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love: a verb, a doing word
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cherryshadowz: Consider the Jellyfish - Supernatural/Spongebob Squarepants - Sam, Spongebob - rated G, omg - Spongebob knows what will cheer Sam up. 118 words.
And now for something completely different, because sometimes when you are up to your ears in multivariate regression analysis, you relax by writing theological language porn, idk. We continue to ask, "What if Castiel were words?" The first wordsverse fic is untitled. This next one is a Dean POV, PG I guess, 500ish words. Will there be a third installment? I dunno, it'll depend on how pretentious I'm feeling.
So I'm wondering, if Castiel can be words, what else can he be? What if Castiel were ice cream flavors? What if he were footwear. Would he be toe socks? What if Castiel were currencies pegged to the dollar? The possibilities are endless!
More important questions:
1) Why are there not more stop-motion t-shirt battles?
2) When will Bradley James and Misha Collins team up to fight zombies in space?
3) Clueless + SPN = <3 Y/Y?
unnamed
Dean & Castiel
i.
the sigils on his bones, the tattoo below his clavicle: they blind and block. on his shoulder is the sign of his duty to things he can't control.
an understanding of symbols is necessary to his line of work, but so is the glint of iron, silver, bullets & knives; salt, to ensure that what is cast out cannot return. salt, the taste of sweat, an honest thing.
if Castiel is a message then perhaps Dean cannot fault him for that, but he can fault whoever sent him, whoever wrote him out in such opaque script. Dean's own penmanship is expansive -- the large loops of his B's, the yawning valleys of his W's -- and is unlike his brother's too-small scribbles, too many letters trying to fit in one word, too many words in a sentence, too many sentences. it's not a story he wants to write, but who ever wants the story they're saddled with? some days it's enough to believe that you're the one holding the pen.
Dean isn't surprised to look inwards and find a foreign language etched beneath his ribs. he learns to make its sounds, to write them down. writing can go from left to right, right to left, up and down, but this particular language works from the inside out.
it waits for comprehension, and it has all the time in the world.
ii.
once you learn a language, you are trapped by it. the dust settles, and you lose the words you could have known had you chosen a different tongue, the stories you could have written, the meanings you could have divined which might have illuminated different paths, had you known exactly what to call that shade of gold. can words exist without language? can a language exist without words? far from Heaven, Castiel is transliterated, and he catches himself on new phonetics and wonders at the sound.
fluency is relative. it's a matter of practice, or familiarity, like the way the faithful read their holy books over and over, the same passages, the same stories, until understanding becomes less important than connection.
the trick is to read the message until it reads you back.
iii.
to communicate is an instinct and a habit for Dean, but for Castiel the verb is something wild and new, having only known the noun. perhaps once you know a language, you are free within it, trapped without it, here, within the four chambers of your heart, here, on the wordlessness that accompanies true revelations, here, in your breaths, coaxed from your body by someone else's prayers.
there are, Castiel teaches him, a thousand ways to pray.
there is a desert tribe for whom every drink of water is a communion with God. you worship that which is rare to you, and which you cannot understand outside the context of your own deliverance. worship is every bit as selfish as it is submissive, because prayer is the act of disguising your weaknesses as love.
So which is it, Dean asks. Is this love or is this weakness?
Castiel replies, This is salvation.
new words for old things, new songs for old devotions: language is part memorization and part improvisation, and when Dean rereads Castiel, he anticipates every word.
cherryshadowz: Consider the Jellyfish - Supernatural/Spongebob Squarepants - Sam, Spongebob - rated G, omg - Spongebob knows what will cheer Sam up. 118 words.And now for something completely different, because sometimes when you are up to your ears in multivariate regression analysis, you relax by writing theological language porn, idk. We continue to ask, "What if Castiel were words?" The first wordsverse fic is untitled. This next one is a Dean POV, PG I guess, 500ish words. Will there be a third installment? I dunno, it'll depend on how pretentious I'm feeling.
So I'm wondering, if Castiel can be words, what else can he be? What if Castiel were ice cream flavors? What if he were footwear. Would he be toe socks? What if Castiel were currencies pegged to the dollar? The possibilities are endless!
More important questions:
1) Why are there not more stop-motion t-shirt battles?
2) When will Bradley James and Misha Collins team up to fight zombies in space?
