fic: Perpetual Love Machines (2/3, Dean/Castiel, NC-17)
fic: Perpetual Love Machines
Masterpost
Art post
*
Part 2
*
The next day was cold and overcast with gray, and Castiel felt wrapped up in it like a cloak of fog and sadness across this empty plain. He shouldn't have mentioned the other Dean, no, he shouldn't have done that at all. Now this mecha doppelganger he saved will never stop wanting to know more, will never stop asking questions, or leave him alone, ever. He got himself in deeper than he ever wanted to, and he listened to Dean ask questions, but his face was like a disinterested child's - blank and faraway.
"What happened to the Winchesters?"
Castiel couldn't remember exactly. "They died, when everyone died."
Dean shrugged. "Your Dean should have had a mother like Mary."
"Mothers can't keep everyone safe, Dean."
"Of course they can. My mother was the best. You'll see."
"Where is your mother now, Dean? Why isn't she with you?"
Dean's tone was condescending. "I had to go to work, silly."
"Your mother would have liked your job?"
"Of course! I made people happy. Everyone needs love."
Castiel supposed angels could get along without it.
He might have found Dean's combination of bravado and denial comforting, because it was familiar, and because it was Dean. But this Dean could never know that, and it was a kind of torture to be so close to him every day, to remind him by the strange sheen of his skin, the unchanging energy, that this was not Dean.
They walked across Kansas towards South Dakota, never resting again, never sleeping. They all had reasons to shiver, Castiel supposed, when they passed old unkempt graveyards with gray crumbling stones. Sam barked at shadows and howled until Dean shushed him. Castiel felt Dean's hand grab onto his as they passed.
Dean dared to point for a brief moment at white stones that sprouted wings, praying hands. "Those statues - they look like you."
"I know."
"What do they do? Watch over the dead?"
Castiel thought over Dean's simple words for a moment, his mouth opening to explain to Dean just what it was angels were supposed to do, but - Dean was right. He was an angel, and he watched over the dead. In the turning of the world both lost and predetermined, what else was there for him to do? He had long ago given up on the living. "Yes. That is what they do. And that is what I do, so then that is what I am - an angel."
"Why do angels have birds' wings?"
His smile was rueful, he knew, and sad. It was familiar. "They were once symbolic and real. I had the grace of God, and wings to fly on that grace. Now, all I have left is the wings." Castiel rustled them, just to show he could, but Sam got anxious and restless at the familiar sight on such an unfamiliar bird, and started pacing in half-circles.
"I don't like that. Don't do that," the dog said.
"I'm sorry, Sam."
"Yeah. It's kind of weird," Dean backed Sam up, as he had been habitually doing for days. "Who ever saw wings on a person before? And since when did anyone besides mechas believe in gods? We only do because we were programmed to, and I'm not sure what all my programming is good for anymore. God didn't create me, and I'm way more useful than you so far."
Once again, Castiel couldn't find the words to argue with Dean, so he just mimicked his careless shrug.
"That's okay, angel. I don't care if you don't know what you are. I guess that just means you belong with us. Right, Sam?"
Sam just barked softly, and seeked out a hand to pet him.
Castiel obliged him. "Yes. Yes, I do."
*
They arrived at the salvage yard after days. All was dust-colored, dust-covered, in shades of rust. The cars here were models so old, Dean barely recognized them at first. Rectangles of rust, topped with boxes of rust. "People used to drive these things? What were they, nuts?" The past was weird - Dean knew that. People used to keep as many children and pets as they wanted, live the kind of life they wanted, and they didn't think about the shrinking world or the ethics of drinking water, breathing air. They just lived.
Dean stared at the burnt up ball of metal in the salvage yard outside of the place Castiel had called 'Bobby's'. Castiel had called it 'Impala' - no, THE Impala. Like that was supposed to mean something. "You're kidding me, right? This used to be a car?" He ran his hands over the hollowed-out shell. He saw fires burning, metal melting, power like an avalanche, broken glass. He pulled his hand away as if burned. It spoke to him in the language of machines.
"Wait," Dean said. "I can fix it."
From where he stood, his face in profile, Castiel narrowed his eyes. "I thought you could."
Later, they joined Sam where he waited on the porch and stared at the sun as it crawled towards the horizon, all sharing an unspoken sense of deja vu. It wasn't so strange - their programming was prone to these kind of glitches, where unplaced moments seemed to repeat themselves, and experiences sometimes played as if seen on a movie screen.
Sam roamed across the wooden floor throughout the evening. "I like this house." His tail wagged. He stopped at the dusty shelves that lined the walls. "What do all of these books mean?"
They looked at the books with their strange symbols and ancient languages with wide eyes. Sometimes Castiel thought he saw shadows pass over their faces, as if remembering. They looked on silently long into the evening.
Inside the living room, Sam loped in a circle and curled up on a faded couch. When Dean got tired of thinking, he joined Sam and they achieved something close to sleep for the first time, because they were something close to home.
*
The next day, Castiel began to admit to his own frail conscience that he had only wanted to give Dean something to keep him occupied, and near. Dean had been right last night - the car was a means to an end, but one that had no ending and offered no answers, no hope. Nothing ever had.
Still, it was hard to keep from staring at Dean, even when he had made him sit on the porch steps, his forearms resting on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him. Magic was happening. The same nanobots Dean used to change the cut and color of his hair, to add or remove freckles, make his clothes worn or shiny, to repair his complex body, were traveling back and forth between his synthetic skin and the newly mirrored chrome of the Impala, changing the very fabric of the matter they touched, and trading memories faster than light.
Dean plugged himself into the car and learned a strange history that shone on his face like a blank kind of wonder. Castiel stared and marveled at what defied his expectations, where he was only just realizing how many expectations he had been holding onto during their journey here, the desire to make the sadness of the past reappear anew, if this could be called desire. Dean stood with the hood of the car open above him, his hand reaching deep inside the guts of the thing he had so loved (this thing Dean had loved, if things could hold love like burned oil and worn parts) and stared at nothing with his mouth agape.
What was he seeing behind his eyes? Castiel wondered. Could he see the road stretched out before him over the top of the wheel, his hands tapping out a song he'd never heard before played from a plastic tape? Could he see black eyed demons running in the taillights, his human brother next to him aiming a shotgun? Could he see his father's eyes in the rear view mirror? The body of a naked angel stretched out on the backseat? The headlights of a semi blinding him before impact?
If so, Dean didn't tell him. Not yet. He just swaggered across the yard at the end of the day - his gait newly bowlegged, his skin matte with dust - and offered his nano-healed shoulder to him. "I'm gonna need you to burn me again," was all he said.
Castiel felt the slickness of the ID under his palm and burned it away for the second time, thinking this was what making Dean Winchester must have felt for his Father, thinking this was what it felt like when he raised Dean from Hell, the intimate holy feeling of his wholly naked body, needing only to burn under his hand and raise again.
*
Fixing the car was a different kind of work. Physical still, but with a finished product at the end besides a softening sex, a mess to clean up. Instead of the never-ending sine wave that was fucking, it was the wholly alien feeling of something growing into solidity. Growing real beneath his hands.
But it was a kind of fucking - Dean knew all kinds. This old machine spoke to him of what it needed and Dean gave what he could, the trading of cells more intimate than playacting. The machine paid him back in creaking metallic groans from its belly, staccato static whines from the radio, dried up pools of grease breathing out fumes. He knew women, and the curved rim that arched over the wheel gave a heated purr against his skin, and he knew that too. The further he reached inside, his whole body stretched out under the hood, the more he knew. He grabbed on, shook with it, and they groaned together. Machines, they spoke a language more intimate than fucking.
Though the angel-thing was something beyond him. He had taken him across whole states just to bring him here, and now he just watched him from the porch all day, his hands clasped in a kind of prayer, those fake-looking wings attached to his back. He had never met anyone so easy to seduce, and so difficult.
That was what he was doing - after all, he was Kinky Dean. It was the only thing he could figure out to do, with the messages from this car beneath his skin, the never-ending strangeness of this place. Dean began to seduce Castiel slowly, and all he had to do was listen to the shadow of his image in those messages. Maybe it was his programming, a safety valve imprinted on all love mechas that told him that Castiel could save him from those visions, and all he had to do was ask him, in the countless ways he knew how to ask, with his eyes, his walk, his tongue.
Things like walking into the kitchen where Castiel sat reading books with Sam. He leaned against the counter, crossed his legs at the ankle.
Sam's tail was wagging against the back of the chair he sat in. "Castiel was right, Dean," he said breathless, almost panting. "Angels are real. They are! We found them!"
"In the books, he means," Castiel kept his voice calm, always calm. But Dean could feel his eyes even when they weren't on him. He could feel everything he wasn't doing, all the time. "They don't talk about what happened to them, only that they existed once."
"I knew it!" Sam so loved the angels, though Dean knew he had nightmares about their careless eyes, the mighty beat of wings.
"You did, huh?" It was too easy to roll his tongue against the inside of his cheek. "Have you met another angel?"
"No," Sam turned around to face him on all fours. "I just believe him. The world is too beautiful, and he has birds' wings. So I believe him."
Dean didn't know about all that. Still, he had the urge to dirty the so-called angel sometimes just to clean him up, make him press his hands into the guts of the car just to mimic what he had been feeling. He began to walk the floor naked in between dreamless sleep, though he never needed to sleep.
