Fic: Fall Into Ash

[entangled_now]

Title: Fall Into Ash
Author: Corona
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Spoilers for season 4
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: There are many things Dean doesn't think he deserves.
AN: "Why am I in this handbasket? Where are we going?"


Dean can't sleep.

Though it's not a great mystery, he thinks maybe you come back from hell and you don't want to close your eyes. You don't want to find out the world was just a dream.

Or worse, and though Dean doesn't know what 'worse' might be it's been turning over and over in his head for so long he's exhausted just thinking the words.

And then suddenly he knows he's not alone.

He scowls at the ceiling.

"What no smashed windows? No turning on the TV? No bleeding eardrums?"

"They are not a punishment those things, simply ripples that I make in the world."

"Nifty," Dean says flatly. "What do you want?"

He tips his head sideways, finds Castiel standing in the middle of the room, like he's lost, like he took a hell of a wrong turn somewhere. And isn't that more his own personal truth than Dean likes to think.

Dean still half thinks someone will realise out it's all been a mistake, though he's probably done his fair share of work for the side of good he's not exactly a shining example of all that's moral.

He's not even always an example of what's right.

He's done some pretty fucked up things.

Castiel steps forward and sits on the edge of the bed, like there's no part of the world he can't fit himself into, like he belongs wherever he is, instantly and completely.

Dean hates that it's true, hates that he can't shake any of the convictions that have crept inside his head since yesterday, hates the way Castiel crawls over every inch of his skin even that far away.

Hates that now that he knows he can feel him.

His foot twitches under the sheets and he drags it out of reach.

"You're not real," Dean accuses.

"Wishing it will not make it true," Castiel says quietly, like Dean's a child that needs to be told an unpleasant truth.

Dean refuses to have this conversation laying down, he sits up and throws his arms over his knees.

"You're just human, no matter what you've got inside you're just human. Screwing us around whenever you feel like it; using us as your puppets. Seems like whatever you are you're not all that different from the things I've spent years killing."

"The issue of what I am or am not has been resolved," Castiel says calmly.

"You kept talking, but I stopped listening," Dean snaps and it's a lie, and a blatant one at that.

Castiel's expression tips into something soft, something chastening and Dean loses all his breath in one go.

"Just don't, just fucking don't." Dean grits his teeth and breathes for a moment in the silence, because he wants to hold on to his anger. He doesn't want Castiel to take it, to just crush it with one look. Like some sort of emotional vampire, and isn't that a screwed up comparison.

"You hold tightly to your certainties, they make you feel grounded, they make you feel safe. But they're wrong."

"Yeah, well, they've worked for me pretty well so far."

"I'm not a monster Dean."

'Then why am I scared to death.' Dean shakes his head, wordless, frustrated, and dares Castiel to hear the thought with a snarl.

"You're wrong, I'm wrong, everything's wrong."

"Then make it right."

Dean scowls at the words, loosed without any kind of sense.

"You know demons are about as big on the sharing as you are," he says tartly. Though Castiel doesn't react to the comparison. He just sits there, looking serene and unfathomable, and nothing Dean has ever seen wear a human being has ever looked so unreal.

Dean shakes off the sense of wrong and reaches a hand out, the edge of Castiel's jaw is both smooth and hard under his fingers. It's just skin over bone, warm. His fingers slide over the pulse in his throat while his thumb moves further, finds the edge of Castiel's mouth.

He presses in, finds the hard line of teeth, the wet edge of his tongue, and he lingers there, drawn curiously to that living thing.

Then he exhales, drags his thumb down Castiel's lower lip, down his chin, just because he can, it leaves a shiny trail, a wet line of imperfection. A line that leaves Dean thinking things he isn't supposed to think, things he's fairly certain fall under blasphemy somewhere, or as close as makes no difference.

But it hurts, it fucking hurts somewhere inside not to.

Castiel is...Dean isn't ever going to describe another man as beautiful but he's something. He's rich and complex and smooth. He's a different sort of want that doesn't press on his nerves as much as before. A sort of want that he thinks he'd like to try.

Because he's come back from hell, there's probably no better reason to try new things.

But he knows he can't have anything for himself, he can't have anything good, that doesn't happen to him. Anything good he's ever had he's pulled to pieces, he's made just as broken and rotten and dirty as him.

And what gives him the right.

What gives him the right to do it again, to do it now.

Dean leans in, one hand folded round Castiel's neck, fingers disappearing under the brush of his hair and he kisses him.

