I'm a lot like People

The Cave was dark, but for the blank white of the screen. A flash of green graced its top right corner intermittently: [INSERT TAPE] , and at the left, in black: [HDMI2]. Castiel had waited for this. The others were sleeping in their rooms. He prided himself on the excuse he’d given to Dean; “I will be communing with the slugs. I want to feel them lingering on my skin.” Dean, despite his profession, could be adorably squeamish about the strangest of things.

My dad always says "HDMI 12" to wind me up even though it's HDMI 2 lol. Anyway, a lot of this fic is (naturally) revelling in Cas’s weirdoness 💗 so maybe another day he does go and commune with the slugs

Cas felt only nominally guilty about his lie. He’d tried to be more honest in the past:

“I want to use the VCR.” // “Awesome, let’s all do a movie night!”

“I plan to learn about the inner workings of our entertainment modules.” // “Like a documentary? Hey, Sam, you ever seen one about that?”

“I wish to be consumed by the television.” // “Swing and a miss, buddy. You consume stuff, not the other way around. TV sounds good though, let’s do Kitchen Nightmares.”

Thus, the necessity of deception. Not joining Dean in bed required an explanation, and accurate explanation, Cas knew, would be impossible. Dean would be disconcerted. Quite possibly disgusted. He might, most importantly, have thrown the VCR away. Cas couldn’t abide that.

Hehehe justifying lies as per usual, never change cas!!!

He ran his thumbs around the opening flap to the VCR, feeling out its generous give. This machine was an object of power. It translated vision to vision, thought to thought, a brain-brain connection that slid daintily past the hard brick wall of imagination. The creation of worlds; no longer the arrogant privilege of a God. On the first day, the Director of Cinematography said Let There Be Light, and there was light. And it was Good.

I literally love television and movies so much and I WILL push that love into Castiel whenever I can!!! I saw him analysing Roadrunner he's just like me for real. I'm obviously less rapturous about it, no story is perfectly captured from someone's brain to another (those faults and work arounds and choices made to convery the things that can't be directly stated are part of what fascinates me!!) But mr godstiel believes that if there is a Creator they must be Omnipotent.

The repeated "on the x day, and it was good" is from the Bible story of the creation of the Earth. Now that I think about it, it's pretty interesting for Castiel to create his own mythos of the creation of movies while being desperately horny over the fact that humans create their own mythoses...! He's doing the thing he admires and he doesn't even realise it!

Another fascination; there is no lone creator. Sometimes, merely seeing the hundreds of credits scroll at the end of a movie had been enough to drive Castiel to distraction. Intricate, high effort collaboration, all for the relatively unimportant end of entertaining other humans for somewhere around an hour and a half. The entire enterprise amounts to making pleasing shapes and noises for each other. Fruitless. Pointless. A total and complete waste of time. A frisson of excitement crackles through Cas at the concept. Every second of time, in Heaven, was accounted for. It was expected that Heavenly Works were being completed at every moment. Idleness was not punished, because it did not happen. To spend months, years even, producing something, the only purpose of which is to waste more time…the decadence was astounding.

As you've likely noticed, the paragraphs in this are LONG, much longer paragraphs all in a row than I'd usually allow in editing. This was to give a sense of how Castiel feels overwhelmed with thought and feeling.

"no lone creator" <- Guy who named herself Kermit after Mr The Frog, the world famous creative director muppet "I think creative collaboration is fucking epic" lol. Of course, I don't think that the art of cinema is a waste of time, this was just to have it be a joke, Castiel getting horny not over the fanciness of artistic vision or the beauty of how it is communicated but over how it's a waste of time. He is crazy about something he doesn't fully respect.

Plus, it grants an extra layer of salaciousness to Castiel's VCR infatuation, which makes it sexier. It's soooo baaaaaad ;) naughty agel ;) haha

That’s not even mentioning the avatars of creative vision. Puppeteering another, willing, human soul to have their actions reflect a world that is not their reality. The closest humans can get to tapping into the kind of power Castiel once swallowed, an act with defiance and vulnerability tied so tightly together that they are inextricable from each other. The unwavering, daring passion of humanity, made transferable by one small gray box with buttons on it. Cas chewed on his own finger to keep himself quiet. He hadn’t even done anything yet, just the thoughts were getting him hot under the collar.

Me, throwing philosophical spaghetti at the wall: is this a pwp crack fic?

