[FIC]: In the Kingdom of the Sons (Dean/Castiel, Adult)
Title: In the Kingdom of the Sons
Author: maboheme @ chocolate_muse
Rating: R
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Count: ~2,400
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to the CW and Kripke. I own nothing and no one.
Notes: Coda, of a sort, to 5.16. Written for my spn_30snapshots table to the prompt dream. Title from Adrienne Rich. Thank you nantahala for the read-through.
Summary: In dreams they are still holy, they are still wanted.
~
Daybreak. Dean opens his eyes; blinks.
The world has gone golden in the morning light. To the east, the rising sun dresses the trees in ribbons of yellow, turning the sky into a soft tangerine bruise. To the west, green valleys and meandering meadows. The air is wet, clean, and fresh; it smells like northern Cali in the spring, but Dean can't recall how he got here.
Dean breathes deep for a moment, gathers his bearings. Listens. When he can't sense anything around him, he starts walking, hands in his pockets and eyes on the sloping land and the expanding sky. Dean can make out hills in the distance, and that's when he realizes he's been here before. There's a small town a couple of miles east, a quiet little place with a church-lined Main Street, a single stoplight, and a mom-and-pop shop that sells warm coffee and fresh pie daily.
But Dean doesn't head toward town; instead he follows an old path through a tangle of pines. His boots slide over the mossy ground as he comes to a stop outside of a secluded homestead. Here all around him, the orange-blue hush of a milky morning is taking root. Dewdrops have landed on the thin cobwebs caught between the branches of the trees in front of him. The drops look like diamonds strung in the air, suspended in space. When a breeze sends the webs shaking -- from one moment to the next -- the world shifts, shrinks, narrows, exhales.
Dean exhales with it, closes his eyes tight; he knows this place. It was home the summer he was eight and first learning about the things that go bump in the night, about the things that shouldn't exist, but do. The summer he fell in love with the idea of magic and myth and becoming a hero like his dad. After school when the other boys in town would ride their bikes down Main and invite him to come along, Dean would say no, have to get home, have to feed Sammy, have to help people. Dean remembers afternoons spent learning to carry the weight of a gun. He remembers his too small hands curling around smooth metal -- hands too small for such a big destiny. Two decades later, Dean thinks, nothing much has changed.
Dean opens his eyes to see the small cottage, as weathered, beaten, and dilapidated as most places he's ever called home. He shifts for a moment, unsure. But his legs decide it for him, moving him forward, down the gravel path toward the front of the house.
Dean is careful as he climbs onto the old porch, wary of the worn and rotting wood sagging toward the ground. For a moment he stills, listening to the metal chimes moving with the wind, the rustling of trees. Dean expects to hear Dad's gruff voice announcing he's going out for a few hours, telling him to behave and to look after Sammy. He expects to hear the hungry roar of the Impala as she kicks up dirt and speeds away. He expects to feel his stomach plunge, that unsteady feeling he always use to get when Dad left. But he hears nothing, feels nothing, because this is a dream, and he's no longer that boy.
Dean approaches the front door, wraps his hand around the knob and twists, entering the house with little fanfare. It's as he remembers. Small and cool, furnished in flea market stock, framed by windows that look out at the overgrown backyard and the surrounding hillside. The panes are pushed up, the lace curtains pulled back, letting in fresh air and natural light.
Dean tours the living room and the front bedroom. The house's only sounds are created by his boots stomping over the old hardwood floorboards. Everything is dusty and still, frozen in time. A house without a family. He saves the back bedroom, the one he used to sleep in, for last. He breathes deeply as he enters, dispersing shadow and dust. He eyes the familiar peeling paint and the Speed Racer poster over the twin bed in the middle of the room. The bed's tired grey comforter is the same as he remembers. Out the bedroom window, he can see the old oak tree he and Sammy use to climb and beyond that the wild fields where he learned to shoot.
"Hello, Dean."
Dean jumps, turns to the one corner of the room he hadn't bothered to look. He laughs softly; he's not surprised to find the room occupied, even less surprised to see the familiar shape sitting at the small desk in the corner.
Dean smirks, says, "Cas, get out of my head."
Castiel arches a brow, responds, "If you want me to I will."
"No, I don't want you to," Dean huffs and moves to stand beside Castiel at the small oak desk. When Dean was a kid, he use to sit here at the desk and work on his "inventions." He was good at building things, finding how everything fit together. Good at making things work. But that was a long time ago, and these days everything he touches breaks. Nothing fits the way it's supposed to.
