Fic: The Propensities of Good Men, 1/15
*takes the plunge*
Aaaaaaand it starts. This will be 15 chapters of an epic love story, a tale of brotherhood and the Apocalypse, tons of whump, torture, mindfucking, and a whole hell of a lot of porn. \o/
Title: The Propensities of Good Men, 1/15
Characters: Dean, Sam, Castiel (part 1)
Pairing(s): Dean/Castiel ftmfw!
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~8,289 (part 1)
Spoilers: I started writing this after 4/19 aired, so it's an AU from there. As far as this fic is concerned, anything 4/20 or thereafter never happened.
Warnings: Sexuality, consent issues (if spell-casting counts?), violence, brief het sex.
A/N: This thing is a monster. Be forewarned. Also, kudos to my wondermous beta/wife/other half ghosts for cracking the whip in the best way possible.
And when night darkens the streets, then wander
forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence & wine.
John Milton, PARADISE LOST
~ ~ ~
Dean has no idea how they’re going to get out of this one.
They’ve been in some nasty scraps before, but this is inarguably, without a doubt, inexplicably, just about the worst one, and as he runs for the Impala he thinks as hard as has ever thought, but he can’t see any kind of way out of this. Somewhere to his left he hears Sam groan, hears the screams of the demons his brother has destroyed, before he feels the blow to his stomach and he falls. Five minutes ago they were alone, just him and Sam and one demon. They were almost finished with the exorcism when Dean heard it: approaching footsteps. Lots of them. He signaled to Sam and they flattened to the walls in unison, poised for attack. The demon laughed then, a strange, cooing, guttural sound, and Dean threw a dose of holy water on it to shut it up. It was a weak, new demon, just a pawn in the scheme of things, so the exorcism had been going smoothly. But now there was something else outside - something big, by the sounds of it.
Dean stepped outside and immediately wished he hadn’t. They were surrounded on all sides by an encroaching wall - nurses, businessmen, housewives, cheerleaders. All obviously possessed, if the solid black glint in their eyes wasn’t a dead giveaway. There were hundreds of them, and as they casually made their way toward the shed where Sam and Dean were, Dean turned to his little brother and made the understatement of the year: “We should go.”
The Impala was just twenty or thirty yards from the shed, parked inconspicuously behind a clump of grassy weeds, but even a short distance seemed like miles when they had that many demons between where they were and where they needed to be. Sam’s immediate reaction was to tap into his powers, that hidden reservoir Dean hadn’t even begun to understand, and destroy as many as he could on the spot. He took down three, five, six of them, but couldn’t keep up with it forever. His powers were draining him; Dean could see it happening clear as day, and yet the demons kept coming. Swarming, like wasps, until the only thought left in Dean’s head besides an aching pressure and the repetitive dull thrum of his pulse were the simple words: oh, fuck.
Dean tries to fight off as many as he can while Sam keeps working on killing as many as he can. When he hears Sam’s voice break through the commotion, he looks over just in time to see his brother fall to his knees, and for all the world he looks about as lifeless as he did back in Cold Oak so many years ago. “Sam!” he calls, but it doesn’t do anything to help their situation. Sam doesn’t even respond.
Dean sees the demon approach, but he can’t really do anything about it since he’s fighting off a small army of his own. A sleazy one, attorney-looking type, sidles up in front of Sam and smiles a toothy grin before he rears back and takes his swing, wood plank in hand. It’s a rough impact, a sickening jolt of an uppercut under Sam’s jaw, and Dean swears he can hear the crack from twenty feet away even through the racket of what is fast becoming a battlefield. Sam flies onto his back, disoriented for a moment, but keeps his hand out, poised for exorcism. Dean calls his name again when he sees that no matter how hard Sammy tries, it’s just not doing a damn thing. He manages to remember the flask of holy water in his pocket, and, feeling like he should have thought of it earlier, flings a protective arc of the stuff at the demons blocking the path to his brother. They shrink away with a slight sizzling sound, but seem to come back even stronger. Dean realizes that the holy water didn’t do anything but piss them off even more, and he thinks about it, and he suddenly realizes that this is how it’s going to end.
The blunt pressure of a right hook hits his side, so hard he can almost feel his ribs bowing. Something hard and solid, maybe a baseball bat, cracks against the side of his knee and he falls with a yelp. That had to have dislodged something, he thinks absently, before there's a hard punch to his left temple, a hand around his throat, and he begins to fade.
An indefinite amount of time passes as his air slowly slips away, but even though his eyes are closed and the world’s gone bleary he sees a staggeringly bright stab of light photograph the blood vessels in his eyelids. It seems to chase away the demon, because the pressure around his windpipe is suddenly gone. His throat springs open and he sucks down a huge gulp of air, retching instinctively for a beat. When the light flashed he heard Sam scream, and when he opens his eyes Castiel is there and Sam has his hands clamped over his eyes. Dean tries to call out to his brother, but he only coughs as the air returns to his body. Sickly choking sounds that piss him off because he wants to be able to ask his brother if he’s alright, but fuck, that bastard got him good. Feels like he’s got a noose still tightened around his neck.
A few demons turn and run; the ones that stay to fight are very quickly disposed of, freezing for a moment in agony before bright flashes of white light and red fire rip through their now eyeless bodies. Dean finds the hushed thumps of their bodies hitting the ground oddly disconcerting. Castiel extends a hand with hardly a change in expression, maybe a slight twitch at one corner of his mouth, though it’s unclear whether this is a manifestation of power or disgust. Perhaps amusement. Dean really can’t tell, and it’s not like Castiel is an open book anyway. The demon at Sam’s side shocks into flame and ash with an awful screech, twin tendrils of black smoke - not the demonic kind, Dean notices, just the singed wisp of quick, hot fire - erupting from its eyes. A few more seconds of Dean coughing, strangulation mingled with the too-familiar reek of burned flesh, before he manages to gulp down enough air to wrestle out his brother’s name.
Sam holds up a hand to signal he is alright, though he stays on the ground and keeps his other hand tightly across his eyes. Dean coughs again, looks around, and notices that the field is mostly desolate now, all the demons having been either destroyed or frightened away by Castiel’s presence. His eyes burn from the flash of light and his head throbs in his temples from the jar of a punch, but he manages to sit up and look back at the unassuming man who just saved his life. Well, the unassuming creature. Angel. Whatever.
Two demons appear behind Castiel and try to overtake him, and Dean wants to call for him to look out!, but the angel spins and palms one in the center of its chest, sending it flying far back with the easy snap of its sternum. The other demon manages to uppercut him, but he barely winces and simply grabs the creature in the crook of its shoulder and shoves down. There’s a loud crack as its neck breaks, a bright pop of clean white light through the air as Castiel seals a palm to its forehead. He is barely breathing any kind of hard and there is a slight snarl on his face, but just as quickly he reassumes the vague, ordinary appearance of the run-of-the-mill, holy-tax-accountant Dean has grown used to over the months. The transformation is seamless.
Sometimes Dean forgets how much of a badass Castiel is - that he is a soldier, a centuries-old relentless warrior, that he has killed more demons in more ways than Dean could ever begin to hold a candle to, who mind-whammied Sam and Bobby and survived a demonic knife through the heart, and that yeah, he’s a pretty badass motherfucker - until something like this happens and he remembers why, deep down inside, Castiel frightens him.
Castiel wipes the blood from his lip and stares at it curiously, as if he doesn’t know what to do with it. His hands disappear into his coat pockets and suddenly his lip isn’t busted anymore; he’s a quick healer. He walks to Dean, asks if he is alright.
“I’m fine, yeah, but what the hell was that all about?” Dean asks, climbing to his feet. “They came outta nowhere, just popped up. And there were hundreds of ‘em.”
“That was just a taste of the Legions we’ll face,” Castiel replies coolly.
Dean blinks, incredulous. “The hell does that mean?” he asks, but Castiel shoots him a glare that seems to say be patient, so he doesn’t expect a response.
Castiel helps Sam up and quietly asks how his eyes are. Sam nods in response, but he is still blinking strangely and Dean can just about see his pupils even from a good two yards away. Dean eyes his brother carefully as he rubs his jaw. Sam’s nose is bleeding and he has a line of blood draining out of his mouth, probably from the impact of his teeth smashing together so hard. He shoots Dean a glance and nods, almost unnoticeably, and Dean nods back; their secret language to signal they are okay.
Castiel seems to be completely healed at this point, no sign he was ever fighting at all. His hands are in his coat pockets, as per usual, as his gaze darts frantically around, absorbing the scenery with eyes that see much more than either Dean or Sam could ever hope to. “You need to leave,” he says. “Go back to your room and pack. Drive a few hours away and settle somewhere. Don’t do anything conspicuous.”
Dean hisses a snarky laugh, thinking dude we have done this before, but the glare from Castiel shuts him up. Sam asks what is going on and Castiel says, “We’ll talk later,” and just like that, with the quietest rustle of feathers, he is gone.
~ ~ ~
They make it back to the motel and pack quickly, leave without checking out and head West. They end up just outside of Memphis, where it’s snowing and the wind moves constantly. Sam doesn’t think they should have left, but Dean says to deal with it. Something big is going on, really fucking big if the droves of demons that attacked them in Vandever say anything, and Castiel had told them to leave, so they left. Dean doesn’t expand on the subject; Sam draws back into himself with a resigned sigh.
“Do we have to summon him or something?” Sam asks after a while when Castiel does not show up as he promised.
Dean pulls up a corner of the blinds before dropping them just as quickly. He shakes his head and says, “No.” Outside it is barely snowing, the ghostly white flakes floating carefully to the ground in a thin wet blanket. It’s sad, and slick, and it makes Dean want to be somewhere like California, where the weather is always the same and it never dives into depressing frigidity like this. He hates Midwest winters, hates the slush of snow. “He always seems to just kinda show up outta the blue anyway.” Dean sits on the edge of his bed and cracks open a beer, and Sam goes to take a shower.
It is the middle of the night before Castiel shows. Dean wakes up ungracefully and in a panic, instinctively grabbing at the knife under his pillow, and Sam wakes up just after him. The metallic click of his gun is clean and smooth in the dark, but he lowers it quickly when he sees the familiar form of the angel leaning passively against the dresser. Dean flips the knife over and stuffs it back under his pillow; Sam’s hand falls and he glances down apologetically.
