In his color coded speak | 1.3k | tattoonatural (read it on AO3)

The first thing Cas notices while putting Dean's body back together is the ink.

Tattoonatural: where everything is the same except Dean Winchester gets to be the tattooed man he deserves to be and Cas gets obsessed with that.

The first thing Cas notices while putting Dean's body back together is the ink.

Intricate lines etched in skin, some delicate and some violent, all joined together to form black patterns. A skull on the upper arm, that goes together with a dagger just below, a butterfly on the neck that looks fragile just like the skin there, a tiger and a wolf and a fox, a snake crawling up the wrist. Cas has never thought "beautiful" relating to humans before that moment, and it wouldn't be the last time he would think that relating to Dean Winchester.

On the course of those first encounters, Cas always gets himself trying to get glimpses of inked skin, Dean using so many layers and all. Not being able to see it again makes his own skin prickle with something that he can't name.

Getting more accustomed to humans, he learns that those are tattoos, a process where a professional artist inserts ink into the second layer of skin creating images or drawings, he learns that some people give meanings to their tattoos and some just do it because they think it's pretty. Cas keeps wondering which one is Dean's case.

The first thing Cas notices when Anna kisses Dean in that barn is her ring finger, there's a tiny delicate cross tattoo in it, he even gets the irony. The next thing is the way her hand cradles Dean's cheek and that makes his stomach turn in a bitter way that he doesn't quite understand.

Even in the middle of an apocalypse in the making, Cas' curiosity continues to grow, but he seems unable to ask Dean about it. He finds his opportunity in the name of Sam Winchester.

They're sitting on a motel room table and Sam's sleeve lifts when he goes to grab his beer.

"Is that a camomile flower?" he asks.

"Uh... yes" Sam answers frowning.

"I apologize, didn't mean to-".

"No, it's okay, just... uh... it reminds me of Jess, that's all", and Cas waits while Sam strokes his inner wrist where the tattoo is.

"It was our first date and we got a little drunk. There was a tattoo parlour around the corner and she kinda dared me to do it. She even got the idea and the place ready, asked the artist to put some color on it and I just did it... because even then i already knew I'd do anything she asked me too".

They don't talk about it anymore, but Cas can't shake it out of his mind for days. He wonders if someone dared Dean to do it too, if he touches the Orion constellation in his right arm or the compass wind rose in his shoulder and thinks about that person like Sam does.

The night after they try to kill the devil and fail, when everything goes to shit and they lose Ellen and Jo, Dean grabs his arm and takes him downtown, where there's a place in a dark street with a green neon sign and a broken window. Inside, there's a pool table and antifascist posters on the walls. Cas leans on a wall while Dean sits with Joe - a tattoo artist, Cas learns as Dean introduces them - and ruffles through a notebook. He points at something on the page and goes lay down on the tattoo stretcher, his left arm outstretched.

Eventually, Cas approaches them, he sees needle breaching skin and leaving ink behind, he sees the way Joe gets serious when doing a tough line on the drawing, the way Dean looks at the ceiling and seems to be at peace. Later, Cas remembers thinking Dean never looked so beautiful, enduring the only pain that is not forced on them, the pain he allows himself.

Dean doesn't explain anything, doesn't show the new anchor sitting on the inside of his arm to anyone but him. Cas doesn't know if he cares so he doesn't tell him, but anchor tattoos mean stability, peace, strength, determination and passion, some things that dean wants and some things that dean already has but ain't aware of. Cas thinks he understands the feeling, the want of something to focus amidst of chaos, the controlled pain and the mark that stays.

Cas thought that once he had understood, he would stop thinking about them, but he doesn't. He starts wondering what he would do if he would to mark his flesh like this. He doesn't know where this is coming from, but it's always present.

There's always this want when it comes to Dean. He wants to know more, he wants to watch and memorize every feature, he wants to listen, but most of all he wants to touch. That urge is so intense that sometimes he lets his hands linger when he's healing Dean's wounds. He keeps wanting even when the world keeps ending around them.

When they get back from purgatory, Cas does something about it.

Dean finds him in front of a mirror later, with his shirt up and a tattoo sitting on his ribs. They just stand there for a moment, Dean's eyes keep going from Cas' face and his torso and he seems stunned. Cas knows him well enough now to realize what he's thinking, "how contagious can I be to fuck up something holy ", but he doesn't say it, he reaches for it.

When his fingers ghost Cas' skin, he asks "Can I?" and Cas just nods because he doesn't know how to say that there's nothing that he wants more.

Dean touches the letters very softly, alis grave nil , "Wha- what does it mean?".

"Nothing is heavy to those who have wings".

