Fic: Keep Only One of Us Free (Dean/Castiel, R)
Fic: Keep Only One of Us Free (Dean/Castiel, R)
Title: Keep Only One of Us Free
Author: eggblue
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Supernatural is not owned by me. Quotes in italics are from tracy_loo_who’s The Forty-First Year, which really made this pairing come together for me, to the point where I couldn’t keep from writing. So all the good parts of this story are her fault. Also, her story kicks my ass, so you don’t have to point out that I’m crazy for attempting this. The idea wouldn’t let go. I blame Chuck. Title from Songs:Ohia.
Word Count: ~ 5,000
Summary: After 4.18, Dean is searching for a missing Castiel (and having fannish dreams of his own) when the Prophet, Chuck, sends him a link to a slash story from a new kind of prophet. Angst follows.
Notes: Partially based on a Castiel spoiler for 4.20, in the hopes of making it through another hellatus. So this story takes place after 4.18, but before 4.19. Ok. Also contains wing!porn, fourth wall experimental!fic, praying!Dean and missing!Cas, and touches of meta. Thanks to tracy_loo_who of course, for writing such inspiring Dean/Cas. Thanks to my flist for inspiring much love. I love feedback, and friending.
***
Dean dreams he is licking the water off the very tip of Castiel’s wing.
Rain is beating down on the car and the dirt outside, like a wall of sound.
Dean is having sex with an angel in his car and the windows have long since been busted out by Castiel’s unfurled wings and unfurled voice. They are taking up the whole of the backseat, but Dean can’t tell where the angel ends and he begins.
This has been going on for hours.
Castiel’s wings are so beautiful in his dreams. The shadows are full, and thick, and silk to sink himself into. When Dean tugs on Castiel’s scrotum and wings at the same time, the sound he makes will be beyond his ability to remember when he awakes. It is loud. It is glorious.
They’re having sex in the Impala and it’s raining and Cas has broken the windows out and Dean couldn’t be happier.
Castiel is fucking into Dean exactly like he can’t help himself to stop. He can’t. And all the world is the backseat and all the world is centered on the place in his body Castiel is hitting like a bullseye.
And there are moments where Castiel breaks like a little boy, his face filled with an open-mouthed awe, but a familiar awe, and maybe Dean doesn’t want to kill God so much in that moment. Maybe he just wants to keep Castiel.
They’re getting wetter, and louder, and the moments of quiet are speeding up faster and faster…
Dean takes one of the last moments (before he really breaks, before he breaks and wakes up) and smoothes his hands down Castiel’s wing bones, and *squeezes* and lets the water pour over him.
Castiel is groaning like he’s in pain, and he thrusts into Dean quickly, one, two, three, before he can stop himself. When he pauses, breathes, looks into Dean’s eyes with a pained expression, Dean holds his gaze for a second longer than he means to. He can’t look away.
His eyes are hungry looking up at Castiel. He wants Castiel to *feel* like he can’t think of anything else to want. Like there’s nothing more to ask of Dean than this, this everything.
Dean is gazing at the wings arched over him. They rise up behind the angel and fold over his shoulders until they fall over Dean. All Dean has to do is turn his head, slowly take his gaze away from the angel’s face…
Spiky wet eyelashes hang over the freckles on his cheeks and water catches over all of it. He opens his lips and tilts his head and lets it fall. Down from the tip of Castiel’s wing to the tip of his tongue, water dribbles over Dean’s waiting lips and the width of his tongue.
It’s not enough.
Dean suppresses a moan and sucks water off the tip of Castiel’s wingtip and strokes the water off of the feathers and drinks it down hungrily.
Castiel fucks into Dean without being able to help himself.
Dean opens his mouth wider.
Dean’s eyes turn black, flash green and golden.
Castiel does not stop. Castiel does not stop until the last black trace disappears into the depths of Dean’s eyes…
When Dean wakes up, he sees a dull green ceiling covered in flashing shadows.
He starts when he sees the neon light flicker outside the motel window, fully awake now.
It’s not Cas.
He sneaks into the bathroom before Sam wakes, and he doesn’t leave until Ruby does.
At least in the shower he can finish off his dream.
Dean knows this dream. He’s known it every night since the night they defeated Lilith. Since Cas helped him save his brother.
Since the first time Dean felt like grabbing the angel’s lapels and never letting go.
He wanted to thank Cas, but everything he was capable of seemed inadequate to the gratitude he felt. He never deserved Castiel’s help. He’d never expected it. Maybe he hoped for it in the same hidden way he was fascinated with the wings. Any excuse to touch Castiel.
But he didn’t. He didn’t touch him that night, when he had prayed for the angel to appear next to the soda machine at the hourly rate hotel.
And now Cas has been missing for three weeks.
Not like he was missing before. Dean had asked for Castiel before, for weeks, and the angel never appeared. This time, it’s different. Dean had never prayed before.
Please, Cas.
Dean lets the water fall over his eyes and mouth and face.
Please. God. Please.
Dean squeezes the heft of his sex and strokes and shakes until he comes, hardly stopping to breathe.
***
He stands outside another motel at 4 a.m. and there’s nothing. The buzz of another soda machine rings in his ears under the snap-snap-snap of an electric bug light. Blue light pools in the sudden water in Dean’s eyes.
He shakes it off. Prayer. He’s like a little Sammy when he was a kid. He’s like some believer. So Cas is gone. Serves him right. The dream porn’s better than pithy Bible quotes anyway.
The anger is strong, familiar. Dean pushes it down even deeper. There is something…
Sam believed in angels long before he did. Sam wants him to be angry.
Oh, Dean is angry. He’s not even sure why half the time. But Sam doesn’t understand either.
He feels *demonic* every time he gets angry. Like Sam must feel. Only he can’t explain it to Sam. Only he hates it. It feels familiar, and he doesn’t want it to feel familiar. So he tries not to get angry. He’d rather Sam see him cry, than be angry. He’d rather hide from Sam than stand there and watch him leave with a demon in the middle of the night.
