Fic: Dog Shit, Traps, Trouble and Other Inconvenient Things to Fall Into
Title: Dog Shit, Traps, Trouble and Other Inconvenient Things to Fall Into
Words: 2,132
Genre: Slash, romance.
Rating: PG 13
Characters: Dean, Cas.
Pairing: Dean/Cas
Spoilers: Up to and including(ish) season 6. But no super-specific spoilers present.
Summary: There's an argument in here somewhere for Castiel's skill of inconvenient timing.
He wakes to a sound like sheets flapping in the wind and says, "Cas," to the darkness.
"Dean," the darkness admits gruffly back.
Dean's first thought is fuck everything. And his second is Get gun-get Sam-getting too old for this shit. But the darkness is calm with Castiel's strange presence; it lacks immediate urgency. Evidently this is just Cas, popping in for a-Dean checks the alarm clock-four twenty six in the Goddamn morning chat. Dean shuffles himself out of bed with the resigned slope of an old soldier, leaving the warm sheets behind, and yanks open Bobby's ugly-ass curtains, ugly-ass maroon curtains, to let some moonlight in.
Cas is standing in the middle of the room, wearing a frown and no shoes. He seems paralyzed. He won't look Dean in the face. This is some kind of an emergency after all. But it's something different, Dean feels it in the pit of his stomach. A low, nervous clenching, like knowing there's a big snake hiding in the room. It's a very human way to stand, alone, empty handed with your eyes on the worn carpet and no shoes on your feet. It's vulnerable and it's wrong.
Dean realizes his life is about to change forever. Again. He thinks that he's sick of redefining his life and that self-actualization is crap and maybe it's shit like this that makes a man snap and buy maroon curtains.
His self-preservation is telling him to blow this off, to go back to bed. But Cas is standing like a sleepwalker in the middle of his bedroom and it makes Dean ache. Because he gets it. He gets the bullshit. Life is a forest everyone gets lost in; and there are wolves and bears and not enough knives to go around and sometimes little kids die and grandmothers get beat and there's no higher purpose at the end of the road. The punch line is a guy with a rubber duck and a mustache, doesn't even make sense. Yeah, Dean gets it.
So he says: "Cas, what's up?" to get the ball rolling. And Cas looks at him-finally looks at him-with an expression of open uncertainty, something Dean hasn't seen on him since before they jammed Lucifer back in the box. His eyes are sad and frightened.
"I am going to Fall," says Cas quietly. And Dean has seriously misread this entire situation.
"No," he says automatically. It's thirty seconds while all the implications catch up with him and then, in a rush like a waterfall breaking free, Dean is pissed. "No," he growls. He doesn't know if he's pissed because this means Cas is giving up or if he's pissed because it just might be his fault but the sharp feeling of WRONG in his chest is boiling off the end of his tongue. "NO! That is not the way to fix this! That is making my mistake and you are fucking better than that Cas, just because your stupid civil war isn't going your way you can't pack up and-"
"I made the wrong decision," Cas interrupts quietly. He's still just standing there, shoulders slumped, ruffled and exhausted. "When God remade me, at the end of the apocalypse." He clarifies when Dean only continues to stare because Cas is obviously loosing his angelic Goddamn marbles.
"You've got your juice back. You can go home, why would you want to give that shit up?" Cas has his family back, you don't just throw that away.
"I chose duty," Cas says, looking up to his own reflection in the dark window. He approaches it and studies his own face with a twist in his mouth. His fingers curl and uncurl at his sides.
"And that's bad because...?" Now Cas is looking at Dean's reflection, his blue eyes lifting under his eyelashes. His brow wrinkles up and he takes a deep breath through his nose, like he's getting ready to jump into deep water from someplace high. The unsaid thing hangs mysteriously between them for a few moments. Then, just as Cas opens his mouth, Dean recognizes it. He hardly hears the actual words.
"I should have chosen you."
Dean stands there in his underwear freezing his ass off because he's got no reply. Really he's the one who's going to fall, Cas has ocean blue eyes and they're deep. It's suddenly a good thing he's only looking into a reflection because otherwise he'd be drowning already.
Cas, it turns out, speaks fluent flabbergasted Dean, and smiles ironically into the glass.
"They'll never take me back now anyway," he says quietly. "They'll see this in me, they'll never forgive me for it." He doesn't seem as upset as he ought to be. But he looks nervous. His mouth is twisted, a little bit crazy.
Cas leaves the window and crosses the room to stand in front of Dean. Dean sits down on the edge of the bed to put some space between them and because his knees are done. He can feel the edge in front of his feet.
He's been walking along this cliff for a long time now, looking straight ahead, pretending it wasn't there. And Cas has been on the other side walking the same way, in step, in sync. And sometimes they'd glance at each other, over the deep and narrow chasm between them, but they were always careful to never look down.
Cas is looking down at Dean.
"I have become a hypocrite, Dean," he says. "I want them to see their own potential, to understand and utilize their free will. Instead, I give them orders, and I lead them because they believe it is my job. I should have refused." Cas' hand comes out, reaching, and Dean feels a single finger tip against his forehead, a tiny pool of warmth. It's a gentle prod that makes Dean feel like the statue in a museum behind the Do not touch sign. Cas is the curious historian who can't help breaking the rule. "I want them to make their own decisions but I have made the same mistake." He lets his hand drop back to his side. Dean looks down at Cas' bare feet and thinks, insanely, that when Cas falls it's gonna be Dean's job to teach him how to clip his toenails. "I have failed to use my free will to seek the things I need."
