fic: Anointed (Dean/Castiel)
Title: Anointed
Author: eggblue
Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam/Dean
Disclaimer: Supernatural, Dean, Sam, and Castiel are not belong to me.
Rating: R
Word Count: ~6,400
Warnings: Angsty orgasms, religious kink, dual OTP-ishness
Notes: Takes place after ‘Great Pumpkin’ ep. 4.7, i.e. the park bench scene. Sam is bored and lost. Castiel is chaste but helpful. Dean is very very frustrated.
On the first full night Castiel spends with Dean Winchester, the night changes to day and back again, and the moon enters three separate phases, reaching just over the horizon, pale in the starless sky.
It begins at dusk, on a park bench before a deserted playground.
“Swear you’ll never speak of this again.” Castiel leans across the distance to Dean. Whether he’s squinting in the sunlight, or regretting what he’s about to say, Dean can’t tell.
“I swear.”
“I don’t envy the choices you’ll have to make, Dean.”
“I know. You’re repeating yourself. Speaking in angel code again. But you’re not telling me what those choices are.” Dean takes Castiel’s grave face in his hands. Willing away both their fears in the way he’s found works best.
Cas reacts to everything Dean does by pushing him away at first, and then drawing him in closer. He’s used to this. The push and pull of Castiel. The way the tone of their relationship is never fully set. The way his crazy life is mimicked by the way it feels to be sitting on a park bench at dusk next to an inhuman, perfect being with no need for cares or time or place. How crazy it is to need something like that.
Dean brushes Castiel’s lips with his own. Only once. Cas pulls away, but keeps his eyes on Dean in a way that makes him feel studied. Dean moves his hands up to Castiel’s ears, feeling the tips grow warmer. A human reaction. He feels Cas’ hands on his wrists pulling him away, but still… his eyes…
So Dean moves his hands to Castiel’s shoulders, since Castiel never tries that hard to keep him away. He follows Castiel’s paranoid expression around the park, though no one’s there. “Castiel…”
Then he puts his arms around him, locking Castiel’s arms in between them. The angel ripples his fingers flat against Dean’s body, flexes his fingers flat against the crotch of his jeans and presses.
“We’re being watched.” Castiel’s breath comes out fast across Dean’s cheek.
Dean wonders if he even needs to breathe. Then again, Castiel doesn’t need to do any of the things that he does. Yet he does them.
Castiel pauses, then whispers. “But there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Cas? What is it?” Dean hears the angel’s words in his head, trying to convince him to have faith and do his duty, to let Castiel do his duty and remain pure.
But Dean also hears Castiel falling for him. He’s not blind, and he’s certainly not dumb. Not about this. Never about this. He can feel it, and like every good chance he’s ever had, he knows it’s bad. But he doesn’t want it to stop. So he can’t help but push Castiel every chance he gets.
Castiel moves out of his arms in the space of a breath, before Dean even feels him think it.
Dean feels as if he’s lost his purpose when Cas goes away. There’s nothing else keeping him grounded these days except for surprise visits from his angel. So of course he wants to sabotage it. So Cas is guilty, so Cas is responsible, so Cas is already worn down from disobeying in his heart - torn between Dean and Heaven, between two purposes, two reasons to exist - and so what then? Dean knows the destructive path of dilemma. “Cas?”
In his gaze, he pleads for silence. “The angels are watching us.”
“I thought you said the angels couldn’t be bothered to watch us.”
“But they are bothered by us.”
Dean raises his eyebrows. “Us? As in… you and me?”
Cas nods.
“Why would they be bothered by us, Cas?”
Dean can feel it. Cas wants to speak, to say much more. He knows he won’t. The angel clams up on him every time, or just disappears.
“I can take us away from them, on nights like tonight. If only for a little while, they won’t be able to find us. Think of it as playing hide-and-seek.” Cas smiles at that.
Dean nods. Cas is a fellow soldier, so he’s great at games. So Dean listens him speak of waxing and waning, how the stars tell him about time and eternity, how the daytime sky reminds him of home. He speaks of the stars unseen, the sun unseen, about celestial and heavenly bodies. How time zones don’t matter because Castiel’s kind can move through time. How geography doesn’t matter because Castiel’s kind can move through all the veils of the world.
He speaks of how the angels are watching in the day, behind the veils of stars. How the eye of Heaven is the sun, and how every poetic metaphor Dean had ever heard contained the hidden truths of the universe.
He speaks of the celestial bodies in their lonely, singular orbits, with their light and dark faces, and their dance, battle, balance of gravity. They move in fated ellipses, crashing together and drifting apart. They are powerful bodies, ephemeral and constant, fleeting and endless.
Then Castiel stands up and reaches out a hand. “You have to decide what you want, Dean. I want to help you do that. Will you come with me?”
“I… uh, have this thing about flying, Cas.”
He looks back at Dean from his outstretched hand. “You know, I lied when I said that I don’t have feelings. I have experienced feelings… before.”
“Before what?”
“Before you, Dean. I’ve just always felt the same things -- fear, sometimes joy, and nothing else.”
“I know, Cas,” is all Dean says.
Castiel nods, places his hands on Dean’s arm, and they’re gone.
*
“Do you remember how I saved you from Hell?” Cas is the first to speak after they arrive in a different place and time.
Looking around him, Dean knows they’ve crossed oceans. They’re standing on a cliff. The sky, the very air around them, is a mist of lilac. Dean looks, finds penguins on the shore of a beach far below them, basking in the sunset. All above and below them, nothing but sea and sky. “No, I don’t remember…”
“It was a Thursday, and I’d asked you before, but this Thursday you finally let me. I convinced you to let me. You don’t remember what that was?”
Castiel catches his charge’s shaking head in his hands, holds it steady and wills Dean to remember.
Castiel cradles Dean’s jaw in his left hand and then takes his right hand, lifts his thumb in front of Dean’s eyes, extends it over a tightly closed fist. There’s the scent of cinnamon, spice, cannabis, olive oil all mixing with the sea air. Sweet and holy.
“What’s that, Cas?”
“Anointing oils. It is a sacrament.”
“Like, for holy people?”
“Yes.” Castiel is smiling. His Castiel, who knew him in hell and had saved him from it and visited him every three days thereafter. Castiel, who felt as familiar as forever, and more alien than anything he’s ever encountered up to this moment.
“Which sacrament?”
“Many of them, Dean. Mostly, it means a cleansing of the soul; an invitation for the Holy Spirit; a marking for endings -- such as death and sickness -- or for beginnings -- as in birth. Or marriage.” Then Castiel blushes right in front of him. He looks so goddamn happy.
“Ok.” Is all Dean can really say. The scent is heady.
“May I?” His thumb gleams wetly.
“Sure…” Then Dean feels a soft pressure on his forehead, slick roughened skin soothing his brow with a cool fire. Castiel is speaking in a language he doesn’t know, whispering it so softly, and yet Dean would swear he heard it inside his own head…
Castiel makes a cross, or an X - two touches of his thumb. His callus brushes over the soft skin at the edges of his ears.
Castiel thumbs each eyelid, smoothing down his lashes.
Then each nostril, and the scent is filling, cleansing.
His lips, then, where Castiel’s thumb pauses lovingly, regretfully, where he drags over the softest skin. Over his heart.
The skin over the back of his hands, to his knuckles. The tops of both feet, suddenly bare in the sand. With every touch, Dean feels a cool fire. A sweetness he’s never felt before. Blessed, holy, safe, and free.
The angel is done. He moves closer, Dean can feel it, and he opens his eyes. He doesn’t feel different, just… lighter. More beautiful.
Castiel’s skin looks fire-lit from the setting sun. Familiar, Dean thinks. The way Castiel holds his head in his hands just so, and feels like he’s bearing down on him, though they’re the same height. The way he wants him, and all questions leave his mind, sure to return. And Castiel’s lips are still moving…
They kiss in Capetown, against a sky of nothing but dim clouds and golden rays of sunlight.
