Fic: The Propensities of Good Men, 10/15
Oy vey, forgive the lateness. This week's been hell on a stick and I've been torn ten thousand different directions. Now excuse me, I'm off to sleep for ten days straight.
Title: The Propensities of Good Men, 10/15
Characters: Castiel, Dean, Sam
Pairing(s): Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 10,131
Disclaimer: Pffft, I wish.
Warnings: Impala!porn, language, Dean being a dick, lots of arguing, alcohol abuse, angst up the wazoo.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
~ ~ ~
The night passes without incident while Dean tries not to think of what Castiel said about the Legions storming their doorstep before sunset. He definitely doesn’t mention it to Sam. Come to think of it, he doesn’t mention anything to Sam, and Sam doesn’t mention anything to him either. Conversation is kept to a tight minimum while they wait out the night, and finally at ten past midnight, Sam drifts into sleep and Dean sneaks quietly from the room and starts driving. With no idea where he’s going or where he’s going to end up, and with a vague sense of this is a really fucking stupid idea digging at the back of his mind, he drives. Just fucking drives, because he doesn’t know what the fuck else to do and he’s going to chew his fingernails down to the bone if he sits still in that motel room any longer, so why not?
Laguna del Perro is hardly more than a puddle, which Dean attributes loosely to the fact that besides today, it hasn’t rained in Torrance County in almost two months. It’s not so much a lake as it is a failed watering hole, just a sunken place in the sand where the water collects and stagnates over the weeks. Salt flats stretch out all around, this weirdly level, ghost-white plane too open and vulnerable to be beautiful. He works his fingers on the steering wheel and rakes in a heavy breath before turning the keys in the ignition. The Impala gives a weak grumble and shudders to stillness. For a long time, Dean just sits. And stares. And waits.
He feels Castiel’s presence long before he ever sees him.
“I thought angels couldn’t lie,” he says quietly. “You said they’d be on our doorstep before sunset.”
“I was mistaken,” Castiel replies after a pause. Dean flinches, actually fucking flinches, at the familiar rasp of his voice; he closes his eyes instinctively and soaks up the sound. “I don’t know why they’ve fallen back. Rest assured we are still watching.”
Dean tents a hand over his lips and focuses on the random scatter of raindrops littering the windshield. “That your apology?”
A long pause passes before Castiel says, “If that’s how you want to think of it.”
The raindrops are becoming more frequent, Rorschach patterns jumping out at Dean everywhere he looks. He finds a pentagram in the upper right corner, something that looks like a dinosaur near the rearview mirror. He doesn’t clear them away, and he doesn’t say anything. It is quiet for a long time, a tense, strained absence of words. Castiel does not urge Dean to talk; he simply waits for the words to form of their own accord.
Finally, Dean squirms awkwardly and huffs out a breath. “I got a question for you, Cas.” He manages to glance over, but the instant his eyes swallow up the image of Castiel sitting so impassive and languid in the seat beside him, staring at him with guarded dark eyes and an unaffected frown, all calm and reposed and accepting, he wishes he hadn’t. It takes a moment for Dean to gather his words into any semblance of logical order. He’s here for a reason, goddammit, and it’s definitely not making things any easier having that sitting next to him. “So you used to be pretty cozy with Belial, huh?”
Castiel blinks several times and turns his face away to study the raindrops on the passenger window.
“We were close,” he says ambiguously. “We were what you might call friends.” He turns again, but only halfway. The lines of his profile are clean and pointed in the dark, the angle of his forehead a perfect geometric slope. Dean tries not to let himself trip up on the details.
And he wishes he could let it go, some stupid primal possessive thing slowly enveloping and taking over, but he just can’t. “But you were never - y’know?”
Castiel blinks, a line denting his forehead. Dean cycles a hand in the air, nodding suggestively.
“You guys were never a thing? I mean, he said - did you…? You said he tempted you.”
Castiel sighs, as if the conversation tests his patience. Couple of months ago Dean might have bitched about it, flipped some witty insult at him for being too holy for that thing called conversation, but by now he’s grown used to it, a quirk of Castiel’s personality. Or, well, what passed for his personality, if angels had such things. Just like the way he tilts his head or shoves his hands into his pockets, or his undying curiosity and, as far as Dean is concerned, unwarranted respect. “Both Belial and I were in our true forms when we knew each other last,” he says finally. “We are not corporeal beings, Dean. We are not capable of taking lovers unless we assume a human vessel.”
“So that was just him trying to get my goat? You were never -” He makes unenthusiastic air quotes. “Lovers?”
Castiel hesitates, his lips parting before the words come out. “Not in the way you would define it, but yes. We shared a bond deeper than friendship.”
“Huh.” Dean nods more times than necessary, suddenly feeling the oppression of awkwardness fill up the small space inside the car. He mumbles a detached, “That’s good,” which doesn’t even begin to cover the - well, the whatever the fuck it is he’s feeling at the confirmation, and falls silent.
It’s cold as a tomb, one of those unpredictable senseless desert nights of forty-something that follows a day of bleating ninety-eight degree heat. And it’s practically black out here, no streetlights or buildings for miles, but the moon hangs brightly overhead, glinting like a pure silver coin. And the stars would have been amazing, Dean thinks, but the downpour has blocked out all hope of seeing any. It’s raining harder now, a constant pealing drumbeat on the roof of the Impala. When Castiel speaks, Dean almost misses it entirely over the din.
“What’s really on your mind, Dean?”
Dean swallows awkwardly, bites at his lip. Then he just says it, brief pauses between his words as they are forced out against all his better judgment: “I don’t think you should come around anymore.”
Not exactly surprisingly, Castiel doesn’t react at all.
“There’s no way I could leave Sammy, you know that,” Dean continues. “And you still told me - that really hurt, y’know? Sammy comes first; Sammy’s always going to come first. I’m not like you, Cas, I’m not a friggin’ robot. I can’t just separate everything into neat little sections and shoot the bird to everything and everyone else for the greater good.” A moment of silent hesitation passes. It unnerves Dean, almost annoys him, how accepting and unresponsive Castiel is, as if he knew all this was coming anyway and it was only a matter of time. Dean barely catches himself before he reaches over and grips Castiel’s shoulders, shakes him until his fucking eyes roll into the back of his skull. Until some semblance of sense sinks into that frozen center of his and thaws it out. He’s jonesing to punch him, claw him, to slap him, something to make him flinch, make him angry, make him speak at all, because fuck, it’s unbearable just having him sit there and quietly accept this whole stupid attempt at rationality. Shit, Dean’s already having a hell of a time enough trying to convince himself this is the right course of action. Resistance from Castiel is just what he needs to make this ten times harder.
Dean squirms uncomfortably and drapes his wrist over the wheel. Scratches at his chin. “You saved my life, you brought me back, but you’re just so - different to me.”
Dean can feel his façade of anger fading. His tough-guy exterior, that rugged unbreakable sheath of insensitivity. And he almost thinks about ripping through it all and telling Castiel the truth, telling him that he’s only doing this and saying this because he’s scared to death and in well over his head. Scared of what, he’s not even sure, but it’s something he’s never quite felt before and it’s unsettling, fucking maddening, how much the only thing he wants to do is stamp out this ridiculous conversation and crush his mouth to Castiel’s, splay his hands out on every inch of that slick skin and feel the sticky resistance of the backseat’s leather against his back.
But Sam was right when he said he was in over his head with this one. Fucking Sam and his rationality, always being right. He was right when he said angels aren’t meant for this. Castiel’s not meant for this.
“It makes you uncomfortable that I’m not human,” Castiel says, low.
A line buries between Dean’s eyebrows as he abstractedly wonders if anyone else in the history of existence has ever had a conversation even remotely this strange, as off the radar and fucking bizarre as this one. Interspecies relations and all that, yeah, probably not a big problem with anybody else but him. Might you fucking know it.
“It’s not just that, Cas, that’s - I can deal with that no problem.” He blinks, and Castiel says nothing. Cannot friggin’ believe I’m actually saying this, Dean thinks with a misplaced smile and a nervous glance to his lap, because really he’s not even sure he’s ever admitted this to himself before, and yet here he is spilling his fucking guts to Castiel out in the middle of nowhere, in the car in a rainstorm with no idea where the fuck he is, only knowing that the highway’s west. It’s jarring, is what it is, knowing that he’s let down his guard so much. “You’re an angel, dude. I’m not - you shouldn’t be fuckin’ around with somebody like me. I’m about as far from holy as it gets. I am on the other side of the spectrum from morally pure.”
Castiel’s head raises as he breathes out a silent laugh. “You govern yourself far too strictly, Dean,” he says quietly. “Your soul is truly righteous.”
Dean shakes his head once, sharply, as his eyes close. “How the hell do I even explain this in terms you’ll get?” A heavy sigh, and thunder chases after a flash of lightning too high above the cloud canopy to see clearly. The sound is low and ominous, scarily primal and unrestrained. Dean raises his eyes slowly skyward. “I don’t want to taint you, okay?”
Dean swallows back a lump of nerves the size of a fucking softball, grip working on the sweat-sticky leather of the wheel. “My whole friggin’ life, everything in it. Everything I touch practically turns to dust, Cas, even my family. Especially my family. I mean, Mom and Dad? Killed by demons. And now Sammy, my own little brother who -…” He pauses, swallows. “Who I’d die for, Cas, I would take a bullet for that kid in a second if I had to. Even he’s been corrupted. He’s not supposed to, y’know? He’s supposed to be the good one, the clean one who goes to school, becomes senior partner and gets married and stays on the straight and narrow.”
“None of us are too far from evil, Dean.”
“Oh yeah?” Dean challenges. “You’re an angel, Cas. You’re about as far from evil as it gets, I’d say.”
Castiel’s eyes drift in from the horizon and he blinks, something fragile and raw and honest, understanding, showing in his face when he locks his gaze to Dean’s. “Lucifer is my brother,” he says simply.
And - oh.
Dean swallows, and remains uncharacteristically silent for a long time because, well, there’s really not a damn thing he can say to that.
The rain doesn’t let up. Dean watches it fall in silence for a while, small streams sliding along the windshield where before it was stray spots and dashes. By the time he’s accustomed to the absence of words, Castiel’s voice breaks through and Dean nearly jolts straight out of his skin in surprise.
“I know you want me to leave, Dean. And I can’t pretend to understand why,” Castiel says, his words careful and calculated and left open at the end. Dean shudders underneath them; he lets the silence draw out before finishing the sentence for him.
“But there’s a bigger picture.” A ragged, uncomfortable laugh huffs from Dean’s lips. “And you can’t exactly just swap another angel into your place, huh?”
“No.”
Dean waits for a long stretch of minutes before allowing his words to form. “Cas, you said it yourself. That some levels of devotion are… dangerous.” The second the words leave his mouth, he instantly feels too exposed, strangely shy, embarrassed.
Castiel draws in a heavy breath and stares at his lap.
Somehow, Dean manages to look at him without instantly turning away again, fuck if he knows how. And when he does, something foreign and painful happens in his chest, a sick feeling of compression. It makes him nervous, and his heart speeds up just slightly.
The angle of Castiel’s jaw sharpens subtly when he swallows. He blinks a few times, absently twists the interlocking net of his fingers. “We won’t let it happen again,” is the only thing he says, and it’s completely emotionless and it just about breaks Dean clean into a million different pieces.
He hesitates. Studies Castiel’s passive lack of expression.
And then he sighs, because this is ten different kinds of fucking ridiculous, and there’s no way this is going to work itself out and no way he’s going to give this up all because of some stupid fucking holy order or whatever. Fuck that. And he might have pulled a 180 and he might not be making any kind of sense here, but since when does has anything ever made sense in this fucked up slip-slide of a life of his? Since when has he ever been able to have something that’s completely his, to have it and keep it, to get something he likes and hold onto it, enjoy it while he can without fucking it up? And he was so sure he could do this, let this fizzle out gradually, nip it in the bud or whatever, he was driven and confident that this was the best and only thing he could do to save them both a hell of a lot of grief, but hearing it from Castiel’s mouth - hearing it confirmed and solidified - no. Just, no.
Dean smirks with one side as his head tips back against the headrest. “I don’t think I can do that.”
Castiel looks up quickly, a confused frown punctuating his features. Dean shrugs. “I don’t think I can. I guess I’m hooked.”
“Dean,” Castiel says, his tone halted as his head barely moves to shake. “It compromises things.”
