[FIC] Playing With Shadows for sorenne
Gift type: Fanfic
Title: Playing With Shadows
Author: tristinai
Recipient: sorenne
Rating: R
Word Count: 4176
Warnings: Dub-con, sexual situations, some gore, angst
Spoilers: up to and including 7.06
Summary: Dean lets Castiel make it up to him. But retribution is a cruel bitch.
Author notes: Loosely based on the prompt, After returning from his Leviathan-induced death, Cas tries to earn Dean's forgiveness. I was in a dark place when I wrote this and struggled with the question of what Castiel's redemption would look like in the middle of season 7 Dean's downward spiral. This was the result.
“I think you should just go on without me.”
Cue the self-righteous bitch-face and eyes so hot they looked as if they could have burned a hole in Dean’s skull, and that was when it happened. That was when Dean threw in his towel and Sam walked.
Sam walked.
It was a scene that had replayed not a few times in that first year after Sam left Stanford, when finding a father who didn’t want to be found strained any attempts to rekindle that bond the boys had felt in their childhood, back in a time when they had only each other. 7 years later and they were still keeping secrets, all for the sake of “knowing” what was best for the other.
The whiskey burned Dean’s throat, his eyes watering as he slammed the shot glass back on the table top.
Stanford. That opened a whole new can of worms and instead of feeling just plain angry, Dean was now served a full helping of anger with a generous side of guilt. The anger, he could deal with. It’s easier to be angry. But the guilt…
“Don’t lie to me again.”
In another time, Dean would have buried himself deep in some wanton one-night fuck, just over the edge of sobriety but far gone enough to enjoy his physical indulgence while his senses were numbed. Nowadays, he can’t even remember the last time he jerked off.
Pouring himself another shot, his eyes flickered to the television screen. A blond woman writhed as a petite brunette crawled between her legs, the camera angle shifting when the brunette’s tongue darted out to flick at the blond’s clitoris. The exaggerated moans normally would have been enough to have Dean’s cock twitch in excitement.
He downed another shot of whiskey.
His cock still felt soft where it was nestled comfortably inside his jeans.
“I can’t even be around you right now!”
In his defense, not being able to stop thinking about the anger and hurt in Sam’s eyes was a serious mood killer. They were supposed to have a bond, one that he thought outlived their respective times in hell. A bond so deep and profound-
…profound bond?
Deans eyes teared up as he finished off his whiskey. With an uncomfortable cough, he stumbled out of his chair and somehow managed to make it over to his bed, collapsing onto the covers. His head was now spinning, the numbing warmth like a bandage as another wound threatened to open.
But he wouldn’t think of Him. Fuck the profound bond shit. Dean would sooner offer himself up as an appetizer to the Leviathans than admit that anything that happened to Castiel was his fault.
Because if it was his fault, that meant that Dean could have done something to prevent it. It meant that he wouldn’t have failed Castiel. Dean was tired of failing people.
The blond on the screen cried out as she orgasmed. Dean, however, was already falling into a fitful sleep.
*
Dean woke with a start as something struck against the door to the motel room. His hands were already on the shotgun lodged under his pillow.
All the lights to the motel room were still on, the television flickering a credit card request if to continue watching the channel. But Dean’s eyes were fixed on the door as he crept towards it, shotgun raised.
When he reached the door, he glanced through the peephole.
…nothing.
But he wasn’t about to place his bets on it actually being nothing. Experience with the supernatural had taught him that when you think you’re alone, you’re really not. When you think everything is fine, that dick Fate is actually dangling you like you’re the Holy fucking Grail to every asshole looking for a new chew toy to play with. Dean’s been played before and he’s not about to be played now.
Ignoring the display of calm that the empty parking lot, sans that God awful shit mobile he’s been driving since parking Baby in her corner, seemed to suggest, Dean’s hand reached out and unlocked the door, pressing his body firmly against the wall beside the door. He slowly opened the door a sliver with his free hand, right arm balancing the shot gun so its nose was the first thing that poked out.
The first thing he saw was the blood. Blood smeared at eye level and trickling down in little trails towards the ground. Hackles raised, he opened the door a little wider and the sudden shift in movement made his shoulders tense, eyes dropping.
Slumped on the ground against the door was a very bleeding, very bloody, Jimmy Novak meat suit.
Dean made a surprised sound and almost fumbled with his shotgun. Maybe if he hadn’t been doing this all his life, he would have done something stupid, like drop the shotgun and help the thing that looked like his dead friend to his feet. Maybe he would have patched it up or, if all else failed, broken into a hospital to get the medical supplies needed to help the Jimmy-Novak-possessed doppelganger.
But Dean wasn’t born yesterday. And miracles never happened to the Winchesters.
“What the fuck are you?”
The thing let out a little groan, head lifting heavily until Dean found a pair of familiar, deep blue eyes staring into his own. Dean’s hand trembled because, for a moment, he could almost believe, just by the way those eyes regarded him in a way that Leviathan-Castiel and Jimmy Novak never had, that this thing could be the angel that had dragged him out of hell.
“Dean…”
The words came out slurred, exhausted, in a gravely voice that was all too familiar.
