Fic: In This Hollow Valley (Dean/Cas, R)
Title: In This Hollow Valley
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Cas (+ Sam)
Rating: light R
Word Count: ~ 2,000
Disclaimer: Not mine, etc.
Summary/Notes: There's a hollowness at the core of Dean that won't seem to go away. It takes him months to realize, being Dean, that the hole is Cas-shaped. The title is from T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men; the eagle-eyed will notice random other Eliot references throughout. Kudos to starcrossedgirl, as well, for certain insights in this fic.
Spoilers: Up to the end of Season 5.
The way he sees it, it looks inverted, at first, like an image seen in negative, or distorted through a twist of rough-blown glass. It's always like that - always the same, this chaos of muted colours in his head, resolving themselves only gradually into the wasteland where everything he was fell away.
"Sam," he says, over and over, "Sammy!"
But every time, there is only the wind to answer him, and it is not the voice of God.
He never sees Sam, not even falling, all limbs and angles and stoicism, ultimately, under fire. Sometimes, though, for a moment, there is Cas. He is never there for long; never long enough to sear his presence through the pain, to make it anything less than the pure ringing horror that jolts Dean breathlessly awake. Sometimes, though, there is a moment of quietude, and he sees the familiar figure in its battered trenchcoat; sees those eyes, complicated and blue. Sometimes, there is only brightness, and a sense of him.
In his nightmares, he is always screaming for Sammy, Sam; but when he wakes, it is with Castiel on his lips.
It's only since he disappeared that Dean has realized: that is where he wants him.
*
February, and the broken, open road. It's a long time since he's driven out like this, with the windows rolled down, uncaring of the fine mist of rain clinging cold as a dying thing. Beside him, behind him, there are empty seats; within him, empty wishes, empty words, and that hollowness Zachariah saw.
"You know I wouldn't have brought you back without a soul," Cas said, and Dean believed him, on the promise of those eyes. But they are gone now, he is gone, and the Cas Dean knew would never have left him like that. Not the Cas that had grown around him like a tree, embracing the shape of him, accommodating his presence. Cas is, surely, not Cas any more, but Castiel, so dutiful, so brittle.
For a time, Dean clung to the way he had laughed in the car, just before he disappeared. Castiel, when first manifest, had been humourless, oblivious, inhuman. Perhaps not everything he had learned had gone, if he could smile at Dean's nonsense? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. But it's been months now, and everywhere is still empty space. Dean was never the one who kept on believing.
"Cas," he breathes, his mouth licked damp with rainhaze and the dark.
The engine swallows the sound, swallows his secrets.
Dean bites his lip and drives.
*
April is the cruellest month, nightmares splintering violet-sharp through the fragile seam between the two halves of his mind. Waking, there is Dean Winchester, Well-Adjusted Joe, eating pancakes and taking Ben to baseball games, his girl smiling on his arm. This is the dermis, the part that flakes and cracks, splits on rough edges to let what's inside bleed out. Beneath, within, there is the hollow man, layers and layers deep. On his shoulder, Castiel's burn sinks through the levels.
It is in April when he sees him first on Level One, the outside, the skin. Glimpses, at first, in the corner of his eye; uncertainties. Once, a dark-haired man standing at the other end of a long aisle in the grocery store, solemn by a display of Captain Crunch. When Dean reached him, naturally, he was gone.
"Dean?" Lisa's eyes wide, concerned. Always so concerned for him.
Dean feels the wounds showing in his face; plasters them over with a smile. "Man, I love this stuff." He seizes a box. "Sugar cereal frenzy?"
The glimpses after that one are insignificant and constant. A flash of blue eyes in line at the gas station; guy in a trenchcoat in a car he passes at a stoplight. Once, Dean could swear that he swims past him, underwater at the city pool. He surfaces, all windmilling limbs and a guilty coil of hopeful heat in his stomach, waiting for the other blur to rise to the surface, take form. When it does, it is only Kim McGregor, one of their regular mailmen. He winks at Dean and grins. "I can stay underwater for over a minute. Impressive, huh?"
Dean nods and smiles, and if Kim notices anything strange in him, he doesn't ever mention it. Probably, he noticed nothing.
April is full of these visions: not-Castiel everywhere he looks.
Late one night, he sinks into the sofa, television still flashing palely in the darkness of the empty living room. He closes his eyes, and summons him, pinning him down inside his mind: the stiff, militaristic bearing, the blue eyes piercing and so utterly Castiel, there in Jimmy Novak's handsome face. "Cas," Dean whispers, holding him there in his head, letting the warmth suffuse him. "Cas."
