Fic: The Propensities of Good Men, 8/15
OH HEY I FOUND ONE. A way to procrastinate exercising, I mean. I'll feed you guys some fic. Agreed?
Before the shenanigans:
Dear Livejournal,
Your word limits raep my soul. 14K words is not too much to ask, is it? When you do things like cut my chapters off before some pornographic fun important plot information, you are killing my happiness. And possibly kittens. Or nuns. Or all of the above.
In summation: PLEASE STOP SUCKING MKAY? YOU'RE KEEPING PORN FROM THE PEOPLE. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.
Disgruntled-ly Yours,
Vin.
*grumble grumble*
Title: The Propensities of Good Men, 8/15
Characters: Castiel, Dean, Sam, Zachariah
Pairing(s): Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~9,895
Disclaimer: Pffft, I wish.
Warnings: Blood and gore, language, torture, dark!Sam, manly tears of manliness, um crucifixion, Zachariah being a dick. You know the drill.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
~ ~ ~
It didn’t happen for almost an hour, but eventually the demons did come. Dean was surprised when it happened - even demons were smarter than this, usually - and, okay, yeah, he did feel a little bad for putting Sam in harm’s way, but technically it was his own damn fault. Dean had suggested Sam hang back at the motel, but he should have known better. Sam was smarter than that; he knew what Dean intended to do. So when Dean said hey maybe it would be better if you just wait at the motel in case Cas comes back, and Sam had stared at him with his eyebrows crinkled in that bitchy, offended way of his, Dean hadn’t pressed it any further.
At the school, the demons were wasted fast, throats split wide open in one fiery slash from Ruby’s knife - their knife, Dean’s and Sam’s, now that the bitch was dead - all but one of them.
They set up the devil’s trap in what looks like a biology classroom, colorful posters of tree frogs and amoebas and the skeletal system smattering the walls. The demon is tied to a chair, brooding and silent before them. Dean hardly waits for Sam to finish sealing the door with a salt line before he slugs the bastard right in the cheekbone, the silver glint of his ring opening a gash beneath the possessed man’s eye. A mechanic, by the looks of him, and if the film of grimy black smudges on his clothes said anything. Dean sees a nametag glitter on his shirt - Jose - and rips it off in one easy movement. He hovers the knife in front of the demon’s face.
“Tell me where he is.”
“No,” the demon says easily.
“Tell me where the fuck he is!” Dean shouts. He fists a hand in the demon’s shirt and presses the tip of the dagger hard into his throat, prompting a hushed whimper from the creature’s mouth. “Where is Castiel?”
The demon hesitates, eyes fixed on the blade, as a smile bleeds onto his lips. “Me vale madre, pendejo,” he growls, prompting another hasty blow to the jaw.
“Where?!”
“Dean,” Sam interrupts, “Let me.” Dean hesitates, but Sam raises his eyebrows. “Let me.”
The demon’s eyes flash when he glances to Dean. He squirms uncomfortably in the chair, twists against the knots of rope and duct tape around his wrists, and hisses spitefully when Dean sprinkles a few drops of holy water on his skin, satisfied with the crisp sizzling and popping sounds that follow the contact. It’s not hard to recognize the emotion clouding the demon’s features - or, well, this Jose guy’s features, though he’s hardly more than an unfortunate muppet at this point - the one that chases away the black in his eyes and shrinks his shoulders into a tight shrug.
Fear.
He’s afraid of Sam.
“Stop squirming,” Dean says flatly as Sam steps forward.
“You heard him,” Sam says. The demon shakes his head, so Sam quirks a smile on one side and tilts his head just slightly. At the movement, the demon shrieks something awful and guttural.
“Where,” Sam sneers. Dean swallows behind him, not really knowing if he should be more wary of the demon or of his brother. Then kicks himself for even thinking there’s a competition, because what the fuck?
The demon relaxes when momentarily Sam lets up. “Vete al carajo, gabacho,” he says with a laugh.
Sam raises a hand.
“Tell us where he is, or I kill you right now,” he says, the slide of his voice smooth and cold and black, more than a little terrifying. With the motion of Sam’s hand the demon seems to collapse in on himself, short spurts of black smoke curling from his mouth between screams. Dean watches over Sam’s shoulder; his grip on the knife tightens instinctively. He considers laying a hand on his brother’s shoulder, telling him to lay off a little, that they can’t kill the bastard yet, they need to find out where Castiel is and this guy is their best shot, but he keeps his distance. He tries to tell himself it’s out of discipline, out of trusting Sam to know what he’s doing well enough to stop on his own when he needs to stop. Not out of - well, fear.
A muscle near the edge of Sam’s mouth twitches when his wrist angles slightly, prompting a sharp cry from the demon. A larger wisp of smoke leaks from his mouth, but he sucks it back in immediately. Dean can’t see Sam’s face from where he stands, but he can almost feel the burn of his eyes, even from behind him. Sam’s eyes that he very desperately hopes are still brown.
