Grace: Fallen 1/2 [SPN, Destiel, R]
Title: Fallen
Rating: R
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Genre: angst, romance
Parts: Feathers + Fallen 2/2 + Grace
Warnings: Violence, non-consensual sexual situations
Summary: "Losing your grace can't be half as bad as you think. The only bite you took was a bit off, you know? There's a reason some angels really dig mortality."
Important note: Despite the third person POV, all that is described is what the character in the center experiences. Nothing stated about others or the surroundings is absolute, everything is subjective.
A/N: Fallen has to be one of the most depressingly... depressing fics I've ever written, and it definitely holds the record for miscommunication and claims the title of the one fic that was supposed to be happy but turned anything but. These suckers just don't behave. Especially Dean. Cas has his odd habits but I can deal with him, Dean's more of a clusterfuck. I have awful issues dealing with his character, which results in erratic behaviour... on both of our parts. Hopefully it isn't too obvious. I mean, it is, but I hope it doesn't bother anyone too much.
Also, no matter what the USA government or the canon says, mermaids are a thing now.
No spoilers after season 4, potential minor AU resulting of ignoring a character death, not set in any specific time in canon.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
There was a clock ticking somewhere. Each of its sounds echoed, muffled and distant, but as the only sound they seemed crystal clear through the man's sleep.
Dean curled up tighter, trying to reach the edge of the thin blanket around his body. When his fingers reached it, he pulled it up and with the cloth, another hand was carried up on him.
He smiled, his mind slowly waking up to the warmth and the dusty smell of the room they slept in. His fingers bent around the hand and he held it tight, reminding himself that he was blessed, that this was as close to paradise as he was getting today.
When he'd wake up entirely, he'd need to walk downstairs and eat, and his paradise would be gone.
In ten minutes, he was getting up from the bed. With gentle effort he turned Castiel on his back and stroked his forehead with his fingertips, finally pressing two fingers to take his temperature. His skin was a little sticky but cool, hinting that he might have suffered a fever during the night but that it was well gone by then. With a heavy sigh, Dean put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and walked the stairs down with heavy steps. He heard voices from the kitchen - Sam's, then Bobby's, then the sound a heavy cup hitting the table, then Sam's voice again.
The house smelled unusually much like old books, so they were probably reading up on something.
He crossed the living room and enjoyed the feel of the old worn smooth planks against his bare feet as much as he enjoyed the feel of the ragged rugs he stepped on on the way through.
”Morning.”
Bobby handed him a cup of coffee before he even managed to sit down.
”What are you reading?” he asked, accepting the cup as he pulled Sam's book to his side of the table, ”What - about mermaids? Why the hell would you read up on mermaids at this ungodly hour?”
Sam huffed and stole his book back.
”Dean, it's nearly half past eleven in the morning. Usually people don't consider this an ungodly hour anymore.”
”He's still asleep?” Bobby asked and glanced at the ceiling.
Dean pursed his lips and brought the cup up to them, tasting the welcome, bitter taste of black coffee in his mouth, washing or burning away the bad taste upon his tongue. Then he nodded, unable to say it aloud.
Castiel had been out for nearly two weeks. At first they'd considered bringing him to a hospital, but he'd never started showing any signs of dehydration or malnourishment. In fact, he didn't show any signs of having lost his grace but the minor detail that he was, in fact, practically comatose.
And perhaps not even practically. Maybe the word they should have used was, in fact, coma - but it sounded so much worse than sleep. Though he did sometimes appear to be dreaming, and he often turned around during the night, always on the side Dean sleeped on so that he was facing him when Dean woke up.
Dean always turned him back over and checked if there was any sign on his skin of irritation or wounds, the sort that appeared on patients unable to get up from the bed or change position often enough, but there was always nothing present.
