Trust (D/C; NC-17)
Spoilers Up to 6.20/The Man Who Would Be King
Wordcount 4,578
It’s less than ten minutes since Castiel beamed out, and Dean is on his third shot when he gets the familiar feeling that prickles the back of his neck. He pushes up from the couch, leans to pick up the bottle, pads into the kitchen and hooks another glass off the drainer. Are you going to show yourself?” he says hoarsely into the dark beside him.
He hasn’t even finished the sentence before he feels the static snap around him. Castiel is standing there, just like Dean knew he was before he even spoke, impassive, crumpled, unkempt and frayed, so damn normal, only now nothing will ever be the same again. He isn’t even really looking at Dean, but he holds out his hand, offers Dean a piece of paper. “Like I said. Some of your warding sigils are incorrect,” he says quietly. He hovers there cautiously, hand extended, and after a minute he casts his eyes down, withdraws, and puts the paper on the countertop. “You should get them fixed.”
Dean takes another swallow, drains the glass. He feels lightheaded, and not just from the liquor. It’s a mix of resignation and pent-up rage, speeding up his breath and giving him butterflies that zip about angrily in the pit of his gut. “For all I know, that could open a channel of communication straight from here to your partner,” he snaps spitefully.
There’s a brief silence before a noncommittal reply. “For all you know, it could.”
Dean looks up again, into a familiar, measured stare that pins him in place, only the angel’s eyes are faded and weary looking in the dim light. Castiel gazes at Dean, clears his throat, and he sounds suddenly hesitant, like he isn’t really sure he wants to hear Dean’s answer.
“You don’t think I left Sam’s soul behind on purpose, do you?”
Dean puts his glass down, shields his face with his palms, fingertips massaging his eyes, closed against this godawful mess for a moment. “No,” he concedes finally, and he hears the breath of relief Castiel releases. For some reason it sparks a flash of impotent, savage anger at the knowledge he’s been led by his dick, just like his brother was, and, “If you’d known, you’d have come up with some lie about it when I asked you to check if his soul was there,” Dean follows up acidly, hands dropping back to his sides, fingers clenching. “Isn’t as if you’d want me sniffing around your deal with Crowley, is it? And it’s not like I could’ve checked.”
Castiel shifts uncomfortably, floats his own hand up and rubs it across his brow, an echo of the nervous gesture Dean just made, and Dean knows the angel caught that habit from him. His voice is even lower, and all schooled calm when he responds. “Is that the only reason you believe me?”
Dean studies his friend as the silence stretches out in the chasm between them, and Castiel blinks hard before his eyes dart away, flitting around like he’s as panicked as he was when Bobby lit up the trap Dean helped set for him. His expression goes crestfallen and hurt, and he reaches up to fold his arms around himself as he starts to turn.
“Wait,” Dean relents, because he can feel the air starting to ripple, and it gives him a raw, tugging feeling inside, like it’s ripping the band-aid off the gaping, suppurating wound Castiel hacked into him with his betrayal.
Castiel stops dead, glances back, and maybe he’s expectant, and maybe there’s a hopeful glow of relief in his eyes.
Dean shrugs carelessly. “You screwed it up. But we wouldn’t have had him to resoul in the first place if you hadn’t pulled him out.” And dammit, he doesn’t want to give the angel any more than he has, because his rage is still set to simmer and it’s bubbling away inside him, but he can’t help himself. “And no,” he adds grudgingly. “It isn’t the only reason.” He exhales long and feelingly then, leans to snag the whiskey bottle, and pours a few fingers of the liquor into both glasses before he slides the spare across the countertop. “You look like you could use a drink.”
Castiel moves closer, all exaggerated care, tense and poised for action, like he thinks he needs to be on his guard, like he thinks he might have to jump out of the line of fire at any minute, which Dean supposes is actually true. When he reaches for the glass, his hand is shaking.
“You and Crowley,” Dean barks out ferociously.
Castiel’s hand freezes in mid-air. “It was the lesser of two evils. At least that’s how it seemed at the time.”
He waits a second, extends his hand the rest of the way, slow, but when he snatches at the glass it’s desperate, and as he raises it to his mouth he’s gripping it so tight Dean can see his knuckles gleam. He downs the contents in one gulp, his other hand fluttering uselessly at his side, fingers strumming the air.
Dean scowls. “The lesser of two evils? Crowley?”
Castiel’s jaw tightens stubbornly. “There was a precedent for Crowley helping us,” he defends.
Dean slams down his glass. “Yeah, there was with Ruby too,” he spits. “And look where that got us.” He crowds up closer, his own personal space invasion that sends the angel retreating a few steps. “Did he help you get into the cage?” he demands. “Has this been going on since Stull, have you been fuckin’ spying on me since Stull?”
Castiel’s eyes narrow and glint suddenly. “If Crowley had come to you after Stull and said he knew a way to get Sam out, what would you have done, Dean?” he parries, his tone stronger, almost a challenge.
It settles down and makes itself at home in the corner of the room like the elephant it is, because Dean doesn’t really have an answer, not one that he has any chance of making convincingly. He loses himself briefly in a memory of endless liquor-fueled nights in front of the laptop, sigils, spells, hoodoo, voodoo, rootwork, seidhr, ya sang, white magic, gray magic, black magic, and he wonders if Castiel was watching then and saw how desperate he was.
Castiel doesn’t break his stare. “Crowley didn’t help me,” he says, pointedly. “I did it myself. For you. All you had was your brother in a hole, Dean. Those were your words. I wanted to give you peace.”
Scrubbing a hand through his hair, Dean sidetracks harshly. “How did you even get in there?”
