Title: The Minor Fall; The Major Lift
Summary: Angels are different than demons. They ask permission before entering the body, before using the body. Angels are similar to demons. They make promises, give hope, and then rip everything away.
Rating: PG
Pairings: Dean/Castiel, Jimmy/Dean (it's a sausage fest!)
Warnings: Angst. Mentions of characters that are no longer considered spoilers for 4.20.
A/N: They said it couldn't be done. They called me crazy. Well, here it is. Vessel!slash post 4.20. What now, bitches? Also, title is from the song "Hallelujah." You pick whichever version you like best.
Disclaimer: I don't own them. If I did, Show would have to move to HBO ;P
The Minor Fall; The Major Lift
December 23, 2012
"Please." Dean hated to beg, but he couldn't help it. Not with everyone he loved gone. Not with Bobby and Ellen and Jo and Sam burnt, blown away on the wind, borne into Heaven if the angel was to be believed.
Dean didn't believe him anymore. Didn't believe him because he'd promised to stay, to show him what it was like to be normal, to be loved, to always wake up next to someone.
It was cold. The snow swirled around their feet as Castiel broke eye contact. "I'm sorry, Dean."
"You promised."
"Jimmy-"
"Jimmy said it was ok. He said-"
"He wants to go home, Dean."
"And where am I supposed to go?"
The angel looked up at that, meeting Dean's eyes. He looked sad. Looked scared. Looked hurt. "Wherever you want. You're free."
He didn't feel free. He felt used. Because they'd seen what he wanted, and they'd given it to him if only he promised to be a good boy and win their war. They'd gotten Jimmy to play along, to further the deception, and when the crisis was averted, they'd pulled everything away.
Angels were leaving around them, light burning brightly through the sky. They should have scorched his eyes, but Dean had long go gotten over their brilliance. It had been around the time he had Cas had gotten close, he thought. Couldn't remember. Didn't want to.
It hurt too damn much.
"I wanna go with you," he whispered. He supposed it was the truth. He'd been told that Sam was there. And Bobby. Ellen, Jo, Haley, Lucas, Lisa, everyone that had been hurt because of him.
Mostly, though, he just wanted to be with Cas. To wake up next to him every day. To finally believe everything the angel had ever said. He was worthy and loved and beautiful and a miracle, but only if the angel stayed. Because who wouldn't want to be with something like that?
"It's not your time."
"Bullshit. I'm dead."
"Second chances, Dean."
"Don't leave." It was little more than a hiss of air, his throat closed off as it was. Cas didn't seem to hear, anyway. Just leaned forward and up, placing his lips on Dean's forehead before disappearing in a burst of light.
Jimmy pulled away from him, eyes wide and confused. "What happened?" He scanned the final battlefield. "Can I go home now?"
Dean punched him.
Three Years Earlier
November 14, 2009
The door closed, a car engine sounded, and Jimmy was alone with Dean. Alone with Dean, and hungry. The fast food wrappers from the beginning of his meal still littered the table, but it hadn't been enough. He had a whole year to make up for, after all.
"So," Dean said, getting to his feet and clearing the trash. "Um, what do you really remember?"
"Look, I told you," Jimmy said with a sigh, "I don't remember what he was gonna tell you. I mean, I've got bits and pieces. Kinda happens when you're strapped to a comet, you know?"
"So, you don't remember…" he trailed off, and Jimmy finally met his eyes. There was fear hidden behind guilt hidden behind shame in the bright green, and suddenly the vessel understood.
"Oh. Oh. That."
Dean blinked. "So you, uh, you do remember, huh?" He sat back at the table and everything came out in a rush. "I thought you were dead, ok? I mean, if he didn't kill you on entrance, then I sure did when I stabbed you. And, and I guess I just thought-"
"Dean."
The hunter's shoulders fell. "Yeah?"
"It's ok."
"No, it's not. I mean, I… the things I did to you? I shoulda asked, I shoulda-"
"He asked."
"What?"
"Angels aren't like demons," Jimmy said. "Demons just hop in and ride until the host dies, right?" Dean nodded. "And they do other stuff, right? Sex, drugs, junk food?" Another nod. "Angels ask. They have to have permission to jump in, they can't do anything big without it."
