[Fic] Heart of Glass (NC-17) 1/2 for c00kie
Gift type: Fanfic
Title: Heart of Glass (1/2)
Recipient: c00kie
Author: omphalos
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Mild blasphemy?
Spoilers: Aired episodes.
Summary: He's the one who was punished, severely, for his feelings for Dean, but who still gave up everything for him in the end. Surely there should exist between them a better level of comprehension than this. He wants -- no, he needs -- to understand Dean.
Author notes: A huge thank you to my beta-readers, who I will name after the big reveal. This was a pinch hit, one I was very happy to take on. C00kie, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! :)
"So, this disk thing," Dean asks in a low voice, "you really think it could work?"
"No." Castiel answers without much thought, his attention elsewhere as he feels out through the door with his mind, disarming every security device and magical warding he can find. "I think I'm clutching at dried grass."
"Straws?" He can feel Dean staring at him. "So why are we even here?"
"Because all I have to clutch at is straws, Dean, and this is the longest straw available. At the least, it could make me useful to you again."
"How many times have I gotta tell you that-"
"Has your denial of plain facts ever changed anything?" Castiel hears the irritation in his own voice and forces it back to a more even tone. It doesn't help that his reaction when finding himself exhibiting human annoyance is generally to feel yet more human style annoyance. "The longer I'm cut off from the Host, the closer I become to an unskilled human, the kind of person you do your best to protect, not work along side."
"Dude, you're not unskilled. You've got more languages and lore stored in that fluffy head of yours than's on the whole fricking Internet." He feels Dean's hand on his shoulder for a few seconds before Dean starts striding about again in the small space of this corridor. "You've still got plenty of mojo anyway. You got us here, didn't you? You're undoing all the security shit okay? You're still way on the plus side of the awesome scale, Cas."
Fluffy? Castiel's pretty sure that adjective doesn't fit any part of him. Still, it isn't entirely unpleasant having his self-doubt blasted by Dean's confidence in him, however unrealistic. He disengages the final electrical defense with a touch of deft telekinesis. "It's only a matter of time," he says with a pleasing level of calmness, "before I lose even those abilities."
He hears Dean shuffle around on the stone floor, and Castiel returns his focus to his immediate surroundings to see Dean looking at him with an unidentifiable expression. Unidentifiable, at least, for Castiel, who has long since decided that the more he 'hangs' with humans, the less he understands them. Or maybe that's just Dean Winchester, who's somehow a little more human than most humans, as if the qualities of humanity are somehow distilled and condensed within him.
It's true that Castiel frequently and increasingly turns to Sam for translation services when Dean manages to baffle him yet again. It's... frustrating. He is the one who carried Dean's shredded soul from Perdition, who patched it up to the best of his ability and reformed a healthy body around it. He's the one who was punished, severely, for his feelings for Dean, but who still gave up everything for him in the end. Surely there should exist between them a better level of comprehension than this. He wants -- no, he needs -- to understand Dean.
After a few moments spent openly staring at each other, the all too human Dean sighs and looks away, his gaze skidding across the plain cream walls of this corridor, the only exterior access way to the underground vault they've come to plunder. "Explain to me again," Dean asks, "just what this sun disk mirror thing can do? Or maybe do?"
"Aten's Sun Disk is rumored," Castiel stresses, "to be a hotline to Heaven, among other things, which, if so, could allow me to 'recharge my batteries' as Sam put it. It also may have the capacity to create a direct line to my Father, which is the reason I've been seeking it. More generally, it's a lens that's said to allow messages and signals to be sent over great distances and through otherwise impassible barriers."
"Yeah, got that, celestial broadband. But there was more than that when Sam told it, something about a siege?"
"A siege perilous."
"Which is...?"
Castiel sighs. He'd suspected Dean hadn't understood that part. "It's an analogy Sam drew from British mythology, meaning a challenge that will either prove your worth once and for all or kill you. The same papyrus that speaks of the powers of the disk mentions also that if someone deemed unworthy attempts to use the disk to talk to God, they will be... unmade."
"Unmade as in killed?"
"Unmade as in removed from time and space completely. They will never have existed."
"You're kidding me."
"I am not."
Dean folds his arms, his expression belligerent. "No way did Sam tell us that part."
"He did, but I suspect him of deliberate obfuscation since his wording was far from clear, and he seemed to wait to tell us until your attention was largely elsewhere." Castiel pulls up the corners of his lips in what he suspects is an entirely inadequate wry smile. "There were women with large breasts on the television, if I recall..."
"Right." Dean seems to be fighting a grin at the memory, but the frown wins out. He leans back against the wall by the door. "So, no way are we doing this. You might as well quit breaking into Fort Knox here; we're heading out."
Castiel tips his head slightly and studies Dean. Sam clearly anticipated this reaction from his brother, yet it still mystifies Castiel. "You don't have to accompany me if you don't wish to," he says slowly, "but I'm not... 'heading out'."
Dean raises his gaze upwards and to the side, clearly exasperated with Castiel. "Look. You don't get it," he says. "I'm not gonna let you kill yourself just so you can be more 'useful'. Fuck that, Cas! I wish, I really wish, you weren't losing your mojo, man. I hate that that's happening to you 'cause of me. But I'd rather have you completely freaking powerless than dead. Worse still, never having existed at all!"
"You wouldn't remember ever knowing me. Another angel would have rescued you from Hell."
"Fuck that!" Dean reiterates fiercely. He seems to be growing increasingly upset, his folded arms having given way to the apparent need to gesticulate. "Look, you're the one who told me you weren't a tool, a hammer or whatever, so why the hell do you keep trying to treat yourself like you are one? You're worth more than that to us, Cas. In case you haven't noticed, we're not exactly awash in friends and allies, and... Well, don't be in such a goddamn hurry to leave us, okay?"
Dean's gaze slides away from Castiel's as he finishes talking, and Castiel wonders what it is that Dean isn't saying. He's sure there's something.
"I need to do this, Dean." Because it really is that simple. "Is it your belief that I'm unworthy to speak with my Father?"
"I never said that." Dean's reply comes gratifyingly fast. "If anyone's worthy, it's you. You're the only one of his dickish kids who's even trying to do the right thing. But, Cas, we don't know for sure that that's even what this stupid disk does. Some Ancient Egyptian equivalent of the Weekly World News is a long way off what I call trustworthy lore!"
"The scroll has a little more more credence to it than that," Castiel says gently, looking deeper into Dean's unsettled soul for clues. "We take risks every day. Every fight we enter into could end up with one or all of us dead, but we still do it. Why is that, Dean?"
"Kill or be killed?" The answer sounds more than a little flippant.
"And when it isn't? When it's a fight we could avoid if we wanted?"
Dean shrugs. "To help people, to draw a line through another name on the long list of evil sons of bitches needing ganking." He sighs heavily, tipping his head back against the wall. "I know what you're getting at, but there's a difference."
"There isn't for me." Castiel puts his hand on the door handle, but then pauses. "I consider this a risk worth taking, but if you don't, you shouldn't be here. I'll take you back to your brother."
"No way!" Dean backs away from him, holding up his hands. "Don't you dare bench me. You're not doing this alone."
Sometimes Dean doesn't make any sense at all. Castiel sighs softly to himself and gestures at the door. "Then shall we?"
Dean shrugs and moves forward again. Castiel opens the door, and together they go into what turns out to be a very large space with strip lighting, a low ceiling, and many square pillars. The floor's covered in a cream-colored padded linoleum, and the walls painted almost the same color. All around the walls and around each pillar are uniform display cases made from reddish wood and glass. There's a smell of something sharp and man-made.
"We can still talk," Castiel says, possibly unnecessarily. "I've disarmed all the sensors in here, and the nearest living thing is miles away."
Dean grunts and strides out into the space, pulling a face at whatever is in the first case he looks down upon. "So what's this Ancient Egyptian game of Russian roulette look like?"
"Like a small polished gold disk with hieroglyphics around the circumference, possibly in some sort of setting. Dean, do you really think I'd risk my life unnecessarily?" Castiel asks as he watches Dean move around. "It was given back to me for a reason, and I-"
"Whatever." Dean waves a dismissive hand back at Castiel without looking around. "You wanna play with possibly evil artifacts, it's no skin off my back." Castiel finds his lips pursing.
He tries again, stalking after Dean. "Whatever else it is, Aten's Disk is not a demonic artifact. 'Aten' is simply the name the Ancient Egyptians of a certain era gave to my Father."
"Right," Dean says in a way that's only one step up from 'whatever'. "And he's not just Satan with his hat off."
"Right," Castiel repeats firmly, coming to stand behind him. "Etymologically, 'Satan' derives from a Semitic root meaning 'accuser'. This itself derives from the Babylo-"
"Cas!" Dean turns around and holds his hand up, flat palm only a few inches from Castiel's face. "Do we really have to have the Conversation?"
Knowing he's going to regret asking, Castiel nonetheless asks, "What conversation?" as he carefully pushes Dean's hand aside.
"The Rules Conversation." Dean uses his still raised hand to count off the numbers. "One: no doomed to failure attempts to educate me. Two: no unnecessary riffing on subjects so old, dry and dead they don't even need to be salted and burned to stop them from walking around. Three: no words longer than three syllables. In short, stick to the point and make the point clear."
"'Unnecessary' has five syllables," Castiel points out, turning his back on Dean and walking away, starting his own hunt for the correct display case. He's annoyed with himself again, with his reaction to Dean's current attitude. It... hurts. Why is it that he finds human qualities in Dean so fascinating, yet in himself so off-putting? He thinks that what he's currently experiencing may be the sting of rejection. He doesn't like the sensation at all.
"I never said the rules applied to me." Dean sounds... smug? "Just angels. And occasionally little brothers."
Castiel should never have told Dean he was free to talk during this illicit activity. "Maybe I have rules too," he says, feeling the muscles of his face have become taut.
"Yeah, well, good luck with that. You're the obedient little soldier boy in this partnership, dude. I'm the rebel with a capital-C cause."
Moving faster than Dean's human eyes will be able to process, Castiel backs Dean into a display case, hard, the metal of Dean's jacket pinging against the glass. "Have you forgotten what I did for you, or do you just not care?" he demands. "Do you see my sacrifices as your God-given right? To be presumed on, not thanked for?"
