trinityofone (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
trinityofone) wrote2009-09-05 09:53 am
trinityofone) wrote2009-09-05 09:53 am
Entry tags:
Fic: The Last Day (Dean/Castiel)
Six days! Previous ficlets here.
Title: The Last Day
Rating: PG
Pairings: Dean/Castiel
Spoilers: General S4
Length: ~2,100 words
Summary: A never-posted response to a kink_meme prompt asking for Dean and Sam and Cas having a relaxing day together in which Castiel experiments with human things. The day after the world doesn’t end, Dean decides he isn’t getting out of bed.
Note: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aesc and bmouse for all the help and encouragement.
The Last Day
The day after the world doesn’t end, Dean decides he isn’t getting out of bed. His bed is nice. It’s soft and warm and on top of that, it isn’t trying to kill him. Dean likes the bed. He’s just going to stay in it and sleep all day and dream dreams that are peaceful and quiet and utterly devoid of red.
That’s the plan. Then he rolls over and sees Castiel standing by the window.
Dean doesn’t say, You’re still here. He doesn’t say anything. Cas turns, sensing Dean awake, and the angel looks at him, his expression unreadable, as always. But Dean’s getting close. He’s so close.
Cas looks at him. There’s sunlight coming in, a muted honey-gold filtered through the yellow curtains. Cas looks almost like he’s held in amber, watching Dean with lips parted but no words coming out.
Dean swallows. His throat feels rough, but not as coarse as it should after so much shouting, so much screaming through the smoke. He wonders if maybe Cas did something.
He doesn’t ask. He says, “Want some breakfast?”
Without waiting for an answer, Dean rolls the other way and thumps his arm against Sam’s bed. Sam snuffles and grunts. “Wha? Dean. ’M sleepin’.”
“You’re getting us breakfast,” Dean says loudly. Rockin’ his new command voice. In case it isn’t quite enough, he works his fingers under the edge of Sam’s comforter and tugs.
“Hey!”
“I want post-averted-apocalypse pancakes. Go get ’em.”
Under normal circumstances, he knows Sam wouldn’t cave this easily, but these aren’t normal circumstances. Dean saved the world yesterday. This is one thing, maybe the only thing, he feels he can ask for.
Sam glares at him half-heartedly as he tugs on his pants, sparing a bit of a grimace for Cas as well, who’s still standing by the window, surveying the room with a preternaturally innocent expression on his face. “It’s gonna be all congealed and gross by the time I get it back here, you know,” Sam says.
“Whatever. Get bacon too!”
“Jerk,” says Sam, shoving his wallet into his pocket.
“Bitch,” Dean says happily, lounging back against his pillow like a king. The door slams. He glances over at Cas, standing stiffly with his hands folded behind his back, his coat draped over him like a heavy shroud.
This won’t do at all.
When Sam gets back, Castiel is perched on the edge of Dean’s bed, wearing a pair of Dean’s sweats and one of his t-shirts. Both are slightly too big. Sam almost fumbles the food, but recovers under the angel’s guileless stare. “Do you require assistance?”
“No,” Sam says firmly. He looks over at his brother, who’s devoting more concentration and effort to channel surfing than he often puts into research. Sam raises an eyebrow pointedly, which Dean ignores, leaving Sam to sigh and carry the food over to the tiny table. “Come and get it.”
Dean laughs. “You’ve gotta be kidding me, Sammy. We’re doing breakfast in bed.”
“I hope the maids at this motel get paid a lot,” Sam says, passing one of the bags over to Castiel, who gives it a mildly curious sniff before handing it to Dean. Within seconds Dean has a piece of bacon dangling from his mouth.
Sam lays out all of his own food carefully before digging in. Oddly, it’s not congealed and gross at all. Sam cuts his pancakes neatly with the plastic knife and fork and toes his shoes off under the table.
When he glances up again, Dean has picked up a piece of melon that had somehow wormed its way in amongst all the carbs and fat, and is frowning at it like it’s something alien and vaguely terrifying. Then, “Hey, Cas,” he says, holding it out between two greasy fingers. The angel spends a moment considering, then scooches up the bed and takes it from Dean with his lips.
“Good?” Dean asks, his thumb sliding wetly out of Castiel’s mouth. He sounds like he’s asking if he’s got the volume turned up loud enough, the chalk sigils positioned correctly.
