fic: To Change This Lonely Life, 4/4 [NC-17] Dean/Castiel, Sam/Dean, Sam/Castiel, Sam/Dean/Castiel
To Change This Lonely Life, 4/4 [NC-17] Dean/Castiel, Sam/Dean, Sam/Castiel, Sam/Dean/Castiel
(see part 1 for disclaimers)
*
*
Castiel used to think he could be like God’s favorite, loving Daniel in Paradise, holding onto him forever in love and righteousness. He thought he could hold his family together against the dreams of his brothers, who coveted corners of the world below, taking their bodies as vessels, staking claim to the men they wished to be most like, confused between the embodiment of a dream and the equivalent of the dream itself. Between the body and the man. Between the house and the life. He could save them, if he had no shame.
Castiel had sat in the midst of perfection for centuries upon centuries and tried to learn what shame was, though he never did figure it out.
Dean used to think he could be like that angel in the white room, the one from his childhood, when he cradled Sammy in his arms. Its gentle gaze had made him think that he could defeat the fire that was consuming his family. He could save them, with a pure heart.
Keep moving, Dean, it had said. And Dean took out his heart again, remade it to fit the angel’s words.
He ran down the hall to meet his father, his baby brother, and his destiny.
*
Sam woke up when the thunder was rolling away. The streets would be flooded at least until dawn, like shiny black rivers. He would stay with his brother through the dark. “What’s wrong?”
The dark was the only time Dean really answered. “Cas thinks you need to decide what you’re gonna do next, Sam.”
“Where’d he go?” Sam handed him back his cigarette.
“He said he had something to do with this family he’s been keeping an eye on. An angel thing. He’ll be back in a little while.” Dean exhaled. “Let’s get out of here. Go back to Florida, maybe.”
“Why?” Sam shrugged. “We’ve been all over the South and no matter where we go, the angels are doing something.”
“Right.” Dean loved to roll his eyes at the angels. “Tempting fate with their nuclear families from hell, starting floods…”
“Cas told you that you’re just being paranoid about the rain.”
“I know, when God sends a flood, you know it’s God’s flood. Whatever. Everyone in this city would know God’s flood if they saw it. Believe me. But come on, Sam - there’s the Blues, barbeque, Disney World. Some of my favorite stuff on earth.”
“First of all, you’ve never been out of the country. Second, you think Disney is evil. Third, hurricanes.”
Dean smiled, “It was your idea to see all of the beaches in the first place. Besides, don’t think about what anyone says. People say Blues is the devil’s music.”
“And you said Florida was the cock of America.”
“Exactly. Don’t listen to us. Whatever. I’ve been to both Hell and Florida. Florida’s not that bad. Fishing? Golf? Beaches? Sunshine? And dolphins, man. What’s wrong with dolphins?”
Sam let his arm flop over his head on the pillow in surrender. “Nothing’s wrong with dolphins, Dean.”
“We’ll totally avoid Broward County, I swear. No blueberry pancakes.”
“It wasn’t blueberry pancakes, it was pigs in a poke.”
“Right, your biggest fear - pigs in a poke every day for the rest of your life. Blasphemy.” Dean liked to punctuate his sarcasm with hand gestures.
“You don’t get it. It was every day, forever. And every day ended the same.”
“That might have sucked, even if it was the worst day of your life. But it was still life, Sam. Hell is a much worse thing. Your life is over in Hell.”
Sam figured he didn’t bring it up. “Was it what you expected? What anyone deserved?”
“Nah. No one deserves that. It’s…,” Dean shrugged, “the total waste of a soul. Even a bad one. It was like Ruby warned me - just despair.”
“What…” Sam wanted to ask Dean what he would’ve wanted Hell to be, but he was only imagining the place; Dean was actually there.
“What about the genie’s dream? Or the African dream root?”
“That is more like an inverted Heaven. It’s not hellish in itself, just what it meant. Or could have meant. Whatever. Like seeing our parents again, then seeing their tragedy. It happened, but it’s not exactly real. It’s just meant to teach us a lesson.”
“That’s what the Trickster said - he was trying to teach a lesson. Like I could learn something by watching you eat at a diner every morning and then die.”
“You couldn’t change it though.”
“I could have, if I would have let go. But I couldn’t.”
“Isn’t that despair too? Hell should be a really predictable day instead. That’s what prison is.” Dean shrugged. “But I liked prison. I didn’t like Hell.”
“You secretly like routine.” Sam cut his hand through the air like a knife. “Because you’ve never had any. Even you would get tired of the same day after awhile.”
“Yeah. This is my life. That’s that.”
“No, it’s not.” Sam thought of the demons, and the angels. All lost. “You can have what you want, Dean.”
“Our life is being written into a gospel, Sam. The Trickster, Chuck. Fuck, even slash fans. They all have plans for us.”
Sam nodded. “So we really need to start making our own plans.”
“What’s this all about? Can’t we just go back to Florida?”
“How about I meet you there?”
“Sam…”
“I’m afraid to be without you, Dean. I’m coming back. But there’s something I have to do.” He moved closer, reassuring Dean with his body, which was what Dean liked to listen to anyway.
“You’ve got me, Sam. Remember me. Hear me. Then come back to me.”
“You trust me.”
Dean matched his every caress with his own. “Not as much as I’d like to. But Cas is right - you have to be free to do what you decide. I can’t take responsibility for both of us anymore. It’s too much. You have to be able to earn my trust again. Can you do that, Sammy?”
“It’s all I want, Dean. I need to you trust me now. I have a plan.”
*
“Come back to me in a week, yeah?”
“As soon as I can. Forever.”
Then Sam drank the last of the blood from his flask, and went to sleep on the bed.
Later, Castiel would return and they would move his body to the Impala. They would check out of the motel and drive southeast, to the most deserted beach they could find, and Castiel would not leave.
Meanwhile, Sam would send out his soul to travel to Hell like an American Odysseus down to the underworld. He would ask for help from an Old God, a Trickster god, look into his golden-brown eyes and sharp-pointed nose and chin, much like his own, and ask him to take over as the Lord of Hell.
The new Demon Prince and the Old God, they would begin to write the story.
*
Dean drove the whole way himself, because Castiel could be trusted with many things, but not with his baby.
“What is it, Cas?”
Cas furrowed his brow in thought, his emotions plain as day on his face as always. “I’ve ignored many questions I’ve had over the years. Time seemed endless, but I never actually thought I would ever get the chance to ask them. One question that’s never gone away… Our Father gave us only a few duties, but the details were never very clear. We are to watch man, make sure His fate is enacted, and serve as warriors in Heaven’s army. We are made to affect human lives, and yet we are given no understanding of human feelings, and instincts, and desires. We are guardians of people, but we are not persons. Our bodies aren’t even corporeal. We have no rights, no decisions to make, no responsibilities that aren’t specifically assigned to us. Why did our Father not give us personal selves?”
Dean is silent. He can only think of his own father, and what he expected of him.
“And yet… You are given selves, free will, enough time to enact your fate. But not all of you do. Some of you despair and give up. If humans can despair, and angels can go rogue, why can we? We would have to be persons, in order to decide to go against our Father’s will. We would have to have the capacity to make judgments, and understand consequences, and know right and wrong with no qualms about conscience. We should not have a conscience. And yet…”
“And yet, you do.”
“Yes.” Cas’ eyes went faraway. “I think I do.”
He knew it sounded lame, but he had to say it. “I think you’ve always been a person, Cas. You’re here, in front of me. And you’ve decided to do the right thing, because of your conscience.”
Castiel’s eyes looked even sadder. He just nodded his head. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Of all the things I’ve imagined myself doing, forever, and never thought I could do… To find that there was nothing stopping me. That it was all a lie.”
“What kinds of things, Cas?" Dean narrowed his eyes in friendly curiosity.
*
When they’d finished moving Sam, the sun was setting over the Gulf.
Castiel closed the door of their single room behind him. He walked up to Dean, one stop after another, and held his head in his hands, tilted it to the left and leaned in, slowly, slowly. Dean knew he gave him every chance to stop him, to speak a word of mocking derision, a deflection, a wavering.
