I know, I know, it's been done, but it's such an interesting concept. And Castiel is as bad-ass as he is adorable :') I tried to capture his character, and the way he seems to take everything in its literal sense.
Set late season 5.
I still own nothing, and gain no profit.
4. Ravenous
It was a hollow, distracting and uncomfortable sensation which clamoured for his constant attention. Castiel did not like it.
The little black box, whose mysteries of infinite life eluded him, did nothing to divert his focus as he had intended. Surely its inactivity formed part of a circadian hibernation cycle … ?
"Hey, Cas? It usually works better if you turn it on," informed Dean will ill repressed amusement, throwing himself down upon the bed opposite and coaxing the prehistoric television set into some semblance of life. Honestly, the angel must have been staring at the blank screen for the past hour.
Meanwhile, Sam lingered in the confined kitchenette, alternately trading time between the pursuits of research and staring idly out of their second-rate motel window.
In his observation of the brothers, Castiel identified an excessive energy and exaggeration about their actions. Restlessness, his intuition supplied. As one, they grew uneasy. That concerned him.
He returned his attention back to the box. The iridescent scenarios it boasted persistently and abruptly altered and reformed so that he could make no sense of their significance. He wondered whether this lack of contingency constituted its natural state.
Dean lazily flipped through the limited allotment of channels, maintaining a close watch upon the angel, should he betray any indication of interest. Nada. Cas was as inscrutable as ever.
Finally, he settled on some lame romantic sitcom, the kind that Sam would unashamedly prick up his ears to catch. Maybe Cas was a sentimentalist.
Castiel listened more than he watched. There were raised voices: anger. An argument; accusations abound. But yet the females alto tones were quailing and breathless; and tears furnished her cheeks as if she were aggrieved. The male conversely, leaned more towards indignation. The names and places of which they conversed were nonsensical. It was all incredibly bewildering.
The disconcerting sensation returned with renewed vigour, where, given the angles infinitesimal distraction, it had tapered off. Twisting, writhing, gurgling in the region of his midriff, perceptibly audible in its distress. This strange anatomy was a myriad of impulses, aches and yearnings: so distinctly human. It had primal needs, but as to how one assessed and satisfied them, Castiel was woefully ignorant. And so, he floundered; the lamb in a den of wolves. For after all, there was no fallen angels guide.
Fallen Angel. Scripture glorified everything, reality was less inclined to accord.
Everything he was – he had given up for love. The love of human beings, the love of their world; corrupted and tainted as it was, the love of morality, which paved a crimson path with the blood of brothers and sisters, and demanded defection from a cause of covert tyranny. Their legacy proceeded them, those whose rebellious actions lent notoriety to a name: Anna, Castiel, Lucifer.
The dichotomy between good an evil had always appeared so prevalent and clear cut; as if it lent purpose to all. But, when shamed and demoted to a reincarnation which craved gratification, even that ageless distinction did not seem so black and white. Humanity was pliable either way, and there were some souls who blurred even those fortified lines. Souls like Sam Winchester, and albeit, to a less drastic degree, Dean.
Dean noted the angels dissatisfied expression with a certain amount of smugness;
"So I guess you're not in to all that girly melodrama then? That's more Sam's department."
Then, raising his voice to a degree that was immoderate when calling the attention of his brother who sat not six yards away:
"Hey, Sam! Cas thinks your viewing habits suck." Sam just rolled his eyes.
"So this is entertainment?" queried Castiel without inflection, motioning towards the box.
"Sure is," grinned Dean. And then noticing his friends uncertainty; "you'll grow to love it." The angel was sceptical.
"Hey, remind me to introduce you to , MD. Thursday afternoons will never be the same again!" Dean winked before uttering a monosyllabic better suited to a man enjoying his first taste of sustenance after a period of prolonged starvation.
Sam scoffed. His experiences of that particular show had been a tad too literal for his own preference.
Castiel was about to assure Dean that he was not currently suffering any malady and therefore, any meeting with a medical practitioner was wholly unnecessary, when the timid protestations of his midriff graduated into what could only be described as an audible rumbling.
The angel shifted in rigid discomfort at the accompanying sensation, finding the internal movement distasteful. His skin momentarily burned like fire, the flames concentrated upon the region of his cheeks. Another involuntary reaction of this strange anatomy; embarrassment.
The two brothers exchanged a significant glance, before:
"Are you hungry, Cas?" Sam asked. The interrogative was unambiguous enough, but yet there was something peculiar in his tone. He recovered himself quickly, however; "yeah, I guess you must be pretty ravenous, you haven't eaten since …"
"The dawn of time," Dean added helpfully.
Sam raised an eyebrow and Dean shrugged. The former had been intending to say; 'since you became human,' but had hesitated on account of the prospective insensitivity. Cue Dean.
