Dean/Castiel Fic: Bad Things With You
I guess I'll go ahead and throw my Dean/Castiel fic into the ring along with everyone else. I was going to wait until I'd seen one more episode with him, but then I liked the idea of a fic based off of only the very initial impressions.
Title: Bad Things With You
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: For 4.01
Summary: I don't know who you think you are, but I know this much is true:
Like hunting, doing God's work involves a lot of hanging around in motel rooms. Dean thought it would be not quite glamorous but more serious, the sort of thing that took place at least in legit hotel rooms, maybe on the thirty-first floor. Definitely there should be a balcony with a view. But then, he doesn't really believe he's doing God's work or that the invincible guy in the trench coat who now follows him everywhere is working for anyone but himself. That doesn't mean he can get rid of him. And it's not like he has anyplace to be but in this guy's company, lately.
It's been two months since he saw his brother. Bobby is not telling him everything, which has pissed Dean off enough to make him attempt to avoid calling him, though he still does when he's drinking. Bobby sounds worried about him, and Dean has spent the past two months trying to figure out why he hasn't yet confided in Bobby about the angel impersonator. Maybe because telling Sam didn't go so well.
It's six o'clock in the evening and Dean has dried blood underneath his fingernails. He's sitting on the end of a saggy queen sized bed and trying to figure out if it's his or someone else's. He rubs the bridge of his nose and moans in the general direction of the room's sliding glass doors. The angel -- not that he's an angel, but Dean has come to refer to him as such and can't seem to stop -- is puttering around behind him, and Dean is always afraid to find out what he's up to. He turns around anyway, because it's getting late and he's hungry and there's nothing worse than eating alone in a shithole diner. Nothing against shithole diners, which actually he loves, but it's a whole different ball game without company, even if your company is an all-powerful liar who for some reason is on your side.
The angel -- Castiel, fine -- is standing in the bathroom doorway and wiping at his belt with a cheap motel washcloth. The washcloth is stained pink, and Dean thinks the blood under his nails is probably not his. Lately it hasn't been.
"Can't you like, just --" Dean holds up his hands, assumes Castiel will know what he's talking about. He gets the usual blank stare in return. "Can't you like, do magic to get the bloodstains out? I'm just saying."
Castiel ignores him and goes back to his cleaning. Dean stares at him with persistent disbelief. His life has always been strange, but this is ridiculous. His brother has run off with a demon, insisting she's good, and Dean is stuck with this clown, who also insists that he's good. There's a whole lot of good going around, and Dean isn't sold on any of it.
"My energy is better spent on other things," Castiel explains belatedly. Dean has already put the television on, though it never works right when Castiel is in the room. It blinks and fizzles and sometimes picks up other frequencies that he thinks might be real people having conversations somewhere.
"I haven't seen you break a sweat yet," Dean says, flipping channels.
"Maintaining this milder form requires concentration," Castiel says. He goes into the bathroom, and Dean hears water running. He had to introduce the almighty angel to the wonders of showering a full week after they hit the road together. Castiel forgets, a lot, that he has a human body now. It's really funny at times, really disturbing at others.
He also has a tendency for walking around naked that Dean can't seem to break him of.
"Whoa, whoa!" he says when Castiel walks dripping wet and starkers into the room, rubbing a towel through his borrowed hair.
"Oh." He pulls the towel down and holds it awkwardly around his waist, as if he can't imagine why he should.
"How many times do we have to do this?" Dean is still holding his forearm over his eyes, hates the way his heart races, cause what the fuck? "Isn't there a whole thing in the Bible about -- fig leaves? Or something?"
"Maybe you should read the Bible." Castiel keeps suggesting this, and Dean keeps offering up the same response.
"I'll read the Bible when you prove to me that you're an angel."
"I don't know how to do that," Castiel says. "I can't make a man have faith."
"It doesn't worry you just a little bit that the guy you picked doesn't believe you're an angel and is kinda wishy-washy on the whole God thing?"
"I didn't pick you --"
"I know, I know. God did. Fuck, can we have this conversation a few more times?"
"I --"
"That was sarcasm. Shut up. Okay. Let's go eat."
Dean is rattled as they make their way out the door. Castiel doesn't have any clothes and he won't let Dean steal or spend the little money he has left on anything but food. He's wearing his single pair of pants and one of Dean's shirts, long-sleeved and purple-gray. Dean doesn't like it when he kind of looks like a normal guy, because he once barely seemed to notice Dean sticking Ruby's knife into his chest. He's not normal, not an angel, but Dean is starting to think he's not evil. Which is a dangerous thing to think. Which is exactly what he told Sam before they split apart.
They sit in silence at a diner with college football games playing on two TVs behind the counter. The line cooks and waitresses are watching the games, reverently quiet, and there's no one in the place but a couple of weepy-looking teenage dorks and a guy with stringy hair who is eating mashed potatoes with intense concentration. Dean orders two beers and two Philly cheese steaks with fries. He'll drink both the beers himself, only after telling Castiel he should have some and watching with a smirk while he drinks from one. Castiel doesn't get why this is funny. It proves he's not an angel, and also that he's kind of slow. Any evil thing worth its salt would pretend it couldn't touch the stuff. At least, Dean would. If he were pretending to be good.
"Eat," Dean says with his mouth full. Castiel is staring down at his plate with the usual disinterest. "I don't want that guy you're living in to starve."
"This man will not be harmed, I've told you. He --"
"Prayed for this, yeah, yeah. Well, who's to say he's not in there craving a cheese steak, huh? Go on, it's good."
Castiel eats half a french fry, and Dean snorts. Whatever he is, he's a laugh riot when he tries to do human things. The first time he took a shower he just stood there under the water until Dean shouted directions through the bathroom door.
"So what's next?" Dean asks, wiping salt on his jeans. "More of God's work to do in Iowa?"
"You believe now that we're doing God's work?"
"No, I was making fun of you. But as long as you keep telling me to kill demons, I'm game. Don't really see how this is different than what I was doing before, but hey. You did pull me out of hell. I kind of owe you one."
Castiel blinks at him as if he's trying to process this. The pace of regular conversation is not his strong suit. Dean occasionally calls him "Clarence," but it always fails to get a rise out of him. He figures there's got to be some way to irritate or shock him enough to get him to drop the whole angel act and pin him to the wall with a wave of his hand.
"I'll have to wait for God's guidance," he says, and Dean groans. This means they'll be between jobs for awhile. It's just as frustrating as it was when he and Sam were hunting and couldn't find any leads. There was always something bad out there, hurting people, whether they'd found it yet or not.
Dean drinks three more beers and tries to explain the appeal of football. Castiel looks bored, which is nothing new.
"I understand," he says in the midst of Dean's slurring commentary on cheerleaders. "It's war. It's a simulated war."
"Well, yeah." Dean frowns and sits up. It's always annoying when he says something not stupid. Almost as annoying as when he saves Dean's life, which happens nearly every time they go after a demon. It doesn't make any sense: why can't Castiel just kill the demons himself? Why can't God just wipe them all out, and take the pedophiles and serial killers with them while he's at it? None of it makes any sense, never has, and Castiel doesn't know how to prove to Dean that he's an angel because there is nothing that could.
Dean lets him drive the car back to the motel. It's terrifying, because he's an awful driver, but Dean would be worse, five beers in. He breathes a melodramatic sigh of relief when they reach the motel parking lot, and strokes the dashboard, promising his car that next time he'll be sober enough to drive her home himself. Castiel gives him a concerned sort of look that reminds him of Sam. Offended by this, Dean stumbles out of the car, cursing.
He meant to take a shower before bed, but it turns out he's too drunk. He crawls under the blankets and sighs into them, deflates. Castiel is behind him on the other queen bed, lying on his back like a vampire, his hands folded over his stomach. Dean tries to stay awake, to watch him for signs of what he really is, something that will show up when he thinks Dean is not paying attention. But he knows, probably, that Dean is paying attention. He knows, Dean thinks, a lot more than he's letting on.
The alcohol helps him pass out completely, but only until around two o'clock in the morning, when the dreams start. There is an almost conscious part of him that knows he hasn't actually been cast back to hell, that black dogs haven't ripped him apart while Castiel watched with sudden helplessness, but it's happened before and the memories make it real enough. Then there are things that aren't even memories, things his mind can't get close to because his brain would melt in his skull like Pamela's eyes. It's beyond repression, but the basic sentiment still comes through, until he's writhing in bed and screaming loud enough to rattle the glass on the sliding doors.
Then someone is speaking Latin, and he thinks it's Sam. He opens his eyes and blinks away frantic tears to see Castiel looming over him like always. Not Sam, never Sam. Castiel stops speaking once Dean is awake. Dean is gulping air and trying to work up the energy to be suspicious, but Castiel's hand is on his forehead and this is reliably the best part of Dean's day. He can feel the memories of hell recede like a physical thing slipping through the wrinkles of his mind until they've retreated, gone back into hiding.
"You were dreaming," Castiel says, because Dean has told him that it really freaks him the fuck out when he does this without speaking. Hot tears slide down both sides of Dean's face like the last of a possession leaving him, and he stares up at Castiel, who is still wearing his shirt. Once, Dean saw his wings. They were black, which is probably not a good sign. But when he's touching Dean's forehead like this, all of his suspicions seem irrelevant. He feels clean and saved and peaceful like a daydream. This would be proof enough that Castiel is an angel, except that whenever he does this Dean also gets the hardest throbbing erections he's ever had in his life, and, c'mon. Something's not right there.
"God," Dean says, shuddering when Castiel takes his hand away, and then he laughs, because it's blasphemous, maybe, but what isn't these days. He rolls over, wanting -- needing to jerk off, and tells himself it doesn't mean anything when he can't bring himself to do it just because there's a guy who claims to be an angel in the room. Even if it was just another guy, he couldn't. But the wanting doesn't stop, and it keeps him awake until dawn. He thinks about rolling over to see what Castiel is doing in the other bed. One of these days Dean will teach him how to sleep.
*
Dean wakes up early the next morning and wallows in his usual hungover, sexually frustrated misery. He's considered bedding waitresses, but he's too depressed about his brother bedding a demon to properly turn on the old charm. He's also afraid that Castiel will try to tell him that he can't, like he did when Dean last attempted to hustle pool. It had an odd effect on him. He's not entirely sure, afraid to find out, but he feels like he's forgotten how to do it since Castiel told him he couldn't.
