#firestiel

[rosereddawn]

Supernatural. Dean/firestiel!Anna. 1100 words. M. CW: suicidal ideation.

There's always been soot in your lungs.

[siterlas]

Hey-o, I was wondering something and I just wanted to ask you-with the promise that I won't judge you at all for your answer because its all pretend and harmless-I love your Castiel as Claire or a Tiger or a Flame etc etc posts, but I always get curious about your take on his relationship with Dean in those forms. From what I gather them remain as intense and inter-wound as in canon-but are they still romantic in your eyes? If they are, are they sexual? Again, no judgement, just intrigued. :)

Also I think I only see Dean and Cas as sometimes romantic, or just left-of-center of romance. That is to say, romance is only one aspect of their complex relationship, and the relationship itself tends to fluctuate between signifiers of several things: duty, loyalty, friendship, human urges, vulnerability, awakening, ascension, descent, misunderstanding, faith, trust, expectations, love. We can say that love encompasses all these things, sure, but I think we can as easily say that faith encompasses all these things including love, that ascension encompasses all these things including love, etc. It's about which one of them we assign as thesis concept and which ones we assign as supporting arguments, and my preferences tend to fluctuate on any given day.

Maybe these AUs are more about how Dean reacts and what it does to him, because Cas is Cas is Cas even when he's a tiger or a flame. He still orbits Dean. What would be especially interesting is the S5 where Cas starts to lose his grace so he becomes more like his vessel. Function loses out to form. No grace to stop the fire from burning Dean. No grace to quell adolescent hormones. No grace to stop the tiger from hungering after prey. Eventually it all becomes a metaphor for need/love/devotion/etc. You are consumed, you are immolated, you are drowning, you lose control.

I'm not sure if Dean/Clairestiel can be truly romantic because Dean'd think it's creepy because she's so young, so if sex happens, he'd feel like shit about it. And I'm not sure if Dean's discomfort would be something Clairestiel can understand. I also think Dean's caretaker instincts would kick in more because even though she's an angel, she looks like a kid. In 5x03, he wouldn't take her to a brothel. He'd take her to a carnival and they'd eat cotton candy and ride the ferris wheel.

Tigerstiel is like the polar opposite because if an angel looks like a tiger, it's more difficult to forget it isn't human, which is what Dean tends to do in canon. This creature is dangerous, it can kill you, and it's both humbling and terrifying to realize you have somehow won its heart, whatever heart it has. You wonder if it can turn on you at any moment. The connection you have to it can overwhelm you, but you work through the fear and wonder to try to meet it halfway because somehow you trust it anyway, and you trust that it trusts you. But you never forget it can rip you apart. As for whether it's sexual, well, IT CAN BE. Maybe it's more erotic? It's not really Dean getting fucked by a tiger and yelling "OH YEAH HARDER HARDER", but more like Cas licking Dean's wound and resisting the thrill the taste gives him? 

Firestiel has all sorts of fun hell associations! Like, Dean can never seem to escape the theme. Fire took his mother, it took forty years of his life (or death, depending how you look at it), then it took his brother, but fire also raised him from perdition, like the only way out is through. He can walk through these flames and not burn. He has walked through these flames and been burned to ashes. I like the interpretation of Firestiel as a cleansing fire, but I also like it when it can't help but burn Dean when it loves him most. It doesn't mean to, but what is fire if it doesn't burn? Shouldn't you have known better? Should he? As for whether it's sexual, you got the burnplay kink, hey hey. But like Tigerstiel, the sexual acts aren't endgame. Part of the appeal of Tigerstiel and Firestiel is the trust it takes to open yourself up to a powerful thing who doesn't always keep its powers in check, the horror of seeing it backfire, and what are you even feeling when it breaks the world/itself for you?

So idk, sometimes it's romantic, sometimes it's horror, sometimes it's kinky, most of it is the profound bond between a man and various things that shouldn't be sentient and/or young girls.

I hope any of this made sense to you.

[siterlas]

And Dean remembers when he thought he'd be a firefighter, before he grew up and realized the fault was with the demon not the flames, before he learned that the heat could heal as well as harm. The thought extinguishing it forever puts a knot in his stomach. But Claire never learns this - all she knows is that fire took her father, inexplicably, and Dean will never forgive himself. At least he never had to come home from school to see his mother's body, smoldering and emptied.

A continuation from here. Sometimes I hoard askfics because I want to play round-robin so I wait for like the ~right moment~, but that is selfish of me and I love Firestiel so I'm going to let it run freeeeee. I need like some sort of chinhands gif right now because omg Emily.

[siterlas]

The guy is big, but Sammy's still bigger. "I'm looking for a Claire Novak?" The firefighter narrows his eyes, but apparently sees nothing in Dean's face to warrant alarm (hah). "Hey, Captain!" he calls. "Somebody here looking for you." From the other side of the apparatus, a smaller figure appears. She's halfway out of her gear, blonde hair sticking up out of a ponytail haphazardly. Clear, bright blue eyes stare steadily and inquisitively at him. There is a small smudge of ash on her cheek.

You already know how much I love firefighter!Claire in this 'verse, and I keep on turning this idea over of like what fire must mean now in the context of their lives. Not just Claire, not just Sam and Dean, but all vessels. Maybe it's not just charred wings here, but charred everything. Charred winged human shapes smudged into the ground like cave paintings. Fire took everything from the Winchesters, and it speaks volumes that Dean began to reach out to it. He may not necessarily want to trust it, and it's the kind of trust that tends at times towards a defensive phobia. But he begins to recognize the burn. At its best, the pain grounds him and at the same time reminds him of the past while burning away its weight. But here Claire is in her new vocation, reminding him that for as long as humankind has existed, we have longed to conquer fire. We fight before the fire conquers us.

[siterlas]

I find your thoughts about god-Firestiel and how it would be like becoming hell in the Winchester's eyes interesting--especially since Lucifer said that he tended to run colder, which is probably the hell that Sam would be more familiar with as he would have been in a deeper level than Dean? Castiel and Lucifer somewhat parallel each other, if Castiel is fire and Lucifer is ice, that would add interesting aspects to the Castiel-Sam (and possibly Wincestiel) relationship.

OMG WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR ROBOSAM? Does Robosam run cold because too long in the cage with Lucifer? What does it mean for soulfisting? What does it mean for resouled Sam? I think it means that in 7x01, he pockets Dean's zippo when Dean is too drunk to notice, then he goes out to the junkyard. He inspects it, trying to remember where Dean got it. It's just always been one of the things he took for granted about his brother, like the car and the attitude and the devil-may-care smile. He thought they'd be around forever. Sam looks at the sky, then back at the lighter, and then he flicks it on. 

Not really relatedly, do you reckon Castiel literally burned the memories out of Lisa and Ben? Castiel may have torn destiny up and burned the pages for all of us, but history is just as flammable and every one of Dean's stories smell like smoke.