*
This house smelled like dust, not food. Too many old smells, people long gone - not for miles around - no animals except for the black birds sometimes, sharp and shiny and boring.
Sam sat beside the car and saw the flashes between the machinery and Dean - Dean's machinery - and watching was like old, familiar smells. The flashes were things he knew about, had even seemed to live before, just like the symbols in the books and the pictures of things Castiel called angels. It was as if mentioning them would break a spell, and though he could speak as well as any living human or mecha, he found he didn't want to. The images tumbling into Dean now were his to decipher, and though Sam knew them just as well, he couldn't do that for Dean. What Sam was was not the boy in the flashes, the boy in the car. No, Sam was John and Mary and Adam's dog, and that was where he wanted to belong. Some safe place like home.
He read the books when Dean shooed him away, too confused to think. He learned to pull the books from the wall with his paws, turn the pages with his tongue, and could stare at the words - ancient, Latin, Enochian - and they spoke of things long lost, like Heaven, Hell and God. The lost things didn't matter - Had they ever? - but they held a beauty and a sadness that the humans still held that only he could see. Sam saw it when he looked at them, the way he could hurt them, or bite them with his teeth, or break their bones, that they didn't have any memory of. The natural world only the unnatural things remembered.
Sam knew he would find the angel where the angel always was - watching Dean. He pushed his head under Castiel's palm and rested on the porch. Castiel would look at him then.
"What do you need, Sam? What can I do for you?"
The angel saw, the angel saw the natural things, even if he didn't want to. He might have wanted to, once. Sam could almost remember that - how no one wanted to see the real world more. "I thank you for the books. I do! I like them. Can I ask you - Can I ask you for a computer? Oh I so want a computer, with a network and keys, someone to talk to. Please? Will you find me one? Will you?"
Castiel smiled. It made Sam want to shake his head. "I will get one for you, Sam. Don't worry. Alright." He scratched with his clawless fingers. It felt good. Soft and good. "Alright," he said.
*
It was dumbfounding the way the world would change. Castiel remembered the first time he saw the world from Heaven, the first time he looked through human eyes, the way it had looked after Dean, then close after the Apocalypse, the end. He'd seen it so many different ways and he never could get a grasp. The world was overwhelming, for he who used to know Heaven, once.
He stood in front of the Tech World store and ignored the automatic doors opening and closing. These were strange people on their shrinking island - always had been. Seas rose ever higher, whole nations collapsed, wars raged in faraway lands they had never even heard of less acknowledged, while they raced like trapped mice into big box stores to buy the biggest smallest screens, ever-shrinking phones he still didn't understand.
Young people in wire-frame glasses and polo shirts greeted him when he finally walked through the doors, and the rows of fluorescent lights made the plastic on the shelves seem shiny and new. Families bought devices to say 'I love you' and screens to plaster the walls of their homes with video games to practice shooting things, and somewhere across the world whole countries were drowning, but this was the way the world had been made, and this was the way his Father and brothers had left it, and this was the world Dean left fighting for, though he hadn't lived to see it fall under the water.
He was here to buy a computer for the dog that he loved so that he could find his missing family. So that was what he was going to do.
"Excuse me," he asked the first polo shirt he could find. "I need to buy a laptop."
The worker barely acknowledged him, looked around for someone else to take care of this. "Uh, do you need a mind interface with that? Because my buddy Mike can help you with that."
Castiel creased his brow, tried to ponder the meaning of a 'mind interface' but figured Sam would know more about it than he did. Sam always had. "Yes. Yes, I do." And because he guessed he might need one, after all these years, "And a phone."
New technology for spoiled people, a cell phone for an angel, and a mind interface for a dog. The world was too strange a thing to ever judge outright.
*
"Oh yes! Yes yes yes!" Sam wagged his tail and stepped from paw to paw in front of the box. He watched, tongue lolling, as Dean gave the angel-thing a kiss on the face. He wanted to join in, so he just licked Castiel's hand and fingers, which tasted like nothing else. "Thank you thank you!"
"The man at the store said it had mind interface technology." Castiel watched Dean open the box.
Sam watched too. It was too exciting - a new computer, a way to find Mary and John and Adam, a way to be seen as more than just a dog. Though he liked being a dog, he did, it's just that everyone came with expectations, and he felt he was much more than a dog, and it was hard to make them see that, he was a dog and more than a dog, and always had been.
Dean pressed the button and Sam stood with his head cocked in the halo of light the machine gave off, and he barked at it, and waited for it to acknowledge him, and when it did, it would do anything he asked of it. If he thought of a place, it would show him that place using far-off satellites. If he wanted a friend, it would display options of smiling faces, costumed faces, body parts saying hello, emoticons beamed in from other minds.
So Sam looked first for information on a missing dog search, and found nothing. He looked for his old address - a place to match Mary and John Smith. There were many Smiths, though not as much as there used to be, and though it took him awhile, he could scour the satellite images with his memories, and find it. There. There - Mary and John Smith, Lawrence, Kansas. Kansas!
Sam kept pacing in place, turning his head towards the machine, towards Castiel and Dean and away again. "I don't have a phone," he said, and whined just a little through his nose. He would not worry, he would not be scared.
The angel-thing held up his hand. "I have one. I thought you both might want it."
"Will you call for me?" Sam asked. It was all he could ask, though he felt he'd been given so much.
Castiel tried. He reached a woman and her husband, talking from somewhere behind her. They denied ever owning a dog. They lied and hung up the phone.
Sam frowned. He spent the rest of the night in Dean's lap and Dean never stopped stroking his fur. Dean told him he could use the computer to find people to talk to. People who wouldn't judge him or leave him. Sam licked his nose, because he liked Dean. Because Dean said the right thing, he tried, but it still wasn't enough.
*
The car was almost done - Dean stuck his hands deep inside the guts of it, laid across the seats and pressed his fingers to the radio, saw a baby in the backseat, two brothers grow into the front seat, a father there and gone and back again, crash after crash after crash, races along highways with trucks, zombie hordes, madmen with fire.
He understood none of it. But that was nothing new, wasn't it? He wasn't built to know, much less question. He was built to get things working and parts lubed up, moving, cease again. He placed his hands upon it and the glass windows joined together to make a dome, the chrome on the bumpers narrowed at the back and curved in the front, the steel turned to titanium. Now THAT was a car he knew. Castiel had called it an Impala.
He was always a mechanic - nothing new there. But for once he was grateful to the machine.
Dean wanted to thank Castiel at night, too, but for what exactly he couldn't name. He didn't know where they were going, only the old familiar running away that shouldn't be so familiar, and yet was.
So Dean thanked him in other ways. The car running in idle in the yard, he played a soft alt-country waltz out of his ears loud enough for Castiel and Sam to hear. "Dance with me?" He held his arms out, for he knew all dances, the steps, the counts.
Dean spun him around slower than the music, feeling Castiel's overwhelmed and nervous feelings before he did himself, kicking up the dead leaves under the oak tree, letting Sam bark and run around them all.
They laid on the grass under the trees and watched the birds Sam spied and chased. Dean let the waltz play and didn't stare at Castiel beside him but felt him just the same, and wondered if he already knew about the images in his head from the car, which he felt just as strongly as if he had remembered them himself, though he did not.
*
The love mecha and his dog sat under the blue halo of light in their shared rapture, shared heaven. Sam shared his computer with Dean, the interface taking them both on as one, together, which would have been unheard of, and yet here it was, Dean thought, and so then it was heard of, wasn't it?
Dean looked up to find Castiel on the couch. "I know where we can find your brothers! It says right here -" and Sam barked too "- the City of Brotherly Love!"
"What?" Castiel sat up and cocked his head like he had started to do more and more. It was something else that Dean remembered about him, if those memories could be real, which of course they weren't.
"Think about it!" Dean felt as excited as Sam's wagging tail. "You said there used to be libraries on the coast, right? Before they moved them inland. This city - Philadelphia - is on the coast now, so couldn't they have moved the libraries there?"
"Yes. I suppose so -"
"We looked up Sam's collar - Golden Calf Industries - but we couldn't find anything else about it. Sam thinks - tell him, Sam."
"If Golden Calf made me," he spoke, "then maybe they could fix me. If we asked they could fix me and John and Mary would let me stay with them again." Sam's tail wagged.
"We could help Sam. And the libraries could tell us more - about what happened to your brothers. It's fate!"
"But you don't believe in fate, Dean."
"Okay, fine, but these brothers of yours - the ones with their memories stored in the car - they were in love, right?"
"Yes. They were."
"Then that's what we're looking for - brothers in love. And this is the city of brotherly love, and in the center of it there's a park called Love Park -" Sam barked over Dean again.
"I don't know, Dean."
Castiel looked something like frightened, but he couldn't be, right? Dean knew this was something to try. There was nothing else left to try, was there? Where else would they go?
"Maybe we'll go then," Dean said. "Maybe we can get along without you."
He let his hope die down and wane and shrink and flutter to sleep, like Sam's wagging tail. They looked at the screen together, their shared minds racing through everything brotherly and hopeful and impossible.
*
Hours passed. Castiel had let Sam and Dean sleep with him on the bed, though he wasn't sure if what they did was sleep at all, or some facsimile of it, like much of what they did in their strange pioneering new-found lives.
