FIC: "The Only Solution" by shadow_artemis - NC-17 - Dean/Castiel (1/1)
Title: The Only Solution
Author: shadow_artemis
Characters/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam, Bobby
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Oral, gratuitous cursing, (past) established relationship
Summary: In the aftermath of Castiel's declaration--to profess their love or be destroyed--Sam, Bobby and Dean face their choices, but only Dean knows what he has to do to save everyone.
Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me. I'm a lowly college student who doesn't get enough sleep and ends up writing these things instead.
Note: My first smut! Oh lord. I apologize if the sexy-time bits are awkward; I've never written smut before this and had to reference another fic to make sure I wasn't being weird about it. Also, this idea hit me out of nowhere the other night when I couldn't fall asleep, so I banged it out over the last three days and I know I should be working on all my other fics instead. This one just wouldn't leave me alone. I also apologize in advance for general crappiness.
“I’m your new god. A better one. So you will bow down, profess your love unto me, your Lord, or I shall destroy you.”
Those words, heavy with their solemn threat, hung in the air, suddenly so thick that all anyone could do was stare. All eyes in the room rested on Castiel, the only one who either didn’t notice or didn’t mind the tension thrumming around the quartet, as they did the only thing they could really do at the moment: contemplate their choices.
Sam simply froze, unsure as to how to react to those words; he was beaten, battered and almost certainly broken, having just returned from another Winchester-style near death experience, and already he was facing imminent death. He could stick by his family credo and go down fighting, or shirk the Winchester ways and give in to preserve his own life. He wasn’t too keen on the latter option, though he was pretty sure that this time, God wouldn’t be bringing him back.
Bobby’s thoughts rested in approximately the same area, this impossible choice that really shouldn’t be a choice. He could stay defiant, follow the same path he’d followed for most his life, and die; alternatively, he could fight his instincts and choose subservience, and damn if that prospect didn’t sound a little too degrading for his tastes.
Dean stood flabbergasted, mind essentially racing to the same places his brother and Bobby’s minds had raced to; the difference here was that, after quickly assessing the situation, he knew exactly what he had to do. There was a small moment of hesitation as a few klaxons in his mind screamed that he shouldn’t do this, that he had to save face in front of Bobby and Sam, but his will to survive overrode his need for any remaining dignity at this point. Living just seemed a whole lot nicer right now than dying, especially when he could save himself, and hopefully Sam and Bobby to boot. For once, no one had to die.
The only human in the room apparently able to move, Dean approached Cas slowly, stiffly, like he’d been frozen in place for more than just a few seconds. The angel-no, God, he was God now-smiled, a look that had once been a strange yet calming sight, though now it was more creepy than calming. Disconcerting as all get-out, really.
“Dean, you’ve chosen well. You will be honored with a high position in my new world order,” He said, head tilting in that still-familiar way that nearly killed Dean on its own. They’d been friends once, more than brothers and closer than Dean had ever been with anyone else, and now to see the guy like this... It was all wrong, so far from right that it wasn’t even a dot on the horizon anymore, but Dean could fix that.
Dean said nothing, couldn’t think of anything but fixing all of this, potentially saving everyone, as he dropped to his knees in front of Castiel. He could feel Bobby and Sam’s boggled looks hitting him, but he never broke eye contact with the sharp blue of his angel’s-his God’s-eyes. It was now-or-never time; he swallowed the lump in his throat, and most likely whatever shame he had left.
He reached out and undid the belt cinched around Castiel’s slim waist. Bobby and Sam just continued to stare, burning imaginary holes into Dean with their stunned intensity. Even the newly-minted God seemed caught off guard by this turn of events and did nothing, allowing Dean to pull on the fly of His pants, dragging it down with a long ‘zzzzp’ that echoed through the library-silent room. The black slacks dropped to the floor, revealing pale blue silk boxers and legs that were far too tan for how little sun they saw. (None, that was.) Dean’s attention, though, was just beyond those boxers and far beyond the land of dignity. Sam and Bobby would never look at him the same way again, but at least they’d be alive.
