Good Vibrations
Title: Good Vibrations
Author: Ainoche
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: DeanxCastiel. No order.
Genre: Angst/Erotica?
Word Count: 5,586
Prompt: Castiel makes a porny recording and Dean whacks to it. Alright, it was worded a little better when Bookkbaby showed it to me, but I don’t remember the exact phrasing.
WARNINGS: Spoilers for 7.10, character death (?), gayness, slash, etc.. MSolo.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Supernatural or any of the characters there-in. If I did, jins would be demons and Lucifer would have been Samael.
A note: My darling friend Bookkbaby wrote something for this prompt as well. Her version is a lot happier than mine. Really. A lot. Also, longer. So if you’re not into the short and sad thing, go read the detailed, funny, happy monstrosity called “The Prank that Filled the Spank Bank” by Bookkbaby. Seriously. Or read this first then go read hers. Do it.
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The hotel wasn't particularly shabby, but shabby enough to have a vibrating bed, which was just shabby enough to keep Sam out of it questioning the locals most of the day. And just shabby enough to keep Dean in so long as his supply of quarters did not run out. He never counted his quarters. He just kept pushing them into the little slot until there weren't any more. Realistically, he knew enough about locks and machines to get his quarters back or even rig the bed to simply never stop vibrating, but neither option ever really occurred to him as legitimate. It was just too much work when quarters were so easy to come by.
He had to have a least an hour a day when he wasn't thinking about breaking into things to save the world.
Usually, that hour occurred when he was at his least sober - too many things taking up space in his head for important things to swim in through the alcohol and scare the everliving shit out of him. And they did scare the shit out of him, there was no getting away from that. He acknowledged the fear and dealt with it. A smarter man might have recognized it as the difference between bravery and courage in the face of danger, but he only understood it as what kept him going despite his flaws. Most blood-thirsty killers didn't have the luxury of letting go, even for a moment.
Part of it was not having to worry about getting caught by anything human. That had happened too often for him to really stress over it anymore. Now, he worried about Heaven and Hell and Purgatory and what dwelt in-between when it wasn't that one drunken hour.
His research, conducted both between and during vibrating sessions, had revealed a local legend about a goddess of love that explained the painfully honest feelings running through the town like wildfire. There wasn't much to be done about it until midnight on a full moon. They had a knife of iron, they had a jar of virgin's blood (voluntarily donated to the cause, of course), and a helping of herbs he didn't know half the names of, which was about all they needed, but for the manifestation on the full moon, to end her.
In the meantime, he'd doubled his intake of cheap booze. It made the love-lady's powers a little easier to bear most of the time.
His hour of self-time had turned into something he could not wrangle with nearly the mental dexterity he used to, not since he'd been smacked with a cheaper version of a cherub's arrow. His manual dexterity was fine - improved with practice, even - but he felt that he'd been dragging himself through a soup of emotions for almost a day and half. Chowder, even, judging by thickness. Half the time he was thinking about familial love, the kind that made him think that his brother really was a good person on the inside, despite everything, better than him even, that filled him with a sort of adoration he hadn't known he could feel for anyone but his father. That familial love let him see little things in all sorts of people he knew. Like how strong Bobby had been for being a guy with no destiny. And how arrogant he could be himself, caught up with Angels and Demons.
The other half of the time, he wished he had a bone in his body capable of being reliably celibate.
Who would have thought that anyone having sex would be caught in the web of the goddess's power? Sam, apparently. And every Bible-thumping bumpkin in town. And Bobby, in his notes. And pretty much everyone but the girl he'd banged. Bad choice. He felt like he'd shot himself in the foot just before the general called for the charge. She'd been a really pretty, really distracting bullet, though.
As things had happened, the second frustrating night, he lay on the vibrating yellow comforter and listened to a mixture of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, trying not to think about anything but the awkward lamp between the two beds. Normally, he would have fallen asleep before Stairway to Heaven made the rotation, but not tonight. Tonight, he looked up at the lamp and listened to the music and thought about all sorts of things he had no business processing under supernatural influence, especially not of the given type he found himself caught in now.
No one was around to take his mind off of it, either. Not tonight. Tonight, Sam was out avoiding what he had deemed "Dean's creepy-Cas eyes," a little too soon for Dean to crack a smile at it. After that, Dean was a little happy to see him go off for some time in a bar by himself.
Dean was left looking up at that awkward lamp, that phrase swirling around in the back of his mind like a feather in the wind. Castiel was dead, as far as he knew, but that did not mean he had stopped praying. Cas had come back before. Many times. Like a ghost, only nerdier and skinnier and somehow full of good to the point of disobeying God if it meant doing the right thing. He also had eyes like no ghost Dean had ever seen, that could undress a man from any distance and a voice like fingernails on his spine.
Oddly, it wasn't the longing looks that he missed, that he found himself thinking about. Instead, it was that voice, which had often been the only telltale sign the Angel was in the room before he was spotted. Like sandpaper, only not nearly as grating. Warm and nearly without inflection and yet so good at conveying what he'd felt - maybe even better than the words he had chosen some times. Cas had never learned to be good with words.
But then, neither had Dean, not with honest ones. Manipulation was his strong point, not charisma. Cas had been the opposite. Cas wouldn't have known how to manipulate a person without assistance if the opportunity had presented itself on a bed naked and covered in whipped cream.
A tiny smile quirked the corner of Dean's mouth. In some terrible alternate future that Zachariah had dreamed up, Cas had been a hippy sex guru perpetually high on painkillers. It made him wondered just what had transpired outside of porn to cue that change.
The song switched on his music player and the five or six seconds of silence in between morphed into what had to be the most realistic hallucination of his life. Castiel's voice, tender and everything it had been in life, only shaky and nervous and full of apprehension he had never showed, filled Dean's ears.
"You're sure I can use this?" It was a normal, conversational tone.
"Trust me. Dean isn't going to care. Knock yourself out." That was Sam. And the voice was definitely coming out of the earbuds. A door closed in the recording.
If the situation had been different, Dean would have skipped right passed that track and found real music, fought off the emotions with one more shot of whiskey and a lot of willpower. But he was a little drunk, and high on goddess juice, and really, really lonely in the worst possible way. That voice sent tingles of warmth sliding down his back and curling in his gut.
"Ehem," Cas cleared his throat. "This is Castiel, and a reading from the script, B.A.B: Himeko's Bondage Birthday written by myself, mostly. I... I've never done this before, not with something recording me. I do not think I am especially good at it. We couldn't come up with anything better, however. I have no last will and testament. This is..." He sighed like he wasn't sure about himself. "This is my farewell to you, Dean. I thought I would try to give you something you will enjoy."
