Fic: "When Play Turns Bitter - Chapter Ten: Putting the Damage On" [SPN - Dean/Cas, Dean/OMC]

[nanoochka]

TITLE: "When Play Turns Bitter - Chapter Ten: Putting the Damage On"
AUTHOR: nanoochka
RATING: NC-17 for language, violence and graphic descriptions of sex.
PAIRING: Dean/Castiel, Dean/OMC, Sam/OFC, mentions of Dean/Lisa and Cas/Balthazar
SUMMARY: “You’re happy with your world/ But there is something small in the back of your head/ Your concerns are still free/ You fall into the trap/ Without knowing what you want/ And there’s nothing left but a foolish idea/ Everything goes back into place.” Remember that play turns sour when playing with a fire; but Dean is as tired of pretending like his life hasn’t begun, as he is waiting for Castiel to notice.
WARNINGS: OMC slash, character death - please be aware that this chapter might be triggery, as it contains graphic descriptions of death and decomposition
SPOILERS: General S6
WORDCOUNT: WIP
DISCLAIMER: Supernatural and all associated content is the property of The CW and Eric Kripke. No infringement intended.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: See previous parts for full author's notes. The title is from the traditional Welsh standard written and sung by Caryl Parry-Jones, “Chwarae'n Troi'n Chwerw” (“When Play Turns Bitter” or, “When Play Turns Sour” - lyrics here); chapter title from Tori Amos. Thanks to sansday for taking point as head cheerleader/alpha, cautionzombies for last-minute hand-holding and talking me off the ledge, and last but not least the indefatigable shane_mayhem for the incisive beta and Portland-related cultural-geographical coaching.

Part Nine

“When Play Turns Bitter” by nanoochka

Chapter Ten: Putting the Damage On

Dean woke in his own bed, buried beneath a mound of dishevelled covers and so comfortably warm that he didn’t have to check that this was a dream. His room was always the more drafty of the two, and his bed rarely so cozy; when he rolled over to find Castiel watching him from beside the bed, that pretty much cemented it. His arm and ribs felt good as new, his jaw bore no evidence of having been dislocated, and then Castiel propelled himself onto the bed-on top of Dean-to mash their mouths together, fitting beneath Dean’s hands so perfectly that they might very well have been designed this way.

Just like Dean remembered, the angel’s smell was neutral, undetectable, his lips full and warm. Even in his dreams Castiel didn’t fuck around, shoving his hands into Dean’s hair so roughly that his head jerked back at an angle, all the better for them to open to each other, teeth biting, tongues moving gently to soothe the pain. One of them groaned into the kiss, Dean probably, and he struggled with the blankets between them until he was free and able to wrap his body around Castiel’s own. Their legs tangled like seaweed; Dean’s t-shirt was lifted and pulled over his head.

This was unlike the other dreams Dean had experienced before-he wanted to know when the rest of his clothes would come off. All that remained were his boxers, a negligible barrier through which he could feel the gorgeous friction of Castiel’s denim rubbing against him, but he pushed up the hem of Castiel’s sweater so their bellies could come into contact, warm and growing tacky with his sweat. A slow thrust of Castiel’s hips made him keen long and low in his throat, the angel’s mouth trailing down his neck as if to reverse the sound’s path.

“Cas, touch me,” he moaned, pushing his body into the angel’s hands. Those broad palms felt so good on him, burning hot against his cool skin, purifying.

He expected for a hand to work its way into his boxers, but instead Castiel nuzzled into the divot at the base of Dean’s collarbones and spread his fingers against the brand on his shoulder, a perfect mimicry of their first time together. Like then, the fire that spread from his touch made Dean gasp with pleasure, electrified by whatever connection tingled to life when Cas touched him there, a mark he wore on the outside as deeply as he did in his soul. Feeling it, Castiel kissed him again, brutal and helpless, and made a lost noise of his own as the pressure built beneath his hand. Almost completely untouched, Dean felt an orgasm burst through him, making him cry out as his came inside his boxers with a release so powerful that he lost time.

Castiel was still holding him when the starbursts cleared from his vision and Dean slumped back against the bed, watching him with an expression half of concern and half of wonder that darkened his eyes to the colour of twilight. It was so close to the real thing that Dean could have looked at him for an eternity to memorize the sharp cast of his expression and the sadness of his mouth.

Instead he blinked away the beads of sweat from his eyelashes and pulled Cas in close, not wanting him to disappear. “I don’t care if this means I’m dead, that was fucking great.”

Cas’s lips yielded to him with impossible sweetness as he snagged another kiss, sucking at his tongue lazily. He couldn’t remember if the dead felt regret this way; it ate at his mind like acid, corroding memories that were now too precious to lose.

“Why didn’t you come for me, Cas?” he murmured, meaning not just at the end, but at all. He had no idea what this meant about Kurt, if maybe he’d survived, but he wasn’t sure how to ask and what he could do about it from a dream state, anyway. “I fucking love you, you know that? I waited months for you to show up and you never did. Here I thought that bullshit was behind us ages ago.”

“But I did come for you,” Cas said slowly, and pushed himself up a little to look at Dean. The fingers tracing Dean’s jaw felt so human and perfect that Dean couldn’t distinguish them from dream or memory. “I heard you calling my name, Dean-why do you think I’m here? I waited months for you to ask me back or forgive me or tell me you wished I was dead, not to find you dying in an alleyway. That isn’t… it’s not what it should take.”

“Yeah, well, a dream is kind of a shitty consolation prize,” Dean deadpanned. He turned his face away so that Cas wouldn’t see the tears burning behind his eyelids. “A dream doesn’t fix anything no matter how real it seems. Not for me and not for Kurt.”

“Dean.” He resisted the plea until Cas grabbed his chin and pulled his face back the other way, eyes still intense and serious in that way that Dean couldn’t decipher. “Why do you think this is a… a consolation prize? And who is Kurt? You can’t still be asleep if you just woke up.”

The words made perfect sense in his mind but Dean couldn’t seem to place them in an order that he could understand. It was natural for Cas not to know who Kurt was, because Sam had supposedly been good to his word not to say anything, but there was no explanation for the other stuff that he could provide.

