[FIC] In the Secret Places of the Stairs (NC-17) 2/3 for Ze_Pink_Lady
Gift type: Fic
Title: In the Secret Places of the Stairs (2 of 3)
Recipient: ze_pink_lady
Author: thevinegarworks
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Torture, mentions of non-con, Hell being a generally scary place, demon!Dean, sexuality.
Spoilers: None; this is an AU from 5x03. Put everything as of 5x04 and afterward out of your mind while reading.
Summary: Castiel has soothed his nightmares since the first night, though Dean will never know of it. Castiel has accepted this invisibility willingly; if it helps Dean Winchester grow into his role, he will oblige without argument and with no need for recognition. He simply wants to help.
Author notes: Title taken from the Song of Songs. All of the languages used herein are the product of copious dictionary-flipping and begging for translations via a sister with a PhD in Classics; translations can be found at the end of the fic itself. Enormous thank you to my beta, M, for refocusing my attentions and getting me on the right path, and also to K, whom I love dearly. Happy Christmas, Z bb, I hope you enjoy it! ♥
Previous Part
The Winchesters are stronger together than they are apart.
Dean has not yet fully mended from his time in Hell, though he shoves the ache deeply behind new layers of purpose - it is the Apocalypse, after all. When Sam opts to leave instead of continue hunting at Dean's side, Castiel very nearly intervenes. He only barely catches himself before manifesting and reminding Sam that his place is here, with his brother, and that Dean very desperately needs him though he might not show it. But this is Sam's choice, as is his privilege, and also Dean's to let him go freely.
Castiel can see the black spots darkening Dean's soul long after the rumble of the pick-up truck carrying Sam fades into the distance.
He does not approach Dean again until midnight, when he is fitfully inebriated and the blackish bruises have faded to murky gray. Dean mills around a table with a large, ruddy man, studying a random scattering of pool balls. When Castiel manifests in a nearby dark corner, no one startles at his presence. When he steps into the cones of light around the table, however, Dean's eyes gape wide open.
"Cas?"
"Hello, Dean."
Dean's expression is difficult to read beyond the blur of alcohol hazing his features. He is surprised, plainly, and perhaps slightly glad at the initial sight of Castiel, but then he draws back to square his shoulders and seems simply confused. "What're you doin' here?"
The glare of Dean's opponent roams heavily over Castiel's body; he returns it with a subtle squint, which seems to bother the man. "Hey, you got a problem?" he asks with a jerk of his head.
Castiel shrugs his challenge away with a blink before stepping close to Dean. To his surprise, Dean immediately steps back and extends a hand between them. "Whoa, hey," he slurs. "No need to get that personal, Cas, just -..." He laughs, though the sound is flat. "Hey, y'wanna beer? Or a shot? Bartender, uh - Lisa over there makes a mean '57 Chevy."
"Dean, you're inebriated," Castiel says. He stares blankly as Dean hisses out a long laugh and rubs at his forehead; the man from before is quickly becoming restless, judging by his shifts in posture.
"Inebriated," Dean repeats. "That's, uh. That's eloquent, Cas."
"You should be resting," Castiel reminds him, but the words are quickly cut off by the rise of Dean's opponent's voice.
"Look, dude, I've got two hundred good bucks on this table right now. You wanna tuck your boyfriend back into bed, you wait till after we're done playin'."
A spike of anger flicks through Dean's face and hardens his slack expression. "'Scuse me?"
He steps forward, but Castiel settles a hand gently against his chest. "Confrontation isn't necessary," he assures, but the line of Dean's gaze is locked and the twitch of his shoulders suggests otherwise.
"I want my money, asshole," the man at Castiel's back spits. Castiel turns quickly.
"Your money is yours to keep. Dean, if you would."
After a long draw of tense silence, Dean's stare softens and shifts to Castiel instead. His eyes are glazed and unfocused as he thumbs through a stack of dingy bills and flings them carelessly onto the table. "Here y'go, baldy," he sighs as the slender pole in his grip clatters against the tabletop. "We'll break even. Hundred bucks. Consider it a pity draw since I was wipin' the floor with your ass anyway."
The man curses and lunges - and very briefly scuffs against Castiel's jaw - before the din of the bar tapers into the unmoving silence of Dean's motel room. Dean wavers on his feet, laughing gracelessly as Castiel dabs at his lip where a distinct dull throb is humming against his flesh.
"Dude," Dean gasps through a bout of laughter. Precisely the same instant his hand lands on Castiel's shoulder, his eyes land on his face and go stoically sober. "Dude! Cas, you okay?"
Castiel's fingers are slick with a swirl of crimson blood when he withdraws them from his lip. "I am..." He sighs and rubs the liquid into his fingertips. The taste of it is peculiar when his tongue finds the wound and skims across it. "Fine," he finishes quietly.
Dean shifts closer, stumbling slightly as his hand moves to catch beneath Castiel's jaw. He tips upward, inspecting the wound in the light. "He got you pretty good, huh?"
The pressure and heat Dean's grip imparts against Castiel's flesh is unexpected. His throat works in a swallow against Dean's palm. "I wasn't aware."
A wide grin reaches across Dean's face as he laughs, though it never quite reaches his eyes. He claps his hand against Castiel's cheek and turns away with a groan. Castiel does not move, instead electing to watch as Dean toes off his boots - always the left first, then right; Castiel has memorized these tiny fragments of Dean's regularity over the months - and peels away his socks, habitually stuffing them inside one another. He pointedly looks away when Dean slips his shirt over his head to leave him naked save for a pair of tattered jeans slung low around his hips.
Castiel stares at the carpet and strives to make sense of its brown, green, and purple fibers. "What do you find funny, Dean?"
Dean's laugh continues as he shrugs and disappears into the bathroom. His voice is muffled behind several clicks and swishes, then the sound of him cleaning his teeth. "S'just - sho much for dishcretion, right?"
Castiel flicks his eyes up to meet Dean's teasing stare, but immediately returns to the carpet at the contact.
Domestic sounds pervade the silence for several moments as Dean readies for sleep and Castiel simply stands in the middle of the room, hands heavy at his sides. Dean pauses momentarily before moving past him and sinking onto the bed. "Hey, don't look too awkward there, Cas," he mumbles. "Might pull something."
At his urging, Castiel folds onto the bed near Dean's feet, keeping a notable distance between them. Ever since Dean complained about his personal space issues, Castiel has taken care to respect Dean's boundaries more implicitly. He feels strangely cold, and even more drawn to Dean than normal, but does not want to upset his comfort. Instead, he hangs back.