Cas smiles slowly, soft pink lips stretching over straight white teeth. He says Dean's name, in that inimitable way. Dean presses the heel of his palm against the rising heat between his spread legs, just a little, half-conscious. Cas smiles a little more, soft, and then abruptly disappears.
Dean's eyes are open immediately, consternated and wronged. That was his Cas, his fantasy. Where - where - where -
And then the television flickers; steadies itself closed-in on Castiel's face.
Dean stares, his hand unmoved, his body arrested in place.
"Soon," says Cas, the gravelled velvet of his voice sweet to Dean's disbelieving ears.
"Cas," Dean begins, shifting, one hand outstretched to touch.
Cas disappears, lost beneath a flurry of snow.
*
His first thought, of course, is to doubt him. Doubt Castiel, doubt heaven; doubt everything and slam his mind angrily closed to all of it; fuck them, fuck it all.
But then he hears Castiel's voice in his mind, with a clarity rare in a chance memory. "That is your problem, Dean. You have no faith."
He remembers praying, his eyes upturned to the sky. Killing the Whore, whom only a true servant of Heaven could defeat. Apocalypse: averted, by hook or by crook, exactly as he had asked.
Ask, chides Cas's voice, and thou shalt receive.
It's two a.m., pitch black and cold with the clammy chill of early spring.
"Goddammit," rasps Dean, and pats his pockets for his keys.
*
The church is empty, of course. No clergyman (naturally); no demons (thankfully); nothing but the dark and the pervasive smell of incense, candlewax and cold stone. Eau de Church, Dean thinks, and laughs, soft, under his breath.
There is nothing in the least scary about it. It's comforting, almost; and maybe that's strange, but Dean hasn't forgotten all the times the odd Christo saved them; all the gallons of Holy Water they used. If nothing else, this place is a sanctuary, in the truest sense of the word. Here, Dean could defend himself against anything; hole up for days and days.
He is procrastinating.
Before him, the altar looms quietly, in a small town sort of way. In his mind, the pressure that is Cas starts to prey on him, like a loose tooth, demanding his attention. He lets himself poke at it a little.
"Cas?"
There is nothing, no response; nothing but the vastness of the nave, the artificial flowers, the pews with their red velvet runners, soft and still in the night. Dean sighs, takes a moment to steel himself. Ask, Cas said; not hedge his bets and fumble in the darkness. He raises his voice.
"Castiel! Castiel. You here?"
He's never sure, afterwards, exactly where he expected Cas to be. On the altar, maybe, materialising bold in a flash of light. Or, perhaps, right in front of him, eyes on his, unblinking.
Either way, the heat at his back still takes him unceremoniously by surprise.
"Dean," Cas says, in a voice that works its way into all the cracks of him, gliding through the chinks in his armour. Dean startles, turns; takes him in, the mussed shock of his hair and the slight quirk of his mouth. It is the quirk he fixates upon, and all the things it means, and Cas's mouth turns up in a smile in response.
"Ask," Castiel says, "and thou shalt receive."
"Yeah," Dean says, the word huffed out in a voice he barely recognises. "Yeah, I got that." He laughs a little, his whole body suddenly light, as if he could float right off the flagstones. "God, Cas."
"Ask me," says Castiel again, close and deep.
Dean leans in and kisses him.
*
This night is not the night for explanations, for all the ways and whys of Cas's disappearance, his life and his mission and his return. All Dean knows, and all Dean needs to know, is that he has faith, and now he is holding it in his arms, thrusting his hips against it. He murmurs his name, over and over, between kisses, cascascas against his skin, licked into the hollows of him, breathed into his mouth. When they are naked, Cas's fingers find their mark, sealing over it, pressing deep.
"Christ," Dean gasps out, and thrusts against Cas's hip, feeling the pull of it, the sting of his soul as Cas makes contact, makes it real. Cas's hands complete him in this moment, stitching all the layers of him together, leaving Dean whole beneath him, reborn. It should be so new, this, so fumbling and tentative and exploratory, Dean's fingers closing for the first time around another man's cock, Cas's breath stuttering as his orgasm builds for the first time under Dean's touch. Dean doesn't do men; doesn't do dicks and hard muscles and strength that matches his own. But Cas is not a man. Cas is the core of him, the missing part now expanding to fill the hollows, and this could never be anything but right. Cas comes in his hand, and Dean kisses him back to hardness on the carpet between the pews, licking deep to the back of his mouth. His fingers are moving of their own accord, knowing things he has never consciously contemplated; thrusting into Cas's mouth until they're slick with his saliva, hot and wet, and then circling, pressing in between his own legs, preparing himself to receive.