“I got fang-raped by those vampires,” he drawled like Cas was no smarter than a two-year-old. Christ, he could still feel the agonizing instant of his arm snapping, the sickening pop as humerus separated from scapula. He remembered all too well Kurt’s muffled struggle going silent and then still. “Me and Kurt. I called to you for help but you never-”

Both of Castiel’s hands came up to cradle his face, silencing him. “Yes, I did. You were almost dead and I was nearly too late, but I found you. Did you think I would not come? Let you die?”

Dean went rigid, so rigid that Castiel said his name softly and searched his eyes in worry. “How am I here?” Dean whispered.

“I carried you.”

“And I’m-”

“Alive.” Castiel sighed as if wondering why this was all so difficult. “I was able to heal your injuries but your body was weak. You have slept for two days; there should no longer be any pain.” To clarify, he added, “This isn’t a dream, Dean.”

For a moment Dean’s ears seemed to lose their ability to function, blocking out all sound until the only thing he could hear was a sharp ringing that grew steadily louder. Accompanying it was a pressure so great that even Castiel’s hands lightly touching his face felt like crushing weights against his head, slowly squeezing until he ripped away with a muffled cry and rolled off the bed.

His knees hit the floor like his legs had forgotten how to stand. “No,” he said weakly. “No, no, no.”

Not even Castiel could hide his expression of alarm, already-pale skin blanching as he looked on in incomprehension. “What’s wrong? Are you embarrassed that we-”

Dean didn’t even hear him. “Holy shit, holy shit,” he repeated over and over, scrabbling around until he found his way upright and stumbled out of the room. Cas was right on his heels, springing up from the bed as easily as a cat, his face still a mask of alarm. There were a million questions and insults Dean had formulated over the last eight months of Castiel’s absence, and they were forgotten in an instant as his mind blacked out except for one clear thought: “Kurt. Holy fuck, Kurt.”

Outside, it was night. Dean had no idea what day of the week it was but from the look of things Sam was at work. Everything in his apartment looked foreign and new until he spotted the leather messenger bag sitting on top of the couch, a wallet and iPhone on top of the coffee table. Kurt’s. The poster tube with its blueprints and plans--their plans-all there. Dean grabbed the wallet, his hands shaking like they hadn’t done since he found Sammy with a knife in his back. This was almost the same thing. The ringing grew louder.

Next to the wallet was a short note from Sam-Didn’t want to wake you guys. Jessie says you and Kurt left these at the bar-couldn’t wait to get home, Dean, really? She asked me to tell you to stop using the back door. The smiley face had probably been added at Jessie’s urging, but Dean crumpled up the note with numb fingers and turned back to the angel.

Flipping open the wallet to Kurt’s driver’s license, he held it up to Cas and shook it deliriously in his panic. “This man,” he said, throat tightening around the words like they were physical objects constricting the flow of air. “This man was with me, he got attacked. Do you remember? Was he there?”

“Yes, Dean,” Castiel answered with deliberate slowness. Dean could tell he was trying to stay calm and figure out what the fuck had Dean so spooked. “There were two people with you-this man, and one other.”

“And?” When all Castiel did was furrow his brow, Dean whipped the wallet at the wall and shoved Cas up against it next, fisting his hands in his sweater so tightly he was surprised it didn’t rip.

“What is the matter with you?” asked Cas, more edge to his voice, now.

“Tell me he was alive,” Dean begged him, pressing Cas into the drywall. “Please tell me that he was alive when you got there, Cas.”

“They both were in much worse shape than you,” Cas told him in apology. He brought his hands up to cover Dean’s own, eyes electric. “Unconscious, but alive.” Slowly, he backed Dean away. “I could not heal all three of you, Dean-they would have woken with too many questions. I was able to transport them to hospital. They will have been in the care of doctors since then, but I don’t know more than that. Is that what you wished to know?”

If asked, Dean wouldn’t have been able to say how he kept his voice from breaking, how he kept himself from breaking altogether. The extent of his panic was so great that it felt like an out-of-body experience; he half-expected to see a Reaper appear to him at any moment, if this didn’t all turn out to be some sick, perverted joke on Castiel’s part. One look at his face confirmed that it wasn’t, and Dean swallowed.

“What I want,” he said roughly, “is to get dressed. And then I want you to take me to him.”

Because Kurt’s wallet spent the night on Dean’s coffee table, no one knew the identity of the man who came in suffering severe blood loss from a gruesome neck wound. While the man who accompanied him to the Emergency Room, also unconscious, had sustained similar injuries, the surgeons on call found his identification inside his pocket and notified the family immediately. Due to the nature of the injuries, Portland police were called; but they could find no connection between the first man, Tim Gallagher, and the John Doe. No missing persons were reported over the weekend that matched his description. Tim was in a coma but expected to recover.

The nurse on duty explained this to Dean as patiently as possible in response to his questions, and it didn’t occur to him to mention Kurt’s wallet until she asked if he had information about the second victim. Her hand hovered halfway above the phone receiver as though she expected him to produce a signed confession right then and there; he was unshaven and frantic, not the most reassuring sight. At a gentle nudge from Castiel, he gave a start and dropped the wallet on the desk like it had been searing a hole into his palm for the last hour.

“This is him,” the nurse said, eyes flicking over the name and Kurt’s smiling, beautiful face. The relief in her expression almost made Dean sag against Castiel. “How did you get this?” she asked.

“He left it at my place,” Dean lied shakily, adding, “When he didn’t show up for a couple of days I started to worry. And then I heard about the attack on the news.”

The story seemed to work. She handed the wallet back. “Are you a relation?”

From the corner of his eye, Dean could see Castiel watching him very carefully and in absolute silence, obviously riveted upon the answers Dean had failed to provide thus far. He forced the sounds from his throat. “I’m not a relative,” he croaked. “I’m his lover.” Beside him, Castiel went utterly stiff. Dean’s every ounce of strength was required not to look over.

The nurse’s expression changed, and Dean wondered if he would have to withstand the silent judgement of a middle-aged homophobe. Instead she put an stop to those thoughts when she said, “Okay, honey,” in a voice that was too sweet. “I’m going to call the doctor right now so that he can speak with you. What is your name?”

“Dean Winchester.”

