Fic: Life on Earth - Part 3/? [SPN]
Jul. 29th, 2010 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nansenseAUTHOR: Nansense
RATING: R to NC-17 overall for swearing, adult themes and graphic depictions of sex
PAIRINGS: Dean/Castiel, Dean/Lisa
SPOILERS: All of Season 5, and Season 6... kinda?
SUMMARY: With Lucifer dead, Sam in the ground and the world effectively saved, Dean has forsaken hunting and everyone associated with it to settle into a life of domestic bliss with Lisa and her son Ben. The only ghosts left for Dean to lay to rest are his own, but they are plenteous indeed, and some of them don't go down without a fight.
DISCLAIMER: Supernatural and all associated content is, sadly, owned by others much more fortunate and creative than I. Up yours, Kripke.
NOTES: This was one of my favourite parts to write, owing to the Bobby factor (by the way... hi, Bobby!). I don't know what it is about Southern accents, but as a British person I find them absolutely delightful to write. Unless anyone sees fit to correct me, I fancy myself as being quite good at them, especially if I've watched Crazy Heart a few times prior to writing. The Brits are no slouches in the insult department, but wisecracks just sound so much funnier with a twang. Forgive the lack of beta, in the meantime, and I apologize for the weird formatting issues LJ insisted upon instigating (ie. randomly changing font styles and sizes). I could go back and fix it all in HTML format, but that's far too much work. Enjoy, and thanks again for reading.
Life on Earth (Pt. 3/?) by Nansense
Were Dean and Castiel’s roles somehow reversed, Dean would be a little weirded out by seeing his home for the first time, considering that he and Sam were basically vagrants when Cas knew them. He tries to look at the house from an outsider’s perspective, its warm coffee-brown walls and welcoming couches, the small, well-organized kitchen complete with a bowl of oranges on the counter and the latte machine he’s kind of crazy about. Dean intimately knows each of the house’s creaks and cold spots, knows where to find everything in the dark; but it’s easy to divorce himself from thinking about this place as his home, especially since he didn’t choose the house so much as the people who live in it. Besides, Dean would have an equally intimate knowledge of a motel room after a couple weeks. Sometimes he still wakes up expecting to see the inside of the Impala and Sam snoring beside him instead of Lisa, though not often.
As he thinks about this, he realizes that Cas could probably care less what colour the walls are, or the size of the television, and in response Castiel nods once, barely perceptibly. Dean silently asks him to stop.
“My apologies,” says Cas, quiet.
He walks around the kitchen with slow steps, the fingers of one fine-boned hand trailing across the black granite countertop. He stands out a lot less than one would expect, in his shirt casually rolled up at the elbows, his jeans. When Castiel ends his circuit, it is with a familiar tilt to his head, fingers tapping, before he flicks eyes over to Dean’s.
“It is hard for me to determine whether I can see you in this space,” he finally says.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Dean growls, hating that Castiel is so much more articulate about what’s in Dean’s head.
Intently, intensely, Castiel is still looking at him. “I am not trying to upset you,” he points out, like Dean is an idiot but not on Cas’s shit list. He probably should be.
“No, you already achieved that this morning,” Dean snaps, since he clearly isn’t over it.
Cas doesn’t bother to glare or act exasperated, and the brief flash of anger leaves Dean like he’s on the receiving end of an angel mind-whammy. He feels more composed after taking a few breaths, but still confused, still unsettled, and he wanders over to the fridge for a beer as an excuse to break eye contact, because it’s
“So tell me, Cas,” he says instead, testing some different waters. “Supposedly you’ve been slumming it with the mortals for the last two years, but you’re still an angel. How is that possible?”
“I haven’t been on Earth, exactly. Or at least not exclusively,” Cas answers. Seemingly still fascinated with the house, he takes his time looking around, studying each object he finds as though evaluating them for traces of Dean. His eyes rest the longest on the pictures of Lisa and Ben. “Just nearby, in case… In the event I was called. I am still a soldier of Heaven.” He spreads his palms flat on the countertop.
