February 28th: Season 4 Filling-in-the-Gaps Ficlets
“I am not your father.”
Castiel turns his back on Jimmy Novak’s daughter and walks down the quiet street. He passes house after house where families are gathering for dinner, where the blue light of televisions flash in the window, where children on bicycles ride up and down the sidewalk. The quietness of human domesticity is soothing to him, draws him towards the warmth of their familial bonds, but he has work to do.
Castiel walks. It would be quicker to fly, the flash of a moment to transport himself to where his charge has summoned him. But he wants to savor this feeling of being back on Earth, entombed in mortal flesh for the first time in more than two millennia. He relishes in the strange feeling of his immense being contained in Jimmy’s slight form.
Castiel walks. He’s keeping Dean Winchester waiting, he knows, but there is somewhere he needs to go first. At the end of Jimmy Novak’s street, where it runs into a larger thoroughfare, there is a gracefully-aging stone church. Castiel enters through the heavy wooden doors. The church is empty but for a woman mopping the floor in the vestibule; he does not speak to her, saving his new human voice for the man he pulled from the bowels of Hell.
Castiel moves down the aisle and slips into an empty pew facing the altar. He looks at the gleaming brass of the richly carved cross, the glowing candles, the colors of the stained glass windows depicting stories from the Old and New Testament. The air in here feels heavy, and Castiel’s whole being thrums with the close connection to this center of his Father’s earthly domain. The last time he walked among humans, such a place of worship for his Father and his Father’s Son was but a prophecy.
Castiel prays.
He prays for his Father to guide him in his role as the protector and helpmeet that the Righteous Man will need in the coming months. He offers thanks to his Father for the honor of being the one to approach Dean Winchester and reward his faith with all the support of Heaven. He asks that his Father help him to be worthy of such an important task - of rewarding the faith of a righteous man, beloved and chosen by Heaven for an important task.
Castiel rises, takes one last look at the altar. High above it, the central stained glass window holds his eye. He tilts his head and studies the image of Michael piercing the heart of the beast. Castiel closes his vessel’s human eyes and blinks himself away to just outside weathered barn doors.
It is time.
4.02 Are You There God? It’s Me, Dean Winchester
The day after his little midnight visitation from the angel, Dean finds himself out of sorts.
He’s not happy that Sam was right, that his skepticism of the existence of angels has been proven wrong. He’s not happy that, instead of being out on the road with the Impala thrumming beneath his hands and AC/DC blasting from the tape deck - soaking up life as any newly-risen Lazarus has the right to do - he’s stuck here at Bobby’s, in the mustiness of the library with two hard-headed research geeks. Dean is not cut out for this kind of work on the best of days, itching to get out, to move around, to rid himself of the nervous energy that has been building up in him like a static charge ever since that damn angel blew the barn doors down and strode into his life just days ago.
Dean slams the musty volume shut and stalks toward Bobby’s kitchen for a beer. He leans back against the sink and talks a long, luxurious pull from the cold bottle. Looking back towards where Sam and Bobby have their heads bent over thick volumes, conferring on some detail or another, Dean closes his eyes as he takes another swallow of beer.
Blue eyes staring into his, so intensely he can feel the gaze bust clean through the back of his skull. Swallowing, Dean breathes in the unfamiliar sent of the not-man, his breath not stale like a man’s, his eyes not blinking like a man’s, his body -- not obeying a man’s customary rules of personal space - pressing Dean’s straight back into the counter, until the sharp linoleum edge cuts into his spine. Dean’s pulse is racing, the hair on the back of his neck standing straight up, his throat dry as he swallows convulsively. He cannot move away, as Castiel steps even closer and speaks the words that will haunt Dean for weeks, for months to come. “I dragged you out of Hell. I can throw you back in.” Hell. Back to hell. Dean’s whole body shivers like an electrical charge has passed through his body.
He opens his eyes.
“Boy,” Bobby calls from the other room, “you fall asleep in there?”
“No sir,” Dean shouts back, as he straightens up and steps away from the counter. “I’m coming.”
“Well, bring me a beer when ya come.” Dean hears the rumble of Sam’s voice. “Bring your brother one, too,” Bobby adds. “And hurry up! The angels ain’t sittin’ around waiting for you to get your head out of your ass.”
“Coming right up!” Dean reaches back into the fridge, and grabs three more beers. Slipping the bottle opener into his pocket, he swallows the last of his now-lukewarm beer, closes his eyes for just a moment - blue eyes and a shock of dark hair, inhuman gaze and power emanating in waves - before forcing them open and stepping out of the kitchen to join the land of the living.
4.03 In the Beginning
Blinking into the dark hotel room, Castiel arrives just in time to see Sam Winchester take a long look at his brother, asleep on top of the covers of his bed, before slipping out the door. Castiel doesn’t need to follow him to know that he’s meeting up with the demon. It’s time for Dean to learn what his brother is doing when he leaves his brother’s side, although Castiel knows enough about his charge to know how devastating such knowledge will be to the one who went to hell to keep his brother safe and alive.
Castiel allows himself to fully materialize and steps across the thick carpet to stand beside the bed where Dean’s trapped in restless sleep. He has looked into his dreams before, even appearing to him in a dream the second time they spoke, so he can imagine the flashes of red, stench of sulfur and burning flesh, shrieks and groans and howls that rend the hellish miasma of Dean’s dream. Watching his charge’s face, he notices the minute twitching of his cheek, the pursing of his lips, the flickering movement beneath his eyelids.