“Thanks, Dean. In the meantime, does Kurt have any family that we can call?”

“His mother’s in St. Petersburg,” Dean answered stiffly. “Um, Florida, not Russia. His sister’s in Miami.” He fished out Kurt’s iPhone and waved it stupidly like proof. Kurt’s mother, Anala, was a regal woman and every bit as beautiful as her son, but Dean neither recalled her number nor had the mental capacity to remember the Florida area code at the moment. The nurse went to pick up the phone again, ostensibly to page the doctor, but Dean put out a hand to stop her and closed his fingers around the receiver. “So can I see him, or what?”

“You should wait for the doctor,” she repeated. “He’ll be along in just a moment.”

“What the fu-” To Dean’s surprise, Cas’s hand on his arm brought his tirade up short, though not unwisely. Just because he felt ready to vibrate off this Earthly plane with worry, didn’t mean that launching a slew of F-bombs at a nurse would get him anything other than a visit from Security. “Am I going to have to talk to the police?” he asked, going for something relatively more polite by comparison. “Is that why you won’t just take me to him?”

“N-no,” she answered slowly. “The doctor can probably advise you about that, but I really couldn’t say. Normally in a John Doe situation they like to follow up with a few questions, especially given the state that Kurt turned up in. But the doctor-”

“Yeah, I get it,” he interrupted. “Along in a minute.”

The nurse smiled stiffly and gestured at a row of puke-coloured waiting chairs while she paged the doctor. There was no guessing the number of hospitals Dean had visited in his lifetime, and they all had chairs like that to ruin your spine while the antiseptic cafeteria coffee ruined your stomach lining. “You can have a seat if you like.”

“Great, thanks,” he grit out.

When Dean turned around, he found that Cas had already migrated over to the chairs and was sitting there with his back ramrod straight and his hands clasped tightly in his lap. He refused to look at Dean and was completely immobile except for a muscle that twitched and jumped in his cheek. Sighing, Dean sat one chair away from him and buried his head in his hands to avoid the inevitable conversation. As much as he didn’t want to explain a damn thing to Cas, on some level the silence was preferable to predicting what the doctor could say. There was no doubt that Kurt would be in rough shape, because you didn’t get up and walk away from that kind of vampire attack with nothing more than a couple of manly scars. Dean knew that better than most people. He just hoped Kurt was conscious by now, sickeningly aware that the role of guardian angel by his bedside would have to be played by himself; doubtful that Cas would be up for the job.

He had forty of the longest seconds of his life to wait before Cas said, brokenly, “Dean.”

“Don’t even.” It was Dean’s turn not too look at him again. “Not a fucking word.”

They remained that way in silence for the better part of ten minutes while the nurse talked in a hushed voice over the phone and they waited for news. Dean ready to jump out of his chair-or his skin-by the time a harassed-looking doctor emerged from around the corner wearing full scrubs and a surgical cap like he’d just exited the operating room.

“Doctor?” Dean bounded out of his seat and was halfway down the hall before the man even looked up from the chart in his hands.

“Are you Dean? Dean Winchester?” His voice was gruff, though not impatient. He looked a bit like Chuck right down to the beard and bloodshot eyes. Dean hoped it was from working the night shift and not alcoholism, and he noticed straight away that the man flipped the chart closed after no more than a cursory glance.

Paranoid or not, a medical report that brief didn’t inspire confidence. “Please tell me that you’ve got some news about Kurt,” he answered. “I’m freaking out, man.”

“I’m Doctor Ensler,” came the brisk introduction and complete non-response to his question. Dean could already tell that his bedside manner was going to suck. “Nurse O’Brien tells me you’re here about the young man who was brought to emergency-Kurt, is it? It’s fortunate that you showed up. I was the doctor on call when he arrived and we had no way of identifying him until now.”

“I would have come sooner if I’d known,” Dean said in a rush. “We can get you all the information you need-insurance, medical records, whatever-but I just want to see him. How is he doing? The nurse said his injuries were… bad.”

Doctor Ensler sighed and flicked his eyes over to Castiel as if to assess his security clearance. Ninja-like as always, Castiel’s presence was warm at Dean’s back, though it did nothing to calm his nerves and racing heart. Since the cat was out of the bag, Dean hoped he’d get on with it and take him to Kurt’s room without standing on such ceremony. It no longer mattered if Cas knew about Kurt, or what he could possibly have to say about the gay love affair Dean had been carrying on for months. All he wanted was Kurt alive and safe, to be able to take him home and care for him until he was better, to be away from this place; he hated hospitals and everything about them. Dean didn’t care if he had to take off a month of work to look after Kurt-that was what he did. He also had a tendency to put loved ones here in the first place.

Craning his head slightly to peer down the hall, Ensler spotted a vacant examination room and gestured for Dean and Castiel to join him inside for some privacy. The door closed behind them and Ensler leaned against it like he wanted to be as close to the exit as possible.

“Kurt lost a lot of blood,” he began. “It was a miracle that he was alive at all when we found him-with that kind of trauma, the body has little choice but to start shutting down, and Kurt was in a coma when he went into surgery. We were able to repair the injury to his neck and begin administering blood, and his condition was stable enough that I felt optimistic that he might regain consciousness within a few days.” The doctor-babble barely cut through Dean’s haze of worry. “Unfortunately there’s always a risk of brain damage, but we can never know until the patient wakes up. If they wake up at all.” On that terrifying note, he looked at Dean for a long moment and sighed again, and the sound was like a knoll.

“Are you saying-” Dean had to stop himself when it became clear that he wouldn’t be able to get the rest of the sentence out. Already there were tears stinging his eyes.

“I believe Dean is asking whether or not he has woken up,” supplied Castiel with surprising gentleness. “Or if his brain has been severely damaged by the blood loss.”

“Mr. Winchester.” Dean blinked at words, not recognizing his own name when Ensler directed his attention past Castiel and solely on Dean. “I’m afraid that Kurt did not wake up. Despite our best efforts his body went into cardiac arrest this morning around dawn; there was too much trauma for his heart to handle, even at such a young age and excellent physical condition. We weren’t able to revive him before he went cold.”