He takes a long shower and sulks, hoping that Castiel will claim to have been visited by God in the night so they'll at least have the distraction of hunting a demon. When he gets out he dries off and dresses in the fogged up bathroom like a proper gentleman. He wipes the mirror clear and checks out the hand print on his shoulder. Chicks will either dig it or be terrified of it, and he's reluctant to find out which.
Castiel is sitting on a chair near the sliding glass doors when Dean walks back into the room, staring out at the cloudless morning like he's receiving testimony. Dean watches him hopefully, but when he turns around with his default blank look, Dean is pretty sure he was just checking out the scenery. He claims he's never been human before. Dean suspects that means he's never been on earth.
"Any word about where to go next?" Dean figures he knows and just doles the information out a little at a time, mostly to drive Dean out of his mind, but hell if he can figure out where to go on his own anymore.
"Not yet," Castiel says.
"What's the hold up? Doesn't God know everything?"
"He doesn't tell me everything, Dean."
The sound of his name on Castiel's lips makes him uncomfortable, like seeing someone trip and feeling embarrassed on their behalf. He groans and and goes for the door, turns back when his hand is on the knob.
"Uh," he says, impatient and obnoxious because he knows by now that he can get away with it. "Breakfast?"
They go back to the same diner, and Dean tries to hit on the waitress, but she just looks at him like he's crazy. His pretty face isn't enough to get by on anymore. There is clearly something wrong with him, and every backwoods beauty can see it. Castiel watches him sympathetically, or maybe Dean is projecting, but at any rate the sight of his face is presently pissing Dean off. Still, just before waking, after finally drifting back to sleep, post-nightmares, post-Castiel's hand, Dean will have these dreams where Sam or Castiel or some combination of the two of him leaves him alone in a motel room, and it feels worse than dying did.
So he tells himself that he's the one keeping Castiel around.
"Tell me more about Rob," he says when they've finished their pancakes and coffee. Castiel cocks his head as if he's struggling to remember who Rob is, though he's currently inhabiting his body.
"What do you want to know?"
"Does he have a family?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
"What do you mean, 'well?'"
"I mean -- tell me about him! Kids, wife, what?"
"Yes, he has those."
Dean rolls his eyes. The angel -- not an angel, but -- always misses the point.
"Why was he praying to be possessed by an angel if he had a family, people who need him?"
"He was afraid he was betraying them."
"Yeah, how?"
"He's in love with a man."
Dean makes an outraged face, and realizes too late that this wasn't some sort of dig at him. But, wait, what? He shakes his head, tips the last stale drop of coffee at the bottom of his cup into his mouth.
"Is he in there now?" Dean asks.
"Yes."
Dean isn't sure where he was going with that. He throws cash on the table and stands up. Castiel stands up, too, like they're attached by strings. Dean wishes it wasn't a comfort. He thought he and Sam were attached, once, too.
They're on the way to the car when Castiel stops and throws his arm out. His hand flattens against Dean's chest, and it's like a defibrillator, doesn't hurt but knocks against him just as hard. Dean forgets where he is for a minute, then comes back to himself, glaring.
"Watch it," he says.
"I know where we need to go next," Castiel says. He's looking at the horizon like he's witnessing a crime. Dean follows his line of vision but only sees a distant farm, giant bales of hay spaced out in a sun-bleached field.
Dean does the driving. It doesn't feel as good as it did with Sam in the passenger seat. The car was like a sanctuary, then. Sometimes he asks Castiel why he doesn't just teleport to wherever they're going, to get a head start, but he never gets a clear answer. He thinks that Castiel might disappear without him. He has a narcissistic fantasy that he isn't real at all, that he just wanted out of hell bad enough to create someone who was strong enough to pull him out by his arms. He might also still be in hell and only dreaming this, though he doesn't think hell would let him get away with such vivid imaginings of bacon cheeseburgers and hot motel showers, and that thing that Castiel does with his hand.
They arrive in Peoria at midnight. Castiel doesn't fill Dean in the way Sam did, with nerdish excitement and the laptop like a slide show presentation to back him up. He only points at things and tells Dean addresses, street names. Turn left, turn right. Dean would tell him to fuck off and demand explanations if he wasn't pretty sure that, whatever Castiel is, he did pull him out of hell with his bare hands. He's checked Castiel's palms for evidence, corresponding burn marks, but apparently it doesn't work that way. He knows he's got a debt to pay, and he keeps waiting for the catch, but everyone Castiel asks Dean to kill flashes black eyes like a dare.
"There," Castiel says when they locate the possessed. It's a woman in her forties, unspectacular, tearing tickets at a movie theater.
"She curses the slips of paper she hands out," Castiel says.
"Those are called movie tickets, slick. What happens to the people she curses?"
"Some of them, general misfortune. Sick relatives and ruined relationships and lost money. Others think they're a character in the movie they've just watched. They become insane. That's the demon's real goal. It finds such disorientation amusing."
"Is there anything you find amusing?" Dean asks as they watch the possessed woman walk to her car. A blue Honda Civic, pretty modest for a demon.
"How do you mean?" Castiel asks, and Dean rolls his eyes.
They follow the demon back to its lair, the house of the woman it's possessed. As Dean parks the car on her street, something down the road catches his eye. It's a red sedan, too far away to identify the make or model. Castiel watches the demon let itself into the woman's house.
"Now," he says, and for some reason Dean wants to argue, tell him they should wait, but he's not very good at being contrary when it's Castiel issuing orders. He's probably claimed in some horrific way by this probably horrific creature he can't identify, and he knows he's going to wake up to it eventually. Probably it's already too late, so he gets out of the car and opens the trunk. Castiel follows and watches him select his weapons, Ruby's knife and a thermos of holy water. Dean has thrown it on Castiel ten times now, keeps thinking that he's missed something. Castiel only blinks when he takes a face full of the stuff, drops of it hanging from his eyelashes.
"Dean," someone says, and Dean is going to get furious for real at Castiel for imitating Sam's voice, then he shuts the trunk and sees Sam standing at the front of the car, Ruby slouched beside him like she's ready to get this over with.
"Sam?" Dean smashes his eyes shut, pulls them back open, but Sam is still there. "What the -- what --"
"The woman who lives in this house is possessed." Sam looks not unrecognizable but just different enough to make Dean's stomach hurt. The long hair is totally fruity on him. And something in his eyes has changed. It's not evil, but it's got nothing to do with Dean.
"Yeah, we know," Dean says, pointing his thumb at Castiel. "We're about to smoke her."
Sam is quiet for a moment, and Dean sees Ruby's jaw go tight with impatience. He turns back to Castiel, who is watching her like a falcon who has spotted a mole.
"You should let us do it, Dean," Sam says, and Dean scoffs, hears himself say something awful before he actually does.
"Right, so Ruby can recruit her into your demonic army? I'd just as soon kill her, but thanks for the offer."
"You're oversimplifying," Ruby snaps.
"We might at least be able to save the woman she's possessing," Sam says, holding a hand back as if to silence his evil girlfriend.
"No," Castiel says. Dean turns, had forgotten he was there for a moment. "She cannot be saved."
"That's a little ironic, coming from you," Sam says, his eyes the two judgmental slits that Dean walked out on.
"Just --" Dean starts to say, but he doesn't know where to go from there. Why can't we all just get along? Let's do this one together, gang?
"Please," Castiel says. "This cannot be interfered with."
Sam looks at Dean as if to check and see if he's going to jump to his defense. Dean's mouth is working but words are a little hard to come by. He wants Sam back so bad, but not like this.
"We're wasting time," Sam says, and he takes a step toward the house, but that's as far as he gets. He winces and falls against the car, bends at the waist. Ruby jerks once and collapses. Dean whirls on Castiel, ready to tear him apart.
"Stop!" he shouts. "Did you kill her?" He leans down to Sam and holds his shoulder, but Sam jerks away.
"Ruby!" Sam says, stumbling over to her. He puts two careful fingers against her throat, and Dean wants to puke, though he does hope she's alive, which doesn't make any sense.
"Please go," Castiel says. Sam glares at him, then Dean.
"This is wrong and you know it," Sam says as he lifts Ruby into his arms. She moans and rests her head against his chest, and the concern on Sam's face is enough to make Dean's eyes sting.
"And following a demon's orders is right?" Dean says.
"I'm not following orders!" Sam is backing up already, heading toward the red sedan at the end of the street.
"Oh, right, excuse me, you've just assumed your rightful place in command, is that it?"
Sam shakes his head, and Dean wants to think he sees the beginnings of regret on his face, but it's really too dark to tell.
"You don't even know what he is!" Sam shouts before turning around. Dean watches him load Ruby into the car. He brushes her hair from her face as she slowly comes to.
"What did you do to them?" Dean asks Castiel. He turns back when he gets no response, afraid for a moment that he's gone. Castiel pulls his eyes away from Sam and Ruby slowly, as if he's still waiting for a surprise attack.
"I got rid of them," he says. "Now let's proceed."
It's the first time Dean doesn't really need his help. The demon is inside watching home videos of her victims behaving like gladiators and pirates in the midst of their confused loved ones. She's laughing so uproariously that she doesn't notice Dean until he's standing right behind her. He slits her throat with Ruby's knife and wipes it on his jeans. Castiel is standing in the front doorway, streetlights glowing behind him.
"Don't look at me like you feel sorry for me," Dean barks.
"I wasn't," Castiel says, and there it is again, proof that he's not an angel. He's lying through his teeth.
*
They check into a motel at three o'clock in the morning, and Dean is still too angry to even go to a bar. He kicks a chair over just to see if Castiel will try to tell him something about wrath, but no luck. Castiel undresses, and hangs Rob's clothes up carefully.
"What are you doing?" Dean asks. He's exhausted but fully awake, can't imagine sleeping. Castiel looks at him like he doesn't know how to handle the question. For a change.
"You should rest," Castiel says.
"Yeah, I should, sure, but what the fuck about you? Why don't you go out and do good works while I'm asleep? Why waste time lying there if you don't need to?"
"I do good works while you're asleep."
"Oh, yeah?" Dean is actually very bothered by the fact that Castiel might leave the room without him, but never mind. "Enlighten me."
"I watch over you."
Dean bucks backward like he's been slapped, makes a offended sound.
"I don't need watching over," he says. "I'd rather you were out there, you know. Doing things. Making a difference."
"I can only do what God asks of me."
"Oh, really? Does God ask you to drink beer when I tell you to?"
"I can also do what you need, or want me to do, if it doesn't interfere with God's plan."
"So if I told you to bark like a dog you'd do it?"
"No."
"Why? Would that interfere with God's plan?"