The angel's temperature changed irregularly, sometimes he had fever, sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he was edging hypothermia. It made no sense at all, but hospital was out of question as long as he wasn't behaving like a human would. The doctors would have as good guesses as to what he was going through as any of them had, and would pretty fast pay attention to everything that was off about him - everything that was, in fact, normal for Castiel, like the fact that he hadn't eaten for weeks.
”So... why mermaids?” Dean asked again and Bobby exchanged looks with Sam.
It made Dean wish he could punch them both.
”There's this case,” Sam finally replied, piled a couple of books on top of the one he'd been reading and pulled out an article cut out from a newspaper, ”Something strange going on with fishing boats. Just read through it, you'll understand.”
Dean pulled the article in front of him and kept drinking his coffee, for a while absently. Three minutes into it they all heard a quiet thud from upstairs, and they all equally jumped from the sound. Dean was the first up and the only one who took it upon himself to nearly run to the stairs - he never got that far, just like Bobby never managed to get his hand off of the back of his chair and follow him. With his heart beating in his throat Dean watched the feet land upon the staircase and take careful steps down. Castiel's fingers bent across the staircase's railing and he peered down, noticed Dean standing in the living room and gaping at him, and a very shy smile appeared and disappeared from his face.
”This is awkward,” he said quietly and glanced towards the kitchen, from where sounds were coming now that the other two had finally managed to get over their shocks and were probably getting out of the room, ”But - I don't know where the bathroom is.”
Dean stared.
He stared long enough that he finally felt Sam's eyes on him instead of them sticking to Castiel, who was in turn answering his stare with raised brows and a faint blush upon his cheeks.
”Damn it,” Dean muttered and shook his head, ”it's - I'll just - just follow me, ok?”
*
Castiel leaned to the bathroom's wall and closed his eyes. To Dean he seemed dizzy, but asking whether he was would be useless - he'd already made it quite clear he had no idea how to define anything he felt, and dizziness would probably seem to him like the normal state of things if he'd never experienced anything other than that during the time he'd spent in his... whatever the state he was in could be called.
”I feel... odd,” the angel said slowly.
His voice was hoarse.
Dean huffed at him.
”I know,” he replied rather impatiently, ”Can you describe the oddness somehow?”
Castiel opened his right eye and looked at Dean briefly with it, then closed it again and breathed in and out for a couple times.
”My mouth is dry,” he finally managed to pronounce, ”and my... body feels weak. I don't trust it to keep me up if I take a step. This has never happened before.”
Dean raised his brows.
”Obviously,” he noted dryly.
Then he grabbed the male's arm and brought it around his shoulder, nudging him off of the wall.
”Just hold onto me if you feel like your legs give in, alright? We'll get you some breakfast, but we'll do it downstairs.”
Sam laid a sandwhich before the angel and Bobby gave him a tall glass of orange juice with a suspicious look on his face. Dean had stayed behind Castiel as he'd sat down and he stood there watching over everything that happened around them. His hands were upon Castiel's shoulders and almost unnoticingly massaging his muscles.
”This is embarrassing,” Castiel mumbled.
Dean could feel his voice vibrating against his palms. The feeling rose the fine hair up on his neck and sent shivers down his spine.
”Get used to it, we're going to keep this up until you're feeling better again,” he chuckled and leaned closer.
Dean felt Castiel straightening his back against him, moving more of his body into contact with the younger's. Another stupid shiver shook him from shoulders on with the notion.
”Talk about embarrassing,” Bobby muttered and turned around.
Dean felt his ears flaring up. Sam chuckled, seating himself next to the angel and watching as Bobby brought the huge pile of books back on the table.
”You start looking through this, and Dean, once you two are done with all that cuddling - don't get me wrong son, I'm happy for you and all, but we really need to get going here - you take the other pile. We're digging right into this case and I sure hope it's not a school we're dealing with here.”
Sam opened up the first book and skimmed to the page he was looking for.
”I don't want to depress you or anything, but it's probably a school - look at this and compare the signs.”
Dean pressed his forehead against the top of Castiel's head.
