Fic: The Propensities of Good Men, 4/15
Finished coding a chapter early, woot! Plus I desperately need an excuse to not be calculating blood counts and studying prothrombin activator --> Factor X --> *KEYBOARD SMASH* have I mentioned today how much I hate A&P II? BECAUSE I REALLY HATE A&P II.
But some lovely comments from my favorite people in the world (read: YOU GUYS) would totally make me feel better. Just sayin'.
I better slow down my posting or you guys are gonna get spoiled. Hm.
Title: The Propensities of Good Men, 4/15
Characters: Belial, Bobby, Castiel, Dean, Sam
Pairing(s): *ahem* Dean/Castiel (finally, eh?), Belial/Castiel, Dean/Castiel/Belial
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~10,506 (part 4)
Disclaimer: Pffft, I wish.
Warnings: Sexuality of the threesome variety, language, pornings, uh demonic orgies...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
~ ~ ~
By the time his physical injuries have come any kind of close to healing themselves, Dean’s fever is back with a vengeance and Sam is almost at his wit’s end trying to find ways to help his brother. Castiel doesn’t show up for three days after nursing Dean back to life and when he does, Sam can’t decide if he’s more relieved to see the angel or infuriated that he would even have the audacity to show up again without a healing prayer or some magical angelic balm, something to cure Dean. Or at the very least, just wake him up.
As he watches Castiel lean down over the back of the couch and place a hand on Dean’s forehead, he’s definitely leaning more toward infuriated.
He doesn’t speak when he comes into the room, and Castiel doesn’t offer anything, not even acknowledgment of his presence. Sam busies himself with cleaning up what he can - candy wrappers and sugar packets and empty root beer and Pepsi bottles. A half-empty bottle of Jack with cap skewed crooked. Castiel draws in a long breath and rests his elbows on the couch back. His hands clasp loosely in front of him. “Has he been awake?” he asks finally.
“Couple of times,” Sam answers. He doesn’t turn around.
“How was he?”
“In pain, what else,” Sam snaps. “It’s a human thing. You wouldn’t get it.” When Castiel does not dignify the statement with a response, instead just gliding around to crouch at Dean’s side, Sam disappears into the kitchen without apologizing.
He comes back shortly and leans in the doorway, arms crossed. He watches Castiel closely, but the angel doesn’t seem to be doing anything but staring at Dean, his forehead marked with a crease as his focus builds. Sam shifts and sighs, wondering to himself what the hell possible good a stare-off with an unconscious guy could do. “He needs rest,” he risks after a beat.
Castiel still doesn’t look up; in fact he seems not to hear Sam at all. Sam replies by clearing his throat and saying, “Cas.”
At last, Castiel glances up.
Sam’s eyebrows raise slightly, signaling his annoyance. “I think it’d be better to just leave him alone.”
Castiel hums quietly and looks back down, leaning forward to rest his elbow on the couch near Dean’s arm. “No,” he says in a whisper. He’s doing that thing again where the idea of personal space is obviously one that angels aren’t familiar with, crowding close to Dean’s unconscious face; it bothers Sam.
“Actually? Yeah,” Sam challenges. “He needs to rest, man.”
“Yes,” Castiel responds, and brings his hand up to hover before Dean’s eyes. “But he’s not resting right now.”
Sam’s voice breaks through an exasperated sigh. “He’s sleeping. I think that counts as rest.”
“No,” Castiel repeats with a shake of his head. His gaze remains trained on Dean’s face, where a small furrow has dented his brow and his jaw is set, his nostrils slightly flared. And even though Dean has never been one to fall too deeply asleep, always needing to be ready to haul at a moment’s notice, Sam has to admit it isn’t exactly the face of one sleeping peacefully. Maybe he really isn’t resting; maybe Castiel is telling the truth.
“Castiel,” Sam barks, drawing his attention to the doorway. “Please leave.” It’s hardly a question.
Castiel glances back to Dean and lowers his fingers between his eyes, and even from the doorway Sam can see how his brother’s face smoothes out and falls into an expression of deep, recuperative sleep. He almost wants to thank Castiel, but the words won’t force out of his throat. If he’d healed Dean, then maybe a thank you would be in order. But he didn’t, so Sam bites his cheek to remain silent.
Castiel quickly runs his tongue along his lips and stands. His hands disappear into his coat pockets as he studies Sam intently. “Your brother is not well,” he says.
Sam simply blinks, tell me something I don’t know stinging on his tongue but not rolling off.
“The spell that Belial cast is stronger than I anticipated,” Castiel continues. His head drops as Sam sees something like defeat darken his features for a moment. “It’s killing him,” he finishes, and Sam’s stomach does a flip. A dull pressure like swallowing stones is building in his chest, sneaking up the line of his throat with a tight, uncomfortable grind. He shifts his feet around, everything below the neck gone suddenly numb.
Stupidly, the only thing he can think to say is, “How do you know?”
Castiel looks to his side, toward Dean but not at him. “I can see his dreams,” he says.
“What is it?” Sam asks, stiffening his entire body. “Is it Hell?”
The snap of Castiel’s eyes to his is abrupt. He hesitates for a long time, then sighs and swallows. Sam finds it strange that he suddenly seems nervous; Castiel is never nervous, and the fact that he so obviously is nervous now is making something wring and twist deep in the floor of Sam’s stomach. That same pressure from before has fought up into his throat, clawing at the back of his tongue with a harsh bitter tang. Blood, bile, the burn of acid. The nervous pain of helplessness. His hands are shaking so he crosses his arms tight over his chest.
“Take care of his body as best as you can,” Castiel says as he makes his way toward the front door.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to pray,” Castiel says by way of an explanation - a shoddy one, when it really comes down to it, and it makes Sam’s fists ball up into tight coils, crescent moons creasing into his palms - and then he leaves.
~ ~ ~
When Bobby gets back from his hunt, it’s the first relief Sam has had since Castiel left two days ago. He finally gets more than half an hour of sleep at a time, though what rest he does get is agitated and unfulfilling. He dreams about the fight with Belial, dreams about the twist of Ruby’s face as agony flashed in her opaque black eyes. Dreams about Dean’s body all broken up and destroyed, almost like the Hellhounds got to him again.
He wakes up at five AM and pads downstairs to check on Dean, and he is surprised to find another figure there already bent over his brother’s body. Instinctively he flattens to the wall and lunges for a butcher knife, but when he recognizes the familiar sweep of the back of Castiel’s shoulders, he relaxes - minimally. He clears his throat and puts the knife back on its magnetic rack. “You’re an early bird,” he says sleepily. When Castiel doesn’t say anything back, Sam abstractedly wonders if angels even need to sleep.
“Has he awoken?”
Sam stretches through a yawn and flops into a chair across the room. “Once or twice yesterday.”
“For how long?”
Sam shrugs confusedly, scratching through his sleep-tangled hair. “I don’t know, long enough to eat some pie, shotgun a Pepsi, and go to the bathroom. He was pretty out. Didn’t say anything.”
Castiel does not look away from Dean. “He hasn’t woken up,” he says quietly. “His body has, but he hasn’t really woken up.”
“What does that mean?” Sam asks, skepticism ragged around the edges of his words. He’d seen Dean himself, watched him walk around and clutch at the bandages on his side, saw him pick up the pie tin and eat nearly a whole slice, hell, even linger afterward to pick a few peaches from the center. Slurp them off his fingers in typical not-quite-disgusting Dean fashion. Sam and Bobby had glanced at each other and shrugged, taking it as a good sign. There was no way Dean was still asleep through all that. “That’s impossible,” Sam finishes with a smirk.
The rustle of Castiel’s coat is ghostly quiet as he shifts, placing the back of his hand on Dean’s forehead. Against the touch, Sam notices that Dean seems to fall just a little deeper into sleep, face smoothing out like it did two days ago the last time Castiel was around. “I’ve been watching his dreams,” Castiel explains, then he looks over his shoulder at Sam. “He hasn’t woken up for two and a half days.”
A silence settles across the room as Sam swallows. He shakes his head slightly, disbelieving, and slowly pushes up from the chair. A pit begins to build in his stomach, a cold deep enough to frost his bones. “What did you do?”
Castiel does not respond, so he asks again, more anxious this time. “What did you do?” He’s at Dean’s side in a flash, nudging Castiel roughly out of the way and frantically checking Dean’s neck for a pulse. There is one and it is steady, but faint. Sam’s eyes go dark as he looks up at the blank-faced angel behind him. He’s got a good million and a half questions racing across the front of his brain, how the hell did this happen, what exactly did Castiel do to him last time, is Dean going to be okay - but everything he needs to know is written in Castiel’s eyes.
His brother is dying.
“Castiel!” he nearly shouts when he gets no response. “Answer me! What’d you do to him the last time you were here? He was awake before you gave him your little brain-tap!”
“I gave him rest,” Castiel explains.
“And what the hell does that mean? He’s been asleep for two days - he’s already rested. We don’t need you to send him into a deeper coma, we need you to wake him up!” Sam coils his fists tightly, shoving to his feet. “I’m gonna take him to the hospital.”
With some effort, Castiel tears his gaze from Dean and looks solely at Sam. “They won’t be able to help him, Sam, it’s not his body that suffers. That’s why I did what I did two days ago. That’s why I sent his mind away from here.”
Sam’s eyes narrow. “You just knocked him out? Didn’t you think maybe that was a bad idea, that he could have a concussion and being unconscious could kill him?”
Castiel looks back to Dean, fists clenching at his sides. “I did, but it was a risk I had to take.” His voice is still unusually calm, completely toneless, and something about that practically drives Sam up the fucking wall.
“A risk you had to take? Have you forgotten we’re talking about Dean here, not you?” Sam’s voice is rising higher, rapidly progressing into a raging shout. His hands are already shrugging out to his sides with his words, body inching forward even though he knows he can’t gain anything good by getting up in an angel’s face.
“Dean is my main concern right now.”
“Oh I’m sure he is,” Sam spits, a new and profoundly livid edge to his words. The anger rolls over him in a hot wave as he steps closer to Castiel. “If it wasn’t for you, he wouldn’t even be like this. He’d be walking around perfectly fine if you hadn’t sent us here. This is your fault!”
And even Sam realizes the danger in his situation, in challenging something as powerful and generally as fucking scary as an angel, but the words fall from his mouth in an untamable wreck. He cannot stop them. Castiel opens his mouth to speak, but Sam cuts him off short.
“You claim you care so much about us, about Dean, but then you barely show up even when you know he’s dying. And - and you knock him unconscious and then leave to go pray? What’s with that?”
“Sam, you know nothing of what is happening,” Castiel challenges, his voice rising slightly.
“I know my brother’s dying,” he bites back. “And I know it’s your fault but you’re too high and mighty to admit it. You could cure him, Castiel. He doesn’t have to be like this. What’s your excuse, huh? Boss man told you not to?”
Something flickers behind Castiel’s eyes, something dangerous, the quickest flame of unbridled holy wrath, there one second and gone the next. It’s the first sign of disturbance he’s betrayed at all, and Sam finds himself feeling strangely victorious when he sees it. He’s getting under Castiel’s skin. Picking at his patience. He’s making Castiel angry, and that means he’s hitting close to home.
“You angels are all the same,” Sam says with a cold smirk as he settles his hands on his hips. “You’re just like Uriel. I thought you were different, but you’re not - you all think we’re so beneath you. You just want Dean to get better so you can keep using him as your tool,” Sam sneers, his words corrosive.
His eyes are locked hard on Castiel’s now, furious and determined and cold. The room seems to be filling with shadows even as the sun is coming up outside, the air charged with a peculiar kind of electricity.
“I would protect Dean from this if I could, Sam, as I have protected him many times in the past,” Castiel says, voice deep and measured and more than a little dangerous, not unlike the slow-motion grind of rusted metal gears waking into motion. The degree of power behind it is staggering, but Sam buries his primal fear beneath thick layers of bitterness and anger.
“Protect Dean? Like you have before?” Sam balks with a sarcastic smile playing across his features. Castiel’s eyes narrow, his head tilts just barely. In the window sill across the room, Sam hears the rattle of glass bottles, the holy water Bobby keeps there in case of emergency, as they are shaken by an invisible force. “Ever since Dean’s been back, his life has been a living nightmare because of you. You’re always putting us in danger or hurting him - or making him torture someone for God’s sakes - and now you’re killing him because you refuse to intervene! You’ve never done a damn thing to help me or Dean.”
“I brought him back from Hell,” Castiel growls.
“So you could make him into your pawn!” Sam shouts, voice cracking with the sudden force.
The cabin rumbles as Castiel takes a careful step forward, but surprisingly Sam stands his ground. He feels the tremors in the boards beneath his feet and it’s more than a little frightening, but he’s so far past furious at this point that it doesn’t matter. When he rakes in a breath, he can distinctly feel an electric charge popping in the around around him, pinpricks of bright blue and white energy tickling all the way down into his lungs.
