Supernatural fic - Like you never had wings [Dean/Castiel, M]
Title: Hands
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: M (everyone has a potty mouth except for Cas, basically)
Wordcount: 4920
Notes: Again, my darling sweetheart Jade-ling is pretty much to blame for this. Angel! Dean, Human!Cas, (kinda hinted at but I never got around to elaborating because I didn't want this getting longer than it already was) Crossroads Demon!Sam
Summary: Castiel Novak has a life, and it works for him. It's not a lot and God knows it isn't special at all but it's his and he's perfectly fine with it.
Castiel Novak has a life, and it works for him.
He has a family he fights with sees during the holidays and avoids the rest of the year, has friends and colleagues who greet him when he enters a room, has dates with pretty women.
He has a small apartment with a bed and a tv and a couch with a pull out bed for when his brother stays with him, a half empty refrigerator and a small avocado tree growing in a red clay pot in the window sill over the sink.
It's not a lot and God knows it isn't special at all but it's his and he's perfectly fine with it.
But then all the strange, terrifying things he had read about as a child -werewolves, Gabriel tells him around a mouthful of a Twix bar, and vampires a month later, and demons possibly Big Foot and mountain trolls and rumors of heaven and hell that make Christmas dinner with his parents seem pleasant - start slowly seeping into his world, the world as a whole.
It doesn't get better from there.
(Let's start a little later.)
Castiel can't find his brother. While that's not unheard of, not in the least, Gabriel has a habit of popping up whenever he feels like it and dropping off the planet just as quickly, but that was before. The last year has been hard on the world, on them, and Gabriel knows to check in now.
But he hasn't, not in a few weeks. Not when Castiel saves a young woman who looks incredibly like Anna from a selkie, and not when Castiel takes a round of rock salt in his center mass and gets put on bed rest for three days by penalty of Michael's wrath. And isn't that strange? That he can rely on Michael for this when he's spent so much of his life bone tired and weary of him?
Castiel is still moving slow, still recovering and that's why they get him surrounded. It's an excuse as much as it is true and he still hasn't found Gabriel. Gabriel knows to check in, and Castiel will not think about why he hasn't returned a single call.
(He'll die...well. He'll die, but not yet.)
He's wounded and worried and tired of running and desperately thirsty and he's surrounded by demons. Vaguely, he is aware it's begun to rain.
He smiles, a small almost feral thing when one breaks away from the group and makes a move towards him.
Castiel has a weapon, a blade that isn't quite short enough to be called a knife, in his hand and is already swinging it down over his head when there is a clap of thunder and it begins to pour.
The demon snarls, Castiel feels a few old stitches pop as he moves, steel bites into flesh, and everything in the room starts to shake. They all look around, the demons frightened and he just bewildered when the far doors slam open.
There's screeching, like a million nails on chalkboards on a planet of howling felines, and Castiel has to drop his weapon, drop to his knees, and cover his ears. He doesn't realize he's screwed his eyes shut until the sound dissipates and someone clears their throat.
He looks up and the man's face is in shadow but the rest of him isn't, he wears dark jeans and a band t shirt under heavy flannel and a brown leather jacket. Lightning flashes, and Castiel glimpses green eyes, light brown hair cropped short. A swath of freckles across his cheeks and nose.
"Looked like you could use some help there, hope you don't mind."
The man's voice is almost too loud, too much in the sudden silence around them, unconscious -dead? He's not sure- bodies littering the ground between them.
"What are you?" Castiel asks before manners or self preservation can stop him. Because he's seen enough, read more, and he's never heard of anything that could do that and still look so human.
There's another flash of lightning, flashing through shattered windows and the blown out door and the man smiles, a slow stretch of lips that dances on the edge of flirtatious and dangerous.
Castiel sees movement around them, is already lifting his blade as tracks the shadows of wings unfurling, stretching and feathers ruffling.
"Name's Dean." he says, rolling his eyes as he steps around the fallen men and women and examines Castiel's face.
