it starts when your girlfriend innocently pinches a lock of your hair in her fingers and says, it's getting long, babe, and you say, oh, it is, huh, i should really get it cut, like you didn't notice. she just shrugs and curls it around her finger, and her pink nail polish revealed from beneath the swirl of it fixes your eye while she says, i don't know. i think it looks good.
it started before you can remember, your father and his big metal monster clippers cropping feathers off your head. so little, still eggshell, hummingbird heart, sometimes you'd cry at the sound of them, and he would pretend not to notice. he would hold you by the face, tiny chin made smaller in his huge hands. he would tilt you, gentler than it looked, and shear you like a prized sheep. all done, he'd tell you, ruffle your head and send scraps flying. then you'd lean under the showerhead and wash it all free. the water always felt colder, more clean. your shoulders trembled.
it starts when your girlfriend takes you into the bathroom and guides warm water gently onto your scalp. she works shampoo into your hair. you lose track of time under her fingertips, under the gentle press of the soft blue towel. then she sits you up and snips away your dead ends. half an inch, maybe one. the sound of it so delicate, so smooth. snp, snp. a halo behind your back. a flock of black-capped chickadees taking flight out the open window.
it started when your dad, imperious and particular, a king with his goblet, told your brother to get'at damn mop off your head before someone called you a. the clippers turned on before you could hear him tell you what you were. your brother’s hands shook around them, dwarfed in the leering face of the scratched steel, and the buzz was patchy by the end of it, but you don't really remember that. you remember your brother's hands on your head, scrubbing thoroughly at it underneath the cold, cold water. you remember he was crying.
it starts in the passenger seat of your best friend's car. she's pushing seventy on the highway. there's someone hooting and cackling behind you, someone cracking a joke that, for the first time, you're sure isn't about you. pop music's blasting on the speakers, but you can't hear it over the baying call of the wind from your window as you, safe and simple, try to catch it in your palm. acting on impulse, you loosen your seatbelt and come haltingly to a kneel on her soft, gray passenger seat, stick your head out the window and howl.
and it all starts right there, you think. the cold, cold rush of the wind in your hair, in your open eyes, the tiny tears that slip from you, immediately brushed away by the gentle hand of the world.
“Shit,” Dean curses suddenly. He places the Visine roughly against the counter and leans on his hands. “Can’t even do one fuckin’ thing.”
Cas can do this.
summary: cas applies visine to dean’s eyes. somehow, this is deeply romantic. ~1.1k.
One familiar morning after a hard hunt finds Dean groaning into the mirror, his fingers holding an eye open to inspection. When Castiel, still sitting in bed, hums questioningly, Dean drops his hand and huffs, “My eyes look like hell, dude.” Then he begins to rummage through the dresser drawer in front of him. It seems that between their late-night return to the bunker, Dean’s usual insomnia, and the amount of time he’d spent cloaked, shivering, shaking, sobbing under the broad spread of Castiel’s hand on his back in the hold of the post-midnight, his eyes are a little red.
This isn’t the first time Castiel has woken to see the whites of Dean’s eyes cracked and reddened, harmless kintsugi of blood. Regardless, as with every time before, Castiel feels something large and protective roam up his spine and crawl through his mouth. He wants to walk over there, place his hand over Dean’s eyes, and unpop every burst vein in his eyes under a cool burst of care. He wants to find a way to take back every wrong thing ever done to Dean, to cut the fuel for the nightmares right out from under Dean’s harried subconscious. His hands open, fingertips spread across the wrinkled bedsheet below, Castiel pictures with sense memory what it would feel like to eradicate all the kindless shades from Dean’s past one by one, to feel them erase from existence under his palm.
Dean has found the little bottle of Visine they keep for mornings like this and is holding the cap, plastic crown made diminutive between the thick press of his thumb and forefinger. In the past, Dean wouldn’t have bothered to fix himself up like this, saying it was a waste of time and money and a bad use of grace just to “make me look pretty again.” Castiel let it be eventually, but sometimes, he still wonders whether Dean really didn’t care about it. Wonders whether Dean just couldn’t find a way to say that he actually needed it. Needed to be able to look in the mirror throughout the day and see his ruddy eyes, to remind himself that he’d woken up, he was free from whatever had clawed at him.
Now, they have a kid. Dean doesn’t like Jack worrying about him when he doesn’t have to. So he stands in front of the mirror and tilts his head back to let drops of Visine fall into his open eyes, but his reflexes keep him blinking and flinching instead of letting them hit, his mouth pulling into an annoyed line at the corners. Dean doesn’t even like putting contacts in. Cas knows this. Cas loves him fiercely. Cas is so proud of him for surviving so beautifully. Cas, silently frenzied with heart, wants to stand up, take the bottle from Dean’s hands, guide his head back until it rests against his bare collarbone, and let him close his eyes as Cas takes care of him, as Cas holds the Visine to the pink triangle of Dean’s caruncle and lets gentle water roll rivulet by rivulet into Dean’s eyes, healing him the way humans do.