Castiel lies back next to Dean, watching him through his eyelashes. “I wish I could appreciate it fully.”
Sam finds he is suddenly very interested in whatever scrape MacGyver has gotten himself into now.
There really isn’t anything good on TV. Dean keeps hoping they’ll stumble across a great movie—Pulp Fiction or Die Hard or Aliens or something—but HBO’s apparently been taken over by the last surviving demons and is playing Air Bud II: Golden Receiver, and Dean would swear that ShamWow douche is on every other channel. Cas watches it all with the same contemplative look on his face, his head tilted slightly to the side. He probably can’t tell the difference, in terms of quality, between an episode of The A-Team and a Two-and-a-Half Men rerun and a 30-minute infomercial for pasta strainers, but that doesn’t change the fact that Dean wants to show him something good.
When his thumb actually starts to get sore, he gives up clicking furiously and shuts off the set. He can feel Cas watching him expectantly. “Sam,” he says, after a moment. “Go to the office and see if they have any games.”
Sam looks up from his laptop, bitchface in top form. “I’m not your errand boy, Dean,” he says, even as he gets up and goes.
Dean feels smug for about four minutes, until Sam comes back carrying an all-too-familiar blue box. “It was all they had,” Sam says, cutting off his complaint. “Really.”
“Fine. Whatever,” says Dean. “But Cas gets to be on my team.”
Sam pulls up a chair and they spread the board across the bed. Cas examines the little plastic pie pieces quizzically as Sam explains the rules. “This is entertaining?” he asks.
“Yes,” says Sam, at the same time Dean says, “For geeks like Sammy.”
“You’re just jealous ’cause I always win.”
Dean rubs his hands together and rolls the dice. “We’ll see.”
As expected, Cas rocks at the history-type questions, but sucks at the pop culture stuff (which, in the case of this particular Trivial Pursuit edition, was all hot and current circa 1987). Luckily that’s Dean’s area of expertise. Sam puts up a good fight, but they still crush him. To Dean’s surprise, his brother lets him gloat and doesn’t even bitch too much about how two against one is kind of cheating.
Sunlight and shadow drift across the floor, the day passing by like water whirling down an open drain. Dean can feel Cas’ warm presence at his back, preternaturally still, and yet he can’t shake the feeling that he’ll turn around and the angel’ll be gone.
“What do you want to do next?” he asks. He’s feeling generous: “Sammy, you pick.”
Sam picks “quiet reading time” just to see if Dean’ll go along with it, or if he’ll get bored and annoyed and go out for a run or start messing around with his car or haul a bunch of weapons back inside and start working them over. Dean’s never actually been all that good at downtime. But now he just rolls his eyes and pulls a couple of tattered issues of CHP out of his bag. He passes one to Castiel, who accepts it more readily than Sam would have imagined. Because obviously the angel’s developed a deep fascination with classic Chevys. Right.
Sam gets out the book of lore he’s been carefully working through, but before he can crack the spine the realization hits him like lightning: he doesn’t actually have to do this right now. Maybe Dean does have the right idea: he can breathe, take it easy—even if it’s just for today. God knows they’ve earned it. Sam puts the book back and instead roots around at the bottom of his backpack until he finds the novel he’s barely been able to do more than glance at in months.
He gets through about four paragraphs before something—some movement or sound from the other side of the room—makes him look up from the page. Dean and Castiel are still just sitting there, side by side, long and not-so-long legs stretched out in front of them. Their magazines are open, and Castiel is dutifully squinting at his. Dean, though…he’s staring off to the side, at the window with its drawn-back curtains, the glass that’s slowly turning dark and reflective.
The lights have come on in the parking lot, and the yellow bulbs have flickered to life above each door. It is the evening of the day, and Dean has on his face an expression akin to panic.
Just for a second, though. Then he catches Sam looking and his face smoothes over. “Hand me that empty soda bottle, will you?” he says.
Sam decides to roll with it. “Dean, for the last time, just get up and use the bathroom like a normal person. This isn’t a ’70s cop film and we’re not on a stakeout.”
Dean tosses his magazine aside and gets to his feet for what may only be the second or third time of the day. “You’re no fun,” he says, sauntering over to the bathroom and letting the door slam behind him.
Castiel does not flinch at the noise. He regards Sam curiously. “Was he suggesting…”
Sam cuts him off. “You don’t want to know.” He’d really rather not destroy the angel’s last remaining illusions about Dean. Though to be honest, he really doesn’t think Castiel has any.