“Like what?” And Dean is still smirking, fuck, full-on grinning now, because he knows Castiel isn’t going to say no, he knows he’s been freaking out for nothing and yeah, they’ve still got time, they can still take their time and figure this thing out. The both of them.
But then Castiel says, “Me.”
And Dean’s stomach ties itself into a fucking pretzel from hell.
Dean recoils immediately, as if burned. He stares at the steering wheel, bends his fingernails back until they ache with how hard he’s digging into his thigh, and he feels like he just swallowed a bag of sand and goddammit, he feels like a monumentally huge fucking dumbass right now.
“So this whole thing… I didn’t even have to bring it up. You were gonna stop it anyway.”
Castiel’s head falls against the headrest with a sigh. He says nothing, which to Dean says everything.
An awkward nod, then Dean sniffs sharply. “Good to know.”
“Dean.”
“That’s, uh. That’s pretty cold, man.”
“It was to be expected,” Castiel replies coolly.
“Right, ‘cause you can’t get too close to humans,” he spits. “I remember now.”
“It’s complicated. You would not understand,” Castiel answers, hushed, and he’s still watching Dean and Dean can feel the steady press of his eyes, and it’s driving him goddamn motherfucking buckets of batshit crazy.
“No, I do understand, Cas,” Dean snaps. “That’s the problem.”
There’s a bitter kind of curiosity spiking in Castiel’s expression as his lips part to speak, but don’t for several seconds. He stares hard at Dean in that certain pragmatic way that five minutes ago Dean would have bled himself dry to see. Now he’s practically tearing himself apart to not whip out a fist and knock it right against Castiel’s stupidly perfect mouth that never seems to bring him any fucking good news.
“Then why are you angry?” Castiel asks, a new edge of desperation to his tone.
Dean tenses his jaw tightly in frustration. A million different words tear through his head, but all he can come up with is, “I don’t know.” And it’s so fucking lame and ridiculous sounding that he wants to punch something. I don’t know.
Lightning streaks foggily through the stormclouds, illuminating the Impala in clean white light for a quick slicing moment. The rain casts translucent gray shadows across Castiel’s features when Dean allows himself to look, small amorphous shapes that bleed easily into the darkness once the flash passes.
A peculiar heat flares in his blood, staggering him as it slips through his fingers and around his knees and behind his eyes, all the odd corners of his body where he wouldn’t expect it to go, spinning into a warm electric coil at the base of his spine. He arches slightly away from the seat to make it go away, but it won’t. It’s nested there, a permanent fixture in his body every time he’s around Castiel, that magnetic pull that tells him to shut the fuck up and just splice himself wide open if Castiel wants him to. That weird intermingling of desire and trust and want and need, craving, faith, worth, security.
“You know how it was in Montana?” he risks after a spell. Finally, his grip on the wheel lessens as his fingers slip to fit into the bottom arch. “The last time I felt that safe, I was six years old being tucked into bed by my dad.” When an insincere smile attaches itself to his lips, suddenly there’s a warm pressure at his jaw and Castiel’s fingers are tipping under his chin, turning Dean’s head softly.
“You’re not the only one who suffers, Dean,” Castiel says, so quiet it’s nearly a whisper. “You need not suffer at all.” His hand drops from Dean’s jaw, withdrawing to rest idly in his lap, and really it’s stupid, it’s completely fucking insane how just a little touch like that could have Dean shaking like a goddamn leaf, could have him sputtering and hyperventilating and breaking out in a sweat in the curve of his back, but yeah. It does. He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, and then he keeps biting.
A vague kind of emotion plays on Castiel’s features, something Dean can’t put to words. Sadness, resignation, sympathy, affection. Whatever. But Castiel tries to smile, and it’s weak and sickly and so fucking alluring, before he finishes, “It pains me to see it.”
Dean gives up trying to stop it. Throws all his this is the right thing for both of us conviction straight out the fucking window when he spins and catches a palm against Castiel’s jaw and kisses him hard, pours all the rage and misery and devastation housed in his body into the simple motion. It takes the stretch of several heartbeats but then Castiel kisses back, hooks a hand in the bend of Dean’s elbow and sighs into his mouth. Dean inhales the breath as if it were his own.
When Castiel pulls back he blinks with wide eyes, tongues one corner of his lips in consideration. “You understand,” he begins, his voice low and drawn and surprisingly breathy, but still so commanding that it makes Dean’s hands tremble. “This is the last time this can happen. After this, past is past. Permanently.”
Dean nods through the icy twinge in his chest. “Yeah,” he says, though at this point he’d agree to just about anything if it meant getting those hands on him again. And besides, with how Castiel said it, the degree of certainty and control swimming through his words, Dean’s not sure he has a choice anyways.
Castiel doesn’t respond except by pulling Dean to him with surprising strength, fusing their lips in a dizzying heat. A small whimper fights out of Dean’s throat at the impact before he loses himself completely. There is a flurry of wingbeats and a cool breeze, a distinct absence of gravity that makes his stomach twirl. When he opens his eyes it takes a minute for his brain to catch up and recognize that yeah, he’s still in the Impala, but he’s in the back seat now, not behind the wheel, and Castiel is right beside him with the slickest smirk on his face. Dean draws his eyebrows up. “Well that’s subtle,” he says. Castiel’s smirk sneaks out into a full-blown smile.
Dean snickers as his fingers splay out on Castiel’s knee, slowly slide up. “So can you go-go-gadget stripper too? ‘Cause it’s a little awkward to get undressed in a car.”
“I don’t want to spoil you,” Castiel says, quiet, slipping out of his coats, and Dean laughs brightly, the sound of it loud and oppressive against the absolute quiet of the salt flats planing out all around them. He shakes his head and pops the clasp of his belt, kicks his shoes and socks off ungracefully.
“You never let me have any fun,” he teases.
His words are cut short when Castiel kisses him again though, crowding him back between the window and the door, knocking the back of his skull against the window with a thud, seat belt buckle digging painfully into his kidney but who the fuck cares. A pleasant surprise bubbles in the pit of his stomach when Castiel’s fingers slip under his shirt and he lifts it easily away. He pauses to watch Dean whip it off his wrist onto the floorboards before he’s snaking out of his own shirt. It flutters onto the floorboards somewhere and he cages Dean down, growls out, “Liar,” and Dean is completely fucking gone.
A breath catches in his throat when the coldness of the leather shocks against his back, but Castiel is over him and he is bleeding obscene amounts of pleasure into Dean’s veins with every kiss, so nothing matters anymore. Castiel moans into his mouth and Dean immediately moans back, lost somewhere between drunk and high and something else that’s exponentially better than both combined. Then there are warm strong fingers around his wrists and they’re above his head without a fight, and when Castiel drags his grip down Dean’s arms the movement is excruciatingly slow and meticulous. An impatient groan leaks out of his mouth and suddenly one of Castiel’s hands is on his cheek, the other one settling low on his stomach, and Dean’s eyes widen as he realizes he still can’t move his arms from above him.
His head does this thrilling dive as it limbos somewhere between panic and this isn’t exactly fair and a general oh holy fuck.
But it doesn’t take long to adjust to the feeling, and soon he almost decides that he likes it. The excitement of not being in control, that he is powerless in Castiel’s hands, that Castiel is not requesting he trust him but demanding it, infuses a new kick of desire in his blood. His pulse beats and rushes alarmingly fast when he feels his jeans slip away from his body.
“Dean.” When Castiel says it it’s so low and slippery and taunting, slipping over Dean like liquid, that he actually moans just from the sound of it. Which is frankly a little embarrassing, but he doesn’t have time to focus on that because Castiel says his name again, drawing his attention.
He gives a short hum, prying his eyes open to glance down just in time to see Castiel staring a hard line up at him, some shadow of a smirk angling his lips as he licks them. Then those same lips are descending on Dean’s cock, that perfect tongue curling and licking. A low groan stutters out of Dean’s mouth, his head tipping back with a punctuated, “Jesus fucking Christ, Cas,” fuck the blasphemy of it. Dean’s hips lift, but Castiel flattens a hand on his stomach and holds him still with a vague mmm of protest. Vaguely, Dean apologizes, but when he pants out a breath behind the words and looks down, Castiel is still looking at him, staring at him, piercing his eyes into Dean’s. He’s still working Dean’s cock with one hand, still sucking lightly in small teasing laps, and he is so the picture of quiet confidence and control that it makes Dean’s skin prickle down his arms, makes his head fall back and his voice turn over on itself in the back of his throat, because he’s pretty sure that - maybe besides Montana - he’s never been this turned on in his fucking life.
He doesn’t even know what the sound that comes out of his throat is, but he has to make some sort of noise or his lungs will explode, his entire chest will ignite into a fiery cavern that could melt all the metal in the fucking car and about ten miles around it too. Something about it surprises him for some reason, like Castiel shouldn’t know how to do this - better yet, he shouldn’t be so insanely good at it - still a little weird that an angel knows how to give such great head, but Castiel’s mouth is moving with just the right kind of friction, laving his tongue and swirling it around, moaning just a little so that the vibration makes Dean’s breath hitch in something inexplicable. The wet heat of Castiel’s mouth, the strength in his lips, pulls back, replaced by his hands as he palms Dean’s cock and strokes, slowly, those long thin fingers working expertly until Dean’s shaking in his skin for more.
But then the feeling is gone and Dean’s eyes snap open. He can move his arms again, he suddenly realizes, so he raises onto his elbows. Castiel’s hands splay on his stomach, crawling up to his chest and smoothing back down. Dean’s eyes flutter with the movement.
“Why’d you stop?” he asks through a ragged breath.
Castiel’s fingers stiffen, knead at Dean’s hipbones. It’s when he won’t really meet Dean’s eyes that Dean recognizes what it is, and it isn’t fascination that’s written into the smooth lines of his face, or desire, or anything else Dean would expect - it’s sadness.
Dean inhales slowly as he watches the movement of Castiel’s hands. A quick thought flowers in his head that he didn’t even think angels could feel this kind of emotion, especially this strongly, but the downward cast of Castiel’s gaze and the set of his lips and the slow crawl of his breathing tells Dean that he’s wrong. An angel’s heart can break. And it’s happening right in front of him, destroying Castiel slowly as he watches.
Behind a measured breath, Dean says, “So this is it.”
A finger swirls playfully around Dean’s belly button and Dean lightly tenses at the touch. Castiel doesn’t look up when he says, simply, “Yes.”
And Dean just nods, because he can’t think of any words that would work.
He pushes up from his elbows until he’s eye level with Castiel, stilted back against his palms that are sweating clammy against the seat’s leather. He pulls in a long breath, swallows thickly and he realizes that words don’t have a fucking prayer of working right now, so instead he just tries to smile and hooks his hands over Castiel’s shoulders. “Just don’t break the windows this time, ‘kay? You fuck with my car, I’m not forgiving you.”
Castiel laughs silently in that typical way that Dean has come to know so well, and doesn’t fight it when Dean pushes him down and crawls over his body. Dean laughs, shifts awkwardly, makes some offhand comment about back seats never working quite as well as they should, and then their mouths meet again and everything else just goes right the fuck away.
Dean’s lips stretch into a smile against Castiel’s throat before he lowers to map out his chest, his stomach, and throughout it all, Castiel remains absolutely silent save for barely elevated breaths.
The primitive growl of thunder that sneaks across the sky after a quick flicker of lightning spikes something deep inside him, trips some secret wire, and suddenly he’s gone impossibly hungry and impossibly dizzy with need, and it’s impossible to breathe or think or function. Dean’s skin breaks out in a bodywide sweat, and when he takes as much of Castiel’s cock into the back of his throat as he can, Castiel cries out something like Dean’s name and bends up in this spectacular kind of angle. And yeah, Dean’s pretty sure he’s not the only one insane with desire anymore.
Dean looks up long enough to see one of Castiel’s hands whip out blindly, brace against the front seat and grasp for something to hold onto. His hand replaces his mouth and he slithers up the line of Castiel’s body as he strokes, long languid pulls, dropping quick licks and kisses along his path, occasionally a bite when he grazes across a nipple or a particularly delicious streak of skin. And Castiel is squirming, bending his back away from the seat and thrusting into Dean’s fist, so Dean’s got a full-on grin as he traces the alluring lines of muscle in the angel’s neck before smothering his sighs in a furious kiss.