"I said thank you," Dean says, trying and failing to meet Castiel's eyes. His soul is full of panic suddenly. "Kinda. Look, I'm sorry I called you an... what I called you, all right?"
Castiel tries to swallow down the emotion that's blazing within him like an explosion. Anger, it is. Rage. It feels alien, like something from outside taking control of him. Dean just makes him so- "You don't even know why you should be sorry." He pushes the words out between the pinched muscles of his lips.
"Well, why don't you tell me?" Dean seems to try again to focus on Castiel with little success.
"In short words?" Castiel shakes his head in exasperation. "An obedient soldier is exactly what I should be and what I've failed to be, thanks to you."
He watches as Dean's eyes close for a few moments, Dean inhaling with a pained expression. "And I slapped you in the face with that. Okay, I hear you."
Castiel backs off as Dean's appeasing words quash the flames inside him a little.
"Do you regret it?" Dean asks softly.
"I'm not proud of it." Castiel looks down for a few moments. The shame is far from the worst of it though. He'd thought it would be, but it isn't. It's the lack of other voices in his mind, this terrible silence, that hurts the most. Sometimes the vacuum they've left inside him seems to threaten to eat him whole.
"I'm sorry," Dean says in a voice so tight it's almost inaudible.
With a shaky exhale, Castiel tries to breathe out the tension developing again in his vessel. Then he raises his head, lifting his chin. "But my only regret is that I failed to rebel sooner, soon enough that maybe you could've stopped Sam."
Dean screws up his face and looks away. "Yeah, well, that was my fuck-up."
Oh, how typical of Dean. One moment infuriatingly smug, the next wandering the shadowed ruins of his broken self-esteem."It was not," Castiel tells him fiercely. "If I'd gotten you there sooner, if I'd stopped obeying orders earlier-"
"Cas, stop it, man!" Dean raises a hand to cut him off, finally meeting Castiel's gaze. "It's done with. We've got more than enough to deal with right now without 'if only's we can't do anything about."
Castiel nods; Dean's right. He so often is -- illogical, coarse, stubborn and irreverent, but right. When all Dean's supposed elders and betters dither, time-waste, and stride confidently off down futile tangents, Dean goes straight to the heart of a matter and knows just what to do.
That's why Castiel's so prepared to follow him, even into a den of iniquity. He's not sure even now that Dean was right about that one exactly, but the end result was a happier Dean than Castiel has ever previously witnessed, and so, ultimately, it was the right thing to do. If he can only make Dean that happy again and for longer, Castiel will sing untold praises to his missing Father.
"You better not be reading my mind," Dean says, frowning at Castiel now, and Castiel realizes he's been staring again in that way that makes humans uneasy. It's useful sometimes, but not when he doesn't intend it.
"I've told you before," he reminds Dean. "I see your soul, not your thoughts." Dean's thoughts are, unfortunately, locked away in his skull where no one can understand them, frequently not even Dean himself. Once, Castiel could have forced his way in if necessary, but no longer.
"Keep it that way."
What's in Dean's thoughts that he doesn't want Castiel to see? Curiosity has always been Castiel's abiding sin. It was his curiosity about humanity as represented by Dean Winchester that started his downward slide into rebellion. He sighs softly to himself. "Let's find the disk."
They walk in opposite directions around the sides of the room. When they meet again at the halfway point, neither of them having found anything even vaguely disk-like, Dean laughs. "After all the fuss, it'll be downright hilarious if the damned thing isn't even here."
"'Hilarious' is not the word I'd use."
"Maybe you should. It'd do you good to laugh more. Or, you know, at all. If you're gonna go all plain white bread on us, you might as well experience the best bits of being human along with the crap." Dean grins at him. "We need to work on your humor, dude."
Dean's soul is calmer now, and Castiel's starting to feel something akin to shame for his loss of equanimity. "I think I may be destined to remain one of life's straight men," he says and has another try at that wry smile.
Snorting, Dean claps Castiel on the back. "It's a talent, man. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise." The smile fades quickly though, some thought process apparently darkening Dean's expression.
Together, they move to the nearest pillar and the display cases that surround it. Castiel looks down unhappily upon yet another shard of broken vase. "It's hard to believe that some of these exhibits are worthy of the amount of security here, no matter how ancient."
"You're right, of course," a voice says from behind them. "But I was hardly going to leave anything valuable here when I'd already sent out the invites to the Bring a Crowbar Party, was I?"
Castiel and Dean whirl around as one to see the demon, Crowley, standing a few feet away from them. He's leaning against a display case and throwing a gold-colored object up in the air and casually catching it. There's no question in Castiel's mind regarding what that object is.
Crowley grins at them, or at least his vessel does, and the demon inside the flesh throws back its head and laughs like the fiend it is. "Well, well, if it isn't Hardy boy the elder and the little angel who could but can't anymore. Delighted you could pop by."
"You," Castiel growls, striding towards him.
"Uh, uh, uh," Crowley scolds, waggling a finger. Castiel finds himself floating slowly backwards through the air to land softly back beside Dean. "I'd hardly have gone to this much trouble if all I'd wanted was an excuse to kill you. You do realize that, in your depleted state, attacking me would be suicide? Hmm?"
"What do you want?" Dean asks, scowling and moving to stand closer to Castiel.
"Well, it's more a question of what you want, isn't it?" Crowley throws the gold thing into the air and catches it again. It's ellipsoid in shape and roughly the size of a baseball. "The Sun Disk of Aten ringing any bells in the gray sludge you like to call a brain?"
"We're not making any deals, Crawley," Dean says, presumably getting the demon's name wrong deliberately. "Been there, done that, not doing it again."
Crowley manifests a complex expression somewhere between smirk and sympathy. "Two score years with Alistair's enough to put anyone off an honest deal. Oh, I get that; I really do. Alistair was an artist of his craft, a positive maestro, but me? I'm just a business man." He winks at them. "A very, very rich and remarkably powerful business man, but the good news for you is that I? -- want what you want." He gives them a brilliant smile, sharing it equally between them.
Castiel thinks he may be learning a new subtlety of human expression just from watching the demon. "You want Lucifer dead, the Apocalypse stopped," he says to Crowley. "Or has that part of your supposed agenda changed now?"
"Lucifer, his life and works, stopped dead, sooner rather than later, and while we're on this subject..." Crowley catches the disk again and slips it into his pants pocket. Then his whole demeanor suddenly changes, the demon roaring up inside the vessel like a flash storm. "WHAT - THE FUCK - HAPPENED? I gave you the most powerful one-on-one weapon in creation, for free, and you... blew it?"
Dean's lips are pursed. He folds his arms. "I put the damn gun to the Devil's forehead and pulled the damn trigger, douche merchant. IT DIDN'T FREAKING WELL WORK!"
Crowley blinks. "When you say 'it didn't work'...?"
"Didn't you hear?" Dean sneers. "I thought you were the master of the underground grapevine or somesuch shit. Well, here's the newsflash you missed. I shot the Devil through the head. He fell down, dead as any of us might like. Then he got up again and blasted me into a freaking tree."
"Oh." Crowley slouches back against a display case, pulling a screwed up face. "Well, that explains a lot. Mostly the annoying swarm of gnats he's been sending my way since then. Suppose I should be glad he hasn't cattle-prodded Death in my direction yet." He tuts and then shrugs. "I ask you, just what's the use in a gun that can kill anything if it can't actually kill the one thing you want it to kill?"
"Five things," Castiel says since he can see no reason to withhold the information. "He claims there are five entities the Colt can't kill, and he's one."
"One thing I'm sure of," Dean says, patting his jacket and smiling coldly at the demon, "you ain't one of the other four."
Crowley snorts and rolls his eyes. Suddenly he's behind them, the Colt in his hand. "Here's a hint, Dumb and Dumber," he says as they whirl around to see him. "You want to kill a demon of my caliber? Don't ever talk first. Empty posturing just makes you look like you should be wearing whiteface. Oh, you want this?" He lets the Colt sway from his finger through the trigger guard. "Tell you what, I'll give you back the gun too once things are all signed and sealed."
Castiel moves a hand out quickly to catch Dean's arm as he starts to surge towards Crowley. He holds Dean firmly and ignores the look of outrage being directed his way. "Maybe you could get to the point?"
"Ah, a man -- and I use the word loosely -- who understands business." Crowley slips the Colt inside his jacket. "Simply put, the disk is yours in return for a lick and a promise."
"I hope you don't mean that literally," Castiel replies, widening his eyes pointedly.
Crowley chuckles. "I'll try to ease up on the tongue just for you, angel. I need an oath from the two of you. Make it, seal it in the usual way, and the direct line to the Big Man is yours."
"Already told you," Dean growls. "No deals."
"Don't you at least want to hear the terms?" Crowley asks. "No? Oh well." He shrugs and starts to turn from them. "I won't have much trouble finding another buyer for this." He pulls the disk out of his pocket and starts to toss it in the air again as he walks away.
Castiel watches it glint in the light as it tumbles through the air. He swallows and momentarily looks down.
"Wait," he forces out, his voice low. "State your terms."
***
"Hey," Sam says as he and the motel room appear around Dean and Cas. Dean doesn't have time for social niceties right now though. He pushes off like an athlete from starting blocks and is in the bathroom with his toothbrush in his mouth in what would have to be a record time if, you know, they kept records for desperate sprints to the Colgate.
"What the hell?" He hears Sam shut the laptop and stand up.
"We got any unopened brushes?" Dean calls out, or at least attempts to with his mouth full of bristles, plastic and reassuringly minty foam.
"Huh?" Sam appears in the doorway. "Dude, brush out of mouth if you actually want me to understand you."
Irritated, Dean pulls the brush free in a spray of froth. "Cas needs a toothbrush. Give him one." Then he gets right back to a brushing so thorough it's more like a deck scrubbing.
"Why?" Sam asks, but he's already heading to his washbag.
Cas appears at the doorway. "I do not." Both Dean and Sam give him confused looks, and Cas adds, "Need a toothbrush. My powers may be failing, but I can still keep my vessel clean and microbe free."
