the horses running

~*~

Title The Voice of The Turtledove
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating NC-17
Word Count: 60,645
Summary: Castiel was eleven years old when he first felt there was something wrong with him. He's twenty-nine, a Roman Catholic priest in a small New England village, before Dean Winchester shows him that there isn't. AU.
Warnings: I think we've hit the motherlode, here. *deep breath* Blasphemy. Theological posturing. Possible underage sex - although Dean is 17, which meets the age of consent where this story takes place. Human!Cas, obviously. Vague insinuations of sibling incest (Castiel/Jimmy, in thought only). Religiously based homophobia. Internalised homophobia in the narrative voice. Shredding of a number of tenets of the Roman Catholic church. Too many Biblical references. Priest!kink and all that comes with it, basically.
Special Mentions to: the ever-wonderful starcrossedgirl, who listened to me complain about this fic, prodded me when I was slowing down with it, and threw me plot momentum, as she so often does, when I had none. Thanks also to A for the Ameripick.
Final Notes: I am, by training, a Church historian; I'm also a long-time attendee of more than one RC church. Everything in here about altar-serving, in particular, comes from observations based upon particular churches. If you've seen it done differently, that's because churches do have some degree of autonomy in these matters. :)


For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing is come,
and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

. part 1 . part 2 . part 3 . part 4 . part 5 . part 6 .

For copyright reasons -- specifically, because it was published -- this fic is no longer available publicly. The story is now available in print here or as an ebook, here. Anyone who feels inclined to purchase either one of them will be much-loved by me. ;) I'm afraid I am no longer able to email PDFs of the original. For a fuller explanation of why, please see this post by my good friend nanoochka, who has summed up the situation better than I could.