Dean released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
He took a good look at the thing bleeding out on his doorstep. Jimmy’s black jacket was missing, the pants and white dress shirt ripped and bloodied. The tie that Castiel had never seemed to wear right anyway was more askew than usual and seemed to be hanging from he meatsuit’s shirt collar for dear life.
That voice, those eyes…Dean could almost believe it was his friend except the Leviathans forgot one important thing: Angels don’t fucking bleed like that.
“Nice try, assface,” Dean scoffed, aiming the shotgun at its head, fingers tightly hovering over the trigger. He may not be able to cut its head off this close but maybe he could blow it into chunks and bury the body before it could reassemble itself. “Last I heard, Camp Cas was no longer in session.”
Dean ignored the tightness in his chest as he made this admission. First time in months that he’s said the angel’s name and it was to admit he’s gone for good.
Oh, this thing was getting its head blown off five times over and being hacked into chunks and buried over 7 different states for pulling this douchebag stunt on him.
“I…this vessel is weak, Dean…” it started, blood dripping from a head wound down its cheeks for good measure. Red blood. “You once said if I need help, all I had to do was ask. I’m asking now.”
The Jimmy-Novak-meatsuit-wearing doppelganger attempted to push itself onto its feet and stumbled back against the ground, hitting its head on the door. In his sleep weary state, Dean had briefly forgotten that the Leviathans bleed black and the red smears staining that white shirt seemed to defy fact. Still. Dean didn’t trust this fucking thing even with a shotgun now pressed to its forehead.
“I don’t know what the fuck you are,” he whispered, voice hitching as he tried to swallow the hurt he felt when it asked him for help, like how he had wanted Cas to ask all those months ago, “but you’re about to paint this sidewalk red if you don’t start answering questions. How the fuck did you find me?”
“You…you called me…” it groaned, body shuddering.
“Bullshit! I haven’t called Cas in-“
The intense stare Dean received cut off his protest. It was like drowning in an ocean, sorrow-filled depths that pushed Dean deeper and deeper beneath the surface, cutting off his air supply as he struggled to resurface, swimming against an unseen current that was leading him to a place he didn’t want to explore, a place where maybe if he had dared ventured to when Castiel had first attempted to appeal to him, those unspoken conversations would have changed the course of events that had brought him to the here and now.
Dean swallowed heavily. The last time Castiel had looked at him like that was when-
But Dean didn’t feel guilty. And this wasn’t Castiel.
“I heard you call out to me in your sleep…”
And that. That just made Dean really, fucking angry.
He grabbed the thing by its shirt collar and dragged it into the motel room roughly, kicking the door closed with his foot. He was a bit surprised when it didn’t so much as a make a peep out of this treatment, despite being, apparently, gravely injured. As much as he just wanted to blow its brains out or exercise it on the street-whether it’s a shape shifter, Jimmy meatsuit possessed demon, or whatever-cleaning up and disposing of a body in the middle of an open parking lot, albeit a dimly lit one at night, could draw unwanted attention. His head was still pounding from the alcohol and he already hated this thing for bleeding out all over the damn street in front of his room, not to mention its little show it was putting on while wearing that face.
“I’m gonna enjoy sending you back downstairs,” Dean snarled, snatching up the holy water off the tabletop. “You see that prick Crowley, tell him Dean Winchester says-“
As the Castiel-Jimmy-whatever imitator used the table to shakily stand back up on its feet, it received a face full of holy water. Water trickled down its chin, dripping onto its sullied shirt collar. Blue eyes blinked in confusion.
Dean stared at it. It stared back. Okay, maybe not a demon.
Dean chucked the shotgun and quickly withdrew his silver knife. Closing the little distance between them, he stabbed the knife into its shoulder and was rewarded with a wince of pain. However, unlike with most supernatural things that seemed to suffer a severe aversion to silver, this one flinched in a way that someone would if they got a paper cut: more out of annoyance than in pain.
Blood trickled onto the handle of the blade, staining Dean’s finger. His eyes widened and he took a step back from the thing, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu as it slowly pulled out the silver-bladed knife from its shoulder. But unlike the time he had stabbed Castiel, this thing didn’t break eye contact to glance curiously at the weapon.
Next came the splash of Borax. A dousing of salt. Dean even tried poking it with an iron rod he kept handy, even if this thing was challenging everything he knew so far that repelled supernatural things. Still, it seemed to regard him with forced patience.
It was then that the inkling, a tiny thought that sprouted into the trickle of hope, surfaced that maybe, just maybe, the universe wasn’t giving Dean a big, “Fuck you” and flipping him off.
“…Cas?”
Dean hated that his voice cracked when he said the angel’s name. He hated that hope brings with it a high that exposes every feeling he’s bottled at the back of his mind for many months now, that even the slightest deviation from the possibility that his friend was still in there could make everything he buried come crashing down. And Dean wasn’t quite ready to deal with Castiel’s death all over again.
“Hello, Dean.”
It took only two words for Castiel to have an entire conversation with Dean. Like with his eyes, Castiel had a way of expressing everything he wanted to say by not saying them, by lacing words with more meaning than should be meant. Any doubt that Dean had was suddenly squandered as the stakes were raised and he placed his bets on the only logical conclusion that defied all logic: this was, in fact, Castiel.