He reached out and pulled down those boxers as smoothly as possible, doing his best not to jar Cas from the confused musing He seemed to be directing toward the elder Winchester. The stares coming from Sam and Bobby now turned into open-mouthed gaping, and Dean was too far down the rabbit hole now to really care; he just had to forge on, wrapping one hand around the base of Cas’ cock, which seemed to be getting the idea before He did, if its growing stiffness was any indication.
Dean looked up at Cas one more time, locking eyes with the blues that had a small spark of familiarity and recognition growing in their depths, and did what he had to do. His tongue darted out, licking a slow line up Cas’ growing erection before wrapping his lips around the whole shaft. That alone was enough to elicit a gasp from the usually stoic Lord; Dean felt His entire body tense up ever-so-slightly.
The hunter, fighting the urge to smile at his small victory, kept going, slowly moving his mouth up and down Cas’ cock, hand kept at the base so he wouldn’t overestimate his depth and choke. He took the God as deep into his throat as he could, holding himself there for a second before bobbing back up. Finally, Cas’ brain seemed to catch up with His body and a hand found its way to the back of Dean’s head, altering his tempo to fit His desire. Not that Dean didn’t know the rhythm, but he liked to know that Cas was actually getting involved in this; it meant that they were way more likely to survive.
Just barely, he could hear how ragged Cas’ breath had become, could almost feel His rapid heartbeat thudding through His body. He was getting closer, Dean could tell, and this was his cue to go faster, egging Cas toward His rising orgasm. A single, quiet moan escaped His lips as the hunter worked his hand in tandem with his mouth.
“Dean,” was all the Lord could whisper before His cock twitched and Dean suddenly lost all cohesive thought; his world had gone a blinding blue-white that blanked everything around him.
When the world finally came back into view, seconds or minutes or years later, he was laid out flat on the ground, staring up at the warehouse ceiling. He squinted for a second, trying to sort out what had happened, when Castiel came into his line of sight, pants back on and holding a hand out to Dean. The hunter stared at it for a second, hoping he hadn’t just doomed them all; the warm smile on Cas’ face, so unlike the cold, empty smile from just a little bit ago, compelled him to take the hand.
“Cas?” he asked tentatively, pulling himself up but eyes never leaving the other man. “You back with us, man?” Cas glanced down at Himself for a second before looking back up at Dean with the same smile on His face.
“Yes, I believe I am,” He replied. His eyes drifted from Dean, aimed at the ground again for a second as His smile fell. “I’m afraid I became a little power-mad, as you’d put it. I’m sorry for losing myself back there.” The Lord looked up at him through those long lashes and there was no way Dean could stay mad at Him.
“It’s okay, man. Happens to the best of us sometimes,” he said, patting Cas on the back. The God smiled again, slowly this time, and raised His eyes fully up to Dean’s. “Just one question, man: what was that at the end there? I mean, I know what it was, I’ve been around the block more than a few times, but that was, uh... That was different.” Cas tilted His head again, processing for a second before comprehension dawned on Him.
“You’re referring to my ejaculate?” He asked. Dean winced-even after all this time, Cas still hadn’t gotten the hang of not sounding like a sex ed book-but nodded anyway. The new Lord pursed his lips. “I’m sorry about that. If I had been more... in control of my faculties, I would have warned you, as per our past agreement.”
For Sam and Bobby, this seemed to be the proverbial straw, breaking them from their stunned silence. Bobby just sputtered, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands like he could erase what he’d just seen, while Sam’s reaction was a bit more... audible.
“Your past agreement?” he all but roared, eyes bulging out. Like Bobby, he sputtered for a moment, at a complete loss for words as he ran a hand through his shaggy hair and looked around wildly. “Your past fucking agreement? What the hell does that mean?”
Dean held out a placating hand, eyes still on Castiel. Before he could deal with the world-shattering explanations he’d have to give his brother, he wanted to know exactly what had happened when Cas came.