He felt so happy he wanted to scream and jump and kill a couple mermaids, preferably immediately and without all the fuss of travelling anywhere. His fingertips had moved down on the angel's back to the place he imagined his wings had connected to the vessel's skin and for a second he wondered what it was like for the other now, was he still sharing the body with its original soul or was it entirely his now. Then, as if incapable of holding himself from doing it, he wrapped his arms around Castiel and smiled to the sound of Sam's awkward chuckle.
”Hey, can you even pretend you care?” Sam snorted and hit him on the head with a book, ”He's trying to eat, you know.”
*
Sam leaned his elbow on the car and raised his eyes to the clear autumn sky. Bobby kneeled in front of him, peeking and reaching behind the tire, pulling back a blackened hand and peering at it disgruntedly.
A sense of hollowness inside the younger's chest was chewing at his mood, but it was hard to ignore how brilliant the weather was and how beautiful the warm-coloured sunlight made everything despite the chipper cold air that lurked in every shadow. He wasn't sure what to think. He'd already gotten used to the sulking, lifeless Dean over the course of the year, and this new energetic, happy thing that had replaced him so fast was a shock. He'd never seen Dean like that, but then again, he'd never seen Dean in love either. He'd seen him on the edge, afraid to reach out if it meant he could suffer a loss, and he'd seen him longing, but none of that had come close to the Dean that was now holding close what he wanted the most in life.
No matter how much Sam tried to avoid acknowledging it, he was jealous and he was hurt because of what Dean had now. It was unfair and he hated himself for that; Dean deserved each moment he could now spend with Castiel, but the fact remained that Sam lived their old life still. He had nobody. Jessica hadn't been raised from the dead no matter how many tears he'd shed on her, and Jessica hadn't saved him from death when he'd been torn and destroyed.
It was impossible not to feel betrayed or punished or mistreated, but he didn't know who to be angry with: God, himself, Dean or Castiel. Nobody really deserved his anger. Things like that simply happened, it was life. What had happened to Dean was perhaps luck, but it certainly wasn't a reward or something Sam should have had any more than his brother. He deserved the same thing as Dean did, but the fact remained that it hadn't come to him. Not yet. It might never come, and it was most likely never going to come like it had now come to Dean.
Also true was that Dean's happiness wouldn't last that long, not in their life. Sam was already worried about Castiel. The angel was a warrior, but not one who was trained to fight with a mortal body with physical weapons. He was in a strange territory and there were a thousand and a hundred things that would have given anything to get a piece of him to just tear apart until there was nothing left to rip and break anymore.
He wasn't human, and he'd never be a human. To become anything close to one would take years, and years were things that weren't given away on demand. Each peaceful day was a gift in their lives, a fleeting moment that could end abruptly at any given moment.
That was why they let the two of them sit on the porch drinking coffee and laughing and doing nothing useful at all.
They might never get another chance like that again, not to mention that Castiel was much too weak to train still and starting now could have interfered with his recovery.
”What do you think happened?” Sam asked quietly, his eyes following a sparrow crossing the deep blue sky.
”You mean why do I think he was braindead for so long?”
”Yeah.”
Bobby got up from the ground and wiped his hands, first looking at Sam and then at the two men sitting on the porch.
”I don't think, I know,” he said then, ”Gimme that.”
He pointed at the box of tools and Sam picked the thing up, offered it up to him until he'd picked what he needed. Then the box could return where it had been, Sam positioned his elbow back against the cold metal and Bobby laid on his back and pulled himself under the car.
The late birds were still singing in the surrounding trees. A minute passed before Sam landed on his knees next to Bobby, placed the toolbox between them and joined him under the car.
”Can you hold this for me for a second?” Bobby asked, handing him the oil-stained cloth.
Sam held out his hand and grabbed it, eyes tracing the car's belly, catching up on what Bobby was trying to achieve.
”So, why was it?” he finally asked again.