So many months thinking he was dead, mourning his death with the burn of whiskey as the only love making he indulged in was when his lips were against the bottle. It numbed him, the revelation, similar to how alcohol had often numbed him when he didn’t want to remember. Now that Castiel was here, bruised and battered but evidently still kicking, Dean did the one thing he had wanted to do for so long, an ache that wouldn’t leave him until it was satisfied.
He lunged forward and punched Castiel in the face.
“Fuck,” Dean swore, his right hand smarting something fierce. He had forgotten how much it hurt to punch an angel.
Blood now oozed from Castiel’s nose, blue eyes flickering to stare at the floor. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“Damn fucking right you do,” Dean said, voice rising with anger. “Your idea of averting the apocalypse by starting a new one? Going fucking great. Just ended a stint as America’s Most Wanted no thanks to those dicks wearing my face like every day’s the Dean Winchester Show.”
He was shaking with anger, fists clenched at his side. When Castiel looked up at him, face forever bordering on expressionless even when his eyes conveyed so much pain, Dean had to fight every urge to punch the should-be fallen angel again.
Instead, he settled on distraction, looking anywhere but at Castiel’s face when he continued to address him. “How the hell are you even here, anyway? I thought you were fish food last I saw you.”
He went to pour himself a shot, the specially tailored Dean Winchester solution to all of life’s problems. Finding the bottle empty, he moodily slammed it down on the table. He kept his body turned away from Castiel, feeling the weight of everything tumbling down on his shoulders, leaning forward against the table as if it was the only thing keeping him from collapsing. If Castiel noticed how Dean’s arms were trembling, how he was struggling to control the bitter mark of betrayal that the angel had left on his soul by burying his ire deep down, the angel gave no indication of reading Dean when he responded, voice controlled and steady.
“I woke up in a field.”
Dean’s shoulders stiffened. He didn’t like the sound of that.
“A field?”
When Castiel didn’t elaborate, Dean cast a quick glance over his left shoulder to where the angel was using the end of the table for support. Castiel looked as perplexed as Dean but quietly added, “I don’t remember much. I recall…flashes, pain…and then they were gone.”
“So toothy and ugly’s been riding your meatsuit ‘round and you wake up in a field?”
Castiel gave that familiar annoyed huff, giving Dean his ‘that-is-what-I-just-said’ look when his patience was tried. “So it would seem.”
Dean’s hands gripped the edge of the table, mind racing surprisingly fast in his post-inebriated induced sleep state. There could only be one reason why the Leviathans would hand Castiel the Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. “And your first thought is, go find the Winchesters.”
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
What should have sounded defensive came out apologetic. Right. Dean forgot. Everyone he cares about fucks up royally and he is always supposed to look the other way, clean up their mess, and tell them it’s alright. Like now. Castiel has no allies in Heaven, no friends left on earth, hell, no Crowley to bail his ass since there was nothing tempting he could even offer the King of Hell. All he had was a Winchester with a knack for dishing out his own Get out of Jail Free cards when it came to the forgiving game.
Well, maybe Dean was tired of turning the other cheek. “Not sure how being ridden by a Leviathan’s affected your brain, Cas, but we didn’t part on friendly terms.”
“I am aware of that,” Castiel said, “But I…I meant what I said. That I would like to make it up to you, Dean.”
“Yeah? Well you can make it up to me by getting the fuck out of here.” Dean pushed himself off the table, storming over to the single bed in the motel room and angrily snatched up the trench coat he had been using as a pillow. “Those things let you go too easily; they might be tracking you.”
He threw the trench coat at Castiel, slightly satisfied when the angel tripped a bit over his feet as he made an attempt to catch it. Castiel was still bleeding profusely from a wound on his abdomen, the cut only noticeable from the fresh blood staining his shirt, and blood dribbled down the side of his face from a head wound. The part of Dean that cared remained buried beneath the anger that wouldn’t be quelled.
Dean crossed his arms over his chest after moments of expectantly waiting for Castiel’s vanishing act. “Well?”
But instead, Castiel swallowed uncomfortably, a gesture so human it looked foreign on the angel. “I used what little energy I had left to get here.”
“Door’s right there.”
It felt cold and wrong to Dean’s ears, not unlike the time he had told Sam that if he thought of going out to that demon bitch, he shouldn’t bother coming back. But this time, there was no choice to be made. Castiel made that choice all those months ago when he swallowed those souls. That was when the Cas Dean knew had really died.
“Dean…”
The unspoken plea made something in Dean snap.
Castiel’s body crashed against the wall, Dean’s fists gripping his soiled dress shirt so tightly it was a wonder that the already abused fabric didn’t tear off. In his weakened state, Castiel’s body shuddered against Dean’s, most likely only holding on because of what little grace the angel had left after its abuse by the leviathans. Still, Castiel’s eyes burned bright blue, staring deep into Dean’s green eyes as if they could deconstruct every piece that made Dean whole as Castiel had once made the hunter whole.
“I tried, Cas,” Dean whispered, “God knows I tried trusting you. But here we are and we’re shit deep in this Leviathan mess and I just can’t do it anymore. I’m all out. I got nothing.”
Nothing.
Dean felt himself break.