“Yeah, Cas, you should’ve warned me, but that’s not exactly the problem here,” he said, maintaining reason as best as he could while the two humans closest to him had increasingly intense mental breakdowns. “What was all that light and shit? That’s not normal, dude, you should know that much.” At this, Cas had the good grace to look abashed, a hand rubbing the back of His neck in a way that was distinctly Dean-ish, if anybody there had been together enough to notice.
“Yes, it wasn’t ordinary ejaculate,” He replied. “It was actually pure Grace, with no traces of human seed as usual. My elevated status and power has apparently affected my corporeal body.”
“Uh-huh,” Dean muttered, brow furrowed. “So wait, you shot me with a load of Grace? What’s the supposed to mean?”
“What the hell is going on here?” Sam thundered in the background, his confusion overriding the array of injuries he’d sustained. “Dean, since when do you...! And what the fuck was... And did you have to do it in front of us?” The elder Winchester finally turned his attention to his brother, if only for a second.
“Sam, could you hold on just one second? I’m trying to sort a few things out myself, if you don’t mind.” Bobby, though, took this moment to jump in.
“No, Dean, I agree with Sam,” he said, calmer than Sam but not by much. “What in the blazing hell was that? Since when did you trade to the other team?” Pinching the bridge of his nose, knowing he wasn’t going to escape this now, Dean turned to face his surrogate father.
“I just saved our lives, alright?” he reasoned. Bobby’s eyebrows just shot up, arms crossing over his chest, not for one minute letting Dean think he could get out of this that easily. “Alright, fine, you want the dirty details? That year that we were trying to stop the Apocalypse, Cas and I were screwing. We screwed all the goddamn time, like freaking rabbits.”
The whole room was silent for a moment; even Sam had quit muttering to himself for a second to process that information. Dean took a couple of calming breaths, while Cas smirked, just barely.
“Well, that don’t surprise anyone,” Bobby grumbled after a moment. Sam’s eyebrows shot up, as if he begged to differ, but he didn’t actually say anything. “So what kind of twisted logic makes you think that now, when we’re all about to die, is the best time to rekindle your damn romance?”
“It used to calm Cas down,” Dean replied with a shrug. “When shit got tough and he was all wound-up, I’d blow him and he’d chill out for a while. I figured if I was gonna die, it was worth a try.” He turned to Cas, who had been smirking this entire time. “Worked, didn’t it?”
“Oh, most definitely,” the Lord replied, eyes lighting up. He glanced to Bobby and Sam (who was still essentially frozen, brain unable to process everything), and bowed His head slightly to them. “I’m sorry for my earlier behavior. It had been a long, stressful year, and the influx of celestial power in my human form created an imbalance in my mental state. Power-mad, as I said earlier.”
“Uh-huh,” Bobby said, nodding slowly. “Appreciate the apology, and whatever you two idjits do in your free time is none of my damn business. I just don’t ever want to see it again, got it?” Cas and Dean both nodded; Sam continued to gawk. “Good. Now, Cas, I gotta know, you still God?”
“I believe so,” the Lord replied after a moment of thought. “I still have the power of Purgatory concentrated in my body, though I believe some of it may have been evacuated during the earlier oral sex.”
“So you did blow Grace?” Dean asked, turning back to Cas. “And what exactly happened to it after that?” Cas in turn raised an eyebrow.
“Where do you think it went, Dean?” Cas asked, a wry smile quirking the corners of His lips. It took the hunter a second, and then it clicked for him.
“In me? You shot me up with Grace? What the hell does that mean?” The Lord shrugged.
“I have no idea, Dean. This is entirely unprecedented. There is no telling what will happen.”
“Well, great,” Dean muttered. “Can’t wait to see what kind of shit this will add to our lives.” Bobby just snorted.
“You just blew God, kid,” the elder hunter replied. “Your life can’t get much weirder.” Dean just shrugged; the elder man had a good point. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going home to bleach my brain.” As the hunter turned to leave, Dean and Cas exchanged small grins, but Sam, suddenly thrust from his stupor, interrupted them again.