“Shit,” Dean curses suddenly. He places the tiny opaque bottle roughly against the counter and drops his hands to either side of it, bracketing it in, leaning hard against them. His eyes are screwed shut. “Can’t even do one fuckin’ thing.”
A beat of quiet where the only sound in the room is the sigh that shudders visibly through the tense line of Dean’s back. Then, the angel Castiel breaks his reverie to push the blankets the rest of the way off his legs and stand. Hair rumpled from sleep, lines in his cheek from the pillow, borrowed boxers hanging from his hips, Castiel cannot banish the pain from Dean’s past, cannot rewrite his story to have a happier start, cannot even begin to fathom a way to untangle the web of chains that still draws Dean’s eyes tightly shut when he cries, like he’s waiting for someone to spit at him, to throw stones through his windows. But this. This simple salvation. Cas can do this.
Dean doesn’t start when one of Cas’s hands covers his own, doesn’t jump when Cas presses a soft kiss to the space where his head meats his neck, but it’s a close thing. Instead, he sucks in a sharp breath, lets out an equally sharp one, shoulders shivering, still tacky with the cold sweat he hasn’t yet had the chance to wash off.
“Hush,” Cas whispers.
He brings his free hand to Dean’s chest, feeling his heartbeat through endless layers of skin and sinew and the Walmart cotton-poly tee that blankets it all, and then drags it up his neck, feeling Dean’s breath, trying to encourage him by holding his warm hand over it to feel it too. So many mornings have started a similar way between them, Cas touching what he knows now he can touch. Today, Cas brings his hand the rest of the way up, cupping the box of Dean’s jaw in the spread of skin between his thumb and forefinger, and gently urges him to let his head fall backward, and Dean does, of course he does, because Cas asked him to, a quiet pained sound vibrating through the soft skin underneath Cas’s hand. He opens his eyes as he does, brows drawn together, the line of his lips a quiver.
“Cas,” is all he says.
“Hush, Dean,” Cas tells him, asks him, permits him. He picks the Visine up. “Close your eyes.” Dean does. “Let me take care of you.” Of course Dean does.
And so Cas holds the bottle just above the corners of Dean’s eyes and drops one, two, three drops of Visine into them. And so Dean shivers as he does, still not liking the feeling of the cold intrusion slipping in. And so Cas kisses Dean at the place where the subtle curve of his widow’s peak meets his skin. And so Dean turns his eyes this and that way beneath his eyelids, dispersing the product. And so Cas watches the smooth roll of that thin and vital skin and somehow, awed, almost not believing it, finds a way to love him even more than he did when they went to bed together yesterday.
And so tears leak from the corners of Dean’s slowly cooling eyes. And so Cas sets the bottle down and wipes them with both hands from the rough plane of Dean’s cheeks. And so Dean sighs like something fell abruptly loose in his soul. And soon there will be butter on the griddle and pancakes on the table. And soon there will be birdsong through the window and laughter through the hallway. And so, here and now, everything is mostly okay.
have been floating a lot of ideas in my head about cassie not necessarily becoming a hunter, but wanting to learn supernatural self-defense, after her experiences in route 666, and then that sort of intensifying over time (particularly after dean’s season 3 death) to where cassie’s not a hunter, but is equally as capable as one in combat against supernatural entities. SO this is my wish fulfillment episode intro to a post-season 3 episode about cassie’s status as a pro bono/accidental ghost hunter, which ties in immediately to my wish fulfillment 4x01 where dean calls cassie and tells her he’s back from the dead.
1. you
2. are an
3. experiment in finding
4. out about what it
5. means to be alive and
6. to hurt so badly that you
7. feel like you’ve already gone and died.
8. hurt is a verb and a noun and
9. an adjective. it is the very nexus of family.
10. hurt is your spinal cord taut as a bowstring. hurt
11. is the empty doorway and the full trunk. safe is knowing
12. that at least you are beside your brother. finger over trigger
13. all night. that is what it means to brother. verb, noun, adjective. promise.
14. psalm 23. you are looking for poppies in the field behind your father’s back.
15. dead gray wheat everywhere. dead gray pigeon in a cat’s mouth. your father is sowing,
16. and he won’t tell you what seed it is. just gives you a scythe. missing prom.
17. missing mom. missing life. learning silence. your brother begs a word. you turn on the tv. your
18. brother shoots up like a comet. gargantuan and precipitous. hurt is you knowing what axes do to trees.
19. terror turns to envy turns to anger. fight over nothing. everything. his hands know ink like yours know blood.
20. your spit runs red. known the weight of a gun so long it became you. you shoot your brother out.
21. hurt is the empty passenger and full trunk. safe is hoping he never sees your face again. safe is the nexus.
22. and so the wide road. and so birdflight. and so heavy, slugging barfight. and so the water runs clean down the drain,
23. away from you. sometimes when you fall you think about not getting up. belly ripe for gutting. it would be so easy. yet.