One heartbeat later he opens his eyes and Castiel is looking down at him, and it’s kind of fucking creepy when Castiel does that honestly, laying the whammy on him like that, but he likes the feel of leather at his back, and he likes how there’s something catlike in the cage of Castiel’s body over his, something like and powerful and dangerous, like a tightly-coiled spiral, so yeah, really, he doesn’t mind so much.
Things blur over when Castiel kisses him again, a long languorous twine of tongues and breath and teeth and heat. Dean shudders suddenly, stutters against the kiss, but Castiel won’t let him up and it’s kind of odd knowing that he’s got another man’s fingers pressing inside of him, but then again it feels pretty fucking good so he’s not one to complain. And besides, with Castiel kissing him like that, and Castiel rubbing their bodies together and teasing his other hand just lightly around Dean’s cock, he definitely has no right to complain about anything.
Some word tries to crack out of his throat when he pulls away from Castiel’s mouth, something like fuck or maybe Castiel’s name or maybe amazing, yes, god, but his voice shatters through a moan and he loses the capacity for actual words when he feels the insistent heat of Castiel sliding into him. His hand braces hard against the door overhead, the force shaking down his arm. Castiel whimpers and hooks a hand around Dean’s knee, pulling it higher, and it’s blinding and sweet and the air is thick and wet and it’s getting harder to breathe with each wrecked gasp Dean tries to rake in. It feels like drowning, and he loves it.
When Castiel’s chest flattens against his and he braces his other hand against the door over Dean’s head, and he’s biting at Dean’s throat and it’s breathy and slippery with sweat and oh fuck yes, Dean’s hand sweeps down fast, clamping with a hard smack against Castiel’s shoulder. Castiel moves faster in response, matching Dean gasp for gasp, and abstractedly Dean thinks he’d probably put money on it that together they could suck out every bit of air in this entire fucking desert right now.
Castiel’s forehead lowers against Dean’s chest, right in the center, he crooks an arm at the sharpest bend of Dean’s back and fucking growls. The new angle sets something off deep within Dean’s body and suddenly every nerve and fiber threatens to rip right out of his skin, and he cries out in frustration because he has to come, it can’t happen soon enough, his entire body wrenching and twisting and bowing with the anticipation. Then when he does it’s timeless, white-washing his vision in this milky, delusional grace, a blaze of fire and heat pumping out of every pore. He knows he calls out Castiel’s name and he knows it feels like he’s just had his fucking brain bleached out completely, pleasure crowding out everything else in some awesome kind of amnesia, but he doesn’t remember much else except a brilliant glow that’s probably lightning, right? Yeah, lightning, and a massive rush of what feels like wind, something soft and delicious and refreshing against his face, and he only realizes until after Castiel’s arm crushes around his waist and he makes a desperate keening sound in the back of his throat when he comes, that the brush felt faintly like feathers.
And - yeah.
It takes a minute or so for Dean to wrap his head around that, but when he finally does, the only thing he can do is sigh out Castiel’s name again, his throat all dry and husky, and clutch his arms tighter around his shoulders than he’s ever held anything before in his entire fucking life.
Castiel looks up when Dean threads his fingers through his hair. He’s utterly unreadable, with the soft mirror-like glint in his eyes that Dean swears almost looks like a glow coming from the inside, and the part of his lips and the hilarious kinks of his hair, the sharpness of his jaw and the understated lines of his collarbones beneath. Dean wants to say something, wants to conceive some brilliant remark to immortalize the moment, but he’s surprised when the only thing his brain offers is a long naked blank.
When Castiel turns and kisses the inner curve of Dean’s wrist he seems to drift away, to curl into himself with some hooded emotion that’s pulling him further and further away. And when Dean sees the sudden departure pass across his expression, the only words he can come up with as he pets a line down Castiel’s cheek are, “Come back.”
Not his usual post-coital quip, no complimenting drumbeat following, but it’s honest and it’s true and hey, it works.
The shake of Castiel’s head is lazy, the pull of his smile slow and vaguely uncertain as he pushes his lips into the center of Dean’s palm. “I’m not leaving, Dean.”
Dean tries to smile, but it’s hard when he knows that’s a lie.
A distant ache has housed itself in his back, burning into his muscles long after he resituates and pulls Castiel into the crook of his shoulder. Castiel seems fully drawn into concentration as he traces intricate swirls on a small area of Dean’s chest. Dean wonders if there is any meaning behind the patterns and lines, short strokes and long swirls and tentative dots, whether they are some kind of runes or angel-writing or hieroglyphs, sigils or whatever, but he doesn’t ask about it, and Castiel doesn’t offer any explanation.
“What’s this like for you?” he asks, because it’s quiet except the rain and Dean’s never been any good at maintaining a peaceful silence when there’s some monster crouched in the corner of his mind, huge and quivering and salivating for the moment it can jump out and tear him to fucking pieces from the inside out. So he throws that out there to change the subject, hopes Castiel will take the bait and run with it. Distraction technique? Maybe, but it works, because when Castiel answers, Dean isn’t thinking about moral whites and blacks anymore, or angels and their charges, or how exactly he ended up in this crazy tangled mess of a situation in the first place. Not that he doesn’t like it, because yeah, he really fucking likes it, but it’s not unlike the feeling of being pierced straight through the heart when he thinks about the disciplined look on Castiel’s face when he’d said permanently.
And goddammit, he’s thinking about it again. Dean scrubs a hand through his hair and sighs gruffly. A moment passes as Castiel hisses a quiet breath in through his teeth, and he just looks so focused and collected and fucking sexy, that all that sad shit Dean was thinking goes right out the fucking window.
“Salvation,” Castiel says finally.
A lazy grin hooks up one side of Dean’s lips as his eyes close, one arm angling up to rest behind his head, the other one still tight around the deceptively small arc of Castiel’s waist. “Fair enough,” he mutters; Castiel doesn’t elaborate, and Dean’s - yeah, Dean’s okay with that.
He falls asleep with Castiel at his side, the long slope of his thigh angled across Dean’s stomach, the skim of his fingers slight. With the downpour outside slackening, all slick and sticking to the seats, cracked leather creasing the skin of Dean’s back.
And when he wakes up, he wakes up alone.
~ ~ ~
Sam notices something is different about his brother the moment he gets back to the motel at 4:45 in the morning and he’s not loud and clumsy and stupidly drunk. He doesn’t say anything, or turn any lights on, or do anything but kick off his already-untied boots and crawl into bed without a word.
At Dean’s insistence, they leave New Mexico the next morning.
~ ~ ~
It’s been almost a week since Willard and they haven’t seen Castiel, and they haven’t heard or seen any demons, not one sign of Belial’s army building or moving, and Sam’s starting to get nervous. He’s already asked Dean to try calling Castiel, because the complete absence of omens has to mean something is going on, but his brother’s blatant refusal to do so severed any hopes he might have had. Once he even managed to ask, “Where is Cas?”, but Dean just drummed his fingers on the bar and gave an animated shrug as he threw back another Jaegerbomb.
“How the hell should I know?” he said tonelessly. Approximately seven minutes later he had a tall blonde on one arm and a redhead on the other, and he stumbled out of the bar without saying anything else to Sam for the rest of the night.
The next morning Sam comes back to the motel to find Dean passed out cold, flattened across the bed on his stomach with an awful chain of snores wrenching out of his open mouth, sheets tangled every which way and one foot jutting out into the open air. The empty whiskey bottle lying sideways on the nightstand next to a ripped-open condom packet, and the pungent stink of liquor and sex, tells Sam that Dean is probably going to be completely intolerable for the rest of the day. Also that he’s probably going to be doing most of the driving, which doesn’t sit particularly well with Sam, considering he’s sore from spending the night folded up in the passenger seat of the Impala, no pillow, no blankets, just the unforgiving creak of too-cold leather and metal gears knuckling through the worn padding. He’s spent dozens of nights in the Impala, more than he’s willing to admit in fact, but he usually at least has the advantage of a forewarning. Last night, though, Dean didn’t give him the luxury. So Sam hasn’t taken a shower, and he’s sore as a motherfucker, and he’s got a headache the size of a goddamn grizzly bear hibernating behind his eyes, and Dean? Dean is still passed out face-down in his sex coma, hung over as a fucking frat boy on his 21st and smeared with lipstick, and really it is just not shaping up to be a good day at all.
Sam shakes his head and tears the curtains open in one swift jerk, shocking the room in a spill of bright white sunlight that burns his eyes.
“Dean. Time to get up,” he calls flatly.
When his brother doesn’t react, he considers ripping the covers off of his body, but a quick glance to the TV tells him that any clothes Dean might have been wearing are now hanging loosely from the rabbit-ear antenna across the room. He drops onto his own bed with a sigh and heaves their weapons duffel onto his brother’s back. He throws as much panic into his voice as he can muster when he calls, “Dean, demons!”
A wide arcing snore breaks off suddenly and Dean pulls in a sharp breath as he twists up from the bed with an oblivious shock of confusion on his face and his buck knife in his hand.
Sam can’t help but laugh as he pulls a tangle of clothes out of his bag. Dean’s wild-eyed and sheet-creased, one side of his hair completely flat to his head while the other is a train wreck sticking up and out every which way. He’s got about a dozen hickeys littering his chest, and even one right above his hipbone, which Sam quickly looks away from with a grimace. “Had to get you up somehow.”
The jolt of the duffel against Sam’s chest is Dean’s only reply before crashing ungracefully back into the bed face first. He rakes a pillow to his chest twice as forcefully as necessary. When Sam throws the bag right back and it lands on Dean’s back with a dull thud, Dean growls out loud.
“Dean, it’s after eleven already. We gotta get to Bangor.”
When Dean gives an unintelligible grumble in reply, Sam snorts back a laugh.
“I don’t speak hangover, dude,” he says, and digs around in his backpack till he finds a half-empty box of Tic-Tacs stashed in the front pocket, perfect for the occasion. He rattles it noisily in the air and artfully dodges the pillow that Dean launches at his head.
“Stop it, bitch,” Dean barks into his remaining pillow.
“Get up, jerk, you’re on breakfast duty today.” Sam pulls to his feet. “Two minutes and I’m breaking out the frozen marbles.”
“You don’t have any frozen marbles,” Dean snaps, but Sam is already slipped past the bathroom door and slamming it loudly behind him.
~ ~ ~
They make an unscheduled stop in Indiana and when Sam asks why, Dean’s only response is, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
The bar is just outside Pickard, a ramshackle roadhouse snappily called Got Beer? that redefines the term dive bar. The minute they step inside, a petite Reese Witherspoon-lookalike shrieks and launches herself at Dean. Suddenly he’s all smiles and charm, even though the last time Sam can remember hearing a thank you or a please out of his brother’s mouth was roughly six days ago. As the night winds out and Dean gets louder and drunker, and his hands start to wander more and more over soft curves and under skimpy tank tops, Sam makes his excuses and artfully ducks out. Dean offers a round of shots to convince him to stay, but Sam reminds him - quiet, so that no one else hears - that he’s been the one paying for their rounds all night. He surreptitiously slips Dean a fifty from his wallet and says to enjoy the rest of the night.
He doesn’t mention how it makes him nervous that Dean seems only a shadow of his former self these days, or how it disturbs him how short Dean’s temper has gotten, or how it weirds him out every time Dean hands him the Impala keys and says to take the wheel while he climbs uncoordinatedly into the back for a nap. He doesn’t mention the drinking, which has gotten so bad there’s hardly been a night for the past two weeks that Dean has taken off his own shoes when he falls asleep above the covers, too drunk to remember to take them off.
And that’s only on the nights when he actually comes back to their room.
It annoys Sam, even scares him a little, but he bites his tongue about all of it when he sees the wide-splaying smear of Dean’s grin every time he knows he’s scored a chick for the night. He’d tip his head back and take a long pull of beer, and for the briefest instant his eyes would flash and he would wink at Sam from across the bar, and that’s how Sam knows he’ll be spending most of the night by himself. It’s slightly jarring that Dean seems to be on a tear even worse than the one after he made his deal, bacon cheeseburgers for breakfast and an ungodly amount of alcohol every night, not to mention fucking any reasonably attractive female that crossed their path. Still, some dark place in Sam’s brain tells him that he doesn’t mind the ridiculous amounts of sex Dean is having (even if it does mean too many nights camped out in the Impala, too many sore mornings and late starts waiting on Dean to drag himself out of bed in perfect Romero zombie fashion), because as long as Dean is fucking random women, at least he isn’t fucking Castiel. And Sam has to throw back an extra shot when he starts thinking like that, because that is not a mental image he wants kicking around in his head, thankyouverymuch.