“You! Blew! God!” he boomed. “You blew God to save our lives! This is fucking unbelievable. Absolutely un-fucking-believable, Dean!” The older Winchester just rolled his eyes and approached his brother.
“Yeah, yeah, Sammy, I know, it’s nuts,” he replied half-heartedly, just playing along as he grabbed the taller man’s arm to lead him along. “Our lives really are weird, et cetera.” He glanced back to Cas as he lead his brother out of the building. “You wanna join us, or do you have new God things you have to go do?” The Lord considered it for a moment, then nodded.
“I’ll join you,” He replied, catching up with the Winchesters quickly. “Sam needs healed, and I would like to talk to you about this last year when we get a chance.” Dean nodded, not liking the prospect of talking about things any more than he ever did, but if anything was going to start going right for them at this, they needed to talk about something.
“Yeah, we can talk when we get back to Bobby’s,” he said, smiling as Cas wrapped an arm around Sam to help support the Sasquatch. Things were fucking weird, like always, but for the first time in a long time, things felt like they might actually get better.
--------------
And get better they did.
Cas healed Sam as soon as they got back to the Impala, though the kid was still treading the edge of sanity as he processed the new developments in his life, never mind the fact that his whole mind had just recently been knitted back together.
The ride back to Bobby’s was fairly uneventful, as well as their first few days there. Cas disappeared on and off, attending to His new responsibilities as God and conferencing with the old God, who was apparently retiring to St. Croix, but He and Dean finally had that talk a few days after the confrontation and sorted out everything that had happened between them since the averted Apocalypse. Things between them were going increasingly well, especially since the world had finally calmed down and there were no major disasters to divert their attention. Cas was falling back into His old semi-human ways, despite being even further from human than He’d previously been; Dean, for the most part, finally had time to relax, even show his baby a little extra attention.
Sam had finally processed the whole thing, even though he was still pretty amazed that everyone but him had seen Dean and Cas’ relationship originally. He chalked it up to missing the biggest things about the people closest to you and congratulated the two. He even gave Cas the younger brother version of ‘break his heart, I’ll break your face,’ which was pretty astounding considering that Sam had once had so much reverence for God. It was just strange thinking of Cas as anything more than the usual guy in a trenchcoat they’d known for years now.
Bobby, for the most part, went back to regular life, though he did grumble occasionally about having the boys around a lot more now that the world was more in order. The less hunts they had, the more time they spent bothering him, not that he really minded. He kept their rooms ready all the time, just in case, and more often than not, they were already there.
A few weeks into their new, easier lives, the ramifications of the Grace Dean had received became apparent: with Heaven now lacking all its archangels, he had essentially been juiced up into one. It was freaking bizarre, manifesting all these powers that he couldn’t control, but if anything, they gave him one more reason to keep spending time with Cas. The Lord not only showed him how to properly use these new abilities and keep them under control, but often needed his assistance in shuffling Heaven and the world into its new order. Dean, for the most part, stayed the same as he had been before; every so often, he’d warp reality a little bit, but mostly to play pranks on Sam. Even great cosmic power wasn’t enough to change the essence that was Dean Winchester.
Sam himself found a new position of power in the world, even if he was still technically human: he became an advisor of sorts to Cas, along with Bobby. The two of them made sure Cas and Dean stayed grounded and provided the purely human rhetoric when it came to cosmic quandaries.
Castiel struggled with His infinite power at first, but within days it had become natural to Him, and He never relapsed back into His original power madness, due in great part to the influence of the Winchesters and Bobby in His life again. He did His best to bring peace to the world without going against free will; at the very least, He fixed many of the things that had been broken by the Celestial Civil War. Monster activity returned to pre-war levels, and demonic activity dropped to lows unseen since Dean had picked up Sam at Stanford seven years ago.
Which was to say, despite going against all the odds, facing every imaginable trial (and quite a few that had been previously unimaginable), and fighting the order of the cosmos, they’d finally won and found a little peace of their own.