“No. Really."
“Dude, really. I’m an angel.”
“An angel named Dean?” Cas asks.
“You’re one to judge Castiel.” Dean snorts.
There’s a sound like something moving, soft and sure, brushing against the far walls.
“Can you show me your wings again?” Cas asks, Dean shrugs.
“Gotta buy me dinner first.” The angel Dean says, smirking.
(This is the moment Castiel Novak's life changes.)
He's been traveling with Dean for a few days, looking for leads at the same time as he's searching for his brother.
Contrary to what he'd been led to believe about angels, Dean was not all fluffy wings and precious moments. He drank and swore and drove Castiel's car too fast, playing classic rock on the radio too loud as he sang along.
They drive from New Orleans to Little Rock, Little Rock to Salt Lake City, and land somewhere in Oregon. They're holed up in a motel off the interstate, or Castiel is at least. Dean had told him, in no uncertain terms, that if there were no cheese burgers when he got back he would 'Start up that banshee crap again,' and he wasn't going to test it.
Dean doesn't storm in, not exactly, but one moment the room is empty except for Castiel, the food on the table, and his measly weapons cache spread over the only bed in the room, then there's the flap of wings, the smell of ozone and Dean is inside the salt line drawn along the walls, grinning brightly.
For a fraction of a second Castiel can almost see wings, dark and huge, but they're gone just as quickly.
"Hey Cas," Dean says, and then upon further inspection of the room and spotting the bag full of cheese burgers for them to share -because Dean hates eating by himself and Castiel doesn't mind the company and only feigns annoyance at the way Dean talks with his mouth full- adds, "oh shit, you're the best, I might have to kiss you."
This is a moment not unlike a few dozen before that, and there are sure to be hundreds after, but it reminds Castiel of how absolutely terrifying Dean could be if he chose to be, how out of his element Castiel is, has been since they met. He can't seem to look anywhere but the skin exposed at his waist when Dean stretches his arms over his head and sighs, cheeks puffed around bites of cheese burger.
His phone rings, the 8-bit rendition of Gabriel's favorite Motley Crue song shrill in the silent two seconds it takes Castiel to answer it.
"Gabriel?" Castiel asks because it's been too long, too quiet without him and he has to be sure.
"Stock up on candy bars, bro. You know what I like." Is all the response Gabriel gives, going into a coughing fit as the line goes dead.
Castiel would be frustrated, would be a lot of things except that there's a smile spreading slow across Dean's face and he presses a hand over Castiel's -still holding the phone- before he says, "I know a guy. Come on, we can find him Cas."
Dean flies them to South Dakota, introduces Castiel to a man with a mullet who doesn't leave his bank of computers except to make his way to the bar he lives above. They find Gabriel on a Monday.
(Castiel dies on a Thursday, but it's still too soon for that.)
They find Gabriel on a Monday, in a cave in a cluster of low hills on the border of California.
It's too quiet. Dean is carrying most of Gabriel's dead weight, and since Gabriel is unconscious he's in no place to defend himself when Dean complains. But it doesn't matter, because it's too quiet. If Castiel, with his limited experience, can tell somethings wrong, than they're already fucked.
Something moves to their left, behind them, Dean keeps going, obviously tense now, and shifts Gabriel into a fireman's carry. Castiel is holding a shotgun, though he's never used one, somehow avoided it all this time, his blade a comforting weight on his hip.
There's movement through the trees, inky black smoke oozing towards them and Dean is suddenly at his back, arm locked around his waist and he yells, "Close your eyes!" He gives Castiel just enough time to do it before there's a tug low in his abdomen, the smell of ozone, and they're standing in front of the hotel they'd checked into.
As soon as Dean let's Castiel go his knees buckle and he hits the pavement hard. His stomach churns, he breathes through his nose and waits for his pulse to stop pounding in his ears. Gabriel is still blissfully unconscious.
They don't die that day, but they all know it was far too close for comfort.