"Don't argue," Dean tells him with another spray of foam. "Just do it. Not having you wandering around with demon cooties all over you."
Cas sighs, but he takes the new toothbrush Sam has found for him and holds it. "I don't have demon cooties, and neither do you."
"Going to tell me why either of you might have them?" Sam says, frowning.
"We were obliged to kiss the demon, Crowley," Cas says matter-of-factly. "He made a point of using his tongue with Dean."
"Christ, Cas. Like I needed to relive it." Dean pushes out another long white slug of Colgate onto his brush and puts the brush back into his mouth.
Sam's pulling a predictable face. "You were what?"
"What's the matter, Sammy?" Dean asks through his mouthful. "Scared you've lost your monopoly on evil tonsil hockey?" Seeing that Sam just stares at him with mild distaste while wiping a splutter of foam from his face, Dean doesn't think his message got through loud and clear.
"We... made a deal with the demon," Cas states, still just holding the toothbrush in its packaging. "He insisted the deal was sealed with a kiss. Apparently, that's an aspect he has no control over. I'm not sure I believe that. He seemed to enjoy kissing Dean very much."
Dean groans. He would really like everyone to stop talking about it now.
"You made a deal," Sam repeats flatly. "Are you insane?"
"Don't look at me," Dean declares, experimenting with taking the brush from his mouth to see if he feels clean yet. "Ask Nice Guy Eddie Angel there. It was his awesomely bad idea."
The bitchface to end all bitchfaces is turned on Cas. "You, an angel of the Lord, thought it was a good idea to enter into a deal with a powerful demon?" Sam shakes his head slowly as Cas fails to deny it. "Am I dreaming? Have I accidentally slipped into an alternate dimension where blue is red?"
Dean snickers. "Yeah, Sammy. You've been magicked away into some mirrorverse where, I dunno, I'm a space pirate with a dashing eyepatch, you're a girl, and Cas is rocking the devilish goatie."
"Girl?" Sam glares down sidetrack alley.
"Dude, you're already so close to being one it'd be type-casting."
"Blue is still blue," Cas says, sounding, Dean thinks, a little put out. "It was necessary to make the deal to obtain Aten's Sun Disk."
Okay, so the sidetrack detour didn't last. Sam looks like not only has he been slapped around the face by Cas, but also like he keeps getting slapped, again and again. "God, Castiel, how far have you fallen?"
"Hey!" Without even thinking, Dean puts himself between his brother and his friend. "That was out of line."
Sam gapes at him. "That was...? What? Okay, that's it. You don't get to say another word." He holds up his hand to Dean and then glares over Dean's shoulder at Cas. "Let me see if I've got this right. In return for an obscure artifact that you don't even know will work, you not only entered into a deal with a senior demon, but you dragged my dumbass brother into it with you? Seriously? Dean? In a deal with the king of the crossroad demons? I... I... How the HELL could you do this, Castiel?"
Dean opens his mouth to defend both Cas and himself and finds Sam's huge hand in his face again. While he's trying to escape it, he hears Cas say calmly, "I understand your concern, Sam, but it's unfounded. This was not a deal for souls, merely a... a mutual non-aggression pact."
That seems to take the defcon level down a notch or two and moves the Goliath palm from out of Dean's vision. "Like a... an alliance?" Sam asks eventually, sounding calmer and almost hopeful.
"No," Dean says bluntly before spitting into the sink. "He's a demon and therefore an evil, lying scumbag, not to mention a freaking pervert. He's not to be trusted for a second. That douche is no ally of mine." He pauses and then adds, "Or of Cas'," for good measure, and then, "Or yours," because he hadn't liked that note of hope in Sam's voice. The last thing he wants is Sammy all pally with a demon again.
Sam blinks at him for a few seconds before turning back to Cas. "What were the terms?"
"We agreed not to deliberately cause, or to attempt to cause, either directly or indirectly, harm upon each other until the Apocalypse is over. The penalty for breaking the contract is simply the end of the contract, which would seem to make the whole thing pointless, but it was all he wanted from us in return for the disk. There was no small print. I checked carefully."
"Huh." Sam's thoughtful expression is turned back to Dean. "So all this dental hygiene urgency is because you kissed a male demon?"
Dean screws up his face at his brother. "Dude, he kissed me. Hell, he went to town in my mouth, and his hands were fricking everywhere. There's no way you would've reacted any different even with your major demon kink."
"Yeah, anytime you wanna quit making comments like that would be a good time."
"What can I say, Sammy? I tell it like I see it."
Sam purses his lips and heads back to his laptop. He says nothing more for some time.
Hours later, Dean is beginning to regret pissing off Sam. He's increasingly sure his brother's deliberately drawing out the research he's gotten Cas all wrapped up in, and Dean is finding it increasingly hard not to demand Sammy gets his own fricking friends and stops stealing Dean's. Cas and Sam have been poring over books and parchments since they left the bathroom. Sam has his laptop open, and Cas is sitting way too close so he can look at the screen too while they discuss... oh, something hieroglyphic-y or some other mystical bullcrap to do with the stupid disk. Dean stopped listening an hour and a rerun from season two of Dr Sexy M.D. ago.
"Can't we just do this already?" he asks and not for the first time. He'll even admit to himself that he's starting to sound whiny.
"This isn't something we can afford to mess up," Cas tells him seriously, like he hasn't already said that three times already in slightly different words. At least Cas is patient with him; Sam isn't even bothering to answer anymore. "We have to make sure we don't cause inadvertent offense by getting the ritual wrong."
Dean stands up from where he's been couch-potatoing on the sofa for so long now that he's all but growing sprouts. He wanders over to the table where they're working. "Dude, either you're worthy or you're not. God's not gonna delete you from history just because you forgot to dot an 'i' somewhere."
Cas tips his head to one side. "You could be right," he says after a few moments. "Sam, maybe we should-"
"Don't give in to his attention ploys, Cas," Sam says without looking up. "You know as well as I do, we have to get this right." Dean tries his very best to burn holes through the top of Sam's skull with his eyes, but sadly the lasers don't seem to be working today.
Cas gives him a vaguely sympathetic look. "I'm sorry, Dean. I... I don't want to be in a hurry to leave you."
Dean knows he's having his own words quoted back at him, and he flinches a little. In truth, some the antsyness he's currently feeling could be worry about Cas. Too often recently, it's been Cas taking the role of fall guy in their encounters with the enemy or even run of the mill monsters, and the guy's not exactly indestructible these days, even if he still likes to act as if he is.
Dean hasn't forgotten the Cas of the awesomely bad future that will never, ever happen, at least if he has anything to say about it. That Cas had been so lost and broken and yet still following Dean blindly. No, not blindly. There's no doubt in Dean's mind that Cas knew he was heading to his death at the end there. Hell, it had probably been a relief to him, knowing it would all finally be over. Dean never wants to see his Cas grow like that, so lost in a haze of drugs and sex and pain.
He wishes now he'd never taken Cas to that stupid brothel. It could've started something, some tumbling down there'd be no coming back from. It was as much a mistake as letting Sam go off on his own for those months. Oh yeah, Zach's guided tour of Dire Future Consequences Land totally opened Dean's eyes, just not in the way Zachariah wanted. Because now Dean knows two things for certain -- one, he and Sam have to stay together, stay wrapped right up in each other, no matter what, and two, Castiel has to stay pure of heart and purpose.
Typically of Dean's fucked up life or psyche or something, it was only after deciding this that Dean finally realized just how he was starting to feel about Cas, when an incredibly vivid and detailed dream made it so obvious that even he had to wake up and smell the... wet sheets. He's pretty sure he's gonna be remembering that dream for years during whatever rare alone times he gets because Jesus, mind-blowing doesn't even begin to cover it. And it's been no good yelling inside his head that he's not gay, and that anyway, Cas is an angel of the Lord, for crissakes. It makes no difference to anything. So Dean's just given up now, is just letting the feelings be there, but they're not getting out of his head, not ever.
He has a feeling, a strong feeling, that he could get more if he wanted it. He got Cas to hook up with a whore, didn't he? Hell, future-Cas had still been with him, following him, even when Dean had all but lost his humanity in that nightmare of a future. Yeah, he's pretty sure he could persuade Cas into almost anything if he wanted to, but that's not good. That's the opposite of good. 'Cause it means he's the one who's got to keep Cas all pure and shiny like a good angel should be. He's the only one who could, and Dean's the freaking poster boy for impure. Dean's as sullied and messed up as they come. Thanks to Hell, there's almost no kind of depravity that he hasn't tried at least once, and he's the one to keep the angel pearly white? It'll be like trying to wipe a plate clean with a cloth he's just found in the sewer.
And all the time that he's trying to do this impossible task, he's also trying to stop himself from getting fixated on Cas' lower lip, or his graceful hands, or how it feels every time Cas gets right in his space. God, when Cas had pushed him into that display cabinet earlier... Dean has to remember now to stare at attractive chicks, just so Sam doesn't notice something's wrong. He hardly even sees them in reality, his head is so full of Cas, Cas, Cas, and he hopes to God Cas is telling the truth when he says he can't read Dean's mind 'cause if he ever does, Dean is so, so paddleless in a freaking ocean of shit.
"What's wrong?"
He shakes himself out of his thoughts to find Cas frowning at him, and he can feel himself blushing. Fuck that.
"Not a thing," he claims. "Not a damn thing." With a pointed sigh, he puts his beer bottle down on the table and picks up the disk that's the cause of all this fuss. It looks like a giant golden M&M. It's too light to be solid metal but too heavy to be hollow, so maybe there's something inside, and it undoes somehow. He starts to try to unscrew the top of the disk from the bottom. Nothing moves. He holds it closer and peers at it, trying to find any kind of line to show where two sides may be joined.
"Dean, don't do that," Cas says urgently after a few moments, having apparently only just noticed. "Anything could happen."
Guiltily, Dean puts the disk down again more carefully. "Right. Well, I'm no help here; that's obvious. Guess I'll head up the road a way and see if I can find a place to hustle some pool. Have fun with your books, guys, and try not to get so dull you stop reflecting light at all. I'd keep tripping over you." He heads to get his jacket from where he threw it earlier.
