[FIC] The Drugs Don't Work for misachan
Gift Type: Fanfic
Title: The Drugs Don’t Work
Author: electricskeptic
Recipient: misachan
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 4802
Warnings: Language, explicit sexuality, drug use
Spoilers: 5.04
Summary: He’s yet to find a drug that gives him quite the same high as Dean does.
Author Notes: This is mainly a response to your first prompt (2009!Dean/2014!Cas) with just a hint of the third (hypothermia!fic) thrown in for good measure. It’s probably a little bit more bittersweet than what you wanted, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
Title from The Verve.
“Well, this is… cozy,” Dean mutters, taking in the single, cramped bedroom of the somewhat dilapidated cabin that’s served as Cas’s home for last however-many-years-it’s-been.
“If I’d known I was getting a roommate, I would’ve straightened the place up,” Cas snipes back automatically, though it’s a blatant lie. He doesn’t think he’s made a single effort to keep the place tidy since their motley crew of survivors first colonized Camp Chitaqua; what would be the fucking point? Only now he feels self-conscious about it, with this Dean-from-the-past standing amidst the wreckage and absorbing it all with a judgemental frown, drug paraphernalia and used condoms and pages torn from a Bible in a fit of drunken despair scattered about the room like debris from a hurricane.
This is what the angel Castiel has come to. Welcome to the future, Dean.
He’d forgotten that Dean had the power to make him feel this way, had buried it under years of bitterness and spite and a hatred that wasn’t really hatred at all, that swung around full circle until it came right back to the other thing. Fine line, and all that. Suddenly faced with it again now, after all this time, he finds that he doesn’t know quite how to conduct himself, and his carefully-constructed veneer of nonchalance is in danger of crumbling away if he dares to look at Dean too long.
He’s not entirely sure he can help himself, though. This Dean is clearly burdened, the massive responsibility he carries observable in the slump to his shoulders and the dark rings underscoring his eyes, but he hasn’t yet lost that spark of life and good humor that’s so fundamental to who he is. Cas hadn’t realized just how fundamental until it was gone, but this Dean -- this Dean is the one he remembers from so long ago, the one he fell for in every sense of the word. Cas is torn between resenting him for his part in all of this and being pathetically grateful that the universe should decide to drop this gift in his lap now of all times, on what will surely be his last night on earth.
Perhaps that’s what Dean -- his Dean, the real one -- had been thinking when he’d told his past self, “You can bunk with Cas tonight.” Granting Cas one last night with the man he no longer has the strength to be as some kind of half-assed apology for sending him straight to what will likely be an untimely and ignoble death. Cas laughs out loud at this notion, because if true, it’s pretty fucking warped. Even by Dean’s standards.
He stops laughing when Dean gives him a strange look, because such behavior is not generally considered a sign of ideal mental health. In lieu of any better ideas, he sinks down to sit cross-legged on the threadbare rug and gropes under the bed for the ancient bottle of whiskey Chuck had given him last Christmas, pulling it out with a flourish. The label is so badly faded that he can’t even make out what brand it is, but liquor is liquor and it burns pleasantly on the way down when he drinks.
Dean eyes the bottle suspiciously when Cas offers it to him, but one thing that can always be counted on with Dean is that his need for booze will outweigh his discomfort with any given situation. True to form, he accepts the whiskey after only a moment’s hesitation, settling down opposite Cas and taking a long pull before staring down the neck of the bottle as though it were the barrel of a gun.
“All right, spill,” Cas prompts when this continues for nearly a full minute. He rolls his eyes at the puzzled frown Dean shoots him in response. “Clearly something’s eating at you. Consider me your therapist for the evening.”
They have time, after all -- the plan is to move out in the early hours of the morning, while they still have the cover of darkness -- and Cas has little else to do on the eve of his destruction.
Dean shakes his head, downs another shot of liquid courage before wiping his mouth on the back of his hand and passing the bottle back to Cas. “Just thinking about something the, uh, other me said.”
“Ah, yes. I heard our Fearless Leader pulled you in for a private chat.” Dean gives him a sharp look at the nickname, and Cas smiles in a way he suspects is not wholly pleasant to witness. “We got snowed into a motel for three days when the TV was playing nothing but Rocky and Bullwinkle on repeat,” he offers, by way of explanation. “It seemed fitting.”
“Does that make you Boris or Natasha?”
“Oh, that’s original,” Cas volleys back on autopilot, even as he feels a twinge somewhere in the vicinity of his chest because his Dean’s response had been exactly the same the first time Cas had used the moniker, back when the joke had been vaguely amusing and they could at least pretend they still liked each other. How times change.
“So what did he say to you?” The question stems more from a desire to distract himself from his own impending funk than any real interest in whatever Dean might’ve had to say to himself, but Dean either fails to notice Cas’s lack of intrigue or simply doesn’t care.
“Oh, just that I should say yes to Michael when I get back to my own time if I ever want to stop all of this from happening. I mean, that’s the whole reason Zach dropped me here in the first place, to show me how bad it gets if I keep saying no, but… Fuck, I don’t know what to do anymore. What do you think?”
Cas laughs out loud at that, because he can’t even remember the last time anybody had asked for his opinion on anything. Not that that’s ever stopped him from offering it. Still, he’d tried to voice his thoughts on tomorrow’s suicide mission at the briefing earlier, and look how that had gone down.
He wonders if it’s petty of him, that he’s going to walk knowingly into a trap, to his certain death, without raising any further complaint -- and let others do the same -- just to serve a final fuck you to Dean.
Probably. He’s guilty of worse crimes.
“It hardly matters what I think.”
