Title: Thursday, 11:46 PM
Author: sowell
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Dean and Castiel have bad sex. And chat. Post-5.22
Warnings: Language, smut, screwed-up timeline
Spoilers: Spoilers through 5.22
Word Count: 2,176
A/N: Unbeta'd
Cas shifts experimentally under him, thighs pressing once against Dean’s ass. “Better or worse?” he asks. There’s mild curiosity in his voice, and Dean wants to call him every foul word he can dredge up.
“Worse,” Dean manages, after his throat unblocks from the throb of pain. “Definitely worse.”
Castiel immediately reverts to his former position, legs sliding smoothly over the stiff white sheets. The unpleasant stretch eases, and Dean relaxes, lets his head drop forward.
His hands are braced on either side of Cas’s ears, and he very slowly eases himself backward, giving himself a shallow little roll on Castiel’s cock. The head is just barely inside him, and while Sam was much bigger - freakish, Dean thinks sourly - he hasn’t done this in months. Seven months to be exact.
He shudders and pushes back a little more. He can feel the steady pulse of a heartbeat under him. It isn’t Castiel at all - it’s only a vessel - and Dean can’t read any cues from his body. Cas’s eyes are equally useless - his blue gaze is steady, perceptive, and completely devoid of anything like arousal. This is all an experiment to Cas, and Dean knows if he weren’t so fucked up he’d never have let things get so far.
“Do something,” Dean says through gritted teeth. “Don’t just lay there, man. You’re freakin’ me out.”
Cas’s brows draw together, and his touch is a little hesitant as it slides down Dean’s stomach, coming to rest at the base of Dean’s cock. Dean swallows, and he starts to feel it, just a little.
Castiel is a freak, but he’s weirdly gorgeous at the same time, and Dean tries to focus on that. Lips full and soft (too soft), skin like pale powder, stretched and molded over the fragile strength of his rib cage. Just a vessel, but one that Dean associates with something. Loyalty. Brotherhood, maybe, in a way that will never be enough.
Castiel’s palms are cool as they slide over Dean’s hips, one thumb stretching to stroke up and down the length of his cock. Dean’s face starts to heat.
“Better or worse?” Castiel asks, steady and unflinching, and Dean chokes back a bitter laugh.
“Better,” he says hoarsely, and so Cas keeps doing it.
Dean curves forward, close enough that they’d be kissing if the situation were any less weird. Cas turns his head in time, follows Dean’s movements in that creepily intense way he has. Always watching for the next signal.
Cas clearly isn’t going to do any of the work, so Dean rocks himself up and down Cas’s length, feels the relief of everything growing loose and slippery, and then the beginning of dissatisfaction, as friction melts into something sharp and wanting. He’s hard now, dragging sticky pre-cum across the soft indent of Castiel’s belly. The muscles in his thighs burn, and he shifts, tries another angle.
Castiel is taking it all in with narrowed eyes, cataloguing every twitch Dean makes with unnerving thoroughness. His eyes flicker to Dean’s mouth, the bend of his wrists, the bunch of muscles in his shoulder, and then down to where they’re joined, to where Dean had straddled him five minutes ago, wary and tense, and said, “This is a terrible idea.”
It’s all so fucking creepy, and Dean can’t figure out why he’s subjecting himself to it, except that it’s been months since anything really bothered him. He’s been half broken since hellhounds got their claws into him, and Sam tumbling into the hole had finished him off in a horrible way, like flicking the last remnants of a shattered light bulb from its socket.
Castiel isn’t satisfied with looking for very long, and his thumbs flutter away, then back to press at Dean’s stretched opening. It hurts, and Dean sets his teeth. He reaches behind him, then firmly moves Cas’s hand back where it belongs, resting limply on Dean’s shaft.
“God, you suck at this,” Dean grouses, and hurt chases its way across Cas’s face.
“The state of your body indicates otherwise,” he says, low and resolute. Castiel is alien in so many ways, but he’s human enough to twist the knife every now and again.
Why not? Dean thinks. Every other creature in the universe gets to.
“You know, when I agreed to this,” Dean says, “I didn’t realize it was gonna be a goddamn science experiment.” He’s a little breathless, because even through his anger and discomfort, his dick is still aching, laying hot and neglected against Castiel’s skin.
Castiel’s eyes soften marginally, and he does the strangest thing. He touches Dean’s face, brushes three dry fingers across his heated skin in a way that has Dean jerking back. It feels too much like Lisa, who’s alone in their bed right now, pretending that she can’t feel the spreading cracks in their false domesticity.
“I didn’t intend - ” Cas says, “I only wanted…” He’s uncomfortable and stumbling, the way he always is when he’s trying to express something foreign to him.
Dean knows what he’s trying to say. Castiel wants to fix Dean in a way that can’t be done any more. He wants Dean to be whole, to mend. Sometimes Cas feels like another little brother, another thing Dean has to watch out for, to keep surviving for.
“Forget it,” Dean says, and he’s in danger of losing his wood in the middle of all this brooding, so he guides Castiel’s hand the way he wants it, shows him how to pull properly. If Cas is his responsibility, then Dean might as well teach him something.
“Yeah,” Dean grunts, “Like that.” It’s not great, but it’s slightly less terrible.
“I don’t understand,” Castiel is murmuring. “I thought you wanted…” and then Dean tunes him out, focusing instead on the sweet tightening in his stomach, the painful stretch of Castiel in him, the way his arms are starting to tremble from holding himself levered over Cas’s chest.
Sweat rolls from Dean’s chest, and a drop hits Castiel at the corner of his mouth. Castiel doesn’t waste a second before licking it away, and Dean nearly groans because, okay - that’s a little hot. Dean flicks his eyes away and works on getting off already.