“Well you’re fashionably late,” Dean quips sleepily. He sits up against the headboard and Castiel must move, because he hears the shift of fabric.
“I had other things to attend to,” he says flatly.
“Yeah? Any of them happen to be exorcising those demons that got away, so their meat suits could go back to life as expected?” Dean yawns after he says it, rubs lazily at his eyes.
Castiel walks more into the light, stopping between the brothers’ beds. His eyes wander to the closed window as he sighs. “The people in that town were already dead by the time you arrived.”
Dean blinks; he can see the turn of his brother’s head as Sam looks to him in the dark. “Come again?”
“Dean, you have to trust me,” Castiel cuts in, the scrape of his voice low and inarguably serious. Dean knows the tone, the I am an angel of the Lord tone, all business, no softness. “Vandever was already gone, there’s no point in mourning its loss now. There are larger things happening.”
Sam stays quiet, watching Castiel with sharp eyes. Dean twirls a hand in the air. “And?” he asks, impatient.
“Someone in my garrison managed to capture one of the demons that attacked you, persuade it to talk. Before it slipped out of its host, it told us some - disturbing things.” Castiel’s eyes lower to the floor, but he doesn’t move. He seems to withdraw into thought for a moment, leaving the ambiguity of his last statement unattended. The pause elicits a bright flare of impatience deep in Dean’s belly, but just when he’s about to urge Castiel to continue, he does. “The demons that overran the city were just one Legion,” he says through a slight tense in his jaw.
“One Legion of... how many are we talking here?” Sam asks.
“Eighty.”
There is brief silence as Dean flicks on the lamp between the beds. He rubs a hand across his lips, looks up to his brother. The stare he receives in response tells him that Sam is just as short on words as he is. “Eighty Legions?” he finally asks.
“Yes.”
“But that’s - one Legion took down a whole town. And you’re saying that there’s seventy-nine more where those came from?” Sam’s voice is incredulous.
“Yes.”
Dean gives a sudden laugh, bitter against the quiet. Castiel’s gaze lingers curiously on him. The angel’s features are drawn, marked by some expression Dean tries to identify but can’t. Irritation, confusion, anxiety. Fascination. Culpability. “Boy, you’re just a ball of good news, aren’t you, Cas?”
Castiel doesn't move apart from the slight purse of his lips. Dean leans forward, elbows on his knees. “You wanna come up with a snappy excuse for why you dragged us out of there when we could have stayed and helped those people? I thought we took care of all of ‘em, and now you tell me that the whole town was possessed? We could have exorcised them, Sammy could have used his demon-whatever-mojo and sent ‘em all packing.”
A line forms between Sam’s eyebrows as he shakes his head at his brother, but he doesn’t say anything.
“We could have saved lives, Cas. You gonna tell me God doesn’t want us saving innocent people now?”
“They would have killed you,” Castiel says wryly.
“We should have stayed,” Dean snaps. “In fact, screw this - I’m goin’ back.”
“You can’t.” Dean starts to gather his things, but the force in Castiel’s usually vague voice freezes him in place, stock still for the span of several heartbeats. All the same, though, he swallows back the dryness in his throat and keeps packing after a beat. Tries to ignore that weird flutter that happens in the floor of his belly whenever Castiel gets all forceful and no-bullshit.
“Somebody’s gotta help those people, and since all the holy forces of Heaven are doing such a bang-up job, I’ll see if I can raise the bar.”
Castiel allows Dean to pass, but his lips curl back from his teeth momentarily and Sam thinks he sees a flash of irritation cross the angel’s face. The ring of his voice, how it lowers just a shade, confirms it. “Dean, everyone is dead. Literally.”
Dean finally stops, blinking in the bathroom doorway with a toothbrush in one hand and his dirty, army-surplus duffel flopping in the other.
Castiel sighs, shoulders slumping with the exhalation. “It’s a city of corpses. The demons killed their hosts when they left.”
Finally a silence settles in the room as Dean just blinks, absorbs the bitter implications of what Castiel is telling them. In the back of his mind he wonders how much truth there is in Castiel’s statement, if the angel was being honest or if he skewed the truth, not lying so much as omitting the truth, basically the same fucking thing. Fucking angels and their shady secrets. All their ulterior motives and underhanded, weak excuses at morality. All their pomp and splendor and arrogance, how they look down their holy fucking noses at anything half a rung below them on the celestial ladder. Dean finds himself almost smirking as the thought train builds upon itself. Castiel had been willing to wipe out a whole town once before already; what made this any different? If he was told to do it, he’d do it, vertebrates need not apply. Which, Dean guesses, it why he’s such a good soldier, why they’re all such good soldiers. God’s own personal I, Robots. Because it’s easy to do what you’re told, get down to business and do what needs to be done, if you don’t have that obnoxious, gnawing thing called a conscience getting in the way all the time.
Dean tries to guess how many of the people in Vandever were killed at the hands of demons, and just how many at the hands of angels, and as the numbers stack, he doesn’t like the odds.
He tosses his backpack onto the bed and braces a hand against the doorway. “So there’s really nothing left,” he muses, only partially a question.
Castiel does not reply, except for pushing his hands back into the pockets of his rumpled trench coat. Sam swallows hard, keeps his voice sympathetic when he asks, “Why are there so many all of a sudden?”
The silence extends beyond Sam’s question for the span of a few seconds as Castiel regards Dean carefully. Indecipherable emotions seems to pass over him, but just as soon they are gone and he is staring distantly at the floor again. “Legions follow orders blindly. They can’t act independently. They do as they are commanded and nothing else,” he explains.
Dean balks, but Castiel ignores it.
“They are here for one reason and that is to bring one of you to their master. We don’t know yet which one of you they want or why.”
Sam rakes in a breath and catches his brother’s eyes. “Is it Lilith?” he asks.
“We don’t think so. This seems bigger.”
Dean’s jaw slackens. “Bigger than Lilith. Really.” He hesitates. “How serious are you right now? ‘Cause I really can’t tell, what with your natural gift for sarcasm and all.”
“Very,” Castiel tonelessly replies, unwittingly perfectly illustrating Dean’s point.
Dean falls back onto his bed, carding his hands through his hair. “So we got Lilith on our tail already, trying to start the friggin’ Apocalypse, and now we’ve got this other jackass cropping up trying to carry us off to Never-never-land. What gives?”
Castiel blinks, and when he does it is a few times in a row, as if he had forgotten to blink for some time and his eyes had dried out. Three short feet away, Dean hears Sam fidget a little. “Eighty Legions are only sent to Earth when commanded by one of the Archdemons,” Castiel explains.
“And who are they?” Dean asks, feeling suddenly stupid.
Castiel doesn’t miss a beat. “You might say they’re the highest on the food chain, after Lucifer.”
Neither Sam nor Dean really knows what to say, despite all the questions brimming at their throats, so they remain silent. Castiel glances to both of them and, almost imperceptibly, nods. “You should be on guard,” he says.
When Dean looks at him, Castiel's eyes seem to have darkened from their usual ethereal blue, as if there is something new dancing behind them. He tries to guess what it is, tries to map it out and pin it down, but the only thing he comes up with is worry, and then the lamp flickers and Castiel is gone.
When Dean finally falls back asleep, the sun has long risen to streak neon lavenders and magentas across the sky, a steady golden glow washing against the undersides of the clouds that hang palpable and ominous in its depths. Sam keeps his eyes open, even in the dark, and listens to the deep draws of his brother’s breath. By the time the AM/FM alarm clock goes off at eight, he has yet to get any rest.
~ ~ ~
The bar is only a seven-minute drive from the motel. It's called Cactus Spike’s, and it's just the kind of place where Dean fits in best: dirty and loud and really fucking shady. A place for the young and the single, the quick and the dirty. A place where nobody looks anybody else in the eye, and nothing is really spoken about the world that begins and ends at the heavy iron doors marred by countless bumper stickers and drunken Sharpie autographs. It’s small, only a few pool tables to choose from, each illuminated by a dull tiffany spotlight. Green chalkboards linger on the walls beside each table, sporting worn-down stalks of blue chalk that have been thumbed over too many times. Dartboards that never get used, dusty old couches stained with Sam doesn’t even want to know what, sporadic table-and-chair sets. A juke box rounds out the joint, the old kind with the clumsy mechanical elbows that manually flip the pages for you. And a music collection that’s eclectic at best, but that Sam is sure Dean thinks is the best thing this side of Metallica.
Sam doesn’t talk much, preferring instead to take a pub table to himself and browse the online weather reports for electrical storms around Memphis. More than a few nice-looking girls pass, make eyes at him, but for the most part he ignores them. That, he’ll leave to Dean.
The man himself has racked up quite a debt at table four. A petite Korean has put him three hundred in the hole, a real leather and lace type with fishnets and a bright crimson camisole that stings through the dusky light of the bar like a brilliant poppy, dangerous and intoxicating and infallibly beautiful. Sam is not surprised when he sees that Dean cares much more about getting in the girl’s pants than he ever did about the money. He’s had more than a few shots by the looks of it. Sam shakes his head with a smirk as he realizes he’ll be spending most of the night by himself. Where he would stay, that was a question he would have loved an answer to, but also one that he was all too familiar with.
The next frame passes and Dean tosses another fifty onto the green. The girl gladly takes it and, with a long stretch, puts it up on the light. Dean puts the game on hold as she racks up, sliding over to the bar for another round. On his way back, he stops at Sam’s table. Pokes a shot in his direction with a single finger, but Sam doesn’t take it immediately. He raises his eyebrows.
Dean shrugs. He waits a few moments before looking at his brother again, which is the exact moment that the girl whistles sharply across the bar. She settles the pool cue in front of her and her mouth moves to form the word, game?. Dean clears his throat and throws her his best grin, then looks to Sam. He jerks his head in the girl’s direction and he doesn’t have to ask - Sam hands over the keys with a dramatic roll of his eyes.
A hand claps on his back.
He takes the shot as soon as Dean leaves.
~ ~ ~
She says her name is Michelle and Dean believes it implicitly.