Finally, the demon breaks.
“A shipping warehouse,” he chokes out. Dean tries to hide the frantic worry in his voice, but he does a piss-poor job of it and honestly he just can’t bring himself to give a shit right now. All that matters is Castiel. Finding him, making sure he’s safe. Making sure he’s even alive.
“Where? What warehouse, where is it?”
The demon winces and huffs out a series of heavy breaths. “East 10th,” he says, “Behind Berger street.”
The line of Sam’s arm straightens again and he steels his fingers. The demon gives a terrible screech and bows backward in the chair, nearly tipping it straight over. “I told you already!”
An amused smirk plays on Sam’s lips as he slowly turns his hand. He sounds alarmingly comfortable when he says, “I know.”
Black smoke barrels out of the demon’s mouth, collecting around his feet and soaking into the floor in a dirty gray residue. A few seconds pass before Sam lowers his hand, then when he turns around his eyes seem to be darker than usual.
Dean tries not to notice.
Sam jerks his head toward the door. “Come on,” he says.
~ ~ ~
It’s a cargo train loading station. Dean sees that when they arrive and there are ISO crates and railcars stacked idly around the complex. They make it through the first building, a squat corrugated steel structure with cramped offices and a small section of lockers crammed against the far wall. When there’s nothing in it, Dean starts wondering if maybe the demon lied, maybe Castiel isn’t here. And Jesus fucking Christ, he wants to punch something…
The second building is brimming with tall shelves, industrial grades ones all cluttered and crammed with crates and beams and train components, huge pieces of metal that Dean can only guess what the hell they are. It seems weird - that demons would choose a place like this to have their fun. The place is chock full of iron - railroad spikes, track bars, crowbars, tools, everything under the fucking sun sucked dry of color and shoved into dark dirty crates. But then he’s thinking that Belial’s probably far too powerful to be affected by anything as elementary as iron anyway, and he’s remembering how the bastard stepped clean over their salt lines back in Eminence without even flinching, and he’s thinking that yeah, they’re probably in way over their heads this time, and that’s precisely the same instant he rounds the corner of the first row of shelves and sees Castiel.
The angel is tied up, arms drawn up into obtuse angles, link chains wrapped around his wrists and a two-foot railroad spike driven straight through the thin white bones of his feet - fucking crucified. When Dean’s stomach does a flip, he’s pretty sure it’s not gonna stop flipping for a good while. What little of Castiel’s skin that is still visible behind the bloodied mess of sigils and symbols carved into his flesh is a ghostly bluish color, some meeting point between blue and gray that skin should never be. Castiel’s clothes are gone and nowhere to be seen, even if Dean had been able to tear his eyes away from the angel’s body long enough to look for any. When his name instinctually rips out of Dean’s throat, Castiel doesn’t respond. He isn’t moving.
Christ, he isn’t even breathing.
Dean is at Castiel’s side in less than a heartbeat, tangling with the chains that hold him in place, but he jerks back instantly at the touch, spinning on his heels at a bright searing pop of pain. “Fuck!” he yells, clasping his hand tightly between his knees. Sam makes it around the corner at the sound, eyes widening and jumping from the crucified angel on the wall and his brother bent sharply at the waist, breaths heaving as if he can’t decide which one he should pay more attention to.
“What happened?”
“The chains,” Dean pants against the lingering sting on his fingers. “They’re too hot to touch.” Whips his hand through the air in a quick snap, pacing in a circle, bending again, fucking anything to chase away the burn. “Fuck!”
And he figures, fuck it, his hand already hurts like a bitch anyway, and if he doesn’t get some of this tension out right the fuck now he’s going to blow a fucking gasket, so he spins and crashes his fist against the metal wall in a hard ringing smack. He sees Sam flinch at the impact and thinks he’s probably going to hear the obligatory are you okay? any minute now, and he really can’t deal with that right now, really doesn’t want to hear something so predictable and stupid and pointless right now, because Castiel, oh god Castiel…
The tension builds in his jaw until his teeth hurt. “No,” he mutters in a voice that’s so weak it frightens him.
Sam blinks. “No?”
“No,” Dean snaps loudly. “As in no, this is not how this is gonna happen. We gotta get him down. Think!”
He scrubs across his jaw. Paces to his left, to his right. Keeps his eyes fair and well the fuck away from Castiel’s body six short feet in front of him, close enough to reach out and touch, smooth away the blood and the pain and, fuck, just touch him.
Sam’s hands shrug out at his sides as his mouth works, opens and closes. “I don’t know.”
Dean paces some more, because what the fuck else could he do? “There’s gotta be something, Sam, gotta be a - a spell or a ritual or something.”
“Dean - I have no idea what to do,” Sam says softly, and Dean hopes to God or whoever’s currently not listening that his brother can’t see the formation of tears in his eyes.