Castiel’s looked away from him and is regarding the bathroom door like an impatient theatergoer staring at the empty stage. Sam thinks about Dean earlier, anxiously watching the light fade and the day turn to dusk. “He’ll never ask you, you know,” he blurts.
Castiel turns, the motion slow and smooth, well-oiled. “Ask me?”
“To—” Sam doesn’t know why he’s blushing: this has nothing to do with him. Except in the way that anything to do with Dean has everything to do with him.
“He doesn’t want you to go.”
For a long moment, Castiel is still. Then he gets to his feet and spreads his arms just a fraction of an inch (and Sam can see in his head the way he had spread his wings just the day before, beautiful and terrible): spreads his skinny human arms and looks down at himself, the slow sweep of his gaze deliberate, meant to draw Sam’s with it. He is barefoot. He is standing in their motel room one day after the world didn’t end, wearing a pair of Dean’s sweats and a faded grey t-shirt. An angel of the Lord.
“I know,” he says. “I won’t.”
“Oh.” Sam swallows the lump in his throat and forces his chin up. “Well, you better tell him that.”
They stand like actors who’ve forgotten their lines and listen to the loud echo of the toilet flushing, of Dean washing his hands. The door opens up.
“Dean,” Castiel says quickly, before Dean can take in the weird atmosphere. “May I speak to you outside?”
Sam sees Dean square his shoulders and force a smile, braced for the worst. “Sure thing,” he says, and Sam buries his nose resolutely in his novel.
Today has been nice. He realizes, as Dean and Castiel sweep by him, as the door clicks closed, that he’s more in agreement with his brother than he’d thought: it was good to take a breather, it was good to relax, to stay in stasis for a little while. Because once it stops being a day in which they do nothing, it becomes the first day of the rest of their lives—some horrible cliché like that. And then they’ll have to figure out what to do next. What’ll stay the same. What’s changing.
Having a future is almost as terrifying as not having one.
So Sam reads each word very carefully…for about two paragraphs. Then he can’t take it anymore. He turns in his chair and he looks out.
Night has fallen. His brother and an angel stand together in the glow of a streetlamp. They’re not touching, not yet. Not just yet.
Sam lets out a breath. The world goes on.
Title: The Last Day
Rating: PG
Pairings: Dean/Castiel
Spoilers: General S4
Length: ~2,100 words
Summary: A never-posted response to a kink_meme prompt asking for Dean and Sam and Cas having a relaxing day together in which Castiel experiments with human things. The day after the world doesn’t end, Dean decides he isn’t getting out of bed.
Note: Thanks to
aesc and bmouse for all the help and encouragement.The Last Day
The day after the world doesn’t end, Dean decides he isn’t getting out of bed. His bed is nice. It’s soft and warm and on top of that, it isn’t trying to kill him. Dean likes the bed. He’s just going to stay in it and sleep all day and dream dreams that are peaceful and quiet and utterly devoid of red.
That’s the plan. Then he rolls over and sees Castiel standing by the window.
Dean doesn’t say, You’re still here. He doesn’t say anything. Cas turns, sensing Dean awake, and the angel looks at him, his expression unreadable, as always. But Dean’s getting close. He’s so close.
Cas looks at him. There’s sunlight coming in, a muted honey-gold filtered through the yellow curtains. Cas looks almost like he’s held in amber, watching Dean with lips parted but no words coming out.
Dean swallows. His throat feels rough, but not as coarse as it should after so much shouting, so much screaming through the smoke. He wonders if maybe Cas did something.
He doesn’t ask. He says, “Want some breakfast?”
Without waiting for an answer, Dean rolls the other way and thumps his arm against Sam’s bed. Sam snuffles and grunts. “Wha? Dean. ’M sleepin’.”
“You’re getting us breakfast,” Dean says loudly. Rockin’ his new command voice. In case it isn’t quite enough, he works his fingers under the edge of Sam’s comforter and tugs.
“Hey!”
“I want post-averted-apocalypse pancakes. Go get ’em.”
Under normal circumstances, he knows Sam wouldn’t cave this easily, but these aren’t normal circumstances. Dean saved the world yesterday. This is one thing, maybe the only thing, he feels he can ask for.