Dean frowned, not sure what to think, but all too aware what he felt. The timing could not have been much worse. He didn't have the heart to shut off the track, however.
"If... if this is playing... don't blame your brother. I have kept what I am recording mysterious."
"You would." Dean grumbled to himself, and leaned over to the bedside stand for a little more whiskey. He was still sober enough to hold the bottle steady and pour something along the lines of a shot and half without mis-measuring, which meant he was far too aware of himself to be talking to a recording of Castiel. It also meant he was sober enough to rub at his forehead while he imbibed the liquor and closed his eyes to the sound of the Angel's voice.
"I - I might as well get on with it. I hope... well..."
"Just read whatever it is, Cas. Damn."
Dean couldn't look at the ceiling, so he started to study his right hand instead, a little mystified that it still was not as callused as it had been before he'd gone to Hell. Before he'd been raised from perdition, or however Cas had phrased it.
"A bar, filled to brimming with leather clad people. The bartender slides a shot to a group by the bar. Himeko lifts the glass and downs the contents. Dean applauds her mockingly while the others watch." It wasn't even sexy and Dean found himself transfixed. "Himeko makes a show of fondling the nipples of her gargantuan breasts through her corset and smiles at him.
"'What is it, Dean?'" Cas' voice was sultrier than sin. "'Didn't you think it would all fit in my sweet... tender... mouth?'"
It was bad. It was horrible. The writing was crap and Cas was not a busty Asian beauty no matter what he did with his voice, but that didn't matter. What mattered were the kinks he knew, the phrases he had learned, the little secrets he had gleaned from simple interactions, and he had named his protagonist after Dean. Antagonist. Whatever. He had dropped Dean right there next to Himeko in a BDSM bar, which was weird and somehow hotter than anything he'd ever known.
Dean found himself wondering where his right hand had crept off to before he realized that he really did not care.
"Himeko stares at Dean intently, waiting for him to do something. Waiting for him to understand. Waiting for him to pick her up and slam her on the bar like a rag-doll. Instead, Dean signals the bartender for another round."
"Damn, Cas, eye-sex?"
"A drink appears before Himeko and she downs it, but her eyes never leave Dean's."
"Why are you doing this to me?" It wasn't what he had thought he'd say, but it was what came out. Dean realized with a sort of sick fascination that whatever that love goddess had over him was making it difficult to breathe. He couldn't be shy about what he wanted, but he could be damn uncomfortable with how much he wanted Cas at the moment. In the least innocent way. He'd always been so into women - their curves, their voices, their shapes, their softness - that seeing things from the other side was awkward and just the slightest bit frightening. Would he still be into men when the effect was lifted? The thought was there and then it was gone. What did he care? That just opened a handful of other doors and options for fun and deviance if he did.
"Dean slides an arm around her waist and leans over her, his expression seductive. 'Why don't we go up to the saloon room?' He asks in a whisper. 'I can show you the ropes.'"
Dean didn't know if he should laugh or not, but a chuckle escaped him anyway. The saloon room. Did Cas know every fetish he had? And what was that sliding along the inside of his thigh like a lover's hand?
"The two of them rise together and he let's go of her while the two of them make their way toward the stairs. She moves fluidly, her eyes never leaving him. Dean is aware of everything around him - he is not stupid enough to drop his guard for a woman - but he at least lets her believe that she has consumed him for the moment. He follows her up the stairs, and the sound of her heeled boots on the hard floor encourages him.
"They come to the second room and she opens the door with a small, silver key. The door opens into a room out of the late eighteen hundreds, though cleaner, with a bed and dresser and a mirror, and a cupboard with..." Cas had to clear his throat and regain his composure. "A motley assortment of instruments inside."
Dean's teeth were going to widdle a way through his lower lip before this was over. What was all the description for? Dean was Dean, Himeko was any big breasted Asian girl, and the room was a room in a saloon from somewhere in the Midwest. After that, it didn't matter. If Cas went into the details of what color the drapes were, he'd just have to-
Wait. And listen. And pay no mind to the traitorous things his fingers were doing to him just on the outside of his jeans.
"The bed is covered in clean, brown linen. The drapes are pulled shut, their deep blue color vivid in the oil lamp's light."
"Damn you, Cas." Dean hissed to himself, and painted the image on the backs of his eyelids perfectly. He had trouble keeping anything that revolved around the woman in focus, however, though he couldn't identify why. She just wasn't as real as the room in his head. It would be easier to put-no. That was a little too far.
"As soon as the door is shut behind them, Dean kisses her, his lips gently parted, and she leans against the door to support herself. The contact steals the strength from her legs. With her left hand, she fumbles for the lock while her right reaches out to take a hold of the leather of Dean's belt.
"Dean pulls away at her enthusiasm, a little surprised. It isn't often he's... he's naked first."
"Don't fail me now, Feathers, get to the juicy part." Dean was just going for his belt when a sound like wooden thunder threatened to wrench his heart clear out of his ribcage. His eyes burst open and he rolled, instinctively, away from the door, while his right hand got his favorite handgun out from under the pillow and cocked before he even registered who'd just walked in on him about to beat the bishop.
Sam, wonderfully nice, giant and gentle, smart, funny, caring little Sammy, stood in the doorway with a to-go bag and a drink caddy in his hands. One of Dean's earbuds must have fallen out, because when he spoke the words actually registered. "Who're you talking to?" Not even the tiniest hint of concern for the gun pointed at the middle of his chest. Really, Dean thought, what a guy.
"'Dean...' Himeko says in a voice wantonly shrill..." Cas was saying in a breathy voice in Dean's left ear.
"My... uh... my... music player." Dean lied, and tried about thirty-seven times in the course of a heartbeat to find the Goddamn pause button. When he finally found it he realized he was breathing like a marathon runner, or a deep sea diver just come to the surface. "I... I named my music player."
"Feathers?" Sam was incredulous. He made that annoyingly toothy smile that highlighted all of his dimples before he breathed half a laugh and toed the door shut behind him. "You really expect me to believe you named your media player Feathers?"
Dean tried to distract himself by putting the gun away. "Yes. Why wouldn't I?"
Sam said something that Dean missed because in his urgency to get the loaded weapon out of his hand, he'd found the play button again.