They get inside the room and she doesn’t wait to get to the point. She kisses him hard, blowing through his skull like a fucking twelve-gauge, and it’s almost like it’s laced with some kind of drug because when she pulls back he immediately wants more. Her lips are smooth as glass, fuck, even smoother, and she tastes amazing, like sugared rum or butterscotch candy, a penetrating sweetness that gnaws at Dean’s bones and hurts his teeth with how rich it is. His voice stretches into a bright laugh as a whiskey bottle appears out of her purse. Michelle takes a pull from the bottle and spins the cap back on before she tosses it to him with a smirk, and Dean might be a little drunk but he's still sober enough to think, holy fucking shit, where has this woman been all my life?
He takes a long swig, settles into the burn behind his sternum, and waits at the door while she kicks off her boots, tall black bondage things with laces all down the front, silver buckles punched along the sides, and her fishnets right after. She’s feline with the smooth calculated way she sweeps her hair back or bats her deliciously long eyelashes, and really she’s probably the hottest fucking thing Dean thinks he has ever seen, with her pear-green contact lenses and her luscious dark silk mane hanging in twin curtains around her shoulders. When he stumbles to the edge of the bed - whoa, alcohol sort of swerving things around already, must have had more than he thought - she licks her smirking lips and stares up at him from under wicked long lashes. She’s so sure of herself it’s almost scary, and through it all there’s this insistent background hum that something’s not quite right about all this, but more than anything the only thought in Dean’s head is the twist of that succulent little mouth and all the things he wants to do to it.
And then his jeans are gone and that mouth is on his cock and it is hot and wet as Dean threads his fingers in her hair, drops his head back, throat opening up with a sigh, and yeah, she’s just about perfect at this point.
She pulls back just when he’s almost done and looks up at him with the reddest lips, stained and swollen and slick. Her skirt slides off and she pulls him to her, letting him on top first, and even though he wants to say something witty, something practical that will still make her giggle and swoon like gotta put my raincoat on, she doesn’t let him and as soon as he’s inside of her it doesn’t fucking matter anymore. A moan intermingles with a growl, rips out of his chest, and she’s tight and wet and apparently likes it when he fucks her hard. The noises she makes are small, mewling ones, and she shuts her eyes tight and it’s hot, so hot, that Dean thinks about slowing down just to make it last longer but ultimately decides, fuck it. And he doesn’t stop and it doesn’t slow down and his pulse is only rushing harder when she pushes on his shoulders and climbs, cat-like, small black nails clinging tightly to his shoulders, on top.
The new angle is exquisite and Dean watches with hazy eyes as she moves above him. His brain is kind of bleached out, vision gone all fuzzy and too-bright, and Dean is more than aware that something must be wrong. Sex is awesome but it’s usually not like this - and really he’s not even sure he could call this awesome anymore, just... weird - but his limbs have gone like sandbags and he can’t really move them. His mind screeches to a halt but his body keeps on going.
Her hand stilts against the wall for leverage, heat and sweat blaring a perfect print on the sheetrock. It moves down to the headboard, to his chest, his arm, scratching at the brand left there by Castiel, and just when she howls out in pleasure, he does too. As soon as he comes she bends to force her lips against his again, laced sweetly with something that numbs his entire body and blazes it up like a fucking bonfire at the same time. The slight taste of whiskey mingles with her sugary background flavor, sweet and luxurious and exhilarating.
Even through the fog in his eyes Dean can see her above him clear as spring, those damn green eyes that aren’t so much sexy as they are fucking creepy now, and he almost speaks but she places a finger over his lips. His head is spinning in this really weird way, like everything he’s drunk tonight is just now hitting him, along with about a dozen roofies and at least a whole fucking bongload of Purple Haze, but somehow it’s good. It’s really, really good, and it only gets better every time she kisses him, incoherent bliss building upon itself with every swipe and tangle of her tongue, darting along the roof of his mouth, dipping just past his teeth, until Dean just wants to splay his mouth wide open, swallow her up, let her crawl inside completely and lace his blood from the inside out.
The next time he opens his eyes they are bleary and clouded, misted over like a cataract, but he feels so amazing that it’s hard to even comprehend, so they close again. And when they open back up a second time, he sees the silver glint of a knife, Ruby's knife, but his reflexes are somehow dulled, the edges of everything smearing together like wet paint. He can’t stop it when she fights his wrist down and presses the blade to his throat, and fuck.
He’s been duped.
“Hi there, Dean,” she says in the sultriest voice he’s ever heard. It occurs to him that he hasn’t given her his name - his real one, at least - and he tries to push her away but she’s impossibly strong. He can’t budge her a single inch.
“We’ve never formally met,” she continues, “But I’ve heard so much about you. You’re all the talk down in the pit, you know. It’s nice to finally meet the man behind the legend.”
Dean struggles some more as his senses start to come back, but still he can’t do a damn thing to get her off of him. The blade is solid and assertive against his throat; he can feel it cut into the topmost layers of his flesh, although he doesn’t feel any warmth or fiery pain, so it’s safe to say she hasn’t actually drawn blood yet. Still, though, her hand is unnervingly steady and it’s making Dean really fucking jumpy.
“Though I must admit, I was expecting you to be a little…” She pauses, allowing her eyes to wander a long line down his body to where their hips meet. Her head tilts and a skewed grin plays across those intoxicating red lips. “Taller,” she finishes, and Dean sneers with a sudden flare of white-hot rage.
“Who the hell are you?” he hisses through clenched teeth. In response she kisses him again, and when she does he almost doesn’t want it to end because it just feels so goddamn good.
“Gimme a B,” she whispers in his ear, and his eyes flutter shut out of pleasure; “Gimme an E,” she continues, scratching down the front of his chest; “Gimme an... L,” and she licks the length of his throat with the syllable.
Somehow he manages to wrest the knife from her grip in one quick movement and holds it at her back, barely piercing the skin. Hesitating. His brain is still all foggy and bleary, but there’s not a doubt in his mind that he can dig out whatever answers he needs from this bitch, sober or not, if he really wants to. “Who the hell are you,” he demands.
But she just grins, and a split second later the room is filled with an impressive column of black smoke. It escapes through the air conditioning vents before the girl, whose real name Dean doesn’t even know, collapses on top of him. Unconscious but alive.
And the only thing Dean can say as he scrubs a palm roughly over his face, taps his cheeks to bring circulation back into his dimmed brain, is, “Ah, shit.”
~ ~ ~
Cactus Spike’s has a neon cactus-shaped sign outside that Dean finds to be an obscure comfort at the moment. He rips the door open hard, stops at the bar for a quick shot, then finds Sam easily. He’s talking with a big guy, a real hardass by the looks of him, around the same table Dean shot earlier. It’s the other guy’s shot and Sam takes a long pull of beer before he feels the hand on his shoulder. Instinctively he spins to face the pressure, his elbow coming up in a sharp angle but stopping just short of knocking Dean’s nose straight into his skull. It’s the quick-toned poise of someone well-trained, someone a lot stronger than they look, someone permanently on guard and misleadingly dangerous. It would almost make Dean proud, but he’s got other things on his mind right now.
“Dean,” Sam exclaims, confusion lilting in his voice. “What’s up, man, I thought you were turning in for the night?”
The big guy scratches and clucks his tongue, nods in Sam’s direction. “Your shot,” he says.
Sam bends to take the shot, but Dean’s hand curls around his arm and he leans close and says, “Sorry to cramp your style but we gotta jet.”
Black Sabbath whines in the background so loud that Sam can barely hear him. He keeps his arm extended alongside the cue, a perfect parallel line, the stuff of geometry, as he searches his brother curiously. “What? Why?”
The bulldog of a guy shooting stripes shifts impatiently and says, “Look, guy, we’re in the middle of a cash game here.”
Dean cuts him off with a sharp hey and the man’s chest inflates. “Keep the money, Chuckles, game’s over.”
“Dean!”
Sam shrugs his hands open to the air and Dean uses the opportunity to snatch the cue from him. It rattles onto the table with an sharp wooden clack as he raises his eyebrows at his little brother. “Let’s go,” he says, and it’s so stern and threatening that Sam is following him out the door without argument or reservation within the next twenty seconds.
“What the hell is going on?” Sam pleads as he catches up to his brother at the Impala. Dean jerks the door open and climbs in.
“She was a demon, Sam, the damn pool chick was a demon,” he lets loose once they’re safe inside the car.
Sam’s jaw slackens momentarily, then snaps shut again. He jerks his head a little, surprised. “Did you kill it?”
The easiness of the question almost unnerves Dean. Two years ago, one even, that’s not the first thing that would have come out of Sam’s mouth. It would have been a tentative are you okay?, maybe an oh shit or a what the hell?. Now he just jumps straight in, doesn’t beat around the bush or sidestep. No pussyfooting around these days, Dean thinks. It’s a discomfiting realization - how hardened his brother has become, how far removed from that goofy, gawky bookworm kid who loved Lucky Charms and Sour Punch straws more than life itself - one that creeps a distinct, visceral taste like bile up into his throat.
He blinks, his fingers working in a furious rhythm on the top curve of the steering wheel. “No.”
It stays quiet for a moment, until Sam tilts his head in his brother’s direction. “And?” he asks. “Aren’t you gonna tell me what happened?”
Dean clears his throat and his eyes barely skitter across Sam’s.
“Oh, come on. You actually…?”
Dean still doesn’t say anything; just nods.
Sam’s hand pulls into a tent over his eyes. “Dean,” he breathes out, something in his voice sounding disappointed.
“What?” Dean snaps, venomous. His eyes drift away from Sam again, back to the patrons milling around outside the bar. The Impala remains dormant as they speak. “Not like you can talk,” and his voice is quieter this time. “You’re the poster child for bangin’ demonic chicks, Sammy. I mean, Jesus, why don’t you just bone Linda Blair while you’re at it.”
Sam almost has to laugh at the comment, though part of him is openly affronted. He pulls a breath in through his nose, rests his arm on the window sill. “Okay,” he says in what is obviously his best objective tone, “Then what happened?”
Dean remains silent, drawn into thought. Sam waits, and watches him the entire time. Finally, when Dean doesn’t respond for a long stretch of minutes, he urges, “So?”
