nansense

TITLE: "Life on Earth" - Part 6/?
AUTHOR: Nansense
RATING: This part R for swearing and adult themes
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.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This part is supposed to lead into a much bigger (and sexier) scene; but alas, once again I've managed to offend the LJ post-length Nazi. So bear with me on that, the rest will be up posthaste. However, I guess having this bit separate does allow me to mention that this is where I expect my ideas for Season 6 to differ wildly from canon, even in anticipation. I highly doubt anything I've set up here will remotely come to pass on the show (even beyond the usual things that will never come to pass)--it interferes with the show's angel mythology to too great an extent. But it was an idea I couldn't let go of, and, well... I'd swear before the court that it makes a certain amount of sense in this context. *cough*

Life on Earth (Pt. 6/?) by Nansense

He wakes feeling like his face has been broken. While this is not in fact the case, it’s no lie that Dean’s head is throbbing something fierce from where Cas sucker-punched him. He has met brick walls more gentle.

When Dean sits up in his own bed, he gasps before he can help it; one hand steadies himself on the mattress while the other comes up to cradle his jaw like it is made of glass. He has no idea where Lisa is or how long he’s been gone. Of course, Castiel is perched at the end of the bed, watching all of this take place.

“Motherfucker,” Dean hisses at no one, at the same time that Cas says, “Dean, I am sorry.”

Cas, suddenly the perfect gentleman, gestures for Dean to speak first. He receives a pillow thrown in the direction of his head and an angry, “What the fuck do you think this is, an episode of Californication?” Dean knows the poor bastard won’t even get the reference to Fucking and Punching, and if a life without Hank Moody weren’t already bad enough, they hadn’t even gotten to the good part before Dean got his lights knocked out.

Cas’s silence almost fires him up more, though the fury is tempered by the thought of them roughhousing and naked together. That familiar bolt of electricity hits him again, running from shoulder to belly to toes, making them curl. Strangely, the sensation calms Dean enough to see that Cas, knees drawn to his chest, head ducked, seems to be trying to attract as little attention to himself as possible. The wings are tucked back into wherever it is they hide, when Cas isn’t using them to smash windows and scare priests half to death. Dean knows embarrassment when he sees it. Attempting to ignore his own splitting headache, he crawls across the bedspread to the angel. It’s shocking how easy it is to reach out and touch him, now that he knows Cas won’t turn to dust beneath his fingertips if he tries. Dean’s hand ghosting over the back of his neck makes them both shiver.

As gently as possible, he asks, “Cas, have you lost your friggin’ mind?”

Dean is surprised when Castiel gives a rueful laugh. “As a matter of fact,” he answers, “yes.”

“Oh,” says Dean weakly. He isn’t quite sure what to add to that.

“I am sorry for hitting you,” Cas says, trying to elaborate. “There is no way for me to describe it except to say that kissing you just…” He sighs in frustration, eyes flashing. “I felt overcome. I just… reacted. Very badly, it would seem.”

“I’ll say,” Dean chuckles, despite his mouth having gone as dry as sand at the mention of kissing. For a split second he’d almost forgotten to dwell on how badly he still wants the taste of Castiel’s lips against his. In this case, just knowing what it feels like is nowhere near enough. Whether because Castiel can sense his thoughts or because Dean’s fingers on his nape tighten because of them, he shudders with his whole body and arches his neck into Dean’s hand like a cat. It’s a wonderful sensation, notes Dean. He knows they’re trying to have a serious conversation but his mind unhelpfully wonders how Cas would react to his hands elsewhere.

As if to answer the question, Castiel’s eyes, when he looks at Dean straight, are midnight blue and hazy. Even his voice sounds huskier than normal, a gentle rasp that gets Dean halfway to hard in an instant. “It’s this form, I think,” Castiel tells him. “I tried to explain to you earlier.”

“Explain what?”

“That I have been trying to find a compromise,” replies Castiel, gesturing at himself as though that makes everything clear. “When I said that the Host no longer considers it blasphemy for me to inhabit this form completely, I was not attempting to be metaphorical.”

“Cas,” Dean interrupts, “I realize that sometimes it is necessary to lead me down the garden path and all, but this is not one of those times. I’d really like to know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Me, Dean,” Castiel says impatiently. He snatches up Dean’s hand and presses it to his chest, letting Dean feel the heartbeat through his thin sweater, the above-average warmth. Dean realizes that he never noticed whether Cas had a heartbeat, before. “This is no longer just a vessel, and I am no longer just an angel who possesses it. I wore Jimmy’s coat while I wore his body, but it’s not his body anymore. He has been with the Lord for some time now. This is me.”