“I saved him, Sam, and I’ve saved you too. More than once,” Castiel counters roughly, though he still doesn’t raise his voice; he doesn’t have to. The power coiled so tightly within that unassuming body of his has enough presence of its own without the slightest hint of a shout. Sam watches as one of the glass holy water containers shakes from the window sill onto the floor, shattering loosely into a small puddle. “Belial would have skinned you both alive faster than you can even comprehend,” Castiel says sharply. “We fight a common enemy, Sam, and I will not fight you.”
Sam snorts back a cynical laugh. “Because God doesn’t want you to?”
“Because Dean doesn’t want me to.”
The quakes seem to settle as some of the electricity fades from the room, though there is still a palpable charge in the atmosphere. As he squares his shoulders, Sam thinks he even feels his ears ringing a little, but he can’t be sure. “Tell me this, Castiel,” he hisses, fixing the angel with his eyes. “If you care so much about Dean then why haven’t you healed him yet?”
Something flashes in Castiel’s eyes again, though clearly not rage this time; Sam can’t really identify what it is, exactly, but it surprises him. “You don’t understand,” he says, and there is surrender in the words as he shakes his head.
“Damn right I don’t understand,” Sam says quickly. “So why don’t you enlighten me?” His voice drops. “Illuminate me. I’m his brother; I deserve to know what’s going on.”
His gaze is unflinching, even as his pulse is racing. The darkness that had manifested in Castiel’s body was still with him, that weirdly magnetic, primordial pull that drained the air and sent Sam’s blood slithering coldly through his veins. It wasn’t just an unexpected swell of confidence, or some stupid hollow threat to bring this to blows; wasn’t like an argument with Dean, all snarky comments and physical bullying, how Dean always intimidates Sam by getting right up in his face, all puffed-out chest and steel-toned arms. No, from Castiel it was something else entirely, something not human, something ancient and primal and powerful beyond anything Sam could see or imagine. A fury that was beyond all measure. He’s already decided he doesn’t even want to try to imagine it.
Now, though, Castiel seems withdrawn back into himself. The darkness is gone from the corners of the room, and most of the static electricity has dissipated. He seems to be considering his words carefully, which unnerves Sam because he’s never seen Castiel falter like this, never seen him hesitate and stutter and sigh this much. Finally, Sam figures out why.
“I can’t cure him, Sam.”
Sam’s chest aches suddenly and he shifts his weight. His eyes flutter around the room, catching on his brother’s motionless form before coming back to Castiel. And as soon as they do, the sad sincerity in the angel’s expression almost rips his heart straight out of his chest. “Why -… What do you mean you can’t cure him? You’re an angel, can’t you just… call in a favor?”
God no, fuck, no, please, not again, god, please. It rings through his head on a litany, rhythmic as a fucking Hail Mary, a pleading for his brother’s life he’s become far too familiar with over the years. A palmful of sweat builds against Sam’s hand as he tries so hard not to lose it right now. With the exasperated sighs coming out of his own chest and how he hasn’t slept, properly slept, in days, and Castiel’s impassive stare in front of him, and oh god Dean. Dean lying practically in pieces two yards away, torn open and run through and fever-flushed, and Sam’s done his best to stitch him up and make him comfortable, but - not again. No no no, not again.
Castiel’s shoulders slump slightly as he shrugs his hands out. They fall back to his sides with a muffled thump. “It’s not a disease, Sam,” he explains, and his voice is just as calm now as it has ever been. “It’s a demonic spell. Dean’s body is locked into the state it’s in now because he waited so long to do anything about it. He is completely under Belial’s sway.”
The draw of Sam’s breath is slow as he looks at Dean with newly softened eyes. “So,” he begins, voice lowered, eyes stinging, blanched-out flickering images of clawmarks half a foot deep ripping invisibly through Dean’s flesh washing behind his eyes. Not fucking again. “How can we help him?”
“We can’t,” Castiel says after a short hesitation. Sam predicts the stab of cold he will feel through his chest upon hearing it, but the real thing is much worse. Much more painful and crushing, and definitely much too familiar.
Not again.
Sam sighs and fights the tears forming in his eyes. He looks to Castiel again, but the angel is not looking at him; he’s not looking at anything, really, but the dim shadow of sadness rooted deep in his expression tears at Sam’s chest in an alarming way.
“We have to pray that Dean finds the strength to help himself now,” Castiel finishes, near a whisper, and when he looks up again Sam knows he was wrong - Castiel does care. It’s written all over him, in the apprehensive curve of his shoulders and the passive oblivion of his face and the vacant, devastating freeze of his eyes.
~ ~ ~
Things get really out of hand the next day when a small gang of demons attacks Sam in broad daylight while he’s in town picking up supplies to fix Bobby’s trashed furniture. He manages to kill them and run back to the house before any others appear, and he covers his tracks well enough to know they won’t be able to follow him here, but then he remembers what Castiel told him back in Eminence - that his blood is a divining rod for Belial to find them, basically a huge fucking neon sign with arrows and foghorns - and his head starts spinning full-speed and doesn’t stop until he gets inside. He’s glad when Castiel is still there; he’s been sitting vigilantly at Dean’s side since dawn.
“Castiel!” he cries desperately, his body sprawling out in every direction as he braces himself in the doorway. The angel eyes him curiously, rising from his position on the edge of the coffee table.
“What is it?” he asks calmly.
“Demons,” Sam stutters, pausing momentarily to catch his breath. “Demons just attacked me. They thought I was with Dean; they wanted to know where he was. I didn’t tell them.”
Castiel blinks, retreating briefly into thought as Sam waits impatiently for - well, for something, for anything. A suggestion, an affirmation, even a false promise of hope would be appreciated at this point. When the angel looks back up, his expression is obscure and somehow, something about it is chilling. Sam stiffens uncomfortably, swallowing back a lump of nerves, or maybe intimidation, whatever, something the size of a goddamn tennis ball in his throat.
“Come with me,” Castiel says as he walks quickly toward the back of the house. Sam follows him up the stairs, into the cramped room with two cots stuffed into the corners that’s the closest thing Sam has to a bedroom of his own. His stomach clenches when he sees Dean’s boots kicked off at the foot of the other bed, one of Dean’s shirts hanging on the doorknob. Castiel gestures loosely to the bed. “Sit down,” he says.
Sam’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “What?” he asks, wrinkling his nose at the bizarre direction.
Castiel searches the open window desperately. Sam sees nothing outside, but the way the angel is suddenly frantic and uneasy makes him, in turn, also frantic and uneasy. “Sam, the demons cannot find Dean again or he will die. Belial is coming to collect him, and when he does I won’t be able to stop him again. Dean all but belongs to him at this point as it is.”
Nervously, Sam swallows, and sits down on the edge of the bed. Without even thinking about it, he’s just followed Castiel’s directions. “So… what do we do?”
The line of Castiel’s jaw sharpens as he purses his lips. “I need to take Dean somewhere safe. Somewhere far away.”
“Okay,” Sam shrugs. “I’ll pack the car, we’ll leave right now.”
“No,” Castiel says strongly, pulling Sam’s attention back to him. “I need to take Dean alone.”
For a moment, Sam says nothing; then he laughs, bright and incredulous. “You’re kidding, right? Dean is barely alive and you want me to let you take him somewhere and dump him by himself? No. No, I don’t think so, not gonna happen.”
“He won’t be alone,” Castiel explains, but the reassurance doesn’t dissuade Sam’s sudden anger.
“No!” he snaps, standing again. He stares hard down the line to Castiel’s eyes, and the fact that he feels more powerful because of a height difference is a stupid one, but it crosses his mind all the same. Fleetingly, he remembers the swell of Castiel’s anger in the den days before - the electric charge of the air, the ebony shadows building in the room’s darkest places - and immediately he softens his tone. Clears his throat and blinks the combativeness out of his eyes. “No, I wanna be with him.”
“You can’t,” Castiel answers wryly. “They can find you anywhere because of your blood, and if they find you they find Dean. We can’t risk that, so you have to be separated.”
Sam shakes his head stubbornly. “Castiel…”
“I will keep him safe,” is the angel’s only response, and then he doesn’t give Sam a choice before pressing two fingers to his forehead and blurring away his consciousness.
~ ~ ~
It isn’t surprising that Castiel’s hands are softer than they look. Of course they would be, Dean thinks. He’s a fucking angel, for one, and for two, whoever the guy is he’s possessing doesn’t look like he’s ever spent the day doing much harder work than pushing a pencil. Which is not to say his body isn’t nice because, fuck, it is, it’s goddamn perfect actually. A little softer than what Dean is used to from his own body - not the body of a hunter - but whoever the poor fuck was must have at least hit the gym a few good times before Castiel brain-kidnapped him or whatever. ‘Cause he looks pretty damn good, when it comes down to it.
The skin of Castiel’s open palms is soft, his fingers nimble, as they slide along the length of Dean’s chest, stroke a long line down his side. And it doesn’t hurt, because in his dreams he’s not injured. There are no black eyes or busted lips, no gaping wound in his side. There’s no pain at all; just impossible heights of pleasure.
Castiel has become a permanent fixture in his dreams lately, a fact which he might have attributed to Belial fucking with him, getting his demonic kicks in some twisted way from watching his prisoner writhe around with an honest-to-God angel - that is, if he hadn’t stopped caring so long ago. He couldn’t give a flying shit about how Castiel got into his dreams, just that he is there is all that really matters.
A sonic heat blares in his head when Castiel’s eyes flash, mirror-like and silver, above him. For a transient moment the spell must break, because he sees Castiel - the real Castiel - above him, and he is not dark and teasing and he is not licking the honey-sweet coating from his lips, but rather looking down at Dean with genuine concern etched all across those perfectly-measured features. His hand rests on Dean’s forehead and it is comforting and cool against the turbulent fire building in his flesh. Dean almost has the aptitude to say something, the only word that can come to mind in the midst of all these psychotropic ins-and-outs and smearing colors and bleeding lights, but before he can choke out help, he is gone again. The coolness of Castiel’s hand leaves his forehead and suddenly the world is feverish and flushed again, so hot it’s almost as if he’s fueling a blaze of Hellfire somewhere deep inside his own body.
Castiel’s breath hisses down his throat and tickles his ear. “Stay with me,” he says, but it’s not really his voice - it’s Belial’s. And even though Dean knows this, knows that this is some terrible, unnatural manipulation that has distorted all his concepts of time and space, and he’s pretty sure it’s killing him, when Castiel flattens his chest to his and his hands sear perfect prints along the flesh of Dean’s stomach, it doesn’t matter. Everything else just kind of stops existing when he gives himself over.
~ ~ ~
When Sam wakes up, he is beyond furious.
It takes a few minutes for him to regain his bearings, but then he remembers the demons from town, and he remembers killing them and milking a long draw of blood from one of their wrists, the subsequent sweet rush of control, and the mad dash back to Bobby’s, and he remembers Dean lying just as still and weak as he’d been the day before, and then he remembers Castiel and his blood flares. By the time he makes it to the living room, he’s hysterical.
It takes two hours for Bobby to calm him down enough to form logical sentences. They think they’ve stumbled across a genius epiphany when Sam gets online and tracks the GPS in Dean’s cell phone, but the excitement dies quickly when Bobby finds it sitting idly on the dining room table, still specked with blood and dead-batteried.
This time, it takes longer than two hours.
~ ~ ~
Dean’s eyes move restlessly beneath their lids as he sleeps, and by the movement Castiel can tell he isn’t so much dreaming as he is hallucinating. The power of the illusions has taken over his mind, enough for him to think they’re real, enough for his physical body not to matter anymore. Castiel feels a certain sympathy for him as he dabs the glaze of sweat from the man’s forehead. He understands that Dean doesn’t want to deal with the pain anymore, but doesn’t understand how he could possibly be content in his dreamland. Doesn’t he know this means he is dying? That Belial is winning, and Lilith is winning, and Lucifer is going to rise if he doesn’t wake up?
When he peels off Dean’s t-shirt, the heat from his body is blistering. Castiel lets the shirt fall aside, studying Dean closely as he gently lays him down. There is a strange kind of tension in his face, a restless discomfort, and when Castiel gets close enough he can hear Dean’s teeth chattering lightly. With a sigh, the angel pulls back and slips his jacket off, pushes his sleeves up to the elbow. He bends one knee onto the bed and steadies his hands against Dean’s shoulders, slick with sweat against his grip, and for a moment he pauses, before he does the only thing he can think to do that might bring Dean a little relief. The thing he’s known to do since the beginning, but has been holding off for as long as he could. Now, though, there’s not a doubt in his mind of what needs to be done. Losing the war is out of the question. Losing Dean is out of the question.
He doesn’t take the time to steel himself any further before he flattens one palm against Dean’s forehead, then lowers the other into the perfect mirror of the brand scarred into Dean’s shoulder.