“I reasoned that perhaps the cage wasn’t meant to hold bodily manifestations,” Castiel ventures. “And I was right. It’s like…” He pauses, fumbles for words. “The Death Star. It has exploitable weaknesses. Small but significant flaws.” He raises his hands, airquotes. “Back doors.” He reaches for Dean then, pressing a hand to Dean’s chest, and words spill out of him haltingly. “I tried to redeem Sam, to give him back to you. I left him where you were. I watched him walk away, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t know him as well as I know you, I wasn’t… the next time I saw him, he was at Bobby’s. They both wanted you to have a chance, to be-”
“Don’t you say the word happy to me,” Dean hisses, and he shoves viciously, sending Castiel off-balance and into the wall. “I was never meant to be there, to be in that life. Couldn’t you see that? When you were spykidding me? And if you’d told me Sam was out, that he was at Bobby’s, I wouldn’t have been.” He ignores Castiel’s owlish, confused stare, stabs a finger at the air in front of his face. “I would have been there with Sam, figuring out something was off with him and figuring out a solution that meant he didn’t suffer down there for however many Hell years it adds up to. He did things he might not have done if I’d been with him. And you wanted me to leave him there. Jesus.”
“Lucifer had him, Dean, for all that time,” Castiel protests. “I was afraid of what he might be.”
Dean ignores it, advances, and now it’s his turn to reach out, and he’s gathering up a handful of shirt and tie as his feelings keep pouring out, fractured and painful. “And what the fuck was with you ignoring him when he was calling you for help? After what he did for us? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Castiel is putting up a hand now, maybe defensive, maybe not, and for all Dean knows he’s about to be smited all the way to the crab nebula, but he doesn’t give a shit, he’s pulling back his arm because he’s taking this punch even if he knows it’ll shatter his hand to smithereens. He tugs Castiel towards him, lets swing a right hook that has his full bodyweight behind it, and his fist smashes into the angel’s face, sending him slamming back into the wall again. He crumples down to the floor and sprawls there, staring up at Dean, eyes startled and deer-like, a scarlet eruption of blood oozing from his nose and lip.
Somewhere behind his boiling fury, Dean registers that the blow didn’t hurt him any more than it usually does when he lays out some drunk in a barfight, and he gapes despite himself. “How the fuck did that happen?”
Castiel waves a hand at the windows behind the couch. “I’m tired, that’s how,” he says petulantly. “And the sigils drain me even more. And I couldn’t go when Sam called me… Dean, it’s comp-”
“Well, uncomplicate it for me.” Dean stares down, resolutely ignores the urge to reach out a hand and haul the angel up. “Use short words. Terms I can understand.”
Castiel manages an explosive laugh that’s half bitter, half disbelief. “Terms you’ll understand…” He trails off and puts a hand up to his face, stares at his fingertips bathed in red. “Alright.” He looks up, unblinking. “In terms you’ll understand, Dean. I couldn’t go when Sam called me because I was having the ever-loving shit kicked out of me by my brother.”
It gets Dean just below the belt and winds him at the same time as it has his whole body go so taut he can already feel the headache he’ll wake up with in the morning, but he doesn’t think Castiel notices. The angel is pushing up unsteadily, along to a metallic clinking sound, and Dean doesn’t quite see what he does but there it is between them, glowing silver and offered to him hilt-first.
Castiel tilts his head. “Here,” he says, and it’s weary but there’s a steely resolve underlying his words as he continues. “Do what you will. I can’t do it myself, it’s forbidden. But I won’t fight you, Dean.”
Dean eyeballs his friend for a moment of dawning, sickly horror that slithers around his belly like snakes just hatched in there. “You think I…” He huffs out his distress, snatches the weapon, and it feels comfortable in his hand, as comfortable as the one he gripped and rammed up through Zachariah’s chin in Van Nuys. “You think I could do that?” he grates out roughly. “To you?”
Grimacing weakly, Castiel replies, “Why not? You’ve taken some pretty big fish, after all.” His face is pale, shadows bruising the skin under his eyes, and Dean thinks he suddenly looks old, has an abstract second when he ponders how many miles Jimmy Novak had clocked before Castiel absorbed him into the fabric of his own being.
Dean looks down, studies the sword, tracks from the incandescent metal to the angel again. And he pulls back, swift and aggressive, an echo of the blow he just landed, the blade catching the moonlight and flaring. At the last minute, as the sword rams into the wall beside his head, Castiel closes his eyes.
The universe stands still for a fraction of a second and then Dean leans in close, cups Castiel’s face with both hands. “How could you think that of me?” he says, gentle because his rage is abruptly gone, melting away like ice in the sun, and because even now this is what he needs and where he wants to be, this connection is magnetic, and he’s moving in closer, dragging his thumb through the blood that smears Castiel’s nose and top lip.
Castiel opens his eyes, his gaze dubious. “I don’t really know what to think any more, Dean,” he offers faintly, but he’s moving in too, nuzzling under Dean’s jaw as Dean lays kisses on his face, tongue trailing through coppery fluid.
Dean starts the clumsy, backward shuffle to the couch almost subconsciously, leading Castiel with him, pushing the trench coat and jacket down off the angel’s shoulders to puddle on the floor as they go. He falls back onto the upholstery, pulling Castiel down with him in a tangle of limbs, and it’s suddenly frenzied and racing away from him. But for all that, he’s thinking and plotting, and it’s calculated, deliberate, maybe even cynical. He’s doing the math, because he can maybe fuck Castiel into bending to his will, and he knows it’s emotional blackmail but he doesn’t care. His tongue is rasping its way across Castiel’s stubble and Castiel is mouthing his jaw, mumbling desperate, nonsensical words and phrases against his skin as he roams warm, wild hands up inside Dean’s tee to range across his torso and clutch at his back. He plants wet, bloody, fervent kisses on Dean, and Dean is licking back, sucking on Castiel’s tongue and nipping at his lips. He fumbles his hands down to Castiel’s belt, ripping at the buckle, and he groans at the friction as the angel grinds his crotch hard on the bulge that already tents his jeans.