“Oh yeah? Because that worked out so well for you the last time, huh?” Dean smirks with the beer at his lips. “So much for Team Free Will.”
“I didn’t say they were the same orders, or that they are even coming from the same source. There has been some reorganization within the hierarchy, as well as to its priorities. And there are not so much orders anymore, as… guidelines.” Castiel doesn’t elaborate more than this.
“I’ll say,” Dean chuckles. “I gotta tell ya, Cas, if you weren’t still such a pompous douchebag, I wouldn’t have recognized you. You’ve changed more than anything else I can see.”
“That’s a step up from ‘junkless sissy’, I suppose,” Cas says with barely contained ire.
Good. Dean thinks that someone else besides him could do with feeling a bit angry. It goes a long way to make up for his guilt. “Well, if the shoe fits.”
“What I think you don’t realise is that any changes I’ve gone through occurred long before my Grace was restored,” Cas bites out. “Not because of it.” Almost as though they were wings, Castiel spreads his arms open on either side of him, inviting, challenging Dean to look. His eyes send the strong suggestion that it would be a mistake for Dean to glance away now. “You once told me to never change, and I didn’t, but you seemed so thoroughly unimpressed with me before Sam died that I can hardly see what was the point. And evidently it didn’t prevent you from trying to change yourself, either.”
“I thought you said I hadn’t changed.”
“At least not in the ways that count,” Cas shoots back.
This is going real well, Dean thinks, and would let himself acknowledge how hurt and angry Cas looks if Dean weren’t so much of a coward. In no way is there a correlation between saving the world, and having balls. No way at all. The fact that Dean called Cas a junkless sissy in the first place was because Dean isn’t so great at seeing the forest for the trees, not because Cas, angel or not, has ever lacked for chutzpah.
“Neither have you, Dean,” Cas interjects passionately, seeming not to care that Dean hates having his thoughts on broadcast. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for years.” What goes unspoken is pretty clear: But you could stop being such a whiny bitch at this moment in time. Perhaps not those exact words.
But there is what Cas believes, and what Dean believes, and those two things compliment each other about as well as Dean and Sam’s tastes in music. “I don’t know where your endless supply of faith in me comes from, Cas. I don’t.” Dean swallows. “But I’m pretty sure you have a higher purpose than just running my fan club. If you haven’t noticed lately, everyone else in it has either died or burned their membership. Including me. The sooner you wrap your halo around that fact, the better off you’ll be.”
Dean is hit with a wave of fury so powerful that it makes him want to cower on the floor rather than hear Castiel’s response. He feels it at such a gut level that his mind instantly flashes to the time four years ago, when Cas threatened to throw his deserving, punk ass back into Hell. Dean braces himself for the full broadside, but it doesn’t come as they both look up at the sound of the front door opening. Lisa is home for a quick lunch, and coming through the door she meets Dean’s gaze with surprise.
“Hey, baby,” she says uncertainly. She comes over to him for a kiss and Dean regrets not having the flowers. “What are you doing home?”
He doesn’t need to turn around to know that Cas has vanished. He can feel the absence like a blanket of silence has fallen over his mind, a single light guttering out in a dark room.
Castiel doesn’t return for a few days, which Dean sees as a good opportunity to spend obsessing over how much of a dick he acted. He goes to work, walks on eggshells around Lisa and lets Ben kick his ass at soccer and Mass Effect 3; but throughout it all Cas is never far from his mind, and Dean goes around feeling slightly sick as a result, even more so because Cas probably knows it. Dean could summon him instantly and get the apology out of the way, so of course he does nothing and broods instead. He’s so ridiculously bad at emotional honesty when Castiel’s around, and yet the moment Dean is alone there’s pretty much no way he can avoid thinking about it. This is no different from how he behaved after Cas first scooped him out of Hell, he knows, and for a while there he actually thought he was improving.