~ ~ ~
When his eyes shoot open, the first thing Dean notices is pain, but it passes quickly when he focuses on the hand against his forehead. There’s that - the same coolness that he remembers from before - but there’s also something else too, something that feels like he just stuck a fucking screwdriver in a wall socket, and it’s originating from his shoulder. From the burn of Castiel’s hand, his own personal stamp of ownership left there when he dragged Dean out of Hell. His breaths shake out quickly before evening out, and it surprises him when they do - he’s still sick, he shouldn’t be able to breathe like this. He searches Castiel’s face for answers desperately, wants to ask if he’s been healed, but he can’t really form words and what comes out of his mouth is just a guttural whimper. He hates how fragile it sounds.
“Dean, listen to me,” Castiel is saying. His voice is stern and all-encompassing, the only thing that Dean can hear, and his eyes - Jesus Christ, his eyes, they’re so bright. Something about him is unnatural, different from what he usually is. Somehow less human, much greater, as if all the light in the room is spilling from his eyes, and that light is etching his words permanently into Dean’s brain. It might have scared him, but the soothing coolness that washes over him at Castiel’s touch tells him not to worry. Even though somewhere inside, buried beneath layers of sweat and fire and lust and exhaustion, he knows he is dying, it doesn’t seem to matter when Castiel’s skin is against his. The angel’s hand is a steady pressure, cool but not too cold, more comforting than anything Dean has ever felt. He knows it has to be some kind of angel thing, that Castiel is mind-whammying him and this isn’t exactly real or fair, but he feels so much better, finally alive, that he doesn’t really give a fuck what it is. He just doesn’t want it to end.
“You need to wake up,” Castiel says, somehow oppressively loud even though his voice is calm and, Dean senses, not even raised. It’s just… powerful. He can’t escape it. “Do you hear me?”
Dean tries to nod, but he can’t do much else besides close his eyes and revel in the temporary relaxation. “I can keep your body safe,” Castiel continues, “But you need to bring yourself back. You need to wake up, Dean.”
His voice is authoritative and demanding and deliciously smooth and unfaltering, and Dean loves the sound of it too much to comprehend. This is the man with whom he has spent the last significant eternities of his life with, the days bleeding into reckless spins where time didn’t matter. They hadn’t slept or eaten or stopped at all, and even if he was weaker than he’d ever been it was all still so amazing. The angel’s body was cool when he needed it to be, warm when he wanted, and he was strong but still let Dean take control whenever he wanted. Castiel on one side, lying below him with the cloying taste of his lips and skin burning on Dean’s tongue; and Belial above him, bowing his back in ways Dean didn’t even know he could bend, Belial’s jewel-studded ears glinting like a signal fire, capturing Dean’s attention as every sound he made was caught on the curl of the demon’s tongue.
A small smile slides onto Dean’s lips as he shifts his hand, splaying it loosely on Castiel’s chest. He sees the mischievous glint of the angel’s eyes above him, the naked streak of his chest, his perfectly-shaped arms. Could practically taste the delectable raw-sugar kiss of his lips. He can see two scenes playing out before him, the clear-cut blue of true Castiel’s eyes staring down at him, trying to wrench him out of a world he’s not sure he wants to leave, and the other Castiel, the dark one, the one who’s all candy-sweet and grinning. The world is flickering before his eyes, as if the two Castiels are fighting for dominance, fighting over which of them gets to keep Dean. It almost makes him laugh.
The real Castiel’s fingers wrap around Dean’s wrist, flattening it to the bed as he writhes weakly up from the bed. “Dean,” he calls, but Dean only responds with a smirk.
He sees Castiel’s mouth curve into a grin, sees those full lips part and his tongue sneak out in a line as it slides along his throat, mapping his sternum and every branch of rib along its length. There’s a whisper of his name, not Castiel’s voice but Belial’s, and the demon is suddenly there, pushing Dean’s knees apart as Castiel crawls between them. Castiel is kneading at Dean’s hipbone as Belial is pulling him up by the hair into a long deep kiss, and Dean can see their tongues turning and lapping at each other from where he lays. They break apart, and Castiel bends to lick at where his hands were, on the curve of Dean’s hipbone, and Belial is grinning from behind Castiel, long wide hands splaying all across the angel’s back. The burning red glow of this world is swallowing up all the clear-cut flashes of Castiel’s true face, the concern drawn into it and the silent pleas his mouth forms as he begs for Dean to come back, to wake up.
Dean’s eyes flutter closed and his tongue comes out to slide along his lips. His neck arches back in a long line of throat as he groans, something animal and alive, before his face falls back into that familiar mask of uneasy rest and Castiel can’t do a damn thing to bring him back again.
At the point when Castiel is moaning around Dean’s cock in the best goddamn blowjob he’s ever had, while his tongue jerks with every time Belial fucks him - fucks Castiel with his red-black eyes set hard on Dean’s face above - that’s when the cool pressure subsides and Dean slips completely back into the grips of his fever.
~ ~ ~
Castiel has been praying all morning.
A full day has passed since they left South Dakota. Since they left Sam. Castiel knows Sam will be furious, his rage a blinded mask across rational thought, but it was a necessary evil. The younger Winchester would probably hate him for a while, several months maybe, and Castiel has even accepted the fact that Sam may very well never forgive him, but that isn’t his chief concern right now. That distinction belongs to Dean. But then he also knows that Dean will probably be livid, too. He will probably scream and throw things, probably sling curse words and acidic blame at the angel, but the lash-outs were sure to only be temporary, and they didn’t intimidate him. More than anything it amuses Castiel how Dean is so belligerent, always spitting accusations and swiping insults at him like a wildcat. His ferocity is endearing. Even though Castiel can bank on the fact that Dean will hate him when he wakes up, he knows that eventually the anger will pass. It always does. Dean keeps up his front perfectly, and more often than not when he speaks with Castiel it is in an argument or an insult, but both of them know he appreciates the angel’s constant vigilance. They’ve never built this trust into words, never exchanged it in a confession or a promise, but it’s a mutual understanding that it does not have to be spoken. It is just there, the honest truth.
Twilight is staining the world outside before Castiel rises from his chair and stands over Dean. His eyes remain somber, the set of his jaw decided; he shrugs his jacket off and crawls onto the bed, nestling into the space between Dean’s knees. Dean himself is pale and sweat-slicked, his face sunken and still bruised from the fight several days before.
This time when he presses his hand inside the grooves of the bran on Dean’s skin, the first effect is a swarming heat, spiraling all along his body in an unstoppable helix. Then it’s as though he is moving very, very fast, and being dragged downward through the ground with such incredible gravity it could almost crush every bone in this fragile human body that Castiel has all but made his own. It is disorienting, but he manages to last through it and begin searching for Dean through the vast bevy of bodies, male and female and neither and everything in between. Demons in their true forms, all cut-up and flayed, burned, all the human flesh singed away to leave something monstrous and base behind. Lipless, blackened faces that lap and curl their pink tongues along the bodies of other primordial squirming things. This is what the soul boils down to over decades in Hell, centuries, even millennia depending on the soul. It could be days for some, hours for some. Forty years for others.
Castiel keeps his eyes determinedly focused. He knows the world around him is not an authentic place, that it is simply a creation, not even part of the physical plane, but that doesn’t stop it from feeling just as genuine and substantial as reality. Just as good.
It is not hard to find Dean, and when he does, Castiel is shaken by the state of him. He is darkened somehow, slick, a snake underwater, slippery and strong and a creature of pure driven instinct. His eyes, blackened almost to opacity, settle on Castiel as he pulls in a long breath and stretches out his arms receptively. It is oppressively hot, the air thick and wet, exotic and saturated in dark shades of crimson, and when Castiel’s eyes narrow as he sees a body form at Dean’s side, collecting itself from curling black smoke, it is him. It is another Castiel, a perfect replica of the body he now inhabits. He is standing in front of Dean and yet he is also kneeling at his own feet, and it takes a moment for it to make sense but eventually he catches on - the creature he sees now is the Castiel that Dean imagines. It is a fictitious creation by Belial, some monster dredged from deep inside Dean’s subconscious and manifested as a purely physical being. The creature with his face claws a line up his body, catching in his belt and pawing like a neglected animal at his shirt. With a sneer, he knocks its grasping hands away and kneels at Dean’s side, shaking his shoulder lightly. He lays a hand on Dean’s chest, staring hard at him.
The peculiar gray cast of Dean’s eyes clears momentarily and he gasps, but it is fleeting and just as soon he is smirking, lost again, and pulling at Castiel’s wrists, pulling him down, pulling him deeper into the dark swirl of his fabricated world. “Dean,” Castiel barks, shrugging away the hordes of groping hands that claw at his entire body, pulling him every direction, stretching and tearing the fabric of his clothes. “Dean, you have to wake up.”
Dean arches in response as the creature with Castiel’s face slinks up his body, and when they kiss, Castiel can feel the euphoria crush over his own mind. He swallows it back and calls Dean’s name again. “Wake up!” he demands, but Dean is fully enraptured in the kiss. It’s hardly even a kiss, really, so much as a full-body affair, all sneaking hands and constricting arms and twisting legs and the satiation of an addiction, the slide of desperate sighs and how the creature in Dean’s arms seems to swallow up every remaining sliver of his soul with the hot brand of its mouth.
Castiel does not wait. Dean pulls his mouth from the demon’s with a sigh and Castiel uses the opportunity to press his palm to Dean’s forehead, his eyes snapping shut, his voice scraping low when he says, “Per venio Dios, ego exsuscito tu,” and then…
A flash of light, the streak of a scream, the blister of obsidian eyes burning into flesh, the tortured rip of a cry as lethal waves of heat roll through Dean’s veins, the clasp of a hand onto his shoulder, the sickly slide of inertia overhauling every cell in his body as he drags himself from the deepest recesses of unconsciousness, the first pull of air into his lungs that he’s felt in days…
~ ~ ~
Dean is awake.
The first thing he does is cough, his body pulling tightly in on itself as all the muscles of his torso jerk and spasm. He throws out a hand blindly, searching for he doesn’t even know what, but comes up empty. Finally, when he can draw a breath again, he croaks out, “Castiel!”
The angel is against the far wall, apparently thrown there by some force outside himself, and panting. His eyes come to Dean’s and they are shaken, but strong. He’s okay. It takes a minute for him to climb to his feet and come back to the bedside.
Again, Dean coughs; he swipes at his mouth when he tastes blood and winces against the devastating pain in his side. “You sonofabitch,” is the first thing he says when he can speak again. His voice is barely a husk of its usual self, which startles him. Castiel purses his lips slightly, surveying Dean’s body in a way that makes Dean feel uncomfortable. Maybe even a little violated. The angel turns his back to shrug his coat on.
“I am sorry, Dean,” Castiel responds, voice calm and calculated. It’s an apology, but it doesn’t sound sincere; most of his apologies don’t, though, so Dean can’t really tell the difference.
“I oughtta choke you with your fuckin’ halo, man,” Dean spits. “You came into my head. You had no right.” He draws a sharp breath and tries to sit up, but a bruising fire builds in his side and he drops flat with a strangled cry.
“You need to lie still,” Castiel says as he looks over his shoulder at Dean. His eyes crawl over the man’s body again, from his face to his side. “You’ll burst your stitches.”
“Got any superglue around?” Dean asks sarcastically, though Castiel does not laugh. This time Dean manages to sit up, propping himself against the headboard even through the pain. He knows it’s stupid to risk breaking the stitches in his side, but he’s groggy and irrational and pissed off right now so it’s a nonissue. He wants to ask if the spell is gone, but as soon as he sits up and feels the unexpected tilt of the room and the pressure in his head and the burn of his skin, he knows it’s still here. “The hell happened?” he asks. His throat is parched, but Castiel seems to have read his mind and hands him a glass of water from the nightstand.
“I pulled you from the grip of Belial’s spell,” he says, and he sounds so tired that Dean almost feels sorry for him. Then he freezes; he can feel his heart hammer in his chest as he searches Castiel’s face.
“So you really came into my dream?”
Castiel nods, lowering onto the bed near Dean’s feet; Dean knocks back the whole glass of water in one drink. When the last drop rolls down his throat, he rakes the back of one wrist over his lips.
“So you were there? Like, you saw my actual dreams?”
“Yes,” Castiel says through a sigh. “I had to. You weren’t waking easily.”
Dean hikes an eyebrow, allowing a brief silence to lull. He suddenly feels awkward, really fucking awkward, and more than a little sacrilegious since, hello, he’s been dreaming about fucking an angel. And the angel he’s been dreaming about fucking has just waltzed straight into said dream, popped in for a visit right in the middle of an orgy with the whole cheerleading squad and half the football team, not to mention Castiel himself, and Belial too, and it’s just really all a little too weird. Though to be fair Castiel shows no outward signs of even knowing that for the past four days, Dean has hardly dreamt of anything else besides him. More specifically, about fucking him seven ways from Sunday on an impressive loop. He lowers his eyes to the glass in his hand and even though it’s stupid and elementary and superstitious, he finds himself crossing his fingers. Maybe Castiel didn’t see that part. “So you… saw. My dreams.”