Dean had kissed him goodnight and held his head, smiling. Castiel remembered trying to breathe then, feeling horribly guilty (that first feeling he remembered having so long ago once) - he'd just wanted to keep Dean near to him, and now he failed at even the most selfish of tasks. Dean was going to leave, and take Sam with him, and they would be lost and he would never find them again.
Castiel was pained by Dean's simpleness and innocence. Why did he have to have hope? Why this Dean? Why now?
And why had he found that false angel in the forest, the one who had told him about Golden Calf Industries? Why did Sam have to have the same collar, the same build-place?
He knew at least that Golden Calf wasn't in Philadelphia. They could still go there and Dean might never find the place. He would have them for a little while longer. It all didn't have to fall apart so quickly. Not this time. There was always hope. He used to try to believe that.
"Can we stay here tonight? With you?" Dean had asked, and of course, always, he had said yes.
"But I don't sleep," he had warned Dean.
"We don't have to sleep," Dean shrugged, and then kissed him. The three of them on the bed, like never before, not even the first time. Dean clung close to Castiel, who held him, and stayed.
Hours passed. Sam went back to his computer, ever sleepless.
Dean touched Castiel's chest with his palm. "Do you feel anything? I feel something."
"Don't."
"Castiel -"
"Don't."
"Angel -"
"Dean. I'm not meant for... this." He at least didn't remove Dean's hand. At least.
"Well. I am." He felt Dean's hands begin undoing the buttons down the front, his mechanical hands slide beneath the cotton of his undershirt. He breathed while they stayed there, this head and hand on his chest.
"Okay," Dean said. Okay. They would go together, he knew then they would go.
The night before, Dean had plugged the car into a power outlet, rebuilding miles worth of wires in the process. In the morning, Castiel rode shotgun and listened to Dean whoop and felt drops from Sam's tongue land unnoticed on the collar of his coat and felt the wetness on his face only after he had started to cry.
"See, you have feelings," Dean insisted in a triumphantly Dean kind of way.
"I do," Castiel said. "I do."
Their last night in the bed, Dean moved his hands under Castiel's shirt again, kissed his face, neck, and chest as much as he would allow. Undid his pants.
"You're just like me," Dean said, before taking Castiel into his mouth soft, rolling his balls between his fingers, playing with his still-soft cock expertly.
Castiel felt something break a little then, growing hard enough to fill up Dean's mouth, listening to Dean's voice in between strokes - "that's better, that's good, that's it" - moaning moaning moaning and humming.
He started to feel more and Dean didn't stop, but it was moving so slow in him, like Castiel didn't know how to feel any more, and then he did, and he was moving closer to something he couldn't name, but so slowly, slowly. Dean didn't stop because he didn't need to, he could go on and on while Castiel felt his breath quicken slightly, just now taking deep breaths down to his belly, but hitching somewhere in between.
Castiel felt the moon move in the sky and the shadows in the room change and Dean's mouth working on his cock and the room slowly shifting over the hours as they passed. Feeling as much as he could and it was almost, almost, too much. He stopped Dean when the sun broke through and bathed the clouds in light.
Later, they left Bobby's and headed East, to the cities.
Dean looked thoughtful and amused and confused and kept looking over at Castiel like he'd never seen anyone like him before.
"You're new," Dean said.
"I know," Castiel frowned.
"No, I mean, that's good. It's good, Cas."
He cocked his head. "What did you just call me?"
"Cas? Castiel?"
"Why did you just call me 'Cas'?"
Dean furrowed his brow and frowned as much as he ever did. "I don't know. A nickname?"
Castiel thought hard for several minutes. This seemed important. Even beyond last night, this was something bigger than he could name right now.
"Do you like it?"
Castiel sighed. "Yes, I think I do."
For some reason, Dean and Sam simultaneously agreed to eat at a diner when they crossed the border of Iowa. The worst, best kind of diner, with plastic gingham tablecloths and dusty venetian blinds and everything covered with the sheen of old grease. Dean ordered burgers to go and came outside with them, running.
"Let's stay at a hotel, hide out for awhile," Dean said, speeding to the most run-down one he could find.
Castiel stated the obvious. "We don't need to eat or sleep." He looked at the road behind them. "What's the hurry?"
Dean shrugged. "I'm used to hotels. I kind of miss them."
"What's the real reason?"
"They wouldn't accept my form of payment." He shrugged again. "I'll have better luck at a hotel."
The thought had never occurred to Castiel. Dean had offered to pay his usual way - however the management wanted him. But they were on the run from the law to begin with, and so they ran some more.
Castiel drank his vanilla milkshake through a straw. "Did you live in hotels when you worked?"
"Sure - where else would I work? The best business could always be found at hotels. Churches were good too, but they are very hard to find. The ones who made us are always looking for the ones that made them. They go in, look around their feet, sing songs, and when they come out, it's usually me they find. I've picked up a lot of business in front of churches. Hotels, too. And I know how to get free stuff from the vending machines."
The hotel they found was the worst, best kind of hotel, with scratchy floral-patterned bedspreads, broken ceiling fans, and spotted wallpaper. Dean adored it.
*
Dean made the night safe by making it familiar. He ground the skin from his chest, his belly, his hips down on Castiel. "Last night, it wasn't enough, was it? You need more. I can give you more." He attacked Castiel's body with his mouth, his hands, the weight of his body. It was too much, all at once, but Dean missed giving it.
"No," Castiel moaned beneath him, "I can't. I'm an angel."
Dean stopped, stricken. Castiel had said no.
*
Castiel had regretted it as soon as he'd said it. He wasn't used to these mecha lovers, their programmed rules. He watched Dean move to the other bed and hug Sam close from where he had been watching there. Dean had closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, or slept, Castiel could never tell. Sam put his head down on the curve of Dean's side and looked at Castiel. He sighed one long doggy sigh and then shut his eyes as well.
Dean was naked on the bed, the curve of his back and cheeks rounded in the moonlight. The whole night Castiel tried not to stare at him, and he failed. He had too much time to work on his apology, staring at Dean.
When it finally came out, it seemed dumb even to his own untrained ears.
"I don't know why I don't want you."
"What?" Dean huffed out a flimsy laugh at him. "That doesn't even make sense."
Castiel wanted to give up. "I know?"
"What is there to be afraid of? What is so wrong to want?"
Everything, Castiel thought. "Nothing," he said.
Dean shrugged. "All I'm asking is for you to be with me, because it's what I am."
"Are you sure?"
Dean moved to the other bed. "Look - maybe, last night, that's not exactly what you wanted. But I bet there's something else that you do want. I'm really good," he spoke between kisses, "at finding out."
Dean still hadn't put his clothes on. Maybe he knew more than Castiel thought. Castiel's thoughts went back to the last days when the angels had been choosing, and every choice had seemed wrong. It was wearing him down, though to what exactly he couldn't fathom.
*
He watched Dean watching the television with Sam all morning, his pale round too-perfect ass turned up on the bed, and when he couldn't move anymore, Castiel fell to his knees beside the bed and started to pray. His hair almost touched Dean's hip he was so close. But he couldn't, he couldn't do what? And he hadn't prayed in so very, very long. He'd been afraid to, in case he heard nothing still.
"Cas, Cas." He felt Dean try to lift his head up. "It's okay, you don't have to do this. I'm right here, Cas. Castiel."
But he refused to move. He felt Sam try to nudge him with his nose and whine a little. "Castiel? Castiel?" He said his name so fast it was like one sound. Castiel could hear the frown in his voice.
He finally let Dean lift his head to face him from between his knees, crumpled by the side of the bed, and his expression was so innocent that Castiel could almost ignore that his face was inches away from Dean's ready semi-hardness and the nest of his hair. "Dean -" And every argument left him.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Dean lick his lips, take one of Castiel's hands and place it on the top of the cheek of his ass, high up at the small of his back, and press his fingers into the curves. He let Dean guide his head forward towards his cock, hard on command, and he managed to do the rest, taking Dean into his mouth and sucking for dear life. He moved his other hand to Dean's other cheek and pressed him in up to his mouth, as close and in as far as he would go.
He didn't break, he didn't even change. Worship, worship - that was all Castiel had wanted. Dean called out in high pitched sounds, yelps and keens, as Castiel mimicked all of his moves from the last night at the salvage yard, but more, and more, not treating Dean like anything new or virginal (though he was both to him), just taking all of him and not letting go. Through his eyelashes, he watched Dean arch his back and let his elbows fall to the bed, the shadows moving across perfect skin, and Castiel shoved his body towards his mouth, all suction and swallowing.
Dean screwed his eyes shut. "Do you want me to come? Do you want me to come?" He almost pleaded in between gasps.
Castiel's mouth was silent, but said nothing but no, silently so it didn't matter.
Dean fell back on the bed completely, his arms collapsing, and Castiel just pulled him closer, eyes raking over his body. His ass was entirely in Castiel's hands now, his cock wholly in his mouth, his legs bent and curled all the way to his toes as the angel jerked him with fast little strokes of his throat. He couldn't come if Castiel didn't want him to, and Castiel showed no signs of slowing. "Please, please, please," Dean begged, and Castiel knew he was beyond caring what he sounded like. His whole body was shaking with the need to release but he couldn't lose a drop if Castiel didn't say so. He'd been figuring out the rules.