"Jeez, you're being an ass today," Sam says. "What's gotten into you? Other than some demon tongue, that is."
"Ha ha, Sammy. That's so totally hilarious. Coming from the founder of the demon diet plan and all."
"Nice," Sam says flatly, his mouth an equally flat line when Dean turns around. "Thanks."
"Any time, Sammy. You know you can rely on me."
So Dean heads out to the nearest bar, doesn't get in any games of pool, but he does drink what might be considered too much beer for this time in the afternoon if, you know, you're a weak-livered douchenozzle. He manages not to think about angels hardly at all. Long enough, in fact, to get the number of the busty brunette bringing him his beer. He may even call her later if things haven't livened up back at chez geek.
He's hardly finished that thought when his phone rings. Sam tells him to meet them at the deserted house that they scoped out yesterday. With a last wink and grin at 'Sylvie', Dean pays his tab and heads out into the chill wind that seems to have blown up from nowhere. He makes a detour to a pizza joint and a corner shop for supplies, but then heads right there.
When he opens the door to the house and goes in, he sees immediately that things have progressed a long way from laptop-staring. The kitchen is full of mouldering and thoroughly unkitcheny furniture all stacked up, and the whole of the large main room has been cleared. Sam's at the far end of that room. He has a glass bowl of something orange in his hands and is pressing into it with the butt end of a hunting knife. Cas is on his knees on the floor inside a large circle drawn in thick lines of some kind of reddy orange powder. There's a heady stink in the air that maybe comes from it, like Indian restaurant meets high church incense.
"Hello, Dean," Cas says. He's lost the ever-present trench somewhere, as well as his suit jacket and tie. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled up, and he looks... Yeah, Dean doesn't need to be thinking about that right now.
He puts the pizza boxes and bags of beer on the floor beside the door, frowning as a floorboard partially lifts from the weight of them. He presses it back down again with his boot heel. "This mean you're finally done with the books?" he asks, stepping carefully into the circle -- necessary if he wants to get anywhere in the room bar the way back out. He tries to keep his gaze firmly above Cas' shoulder line, but he can't help noticing his amulet dangling free of Castiel's shirt while he draws.
"Yes," Cas replies, sounding pleased. "We'll soon be ready to make our first attempt."
Dean nods and then looks over at the safer prospect of Sam. "Pizza for you here, bro. Plenty of gross green crap on it, just the way you like."
"Thanks." Sam smiles over at him in a way that makes it obvious Dean's earlier transgressions have been forgiven. Yeah, he knows he should lay off the demon blood jibes. He seriously means to, but they keep slipping out when he's not looking. He smiles back, the beer he's drunk helping make the smile gentle. He hopes Sam will get the unspoken apology. Sam just frowns down at the bowl he's holding. "I'll have to wash real well before I eat. This stuff is all kinds of toxic."
"Lovely." Dean looks down to where Cas is carefully spilling more powder to form a complex symbol by the rim of the circle.
"If this works," Cas says, "I'll be able to remove all trace of the remaining incense once we're done."
"What is it?" Dean asks, crouching down beside Cas to look closer.
"Gamboge and white copal resins," Cas tells him as he finishes the sign and sits back on his haunches, "mixed with red lead, cinnabar, some gold dust, saffron, and a lot of Indonesian mace as a base. We've had to make a few careful substitutions from the original recipe. They're all components associated with my Father in his aspect as the great sun god."
Dean pulls a face. "Mace as in mace spray?"
"As in the spice, it's from the nutmeg plant." Cas tips his head to the side, studying Dean in that way that does things to Dean's insides. "So that Sam can take time to eat, would you help me with the final preparations, Dean?"
"Sure. What d'you need me to do?"
As Dean watches with increasingly boggled eyes, Cas puts his fingers to his shirt and starts to unbutton it. "Two symbols need to be painted onto my skin, one on my chest and one on my back."
Oh Joseph, Mary and the donkey, what has he said yes to now? "You want me to paint on you?" he asks in a thin voice as Cas stands and pulls the shirt from his pants before slipping it off. Cas is lean but not skinny in a weedy way, and Dean thanks God that Jimmy wasn't resurrected with his ex-body when Cas came back from the smitted. Probably not the most tactful of things to thank the Almighty for, but at least Dean doesn't have to feel guilty about perving on the poor guy.
"Dean?" Cas says carefully after a few moments, and Dean drags his gaze up from the thin line of hair that leads down into Cas' pants.
"Yeah?"
"Would you prefer it if Sam did this for me?"
Sam snorts as he strides over to the two of them. "I think even Dean can draw symbols, Cas, bear of very little brain though he is."
"Dean is far from stupid, Sam," Cas says in his stern teacher voice. "You shouldn't say things like that." Both brothers stare at Cas for a few moments, but Dean's smiling. His angel stood up for him, just another small proof that Cas is awesome.
Of course, now he has to paint the damn symbols. He gets to his feet. "What am I painting with?"
Sam passes him the bowl, which contains a grainy paste more or less the same color as the powder Cas has been using. "Here. You can use your fingers, just wash them well afterwards. Kinda important this stuff goes nowhere near your mouth. Talking of which..." He heads off to the doorway and presumably the bathroom beyond. There's no mains water, but they discovered earlier that there's still plenty in the attic tank that runs to the hot water faucet.
Dean stares down dubiously at the red paste. If this ritual doesn't kill Cas, will the toxic waste they're playing with do it instead?
"Everything will be all right, Dean," Cas says gently. "There's no need to worry."
"Who's worried?" Dean sticks his fingers in the gunk as if he does this kind of thing everyday. He looks up and winks at Cas. "Just don't wanna have to break in a new angel to our way of doing things, that's all." Something uncertain flickers over Cas' face, and Dean sighs to himself. "Joke, Cas. Just like it was when Sam called me Pooh Bear back there."
A frown appears. "Sometimes I find it very hard to tell the difference between your 'jokes' and your passive aggressive assertions, especially when you're speaking to each other."
Dean blinks. Well, that told him. "It can be a narrow dividing line, I guess. Now what's this symbol look like?"
"Like the one on the floor. You just need to copy it twice."
He studies Cas' chest, trying to see it like a canvas or something and not skin that he never really thought he'd get to see, let alone touch. "Any rules on size or position?"
"None. Just do it, Dean."
He lifts sticky fingers from the bowl, and looking back and forth between skin and floorboards, starts to finger paint. He draws large, covering the width of Cas' chest. It's easier not to get distracted than he thought it would be, his worry about copying it wrong and hurting Cas enough to overwhelm the erotic thrill of what's basically a forbidden touch.
Still, he can't help noticing a few things, like how smooth Cas' skin is and how warm. As a sticky-out bit of the symbol pulls his fingertips over the top of one of Cas' nipples, the delicate skin there puckers and pulls tight. Dean freezes for a second or so, but then carries on. He's not sure he's ever touched another male like this except for Sam -- caring for him when they were kids, sewing him up after yet another monster-related injury as adults -- but it doesn't feel as weird as it maybe should. Because it's Cas, and the thing about Cas is he just accepts Dean, almost unconditionally, and so that makes it easy to do it for Cas in return.
It's a pretty amazing gift to be given really. Cas has seen Dean at his absolute worst and yet... Dean shakes his head as he moves round to Cas' back. "Hope this works for you, man."
The room is quiet enough that he hears Cas inhale deeply before talking. "I hope so too. I would like..."
After a pause, Dean asks, "What would you like?"
Cas snorts softly, his ribs moving under Dean's touch. "So much, it seems. How human of me."
"Yeah, that's what drags us puny mortals through this crappy life: our wants, our ambitions and dreams. It's the carrot that keeps us pulling the cart. Some of us even get them eventually. Not often, but yeah, can happen. There, you're done." Dean puts a hand on Cas' hips and turns him. Cas has very sharp hips, he discovers, before letting go and stepping back.
"Thank you, Dean." Cas manages an understated smile, and from Cas that feels like a huge grin, so Dean rewards him with a warm grin of his own, looking him up and down.
"It's a good look on you, man. If, you know, cold." He winks then turns away before his grin can get either heated or sappy. It could go either way, right now. God, what the hell is wrong with him? He can't remember having a crush this strong since he was fourteen, and never, ever, on someone without boobs. As Sam returns to the room, Dean slips out so he can wash his fingers clean of the red stain.
The water swirls around the sink looking like that wrong colored blood you get in some old horror films, way too much pink in it to be real. Dean scrubs until it runs clear and his hands are going kind of numb in the cold water.
Back in the main room, Sam's eating pizza, crouching near the door, and Cas is standing quietly in the middle of the orange circle with his arms slightly lifted to the sides.
"Dude, you're gonna freeze," Dean tells him. "What's next? Let's get this done."
"I just need the disk," Cas says, walking closer to Dean, who can see the lean muscles moving below the painted skin. It's hard to lift his gaze. Cas stops by the edge of the circle. "It's in the bag by the kitchen, wrapped in one of your T-shirts."
One of his? Typical. "I'll get it," Dean says, heading to do just that. "Don't worry, I'll be careful."
The disk is exactly where Cas said. Dean unwraps it carefully, making a mental note to flick Sammy's ear for using his Master of Puppets tee. Holding the disk securely, Dean closes his eyes and mutters a short prayer to a deity he's far from sure he believes in even now.
"Hey, listen up, big man. Way to be a bad dad. Castiel's the best by far of your lousy kids, the only one who gives a fuck about obeying your will. I know that if you won't listen to him, no way are you gonna listen to me, but I'm saying it anyway. He deserves some kind of reward for his loyalty, for what it's lost him, and, oh Hell, can't you at least give him a pat on the back for once? Tell him 'well done, son, you did good'? Is that really too much to ask? Oh, and don't blame him for any disrespect I'm showing here. It's not his fault I'm a dick. He's not. He's awesome."
Sighing, Dean straightens up and heads back to the main room.
"Hey, Cas," he starts as he enters the room, but he doesn't get a chance to finish what he started since his foot catches in something and sends him flying forward into the powder circle. The last thing he sees is the golden disk leaving his outstretched hand and spinning through the air. Then there's a wooshing noise and a flare of impossibly bright light, and Dean knows nothing more.