“They weren’t dreams, Dean, they were illusions. Complex ones Belial created to tempt you into joining his Legions.”
His voice is cool, but still Dean avoids eye contact as much as possible. He sets the glass aside and sits up a little more, wincing as he does. Castiel’s eyes follow his movements. “So the stuff I saw… It wasn’t stuff I thought up, was it? That was totally Belial’s fault, right?”
“Generally. But when Belial got wind of your true desires, he used them against you.” Castiel glances to the floor and Dean swears he can almost see a smirk skewing those stupidly alluring pale pink lips.
Dean blinks hard; shudders. Oh, goddammit.
He coughs. “Why do I still feel sick?” he asks to change the subject, and is surprised, a little annoyed for some reason, when Castiel’s hand comes up to feel his forehead. He almost pulls away from the touch, but the refreshing coolness it brings makes him decide otherwise.
“You are still sick,” Castiel explains as he takes his hand away. Immediately, Dean misses it. Ridiculous amounts, actually. “I didn’t cure you; just woke you up.”
Dean lowers himself to the bed again with a groan. “Thanks for that,” he says wryly, his words saturated in sarcasm. “Now I can squirm around in pain while I’m awake, as opposed to when I was unconscious. Awesome.”
Castiel’s eyes fix hard on Dean, and it makes him nervous. He doesn’t meet the gaze. For a long time the angel doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything at all, just spaces right the fuck out and simply watches Dean, which - a month ago Dean would have found annoying, but not so much now. To Dean, it seems like ten minutes go by, when in fact he knows it’s probably only been one or two. “You need to eat,” Castiel says finally as he stands.
Dean gives a small grunt in reply as he begins studying his surroundings. It’s a wooden room, old if the deep veins of the grain say anything; he’s on a bed, an actual bed instead of Bobby’s ancient lumpy sofa, and there’s a bright yellow spill of afternoon sunlight outside the uncurtained windows. He studies the linen shade of the lamp beside the bed, noticing that there is no alarm clock. Nope; this is definitely nowhere he knows. “Where am I?” he asks after absorbing it all.
“Montana,” Castiel answers quickly. “West of Bynum. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Sam around?”
Castiel’s gaze lands hard on Dean and he keeps his voice low when he says, “No.”
When he doesn’t receive any explanation, Dean’s eyes narrow. “Where is he?”
“He’s safe,” the angel replies, and it should make Dean angry but, fuck, he just doesn’t have the energy for a confrontation right now. “You needed to be away from him. It was too easy for Belial to find you.”
Another small hum. Castiel leaves, and when he comes back he tosses a PowerBar at Dean’s chest. “Eat something. You’re weak.”
Dean picks up the foil package with a hiked eyebrow. “No t-bones?”
Castiel slides a chastising look in his direction, an almost invisible smirk playing across his features. With a snicker, Dean opens the package without any real protest and tries to tell himself that that’s hunger he feels stirring low in the floor of his hips.
“Dean, there’s something you need to know,” Castiel says dryly as he sits down again. Dean abstractedly wonders if it’s too much to enjoy his first meal in days in peace, but doesn’t bring it up. Castiel never really seems to fully appreciate his sarcasm anyway, the smug bastard. He waits for the angel to finish, not a little disturbed by the sternness in his expression, the long blank of silence that follows. Castiel seems to be withdrawn into thought for a long time before he continues.
“There is a way for me to cure you,” he says. His gaze comes up from the floor to steady on Dean’s face. “The spell of a demon can be broken by an angel through the transfer of Grace.”
Dean snorts back a laugh through a small fit of coughing, then gives a decidedly annoyed growl as he tosses the empty wrapper onto the table. “Dude,” he begins with another small cough, “I’m up for anything if it’ll get rid of this damn fever.” He wants to say something about how he’d felt better, really and truly better, when Castiel touched him. Wants to ask why exactly that was, whether it was angelic mojo or something, grace transfer or whatever, or just his wild-ass imagination. But he’s grateful his teeth are kind of stuck together with caramel right now, as that doesn’t seem like the best thing to bring up with somebody like Castiel. And besides, getting this goddamn fever out of his system is more important than just about anything right now anyway, so he couldn’t care less how it works or what kind of mojo Castiel was working on him when he touched him before. He just wants the shit out of his body, stat.
“I can give you temporary relief by touch,” Castiel sighs, “But it won’t cure you. The spell is too strong.”
“Alright,” Dean says with a shrug. “Whatever. What do we do?”
He stares for a moment, waiting for Castiel to utter some magical prayer or blessed incantation, waiting for holy golden light to spread across his body or some giant fucking hand to come out of the sky and whack him on the forehead, but instead he just gets wide-eyed shock and a full-body rush of heat, and confusion, and maybe even anger, when Castiel leans forward and presses his lips against Dean’s in a tentative, but warm, close-lipped kiss.
For a moment, Dean just blinks. He stares into Castiel’s open eyes and doesn’t move and holds his breath, and his mind is busy spinning the fuck out, thinking is this seriously going down, thinking oh my fucking god are you serious and thinking this has to be some other twisted fever hallucination his brain conjured up when it got bored with the perpetual orgy scenes. And then he just thinks what the fuck?! and makes a small whimper of confused protest against Castiel’s mouth.
When Castiel pulls away, his eyes are curious and his lips are kiss-flushed, stained magenta, and even though he looks about as threatening as a fucking kitten with a ball of string, and even though the kiss made Dean feel immeasurably better than he has in weeks, Dean’s immediate reaction is to whip out a fist as hard and fast as he can against Castiel’s jaw.
His head turns sharply with the impact, but Castiel doesn’t say anything or even close his eyes. A sigh shakes out of his throat when he turns back to Dean, his face as blank and expressionless as ever, lightly tonguing the small blossom of blood in one corner of his mouth. Dean pulls in a seething breath and wants to just go the fuck to town, whip out another punch and another one and another one until Castiel begs him to stop or fought back or just did something, but then the pain returns and hits him like a fucking semi, and his thought train derails.
His vision goes white.
Stomach bottoms out.
He hadn’t even noticed it was gone until it returned, and - oh shit. It was only gone when Castiel was kissing him.
The burn of Dean’s skin reaches almost unbearable heights as his voice cracks with a pained moan, as the fever surges back through his system with a fucking vendetta from the deepest belly of Hell, wiping out his brain and tearing through his veins sharper than battery acid. His muscles tighten, constrict in pain with a quick snap, and his eyes slam shut so hard he’s seeing sparkles. He’s hot, so hot, he’s almost delirious because of it, and Castiel says his name and just fuck it, fuck it all, he fists a hand in the angel’s shirt and pulls him hard into another kiss. It’s a conscious decision, but he can’t explain it. And when he feels a few degrees of heat slip from his body, feels the perpetual ache in his skull begin to subside, he doesn’t even want to explain it.
He’s not sure when it happens but somehow one of his hands ends up on the side of Castiel’s neck, feathery dark hair fringing along his fingertips, and the angel slinks just barely closer until his tongue is inside Dean’s mouth, darting past his lips and sweeping around, like he’s nervous about it or he doesn’t quite know what to do. He does something - something Dean can’t quite pinpoint or define - and suddenly he’s pulling all the air out of Dean’s lungs in one long, slow draw. But no; no, it’s more than his air - he’s pulling out all of his sickness, replacing it with something immaculate and divine that seeps past Dean’s lips and along his tongue, drips down his throat like a sweet honey, blooming all through his belly and along his spine, into every nerve and muscle in his body. Dean’s head starts to spin and suddenly he feels dizzy, but - fuck, holy shit, Jesus H. Christ. Castiel’s kiss in real life is just as addictive as it was back in the dreamworld, maybe even more so, and Dean can’t help but kiss back, forcing their lips together so powerfully that Castiel sighs into his mouth.
A small moan rattles from Dean’s throat as the thick band around his ribs slackens. His eyes flutter open for the briefest second and when they do, the surprising blue of Castiel’s is almost overbearing. The angel does not make a sound or even close his eyes, which Dean finds a little weird, honestly, but the result is all the same when it comes down it, and it’s fucking stellar - the kiss is healing him.
Dean can feel his body slowly unfolding, gaining its natural strength back in a slow-motion metamorphosis. It’s a sweet, blissful feeling as the fever slips from his cells, as it dissipates into a cool misty aura, simmering out of his blood into nonexistence. He closes his eyes against the sensation, feeling about like he could leap clear through the fucking stratosphere at this point because he’s so energetic, and it’s almost overwhelming but the only thing that makes sense is to kiss Castiel even harder. Dean drags a breath in through his nose, keeping the fusion of their mouths in tact because he can’t risk losing this. The kiss has an almost addictive quality to it, the flow of pure healing energy in a stream from Castiel’s body into his something obscure and intoxicating, maddening as it slides effortlessly between them with the brush of tongue against tongue, something he can’t identify but that he never wants to lose. And when he splays his hands stiffly below Castiel’s jawline to hold him in place, to make it so that there’s no possible way he can break their lips apart, something twists in Dean’s head and he recognizes what it is, that steady luminescent flow that tastes so sweet and pure on his tongue, the reason he never wants to stop kissing Castiel.
It’s power.
The thought blooms and Dean gives a quiet moan that surprises him just as much as it does Castiel.
Castiel breaks the line of their lips first and pulls back to a comfortable distance. His eyes are clean and pure, flaring a little brighter than usual maybe, but they betray nothing. He keeps his voice carefully measured when he says, “Your fever,” and it’s quiet and more than a little breathy and lilted with something that, if Dean didn’t know better, he would think was desire.
And yeah, honestly? It’s pretty fucking hot.
Dean’s brain has all but shut down, but Castiel’s words kick it back into gear after several seconds. He blinks, over and over again quickly, then feels at his forehead - cool. He glances up to Castiel with a smile, and despite his physical injuries still being there, he doesn’t feel them at all. His body seems flooded with something, some unnatural kind of light that is leaping and somersaulting deep in his chest somewhere. It is un-fucking-believable.
“What did you do?” he asks, stunned. His hand splays on his chest as he draws a perfectly clear breath, oh Jesus Christ yes, no fucking pneumatic rattle, and he cannot stop smiling like a goddamn schoolboy for anything, which at any other time might make him feel like a total idiot, but - man, fuck. “What was that?”
Castiel smiles slightly, as much as he ever does, a vague curve bending his lips as his eyes drop to Dean’s chest; Dean follows his gaze, but he can’t see anything there. “Grace,” Castiel says quietly.
A full grin sprawls across Dean’s face as he quirks his head. He doesn’t know whether to believe Castiel or not, and he honestly has no idea what that even means, but it doesn’t matter because he feels like fucking Superman at this juncture.
“You need to remain still,” Castiel says, all seriousness and sobriety again. “You won’t feel your injuries for a while, but they are still there. You need to be careful not to rip the stitches.”
Dean knits his eyebrows, petulant. “Come on, dude, I’ve been on my ass for two weeks now! Can’t I at least get up to take a piss?”
Castiel’s body tenses in a laugh that remains completely soundless. “You may move around, just be careful.”
“So I’m cured now? Belial’s spell - it’s totally gone?”
“Yes.”
“Totally gone. I’m not talkin’ some angelic mojo-trick just to hide it or somethin’. It’s completely done?”
“Yes.”
“For good?”
“Yes, Dean,” Castiel answers through the shrug of another silent laugh. Abstractedly Dean congratulates himself - two laughs in less than five minutes. It’s a huge accomplishment, really, taking into account it took almost six months to get Castiel to laugh the first time. That silent tight curve of his lips, as if he was straining not to show his teeth or make a sound. His shoulders pulling up in a loose shrug and his head nodding just barely, with the way that remarkable blue of his eyes caught the sunlight and threw it back out around the playground. Clean white sunlight sprawling all over his skin, washing around in his hair.
It takes about a good solid minute for Dean to pull himself back to the present after that image.
A brief silence settles as Dean lets it sink in, the realization that he is finally free of the sickness plaguing his body and mind for the last immeasurable stretch of days. Suddenly, his face crinkles in confusion.
“What day is it?” he asks.
Again, Castiel’s laugh is silent. Three in under five minutes? Fuck me, this should be on the six o’clock broadcast, Dean thinks with a crooked smirk.
Castiel stands and takes a few easy steps toward the door. He turns when he gets there, peering at Dean over his shoulder. “Tuesday,” he says softly, then, “Take care of yourself, Dean.”
And for some reason it feels unfinished, as if there’s something else that should be said before he leaves, but by the time Dean looks up he’s already gone.
The only thought in his head, the only thing he’ll allow himself to think after Castiel leaves - because goddammit he is not going to sit here and jack off to the fever-flushed memory of making out with an angel, his angel, fucking Cas for cryin’ out loud - is that fuck, his teeth hurt, and abstractedly he has to wonder just how much candy he’s eaten in the past two weeks.