“Why’d you have to be so stupid, Cas?” Dean groaned, grip loosening and head dropping forward until it rested on the wall, hovering in that space just above Castiel’s shoulder. Jimmy’s shoulder, Dean thought bitterly. Another unnecessary casualty of angel vessel-wearing dickery.
“I did it for you, Dean. All of it. Raphael would have-“
“Don’t give me that shit, Cas. Why the fuck’s it all for me?”
A pause.
“You know why, Dean.”
The certainty in his low voice was both admission and guilt. It was the non treaded waters that made Dean turn away whenever Castiel stared too intently, when he remarked on their ‘profound bond’, or whenever he died willingly, a soldier meant to serve a higher purpose, for a human whose existence was but a tiny speck among the billions upon billions of his father’s creations. It was what filled Dean with that touch of warmth and that at the same time terrified him and made him incredibly uncomfortable. Don’t even get him started on the fact that this being was wearing a suit that once contained a human soul and that the human had been very much male shaped.
But no, issues of gender and Jimmy-wearing were not at the forefront of Dean’s mind. It was the knowledge that taking that leap would be acceptance of Dean’s role in this Leviathan mess and Dean’s soul, weighted down by 40 years spent in hell, his failure to protect Sam from Castiel’s pre-Godstiel wrath, his lying to Sam, and his inability to stop these leviathans as the world went back to hell and people died…Dean’s soul couldn’t take the guilt of being yet again the reason everything was a fucking mess, this time because some angel had a crush.
“I never asked for no favors.”
He meant to push himself away from Castiel, only now aware of how his body had somehow ended up against the angel, body drained and having collapsed as the ire dissipated. It seemed almost fitting that this was how Dean always ended up, backed into a corner and depending on Castiel to do everything: kill his Apocalypse-supporting brothers, mind-wipe Ben and Lisa, die because Dean tells him that what he’s dying for is worth it…the irony of Dean’s statement is not lost on him as he is again having his weight supported by an angel who could barely stand on his two feet.
Maybe that is why Dean throws caution to the wind, leaning in to roughly take Castiel’s chapped and broken lips in a kiss that channeled all the pain of months of not dealing, mingled in with a yearning and loneliness for human contact Dean often ignored when drowning in another bottle of Jack Daniels. Maybe it’s why when he attacked those lips, rewarded with a surprised groan and the taste of copper tainted saliva, that his cock twitched in his jeans and he pressed into Castiel, pretending everything that was wrong with this scenario wasn’t wrong at all.
Because Dean wasn’t guilty. He wasn’t.
With a hand reaching down to harshly clutch at Castiel’s waist, Dean literally had Castiel’s blood on his hands as the vessel bled into his touch. His fingers pressed into the wound, stained with the warm liquid and when Castiel made the tiniest of whimpers, Dean bit down hard on his lower lip.
“D-Dean…”
It was pleading. It was Castiel’s way of asking for the roadmap to redemption. And Dean was going to take it all from Castiel until that empty void that he tried to fill with alcohol was no longer brimming with his own self-hatred.
“That’s it, Cas,” Dean whispered hoarsely, grinding his hips forward until the friction had him seeing stars behind his eyes. Bleed for me, you son of a bitch.
If Castiel was too stupid to learn anything else, Dean could still teach him this: retribution was a cruel bitch.
Cock hard and sprung behind the confines of his jeans, Dean cried out when a hand ghosted over his crotch. For so long he had been denied any release that it crashed over him in a wave threatening to knock him unconscious. He collapsed against Castiel as his abdomen tightened and hot liquid spurted out of his cock, staining his boxers and jeans. With his forehead pressed against Castiel’s, blood and sweat matting into his hair, Dean breathed heavily and his body shuddered, thrusting forward pathetically into Castiel’s hand as he rode out the last vestiges of his orgasm.
For a moment, he breathed in Castiel’s scent, tainted with the bitter stench of copper and Dean’s sweat, the smell of shame hanging heavily in the air. Dean’s fingers laced their way into blood-and-sweat soaked locks of as he continued to breathe in slowly, breathe in Castiel in these few, tense moments before he opened his eyes. If that asshole upstairs could give him anything, give him this: give Dean these few moments of peace before he would look into those betrayed, blue eyes.
But when those green eyes finally blinked open slowly, face having been buried in a makeshift, tanned trench coat pillow still blood stained and containing the faintest hint of Castiel’s vessel’s scent, Dean didn’t so much as tear up. He didn’t so much as groan in disappointment. His head still pounding from the alcohol, he groggily sat up to glance around the fully lit room, television blaring advertisements for more pay-per-view programs.
Dizzy and drained, he stood up and stumbled out of his bed, the emptiness of the motel room another reminder of what he didn’t have. The remnants of an orgasm staining his jeans, the first he had had in a while, pressed like a cold kiss against his skin and he pretended that the reason wasn’t a sex-dream induced dry fuck with a creature better off dead.
He reached out for the bottle on the table, eager to pour another glass again as sobriety would soon overtake him.
Because he wasn’t guilty and this was what he did.
But the bottle was empty. It was always empty when he woke up. He didn’t know why he expected this time would be different.
He wasn’t guilty.
Fingers clenching tightly around the neck of the bottle, he reeled back his arm and watched as the bottle smashed against the wall.