Castiel pulls up and back, starts picking feverishly at the buttons on Dean’s fly, biting his lips as he concentrates, but he doesn’t look at Dean and Dean thinks maybe he knows what this is. He lifts his hips as the fabric starts sliding down, sits up to rip his tee off, and starts hauling at Castiel’s own pants. Stripped naked, Castiel falls on him, body hard and desperate as he bites at Dean’s throat, cock rigid and hungry against Dean’s.
“Don’t do this,” Dean mutters, as he rakes his fingers hard down Castiel’s back, feeling skin scrape off under his nails as he does. “Stay here with me.” He crashes their mouths together again, teeth clashing and colliding as he fucks his tongue as deep inside as he can. “We can fix it,” he says breathlessly. “Cas. We can.”
Castiel moans out a low cry and his tongue slides frantically between Dean’s lips. And then he’s gone, licking stripes and splotches down Dean’s torso, hand tight and urgent on Dean’s dick, and his mouth a sudden, soaking, searing heat that makes Dean whine, high-pitched and strangled. Castiel sluices the head of his cock with saliva, suckling it frantically, scraping it with sharp teeth, and Dean yelps, thrusts up, hands gripping and twisting in Castiel’s hair as he forces him down to the root. He feels Castiel’s throat constrict and swallow around him, but the angel is distracted, fraught, pulls off with a damp pop, and now he’s lifting Dean’s leg, pushing it back and his tongue is lapping at Dean’s balls and trailing on further down, circling his rim insistently and sloppily.
Dean cranes his neck, mesmerized, as Castiel heaves his ass up off the couch and drapes a leg over each shoulder. He pushes in along to Dean’s incoherent, choked-out lust, opening Dean up with his tongue. It’s deep, slick, messy, greedy, filthy, unholy, and Dean can feel the sounds Castiel is making reverberate straight up inside him, feel the angel’s lips pressed around him there, in the most intimate of kisses. He feels a thicker prod and slide now, digits plunging in to that sparking place inside him, and he reaches for his dick, strips it efficiently, three, four times, until his balls tighten and he’s exploding across his belly, clenching around Castiel’s tongue and fingers as he comes.
Dean feels open, exposed and gaping as Castiel drops him back down. The angel’s erection is curved and eager, and he stares darkly at Dean as he swipes his fingers through the mess splotching Dean’s belly and gives his shaft a cursory lube job. He lines up and Dean can feel him there, blunt and relentless as he nudges in, a steady, relentless glide that burns and aches as his cock stretches and fills Dean. He flops down to drape himself on Dean, shuddering and sweat soaked, buries his face in the crook of Dean’s shoulder, a hand suddenly fisting restlessly in Dean’s hair, his lips and teeth working at Dean’s throat, marking him. He croons unintelligibly, and he might be speaking in tongues but Dean knows it’s devotion, worship, maybe even prayer, and he knows damn well what the angel is telling him.
Dean gathers some sense, remembers his mission. “Cas,” he whispers into hhis friend’s ear. “Listen to me. We can-”
Castiel growls and then he’s on Dean again, kisses fierce and animalistic, teeth sharp on Dean’s lips, eyes flashing fire as he starts to flex his lower body, hips snapping, driving into Dean so that Dean forgets everything except the perfect, solid, incendiary heat of Castiel’s cock as it rams against him inside, splitting him open. The pain is exquisite, the shocky bursts of pleasure light a fuse that sends fire electrifying through all of Dean’s nerves and whiting out his vision, and he didn’t even realize he was hard again but he’s shooting hot and liquid all over Castiel’s belly. He can feel himself clenching hard, gripping tight as if he might hold Castiel there forever, and Castiel stops. There’s an instant of stillness as he gazes down, and Dean reaches up and lays a tender hand on his face, because the angel’s eyes are liquid and yearning. And then he shudders, groans out low and desperate, jerks in once, twice, and collapses on Dean, shaking and sobbing out breath.
Dean presses a hand to his back, rubs it in circles. “You should have come to me,” he whispers.
“I did,” Castiel chokes into Dean’s neck. “But I couldn’t bring myself to ask you for more. You’d given enough.”
Dean swallows thickly, and fuck it if he can’t feel the sting of salt in his eyes. “He’s a demon. How could that ever have seemed like the right thing to do?”
“It never seemed like the right thing to do, Dean,” Castiel says despondently. “But at the time it seemed like the least wrong thing to do.” He chuckles, hollow and humorless. “I was naive. I thought it would be so easy. But freedom, after millennia of obedience… it was incompatible with the culture. If there had been time for a more gradual approach, well… but there wasn’t. It was like-” He pauses a beat. “That movie we watched at Bobby’s, the night before Stull.”
Dean hoiks his eyebrows up skeptically. “The Life of Brian?”
Castiel shrugs in his arms. “Do you remember how Brian kept telling people he wasn’t the Messiah? Telling them they didn’t need to follow anybody, that they could think for themselves, that they were all individuals? And they just kept saying-”
“We’re all individuals.” It’s so many things, but most of all it’s sad, and it spikes Dean in his heart because it makes him think of Castiel’s shy, hopeful confidence about his prospects as Sheriff of Heaven. “And I kept thinking you were up there spreading democracy,” he says. “Bunch of fuckin’ Stepford bitches.”
“Not all of them,” Castiel corrects. “But many of them craved the security of the absolute monarchy. Raphael.” Castiel is resting his head on Dean’s shoulder now, still draped over him, still inside him, and he trails his finger along Dean’s cheek. “He gave me an ultimatum.”
Dean stares back at him. “You should have come to me,” he insists.