Dean's hands flutter and shift along the boxy alarm clock in his lap. His movements are short and clumsy, obviously still altered from the alcohol as he mumbles a curse beneath his breath and punches at the buttons. "You staying?" he asks without looking up.
Castiel frowns at the words. "Do you wish me to?"
Dean shrugs. "Whatever." He pulls to his feet and wavers, nearly enough to lose his balance completely, but Castiel rises within a blink and catches a hand at the curve of Dean's back to prevent his fall.
The silence is overbearing as Dean maps Castiel's face. His body is warm, firm and alive against Castiel's palm; he does not want to sever the contact even after Dean regains his balance and moves away.
He clears his throat. "Hey, please tell me you brought my car back too?"
Castiel's hands curl into his pockets as Dean jerks the blankets down and crawls beneath them with a wide yawn. "Of course."
"Ah," Dean grunts, not quite laughing. There is not a wealth of available room on the edge of the bed when Castiel sits down again, and Dean's leg is a solid line fit against the small of his back. It is strangely intimate, Castiel thinks, sharing this silent space with Dean in this manner. They have been alone in these indiscriminate rooms before, but this feels... different.
Dean struggles for a moment before propping an arm behind him and waving the other in the air near Castiel's face. "How's your..."
Castiel blinks.
"S'it hurt?"
His immediate reaction when Dean's fingertip finds his face is to move toward it. But Dean is drunk and in all likelihood unaware of his exact actions, so Castiel forces himself into inaction instead. When two of Dean's fingers swipe at his cheek, too clumsy to be any degree sober, Castiel says simply, "Dean."
Dean's fingers find his lip and Castiel is highly aware that Dean is watching the motion of his wandering hand. His knuckles brush below Castiel's lip, then part around his chin; they turn to skim the line of Castiel's jaw until they reach where his lips meet, faintly tickling over their crease and surface until they reach the swell of broken flesh in one corner.
Castiel winces, just slightly.
"It does hurt," Dean says. The pressure of his fingers eases and for a moment Castiel thinks he is very near having to catch Dean from slumping limply into an unconscious pile, but instead he only shifts down the bed until there are only inches between them. "You can't heal. Can you?"
The curve of his palm migrates to fit against Castiel's jaw and Castiel has no idea what to do.
"Dean," he says. The sound that meets it is faraway and hushed; Dean's stare is pointed even through his drug-addled haze, centered solely on where the blossom of a bruise thrums at the juncture of Castiel's lips.
It is terrifyingly intense.
"You should rest."
Dean staggers for a moment before regaining his presence and lifting his gaze from Castiel's mouth to his eyes. "Hm?"
A small but noticeable shiver darts along Castiel's spine.
"You should sleep," he repeats.
Dean says simply, "yeah," and when his hands move quickly away Castiel misses them immediately.
He supposes asking Dean to return would be uncouth, though, so instead he says, "Goodnight, Dean," and extinguishes the lamp with barely more than a thought.
~ ~ ~
After twelve days apart, Sam contacts Dean while he is eating lunch in a roadside diner and tells him he does not plan on coming back.
Dean abandons half his meal uneaten and does not wait for change when he leaves far too much money on the table.
When Castiel appears in the passenger seat of the Impala as he is driving down a blank strip of darkened highway, Dean clenches his jaw and says simply, "No."
Castiel opens his mouth to speak, but the words do not form immediately. It is enough of a pause for Dean to collect his thoughts more coherently, as well as forcefully.
"No, Cas, god dammit," he snaps. "Just - I just wanna find a motel and sleep for a while, okay? And then I wanna find some evil sonofabitch monster and kill it, and have a few beers once it's dead. Is that so hard? That too much to ask?"
Castiel closes his mouth carefully. "No," he answers. "I suppose not."
And then he leaves.
That night, Dean dreams about the barrel of a shotgun waved in his face from too close a distance. He dreams about a red stain of blood dribbling down Sam's chin and a pair of large hands closing around his throat. Castiel touches his fingers between Dean's eyes as the word monster pushes past his lips, then rests his hand briefly against Dean's cheek. It is not a dream of Hell, but close enough to one to bury a crease of pain into Dean's brow and set his heartbeat racing.
When Castiel pulls back, his thumb finds the smooth ridge of bone above the concavity of Dean's eye. He pets its line, once, before withdrawing to stand guard at the salted window.
~ ~ ~
Days pass until a week is built, and then another. Sam is surviving and doing his best to research portents of the apocalypse. He is staying in contact, if only sporadically.
Dean is surviving too, but barely.
He has grown careless since Sam's departure, and if Castiel has warned him of this more than once Dean has taken no heed of it. Castiel has kept a vigilant eye on Dean as often as he can, though the sigils carved into his ribs complicate matters. He can still feel when Dean calls to him, on what occasion he has to summon him by name. More than once, Castiel has felt the pull of Dean calling him someplace, but has had to resort to rudimentary means to pinpoint his exact location.
Dean always sounds gruff and unwelcoming over the phone, but he never tells Castiel to stop calling. He even calls Castiel once, just checking in on the quest for the Holy Spirit. After Castiel briefs him on his lack of progress, Dean seems hesitant to end the conversation. Castiel thinks there must be some meaning behind this, but Dean curls in on himself and says not to stay up too late on a weeknight, then hangs up.
Castiel does not hear from him for three days, and when he does it is disorienting.
As he is walking the roadless desert between Jerusalem and Ubeidiya, a weight clutches tightly at his chest and pulls him to the ground. Before the sand is settled beneath his hands he is at Dean's side, crouched near his prone form as the gnashing jaws of an old forest demon barrel toward him.
Castiel flings a hand in the creature's direction and scrambles defensively in front of Dean. The demon skids to a halt with an awful screech when Castiel stumbles quickly through an Enochian exorcism rite; it wails and shrinks from Castiel's presence as he repeats the benediction and forces the creature to return to its cave.
He does not address the startling amount of effort he had to extend to banish the demon, where once he could have destroyed it altogether with barely more than a glance.
Instead he rushes to Dean's side and checks his body carefully. No bones are broken but he is unresponsive when Castiel taps his face. He only wakes up once, once Castiel has transported them to Dean's motel room and is slipping the shirt from his shoulders to better suture the wound gaping across his midsection.
Dean's eyes flutter as his lips work dryly. "Cas," he says, but nothing else.
"I'm here," Castiel answers. He closes his fingers around Dean's, but the hand in his grip is prone and still.
