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alchemyaliceAuthor:AlchemyAlice
Rating: PG-13
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam/Gabriel
Spoilers: Season 5
Warnings: Good Omens references afoot. Also, possible plot chaos. Ack.
Disclaimer: Riffing on stuff that isn’t mine.
Summary: It starts with headaches, and it ends in a clusterfuck. So, business as usual, Apocalypse-wise.
IV.
They go to bed. Or rather, Sam and Bobby go to bed; Gabriel buggers off somewhere to take care of ‘important things’, which is probably a euphemism for chocolate orgies and maybe a trip to Vegas, and Dean sits with Castiel in the living room, shifting restlessly as he tries to get used to sharing headspace with Michael. It’s sort of like the mental equivalent of being stuck in a very small closet with him, both of them trying to look through a single keyhole and pushing each other aside to get a turn. Or something. Dean’s head is a very confusing place at the moment, is his point. It doesn’t hurt anymore, though, and that’s what really matters to him. Michael had explained that by letting him occupy more space in Dean’s body, he essentially had given Michael a pressure valve, so he isn’t bursting at the seams to get out anymore. So, no more migraines. Dean is in favor of that.
Castiel just keeps staring at him, his head almost parallel to the floor now, it’s cocked so severely. Dean looks at him, and says, “Dude, you’re going to give yourself spinal damage if you stay like that much longer.”
Castiel straightens, but not without looking like he doesn’t entirely trust the safety of doing so. “I am trying to understand,” he says. “It is…confusing for me, to see you like this, at once my brother and my charge.”
“Listen,” Dean starts, but all of a sudden he’s Michael, who says, “You need not fear for us, Castiel. This…arrangement, while unorthodox, will work—you can trust me on that.” He places a hand on Castiel’s shoulder, “I would not do anything to harm him. For him, for myself, and for you.”
Castiel startles at that, and Michael smiles in an understanding that looks utterly alien on Dean’s face. “What do you mean by that?” Castiel asks quietly.
“I mean,” Michael says, “That I have seen you through his eyes, and know. I’ll protect him, you have my word.”
Dean shoves himself bodily back into control; Castiel can see it in the way his expression and the set of his shoulders abruptly shifts. “What the hell?” he asks, peering into the angel’s face. “What is he talking about, Cas?”
“Nothing,” Castiel answers, readily enough, because he is not entirely sure either. “Nothing at all.”
“Right. Well, we’re just gonna sit here for a while and figure out the terms of use, so you don’t have to stick around if you don’t want to.”
“It’s fine,” Castiel says. “I’ll stay.”
He does, through the night even when Dean proclaims he’s had enough of discussion and needs to sleep. He stays, because he knows that Dean is the one sleeping, not Michael.
***
Things move fast after that.
Michael wakes early, heading downstairs where Bobby is making coffee. “Good morning,” he says formally. “May I have a cup of that?”
Bobby grunts, raising an eyebrow at the archangel. “You take it the same as Dean?”
“Yes, though a bit of milk wouldn’t go amiss.”
Bobby complies. Michael eyes him. “I can get you out of that wheelchair, if you like,” he offers quietly.
Bobby startles—there’s no other word for it. “Miracles this early in the mornin’?” he asks dryly. “Surely that’s a bit out of your jurisdiction.”
“I don’t see why not. The shepherds of old rose and slept with the sun. Sunrise was nearly an hour ago. Not so early, really.”
“And you can do what Castiel can’t?”
“Castiel has been separated purposefully from the Host. I never was. Though they do not know where I am, they have never denied me access to the power of my Grace.”
Bobby thinks for a long second. “I’d be messing with fate, wouldn’t I,” he says eventually. “Doin’ things not intended.”
“I’ve been doing that for that past thirty years,” Michael responds. “The Host have been for at least a century.”
“Yeah, and they started the Apocalypse.”
“Bad example, I admit. But still, I…you’re practically Dean’s father. And I’d like to acknowledge that by doing this.”
The hunter exhales slowly.
***
When Sam comes down the stairs wiping sleep out of his eyes he nearly walks into a chair and falls on his ass. He stares at Bobby, slack-jawed.
Bobby’s leaning up against the counter, back straight, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, supporting his weight with little to no effort. Michael is sipping coffee and making the same faintly inappropriate sounds Dean makes over it. Castiel has appeared at some point as well, and is watching Michael intently. Sam looks back and forth between all of them, piecing it slowly together.