Haha, but I do genuinely think that if one can drill down to WHY someone finds something hot (this is fiction, no one irl needs to have a reason for liking stuff but characters should) and communicate that to the audience, it makes the sex hotter. To give an example of this not working: in Bride by Ali Hazelwood (which I very much enjoyed until the last 5 chapters :$), the protagonist, Misery the vampire (LOVE HER) falls in love with Lowe Moorland the werewolf (his name also cracks me up, is he The Fens?). Misery is very forthright and frank with her thoughts and feelings when she feels able to trust him, she's very active when she wants something, she is willing to fight at the drop of a hat. And then in every sex scene she effectively turns into a little sex doll that Lowe Does Sex To rather than an active participant. The favoured position is her pressed against the wall with her back to him, even though part of the vampire mating sequence is drinking each other's blood. She thinks about what she might like but never reaches for them or is blocked when she tries them. And their sex life is presented as very positive, this isn't a deliberate relationship flaw. It's so strange! I have no idea why Misery would want to be lifted around like a dolly and I was literally in her head. Reportedly, these positions happen in every book of hers and like :/ it's FINE she finds it hot and I don't it's FINE but like. Maybe try. Thinking about the character's specificity while doing the sex scene....I fell in love with Misery not the cut out of a woman...

Anyway. I think allowing myself to think of this as a silly piece helped me not worry too much about whether I was being too pretentious or using the perfect character voice just to get these thoughts down. I can wax poetic about things I genuinely love about television and movies in the less vulnerable space of "this is jokes it's just what Castiel thinks when he's getting randy". It's not me getting overly emotional about it, it's Castiel!

He dipped his fingertips into the flap. It opened a little way for him, ready and willing, a faint, creaking, whine escaping from it when it found no videotape to swallow. He shushed it and spread his other hand soothingly over the box. A little glisten of saliva transferred from his knuckle to its top, incontrovertible proof of his sensual intentions. He wiped it away with his thumb.

He pressed further in. At a certain threshold, the VCR rejoiced at finding its fleshy tape, and it thrummed excitedly around his fingers. Small wheels encouraged Castiel deeper, and who is he to deny its request? He only got as far as the third segment of his middle finger when he encountered resistance for the first time. The back wall of the tape compartment. He could sense the mechanisms behind it quivering and spinning, but the restraints of the physical plane prevented him from going any further. Or, they would have. If he was human.

Now here is where the true eroticism begins! Now. I didn't feel any particular way about machines being hot or sexual before writing this fic. And I'm still not into vore. But. Well. The thing is sometimes I see a car getting its innards revealed by a delicate yet massive crane or a machine made of lego with its wheels spinning perfectly and I do sometimes get a little flustered. And since writing my deancaspala I've definitely been thinking a lot about the impala as a sex object. So. Writers beware lmao. Although, I think it's a good thing to find more things hot, so 😜

Anyway - with the actual writing. A VCR machine is a little flat box with wheels in it. It's not sexy to most people. I made it more clearly a sexual object by a) Cas believing it has agency (it opened for him, it wants a tape) b) describing it as a body (it whines, it swallows, it quivers) and c) adding fluids (cas's saliva). I feel that these steps could likely be used to make any object sexual. Try it and see! While heeding my warning lol.

Arm set sideways, Castiel glided his hand flat so that his pinkie finger was brushing that back wall and his thumb and index hung garishly out of the front. He paused there for a time, stroking the sides of the opening carefully, reassuring the open mouth that he planned to be gentle when he breached its precious interior. Then he slid through. The plastic wall became permeable under his will, and it sucked at his fingers like a departing wave. There were mechanisms back there, wires, sensors, circuit boards. Cas shivered. It was hot. More than erotic - although that was a factor - the caged off fans did little to cool off this backstage area. The things there were not meant to be touched while they were on. Not permissible. Indecent. His elbow knocked the side of the entertainment unit in his eagerness to press in, making the VCR shiver in kind. He stretched space with half a thought to delve deeper into the machine’s guts.

I took some care with the pacing of how things went. I described every movement of Castiel’s hand going into the flap, making the pace very slow, and then he thinks about how it's "not permissible. Indecent." and this excites him, so he speeds up and we get less detail - the action is zoomed out suddenly from his fingers to his elbow. This, naturally, has some unintended consequences:

He stretched, perhaps, a little too far. A segment of his consciousness slipped into the HDMI access point by accident, and suddenly he had double vision. He shut his eyes tight against the dizziness, and found he could still see. His view was of himself, from the front, lit by a bright, neon pink glow. He was the very picture of debauched; head cast back, eyes shut, gasps catching at every breath. He hadn’t even realized he had been biting his bottom lip until he saw it from the outside. The sting was present, but felt abstracted, as if through a thick coat.