Dean reaches out his hand, takes Castiel's in his own. This fits. This is all a dream, but Cas feels warm and real to him. Cas feels good. "You've been gone for a few days," Dean says, can't help the concern he hears in his own words. "Was worried."
"I'm sorry," Cas says, voice gone quiet and a little distant, whether due to their shared dream state or something else, Dean can't tell. Castiel looks away from Dean and toward the window when he says, "I needed time to think about certain things."
Dean clears his throat, feeling heavy with the memory of all they've learned in the past week. It's been an epically shitty week, even by Apocalypse standards. "Thinking is good," Dean finally says. "What are you up to now?"
Cas meets Dean's eyes, says simply, "Poking around in your dreams again."
Dean quirks his lips. "Cas."
"Dean." One word, just his name, but there's something in Castiel's voice that Dean recognizes from his own. Exhaustion. Guilt. Maybe fear, doubt. Something Dean is not use to hearing there.
Dean exhales a long breath, rubs a hand over his face. Offers, "It's gonna be okay."
"Your attempt at comfort is admirable," Castiel says, and that something in his voice grows, deepens, and Dean wants to reach for it, grab it, twist it, and throw it away.
Instead Dean takes Castiel's hand and drags the angel up and forward until they are both standing. Face to face, chest to chest, hand in hand.
Castiel's eyes are very blue and very deep, and Dean's maybe drowning a little when he looks into them. "I really am sorry, Cas," he says, soft.
Cas frowns, takes a step back, and shakes his head. "This is not your fault."
"The fuck it's not," Dean growls, turns his head to stare at the desk again. He feels weighed down, too heavy in this moment. Too old and tired and nothing like he use to be.
Dean looks up when Castiel touches his cheek, turns his head until they regard each other once again. "You are not responsible for the decisions of my father," Cas tells him, but that something in his voice resounds, thickens. Defeat. Acceptance. Anger. Betrayal. The combination of everything Dean's been feeling for so long it's like hearing his own heart break.
Dean reaches out, takes Castiel's face between both of his hands, pulls him close. He lets their mouths do all the work. Lips parting and tongues pressing inside, sucking and demanding, full of desperation and want, they kiss like it's the last thing they'll ever do. Too many days of running and fighting and pushing, bound together in this war, held under the weight of everything they are, of destinies that can't be averted. So, maybe this is all there is at day's end: dream kisses that feel so damn real, all tongue and lips and teeth and breath; hearts that are aching but somehow still manage to work past the pain to keep right on beating.
Something inside Dean finally lets go, and something in Cas must do the same, because suddenly they are grappling and struggling just to hold on to each other, hold each other up. This is just a dream, but they keep kissing because it's comfort and need, and it's anger and loss, and they've been on the edge so long the fall is all they have left.
"Dean." Both a name and a sound, a curse and a blessing, and Castiel's fingers are tightening their hold on Dean's shoulders, and Dean hands are fisting in Castiel's hair, pulling so hard it must be painful but Cas isn't fighting it. He kisses Dean harder between every gasp of breath.
"Cas," Dean shudders and sighs, and thinks they're as likely to sob as to fuck. But Cas is pushing him down, onto the bed, grinding his hips against Dean's own. Dean groans softly, slides his hands down Castiel's back, fingers digging into the curve of lean hips. They are back to kissing, a hard, wet slide of insistent mouths. There is something so incredibly human about this act, Dean thinks. So human it hurts.
The truth is: sometimes they need each other so much Dean can't breathe. Some days are harder than others; some days they are left bleeding and crying on the side of the road, spinning out of control. Some days there is no light and all they can do is stumble around in the darkness until they find each other, hold on just like this. On those days days Cas will kiss the blood and tears from Dean's face, and Dean will offer everything he has left to give, as hollow and broken as he is.
On the good days, there are dreams like this, dreams without monsters. Dreams with Cas in a sunlit place, maybe the only safe place left in the world. Dreams of flesh and light and weightlessness. Dreams that turn the world into a quiet fiction.
In dreams they are still holy, they are still wanted. In dreams, there is a kingdom for all orphaned sons.
~
Light spills through the windows, fills the room, and beneath Dean's hands Cas is long and smooth and golden with the sun. The light paints a map across his skin, stripes like roads, and Dean wants to follow every one, see where they take him. Dean maybe wants to put his mouth all over Cas, all over this body the angel has made his own, taste every part of him that is dark and sweet and bitter: lips and cock and shoulder and chest and ear and nose and navel and thigh and toe.