Castiel smiles. "I can also refuse to do what you ask," he says. "As long as it doesn't interfere with God's plan."
"So you don't want to bark like a dog, on a personal level, and therefore you can refuse?" Dean is grimacing at him, getting a headache.
"Yes."
"But you don't mind drinking beer?"
Castiel thinks on this for a moment, as if he has to remember what beer is.
"No."
"Why should you want anything for yourself, if you were really an angel?" Dean walks close enough to almost jab a finger into his chest.
"I don't know," Castiel says. "I did not design myself."
"You're a liar," Dean says. Castiel is wearing an undershirt and a pair of Dean's boxer shorts with a worn-out waistband that hangs below his hipbones. Dean wants to grab him and be surrounded by that deceptively good feeling he gets when Castiel's hand is on his forehead, but he'd probably go up in flames if he tried.
"You know in your heart that I am what I claim to be," Castiel says. He looks so sad and full of pity. Dean wants to punch him just as badly as he wants his hand on him like good drugs.
"I don't know anything, except that my brother is --" He cuts himself off there, because he's going to lose his voice, and anyway he doesn't have a word for it yet. Gone isn't quite right. Changed sounds too final.
"Your brother will find his way." Castiel keeps saying this. Dean keeps telling him to shut up. Tonight he doesn't even have the energy for that, so he crawls onto his bed and turns away from Castiel, watches the wall. He hears the usual sounds behind him: the shower, the towel scrubbing through his hair, the creak of the mattress. Sam once made all the same sounds in these same small rooms, only he said 'goodnight' before he turned the light out, if they weren't in a fight, and sometimes he mumbled it begrudgingly even if they were.
Sleep sneaks up on him, and the nightmares flood back in. He remembers his organs ripped from his body and lying on the floor, pretty damn clearly because hell replayed it for him on loop, and he thinks that it's not the sort of image someone should survive with. He fights off more memories of hell, feels good about this, like he's making progress and maybe it's easier when he hasn't been drinking. His dreams shift around him in nonsensical patterns, flashes of sex as he attempts to make them lucid, but the best he can do is back in the car with Sam, their father in the backseat, all of them laughing. It's better than a sex dream, until Dean sees out of the corner of his eye that Sam's eyes are pure black, his smile twisted. He looks at his father in the rearview and sees him weeping, though when he turns to the backseat he's still laughing.
Then Sam grabs his throat with a searing hot hand and calls him a hypocrite. He's back to normal now, but it hurts just as bad.
"Kill him!" his father screams from the rearview mirror, while whoever is in the back seat laughs his head off.
Dean wakes up gasping and grabbing at the darkness, and when he finds two arms reaching down for him he thinks someone is trying to strangle him. He's gropes at the bedside table, looking for his gun, but sinks back to the pillow when Castiel's hand cups his face.
"Oh," he breathes as insane relief spreads through him. "It's you."
"You were --"
"Dreaming, I know. You don't have to say the same thing every time."
He shuts his eyes again, nothing terrifying behind them now. His heart is still pounding. Castiel's hand moves on his face, fingers sliding into his hair. Dean swallows heavily as the touch spreads downward until it resonates in his lap, landing so firmly against his dick that he spreads his legs without thinking. He moans in embarrassed complaint, but Castiel doesn't seem to mind, or notice, never does. He draws his fingers back down the side of Dean's face, and Dean is fully hard already, telling himself in a constant, furious stream of thought: don't hitch, don't arch, don't move.
"Do you know how fucking good that feels?" he huffs, trying to get angry about it.
"Yes."
"Are you doing it, ahh, on purpose?" Castiel is stroking Dean under his chin with just his thumb, and it's like the smoothness of Dean's own skin under that touch is going to make him come in his pants.
"I can stop if you want me to."
"N-no," Dean stutters when he starts to pull away. "Don't stop."
Castiel touches his face again, soft and cautious as if he's afraid he'll hurt him, which is probably a justified fear. Dean feels close to going over the edge of something, and it's not an orgasm, though that's imminent, too, because just the shift of his underwear over the head of his cock is driving him to the brink. Castiel's hand moves over his chest, stopping to make note of his wild heartbeat before continuing down to his stomach. Dean hisses when his hand slides up underneath his t-shirt, and again it's the feeling of his own skin under such reverent hands that makes his nerves pulse and his cock leak.
"God," Dean moans, long and low. "What - oh, I -- what are you?"
"I've told you what I am."
"That can't be, it can't be," Dean cries, his eyes filling up because the tiny motion of Castiel's thumb brushing over the hair that trails down to the top button of his jeans is going to kill him, and he's gonna let it happen.
"You can doubt me," Castiel says. "I don't mind."
His hand slides down over the shape of Dean's erection and then lower, between his legs. It's the sudden awareness of the damp heat of his balls through his jeans that sends Dean over the edge, and he comes so hard that he doesn't even realize he's sobbing, until it's too much, like his skin is being ripped off but it's good and he can't stand it. He blacks out, white light burning behind his eyelids.
He reawakens almost immediately, Castiel touching him now only with a wet washcloth. Dean searches his face for guilt or evil or anything to indicate that what they just did rocked the fucking foundations of the earth, but he only looks vaguely concerned for Dean.
"Are you alright?" he asks, patting sweat from Dean's hairline.
Dean doesn't know what to say, exhales a series of painfully astonished breaths. Castiel wipes Dean's eyes and the corner of his mouth, and Dean looks down at his lap, cold and sticky now.
"This is fucked up," he finally says.
"What?"
"Whatever just happened."
"You need rest, Dean."
"That wasn't rest! That was, like -- holy shit, I don't even know. Let me up, I'm gonna take a shower."
Castiel stands, and Dean checks his lap before heading for the bathroom. There's no bulge, no come dripping down his leg. He looks perfectly unaffected, and Dean might have known. He shuts the bathroom door and tears his clothes off. He's freezing, and even when he makes the water in the shower burning hot, he's too conscious of the air touching his skin in every place where the water doesn't. He's shivering as soon as he gets out, and he curses as he dries himself off. He doesn't want to think about what just happened out in the room, and doesn't want to face Castiel, but the thought of getting under the blankets in his bed is too appealing.
When he walks out into the motel room, Castiel is sitting on his own bed with his hands folded on his stomach. Dean avoids his eyes and tries to get his teeth to stop chattering.
"Quit staring at me," Dean says as he climbs into bed. The thin motel sheets are freezing, and he pulls them up over his ear as he rolls onto his side.
"Did I hurt you?" Castiel asks.
"What? No, there's just -- something weird happens when you touch me. You know that."
"Yes. I think I know why."
Dean leans up onto an elbow and looks over at him. He's staring at the blank television screen, his hands flat on the mattress.
"Okay," Dean says. "Why?"
"You associate my touch with being pulled out of hell. It's a powerful sense memory. And I -- because I associate your safety and contentment with the will of God -- I, I --" His hands curl into fists. "It's a dangerous combination."
Dean tucks the blankets in around his legs, wondering what the hell happened to his body temperature. He feels like he's lost a layer of skin.
"D-dangerous," he says. "Yeah. S-s-so, just. We won't touch each other."
Castiel looks at him, his hands uncurling on the mattress.
"You're cold," he says.
"I'm alright."
"This has never happened to me before," Castiel says, as if to apologize.
"No sh-sh-shit, Sh-Sherlock. Me either."
"Dean," he says, and Dean is going to tell him, I hate it when you say my name, because he feels like someone different when he's with Castiel, someone who didn't answer to that name when his brother shouted it across graveyards and through haunted cabins. He and Sam had a language that was only their names. They didn't need much else, once.
But Dean can't tell him anything because he's shaking too hard. Castiel walks over to the bed and puts his hand on Dean's back. Even through the comforter, sheets, and the fabric of his shirt, his hand burns in the best way. Dean makes a grateful noise he can't stuff down, rolls onto his back.
"Here," he says frantically. He grabs Castiel's hand and puts it against his neck. The warmth of him spreads through Dean's body, and he's afraid he'll go hard again, but it's different this time. He shuts his eyes, and shudders happily as his temperature rises.
"If I do touch you," Castiel says, sliding his thumb across the line of Dean's jaw. "I'll have to be more restrained."
"Yeah, whatever, just c'mere."
Dean pulls Castiel down and under the blankets, puts his face against his chest and moans in sleepy satisfaction. He's still not an angel, definitely not. Some kind of sex demon, which maybe Dean earned after his stint in hell. Figures it'd possess a guy, but whatever, it works. Dean has never been much for clutching at girls in bed, usually just wants to roll over and get comfortable for sleep, but this feels like some combination of sliding into a jacuzzi and smoking crack, which he's actually never done, but supposedly it's instantly addictive, and he's pretty sure that's the way this works. The thought is pretty frightening, but he'll worry about it later.
"What the fuck did you do to me?" he asks, clinging hard. Castiel smells like cherry tobacco, which is weird. Dean's father used to keep some in the glove compartment back in his pipe smoking days, and Dean would sneak whiffs of it when his Dad was picking up food. Growing up, it was his favorite scent, reminded him of the car and his dad letting him stay up late in the front seat, messing with the radio while Sammy slept in the back.
"I hope you don't still expect me to believe you're an angel after all of this," Dean says as he's drifting off to sleep. Castiel lifts up the sleeve of Dean's t-shirt and peeks in at the hand print on his shoulder. Dean can feel his breath there as if he's going to kiss the scar.
"The first time I tried to speak to you, I hurt you," Castiel says. "The second time, that shattering glass, I almost killed you. I don't always know what to do. Maybe I shouldn't have touched you at all. I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it," Dean says. "Just keep me warm until I fall asleep, okay?"
In his long life of things that are hard to believe, saying this to an unidentified creature who has possessed a man named Rob tops the list.
Regardless, Castiel carefully draws Dean's sleeve back over the scar, and puts one heavy hand on Dean's ear while he sleeps, as if to keep the bad things quiet.
*
Dean dreams about Rob, the man who prayed for Castiel to come to him. He sees his modest two bedroom house in Maine, his wife who is barely five feet tall and makes a living selling homemade herbal tea pouches, and the man he's in love with, a teller at the bank he manages. He's blond with bright green eyes and pale freckles across his nose, and Dean loves him vicariously through Rob for the duration of the dream. Rob has never even touched him, but he weeps in his car and begs God to forgive him for his impure thoughts.
When Dean finally wakes up, he feels like he's slept for days. It's not an unpleasant feeling, though unfamiliar. He can't remember the last time he actually slept for a full eight hours, unless of course he counts the time he died. Or the other time he sorta died.