“I don’t remember, okay?” Dean admits not a little reluctantly. Something the demon did to him - nearest he can guess it was probably transmitted through those fucking kisses - it inked out almost his entire collection of memories from the encounter. He remembers the physical feelings, and when he does he can almost feel himself growing hard again, but the details are all glossed over, like how exactly she got the knife and what he had done with the girl’s body after she passed out. His voice lowers when he says, “She dosed me with something.”
Sam’s eyes widen. “A demon slipped you a mickey?”
“Sam,” Dean warns, and his brother shrugs innocently.
“What? I just - that’s unusual.” Silence catches up to them in the minutes that follow. The music from the bar is barely audible, heavily muffled through the doors and windows, not clear enough to make out. Dean tries to recognize it and he thinks he pegs it as Motorhead, but then Sam starts talking again.
“Why would a demon drug you with something? That’s just not their style, man.” He pauses to think. “They want something from you, they smash your head through a wall until you’re either unconscious or you give it to them.”
“Well, apparently all this chick wanted was -”
“Dean. Really.”
The sweep of Dean’s grin is easy as he glances to his brother beside him. Sam’s face is wringed with disgust, a little bit of annoyance, which is what makes it impossible for Dean to resist the urge to ruffle the errant feathers of his hair with a chuckle, if not for anything else, just to piss Sam off. Sam jerks away from the action with a groan, pawing clumsily at Dean’s hand until he stops, and then Dean starts up the Impala and they’re laughing quietly, mumbling through Bad Company as they roll back to the motel.
~ ~ ~
Dean seems nervous the entire time Sam works on researching the demon that attacked him. He hovers around the window and periodically lifts the blinds, and each time his eyes dart around a few times. Then the blinds snap closed and he sits down uneasily again. Any minute now he’s expecting half the town to appear over the hill’s bend, eyes black as oil slicks and fists ready to take them down just like in Vandever. Sam notices with unease how the whiskey bottle on the nightstand gradually empties over the minutes. When they got here there was only a few ounces missing; now, though, almost an entire fourth of the bottle is gone.
Sam bites at his thumbnail and half-whispers, “Oh shit,” and it’s at that point when Dean knows that nothing good can come of this whole ordeal.
“What,” he asks tonelessly, barely a question at all. For the past two hours he’s been watching a staticy marathon of The Simpsons, but he hasn’t laughed once. That’s when Sam had really known something was wrong; Dean always laughs at The Simpsons.
The air conditioner kicks on with a shudder, flickering the lamp for a moment. “I think I know who attacked you,” Sam says without removing his eyes from the computer screen. He watches as Dean stretches out across his bed, rubbing at his eyes, and it strikes him at once just how tired his brother looks.
Dean’s hand stays over his eyes as he asks, “Who?”
Sam looks back to the screen and sighs. His voice deepens just slightly when he admits, albeit grudgingly, “I’m pretty sure it was Belial.”
Suddenly there is a faint breeze through the room, then Castiel’s voice saying, “Good work, Sam.”
Dean jumps up from his bed, startled, and warily eyes the angel. He tells himself he should be used to that by now, how Castiel just seems to pop in unannounced, with that smart frown of his and the frumpy sweep of his P.I. coat that Dean has always thought was kind of lame, the crackle of electricity and the distinct hum of power emanating from each angle and curve of his body - but he’s not. It still surprises him, and honestly it’s kind of really fucking annoying sometimes, because hello, privacy? And while there is a distinct comfort accompanying the knowledge that you’ve constantly got an angel of the Lord watching your back twenty-four-seven, Dean hasn’t decided yet if he finds it comforting or just... well, creepy. He shifts his weight, brow muddling. “Wait, you knew that?”
“Yes,” Castiel replies, hands settling in his jacket pockets. He leans casually against the wall on the other side of Dean’s bed and continues, “In all fairness, though, I only knew a few hours before you.”
Dean looks to Sam, and Sam shrugs. “And you didn’t think to warn me?”
“I was busy with other things,” Castiel says. At the words, his eyes seem to be hiding something, and Dean catches onto it but lets it slide. “But trust me when I say that I did try to get to you first.”
Dean shrugs one shoulder loosely. “You seem to be a little bad at that, Cas.” The angel smiles almost imperceptibly, a nearly indiscernible curve at one corner of his lips, but doesn’t say anything else. Dean sits down on the edge of Sam’s bed, leaning onto his elbows. “So… Belial’s a dude. Why would he possess a smokin’ hot Asian chick? Even better, why would he wait to reveal himself until after we’ve - y’know, fornicated or copulated or however you holy host guys sugarcoat it?”
For an instant, Castiel’s gaze hovers on the TV. He seems to be studying it, enthralled by its colors and movement, but quickly he shifts his focus to Dean and stares hard at him in that raw, unblinking way of his. “Belial is the carnal side of man; the chief demon of lust, sex, and pleasure - the principal drives that make life worthwhile to some.”
Dean snarks and glances to Sam, but his face is a mask of concentration set on Castiel, so Dean tries to focus too. It’s challenging, though, hearing words like lust and sex coming out of Castiel’s perfectly sanctified mouth. They come out sounding alien, uncomfortable or forced or something, as if they are untranslated words of a foreign language that Castiel does not speak or understand. They carry with them a peculiar charge that Dean cannot ignore. Or even understand, for that matter.
“He is everything material about being human,” Castiel continues. “His creed is that humans don’t need saving or redemption; that the spirit becomes divine through experiences of the flesh. He believes that humanity is... degenerate. That you are creatures for demonic amusement. That you’re selfish and sexual animals easily turned in your allegiances. In his mind, there are no altruistic motives for anything humans do. There are no selfless acts. Everything that is done, is done solely in the spirit of growing higher in the ranks of Lucifer’s Infernal Order.”
Dean watches Castiel intently, narrows his eyes at him, and he realizes absently that that is the most he has ever heard the angel speak at one time.
“But who is he?” Sam asks, increasingly curious. Always thirsty for knowledge. “I mean, why’s he so powerful?”
Castiel draws a breath, licks his lips lightly, a movement that Dean doesn’t watch, really. “Belial was one of God’s most beautiful angels; he was created just after Lucifer, which gives them a very profound bond.” He hesitates, shifts his position. “He was the first true Fallen One; he fell before even Lucifer did. He also convinced Lucifer to stage a rebellion in Heaven, which eventually led to the downfall of - many.” Something in Castiel's eyes goes gray, goes sad, but it passes as a ghost before Dean can be sure it was ever there at all. He swallows thickly when he sees the brief flash of emotion, because he knows that some distant part of Castiel is in pain as he retraces his memories, and for the first time Dean feels something other than fear or annoyance or suspicion regarding the angel - he feels empathy.
“You are a model Son of Belial, Dean,” Castiel continues, all traces of the former emotion stamped out. Right back to business. “A sybarite. Lawless and fiercely independent.”
“So,” Dean interrupts thoughtfully. “He preys on horny people ‘cause they’re - sorry, ‘cause we’re - easy to turn Dark Side?”
Castiel nods, one deep and calculated movement. “In such simple terms, yes. Though you have a stronger conviction than most.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean stands, peeking out the window again. “Four months in Hell does a lot to a guy, not the least of which is makin’ him really damn determined he doesn’t ever go back again.”
“What does he want with us?” Sam asks, voice hushed.
“I don’t really care what he wants,” Dean says before Castiel can explain. “I just wanna kick his nasty herpetic ass back to Hell.”
Castiel shifts positions again, the backward arch of his neck slight for a few seconds as he considers his words carefully. When he levels his eyes with the brothers’ again, they are closed. “He doesn’t want both of you.” And his eyes seem to have gone paler when he opens them again and looks hard at Dean, and he says, “He just wants you, Dean.”
Sam stops breathing for the span of several seconds after he hears the words. His gaze lingers on Castiel before crawling slowly to his brother’s blank face. “I... don’t... I’m not really following you here,” he manages after a while.
Dean, meanwhile, he just stares, and Castiel stares right back.
“Belial is Lucifer’s right hand man,” Castiel explains, like he’s reading out directions on how to put a fucking table together or something, completely toneless and detached and just blank. It unnerves Dean, even pisses him off a little, how blasé Castiel is about all of this. “If he somehow managed to cast his spell on Dean, that would open the door for Lucifer to walk free. Dean would be out of the way and his allegiance would be to Belial. Dean is the only one who can stop the Seals from breaking and with him gone, breaking the final ones would be child’s play.” Again, hesitation; then he finishes, voice cast low and stern, “The war would be lost.”
Dean blinks away the dryness in his eyes as his gaze sinks to the floor. A spell, he thinks. The kiss... Fucking hell.
“So,” Sam begins, “That’s how Belial reaps his power, through sex. He casts this spell on them, and they physically surrender to him. Which means, of course, eventually they’ll also surrender mentally?”
When Castiel says nothing, his silence confirms Sam’s theory. “Dean?”
He makes a noise of acknowledgment, but still his eyes don’t move. Eventually he bites his lip, which is the only movement he has elicited in minutes.
“Dean, you okay?”
It is Sam’s voice that snaps him back to the world. Dean’s eyes clear and he shakes his head quickly, looking from his brother’s concerned face to Castiel’s vacant one. He shifts, shrugs nervously. “So what’s the diag-nonsense then? We just strap a chastity belt on me and Belial leaves me alone?”
“Dean, you need to run,” Castiel says quickly, and his voice is so solid and urgent and grave that not even Dean can think of anything to say back to him.
~ ~ ~
The first time Sam notices his brother is sick is when they pull into a diner for breakfast the next morning and he sticks with just coffee. He watches with mixed curiosities as Dean rips sugar packets open two at a time, dumping them into his mug. He gets to at least eight by the time Sam sarcastically pushes a sugar jar in his direction.
“Need this?” he asks, eyebrows knitting in a blending of confusion and concern.
“Shut up,” Dean spits with no real venom.
He really knows something is wrong when the waitress behind the counter asks them if they’d like a slice of oven-fresh blueberry pie, and Dean says no thanks.
Something was definitely going on.