And damn if they didn’t deserve it.
Author: shadow_artemis
Characters/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam, Bobby
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Oral, gratuitous cursing, (past) established relationship
Summary: In the aftermath of Castiel's declaration--to profess their love or be destroyed--Sam, Bobby and Dean face their choices, but only Dean knows what he has to do to save everyone.
Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me. I'm a lowly college student who doesn't get enough sleep and ends up writing these things instead.
Note: My first smut! Oh lord. I apologize if the sexy-time bits are awkward; I've never written smut before this and had to reference another fic to make sure I wasn't being weird about it. Also, this idea hit me out of nowhere the other night when I couldn't fall asleep, so I banged it out over the last three days and I know I should be working on all my other fics instead. This one just wouldn't leave me alone. I also apologize in advance for general crappiness.
“I’m your new god. A better one. So you will bow down, profess your love unto me, your Lord, or I shall destroy you.”
Those words, heavy with their solemn threat, hung in the air, suddenly so thick that all anyone could do was stare. All eyes in the room rested on Castiel, the only one who either didn’t notice or didn’t mind the tension thrumming around the quartet, as they did the only thing they could really do at the moment: contemplate their choices.
Sam simply froze, unsure as to how to react to those words; he was beaten, battered and almost certainly broken, having just returned from another Winchester-style near death experience, and already he was facing imminent death. He could stick by his family credo and go down fighting, or shirk the Winchester ways and give in to preserve his own life. He wasn’t too keen on the latter option, though he was pretty sure that this time, God wouldn’t be bringing him back.
Bobby’s thoughts rested in approximately the same area, this impossible choice that really shouldn’t be a choice. He could stay defiant, follow the same path he’d followed for most his life, and die; alternatively, he could fight his instincts and choose subservience, and damn if that prospect didn’t sound a little too degrading for his tastes.
Dean stood flabbergasted, mind essentially racing to the same places his brother and Bobby’s minds had raced to; the difference here was that, after quickly assessing the situation, he knew exactly what he had to do. There was a small moment of hesitation as a few klaxons in his mind screamed that he shouldn’t do this, that he had to save face in front of Bobby and Sam, but his will to survive overrode his need for any remaining dignity at this point. Living just seemed a whole lot nicer right now than dying, especially when he could save himself, and hopefully Sam and Bobby to boot. For once, no one had to die.
The only human in the room apparently able to move, Dean approached Cas slowly, stiffly, like he’d been frozen in place for more than just a few seconds. The angel-no, God, he was God now-smiled, a look that had once been a strange yet calming sight, though now it was more creepy than calming. Disconcerting as all get-out, really.
“Dean, you’ve chosen well. You will be honored with a high position in my new world order,” He said, head tilting in that still-familiar way that nearly killed Dean on its own. They’d been friends once, more than brothers and closer than Dean had ever been with anyone else, and now to see the guy like this... It was all wrong, so far from right that it wasn’t even a dot on the horizon anymore, but Dean could fix that.
Dean said nothing, couldn’t think of anything but fixing all of this, potentially saving everyone, as he dropped to his knees in front of Castiel. He could feel Bobby and Sam’s boggled looks hitting him, but he never broke eye contact with the sharp blue of his angel’s-his God’s-eyes. It was now-or-never time; he swallowed the lump in his throat, and most likely whatever shame he had left.
He reached out and undid the belt cinched around Castiel’s slim waist. Bobby and Sam just continued to stare, burning imaginary holes into Dean with their stunned intensity. Even the newly-minted God seemed caught off guard by this turn of events and did nothing, allowing Dean to pull on the fly of His pants, dragging it down with a long ‘zzzzp’ that echoed through the library-silent room. The black slacks dropped to the floor, revealing pale blue silk boxers and legs that were far too tan for how little sun they saw. (None, that was.) Dean’s attention, though, was just beyond those boxers and far beyond the land of dignity. Sam and Bobby would never look at him the same way again, but at least they’d be alive.
