
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/400619.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M, M/M
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Claire!Castiel/Dean_Winchester, Castiel/Dean_Winchester
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Apocalypse, Clairestiel:_Cas_as_Claire_Novak
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-05-08 Words: 2912
****** The Answer ******
by Emerald_Embers_(emeraldembers)
Summary
     Post-apocalyptic Clairestiel AU; swapping vessels didn't change
     Castiel after the world ended, but sharing room with the Leviathans
     had.
Notes
     NB: Claire in this universe is seventeen when Castiel takes her as
     his vessel.
Once they had spread to every corner of the world, the Leviathans stopped
hiding. Within a week they were all the news showed; within a month the news
ceased showing anything.
Two months passed before the streets all ran black and the safest place for a
human to hide was underground. Not in sewers or underwater - wherever water
flowed, a Leviathan wasn't far behind - but in subways and basements, in mines
and caves. Of course, that also meant showers and baths were no longer an
option. Some people went into denial, coating themselves liberally with
whatever deodorants they could get their hands on, and the rest had largely
given up on staying clean and minty-fresh.
Dean guessed that was part of why he wasn't the only one bewitched by Castiel
these days. Everyone was filthy except her.
 
After the battle between Castiel and the Leviathans left his vessel a corrupted
and oozing mess, Castiel finally escaped to the next best thing.
Claire had grown up into a pale seventeen year old blonde with wide blue eyes
and battle-scarred arms, and one of the best hunters Dean had ever seen. He
couldn't remember anymore if Claire had been blue-eyed before Castiel first
climbed inside her, just that her willowy teenage limbs had hidden how strong
she was even before she had an angel's power filling them out. That, and how
she had known more about him and Castiel than anyone ought to know, let alone a
kid.
"He thought about you more than God. Even after they burned him half to death
for it."
It was one of the politest things Claire ever said about it; when she wanted to
provoke Dean, usually when something brought her dead mother or missing father
to mind, she liked to taunt him.
"He would have fucked your brains out."
Dean tried not to think about how she'd learned that before hitting puberty, or
about why he believed her.
 
When Castiel took her, the grit and scars of a hunter's life evaporated from
her skin in an instant. Anyone could see it, even if Dean and Sam were the only
humans who knew what it meant. It was hard to miss afterwards how she almost
glowed in her cleanliness, moving through filthy tunnels without a spot of dirt
clinging to her.
Even so, despite her being visibly otherworldly, most of the survivors - Dean
and Sam obviously excepted - still treated her like a little girl. They didn't
entirely recognise that she had been replaced by something much, much older,
and they hadn't paid much attention to the fact that she hadn't been a child
for years even before Castiel took her over.
Castiel didn't notice how the others treated her unless she wanted to - and
that was strange too, how Dean had found it easy calling Castiel "Her", far
easier than when Raphael had swapped vessels. Angels didn't buy into gender
constructs but that didn't mean the humans around them could get used to the
idea.
Slim hips and small breasts had made Claire look childish, but Castiel wore her
skin with so much weight that anyone who knew her true age should have seen it.
Few bothered to look at her eyes because after killing enough monsters with
human faces it was hard to like making eye contact, but wide and blue didn't
mean innocent. The hair-thread laughter lines said adolescent; the ageless
stare said immortal.
Everyone could see one truth though. They all saw that she was beautiful.
 
When Castiel was male Dean had tried desperately to ignore certain
realisations; Castiel knew it too, and when Dean failed to hide his reactions
to her new form she'd been resentful at first. Dean wanted to blame her, and
did so under his breath in public, but inside he knew he didn't believe it.
He'd loved Castiel before she swapped vessels. The only difference was that now
he couldn't lie to himself about it.
Castiel knew him better than himself and almost as well as Sam, and Dean had
thought crushing guilt and awkward wet dreams were all he deserved.
Castiel didn't. Sharing a vessel with the Leviathans for so long seemed to have
left her hungry, and she wasn't shy about it for long.
 
They had been leading their group through an abandoned mine safely enough until
Dean discovered a wooden bridge had rotted by falling through the slats.
Castiel had caught him at the last minute, defying the odds by reaching across
what remained of the bridge to grab his wrist, but unable to stop his arm
dislocating from the sudden jolt of being caught mid-drop.
Before she had a chance to heal it his dislocated shoulder had hurt like fuck,
but any pain was worthwhile when escaping a messy death. It had been even more
worthwhile when he and Castiel were next on watch together and she used their
time alone to kiss him senseless.
Just because she wasn't a skilled kisser at first it didn't mean she was bad -
she was enthusiastic and quick to learn, even if Dean had to teach her a thing
or two along the way. Her strength just happened to apply to her facial muscles
as well, and he'd never known "battling tongues" to be something other than a
euphemism before he'd had to pull back to warn her she was literally choking
him.
 