“Yeah, well, it matters to me, okay?” Dean snaps back, with an unexpected amount of vehemence behind the words. But then, that’s Dean all over, isn’t it? Forever finding new ways to surprise him, even when Cas is certain he’s long since lost the ability to be surprised. He blinks, taken aback, before hastily covering over his shock with the most obnoxious, shit-eating grin he can muster.
“Why, Dean. I didn’t know you cared --”
“Jesus, could you just drop the act for five fucking seconds?” Dean shakes his head in a words fail me kind of way that Cas is painfully familiar with. “What the hell happened to you, Cas? And don’t give me that ‘life’ crap.”
“You won’t say yes,” Cas sighs, because the answer to Dean’s question is a very long and tedious essay that he has no immediate desire to get into, though the short version might as well be you. Still, this much he is certain of: that Dean will continue to resist Michael, even if it dooms them all. Logically, rationally, Cas thinks that maybe he shouldn’t, that they were wrong, that half a planet is better than no planet. But he is no longer a logical, rational creature, and such thoughts are always inevitably crushed beneath the wild panic that still grips him every time he considers the possibility of looking at Dean and seeing someone else stare back at him from behind those undeniably lovely eyes.
“How can you be so sure?” Dean’s voice comes out small and tremulous, jarring when Cas is more used to it barking commands and threats.
“You won’t say yes, Dean.” This time it sounds like an order, and Cas can almost feel the weight of phantom wings stirring at his back.
You won’t say yes. I’d never forgive you for it.
+
It doesn’t take long for Cas to lose interest in the alcohol, and he assiduously avoids Dean’s gaze as he rifles through his drawers looking for the joint he’d rolled earlier in the afternoon and never gotten around to smoking. He knows there’s no point in trying to explain himself to Dean, this ghost from his past; the only way to fully appreciate the fucked-up reality of his current situation is to have lived through the last five years of literal hell on earth.
He finds what it is he’s looking for and sets the paper alight with an expert flick of his lighter, taking a long drag and relishing in the sensation of sweet, fragrant smoke settling heavy in his lungs. Dean shakes his head warily when Cas holds the joint out to him in offering, and Cas smirks around his next hit, already starting to get that nice, floaty feeling, like he’s been unplugged from the rest of the world.
“S’only weed,” he taunts, and neglects to mention that he’s saving the harder stuff for when they hit the road in the morning. “It’s the end of the world, Dean. Live a little.”
“Can’t believe you’re a damn junkie now,” Dean mutters under his breath, like he thinks Cas won’t hear, even as he apparently changes his mind and leans forward to take the joint. Cas feels something inside himself grow cold at the words, even though it’s an accurate summation of his character. But Dean -- this Dean -- hasn’t been here, doesn’t have to spend his every waking moment living beneath the canopy of bleakness and despair that’s settled over the earth under Lucifer’s rule, and still he feels authorized to sit here in the ruins of what Cas has become and pass judgement on how he chooses to spend his dying days.
Cas may be reckless, but he’s not stupid. Everything is a gamble; a bad trip can leave him a shaking, crumbling mess for days on end, but a good trip is enough to make him feel like he can fly again, almost. He’s yet to find a drug that gives him quite the same high as Dean does, though. If it does exist, that elusive formula, then surely somebody somewhere would have thought to bottle and mass-produce it by now. It would be dangerous, addictive stuff -- may cause headaches and occasional bouts of martyrdom -- but the rush would be like no other.
His muddled train of thought is interrupted by Dean coughing and choking on perfumed smoke, sounding like he’s making a spirited attempt to hack up a lung. Cas snickers to himself, takes the spliff back while Dean glares wordlessly at him.
“Been a while, huh?”
Struck by a sudden inspiration, he raises the joint to his own lips and inhales again, this time holding the smoke in his lungs and shuffling across the distance between them until he’s practically sitting in Dean’s lap. Dean’s eyes -- pupils already slightly blown -- grow impossibly wide, and Cas hesitates for just a second, giving him opportunity to freak out or back away. When he does neither, Cas leans forward to seal their lips together, using his tongue to coax Dean’s mouth open before pushing the marijuana fumes inside.
Dean leans with him as he pulls away, following on some unconscious instinct, and something inside of Cas gives a small thrill of victory. He’d had his first introduction to recreational drugs this way, by a former grad student named Shona with dark skin and red lips, who’d poured smoke down his throat until he was drunk with it and then told him how her fiancé had been ripped apart by demons as she watched. Everyone at Camp Chitaqua has some horror story or other, and most tell them to Cas; because he listens to their tragedies, and then he does his best to help them forget. The irony of it hasn’t escaped him, that he has more humanity left in him than anyone else, these days.
Dean’s exhale is smoother this time, the greyish plume drifting up to hang over their heads, cloying and sickly-sweet. Their gazes catch and lock together, and for that one, crystalline moment, it’s like old times again. Cas is close enough to count the spray of freckles across Dean’s nose and cheeks, to identify each individual shade of green in his eyes, and he stares unabashedly, drinking in every detail after having denied himself this for years.
The moment is broken when Dean shifts awkwardly, drops his gaze with a nervous cough. Cas grins wide, papering over the cracks even though he might as well be falling apart.
“Am I making you uncomfortable, Dean?”
Dean makes a frustrated noise and yanks Cas forward by the lapels of his combat jacket, forcing him to widen his stance so as not to overbalance completely. The sudden move finds him seated more fully on top of Dean, and now he can feel exactly what effect he’s having, the first stirrings of arousal pressing insistently against his backside. Cas smirks and grinds down obscenely, going through the motions even as his heart beats a triple-time rhythm against his sternum and all the blood in his body rushes southwards.
