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alchemyaliceTitle: Su Casa
Author: Alchemy Alice
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: none
Word Count: ~2,300
Disclaimer: All kinds of not mine.
Summary: In which things are put back, though not without a fight. With![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
entangled_now ’s kind permission, I’ve taken a short respite from ‘Wings of War’ (though yes, there will be an update on that tomorrow) to write a sequel to her brilliant piece, Mi Casa. Go read that first, because otherwise this won't make sense, and also it is excellent. Hope I did it justice, at least somewhat!
The car ride is so silent, too silent. Dean grips the wheel hard, as if he’s trying to graft the vibrations onto himself.
It isn’t far to the motel, and Sam’s already there, Dean can see the light on through the crappy blinds in the window.
His joints still feel stiff and tumbled as he lets himself out of the Impala, shutting her door just a little too hard behind him.
Sam’s surrounded by books on his bed, stacks of them piled like brick and mortar, and he looks up with shadowed eyes. “How’d it go? You gank him?” Then his tone abruptly shifts, as he watches Dean shut the door behind him, nothing but air in tow. “Dean?”
Dean leans heavily on the doorknob. “It was more than a him. There were demons.”
Sam sucks in a breath. “You got back all right, though. Where’s Cas?”
“That’s kinda the thing,” Dean says, and he pushes himself off the door handle to sit down on his bed, stance wide, setting his elbows on his thighs. He feels a curl of Cas against someplace indefinable in him, a navy blue smoke trail of something that has him moving his mouth before he thinks. “He’s here, but they took Jimmy.”
Sam opens his mouth to start several sentences, and then opts to nix all of them. Finally he settles on, “Where is he, then?”
“He’s…he’s with me.”
Sam’s learned how to keep his mouth shut over the years. Or rather, he’s learned how to make his mouth not say words even when its opening and shutting like it wants to say a million fucking things all at once. He guppies for a few seconds while Dean listens to the passenger in his head be thin, cool and patient, and also painfully sharp-edged in wrong places. It makes his jaw itch with worry.
Sam says, “Is that you, Cas?”
Dean glares at him. “No, jackass. What did I just say? He’s with me. He’s not wearing me. Jesus, Sam.”
“Sorry. Sorry.” Sam holds up his hands in surrender. He moves a stack of books aside and looks intently at Dean. “How’s that possible? Jimmy said it was like being chained to a comet, how could you possibly still…?”
“He’s keeping himself…folded up,” Dean decides, after a second. It’s the only way he understands it, and Cas is making no attempt to correct him.
“Okay. Right. How long can he stay like that?”
Dean tilts his head slightly, looking away, and says, “You hear that, Cas? What do you think?”
I can maintain this position…for some time. Cas’s voice is hesitant, but the solid enough in the end.
Dean bites back anxiety. He says aloud, “A while. Enough for us to get to those sons of bitches and get Jimmy out. It probably won’t be long before they discover their angel’s left the building anyway.”
Sam nods, and then he’s pulling his laptop up over his literary fortifications and stacking it, typing away and doing crucial internet-y things. Dean sits back for a second, and then he says, “I’m gonna take a walk. I’ll be back soon, but call me if you find anything.”
“Is that safe?” Sam says doubtfully.
“I’ve got Cas with me, haven’t I?” Dean replies lightly, and he’s already halfway out the door. He closes it on whatever Sam had to say on the subject. Then he runs a hand through his hair. “Cas?”
Yes, Dean.
“How…how’re you doing, really?”
There’s a pause, and god it’s weird how he can feel the pause like it’s something else all on its own, not a waiting game any more but a palpable feeling of wheels that aren’t his own turning and shifting. It makes him think of his own shards of panic, grating at him somewhere beyond his gut, but he shoves that aside, pushes it violently because after what Cas said to him, after what he did…fear like that’s the last thing he deserves.
Tentative tendrils of thought seep back to him. You needn’t worry about me, Dean. You are vessel enough for Michael, it makes sense that you would offer more than enough for me, even folded back, as I am.