Dean's got some inappropriate butterflies messing up his stomach and a more inappropriate urge to giggle. Cas knows him to his molecules, to his atoms.
Cas knows what Dean knows. That this has always been between them.
"Need?" asks Dean, and wonders where his voice went.
"Want," says Cas. Then he kneels before Dean, and takes each of Dean's hands into his own. Now Cas is looking up and Dean is looking down, and it really is a very very long way to fall.
"What do you want, Dean?" Cas asks him and that's a laundry list Dean leaves alone. Shit he wants just gets him in trouble. Gets him landed in hell. Starts the apocalypse. Kills his baby brother. Breaks Lisa's heart.
Yanks an angel out of heaven.
"You gotta ask?" Dean says. Because maybe Cas can say it, Cas has no scale for humiliation and spent thousands of years fighting for it, but Dean's never said it to anyone but Sam.
"No," Cas smiles at him. He reaches up to cup the back of Dean's neck and pulls Dean down. Dean slams his eyes shut and then he's slipping off the mattress, melting into a warm mouth and hands. Cas kisses him like Dean's his first and his last. They're both desperate. When Dean runs out of air and opens his mouth he ends up gasping through his nose because Cas bites into him. It's rough and gentle, and Dean's bottomless with it. He feels the velvet of Cas' tongue, the clutch of his fingers, and waits to stop plummeting.
Cas pulls back gently, with a lush kiss to Dean's bottom lip, and rests his forehead against Dean's temple.
"Did you learn that from the pizza man?" Dean gasps hysterically.
Cas smiles against Dean's skin and mouths at his cheekbones.
"No. I learned it from you."
"Fuck, Cas," Dean breathes, because it's all a little bit too much. He's used to epiphanies but he thought he was going down a different road than this. Cas' chuckle is the snapping of twigs in the dark, making Dean's hair stand on end.
"I think that can be arranged," Cas whispers.
In Dean's chest is a fragile thing that breaks under the weight of Castiel's breath.
Dean thinks about tomorrow, not the dawn that's already rising, but the one after it, and maybe the next one too. He thinks about how different the sun will look over Cas' shoulder looking up from a pillow. Dean is knee to knee with his angel and he thinks that it should have harder than this. There should have been a fight. Dean should be trying to punch some God-damn sense into Cas before he allows anything this fucking...impossible. Instead he's just holding onto Castiel's wrists like they're the handles of a bicycle flying out of control down a hill.
"You still believe in impossible?" Cas whispers.
"Will it hurt?" Dean asks, because he's an idiot and words like grateful and forever always seem to change on his tongue into cheesy lyrics and bad movie references. Cas stands up. There's just enough light coming in the window to give him a long shadow. It falls over Dean.
"Today, it will." Cas puts his empty hands into his pockets and twists to look at the horizon. Bobby's yard is waking up with a mouthful of chatty birds. Downstairs somebody, probably Sam, is clattering across the mess in the living room. The floor is freezing. "Close your eyes," says Cas "and don't open them until it's over."
Dean's on his feet.
"Wait. You're gonna do this now?" He looks wildly around him for something helpful. Drugs. Whisky. A fucking band-aid.
"Yes. Why?"
Dean decides to skip the obvious explanations like: because I'm not wearing any pants. Of course Cas wouldn't want to stand on good literary traditions. He doesn't know about them. Dean asks:
"How will I know when it's over?"
"It will be when I stop screaming."
Well.
Shit.
Dean doesn't say that he isn't worth this. That there's no telling what could happen. That they could be regretting this next week. He doesn't say thank you, Cas or please don't. He doesn't say think about this first. He puts his hands over his eyes and sits down on the bed to wait.
It's about time he sucked it up and fell in lo-
There's the sound of continents tearing apart. The strong smell of ozone and the crackle of an angry storm. The glow and burn of a star taking its last breath. Castiel's scream rips into Dean. It's worse than the teeth of a hellhound, worse than Alastair's blades. Dean opens himself to it, and shares as much of it as he can.
He expects it to feel like hours, but it's over all of a sudden. The scream cuts off and the silence is profound.
It shut those god-damn birds right up.
Dean opens his eyes and sees the window is a goner. Shards everywhere. Bobby's startled cussing and Sam's heavy footsteps are on the stairs.
Cas is on his ass, his head in his hands, sweating, tears still left on his face. He's gasping and shuddering. Dean scrambles to reach him, cutting his feet and his shins as he pulls Cas to him. Cas is burning. Alive.
"Dean," Cas slurs, and hides his face in Dean's neck.
When Sam kicks open the door, Dean is still in nothing but his boxers and there's a fallen angel in his lap. Dean looks at his little brother, the shock frozen on Sam's face.
"It's all right, Sammy," he says. "Close the door." And Sam does, because he's a smart fucking guy.
Through the broken window the birds start up again all at once, like someone hit the play button. The sun is warm on Dean's arms, climbing higher, proving that time doesn't stop, even for miracles. Sam is still outside the door, breathing heavily in panic. Bobby is shouting abuse and worry up from the living room. Heaven is probably just getting the bulletin. And the whole Godless world is spinning on and on, a gyroscope that never heard of friction.
But Dean and Cas hold on, curved together-like two leaves from different trees that accidentally fell on top of each other-and balance the distance between peace and disaster.