Except there’s Cas too. It’s easy to get angry at the angel, precisely because he’s an *angel*. But he’s never is able to feel all of that anger when he’s with him. It’s muted somehow. Limited. He should be afraid of Castiel, the angel of the lord, the agent of fate, the savior who pulled him out of perdition.
The one he would rather stab in the heart than even *deal* with. The one he’s been dreaming of for one endless night after another.
And he is afraid. But never in the way he expects to be.
A giant dust-colored moth snaps with a *crack* in the light and Dean flinches. It flutters its wings so fast, and then stills. Flutters and stills, like it’s going to burst or fade. There’s something …
Dean stops in mid-expression, a question on his open lips, his brow furrowed, making his face look sharper, narrow. The faintest light dawns in his eyes, but he pushes it down. He focuses on the blue light, the snap of insects, the buzz of the machine, the noises that mean nothing.
After awhile, he goes back to bed and stares at where Sam was sleeping and stares at the shadows on the ceiling until light comes.
And prays.
***
The first thing he does in the morning is check on his baby.
He saw her last night, but it was easier to see the intact windows in the morning. Rain beaded on the hood in large drops. No feathers.
He stays outside for awhile, his hands in his jacket, his ass resting on the car. The sun makes his eyes squint and he looks for all the world like someone waiting for a bus route that hasn’t been running for years.
Sam is still gone.
***
When the world is on your shoulders, wrestling with angels, and your brother is sneaking with a demon, at least there is porn.
Dean figures if Sam’s laptop freezes on porn again, it serves him right.
He’s settled on the bed with a beer when he gets a new email alert. He sets the beer down when he sees who it’s from.
Chuck had been sending them pages of his story, only just excerpts. And nothing meaningful. Nothing about the Apocalypse. Nothing about Sam’s fate. Nothing about Cas.
Dean had asked specifically about Cas.
No, Sam and Dean would have a stupid argument at the laundromat a few days later about Sam’s gigantic darks bleeding all over Dean’s boxer shorts and they would get the most annoying case of déjà vu ever.
This one had FOR DEAN WINCHESTER for a subject. Of course Chuck knew they had a shared email account. Of course Chuck knew that it was mostly Sam’s. This was different. Chuck usually sent them Word files, but this one was a link to a webpage. All of the graphic links were broken but the text was clear. “Dean/Castiel” he reads. WTF?
This one was about Cas…
He starts to read.
“So it came to be that forty years after Castiel left Heaven with a host of two hundred, he came to the source of the loudest screams alone, weary and small, to look upon the righteous man he was sent to save.”
And “Dean” stabs “Castiel” in the heart.
And just like that Dean freezes. *Castiel* he thinks. *Déjà vu* he thinks.
No. Not déjà vu.
He doesn’t want to keep reading.
He doesn’t want to keep reading.
He looks at the drab green wallpaper, he checks the corners of the room for spiders, he looks at the towels piled at the bathroom door.
He doesn’t want to keep reading.
He keeps reading.
“For the first time in Castiel’s existence, he was terrified. It wasn’t fear of dying, because he had lived or died as God willed. It was fear of pain.”
Dean can’t blink.
And maybe Dean had always known a little. Maybe it felt natural to disrespect the angel, to put his anger onto hunched shoulders and blank expressions. Not only because he could, but because he *liked it*. But when he was angry with Castiel, he was never *this*…
This story is a lie.
No, it’s a curse. It must be. It can’t be a truth. It can’t be Cas.
More than anything he’s ever wanted in this life, and he wants quite a lot, he wants to know Castiel. Really *know* him.
It is terrifying. It is proof of something he doesn’t want to deal with. Because the only thing he might be afraid of more than knowing Cas, is knowing himself. And the scariest thing, he thinks…
When he really thinks about it…
In the middle of the night, in the shadows on the ceiling…
Is that if he knew Castiel the way he *needs* to know Castiel, he would know himself utterly in that moment.
For three weeks it’s been easy to focus on the impossible task of finding an angel who doesn’t want to be found. It is easier to focus on the mystery of Cas than the despair of Dean.
He is sick and tired of the despair of Dean. It’s a familiar story. It’s as cliché as they come.
But this is not that story.
This is Dean’s history. He wished it were only as familiar as his nightmares.
It was much much worse.
What was *wrong* with him?
“In reply, Dean cut open a hole in Castiel’s soft belly and poured a thousand fire ants into it. They didn’t all fit…”
Dean’s stomach *trembles* and the taste of acid burns the back of his throat, and he doesn’t let a sound pass his lips before he’s smashing a pillow to his face, the whole of it vibrating with his muffled screams.
His throat burns.
He doesn’t even bother to tell himself it’s not real. He can’t. He can’t because he knows what this feels like. He knows what it feels like to decide to unchain Castiel’s wrists, so that he can watch even more of his suffering, always more suffering. He knows what it feels like to carve his angel like a butcher carves cattle.
Behind his eyes, the black turns red. He feels a coldness in his gut spread until he feels his shoulders tense hard as stone. There is something…
“Castiel wondered, through his whimpers, if his eyes reminded Dean of the sky.”
Then a flash in his mind.
He doesn’t know where he is or what he is doing. He’s sure the image is new to him, just as he’s sure that he’s imagined it before. Déjà vu.
Light ripples all around them, as if they are standing on waves.
Castiel arches over him. Flashes of white light flutter in susurrations like silent lightning. All is white light and shadows, flashes of winged arches on either side framing crystal blue eyes above. Flashes of white light spark behind his eyes. Dean blinks beneath him, his eyelashes play shadows on his face. He takes in what he can before he must close his eyes.
Castiel never blinks, he realizes. He just lowers his eyes.
Eyes like the sky.
He’s using his whole body, Dean sees him feeling it, and moving in quick bursts against him, flexing and floating. There’s nothing but the beat of wings and hearts, everything pumping blood.