The advantages of having an angel on their side included how angels didn't need
to sleep or breathe. Castiel was more effective than a canary and a watchdog
combined; she could smell gas pockets before anyone took a naked flame
somewhere explosive or walked into an ambush while they still had time to
change their route or hide.
With her senses at hand all day and night, having other people on watch when
she was around wasn't necessary, but it made the humans who weren't hunters
feel safer.
The disadvantages of having her around weren't her fault either. No one knew
how her grace would fare against the Leviathans but experience with her last
vessel indicated poor odds, and her current vessel occasionally attracted the
wrong sort of attention. Thankfully, creeps came along less than horror movies
would generally suggest for an apocalyptic world, and she was more than capable
of dealing with them herself.
Dean knew Castiel's age; he knew that when he slid her hand into her underwear
she was more than old enough to know what he was doing, because he loved
Castiel, and because he wanted to make her come. Strangers who joined the group
and a few stubbornly stupid non-believers didn't know her age; they thought
when they grabbed her waist or brushed her hair behind her ear that the
seventeen year old body they were touching belonged to a seventeen year old.
Castiel was not innocent. Naive on occasion, perhaps, but not innocent. If
someone didn't listen to "Don't", she broke their fingers. If they still didn't
listen, she broke worse.
The Leviathans were not the only monsters she protected the camp from on her
watches.
 
There wasn't much of a plan for defeating the Leviathans anymore, just a plan
for survival. When Castiel had turned up they had interrogated her, but all she
had to offer from her time as the Leviathans' plaything inside Jimmy was what
they had gathered already.
Leviathans ate each other to gain strength and ate humans to sustain what they
already had. They could not burn or freeze, physical wounds healed almost
instantly, and they developed immunity to any poison or disease they were
exposed to within seconds. Even so, they were still animals - they needed rest,
water, and food. It was a long shot, but humanity's survival largely seemed to
depend on how long it would take a cannibalistic population of thousands to
starve to death.
At the same time it meant not dying from a lack of resources themselves, and
with just two hunters and a handful of soldiers in their group, the chance of
everyone returning intact and uninfected from a trip back to the surface was
minimal. They had lucked out by finding a food canning plant to make a base
beneath, even if most people were getting a little tired of tinned spaghetti-
and-whatever combinations. As for clothes and tents, pretty much everyone who
survived had been sensible enough to bring whatever they could carry when they
first moved underground. The remaining problem, and the main reason for
continuing to explore as far underground as they could, was water; a five
gallon bottle was heavy as fuck and only went so far despite that, and without
a power source to help purify it, recycled urine didn't go much further.
Of course, anyone who knew the area they were hiding under also knew about the
natural spring. They just didn't happen to know anything about whether it was
still drinkable, and who or what might have taken notice of it.
Dean knew Castiel would volunteer to go exploring before she raised her hand or
opened her mouth, even though no one could be sure what sort of risk she was
taking. Sam glanced between her and Dean, not saying anything but perfectly
aware of what it meant for Dean to keep quiet; Sam was the only one in the camp
who knew about Dean's relationship with Castiel because he was the only one who
wouldn't judge him for it.
Neither of them protested - self-sacrifice wasn't exactly unheard of on
Castiel's part and he couldn't weigh one angel's life against fifty humans',
but he'd grabbed her afterwards and asked, "Do you want to die a virgin?"
She punched him once, hard, and disappeared with a flap of wings that sounded
just as loud as they had when Jimmy wore them.
 
He braced himself for another punch when she returned, but he didn't get one.
Castiel had taken with her what she could carry without interrupting her flight
- two empty five gallon bottles between her legs, and one more tucked under
each arm - and she'd brought all four of them back. Full. Dean didn't pretend
to be more than passively thankful for them - he'd fought long enough to know
the difference between surviving and living, and while the water would let him
survive, Sam and Castiel kept him alive - but he joined everyone in praising
her for a job well done.
It was worth seeing the expressions on a few of the more doubtful members of
the camp when they were struck dumb by the honest to God miracle dropped in
front of them.
 