"He asked you if he could have sex with me?"
"Well, I mean, not in so many words," Jimmy explained. "He didn't get it, you know? All of the stuff he was feeling. I guess they aren't supposed to feel, or something." He watched Dean, waiting for a change in expression, a lessening of the tension in his shoulders. "He didn't know that he loves you."
Dean jumped at that, just a little. Shock became apparent on his face. "He loves me?"
"Yeah. I thought you knew."
The hunter shrugged. "I just thought…"
"You were a pity fuck?"
"Maybe."
"No, man. It's real." He sighed again. "And I had to be the one to tell him. Talk about awkward sex talks."
Five Months Earlier
June 27, 2009
You love him.
Castiel didn't move, just continued staring down at Dean's prone form as the hunter twitched in his sleep. So Jimmy repeated himself. You love him.
"You don't know what you're talking about," Castiel said. His voice was pitched low, softened so as not to wake Dean, and Jimmy could hear his real voice - the voice of an angel - ringing through their head.
You worry about him, the man pointed out, you think about him constantly when we're not with him, and you were upset when he showed up with Anna.
"I had a right to be. He impeded my mission."
He was trying to protect her. From you.
"He loved her."
No, he didn't. She sympathized. She told him what he wanted to hear. That's not love. It's seduction. What you've got going? Definitely love.
"I cannot feel-"
Bull. You feel plenty. I know because I can feel it, too. Coming off you in waves. You love him.
Castiel sighed. "It doesn't matter."
Sure it does. You seen the way he looks at you?
The angel actually snorted. That was a first. "He looks at you. It's your body."
He hasn't met me, though. He's only met you. You pulled him outta Hell. You saw him at his worst. And you're still here. He hadn't seen much of Dean's life, only the small bits that flickered across the hunter's brain as he slept, and hunted, and talked. Little snippets of pain and torture and love and loss. From all of that, he'd been able to see a pattern; Dean was the love 'em and leave 'em type, if only because he was usually the one to love and then be left. And the hunter was tired of it.
"What would you have me do?" the angel asked.
Jimmy sighed, bracing himself for what he knew was bound to come, the fact that Dean tended to consummate relationships early and fast and hard. Whatever he needs you to.
Five Years Later
January 24, 2014
Dean didn't pray. He hadn't since the war had been won and Castiel had left him staring at a very confused Jimmy Novak. He hadn't because Castiel had promised to stay, to be what he needed. He hadn't because the angels had whisked his only hope, his only connection, the one thing he had left to love away to Heaven.
Dean didn't pray. No one listened.
He was sitting on the single bed in the motel room, not praying, when someone knocked at the door. Hiding his gun beneath his shirt, he answered.
Jimmy was standing out in the rain, his jeans and t-shirt soaked completely through. He stared at Dean, his eyes unblinking, head tilted down.
"Is something wrong?" the hunter asked, stepping aside to let the other man in.
"I Fell." Jimmy's voice was lower than it had been at the end, was lower than it was when he was Jimmy. The capital was implied, clearly heard, and Dean felt his legs give out. He landed gracelessly - ha! - against the door he'd just closed.
"What?"
Castiel turned to look at him. "I Fell, Dean. I couldn't leave you alone."
He swallowed hard. "You heard?"
The angel raised an eyebrow. "Your prayers?"
Dean nodded. His prayers. The ones he'd sent up in the beginning, back when he still had a shred of hope left in him. That had been so long ago. "Why now? And what about Jimmy?"
"I missed you. More than I ever imagined. And I thought you would prefer this body."
"You're stuck in him?" As happy as he was to have Cas back, he couldn't help but feel bad for Jimmy. Jimmy, who had a family and a life. Who was now a prisoner in his body for the rest of Castiel's human life.
"Cancer."
That pulled him from his thoughts. "What?"
"Jimmy died. Last week, actually. This body is mine. He… willed it to me, I suppose you would say."
Dean blinked. "You possessing a dead man?"
