[fic] no man's land
no man’s land
dean/castiel | nc-17 | ~7000 words
Notes: Some purgatory!fic before everything is jossed by S8. Many thanks to zatnikatel for looking this over <3
Summary: They've long since stopped thinking of Purgatory as a place. It's a sentient, malevolent being in its own right, and it wants to keep them.
+
Dean never expected to find anything like beauty in Purgatory, but this spot by the sea comes pretty close to it. It’s an eerie kind of beauty, granted, almost more terrifying in its seductive nature than the festering rot that seems to permeate the rest of the place. The pale disc of the moon hangs too low, abnormally large in the sky as it casts silvery shadows over the rolling sand dunes. Dean watches the restless surface of the iron-gray sea from the mouth of the cave he’s holed up in, wonders what monstrosities lie in wait below its depths. He shudders involuntarily, hyper-alert, ears pricked for any sound that might signal an imminent attack. He’s living off adrenaline and primal instinct more than anything else, but in between all the hacking through monsters and running for his life, there seems to be an awful lot of sitting around and waiting to be done, and sometimes the anticipation is worse than any fanged thing lurking in the dark.
Mostly, though, he’s just glad to be out of the forest.
He doesn’t startle at the sudden beat of wings; it’s just about the only comforting, familiar sound in this place, and he feels the knot in his stomach unclench just a fraction as Castiel materializes in front of him. If there’s one thing he’s grown to hate, it’s every time the angel decides to flutter off on one of his solo recon missions. Dean understands why they’re necessary, to a degree, but that doesn’t stop the near-paralyzing fear whenever Castiel disappears that maybe this is the time he won’t come back.
“We clear?” he asks, even though he knows Castiel would still be out there if they weren’t. He still likes to double-check that he’s not in immediate danger of becoming something’s next meal. He’s just cautious that way.
“I detected some activity about thirty miles north of here: werewolves, I think. So relatively, yes.”
It shouldn’t be reassuring, but that kind of thing has become code for as good as it’s going to get. They don’t talk in absolutes or positives anymore, and there’s no such thing as safe; only safer than the last place.
Dean finds himself looking Castiel over, checking surreptitiously for any new damage. He looks wiped, even by Castiel’s usual standards of frazzled exhaustion, but largely unscathed. His sword is clenched too tightly in his fist, dripping gore all over the stone floor of the cave, and his once pristine white hospital scrubs are stained with dirt and blood and god only knows what else. Dean isn’t sure whether it’s a case of Castiel not caring enough to do his usual instant laundry trick, or simply not being able to spare the energy.
“Soon as we get back home, we’re getting you some new threads,” he comments lightly, stretching his legs out in front of him and wincing at the aching protest of his muscles. If Castiel picks up on his use of we and home in the same sentence he chooses not to comment on it, instead making a show of wiping his sword on the loose material of his pants before stowing it back inside his coat and settling down next to Dean on the ground.
“We should head for the mountains tomorrow,” Castiel says, his voice a low rumble in the dark. Dean’s hyper-aware of him in ways that he never was before they landed themselves here; can feel the heat bleeding from Castiel’s body, the solidness of his shoulder barely brushing Dean’s own. It’s the same strange buzz of tension that’s always existed between them on some level, only amplified to the power of ten. And yet it’s oddly soothing, like the background hum of a refrigerator at night.
“Sounds like a plan,” he mutters distractedly, although he knows it’s fucking pointless. They’re both painfully aware of the fact that they’re not going to stumble across an exit any time soon; there will be no helpfully signposted pathway pointing them to the way out from this side of the barrier. The only thing that they can do is to keep moving from place to place, trying to stay one step ahead of the game, trying to stay alive as they bide their time and wait for Sam to dig them out from the other side.
Sam. Dean’s insides twist horribly whenever he thinks of his brother, and he tries not to dwell on the fact that he has no way of knowing whether Sam has figured out where they are, if he’s looking for them, if he’s even alive. Castiel seems certain that he didn’t get dragged in here with them, but that doesn’t make Dean feel any better about the fact that they left him in Leviathan HQ with no-one but Meg and the prophet kid for backup - and that’s assuming they all made it out of that clusterfuck in one piece.
He can’t help thinking about the last time he took a vacation beyond the veil; Sam has a tendency to go to pieces when Dean isn’t around, and Dean can only hope that his brother has grown enough since last time to not do anything quite so reckless. Bobby may be gone for good now (and Jesus, but that’s an ache that still burns deep every time Dean remembers) but there are still a few people left to offer moral support. People like Jody Mills, for instance; Dean knows that Sam bonded with the good sheriff while he was stuck in the forties, and he just hopes his brother has the good sense to go to her rather than trying to muddle through alone.
Sometimes he’s struck by the uneasy realization that he’s already beginning to forget what Sam looks like. Oh, the basics are easy enough to recall - freakin’ Sasquatch, stupid hippy hair falling all over his face - but whenever Dean tries to focus on some of the finer details, like the exact cadence of Sam’s voice, or the way his forehead would crease up whenever he was puzzling over a particularly difficult case, his mind just kind of… slides away from it.
It scares him, because even when he lost all other language in Hell, Sam’s name was the one thing he kept screaming over and over again. Only he’s pretty sure that at some point he forgot who it belonged to, or even that it was a name at all; that it was anything more than one meaningless syllable promising a salvation that seemed more far-fetched with every day he spent on the rack.
In his weaker moments, Dean can admit to himself that he’s terrified it’s happening all over again.
Castiel is his only constant here - the only thing that’s real and solid and good - and Dean’s dedicated long seconds to memorizing the line of his friend’s jaw, the slope of his nose, the slow up-down sweep of his eyelashes every time he blinks.
Just in case.
+
Thirty-seven days. That’s how long they’ve been stuck here.
Not that the construct of ‘days’ has any real meaning: there’s a weak sun that rises and sets with some regularity, but it offers no more light than the equally watery moon, and as a result the world hangs in a perpetual state of somber twilight, bleaching all color to a muted gray. In addition, there can be no way of knowing whether the time here corresponds to that of the mortal world, and Dean gets a sick feeling in his gut every time he remembers that a matter of seconds or centuries could have passed back home.
They exist in a weird kind of stasis, untouched by the usual effects of the passage of time. Dean still gets tired enough that they need to take regular rest stops, but his beard hasn’t grown an inch since he woke up here, despite the fact that he hasn’t shaved once. He frequently finds himself longing for an ice-cold beer or a hearty slab of home-baked pie, but he doesn’t ever seem to get truly hungry or thirsty, and the cravings seem to come from a place of desire rather than necessity.
According to Castiel, it’s because they don’t truly belong here, and they’re somehow out of sync with the rest of the place. They’re not just disembodied souls like the rest of Purgatory’s inhabitants; their flesh-and-blood bodies were dragged down with them. They’re not technically dead, but they’re not quite alive by the simple virtue of being here in the first place.
The whole thing is maddeningly confusing, and Dean doesn’t think it’s something he’ll ever be able to wrap his head around. He’s not sure he wants to, truth be told, because that would mean resigning himself to the reality of their situation - the reality that they might never get out.
Castiel doesn’t seem to notice the effects so much; mostly, Dean suspects, because this unchanging inertia is exactly what his daily existence was like before they even landed here. If that’s the case, Dean has to wonder how Castiel didn’t have his mental breakdown a good deal sooner, because Dean feels as though he’s getting dangerously close to snapping completely the longer he spends here.
The creatures that call this place home can’t be killed, not truly - how can they, when they’re already dead? They come apart easy enough under a blow from Dean’s machete or the slice of angelic steel, but it’s always a matter of moments before they’re piecing themselves back together again. Dean’s learnt the hard way not to linger around dead bodies.
It reminds him of Hell in that, no matter how much he wished for death, his body would always find a way to regenerate, whole and perfect, for Alastair to take him apart all over again. He finds himself wondering what would happen if he were to die here, but he can never quite bring himself to voice the question, afraid of what the answer might be.