Castiel's tent was set up at a distance from everyone else's, and despite
everyone's attempts to give her attention she no doubt deserved, she stormed
over to it and made a clear point of demanding that everyone give her a
moment's peace.
Keen to thank her in whatever way they could, the rest of the camp obeyed her
and set about celebrating the small victory, allowing Dean to approach her tent
without notice once he dared to. He didn't have a chance to tap on the canvas
before her hand darted out through the open zip, grabbed him by the collar of
his shirt, and dragged him inside.
At least when she pushed him down and kissed him roughly he knew he didn't have
to worry whether she was still angry with him or not. Neither did he breathe a
word of protest when her rough treatment meant he banged his head despite the
sleeping bag spread beneath them.
"My virginity is unimportant," Castiel said, her tone showing the irritation
her volume couldn't if they wished to keep their relationship secret. "I do not
wish to die at all."
He'd wanted to do this somewhere softer or better lit, but Castiel had her own
ideas when she straddled him, the narrow outline of her silhouetted in what
little light came from the group's campfire. He hoped that no one could see her
in turn, that the shadows in the tent weren't copied outside, because otherwise
it would mean his hands were just as obvious when he started unbuttoning her
shirt.
Thinking about the visual, even if he didn't want it to be true, was enough to
have him hardening so quickly it hurt; distracting himself from arousal wasn't
easy either with the warmth of her skin under his hands and her breaths seeming
louder than any of the idle chatter outside.
Despite the dark he knew what to feel for, knew what she liked - when to
massage her breasts and pinch her nipples, when "More" meant harder and when
"More" was an order to drop his hands below her waist.
She'd traded slacks for sweatpants when she took on her new vessel, and helping
her slide them and her panties down her hips was easy with elasticated
waistbands all that had held them in place.
The shirt stayed on, light cotton brushing across his stomach when she moved
down, dragging his jeans off before settling in his lap. "This isn't our last
day on Earth," she said, and Dean felt the slick folds of her rub against his
cock in a tease he guessed was intentional. "It isn't our last day anywhere."
She was quick and decisive in a way he could never be when she stretched out
over him, bracing one hand by his shoulder and guiding him inside her with the
other, a sharp intake of breath and clench of her thighs around his hips all he
had to gauge her reaction by. He'd remember that little gasp for the rest of
his life, remember how it accompanied the first time he got to feel the hot
grip of her cunt around his cock, better than her fist, better even than her
mouth.
When Dean gripped her by the hair, he wasn't the one drawing her into a kiss -
she was the one who let him kiss her, immovable unless she wished to move, and
she wanted him to know it. She set the pace, rocking back and forth against him
at a speed that suited her, slowing cruelly to a complete halt every time she
wanted to kiss him.
She was going to be the end of him. Each break forced him to take in everything
- how the slick around his cock cooled a little every time he slid out of her,
how she tasted, how she smelled - ozone and sex, an angel and a girl. At the
same time, going faster would have meant trying to keep up with someone who
could break every bone in his body by accident, and the slight chill from that
thought should have been more effective in helping him hold out than it was in
practice.
Dean only wished they had done this somewhere he could see her, raised his
hands to her face and stroked her cheeks, the flat of her forehead, the curve
of her lips. He couldn't see with his fingers, but it was worth a shot.
"Why are you doing that?" Castiel asked, and Dean couldn't answer, closing his
eyes before letting his hands drift down to something they did know, cupping
her breasts and feeling the rub of her nipples against his palm.
She didn't adjust her pace when he threw his head back and came, gritting his
teeth against any noise he wanted to make; she rode his cock until he finally
slipped out of her, grabbed one of his hands and brought it between her legs
quickly.
"Help me," she ordered, soft and insistent, and he did what he could, no grace
in his fingers when he fucked her with them but her reaction suggesting that
none was needed.
She didn't make a sound, but he knew what it meant when her breath caught and
her thighs trembled. The way his fingers were soaking wet were a clue as well,
and Dean wondered if he wanted to lick them or not.
He eventually decided on 'not', pulled them out and wiped them clean on her
shirt before hugging her close, knowing she could dry herself with next to no
effort.
"That was interesting," Castiel said, letting her own arms wrap loosely around
Dean's neck for a moment; Dean laughed, kissed her hair and made himself
comfortable. "I have to go on watch."
"Do you?" Dean asked, only half-serious. He knew what she meant to the camp,
knew her importance in keeping them safe.
"Someone has to look after you. Go to sleep," Castiel ordered, touching a
finger to her chest once to clean herself and a second time to dress. Dean let
the urge to protest slide in favour of watching her leave, the tent zipping up
behind her with a click of her fingers, before trying to relax into something
like sleep.
 
By all rights with everything going on above ground he ought to have grown
scared of the dark, but with Castiel around he couldn't bring himself to fear
it. It wasn't that she made him fearless or that she lit up the shadows - it
was something only a little less simple, but just as cliché.
Castiel had come back from the dark. She'd fought every step of the way and it
still had the power to take her again under the right circumstances, but she
had come back.
Dean hadn't trusted a second chance before, but he was willing to give it a
shot for her.
 
The End
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