The ringing in Dean’s ears returned even before Ensler reached the end of the sentence. He staggered into Castiel, who caught his shoulder, and Dean had to watch the doctor’s lips to make out what his mouth was saying. As if working on autopilot, his feet propelled him backwards until his shoulders collided with a wall, at which point his legs gave out altogether and he slid down to the floor. All he could make out from Ensler were a few token apologies before he launched into the bureaucratic bullshit that always seemed to accompany bereavement.

“I know this is a lot to take in, but we’re going to have to ask you to identify Kurt for the coroner and fill out some paperwork,” said the doctor. “There’s no way for the autopsy to proceed without it, and after that the family will need to be contacted to release the body.”

“Kurt’s dead,” Dean mumbled, for some reason needing to say the words out loud. Dumbly, he wondered if he was just in a state of shock and hearing the news all wrong. Maybe what Ensler was really trying to tell him was that Kurt had just stepped out for a minute and would return eventually; there was no need for tears or dramatics, it was all just some weird misunderstanding.

But Ensler said again, “I’m sorry for your loss, Dean. Kurt put up a brave fight.” The fantasy died there. No one ever apologized like that for an absence except those which were permanent and irreversible. To Castiel he added, “Take whatever time you need. A nurse can show you down to the morgue whenever Mr. Winchester is ready, and the coroner will take you through all the necessary steps.” With one last, sad look at Dean and Cas, the doctor tapped the chart against his palm awkwardly and cleared his throat before escaping the room.

Dean had no words and was hideously relieved that Castiel didn’t try to say anything else. He knew that Cas understood grief and himself suffered it with the death of every angel on the battlefield-Dean knew that the loss of Anna, Uriel and Gabriel affected him more than he let on-but he’d never quite got the hold of offering condolences to others, nor how to accept them. It was more likely that Cas would stand around awaiting instructions on how to react, who to hug and how not to stare uncomfortably. This was normally a job that fell to Dean, except that he had no concept of how to explain grief to someone when you didn’t really understand it yourself. Grief was a black hole that sucked the ability to be human clear into the void.

Numb save for the curious pins and needles sensation that had settled into his hands and feet, Dean continued to stare straight ahead while his mind tried to work itself around the information in a manageable way. He knew what dead was, of course, knew himself what it meant to be dead the way few people realized. Kurt would never build his house or debate granite countertops over marble or fuck Dean on the furniture they picked out together. He would never spend another lazy Saturday in his underwear or writing music in bed or play another song. He’d never laugh or smile or be kissed goodnight. Kurt just stopped, went cold. People lived until they didn’t, Dean knew, and he was sometimes even the cause of it. Despite all that, the thought of Kurt well and truly gone lodged in his brain like a stone in a spinning motor, jamming his thoughts until the rust set in.

Weirdly, a small part of him knew to enjoy this time-it wouldn’t be long before reality asserted itself. By then he’d be as incapable of forcing his mind off the subject as he was currently unable to pick himself up off the floor, for beyond numbness lay all the stuff people spent their lives running away from.

“Do you wish to-Should you go see him now? The… body?” asked Cas awkwardly. His lack of familiarity with the situation, with Kurt and even Dean, stilted his words. Later, Dean would realize the strangeness of this alone, and that angel or not Castiel had moments of betraying his emotions without realizing it. He didn’t know what to do any more than Dean, who wasn’t even sure if he could stand up.

“I don’t know.”

The idea of Kurt lying there was terrifying, and it seemed not to matter that Dean had seen hundreds of bodies in his lifetime. This would be different, and he realized that he’d yet to see someone he loved laid out like that, dead and cold on a table like a slab of meat. At least his dad and Sammy had still been warm when he found them. At least Sammy had come back. Oddly enough it was this that started the tears flowing, and he pulled a hand free to drag the back of his wrist across his damp eyes.

Seeming to recognize the problem, Cas hesitated for a moment before stooping slightly and catching the inside of Dean’s elbow. Without exerting much effort, he tried to haul Dean up to his feet like a broken doll; or maybe he sought to provide the comfort of his hands, using touch, Dean suspected, the way that a horse trainer used touch to calm a spooked animal. The comparison was more or less apt. For a split second Dean thought he might be grateful for the attention, for Cas’s presence-he wasn’t quite sure what he would do when alone, anyway. Hunters burned their dead. What did normal people do except tear their hear out and rend their clothing? Logically he knew it was good to have someone with him, but the pressure of Castiel’s hand sparked a flash of anger that came from nowhere, like a sudden thunderstorm over the ocean, surprising Dean almost as badly as it did Cas.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he snapped, and shoved blindly with his arms until Cas stumbled back. Far enough, and Dean once again felt safe.

Castiel’s face darkened at the outburst and he visibly struggled not to respond in kind. He seemed to want to be the bigger person. “Dean-We can wait a while longer, if you prefer.”

The sentiment was obvious but Dean bristled at it unfairly, riding the knee-jerk reaction through to its finish. “What exactly about this situation is to my preference?” he shouted. “That one guy is in a coma because I couldn’t get to him on time? That the other is-is-” He swallowed. “Nothing is as I prefer it. If it was, Kurt would still be alive and you’d just fuck off back to wherever it is you’ve been for eight months.”

“That isn’t fair,” Cas argued. “You don’t understand half of why-”

“No? You mean this whole time you were just waiting to flutter down and make everything better?” Cas said nothing, and Dean curled his lip in perverse gratification. If it was blood he wanted, he was getting it. “Why the hell are you still here, Cas? You think saving me entitles you to forgiveness, for me to pretend like everything’s peachy now that you’re back?” He let out a painful bark of laughter that caught in the middle. “Well, I got news for you-I don’t forgive anything, and nothing’s okay. I have to think about how the hell I’m supposed to tell Kurt’s friends and family that he’s gone, and that I didn’t do a damn thing to help it.” Finding his vision surprisingly clear and steady, Dean lifted his chin and met Cas’s eyes. “I wish you’d just fucking left me in that alleyway to die,” he spat. “At least then I wouldn’t have to look at you now.”

Letting the words sink in, Cas didn’t say anything for a moment, though his mouth opened as if he were about to. Then it closed again, his jaw going tight and angry, and the words withered in the silence like dead blooms. The only warning was a subtle adjustment of his shoulders, strong and proud beneath the fabric of his sweater, and then Cas blipped out of the room with a resolute flap of wings.