Castiel is sitting at the end of the other bed. He's turned the television on, and though it's muted, he's frowning at it as if he objects to it very seriously. Dean blinks in the dim light through the room's heavy curtains, has no idea what day it is. The program Castiel is watching is some sort of religious junk. A preacher is ranting into a microphone on stage in a cavernous church.
"Better with the sound off, eh?" Dean asks. He sits up with a groan.
"I didn't want to wake you," Castiel says.
"How long have I been out?"
"Thirty-five hours."
"Thirty -- what?"
"You needed to rest."
"But there's -- what if -- haven't we got work to do?"
"I'm waiting for God's --"
"Direction, yeah, yeah. Holy fuck, I'm starving. Let's go eat."
They drive until they find a pizza place that sells by the slice. Dean catches himself drumming on the steering wheel as he pulls into the parking lot, and he's grinning like an idiot, couldn't say why. He wonders briefly if Castiel is a genie, but last time he checked this isn't something he'd wish for, aside from the restfulness, and the coma-inducing orgasm wasn't bad either, despite the circumstances.
He watches Castiel eat a slice of cheese pizza with a knife and fork, and an idea begins to form. Things can't go on like this forever. Sammy can't conspire with Ruby, Dean can't kill demons without him, and Castiel can't keep insisting he's an angel. He's almost definitely not bad, but there's got to be some dark twist, there always is, and Dean means to figure it out. He thinks that maybe if he does, he can go to Sam and tell him he was partially right, and hopefully by then Sam will have realized Dean was not entirely pigheaded and jealous and stupid and actually had a point about Ruby, too.
"Anything?" Dean asks with a mouth full of calzone.
"Not yet." Castiel knows what that question always means. He's learning. Dean bites down on a grin, thinking about the other things he could teach him. It's the only way, really, to prove once and for all that there is nothing angelic about this arrangement.
They go back to the motel room, and Dean considers ordering a porn, but that would be tacky, and he wants to do this thing right. It won't be legit if he doesn't. He takes out a pack of cards and throws them on the bed. Castiel stares at them as if he's trying to interpret a sign.
"You know how to play poker?" Dean asks.
Castiel frowns up at him, tilts his head like a curious bird.
"Didn't think so."
So Dean spends the afternoon showing him how. Castiel holds his cards wrong and forgets the rules, but he's got the best poker face Dean's ever seen.
"What's the point of this?" he asks, an hour into the lesson.
"The point is money, Clarence. Normally we'd be betting. I'd say we could play strip poker instead, but I don't know if the guy you're living in would be into that."
It's Dean's one concern about this brilliant plan. He has no qualms about messing around with someone who claims to be an angel, but if someone else has to be involved against his will, he'll have to call the whole thing off.
"I don't understand," Castiel says. Dean throws down his cards and lies back on the bed.
"I'm talking about Rob. It's all fine and good for you to blow out my synapses with your magic fingers, but what does he think about it?"
Castiel takes a moment to process this, and Dean waits. Rob is not a bad looking guy. It's been Dean's experience that demons usually choose attractive hosts, though old yellow eyes was pretty modest in his final form.
"It was his idea to touch you in the first place," Castiel says.
"What, he's giving you orders? I've known a lot of possessed people in my time, and they don't usually have much say --"
"They were possessed by demons. I am not a demon."
Dean is still skeptical about this, though it must be true. Holy water does nothing, the knife was useless.
"So this guy likes me?" Dean says, tipping his legs apart like an invitation, or maybe it's more like a dare. He folds his hands behind his head, waits.
"Likes you? He was concerned for you, the first night that I spent here. You were having a nightmare. I was cautious of touching you, I'd seen the marks I left. But he was persistent."
"What, he talks to you? A little voice inside your head?"
"It's not like talking. He has free will, and I am responsible for honoring it. I can't make him do things he doesn't want to do."
"Well, good," Dean says. "Because I was thinking we should practice."
"Practice?"
"Yeah, cause in the heat of battle, you might have to grab me, or we might reach for the same salt shaker at a diner, and I don't really need to be getting a boner in those situations. You said you had to practice restraint. So come on over here and practice."
Castiel gathers up the playing cards and puts them on the beside table in a neat stack. He's wearing Rob's shirt and pants today, no tie. Dean makes him take the trench coat off whenever they come back to a motel room, because he always forgets and there's something uncanny about him leaving it on all the time.
"Unless you've got a better idea for how we should spend the afternoon," Dean says. "Cause I'd rather be slaying demons, don't get me wrong."
"I've yet to receive word about where we should go next." Castiel is standing beside the bed, staring at Dean. Whoever he's possessing, there's no way an angel could look at a human so hungrily. Even if he's not angel -- of course he's not -- he's some kind of terrifyingly powerful entity who should be above this sort of thing, and Dean mentally pats himself on the back. He's still got it.
"That's what I thought you'd say." Dean rubs a spot beside him on the mattress. "So, since we've got time to kill. Might as well make use of it."
Castiel sits down and looks at Dean, not quite sheepish but less confident than usual. He reaches over to very gently lay a hand on Dean's stomach. Dean quivers, somehow hadn't expected this to still hit him so hard. He shuts his eyes and tries to concentrate, but it doesn't work. His dick responds like Castiel has just slid his lips around it.
"That's too much," Dean says, his eyelids fluttering. He's forgotten what he's trying to accomplish here. Getting off suddenly seems more desirable than proving a point.
"I don't think I can lessen the impact any more than this," Castiel says. He takes his hand away, and Dean groans. He feels almost relieved for a moment, then only panicked and full of infantile need. He starts to grab for Castiel's hand but stops himself, sits up.
"Okay," Dean says. He draws both hands through his hair and shakes his head, tries to regain a logical train of thought. "What if I touch you? Would that be easier?"
"I don't know."
"No objections from Rob?"
A smile flicks onto Castiel's face and disappears.
"No."
"Okay. Okay." Dean doesn't know why he's nervous. He and Castiel are both kneeling on the bed like teenage friends who are going to practice their kissing technique on each other. Dean had a friend like that in Lawrence, but it got out of hand, and he eventually began to ignore him whenever they were in town.
He touches the collar of Castiel's shirt, pinches it between two fingers. It doesn't effect him at all, until Castiel turns to look at what he's doing, and Dean feels his breath on the back of his hand. His cock stiffens, jammed painfully inside his pants now. Dean is going to take a break, back off for a second, but then he's touching Castiel's lips, which is probably the worst idea ever.
"Does it do anything to you?" Dean asks, breathless, and oh, God, this isn't going according to plan. "Like it does to me?"
"Yes," Castiel says when Dean slides both hands into his hair. His eyes fall shut, and that's really all Dean needs. He tears his jeans open with one shaking hand and tips Castiel's head back with the other.
"Fuck it," he says in a growl. He falls onto Castiel, knocks him back onto the bed, and for a moment it feels like a thousand pins have pierced his skin. Before he can wrench out a scream, this sensation fades into something still rough but good now, so fucking good. He kisses Castiel hard and wet and it's not exactly the careful introduction he'd planned, but he figures it must be working, because his erection is grinding against what feels like Castiel's.
"Are you hard?" Dean asks with a wicked smirk, reaching down to find out. Castiel spreads his legs like he's been waiting, and he arches off the bed with a gasp when Dean feels his cock through his pants.
"Hard as hell," Dean says triumphantly. He licks Castiel's cheek, has to keep talking or this is gonna be over fast. "I knew it. Knew you were bad. So tell me, huh?" He finds his way into Castiel's pants, reaches past a pair of his own boxers and wraps a tight hand around his cock. Castiel squeezes Dean's arms, and if his skin is on fire again he's too preoccupied to notice.
"Tell me how bad you are," Dean says while he strokes him. "Tell me, go on, you can't hide it now."
Castiel chews his lip and thrusts into Dean's hand, his eyes pinched tight. Dean rubs his thumb in circles over the wet head of his cock until he finally draws a noise out of him, a whine building low in the back of his throat.
"Feels good, doesn't it?" Dean whispers in his ear.
Castiel doesn't answer, only lets loose a long sigh of relief when he comes, so profound that Dean can feel it between his own ribs. Dean pumps him as his come spills down over his hand, licks his throat and rubs against his thigh. When Castiel's eyes open Dean half expects them to flash something inhuman at him, but there's only the same gray-blue he's come to know. Dean kisses him over each eyelid, so grateful for this he could cry.
"I think I wanna fuck you," Dean says, his voice so rough he barely recognizes it, but just saying so makes him come in his unbuttoned jeans. Castiel holds onto the back of his neck while his orgasm shudders out of him, and when Dean collapses onto his chest he wonders if he's left another hand print behind, if he's covered Dean's skin in hundreds of them.
"Well," Dean says after they've both been still for several minutes, panting and sweating on each other. "We'll just have to try not to do that in the heat of battle. Or in a diner."
Castiel says nothing, and Dean sits up to look at him, though he's almost afraid to. His eyes are shut, and Dean waits for him to work up the nerve to face him after what just happened, but he only lies there until his lips part silently. He's asleep.
Dean lies beside him and tries to figure out what any of this means, but he's out cold before he can even begin to think about it. He dreams about eating waffles in a diner with Sam and shooting targets in a field in Kansas while his father watches. He wakes up slow, something tickling the side of his face. When he opens his eyes he sees Castiel sitting beside him. He could swear what he just felt on his cheek was a feather. Maybe he was still dreaming.
"Have we got orders?" Dean asks.
Castiel nods and straightens his shirt.
"Las Cruces, New Mexico," he says.
"Jesus. That sounds serious."
"Yes."
Castiel stands and refastens his pants. Guilt takes Dean down like a rip tide.
"Is it okay?" he asks. "I mean. I'm not going to get you in trouble, am I?"
"Get me in trouble with who, Dean?"
Dean blinks at him. He was going to say God. It doesn't make any sense that rolling around in bed with him would be what convinced Dean this is the real deal. But when's the last time anything made sense.
"It'll be a long drive," Dean says.
"It will."
"You gonna ride with me?"
Castiel looks tired. Dean is pretty sure he just fucked things up royal. He imagines Castiel telling him like Sam did that he has to leave, that Dean just loves him too much and too hard and not in the way he's supposed to.
"Yes, I'll ride with you," Castiel says.
They check out of the motel and head west. Dean wants to ask a thousand questions, but there's only one he's ready to have answered. He puts the radio on.
"You like classic rock?" he asks.
Castiel turns from the window and scratches his head like for a second he's just a regular guy.
