everything in its place

[whynot]

callowyn made a post compiling her Novakcest ficlets and I thought maybe I should do that too. So I cleaned them up and here are some! But first, have some canonverse Dean&Cas tumblrfic I wrote for aplethora's birthday a couple of months ago. She asked for platonic cuddling.

As always, clicking on the picture will take you to the original post.

The word ‘no’ slips out of what passes for Dean’s mouth, but the creature cannot hear or understand him, or doesn’t care. The fire wraps around him, and he screams like a freshly damned soul new to the rack.

Somewhere on the periphery of his consciousness, Alastair curses and howls.

“Stop,” Dean snarls as Hell falls away beneath him. “You can’t, I belong here.”

The creature, whatever it is, for all that it burns as bright as infernal fire, is gentle with him. It is frightfully gentle, and this is what disorients Dean the most. He doesn’t like the unfamiliar.

We need you, it tells him, and holds him closer. Dean begins to notice its contours - the impression of vast wings, a thousand eyes, wheels that turn and turn. Something terrible and incomprehensible carrying him with all the care in the world.

“Take me back,” Dean rasps, but finds he doesn’t struggle as much. The tenderness is soporific, and the rush of their ascent is a thunderstorm he feels protected from. He sinks into this strange embrace, and something soft as feathers caresses his cheek.

The creature replies, I am.

Okay, here's the Novakcest. They're all PG13 and lower, even the blow job one somehow.

Jacob sinks to his knees and Castiel’s response is a breathless and automatic “wait”, but there is another momentum here, one Castiel can’t explain because he has only observed it: millions of years of watching humanity contort themselves around each other and he has only watched the proceedings with a clinical eye, a detached curiosity, but then Jacob unzips Castiel’s jeans and this borrowed body wants. Borrowed lungs stuttering out a gasp. Many things that were a formality suddenly become instinct: the deep breaths, the eyes fluttering shut. The hand tangling in Jacob’s hair as he swallows Castiel down. They had warned him about such things back home. They were told cautionary tales of the Grigori, how the archangel Gabriel had smote them all for their disobedience and their passion for earthly things. Humans are just creatures limited by instinct and weakened by free will, after all, but in that moment, Castiel is one of them too.

dying wish? ha, jacob just says that to distract jimmy from his navelgazing. he says come on, jimmy, come on, because he remembers that jimmy has never been to the ocean, never tasted its salt. jimmy's only known lake michigan: they were seven, there was a sandcastle, and for once their mother had seemed complete at ease, uncoiled, her face turned to the sun, eyes closed, unguarded. warm desaturated memories from the past.

jacob says come on, man, it’s right there, and he injects enough irritation and wheedling into his voice to make jimmy think that this is what he wants, but what jacob really wants is jimmy’s soft conceding smile. okay, jimmy says, and jimmy doesn’t say for you, but jacob takes it as for granted. he has sacrificed much to be able to, to take for granted that jimmy will still be here, no matter what the cost.

*

the ocean is an endless thing and the horizon is an illusion. it is the limit of what humans can see, and so we name not the thing, but what we perceive the thing to be. maybe that’s what hell is - not something that actually exists, but merely names put to the only interstices the human heart can see.

when jacob leaves him, where will he go?

jimmy leans against the car, just drinking in the sight of it. the air smells salty and the breeze carries grit, and he is hyperaware of his brother in his peripheral vision, the small distance between them that can be closed with any number of ill-conceived desires. jacob is being noisy about how the atlantic is always cold this far up north, how after this they’ll hit up the pacific, because if you’re a fan of scuba diving, jimbo - and neither of them are, last time jimmy checked, but whatever - then the southwestern pacific is the place to be. jacob starts walking to the water and pulls off his shirt and jimmy watches, heart in his throat.

it’s fucking cold, jacob yells when he hits the water. he dives in anyway and submerges himself, and jimmy finds himself tensing. not that he’s worried that his brother has gone and drowned himself, but there is a well-honed instinct that bares its teeth at the absence of jacob.

jimmy walks to the water. a few seconds later, jacob resurfaces and whoops at the sky, and jimmy shucks off his shirt.

*

so much bare skin under your hands is a shock, a revelation. you have been staking your claim on this for years, but now that it is yours, now that it is given freely, you find your body stammering. hey, he says. hey, and touches your cheek. it’s okay, he says, finally turning soft eyes on you, eyes you’ve known your whole life, and you kiss him to push back the vestiges of fear remaining in the way he says your name.

