#arosteve

oh no! feel better soon bb!! <3

tkrug replied to your post:what has two thumbs and is sick it’s me i have two...

noooooooo i hope you feel better soon!!!

a lot... of people...

(join me in haikyuu!! hell)

“Hello?” Dean asks, knocking on the door. There’s only more quiet, like none of Sam, Charlie, or Kevin are even on the other side. Then, he turns to Castiel. “What the hell?”

Castiel can only shrug, and ignore the dread creeping through his body. A few months ago, he could have blasted the door away, but now he’s stuck doing nothing more than rattling the door handle. It turns easy in his hand, but the door doesn’t open.

“Your powers would be great, now,” Dean sighs, irritation in his voice that makes Castiel withdraw away from him somewhat. Castiel has washed piles of dishes caked with food residue next to Dean and helped him dust and paint the walls of the bunker; he’s sneezed over the particles in the air and grumbled about his wrinkly fingers, but Dean never bit back at him about how much easier his powers would have made it.

Resentment must have built up. It’s understandable. Castiel remembers all the times he used to spit for you out at Dean. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t stab and twist at his newly human gut – he has guts now, in every sense of the word that humans use the term, bravery and instinct and soft vulnerable insides alike – when it’s laid out in front of Castiel, as it turns out.

“I’m sorry,” is all Castiel can say, even if the words taste like his own coppery blood in his mouth at this point.

As much as Dean would like to think he’s closed off, Castiel’s found that he’s terrible at hiding his emotions in general. He stomps around the bunker when he’s annoyed; when he’s in a better mood, he’s nothing but grins and offers of burgers and songs hummed under his breath.

Somehow, that knowledge makes it feel worse that Dean makes no noise of acknowledgement, not even a scoff. He just casts eyes green like ice in the water when the sunlight hits them at the right angle at Castiel, and offers, flat, “Right. Of course you are.”

There isn’t much for the two of them to do. Castiel tries hammering his shoulder against the door, but he’s only so strong now, and it doesn’t work. He has to jump back after only a few hard shoves, because his shoulder’s gone sore and it’s only making him rattle with irritation. “Dammit,” he hisses.

It’s easy to remember feeling this trapped, frozen out despite the fact that he’d been behind a barrier of flames at the time.

Blah blah more text would have gone here~~

“Probably you and your intentions,” Dean sighs.

Castiel feels his own brow furrow at that, unbidden even. “What?”

Dean leans against the door, crossing his arms. His defensive posture isn’t making Castiel feel any easier. “Nothing. Just –” He lets out a dry, mirthless laugh. “How many times now have you tried to make the right decision and screwed up a lot of things for a lot of people?” The laugh escapes his mouth again, as he shakes his head.

As he starts to speak, Castiel realizes he’s taken a step back, away from Dean. His cheeks are too warm, and though he’s steady on his feet his balance seems thrown off, like he could topple over at any time. “Too many times, probably.”

“Well, self-awareness is a good thing. Maybe you’re actually learning something, for once.” Dean jiggles the door handle again, though still, nothing happens.

“What do you mean?” Castiel finds his own voice impressively even, considering how much he’s wobbling inside with apprehension. He’s not willing to admit it’s tilting over into fear, either.

Dean’s busying himself testing the edges of the door, and he talks like Castiel is an afterthought. “So you’re telling me after the whole Purgatory fiasco, some other douchebag tells you you’re the savior, and you just – spread ‘em for him like that? Might be a billion years old, but sometimes you’re like a kindergartener.” (AN: see shit like that was why I didn’t want to write this. It’s REALLY MEAN and like... I know it's a bad guy saying this but???? I FEEL SO UNCOMFY.)

Most of the time Castiel spent working with Crowley sometimes feels like the last time he was allowed to be himself. Castiel’s lived millennia, but what he’s been through in the years since seems staggering to him; walking out of the lake with his memory wiped clean, marrying someone, plunging halfway into insanity due to Sam’s memory of the Cage, crash-landing in Purgatory and going on the run, being turned into Naomi’s puppet and tool and then Metatron’s. Getting thrown right into the mud of humanity.