Dean does not wake up again all night, but his wounds are sufficiently stitched and Castiel has made him as comfortable as he knows how - two pillows beneath his head, the sheets loose over him because Dean hates when sheets are tucked tightly around him. Castiel dims the lamp and sits at Dean's side until the sun comes up.
Only then does he lie back and close his eyes.
~ ~ ~
When Dean wakes him with a gentle shake to his shoulder, Castiel shoots from the bed with a distinct panic. Dean's palm hovers between them for a moment, as if keeping an animal at bay, before falling to his side and slipping into his pocket.
"Morning," he says as he raises the coffee in his other hand to his lips. Castiel can smell it from here - warm, bitter, and processed. He can glean nothing appealing from the scent, but Dean seems to enjoy it as he sips idly from the styrofoam cup and simply watches. Watches Castiel.
It makes no sense.
By all rights, Castiel should not even be able to sleep, yet he feels... refreshed. Sleep was a pleasantly heavy weight buried into his body; these muscles that have attached to him feel rejuvenated. He thinks there must be something wrong about how easy it was for him to be overtaken by sleep, and that this surely cannot mean anything good for him, but in favor of worrying he only stands and says, "Good morning, Dean."
Dean swings around where Castiel stands and sinks onto the bed to tie up his boots. "I didn't think you slept," he says conversationally, but Castiel detects a fine thread of worry running through the words.
"I rest," he answers. It is a simple enough explanation - he does rest, after all, and since he is attached to a human body he supposes it is merely a question of translation. Not a portent of his growing weakness, he hopes, and even if it was he would not trouble Dean with the development.
Dean nods slowly before glancing back to the knot of his shoelaces. "Hey, Cas? I gotta ask something." Castiel shifts to Dean's side and sits beside him as he lowers one foot and raises the other to begin lacing. "How'd you find me?"
That same faint tint of worry colors Dean's words. He waits, leaned against his knees, dissecting Castiel's face for an explanation he cannot give.
Castiel blinks and answers honestly: "I don't know."
"I thought your little magic trick with the ribs was supposed to stop that."
"You wish that I hadn't found you?"
Dean's foot stomps onto the ground as his gaze flicks quickly downward in a flash, catching on Castiel's lips before he licks his own. "No, I - thanks," he mumbles. "For saving my ass and for sewing me up. You're pretty handy with a needle and thread."
Castiel bows his head briefly. "You're welcome."
When Dean takes a slow sip of coffee and offers the warm cup to Castiel with an expectant smile, Castiel takes it.
Coffee is actually quite delicious, he discovers.
~ ~ ~
Dean insists they drive the way to Michigan. It is winter and bitter cold, and Castiel has things to do, countries and oceans to search, but Dean sniffs and bounces on his toes against the cold. He punches Castiel on the shoulder and says, "Ah, come on, Cas, humor me."
Castiel cannot say no to that.
The passenger seat warms to his flesh quickly enough, but the contours of it do not fit appropriately to his body. The grooves sunk into the upholstery are much larger than he is - Sam's size - and he cannot quite swallow the awkward feeling that this is not his place. He is merely filling it in Sam's stead.
He wonders what that means, but Dean is singing with the radio with his arm propped in the window sill, and Castiel thinks better of discussing it. He leans back, closes his eyes, and allows the sharp bite of wintry sunlight to cool his eyelids instead.
He stays at Dean's side as they roll to a stop outside a small red building marked Mel's. It is quiet and nearly barren inside as Dean tells Castiel stories about his childhood over his meal and glows brighter with each word. Dean offers him french fries and chicken fried steak, but Castiel respectfully declines. He does taste the peach cobbler Dean orders after the meal, however, which he finds to be very pleasant. Dean's eyes slant into a grin when he makes a joke about Castiel's sweet tooth.
Castiel quietly picks up the untouched fork near his elbow and cuts off another warm lump of peach filling in reply.
They drive for eleven hours and Dean never once gives any indication he might find Castiel's presence a nuisance. It is a welcome change, one that Castiel is not completely confident he understands, but Dean is distanced from the dark places of himself when he is distracted by his music and old memories, and for that Castiel is thankful. He does not question it.
He does not tell Dean that he knows these stories already, that he watched them as they took place so many years ago, because he likes the way Dean's words color the events in a new light. He likes Dean's new perspective and he likes Dean's company, so he sits silently in the passenger seat and listens.
When they reach Westphalia, Dean checks into a motel with two beds and tells Castiel to make himself at home. The news says a snow storm is coming through overnight and Dean says he does not intend to wake up before a two-digit number. Castiel considers reminding Dean that he does not need to sleep, but Dean seems so content to call in an order of Chinese food with extra egg rolls and explain the details of a very colorful and strongly-worded action movie that Castiel cannot bring himself to dampen his satisfaction.
He wonders if this is what Sam's life was like when he still traveled with Dean - a constantly shifting succession of cramped motel rooms, condemned houses, greasy food, action movies. It is dingy and human and flawed, and all the more perfect for it. He cannot imagine why anyone would want to leave this existence behind.
The blankets are scratchy against his skin as he settles into them. Dean insisted he wear something besides the 'yuppie get-up' and all but forced Castiel into sleep pants and a t-shirt. In as long as he has owned this body, not once has he removed any of the layers built up around his flesh. He thinks perhaps it is only fitting that Dean is the one who convinced him to remove them.
It is both exciting and frightening to stare at the pale sweeps of his own bare skin in the clouded bathroom mirror. His body is far different from Dean's - smaller and narrower, with round arms and a soft belly. Dean's skin is dark and drawn taut over toned muscles, while Castiel's is white and smooth, unmarked by scars save for a small bump on his left side. He fingers the mark absently, feeling its smooth thickness. Jimmy Novak had an appendectomy at age seventeen which left this small reddened dash in its wake; Castiel knows this because he knows everything about Jimmy Novak.
He misses Jimmy sometimes.
The clothes are awkward and unfamiliar, but comfortable so far as Castiel can tell. They are much less restricting. Castiel feels naked and unguarded in these new, thin garments, but the inexorable crawl of Dean's gaze across his body when he first steps from the bathroom makes it worth the discomfort.
Castiel finds he very much enjoys it when Dean looks at him so carefully, as if he is memorizing him or working him out into comprehensible pieces.
Dean has been watching him very closely lately.
Castiel does not sleep through the night, though he lies in bed sunk into the cadence of Dean's soft, heavy breathing.
The nightmares slip in when he allows his guard down.
Alastair, unmediated by a human husk, hands Dean a razor and tells him to begin. "Class is in session," he says in a low hiss of words indefinable by human tongues. It is a cursed language, the filthy sibilants and guttural groans of the demons' tongue.
