apocabigbang: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, 3/3
MASTERPOST; PART ONE; PART TWO; PART THREE
the angel;
The first clear burst of Dean's voice saying something other than his name startles Castiel enough that he loses both time and space and ends up flat on his back in a swaying wheat field. The black of the sky lumbers above, the inscrutable distance of the stars he could once travel. Dean's voice is a tear through his skull, a bolt as bright and powerful as lightning straight from Zeus' hand.
Don't, he is saying. Cas, don't, don't, please.
Castiel crushes his hands over his ears and stands, slowly. "Quiet," he says, but Dean doesn't listen.
The wheat sways and dips in the soft rustle of a breeze. It is an open field, boundless as it rises toward the flat horizon. The reeds tickle Castiel's palms as he passes them over the tops, as he walks and carves a careful path through the field without trampling any stalks. Dean is becoming a louder cacophony and Castiel feels his breaths coming faster, his blood singing with light, his control slipping.
He stumbles because these feet are not his own and because these are the legs of a sleeping man, a dead man. He rises and the soil clings to his knees and stains his clothing.
Please, please don't, Cas, don't -
Castiel crushes a handful of wheat stalks, the low murmur of his human voice breaking apart into the piercing hum of his true tone. He sighs when Dean's pleading tapers to stunned silence. "I have to, Dean. For you."
Just as soon Dean is back, and Castiel clamps his hands over his ears and screams from his human throat, "Shut up!"
Dean doesn't.
By the time he moves himself through space to an empty crossroads and buries the box of charms with the picture Gabriel slipped into his pocket, Dean is nearly unbearable. There is but a thin thread tethering Castiel to his vessel and Dean has begun screaming not only in desperation but in pain, as the constant shine of Castiel's light begins to eat through what remains of him. Castiel's chest aches fiercely with it, that in order to save Dean he must hurt him as well.
The demon Crowley comes easily, drawn by the scent of an angel. He smiles at the sight of Castiel's ragged frame, hunched and shaking, plagued by shivers of light that bleed from his eyes and chase along his flesh. Castiel straightens as much as he can as the demon moves closer, all swagger and none of the fear that a demon should have in the face of an angel.
"Well fuck me," he says with a satisfied snort. "Didn't know it was my birthday."
"You came quickly," Castiel replies, then chokes on a spasm deep in his throat. His control over this body is slipping, slow and sure.
Crowley shrugs and tucks his hands firmly in the pockets of his overcoat. "Real live angel, begging for my services? Sets the alarm bells a-ringing, old boy. It's like fresh blood to lions, you can't expect me to stay away from something this delicious."
"Gabriel said you might help me."
Please please Cas, Castiel, no, don't, not you, Cas -
Castiel slams his eyes shut as he hears Crowley make a small noise. "Maybe, maybe not. Let's see what's on the table before we draw any conclusions, shall we?"
"Dean," Castiel says instantly. "Dean needs your help."
He explains the tangled situation they've been thrown into - the seals, the Horseman, the prophecy, Lucifer's subversive plot. Crowley's eyebrows slowly climb up his forehead as Castiel speaks, his slow smirk and nod the barest signals of his comprehension. When all the breath is exhausted from Castiel's body - his and Dean's and Jimmy's body - Crowley bites at his lip and begins pacing.
"That's heavy magic you're talking," he says. "The good, dark stuff. Hell magic."
"I know," Castiel sighs, though each part of him thrashes against it. But Dean is burning and Crowley offers the only alternative and Castiel is willing to put aside allegiances for this, for Dean. He is not above begging, even begging demons.
He thinks perhaps he would fall at the feet of Lucifer himself if it meant keeping Dean alive.
"And what," Crowley says as he stops in front of Castiel, close enough to feel the blackness rolling off him in waves, the filth and ichor and stink of Hell ingrained in each fiber that constructs him. He tilts his head, curious. "What would an angel, a half angel at that, offer me? Road goes both ways. If I were to give you this spell, what, pray tell, would be your collateral?"
The eyes crawling across Castiel's face are hungry and despicable; he finds himself shuddering beneath their weight. "Protection. From the Winchesters and myself, as well as any other humans."
Crowley clicks his teeth and shakes his head, unconvinced. "I'm a big boy, you know. I get on alright as it is, with or without your protection. Gotta sweeten the pot if you want to deal with me, mate."
Castiel flicks his eyes upward until he is staring into bottomless black. "Please," he whispers, slow and sincere. "I can't offer years, but anything else is yours to take freely. Any favor, any act that won't harm the Winchesters or Bobby Singer. I will be in your debt as long as you see fit, but please. If Dean dies, Lucifer wins without a fight and we all die. Even you."
For a long moment there is only the depths of black roving across Castiel's skin that flashes with light and power, that threatens to rip apart at any moment. Crowley squints and sighs and tilts his head as if appraising, and Castiel feels ready to collapse with the effort of keeping himself contained and keeping Dean safe, ready to unravel hopelessly when the demon declines his offer.
But then Crowley says, "alright, deal," and the words pierce Castiel like a gunshot.
"Anything I want," Crowley clarifies with a finger pointed at Castiel's chest. "Protection and anything I want."
Castiel nods, trembling with the promise of a solution, finally, a solution. "If it is within my power to give, yes."
"Your kind's not even supposed to be dealing with me, you know," Crowley says quickly, a hint of amusement in his voice. "I think this is a first."
Castiel stares as the demon moves closer and hooks a cool hand around the back of his neck, drags him close. Crowley grins and whispers, "I'll be gentle," then kisses him and seals the deal.
There is a burn in the contact, a sting beyond the slight nip of Crowley's teeth catching Castiel's lip. The filth and sin of Hell pours into Castiel's mouth through the contact, a bitter taste and acidic awareness scalding his tongue and sliding down the line of his throat. It is a heavy and aching knowledge, that he owes an outstanding debt to a demon, but as Crowley licks at his mouth with a serpentine grace unnecessary for such a transaction, as he withdraws with a hum and Castiel sees the barest hints of honesty in his smirking face, he reminds himself that it was worth it.
Dean will live, and that is worth any deal with devils.
~ ~ ~
sam;
He's had his stupid moments of desperation where dealing with demons seemed like a good idea, and Dean has had his even stupider moments of the same, but Sam never expected to see Castiel of all people - the only angel with his head on straight, it seems, the one pure and righteous one in the lot - stroll through the door with a demon trailing willingly at his heels.
Sam is on his feet in a heartbeat as Bobby loads a salt round and Chuck scrambles behind the couch with a yelp. "What the hell is he doing here?" Sam demands.
Crowley, with his sharp wool overcoat and soft kid-leather gloves, looks disproportionately out of place in the dusty wreck of Bobby's house. He swivels around to level a glare in Bobby's direction and says, "You can put your toys away now. Takes a lot more than a dash of that stuff to knock me down anyway, I can guarantee that."
"What do you want?" Sam snarls, prickling as the question is met with a snide laugh.
Castiel raises his hand and Sam winces in something like sympathy: he looks the very definition of awful. Castiel's eyes are dull and reddened at the rims, his skin bloodless and beaded with a fine mist of sweat. He swallows and says, shakily, "Sam, please. This is the only - " he wavers, steadies himself against the door jamb - "only way to help Dean."
"By making deals with demons? That never works out well, in case you didn't notice." Sam gestures loosely to himself, then to Dean. He stares hard at Crowley, who smiles pleasantly in return. "They're all just lying rats."
Crowley grounds his jaw and leans into Castiel's space, speaking in a low voice but still audible. "Now that's just bloody rude. Not exactly the friendliest bunch, are they?" He sniffs disdainfully and eyes the piles of books scattered across every surface. "Not very good housekeepers either."
"Castiel," Sam says slowly. "Get. Him. Out of here."
Castiel shakes his head and lurches forward, coughing a bright flash of light as he finds the back of a chair and squeezes it for support. "No," he breathes raggedly. "He is here to help."
"Look, nobody's making any - "
"The deal is made, Sam," Castiel cuts in. Sam blinks and takes in the trembling slouch of Castiel's shoulders, the silver pops of light that are bright enough now that Sam has to squint against them. He's barely holding on, Sam thinks, and he wonders what exactly Castiel gave for this.