He reached out and pulled down those boxers as smoothly as possible, doing his best not to jar Cas from the confused musing He seemed to be directing toward the elder Winchester. The stares coming from Sam and Bobby now turned into open-mouthed gaping, and Dean was too far down the rabbit hole now to really care; he just had to forge on, wrapping one hand around the base of Cas’ cock, which seemed to be getting the idea before He did, if its growing stiffness was any indication.
Dean looked up at Cas one more time, locking eyes with the blues that had a small spark of familiarity and recognition growing in their depths, and did what he had to do. His tongue darted out, licking a slow line up Cas’ growing erection before wrapping his lips around the whole shaft. That alone was enough to elicit a gasp from the usually stoic Lord; Dean felt His entire body tense up ever-so-slightly.
The hunter, fighting the urge to smile at his small victory, kept going, slowly moving his mouth up and down Cas’ cock, hand kept at the base so he wouldn’t overestimate his depth and choke. He took the God as deep into his throat as he could, holding himself there for a second before bobbing back up. Finally, Cas’ brain seemed to catch up with His body and a hand found its way to the back of Dean’s head, altering his tempo to fit His desire. Not that Dean didn’t know the rhythm, but he liked to know that Cas was actually getting involved in this; it meant that they were way more likely to survive.
Just barely, he could hear how ragged Cas’ breath had become, could almost feel His rapid heartbeat thudding through His body. He was getting closer, Dean could tell, and this was his cue to go faster, egging Cas toward His rising orgasm. A single, quiet moan escaped His lips as the hunter worked his hand in tandem with his mouth.
“Dean,” was all the Lord could whisper before His cock twitched and Dean suddenly lost all cohesive thought; his world had gone a blinding blue-white that blanked everything around him.
When the world finally came back into view, seconds or minutes or years later, he was laid out flat on the ground, staring up at the warehouse ceiling. He squinted for a second, trying to sort out what had happened, when Castiel came into his line of sight, pants back on and holding a hand out to Dean. The hunter stared at it for a second, hoping he hadn’t just doomed them all; the warm smile on Cas’ face, so unlike the cold, empty smile from just a little bit ago, compelled him to take the hand.
“Cas?” he asked tentatively, pulling himself up but eyes never leaving the other man. “You back with us, man?” Cas glanced down at Himself for a second before looking back up at Dean with the same smile on His face.
“Yes, I believe I am,” He replied. His eyes drifted from Dean, aimed at the ground again for a second as His smile fell. “I’m afraid I became a little power-mad, as you’d put it. I’m sorry for losing myself back there.” The Lord looked up at him through those long lashes and there was no way Dean could stay mad at Him.
“It’s okay, man. Happens to the best of us sometimes,” he said, patting Cas on the back. The God smiled again, slowly this time, and raised His eyes fully up to Dean’s. “Just one question, man: what was that at the end there? I mean, I know what it was, I’ve been around the block more than a few times, but that was, uh... That was different.” Cas tilted His head again, processing for a second before comprehension dawned on Him.
“You’re referring to my ejaculate?” He asked. Dean winced-even after all this time, Cas still hadn’t gotten the hang of not sounding like a sex ed book-but nodded anyway. The new Lord pursed his lips. “I’m sorry about that. If I had been more... in control of my faculties, I would have warned you, as per our past agreement.”
For Sam and Bobby, this seemed to be the proverbial straw, breaking them from their stunned silence. Bobby just sputtered, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands like he could erase what he’d just seen, while Sam’s reaction was a bit more... audible.
“Your past agreement?” he all but roared, eyes bulging out. Like Bobby, he sputtered for a moment, at a complete loss for words as he ran a hand through his shaggy hair and looked around wildly. “Your past fucking agreement? What the hell does that mean?”
Dean held out a placating hand, eyes still on Castiel. Before he could deal with the world-shattering explanations he’d have to give his brother, he wanted to know exactly what had happened when Cas came.