He moved his right hand to cup Dean's ass lower, and in, swirling a finger until he found the spot where his mechanically lubed puckered hole kissed the tip, and he pressed in slowly, swirling in deeper down to the second knuckle, circled his finger around and felt the synthetic skin take and give. He circled in slowly, so slowly, and never stopped sucking. Dean grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled hard, but he just messed it up, and Castiel sucked harder, and began a second finger. He watched Dean's eyes water with the strain and the tears fall when he could lift his head up, and he didn't know how much any of this was programmed and how much might have been anything like real, but it was as real as he would ever get, and it was Dean and every bit of him programmed for pleasure.
"Please, please," Dean begged, and it was so easy to find the sweet spot on love mechas, synthetic and hard and jutting out easy against his fingers, and rub the pads of his fingers past it in little thrusts, and when Dean screamed next Castiel screamed too around the dick in his mouth, loud enough for Dean to understand, "Yes" - because his main kink had always been mercy.
Dean's whole body tensed and stilled, and he poured hot and sweet into Castiel's mouth, and if Castiel had had anything to compare it to, he would have thought it perhaps too sweet instead of salty, too soft instead of bitter, but Castiel didn't, so he thought it was just perfect, and tasted as much as he could before swallowing it down.
Castiel finally moved off him then, and kneeled there panting and watching as Dean pulled himself through the phases of recovery which he didn't need, and the slow regulation of his breathing and opening of his eyes which he also didn't need, and he felt that he should be exhausted himself but he wasn't, not at all. He just wanted to give the mechanical love robot enough pleasure to the point where everything that they were was unnecessary. Just now, he thought that he could work that kind of a miracle, where he had failed in so many before.
"Dean." Was all he could say. "Dean." And he felt as if his grace itself was leaking out, if he'd still had some.
He waited until Dean was looking into his eyes, and then he said, "Again," and bent over Dean again. The love robot gasped and got hard on cue before letting his elbows fully collapse in surrender.
*
Sam was amused by the eight-limbed winged thing that flopped around on the bed all day. It was hard not to want to pounce on the wings and play with them, but they belonged to Castiel and Sam knew all about loyalty and betrayal, and he didn't want to know any more.
*
Dean wanted to bring Castiel pleasure, like he was made to do, but even he knew that there was more to it, and he had been told for years by his clients that he could be incredibly dense. But not about this, Dean thought. Not this time.
It wasn't just that he didn't want to be stupid for Castiel - he wanted to be smart. And real, and be able to read his mind like he was best at. But Castiel was so hard to read most of the time, so beyond him, and Dean didn't know why. No one had ever acted like they had wanted him that badly - but Castiel had. He was just another love robot, and he wanted to be good at his job, but he found himself feeling almost - satisfied. Though he wasn't supposed to have feelings of his own, only the feelings that he could imagine to be. Castiel, with his utter incomprehensibility and overall strangeness, had given him so many feelings to imagine.
Dean hugged Sam to his chest on the bed and rocked with his roly poly softness until Sam licked his face. "Happy, Dean. You're happy," Sam said between licks.
"Yes, happy," Dean smiled and let Sam lick his freckles. Moments like these, when Dean remembered there was a hole where a heart would normally supposed to be, Sam could make him feel more real than ever. Maybe Sam had something to do with it too. "Hey, Sam?"
"What?" he barked.
"You're happy too? Not sad anymore?"
Sam stopped licking and his eyes grew softer brown in the brown parts, and more glowing in the golden parts. "Not sad like I was."
Dean placed a hand on Sam's chest between his paws. "You feel all this stuff too, right?"
"I am meant to share feelings with my masters."
"But I'm not human. And Cas, he isn't... well, he isn't human, and he's not one of us either."
"I still feel you. When you are an eight-limbed thing with wings, or even now."
"A... what?" Dean mused, and then barked a laugh himself, covering it up the best he could so as not to wake Castiel. "You're funny, Sam."
Sam panted in pleasure. "Thanks."
Dean ruffled the fur on his head. "What's happening to us, huh?"
"I don't know. Nothing bad, I think."
"Yeah," Dean nodded, "nothing bad."
*
Castiel awoke from sleep with Dean hovering above him with a strange light in his eyes. "What is that?"
"I think it's called mischief. That's what Sam told me."
"Sam is smart."
"I know. Sam is very, very smart." And Dean lowered himself down onto Castiel, his perfectly lubed hole clutching at Castiel's dream-hardened cock just this side of ache. "So tell me - what were you dreaming about?"
"But, I don't have dreams," Castiel tried to say between gasps. He could feel his eyes wide open. "Dean."
"Shhhh," Dean put a finger to Castiel's lips.
"I don't want you, to have to -," Castiel tried to say.
Dean's face fell just enough for him to notice. "You don't want me?"
"Please. Just," Castiel put his hands over Dean's face, smoothing it down and calm. Roughing up his hair until he looked like Dean. "I want you like this. However you... want to feel."
He could tell Dean wasn't sure how to take that, because everything just stopped for a moment. "Okay," Dean said.
"I mean - Just go. It's okay, just go on," and Castiel brushed a palm over Dean's cheek, just to be sure all of this was real.
His thumb brushed the eyelashes on Dean's face - that beautiful, most beautiful face - and his breath hitched. He cupped the back of his neck and pulled him close, shutting his eyes against the sight for just a moment, a moment to breathe.
"What's wrong?" Dean's breath was warm against his chest.
"I just - I need to -" Castiel breathed twice, three more times before he lifted Dean off of himself and flipped him onto his back.
"Hey, what?"
He barely felt in control. "I need you," he said. "Now I know I do."
"Shhhh, it's fine," Dean hushed. Then Castiel felt Dean's palms, the slide of his thighs against his own, his ass open and ready and winking at him Castiel's lap. "Better?" Dean smiled. "You like to be the top, I guess."
Castiel couldn't speak if he tried.
"Don't worry - bottom is my specialty," Dean beamed.
He moved as much clothing aside as Dean had managed to leave on him and stared at the clench of Dean's ass the whole way in. He wanted to do this right, and he wanted to make Dean cry again, and he wanted everything and anything all at once, and it felt so good but it wasn't - right. The first thrust was hard, jolting, all slick slide. And then he stopped, listening to Dean curl up beneath him, breathing. He tried to go slower, but it was harder to, almost violent. He shook the bed, shook everything, and tried to hold back, and failed.
"It's okay, it's okay," Dean pressed. Dean's hands were in his hair.
Then Castiel stopped, his eyes still shut closed.
"You can't hurt me. You can't do anything wrong. Not to me."
It wasn't this Dean he was afraid of hurting. Somehow the memory of Dean that was inhabiting this body, both of their minds perhaps, every moment of every wide-awake day for at least a century now.
"Cas. Cas - just go. Alright? Just go."
So Cas went. The violent thrusts that shook the bed, shook the very breath out of Dean. The grip of his hands, bruising, on Dean's body. The stillness of their bodies and the pistoning of his hips into Dean, outstripping the lube, faster, faster, and more wild.
"God, you're so hard, so hard, so fucking -" Dean was gasping and Castiel was almost afraid, afraid that he would *break* him, the way Dean used to bleed and break for everyone, the way he used to cry when he thought no one could hear him, not even Sam, but Castiel could, he always could -
"Help me, help me," he pleaded with each last thrust, each thrust he thought would be the last, and dug his nails into Dean's synthetic skin and just shook and shook with his coming when it came.
"I got you. I got you."
Castiel felt Dean's hands on his back, but that was all. He felt numb and hyper-aware all at once. His cock was still hard and tucked deep within Dean, but he had come, somehow, he had come.
Dean pat his skin, covered with the barest sheen of sweat. "You're some kind of robot, you know that?"
"But." Castiel breathed, confused. "I'm not a robot. I'm an angel."
"Okay. Well, then, angel. You're some kind of angel."
"You don't believe me." Castiel tried to bend his body in half, rest his forehead on Dean -
"Sure, sure I believe you."
"Dean." Castiel would try -
"Okay, so just tell me one thing."
"Anything, Dean." And lick with his tongue -
"What's an angel supposed to be again?" Dean's breath hitched. The most beautiful sounds.
*
Dean figured they might as well watch TV, might as well get this hotel room for the third day. He wanted a break from searching for the Smiths and Winchesters, focused again on his primary, original purpose. It was so much safer, so much closer to real.
Dean straddled the hips and lowered himself down onto what seemed to be the perpetual hardness of an angel.
Dean bounced, and bounced, and bounced, until even he was afraid that Castiel might break him. But, God, he couldn't stop. "More, fuck me more, fuck me, more, more," he groaned at the ceiling as he fucked himself down and down. Castiel was hard enough to push him open, leave him open and keep him there.
Sam got bored and came over to check on him from time to time, licking his knee, and Dean hugged him close with his fucking high, every part of his robot self doing what it was supposed to do at maximum capacity, and ruffled his sweaty hands and face in Sam's fur until content, the dog lay on the floor near the bed as it shook over him.
Dean tried to watch TV with Castiel's face buried in his ass, his never-tired tongue, and sucked his fingers into his mouth until the angel allowed him to come over and over again. He was some kind of angel.