+
They’ve managed to get a small campfire going, piled together from half-rotted bits of wood and debris found along the shoreline. It’s a little on the pathetic side, and the acrid smoke it gives off definitely doesn’t smell too pleasant, but warmth is warmth and Dean huddles closer in spite of the fumes, desperate to erase the bitter chill that’s lodged deep in his bones. The flames cast flickering shadows over the cave walls, glistening red in places, the intricate swirls and loops of various protective sigils painted in Castiel’s blood.
There are still faint red marks standing out along the inside of his arm. He hasn’t been healing as quickly as he should be, and Dean doesn’t really want to dwell on what that might mean.
“Tell me about the Amazons,” Castiel prompts him, because this is something that they’ve been doing whenever they get the chance to sit down and take a breather, swapping stories about the time they spent apart in the last year. Dean’s filled Castiel in on everything from his vacation in the 1940s to Sam’s short-lived ‘wedding’, told him about Frank and Garth and Charlie, and all the other people he never got the chance to meet. The night he decided it was time to talk about exactly how it went down with Bobby was the worst. He almost couldn’t force the words out past the ache in his throat, and he definitely didn’t miss the way Castiel’s face closed off with guilt.
In return, Cas has been offering up the occasional anecdote about his brief domestic life as Emmanuel, and the conversations have become something that Dean actually looks forward to. It would almost be nice, if not for the setting, and it gives Dean the strangest sense that they’re getting to know each other again. The truth is, he and Castiel have been stuck in the same foxhole for years now, but for most of that time they were trying to stave off the end of the world and opportunities to actually sit down and talk to each other have been few and far between.
If Dean’s being truly honest with himself, he’s always struggled to define his relationship with Castiel. They’re friends, obviously, but that doesn’t really seem to do it justice, somehow. The word just isn’t big enough to encompass all that Castiel is to him, and it doesn’t explain the aching hole he carried around in his gut for all those months when he thought Castiel was dead.
“Did you kill her?” Castiel asks quietly, when Dean’s finished telling him about Emma. There’s no judgment in his tone, but Dean feels hot shame creeping up his spine anyway.
“Sam did. It should’ve been me, but… I couldn’t. I knew what she was, what she was going to do, but I wanted so badly to believe that she’d do the right thing anyway.”
“Because she was family,” Castiel surmises, and Dean knows he’s not the only one who’s thinking about their final standoff in Crowley’s lab, where Dean laid it all on the line and Castiel rejected him anyway.
“Something like that.” Dean sighs, rolls his shoulders in an attempt to shake off the funk that’s settled over him. “You think she’s down here somewhere?”
It’s not the first time such a thought has crossed his mind. Dean’s dispatched more than his fair share of monsters over the years, and he figures it’s only a matter of time before he stumbles across one who recognizes him.
“It’s likely. This is where all supernatural creatures end up in death, after all.”
“Fantastic,” Dean sighs, because he can’t say he’s exactly thrilled about the prospect of a reunion with his half-human daughter, even if his stomach still does a weird somersault of regret every time he thinks about her. “Okay, Cas, your turn. Tell me a bedtime story.”
The words are full of sarcasm, but he almost does doze off as he lets Castiel’s voice wash over him, narrating a tale from his brief stint as a mild-mannered healer. It’s still something that Dean can’t quite get his head around, even now. He’s tried to picture Castiel doing normal, human things - washing the dishes, mowing the lawn, exchanging his wedding vows - but he can never quite manage it, and his mind rejects the idea every time. Even now, Castiel is too strange, too otherworldly, always just a few steps too removed from the normal beat of human rhythms for Dean to make much sense of the concept.
“Did you love her?” he finds himself asking, once Castiel’s done telling him about Daphne’s love of obscure silent movies. He doesn’t know why it should matter, but it’s a question that’s been niggling at him ever since seeing them together in that kitchen in Colorado, and his stomach feels suddenly full of butterflies as he waits for the answer.
Castiel frowns, like it’s something he hasn’t really considered in any great detail. “I don’t know,” he says slowly, like he’s thinking carefully over each word. “Emmanuel did, I think.”
“Dude, you are Emmanuel. Or Emmanuel was you. Whatever, it’s the same damn person.”
“It’s not, though. Maybe that’s who I would’ve been if I’d been born human, if I hadn’t been created for war… but that’s so far removed from my experiences that I don’t even know how to imagine it.” He sighs out a frustrated breath. “Dean, can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
Castiel fidgets with the end of the belt that’s attached to his coat, looking vaguely unsure how to continue. “If Meg hadn’t told me the truth about what I am, and if I’d been able to fix Sam… you would have let me go back to that life, wouldn’t you?”
Dean can’t make himself answer, but evidently his silence is damning enough; Castiel levels him with a look that manages to be exasperated and grateful and hurt all at once.
“Do you really think I would have wanted that? To have lived an eternity without knowing you, without knowing everything we fought for?”
“You wouldn’t have known any better.”
Castiel shakes his head. “That doesn’t matter. There was always something missing. And when I saw you again, it felt as though everything just fell into place. Even though I didn’t know you.”
“You were happy,” Dean points out weakly, because he still remembers what Castiel - or rather, Emmanuel - had said to him on the ride to Indiana. It’s my life. And it’s a good life. But of course it could never last. Of course Castiel had to be torn away from it, just as surely as Dean had been ripped from whatever temporary shelter he’d found at the Braedens’. Neither one of them is much suited to civilian life; they’re soldiers, and to that end the trenches are where they belong.
“I was ignorant,” Castiel corrects, with a wry, upward quirk of his lips. “I don’t think it’s quite the same thing.”
+
They’ve long since stopped thinking of Purgatory as a place.
The very landscape is against them, and they speak of it in hushed tones for the fear that it might overhear; its spies are the trees and the rocks and the ground they walk on. It may be filled with monsters, but it’s also a sentient, malevolent being in its own right, and it wants to keep them.
Much like Heaven and Hell, it’s an interactive environment, one that reaches inside the mind with insidious feelers to draw out their deepest fears and desires. Dean sees things, sometimes; or rather, he sees people, people that he knows can’t possibly be here: Sam, Bobby, Lisa, Jo.
One time it was the apparition of his mother: Mary Winchester in the flesh, shining and beautiful and exactly how Dean remembered her, whispering soft sweet promises and beckoning him to come home. Dean strayed so far off the path that time that Castiel had to bring him back with hands on his face and a thread of real urgency in his voice: Dean, Dean, look at me, look at me. When Dean snapped out of his trance it was to find himself teetering right on the edge of a steep ravine, Castiel looking more freaked out than Dean could ever remember seeing him before as the angel led him quietly away.
Castiel sees things too; Dean can tell by the way he’ll sometimes stop what he’s doing and stare off into middle distance for minutes at a time, shoulders tense, totally unreachable. Sometimes Dean wonders who it is that haunts Castiel out here, who this place conjured up to tempt him off the path and keep him here for good. His old angel buddies maybe, or, hell, his wife - but Castiel evades the question whenever Dean asks, avoiding his gaze and toying with the stupid hospital ID bracelet still secured around his wrist until Dean drops it.
For the most part, Castiel is a good deal more lucid now than he was before they took out Dick, and he puts on a good show of holding it together for Dean’s sake. Dean isn’t stupid, though, and he knows Cas well enough to know that most of the time, he’s barely hanging on by a thread.
I don’t fight anymore. Most of the monsters here have good reason for wanting Castiel’s head on a plate, and Dean has a nasty suspicion that if Cas was here alone, he might just lie down and let them have their retribution. As it is, he doesn’t hesitate to maim and kill and eviscerate, especially if he thinks Dean is in danger. Dean’s seen him rip the heads off vampires with his bare hands, but he refuses to look at the bodies afterwards, and sometimes he spends a little too long studying the blood under his nails.
+
Dean doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he can only assume that he drifted off at some stage because the next thing he knows he’s jerking back to wakefulness, cramped against the hard stone wall of the cave with hellfire and brimstone still curling at the edge of his consciousness.
He waits for the last remnants to fade as he tries to get his breathing back under control, heart jackhammering away against the inside of his chest. He’d mostly put the Hell dreams behind him by the time they were up to their eyeballs in Leviathans, Alastair and the rack phased out by images of Sam in a padded white cell, Bobby with a hole in his head and Castiel walking into that fucking lake - but being in Purgatory seems to have knocked something loose in his head, sent his nighttime wanderings spiraling right back to where they were five years ago.