It’s 4 AM and you’re not asleep because angels don’t sleep, but you are aware now of time and the specific ways humans have systematized it. You are aware of these divisions and pay attention to it because Jacob does too. He is subject to its tyranny as you are subject to him, the both of you believing that it is the other who is a force of nature, the whirlwind to be reckoned with.

Angels don’t sleep, but you are beginning to feel exhaustion. Usually you are able to leave the vessel and recuperate, but now you are trapped. It’s too dangerous to leave this body, but you think maybe it’s also just as dangerous to stay. Human frailty accumulates. You feel it as a pang in your chest and a twist in your belly. It is a restlessness that feels like hunger and a hunger you cannot name.

It’s 4 AM, and you are trying to figure out if you are surprised at the night’s turn of events. You don’t think you were expecting it, but when Jacob kissed you, it was like getting an answer to a question you didn’t know you had asked.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Jacob had said, sounding oddly breathless, and you tipped his chin up and leaned in for another.

“Woah, woah!” Jacob holds up his hands. He’s unarmed.

Ellen lowers her gun. She’s frowning. “Jake? That you?”

And then they’re all lowering their guns, confused looks on all their faces except for Cas, who keeps his Beretta up, aimed at Jacob’s heart. “No,” says Cas, and in this strange landscape, that guttural voice is an odd comfort to him. “No, that’s not Jacob.”

Sam tenses. “Is it—”

Cas says, “No.” Eyes on Jacob’s, Adam’s apple bobbing, and Jacob knows that look. “But it’s not our Jacob.”

*

Jo says, “Who? Sam?”

Jacob helps unload the truck when they get to Chitaqua. The loot is desperately random, anything they can find. The whole ride here Ellen has been telling him what’s been going on since 2009, but it was Sam Winchester that Jacob was watching. Jacob’s seen neither hide nor hair of him since Lawrence. Sam sat up front with Cas, barely saying anything, and even now Sam hovers close as Cas snaps out directions - take this to the mess, bring these to Chuck, tell Risa we’re back. Sam doesn’t let down his guard. He keeps his finger on the trigger and Cas in his peripheral vision.

Jo shrugs. “He showed up one day and stuck around. Says he’s looking for his brother, but I dunno. Doesn’t seem like he has any plans to leave.”

*

Jacob frowns skeptically at his future self, who raises an eyebrow back. Is this what Jimmy sees?

*

Sam hesitates, and for a second Jacob thinks he isn’t going to reply, but then he says, “I came looking for my brother.” For the first time since Jacob got here, he sees Sam smile. It’s not a particularly happy smile. “I mean. I’m sure you know what that’s like.”

“But your brother isn’t—”

“Come on,” Sam says, and starts heading to the convoy. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

Jacob recognizes the evasion. He lets it go.

Based on this drawing by darling Lui.

The sun went down about an hour ago and Jacob’s staring at the pages of some ancient tome that will doubtless have no answers. He sees the words and doesn’t read them, can’t concentrate on anything until he hears the door open, and his concentration zeroes in on the sound like matter pulled by gravity. Jimmy stands in the doorway looking the worse for wear. Fatigued. He meets Jacob’s eyes as if he doesn’t want to.

“What’d the sheriff have to say?” Jacob asks.

Jimmy says, “Nothing. That book?”

“Nothing.”

No leads on the case and no leads on his deal, so Jacob puts down the book, gets up and crosses to the fridge where beer is waiting.

“Jake—”

“Don’t say it.” He opens the fridge door, aware of Jimmy approaching in his peripheral vision.

“Jacob, look—”

“I said don’t.” And then everything is still. Everything is very still. Jimmy is close behind him; Jacob can tell. He hears his heartbeat in his ears, insistent, a little too fast like it’s trying to live while it still can. A mad dash for freedom perhaps, not a countdown.

The beers are waiting for Jacob to pick them up, but instead he reaches behind him and touches Jimmy’s shoulder, slides his fingers over until they close around his tie, and he pulls. Jacob turns his head as Jimmy steps forward, and the kiss sends something sharp and and hot shooting through his gut. These kisses unbalance Jacob, this air of finally with topnotes of grateful despair. Jimmy lifts a hand to cup his face, and Jacob turns his whole body to him, pulling him closer. He is light-headed with resolution and flushed with want, and he can taste the cigarette on Jimmy’s tongue. After a lifetime of cynicism, Jimmy kissing him back is the only thing that manages to bewilder him, again, and again, and again. Jimmy breathes his brother’s name, and Jacob says, "I’m here." And again.