“If you tell me that’s your gun I’m going to be very disappointed.”
Dean rolls his eyes, but the words bring a flood of color to his face regardless. Cas delights in it, having almost forgotten that Dean was ever this easy to rile up.
“Cas,” Dean breathes, and there’s an edge to his voice that sounds just this side of desperate, “Tell me, you and me, did we ever…?”
He trails off, but Cas doesn’t need to hear the end of that question in order to know where it was going. He laughs, and for once it’s not bitter as he takes his mind back, remembers all the various places and positions they’ve ever fucked in. They’ve been slow and careful and worshipful with one another, breathless lovemaking between soft cotton sheets from what seems like a lifetime ago, and they’ve done it brutal and nasty, half-clothed in grimy alleyways, primal and covered in blood after mowing down croats or demons in their dozens. The sordid history of Dean ‘n’ Cas stretches from coast to coast across post-apocalyptic America in pornographic Technicolor, written into broken motel beds and abandoned warehouse buildings all the way from New York to Nevada.
Cas puts down his joint, traces a thumb across Dean’s reddened lower lip and tries to remember when it all started.
“Have you done the brothel yet?” he asks finally.
Dean’s forehead crumples into a frown. “Yeah, about three weeks ago, why?”
Cas leans in conspiratorially, like he’s about to impart to Dean all the secrets of the universe. “I wanted you to fuck me then. When you said you wouldn’t let me die a virgin, I rather hoped you’d take care of it yourself.”
Dean lets out a tortured-sounding groan, surges forward to smash their mouths together. It’s not a nice kiss, by any stretch of the imagination: it’s wide and wet and fucking filthy, all clashing teeth, scraping stubble and too much saliva, Dean’s tongue shoved to the back of his throat and his hands too tight in Cas’s hair. But Cas gives back as good as he gets, because this is what he’s good at, because Dean is kissing him with something like passion, like he actually gives a damn, and Cas has been looking for glimpses of this man behind the eyes of a stranger for longer than he cares to think about. He drags himself away with no small degree of difficulty, turns his head to bring his lips in close to Dean’s ear.
“Dean,” he whispers, and he doesn’t like the way his voice shakes out rough and strange, but he suspects he couldn’t help it if he tried. “I need you. Please.”
And now he’s pleading, which is something he categorically does not do, but he needs this, needs it like he needs breathing and sleep and every other petty little thing that makes him so pitifully human.
Dean pulls back to look at him, something dark and troubled passing over his face -- something like regret, like uncertainty -- and for one awful moment Cas thinks he’s going to refuse. But then Dean relaxes, sighs out a nervous breath, and he knows he’s won.
Dean has never been able to deny him anything, in any incarnation.
+
Everything that transpires next does so in something of a blur; Cas’s head feels muddled and strange, and for once he’s not sure the drugs are responsible. Somehow they make it to the bed, and clothes quickly become a thing of the past: boots kicked off with the laces still done up, shirts tearing, jeans and underwear dragged down all at once in their haste. Hardly anyone has sex fully naked anymore, and most people sleep with their boots on. There’s always the chance that they’ll come under attack in the middle of the night, and nobody wants to be that unlucky bastard who gets caught out.
Cas doesn’t care about any of that right now, can’t care about it. He’s probably going to die tomorrow, so that makes everything else pretty much redundant.
Dean’s skin is almost as smooth and unmarked as it had been when Cas -- Castiel -- had first raised him up from Hell, a blank canvas free from the crosshatching of battle wounds Cas has grown used to seeing there. Contrastingly, Dean seems fascinated by the vast collection of scars Cas has picked up over the last five years, tracing them with deft fingers and a clever tongue.
“What happened here?” Dean murmurs distractedly, sucking at the long pink line that marks the skin of Cas’s throat.
“Vampires,” Cas gasps out, digging his fingers into Dean’s hips and not caring that it’s probably going to bruise. The creatures are almost extinct now, their numbers dwindling as Lucifer slowly exterminated their food source -- but the ones that are left are ravenously hungry, as Cas and Risa had found out when they’d stumbled upon a nest during a reconnaissance mission.
Dean continues making his way down Cas’s body, taking his sweet time mapping out each individual scar until every nerve ending in Cas’s body is thrumming with impatience.
“Cas,” Dean breathes, and it sounds far too raw, far too honest for Cas’s liking. “Cas, I’m so sorry --”
“Don’t do that,” Cas snarls, suddenly overcome by irritation. He may not have much left, but he still has millennia on Dean, and if there’s one thing he can’t abide it’s people apologizing to him for the choices he made of his own free will, the choices he would make again and again a thousand times over, in full knowledge of the consequences. “I don’t need your pity.”
Dean looks like he wants to say something else and, impatient, Cas reaches up and clamps his hand over the brand he burned into Dean’s shoulder a lifetime ago, fingers pressing into the flesh hard enough to mark him all over again.
“Whatever becomes of me, never forget who it was that dragged you up from the Pit kicking and screaming, who rebuilt your bones from ash and your flesh from cinders. That means I own you, Dean Winchester, and you don’t have the right to take responsibility for my actions, even if they lead me here.”
“God, you’re so full of it,” Dean mutters, rolling his eyes and leaning down to bring their lips together again. The kiss much slower this time, careful, almost cautious; there’s a part of Cas that wants to resist it, but it’s a relatively small part, and his anger begins to dissipate as quickly as it came upon him. He can feel Dean’s cock pressing into his belly, leaving wet trails against his skin, and he reaches a hand down between them to reacquaint himself with the shape and feel of it, swiping his thumb over the leaking head and smirking in spite of himself as Dean moans wordlessly into his mouth.