*
Dean opens his eyes and it’s daylight. All around him there are bright green hills and bright blue lakes, butterflies and wildflowers of every color and he can’t tell the difference between the two. Castiel is kissing his neck. Dean notices his feet are still bare.
Dean thinks of the masters of music, art, science. And what was he good for? He knows he is a good soldier, like Cas. He also knows how fucked up that can be. He wants to ask, why me? But it’s hard to tell where angels make choices, if they make them at all. Castiel was either the most manipulative sonofabitch he’s ever met, or the least.
“Castiel? You know about me, and Sam? Don’t you?”
“Yes, Dean.”
“For how long have you known?”
“For always.”
“Our childhood?”
“Always.” He waits. “You want to know what I think…”
That wasn’t exactly the tone he was hoping for. “Not really.”
Castiel knows he’s lying. “You have privileges here, with your brother, which I don’t have. I can’t care if you exercise them. I can’t fault you for that. It’s not my domain.”
“And God doesn’t care?” He has to ask. He has to.
“I don’t know my Father’s mind.”
“Cas, tell me. Do you think that it’s wrong? Sammy and me - together?”
Castiel studies his face like it’s a sacred text. It’s fucking unnerving.
“Castiel?”
“Before you sold you soul, Dean, did you already think you were going to end up in Hell?”
Dean feels his face get tense, but when he looks at Castiel his eyes are shining. “Yeah. I always did.”
“And yet you try to do the right thing, in every case. Except this one, which you think you should be damned for.”
“Aren’t I? I mean, you’re the angel - you tell me.”
“Most people do what you and Sam do.”
“What?”
“The majority of the population have engaged in carnal acts with a brother or a sibling. We watch, Dean, remember?”
“That must be the kind of thing your friend Uriel hates us for.”
Castiel shrugs. “Uriel is very particular.”
“But you don’t?”
“No. I don’t. I envy you.”
“Isn’t envy a sin?”
“Yes, very much so. That’s why I keep it a poorly hidden secret. Now I ask you a question: Do you love your brother?”
Dean just stares at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
Castiel smiles and turns his head to the side. His expression of a laugh. “You think that you deserve your brother’s love, and yet you are convinced that it has damned you. That’s so very Dean of you, Dean.”
Dean shrugs. “Yeah, well, what can I say? I literally traded my soul for him once, remember? Were you watching then too?”
Castiel does not blink. “Yes. I knew what you were going to do. Your choice was fated a long time ago.”
“Thanks. For that.” Dean furrows his brow, lifts his head a little. “Cas, are you saying that Sam and I, we were fated to be…?”
“Fated to be brothers, yes. Lovers, perhaps yes, too.”
“Then how come it’s not like that anymore?” He doesn’t tell Castiel what’s really wrong. He doesn’t tell him about all the things he can’t talk to Sammy about, even when they stay up all night entwined around each other, staving off the day’s madness with nothing else to get them through.
He doesn’t tell him that he hasn’t been able to get hard or come at all since he returned from Hell for anyone but Castiel. He thinks perhaps he already knows. He thinks perhaps that’s why he’s here.
“You were fated for other things.”
“Those things they’re not telling you about.”
Castiel nods. “I am sorry, Dean, about what you had to endure in Hell. Especially those things involving your brother.”
Dean just stares, his heart beating through his chest, his blood racing in his ears, just shy of panic. “You know about that?” Of course. All the angels must know.
“I still have every faith in you, Dean. You will find a solution.”
“Right. You know me, and you have all the faith in the world in me. Why is that, Cas?”
“That’s just faith.”
“Faith for the sake of faith? What’s the point of that?” So Dean asks the same familiar questions. “Why did you even save me?”
He gets the same answers. “Because I was meant to.”
“You keep saying that, but I tell you, Cas, I’m not seeing it. For what purpose? You’ve got Heaven, and angels, and your God. What am I supposed to do?”
“We’ll know, when it’s time. You’ve trusted me this far.”
“Don’t ask me why.”
Castiel smiles a tight, sharp smile. “I won’t.” He scrunches up his face, against the sun or against Dean, he can’t tell. “Right now, I’d just like you to keep doing this, here with me. Would you?”
“Yes, Cas,” and Dean breathes his name onto the angel’s lips before pressing their mouths together.
Dean feels the weight of Castiel’s body on top of him for the first time. He will forever associate that heavy bliss with the smell of Swiss mountain wildflowers.
Dean wants to grind his hips up into something, but he hesitates. He hates feeling guilty for being human.
Cas puts a hand on his hip, stopping him. He smiles a tiny smile. “I’m sorry, Dean. I can’t have us giving up who we are.”
“So I guess we can’t, huh?” and Dean just brushes his palm against the hair that falls down over Castiel’s forehead. It falls back into place.
Castiel shakes his head softly and steadily. “We can’t, but you can.”
“I know - ‘our chaste, soulful, spiritual relationship and sharing in God’s love…’”
“You’re mocking me.”
Dean gets angry, edgy. He just wanted one thing, just this one thing, in his whole crappy life. Why should this be any different. “Can’t we do something about it though? Isn’t there a way to escape all this? Just for a while? A way to get around God’s law?”
“I know of many things, Dean, about all the realms of the universe. There’s no getting around God’s law. That’s why it’s God’s law.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. You’re talking about the entire universe - everything that exists - and you still make it sound like a cage.”
“If it is, it’s very old cage. I was the angel of the moon before there was a moon, Dean. The supernatural invokes the natural, and the natural invokes the supernatural again. There’s no escape from either one.”
“I know, there’s the order of things. Aren’t there other spells? Other things that can influence angels?”
“Anointing you connects us together. There’s holiness there, beyond magic. It connects the grace in both our souls.”
“Humans have grace?”
Castiel smiles then, a huge smile, and rare. “Of course you do. The more connected we are, the more I can protect you.”
“Does that go both ways?”
Castiel’s eyes are wide and bluer than the periwinkles. “Do I need you to protect me, Dean? From who?”
“From anyone who means you harm. It’s kind of my thing.” Dean resents Castiel’s lack of fear, but he stabbed him in the heart and Cas didn’t bat an eyelash. Nothing fazes Cas, and Dean feels like he’s losing his mind in every single one of the angel’s infinite possibilities. He doesn’t know of a single spell to trap an angel. He is way out of his league.
“There are signs and symbols, very ancient ones, to trap us or keep us away. Very few things can kill us. Unless prayed for, or called for, we are to keep out of human affairs. But we can observe, as I said.”
“Are you supposed to watch each other, too? Like spies?”
“We are under orders to report disobedience to our superiors.”
“What happens to those who disobey?”
“It’s not pleasant. But that’s not important. Angels rarely disobey, and are rarely punished for it. It rarely happens.”
“But it does happen.”
“Yes.” Castiel looks at him, as if testing his loyalty.
Dean holds Cas tight against him and grinds his body up, finally making contact. Maybe he’s losing himself a little bit, but there are parts he’d rather not keep.
*
Castiel’s hands are all over under Dean’s clothes and it’s a few moments before he realizes they’ve moved again.
Dean gets the feeling it’s the last place, their final one on this night. He feels fresh cut grass, lush at his back. The moon is huge and shining, hanging in the sky low with the clouds somewhere above the treetops that loom for a mile above him. Is this a golf course?
He wants to tease Castiel’s fondness for parks and their artificial perfection, because he never tires of teasing Castiel, but the angel is frantic now, distracting Dean with his hands and his lips.
“We’re still using subterfuge. We’re still going to have to hide from the Host. Never speak of this again.”
“I promise.”
Castiel closes his eyes and hangs his head over Dean’s chest, the way he winds himself up with passion, like he can’t handle it, like he doesn’t know what to do with it all.
“Say it,” Dean whispers. "Say it.”
“I’m in love with you, Dean Winchester.”
The way he looks right now will be in Dean’s dreams for the months and years to come.
“Could you love me?”
Could you love me and do what we ask of you?
Dean will always remember the first question. In his darkest moments of doubt, he will hear the second.