"Because she needs him so, Dean can't hold back any longer. While his mouth explores Himeko's, he tears at the laces on her-"
"Because, Dean, you haven't named anything a remotely normal name since you were eleven." Sam told him, putting the food down. "What was that snake you found when I was seven? Lord Serpentus? And the wraith... vampire... hybrid things? Jefferson Star-ships? And the dog that followed me home that I wanted to name Fido?"
"Cerberus. He was too big for Fido."
Sam held up a hand to gesture at the media player and made a face like Dean was the biggest idiot in the world. "You did not name it Feathers."
"Shut up." Dean growled, and wondered for the briefest of moments if he was doing the right thing before he did what he always did and went with his gut. "And get out. I was in the middle of something." He prayed that Sammy would understand. Prayed to whoever would listen. Prayed and hoped and begged the universe that Sammy would just pick up the bag, say he was sorry, and wander on out.
Sam looked confused. "What? Vibrating?"
Dean just blinked at him.
"I...oh. Oh! Then..." Sam was chewing on a witty remark. "I'll just, uh... be back." He stood up, took a few steps toward the door. "In what? Three minutes?"
"An hour."
"Right." Sam was almost to the door when he tip-toed back to the table and ruffled through the bag of food for a clear plastic container of something green and covered in goo. "Dinner," he said, shaking the salad, and meandered (if a man that large can meander) outside. He didn't immediately pull the door shut behind him, however. He just stood there with the moonlight glinting off his hair and dazzling in his eyes. "You didn't name your junk Feathers did-"
Dean must have looked threatening for just a moment, because Sam pulled the door shut without even finishing his sentence. He didn’t even say if he had remembered the pie.
Mood severely lowered, Dean looked down at the music player in his fist and felt a rush of curious warmth fill his chest, like a deep breath, but he hadn't taken one. The track had a title. FINAL ATTEMPT. It brought to mind an image of Cas at one of the computers, leaning in to speak to the microphone, his trench coat draped over the back of his chair, his tie hanging loose around his neck. And in his hands, clenched so the tension in his arms made Dean want to reach out and touch him, was the script Cas had penned, large sections of it crossed out and rewritten in the margins. The Angel's face was tired, his hair mussed from running his fingers through it in frustration.
That thought brought Dean's finger purposely down on the play button again and pushed him down on the mattress. This time he did not notice that the bed was still, his last quarter's time expired.
"-bodice. His fingers rip the garment away from her in an effort get to her...flesh." Cas finished the passage, his breath leaving him in a rush at the end of the sentence. He sounded winded. Or-
Dean's mouth fell open. No. Castiel could not be getting off to his own farewell gift. Or he could be. Dean grinned a little. The pizza man had taught Cas many things, but where he might have learned to charm the trouser snake-
"Together, the two of them tumble toward the bed, and Dean's hand cups her... her supple breast for a moment before he flicks a thumb over her nipple. Himeko... reaches with shaking fingers and unbuckles Dean's... Dean's belt..." Cas' voice had turned painfully strained, his mouth dry, and Dean could close his eyes and see him, from his rumbled hair and his needy, innocent expression, to the hand he had started to draw across the zipper of his pants. Because Cas would fight it. Because Cas hadn't really known much about sex, not at the beginning and not in the middle and not when he'd died, and as much as he knew Dean liked it, masturbation wasn't exactly condoned by Heaven.
"Her long fingered hand slips into his pants, passed his boxers. She entwines him and-" There was a little sound, just the slightest intake of breath.
Dean watched the Cas in his mind crumple the paper, watched him sitting there in front of the computer, stroking his cock with a determined look crinkling his eyebrows, desire and embarrassment evident in every line of his face. No mask. No armor. Just Cas, thinking about Dean, his trembling voice strangled in his throat.
"Dean..." No, that wasn't Himeko. Not anymore.
Wordlessly, Dean opened his jeans and tugged them into a more comfortable position on his butt before he took his dick in his right hand and gave in to the desire that had started the moment he'd heard Castiel speaking to him through his media player. A preliminary stroke. A testing of the waters. And behind his eyelids, the Angel of Thursday shivered and his breath hitched in his throat.
“Dean, I’d thought-” Cas started, and his voice was so uneven it almost hurt to listen to. “I’ve been too nervous to finish before. To finish reading. Not… finish, but to get to the… the point. But now I think of you and-of you and…” His voice stopped, and Dean twisted his own cock in his hand, pressed his thumb to the head of it. What if Castiel were touching him? He finally allowed himself to wonder, and let out all of his air at the thought. What if Cas had done this, night after night after day after day, thinking of him? “Dean-” It was like a prayer, like how Sam sometimes talked to God when he didn’t think anyone was listening. “I think… of you and…”
The palm on the shaft of his cock was smooth and cool and fearless, like Cas’s eyes, and Dean let himself imagine what he would do if it was Castiel’s erection in his hand.
His finger ghosted over one of those painfully sensitive places and he let it linger there, just like Cas would, not knowing it was there, and imagined that the groan in his headphones was right beside him.
“I should… I should read-”
Dean shook his head. “Because Himeko isn’t a self-insertion Mary Sue, Cas?”
“Then you wouldn’t know that I wanted this with you.”
It wasn’t as if Dean couldn’t hear the fear and pain in Cas’s voice, it was just that he could make it all go away now, fisting Cas’s dick, his own wound up in Cas’s hand, the room dim around them, the laptop still recording. In the scene in Dean’s head, it could be perfect. It was an unexpected confession, but that didn’t mean it was unwanted. There was time to tease the tip of Cas’s erection with the pad of his thumb and feel the sensation echoed back against his own flesh, to explore little places he’d never even wondered about, to be gazed at without wondering what was going on behind those eyes.
In his ears, Cas gasped something desperate. Dean began to keep a solid rhythm, and lied to himself about keeping the Angel in his mind satisfied.
“I am so very stupid.” Cas somehow managed to whisper, and Dean wanted to reach out and touch his face. He wanted to pull his chin up and kiss him, tell him that it was alright, they could get through the night and talk it over, figure it out. Because they were like family. Because they cared about each other more deeply than was fit. Because they had a profound bond or something.
Dean’s left hand snaked its way down next to his right. The voice in his ears let out a low, throaty growl, followed by a louder, more desperate gasp. Cas didn’t get a word out, but he still made sound. His voice was needy and pleased and perfect, forming syllables that might have been English mixed with Enochian. But one thing fought its way out, somehow, soft and tender like nothing Cas had ever said to anyone.