The second time, Castiel comes inside Dean, unsheathed and hot and messy. It's sloppy and rough, but when Cas pulls out, there is a burn where the emptiness was, an ache that is Castiel. Dean sinks into it; treasures it.
*
They leave a note for Lisa on the way to the motel: Something came up. Back soon to explain.
The hour is ridiculous, but the bored clerk is evidently used to it. Dean is gratified to discover that Cas has not learned to appreciate personal space any more than he ever did, and wriggles back when Cas curls around him. In the morning, of course, it will be Cas's fault. That's only one of the joys of it. Dean falls asleep sated, and content.
*
He dreams of the wasteland, of the grass and the dirt and the sky.
"Sammy!" His voice is hoarse, rasping over the wind. "Sam!"
"Dean," Sam says, warm and familiar by Dean's shoulder. "Dean. It's okay. I got him."
Dean turns towards the sound, towards green eyes and the tumble of his hair and the solidity of him, sudden and real when Dean throws his arms around him.
"Dean," Sam laughs, hesitant and surprised. "Doesn't this qualify as a chick-flick moment?" But his hands curve up around Dean, all the same, and they cling like they'll never let go.
Dean wakes slowly, in Cas's arms.
"Hi," Cas says, voice morning-dark against Dean's shoulder. Dean absolutely does not snuggle back against him, nor pull Cas's arm more closely around his waist.
"Sammy," he says, after a moment. "I think - "
He can't say it, what he feels. Not the way he saw him fall.
"I was dreaming about Sam," he says.
Cas pulls him closer, fitting himself around the curve of Dean's back. His mouth finds the bolt of Dean's jaw, kissing wetly there for a moment. He draws a hesitant breath.
"Dean," he says, his voice very careful. "Dean. Sam is alive. I was going to tell you."
"I knew it," Dean returns, immediate and fierce with certainty, with validation. "God, Cas. Where the fuck is he?"
*
They leave the motel a little after eleven, Zeppelin blaring out of the speakers, a hard glint in Dean's eyes. Beside him, Cas is riding shotgun. Within him, there is Cas, his burn, his mark. Somewhere, not unreachable, is Sam.
Dean's okay, from the dermis all the way down. Goddammit, he survived the freakin' Apocalypse. He's okay.
And if his fingers find Cas's over the gearstick as they roll into Arkansas, well, there's nobody else here to bear witness.
*
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Cas (+ Sam)
Rating: light R
Word Count: ~ 2,000
Disclaimer: Not mine, etc.
Summary/Notes: There's a hollowness at the core of Dean that won't seem to go away. It takes him months to realize, being Dean, that the hole is Cas-shaped. The title is from T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men; the eagle-eyed will notice random other Eliot references throughout. Kudos to starcrossedgirl, as well, for certain insights in this fic.
Spoilers: Up to the end of Season 5.
The way he sees it, it looks inverted, at first, like an image seen in negative, or distorted through a twist of rough-blown glass. It's always like that - always the same, this chaos of muted colours in his head, resolving themselves only gradually into the wasteland where everything he was fell away.
"Sam," he says, over and over, "Sammy!"
But every time, there is only the wind to answer him, and it is not the voice of God.
He never sees Sam, not even falling, all limbs and angles and stoicism, ultimately, under fire. Sometimes, though, for a moment, there is Cas. He is never there for long; never long enough to sear his presence through the pain, to make it anything less than the pure ringing horror that jolts Dean breathlessly awake. Sometimes, though, there is a moment of quietude, and he sees the familiar figure in its battered trenchcoat; sees those eyes, complicated and blue. Sometimes, there is only brightness, and a sense of him.
In his nightmares, he is always screaming for Sammy, Sam; but when he wakes, it is with Castiel on his lips.
It's only since he disappeared that Dean has realized: that is where he wants him.
*
February, and the broken, open road. It's a long time since he's driven out like this, with the windows rolled down, uncaring of the fine mist of rain clinging cold as a dying thing. Beside him, behind him, there are empty seats; within him, empty wishes, empty words, and that hollowness Zachariah saw.
"You know I wouldn't have brought you back without a soul," Cas said, and Dean believed him, on the promise of those eyes. But they are gone now, he is gone, and the Cas Dean knew would never have left him like that. Not the Cas that had grown around him like a tree, embracing the shape of him, accommodating his presence. Cas is, surely, not Cas any more, but Castiel, so dutiful, so brittle.
For a time, Dean clung to the way he had laughed in the car, just before he disappeared. Castiel, when first manifest, had been humourless, oblivious, inhuman. Perhaps not everything he had learned had gone, if he could smile at Dean's nonsense? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. But it's been months now, and everywhere is still empty space. Dean was never the one who kept on believing.