“Yes.” Dean can’t say anything else but the one desperate word.
“Will you let me do this?” Castiel’s clothes are roughed up, his tie loose and the tails of his shirt out, but he’s still mostly dressed.
Dean just says, “Yes,” though he’s not sure what to. His t-shirt is pushed up to his chest and his jeans are halfway down and he doesn’t even remember it happening.
When Castiel first presses his mouth to his skin, Dean remembers his words: You can’t change destiny. Destiny is to be an angel and a man. Destiny is also to be in love. We will find a way, Dean. I will try everything I know. I will find every secret I don’t.
Castiel is nuzzling him, sending shivers across the skin on his belly, thighs, and hard sex with his breaths. “This is a funny kind of seduction, Cas. When you don’t really want me.”
Castiel growls then, takes him hard in his mouth and cups his balls, sucks and squeezes with a perfection that’s beyond mechanical, beyond fantasy. Dean twists his hips but he’s held firm, so he can’t move at all.
This is the stuff of his dreams, ones where he wakes up with wet spots on his jeans and Castiel’s name on his lips. Ones where there is sunlight instead of an inferno, and the scent of wildflowers instead of boiling flesh.
Dean is crying out words he doesn’t even know, and when he’s coming -- with the taste of earth in his mouth and blood from the fresh-cut blades of grass on his tongue -- he would swear he sees stars, everywhere everywhere.
He opens his eyes and he’s sitting on a park bench, near dusk, fully clothed and alone. He looks at the perfectly manicured grass and the primary colors of the jungle gym and he wants to hate it, he really does. But he can’t.
*
Three days later, Sam and Dean are sitting in a booth at a diner and Dean looks miserable above his blueberry pancakes.
“You miss him.”
Dean looks stricken.
“I’d have to be blind not to see it. And you’ve been acting like a dick for the past three days. Again.”
Sam ignores Dean’s snort. “Look, I’m not telling you what to do. But I don’t know how to help you. If he can make you feel like yourself again, give you back some of what you’ve lost, I say… go for it.”
“He’s an angel, Sam. An angel. They’re dicks and they’re innocent. Nothing good’s gonna come out of this. He’s a curse.”
“He’s a gift.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dean, all I’m saying, is the guy saved you from Hell. You’re miserable without him. I know you are. If he can offer you anything, and you think he’s the real deal, just… don’t mess it up.”
“Nice pep talk, Sam. I’m glad you care so much about…” He waves his hand, thinks: My sex life. My guardian angel. The last 20 years of our lives. He doesn’t say any of it, he doesn’t.
“Remember after Jess died? You were all worried about me, trying to get me laid.”
“And did that ever help?” Dean raises a hand off the table in exasperation and scoffs.
“No, not really. But that was kind of your deal. This? Being mopey and freaked out? Is not.”
“He’s an angel, Sam. I don’t have much say. There are lines he can’t cross, rules, commands. It’s impossible.” Maybe Sam was being too helpful, Dean thinks. Maybe Sam was looking for an out.
“Just one more thing.” He waves away Dean’s groan. “Hear me out. Look, I made a mistake. Last summer. I messed up. Things happened, even before,” he slows down, “New Harmony, and those things forced me to make a decision I didn’t want to make. I had to survive without you. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t know how I could. So… I don’t know, I lost a part of myself. I lost a lot of what was you, because I didn’t know how to go on if I didn’t. It made me weak.”
Sam waves away Dean’s protests again. “No, it did. You said it yourself - we’re each other’s weakness. For better or worse. I never thought it would make things better, not really. Just survivable, you know. You’ve never given up on me Dean, and you don’t know how much that keeps me going. Whatever I say. I know that. I don’t want to see you make that mistake with Castiel. I wish to god the angels spoke to me. I wish they had been around to save us, all those times we needed it. He saved your life. He brought you back to me. You deserved that. You deserve to have at least a chance here, right? And I can’t deal with your sorry miserable ass like this much longer.”
Dean gives a sad smile. “People don’t deserve other people, Sam. We’re all miserable to each other. It hurts to stay, and it hurts to leave.”
“Seriously? Dean…”
“The best case scenario? Castiel falls, loses everything he is, maybe even dies because of me. He has all this power over me in the meantime, and what? We spend the rest of my short life dry humping like teenagers? He can bend time and space but feelings are too much to handle? It’s crazy, Sam. No, it’s stupid.”
“Crazy, maybe. But you are my crazy brother. You don’t do normal.”
“What’s wrong with normal? Maybe I like normal.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t do normal - you do angels.”
Dean narrows his eyes. “And what do you do at night, Sam?”
Sam shakes it off. Yet again. “Dean, you really think you can go back to that dream you had, before everything really went to shit last year? That you can have that perfect life?”
Sam was talking about the dream picnic, the wife and the son and baseball. Not their dream, not their entwined violent life, destined to die together, but always together. Now it’s Dean’s turn to wave his hand, lean back and scoff at the very suggestion. “Nah. Even before Hell, that never would’ve worked.”
“Yeah.” Sam stares at the oily pool of his coffee.
“Hey. Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry I died. I’m sorry I left you. For what it’s worth.”
“Me too, Dean.”
“Do you ever think you might get it back, Sammy?”
“Get what back?”
“Those memories. Those feelings of what it was like… you know, before? When it was good?”
“I don’t know, Dean. I wish for that, more than anything. Even if it kills me, I’d like to have that back.”
Dean nods.
“What about you? Has it gotten any better? Since you first came back?”
Dean nods. “A little. Castiel makes me remember things sometimes. Things from childhood. And that one time, he took me back to a time when Mom and Dad were still around.”
“Did that make it better?”
“Actually, that time, he made things worse. He doesn’t seem to get the fine line between happiness and tragedy. I think he’s figuring it out. Hanging around our family and all. But still, he makes everything I lived before, I don’t know, closer, somehow. Like, he’s so crazy, he makes my own crazy existence make sense. Like he can fix things.”
“You’re not something to be fixed, Dean. I’m sorry, I know I keep making you think that you are. Even so, the angels don’t seem to be big on helping.”
“Revenge doesn’t fix things, either, you know.”
Sam shrugs. “Maybe I don’t need fixing. Maybe I just want justice.”
“I don’t want to argue about this. I don’t want to think any more, ever again.” Dean puts his hand over his eyes. He really means it.
“We’ll get separate hotel rooms tonight. You can make up your mind.”
Like it was all up to him. Like he ever felt as if he had a choice. Dean felt like an blacksmith, spending his whole life chipping away at cold cold hearts, searching for cracks in the castings.
Sam always knew how to get through to Dean. Not even Hell could close him up so completely, take away his ability to recognize his brother. No matter what he said. If there is destiny, this is it. But when he wasn’t looking, when he wasn’t there to protect Sam, Sam had lost the way back. And Dean’s shattered mind, flawless scarless body, and battered courage weren’t enough to remind Sam of what Dean himself was barely hanging on to. Their shared past was all they had, and they were both losing it.
Still…
Dean leans over the table, attempts to do something he’s never tried before in public, without the blinds drawn, without the covers up. But the days seemed so impossibly short, and that meant less chances for everything he could still imagine himself wanting to do.
So he presses his lips to Sam’s own, enough to take the coffee, to taste his Sam. Sam gives him that look that says there are more important things to worry about. Dean doesn’t care. He lowers his eyes (like Castiel) and presses softly but insistently until Sam presses back.
The waitress comes and glares at them until the defiance sparks in his brother’s eyes. The defiance he sees all the time. And then just as suddenly, it’s gone. Dean considers his brother’s rebellious streak. He ponders Sam’s infinite capacity for boredom. He has no idea how to deal with any of it.
This is the life Dean gave to his brother. To Sam, any escape from it -- be it death, demon, or Castiel -- is better than staying in it. Is a damn gift, Sam says. Dean feels himself backfiring on Sam. It stings. He picks up his tools, and goes in search of another fire-forged heart.