With just a tap of his fingers, Castiel could send him into the peaceful oblivion of soundless sleep. His arm moves forward, then back, as Castiel stops himself from interfering with what he has been told by his superiors is Dean’s proper course of re-entry from Hell - the painful reconciliation of his 40-year experiences to the Dean Winchester that his brother remembers, a process that Castiel has been assured is absolutely vital to preparing Dean for his role in the events to come. Castiel has not been told what that role is, exactly, but he is a good soldier and obeys to his Heavenly orders even though his traitorous arm stretches out each time, wanting to touch Dean’s troubled forehead and soothe his nightly torment.
Stepping around to the other side of the bed, Castiel bends his vessel’s knees to sit on the bed without breaking his gaze from Dean’s sleeping face. The give of the mattress underneath him is unfamiliar and awkward, and he slips forward a bit towards Dean’s shoulder. Castiel jerks his arm forward to keep from tipping onto the sleeping man, but the sudden pressure on the bed causes the mattress to bounce a bit, and Dean stirs from his sleep.
“Hello, Dean. What were you dreaming about?”
4.07 It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester
“I don’t envy the weight that’s on your shoulders. I truly don’t.”
Dean holds the angel’s look for a long moment, trying to gauge the emotion or intent behind the startlingly blue, unblinking eyes. He sees empathy, concern, respect, and not a small amount of fear. Dean swallows, breaks eye contact to look out once more at the busy scene on the playground in front of him as Castiel vanishes.
Children chase each other from swingset to slide, dangle from the bars of the jungle gym, kneel intently before their sandy creations in the sandbox. Mothers chase the small wobbling figures of toddlers, clean the new scrape from a bloody knee, pull out a juice box from a bright orange backpack. A father stands behind the swings, pushing a laughing, shrieking pigtailed girl higher and higher.
Dean soaks it all in and breathes deeply. He meant what he said, he thinks as he leans his head back against the park bench and closes his eyes for a moment. He and Sam would not have let this town perish, not for all the seals in the world. The angels would just have to do a better job alerting them to these seals, letting the Winchesters do what they do best - saving people, hunting things - before jumping in full-on smite mode.
Speaking of, Dean did not like the appearance of Cas’s fellow angel. Uriel. What a dick. No wonder Castiel felt compelled to confess his doubts to Dean, a mere human. Uriel didn’t seem like the type to exactly invite that kind of confidence. Dean isn’t quite sure what to make of Castiel, still. Despite his almost-human moment of uncertainty and confusion, and the half-smile that Dean could have sworn graced his mouth for a flash of second before it was gone, Castiel was still an angel. Alien, other, inscrutable, powerful. Un-fucking-knowable. Even though Dean begrudging admits to himself that Cas is growing on him, slowly, that doesn’t mean that Dean trusts him for a second. Not with his life, definitely not with Sam’s, and not with the lives of the thousands of people in this town.
A quiet fluttering and soft breeze announced the angel’s reappearance. Dean groans, but does not move his head or open his eyes against the warmth of the sun on his face. “What now?” he growls instead, not happy at the prospect of more angel one-on-one with Heaven’s Most Baffling.
“I brought pie,” Castiel’s voice rumbles somewhere over Dean’s head. His eyes snap open -- the smell of cinnamon, baked apple, and fresh pie crust clearing his mind of any lingering philosophy. He raises his gaze from the pie in Castiel’s hands to the angel himself, who looks down at Dean with no discernable expression whatsoever. Dean scowls.
“Where did you get that?” he asks, sitting up straight as Castiel resumes his seat on the other bench. Dean eyes the pie on the other man’s lap as Cas reaches into his trenchcoat pocket and withdraws a red-checked kitchen towel and one shiny fork, which he promptly hands to Dean.
“I thought you might like to celebrate the completion of your test by consuming one of your favorite earthly pleasures.” Castiel explains as he places the pre-sliced pie on Dean’s lap. “You do enjoy apple pie, right?” Castiel asks, tilting his head in that birdlike way that makes Dean’s palms itch. “Did I glean that correctly from your memories?”
The warmth of the pie on the top of his thighs rolls up into Dean’s stomach along with the slightly-worried expression on Castiel’s face. Dean smiles, digs his fork into the perfectly-browned pie crust, and raises a golden bite to his mouth. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, Cas. You did good.”
Turning back towards the activity on the playground, Dean almost misses the small half-smile that curls up the edge of Castiel’s mouth before he blinks away with a flutter. Dean swallows the bite of warm apple and cinnamon, feels the sun on his face, and smiles out at the world.
4.09 & 4.10 I Know What You Did Last Summer & Heaven and Hell
When he feels the flash and burn in his grace that is the sign of another angel - a fallen angel -- touching his mark on Dean’s body, Castiel is unprepared for the dark, hot burst of feeling that roils in his abdomen.
Unfamiliar with such emotion, unhappy with the implied tainting of his angelic disposition, he hurls himself away from his spot on a barn roof where he and Uriel had been waiting for the coming dawn and inevitable confrontation with Dean and his brother over Anna. Castiel flings himself across space, not knowing where he’s going, until he ends up at the edge of the North American continent, on a sandy moonlight shore where gentle waves roll and crash.
He sits on the cold, damp sand and lets the sound and motion of the waves beat his vessel’s traitorous heart back into regular, steady rhythm. Whatever drove him here, whatever that misfire of the angelic connection was with Dean, it does not bear examining now. There are important Heavenly matters to attend to, after all.
Deep in the soothing familiarity of prayer, Castiel sits on the empty shore and waits for the light of dawn to creep over the horizon. For once, he does not think of Dean.