The angel smiles ruefully. “I had a day to make my decision, Dean. Down here, it would have been an hour at the most.” He kisses Dean, gentle and considerate now, before he pushes up and eases himself out.
Dean sucks in air at the tug across sensitive skin. “But what about what it does to you?” he says. “Jesus. This - it’s Sam all over again. Only it’s Crowley whispering in your ear instead of Ruby whispering in his.”
Castiel is pulling on his shorts, standing up, and the moonlight from the window makes his skin gleam like mother of pearl. “What it does to me is immaterial.”
“That’s so much shit, Cas,” Dean snaps, sitting up himself. He pats a hand out for his shirt, uses it to wipe tacky semen off his belly as he goes on. “And it isn’t immaterial to me. You compromise yourself this one time, and maybe you win. But what about the next time you’re up shit creek? And you can do things the hard way, the right way, or you can press the easy button again, because who gives a shit about another fifty thousand souls that never existed in the first place?” He sees Castiel slant his eyes towards him fast and surprised, and he nods. “Doesn’t take Einstein to figure out what that crap with the boat was about. Especially after you tapping Bobby.”
Castiel is calm, reasonable even. “Offer me a solution.” He waits a moment, poised in the act of zipping his pants. “See? You don’t have one.” He pulls on his shirt, starts doing up the buttons. “You wouldn’t have had one then either.”
Dean throws up a hand, helpless. “We would have found a way. We don’t make deals with-”
“But we do, Dean,” Castiel replies, with infinite patience. “We do. And I would do whatever it takes to keep you safe. I would do anything.”
Dean scrubs a hand through his hair, shakes his head. “Touché. Spoken like a true Winchester.” He reaches for his own shorts, slides them up his legs. “But I’m here to tell you that you have no idea what that really means. I do, and I know what I’m talking about. I wouldn’t choose to deal again, and there’s no excuse for-”
Castiel bristles as he interrupts. “I’m not here to make excuses, Dean. I’m here to tell you that Raphael’s plans to unleash Lucifer and Michael and see the Apocalypse proceed as intended, using you and your brother to destroy this planet, were unacceptable to me. Crowley offered me a means of holding Raphael at bay, perhaps defeating him. It wasn’t much of choice.”
Dean snorts. “Well, you chose wrong.”
“I weighed the costs against the benefits, Dean,” Castiel says, frosty. “I chose what I judged to be the best option. The one that would do the least harm. The one that would keep you safe. Like I said.”
“But look at this mess,” Dean replies, an edgy snap of annoyance. “You want to help Crowley open the blast doors to Purgatory? Monsters roaming the earth?” He pushes up to stand, winces as he does, and he knows he’ll feel that dull throb in his ass for a week. “You have all the answers - you’ve done your cost-benefit analysis. So tell me how that keeps me safe? Tell me how that won’t turn into the Apocalypse strikes back?”
Castiel stares at Dean, his eyes are wide and unhappy. And suddenly Dean knows what it meant when his friend stopped and gazed down at him, knows that Castiel was fixing that moment in his mind, learning him by heart and committing him to memory. “You’re not stopping, are you?” he accuses, and he can already feel anxiety start to course through his veins.
“It’s too late for me to stop,” Castiel replies carefully. “Our numbers are depleted. We’re outnumbered ten to one. Even with the weapons, it’s a hopeless cause.”
Dean rubs at his jaw, and he knows his voice comes out high and panicked. “Are you taking what Crowley is telling you at face value? Seriously? Come on, Cas. How do you know he doesn’t have some trick up his sleeve to take you out of the game somewhere along the line? How do you know he isn’t playing both sides? He could be dealing with Raphael too.”
Castiel doesn't answer, squints down at himself while he fumbles with his tie, but Dean can feel the tension radiating from him. “Look, Cas,” he says, holding out a placating hand. “I’m mad as hell at you. But fuck knows, I’ve made piss-poor decisions. And so has Sam. I’m not judging you. I’m saying this isn’t the way. For so many reasons that are about you, and what you are, and what you are to me. Please. I will crawl on my knees over broken glass and beg you if I have to. Stop.”
Castiel smiles into the middle distance, just the barest curl of his lips. “Do you think you can grip me tight and raise me from perdition, Dean?” he asks softly.
It’s slipping through Dean’s fingers now, he knows, tearing a part of him with it, like a replay of his brother turning away and leaving him passed out in the wreckage of that choice Sam made, so long ago. But he persists. “I will never know anyone like you. I can’t even wrap my mind around what this is with us, or why you’d want it. You saw me at my worst and you still thought I was worth it. You know what that means to me. It means everything, and maybe you mean everything too. I don’t want to lose you. So don’t do this. Don’t choose a demon over me, Cas. Just - don’t. Please.”
There’s a moment when Castiel is suddenly up close, and his eyes are as naked as they were when Dean was pinned and writhing underneath him. “You asked me to trust you,” he says. “I fought my way through Hell for you, Dean. I fell from grace for you. I’ve died for you twice. I’m asking you to trust me.”
And then Dean is blinking at empty space, and, “Fuck,” he breathes out. “Cas.”
He feels wrung out and wrecked, and he groans out his distress, sinks down onto the couch again, leans his face into one hand and wraps the other one around himself, sucking in air. He pushes up without conscious thought, stumbles into the kitchen, the floor icy under his bare feet. He doesn’t bother with a glass, takes a long pull from the bottle, and the booze scalds his throat.
The piece of paper is right where Castiel placed it, covered in neatly drawn symbols, wards that could be a hotline to Crowley or could mean tonight will never happen again. Dean sets the whiskey bottle down, picks up the paper, considers it for a moment.
I’m asking you to trust me.
It’s heartfelt, and it echoes in Dean’s head.