Castiel watches as the razor gleams in Dean's hand and he says, "Bring them to me," in the same language.
Dean's voice should never speak such atrocities. It hurts Castiel to hear it, so he fits his palm to the print blazing on Dean's shoulder and commands him not to remember such foul, debased words.
He stands over Dean for a long time after the nightmares settle into a blank void of restless sleep. He very pointedly does not think about the effort he must extend to chase Dean's dreams away these days, where before it was as simple as a thought. In some ways he is still very much an angel, but his grace is dimming and he is losing touch with its power. He aches to think about what will happen when the disconnect becomes too great and he can no longer settle Dean's dreams or pull Dean out of a deadly situation. It is frightening, not knowing what lies over the zenith of this path he has set himself on.
All the same, he would not choose another one if given the option.
When Dean makes a rough sound in his sleep, Castiel skims his thumb along the place on his wrist where the rhythm of his pulse is strongest. The beat is steady, the flesh beneath Castiel's warm with life. He presses at his own wrist and feels the matching pulse there, but the rhythm is off and he feels no intimate connection with the working machine inside his chest. It is not him - not Castiel. He is not flesh and blood; he is not alive in this sense, like Dean is. He is simply borrowed.
He folds Dean's wrist carefully across his stomach before slipping back into his own bed and counting out the night by the steady tempo of Dean's breathing.
~ ~ ~
On the seventh day in Westphalia, Castiel follows Dean into a demons' hideout to find a putrefied slick of blood coating the floor and eight piles of flesh wholly unrecognizable as human were it not for the row of their heads sat near the altar. Dean falters when his eyes land on them, turned at an angle in a grotesque mockery of observation, as if the demons wanted an audience for their ritual.
Castiel lays a hand on Dean's arm and calls his name. Dean's only answer is to cock his shotgun and say, "Let's bleed these sons of bitches dry, Cas."
They do, more or less, but the damage is evident and Dean would have caught a machete to the skull if Castiel had waited half a second longer to take a blind shot from Dean's discarded shotgun.
He had never fired a gun before; he had never needed to.
Neither of them talk about it.
Dean does not talk about anything, in fact, and leaves the scene of the slaughter without cleaning up. Castiel finds him outside, leaned heavily against the wall emptying everything out of his stomach in short, choked retches.
He leaves him be as long as he can; three hours pass before he returns to their room to find Dean perched at the bathroom sink, scrubbing blood out of his shirt until his hands have gone raw. When Castiel steps closer to peer over his shoulder, he sees that Dean's fingernails are bleeding around the edges, his flesh gone angry red with the heat of the water.
"Dean." The faucet shrieks dully as Castiel reaches across Dean's body to turn it off. "What happened?"
The sudden slam of Dean's shirt into the sink, the swift spin of his body to face Castiel, shocks him. "Look, okay," Dean begins. The words betray a definite tremor, though Castiel cannot identify if it is anger or fear, or perhaps something else entirely. "Look. I'm not exactly firing on all cylinders here, alright, and sometimes the things I see on this job just - they take me out of my head and put me back on that rack, Cas. They put me back down there with the blood and the screaming and... They put that fucking blade back in my hand, okay? They put - you don't get it, man. You can't."
Castiel shifts to catch Dean's eyes, but they refuse to settle. He lingers instead on the impatient tap of Dean's heel against the floor, the restless rush of his breathing, the twitch of his lips. He wants to tell Dean that yes, yes, he does understand, he has seen each single thing Dean has ever done in his life and through his time in Hell, that he knows every tiny facet of Dean more intimately and completely than Dean could ever comprehend or reciprocate.
But amongst the patterns of Dean he knows so well, he knows his words would only be met with denial and more guilt than should ever be placed on one so undeserving. Dean is a good man. Castiel wishes he could show this fact as explicit and simple as he knows it to be, but Dean refuses to see it. Dean has always refused to see it, and probably always will.
So Castiel shakes his head and sighs instead.
"Why did you lie to your brother then?" he asks. "Why did you tell Sam you would be alright without him?"
Dean rolls his bottom lip through his teeth with a huff of laughter. The expression morphs seamlessly into a grimace as he stares down at the burned and bleeding mess of his hands. Castiel wishes he could heal them.
"Because I can't - I can't keep using Sam as a crutch forever," Dean says. The words are quick and clipped, and Castiel gets the distinct impression that Dean does not want to reveal this slice of weakness but it is leaking out beyond his control. He wishes he could heal this too.
"Sam's the stronger one, Cas, and if anybody's going to do anything to stop this damn Apocalypse it's going to be him." He shakes his head, the movement a quick snap. "I don't have it in me. Not anymore. Certain things I see just - it's like flipping a switch. I freeze up. I go stiff. Useless."
"Dean."
"I thought I could handle it, y'know? I thought I'd washed the worst of it out, but." Dean taps two fingers quickly against his temple and makes a small sound that mimics a laugh, but falls far short. "It's still up there. It's never going to leave."
"Dean," Castiel repeats. This time Dean looks at him, his gaze forced upward by the lift of Castiel's knuckles under the bend of his chin. He stares for a long moment, expectant, swallowing any ounce of reassurance Castiel can offer. A bright spike of suffering spears through Castiel's chest as he mirrors Dean's stare; the agony is crippling and it makes him want to sink to his knees and shout to his Father, makes him want to clutch Dean close and shield him from the worst of a world so vicious. Makes him want to rinse these stains from Dean's memory permanently, lift the weight of Hell he perpetually carries with him.
He drops his hand from Dean's chin in favor of flattening it to the thrumming center of his chest.
"You are not useless," he says.
Dean trembles, blinks with slightly wet eyes, and stares down at the place where Castiel's palm meets the cloth of his undershirt. "Cas," he says, strangled.
The flesh beneath Castiel's hand is shuddering and thundering with a wild rhythm, bleeding warmth into the coldness of his own skin and contradictorily alive beneath the dead blank of Dean's expression. It is, above anything else, chilling how empty Dean has gone in so few seconds. Castiel swallows, a decidedly human mark of nervousness, but does not remove his hand.
Dean does.
He finds Castiel's wrist and holds on for a moment before pushing it away. "Cas," he repeats, less of a question this time, flat and resigned as he thumbs at his nose and turns to walk away. "Get out of here for a little while, okay. I need to get some sleep."
It is hardly a question and the words sting as if Castiel has been slapped, but he bears no place to argue. He leaves, reluctantly, and silently promises not to intervene again until Dean deems it necessary.