“Cas, I—“
Don’t. And there’s red gripping him, furling along his jaw and at his elbows. Don’t if you don’t mean it.
And Dean…owes him that.
What a mess.
“Sorry,” he says. And he knows he means that one.
I didn’t expect anything of you, Dean.
Dean pushes a hand through the hair at the back of his neck, like maybe he can reach inside and touch. “I know. That really doesn’t make it better.”
Cas is silent, but Dean can still feel him in that barely there press of worry and discomfort. “You didn’t answer my question,” he says eventually.
I’ll be fine, Dean.
And Dean knows how that goes. Hears the implicit not fine like cannon fire in the dark. And he can’t help it; he prods at it. “What can I do?” he asks, feeling like a moron alone under the fluorescent paleness of a streetlamp.
Castiel seems to shift under his skin, a careful expansion and contraction that he feels in his lungs. There’s nothing you can do. I’m…you’ve done more than enough already.
Dean shakes his head.
His phone rings, and he realizes he’s barely walked more than twenty feet from the motel. He answers with a grunt.
“I’ve got a lead,” Sam says through the line.
Dean exhales. “Right. I’ll meet you at the car.”
***
The demons are less than thrilled that Dean has come back with a friend, and Sam’s fresh and not reeling from sudden and unexpected angelic possession, so they’re in good shape.
Jimmy’s not.
Dean sees him across the room, strung up and unconscious (thank God for small mercies), and all he thinks is Cas and before the actual Castiel can say anything about it he’s throwing overused and battered muscles into the fight with an abandon he usually reserves for Sam in danger.
But he’s also worn out and running on too little sleep, so he manages to cut two down before the third pins him to the wall, razor blade up against his throat. Sam’s across the room, dealing with too much other shit, and Dean can barely breathe for fear of slitting his own throat.
“Well isn’t this nice?” the demon purrs, black eyes against golden skin and dark braided hair, the type Dean would go for in a bar. He swallows very slowly, and feels blood trickle down to pool at his collar. He’s been in this position loads of times, but it never stops the frantic thought of if this is going to be it, the time.
There’s a surge from somewhere deep in him, somewhere past his spine, somewhere beyond.
“Dean!” Sam shouts from across the room, struggling to get to him. But it sounds muffled suddenly, like the world is slowing.
Dean. Cas’s voice is clear, almost tangible, fierce like a torrential downpour. Filled with intent.
Wildly, Dean thinks that there’s nothing like life-endangerment to put previous body snatching panics in perspective. He curls his assent against that known and unknown quantity inside him, and claps a hand to the demon’s brow.
And then his world is on fire.
Jimmy hadn’t been lying. Dean’s still himself, he can tell because he can feel the nerves in every inch of his body jangling with adrenaline, can feel himself occupying the same parts of himself he always has. But Castiel is galvanized inside him and out, aflame from places he can’t know, and he feels it flood and crackle through every inch of him, like being on the receiving end of a turbo-charged defibrillator. It’s more than painful, it’s excruciating, but it doesn’t matter. He reaches into it even as he reaches outwards with his hands, bringing the demon to its knees.
The demon shrieks under him, light pouring out of its eyes and mouth, and Dean pushes, twisting himself around Cas with the blind intention of helping. He holds on and starts the verbal exorcism under his breath, and Cas is there with him for that too, tendrils reaching up and opening his throat like it’s a gateway to something abyssal and cleansing, and maybe at this point it is.
“Ecce, Deus ádjuvat me, óminus susténtat vitam meam. Retórque malum in adversários meos, et pro fidelitáte tua déstrue ilos.”
This isn’t the right exorcism, this is the one only priests are allowed to say, but the words form in his mouth like they belong there, like he has the right, and he doesn’t. But filaments of something like static electricity are spiraling up through him, muscular in their strength and utterly alien but still so familiarly Cas that he lets it through, lets it run through him like he’s standing in a wind tunnel.
He’s distantly aware through the haze of lightening and fire of the separate blaze of the brand on his shoulder. He doesn’t have time to wonder what it means.