*
Part 3
Masterpost
Art post
*
Part 2
*
The next day was cold and overcast with gray, and Castiel felt wrapped up in it like a cloak of fog and sadness across this empty plain. He shouldn't have mentioned the other Dean, no, he shouldn't have done that at all. Now this mecha doppelganger he saved will never stop wanting to know more, will never stop asking questions, or leave him alone, ever. He got himself in deeper than he ever wanted to, and he listened to Dean ask questions, but his face was like a disinterested child's - blank and faraway.
"What happened to the Winchesters?"
Castiel couldn't remember exactly. "They died, when everyone died."
Dean shrugged. "Your Dean should have had a mother like Mary."
"Mothers can't keep everyone safe, Dean."
"Of course they can. My mother was the best. You'll see."
"Where is your mother now, Dean? Why isn't she with you?"
Dean's tone was condescending. "I had to go to work, silly."
"Your mother would have liked your job?"
"Of course! I made people happy. Everyone needs love."
Castiel supposed angels could get along without it.
He might have found Dean's combination of bravado and denial comforting, because it was familiar, and because it was Dean. But this Dean could never know that, and it was a kind of torture to be so close to him every day, to remind him by the strange sheen of his skin, the unchanging energy, that this was not Dean.
They walked across Kansas towards South Dakota, never resting again, never sleeping. They all had reasons to shiver, Castiel supposed, when they passed old unkempt graveyards with gray crumbling stones. Sam barked at shadows and howled until Dean shushed him. Castiel felt Dean's hand grab onto his as they passed.
Dean dared to point for a brief moment at white stones that sprouted wings, praying hands. "Those statues - they look like you."
"I know."
"What do they do? Watch over the dead?"
Castiel thought over Dean's simple words for a moment, his mouth opening to explain to Dean just what it was angels were supposed to do, but - Dean was right. He was an angel, and he watched over the dead. In the turning of the world both lost and predetermined, what else was there for him to do? He had long ago given up on the living. "Yes. That is what they do. And that is what I do, so then that is what I am - an angel."
"Why do angels have birds' wings?"
His smile was rueful, he knew, and sad. It was familiar. "They were once symbolic and real. I had the grace of God, and wings to fly on that grace. Now, all I have left is the wings." Castiel rustled them, just to show he could, but Sam got anxious and restless at the familiar sight on such an unfamiliar bird, and started pacing in half-circles.
"I don't like that. Don't do that," the dog said.
"I'm sorry, Sam."
"Yeah. It's kind of weird," Dean backed Sam up, as he had been habitually doing for days. "Who ever saw wings on a person before? And since when did anyone besides mechas believe in gods? We only do because we were programmed to, and I'm not sure what all my programming is good for anymore. God didn't create me, and I'm way more useful than you so far."
Once again, Castiel couldn't find the words to argue with Dean, so he just mimicked his careless shrug.
"That's okay, angel. I don't care if you don't know what you are. I guess that just means you belong with us. Right, Sam?"
Sam just barked softly, and seeked out a hand to pet him.
Castiel obliged him. "Yes. Yes, I do."
*
They arrived at the salvage yard after days. All was dust-colored, dust-covered, in shades of rust. The cars here were models so old, Dean barely recognized them at first. Rectangles of rust, topped with boxes of rust. "People used to drive these things? What were they, nuts?" The past was weird - Dean knew that. People used to keep as many children and pets as they wanted, live the kind of life they wanted, and they didn't think about the shrinking world or the ethics of drinking water, breathing air. They just lived.
Dean stared at the burnt up ball of metal in the salvage yard outside of the place Castiel had called 'Bobby's'. Castiel had called it 'Impala' - no, THE Impala. Like that was supposed to mean something. "You're kidding me, right? This used to be a car?" He ran his hands over the hollowed-out shell. He saw fires burning, metal melting, power like an avalanche, broken glass. He pulled his hand away as if burned. It spoke to him in the language of machines.
"Wait," Dean said. "I can fix it."
From where he stood, his face in profile, Castiel narrowed his eyes. "I thought you could."
Later, they joined Sam where he waited on the porch and stared at the sun as it crawled towards the horizon, all sharing an unspoken sense of deja vu. It wasn't so strange - their programming was prone to these kind of glitches, where unplaced moments seemed to repeat themselves, and experiences sometimes played as if seen on a movie screen.
Sam roamed across the wooden floor throughout the evening. "I like this house." His tail wagged. He stopped at the dusty shelves that lined the walls. "What do all of these books mean?"
They looked at the books with their strange symbols and ancient languages with wide eyes. Sometimes Castiel thought he saw shadows pass over their faces, as if remembering. They looked on silently long into the evening.
Inside the living room, Sam loped in a circle and curled up on a faded couch. When Dean got tired of thinking, he joined Sam and they achieved something close to sleep for the first time, because they were something close to home.
*
The next day, Castiel began to admit to his own frail conscience that he had only wanted to give Dean something to keep him occupied, and near. Dean had been right last night - the car was a means to an end, but one that had no ending and offered no answers, no hope. Nothing ever had.
Still, it was hard to keep from staring at Dean, even when he had made him sit on the porch steps, his forearms resting on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him. Magic was happening. The same nanobots Dean used to change the cut and color of his hair, to add or remove freckles, make his clothes worn or shiny, to repair his complex body, were traveling back and forth between his synthetic skin and the newly mirrored chrome of the Impala, changing the very fabric of the matter they touched, and trading memories faster than light.
Dean plugged himself into the car and learned a strange history that shone on his face like a blank kind of wonder. Castiel stared and marveled at what defied his expectations, where he was only just realizing how many expectations he had been holding onto during their journey here, the desire to make the sadness of the past reappear anew, if this could be called desire. Dean stood with the hood of the car open above him, his hand reaching deep inside the guts of the thing he had so loved (this thing Dean had loved, if things could hold love like burned oil and worn parts) and stared at nothing with his mouth agape.
What was he seeing behind his eyes? Castiel wondered. Could he see the road stretched out before him over the top of the wheel, his hands tapping out a song he'd never heard before played from a plastic tape? Could he see black eyed demons running in the taillights, his human brother next to him aiming a shotgun? Could he see his father's eyes in the rear view mirror? The body of a naked angel stretched out on the backseat? The headlights of a semi blinding him before impact?
If so, Dean didn't tell him. Not yet. He just swaggered across the yard at the end of the day - his gait newly bowlegged, his skin matte with dust - and offered his nano-healed shoulder to him. "I'm gonna need you to burn me again," was all he said.
Castiel felt the slickness of the ID under his palm and burned it away for the second time, thinking this was what making Dean Winchester must have felt for his Father, thinking this was what it felt like when he raised Dean from Hell, the intimate holy feeling of his wholly naked body, needing only to burn under his hand and raise again.
*
Fixing the car was a different kind of work. Physical still, but with a finished product at the end besides a softening sex, a mess to clean up. Instead of the never-ending sine wave that was fucking, it was the wholly alien feeling of something growing into solidity. Growing real beneath his hands.
But it was a kind of fucking - Dean knew all kinds. This old machine spoke to him of what it needed and Dean gave what he could, the trading of cells more intimate than playacting. The machine paid him back in creaking metallic groans from its belly, staccato static whines from the radio, dried up pools of grease breathing out fumes. He knew women, and the curved rim that arched over the wheel gave a heated purr against his skin, and he knew that too. The further he reached inside, his whole body stretched out under the hood, the more he knew. He grabbed on, shook with it, and they groaned together. Machines, they spoke a language more intimate than fucking.
Though the angel-thing was something beyond him. He had taken him across whole states just to bring him here, and now he just watched him from the porch all day, his hands clasped in a kind of prayer, those fake-looking wings attached to his back. He had never met anyone so easy to seduce, and so difficult.
That was what he was doing - after all, he was Kinky Dean. It was the only thing he could figure out to do, with the messages from this car beneath his skin, the never-ending strangeness of this place. Dean began to seduce Castiel slowly, and all he had to do was listen to the shadow of his image in those messages. Maybe it was his programming, a safety valve imprinted on all love mechas that told him that Castiel could save him from those visions, and all he had to do was ask him, in the countless ways he knew how to ask, with his eyes, his walk, his tongue.
Things like walking into the kitchen where Castiel sat reading books with Sam. He leaned against the counter, crossed his legs at the ankle.
Sam's tail was wagging against the back of the chair he sat in. "Castiel was right, Dean," he said breathless, almost panting. "Angels are real. They are! We found them!"
"In the books, he means," Castiel kept his voice calm, always calm. But Dean could feel his eyes even when they weren't on him. He could feel everything he wasn't doing, all the time. "They don't talk about what happened to them, only that they existed once."
"I knew it!" Sam so loved the angels, though Dean knew he had nightmares about their careless eyes, the mighty beat of wings.
"You did, huh?" It was too easy to roll his tongue against the inside of his cheek. "Have you met another angel?"
"No," Sam turned around to face him on all fours. "I just believe him. The world is too beautiful, and he has birds' wings. So I believe him."
Dean didn't know about all that. Still, he had the urge to dirty the so-called angel sometimes just to clean him up, make him press his hands into the guts of the car just to mimic what he had been feeling. He began to walk the floor naked in between dreamless sleep, though he never needed to sleep.