~ ~ ~
{to be continued...}
ONTO PART TWO.
Aaaaaaand it starts. This will be 15 chapters of an epic love story, a tale of brotherhood and the Apocalypse, tons of whump, torture, mindfucking, and a whole hell of a lot of porn. \o/
Title: The Propensities of Good Men, 1/15
Characters: Dean, Sam, Castiel (part 1)
Pairing(s): Dean/Castiel ftmfw!
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~8,289 (part 1)
Spoilers: I started writing this after 4/19 aired, so it's an AU from there. As far as this fic is concerned, anything 4/20 or thereafter never happened.
Warnings: Sexuality, consent issues (if spell-casting counts?), violence, brief het sex.
A/N: This thing is a monster. Be forewarned. Also, kudos to my wondermous beta/wife/other half ghosts for cracking the whip in the best way possible.
And when night darkens the streets, then wander
forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence & wine.
John Milton, PARADISE LOST
~ ~ ~
Dean has no idea how they’re going to get out of this one.
They’ve been in some nasty scraps before, but this is inarguably, without a doubt, inexplicably, just about the worst one, and as he runs for the Impala he thinks as hard as has ever thought, but he can’t see any kind of way out of this. Somewhere to his left he hears Sam groan, hears the screams of the demons his brother has destroyed, before he feels the blow to his stomach and he falls. Five minutes ago they were alone, just him and Sam and one demon. They were almost finished with the exorcism when Dean heard it: approaching footsteps. Lots of them. He signaled to Sam and they flattened to the walls in unison, poised for attack. The demon laughed then, a strange, cooing, guttural sound, and Dean threw a dose of holy water on it to shut it up. It was a weak, new demon, just a pawn in the scheme of things, so the exorcism had been going smoothly. But now there was something else outside - something big, by the sounds of it.
Dean stepped outside and immediately wished he hadn’t. They were surrounded on all sides by an encroaching wall - nurses, businessmen, housewives, cheerleaders. All obviously possessed, if the solid black glint in their eyes wasn’t a dead giveaway. There were hundreds of them, and as they casually made their way toward the shed where Sam and Dean were, Dean turned to his little brother and made the understatement of the year: “We should go.”
The Impala was just twenty or thirty yards from the shed, parked inconspicuously behind a clump of grassy weeds, but even a short distance seemed like miles when they had that many demons between where they were and where they needed to be. Sam’s immediate reaction was to tap into his powers, that hidden reservoir Dean hadn’t even begun to understand, and destroy as many as he could on the spot. He took down three, five, six of them, but couldn’t keep up with it forever. His powers were draining him; Dean could see it happening clear as day, and yet the demons kept coming. Swarming, like wasps, until the only thought left in Dean’s head besides an aching pressure and the repetitive dull thrum of his pulse were the simple words: oh, fuck.
Dean tries to fight off as many as he can while Sam keeps working on killing as many as he can. When he hears Sam’s voice break through the commotion, he looks over just in time to see his brother fall to his knees, and for all the world he looks about as lifeless as he did back in Cold Oak so many years ago. “Sam!” he calls, but it doesn’t do anything to help their situation. Sam doesn’t even respond.
Dean sees the demon approach, but he can’t really do anything about it since he’s fighting off a small army of his own. A sleazy one, attorney-looking type, sidles up in front of Sam and smiles a toothy grin before he rears back and takes his swing, wood plank in hand. It’s a rough impact, a sickening jolt of an uppercut under Sam’s jaw, and Dean swears he can hear the crack from twenty feet away even through the racket of what is fast becoming a battlefield. Sam flies onto his back, disoriented for a moment, but keeps his hand out, poised for exorcism. Dean calls his name again when he sees that no matter how hard Sammy tries, it’s just not doing a damn thing. He manages to remember the flask of holy water in his pocket, and, feeling like he should have thought of it earlier, flings a protective arc of the stuff at the demons blocking the path to his brother. They shrink away with a slight sizzling sound, but seem to come back even stronger. Dean realizes that the holy water didn’t do anything but piss them off even more, and he thinks about it, and he suddenly realizes that this is how it’s going to end.
The blunt pressure of a right hook hits his side, so hard he can almost feel his ribs bowing. Something hard and solid, maybe a baseball bat, cracks against the side of his knee and he falls with a yelp. That had to have dislodged something, he thinks absently, before there's a hard punch to his left temple, a hand around his throat, and he begins to fade.
An indefinite amount of time passes as his air slowly slips away, but even though his eyes are closed and the world’s gone bleary he sees a staggeringly bright stab of light photograph the blood vessels in his eyelids. It seems to chase away the demon, because the pressure around his windpipe is suddenly gone. His throat springs open and he sucks down a huge gulp of air, retching instinctively for a beat. When the light flashed he heard Sam scream, and when he opens his eyes Castiel is there and Sam has his hands clamped over his eyes. Dean tries to call out to his brother, but he only coughs as the air returns to his body. Sickly choking sounds that piss him off because he wants to be able to ask his brother if he’s alright, but fuck, that bastard got him good. Feels like he’s got a noose still tightened around his neck.
A few demons turn and run; the ones that stay to fight are very quickly disposed of, freezing for a moment in agony before bright flashes of white light and red fire rip through their now eyeless bodies. Dean finds the hushed thumps of their bodies hitting the ground oddly disconcerting. Castiel extends a hand with hardly a change in expression, maybe a slight twitch at one corner of his mouth, though it’s unclear whether this is a manifestation of power or disgust. Perhaps amusement. Dean really can’t tell, and it’s not like Castiel is an open book anyway. The demon at Sam’s side shocks into flame and ash with an awful screech, twin tendrils of black smoke - not the demonic kind, Dean notices, just the singed wisp of quick, hot fire - erupting from its eyes. A few more seconds of Dean coughing, strangulation mingled with the too-familiar reek of burned flesh, before he manages to gulp down enough air to wrestle out his brother’s name.
Sam holds up a hand to signal he is alright, though he stays on the ground and keeps his other hand tightly across his eyes. Dean coughs again, looks around, and notices that the field is mostly desolate now, all the demons having been either destroyed or frightened away by Castiel’s presence. His eyes burn from the flash of light and his head throbs in his temples from the jar of a punch, but he manages to sit up and look back at the unassuming man who just saved his life. Well, the unassuming creature. Angel. Whatever.
Two demons appear behind Castiel and try to overtake him, and Dean wants to call for him to look out!, but the angel spins and palms one in the center of its chest, sending it flying far back with the easy snap of its sternum. The other demon manages to uppercut him, but he barely winces and simply grabs the creature in the crook of its shoulder and shoves down. There’s a loud crack as its neck breaks, a bright pop of clean white light through the air as Castiel seals a palm to its forehead. He is barely breathing any kind of hard and there is a slight snarl on his face, but just as quickly he reassumes the vague, ordinary appearance of the run-of-the-mill, holy-tax-accountant Dean has grown used to over the months. The transformation is seamless.
Sometimes Dean forgets how much of a badass Castiel is - that he is a soldier, a centuries-old relentless warrior, that he has killed more demons in more ways than Dean could ever begin to hold a candle to, who mind-whammied Sam and Bobby and survived a demonic knife through the heart, and that yeah, he’s a pretty badass motherfucker - until something like this happens and he remembers why, deep down inside, Castiel frightens him.
Castiel wipes the blood from his lip and stares at it curiously, as if he doesn’t know what to do with it. His hands disappear into his coat pockets and suddenly his lip isn’t busted anymore; he’s a quick healer. He walks to Dean, asks if he is alright.
“I’m fine, yeah, but what the hell was that all about?” Dean asks, climbing to his feet. “They came outta nowhere, just popped up. And there were hundreds of ‘em.”
“That was just a taste of the Legions we’ll face,” Castiel replies coolly.
Dean blinks, incredulous. “The hell does that mean?” he asks, but Castiel shoots him a glare that seems to say be patient, so he doesn’t expect a response.
Castiel helps Sam up and quietly asks how his eyes are. Sam nods in response, but he is still blinking strangely and Dean can just about see his pupils even from a good two yards away. Dean eyes his brother carefully as he rubs his jaw. Sam’s nose is bleeding and he has a line of blood draining out of his mouth, probably from the impact of his teeth smashing together so hard. He shoots Dean a glance and nods, almost unnoticeably, and Dean nods back; their secret language to signal they are okay.
Castiel seems to be completely healed at this point, no sign he was ever fighting at all. His hands are in his coat pockets, as per usual, as his gaze darts frantically around, absorbing the scenery with eyes that see much more than either Dean or Sam could ever hope to. “You need to leave,” he says. “Go back to your room and pack. Drive a few hours away and settle somewhere. Don’t do anything conspicuous.”
Dean hisses a snarky laugh, thinking dude we have done this before, but the glare from Castiel shuts him up. Sam asks what is going on and Castiel says, “We’ll talk later,” and just like that, with the quietest rustle of feathers, he is gone.
~ ~ ~
They make it back to the motel and pack quickly, leave without checking out and head West. They end up just outside of Memphis, where it’s snowing and the wind moves constantly. Sam doesn’t think they should have left, but Dean says to deal with it. Something big is going on, really fucking big if the droves of demons that attacked them in Vandever say anything, and Castiel had told them to leave, so they left. Dean doesn’t expand on the subject; Sam draws back into himself with a resigned sigh.
“Do we have to summon him or something?” Sam asks after a while when Castiel does not show up as he promised.
Dean pulls up a corner of the blinds before dropping them just as quickly. He shakes his head and says, “No.” Outside it is barely snowing, the ghostly white flakes floating carefully to the ground in a thin wet blanket. It’s sad, and slick, and it makes Dean want to be somewhere like California, where the weather is always the same and it never dives into depressing frigidity like this. He hates Midwest winters, hates the slush of snow. “He always seems to just kinda show up outta the blue anyway.” Dean sits on the edge of his bed and cracks open a beer, and Sam goes to take a shower.
It is the middle of the night before Castiel shows. Dean wakes up ungracefully and in a panic, instinctively grabbing at the knife under his pillow, and Sam wakes up just after him. The metallic click of his gun is clean and smooth in the dark, but he lowers it quickly when he sees the familiar form of the angel leaning passively against the dresser. Dean flips the knife over and stuffs it back under his pillow; Sam’s hand falls and he glances down apologetically.