A barely there touch, that lasts half a second. This isn't complicated, this is something quiet, something dark, something Dean knows. And though he doesn't expect to be killed for it he expects something. He doesn't know what.

But he's dared his whole life, so he kisses him again, not brief this time but a steady push against his mouth. But there's no punishment. There's nothing, just lips on skin and warmth against his mouth. Castiel let's him kiss him, head tipped back, mouth open just a fraction, but not enough, still and soft under Dean's. Under every press, each harder than the last, and Dean can feel the vibrations of his own breath there, can feel the warm flare of Castiel's.

Though he doesn't offer anything there's something awkward in the way he moves under the pressure, and Dean thinks maybe it's not that he doesn't want to, but that he doesn't know how.

Dean swallows back the words he'd been meaning to say and smoothes his thumbs down the rough skin of Castiel's cheeks.

"Open your mouth." His voice sounds like it's been forced out of him, all wet command he doesn't want to mean, doesn't want to admit to.

There's a faint, audible inhale against his face and Castiel obeys.

Dean leans forward again.

Castiel doesn't taste like an angel, he tastes alive under every push of Dean's tongue. He tastes like living flesh, wet inside, bending under Dean's ferocity but not protesting it.

And he still needs to breathe, there's a push of air against Dean's cheek, against his mouth when he stops to watch the curious mixture of watchfulness and judgment in Castiel's face.

Until he gets tired of looking. Until looking makes him feel twisted inside, half wrong and half guilty. But still caught under that spike of fucked up arousal and he wants to blame him, wants to blame what he is, even though he knows that makes it worse, makes him something he doesn't want to be.

But kissing him doesn't stop it, kissing him doesn't help, it just makes it worse too, makes it run red all the way through, and Dean doesn't even realise his fingers are easing white cotton out of pants until they're doing it, steady, restless pulls like they know it's shameful, like they know he can't, that this isn't what you do.

Castiel doesn't try and stop him, but he doesn't encourage him either. The shirt's creased at the bottom, a curious discovery that's so painfully human, that it makes Dean, just for a second, rougher than before. He's pulling the back out in fists of fabric that knock Castiel into him, that draw the tiniest noise out of him.

Dean pulls the shirt through his fingers and the material is warm and real.

But underneath-

Underneath there's nothing but skin, warm under his hands, warmer the more of it he touches, soft line of waist and the shallow dip at the base of his spine, smooth where he dares to go.

He can't help groaning into Castiel's mouth, fingers spreading and he's warm he's so fucking warm, and completely forbidden and Dean doesn't know why he's letting him do this, doesn't understand if this is some sort of messed up test.

Doesn't fucking care.

But he won't play for their amusement.

"Stop me," Dean says and he can taste his own anger but he doesn't know where it comes from or why. "Do something, make me stop touching you."

Castiel does nothing, head tilted, like he's waiting for something to show up in Dean's face, all careful curiosity and endless patience.

"Stop me."

"If you want to stop, then stop," Castiel says smoothly and his voice is a shade lower than normal, a purr of sound. The words are flat, simple but they make Dean's fingers catch on his waist, makes them press in hard enough to bruise.

"You're testing me."

"I'm doing nothing," Castiel catches his eyes and Dean can't look away. "You're testing yourself."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Castiel just looks at him, the expression at the same time innocent and utterly alien. He looks too deep, he looks deep enough that Dean can't help but feel he's seeing everything about him that's broken. That he sees someone who can do this, and Dean has to kiss him again just to crush that expression off of his face.

To stop him before he breaks Dean open.

His finger's find the loose edge of his tie, pick at its knot and draw it open in one long pull. The buttons of his shirt go slowly, lazily, through their holes and Dean can't feel anything but the slow shift of Castiel's chest as he breathes against the back of his knuckles and the curious, wet surrender of his mouth.

Dean pushes both sides apart, slides the white material over his shoulders, down his arms, tanned fingers sliding out of the cuffs in easy movements, it's all easy, it's all too easy. Dean pulls back far enough to press his forehead against Castiel's.

"Shouldn't you be protesting this, this is what you do after all right? Protesting sin? Speaking out against the evils of the flesh."

"Would it make a difference?" Castiel says quietly. "Would it stop you wanting?"

Instead of answering Dean reaches for his waist again, then curls his fingers round it, pulling just hard enough to sway Castiel towards him, into him. Pressed chest to chest, smooth glide of shifting, breathing flesh, and Dean can't resist sliding an arm round his waist, finding the soft edges and flat planes of muscle with his fingers.

