Sacrifice
Title: Sacrifice, 2/3
Author:
radioheading
Rating: PG 13, language and violence.
Characters/Pairings: Dean/Cas
Warnings: AU
Word Count: 2500
Summary: The aftermath of the season finale. This is a two shot *cough, three-shot* for
trocket, who figure something out in my other story and requested a storyline having to do with Cas' wings. Um. I went a little off track with that, but there will be much more of that in the next/last part. So this is basically Cas after the season finale.
“You've got to be kidding me.” Sam's expression is flat, his lips thin, pale against the flushed skin of his face. He doesn't look at Castiel, can't bring his eyes up to the angel's face. Castiel wonders what the human fears; wonders if he thinks of imminent attacks and being torn apart from the inside, the wall against hell brought down heavy, repressed memories skating over his fingertips, carving their calling cards into his sides.
He lifts his hand, a question mark that has Sam stepping back out of reflex, boots scuffing the gravel underfoot. It's a satisfying sound, weight against rock. Castiel likes it. What he doesn't like is the fear licking around the edges of Sam's soul, though the hunter would never show it in his face, in the depths of hazel irises glued to Dean's form a few feet away, laid gently on his back, asleep. A moment is all it takes for Sam to right himself, to straighten his back and harden his expression.
“Please,” Castiel says, hand up and reaching, begging to be allowed. To be let in. To take liberties that would have come without a second thought before he declared himself God. For a horrible moment, stomach tight and the hairs on his arms electric, he thinks he'll be denied. That Sam will have finished with him, will have found nothing worth saving. He imagines the human turning on his heel, collecting his brother and leaving, forgetting Castiel's face without a second thought. But at the last second, a breath between them when he's ready to drop his palm back to his side, Sam relents, guides his hand to the angel's and allows their fingers to mesh like the knots of a fishing net. Castiel says nothing, though relief floods his vessel's blood as he guides the human's hand to his chest, placing it over a fast-beating heart.
Sam's face, the angular jaw and slanted eyes and generous mouth all still as his fingers are held tight against Castiel's chest. He's quiet, too still, before his eyes roll back in his head, forced into a trance by a sudden barrage of images, of thoughts and feelings and soul that bleeds through Castiel's being into his own. The angle tries to keep the rush the crescendos within him under control, but the more he tries, the more the truth leaks out. Each image that falls on Sam's shoulders contains a person, a man, a human with green eyes and dirty-blonde hair and a smile that could make women faint of heart. After a breath, or maybe an eternity of breaths, he allows the rest to come out, the regret and the pain of losing the human, the triumph and joy from having rescued him from hell's black hills. He gives it all, offers himself on a serving platter to Sam and waits for the verdict.
“Is it true?” Sam's words shake as they ghost past his lips, a thready sort of tone that's all strangled hope and disbelief. “This isn't some revenge tactic?”
“Sam,” He doesn't know how to convince the human, can't show him how his grace shudders and twitched inside over Dean's amnesia, the strange, sick wipe of his presence from the man's mind. “I can take him to the place he'll be the safest. What if it's not just me he forgot?” Castiel sees Dean freezing during a hunt, mouth agape, shock and surprise wringing his lips thin, drawing his eyebrows down. What if Dean's lost everything, hunting instincts included?
No. He won't take that chance.
“He'll come back when he remembers?”
“Not a moment later,” Castiel promises, unused to the way his heart jumps to his throat when permission is perceived, when a yes is given without ever being uttered. “I have to fix this,” he mutters, maybe only to himself, before nodding at Sam and stepping past him, toward the spread-eagle of Dean's body. The man is light in his arms, a barely-there burden with steady breaths and a time-clock heart, a countdown that weighs heavily on Castiel's mind. He catches Sam's gaze before his wings spread and wrap around Dean; there's fear there, and silent regret, but laced through tired eyes is the smallest hint of happiness, like something's finally gone right.
***
“You're serious.” Dean isn't looking at Castiel. He's staring just past, over the angel's head, at the wings that won't go back to ether, tucked safely between the dimensions of tangibility and sight.
“Completely,” Castiel has to concentrate to keep the wings from shifting and twitching against his back. Being seen by a human like this, halfway to his true form isn't...it's strange. It's close, like shared breath between a kiss. He's only had one in his entire lifetime, and it tasted of sulfur and ash. Dean licks his lips and he has to keep himself from actively wondering what a human would taste of.
“Sam wouldn't do that,” he mutters, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “He wouldn't put my life in a stranger's hands. He wouldn't let some thing take me to-” He looks around, takes in a rolling field, a lake and a small house perched on top of a gentle hill.
“Heaven,” Castiel supplies, stiff lips trapping the words so they're muffled and weak. “Sam trusts me, Dean. And you did too, once.”
Dean's eyes narrow, fire behind the iris.
“Heaven. We're in Heaven.” Hands on his hips now, reaching for a weapon he doesn't have.
“Yes.” The wings itch to spread, Castiel's discomfort and the ability to flee too close, too tempting. But he grits his teeth, ignores the urge. “You're protected here. Nothing can harm you until we figure out the extent of the curse, or whatever it is that's taken your memory.
“Fine,” Dean snarls, turning on his heel. Broad back, narrow waist. The muscles there contract and relax as he walks away from Castiel, putting as much space between them as can be managed.
***
Dean remembers. He can name any supernatural creature Castiel can think of, walks the angel through a salt and burn with dull words and a glazed expression. He knows of other angels-Gabriel, Uriel, Anael. And yet there is a blank spot where Castiel once was, white noise where memories should be. Sam, his mother, his father and all the people he's every met are stored, kept safe.