*
That night, he dreams of Sammy as a boy.
A time back when Sammy would moodily reject any attempt to draw their lives together, wanting nothing to do with hunting, while every thought of his every day was about making Sammy happy. Because Dean was young, and he didn’t know better, and he didn’t know anything else. He knew he loved his brother, and he saw him sinking into isolation, and he didn’t want to be thrown out with Dad, with everything else.
And Sammy would ask for more. So Dean would give him more, and Sammy would take it. No one else felt like Sammy, and no one else loved him.
His dream always changes. He dreams of Sammy in Hell.
He dreams of Sam strangling him, of Sam yelling at him in anger, of Sam saying he’s sorry, of Sam lying, tearing at him, not caring, just wanting to be free of him, and having to rip out his very self, organ by organ, strip of skin by strip of skin, call him what he is and burn it all.
Dean awakes alone. He can’t take much more of this. Sam won’t even talk to him anymore, and he insisted on separate rooms after their fifth blow-up over absolutely nothing. It doesn’t help that they used to solve so many of their arguments through sex. Dean hadn’t realized how many fights ended with his dick in Sam’s mouth, with him bent in half in the back of the Impala, with Sammy saying he’s sorry when he comes. It doesn’t help that he feels wrecked.
It doesn’t help that it’s days before Dean can bear to do more than shake off without feeling like he’s re-bruised his dick, still sore from Castiel’s mouth. So by the time he can finally take some time alone, he’s all kinds of needy mess.
He blames Cas. Cas and his stupid angel tricks and disappearing and mouths direct from fucking god. But when Dean touches himself, leans his neck back against the cool rim of the tub and lets the water lap at his nipples, all he wants to think of is Cas.
When he opens his eyes, he’s not surprised to find his angel there.
Castiel’s wide celestial blue eyes are focused on Dean’s hands, caught where they are wrapped around his sex and between his teeth. Castiel’s still standing in the corner, as far away from Dean as possible.
Dean pulls at himself harder, more insistently, keeping his fist tight against his skin, running his fingers over the stretched skin at the head of his sex with every stroke. He hears Castiel’s name in his head, blocking out all else, and he begins to breathe it, say it, with each deep breath, let it take him higher.
Castiel moves forward, kneeling and crawling, as if pulled by the sound of his name. He keeps whimpering under his breath. “Too much. Too much. Too much.” But he doesn’t move away.
Dean leans up out of the tub, crouches like a cat with one hand on the side of the white tub, his legs curled under him. Castiel kneels down low, closer, closer, like he’s at an altar. They should move, they should move, they should stop staring, but neither one is going to. He holds it and holds it and doesn’t slow down until he’s coming on Castiel’s hair, face, neck, his open gasping mouth, his closed eyelashes. His come is only slightly more pale than the angel’s marble-white skin.
Dean grabs onto Castiel’s coat collar as he crumples, spilling water on the floor and over his clothes. “Cas, stay?” He’s pleading but he doesn’t care.
“Stay,” and he lifts Castiel like a doll - but with his weight, he’s more like a lever - and pulls him crashing into the water. Castiel doesn’t move to take off his coat, doesn’t struggle. Just sinks until he’s under water, comes up for air and begins to breathe again, like a baptism. They roll over each other, all limbs and wet cloth. Castiel keeps falling under water, limp, dazed, and heavy. Dean knows Castiel’s need to stay intact. He also knows the expression on his face, pale and shining, framed by dark shocks of hair. It’s a feeling he hasn’t felt in a long time.
“C’mere,” he softly goads, soaping up his hands. He weaves his finger through the thick black hair, pressing with his fingertips and roughing up some suds, cupping Castiel’s head in his hands. He feels the weight of him shift as Castiel lets go, arches his head back and shuts his eyes. Neither of their bodies is real. Still, they can make the most of their borrowed selves, their facades.
Dean dunks him under the water, then pulls him up and over him into a kiss. Drops of water fall on his face when Castiel grabs him and holds him still. Time and peace are what Castiel offers him, and it’s all he wants.
“Stay tonight.”
Castiel nods, his nose brushing up against Dean’s. Every surface of his skin is slick and he feels it all over.
For a moment, he is soaking wet on the tile floor, weighted down by emotion. Seconds later, he is completely dry. Dean towels off lightly. Then he just stares at Cas, and leads him to the bed.
He’s half hard and Cas is too. They kiss, rest, stay that way. Dean is exhausted. It’s exciting in a way nothing has excited him in a long time. It reminds him of sleeping with Sam, when they were younger, or other times when they had to share a bed out of necessity. Sometimes just himself alone, half hard and fully clothed, watching the light on the wall and listening to Sam breathe.
It’s everything that’s ever meant anything to him. Despite what he says. Despite what he does. Castiel knows this.
And, still, Dean wants Castiel so bad, it’s like every bad romance story he’s ever hated, come back to haunt him, and he loves it and he hates it.
When he came back from Hell, nothing was real or right. Whatever life he thought he had was gone, as if it was there and he just couldn’t see it anymore. And then Castiel comes along and mirrors every old feeling, old memory, back to him. And tells him it’s important like it means something, like it’s the only thing that matters in the world.
But Sam mattered to him, still does, with all the fire and anger he’s got. If that meant nothing in the universe, then what chance did he have? What could anything else mean then?
Dean clings to Castiel, and cries. He’s embarrassed, but he gives up fighting just this once. He’s never had everything in his life fail at once, and been given an angel’s shoulder to cry on in return.
Castiel holds him close, but soothingly, like his father never did. Castiel opens his legs and lets Dean’s thigh fall between them and holds his body tight against Dean wherever he moves, like he hasn’t done with Sam since they were teenagers. Castiel can’t give Dean any more, but he lets Dean take and take whatever he needs, bite his lips and grab at his skin and grind more and more of his naked skin against his rumpled suit.
And Dean doesn’t care about a damn thing except using this, and he doesn’t care if the angels are watching him, or god himself, because they’ve taken everything else away, and they can give him this. He’s not going to stop.
When he calls out his brother’s name, he wonders if Sammy can hear it, or if he’s even there at all.
*
The sunlight is starting to come in through the cracks in the blinds. Dean remembers sleeping long enough to have dreams. They’re bad ones he doesn’t want to remember. They’re of Sam.
“You’ve been quiet, Castiel.” He knows the angel isn’t sleeping. Angels don’t sleep.
“I’ve been listening to you. You’re very loud.”
“You can read my mind?”
Castiel’s chin moves at the crown of his head, where it’s been resting. “No, I’m just listening to your feelings.”
“Do that a lot?”
“If it helps me to understand you, yes. They’re just hints of feelings, sometimes phrases or images. I’m not used to being one of the subjects though. That’s certainly different.”
“You can listen to other people’s, too?”
“Yes. They’re not as important. Not as interesting, either.”
He hears the slightly dangerous tone in Castiel’s voice. Dean lifts his head to look at Castiel, his eyes narrowed. “You are envious.”
“Why did you call your brother’s name?”
Dean cocks his head. “You’re the one that can read minds. You tell me.”
“I want you to tell me.”
“Because I need both of you and I can’t choose one over the other.”
“So you’ll use me instead.”
“Is that what you hear, from inside my head? Really? Aren’t you using me? Castiel.”
“No. No, Dean.”
“Right. That’s just what we want each other to think.”
Castiel is angry, he can feel it. His eyes are open wide, but his chest is rising and falling with frustrated power. Something he won’t say. Dean can’t read him. It’s not fair.
“I’m sorry I said his name. You’re both messing with my head. Can’t we just stop? Have this for now until the next disaster comes?”
Castiel stops breathing. Sighs with relief. What was the angel hiding from him? “Yes. That’s what I want too.”
Castiel kisses him then, soft pleading kisses. He plies him with his hands, soothes and caresses his overstimulated sex until he comes lazily, and Dean doesn’t have to remember to whisper “Castiel” at all. He just does.
When he awakens a few hours later, the room is empty, smelling faintly of salt and cinnamon.