Pressing and pulling at everything that's real.

He presses in all the way, bare thigh pushed between Castiel's and that's when he stops, when he breaks away, twists out of the kiss and breathes surprise into Castiel's mouth.

"Jesus-" Dean's voice cracks. "Jesus you're hard."

"This body is human," Castiel says simply, and there's a faint, almost imperceptible pause before the word. Dean can hear the word 'weak' slipped in effortlessly in its place. He wonders if that's his own prejudice or something more truthful.

"But you're not."

"No," simple, honest.

But Dean can't pick at it under that discovery. That line of heat against his thigh, pressing into the muscle, pressing in impossibly when Dean shifts, flexes, pushes, and they're brief, curious, uncertain movements.

And it's that unexpected reaction, involuntary? reaction to his touching that shakes everything. He holds Castiel there, watching his face,

"Do you want me to touch you?"

"You want to touch me," Castiel counters, frustratingly.

"That's not an answer, " Dean says quietly, angrily.

"It's important nonetheless."

"I don't know what you're doing, I don't know what you want."

"It's not about what I want," Castiel says smoothly. "It's about what you want."

And Dean gets it, messed up though it is, he gets it, and he knows.

"Kiss me," he says roughly.

And Castiel sighs like he's been waiting all this time for Dean to ask, to demand, to plead and Castiel catches his hair and tips his head down, and kisses him. The same way Dean kissed him, hard and open and wet, fingers dragging through the back of his hair, warm and sharp and just the wrong side of tight.

Dean can't stop his hands from sliding into the front of those sensible pants, pants that don't belong to Castiel at all, uncatching and unzipping them, before pushing his hands underneath, under both pants and shorts. Until he can pull his fingers across the curve of hipbones and warmer skin, pushing it down with his knuckles, a slide of material down strong thighs.

Dean slides his hand back up, a drift of fingers on skin and then higher. Until he's touching what's purely, achingly human, stolen flesh and blood that jumps in his hand when he pushes his palm into it, when he tightens his fingers and hears, fractionally, impossibly, the faintest catch in Castiel's throat.

He pulls out of the kiss, mouth hot and half-numb.

"So you're not just a doll wearing that body after all."

Castiel says nothing, though his fingers are still shifting in Dean's hair.

"Touch me," Dean demands.

"Is that what you want?"

Dean grits his teeth and nods, and when that doesn't seem like enough-

"Yeah, that's what I want."

Castiel lifts his hands like he's been given a task, fingers sliding round Dean's waist, then up his chest, more curious than intent but his touch is firm, is sure. Like Dean could never fall through his hands, like no matter what he ever did Castiel would still hold him like this.

And it should be too much, that flicker of something not quite human, that trickle of invasiveness to the sensation, that his brain keeps telling him is touching him inside, somewhere he can't see.

But instead Dean finds his own hands on the back of Castiel's a plea not to stop, that he isn't brave enough to voice.

"It's not my job to judge you," Castiel says quietly.

"Are you pretending to know what I want again," Dean's voice is harder than he intended.

"You want to be punished, you think you should be punished." Castiel's voice is soft. "You want to turn my being here for you into something you can understand, something that makes sense to you."

"In my world nothing makes sense," Dean tells him.

"In your world the strong always overpower the weak."

"Damn it get out of my head."

Castiel's hands are still moving, edging into the fallen waist of his shorts, a steady glide of movement that has them halfway down Dean's thighs before he's noticed, and his throat swallows against his will.

He can't protest when he's the one that started it, when he's the one that wants it.

He can't protest just because Castiel as a living, breathing, moving thing scares him more than he'll even admit to himself. Something tears, a sharp painful sound, and Dean's left kneeling there utterly naked and feeling every inch of it while Castiel's hands slide all the way down to his wrists and circle there. And all Dean's doing is breathing, breathing and staying upright.

Castiel's fingers tighten, easing Dean's hands back to the sheets in one long movement and that's familiar enough that Dean takes a breath and fights for one instant, just long enough for his pulse to jump and catch and for Castiel to kiss him into stillness. He's struck for one second how vulnerable, how fragile he is, made of flesh and blood, like Castiel could break him if he wanted to, like Castiel would break him if he was told and it should make him afraid, it should make him angry but it's old and familiar, that taut wariness on the back of his tongue. It makes his skin stretch under Castiel's fingers, makes his thighs slide open around an unfamiliar waist, makes him swear and push and demand.

And then Castiel is pressing him into the sheets with his own body weight, pushing him down with impossible hands, hair tipping and falling into his eyes, flecks of darkness over the blue.