“NAM EX OMNI TRIBULATIÓNE ERIPUIT ME, ET INIMÍCOS MEOS CONFÚSOS VIDIT ÓCULOS MEUS.”
There’s shouting, and a hard tremble somewhere around or maybe all around them and Dean’s vision whites out for a hard second.
And then there’s nothing.
***
Dean blinks slowly, and finds that the floor has gone sideways. His cheek is flat against it, grit digging into his jaw.
This is happening way too fucking often.
He shifts, and groans. “Cas?”
I’m still here, Dean.
“Good. That was…”
…Unusual. Cas’s voice thrums with something new and hesitant, something like surprise. That should not have happened.
“I’m just that good,” Dean says. He stays on the floor for a second though. Something is different. But he doesn’t know what.
Slowly, he pushes himself to his feet.
Sam is on the floor too, sitting on his ass and looking at Dean like he’s come back from the dead, again. “Jesus Christ, Dean, are you okay?” he demands. “Is Cas still with you?”
“Yeah, he’s here. And you’re the one who’s still sitting down, princess,” Dean says, and walks over on unsteady legs to offer his hand. Then he looks around.
Husks of people litter the ground, snapped necks and torn insides blooming now that their possessors aren’t holding them together any more. Sam makes a small noise in his throat.
Dean turns away, choosing not to think about it. Sam can burn the bodies. Dean feels like his limbs have been wrenched out of their sockets a few times too many, and he’s got a more important job to do.
Jimmy is still up on the rack, unmoved. Dean goes to him, still compulsively reading Cas in the line of his jaw and the thin jut of his hips over his dress pants. He feels for a pulse, and finds one, thin and thready, but present. “Is he still alive, Cas?” he mutters, breaking off the shackles. “Brain wise?”
He has been asleep ever since Raphael. I imagine he remained asleep even when I left him.
“Good,” Dean says roughly, and catches him as he collapses off of the crossbeams. Jimmy feels too light without Cas, too fragile. Dean lays him down carefully on the floor.
There’s a scrape and a slam as Sam drags two of the bodies outside. Dean ignores it.
“Cas, I—“ he stops. Looks down at Jimmy’s battered face, and searches for something that he knows isn’t there.
A curl of grayed out curiosity at the back of his mind asks more of a question than any verbalization could. Almost automatically now, Dean reaches back towards it, grasping at its source and finding it. He feels more than hears a soft intake of breath.
You shouldn’t be able to do that, Cas says quietly.
“I get the feeling we shouldn’t have been able to do a lot of things,” Dean responds, still kneeling over Jimmy’s body, but not really seeing him. “You haven’t been able to exorcise that way in a while,” he says finally.
No, Castiel agrees, but seems unwilling to go any further than that.
Dean can though, he thinks maybe he can. He takes a deep breath.
“Cas, I’m not just interested in a sexual relationship. I,” and he stops again, has to because this isn’t something he does, dammit, but Cas is now so quiet and so still inside him that he feels something welling in him in an awful urge to fix it. “If I was,” he starts again, slowly, so quietly that he can barely hear himself, “I wouldn’t have helped you like this. I don’t…I don’t think I would have known how.”
And he thinks that now he knows what’s different. Cas feels…smooth. Shattered edges soothed away. When he shifts, it’s like an intake of breath, and not a distressed flutter of rough angles.
I know that now. He sounds firm, assured.
“You should have known sooner,” Dean says, a little too sharply, but it’s not directed at Cas. “And that’s my fault.”
Dean. Please don’t apologize.
Dean thinks he could say it now, say it and mean it. But instead he says, “What’s it gonna take to get you back in your rightful place?”
There’s a blue-tinged flare of amusement that takes Dean by surprise. You’ll have to let me go first.
Dean hadn’t realized that he’s kept his grip, winding himself around whatever he could reach and still feeling how those parts extend outwards into somewhere cavernous and unseen. He finds himself almost unwilling to let go. He huffs softly.
He gathers Jimmy’s body close to him with a raw feeling of déjà vu, the skin too warm under his hands, incomplete.
Close your eyes, Dean.
Dean does. And lets go.