~ ~ ~
{to be continued...}
ONTO PART FIVE.
But some lovely comments from my favorite people in the world (read: YOU GUYS) would totally make me feel better. Just sayin'.
I better slow down my posting or you guys are gonna get spoiled. Hm.
Title: The Propensities of Good Men, 4/15
Characters: Belial, Bobby, Castiel, Dean, Sam
Pairing(s): *ahem* Dean/Castiel (finally, eh?), Belial/Castiel, Dean/Castiel/Belial
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~10,506 (part 4)
Disclaimer: Pffft, I wish.
Warnings: Sexuality of the threesome variety, language, pornings, uh demonic orgies...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
~ ~ ~
By the time his physical injuries have come any kind of close to healing themselves, Dean’s fever is back with a vengeance and Sam is almost at his wit’s end trying to find ways to help his brother. Castiel doesn’t show up for three days after nursing Dean back to life and when he does, Sam can’t decide if he’s more relieved to see the angel or infuriated that he would even have the audacity to show up again without a healing prayer or some magical angelic balm, something to cure Dean. Or at the very least, just wake him up.
As he watches Castiel lean down over the back of the couch and place a hand on Dean’s forehead, he’s definitely leaning more toward infuriated.
He doesn’t speak when he comes into the room, and Castiel doesn’t offer anything, not even acknowledgment of his presence. Sam busies himself with cleaning up what he can - candy wrappers and sugar packets and empty root beer and Pepsi bottles. A half-empty bottle of Jack with cap skewed crooked. Castiel draws in a long breath and rests his elbows on the couch back. His hands clasp loosely in front of him. “Has he been awake?” he asks finally.
“Couple of times,” Sam answers. He doesn’t turn around.
“How was he?”
“In pain, what else,” Sam snaps. “It’s a human thing. You wouldn’t get it.” When Castiel does not dignify the statement with a response, instead just gliding around to crouch at Dean’s side, Sam disappears into the kitchen without apologizing.
He comes back shortly and leans in the doorway, arms crossed. He watches Castiel closely, but the angel doesn’t seem to be doing anything but staring at Dean, his forehead marked with a crease as his focus builds. Sam shifts and sighs, wondering to himself what the hell possible good a stare-off with an unconscious guy could do. “He needs rest,” he risks after a beat.
Castiel still doesn’t look up; in fact he seems not to hear Sam at all. Sam replies by clearing his throat and saying, “Cas.”
At last, Castiel glances up.
Sam’s eyebrows raise slightly, signaling his annoyance. “I think it’d be better to just leave him alone.”
Castiel hums quietly and looks back down, leaning forward to rest his elbow on the couch near Dean’s arm. “No,” he says in a whisper. He’s doing that thing again where the idea of personal space is obviously one that angels aren’t familiar with, crowding close to Dean’s unconscious face; it bothers Sam.
“Actually? Yeah,” Sam challenges. “He needs to rest, man.”
“Yes,” Castiel responds, and brings his hand up to hover before Dean’s eyes. “But he’s not resting right now.”
Sam’s voice breaks through an exasperated sigh. “He’s sleeping. I think that counts as rest.”
“No,” Castiel repeats with a shake of his head. His gaze remains trained on Dean’s face, where a small furrow has dented his brow and his jaw is set, his nostrils slightly flared. And even though Dean has never been one to fall too deeply asleep, always needing to be ready to haul at a moment’s notice, Sam has to admit it isn’t exactly the face of one sleeping peacefully. Maybe he really isn’t resting; maybe Castiel is telling the truth.
“Castiel,” Sam barks, drawing his attention to the doorway. “Please leave.” It’s hardly a question.
Castiel glances back to Dean and lowers his fingers between his eyes, and even from the doorway Sam can see how his brother’s face smoothes out and falls into an expression of deep, recuperative sleep. He almost wants to thank Castiel, but the words won’t force out of his throat. If he’d healed Dean, then maybe a thank you would be in order. But he didn’t, so Sam bites his cheek to remain silent.
Castiel quickly runs his tongue along his lips and stands. His hands disappear into his coat pockets as he studies Sam intently. “Your brother is not well,” he says.
Sam simply blinks, tell me something I don’t know stinging on his tongue but not rolling off.
“The spell that Belial cast is stronger than I anticipated,” Castiel continues. His head drops as Sam sees something like defeat darken his features for a moment. “It’s killing him,” he finishes, and Sam’s stomach does a flip. A dull pressure like swallowing stones is building in his chest, sneaking up the line of his throat with a tight, uncomfortable grind. He shifts his feet around, everything below the neck gone suddenly numb.
Stupidly, the only thing he can think to say is, “How do you know?”
Castiel looks to his side, toward Dean but not at him. “I can see his dreams,” he says.
“What is it?” Sam asks, stiffening his entire body. “Is it Hell?”
The snap of Castiel’s eyes to his is abrupt. He hesitates for a long time, then sighs and swallows. Sam finds it strange that he suddenly seems nervous; Castiel is never nervous, and the fact that he so obviously is nervous now is making something wring and twist deep in the floor of Sam’s stomach. That same pressure from before has fought up into his throat, clawing at the back of his tongue with a harsh bitter tang. Blood, bile, the burn of acid. The nervous pain of helplessness. His hands are shaking so he crosses his arms tight over his chest.
“Take care of his body as best as you can,” Castiel says as he makes his way toward the front door.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to pray,” Castiel says by way of an explanation - a shoddy one, when it really comes down to it, and it makes Sam’s fists ball up into tight coils, crescent moons creasing into his palms - and then he leaves.
~ ~ ~
When Bobby gets back from his hunt, it’s the first relief Sam has had since Castiel left two days ago. He finally gets more than half an hour of sleep at a time, though what rest he does get is agitated and unfulfilling. He dreams about the fight with Belial, dreams about the twist of Ruby’s face as agony flashed in her opaque black eyes. Dreams about Dean’s body all broken up and destroyed, almost like the Hellhounds got to him again.
He wakes up at five AM and pads downstairs to check on Dean, and he is surprised to find another figure there already bent over his brother’s body. Instinctively he flattens to the wall and lunges for a butcher knife, but when he recognizes the familiar sweep of the back of Castiel’s shoulders, he relaxes - minimally. He clears his throat and puts the knife back on its magnetic rack. “You’re an early bird,” he says sleepily. When Castiel doesn’t say anything back, Sam abstractedly wonders if angels even need to sleep.
“Has he awoken?”
Sam stretches through a yawn and flops into a chair across the room. “Once or twice yesterday.”
“For how long?”
Sam shrugs confusedly, scratching through his sleep-tangled hair. “I don’t know, long enough to eat some pie, shotgun a Pepsi, and go to the bathroom. He was pretty out. Didn’t say anything.”
Castiel does not look away from Dean. “He hasn’t woken up,” he says quietly. “His body has, but he hasn’t really woken up.”
“What does that mean?” Sam asks, skepticism ragged around the edges of his words. He’d seen Dean himself, watched him walk around and clutch at the bandages on his side, saw him pick up the pie tin and eat nearly a whole slice, hell, even linger afterward to pick a few peaches from the center. Slurp them off his fingers in typical not-quite-disgusting Dean fashion. Sam and Bobby had glanced at each other and shrugged, taking it as a good sign. There was no way Dean was still asleep through all that. “That’s impossible,” Sam finishes with a smirk.
The rustle of Castiel’s coat is ghostly quiet as he shifts, placing the back of his hand on Dean’s forehead. Against the touch, Sam notices that Dean seems to fall just a little deeper into sleep, face smoothing out like it did two days ago the last time Castiel was around. “I’ve been watching his dreams,” Castiel explains, then he looks over his shoulder at Sam. “He hasn’t woken up for two and a half days.”
A silence settles across the room as Sam swallows. He shakes his head slightly, disbelieving, and slowly pushes up from the chair. A pit begins to build in his stomach, a cold deep enough to frost his bones. “What did you do?”
Castiel does not respond, so he asks again, more anxious this time. “What did you do?” He’s at Dean’s side in a flash, nudging Castiel roughly out of the way and frantically checking Dean’s neck for a pulse. There is one and it is steady, but faint. Sam’s eyes go dark as he looks up at the blank-faced angel behind him. He’s got a good million and a half questions racing across the front of his brain, how the hell did this happen, what exactly did Castiel do to him last time, is Dean going to be okay - but everything he needs to know is written in Castiel’s eyes.
His brother is dying.
“Castiel!” he nearly shouts when he gets no response. “Answer me! What’d you do to him the last time you were here? He was awake before you gave him your little brain-tap!”
“I gave him rest,” Castiel explains.
“And what the hell does that mean? He’s been asleep for two days - he’s already rested. We don’t need you to send him into a deeper coma, we need you to wake him up!” Sam coils his fists tightly, shoving to his feet. “I’m gonna take him to the hospital.”
With some effort, Castiel tears his gaze from Dean and looks solely at Sam. “They won’t be able to help him, Sam, it’s not his body that suffers. That’s why I did what I did two days ago. That’s why I sent his mind away from here.”
Sam’s eyes narrow. “You just knocked him out? Didn’t you think maybe that was a bad idea, that he could have a concussion and being unconscious could kill him?”
Castiel looks back to Dean, fists clenching at his sides. “I did, but it was a risk I had to take.” His voice is still unusually calm, completely toneless, and something about that practically drives Sam up the fucking wall.
“A risk you had to take? Have you forgotten we’re talking about Dean here, not you?” Sam’s voice is rising higher, rapidly progressing into a raging shout. His hands are already shrugging out to his sides with his words, body inching forward even though he knows he can’t gain anything good by getting up in an angel’s face.
“Dean is my main concern right now.”
“Oh I’m sure he is,” Sam spits, a new and profoundly livid edge to his words. The anger rolls over him in a hot wave as he steps closer to Castiel. “If it wasn’t for you, he wouldn’t even be like this. He’d be walking around perfectly fine if you hadn’t sent us here. This is your fault!”
And even Sam realizes the danger in his situation, in challenging something as powerful and generally as fucking scary as an angel, but the words fall from his mouth in an untamable wreck. He cannot stop them. Castiel opens his mouth to speak, but Sam cuts him off short.
“You claim you care so much about us, about Dean, but then you barely show up even when you know he’s dying. And - and you knock him unconscious and then leave to go pray? What’s with that?”
“Sam, you know nothing of what is happening,” Castiel challenges, his voice rising slightly.
“I know my brother’s dying,” he bites back. “And I know it’s your fault but you’re too high and mighty to admit it. You could cure him, Castiel. He doesn’t have to be like this. What’s your excuse, huh? Boss man told you not to?”
Something flickers behind Castiel’s eyes, something dangerous, the quickest flame of unbridled holy wrath, there one second and gone the next. It’s the first sign of disturbance he’s betrayed at all, and Sam finds himself feeling strangely victorious when he sees it. He’s getting under Castiel’s skin. Picking at his patience. He’s making Castiel angry, and that means he’s hitting close to home.
“You angels are all the same,” Sam says with a cold smirk as he settles his hands on his hips. “You’re just like Uriel. I thought you were different, but you’re not - you all think we’re so beneath you. You just want Dean to get better so you can keep using him as your tool,” Sam sneers, his words corrosive.
His eyes are locked hard on Castiel’s now, furious and determined and cold. The room seems to be filling with shadows even as the sun is coming up outside, the air charged with a peculiar kind of electricity.
“I would protect Dean from this if I could, Sam, as I have protected him many times in the past,” Castiel says, voice deep and measured and more than a little dangerous, not unlike the slow-motion grind of rusted metal gears waking into motion. The degree of power behind it is staggering, but Sam buries his primal fear beneath thick layers of bitterness and anger.
“Protect Dean? Like you have before?” Sam balks with a sarcastic smile playing across his features. Castiel’s eyes narrow, his head tilts just barely. In the window sill across the room, Sam hears the rattle of glass bottles, the holy water Bobby keeps there in case of emergency, as they are shaken by an invisible force. “Ever since Dean’s been back, his life has been a living nightmare because of you. You’re always putting us in danger or hurting him - or making him torture someone for God’s sakes - and now you’re killing him because you refuse to intervene! You’ve never done a damn thing to help me or Dean.”
“I brought him back from Hell,” Castiel growls.
“So you could make him into your pawn!” Sam shouts, voice cracking with the sudden force.
The cabin rumbles as Castiel takes a careful step forward, but surprisingly Sam stands his ground. He feels the tremors in the boards beneath his feet and it’s more than a little frightening, but he’s so far past furious at this point that it doesn’t matter. When he rakes in a breath, he can distinctly feel an electric charge popping in the around around him, pinpricks of bright blue and white energy tickling all the way down into his lungs.