The End
Author: eggblue
Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam/Dean
Disclaimer: Supernatural, Dean, Sam, and Castiel are not belong to me.
Rating: R
Word Count: ~6,400
Warnings: Angsty orgasms, religious kink, dual OTP-ishness
Notes: Takes place after ‘Great Pumpkin’ ep. 4.7, i.e. the park bench scene. Sam is bored and lost. Castiel is chaste but helpful. Dean is very very frustrated.
On the first full night Castiel spends with Dean Winchester, the night changes to day and back again, and the moon enters three separate phases, reaching just over the horizon, pale in the starless sky.
It begins at dusk, on a park bench before a deserted playground.
“Swear you’ll never speak of this again.” Castiel leans across the distance to Dean. Whether he’s squinting in the sunlight, or regretting what he’s about to say, Dean can’t tell.
“I swear.”
“I don’t envy the choices you’ll have to make, Dean.”
“I know. You’re repeating yourself. Speaking in angel code again. But you’re not telling me what those choices are.” Dean takes Castiel’s grave face in his hands. Willing away both their fears in the way he’s found works best.
Cas reacts to everything Dean does by pushing him away at first, and then drawing him in closer. He’s used to this. The push and pull of Castiel. The way the tone of their relationship is never fully set. The way his crazy life is mimicked by the way it feels to be sitting on a park bench at dusk next to an inhuman, perfect being with no need for cares or time or place. How crazy it is to need something like that.
Dean brushes Castiel’s lips with his own. Only once. Cas pulls away, but keeps his eyes on Dean in a way that makes him feel studied. Dean moves his hands up to Castiel’s ears, feeling the tips grow warmer. A human reaction. He feels Cas’ hands on his wrists pulling him away, but still… his eyes…
So Dean moves his hands to Castiel’s shoulders, since Castiel never tries that hard to keep him away. He follows Castiel’s paranoid expression around the park, though no one’s there. “Castiel…”
Then he puts his arms around him, locking Castiel’s arms in between them. The angel ripples his fingers flat against Dean’s body, flexes his fingers flat against the crotch of his jeans and presses.
“We’re being watched.” Castiel’s breath comes out fast across Dean’s cheek.
Dean wonders if he even needs to breathe. Then again, Castiel doesn’t need to do any of the things that he does. Yet he does them.
Castiel pauses, then whispers. “But there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Cas? What is it?” Dean hears the angel’s words in his head, trying to convince him to have faith and do his duty, to let Castiel do his duty and remain pure.
But Dean also hears Castiel falling for him. He’s not blind, and he’s certainly not dumb. Not about this. Never about this. He can feel it, and like every good chance he’s ever had, he knows it’s bad. But he doesn’t want it to stop. So he can’t help but push Castiel every chance he gets.
Castiel moves out of his arms in the space of a breath, before Dean even feels him think it.
Dean feels as if he’s lost his purpose when Cas goes away. There’s nothing else keeping him grounded these days except for surprise visits from his angel. So of course he wants to sabotage it. So Cas is guilty, so Cas is responsible, so Cas is already worn down from disobeying in his heart - torn between Dean and Heaven, between two purposes, two reasons to exist - and so what then? Dean knows the destructive path of dilemma. “Cas?”
In his gaze, he pleads for silence. “The angels are watching us.”
“I thought you said the angels couldn’t be bothered to watch us.”
“But they are bothered by us.”
Dean raises his eyebrows. “Us? As in… you and me?”
Cas nods.
“Why would they be bothered by us, Cas?”
Dean can feel it. Cas wants to speak, to say much more. He knows he won’t. The angel clams up on him every time, or just disappears.
“I can take us away from them, on nights like tonight. If only for a little while, they won’t be able to find us. Think of it as playing hide-and-seek.” Cas smiles at that.
Dean nods. Cas is a fellow soldier, so he’s great at games. So Dean listens him speak of waxing and waning, how the stars tell him about time and eternity, how the daytime sky reminds him of home. He speaks of the stars unseen, the sun unseen, about celestial and heavenly bodies. How time zones don’t matter because Castiel’s kind can move through time. How geography doesn’t matter because Castiel’s kind can move through all the veils of the world.
He speaks of how the angels are watching in the day, behind the veils of stars. How the eye of Heaven is the sun, and how every poetic metaphor Dean had ever heard contained the hidden truths of the universe.
He speaks of the celestial bodies in their lonely, singular orbits, with their light and dark faces, and their dance, battle, balance of gravity. They move in fated ellipses, crashing together and drifting apart. They are powerful bodies, ephemeral and constant, fleeting and endless.
Then Castiel stands up and reaches out a hand. “You have to decide what you want, Dean. I want to help you do that. Will you come with me?”
“I… uh, have this thing about flying, Cas.”
He looks back at Dean from his outstretched hand. “You know, I lied when I said that I don’t have feelings. I have experienced feelings… before.”
“Before what?”
“Before you, Dean. I’ve just always felt the same things -- fear, sometimes joy, and nothing else.”
“I know, Cas,” is all Dean says.
Castiel nods, places his hands on Dean’s arm, and they’re gone.
*
“Do you remember how I saved you from Hell?” Cas is the first to speak after they arrive in a different place and time.
Looking around him, Dean knows they’ve crossed oceans. They’re standing on a cliff. The sky, the very air around them, is a mist of lilac. Dean looks, finds penguins on the shore of a beach far below them, basking in the sunset. All above and below them, nothing but sea and sky. “No, I don’t remember…”
“It was a Thursday, and I’d asked you before, but this Thursday you finally let me. I convinced you to let me. You don’t remember what that was?”
Castiel catches his charge’s shaking head in his hands, holds it steady and wills Dean to remember.
Castiel cradles Dean’s jaw in his left hand and then takes his right hand, lifts his thumb in front of Dean’s eyes, extends it over a tightly closed fist. There’s the scent of cinnamon, spice, cannabis, olive oil all mixing with the sea air. Sweet and holy.
“What’s that, Cas?”
“Anointing oils. It is a sacrament.”
“Like, for holy people?”
“Yes.” Castiel is smiling. His Castiel, who knew him in hell and had saved him from it and visited him every three days thereafter. Castiel, who felt as familiar as forever, and more alien than anything he’s ever encountered up to this moment.
“Which sacrament?”
“Many of them, Dean. Mostly, it means a cleansing of the soul; an invitation for the Holy Spirit; a marking for endings -- such as death and sickness -- or for beginnings -- as in birth. Or marriage.” Then Castiel blushes right in front of him. He looks so goddamn happy.
“Ok.” Is all Dean can really say. The scent is heady.
“May I?” His thumb gleams wetly.
“Sure…” Then Dean feels a soft pressure on his forehead, slick roughened skin soothing his brow with a cool fire. Castiel is speaking in a language he doesn’t know, whispering it so softly, and yet Dean would swear he heard it inside his own head…
Castiel makes a cross, or an X - two touches of his thumb. His callus brushes over the soft skin at the edges of his ears.
Castiel thumbs each eyelid, smoothing down his lashes.
Then each nostril, and the scent is filling, cleansing.
His lips, then, where Castiel’s thumb pauses lovingly, regretfully, where he drags over the softest skin. Over his heart.
The skin over the back of his hands, to his knuckles. The tops of both feet, suddenly bare in the sand. With every touch, Dean feels a cool fire. A sweetness he’s never felt before. Blessed, holy, safe, and free.
The angel is done. He moves closer, Dean can feel it, and he opens his eyes. He doesn’t feel different, just… lighter. More beautiful.
Castiel’s skin looks fire-lit from the setting sun. Familiar, Dean thinks. The way Castiel holds his head in his hands just so, and feels like he’s bearing down on him, though they’re the same height. The way he wants him, and all questions leave his mind, sure to return. And Castiel’s lips are still moving…
They kiss in Capetown, against a sky of nothing but dim clouds and golden rays of sunlight.