"What do you mean?" he asks.
And Dean spends the rest of the trip explaining.
*
Continued
Title: Bad Things With You
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: For 4.01
Summary: I don't know who you think you are, but I know this much is true:
Like hunting, doing God's work involves a lot of hanging around in motel rooms. Dean thought it would be not quite glamorous but more serious, the sort of thing that took place at least in legit hotel rooms, maybe on the thirty-first floor. Definitely there should be a balcony with a view. But then, he doesn't really believe he's doing God's work or that the invincible guy in the trench coat who now follows him everywhere is working for anyone but himself. That doesn't mean he can get rid of him. And it's not like he has anyplace to be but in this guy's company, lately.
It's been two months since he saw his brother. Bobby is not telling him everything, which has pissed Dean off enough to make him attempt to avoid calling him, though he still does when he's drinking. Bobby sounds worried about him, and Dean has spent the past two months trying to figure out why he hasn't yet confided in Bobby about the angel impersonator. Maybe because telling Sam didn't go so well.
It's six o'clock in the evening and Dean has dried blood underneath his fingernails. He's sitting on the end of a saggy queen sized bed and trying to figure out if it's his or someone else's. He rubs the bridge of his nose and moans in the general direction of the room's sliding glass doors. The angel -- not that he's an angel, but Dean has come to refer to him as such and can't seem to stop -- is puttering around behind him, and Dean is always afraid to find out what he's up to. He turns around anyway, because it's getting late and he's hungry and there's nothing worse than eating alone in a shithole diner. Nothing against shithole diners, which actually he loves, but it's a whole different ball game without company, even if your company is an all-powerful liar who for some reason is on your side.
The angel -- Castiel, fine -- is standing in the bathroom doorway and wiping at his belt with a cheap motel washcloth. The washcloth is stained pink, and Dean thinks the blood under his nails is probably not his. Lately it hasn't been.
"Can't you like, just --" Dean holds up his hands, assumes Castiel will know what he's talking about. He gets the usual blank stare in return. "Can't you like, do magic to get the bloodstains out? I'm just saying."
Castiel ignores him and goes back to his cleaning. Dean stares at him with persistent disbelief. His life has always been strange, but this is ridiculous. His brother has run off with a demon, insisting she's good, and Dean is stuck with this clown, who also insists that he's good. There's a whole lot of good going around, and Dean isn't sold on any of it.
"My energy is better spent on other things," Castiel explains belatedly. Dean has already put the television on, though it never works right when Castiel is in the room. It blinks and fizzles and sometimes picks up other frequencies that he thinks might be real people having conversations somewhere.
"I haven't seen you break a sweat yet," Dean says, flipping channels.
"Maintaining this milder form requires concentration," Castiel says. He goes into the bathroom, and Dean hears water running. He had to introduce the almighty angel to the wonders of showering a full week after they hit the road together. Castiel forgets, a lot, that he has a human body now. It's really funny at times, really disturbing at others.
He also has a tendency for walking around naked that Dean can't seem to break him of.
"Whoa, whoa!" he says when Castiel walks dripping wet and starkers into the room, rubbing a towel through his borrowed hair.
"Oh." He pulls the towel down and holds it awkwardly around his waist, as if he can't imagine why he should.
"How many times do we have to do this?" Dean is still holding his forearm over his eyes, hates the way his heart races, cause what the fuck? "Isn't there a whole thing in the Bible about -- fig leaves? Or something?"
"Maybe you should read the Bible." Castiel keeps suggesting this, and Dean keeps offering up the same response.
"I'll read the Bible when you prove to me that you're an angel."
"I don't know how to do that," Castiel says. "I can't make a man have faith."
"It doesn't worry you just a little bit that the guy you picked doesn't believe you're an angel and is kinda wishy-washy on the whole God thing?"
"I didn't pick you --"
"I know, I know. God did. Fuck, can we have this conversation a few more times?"
"I --"
"That was sarcasm. Shut up. Okay. Let's go eat."
Dean is rattled as they make their way out the door. Castiel doesn't have any clothes and he won't let Dean steal or spend the little money he has left on anything but food. He's wearing his single pair of pants and one of Dean's shirts, long-sleeved and purple-gray. Dean doesn't like it when he kind of looks like a normal guy, because he once barely seemed to notice Dean sticking Ruby's knife into his chest. He's not normal, not an angel, but Dean is starting to think he's not evil. Which is a dangerous thing to think. Which is exactly what he told Sam before they split apart.
They sit in silence at a diner with college football games playing on two TVs behind the counter. The line cooks and waitresses are watching the games, reverently quiet, and there's no one in the place but a couple of weepy-looking teenage dorks and a guy with stringy hair who is eating mashed potatoes with intense concentration. Dean orders two beers and two Philly cheese steaks with fries. He'll drink both the beers himself, only after telling Castiel he should have some and watching with a smirk while he drinks from one. Castiel doesn't get why this is funny. It proves he's not an angel, and also that he's kind of slow. Any evil thing worth its salt would pretend it couldn't touch the stuff. At least, Dean would. If he were pretending to be good.
"Eat," Dean says with his mouth full. Castiel is staring down at his plate with the usual disinterest. "I don't want that guy you're living in to starve."
"This man will not be harmed, I've told you. He --"
"Prayed for this, yeah, yeah. Well, who's to say he's not in there craving a cheese steak, huh? Go on, it's good."
Castiel eats half a french fry, and Dean snorts. Whatever he is, he's a laugh riot when he tries to do human things. The first time he took a shower he just stood there under the water until Dean shouted directions through the bathroom door.
"So what's next?" Dean asks, wiping salt on his jeans. "More of God's work to do in Iowa?"
"You believe now that we're doing God's work?"
"No, I was making fun of you. But as long as you keep telling me to kill demons, I'm game. Don't really see how this is different than what I was doing before, but hey. You did pull me out of hell. I kind of owe you one."
Castiel blinks at him as if he's trying to process this. The pace of regular conversation is not his strong suit. Dean occasionally calls him "Clarence," but it always fails to get a rise out of him. He figures there's got to be some way to irritate or shock him enough to get him to drop the whole angel act and pin him to the wall with a wave of his hand.
"I'll have to wait for God's guidance," he says, and Dean groans. This means they'll be between jobs for awhile. It's just as frustrating as it was when he and Sam were hunting and couldn't find any leads. There was always something bad out there, hurting people, whether they'd found it yet or not.
Dean drinks three more beers and tries to explain the appeal of football. Castiel looks bored, which is nothing new.
"I understand," he says in the midst of Dean's slurring commentary on cheerleaders. "It's war. It's a simulated war."
"Well, yeah." Dean frowns and sits up. It's always annoying when he says something not stupid. Almost as annoying as when he saves Dean's life, which happens nearly every time they go after a demon. It doesn't make any sense: why can't Castiel just kill the demons himself? Why can't God just wipe them all out, and take the pedophiles and serial killers with them while he's at it? None of it makes any sense, never has, and Castiel doesn't know how to prove to Dean that he's an angel because there is nothing that could.
Dean lets him drive the car back to the motel. It's terrifying, because he's an awful driver, but Dean would be worse, five beers in. He breathes a melodramatic sigh of relief when they reach the motel parking lot, and strokes the dashboard, promising his car that next time he'll be sober enough to drive her home himself. Castiel gives him a concerned sort of look that reminds him of Sam. Offended by this, Dean stumbles out of the car, cursing.
He meant to take a shower before bed, but it turns out he's too drunk. He crawls under the blankets and sighs into them, deflates. Castiel is behind him on the other queen bed, lying on his back like a vampire, his hands folded over his stomach. Dean tries to stay awake, to watch him for signs of what he really is, something that will show up when he thinks Dean is not paying attention. But he knows, probably, that Dean is paying attention. He knows, Dean thinks, a lot more than he's letting on.
The alcohol helps him pass out completely, but only until around two o'clock in the morning, when the dreams start. There is an almost conscious part of him that knows he hasn't actually been cast back to hell, that black dogs haven't ripped him apart while Castiel watched with sudden helplessness, but it's happened before and the memories make it real enough. Then there are things that aren't even memories, things his mind can't get close to because his brain would melt in his skull like Pamela's eyes. It's beyond repression, but the basic sentiment still comes through, until he's writhing in bed and screaming loud enough to rattle the glass on the sliding doors.
Then someone is speaking Latin, and he thinks it's Sam. He opens his eyes and blinks away frantic tears to see Castiel looming over him like always. Not Sam, never Sam. Castiel stops speaking once Dean is awake. Dean is gulping air and trying to work up the energy to be suspicious, but Castiel's hand is on his forehead and this is reliably the best part of Dean's day. He can feel the memories of hell recede like a physical thing slipping through the wrinkles of his mind until they've retreated, gone back into hiding.
"You were dreaming," Castiel says, because Dean has told him that it really freaks him the fuck out when he does this without speaking. Hot tears slide down both sides of Dean's face like the last of a possession leaving him, and he stares up at Castiel, who is still wearing his shirt. Once, Dean saw his wings. They were black, which is probably not a good sign. But when he's touching Dean's forehead like this, all of his suspicions seem irrelevant. He feels clean and saved and peaceful like a daydream. This would be proof enough that Castiel is an angel, except that whenever he does this Dean also gets the hardest throbbing erections he's ever had in his life, and, c'mon. Something's not right there.
"God," Dean says, shuddering when Castiel takes his hand away, and then he laughs, because it's blasphemous, maybe, but what isn't these days. He rolls over, wanting -- needing to jerk off, and tells himself it doesn't mean anything when he can't bring himself to do it just because there's a guy who claims to be an angel in the room. Even if it was just another guy, he couldn't. But the wanting doesn't stop, and it keeps him awake until dawn. He thinks about rolling over to see what Castiel is doing in the other bed. One of these days Dean will teach him how to sleep.
*
Dean wakes up early the next morning and wallows in his usual hungover, sexually frustrated misery. He's considered bedding waitresses, but he's too depressed about his brother bedding a demon to properly turn on the old charm. He's also afraid that Castiel will try to tell him that he can't, like he did when Dean last attempted to hustle pool. It had an odd effect on him. He's not entirely sure, afraid to find out, but he feels like he's forgotten how to do it since Castiel told him he couldn't.
He takes a long shower and sulks, hoping that Castiel will claim to have been visited by God in the night so they'll at least have the distraction of hunting a demon. When he gets out he dries off and dresses in the fogged up bathroom like a proper gentleman. He wipes the mirror clear and checks out the hand print on his shoulder. Chicks will either dig it or be terrified of it, and he's reluctant to find out which.