He's so voyeuristic he's getting off on watching himself from an abstracted distance. 🥳. I like this image I'm very pleased with it.

Focusing on that point of pain brought it closer, along with his other humanoid senses, and, with caution, Cas opened his eyes again. He stared. There, on the television screen, was an eye, flat and searching, looking rapidly in every direction it could. Despite being surrounded by dazzling pink light, the pupil is dilated, lustful. Not just an eye, Cas realized with a gasp, tapping into the other image to compare, his own eye. He was transformed. A construct of pure entertainment.

I like calling Cas "humanoid" lol. He is! He's a being in the shape of a human but he is not human. "Scully you're not going to believe this!"

Also, coming back to my earlier realisation, I did put in the fic that he makes himself become televison but I think that is distinct from becoming a creator of stories as he's praising. Like, I can have my photo taken and that doesn't make me a photographer.

Cas can have some self objectification. As a treat.

Castiel’s breathing took on a distinct heaviness, and he watched a line of drool run loose from his own slack mouth. On the last day, the VCR machine said Let There Be Castiel, and there was Castiel. And it was Good.

Almost too good. A crackle of electricity skittered across Cas’s hand and then across his brain, sending a fuzz of blue static across both sets of his vision. He saw himself moan but didn’t hear it, so moaned again, watching the stretch of his own mouth with interest. All he could hear was the embracing sound of white noise. His senses were restricted by attaching himself to the TV.

He had to push deeper.

Sunk cost fallacy more like. Sunk. Cock. Phallus-y. Not that this is a sunk cost fallacy moment, he isn't having any negative side effects it's just a pun I thought of just now. Because he had to push deeper.

Oh, I wanted to talk about! I don't often write in the past tense, I usually write in present tense. Well, more accurately, I write in a mix of past and present and it's all fucked to hell and then I fix it in editing and/or my beta readers catch it for me, haha. But usually the end result is present. I like the immediacy. This one is past tense for a greater level of gravitas, again mimicking the Bible, and to have another level of that juicy distancing. Cas finds it hot to be distanced from himself and you the reader are distanced from him. I use past tense for the first reason in Saint of the Smallest Sun, and the second in ghost!Dean's parts of I Sing The Body Electric (although for sad dissociation reasons not horny dissociation reasons lol).

His wrist got through the slot, then he twisted it sideways slowly, pressuring the VCR’s opening to widen for him. He splayed out his other hand on the edge of the hole, spreading without mercy, and the hole opened for him just as he wished. It was still a tight squeeze to fit his head through it, but once the plastic was forced over the shells of his ears, the rest went easier, as if the machine then understood what he wanted. His entire body was soon completely ensconced in the whirring, cozy darkness of the tape compartment.

I watched videodrome for this fic (and after reading @explainslowly 's cronunbussy destiel fic) and recently described it as "haunted tv show gone wrong gone sexual???!" while recommending it to my friends after my PowerPoint presentation on how depictions of ghosts have changed through new technologies! I actually don't remember if I watched it before or after writing this fic? But they share the idea of hard plastic becoming stretchy and maliable as part of sex acts. It's a good weird movie I enjoyed it!

Once the toe of his final shoe was through, there was a wonderful sensation of intense compression, like being squeezed very tightly all over his body. A VCR machine wants above all to be the shape of a VCR machine and without Castiel’s deliberate stretching it had reverted, with him secreted inside. He was made small by it, protected in a way he’d never experienced before.

"A VCR machine wants above all to be a VCR machine" very Parchett-inian line if I do say so myself. I love dyskworld I love how it's 80% jokes AND 80% thoughtful characterisations and actions with consequences. You can do both, and at the same time!! I don't think my writing is stylistically similar at all, but we do both enjoy silliness, punes (or, playses on wordsies) and character work. Yippee!

It was too hot in there for a mammal. The VCR was overheating, pushed past its means, letting out long bleeps of complaint that Cas felt pulsing pleasurably through brain as the electricity had. If it weren’t for his powers, Cas would be panting and writhing with the heat of it. As it was, he panted and writhed for entirely different reasons.

In complete darkness, Cas found it easier to keep his total focus inside the television. He tried pushing his gaze all the way to the left, trying to see inside the box of the TV rather than out of the screen, but he was stuck within its four edges, which was exhilarating in its own way. He couldn’t hear, couldn’t speak, couldn’t touch, only watch, a sensory reconstruction of his time as an angel. Upholding those rules through his own choice, rather than in fear of Heaven, felt intensely erotic.

