoulder against Castiel's, companionably. "Hey, tell me, is God as big a dick in person?"
It's startlingly easy to lean into Dean, as if they were friends. As if they were more.
"I don't know," Castiel says. "I've never seen Him."
Castiel may, like Azrael and Nehandriel before him, have finally been driven mad by the banalities of human existence.
He doesn't tell anyone about Dean, or the other Dean. If there's a connection, he decides, it's purely in his head. With his mind now housed in the organic workings of a frail human brain and neurostructure, he should probably be grateful something like this hasn't happened sooner.
The label on the puma's cage reads SNICKERS - PUMA CONCOLOR, M20120915, as do all his records and files. But when the last of the stitches come out, the note Castiel makes in his calendar is Dean - end treatment, and when he calls Balthazar, it's that name he uses.
"I think Dean's lonely," he frets into the phone, late in October. "Understimulated, at least. He's been pacing so much-"
"Is this about that goddamn cat again, Castiel?"
"Balthazar-"
"I'm hanging up now."
"Baltha-!"
A few days later, Castiel receives a package covered with impenetrably foreign postage (Malaysian, he thinks. Possibly Thai) and inside finds close to a hundred catnip toys, small pink mice with gossamer ribbons and tiny bells stitched to their sides. The note inside says, For your sweetums.
Castiel would be more annoyed, but the puma loves them. With Andy's patient step-by-step instructions, he manages to send Balthazar a picture of the puma rolling in a pile of the fluffy pink toys, pupils blown to the size of quarters.
The text he gets back seems strangely non sequitor.
/are you still going to the convocation, then?/
Frowning, Castiel carefully pecks out, /Yes. Why?/
Balthazar doesn't respond.
"So, Mr. Samuel... Hagar," Castiel says, looking down at the application to make sure he has the correct name. "According to this, you've loved animals since you were a child, have hopes of opening your own wildlife refuge one day, and just finished a graduate degree in large animal husbandry at South Dakota State." He looks up. "Congratulations."
"Thanks, Mr. Novak," the man says. "I just go by Sam, if you'd like."
"Alright, then. Sam." Castiel studies him, the upright line of his back, hands folded neatly in front of him, eyes direct and all but dripping earnestness. "You came through with a tour last week," he realizes out loud.
"Um, yes," Sam says shamefacedly, hand going to the back of his neck in a gesture Castiel remembers well. "Sorry again for upsetting your mountain lion."
"Snickers can be a bit fractious," Castiel allows, and Sam's eyes go wide.
"Snickers?" he asks, voice strained.
Castiel gives him a blandly inquiring look, and Sam bites him lip. Strangely, it looks like he's trying not to laugh.
"It's just… I, ah, was expecting something a little more… fierce?"
"I see," Castiel says, although he really doesn't. "Why don't you tell me a little more about your work experience, Mr. Hagar?"
They're in the car, now, rolling down a highway that's nothing but a black ribbon against dull grey grass and an overexposed sky.
"Don't get me wrong, Cas, it's nice that you try," Dean says, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "But seriously, dude. Those catnip mice? They're great, thanks, but afterwards I just want to punch you in the face. Don't think I didn't see you take that picture."
Castiel smiles at him from the passenger's seat, not really understanding why Dean would care about other-Dean's toys but happy anyway. Happy, because Dean is here and it feels like there's something smoldering in his chest, a half-lit coal waiting for the right wind to blow it into flames.
"And nice going with the Snickers thing," Dean grumbles. "Sam is never going to let that one go. You don't know him yet, but trust me, he can be such a little asshole-"
Castiel stares at him for a moment."Do you... know Mr. Hagar?"
"Sam Hagar? That little creep," Dean says, but his derision sounds somehow fond, familiar. "And yes, I know Sam. Haven't you been listening to anything I talk about?"
Azrael believed spoons were the ultimate expression of divine love and hoarded them in the billions, Castiel reminds himself. Nehandriel claimed the Leviathan were hiding in the Aral Sea and drained the entire basin. Hallucinating one man isn't so bad, compared to that.
Dean's looking at him like he expects an answer, and Castiel fumbles out "I- shouldn't hire him, then?"
"What?" Dean away. "No, no. Kid's smart. He'll do good work."