*
This house smelled like dust, not food. Too many old smells, people long gone - not for miles around - no animals except for the black birds sometimes, sharp and shiny and boring.
Sam sat beside the car and saw the flashes between the machinery and Dean - Dean's machinery - and watching was like old, familiar smells. The flashes were things he knew about, had even seemed to live before, just like the symbols in the books and the pictures of things Castiel called angels. It was as if mentioning them would break a spell, and though he could speak as well as any living human or mecha, he found he didn't want to. The images tumbling into Dean now were his to decipher, and though Sam knew them just as well, he couldn't do that for Dean. What Sam was was not the boy in the flashes, the boy in the car. No, Sam was John and Mary and Adam's dog, and that was where he wanted to belong. Some safe place like home.
He read the books when Dean shooed him away, too confused to think. He learned to pull the books from the wall with his paws, turn the pages with his tongue, and could stare at the words - ancient, Latin, Enochian - and they spoke of things long lost, like Heaven, Hell and God. The lost things didn't matter - Had they ever? - but they held a beauty and a sadness that the humans still held that only he could see. Sam saw it when he looked at them, the way he could hurt them, or bite them with his teeth, or break their bones, that they didn't have any memory of. The natural world only the unnatural things remembered.
Sam knew he would find the angel where the angel always was - watching Dean. He pushed his head under Castiel's palm and rested on the porch. Castiel would look at him then.
"What do you need, Sam? What can I do for you?"
The angel saw, the angel saw the natural things, even if he didn't want to. He might have wanted to, once. Sam could almost remember that - how no one wanted to see the real world more. "I thank you for the books. I do! I like them. Can I ask you - Can I ask you for a computer? Oh I so want a computer, with a network and keys, someone to talk to. Please? Will you find me one? Will you?"
Castiel smiled. It made Sam want to shake his head. "I will get one for you, Sam. Don't worry. Alright." He scratched with his clawless fingers. It felt good. Soft and good. "Alright," he said.
*
It was dumbfounding the way the world would change. Castiel remembered the first time he saw the world from Heaven, the first time he looked through human eyes, the way it had looked after Dean, then close after the Apocalypse, the end. He'd seen it so many different ways and he never could get a grasp. The world was overwhelming, for he who used to know Heaven, once.
He stood in front of the Tech World store and ignored the automatic doors opening and closing. These were strange people on their shrinking island - always had been. Seas rose ever higher, whole nations collapsed, wars raged in faraway lands they had never even heard of less acknowledged, while they raced like trapped mice into big box stores to buy the biggest smallest screens, ever-shrinking phones he still didn't understand.
Young people in wire-frame glasses and polo shirts greeted him when he finally walked through the doors, and the rows of fluorescent lights made the plastic on the shelves seem shiny and new. Families bought devices to say 'I love you' and screens to plaster the walls of their homes with video games to practice shooting things, and somewhere across the world whole countries were drowning, but this was the way the world had been made, and this was the way his Father and brothers had left it, and this was the world Dean left fighting for, though he hadn't lived to see it fall under the water.
He was here to buy a computer for the dog that he loved so that he could find his missing family. So that was what he was going to do.
"Excuse me," he asked the first polo shirt he could find. "I need to buy a laptop."
The worker barely acknowledged him, looked around for someone else to take care of this. "Uh, do you need a mind interface with that? Because my buddy Mike can help you with that."
Castiel creased his brow, tried to ponder the meaning of a 'mind interface' but figured Sam would know more about it than he did. Sam always had. "Yes. Yes, I do." And because he guessed he might need one, after all these years, "And a phone."
New technology for spoiled people, a cell phone for an angel, and a mind interface for a dog. The world was too strange a thing to ever judge outright.
*
"Oh yes! Yes yes yes!" Sam wagged his tail and stepped from paw to paw in front of the box. He watched, tongue lolling, as Dean gave the angel-thing a kiss on the face. He wanted to join in, so he just licked Castiel's hand and fingers, which tasted like nothing else. "Thank you thank you!"
"The man at the store said it had mind interface technology." Castiel watched Dean open the box.
Sam watched too. It was too exciting - a new computer, a way to find Mary and John and Adam, a way to be seen as more than just a dog. Though he liked being a dog, he did, it's just that everyone came with expectations, and he felt he was much more than a dog, and it was hard to make them see that, he was a dog and more than a dog, and always had been.
Dean pressed the button and Sam stood with his head cocked in the halo of light the machine gave off, and he barked at it, and waited for it to acknowledge him, and when it did, it would do anything he asked of it. If he thought of a place, it would show him that place using far-off satellites. If he wanted a friend, it would display options of smiling faces, costumed faces, body parts saying hello, emoticons beamed in from other minds.
So Sam looked first for information on a missing dog search, and found nothing. He looked for his old address - a place to match Mary and John Smith. There were many Smiths, though not as much as there used to be, and though it took him awhile, he could scour the satellite images with his memories, and find it. There. There - Mary and John Smith, Lawrence, Kansas. Kansas!
Sam kept pacing in place, turning his head towards the machine, towards Castiel and Dean and away again. "I don't have a phone," he said, and whined just a little through his nose. He would not worry, he would not be scared.
The angel-thing held up his hand. "I have one. I thought you both might want it."
"Will you call for me?" Sam asked. It was all he could ask, though he felt he'd been given so much.
Castiel tried. He reached a woman and her husband, talking from somewhere behind her. They denied ever owning a dog. They lied and hung up the phone.
Sam frowned. He spent the rest of the night in Dean's lap and Dean never stopped stroking his fur. Dean told him he could use the computer to find people to talk to. People who wouldn't judge him or leave him. Sam licked his nose, because he liked Dean. Because Dean said the right thing, he tried, but it still wasn't enough.
*
The car was almost done - Dean stuck his hands deep inside the guts of it, laid across the seats and pressed his fingers to the radio, saw a baby in the backseat, two brothers grow into the front seat, a father there and gone and back again, crash after crash after crash, races along highways with trucks, zombie hordes, madmen with fire.
He understood none of it. But that was nothing new, wasn't it? He wasn't built to know, much less question. He was built to get things working and parts lubed up, moving, cease again. He placed his hands upon it and the glass windows joined together to make a dome, the chrome on the bumpers narrowed at the back and curved in the front, the steel turned to titanium. Now THAT was a car he knew. Castiel had called it an Impala.
He was always a mechanic - nothing new there. But for once he was grateful to the machine.
Dean wanted to thank Castiel at night, too, but for what exactly he couldn't name. He didn't know where they were going, only the old familiar running away that shouldn't be so familiar, and yet was.
So Dean thanked him in other ways. The car running in idle in the yard, he played a soft alt-country waltz out of his ears loud enough for Castiel and Sam to hear. "Dance with me?" He held his arms out, for he knew all dances, the steps, the counts.
Dean spun him around slower than the music, feeling Castiel's overwhelmed and nervous feelings before he did himself, kicking up the dead leaves under the oak tree, letting Sam bark and run around them all.
They laid on the grass under the trees and watched the birds Sam spied and chased. Dean let the waltz play and didn't stare at Castiel beside him but felt him just the same, and wondered if he already knew about the images in his head from the car, which he felt just as strongly as if he had remembered them himself, though he did not.
*
The love mecha and his dog sat under the blue halo of light in their shared rapture, shared heaven. Sam shared his computer with Dean, the interface taking them both on as one, together, which would have been unheard of, and yet here it was, Dean thought, and so then it was heard of, wasn't it?
Dean looked up to find Castiel on the couch. "I know where we can find your brothers! It says right here -" and Sam barked too "- the City of Brotherly Love!"
"What?" Castiel sat up and cocked his head like he had started to do more and more. It was something else that Dean remembered about him, if those memories could be real, which of course they weren't.
"Think about it!" Dean felt as excited as Sam's wagging tail. "You said there used to be libraries on the coast, right? Before they moved them inland. This city - Philadelphia - is on the coast now, so couldn't they have moved the libraries there?"
"Yes. I suppose so -"
"We looked up Sam's collar - Golden Calf Industries - but we couldn't find anything else about it. Sam thinks - tell him, Sam."
"If Golden Calf made me," he spoke, "then maybe they could fix me. If we asked they could fix me and John and Mary would let me stay with them again." Sam's tail wagged.
"We could help Sam. And the libraries could tell us more - about what happened to your brothers. It's fate!"
"But you don't believe in fate, Dean."
"Okay, fine, but these brothers of yours - the ones with their memories stored in the car - they were in love, right?"
"Yes. They were."
"Then that's what we're looking for - brothers in love. And this is the city of brotherly love, and in the center of it there's a park called Love Park -" Sam barked over Dean again.
"I don't know, Dean."
Castiel looked something like frightened, but he couldn't be, right? Dean knew this was something to try. There was nothing else left to try, was there? Where else would they go?
"Maybe we'll go then," Dean said. "Maybe we can get along without you."
He let his hope die down and wane and shrink and flutter to sleep, like Sam's wagging tail. They looked at the screen together, their shared minds racing through everything brotherly and hopeful and impossible.
*
Hours passed. Castiel had let Sam and Dean sleep with him on the bed, though he wasn't sure if what they did was sleep at all, or some facsimile of it, like much of what they did in their strange pioneering new-found lives.