Author: Alchemy Alice
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: none
Word Count: ~2,300
Disclaimer: All kinds of not mine.
Summary: In which things are put back, though not without a fight. With
entangled_now ’s kind permission, I’ve taken a short respite from ‘Wings of War’ (though yes, there will be an update on that tomorrow) to write a sequel to her brilliant piece, Mi Casa. Go read that first, because otherwise this won't make sense, and also it is excellent. Hope I did it justice, at least somewhat!The car ride is so silent, too silent. Dean grips the wheel hard, as if he’s trying to graft the vibrations onto himself.
It isn’t far to the motel, and Sam’s already there, Dean can see the light on through the crappy blinds in the window.
His joints still feel stiff and tumbled as he lets himself out of the Impala, shutting her door just a little too hard behind him.
Sam’s surrounded by books on his bed, stacks of them piled like brick and mortar, and he looks up with shadowed eyes. “How’d it go? You gank him?” Then his tone abruptly shifts, as he watches Dean shut the door behind him, nothing but air in tow. “Dean?”
Dean leans heavily on the doorknob. “It was more than a him. There were demons.”
Sam sucks in a breath. “You got back all right, though. Where’s Cas?”
“That’s kinda the thing,” Dean says, and he pushes himself off the door handle to sit down on his bed, stance wide, setting his elbows on his thighs. He feels a curl of Cas against someplace indefinable in him, a navy blue smoke trail of something that has him moving his mouth before he thinks. “He’s here, but they took Jimmy.”
Sam opens his mouth to start several sentences, and then opts to nix all of them. Finally he settles on, “Where is he, then?”
“He’s…he’s with me.”
Sam’s learned how to keep his mouth shut over the years. Or rather, he’s learned how to make his mouth not say words even when its opening and shutting like it wants to say a million fucking things all at once. He guppies for a few seconds while Dean listens to the passenger in his head be thin, cool and patient, and also painfully sharp-edged in wrong places. It makes his jaw itch with worry.
Sam says, “Is that you, Cas?”
Dean glares at him. “No, jackass. What did I just say? He’s with me. He’s not wearing me. Jesus, Sam.”
“Sorry. Sorry.” Sam holds up his hands in surrender. He moves a stack of books aside and looks intently at Dean. “How’s that possible? Jimmy said it was like being chained to a comet, how could you possibly still…?”
“He’s keeping himself…folded up,” Dean decides, after a second. It’s the only way he understands it, and Cas is making no attempt to correct him.
“Okay. Right. How long can he stay like that?”
Dean tilts his head slightly, looking away, and says, “You hear that, Cas? What do you think?”
I can maintain this position…for some time. Cas’s voice is hesitant, but the solid enough in the end.
Dean bites back anxiety. He says aloud, “A while. Enough for us to get to those sons of bitches and get Jimmy out. It probably won’t be long before they discover their angel’s left the building anyway.”
Sam nods, and then he’s pulling his laptop up over his literary fortifications and stacking it, typing away and doing crucial internet-y things. Dean sits back for a second, and then he says, “I’m gonna take a walk. I’ll be back soon, but call me if you find anything.”
“Is that safe?” Sam says doubtfully.
“I’ve got Cas with me, haven’t I?” Dean replies lightly, and he’s already halfway out the door. He closes it on whatever Sam had to say on the subject. Then he runs a hand through his hair. “Cas?”
Yes, Dean.
“How…how’re you doing, really?”
There’s a pause, and god it’s weird how he can feel the pause like it’s something else all on its own, not a waiting game any more but a palpable feeling of wheels that aren’t his own turning and shifting. It makes him think of his own shards of panic, grating at him somewhere beyond his gut, but he shoves that aside, pushes it violently because after what Cas said to him, after what he did…fear like that’s the last thing he deserves.
Tentative tendrils of thought seep back to him. You needn’t worry about me, Dean. You are vessel enough for Michael, it makes sense that you would offer more than enough for me, even folded back, as I am.
“Cas, I—“
Don’t. And there’s red gripping him, furling along his jaw and at his elbows. Don’t if you don’t mean it.