Cas arches up against him, responding in kind with a groan of his own when Dean breaks the kiss to suck tender bruises into the hollow of his throat. Since his sexual enlightenment, Cas has indulged in some of the most extravagant and inventive styles of fornication ever dreamed up by humankind, a veritable Kama Sutra of positions and techniques. He finds most human taboos trivial and ridiculous, and self-consciousness doesn’t seem to apply to him -- this isn’t his body, after all -- and so he has been able to throw himself headfirst into so-called sexual deviancy totally free of guilt or inhibitions. He has been with men and women both, with multiple partners all at the same time, and he still has yet to find anything that could compare to this: the simple press of Dean’s weight on top of him as they grind together with similar levels of self-control to those of the average adolescent.
Dean makes a small noise of protest when Cas lets go of his dick, a noise turns into something altogether more wanton when Cas licks a broad stripe across his own palm before wrapping his hand around both of them instead.
Cas can’t quite suppress a gasp at how good that feels, their cocks pressed together in his fist, heads seeping wet with precome as he works them both towards completion with ever-increasing urgency. It occurs to him that he could point out he has condoms and lube in the bedside cabinet, but now that he has Dean where he wants him, he doesn’t think he could let go if he tried.
He’s close already, his balls tightening as Dean bites down into the meat of his shoulder, and he finds himself opening his legs wider so that Dean can fit between them more easily, falling into the space as though it was made specifically with him in mind. Dean utters a sound that comes out half-growl, half-whimper, and then his hand is reaching down to join Cas’s, fingers intertwining as they rock against one another and move in near-perfect tandem to reach their end goal.
Dean comes first, lifting his head from Cas’s shoulder to gaze down at him with an unreadable expression, the green of his eyes almost eclipsed by lust-swollen pupils. He just manages to choke out Cas’s name before he tenses and shudders, and then he’s swooping down to capture Cas’s mouth in a searing, messy kiss as he spills his release over their joined hands.
The noises Dean makes, the breathless, incoherent whimpers and broken little ohs, are more than enough to finish Cas off, and it only takes a few more well-timed strokes before he’s following Dean over the edge, falling into that perfect, limitless abyss where everything goes dark and he is once again magnificent.
+
Cas sits against the broken headboard with his knees drawn up to his chest, feeling exposed in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with being naked. He can feel Dean’s eyes on him, boring a hole in the side of his head, and if it was anybody else he’d kick them out just so that he could get some goddamn sleep. He’s still tempted to do that, if not for the fact that Dean would probably wander off and get himself killed. For all that he’s supposedly a fearless demon hunter -- the great Dean Winchester -- he isn’t versed in the rules and regulations of this world, and that makes him just as vulnerable as any civilian.
“You don’t think you’re going to make it, tomorrow,” Dean says, effectively breaking the awkward silence that’s descended over them post-coitus. Cas has to smile a little at that, because Dean was always such a smart boy, always so perceptive, even if he never believed it, even if that was always supposed to be Sam’s role.
“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. It doesn’t much matter either way.” At Dean’s incredulous look, he adds, “Look at me, Dean. What am I supposed to live for, huh? We’re all just sitting around waiting to die anyway. If I’m going down, I intend to go down fighting.”
Dean stares at him for a moment, snorting out a disbelieving breath. “Man, you are so full of shit.”
“Believe what you want to believe,” Cas sighs, too tired to argue the point. “Why do you even care, anyway? For all you know I might not even be real.”
He turns those words over in his mind and finds that there’s some cold comfort to be found in them, in the possibility that his existence may be nothing more than a product of Zachariah’s warped imagination. The bastard always did have a sick sense of humor, and no doubt he’d get some kind of perverse thrill out of seeing his former subordinate brought so low.
With that happy thought in mind, he slides under his threadbare blanket, turning his back to Dean and pointedly shutting down the conversation. He’s still slightly buzzed, and he has that pleasant, just-fucked feeling that makes him want to sleep for a week, but the cold is already beginning seep in, settling deep in his marrow and slow-freezing him from the inside out. Ever since his Fall, he feels temperature extremes much more keenly than most, and the attacks tend to strike without warning -- though usually after periods of intense physical exertion. He imagines his blood slowing and turning to ice in his veins and tries to suppress a shiver, but Dean still notices. Of course he does.
“You cold?”
Cas rolls his eyes and does his best to shrug while horizontal. “This happens sometimes. It’ll pass.”
There’s a moment’s pause, then the rustle of sheets as Dean joins him under the covers. An instant later, Dean is pressed up against Cas’s back, arm thrown over his chest, radiating blissful heat everywhere they touch. Cas is briefly tempted to be stubborn and pull away -- because he hasn’t allowed himself to need like this in years, and now Dean comes along and shatters it all in the space of one night -- but then he decides that he simply doesn’t have the energy to fight and instead melts into Dean’s warmth
“I’m gonna do things right this time, I promise,” Dean says, and his voice is full of such fervent hope and determination that Cas wants to beat it out of him because it’s all so fucking hopeless. “I won’t be him.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Cas tells him sharply, because hasn’t Dean promised him all the same things before? Hasn’t he breathed them into Cas’s skin, on cheap motel sheets and the backseat of his beloved car, You’re perfect, I could never leave you, I love you, I love you, I love you. Just words at the end of the day, and empty ones at that.
Dean doesn’t say anything more, and Cas pretends he doesn’t feel the soft brush of lips against the back of his neck. He lies awake for what feels like hours, listening to Dean’s breathing go slow and rhythmic.
For the first time since his wings burned up and left him stranded in this dystopian wasteland -- and in spite of everything tomorrow will bring -- his sleep is undisturbed when he finally closes his eyes.