Dean didn’t speak. Emotions flashed in his eyes like a kaleidoscope, but he didn’t speak. Castiel, as always, took it as an invitation. Parted his lips over Dean’s, dragged over and brought together again over Dean.
Dean let his head fall into Castiel’s waiting hands and felt it, opening up his lips, his knees, his hands so Castiel could fit himself to his body, just press in and take.
Cas kissed him until he didn’t know what else to do.
Dean said, “More.”
“Yes.” Cas held onto Dean’s skull and kissed him with every kind of desperation. His hands hung uselessly at his side and Dean’s jacket was suddenly on the floor, as the light on the dresser behind him flickered and went dead.
They stayed that way for a long time, letting the days of their history speak through their lips and their tongues, the touches of fingertips and wings.
*
There were sparks in the darkness, floating over their skin.
Dean felt little pricks of electricity fork over his skin and down under the covers where Cas’ hands flowed over his body. He felt his adrenaline climb and his dick ache.
“What’s that, Cas?”
“Just a touch.”
And Dean shivered. He remembered the freak lightning that made Alastair disappear like a piece of paper in a fire.
Castiel was drawn to the skin over his torso and traced every arc line with his fingers, tiny hot sparks of light following, and his mouth, marking its own path over sensitive skin. Dean put his arm over his head and partially covered his face, trying to block out as many over-loaded senses as he could.
When Castiel was done with one side of his ribcage, he started with the other, and Dean put both of his hands over his head in surrender, hoping he wasn’t writhing as much as he felt he was.
He was. But Castiel held his body steady between two strong, flat hands, turning his body slowly as he licked lines over muscle clenching with electric pulses. Dean couldn’t hear the sounds he was making over his covered ears, or he was oblivious to them. Castiel hummed with it.
Dean felt tiny pinches fleck all over the rounded flesh of his backside, and then they moved, all over. It was constant, like a spanking without the sting. He felt the tingle and the sensitivity that slowly built and built and built until the voice calling for it to stop got louder, but never loud enough to say stop, just a groan that seemed to take his breath away.
He removed his face from where it had been implanted in the pillow, “Castiel?”
Castiel was staring intently at the cheeks of his ass, and the faint sparks flying between it and his fingers, like the world’s hottest crystal ball. “Jesus Christ.”
Then Castiel got a strange expression on his face and moved one finger closer in. Dean felt his whole self exposed suddenly from the inside out, like layers of his self peeled away, and he sat up, away from Castiel, and tried to catch his breath in long disbelieving gasps. “Um. Don’t do that.”
“Are you sure? I’ll go slow.”
Dean nodded.
He felt heat where Castiel pressed his generous cock, heat like perfect friction, burrowing in, and he groaned the whole way in.
“Do it,” and Dean grabbed onto his ears. “Fast, hard.” They fucked, with sparks flying from their limbs, their lips, rolling in branched lines between their sweat-dripped chests and thighs. Dean felt a buzzing from as deep inside as Castiel could go and he let out a cry to match it, going on and on until he released himself all over his clenched abdomen, his heart-battered chest.
He pushed Castiel away, his slight frame a crushing weight on top of him. “I need, away.”
He was panting and breathing and he felt like he would never get his breath back, or his heart to stop hammering, ever again. He lay down and closed his eyes and the room went totally black.
When he woke up, the sun was coming through the blinds and Castiel was sitting across the room, staring at him.
He just stared at him and breathed for a few seconds. “Cas. I fell asleep.”
“It’s alright, Dean. You needed rest.” He grinned and flinched at the same time.
Dean loved it when he did that. “Yeah. But next time, we’re gonna do this human style.”
They spent the next four days on the bed, only leaving to check on Sam, or use the bathroom, and the one time Dean ordered a gigantic amount of pizza.
He knew Castiel was trying to distract him from his brother, to keep his mind off of what he couldn’t change. Dean loved it when he did that too. One of the dozen ways he needed Castiel, had always needed him, since they first met.
*
Dean woke up on the bed, with Castiel’s arms criss-crossed against his chest, like some sleepy swan ballet. He stared at his pale white skin, almost bright in the darkness, and remembered the hours before, coming back to him in flashes of light and shadow. The feel of cheek and chin around his dark wrinkled hole, scratching him raw each day, making him moan. The feel of callused hands gripping his thighs and pulling up, grabbing his ass and pulling up, and closer, skin to skin, creating a messy, slapping suction, so Castiel had to grip harder. Dean felt the grit on his skin still, the itching slickness from deep inside him, the sore stretch of his thighs, and couldn’t think about anything else until he was half hard again.
Castiel moaned then, from his sleepy state, and Dean checked his body, knowing what he’d find. The angel always responded to his thoughts, because he couldn’t help but think them too. He looked so innocent when he was sleeping, and more often than not he slept like an angel too, arms raised in some kind of graceful praise or supplication, body tilted on one hip, his sex dark and heavy and arched towards the mattress, his feet resting on the bed like a winged Mercury in flight.
*
Castiel woke up and let his body flow lazily against Dean, until they measured their states of arousal and found they were on the same page, again. The angel smiled at his luck, at Dean’s seemingly endless generosity of heart, at Sam’s faith, and knew they needed all of it. Strange how he searched for eternity with his brothers, with boundless loyalty, only to find someone like Dean at the end of it. How strange the world looked when everything was unique, and their hearts still fell for all of it, one at a time and together at last.
Without a word, Castiel kissed Dean on the nose, the little spot that was almost too pale for freckles, before moving down to his lips, and lower. Only pressing his lips to Dean’s body when he was looking, focused on anticipation. Castiel pressed his head into Dean’s abdomen, tickling him with his hair and getting a look at his pale, freckled sex, awesome in its perfection, the way pearly drops gathered on the too-pink head, begging to be kissed.
Amen, Castiel thought, as he closed his eyes and slowly flicked his tongue. When Dean grabbed his hair, he went down, until his forehead hit against muscle. He held Dean’s thighs and sucked him until he found suction worth keeping, until Dean could do nothing but whimper and buck his hips and let the bedsprings rock him in and out of that perfect mouth.
When Dean came, he still didn’t stop, not until he was hard again. He wanted to train him. He wanted to hear him whimper through it, until Dean was the one to push him off, turn around and put one foot on the floor next to the bed, like a kickstand, and brace his hands on the wall. The second he was ready, Castiel spread Dean open, with his callused thumbs brushing over the raw pink slickness outside of his hole, ready and open for him, and pressed into Dean.
The second he started thrusting, he had them back at that plateau of fucking, like they had never even left off, this continual perfect fuck they could find again and again. It went on and on. This state of perfection. He wondered if they could find any kind of perfection outside of this room, this bed. He didn’t think so, and he’d been to Paradise. It seemed impossible, but then again Castiel knew all about impossible.
*
Every day that went by, Dean had to dig a little further into himself, find a hidden, endless reservoir of feeling, pull it out and feel it for Castiel. Like he was answering the question of their future with every clench of his muscles around Castiel, every drop milked from his cock.
He was used to it, because of Sam. He could answer every question of Sam’s with his body, and he could do the same for his angel.
He woke up on his stomach sometime after dawn. Castiel was curled up in the middle of the bed, his wrists open to the ceiling and his feet curled up. Dean smiled at his hair, wondering how it could possibly look more mussed up than he’d ever seen it. His ass was just inches away, blank and open.
He wasn’t even thinking about sex. His dick ached in protest if he tried. But he’d been here before. He knew where they would end up eventually. Every second he looked at Castiel it got harder to wait. Hell itself could be falling in on his brother, and both sides still waging war over the world as he knew it. And yet Castiel was every quiet moment in his head. It had been that way for a year. Why should now be any different? Dean had wanted him for a year, now he just noticed it. Cas had been there all along.
