#wayward 👼

[bippityboppitybibuck]

This ficlet is written for and inspired by @valleydeans A Ghost Story. It contains spoilers to the entire story, so please don’t read this if you haven’t finished reading it yet. Wc:1400, no extra warnings (warnings for original fic stand) Italicizes mark establishing narrative the rest is in Cas’ POV.

It first plays on the old radio that sits attached to the bottom of one of the kitchen cupboards in the townhouse. Both Sam and Dean forgot it existed, left behind by the previous tenants, since they never had cause to use it but it was simple enough that Cas managed to get it turned on.

Granted it was only because the button was labeled Power; Cas knows even a moron could have figured that one out.

Cas didn't know how to change what music played at first, so he pressed buttons until something happened and took note of the outcomes. Seek seemed to be his friend, AM did not, and one afternoon while Dean and Sam were out at class or work or the library - there were so many places for Dean to be now, back before his resurrection Cas could have just walked around the grounds of the manor until he came upon him but now Dean is as hard for Cas to find as his place in this new time is - he finds a station that played a lovely song with a piano (Sam later told him it was an ‘indie station’, he doesn’t know how to tell him that he has no idea what that means) soft lyrics fell upon his ears and he lost his afternoon to meaneal tasks while the music floated from the small machine.

He takes notice of a song that starts to play only because it is in such contrast to the music the machine has been playing for the better part of the afternoon. There's a heaviness to the melody, an intensity that the other songs lacked, he spends much of the song listening only to the instruments.

The only line that actually sinks in after that first listen is “there is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin” and he can’t understand why his chest seems to expand against his ribs while his lungs squeeze themselves together because he���s never heard the type of lyric that was made to hit you square in the chest because, well, there’s not been a lot of music listening aside from piano and string quartets in his life.

He asks Sam how to learn the words in a song and Sam shows him how to get to a ‘Google tab’ so he can look up the song (Sam reckons a genius lyrics page might be a little too much for Cas). He types the words he remembers into the ‘Google’, and is decidedly confused by what can only be the name of the song. Take Me to Church, while a lovely name, stands out like a sore thumb in his head alongside the titles of the pieces he aimed to perfect in his old life.

He spends as much time as possible over the next three days listening to the song on ‘Youtube’ while he reads the lyrics, he just barely manages to stop himself from writing the lyrics out on paper so he can look at them when he’s away from a computer (like when Dean heads to school with his laptop and he can’t listen unless the machine - a ‘radio’ apparently - decides to play it)

Each line draws him in and pushes him away in equal measure, humor for Cas doesn’t mean laughing at a funeral it means Dean teasing him, tickling him, smiling as he waits for the joke to land on Cas’ ears. But still they all seem to resonate beyond what he thought was possible, Dean was always met with disapproval, he always wanted to worship him in any way he could, even now he curses the moments they could have had together if only one of them had been braver before the night spent in their clearing.

“We were born sick / you heard them say it” and “I was born sick, but I love it” stop his breath cold on every listen. He doesn’t allow himself to look too deeply into that, he’s long since accepted himself and delving into beliefs of a time long since past does no one any good.

What strikes him as odd is that there's a violence to the love and devotion that he can’t really understand, worshipping like a dog and revealing your sins to the sound of steel being honed isn't how he loves Dean, isn't how he sees Dean as his salvation, he writes hymns inspired by Dean. He doesn’t, could never, equate his devotion to something so lacking in softness, not when he can still feel the tufts of Dean’s hair under his nose or the petals of the roses Dean winded up the trellis on the side of his balcony.

The focus on a violent love turns him off from the song but there’s a pull in his mind with each iteration of “offer me my deathless death” he knows enough to know it might be a reference to sexual pleasure but he can't shake that something about the line draws him in, what with his death being undone when Dean brought him back.

The bridge, as the website calls it (Sam does eventually end up showing Cas the genius page), he reads the most, over and over and over and he thinks how it was just him and Dean in those stolen moments, how the doctrine he was told to follow labelled him a sinner but with Dean that didn't matter, it didn't even filter into the moment. The ritual the man sings of, the scene that plays out with it, becoming clean, human, he can’t even put words to why that settles so deeply into his chest, why it makes sense to him even though he never truly felt dirty about the things he and Dean did, the love they shared. But the truth of the matter is that Dean made him human again that night in the manor, and in doing so made him clean, clean of the never ending hell of the manor, just like he had promised to do all that time ago.

“Let me give you my life” sits heavy in his skull, it scratches at something deep within his brain for weeks. Ever since he first took the words into his head something about them made him think of them. It didn’t make sense though, Cas’ death hadn’t given Dean his life. Hell Cas’ death almost surely led to Dean’s own. So why would this lyric stick with him?

It's about a month after the successful ritual that he hears the song again, a fluke video on ‘autoplay’ on the youtube tab Dean keeps open for him. Let me give you my life. Let me give you my life. Cold fingers dance along the hairs at the nape of his neck, blood covers his hands, a redo, a trade off. Let me give you my life. And then a trade again, Dean to him this time. Let me give you my life. Good god, let me give you my life. The weeks spent ruminating over the line make sense now, as though some deep part of him always knew of the choice he made that night, the choice to save his love, the choice to give his life for the only thing that ever made him feel alive.

In the wake of his completed reincarnation, the sloughing off of death’s hold on him, the song takes on intense new meaning, which is no surprise really. His heaven is and has always been the moments he and Dean spend alone together, afternoons in the music room or midnights spent wrapped around each other. His lover is the sunlight, to keep the goddess on their side Cas and then Dean offered their sacrifices. Deathless deaths in multiples, love is worth more than what Sunday’s used to hold.

One night he plays the song for Dean, when the spring shoots are digging their way to the surface and the snowdrops are withering. He says nothing when Dean’s hold on him tightens as the song plays, he doesn't mention the hitches in his husband’s breath or the redness in his eyes when Dean hits replay on the song. He doesn’t bring up the way this song seems to recount their story with startling accuracy, he knows Dean understands. Take Me to Church... they needn’t worry, they’ve already reached salvation.

Sam sneaks the song into the playlist for the reception, their guests assume it’s just another popular song with a decent beat but for them it’s undoubtedly more.

[31miw-inkpsycho]

2019’s hottest boy band.... Wayward Angels 👼 (minus the tall one of the group)

TWINSIES (x)