Title: The Drugs Don’t Work
Author: electricskeptic
Recipient: misachan
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 4802
Warnings: Language, explicit sexuality, drug use
Spoilers: 5.04
Summary: He’s yet to find a drug that gives him quite the same high as Dean does.
Author Notes: This is mainly a response to your first prompt (2009!Dean/2014!Cas) with just a hint of the third (hypothermia!fic) thrown in for good measure. It’s probably a little bit more bittersweet than what you wanted, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
Title from The Verve.
“Well, this is… cozy,” Dean mutters, taking in the single, cramped bedroom of the somewhat dilapidated cabin that’s served as Cas’s home for last however-many-years-it’s-been.
“If I’d known I was getting a roommate, I would’ve straightened the place up,” Cas snipes back automatically, though it’s a blatant lie. He doesn’t think he’s made a single effort to keep the place tidy since their motley crew of survivors first colonized Camp Chitaqua; what would be the fucking point? Only now he feels self-conscious about it, with this Dean-from-the-past standing amidst the wreckage and absorbing it all with a judgemental frown, drug paraphernalia and used condoms and pages torn from a Bible in a fit of drunken despair scattered about the room like debris from a hurricane.
This is what the angel Castiel has come to. Welcome to the future, Dean.
He’d forgotten that Dean had the power to make him feel this way, had buried it under years of bitterness and spite and a hatred that wasn’t really hatred at all, that swung around full circle until it came right back to the other thing. Fine line, and all that. Suddenly faced with it again now, after all this time, he finds that he doesn’t know quite how to conduct himself, and his carefully-constructed veneer of nonchalance is in danger of crumbling away if he dares to look at Dean too long.
He’s not entirely sure he can help himself, though. This Dean is clearly burdened, the massive responsibility he carries observable in the slump to his shoulders and the dark rings underscoring his eyes, but he hasn’t yet lost that spark of life and good humor that’s so fundamental to who he is. Cas hadn’t realized just how fundamental until it was gone, but this Dean -- this Dean is the one he remembers from so long ago, the one he fell for in every sense of the word. Cas is torn between resenting him for his part in all of this and being pathetically grateful that the universe should decide to drop this gift in his lap now of all times, on what will surely be his last night on earth.
Perhaps that’s what Dean -- his Dean, the real one -- had been thinking when he’d told his past self, “You can bunk with Cas tonight.” Granting Cas one last night with the man he no longer has the strength to be as some kind of half-assed apology for sending him straight to what will likely be an untimely and ignoble death. Cas laughs out loud at this notion, because if true, it’s pretty fucking warped. Even by Dean’s standards.
He stops laughing when Dean gives him a strange look, because such behavior is not generally considered a sign of ideal mental health. In lieu of any better ideas, he sinks down to sit cross-legged on the threadbare rug and gropes under the bed for the ancient bottle of whiskey Chuck had given him last Christmas, pulling it out with a flourish. The label is so badly faded that he can’t even make out what brand it is, but liquor is liquor and it burns pleasantly on the way down when he drinks.
Dean eyes the bottle suspiciously when Cas offers it to him, but one thing that can always be counted on with Dean is that his need for booze will outweigh his discomfort with any given situation. True to form, he accepts the whiskey after only a moment’s hesitation, settling down opposite Cas and taking a long pull before staring down the neck of the bottle as though it were the barrel of a gun.
“All right, spill,” Cas prompts when this continues for nearly a full minute. He rolls his eyes at the puzzled frown Dean shoots him in response. “Clearly something’s eating at you. Consider me your therapist for the evening.”
They have time, after all -- the plan is to move out in the early hours of the morning, while they still have the cover of darkness -- and Cas has little else to do on the eve of his destruction.
Dean shakes his head, downs another shot of liquid courage before wiping his mouth on the back of his hand and passing the bottle back to Cas. “Just thinking about something the, uh, other me said.”
“Ah, yes. I heard our Fearless Leader pulled you in for a private chat.” Dean gives him a sharp look at the nickname, and Cas smiles in a way he suspects is not wholly pleasant to witness. “We got snowed into a motel for three days when the TV was playing nothing but Rocky and Bullwinkle on repeat,” he offers, by way of explanation. “It seemed fitting.”
“Does that make you Boris or Natasha?”
“Oh, that’s original,” Cas volleys back on autopilot, even as he feels a twinge somewhere in the vicinity of his chest because his Dean’s response had been exactly the same the first time Cas had used the moniker, back when the joke had been vaguely amusing and they could at least pretend they still liked each other. How times change.
“So what did he say to you?” The question stems more from a desire to distract himself from his own impending funk than any real interest in whatever Dean might’ve had to say to himself, but Dean either fails to notice Cas’s lack of intrigue or simply doesn’t care.
“Oh, just that I should say yes to Michael when I get back to my own time if I ever want to stop all of this from happening. I mean, that’s the whole reason Zach dropped me here in the first place, to show me how bad it gets if I keep saying no, but… Fuck, I don’t know what to do anymore. What do you think?”
Cas laughs out loud at that, because he can’t even remember the last time anybody had asked for his opinion on anything. Not that that’s ever stopped him from offering it. Still, he’d tried to voice his thoughts on tomorrow’s suicide mission at the briefing earlier, and look how that had gone down.
He wonders if it’s petty of him, that he’s going to walk knowingly into a trap, to his certain death, without raising any further complaint -- and let others do the same -- just to serve a final fuck you to Dean.
Probably. He’s guilty of worse crimes.
“It hardly matters what I think.”