The angel’s cheek was rough against his own; his skin tasted of salt, making his tongue water for more. He smoothed the dark feather-like hair at his temples with his tongue. He tried to pretend that it wasn’t a pretense for fucking, that they were going to end up somewhere else this time. But he felt it in the rough burn of Castiel’s jaw against his lips, his sore hips straddling over Castiel, the dribble running down his thigh. It was just a matter of waiting for one of them to get hard, and the other would have to play catch-up.
Dean played hard. He slicked up two fingers in his mouth, still watering from the taste of Castiel, held him still with his hips, one leg wrapping around Castiel’s, spreading him open knee from knee, and pressed in with sharps jabs. Twisted and crooked his fingers, holding him steady as he jerked. Castiel pulled Dean to hardness, rocking his body as he squeezed Dean roughly and twisted back onto his fingers. They always found a rhythm, no matter what. Castiel knew how to find it.
As soon as he was ready, Dean shifted to his side behind him and kept the same rhythm with his dick, listened to Castiel breathe through it and reach back for him. Dean gripped his shoulder and pulled Castiel down on himself with a grunt. Then they just rocked into each other, with Dean keeping that perfect rhythm, watching Castiel match it with his hand on his cock.
Dean came with a shiver, his mouth smearing against the flat planes of Castiel’s back. Dean watched him finish himself off, his teeth biting his shoulder to help get him there, and was rewarded with the first tugs of Castiel’s orgasm on the head of his softening sex. Perfect.
*
Hours later, Dean awoke to the noon heat and gave into the thought of a shower. He was still dripping water all over the floor when he crawled back over Castiel and ground himself down dirty again on his angel, who lifted his legs to the air in wordless invitation.
This time, he had to stop for pizza afterwards. He moved the box to the bed, so they could eat entwined in the sheets, jumbled together and sprawled out. They feel asleep to the warm buzz of the heat in the air.
*
Castiel came alive in the night, barely waiting for Dean to wake up before he was pleading with him to open up for him, placing insistent kisses on his forehead and whispering, like Dean would wake up and forget the stakes here, forget the last three days in this bed.
So Dean planted his feet on the bed and spread his legs without a word, barely hard but aroused. Besides, he felt he was just waiting for Castiel to fill him up again, when Castiel wasn’t already there.
So Castiel worked his perfect rhythm, apologetic but not stopping, taking what he wanted and pleading with Dean to let him.
And Dean let him, knowing that Castiel would take him there, until he was coming with a sob, like he could feel the few drops travel through his sac through his dick through the teasing tip of his thumb.
He had faith.
He had faith in Castiel.
“Oh god.”
*
“Are the angels going to know our story?”
“They’re very nosy. And they gossip. Here. I used to be ashamed to show this to you. But then I used to be ashamed of many things.”
“What is it?” Dean felt the warm wetness of Castiel’s palm on his forehead. Castiel had an aura of dark golden light around his head, neck, and shoulders.
“I can see the light, too. Yours is… beautiful. I’m calling on the holy fire to help give us strength for when Sam returns.”
Dean closed his eyes when he started to feel his eyes roll back.
“Stay with me, Dean. You’re just fine.”
Dean felt Castiel pet his face, his hair, his arm. Eventually he opened his eyes. “Hey, you look darker.”
And Castiel did. His halo of light had red inlaid with the golden, his eyes were shiny and wet. “I feel darker. More like you. What do I want right now?”
Dean lifted his knees around Castiel, knowing he passed the test. Not because he could sense Castiel’s emotions, but because he really knew Castiel after all. He hadn’t even had to remake his heart, or burn anything alive, or sell his self away, because Castiel was what was going to be there when he’d already done all that. Castiel was going to be the end.
He loved the way Castiel could move between his thighs, curl up close to him, and look at him, arms curled over his shoulders and bringing him down over and over again, asking him the question he liked to ask.
“Does this make you feel human?”
It made him feel like the sun itself, the heat of a nonspecific sun trapped on earth and giving giving giving, taking nothing, and maybe God loved him and maybe his mother loved him and maybe Sam will never ever leave and the world will never end. “No. Something else.”
*
Dean held onto Castiel like a sheath for a sword, his hands clasped together against his ribcage to hold him still. Castiel let himself be held as Dean rocked into him.
“Does this make you feel human?”
“Yes.”
“Does this make you feel like an angel?”
“Yes.”
“Could you decide?”
“No.”
“Good. Because I’m beginning to really like ambivalence.” And Dean kissed him, parted lips to parted lips.
*
“You miss your brother.”
“I know. It’s been six days. But he’s coming back.”
“Tomorrow.”
Dean nodded. “Tomorrow. Hey, Cas? How would you feel about Sam maybe joining us?”
“I think he might need us both. But I’ll give you time alone with him first. He’s going to need you more than anyone.”
Dean knew that.
*
Dean said the phrase to recall his brother back to his body, while Castiel placed his hand on his forehead.
When he opened his eyes, it was his Sam.
But his Sam was a little breathless and wild-eyed. “I have so much to tell you.”
“Let’s make sure you’re ok first. Shower. Some food. Then we’ll talk.”
He made sure Sam did as he was told and didn’t leave his side the whole time. Sam looked young. Dean frowned. He’d looked older when he got back from Hell, even with his new body.
He put his hands through the lather in Sam’s hair, not even caring that Sam hadn’t let him do this to him in years, and kept catching Sam’s gaze where it was fixed on him, unwavering. “It’s different now, yeah?”
Sam nodded, then ducked underwater before Dean could kiss him.
*
Castiel sat perched on a chair on the other side of the room waiting for both of them. Sam walked out of the bathroom with his hair still dripping wet and Castiel could see the outline of something hovering around him, changing with the shadows and the light, as if his moods were flashing through him like frames of film through a camera.
His hands were all over Dean, from whom he felt every emotion Sam was going through, but all at once, more like a blinking strobe light effect. He’d never watched them this close before. Not so close that Dean could ever sense him if he’d wanted to.
“You taste so sweet, Dean. What has your angel done to you? Get you ready for me?”
“Yeah,” Dean breathed and they both looked across the room at him at once.
But he wouldn’t move. Not when Dean took off his jeans and straddled Sam’s body, letting him grab his ankles and hold him still as he rode him. Long and hard enough to make Sam want to stay, to make him forgive Dean everything and stay, though Dean never needed forgiveness, though Sam would never leave. But it’s what Dean needed to prove.
“You’ll never have to go back there, Dean. Never. Never. I was right.” Sam gasped as Dean grabbed onto the bottom of his shaft, squeezed it, and rode the tip even faster. “I used to hate him, for what he’d done to you. But he never killed you. He was just trying to teach me something.”
“And you’re stubborn.” Dean’s voice was wrecked.
Sam flipped Dean onto his back and held his body high up to meet him, talked to him in bursts but moved into him steady and slow. “We were so powerful, so powerful.”
His eyes turned different shades of brown and black, hazel and gold, over Dean. “Hell is glorious, now, Dean. Hell is another world.” Sam kissed him to cover his sobs.
Castiel knew what that felt like. The softness of Dean’s skin where his freckles met the thin skin under his eyes, the place where his thumb met Dean’s tears. Sam rubbed his thumb there. Just what Cas would’ve done.
Dean wrapped his legs around Sam and whimpered. “I feel it Sammy. Don’t stop, don’t stop.”
“You feel like an angel, baby. You feel like an angel.”
“That’s Cas.” He kissed him, made Sam taste his tongue. “You feel Cas and me.”
Dean grabbed the back of Sam’s thighs and pushed his own body up to him, and Castiel knew what that felt like. Knew Sam had no other choice but to brace his hands next to Dean’s perfect face and rock his body into Dean’s own until he tells him to stop. And Sam wasn’t going to stop for a long time.
“You deserve me, Sam. We both deserve to be here.”
“Yes. Yes, now we do.”
So Castiel touched himself the way Dean did, and rocked his hips the way Dean did, and waited until Dean was ready to call his name.
When he did, Castiel held him under his arms, Dean’s back against his chest, kissed him hard, then leaned forward to meet Sam, who met his lips like he was ravenous. He stayed that way until he felt Dean’s head shudder in his lap, felt both brothers jerk against him and kissed and petted them through it until they stopped.