*
Dean opens his eyes and it’s daylight. All around him there are bright green hills and bright blue lakes, butterflies and wildflowers of every color and he can’t tell the difference between the two. Castiel is kissing his neck. Dean notices his feet are still bare.
Dean thinks of the masters of music, art, science. And what was he good for? He knows he is a good soldier, like Cas. He also knows how fucked up that can be. He wants to ask, why me? But it’s hard to tell where angels make choices, if they make them at all. Castiel was either the most manipulative sonofabitch he’s ever met, or the least.
“Castiel? You know about me, and Sam? Don’t you?”
“Yes, Dean.”
“For how long have you known?”
“For always.”
“Our childhood?”
“Always.” He waits. “You want to know what I think…”
That wasn’t exactly the tone he was hoping for. “Not really.”
Castiel knows he’s lying. “You have privileges here, with your brother, which I don’t have. I can’t care if you exercise them. I can’t fault you for that. It’s not my domain.”
“And God doesn’t care?” He has to ask. He has to.
“I don’t know my Father’s mind.”
“Cas, tell me. Do you think that it’s wrong? Sammy and me - together?”
Castiel studies his face like it’s a sacred text. It’s fucking unnerving.
“Castiel?”
“Before you sold you soul, Dean, did you already think you were going to end up in Hell?”
Dean feels his face get tense, but when he looks at Castiel his eyes are shining. “Yeah. I always did.”
“And yet you try to do the right thing, in every case. Except this one, which you think you should be damned for.”
“Aren’t I? I mean, you’re the angel - you tell me.”
“Most people do what you and Sam do.”
“What?”
“The majority of the population have engaged in carnal acts with a brother or a sibling. We watch, Dean, remember?”
“That must be the kind of thing your friend Uriel hates us for.”
Castiel shrugs. “Uriel is very particular.”
“But you don’t?”
“No. I don’t. I envy you.”
“Isn’t envy a sin?”
“Yes, very much so. That’s why I keep it a poorly hidden secret. Now I ask you a question: Do you love your brother?”
Dean just stares at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
Castiel smiles and turns his head to the side. His expression of a laugh. “You think that you deserve your brother’s love, and yet you are convinced that it has damned you. That’s so very Dean of you, Dean.”
Dean shrugs. “Yeah, well, what can I say? I literally traded my soul for him once, remember? Were you watching then too?”
Castiel does not blink. “Yes. I knew what you were going to do. Your choice was fated a long time ago.”
“Thanks. For that.” Dean furrows his brow, lifts his head a little. “Cas, are you saying that Sam and I, we were fated to be…?”
“Fated to be brothers, yes. Lovers, perhaps yes, too.”
“Then how come it’s not like that anymore?” He doesn’t tell Castiel what’s really wrong. He doesn’t tell him about all the things he can’t talk to Sammy about, even when they stay up all night entwined around each other, staving off the day’s madness with nothing else to get them through.
He doesn’t tell him that he hasn’t been able to get hard or come at all since he returned from Hell for anyone but Castiel. He thinks perhaps he already knows. He thinks perhaps that’s why he’s here.
“You were fated for other things.”
“Those things they’re not telling you about.”
Castiel nods. “I am sorry, Dean, about what you had to endure in Hell. Especially those things involving your brother.”
Dean just stares, his heart beating through his chest, his blood racing in his ears, just shy of panic. “You know about that?” Of course. All the angels must know.
“I still have every faith in you, Dean. You will find a solution.”
“Right. You know me, and you have all the faith in the world in me. Why is that, Cas?”
“That’s just faith.”
“Faith for the sake of faith? What’s the point of that?” So Dean asks the same familiar questions. “Why did you even save me?”
He gets the same answers. “Because I was meant to.”
“You keep saying that, but I tell you, Cas, I’m not seeing it. For what purpose? You’ve got Heaven, and angels, and your God. What am I supposed to do?”
“We’ll know, when it’s time. You’ve trusted me this far.”
“Don’t ask me why.”
Castiel smiles a tight, sharp smile. “I won’t.” He scrunches up his face, against the sun or against Dean, he can’t tell. “Right now, I’d just like you to keep doing this, here with me. Would you?”
“Yes, Cas,” and Dean breathes his name onto the angel’s lips before pressing their mouths together.
Dean feels the weight of Castiel’s body on top of him for the first time. He will forever associate that heavy bliss with the smell of Swiss mountain wildflowers.
Dean wants to grind his hips up into something, but he hesitates. He hates feeling guilty for being human.
Cas puts a hand on his hip, stopping him. He smiles a tiny smile. “I’m sorry, Dean. I can’t have us giving up who we are.”
“So I guess we can’t, huh?” and Dean just brushes his palm against the hair that falls down over Castiel’s forehead. It falls back into place.
Castiel shakes his head softly and steadily. “We can’t, but you can.”
“I know - ‘our chaste, soulful, spiritual relationship and sharing in God’s love…’”
“You’re mocking me.”
Dean gets angry, edgy. He just wanted one thing, just this one thing, in his whole crappy life. Why should this be any different. “Can’t we do something about it though? Isn’t there a way to escape all this? Just for a while? A way to get around God’s law?”
“I know of many things, Dean, about all the realms of the universe. There’s no getting around God’s law. That’s why it’s God’s law.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. You’re talking about the entire universe - everything that exists - and you still make it sound like a cage.”
“If it is, it’s very old cage. I was the angel of the moon before there was a moon, Dean. The supernatural invokes the natural, and the natural invokes the supernatural again. There’s no escape from either one.”
“I know, there’s the order of things. Aren’t there other spells? Other things that can influence angels?”
“Anointing you connects us together. There’s holiness there, beyond magic. It connects the grace in both our souls.”
“Humans have grace?”
Castiel smiles then, a huge smile, and rare. “Of course you do. The more connected we are, the more I can protect you.”
“Does that go both ways?”
Castiel’s eyes are wide and bluer than the periwinkles. “Do I need you to protect me, Dean? From who?”
“From anyone who means you harm. It’s kind of my thing.” Dean resents Castiel’s lack of fear, but he stabbed him in the heart and Cas didn’t bat an eyelash. Nothing fazes Cas, and Dean feels like he’s losing his mind in every single one of the angel’s infinite possibilities. He doesn’t know of a single spell to trap an angel. He is way out of his league.
“There are signs and symbols, very ancient ones, to trap us or keep us away. Very few things can kill us. Unless prayed for, or called for, we are to keep out of human affairs. But we can observe, as I said.”
“Are you supposed to watch each other, too? Like spies?”
“We are under orders to report disobedience to our superiors.”
“What happens to those who disobey?”
“It’s not pleasant. But that’s not important. Angels rarely disobey, and are rarely punished for it. It rarely happens.”
“But it does happen.”
“Yes.” Castiel looks at him, as if testing his loyalty.
Dean holds Cas tight against him and grinds his body up, finally making contact. Maybe he’s losing himself a little bit, but there are parts he’d rather not keep.
*
Castiel’s hands are all over under Dean’s clothes and it’s a few moments before he realizes they’ve moved again.
Dean gets the feeling it’s the last place, their final one on this night. He feels fresh cut grass, lush at his back. The moon is huge and shining, hanging in the sky low with the clouds somewhere above the treetops that loom for a mile above him. Is this a golf course?
He wants to tease Castiel’s fondness for parks and their artificial perfection, because he never tires of teasing Castiel, but the angel is frantic now, distracting Dean with his hands and his lips.
“We’re still using subterfuge. We’re still going to have to hide from the Host. Never speak of this again.”
“I promise.”
Castiel closes his eyes and hangs his head over Dean’s chest, the way he winds himself up with passion, like he can’t handle it, like he doesn’t know what to do with it all.
“Say it,” Dean whispers. "Say it.”
“I’m in love with you, Dean Winchester.”
The way he looks right now will be in Dean’s dreams for the months and years to come.
“Could you love me?”
Could you love me and do what we ask of you?
Dean will always remember the first question. In his darkest moments of doubt, he will hear the second.