He stays up surprisingly late, scanning the headlines and weather reports for anything that might be a demonic omen, but at half past three Dean comes bursting into the room with a drunk goth on his arm, all bright pink pigtails and fishnet hose and safety pins in her blue plaid miniskirt. Sam doesn’t hesitate before gathering his things and leaving, slicing a bitter glare over his shoulder as he pulls the door into a tight angle. The last thing he sees is the girl shaking out of her shirt and Dean toasting a whisky bottle to the electric purple Cheshire cat print on her spindly D-cup. When he hears the reckless peal of that laughter he knows so well and Dean saying c’mere babe, hears the girl squeal and things go quiet, Sam disappears from the vicinity quicker than vapor and checks out a separate room on the other side of the building.
~ ~ ~
The first night they’re in Bangor, Sam is not surprised when Dean spends half the time they’re supposed to be surveilling the streets for a werewolf asleep in the back seat.
At 2:40, he finally rouses and knocks a hand against Sam’s shoulder. “Shotgun,” he mumbles, and Sam obediently gives the driver’s seat over without argument. He likes it when Dean drives; it makes him feel a little more like things are back to normal.
Dean climbs clumsily into the front with a growling sigh, as if the effort of hurdling the center console just ripped out every ounce of energy in his body. “Anything?” he asks, and flips a flask from his jacket.
Sam watches with a small wince as he takes a long swig. “No,” he replies quietly. “We can go, if you wanna get some sleep in a real bed.”
“Nah,” Dean replies coolly. “I’m plenty rested now.”
He offers a boyish smile and something in Sam’s blood warms, but twenty minutes later Dean’s head is lolled backwards and small sluggish snores are straining from his throat. Sam doesn’t wake him up.
~ ~ ~
Things come to a head on their third night in Bangor, when Sam has to duck for his life not to get half his brains blown away by an errant blast from Dean’s pistol. He climbs to his feet slowly with wide eyes as the werewolf disappears smoothly around a corner and out of sight. He stares at his brother incredulously.
Dean curses under his breath, sloppily shoving his pistol into the back of his belt. He pulls a frown and tries to saunter past, but Sam braces a hand against his chest. He draws back and blinks, noting the gloss in Dean’s eyes, the slight air of liquor on his breath. “What the hell was that, Dean? What happened?”
“I’m fine,” is Dean’s only response.
He tries to walk away, but Sam grabs him stiffly around the arm, knowing those words never mean what they’re supposed to. “You just about put a silver bullet through my skull, Dean, that’s not fine.”
Dean jerks his arm free. “I said I’m fine, Sam, now come on. We gotta split before the pokey shows.”
“No,” Sam snaps quickly. He doesn’t grab Dean’s arm again, but moves to stand in front of him so he can’t squeeze past in the narrow hallway. Dean immediately glares up at him, obvious annoyance tinting his red-rimmed eyes. “I need to know what’s going on with you, man,” Sam says decisively. “You could get somebody killed - a civilian, me, yourself… You’re not sleeping enough, you’re screwing everything in your path - you’re going into a hunt drunk? It’s not like you. I’m worried about you, Dean, and I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong!”
Dean puffs his cheeks out in an exasperated sigh, glancing up to the ceiling as if the answers are written up there for him to read off a cue-card. “Sam, can the patronizing Jerry Springer shit, okay? We got work to do.”
“It’s Castiel, isn’t it?”
Dean shifts suddenly, uncomfortably, and narrows his eyes. “What makes you say that?”
Sam shrugs, eyes darting to the side briefly. “He hasn’t shown up in weeks, since Willard. What, did you get into a - a couples’ tiff or something? Break up that night you went out?”
Dean gives a bitter snark and shakes his head slowly, licks at his lips. Sam recognizes the signs. He’s testing Dean’s patience, and he’s almost at the end of his rope if his brother’s temper these days says anything. Still, he doesn’t relent.
“Come on, Dean, I’m not an idiot. It’s not like I didn’t know something was going on the first day we left New Mexico. I just figured you’d have enough respect for me to tell me what it was.” Sam fidgets nervously as his hands come up to angle on his hips.
Dean draws a long breath and rolls his eyes in an obvious show of aggravation. “No, Sam, we didn’t break up, because we’re not a damn couple. Get that through that big head of yours. Me and Cas were never a couple, okay?” He stares hard at Sam, looking him up and down once, before he lowers his voice a notch. “I don’t know where he is. And we didn’t talk about you, if that’s what you’re wiggin’ out about.”
Sam nods, relieved, and sighs deeply. But when Dean steps forward, he still keeps him blocked. “So?”
Dean blinks. “So what?”
“So what did you talk about?”
Instantly, Dean goes blank. He folds up, squares his shoulders and plants his weight and that astringent gloss descends over his eyes. “Just drop it, Sam,” he says, voice low and measured. He bumps Sam’s shoulder on the way past, and Sam grounds his jaw but doesn’t try to stop him.
They don’t speak again until they’re back at the motel and Sam asks, already knowing the answer, where Dean is going as he shrugs on his leather jacket. He clears his throat and jingles the keys, popping his collar warmly around his ears. “I’m going out,” he says without looking Sam in the eye, and Sam doesn’t offer anything in response except a barely noticeable concerned frown.
~ ~ ~
By the time they get into Michigan to settle a poltergeist in eastern Kalamazoo, Dean is completely useless. It’s the middle of the night when Sam gets back to the motel, all sweat and smoke and mud and blood, dirty from doing his job and ripping up five hundred square feet of floorboards for the sake of digging four feet down and burning Harold Wallace Jr.’s pain-in-the-ass bones. He’s tired, and he hasn’t slept in about thirty-four hours, and he’s worked this entire case by himself, and Dean is straight-up passed out sideways across his bed - across Sam’s bed - with a half-empty bottle of Ron Rico in his loose grip. For a long time Sam just hovers in the doorway, before he slams the door as loud as he can and tears the soiled shirt from his body with an exasperated growl.
“Dean.”
Predictably, Dean doesn’t respond.
Sam forces his bag roughly onto the bed, which seems to rouse his brother from coma. Dean sits up slowly, spinning in a semi-circle when he does. He regards the bottle in his hand with utter confusion for several seconds, then raises it to take a swig.
Before he can, though, Sam swipes the bottle clean out of his hand and across the room. It shatters against the wall with a splintering crack.
“Stop,” he bites, and Dean’s eyes grow wide.
“Whoa, Sammy, the hell?” he asks, his words all slurred and uneven. They don’t match, like a spoken ransom note built of uncollected letters and sounds.
“I am sick of this. I’m not going to do it anymore.”
Dean blinks and sighs heavily when he glances over at the destroyed rum bottle across the room. His shoulders slump dramatically as he blinks, unsynchronized, up at Sam. “That’s alcohol abuse,” he says, quirking a grin, but Sam doesn’t acknowledge the comment.
“You either clean yourself up, or you’re on your own.”
“Sammyyyyy,” Dean croons playfully. He raises a hand to place it against his brother’s arm, but Sam swats it roughly away.
“Cut it out, Dean! I’m not going to drag you around like a piece of dysfunctional luggage anymore! You’re not even hunting! Do you even know why we’re in Kalamazoo?”
A long pause passes - Dean bracing a hand on his knee and pouting his lips out while he thinks, Sam trying not to go apeshit and slap the living shit out of him. For the briefest moment Sam allows himself a glimmer of hope - maybe Dean does know why they’re here, and maybe he’s about to apologize for acting like such an ass. Maybe they’re actually about to have that discussion they should have had a month ago, where Dean explains exactly what went down out in the desert, where Castiel is, what’s going on with Belial, and maybe, just maybe, why Dean’s built up a wall around himself Sam’s only ever seen go so high around the time he first made his deal.
But instead Dean just clears his throat quietly and squeezes the bridge of his nose. He drops his hand like dead weight into his lap, grimaces, and guesses, “Abominable Snowman?”
A sudden, loud groan of frustration rips out of Sam’s throat before he can stop it. He storms out because he knows this is going to come to blows if he stays within striking distance of his douchebag brother another minute, roughly slamming the bathroom door behind him. He comes back, though, only long enough to grab his bag and say, “We are going to Bobby’s, and you are gonna dry yourself out.” He raises a pointed finger, wagging it stiffly in Dean’s direction. “And I swear to God, if you don’t get a grip…”
He lets the furious narrow of his eyes, the shake of his head, finish his sentence for him. This time when he leaves, he slams the bathroom door shut behind him so hard that the painting to the right of Dean’s bed shudders and falls off the wall with an dull thud.
~ ~ ~
A dark band of trees lines the lake, stooping near the water so it is impossible to tell where water begins and earth ends. There are fireflies, small bright streaks through the air, and cattails dipping and bending with the breeze, quick white flashes of the underside of ducks’ wings as they shake and preen meticulously on the far shore. Bass fill the water below the pier where Sam sits, vague flashes of rainbow fins and gills puncturing the surface in random unpredictable intervals.
Dean has been napping in the back seat of the Impala for the past half hour, leaving Sam alone with the great nothingness that was some nameless backwoods lake in southwest Minnesota. He kicks his feet lazily off the pier and stretches back with a mighty yawn. Thinks about peeling away his shirt and kicking off his jeans and burying himself beneath the warm lake water for a while, let it soak into his skin and lap away all the crazy shit knotting up in his muscles.
He swills a flat, room-temperature beer as he remembers the lake out behind Pastor Jim’s hideaway cabin, the sway of the reeds and the grime of the algae, sticky red summers spent picking bugs out of his hair and sharing bags of candy with Dean, watermelon Jolly Ranchers clicking against their teeth. It takes everything he’s got to keep him from diving straight off the pier and kicking down to the silt at the bottom, dig through it until maybe he’ll be able to find something of who his brother was back then. The one who would read him ghost stories by flashlight under a fort of blankets. Roast marshmallows and hot dogs together on the same stick, despite Dad’s insistence that he had it all wrong. Have cannonball contests to see who could make the bigger splash (Sam’s winning streak started the summer he turned seven and never ended. As far as he’s concerned, he’s still the reigning champion.)
Hard to believe that same goofy, Dumbo-eared brother was the same one who slept not twenty yards away, passed out in a sleep like death since he’d forgone sleep for a fun set of twins last night. Hard to believe the Dean who caught fireflies in cheesecloth-topped jars and used them as nightlights in their cramped excuse for a guestroom was the same Dean who’d been to Hell and back, who’d had more than all the weight of this world the next thrown onto his shoulders and yet still somehow managed to cast a shadow Sam could only hope to fit into someday.
Crickets are singing in a multi-level chorus with cicadas and whippoorwills and what Sam thinks he identifies as the unsettling caw of vultures, banshee-reminiscent calls shrieking across the stretch of black road coiled through the forest like a serpent. It’s all very relaxing and appealing in its own rural way, but over that there is the thick, uncomfortable film of dismay. A quick glance back at the Impala makes him wonder how long it’s been since she’s had a tune-up, and he feels a distinct sting of sadness in the center of his chest at the thought. Dean hasn’t even been doing that lately. He’s barely even paid attention to his baby over the past few weeks, practically just used her as a convenient ride, treated her like a car instead of a religion like he’s supposed to. The realization pulls a sun-squinted frown onto Sam’s face.
He unfolds his body slowly and stands straight, and as he stares up to the blank dull lavender slate of dusk, sighs long and low. And he doesn’t know why he does it, but he figures - what could it hurt? Then shrugs and clears his throat, because the words don’t seem to want to come out of his mouth of their own accord.
“Cas?” he starts, and yeah, okay, he might feel just slightly ridiculous saying this out loud after all. Knowing his luck, Dean would saunter up behind him any second now, dude what the hell? lilting out of his lips with a too-charming smirk. But he glances back at the Impala and Dean hasn’t moved, so he turns to the lake again and continues. “If you’re out there - please, give me something, man. I really need your help here.” And after a spell, quieter, “Dean really needs your help.”
He purses his lips and breathes in slowly. No whoosh of wind, no crackle of electricity or soft thrum of wingbeats follows. Just a silent forest, treetops swaying rhythmically in a breeze Sam barely feels.
He turns and makes his way back to the car, chucking his half-empty beer bottle into a particularly thick clump of weeds crouched near the shoreline.