He’s not so stupid that he doesn’t know how it all works, and if Sam were here Dean knows he’d be giving him that concerned look, going on about PTSD and triggers, maybe even offering to trade Hell stories like they’re a couple of military vets back from some war-torn country.
But Sam isn’t here, and Dean plans to deal with this exactly the same way he always does: by sucking it up and moving on, helped along by a good healthy dollop of denial and repression.
He’s so wrapped up in it that it takes a few seconds for him to drag himself entirely back to reality, but once he does so he registers the weight leaning against his shoulder, the soft puffs of warm air against the side of his neck.
Castiel is sleeping, slumped against Dean’s side like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Dean’s first thought is what the hell, followed swiftly by panic - so far they’ve been relying on Castiel to keep watch while Dean gets some shut-eye, but if they were both asleep then anything could have crept up on them in the night.
Dean grips the handle of his machete where it rests on the floor beside him, every muscle in his body poised and tense as he listens out for movement. There’s nothing but silence, save for the rushing of the waves against the shore and the faint rustle of detritus in the sea breeze. He doesn’t quite relax, but he allows himself to breathe out, just a little.
He cuts a sideways glance at Castiel, fascinated in spite of himself because he can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen the angel at rest. There’s worry there, because Castiel shouldn’t sleep, and the fact that he’s doing so now can’t mean anything good - but it’s accompanied by a strange, insistent tugging somewhere inside of him, something possessive that he doesn’t quite know what to do with.
He wishes he could put it down to simple lust; god knows they’ve been down here long enough that the craving for another warm body would be more than justified. But the sweet, sharp ache in the center of his chest speaks of a longing that cuts a little deeper than that.
Castiel twitches against him, eyes flying open without a sound, body coiling up like he’s ready for a fight. When he looks at Dean, it’s really more of a glare, and that much, at least, is familiar.
“You let me fall asleep,” he snaps, and Dean blinks at the accusation because he missed the part where this was his fault.
“Yeah, about that,” Dean drawls, raising an eyebrow pointedly. “You wanna explain?”
Castiel sighs, looking away almost guiltily as he levers himself into more of an upright position. Dean shivers, suddenly cold without the heat of Castiel’s body leaning into his own.
“We’re a very long way from Heaven, Dean. I suppose you might say I had to recharge my batteries.” His jaw tightens into a defiant line, as though he’s irritated with himself for slipping. “I won’t let it happen again.”
Now it’s Dean’s turn to sigh, expelling the frustration from his lungs with a weary head-shake. “No, Cas, that’s not… Look, believe it or not I’d actually rather you got some rest now and then instead of wearing yourself into the ground. We’ll just have to figure out a system, take it in turns keeping watch.”
For a moment, it looks as though Castiel is going to argue the point, but then it passes and the tense, agitated lines of his face soften into something more vulnerable.
“I haven’t been unconscious since the hospital,” he confesses quietly, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out everything unsaid in that statement. Dean’s throat feels tight all of a sudden; he never quite knows how to react when Castiel admits a weakness, it leaves him feeling wrong-footed and out of sorts even though he’s known for years now that Cas is far from invincible.
Without really thinking about it, he wraps his fingers around Castiel’s wrist, thumb rubbing small, soothing circles over the thin skin at his pulse point. It’s the kind of move he would never have been bold enough to make back home, but they’re not in fucking Kansas anymore, and these kind of casual touches have become a welcome comfort against the nightmares waiting in the dark.
He ignores the slight hitch of Castiel’s breath as the contact is made.
“What about you?” Castiel asks suddenly, randomly. At Dean’s puzzled look, he elaborates: “You were dreaming of Hell.”
Oh. That. Dean shifts a little, suddenly uncomfortable under Castiel’s scrutiny. “You been poking around in my brain again?” he grinds out, on the defensive because it’s easier than actually trying to talk about this stuff. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was,” Castiel argues, and the pointed look he directs at Dean is in no way diminished by the now pathetically threadbare scrubs or the bruised circles under his eyes. “And it wasn’t deliberate: you were telegraphing. Practically screaming it at me, in fact.”
“Yeah, well,” Dean rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably, struggling to appear nonchalant. “I guess it’s this place, being stuck here; it’s bringing all that stuff back, you know?”
“I think I do,” Castiel replies cryptically. Dean’s suddenly aware of how close he is, staring right into Dean in a way that leaves him feeling raw and needy and exposed. Dean’s still holding Castiel’s wrist, can feel Castiel’s pulse thrumming beneath his skin, the hot rush of blood close to the surface. Castiel feels like he’s real, like he’s alive, more so than anything else in this godforsaken place, and Dean wants - God, he doesn’t even know what he wants. To haul Castiel a little closer maybe, to touch and taste and get as tangled up in each other as they possibly can, because this connection is the only thing that’s keeping both of them going, day after day.
He could ignore it. He could let go of Castiel, brush the moment off the way he has done all the others that came before.
But Dean’s tired of pretending, tired of denying himself what he really wants, and the rules are different here - hell, the whole fucking game is different. So he leans in when he should be pulling away, bringing himself closer until his mouth is on Castiel’s, and this - he should have done this years ago.
It seems like Castiel would agree, if the way he grabs at Dean’s jacket and kisses him back is any indication, lips unexpectedly soft as they press against Dean’s. As far as kisses go, it’s almost chaste, barely lasting more than five seconds, and yet it’s still enough for Dean to feel as though the whole world is crashing down around him by the time they separate.
“What was that for?” Castiel asks, quirking an odd, crooked smile at him, and it hits Dean square in the chest right then that this is Cas - not Castiel the genocidal warlord, or the amnesiac faith healer, or the bee-watching pacifist, but the same infuriating sonofabitch that Dean couldn’t quite bring himself to grieve for even if he never truly believed that he’d ever get this back.
His throat feels tight with it, and instead of choking out an answer he elects to drag Castiel closer and kiss him again, this time with intent, with direction, because this is a kiss that’s going somewhere, all want and desperation, lips clinging wetly, the spit-slick sound of them obscene in the dark. Dean groans when Castiel’s hands find their way into his hair, when Castiel’s tongue pushes into his mouth, sliding sensuously over his own. Dean’s skin feels electrified, too small for his body; this, all of it, is overwhelming, even though he can’t abandon himself to it completely - too aware of where they are, one ear open for anything that might be looking to catch them off-guard even as he’s pushing Castiel’s trenchcoat off his shoulders and sliding hands under the loose material of his hospital shirt to get at smooth, warm flesh.
Castiel shifts closer until he’s practically sitting in Dean’s lap, until Dean can feel the hard, solid line of Castiel’s erection pressing against his hip, and his own cock leaps in response. Castiel bites at the soft swell of Dean’s lower lip as he pulls away, and Jesus if that doesn’t send a fierce pulse of want direct to his groin, Castiel mouthing at the line of Dean’s jaw, his neck, the hollow of his throat, before shoving Dean over onto his back and sliding down the length of his body like something liquid.
This might be a monumentally bad idea, considering where they are, but Dean’s too caught up in it to care, and he’s more than happy to lie back and let Castiel take the reins if that’s what he wants. He’s fully hard now, on edge already; he hasn’t been with anyone since the whole Amazon fiasco, and there have been precious few opportunities to take care of his own business since getting stuck down here, so he suspects he isn’t going to last long - which is probably for the best, given the circumstances.
And yet - this isn’t really about sex, not even as Castiel presses more open-mouthed kisses against Dean’s stomach, the cut of his hip, fumbling with his zipper and shoving jeans and underwear out of the way. It’s about taking comfort in each other, building themselves a sanctuary in this land of the dead, and the low, hazy pulse of desire at Dean’s core is offset by something softer that he doesn’t really want to put a name to.
“Jesus, Cas,” Dean gasps when Castiel gives his cock an experimental stroke, and he just about loses his damn mind when he feels Castiel’s mouth on him, lips closing around the head of his dick. He whines and arches, instinctively trying to thrust up into it, but Castiel’s hands on the spurs of his hips hold him in place.