“Yeah, well, it matters to me, okay?” Dean snaps back, with an unexpected amount of vehemence behind the words. But then, that’s Dean all over, isn’t it? Forever finding new ways to surprise him, even when Cas is certain he’s long since lost the ability to be surprised. He blinks, taken aback, before hastily covering over his shock with the most obnoxious, shit-eating grin he can muster.
“Why, Dean. I didn’t know you cared --”
“Jesus, could you just drop the act for five fucking seconds?” Dean shakes his head in a words fail me kind of way that Cas is painfully familiar with. “What the hell happened to you, Cas? And don’t give me that ‘life’ crap.”
“You won’t say yes,” Cas sighs, because the answer to Dean’s question is a very long and tedious essay that he has no immediate desire to get into, though the short version might as well be you. Still, this much he is certain of: that Dean will continue to resist Michael, even if it dooms them all. Logically, rationally, Cas thinks that maybe he shouldn’t, that they were wrong, that half a planet is better than no planet. But he is no longer a logical, rational creature, and such thoughts are always inevitably crushed beneath the wild panic that still grips him every time he considers the possibility of looking at Dean and seeing someone else stare back at him from behind those undeniably lovely eyes.
“How can you be so sure?” Dean’s voice comes out small and tremulous, jarring when Cas is more used to it barking commands and threats.
“You won’t say yes, Dean.” This time it sounds like an order, and Cas can almost feel the weight of phantom wings stirring at his back.
You won’t say yes. I’d never forgive you for it.
+
It doesn’t take long for Cas to lose interest in the alcohol, and he assiduously avoids Dean’s gaze as he rifles through his drawers looking for the joint he’d rolled earlier in the afternoon and never gotten around to smoking. He knows there’s no point in trying to explain himself to Dean, this ghost from his past; the only way to fully appreciate the fucked-up reality of his current situation is to have lived through the last five years of literal hell on earth.
He finds what it is he’s looking for and sets the paper alight with an expert flick of his lighter, taking a long drag and relishing in the sensation of sweet, fragrant smoke settling heavy in his lungs. Dean shakes his head warily when Cas holds the joint out to him in offering, and Cas smirks around his next hit, already starting to get that nice, floaty feeling, like he’s been unplugged from the rest of the world.
“S’only weed,” he taunts, and neglects to mention that he’s saving the harder stuff for when they hit the road in the morning. “It’s the end of the world, Dean. Live a little.”
“Can’t believe you’re a damn junkie now,” Dean mutters under his breath, like he thinks Cas won’t hear, even as he apparently changes his mind and leans forward to take the joint. Cas feels something inside himself grow cold at the words, even though it’s an accurate summation of his character. But Dean -- this Dean -- hasn’t been here, doesn’t have to spend his every waking moment living beneath the canopy of bleakness and despair that’s settled over the earth under Lucifer’s rule, and still he feels authorized to sit here in the ruins of what Cas has become and pass judgement on how he chooses to spend his dying days.
Cas may be reckless, but he’s not stupid. Everything is a gamble; a bad trip can leave him a shaking, crumbling mess for days on end, but a good trip is enough to make him feel like he can fly again, almost. He’s yet to find a drug that gives him quite the same high as Dean does, though. If it does exist, that elusive formula, then surely somebody somewhere would have thought to bottle and mass-produce it by now. It would be dangerous, addictive stuff -- may cause headaches and occasional bouts of martyrdom -- but the rush would be like no other.
His muddled train of thought is interrupted by Dean coughing and choking on perfumed smoke, sounding like he’s making a spirited attempt to hack up a lung. Cas snickers to himself, takes the spliff back while Dean glares wordlessly at him.
“Been a while, huh?”
Struck by a sudden inspiration, he raises the joint to his own lips and inhales again, this time holding the smoke in his lungs and shuffling across the distance between them until he’s practically sitting in Dean’s lap. Dean’s eyes -- pupils already slightly blown -- grow impossibly wide, and Cas hesitates for just a second, giving him opportunity to freak out or back away. When he does neither, Cas leans forward to seal their lips together, using his tongue to coax Dean’s mouth open before pushing the marijuana fumes inside.
Dean leans with him as he pulls away, following on some unconscious instinct, and something inside of Cas gives a small thrill of victory. He’d had his first introduction to recreational drugs this way, by a former grad student named Shona with dark skin and red lips, who’d poured smoke down his throat until he was drunk with it and then told him how her fiancé had been ripped apart by demons as she watched. Everyone at Camp Chitaqua has some horror story or other, and most tell them to Cas; because he listens to their tragedies, and then he does his best to help them forget. The irony of it hasn’t escaped him, that he has more humanity left in him than anyone else, these days.
Dean’s exhale is smoother this time, the greyish plume drifting up to hang over their heads, cloying and sickly-sweet. Their gazes catch and lock together, and for that one, crystalline moment, it’s like old times again. Cas is close enough to count the spray of freckles across Dean’s nose and cheeks, to identify each individual shade of green in his eyes, and he stares unabashedly, drinking in every detail after having denied himself this for years.
The moment is broken when Dean shifts awkwardly, drops his gaze with a nervous cough. Cas grins wide, papering over the cracks even though he might as well be falling apart.
“Am I making you uncomfortable, Dean?”
Dean makes a frustrated noise and yanks Cas forward by the lapels of his combat jacket, forcing him to widen his stance so as not to overbalance completely. The sudden move finds him seated more fully on top of Dean, and now he can feel exactly what effect he’s having, the first stirrings of arousal pressing insistently against his backside. Cas smirks and grinds down obscenely, going through the motions even as his heart beats a triple-time rhythm against his sternum and all the blood in his body rushes southwards.
“If you tell me that’s your gun I’m going to be very disappointed.”