Dean let out the breath he’d been holding and buried his head in his hands. The whole time while he was speaking, he wanted to swallow down the words, erase them from his thoughts and from existence; but once started, his rage and sorrow poured out like an arterial bleed. He hated himself for chasing Cas away again, but he was just so angry, the emotions bubbling up inside of him like a temporary insanity, a swarm of red. Cas was gone, and Dean didn’t want him to go. But, like always, he wasn’t sure how to call him back, or apologize. So, he didn’t.

The morgue was located in a dedicated wing of the Legacy Good Samaritan hospital, easy for Dean to find on his own, but far enough removed that those without a reason to be there wouldn’t stumble upon it by accident. Shivering at the immediate temperature change as he walked through the entrance, Dean folded his arms in front of him for warmth and didn’t realize how loudly the gesture spoke to his mental state, distraught and desperate to be anywhere else.

The coroner met him near the deserted front desk, offering neither an introduction nor his condolences for Kurt’s death. It was bad form, considering that any civilians who ventured down here had probably just lost someone, but Dean was grateful not to have to thank another person for their pithy sympathies. On the elevator ride down to the basement, a cute nurse going the same way had asked Dean whether he was lost, as though it was inconceivable that he could be headed to where the bodies were kept chilled and conveniently out of sight from the general public. When he answered, “No, my boyfriend’s dead,” she made the face at him that he couldn’t stand and looked about to cry.

Except that, when the coroner said, “You here to identify that John Doe’s body?” like Kurt was just another fucking toe tag standing between him and the end of the night shift, Dean flinched and wasn’t convinced that this blatant disregard of Kurt’s life, his existence, was any better.

“Nice, man,” he snapped, and wondered if he was about to Hulk out on this guy the way he’d done with Cas. “Really nice. ‘That body’ happens to be my god damned boyfriend, not a fucking piece of meat.”

Taken aback by Dean’s vehemence, the coroner’s eyebrows shot up and he took a step backwards, clutching Kurt’s-no, John Doe’s-medical chart to his chest like it would protect him from the onslaught. Dressed in clean scrubs and with dark circles around his eyes, he was just about the loneliest sight Dean could imagine. “Do you think you’d be able to do my job if I thought about their families and significant others the whole time?” asked the coroner. “I’d have an easier time naming the cows at a meat processing plant.”

Given the number of bodies Dean had poked and prodded over the years in his line of work, this was not unlike the rationale he’d been forced to employ time and time again. “Probably, but a little fuckin’ respect wouldn’t hurt.”

“That, I show by doing my job well,” the coroner said bluntly. “For good bedside manner, go to Pediatrics. Half the John Does who come in here aren’t nearly so lucky to be identified before they’re cremated and deep-sixed into the cold case vault. Consider it a favour if we can take care of this paperwork pronto, and save you from spending any more time down here than necessary. Trust me-this isn’t how you want to remember someone.”

“Yeah, sure.” The thought of leaving sent an even bigger swell of fear coursing through Dean than the thought of Kurt beneath a sheet, but he wiped his palms against his jeans and straightened his shoulders. “Lead the way.”

Warned of Dean’s imminent arrival, the coroner had wheeled the gurney into a private room designated for this exact purpose. The walls were tiled in that sickly green colour ubiquitous to hospitals everywhere, and Dean’s eyes couldn’t find anything else in the room to focus upon except Kurt’s shrouded body. Harsh fluorescent overheads cast anaemic shadows upon the white sheet, neon-tinged peaks where a ridge of knee or the line of Kurt’s toes protruded. Dean could just make out the vague shape of his face at the head of the gurney, and swallowed like a man about to walk to his own death, rather than the aftermath of someone else’s.

The coroner frowned pensively and moved towards the edge of the sheet. Working with practiced hands, he flipped it upwards and folded it back in a neat line just below Kurt’s collarbones, revealing his face and shoulders in a way that would have looked peaceful were he not so deathly still.

A shudder wracked Dean’s body and he wanted to tear his eyes away, but couldn’t. He felt like someone was slamming a plank of wood into his chest repeatedly. “That’s Kurt,” he choked out.

“What is Kurt’s full name and date of birth?” asked the coroner, voice surprisingly gentle. “I can get this paperwork started for you, if you need a minute.”

“Kurt Nikhil Wolfgramm,” Dean recited dutifully and marvelled that he could articulate each syllable. “Date of birth, November twenty-eighth, nineteen eighty-two.” The thought occurred to him to fork over Kurt’s driver’s license and save himself from having to answer any more questions. “Here.”

Looking up from his scribbling on the chart, the coroner accepted the plastic card and looked at it intently. Something made him huff in surprise, and he said, “Nikhil’s an Indian name.” The comment made Dean glance up at his face, only to belatedly take in the coroner’s own latte-brown skin and dark eyes. “I thought he was Brazilian or something, from his looks.”

“Indian and German,” Dean murmured. Unable to stop himself, he added, “Careful, you’re one step away from naming the cattle. Wouldn’t want you to not be able to do your job.”

A sharp laugh broke the uncomfortable stillness of the room as the coroner acknowledged the comment with an odd smile. “I probably deserved that.” He gestured at Kurt and began to move towards the door. “It’s not like I can tell you to take all the time you need, because… you know. But considering the circumstances, I won’t kick you out if you need to be with him for a while. Say goodbye.”

“Thanks.”

Dean, though thoroughly sick of thanking people for what ranked as one of the worst days of his life, didn’t begrudge this obvious show of atonement. He wondered whether such effort would have been made if not for Kurt’s Indian heritage, but he lacked both the patience and the mental capacity to consider that too closely. The coroner exited the room without another word, and through the door’s single porthole Dean saw him retreat behind the main desk and begin filling out paperwork, slipping on a pair of earphones while he worked.

Dead was the first thing that came to mind when Dean looked back at Kurt’s prone form, so weighty that it seemed to hang in the air unaided. The stages of body decomposition were old hat to Dean, but he was relieved to see that Kurt still looked more or less like himself. Except for where the blood had begun to settle like a dark bruise beneath his ears and what Dean could see of his back, his skin was waxy and pale like a doll’s. Thanks to the temperature of the cold room, it was no worse than that, but Dean couldn’t quite barricade his mind against the knowledge of what would eventually follow.