He swallows past the lump in his throat, tears the paper up, and throws it in Bobby’s trashcan.
Wordcount 4,578
It’s less than ten minutes since Castiel beamed out, and Dean is on his third shot when he gets the familiar feeling that prickles the back of his neck. He pushes up from the couch, leans to pick up the bottle, pads into the kitchen and hooks another glass off the drainer. Are you going to show yourself?” he says hoarsely into the dark beside him.
He hasn’t even finished the sentence before he feels the static snap around him. Castiel is standing there, just like Dean knew he was before he even spoke, impassive, crumpled, unkempt and frayed, so damn normal, only now nothing will ever be the same again. He isn’t even really looking at Dean, but he holds out his hand, offers Dean a piece of paper. “Like I said. Some of your warding sigils are incorrect,” he says quietly. He hovers there cautiously, hand extended, and after a minute he casts his eyes down, withdraws, and puts the paper on the countertop. “You should get them fixed.”
Dean takes another swallow, drains the glass. He feels lightheaded, and not just from the liquor. It’s a mix of resignation and pent-up rage, speeding up his breath and giving him butterflies that zip about angrily in the pit of his gut. “For all I know, that could open a channel of communication straight from here to your partner,” he snaps spitefully.
There’s a brief silence before a noncommittal reply. “For all you know, it could.”
Dean looks up again, into a familiar, measured stare that pins him in place, only the angel’s eyes are faded and weary looking in the dim light. Castiel gazes at Dean, clears his throat, and he sounds suddenly hesitant, like he isn’t really sure he wants to hear Dean’s answer.
“You don’t think I left Sam’s soul behind on purpose, do you?”
Dean puts his glass down, shields his face with his palms, fingertips massaging his eyes, closed against this godawful mess for a moment. “No,” he concedes finally, and he hears the breath of relief Castiel releases. For some reason it sparks a flash of impotent, savage anger at the knowledge he’s been led by his dick, just like his brother was, and, “If you’d known, you’d have come up with some lie about it when I asked you to check if his soul was there,” Dean follows up acidly, hands dropping back to his sides, fingers clenching. “Isn’t as if you’d want me sniffing around your deal with Crowley, is it? And it’s not like I could’ve checked.”
Castiel shifts uncomfortably, floats his own hand up and rubs it across his brow, an echo of the nervous gesture Dean just made, and Dean knows the angel caught that habit from him. His voice is even lower, and all schooled calm when he responds. “Is that the only reason you believe me?”
Dean studies his friend as the silence stretches out in the chasm between them, and Castiel blinks hard before his eyes dart away, flitting around like he’s as panicked as he was when Bobby lit up the trap Dean helped set for him. His expression goes crestfallen and hurt, and he reaches up to fold his arms around himself as he starts to turn.
“Wait,” Dean relents, because he can feel the air starting to ripple, and it gives him a raw, tugging feeling inside, like it’s ripping the band-aid off the gaping, suppurating wound Castiel hacked into him with his betrayal.
Castiel stops dead, glances back, and maybe he’s expectant, and maybe there’s a hopeful glow of relief in his eyes.
Dean shrugs carelessly. “You screwed it up. But we wouldn’t have had him to resoul in the first place if you hadn’t pulled him out.” And dammit, he doesn’t want to give the angel any more than he has, because his rage is still set to simmer and it’s bubbling away inside him, but he can’t help himself. “And no,” he adds grudgingly. “It isn’t the only reason.” He exhales long and feelingly then, leans to snag the whiskey bottle, and pours a few fingers of the liquor into both glasses before he slides the spare across the countertop. “You look like you could use a drink.”
Castiel moves closer, all exaggerated care, tense and poised for action, like he thinks he needs to be on his guard, like he thinks he might have to jump out of the line of fire at any minute, which Dean supposes is actually true. When he reaches for the glass, his hand is shaking.
“You and Crowley,” Dean barks out ferociously.
Castiel’s hand freezes in mid-air. “It was the lesser of two evils. At least that’s how it seemed at the time.”
He waits a second, extends his hand the rest of the way, slow, but when he snatches at the glass it’s desperate, and as he raises it to his mouth he’s gripping it so tight Dean can see his knuckles gleam. He downs the contents in one gulp, his other hand fluttering uselessly at his side, fingers strumming the air.
Dean scowls. “The lesser of two evils? Crowley?”
Castiel’s jaw tightens stubbornly. “There was a precedent for Crowley helping us,” he defends.
Dean slams down his glass. “Yeah, there was with Ruby too,” he spits. “And look where that got us.” He crowds up closer, his own personal space invasion that sends the angel retreating a few steps. “Did he help you get into the cage?” he demands. “Has this been going on since Stull, have you been fuckin’ spying on me since Stull?”
Castiel’s eyes narrow and glint suddenly. “If Crowley had come to you after Stull and said he knew a way to get Sam out, what would you have done, Dean?” he parries, his tone stronger, almost a challenge.
It settles down and makes itself at home in the corner of the room like the elephant it is, because Dean doesn’t really have an answer, not one that he has any chance of making convincingly. He loses himself briefly in a memory of endless liquor-fueled nights in front of the laptop, sigils, spells, hoodoo, voodoo, rootwork, seidhr, ya sang, white magic, gray magic, black magic, and he wonders if Castiel was watching then and saw how desperate he was.
Castiel doesn’t break his stare. “Crowley didn’t help me,” he says, pointedly. “I did it myself. For you. All you had was your brother in a hole, Dean. Those were your words. I wanted to give you peace.”
Scrubbing a hand through his hair, Dean sidetracks harshly. “How did you even get in there?”