Castiel takes him down as far as he can manage, eyes flicking back up to Dean’s face, and there’s a long moment where the only thing Dean is aware of is heat and wetness and suction as Castiel works him with lips and tongue. He buries his hands in Castiel’s hair, all he can do to hold on for the ride; as predicted, it doesn’t take long before he’s gasping out a warning, and then he’s coming sudden and sharp, thighs shaking with the effort, his mind whiting out for a single, blissful moment where he can almost forget where they are.
By the time he comes back to himself, Castiel is climbing back up his body with a freakish grace that’s too fluid to be anything human, straddling Dean’s lap in a way that makes him gasp at the sudden pressure against his oversensitive dick.
Dean watches with a mouth gone dry as Castiel pushes the wrecked hospital pants down over his hips to start jacking his own cock with slow, measured strokes, head tipped back and mouth parted. There’s something oddly intimate about this, seeing another person at their most open and exposed, and it’s easy, too easy, for Dean to fit his hands to Castiel’s hips, thumbs skimming over the sharp ridges of bone.
“Dean,” Castiel says, half-command, half-plea, rolling his shoulders like he’s shaking out invisible wings. He’s gathering speed now, twisting slightly on every upstroke, and Dean’s own hand wanders down to join him, fingers intertwining with Castiel’s in the rhythmic up-down slide along the length of his cock.
Castiel makes a choked noise and falls forward, pushing his face against the sweaty curve of Dean’s neck as his free hand grasps at Dean’s shirt like a lifeline. “I got you ,” Dean mutters, circling his thumb over the head of Castiel’s cock, and that does it: Castiel tenses, biting down hard into the meat of Dean’s shoulder as he comes over both their hands, dripping sticky between their fingers.
Several seconds pass where the only sound to be heard is that of their mingled breath, though Dean is straining to listen outside the cave, on the alert in case anything happened to wander their way while they were otherwise occupied.
“There’s nothing out there, Dean,” Castiel tells him, apparently not even bothering to hide the fact that he’s reading Dean’s mind anymore. Dean figures he should probably be annoyed about that, but he’s mostly just relieved. He wipes his hand off on the floor with a grimace as Castiel pushes himself up to hover over Dean on his elbows, pushing Dean’s hair back from his forehead in a way that makes him feel hot and prickly with embarrassment, unused to being handled so carefully and not at all sure how to deal with it.
“Jesus, I missed you,” he blurts out before he can help himself, post-sex endorphins lowering all his usual barriers and fucking up his brain-to-mouth filter .“Cas, I missed you so fucking much.”
“I know,” Castiel sighs, looking away with an expression of guilt that Dean’s become only too-well acquainted with of late. “Dean, I’m sorry. For everything, I-”
“I know you are,” Dean cuts him off, pulling Castiel back down to end the conversation before it can begin.
He’s tired of listening to apologies.
+
“When we get out of here, we’re taking a fucking vacation,” Dean announces.
“A vacation,” Castiel repeats dubiously. His body is a pleasant weight where he’s still collapsed on top of Dean, tracing abstract patterns with his fingertips over Dean’s stomach. They’re both mostly dressed again, save for the trenchcoat draped over them like a blanket in an attempt to stave off the cold, the last embers of the fire having long since died down. Dean knows that they should probably move, that the shelter is nothing more than an illusion, but he wants to drag this temporary reprieve out as long as he possibly can, not yet ready to submerge himself in the nightmare again.
“I mean it. Me, you, Sam: we’ll take a week; go to the Grand Canyon or something. God knows we’ve earned it.”
“What about Crowley?”
Dean snorts. “What, you want him to come too?”
“Dean.” He can hear the eye-roll in Castiel’s voice, and boy, he’s really got that exasperation down pat.
“Crowley can go fuck himself. Hell, it can be the end of the world again for all I care. It can wait.”
It’s all just talk, of course, but Dean figures he’s entitled to indulge in pointless fantasy if he wants. Especially since the odds of them making it out of here in one piece are looking slimmer and slimmer.
“I’d like that,” Castiel says noncommittally, a wistful edge to his voice that suggests he believes it about as much as Dean does.
Dean’s about to say something else when a high, thin wail splits the quiet, hideous and pitiful all at once. It’s still some distance away, but the very fact that they can hear it at all is cause for concern, because Dean’s seen firsthand just how fast some of the creatures down here can move. Castiel is upright in an instant, all the softness gone from him as he switches effortlessly into soldier mode, drawing his coat around him like a shield.
There’s a tense moment of silence as they both hold their breath, and then it sounds again, closer this time, unearthly in a way that raises the fine hairs along Dean’s arms. It strikes close to the bone, too reminiscent of the half-remembered noises that have kept him up at night for the last five years, and for an instant there’s hellfire bubbling his skin, hooks through his flesh, and sulfur in his nose and it’s like he never left.
Castiel’s fingers close around his wrist, mimicking the same hold Dean had used on him earlier, and it’s a lifeline, anchoring Dean back to reality. Not for the first time, he’s glad that Castiel is here with him, that somebody’s got his back this time around. He wonders if that’s selfish, but he can’t quite make himself feel bad about it.
Castiel looks at him questioningly - not pushing - and Dean nods, drawing in an affirming breath. “I’m okay.”
Castiel squeezes his wrist once before letting go, sword falling into his hand as he rises smoothly to his feet. “Stay here.”
Dean watches him make his way to the mouth of the cave, stopping just short of the entrance. Nothing happens for several seconds, long enough for Dean run through every worst-case scenario he can conceive of with his heart in his mouth.
“So, are we under attack or what?”
“I don’t think so,” Castiel replies, his voice sounding oddly strangled. “You should probably come and see this.”
Frowning, Dean picks up his machete and joins Castiel at the cave’s rocky opening, peering out at the murky waters, sickly yellow sun just beginning to break over the horizon. It doesn’t take him long to spot exactly what it is that’s got Castiel sounding so out of sorts - and Dean’s witnessed his fair share of strange spectacles over the years, but he still feels his jaw drop open at the sight.
“Holy shit.”
He can feel a headache coming on as his brain tries to process what he’s seeing but keeps drawing blanks. It’s a huge, writhing mass just cresting the surface of the water, spanning at least fifty meters across, the waves occasionally broken by a protruding appendage that could be a fin, or a tentacle, or a face, or none or all of the above. In one moment it looks as though it’s covered in scales, but then Dean thinks it’s more like feathers, and then smooth, slippery skin, constantly shifting through an endless, rippling spectrum of colors: azure to crimson to violet to fuchsia and then back again. It’s impossible to even tell whether it’s one giant creature or a multitude of smaller ones, what with the way it keeps dispersing out across the water before merging back together as one.
Dean’s spent plenty of time researching the books, and right now Lovecraftian is the only word he can think of to describe this… whatever it is. Which isn’t terribly surprising, considering what they know of where the guy got his inspiration from.
“What the hell is that?” His voice sounds small and breathless even to his own ears, but he’s damned if he can help it. He can only remember feeling this kind of awe exactly once before in his entire life, and that was when he first met Castiel.
“I don’t know,” Cas replies, sounding pretty damn awed himself. He must say it about three times a day, but it never fails to throw Dean for a loop: that there are things down here so ancient and forgotten, even the angels don’t have a name for them.
Dean watches as a whiplash tail arcs up out of the water only to splash back down again, creating waves upon waves that crash against the shoreline. And what the hell, it’s kind of beautiful, in a totally surreal, mind-bending way. He has absolutely no doubt that Sam would blow a nerd gasket over this, and suddenly he can recall his brother’s voice enthusing over some obscure piece of lore, clear as day. It bolsters him, gives him hope, and before he’s got time to question it or second-guess himself, he’s reaching down to take Castiel’s hand, sliding their fingers together until they’re intertwined. Castiel looks at him curiously, but wisely refrains from commenting, instead rubbing his thumb in a soothing, repetitive motion over Dean’s knuckles.
Hold on, Sammy. We’re coming, Dean thinks, and for the first time, he even believes it.