4.15 & 4.16 Death Take a Holiday & On the Head of a Pin
On his third day in the hospital -- after the tasteless breakfast of rubbery eggs, after the not-hot nurse helps him in and out of the shower, after the visit from a curiously solemn and sorrowful Sam, after the visit from the physical therapist and the chaplain (a daily visitor ever since a drugged-up Dean told his nurse that a demon did this to him) and the brisk doctor and the giggly young definitely-hot PA, after he’s taken his first long walk (all the way down the hall and back), after a couple of hours of tepid soap operas (would it kill the hospital to add Casa Erotica to the channel lineup, in the name of healing?), and a phone call from Sam to ask what he wants him to bring for dinner -- Dean dozes off. He’s always thankful for these drug-induced naps, if for no other reason than it helps to break the long, monotonous days into shorter periods of conscious boredom.
The first thing he sees when he cracks open his eyes is not the usual, speckled ceiling tiles and florescent hospital lighting. He sees a bunny. A shiny, purple, balloon bunny drifting across his field of vision like a hallucinatory cloud. Dean rubs his eyes to get the sleep out, then cracks them open to see that the bunny has now been joined by balloons of every color, many of which bear messages like: “It’s a boy!” and “Congratulations!” and “Get well soon!”. That last one, at least, seems to belong in his room, so Dean rolls over with a groan to look toward the side of the room where the balloons seem to be coming from.
Standing awkwardly in the doorway, half in and half out of the room, is Dean’s very own slump-shouldered, trenchcoat-wearing, balloon-wielding angel. Castiel’s expression - as Dean has finally learned to discern the subtlest of changes on his face - is caught between eagerness and hesitancy.
Dean decides to throw him a bone. “What’s with the bunny?” he croaks out, his vocal chords still bruised from Alistair’s iron grip around his throat. Castiel steps fully into the room. “Did you steal those from the little girl down the hall or what?”
Puzzled, Castiel tilts his head and looks up as if he didn’t realize there was indeed a three-foot-long purple bunny floating on the ceiling. He looks back at Dean, shaking his head slowly. “The woman in the hospital gift shop was very helpful.” Castiel steps closer to the bed and thrusts the gathered balloon strings into Dean’s hand. “I wasn’t sure what kind you would like, so she allowed me to pick one of each kind of balloon they had.”
Dean takes them, and ties the multi-colored bunch of ribbons around the rungs of the bedrail. He looks back up at Castiel, who still stands there uncertainly beside Dean’s bed, as if at any moment he expects to be yelled at again or tossed out on his ear. Although Dean is still wary of the role Castiel laid at his feet two days ago, not to mention pissed about the whole torturing a demon for nothing thing, he takes pity on him anyway and decides to make a peace offering.
“So, Cas,” he says, reaching for the very first thing he can think of, “you’ve now mastered the fine art of balloons. Ever try Jello?”
4.18 The Monster at the End of This Book
It happens a week after the incident with Lilith, on just another visit to the Winchesters’ current motel room to check on his charge. Dean and Sam sit at the round, scarred wooden table eating dinner while the room’s television blares out what Castiel knows to be a hockey game.
Castiel has nothing new to report, really. Working alone since Uriel’s betrayal -- his death, Castiel reminds himself to acknowledge - he has been rather unsuccessful in uncovering the remainder of the seals that the Winchesters need to protect. He feels somewhat useless, aimless, wandering from place to place in the blink of an eye, waiting for commands from his supervisors that are suspiciously slower to arrive these days.
“Well, don’t let us keep you from your important angel business,” Dean mumbles him around a mouthful of hamburger. His eyes, as well as those of his brother, are glued to the small figures moving across a field of white on the screen. Castiel feels dismissed, and pulls his vessel’s body up to its full height.
“Very well, then.”
In a moment he’s gone, leaving behind a current of breeze and, Dean notices as he compulsively looks over at Castiel’s departure, an object on the floor where he had been standing.
Dean gets up to retrieve it. “Uh, Cas,” he begins to call after the angel, to return the object that clearly fell out of Castiel’s trenchcoat pocket. Then he picks it up and turns it over in his hands. “Son of a bitch!”
“What?” Sam’s interest is momentarily drawn from the action on the screen.
Dean slides his palm over the shiny black cover, blocking out the image of a truck and the words “Route 666” that he wishes he could erase from the memory of the world.
“Nothing,” he assures Sam, as he walks over to his duffel bag on the floor beside his bed. “Just something I’d been missing, that’s all.” Shoving the book deep into the recesses of the bag, Dean straightens up and heads back to the distracting comforts of food and the game. Shaking his head, he tries to get the image of the angel poring through the pages of that particular book out of his head.
“I’m full frontal in here, dude.”
“I admire your work.”
Yeah, he’s got a thing or two to ask Cas the next time he sees him.
4.20 The Rapture
“So, what, now I’m a prisoner?”
“Harsh way to put it.”
“Fine,” Jimmy says abruptly, throwing up his hands. “I’ll stay.” He steps away from Sam and heads into the motel room’s tiny bathroom, slamming the door emphatically.
Sam steps toward the door, but Dean puts a hand on his arm to stop him. They hear the shower turn on. “Let him be,” Dean says to his brother. “If the poor dude hadn’t eaten in a month, imagine the last time Cas let him take a shower.”
Sam grimaces in sympathy. “Yeah, okay.” He glances from the bathroom door to the motel room door. “Look, um, can you keep an eye on him for a while? I need to get some air.”