Title: Playing With Shadows
Author: tristinai
Recipient: sorenne
Rating: R
Word Count: 4176
Warnings: Dub-con, sexual situations, some gore, angst
Spoilers: up to and including 7.06
Summary: Dean lets Castiel make it up to him. But retribution is a cruel bitch.
Author notes: Loosely based on the prompt, After returning from his Leviathan-induced death, Cas tries to earn Dean's forgiveness. I was in a dark place when I wrote this and struggled with the question of what Castiel's redemption would look like in the middle of season 7 Dean's downward spiral. This was the result.
“I think you should just go on without me.”
Cue the self-righteous bitch-face and eyes so hot they looked as if they could have burned a hole in Dean’s skull, and that was when it happened. That was when Dean threw in his towel and Sam walked.
Sam walked.
It was a scene that had replayed not a few times in that first year after Sam left Stanford, when finding a father who didn’t want to be found strained any attempts to rekindle that bond the boys had felt in their childhood, back in a time when they had only each other. 7 years later and they were still keeping secrets, all for the sake of “knowing” what was best for the other.
The whiskey burned Dean’s throat, his eyes watering as he slammed the shot glass back on the table top.
Stanford. That opened a whole new can of worms and instead of feeling just plain angry, Dean was now served a full helping of anger with a generous side of guilt. The anger, he could deal with. It’s easier to be angry. But the guilt…
“Don’t lie to me again.”
In another time, Dean would have buried himself deep in some wanton one-night fuck, just over the edge of sobriety but far gone enough to enjoy his physical indulgence while his senses were numbed. Nowadays, he can’t even remember the last time he jerked off.
Pouring himself another shot, his eyes flickered to the television screen. A blond woman writhed as a petite brunette crawled between her legs, the camera angle shifting when the brunette’s tongue darted out to flick at the blond’s clitoris. The exaggerated moans normally would have been enough to have Dean’s cock twitch in excitement.
He downed another shot of whiskey.
His cock still felt soft where it was nestled comfortably inside his jeans.
“I can’t even be around you right now!”
In his defense, not being able to stop thinking about the anger and hurt in Sam’s eyes was a serious mood killer. They were supposed to have a bond, one that he thought outlived their respective times in hell. A bond so deep and profound-
…profound bond?
Deans eyes teared up as he finished off his whiskey. With an uncomfortable cough, he stumbled out of his chair and somehow managed to make it over to his bed, collapsing onto the covers. His head was now spinning, the numbing warmth like a bandage as another wound threatened to open.
But he wouldn’t think of Him. Fuck the profound bond shit. Dean would sooner offer himself up as an appetizer to the Leviathans than admit that anything that happened to Castiel was his fault.
Because if it was his fault, that meant that Dean could have done something to prevent it. It meant that he wouldn’t have failed Castiel. Dean was tired of failing people.
The blond on the screen cried out as she orgasmed. Dean, however, was already falling into a fitful sleep.
*
Dean woke with a start as something struck against the door to the motel room. His hands were already on the shotgun lodged under his pillow.
All the lights to the motel room were still on, the television flickering a credit card request if to continue watching the channel. But Dean’s eyes were fixed on the door as he crept towards it, shotgun raised.
When he reached the door, he glanced through the peephole.
…nothing.
But he wasn’t about to place his bets on it actually being nothing. Experience with the supernatural had taught him that when you think you’re alone, you’re really not. When you think everything is fine, that dick Fate is actually dangling you like you’re the Holy fucking Grail to every asshole looking for a new chew toy to play with. Dean’s been played before and he’s not about to be played now.
Ignoring the display of calm that the empty parking lot, sans that God awful shit mobile he’s been driving since parking Baby in her corner, seemed to suggest, Dean’s hand reached out and unlocked the door, pressing his body firmly against the wall beside the door. He slowly opened the door a sliver with his free hand, right arm balancing the shot gun so its nose was the first thing that poked out.
The first thing he saw was the blood. Blood smeared at eye level and trickling down in little trails towards the ground. Hackles raised, he opened the door a little wider and the sudden shift in movement made his shoulders tense, eyes dropping.
Slumped on the ground against the door was a very bleeding, very bloody, Jimmy Novak meat suit.
Dean made a surprised sound and almost fumbled with his shotgun. Maybe if he hadn’t been doing this all his life, he would have done something stupid, like drop the shotgun and help the thing that looked like his dead friend to his feet. Maybe he would have patched it up or, if all else failed, broken into a hospital to get the medical supplies needed to help the Jimmy-Novak-possessed doppelganger.
But Dean wasn’t born yesterday. And miracles never happened to the Winchesters.
“What the fuck are you?”
The thing let out a little groan, head lifting heavily until Dean found a pair of familiar, deep blue eyes staring into his own. Dean’s hand trembled because, for a moment, he could almost believe, just by the way those eyes regarded him in a way that Leviathan-Castiel and Jimmy Novak never had, that this thing could be the angel that had dragged him out of hell.
“Dean…”
The words came out slurred, exhausted, in a gravely voice that was all too familiar.