*
Sam was so hungry, he made an attempt at the pizza. Castiel waited with him, knowing Dean would sleep for at least a while longer.
Sam shrugged. “It was weird, you know. I took the dream root and I could move through the demons’ dreams, any demon whose blood I’d taken. It didn’t matter where I was.”
“When Lucifer was freed, the veils between the worlds became thin. It’s easier for the angels to move as well.”
“That’s why it’s more dangerous. I could reach them all this way. I let the demons see what they’d done, and what they could be. I let them remember a time before Hell. I showed them the way out, the only way we’d let them out. In Hell, my visions were just as powerful as the Trickster’s. He showed me how to use them - more than I’d ever known before. It was a whole new universe. Like creating another world, where Hell was based on this one, but with slightly different rules.”
“Which set of rules did you use, Sam?”
“Really bureaucratic ones. But at least there are rules now. There’s a chance to move up the ladder, so to speak, besides all of that despair. The Trickster thought paperwork was hilarious, so he gave Hell a system of laws. I don’t know, Cas - He did everything I asked. Everything I’d dreamed about. Like he’d been waiting for me, for us, to know what to ask. For three years we worked. And we’re not done yet, but…”
Cas nodded, then leaned in to kiss him. “It’s ok, Sam. You did good work.”
Sam held Castiel in his lap and cradled his body against him, his arms wrapped around him whole-body. “Thanks for taking care of my brother.”
Castiel felt those roaming hands move all over him, let them press his back to Sam’s broad chest and run down this thighs, straddling Sam’s. Then Castiel closed his eyes.
He kept them closed while Sam manhandled his body onto his sex, opening him wider than Dean and not nearly as gentle. Pressed him down down, until Cas had nothing to kick against, until Sam took one foot in each hand and Cas could press himself to Sam’s pistoning hips, about to break the chair.
“Oh, fuck.”
That was Dean, dragging out the syllables like his brain was falling out his ears.
Cas couldn’t open his eyes; he just groaned out of his nostrils.
And that was Dean on him, kissing him, and pressing his body to Castiel’s own, sex to sex. Dean thrust with his body, and Cas could feel Sam pressing further in and the crushing heat of Dean.
Castiel who had spent so much time watching them, found himself between the both of them. He cried out to Heaven.
Dean whispered soothing words in his ears when he whined high in his throat. “I’ve got you,” he said, circling his fingers in deeper and deeper arcs, lazily drawing lines across the soft skin on the side of his and Sam’s chest.
Dean kissed and rubbed his body, bent over and worked each nipple with his mouth, moving slow so he could watch Castiel. “I’ve got you,” he said, leaning down to take him in his mouth, deep and loose. He twisted so Castiel and Sam could both see his face - caved cheeks, puckered lips, and full eyelashes - and let Sam move Castiel between the both of them.
When Sam came, Dean felt his brother’s hands around his head, pulling him to Castiel’s body as he twisted up. Castiel held onto Sam’s hips and kept him close, tight, and spasming around him.
Dean held onto the both of them, sucked him to beyond dry, and when he smiled, Castiel knew he was getting his payback for earlier. Yes, he thought. Heaven.
*
Hell, it turned out, was much like watching television.
Life was a flashing screen in each soul’s mind, a way of interpreting events. There was the chance for understanding, through a frame or a fantasy. Souls communicated through electricity that flashed through hell on chains, like synapses. They could even watch Paradise, faraway and distant, like peeking in on a neighbor across the street, forbidden and hidden by the sounds of the television.
Daniel checked his Blackberry for memos from Zachariah detailing the workings of the world - a step-by-step visitor’s guide to negotiations with the humans. He slept alone in his house and he found a job in marketing, surveying the humans on their likes and dislikes. They made less and less sense all the time.
In fact, if he really thought about it, on the whole, maybe it had been easier with his brother at his side; when he’d only had Castiel’s thoughts to worry about; strange, solitary thoughts, but true.
In Paradise, angels arched their backs in arcs of light that bounced off one another. They held each other close and sent off hums of vibration that peaked like moans. Kisses flew like sparks and orgasms flashed like lightning. They had no need for televisions, for human bodies.
They were light and they were music.
Alice looked around herself, at the lights that no longer blinded her, the tailed comets with their voices like echoes. The horizon was flat planes and soft surfaces, all cooing to her to touch. She couldn’t have been happier if she were in her own mother’s womb again, listening to the record player spin 70s folk-rock guitar songs, as if willing the world to slow.
The angel she recognized as Castiel stood out from all the rest, alone. He was different from them, almost as human-tainted as Alice was herself. When she went to him, she felt like bowing, though she didn’t exactly know why. Still, she saw the light in his eyes - the lights that were his eyes - and no longer worried for him. In this place, there was no reason to worry for love, or to fear doom. She felt when her baby was born, they would look out upon the world with the same newborn eyes, the same sense of wonder that had always been there, but sucked out of the air itself by a limited dichotomy applied to infinite beings of three tiny worlds.
*
“Tell me again, Cas.”
The angel stood where he’d just returned from Paradise, bare feet twitching on the broken shell beach. He thought, perhaps, that today couldn’t get much better. “There’s been a permanent revolution. Paradise is a very different place.”
Dean slapped the towel next to him with his hand.
Castiel folded his suit around him and sat. “What are you eating?”
“Hush puppies. Try one.” Dean gave him what was left of his.
“I don’t even know what this is.” It looked like a ball of greasy bread.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think you’re supposed to.” Dean shrugged. “You were telling me about this epic orgy thing…”
Cas smiled. “As I watched it, it seemed meant to be, like it was just waiting to happen, since the beginning of time. Like the last perfect stroke of a painting, or the last note of a song. All of my sisters playing games, songs they’ve known but forgotten. Their graces flowing together… I couldn’t tell where some of them began and ended. And when they released their grace… the explosions of light went on forever, flowed over everything… like a flood. I can’t describe it any better. It’s hard to convey Paradise.”
“So, why would God give the female angels the ability to have sex in Paradise and not the male angels?”
“He might have. Maybe we weren’t creative enough to figure it out. Paradise is very inventive now.”
“Well, if I were God, I’d certainly be happy with Paradise.” Dean looked out at the ocean from the top of his sunglasses as Sam walked in with the waves.
“You wouldn’t have anything to compare it to.”
“I know, but what could you compare with a lesbian angel orgy anyway?”
“What are we talking about?” Sam voice was muffled by the towel he used to dry his hair.
Dean squinted up at his brother. “Apparently the two of you have managed to start revolutions in both Heaven and Hell.”
“My sisters did that on their own, Dean. I just happened to find out after the fact.”
“Your sisters just caught on quicker. You’d started hinting it to your brothers first.”
“Well, maybe they’ll get the hint now. Anything to give me a break from them.” Castiel rolled his eyes.
“Don’t do that, man. I’d hate to think you’re picking up on Sam’s bitchface.”
“Sam’s what?”
“Oh, no, even worse. Please, I can’t have two bitchfaces riding around in my baby at once…”
Sam kicked a wave of shells. “Can it, Dean, with the bitchface crap. That’s two against one.”
Castiel couldn’t help but smile with Sam at that one. He still didn’t know what a bitchface was, but it was always fun to gang up on Dean.
“Oh, fuck my life.” Dean was in trouble.
*
The End
A/N: Thanks for my flist for encouraging me when this story was eating my brain like candy. Also, for sending me porn and forever musing about polyamory. You all rock. thevinegarworks did an amazing beta that convinced me, finally, that betas are necessary things. She saved my ass. I made revisions when she was done, so any flaws you found are purely my fault. Thanks to moodswingers too, for the Sam/Dean love and for reading and for everything. Endless <3 <3 <3
I missed the Big Bang entirely this year, so I wanted to write a BB-length fic just to see if it was possible for next year, perhaps. I’m even more in awe of BB writers now. *shakes head*
Also, in case you didn’t guess it, the title is from a Foreigner song :) I’m not necessarily a fan. Show is. (Don’t look at my iPod…)
Comments of any kind are AWESOME.