Dean’s hand tightened on his cock and he heard himself moan. So close, so very, very close. He didn’t know when the pressure had started to feel unbearable but it did now. He could hardly move his hand fast enough, could hardly keep pace with the image in his mind.
Castiel whispered his name. The heat that gathered at the base of his cock grew tight. Everything narrowed to the vision in his mind, so real he could almost taste it, and he bit down his lower lip in an effort to keep from calling out to the man. Orgasm hit him harder than it had any right to, his toes curled in his socks and the world went blank and silent, but for Cas’s voice in his ears stuttering out his name like he couldn’t keep it in any longer.
The warm wetness on Dean’s hand didn’t seem to do the whole thing justice. He was out of breath, couldn’t think straight, and now that Castiel had finished just a heartbeat after him, Dean wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t dreaming.
Through his earbuds, he heard Cas laugh. The sound was warm and self-deprecating. “I told myself this would be my last attempt.” He was not as winded as Dean was, but he still paused to catch his breath a little. Maybe it was embarrassment instead of tiredness. “I will not make it a lie. I chose not to tell you what I wanted and it is too late now to change it. Please, forgive me. For this. For the things I have done. For not allowing you to understand, for not making you listen. It is the curse of free-will that we must apologize for the things we do when we live. I am… I am glad that you taught me there are worse things than choosing and being wrong.”
Dean didn’t know what that meant. He did not yet open his eyes because then he would have to see the empty motel room, the mess he’d made, the shadows and the tasteless decor. He tried to think about what Cas was saying, but there was too much whiskey and too much exhaustion running through him. He couldn’t wrap his head around it.
“Thank you, Dean. You have been closer to me than any of my brothers.”
There were a series of clicks, a low murmur of confusion, and then the recording turned to silence. The opening strains of Iron Man started before he rolled away from the media player and cast it aside without even the slightest interest in what it was playing. He looked at the room. At the blue curtains and the yellowish brown bedspread, at the small mound of quarters on the bedside stand. Empty. Every corner of it, ever shadow, every hiding place, every nook and cranny was empty. If Sam had been in the room with him, it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Because Cas was dead. And the only thing left of him was half of a bad romance-on-tape and a sexual moment he had been ashamed of. And an old, beaten up trench coat that smelled more like fishy water than Castiel anymore.
Dean pushed himself off the bed and went into the bathroom on unsteady feet, his jeans hanging on his hips, his feet dragging on the carpet. He was tired. And drunk. And sad to the point that he didn’t even want to remember finding that recording in the morning. But he would. It didn’t matter if he drank the whole fifth of whisky, he’d remember that voice forever. And he’d remember what he’d done. While he rinsed his hands and started the shower, he thought about it and tried to shake the feeling that he had missed the signals while Cas was around. It was too late now. No fixing it. No way around what had happened and no way to communicate to Cas that he, too, was sorry things had gone the way they had.
The water became hot but he didn’t immediately undress himself and climb in. Instead, on something that might have been like a whim, he knelt next to the yellowing bathtub and clasped his hands together, his fly still open, and looked upward. It felt like a bad joke to him that this would be his answer to the night, but he had to. Maybe it was his final attempt. Maybe it was just all he had left.
“Hey, Castiel. Cas, I mean.” Dean said, and his voice came out scratchy and soft, just audible over the water falling on the porcelain. “It’s… it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Since we talked. Yeah. It’s been… a while. Anyway, I listened to that recording you left me and I, um, well… that’s some pretty hot shit, isn’t it? Hot and heavy. Not the part with Himeko, that was crap.” He swallowed and folded his hands differently. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m calling. Or praying. I wanted you to know something, too, now that you’re gone. If you can hear me. I kind of… no, that’s not right. I do. I miss you, Cas. A lot. We both do, but it isn’t like I miss you like I miss Ellen and Jo, you know?”
He let his eyes fall shut, because that was how he had seen other people pray. The steam coming out of the shower warmed him and he tried to ignore the hard tile on his knees. If they’d stayed in a nicer place, there would have been a fresh towel to kneel on, but not here, not in this shabby hotel in the middle of nowhere. “If you’d told me you wanted that, if you’d explained it to me, I want to say that we could have dealt with it. We could have done something, had something, maybe, more than whatever we had before. It’s not like I think we coulda settled down and found a little house someplace like Lisa and Ben - that’d be stupid. And I dunno if this is the goddess juice talking or the whiskey or me, right now, but I’m telling the truth as far as I can feel it. We coulda had something. I would’ve let you have a little sliver of happiness if you’d asked me. At least I wanna believe I would’ve.
“Because as mad as I was at you, it ain’t like being angry makes you love a guy any less.” He paused to breathe for a second, to get his thoughts in order. But he couldn’t. His thoughts were a disorganized pile of feelings and broken logic he could no longer make sense of. “Did you know that for a while I thought I wouldn’t feel anything? Because you were just gone and you left Sammy’s brain stirred up like a Denver scramble. And then Bobby…” He shook his head. “But that’s not how it turned out. I feel everything. Regret and pain and fear, because there isn’t a single thing I can do down here to fight the things we’re fighting, and nothing I can do to fix Sammy, and no way to raise Bobby from the dead. I feel all of it. So I drink and try to forget it and numb it, when I can. But it’s not helping much anymore, Cas. It’s too small a fix and it doesn’t change a Goddamn thing when I’m sober.”
His palms pressed to his eyes but he didn’t think of it as breaking form. If anything, it felt right to cover his face with his hands rather than awkward. It wasn’t hiding, though it might have looked a lot like it. “If you were here, I don’t know what I’d do. Forgive you, I guess. Really forgive you. Talk about that thing you left me.” He didn’t smile, though he had one in him somewhere imagining the conversation. “Fix Sam. Come up with some great plan to shove the Leviathans back in their box. Or kill them. Maybe we’d have amazing sex somewhere in there, I don’t know. But if you wanted to, we could try it. I wish…” He realized too late that his shoulders were shaking, his fingers moist. Why didn’t click for the longest moment. As often as he came close to tears facing the things he and Sam lived with, he almost never cried.
“Please, Cas, if you’re there,” Dean looked up at the molding paint on the ceiling and tried to see beyond it, through it, to the glory of Heaven. “If you can hear me, please, just come down here. Only for a moment. Just… I need you. I can’t do this alone. Not anymore.”
Time turned to molasses while he sat there, looking up at the ceiling, his face wet from steam and tears. It was not until the mirror was entirely fogged that he pulled off his clothing and slipped his exhausted body into the shower in silence.
He didn’t hear a whisper or feel a presence. He could only tell himself that he hadn’t expected to.