Everything light.
Dean gasps, and opens his eyes.
He’s in an olive-green motel room again. He sees blood behind his eyelids, and he * smells * it. He wants so badly for it to go away. He wants * that * story, the story with the white light and the waves and the heart.
He wants something he can never have. That easy hope, that comforting beauty, that peace.
Dean never asked for that, would never ask for that. He takes what can sustain him from dreams, and finds penance in Castiel’s abstinence. He wants his longing to remain a vague feeling, a denied dream after his first blink in the morning. He wants Castiel to be the angel from his dreams. The angel he thought he always was.
The feeling of familiarity he feels for the angel has only grown stronger since Castiel stopped answering him three weeks ago. He thinks his feelings are devotion, fraternity, perhaps even, maybe, faith. He thinks they are true.
As Dean reads, he knows that they are true feelings. He also knows that they will never belong to him.
Because he doesn’t deserve them.
Dean keeps reading.
“Just for kicks, Castiel’s arms went, too, and only after that, when Castiel was only head and torso and bottom and pain, did Dean grab hold of him and fuck him.”
He didn’t know this memory could possibly belong to him.
In his dreams, Castiel was perfect. Castiel was everything he wanted, every night. Castiel was the hand of firm pressure on his scalp, tracing a line down his body until a warm thumb and palm pressed in tight between the muscle of his thigh and his hip. Castiel was the breath on his knee. Castiel was wide blue eyes staring up through dark lashes. Castiel was a warm light after a nightmare. Castiel was closeness, and comfort, and silence.
The words in front of him are not.
None of this will be his. Not love, not Castiel, never anything else but this story. This is the fate Castiel is hiding. This is the truth behind Castiel’s disappointment in Dean. This is the end of the dream he foolishly thought could save them both.
Dean is not saved. He never was. He will never be saved from now on.
He thinks maybe he can’t take it anymore. Maybe he doesn’t want to know.
“‘You don’t actually enjoy hurting me,’ Castiel said softly as Dean panted beside his ear.”
He doesn’t. But he has to know. For Cas.
He feels like he’s reading a shadow of a lie so big it could block out the light of the sun. A lie that is his world.
“‘Because I don’t want to go back’”
Every world, a lie.
“In the silence that followed, Castiel closed his eyes in shame and prayed.”
The lie is making him cry out now, as if his surprise is the only thing that can drown out his regret. He’s felt it before, but never this clearly. His fear of having this, and his fear of never having had this before, and his fear of never having it again.
“‘You are worth everything’”
The lie is making him think of other sacrifices, other ghosts, of the worst ones he knows, of ones where a guilty master gives it up for a lost apprentice, of ones where a hero gives it up for a year…
He gasps. He can’t keep himself from punching at his thighs, putting his head in his hands, reading, pleading.
No.
“‘You are worth everything’”
No, no no no.
He thinks. He thinks.
“‘You are worth everything’”
This trap is the same. But Castiel isn’t family. Castiel is a stranger. Castiel isn’t even human, and he sacrificed wing and song for him. He’s so tired of regret. This trap is the same.
“This was Dean now, the man who loved pie and beer and his car and Sam and Castiel, and here, in the bottom of Hell with fires all around them, Castiel kissed him back and thought, I found you.”
“What have you done, Cas?” Dean groans. He groans. “What have you done?”
But instead of bitter laughter or hopeless tears, there is safety in illumination. His body feels cut open by light in the realization. He knows that light. There is something…
Dean reads to the end. There is something he remembers.
“‘I have faith in you, Dean.’”
He doesn’t remember all of the story. He doesn’t * remember * it. He knows it is an impossible story. He knows it is the truest story he will ever read. He knows he will never read it again. He will never talk to Chuck about it.
But Dean knows now. His regret is futile. His shame is futile. In the face of everything, Castiel’s mark on his arm is the only memory he has of his angel. It had always been his truest sign of faith, and Dean had never even known what it meant, what it cost.
Now he knows, and Dean finds he can’t deny a thing. Castiel loves him, and his love has led him here.
You couldn’t have stopped it, Castiel said to him once. Destiny can’t be changed, Dean. All roads lead to the same destination…
Castiel is the craziest sonofabitch in a world of crazy sonofabitches, he thinks. They are supposed to save the world, he thinks.
Dean can’t tell if he wants to see the face of God right then because he wants to thank him, or because he wants to stab him in the face.
He settles on praying for Cas.
He falls asleep, exhausted, drained. And he’s thinking of the comments he read at the end of the story, of the others who know his story now, and Castiel’s too. He thinks of the fascination, and the emotion, and the truth, in the end, that he can’t find a single voice to judge him.
Though he feels the exact opposite, the thought doesn’t make him lonely.
***
Dean leaves to get some air and finds himself back at the motel soda machine. The moths have been replaced by mosquitoes in the mid-morning heat. There might as well not be a soul on the Earth. For once, Dean feels ok with that.
That’s why, when he hears wings and Castiel arrives, Dean feels his heart clench as if he’s been stabbed.
It’s been *so long* since he’s heard wings…
Then he just stares because it *is* Castiel. It’s not a dream, or a fantasy this time. Not even a memory. Just Castiel standing there like he’d never left.
“Cas…” he breathes.
“We heard you screaming, Dean. We know about the story. It is unfortunate, but,” he finally looks up, “now we can investigate, the possibility, of another prophet.”
Dean can’t speak for long seconds. They used to be a *we*. They used to be… he doesn’t know. No, he knows the story now. He knows he is wrong.
“Wait a sec, *we*?? Who the hell are *we*, Cas?”
Castiel’s gaze is head-on. “My brothers and sisters.” He pauses, and tilts his head in the way that Dean recognizes, in a way that makes his blood ring in his ears. “My superiors.”
Oh. “So another bureaucratic dick of an angel is micro-managing you? And what, you can’t be trusted around us lowly humans?”