Hesitantly, he reached out to touch Kurt’s hair, brushing it away from his cold forehead and letting his fingers thread through that dark softness one last time. It was shorter now than when they’d met, Kurt having buzzed it on a whim. Dean had come home one night with a haircut of his own, and after a week of watching Dean peacock about, high on female attention as much as his boyfriend’s, Kurt grabbed the clippers shaved his own hair to a neat half-inch. He’d looked so delicious that Dean went down on him before the job was even done, and for days after all he could do was scrub his fingers against the ticklish bristles at the back of Kurt’s head, both of them enjoying the sensation like a couple of cats. It killed Dean to catch himself now waiting for the smile that would never come. It killed him to admit it was all his fault. The reminder that he’d once sworn to never involve someone in his life again was an acrid, rotten taste in his mouth.

“I should be the one lying there,” he said quietly, and let his palm linger for a moment against the beautiful curve of Kurt’s skull, cold and unresponsive. “You trusted me to keep you safe and I fucked it up. This is supposed to be my place, not yours.”

“If he cared anything for you at all, I don’t believe he would wish your positions reversed. Nor should you.” The shock of Castiel’s voice behind him made Dean cry out in surprise, so startled and embarrassed by his reaction that tears leapt from his eyes in response.

“Cas,” he hissed pointlessly, and bowed his head until it almost touched Kurt’s bare shoulder. For a few moments he breathed deeply in and out to get himself back under control; he struggled and mostly failed. “What are you doing here?”

“By now I know not to take your outbursts too personally,” Cas answered, and touched Dean softly on the shoulder before moving to stand beside him. “You just lost a friend. I… didn’t intend to rush your grieving.” Cas stopped short, clearly not knowing what he might have done differently, but willing to concede the point nevertheless. The way he carefully navigated the words, though, made Dean think that Castiel had spent some time in deep thought, and wasn’t quite satisfied with his conclusions.

Something about his exceptionally straight-backed stance-more rigid even than usual-made Dean’s own shoulders tighten in warning like the vaguely nauseated feeling he got before a thunderstorm. “He was more than a friend, Cas,” he said stiffly.

To this, Castiel said nothing. Despite his white-knuckled grip on the edge of the gurney, Cas shifted his gaze to Kurt’s face and studied him for a few minutes. “He is an exceptionally beautiful man,” he said at last. This observation depressed Dean horribly, but he held back the remark. “It is obviously-” He stopped again and Dean’s hackles rose a bit more. “I can see why you were taken with him,” Cas finally concluded. Perhaps feeling the weight of Dean’s gaze this entire time, Castiel looked up and their eyes met. “I am sorry that he perished, Dean, but the blame for his death doesn’t lie with you. The vampires you encountered were old. Strong. You haven’t been a hunter in a long time.”

“And that’s an excuse? Since when does, ‘I’m sorry, I’m a bit rusty these days,’ get me off the hook for putting an innocent person’s life in danger? Sam used that kind of reasoning, too, when he accidentally let Lucifer out of the cage-did anyone care that he didn’t know what he was doing, or that Ruby tricked him?” Dean laughed harshly at the logic and shook his head. It felt wrong to have this conversation with Kurt lying there, exposed. Biting his lip, Dean reached out to grab the sheet and drew it over Kurt’s head in silent apology. “Sorry, Cas, but I fucked up this time and it cost Kurt his life. No coming back from that.”

“And yet it won’t bring him back.” The words stung, though not with insult. Just reality, which was something that Cas had a habit of reminding him of whether he liked it or not. As if to soften the blow, Castiel covered Dean’s hand with his own and said, “The stages of mourning I observed in India would be familiar to you, as a hunter,” he began, but Dean interrupted him peevishly.

“We’re a long fucking way from observation, Cas. But I’m glad you were afforded that luxury.”

Cas continued on, ignoring him save for a nonplussed twitch of his eyebrow. He seemed to want Dean to take it on faith that he was about to say something important. “They burn the dead so as to free the soul from its physical form-Hindus believe that the spirit will not find rest otherwise. The ashes are released into water and the mourners depart for home. They don’t look back. For eleven days the family prays and prepares offerings as the soul makes it way to the far shore and finds peace.” He fell silent, and eventually withdrew his hand. He found Dean’s gaze again, adding, “They mourn, Dean, but they don’t look back. Once the shraddha has been observed, they accept that the person is gone and move on with their lives.”

Vehemence Dean did not expect came through in Castiel’s words, and the ferocity behind his gaze made Dean flinch at what Castiel was trying to tell him. “Cas, if you’re implying that I should just get over it-”

“I’m not simply implying it,” Cas interrupted in a level voice. “You’re a hunter-or at least you were. The Dean I knew wouldn’t simper and ask for the impossible-he would accept the lesson even with difficulty, and try to prevent it from happening again. Sam, your father-their deaths didn’t stop you from doing what was necessary.”

Before Dean could reply with something mulish and dumb like, ‘I’m not a hunter anymore,’ which in all honesty was exactly what he intended, Castiel fixed him with what amounted to his angel death glare and set his shoulders. It meant he was about to say something Dean would find exceptionally unpleasant; but he was already so far off track-to Dean’s line of thought, at least-that Dean couldn’t even begin to anticipate what it might be.

As it turned out, his ignorance was a blessing. “Dean, I do not mean to undermine this man’s death, but if you stopped to mourn the passing of every body that had once warmed your bed, the rest of your time on Earth would be over before you knew it.” Dean started to say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa-” but Cas wasn’t finished. “I may have stood by and watched you throw the last two years of your life away, but this is not something I will allow.”

He wasn’t a man of words at the best of times, but this left Dean so truly speechless that even his breathing seemed not to produce a sound. Unable to process the utter nerve-the complete ridiculousness-of what Castiel had just said to him, Dean answered in the only way he could: his fist flew out and collided with Castiel’s face. For once, he didn’t consider it an overreaction.