Dean had kissed him goodnight and held his head, smiling. Castiel remembered trying to breathe then, feeling horribly guilty (that first feeling he remembered having so long ago once) - he'd just wanted to keep Dean near to him, and now he failed at even the most selfish of tasks. Dean was going to leave, and take Sam with him, and they would be lost and he would never find them again.
Castiel was pained by Dean's simpleness and innocence. Why did he have to have hope? Why this Dean? Why now?
And why had he found that false angel in the forest, the one who had told him about Golden Calf Industries? Why did Sam have to have the same collar, the same build-place?
He knew at least that Golden Calf wasn't in Philadelphia. They could still go there and Dean might never find the place. He would have them for a little while longer. It all didn't have to fall apart so quickly. Not this time. There was always hope. He used to try to believe that.
"Can we stay here tonight? With you?" Dean had asked, and of course, always, he had said yes.
"But I don't sleep," he had warned Dean.
"We don't have to sleep," Dean shrugged, and then kissed him. The three of them on the bed, like never before, not even the first time. Dean clung close to Castiel, who held him, and stayed.
Hours passed. Sam went back to his computer, ever sleepless.
Dean touched Castiel's chest with his palm. "Do you feel anything? I feel something."
"Don't."
"Castiel -"
"Don't."
"Angel -"
"Dean. I'm not meant for... this." He at least didn't remove Dean's hand. At least.
"Well. I am." He felt Dean's hands begin undoing the buttons down the front, his mechanical hands slide beneath the cotton of his undershirt. He breathed while they stayed there, this head and hand on his chest.
"Okay," Dean said. Okay. They would go together, he knew then they would go.
The night before, Dean had plugged the car into a power outlet, rebuilding miles worth of wires in the process. In the morning, Castiel rode shotgun and listened to Dean whoop and felt drops from Sam's tongue land unnoticed on the collar of his coat and felt the wetness on his face only after he had started to cry.
"See, you have feelings," Dean insisted in a triumphantly Dean kind of way.
"I do," Castiel said. "I do."
Their last night in the bed, Dean moved his hands under Castiel's shirt again, kissed his face, neck, and chest as much as he would allow. Undid his pants.
"You're just like me," Dean said, before taking Castiel into his mouth soft, rolling his balls between his fingers, playing with his still-soft cock expertly.
Castiel felt something break a little then, growing hard enough to fill up Dean's mouth, listening to Dean's voice in between strokes - "that's better, that's good, that's it" - moaning moaning moaning and humming.
He started to feel more and Dean didn't stop, but it was moving so slow in him, like Castiel didn't know how to feel any more, and then he did, and he was moving closer to something he couldn't name, but so slowly, slowly. Dean didn't stop because he didn't need to, he could go on and on while Castiel felt his breath quicken slightly, just now taking deep breaths down to his belly, but hitching somewhere in between.
Castiel felt the moon move in the sky and the shadows in the room change and Dean's mouth working on his cock and the room slowly shifting over the hours as they passed. Feeling as much as he could and it was almost, almost, too much. He stopped Dean when the sun broke through and bathed the clouds in light.
Later, they left Bobby's and headed East, to the cities.
Dean looked thoughtful and amused and confused and kept looking over at Castiel like he'd never seen anyone like him before.
"You're new," Dean said.
"I know," Castiel frowned.
"No, I mean, that's good. It's good, Cas."
He cocked his head. "What did you just call me?"
"Cas? Castiel?"
"Why did you just call me 'Cas'?"
Dean furrowed his brow and frowned as much as he ever did. "I don't know. A nickname?"
Castiel thought hard for several minutes. This seemed important. Even beyond last night, this was something bigger than he could name right now.
"Do you like it?"
Castiel sighed. "Yes, I think I do."
For some reason, Dean and Sam simultaneously agreed to eat at a diner when they crossed the border of Iowa. The worst, best kind of diner, with plastic gingham tablecloths and dusty venetian blinds and everything covered with the sheen of old grease. Dean ordered burgers to go and came outside with them, running.
"Let's stay at a hotel, hide out for awhile," Dean said, speeding to the most run-down one he could find.
Castiel stated the obvious. "We don't need to eat or sleep." He looked at the road behind them. "What's the hurry?"
Dean shrugged. "I'm used to hotels. I kind of miss them."
"What's the real reason?"
"They wouldn't accept my form of payment." He shrugged again. "I'll have better luck at a hotel."
The thought had never occurred to Castiel. Dean had offered to pay his usual way - however the management wanted him. But they were on the run from the law to begin with, and so they ran some more.
Castiel drank his vanilla milkshake through a straw. "Did you live in hotels when you worked?"
"Sure - where else would I work? The best business could always be found at hotels. Churches were good too, but they are very hard to find. The ones who made us are always looking for the ones that made them. They go in, look around their feet, sing songs, and when they come out, it's usually me they find. I've picked up a lot of business in front of churches. Hotels, too. And I know how to get free stuff from the vending machines."
The hotel they found was the worst, best kind of hotel, with scratchy floral-patterned bedspreads, broken ceiling fans, and spotted wallpaper. Dean adored it.
*
Dean made the night safe by making it familiar. He ground the skin from his chest, his belly, his hips down on Castiel. "Last night, it wasn't enough, was it? You need more. I can give you more." He attacked Castiel's body with his mouth, his hands, the weight of his body. It was too much, all at once, but Dean missed giving it.
"No," Castiel moaned beneath him, "I can't. I'm an angel."
Dean stopped, stricken. Castiel had said no.
*
Castiel had regretted it as soon as he'd said it. He wasn't used to these mecha lovers, their programmed rules. He watched Dean move to the other bed and hug Sam close from where he had been watching there. Dean had closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, or slept, Castiel could never tell. Sam put his head down on the curve of Dean's side and looked at Castiel. He sighed one long doggy sigh and then shut his eyes as well.
Dean was naked on the bed, the curve of his back and cheeks rounded in the moonlight. The whole night Castiel tried not to stare at him, and he failed. He had too much time to work on his apology, staring at Dean.
When it finally came out, it seemed dumb even to his own untrained ears.
"I don't know why I don't want you."
"What?" Dean huffed out a flimsy laugh at him. "That doesn't even make sense."
Castiel wanted to give up. "I know?"
"What is there to be afraid of? What is so wrong to want?"
Everything, Castiel thought. "Nothing," he said.
Dean shrugged. "All I'm asking is for you to be with me, because it's what I am."
"Are you sure?"
Dean moved to the other bed. "Look - maybe, last night, that's not exactly what you wanted. But I bet there's something else that you do want. I'm really good," he spoke between kisses, "at finding out."
Dean still hadn't put his clothes on. Maybe he knew more than Castiel thought. Castiel's thoughts went back to the last days when the angels had been choosing, and every choice had seemed wrong. It was wearing him down, though to what exactly he couldn't fathom.
*
He watched Dean watching the television with Sam all morning, his pale round too-perfect ass turned up on the bed, and when he couldn't move anymore, Castiel fell to his knees beside the bed and started to pray. His hair almost touched Dean's hip he was so close. But he couldn't, he couldn't do what? And he hadn't prayed in so very, very long. He'd been afraid to, in case he heard nothing still.
"Cas, Cas." He felt Dean try to lift his head up. "It's okay, you don't have to do this. I'm right here, Cas. Castiel."
But he refused to move. He felt Sam try to nudge him with his nose and whine a little. "Castiel? Castiel?" He said his name so fast it was like one sound. Castiel could hear the frown in his voice.
He finally let Dean lift his head to face him from between his knees, crumpled by the side of the bed, and his expression was so innocent that Castiel could almost ignore that his face was inches away from Dean's ready semi-hardness and the nest of his hair. "Dean -" And every argument left him.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Dean lick his lips, take one of Castiel's hands and place it on the top of the cheek of his ass, high up at the small of his back, and press his fingers into the curves. He let Dean guide his head forward towards his cock, hard on command, and he managed to do the rest, taking Dean into his mouth and sucking for dear life. He moved his other hand to Dean's other cheek and pressed him in up to his mouth, as close and in as far as he would go.
He didn't break, he didn't even change. Worship, worship - that was all Castiel had wanted. Dean called out in high pitched sounds, yelps and keens, as Castiel mimicked all of his moves from the last night at the salvage yard, but more, and more, not treating Dean like anything new or virginal (though he was both to him), just taking all of him and not letting go. Through his eyelashes, he watched Dean arch his back and let his elbows fall to the bed, the shadows moving across perfect skin, and Castiel shoved his body towards his mouth, all suction and swallowing.
Dean screwed his eyes shut. "Do you want me to come? Do you want me to come?" He almost pleaded in between gasps.
Castiel's mouth was silent, but said nothing but no, silently so it didn't matter.
Dean fell back on the bed completely, his arms collapsing, and Castiel just pulled him closer, eyes raking over his body. His ass was entirely in Castiel's hands now, his cock wholly in his mouth, his legs bent and curled all the way to his toes as the angel jerked him with fast little strokes of his throat. He couldn't come if Castiel didn't want him to, and Castiel showed no signs of slowing. "Please, please, please," Dean begged, and Castiel knew he was beyond caring what he sounded like. His whole body was shaking with the need to release but he couldn't lose a drop if Castiel didn't say so. He'd been figuring out the rules.