Bobby wiped his fingers on the cloth Sam was still holding and gave him a look that made him feel abnormally slow.
”He took Dean's bloodloss, obviously. Haven't you been paying attention at all? Your brother was dying when you carried him here. His stomach was open to the guts and he was patched up with a thrice-damned shirt, Sam. That angel transferred his damage upon his own body and blacked out because that wound was fatal, even shared between the two of them. I was surprised when he didn't just die all over again from it right away I tell ya, but I kept my mouth shut for your brother's sake. Give me the wrench.”
”What?”
”The wrench, it's somewhere under you right now.”
Sam laughed.
”Sorry,” he chuckled and pulled up the wrench he'd partially been laying on top of.
Soon after a shadow covered the light they were getting under the car. Sam lifted his head as much as the space allowed and saw an expected shape drawn against the light.
”Get out Castiel,” Bobby grunted, ”You're blocking out the sun.”
”Oh.”
The angel shifted just enough to let the light back in. Dean's legs appeared next to him.
”Come on, they don't want you in their private car fixing time together,” the younger male said and tugged at the trench coat Castiel was wearing again.
”What are they doing?” the angel asked, pulling himself up and away from Sam's view.
”I told you already, they're fixing the car. You'd just end up dropping it on them, so please don't get involved, seriously. We need to teach you to bake instead.”
Bobby spat something out of his mouth and rolled out from under the car.
”Don't you dare make him your damn wife, he's gotta learn to do a man's job around here and not some damn bakin',” he growled after them, turning to dig something out of the box.
Sam could hear Dean laughing.
That was a sound he really liked hearing, no matter what else he might feel about the situation.
”Now where is the damn cutter? I was just holdin' it right here...”
*
Castiel held his pillow on top of his lap and stared out of the window. He'd been doing it for an absurdly long time and the intensity of his gaze was giving Dean creeps. He put the book down and started staring at the fallen angel, wondering if he'd manage to wake him up from the trance if he'd give him the same intensity as he was giving the window.
The clock kept ticking.
Five seconds, fifteen, fourty-five, a minute.
Finally Castiel's eyes strayed upon Dean's and he blinked surprisedly. They watched one another, the older tilting his head as Dean tried to figure out how to move on. He almost started talking about the mermaids, but suddenly realised that wasn't what he wanted. He crawled across the space and laid his hands on both sides of Castiel's legs, bringing the stare into extremely close proximity. Then he huffed and broke the contact, balancing himself on his knees and looking out the window in a desperate effort of catching a glimpse of what Castiel was seeing outside.
A very painful premonition had settled in the pit of his stomach. He knew he was right about it.
"Hey, Cas?" he started as kindly as he could.
He knew his whole position there was about as submissive as a person could get without rolling on his back like a dog, but that was pretty close to how he felt.
He felt guilty and responsible for any pain Castiel was feeling. Inside somewhere, it had been clear all along to him that the angel wasn't happy, but he'd buried that fear deep and hoped it wouldn't crawl out anytime soon. The very first night seemed like a bad timing to him.
"Yes?"
Dean hesitated. Then, changing the plans he'd never had to start with, he picked himself up and went to turn off the lights. He stumbled back across the room and sat down on the makeshift bed they'd recovered on and had now decided to return to despite there being much more comfortable spots to sleep in downstairs. The attic room felt better than any of those. It had been unused for a while, now it was theirs. It was private, safe and Dean had already gotten used to it - the same seemed to be true for Castiel, who had returned there without a question before any of them had even mentioned the possibility of other arrangements.
"D'you remember the day you woke up the first time?" he finally asked.
Castiel nodded.
"I do."
Continuing was hard. They'd avoided the subject for the whole day, or at least Dean had. How Castiel felt about it and whether or not he wanted, or thought it was necessary, to discuss the matter was unclear to the human.
"We... said things," he started.