***
Part Two
Title: Heart of Glass (1/2)
Recipient: c00kie
Author: omphalos
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Mild blasphemy?
Spoilers: Aired episodes.
Summary: He's the one who was punished, severely, for his feelings for Dean, but who still gave up everything for him in the end. Surely there should exist between them a better level of comprehension than this. He wants -- no, he needs -- to understand Dean.
Author notes: A huge thank you to my beta-readers, who I will name after the big reveal. This was a pinch hit, one I was very happy to take on. C00kie, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! :)
"So, this disk thing," Dean asks in a low voice, "you really think it could work?"
"No." Castiel answers without much thought, his attention elsewhere as he feels out through the door with his mind, disarming every security device and magical warding he can find. "I think I'm clutching at dried grass."
"Straws?" He can feel Dean staring at him. "So why are we even here?"
"Because all I have to clutch at is straws, Dean, and this is the longest straw available. At the least, it could make me useful to you again."
"How many times have I gotta tell you that-"
"Has your denial of plain facts ever changed anything?" Castiel hears the irritation in his own voice and forces it back to a more even tone. It doesn't help that his reaction when finding himself exhibiting human annoyance is generally to feel yet more human style annoyance. "The longer I'm cut off from the Host, the closer I become to an unskilled human, the kind of person you do your best to protect, not work along side."
"Dude, you're not unskilled. You've got more languages and lore stored in that fluffy head of yours than's on the whole fricking Internet." He feels Dean's hand on his shoulder for a few seconds before Dean starts striding about again in the small space of this corridor. "You've still got plenty of mojo anyway. You got us here, didn't you? You're undoing all the security shit okay? You're still way on the plus side of the awesome scale, Cas."
Fluffy? Castiel's pretty sure that adjective doesn't fit any part of him. Still, it isn't entirely unpleasant having his self-doubt blasted by Dean's confidence in him, however unrealistic. He disengages the final electrical defense with a touch of deft telekinesis. "It's only a matter of time," he says with a pleasing level of calmness, "before I lose even those abilities."
He hears Dean shuffle around on the stone floor, and Castiel returns his focus to his immediate surroundings to see Dean looking at him with an unidentifiable expression. Unidentifiable, at least, for Castiel, who has long since decided that the more he 'hangs' with humans, the less he understands them. Or maybe that's just Dean Winchester, who's somehow a little more human than most humans, as if the qualities of humanity are somehow distilled and condensed within him.
It's true that Castiel frequently and increasingly turns to Sam for translation services when Dean manages to baffle him yet again. It's... frustrating. He is the one who carried Dean's shredded soul from Perdition, who patched it up to the best of his ability and reformed a healthy body around it. He's the one who was punished, severely, for his feelings for Dean, but who still gave up everything for him in the end. Surely there should exist between them a better level of comprehension than this. He wants -- no, he needs -- to understand Dean.
After a few moments spent openly staring at each other, the all too human Dean sighs and looks away, his gaze skidding across the plain cream walls of this corridor, the only exterior access way to the underground vault they've come to plunder. "Explain to me again," Dean asks, "just what this sun disk mirror thing can do? Or maybe do?"
"Aten's Sun Disk is rumored," Castiel stresses, "to be a hotline to Heaven, among other things, which, if so, could allow me to 'recharge my batteries' as Sam put it. It also may have the capacity to create a direct line to my Father, which is the reason I've been seeking it. More generally, it's a lens that's said to allow messages and signals to be sent over great distances and through otherwise impassible barriers."
"Yeah, got that, celestial broadband. But there was more than that when Sam told it, something about a siege?"
"A siege perilous."
"Which is...?"
Castiel sighs. He'd suspected Dean hadn't understood that part. "It's an analogy Sam drew from British mythology, meaning a challenge that will either prove your worth once and for all or kill you. The same papyrus that speaks of the powers of the disk mentions also that if someone deemed unworthy attempts to use the disk to talk to God, they will be... unmade."
"Unmade as in killed?"
"Unmade as in removed from time and space completely. They will never have existed."
"You're kidding me."
"I am not."
Dean folds his arms, his expression belligerent. "No way did Sam tell us that part."
"He did, but I suspect him of deliberate obfuscation since his wording was far from clear, and he seemed to wait to tell us until your attention was largely elsewhere." Castiel pulls up the corners of his lips in what he suspects is an entirely inadequate wry smile. "There were women with large breasts on the television, if I recall..."
"Right." Dean seems to be fighting a grin at the memory, but the frown wins out. He leans back against the wall by the door. "So, no way are we doing this. You might as well quit breaking into Fort Knox here; we're heading out."
Castiel tips his head slightly and studies Dean. Sam clearly anticipated this reaction from his brother, yet it still mystifies Castiel. "You don't have to accompany me if you don't wish to," he says slowly, "but I'm not... 'heading out'."
Dean raises his gaze upwards and to the side, clearly exasperated with Castiel. "Look. You don't get it," he says. "I'm not gonna let you kill yourself just so you can be more 'useful'. Fuck that, Cas! I wish, I really wish, you weren't losing your mojo, man. I hate that that's happening to you 'cause of me. But I'd rather have you completely freaking powerless than dead. Worse still, never having existed at all!"
"You wouldn't remember ever knowing me. Another angel would have rescued you from Hell."
"Fuck that!" Dean reiterates fiercely. He seems to be growing increasingly upset, his folded arms having given way to the apparent need to gesticulate. "Look, you're the one who told me you weren't a tool, a hammer or whatever, so why the hell do you keep trying to treat yourself like you are one? You're worth more than that to us, Cas. In case you haven't noticed, we're not exactly awash in friends and allies, and... Well, don't be in such a goddamn hurry to leave us, okay?"
Dean's gaze slides away from Castiel's as he finishes talking, and Castiel wonders what it is that Dean isn't saying. He's sure there's something.
"I need to do this, Dean." Because it really is that simple. "Is it your belief that I'm unworthy to speak with my Father?"
"I never said that." Dean's reply comes gratifyingly fast. "If anyone's worthy, it's you. You're the only one of his dickish kids who's even trying to do the right thing. But, Cas, we don't know for sure that that's even what this stupid disk does. Some Ancient Egyptian equivalent of the Weekly World News is a long way off what I call trustworthy lore!"
"The scroll has a little more more credence to it than that," Castiel says gently, looking deeper into Dean's unsettled soul for clues. "We take risks every day. Every fight we enter into could end up with one or all of us dead, but we still do it. Why is that, Dean?"
"Kill or be killed?" The answer sounds more than a little flippant.
"And when it isn't? When it's a fight we could avoid if we wanted?"
Dean shrugs. "To help people, to draw a line through another name on the long list of evil sons of bitches needing ganking." He sighs heavily, tipping his head back against the wall. "I know what you're getting at, but there's a difference."
"There isn't for me." Castiel puts his hand on the door handle, but then pauses. "I consider this a risk worth taking, but if you don't, you shouldn't be here. I'll take you back to your brother."
"No way!" Dean backs away from him, holding up his hands. "Don't you dare bench me. You're not doing this alone."
Sometimes Dean doesn't make any sense at all. Castiel sighs softly to himself and gestures at the door. "Then shall we?"
Dean shrugs and moves forward again. Castiel opens the door, and together they go into what turns out to be a very large space with strip lighting, a low ceiling, and many square pillars. The floor's covered in a cream-colored padded linoleum, and the walls painted almost the same color. All around the walls and around each pillar are uniform display cases made from reddish wood and glass. There's a smell of something sharp and man-made.
"We can still talk," Castiel says, possibly unnecessarily. "I've disarmed all the sensors in here, and the nearest living thing is miles away."
Dean grunts and strides out into the space, pulling a face at whatever is in the first case he looks down upon. "So what's this Ancient Egyptian game of Russian roulette look like?"
"Like a small polished gold disk with hieroglyphics around the circumference, possibly in some sort of setting. Dean, do you really think I'd risk my life unnecessarily?" Castiel asks as he watches Dean move around. "It was given back to me for a reason, and I-"
"Whatever." Dean waves a dismissive hand back at Castiel without looking around. "You wanna play with possibly evil artifacts, it's no skin off my back." Castiel finds his lips pursing.
He tries again, stalking after Dean. "Whatever else it is, Aten's Disk is not a demonic artifact. 'Aten' is simply the name the Ancient Egyptians of a certain era gave to my Father."
"Right," Dean says in a way that's only one step up from 'whatever'. "And he's not just Satan with his hat off."
"Right," Castiel repeats firmly, coming to stand behind him. "Etymologically, 'Satan' derives from a Semitic root meaning 'accuser'. This itself derives from the Babylo-"
"Cas!" Dean turns around and holds his hand up, flat palm only a few inches from Castiel's face. "Do we really have to have the Conversation?"
Knowing he's going to regret asking, Castiel nonetheless asks, "What conversation?" as he carefully pushes Dean's hand aside.
"The Rules Conversation." Dean uses his still raised hand to count off the numbers. "One: no doomed to failure attempts to educate me. Two: no unnecessary riffing on subjects so old, dry and dead they don't even need to be salted and burned to stop them from walking around. Three: no words longer than three syllables. In short, stick to the point and make the point clear."
"'Unnecessary' has five syllables," Castiel points out, turning his back on Dean and walking away, starting his own hunt for the correct display case. He's annoyed with himself again, with his reaction to Dean's current attitude. It... hurts. Why is it that he finds human qualities in Dean so fascinating, yet in himself so off-putting? He thinks that what he's currently experiencing may be the sting of rejection. He doesn't like the sensation at all.
"I never said the rules applied to me." Dean sounds... smug? "Just angels. And occasionally little brothers."
Castiel should never have told Dean he was free to talk during this illicit activity. "Maybe I have rules too," he says, feeling the muscles of his face have become taut.
"Yeah, well, good luck with that. You're the obedient little soldier boy in this partnership, dude. I'm the rebel with a capital-C cause."
Moving faster than Dean's human eyes will be able to process, Castiel backs Dean into a display case, hard, the metal of Dean's jacket pinging against the glass. "Have you forgotten what I did for you, or do you just not care?" he demands. "Do you see my sacrifices as your God-given right? To be presumed on, not thanked for?"