“I saved him, Sam, and I’ve saved you too. More than once,” Castiel counters roughly, though he still doesn’t raise his voice; he doesn’t have to. The power coiled so tightly within that unassuming body of his has enough presence of its own without the slightest hint of a shout. Sam watches as one of the glass holy water containers shakes from the window sill onto the floor, shattering loosely into a small puddle. “Belial would have skinned you both alive faster than you can even comprehend,” Castiel says sharply. “We fight a common enemy, Sam, and I will not fight you.”
Sam snorts back a cynical laugh. “Because God doesn’t want you to?”
“Because Dean doesn’t want me to.”
The quakes seem to settle as some of the electricity fades from the room, though there is still a palpable charge in the atmosphere. As he squares his shoulders, Sam thinks he even feels his ears ringing a little, but he can’t be sure. “Tell me this, Castiel,” he hisses, fixing the angel with his eyes. “If you care so much about Dean then why haven’t you healed him yet?”
Something flashes in Castiel’s eyes again, though clearly not rage this time; Sam can’t really identify what it is, exactly, but it surprises him. “You don’t understand,” he says, and there is surrender in the words as he shakes his head.
“Damn right I don’t understand,” Sam says quickly. “So why don’t you enlighten me?” His voice drops. “Illuminate me. I’m his brother; I deserve to know what’s going on.”
His gaze is unflinching, even as his pulse is racing. The darkness that had manifested in Castiel’s body was still with him, that weirdly magnetic, primordial pull that drained the air and sent Sam’s blood slithering coldly through his veins. It wasn’t just an unexpected swell of confidence, or some stupid hollow threat to bring this to blows; wasn’t like an argument with Dean, all snarky comments and physical bullying, how Dean always intimidates Sam by getting right up in his face, all puffed-out chest and steel-toned arms. No, from Castiel it was something else entirely, something not human, something ancient and primal and powerful beyond anything Sam could see or imagine. A fury that was beyond all measure. He’s already decided he doesn’t even want to try to imagine it.
Now, though, Castiel seems withdrawn back into himself. The darkness is gone from the corners of the room, and most of the static electricity has dissipated. He seems to be considering his words carefully, which unnerves Sam because he’s never seen Castiel falter like this, never seen him hesitate and stutter and sigh this much. Finally, Sam figures out why.
“I can’t cure him, Sam.”
Sam’s chest aches suddenly and he shifts his weight. His eyes flutter around the room, catching on his brother’s motionless form before coming back to Castiel. And as soon as they do, the sad sincerity in the angel’s expression almost rips his heart straight out of his chest. “Why -… What do you mean you can’t cure him? You’re an angel, can’t you just… call in a favor?”
God no, fuck, no, please, not again, god, please. It rings through his head on a litany, rhythmic as a fucking Hail Mary, a pleading for his brother’s life he’s become far too familiar with over the years. A palmful of sweat builds against Sam’s hand as he tries so hard not to lose it right now. With the exasperated sighs coming out of his own chest and how he hasn’t slept, properly slept, in days, and Castiel’s impassive stare in front of him, and oh god Dean. Dean lying practically in pieces two yards away, torn open and run through and fever-flushed, and Sam’s done his best to stitch him up and make him comfortable, but - not again. No no no, not again.
Castiel’s shoulders slump slightly as he shrugs his hands out. They fall back to his sides with a muffled thump. “It’s not a disease, Sam,” he explains, and his voice is just as calm now as it has ever been. “It’s a demonic spell. Dean’s body is locked into the state it’s in now because he waited so long to do anything about it. He is completely under Belial’s sway.”
The draw of Sam’s breath is slow as he looks at Dean with newly softened eyes. “So,” he begins, voice lowered, eyes stinging, blanched-out flickering images of clawmarks half a foot deep ripping invisibly through Dean’s flesh washing behind his eyes. Not fucking again. “How can we help him?”
“We can’t,” Castiel says after a short hesitation. Sam predicts the stab of cold he will feel through his chest upon hearing it, but the real thing is much worse. Much more painful and crushing, and definitely much too familiar.
Not again.
Sam sighs and fights the tears forming in his eyes. He looks to Castiel again, but the angel is not looking at him; he’s not looking at anything, really, but the dim shadow of sadness rooted deep in his expression tears at Sam’s chest in an alarming way.
“We have to pray that Dean finds the strength to help himself now,” Castiel finishes, near a whisper, and when he looks up again Sam knows he was wrong - Castiel does care. It’s written all over him, in the apprehensive curve of his shoulders and the passive oblivion of his face and the vacant, devastating freeze of his eyes.
~ ~ ~
Things get really out of hand the next day when a small gang of demons attacks Sam in broad daylight while he’s in town picking up supplies to fix Bobby’s trashed furniture. He manages to kill them and run back to the house before any others appear, and he covers his tracks well enough to know they won’t be able to follow him here, but then he remembers what Castiel told him back in Eminence - that his blood is a divining rod for Belial to find them, basically a huge fucking neon sign with arrows and foghorns - and his head starts spinning full-speed and doesn’t stop until he gets inside. He’s glad when Castiel is still there; he’s been sitting vigilantly at Dean’s side since dawn.
“Castiel!” he cries desperately, his body sprawling out in every direction as he braces himself in the doorway. The angel eyes him curiously, rising from his position on the edge of the coffee table.
“What is it?” he asks calmly.
“Demons,” Sam stutters, pausing momentarily to catch his breath. “Demons just attacked me. They thought I was with Dean; they wanted to know where he was. I didn’t tell them.”
Castiel blinks, retreating briefly into thought as Sam waits impatiently for - well, for something, for anything. A suggestion, an affirmation, even a false promise of hope would be appreciated at this point. When the angel looks back up, his expression is obscure and somehow, something about it is chilling. Sam stiffens uncomfortably, swallowing back a lump of nerves, or maybe intimidation, whatever, something the size of a goddamn tennis ball in his throat.
“Come with me,” Castiel says as he walks quickly toward the back of the house. Sam follows him up the stairs, into the cramped room with two cots stuffed into the corners that’s the closest thing Sam has to a bedroom of his own. His stomach clenches when he sees Dean’s boots kicked off at the foot of the other bed, one of Dean’s shirts hanging on the doorknob. Castiel gestures loosely to the bed. “Sit down,” he says.
Sam’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “What?” he asks, wrinkling his nose at the bizarre direction.
Castiel searches the open window desperately. Sam sees nothing outside, but the way the angel is suddenly frantic and uneasy makes him, in turn, also frantic and uneasy. “Sam, the demons cannot find Dean again or he will die. Belial is coming to collect him, and when he does I won’t be able to stop him again. Dean all but belongs to him at this point as it is.”
Nervously, Sam swallows, and sits down on the edge of the bed. Without even thinking about it, he’s just followed Castiel’s directions. “So… what do we do?”
The line of Castiel’s jaw sharpens as he purses his lips. “I need to take Dean somewhere safe. Somewhere far away.”
“Okay,” Sam shrugs. “I’ll pack the car, we’ll leave right now.”
“No,” Castiel says strongly, pulling Sam’s attention back to him. “I need to take Dean alone.”
For a moment, Sam says nothing; then he laughs, bright and incredulous. “You’re kidding, right? Dean is barely alive and you want me to let you take him somewhere and dump him by himself? No. No, I don’t think so, not gonna happen.”
“He won’t be alone,” Castiel explains, but the reassurance doesn’t dissuade Sam’s sudden anger.
“No!” he snaps, standing again. He stares hard down the line to Castiel’s eyes, and the fact that he feels more powerful because of a height difference is a stupid one, but it crosses his mind all the same. Fleetingly, he remembers the swell of Castiel’s anger in the den days before - the electric charge of the air, the ebony shadows building in the room’s darkest places - and immediately he softens his tone. Clears his throat and blinks the combativeness out of his eyes. “No, I wanna be with him.”
“You can’t,” Castiel answers wryly. “They can find you anywhere because of your blood, and if they find you they find Dean. We can’t risk that, so you have to be separated.”
Sam shakes his head stubbornly. “Castiel…”
“I will keep him safe,” is the angel’s only response, and then he doesn’t give Sam a choice before pressing two fingers to his forehead and blurring away his consciousness.
~ ~ ~
It isn’t surprising that Castiel’s hands are softer than they look. Of course they would be, Dean thinks. He’s a fucking angel, for one, and for two, whoever the guy is he’s possessing doesn’t look like he’s ever spent the day doing much harder work than pushing a pencil. Which is not to say his body isn’t nice because, fuck, it is, it’s goddamn perfect actually. A little softer than what Dean is used to from his own body - not the body of a hunter - but whoever the poor fuck was must have at least hit the gym a few good times before Castiel brain-kidnapped him or whatever. ‘Cause he looks pretty damn good, when it comes down to it.
The skin of Castiel’s open palms is soft, his fingers nimble, as they slide along the length of Dean’s chest, stroke a long line down his side. And it doesn’t hurt, because in his dreams he’s not injured. There are no black eyes or busted lips, no gaping wound in his side. There’s no pain at all; just impossible heights of pleasure.
Castiel has become a permanent fixture in his dreams lately, a fact which he might have attributed to Belial fucking with him, getting his demonic kicks in some twisted way from watching his prisoner writhe around with an honest-to-God angel - that is, if he hadn’t stopped caring so long ago. He couldn’t give a flying shit about how Castiel got into his dreams, just that he is there is all that really matters.
A sonic heat blares in his head when Castiel’s eyes flash, mirror-like and silver, above him. For a transient moment the spell must break, because he sees Castiel - the real Castiel - above him, and he is not dark and teasing and he is not licking the honey-sweet coating from his lips, but rather looking down at Dean with genuine concern etched all across those perfectly-measured features. His hand rests on Dean’s forehead and it is comforting and cool against the turbulent fire building in his flesh. Dean almost has the aptitude to say something, the only word that can come to mind in the midst of all these psychotropic ins-and-outs and smearing colors and bleeding lights, but before he can choke out help, he is gone again. The coolness of Castiel’s hand leaves his forehead and suddenly the world is feverish and flushed again, so hot it’s almost as if he’s fueling a blaze of Hellfire somewhere deep inside his own body.
Castiel’s breath hisses down his throat and tickles his ear. “Stay with me,” he says, but it’s not really his voice - it’s Belial’s. And even though Dean knows this, knows that this is some terrible, unnatural manipulation that has distorted all his concepts of time and space, and he’s pretty sure it’s killing him, when Castiel flattens his chest to his and his hands sear perfect prints along the flesh of Dean’s stomach, it doesn’t matter. Everything else just kind of stops existing when he gives himself over.
~ ~ ~
When Sam wakes up, he is beyond furious.
It takes a few minutes for him to regain his bearings, but then he remembers the demons from town, and he remembers killing them and milking a long draw of blood from one of their wrists, the subsequent sweet rush of control, and the mad dash back to Bobby’s, and he remembers Dean lying just as still and weak as he’d been the day before, and then he remembers Castiel and his blood flares. By the time he makes it to the living room, he’s hysterical.
It takes two hours for Bobby to calm him down enough to form logical sentences. They think they’ve stumbled across a genius epiphany when Sam gets online and tracks the GPS in Dean’s cell phone, but the excitement dies quickly when Bobby finds it sitting idly on the dining room table, still specked with blood and dead-batteried.
This time, it takes longer than two hours.
~ ~ ~
Dean’s eyes move restlessly beneath their lids as he sleeps, and by the movement Castiel can tell he isn’t so much dreaming as he is hallucinating. The power of the illusions has taken over his mind, enough for him to think they’re real, enough for his physical body not to matter anymore. Castiel feels a certain sympathy for him as he dabs the glaze of sweat from the man’s forehead. He understands that Dean doesn’t want to deal with the pain anymore, but doesn’t understand how he could possibly be content in his dreamland. Doesn’t he know this means he is dying? That Belial is winning, and Lilith is winning, and Lucifer is going to rise if he doesn’t wake up?
When he peels off Dean’s t-shirt, the heat from his body is blistering. Castiel lets the shirt fall aside, studying Dean closely as he gently lays him down. There is a strange kind of tension in his face, a restless discomfort, and when Castiel gets close enough he can hear Dean’s teeth chattering lightly. With a sigh, the angel pulls back and slips his jacket off, pushes his sleeves up to the elbow. He bends one knee onto the bed and steadies his hands against Dean’s shoulders, slick with sweat against his grip, and for a moment he pauses, before he does the only thing he can think to do that might bring Dean a little relief. The thing he’s known to do since the beginning, but has been holding off for as long as he could. Now, though, there’s not a doubt in his mind of what needs to be done. Losing the war is out of the question. Losing Dean is out of the question.
He doesn’t take the time to steel himself any further before he flattens one palm against Dean’s forehead, then lowers the other into the perfect mirror of the brand scarred into Dean’s shoulder.