“Well you’re fashionably late,” Dean quips sleepily. He sits up against the headboard and Castiel must move, because he hears the shift of fabric.
“I had other things to attend to,” he says flatly.
“Yeah? Any of them happen to be exorcising those demons that got away, so their meat suits could go back to life as expected?” Dean yawns after he says it, rubs lazily at his eyes.
Castiel walks more into the light, stopping between the brothers’ beds. His eyes wander to the closed window as he sighs. “The people in that town were already dead by the time you arrived.”
Dean blinks; he can see the turn of his brother’s head as Sam looks to him in the dark. “Come again?”
“Dean, you have to trust me,” Castiel cuts in, the scrape of his voice low and inarguably serious. Dean knows the tone, the I am an angel of the Lord tone, all business, no softness. “Vandever was already gone, there’s no point in mourning its loss now. There are larger things happening.”
Sam stays quiet, watching Castiel with sharp eyes. Dean twirls a hand in the air. “And?” he asks, impatient.
“Someone in my garrison managed to capture one of the demons that attacked you, persuade it to talk. Before it slipped out of its host, it told us some - disturbing things.” Castiel’s eyes lower to the floor, but he doesn’t move. He seems to withdraw into thought for a moment, leaving the ambiguity of his last statement unattended. The pause elicits a bright flare of impatience deep in Dean’s belly, but just when he’s about to urge Castiel to continue, he does. “The demons that overran the city were just one Legion,” he says through a slight tense in his jaw.
“One Legion of... how many are we talking here?” Sam asks.
“Eighty.”
There is brief silence as Dean flicks on the lamp between the beds. He rubs a hand across his lips, looks up to his brother. The stare he receives in response tells him that Sam is just as short on words as he is. “Eighty Legions?” he finally asks.
“Yes.”
“But that’s - one Legion took down a whole town. And you’re saying that there’s seventy-nine more where those came from?” Sam’s voice is incredulous.
“Yes.”
Dean gives a sudden laugh, bitter against the quiet. Castiel’s gaze lingers curiously on him. The angel’s features are drawn, marked by some expression Dean tries to identify but can’t. Irritation, confusion, anxiety. Fascination. Culpability. “Boy, you’re just a ball of good news, aren’t you, Cas?”
Castiel doesn't move apart from the slight purse of his lips. Dean leans forward, elbows on his knees. “You wanna come up with a snappy excuse for why you dragged us out of there when we could have stayed and helped those people? I thought we took care of all of ‘em, and now you tell me that the whole town was possessed? We could have exorcised them, Sammy could have used his demon-whatever-mojo and sent ‘em all packing.”
A line forms between Sam’s eyebrows as he shakes his head at his brother, but he doesn’t say anything.
“We could have saved lives, Cas. You gonna tell me God doesn’t want us saving innocent people now?”
“They would have killed you,” Castiel says wryly.
“We should have stayed,” Dean snaps. “In fact, screw this - I’m goin’ back.”
“You can’t.” Dean starts to gather his things, but the force in Castiel’s usually vague voice freezes him in place, stock still for the span of several heartbeats. All the same, though, he swallows back the dryness in his throat and keeps packing after a beat. Tries to ignore that weird flutter that happens in the floor of his belly whenever Castiel gets all forceful and no-bullshit.
“Somebody’s gotta help those people, and since all the holy forces of Heaven are doing such a bang-up job, I’ll see if I can raise the bar.”
Castiel allows Dean to pass, but his lips curl back from his teeth momentarily and Sam thinks he sees a flash of irritation cross the angel’s face. The ring of his voice, how it lowers just a shade, confirms it. “Dean, everyone is dead. Literally.”
Dean finally stops, blinking in the bathroom doorway with a toothbrush in one hand and his dirty, army-surplus duffel flopping in the other.
Castiel sighs, shoulders slumping with the exhalation. “It’s a city of corpses. The demons killed their hosts when they left.”
Finally a silence settles in the room as Dean just blinks, absorbs the bitter implications of what Castiel is telling them. In the back of his mind he wonders how much truth there is in Castiel’s statement, if the angel was being honest or if he skewed the truth, not lying so much as omitting the truth, basically the same fucking thing. Fucking angels and their shady secrets. All their ulterior motives and underhanded, weak excuses at morality. All their pomp and splendor and arrogance, how they look down their holy fucking noses at anything half a rung below them on the celestial ladder. Dean finds himself almost smirking as the thought train builds upon itself. Castiel had been willing to wipe out a whole town once before already; what made this any different? If he was told to do it, he’d do it, vertebrates need not apply. Which, Dean guesses, it why he’s such a good soldier, why they’re all such good soldiers. God’s own personal I, Robots. Because it’s easy to do what you’re told, get down to business and do what needs to be done, if you don’t have that obnoxious, gnawing thing called a conscience getting in the way all the time.
Dean tries to guess how many of the people in Vandever were killed at the hands of demons, and just how many at the hands of angels, and as the numbers stack, he doesn’t like the odds.
He tosses his backpack onto the bed and braces a hand against the doorway. “So there’s really nothing left,” he muses, only partially a question.
Castiel does not reply, except for pushing his hands back into the pockets of his rumpled trench coat. Sam swallows hard, keeps his voice sympathetic when he asks, “Why are there so many all of a sudden?”
The silence extends beyond Sam’s question for the span of a few seconds as Castiel regards Dean carefully. Indecipherable emotions seems to pass over him, but just as soon they are gone and he is staring distantly at the floor again. “Legions follow orders blindly. They can’t act independently. They do as they are commanded and nothing else,” he explains.
Dean balks, but Castiel ignores it.
“They are here for one reason and that is to bring one of you to their master. We don’t know yet which one of you they want or why.”
Sam rakes in a breath and catches his brother’s eyes. “Is it Lilith?” he asks.
“We don’t think so. This seems bigger.”
Dean’s jaw slackens. “Bigger than Lilith. Really.” He hesitates. “How serious are you right now? ‘Cause I really can’t tell, what with your natural gift for sarcasm and all.”
“Very,” Castiel tonelessly replies, unwittingly perfectly illustrating Dean’s point.
Dean falls back onto his bed, carding his hands through his hair. “So we got Lilith on our tail already, trying to start the friggin’ Apocalypse, and now we’ve got this other jackass cropping up trying to carry us off to Never-never-land. What gives?”
Castiel blinks, and when he does it is a few times in a row, as if he had forgotten to blink for some time and his eyes had dried out. Three short feet away, Dean hears Sam fidget a little. “Eighty Legions are only sent to Earth when commanded by one of the Archdemons,” Castiel explains.
“And who are they?” Dean asks, feeling suddenly stupid.
Castiel doesn’t miss a beat. “You might say they’re the highest on the food chain, after Lucifer.”
Neither Sam nor Dean really knows what to say, despite all the questions brimming at their throats, so they remain silent. Castiel glances to both of them and, almost imperceptibly, nods. “You should be on guard,” he says.
When Dean looks at him, Castiel's eyes seem to have darkened from their usual ethereal blue, as if there is something new dancing behind them. He tries to guess what it is, tries to map it out and pin it down, but the only thing he comes up with is worry, and then the lamp flickers and Castiel is gone.
When Dean finally falls back asleep, the sun has long risen to streak neon lavenders and magentas across the sky, a steady golden glow washing against the undersides of the clouds that hang palpable and ominous in its depths. Sam keeps his eyes open, even in the dark, and listens to the deep draws of his brother’s breath. By the time the AM/FM alarm clock goes off at eight, he has yet to get any rest.
~ ~ ~
The bar is only a seven-minute drive from the motel. It's called Cactus Spike’s, and it's just the kind of place where Dean fits in best: dirty and loud and really fucking shady. A place for the young and the single, the quick and the dirty. A place where nobody looks anybody else in the eye, and nothing is really spoken about the world that begins and ends at the heavy iron doors marred by countless bumper stickers and drunken Sharpie autographs. It’s small, only a few pool tables to choose from, each illuminated by a dull tiffany spotlight. Green chalkboards linger on the walls beside each table, sporting worn-down stalks of blue chalk that have been thumbed over too many times. Dartboards that never get used, dusty old couches stained with Sam doesn’t even want to know what, sporadic table-and-chair sets. A juke box rounds out the joint, the old kind with the clumsy mechanical elbows that manually flip the pages for you. And a music collection that’s eclectic at best, but that Sam is sure Dean thinks is the best thing this side of Metallica.
Sam doesn’t talk much, preferring instead to take a pub table to himself and browse the online weather reports for electrical storms around Memphis. More than a few nice-looking girls pass, make eyes at him, but for the most part he ignores them. That, he’ll leave to Dean.
The man himself has racked up quite a debt at table four. A petite Korean has put him three hundred in the hole, a real leather and lace type with fishnets and a bright crimson camisole that stings through the dusky light of the bar like a brilliant poppy, dangerous and intoxicating and infallibly beautiful. Sam is not surprised when he sees that Dean cares much more about getting in the girl’s pants than he ever did about the money. He’s had more than a few shots by the looks of it. Sam shakes his head with a smirk as he realizes he’ll be spending most of the night by himself. Where he would stay, that was a question he would have loved an answer to, but also one that he was all too familiar with.
The next frame passes and Dean tosses another fifty onto the green. The girl gladly takes it and, with a long stretch, puts it up on the light. Dean puts the game on hold as she racks up, sliding over to the bar for another round. On his way back, he stops at Sam’s table. Pokes a shot in his direction with a single finger, but Sam doesn’t take it immediately. He raises his eyebrows.
Dean shrugs. He waits a few moments before looking at his brother again, which is the exact moment that the girl whistles sharply across the bar. She settles the pool cue in front of her and her mouth moves to form the word, game?. Dean clears his throat and throws her his best grin, then looks to Sam. He jerks his head in the girl’s direction and he doesn’t have to ask - Sam hands over the keys with a dramatic roll of his eyes.
A hand claps on his back.
He takes the shot as soon as Dean leaves.
~ ~ ~
She says her name is Michelle and Dean believes it implicitly.