Dean released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
He took a good look at the thing bleeding out on his doorstep. Jimmy’s black jacket was missing, the pants and white dress shirt ripped and bloodied. The tie that Castiel had never seemed to wear right anyway was more askew than usual and seemed to be hanging from he meatsuit’s shirt collar for dear life.
That voice, those eyes…Dean could almost believe it was his friend except the Leviathans forgot one important thing: Angels don’t fucking bleed like that.
“Nice try, assface,” Dean scoffed, aiming the shotgun at its head, fingers tightly hovering over the trigger. He may not be able to cut its head off this close but maybe he could blow it into chunks and bury the body before it could reassemble itself. “Last I heard, Camp Cas was no longer in session.”
Dean ignored the tightness in his chest as he made this admission. First time in months that he’s said the angel’s name and it was to admit he’s gone for good.
Oh, this thing was getting its head blown off five times over and being hacked into chunks and buried over 7 different states for pulling this douchebag stunt on him.
“I…this vessel is weak, Dean…” it started, blood dripping from a head wound down its cheeks for good measure. Red blood. “You once said if I need help, all I had to do was ask. I’m asking now.”
The Jimmy-Novak-meatsuit-wearing doppelganger attempted to push itself onto its feet and stumbled back against the ground, hitting its head on the door. In his sleep weary state, Dean had briefly forgotten that the Leviathans bleed black and the red smears staining that white shirt seemed to defy fact. Still. Dean didn’t trust this fucking thing even with a shotgun now pressed to its forehead.
“I don’t know what the fuck you are,” he whispered, voice hitching as he tried to swallow the hurt he felt when it asked him for help, like how he had wanted Cas to ask all those months ago, “but you’re about to paint this sidewalk red if you don’t start answering questions. How the fuck did you find me?”
“You…you called me…” it groaned, body shuddering.
“Bullshit! I haven’t called Cas in-“
The intense stare Dean received cut off his protest. It was like drowning in an ocean, sorrow-filled depths that pushed Dean deeper and deeper beneath the surface, cutting off his air supply as he struggled to resurface, swimming against an unseen current that was leading him to a place he didn’t want to explore, a place where maybe if he had dared ventured to when Castiel had first attempted to appeal to him, those unspoken conversations would have changed the course of events that had brought him to the here and now.
Dean swallowed heavily. The last time Castiel had looked at him like that was when-
But Dean didn’t feel guilty. And this wasn’t Castiel.
“I heard you call out to me in your sleep…”
And that. That just made Dean really, fucking angry.
He grabbed the thing by its shirt collar and dragged it into the motel room roughly, kicking the door closed with his foot. He was a bit surprised when it didn’t so much as a make a peep out of this treatment, despite being, apparently, gravely injured. As much as he just wanted to blow its brains out or exercise it on the street-whether it’s a shape shifter, Jimmy meatsuit possessed demon, or whatever-cleaning up and disposing of a body in the middle of an open parking lot, albeit a dimly lit one at night, could draw unwanted attention. His head was still pounding from the alcohol and he already hated this thing for bleeding out all over the damn street in front of his room, not to mention its little show it was putting on while wearing that face.
“I’m gonna enjoy sending you back downstairs,” Dean snarled, snatching up the holy water off the tabletop. “You see that prick Crowley, tell him Dean Winchester says-“
As the Castiel-Jimmy-whatever imitator used the table to shakily stand back up on its feet, it received a face full of holy water. Water trickled down its chin, dripping onto its sullied shirt collar. Blue eyes blinked in confusion.
Dean stared at it. It stared back. Okay, maybe not a demon.
Dean chucked the shotgun and quickly withdrew his silver knife. Closing the little distance between them, he stabbed the knife into its shoulder and was rewarded with a wince of pain. However, unlike with most supernatural things that seemed to suffer a severe aversion to silver, this one flinched in a way that someone would if they got a paper cut: more out of annoyance than in pain.
Blood trickled onto the handle of the blade, staining Dean’s finger. His eyes widened and he took a step back from the thing, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu as it slowly pulled out the silver-bladed knife from its shoulder. But unlike the time he had stabbed Castiel, this thing didn’t break eye contact to glance curiously at the weapon.
Next came the splash of Borax. A dousing of salt. Dean even tried poking it with an iron rod he kept handy, even if this thing was challenging everything he knew so far that repelled supernatural things. Still, it seemed to regard him with forced patience.
It was then that the inkling, a tiny thought that sprouted into the trickle of hope, surfaced that maybe, just maybe, the universe wasn’t giving Dean a big, “Fuck you” and flipping him off.
“…Cas?”
Dean hated that his voice cracked when he said the angel’s name. He hated that hope brings with it a high that exposes every feeling he’s bottled at the back of his mind for many months now, that even the slightest deviation from the possibility that his friend was still in there could make everything he buried come crashing down. And Dean wasn’t quite ready to deal with Castiel’s death all over again.
“Hello, Dean.”
It took only two words for Castiel to have an entire conversation with Dean. Like with his eyes, Castiel had a way of expressing everything he wanted to say by not saying them, by lacing words with more meaning than should be meant. Any doubt that Dean had was suddenly squandered as the stakes were raised and he placed his bets on the only logical conclusion that defied all logic: this was, in fact, Castiel.