~ ~ ~
When his eyes shoot open, the first thing Dean notices is pain, but it passes quickly when he focuses on the hand against his forehead. There’s that - the same coolness that he remembers from before - but there’s also something else too, something that feels like he just stuck a fucking screwdriver in a wall socket, and it’s originating from his shoulder. From the burn of Castiel’s hand, his own personal stamp of ownership left there when he dragged Dean out of Hell. His breaths shake out quickly before evening out, and it surprises him when they do - he’s still sick, he shouldn’t be able to breathe like this. He searches Castiel’s face for answers desperately, wants to ask if he’s been healed, but he can’t really form words and what comes out of his mouth is just a guttural whimper. He hates how fragile it sounds.
“Dean, listen to me,” Castiel is saying. His voice is stern and all-encompassing, the only thing that Dean can hear, and his eyes - Jesus Christ, his eyes, they’re so bright. Something about him is unnatural, different from what he usually is. Somehow less human, much greater, as if all the light in the room is spilling from his eyes, and that light is etching his words permanently into Dean’s brain. It might have scared him, but the soothing coolness that washes over him at Castiel’s touch tells him not to worry. Even though somewhere inside, buried beneath layers of sweat and fire and lust and exhaustion, he knows he is dying, it doesn’t seem to matter when Castiel’s skin is against his. The angel’s hand is a steady pressure, cool but not too cold, more comforting than anything Dean has ever felt. He knows it has to be some kind of angel thing, that Castiel is mind-whammying him and this isn’t exactly real or fair, but he feels so much better, finally alive, that he doesn’t really give a fuck what it is. He just doesn’t want it to end.
“You need to wake up,” Castiel says, somehow oppressively loud even though his voice is calm and, Dean senses, not even raised. It’s just… powerful. He can’t escape it. “Do you hear me?”
Dean tries to nod, but he can’t do much else besides close his eyes and revel in the temporary relaxation. “I can keep your body safe,” Castiel continues, “But you need to bring yourself back. You need to wake up, Dean.”
His voice is authoritative and demanding and deliciously smooth and unfaltering, and Dean loves the sound of it too much to comprehend. This is the man with whom he has spent the last significant eternities of his life with, the days bleeding into reckless spins where time didn’t matter. They hadn’t slept or eaten or stopped at all, and even if he was weaker than he’d ever been it was all still so amazing. The angel’s body was cool when he needed it to be, warm when he wanted, and he was strong but still let Dean take control whenever he wanted. Castiel on one side, lying below him with the cloying taste of his lips and skin burning on Dean’s tongue; and Belial above him, bowing his back in ways Dean didn’t even know he could bend, Belial’s jewel-studded ears glinting like a signal fire, capturing Dean’s attention as every sound he made was caught on the curl of the demon’s tongue.
A small smile slides onto Dean’s lips as he shifts his hand, splaying it loosely on Castiel’s chest. He sees the mischievous glint of the angel’s eyes above him, the naked streak of his chest, his perfectly-shaped arms. Could practically taste the delectable raw-sugar kiss of his lips. He can see two scenes playing out before him, the clear-cut blue of true Castiel’s eyes staring down at him, trying to wrench him out of a world he’s not sure he wants to leave, and the other Castiel, the dark one, the one who’s all candy-sweet and grinning. The world is flickering before his eyes, as if the two Castiels are fighting for dominance, fighting over which of them gets to keep Dean. It almost makes him laugh.
The real Castiel’s fingers wrap around Dean’s wrist, flattening it to the bed as he writhes weakly up from the bed. “Dean,” he calls, but Dean only responds with a smirk.
He sees Castiel’s mouth curve into a grin, sees those full lips part and his tongue sneak out in a line as it slides along his throat, mapping his sternum and every branch of rib along its length. There’s a whisper of his name, not Castiel’s voice but Belial’s, and the demon is suddenly there, pushing Dean’s knees apart as Castiel crawls between them. Castiel is kneading at Dean’s hipbone as Belial is pulling him up by the hair into a long deep kiss, and Dean can see their tongues turning and lapping at each other from where he lays. They break apart, and Castiel bends to lick at where his hands were, on the curve of Dean’s hipbone, and Belial is grinning from behind Castiel, long wide hands splaying all across the angel’s back. The burning red glow of this world is swallowing up all the clear-cut flashes of Castiel’s true face, the concern drawn into it and the silent pleas his mouth forms as he begs for Dean to come back, to wake up.
Dean’s eyes flutter closed and his tongue comes out to slide along his lips. His neck arches back in a long line of throat as he groans, something animal and alive, before his face falls back into that familiar mask of uneasy rest and Castiel can’t do a damn thing to bring him back again.
At the point when Castiel is moaning around Dean’s cock in the best goddamn blowjob he’s ever had, while his tongue jerks with every time Belial fucks him - fucks Castiel with his red-black eyes set hard on Dean’s face above - that’s when the cool pressure subsides and Dean slips completely back into the grips of his fever.
~ ~ ~
Castiel has been praying all morning.
A full day has passed since they left South Dakota. Since they left Sam. Castiel knows Sam will be furious, his rage a blinded mask across rational thought, but it was a necessary evil. The younger Winchester would probably hate him for a while, several months maybe, and Castiel has even accepted the fact that Sam may very well never forgive him, but that isn’t his chief concern right now. That distinction belongs to Dean. But then he also knows that Dean will probably be livid, too. He will probably scream and throw things, probably sling curse words and acidic blame at the angel, but the lash-outs were sure to only be temporary, and they didn’t intimidate him. More than anything it amuses Castiel how Dean is so belligerent, always spitting accusations and swiping insults at him like a wildcat. His ferocity is endearing. Even though Castiel can bank on the fact that Dean will hate him when he wakes up, he knows that eventually the anger will pass. It always does. Dean keeps up his front perfectly, and more often than not when he speaks with Castiel it is in an argument or an insult, but both of them know he appreciates the angel’s constant vigilance. They’ve never built this trust into words, never exchanged it in a confession or a promise, but it’s a mutual understanding that it does not have to be spoken. It is just there, the honest truth.
Twilight is staining the world outside before Castiel rises from his chair and stands over Dean. His eyes remain somber, the set of his jaw decided; he shrugs his jacket off and crawls onto the bed, nestling into the space between Dean’s knees. Dean himself is pale and sweat-slicked, his face sunken and still bruised from the fight several days before.
This time when he presses his hand inside the grooves of the bran on Dean’s skin, the first effect is a swarming heat, spiraling all along his body in an unstoppable helix. Then it’s as though he is moving very, very fast, and being dragged downward through the ground with such incredible gravity it could almost crush every bone in this fragile human body that Castiel has all but made his own. It is disorienting, but he manages to last through it and begin searching for Dean through the vast bevy of bodies, male and female and neither and everything in between. Demons in their true forms, all cut-up and flayed, burned, all the human flesh singed away to leave something monstrous and base behind. Lipless, blackened faces that lap and curl their pink tongues along the bodies of other primordial squirming things. This is what the soul boils down to over decades in Hell, centuries, even millennia depending on the soul. It could be days for some, hours for some. Forty years for others.
Castiel keeps his eyes determinedly focused. He knows the world around him is not an authentic place, that it is simply a creation, not even part of the physical plane, but that doesn’t stop it from feeling just as genuine and substantial as reality. Just as good.
It is not hard to find Dean, and when he does, Castiel is shaken by the state of him. He is darkened somehow, slick, a snake underwater, slippery and strong and a creature of pure driven instinct. His eyes, blackened almost to opacity, settle on Castiel as he pulls in a long breath and stretches out his arms receptively. It is oppressively hot, the air thick and wet, exotic and saturated in dark shades of crimson, and when Castiel’s eyes narrow as he sees a body form at Dean’s side, collecting itself from curling black smoke, it is him. It is another Castiel, a perfect replica of the body he now inhabits. He is standing in front of Dean and yet he is also kneeling at his own feet, and it takes a moment for it to make sense but eventually he catches on - the creature he sees now is the Castiel that Dean imagines. It is a fictitious creation by Belial, some monster dredged from deep inside Dean’s subconscious and manifested as a purely physical being. The creature with his face claws a line up his body, catching in his belt and pawing like a neglected animal at his shirt. With a sneer, he knocks its grasping hands away and kneels at Dean’s side, shaking his shoulder lightly. He lays a hand on Dean’s chest, staring hard at him.
The peculiar gray cast of Dean’s eyes clears momentarily and he gasps, but it is fleeting and just as soon he is smirking, lost again, and pulling at Castiel’s wrists, pulling him down, pulling him deeper into the dark swirl of his fabricated world. “Dean,” Castiel barks, shrugging away the hordes of groping hands that claw at his entire body, pulling him every direction, stretching and tearing the fabric of his clothes. “Dean, you have to wake up.”
Dean arches in response as the creature with Castiel’s face slinks up his body, and when they kiss, Castiel can feel the euphoria crush over his own mind. He swallows it back and calls Dean’s name again. “Wake up!” he demands, but Dean is fully enraptured in the kiss. It’s hardly even a kiss, really, so much as a full-body affair, all sneaking hands and constricting arms and twisting legs and the satiation of an addiction, the slide of desperate sighs and how the creature in Dean’s arms seems to swallow up every remaining sliver of his soul with the hot brand of its mouth.
Castiel does not wait. Dean pulls his mouth from the demon’s with a sigh and Castiel uses the opportunity to press his palm to Dean’s forehead, his eyes snapping shut, his voice scraping low when he says, “Per venio Dios, ego exsuscito tu,” and then…
A flash of light, the streak of a scream, the blister of obsidian eyes burning into flesh, the tortured rip of a cry as lethal waves of heat roll through Dean’s veins, the clasp of a hand onto his shoulder, the sickly slide of inertia overhauling every cell in his body as he drags himself from the deepest recesses of unconsciousness, the first pull of air into his lungs that he’s felt in days…
~ ~ ~
Dean is awake.
The first thing he does is cough, his body pulling tightly in on itself as all the muscles of his torso jerk and spasm. He throws out a hand blindly, searching for he doesn’t even know what, but comes up empty. Finally, when he can draw a breath again, he croaks out, “Castiel!”
The angel is against the far wall, apparently thrown there by some force outside himself, and panting. His eyes come to Dean’s and they are shaken, but strong. He’s okay. It takes a minute for him to climb to his feet and come back to the bedside.
Again, Dean coughs; he swipes at his mouth when he tastes blood and winces against the devastating pain in his side. “You sonofabitch,” is the first thing he says when he can speak again. His voice is barely a husk of its usual self, which startles him. Castiel purses his lips slightly, surveying Dean’s body in a way that makes Dean feel uncomfortable. Maybe even a little violated. The angel turns his back to shrug his coat on.
“I am sorry, Dean,” Castiel responds, voice calm and calculated. It’s an apology, but it doesn’t sound sincere; most of his apologies don’t, though, so Dean can’t really tell the difference.
“I oughtta choke you with your fuckin’ halo, man,” Dean spits. “You came into my head. You had no right.” He draws a sharp breath and tries to sit up, but a bruising fire builds in his side and he drops flat with a strangled cry.
“You need to lie still,” Castiel says as he looks over his shoulder at Dean. His eyes crawl over the man’s body again, from his face to his side. “You’ll burst your stitches.”
“Got any superglue around?” Dean asks sarcastically, though Castiel does not laugh. This time Dean manages to sit up, propping himself against the headboard even through the pain. He knows it’s stupid to risk breaking the stitches in his side, but he’s groggy and irrational and pissed off right now so it’s a nonissue. He wants to ask if the spell is gone, but as soon as he sits up and feels the unexpected tilt of the room and the pressure in his head and the burn of his skin, he knows it’s still here. “The hell happened?” he asks. His throat is parched, but Castiel seems to have read his mind and hands him a glass of water from the nightstand.
“I pulled you from the grip of Belial’s spell,” he says, and he sounds so tired that Dean almost feels sorry for him. Then he freezes; he can feel his heart hammer in his chest as he searches Castiel’s face.
“So you really came into my dream?”
Castiel nods, lowering onto the bed near Dean’s feet; Dean knocks back the whole glass of water in one drink. When the last drop rolls down his throat, he rakes the back of one wrist over his lips.
“So you were there? Like, you saw my actual dreams?”
“Yes,” Castiel says through a sigh. “I had to. You weren’t waking easily.”
Dean hikes an eyebrow, allowing a brief silence to lull. He suddenly feels awkward, really fucking awkward, and more than a little sacrilegious since, hello, he’s been dreaming about fucking an angel. And the angel he’s been dreaming about fucking has just waltzed straight into said dream, popped in for a visit right in the middle of an orgy with the whole cheerleading squad and half the football team, not to mention Castiel himself, and Belial too, and it’s just really all a little too weird. Though to be fair Castiel shows no outward signs of even knowing that for the past four days, Dean has hardly dreamt of anything else besides him. More specifically, about fucking him seven ways from Sunday on an impressive loop. He lowers his eyes to the glass in his hand and even though it’s stupid and elementary and superstitious, he finds himself crossing his fingers. Maybe Castiel didn’t see that part. “So you… saw. My dreams.”