Castiel makes a thoughtful noise and the ouroboros winds away, a black river snaking under their wheels.
"Hey, Jimmy?"
"Mmm?" He looks up from his lunch, a cup of instant ramen.
Meg's leaning up against the staff kitchenette counter, looking over at the group of new volunteers filing out their paperwork at the table across the room.
"Who's the big guy?"
There's no question as to who she means. Sam makes their humble plastic chairs look like children's furniture, even hunched in on himself to make more room for other people at the table.
"Ah. Mr. Hagar. He had an excellent resume." Castiel doesn't add that it was his references that made the deal.
"Mmhm," Meg says distractedly. There's something in the demon's eyes, an intense interest that Castiel is immediately wary of.
He watches her closely under the pretext of finishing his noodles, but all she does is stand there and smile behind her hand: a small, malevolent thing that makes her eyes gleam briefly black where they're fixed on Sam's bowed shoulders.
The wallpaper in this motel room is reminiscent of pea soup and overcooked cabbage, and the color of the carpet is frankly even more horrendous. Cas opens his mouth to say so, and-
"Oh," he says instead. "Oh, what-?"
His breath hitches as Dean's mouth moves on him, sliding slow and sure over the trembling muscles of his bare stomach. His lips, his tongue- so hot, like a brand, slick and wet where they-
"Dean..."
"Like that?" the man murmurs into the cut of his hip, hands braced under Castiel's thighs to spread them wide. Thumbs stroke into the hollows his bones make under his skin, and Dean sucks lazily at the crease between leg and groin, Castiel's hips coming right up off the bed. "Dean- what-" he moans.
"Shhh," Dean laughs, firms his hold and turns his head-
-and Castiel wakes with his hands twisted in the sheets instead of Dean's hair, panting up at the ceiling.
Castiel has never quite mastered the art of self-satisfaction, and as a result he's in an unbelievably foul mood for the rest of the day.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Castiel says to the crowd before him. "Do you have any idea why I've called you here this afternoon?"
There are glances of confusion among them, uncomfortable murmurs and shifting like sheep before the sheepdog. Sam is conspicuous in the back row, a giant compared to their mostly-female, mostly-veterinary-student new volunteer group. In the enclosure next to them, Dean sits at the bars with his long tail wrapped neatly around his feet, grooming a paw with a distinct air of deep satisfaction.
"I called you here," Castiel says with deadly intensity, "because for the past few days I've been finding these in Snickers' cage."
He brandishes a crumpled aluminum dish, licked completely clean but for a few smears of apple-cinnamon filling along the bottom.
"Do you know what this is?" he asks tightly.
"Um," one of the girls says. "It's a... it's a pie plate?"
"Yes," Castiel says. "It is a pie plate. Would anyone care to explain to me why they felt it necessary to give this puma, an obligate albeit opportunistic carnivore, several pounds carbs, sugar and fruit?"
On the other side of the fence, Dean lets out a sharp yowl and nervous giggles break out amongst the volunteers. Castiel glares at the cat and Dean looks right back at him, smacking his lips.
"Volunteers, please." Castiel holds up the tin again. "Big cats do not eat apple pie," he says with narrow eyes. "There will therefore be no more apple pie. Do we understand each other?"
Various permutations of "Yes, sir," issue from the crowd, and more laughter.
"Good. You may go," Castiel says, and on the other side of the fence Dean stretches out his paw to try and knock the pie plate out of Castiel's hand.
"Bad cat," Castiel scolds, and Dean snorts at him.
"You do not get between a man and his pie, Cas," Dean says, shoving Castiel back into the headboard and kneels above him to shrug out of his jacket, yank off his shirt.
Castiel twists his fingers into the belt loops on Dean's jeans and tugs impatiently, and Dean comes willingly, with a smile that's sweet and devious at the same time. It tastes sweet, too, under the clumsy, unpracticed push of Castiel's tongue- a little like apples, and spices.
"I do not want to hear about the pie," Castiel growls into Dean's mouth, winding his arms around the man's neck so he can pull him down, pull him closer."I want sex."
"Mmm, I have absolutely no problem with that," Dean purrs, and they topple backwards onto the mattress.
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