ᴀʟʟ I ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ʙᴇɪɴɢ ᴀʟɪᴠᴇ ɪs ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʟɪғᴇ's ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪᴠɪɴɢ (open.)

[righteously]

Who: Dean Winchester & Others.
When: Post-Event.
Where: Cadens, the Horizon, Nocwich.
What: A catch-all of open & closed starters.
Warnings: A little grief, a little alcoholism, probably canon-typical violence and suicidal ideation. Mentions of fruit turbo-hell.

I ᴀɪɴ'ᴛ sᴇᴇᴋɪɴɢ sᴀʟᴠᴀᴛɪᴏɴ
Nᴏᴛ ᴛᴏᴏ ᴡᴏʀʀɪᴇᴅ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴅᴀᴍɴᴀᴛɪᴏɴ
I ɢᴏᴛ ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ᴇxᴘᴇᴄᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴀs sᴜᴄʜ I ᴀɪɴ'ᴛ ᴇᴀsɪʟʏ ʟᴇᴛ ᴅᴏᴡɴ
Aʟʟ I ʀᴇᴀʟʟʏ ᴡᴀɴɴᴀ ᴅᴏ ɪs ʙᴇ ᴄʟᴏsᴇ ᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜ
ᴡʜɪʟᴇ ᴡᴇ'ʀᴇ sᴛɪʟʟ ʙᴏᴛʜ ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ.

Comments

[righteously]

( Cas stands before him, and lays it all out there in a way that finally, finally feels honest. No more dodging, no more bullshit excuses, no more whatever it was he was telling himself in order to justify his absence — the way everyone always justifies their absence from him after they leave him.

Part of him wants to cling to that hurt, and wield it like a weapon. Part of him wants to punish, to rip himself away from the possibility of getting left again; you wanted to be gone, be gone. Just like part of him has always wanted to be strong enough to do to John, to Mary, sometimes to Sam.

But at the end of the day, he could never be that guy. If he were capable of letting go of people their story would have ended over ten years before he actually died.

God damn it, but he can't, when all he wants is to love and be loved in approximately equal measure — and here's Castiel, trying to convince him of that reciprocity being real for the first time in Dean's idiot life. The desperate desire to believe it lines up with the shape of Castiel's palm over his heart, and it stings at his eyes. They shine wet and shameful, because he's always been too easy to push to the edge of tears, despite his entire stupid fucking life hardening him against stuff like that. No amount of callouses have been able to rival the depth of how much he always feels.

And he feels so, so much for this stupid god damn angel.
And he felt so, so much for Jo, whose loss feels like a gaping wound glaring betrayal at him from beyond for daring to feel loved right now without her — a guilt that's entirely self-manifested, that Jo herself would never actually saddle him with.
And it all comes together, all of it, in a thick and heavy blanket of too much at once, and he can't keep blocking it all out with his deliberately obtuse denial anymore. The floodgates come down.

So he reaches out, and he reels Cas in against his chest, hanging on too tight, fingers digging bruises into the backs of his shoulders where the wings would be if they were real. )

Don't you ever do that to me again, you hear me? Don't ever do that again.

( It's a harsh and furious order half-whispered near Castiel's ear, because his throat's too thick to snarl it the way he'd wanted to. It comes out weaker than he intended, but no less steely for it. )

[unwings]

[ home, where he was crafted a soldier tasked with an objective, he couldn't decipher or disentangle himself from the entropic chain reaction of feeling dean set off in him. the years went on and it rooted deeper until it was overgrown around his heart, so clear the empty saw it as the dangerous, buried truth at the core of him, and the dream that could never be realized. the thought dean might want him back was a cruel, false hope.

castiel thought he knew his friend inside and out, every carefully guarded secret, every dark corner locked away where it couldn't harm him anymore. through his own conviction, cas was blind to what precious, fragile thing lay beneath their bond. somewhere along the way, they grew the same skeptism from any glimmer of happiness.

after the onslaught of eight centuries of jumbled memory, and the years spent in desperate denial and longing at home, those first acts exploring their love in Abraxas seems so far away. this volatile, charged moment peeling back the layers on an old truth that wrought such pain in it's denial feels new, fresh. Electric in it's anxiety and long withheld catharsis. Almost unreal.

Dean's in a storm, overwhelmed and exposed, vulnerable to a pain that's already devastated him once. it echoes scattered arguments and harsh lectures recieved throughout their history when cas would strike out alone. the where the hell were yous and you can't just go dark like thats, speaking in 'we' and 'us' disguises. it was there and he never saw it. castiel does what he knows now he was made for, in spite of the story chuck tried to write them. ]

Never again. [ he murmurs against Dean's cheek, feeling the curve of ribs under his hand and tension strung tight through Dean's shoulders as he wraps him up into his chest. he sighs out a surrender, dropping himself into the unknown waters of true happiness they weren't supposed to have. cas listens to the thrum of blood in dean's veins and frantic pulse of a heart he loves so dearly he'd give the world for it. the weight of dean in his arms, the delicate, rasped fury of his voice rumbling a wave of sound over his skin, feels right. puzzle pieces connecting, his ragged edges softening against a second half he's utterly incomplete without.

the force of emotion, made foreign in that alternate future, shakes cas, uncontrolled in a manner astonishingly human. his true form flickers and flashes a hazy aura of white light around them, wings taking spectral form folding in to hold them in a protective, warm, silent cocoon. there's an intimacy to the brush of his being against dean's soul that far outpaces the physical. ]

You and I, [ voice a low, secret rumble between them, ] We belong here. Together.

[ fingertips card, adoring, possessive, through dean's hair at the nape of his neck. ]

You're my home, Dean. I will always, always, find my way to your side.

i think we can maybe call this one wrapped?? unless u have anything more!!

[righteously]

( At some point along the way, his eyes squeeze themselves shut. At some point along the way, his heart begins to bleed — the painful-sweet ache of getting exactly what you want, the feeling of something healing. The way things hurt when they're good.

He remembers sitting in the bunker, in the vacancy. In the empty space Cas left behind. How that moment stretched, and stretched, and stretched, and how he lingered in it. How he never wanted to leave it. How he wanted to drown in it, how part of him wanted to end there, too. To just stop, to never move on.

The hand print on his jacket.

The cruel stab of hope when Cas's name showed up on his Caller ID. The cruel stab of hope when Bobby said his name, in heaven. The cruel stab of hope every century in that alternate universe.

The emptiness that swiftly followed behind each of those moments.

We belong here, together.

He presses his forehead to Castiel's.

And they stay there. For a long time. In this moment, this new moment, this better moment — not of something lost, but of something gained. They stay here longer than he was allowed to stay in the bunker. Just... standing, and breathing, and being, and holding on to one another.

And it's enough for him to at least begin to consider that maybe this is something he gets to have, for as long as the both of them can manage to stay alive here. This is their second chance, and god damn but they're not going to waste it this time. )