“Yeah, sure,” Dean says. “No problem.” He watches his brother’s broad back move out into the night, shutting the door behind him. The only sound in the room is now the sound of someone in the shower, of water hitting tile and tub and body. Dean walks over to his duffel bag and pulls out a pair of sweatpants, boxers, and the least ratty (clean) t-shirt he can find. He lays the clothes on one of the motel beds, and lies down on the other one, wearily covering his face with his arm.
What the hell are they going to do about Jimmy, he wonders. How are they going to keep a grown man a willing prisoner until they can figure out how to protect him -- and from what? Dean’s less than thrilled at the idea of having Castiel’s former vessel around 24/7, but he has little hope at this point that the angel is going to be coming back. He had decided that pretty quickly after seeing non-Castiel scarfing down hamburgers like he was in a 4th of July eating contest. Dean wouldn’t say he considers Cas a friend, necessarily, but he has to admit that the dude - angel - had been helpful upon occasion. Awkward as hell, but helpful.
Dean hears the water shut off and, after a few moments, the bathroom door open, releasing a cloud of warm steam into the room. “Better?” he calls out to Jimmy. He doesn’t get a response, so he moves his arm off his face, opens his eyes, and sits up.
Jimmy is standing in front of the full length mirror on the wall beside the bathroom. His hands on his face, turning it this way and that, move
down his neck and across his chest. Looking for a scar, Dean thinks, from a stab wound to his heart. Jimmy’s back, pale and speckled with water drops, ripples with the movement of his arms and hands across his chest and abdomen. Dean’s eyes are drawn first to his shoulder blades - wing bones, the thought flashes across his mind, I saw wings from those shoulders - down his back to the cheap white towel wrapped tightly around Jimmy’s slender hips. Dean quickly looks away, although Jimmy is too absorbed in his examination to notice anything else.
Dean clears his throat. “I, uh, left you some clothes on the bed,” he says. “You know. To, uh, sleep in.” He scrubs his hand over his face. What’s with the stuttering, Dean? Not like you’ve never seen another guy in a towel. Hell, he’d seen Sam just like that nearly every day for four years - not to mention every single day before he’d gone off to Stanford.
Jimmmy turns from the mirror to glance at the clothes on the other bed, then looks steadily back at Dean for several long seconds. “I think I’ll wear my own clothes,” he says flatly. He steps back into the bathroom and shuts the door.
Dean flops back on the bed and sighs. Suddenly, an awkward but fully-clothed angel of the Lord is looking like not such a bad thing to have around after all.
4.21 When the Levee Breaks
Castiel leans against the rusting iron wall to Bobby Singer’s panic room. Inside, Sam shouts and curses and fights back against the brother he thinks he sees. Dean, Castiel knows, is actually upstairs with Bobby arguing for why Sam needs to stay locked up for his own good. Castiel regrets the part he has to play, but his superiors were very clear in their latest orders.
Do this, Zachariah had said, or else someone else will. And you, Castiel, will be permanently removed from your post. Let Dean Winchester see how he fares with another, less conflicted guardian.
Castiel imagines one of his brothers or sisters delivering Heaven’s mandates to the less-than-cooperative human. Like Uriel, they would have little patience for Dean’s skepticism, his independence and insistence on finding another way. No, Dean was not at all what Heaven had expected their champion to be. Castiel wonders, for the thousandth time, exactly why he of all the angels was given charge over this stubborn and baffling man.
Sam’s screaming has finally stopped. Castiel reaches out with his mind to find Sam asleep, thankfully in a dreamless state. He senses that Dean, likewise, has succumbed to exhaustion and is now asleep on Bobby’s sofa, an empty bottle on the floor beside him.
Castiel can no longer neglect his heavy duty, lest Heaven grow impatient and send another in his place. He sends one final apology to Dean, looks over at the curved iron door, and raises his hand -- fingers outstretched.
Thy will be done.
4.22 Lucifer Rising
Pacing the floor for the hundredth time, Dean curses Zachariah, Castiel, and all the other feathery bastards who are keeping him stuck in
this gilded cage. Sweeping past the same fussy paintings, uncomfortable furniture, and ridiculous knick-knacks - Wait, when the hell did that angel statue reappear? Didn’t I break that? - Dean comes back around to the table in the center of the room.
The cold beer and pile of aromatic burgers beckon to him after hours of being trapped in this room. But something cautions Dean and delays his hunger. Something Sammy told him when he was a kid, knee deep in books about ancient Rome and Greece. Sam had been in his mythology phase, Dean recalls, and told Dean about some goddess whose daughter - Persephone, he thinks - got dragged down to live in the underworld because she ate something offered to her by Hades. Sam would be proud he remembers that, Dean thinks as he turns away from the platter of burgers once again to resume his anxious pacing.
And runs straight into an angel. “Hello, Dean,” Castiel says in his usual monotone rumble. “I brought you some reading material.”
Dean glances at the stack of magazines in Castiel’s hands and whistles. “Busty Asian Beauties? Oh, man,” he laughs mirthlessly, “I guess this really is Heaven.” The angel blushes, but offers the magazines to Dean - immediately vanishing after Dean grasps them in his hands.
Dean flips through the other titles: Hot Rod (featuring a classic Impala on the cover, though not a ‘67), Playboy (with one of the hot surgeons from Dr. Sexy, MD on the cover), Rolling Stone (with Steven Tyler on the cover), Bird Talk (with a spiky feathered white bird on the cover, cocking its head in a familiar way, the headline “How to Groom Your Pet’s Wings” underneath) --
Dean stops. Reads the headline again. Looks up into the empty room, mouth agape.