Castiel is sitting on a chair near the sliding glass doors when Dean walks back into the room, staring out at the cloudless morning like he's receiving testimony. Dean watches him hopefully, but when he turns around with his default blank look, Dean is pretty sure he was just checking out the scenery. He claims he's never been human before. Dean suspects that means he's never been on earth.
"Any word about where to go next?" Dean figures he knows and just doles the information out a little at a time, mostly to drive Dean out of his mind, but hell if he can figure out where to go on his own anymore.
"Not yet," Castiel says.
"What's the hold up? Doesn't God know everything?"
"He doesn't tell me everything, Dean."
The sound of his name on Castiel's lips makes him uncomfortable, like seeing someone trip and feeling embarrassed on their behalf. He groans and and goes for the door, turns back when his hand is on the knob.
"Uh," he says, impatient and obnoxious because he knows by now that he can get away with it. "Breakfast?"
They go back to the same diner, and Dean tries to hit on the waitress, but she just looks at him like he's crazy. His pretty face isn't enough to get by on anymore. There is clearly something wrong with him, and every backwoods beauty can see it. Castiel watches him sympathetically, or maybe Dean is projecting, but at any rate the sight of his face is presently pissing Dean off. Still, just before waking, after finally drifting back to sleep, post-nightmares, post-Castiel's hand, Dean will have these dreams where Sam or Castiel or some combination of the two of him leaves him alone in a motel room, and it feels worse than dying did.
So he tells himself that he's the one keeping Castiel around.
"Tell me more about Rob," he says when they've finished their pancakes and coffee. Castiel cocks his head as if he's struggling to remember who Rob is, though he's currently inhabiting his body.
"What do you want to know?"
"Does he have a family?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
"What do you mean, 'well?'"
"I mean -- tell me about him! Kids, wife, what?"
"Yes, he has those."
Dean rolls his eyes. The angel -- not an angel, but -- always misses the point.
"Why was he praying to be possessed by an angel if he had a family, people who need him?"
"He was afraid he was betraying them."
"Yeah, how?"
"He's in love with a man."
Dean makes an outraged face, and realizes too late that this wasn't some sort of dig at him. But, wait, what? He shakes his head, tips the last stale drop of coffee at the bottom of his cup into his mouth.
"Is he in there now?" Dean asks.
"Yes."
Dean isn't sure where he was going with that. He throws cash on the table and stands up. Castiel stands up, too, like they're attached by strings. Dean wishes it wasn't a comfort. He thought he and Sam were attached, once, too.
They're on the way to the car when Castiel stops and throws his arm out. His hand flattens against Dean's chest, and it's like a defibrillator, doesn't hurt but knocks against him just as hard. Dean forgets where he is for a minute, then comes back to himself, glaring.
"Watch it," he says.
"I know where we need to go next," Castiel says. He's looking at the horizon like he's witnessing a crime. Dean follows his line of vision but only sees a distant farm, giant bales of hay spaced out in a sun-bleached field.
Dean does the driving. It doesn't feel as good as it did with Sam in the passenger seat. The car was like a sanctuary, then. Sometimes he asks Castiel why he doesn't just teleport to wherever they're going, to get a head start, but he never gets a clear answer. He thinks that Castiel might disappear without him. He has a narcissistic fantasy that he isn't real at all, that he just wanted out of hell bad enough to create someone who was strong enough to pull him out by his arms. He might also still be in hell and only dreaming this, though he doesn't think hell would let him get away with such vivid imaginings of bacon cheeseburgers and hot motel showers, and that thing that Castiel does with his hand.
They arrive in Peoria at midnight. Castiel doesn't fill Dean in the way Sam did, with nerdish excitement and the laptop like a slide show presentation to back him up. He only points at things and tells Dean addresses, street names. Turn left, turn right. Dean would tell him to fuck off and demand explanations if he wasn't pretty sure that, whatever Castiel is, he did pull him out of hell with his bare hands. He's checked Castiel's palms for evidence, corresponding burn marks, but apparently it doesn't work that way. He knows he's got a debt to pay, and he keeps waiting for the catch, but everyone Castiel asks Dean to kill flashes black eyes like a dare.
"There," Castiel says when they locate the possessed. It's a woman in her forties, unspectacular, tearing tickets at a movie theater.
"She curses the slips of paper she hands out," Castiel says.
"Those are called movie tickets, slick. What happens to the people she curses?"
"Some of them, general misfortune. Sick relatives and ruined relationships and lost money. Others think they're a character in the movie they've just watched. They become insane. That's the demon's real goal. It finds such disorientation amusing."
"Is there anything you find amusing?" Dean asks as they watch the possessed woman walk to her car. A blue Honda Civic, pretty modest for a demon.
"How do you mean?" Castiel asks, and Dean rolls his eyes.
They follow the demon back to its lair, the house of the woman it's possessed. As Dean parks the car on her street, something down the road catches his eye. It's a red sedan, too far away to identify the make or model. Castiel watches the demon let itself into the woman's house.
"Now," he says, and for some reason Dean wants to argue, tell him they should wait, but he's not very good at being contrary when it's Castiel issuing orders. He's probably claimed in some horrific way by this probably horrific creature he can't identify, and he knows he's going to wake up to it eventually. Probably it's already too late, so he gets out of the car and opens the trunk. Castiel follows and watches him select his weapons, Ruby's knife and a thermos of holy water. Dean has thrown it on Castiel ten times now, keeps thinking that he's missed something. Castiel only blinks when he takes a face full of the stuff, drops of it hanging from his eyelashes.
"Dean," someone says, and Dean is going to get furious for real at Castiel for imitating Sam's voice, then he shuts the trunk and sees Sam standing at the front of the car, Ruby slouched beside him like she's ready to get this over with.
"Sam?" Dean smashes his eyes shut, pulls them back open, but Sam is still there. "What the -- what --"
"The woman who lives in this house is possessed." Sam looks not unrecognizable but just different enough to make Dean's stomach hurt. The long hair is totally fruity on him. And something in his eyes has changed. It's not evil, but it's got nothing to do with Dean.
"Yeah, we know," Dean says, pointing his thumb at Castiel. "We're about to smoke her."
Sam is quiet for a moment, and Dean sees Ruby's jaw go tight with impatience. He turns back to Castiel, who is watching her like a falcon who has spotted a mole.
"You should let us do it, Dean," Sam says, and Dean scoffs, hears himself say something awful before he actually does.
"Right, so Ruby can recruit her into your demonic army? I'd just as soon kill her, but thanks for the offer."
"You're oversimplifying," Ruby snaps.
"We might at least be able to save the woman she's possessing," Sam says, holding a hand back as if to silence his evil girlfriend.
"No," Castiel says. Dean turns, had forgotten he was there for a moment. "She cannot be saved."
"That's a little ironic, coming from you," Sam says, his eyes the two judgmental slits that Dean walked out on.
"Just --" Dean starts to say, but he doesn't know where to go from there. Why can't we all just get along? Let's do this one together, gang?
"Please," Castiel says. "This cannot be interfered with."
Sam looks at Dean as if to check and see if he's going to jump to his defense. Dean's mouth is working but words are a little hard to come by. He wants Sam back so bad, but not like this.
"We're wasting time," Sam says, and he takes a step toward the house, but that's as far as he gets. He winces and falls against the car, bends at the waist. Ruby jerks once and collapses. Dean whirls on Castiel, ready to tear him apart.
"Stop!" he shouts. "Did you kill her?" He leans down to Sam and holds his shoulder, but Sam jerks away.
"Ruby!" Sam says, stumbling over to her. He puts two careful fingers against her throat, and Dean wants to puke, though he does hope she's alive, which doesn't make any sense.
"Please go," Castiel says. Sam glares at him, then Dean.
"This is wrong and you know it," Sam says as he lifts Ruby into his arms. She moans and rests her head against his chest, and the concern on Sam's face is enough to make Dean's eyes sting.
"And following a demon's orders is right?" Dean says.
"I'm not following orders!" Sam is backing up already, heading toward the red sedan at the end of the street.
"Oh, right, excuse me, you've just assumed your rightful place in command, is that it?"
Sam shakes his head, and Dean wants to think he sees the beginnings of regret on his face, but it's really too dark to tell.
"You don't even know what he is!" Sam shouts before turning around. Dean watches him load Ruby into the car. He brushes her hair from her face as she slowly comes to.
"What did you do to them?" Dean asks Castiel. He turns back when he gets no response, afraid for a moment that he's gone. Castiel pulls his eyes away from Sam and Ruby slowly, as if he's still waiting for a surprise attack.
"I got rid of them," he says. "Now let's proceed."
It's the first time Dean doesn't really need his help. The demon is inside watching home videos of her victims behaving like gladiators and pirates in the midst of their confused loved ones. She's laughing so uproariously that she doesn't notice Dean until he's standing right behind her. He slits her throat with Ruby's knife and wipes it on his jeans. Castiel is standing in the front doorway, streetlights glowing behind him.
"Don't look at me like you feel sorry for me," Dean barks.
"I wasn't," Castiel says, and there it is again, proof that he's not an angel. He's lying through his teeth.
*
They check into a motel at three o'clock in the morning, and Dean is still too angry to even go to a bar. He kicks a chair over just to see if Castiel will try to tell him something about wrath, but no luck. Castiel undresses, and hangs Rob's clothes up carefully.
"What are you doing?" Dean asks. He's exhausted but fully awake, can't imagine sleeping. Castiel looks at him like he doesn't know how to handle the question. For a change.
"You should rest," Castiel says.
"Yeah, I should, sure, but what the fuck about you? Why don't you go out and do good works while I'm asleep? Why waste time lying there if you don't need to?"
"I do good works while you're asleep."
"Oh, yeah?" Dean is actually very bothered by the fact that Castiel might leave the room without him, but never mind. "Enlighten me."
"I watch over you."
Dean bucks backward like he's been slapped, makes a offended sound.
"I don't need watching over," he says. "I'd rather you were out there, you know. Doing things. Making a difference."
"I can only do what God asks of me."
"Oh, really? Does God ask you to drink beer when I tell you to?"
"I can also do what you need, or want me to do, if it doesn't interfere with God's plan."
"So if I told you to bark like a dog you'd do it?"
"No."
"Why? Would that interfere with God's plan?"
Castiel smiles. "I can also refuse to do what you ask," he says. "As long as it doesn't interfere with God's plan."