Hungry. Ravenous. The latter made the same state sound perverse and animalistic. Castiel vaguely remembered 'hunger' from their run in with Famine; the barrenness; the desire; the need. But then the sensation had been solely and entirely Jimmy's, born of the vessels partiality to red meat: separate and distant. Then Castiel had been the vessel, slave to impetuous yearning, which demanded satisfaction.
Now, the sensation was wholly his own, and though comparatively sharper and more exigent, its semblance to hunger was undeniable. And perhaps ravenous was the more befitting term.
"Yes. I do believe I am afflicted with hunger."
Dean shook his head disbelievingly. Only Castiel could make something as commonplace as the necessity to eat sound so outrageously structured and adherent.
"Well, let's go and grab some grub then," said Dean, happily vacating the rough motel sheets and snagging the car keys from the complimentary ash-tray. "There's a double-cheeseburger out there with my name on it."
He was half way through the door before Sam called him back.
"Er, Dean …"
"What?" He was honestly desperate to gain a reprieve from the outdated, garish décor and the lingering odour of damp which permeated the stifled air of the single room they had inhabited, without intermission, for three days. Even one as short lived as a trip to the nearest greasy spoon would constitute a godsend.
"Maybe it would be better if we ordered in …" implied Sam, indicating Castiel, who remained in the same rigid position, observing the brothers with interest. Apparently he didn't comprehend invitations to dine out.
Dean gazed wistfully upon the world beyond the four sickeningly clashing walls which they now inhabited. He was going stir crazy! But even that could not justify forcing the former angel to integrate into a society he so evidently was not ready to inhabit. With a heavy sigh, Dean reluctantly closed the door.
"Maybe you're right."
It was three days since Castiel's fall from grace, and the onset of humanity had been swift.
It began small, little things at first. Things which would have otherwise defied notice: the necessity to blink more frequently; the requirement of breathing rather than just the habit – such trivial processes no longer piloted by the vessels body itself; the simultaneous enhancement and detraction of senses. The reality of solidity, of fixed location, and Dean thought that must have been the hardest to bare.
Then came sensitivity to temperature, and an especial abhorrence of the cold. There had been true anguish in Sam's eyes when he had witnessed Castiel shiver for the first time, and its complete allegiance was not owed solely to sorrow for the consequences of the angels sacrifice, it was in part the sorrow of a lost ideal, for with Castiel's growing humanity, so his representation of angels faded.
Subsequently came discomfort: the stiffness of prolonged standing, the numbness born of excessive sedentary, the irritation of certain materials against the skin, not to mention the necessity to relieve some of the more baser needs.
And soon after: pain. In his immeasurable term as an angel, Castiel knew only one comparative for the noun, the agony of being wrenched unwillingly back to heaven. But within the confines of humanity, pain assumed a plethora of distinct forms: both literal and semantic. The pain of grief and loss, the pain of disappointment, the sharp implements bite and resultant tenderness, and the resonating throbbing which resided just behind his temples; out of reach. Those were the pains he had experienced thus far, and already they seemed too numerous to bare.
Now it appeared that they were transitioning into the triumph of more prominent milestones: hunger, and in probable partnership, thirst. Sleep, for the moment, however, remained unnecessary, its ultimate occurrence as the final certification.
It was like witnessing the dependant toddler flourish into the independent child, only, ironically reversed. Or the successive stages of some degenerative disease. It was the same sort of cruelty: the resultant emotional insecurity formed of the same unforgiving model.
And yet, Castiel bore it all with the same religious stoicism, the same ineffectual reserve which defined him. That scared Sam and Dean more than the shrouded uncertainty the former angels future had become, because Cas must have felt something, even if it was regret. They mocked and made light of the situation because it wasn't funny. They traded distressing insecurity for humour.
Dean lead Castiel to the crude, metal construction which masqueraded as a serviceable table, a guiding hand upon the angels shoulder. Usually such ceremonies were not observed, but as this constituted Castiel's first official meal, he deserved the full customary experience, or as close to as their current situation permitted.
Sam paid for the delivery with unabashed disbelief. Then, depositing their laden spoils upon the centre of the table, which shifted precariously under the weight, he fixed Dean with an exasperated glance:
"Did you order the entire menu?"
"Eh, give or take," Dean permitted, eagerly divvying up the contents, then, without glancing up at Sam, who contrary to practice remained standing, and seeming to read his brothers expression of wearied incredulity even as Castiel observed it:
"Come on, you lost fair an square. If Cas is gonna like something then it's gonna be something full of saturates, additives and e-numbers, not all that rabbit food crap you're so partial to," Dean gloated without reserve, offering Sam his smuggest and most infuriating smile until the latter relented his cause and took as seat in their small congregation.