Freaking angels, man.
Castiel turns his back on Jimmy Novak’s daughter and walks down the quiet street. He passes house after house where families are gathering for dinner, where the blue light of televisions flash in the window, where children on bicycles ride up and down the sidewalk. The quietness of human domesticity is soothing to him, draws him towards the warmth of their familial bonds, but he has work to do.
Castiel walks. It would be quicker to fly, the flash of a moment to transport himself to where his charge has summoned him. But he wants to savor this feeling of being back on Earth, entombed in mortal flesh for the first time in more than two millennia. He relishes in the strange feeling of his immense being contained in Jimmy’s slight form.
Castiel walks. He’s keeping Dean Winchester waiting, he knows, but there is somewhere he needs to go first. At the end of Jimmy Novak’s street, where it runs into a larger thoroughfare, there is a gracefully-aging stone church. Castiel enters through the heavy wooden doors. The church is empty but for a woman mopping the floor in the vestibule; he does not speak to her, saving his new human voice for the man he pulled from the bowels of Hell.
Castiel moves down the aisle and slips into an empty pew facing the altar. He looks at the gleaming brass of the richly carved cross, the glowing candles, the colors of the stained glass windows depicting stories from the Old and New Testament. The air in here feels heavy, and Castiel’s whole being thrums with the close connection to this center of his Father’s earthly domain. The last time he walked among humans, such a place of worship for his Father and his Father’s Son was but a prophecy.
Castiel prays.
He prays for his Father to guide him in his role as the protector and helpmeet that the Righteous Man will need in the coming months. He offers thanks to his Father for the honor of being the one to approach Dean Winchester and reward his faith with all the support of Heaven. He asks that his Father help him to be worthy of such an important task - of rewarding the faith of a righteous man, beloved and chosen by Heaven for an important task.
Castiel rises, takes one last look at the altar. High above it, the central stained glass window holds his eye. He tilts his head and studies the image of Michael piercing the heart of the beast. Castiel closes his vessel’s human eyes and blinks himself away to just outside weathered barn doors.
It is time.
4.02 Are You There God? It’s Me, Dean Winchester
The day after his little midnight visitation from the angel, Dean finds himself out of sorts.
He’s not happy that Sam was right, that his skepticism of the existence of angels has been proven wrong. He’s not happy that, instead of being out on the road with the Impala thrumming beneath his hands and AC/DC blasting from the tape deck - soaking up life as any newly-risen Lazarus has the right to do - he’s stuck here at Bobby’s, in the mustiness of the library with two hard-headed research geeks. Dean is not cut out for this kind of work on the best of days, itching to get out, to move around, to rid himself of the nervous energy that has been building up in him like a static charge ever since that damn angel blew the barn doors down and strode into his life just days ago.
Dean slams the musty volume shut and stalks toward Bobby’s kitchen for a beer. He leans back against the sink and talks a long, luxurious pull from the cold bottle. Looking back towards where Sam and Bobby have their heads bent over thick volumes, conferring on some detail or another, Dean closes his eyes as he takes another swallow of beer.
Blue eyes staring into his, so intensely he can feel the gaze bust clean through the back of his skull. Swallowing, Dean breathes in the unfamiliar sent of the not-man, his breath not stale like a man’s, his eyes not blinking like a man’s, his body -- not obeying a man’s customary rules of personal space - pressing Dean’s straight back into the counter, until the sharp linoleum edge cuts into his spine. Dean’s pulse is racing, the hair on the back of his neck standing straight up, his throat dry as he swallows convulsively. He cannot move away, as Castiel steps even closer and speaks the words that will haunt Dean for weeks, for months to come. “I dragged you out of Hell. I can throw you back in.” Hell. Back to hell. Dean’s whole body shivers like an electrical charge has passed through his body.
He opens his eyes.
“Boy,” Bobby calls from the other room, “you fall asleep in there?”
“No sir,” Dean shouts back, as he straightens up and steps away from the counter. “I’m coming.”
“Well, bring me a beer when ya come.” Dean hears the rumble of Sam’s voice. “Bring your brother one, too,” Bobby adds. “And hurry up! The angels ain’t sittin’ around waiting for you to get your head out of your ass.”
“Coming right up!” Dean reaches back into the fridge, and grabs three more beers. Slipping the bottle opener into his pocket, he swallows the last of his now-lukewarm beer, closes his eyes for just a moment - blue eyes and a shock of dark hair, inhuman gaze and power emanating in waves - before forcing them open and stepping out of the kitchen to join the land of the living.
4.03 In the Beginning
Blinking into the dark hotel room, Castiel arrives just in time to see Sam Winchester take a long look at his brother, asleep on top of the covers of his bed, before slipping out the door. Castiel doesn’t need to follow him to know that he’s meeting up with the demon. It’s time for Dean to learn what his brother is doing when he leaves his brother’s side, although Castiel knows enough about his charge to know how devastating such knowledge will be to the one who went to hell to keep his brother safe and alive.
Castiel allows himself to fully materialize and steps across the thick carpet to stand beside the bed where Dean’s trapped in restless sleep. He has looked into his dreams before, even appearing to him in a dream the second time they spoke, so he can imagine the flashes of red, stench of sulfur and burning flesh, shrieks and groans and howls that rend the hellish miasma of Dean’s dream. Watching his charge’s face, he notices the minute twitching of his cheek, the pursing of his lips, the flickering movement beneath his eyelids.