His eyes escaped to the window. It was hypnotic: the starry skies somewhere far above them were a deep shade of blue, dotted with the brightest of lights, each shining from distance so long it was impossible to understand. To Dean, stars were just little spots of light on the wide surface that the sky was when viewed from where he stood. He wondered what they were to Castiel, if Castiel's mind could understand the ferocity of a sun's flames, the distances between celestial objects, the size and scale of things around them and even inside them on the microscopic scale that was as surreal to Dean as the macro scale was.
Suddenly he felt sick to his stomach and the question he had to ask seemed to have an obvious answer. How the hell could they love each other when they were nothing alike? They weren't even the same species and their minds were as different as a candle's flame was different to the blaze of all those stars he was still looking at, twinkling in their own realms, to him impossible to comprehend, and to Castiel...
He felt the angel's hand on his shoulder and turned to look at him. Castiel looked back with a worried, questioning expression.
"What is it, Dean?" the older asked.
And older he was. Dean didn't even know by how much but he feared that a couple million years probably didn't even come close to the real numbers.
"Why do you even care?" Dean asked back, not rudely like the words implied but confusedly, wanting to understand.
"Why am I so important to you and you act like I am worthwhile, that I'd be anything even close to equal to you?"
"We... are equal, Dean," Castiel replied, his tone shy like he wasn't certain he was understanding the conversation at all.
"No, we're not," Dean sighed frustratedly, "I'm like an ant compared to you. I'm stupid, I've lived for a fraction of the time you've existed, I don't have wings and your siblings keep referring to me as a mud-monkey. That's for a reason, Cas."
Castiel tilted his head and then it was his turn to turn towards the window. It was becoming a ritual.
"You're confusing 'equal' with 'similar'," he said, his voice flowing softly and without a hint of emotion pouring into it.
He sounded like he was talking about the weather, and his position considered, he could well have been.
"And what the heck does that mean?"
"We are different," the angel stated the obvious, "but we're also equal. Angels often forget that we, too, were created like your kind, and that our Father has a purpose for our differences. In fact... it could well be that I am inferior to you, Dean. The only certain thing is that it is not the other way around, it has never been."
Dean bit his lip and looked down at his feet. He wanted to lean into the touch but he was nowhere near confident enough to do it. Every moment he spent doubting did nothing but convince him further that this was wrong, and he was wrong for wanting it to be right. At the same time, he still wanted nothing more than for Castiel to stay there with him. As afraid as he was to even admit it to himself, he wanted the other to want to stay as much as he needed him to, and he wanted to be the reason Castiel would feel that way.
Yet he couldn't ignore the truth that they'd never have much of a life together, not even if everything played out the way he wanted for once. Even if it would have been possible for Dean to just leave the hunter's life behind and move into a comfortable little apartment of his own somewhere, work a normal job and tend a garden on his freetime, the fact remained that Castiel would never be able to leave himself behind. Being an angel wasn't a lifestyle, it wasn't like hunting - he'd never stop being an angel, just like Dean would never stop being a human no matter how many years he'd spend on four legs eating cat food and communicating in hisses and meows.
And that wasn't even touching the whole subject of society. Even worse than dating someone who wasn't human was gay-dating someone who wasn't human.
It didn't get more socially unacceptable than that.
Bitterly, Dean wondered whether Castiel had any clue about that at all.
The only light at the end of the tunnel was knowing that there had been, in an alternative reality and an alternate timeline, a human Castiel who functioned. Even that light was so dim and constantly shadowed by the fact that the Castiel he remembered from that realm had hated his life and coped by extreme nihilism. It wasn't the Castiel that sat next to him and still remembered who he was.
The younger flinched when Castiel reached to touch his face, pressing his fingers against his chin and turning his head up and towards his own.
"You wanted to ask something," the angel prompted him gently.
"It was nothing."
Dean's reply was quiet and fragile and ended the discussion. He did stay, however, slowly curling up on the angel's lap and staying there, mind full of uninvited questions and doubts, the older's fingers in his hair and upon his neck, caressing him until he was ready to fall asleep there and finally crawled into his own bed.