“Thanks,” he says hoarsely to Michael.
Michael smiles and nods. Castiel looks, for a moment, vaguely content.
Gabriel ruins the moment (probably on purpose) by appearing on the counter, sitting and swinging his legs, banging them against the cabinets like a five year old. “So children, what’s on the docket today?” he asks cheerfully.
Michael eyes him. “You smell of booze and women,” he says matter-of-factly. “And pixie stix.”
Gabriel cocks an eyebrow. “You’re living in Dean’s body,” he replies primly. “Pot, meet kettle.”
“Dean doesn’t like pixie stix,” Castiel says.
Both archangels stare at him, but his face remains impassive. Sam wonders how the hell Castiel knows about that. Then Michael clears his throat.
“We need reinforcements.”
“I’ll call the other hunters I know,” Bobby says, “Get the word out.”
“Good. I’ll contact members of the Host. At least, those discreet enough not to go to Zachariah,” Michael says. He turns to Gabriel. “I know it’s been a while for you, but…Aziraphale?”
“What about him?” Gabriel says, looking amused. “He’s hardly the warrior you need. The boy is living in a bookshop in the middle of England.”
“At least he won’t be offended by you going native,” Michael shoots back. “What I want him for is to get in contact with Crowley.”
“Crowley?” Sam echoes. “The demon who had the Colt?”
“Among other things,” Gabriel says. He grins. “Old Crawly’s fun. I like him.”
“You like a demon,” Bobby states.
The archangel shrugs. “He has good taste in cars. Though I must admit, his choice of music can be a bit monotonous.”
“The point is, he’ll be interested in helping us, however indirectly,” Michael says. Then suddenly he stills, and cocks his head. And then equally suddenly, he’s Dean. “Uh,” Dean says eloquently, looking around with widening eyes at the figures around him. “Sorry. Just woke up. Am I interrupting something?”
“Good morning, Dean,” Castiel says, and Sam wants to know why he looks pained all of a sudden. “Michael was just laying out a plan of action. We’re amassing allies.”
“That sounds good,” Dean says. He feels somewhat left out, and also like he’s just woken up from the craziest sleepwalk ever, but he’s not about to say so. “Um, should I let you get back to it?” Though before anyone can answer, he seems to hold a conference with himself, which Sam supposes he actually is, which is still weird beyond belief, and then he’s straightening again and looking at Castiel snorting. “Dude, there’s seriously some angel just hanging out in England dealing rare books? I thought you were the nerdiest angel!”
Castiel…flushes slightly. It’s barely noticeable, but Sam sees it, and dammit, what?
Gabriel grins. “Seraphim, I’m telling you,” he says. “Warriors of God by day, bibliophiles by night. All right, if that’s settled I’m off to see an angel about a demon.”
He blinks out. Sam shakes his head.
“Dean, our lives are getting too weird.”
“Tell me about it. Uh, listen, Michael’s gotta go talk to—“
“—the Host, yeah I know,” Sam says, and now he’s pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Go ahead.”
Dean nods, more to himself than anyone else, and then he looks at Castiel. “Want to come with?” he asks.
Castiel seems to shrink into himself slightly. “I don’t know if I’d be welcome.”
“Dude. You’d be with Michael. Your big brother will kick the asses of anyone being mean to you on the playground.” Then his smile softens just a bit. “Come on. It’ll be nice for me to actually fly with you for once without you bamfing me all over the place. Michael won’t mind either.”
Castiel nods jerkily. “Very well.”
Dean grins at Sam. “Catch you later, Sammy. You can work on figuring out where Lucifer’s gonna pop up next, yeah?”
“Sure, Dean. See you.”
And just like that, Dean and Cas are gone in a puff of displaced air.
“All this popping in and out of the ground is starting to get on my nerves,” Bobby observes.
Sam sighs. “Tell me about it.”
***
Dean is being entirely honest when he tells Cas it’d be fun to fly with him, rather than getting dragged along behind. Sharing his body with Michael means that he appreciates the way the angels bend space and time around themselves, entire continents whipping past them in a rush of air and light and yet not seeming to move that fast at all. It is like getting whiplash while walking through a doorway—makes no real reasonable sense, and yet hey, you end up in a totally different place at the end of it, and that’s that.