With just a tap of his fingers, Castiel could send him into the peaceful oblivion of soundless sleep. His arm moves forward, then back, as Castiel stops himself from interfering with what he has been told by his superiors is Dean’s proper course of re-entry from Hell - the painful reconciliation of his 40-year experiences to the Dean Winchester that his brother remembers, a process that Castiel has been assured is absolutely vital to preparing Dean for his role in the events to come. Castiel has not been told what that role is, exactly, but he is a good soldier and obeys to his Heavenly orders even though his traitorous arm stretches out each time, wanting to touch Dean’s troubled forehead and soothe his nightly torment.
Stepping around to the other side of the bed, Castiel bends his vessel’s knees to sit on the bed without breaking his gaze from Dean’s sleeping face. The give of the mattress underneath him is unfamiliar and awkward, and he slips forward a bit towards Dean’s shoulder. Castiel jerks his arm forward to keep from tipping onto the sleeping man, but the sudden pressure on the bed causes the mattress to bounce a bit, and Dean stirs from his sleep.
“Hello, Dean. What were you dreaming about?”
4.07 It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester
“I don’t envy the weight that’s on your shoulders. I truly don’t.”
Dean holds the angel’s look for a long moment, trying to gauge the emotion or intent behind the startlingly blue, unblinking eyes. He sees empathy, concern, respect, and not a small amount of fear. Dean swallows, breaks eye contact to look out once more at the busy scene on the playground in front of him as Castiel vanishes.
Children chase each other from swingset to slide, dangle from the bars of the jungle gym, kneel intently before their sandy creations in the sandbox. Mothers chase the small wobbling figures of toddlers, clean the new scrape from a bloody knee, pull out a juice box from a bright orange backpack. A father stands behind the swings, pushing a laughing, shrieking pigtailed girl higher and higher.
Dean soaks it all in and breathes deeply. He meant what he said, he thinks as he leans his head back against the park bench and closes his eyes for a moment. He and Sam would not have let this town perish, not for all the seals in the world. The angels would just have to do a better job alerting them to these seals, letting the Winchesters do what they do best - saving people, hunting things - before jumping in full-on smite mode.
Speaking of, Dean did not like the appearance of Cas’s fellow angel. Uriel. What a dick. No wonder Castiel felt compelled to confess his doubts to Dean, a mere human. Uriel didn’t seem like the type to exactly invite that kind of confidence. Dean isn’t quite sure what to make of Castiel, still. Despite his almost-human moment of uncertainty and confusion, and the half-smile that Dean could have sworn graced his mouth for a flash of second before it was gone, Castiel was still an angel. Alien, other, inscrutable, powerful. Un-fucking-knowable. Even though Dean begrudging admits to himself that Cas is growing on him, slowly, that doesn’t mean that Dean trusts him for a second. Not with his life, definitely not with Sam’s, and not with the lives of the thousands of people in this town.
A quiet fluttering and soft breeze announced the angel’s reappearance. Dean groans, but does not move his head or open his eyes against the warmth of the sun on his face. “What now?” he growls instead, not happy at the prospect of more angel one-on-one with Heaven’s Most Baffling.
“I brought pie,” Castiel’s voice rumbles somewhere over Dean’s head. His eyes snap open -- the smell of cinnamon, baked apple, and fresh pie crust clearing his mind of any lingering philosophy. He raises his gaze from the pie in Castiel’s hands to the angel himself, who looks down at Dean with no discernable expression whatsoever. Dean scowls.
“Where did you get that?” he asks, sitting up straight as Castiel resumes his seat on the other bench. Dean eyes the pie on the other man’s lap as Cas reaches into his trenchcoat pocket and withdraws a red-checked kitchen towel and one shiny fork, which he promptly hands to Dean.
“I thought you might like to celebrate the completion of your test by consuming one of your favorite earthly pleasures.” Castiel explains as he places the pre-sliced pie on Dean’s lap. “You do enjoy apple pie, right?” Castiel asks, tilting his head in that birdlike way that makes Dean’s palms itch. “Did I glean that correctly from your memories?”
The warmth of the pie on the top of his thighs rolls up into Dean’s stomach along with the slightly-worried expression on Castiel’s face. Dean smiles, digs his fork into the perfectly-browned pie crust, and raises a golden bite to his mouth. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, Cas. You did good.”
Turning back towards the activity on the playground, Dean almost misses the small half-smile that curls up the edge of Castiel’s mouth before he blinks away with a flutter. Dean swallows the bite of warm apple and cinnamon, feels the sun on his face, and smiles out at the world.
4.09 & 4.10 I Know What You Did Last Summer & Heaven and Hell
When he feels the flash and burn in his grace that is the sign of another angel - a fallen angel -- touching his mark on Dean’s body, Castiel is unprepared for the dark, hot burst of feeling that roils in his abdomen.
Unfamiliar with such emotion, unhappy with the implied tainting of his angelic disposition, he hurls himself away from his spot on a barn roof where he and Uriel had been waiting for the coming dawn and inevitable confrontation with Dean and his brother over Anna. Castiel flings himself across space, not knowing where he’s going, until he ends up at the edge of the North American continent, on a sandy moonlight shore where gentle waves roll and crash.
He sits on the cold, damp sand and lets the sound and motion of the waves beat his vessel’s traitorous heart back into regular, steady rhythm. Whatever drove him here, whatever that misfire of the angelic connection was with Dean, it does not bear examining now. There are important Heavenly matters to attend to, after all.
Deep in the soothing familiarity of prayer, Castiel sits on the empty shore and waits for the light of dawn to creep over the horizon. For once, he does not think of Dean.
