Fic: Though my tail would lash, part 8/? in Oz
Though my tail would lash
2,000 words, SPN Dean/Castiel slash. Spoilers for all of season 4.
Many thanks to zelda_zee, who does what she can with the nonsense I write.
This is a continuation of Welcome to Oz. Master post of chapters here.
Irritation has been tickling under Dean’s skin all night. A little part of him knows this, is aware that he was needlessly snippy with Castiel throughout dinner, and feels-not bad, because that would imply he’s done something wrong-but maybe like he should let up a little. But the other part of him, the 90% part of him, feels entitled to the crankiness, to snapping back when Castiel just doesn’t seem to get it (‘it’ being everything, tonight). And so what if Castiel had gotten progressively quieter as the meal continued-it probably just means he’s not in a chatty mood, not that his feelings are hurt or anything.
Though my tail would lash
Irritation has been tickling under Dean’s skin all night. A little part of him knows this, is aware that he was needlessly snippy with Castiel throughout dinner, and feels-not bad, because that would imply he’s done something wrong-but maybe like he should let up a little. But the other part of him, the 90% part of him, feels entitled to the crankiness, to snapping back when Castiel just doesn’t seem to get it (‘it’ being everything, tonight). And so what if Castiel had gotten progressively quieter as the meal continued-it probably just means he’s not in a chatty mood, not that his feelings are hurt or anything. He’s not a 12-year-old girl, for Christ’s sake.
There comes a point, however, when Dean’s mood tips like a bucket over from irritable to full on pissed off. This point comes when Dean stands to clear the dishes (it’s an olive branch, maybe, but most definitely not an act of contrition) and reaches for Castiel’s empty plate. Dean’s arm somehow goes wide and his elbow swings in an awkward half circle before colliding with an empty bowl. Naturally, it flies off the table and onto the floor with a spectacular crash.
Castiel startles back and Dean lets loose a string of invective targeted at the dish, the floor, gravity, and eventually the universe. It includes curses in every language he’s ever learned, every insult he’s ever heard, and then finally every colorful saying he knows that doesn’t fall into the first two categories. By the time he’s finished, Dean’s out of breath and Castiel seems caught between a mixture of shock and disapproval.
“It is only a bowl, Dean,” Castiel says, and the way he says it is so intolerably smug that the anger Dean thought he’d released on impact rises back up again.
“Really, Cas? And here I was, thinking this bowl could turn back time, or fly us the fuck out of this place.” Dean wrings every drop of sarcasm he can from the words, relishing it. “Thanks for clearing that up for me, though.”
Castiel’s lips press down into a thin line. “Dean,” is all he says, but it’s in that warning tone, the one that follows with crowding of personal space and, “You should show me some respect.” Except now it’s all empty threats and they both know it.
“You gonna throw me back into Hell?” Dean says. “Go ahead and do it. Sure beats the living daylights out of sticking around this Model Town meets Bomb Shelter meets Brady Bunch, USA.” It’s a lie of course-Dean may be bored out of his gourd most days but being bored ain’t got nothing on being tortured or torturing, and they both know that too.
“Dean, you are being-” Castiel’s nostrils flare slightly, and he stops.
“Difficult?” Dean drops his voice an octave and does his best raspy imitation. “Immature? Insufferable?”
“Childish.” Castiel meets Dean’s stare and doesn’t back down. Dean feels a rush of triumph when he sees the anger there. “Unreasonable. Ridiculous.”
“You know what I think is ridiculous? This.” Dean scoops a piece of broken pottery off the floor and waves it in the air. “The fact that we’re eating out of bowls your dead vessel bought when he moved to a fucking fallout shelter to escape the nuclear apocalypse. That is ridiculous.”
“We do not know for certain that--”
“Blah blah, any number of possibilities, blah blah, demon tricks, angel prisoners, genie in a fucking bottle.” Dean drops the shard of pottery to the ground with a satisfying crash. “A whole fucking month and we still don’t know a damn thing more than when we started.”
“We know more about this place,” Castiel says tersely. “We know more about its inhabitants.”
“More about this place?” Dean repeats, and he stands up, hears the ceramic crunch underneath his shoes. “What, like there’s a park and a drive-in movie theater and some goddamn cornfields? All we’ve got now is a top ten list of locations to take hot dates to.”