Dean feels the anger rise in him, and Castiel’s gaze falls to the ground. It’s the last thing he wants, but the only…
“No.” He raises his eyes until he’s looking * down * at Dean. “I’ve tried to make you understand. You are worthy of everything, Dean. I, am not.”
Dean grabs the angel’s shadowed face before he can finish. His voice is a growl. “Don’t you say that. Then why did you let Chuck send me that story? And where have you been? What, I’m supposed to feel better now? Be ready to fight in your dickless army?”
“Dean,” Castiel says it dangerously. He’s tense, restrained. “You know the story now. If I could change, anything, it never would have happened this way.”
Dean realizes he’s holding onto Castiel hard enough to bruise. Holding onto an angel. And his sudden fear washes over his anger like a painkiller. Somewhere between the two is the feeling that reminds him what he’s really doing here. He lets go. “You don’t deserve Hell, and you don’t deserve...”
Dean feels the angel take a step closer. “…What I did to you.” Then he feels it. “Cas… why are you…?”
The angel has a hard-on. “There is no deserving,” Castiel states. His blue eyes don’t blink. He doesn’t hesitate. He grinds himself against Dean’s thigh with each word, expressionless, as if he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. “Or justice. Or sacrifice.”
Dean takes a step back. “What?” It’s all he can manage to say. Castiel is huge against him, and impossibly hard. He’s frozen.
“All the dreams you’ve been having about me, Dean.” And Castiel’s voice is all breath. “Remember them. Please.”
“Why?” Dean doesn’t even know why he’s asking. He rakes his mouth across Castiel’s cheek.
“Your dreams are fate, Dean.”
“You’re fucking insane,” His breath catches in his throat and his jeans feel heavy, tight, and damp all at once.
Castiel pushes even closer. “No. It’s fate. You don’t need anything else from me. I don’t need any more from you.”
Dean feels the vibration of the soda machine on his back. “Just fate, huh? So what’s that all about then?” He glances down.
“My vessel is… overwhelmed with feelings that he cannot control. There is nothing to be done about it.” Castiel sighs, but it sounds just like a moan. Suddenly they’re all breath and skin, moving together. “Until these feelings go away.”
“Do you want them to go away, Cas? I’ve got a mouth here, these hands, this body.” He lets Castiel feel all of it, all over.
“It’s forbidden. We would lose...” Castiel groans when Dean rakes his teeth over his neck. “...Everything. My superiors have expressed concern. They want me to prove to them I can save myself.”
Dean shakes his head at the angel, feeling the frustration come off him in waves. “So you stay away from me? You leave your vessel? ‘S not fair, Cas. It’s not right.”
The angel’s eyes look down, and back up at him. Down, and up. “Only, will you save me, Dean?”
They’re all breath and skin. Castiel’s lips brush against Dean’s, soft enough to deny it if he wanted. “Will you let me save you?”
Dean’s breath hitches in his throat. He can’t breathe deep enough.
“Again?” The angel breathes the word. There’s a whisper of a touch, maybe a memory. “Do you promise?”
Dean stares at him wide-eyed until he feels Castiel’s breath in a sharp sigh.
“Do you promise?”
Dean can’t respond to that so he groans and pulls Castiel into a kiss. Again that tearing feeling of guilt and regret. Again the push of the wall against what he will and will not do.
He had hurt so many. He had killed so many. Then why does Castiel feel so good against him right now? Why are his moans betraying him so badly? If all this is true, why is Castiel even *here*? Could saving him make up for all of it? Could it make up for any of it?
“Do you believe, Dean?”
He groans before he can think to stop. “Believe what?”
A part of him wants to believe in the platitudes about going to better places and God loves him and there is a plan. But Dean doesn’t. He really doesn’t. Does he?
Eyes like the sky. “That we are fate.”
We. Cas said *we*.
“You make me want to feel this way,” he grinds out, his teeth brushing against the top of Castiel’s ear.
Castiel looks at him with a slightly crumpled face, the face he’s taken to wearing of late.
Dean takes it in his hands. “Three weeks, Cas. I prayed for you.” Kisses Castiel’s lips. “I prayed for you to come.” That has to be enough.
Castiel looks through him with an endless weary sadness. “I heard every prayer, Dean.”
What?
“I can’t stay, Dean.”
Dean starts…
“I can’t stay.” He repeats with his forceful voice. Then he covers it with a kiss.
Then a whisper in Dean’s ear, so softly it sounds like a mosquito, like a whirr of wings, “Do not be afraid, Dean. Love is rebellion in every world. Even our love. Even our worlds. I will find a place for us alone. I will send for you, and I will show myself, all of myself, to you. We will be free. I vow it.”
Dean sees freedom from behind the windshield of a black car, driving down a barrel of a black landscape, an angel by his side, “Stairway to Heaven” on the radio.
“‘Come with me.’”
Dean sees the Hell he remembers, and the Hell in the new prophet’s story.
“‘And then neither of us will ever leave this place, and the world will crumble. This is faith.’”
Dean sees the wings in his rain-soaked dream.
“Dean didn’t fight him when Castiel pressed two fingers to his forehead, so when he slumped forward into Castiel’s arms, Castiel gripped him tight and raised him from perdition.”
In the entire universe, there is no place in which this is right, he thinks. There is no place where this is not wrong, not heresy, not death.
Then why, in all the places it is wrong, it is death, is there always Castiel?
Dean just stops and stares at Castiel’s blank face, pale and broad and tired, always tired. The weariness in his own bones aches suddenly. He doesn’t ask why.
“My vessel, he will not let me stay. I’m sorry, Dean.”
Castiel is gone before his name leaves the air.
“I’ll be here.” Dean knows he is speaking to nothing. He almost buries the sob.
Dean finds that he always, always cares. And he will never stop.
He doesn’t decide to keep looking for Castiel. He just does it.
At least now, he has a clue as to why. He now knows the debt he must pay.
He now knows the cost.