"Cas," he breathes, his mouth licked damp with rainhaze and the dark.
The engine swallows the sound, swallows his secrets.
Dean bites his lip and drives.
*
April is the cruellest month, nightmares splintering violet-sharp through the fragile seam between the two halves of his mind. Waking, there is Dean Winchester, Well-Adjusted Joe, eating pancakes and taking Ben to baseball games, his girl smiling on his arm. This is the dermis, the part that flakes and cracks, splits on rough edges to let what's inside bleed out. Beneath, within, there is the hollow man, layers and layers deep. On his shoulder, Castiel's burn sinks through the levels.
It is in April when he sees him first on Level One, the outside, the skin. Glimpses, at first, in the corner of his eye; uncertainties. Once, a dark-haired man standing at the other end of a long aisle in the grocery store, solemn by a display of Captain Crunch. When Dean reached him, naturally, he was gone.
"Dean?" Lisa's eyes wide, concerned. Always so concerned for him.
Dean feels the wounds showing in his face; plasters them over with a smile. "Man, I love this stuff." He seizes a box. "Sugar cereal frenzy?"
The glimpses after that one are insignificant and constant. A flash of blue eyes in line at the gas station; guy in a trenchcoat in a car he passes at a stoplight. Once, Dean could swear that he swims past him, underwater at the city pool. He surfaces, all windmilling limbs and a guilty coil of hopeful heat in his stomach, waiting for the other blur to rise to the surface, take form. When it does, it is only Kim McGregor, one of their regular mailmen. He winks at Dean and grins. "I can stay underwater for over a minute. Impressive, huh?"
Dean nods and smiles, and if Kim notices anything strange in him, he doesn't ever mention it. Probably, he noticed nothing.
April is full of these visions: not-Castiel everywhere he looks.
Late one night, he sinks into the sofa, television still flashing palely in the darkness of the empty living room. He closes his eyes, and summons him, pinning him down inside his mind: the stiff, militaristic bearing, the blue eyes piercing and so utterly Castiel, there in Jimmy Novak's handsome face. "Cas," Dean whispers, holding him there in his head, letting the warmth suffuse him. "Cas."
Cas smiles slowly, soft pink lips stretching over straight white teeth. He says Dean's name, in that inimitable way. Dean presses the heel of his palm against the rising heat between his spread legs, just a little, half-conscious. Cas smiles a little more, soft, and then abruptly disappears.
Dean's eyes are open immediately, consternated and wronged. That was his Cas, his fantasy. Where - where - where -
And then the television flickers; steadies itself closed-in on Castiel's face.
Dean stares, his hand unmoved, his body arrested in place.
"Soon," says Cas, the gravelled velvet of his voice sweet to Dean's disbelieving ears.
"Cas," Dean begins, shifting, one hand outstretched to touch.
Cas disappears, lost beneath a flurry of snow.
*
His first thought, of course, is to doubt him. Doubt Castiel, doubt heaven; doubt everything and slam his mind angrily closed to all of it; fuck them, fuck it all.
But then he hears Castiel's voice in his mind, with a clarity rare in a chance memory. "That is your problem, Dean. You have no faith."
He remembers praying, his eyes upturned to the sky. Killing the Whore, whom only a true servant of Heaven could defeat. Apocalypse: averted, by hook or by crook, exactly as he had asked.
Ask, chides Cas's voice, and thou shalt receive.
It's two a.m., pitch black and cold with the clammy chill of early spring.
"Goddammit," rasps Dean, and pats his pockets for his keys.
*
The church is empty, of course. No clergyman (naturally); no demons (thankfully); nothing but the dark and the pervasive smell of incense, candlewax and cold stone. Eau de Church, Dean thinks, and laughs, soft, under his breath.
There is nothing in the least scary about it. It's comforting, almost; and maybe that's strange, but Dean hasn't forgotten all the times the odd Christo saved them; all the gallons of Holy Water they used. If nothing else, this place is a sanctuary, in the truest sense of the word. Here, Dean could defend himself against anything; hole up for days and days.
He is procrastinating.
Before him, the altar looms quietly, in a small town sort of way. In his mind, the pressure that is Cas starts to prey on him, like a loose tooth, demanding his attention. He lets himself poke at it a little.
"Cas?"
There is nothing, no response; nothing but the vastness of the nave, the artificial flowers, the pews with their red velvet runners, soft and still in the night. Dean sighs, takes a moment to steel himself. Ask, Cas said; not hedge his bets and fumble in the darkness. He raises his voice.