So many months thinking he was dead, mourning his death with the burn of whiskey as the only love making he indulged in was when his lips were against the bottle. It numbed him, the revelation, similar to how alcohol had often numbed him when he didn’t want to remember. Now that Castiel was here, bruised and battered but evidently still kicking, Dean did the one thing he had wanted to do for so long, an ache that wouldn’t leave him until it was satisfied.
He lunged forward and punched Castiel in the face.
“Fuck,” Dean swore, his right hand smarting something fierce. He had forgotten how much it hurt to punch an angel.
Blood now oozed from Castiel’s nose, blue eyes flickering to stare at the floor. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“Damn fucking right you do,” Dean said, voice rising with anger. “Your idea of averting the apocalypse by starting a new one? Going fucking great. Just ended a stint as America’s Most Wanted no thanks to those dicks wearing my face like every day’s the Dean Winchester Show.”
He was shaking with anger, fists clenched at his side. When Castiel looked up at him, face forever bordering on expressionless even when his eyes conveyed so much pain, Dean had to fight every urge to punch the should-be fallen angel again.
Instead, he settled on distraction, looking anywhere but at Castiel’s face when he continued to address him. “How the hell are you even here, anyway? I thought you were fish food last I saw you.”
He went to pour himself a shot, the specially tailored Dean Winchester solution to all of life’s problems. Finding the bottle empty, he moodily slammed it down on the table. He kept his body turned away from Castiel, feeling the weight of everything tumbling down on his shoulders, leaning forward against the table as if it was the only thing keeping him from collapsing. If Castiel noticed how Dean’s arms were trembling, how he was struggling to control the bitter mark of betrayal that the angel had left on his soul by burying his ire deep down, the angel gave no indication of reading Dean when he responded, voice controlled and steady.
“I woke up in a field.”
Dean’s shoulders stiffened. He didn’t like the sound of that.
“A field?”
When Castiel didn’t elaborate, Dean cast a quick glance over his left shoulder to where the angel was using the end of the table for support. Castiel looked as perplexed as Dean but quietly added, “I don’t remember much. I recall…flashes, pain…and then they were gone.”
“So toothy and ugly’s been riding your meatsuit ‘round and you wake up in a field?”
Castiel gave that familiar annoyed huff, giving Dean his ‘that-is-what-I-just-said’ look when his patience was tried. “So it would seem.”
Dean’s hands gripped the edge of the table, mind racing surprisingly fast in his post-inebriated induced sleep state. There could only be one reason why the Leviathans would hand Castiel the Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. “And your first thought is, go find the Winchesters.”
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
What should have sounded defensive came out apologetic. Right. Dean forgot. Everyone he cares about fucks up royally and he is always supposed to look the other way, clean up their mess, and tell them it’s alright. Like now. Castiel has no allies in Heaven, no friends left on earth, hell, no Crowley to bail his ass since there was nothing tempting he could even offer the King of Hell. All he had was a Winchester with a knack for dishing out his own Get out of Jail Free cards when it came to the forgiving game.
Well, maybe Dean was tired of turning the other cheek. “Not sure how being ridden by a Leviathan’s affected your brain, Cas, but we didn’t part on friendly terms.”
“I am aware of that,” Castiel said, “But I…I meant what I said. That I would like to make it up to you, Dean.”
“Yeah? Well you can make it up to me by getting the fuck out of here.” Dean pushed himself off the table, storming over to the single bed in the motel room and angrily snatched up the trench coat he had been using as a pillow. “Those things let you go too easily; they might be tracking you.”
He threw the trench coat at Castiel, slightly satisfied when the angel tripped a bit over his feet as he made an attempt to catch it. Castiel was still bleeding profusely from a wound on his abdomen, the cut only noticeable from the fresh blood staining his shirt, and blood dribbled down the side of his face from a head wound. The part of Dean that cared remained buried beneath the anger that wouldn’t be quelled.
Dean crossed his arms over his chest after moments of expectantly waiting for Castiel’s vanishing act. “Well?”
But instead, Castiel swallowed uncomfortably, a gesture so human it looked foreign on the angel. “I used what little energy I had left to get here.”
“Door’s right there.”
It felt cold and wrong to Dean’s ears, not unlike the time he had told Sam that if he thought of going out to that demon bitch, he shouldn’t bother coming back. But this time, there was no choice to be made. Castiel made that choice all those months ago when he swallowed those souls. That was when the Cas Dean knew had really died.
“Dean…”
The unspoken plea made something in Dean snap.
Castiel’s body crashed against the wall, Dean’s fists gripping his soiled dress shirt so tightly it was a wonder that the already abused fabric didn’t tear off. In his weakened state, Castiel’s body shuddered against Dean’s, most likely only holding on because of what little grace the angel had left after its abuse by the leviathans. Still, Castiel’s eyes burned bright blue, staring deep into Dean’s green eyes as if they could deconstruct every piece that made Dean whole as Castiel had once made the hunter whole.
“I tried, Cas,” Dean whispered, “God knows I tried trusting you. But here we are and we’re shit deep in this Leviathan mess and I just can’t do it anymore. I’m all out. I got nothing.”
Nothing.
Dean felt himself break.