He knows it will sustain him in his search, like a good story. He leans against the Impala and waits for Sam to come home.
***
the end
Title: Keep Only One of Us Free
Author: eggblue
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Supernatural is not owned by me. Quotes in italics are from tracy_loo_who’s The Forty-First Year, which really made this pairing come together for me, to the point where I couldn’t keep from writing. So all the good parts of this story are her fault. Also, her story kicks my ass, so you don’t have to point out that I’m crazy for attempting this. The idea wouldn’t let go. I blame Chuck. Title from Songs:Ohia.
Word Count: ~ 5,000
Summary: After 4.18, Dean is searching for a missing Castiel (and having fannish dreams of his own) when the Prophet, Chuck, sends him a link to a slash story from a new kind of prophet. Angst follows.
Notes: Partially based on a Castiel spoiler for 4.20, in the hopes of making it through another hellatus. So this story takes place after 4.18, but before 4.19. Ok. Also contains wing!porn, fourth wall experimental!fic, praying!Dean and missing!Cas, and touches of meta. Thanks to tracy_loo_who of course, for writing such inspiring Dean/Cas. Thanks to my flist for inspiring much love. I love feedback, and friending.
***
Dean dreams he is licking the water off the very tip of Castiel’s wing.
Rain is beating down on the car and the dirt outside, like a wall of sound.
Dean is having sex with an angel in his car and the windows have long since been busted out by Castiel’s unfurled wings and unfurled voice. They are taking up the whole of the backseat, but Dean can’t tell where the angel ends and he begins.
This has been going on for hours.
Castiel’s wings are so beautiful in his dreams. The shadows are full, and thick, and silk to sink himself into. When Dean tugs on Castiel’s scrotum and wings at the same time, the sound he makes will be beyond his ability to remember when he awakes. It is loud. It is glorious.
They’re having sex in the Impala and it’s raining and Cas has broken the windows out and Dean couldn’t be happier.
Castiel is fucking into Dean exactly like he can’t help himself to stop. He can’t. And all the world is the backseat and all the world is centered on the place in his body Castiel is hitting like a bullseye.
And there are moments where Castiel breaks like a little boy, his face filled with an open-mouthed awe, but a familiar awe, and maybe Dean doesn’t want to kill God so much in that moment. Maybe he just wants to keep Castiel.
They’re getting wetter, and louder, and the moments of quiet are speeding up faster and faster…
Dean takes one of the last moments (before he really breaks, before he breaks and wakes up) and smoothes his hands down Castiel’s wing bones, and *squeezes* and lets the water pour over him.
Castiel is groaning like he’s in pain, and he thrusts into Dean quickly, one, two, three, before he can stop himself. When he pauses, breathes, looks into Dean’s eyes with a pained expression, Dean holds his gaze for a second longer than he means to. He can’t look away.
His eyes are hungry looking up at Castiel. He wants Castiel to *feel* like he can’t think of anything else to want. Like there’s nothing more to ask of Dean than this, this everything.
Dean is gazing at the wings arched over him. They rise up behind the angel and fold over his shoulders until they fall over Dean. All Dean has to do is turn his head, slowly take his gaze away from the angel’s face…
Spiky wet eyelashes hang over the freckles on his cheeks and water catches over all of it. He opens his lips and tilts his head and lets it fall. Down from the tip of Castiel’s wing to the tip of his tongue, water dribbles over Dean’s waiting lips and the width of his tongue.
It’s not enough.
Dean suppresses a moan and sucks water off the tip of Castiel’s wingtip and strokes the water off of the feathers and drinks it down hungrily.
Castiel fucks into Dean without being able to help himself.
Dean opens his mouth wider.
Dean’s eyes turn black, flash green and golden.
Castiel does not stop. Castiel does not stop until the last black trace disappears into the depths of Dean’s eyes…
When Dean wakes up, he sees a dull green ceiling covered in flashing shadows.
He starts when he sees the neon light flicker outside the motel window, fully awake now.
It’s not Cas.
He sneaks into the bathroom before Sam wakes, and he doesn’t leave until Ruby does.
At least in the shower he can finish off his dream.
Dean knows this dream. He’s known it every night since the night they defeated Lilith. Since Cas helped him save his brother.
Since the first time Dean felt like grabbing the angel’s lapels and never letting go.
He wanted to thank Cas, but everything he was capable of seemed inadequate to the gratitude he felt. He never deserved Castiel’s help. He’d never expected it. Maybe he hoped for it in the same hidden way he was fascinated with the wings. Any excuse to touch Castiel.
But he didn’t. He didn’t touch him that night, when he had prayed for the angel to appear next to the soda machine at the hourly rate hotel.
And now Cas has been missing for three weeks.
Not like he was missing before. Dean had asked for Castiel before, for weeks, and the angel never appeared. This time, it’s different. Dean had never prayed before.
Please, Cas.
Dean lets the water fall over his eyes and mouth and face.
Please. God. Please.
Dean squeezes the heft of his sex and strokes and shakes until he comes, hardly stopping to breathe.
***
He stands outside another motel at 4 a.m. and there’s nothing. The buzz of another soda machine rings in his ears under the snap-snap-snap of an electric bug light. Blue light pools in the sudden water in Dean’s eyes.
He shakes it off. Prayer. He’s like a little Sammy when he was a kid. He’s like some believer. So Cas is gone. Serves him right. The dream porn’s better than pithy Bible quotes anyway.
The anger is strong, familiar. Dean pushes it down even deeper. There is something…
Sam believed in angels long before he did. Sam wants him to be angry.
Oh, Dean is angry. He’s not even sure why half the time. But Sam doesn’t understand either.
He feels *demonic* every time he gets angry. Like Sam must feel. Only he can’t explain it to Sam. Only he hates it. It feels familiar, and he doesn’t want it to feel familiar. So he tries not to get angry. He’d rather Sam see him cry, than be angry. He’d rather hide from Sam than stand there and watch him leave with a demon in the middle of the night.