"So you don't want to bark like a dog, on a personal level, and therefore you can refuse?" Dean is grimacing at him, getting a headache.
"Yes."
"But you don't mind drinking beer?"
Castiel thinks on this for a moment, as if he has to remember what beer is.
"No."
"Why should you want anything for yourself, if you were really an angel?" Dean walks close enough to almost jab a finger into his chest.
"I don't know," Castiel says. "I did not design myself."
"You're a liar," Dean says. Castiel is wearing an undershirt and a pair of Dean's boxer shorts with a worn-out waistband that hangs below his hipbones. Dean wants to grab him and be surrounded by that deceptively good feeling he gets when Castiel's hand is on his forehead, but he'd probably go up in flames if he tried.
"You know in your heart that I am what I claim to be," Castiel says. He looks so sad and full of pity. Dean wants to punch him just as badly as he wants his hand on him like good drugs.
"I don't know anything, except that my brother is --" He cuts himself off there, because he's going to lose his voice, and anyway he doesn't have a word for it yet. Gone isn't quite right. Changed sounds too final.
"Your brother will find his way." Castiel keeps saying this. Dean keeps telling him to shut up. Tonight he doesn't even have the energy for that, so he crawls onto his bed and turns away from Castiel, watches the wall. He hears the usual sounds behind him: the shower, the towel scrubbing through his hair, the creak of the mattress. Sam once made all the same sounds in these same small rooms, only he said 'goodnight' before he turned the light out, if they weren't in a fight, and sometimes he mumbled it begrudgingly even if they were.
Sleep sneaks up on him, and the nightmares flood back in. He remembers his organs ripped from his body and lying on the floor, pretty damn clearly because hell replayed it for him on loop, and he thinks that it's not the sort of image someone should survive with. He fights off more memories of hell, feels good about this, like he's making progress and maybe it's easier when he hasn't been drinking. His dreams shift around him in nonsensical patterns, flashes of sex as he attempts to make them lucid, but the best he can do is back in the car with Sam, their father in the backseat, all of them laughing. It's better than a sex dream, until Dean sees out of the corner of his eye that Sam's eyes are pure black, his smile twisted. He looks at his father in the rearview and sees him weeping, though when he turns to the backseat he's still laughing.
Then Sam grabs his throat with a searing hot hand and calls him a hypocrite. He's back to normal now, but it hurts just as bad.
"Kill him!" his father screams from the rearview mirror, while whoever is in the back seat laughs his head off.
Dean wakes up gasping and grabbing at the darkness, and when he finds two arms reaching down for him he thinks someone is trying to strangle him. He's gropes at the bedside table, looking for his gun, but sinks back to the pillow when Castiel's hand cups his face.
"Oh," he breathes as insane relief spreads through him. "It's you."
"You were --"
"Dreaming, I know. You don't have to say the same thing every time."
He shuts his eyes again, nothing terrifying behind them now. His heart is still pounding. Castiel's hand moves on his face, fingers sliding into his hair. Dean swallows heavily as the touch spreads downward until it resonates in his lap, landing so firmly against his dick that he spreads his legs without thinking. He moans in embarrassed complaint, but Castiel doesn't seem to mind, or notice, never does. He draws his fingers back down the side of Dean's face, and Dean is fully hard already, telling himself in a constant, furious stream of thought: don't hitch, don't arch, don't move.
"Do you know how fucking good that feels?" he huffs, trying to get angry about it.
"Yes."
"Are you doing it, ahh, on purpose?" Castiel is stroking Dean under his chin with just his thumb, and it's like the smoothness of Dean's own skin under that touch is going to make him come in his pants.
"I can stop if you want me to."
"N-no," Dean stutters when he starts to pull away. "Don't stop."
Castiel touches his face again, soft and cautious as if he's afraid he'll hurt him, which is probably a justified fear. Dean feels close to going over the edge of something, and it's not an orgasm, though that's imminent, too, because just the shift of his underwear over the head of his cock is driving him to the brink. Castiel's hand moves over his chest, stopping to make note of his wild heartbeat before continuing down to his stomach. Dean hisses when his hand slides up underneath his t-shirt, and again it's the feeling of his own skin under such reverent hands that makes his nerves pulse and his cock leak.
"God," Dean moans, long and low. "What - oh, I -- what are you?"
"I've told you what I am."
"That can't be, it can't be," Dean cries, his eyes filling up because the tiny motion of Castiel's thumb brushing over the hair that trails down to the top button of his jeans is going to kill him, and he's gonna let it happen.
"You can doubt me," Castiel says. "I don't mind."
His hand slides down over the shape of Dean's erection and then lower, between his legs. It's the sudden awareness of the damp heat of his balls through his jeans that sends Dean over the edge, and he comes so hard that he doesn't even realize he's sobbing, until it's too much, like his skin is being ripped off but it's good and he can't stand it. He blacks out, white light burning behind his eyelids.
He reawakens almost immediately, Castiel touching him now only with a wet washcloth. Dean searches his face for guilt or evil or anything to indicate that what they just did rocked the fucking foundations of the earth, but he only looks vaguely concerned for Dean.
"Are you alright?" he asks, patting sweat from Dean's hairline.
Dean doesn't know what to say, exhales a series of painfully astonished breaths. Castiel wipes Dean's eyes and the corner of his mouth, and Dean looks down at his lap, cold and sticky now.
"This is fucked up," he finally says.
"What?"
"Whatever just happened."
"You need rest, Dean."
"That wasn't rest! That was, like -- holy shit, I don't even know. Let me up, I'm gonna take a shower."
Castiel stands, and Dean checks his lap before heading for the bathroom. There's no bulge, no come dripping down his leg. He looks perfectly unaffected, and Dean might have known. He shuts the bathroom door and tears his clothes off. He's freezing, and even when he makes the water in the shower burning hot, he's too conscious of the air touching his skin in every place where the water doesn't. He's shivering as soon as he gets out, and he curses as he dries himself off. He doesn't want to think about what just happened out in the room, and doesn't want to face Castiel, but the thought of getting under the blankets in his bed is too appealing.
When he walks out into the motel room, Castiel is sitting on his own bed with his hands folded on his stomach. Dean avoids his eyes and tries to get his teeth to stop chattering.
"Quit staring at me," Dean says as he climbs into bed. The thin motel sheets are freezing, and he pulls them up over his ear as he rolls onto his side.
"Did I hurt you?" Castiel asks.
"What? No, there's just -- something weird happens when you touch me. You know that."
"Yes. I think I know why."
Dean leans up onto an elbow and looks over at him. He's staring at the blank television screen, his hands flat on the mattress.
"Okay," Dean says. "Why?"
"You associate my touch with being pulled out of hell. It's a powerful sense memory. And I -- because I associate your safety and contentment with the will of God -- I, I --" His hands curl into fists. "It's a dangerous combination."
Dean tucks the blankets in around his legs, wondering what the hell happened to his body temperature. He feels like he's lost a layer of skin.
"D-dangerous," he says. "Yeah. S-s-so, just. We won't touch each other."
Castiel looks at him, his hands uncurling on the mattress.
"You're cold," he says.
"I'm alright."
"This has never happened to me before," Castiel says, as if to apologize.
"No sh-sh-shit, Sh-Sherlock. Me either."
"Dean," he says, and Dean is going to tell him, I hate it when you say my name, because he feels like someone different when he's with Castiel, someone who didn't answer to that name when his brother shouted it across graveyards and through haunted cabins. He and Sam had a language that was only their names. They didn't need much else, once.
But Dean can't tell him anything because he's shaking too hard. Castiel walks over to the bed and puts his hand on Dean's back. Even through the comforter, sheets, and the fabric of his shirt, his hand burns in the best way. Dean makes a grateful noise he can't stuff down, rolls onto his back.
"Here," he says frantically. He grabs Castiel's hand and puts it against his neck. The warmth of him spreads through Dean's body, and he's afraid he'll go hard again, but it's different this time. He shuts his eyes, and shudders happily as his temperature rises.
"If I do touch you," Castiel says, sliding his thumb across the line of Dean's jaw. "I'll have to be more restrained."
"Yeah, whatever, just c'mere."
Dean pulls Castiel down and under the blankets, puts his face against his chest and moans in sleepy satisfaction. He's still not an angel, definitely not. Some kind of sex demon, which maybe Dean earned after his stint in hell. Figures it'd possess a guy, but whatever, it works. Dean has never been much for clutching at girls in bed, usually just wants to roll over and get comfortable for sleep, but this feels like some combination of sliding into a jacuzzi and smoking crack, which he's actually never done, but supposedly it's instantly addictive, and he's pretty sure that's the way this works. The thought is pretty frightening, but he'll worry about it later.
"What the fuck did you do to me?" he asks, clinging hard. Castiel smells like cherry tobacco, which is weird. Dean's father used to keep some in the glove compartment back in his pipe smoking days, and Dean would sneak whiffs of it when his Dad was picking up food. Growing up, it was his favorite scent, reminded him of the car and his dad letting him stay up late in the front seat, messing with the radio while Sammy slept in the back.
"I hope you don't still expect me to believe you're an angel after all of this," Dean says as he's drifting off to sleep. Castiel lifts up the sleeve of Dean's t-shirt and peeks in at the hand print on his shoulder. Dean can feel his breath there as if he's going to kiss the scar.
"The first time I tried to speak to you, I hurt you," Castiel says. "The second time, that shattering glass, I almost killed you. I don't always know what to do. Maybe I shouldn't have touched you at all. I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it," Dean says. "Just keep me warm until I fall asleep, okay?"
In his long life of things that are hard to believe, saying this to an unidentified creature who has possessed a man named Rob tops the list.
Regardless, Castiel carefully draws Dean's sleeve back over the scar, and puts one heavy hand on Dean's ear while he sleeps, as if to keep the bad things quiet.
*
Dean dreams about Rob, the man who prayed for Castiel to come to him. He sees his modest two bedroom house in Maine, his wife who is barely five feet tall and makes a living selling homemade herbal tea pouches, and the man he's in love with, a teller at the bank he manages. He's blond with bright green eyes and pale freckles across his nose, and Dean loves him vicariously through Rob for the duration of the dream. Rob has never even touched him, but he weeps in his car and begs God to forgive him for his impure thoughts.
When Dean finally wakes up, he feels like he's slept for days. It's not an unpleasant feeling, though unfamiliar. He can't remember the last time he actually slept for a full eight hours, unless of course he counts the time he died. Or the other time he sorta died.