And then Dean’s fists are in his jacket before he even knows what he’s doing, sprung clean across a ten-foot gap to white-knuckle hard into the fabric, and his breaths are erratic and his eyes are wild and desperate, less than a few inches separating their faces. Sam stumbles back a step or two before he steels himself. Dean doesn’t let go. “So what, you just wanna leave him?”
“No!” Sam counters, sounding offended. Dean releases him with a jerk, rubs over his lips again. He turns around so Sam can’t see his face and stilts a hand on his hip, the same one that still stings with white fire, throbbing and welting and swollen, the rough grate of denim too rich against his sensitized fingertips. He can picture that wilted, puppy-dog sparkle in his brother’s eyes as he stares at his back, the same one he’s seen a million times. The one that made an appearance every time Dad’s back spun and built up like a wall, Sam on one side, Dad on the other, Dean in the middle, the torn mediator. That was before Sam gave up on communicating, before Dad shut down with the predictability of go to your room and Sam did, holing up for the rest of the night and forcing Dean to take the couch. Before Dad got impatient and Sam got bitter. Before Sam said fuck it and threw in the towel, before he left. Dean knows that look all too well. It aches like a heart attack knowing that that must be what Sam looks like right now, but really he can’t bring himself to care enough to turn around, because there’s Castiel. Castiel who is cold and carved up and crucified, who’s been sliced seven ways from Sunday and then some, by the looks of it. Castiel who’s not moving, not breathing, not emanating that faint staticy hum Dean has grown so used to over the months of having his angel at his side.
Castiel who’s just - gone.
The sound of his own name barely even pulls him back to present. It’s Sam, and when Dean spins around quickly he’s got this sprawling smile on his face like he’s just won the fucking World Series. “Holy water,” Sam says as he scrabbles through his pockets for a flask. Dean watches as he twists the cap off and pours the water over the chains. “Belial sealed them,” Sam explains, “Holy water washes away any demonic spells. Blesses them.”
And any other time, Dean might have felt stupid for not thinking of it earlier, might toss out some smartass comment about Sam beating him to the chase, but he’s not really thinking about any of that as he watches the chains around Castiel’s wrist light up with a dull orange glow at the sprinkle of holy water. They bleed into yellow first, then into white, before they fade back to regular dull gray. Really all he’s thinking is that he needs to find a spike and a hammer, fast, and that he really loves how much of a dork his little brother is sometimes.
Dean springs into action instantly, tearing the place apart for tools he can’t possibly find fast enough. Luckily there’s a bin of spikes at his back and another one beside it where he finds a hammer, so he’s back at Castiel’s side with the spike inside one of the links and the hammer in his other hand before his brain even has time to catch up to what his body is doing. It’s an irresolute shot, one he’s not sure he’s going to make with how stupidly shaky his hands are, but it’s their only choice and fuck if he’s going to leave Castiel hanging up there all broken and naked and cold any longer. He glances to Sam, nods, and works his fingers on the slick hammer handle.
And then he swings.
Dean’s eyes slam shut with the impact, but open again when he hears the quiet clink of metal on metal. He drops the hammer with a loud clatter when the weight of the chains jerks Castiel’s arm down, pulling his body forward along with it in a wilted curl. Dean braces his hands on Castiel’s waist to hold him up, stomach lurching in a sick spin of nausea when he feels his fingers pierce places of the angel’s flesh, sink right into open wounds through crusted-over damp scabs of dark blood. He winces, rests his forehead against the wall. Fuck, Castiel is cold as a fucking stone slab, boneless, limp, nothing but dead weight.
Dean just about loses it then.
Sam snaps into action, stooping to pick up the hammer before he puts it right back down again. Dean is vaguely aware of him saying, “Hold him up,” before his eyes close against the sight of the thick spike of iron, blackened with half-coagulated blood, Castiel’s blood, jarring in a weak jiggle as Sam pulls it out. Against his better judgment Dean opens his eyes again, and - yeah, he really fucking shouldn’t have done that. A shiver like a thousand volts ratchets along his backbone when he sees the dark gape left in Castiel’s flesh, the hole gone clean through to the other side.
Sam doesn’t warn him before striking the hammer through the chains securing Castiel’s other wrist. Behind the jarring clang ricocheting around his skull, making his damn teeth chatter with the impact, Dean hears Sam call his name again and then he’s almost losing his balance as the rest of Castiel’s body weight falls against him.
Dead weight, Dean thinks, and his skin goes gold and sweaty and his eyes burn and his hands tremor and he forces the words out of his head.
He lies Castiel down slowly, lowers him to the floor taking care to keep the angel’s head and shoulders in his lap as he wrestles his jacket off. It doesn’t seem right to have him so exposed and bare, not in front of Sam; it feels sacrilegious and ten kinds of wrong, so he drapes his jacket across the thin stretch of Castiel’s hips as carefully as he can. The blood’s going to stain, he knows, going to ruin his favorite army-green terrain jacket, but at this point he couldn’t give a fuck less. Because Castiel is bleeding and Castiel still isn’t breathing, and they’ve got him down already so why the fuck isn’t he healing?