He swallows and the room goes silent save for the rasp of Castiel's strained breathing, stuttered and irregular, like a man who doesn't know how to consciously keep a rhythm. He is weaker than Sam has ever seen him, yet at the same time something great and terrible that can't be contained by human flesh, and he's frightening and reeling in pain and trying, trying so hard to make everything right, to get Dean back. Sam feels a sharp slice of fondness dart along his spine as he watches Castiel's head fall forward against his chest, his eyes squeeze into tiny wrinkles, his mouth move to struggle for breath.
"Alright then," Crowley pipes up after a beat. "I'll need some things. Hopefully they're on hand already, I don't think wingless here can hold out for a trip to the quickie mart." He glances briefly at Castiel, then firmly at Sam, then Bobby. "Boys? Not going to make me fish through your cupboards myself now, are you?"
The shotgun in Bobby's grip lowers for the first time as he stares hard at Sam - for guidance, for a signal, for acceptance. Sam sighs heavily and shrugs his hands out at his sides and ignores the anxious thrill thrumming through his body like a second pulse. "What do you need?"
~ ~ ~
the prophet;
Now this is something he never saw coming.
And Chuck sees most things coming.
Prophet, and all.
Not this though.
Angels and demons working together, making deals, performing rituals? It just doesn't happen. This is one of those things that would get red-inked to death and eventually used as nothing more than a coaster. It's just unrealistic.
Except apparently it is all kinds of real after all, because there's a circle of black candles on the floor and the stink of burning belladonna curling through the air, and Castiel is literally holding hands with a demon and letting him split a three-inch gash along his forearm with a silver blade, and, okay. This is the part where Chuck looks away. Very far away.
"Espergefacias," Crowley is saying, interspersed with other crazy Latin mumbo jumbo. It all sounds alike to Chuck at this point. He never really put much stock in learning Latin. He had a guy for that, someone down at the editor's office with a bachelor's in classical languages. Now he's wishing he remembered a bit more of it, because everybody else knows what's going on and he feels quite magnificently left out of the loop.
At some point Castiel joins in the chanting, then Sam, then Bobby. No one asks Chuck to join in. He wonders if they forgot he's even here.
Wouldn't be the first time.
A yellow spike of flame spears into the air and Chuck watches with a certain mixture of disgust and fear as, beneath the bloodied sheet, Dean's back bows up from the floor. Sam makes a noise like he's choking and Chuck doesn't make a noise at all because he's too freaked out to do much else but gape and tremble and nearly bug his eyes straight out of their sockets.
Dean thumps back to the floor and arches again, then gasps and tightens the angle where his spine bends. Castiel groans something obscene as the windows shake and Crowley says, "Might want to shut your eyes."
Chuck doesn't because a) he's seen an angel before already and his eyes haven't been burned out yet, and b) even if his eyes did get burned out it wouldn't be such a bad thing. At least he could file for disability.
Across the room, Sam hisses out a breath and goes to his knees, hands over his ears. Bobby covers his too, while Crowley shrinks back with a hiss to shield himself from the furious mass of energy and liquid light swirling through the room, the vague shape of something not quite human born out of Castiel's body and grown huge enough to fill up every corner. Chuck blinks and blocks his ears when a shrill hum vibrates through the air; Dean, it sounds like, but he can't make out anything certain.
Maybe father. Maybe please. Chuck doesn't give it much thought.
In the amorphous shape bleeding out of Castiel's body he deciphers a set of furious blue eyes and incandescent flesh, if it could be called flesh; a soft mouth and long thin arms, threateningly huge wings more built of ribbons and pure light than actual feathers; a pair of elegant hands moving toward Dean and bracing his face so the non-shape-angel-thing can move close enough to fasten its mouth to Dean's, pouring a bright stream of light and life into him.
This thing - it - Castiel - moves to press a hand to Dean's chest, and Chuck finds himself clutching at his own when the tapered fingers sink smoothly through flesh and bone, right into the center of Dean's ribs without ever breaking the surface. It just passes right through him, hot knife to butter.
Chuck makes a small, wouldn't-have-expected-that noise and shakes his head. "I'll be damned," he mumbles.
The hand withdraws and the vague shape hovering above him says Dean in its deafening roar of a voice as it kisses Dean's mouth again.
Then Chuck blinks and the impossible form and all its lights are gone, bound within the slight body that they've all become accustomed to equating with Castiel.
Even though that is very much not what Castiel himself looks like. Chuck can attest to that firsthand.
The Novak guy is much nicer looking, considering he...well, has a body at all.
Angels aren't the easiest things to wrap your head around.
Not that they're hideous, but - Chuck finds himself letting out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding - they're just so far removed and different, so vast and genuinely beautiful it physically hurts.
Sort of like the dull thump of Castiel's body faceplanting into the floor. Chuck gives a sympathetic cringe.
Then jumps a good ten feet in the air when the lifeless shape that's been Dean for the past eight hours gasps long and loud and fights its way from under the sheet and scrambles clear across the room within the span of two-point-five seconds.
There's a scuffle of panicked movement as Sam gasps and calls his brother's name, and as Dean pants and asks what the ever-loving fuck is going on, and as Chuck maneuvers himself around the couch to sit down so it won't hurt quite as bad when he passes out.
Not if. When.
Nobody should have to deal with this shit.
He's just a writer, for Christ's sake.
Okay, yeah, and apparently a prophet, but he never dreamed this part. This is all still new and very shocking and very weird.
A scramble of words and action as Chuck sits and rubs his forehead and pointedly does not try to make anything make sense. The sheet with Dean's dried blood is at his feet, stiff and stained. Chuck toes it away and leans back into the springs that jab through the threadbare cushions.
He hears Crowley sigh and say, "Be seein' ya then." Dean hoarsely demands to know what the hell he means, but Crowley just says, "Don't forget about your friend here, yeah? Just saved your arse, he did. Might want to show a little gratitude."
Nobody responds after that, so Chuck guesses Crowley left without waiting for one.
They all just breathe and Sam is making some undignified noise that's probably crying. Chuck scratches at his eyes and wonders if he should have toned down on the teary heart to hearts in the past. He wonders if it would be too late to change it now.
Someone moves closer and Chuck opens his eyes to see Sam picking Castiel up from the floor, draping him limply over an arm and lifting him into a nearby chair. Castiel slumps lifelessly and Chuck has just enough time to think huh, should have seen that one coming, before Sam is pressing two fingers below the angel's jaw and saying, "He's alive. Just unconscious."
Chuck expects Dean to sigh in relief. At least fling out a witty quip or an oh thank god.
Instead he looks up to Dean and sees nothing but naked fear on his face as he stares at Castiel's pliant, deceptively human body.
Dean rubs at his mouth and takes a deep breath and walks out of the house, slamming the door behind him as he goes.
~ ~ ~
dean;
It doesn't make any sense. It seriously does not make any sense.
Dean paces and trembles and walks in circles around the yard and it doesn't get any easier to understand or accept.
Daylight is bright outside, filled with birdsong and scents of sweet pine, apple blossoms, engine oil. It smells as much like home as anything outside of the Impala does, and it's gorgeous and slow and missing something. Dean can't say what it is, but there's something not whole about it all, like a block in his center has been removed and he's about to topple with each rattle of breeze.
His skin feels infant and new, like he's just shed an old one, like he's just been reborn. The wind feels amazing, close to painful in its purity.
He keeps his eyes open until they're stinging and brimmed with dry tears, because if he closes them he sees light that's too bright and hands that are too big and eyes that are too furious and bottomless, so blue it's stupid, wings that are seamless fluid instead of feathers, pure energy, pure grace.
He closes his eyes and he sees Castiel.
Real Castiel.
And he opens them again because he can't, because he doesn't want to. Because it's terrifying and it's too real and it makes him feel gutted, makes him want to scream and cry and pull himself apart and say thank you thank you thank you.
But he can't do it.
He can't say thank you. He can't even go inside.