"He's alive as long as I am." The angel approached him, Dean's heart beating faster with every step the other man took. "I missed you, Dean." Warm hands on his shoulders, warm eyes staring up into his, but something was wrong.
"You're different."
Cas grinned. "I'm human. I feel. And I love you. Maybe even more now than before."
Dean bit his lip. It was too good to be true. There was no way that he was finally getting what he wanted after all that time. He still leaned into the kiss, though. He still led the new human back to the bed.
He didn't think about all of the ways that things were different. He was just glad that something - love - had stayed the same.
-.-
He wrapped an arm around Dean's waist and stared up at the hunter. He was a pretty man. Freckled face, full lips, long lashes. All traits that Jimmy would find attractive in a woman.
Dean started to stir, and Jimmy laid his head back on the other man's chest, quieting him instantly.
He'd taken too long. Dean was broken, scared, tired. Alone.
He'd been alone, anyway. He never would again. Jimmy would make sure of that, would make sure that Dean would get everything that Castiel had promised him, because angels lied, but Jimmy Novak didn't, and his mouth had been the one to say the words.
It had been a coincidence, him finding Dean. The hunter had been through Pontiac in September, probably to visit his old gravesite, maybe to mourn the loss of the being he'd first truly met there. It didn't matter in the end, because Jimmy had found him.
He'd found him in the hospital, actually. He'd been leaving the room they'd set Amelia up in, her depression over the loss of their daughter taking a shocking, final toll, her body slowly dying, wasting away in a coma induced by too many pills in too short a time.
He'd been walking down the hall, walking away from that long, piercing tone that signaled the end of everything he'd loved, when Dean had walked by. Sunken and pale, dark circles under his eyes, stark white bandages on his arms.
Amelia had been successful. Dean hadn't.
Jimmy had caught the other man's eye as he'd passed, and Dean had done a double-take, hope flaring to life behind his eyes for an instant before he realized where he was and who he was seeing.
Jimmy had tried to unsee the tear. He'd tried to keep it out of his dreams, just like he tried to keep the final battle, the one requiring all available angels and all possible vessels, away from his thoughts.
Castiel had tried to save his sister, and, in the process, Jimmy's daughter. He'd failed. That was the first promise he'd broken. He went for a personal record after that.
If Jimmy had thought Dean looked broken on the battlefield, after the other man had socked him in the face… well, it was nothing compared to the way Dean had looked in the hospital.
Jimmy reached out under the rumpled sheets and grabbed the hunter's hand, pulling it across Dean's body and bringing a scarred wrist into the light. He'd like to believe that it was destiny that had brought them both together again, but he knew otherwise.
It wasn't destiny, or divine intervention. It had been a coincidence.
It had been a chance, and Jimmy had taken it. He'd left his home, after a month and a half alone, had started tracking Dean. He'd always been too late before, but now he figured that was a good thing. After all, it had given him a chance to come up with a good story.
Dean didn't need Jimmy Novak, used up and lonely vessel of an angel. He needed the angel himself. He needed Castiel. A dead vessel - cancer - was the best Jimmy had been able to com e up with.
And it had worked. Dean had let him in. That spark of hope lit up in green eyes, and Jimmy found that if he simply focused on that, then the rest was bearable. The lying and the obscene noises and the sex. The fact that it was actually him this time, little Jimmy Novak, fucking a man. Not an angel of the Lord doing the deed, using him, but Jimmy himself.
The eyes had gotten him through it, and the scars would make him stay.
He laid his lips softly on the jagged line that twisted from wrist to elbow, and Dean moaned. The hunter turned toward him and cracked an eye open. Bleary at first, then bright and alert. A smile formed on his face. "Still here?"
"You doubted?" Jimmy asked, his voice dropping back to that low octave, uncomfortable as it was for him to maintain it.
Dean leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together. "Thought it was another dream. Had 'em all the time. Woke up alone."
"I'm here now."
Dean closed the remaining space between them, brushing Jimmy's lips with his own. "I know." He smiled again, wider this time. "Love you, Cas."
Jimmy returned the grin, making a conscious effort to tone it down to an appropriately angelic level. "I love you, too, Dean."
Maybe, someday, he'd even mean it.