Author: Ainoche
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: DeanxCastiel. No order.
Genre: Angst/Erotica?
Word Count: 5,586
Prompt: Castiel makes a porny recording and Dean whacks to it. Alright, it was worded a little better when Bookkbaby showed it to me, but I don’t remember the exact phrasing.
WARNINGS: Spoilers for 7.10, character death (?), gayness, slash, etc.. MSolo.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Supernatural or any of the characters there-in. If I did, jins would be demons and Lucifer would have been Samael.
A note: My darling friend Bookkbaby wrote something for this prompt as well. Her version is a lot happier than mine. Really. A lot. Also, longer. So if you’re not into the short and sad thing, go read the detailed, funny, happy monstrosity called “The Prank that Filled the Spank Bank” by Bookkbaby. Seriously. Or read this first then go read hers. Do it.
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The hotel wasn't particularly shabby, but shabby enough to have a vibrating bed, which was just shabby enough to keep Sam out of it questioning the locals most of the day. And just shabby enough to keep Dean in so long as his supply of quarters did not run out. He never counted his quarters. He just kept pushing them into the little slot until there weren't any more. Realistically, he knew enough about locks and machines to get his quarters back or even rig the bed to simply never stop vibrating, but neither option ever really occurred to him as legitimate. It was just too much work when quarters were so easy to come by.
He had to have a least an hour a day when he wasn't thinking about breaking into things to save the world.
Usually, that hour occurred when he was at his least sober - too many things taking up space in his head for important things to swim in through the alcohol and scare the everliving shit out of him. And they did scare the shit out of him, there was no getting away from that. He acknowledged the fear and dealt with it. A smarter man might have recognized it as the difference between bravery and courage in the face of danger, but he only understood it as what kept him going despite his flaws. Most blood-thirsty killers didn't have the luxury of letting go, even for a moment.
Part of it was not having to worry about getting caught by anything human. That had happened too often for him to really stress over it anymore. Now, he worried about Heaven and Hell and Purgatory and what dwelt in-between when it wasn't that one drunken hour.
His research, conducted both between and during vibrating sessions, had revealed a local legend about a goddess of love that explained the painfully honest feelings running through the town like wildfire. There wasn't much to be done about it until midnight on a full moon. They had a knife of iron, they had a jar of virgin's blood (voluntarily donated to the cause, of course), and a helping of herbs he didn't know half the names of, which was about all they needed, but for the manifestation on the full moon, to end her.
In the meantime, he'd doubled his intake of cheap booze. It made the love-lady's powers a little easier to bear most of the time.
His hour of self-time had turned into something he could not wrangle with nearly the mental dexterity he used to, not since he'd been smacked with a cheaper version of a cherub's arrow. His manual dexterity was fine - improved with practice, even - but he felt that he'd been dragging himself through a soup of emotions for almost a day and half. Chowder, even, judging by thickness. Half the time he was thinking about familial love, the kind that made him think that his brother really was a good person on the inside, despite everything, better than him even, that filled him with a sort of adoration he hadn't known he could feel for anyone but his father. That familial love let him see little things in all sorts of people he knew. Like how strong Bobby had been for being a guy with no destiny. And how arrogant he could be himself, caught up with Angels and Demons.
The other half of the time, he wished he had a bone in his body capable of being reliably celibate.
Who would have thought that anyone having sex would be caught in the web of the goddess's power? Sam, apparently. And every Bible-thumping bumpkin in town. And Bobby, in his notes. And pretty much everyone but the girl he'd banged. Bad choice. He felt like he'd shot himself in the foot just before the general called for the charge. She'd been a really pretty, really distracting bullet, though.
As things had happened, the second frustrating night, he lay on the vibrating yellow comforter and listened to a mixture of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, trying not to think about anything but the awkward lamp between the two beds. Normally, he would have fallen asleep before Stairway to Heaven made the rotation, but not tonight. Tonight, he looked up at the lamp and listened to the music and thought about all sorts of things he had no business processing under supernatural influence, especially not of the given type he found himself caught in now.
No one was around to take his mind off of it, either. Not tonight. Tonight, Sam was out avoiding what he had deemed "Dean's creepy-Cas eyes," a little too soon for Dean to crack a smile at it. After that, Dean was a little happy to see him go off for some time in a bar by himself.
Dean was left looking up at that awkward lamp, that phrase swirling around in the back of his mind like a feather in the wind. Castiel was dead, as far as he knew, but that did not mean he had stopped praying. Cas had come back before. Many times. Like a ghost, only nerdier and skinnier and somehow full of good to the point of disobeying God if it meant doing the right thing. He also had eyes like no ghost Dean had ever seen, that could undress a man from any distance and a voice like fingernails on his spine.
Oddly, it wasn't the longing looks that he missed, that he found himself thinking about. Instead, it was that voice, which had often been the only telltale sign the Angel was in the room before he was spotted. Like sandpaper, only not nearly as grating. Warm and nearly without inflection and yet so good at conveying what he'd felt - maybe even better than the words he had chosen some times. Cas had never learned to be good with words.
But then, neither had Dean, not with honest ones. Manipulation was his strong point, not charisma. Cas had been the opposite. Cas wouldn't have known how to manipulate a person without assistance if the opportunity had presented itself on a bed naked and covered in whipped cream.
A tiny smile quirked the corner of Dean's mouth. In some terrible alternate future that Zachariah had dreamed up, Cas had been a hippy sex guru perpetually high on painkillers. It made him wondered just what had transpired outside of porn to cue that change.
The song switched on his music player and the five or six seconds of silence in between morphed into what had to be the most realistic hallucination of his life. Castiel's voice, tender and everything it had been in life, only shaky and nervous and full of apprehension he had never showed, filled Dean's ears.
"You're sure I can use this?" It was a normal, conversational tone.
"Trust me. Dean isn't going to care. Knock yourself out." That was Sam. And the voice was definitely coming out of the earbuds. A door closed in the recording.
If the situation had been different, Dean would have skipped right passed that track and found real music, fought off the emotions with one more shot of whiskey and a lot of willpower. But he was a little drunk, and high on goddess juice, and really, really lonely in the worst possible way. That voice sent tingles of warmth sliding down his back and curling in his gut.
"Ehem," Cas cleared his throat. "This is Castiel, and a reading from the script, B.A.B: Himeko's Bondage Birthday written by myself, mostly. I... I've never done this before, not with something recording me. I do not think I am especially good at it. We couldn't come up with anything better, however. I have no last will and testament. This is..." He sighed like he wasn't sure about himself. "This is my farewell to you, Dean. I thought I would try to give you something you will enjoy."