He fell into a restless sleep.
*
Night's light was still shining into the room when Dean woke up and his senses told him something had changed. He sat up, his eyes swollen from the less than unsatisfying rest, and as he scratched at his neck absently he slowly realised that the room was empty.
The notion made his heart beat faster and he could feel adrenaline bursting into his veins. His breathing changed from slow and deep to fast and light and as he climbed up from his bed, his fingers had grown cold.
He stumbled on his way out of the door and down the steps as if his legs didn't really know how to move his feet. As he passed he saw Sam curled up on the couch, wrapped in a thick blanket and breathing quietly. The living room was empty other than for him, and so was the kitchen. He didn't look into Bobby's bedroom nor at his study, the latter merely because going there would most definitely have woken Sam up.
The more rooms he looked through without a single sign of the angel anywhere, the worse he felt. By the time he got to the front door he was shaking from cold, and yet he didn't even bother putting on shoes as he stepped out into the night.
He walked down the couple steps on the yard's gravel, eyes peering into the dark. The figures of cars and machines littering the space were all potential traps and behind each and every one he was prepared to seeing a demon or a monster of any sort, ready to charge for him now that he was there practically naked and entirely vulnerable.
He'd crossed the open space between himself and the Impala when he heard movement from behind him and turned, body ready for an attack, every muscle aching from tension.
It was Castiel.
He was wearing the t-shirt and jeans he'd worn the day before, and the look on his face expressed all the questions he hadn't yet asked.
Without thinking, Dean walked up to him and wrapped his arms around his warm body, pressing his face against the angel's neck and breathing in the air that smelled of him and the night air combined.
The older placed his arms clumsily around Dean's body in return and held him there, likely uncertain as to what to do next or how to move on from the embrace.
There was a wordless war between them, beginning from Dean's reaction to his presence - wandering about the cold night in light pants and nothing more was a good enough indicator of his opening line. It was screaming the words he didn't let out, the fear of losing again, and as Castiel stood there, his whole being replied with questions. Had he done wrong? Was Dean alright? What should he say?
Dean replied with nothing but questions himself; why was he there, what had he been thinking, why hadn't he woken Dean up, how long had he been gone?
Finally, they found no words to say aloud at all. Dean was shivering from the cold and Castiel had nothing to cover him with, and even the warmth of his body couldn't fight off the chill entirely. As they parted, the quiet cacophony died down, and as they looked at one another the silence pressed against Dean's eardrums like water.
"Do you love me?" he asked the question he'd left unspoken earlier with nothing but desperation and demanding in his voice.
He pronounced the words like a starving man bit into an apple, the letters falling from his mouth with immense weight and through insane effort and strength. The memory of the question lingered in the night until he couldn't have any of it anymore and he tried to wipe it away with other words, each as painful and sharp as the first ones had been.
"You never said it to me. You've never said it to me."
His heart felt like it was bursting, feeling like it was rubbing itself against the carvings in his bones and would continue until it would be bleeding. Castiel turned away from him and he felt his whole being breaking, shattering into dust and then stubbornly refusing to fall apart like it should have, like he felt it should have. With no more words he grabbed the male's hair and forced their lips together again. Castiel backed, more out of the force Dean had applied onto him, fighting to stay in balance. His back collided with the Impala and Dean locked him in place by pushing his hands on his both sides - he tasted tears he didn't recognise as his own and bit the angel's lip until he let out a sound. His lips slipped off of the older's and, ashamed to stop for a second, afraid the other would refuse him or worse, he moved right onto his neck, biting and sucking until the skin was bruised and he tasted blood in his mouth.