“I reasoned that perhaps the cage wasn’t meant to hold bodily manifestations,” Castiel ventures. “And I was right. It’s like…” He pauses, fumbles for words. “The Death Star. It has exploitable weaknesses. Small but significant flaws.” He raises his hands, airquotes. “Back doors.” He reaches for Dean then, pressing a hand to Dean’s chest, and words spill out of him haltingly. “I tried to redeem Sam, to give him back to you. I left him where you were. I watched him walk away, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t know him as well as I know you, I wasn’t… the next time I saw him, he was at Bobby’s. They both wanted you to have a chance, to be-”
“Don’t you say the word happy to me,” Dean hisses, and he shoves viciously, sending Castiel off-balance and into the wall. “I was never meant to be there, to be in that life. Couldn’t you see that? When you were spykidding me? And if you’d told me Sam was out, that he was at Bobby’s, I wouldn’t have been.” He ignores Castiel’s owlish, confused stare, stabs a finger at the air in front of his face. “I would have been there with Sam, figuring out something was off with him and figuring out a solution that meant he didn’t suffer down there for however many Hell years it adds up to. He did things he might not have done if I’d been with him. And you wanted me to leave him there. Jesus.”
“Lucifer had him, Dean, for all that time,” Castiel protests. “I was afraid of what he might be.”
Dean ignores it, advances, and now it’s his turn to reach out, and he’s gathering up a handful of shirt and tie as his feelings keep pouring out, fractured and painful. “And what the fuck was with you ignoring him when he was calling you for help? After what he did for us? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Castiel is putting up a hand now, maybe defensive, maybe not, and for all Dean knows he’s about to be smited all the way to the crab nebula, but he doesn’t give a shit, he’s pulling back his arm because he’s taking this punch even if he knows it’ll shatter his hand to smithereens. He tugs Castiel towards him, lets swing a right hook that has his full bodyweight behind it, and his fist smashes into the angel’s face, sending him slamming back into the wall again. He crumples down to the floor and sprawls there, staring up at Dean, eyes startled and deer-like, a scarlet eruption of blood oozing from his nose and lip.
Somewhere behind his boiling fury, Dean registers that the blow didn’t hurt him any more than it usually does when he lays out some drunk in a barfight, and he gapes despite himself. “How the fuck did that happen?”
Castiel waves a hand at the windows behind the couch. “I’m tired, that’s how,” he says petulantly. “And the sigils drain me even more. And I couldn’t go when Sam called me… Dean, it’s comp-”
“Well, uncomplicate it for me.” Dean stares down, resolutely ignores the urge to reach out a hand and haul the angel up. “Use short words. Terms I can understand.”
Castiel manages an explosive laugh that’s half bitter, half disbelief. “Terms you’ll understand…” He trails off and puts a hand up to his face, stares at his fingertips bathed in red. “Alright.” He looks up, unblinking. “In terms you’ll understand, Dean. I couldn’t go when Sam called me because I was having the ever-loving shit kicked out of me by my brother.”
It gets Dean just below the belt and winds him at the same time as it has his whole body go so taut he can already feel the headache he’ll wake up with in the morning, but he doesn’t think Castiel notices. The angel is pushing up unsteadily, along to a metallic clinking sound, and Dean doesn’t quite see what he does but there it is between them, glowing silver and offered to him hilt-first.
Castiel tilts his head. “Here,” he says, and it’s weary but there’s a steely resolve underlying his words as he continues. “Do what you will. I can’t do it myself, it’s forbidden. But I won’t fight you, Dean.”
Dean eyeballs his friend for a moment of dawning, sickly horror that slithers around his belly like snakes just hatched in there. “You think I…” He huffs out his distress, snatches the weapon, and it feels comfortable in his hand, as comfortable as the one he gripped and rammed up through Zachariah’s chin in Van Nuys. “You think I could do that?” he grates out roughly. “To you?”
Grimacing weakly, Castiel replies, “Why not? You’ve taken some pretty big fish, after all.” His face is pale, shadows bruising the skin under his eyes, and Dean thinks he suddenly looks old, has an abstract second when he ponders how many miles Jimmy Novak had clocked before Castiel absorbed him into the fabric of his own being.
Dean looks down, studies the sword, tracks from the incandescent metal to the angel again. And he pulls back, swift and aggressive, an echo of the blow he just landed, the blade catching the moonlight and flaring. At the last minute, as the sword rams into the wall beside his head, Castiel closes his eyes.
The universe stands still for a fraction of a second and then Dean leans in close, cups Castiel’s face with both hands. “How could you think that of me?” he says, gentle because his rage is abruptly gone, melting away like ice in the sun, and because even now this is what he needs and where he wants to be, this connection is magnetic, and he’s moving in closer, dragging his thumb through the blood that smears Castiel’s nose and top lip.
Castiel opens his eyes, his gaze dubious. “I don’t really know what to think any more, Dean,” he offers faintly, but he’s moving in too, nuzzling under Dean’s jaw as Dean lays kisses on his face, tongue trailing through coppery fluid.
Dean starts the clumsy, backward shuffle to the couch almost subconsciously, leading Castiel with him, pushing the trench coat and jacket down off the angel’s shoulders to puddle on the floor as they go. He falls back onto the upholstery, pulling Castiel down with him in a tangle of limbs, and it’s suddenly frenzied and racing away from him. But for all that, he’s thinking and plotting, and it’s calculated, deliberate, maybe even cynical. He’s doing the math, because he can maybe fuck Castiel into bending to his will, and he knows it’s emotional blackmail but he doesn’t care. His tongue is rasping its way across Castiel’s stubble and Castiel is mouthing his jaw, mumbling desperate, nonsensical words and phrases against his skin as he roams warm, wild hands up inside Dean’s tee to range across his torso and clutch at his back. He plants wet, bloody, fervent kisses on Dean, and Dean is licking back, sucking on Castiel’s tongue and nipping at his lips. He fumbles his hands down to Castiel’s belt, ripping at the buckle, and he groans at the friction as the angel grinds his crotch hard on the bulge that already tents his jeans.