They get inside the room and she doesn’t wait to get to the point. She kisses him hard, blowing through his skull like a fucking twelve-gauge, and it’s almost like it’s laced with some kind of drug because when she pulls back he immediately wants more. Her lips are smooth as glass, fuck, even smoother, and she tastes amazing, like sugared rum or butterscotch candy, a penetrating sweetness that gnaws at Dean’s bones and hurts his teeth with how rich it is. His voice stretches into a bright laugh as a whiskey bottle appears out of her purse. Michelle takes a pull from the bottle and spins the cap back on before she tosses it to him with a smirk, and Dean might be a little drunk but he's still sober enough to think, holy fucking shit, where has this woman been all my life?
He takes a long swig, settles into the burn behind his sternum, and waits at the door while she kicks off her boots, tall black bondage things with laces all down the front, silver buckles punched along the sides, and her fishnets right after. She’s feline with the smooth calculated way she sweeps her hair back or bats her deliciously long eyelashes, and really she’s probably the hottest fucking thing Dean thinks he has ever seen, with her pear-green contact lenses and her luscious dark silk mane hanging in twin curtains around her shoulders. When he stumbles to the edge of the bed - whoa, alcohol sort of swerving things around already, must have had more than he thought - she licks her smirking lips and stares up at him from under wicked long lashes. She’s so sure of herself it’s almost scary, and through it all there’s this insistent background hum that something’s not quite right about all this, but more than anything the only thought in Dean’s head is the twist of that succulent little mouth and all the things he wants to do to it.
And then his jeans are gone and that mouth is on his cock and it is hot and wet as Dean threads his fingers in her hair, drops his head back, throat opening up with a sigh, and yeah, she’s just about perfect at this point.
She pulls back just when he’s almost done and looks up at him with the reddest lips, stained and swollen and slick. Her skirt slides off and she pulls him to her, letting him on top first, and even though he wants to say something witty, something practical that will still make her giggle and swoon like gotta put my raincoat on, she doesn’t let him and as soon as he’s inside of her it doesn’t fucking matter anymore. A moan intermingles with a growl, rips out of his chest, and she’s tight and wet and apparently likes it when he fucks her hard. The noises she makes are small, mewling ones, and she shuts her eyes tight and it’s hot, so hot, that Dean thinks about slowing down just to make it last longer but ultimately decides, fuck it. And he doesn’t stop and it doesn’t slow down and his pulse is only rushing harder when she pushes on his shoulders and climbs, cat-like, small black nails clinging tightly to his shoulders, on top.
The new angle is exquisite and Dean watches with hazy eyes as she moves above him. His brain is kind of bleached out, vision gone all fuzzy and too-bright, and Dean is more than aware that something must be wrong. Sex is awesome but it’s usually not like this - and really he’s not even sure he could call this awesome anymore, just... weird - but his limbs have gone like sandbags and he can’t really move them. His mind screeches to a halt but his body keeps on going.
Her hand stilts against the wall for leverage, heat and sweat blaring a perfect print on the sheetrock. It moves down to the headboard, to his chest, his arm, scratching at the brand left there by Castiel, and just when she howls out in pleasure, he does too. As soon as he comes she bends to force her lips against his again, laced sweetly with something that numbs his entire body and blazes it up like a fucking bonfire at the same time. The slight taste of whiskey mingles with her sugary background flavor, sweet and luxurious and exhilarating.
Even through the fog in his eyes Dean can see her above him clear as spring, those damn green eyes that aren’t so much sexy as they are fucking creepy now, and he almost speaks but she places a finger over his lips. His head is spinning in this really weird way, like everything he’s drunk tonight is just now hitting him, along with about a dozen roofies and at least a whole fucking bongload of Purple Haze, but somehow it’s good. It’s really, really good, and it only gets better every time she kisses him, incoherent bliss building upon itself with every swipe and tangle of her tongue, darting along the roof of his mouth, dipping just past his teeth, until Dean just wants to splay his mouth wide open, swallow her up, let her crawl inside completely and lace his blood from the inside out.
The next time he opens his eyes they are bleary and clouded, misted over like a cataract, but he feels so amazing that it’s hard to even comprehend, so they close again. And when they open back up a second time, he sees the silver glint of a knife, Ruby's knife, but his reflexes are somehow dulled, the edges of everything smearing together like wet paint. He can’t stop it when she fights his wrist down and presses the blade to his throat, and fuck.
He’s been duped.
“Hi there, Dean,” she says in the sultriest voice he’s ever heard. It occurs to him that he hasn’t given her his name - his real one, at least - and he tries to push her away but she’s impossibly strong. He can’t budge her a single inch.
“We’ve never formally met,” she continues, “But I’ve heard so much about you. You’re all the talk down in the pit, you know. It’s nice to finally meet the man behind the legend.”
Dean struggles some more as his senses start to come back, but still he can’t do a damn thing to get her off of him. The blade is solid and assertive against his throat; he can feel it cut into the topmost layers of his flesh, although he doesn’t feel any warmth or fiery pain, so it’s safe to say she hasn’t actually drawn blood yet. Still, though, her hand is unnervingly steady and it’s making Dean really fucking jumpy.
“Though I must admit, I was expecting you to be a little…” She pauses, allowing her eyes to wander a long line down his body to where their hips meet. Her head tilts and a skewed grin plays across those intoxicating red lips. “Taller,” she finishes, and Dean sneers with a sudden flare of white-hot rage.
“Who the hell are you?” he hisses through clenched teeth. In response she kisses him again, and when she does he almost doesn’t want it to end because it just feels so goddamn good.
“Gimme a B,” she whispers in his ear, and his eyes flutter shut out of pleasure; “Gimme an E,” she continues, scratching down the front of his chest; “Gimme an... L,” and she licks the length of his throat with the syllable.
Somehow he manages to wrest the knife from her grip in one quick movement and holds it at her back, barely piercing the skin. Hesitating. His brain is still all foggy and bleary, but there’s not a doubt in his mind that he can dig out whatever answers he needs from this bitch, sober or not, if he really wants to. “Who the hell are you,” he demands.
But she just grins, and a split second later the room is filled with an impressive column of black smoke. It escapes through the air conditioning vents before the girl, whose real name Dean doesn’t even know, collapses on top of him. Unconscious but alive.
And the only thing Dean can say as he scrubs a palm roughly over his face, taps his cheeks to bring circulation back into his dimmed brain, is, “Ah, shit.”
~ ~ ~
Cactus Spike’s has a neon cactus-shaped sign outside that Dean finds to be an obscure comfort at the moment. He rips the door open hard, stops at the bar for a quick shot, then finds Sam easily. He’s talking with a big guy, a real hardass by the looks of him, around the same table Dean shot earlier. It’s the other guy’s shot and Sam takes a long pull of beer before he feels the hand on his shoulder. Instinctively he spins to face the pressure, his elbow coming up in a sharp angle but stopping just short of knocking Dean’s nose straight into his skull. It’s the quick-toned poise of someone well-trained, someone a lot stronger than they look, someone permanently on guard and misleadingly dangerous. It would almost make Dean proud, but he’s got other things on his mind right now.
“Dean,” Sam exclaims, confusion lilting in his voice. “What’s up, man, I thought you were turning in for the night?”
The big guy scratches and clucks his tongue, nods in Sam’s direction. “Your shot,” he says.
Sam bends to take the shot, but Dean’s hand curls around his arm and he leans close and says, “Sorry to cramp your style but we gotta jet.”
Black Sabbath whines in the background so loud that Sam can barely hear him. He keeps his arm extended alongside the cue, a perfect parallel line, the stuff of geometry, as he searches his brother curiously. “What? Why?”
The bulldog of a guy shooting stripes shifts impatiently and says, “Look, guy, we’re in the middle of a cash game here.”
Dean cuts him off with a sharp hey and the man’s chest inflates. “Keep the money, Chuckles, game’s over.”
“Dean!”
Sam shrugs his hands open to the air and Dean uses the opportunity to snatch the cue from him. It rattles onto the table with an sharp wooden clack as he raises his eyebrows at his little brother. “Let’s go,” he says, and it’s so stern and threatening that Sam is following him out the door without argument or reservation within the next twenty seconds.
“What the hell is going on?” Sam pleads as he catches up to his brother at the Impala. Dean jerks the door open and climbs in.
“She was a demon, Sam, the damn pool chick was a demon,” he lets loose once they’re safe inside the car.
Sam’s jaw slackens momentarily, then snaps shut again. He jerks his head a little, surprised. “Did you kill it?”
The easiness of the question almost unnerves Dean. Two years ago, one even, that’s not the first thing that would have come out of Sam’s mouth. It would have been a tentative are you okay?, maybe an oh shit or a what the hell?. Now he just jumps straight in, doesn’t beat around the bush or sidestep. No pussyfooting around these days, Dean thinks. It’s a discomfiting realization - how hardened his brother has become, how far removed from that goofy, gawky bookworm kid who loved Lucky Charms and Sour Punch straws more than life itself - one that creeps a distinct, visceral taste like bile up into his throat.
He blinks, his fingers working in a furious rhythm on the top curve of the steering wheel. “No.”
It stays quiet for a moment, until Sam tilts his head in his brother’s direction. “And?” he asks. “Aren’t you gonna tell me what happened?”
Dean clears his throat and his eyes barely skitter across Sam’s.
“Oh, come on. You actually…?”
Dean still doesn’t say anything; just nods.
Sam’s hand pulls into a tent over his eyes. “Dean,” he breathes out, something in his voice sounding disappointed.
“What?” Dean snaps, venomous. His eyes drift away from Sam again, back to the patrons milling around outside the bar. The Impala remains dormant as they speak. “Not like you can talk,” and his voice is quieter this time. “You’re the poster child for bangin’ demonic chicks, Sammy. I mean, Jesus, why don’t you just bone Linda Blair while you’re at it.”
Sam almost has to laugh at the comment, though part of him is openly affronted. He pulls a breath in through his nose, rests his arm on the window sill. “Okay,” he says in what is obviously his best objective tone, “Then what happened?”
Dean remains silent, drawn into thought. Sam waits, and watches him the entire time. Finally, when Dean doesn’t respond for a long stretch of minutes, he urges, “So?”