Dean snatches his hand back. “And the wings—”

Castiel nods. “They now belong to this form. Just like every feeling and emotion I was separate from before, they have all become part of the same whole.” He pauses, thoughtful. “I did not realize that assimilating the angelic and the human together would be such an… experience. They are two states of being very at odds with one another.”

“And what, the other angels just let you back into Heaven like this?” asks Dean.

“It is not for them to decide. Besides which,” Cas adds, with the twitch of a smile, “I doubt anyone else aspires to such an inferior form.” As if something else occurs to him, Cas’s almost-smile transforms into the smallest of smirks, the change reflecting more in his eyes than anything. “You are finally someone who can look upon an angel without dying,” he points out.

Dean sits back onto his heels, looking at his hands but still watching Cas out of the corner of his eye. The angel seems lighter somehow, relieved as though he has just set down a huge weight from his shoulders, and perhaps he has. It isn’t that Dean thinks he has learned any great secret—although if what Cas says is true, this is all pretty unprecedented—but he wonders if Cas has just been waiting all this time to share the news with him, the way Dean sometimes had to suffer through John’s long absences until he could tell him about some hilarious or amazing thing Sammy had done.

That Castiel might have been thinking about him for so long both warms Dean and makes him a little ashamed to have avoided contact so stubbornly; and yet he still feels a chill thinking about Jimmy Novak, the unlucky bastard hardly much older than Dean himself, now. He got ripped away from his wife and kid just for having faith, for having the wrong blood in his veins. He knows that isn’t Castiel’s fault, exactly—Jimmy’s more at peace now than he would have been otherwise, a benign passenger in his own body for all eternity—but still. The parallels to Dean’s own life are difficult to ignore, and once again cast light onto the many moral ambiguities of this life. He didn’t protest too hard when Adam stepped up to be Michael’s vessel in his place, either, and he certainly would have rolled out a red carpet had Lucifer decided to stay in Nick’s body, rather than taking Sam’s. However badly he feels about it, Dean kind of feels like the choice would be easily made, if it came down to deciding between Cas’s presence and Jimmy’s freedom. What is less clear is how willingly Dean would walk away from his own family. He still hasn’t come all the way around to accepting that the question is a lot closer to reality than he’d like to believe.

The sudden touch of Castiel’s hand upon his wrist makes Dean jump. He looks up to find the angel watching him with a complex expression, having shifted closer on the bed. “Dean,” he prompts.

“Where’re Lisa and Ben?” Dean asks, appreciative that Castiel is staying out of his head, but not divorcing his earlier train of thought entirely. “Are they here?”

Cas starts. “I thought you realized,” he says. “Lisa and Ben are where you’d expect; I returned you home. You’re just asleep, Dean. Considering how last two attempts ended, I thought that your mind was the most neutral ground in which to finish our conversation.”

This information leaves Dean both relieved and disappointed: so much for staying out of his head. “Right. Sorry,” he says, trying to shake off the feeling like it’s a shot of Jack gone down the wrong way. “Asleep or not, you gave me a lot to think about right there, dude.”

“I did not imply it would be a small matter,” agrees Cas.

He withdraws his arm, and the brief delicate flash of his wrist is oddly touching. Unfortunately, Dean knows the hard way that the fragility is an utter lie. Even the kiss, which, for the seemingly endless number of times Dean has thought about it before, whenever Cas stood too close or looked too intently or lit Dean’s skin on fire just by saying his name in that way, a part of Dean always thought it would be more uncertain, more exploratory. Instead he kissed Dean like an avalanche, unambiguous and with no stopping him. Sometimes Dean has to remember that Castiel has been a soldier since before soldiers existed, and that, while he might not be God’s hammer, he is certainly his own. In retrospect it’s beyond ridiculous that Dean has ever not placed Castiel’s force of will at the same level as his power. Chained to a fucking comet indeed, he remembers, thinking again of Jimmy.

He might be imagining it, but he thinks he sees Castiel’s eyes smile. And just like that, Dean finally gets it. The significance of what Cas is trying to tell him, Jimmy and morality and fate notwithstanding, is that they must forget what they both think they know about Cas’s body. He can finally be touched, and held, and kissed, and he will feel what he is supposed to, what Dean wants him to feel; but he wouldn’t just be touching or holding or kissing an angel wearing a human body. He would be doing those things to an angel, period. Cas, though now technically a person, is not people; his true nature is not transient. None of the same rules could possibly apply, and no wonder Castiel’s blood is running a bit hot these days. Dean, almost reverent, reaches out to lay his thumb along Castiel’s jaw, the contact and perma-stubble both prickling his skin. He’s like an ocean someone has tried to fit into a fishpond.

“There’s just one thing I don’t get,” Dean says, dropping his hand. “Lucifer’s gone. The world? Effectively saved by our awesomeness. Not that I’m complaining, but why decide to stay? Why choose any of this?”