They go through the same pattern, question answer question answer until Dean's seething because something's been taken from him and Castiel can only let him go. Days go by, though they amount to seconds on Earth, and Castiel's Heaven begins to expand. The lake has a dock with a canoe tied to it; the house has acquired a wraparound porch and the hills rise into a road, though he has no desire to go anywhere.
Dean is swimming in the lake, the sun glossy on his back. Castiel watches him silently from the porch, admiring the smooth agility he possesses, the easy way the water cups and supports him. He stretches out on his back, bobbing slowly like breaths, in and out, with the tide of the lake.
“You're creeping me out, dude,” Dean sighs, knowing fully well the angel hears everything, knows everything. “Just come in.”
Castiel doesn't wait to be asked a second time. He takes off his tie first, the sloppy knot undone easily enough, then works on the buttons of his shirt. Pants and shoes next, and then he's down to boxers and a flushed face, wondering if they should be removed too. Dean is naked as the day he was born. Castiel appreciates the power of the human's body, the strength of his shoulders and legs, the long lines of his torso and hips. A smattering of freckles dot his back and chest, and Castiel swallows hard because awe doesn't quite cover it.
Dean's body is his. It's not on loan, it's not something unfamiliar, something he has to get used to. He is inherently solid, experiencing life through sight and touch and smell and taste. And Castiel knows none of that, doesn't really know the heat of another under his fingers, the slow whiskey intoxication of losing oneself to the physical. He is eternity and nothingness all at once; no wants, no needs, created for the intentions of others.
The water touches his toes. He slides off the underwear protecting an organ he's never used and steps into the lake. Its cool density settles around him, wrestling with his wings a bit, though eventually he finds his stride. Dean smiles at him, a brief little twitch of the lip, before his eyes slide shut and he's turning his face back up to the sky.
“Is this real, Cas? Am I even still alive?”
Water clings to the hair on Dean's arm. Castiel's fingers itch to chase the liquid away, to smooth his hands over the tanned forearm, to pull the human close.
“It's real,” Castiel doesn't comment on the nickname, on the familiarity blooming between them, just like it had years ago. “You're alive.”
“Jesus, your eyes.”
Dean's staring at him, lips parted with surprise; the water shifts and he's treading water, too close to Castiel for comfort. The heat of his grace works its way past the copied vessel, reaches to be seen.
“Dean,” he starts, a warning, close your eyes, stay away, but then fingertips break through the water like tiny submarines and they're reaching, up, up, until they touch down on his cheekbones. His lower lashes catch on Dean's skin. He wonders what Dean sees. The bleeding through of his grace, obviously, but what does that mean to Dean? Is it repulsive? Too different to be anything but untrustworthy, something to be feared and put down before it can do damage?
Castiel's eyes are warm. Dean's face blurs into a kaleidoscope, pale lips and long lashes and the pinch of concern between his forehead. Thumbs swipe the corners of his eyes and sight comes back, the glaring sun reflecting off the lake. Dean says nothing, but swims with him toward the shore. Each pull, each reach of his arms feels like slipping, tumbling down a hole that holds nothing but darkness. But then the beach is under him, cheek digging into the grains of sand, and he sighs into its embrace.
He doesn't fall asleep. Angel's can't dream, can't rest the way humans do but maybe he goes into a trance because the next thing he knows is the soft, careful glide of a hand sifting through his feathers, straightening what he's been to apathetic to groom. It's like flying, like Dean's hands are mimicking wind as they move around him and support his weight. But it also pulls at something within, a deep ache that traps breath in his throat.
“Holy shit, Cas,” Dean breathes, and Castiel catches sight of his hands as he tries to sit up.
He's not solid. He's light behind skin, a luminescence just a step away from his true form. His body is taller, his hair longer but just as dark, plastered across his forehead by water and sand.
“Dean,” his voice is deeper, other, vibrates with age and knowledge. Tired. The other words settling on his tongue have no chance to taste air, though, because Dean closes the space between them, forces their mouths together while he buries his hands in the down of Castiel's wings, stroking them up and down, each touch a stuttered bolt of lightning that tightens his chest and clouds his mind.
Dean is honey slow with the ministrations of his tongue. He parts Castiel's lips and sighs almost imperceptibly when he's allowed in, when the heat of him passes into the angel's cooler mouth. Dean is dark cherry so strong it's almost alcoholic, the bitter tang of dark chocolate a fleeting aftertaste on Castiel's tongue.
He could lose himself to this kiss. He could allow his grace to surge out and encompass the human ( a want need now instinct that's thick and insistent), but as they turn and twine, learning the angles and needs of the other, an image flashes through his mind. Dean. Bloody, beaten. All by his hand. By his doing. He-how can he think to touch someone he's wronged so absolutely? How can he burn to taste and lick and know Dean when the man can't even remember him? He'd never allow this if he knew who Castiel really was. The traitor he is. The echo of Dean's soul as Castiel ordered him to bow down or die-it would bring him to his knees if he weren't already on the ground.
Castiel breaks the kiss with Dean's saliva on his mouth, a light sheen he licks at and swallows down, a moan stifled in his throat. Dean's a second behind, confused as to why they stopped, but he gives no answers as he rises to his feet and his wings spread, flinging the excess water this way and that. Bent knees and held breath would carry him up to the sky, but before he can rise a foot off the ground, a hand clasps his shoulder and drags him back, hard.
“Sorry, kiddo. There's no running from this.”
Gabriel.