“They weren’t dreams, Dean, they were illusions. Complex ones Belial created to tempt you into joining his Legions.”
His voice is cool, but still Dean avoids eye contact as much as possible. He sets the glass aside and sits up a little more, wincing as he does. Castiel’s eyes follow his movements. “So the stuff I saw… It wasn’t stuff I thought up, was it? That was totally Belial’s fault, right?”
“Generally. But when Belial got wind of your true desires, he used them against you.” Castiel glances to the floor and Dean swears he can almost see a smirk skewing those stupidly alluring pale pink lips.
Dean blinks hard; shudders. Oh, goddammit.
He coughs. “Why do I still feel sick?” he asks to change the subject, and is surprised, a little annoyed for some reason, when Castiel’s hand comes up to feel his forehead. He almost pulls away from the touch, but the refreshing coolness it brings makes him decide otherwise.
“You are still sick,” Castiel explains as he takes his hand away. Immediately, Dean misses it. Ridiculous amounts, actually. “I didn’t cure you; just woke you up.”
Dean lowers himself to the bed again with a groan. “Thanks for that,” he says wryly, his words saturated in sarcasm. “Now I can squirm around in pain while I’m awake, as opposed to when I was unconscious. Awesome.”
Castiel’s eyes fix hard on Dean, and it makes him nervous. He doesn’t meet the gaze. For a long time the angel doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything at all, just spaces right the fuck out and simply watches Dean, which - a month ago Dean would have found annoying, but not so much now. To Dean, it seems like ten minutes go by, when in fact he knows it’s probably only been one or two. “You need to eat,” Castiel says finally as he stands.
Dean gives a small grunt in reply as he begins studying his surroundings. It’s a wooden room, old if the deep veins of the grain say anything; he’s on a bed, an actual bed instead of Bobby’s ancient lumpy sofa, and there’s a bright yellow spill of afternoon sunlight outside the uncurtained windows. He studies the linen shade of the lamp beside the bed, noticing that there is no alarm clock. Nope; this is definitely nowhere he knows. “Where am I?” he asks after absorbing it all.
“Montana,” Castiel answers quickly. “West of Bynum. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Sam around?”
Castiel’s gaze lands hard on Dean and he keeps his voice low when he says, “No.”
When he doesn’t receive any explanation, Dean’s eyes narrow. “Where is he?”
“He’s safe,” the angel replies, and it should make Dean angry but, fuck, he just doesn’t have the energy for a confrontation right now. “You needed to be away from him. It was too easy for Belial to find you.”
Another small hum. Castiel leaves, and when he comes back he tosses a PowerBar at Dean’s chest. “Eat something. You’re weak.”
Dean picks up the foil package with a hiked eyebrow. “No t-bones?”
Castiel slides a chastising look in his direction, an almost invisible smirk playing across his features. With a snicker, Dean opens the package without any real protest and tries to tell himself that that’s hunger he feels stirring low in the floor of his hips.
“Dean, there’s something you need to know,” Castiel says dryly as he sits down again. Dean abstractedly wonders if it’s too much to enjoy his first meal in days in peace, but doesn’t bring it up. Castiel never really seems to fully appreciate his sarcasm anyway, the smug bastard. He waits for the angel to finish, not a little disturbed by the sternness in his expression, the long blank of silence that follows. Castiel seems to be withdrawn into thought for a long time before he continues.
“There is a way for me to cure you,” he says. His gaze comes up from the floor to steady on Dean’s face. “The spell of a demon can be broken by an angel through the transfer of Grace.”
Dean snorts back a laugh through a small fit of coughing, then gives a decidedly annoyed growl as he tosses the empty wrapper onto the table. “Dude,” he begins with another small cough, “I’m up for anything if it’ll get rid of this damn fever.” He wants to say something about how he’d felt better, really and truly better, when Castiel touched him. Wants to ask why exactly that was, whether it was angelic mojo or something, grace transfer or whatever, or just his wild-ass imagination. But he’s grateful his teeth are kind of stuck together with caramel right now, as that doesn’t seem like the best thing to bring up with somebody like Castiel. And besides, getting this goddamn fever out of his system is more important than just about anything right now anyway, so he couldn’t care less how it works or what kind of mojo Castiel was working on him when he touched him before. He just wants the shit out of his body, stat.
“I can give you temporary relief by touch,” Castiel sighs, “But it won’t cure you. The spell is too strong.”
“Alright,” Dean says with a shrug. “Whatever. What do we do?”
He stares for a moment, waiting for Castiel to utter some magical prayer or blessed incantation, waiting for holy golden light to spread across his body or some giant fucking hand to come out of the sky and whack him on the forehead, but instead he just gets wide-eyed shock and a full-body rush of heat, and confusion, and maybe even anger, when Castiel leans forward and presses his lips against Dean’s in a tentative, but warm, close-lipped kiss.
For a moment, Dean just blinks. He stares into Castiel’s open eyes and doesn’t move and holds his breath, and his mind is busy spinning the fuck out, thinking is this seriously going down, thinking oh my fucking god are you serious and thinking this has to be some other twisted fever hallucination his brain conjured up when it got bored with the perpetual orgy scenes. And then he just thinks what the fuck?! and makes a small whimper of confused protest against Castiel’s mouth.
When Castiel pulls away, his eyes are curious and his lips are kiss-flushed, stained magenta, and even though he looks about as threatening as a fucking kitten with a ball of string, and even though the kiss made Dean feel immeasurably better than he has in weeks, Dean’s immediate reaction is to whip out a fist as hard and fast as he can against Castiel’s jaw.
His head turns sharply with the impact, but Castiel doesn’t say anything or even close his eyes. A sigh shakes out of his throat when he turns back to Dean, his face as blank and expressionless as ever, lightly tonguing the small blossom of blood in one corner of his mouth. Dean pulls in a seething breath and wants to just go the fuck to town, whip out another punch and another one and another one until Castiel begs him to stop or fought back or just did something, but then the pain returns and hits him like a fucking semi, and his thought train derails.
His vision goes white.
Stomach bottoms out.
He hadn’t even noticed it was gone until it returned, and - oh shit. It was only gone when Castiel was kissing him.
The burn of Dean’s skin reaches almost unbearable heights as his voice cracks with a pained moan, as the fever surges back through his system with a fucking vendetta from the deepest belly of Hell, wiping out his brain and tearing through his veins sharper than battery acid. His muscles tighten, constrict in pain with a quick snap, and his eyes slam shut so hard he’s seeing sparkles. He’s hot, so hot, he’s almost delirious because of it, and Castiel says his name and just fuck it, fuck it all, he fists a hand in the angel’s shirt and pulls him hard into another kiss. It’s a conscious decision, but he can’t explain it. And when he feels a few degrees of heat slip from his body, feels the perpetual ache in his skull begin to subside, he doesn’t even want to explain it.
He’s not sure when it happens but somehow one of his hands ends up on the side of Castiel’s neck, feathery dark hair fringing along his fingertips, and the angel slinks just barely closer until his tongue is inside Dean’s mouth, darting past his lips and sweeping around, like he’s nervous about it or he doesn’t quite know what to do. He does something - something Dean can’t quite pinpoint or define - and suddenly he’s pulling all the air out of Dean’s lungs in one long, slow draw. But no; no, it’s more than his air - he’s pulling out all of his sickness, replacing it with something immaculate and divine that seeps past Dean’s lips and along his tongue, drips down his throat like a sweet honey, blooming all through his belly and along his spine, into every nerve and muscle in his body. Dean’s head starts to spin and suddenly he feels dizzy, but - fuck, holy shit, Jesus H. Christ. Castiel’s kiss in real life is just as addictive as it was back in the dreamworld, maybe even more so, and Dean can’t help but kiss back, forcing their lips together so powerfully that Castiel sighs into his mouth.
A small moan rattles from Dean’s throat as the thick band around his ribs slackens. His eyes flutter open for the briefest second and when they do, the surprising blue of Castiel’s is almost overbearing. The angel does not make a sound or even close his eyes, which Dean finds a little weird, honestly, but the result is all the same when it comes down it, and it’s fucking stellar - the kiss is healing him.
Dean can feel his body slowly unfolding, gaining its natural strength back in a slow-motion metamorphosis. It’s a sweet, blissful feeling as the fever slips from his cells, as it dissipates into a cool misty aura, simmering out of his blood into nonexistence. He closes his eyes against the sensation, feeling about like he could leap clear through the fucking stratosphere at this point because he’s so energetic, and it’s almost overwhelming but the only thing that makes sense is to kiss Castiel even harder. Dean drags a breath in through his nose, keeping the fusion of their mouths in tact because he can’t risk losing this. The kiss has an almost addictive quality to it, the flow of pure healing energy in a stream from Castiel’s body into his something obscure and intoxicating, maddening as it slides effortlessly between them with the brush of tongue against tongue, something he can’t identify but that he never wants to lose. And when he splays his hands stiffly below Castiel’s jawline to hold him in place, to make it so that there’s no possible way he can break their lips apart, something twists in Dean’s head and he recognizes what it is, that steady luminescent flow that tastes so sweet and pure on his tongue, the reason he never wants to stop kissing Castiel.
It’s power.
The thought blooms and Dean gives a quiet moan that surprises him just as much as it does Castiel.
Castiel breaks the line of their lips first and pulls back to a comfortable distance. His eyes are clean and pure, flaring a little brighter than usual maybe, but they betray nothing. He keeps his voice carefully measured when he says, “Your fever,” and it’s quiet and more than a little breathy and lilted with something that, if Dean didn’t know better, he would think was desire.
And yeah, honestly? It’s pretty fucking hot.
Dean’s brain has all but shut down, but Castiel’s words kick it back into gear after several seconds. He blinks, over and over again quickly, then feels at his forehead - cool. He glances up to Castiel with a smile, and despite his physical injuries still being there, he doesn’t feel them at all. His body seems flooded with something, some unnatural kind of light that is leaping and somersaulting deep in his chest somewhere. It is un-fucking-believable.
“What did you do?” he asks, stunned. His hand splays on his chest as he draws a perfectly clear breath, oh Jesus Christ yes, no fucking pneumatic rattle, and he cannot stop smiling like a goddamn schoolboy for anything, which at any other time might make him feel like a total idiot, but - man, fuck. “What was that?”
Castiel smiles slightly, as much as he ever does, a vague curve bending his lips as his eyes drop to Dean’s chest; Dean follows his gaze, but he can’t see anything there. “Grace,” Castiel says quietly.
A full grin sprawls across Dean’s face as he quirks his head. He doesn’t know whether to believe Castiel or not, and he honestly has no idea what that even means, but it doesn’t matter because he feels like fucking Superman at this juncture.
“You need to remain still,” Castiel says, all seriousness and sobriety again. “You won’t feel your injuries for a while, but they are still there. You need to be careful not to rip the stitches.”
Dean knits his eyebrows, petulant. “Come on, dude, I’ve been on my ass for two weeks now! Can’t I at least get up to take a piss?”
Castiel’s body tenses in a laugh that remains completely soundless. “You may move around, just be careful.”
“So I’m cured now? Belial’s spell - it’s totally gone?”
“Yes.”
“Totally gone. I’m not talkin’ some angelic mojo-trick just to hide it or somethin’. It’s completely done?”
“Yes.”
“For good?”
“Yes, Dean,” Castiel answers through the shrug of another silent laugh. Abstractedly Dean congratulates himself - two laughs in less than five minutes. It’s a huge accomplishment, really, taking into account it took almost six months to get Castiel to laugh the first time. That silent tight curve of his lips, as if he was straining not to show his teeth or make a sound. His shoulders pulling up in a loose shrug and his head nodding just barely, with the way that remarkable blue of his eyes caught the sunlight and threw it back out around the playground. Clean white sunlight sprawling all over his skin, washing around in his hair.
It takes about a good solid minute for Dean to pull himself back to the present after that image.
A brief silence settles as Dean lets it sink in, the realization that he is finally free of the sickness plaguing his body and mind for the last immeasurable stretch of days. Suddenly, his face crinkles in confusion.
“What day is it?” he asks.
Again, Castiel’s laugh is silent. Three in under five minutes? Fuck me, this should be on the six o’clock broadcast, Dean thinks with a crooked smirk.
Castiel stands and takes a few easy steps toward the door. He turns when he gets there, peering at Dean over his shoulder. “Tuesday,” he says softly, then, “Take care of yourself, Dean.”
And for some reason it feels unfinished, as if there’s something else that should be said before he leaves, but by the time Dean looks up he’s already gone.
The only thought in his head, the only thing he’ll allow himself to think after Castiel leaves - because goddammit he is not going to sit here and jack off to the fever-flushed memory of making out with an angel, his angel, fucking Cas for cryin’ out loud - is that fuck, his teeth hurt, and abstractedly he has to wonder just how much candy he’s eaten in the past two weeks.
~ ~ ~
{to be continued...}
ONTO PART FIVE.