"I said thank you," Dean says, trying and failing to meet Castiel's eyes. His soul is full of panic suddenly. "Kinda. Look, I'm sorry I called you an... what I called you, all right?"
Castiel tries to swallow down the emotion that's blazing within him like an explosion. Anger, it is. Rage. It feels alien, like something from outside taking control of him. Dean just makes him so- "You don't even know why you should be sorry." He pushes the words out between the pinched muscles of his lips.
"Well, why don't you tell me?" Dean seems to try again to focus on Castiel with little success.
"In short words?" Castiel shakes his head in exasperation. "An obedient soldier is exactly what I should be and what I've failed to be, thanks to you."
He watches as Dean's eyes close for a few moments, Dean inhaling with a pained expression. "And I slapped you in the face with that. Okay, I hear you."
Castiel backs off as Dean's appeasing words quash the flames inside him a little.
"Do you regret it?" Dean asks softly.
"I'm not proud of it." Castiel looks down for a few moments. The shame is far from the worst of it though. He'd thought it would be, but it isn't. It's the lack of other voices in his mind, this terrible silence, that hurts the most. Sometimes the vacuum they've left inside him seems to threaten to eat him whole.
"I'm sorry," Dean says in a voice so tight it's almost inaudible.
With a shaky exhale, Castiel tries to breathe out the tension developing again in his vessel. Then he raises his head, lifting his chin. "But my only regret is that I failed to rebel sooner, soon enough that maybe you could've stopped Sam."
Dean screws up his face and looks away. "Yeah, well, that was my fuck-up."
Oh, how typical of Dean. One moment infuriatingly smug, the next wandering the shadowed ruins of his broken self-esteem."It was not," Castiel tells him fiercely. "If I'd gotten you there sooner, if I'd stopped obeying orders earlier-"
"Cas, stop it, man!" Dean raises a hand to cut him off, finally meeting Castiel's gaze. "It's done with. We've got more than enough to deal with right now without 'if only's we can't do anything about."
Castiel nods; Dean's right. He so often is -- illogical, coarse, stubborn and irreverent, but right. When all Dean's supposed elders and betters dither, time-waste, and stride confidently off down futile tangents, Dean goes straight to the heart of a matter and knows just what to do.
That's why Castiel's so prepared to follow him, even into a den of iniquity. He's not sure even now that Dean was right about that one exactly, but the end result was a happier Dean than Castiel has ever previously witnessed, and so, ultimately, it was the right thing to do. If he can only make Dean that happy again and for longer, Castiel will sing untold praises to his missing Father.
"You better not be reading my mind," Dean says, frowning at Castiel now, and Castiel realizes he's been staring again in that way that makes humans uneasy. It's useful sometimes, but not when he doesn't intend it.
"I've told you before," he reminds Dean. "I see your soul, not your thoughts." Dean's thoughts are, unfortunately, locked away in his skull where no one can understand them, frequently not even Dean himself. Once, Castiel could have forced his way in if necessary, but no longer.
"Keep it that way."
What's in Dean's thoughts that he doesn't want Castiel to see? Curiosity has always been Castiel's abiding sin. It was his curiosity about humanity as represented by Dean Winchester that started his downward slide into rebellion. He sighs softly to himself. "Let's find the disk."
They walk in opposite directions around the sides of the room. When they meet again at the halfway point, neither of them having found anything even vaguely disk-like, Dean laughs. "After all the fuss, it'll be downright hilarious if the damned thing isn't even here."
"'Hilarious' is not the word I'd use."
"Maybe you should. It'd do you good to laugh more. Or, you know, at all. If you're gonna go all plain white bread on us, you might as well experience the best bits of being human along with the crap." Dean grins at him. "We need to work on your humor, dude."
Dean's soul is calmer now, and Castiel's starting to feel something akin to shame for his loss of equanimity. "I think I may be destined to remain one of life's straight men," he says and has another try at that wry smile.
Snorting, Dean claps Castiel on the back. "It's a talent, man. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise." The smile fades quickly though, some thought process apparently darkening Dean's expression.
Together, they move to the nearest pillar and the display cases that surround it. Castiel looks down unhappily upon yet another shard of broken vase. "It's hard to believe that some of these exhibits are worthy of the amount of security here, no matter how ancient."
"You're right, of course," a voice says from behind them. "But I was hardly going to leave anything valuable here when I'd already sent out the invites to the Bring a Crowbar Party, was I?"
Castiel and Dean whirl around as one to see the demon, Crowley, standing a few feet away from them. He's leaning against a display case and throwing a gold-colored object up in the air and casually catching it. There's no question in Castiel's mind regarding what that object is.
Crowley grins at them, or at least his vessel does, and the demon inside the flesh throws back its head and laughs like the fiend it is. "Well, well, if it isn't Hardy boy the elder and the little angel who could but can't anymore. Delighted you could pop by."
"You," Castiel growls, striding towards him.
"Uh, uh, uh," Crowley scolds, waggling a finger. Castiel finds himself floating slowly backwards through the air to land softly back beside Dean. "I'd hardly have gone to this much trouble if all I'd wanted was an excuse to kill you. You do realize that, in your depleted state, attacking me would be suicide? Hmm?"
"What do you want?" Dean asks, scowling and moving to stand closer to Castiel.
"Well, it's more a question of what you want, isn't it?" Crowley throws the gold thing into the air and catches it again. It's ellipsoid in shape and roughly the size of a baseball. "The Sun Disk of Aten ringing any bells in the gray sludge you like to call a brain?"
"We're not making any deals, Crawley," Dean says, presumably getting the demon's name wrong deliberately. "Been there, done that, not doing it again."
Crowley manifests a complex expression somewhere between smirk and sympathy. "Two score years with Alistair's enough to put anyone off an honest deal. Oh, I get that; I really do. Alistair was an artist of his craft, a positive maestro, but me? I'm just a business man." He winks at them. "A very, very rich and remarkably powerful business man, but the good news for you is that I? -- want what you want." He gives them a brilliant smile, sharing it equally between them.
Castiel thinks he may be learning a new subtlety of human expression just from watching the demon. "You want Lucifer dead, the Apocalypse stopped," he says to Crowley. "Or has that part of your supposed agenda changed now?"
"Lucifer, his life and works, stopped dead, sooner rather than later, and while we're on this subject..." Crowley catches the disk again and slips it into his pants pocket. Then his whole demeanor suddenly changes, the demon roaring up inside the vessel like a flash storm. "WHAT - THE FUCK - HAPPENED? I gave you the most powerful one-on-one weapon in creation, for free, and you... blew it?"
Dean's lips are pursed. He folds his arms. "I put the damn gun to the Devil's forehead and pulled the damn trigger, douche merchant. IT DIDN'T FREAKING WELL WORK!"
Crowley blinks. "When you say 'it didn't work'...?"
"Didn't you hear?" Dean sneers. "I thought you were the master of the underground grapevine or somesuch shit. Well, here's the newsflash you missed. I shot the Devil through the head. He fell down, dead as any of us might like. Then he got up again and blasted me into a freaking tree."
"Oh." Crowley slouches back against a display case, pulling a screwed up face. "Well, that explains a lot. Mostly the annoying swarm of gnats he's been sending my way since then. Suppose I should be glad he hasn't cattle-prodded Death in my direction yet." He tuts and then shrugs. "I ask you, just what's the use in a gun that can kill anything if it can't actually kill the one thing you want it to kill?"
"Five things," Castiel says since he can see no reason to withhold the information. "He claims there are five entities the Colt can't kill, and he's one."
"One thing I'm sure of," Dean says, patting his jacket and smiling coldly at the demon, "you ain't one of the other four."
Crowley snorts and rolls his eyes. Suddenly he's behind them, the Colt in his hand. "Here's a hint, Dumb and Dumber," he says as they whirl around to see him. "You want to kill a demon of my caliber? Don't ever talk first. Empty posturing just makes you look like you should be wearing whiteface. Oh, you want this?" He lets the Colt sway from his finger through the trigger guard. "Tell you what, I'll give you back the gun too once things are all signed and sealed."
Castiel moves a hand out quickly to catch Dean's arm as he starts to surge towards Crowley. He holds Dean firmly and ignores the look of outrage being directed his way. "Maybe you could get to the point?"
"Ah, a man -- and I use the word loosely -- who understands business." Crowley slips the Colt inside his jacket. "Simply put, the disk is yours in return for a lick and a promise."
"I hope you don't mean that literally," Castiel replies, widening his eyes pointedly.
Crowley chuckles. "I'll try to ease up on the tongue just for you, angel. I need an oath from the two of you. Make it, seal it in the usual way, and the direct line to the Big Man is yours."
"Already told you," Dean growls. "No deals."
"Don't you at least want to hear the terms?" Crowley asks. "No? Oh well." He shrugs and starts to turn from them. "I won't have much trouble finding another buyer for this." He pulls the disk out of his pocket and starts to toss it in the air again as he walks away.
Castiel watches it glint in the light as it tumbles through the air. He swallows and momentarily looks down.
"Wait," he forces out, his voice low. "State your terms."
***
"Hey," Sam says as he and the motel room appear around Dean and Cas. Dean doesn't have time for social niceties right now though. He pushes off like an athlete from starting blocks and is in the bathroom with his toothbrush in his mouth in what would have to be a record time if, you know, they kept records for desperate sprints to the Colgate.
"What the hell?" He hears Sam shut the laptop and stand up.
"We got any unopened brushes?" Dean calls out, or at least attempts to with his mouth full of bristles, plastic and reassuringly minty foam.
"Huh?" Sam appears in the doorway. "Dude, brush out of mouth if you actually want me to understand you."
Irritated, Dean pulls the brush free in a spray of froth. "Cas needs a toothbrush. Give him one." Then he gets right back to a brushing so thorough it's more like a deck scrubbing.
"Why?" Sam asks, but he's already heading to his washbag.
Cas appears at the doorway. "I do not." Both Dean and Sam give him confused looks, and Cas adds, "Need a toothbrush. My powers may be failing, but I can still keep my vessel clean and microbe free."