I just put as many kinks into this experience as possible, huh? Lol. He's objectuming, he's overstimulated, he's sensorarily deprived, he's restrained, he's compressed, he's objectified, he's voyeur, he's exhibitionist, he's degraded (he has become what he was earlier calling a waste of time), he's empowered (making the choice, and reminded of his angelhood), he's penetrating the VCR and will later be penetrated in a sense ("dean stick your dick in the vcr machine"). I don't fully understand the appeal of vore, but I do understand the appeal of all of these (not saying one way or the other if I have these as kinks), and so can

He stared at the dark edge of his recliner - stained a dark, shiny pink by the light around his eye - and his sense of time slowly fogged over through the lack of sensation. He’s surprised, therefore, when Dean steps into view. First his legs, clad in his hotdog pajama bottoms, then his face when he crouched to squint into the screen. His eyes screwed up at the brightness, but he didn’t back away from it. Cas couldn’t hear him when he spoke, but Cas knew what his own name looked like on Dean’s mouth.

Isn't that last line so cute....he love him...ehehe

Unable to communicate with his human voice, Cas tried his true one for a few seconds, but from Dean curling in on himself and the furniture bouncing behind him it’s clear that it didn’t come through. Dean said something else, rolling his eyes, then his hand landed on the remote that had fallen off the side table in the rumble of Castiel’s speech. He picked it up, looked at it for a moment, then clicked it at the screen with a half-shrug. A black line appeared at the bottom of Cas’s vision. When he looked back at Dean, he mouthed, “Say something.”

[DEAN], Cas said, and it appeared in the box, written backwards in a vivid light blue. Subtitles.

a) I love finding new ways for people to communicate when they're not in their bodies!! It's so fun!! I do it a lot in The Body Electric (Dean can't speak as a ghost) but I also have that in a late chapter of A Light Above Descending where an angel talks via the weather. I'm an active listener* and very patient, and it always makes me a little smug when I've figured out what someone is trying to communicate while others are confused by it. Seems I win at being considerate and thoughful and understanding, eh? >:^]

*this includes body language and tone. I will say I am not good at picking up if people are being passive aggressive to ME (usually from mangers lol) but that only annoys them and doesnt affect me bc I don't know and they're the one not being a grown up and a professional and talking to me clearly about it so it's not a skill I care to learn lol

ANYWAY. Isn't deanie weanie such a smart boy 1000 kisses for him.

Dean clapped and raised his hands over his head to celebrate his own cleverness, which Cas waited out indulgently, appreciating the silent film he was presented with. As soon as he was done, Cas instructs him:

[DEAN, PUT YOUR DICK IN THE VCR MACHINE]

An all time classic! DEAN PUT YOUR DICK IN THE VCR MACHINE. 🥳🥳🥳 I had gone back and forth on whether or not to include Dean at all but then this line came to me and I knew I shrimply must.

Dean’s hands dropped instantly to cover his face, which had turned a darker pink even under Cas's pink light. He said something behind his hands, then peaked out at Cas, clearly waiting for his reaction.

Cas's light is pink because it's like. You know. Like the inside of your. Baby. Pynk behind all of the doors. Crazy. Pynk like the tongue that goes down. Maybe. Pynk like the paradise found.

And because pink is a warmer colour than light blue (the other colour I was considering) and works well as a contrast to his blue iris AND I was planning to make the accompanying image the whole time and I had a good neon pink highlighter <3

[I CAN’T HEAR YOU]

A huff and an eye roll, then Dean put up his arms in a big X, which Cas knew meant 'no way, man!!' It was often pulled out when Dean heard about Cas’s more out there ideas for the bedroom, but also often recanted after a little more explanation of what Cas actually meant. Squeamish, he was, but typically his curiosity and abiding horniness won out.

[WHY NOT?] Cas asked, but he couldn’t follow Dean’s subsequent rant, despite the frequent and wild arm movements. [IT’S WARM], Cas tempted, [IT’S VERY COZY IN HERE]

The tempterrrrrrr.

Dean’s mouth dropped open, and it took a few goes but Cas eventually understood Dean asking, “You’re in there?”

[YES.]

It was deeply entertaining to see Dean’s face go on 10 different journeys, and better when Dean finally tugged at the elastic of his pajama pants. Flashes of yellow burst through the pink of the screen, an apparent manifestation of Castiel’s excitement, which embarrassed him somewhat, until Dean put his hand to the edge of the screen and brushed his thumb on it with a fond smile. Cas couldn’t feel it, of course, but the gesture was appreciated.

GAY. GAY. HOMOSEXUAL. GAY.

Cas didn’t know what their Godless, collaborative, frivolous love-making was going to end up looking like, but he did know this: It was going to be Good

And it was.