~ ~ ~
Next Part
Title: In the Secret Places of the Stairs (2 of 3)
Recipient: ze_pink_lady
Author: thevinegarworks
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Torture, mentions of non-con, Hell being a generally scary place, demon!Dean, sexuality.
Spoilers: None; this is an AU from 5x03. Put everything as of 5x04 and afterward out of your mind while reading.
Summary: Castiel has soothed his nightmares since the first night, though Dean will never know of it. Castiel has accepted this invisibility willingly; if it helps Dean Winchester grow into his role, he will oblige without argument and with no need for recognition. He simply wants to help.
Author notes: Title taken from the Song of Songs. All of the languages used herein are the product of copious dictionary-flipping and begging for translations via a sister with a PhD in Classics; translations can be found at the end of the fic itself. Enormous thank you to my beta, M, for refocusing my attentions and getting me on the right path, and also to K, whom I love dearly. Happy Christmas, Z bb, I hope you enjoy it! ♥
Previous Part
The Winchesters are stronger together than they are apart.
Dean has not yet fully mended from his time in Hell, though he shoves the ache deeply behind new layers of purpose - it is the Apocalypse, after all. When Sam opts to leave instead of continue hunting at Dean's side, Castiel very nearly intervenes. He only barely catches himself before manifesting and reminding Sam that his place is here, with his brother, and that Dean very desperately needs him though he might not show it. But this is Sam's choice, as is his privilege, and also Dean's to let him go freely.
Castiel can see the black spots darkening Dean's soul long after the rumble of the pick-up truck carrying Sam fades into the distance.
He does not approach Dean again until midnight, when he is fitfully inebriated and the blackish bruises have faded to murky gray. Dean mills around a table with a large, ruddy man, studying a random scattering of pool balls. When Castiel manifests in a nearby dark corner, no one startles at his presence. When he steps into the cones of light around the table, however, Dean's eyes gape wide open.
"Cas?"
"Hello, Dean."
Dean's expression is difficult to read beyond the blur of alcohol hazing his features. He is surprised, plainly, and perhaps slightly glad at the initial sight of Castiel, but then he draws back to square his shoulders and seems simply confused. "What're you doin' here?"
The glare of Dean's opponent roams heavily over Castiel's body; he returns it with a subtle squint, which seems to bother the man. "Hey, you got a problem?" he asks with a jerk of his head.
Castiel shrugs his challenge away with a blink before stepping close to Dean. To his surprise, Dean immediately steps back and extends a hand between them. "Whoa, hey," he slurs. "No need to get that personal, Cas, just -..." He laughs, though the sound is flat. "Hey, y'wanna beer? Or a shot? Bartender, uh - Lisa over there makes a mean '57 Chevy."
"Dean, you're inebriated," Castiel says. He stares blankly as Dean hisses out a long laugh and rubs at his forehead; the man from before is quickly becoming restless, judging by his shifts in posture.
"Inebriated," Dean repeats. "That's, uh. That's eloquent, Cas."
"You should be resting," Castiel reminds him, but the words are quickly cut off by the rise of Dean's opponent's voice.
"Look, dude, I've got two hundred good bucks on this table right now. You wanna tuck your boyfriend back into bed, you wait till after we're done playin'."
A spike of anger flicks through Dean's face and hardens his slack expression. "'Scuse me?"
He steps forward, but Castiel settles a hand gently against his chest. "Confrontation isn't necessary," he assures, but the line of Dean's gaze is locked and the twitch of his shoulders suggests otherwise.
"I want my money, asshole," the man at Castiel's back spits. Castiel turns quickly.
"Your money is yours to keep. Dean, if you would."
After a long draw of tense silence, Dean's stare softens and shifts to Castiel instead. His eyes are glazed and unfocused as he thumbs through a stack of dingy bills and flings them carelessly onto the table. "Here y'go, baldy," he sighs as the slender pole in his grip clatters against the tabletop. "We'll break even. Hundred bucks. Consider it a pity draw since I was wipin' the floor with your ass anyway."
The man curses and lunges - and very briefly scuffs against Castiel's jaw - before the din of the bar tapers into the unmoving silence of Dean's motel room. Dean wavers on his feet, laughing gracelessly as Castiel dabs at his lip where a distinct dull throb is humming against his flesh.
"Dude," Dean gasps through a bout of laughter. Precisely the same instant his hand lands on Castiel's shoulder, his eyes land on his face and go stoically sober. "Dude! Cas, you okay?"
Castiel's fingers are slick with a swirl of crimson blood when he withdraws them from his lip. "I am..." He sighs and rubs the liquid into his fingertips. The taste of it is peculiar when his tongue finds the wound and skims across it. "Fine," he finishes quietly.
Dean shifts closer, stumbling slightly as his hand moves to catch beneath Castiel's jaw. He tips upward, inspecting the wound in the light. "He got you pretty good, huh?"
The pressure and heat Dean's grip imparts against Castiel's flesh is unexpected. His throat works in a swallow against Dean's palm. "I wasn't aware."
A wide grin reaches across Dean's face as he laughs, though it never quite reaches his eyes. He claps his hand against Castiel's cheek and turns away with a groan. Castiel does not move, instead electing to watch as Dean toes off his boots - always the left first, then right; Castiel has memorized these tiny fragments of Dean's regularity over the months - and peels away his socks, habitually stuffing them inside one another. He pointedly looks away when Dean slips his shirt over his head to leave him naked save for a pair of tattered jeans slung low around his hips.
Castiel stares at the carpet and strives to make sense of its brown, green, and purple fibers. "What do you find funny, Dean?"
Dean's laugh continues as he shrugs and disappears into the bathroom. His voice is muffled behind several clicks and swishes, then the sound of him cleaning his teeth. "S'just - sho much for dishcretion, right?"
Castiel flicks his eyes up to meet Dean's teasing stare, but immediately returns to the carpet at the contact.
Domestic sounds pervade the silence for several moments as Dean readies for sleep and Castiel simply stands in the middle of the room, hands heavy at his sides. Dean pauses momentarily before moving past him and sinking onto the bed. "Hey, don't look too awkward there, Cas," he mumbles. "Might pull something."
At his urging, Castiel folds onto the bed near Dean's feet, keeping a notable distance between them. Ever since Dean complained about his personal space issues, Castiel has taken care to respect Dean's boundaries more implicitly. He feels strangely cold, and even more drawn to Dean than normal, but does not want to upset his comfort. Instead, he hangs back.