Unlike anyone else in Dean’s life, Castiel cares enough to give him shit for heeding anyone who isn’t supportive or at least critically constructive towards him. With the exception of Sam, Dean hasn’t exactly grown up surrounded by nurturing personalities. His dad, when he wasn’t busy leaving Sam and Dean to their own devices like no-water plants, had been a little too quick on the draw at expressing paternal disappointment, of which there seemed to be an endless supply. If Dean hasn’t developed the can-do attitude that Castiel is looking for, if most of his decisions are fraught with insecurity because he expects to fail anyway, well, it isn’t hard to see why.
The hard part is explaining this to Cas, who seems to feel that his faith in Dean is sufficient to cancel out a lifetime of negative feedback. He doesn’t understand that it actually pains Dean to hear his self-worth contradicted, nevermind taking the words to heart; and Cas doesn’t understand how this serves to make Dean constantly want to prove him wrong. Dean has succeeded quite a few times in this respect, spectacularly well actually, but Cas seems to want him to think that Dean won’t ever push hard enough to make him leave. Beat the shit out of him in an alleyway, yes, but leave, never. Dean can’t accept that there isn’t a breaking point, though; eventually, everyone gets tired and fucks off. Even angels.
In a way, Dean appreciates that Cas can still call him on his bullshit, his transparent hostility—it’s much easier to walk away, after all, and in Castiel’s place Dean would have fled clear off this celestial plane by now—but Dean doesn’t know how to stop himself from acting like a cornered, kicked dog whenever Castiel turns those haunting blue eyes on him. Like with every person Dean has ever wanted to love or be loved by, his fear of their inevitable disappointment outweighs his ability to rise above. That Cas is so powerful, and so persistent, scares him the most.
Dean just doesn’t know how to believe in himself the way Cas does. He’d rather die trying to stop another apocalypse. But since there isn’t one available, Dean calls Bobby instead.
When Bobby manages to force out an ambiguous-sounding, “Dean,” after almost ninety seconds of silence, Dean breathes a sigh of relief that is most likely audible on the other end. At first, Dean’s biggest concern was that Bobby would not even pick up; but when the older Hunter proceeded to break out the silent treatment with Dean already on the line, well. Dean felt like he paced a hole through the back porch until he heard Bobby’s voice again, and apparently it is possible to be passive-aggressive in new and inventive ways past the age of fifty.
“Hey, Bobby,” was what Dean chose to open with initially, but he says it again for good measure. “How… Uh, how’s it going?”
“It’s going fine, boy,” Bobby answers, “if you’re sure that you really care after this long.” Dean flinches. For the first time in years, he appreciates how inappropriate it was for him to ever, ever insist that Bobby wasn’t a father to him, because Dean reacts to his disappointment almost identically to how he used to react to John. “How did you even know I’m still alive?” Bobby asks, with genuine curiosity.
“Cas told me,” Dean lies weakly. “He was here to see me the other day and it… came up.”
“I’ll bet,” says Bobby. He pauses again for so long that Dean has to say his name tentatively to make sure he’s still there; he’s pretty sure he can hear a muffled discussion happening in the background. Bobby eventually comes back on the line and says, “So Cas came back to see you, huh? Where is he now?”
The question has ‘trap’ written all over it, but if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, Dean will call it a penguin anyway. “Cas is, um… here. He’s in town. Not here with me now, but, y’know… around.” Dean clears his throat once.
“Bullshit, son,” Bobby barks. He gives an angry sigh. “Was that really necessary, Dean? Seriously? Cas is right the fuck here in my living room, so don’t try and sell me that ambiguous crap after two years of fuck all like I just fell off the back of a wagon.” As Dean is busy trying not to shove his fist into his mouth or die on the floor, he very clearly hears Bobby say, “Cas, get lost for a while. I need a minute to talk to this goddamn idjit alone.” There is an indistinct rumble from Cas, followed more outrage directed at Dean, from Bobby.