Dean rolls his eyes, but the words bring a flood of color to his face regardless. Cas delights in it, having almost forgotten that Dean was ever this easy to rile up.
“Cas,” Dean breathes, and there’s an edge to his voice that sounds just this side of desperate, “Tell me, you and me, did we ever…?”
He trails off, but Cas doesn’t need to hear the end of that question in order to know where it was going. He laughs, and for once it’s not bitter as he takes his mind back, remembers all the various places and positions they’ve ever fucked in. They’ve been slow and careful and worshipful with one another, breathless lovemaking between soft cotton sheets from what seems like a lifetime ago, and they’ve done it brutal and nasty, half-clothed in grimy alleyways, primal and covered in blood after mowing down croats or demons in their dozens. The sordid history of Dean ‘n’ Cas stretches from coast to coast across post-apocalyptic America in pornographic Technicolor, written into broken motel beds and abandoned warehouse buildings all the way from New York to Nevada.
Cas puts down his joint, traces a thumb across Dean’s reddened lower lip and tries to remember when it all started.
“Have you done the brothel yet?” he asks finally.
Dean’s forehead crumples into a frown. “Yeah, about three weeks ago, why?”
Cas leans in conspiratorially, like he’s about to impart to Dean all the secrets of the universe. “I wanted you to fuck me then. When you said you wouldn’t let me die a virgin, I rather hoped you’d take care of it yourself.”
Dean lets out a tortured-sounding groan, surges forward to smash their mouths together. It’s not a nice kiss, by any stretch of the imagination: it’s wide and wet and fucking filthy, all clashing teeth, scraping stubble and too much saliva, Dean’s tongue shoved to the back of his throat and his hands too tight in Cas’s hair. But Cas gives back as good as he gets, because this is what he’s good at, because Dean is kissing him with something like passion, like he actually gives a damn, and Cas has been looking for glimpses of this man behind the eyes of a stranger for longer than he cares to think about. He drags himself away with no small degree of difficulty, turns his head to bring his lips in close to Dean’s ear.
“Dean,” he whispers, and he doesn’t like the way his voice shakes out rough and strange, but he suspects he couldn’t help it if he tried. “I need you. Please.”
And now he’s pleading, which is something he categorically does not do, but he needs this, needs it like he needs breathing and sleep and every other petty little thing that makes him so pitifully human.
Dean pulls back to look at him, something dark and troubled passing over his face -- something like regret, like uncertainty -- and for one awful moment Cas thinks he’s going to refuse. But then Dean relaxes, sighs out a nervous breath, and he knows he’s won.
Dean has never been able to deny him anything, in any incarnation.
+
Everything that transpires next does so in something of a blur; Cas’s head feels muddled and strange, and for once he’s not sure the drugs are responsible. Somehow they make it to the bed, and clothes quickly become a thing of the past: boots kicked off with the laces still done up, shirts tearing, jeans and underwear dragged down all at once in their haste. Hardly anyone has sex fully naked anymore, and most people sleep with their boots on. There’s always the chance that they’ll come under attack in the middle of the night, and nobody wants to be that unlucky bastard who gets caught out.
Cas doesn’t care about any of that right now, can’t care about it. He’s probably going to die tomorrow, so that makes everything else pretty much redundant.
Dean’s skin is almost as smooth and unmarked as it had been when Cas -- Castiel -- had first raised him up from Hell, a blank canvas free from the crosshatching of battle wounds Cas has grown used to seeing there. Contrastingly, Dean seems fascinated by the vast collection of scars Cas has picked up over the last five years, tracing them with deft fingers and a clever tongue.
“What happened here?” Dean murmurs distractedly, sucking at the long pink line that marks the skin of Cas’s throat.
“Vampires,” Cas gasps out, digging his fingers into Dean’s hips and not caring that it’s probably going to bruise. The creatures are almost extinct now, their numbers dwindling as Lucifer slowly exterminated their food source -- but the ones that are left are ravenously hungry, as Cas and Risa had found out when they’d stumbled upon a nest during a reconnaissance mission.
Dean continues making his way down Cas’s body, taking his sweet time mapping out each individual scar until every nerve ending in Cas’s body is thrumming with impatience.
“Cas,” Dean breathes, and it sounds far too raw, far too honest for Cas’s liking. “Cas, I’m so sorry --”
“Don’t do that,” Cas snarls, suddenly overcome by irritation. He may not have much left, but he still has millennia on Dean, and if there’s one thing he can’t abide it’s people apologizing to him for the choices he made of his own free will, the choices he would make again and again a thousand times over, in full knowledge of the consequences. “I don’t need your pity.”
Dean looks like he wants to say something else and, impatient, Cas reaches up and clamps his hand over the brand he burned into Dean’s shoulder a lifetime ago, fingers pressing into the flesh hard enough to mark him all over again.
“Whatever becomes of me, never forget who it was that dragged you up from the Pit kicking and screaming, who rebuilt your bones from ash and your flesh from cinders. That means I own you, Dean Winchester, and you don’t have the right to take responsibility for my actions, even if they lead me here.”
“God, you’re so full of it,” Dean mutters, rolling his eyes and leaning down to bring their lips together again. The kiss much slower this time, careful, almost cautious; there’s a part of Cas that wants to resist it, but it’s a relatively small part, and his anger begins to dissipate as quickly as it came upon him. He can feel Dean’s cock pressing into his belly, leaving wet trails against his skin, and he reaches a hand down between them to reacquaint himself with the shape and feel of it, swiping his thumb over the leaking head and smirking in spite of himself as Dean moans wordlessly into his mouth.