Dean's hands flutter and shift along the boxy alarm clock in his lap. His movements are short and clumsy, obviously still altered from the alcohol as he mumbles a curse beneath his breath and punches at the buttons. "You staying?" he asks without looking up.
Castiel frowns at the words. "Do you wish me to?"
Dean shrugs. "Whatever." He pulls to his feet and wavers, nearly enough to lose his balance completely, but Castiel rises within a blink and catches a hand at the curve of Dean's back to prevent his fall.
The silence is overbearing as Dean maps Castiel's face. His body is warm, firm and alive against Castiel's palm; he does not want to sever the contact even after Dean regains his balance and moves away.
He clears his throat. "Hey, please tell me you brought my car back too?"
Castiel's hands curl into his pockets as Dean jerks the blankets down and crawls beneath them with a wide yawn. "Of course."
"Ah," Dean grunts, not quite laughing. There is not a wealth of available room on the edge of the bed when Castiel sits down again, and Dean's leg is a solid line fit against the small of his back. It is strangely intimate, Castiel thinks, sharing this silent space with Dean in this manner. They have been alone in these indiscriminate rooms before, but this feels... different.
Dean struggles for a moment before propping an arm behind him and waving the other in the air near Castiel's face. "How's your..."
Castiel blinks.
"S'it hurt?"
His immediate reaction when Dean's fingertip finds his face is to move toward it. But Dean is drunk and in all likelihood unaware of his exact actions, so Castiel forces himself into inaction instead. When two of Dean's fingers swipe at his cheek, too clumsy to be any degree sober, Castiel says simply, "Dean."
Dean's fingers find his lip and Castiel is highly aware that Dean is watching the motion of his wandering hand. His knuckles brush below Castiel's lip, then part around his chin; they turn to skim the line of Castiel's jaw until they reach where his lips meet, faintly tickling over their crease and surface until they reach the swell of broken flesh in one corner.
Castiel winces, just slightly.
"It does hurt," Dean says. The pressure of his fingers eases and for a moment Castiel thinks he is very near having to catch Dean from slumping limply into an unconscious pile, but instead he only shifts down the bed until there are only inches between them. "You can't heal. Can you?"
The curve of his palm migrates to fit against Castiel's jaw and Castiel has no idea what to do.
"Dean," he says. The sound that meets it is faraway and hushed; Dean's stare is pointed even through his drug-addled haze, centered solely on where the blossom of a bruise thrums at the juncture of Castiel's lips.
It is terrifyingly intense.
"You should rest."
Dean staggers for a moment before regaining his presence and lifting his gaze from Castiel's mouth to his eyes. "Hm?"
A small but noticeable shiver darts along Castiel's spine.
"You should sleep," he repeats.
Dean says simply, "yeah," and when his hands move quickly away Castiel misses them immediately.
He supposes asking Dean to return would be uncouth, though, so instead he says, "Goodnight, Dean," and extinguishes the lamp with barely more than a thought.
~ ~ ~
After twelve days apart, Sam contacts Dean while he is eating lunch in a roadside diner and tells him he does not plan on coming back.
Dean abandons half his meal uneaten and does not wait for change when he leaves far too much money on the table.
When Castiel appears in the passenger seat of the Impala as he is driving down a blank strip of darkened highway, Dean clenches his jaw and says simply, "No."
Castiel opens his mouth to speak, but the words do not form immediately. It is enough of a pause for Dean to collect his thoughts more coherently, as well as forcefully.
"No, Cas, god dammit," he snaps. "Just - I just wanna find a motel and sleep for a while, okay? And then I wanna find some evil sonofabitch monster and kill it, and have a few beers once it's dead. Is that so hard? That too much to ask?"
Castiel closes his mouth carefully. "No," he answers. "I suppose not."
And then he leaves.
That night, Dean dreams about the barrel of a shotgun waved in his face from too close a distance. He dreams about a red stain of blood dribbling down Sam's chin and a pair of large hands closing around his throat. Castiel touches his fingers between Dean's eyes as the word monster pushes past his lips, then rests his hand briefly against Dean's cheek. It is not a dream of Hell, but close enough to one to bury a crease of pain into Dean's brow and set his heartbeat racing.
When Castiel pulls back, his thumb finds the smooth ridge of bone above the concavity of Dean's eye. He pets its line, once, before withdrawing to stand guard at the salted window.
~ ~ ~
Days pass until a week is built, and then another. Sam is surviving and doing his best to research portents of the apocalypse. He is staying in contact, if only sporadically.
Dean is surviving too, but barely.
He has grown careless since Sam's departure, and if Castiel has warned him of this more than once Dean has taken no heed of it. Castiel has kept a vigilant eye on Dean as often as he can, though the sigils carved into his ribs complicate matters. He can still feel when Dean calls to him, on what occasion he has to summon him by name. More than once, Castiel has felt the pull of Dean calling him someplace, but has had to resort to rudimentary means to pinpoint his exact location.
Dean always sounds gruff and unwelcoming over the phone, but he never tells Castiel to stop calling. He even calls Castiel once, just checking in on the quest for the Holy Spirit. After Castiel briefs him on his lack of progress, Dean seems hesitant to end the conversation. Castiel thinks there must be some meaning behind this, but Dean curls in on himself and says not to stay up too late on a weeknight, then hangs up.
Castiel does not hear from him for three days, and when he does it is disorienting.
As he is walking the roadless desert between Jerusalem and Ubeidiya, a weight clutches tightly at his chest and pulls him to the ground. Before the sand is settled beneath his hands he is at Dean's side, crouched near his prone form as the gnashing jaws of an old forest demon barrel toward him.
Castiel flings a hand in the creature's direction and scrambles defensively in front of Dean. The demon skids to a halt with an awful screech when Castiel stumbles quickly through an Enochian exorcism rite; it wails and shrinks from Castiel's presence as he repeats the benediction and forces the creature to return to its cave.
He does not address the startling amount of effort he had to extend to banish the demon, where once he could have destroyed it altogether with barely more than a glance.
Instead he rushes to Dean's side and checks his body carefully. No bones are broken but he is unresponsive when Castiel taps his face. He only wakes up once, once Castiel has transported them to Dean's motel room and is slipping the shirt from his shoulders to better suture the wound gaping across his midsection.
Dean's eyes flutter as his lips work dryly. "Cas," he says, but nothing else.
"I'm here," Castiel answers. He closes his fingers around Dean's, but the hand in his grip is prone and still.