It’s easy to forget, then, how incredibly miserable he’d been. Wretched, and miserable. Miserable, if not numbing himself over by necessity. As it turns out, he didn’t need other people making him do terrible things; he was too good at that on his own. You could get used to the blood on your hands. You could get used to the blood dripping off you. You could get used to the blood you were wading into.

You could get used to drowning yourself in it.

“Better and smarter and stronger than everyone else though, right? Right.” Dean’s still not looking at him, and that’s making it worse.

also more text would theoretically go here.

“Let me know if you’re gonna stare at me doing yardwork again,” he grumbles. “Fucking creepy.”

Something huge in Castiel seizes up. It’s true, yes, Castiel spent too much time on the lines between watching over and observing and outright spying, justifying it all to himself while he watched early morning light play over Dean’s cheekbones and brow for no strategic reason. He’s observed nothing but the line of Dean’s jaw and the easy bob of his throat while he shoveled French fries in his mouth, able to make beauty out of something so ordinary.

But Castiel never told Dean about the way he hesitated in Lisa Braeden’s backyard. He never told Dean too many things he should have said, only I’m sorry over, and over and over, again. He’d throw his life away for the Winchesters, but that kind of bravery was the rare thing that was foreign to him.

This time, Castiel finds the courage, grabbing Dean’s – Dean’s body’s – upper arm. “You’re not Dean,” Castiel tells the thing in front of him, even as he can feel his pulse thrumming against his arm. The words are a relief, and an entirely new wave of utter terror, at once.

Like someone turned on a light switch, Dean’s face goes from goggling to grinning a shark’s smile. “No,” he says. “But even you have to admit it wasn’t a bad imitation.”

His eyes flick red. Red like stop signs in snarls of traffic. Red like a dying coal or hellfire alike. Red like Castiel’s own blood or the blood that suddenly bubbles out and starts to stain Dean’s t-shirt near his right shoulder, like someone slashed his protective tattoo in half and they’re only allowing his body to show it now.

Possession. There’s a glut of hazards in the world, and Castiel is bitterly aware of too many of them now, but losing control of himself the way Naomi pushed on him is one of the worst ideas possible, especially when he considers the idea of a demon taking control of his limbs and shaping his words. He was tattooed on his back, and as much as the pain of it drilled into him made him want to scream, he exhaled when it was over, because it meant safety as much as anything could.

But Dean has armored himself from possession right over his heart. Castiel erased all his scars, smoothing his skin over, but he took his time with the tattoo, knowing its significance in the hunting world. As it turns out, maybe it wasn’t as significant as he thought.

“Look at you,” the thing wearing Dean’s face snarls, pushing Castiel’s arm back too easily. Castiel nearly doubles over with the jolt of pain that stabs him at that. “Pathetic. This is you without your powers? You couldn’t even tell loverboy here was little old me instead.”

At that, Castiel manages to stand back up again, defiant. “He’s not –” Suddenly, realization hits him. The red eyes. The attitude. The leering, now. “Crowley,” Castiel says, hearing the venom in his own voice.

He’s never hated Dean’s smile before, but he does now. “Got it in one,” that smile responds. “Well, one and – several hours of plodding along cluelessly. God, you’ve gone soft. All of you.”

“I thought they cured you.”

Crowley’s shrug is incredibly exaggerated. Castiel’s fighting, at his every movement, not to puke his lunch back up on the floor of the bunker. “The little ritual didn’t stick. Not when they ran away instead of completing it.” He laughs, and it’s galaxies – and Castiel knows galaxies – away from the noise Dean makes when Castiel asks a strange question about whatever television show they’re watching. “God, you didn’t even hear the Winchesters when they were so close – so close! – to finishing the ritual. Pathetic little wibblers. Nothing comes before you, blah, blah, blah.” His steps are so measured, like Crowley means to emphasize the differences between himself and Dean’s easy gait. That’s probably his exact intention. “How does it feel to know you’ll always come second?”