~ ~ ~
{to be continued...}
ONTO PART ELEVEN
Title: The Propensities of Good Men, 10/15
Characters: Castiel, Dean, Sam
Pairing(s): Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 10,131
Disclaimer: Pffft, I wish.
Warnings: Impala!porn, language, Dean being a dick, lots of arguing, alcohol abuse, angst up the wazoo.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
~ ~ ~
The night passes without incident while Dean tries not to think of what Castiel said about the Legions storming their doorstep before sunset. He definitely doesn’t mention it to Sam. Come to think of it, he doesn’t mention anything to Sam, and Sam doesn’t mention anything to him either. Conversation is kept to a tight minimum while they wait out the night, and finally at ten past midnight, Sam drifts into sleep and Dean sneaks quietly from the room and starts driving. With no idea where he’s going or where he’s going to end up, and with a vague sense of this is a really fucking stupid idea digging at the back of his mind, he drives. Just fucking drives, because he doesn’t know what the fuck else to do and he’s going to chew his fingernails down to the bone if he sits still in that motel room any longer, so why not?
Laguna del Perro is hardly more than a puddle, which Dean attributes loosely to the fact that besides today, it hasn’t rained in Torrance County in almost two months. It’s not so much a lake as it is a failed watering hole, just a sunken place in the sand where the water collects and stagnates over the weeks. Salt flats stretch out all around, this weirdly level, ghost-white plane too open and vulnerable to be beautiful. He works his fingers on the steering wheel and rakes in a heavy breath before turning the keys in the ignition. The Impala gives a weak grumble and shudders to stillness. For a long time, Dean just sits. And stares. And waits.
He feels Castiel’s presence long before he ever sees him.
“I thought angels couldn’t lie,” he says quietly. “You said they’d be on our doorstep before sunset.”
“I was mistaken,” Castiel replies after a pause. Dean flinches, actually fucking flinches, at the familiar rasp of his voice; he closes his eyes instinctively and soaks up the sound. “I don’t know why they’ve fallen back. Rest assured we are still watching.”
Dean tents a hand over his lips and focuses on the random scatter of raindrops littering the windshield. “That your apology?”
A long pause passes before Castiel says, “If that’s how you want to think of it.”
The raindrops are becoming more frequent, Rorschach patterns jumping out at Dean everywhere he looks. He finds a pentagram in the upper right corner, something that looks like a dinosaur near the rearview mirror. He doesn’t clear them away, and he doesn’t say anything. It is quiet for a long time, a tense, strained absence of words. Castiel does not urge Dean to talk; he simply waits for the words to form of their own accord.
Finally, Dean squirms awkwardly and huffs out a breath. “I got a question for you, Cas.” He manages to glance over, but the instant his eyes swallow up the image of Castiel sitting so impassive and languid in the seat beside him, staring at him with guarded dark eyes and an unaffected frown, all calm and reposed and accepting, he wishes he hadn’t. It takes a moment for Dean to gather his words into any semblance of logical order. He’s here for a reason, goddammit, and it’s definitely not making things any easier having that sitting next to him. “So you used to be pretty cozy with Belial, huh?”
Castiel blinks several times and turns his face away to study the raindrops on the passenger window.
“We were close,” he says ambiguously. “We were what you might call friends.” He turns again, but only halfway. The lines of his profile are clean and pointed in the dark, the angle of his forehead a perfect geometric slope. Dean tries not to let himself trip up on the details.
And he wishes he could let it go, some stupid primal possessive thing slowly enveloping and taking over, but he just can’t. “But you were never - y’know?”
Castiel blinks, a line denting his forehead. Dean cycles a hand in the air, nodding suggestively.
“You guys were never a thing? I mean, he said - did you…? You said he tempted you.”
Castiel sighs, as if the conversation tests his patience. Couple of months ago Dean might have bitched about it, flipped some witty insult at him for being too holy for that thing called conversation, but by now he’s grown used to it, a quirk of Castiel’s personality. Or, well, what passed for his personality, if angels had such things. Just like the way he tilts his head or shoves his hands into his pockets, or his undying curiosity and, as far as Dean is concerned, unwarranted respect. “Both Belial and I were in our true forms when we knew each other last,” he says finally. “We are not corporeal beings, Dean. We are not capable of taking lovers unless we assume a human vessel.”
“So that was just him trying to get my goat? You were never -” He makes unenthusiastic air quotes. “Lovers?”
Castiel hesitates, his lips parting before the words come out. “Not in the way you would define it, but yes. We shared a bond deeper than friendship.”
“Huh.” Dean nods more times than necessary, suddenly feeling the oppression of awkwardness fill up the small space inside the car. He mumbles a detached, “That’s good,” which doesn’t even begin to cover the - well, the whatever the fuck it is he’s feeling at the confirmation, and falls silent.
It’s cold as a tomb, one of those unpredictable senseless desert nights of forty-something that follows a day of bleating ninety-eight degree heat. And it’s practically black out here, no streetlights or buildings for miles, but the moon hangs brightly overhead, glinting like a pure silver coin. And the stars would have been amazing, Dean thinks, but the downpour has blocked out all hope of seeing any. It’s raining harder now, a constant pealing drumbeat on the roof of the Impala. When Castiel speaks, Dean almost misses it entirely over the din.
“What’s really on your mind, Dean?”
Dean swallows awkwardly, bites at his lip. Then he just says it, brief pauses between his words as they are forced out against all his better judgment: “I don’t think you should come around anymore.”
Not exactly surprisingly, Castiel doesn’t react at all.
“There’s no way I could leave Sammy, you know that,” Dean continues. “And you still told me - that really hurt, y’know? Sammy comes first; Sammy’s always going to come first. I’m not like you, Cas, I’m not a friggin’ robot. I can’t just separate everything into neat little sections and shoot the bird to everything and everyone else for the greater good.” A moment of silent hesitation passes. It unnerves Dean, almost annoys him, how accepting and unresponsive Castiel is, as if he knew all this was coming anyway and it was only a matter of time. Dean barely catches himself before he reaches over and grips Castiel’s shoulders, shakes him until his fucking eyes roll into the back of his skull. Until some semblance of sense sinks into that frozen center of his and thaws it out. He’s jonesing to punch him, claw him, to slap him, something to make him flinch, make him angry, make him speak at all, because fuck, it’s unbearable just having him sit there and quietly accept this whole stupid attempt at rationality. Shit, Dean’s already having a hell of a time enough trying to convince himself this is the right course of action. Resistance from Castiel is just what he needs to make this ten times harder.
Dean squirms uncomfortably and drapes his wrist over the wheel. Scratches at his chin. “You saved my life, you brought me back, but you’re just so - different to me.”
Dean can feel his façade of anger fading. His tough-guy exterior, that rugged unbreakable sheath of insensitivity. And he almost thinks about ripping through it all and telling Castiel the truth, telling him that he’s only doing this and saying this because he’s scared to death and in well over his head. Scared of what, he’s not even sure, but it’s something he’s never quite felt before and it’s unsettling, fucking maddening, how much the only thing he wants to do is stamp out this ridiculous conversation and crush his mouth to Castiel’s, splay his hands out on every inch of that slick skin and feel the sticky resistance of the backseat’s leather against his back.
But Sam was right when he said he was in over his head with this one. Fucking Sam and his rationality, always being right. He was right when he said angels aren’t meant for this. Castiel’s not meant for this.
“It makes you uncomfortable that I’m not human,” Castiel says, low.
A line buries between Dean’s eyebrows as he abstractedly wonders if anyone else in the history of existence has ever had a conversation even remotely this strange, as off the radar and fucking bizarre as this one. Interspecies relations and all that, yeah, probably not a big problem with anybody else but him. Might you fucking know it.
“It’s not just that, Cas, that’s - I can deal with that no problem.” He blinks, and Castiel says nothing. Cannot friggin’ believe I’m actually saying this, Dean thinks with a misplaced smile and a nervous glance to his lap, because really he’s not even sure he’s ever admitted this to himself before, and yet here he is spilling his fucking guts to Castiel out in the middle of nowhere, in the car in a rainstorm with no idea where the fuck he is, only knowing that the highway’s west. It’s jarring, is what it is, knowing that he’s let down his guard so much. “You’re an angel, dude. I’m not - you shouldn’t be fuckin’ around with somebody like me. I’m about as far from holy as it gets. I am on the other side of the spectrum from morally pure.”
Castiel’s head raises as he breathes out a silent laugh. “You govern yourself far too strictly, Dean,” he says quietly. “Your soul is truly righteous.”
Dean shakes his head once, sharply, as his eyes close. “How the hell do I even explain this in terms you’ll get?” A heavy sigh, and thunder chases after a flash of lightning too high above the cloud canopy to see clearly. The sound is low and ominous, scarily primal and unrestrained. Dean raises his eyes slowly skyward. “I don’t want to taint you, okay?”
Dean swallows back a lump of nerves the size of a fucking softball, grip working on the sweat-sticky leather of the wheel. “My whole friggin’ life, everything in it. Everything I touch practically turns to dust, Cas, even my family. Especially my family. I mean, Mom and Dad? Killed by demons. And now Sammy, my own little brother who -…” He pauses, swallows. “Who I’d die for, Cas, I would take a bullet for that kid in a second if I had to. Even he’s been corrupted. He’s not supposed to, y’know? He’s supposed to be the good one, the clean one who goes to school, becomes senior partner and gets married and stays on the straight and narrow.”
“None of us are too far from evil, Dean.”
“Oh yeah?” Dean challenges. “You’re an angel, Cas. You’re about as far from evil as it gets, I’d say.”
Castiel’s eyes drift in from the horizon and he blinks, something fragile and raw and honest, understanding, showing in his face when he locks his gaze to Dean’s. “Lucifer is my brother,” he says simply.
And - oh.
Dean swallows, and remains uncharacteristically silent for a long time because, well, there’s really not a damn thing he can say to that.
The rain doesn’t let up. Dean watches it fall in silence for a while, small streams sliding along the windshield where before it was stray spots and dashes. By the time he’s accustomed to the absence of words, Castiel’s voice breaks through and Dean nearly jolts straight out of his skin in surprise.
“I know you want me to leave, Dean. And I can’t pretend to understand why,” Castiel says, his words careful and calculated and left open at the end. Dean shudders underneath them; he lets the silence draw out before finishing the sentence for him.
“But there’s a bigger picture.” A ragged, uncomfortable laugh huffs from Dean’s lips. “And you can’t exactly just swap another angel into your place, huh?”
“No.”
Dean waits for a long stretch of minutes before allowing his words to form. “Cas, you said it yourself. That some levels of devotion are… dangerous.” The second the words leave his mouth, he instantly feels too exposed, strangely shy, embarrassed.
Castiel draws in a heavy breath and stares at his lap.
Somehow, Dean manages to look at him without instantly turning away again, fuck if he knows how. And when he does, something foreign and painful happens in his chest, a sick feeling of compression. It makes him nervous, and his heart speeds up just slightly.
The angle of Castiel’s jaw sharpens subtly when he swallows. He blinks a few times, absently twists the interlocking net of his fingers. “We won’t let it happen again,” is the only thing he says, and it’s completely emotionless and it just about breaks Dean clean into a million different pieces.
He hesitates. Studies Castiel’s passive lack of expression.
And then he sighs, because this is ten different kinds of fucking ridiculous, and there’s no way this is going to work itself out and no way he’s going to give this up all because of some stupid fucking holy order or whatever. Fuck that. And he might have pulled a 180 and he might not be making any kind of sense here, but since when does has anything ever made sense in this fucked up slip-slide of a life of his? Since when has he ever been able to have something that’s completely his, to have it and keep it, to get something he likes and hold onto it, enjoy it while he can without fucking it up? And he was so sure he could do this, let this fizzle out gradually, nip it in the bud or whatever, he was driven and confident that this was the best and only thing he could do to save them both a hell of a lot of grief, but hearing it from Castiel’s mouth - hearing it confirmed and solidified - no. Just, no.
Dean smirks with one side as his head tips back against the headrest. “I don’t think I can do that.”
Castiel looks up quickly, a confused frown punctuating his features. Dean shrugs. “I don’t think I can. I guess I’m hooked.”
“Dean,” Castiel says, his tone halted as his head barely moves to shake. “It compromises things.”