Castiel pulls up and back, starts picking feverishly at the buttons on Dean’s fly, biting his lips as he concentrates, but he doesn’t look at Dean and Dean thinks maybe he knows what this is. He lifts his hips as the fabric starts sliding down, sits up to rip his tee off, and starts hauling at Castiel’s own pants. Stripped naked, Castiel falls on him, body hard and desperate as he bites at Dean’s throat, cock rigid and hungry against Dean’s.
“Don’t do this,” Dean mutters, as he rakes his fingers hard down Castiel’s back, feeling skin scrape off under his nails as he does. “Stay here with me.” He crashes their mouths together again, teeth clashing and colliding as he fucks his tongue as deep inside as he can. “We can fix it,” he says breathlessly. “Cas. We can.”
Castiel moans out a low cry and his tongue slides frantically between Dean’s lips. And then he’s gone, licking stripes and splotches down Dean’s torso, hand tight and urgent on Dean’s dick, and his mouth a sudden, soaking, searing heat that makes Dean whine, high-pitched and strangled. Castiel sluices the head of his cock with saliva, suckling it frantically, scraping it with sharp teeth, and Dean yelps, thrusts up, hands gripping and twisting in Castiel’s hair as he forces him down to the root. He feels Castiel’s throat constrict and swallow around him, but the angel is distracted, fraught, pulls off with a damp pop, and now he’s lifting Dean’s leg, pushing it back and his tongue is lapping at Dean’s balls and trailing on further down, circling his rim insistently and sloppily.
Dean cranes his neck, mesmerized, as Castiel heaves his ass up off the couch and drapes a leg over each shoulder. He pushes in along to Dean’s incoherent, choked-out lust, opening Dean up with his tongue. It’s deep, slick, messy, greedy, filthy, unholy, and Dean can feel the sounds Castiel is making reverberate straight up inside him, feel the angel’s lips pressed around him there, in the most intimate of kisses. He feels a thicker prod and slide now, digits plunging in to that sparking place inside him, and he reaches for his dick, strips it efficiently, three, four times, until his balls tighten and he’s exploding across his belly, clenching around Castiel’s tongue and fingers as he comes.
Dean feels open, exposed and gaping as Castiel drops him back down. The angel’s erection is curved and eager, and he stares darkly at Dean as he swipes his fingers through the mess splotching Dean’s belly and gives his shaft a cursory lube job. He lines up and Dean can feel him there, blunt and relentless as he nudges in, a steady, relentless glide that burns and aches as his cock stretches and fills Dean. He flops down to drape himself on Dean, shuddering and sweat soaked, buries his face in the crook of Dean’s shoulder, a hand suddenly fisting restlessly in Dean’s hair, his lips and teeth working at Dean’s throat, marking him. He croons unintelligibly, and he might be speaking in tongues but Dean knows it’s devotion, worship, maybe even prayer, and he knows damn well what the angel is telling him.
Dean gathers some sense, remembers his mission. “Cas,” he whispers into hhis friend’s ear. “Listen to me. We can-”
Castiel growls and then he’s on Dean again, kisses fierce and animalistic, teeth sharp on Dean’s lips, eyes flashing fire as he starts to flex his lower body, hips snapping, driving into Dean so that Dean forgets everything except the perfect, solid, incendiary heat of Castiel’s cock as it rams against him inside, splitting him open. The pain is exquisite, the shocky bursts of pleasure light a fuse that sends fire electrifying through all of Dean’s nerves and whiting out his vision, and he didn’t even realize he was hard again but he’s shooting hot and liquid all over Castiel’s belly. He can feel himself clenching hard, gripping tight as if he might hold Castiel there forever, and Castiel stops. There’s an instant of stillness as he gazes down, and Dean reaches up and lays a tender hand on his face, because the angel’s eyes are liquid and yearning. And then he shudders, groans out low and desperate, jerks in once, twice, and collapses on Dean, shaking and sobbing out breath.
Dean presses a hand to his back, rubs it in circles. “You should have come to me,” he whispers.
“I did,” Castiel chokes into Dean’s neck. “But I couldn’t bring myself to ask you for more. You’d given enough.”
Dean swallows thickly, and fuck it if he can’t feel the sting of salt in his eyes. “He’s a demon. How could that ever have seemed like the right thing to do?”
“It never seemed like the right thing to do, Dean,” Castiel says despondently. “But at the time it seemed like the least wrong thing to do.” He chuckles, hollow and humorless. “I was naive. I thought it would be so easy. But freedom, after millennia of obedience… it was incompatible with the culture. If there had been time for a more gradual approach, well… but there wasn’t. It was like-” He pauses a beat. “That movie we watched at Bobby’s, the night before Stull.”
Dean hoiks his eyebrows up skeptically. “The Life of Brian?”
Castiel shrugs in his arms. “Do you remember how Brian kept telling people he wasn’t the Messiah? Telling them they didn’t need to follow anybody, that they could think for themselves, that they were all individuals? And they just kept saying-”
“We’re all individuals.” It’s so many things, but most of all it’s sad, and it spikes Dean in his heart because it makes him think of Castiel’s shy, hopeful confidence about his prospects as Sheriff of Heaven. “And I kept thinking you were up there spreading democracy,” he says. “Bunch of fuckin’ Stepford bitches.”
“Not all of them,” Castiel corrects. “But many of them craved the security of the absolute monarchy. Raphael.” Castiel is resting his head on Dean’s shoulder now, still draped over him, still inside him, and he trails his finger along Dean’s cheek. “He gave me an ultimatum.”
Dean stares back at him. “You should have come to me,” he insists.