4.15 & 4.16 Death Take a Holiday & On the Head of a Pin
On his third day in the hospital -- after the tasteless breakfast of rubbery eggs, after the not-hot nurse helps him in and out of the shower, after the visit from a curiously solemn and sorrowful Sam, after the visit from the physical therapist and the chaplain (a daily visitor ever since a drugged-up Dean told his nurse that a demon did this to him) and the brisk doctor and the giggly young definitely-hot PA, after he’s taken his first long walk (all the way down the hall and back), after a couple of hours of tepid soap operas (would it kill the hospital to add Casa Erotica to the channel lineup, in the name of healing?), and a phone call from Sam to ask what he wants him to bring for dinner -- Dean dozes off. He’s always thankful for these drug-induced naps, if for no other reason than it helps to break the long, monotonous days into shorter periods of conscious boredom.
The first thing he sees when he cracks open his eyes is not the usual, speckled ceiling tiles and florescent hospital lighting. He sees a bunny. A shiny, purple, balloon bunny drifting across his field of vision like a hallucinatory cloud. Dean rubs his eyes to get the sleep out, then cracks them open to see that the bunny has now been joined by balloons of every color, many of which bear messages like: “It’s a boy!” and “Congratulations!” and “Get well soon!”. That last one, at least, seems to belong in his room, so Dean rolls over with a groan to look toward the side of the room where the balloons seem to be coming from.
Standing awkwardly in the doorway, half in and half out of the room, is Dean’s very own slump-shouldered, trenchcoat-wearing, balloon-wielding angel. Castiel’s expression - as Dean has finally learned to discern the subtlest of changes on his face - is caught between eagerness and hesitancy.
Dean decides to throw him a bone. “What’s with the bunny?” he croaks out, his vocal chords still bruised from Alistair’s iron grip around his throat. Castiel steps fully into the room. “Did you steal those from the little girl down the hall or what?”
Puzzled, Castiel tilts his head and looks up as if he didn’t realize there was indeed a three-foot-long purple bunny floating on the ceiling. He looks back at Dean, shaking his head slowly. “The woman in the hospital gift shop was very helpful.” Castiel steps closer to the bed and thrusts the gathered balloon strings into Dean’s hand. “I wasn’t sure what kind you would like, so she allowed me to pick one of each kind of balloon they had.”
Dean takes them, and ties the multi-colored bunch of ribbons around the rungs of the bedrail. He looks back up at Castiel, who still stands there uncertainly beside Dean’s bed, as if at any moment he expects to be yelled at again or tossed out on his ear. Although Dean is still wary of the role Castiel laid at his feet two days ago, not to mention pissed about the whole torturing a demon for nothing thing, he takes pity on him anyway and decides to make a peace offering.
“So, Cas,” he says, reaching for the very first thing he can think of, “you’ve now mastered the fine art of balloons. Ever try Jello?”
4.18 The Monster at the End of This Book
It happens a week after the incident with Lilith, on just another visit to the Winchesters’ current motel room to check on his charge. Dean and Sam sit at the round, scarred wooden table eating dinner while the room’s television blares out what Castiel knows to be a hockey game.
Castiel has nothing new to report, really. Working alone since Uriel’s betrayal -- his death, Castiel reminds himself to acknowledge - he has been rather unsuccessful in uncovering the remainder of the seals that the Winchesters need to protect. He feels somewhat useless, aimless, wandering from place to place in the blink of an eye, waiting for commands from his supervisors that are suspiciously slower to arrive these days.
“Well, don’t let us keep you from your important angel business,” Dean mumbles him around a mouthful of hamburger. His eyes, as well as those of his brother, are glued to the small figures moving across a field of white on the screen. Castiel feels dismissed, and pulls his vessel’s body up to its full height.
“Very well, then.”
In a moment he’s gone, leaving behind a current of breeze and, Dean notices as he compulsively looks over at Castiel’s departure, an object on the floor where he had been standing.
Dean gets up to retrieve it. “Uh, Cas,” he begins to call after the angel, to return the object that clearly fell out of Castiel’s trenchcoat pocket. Then he picks it up and turns it over in his hands. “Son of a bitch!”
“What?” Sam’s interest is momentarily drawn from the action on the screen.
Dean slides his palm over the shiny black cover, blocking out the image of a truck and the words “Route 666” that he wishes he could erase from the memory of the world.
“Nothing,” he assures Sam, as he walks over to his duffel bag on the floor beside his bed. “Just something I’d been missing, that’s all.” Shoving the book deep into the recesses of the bag, Dean straightens up and heads back to the distracting comforts of food and the game. Shaking his head, he tries to get the image of the angel poring through the pages of that particular book out of his head.
“I’m full frontal in here, dude.”
“I admire your work.”
Yeah, he’s got a thing or two to ask Cas the next time he sees him.
4.20 The Rapture
“So, what, now I’m a prisoner?”
“Harsh way to put it.”
“Fine,” Jimmy says abruptly, throwing up his hands. “I’ll stay.” He steps away from Sam and heads into the motel room’s tiny bathroom, slamming the door emphatically.
Sam steps toward the door, but Dean puts a hand on his arm to stop him. They hear the shower turn on. “Let him be,” Dean says to his brother. “If the poor dude hadn’t eaten in a month, imagine the last time Cas let him take a shower.”
Sam grimaces in sympathy. “Yeah, okay.” He glances from the bathroom door to the motel room door. “Look, um, can you keep an eye on him for a while? I need to get some air.”