He’s got something worth fighting for, after all.
dean/castiel | nc-17 | ~7000 words
Notes: Some purgatory!fic before everything is jossed by S8. Many thanks to zatnikatel for looking this over <3
Summary: They've long since stopped thinking of Purgatory as a place. It's a sentient, malevolent being in its own right, and it wants to keep them.
+
Dean never expected to find anything like beauty in Purgatory, but this spot by the sea comes pretty close to it. It’s an eerie kind of beauty, granted, almost more terrifying in its seductive nature than the festering rot that seems to permeate the rest of the place. The pale disc of the moon hangs too low, abnormally large in the sky as it casts silvery shadows over the rolling sand dunes. Dean watches the restless surface of the iron-gray sea from the mouth of the cave he’s holed up in, wonders what monstrosities lie in wait below its depths. He shudders involuntarily, hyper-alert, ears pricked for any sound that might signal an imminent attack. He’s living off adrenaline and primal instinct more than anything else, but in between all the hacking through monsters and running for his life, there seems to be an awful lot of sitting around and waiting to be done, and sometimes the anticipation is worse than any fanged thing lurking in the dark.
Mostly, though, he’s just glad to be out of the forest.
He doesn’t startle at the sudden beat of wings; it’s just about the only comforting, familiar sound in this place, and he feels the knot in his stomach unclench just a fraction as Castiel materializes in front of him. If there’s one thing he’s grown to hate, it’s every time the angel decides to flutter off on one of his solo recon missions. Dean understands why they’re necessary, to a degree, but that doesn’t stop the near-paralyzing fear whenever Castiel disappears that maybe this is the time he won’t come back.
“We clear?” he asks, even though he knows Castiel would still be out there if they weren’t. He still likes to double-check that he’s not in immediate danger of becoming something’s next meal. He’s just cautious that way.
“I detected some activity about thirty miles north of here: werewolves, I think. So relatively, yes.”
It shouldn’t be reassuring, but that kind of thing has become code for as good as it’s going to get. They don’t talk in absolutes or positives anymore, and there’s no such thing as safe; only safer than the last place.
Dean finds himself looking Castiel over, checking surreptitiously for any new damage. He looks wiped, even by Castiel’s usual standards of frazzled exhaustion, but largely unscathed. His sword is clenched too tightly in his fist, dripping gore all over the stone floor of the cave, and his once pristine white hospital scrubs are stained with dirt and blood and god only knows what else. Dean isn’t sure whether it’s a case of Castiel not caring enough to do his usual instant laundry trick, or simply not being able to spare the energy.
“Soon as we get back home, we’re getting you some new threads,” he comments lightly, stretching his legs out in front of him and wincing at the aching protest of his muscles. If Castiel picks up on his use of we and home in the same sentence he chooses not to comment on it, instead making a show of wiping his sword on the loose material of his pants before stowing it back inside his coat and settling down next to Dean on the ground.
“We should head for the mountains tomorrow,” Castiel says, his voice a low rumble in the dark. Dean’s hyper-aware of him in ways that he never was before they landed themselves here; can feel the heat bleeding from Castiel’s body, the solidness of his shoulder barely brushing Dean’s own. It’s the same strange buzz of tension that’s always existed between them on some level, only amplified to the power of ten. And yet it’s oddly soothing, like the background hum of a refrigerator at night.
“Sounds like a plan,” he mutters distractedly, although he knows it’s fucking pointless. They’re both painfully aware of the fact that they’re not going to stumble across an exit any time soon; there will be no helpfully signposted pathway pointing them to the way out from this side of the barrier. The only thing that they can do is to keep moving from place to place, trying to stay one step ahead of the game, trying to stay alive as they bide their time and wait for Sam to dig them out from the other side.
Sam. Dean’s insides twist horribly whenever he thinks of his brother, and he tries not to dwell on the fact that he has no way of knowing whether Sam has figured out where they are, if he’s looking for them, if he’s even alive. Castiel seems certain that he didn’t get dragged in here with them, but that doesn’t make Dean feel any better about the fact that they left him in Leviathan HQ with no-one but Meg and the prophet kid for backup - and that’s assuming they all made it out of that clusterfuck in one piece.
He can’t help thinking about the last time he took a vacation beyond the veil; Sam has a tendency to go to pieces when Dean isn’t around, and Dean can only hope that his brother has grown enough since last time to not do anything quite so reckless. Bobby may be gone for good now (and Jesus, but that’s an ache that still burns deep every time Dean remembers) but there are still a few people left to offer moral support. People like Jody Mills, for instance; Dean knows that Sam bonded with the good sheriff while he was stuck in the forties, and he just hopes his brother has the good sense to go to her rather than trying to muddle through alone.
Sometimes he’s struck by the uneasy realization that he’s already beginning to forget what Sam looks like. Oh, the basics are easy enough to recall - freakin’ Sasquatch, stupid hippy hair falling all over his face - but whenever Dean tries to focus on some of the finer details, like the exact cadence of Sam’s voice, or the way his forehead would crease up whenever he was puzzling over a particularly difficult case, his mind just kind of… slides away from it.
It scares him, because even when he lost all other language in Hell, Sam’s name was the one thing he kept screaming over and over again. Only he’s pretty sure that at some point he forgot who it belonged to, or even that it was a name at all; that it was anything more than one meaningless syllable promising a salvation that seemed more far-fetched with every day he spent on the rack.
In his weaker moments, Dean can admit to himself that he’s terrified it’s happening all over again.
Castiel is his only constant here - the only thing that’s real and solid and good - and Dean’s dedicated long seconds to memorizing the line of his friend’s jaw, the slope of his nose, the slow up-down sweep of his eyelashes every time he blinks.
Just in case.
+
Thirty-seven days. That’s how long they’ve been stuck here.
Not that the construct of ‘days’ has any real meaning: there’s a weak sun that rises and sets with some regularity, but it offers no more light than the equally watery moon, and as a result the world hangs in a perpetual state of somber twilight, bleaching all color to a muted gray. In addition, there can be no way of knowing whether the time here corresponds to that of the mortal world, and Dean gets a sick feeling in his gut every time he remembers that a matter of seconds or centuries could have passed back home.
They exist in a weird kind of stasis, untouched by the usual effects of the passage of time. Dean still gets tired enough that they need to take regular rest stops, but his beard hasn’t grown an inch since he woke up here, despite the fact that he hasn’t shaved once. He frequently finds himself longing for an ice-cold beer or a hearty slab of home-baked pie, but he doesn’t ever seem to get truly hungry or thirsty, and the cravings seem to come from a place of desire rather than necessity.
According to Castiel, it’s because they don’t truly belong here, and they’re somehow out of sync with the rest of the place. They’re not just disembodied souls like the rest of Purgatory’s inhabitants; their flesh-and-blood bodies were dragged down with them. They’re not technically dead, but they’re not quite alive by the simple virtue of being here in the first place.
The whole thing is maddeningly confusing, and Dean doesn’t think it’s something he’ll ever be able to wrap his head around. He’s not sure he wants to, truth be told, because that would mean resigning himself to the reality of their situation - the reality that they might never get out.
Castiel doesn’t seem to notice the effects so much; mostly, Dean suspects, because this unchanging inertia is exactly what his daily existence was like before they even landed here. If that’s the case, Dean has to wonder how Castiel didn’t have his mental breakdown a good deal sooner, because Dean feels as though he’s getting dangerously close to snapping completely the longer he spends here.
The creatures that call this place home can’t be killed, not truly - how can they, when they’re already dead? They come apart easy enough under a blow from Dean’s machete or the slice of angelic steel, but it’s always a matter of moments before they’re piecing themselves back together again. Dean’s learnt the hard way not to linger around dead bodies.
It reminds him of Hell in that, no matter how much he wished for death, his body would always find a way to regenerate, whole and perfect, for Alastair to take him apart all over again. He finds himself wondering what would happen if he were to die here, but he can never quite bring himself to voice the question, afraid of what the answer might be.