“Why’d you have to be so stupid, Cas?” Dean groaned, grip loosening and head dropping forward until it rested on the wall, hovering in that space just above Castiel’s shoulder. Jimmy’s shoulder, Dean thought bitterly. Another unnecessary casualty of angel vessel-wearing dickery.
“I did it for you, Dean. All of it. Raphael would have-“
“Don’t give me that shit, Cas. Why the fuck’s it all for me?”
A pause.
“You know why, Dean.”
The certainty in his low voice was both admission and guilt. It was the non treaded waters that made Dean turn away whenever Castiel stared too intently, when he remarked on their ‘profound bond’, or whenever he died willingly, a soldier meant to serve a higher purpose, for a human whose existence was but a tiny speck among the billions upon billions of his father’s creations. It was what filled Dean with that touch of warmth and that at the same time terrified him and made him incredibly uncomfortable. Don’t even get him started on the fact that this being was wearing a suit that once contained a human soul and that the human had been very much male shaped.
But no, issues of gender and Jimmy-wearing were not at the forefront of Dean’s mind. It was the knowledge that taking that leap would be acceptance of Dean’s role in this Leviathan mess and Dean’s soul, weighted down by 40 years spent in hell, his failure to protect Sam from Castiel’s pre-Godstiel wrath, his lying to Sam, and his inability to stop these leviathans as the world went back to hell and people died…Dean’s soul couldn’t take the guilt of being yet again the reason everything was a fucking mess, this time because some angel had a crush.
“I never asked for no favors.”
He meant to push himself away from Castiel, only now aware of how his body had somehow ended up against the angel, body drained and having collapsed as the ire dissipated. It seemed almost fitting that this was how Dean always ended up, backed into a corner and depending on Castiel to do everything: kill his Apocalypse-supporting brothers, mind-wipe Ben and Lisa, die because Dean tells him that what he’s dying for is worth it…the irony of Dean’s statement is not lost on him as he is again having his weight supported by an angel who could barely stand on his two feet.
Maybe that is why Dean throws caution to the wind, leaning in to roughly take Castiel’s chapped and broken lips in a kiss that channeled all the pain of months of not dealing, mingled in with a yearning and loneliness for human contact Dean often ignored when drowning in another bottle of Jack Daniels. Maybe it’s why when he attacked those lips, rewarded with a surprised groan and the taste of copper tainted saliva, that his cock twitched in his jeans and he pressed into Castiel, pretending everything that was wrong with this scenario wasn’t wrong at all.
Because Dean wasn’t guilty. He wasn’t.
With a hand reaching down to harshly clutch at Castiel’s waist, Dean literally had Castiel’s blood on his hands as the vessel bled into his touch. His fingers pressed into the wound, stained with the warm liquid and when Castiel made the tiniest of whimpers, Dean bit down hard on his lower lip.
“D-Dean…”
It was pleading. It was Castiel’s way of asking for the roadmap to redemption. And Dean was going to take it all from Castiel until that empty void that he tried to fill with alcohol was no longer brimming with his own self-hatred.
“That’s it, Cas,” Dean whispered hoarsely, grinding his hips forward until the friction had him seeing stars behind his eyes. Bleed for me, you son of a bitch.
If Castiel was too stupid to learn anything else, Dean could still teach him this: retribution was a cruel bitch.
Cock hard and sprung behind the confines of his jeans, Dean cried out when a hand ghosted over his crotch. For so long he had been denied any release that it crashed over him in a wave threatening to knock him unconscious. He collapsed against Castiel as his abdomen tightened and hot liquid spurted out of his cock, staining his boxers and jeans. With his forehead pressed against Castiel’s, blood and sweat matting into his hair, Dean breathed heavily and his body shuddered, thrusting forward pathetically into Castiel’s hand as he rode out the last vestiges of his orgasm.
For a moment, he breathed in Castiel’s scent, tainted with the bitter stench of copper and Dean’s sweat, the smell of shame hanging heavily in the air. Dean’s fingers laced their way into blood-and-sweat soaked locks of as he continued to breathe in slowly, breathe in Castiel in these few, tense moments before he opened his eyes. If that asshole upstairs could give him anything, give him this: give Dean these few moments of peace before he would look into those betrayed, blue eyes.
But when those green eyes finally blinked open slowly, face having been buried in a makeshift, tanned trench coat pillow still blood stained and containing the faintest hint of Castiel’s vessel’s scent, Dean didn’t so much as tear up. He didn’t so much as groan in disappointment. His head still pounding from the alcohol, he groggily sat up to glance around the fully lit room, television blaring advertisements for more pay-per-view programs.
Dizzy and drained, he stood up and stumbled out of his bed, the emptiness of the motel room another reminder of what he didn’t have. The remnants of an orgasm staining his jeans, the first he had had in a while, pressed like a cold kiss against his skin and he pretended that the reason wasn’t a sex-dream induced dry fuck with a creature better off dead.
He reached out for the bottle on the table, eager to pour another glass again as sobriety would soon overtake him.
Because he wasn’t guilty and this was what he did.
But the bottle was empty. It was always empty when he woke up. He didn’t know why he expected this time would be different.
He wasn’t guilty.
Fingers clenching tightly around the neck of the bottle, he reeled back his arm and watched as the bottle smashed against the wall.