Dean laughs, because he is ridiculous. He's in a dream house in a dream world, and he is dreaming with Cas of a place he only knew for three months when he was eight, and everything felt possible.
Cas is humming a smooth sound, and Dean is laughing again because he doesn't know how they went from kissing to being naked in a too-small twin bed, wrapped in each other and the light.
When Cas draws him closer, Dean turns to look at him and asks, "Feeling better?"
Cas smiles slow and easy. Angelic. "I think I am."
Reaching out, Dean brushes his thumb over Castiel’s curving lips. "Yeah, me too."
Castiel's hands spread over Dean's chest, and Dean can't help but arch under the touch, melt down into the bed as Castiel's warm palm settles over his heart.
Cas feels good -- real and more than a dream, especially when his tongue slips in and out of Dean's mouth, before working its way along Dean's neck and chin, laving into the dip between Dean's collarbone.
Dean hums, body thrumming, as he brushes his own fingers across Castiel's hips, before wrapping his hand around the thick length of his cock. Cas gasps weakly, thrusts into Dean's fist. Dean meets his movements, cupping Castiel's balls, mapping the soft, silk skin there before settling his hand back on the base of his shaft.
When Cas works his tongue back into Dean's mouth, Dean works their cocks together, creating a jumbled mix of rhythm and motion: licking and tasting, pumping and jerking. Cas is holding on tight, his fingers burning new brands into Dean's shoulders. And Dean doesn't want to wake up; it’s so good here, the pressure and friction so real, so right. Dean pumps their cocks with sure, measured strokes, and Cas chokes off broken, raw sounds with every lurch forward into Dean’s palm.
They break together, tumble through a haze of motion and pressure, an infinite fall into completion. Dean is breathless, dream-spun; everything else about them is thick and soft, radiant. They push and shift together until there is only the spill of come and light between them.
Dean turns to Cas, whispers into the quiet come down: "When I wake up, you'll be there right?"
Castiel's eyes shine bright for a moment, a hint of a distant sun. "Always," he says quietly, before he leans in to whisper-kiss the word against Dean's lips. He murmurs the same promise into the next kiss and the next and the next and the next.
-fin-
Author: maboheme @ chocolate_muse
Rating: R
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Count: ~2,400
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to the CW and Kripke. I own nothing and no one.
Notes: Coda, of a sort, to 5.16. Written for my spn_30snapshots table to the prompt dream. Title from Adrienne Rich. Thank you nantahala for the read-through.
Summary: In dreams they are still holy, they are still wanted.
~
Daybreak. Dean opens his eyes; blinks.
The world has gone golden in the morning light. To the east, the rising sun dresses the trees in ribbons of yellow, turning the sky into a soft tangerine bruise. To the west, green valleys and meandering meadows. The air is wet, clean, and fresh; it smells like northern Cali in the spring, but Dean can't recall how he got here.
Dean breathes deep for a moment, gathers his bearings. Listens. When he can't sense anything around him, he starts walking, hands in his pockets and eyes on the sloping land and the expanding sky. Dean can make out hills in the distance, and that's when he realizes he's been here before. There's a small town a couple of miles east, a quiet little place with a church-lined Main Street, a single stoplight, and a mom-and-pop shop that sells warm coffee and fresh pie daily.
But Dean doesn't head toward town; instead he follows an old path through a tangle of pines. His boots slide over the mossy ground as he comes to a stop outside of a secluded homestead. Here all around him, the orange-blue hush of a milky morning is taking root. Dewdrops have landed on the thin cobwebs caught between the branches of the trees in front of him. The drops look like diamonds strung in the air, suspended in space. When a breeze sends the webs shaking -- from one moment to the next -- the world shifts, shrinks, narrows, exhales.
Dean exhales with it, closes his eyes tight; he knows this place. It was home the summer he was eight and first learning about the things that go bump in the night, about the things that shouldn't exist, but do. The summer he fell in love with the idea of magic and myth and becoming a hero like his dad. After school when the other boys in town would ride their bikes down Main and invite him to come along, Dean would say no, have to get home, have to feed Sammy, have to help people. Dean remembers afternoons spent learning to carry the weight of a gun. He remembers his too small hands curling around smooth metal -- hands too small for such a big destiny. Two decades later, Dean thinks, nothing much has changed.