“Yes.” Dean can’t say anything else but the one desperate word.
“Will you let me do this?” Castiel’s clothes are roughed up, his tie loose and the tails of his shirt out, but he’s still mostly dressed.
Dean just says, “Yes,” though he’s not sure what to. His t-shirt is pushed up to his chest and his jeans are halfway down and he doesn’t even remember it happening.
When Castiel first presses his mouth to his skin, Dean remembers his words: You can’t change destiny. Destiny is to be an angel and a man. Destiny is also to be in love. We will find a way, Dean. I will try everything I know. I will find every secret I don’t.
Castiel is nuzzling him, sending shivers across the skin on his belly, thighs, and hard sex with his breaths. “This is a funny kind of seduction, Cas. When you don’t really want me.”
Castiel growls then, takes him hard in his mouth and cups his balls, sucks and squeezes with a perfection that’s beyond mechanical, beyond fantasy. Dean twists his hips but he’s held firm, so he can’t move at all.
This is the stuff of his dreams, ones where he wakes up with wet spots on his jeans and Castiel’s name on his lips. Ones where there is sunlight instead of an inferno, and the scent of wildflowers instead of boiling flesh.
Dean is crying out words he doesn’t even know, and when he’s coming -- with the taste of earth in his mouth and blood from the fresh-cut blades of grass on his tongue -- he would swear he sees stars, everywhere everywhere.
He opens his eyes and he’s sitting on a park bench, near dusk, fully clothed and alone. He looks at the perfectly manicured grass and the primary colors of the jungle gym and he wants to hate it, he really does. But he can’t.
*
Three days later, Sam and Dean are sitting in a booth at a diner and Dean looks miserable above his blueberry pancakes.
“You miss him.”
Dean looks stricken.
“I’d have to be blind not to see it. And you’ve been acting like a dick for the past three days. Again.”
Sam ignores Dean’s snort. “Look, I’m not telling you what to do. But I don’t know how to help you. If he can make you feel like yourself again, give you back some of what you’ve lost, I say… go for it.”
“He’s an angel, Sam. An angel. They’re dicks and they’re innocent. Nothing good’s gonna come out of this. He’s a curse.”
“He’s a gift.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dean, all I’m saying, is the guy saved you from Hell. You’re miserable without him. I know you are. If he can offer you anything, and you think he’s the real deal, just… don’t mess it up.”
“Nice pep talk, Sam. I’m glad you care so much about…” He waves his hand, thinks: My sex life. My guardian angel. The last 20 years of our lives. He doesn’t say any of it, he doesn’t.
“Remember after Jess died? You were all worried about me, trying to get me laid.”
“And did that ever help?” Dean raises a hand off the table in exasperation and scoffs.
“No, not really. But that was kind of your deal. This? Being mopey and freaked out? Is not.”
“He’s an angel, Sam. I don’t have much say. There are lines he can’t cross, rules, commands. It’s impossible.” Maybe Sam was being too helpful, Dean thinks. Maybe Sam was looking for an out.
“Just one more thing.” He waves away Dean’s groan. “Hear me out. Look, I made a mistake. Last summer. I messed up. Things happened, even before,” he slows down, “New Harmony, and those things forced me to make a decision I didn’t want to make. I had to survive without you. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t know how I could. So… I don’t know, I lost a part of myself. I lost a lot of what was you, because I didn’t know how to go on if I didn’t. It made me weak.”
Sam waves away Dean’s protests again. “No, it did. You said it yourself - we’re each other’s weakness. For better or worse. I never thought it would make things better, not really. Just survivable, you know. You’ve never given up on me Dean, and you don’t know how much that keeps me going. Whatever I say. I know that. I don’t want to see you make that mistake with Castiel. I wish to god the angels spoke to me. I wish they had been around to save us, all those times we needed it. He saved your life. He brought you back to me. You deserved that. You deserve to have at least a chance here, right? And I can’t deal with your sorry miserable ass like this much longer.”
Dean gives a sad smile. “People don’t deserve other people, Sam. We’re all miserable to each other. It hurts to stay, and it hurts to leave.”
“Seriously? Dean…”
“The best case scenario? Castiel falls, loses everything he is, maybe even dies because of me. He has all this power over me in the meantime, and what? We spend the rest of my short life dry humping like teenagers? He can bend time and space but feelings are too much to handle? It’s crazy, Sam. No, it’s stupid.”
“Crazy, maybe. But you are my crazy brother. You don’t do normal.”
“What’s wrong with normal? Maybe I like normal.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t do normal - you do angels.”
Dean narrows his eyes. “And what do you do at night, Sam?”
Sam shakes it off. Yet again. “Dean, you really think you can go back to that dream you had, before everything really went to shit last year? That you can have that perfect life?”
Sam was talking about the dream picnic, the wife and the son and baseball. Not their dream, not their entwined violent life, destined to die together, but always together. Now it’s Dean’s turn to wave his hand, lean back and scoff at the very suggestion. “Nah. Even before Hell, that never would’ve worked.”
“Yeah.” Sam stares at the oily pool of his coffee.
“Hey. Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry I died. I’m sorry I left you. For what it’s worth.”
“Me too, Dean.”
“Do you ever think you might get it back, Sammy?”
“Get what back?”
“Those memories. Those feelings of what it was like… you know, before? When it was good?”
“I don’t know, Dean. I wish for that, more than anything. Even if it kills me, I’d like to have that back.”
Dean nods.
“What about you? Has it gotten any better? Since you first came back?”
Dean nods. “A little. Castiel makes me remember things sometimes. Things from childhood. And that one time, he took me back to a time when Mom and Dad were still around.”
“Did that make it better?”
“Actually, that time, he made things worse. He doesn’t seem to get the fine line between happiness and tragedy. I think he’s figuring it out. Hanging around our family and all. But still, he makes everything I lived before, I don’t know, closer, somehow. Like, he’s so crazy, he makes my own crazy existence make sense. Like he can fix things.”
“You’re not something to be fixed, Dean. I’m sorry, I know I keep making you think that you are. Even so, the angels don’t seem to be big on helping.”
“Revenge doesn’t fix things, either, you know.”
Sam shrugs. “Maybe I don’t need fixing. Maybe I just want justice.”
“I don’t want to argue about this. I don’t want to think any more, ever again.” Dean puts his hand over his eyes. He really means it.
“We’ll get separate hotel rooms tonight. You can make up your mind.”
Like it was all up to him. Like he ever felt as if he had a choice. Dean felt like an blacksmith, spending his whole life chipping away at cold cold hearts, searching for cracks in the castings.
Sam always knew how to get through to Dean. Not even Hell could close him up so completely, take away his ability to recognize his brother. No matter what he said. If there is destiny, this is it. But when he wasn’t looking, when he wasn’t there to protect Sam, Sam had lost the way back. And Dean’s shattered mind, flawless scarless body, and battered courage weren’t enough to remind Sam of what Dean himself was barely hanging on to. Their shared past was all they had, and they were both losing it.
Still…
Dean leans over the table, attempts to do something he’s never tried before in public, without the blinds drawn, without the covers up. But the days seemed so impossibly short, and that meant less chances for everything he could still imagine himself wanting to do.
So he presses his lips to Sam’s own, enough to take the coffee, to taste his Sam. Sam gives him that look that says there are more important things to worry about. Dean doesn’t care. He lowers his eyes (like Castiel) and presses softly but insistently until Sam presses back.
The waitress comes and glares at them until the defiance sparks in his brother’s eyes. The defiance he sees all the time. And then just as suddenly, it’s gone. Dean considers his brother’s rebellious streak. He ponders Sam’s infinite capacity for boredom. He has no idea how to deal with any of it.
This is the life Dean gave to his brother. To Sam, any escape from it -- be it death, demon, or Castiel -- is better than staying in it. Is a damn gift, Sam says. Dean feels himself backfiring on Sam. It stings. He picks up his tools, and goes in search of another fire-forged heart.
*
That night, he dreams of Sammy as a boy.