“I know that’s the case,” Castiel responds, chin high as it can go without looking ridiculous. (AN: Be more anticlimactic, self.) Crowley’s smile dims, only for a moment, before it snaps back rubber-fast.

“He’s not even screaming, you know,” he breathes, voice low enough that Castiel has to strain to hear it. His stomach squirms on instinct. “Well, not screaming for himself. He wants you to get away.” Crowley massively rolls his eyes. “Not like you could. Not like you would, either.”

“No.” Dean, Castiel suddenly thinks, plaintive and pathetic, and he wants nothing other than to find a way to pray to him somehow. He’ll make it okay; he has to.

Crowley just offers up a lopsided smile, one side of his lips making an ugly burrow into Dean’s cheek. “You could be the one to get rid of me, Cas. Taking down the big bad King of Hell, the one who ruined – your – existence.” He pokes his finger over Castiel’s human, beating heart. “You think Dean will ever trust you again, after you worked with a demon to crack open Purgatory behind his back for two years?”

Truth be told, Castiel has no response to Crowley’s accusations. No, he doesn’t deserve Dean’s trust, or his loyalty; he might not be Dean’s number one, not the way Sam is, but the force of Dean’s devotion is a hurricane gale and the quiet of a crypt alike, and he’s gotten too caught up in it for as much as he tries to shield himself from anything vulnerable. Anything too human.

“You know where that knife is,” Crowley says, right into Castiel’s ear. His breath stinks like sulfur. Castiel considers: this is the person he stitched back together, breathed life into, and now he has a reviled demon coiled up in his guts and feasting on his thoughts. All Castiel made, all Castiel has loved, is being twisted against him. “He might not even be alive by now. You’re a hero. All for one little human. I’d mention how insignificant one human is, but well. You know now.”

He does know exactly where the knife is, but Castiel doesn’t even consider moving.

Crowley cackles. Castiel considers it a small triumph that he doesn’t wince or jump back from the noise. “I knew you wouldn’t do it. I just like to see you squirm.”

“Sam? Kevin? Charlie?” Castiel asks. “What are you planning on doing with them?”

“Don’t try and change the subject, Castiel,” Crowley says, voice smooth and even, and Castiel wishes there was some way to kick his body hard enough to leave a bruise for being so obvious. “I’ll deal with them as soon as I’ve disposed of you. Think I’ll have some fun with the prophet after all this time evading me.”

Blah blah more text blah.

As much as Castiel’s grateful he’s welcome in the bunker, and as much as his room with his own bed and its mostly unused nightstand feels more like a home than anywhere else ever has, it has its disadvantages, namely that it’s so small and cramped. Before, if he was bored, he could have been on another planet in an eyeblink. Now, he’s stuck wandering from room to room, eyeing the corners where the walls come together. Everything seems so cramped.

Castiel spends a lot of time sitting on the steps outside the bunker. Any breeze is too welcome to him. He spends too much time looking up at the sky; he knows it’s not an endless expanse, but to his eyes now, it seems like that, which is terrifying and reassuring all at once. In the Impala, he cranks the window down. Dean cracks jokes about the wind messing up his hair, but the rush of it by Castiel, buffeting his cheek – if he closes his eyes and ignores the way it plunges him into black, it’s like his wings are back.

Those are brief moments, though. Most of the time, Castiel finds himself stuck inside all the little boxes of varying shapes humanity seems to love, whether the boxes are as small as his room or as grossly gargantuan as the Wal-Mart fifty miles out of town. The bunker is walking from box to box. They’re boxes he’s come to love, boxes with people he would give himself up for the chance of their safety, but boxes all the same.

In this case, though, they’re boxes he knows.

Castiel begins to move backward. He’s not running; he’s done too much of that, and with his human muscles that burn, he cannot escape much with his legs alone any more. He’s leading, and luring, and Crowley follows him all the way through the guts of the bunker, calling out after him. “Running away again? You can’t stop leaving this face, can you? Don’t know why anyone would, but you do, Castiel. You do.”