Dean opens his eyes to see the small cottage, as weathered, beaten, and dilapidated as most places he's ever called home. He shifts for a moment, unsure. But his legs decide it for him, moving him forward, down the gravel path toward the front of the house.
Dean is careful as he climbs onto the old porch, wary of the worn and rotting wood sagging toward the ground. For a moment he stills, listening to the metal chimes moving with the wind, the rustling of trees. Dean expects to hear Dad's gruff voice announcing he's going out for a few hours, telling him to behave and to look after Sammy. He expects to hear the hungry roar of the Impala as she kicks up dirt and speeds away. He expects to feel his stomach plunge, that unsteady feeling he always use to get when Dad left. But he hears nothing, feels nothing, because this is a dream, and he's no longer that boy.
Dean approaches the front door, wraps his hand around the knob and twists, entering the house with little fanfare. It's as he remembers. Small and cool, furnished in flea market stock, framed by windows that look out at the overgrown backyard and the surrounding hillside. The panes are pushed up, the lace curtains pulled back, letting in fresh air and natural light.
Dean tours the living room and the front bedroom. The house's only sounds are created by his boots stomping over the old hardwood floorboards. Everything is dusty and still, frozen in time. A house without a family. He saves the back bedroom, the one he used to sleep in, for last. He breathes deeply as he enters, dispersing shadow and dust. He eyes the familiar peeling paint and the Speed Racer poster over the twin bed in the middle of the room. The bed's tired grey comforter is the same as he remembers. Out the bedroom window, he can see the old oak tree he and Sammy use to climb and beyond that the wild fields where he learned to shoot.
"Hello, Dean."
Dean jumps, turns to the one corner of the room he hadn't bothered to look. He laughs softly; he's not surprised to find the room occupied, even less surprised to see the familiar shape sitting at the small desk in the corner.
Dean smirks, says, "Cas, get out of my head."
Castiel arches a brow, responds, "If you want me to I will."
"No, I don't want you to," Dean huffs and moves to stand beside Castiel at the small oak desk. When Dean was a kid, he use to sit here at the desk and work on his "inventions." He was good at building things, finding how everything fit together. Good at making things work. But that was a long time ago, and these days everything he touches breaks. Nothing fits the way it's supposed to.
Dean reaches out his hand, takes Castiel's in his own. This fits. This is all a dream, but Cas feels warm and real to him. Cas feels good. "You've been gone for a few days," Dean says, can't help the concern he hears in his own words. "Was worried."
"I'm sorry," Cas says, voice gone quiet and a little distant, whether due to their shared dream state or something else, Dean can't tell. Castiel looks away from Dean and toward the window when he says, "I needed time to think about certain things."
Dean clears his throat, feeling heavy with the memory of all they've learned in the past week. It's been an epically shitty week, even by Apocalypse standards. "Thinking is good," Dean finally says. "What are you up to now?"
Cas meets Dean's eyes, says simply, "Poking around in your dreams again."
Dean quirks his lips. "Cas."
"Dean." One word, just his name, but there's something in Castiel's voice that Dean recognizes from his own. Exhaustion. Guilt. Maybe fear, doubt. Something Dean is not use to hearing there.
Dean exhales a long breath, rubs a hand over his face. Offers, "It's gonna be okay."
"Your attempt at comfort is admirable," Castiel says, and that something in his voice grows, deepens, and Dean wants to reach for it, grab it, twist it, and throw it away.
Instead Dean takes Castiel's hand and drags the angel up and forward until they are both standing. Face to face, chest to chest, hand in hand.
Castiel's eyes are very blue and very deep, and Dean's maybe drowning a little when he looks into them. "I really am sorry, Cas," he says, soft.
Cas frowns, takes a step back, and shakes his head. "This is not your fault."
"The fuck it's not," Dean growls, turns his head to stare at the desk again. He feels weighed down, too heavy in this moment. Too old and tired and nothing like he use to be.
Dean looks up when Castiel touches his cheek, turns his head until they regard each other once again. "You are not responsible for the decisions of my father," Cas tells him, but that something in his voice resounds, thickens. Defeat. Acceptance. Anger. Betrayal. The combination of everything Dean's been feeling for so long it's like hearing his own heart break.