(Just a bit farther.)
Castiel remembers, in the time he gets between making runs to the store for food and sitting with Gabriel, their younger sister.
Anna was the youngest, had been born with their mother's red hair and their father's temper and enough patience to withstand the worst of Gabriel's pranks and teasing as she grew up. When she became sick Castiel and Gabriel, who were 18 and 20 at the time, spent a whole summer camped out in her room, telling ghost stories, or watching television on mute and coming up with their own dialogue.
One night Castiel falls asleep, his hand in Anna's, her pulse a thready beat against his finger. He wakes with a start, sees Gabriel shutting the door behind him and wonders at the scrap of cloth wrapped around his palm.
He doesn't ask about it, but he's still curious when within the week doctors are talking about remission as if it's a miracle and all Gabriel will tell him is that he took care of it.
He wonders, sitting in bed with him now, a small mountain of candy wrappers growing between them, if his brother would still lie to him about it.
There's a scar across Gabriel's palm, a clean diagonal line from his pinky to his wrist. Castiel had never asked about it, just accepted it as a part of his brother, like the ever present candy bar or smirk as he told a joke.
Dean though, Dean sees no issue with being blunt about everything. And maybe they've had more trouble over the weeks it took Gabriel to heal and the month it took them to learn to work together, but it still takes Castiel by surprise.
They're sitting at a table in a diner, Dean and Castiel with their backs to the wall to watch the exits and Gabriel across from them when Dean spots the scar on Gabriel's hand, seems to piece things together that Castiel can't begin to see and glares.
"How much longer do you have?" Dean asks, and it sounds like an accusation. He chews on the fork full of blue berry pie, Castiel bristles, starts to open his mouth and Gabriel shrugs.
"A few weeks, why, you gonna miss me Dean-o?" Gabriel replies and shoves a whole pancake in his mouth. Castiel can't help but wonder at the ridiculous turn of events that is their lives, even as he's fuming.
They leave not long after that, check out of the motel and Dean pulls Castiel aside before he has a chance to get in his car.
It's not completely unheard of, them going off on their own to talk, and it's not even unusual for one or both of them to be angry when they do so.
This is the same.
Dean is a hundred steps ahead of Castiel, always is, probably always will be. He shoves Castiel against the brick wall seperating the motel from the all-night laundromat next door, pushes his hands into his coat and crashes their bodies together.
This is different.
Dean's mouth is a vicious, impossible heat against Castiel's and he wants to sooth it, let's his tongue slide along Dean's with a groan. He wants to dampen the fire that's been burning there between them, unchecked and neglected, since the first time Dean saved his life.
Castiel breaks away first, reminded of his mortality as his breath rushes out of his lungs in a sob. Dean smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes until he leans back in and kisses him again. He's gentle this time, his fingers tangled in Dean's hair, Dean cradeling the back of his head in his palm.
They're both a little breathless when they pull apart the second time, Dean leans his forehead against Castiel's and sighs.
"Fuck. Just, Cas don't do anything stupid without me, okay?" Dean says. His eyelashes send shadows across his cheekbones, over the freckles there. Castiel nods.
"Okay," He says, "Of course." and he's alone.
(Almost.)
Dean isn't around today, or at all this week, so it's easy for Castiel to sneak out once Gabriel falls into a sugar-and-alcohol induced sleep. Easy for him to drive to the nearest animal cemetery and dig, easy for him to leave his car in the lot, leave his keys and a note for Gabriel on the nightstand.
There's another letter, but he doesn't know where to leave it, how to send it, or even if he'd want it, so it stays in the pocket of his overcoat, a small steady thing over the frantic beat of his heart.
It's a short walk to the nearest crossroads. He digs and digs, there's dirt under his fingernails and blood in his mouth from where he's chewed the inside of his lip.
(Gabriel had told him about his deal the night before last. How there were bones, how the kitchen knife he'd brought with him was filthy when it bit into his palm because it was freezing out that night and he hadn't brought anything to dig with. How the demon's eyes weren't blood red, but closer to the color of Anna's hair at the roots.