Dean’s eyes crawl across the reckless tangles of stabs and slashes on Castiel’s body, thick as a bramble field, like he’s been run through a fucking razor wire gauntlet, those and the blistered burns on his wrists, angry red welts encircling the slender white stalks. He swallows back a bundle of nerves as big as a fucking tennis ball as he watches Castiel’s chest, waiting for a rise or a fall that never happens.
“Cas, hey,” Dean whispers. He taps Castiel’s cheek lightly, then a little harder a second time. “Cas.”
Beside him, Sam rakes in an unsteady breath, and just - just fuck it. Dean’s not even going to try to hide the hot well of tears in his eyes anymore. It’s not worth the effort. And he knows Sam will ask him about it later, knows he will lay an understanding hand on his shoulder and ask if he’s okay, try for one of those deep heart-to-heart acknowledgments of pain he always goes for. Truth is he doesn’t even care. He’ll take the soulful looks and pleading eyes. Take the uncomfortable stretches of silence behind the question are you alright, man, because Castiel’s cold and still and dead weight, just dead weight. He’s ravaged and cut up beyond what stitches could fix, and Dean’s never seen anything like it before, with all the fucked-up shit he’s seen, he’s never seen anything like this, nothing that hurts this fucking much to look at, and just -
Fuck.
Cas.
Dean feels the tears sneak down his face in long lines as Sam’s hand brushes against his forearm, ghost-light like he’s not sure if he should or not. Dean doesn’t confirm or deny, doesn’t encourage or pull away; he’s busy staring at Castiel, how his eyelids are bruised and his lips are split open, the line of his jugular mapped with one precarious long sweep like some fucked up dissection slice or autopsy line or something. Dean resituates, jerks Castiel a little. His stomach clenches painfully when nothing happens but the awkward angle of Castiel’s neck as his head lolls to the side, dead arm falling to the floor with a hushed smack.
“He’s cold,” Dean says, though he doesn’t know why.
Sam’s hand sneaks up to find the place beneath Castiel’s jaw where the pulse should be the strongest, and oh fuck no, Dean doesn’t even want to know. Wants to knock Sam’s hand away and pull Castiel to him and hold him, clutch at his back, say of course he’s got a pulse, what the fuck, he’s going to heal, of course he’s going to heal, but none of that happens and instead Sam’s hand pulls back and Dean’s stays coiled loosely on the devastated stretch of skin over Castiel’s ribs.
Sam is quiet when he says, “He doesn’t have a pulse, Dean.”
A sound like a sob rips from Dean’s throat before he can stop it, tossing around the building in a ghostly echo before it makes the seamless transition into a bitter, “No.” Beside him, Sam’s eyes glitter, catching the sparse light of the warehouse as if he’s trying hard to hold himself together too. Which is the last thing Dean needs right now, because with all the shit that this is doing to him - tying him in knots seeing Castiel like this, ruined, torn up and shredded and degraded - he needs Sam to be the strong one, dammit. He needs him to pull some role reversal crap and act like the unshakable pillar for once, just be the constant one. If he doesn’t have somebody to hold the pieces of him together, he’s not sure he’s going to make it out of this shitstorm alive.
“No, no, no, Cas, this can’t happen, you can’t die,” Dean mumbles. When he gathers Castiel to his chest, it’s hard to ignore the coldness of his skin, how it doesn’t have much give when Dean moves his mouth against the soft sweep of unscathed flesh below Castiel’s ear, fuck, no, no, this is all kinds of wrong, all kinds of unfair, fuck fuck fuck.
“You’re a friggin’ angel, man, come on,” he’s still muttering when a warm weight that must be Sam’s hand presses against his back. He lowers Castiel back into his lap, studies the unchanged pallor of his dead skin and the lack of tension in his jaw and how his eyes don’t seem to close all the way. “You can’t die,” he repeats, because maybe if he says it enough, maybe if he prays to that stupid holy whatever that Castiel is always talking about, grace or God or Archangels, whatever the fuck it is, maybe, just maybe it will come true. Maybe he’ll be right.
Then again, Dean’s never had much luck with praying.
He skims blood-stained fingers down Castiel’s face, tracing the dent of his temple to the curve of his cheekbone, the line of his stubble-rough jaw. That mouth that had tasted so sweet prying open below his, bleeding all the doubt out of his brain when Castiel kissed him senseless and Dean had kissed back, just like he’s doing now when he leans close to the angel’s face and presses his lips softly to his, fuck if Sam’s watching, fuck if his brother is right there probably freaking the fuck out right about now. Dean doesn’t give a damn because there’s no warm puff of air on his face, no tension in the lips against his own, and he feels the hard scrape of his chest hollowing out because he’s kissing Castiel and Castiel isn’t kissing back.
And that? That’s when he breaks.
~ ~ ~
Sam watches it happen with eyes widened in astonishment.