Sam glares at him half-heartedly as he tugs on his pants, sparing a bit of a grimace for Cas as well, who’s still standing by the window, surveying the room with a preternaturally innocent expression on his face. “It’s gonna be all congealed and gross by the time I get it back here, you know,” Sam says.
“Whatever. Get bacon too!”
“Jerk,” says Sam, shoving his wallet into his pocket.
“Bitch,” Dean says happily, lounging back against his pillow like a king. The door slams. He glances over at Cas, standing stiffly with his hands folded behind his back, his coat draped over him like a heavy shroud.
This won’t do at all.
When Sam gets back, Castiel is perched on the edge of Dean’s bed, wearing a pair of Dean’s sweats and one of his t-shirts. Both are slightly too big. Sam almost fumbles the food, but recovers under the angel’s guileless stare. “Do you require assistance?”
“No,” Sam says firmly. He looks over at his brother, who’s devoting more concentration and effort to channel surfing than he often puts into research. Sam raises an eyebrow pointedly, which Dean ignores, leaving Sam to sigh and carry the food over to the tiny table. “Come and get it.”
Dean laughs. “You’ve gotta be kidding me, Sammy. We’re doing breakfast in bed.”
“I hope the maids at this motel get paid a lot,” Sam says, passing one of the bags over to Castiel, who gives it a mildly curious sniff before handing it to Dean. Within seconds Dean has a piece of bacon dangling from his mouth.
Sam lays out all of his own food carefully before digging in. Oddly, it’s not congealed and gross at all. Sam cuts his pancakes neatly with the plastic knife and fork and toes his shoes off under the table.
When he glances up again, Dean has picked up a piece of melon that had somehow wormed its way in amongst all the carbs and fat, and is frowning at it like it’s something alien and vaguely terrifying. Then, “Hey, Cas,” he says, holding it out between two greasy fingers. The angel spends a moment considering, then scooches up the bed and takes it from Dean with his lips.
“Good?” Dean asks, his thumb sliding wetly out of Castiel’s mouth. He sounds like he’s asking if he’s got the volume turned up loud enough, the chalk sigils positioned correctly.
Castiel lies back next to Dean, watching him through his eyelashes. “I wish I could appreciate it fully.”
Sam finds he is suddenly very interested in whatever scrape MacGyver has gotten himself into now.
There really isn’t anything good on TV. Dean keeps hoping they’ll stumble across a great movie—Pulp Fiction or Die Hard or Aliens or something—but HBO’s apparently been taken over by the last surviving demons and is playing Air Bud II: Golden Receiver, and Dean would swear that ShamWow douche is on every other channel. Cas watches it all with the same contemplative look on his face, his head tilted slightly to the side. He probably can’t tell the difference, in terms of quality, between an episode of The A-Team and a Two-and-a-Half Men rerun and a 30-minute infomercial for pasta strainers, but that doesn’t change the fact that Dean wants to show him something good.
When his thumb actually starts to get sore, he gives up clicking furiously and shuts off the set. He can feel Cas watching him expectantly. “Sam,” he says, after a moment. “Go to the office and see if they have any games.”
Sam looks up from his laptop, bitchface in top form. “I’m not your errand boy, Dean,” he says, even as he gets up and goes.
Dean feels smug for about four minutes, until Sam comes back carrying an all-too-familiar blue box. “It was all they had,” Sam says, cutting off his complaint. “Really.”
“Fine. Whatever,” says Dean. “But Cas gets to be on my team.”
Sam pulls up a chair and they spread the board across the bed. Cas examines the little plastic pie pieces quizzically as Sam explains the rules. “This is entertaining?” he asks.
“Yes,” says Sam, at the same time Dean says, “For geeks like Sammy.”
“You’re just jealous ’cause I always win.”
Dean rubs his hands together and rolls the dice. “We’ll see.”
As expected, Cas rocks at the history-type questions, but sucks at the pop culture stuff (which, in the case of this particular Trivial Pursuit edition, was all hot and current circa 1987). Luckily that’s Dean’s area of expertise. Sam puts up a good fight, but they still crush him. To Dean’s surprise, his brother lets him gloat and doesn’t even bitch too much about how two against one is kind of cheating.
Sunlight and shadow drift across the floor, the day passing by like water whirling down an open drain. Dean can feel Cas’ warm presence at his back, preternaturally still, and yet he can’t shake the feeling that he’ll turn around and the angel’ll be gone.