Castiel’s hands just aren’t doing it, and so Dean has to reach down and stroke himself, blocking out everything except his blood pounding in his ears, the core of heat stretching through him. He forces himself up and down Cas’s length in earnest, and then -
“Dean,” says Castiel, but it’s not Castiel.
Sam is looking up at him, eyes dark and concerned, mouth pressed and tight. His tattoo pops against his chest, harsh lines against tanned skin. Dean clenches his thighs involuntarily, his heart slamming with something dangerous and shocking. It’s Sam’s big body under him, Sam’s hands warm at his hips. Sam’s smell all around him, sweat and gunpowder and the sourness of demon blood that’s never left his skin.
“Dean,” he says again, in Sam’s softest voice, and Dean drops his head instantly, tucks his chin in and closes out the sight.
“Worse,” he gasps. “Worse.”
The illusion only lasts a second, but it’s enough for heat and grief to knife through him all at once. He can feel himself shaking, the terrible wrongness of it skittering up his spine like spiders. Sam is gone, Sam is months dead, and even this one moment is enough to rip Dean’s scarred psyche to shreds.
Dean, Sam says in his mind, and he’s going over the edge with Michael while Dean watches through a ruined face and numb limbs. Dean feels it again in his throat, the wild panic he hadn’t been able to act on, the helpless impulse to follow.
His cock pulses, harder than ever, because the teasing warmth of Sam is like an echo around him.
“Dean,” Castiel says again, back in his own voice. He’s alarmed. He starts to move, to sit up, and Dean violently shoves him back against the mattress, pinning him there. Castiel’s eyes are wide with something that might be confusion and might be shame and Dean doesn’t fucking care. He fucks himself on Castiel’s cock until he comes in a wave of fury and adrenaline. He refuses to acknowledge the way his vision is blurring.
He shoves himself off of Castiel that moment he’s finished, stumbles a step or two away from the motel bed on rubbery legs. He aches in every part of himself. The brief jolt of Sam’s face still thrums through him, looping through his blood.
“Dean.” Fucking angel is close behind him, all careful movements, like Dean might shatter.
Dean stops, gathers his fury into himself, gets his breathing under control.
“If you ever do that again,” he says without turning around, “I’ll shove that knife through your throat faster than you can blink.”
Castiel stops. Dean holds his breath for a second, waiting. Hoping for a fight. Maybe he really will get to kill an angel tonight.
There’s a whispered flutter, and when Dean turns Castiel has put himself back together - trench coat assembled, hair lying flat, not a trace of Dean’s sweat or jizz staining him. It’s a neat trick, and on another night Dean would tease him about it.
Tonight he just watches Castiel stonily. “I’m sorry,” Cas finally says. “It was stupid of me. I just thought it would make you happy.” He looks like he wants to say more, but instead he looks away and then he’s gone.
Two Hours Earlier
Dean’s drinking alone in his usual bar when Castiel finds him. He’s making his lazy way through a third jack and coke, stalling. Everyone else left hours ago. All the guys from the site have families, and Dean reminds himself that he has a family, too. Waiting for him.
The word family sounds right in his head, in the same way he can put proper words to every object in the bar: chair, table, juke box, plate. It sounds right but it feels wrong. Family should be essential, half your limbs, a breathing tube. He loves Lisa and he loves Ben, but if he walked away tonight he’d still breathe just the same.
“Heya Cas,” he says, tightening his lips into a smile. From Cas’s expression he guesses it’s not a very nice smile.
“You’re drunk,” Castiel says, frowning.
Dean snorts and throws back the rest of his glass. He’s considering ordering another, hold the coke, when he feels Castiel’s breath almost on his ears.
He’s gotten used to Cas’s personal space issues, but it still creeps him out at times. He swipes at the back of his neck, then turns around to glare. “Are you here to lecture me about my drinking habits? ‘Cause you’ll have to get in line.”
“Dean,” Castiel says gently, all up in his face. “God wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself. Believe it or not, He wants you to be happy. ”
“Great,” Dean says. “He’s done a bang-up job so far, really.” That fourth drink is looking more and more appealing.
“I wish I could convince you.”
“Well you can’t,” Dean says flatly. He decides against the drink, flicks a ten and a twenty onto the bar, and pushes off his stool.
The real reason he doesn’t want to go back to Lisa has nothing to do with family and everything to do with the roiling anger inside of him. He needs a hunt, badly. He wants to feel the cut of the machete, the warm flecks of blood. He wants the release of his knife spearing through some evil thing; the wet pop it would make when he pulled it out has him biting down on his tongue in some fucked kind of craving. He wants to take something apart with his hands, but that would mean breaking his last promise to Sam, and that’s all that’s keeping him going these days.
Short of a hunt, he wants a fuck. It’s not quite the same, but it’s violence and release and exhausting enough that he’ll be able to sleep. He wants sex, but the brand of lust inside him is too dark and ugly to bring home to Lisa.
Castiel follows him out to his pick-up, trailing him like a terrier. “Where are you going?” Castiel says, and Dean explodes.
“I don’t know, okay? So quit following me.”
Silence, and then, “I wish I could be of use.”
And Dean knows that, wishes he could still find some pity inside himself, but it’s all gone. He lets his lips twist up into a bitter smile. “You can find me something to kill, or find me something to fuck, or you can get the hell out of my face.”
Instead of disappearing in a swish of righteous indignation, Cas takes a step closer, head tilted. “Is that what you want?” he asks, serious and quiet, and Dean’s heart skitters for some unknown reason.
Dean shrugs, looks away. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Then. Maybe I can help.”