Wait … Sam part-took in cross species nutrition? Castiel was certain the advisability of that was not to prolific.
In the presence of appropriate sustenance his hunger only grew more violent and uncomfortable. It ached like a constant pressure, simultaneously compelling him to cradle his stomach in want of relief, and defect from that very action for fear of exacerbation. His senses were assailed by a hundred different scents, each one more glorious than he had ever experienced, more glorious than heaven itself. What did the scents of a human world matter to an angel? Nothing. They didn't even exist.
He distantly recalled the mechanics of consumption: the wearing down and reduction of material via a peculiar grinding motion, proceeded by the convulsive movement which worked in numeracy to sate the body, leaving the mouth empty once more.
And of the diverse foods arrayed before him, he recognised but few; burgers, and those long, thin, golden tubes with fluffy white interiors he had heard referred to as 'fries,' among them.
He was aware of the brothers intense gaze upon him and the fervency of implore it retained. It stirred a new uneasiness within his stomach, a motion that was quite unlike hunger.
Cautiously, he reached for the fries, which appeared the most uncomplicated of the party. He chewed mechanically, swallowed convulsively and tasted nothing. The smooth series of motions performed subconsciously by those accustomed to eating, were hesitant, exaggerated and staggered by the angel, marking the simple practice a decidedly laborious affair.
It was not until the fifth mouthful that Castiel really discovered taste and … wow! There were no words to describe it, for taste was its own description. And to a former angel, discovering humanity for the first time, it was unbelievable, incomparable. He made a sound of thorough satisfaction that was not entirely involuntary.
"You like those, huh?" chuckled Dean. He watched Castiel lick the remnant salt from his fingers in an uncharacteristic motion of humanity. Sam grinned wryly.
"They are most appetising," he agreed.
"They taste even better with sauce," Dean assured, applying a generous portion to the lid of a discarded burger carton and motioning for Castiel to coat his suspended French fry. They would tackle table etiquette and the science of cutlery at a later function.
Castiel thought that the fries could not suffer improvement … he was wrong. In that moment he comprehended the humans persistent and liberal figurative use of heaven, and all related synonyms.
When interaction waned, Castiel fell to observing the two men before him, as was becoming increasingly habitual. His friends, in the broadest and most unrestrained sense of the word. He measured the breadth and comparative frequency of their mouthfuls: how Sam paused minutely between swallows and took only moderate and consistent bites, while Dean forced excessive amounts into the gaping region, chewing unsatisfactorily, swallowing audibly, and beginning again without a breath. Deciding that Dean more accurately paid homage to the representation of 'ravenous,' Castiel hurried to emulate him.
That was until he took too ambitious a bite of cheeseburger and chocked unceremoniously for a minute thereafter. Needless to say, he subsequently ate with renewed caution, having simultaneously curbed his latent desire for red meat with the fright.
Castiel was accommodating to the certainly enjoyable and novel sensation of being comfortably full when Dean proffered him an unappetising morsel.
With mild interest he had watched Dean submerge the torn quarter of toasted bread into the rose tinctured and vaguely opalescent liquid, guardedly sceptical of their union.
"Humans enjoy these elaborate combinations?" he clarified with resistance.
"Sure do," was Dean's succinct return; an inspiration of confidence, even as his levelled gaze dared Sam to intercede. The younger Winchester simply watched in high amusement.
Castiel really should have known those expressions by now, and the mischief they usually pre-empted.
He accepted the offering, chewed without reaction and swallowed before gazing at Dean without expression.
"Well?" Dean prompted, bemused by the angel's apathy and lack of repulse.
"That was disgusting," Castiel dead-panned.
Sam dissolved into laugher, knowing not whether Castiel's absence of reaction or Dean's crestfallen expression was the more hilarious. Clearly the families practical joker had met his match in one former Angel Of The Lord, who was yet, among other novelties, to discover humour.
"But you ate it …?" Dean accused in disbelief.
"I did," confirmed Castiel.
"Cas, if you don't like something, you don't have to swallow it, you know," Sam informed him belatedly, wiping tears from his eyes, "you can just spit it out."
" … That would be highly unsanitary."
The state of possessing emotion and/or of loving too persistently God's pestilent and favoured creation; humanity, were among two of the most derogatory insults angels could afford one another. Emotion was dangerous, it ruled logic and reason: compelling, impulsive, consuming. It formed part of what made Lucifer such a formidable adversary, for, imbued within that zealous anger and malice was ingenuity.
And yet, knowing its dangers, it was to emotion Castiel had so steadfastly cleaved. Sorrow and pity. Joy and excitement. And above all else, love.
He had given it all up for love. Traded family for the friendship of Sam and Dean Winchester, for the civil liberty of free will. Humanity was the sacrifice, but even that had its perks.
Thank you very much for reading.
- One Wish Magic.