Except there’s Cas too. It’s easy to get angry at the angel, precisely because he’s an *angel*. But he’s never is able to feel all of that anger when he’s with him. It’s muted somehow. Limited. He should be afraid of Castiel, the angel of the lord, the agent of fate, the savior who pulled him out of perdition.
The one he would rather stab in the heart than even *deal* with. The one he’s been dreaming of for one endless night after another.
And he is afraid. But never in the way he expects to be.
A giant dust-colored moth snaps with a *crack* in the light and Dean flinches. It flutters its wings so fast, and then stills. Flutters and stills, like it’s going to burst or fade. There’s something …
Dean stops in mid-expression, a question on his open lips, his brow furrowed, making his face look sharper, narrow. The faintest light dawns in his eyes, but he pushes it down. He focuses on the blue light, the snap of insects, the buzz of the machine, the noises that mean nothing.
After awhile, he goes back to bed and stares at where Sam was sleeping and stares at the shadows on the ceiling until light comes.
And prays.
***
The first thing he does in the morning is check on his baby.
He saw her last night, but it was easier to see the intact windows in the morning. Rain beaded on the hood in large drops. No feathers.
He stays outside for awhile, his hands in his jacket, his ass resting on the car. The sun makes his eyes squint and he looks for all the world like someone waiting for a bus route that hasn’t been running for years.
Sam is still gone.
***
When the world is on your shoulders, wrestling with angels, and your brother is sneaking with a demon, at least there is porn.
Dean figures if Sam’s laptop freezes on porn again, it serves him right.
He’s settled on the bed with a beer when he gets a new email alert. He sets the beer down when he sees who it’s from.
Chuck had been sending them pages of his story, only just excerpts. And nothing meaningful. Nothing about the Apocalypse. Nothing about Sam’s fate. Nothing about Cas.
Dean had asked specifically about Cas.
No, Sam and Dean would have a stupid argument at the laundromat a few days later about Sam’s gigantic darks bleeding all over Dean’s boxer shorts and they would get the most annoying case of déjà vu ever.
This one had FOR DEAN WINCHESTER for a subject. Of course Chuck knew they had a shared email account. Of course Chuck knew that it was mostly Sam’s. This was different. Chuck usually sent them Word files, but this one was a link to a webpage. All of the graphic links were broken but the text was clear. “Dean/Castiel” he reads. WTF?
This one was about Cas…
He starts to read.
“So it came to be that forty years after Castiel left Heaven with a host of two hundred, he came to the source of the loudest screams alone, weary and small, to look upon the righteous man he was sent to save.”
And “Dean” stabs “Castiel” in the heart.
And just like that Dean freezes. *Castiel* he thinks. *Déjà vu* he thinks.
No. Not déjà vu.
He doesn’t want to keep reading.
He doesn’t want to keep reading.
He looks at the drab green wallpaper, he checks the corners of the room for spiders, he looks at the towels piled at the bathroom door.
He doesn’t want to keep reading.
He keeps reading.
“For the first time in Castiel’s existence, he was terrified. It wasn’t fear of dying, because he had lived or died as God willed. It was fear of pain.”
Dean can’t blink.
And maybe Dean had always known a little. Maybe it felt natural to disrespect the angel, to put his anger onto hunched shoulders and blank expressions. Not only because he could, but because he *liked it*. But when he was angry with Castiel, he was never *this*…
This story is a lie.
No, it’s a curse. It must be. It can’t be a truth. It can’t be Cas.
More than anything he’s ever wanted in this life, and he wants quite a lot, he wants to know Castiel. Really *know* him.
It is terrifying. It is proof of something he doesn’t want to deal with. Because the only thing he might be afraid of more than knowing Cas, is knowing himself. And the scariest thing, he thinks…
When he really thinks about it…
In the middle of the night, in the shadows on the ceiling…
Is that if he knew Castiel the way he *needs* to know Castiel, he would know himself utterly in that moment.
For three weeks it’s been easy to focus on the impossible task of finding an angel who doesn’t want to be found. It is easier to focus on the mystery of Cas than the despair of Dean.
He is sick and tired of the despair of Dean. It’s a familiar story. It’s as cliché as they come.
But this is not that story.
This is Dean’s history. He wished it were only as familiar as his nightmares.
It was much much worse.
What was *wrong* with him?
“In reply, Dean cut open a hole in Castiel’s soft belly and poured a thousand fire ants into it. They didn’t all fit…”
Dean’s stomach *trembles* and the taste of acid burns the back of his throat, and he doesn’t let a sound pass his lips before he’s smashing a pillow to his face, the whole of it vibrating with his muffled screams.
His throat burns.
He doesn’t even bother to tell himself it’s not real. He can’t. He can’t because he knows what this feels like. He knows what it feels like to decide to unchain Castiel’s wrists, so that he can watch even more of his suffering, always more suffering. He knows what it feels like to carve his angel like a butcher carves cattle.
Behind his eyes, the black turns red. He feels a coldness in his gut spread until he feels his shoulders tense hard as stone. There is something…
“Castiel wondered, through his whimpers, if his eyes reminded Dean of the sky.”
Then a flash in his mind.
He doesn’t know where he is or what he is doing. He’s sure the image is new to him, just as he’s sure that he’s imagined it before. Déjà vu.
Light ripples all around them, as if they are standing on waves.
Castiel arches over him. Flashes of white light flutter in susurrations like silent lightning. All is white light and shadows, flashes of winged arches on either side framing crystal blue eyes above. Flashes of white light spark behind his eyes. Dean blinks beneath him, his eyelashes play shadows on his face. He takes in what he can before he must close his eyes.
Castiel never blinks, he realizes. He just lowers his eyes.
Eyes like the sky.
He’s using his whole body, Dean sees him feeling it, and moving in quick bursts against him, flexing and floating. There’s nothing but the beat of wings and hearts, everything pumping blood.
Everything light.
Dean gasps, and opens his eyes.