Force met immovable object and immediately reduced Dean to a doubled-up mass of agony that radiated out from his shattered knuckles. Crying out in anger and pain, Dean cradled his hand against his chest and struggled to get his body’s responses under control until he merely breathed heavily and grunted with the effort, sinking to his knees on the floor.

“Dean,” Castiel said in surprise.

“Fuck you,” Dean yelled, and when after a moment the coroner didn’t come running, still lost in his headphones and music, Dean hollered it again and again. The corpses wouldn’t care. Kurt sure as hell didn’t.

To Dean’s great annoyance, Castiel followed him down and pressed his fingers against Dean’s palm until the pain began to ease. Breath hitching in relief, Dean was momentarily annoyed with himself; while the pain was unbearable to his retired self, too unfamiliar to withstand, he jerked his hand away so that Cas was forced to withdraw.

“You don’t have a right to talk about Kurt that way,” Dean said in a hoarse voice, still spitting mad but beginning to lose some of his steam to exhaustion. “Not when you don’t know the first thing about him-or me.”

Cas made a noise stuck between a derisive laugh and a snort of frustration. A single glance at his clenched fists told Dean what he needed to know, that his comment had wounded its target, though no amount of hurt could be great enough in his eyes. “Perhaps that is how you wish to reassure yourself, Dean, but we both know it isn’t true. You may behave as though this life makes you happy, and yet there will always be something at the back of your mind that feels wrong, a sour taste in your mouth or a shadow at the corner of your eye that you can’t ignore, even at your most stubborn. This isn’t who you are.”

Perhaps his silence was as good as an admission, but Dean said nothing for a moment and simply glared at Castiel. The only sounds in the room were his breathing and the aggressive whirr of the morgue’s cooling units blowing away, rustling the disordered strands of Castiel’s hair. Hell, Dean wanted to tell Cas that he was way off the mark, but they both knew the words had merit.

Eventually he replied, “That guy you met five years ago-the asshole with the drinking problem and the nightmares and the fucked-up kid brother, the one who managed to hurt or kill everyone he loved? The ‘Righteous Man’? That isn’t me, Cas. I don’t want righteousness, I want a life. I’ve been fighting this whole time to escape him, and you wanna walk in here and tell me it’s who I am? Go to hell, man. You’ve always been so big on free will and a man’s ability to change his destiny, so where’s that party line now?”

“It’s a path you have escaped,” Cas said impatiently. “But what you are is a hunter-maybe that lifestyle and your past don’t seem mutually exclusive to you, but they can be. There is no longer an apocalypse or your brother’s soul to worry over-you’ve been free this whole time without knowing it, Dean. And while you might think that Kurt’s death is your burden to shoulder, all I see here is an opportunity for you to realize that you’ve been fooling yourself. This life of mediocrity and dissatisfaction is not the best you can hope for. As the one who raised you from hell, I find it an insult.”

“Kurt made me happy,” Dean snapped. “Sorry to burst whatever bubble you had going there, but I moved on to someone who actually accepted me, who wanted to have a life with me that didn’t include mediocrity or dissatisfaction anywhere on the packing list. Shoulder that, you sanctimonious prick.”

“Kurt didn’t know you.” With an angry sigh, the angel straightened and paused to look down at Dean with a weird expression of pity and haughtiness, his face shadowed in some places and washed-out in others in this florescent wilderness. “I’d hoped that you by now realized that it isn’t enough to live your life for one person. Whether or not you think you love them, there needs to be something else; more than anyone, you know that nothing lasts forever.” Another moment passed; Dean saw Cas’s face get that slightly pinched expression he made when he experienced psychic pain of some kind, and tried not to show it. “This is your chance to live life how you want it, doing what makes you happy.” Then he added, brokenly, “With me.”

Typically Dean was the sort of listener who, in an argument, liked to tune out the other person while he formulated his own responses. That was probably why his fights with Lisa had always been so vicious and circular and unproductive, and his spats with Sam so frustrating for his brother. Though his relationship with Kurt had been curiously devoid of major rows-yeah, Dean didn’t get it, either-during the few disagreements they’d had, this wasn’t a technique that Dean was able to employ before Kurt called him on it. Curiously, Cas was the only other person with whom he’d been forced to take part in fights as an active participant and listener both, because the angel had ways of making himself clear.

As such, he caught exactly what Cas said at the moment he said it, and responded with a shaky, “What?” not because it needed repeating, but because Dean couldn’t believe he’d heard correctly. Cas, seeming to understand, simply looked back at him with an expression of such outrage and misery that Dean ached at the sight for a million different reasons. He went with the first emotion he recognized, which happened to be anger. Not only was it the most familiar, but it was also the easiest.

“You do not get to say that,” he growled.

“Why not?” Castiel shot back.

He stalked around to the other side of the room with his old caged-animal fierceness, putting Kurt between them like a shield. Dean, if he was honest with himself, knew that this had been Kurt’s primary function all along, the only way he could think of with which to distance himself from Cas and all the hurt that followed in his wake. Of course, Kurt had grown into so much more, but even the symbolism burned. Apparently it was ineffectual, though, even now. The painful leap his heart gave at Cas’s words infuriated him even more, but whether from longing or outrage he couldn’t be sure. Cas’s timing, he thought, sucked, but the sad thing was that Dean didn’t know if it was a result of callousness or bad social awareness. Or hurt. He never was sure, with Castiel.

Taking Dean’s extended silence as permission to continue, Cas ventured, as grumpily as it was possible to be during such a conversation, “I know how you feel about us, Dean. Every thought of me, every dream, every memory-I’ve felt them all. I understand your anger and your despair and your desire because it’s all I think about whenever I’m not here, even if being here is painful to me. Why do you think I found you so quickly?” He watched Dean quietly as that information sank in. There wasn’t even any point in denying it, since Dean, to his maximum embarrassment, had already confessed his feelings once today. “I brought you back to life, Dean,” he said quietly. “I gave you the breath from my lungs. That’s no easier for us to escape than the reality that hunting is in your blood. So stop running. I will, if you do.”