The first they see is Anna, and since Michael’s in the lead for this job she recognizes him immediately and her face clouds over with anger. “You let him go right now, Michael,” she growls, stalking towards them. “If you’ve hurt him—“
Michael raises his hands, and Castiel puts a hand on her arm to stop her. “Wait, Anna,” he says, “Dean is all right.”
And Michael slips aside for a moment so that Dean can come forward and as he looks out fully through his own eyes he sees her stop abruptly and become utterly gobsmacked. “Dean?” she says, eyes wide. “That’s really…?”
“Hey, Anna,” he says awkwardly. “I’m fine. We’ve sort of made an arrangement.”
Her smile, when it slowly creeps onto her face, is crooked but warm. “I can see that.”
They explain the new situation. At the end of it, Anna’s glowing.
“Michael,” she says, shaking her head. “You planned this since 1908. And you told no one?”
“It was not for the noble intentions that have since been revealed,” Michael says. He spares a glance at Castiel. “I simply knew that Dean Winchester would be of great importance as we all did, and I wanted to understand why. Fully and completely. But when I had finally succeeded in inserting myself next his soul, I…found that I wished to stay.”
“Then Castiel is right,” Anna says. “Our Father is still here.”
“Or he set measures into place to give his true followers hope in his absence,” Michael shrugs. “Either way, it would simply be ungrateful not to take Him up on it, yes?”
Together, the trio (quartet? Dean is still not used to it) takes flight.
***
Castiel is watching Michael as he flies. It is bizarre and alien how much like Dean living within him has changed him. Castiel has not seen Michael for millennia, just as he said—even among the Host, Michael was always a world apart from the garrisons, overseeing but rarely interacting, speaking only to the other archangels. But he remembers back then, at the beginning of the First War, how Michael had been wrought with divine love and fury, a force more than an entity, almost unbearable even for the other angels to behold. The Morningstar had been almost the same, his love misplaced but still there in his twisted righteousness.
They had both been larger than even angelic life could appear to be. All of the archangels had been, in their way.
Castiel remembers what he told Dean, about how Michael was nothing like him. He is both relieved and sorry that he was wrong. Michael inhabits Dean’s body in a way Castiel knows he could never do with Jimmy’s. There is, in his movements, the comfort of knowing the person he is sharing space with inside and out, and agreeing with him. Dean may beg to differ, but he and the archangel were in a harmonious relationship, like twins between species. And it’s strange, because Castiel finds himself wishing suddenly for privacy, for a conversation between himself and Dean that doesn’t have Michael waiting in the wings, seeing through the hunter’s eyes. He should be joyous for the presence of his strongest brother, but what vague feelings he does experience are firmly of the mixed persuasion. And he knows that it’s because Michael is in Dean, specifically, but he cannot understand why. Dean is the closest thing he has to a friend, it is true, but that should not make him somehow proprietary over him.
Then again, Dean bears his mark. Michael does not. Castiel clings to this as he travels miles in milliseconds, the greatest of his brethren beside him, and a slowly growing garrison behind them both.
***
Sam is fairly certain he’s going to get a heart attack in the near future. There’s really no other way things could turn out, what with not one, but three damn angels apparating in and out like Harry frigging Potter and not even having the wizarding decency to make a warning sound while doing it. Which is precisely why Sam makes a very undignified squeaky noise when Gabriel appears directly in front of his computer with Crowley and a very English, very effete blond man in tweeds and a faintly confused expression in tow.
“Hiya, Sammy,” Gabriel says. “You remember Crowley?”
Sam makes a concerted effort to slow his heart rate. “Yeah. Um. Hi.”
Crowley looks around. “Nice place you got here. Trailer trash chic is in, I hear.”
“You could have told us the Colt wouldn’t work on Lucifer,” Sam snaps, bristling on behalf of Bobby.
“Fuck off, I didn’t know,” Crowley snipes, finally looking at Sam and putting his hands up defensively. “If I had, I wouldn’t have given it to you.”
“You’re so believable.”
“Sam,” Gabriel cuts in. “My brother, Aziraphale.” He gestures at the young man to Crowley’s left. Sam looks at him.
“You’re an angel too?”
“Indeed,” Aziraphale answers, tugging at his cuffs. “It’s a pleasure. Sam Winchester, is it? I’ve read quite a bit about you.”