"Ten years for Anna's life," he said, popping a fun sized snickers bar into his mouth.
Neither of them dared to think it wasn't worth it.)
There's bones, and blood, and his soul at the crossroads.
Castiel stands with the cut on his hand, a line from pinky to wrist bleeding down his fingers and onto the ground, and waits.
He doesn't have to wait long.
"Take me in my brother's place." He says when the demon finally appears.
It's eyes are red and shimmering in the dark. It's in a man's body, tall and strong and it doesn't ask questions or mock or sneer. It stands close, tilts his head up with a finger under his chin and looks into his eyes, it's eyebrows drawn together in something that Castiel would classify as worry on a human.
"Are you sure?" it asks, mouth hovering over his.
"Yes," Castiel nods, "Yes I am." he says.
The kiss is just a kiss, and they pull apart quickly. The demon frowns, as if it wants to apologize, and Castiel freezes suddenly.
There's the sound of dogs, he's not sure how many of them, growling and closing in around him.
"This is going to hurt, I'm sorry." It says, and Castiel, who had been calm and unfazed, was suddenly very afraid.
Castiel dies on a Thursday.
(But this story doesn't end there, does it?)
Hell is a lot like what everyone describes.
It's worse too.
Castiel wakes up in the dark. It takes him a moment to shake the feeling he has in the pit of his stomach, the crash after a long fall, like hitting the ground a thousand times, he shouldn't have lived through it.
It starts to come back in flashes.
Gabriel's cackling laughter, the way Anna's lips twitched before she smiled, Michael standing in a doorway, arms crossed over his chest and his mouth twisted into a grimace as his eyes softened. Dean.
Castiel wakes up in the dark, realizes he's in a coffin, probably his, and no one can hear him. It doesn't stop him from screaming himself hoarse.
He drifts.
For minutes, hours, days, he isn't sure. When blinks his eyes open the pressure of hundreds of pounds of dirt doesn't seem as heavy, and he kicks up until the wood cracks, thrashes and knows he's depleting what little oxygen he has left but he can't stop.
Someone somewhere above him is shouting his name. He can't respond, kicks and punches until he touches dirt and then he digs.
He can't dig forever, can barely do it now, but it seems he doesn't have to. He's pulled out of his grave by the elbows, his feet catching on an edge before he's completely free. Castiel's first lungful of air since his death is exhaled against the front of Dean's favorite flannel, but he'd never imagined it being anywhere else.
The second one, the one they count instead of the first, the one before Gabriel or Anna get to him, is against Dean's lips, Dean murmuring, "What did I tell you Cas, huh? Nothing stupid without me," as he kisses his cheeks, his eyelids, the tip of his nose, his forehead. Castiel doesn't really have a problem with that either.
Epilogue
Anna doesn't know the man in her doorway, but he's holding her brother up as if he's the only thing in the fucking world that can, and Gabriel looks like he's been crying.
"Cas-" He croaks, and folds in on himself, can't seem to continue. She doesn't need him to, nods and moves aside to let them in.
They curl up together on the one small couch in her living room, the one Castiel and Gabriel had helped her move in when she came out to California for college.
"What happened?" she asks later, when Gabe is asleep with his head on her shoulder. The other man -He says his name is Dean and she doesn't know if it's true or not but she's suspicious of him- meets her stare over her brother's head and holds her gaze.
"Cas- he- was a fucking self sacrificing idiot." He says and she snorts, makes to shrug and thinks better of it when Gabriel shifts against her side.
"Always has been, our Castiel." she whispers into the quiet of her living room. When she looks over she's alone with Gabriel snoring lightly against her neck. It's not even the strangest thing that's happened to her within the last few months.
-:-
Castiel is buried in a closed coffin, no one capable or willing to explain the damage to his the body -she has to remind herself that Castiel isn't there anymore repeatedly- brutally mauled and yet pale white against the gleaming satin it lay upon.