“Like what?” And Dean is still smirking, fuck, full-on grinning now, because he knows Castiel isn’t going to say no, he knows he’s been freaking out for nothing and yeah, they’ve still got time, they can still take their time and figure this thing out. The both of them.
But then Castiel says, “Me.”
And Dean’s stomach ties itself into a fucking pretzel from hell.
Dean recoils immediately, as if burned. He stares at the steering wheel, bends his fingernails back until they ache with how hard he’s digging into his thigh, and he feels like he just swallowed a bag of sand and goddammit, he feels like a monumentally huge fucking dumbass right now.
“So this whole thing… I didn’t even have to bring it up. You were gonna stop it anyway.”
Castiel’s head falls against the headrest with a sigh. He says nothing, which to Dean says everything.
An awkward nod, then Dean sniffs sharply. “Good to know.”
“Dean.”
“That’s, uh. That’s pretty cold, man.”
“It was to be expected,” Castiel replies coolly.
“Right, ‘cause you can’t get too close to humans,” he spits. “I remember now.”
“It’s complicated. You would not understand,” Castiel answers, hushed, and he’s still watching Dean and Dean can feel the steady press of his eyes, and it’s driving him goddamn motherfucking buckets of batshit crazy.
“No, I do understand, Cas,” Dean snaps. “That’s the problem.”
There’s a bitter kind of curiosity spiking in Castiel’s expression as his lips part to speak, but don’t for several seconds. He stares hard at Dean in that certain pragmatic way that five minutes ago Dean would have bled himself dry to see. Now he’s practically tearing himself apart to not whip out a fist and knock it right against Castiel’s stupidly perfect mouth that never seems to bring him any fucking good news.
“Then why are you angry?” Castiel asks, a new edge of desperation to his tone.
Dean tenses his jaw tightly in frustration. A million different words tear through his head, but all he can come up with is, “I don’t know.” And it’s so fucking lame and ridiculous sounding that he wants to punch something. I don’t know.
Lightning streaks foggily through the stormclouds, illuminating the Impala in clean white light for a quick slicing moment. The rain casts translucent gray shadows across Castiel’s features when Dean allows himself to look, small amorphous shapes that bleed easily into the darkness once the flash passes.
A peculiar heat flares in his blood, staggering him as it slips through his fingers and around his knees and behind his eyes, all the odd corners of his body where he wouldn’t expect it to go, spinning into a warm electric coil at the base of his spine. He arches slightly away from the seat to make it go away, but it won’t. It’s nested there, a permanent fixture in his body every time he’s around Castiel, that magnetic pull that tells him to shut the fuck up and just splice himself wide open if Castiel wants him to. That weird intermingling of desire and trust and want and need, craving, faith, worth, security.
“You know how it was in Montana?” he risks after a spell. Finally, his grip on the wheel lessens as his fingers slip to fit into the bottom arch. “The last time I felt that safe, I was six years old being tucked into bed by my dad.” When an insincere smile attaches itself to his lips, suddenly there’s a warm pressure at his jaw and Castiel’s fingers are tipping under his chin, turning Dean’s head softly.
“You’re not the only one who suffers, Dean,” Castiel says, so quiet it’s nearly a whisper. “You need not suffer at all.” His hand drops from Dean’s jaw, withdrawing to rest idly in his lap, and really it’s stupid, it’s completely fucking insane how just a little touch like that could have Dean shaking like a goddamn leaf, could have him sputtering and hyperventilating and breaking out in a sweat in the curve of his back, but yeah. It does. He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, and then he keeps biting.
A vague kind of emotion plays on Castiel’s features, something Dean can’t put to words. Sadness, resignation, sympathy, affection. Whatever. But Castiel tries to smile, and it’s weak and sickly and so fucking alluring, before he finishes, “It pains me to see it.”
Dean gives up trying to stop it. Throws all his this is the right thing for both of us conviction straight out the fucking window when he spins and catches a palm against Castiel’s jaw and kisses him hard, pours all the rage and misery and devastation housed in his body into the simple motion. It takes the stretch of several heartbeats but then Castiel kisses back, hooks a hand in the bend of Dean’s elbow and sighs into his mouth. Dean inhales the breath as if it were his own.
When Castiel pulls back he blinks with wide eyes, tongues one corner of his lips in consideration. “You understand,” he begins, his voice low and drawn and surprisingly breathy, but still so commanding that it makes Dean’s hands tremble. “This is the last time this can happen. After this, past is past. Permanently.”
Dean nods through the icy twinge in his chest. “Yeah,” he says, though at this point he’d agree to just about anything if it meant getting those hands on him again. And besides, with how Castiel said it, the degree of certainty and control swimming through his words, Dean’s not sure he has a choice anyways.
Castiel doesn’t respond except by pulling Dean to him with surprising strength, fusing their lips in a dizzying heat. A small whimper fights out of Dean’s throat at the impact before he loses himself completely. There is a flurry of wingbeats and a cool breeze, a distinct absence of gravity that makes his stomach twirl. When he opens his eyes it takes a minute for his brain to catch up and recognize that yeah, he’s still in the Impala, but he’s in the back seat now, not behind the wheel, and Castiel is right beside him with the slickest smirk on his face. Dean draws his eyebrows up. “Well that’s subtle,” he says. Castiel’s smirk sneaks out into a full-blown smile.
Dean snickers as his fingers splay out on Castiel’s knee, slowly slide up. “So can you go-go-gadget stripper too? ‘Cause it’s a little awkward to get undressed in a car.”
“I don’t want to spoil you,” Castiel says, quiet, slipping out of his coats, and Dean laughs brightly, the sound of it loud and oppressive against the absolute quiet of the salt flats planing out all around them. He shakes his head and pops the clasp of his belt, kicks his shoes and socks off ungracefully.
“You never let me have any fun,” he teases.
His words are cut short when Castiel kisses him again though, crowding him back between the window and the door, knocking the back of his skull against the window with a thud, seat belt buckle digging painfully into his kidney but who the fuck cares. A pleasant surprise bubbles in the pit of his stomach when Castiel’s fingers slip under his shirt and he lifts it easily away. He pauses to watch Dean whip it off his wrist onto the floorboards before he’s snaking out of his own shirt. It flutters onto the floorboards somewhere and he cages Dean down, growls out, “Liar,” and Dean is completely fucking gone.
A breath catches in his throat when the coldness of the leather shocks against his back, but Castiel is over him and he is bleeding obscene amounts of pleasure into Dean’s veins with every kiss, so nothing matters anymore. Castiel moans into his mouth and Dean immediately moans back, lost somewhere between drunk and high and something else that’s exponentially better than both combined. Then there are warm strong fingers around his wrists and they’re above his head without a fight, and when Castiel drags his grip down Dean’s arms the movement is excruciatingly slow and meticulous. An impatient groan leaks out of his mouth and suddenly one of Castiel’s hands is on his cheek, the other one settling low on his stomach, and Dean’s eyes widen as he realizes he still can’t move his arms from above him.
His head does this thrilling dive as it limbos somewhere between panic and this isn’t exactly fair and a general oh holy fuck.
But it doesn’t take long to adjust to the feeling, and soon he almost decides that he likes it. The excitement of not being in control, that he is powerless in Castiel’s hands, that Castiel is not requesting he trust him but demanding it, infuses a new kick of desire in his blood. His pulse beats and rushes alarmingly fast when he feels his jeans slip away from his body.
“Dean.” When Castiel says it it’s so low and slippery and taunting, slipping over Dean like liquid, that he actually moans just from the sound of it. Which is frankly a little embarrassing, but he doesn’t have time to focus on that because Castiel says his name again, drawing his attention.
He gives a short hum, prying his eyes open to glance down just in time to see Castiel staring a hard line up at him, some shadow of a smirk angling his lips as he licks them. Then those same lips are descending on Dean’s cock, that perfect tongue curling and licking. A low groan stutters out of Dean’s mouth, his head tipping back with a punctuated, “Jesus fucking Christ, Cas,” fuck the blasphemy of it. Dean’s hips lift, but Castiel flattens a hand on his stomach and holds him still with a vague mmm of protest. Vaguely, Dean apologizes, but when he pants out a breath behind the words and looks down, Castiel is still looking at him, staring at him, piercing his eyes into Dean’s. He’s still working Dean’s cock with one hand, still sucking lightly in small teasing laps, and he is so the picture of quiet confidence and control that it makes Dean’s skin prickle down his arms, makes his head fall back and his voice turn over on itself in the back of his throat, because he’s pretty sure that - maybe besides Montana - he’s never been this turned on in his fucking life.
He doesn’t even know what the sound that comes out of his throat is, but he has to make some sort of noise or his lungs will explode, his entire chest will ignite into a fiery cavern that could melt all the metal in the fucking car and about ten miles around it too. Something about it surprises him for some reason, like Castiel shouldn’t know how to do this - better yet, he shouldn’t be so insanely good at it - still a little weird that an angel knows how to give such great head, but Castiel’s mouth is moving with just the right kind of friction, laving his tongue and swirling it around, moaning just a little so that the vibration makes Dean’s breath hitch in something inexplicable. The wet heat of Castiel’s mouth, the strength in his lips, pulls back, replaced by his hands as he palms Dean’s cock and strokes, slowly, those long thin fingers working expertly until Dean’s shaking in his skin for more.
But then the feeling is gone and Dean’s eyes snap open. He can move his arms again, he suddenly realizes, so he raises onto his elbows. Castiel’s hands splay on his stomach, crawling up to his chest and smoothing back down. Dean’s eyes flutter with the movement.
“Why’d you stop?” he asks through a ragged breath.
Castiel’s fingers stiffen, knead at Dean’s hipbones. It’s when he won’t really meet Dean’s eyes that Dean recognizes what it is, and it isn’t fascination that’s written into the smooth lines of his face, or desire, or anything else Dean would expect - it’s sadness.
Dean inhales slowly as he watches the movement of Castiel’s hands. A quick thought flowers in his head that he didn’t even think angels could feel this kind of emotion, especially this strongly, but the downward cast of Castiel’s gaze and the set of his lips and the slow crawl of his breathing tells Dean that he’s wrong. An angel’s heart can break. And it’s happening right in front of him, destroying Castiel slowly as he watches.
Behind a measured breath, Dean says, “So this is it.”
A finger swirls playfully around Dean’s belly button and Dean lightly tenses at the touch. Castiel doesn’t look up when he says, simply, “Yes.”
And Dean just nods, because he can’t think of any words that would work.
He pushes up from his elbows until he’s eye level with Castiel, stilted back against his palms that are sweating clammy against the seat’s leather. He pulls in a long breath, swallows thickly and he realizes that words don’t have a fucking prayer of working right now, so instead he just tries to smile and hooks his hands over Castiel’s shoulders. “Just don’t break the windows this time, ‘kay? You fuck with my car, I’m not forgiving you.”
Castiel laughs silently in that typical way that Dean has come to know so well, and doesn’t fight it when Dean pushes him down and crawls over his body. Dean laughs, shifts awkwardly, makes some offhand comment about back seats never working quite as well as they should, and then their mouths meet again and everything else just goes right the fuck away.
Dean’s lips stretch into a smile against Castiel’s throat before he lowers to map out his chest, his stomach, and throughout it all, Castiel remains absolutely silent save for barely elevated breaths.
The primitive growl of thunder that sneaks across the sky after a quick flicker of lightning spikes something deep inside him, trips some secret wire, and suddenly he’s gone impossibly hungry and impossibly dizzy with need, and it’s impossible to breathe or think or function. Dean’s skin breaks out in a bodywide sweat, and when he takes as much of Castiel’s cock into the back of his throat as he can, Castiel cries out something like Dean’s name and bends up in this spectacular kind of angle. And yeah, Dean’s pretty sure he’s not the only one insane with desire anymore.
Dean looks up long enough to see one of Castiel’s hands whip out blindly, brace against the front seat and grasp for something to hold onto. His hand replaces his mouth and he slithers up the line of Castiel’s body as he strokes, long languid pulls, dropping quick licks and kisses along his path, occasionally a bite when he grazes across a nipple or a particularly delicious streak of skin. And Castiel is squirming, bending his back away from the seat and thrusting into Dean’s fist, so Dean’s got a full-on grin as he traces the alluring lines of muscle in the angel’s neck before smothering his sighs in a furious kiss.