(see part 1 for disclaimers)
*
*
Castiel used to think he could be like God’s favorite, loving Daniel in Paradise, holding onto him forever in love and righteousness. He thought he could hold his family together against the dreams of his brothers, who coveted corners of the world below, taking their bodies as vessels, staking claim to the men they wished to be most like, confused between the embodiment of a dream and the equivalent of the dream itself. Between the body and the man. Between the house and the life. He could save them, if he had no shame.
Castiel had sat in the midst of perfection for centuries upon centuries and tried to learn what shame was, though he never did figure it out.
Dean used to think he could be like that angel in the white room, the one from his childhood, when he cradled Sammy in his arms. Its gentle gaze had made him think that he could defeat the fire that was consuming his family. He could save them, with a pure heart.
Keep moving, Dean, it had said. And Dean took out his heart again, remade it to fit the angel’s words.
He ran down the hall to meet his father, his baby brother, and his destiny.
*
Sam woke up when the thunder was rolling away. The streets would be flooded at least until dawn, like shiny black rivers. He would stay with his brother through the dark. “What’s wrong?”
The dark was the only time Dean really answered. “Cas thinks you need to decide what you’re gonna do next, Sam.”
“Where’d he go?” Sam handed him back his cigarette.
“He said he had something to do with this family he’s been keeping an eye on. An angel thing. He’ll be back in a little while.” Dean exhaled. “Let’s get out of here. Go back to Florida, maybe.”
“Why?” Sam shrugged. “We’ve been all over the South and no matter where we go, the angels are doing something.”
“Right.” Dean loved to roll his eyes at the angels. “Tempting fate with their nuclear families from hell, starting floods…”
“Cas told you that you’re just being paranoid about the rain.”
“I know, when God sends a flood, you know it’s God’s flood. Whatever. Everyone in this city would know God’s flood if they saw it. Believe me. But come on, Sam - there’s the Blues, barbeque, Disney World. Some of my favorite stuff on earth.”
“First of all, you’ve never been out of the country. Second, you think Disney is evil. Third, hurricanes.”
Dean smiled, “It was your idea to see all of the beaches in the first place. Besides, don’t think about what anyone says. People say Blues is the devil’s music.”
“And you said Florida was the cock of America.”
“Exactly. Don’t listen to us. Whatever. I’ve been to both Hell and Florida. Florida’s not that bad. Fishing? Golf? Beaches? Sunshine? And dolphins, man. What’s wrong with dolphins?”
Sam let his arm flop over his head on the pillow in surrender. “Nothing’s wrong with dolphins, Dean.”
“We’ll totally avoid Broward County, I swear. No blueberry pancakes.”
“It wasn’t blueberry pancakes, it was pigs in a poke.”
“Right, your biggest fear - pigs in a poke every day for the rest of your life. Blasphemy.” Dean liked to punctuate his sarcasm with hand gestures.
“You don’t get it. It was every day, forever. And every day ended the same.”
“That might have sucked, even if it was the worst day of your life. But it was still life, Sam. Hell is a much worse thing. Your life is over in Hell.”
Sam figured he didn’t bring it up. “Was it what you expected? What anyone deserved?”
“Nah. No one deserves that. It’s…,” Dean shrugged, “the total waste of a soul. Even a bad one. It was like Ruby warned me - just despair.”
“What…” Sam wanted to ask Dean what he would’ve wanted Hell to be, but he was only imagining the place; Dean was actually there.
“What about the genie’s dream? Or the African dream root?”
“That is more like an inverted Heaven. It’s not hellish in itself, just what it meant. Or could have meant. Whatever. Like seeing our parents again, then seeing their tragedy. It happened, but it’s not exactly real. It’s just meant to teach us a lesson.”
“That’s what the Trickster said - he was trying to teach a lesson. Like I could learn something by watching you eat at a diner every morning and then die.”
“You couldn’t change it though.”
“I could have, if I would have let go. But I couldn’t.”
“Isn’t that despair too? Hell should be a really predictable day instead. That’s what prison is.” Dean shrugged. “But I liked prison. I didn’t like Hell.”
“You secretly like routine.” Sam cut his hand through the air like a knife. “Because you’ve never had any. Even you would get tired of the same day after awhile.”
“Yeah. This is my life. That’s that.”
“No, it’s not.” Sam thought of the demons, and the angels. All lost. “You can have what you want, Dean.”
“Our life is being written into a gospel, Sam. The Trickster, Chuck. Fuck, even slash fans. They all have plans for us.”
Sam nodded. “So we really need to start making our own plans.”
“What’s this all about? Can’t we just go back to Florida?”
“How about I meet you there?”
“Sam…”
“I’m afraid to be without you, Dean. I’m coming back. But there’s something I have to do.” He moved closer, reassuring Dean with his body, which was what Dean liked to listen to anyway.
“You’ve got me, Sam. Remember me. Hear me. Then come back to me.”
“You trust me.”
Dean matched his every caress with his own. “Not as much as I’d like to. But Cas is right - you have to be free to do what you decide. I can’t take responsibility for both of us anymore. It’s too much. You have to be able to earn my trust again. Can you do that, Sammy?”
“It’s all I want, Dean. I need to you trust me now. I have a plan.”
*
“Come back to me in a week, yeah?”
“As soon as I can. Forever.”
Then Sam drank the last of the blood from his flask, and went to sleep on the bed.
Later, Castiel would return and they would move his body to the Impala. They would check out of the motel and drive southeast, to the most deserted beach they could find, and Castiel would not leave.
Meanwhile, Sam would send out his soul to travel to Hell like an American Odysseus down to the underworld. He would ask for help from an Old God, a Trickster god, look into his golden-brown eyes and sharp-pointed nose and chin, much like his own, and ask him to take over as the Lord of Hell.
The new Demon Prince and the Old God, they would begin to write the story.
*
Dean drove the whole way himself, because Castiel could be trusted with many things, but not with his baby.
“What is it, Cas?”
Cas furrowed his brow in thought, his emotions plain as day on his face as always. “I’ve ignored many questions I’ve had over the years. Time seemed endless, but I never actually thought I would ever get the chance to ask them. One question that’s never gone away… Our Father gave us only a few duties, but the details were never very clear. We are to watch man, make sure His fate is enacted, and serve as warriors in Heaven’s army. We are made to affect human lives, and yet we are given no understanding of human feelings, and instincts, and desires. We are guardians of people, but we are not persons. Our bodies aren’t even corporeal. We have no rights, no decisions to make, no responsibilities that aren’t specifically assigned to us. Why did our Father not give us personal selves?”
Dean is silent. He can only think of his own father, and what he expected of him.
“And yet… You are given selves, free will, enough time to enact your fate. But not all of you do. Some of you despair and give up. If humans can despair, and angels can go rogue, why can we? We would have to be persons, in order to decide to go against our Father’s will. We would have to have the capacity to make judgments, and understand consequences, and know right and wrong with no qualms about conscience. We should not have a conscience. And yet…”
“And yet, you do.”
“Yes.” Cas’ eyes went faraway. “I think I do.”
He knew it sounded lame, but he had to say it. “I think you’ve always been a person, Cas. You’re here, in front of me. And you’ve decided to do the right thing, because of your conscience.”
Castiel’s eyes looked even sadder. He just nodded his head. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Of all the things I’ve imagined myself doing, forever, and never thought I could do… To find that there was nothing stopping me. That it was all a lie.”
“What kinds of things, Cas?" Dean narrowed his eyes in friendly curiosity.
*
When they’d finished moving Sam, the sun was setting over the Gulf.
Castiel closed the door of their single room behind him. He walked up to Dean, one stop after another, and held his head in his hands, tilted it to the left and leaned in, slowly, slowly. Dean knew he gave him every chance to stop him, to speak a word of mocking derision, a deflection, a wavering.