Cas arches up against him, responding in kind with a groan of his own when Dean breaks the kiss to suck tender bruises into the hollow of his throat. Since his sexual enlightenment, Cas has indulged in some of the most extravagant and inventive styles of fornication ever dreamed up by humankind, a veritable Kama Sutra of positions and techniques. He finds most human taboos trivial and ridiculous, and self-consciousness doesn’t seem to apply to him -- this isn’t his body, after all -- and so he has been able to throw himself headfirst into so-called sexual deviancy totally free of guilt or inhibitions. He has been with men and women both, with multiple partners all at the same time, and he still has yet to find anything that could compare to this: the simple press of Dean’s weight on top of him as they grind together with similar levels of self-control to those of the average adolescent.
Dean makes a small noise of protest when Cas lets go of his dick, a noise turns into something altogether more wanton when Cas licks a broad stripe across his own palm before wrapping his hand around both of them instead.
Cas can’t quite suppress a gasp at how good that feels, their cocks pressed together in his fist, heads seeping wet with precome as he works them both towards completion with ever-increasing urgency. It occurs to him that he could point out he has condoms and lube in the bedside cabinet, but now that he has Dean where he wants him, he doesn’t think he could let go if he tried.
He’s close already, his balls tightening as Dean bites down into the meat of his shoulder, and he finds himself opening his legs wider so that Dean can fit between them more easily, falling into the space as though it was made specifically with him in mind. Dean utters a sound that comes out half-growl, half-whimper, and then his hand is reaching down to join Cas’s, fingers intertwining as they rock against one another and move in near-perfect tandem to reach their end goal.
Dean comes first, lifting his head from Cas’s shoulder to gaze down at him with an unreadable expression, the green of his eyes almost eclipsed by lust-swollen pupils. He just manages to choke out Cas’s name before he tenses and shudders, and then he’s swooping down to capture Cas’s mouth in a searing, messy kiss as he spills his release over their joined hands.
The noises Dean makes, the breathless, incoherent whimpers and broken little ohs, are more than enough to finish Cas off, and it only takes a few more well-timed strokes before he’s following Dean over the edge, falling into that perfect, limitless abyss where everything goes dark and he is once again magnificent.
+
Cas sits against the broken headboard with his knees drawn up to his chest, feeling exposed in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with being naked. He can feel Dean’s eyes on him, boring a hole in the side of his head, and if it was anybody else he’d kick them out just so that he could get some goddamn sleep. He’s still tempted to do that, if not for the fact that Dean would probably wander off and get himself killed. For all that he’s supposedly a fearless demon hunter -- the great Dean Winchester -- he isn’t versed in the rules and regulations of this world, and that makes him just as vulnerable as any civilian.
“You don’t think you’re going to make it, tomorrow,” Dean says, effectively breaking the awkward silence that’s descended over them post-coitus. Cas has to smile a little at that, because Dean was always such a smart boy, always so perceptive, even if he never believed it, even if that was always supposed to be Sam’s role.
“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. It doesn’t much matter either way.” At Dean’s incredulous look, he adds, “Look at me, Dean. What am I supposed to live for, huh? We’re all just sitting around waiting to die anyway. If I’m going down, I intend to go down fighting.”
Dean stares at him for a moment, snorting out a disbelieving breath. “Man, you are so full of shit.”
“Believe what you want to believe,” Cas sighs, too tired to argue the point. “Why do you even care, anyway? For all you know I might not even be real.”
He turns those words over in his mind and finds that there’s some cold comfort to be found in them, in the possibility that his existence may be nothing more than a product of Zachariah’s warped imagination. The bastard always did have a sick sense of humor, and no doubt he’d get some kind of perverse thrill out of seeing his former subordinate brought so low.
With that happy thought in mind, he slides under his threadbare blanket, turning his back to Dean and pointedly shutting down the conversation. He’s still slightly buzzed, and he has that pleasant, just-fucked feeling that makes him want to sleep for a week, but the cold is already beginning seep in, settling deep in his marrow and slow-freezing him from the inside out. Ever since his Fall, he feels temperature extremes much more keenly than most, and the attacks tend to strike without warning -- though usually after periods of intense physical exertion. He imagines his blood slowing and turning to ice in his veins and tries to suppress a shiver, but Dean still notices. Of course he does.
“You cold?”
Cas rolls his eyes and does his best to shrug while horizontal. “This happens sometimes. It’ll pass.”
There’s a moment’s pause, then the rustle of sheets as Dean joins him under the covers. An instant later, Dean is pressed up against Cas’s back, arm thrown over his chest, radiating blissful heat everywhere they touch. Cas is briefly tempted to be stubborn and pull away -- because he hasn’t allowed himself to need like this in years, and now Dean comes along and shatters it all in the space of one night -- but then he decides that he simply doesn’t have the energy to fight and instead melts into Dean’s warmth
“I’m gonna do things right this time, I promise,” Dean says, and his voice is full of such fervent hope and determination that Cas wants to beat it out of him because it’s all so fucking hopeless. “I won’t be him.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Cas tells him sharply, because hasn’t Dean promised him all the same things before? Hasn’t he breathed them into Cas’s skin, on cheap motel sheets and the backseat of his beloved car, You’re perfect, I could never leave you, I love you, I love you, I love you. Just words at the end of the day, and empty ones at that.
Dean doesn’t say anything more, and Cas pretends he doesn’t feel the soft brush of lips against the back of his neck. He lies awake for what feels like hours, listening to Dean’s breathing go slow and rhythmic.
For the first time since his wings burned up and left him stranded in this dystopian wasteland -- and in spite of everything tomorrow will bring -- his sleep is undisturbed when he finally closes his eyes.