Castiel is sitting at the end of the other bed. He's turned the television on, and though it's muted, he's frowning at it as if he objects to it very seriously. Dean blinks in the dim light through the room's heavy curtains, has no idea what day it is. The program Castiel is watching is some sort of religious junk. A preacher is ranting into a microphone on stage in a cavernous church.
"Better with the sound off, eh?" Dean asks. He sits up with a groan.
"I didn't want to wake you," Castiel says.
"How long have I been out?"
"Thirty-five hours."
"Thirty -- what?"
"You needed to rest."
"But there's -- what if -- haven't we got work to do?"
"I'm waiting for God's --"
"Direction, yeah, yeah. Holy fuck, I'm starving. Let's go eat."
They drive until they find a pizza place that sells by the slice. Dean catches himself drumming on the steering wheel as he pulls into the parking lot, and he's grinning like an idiot, couldn't say why. He wonders briefly if Castiel is a genie, but last time he checked this isn't something he'd wish for, aside from the restfulness, and the coma-inducing orgasm wasn't bad either, despite the circumstances.
He watches Castiel eat a slice of cheese pizza with a knife and fork, and an idea begins to form. Things can't go on like this forever. Sammy can't conspire with Ruby, Dean can't kill demons without him, and Castiel can't keep insisting he's an angel. He's almost definitely not bad, but there's got to be some dark twist, there always is, and Dean means to figure it out. He thinks that maybe if he does, he can go to Sam and tell him he was partially right, and hopefully by then Sam will have realized Dean was not entirely pigheaded and jealous and stupid and actually had a point about Ruby, too.
"Anything?" Dean asks with a mouth full of calzone.
"Not yet." Castiel knows what that question always means. He's learning. Dean bites down on a grin, thinking about the other things he could teach him. It's the only way, really, to prove once and for all that there is nothing angelic about this arrangement.
They go back to the motel room, and Dean considers ordering a porn, but that would be tacky, and he wants to do this thing right. It won't be legit if he doesn't. He takes out a pack of cards and throws them on the bed. Castiel stares at them as if he's trying to interpret a sign.
"You know how to play poker?" Dean asks.
Castiel frowns up at him, tilts his head like a curious bird.
"Didn't think so."
So Dean spends the afternoon showing him how. Castiel holds his cards wrong and forgets the rules, but he's got the best poker face Dean's ever seen.
"What's the point of this?" he asks, an hour into the lesson.
"The point is money, Clarence. Normally we'd be betting. I'd say we could play strip poker instead, but I don't know if the guy you're living in would be into that."
It's Dean's one concern about this brilliant plan. He has no qualms about messing around with someone who claims to be an angel, but if someone else has to be involved against his will, he'll have to call the whole thing off.
"I don't understand," Castiel says. Dean throws down his cards and lies back on the bed.
"I'm talking about Rob. It's all fine and good for you to blow out my synapses with your magic fingers, but what does he think about it?"
Castiel takes a moment to process this, and Dean waits. Rob is not a bad looking guy. It's been Dean's experience that demons usually choose attractive hosts, though old yellow eyes was pretty modest in his final form.
"It was his idea to touch you in the first place," Castiel says.
"What, he's giving you orders? I've known a lot of possessed people in my time, and they don't usually have much say --"
"They were possessed by demons. I am not a demon."
Dean is still skeptical about this, though it must be true. Holy water does nothing, the knife was useless.
"So this guy likes me?" Dean says, tipping his legs apart like an invitation, or maybe it's more like a dare. He folds his hands behind his head, waits.
"Likes you? He was concerned for you, the first night that I spent here. You were having a nightmare. I was cautious of touching you, I'd seen the marks I left. But he was persistent."
"What, he talks to you? A little voice inside your head?"
"It's not like talking. He has free will, and I am responsible for honoring it. I can't make him do things he doesn't want to do."
"Well, good," Dean says. "Because I was thinking we should practice."
"Practice?"
"Yeah, cause in the heat of battle, you might have to grab me, or we might reach for the same salt shaker at a diner, and I don't really need to be getting a boner in those situations. You said you had to practice restraint. So come on over here and practice."
Castiel gathers up the playing cards and puts them on the beside table in a neat stack. He's wearing Rob's shirt and pants today, no tie. Dean makes him take the trench coat off whenever they come back to a motel room, because he always forgets and there's something uncanny about him leaving it on all the time.
"Unless you've got a better idea for how we should spend the afternoon," Dean says. "Cause I'd rather be slaying demons, don't get me wrong."
"I've yet to receive word about where we should go next." Castiel is standing beside the bed, staring at Dean. Whoever he's possessing, there's no way an angel could look at a human so hungrily. Even if he's not angel -- of course he's not -- he's some kind of terrifyingly powerful entity who should be above this sort of thing, and Dean mentally pats himself on the back. He's still got it.
"That's what I thought you'd say." Dean rubs a spot beside him on the mattress. "So, since we've got time to kill. Might as well make use of it."
Castiel sits down and looks at Dean, not quite sheepish but less confident than usual. He reaches over to very gently lay a hand on Dean's stomach. Dean quivers, somehow hadn't expected this to still hit him so hard. He shuts his eyes and tries to concentrate, but it doesn't work. His dick responds like Castiel has just slid his lips around it.
"That's too much," Dean says, his eyelids fluttering. He's forgotten what he's trying to accomplish here. Getting off suddenly seems more desirable than proving a point.
"I don't think I can lessen the impact any more than this," Castiel says. He takes his hand away, and Dean groans. He feels almost relieved for a moment, then only panicked and full of infantile need. He starts to grab for Castiel's hand but stops himself, sits up.
"Okay," Dean says. He draws both hands through his hair and shakes his head, tries to regain a logical train of thought. "What if I touch you? Would that be easier?"
"I don't know."
"No objections from Rob?"
A smile flicks onto Castiel's face and disappears.
"No."
"Okay. Okay." Dean doesn't know why he's nervous. He and Castiel are both kneeling on the bed like teenage friends who are going to practice their kissing technique on each other. Dean had a friend like that in Lawrence, but it got out of hand, and he eventually began to ignore him whenever they were in town.
He touches the collar of Castiel's shirt, pinches it between two fingers. It doesn't effect him at all, until Castiel turns to look at what he's doing, and Dean feels his breath on the back of his hand. His cock stiffens, jammed painfully inside his pants now. Dean is going to take a break, back off for a second, but then he's touching Castiel's lips, which is probably the worst idea ever.
"Does it do anything to you?" Dean asks, breathless, and oh, God, this isn't going according to plan. "Like it does to me?"
"Yes," Castiel says when Dean slides both hands into his hair. His eyes fall shut, and that's really all Dean needs. He tears his jeans open with one shaking hand and tips Castiel's head back with the other.
"Fuck it," he says in a growl. He falls onto Castiel, knocks him back onto the bed, and for a moment it feels like a thousand pins have pierced his skin. Before he can wrench out a scream, this sensation fades into something still rough but good now, so fucking good. He kisses Castiel hard and wet and it's not exactly the careful introduction he'd planned, but he figures it must be working, because his erection is grinding against what feels like Castiel's.
"Are you hard?" Dean asks with a wicked smirk, reaching down to find out. Castiel spreads his legs like he's been waiting, and he arches off the bed with a gasp when Dean feels his cock through his pants.
"Hard as hell," Dean says triumphantly. He licks Castiel's cheek, has to keep talking or this is gonna be over fast. "I knew it. Knew you were bad. So tell me, huh?" He finds his way into Castiel's pants, reaches past a pair of his own boxers and wraps a tight hand around his cock. Castiel squeezes Dean's arms, and if his skin is on fire again he's too preoccupied to notice.
"Tell me how bad you are," Dean says while he strokes him. "Tell me, go on, you can't hide it now."
Castiel chews his lip and thrusts into Dean's hand, his eyes pinched tight. Dean rubs his thumb in circles over the wet head of his cock until he finally draws a noise out of him, a whine building low in the back of his throat.
"Feels good, doesn't it?" Dean whispers in his ear.
Castiel doesn't answer, only lets loose a long sigh of relief when he comes, so profound that Dean can feel it between his own ribs. Dean pumps him as his come spills down over his hand, licks his throat and rubs against his thigh. When Castiel's eyes open Dean half expects them to flash something inhuman at him, but there's only the same gray-blue he's come to know. Dean kisses him over each eyelid, so grateful for this he could cry.
"I think I wanna fuck you," Dean says, his voice so rough he barely recognizes it, but just saying so makes him come in his unbuttoned jeans. Castiel holds onto the back of his neck while his orgasm shudders out of him, and when Dean collapses onto his chest he wonders if he's left another hand print behind, if he's covered Dean's skin in hundreds of them.
"Well," Dean says after they've both been still for several minutes, panting and sweating on each other. "We'll just have to try not to do that in the heat of battle. Or in a diner."
Castiel says nothing, and Dean sits up to look at him, though he's almost afraid to. His eyes are shut, and Dean waits for him to work up the nerve to face him after what just happened, but he only lies there until his lips part silently. He's asleep.
Dean lies beside him and tries to figure out what any of this means, but he's out cold before he can even begin to think about it. He dreams about eating waffles in a diner with Sam and shooting targets in a field in Kansas while his father watches. He wakes up slow, something tickling the side of his face. When he opens his eyes he sees Castiel sitting beside him. He could swear what he just felt on his cheek was a feather. Maybe he was still dreaming.
"Have we got orders?" Dean asks.
Castiel nods and straightens his shirt.
"Las Cruces, New Mexico," he says.
"Jesus. That sounds serious."
"Yes."
Castiel stands and refastens his pants. Guilt takes Dean down like a rip tide.
"Is it okay?" he asks. "I mean. I'm not going to get you in trouble, am I?"
"Get me in trouble with who, Dean?"
Dean blinks at him. He was going to say God. It doesn't make any sense that rolling around in bed with him would be what convinced Dean this is the real deal. But when's the last time anything made sense.
"It'll be a long drive," Dean says.
"It will."
"You gonna ride with me?"
Castiel looks tired. Dean is pretty sure he just fucked things up royal. He imagines Castiel telling him like Sam did that he has to leave, that Dean just loves him too much and too hard and not in the way he's supposed to.
"Yes, I'll ride with you," Castiel says.
They check out of the motel and head west. Dean wants to ask a thousand questions, but there's only one he's ready to have answered. He puts the radio on.
"You like classic rock?" he asks.
Castiel turns from the window and scratches his head like for a second he's just a regular guy.
"What do you mean?" he asks.
And Dean spends the rest of the trip explaining.
*
Continued