“Yeah, Cas, you should’ve warned me, but that’s not exactly the problem here,” he said, maintaining reason as best as he could while the two humans closest to him had increasingly intense mental breakdowns. “What was all that light and shit? That’s not normal, dude, you should know that much.” At this, Cas had the good grace to look abashed, a hand rubbing the back of His neck in a way that was distinctly Dean-ish, if anybody there had been together enough to notice.
“Yes, it wasn’t ordinary ejaculate,” He replied. “It was actually pure Grace, with no traces of human seed as usual. My elevated status and power has apparently affected my corporeal body.”
“Uh-huh,” Dean muttered, brow furrowed. “So wait, you shot me with a load of Grace? What’s the supposed to mean?”
“What the hell is going on here?” Sam thundered in the background, his confusion overriding the array of injuries he’d sustained. “Dean, since when do you...! And what the fuck was... And did you have to do it in front of us?” The elder Winchester finally turned his attention to his brother, if only for a second.
“Sam, could you hold on just one second? I’m trying to sort a few things out myself, if you don’t mind.” Bobby, though, took this moment to jump in.
“No, Dean, I agree with Sam,” he said, calmer than Sam but not by much. “What in the blazing hell was that? Since when did you trade to the other team?” Pinching the bridge of his nose, knowing he wasn’t going to escape this now, Dean turned to face his surrogate father.
“I just saved our lives, alright?” he reasoned. Bobby’s eyebrows just shot up, arms crossing over his chest, not for one minute letting Dean think he could get out of this that easily. “Alright, fine, you want the dirty details? That year that we were trying to stop the Apocalypse, Cas and I were screwing. We screwed all the goddamn time, like freaking rabbits.”
The whole room was silent for a moment; even Sam had quit muttering to himself for a second to process that information. Dean took a couple of calming breaths, while Cas smirked, just barely.
“Well, that don’t surprise anyone,” Bobby grumbled after a moment. Sam’s eyebrows shot up, as if he begged to differ, but he didn’t actually say anything. “So what kind of twisted logic makes you think that now, when we’re all about to die, is the best time to rekindle your damn romance?”
“It used to calm Cas down,” Dean replied with a shrug. “When shit got tough and he was all wound-up, I’d blow him and he’d chill out for a while. I figured if I was gonna die, it was worth a try.” He turned to Cas, who had been smirking this entire time. “Worked, didn’t it?”
“Oh, most definitely,” the Lord replied, eyes lighting up. He glanced to Bobby and Sam (who was still essentially frozen, brain unable to process everything), and bowed His head slightly to them. “I’m sorry for my earlier behavior. It had been a long, stressful year, and the influx of celestial power in my human form created an imbalance in my mental state. Power-mad, as I said earlier.”
“Uh-huh,” Bobby said, nodding slowly. “Appreciate the apology, and whatever you two idjits do in your free time is none of my damn business. I just don’t ever want to see it again, got it?” Cas and Dean both nodded; Sam continued to gawk. “Good. Now, Cas, I gotta know, you still God?”
“I believe so,” the Lord replied after a moment of thought. “I still have the power of Purgatory concentrated in my body, though I believe some of it may have been evacuated during the earlier oral sex.”
“So you did blow Grace?” Dean asked, turning back to Cas. “And what exactly happened to it after that?” Cas in turn raised an eyebrow.
“Where do you think it went, Dean?” Cas asked, a wry smile quirking the corners of His lips. It took the hunter a second, and then it clicked for him.
“In me? You shot me up with Grace? What the hell does that mean?” The Lord shrugged.
“I have no idea, Dean. This is entirely unprecedented. There is no telling what will happen.”
“Well, great,” Dean muttered. “Can’t wait to see what kind of shit this will add to our lives.” Bobby just snorted.
“You just blew God, kid,” the elder hunter replied. “Your life can’t get much weirder.” Dean just shrugged; the elder man had a good point. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going home to bleach my brain.” As the hunter turned to leave, Dean and Cas exchanged small grins, but Sam, suddenly thrust from his stupor, interrupted them again.