And Dean…owes him that.
What a mess.
“Sorry,” he says. And he knows he means that one.
I didn’t expect anything of you, Dean.
Dean pushes a hand through the hair at the back of his neck, like maybe he can reach inside and touch. “I know. That really doesn’t make it better.”
Cas is silent, but Dean can still feel him in that barely there press of worry and discomfort. “You didn’t answer my question,” he says eventually.
I’ll be fine, Dean.
And Dean knows how that goes. Hears the implicit not fine like cannon fire in the dark. And he can’t help it; he prods at it. “What can I do?” he asks, feeling like a moron alone under the fluorescent paleness of a streetlamp.
Castiel seems to shift under his skin, a careful expansion and contraction that he feels in his lungs. There’s nothing you can do. I’m…you’ve done more than enough already.
Dean shakes his head.
His phone rings, and he realizes he’s barely walked more than twenty feet from the motel. He answers with a grunt.
“I’ve got a lead,” Sam says through the line.
Dean exhales. “Right. I’ll meet you at the car.”
***
The demons are less than thrilled that Dean has come back with a friend, and Sam’s fresh and not reeling from sudden and unexpected angelic possession, so they’re in good shape.
Jimmy’s not.
Dean sees him across the room, strung up and unconscious (thank God for small mercies), and all he thinks is Cas and before the actual Castiel can say anything about it he’s throwing overused and battered muscles into the fight with an abandon he usually reserves for Sam in danger.
But he’s also worn out and running on too little sleep, so he manages to cut two down before the third pins him to the wall, razor blade up against his throat. Sam’s across the room, dealing with too much other shit, and Dean can barely breathe for fear of slitting his own throat.
“Well isn’t this nice?” the demon purrs, black eyes against golden skin and dark braided hair, the type Dean would go for in a bar. He swallows very slowly, and feels blood trickle down to pool at his collar. He’s been in this position loads of times, but it never stops the frantic thought of if this is going to be it, the time.
There’s a surge from somewhere deep in him, somewhere past his spine, somewhere beyond.
“Dean!” Sam shouts from across the room, struggling to get to him. But it sounds muffled suddenly, like the world is slowing.
Dean. Cas’s voice is clear, almost tangible, fierce like a torrential downpour. Filled with intent.
Wildly, Dean thinks that there’s nothing like life-endangerment to put previous body snatching panics in perspective. He curls his assent against that known and unknown quantity inside him, and claps a hand to the demon’s brow.
And then his world is on fire.
Jimmy hadn’t been lying. Dean’s still himself, he can tell because he can feel the nerves in every inch of his body jangling with adrenaline, can feel himself occupying the same parts of himself he always has. But Castiel is galvanized inside him and out, aflame from places he can’t know, and he feels it flood and crackle through every inch of him, like being on the receiving end of a turbo-charged defibrillator. It’s more than painful, it’s excruciating, but it doesn’t matter. He reaches into it even as he reaches outwards with his hands, bringing the demon to its knees.
The demon shrieks under him, light pouring out of its eyes and mouth, and Dean pushes, twisting himself around Cas with the blind intention of helping. He holds on and starts the verbal exorcism under his breath, and Cas is there with him for that too, tendrils reaching up and opening his throat like it’s a gateway to something abyssal and cleansing, and maybe at this point it is.
“Ecce, Deus ádjuvat me, óminus susténtat vitam meam. Retórque malum in adversários meos, et pro fidelitáte tua déstrue ilos.”
This isn’t the right exorcism, this is the one only priests are allowed to say, but the words form in his mouth like they belong there, like he has the right, and he doesn’t. But filaments of something like static electricity are spiraling up through him, muscular in their strength and utterly alien but still so familiarly Cas that he lets it through, lets it run through him like he’s standing in a wind tunnel.
He’s distantly aware through the haze of lightening and fire of the separate blaze of the brand on his shoulder. He doesn’t have time to wonder what it means.
“NAM EX OMNI TRIBULATIÓNE ERIPUIT ME, ET INIMÍCOS MEOS CONFÚSOS VIDIT ÓCULOS MEUS.”