Dean frowned, not sure what to think, but all too aware what he felt. The timing could not have been much worse. He didn't have the heart to shut off the track, however.
"If... if this is playing... don't blame your brother. I have kept what I am recording mysterious."
"You would." Dean grumbled to himself, and leaned over to the bedside stand for a little more whiskey. He was still sober enough to hold the bottle steady and pour something along the lines of a shot and half without mis-measuring, which meant he was far too aware of himself to be talking to a recording of Castiel. It also meant he was sober enough to rub at his forehead while he imbibed the liquor and closed his eyes to the sound of the Angel's voice.
"I - I might as well get on with it. I hope... well..."
"Just read whatever it is, Cas. Damn."
Dean couldn't look at the ceiling, so he started to study his right hand instead, a little mystified that it still was not as callused as it had been before he'd gone to Hell. Before he'd been raised from perdition, or however Cas had phrased it.
"A bar, filled to brimming with leather clad people. The bartender slides a shot to a group by the bar. Himeko lifts the glass and downs the contents. Dean applauds her mockingly while the others watch." It wasn't even sexy and Dean found himself transfixed. "Himeko makes a show of fondling the nipples of her gargantuan breasts through her corset and smiles at him.
"'What is it, Dean?'" Cas' voice was sultrier than sin. "'Didn't you think it would all fit in my sweet... tender... mouth?'"
It was bad. It was horrible. The writing was crap and Cas was not a busty Asian beauty no matter what he did with his voice, but that didn't matter. What mattered were the kinks he knew, the phrases he had learned, the little secrets he had gleaned from simple interactions, and he had named his protagonist after Dean. Antagonist. Whatever. He had dropped Dean right there next to Himeko in a BDSM bar, which was weird and somehow hotter than anything he'd ever known.
Dean found himself wondering where his right hand had crept off to before he realized that he really did not care.
"Himeko stares at Dean intently, waiting for him to do something. Waiting for him to understand. Waiting for him to pick her up and slam her on the bar like a rag-doll. Instead, Dean signals the bartender for another round."
"Damn, Cas, eye-sex?"
"A drink appears before Himeko and she downs it, but her eyes never leave Dean's."
"Why are you doing this to me?" It wasn't what he had thought he'd say, but it was what came out. Dean realized with a sort of sick fascination that whatever that love goddess had over him was making it difficult to breathe. He couldn't be shy about what he wanted, but he could be damn uncomfortable with how much he wanted Cas at the moment. In the least innocent way. He'd always been so into women - their curves, their voices, their shapes, their softness - that seeing things from the other side was awkward and just the slightest bit frightening. Would he still be into men when the effect was lifted? The thought was there and then it was gone. What did he care? That just opened a handful of other doors and options for fun and deviance if he did.
"Dean slides an arm around her waist and leans over her, his expression seductive. 'Why don't we go up to the saloon room?' He asks in a whisper. 'I can show you the ropes.'"
Dean didn't know if he should laugh or not, but a chuckle escaped him anyway. The saloon room. Did Cas know every fetish he had? And what was that sliding along the inside of his thigh like a lover's hand?
"The two of them rise together and he let's go of her while the two of them make their way toward the stairs. She moves fluidly, her eyes never leaving him. Dean is aware of everything around him - he is not stupid enough to drop his guard for a woman - but he at least lets her believe that she has consumed him for the moment. He follows her up the stairs, and the sound of her heeled boots on the hard floor encourages him.
"They come to the second room and she opens the door with a small, silver key. The door opens into a room out of the late eighteen hundreds, though cleaner, with a bed and dresser and a mirror, and a cupboard with..." Cas had to clear his throat and regain his composure. "A motley assortment of instruments inside."
Dean's teeth were going to widdle a way through his lower lip before this was over. What was all the description for? Dean was Dean, Himeko was any big breasted Asian girl, and the room was a room in a saloon from somewhere in the Midwest. After that, it didn't matter. If Cas went into the details of what color the drapes were, he'd just have to-
Wait. And listen. And pay no mind to the traitorous things his fingers were doing to him just on the outside of his jeans.
"The bed is covered in clean, brown linen. The drapes are pulled shut, their deep blue color vivid in the oil lamp's light."
"Damn you, Cas." Dean hissed to himself, and painted the image on the backs of his eyelids perfectly. He had trouble keeping anything that revolved around the woman in focus, however, though he couldn't identify why. She just wasn't as real as the room in his head. It would be easier to put-no. That was a little too far.
"As soon as the door is shut behind them, Dean kisses her, his lips gently parted, and she leans against the door to support herself. The contact steals the strength from her legs. With her left hand, she fumbles for the lock while her right reaches out to take a hold of the leather of Dean's belt.
"Dean pulls away at her enthusiasm, a little surprised. It isn't often he's... he's naked first."
"Don't fail me now, Feathers, get to the juicy part." Dean was just going for his belt when a sound like wooden thunder threatened to wrench his heart clear out of his ribcage. His eyes burst open and he rolled, instinctively, away from the door, while his right hand got his favorite handgun out from under the pillow and cocked before he even registered who'd just walked in on him about to beat the bishop.
Sam, wonderfully nice, giant and gentle, smart, funny, caring little Sammy, stood in the doorway with a to-go bag and a drink caddy in his hands. One of Dean's earbuds must have fallen out, because when he spoke the words actually registered. "Who're you talking to?" Not even the tiniest hint of concern for the gun pointed at the middle of his chest. Really, Dean thought, what a guy.
"'Dean...' Himeko says in a voice wantonly shrill..." Cas was saying in a breathy voice in Dean's left ear.
"My... uh... my... music player." Dean lied, and tried about thirty-seven times in the course of a heartbeat to find the Goddamn pause button. When he finally found it he realized he was breathing like a marathon runner, or a deep sea diver just come to the surface. "I... I named my music player."
"Feathers?" Sam was incredulous. He made that annoyingly toothy smile that highlighted all of his dimples before he breathed half a laugh and toed the door shut behind him. "You really expect me to believe you named your media player Feathers?"
Dean tried to distract himself by putting the gun away. "Yes. Why wouldn't I?"
Sam said something that Dean missed because in his urgency to get the loaded weapon out of his hand, he'd found the play button again.