“You! Blew! God!” he boomed. “You blew God to save our lives! This is fucking unbelievable. Absolutely un-fucking-believable, Dean!” The older Winchester just rolled his eyes and approached his brother.
“Yeah, yeah, Sammy, I know, it’s nuts,” he replied half-heartedly, just playing along as he grabbed the taller man’s arm to lead him along. “Our lives really are weird, et cetera.” He glanced back to Cas as he lead his brother out of the building. “You wanna join us, or do you have new God things you have to go do?” The Lord considered it for a moment, then nodded.
“I’ll join you,” He replied, catching up with the Winchesters quickly. “Sam needs healed, and I would like to talk to you about this last year when we get a chance.” Dean nodded, not liking the prospect of talking about things any more than he ever did, but if anything was going to start going right for them at this, they needed to talk about something.
“Yeah, we can talk when we get back to Bobby’s,” he said, smiling as Cas wrapped an arm around Sam to help support the Sasquatch. Things were fucking weird, like always, but for the first time in a long time, things felt like they might actually get better.
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And get better they did.
Cas healed Sam as soon as they got back to the Impala, though the kid was still treading the edge of sanity as he processed the new developments in his life, never mind the fact that his whole mind had just recently been knitted back together.
The ride back to Bobby’s was fairly uneventful, as well as their first few days there. Cas disappeared on and off, attending to His new responsibilities as God and conferencing with the old God, who was apparently retiring to St. Croix, but He and Dean finally had that talk a few days after the confrontation and sorted out everything that had happened between them since the averted Apocalypse. Things between them were going increasingly well, especially since the world had finally calmed down and there were no major disasters to divert their attention. Cas was falling back into His old semi-human ways, despite being even further from human than He’d previously been; Dean, for the most part, finally had time to relax, even show his baby a little extra attention.
Sam had finally processed the whole thing, even though he was still pretty amazed that everyone but him had seen Dean and Cas’ relationship originally. He chalked it up to missing the biggest things about the people closest to you and congratulated the two. He even gave Cas the younger brother version of ‘break his heart, I’ll break your face,’ which was pretty astounding considering that Sam had once had so much reverence for God. It was just strange thinking of Cas as anything more than the usual guy in a trenchcoat they’d known for years now.
Bobby, for the most part, went back to regular life, though he did grumble occasionally about having the boys around a lot more now that the world was more in order. The less hunts they had, the more time they spent bothering him, not that he really minded. He kept their rooms ready all the time, just in case, and more often than not, they were already there.
A few weeks into their new, easier lives, the ramifications of the Grace Dean had received became apparent: with Heaven now lacking all its archangels, he had essentially been juiced up into one. It was freaking bizarre, manifesting all these powers that he couldn’t control, but if anything, they gave him one more reason to keep spending time with Cas. The Lord not only showed him how to properly use these new abilities and keep them under control, but often needed his assistance in shuffling Heaven and the world into its new order. Dean, for the most part, stayed the same as he had been before; every so often, he’d warp reality a little bit, but mostly to play pranks on Sam. Even great cosmic power wasn’t enough to change the essence that was Dean Winchester.
Sam himself found a new position of power in the world, even if he was still technically human: he became an advisor of sorts to Cas, along with Bobby. The two of them made sure Cas and Dean stayed grounded and provided the purely human rhetoric when it came to cosmic quandaries.
Castiel struggled with His infinite power at first, but within days it had become natural to Him, and He never relapsed back into His original power madness, due in great part to the influence of the Winchesters and Bobby in His life again. He did His best to bring peace to the world without going against free will; at the very least, He fixed many of the things that had been broken by the Celestial Civil War. Monster activity returned to pre-war levels, and demonic activity dropped to lows unseen since Dean had picked up Sam at Stanford seven years ago.
Which was to say, despite going against all the odds, facing every imaginable trial (and quite a few that had been previously unimaginable), and fighting the order of the cosmos, they’d finally won and found a little peace of their own.
And damn if they didn’t deserve it.