24. on days when the light sees too much of you, you drive into the woods until the stars come back, lay on the hood.
25. you cannot bring the dead back to life. you can only bring the living to death. can only store night behind your eyelids.
26. you drag him back. you’re not sure you’re sorry. green is sprouting in your father’s field. you die for him. his scythe now. brother; verb, noun.
for a devout man, james novak
does not understand how to love anything holy.
he tries. in sleep, he extends his hands toward you,
far as they can go. a hug, maybe. child of god. smallest
wingspan. you must be careful with fine china, must
not let it burn up in firing. you demure, recede. and
he lets you.
you are a flaming ball of matter and destruction
that looms hungrily over his picket fence. and
he keeps you.
fragile little bird in your grasp. hallowed bones.
eyes of grace. frightlessly knowing your shape.
ever-willing glass hammer. yours. sometimes,
this scares you.
sometimes, you can feel his mind resist against
the bit of your command, your orders, and this,
too, scares you, because you cannot always see
the line between his doubt and yours. who lives
in whose vessel? who balks at the scent of ash,
the sound of a steady march? terror.
you push him back. regress. and he lets you. and
he hates you.
at some point you will learn to stop fighting this
body. all it wants is to hold you. it just isn't big
enough to reach. your wrists are too large for
its grasp.
but when the beast of your mind falls silent. and
when the snow of your soul blankets heavy. and
when his hands come up in prayer to his own neck.
and when you remember that you disobey no one
in moving him, gently, toward the window to see
the sun set. then something beautiful begins.
sunshine. and starlight. and cold metal lampposts.
lakewater. terrycloth. and hardcover books. he says,
you've been alive since before fish breathed, and
you've never seen a movie? popcorn. and low lights.
and soft, cushioned seats. whatever you can fit in
between the war. white knuckles on the arm rests.
you disobey no one. you disobey no one. heaven
does not know the shape of his ribs in the morning.
and when it leaves you battered and bruised, whose
hands show you how to heal? whose palms cup
beneath the sink to wash the blood from your
sallow cheeks? whose sorrowed eyes stare back
into you from the mirror? jimmy hasn't spoken
to you in a long, long time, but his eyes are saying,
i love you still. i wish you'd come home. you say
okay. you dry your hands. you order pizza. you
come home.
one day. you don't know what caused it. but
you feel it happen.
the man who gave you a home dies.
he dies inside you.
like a single match flicking out in the vast expanse
of a nebula.
hollowed.
somehow you notice his absence everywhere. this
is not possible, because you are his presence
everywhere.
still.
much later, a man teaches you to ride a bike.
you get it first try, because jimmy's arms and legs,
considerate and forethinking as he always was, are
lined with the love letter of his untold knowledge
upon every muscle.
you shoot off like a comet downhill. the man,
very far away now, woops victoriously. your smile
is impossible. you almost cannot breathe. you are
flying. soaring. your hands lift from the handles.
your body holds you.
you have never ridden a bike before. but his body
remembers the thrill. his heart races. within the
swell of his throat there builds a sun of laughter.
you wonder who taught him. you wonder if he
ever missed the feeling. you regret so much.
as the wind beats your eyes, you notice
that you have begun to cry.
holy water, you think. the sun is setting to your left.
you turn, still flying, and watch as it disappears behind
a horizon which you were once able to touch. rivers of holy
water.
in another world jimmy novak notices from a young age that he has a superhuman ability for endurance (as a result of his chosen status for vesseldom) of some truly wild shit (like the boiling water), and it sets him apart so starkly from his peers, some fascinated and some horrified in turn, that he ends up joining the circus. when castiel finds him, jimmy isn't an advertising salesman for am radio, happily married with a kid and a thriving place in his local church.
instead, he is sitting under the low canopy of a circus tent at night, passing plastic bottle vodka back and forth between a man who swallows swords for a living. the cold air of the night puffs slowly against their fronts as the show goes on through the open flap behind them, casting a warm yellow glow on their backs. laughter and gasps of shock and the soft explosion of the firebreather at work. above and behind jimmy, the only two places he has ever felt at home: the circus and the stars.
more of this 3x17 / 4x0.5 script on ghost-busting Cassie, speculatively titled 1234567890 GOOD BYE or Treat the Spirits with Respect. first pass at a conversation where cassie asks dean to fill her in. not sure if this would be a good format for a full-length fic but it’s really fun to write in script format
young dean shaky-handed returning to the motel. everything hurts. dad’ll call soon with a new job to bleed for. he slugs into the bathroom to clean up and as he goes he feels something drip down his face, smudges it with the back of his hand over his mouth. when he looks in the mirror he sees his own bloody and tired face. but that’s not what he’s looking at. the blood from the cut over his eye has smeared over his mouth. lips are bright red. uneven and messy. red on his chin, almost on his nose. transfixed, blaming it on head trauma, he reaches under the sink with a rag and dabs above and below his mouth, cleaning it up like lipstick. just stands there. stares at it for minutes. why not. he’s alone. no one else can see.