Dean’s eyes draw tightly together, squinted into tight commas as his forehead lowers against Castiel’s and a sound like a whimper, something too small and pained to ever be something that should come out of Dean, fights from behind his lips. The same ones that were just pressed against Castiel’s in a tentative kiss that lingered just a little too long.
Sam blinks.
He’s confused, extremely confused and it’s safe to say a little freaked out, but right now they’ve got Legions at their heels and Belial hot on their trail. Even coming here at all was probably a stupid idea, monumentally stupid, though he’d never admit that to Dean in a million years unless he was in the mood for a serious beatdown. Really he wouldn’t even be surprised if Belial turned up any second, a victorious laugh lighting out of his lips and a whole army of Legions at his back, trained and ready to pounce at a snap. Shit, they’re practically sitting ducks in a place like this.
Sam clears his throat as quietly as he can. “Dean, I’m sorry, but… We have to leave.”
His brother doesn’t respond. Doesn’t even move.
Sam shifts around until he’s crouched at Castiel’s side, ready to stand. “We need to go,” he repeats, trying not to notice how there’s a fringe of tears collecting on the tips of Dean’s eyelashes, a warm line sneaking down the torn streak of Castiel’s cheek. “The Legions -”
“I heard you,” Dean cuts in without any real venom, and when he looks up he just looks so fractured, completely broken, directionless, and - Jesus Christ. Everything is written in his eyes, and suddenly Sam feels like he’s just plunged headfirst into the Arctic fucking Ocean at a million miles a minute.
It’s hard, what with the hundred questions colliding in his head and fighting to tear out of his mouth, how the fuck did this happen, when did you decide to switch teams exactly, have you forgotten he’s a fucking angel, your generic what the fucking hell, but Sam shakes most of the surprise away and his eyes soften. “Let’s get him to the car,” he says after a hesitation. “We’ll figure out what to do from there.”
Dean’s shoulders jerk with a sharp sniff when he lowers his head again, crooking a hand behind Castiel’s neck to ease him softly to the floor. He nods, though it’s stiff and awkward. “Okay,” he says in a cracked whisper. The sound of it alone nearly breaks Sam’s heart in two.
But then he pauses. He stares up at Sam and Sam stares right back, before suddenly Dean’s gaze abstracts and he becomes lost. Sam’s eyebrows crinkle in confusion as Dean leans in close to Castiel’s face. He reaches to find the angel’s hand, pulls cold wilted fingers to his lips. “You’re not gettin’ outta this so easy,” he says.
“Dean?”
Sam watches with wide eyes as Dean rips at his henley until he’s just in a t-shirt. He bunches one sleeve up, exposes the brand of Castiel’s handprint on his shoulder. Sam’s jaw tightens. “Dean, what are you doing?”
“It’s okay, Sammy,” Dean says too calmly, “Just returning something that’s not mine.” He raises Castiel’s hand again and presses it firmly, perfectly, inside the brand. When his eyes close and his forehead creases with concentration, Sam feels a distinct nauseating rush of dark panic.
“Dean, wait,” he protests, but it goes unheeded.
And then as much as he wants to list all the reasons why this whole charade is a really bad idea, drag Castiel’s corpse out of his brother’s arms and throw Dean into the Impala, burn the tires up lighting out of New Mexico forever, he can’t. Because even with how Sam always seems to have something to say about the crazy shit that his brother pulls, all the impossible messes Dean always seems to get into, right now he doesn’t have any words that could possibly work.
At first the change is subtle, a barely-noticeable brightening in the room, but over the span of ten seconds or so, it grows to a bright golden burn. Castiel’s hand and Dean’s shoulder seem to be fusing, melting together in a glow that’s too bright to look directly into. Sam has to hold up a hand against it, but as soon as he does, the light blinks out and the only thing he can hear is Dean gasping crudely for breath at his feet.
“Dean!” he cries, catching his brother around the shoulders before he falls clean over. “What the hell was that?” Dean shakes his head, looking like he’s just been fed ten thousand volts through the brain. Stabbed with epinephrine. Something.
“I have no idea,” he breathes. With a jerk of his head he swallows, and then there’s the biggest damn smile on his face Sam might have ever seen. “But it was amazing… and hey. It worked.” For a moment Sam just stares, blankly searching Dean’s face for answers he never gets, before following the unwavering line to where his brother hasn’t stopped staring since he fell flat onto his ass, clawing for air.
The instant he turns, Sam’s eyes grow wide.
“Oh my God,” he stammers as he watches the subtle rise and fall of Castiel’s chest settle into a passive rhythm.
~ ~ ~
It’s definitely a miracle. Both of them know this, but they can’t deny the constant tremor of fear vibrating in the atmosphere throughout the short drive back to the motel. Castiel’s wounds haven’t healed and he hasn’t woken up. He’s breathing, and he has a weak erratic pulse, but that’s about it. He’s alive, but not really.