Dean reaches out, takes Castiel's face between both of his hands, pulls him close. He lets their mouths do all the work. Lips parting and tongues pressing inside, sucking and demanding, full of desperation and want, they kiss like it's the last thing they'll ever do. Too many days of running and fighting and pushing, bound together in this war, held under the weight of everything they are, of destinies that can't be averted. So, maybe this is all there is at day's end: dream kisses that feel so damn real, all tongue and lips and teeth and breath; hearts that are aching but somehow still manage to work past the pain to keep right on beating.
Something inside Dean finally lets go, and something in Cas must do the same, because suddenly they are grappling and struggling just to hold on to each other, hold each other up. This is just a dream, but they keep kissing because it's comfort and need, and it's anger and loss, and they've been on the edge so long the fall is all they have left.
"Dean." Both a name and a sound, a curse and a blessing, and Castiel's fingers are tightening their hold on Dean's shoulders, and Dean hands are fisting in Castiel's hair, pulling so hard it must be painful but Cas isn't fighting it. He kisses Dean harder between every gasp of breath.
"Cas," Dean shudders and sighs, and thinks they're as likely to sob as to fuck. But Cas is pushing him down, onto the bed, grinding his hips against Dean's own. Dean groans softly, slides his hands down Castiel's back, fingers digging into the curve of lean hips. They are back to kissing, a hard, wet slide of insistent mouths. There is something so incredibly human about this act, Dean thinks. So human it hurts.
The truth is: sometimes they need each other so much Dean can't breathe. Some days are harder than others; some days they are left bleeding and crying on the side of the road, spinning out of control. Some days there is no light and all they can do is stumble around in the darkness until they find each other, hold on just like this. On those days days Cas will kiss the blood and tears from Dean's face, and Dean will offer everything he has left to give, as hollow and broken as he is.
On the good days, there are dreams like this, dreams without monsters. Dreams with Cas in a sunlit place, maybe the only safe place left in the world. Dreams of flesh and light and weightlessness. Dreams that turn the world into a quiet fiction.
In dreams they are still holy, they are still wanted. In dreams, there is a kingdom for all orphaned sons.
~
Light spills through the windows, fills the room, and beneath Dean's hands Cas is long and smooth and golden with the sun. The light paints a map across his skin, stripes like roads, and Dean wants to follow every one, see where they take him. Dean maybe wants to put his mouth all over Cas, all over this body the angel has made his own, taste every part of him that is dark and sweet and bitter: lips and cock and shoulder and chest and ear and nose and navel and thigh and toe.
Dean laughs, because he is ridiculous. He's in a dream house in a dream world, and he is dreaming with Cas of a place he only knew for three months when he was eight, and everything felt possible.
Cas is humming a smooth sound, and Dean is laughing again because he doesn't know how they went from kissing to being naked in a too-small twin bed, wrapped in each other and the light.
When Cas draws him closer, Dean turns to look at him and asks, "Feeling better?"
Cas smiles slow and easy. Angelic. "I think I am."
Reaching out, Dean brushes his thumb over Castiel’s curving lips. "Yeah, me too."
Castiel's hands spread over Dean's chest, and Dean can't help but arch under the touch, melt down into the bed as Castiel's warm palm settles over his heart.
Cas feels good -- real and more than a dream, especially when his tongue slips in and out of Dean's mouth, before working its way along Dean's neck and chin, laving into the dip between Dean's collarbone.
Dean hums, body thrumming, as he brushes his own fingers across Castiel's hips, before wrapping his hand around the thick length of his cock. Cas gasps weakly, thrusts into Dean's fist. Dean meets his movements, cupping Castiel's balls, mapping the soft, silk skin there before settling his hand back on the base of his shaft.
When Cas works his tongue back into Dean's mouth, Dean works their cocks together, creating a jumbled mix of rhythm and motion: licking and tasting, pumping and jerking. Cas is holding on tight, his fingers burning new brands into Dean's shoulders. And Dean doesn't want to wake up; it’s so good here, the pressure and friction so real, so right. Dean pumps their cocks with sure, measured strokes, and Cas chokes off broken, raw sounds with every lurch forward into Dean’s palm.
They break together, tumble through a haze of motion and pressure, an infinite fall into completion. Dean is breathless, dream-spun; everything else about them is thick and soft, radiant. They push and shift together until there is only the spill of come and light between them.
Dean turns to Cas, whispers into the quiet come down: "When I wake up, you'll be there right?"
Castiel's eyes shine bright for a moment, a hint of a distant sun. "Always," he says quietly, before he leans in to whisper-kiss the word against Dean's lips. He murmurs the same promise into the next kiss and the next and the next and the next.
-fin-