“What do you want me to say?” Castiel’s tenuous thread of self control breaks, finally, and he gets to his feet. He draws himself up to stand chest to chest, shoulder to shoulder with Dean, voice rising. “What do you want me to tell you?”
“I want to know what the fuck we’re doing here, Cas!” Dean’s not yelling, but he’s close, so close. “I want to know why the fuck we’ve started unpacking stuff-Jimmy’s stuff-like we’re planning to live here, like we’re playing goddamn house together!”
“We are not playing anything!” Castiel says and he slams his right hand down on the kitchen table hard enough to make the silverware jump. “We are-we are doing our best, Dean!”
“Yeah, well, maybe our best ain’t good enough anymore!” Dean does yell this time, letting the anger and frustration ooze out of him, out of his pores, like slime. “Because we’re still here!”
“What else would you have me do, Dean?” Castiel yells in return, but he sounds tired and not in the way he used to, in that angelic and longsuffering way he used to have. Now Castiel sounds human, and pissed. “What else would you have me do?”
“I don’t know, Cas-all I know is that we’re missing everything!” Dean steps back, bumps into a chair. He’s not backing down he’s just-he’s getting some space. Space to breathe. “There’s an apocalypse going on and we’re missing it because someone’s benched us and we can’t do a damn thing about it. Can’t stop it, can’t fight it, can’t save--” Dean cuts off, feeling the bitterness choke like bile in his throat. “Can’t save our fucking selves, much less anyone else.”
“You will stop Lucifer,” Castiel says, but it’s the way he says it-with such fierce, fiery conviction and faith that it makes Dean want to vomit. “When the time is right, when it is fated, you will--”
“How can you still believe that?” Dean shouts. “After what the angels did to you? After how they played us all like goddamned chess pieces? How can you believe anything they ever said to you?”
“Because inside me I know who you are!” Before Dean knows what’s happening, Castiel grabs Dean’s hand and shoves it against Castiel’s chest, over his racing heart. “I know that you are meant for this, Dean, I know this like my own heartbeat. And I knew the moment we met in Perdition that it was right, and it was true.”
“Yeah, well, I was a monster back then and now you’re a human.” Dean shoves Castiel weakly with his hand (Castiel doesn’t move an inch) and then pulls back. “What the hell do either of us know anyway?”
“He will not be able to stand against you, for you are a righteous man and you will end what you began,” Castiel says. “You will strike him down where he stands and stop the reign of horror he sought to wreak.”
“Fuck you, Cas,” Dean says, and sinks down into his chair. He doesn’t want the fight to leave him but he can’t sustain it, not with the nausea rising up like a wave. “How am I supposed to do that, huh? The Devil versus some dumbass guy stuck on top of a goddamn mountain too stupid to--” It almost slips out before Dean swallows it back down.
He thinks about that damn balloon ride still, and about whether he’d make the same choice if he could go back and do it again (which of course he can’t, but it doesn’t stop him from thinking about it). Some days, he wakes up and wishes he’d gone, because of Sam, and it’s been a month, or maybe a month and ten years if the whackjobs living in this town are to believed and-well, the kid never could figure out how to live on his own without Dean watching out for him.
Other days, Dean wakes up and goes to work and comes home and tells Castiel about his boring day and they make jokes and laugh and go to bed and Dean doesn’t even think about hot air balloons once. Dean feels a mixture of guilt and fear and something else he can’t quite identify when he realizes it’s been a few days since he last thought about that balloon, a few days since he last thought about Sam, a few days since he felt miserable and wanted to go back.
Yesterday, Dean caught himself unloading inventory at the store, thinking Cas might be interested in this book, and then, I wonder what he’s doing right now. He’d looked forward to going home with that book and the frightening thing wasn’t that he looked forward to going home, it was that Dean’s conception of ‘home’ has somehow shifted from the Impala and crappy motel rooms and Sam to a house with a yard and a deck and honest to God furniture, and Castiel. And the expression on Castiel’s face when Dean gave him the book (just some Kurt Vonnegut--it wasn’t like it was a first edition copy of the Bible or something) made Dean feel like, for the first time in his whole life, he’d done something completely right.