Dean winces when a string of the motel washcloth catches on a frayed tag of skin on Castiel’s stomach. He’s managed to get most of the dried blood off, leaving the wounds clean and open to the air, stitched up the worst ones as best he could, though it’s taken hours and his patchwork isn’t the best it’s ever been with how much his hands are shaking. Sam fell asleep a long time ago, an hour into the infomercials. In the back of Dean’s head he does the math, and from that he estimates it to be around four AM. Maybe later, but it doesn’t really matter. All that really matters is the slow rise and fall of Castiel’s chest in front of him, the rhythm by which he bases all others. He inhales only when Castiel does, exhales when he does, because in some distant, stupid way it makes him feel better about this whole massive shitstorm. Makes him feel a little more in control. As if as long as he is breathing, so will Castiel. It’s a ridiculous thought, he knows, but it helps him get through the night so he’ll take it. He’ll take anything he can get right now.
Castiel himself is practically carved into fucking pieces. There’s a slice through nearly every muscle on his body, top to bottom, front to back, every visible vein and artery opened in long lines. Dean can’t decide if he’s nauseous or angry, perhaps just heartsick, when he sees that in some places, the cuts go straight down to the bone, down past skin like ribbons and wet muscle, dull white peeking through the mess of red so dark it’s almost black.
It’s been nearly six hours since they found him and Castiel’s only been breathing for five and a half of them; it’s taken four others to clean the blood from his body. He’s still disconcertingly cold and his pulse still hasn’t strengthened, and goddammit, he’s still not showing any signs of healing himself or waking up at all. When Dean sits back and surveys the ruin of his body, that marble-white flesh usually so perfect, the same flesh that shifted smoother than marble beneath his hands, warm, lean, alive, he feels the unfamiliar weight of futility settle in his chest. The seared print on his arm has been tingling with a pleasant warmth since the warehouse, but when he had tried pressing Castiel’s hand to it again two hours ago, nothing had happened this time. Just the vaguely warm weak pressure of a human hand against a human arm.
Dean heaves out a frustrated sigh and gives Castiel’s hand a light squeeze before turning his back to go into the bathroom. When he pours it out, the redness of the water against the white porcelain makes his stomach flip. He intentionally doesn’t look in the mirror; he knows he must look like a fucking train wreck at this point, or worse. He’s lost count of how many times he’s been punched in the face today, and then there were the cuts from Belial’s knife.
His eyes narrow. Belial’s knife.
He leaves the bowl on the bathroom counter with the water still running and carefully sinks onto the bed near Castiel’s hip. His skin is an unreadable tangle of symbols and swipes and seals, but after a long stretch of minutes, Dean sees it - a pattern. A binding seal, right over Castiel’s heart, carved deep enough to nick ribs. Dean’s eyes close as his head drops with a sigh.
Even between him and Sam, hell, even with Bobby thrown into the mix, they knew fuck all about breaking a binding seal powerful enough to contain an angel. Anna was out of the equation; Uriel was dead; Zachariah was a fucking prick who probably wouldn’t give a damn either way. There’s no written lore, no instruction manual on how to counteract ancient demonic sigils and free an angel of the fucking Lord from his physical bonds. So how the fuck were they supposed to break this one and get Castiel back? How could they expect to save him?
When he looks at the blank draw of Castiel’s face, those rich eyes like mirrors now obstructed by bruised motionless eyelids, the subtle slack part of his lips and how barely any breath seeps from between them, Dean has to bite his lip hard to keep the sob in the back of his throat and the tears in his eyes. He only manages the first one.
~ ~ ~
Shortly after seven AM, Sam rouses from a restive sleep. He draws a long clear breath and yawns, cracking a few joints before he looks over.
Castiel is still unmoving. He looks much better without all the blackened blood crusting his skin, but the naked wounds are almost worse to see now that they’re cleaned. Sam swallows hard as he studies the angel’s body, and for a moment he panics when Castiel’s chest doesn’t rise as quickly as he expects it to. He sits up fast and trains his eyes on the anticipated movement. When it comes, he breathes out long and low and passes a hand through his sleep-mussed hair.
Dean is across the room, sprawled in a chair in the darkest corner. He’s resting a temple on his fist, his face drawn and tense in a clearly restless sleep. As Sam curls up in a moment and just watched his brother, it strikes him all at once how tired Dean looks. His skin is dotted with dull purple and yellow marks, small red blotches where the blood vessels have burst. The gash on his arm looks nasty, like it’ll probably need stitches, but the one time he brought it up last night, Dean had slid a glare at him like he was trying to kill him with fucking laser eyes or something, so Sam had dropped it. It did look bad, though, even worse because Dean obviously hadn’t even bothered to clean it up yet.
Apart from all the bumps and bruises, small places where his skin’s been opened up by a knuckle, Dean’s obvious exhaustion isn’t just physical, either. He’s got thick lines underscoring his eyes and his forehead holds the permanent crease of a frown, a two-day shadow scrabbling along his jaw and filling out nicely. Even the posture of his body screams exhaustion, Sam notices. The slump of his shoulders, the tension in his neck. And it’s not a new thing; he’s been like this for weeks. The last time Sam actually saw his brother look healthy was when he and Bobby pulled him from the cabin in Montana. Ever since then Dean’s been degrading slowly, gradually eroding into something less than himself. Quiet, resigned, sinking into long spells of silence at a time.