Dean keeps his touch very gentle, he traces the yellow and white lines that resemble a halo and the letters again and Cas just stands there breathing.

"Why? I mean, Cas, it's beautiful, but... I didn't know that you... ", he's standing upright now and looking Cas in the eyes and Cas wants.

"Because I wanted Dean" and aren't they all in this mess because Cas dared to want things he couldn't have, because Cas dared to feel and to fall?

Dean reaches again, his palm against cas cheek. They breathe together for a moment and then Dean kisses him.

Cas always dreamed about telling Dean that it's okay to want things, that he deserves good things and that he isn't broken, and that even if he was, Cas would choose him over and over again, but he never knows enough words for that.

So he shows him. With the softness of his lips and the wetness of his tongue and the grip of his hands. In the way he pulls Dean's hair just enough to hear a moan from him, in the way he pushes him to bed, and sits in his lap, the way his fingers drag on Dean's side when he lifts his shirt. In the soft way he opens him up and fills him in and in the hard way he thrusts when Dean asks for it.

Dean started tattooing himself when he was fourteen because he needed the needle pain to ground him, something he could control, something that was only his. To prove the universe that his body belonged to him and not to his father or the violent life he was going to live. Cas started tattooing himself after he raised a soul from perdition and fell so irrevocably in love that he needed to manifest in his body where he really belonged. Not in Heaven or Purgatory or the Empty, but at Dean Winchester's side.

Cas gets to want things now and to have them and Dean learns to ask for more. And if Cas gets to trace Dean's tattoos with his tongue these days, neither Heaven nor Earth get to know about it.

Hi! I've just read your meta masterlist written for someone who wanted to convince their friends that deancas is real. First of all - thank you, what a treat to have it all in one place. The best Matrix red pill of them all. Second of all - "the entire S8, which was basically a demented Jane Eyre AU" - could you elaborate on that? I'm mighty interested.

Hi! Thanks for that - uhm - it’s missing a lot of stuff, though. I’m sure there are better masterposts out there, and I actually looked for them, but all I could find was fanfiction stuff.

As for the Jane Eyre thing - I should say I’m a fan of the Brontë sisters, so it wasn’t supposed to be an insult or anything, but it’s hard to deny that those kind of novels (particularly Wuthering Heights) are over the top and überdramatic and there’s almost an unhealthy focus on love and falling in love and what happens if you lose that and how your life can never be complete without that one person who means everything, and if that person is your foaming-at-the-mouth insane half-brother, so be it. And the thing is, Supernatural seasons often hinge around powerful and borderline soap-operish themes (the whole ‘almost orphans desperately looking for their father while killing things’ was very Dickens, in a way - if Dickens had been high on opium and cocaine and stuff, that is), but S8 really went above and beyond. I mean, even without the big love story for the fucking ages supporting the entire narrative arc, it was full of OMG and oh no! moments - 

Sam is all alone in the world and may have found love but oh no! his brother’s back from the dead and super pissed and oh no! the woman he probably loves is actually not a widow and OMG what next?

Hunter Dean found himself a new best friend but oh no! he’s a vampire drawn to human blood but OMG he’s promised to abstain forever and fight his own instincts every day for eternity but oh no! what happens if he can’t?

There is a way to banish all demons from the Earth but oh no! it’s a magic spell that requires a human sacrifice and oh no! Sam actually wants to do that and is it guilt or depression or martyrdom or OMG is he simply that heroic??!?

- so much Gothic extravaganza, the list could go on and on. But, as I said, at the heart of it all are Dean and Cas, and what’s going on with them is so sappy and romantic even Charlotte Brontê would have edited some stuff out.

Like, I don’t even know where to start. 

At the beginning of the season, Dean is precipitated in a world of darkness and monsters. He fights his way out for an entire year, and during that time he prays to Cas every night - Dean, who normally doesn’t pray at all. We know he’s tortured and desperate, because part of him believes Cas is dead (because Cas always comes when Dean calls, right?) and all of him knows it’s his own fault, because he forced Cas to fight even if Cas wasn’t in his right mind and Jesus, ALL the regrets and ALL the guilt. Then he finally finds Cas, who first refuses his manly and chaste affection and then pushes Dean to safety and chooses to die in that hellhole. This is so incredibly traumatic that Dean erases that entire memory as he makes his way into the real world (and, remember, we’re talking about Dean ‘I remember what was done to me in Hell’ Winchester here - I guess losing Cas was more painful than that?), which is just as lonely and brutal and hostile as the one he left behind (cue all the drama about Sam and Benny and Crowley killing everyone he can get his hands on). As he fights on, Dean starts to see Cas’ ghost everywhere, which is, like, standard behaviour for a Romantic hero or heroine but also legit what happens to you when your brain suffers such a heavy loss it can’t cope (if you’re not reading this alone at night, I recommend you check out this article about Japanese cab drivers picking up ghost passengers after the tsunami, and this BBC radio program explaining why it happens). This is obviously distressing for Dean, but then, as he’s fast approaching his breaking point, Cas actually shows up in person - he cannot explain how he found Dean, since Dean still has the anti-angel tattoo on his ribs, but wait - we know Cas can sense longing, right? so that’s why and if that isn’t the most tragic, romantic thing you’ve ever heard, get out. But there’s worse to come. Before that, though, we’re treated to a brief comedic interlude featuring the sappiest love trope ever - ‘all grown up’ - as Cas retires to the bathroom (and why) to clean up and reappears all handsome and clean-shaven, causing Dean an erection and much embarrassment.