One thing that Dean has noticed in the past is that when Bobby gets mad and starts yelling, the Kansas in Dean’s own voice becomes a lot more pronounced—like he needs to talk slower to keep up with the fight. “Now wait a minute,” Dean protests loudly. “You let me walk right into that one. How the fuck was I supposed to know that he’d be sitting right there? And why the hell are you havin’ tea parties with that guy anyway?”
“It’s not my fault you’re as dumb as two bricks rubbed together sometimes,” Bobby responds. “Besides which, this isn’t about me and why I might be spendin’ time around Cas. As far as I’m concerned, that angel has been a lot more involved since Lucifer kicked it than you have; he doesn’t owe anyone an explanation for nothin’.”
“When Cas said that he’d been hanging around on Earth for a while, he didn’t say it was with you,” says Dean. “What, have you guys been hunting together or something?”
“Just because you decided to retire, doesn’t mean the ghosts and other undead assholes did,” Bobby points out reasonably. It might just be Dean’s imagination, but he thinks he hears Bobby’s voice beginning to lose some of its edge.
Dean tries really hard to put the kicked dog back in the cage. It takes a moment but he eventually rediscovers his balls in time to speak. “I’m sorry, Bobby. You’re right. I was a dick for not calling sooner. There’s no real excuse for it.” The apology sounds clumsy to Dean’s ears, since he never really got to practice saying sorry much to anyone but Sammy; but fortunately Bobby is no less awkward with these emotional scenes.
Bobby stops him before he can turn into even more of a girl. “Alright, alright,” Bobby grates out. “I get it. I’m sorry for not calling you, too, boy.” And just like that, things feel almost okay. Other than the two years of catching up they’ll have to do, that is.
Apparently Bobby would prefer to hug it out later, because he clears his throat and mutters to himself before saying, “So what on Earth are you callin’ me for, anyway? Is it because Cas came to see you? Or could you just not go another two years without hearing me rip you a new one?”
“A combination of both, I guess,” Dean says. Sometimes his need to get yelled at is strong enough to make him think he’s only a hop, skip and a jump away from finding a dungeon somewhere and letting a dude called Chip make him his bitch. Obviously he keeps that one tucked away, but he makes a mental note to control his thoughts a bit more around Cas during their next fistfight. “I’m not going to say that seeing him didn’t bring up a few demons, so to speak, but mostly it got me thinking about some stuff I’ve let slide.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know… Life?”
Dean is tempted to get into his recent emotional turmoil, but realizes that Bobby is unequipped to talk to him about that stuff for a few different reasons. He’s never met Lisa, for one thing, and for another, the two-year gap doesn’t really put Bobby in a position to consider all the factors, like Ben. Plus where Dean’s romantic life is concerned, Bobby tends to hold fast to the idea that, if there is something wrong, it’s probably Dean’s fault for being a fuckup. Which, generally, is true. It’s times like these that Dean wishes he had his brother around for his levelheaded advice, even if he never would have admitted that to Sam. Dean has to wonder why the emotionally stunted loners like him and Bobby are the only ones left standing, when they are always one crime of passion away from winking out of existence.
That Dean would rather talk about Castiel instead is something he tries not to analyze overmuch. “So what’s your take on Cas these days?” Dean asks. Although his voice is mostly casual, he catches the little uncertain wibble where the question mark should be and has to swallow a choking sound. He’ll blame it on phone reception if Bobby catches him out; but there’s no mention of it. “It’s almost like he’s a real boy now, huh?”
“That angel is about as normal as a three-dollar bill,” snorts Bobby, and they chortle together at that like no time at all has passed. Dean is grateful, but the nostalgia would only be complete if Dean had a bottle of Jack in his fist. Bobby, apparently, does; Dean hears the telltale swig and sigh before Bobby speaks again. “But if you’re asking me whether he’s been acting differently since God restored his security clearance, then hell yeah. Most definitely. I used to catch him practicing facial expressions in the mirror, not long after you left.” Bobby guffaws at the memory.