One heartbeat later he opens his eyes and Castiel is looking down at him, and it’s kind of fucking creepy when Castiel does that honestly, laying the whammy on him like that, but he likes the feel of leather at his back, and he likes how there’s something catlike in the cage of Castiel’s body over his, something like and powerful and dangerous, like a tightly-coiled spiral, so yeah, really, he doesn’t mind so much.
Things blur over when Castiel kisses him again, a long languorous twine of tongues and breath and teeth and heat. Dean shudders suddenly, stutters against the kiss, but Castiel won’t let him up and it’s kind of odd knowing that he’s got another man’s fingers pressing inside of him, but then again it feels pretty fucking good so he’s not one to complain. And besides, with Castiel kissing him like that, and Castiel rubbing their bodies together and teasing his other hand just lightly around Dean’s cock, he definitely has no right to complain about anything.
Some word tries to crack out of his throat when he pulls away from Castiel’s mouth, something like fuck or maybe Castiel’s name or maybe amazing, yes, god, but his voice shatters through a moan and he loses the capacity for actual words when he feels the insistent heat of Castiel sliding into him. His hand braces hard against the door overhead, the force shaking down his arm. Castiel whimpers and hooks a hand around Dean’s knee, pulling it higher, and it’s blinding and sweet and the air is thick and wet and it’s getting harder to breathe with each wrecked gasp Dean tries to rake in. It feels like drowning, and he loves it.
When Castiel’s chest flattens against his and he braces his other hand against the door over Dean’s head, and he’s biting at Dean’s throat and it’s breathy and slippery with sweat and oh fuck yes, Dean’s hand sweeps down fast, clamping with a hard smack against Castiel’s shoulder. Castiel moves faster in response, matching Dean gasp for gasp, and abstractedly Dean thinks he’d probably put money on it that together they could suck out every bit of air in this entire fucking desert right now.
Castiel’s forehead lowers against Dean’s chest, right in the center, he crooks an arm at the sharpest bend of Dean’s back and fucking growls. The new angle sets something off deep within Dean’s body and suddenly every nerve and fiber threatens to rip right out of his skin, and he cries out in frustration because he has to come, it can’t happen soon enough, his entire body wrenching and twisting and bowing with the anticipation. Then when he does it’s timeless, white-washing his vision in this milky, delusional grace, a blaze of fire and heat pumping out of every pore. He knows he calls out Castiel’s name and he knows it feels like he’s just had his fucking brain bleached out completely, pleasure crowding out everything else in some awesome kind of amnesia, but he doesn’t remember much else except a brilliant glow that’s probably lightning, right? Yeah, lightning, and a massive rush of what feels like wind, something soft and delicious and refreshing against his face, and he only realizes until after Castiel’s arm crushes around his waist and he makes a desperate keening sound in the back of his throat when he comes, that the brush felt faintly like feathers.
And - yeah.
It takes a minute or so for Dean to wrap his head around that, but when he finally does, the only thing he can do is sigh out Castiel’s name again, his throat all dry and husky, and clutch his arms tighter around his shoulders than he’s ever held anything before in his entire fucking life.
Castiel looks up when Dean threads his fingers through his hair. He’s utterly unreadable, with the soft mirror-like glint in his eyes that Dean swears almost looks like a glow coming from the inside, and the part of his lips and the hilarious kinks of his hair, the sharpness of his jaw and the understated lines of his collarbones beneath. Dean wants to say something, wants to conceive some brilliant remark to immortalize the moment, but he’s surprised when the only thing his brain offers is a long naked blank.
When Castiel turns and kisses the inner curve of Dean’s wrist he seems to drift away, to curl into himself with some hooded emotion that’s pulling him further and further away. And when Dean sees the sudden departure pass across his expression, the only words he can come up with as he pets a line down Castiel’s cheek are, “Come back.”
Not his usual post-coital quip, no complimenting drumbeat following, but it’s honest and it’s true and hey, it works.
The shake of Castiel’s head is lazy, the pull of his smile slow and vaguely uncertain as he pushes his lips into the center of Dean’s palm. “I’m not leaving, Dean.”
Dean tries to smile, but it’s hard when he knows that’s a lie.
A distant ache has housed itself in his back, burning into his muscles long after he resituates and pulls Castiel into the crook of his shoulder. Castiel seems fully drawn into concentration as he traces intricate swirls on a small area of Dean’s chest. Dean wonders if there is any meaning behind the patterns and lines, short strokes and long swirls and tentative dots, whether they are some kind of runes or angel-writing or hieroglyphs, sigils or whatever, but he doesn’t ask about it, and Castiel doesn’t offer any explanation.
“What’s this like for you?” he asks, because it’s quiet except the rain and Dean’s never been any good at maintaining a peaceful silence when there’s some monster crouched in the corner of his mind, huge and quivering and salivating for the moment it can jump out and tear him to fucking pieces from the inside out. So he throws that out there to change the subject, hopes Castiel will take the bait and run with it. Distraction technique? Maybe, but it works, because when Castiel answers, Dean isn’t thinking about moral whites and blacks anymore, or angels and their charges, or how exactly he ended up in this crazy tangled mess of a situation in the first place. Not that he doesn’t like it, because yeah, he really fucking likes it, but it’s not unlike the feeling of being pierced straight through the heart when he thinks about the disciplined look on Castiel’s face when he’d said permanently.
And goddammit, he’s thinking about it again. Dean scrubs a hand through his hair and sighs gruffly. A moment passes as Castiel hisses a quiet breath in through his teeth, and he just looks so focused and collected and fucking sexy, that all that sad shit Dean was thinking goes right out the fucking window.
“Salvation,” Castiel says finally.
A lazy grin hooks up one side of Dean’s lips as his eyes close, one arm angling up to rest behind his head, the other one still tight around the deceptively small arc of Castiel’s waist. “Fair enough,” he mutters; Castiel doesn’t elaborate, and Dean’s - yeah, Dean’s okay with that.
He falls asleep with Castiel at his side, the long slope of his thigh angled across Dean’s stomach, the skim of his fingers slight. With the downpour outside slackening, all slick and sticking to the seats, cracked leather creasing the skin of Dean’s back.
And when he wakes up, he wakes up alone.
~ ~ ~
Sam notices something is different about his brother the moment he gets back to the motel at 4:45 in the morning and he’s not loud and clumsy and stupidly drunk. He doesn’t say anything, or turn any lights on, or do anything but kick off his already-untied boots and crawl into bed without a word.
At Dean’s insistence, they leave New Mexico the next morning.
~ ~ ~
It’s been almost a week since Willard and they haven’t seen Castiel, and they haven’t heard or seen any demons, not one sign of Belial’s army building or moving, and Sam’s starting to get nervous. He’s already asked Dean to try calling Castiel, because the complete absence of omens has to mean something is going on, but his brother’s blatant refusal to do so severed any hopes he might have had. Once he even managed to ask, “Where is Cas?”, but Dean just drummed his fingers on the bar and gave an animated shrug as he threw back another Jaegerbomb.
“How the hell should I know?” he said tonelessly. Approximately seven minutes later he had a tall blonde on one arm and a redhead on the other, and he stumbled out of the bar without saying anything else to Sam for the rest of the night.
The next morning Sam comes back to the motel to find Dean passed out cold, flattened across the bed on his stomach with an awful chain of snores wrenching out of his open mouth, sheets tangled every which way and one foot jutting out into the open air. The empty whiskey bottle lying sideways on the nightstand next to a ripped-open condom packet, and the pungent stink of liquor and sex, tells Sam that Dean is probably going to be completely intolerable for the rest of the day. Also that he’s probably going to be doing most of the driving, which doesn’t sit particularly well with Sam, considering he’s sore from spending the night folded up in the passenger seat of the Impala, no pillow, no blankets, just the unforgiving creak of too-cold leather and metal gears knuckling through the worn padding. He’s spent dozens of nights in the Impala, more than he’s willing to admit in fact, but he usually at least has the advantage of a forewarning. Last night, though, Dean didn’t give him the luxury. So Sam hasn’t taken a shower, and he’s sore as a motherfucker, and he’s got a headache the size of a goddamn grizzly bear hibernating behind his eyes, and Dean? Dean is still passed out face-down in his sex coma, hung over as a fucking frat boy on his 21st and smeared with lipstick, and really it is just not shaping up to be a good day at all.
Sam shakes his head and tears the curtains open in one swift jerk, shocking the room in a spill of bright white sunlight that burns his eyes.
“Dean. Time to get up,” he calls flatly.
When his brother doesn’t react, he considers ripping the covers off of his body, but a quick glance to the TV tells him that any clothes Dean might have been wearing are now hanging loosely from the rabbit-ear antenna across the room. He drops onto his own bed with a sigh and heaves their weapons duffel onto his brother’s back. He throws as much panic into his voice as he can muster when he calls, “Dean, demons!”
A wide arcing snore breaks off suddenly and Dean pulls in a sharp breath as he twists up from the bed with an oblivious shock of confusion on his face and his buck knife in his hand.
Sam can’t help but laugh as he pulls a tangle of clothes out of his bag. Dean’s wild-eyed and sheet-creased, one side of his hair completely flat to his head while the other is a train wreck sticking up and out every which way. He’s got about a dozen hickeys littering his chest, and even one right above his hipbone, which Sam quickly looks away from with a grimace. “Had to get you up somehow.”
The jolt of the duffel against Sam’s chest is Dean’s only reply before crashing ungracefully back into the bed face first. He rakes a pillow to his chest twice as forcefully as necessary. When Sam throws the bag right back and it lands on Dean’s back with a dull thud, Dean growls out loud.
“Dean, it’s after eleven already. We gotta get to Bangor.”
When Dean gives an unintelligible grumble in reply, Sam snorts back a laugh.
“I don’t speak hangover, dude,” he says, and digs around in his backpack till he finds a half-empty box of Tic-Tacs stashed in the front pocket, perfect for the occasion. He rattles it noisily in the air and artfully dodges the pillow that Dean launches at his head.
“Stop it, bitch,” Dean barks into his remaining pillow.
“Get up, jerk, you’re on breakfast duty today.” Sam pulls to his feet. “Two minutes and I’m breaking out the frozen marbles.”
“You don’t have any frozen marbles,” Dean snaps, but Sam is already slipped past the bathroom door and slamming it loudly behind him.
~ ~ ~
They make an unscheduled stop in Indiana and when Sam asks why, Dean’s only response is, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
The bar is just outside Pickard, a ramshackle roadhouse snappily called Got Beer? that redefines the term dive bar. The minute they step inside, a petite Reese Witherspoon-lookalike shrieks and launches herself at Dean. Suddenly he’s all smiles and charm, even though the last time Sam can remember hearing a thank you or a please out of his brother’s mouth was roughly six days ago. As the night winds out and Dean gets louder and drunker, and his hands start to wander more and more over soft curves and under skimpy tank tops, Sam makes his excuses and artfully ducks out. Dean offers a round of shots to convince him to stay, but Sam reminds him - quiet, so that no one else hears - that he’s been the one paying for their rounds all night. He surreptitiously slips Dean a fifty from his wallet and says to enjoy the rest of the night.
He doesn’t mention how it makes him nervous that Dean seems only a shadow of his former self these days, or how it disturbs him how short Dean’s temper has gotten, or how it weirds him out every time Dean hands him the Impala keys and says to take the wheel while he climbs uncoordinatedly into the back for a nap. He doesn’t mention the drinking, which has gotten so bad there’s hardly been a night for the past two weeks that Dean has taken off his own shoes when he falls asleep above the covers, too drunk to remember to take them off.
And that’s only on the nights when he actually comes back to their room.
It annoys Sam, even scares him a little, but he bites his tongue about all of it when he sees the wide-splaying smear of Dean’s grin every time he knows he’s scored a chick for the night. He’d tip his head back and take a long pull of beer, and for the briefest instant his eyes would flash and he would wink at Sam from across the bar, and that’s how Sam knows he’ll be spending most of the night by himself. It’s slightly jarring that Dean seems to be on a tear even worse than the one after he made his deal, bacon cheeseburgers for breakfast and an ungodly amount of alcohol every night, not to mention fucking any reasonably attractive female that crossed their path. Still, some dark place in Sam’s brain tells him that he doesn’t mind the ridiculous amounts of sex Dean is having (even if it does mean too many nights camped out in the Impala, too many sore mornings and late starts waiting on Dean to drag himself out of bed in perfect Romero zombie fashion), because as long as Dean is fucking random women, at least he isn’t fucking Castiel. And Sam has to throw back an extra shot when he starts thinking like that, because that is not a mental image he wants kicking around in his head, thankyouverymuch.