There’s shouting, and a hard tremble somewhere around or maybe all around them and Dean’s vision whites out for a hard second.
And then there’s nothing.
***
Dean blinks slowly, and finds that the floor has gone sideways. His cheek is flat against it, grit digging into his jaw.
This is happening way too fucking often.
He shifts, and groans. “Cas?”
I’m still here, Dean.
“Good. That was…”
…Unusual. Cas’s voice thrums with something new and hesitant, something like surprise. That should not have happened.
“I’m just that good,” Dean says. He stays on the floor for a second though. Something is different. But he doesn’t know what.
Slowly, he pushes himself to his feet.
Sam is on the floor too, sitting on his ass and looking at Dean like he’s come back from the dead, again. “Jesus Christ, Dean, are you okay?” he demands. “Is Cas still with you?”
“Yeah, he’s here. And you’re the one who’s still sitting down, princess,” Dean says, and walks over on unsteady legs to offer his hand. Then he looks around.
Husks of people litter the ground, snapped necks and torn insides blooming now that their possessors aren’t holding them together any more. Sam makes a small noise in his throat.
Dean turns away, choosing not to think about it. Sam can burn the bodies. Dean feels like his limbs have been wrenched out of their sockets a few times too many, and he’s got a more important job to do.
Jimmy is still up on the rack, unmoved. Dean goes to him, still compulsively reading Cas in the line of his jaw and the thin jut of his hips over his dress pants. He feels for a pulse, and finds one, thin and thready, but present. “Is he still alive, Cas?” he mutters, breaking off the shackles. “Brain wise?”
He has been asleep ever since Raphael. I imagine he remained asleep even when I left him.
“Good,” Dean says roughly, and catches him as he collapses off of the crossbeams. Jimmy feels too light without Cas, too fragile. Dean lays him down carefully on the floor.
There’s a scrape and a slam as Sam drags two of the bodies outside. Dean ignores it.
“Cas, I—“ he stops. Looks down at Jimmy’s battered face, and searches for something that he knows isn’t there.
A curl of grayed out curiosity at the back of his mind asks more of a question than any verbalization could. Almost automatically now, Dean reaches back towards it, grasping at its source and finding it. He feels more than hears a soft intake of breath.
You shouldn’t be able to do that, Cas says quietly.
“I get the feeling we shouldn’t have been able to do a lot of things,” Dean responds, still kneeling over Jimmy’s body, but not really seeing him. “You haven’t been able to exorcise that way in a while,” he says finally.
No, Castiel agrees, but seems unwilling to go any further than that.
Dean can though, he thinks maybe he can. He takes a deep breath.
“Cas, I’m not just interested in a sexual relationship. I,” and he stops again, has to because this isn’t something he does, dammit, but Cas is now so quiet and so still inside him that he feels something welling in him in an awful urge to fix it. “If I was,” he starts again, slowly, so quietly that he can barely hear himself, “I wouldn’t have helped you like this. I don’t…I don’t think I would have known how.”
And he thinks that now he knows what’s different. Cas feels…smooth. Shattered edges soothed away. When he shifts, it’s like an intake of breath, and not a distressed flutter of rough angles.
I know that now. He sounds firm, assured.
“You should have known sooner,” Dean says, a little too sharply, but it’s not directed at Cas. “And that’s my fault.”
Dean. Please don’t apologize.
Dean thinks he could say it now, say it and mean it. But instead he says, “What’s it gonna take to get you back in your rightful place?”
There’s a blue-tinged flare of amusement that takes Dean by surprise. You’ll have to let me go first.
Dean hadn’t realized that he’s kept his grip, winding himself around whatever he could reach and still feeling how those parts extend outwards into somewhere cavernous and unseen. He finds himself almost unwilling to let go. He huffs softly.
He gathers Jimmy’s body close to him with a raw feeling of déjà vu, the skin too warm under his hands, incomplete.
Close your eyes, Dean.
Dean does. And lets go.
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Date: 2 Jul 2010 21:41 (UTC)