He’s in an olive-green motel room again. He sees blood behind his eyelids, and he * smells * it. He wants so badly for it to go away. He wants * that * story, the story with the white light and the waves and the heart.
He wants something he can never have. That easy hope, that comforting beauty, that peace.
Dean never asked for that, would never ask for that. He takes what can sustain him from dreams, and finds penance in Castiel’s abstinence. He wants his longing to remain a vague feeling, a denied dream after his first blink in the morning. He wants Castiel to be the angel from his dreams. The angel he thought he always was.
The feeling of familiarity he feels for the angel has only grown stronger since Castiel stopped answering him three weeks ago. He thinks his feelings are devotion, fraternity, perhaps even, maybe, faith. He thinks they are true.
As Dean reads, he knows that they are true feelings. He also knows that they will never belong to him.
Because he doesn’t deserve them.
Dean keeps reading.
“Just for kicks, Castiel’s arms went, too, and only after that, when Castiel was only head and torso and bottom and pain, did Dean grab hold of him and fuck him.”
He didn’t know this memory could possibly belong to him.
In his dreams, Castiel was perfect. Castiel was everything he wanted, every night. Castiel was the hand of firm pressure on his scalp, tracing a line down his body until a warm thumb and palm pressed in tight between the muscle of his thigh and his hip. Castiel was the breath on his knee. Castiel was wide blue eyes staring up through dark lashes. Castiel was a warm light after a nightmare. Castiel was closeness, and comfort, and silence.
The words in front of him are not.
None of this will be his. Not love, not Castiel, never anything else but this story. This is the fate Castiel is hiding. This is the truth behind Castiel’s disappointment in Dean. This is the end of the dream he foolishly thought could save them both.
Dean is not saved. He never was. He will never be saved from now on.
He thinks maybe he can’t take it anymore. Maybe he doesn’t want to know.
“‘You don’t actually enjoy hurting me,’ Castiel said softly as Dean panted beside his ear.”
He doesn’t. But he has to know. For Cas.
He feels like he’s reading a shadow of a lie so big it could block out the light of the sun. A lie that is his world.
“‘Because I don’t want to go back’”
Every world, a lie.
“In the silence that followed, Castiel closed his eyes in shame and prayed.”
The lie is making him cry out now, as if his surprise is the only thing that can drown out his regret. He’s felt it before, but never this clearly. His fear of having this, and his fear of never having had this before, and his fear of never having it again.
“‘You are worth everything’”
The lie is making him think of other sacrifices, other ghosts, of the worst ones he knows, of ones where a guilty master gives it up for a lost apprentice, of ones where a hero gives it up for a year…
He gasps. He can’t keep himself from punching at his thighs, putting his head in his hands, reading, pleading.
No.
“‘You are worth everything’”
No, no no no.
He thinks. He thinks.
“‘You are worth everything’”
This trap is the same. But Castiel isn’t family. Castiel is a stranger. Castiel isn’t even human, and he sacrificed wing and song for him. He’s so tired of regret. This trap is the same.
“This was Dean now, the man who loved pie and beer and his car and Sam and Castiel, and here, in the bottom of Hell with fires all around them, Castiel kissed him back and thought, I found you.”
“What have you done, Cas?” Dean groans. He groans. “What have you done?”
But instead of bitter laughter or hopeless tears, there is safety in illumination. His body feels cut open by light in the realization. He knows that light. There is something…
Dean reads to the end. There is something he remembers.
“‘I have faith in you, Dean.’”
He doesn’t remember all of the story. He doesn’t * remember * it. He knows it is an impossible story. He knows it is the truest story he will ever read. He knows he will never read it again. He will never talk to Chuck about it.
But Dean knows now. His regret is futile. His shame is futile. In the face of everything, Castiel’s mark on his arm is the only memory he has of his angel. It had always been his truest sign of faith, and Dean had never even known what it meant, what it cost.
Now he knows, and Dean finds he can’t deny a thing. Castiel loves him, and his love has led him here.
You couldn’t have stopped it, Castiel said to him once. Destiny can’t be changed, Dean. All roads lead to the same destination…
Castiel is the craziest sonofabitch in a world of crazy sonofabitches, he thinks. They are supposed to save the world, he thinks.
Dean can’t tell if he wants to see the face of God right then because he wants to thank him, or because he wants to stab him in the face.
He settles on praying for Cas.
He falls asleep, exhausted, drained. And he’s thinking of the comments he read at the end of the story, of the others who know his story now, and Castiel’s too. He thinks of the fascination, and the emotion, and the truth, in the end, that he can’t find a single voice to judge him.
Though he feels the exact opposite, the thought doesn’t make him lonely.
***
Dean leaves to get some air and finds himself back at the motel soda machine. The moths have been replaced by mosquitoes in the mid-morning heat. There might as well not be a soul on the Earth. For once, Dean feels ok with that.
That’s why, when he hears wings and Castiel arrives, Dean feels his heart clench as if he’s been stabbed.
It’s been *so long* since he’s heard wings…
Then he just stares because it *is* Castiel. It’s not a dream, or a fantasy this time. Not even a memory. Just Castiel standing there like he’d never left.
“Cas…” he breathes.
“We heard you screaming, Dean. We know about the story. It is unfortunate, but,” he finally looks up, “now we can investigate, the possibility, of another prophet.”
Dean can’t speak for long seconds. They used to be a *we*. They used to be… he doesn’t know. No, he knows the story now. He knows he is wrong.
“Wait a sec, *we*?? Who the hell are *we*, Cas?”
Castiel’s gaze is head-on. “My brothers and sisters.” He pauses, and tilts his head in the way that Dean recognizes, in a way that makes his blood ring in his ears. “My superiors.”
Oh. “So another bureaucratic dick of an angel is micro-managing you? And what, you can’t be trusted around us lowly humans?”