Dean ignored the sting he felt behind his eyelids at the words, and hardened himself against them like he did when Sam went into the pit, or the last time he saw Cas vanish from the front seat of the Impala and disappear for over a year. It was all he could do. “You don’t get to decide what I run from, and what I embrace,” he answered. His voice sounded surprisingly steady, though he didn’t trust it to hold. “If you left, if you stayed gone, that was your decision. Maybe I would have embraced you in the midst of all the bullshit we’ve been through together, but you never let me, never gave any sign it was what you wanted after that one night. And now you say you knew how I felt the whole time? Fuck you, Cas. The fact that you brought me back from Hell doesn’t earn you anything but my gratitude, which you’ve long exhausted by now.”

“It’s not gratitude which constitutes our bond, Dean, and you know it.”

“I don’t give two fucks,” Dean shot back automatically. “Whatever bond you’re so fond of spouting off about means jack shit to me. Because-and here’s what you keep dancing around-if you actually gave a damn about me at all, you’d have been here, and you’d be doing your damndest to bring Kurt back now.” The last part just slipped out-Dean was shocked to realize that it was something that had been growing steadily in his mind this entire time. But now that it was in the open, he shivered with how badly he wanted it to be true, even if it was the last thing he ever asked of Castiel. He felt it was owed to him, to Kurt.

Surprise registered on Castiel’s face for a moment before it was gone again, his features still and inscrutable once more. “Of everyone, you should understand how impossible a request that is,” he warned.

Dean snorted. “It isn’t a request, Cas. I’m stating a simple fucking fact. Since you’re all about opportunity and negotiation today, I’ll put it in terms you should be able to understand: Either you bring Kurt back from the dead, or you’re dead to me. I don’t care if I have to dream about you for the rest of my god damned life and die a miserable son of a bitch like Bobby, but I will cut you out for good. This man deserves to walk again, deserves to have a life to spend with someone of his own choosing, even if that doesn’t turn out to be me. Maybe it’s too much for your featherbrain to comprehend, but that’s how us humans do things when we love someone. And you should know by now that a Winchester doesn’t stop until a thing is set to rights.”

This last item appeared to distress Castiel the most of anything, which Dean found surprising but didn’t admit out loud-of course. “There is a great deal of insult I will tolerate from you, Dean,” he rumbled, “but don’t talk to me about sacrifice. I died for you multiple times, turned my back on my Father and Heaven and who I was without ever questioning why I did it. You never once tried to bring me back, nor will you ever comprehend how far I would go to keep you safe, why I’d do it all again. But you should-I’m not the only one who knows what it’s like to love someone for whom you wouldn’t deny anything.” He smiled bitterly. “Just ask Sam.”

Flinching, Dean looked away and tried to focus on the pain still throbbing in his knuckles, the cloying weight of unhappiness which was beginning to settle in his veins like cement. He needed, almost as much as for Kurt to not be on that gurney, for Cas to stop complicating things so far beyond what Dean could handle. Already he was so out of his depth that he barely trusted himself to speak. “This isn’t really a discussion, Cas. It’s a yes or no answer.” However childish and reductive Dean sounded, he didn’t care.

“No, it’s not, just like Kurt isn’t mine to save,” Cas replied after a pause. “Not like you.” His eyes were still intense and angry-no, afraid, Dean realized with a start-when he risked a look. “There is nothing to say that this wasn’t his time-haven’t you learned enough lessons about upsetting the natural order by now?” Castiel’s lips tightened. “God might be gone, Dean, but He didn’t nominate you for the job in His stead.”

“Cas.”

The angel tried again. “If I were to raise Kurt from the dead, there is no telling what it might change, to say nothing of the lasting effect it will have upon Kurt’s existence or his perception of the world. And he may not thank me for pulling him from Heaven. Dean, not everyone experiences the afterlife the way you did-there’s a reason why it’s known as Paradise. What if he is happy there, and I rob him of that?”

“So that’s a no,” Dean answered, shoulders slumping. He started to climb to his feet, ready to summon the coroner and get out of this place, surprised that they hadn’t already been asked to leave. Although trying to explain how Castiel materialized inside the room would be a laugh and a half, the distraction might at least be welcome.

In an abortive movement, Castiel moved closer and caught Dean’s hand, the broken one, somehow managing to heal the bones even while appearing wholly engrossed in their conversation. “I can’t simply snap my fingers and rouse Kurt from the dead. Assuming I find his soul, his body is still a deteriorating shell,” he murmured, miserably, voice receding until Dean had to strain to hear him even from a few inches away. “Please don’t ask me to do this. Not when you know I can’t just refuse you.”

“I’m not forcing you,” said Dean tonelessly, but this was a lie and they both knew it. Whatever his issues with Castiel’s absence, his motivations, his feelings towards Dean, the one thing that he never really doubted was how far Cas would go for him.

Maybe Dean didn’t fully appreciate what it took to bring someone back to life-he remembered nothing of his own resurrection except for clawing his way from the ground-but Cas was wrong when he said that Dean didn’t understand that kind of sacrifice. He did, because he would probably still do the same for Cas even with all the bullshit, and knew the extent to which the blackmail was unnecessary and just Dean’s way of inflicting pain. Castiel’s continued presence in the room, despite his protests, was as good as a yes already. He was right in that Kurt’s reaction would be the true wildcard, but Dean resolved to deal with that when he had to. There was love on his side, and determination and endless apology, and Kurt would eventually see that Dean had his best interests at heart.

The only problem was, he was growing less and less sure of where that would leave them, after all was said and done. He knew even less what it would mean for Cas.

As it turned out, Cas wasn’t shy to let him know. The gentle pressure of his fingers against Dean’s cheek drew him out of his thoughts and back to reality, back to this ugly room filled with death and impossible requests and Dean’s overwhelming guilt like a suffocating shroud, back to the unbelievable blue of Castiel’s eyes looking at him in sadness and resignation. A brief kiss was placed upon his lips, and Dean was too tired to return it or draw away.

“I love you,” Cas told him in a flat, painful voice, “but this is why I didn’t come back.”

Invisble currents sprang from the hand upon Dean’s face and tingled through his body like from the contact point with a live wire; Castiel’s other hand was resting upon Kurt’s leg beneath the sheet. Dean recognized the sickening lurch that meant he was being sucked out of one place and into another, and then the room around them disappeared.

Chapter Eleven

I'm sorry if that part sent anyone into a fit... but I promise the next chapter will suck less. XD