#wanderingcas

This fic is going to be purely self-indulgence. It's all soft bois and feelings shit. Season 9 AU in which graceless!Cas, after being told he can't stay in the Bunker, uses his brain for 12 seconds instead of just being all sad and hurt, and proceeds to blow up Gadreel's whole spot.

Castiel got up and staggered to the stairs, ignoring Dean’s abrupt turn from soft apology to bitter shouting, saying it was just like Cas to have his head so far up his ass he couldn’t listen. He didn’t want Dean’s fucking money. He mounted the stairs and threw open the outer door to the bunker. A cold wind was whistling over the Kansas prairie and it shoved its clammy fingers under the stolen hoodie. Castiel was reminded once again that cold mattered to him, now, and a hoodie was not enough protection from the weather. Anger and shame pounded in him like a second heartbeat, making his ears roar and filling his face with hot blood, but the slap of the wind on his cheeks made him pause. If he had learned anything in the past two weeks, it was how fickle the feelings of being full and warm were. They would abandon one so quickly. He hesitated for mere seconds, but it was long enough for Dean’s clanging boots to catch up with him, and a firm hand to grip him by the elbow. “Cas, would you listen?” he shouted. “I was going to call Jody and ask if she could put you up for a while!” Castiel turned around and stared at him. “I’m just as much of a risk at Jody’s as I would be here,” he said. Dean pursed his lips, darted his eyes away. “Look, I…” “There’s something you’re not telling me, Dean,” Castiel said, suddenly realizing. Logic hadn’t suddenly deserted Dean—he was just keeping a secret. Castiel had let himself be blinded by his feelings, by the way they could grip his graceless body and toss it around just as effectively as the wind and rain could. He had failed to see it, but he saw it now. “Tell me the truth, Dean. Why can I be with other people you care about, but not with you?” Dean looked frightened. “Listen, Cas, don’t, please. Just. I’m sorry.” Castiel never liked to see Dean afraid, and there was a limited list of things that could scare him so much and cause such a change in him in a matter of hours. Castiel would go confront the only thing he could think of that might have caused this. Castiel hadn’t really had enough time to get used to how diminished he was; nor had Dean. When Castiel shoved past him and back down the stairs, it would have been easy for Dean to stop him, but neither of them really considered that. Castiel went marching back into the bunker shouting Sam’s name with Dean at his heels shouting his.

the game is to put your most recent ten fics and their first lines.

end in blood (2k)

May 2009 Dusty earth moves.

technically two lines but i think i can be forgiven due to the format.

handiwork (1k)

The World thrums.

can i say i like completely forgot i wrote that one. brain so melted.

there's my bloodhound (2k)

Lenore’s knees ache.

i think this is the only one on this list where the pov character is the subject of the first line. maybe one other?

surveil and punish (5k)

“I just wish I could… I need to make you understand.”

it's still kind of crazy to me that i finally finished and published this one after like four years sitting in my drafts. and i'm pretty happy with it, too!

miasma (5k)

Alex is already home.

tight skin (2k)

It is easy to untwist an angel.

one more thing you can do for me (400 words)

“Oh God, I’m Pattinson,” Dean says, looking away from him, and Cas doesn’t know what that means but there is so much anguish there, he just wants to reach out…

wow i've written a lot this year. it feels pretty unreal.

strings (3k)

You pick her because she’s got the look.

got distracted rereading this. i actually really like this one, i always forget. i wasn't expecting to necessarily like it when i wrote it because i'm not always happy with experiments. but i do like it.

lick (100 words)

He runs so hot.

fly fishing (600 words)

“Man, we could really go for another one of those crescent cookies,” the other one says as Mrs. Melina sniffles on your shoulder.

oh i forgot this one too.

anyway some really funny patterns popping up here. i'm addicted to starting my fics either in media res with dialogue or with like plain statements. my main character is only the subject (grammatical subject) in two out of these ten lol.

Hey, Sam! When I saw your avatar in my inbox it made me go 😊 I’ve been away from tumblr for ages and it’s comforting to see familiar “faces.”

These questions actually stumped me for a bit! But after overthinking I came up with some (rambling) answers 😂

18. Share an excerpt from your favorite scene.

I wasn’t sure I’d find something I could share! Everything from this particular fic feels like it’ll give the game away, and I really love to try and surprise the reader (in good ways). Also, how is it that I don’t struggle with summaries at all, but ask me to choose an excerpt and suddenly my brain goes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Like… I already wrote it. What’s the problem.

Anyway, here we go:

Castiel reaches for the only weapon he has: the whip. With the fall still encircling his wrist, he grips a short length of the whip between his hands, raising it just in time to block the next blow. The angel blade clashes with the chainmail and bounces off, a discordant vibration rattling through the disparate metals, through Castiel’s entire being.

Funny how scenes that almost make you lose your mind while writing them later get promoted to “favorite.”

23. How did you recharge between fics?

Does (mentally) holding your foot on the gas pedal while your brain car is stuck in mud, wheels spinning, and inside you’re screaming, “I HAVE TO KEEP GOING!!!” count as recharging?

No…?

I am bad at recharging! Like, I’ll disengage from writing and not open my documents and Notion, but it’s as if I can’t truly convince myself that I have permission to do that. (It doesn’t help that I think about my writing all the time.) But yeah, I always feel the “I should be making progress” itch (even though rationally I know that resting is part of the process, and necessary to making progress). This last year was especially tough because I desperately wanted to complete certain things and publish but I couldn’t.

I have found that the less time I spend on my computer when I know I’m not focusing on writing helps me disengage further. (Like… if you’re on your computer, the documents are lurking… and you can feel them wondering, accusingly, why you aren’t adding words to them.)

Maybe the bigger thing, though, is just… getting stuff done in other areas of my life. I find doing loads of laundry always helps to recenter me. But towards the end of 2022 Tom and I focused on household projects and tackling small to-dos we kept putting off. We finally put up bird feeders after almost a year of meaning to (and the birds were really pleased! So was a fat squirrel 😂). We ran errands and organized a bunch of stuff/rooms. I put a new screen protector on his phone, and he helped me install my big memo board in my study.

I think the key is to see something through to completion, no matter how small the thing is. I don’t know what writing feels like for you, but for me it is often hard, and very slow, and a lot of the time it feels like I’m clawing my way to the finish line. So starting tasks and finishing them, without having to feel like I’m fighting my way through them, is restorative in some way.

…I told you they were rambling answers!

Thank you for the ask 😊 And happy new year to you and your family! I'm wishing you the very best of luck with your 2023 writing goals ✨