"Castiel! Castiel. You here?"
He's never sure, afterwards, exactly where he expected Cas to be. On the altar, maybe, materialising bold in a flash of light. Or, perhaps, right in front of him, eyes on his, unblinking.
Either way, the heat at his back still takes him unceremoniously by surprise.
"Dean," Cas says, in a voice that works its way into all the cracks of him, gliding through the chinks in his armour. Dean startles, turns; takes him in, the mussed shock of his hair and the slight quirk of his mouth. It is the quirk he fixates upon, and all the things it means, and Cas's mouth turns up in a smile in response.
"Ask," Castiel says, "and thou shalt receive."
"Yeah," Dean says, the word huffed out in a voice he barely recognises. "Yeah, I got that." He laughs a little, his whole body suddenly light, as if he could float right off the flagstones. "God, Cas."
"Ask me," says Castiel again, close and deep.
Dean leans in and kisses him.
*
This night is not the night for explanations, for all the ways and whys of Cas's disappearance, his life and his mission and his return. All Dean knows, and all Dean needs to know, is that he has faith, and now he is holding it in his arms, thrusting his hips against it. He murmurs his name, over and over, between kisses, cascascas against his skin, licked into the hollows of him, breathed into his mouth. When they are naked, Cas's fingers find their mark, sealing over it, pressing deep.
"Christ," Dean gasps out, and thrusts against Cas's hip, feeling the pull of it, the sting of his soul as Cas makes contact, makes it real. Cas's hands complete him in this moment, stitching all the layers of him together, leaving Dean whole beneath him, reborn. It should be so new, this, so fumbling and tentative and exploratory, Dean's fingers closing for the first time around another man's cock, Cas's breath stuttering as his orgasm builds for the first time under Dean's touch. Dean doesn't do men; doesn't do dicks and hard muscles and strength that matches his own. But Cas is not a man. Cas is the core of him, the missing part now expanding to fill the hollows, and this could never be anything but right. Cas comes in his hand, and Dean kisses him back to hardness on the carpet between the pews, licking deep to the back of his mouth. His fingers are moving of their own accord, knowing things he has never consciously contemplated; thrusting into Cas's mouth until they're slick with his saliva, hot and wet, and then circling, pressing in between his own legs, preparing himself to receive.
The second time, Castiel comes inside Dean, unsheathed and hot and messy. It's sloppy and rough, but when Cas pulls out, there is a burn where the emptiness was, an ache that is Castiel. Dean sinks into it; treasures it.
*
They leave a note for Lisa on the way to the motel: Something came up. Back soon to explain.
The hour is ridiculous, but the bored clerk is evidently used to it. Dean is gratified to discover that Cas has not learned to appreciate personal space any more than he ever did, and wriggles back when Cas curls around him. In the morning, of course, it will be Cas's fault. That's only one of the joys of it. Dean falls asleep sated, and content.
*
He dreams of the wasteland, of the grass and the dirt and the sky.
"Sammy!" His voice is hoarse, rasping over the wind. "Sam!"
"Dean," Sam says, warm and familiar by Dean's shoulder. "Dean. It's okay. I got him."
Dean turns towards the sound, towards green eyes and the tumble of his hair and the solidity of him, sudden and real when Dean throws his arms around him.
"Dean," Sam laughs, hesitant and surprised. "Doesn't this qualify as a chick-flick moment?" But his hands curve up around Dean, all the same, and they cling like they'll never let go.
Dean wakes slowly, in Cas's arms.
"Hi," Cas says, voice morning-dark against Dean's shoulder. Dean absolutely does not snuggle back against him, nor pull Cas's arm more closely around his waist.
"Sammy," he says, after a moment. "I think - "
He can't say it, what he feels. Not the way he saw him fall.
"I was dreaming about Sam," he says.
Cas pulls him closer, fitting himself around the curve of Dean's back. His mouth finds the bolt of Dean's jaw, kissing wetly there for a moment. He draws a hesitant breath.
"Dean," he says, his voice very careful. "Dean. Sam is alive. I was going to tell you."
"I knew it," Dean returns, immediate and fierce with certainty, with validation. "God, Cas. Where the fuck is he?"
*
They leave the motel a little after eleven, Zeppelin blaring out of the speakers, a hard glint in Dean's eyes. Beside him, Cas is riding shotgun. Within him, there is Cas, his burn, his mark. Somewhere, not unreachable, is Sam.
Dean's okay, from the dermis all the way down. Goddammit, he survived the freakin' Apocalypse. He's okay.
And if his fingers find Cas's over the gearstick as they roll into Arkansas, well, there's nobody else here to bear witness.
*