Dean’s life had been simple: Sam, the Impala, saving people, hunting things, food, sex, and the open road. Most things added up right, even if he usually didn’t like the answer. But then Castiel came along with his angel crap and his God crap and his I believe in you crap, and it threw Dean’s life all out of whack. It’s like one of those algebra problems Castiel’s now practicing for school, only Dean’s always sucked at math and he never bothered figuring out how to make the two sides of the equation balance. He never had to, before Castiel. And all he knows now is that the idea of leaving Castiel behind in this place, alone, is about as pleasant as a hard kick to the head.
If Dean had known he’d be stuck on the top of a mountain indefinitely, maybe he wouldn’t have stayed. But sometimes, when he looks at Castiel, he thinks maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference.
“I do not know how, and I do not know when,” Castiel says, and his words are absolute, certain, “but I know you will. It is your destiny.”
“Great,” Dean exhales deeply. “Destiny.”
“You are not alone, Dean.” Castiel tries to catch Dean’s gaze. “You told me that. I will be by your side meet you meet Lucifer, and until that time, I will not waver.”
“When the hell did I say something that cheesy?” Dean asks. “I don’t remember that.”
“Last week,” Castiel says with an almost smile. “In the bathroom?”
“Figures that the one day I go all after school special you turn and throw it back in my face,” Dean grouses with no real venom. He props his elbows up on the table and runs a hand over his face. “We’re missing it, Cas. Unless Lucifer decides to take some vacation days in Mountaindale, we’re missing everything. And who the fuck knows what’s been happening, who knows if everyone-” Dean squeezes his eyes shut against the image of Bobby and Sam lying motionless in a pile of rubble.
Dean expects some platitudes about destiny and togetherness and not giving up, and maybe some flowery language from the Bible. Instead, there’s silence and then the slow slide of Castiel’s fingers (soft and uncalloused like a man who’s only worked behind a desk his whole life) over Dean’s right hand resting on the tabletop. Castiel doesn’t do or say anything besides letting his fingers curl slightly into Dean’s palm, and the two of them stay like that, in silence, until the sick feeling in Dean’s stomach fades away.
Onto the next chapter: Follow the yellow brick road
2,000 words, SPN Dean/Castiel slash. Spoilers for all of season 4.
Many thanks to zelda_zee, who does what she can with the nonsense I write.
This is a continuation of Welcome to Oz. Master post of chapters here.
Irritation has been tickling under Dean’s skin all night. A little part of him knows this, is aware that he was needlessly snippy with Castiel throughout dinner, and feels-not bad, because that would imply he’s done something wrong-but maybe like he should let up a little. But the other part of him, the 90% part of him, feels entitled to the crankiness, to snapping back when Castiel just doesn’t seem to get it (‘it’ being everything, tonight). And so what if Castiel had gotten progressively quieter as the meal continued-it probably just means he’s not in a chatty mood, not that his feelings are hurt or anything.
Though my tail would lash
Irritation has been tickling under Dean’s skin all night. A little part of him knows this, is aware that he was needlessly snippy with Castiel throughout dinner, and feels-not bad, because that would imply he’s done something wrong-but maybe like he should let up a little. But the other part of him, the 90% part of him, feels entitled to the crankiness, to snapping back when Castiel just doesn’t seem to get it (‘it’ being everything, tonight). And so what if Castiel had gotten progressively quieter as the meal continued-it probably just means he’s not in a chatty mood, not that his feelings are hurt or anything. He’s not a 12-year-old girl, for Christ’s sake.
There comes a point, however, when Dean’s mood tips like a bucket over from irritable to full on pissed off. This point comes when Dean stands to clear the dishes (it’s an olive branch, maybe, but most definitely not an act of contrition) and reaches for Castiel’s empty plate. Dean’s arm somehow goes wide and his elbow swings in an awkward half circle before colliding with an empty bowl. Naturally, it flies off the table and onto the floor with a spectacular crash.
Castiel startles back and Dean lets loose a string of invective targeted at the dish, the floor, gravity, and eventually the universe. It includes curses in every language he’s ever learned, every insult he’s ever heard, and then finally every colorful saying he knows that doesn’t fall into the first two categories. By the time he’s finished, Dean’s out of breath and Castiel seems caught between a mixture of shock and disapproval.