He stays on the porch and listens to the wind, because he's shaking and terrified and he can't look at Castiel's familiar face now that he's truly seen him.
Dean has no idea how to approach or forget that, and he's scared and he's lonely and he feels sensitive and sewn out of scar tissue and more alive than ever. He goes back inside long enough to swipe his keys from the kitchen cabinet before he leaves again, climbs into his baby and starts her up. She's loud, and she sounds glad to see him but the rumble fades and everything is too quiet. Too quiet compared to Castiel.
He throws her into second and takes off like a shot. His phone rings after a few minutes but he doesn't answer it.
He just drives, and drives, and lets the wind sting his eyes until the tears are flowing like fucking Niagara, and he plays Metallica as loud as it will go until a speaker blows, and he sings along in a shout to have something to fill his ears, and nothing is enough and he keeps on driving and driving and doesn't stop.
~ ~ ~
the angel;
He wakes up folded into the relative softness of a bed with the diagonal beams of a roof above - Bobby's loft. Or, as he knows it, Dean's room.
His feet are bare when he wiggles his toes. Sam must have seen fit to remove his shoes before laying him here. Castiel blinks slowly and draws in a meticulous breath, closes his eyes and sighs it out long and low.
There is no pain. No terrible wrenching and pushing, no screaming or thrashing or clawing. There is the steady song of one slowed pulse and the static silence of Jimmy's unresponsive sleep; nothing else.
Dean is gone.
Dean is safe.
Castiel allows his lips to curve into a smile as he breathes, slow and even for the first time in what seems like ages. He lies still, stretches his fingers, bows his back. These muscles - his muscles - stretch and contract, glide smoothly over bone and tendon, fed and oxygenated by warm blood. He is in each of these cells, Castiel thinks. He is this body.
It is a strange awareness, his attachment to this physicality. The energy within him stretches and languishes, rolls loosely through arteries and nerves, organs and flesh and tiny things like the thin hairs sprouting from his skin, the sensitive ridges of his fingerprints, the brush and slip of fabric across his flesh. He reacquaints himself with this body and fits into it once more, aching for the loss of Dean but grateful he no longer has to shrink himself small and dim enough to be perceived without consequences.
Through the strips of it visible through dusty slatted blinds, the day is bright and lazy and rich with color.
Castiel utters a quick prayer of gratitude to his Father before spreading his arms over the bed and allowing his eyes to close, his blood to thrum, his heart to beat, a slow and steady cadence calming enough that he passes seamlessly into a light sleep.
~ ~ ~
sam;
It takes each sliver of restraint pooled into Sam's body to keep his tongue from spitting the predictable, albeit admittedly fussy, where the hell have you been? by the time Dean walks back through the door almost seven hours later. Sam launches off the couch to meet him at the door, but swallows the rant back to silence.
Dean tosses his keys on the sofa table and sighs, looks around, looks up. He says, "Sammy," in greeting with a simple smile, like nothing out of the ordinary has been going on for the past...well, thirty years. Like he hasn't just died and shared a body with an angel, been brought back by Hell magic and - Sam shakes his head in lieu of finishing the thought, because the past twenty-four hours have just been too weird to quantify.
"Dean," Sam stammers back, the word hanging open at the end, the what the hell are you smoking? implied without actually saying.
Dean sucks in a breath and looks away, eyes skittish, typically guarded. He clearly doesn't want to talk about it, even though Sam very much does.
It's not so different than their everyday lives, when Sam really thinks about it.
"Had to clear my head," Dean says after a pause. When Sam quirks an eyebrow, he snorts a soft laugh. "Bunking with an angel is... It kind of scrambles up the gray matter. Kind of a lot."
"Are you okay?"
Dean paws the question away with a hand through the air between them. "Nah, I'm fine. Set me up with a beer - or like, eight - and I'll come around. Just gotta get my head straight."
Sam nods and gives a mousey, "Okay."
Dean laughs tightly after a pause when Sam's feet refuse to move. "Sammy, I'm fine. Look at me, I'm here. I'm healed, okay? Not dead. I'm good."
A river of apologies and admissions floods across the back of Sam's tongue - I'm sorry I couldn't save you, I'm sorry I made you go through that, I'm sorry I couldn't make the deal, I'm sorry it was you, I'm sorry for putting you through Hell, again and again and again - but he doesn't voice any of them. He just nods and twitches uncomfortably, smiles and says, "Yeah, you're good. We're good."
"Seal still broke," Dean sighs.
"Yeah."
Dean's hands sink into his pockets. "We didn't stop it. Pestilence still won."
Sam shuffles, digging for some ray of optimism. "Guess we know not to try and outrun any more of Chuck's visions now."
Dean makes a vaguely disgruntled sound in the back of his throat. "But you didn't die, and I died and came back, so - "
"Could be worse."
"Could totally be worse."
Sam winces; Dean grins.
There's a bright slap on his shoulder and Sam only notices belatedly that Dean has moved past him, into the kitchen where he's twisting open a beer and leaning back against a cabinet, one ankle slung over the other, flipping the cap over his shoulder to clatter quietly into the sink.
He's just come out of the ass end of one of the stickiest situations they've ever found themselves tangled up in, yet he's tipping his head back with a long swig of cheap beer and he's still exponentially cooler than Jim Stark on any of his better days.
Dean hands him a beer and clinks the necks together and they sit and drink and don't talk about anything in particular. Sam can see from the way Dean's eyes occasionally go distant, or the way he rubs at his forehead or stares at familiar objects like they're foreign, that he's shaken, that some part of him is still working through the impossible logic of sharing space with an angel; but they don't talk about it.
Sam wonders what he saw, if he saw. How Castiel sounded and looked and felt up close, if angels really are as terrible as he imagines.
But Dean's not telling and Sam's not asking - not for now, at least - and for the moment, having Dean back at all is more than enough to quell his curiosity.
~ ~ ~
dean;
There is a moment of stillness when they find each other for the first time.
It took five hours of driving and two hours of staring into a lake from the end of a pier too shaky to be any kind of safe; two beers and half an hour gabbing about seals and game plans with Sam before Dean found his center again, what he needed to be calm and together.
And right now he's staring it in the face, its eyes too big and open, strangely nervous and expectant. His center. Cas.
Dean says, stupidly enough, "Hey." The door shuts behind him with a muted click; his boots scuff on the floorboards and everything still sounds too new.
Castiel swallows and says, "Dean."
Of course he would.
He's sitting on the bed, his usual stiff and weird self, but Dean noticed how his hands clenched on the blankets when he walked in.
Dean moves around the room, finds himself touching random objects - a belt here, a lightswitch there, the nicked edge of a table, the embossing of a quarter, smooth blown glass. Their textures are raw and rich, profound against his infant fingers. Before he ever thinks about speaking again, several minutes have ticked by.
Castiel clears his throat, low and awkward; it makes Dean smile to himself, just a little. "Are you alright?"
Dean shrugs, nods. "I'm alive. Thanks to you."
"I apologize if I hurt you. I did my best to shield you, but - "
"Water under the bridge, Cas." He shuts his eyes and feels instantly weightless, suspended on nothing but empty air and light. There are spinning ribbons that Dean can't quite make himself call wings, swirls and limbs and it's a fucking mindjob if there ever was such a thing, but it's beautiful. "And I wouldn't call it hurting, you just - kind of freaked me out, is all."
"I'm sorry," Castiel says, small and sincere.
"Maybe a little bit of hurt," Dean says through a smile that Castiel doesn't return. "Nothing I couldn't handle, though."
Castiel looks down to his lap and doesn't move.
After a long pause and another pass around the room, Dean stops in front of him and plants his feet, crosses his arms. "How long?"
Castiel glances back up, eyes all wide and innocent, and Dean can't help but shiver because he knows what's behind them. He's seen it himself in a way he never thought he would, or could and live to tell about it.
"How many years, Cas?"
"That wasn't our currency." Castiel pauses long enough to wet his lips with a brief dart of tongue. "I could offer much more than that to the demon Crowley and I suspect he knew as much."
