Always gonna be trash for my immortal flyboys OTP. Castiel x Captain Jack Harkness.

Pose reference from the fabulously talented @kibbi whose snuggle studies are amazing.

Official Soundtrack (Spotify) [ x ]

I ported the old soundtrack from my Superwood Castiel x Jack Harkness story Grace over to Spotify from 8Tracks, as one does, and added some new songs.

As deaths went, hypothermia wasn’t so bad. Jack didn’t have time to starve, the snow allowed a trickle of oxygen to reach him, and he wasn’t, you know, impaled on anything this time. But it was getting old, and god he was cold, and fuck he was bored. The weight of the snow immobilized him, but thankfully he’d fallen with his wrist by his face. It took a few deaths to melt the snow with his breath, but he could at least ask his vortex manipulator the date.

He’d been here for six months.

The first few days were the worst, as Jack relived buried memories of years with his back to Cardiff’s bedrock. He screamed, cried; said things he’d never admit. He called for help. He sang songs he hadn’t thought of in centuries. By November; however, Jack sank into a silence as dark and cold as the snow confining him.

This was going to be another forever, Jack thought. Forever on some iceball planet too miserable to even have a name at the ass-end of its solar system. By the time someone found him (or a nearby star went yellow giant, he thought briefly, and locked it down in a panic), Jack might not have a friend alive to remember him.

Except one.

And well, ‘friend’ hardly applied to them, these days.

It took him a few more deaths to get to the decision, but in the end, Jack prayed.

A month later, he came to with the sound of snow sliding overhead. Warmth bled through to his numb limbs, then light and water as melt percolated down through the snowpack. The endless darkness faded to gray, then blue, then painful white, burning his eyes like a sun was personally digging him out of this avalanche.

The last fifteen minutes of a long trip are always the worst. Jack lost his patience and screamed for help.

The snow melted away from his face, and he raised his chin, gasping as his wet cheeks froze immediately in the frigid open air.

Castiel’s face blotted out the radiance. Jack squinted up, into eyes like blue glass, wobbling and blurring as his own eyes struggled to focus.

The whole place was rich and lavish; like a Fifties’ big-budget movie set, or a kinkster’s temple fantasy. A show of wealth and power, Jack thought, with no mitigating taste. He worked the room like a shark, charming and impersonal. The artifact was here, just as he’d been told it would. All of Jack’s sensors were off the charts. He felt it on his skin, tingling away with a familiarity that galled and goaded him.

He smiled, swallowing the bile of rage with every sip of amber wine, and found nothing but jewelry of varying value, and searching, inebriated hands. The band played on, the guests danced and drank. Jack lurked in their midst, alone with his frustration.

A gong sounded at the end of the great hall. The drummers pushed their pace; the dancers followed. Jack considered joining them. It would be effortless to catch a partner, to swirl away on the overflowing tide. Instead, Jack eased through the crowd, towards the center of the room.

When he reached it, Jack knew what he’d been looking for.

The host of this festival stood on a raised platform, a glass bowl of wine raised to his lips. He was young and handsome, as he should be, clad in an affair of white silk and silver jewelry that named him the nubile priest of this shrine to decadence.

In his other hand was a silver chain. Jack’s eyes followed the chain to its destination: a silver collar, thick and heavy, around the throat of his companion. The chained man was nude, save for that collar, a few strategic bits of silver jewelry, and tall white wings surging up from his back like the arches of a Gothic cathedral.

Jack knew him; knew every groove in the muscular shoulders. A hot wind swept over Jack’s skin, with a cold gust of fear and pain on its heels. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. Jack knew the stories of angels after the fall of Earth; knew how the powerful sought them and bound them. He’d traveled with one for centuries, hadn’t he? He knew the risks. But so did Castiel.

And yet, here he was. Jack thought of tearing the mocking wings from his shoulders; of shoving the feathers into his captor’s beatific smile until his mouth bled. He shoved the dark thoughts aside, and swallowed as Castiel looked his way.

His eyes were blue, but changed. No iris to catch the light like deep water, but solid blue from corner to corner, as if his eyes had been replaced with cut sapphires. Castiel was a senseless work of art, all the danger and gorgeous violence of him locked away. Pegasus bridled by Bellerophon and paraded before the masses.

Jack wanted to slaughter things.

He pushed his hands in the pockets of his coat, closing around the sharp edges of the tiny chip. All he had to do was get close enough…

His chance came as the music shifted. The band picked up the strains of another reel, and Castiel’s smiling Bellerophon succumbed to the call of the drums. He towed Castiel along with him by the neck, like a cruel child with a cocker spaniel.

He loved music, Jack remembered; Castiel loved to dance. Jack taught him in the cold tunnels of Torchwood Cardiff, noisy with the sea. They danced through bloody, filthy wars; in lonely dark ships; in prison cells; in the snow. He was clumsy here, the spark of real creativity in him snuffed as the silver collar did its damnable work.

But smug Bellerophon in his death-white hood had forgotten his guards. Jack might not be able to slip through their ring at the dais, but they hadn’t bothered to follow so closely now. Castiel stumbled and the false wings bobbed above the crowd. Bellerophon mocked him, too coddled and too stupid to realize the hurricane he’d caged. It was the work of a second to free that hurricane - to palm the chip Jack paid dearly for, and shove it in the open slot at the back of Castiel’s collar.

Castiel got to his feet, slowly, and the music scattered to a confused halt. His hand was on Jack’s shoulder; the other over his eyes.

“What is this?” cried Bellerophon, not yet realizing he’d been unhorsed.

Castiel looked up at Jack. The blind animal blue burned away from his eyes as the contacts melted, running down Castiel’s face in molten blue tears. He was there now, silver-bright and angry, Angel of the Lord, Soldier of God. The power of him washed over Jack’s skin to the soul he’d been so convinced he didn’t have.

“Hiya, Hot Wings,” Jack breathed, “good to see you again.”

Of course Jack would find him on a beautiful, sun-drenched planet full of green and living things. Given their track record (and Jack’s history of avoidance), he expected it all to be Castiel’s design.

He nearly missed Castiel. These days, he wasn’t in the habit of recognizing people. They slid by his eyes like the stars and the years: fast, anonymous streaks of light in the dark. But you can’t live life like a shadow forever. He knew that, and the angel knew that - not as a truism but as a cold, witnessed truth.

The crowd swept aside and left Castiel in the center of the square, a piece of terrestrial driftwood, and the first thing Jack registered was pain.

He wanted to run. They hadn’t seen each other since - well - since the last time, and Jack would bet him a beer Castiel didn’t want to remember that. Fuck knows, he didn’t.

He wanted to stay. Because they hadn’t seen each other since the last time, and people were sliding by Jack faster and faster every day since. Turning on his heel, Jack started the other direction.

Castiel called his name. Once. And when it reached Jack it felt brutal, coughed up hard with blood.

Jack kept walking, until Castiel said his name again. Closer now; softer. An invitation, and a pleading.