Sam could see the gradual shut-down of his body, how he was caving in on himself slowly, the progress doubling, fuck, tripling on itself since they found Castiel crucified on the warehouse wall. He saw the burn of saltwater gathered into pockets beneath Dean’s eyes, how it created a tense redness in the whites of his eyes and clumped his lashes together in awkwardly speared sections, even though no actual tears fell. It almost scares Sam how much Castiel’s situation affects Dean; and even as much as he tries to keep it a separate issue, his mind still keeps coming back to that kiss in the warehouse.
That, he hasn’t even tried to decipher.
Not yet, at least.
He feels like shit when he shifts his bag around on the dresser and it wakes Dean up. “Hey,” Sam offers quietly, and leaves it at that.
Dean blinks hard and rubs his eyes clear, as if embarrassed he fell asleep at all. He clears his throat casually before glancing at his watch. “Mornin’. How’d you sleep?”
Sam waits a few seconds before answering, trying not to notice how that was probably the most unenthusiastic good morning he’s ever heard from his loudmouth, caffeine-addled brother. “Fine,” he says after a spell. “Doesn’t look like you can say so much, though.”
Dean halfway laughs, letting the bitter sound suffice as his only response. He immediately migrates to Castiel’s side, checking his pulse and the temperature of his skin and the saddening lack of movement behind his eyelids.
“Should try to get some,” Sam suggests as he pulls fresh clothes from his backpack. “I’ll just take a shower and go get us some breakfast. I can wake you up when I’m done.”
Dean offers a miniscule smile. “It’s cool, Sammy. I’m already up.”
Sam nods slowly, a little sadly, and watches Dean for a few seconds before shutting the bathroom door behind him.
~ ~ ~
Dean cannot fucking stand it anymore, and even if it means some holy hand of Jehovah is going to descend from on high and bitchslap him, or it means a gang of Archangels is going to flutter down with their trumpets or harps or what the fuck ever and burn his eyes clean out of his fucking skull, he gets up and flies out the door all the same. Because if he sits one more second in that goddamn motel room, with the dull whine of the shower backed up against the TV wall and the depressing lack of progress at healing Castiel, Dean’s going to chew his fucking fingers down to the bone. By the time Sam emerges from the shower and calls after him, he’s already out the door and in the parking lot, yelling Zachariah’s name with every thread of his voice that’s left.
Sam storms out after him, all wet hair and inside-out t-shirt clinging to his skin beaded with still-warm water, a sharp crease etched between his eyebrows. Just by the looks of him Dean knows he’s about the get an earful, another one of those righteous logical schpiels Sam practically has a fucking library of. There’s a crowd of room service maids amassing a dozen rooms or so down the way, already gaping at the crazy screaming guy in the middle of the parking lot. Dean doesn’t give a shit. He calls the Archangel’s name again.
“Dean!” Sam calls as he half-jogs into the courtyard, but Dean doesn’t respond.
“Zachariah!”
“What are you doing?” Sam growls when he makes it over, crowding half a foot away from Dean’s face, close enough to feel the frantic hot sifts of his breath. He hooks a hand around Dean’s elbow, drags him back toward the room, but Dean rips away from the contact easily.
“Come on, you sonofabitch!” he yells. Sam holds up a hand to the maids as they shuffle around obliviously, pausing to watch the spectacle with pillowcases in their arms, rubber gloves on their hands. Dean knows it’s only a matter of time before one of them has the foresight to call 911, and when that happens, they’re fucked, but still.
“Zachariah, you asshole, get the fuck down here! Your soldier’s dying, you heartless sonofabitch!”
“Dean, stop,” Sam says with a forced smile, obviously straining to keep his voice calm. “People are looking, you’re gonna get us thrown out. Or they’re gonna call the cops. Seriously. Stop.”
Dean scoffs and barely makes eye contact with his brother, but when Sam clamps a hand around his arm again, this time he can’t pull away. The hiss of Sam’s words is bitter when he leans in about two inches from Dean’s face, maybe less. Dean doesn’t know how it happens, he just opens his eyes and Sam is suddenly there, uncomfortably close.
“That is the last thing we need, Dean. We got a half-naked comatose guy carved to pieces lying in our room that’s checked out under a goddamn fake credit card.”
Sam seethes as Dean’s eyes crawl across his frame, swallow the dark glimmering slant of his eyes, the part of his lips and the tension of his jaw, the twin lines of muscle that pique at the curve when he gets pissed enough. After a stretch, Dean nods and resituates his shirt where it’s bunched up in careless hand-wrinkles. He follows Sam back to the room silently, pulling a hand over his face, and well, fuck.
That had been it.