He says nothing in return, letting the words grab hold of his guts and twist them instead.

The air changes in a certain room, and the noises of his footsteps hollow out. Funny blue lines lap off the wall. It’s the pool room; apparently, the Men of Letters thought of nearly everything. Though Crowley’s words still bounce around inside his head, Castiel can’t help but smile and kick off his shoes, readying himself.

Crowley’s face curdles sour, the twisted features so different from Dean it’s hard to believe it’s on his face, but the look of it is so sweet to Castiel.

He plunges into the pool – which they were sure to lace with holy water when they first filled it up.

Immediately, he regrets not shedding more clothing, though he wouldn’t have had much time for it. His jeans hold the water too well. Just a few moments paddling make his legs burn so badly they might be screaming, but when he tries to swim over to the side of the pool to rest, Crowley kicks at his fingers.

Castiel likes showers in the morning, and he enjoys swimming, deliberate and sharp, in laps around the pool. Sometimes, he’ll come to the pool room when Dean’s already there, and he enjoys that even more with Dean’s broad torso and the way his swim trunks stick to his legs. But this reminds him of nothing more than the Leviathan inside him, pulling him down, down, down, down into the dank water. He didn’t surface again, really, until he was using his hands to snuff out another’s life. All he’s good for and all he can ever be counted on for, after all, he’s learned that much.

“Clever,” Crowley says. Dean’s face peers down at Castiel, all sharp eyes and nasty smile, and for once, Castiel hates the sight of that face. “Very clever. But I can wait. And you’re human now, Cas,” Crowley spits out, and Castiel loved that word on Dean’s tongue but hates it on Crowley’s. He was Castiel, a thing of God, but now the nickname is even more correct; he’s like any other man, his legs churning in the pool while the chlorine makes his eyes go funny and teary and burns his nose. “You can only swim so long.”

As if by sheer spite alone, Crowley’s words give him another burst of energy. A flurry of bubbles float off to the pool’s surface as his kicks suddenly turn furious, and Castiel hears some of them pop in the still of the room. “I still possess unusual strength, for a human.”

“Human’s the important part of that sentence, kitten,” Crowley murmurs, settling himself back on one of the piles of foam mats in the corner of the room. “Dean’s not talking back much, but he’s probably glad you’re stuck there. Can’t leave like that, after all.”

Castiel lets the shock of those words push him underwater, and he knows it’s an immediate bad idea. The water fully soaks his hair and clothes, and it must add on ten pounds to his frame. Ten pounds that will sink him, ten pounds that will burn his muscles and tire him out more quickly. His clothes stick to the water, like they want to pull him back in.

His vision’s gone blurry after going underwater with his eyes open. He blinks it away, shaking his head from side to side, trying to get all of it to go away.

“I hit an all-too-vulnerable nerve,” Crowley laughs, once Castiel’s done sputtering out the water.

Looking to change the subject, Castiel starts reciting words all but burned into the back of his skull, though they sound tiny and leeched of their power. “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…”

“Please. Need something a little upgraded for me,” Crowley chuckles, holding up his forearm until the cloth of Dean’s overshirt slumps down to his elbow. The binding link stands out, bright red, a mockery. “What are you even doing here, Castiel.”

“Staying away from you,” he returns.

Crowley snorts, hard and rough out of Dean’s nose. “Your mouth always was a better weapon than anything else, Cas. I meant in this bunker, when you have so much to atone for. I wouldn’t know a thing about that, but you’re positively marinating in it. Yet you stay here.”

4. A film you could watch on repeat for the rest of your life?

It’s a tie between The Mummy (1999) and The Prince of Egypt. I’ve gone months where I watched those movies every single day. :))

13. Your favorite comedy film?

Uh oh, I don’t know! I’m really particular about comedy (I think due in part to getting bad second-hand embarrassment). Out of the movies I own, probably Easy A. There’s probably one I like better, but I’m seriously drawing a blank.