+
They’ve managed to get a small campfire going, piled together from half-rotted bits of wood and debris found along the shoreline. It’s a little on the pathetic side, and the acrid smoke it gives off definitely doesn’t smell too pleasant, but warmth is warmth and Dean huddles closer in spite of the fumes, desperate to erase the bitter chill that’s lodged deep in his bones. The flames cast flickering shadows over the cave walls, glistening red in places, the intricate swirls and loops of various protective sigils painted in Castiel’s blood.
There are still faint red marks standing out along the inside of his arm. He hasn’t been healing as quickly as he should be, and Dean doesn’t really want to dwell on what that might mean.
“Tell me about the Amazons,” Castiel prompts him, because this is something that they’ve been doing whenever they get the chance to sit down and take a breather, swapping stories about the time they spent apart in the last year. Dean’s filled Castiel in on everything from his vacation in the 1940s to Sam’s short-lived ‘wedding’, told him about Frank and Garth and Charlie, and all the other people he never got the chance to meet. The night he decided it was time to talk about exactly how it went down with Bobby was the worst. He almost couldn’t force the words out past the ache in his throat, and he definitely didn’t miss the way Castiel’s face closed off with guilt.
In return, Cas has been offering up the occasional anecdote about his brief domestic life as Emmanuel, and the conversations have become something that Dean actually looks forward to. It would almost be nice, if not for the setting, and it gives Dean the strangest sense that they’re getting to know each other again. The truth is, he and Castiel have been stuck in the same foxhole for years now, but for most of that time they were trying to stave off the end of the world and opportunities to actually sit down and talk to each other have been few and far between.
If Dean’s being truly honest with himself, he’s always struggled to define his relationship with Castiel. They’re friends, obviously, but that doesn’t really seem to do it justice, somehow. The word just isn’t big enough to encompass all that Castiel is to him, and it doesn’t explain the aching hole he carried around in his gut for all those months when he thought Castiel was dead.
“Did you kill her?” Castiel asks quietly, when Dean’s finished telling him about Emma. There’s no judgment in his tone, but Dean feels hot shame creeping up his spine anyway.
“Sam did. It should’ve been me, but… I couldn’t. I knew what she was, what she was going to do, but I wanted so badly to believe that she’d do the right thing anyway.”
“Because she was family,” Castiel surmises, and Dean knows he’s not the only one who’s thinking about their final standoff in Crowley’s lab, where Dean laid it all on the line and Castiel rejected him anyway.
“Something like that.” Dean sighs, rolls his shoulders in an attempt to shake off the funk that’s settled over him. “You think she’s down here somewhere?”
It’s not the first time such a thought has crossed his mind. Dean’s dispatched more than his fair share of monsters over the years, and he figures it’s only a matter of time before he stumbles across one who recognizes him.
“It’s likely. This is where all supernatural creatures end up in death, after all.”
“Fantastic,” Dean sighs, because he can’t say he’s exactly thrilled about the prospect of a reunion with his half-human daughter, even if his stomach still does a weird somersault of regret every time he thinks about her. “Okay, Cas, your turn. Tell me a bedtime story.”
The words are full of sarcasm, but he almost does doze off as he lets Castiel’s voice wash over him, narrating a tale from his brief stint as a mild-mannered healer. It’s still something that Dean can’t quite get his head around, even now. He’s tried to picture Castiel doing normal, human things - washing the dishes, mowing the lawn, exchanging his wedding vows - but he can never quite manage it, and his mind rejects the idea every time. Even now, Castiel is too strange, too otherworldly, always just a few steps too removed from the normal beat of human rhythms for Dean to make much sense of the concept.
“Did you love her?” he finds himself asking, once Castiel’s done telling him about Daphne’s love of obscure silent movies. He doesn’t know why it should matter, but it’s a question that’s been niggling at him ever since seeing them together in that kitchen in Colorado, and his stomach feels suddenly full of butterflies as he waits for the answer.
Castiel frowns, like it’s something he hasn’t really considered in any great detail. “I don’t know,” he says slowly, like he’s thinking carefully over each word. “Emmanuel did, I think.”
“Dude, you are Emmanuel. Or Emmanuel was you. Whatever, it’s the same damn person.”
“It’s not, though. Maybe that’s who I would’ve been if I’d been born human, if I hadn’t been created for war… but that’s so far removed from my experiences that I don’t even know how to imagine it.” He sighs out a frustrated breath. “Dean, can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
Castiel fidgets with the end of the belt that’s attached to his coat, looking vaguely unsure how to continue. “If Meg hadn’t told me the truth about what I am, and if I’d been able to fix Sam… you would have let me go back to that life, wouldn’t you?”
Dean can’t make himself answer, but evidently his silence is damning enough; Castiel levels him with a look that manages to be exasperated and grateful and hurt all at once.
“Do you really think I would have wanted that? To have lived an eternity without knowing you, without knowing everything we fought for?”
“You wouldn’t have known any better.”
Castiel shakes his head. “That doesn’t matter. There was always something missing. And when I saw you again, it felt as though everything just fell into place. Even though I didn’t know you.”
“You were happy,” Dean points out weakly, because he still remembers what Castiel - or rather, Emmanuel - had said to him on the ride to Indiana. It’s my life. And it’s a good life. But of course it could never last. Of course Castiel had to be torn away from it, just as surely as Dean had been ripped from whatever temporary shelter he’d found at the Braedens’. Neither one of them is much suited to civilian life; they’re soldiers, and to that end the trenches are where they belong.
“I was ignorant,” Castiel corrects, with a wry, upward quirk of his lips. “I don’t think it’s quite the same thing.”
+
They’ve long since stopped thinking of Purgatory as a place.
The very landscape is against them, and they speak of it in hushed tones for the fear that it might overhear; its spies are the trees and the rocks and the ground they walk on. It may be filled with monsters, but it’s also a sentient, malevolent being in its own right, and it wants to keep them.
Much like Heaven and Hell, it’s an interactive environment, one that reaches inside the mind with insidious feelers to draw out their deepest fears and desires. Dean sees things, sometimes; or rather, he sees people, people that he knows can’t possibly be here: Sam, Bobby, Lisa, Jo.
One time it was the apparition of his mother: Mary Winchester in the flesh, shining and beautiful and exactly how Dean remembered her, whispering soft sweet promises and beckoning him to come home. Dean strayed so far off the path that time that Castiel had to bring him back with hands on his face and a thread of real urgency in his voice: Dean, Dean, look at me, look at me. When Dean snapped out of his trance it was to find himself teetering right on the edge of a steep ravine, Castiel looking more freaked out than Dean could ever remember seeing him before as the angel led him quietly away.
Castiel sees things too; Dean can tell by the way he’ll sometimes stop what he’s doing and stare off into middle distance for minutes at a time, shoulders tense, totally unreachable. Sometimes Dean wonders who it is that haunts Castiel out here, who this place conjured up to tempt him off the path and keep him here for good. His old angel buddies maybe, or, hell, his wife - but Castiel evades the question whenever Dean asks, avoiding his gaze and toying with the stupid hospital ID bracelet still secured around his wrist until Dean drops it.
For the most part, Castiel is a good deal more lucid now than he was before they took out Dick, and he puts on a good show of holding it together for Dean’s sake. Dean isn’t stupid, though, and he knows Cas well enough to know that most of the time, he’s barely hanging on by a thread.
I don’t fight anymore. Most of the monsters here have good reason for wanting Castiel’s head on a plate, and Dean has a nasty suspicion that if Cas was here alone, he might just lie down and let them have their retribution. As it is, he doesn’t hesitate to maim and kill and eviscerate, especially if he thinks Dean is in danger. Dean’s seen him rip the heads off vampires with his bare hands, but he refuses to look at the bodies afterwards, and sometimes he spends a little too long studying the blood under his nails.
+
Dean doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he can only assume that he drifted off at some stage because the next thing he knows he’s jerking back to wakefulness, cramped against the hard stone wall of the cave with hellfire and brimstone still curling at the edge of his consciousness.
He waits for the last remnants to fade as he tries to get his breathing back under control, heart jackhammering away against the inside of his chest. He’d mostly put the Hell dreams behind him by the time they were up to their eyeballs in Leviathans, Alastair and the rack phased out by images of Sam in a padded white cell, Bobby with a hole in his head and Castiel walking into that fucking lake - but being in Purgatory seems to have knocked something loose in his head, sent his nighttime wanderings spiraling right back to where they were five years ago.