She stands, back straight as the yard stick their mother had tied around her waist, cursing her under her breath as Gabe held her fist in his hands. It stuck, like so much of the bullshit Lillith had taught them, and she can't even hate the woman for it. She looks over at Michael, his jaw tight as he nods at her, and knows that look, saw it enough as a teenager to last her the rest of her life.
Dean is at her side today, and she's grateful for that at least. Her nails dig into the back of his hand and his eyes, when he looks at her, when he can stand to long enough, glimmer bright, red-rimmed and watery and she has this urge to gather him in her arms and just hold him, so she does.
She stands with Gabe at her back, her arms around this stranger who is holding onto her like he'll fly away if he doesn't, for a long time.
-:-
Their family has always been large, still feels that way after losing members, but Anna is somehow comforted by that fact.
She knows it's crazy, and the world is crazy enough already without her adding to it, but when she's reading, or making dinner, or a hundred other things she does that are mundane as all fuck, she likes to talk to them, imagines conversations with Uriel and Lucifer and Zachariah and now Castiel.
It doesn't change the fact that she's lonely and bordering on hopeless, but it helps her forget, just for a little while, that they aren't gone.
-:-
When Anna was a kid she was sick, and then she got better. That's the story (except how it isn't even close, is it?)
Anna was sick a lot as a kid, and sometimes she thinks that's the way it should have ended. A small coffin for a small girl buried in the family plot instead of losing everyone they've lost.
When Anna was 12 she was diagnosed, an inoperable tumor on her brain stem, too many hospital visits, and she's more exhausted than she knows she should be.
She spends her nights on the phone with Gabriel, who is away at school or terrorizing neighbors or annoying their parents, never where he should be because he's waiting for Castiel.
One day, towards the start of summer, she falls asleep and when she wakes she's nestled against Gabe's chest, Castiel reading by the light of the moon streaming in through the window and she knows it's well past midnight and they must have been on the road for ages, but she's just so glad they're there she can't help but grin over at him.
Gabe teaches her how to swear properly, and Castiel reads his summer novel -something about demons and angels sauntering vaguely downward that she will laugh at much, much later- to her every night and when she teaches Castiel how to braid the hair on the only doll she still has, and he smiles and tells her, "When you're well enough, I'll braid your hair and we'll have Gabriel show us how to blow this up."
She wakes up one day a month into their stay feeling better than she has in a year, and she's so excited she nearly skips out of her bedroom once she's ok'd to leave it.
She notices the furtive glances Castiel thinks no one sees him shooting Gabriel, as well as the new scar cutting across Gabe's palm. They blow up her doll, and then whatever else they can get away with before Michael hears them and tells father and it's the first time since they arrived that the three of them really laugh.
-:-
She remembers a week after the funeral, curled around Gabe sleeping on her couch, waking in the middle of the night to him on the phone, a whispered argument and then the soft smile he only ever had for Kali, and this is how she finds out what really happened. Not from Gabe or Castiel, the two people she loves most in the world, but from a quick Google search after an even more hurried call to Gabriel's ex fiancé.
-:-
She's angry, of course she's fucking angry, she'd have to be an idiot not to be angry but if there's anything being Gabriel's little sister has taught her it's this: Only accept half of what he says as truth. More important than the first, to remember the impossible is just a little harder to achieve than the improbable.
So when Dean shows up in her kitchen out of thin fucking air -she's not dealing with him right now unless she abso-fucking-lutely has to, Kali told her angels are assholes and she's inclined to believe it- she holds onto the frying pan she was about to throw at Gabe's face and glares.
She knows she must look a little wild, her hair and clothes still mussed from sleep, her mouth set in the most defiant line she can manage, but she doesn't really give a shit.
"If one of you stupid assholes doesn't tell me what happened," she seethes, pauses to point the frying pan at her brother cowering behind the overturned dining room table, "The truth, thank you very fucking much, I swear to God..." She let's the threat trail off as Dean steps around her and opens her fridge.