“You’ve read the Gospels?” Sam asks, suddenly acutely uncomfortable.
“Quite so. I happen to collect prophetic works.” But Aziraphale looks about as embarrassed as Sam feels. “It’s a bit of a hobby.”
Sam raises an eyebrow at Gabriel. Gabriel shrugs.
Aziraphale looks at the archangel anxiously. “Gabriel, I don’t really see how much use I’ll be to you. I’m hardly suited to this type of work.”
“You can take over for Sam with research,” Gabriel says with a smile. “Sam’s a hunter, after all. We can use him elsewhere.”
“Oh! Oh, I see. I must say, Crowley, it’s a bit of a relief to know we’re not the only ones not so keen on this whole Apocalypse business.”
“Told you,” says Crowley smugly. Sam watches him exchange a glance with Aziraphale, and his eyes widen at the odd sort of affable friendship between the angel and demon. Apparently they really are more civilized in England, or something.
“And what’s Crowley going to do?” he asks Gabriel.
“Help Aziraphale. They’ve worked together for a long time, now—their combined knowledge along with Bobby’s library will be very useful. And you and I have got a job to do anyway.”
Sam does not like where this is going. “What’s that?” he asks warily.
Gabriel throws down a copy of the New York Times. It’s opened on the international section.
“’Inexplicable Rising of North Atlantic Seabed Confounds Scientists,’” he reads. He looks up at Gabriel. “What does that mean?”
Gabriel’s smile is razor sharp and predatory. “It means the Leviathan has risen. Fun times are afoot.”
“You’ve talked to Michael about this?”
“He’s not the boss of me,” Gabriel says, and the tone is playful but there’s an echo of how he’d said much of the same back in TV land. Then he adds, “I’m being proactive. You should be patting me on the head and rewarding me with cookies.”
“So you’re basically equating yourself to a German Shepherd,” Sam supplies. Gabriel draws himself up, and still manages to remain impressively short. Sam wonders how a force of nature like an archangel can fold himself inside a vessel like that.
“I’m merely pointing out that I should be praised rather than criticized at the moment,” Gabriel retorts.
Sam seriously considers actually standing up and patting him on the head, and then thinks better of it. No point in tempting fate, after all, especially when fate in this case can magic a piano out of thin air specifically to fall on you.
“So, you want me to go gallivanting off with you to kill some monstrous sea beast, without telling Dean?” he says, raising his eyebrows. “Hell no. We have enough trust issues as it is.”
“But we don’t know when he’ll be back with Michael!” Gabriel protests.
“We’ll just have to wait then,” Sam replies primly.
Gabriel throws up his hands. Aziraphale looks between them, and says, “We could perhaps use your help in the meantime, Gabriel. Tracking Lucifer down is no small thing.”
“Small or no, it’s boring,” Gabriel replies. “I’m going back to Vegas.” He turns to Sam, and grins. “I wouldn’t be averse to company. But seeing as you’re being a good little brother—“
“Have fun,” Sam cuts him off. And the weird thing is that Gabriel looks a bit…disappointed. Huh.
“Fine,” the archangel says, shrugging, the look totally gone, and then he disappears.
Part Five.
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Date: 27 Jan 2010 00:41 (UTC)If Michael had a middle and last name, Anna would've done the hwole 'full name = major trouble' thing *g*. As for the ever increasing population of Bobby's house- what a mix! It makes for great banter though :D.
But poor Cas, wanting some alone time with Dean and not even knowing why he feels that way, why he feels so ambivalent towards Michael's presence.
Laura.
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Date: 8 Feb 2010 04:34 (UTC)no subject
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Date: 1 Jul 2010 23:59 (UTC)*giggles madly* Oh, God, I just about flailed out of my seat when Aziraphale showed up. So happy I found a link to this fic :D
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Date: 2 Jul 2010 07:04 (UTC)no subject
Date: 31 Mar 2011 19:14 (UTC)no subject
Date: 24 Nov 2011 22:07 (UTC)Gabriel cocks an eyebrow. “You’re living in Dean’s body,” he replies primly. “Pot, meet kettle.”
“Dean doesn’t like pixie stix,” Castiel says.
This exchange was really cute, and Gabriel in the last section, with "He's not the boss of me," and wanting to lead Sam astray. I had missed that this was a GO crossover/fusion, but I am quite thrilled that it is :D