The angel smiles ruefully. “I had a day to make my decision, Dean. Down here, it would have been an hour at the most.” He kisses Dean, gentle and considerate now, before he pushes up and eases himself out.
Dean sucks in air at the tug across sensitive skin. “But what about what it does to you?” he says. “Jesus. This - it’s Sam all over again. Only it’s Crowley whispering in your ear instead of Ruby whispering in his.”
Castiel is pulling on his shorts, standing up, and the moonlight from the window makes his skin gleam like mother of pearl. “What it does to me is immaterial.”
“That’s so much shit, Cas,” Dean snaps, sitting up himself. He pats a hand out for his shirt, uses it to wipe tacky semen off his belly as he goes on. “And it isn’t immaterial to me. You compromise yourself this one time, and maybe you win. But what about the next time you’re up shit creek? And you can do things the hard way, the right way, or you can press the easy button again, because who gives a shit about another fifty thousand souls that never existed in the first place?” He sees Castiel slant his eyes towards him fast and surprised, and he nods. “Doesn’t take Einstein to figure out what that crap with the boat was about. Especially after you tapping Bobby.”
Castiel is calm, reasonable even. “Offer me a solution.” He waits a moment, poised in the act of zipping his pants. “See? You don’t have one.” He pulls on his shirt, starts doing up the buttons. “You wouldn’t have had one then either.”
Dean throws up a hand, helpless. “We would have found a way. We don’t make deals with-”
“But we do, Dean,” Castiel replies, with infinite patience. “We do. And I would do whatever it takes to keep you safe. I would do anything.”
Dean scrubs a hand through his hair, shakes his head. “Touché. Spoken like a true Winchester.” He reaches for his own shorts, slides them up his legs. “But I’m here to tell you that you have no idea what that really means. I do, and I know what I’m talking about. I wouldn’t choose to deal again, and there’s no excuse for-”
Castiel bristles as he interrupts. “I’m not here to make excuses, Dean. I’m here to tell you that Raphael’s plans to unleash Lucifer and Michael and see the Apocalypse proceed as intended, using you and your brother to destroy this planet, were unacceptable to me. Crowley offered me a means of holding Raphael at bay, perhaps defeating him. It wasn’t much of choice.”
Dean snorts. “Well, you chose wrong.”
“I weighed the costs against the benefits, Dean,” Castiel says, frosty. “I chose what I judged to be the best option. The one that would do the least harm. The one that would keep you safe. Like I said.”
“But look at this mess,” Dean replies, an edgy snap of annoyance. “You want to help Crowley open the blast doors to Purgatory? Monsters roaming the earth?” He pushes up to stand, winces as he does, and he knows he’ll feel that dull throb in his ass for a week. “You have all the answers - you’ve done your cost-benefit analysis. So tell me how that keeps me safe? Tell me how that won’t turn into the Apocalypse strikes back?”
Castiel stares at Dean, his eyes are wide and unhappy. And suddenly Dean knows what it meant when his friend stopped and gazed down at him, knows that Castiel was fixing that moment in his mind, learning him by heart and committing him to memory. “You’re not stopping, are you?” he accuses, and he can already feel anxiety start to course through his veins.
“It’s too late for me to stop,” Castiel replies carefully. “Our numbers are depleted. We’re outnumbered ten to one. Even with the weapons, it’s a hopeless cause.”
Dean rubs at his jaw, and he knows his voice comes out high and panicked. “Are you taking what Crowley is telling you at face value? Seriously? Come on, Cas. How do you know he doesn’t have some trick up his sleeve to take you out of the game somewhere along the line? How do you know he isn’t playing both sides? He could be dealing with Raphael too.”
Castiel doesn't answer, squints down at himself while he fumbles with his tie, but Dean can feel the tension radiating from him. “Look, Cas,” he says, holding out a placating hand. “I’m mad as hell at you. But fuck knows, I’ve made piss-poor decisions. And so has Sam. I’m not judging you. I’m saying this isn’t the way. For so many reasons that are about you, and what you are, and what you are to me. Please. I will crawl on my knees over broken glass and beg you if I have to. Stop.”
Castiel smiles into the middle distance, just the barest curl of his lips. “Do you think you can grip me tight and raise me from perdition, Dean?” he asks softly.
It’s slipping through Dean’s fingers now, he knows, tearing a part of him with it, like a replay of his brother turning away and leaving him passed out in the wreckage of that choice Sam made, so long ago. But he persists. “I will never know anyone like you. I can’t even wrap my mind around what this is with us, or why you’d want it. You saw me at my worst and you still thought I was worth it. You know what that means to me. It means everything, and maybe you mean everything too. I don’t want to lose you. So don’t do this. Don’t choose a demon over me, Cas. Just - don’t. Please.”
There’s a moment when Castiel is suddenly up close, and his eyes are as naked as they were when Dean was pinned and writhing underneath him. “You asked me to trust you,” he says. “I fought my way through Hell for you, Dean. I fell from grace for you. I’ve died for you twice. I’m asking you to trust me.”
And then Dean is blinking at empty space, and, “Fuck,” he breathes out. “Cas.”
He feels wrung out and wrecked, and he groans out his distress, sinks down onto the couch again, leans his face into one hand and wraps the other one around himself, sucking in air. He pushes up without conscious thought, stumbles into the kitchen, the floor icy under his bare feet. He doesn’t bother with a glass, takes a long pull from the bottle, and the booze scalds his throat.
The piece of paper is right where Castiel placed it, covered in neatly drawn symbols, wards that could be a hotline to Crowley or could mean tonight will never happen again. Dean sets the whiskey bottle down, picks up the paper, considers it for a moment.
I’m asking you to trust me.
It’s heartfelt, and it echoes in Dean’s head.
He swallows past the lump in his throat, tears the paper up, and throws it in Bobby’s trashcan.