Dean does not wake up again all night, but his wounds are sufficiently stitched and Castiel has made him as comfortable as he knows how - two pillows beneath his head, the sheets loose over him because Dean hates when sheets are tucked tightly around him. Castiel dims the lamp and sits at Dean's side until the sun comes up.
Only then does he lie back and close his eyes.
~ ~ ~
When Dean wakes him with a gentle shake to his shoulder, Castiel shoots from the bed with a distinct panic. Dean's palm hovers between them for a moment, as if keeping an animal at bay, before falling to his side and slipping into his pocket.
"Morning," he says as he raises the coffee in his other hand to his lips. Castiel can smell it from here - warm, bitter, and processed. He can glean nothing appealing from the scent, but Dean seems to enjoy it as he sips idly from the styrofoam cup and simply watches. Watches Castiel.
It makes no sense.
By all rights, Castiel should not even be able to sleep, yet he feels... refreshed. Sleep was a pleasantly heavy weight buried into his body; these muscles that have attached to him feel rejuvenated. He thinks there must be something wrong about how easy it was for him to be overtaken by sleep, and that this surely cannot mean anything good for him, but in favor of worrying he only stands and says, "Good morning, Dean."
Dean swings around where Castiel stands and sinks onto the bed to tie up his boots. "I didn't think you slept," he says conversationally, but Castiel detects a fine thread of worry running through the words.
"I rest," he answers. It is a simple enough explanation - he does rest, after all, and since he is attached to a human body he supposes it is merely a question of translation. Not a portent of his growing weakness, he hopes, and even if it was he would not trouble Dean with the development.
Dean nods slowly before glancing back to the knot of his shoelaces. "Hey, Cas? I gotta ask something." Castiel shifts to Dean's side and sits beside him as he lowers one foot and raises the other to begin lacing. "How'd you find me?"
That same faint tint of worry colors Dean's words. He waits, leaned against his knees, dissecting Castiel's face for an explanation he cannot give.
Castiel blinks and answers honestly: "I don't know."
"I thought your little magic trick with the ribs was supposed to stop that."
"You wish that I hadn't found you?"
Dean's foot stomps onto the ground as his gaze flicks quickly downward in a flash, catching on Castiel's lips before he licks his own. "No, I - thanks," he mumbles. "For saving my ass and for sewing me up. You're pretty handy with a needle and thread."
Castiel bows his head briefly. "You're welcome."
When Dean takes a slow sip of coffee and offers the warm cup to Castiel with an expectant smile, Castiel takes it.
Coffee is actually quite delicious, he discovers.
~ ~ ~
Dean insists they drive the way to Michigan. It is winter and bitter cold, and Castiel has things to do, countries and oceans to search, but Dean sniffs and bounces on his toes against the cold. He punches Castiel on the shoulder and says, "Ah, come on, Cas, humor me."
Castiel cannot say no to that.
The passenger seat warms to his flesh quickly enough, but the contours of it do not fit appropriately to his body. The grooves sunk into the upholstery are much larger than he is - Sam's size - and he cannot quite swallow the awkward feeling that this is not his place. He is merely filling it in Sam's stead.
He wonders what that means, but Dean is singing with the radio with his arm propped in the window sill, and Castiel thinks better of discussing it. He leans back, closes his eyes, and allows the sharp bite of wintry sunlight to cool his eyelids instead.
He stays at Dean's side as they roll to a stop outside a small red building marked Mel's. It is quiet and nearly barren inside as Dean tells Castiel stories about his childhood over his meal and glows brighter with each word. Dean offers him french fries and chicken fried steak, but Castiel respectfully declines. He does taste the peach cobbler Dean orders after the meal, however, which he finds to be very pleasant. Dean's eyes slant into a grin when he makes a joke about Castiel's sweet tooth.
Castiel quietly picks up the untouched fork near his elbow and cuts off another warm lump of peach filling in reply.
They drive for eleven hours and Dean never once gives any indication he might find Castiel's presence a nuisance. It is a welcome change, one that Castiel is not completely confident he understands, but Dean is distanced from the dark places of himself when he is distracted by his music and old memories, and for that Castiel is thankful. He does not question it.
He does not tell Dean that he knows these stories already, that he watched them as they took place so many years ago, because he likes the way Dean's words color the events in a new light. He likes Dean's new perspective and he likes Dean's company, so he sits silently in the passenger seat and listens.
When they reach Westphalia, Dean checks into a motel with two beds and tells Castiel to make himself at home. The news says a snow storm is coming through overnight and Dean says he does not intend to wake up before a two-digit number. Castiel considers reminding Dean that he does not need to sleep, but Dean seems so content to call in an order of Chinese food with extra egg rolls and explain the details of a very colorful and strongly-worded action movie that Castiel cannot bring himself to dampen his satisfaction.
He wonders if this is what Sam's life was like when he still traveled with Dean - a constantly shifting succession of cramped motel rooms, condemned houses, greasy food, action movies. It is dingy and human and flawed, and all the more perfect for it. He cannot imagine why anyone would want to leave this existence behind.
The blankets are scratchy against his skin as he settles into them. Dean insisted he wear something besides the 'yuppie get-up' and all but forced Castiel into sleep pants and a t-shirt. In as long as he has owned this body, not once has he removed any of the layers built up around his flesh. He thinks perhaps it is only fitting that Dean is the one who convinced him to remove them.
It is both exciting and frightening to stare at the pale sweeps of his own bare skin in the clouded bathroom mirror. His body is far different from Dean's - smaller and narrower, with round arms and a soft belly. Dean's skin is dark and drawn taut over toned muscles, while Castiel's is white and smooth, unmarked by scars save for a small bump on his left side. He fingers the mark absently, feeling its smooth thickness. Jimmy Novak had an appendectomy at age seventeen which left this small reddened dash in its wake; Castiel knows this because he knows everything about Jimmy Novak.
He misses Jimmy sometimes.
The clothes are awkward and unfamiliar, but comfortable so far as Castiel can tell. They are much less restricting. Castiel feels naked and unguarded in these new, thin garments, but the inexorable crawl of Dean's gaze across his body when he first steps from the bathroom makes it worth the discomfort.
Castiel finds he very much enjoys it when Dean looks at him so carefully, as if he is memorizing him or working him out into comprehensible pieces.
Dean has been watching him very closely lately.
Castiel does not sleep through the night, though he lies in bed sunk into the cadence of Dean's soft, heavy breathing.
The nightmares slip in when he allows his guard down.
Alastair, unmediated by a human husk, hands Dean a razor and tells him to begin. "Class is in session," he says in a low hiss of words indefinable by human tongues. It is a cursed language, the filthy sibilants and guttural groans of the demons' tongue.