He stays up surprisingly late, scanning the headlines and weather reports for anything that might be a demonic omen, but at half past three Dean comes bursting into the room with a drunk goth on his arm, all bright pink pigtails and fishnet hose and safety pins in her blue plaid miniskirt. Sam doesn’t hesitate before gathering his things and leaving, slicing a bitter glare over his shoulder as he pulls the door into a tight angle. The last thing he sees is the girl shaking out of her shirt and Dean toasting a whisky bottle to the electric purple Cheshire cat print on her spindly D-cup. When he hears the reckless peal of that laughter he knows so well and Dean saying c’mere babe, hears the girl squeal and things go quiet, Sam disappears from the vicinity quicker than vapor and checks out a separate room on the other side of the building.
~ ~ ~
The first night they’re in Bangor, Sam is not surprised when Dean spends half the time they’re supposed to be surveilling the streets for a werewolf asleep in the back seat.
At 2:40, he finally rouses and knocks a hand against Sam’s shoulder. “Shotgun,” he mumbles, and Sam obediently gives the driver’s seat over without argument. He likes it when Dean drives; it makes him feel a little more like things are back to normal.
Dean climbs clumsily into the front with a growling sigh, as if the effort of hurdling the center console just ripped out every ounce of energy in his body. “Anything?” he asks, and flips a flask from his jacket.
Sam watches with a small wince as he takes a long swig. “No,” he replies quietly. “We can go, if you wanna get some sleep in a real bed.”
“Nah,” Dean replies coolly. “I’m plenty rested now.”
He offers a boyish smile and something in Sam’s blood warms, but twenty minutes later Dean’s head is lolled backwards and small sluggish snores are straining from his throat. Sam doesn’t wake him up.
~ ~ ~
Things come to a head on their third night in Bangor, when Sam has to duck for his life not to get half his brains blown away by an errant blast from Dean’s pistol. He climbs to his feet slowly with wide eyes as the werewolf disappears smoothly around a corner and out of sight. He stares at his brother incredulously.
Dean curses under his breath, sloppily shoving his pistol into the back of his belt. He pulls a frown and tries to saunter past, but Sam braces a hand against his chest. He draws back and blinks, noting the gloss in Dean’s eyes, the slight air of liquor on his breath. “What the hell was that, Dean? What happened?”
“I’m fine,” is Dean’s only response.
He tries to walk away, but Sam grabs him stiffly around the arm, knowing those words never mean what they’re supposed to. “You just about put a silver bullet through my skull, Dean, that’s not fine.”
Dean jerks his arm free. “I said I’m fine, Sam, now come on. We gotta split before the pokey shows.”
“No,” Sam snaps quickly. He doesn’t grab Dean’s arm again, but moves to stand in front of him so he can’t squeeze past in the narrow hallway. Dean immediately glares up at him, obvious annoyance tinting his red-rimmed eyes. “I need to know what’s going on with you, man,” Sam says decisively. “You could get somebody killed - a civilian, me, yourself… You’re not sleeping enough, you’re screwing everything in your path - you’re going into a hunt drunk? It’s not like you. I’m worried about you, Dean, and I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong!”
Dean puffs his cheeks out in an exasperated sigh, glancing up to the ceiling as if the answers are written up there for him to read off a cue-card. “Sam, can the patronizing Jerry Springer shit, okay? We got work to do.”
“It’s Castiel, isn’t it?”
Dean shifts suddenly, uncomfortably, and narrows his eyes. “What makes you say that?”
Sam shrugs, eyes darting to the side briefly. “He hasn’t shown up in weeks, since Willard. What, did you get into a - a couples’ tiff or something? Break up that night you went out?”
Dean gives a bitter snark and shakes his head slowly, licks at his lips. Sam recognizes the signs. He’s testing Dean’s patience, and he’s almost at the end of his rope if his brother’s temper these days says anything. Still, he doesn’t relent.
“Come on, Dean, I’m not an idiot. It’s not like I didn’t know something was going on the first day we left New Mexico. I just figured you’d have enough respect for me to tell me what it was.” Sam fidgets nervously as his hands come up to angle on his hips.
Dean draws a long breath and rolls his eyes in an obvious show of aggravation. “No, Sam, we didn’t break up, because we’re not a damn couple. Get that through that big head of yours. Me and Cas were never a couple, okay?” He stares hard at Sam, looking him up and down once, before he lowers his voice a notch. “I don’t know where he is. And we didn’t talk about you, if that’s what you’re wiggin’ out about.”
Sam nods, relieved, and sighs deeply. But when Dean steps forward, he still keeps him blocked. “So?”
Dean blinks. “So what?”
“So what did you talk about?”
Instantly, Dean goes blank. He folds up, squares his shoulders and plants his weight and that astringent gloss descends over his eyes. “Just drop it, Sam,” he says, voice low and measured. He bumps Sam’s shoulder on the way past, and Sam grounds his jaw but doesn’t try to stop him.
They don’t speak again until they’re back at the motel and Sam asks, already knowing the answer, where Dean is going as he shrugs on his leather jacket. He clears his throat and jingles the keys, popping his collar warmly around his ears. “I’m going out,” he says without looking Sam in the eye, and Sam doesn’t offer anything in response except a barely noticeable concerned frown.
~ ~ ~
By the time they get into Michigan to settle a poltergeist in eastern Kalamazoo, Dean is completely useless. It’s the middle of the night when Sam gets back to the motel, all sweat and smoke and mud and blood, dirty from doing his job and ripping up five hundred square feet of floorboards for the sake of digging four feet down and burning Harold Wallace Jr.’s pain-in-the-ass bones. He’s tired, and he hasn’t slept in about thirty-four hours, and he’s worked this entire case by himself, and Dean is straight-up passed out sideways across his bed - across Sam’s bed - with a half-empty bottle of Ron Rico in his loose grip. For a long time Sam just hovers in the doorway, before he slams the door as loud as he can and tears the soiled shirt from his body with an exasperated growl.
“Dean.”
Predictably, Dean doesn’t respond.
Sam forces his bag roughly onto the bed, which seems to rouse his brother from coma. Dean sits up slowly, spinning in a semi-circle when he does. He regards the bottle in his hand with utter confusion for several seconds, then raises it to take a swig.
Before he can, though, Sam swipes the bottle clean out of his hand and across the room. It shatters against the wall with a splintering crack.
“Stop,” he bites, and Dean’s eyes grow wide.
“Whoa, Sammy, the hell?” he asks, his words all slurred and uneven. They don’t match, like a spoken ransom note built of uncollected letters and sounds.
“I am sick of this. I’m not going to do it anymore.”
Dean blinks and sighs heavily when he glances over at the destroyed rum bottle across the room. His shoulders slump dramatically as he blinks, unsynchronized, up at Sam. “That’s alcohol abuse,” he says, quirking a grin, but Sam doesn’t acknowledge the comment.
“You either clean yourself up, or you’re on your own.”
“Sammyyyyy,” Dean croons playfully. He raises a hand to place it against his brother’s arm, but Sam swats it roughly away.
“Cut it out, Dean! I’m not going to drag you around like a piece of dysfunctional luggage anymore! You’re not even hunting! Do you even know why we’re in Kalamazoo?”
A long pause passes - Dean bracing a hand on his knee and pouting his lips out while he thinks, Sam trying not to go apeshit and slap the living shit out of him. For the briefest moment Sam allows himself a glimmer of hope - maybe Dean does know why they’re here, and maybe he’s about to apologize for acting like such an ass. Maybe they’re actually about to have that discussion they should have had a month ago, where Dean explains exactly what went down out in the desert, where Castiel is, what’s going on with Belial, and maybe, just maybe, why Dean’s built up a wall around himself Sam’s only ever seen go so high around the time he first made his deal.
But instead Dean just clears his throat quietly and squeezes the bridge of his nose. He drops his hand like dead weight into his lap, grimaces, and guesses, “Abominable Snowman?”
A sudden, loud groan of frustration rips out of Sam’s throat before he can stop it. He storms out because he knows this is going to come to blows if he stays within striking distance of his douchebag brother another minute, roughly slamming the bathroom door behind him. He comes back, though, only long enough to grab his bag and say, “We are going to Bobby’s, and you are gonna dry yourself out.” He raises a pointed finger, wagging it stiffly in Dean’s direction. “And I swear to God, if you don’t get a grip…”
He lets the furious narrow of his eyes, the shake of his head, finish his sentence for him. This time when he leaves, he slams the bathroom door shut behind him so hard that the painting to the right of Dean’s bed shudders and falls off the wall with an dull thud.
~ ~ ~
A dark band of trees lines the lake, stooping near the water so it is impossible to tell where water begins and earth ends. There are fireflies, small bright streaks through the air, and cattails dipping and bending with the breeze, quick white flashes of the underside of ducks’ wings as they shake and preen meticulously on the far shore. Bass fill the water below the pier where Sam sits, vague flashes of rainbow fins and gills puncturing the surface in random unpredictable intervals.
Dean has been napping in the back seat of the Impala for the past half hour, leaving Sam alone with the great nothingness that was some nameless backwoods lake in southwest Minnesota. He kicks his feet lazily off the pier and stretches back with a mighty yawn. Thinks about peeling away his shirt and kicking off his jeans and burying himself beneath the warm lake water for a while, let it soak into his skin and lap away all the crazy shit knotting up in his muscles.
He swills a flat, room-temperature beer as he remembers the lake out behind Pastor Jim’s hideaway cabin, the sway of the reeds and the grime of the algae, sticky red summers spent picking bugs out of his hair and sharing bags of candy with Dean, watermelon Jolly Ranchers clicking against their teeth. It takes everything he’s got to keep him from diving straight off the pier and kicking down to the silt at the bottom, dig through it until maybe he’ll be able to find something of who his brother was back then. The one who would read him ghost stories by flashlight under a fort of blankets. Roast marshmallows and hot dogs together on the same stick, despite Dad’s insistence that he had it all wrong. Have cannonball contests to see who could make the bigger splash (Sam’s winning streak started the summer he turned seven and never ended. As far as he’s concerned, he’s still the reigning champion.)
Hard to believe that same goofy, Dumbo-eared brother was the same one who slept not twenty yards away, passed out in a sleep like death since he’d forgone sleep for a fun set of twins last night. Hard to believe the Dean who caught fireflies in cheesecloth-topped jars and used them as nightlights in their cramped excuse for a guestroom was the same Dean who’d been to Hell and back, who’d had more than all the weight of this world the next thrown onto his shoulders and yet still somehow managed to cast a shadow Sam could only hope to fit into someday.
Crickets are singing in a multi-level chorus with cicadas and whippoorwills and what Sam thinks he identifies as the unsettling caw of vultures, banshee-reminiscent calls shrieking across the stretch of black road coiled through the forest like a serpent. It’s all very relaxing and appealing in its own rural way, but over that there is the thick, uncomfortable film of dismay. A quick glance back at the Impala makes him wonder how long it’s been since she’s had a tune-up, and he feels a distinct sting of sadness in the center of his chest at the thought. Dean hasn’t even been doing that lately. He’s barely even paid attention to his baby over the past few weeks, practically just used her as a convenient ride, treated her like a car instead of a religion like he’s supposed to. The realization pulls a sun-squinted frown onto Sam’s face.
He unfolds his body slowly and stands straight, and as he stares up to the blank dull lavender slate of dusk, sighs long and low. And he doesn’t know why he does it, but he figures - what could it hurt? Then shrugs and clears his throat, because the words don’t seem to want to come out of his mouth of their own accord.
“Cas?” he starts, and yeah, okay, he might feel just slightly ridiculous saying this out loud after all. Knowing his luck, Dean would saunter up behind him any second now, dude what the hell? lilting out of his lips with a too-charming smirk. But he glances back at the Impala and Dean hasn’t moved, so he turns to the lake again and continues. “If you’re out there - please, give me something, man. I really need your help here.” And after a spell, quieter, “Dean really needs your help.”
He purses his lips and breathes in slowly. No whoosh of wind, no crackle of electricity or soft thrum of wingbeats follows. Just a silent forest, treetops swaying rhythmically in a breeze Sam barely feels.
He turns and makes his way back to the car, chucking his half-empty beer bottle into a particularly thick clump of weeds crouched near the shoreline.
~ ~ ~
{to be continued...}
ONTO PART ELEVEN