He’s not so stupid that he doesn’t know how it all works, and if Sam were here Dean knows he’d be giving him that concerned look, going on about PTSD and triggers, maybe even offering to trade Hell stories like they’re a couple of military vets back from some war-torn country.
But Sam isn’t here, and Dean plans to deal with this exactly the same way he always does: by sucking it up and moving on, helped along by a good healthy dollop of denial and repression.
He’s so wrapped up in it that it takes a few seconds for him to drag himself entirely back to reality, but once he does so he registers the weight leaning against his shoulder, the soft puffs of warm air against the side of his neck.
Castiel is sleeping, slumped against Dean’s side like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Dean’s first thought is what the hell, followed swiftly by panic - so far they’ve been relying on Castiel to keep watch while Dean gets some shut-eye, but if they were both asleep then anything could have crept up on them in the night.
Dean grips the handle of his machete where it rests on the floor beside him, every muscle in his body poised and tense as he listens out for movement. There’s nothing but silence, save for the rushing of the waves against the shore and the faint rustle of detritus in the sea breeze. He doesn’t quite relax, but he allows himself to breathe out, just a little.
He cuts a sideways glance at Castiel, fascinated in spite of himself because he can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen the angel at rest. There’s worry there, because Castiel shouldn’t sleep, and the fact that he’s doing so now can’t mean anything good - but it’s accompanied by a strange, insistent tugging somewhere inside of him, something possessive that he doesn’t quite know what to do with.
He wishes he could put it down to simple lust; god knows they’ve been down here long enough that the craving for another warm body would be more than justified. But the sweet, sharp ache in the center of his chest speaks of a longing that cuts a little deeper than that.
Castiel twitches against him, eyes flying open without a sound, body coiling up like he’s ready for a fight. When he looks at Dean, it’s really more of a glare, and that much, at least, is familiar.
“You let me fall asleep,” he snaps, and Dean blinks at the accusation because he missed the part where this was his fault.
“Yeah, about that,” Dean drawls, raising an eyebrow pointedly. “You wanna explain?”
Castiel sighs, looking away almost guiltily as he levers himself into more of an upright position. Dean shivers, suddenly cold without the heat of Castiel’s body leaning into his own.
“We’re a very long way from Heaven, Dean. I suppose you might say I had to recharge my batteries.” His jaw tightens into a defiant line, as though he’s irritated with himself for slipping. “I won’t let it happen again.”
Now it’s Dean’s turn to sigh, expelling the frustration from his lungs with a weary head-shake. “No, Cas, that’s not… Look, believe it or not I’d actually rather you got some rest now and then instead of wearing yourself into the ground. We’ll just have to figure out a system, take it in turns keeping watch.”
For a moment, it looks as though Castiel is going to argue the point, but then it passes and the tense, agitated lines of his face soften into something more vulnerable.
“I haven’t been unconscious since the hospital,” he confesses quietly, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out everything unsaid in that statement. Dean’s throat feels tight all of a sudden; he never quite knows how to react when Castiel admits a weakness, it leaves him feeling wrong-footed and out of sorts even though he’s known for years now that Cas is far from invincible.
Without really thinking about it, he wraps his fingers around Castiel’s wrist, thumb rubbing small, soothing circles over the thin skin at his pulse point. It’s the kind of move he would never have been bold enough to make back home, but they’re not in fucking Kansas anymore, and these kind of casual touches have become a welcome comfort against the nightmares waiting in the dark.
He ignores the slight hitch of Castiel’s breath as the contact is made.
“What about you?” Castiel asks suddenly, randomly. At Dean’s puzzled look, he elaborates: “You were dreaming of Hell.”
Oh. That. Dean shifts a little, suddenly uncomfortable under Castiel’s scrutiny. “You been poking around in my brain again?” he grinds out, on the defensive because it’s easier than actually trying to talk about this stuff. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was,” Castiel argues, and the pointed look he directs at Dean is in no way diminished by the now pathetically threadbare scrubs or the bruised circles under his eyes. “And it wasn’t deliberate: you were telegraphing. Practically screaming it at me, in fact.”
“Yeah, well,” Dean rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably, struggling to appear nonchalant. “I guess it’s this place, being stuck here; it’s bringing all that stuff back, you know?”
“I think I do,” Castiel replies cryptically. Dean’s suddenly aware of how close he is, staring right into Dean in a way that leaves him feeling raw and needy and exposed. Dean’s still holding Castiel’s wrist, can feel Castiel’s pulse thrumming beneath his skin, the hot rush of blood close to the surface. Castiel feels like he’s real, like he’s alive, more so than anything else in this godforsaken place, and Dean wants - God, he doesn’t even know what he wants. To haul Castiel a little closer maybe, to touch and taste and get as tangled up in each other as they possibly can, because this connection is the only thing that’s keeping both of them going, day after day.
He could ignore it. He could let go of Castiel, brush the moment off the way he has done all the others that came before.
But Dean’s tired of pretending, tired of denying himself what he really wants, and the rules are different here - hell, the whole fucking game is different. So he leans in when he should be pulling away, bringing himself closer until his mouth is on Castiel’s, and this - he should have done this years ago.
It seems like Castiel would agree, if the way he grabs at Dean’s jacket and kisses him back is any indication, lips unexpectedly soft as they press against Dean’s. As far as kisses go, it’s almost chaste, barely lasting more than five seconds, and yet it’s still enough for Dean to feel as though the whole world is crashing down around him by the time they separate.
“What was that for?” Castiel asks, quirking an odd, crooked smile at him, and it hits Dean square in the chest right then that this is Cas - not Castiel the genocidal warlord, or the amnesiac faith healer, or the bee-watching pacifist, but the same infuriating sonofabitch that Dean couldn’t quite bring himself to grieve for even if he never truly believed that he’d ever get this back.
His throat feels tight with it, and instead of choking out an answer he elects to drag Castiel closer and kiss him again, this time with intent, with direction, because this is a kiss that’s going somewhere, all want and desperation, lips clinging wetly, the spit-slick sound of them obscene in the dark. Dean groans when Castiel’s hands find their way into his hair, when Castiel’s tongue pushes into his mouth, sliding sensuously over his own. Dean’s skin feels electrified, too small for his body; this, all of it, is overwhelming, even though he can’t abandon himself to it completely - too aware of where they are, one ear open for anything that might be looking to catch them off-guard even as he’s pushing Castiel’s trenchcoat off his shoulders and sliding hands under the loose material of his hospital shirt to get at smooth, warm flesh.
Castiel shifts closer until he’s practically sitting in Dean’s lap, until Dean can feel the hard, solid line of Castiel’s erection pressing against his hip, and his own cock leaps in response. Castiel bites at the soft swell of Dean’s lower lip as he pulls away, and Jesus if that doesn’t send a fierce pulse of want direct to his groin, Castiel mouthing at the line of Dean’s jaw, his neck, the hollow of his throat, before shoving Dean over onto his back and sliding down the length of his body like something liquid.
This might be a monumentally bad idea, considering where they are, but Dean’s too caught up in it to care, and he’s more than happy to lie back and let Castiel take the reins if that’s what he wants. He’s fully hard now, on edge already; he hasn’t been with anyone since the whole Amazon fiasco, and there have been precious few opportunities to take care of his own business since getting stuck down here, so he suspects he isn’t going to last long - which is probably for the best, given the circumstances.
And yet - this isn’t really about sex, not even as Castiel presses more open-mouthed kisses against Dean’s stomach, the cut of his hip, fumbling with his zipper and shoving jeans and underwear out of the way. It’s about taking comfort in each other, building themselves a sanctuary in this land of the dead, and the low, hazy pulse of desire at Dean’s core is offset by something softer that he doesn’t really want to put a name to.
“Jesus, Cas,” Dean gasps when Castiel gives his cock an experimental stroke, and he just about loses his damn mind when he feels Castiel’s mouth on him, lips closing around the head of his dick. He whines and arches, instinctively trying to thrust up into it, but Castiel’s hands on the spurs of his hips hold him in place.