"Because she needs him so, Dean can't hold back any longer. While his mouth explores Himeko's, he tears at the laces on her-"
"Because, Dean, you haven't named anything a remotely normal name since you were eleven." Sam told him, putting the food down. "What was that snake you found when I was seven? Lord Serpentus? And the wraith... vampire... hybrid things? Jefferson Star-ships? And the dog that followed me home that I wanted to name Fido?"
"Cerberus. He was too big for Fido."
Sam held up a hand to gesture at the media player and made a face like Dean was the biggest idiot in the world. "You did not name it Feathers."
"Shut up." Dean growled, and wondered for the briefest of moments if he was doing the right thing before he did what he always did and went with his gut. "And get out. I was in the middle of something." He prayed that Sammy would understand. Prayed to whoever would listen. Prayed and hoped and begged the universe that Sammy would just pick up the bag, say he was sorry, and wander on out.
Sam looked confused. "What? Vibrating?"
Dean just blinked at him.
"I...oh. Oh! Then..." Sam was chewing on a witty remark. "I'll just, uh... be back." He stood up, took a few steps toward the door. "In what? Three minutes?"
"An hour."
"Right." Sam was almost to the door when he tip-toed back to the table and ruffled through the bag of food for a clear plastic container of something green and covered in goo. "Dinner," he said, shaking the salad, and meandered (if a man that large can meander) outside. He didn't immediately pull the door shut behind him, however. He just stood there with the moonlight glinting off his hair and dazzling in his eyes. "You didn't name your junk Feathers did-"
Dean must have looked threatening for just a moment, because Sam pulled the door shut without even finishing his sentence. He didn’t even say if he had remembered the pie.
Mood severely lowered, Dean looked down at the music player in his fist and felt a rush of curious warmth fill his chest, like a deep breath, but he hadn't taken one. The track had a title. FINAL ATTEMPT. It brought to mind an image of Cas at one of the computers, leaning in to speak to the microphone, his trench coat draped over the back of his chair, his tie hanging loose around his neck. And in his hands, clenched so the tension in his arms made Dean want to reach out and touch him, was the script Cas had penned, large sections of it crossed out and rewritten in the margins. The Angel's face was tired, his hair mussed from running his fingers through it in frustration.
That thought brought Dean's finger purposely down on the play button again and pushed him down on the mattress. This time he did not notice that the bed was still, his last quarter's time expired.
"-bodice. His fingers rip the garment away from her in an effort get to her...flesh." Cas finished the passage, his breath leaving him in a rush at the end of the sentence. He sounded winded. Or-
Dean's mouth fell open. No. Castiel could not be getting off to his own farewell gift. Or he could be. Dean grinned a little. The pizza man had taught Cas many things, but where he might have learned to charm the trouser snake-
"Together, the two of them tumble toward the bed, and Dean's hand cups her... her supple breast for a moment before he flicks a thumb over her nipple. Himeko... reaches with shaking fingers and unbuckles Dean's... Dean's belt..." Cas' voice had turned painfully strained, his mouth dry, and Dean could close his eyes and see him, from his rumbled hair and his needy, innocent expression, to the hand he had started to draw across the zipper of his pants. Because Cas would fight it. Because Cas hadn't really known much about sex, not at the beginning and not in the middle and not when he'd died, and as much as he knew Dean liked it, masturbation wasn't exactly condoned by Heaven.
"Her long fingered hand slips into his pants, passed his boxers. She entwines him and-" There was a little sound, just the slightest intake of breath.
Dean watched the Cas in his mind crumple the paper, watched him sitting there in front of the computer, stroking his cock with a determined look crinkling his eyebrows, desire and embarrassment evident in every line of his face. No mask. No armor. Just Cas, thinking about Dean, his trembling voice strangled in his throat.
"Dean..." No, that wasn't Himeko. Not anymore.
Wordlessly, Dean opened his jeans and tugged them into a more comfortable position on his butt before he took his dick in his right hand and gave in to the desire that had started the moment he'd heard Castiel speaking to him through his media player. A preliminary stroke. A testing of the waters. And behind his eyelids, the Angel of Thursday shivered and his breath hitched in his throat.
“Dean, I’d thought-” Cas started, and his voice was so uneven it almost hurt to listen to. “I’ve been too nervous to finish before. To finish reading. Not… finish, but to get to the… the point. But now I think of you and-of you and…” His voice stopped, and Dean twisted his own cock in his hand, pressed his thumb to the head of it. What if Castiel were touching him? He finally allowed himself to wonder, and let out all of his air at the thought. What if Cas had done this, night after night after day after day, thinking of him? “Dean-” It was like a prayer, like how Sam sometimes talked to God when he didn’t think anyone was listening. “I think… of you and…”
The palm on the shaft of his cock was smooth and cool and fearless, like Cas’s eyes, and Dean let himself imagine what he would do if it was Castiel’s erection in his hand.
His finger ghosted over one of those painfully sensitive places and he let it linger there, just like Cas would, not knowing it was there, and imagined that the groan in his headphones was right beside him.
“I should… I should read-”
Dean shook his head. “Because Himeko isn’t a self-insertion Mary Sue, Cas?”
“Then you wouldn’t know that I wanted this with you.”
It wasn’t as if Dean couldn’t hear the fear and pain in Cas’s voice, it was just that he could make it all go away now, fisting Cas’s dick, his own wound up in Cas’s hand, the room dim around them, the laptop still recording. In the scene in Dean’s head, it could be perfect. It was an unexpected confession, but that didn’t mean it was unwanted. There was time to tease the tip of Cas’s erection with the pad of his thumb and feel the sensation echoed back against his own flesh, to explore little places he’d never even wondered about, to be gazed at without wondering what was going on behind those eyes.
In his ears, Cas gasped something desperate. Dean began to keep a solid rhythm, and lied to himself about keeping the Angel in his mind satisfied.
“I am so very stupid.” Cas somehow managed to whisper, and Dean wanted to reach out and touch his face. He wanted to pull his chin up and kiss him, tell him that it was alright, they could get through the night and talk it over, figure it out. Because they were like family. Because they cared about each other more deeply than was fit. Because they had a profound bond or something.
Dean’s left hand snaked its way down next to his right. The voice in his ears let out a low, throaty growl, followed by a louder, more desperate gasp. Cas didn’t get a word out, but he still made sound. His voice was needy and pleased and perfect, forming syllables that might have been English mixed with Enochian. But one thing fought its way out, somehow, soft and tender like nothing Cas had ever said to anyone.
Dean’s hand tightened on his cock and he heard himself moan. So close, so very, very close. He didn’t know when the pressure had started to feel unbearable but it did now. He could hardly move his hand fast enough, could hardly keep pace with the image in his mind.