Dean feels the anger rise in him, and Castiel’s gaze falls to the ground. It’s the last thing he wants, but the only…
“No.” He raises his eyes until he’s looking * down * at Dean. “I’ve tried to make you understand. You are worthy of everything, Dean. I, am not.”
Dean grabs the angel’s shadowed face before he can finish. His voice is a growl. “Don’t you say that. Then why did you let Chuck send me that story? And where have you been? What, I’m supposed to feel better now? Be ready to fight in your dickless army?”
“Dean,” Castiel says it dangerously. He’s tense, restrained. “You know the story now. If I could change, anything, it never would have happened this way.”
Dean realizes he’s holding onto Castiel hard enough to bruise. Holding onto an angel. And his sudden fear washes over his anger like a painkiller. Somewhere between the two is the feeling that reminds him what he’s really doing here. He lets go. “You don’t deserve Hell, and you don’t deserve...”
Dean feels the angel take a step closer. “…What I did to you.” Then he feels it. “Cas… why are you…?”
The angel has a hard-on. “There is no deserving,” Castiel states. His blue eyes don’t blink. He doesn’t hesitate. He grinds himself against Dean’s thigh with each word, expressionless, as if he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. “Or justice. Or sacrifice.”
Dean takes a step back. “What?” It’s all he can manage to say. Castiel is huge against him, and impossibly hard. He’s frozen.
“All the dreams you’ve been having about me, Dean.” And Castiel’s voice is all breath. “Remember them. Please.”
“Why?” Dean doesn’t even know why he’s asking. He rakes his mouth across Castiel’s cheek.
“Your dreams are fate, Dean.”
“You’re fucking insane,” His breath catches in his throat and his jeans feel heavy, tight, and damp all at once.
Castiel pushes even closer. “No. It’s fate. You don’t need anything else from me. I don’t need any more from you.”
Dean feels the vibration of the soda machine on his back. “Just fate, huh? So what’s that all about then?” He glances down.
“My vessel is… overwhelmed with feelings that he cannot control. There is nothing to be done about it.” Castiel sighs, but it sounds just like a moan. Suddenly they’re all breath and skin, moving together. “Until these feelings go away.”
“Do you want them to go away, Cas? I’ve got a mouth here, these hands, this body.” He lets Castiel feel all of it, all over.
“It’s forbidden. We would lose...” Castiel groans when Dean rakes his teeth over his neck. “...Everything. My superiors have expressed concern. They want me to prove to them I can save myself.”
Dean shakes his head at the angel, feeling the frustration come off him in waves. “So you stay away from me? You leave your vessel? ‘S not fair, Cas. It’s not right.”
The angel’s eyes look down, and back up at him. Down, and up. “Only, will you save me, Dean?”
They’re all breath and skin. Castiel’s lips brush against Dean’s, soft enough to deny it if he wanted. “Will you let me save you?”
Dean’s breath hitches in his throat. He can’t breathe deep enough.
“Again?” The angel breathes the word. There’s a whisper of a touch, maybe a memory. “Do you promise?”
Dean stares at him wide-eyed until he feels Castiel’s breath in a sharp sigh.
“Do you promise?”
Dean can’t respond to that so he groans and pulls Castiel into a kiss. Again that tearing feeling of guilt and regret. Again the push of the wall against what he will and will not do.
He had hurt so many. He had killed so many. Then why does Castiel feel so good against him right now? Why are his moans betraying him so badly? If all this is true, why is Castiel even *here*? Could saving him make up for all of it? Could it make up for any of it?
“Do you believe, Dean?”
He groans before he can think to stop. “Believe what?”
A part of him wants to believe in the platitudes about going to better places and God loves him and there is a plan. But Dean doesn’t. He really doesn’t. Does he?
Eyes like the sky. “That we are fate.”
We. Cas said *we*.
“You make me want to feel this way,” he grinds out, his teeth brushing against the top of Castiel’s ear.
Castiel looks at him with a slightly crumpled face, the face he’s taken to wearing of late.
Dean takes it in his hands. “Three weeks, Cas. I prayed for you.” Kisses Castiel’s lips. “I prayed for you to come.” That has to be enough.
Castiel looks through him with an endless weary sadness. “I heard every prayer, Dean.”
What?
“I can’t stay, Dean.”
Dean starts…
“I can’t stay.” He repeats with his forceful voice. Then he covers it with a kiss.
Then a whisper in Dean’s ear, so softly it sounds like a mosquito, like a whirr of wings, “Do not be afraid, Dean. Love is rebellion in every world. Even our love. Even our worlds. I will find a place for us alone. I will send for you, and I will show myself, all of myself, to you. We will be free. I vow it.”
Dean sees freedom from behind the windshield of a black car, driving down a barrel of a black landscape, an angel by his side, “Stairway to Heaven” on the radio.
“‘Come with me.’”
Dean sees the Hell he remembers, and the Hell in the new prophet’s story.
“‘And then neither of us will ever leave this place, and the world will crumble. This is faith.’”
Dean sees the wings in his rain-soaked dream.
“Dean didn’t fight him when Castiel pressed two fingers to his forehead, so when he slumped forward into Castiel’s arms, Castiel gripped him tight and raised him from perdition.”
In the entire universe, there is no place in which this is right, he thinks. There is no place where this is not wrong, not heresy, not death.
Then why, in all the places it is wrong, it is death, is there always Castiel?
Dean just stops and stares at Castiel’s blank face, pale and broad and tired, always tired. The weariness in his own bones aches suddenly. He doesn’t ask why.
“My vessel, he will not let me stay. I’m sorry, Dean.”
Castiel is gone before his name leaves the air.
“I’ll be here.” Dean knows he is speaking to nothing. He almost buries the sob.
Dean finds that he always, always cares. And he will never stop.
He doesn’t decide to keep looking for Castiel. He just does it.
At least now, he has a clue as to why. He now knows the debt he must pay.
He now knows the cost.
He knows it will sustain him in his search, like a good story. He leans against the Impala and waits for Sam to come home.
***
the end