“It is only a bowl, Dean,” Castiel says, and the way he says it is so intolerably smug that the anger Dean thought he’d released on impact rises back up again.
“Really, Cas? And here I was, thinking this bowl could turn back time, or fly us the fuck out of this place.” Dean wrings every drop of sarcasm he can from the words, relishing it. “Thanks for clearing that up for me, though.”
Castiel’s lips press down into a thin line. “Dean,” is all he says, but it’s in that warning tone, the one that follows with crowding of personal space and, “You should show me some respect.” Except now it’s all empty threats and they both know it.
“You gonna throw me back into Hell?” Dean says. “Go ahead and do it. Sure beats the living daylights out of sticking around this Model Town meets Bomb Shelter meets Brady Bunch, USA.” It’s a lie of course-Dean may be bored out of his gourd most days but being bored ain’t got nothing on being tortured or torturing, and they both know that too.
“Dean, you are being-” Castiel’s nostrils flare slightly, and he stops.
“Difficult?” Dean drops his voice an octave and does his best raspy imitation. “Immature? Insufferable?”
“Childish.” Castiel meets Dean’s stare and doesn’t back down. Dean feels a rush of triumph when he sees the anger there. “Unreasonable. Ridiculous.”
“You know what I think is ridiculous? This.” Dean scoops a piece of broken pottery off the floor and waves it in the air. “The fact that we’re eating out of bowls your dead vessel bought when he moved to a fucking fallout shelter to escape the nuclear apocalypse. That is ridiculous.”
“We do not know for certain that--”
“Blah blah, any number of possibilities, blah blah, demon tricks, angel prisoners, genie in a fucking bottle.” Dean drops the shard of pottery to the ground with a satisfying crash. “A whole fucking month and we still don’t know a damn thing more than when we started.”
“We know more about this place,” Castiel says tersely. “We know more about its inhabitants.”
“More about this place?” Dean repeats, and he stands up, hears the ceramic crunch underneath his shoes. “What, like there’s a park and a drive-in movie theater and some goddamn cornfields? All we’ve got now is a top ten list of locations to take hot dates to.”
“What do you want me to say?” Castiel’s tenuous thread of self control breaks, finally, and he gets to his feet. He draws himself up to stand chest to chest, shoulder to shoulder with Dean, voice rising. “What do you want me to tell you?”
“I want to know what the fuck we’re doing here, Cas!” Dean’s not yelling, but he’s close, so close. “I want to know why the fuck we’ve started unpacking stuff-Jimmy’s stuff-like we’re planning to live here, like we’re playing goddamn house together!”
“We are not playing anything!” Castiel says and he slams his right hand down on the kitchen table hard enough to make the silverware jump. “We are-we are doing our best, Dean!”
“Yeah, well, maybe our best ain’t good enough anymore!” Dean does yell this time, letting the anger and frustration ooze out of him, out of his pores, like slime. “Because we’re still here!”
“What else would you have me do, Dean?” Castiel yells in return, but he sounds tired and not in the way he used to, in that angelic and longsuffering way he used to have. Now Castiel sounds human, and pissed. “What else would you have me do?”
“I don’t know, Cas-all I know is that we’re missing everything!” Dean steps back, bumps into a chair. He’s not backing down he’s just-he’s getting some space. Space to breathe. “There’s an apocalypse going on and we’re missing it because someone’s benched us and we can’t do a damn thing about it. Can’t stop it, can’t fight it, can’t save--” Dean cuts off, feeling the bitterness choke like bile in his throat. “Can’t save our fucking selves, much less anyone else.”
“You will stop Lucifer,” Castiel says, but it’s the way he says it-with such fierce, fiery conviction and faith that it makes Dean want to vomit. “When the time is right, when it is fated, you will--”
“How can you still believe that?” Dean shouts. “After what the angels did to you? After how they played us all like goddamned chess pieces? How can you believe anything they ever said to you?”
“Because inside me I know who you are!” Before Dean knows what’s happening, Castiel grabs Dean’s hand and shoves it against Castiel’s chest, over his racing heart. “I know that you are meant for this, Dean, I know this like my own heartbeat. And I knew the moment we met in Perdition that it was right, and it was true.”