Dean bristles and, fleetingly, really wishes Castiel would stop making all these grand, unreturnable sacrifices for him. It's a lot for a guy to handle. "So what was it?"
"Protection." He looks back down again, to that fascinating place between his feet. "And a favor to be named later."
Dean wants to rant and squawk and call Castiel a stupid sonofabitch, he wants to ask why the hell you would do something like that, what possessed you to make such a dumb fucking move, but then he remembers that he was burning alive and he remembers Castiel, and Castiel looks up to stare him straight in the face this time and says, "I'm glad you're back."
And Dean just doesn't care, he doesn't care at all.
He's on Castiel in an instant, holding the curve of his jaw in his fingers and kissing him hard, licking at his lips and hitching a breath when Castiel opens far easier to him than Dean ever expected. Castiel makes a soft, stunned noise when Dean crawls into his lap and finds two handfuls of thick hair, hair he wants to rake through and hold tight and feel tickle his belly.
It's all elbows and knees for a few moments while Dean fights Castiel out of his coats and flips them over, pulls Castiel into his lap, tight against him so they're flush, and it's good, it's so good.
Castiel tastes like sweet water and human skin and vanilla shampoo, hint of metal and gunpowder, and his arms are solid slender things that wrap nicely around Dean's shoulders. His angles are perfect and his breath is hot and his mouth is soft and wet, his throat stretching back with a long groan as Dean latches on below his Adam's apple and sucks.
Dean mumbles into the pale curve of his neck, nonsense and so fucking hot, Cas, and Castiel gasps and shudders and squeezes his shoulders. He touches Dean's neck, the back of Dean's hand that's settled into the bend of Castiel's waist, with light, tentative brushes like he's afraid he'll burn a new set of prints into Dean's skin if he holds on too long.
Dean shivers and moans low in his throat when he realizes that he actually might.
He shuts his eyes and it's pure light, enough to swallow him up and make him lose himself in the climb of his hand along Castiel's spine to nest in his hair, in the slow roll of Castiel's hips and the hungry redness of his mouth. "Cas," he says, then again, hard and broken.
Castiel tips his head back and makes a strangled sound, rides his hips again, one more time before he's tensing and shrinking back and saying, "Dean, wait, no."
Dean's initial response is to bite a little harder at the pink-flushed skin showing under Castiel's collar.
But Castiel holds his shoulders tighter and bends his throat away, stares across the short inches between them and his eyes are blown wide, all pupil, all want, but they're also soft and regretful, apologetic, sad.
Dean's hand slips down the s-curve of Castiel's spine to rest at the sharp jut of his hip. "What's a matter?"
Castiel's lips purse into a tight line as he shakes his head, just barely. Blunt fingernails skate through Dean's hair, the movement shooting straight into his bloodstream and going everywhere at once. "I need consent."
Dean can only blink. Blink and move his hands lower to grip the juncture of hip and thigh. "Consent? Cas. You're givin' me the blue balls of a lifetime here, I think that's more than enough consent."
A smile, soft and slow, and the quiet exhalation of not-quite laughter that Dean's only heard once, maybe twice, in years. "This body is not my own, Dean."
Oh.
Dean tightens up his jaw. "You don't mean my consent, do you?"
Castiel's head shakes with a pointed sigh. "I'm sorry."
There's nothing else to do but nod, so Dean does just that. He doesn't let Castiel go yet, though. He's not ready to. "Any word on, you know. When that'll be?"
He tries desperately to force a smile, he really does, but judging by the sympathetic wince on Castiel's face it comes out as more of a grimace. Another pet through his hair, a warm sheet of breath across his face, and Dean's thumbs can't stop brushing at the warm slice of skin just below Castiel's shirt.
"He is asleep," Castiel nearly whispers. "He has been, since my return. But he is still here, and this body is still his own as long he is. I must honor that."
Dean stares for a long time before pressing his forehead into Castiel's collarbone, and wonders why it is that the one thing, the only thing, the best thing, is always so utterly unattainable.
"I'm sorry," Castiel says, then kisses the top of Dean's head, wraps his arms tight around Dean's shoulders and holds on. He even repeats it, I'm sorry breathed out against Dean's temple, as if Dean didn't already know how deeply he meant it the first time.
But Dean did. He felt it in the tremor of Castiel's body, saw it in the tragedy of his eyes. He felt the truth right down to his bones and beyond.
"It's okay," he says after a while, because strangely, it is. He can't explain why and he's not easily going to cop to waiting for an innocent guy to die and leave his body for the taking, for Dean's taking, but Dean thinks that if anyone's entitled to be a little selfish after the shit they've been through, it's him. And he wants Castiel, selfishly and completely, all for himself.
But then he's already got him, in all ways but one. It's a minimal thing, at best. So when he looks up and smiles at Castiel's shaky lack of expression and says it's okay, what he really means is, it's okay.
It takes him a minute or two or three, but eventually Castiel nods and tilts the corners of his mouth up just barely in as much of a smile as he ever smiles, and says, "Okay."
It's tense and too tender and Dean's dying, burning up now more than he was before, so he fakes a cough and tacks on a smirk. "Just so we're clear, though, even with our pal Jimmy hanging around I can still at least kiss you, right? 'Cause that's kind of a dealbreaker and, swear to God, I think you've created a monster."
Castiel's lip curls back over a hint of teeth before he's sweeping long fingers around the base of Dean's skull and pulling him close to kiss him hard, a slow and deep aching tangle that has Dean's pulse wildly erratic in half a second or less.
"I will kiss you just to quiet your blasphemies, Dean Winchester," Castiel slurs into his mouth, and kisses him and kisses him and Dean is burning up and he's all hands, and it's ridiculous and perfect and enough.
~ ~ ~
the prophet;
He finds the page almost a month later, water-blotted and creased to shit, while scrounging for the last quarter he needs to start the dryer. The coin slips into the slot with a dink and the dryer starts its thunderous whir as Chuck makes his way out the door and down the street, stopping by the mailbox on his way. It's chock full and overflowing, but ninety-five percent of it is junk. Four percent is bills stamped final notice. The other one percent he doesn't categorize yet; just tucks it under his elbow and concentrates on unfolding the page from his back pocket. One side is covered in indecipherable dots and dashes that look kind of like some arcane language, but the other...
- but not really. It wasn't like Hell, though, it was - "
Dean's voice caught on a breath as Castiel rubbed a thumb over his knuckle.
"Overwhelming and bizarre, but after a while I realized it wasn't pain. It was just... light." They both smiled; Dean's lopsided and boyish, Castiel's guarded and unfamiliar.
"I'm sorry if I hurt you," Castiel said, to which Dean replied by slinking onto Castiel's lap and kissing him until their breath was gone.
Dean only pulled back once, to card a hand through Castiel's hair and say, "I'm sorry you lost him."
Castiel smirked and shrugged, his hands finding Dean's hips, and said, "If it allows me this, I can bear the loss easily."
"Amen to that," Dean murmured with a smirk, and leaned in close to kiss Castiel again.
Chuck crumples up the page and tosses it into the garbage on top of an empty milk jug and a tub of freezer-burnt Phish Food.
No one says this crap in real life.
He slaps the rest of the mail on the kitchen counter and pours two fingers of scotch, then drinks it down in one go.
It doesn't bode well for the rest of the day, but Chuck is finally back home, not dealing with Horsemen and apocalypses and epic plagues. He's back with his fridge full of beer and his shitty outdated computer, his own bed and the ability to walk around all day without pants if he wants. It's not a perfect world, and yeah, it is still ending a little more each minute, but all he knows is that it didn't end ten days ago when by all rights it should have, and nobody died (for long, anyway), and it's a new day and life looks surprisingly bright and promising.
Except apparently the Springfield motel didn't take kindly to the grimy blue Civic that took up permanent residence in its parking lot, and decided to have it towed. Then re-possessed. Then possibly compacted into a tiny metal cube. Chuck's not entirely sure. All he knows is that he's got an answering machine full of what might be death threats and a court summons stuffed in his mail between letters from OMG YOUR BIGGEST FAN and the new Chinese place down the street.
He thinks, belatedly, that it's probably an eat-in kind of night.
