My art post for the @deancasbigbang 2023, Mme_Yersinia's fic ''Magdalena''
The fic is written by @cats-coffee-castiel & illustrated by me! :)
Check it out here on Ao3!
Warnings: Explicit sexual content, heavy angst, implied/referenced child abuse, implied/referenced suicide, torture, self-harm
Tags: Redemption arcs, slow burn, Castiel is Jack Kline's Parent, Domestic fluff, mutual pining, s13 canon divergent, dysfunctional family, angst with a happy ending, Castiel whump, kid fic
Summary: Castiel swore to protect Jack at all costs. If that means taking him away from the dark dungeon of the bunker and away from the harsh words and hands of Dean Winchester, then so be it. Castiel takes Jack and runs. He finds them a safe town, a battered rental house, a little job and a little life. He wants Jack to have a normal childhood; to grow up safe and loved, not in a windowless basement.
Dean tracks them down, of course. He begs forgiveness, of course. Redemption is a long, slow road. It’s paved with ginger cats and broken-down Hondas, stolen kisses and dusty libraries and bathroom repairs. Dean and Castiel find themselves growing closer in the haze of domesticity. Dean moves from sleeping in the car, to the sofa, to Castiel’s bed. It’s not easy to carve out a place for themselves in a world that doesn’t always want them.
But strange things start to happen in the home they’ve made. Neighbors complain of shadows in the night. Monsters appear that don’t belong. Coincidences line up. Wherever peace and happiness try to grow, there are adversaries who would snuff it out. The love holding their family together just might be the last weapon they have against the evils of the world.
Warnings: Explicit sexual content, torture, self-harm and suicidal ideation
Tags: Canon-divergent s13, domestic kid fic, complex family dynamics, rural americana, mutual pining, dadstiel, hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending, slow burn, redemption arcs
Posting Date: October 25, 2023
Summary: Castiel swore to protect Jack at all costs. If that means taking him away from the dark dungeon of the bunker, and away from the harsh words and hands of Dean Winchester, then so be it. Castiel takes Jack and runs. He finds them a safe town, a battered rental house, a little job and a little life. He wants Jack to have a normal childhood; to grow up safe and loved, not in a windowless basement.
Dean tracks them down, of course. He begs forgiveness, of course. But redemption is a long, slow road. It’s paved with ginger cats and broken-down Hondas, stolen kisses and dusty libraries and bathroom repairs. Dean and Castiel find themselves growing closer in the haze of domesticity. Dean moves from sleeping in the car, to the sofa, to Castiel’s bed. It’s not easy to carve out a place for themselves in a world that doesn’t always want them.
But strange things start to happen in the home they’ve made. Neighbors complain of shadows in the night. Monsters appear that don’t belong. Coincidences line up. Wherever peace and happiness try to grow, there are adversaries who would snuff it out. The love holding their family together just might be the last weapon they have against the evils of the world.
Excerpt: Castiel takes his lunch break outside whenever the weather allows. He always intends to spend it reading one of the library’s newest additions. Usually he ends up watching other creatures instead.
Birds flit back and forth in the courtyard’s ill-kempt bushes. Interesting insects crawl between the boards of the picnic table. A woman a few blocks down is walking her fluffy, prim little dog on a pink leash when Castiel’s phone buzzes. He hopes that it’s the bank calling him back to say there was a mistake, actually, the check has come through. But no: it’s a text from Sam.
“You and Jack doing okay?”
The midday sun bakes the back of Castiel’s neck, rising a ring of sweat around the collar of his polo shirt. The library dress code is business casual. He’d Googled what that meant after his interview, and then he and Jack had frantically made a trip to the local Goodwill to scrape together a week’s worth of work clothes for him.
Jack had found a dinosaur cup for fifty cents, though, so the outing had been successful by more than one standard.
Castiel had almost picked out a flannel. The well-worn, faded, familiar stripes caught his eye from the hanger in the men’s row. Fondness and bitterness blended in a strange way in Castiel's grace until Jack caught him staring and asked, “Do you want that one, too?”
“We can’t afford it,” Castiel had blurted out, turning away, because by then it was their turn to check out.
He stares at Sam’s text message. Above it are a long stream of others, most unanswered. It’s not Sam’s fault. He’s just stuck working damage control. Castiel taps back an answer.
“Yes.”
It’s not a lie. A few moments pass and Castiel doesn’t put his phone away. He watches a brown-striped bird peck at the remnants of someone’s french fries on the ground. A reply pops up on his screen.
“Can you tell me where you are?”
Castiel frowns, chews his lip. His break is almost over. He’s got to work on re-filing the historical nonfiction (F through K) when he goes back inside the library.
He texts back, “No.”
If it was up to him - if there were fewer variables in this nasty equation - the answer might be different. He doesn’t want Sam trying to visit so he can peer in on their little life that’s trying to grow into the shape of something human. He doesn’t want pitying glances or offers of help.
Least of all does he want Dean to know where they are. Dean has no right to that.
The phone burbles a reply:
“Okay. Let me know if you or Jack need anything. Talk soon.”
Castiel stares down at the washed-out screen in the warm glare of sunlight. His bittersweet moroseness feels out of place in such fine weather, butting up against the scalding green of the garden. He gets to his feet and drags his vessel back inside the library.
once upon a time i scribbled this thing for seacon & the actors of the characters pictured (& some other truly magnificent people) touched it with their hands and looked at it with their actual eyeballs and let me tell you i basically blacked out just to survive the encounter.
I’ll upload a picture of the signed version when its not night time…
dean jacking off and cas sensing it as a prayer is OLD and OVERDONE. what i NEED is dean actually miserably longing for cas because everyone he loves leaves him cas will never stay he misses cas yadda yadda and well. cas feels this and jacks off to it. and send post
LIKE. once cas realizes that longing from dean and recognizes that as a form of like. missing him he WOULD get hot and bothered over it. like in a god-damn-i-am-CARED-about affection starved way. but also in cas’s mind he still doesn’t fully realize the true extent so he uses the prayers as a fantasy and gets to pretend its because he is loved
again my take on 15x03 divorce moment is unpopular in that i think it was less about cas establishing a boundary and standing up for himself by saying You Can’t Treat Me This Way and more about. well. a guy who found out he was a side character in his absent father’s favorite soap opera, and then watched his son die horrifically, and started losing his angel ability, and then got brushed aside by the love of his life (who had previously been trying to kill his son), and then had to destroy a demon who had been dragging around his son’s corpse, and then had to hear the love of his life tell him that he was still, essentially, dead to him. imo the walking out was about cas not being able to look dean in the eye because all he could see there was resentment and rage and hatred and it doesn’t matter if he knows that it was dean unfairly lashing out. it hurt to look at! and belphegor really did succeed in germinating the idea in cas’ mind that he was only welcome if he was useful. i think he left because he stopped feeling like he had a place there after he saw how dean was prioritizing dead mary over alive jack and cas. like. more proof that dean couldn’t care about him as much as cas needed him to. i think it was like one of his lowest moments tbh
vaporwave
2087
theartofmadeline