He moved his right hand to cup Dean's ass lower, and in, swirling a finger until he found the spot where his mechanically lubed puckered hole kissed the tip, and he pressed in slowly, swirling in deeper down to the second knuckle, circled his finger around and felt the synthetic skin take and give. He circled in slowly, so slowly, and never stopped sucking. Dean grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled hard, but he just messed it up, and Castiel sucked harder, and began a second finger. He watched Dean's eyes water with the strain and the tears fall when he could lift his head up, and he didn't know how much any of this was programmed and how much might have been anything like real, but it was as real as he would ever get, and it was Dean and every bit of him programmed for pleasure.
"Please, please," Dean begged, and it was so easy to find the sweet spot on love mechas, synthetic and hard and jutting out easy against his fingers, and rub the pads of his fingers past it in little thrusts, and when Dean screamed next Castiel screamed too around the dick in his mouth, loud enough for Dean to understand, "Yes" - because his main kink had always been mercy.
Dean's whole body tensed and stilled, and he poured hot and sweet into Castiel's mouth, and if Castiel had had anything to compare it to, he would have thought it perhaps too sweet instead of salty, too soft instead of bitter, but Castiel didn't, so he thought it was just perfect, and tasted as much as he could before swallowing it down.
Castiel finally moved off him then, and kneeled there panting and watching as Dean pulled himself through the phases of recovery which he didn't need, and the slow regulation of his breathing and opening of his eyes which he also didn't need, and he felt that he should be exhausted himself but he wasn't, not at all. He just wanted to give the mechanical love robot enough pleasure to the point where everything that they were was unnecessary. Just now, he thought that he could work that kind of a miracle, where he had failed in so many before.
"Dean." Was all he could say. "Dean." And he felt as if his grace itself was leaking out, if he'd still had some.
He waited until Dean was looking into his eyes, and then he said, "Again," and bent over Dean again. The love robot gasped and got hard on cue before letting his elbows fully collapse in surrender.
*
Sam was amused by the eight-limbed winged thing that flopped around on the bed all day. It was hard not to want to pounce on the wings and play with them, but they belonged to Castiel and Sam knew all about loyalty and betrayal, and he didn't want to know any more.
*
Dean wanted to bring Castiel pleasure, like he was made to do, but even he knew that there was more to it, and he had been told for years by his clients that he could be incredibly dense. But not about this, Dean thought. Not this time.
It wasn't just that he didn't want to be stupid for Castiel - he wanted to be smart. And real, and be able to read his mind like he was best at. But Castiel was so hard to read most of the time, so beyond him, and Dean didn't know why. No one had ever acted like they had wanted him that badly - but Castiel had. He was just another love robot, and he wanted to be good at his job, but he found himself feeling almost - satisfied. Though he wasn't supposed to have feelings of his own, only the feelings that he could imagine to be. Castiel, with his utter incomprehensibility and overall strangeness, had given him so many feelings to imagine.
Dean hugged Sam to his chest on the bed and rocked with his roly poly softness until Sam licked his face. "Happy, Dean. You're happy," Sam said between licks.
"Yes, happy," Dean smiled and let Sam lick his freckles. Moments like these, when Dean remembered there was a hole where a heart would normally supposed to be, Sam could make him feel more real than ever. Maybe Sam had something to do with it too. "Hey, Sam?"
"What?" he barked.
"You're happy too? Not sad anymore?"
Sam stopped licking and his eyes grew softer brown in the brown parts, and more glowing in the golden parts. "Not sad like I was."
Dean placed a hand on Sam's chest between his paws. "You feel all this stuff too, right?"
"I am meant to share feelings with my masters."
"But I'm not human. And Cas, he isn't... well, he isn't human, and he's not one of us either."
"I still feel you. When you are an eight-limbed thing with wings, or even now."
"A... what?" Dean mused, and then barked a laugh himself, covering it up the best he could so as not to wake Castiel. "You're funny, Sam."
Sam panted in pleasure. "Thanks."
Dean ruffled the fur on his head. "What's happening to us, huh?"
"I don't know. Nothing bad, I think."
"Yeah," Dean nodded, "nothing bad."
*
Castiel awoke from sleep with Dean hovering above him with a strange light in his eyes. "What is that?"
"I think it's called mischief. That's what Sam told me."
"Sam is smart."
"I know. Sam is very, very smart." And Dean lowered himself down onto Castiel, his perfectly lubed hole clutching at Castiel's dream-hardened cock just this side of ache. "So tell me - what were you dreaming about?"
"But, I don't have dreams," Castiel tried to say between gasps. He could feel his eyes wide open. "Dean."
"Shhhh," Dean put a finger to Castiel's lips.
"I don't want you, to have to -," Castiel tried to say.
Dean's face fell just enough for him to notice. "You don't want me?"
"Please. Just," Castiel put his hands over Dean's face, smoothing it down and calm. Roughing up his hair until he looked like Dean. "I want you like this. However you... want to feel."
He could tell Dean wasn't sure how to take that, because everything just stopped for a moment. "Okay," Dean said.
"I mean - Just go. It's okay, just go on," and Castiel brushed a palm over Dean's cheek, just to be sure all of this was real.
His thumb brushed the eyelashes on Dean's face - that beautiful, most beautiful face - and his breath hitched. He cupped the back of his neck and pulled him close, shutting his eyes against the sight for just a moment, a moment to breathe.
"What's wrong?" Dean's breath was warm against his chest.
"I just - I need to -" Castiel breathed twice, three more times before he lifted Dean off of himself and flipped him onto his back.
"Hey, what?"
He barely felt in control. "I need you," he said. "Now I know I do."
"Shhhh, it's fine," Dean hushed. Then Castiel felt Dean's palms, the slide of his thighs against his own, his ass open and ready and winking at him Castiel's lap. "Better?" Dean smiled. "You like to be the top, I guess."
Castiel couldn't speak if he tried.
"Don't worry - bottom is my specialty," Dean beamed.
He moved as much clothing aside as Dean had managed to leave on him and stared at the clench of Dean's ass the whole way in. He wanted to do this right, and he wanted to make Dean cry again, and he wanted everything and anything all at once, and it felt so good but it wasn't - right. The first thrust was hard, jolting, all slick slide. And then he stopped, listening to Dean curl up beneath him, breathing. He tried to go slower, but it was harder to, almost violent. He shook the bed, shook everything, and tried to hold back, and failed.
"It's okay, it's okay," Dean pressed. Dean's hands were in his hair.
Then Castiel stopped, his eyes still shut closed.
"You can't hurt me. You can't do anything wrong. Not to me."
It wasn't this Dean he was afraid of hurting. Somehow the memory of Dean that was inhabiting this body, both of their minds perhaps, every moment of every wide-awake day for at least a century now.
"Cas. Cas - just go. Alright? Just go."
So Cas went. The violent thrusts that shook the bed, shook the very breath out of Dean. The grip of his hands, bruising, on Dean's body. The stillness of their bodies and the pistoning of his hips into Dean, outstripping the lube, faster, faster, and more wild.
"God, you're so hard, so hard, so fucking -" Dean was gasping and Castiel was almost afraid, afraid that he would *break* him, the way Dean used to bleed and break for everyone, the way he used to cry when he thought no one could hear him, not even Sam, but Castiel could, he always could -
"Help me, help me," he pleaded with each last thrust, each thrust he thought would be the last, and dug his nails into Dean's synthetic skin and just shook and shook with his coming when it came.
"I got you. I got you."
Castiel felt Dean's hands on his back, but that was all. He felt numb and hyper-aware all at once. His cock was still hard and tucked deep within Dean, but he had come, somehow, he had come.
Dean pat his skin, covered with the barest sheen of sweat. "You're some kind of robot, you know that?"
"But." Castiel breathed, confused. "I'm not a robot. I'm an angel."
"Okay. Well, then, angel. You're some kind of angel."
"You don't believe me." Castiel tried to bend his body in half, rest his forehead on Dean -
"Sure, sure I believe you."
"Dean." Castiel would try -
"Okay, so just tell me one thing."
"Anything, Dean." And lick with his tongue -
"What's an angel supposed to be again?" Dean's breath hitched. The most beautiful sounds.
*
Dean figured they might as well watch TV, might as well get this hotel room for the third day. He wanted a break from searching for the Smiths and Winchesters, focused again on his primary, original purpose. It was so much safer, so much closer to real.
Dean straddled the hips and lowered himself down onto what seemed to be the perpetual hardness of an angel.
Dean bounced, and bounced, and bounced, until even he was afraid that Castiel might break him. But, God, he couldn't stop. "More, fuck me more, fuck me, more, more," he groaned at the ceiling as he fucked himself down and down. Castiel was hard enough to push him open, leave him open and keep him there.
Sam got bored and came over to check on him from time to time, licking his knee, and Dean hugged him close with his fucking high, every part of his robot self doing what it was supposed to do at maximum capacity, and ruffled his sweaty hands and face in Sam's fur until content, the dog lay on the floor near the bed as it shook over him.
Dean tried to watch TV with Castiel's face buried in his ass, his never-tired tongue, and sucked his fingers into his mouth until the angel allowed him to come over and over again. He was some kind of angel.
*
Part 3