Dean didn’t speak. Emotions flashed in his eyes like a kaleidoscope, but he didn’t speak. Castiel, as always, took it as an invitation. Parted his lips over Dean’s, dragged over and brought together again over Dean.
Dean let his head fall into Castiel’s waiting hands and felt it, opening up his lips, his knees, his hands so Castiel could fit himself to his body, just press in and take.
Cas kissed him until he didn’t know what else to do.
Dean said, “More.”
“Yes.” Cas held onto Dean’s skull and kissed him with every kind of desperation. His hands hung uselessly at his side and Dean’s jacket was suddenly on the floor, as the light on the dresser behind him flickered and went dead.
They stayed that way for a long time, letting the days of their history speak through their lips and their tongues, the touches of fingertips and wings.
*
There were sparks in the darkness, floating over their skin.
Dean felt little pricks of electricity fork over his skin and down under the covers where Cas’ hands flowed over his body. He felt his adrenaline climb and his dick ache.
“What’s that, Cas?”
“Just a touch.”
And Dean shivered. He remembered the freak lightning that made Alastair disappear like a piece of paper in a fire.
Castiel was drawn to the skin over his torso and traced every arc line with his fingers, tiny hot sparks of light following, and his mouth, marking its own path over sensitive skin. Dean put his arm over his head and partially covered his face, trying to block out as many over-loaded senses as he could.
When Castiel was done with one side of his ribcage, he started with the other, and Dean put both of his hands over his head in surrender, hoping he wasn’t writhing as much as he felt he was.
He was. But Castiel held his body steady between two strong, flat hands, turning his body slowly as he licked lines over muscle clenching with electric pulses. Dean couldn’t hear the sounds he was making over his covered ears, or he was oblivious to them. Castiel hummed with it.
Dean felt tiny pinches fleck all over the rounded flesh of his backside, and then they moved, all over. It was constant, like a spanking without the sting. He felt the tingle and the sensitivity that slowly built and built and built until the voice calling for it to stop got louder, but never loud enough to say stop, just a groan that seemed to take his breath away.
He removed his face from where it had been implanted in the pillow, “Castiel?”
Castiel was staring intently at the cheeks of his ass, and the faint sparks flying between it and his fingers, like the world’s hottest crystal ball. “Jesus Christ.”
Then Castiel got a strange expression on his face and moved one finger closer in. Dean felt his whole self exposed suddenly from the inside out, like layers of his self peeled away, and he sat up, away from Castiel, and tried to catch his breath in long disbelieving gasps. “Um. Don’t do that.”
“Are you sure? I’ll go slow.”
Dean nodded.
He felt heat where Castiel pressed his generous cock, heat like perfect friction, burrowing in, and he groaned the whole way in.
“Do it,” and Dean grabbed onto his ears. “Fast, hard.” They fucked, with sparks flying from their limbs, their lips, rolling in branched lines between their sweat-dripped chests and thighs. Dean felt a buzzing from as deep inside as Castiel could go and he let out a cry to match it, going on and on until he released himself all over his clenched abdomen, his heart-battered chest.
He pushed Castiel away, his slight frame a crushing weight on top of him. “I need, away.”
He was panting and breathing and he felt like he would never get his breath back, or his heart to stop hammering, ever again. He lay down and closed his eyes and the room went totally black.
When he woke up, the sun was coming through the blinds and Castiel was sitting across the room, staring at him.
He just stared at him and breathed for a few seconds. “Cas. I fell asleep.”
“It’s alright, Dean. You needed rest.” He grinned and flinched at the same time.
Dean loved it when he did that. “Yeah. But next time, we’re gonna do this human style.”
They spent the next four days on the bed, only leaving to check on Sam, or use the bathroom, and the one time Dean ordered a gigantic amount of pizza.
He knew Castiel was trying to distract him from his brother, to keep his mind off of what he couldn’t change. Dean loved it when he did that too. One of the dozen ways he needed Castiel, had always needed him, since they first met.
*
Dean woke up on the bed, with Castiel’s arms criss-crossed against his chest, like some sleepy swan ballet. He stared at his pale white skin, almost bright in the darkness, and remembered the hours before, coming back to him in flashes of light and shadow. The feel of cheek and chin around his dark wrinkled hole, scratching him raw each day, making him moan. The feel of callused hands gripping his thighs and pulling up, grabbing his ass and pulling up, and closer, skin to skin, creating a messy, slapping suction, so Castiel had to grip harder. Dean felt the grit on his skin still, the itching slickness from deep inside him, the sore stretch of his thighs, and couldn’t think about anything else until he was half hard again.
Castiel moaned then, from his sleepy state, and Dean checked his body, knowing what he’d find. The angel always responded to his thoughts, because he couldn’t help but think them too. He looked so innocent when he was sleeping, and more often than not he slept like an angel too, arms raised in some kind of graceful praise or supplication, body tilted on one hip, his sex dark and heavy and arched towards the mattress, his feet resting on the bed like a winged Mercury in flight.
*
Castiel woke up and let his body flow lazily against Dean, until they measured their states of arousal and found they were on the same page, again. The angel smiled at his luck, at Dean’s seemingly endless generosity of heart, at Sam’s faith, and knew they needed all of it. Strange how he searched for eternity with his brothers, with boundless loyalty, only to find someone like Dean at the end of it. How strange the world looked when everything was unique, and their hearts still fell for all of it, one at a time and together at last.
Without a word, Castiel kissed Dean on the nose, the little spot that was almost too pale for freckles, before moving down to his lips, and lower. Only pressing his lips to Dean’s body when he was looking, focused on anticipation. Castiel pressed his head into Dean’s abdomen, tickling him with his hair and getting a look at his pale, freckled sex, awesome in its perfection, the way pearly drops gathered on the too-pink head, begging to be kissed.
Amen, Castiel thought, as he closed his eyes and slowly flicked his tongue. When Dean grabbed his hair, he went down, until his forehead hit against muscle. He held Dean’s thighs and sucked him until he found suction worth keeping, until Dean could do nothing but whimper and buck his hips and let the bedsprings rock him in and out of that perfect mouth.
When Dean came, he still didn’t stop, not until he was hard again. He wanted to train him. He wanted to hear him whimper through it, until Dean was the one to push him off, turn around and put one foot on the floor next to the bed, like a kickstand, and brace his hands on the wall. The second he was ready, Castiel spread Dean open, with his callused thumbs brushing over the raw pink slickness outside of his hole, ready and open for him, and pressed into Dean.
The second he started thrusting, he had them back at that plateau of fucking, like they had never even left off, this continual perfect fuck they could find again and again. It went on and on. This state of perfection. He wondered if they could find any kind of perfection outside of this room, this bed. He didn’t think so, and he’d been to Paradise. It seemed impossible, but then again Castiel knew all about impossible.
*
Every day that went by, Dean had to dig a little further into himself, find a hidden, endless reservoir of feeling, pull it out and feel it for Castiel. Like he was answering the question of their future with every clench of his muscles around Castiel, every drop milked from his cock.
He was used to it, because of Sam. He could answer every question of Sam’s with his body, and he could do the same for his angel.
He woke up on his stomach sometime after dawn. Castiel was curled up in the middle of the bed, his wrists open to the ceiling and his feet curled up. Dean smiled at his hair, wondering how it could possibly look more mussed up than he’d ever seen it. His ass was just inches away, blank and open.
He wasn’t even thinking about sex. His dick ached in protest if he tried. But he’d been here before. He knew where they would end up eventually. Every second he looked at Castiel it got harder to wait. Hell itself could be falling in on his brother, and both sides still waging war over the world as he knew it. And yet Castiel was every quiet moment in his head. It had been that way for a year. Why should now be any different? Dean had wanted him for a year, now he just noticed it. Cas had been there all along.
The angel’s cheek was rough against his own; his skin tasted of salt, making his tongue water for more. He smoothed the dark feather-like hair at his temples with his tongue. He tried to pretend that it wasn’t a pretense for fucking, that they were going to end up somewhere else this time. But he felt it in the rough burn of Castiel’s jaw against his lips, his sore hips straddling over Castiel, the dribble running down his thigh. It was just a matter of waiting for one of them to get hard, and the other would have to play catch-up.