And that he's definitely going to need another drink.
end
the angel;
The first clear burst of Dean's voice saying something other than his name startles Castiel enough that he loses both time and space and ends up flat on his back in a swaying wheat field. The black of the sky lumbers above, the inscrutable distance of the stars he could once travel. Dean's voice is a tear through his skull, a bolt as bright and powerful as lightning straight from Zeus' hand.
Don't, he is saying. Cas, don't, don't, please.
Castiel crushes his hands over his ears and stands, slowly. "Quiet," he says, but Dean doesn't listen.
The wheat sways and dips in the soft rustle of a breeze. It is an open field, boundless as it rises toward the flat horizon. The reeds tickle Castiel's palms as he passes them over the tops, as he walks and carves a careful path through the field without trampling any stalks. Dean is becoming a louder cacophony and Castiel feels his breaths coming faster, his blood singing with light, his control slipping.
He stumbles because these feet are not his own and because these are the legs of a sleeping man, a dead man. He rises and the soil clings to his knees and stains his clothing.
Please, please don't, Cas, don't -
Castiel crushes a handful of wheat stalks, the low murmur of his human voice breaking apart into the piercing hum of his true tone. He sighs when Dean's pleading tapers to stunned silence. "I have to, Dean. For you."
Just as soon Dean is back, and Castiel clamps his hands over his ears and screams from his human throat, "Shut up!"
Dean doesn't.
By the time he moves himself through space to an empty crossroads and buries the box of charms with the picture Gabriel slipped into his pocket, Dean is nearly unbearable. There is but a thin thread tethering Castiel to his vessel and Dean has begun screaming not only in desperation but in pain, as the constant shine of Castiel's light begins to eat through what remains of him. Castiel's chest aches fiercely with it, that in order to save Dean he must hurt him as well.
The demon Crowley comes easily, drawn by the scent of an angel. He smiles at the sight of Castiel's ragged frame, hunched and shaking, plagued by shivers of light that bleed from his eyes and chase along his flesh. Castiel straightens as much as he can as the demon moves closer, all swagger and none of the fear that a demon should have in the face of an angel.
"Well fuck me," he says with a satisfied snort. "Didn't know it was my birthday."
"You came quickly," Castiel replies, then chokes on a spasm deep in his throat. His control over this body is slipping, slow and sure.
Crowley shrugs and tucks his hands firmly in the pockets of his overcoat. "Real live angel, begging for my services? Sets the alarm bells a-ringing, old boy. It's like fresh blood to lions, you can't expect me to stay away from something this delicious."
"Gabriel said you might help me."
Please please Cas, Castiel, no, don't, not you, Cas -
Castiel slams his eyes shut as he hears Crowley make a small noise. "Maybe, maybe not. Let's see what's on the table before we draw any conclusions, shall we?"
"Dean," Castiel says instantly. "Dean needs your help."
He explains the tangled situation they've been thrown into - the seals, the Horseman, the prophecy, Lucifer's subversive plot. Crowley's eyebrows slowly climb up his forehead as Castiel speaks, his slow smirk and nod the barest signals of his comprehension. When all the breath is exhausted from Castiel's body - his and Dean's and Jimmy's body - Crowley bites at his lip and begins pacing.
"That's heavy magic you're talking," he says. "The good, dark stuff. Hell magic."
"I know," Castiel sighs, though each part of him thrashes against it. But Dean is burning and Crowley offers the only alternative and Castiel is willing to put aside allegiances for this, for Dean. He is not above begging, even begging demons.
He thinks perhaps he would fall at the feet of Lucifer himself if it meant keeping Dean alive.
"And what," Crowley says as he stops in front of Castiel, close enough to feel the blackness rolling off him in waves, the filth and ichor and stink of Hell ingrained in each fiber that constructs him. He tilts his head, curious. "What would an angel, a half angel at that, offer me? Road goes both ways. If I were to give you this spell, what, pray tell, would be your collateral?"
The eyes crawling across Castiel's face are hungry and despicable; he finds himself shuddering beneath their weight. "Protection. From the Winchesters and myself, as well as any other humans."
Crowley clicks his teeth and shakes his head, unconvinced. "I'm a big boy, you know. I get on alright as it is, with or without your protection. Gotta sweeten the pot if you want to deal with me, mate."
Castiel flicks his eyes upward until he is staring into bottomless black. "Please," he whispers, slow and sincere. "I can't offer years, but anything else is yours to take freely. Any favor, any act that won't harm the Winchesters or Bobby Singer. I will be in your debt as long as you see fit, but please. If Dean dies, Lucifer wins without a fight and we all die. Even you."
For a long moment there is only the depths of black roving across Castiel's skin that flashes with light and power, that threatens to rip apart at any moment. Crowley squints and sighs and tilts his head as if appraising, and Castiel feels ready to collapse with the effort of keeping himself contained and keeping Dean safe, ready to unravel hopelessly when the demon declines his offer.
But then Crowley says, "alright, deal," and the words pierce Castiel like a gunshot.
"Anything I want," Crowley clarifies with a finger pointed at Castiel's chest. "Protection and anything I want."
Castiel nods, trembling with the promise of a solution, finally, a solution. "If it is within my power to give, yes."
"Your kind's not even supposed to be dealing with me, you know," Crowley says quickly, a hint of amusement in his voice. "I think this is a first."
Castiel stares as the demon moves closer and hooks a cool hand around the back of his neck, drags him close. Crowley grins and whispers, "I'll be gentle," then kisses him and seals the deal.
There is a burn in the contact, a sting beyond the slight nip of Crowley's teeth catching Castiel's lip. The filth and sin of Hell pours into Castiel's mouth through the contact, a bitter taste and acidic awareness scalding his tongue and sliding down the line of his throat. It is a heavy and aching knowledge, that he owes an outstanding debt to a demon, but as Crowley licks at his mouth with a serpentine grace unnecessary for such a transaction, as he withdraws with a hum and Castiel sees the barest hints of honesty in his smirking face, he reminds himself that it was worth it.
Dean will live, and that is worth any deal with devils.
~ ~ ~
sam;
He's had his stupid moments of desperation where dealing with demons seemed like a good idea, and Dean has had his even stupider moments of the same, but Sam never expected to see Castiel of all people - the only angel with his head on straight, it seems, the one pure and righteous one in the lot - stroll through the door with a demon trailing willingly at his heels.
Sam is on his feet in a heartbeat as Bobby loads a salt round and Chuck scrambles behind the couch with a yelp. "What the hell is he doing here?" Sam demands.
Crowley, with his sharp wool overcoat and soft kid-leather gloves, looks disproportionately out of place in the dusty wreck of Bobby's house. He swivels around to level a glare in Bobby's direction and says, "You can put your toys away now. Takes a lot more than a dash of that stuff to knock me down anyway, I can guarantee that."
"What do you want?" Sam snarls, prickling as the question is met with a snide laugh.
Castiel raises his hand and Sam winces in something like sympathy: he looks the very definition of awful. Castiel's eyes are dull and reddened at the rims, his skin bloodless and beaded with a fine mist of sweat. He swallows and says, shakily, "Sam, please. This is the only - " he wavers, steadies himself against the door jamb - "only way to help Dean."
"By making deals with demons? That never works out well, in case you didn't notice." Sam gestures loosely to himself, then to Dean. He stares hard at Crowley, who smiles pleasantly in return. "They're all just lying rats."
Crowley grounds his jaw and leans into Castiel's space, speaking in a low voice but still audible. "Now that's just bloody rude. Not exactly the friendliest bunch, are they?" He sniffs disdainfully and eyes the piles of books scattered across every surface. "Not very good housekeepers either."
"Castiel," Sam says slowly. "Get. Him. Out of here."
Castiel shakes his head and lurches forward, coughing a bright flash of light as he finds the back of a chair and squeezes it for support. "No," he breathes raggedly. "He is here to help."
"Look, nobody's making any - "
"The deal is made, Sam," Castiel cuts in. Sam blinks and takes in the trembling slouch of Castiel's shoulders, the silver pops of light that are bright enough now that Sam has to squint against them. He's barely holding on, Sam thinks, and he wonders what exactly Castiel gave for this.