Castiel watches as the razor gleams in Dean's hand and he says, "Bring them to me," in the same language.
Dean's voice should never speak such atrocities. It hurts Castiel to hear it, so he fits his palm to the print blazing on Dean's shoulder and commands him not to remember such foul, debased words.
He stands over Dean for a long time after the nightmares settle into a blank void of restless sleep. He very pointedly does not think about the effort he must extend to chase Dean's dreams away these days, where before it was as simple as a thought. In some ways he is still very much an angel, but his grace is dimming and he is losing touch with its power. He aches to think about what will happen when the disconnect becomes too great and he can no longer settle Dean's dreams or pull Dean out of a deadly situation. It is frightening, not knowing what lies over the zenith of this path he has set himself on.
All the same, he would not choose another one if given the option.
When Dean makes a rough sound in his sleep, Castiel skims his thumb along the place on his wrist where the rhythm of his pulse is strongest. The beat is steady, the flesh beneath Castiel's warm with life. He presses at his own wrist and feels the matching pulse there, but the rhythm is off and he feels no intimate connection with the working machine inside his chest. It is not him - not Castiel. He is not flesh and blood; he is not alive in this sense, like Dean is. He is simply borrowed.
He folds Dean's wrist carefully across his stomach before slipping back into his own bed and counting out the night by the steady tempo of Dean's breathing.
~ ~ ~
On the seventh day in Westphalia, Castiel follows Dean into a demons' hideout to find a putrefied slick of blood coating the floor and eight piles of flesh wholly unrecognizable as human were it not for the row of their heads sat near the altar. Dean falters when his eyes land on them, turned at an angle in a grotesque mockery of observation, as if the demons wanted an audience for their ritual.
Castiel lays a hand on Dean's arm and calls his name. Dean's only answer is to cock his shotgun and say, "Let's bleed these sons of bitches dry, Cas."
They do, more or less, but the damage is evident and Dean would have caught a machete to the skull if Castiel had waited half a second longer to take a blind shot from Dean's discarded shotgun.
He had never fired a gun before; he had never needed to.
Neither of them talk about it.
Dean does not talk about anything, in fact, and leaves the scene of the slaughter without cleaning up. Castiel finds him outside, leaned heavily against the wall emptying everything out of his stomach in short, choked retches.
He leaves him be as long as he can; three hours pass before he returns to their room to find Dean perched at the bathroom sink, scrubbing blood out of his shirt until his hands have gone raw. When Castiel steps closer to peer over his shoulder, he sees that Dean's fingernails are bleeding around the edges, his flesh gone angry red with the heat of the water.
"Dean." The faucet shrieks dully as Castiel reaches across Dean's body to turn it off. "What happened?"
The sudden slam of Dean's shirt into the sink, the swift spin of his body to face Castiel, shocks him. "Look, okay," Dean begins. The words betray a definite tremor, though Castiel cannot identify if it is anger or fear, or perhaps something else entirely. "Look. I'm not exactly firing on all cylinders here, alright, and sometimes the things I see on this job just - they take me out of my head and put me back on that rack, Cas. They put me back down there with the blood and the screaming and... They put that fucking blade back in my hand, okay? They put - you don't get it, man. You can't."
Castiel shifts to catch Dean's eyes, but they refuse to settle. He lingers instead on the impatient tap of Dean's heel against the floor, the restless rush of his breathing, the twitch of his lips. He wants to tell Dean that yes, yes, he does understand, he has seen each single thing Dean has ever done in his life and through his time in Hell, that he knows every tiny facet of Dean more intimately and completely than Dean could ever comprehend or reciprocate.
But amongst the patterns of Dean he knows so well, he knows his words would only be met with denial and more guilt than should ever be placed on one so undeserving. Dean is a good man. Castiel wishes he could show this fact as explicit and simple as he knows it to be, but Dean refuses to see it. Dean has always refused to see it, and probably always will.
So Castiel shakes his head and sighs instead.
"Why did you lie to your brother then?" he asks. "Why did you tell Sam you would be alright without him?"
Dean rolls his bottom lip through his teeth with a huff of laughter. The expression morphs seamlessly into a grimace as he stares down at the burned and bleeding mess of his hands. Castiel wishes he could heal them.
"Because I can't - I can't keep using Sam as a crutch forever," Dean says. The words are quick and clipped, and Castiel gets the distinct impression that Dean does not want to reveal this slice of weakness but it is leaking out beyond his control. He wishes he could heal this too.
"Sam's the stronger one, Cas, and if anybody's going to do anything to stop this damn Apocalypse it's going to be him." He shakes his head, the movement a quick snap. "I don't have it in me. Not anymore. Certain things I see just - it's like flipping a switch. I freeze up. I go stiff. Useless."
"Dean."
"I thought I could handle it, y'know? I thought I'd washed the worst of it out, but." Dean taps two fingers quickly against his temple and makes a small sound that mimics a laugh, but falls far short. "It's still up there. It's never going to leave."
"Dean," Castiel repeats. This time Dean looks at him, his gaze forced upward by the lift of Castiel's knuckles under the bend of his chin. He stares for a long moment, expectant, swallowing any ounce of reassurance Castiel can offer. A bright spike of suffering spears through Castiel's chest as he mirrors Dean's stare; the agony is crippling and it makes him want to sink to his knees and shout to his Father, makes him want to clutch Dean close and shield him from the worst of a world so vicious. Makes him want to rinse these stains from Dean's memory permanently, lift the weight of Hell he perpetually carries with him.
He drops his hand from Dean's chin in favor of flattening it to the thrumming center of his chest.
"You are not useless," he says.
Dean trembles, blinks with slightly wet eyes, and stares down at the place where Castiel's palm meets the cloth of his undershirt. "Cas," he says, strangled.
The flesh beneath Castiel's hand is shuddering and thundering with a wild rhythm, bleeding warmth into the coldness of his own skin and contradictorily alive beneath the dead blank of Dean's expression. It is, above anything else, chilling how empty Dean has gone in so few seconds. Castiel swallows, a decidedly human mark of nervousness, but does not remove his hand.
Dean does.
He finds Castiel's wrist and holds on for a moment before pushing it away. "Cas," he repeats, less of a question this time, flat and resigned as he thumbs at his nose and turns to walk away. "Get out of here for a little while, okay. I need to get some sleep."
It is hardly a question and the words sting as if Castiel has been slapped, but he bears no place to argue. He leaves, reluctantly, and silently promises not to intervene again until Dean deems it necessary.
~ ~ ~
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