3) Clueless + SPN = <3 Y/Y?
unnamed
Dean & Castiel
i.
the sigils on his bones, the tattoo below his clavicle: they blind and block. on his shoulder is the sign of his duty to things he can't control.
an understanding of symbols is necessary to his line of work, but so is the glint of iron, silver, bullets & knives; salt, to ensure that what is cast out cannot return. salt, the taste of sweat, an honest thing.
if Castiel is a message then perhaps Dean cannot fault him for that, but he can fault whoever sent him, whoever wrote him out in such opaque script. Dean's own penmanship is expansive -- the large loops of his B's, the yawning valleys of his W's -- and is unlike his brother's too-small scribbles, too many letters trying to fit in one word, too many words in a sentence, too many sentences. it's not a story he wants to write, but who ever wants the story they're saddled with? some days it's enough to believe that you're the one holding the pen.
Dean isn't surprised to look inwards and find a foreign language etched beneath his ribs. he learns to make its sounds, to write them down. writing can go from left to right, right to left, up and down, but this particular language works from the inside out.
it waits for comprehension, and it has all the time in the world.
ii.
once you learn a language, you are trapped by it. the dust settles, and you lose the words you could have known had you chosen a different tongue, the stories you could have written, the meanings you could have divined which might have illuminated different paths, had you known exactly what to call that shade of gold. can words exist without language? can a language exist without words? far from Heaven, Castiel is transliterated, and he catches himself on new phonetics and wonders at the sound.
fluency is relative. it's a matter of practice, or familiarity, like the way the faithful read their holy books over and over, the same passages, the same stories, until understanding becomes less important than connection.
the trick is to read the message until it reads you back.
iii.
to communicate is an instinct and a habit for Dean, but for Castiel the verb is something wild and new, having only known the noun. perhaps once you know a language, you are free within it, trapped without it, here, within the four chambers of your heart, here, on the wordlessness that accompanies true revelations, here, in your breaths, coaxed from your body by someone else's prayers.
there are, Castiel teaches him, a thousand ways to pray.
there is a desert tribe for whom every drink of water is a communion with God. you worship that which is rare to you, and which you cannot understand outside the context of your own deliverance. worship is every bit as selfish as it is submissive, because prayer is the act of disguising your weaknesses as love.
So which is it, Dean asks. Is this love or is this weakness?
Castiel replies, This is salvation.
new words for old things, new songs for old devotions: language is part memorization and part improvisation, and when Dean rereads Castiel, he anticipates every word.
no subject
"BRAAAAAINS."
"Okay, we've got to get out of here," Bradley says, grabbing Misha's arm and pulling him along.
"Have we got any yogurt? They like yogurt," Misha says, covering their six as he struggles to stay on his feet.
no subject
Momentum works against them. Misha yelps and loses his balance, and they both crash to the ground, Misha on his back, Bradley flush on top him. In the vague and disconnected clarity that accompanies near-death experiences, Bradley thinks, His eyes are really fucking blue. But there's no time to linger on that. Bradley begins to scramble to his feet, when Misha yells, "STAY DOWN."
And Bradley lets himself collapse on top of Misha, feeling Misha raise his gun, feels the heat of the laser as Misha shoots the abominations that were probably about to eat Bradley alive.
"Braai--" gibbers something behind him, and then it is silenced, and then he hears a thud.
"Come on," Misha hisses. "Come on, let's go." And when Bradley stands up and pulls Misha up with him, he says, "Lemme go, I can run."
Bradley says, "Can you run fast?"
"I can run a hell of a lot faster if you're not dragging me around."
So Bradley lets go, and the moans and groans behind them fade as they rush down the corridor.
+
"How's that? That good?" Bradley has ripped off his shirt and transformed it into a makeshift bandage for Misha's shoulder. The relief that filled him when he discovered the wound was not a zombie bite, he will never tell Misha about.
"It's fine." Misha swats away his arms.
"I never thought it would end this way, you know," Bradley says, trying to make light of the situation.
"It won't," Misha says tightly. "Besides, they'd probably go after me before they go after you. I have bigger brains."
"I don't know, your head's pretty small."
"It's bigger on the inside than it is on the ouside."
Bradley wonders if that's the blood loss talking or just Misha being Misha. It's hard to tell. It's cold in the spaceship and Bradley's getting goosebumps already, but that is of course the least of his worries.
"Do you think the CW or the BBC have received our distress calls by now?" Bradley asks.
Misha says, "We need more ammo."
no subject
"Are you suggesting that I'm fat?" Misha slurs, somehow managing to leer at the same time.
"Why are you still leering at me when you can barely walk by yourself?" Bradley asks, because sometimes there are important questions to ask and this is definitely one of them, even though he's got one arm trying to keep Misha standing and his other arm is full. Guns tend to do that.
Misha doesn't answer, which surprises Bradley until he realizes that the dead weight in his arms is now actual dead weight, as Misha has gone and fainted on him.
Goddamnit. At least he managed to get them to the armory.