He swallows and the room goes silent save for the rasp of Castiel's strained breathing, stuttered and irregular, like a man who doesn't know how to consciously keep a rhythm. He is weaker than Sam has ever seen him, yet at the same time something great and terrible that can't be contained by human flesh, and he's frightening and reeling in pain and trying, trying so hard to make everything right, to get Dean back. Sam feels a sharp slice of fondness dart along his spine as he watches Castiel's head fall forward against his chest, his eyes squeeze into tiny wrinkles, his mouth move to struggle for breath.
"Alright then," Crowley pipes up after a beat. "I'll need some things. Hopefully they're on hand already, I don't think wingless here can hold out for a trip to the quickie mart." He glances briefly at Castiel, then firmly at Sam, then Bobby. "Boys? Not going to make me fish through your cupboards myself now, are you?"
The shotgun in Bobby's grip lowers for the first time as he stares hard at Sam - for guidance, for a signal, for acceptance. Sam sighs heavily and shrugs his hands out at his sides and ignores the anxious thrill thrumming through his body like a second pulse. "What do you need?"
~ ~ ~
the prophet;
Now this is something he never saw coming.
And Chuck sees most things coming.
Prophet, and all.
Not this though.
Angels and demons working together, making deals, performing rituals? It just doesn't happen. This is one of those things that would get red-inked to death and eventually used as nothing more than a coaster. It's just unrealistic.
Except apparently it is all kinds of real after all, because there's a circle of black candles on the floor and the stink of burning belladonna curling through the air, and Castiel is literally holding hands with a demon and letting him split a three-inch gash along his forearm with a silver blade, and, okay. This is the part where Chuck looks away. Very far away.
"Espergefacias," Crowley is saying, interspersed with other crazy Latin mumbo jumbo. It all sounds alike to Chuck at this point. He never really put much stock in learning Latin. He had a guy for that, someone down at the editor's office with a bachelor's in classical languages. Now he's wishing he remembered a bit more of it, because everybody else knows what's going on and he feels quite magnificently left out of the loop.
At some point Castiel joins in the chanting, then Sam, then Bobby. No one asks Chuck to join in. He wonders if they forgot he's even here.
Wouldn't be the first time.
A yellow spike of flame spears into the air and Chuck watches with a certain mixture of disgust and fear as, beneath the bloodied sheet, Dean's back bows up from the floor. Sam makes a noise like he's choking and Chuck doesn't make a noise at all because he's too freaked out to do much else but gape and tremble and nearly bug his eyes straight out of their sockets.
Dean thumps back to the floor and arches again, then gasps and tightens the angle where his spine bends. Castiel groans something obscene as the windows shake and Crowley says, "Might want to shut your eyes."
Chuck doesn't because a) he's seen an angel before already and his eyes haven't been burned out yet, and b) even if his eyes did get burned out it wouldn't be such a bad thing. At least he could file for disability.
Across the room, Sam hisses out a breath and goes to his knees, hands over his ears. Bobby covers his too, while Crowley shrinks back with a hiss to shield himself from the furious mass of energy and liquid light swirling through the room, the vague shape of something not quite human born out of Castiel's body and grown huge enough to fill up every corner. Chuck blinks and blocks his ears when a shrill hum vibrates through the air; Dean, it sounds like, but he can't make out anything certain.
Maybe father. Maybe please. Chuck doesn't give it much thought.
In the amorphous shape bleeding out of Castiel's body he deciphers a set of furious blue eyes and incandescent flesh, if it could be called flesh; a soft mouth and long thin arms, threateningly huge wings more built of ribbons and pure light than actual feathers; a pair of elegant hands moving toward Dean and bracing his face so the non-shape-angel-thing can move close enough to fasten its mouth to Dean's, pouring a bright stream of light and life into him.
This thing - it - Castiel - moves to press a hand to Dean's chest, and Chuck finds himself clutching at his own when the tapered fingers sink smoothly through flesh and bone, right into the center of Dean's ribs without ever breaking the surface. It just passes right through him, hot knife to butter.
Chuck makes a small, wouldn't-have-expected-that noise and shakes his head. "I'll be damned," he mumbles.
The hand withdraws and the vague shape hovering above him says Dean in its deafening roar of a voice as it kisses Dean's mouth again.
Then Chuck blinks and the impossible form and all its lights are gone, bound within the slight body that they've all become accustomed to equating with Castiel.
Even though that is very much not what Castiel himself looks like. Chuck can attest to that firsthand.
The Novak guy is much nicer looking, considering he...well, has a body at all.
Angels aren't the easiest things to wrap your head around.
Not that they're hideous, but - Chuck finds himself letting out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding - they're just so far removed and different, so vast and genuinely beautiful it physically hurts.
Sort of like the dull thump of Castiel's body faceplanting into the floor. Chuck gives a sympathetic cringe.
Then jumps a good ten feet in the air when the lifeless shape that's been Dean for the past eight hours gasps long and loud and fights its way from under the sheet and scrambles clear across the room within the span of two-point-five seconds.
There's a scuffle of panicked movement as Sam gasps and calls his brother's name, and as Dean pants and asks what the ever-loving fuck is going on, and as Chuck maneuvers himself around the couch to sit down so it won't hurt quite as bad when he passes out.
Not if. When.
Nobody should have to deal with this shit.
He's just a writer, for Christ's sake.
Okay, yeah, and apparently a prophet, but he never dreamed this part. This is all still new and very shocking and very weird.
A scramble of words and action as Chuck sits and rubs his forehead and pointedly does not try to make anything make sense. The sheet with Dean's dried blood is at his feet, stiff and stained. Chuck toes it away and leans back into the springs that jab through the threadbare cushions.
He hears Crowley sigh and say, "Be seein' ya then." Dean hoarsely demands to know what the hell he means, but Crowley just says, "Don't forget about your friend here, yeah? Just saved your arse, he did. Might want to show a little gratitude."
Nobody responds after that, so Chuck guesses Crowley left without waiting for one.
They all just breathe and Sam is making some undignified noise that's probably crying. Chuck scratches at his eyes and wonders if he should have toned down on the teary heart to hearts in the past. He wonders if it would be too late to change it now.
Someone moves closer and Chuck opens his eyes to see Sam picking Castiel up from the floor, draping him limply over an arm and lifting him into a nearby chair. Castiel slumps lifelessly and Chuck has just enough time to think huh, should have seen that one coming, before Sam is pressing two fingers below the angel's jaw and saying, "He's alive. Just unconscious."
Chuck expects Dean to sigh in relief. At least fling out a witty quip or an oh thank god.
Instead he looks up to Dean and sees nothing but naked fear on his face as he stares at Castiel's pliant, deceptively human body.
Dean rubs at his mouth and takes a deep breath and walks out of the house, slamming the door behind him as he goes.
~ ~ ~
dean;
It doesn't make any sense. It seriously does not make any sense.
Dean paces and trembles and walks in circles around the yard and it doesn't get any easier to understand or accept.
Daylight is bright outside, filled with birdsong and scents of sweet pine, apple blossoms, engine oil. It smells as much like home as anything outside of the Impala does, and it's gorgeous and slow and missing something. Dean can't say what it is, but there's something not whole about it all, like a block in his center has been removed and he's about to topple with each rattle of breeze.
His skin feels infant and new, like he's just shed an old one, like he's just been reborn. The wind feels amazing, close to painful in its purity.
He keeps his eyes open until they're stinging and brimmed with dry tears, because if he closes them he sees light that's too bright and hands that are too big and eyes that are too furious and bottomless, so blue it's stupid, wings that are seamless fluid instead of feathers, pure energy, pure grace.
He closes his eyes and he sees Castiel.
Real Castiel.
And he opens them again because he can't, because he doesn't want to. Because it's terrifying and it's too real and it makes him feel gutted, makes him want to scream and cry and pull himself apart and say thank you thank you thank you.
But he can't do it.
He can't say thank you. He can't even go inside.
He stays on the porch and listens to the wind, because he's shaking and terrified and he can't look at Castiel's familiar face now that he's truly seen him.