A time back when Sammy would moodily reject any attempt to draw their lives together, wanting nothing to do with hunting, while every thought of his every day was about making Sammy happy. Because Dean was young, and he didn’t know better, and he didn’t know anything else. He knew he loved his brother, and he saw him sinking into isolation, and he didn’t want to be thrown out with Dad, with everything else.
And Sammy would ask for more. So Dean would give him more, and Sammy would take it. No one else felt like Sammy, and no one else loved him.
His dream always changes. He dreams of Sammy in Hell.
He dreams of Sam strangling him, of Sam yelling at him in anger, of Sam saying he’s sorry, of Sam lying, tearing at him, not caring, just wanting to be free of him, and having to rip out his very self, organ by organ, strip of skin by strip of skin, call him what he is and burn it all.
Dean awakes alone. He can’t take much more of this. Sam won’t even talk to him anymore, and he insisted on separate rooms after their fifth blow-up over absolutely nothing. It doesn’t help that they used to solve so many of their arguments through sex. Dean hadn’t realized how many fights ended with his dick in Sam’s mouth, with him bent in half in the back of the Impala, with Sammy saying he’s sorry when he comes. It doesn’t help that he feels wrecked.
It doesn’t help that it’s days before Dean can bear to do more than shake off without feeling like he’s re-bruised his dick, still sore from Castiel’s mouth. So by the time he can finally take some time alone, he’s all kinds of needy mess.
He blames Cas. Cas and his stupid angel tricks and disappearing and mouths direct from fucking god. But when Dean touches himself, leans his neck back against the cool rim of the tub and lets the water lap at his nipples, all he wants to think of is Cas.
When he opens his eyes, he’s not surprised to find his angel there.
Castiel’s wide celestial blue eyes are focused on Dean’s hands, caught where they are wrapped around his sex and between his teeth. Castiel’s still standing in the corner, as far away from Dean as possible.
Dean pulls at himself harder, more insistently, keeping his fist tight against his skin, running his fingers over the stretched skin at the head of his sex with every stroke. He hears Castiel’s name in his head, blocking out all else, and he begins to breathe it, say it, with each deep breath, let it take him higher.
Castiel moves forward, kneeling and crawling, as if pulled by the sound of his name. He keeps whimpering under his breath. “Too much. Too much. Too much.” But he doesn’t move away.
Dean leans up out of the tub, crouches like a cat with one hand on the side of the white tub, his legs curled under him. Castiel kneels down low, closer, closer, like he’s at an altar. They should move, they should move, they should stop staring, but neither one is going to. He holds it and holds it and doesn’t slow down until he’s coming on Castiel’s hair, face, neck, his open gasping mouth, his closed eyelashes. His come is only slightly more pale than the angel’s marble-white skin.
Dean grabs onto Castiel’s coat collar as he crumples, spilling water on the floor and over his clothes. “Cas, stay?” He’s pleading but he doesn’t care.
“Stay,” and he lifts Castiel like a doll - but with his weight, he’s more like a lever - and pulls him crashing into the water. Castiel doesn’t move to take off his coat, doesn’t struggle. Just sinks until he’s under water, comes up for air and begins to breathe again, like a baptism. They roll over each other, all limbs and wet cloth. Castiel keeps falling under water, limp, dazed, and heavy. Dean knows Castiel’s need to stay intact. He also knows the expression on his face, pale and shining, framed by dark shocks of hair. It’s a feeling he hasn’t felt in a long time.
“C’mere,” he softly goads, soaping up his hands. He weaves his finger through the thick black hair, pressing with his fingertips and roughing up some suds, cupping Castiel’s head in his hands. He feels the weight of him shift as Castiel lets go, arches his head back and shuts his eyes. Neither of their bodies is real. Still, they can make the most of their borrowed selves, their facades.
Dean dunks him under the water, then pulls him up and over him into a kiss. Drops of water fall on his face when Castiel grabs him and holds him still. Time and peace are what Castiel offers him, and it’s all he wants.
“Stay tonight.”
Castiel nods, his nose brushing up against Dean’s. Every surface of his skin is slick and he feels it all over.
For a moment, he is soaking wet on the tile floor, weighted down by emotion. Seconds later, he is completely dry. Dean towels off lightly. Then he just stares at Cas, and leads him to the bed.
He’s half hard and Cas is too. They kiss, rest, stay that way. Dean is exhausted. It’s exciting in a way nothing has excited him in a long time. It reminds him of sleeping with Sam, when they were younger, or other times when they had to share a bed out of necessity. Sometimes just himself alone, half hard and fully clothed, watching the light on the wall and listening to Sam breathe.
It’s everything that’s ever meant anything to him. Despite what he says. Despite what he does. Castiel knows this.
And, still, Dean wants Castiel so bad, it’s like every bad romance story he’s ever hated, come back to haunt him, and he loves it and he hates it.
When he came back from Hell, nothing was real or right. Whatever life he thought he had was gone, as if it was there and he just couldn’t see it anymore. And then Castiel comes along and mirrors every old feeling, old memory, back to him. And tells him it’s important like it means something, like it’s the only thing that matters in the world.
But Sam mattered to him, still does, with all the fire and anger he’s got. If that meant nothing in the universe, then what chance did he have? What could anything else mean then?
Dean clings to Castiel, and cries. He’s embarrassed, but he gives up fighting just this once. He’s never had everything in his life fail at once, and been given an angel’s shoulder to cry on in return.
Castiel holds him close, but soothingly, like his father never did. Castiel opens his legs and lets Dean’s thigh fall between them and holds his body tight against Dean wherever he moves, like he hasn’t done with Sam since they were teenagers. Castiel can’t give Dean any more, but he lets Dean take and take whatever he needs, bite his lips and grab at his skin and grind more and more of his naked skin against his rumpled suit.
And Dean doesn’t care about a damn thing except using this, and he doesn’t care if the angels are watching him, or god himself, because they’ve taken everything else away, and they can give him this. He’s not going to stop.
When he calls out his brother’s name, he wonders if Sammy can hear it, or if he’s even there at all.
*
The sunlight is starting to come in through the cracks in the blinds. Dean remembers sleeping long enough to have dreams. They’re bad ones he doesn’t want to remember. They’re of Sam.
“You’ve been quiet, Castiel.” He knows the angel isn’t sleeping. Angels don’t sleep.
“I’ve been listening to you. You’re very loud.”
“You can read my mind?”
Castiel’s chin moves at the crown of his head, where it’s been resting. “No, I’m just listening to your feelings.”
“Do that a lot?”
“If it helps me to understand you, yes. They’re just hints of feelings, sometimes phrases or images. I’m not used to being one of the subjects though. That’s certainly different.”
“You can listen to other people’s, too?”
“Yes. They’re not as important. Not as interesting, either.”
He hears the slightly dangerous tone in Castiel’s voice. Dean lifts his head to look at Castiel, his eyes narrowed. “You are envious.”
“Why did you call your brother’s name?”
Dean cocks his head. “You’re the one that can read minds. You tell me.”
“I want you to tell me.”
“Because I need both of you and I can’t choose one over the other.”
“So you’ll use me instead.”
“Is that what you hear, from inside my head? Really? Aren’t you using me? Castiel.”
“No. No, Dean.”
“Right. That’s just what we want each other to think.”
Castiel is angry, he can feel it. His eyes are open wide, but his chest is rising and falling with frustrated power. Something he won’t say. Dean can’t read him. It’s not fair.
“I’m sorry I said his name. You’re both messing with my head. Can’t we just stop? Have this for now until the next disaster comes?”
Castiel stops breathing. Sighs with relief. What was the angel hiding from him? “Yes. That’s what I want too.”
Castiel kisses him then, soft pleading kisses. He plies him with his hands, soothes and caresses his overstimulated sex until he comes lazily, and Dean doesn’t have to remember to whisper “Castiel” at all. He just does.
When he awakens a few hours later, the room is empty, smelling faintly of salt and cinnamon.
The End