Castiel whispered his name. The heat that gathered at the base of his cock grew tight. Everything narrowed to the vision in his mind, so real he could almost taste it, and he bit down his lower lip in an effort to keep from calling out to the man. Orgasm hit him harder than it had any right to, his toes curled in his socks and the world went blank and silent, but for Cas’s voice in his ears stuttering out his name like he couldn’t keep it in any longer.
The warm wetness on Dean’s hand didn’t seem to do the whole thing justice. He was out of breath, couldn’t think straight, and now that Castiel had finished just a heartbeat after him, Dean wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t dreaming.
Through his earbuds, he heard Cas laugh. The sound was warm and self-deprecating. “I told myself this would be my last attempt.” He was not as winded as Dean was, but he still paused to catch his breath a little. Maybe it was embarrassment instead of tiredness. “I will not make it a lie. I chose not to tell you what I wanted and it is too late now to change it. Please, forgive me. For this. For the things I have done. For not allowing you to understand, for not making you listen. It is the curse of free-will that we must apologize for the things we do when we live. I am… I am glad that you taught me there are worse things than choosing and being wrong.”
Dean didn’t know what that meant. He did not yet open his eyes because then he would have to see the empty motel room, the mess he’d made, the shadows and the tasteless decor. He tried to think about what Cas was saying, but there was too much whiskey and too much exhaustion running through him. He couldn’t wrap his head around it.
“Thank you, Dean. You have been closer to me than any of my brothers.”
There were a series of clicks, a low murmur of confusion, and then the recording turned to silence. The opening strains of Iron Man started before he rolled away from the media player and cast it aside without even the slightest interest in what it was playing. He looked at the room. At the blue curtains and the yellowish brown bedspread, at the small mound of quarters on the bedside stand. Empty. Every corner of it, ever shadow, every hiding place, every nook and cranny was empty. If Sam had been in the room with him, it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Because Cas was dead. And the only thing left of him was half of a bad romance-on-tape and a sexual moment he had been ashamed of. And an old, beaten up trench coat that smelled more like fishy water than Castiel anymore.
Dean pushed himself off the bed and went into the bathroom on unsteady feet, his jeans hanging on his hips, his feet dragging on the carpet. He was tired. And drunk. And sad to the point that he didn’t even want to remember finding that recording in the morning. But he would. It didn’t matter if he drank the whole fifth of whisky, he’d remember that voice forever. And he’d remember what he’d done. While he rinsed his hands and started the shower, he thought about it and tried to shake the feeling that he had missed the signals while Cas was around. It was too late now. No fixing it. No way around what had happened and no way to communicate to Cas that he, too, was sorry things had gone the way they had.
The water became hot but he didn’t immediately undress himself and climb in. Instead, on something that might have been like a whim, he knelt next to the yellowing bathtub and clasped his hands together, his fly still open, and looked upward. It felt like a bad joke to him that this would be his answer to the night, but he had to. Maybe it was his final attempt. Maybe it was just all he had left.
“Hey, Castiel. Cas, I mean.” Dean said, and his voice came out scratchy and soft, just audible over the water falling on the porcelain. “It’s… it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Since we talked. Yeah. It’s been… a while. Anyway, I listened to that recording you left me and I, um, well… that’s some pretty hot shit, isn’t it? Hot and heavy. Not the part with Himeko, that was crap.” He swallowed and folded his hands differently. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m calling. Or praying. I wanted you to know something, too, now that you’re gone. If you can hear me. I kind of… no, that’s not right. I do. I miss you, Cas. A lot. We both do, but it isn’t like I miss you like I miss Ellen and Jo, you know?”
He let his eyes fall shut, because that was how he had seen other people pray. The steam coming out of the shower warmed him and he tried to ignore the hard tile on his knees. If they’d stayed in a nicer place, there would have been a fresh towel to kneel on, but not here, not in this shabby hotel in the middle of nowhere. “If you’d told me you wanted that, if you’d explained it to me, I want to say that we could have dealt with it. We could have done something, had something, maybe, more than whatever we had before. It’s not like I think we coulda settled down and found a little house someplace like Lisa and Ben - that’d be stupid. And I dunno if this is the goddess juice talking or the whiskey or me, right now, but I’m telling the truth as far as I can feel it. We coulda had something. I would’ve let you have a little sliver of happiness if you’d asked me. At least I wanna believe I would’ve.
“Because as mad as I was at you, it ain’t like being angry makes you love a guy any less.” He paused to breathe for a second, to get his thoughts in order. But he couldn’t. His thoughts were a disorganized pile of feelings and broken logic he could no longer make sense of. “Did you know that for a while I thought I wouldn’t feel anything? Because you were just gone and you left Sammy’s brain stirred up like a Denver scramble. And then Bobby…” He shook his head. “But that’s not how it turned out. I feel everything. Regret and pain and fear, because there isn’t a single thing I can do down here to fight the things we’re fighting, and nothing I can do to fix Sammy, and no way to raise Bobby from the dead. I feel all of it. So I drink and try to forget it and numb it, when I can. But it’s not helping much anymore, Cas. It’s too small a fix and it doesn’t change a Goddamn thing when I’m sober.”
His palms pressed to his eyes but he didn’t think of it as breaking form. If anything, it felt right to cover his face with his hands rather than awkward. It wasn’t hiding, though it might have looked a lot like it. “If you were here, I don’t know what I’d do. Forgive you, I guess. Really forgive you. Talk about that thing you left me.” He didn’t smile, though he had one in him somewhere imagining the conversation. “Fix Sam. Come up with some great plan to shove the Leviathans back in their box. Or kill them. Maybe we’d have amazing sex somewhere in there, I don’t know. But if you wanted to, we could try it. I wish…” He realized too late that his shoulders were shaking, his fingers moist. Why didn’t click for the longest moment. As often as he came close to tears facing the things he and Sam lived with, he almost never cried.
“Please, Cas, if you’re there,” Dean looked up at the molding paint on the ceiling and tried to see beyond it, through it, to the glory of Heaven. “If you can hear me, please, just come down here. Only for a moment. Just… I need you. I can’t do this alone. Not anymore.”
Time turned to molasses while he sat there, looking up at the ceiling, his face wet from steam and tears. It was not until the mirror was entirely fogged that he pulled off his clothing and slipped his exhausted body into the shower in silence.
He didn’t hear a whisper or feel a presence. He could only tell himself that he hadn’t expected to.