Dean has no idea how to approach or forget that, and he's scared and he's lonely and he feels sensitive and sewn out of scar tissue and more alive than ever. He goes back inside long enough to swipe his keys from the kitchen cabinet before he leaves again, climbs into his baby and starts her up. She's loud, and she sounds glad to see him but the rumble fades and everything is too quiet. Too quiet compared to Castiel.
He throws her into second and takes off like a shot. His phone rings after a few minutes but he doesn't answer it.
He just drives, and drives, and lets the wind sting his eyes until the tears are flowing like fucking Niagara, and he plays Metallica as loud as it will go until a speaker blows, and he sings along in a shout to have something to fill his ears, and nothing is enough and he keeps on driving and driving and doesn't stop.
~ ~ ~
the angel;
He wakes up folded into the relative softness of a bed with the diagonal beams of a roof above - Bobby's loft. Or, as he knows it, Dean's room.
His feet are bare when he wiggles his toes. Sam must have seen fit to remove his shoes before laying him here. Castiel blinks slowly and draws in a meticulous breath, closes his eyes and sighs it out long and low.
There is no pain. No terrible wrenching and pushing, no screaming or thrashing or clawing. There is the steady song of one slowed pulse and the static silence of Jimmy's unresponsive sleep; nothing else.
Dean is gone.
Dean is safe.
Castiel allows his lips to curve into a smile as he breathes, slow and even for the first time in what seems like ages. He lies still, stretches his fingers, bows his back. These muscles - his muscles - stretch and contract, glide smoothly over bone and tendon, fed and oxygenated by warm blood. He is in each of these cells, Castiel thinks. He is this body.
It is a strange awareness, his attachment to this physicality. The energy within him stretches and languishes, rolls loosely through arteries and nerves, organs and flesh and tiny things like the thin hairs sprouting from his skin, the sensitive ridges of his fingerprints, the brush and slip of fabric across his flesh. He reacquaints himself with this body and fits into it once more, aching for the loss of Dean but grateful he no longer has to shrink himself small and dim enough to be perceived without consequences.
Through the strips of it visible through dusty slatted blinds, the day is bright and lazy and rich with color.
Castiel utters a quick prayer of gratitude to his Father before spreading his arms over the bed and allowing his eyes to close, his blood to thrum, his heart to beat, a slow and steady cadence calming enough that he passes seamlessly into a light sleep.
~ ~ ~
sam;
It takes each sliver of restraint pooled into Sam's body to keep his tongue from spitting the predictable, albeit admittedly fussy, where the hell have you been? by the time Dean walks back through the door almost seven hours later. Sam launches off the couch to meet him at the door, but swallows the rant back to silence.
Dean tosses his keys on the sofa table and sighs, looks around, looks up. He says, "Sammy," in greeting with a simple smile, like nothing out of the ordinary has been going on for the past...well, thirty years. Like he hasn't just died and shared a body with an angel, been brought back by Hell magic and - Sam shakes his head in lieu of finishing the thought, because the past twenty-four hours have just been too weird to quantify.
"Dean," Sam stammers back, the word hanging open at the end, the what the hell are you smoking? implied without actually saying.
Dean sucks in a breath and looks away, eyes skittish, typically guarded. He clearly doesn't want to talk about it, even though Sam very much does.
It's not so different than their everyday lives, when Sam really thinks about it.
"Had to clear my head," Dean says after a pause. When Sam quirks an eyebrow, he snorts a soft laugh. "Bunking with an angel is... It kind of scrambles up the gray matter. Kind of a lot."
"Are you okay?"
Dean paws the question away with a hand through the air between them. "Nah, I'm fine. Set me up with a beer - or like, eight - and I'll come around. Just gotta get my head straight."
Sam nods and gives a mousey, "Okay."
Dean laughs tightly after a pause when Sam's feet refuse to move. "Sammy, I'm fine. Look at me, I'm here. I'm healed, okay? Not dead. I'm good."
A river of apologies and admissions floods across the back of Sam's tongue - I'm sorry I couldn't save you, I'm sorry I made you go through that, I'm sorry I couldn't make the deal, I'm sorry it was you, I'm sorry for putting you through Hell, again and again and again - but he doesn't voice any of them. He just nods and twitches uncomfortably, smiles and says, "Yeah, you're good. We're good."
"Seal still broke," Dean sighs.
"Yeah."
Dean's hands sink into his pockets. "We didn't stop it. Pestilence still won."
Sam shuffles, digging for some ray of optimism. "Guess we know not to try and outrun any more of Chuck's visions now."
Dean makes a vaguely disgruntled sound in the back of his throat. "But you didn't die, and I died and came back, so - "
"Could be worse."
"Could totally be worse."
Sam winces; Dean grins.
There's a bright slap on his shoulder and Sam only notices belatedly that Dean has moved past him, into the kitchen where he's twisting open a beer and leaning back against a cabinet, one ankle slung over the other, flipping the cap over his shoulder to clatter quietly into the sink.
He's just come out of the ass end of one of the stickiest situations they've ever found themselves tangled up in, yet he's tipping his head back with a long swig of cheap beer and he's still exponentially cooler than Jim Stark on any of his better days.
Dean hands him a beer and clinks the necks together and they sit and drink and don't talk about anything in particular. Sam can see from the way Dean's eyes occasionally go distant, or the way he rubs at his forehead or stares at familiar objects like they're foreign, that he's shaken, that some part of him is still working through the impossible logic of sharing space with an angel; but they don't talk about it.
Sam wonders what he saw, if he saw. How Castiel sounded and looked and felt up close, if angels really are as terrible as he imagines.
But Dean's not telling and Sam's not asking - not for now, at least - and for the moment, having Dean back at all is more than enough to quell his curiosity.
~ ~ ~
dean;
There is a moment of stillness when they find each other for the first time.
It took five hours of driving and two hours of staring into a lake from the end of a pier too shaky to be any kind of safe; two beers and half an hour gabbing about seals and game plans with Sam before Dean found his center again, what he needed to be calm and together.
And right now he's staring it in the face, its eyes too big and open, strangely nervous and expectant. His center. Cas.
Dean says, stupidly enough, "Hey." The door shuts behind him with a muted click; his boots scuff on the floorboards and everything still sounds too new.
Castiel swallows and says, "Dean."
Of course he would.
He's sitting on the bed, his usual stiff and weird self, but Dean noticed how his hands clenched on the blankets when he walked in.
Dean moves around the room, finds himself touching random objects - a belt here, a lightswitch there, the nicked edge of a table, the embossing of a quarter, smooth blown glass. Their textures are raw and rich, profound against his infant fingers. Before he ever thinks about speaking again, several minutes have ticked by.
Castiel clears his throat, low and awkward; it makes Dean smile to himself, just a little. "Are you alright?"
Dean shrugs, nods. "I'm alive. Thanks to you."
"I apologize if I hurt you. I did my best to shield you, but - "
"Water under the bridge, Cas." He shuts his eyes and feels instantly weightless, suspended on nothing but empty air and light. There are spinning ribbons that Dean can't quite make himself call wings, swirls and limbs and it's a fucking mindjob if there ever was such a thing, but it's beautiful. "And I wouldn't call it hurting, you just - kind of freaked me out, is all."
"I'm sorry," Castiel says, small and sincere.
"Maybe a little bit of hurt," Dean says through a smile that Castiel doesn't return. "Nothing I couldn't handle, though."
Castiel looks down to his lap and doesn't move.
After a long pause and another pass around the room, Dean stops in front of him and plants his feet, crosses his arms. "How long?"
Castiel glances back up, eyes all wide and innocent, and Dean can't help but shiver because he knows what's behind them. He's seen it himself in a way he never thought he would, or could and live to tell about it.
"How many years, Cas?"
"That wasn't our currency." Castiel pauses long enough to wet his lips with a brief dart of tongue. "I could offer much more than that to the demon Crowley and I suspect he knew as much."
Dean bristles and, fleetingly, really wishes Castiel would stop making all these grand, unreturnable sacrifices for him. It's a lot for a guy to handle. "So what was it?"