"Don't argue," Dean tells him with another spray of foam. "Just do it. Not having you wandering around with demon cooties all over you."
Cas sighs, but he takes the new toothbrush Sam has found for him and holds it. "I don't have demon cooties, and neither do you."
"Going to tell me why either of you might have them?" Sam says, frowning.
"We were obliged to kiss the demon, Crowley," Cas says matter-of-factly. "He made a point of using his tongue with Dean."
"Christ, Cas. Like I needed to relive it." Dean pushes out another long white slug of Colgate onto his brush and puts the brush back into his mouth.
Sam's pulling a predictable face. "You were what?"
"What's the matter, Sammy?" Dean asks through his mouthful. "Scared you've lost your monopoly on evil tonsil hockey?" Seeing that Sam just stares at him with mild distaste while wiping a splutter of foam from his face, Dean doesn't think his message got through loud and clear.
"We... made a deal with the demon," Cas states, still just holding the toothbrush in its packaging. "He insisted the deal was sealed with a kiss. Apparently, that's an aspect he has no control over. I'm not sure I believe that. He seemed to enjoy kissing Dean very much."
Dean groans. He would really like everyone to stop talking about it now.
"You made a deal," Sam repeats flatly. "Are you insane?"
"Don't look at me," Dean declares, experimenting with taking the brush from his mouth to see if he feels clean yet. "Ask Nice Guy Eddie Angel there. It was his awesomely bad idea."
The bitchface to end all bitchfaces is turned on Cas. "You, an angel of the Lord, thought it was a good idea to enter into a deal with a powerful demon?" Sam shakes his head slowly as Cas fails to deny it. "Am I dreaming? Have I accidentally slipped into an alternate dimension where blue is red?"
Dean snickers. "Yeah, Sammy. You've been magicked away into some mirrorverse where, I dunno, I'm a space pirate with a dashing eyepatch, you're a girl, and Cas is rocking the devilish goatie."
"Girl?" Sam glares down sidetrack alley.
"Dude, you're already so close to being one it'd be type-casting."
"Blue is still blue," Cas says, sounding, Dean thinks, a little put out. "It was necessary to make the deal to obtain Aten's Sun Disk."
Okay, so the sidetrack detour didn't last. Sam looks like not only has he been slapped around the face by Cas, but also like he keeps getting slapped, again and again. "God, Castiel, how far have you fallen?"
"Hey!" Without even thinking, Dean puts himself between his brother and his friend. "That was out of line."
Sam gapes at him. "That was...? What? Okay, that's it. You don't get to say another word." He holds up his hand to Dean and then glares over Dean's shoulder at Cas. "Let me see if I've got this right. In return for an obscure artifact that you don't even know will work, you not only entered into a deal with a senior demon, but you dragged my dumbass brother into it with you? Seriously? Dean? In a deal with the king of the crossroad demons? I... I... How the HELL could you do this, Castiel?"
Dean opens his mouth to defend both Cas and himself and finds Sam's huge hand in his face again. While he's trying to escape it, he hears Cas say calmly, "I understand your concern, Sam, but it's unfounded. This was not a deal for souls, merely a... a mutual non-aggression pact."
That seems to take the defcon level down a notch or two and moves the Goliath palm from out of Dean's vision. "Like a... an alliance?" Sam asks eventually, sounding calmer and almost hopeful.
"No," Dean says bluntly before spitting into the sink. "He's a demon and therefore an evil, lying scumbag, not to mention a freaking pervert. He's not to be trusted for a second. That douche is no ally of mine." He pauses and then adds, "Or of Cas'," for good measure, and then, "Or yours," because he hadn't liked that note of hope in Sam's voice. The last thing he wants is Sammy all pally with a demon again.
Sam blinks at him for a few seconds before turning back to Cas. "What were the terms?"
"We agreed not to deliberately cause, or to attempt to cause, either directly or indirectly, harm upon each other until the Apocalypse is over. The penalty for breaking the contract is simply the end of the contract, which would seem to make the whole thing pointless, but it was all he wanted from us in return for the disk. There was no small print. I checked carefully."
"Huh." Sam's thoughtful expression is turned back to Dean. "So all this dental hygiene urgency is because you kissed a male demon?"
Dean screws up his face at his brother. "Dude, he kissed me. Hell, he went to town in my mouth, and his hands were fricking everywhere. There's no way you would've reacted any different even with your major demon kink."
"Yeah, anytime you wanna quit making comments like that would be a good time."
"What can I say, Sammy? I tell it like I see it."
Sam purses his lips and heads back to his laptop. He says nothing more for some time.
Hours later, Dean is beginning to regret pissing off Sam. He's increasingly sure his brother's deliberately drawing out the research he's gotten Cas all wrapped up in, and Dean is finding it increasingly hard not to demand Sammy gets his own fricking friends and stops stealing Dean's. Cas and Sam have been poring over books and parchments since they left the bathroom. Sam has his laptop open, and Cas is sitting way too close so he can look at the screen too while they discuss... oh, something hieroglyphic-y or some other mystical bullcrap to do with the stupid disk. Dean stopped listening an hour and a rerun from season two of Dr Sexy M.D. ago.
"Can't we just do this already?" he asks and not for the first time. He'll even admit to himself that he's starting to sound whiny.
"This isn't something we can afford to mess up," Cas tells him seriously, like he hasn't already said that three times already in slightly different words. At least Cas is patient with him; Sam isn't even bothering to answer anymore. "We have to make sure we don't cause inadvertent offense by getting the ritual wrong."
Dean stands up from where he's been couch-potatoing on the sofa for so long now that he's all but growing sprouts. He wanders over to the table where they're working. "Dude, either you're worthy or you're not. God's not gonna delete you from history just because you forgot to dot an 'i' somewhere."
Cas tips his head to one side. "You could be right," he says after a few moments. "Sam, maybe we should-"
"Don't give in to his attention ploys, Cas," Sam says without looking up. "You know as well as I do, we have to get this right." Dean tries his very best to burn holes through the top of Sam's skull with his eyes, but sadly the lasers don't seem to be working today.
Cas gives him a vaguely sympathetic look. "I'm sorry, Dean. I... I don't want to be in a hurry to leave you."
Dean knows he's having his own words quoted back at him, and he flinches a little. In truth, some the antsyness he's currently feeling could be worry about Cas. Too often recently, it's been Cas taking the role of fall guy in their encounters with the enemy or even run of the mill monsters, and the guy's not exactly indestructible these days, even if he still likes to act as if he is.
Dean hasn't forgotten the Cas of the awesomely bad future that will never, ever happen, at least if he has anything to say about it. That Cas had been so lost and broken and yet still following Dean blindly. No, not blindly. There's no doubt in Dean's mind that Cas knew he was heading to his death at the end there. Hell, it had probably been a relief to him, knowing it would all finally be over. Dean never wants to see his Cas grow like that, so lost in a haze of drugs and sex and pain.
He wishes now he'd never taken Cas to that stupid brothel. It could've started something, some tumbling down there'd be no coming back from. It was as much a mistake as letting Sam go off on his own for those months. Oh yeah, Zach's guided tour of Dire Future Consequences Land totally opened Dean's eyes, just not in the way Zachariah wanted. Because now Dean knows two things for certain -- one, he and Sam have to stay together, stay wrapped right up in each other, no matter what, and two, Castiel has to stay pure of heart and purpose.
Typically of Dean's fucked up life or psyche or something, it was only after deciding this that Dean finally realized just how he was starting to feel about Cas, when an incredibly vivid and detailed dream made it so obvious that even he had to wake up and smell the... wet sheets. He's pretty sure he's gonna be remembering that dream for years during whatever rare alone times he gets because Jesus, mind-blowing doesn't even begin to cover it. And it's been no good yelling inside his head that he's not gay, and that anyway, Cas is an angel of the Lord, for crissakes. It makes no difference to anything. So Dean's just given up now, is just letting the feelings be there, but they're not getting out of his head, not ever.
He has a feeling, a strong feeling, that he could get more if he wanted it. He got Cas to hook up with a whore, didn't he? Hell, future-Cas had still been with him, following him, even when Dean had all but lost his humanity in that nightmare of a future. Yeah, he's pretty sure he could persuade Cas into almost anything if he wanted to, but that's not good. That's the opposite of good. 'Cause it means he's the one who's got to keep Cas all pure and shiny like a good angel should be. He's the only one who could, and Dean's the freaking poster boy for impure. Dean's as sullied and messed up as they come. Thanks to Hell, there's almost no kind of depravity that he hasn't tried at least once, and he's the one to keep the angel pearly white? It'll be like trying to wipe a plate clean with a cloth he's just found in the sewer.
And all the time that he's trying to do this impossible task, he's also trying to stop himself from getting fixated on Cas' lower lip, or his graceful hands, or how it feels every time Cas gets right in his space. God, when Cas had pushed him into that display cabinet earlier... Dean has to remember now to stare at attractive chicks, just so Sam doesn't notice something's wrong. He hardly even sees them in reality, his head is so full of Cas, Cas, Cas, and he hopes to God Cas is telling the truth when he says he can't read Dean's mind 'cause if he ever does, Dean is so, so paddleless in a freaking ocean of shit.
"What's wrong?"
He shakes himself out of his thoughts to find Cas frowning at him, and he can feel himself blushing. Fuck that.
"Not a thing," he claims. "Not a damn thing." With a pointed sigh, he puts his beer bottle down on the table and picks up the disk that's the cause of all this fuss. It looks like a giant golden M&M. It's too light to be solid metal but too heavy to be hollow, so maybe there's something inside, and it undoes somehow. He starts to try to unscrew the top of the disk from the bottom. Nothing moves. He holds it closer and peers at it, trying to find any kind of line to show where two sides may be joined.
"Dean, don't do that," Cas says urgently after a few moments, having apparently only just noticed. "Anything could happen."
Guiltily, Dean puts the disk down again more carefully. "Right. Well, I'm no help here; that's obvious. Guess I'll head up the road a way and see if I can find a place to hustle some pool. Have fun with your books, guys, and try not to get so dull you stop reflecting light at all. I'd keep tripping over you." He heads to get his jacket from where he threw it earlier.