(I still can’t believe that is a thing that actually happened, by the way.) 

Next, of course, there’s the whole ‘Cas has been trained and programmed to kill Dean against his will and beats him up in a darkened crypt and nothing can happen now everyone is doomed doomed doomed but wait I NEED YOU and BAM, suddenly the mind control is gone and even someone with the whole of Heaven’s power behind her can’t come between Cas and Dean and Cas will never hurt Dean and what the fuck is even happening?’ episode, which, again, how was that an actual thing? Sometimes I think we were all high during that season and we had a collective hallucination or something. And next there is all the ‘You didn’t trust me? You didn’t trust me, I almost died to get you out, I would have died, I did not leave you’ drama as Dean finally remembers what happened (he doesn’t, by the way: Cas heals his brain, and those memories come back), and meanwhile in the background there’s more over the top and dramatic stuff going down - Sam being weird and volunteering to die and Benny also volunteering to die and Dean can’t save anyone and can’t do anything and now BAM, turns out Cas is also dying, or leaving forever, anyway, and there was so much unsaid stuff between them I remember fainting and melting into my couch during various episodes and thank God for smelling salts. And after all this torture and torment and ALL the love and ALL the pain, the very last episode was the worst of the worst - Dean must basically say goodbye to the only people he cares about and would do anything to spare, because both of them are dying, and it’s a sort of Sophie’s choice too because Cas is gone and Dean doesn’t have time to focus on that because SAMMY and at the end we’re left with him half supporting his brother’s weight as they look up at a sky full of falling angels (and is Cas one of them or did they kill him already and aaaaargh).

So, look - I’m even leaving out stuff, and it’s still almost unbearably sugary and tragic - it’s not like they haven’t had other weird moments between them, but this season alone is more romantic than, say, the entirety of Jane the Virgin, who’s supposed to be about romance, or even Grey’s fucking Anatomy, where, sure, you get those random episodes where a train explodes and people are stuck all over the city and you can’t save all of them and surprise! you’re probably dying yourself BUT you also get some time to breathe in between and episodes where almost no one’s fighting and people are having sex and how come they never sleep, seriously? And what I just can’t believe is that we’re the only ones to have both sides here - Dean still doesn’t know about the thousand Deans Cas was forced to kill, or about those convoluted reasons Metatron had for cutting out Cas’ Grace, specifically, and Cas doesn’t understand how close Dean came to tell him those three stupid words which would have solved and changed everything, and he doesn’t get why Dean was hurt by his choice to remain in Purgatory, and how much, and he must ignore or disregard, by now, those random spikes in Dean’s arousals, because he assumes that’s what humans do or whatever and he probably never realized he should have hugged Dean back that time on the river bank, and what it meant to Dean that he didn’t. See? Tragedy and misunderstanding and Dean being an actual Gothic heroine and Cas being all Rochester-y about things (early Rochester, I mean, the one who was determined to be a martyr and could not believe someone as smart as Jane would ever find his old ass interesting in any way).

I know we always say it, but that’s honestly how I feel all the time - I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking here, because you cannot write a story like this, you cannot insert all these tropes and bend and twist and narrative so stuff will only work with the foundation of a Great Love, and not see it. You physically cannot, especially if you’re a trained screenwriter and this is literally your job. So they do see it, and what? I don’t mind the UST and the pain and the slow-burn (much), but I still wish they would make it clear that this is indeed where they’re going, because they can’t keep writing this shit and pretending they aren’t. It’s - if someone had written S8 as a Destiel - canon divergent after S7 fic on AO3, I’m not sure I would have read it. So gay that it’s almost OOC, I would have thought, and there’s not even the comfort of some smut - it’s all angst, all the way, and come on - even this show is not that gay.

Except it is, isn’t it?

Lucky us.