"Protection." He looks back down again, to that fascinating place between his feet. "And a favor to be named later."
Dean wants to rant and squawk and call Castiel a stupid sonofabitch, he wants to ask why the hell you would do something like that, what possessed you to make such a dumb fucking move, but then he remembers that he was burning alive and he remembers Castiel, and Castiel looks up to stare him straight in the face this time and says, "I'm glad you're back."
And Dean just doesn't care, he doesn't care at all.
He's on Castiel in an instant, holding the curve of his jaw in his fingers and kissing him hard, licking at his lips and hitching a breath when Castiel opens far easier to him than Dean ever expected. Castiel makes a soft, stunned noise when Dean crawls into his lap and finds two handfuls of thick hair, hair he wants to rake through and hold tight and feel tickle his belly.
It's all elbows and knees for a few moments while Dean fights Castiel out of his coats and flips them over, pulls Castiel into his lap, tight against him so they're flush, and it's good, it's so good.
Castiel tastes like sweet water and human skin and vanilla shampoo, hint of metal and gunpowder, and his arms are solid slender things that wrap nicely around Dean's shoulders. His angles are perfect and his breath is hot and his mouth is soft and wet, his throat stretching back with a long groan as Dean latches on below his Adam's apple and sucks.
Dean mumbles into the pale curve of his neck, nonsense and so fucking hot, Cas, and Castiel gasps and shudders and squeezes his shoulders. He touches Dean's neck, the back of Dean's hand that's settled into the bend of Castiel's waist, with light, tentative brushes like he's afraid he'll burn a new set of prints into Dean's skin if he holds on too long.
Dean shivers and moans low in his throat when he realizes that he actually might.
He shuts his eyes and it's pure light, enough to swallow him up and make him lose himself in the climb of his hand along Castiel's spine to nest in his hair, in the slow roll of Castiel's hips and the hungry redness of his mouth. "Cas," he says, then again, hard and broken.
Castiel tips his head back and makes a strangled sound, rides his hips again, one more time before he's tensing and shrinking back and saying, "Dean, wait, no."
Dean's initial response is to bite a little harder at the pink-flushed skin showing under Castiel's collar.
But Castiel holds his shoulders tighter and bends his throat away, stares across the short inches between them and his eyes are blown wide, all pupil, all want, but they're also soft and regretful, apologetic, sad.
Dean's hand slips down the s-curve of Castiel's spine to rest at the sharp jut of his hip. "What's a matter?"
Castiel's lips purse into a tight line as he shakes his head, just barely. Blunt fingernails skate through Dean's hair, the movement shooting straight into his bloodstream and going everywhere at once. "I need consent."
Dean can only blink. Blink and move his hands lower to grip the juncture of hip and thigh. "Consent? Cas. You're givin' me the blue balls of a lifetime here, I think that's more than enough consent."
A smile, soft and slow, and the quiet exhalation of not-quite laughter that Dean's only heard once, maybe twice, in years. "This body is not my own, Dean."
Oh.
Dean tightens up his jaw. "You don't mean my consent, do you?"
Castiel's head shakes with a pointed sigh. "I'm sorry."
There's nothing else to do but nod, so Dean does just that. He doesn't let Castiel go yet, though. He's not ready to. "Any word on, you know. When that'll be?"
He tries desperately to force a smile, he really does, but judging by the sympathetic wince on Castiel's face it comes out as more of a grimace. Another pet through his hair, a warm sheet of breath across his face, and Dean's thumbs can't stop brushing at the warm slice of skin just below Castiel's shirt.
"He is asleep," Castiel nearly whispers. "He has been, since my return. But he is still here, and this body is still his own as long he is. I must honor that."
Dean stares for a long time before pressing his forehead into Castiel's collarbone, and wonders why it is that the one thing, the only thing, the best thing, is always so utterly unattainable.
"I'm sorry," Castiel says, then kisses the top of Dean's head, wraps his arms tight around Dean's shoulders and holds on. He even repeats it, I'm sorry breathed out against Dean's temple, as if Dean didn't already know how deeply he meant it the first time.
But Dean did. He felt it in the tremor of Castiel's body, saw it in the tragedy of his eyes. He felt the truth right down to his bones and beyond.
"It's okay," he says after a while, because strangely, it is. He can't explain why and he's not easily going to cop to waiting for an innocent guy to die and leave his body for the taking, for Dean's taking, but Dean thinks that if anyone's entitled to be a little selfish after the shit they've been through, it's him. And he wants Castiel, selfishly and completely, all for himself.
But then he's already got him, in all ways but one. It's a minimal thing, at best. So when he looks up and smiles at Castiel's shaky lack of expression and says it's okay, what he really means is, it's okay.
It takes him a minute or two or three, but eventually Castiel nods and tilts the corners of his mouth up just barely in as much of a smile as he ever smiles, and says, "Okay."
It's tense and too tender and Dean's dying, burning up now more than he was before, so he fakes a cough and tacks on a smirk. "Just so we're clear, though, even with our pal Jimmy hanging around I can still at least kiss you, right? 'Cause that's kind of a dealbreaker and, swear to God, I think you've created a monster."
Castiel's lip curls back over a hint of teeth before he's sweeping long fingers around the base of Dean's skull and pulling him close to kiss him hard, a slow and deep aching tangle that has Dean's pulse wildly erratic in half a second or less.
"I will kiss you just to quiet your blasphemies, Dean Winchester," Castiel slurs into his mouth, and kisses him and kisses him and Dean is burning up and he's all hands, and it's ridiculous and perfect and enough.
~ ~ ~
the prophet;
He finds the page almost a month later, water-blotted and creased to shit, while scrounging for the last quarter he needs to start the dryer. The coin slips into the slot with a dink and the dryer starts its thunderous whir as Chuck makes his way out the door and down the street, stopping by the mailbox on his way. It's chock full and overflowing, but ninety-five percent of it is junk. Four percent is bills stamped final notice. The other one percent he doesn't categorize yet; just tucks it under his elbow and concentrates on unfolding the page from his back pocket. One side is covered in indecipherable dots and dashes that look kind of like some arcane language, but the other...
- but not really. It wasn't like Hell, though, it was - "
Dean's voice caught on a breath as Castiel rubbed a thumb over his knuckle.
"Overwhelming and bizarre, but after a while I realized it wasn't pain. It was just... light." They both smiled; Dean's lopsided and boyish, Castiel's guarded and unfamiliar.
"I'm sorry if I hurt you," Castiel said, to which Dean replied by slinking onto Castiel's lap and kissing him until their breath was gone.
Dean only pulled back once, to card a hand through Castiel's hair and say, "I'm sorry you lost him."
Castiel smirked and shrugged, his hands finding Dean's hips, and said, "If it allows me this, I can bear the loss easily."
"Amen to that," Dean murmured with a smirk, and leaned in close to kiss Castiel again.
Chuck crumples up the page and tosses it into the garbage on top of an empty milk jug and a tub of freezer-burnt Phish Food.
No one says this crap in real life.
He slaps the rest of the mail on the kitchen counter and pours two fingers of scotch, then drinks it down in one go.
It doesn't bode well for the rest of the day, but Chuck is finally back home, not dealing with Horsemen and apocalypses and epic plagues. He's back with his fridge full of beer and his shitty outdated computer, his own bed and the ability to walk around all day without pants if he wants. It's not a perfect world, and yeah, it is still ending a little more each minute, but all he knows is that it didn't end ten days ago when by all rights it should have, and nobody died (for long, anyway), and it's a new day and life looks surprisingly bright and promising.
Except apparently the Springfield motel didn't take kindly to the grimy blue Civic that took up permanent residence in its parking lot, and decided to have it towed. Then re-possessed. Then possibly compacted into a tiny metal cube. Chuck's not entirely sure. All he knows is that he's got an answering machine full of what might be death threats and a court summons stuffed in his mail between letters from OMG YOUR BIGGEST FAN and the new Chinese place down the street.
He thinks, belatedly, that it's probably an eat-in kind of night.
And that he's definitely going to need another drink.
end