“Yeah, sure,” Dean says. “No problem.” He watches his brother’s broad back move out into the night, shutting the door behind him. The only sound in the room is now the sound of someone in the shower, of water hitting tile and tub and body. Dean walks over to his duffel bag and pulls out a pair of sweatpants, boxers, and the least ratty (clean) t-shirt he can find. He lays the clothes on one of the motel beds, and lies down on the other one, wearily covering his face with his arm.
What the hell are they going to do about Jimmy, he wonders. How are they going to keep a grown man a willing prisoner until they can figure out how to protect him -- and from what? Dean’s less than thrilled at the idea of having Castiel’s former vessel around 24/7, but he has little hope at this point that the angel is going to be coming back. He had decided that pretty quickly after seeing non-Castiel scarfing down hamburgers like he was in a 4th of July eating contest. Dean wouldn’t say he considers Cas a friend, necessarily, but he has to admit that the dude - angel - had been helpful upon occasion. Awkward as hell, but helpful.
Dean hears the water shut off and, after a few moments, the bathroom door open, releasing a cloud of warm steam into the room. “Better?” he calls out to Jimmy. He doesn’t get a response, so he moves his arm off his face, opens his eyes, and sits up.
Jimmy is standing in front of the full length mirror on the wall beside the bathroom. His hands on his face, turning it this way and that, move
down his neck and across his chest. Looking for a scar, Dean thinks, from a stab wound to his heart. Jimmy’s back, pale and speckled with water drops, ripples with the movement of his arms and hands across his chest and abdomen. Dean’s eyes are drawn first to his shoulder blades - wing bones, the thought flashes across his mind, I saw wings from those shoulders - down his back to the cheap white towel wrapped tightly around Jimmy’s slender hips. Dean quickly looks away, although Jimmy is too absorbed in his examination to notice anything else.
Dean clears his throat. “I, uh, left you some clothes on the bed,” he says. “You know. To, uh, sleep in.” He scrubs his hand over his face. What’s with the stuttering, Dean? Not like you’ve never seen another guy in a towel. Hell, he’d seen Sam just like that nearly every day for four years - not to mention every single day before he’d gone off to Stanford.
Jimmmy turns from the mirror to glance at the clothes on the other bed, then looks steadily back at Dean for several long seconds. “I think I’ll wear my own clothes,” he says flatly. He steps back into the bathroom and shuts the door.
Dean flops back on the bed and sighs. Suddenly, an awkward but fully-clothed angel of the Lord is looking like not such a bad thing to have around after all.
4.21 When the Levee Breaks
Castiel leans against the rusting iron wall to Bobby Singer’s panic room. Inside, Sam shouts and curses and fights back against the brother he thinks he sees. Dean, Castiel knows, is actually upstairs with Bobby arguing for why Sam needs to stay locked up for his own good. Castiel regrets the part he has to play, but his superiors were very clear in their latest orders.
Do this, Zachariah had said, or else someone else will. And you, Castiel, will be permanently removed from your post. Let Dean Winchester see how he fares with another, less conflicted guardian.
Castiel imagines one of his brothers or sisters delivering Heaven’s mandates to the less-than-cooperative human. Like Uriel, they would have little patience for Dean’s skepticism, his independence and insistence on finding another way. No, Dean was not at all what Heaven had expected their champion to be. Castiel wonders, for the thousandth time, exactly why he of all the angels was given charge over this stubborn and baffling man.
Sam’s screaming has finally stopped. Castiel reaches out with his mind to find Sam asleep, thankfully in a dreamless state. He senses that Dean, likewise, has succumbed to exhaustion and is now asleep on Bobby’s sofa, an empty bottle on the floor beside him.
Castiel can no longer neglect his heavy duty, lest Heaven grow impatient and send another in his place. He sends one final apology to Dean, looks over at the curved iron door, and raises his hand -- fingers outstretched.
Thy will be done.
4.22 Lucifer Rising
Pacing the floor for the hundredth time, Dean curses Zachariah, Castiel, and all the other feathery bastards who are keeping him stuck in
this gilded cage. Sweeping past the same fussy paintings, uncomfortable furniture, and ridiculous knick-knacks - Wait, when the hell did that angel statue reappear? Didn’t I break that? - Dean comes back around to the table in the center of the room.
The cold beer and pile of aromatic burgers beckon to him after hours of being trapped in this room. But something cautions Dean and delays his hunger. Something Sammy told him when he was a kid, knee deep in books about ancient Rome and Greece. Sam had been in his mythology phase, Dean recalls, and told Dean about some goddess whose daughter - Persephone, he thinks - got dragged down to live in the underworld because she ate something offered to her by Hades. Sam would be proud he remembers that, Dean thinks as he turns away from the platter of burgers once again to resume his anxious pacing.
And runs straight into an angel. “Hello, Dean,” Castiel says in his usual monotone rumble. “I brought you some reading material.”
Dean glances at the stack of magazines in Castiel’s hands and whistles. “Busty Asian Beauties? Oh, man,” he laughs mirthlessly, “I guess this really is Heaven.” The angel blushes, but offers the magazines to Dean - immediately vanishing after Dean grasps them in his hands.
Dean flips through the other titles: Hot Rod (featuring a classic Impala on the cover, though not a ‘67), Playboy (with one of the hot surgeons from Dr. Sexy, MD on the cover), Rolling Stone (with Steven Tyler on the cover), Bird Talk (with a spiky feathered white bird on the cover, cocking its head in a familiar way, the headline “How to Groom Your Pet’s Wings” underneath) --
Dean stops. Reads the headline again. Looks up into the empty room, mouth agape.
Freaking angels, man.