"No beer? We're really gonna need beers for this." He says, shutting it to look in the freezer. She almost smiles when he finds the bottle of vodka behind the frostbitten ice cream, pulls it out and she sets the pan back on the stove to get three glasses.
"Okay," She sighs, sipping from her glasses and smiling as Gabe blanches, "Spill." She demands.
By the time they're done talking, she's more than a little drunk but she glares at them as much as she can manage.
"You are, all three of you, so fucking stupid I can't even talk about it." She grumbles into the tabletop, feels Dean dig his fingers into the back of her neck and he hums in agreement.
"At least we're all very pretty." Gabriel says, pressing an almond joy into her hand with a giggle.
When she wakes up, Gabe slumped over the table across from her and Dean's chair empty and she's reminded that, yes, being Gabe's little sister has given her a skewed idea of what's possible, but the plan they'd decided on last night is one of the most ridiculous she's heard, up to and including the time Gabe wanted them to convince Balthazar he could fly.
It's ridiculous, but not impossible, not completely. In any case, it's all they have, so she packs and Gabe makes breakfast and they wait for Dean to come back.
-:-
They wait
And wait
And wait.
(Anna thought angels would be speedy, she doesn't know why, but obviously she's wrong.)
-:-
When Dean does show up, finally, it's been two damn months, he looks wrecked. He still dodges the salad bowl aimed at his left eye though, so Anna figures he can't be that bad.
"You fucking feathery asshole." She sighs before pulling him into a hug. It's become a habit, but it's not the worst of the ones she has, not even close, so she leaves it be.
"Gabe, get over here." Dean growls, arm tightening around Anna's waist. Gabe groans but does as he's told, the arm that isn't wrapped securely around Dean bunching up the back of her jacket in his fist.
"If you gotta puke, aim for his boots." Gabe whispers into her ear. Before she can laugh or breath or blink the world tilts, the air was punched out of her lungs, there's the sound of something rushing around them, the smell of ozone, and they land.
Dean let's them go, Gabe staggers back looking a little green but otherwise fine. Anna falls to her knees and drops her hands to the ground to try to keep steady, breathing through her nose hard as she glares up at Dean, who was running towards the maintenance shed.
"We need shovels." he yells over his shoulder and only then does Anna realize where they were.
She almost throws up when she looks up and is eye level with the tombstone on Castiel's grave.
"Fuck," she whispers and than because everything is hitting her slow, "Fuck we need shovels." just as Dean hands her one.
They dig. She tries not to think about what Dean is telling them, how Dean's spent the time since he left her house searching hell for Castiel, how he could be down there suffocating and she can't, can't, can't think about what hell must be like for Castiel because if there was one person who doesn't deserve whatever it is down there, it's her brother.
After a while -minutes, fuck, hours?- they resort to their hands. Dean's jaw is tight and his knuckles are dirt covered and bleeding and he doesn't stop, doesn't look like he can, and Anna wants to cry from the sheer determination in his eyes but then they hear it.
It sounds like someone knocking on wood, and they all freeze before digging again, yelling and never mind that it's the middle of the day in a cemetery, they just yell louder.
"Castiel, you stupid asshat!" Anna yells and then then Castiel reaches through the dirt and Dean grabs him by the elbows and pulls him up and out.
She can't even care about the fact that he's covered in dirt and dust or that he's being chewed out by a fucking angel, who is kissing any bit of skin he can reach between breaths.
She can't because Castiel is alive and smiling like he's never been happier to be buried alive and when he finally frees himself of Dean, just long enough to pull her and Gabe into a hug she punches him in the ribs.
"You are so lucky we love you." she laughs, tears streaming down her face and she doesn't give a shit because Castiel smiles, skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes, and presses a kiss to her forehead.
"Ps, your boyfriend is a dick." she grumbles against his chest, just to hear him laugh.