Castiel takes him down as far as he can manage, eyes flicking back up to Dean’s face, and there’s a long moment where the only thing Dean is aware of is heat and wetness and suction as Castiel works him with lips and tongue. He buries his hands in Castiel’s hair, all he can do to hold on for the ride; as predicted, it doesn’t take long before he’s gasping out a warning, and then he’s coming sudden and sharp, thighs shaking with the effort, his mind whiting out for a single, blissful moment where he can almost forget where they are.
By the time he comes back to himself, Castiel is climbing back up his body with a freakish grace that’s too fluid to be anything human, straddling Dean’s lap in a way that makes him gasp at the sudden pressure against his oversensitive dick.
Dean watches with a mouth gone dry as Castiel pushes the wrecked hospital pants down over his hips to start jacking his own cock with slow, measured strokes, head tipped back and mouth parted. There’s something oddly intimate about this, seeing another person at their most open and exposed, and it’s easy, too easy, for Dean to fit his hands to Castiel’s hips, thumbs skimming over the sharp ridges of bone.
“Dean,” Castiel says, half-command, half-plea, rolling his shoulders like he’s shaking out invisible wings. He’s gathering speed now, twisting slightly on every upstroke, and Dean’s own hand wanders down to join him, fingers intertwining with Castiel’s in the rhythmic up-down slide along the length of his cock.
Castiel makes a choked noise and falls forward, pushing his face against the sweaty curve of Dean’s neck as his free hand grasps at Dean’s shirt like a lifeline. “I got you ,” Dean mutters, circling his thumb over the head of Castiel’s cock, and that does it: Castiel tenses, biting down hard into the meat of Dean’s shoulder as he comes over both their hands, dripping sticky between their fingers.
Several seconds pass where the only sound to be heard is that of their mingled breath, though Dean is straining to listen outside the cave, on the alert in case anything happened to wander their way while they were otherwise occupied.
“There’s nothing out there, Dean,” Castiel tells him, apparently not even bothering to hide the fact that he’s reading Dean’s mind anymore. Dean figures he should probably be annoyed about that, but he’s mostly just relieved. He wipes his hand off on the floor with a grimace as Castiel pushes himself up to hover over Dean on his elbows, pushing Dean’s hair back from his forehead in a way that makes him feel hot and prickly with embarrassment, unused to being handled so carefully and not at all sure how to deal with it.
“Jesus, I missed you,” he blurts out before he can help himself, post-sex endorphins lowering all his usual barriers and fucking up his brain-to-mouth filter .“Cas, I missed you so fucking much.”
“I know,” Castiel sighs, looking away with an expression of guilt that Dean’s become only too-well acquainted with of late. “Dean, I’m sorry. For everything, I-”
“I know you are,” Dean cuts him off, pulling Castiel back down to end the conversation before it can begin.
He’s tired of listening to apologies.
+
“When we get out of here, we’re taking a fucking vacation,” Dean announces.
“A vacation,” Castiel repeats dubiously. His body is a pleasant weight where he’s still collapsed on top of Dean, tracing abstract patterns with his fingertips over Dean’s stomach. They’re both mostly dressed again, save for the trenchcoat draped over them like a blanket in an attempt to stave off the cold, the last embers of the fire having long since died down. Dean knows that they should probably move, that the shelter is nothing more than an illusion, but he wants to drag this temporary reprieve out as long as he possibly can, not yet ready to submerge himself in the nightmare again.
“I mean it. Me, you, Sam: we’ll take a week; go to the Grand Canyon or something. God knows we’ve earned it.”
“What about Crowley?”
Dean snorts. “What, you want him to come too?”
“Dean.” He can hear the eye-roll in Castiel’s voice, and boy, he’s really got that exasperation down pat.
“Crowley can go fuck himself. Hell, it can be the end of the world again for all I care. It can wait.”
It’s all just talk, of course, but Dean figures he’s entitled to indulge in pointless fantasy if he wants. Especially since the odds of them making it out of here in one piece are looking slimmer and slimmer.
“I’d like that,” Castiel says noncommittally, a wistful edge to his voice that suggests he believes it about as much as Dean does.
Dean’s about to say something else when a high, thin wail splits the quiet, hideous and pitiful all at once. It’s still some distance away, but the very fact that they can hear it at all is cause for concern, because Dean’s seen firsthand just how fast some of the creatures down here can move. Castiel is upright in an instant, all the softness gone from him as he switches effortlessly into soldier mode, drawing his coat around him like a shield.
There’s a tense moment of silence as they both hold their breath, and then it sounds again, closer this time, unearthly in a way that raises the fine hairs along Dean’s arms. It strikes close to the bone, too reminiscent of the half-remembered noises that have kept him up at night for the last five years, and for an instant there’s hellfire bubbling his skin, hooks through his flesh, and sulfur in his nose and it’s like he never left.
Castiel’s fingers close around his wrist, mimicking the same hold Dean had used on him earlier, and it’s a lifeline, anchoring Dean back to reality. Not for the first time, he’s glad that Castiel is here with him, that somebody’s got his back this time around. He wonders if that’s selfish, but he can’t quite make himself feel bad about it.
Castiel looks at him questioningly - not pushing - and Dean nods, drawing in an affirming breath. “I’m okay.”
Castiel squeezes his wrist once before letting go, sword falling into his hand as he rises smoothly to his feet. “Stay here.”
Dean watches him make his way to the mouth of the cave, stopping just short of the entrance. Nothing happens for several seconds, long enough for Dean run through every worst-case scenario he can conceive of with his heart in his mouth.
“So, are we under attack or what?”
“I don’t think so,” Castiel replies, his voice sounding oddly strangled. “You should probably come and see this.”
Frowning, Dean picks up his machete and joins Castiel at the cave’s rocky opening, peering out at the murky waters, sickly yellow sun just beginning to break over the horizon. It doesn’t take him long to spot exactly what it is that’s got Castiel sounding so out of sorts - and Dean’s witnessed his fair share of strange spectacles over the years, but he still feels his jaw drop open at the sight.
“Holy shit.”
He can feel a headache coming on as his brain tries to process what he’s seeing but keeps drawing blanks. It’s a huge, writhing mass just cresting the surface of the water, spanning at least fifty meters across, the waves occasionally broken by a protruding appendage that could be a fin, or a tentacle, or a face, or none or all of the above. In one moment it looks as though it’s covered in scales, but then Dean thinks it’s more like feathers, and then smooth, slippery skin, constantly shifting through an endless, rippling spectrum of colors: azure to crimson to violet to fuchsia and then back again. It’s impossible to even tell whether it’s one giant creature or a multitude of smaller ones, what with the way it keeps dispersing out across the water before merging back together as one.
Dean’s spent plenty of time researching the books, and right now Lovecraftian is the only word he can think of to describe this… whatever it is. Which isn’t terribly surprising, considering what they know of where the guy got his inspiration from.
“What the hell is that?” His voice sounds small and breathless even to his own ears, but he’s damned if he can help it. He can only remember feeling this kind of awe exactly once before in his entire life, and that was when he first met Castiel.
“I don’t know,” Cas replies, sounding pretty damn awed himself. He must say it about three times a day, but it never fails to throw Dean for a loop: that there are things down here so ancient and forgotten, even the angels don’t have a name for them.
Dean watches as a whiplash tail arcs up out of the water only to splash back down again, creating waves upon waves that crash against the shoreline. And what the hell, it’s kind of beautiful, in a totally surreal, mind-bending way. He has absolutely no doubt that Sam would blow a nerd gasket over this, and suddenly he can recall his brother’s voice enthusing over some obscure piece of lore, clear as day. It bolsters him, gives him hope, and before he’s got time to question it or second-guess himself, he’s reaching down to take Castiel’s hand, sliding their fingers together until they’re intertwined. Castiel looks at him curiously, but wisely refrains from commenting, instead rubbing his thumb in a soothing, repetitive motion over Dean’s knuckles.
Hold on, Sammy. We’re coming, Dean thinks, and for the first time, he even believes it.
He’s got something worth fighting for, after all.