“Yeah, well, I was a monster back then and now you’re a human.” Dean shoves Castiel weakly with his hand (Castiel doesn’t move an inch) and then pulls back. “What the hell do either of us know anyway?”
“He will not be able to stand against you, for you are a righteous man and you will end what you began,” Castiel says. “You will strike him down where he stands and stop the reign of horror he sought to wreak.”
“Fuck you, Cas,” Dean says, and sinks down into his chair. He doesn’t want the fight to leave him but he can’t sustain it, not with the nausea rising up like a wave. “How am I supposed to do that, huh? The Devil versus some dumbass guy stuck on top of a goddamn mountain too stupid to--” It almost slips out before Dean swallows it back down.
He thinks about that damn balloon ride still, and about whether he’d make the same choice if he could go back and do it again (which of course he can’t, but it doesn’t stop him from thinking about it). Some days, he wakes up and wishes he’d gone, because of Sam, and it’s been a month, or maybe a month and ten years if the whackjobs living in this town are to believed and-well, the kid never could figure out how to live on his own without Dean watching out for him.
Other days, Dean wakes up and goes to work and comes home and tells Castiel about his boring day and they make jokes and laugh and go to bed and Dean doesn’t even think about hot air balloons once. Dean feels a mixture of guilt and fear and something else he can’t quite identify when he realizes it’s been a few days since he last thought about that balloon, a few days since he last thought about Sam, a few days since he felt miserable and wanted to go back.
Yesterday, Dean caught himself unloading inventory at the store, thinking Cas might be interested in this book, and then, I wonder what he’s doing right now. He’d looked forward to going home with that book and the frightening thing wasn’t that he looked forward to going home, it was that Dean’s conception of ‘home’ has somehow shifted from the Impala and crappy motel rooms and Sam to a house with a yard and a deck and honest to God furniture, and Castiel. And the expression on Castiel’s face when Dean gave him the book (just some Kurt Vonnegut--it wasn’t like it was a first edition copy of the Bible or something) made Dean feel like, for the first time in his whole life, he’d done something completely right.
Dean’s life had been simple: Sam, the Impala, saving people, hunting things, food, sex, and the open road. Most things added up right, even if he usually didn’t like the answer. But then Castiel came along with his angel crap and his God crap and his I believe in you crap, and it threw Dean’s life all out of whack. It’s like one of those algebra problems Castiel’s now practicing for school, only Dean’s always sucked at math and he never bothered figuring out how to make the two sides of the equation balance. He never had to, before Castiel. And all he knows now is that the idea of leaving Castiel behind in this place, alone, is about as pleasant as a hard kick to the head.
If Dean had known he’d be stuck on the top of a mountain indefinitely, maybe he wouldn’t have stayed. But sometimes, when he looks at Castiel, he thinks maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference.
“I do not know how, and I do not know when,” Castiel says, and his words are absolute, certain, “but I know you will. It is your destiny.”
“Great,” Dean exhales deeply. “Destiny.”
“You are not alone, Dean.” Castiel tries to catch Dean’s gaze. “You told me that. I will be by your side meet you meet Lucifer, and until that time, I will not waver.”
“When the hell did I say something that cheesy?” Dean asks. “I don’t remember that.”
“Last week,” Castiel says with an almost smile. “In the bathroom?”
“Figures that the one day I go all after school special you turn and throw it back in my face,” Dean grouses with no real venom. He props his elbows up on the table and runs a hand over his face. “We’re missing it, Cas. Unless Lucifer decides to take some vacation days in Mountaindale, we’re missing everything. And who the fuck knows what’s been happening, who knows if everyone-” Dean squeezes his eyes shut against the image of Bobby and Sam lying motionless in a pile of rubble.
Dean expects some platitudes about destiny and togetherness and not giving up, and maybe some flowery language from the Bible. Instead, there’s silence and then the slow slide of Castiel’s fingers (soft and uncalloused like a man who’s only worked behind a desk his whole life) over Dean’s right hand resting on the tabletop. Castiel doesn’t do or say anything besides letting his fingers curl slightly into Dean’s palm, and the two of them stay like that, in silence, until the sick feeling in Dean’s stomach fades away.
Onto the next chapter: Follow the yellow brick road