“I don’t remember, okay?” Dean admits not a little reluctantly. Something the demon did to him - nearest he can guess it was probably transmitted through those fucking kisses - it inked out almost his entire collection of memories from the encounter. He remembers the physical feelings, and when he does he can almost feel himself growing hard again, but the details are all glossed over, like how exactly she got the knife and what he had done with the girl’s body after she passed out. His voice lowers when he says, “She dosed me with something.”
Sam’s eyes widen. “A demon slipped you a mickey?”
“Sam,” Dean warns, and his brother shrugs innocently.
“What? I just - that’s unusual.” Silence catches up to them in the minutes that follow. The music from the bar is barely audible, heavily muffled through the doors and windows, not clear enough to make out. Dean tries to recognize it and he thinks he pegs it as Motorhead, but then Sam starts talking again.
“Why would a demon drug you with something? That’s just not their style, man.” He pauses to think. “They want something from you, they smash your head through a wall until you’re either unconscious or you give it to them.”
“Well, apparently all this chick wanted was -”
“Dean. Really.”
The sweep of Dean’s grin is easy as he glances to his brother beside him. Sam’s face is wringed with disgust, a little bit of annoyance, which is what makes it impossible for Dean to resist the urge to ruffle the errant feathers of his hair with a chuckle, if not for anything else, just to piss Sam off. Sam jerks away from the action with a groan, pawing clumsily at Dean’s hand until he stops, and then Dean starts up the Impala and they’re laughing quietly, mumbling through Bad Company as they roll back to the motel.
~ ~ ~
Dean seems nervous the entire time Sam works on researching the demon that attacked him. He hovers around the window and periodically lifts the blinds, and each time his eyes dart around a few times. Then the blinds snap closed and he sits down uneasily again. Any minute now he’s expecting half the town to appear over the hill’s bend, eyes black as oil slicks and fists ready to take them down just like in Vandever. Sam notices with unease how the whiskey bottle on the nightstand gradually empties over the minutes. When they got here there was only a few ounces missing; now, though, almost an entire fourth of the bottle is gone.
Sam bites at his thumbnail and half-whispers, “Oh shit,” and it’s at that point when Dean knows that nothing good can come of this whole ordeal.
“What,” he asks tonelessly, barely a question at all. For the past two hours he’s been watching a staticy marathon of The Simpsons, but he hasn’t laughed once. That’s when Sam had really known something was wrong; Dean always laughs at The Simpsons.
The air conditioner kicks on with a shudder, flickering the lamp for a moment. “I think I know who attacked you,” Sam says without removing his eyes from the computer screen. He watches as Dean stretches out across his bed, rubbing at his eyes, and it strikes him at once just how tired his brother looks.
Dean’s hand stays over his eyes as he asks, “Who?”
Sam looks back to the screen and sighs. His voice deepens just slightly when he admits, albeit grudgingly, “I’m pretty sure it was Belial.”
Suddenly there is a faint breeze through the room, then Castiel’s voice saying, “Good work, Sam.”
Dean jumps up from his bed, startled, and warily eyes the angel. He tells himself he should be used to that by now, how Castiel just seems to pop in unannounced, with that smart frown of his and the frumpy sweep of his P.I. coat that Dean has always thought was kind of lame, the crackle of electricity and the distinct hum of power emanating from each angle and curve of his body - but he’s not. It still surprises him, and honestly it’s kind of really fucking annoying sometimes, because hello, privacy? And while there is a distinct comfort accompanying the knowledge that you’ve constantly got an angel of the Lord watching your back twenty-four-seven, Dean hasn’t decided yet if he finds it comforting or just... well, creepy. He shifts his weight, brow muddling. “Wait, you knew that?”
“Yes,” Castiel replies, hands settling in his jacket pockets. He leans casually against the wall on the other side of Dean’s bed and continues, “In all fairness, though, I only knew a few hours before you.”
Dean looks to Sam, and Sam shrugs. “And you didn’t think to warn me?”
“I was busy with other things,” Castiel says. At the words, his eyes seem to be hiding something, and Dean catches onto it but lets it slide. “But trust me when I say that I did try to get to you first.”
Dean shrugs one shoulder loosely. “You seem to be a little bad at that, Cas.” The angel smiles almost imperceptibly, a nearly indiscernible curve at one corner of his lips, but doesn’t say anything else. Dean sits down on the edge of Sam’s bed, leaning onto his elbows. “So… Belial’s a dude. Why would he possess a smokin’ hot Asian chick? Even better, why would he wait to reveal himself until after we’ve - y’know, fornicated or copulated or however you holy host guys sugarcoat it?”
For an instant, Castiel’s gaze hovers on the TV. He seems to be studying it, enthralled by its colors and movement, but quickly he shifts his focus to Dean and stares hard at him in that raw, unblinking way of his. “Belial is the carnal side of man; the chief demon of lust, sex, and pleasure - the principal drives that make life worthwhile to some.”
Dean snarks and glances to Sam, but his face is a mask of concentration set on Castiel, so Dean tries to focus too. It’s challenging, though, hearing words like lust and sex coming out of Castiel’s perfectly sanctified mouth. They come out sounding alien, uncomfortable or forced or something, as if they are untranslated words of a foreign language that Castiel does not speak or understand. They carry with them a peculiar charge that Dean cannot ignore. Or even understand, for that matter.
“He is everything material about being human,” Castiel continues. “His creed is that humans don’t need saving or redemption; that the spirit becomes divine through experiences of the flesh. He believes that humanity is... degenerate. That you are creatures for demonic amusement. That you’re selfish and sexual animals easily turned in your allegiances. In his mind, there are no altruistic motives for anything humans do. There are no selfless acts. Everything that is done, is done solely in the spirit of growing higher in the ranks of Lucifer’s Infernal Order.”
Dean watches Castiel intently, narrows his eyes at him, and he realizes absently that that is the most he has ever heard the angel speak at one time.
“But who is he?” Sam asks, increasingly curious. Always thirsty for knowledge. “I mean, why’s he so powerful?”
Castiel draws a breath, licks his lips lightly, a movement that Dean doesn’t watch, really. “Belial was one of God’s most beautiful angels; he was created just after Lucifer, which gives them a very profound bond.” He hesitates, shifts his position. “He was the first true Fallen One; he fell before even Lucifer did. He also convinced Lucifer to stage a rebellion in Heaven, which eventually led to the downfall of - many.” Something in Castiel's eyes goes gray, goes sad, but it passes as a ghost before Dean can be sure it was ever there at all. He swallows thickly when he sees the brief flash of emotion, because he knows that some distant part of Castiel is in pain as he retraces his memories, and for the first time Dean feels something other than fear or annoyance or suspicion regarding the angel - he feels empathy.
“You are a model Son of Belial, Dean,” Castiel continues, all traces of the former emotion stamped out. Right back to business. “A sybarite. Lawless and fiercely independent.”
“So,” Dean interrupts thoughtfully. “He preys on horny people ‘cause they’re - sorry, ‘cause we’re - easy to turn Dark Side?”
Castiel nods, one deep and calculated movement. “In such simple terms, yes. Though you have a stronger conviction than most.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean stands, peeking out the window again. “Four months in Hell does a lot to a guy, not the least of which is makin’ him really damn determined he doesn’t ever go back again.”
“What does he want with us?” Sam asks, voice hushed.
“I don’t really care what he wants,” Dean says before Castiel can explain. “I just wanna kick his nasty herpetic ass back to Hell.”
Castiel shifts positions again, the backward arch of his neck slight for a few seconds as he considers his words carefully. When he levels his eyes with the brothers’ again, they are closed. “He doesn’t want both of you.” And his eyes seem to have gone paler when he opens them again and looks hard at Dean, and he says, “He just wants you, Dean.”
Sam stops breathing for the span of several seconds after he hears the words. His gaze lingers on Castiel before crawling slowly to his brother’s blank face. “I... don’t... I’m not really following you here,” he manages after a while.
Dean, meanwhile, he just stares, and Castiel stares right back.
“Belial is Lucifer’s right hand man,” Castiel explains, like he’s reading out directions on how to put a fucking table together or something, completely toneless and detached and just blank. It unnerves Dean, even pisses him off a little, how blasé Castiel is about all of this. “If he somehow managed to cast his spell on Dean, that would open the door for Lucifer to walk free. Dean would be out of the way and his allegiance would be to Belial. Dean is the only one who can stop the Seals from breaking and with him gone, breaking the final ones would be child’s play.” Again, hesitation; then he finishes, voice cast low and stern, “The war would be lost.”
Dean blinks away the dryness in his eyes as his gaze sinks to the floor. A spell, he thinks. The kiss... Fucking hell.
“So,” Sam begins, “That’s how Belial reaps his power, through sex. He casts this spell on them, and they physically surrender to him. Which means, of course, eventually they’ll also surrender mentally?”
When Castiel says nothing, his silence confirms Sam’s theory. “Dean?”
He makes a noise of acknowledgment, but still his eyes don’t move. Eventually he bites his lip, which is the only movement he has elicited in minutes.
“Dean, you okay?”
It is Sam’s voice that snaps him back to the world. Dean’s eyes clear and he shakes his head quickly, looking from his brother’s concerned face to Castiel’s vacant one. He shifts, shrugs nervously. “So what’s the diag-nonsense then? We just strap a chastity belt on me and Belial leaves me alone?”
“Dean, you need to run,” Castiel says quickly, and his voice is so solid and urgent and grave that not even Dean can think of anything to say back to him.
~ ~ ~
The first time Sam notices his brother is sick is when they pull into a diner for breakfast the next morning and he sticks with just coffee. He watches with mixed curiosities as Dean rips sugar packets open two at a time, dumping them into his mug. He gets to at least eight by the time Sam sarcastically pushes a sugar jar in his direction.
“Need this?” he asks, eyebrows knitting in a blending of confusion and concern.
“Shut up,” Dean spits with no real venom.
He really knows something is wrong when the waitress behind the counter asks them if they’d like a slice of oven-fresh blueberry pie, and Dean says no thanks.
Something was definitely going on.
~ ~ ~
{to be continued...}
ONTO PART TWO.