“What’s up with that?” wonders Dean. “Before he couldn’t go two steps without being threatened with a cosmic smackdown for being too ‘human’, and now he’s drinking Bud Lite and reading Us Weekly?”
Yes, Dean appreciates that he is being unnecessarily melodramatic about Castiel’s recent behaviour, but he’s seen firsthand what the dirtier aspects of humanity can do to Cas’s smile. His soul. He doubts the angel will be reaching for the LSD anytime soon—apocalypse averted and all—but even still, he remembers Castiel being at his most miserable as a human. The pain, the bug bites, the feeling of uselessness. Dean can’t figure out why the hell he’d want to become more like them, now that he’s got a second chance to be an angel. Out of everyone, Dean is both Castiel’s harshest critic and his fiercest protector, not unlike how he was with Sam; it bothers him to think of either one of them suffering. He also managed to fail them both, in the end.
“I think that there have been some changes upstairs as to what constitutes ‘too human’,” Bobby admits. “And Cas does go pretty freely: I haven’t seen him get called away lately except for reasons of his own devising. But you know he doesn’t really talk to me, so as to his motivations, well… You’d have to ask him. Maybe he just discovered bacon and head massagers and decided to get comfortable, who knows.”
“He kind of implied he’d been keeping an eye out on me,” Dean tells Bobby, referring to their initial confrontation in the park. Over the rush of blood in Dean’s ears at the time, he’s surprised he even caught the whole conversation. “D’you think that’s true?”
“Hell, I know it’s true, son,” Bobby responds with a grunt. At this, Dean starts. “I woulda called ya a year and a half ago had Cas not talked me out of it.”
“What the hell does that mean, Cas ‘talked you out of it’? He didn’t want us seein’ each other?” Dean’s first thought is, I don’t care how different he dresses or how much he smiles, ain’t nothing smells of angel more than Cas’s covert routine.
“Again, you’d have to ask him.” The strangest thing is that Bobby doesn’t seem terribly disturbed by the idea, for someone who once had spoken out against Heaven’s need-to-know policy more heatedly than even Dean. “He just seemed to think that it’d be better not to bother you until you were ready, that you’d call in your own time. I didn’t think it would take two years, but in a way, Cas was right… You did come around eventually.”
Dean has no response to that, because Cas has him pegged and Dean hates it when anyone figures him out faster than he can decipher himself. He must grumble too loudly under his breath, since Bobby interjects again.
“Listen, Dean, I know you two got your issues between you, but don’t be too hard on the boy.” Bobby corrects himself. “You know what I mean. He’s been a big help to me in cleaning out some of the local bad juju these past two years, and he’s always had your back and then some. I know you’re out of the game, but if you ever reconsidered, we’d have a hell of a team again, even without… Well.” Letting his voice trail off, Bobby lets Dean chew on that for a moment while he takes another drink over the phone, as if to temper the hopefulness in his voice.
Eerily in sync with the sun’s slow descent below the horizon, the conversation begins to peter off from there. The last crickets of summer are already beginning to sing in the fields beyond his backyard. Dean addresses that last statement with a noncommittal noise, not wanting to hold Ben and Lisa accountable for his own uncertainty towards hunting, but he does persist in making Bobby agree to visit the following week, ghost activity permitting. He and Ben will get a kick out of each other, Dean thinks. It might be longer before Dean can set foot back in Bobby’s house and not see Sam hovering at the corners of his vision, which he doesn’t say, and doesn’t think he needs to; but he does tell Bobby that he’s looking forward to seeing him again. He means it as powerfully as his last goodbye to Sam.
“You too, son,” Bobby says quietly, and then he hangs up.
Part Four