Dean played hard. He slicked up two fingers in his mouth, still watering from the taste of Castiel, held him still with his hips, one leg wrapping around Castiel’s, spreading him open knee from knee, and pressed in with sharps jabs. Twisted and crooked his fingers, holding him steady as he jerked. Castiel pulled Dean to hardness, rocking his body as he squeezed Dean roughly and twisted back onto his fingers. They always found a rhythm, no matter what. Castiel knew how to find it.
As soon as he was ready, Dean shifted to his side behind him and kept the same rhythm with his dick, listened to Castiel breathe through it and reach back for him. Dean gripped his shoulder and pulled Castiel down on himself with a grunt. Then they just rocked into each other, with Dean keeping that perfect rhythm, watching Castiel match it with his hand on his cock.
Dean came with a shiver, his mouth smearing against the flat planes of Castiel’s back. Dean watched him finish himself off, his teeth biting his shoulder to help get him there, and was rewarded with the first tugs of Castiel’s orgasm on the head of his softening sex. Perfect.
*
Hours later, Dean awoke to the noon heat and gave into the thought of a shower. He was still dripping water all over the floor when he crawled back over Castiel and ground himself down dirty again on his angel, who lifted his legs to the air in wordless invitation.
This time, he had to stop for pizza afterwards. He moved the box to the bed, so they could eat entwined in the sheets, jumbled together and sprawled out. They feel asleep to the warm buzz of the heat in the air.
*
Castiel came alive in the night, barely waiting for Dean to wake up before he was pleading with him to open up for him, placing insistent kisses on his forehead and whispering, like Dean would wake up and forget the stakes here, forget the last three days in this bed.
So Dean planted his feet on the bed and spread his legs without a word, barely hard but aroused. Besides, he felt he was just waiting for Castiel to fill him up again, when Castiel wasn’t already there.
So Castiel worked his perfect rhythm, apologetic but not stopping, taking what he wanted and pleading with Dean to let him.
And Dean let him, knowing that Castiel would take him there, until he was coming with a sob, like he could feel the few drops travel through his sac through his dick through the teasing tip of his thumb.
He had faith.
He had faith in Castiel.
“Oh god.”
*
“Are the angels going to know our story?”
“They’re very nosy. And they gossip. Here. I used to be ashamed to show this to you. But then I used to be ashamed of many things.”
“What is it?” Dean felt the warm wetness of Castiel’s palm on his forehead. Castiel had an aura of dark golden light around his head, neck, and shoulders.
“I can see the light, too. Yours is… beautiful. I’m calling on the holy fire to help give us strength for when Sam returns.”
Dean closed his eyes when he started to feel his eyes roll back.
“Stay with me, Dean. You’re just fine.”
Dean felt Castiel pet his face, his hair, his arm. Eventually he opened his eyes. “Hey, you look darker.”
And Castiel did. His halo of light had red inlaid with the golden, his eyes were shiny and wet. “I feel darker. More like you. What do I want right now?”
Dean lifted his knees around Castiel, knowing he passed the test. Not because he could sense Castiel’s emotions, but because he really knew Castiel after all. He hadn’t even had to remake his heart, or burn anything alive, or sell his self away, because Castiel was what was going to be there when he’d already done all that. Castiel was going to be the end.
He loved the way Castiel could move between his thighs, curl up close to him, and look at him, arms curled over his shoulders and bringing him down over and over again, asking him the question he liked to ask.
“Does this make you feel human?”
It made him feel like the sun itself, the heat of a nonspecific sun trapped on earth and giving giving giving, taking nothing, and maybe God loved him and maybe his mother loved him and maybe Sam will never ever leave and the world will never end. “No. Something else.”
*
Dean held onto Castiel like a sheath for a sword, his hands clasped together against his ribcage to hold him still. Castiel let himself be held as Dean rocked into him.
“Does this make you feel human?”
“Yes.”
“Does this make you feel like an angel?”
“Yes.”
“Could you decide?”
“No.”
“Good. Because I’m beginning to really like ambivalence.” And Dean kissed him, parted lips to parted lips.
*
“You miss your brother.”
“I know. It’s been six days. But he’s coming back.”
“Tomorrow.”
Dean nodded. “Tomorrow. Hey, Cas? How would you feel about Sam maybe joining us?”
“I think he might need us both. But I’ll give you time alone with him first. He’s going to need you more than anyone.”
Dean knew that.
*
Dean said the phrase to recall his brother back to his body, while Castiel placed his hand on his forehead.
When he opened his eyes, it was his Sam.
But his Sam was a little breathless and wild-eyed. “I have so much to tell you.”
“Let’s make sure you’re ok first. Shower. Some food. Then we’ll talk.”
He made sure Sam did as he was told and didn’t leave his side the whole time. Sam looked young. Dean frowned. He’d looked older when he got back from Hell, even with his new body.
He put his hands through the lather in Sam’s hair, not even caring that Sam hadn’t let him do this to him in years, and kept catching Sam’s gaze where it was fixed on him, unwavering. “It’s different now, yeah?”
Sam nodded, then ducked underwater before Dean could kiss him.
*
Castiel sat perched on a chair on the other side of the room waiting for both of them. Sam walked out of the bathroom with his hair still dripping wet and Castiel could see the outline of something hovering around him, changing with the shadows and the light, as if his moods were flashing through him like frames of film through a camera.
His hands were all over Dean, from whom he felt every emotion Sam was going through, but all at once, more like a blinking strobe light effect. He’d never watched them this close before. Not so close that Dean could ever sense him if he’d wanted to.
“You taste so sweet, Dean. What has your angel done to you? Get you ready for me?”
“Yeah,” Dean breathed and they both looked across the room at him at once.
But he wouldn’t move. Not when Dean took off his jeans and straddled Sam’s body, letting him grab his ankles and hold him still as he rode him. Long and hard enough to make Sam want to stay, to make him forgive Dean everything and stay, though Dean never needed forgiveness, though Sam would never leave. But it’s what Dean needed to prove.
“You’ll never have to go back there, Dean. Never. Never. I was right.” Sam gasped as Dean grabbed onto the bottom of his shaft, squeezed it, and rode the tip even faster. “I used to hate him, for what he’d done to you. But he never killed you. He was just trying to teach me something.”
“And you’re stubborn.” Dean’s voice was wrecked.
Sam flipped Dean onto his back and held his body high up to meet him, talked to him in bursts but moved into him steady and slow. “We were so powerful, so powerful.”
His eyes turned different shades of brown and black, hazel and gold, over Dean. “Hell is glorious, now, Dean. Hell is another world.” Sam kissed him to cover his sobs.
Castiel knew what that felt like. The softness of Dean’s skin where his freckles met the thin skin under his eyes, the place where his thumb met Dean’s tears. Sam rubbed his thumb there. Just what Cas would’ve done.
Dean wrapped his legs around Sam and whimpered. “I feel it Sammy. Don’t stop, don’t stop.”
“You feel like an angel, baby. You feel like an angel.”
“That’s Cas.” He kissed him, made Sam taste his tongue. “You feel Cas and me.”
Dean grabbed the back of Sam’s thighs and pushed his own body up to him, and Castiel knew what that felt like. Knew Sam had no other choice but to brace his hands next to Dean’s perfect face and rock his body into Dean’s own until he tells him to stop. And Sam wasn’t going to stop for a long time.
“You deserve me, Sam. We both deserve to be here.”
“Yes. Yes, now we do.”
So Castiel touched himself the way Dean did, and rocked his hips the way Dean did, and waited until Dean was ready to call his name.
When he did, Castiel held him under his arms, Dean’s back against his chest, kissed him hard, then leaned forward to meet Sam, who met his lips like he was ravenous. He stayed that way until he felt Dean’s head shudder in his lap, felt both brothers jerk against him and kissed and petted them through it until they stopped.