He had to stop, he knew it, but his body was full of fear and the very thought of backing off now was killing him, each attempt to draw back like swallowing a litre of ice. A fraction of his mind noted the angel's hands on his back, holding him still with such confidence and yet so gently and calmly it was like he had adopted all the control Dean had lost. The younger held onto that notion and concentrated on it until it was all he was, he became one with the serenity radiating from the other and ignored both the racing of his own broken heart and the trembling of the other's body against him.
The feel of the older's lips against his ear sent fire raging in his chest. The roots of the fire wound around his spine and held him together, binding the pieces one again, melting the dust back into the shape of a man.
The words the angel spoke to him were in Enochian.
They were the most beautiful words he'd ever heard, yet he couldn't understand them, and he couldn't ask, he didn't dare to. It was like everything in him had burnt away with the blaze leaving behind nothing but ashes, and his knees were giving in.
*
The sheets had been torn off during the morning hours and ended up wrapped tight around the male's body. That was what Dean woke up to, the feel of rough fabric biting into his flesh and preventing his legs from moving. Awakened, it didn't take him much effort to make space for his feet again. His eyes adjusted to the light and the colours slowly got brighter along with his sense of reality returning in bits and pieces. His heart skipped a beat when he remembered, then another when he realised how close Castiel was to him. Their bodies were covered by the same blanket and the older's naked knees pressed against his thighs. His arm had rested on Dean's side for so long it had become weightless there, its warmth exactly the same with his. The angel was breathing slowly, still fast asleep, and his hair stood up from the parts that had rubbed against the pillows.
His head was so close to Dean's that their faces were still near enough for all air between them to be shared, and now that Dean was awake, his lungs ached to get fresh air inside. Carefully he turned his head a little to poke his nose up from the stream of recycled air.
He knew it had to be past noon then and wondered why they hadn't been woken up yet. Rain washed the roof, its sound was clear in the attic room. Small streams of water were running down the window's glass as well. Downstairs Sam coughed and Dean could hear a cup hitting the wooden surface of the study's table again. He closed his eyes, ears picking up Bobby's voice.
They were all wasting time, but wasting time had never felt like such a welcome option in Dean's mind. He'd never stopped like this for years, never truly felt like he might not want more than he already had.
The sound of the front door opening and closing made his imagination create the area inside his mind. It was Bobby who'd left - Sam was still in the study. He knew it somehow, counting the little sounds and time that had passed between each sign.
When he opened his eyes again, Castiel was staring at his collarbones expressionlessly. The blue of his eyes was clear and bright again in the light of the rainy day shining from the right angle, and the bruising on his neck looked like some madman had tried to eat him alive. A weight settled in the pit of the younger's stomach. Suddenly he felt the idol on his chest, the trinket Sam had years ago given to him as a gift and that Castiel had once borrowed - it took him a while to understand that Castiel was holding a finger on top of it.
"When I met you," the angel said absently, "I was someone else."
Dean moved the hand that was trapped under Castiel's head until he could reach the other's short, silky hair with his fingers. He couldn't answer. He didn't want to remember that time. There were wounds inside him, wounds that would never heal, and for the pain they caused him if disturbed, they were best left alone. He'd thought he was broken then. It was nothing compared to how damaged he was today, how little human there was left in him and how much he resembled the things he hunted. The difference was that he still looked like a person, someone with an intact, complete soul, yet if he'd faced himself, he would have shot without hesitation. Only someone like himself could see past the surface and know the creature he'd become inside.
He watched the drops run down the glass and wondered whether Castiel felt the same. The only thing that could be said for sure was that he had suffered enough to be broken.
Weight settled on the string around his neck again as the angel laid his hand back down and let the trinket fall. This was the most normal thing they'd ever done together, just lying there on the bed without talking, arms around one another.
"I'm sorry," Dean said quietly.
Castiel turned on his back, moving his head closer to Dean at the same time so that eventually the younger felt his hair bending against his face. The ceiling above them seemed alive with the shadows of the rain.
"I don't want you to be sorry," the angel said and closed his eyes again, "I'm the one who should be."
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
(Part 2 --->)