"Jeez, you're being an ass today," Sam says. "What's gotten into you? Other than some demon tongue, that is."
"Ha ha, Sammy. That's so totally hilarious. Coming from the founder of the demon diet plan and all."
"Nice," Sam says flatly, his mouth an equally flat line when Dean turns around. "Thanks."
"Any time, Sammy. You know you can rely on me."
So Dean heads out to the nearest bar, doesn't get in any games of pool, but he does drink what might be considered too much beer for this time in the afternoon if, you know, you're a weak-livered douchenozzle. He manages not to think about angels hardly at all. Long enough, in fact, to get the number of the busty brunette bringing him his beer. He may even call her later if things haven't livened up back at chez geek.
He's hardly finished that thought when his phone rings. Sam tells him to meet them at the deserted house that they scoped out yesterday. With a last wink and grin at 'Sylvie', Dean pays his tab and heads out into the chill wind that seems to have blown up from nowhere. He makes a detour to a pizza joint and a corner shop for supplies, but then heads right there.
When he opens the door to the house and goes in, he sees immediately that things have progressed a long way from laptop-staring. The kitchen is full of mouldering and thoroughly unkitcheny furniture all stacked up, and the whole of the large main room has been cleared. Sam's at the far end of that room. He has a glass bowl of something orange in his hands and is pressing into it with the butt end of a hunting knife. Cas is on his knees on the floor inside a large circle drawn in thick lines of some kind of reddy orange powder. There's a heady stink in the air that maybe comes from it, like Indian restaurant meets high church incense.
"Hello, Dean," Cas says. He's lost the ever-present trench somewhere, as well as his suit jacket and tie. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled up, and he looks... Yeah, Dean doesn't need to be thinking about that right now.
He puts the pizza boxes and bags of beer on the floor beside the door, frowning as a floorboard partially lifts from the weight of them. He presses it back down again with his boot heel. "This mean you're finally done with the books?" he asks, stepping carefully into the circle -- necessary if he wants to get anywhere in the room bar the way back out. He tries to keep his gaze firmly above Cas' shoulder line, but he can't help noticing his amulet dangling free of Castiel's shirt while he draws.
"Yes," Cas replies, sounding pleased. "We'll soon be ready to make our first attempt."
Dean nods and then looks over at the safer prospect of Sam. "Pizza for you here, bro. Plenty of gross green crap on it, just the way you like."
"Thanks." Sam smiles over at him in a way that makes it obvious Dean's earlier transgressions have been forgiven. Yeah, he knows he should lay off the demon blood jibes. He seriously means to, but they keep slipping out when he's not looking. He smiles back, the beer he's drunk helping make the smile gentle. He hopes Sam will get the unspoken apology. Sam just frowns down at the bowl he's holding. "I'll have to wash real well before I eat. This stuff is all kinds of toxic."
"Lovely." Dean looks down to where Cas is carefully spilling more powder to form a complex symbol by the rim of the circle.
"If this works," Cas says, "I'll be able to remove all trace of the remaining incense once we're done."
"What is it?" Dean asks, crouching down beside Cas to look closer.
"Gamboge and white copal resins," Cas tells him as he finishes the sign and sits back on his haunches, "mixed with red lead, cinnabar, some gold dust, saffron, and a lot of Indonesian mace as a base. We've had to make a few careful substitutions from the original recipe. They're all components associated with my Father in his aspect as the great sun god."
Dean pulls a face. "Mace as in mace spray?"
"As in the spice, it's from the nutmeg plant." Cas tips his head to the side, studying Dean in that way that does things to Dean's insides. "So that Sam can take time to eat, would you help me with the final preparations, Dean?"
"Sure. What d'you need me to do?"
As Dean watches with increasingly boggled eyes, Cas puts his fingers to his shirt and starts to unbutton it. "Two symbols need to be painted onto my skin, one on my chest and one on my back."
Oh Joseph, Mary and the donkey, what has he said yes to now? "You want me to paint on you?" he asks in a thin voice as Cas stands and pulls the shirt from his pants before slipping it off. Cas is lean but not skinny in a weedy way, and Dean thanks God that Jimmy wasn't resurrected with his ex-body when Cas came back from the smitted. Probably not the most tactful of things to thank the Almighty for, but at least Dean doesn't have to feel guilty about perving on the poor guy.
"Dean?" Cas says carefully after a few moments, and Dean drags his gaze up from the thin line of hair that leads down into Cas' pants.
"Yeah?"
"Would you prefer it if Sam did this for me?"
Sam snorts as he strides over to the two of them. "I think even Dean can draw symbols, Cas, bear of very little brain though he is."
"Dean is far from stupid, Sam," Cas says in his stern teacher voice. "You shouldn't say things like that." Both brothers stare at Cas for a few moments, but Dean's smiling. His angel stood up for him, just another small proof that Cas is awesome.
Of course, now he has to paint the damn symbols. He gets to his feet. "What am I painting with?"
Sam passes him the bowl, which contains a grainy paste more or less the same color as the powder Cas has been using. "Here. You can use your fingers, just wash them well afterwards. Kinda important this stuff goes nowhere near your mouth. Talking of which..." He heads off to the doorway and presumably the bathroom beyond. There's no mains water, but they discovered earlier that there's still plenty in the attic tank that runs to the hot water faucet.
Dean stares down dubiously at the red paste. If this ritual doesn't kill Cas, will the toxic waste they're playing with do it instead?
"Everything will be all right, Dean," Cas says gently. "There's no need to worry."
"Who's worried?" Dean sticks his fingers in the gunk as if he does this kind of thing everyday. He looks up and winks at Cas. "Just don't wanna have to break in a new angel to our way of doing things, that's all." Something uncertain flickers over Cas' face, and Dean sighs to himself. "Joke, Cas. Just like it was when Sam called me Pooh Bear back there."
A frown appears. "Sometimes I find it very hard to tell the difference between your 'jokes' and your passive aggressive assertions, especially when you're speaking to each other."
Dean blinks. Well, that told him. "It can be a narrow dividing line, I guess. Now what's this symbol look like?"
"Like the one on the floor. You just need to copy it twice."
He studies Cas' chest, trying to see it like a canvas or something and not skin that he never really thought he'd get to see, let alone touch. "Any rules on size or position?"
"None. Just do it, Dean."
He lifts sticky fingers from the bowl, and looking back and forth between skin and floorboards, starts to finger paint. He draws large, covering the width of Cas' chest. It's easier not to get distracted than he thought it would be, his worry about copying it wrong and hurting Cas enough to overwhelm the erotic thrill of what's basically a forbidden touch.
Still, he can't help noticing a few things, like how smooth Cas' skin is and how warm. As a sticky-out bit of the symbol pulls his fingertips over the top of one of Cas' nipples, the delicate skin there puckers and pulls tight. Dean freezes for a second or so, but then carries on. He's not sure he's ever touched another male like this except for Sam -- caring for him when they were kids, sewing him up after yet another monster-related injury as adults -- but it doesn't feel as weird as it maybe should. Because it's Cas, and the thing about Cas is he just accepts Dean, almost unconditionally, and so that makes it easy to do it for Cas in return.
It's a pretty amazing gift to be given really. Cas has seen Dean at his absolute worst and yet... Dean shakes his head as he moves round to Cas' back. "Hope this works for you, man."
The room is quiet enough that he hears Cas inhale deeply before talking. "I hope so too. I would like..."
After a pause, Dean asks, "What would you like?"
Cas snorts softly, his ribs moving under Dean's touch. "So much, it seems. How human of me."
"Yeah, that's what drags us puny mortals through this crappy life: our wants, our ambitions and dreams. It's the carrot that keeps us pulling the cart. Some of us even get them eventually. Not often, but yeah, can happen. There, you're done." Dean puts a hand on Cas' hips and turns him. Cas has very sharp hips, he discovers, before letting go and stepping back.
"Thank you, Dean." Cas manages an understated smile, and from Cas that feels like a huge grin, so Dean rewards him with a warm grin of his own, looking him up and down.
"It's a good look on you, man. If, you know, cold." He winks then turns away before his grin can get either heated or sappy. It could go either way, right now. God, what the hell is wrong with him? He can't remember having a crush this strong since he was fourteen, and never, ever, on someone without boobs. As Sam returns to the room, Dean slips out so he can wash his fingers clean of the red stain.
The water swirls around the sink looking like that wrong colored blood you get in some old horror films, way too much pink in it to be real. Dean scrubs until it runs clear and his hands are going kind of numb in the cold water.
Back in the main room, Sam's eating pizza, crouching near the door, and Cas is standing quietly in the middle of the orange circle with his arms slightly lifted to the sides.
"Dude, you're gonna freeze," Dean tells him. "What's next? Let's get this done."
"I just need the disk," Cas says, walking closer to Dean, who can see the lean muscles moving below the painted skin. It's hard to lift his gaze. Cas stops by the edge of the circle. "It's in the bag by the kitchen, wrapped in one of your T-shirts."
One of his? Typical. "I'll get it," Dean says, heading to do just that. "Don't worry, I'll be careful."
The disk is exactly where Cas said. Dean unwraps it carefully, making a mental note to flick Sammy's ear for using his Master of Puppets tee. Holding the disk securely, Dean closes his eyes and mutters a short prayer to a deity he's far from sure he believes in even now.
"Hey, listen up, big man. Way to be a bad dad. Castiel's the best by far of your lousy kids, the only one who gives a fuck about obeying your will. I know that if you won't listen to him, no way are you gonna listen to me, but I'm saying it anyway. He deserves some kind of reward for his loyalty, for what it's lost him, and, oh Hell, can't you at least give him a pat on the back for once? Tell him 'well done, son, you did good'? Is that really too much to ask? Oh, and don't blame him for any disrespect I'm showing here. It's not his fault I'm a dick. He's not. He's awesome."
Sighing, Dean straightens up and heads back to the main room.
"Hey, Cas," he starts as he enters the room, but he doesn't get a chance to finish what he started since his foot catches in something and sends him flying forward into the powder circle. The last thing he sees is the golden disk leaving his outstretched hand and spinning through the air. Then there's a wooshing noise and a flare of impossibly bright light, and Dean knows nothing more.
***
Part Two