*
Sam was so hungry, he made an attempt at the pizza. Castiel waited with him, knowing Dean would sleep for at least a while longer.
Sam shrugged. “It was weird, you know. I took the dream root and I could move through the demons’ dreams, any demon whose blood I’d taken. It didn’t matter where I was.”
“When Lucifer was freed, the veils between the worlds became thin. It’s easier for the angels to move as well.”
“That’s why it’s more dangerous. I could reach them all this way. I let the demons see what they’d done, and what they could be. I let them remember a time before Hell. I showed them the way out, the only way we’d let them out. In Hell, my visions were just as powerful as the Trickster’s. He showed me how to use them - more than I’d ever known before. It was a whole new universe. Like creating another world, where Hell was based on this one, but with slightly different rules.”
“Which set of rules did you use, Sam?”
“Really bureaucratic ones. But at least there are rules now. There’s a chance to move up the ladder, so to speak, besides all of that despair. The Trickster thought paperwork was hilarious, so he gave Hell a system of laws. I don’t know, Cas - He did everything I asked. Everything I’d dreamed about. Like he’d been waiting for me, for us, to know what to ask. For three years we worked. And we’re not done yet, but…”
Cas nodded, then leaned in to kiss him. “It’s ok, Sam. You did good work.”
Sam held Castiel in his lap and cradled his body against him, his arms wrapped around him whole-body. “Thanks for taking care of my brother.”
Castiel felt those roaming hands move all over him, let them press his back to Sam’s broad chest and run down this thighs, straddling Sam’s. Then Castiel closed his eyes.
He kept them closed while Sam manhandled his body onto his sex, opening him wider than Dean and not nearly as gentle. Pressed him down down, until Cas had nothing to kick against, until Sam took one foot in each hand and Cas could press himself to Sam’s pistoning hips, about to break the chair.
“Oh, fuck.”
That was Dean, dragging out the syllables like his brain was falling out his ears.
Cas couldn’t open his eyes; he just groaned out of his nostrils.
And that was Dean on him, kissing him, and pressing his body to Castiel’s own, sex to sex. Dean thrust with his body, and Cas could feel Sam pressing further in and the crushing heat of Dean.
Castiel who had spent so much time watching them, found himself between the both of them. He cried out to Heaven.
Dean whispered soothing words in his ears when he whined high in his throat. “I’ve got you,” he said, circling his fingers in deeper and deeper arcs, lazily drawing lines across the soft skin on the side of his and Sam’s chest.
Dean kissed and rubbed his body, bent over and worked each nipple with his mouth, moving slow so he could watch Castiel. “I’ve got you,” he said, leaning down to take him in his mouth, deep and loose. He twisted so Castiel and Sam could both see his face - caved cheeks, puckered lips, and full eyelashes - and let Sam move Castiel between the both of them.
When Sam came, Dean felt his brother’s hands around his head, pulling him to Castiel’s body as he twisted up. Castiel held onto Sam’s hips and kept him close, tight, and spasming around him.
Dean held onto the both of them, sucked him to beyond dry, and when he smiled, Castiel knew he was getting his payback for earlier. Yes, he thought. Heaven.
*
Hell, it turned out, was much like watching television.
Life was a flashing screen in each soul’s mind, a way of interpreting events. There was the chance for understanding, through a frame or a fantasy. Souls communicated through electricity that flashed through hell on chains, like synapses. They could even watch Paradise, faraway and distant, like peeking in on a neighbor across the street, forbidden and hidden by the sounds of the television.
Daniel checked his Blackberry for memos from Zachariah detailing the workings of the world - a step-by-step visitor’s guide to negotiations with the humans. He slept alone in his house and he found a job in marketing, surveying the humans on their likes and dislikes. They made less and less sense all the time.
In fact, if he really thought about it, on the whole, maybe it had been easier with his brother at his side; when he’d only had Castiel’s thoughts to worry about; strange, solitary thoughts, but true.
In Paradise, angels arched their backs in arcs of light that bounced off one another. They held each other close and sent off hums of vibration that peaked like moans. Kisses flew like sparks and orgasms flashed like lightning. They had no need for televisions, for human bodies.
They were light and they were music.
Alice looked around herself, at the lights that no longer blinded her, the tailed comets with their voices like echoes. The horizon was flat planes and soft surfaces, all cooing to her to touch. She couldn’t have been happier if she were in her own mother’s womb again, listening to the record player spin 70s folk-rock guitar songs, as if willing the world to slow.
The angel she recognized as Castiel stood out from all the rest, alone. He was different from them, almost as human-tainted as Alice was herself. When she went to him, she felt like bowing, though she didn’t exactly know why. Still, she saw the light in his eyes - the lights that were his eyes - and no longer worried for him. In this place, there was no reason to worry for love, or to fear doom. She felt when her baby was born, they would look out upon the world with the same newborn eyes, the same sense of wonder that had always been there, but sucked out of the air itself by a limited dichotomy applied to infinite beings of three tiny worlds.
*
“Tell me again, Cas.”
The angel stood where he’d just returned from Paradise, bare feet twitching on the broken shell beach. He thought, perhaps, that today couldn’t get much better. “There’s been a permanent revolution. Paradise is a very different place.”
Dean slapped the towel next to him with his hand.
Castiel folded his suit around him and sat. “What are you eating?”
“Hush puppies. Try one.” Dean gave him what was left of his.
“I don’t even know what this is.” It looked like a ball of greasy bread.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think you’re supposed to.” Dean shrugged. “You were telling me about this epic orgy thing…”
Cas smiled. “As I watched it, it seemed meant to be, like it was just waiting to happen, since the beginning of time. Like the last perfect stroke of a painting, or the last note of a song. All of my sisters playing games, songs they’ve known but forgotten. Their graces flowing together… I couldn’t tell where some of them began and ended. And when they released their grace… the explosions of light went on forever, flowed over everything… like a flood. I can’t describe it any better. It’s hard to convey Paradise.”
“So, why would God give the female angels the ability to have sex in Paradise and not the male angels?”
“He might have. Maybe we weren’t creative enough to figure it out. Paradise is very inventive now.”
“Well, if I were God, I’d certainly be happy with Paradise.” Dean looked out at the ocean from the top of his sunglasses as Sam walked in with the waves.
“You wouldn’t have anything to compare it to.”
“I know, but what could you compare with a lesbian angel orgy anyway?”
“What are we talking about?” Sam voice was muffled by the towel he used to dry his hair.
Dean squinted up at his brother. “Apparently the two of you have managed to start revolutions in both Heaven and Hell.”
“My sisters did that on their own, Dean. I just happened to find out after the fact.”
“Your sisters just caught on quicker. You’d started hinting it to your brothers first.”
“Well, maybe they’ll get the hint now. Anything to give me a break from them.” Castiel rolled his eyes.
“Don’t do that, man. I’d hate to think you’re picking up on Sam’s bitchface.”
“Sam’s what?”
“Oh, no, even worse. Please, I can’t have two bitchfaces riding around in my baby at once…”
Sam kicked a wave of shells. “Can it, Dean, with the bitchface crap. That’s two against one.”
Castiel couldn’t help but smile with Sam at that one. He still didn’t know what a bitchface was, but it was always fun to gang up on Dean.
“Oh, fuck my life.” Dean was in trouble.
*
The End
A/N: Thanks for my flist for encouraging me when this story was eating my brain like candy. Also, for sending me porn and forever musing about polyamory. You all rock. thevinegarworks did an amazing beta that convinced me, finally, that betas are necessary things. She saved my ass. I made revisions when she was done, so any flaws you found are purely my fault. Thanks to moodswingers too, for the Sam/Dean love and for reading and for everything. Endless <3 <3 <3
I missed the Big Bang entirely this year, so I wanted to write a BB-length fic just to see if it was possible for next year, perhaps. I’m even more in awe of BB writers now. *shakes head*
Also, in case you didn’t guess it, the title is from a Foreigner song :) I’m not necessarily a fan. Show is. (Don’t look at my iPod…)
Comments of any kind are AWESOME.