“What do you want to do next?” he asks. He’s feeling generous: “Sammy, you pick.”
Sam picks “quiet reading time” just to see if Dean’ll go along with it, or if he’ll get bored and annoyed and go out for a run or start messing around with his car or haul a bunch of weapons back inside and start working them over. Dean’s never actually been all that good at downtime. But now he just rolls his eyes and pulls a couple of tattered issues of CHP out of his bag. He passes one to Castiel, who accepts it more readily than Sam would have imagined. Because obviously the angel’s developed a deep fascination with classic Chevys. Right.
Sam gets out the book of lore he’s been carefully working through, but before he can crack the spine the realization hits him like lightning: he doesn’t actually have to do this right now. Maybe Dean does have the right idea: he can breathe, take it easy—even if it’s just for today. God knows they’ve earned it. Sam puts the book back and instead roots around at the bottom of his backpack until he finds the novel he’s barely been able to do more than glance at in months.
He gets through about four paragraphs before something—some movement or sound from the other side of the room—makes him look up from the page. Dean and Castiel are still just sitting there, side by side, long and not-so-long legs stretched out in front of them. Their magazines are open, and Castiel is dutifully squinting at his. Dean, though…he’s staring off to the side, at the window with its drawn-back curtains, the glass that’s slowly turning dark and reflective.
The lights have come on in the parking lot, and the yellow bulbs have flickered to life above each door. It is the evening of the day, and Dean has on his face an expression akin to panic.
Just for a second, though. Then he catches Sam looking and his face smoothes over. “Hand me that empty soda bottle, will you?” he says.
Sam decides to roll with it. “Dean, for the last time, just get up and use the bathroom like a normal person. This isn’t a ’70s cop film and we’re not on a stakeout.”
Dean tosses his magazine aside and gets to his feet for what may only be the second or third time of the day. “You’re no fun,” he says, sauntering over to the bathroom and letting the door slam behind him.
Castiel does not flinch at the noise. He regards Sam curiously. “Was he suggesting…”
Sam cuts him off. “You don’t want to know.” He’d really rather not destroy the angel’s last remaining illusions about Dean. Though to be honest, he really doesn’t think Castiel has any.
Castiel’s looked away from him and is regarding the bathroom door like an impatient theatergoer staring at the empty stage. Sam thinks about Dean earlier, anxiously watching the light fade and the day turn to dusk. “He’ll never ask you, you know,” he blurts.
Castiel turns, the motion slow and smooth, well-oiled. “Ask me?”
“To—” Sam doesn’t know why he’s blushing: this has nothing to do with him. Except in the way that anything to do with Dean has everything to do with him.
“He doesn’t want you to go.”
For a long moment, Castiel is still. Then he gets to his feet and spreads his arms just a fraction of an inch (and Sam can see in his head the way he had spread his wings just the day before, beautiful and terrible): spreads his skinny human arms and looks down at himself, the slow sweep of his gaze deliberate, meant to draw Sam’s with it. He is barefoot. He is standing in their motel room one day after the world didn’t end, wearing a pair of Dean’s sweats and a faded grey t-shirt. An angel of the Lord.
“I know,” he says. “I won’t.”
“Oh.” Sam swallows the lump in his throat and forces his chin up. “Well, you better tell him that.”
They stand like actors who’ve forgotten their lines and listen to the loud echo of the toilet flushing, of Dean washing his hands. The door opens up.
“Dean,” Castiel says quickly, before Dean can take in the weird atmosphere. “May I speak to you outside?”
Sam sees Dean square his shoulders and force a smile, braced for the worst. “Sure thing,” he says, and Sam buries his nose resolutely in his novel.
Today has been nice. He realizes, as Dean and Castiel sweep by him, as the door clicks closed, that he’s more in agreement with his brother than he’d thought: it was good to take a breather, it was good to relax, to stay in stasis for a little while. Because once it stops being a day in which they do nothing, it becomes the first day of the rest of their lives—some horrible cliché like that. And then they’ll have to figure out what to do next. What’ll stay the same. What’s changing.
Having a future is almost as terrifying as not having one.
So Sam reads each word very carefully…for about two paragraphs. Then he can’t take it anymore. He turns in his chair and he looks out.
Night has fallen. His brother and an angel stand together in the glow of a streetlamp. They’re not touching, not yet. Not just yet.
Sam lets out a breath. The world goes on.