Until Dean can't breathe and he's not sure he still can, bare thigh sliding against Castiel's waist, wrists shifting and chafing under his fingers, aching all the way to the bone. He presses up, left with no leverage but still feeling the whisper shift of skin against his cock, of the press and slide of skin, fractional movements between one breath and the next. And Dean can't help shaking under every one. While Castiel stares down at him, expression open and determined and curious. Like he's trying to understand.

But Dean doesn't want to be understood.

Castiel's hands leave his wrist, glide up his arms, down his chest, the curve of his open thighs, and it's a curiously extended gesture, reverent in a way that Dean doesn't want to understand. When they move back up one turns his head, pulls the edge of his jaw down and Castiel's the one who presses his fingers into Dean's mouth, salt-steel slide against his tongue. Smooth and wet against his teeth for just long enough to make his cock jump and ache against his own abdomen, before they're pulling free.

"I won't break you," Castiel says softly, solemnly, and Dean wants to protest that he already has, that he already did when he dragged him out of hell and left him branded for all time with the burning hands of an angel.

He wants to tell him all of that. But before he can breathe a word of it smooth, steady fingers push all the way inside him, and he opens up like he wants it, like he's been waiting for it and he's caught by brief, sharp-edged laughter at the obscenity of it, at the rich red intimacy of it. Laughter that cracks when two fingers become three, all the way inside until Dean can't do anything but spread his legs like a fucking whore and take it.

He looks down, finds the curve of Castiel, all muscle and flesh that he shouldn't own, shoulder and arm shifting in quick, tense movements between Dean's thighs. And the picture is so visceral so blatantly un-angelic that Dean groans and lets his head fall back.

Castiel eases his hand free and pushes at his thigh, then rises into the space it leaves, and Dean's pulse roars in his throat, and he can't stop exhaling when there's weight and intent.

And he thinks, helplessly, that he can't fuck him because that's insane, that's completely and utterly wrong. It breaks every rule, every assumption Dean ever had. One more sharp-edged secret to add to the picture of his life.

But it's too late, he's already inside, one steady press that makes Dean groan in the back of his throat, leg shifting higher under the push of Castiel's hand when he slides deeper, a ragged half-wet push that stretches him open and hurts in a way he has no reference for. A too intimate, too close burn that leaves him reaching for skin, fingers curling round Castiel's bare shoulder's, smooth under his hands and hard when he presses deeper.

Castiel has his eyes shut, head tipped down, mouth half open and Dean shudders underneath him because he looks broken like that, broken and more human than he ever seemed before.

Dean's the one who shifts, who presses and encourages him, thighs sliding somewhere easier when Castiel moves, when he draws back and pushes in again. He does make a noise then, quiet and lost and low in his chest like he's found something strange and wonderful. Dean pushes up, groans through an ache that's rapidly drifting from discomfort to something familiar, something greedy. His hands move from his shoulders to the warmth of Castiel's chest. Until he can hold and pull in a way that starts off awkward and is then suddenly easy. Easier still when he tips his knee out of the way, stretches into every push instead of trying to brace against it.

Castiel reacts to that, pushes in hard and Dean's nails dig in, breath forced out of his throat. He groans under a tangle of pain and heat so tightly bound together he can't tell where they seperate.

"Again!" He demands and Castiel breathes sharply down into his face and obeys. One hand sliding up his chest to grasp his shoulder fingers pain-tight on the skin, pulling him down and pushing in in the same movement. And Dean has no choice but to bend under it.

The whole world starts to crack apart under that fury and Dean's hands slide on his skin, thighs aching, chest too crushed to breathe properly.

And he starts to unravel, untangling in pieces, making noises like he's dying.

Castiel's hand slides from his shoulder to his face, covers his eyes; presses down hard.

And the whole world goes white.

Dean takes a breath.

-

The world isn't real.

Dean wakes up gasping, blinking in the darkness, shuddering and aching like he's dying all over again.

"Fuck." The word sounds thin and useless. Like he's been breathing sand, or screaming.

He drags himself all the way upright, still shaking off the edges of the dream, but the sensations still cling to his skin while he breathes, soft whistles of damp, hot air through his throat.

"Fuck!" He says louder, the sheets are crinkled, and damp with sweat underneath him, wet and heavy in his lap for an entirely different reason. One that makes him swallow and drag his fingers through his hair and fucking hate himself.

He doesn't feel like he's slept at all, shaking and cold, breathing too fast and utterly lost.