His last-ditch effort for a solution to save Castiel. He understands the logic of Sam’s argument, but part of him still wants to try calling Zachariah, wants to break away from the room and burn his lungs out yelling for the fucking Archangel in the parking lot until he shows face. Merciful creature of light, yeah, fucking right, sure. His soldier lay dying, strapped to a meatsuit, sliced up like he’s been run through a fucking blender, and he doesn’t even think to show face. It makes Dean sick, really physically fucking sick.
When Sam leaves under the pretense of getting breakfast, Dean takes the opportunity to get Castiel in the shower. It’s not an easy thing, carrying an unresponsive grown fucking man through an already too-small bathroom and fitting both of their bodies into the uncomfortably tight space. It’s awkward, but Dean hardly notices; worry eclipses everything else at this point. Castiel’s still not healing like he should, and yeah, it’s freaking Dean right the fuck out.
The jagged cuts littering Castiel’s skin don’t seem to be healing at all, and when Dean looks closer he can see that the only reason they aren’t bleeding anymore is because there’s simply no blood left in Castiel’s body to supply them. His skin is tinted a sickly gray color, almost bluish, unsettlingly cold to the touch, might as well be petting down a fucking sheetrock wall. There is no tension in his muscles when Dean grazes his fingers along them under thin rivulets of nearly steaming water.
Vapor builds in the room thick enough to make Dean’s head swim, but he doesn’t cool the water. He doesn’t know how long he’s at the edge of the tub, elbows resting on the porcelain. Doesn’t notice how wet his sleeves have gotten, or the slick of condensation meddling with sweat in the small of his back, on the crest of his upper lip. He simply sits, and watches.
A sigh floats out of his throat when he skims a hand through the damp, random spikes of Castiel’s hair. Without a word he climbs in behind him, settling the angel’s lacerated back to his still-clothed chest. He tries to map the slide of Castiel’s chest, slick the line down to his stomach, but the raised open gapes of the cuts won’t allow it and Dean’s stomach clenches at the feel of the sloppily knotted stitches failing to keep his flesh together. So he settles a hand on Castiel’s forehead and pets back his hair every time he says his name, the sound of it bittersweet and hollow on his tongue. He doesn’t even know why he says it, other than that it feels right, and that he doesn’t know what the fuck else to say. If he knew how to pray, maybe that would be acceptable, but he never saw the point in it until Castiel arrived. And now he’s kind of kicking himself for not learning, because if there’s one thing that could help right now…
But Dean never learned how to pray, and frankly he feels a little stupid trying, so instead he just tightens his arm around Castiel’s ribs and presses a kiss behind his ear, one of the only places he’s found that’s not nicked or carved or shredded. “Cas?” he says as he smoothes away more of the blood collected on Castiel’s skin. “You better come back, man.”
He tangles his fingers up in Castiel’s hair, nudges another kiss behind his ear, the protrusion of pale bone there smooth and solid. Inhales, exhales. Holds on just tight enough and doesn’t let go, lips moving against the disarmingly cold shell of Castiel’s ear.
“You hear me?” Dean whispers. “You better fucking come back.”
~ ~ ~
The knock on the door doesn’t come until halfway through the four o’clock local broadcast. Dean props up onto an elbow immediately, blinking sleep-clouded eyes at Sam. Momentarily a fit of outrage flashes across his mind, angry tumbling words like why the hell did you let me fall asleep, but he’s just too fucking tired to go that route right now. They’ve got a comatose angel in their room and a phantom knock on their door, and yeah, he’s got bigger fucking fish to fry right now than some stupid argument with Sam about responsibilities and priorities and fuck if he even knows what else.
He glances at his watch confusedly. “You order food?” he asks, and when Sam shakes his head, Dean palms his Glock quick as greased fucking lightning.
Sam nods when he’s got his gun carefully concealed, but cocked, under a pillow aimed at the door. Dean keeps his hand behind his back and almost opens the door, but then a voice says, “You won’t be needing those, I come in peace,” and Dean’s eyebrows hike all the way up to his hairline. He’d know that vexing, holier-than-thou voice anywhere.
When Dean swings the door open, Zachariah smiles down at him, clasping his hands pleasantly as he forces his way into the room. “I would have come sooner,” he says cheerfully, tracking the dirt from his shoes on the entryway rug, “But you didn’t leave a calling address.”
Dean blinks. “I thought - but you’re an angel. I thought you just knew that stuff.”
Zachariah sighs heavily and regards Dean with beady, judgmental eyes. “It was a joke, Dean. Of course I knew where you were.”
Sam swallows and eyes Dean hopefully. “You’re Zachariah?”
The archangel leers down his nose at Sam, just like he does with everyone else, arrogant bastard he is, and searches his form carefully. “Yes,” he says with a peculiar smirk that sends a dozen rails of shivers along Dean’s spine. “And you’re Sam. The boy with the demon blood.”
Dean flips the door shut and sets his gun on the entry table. “Can you help?” he asks, uninterested in skirting around the issue. Fuck the pleasantries.
For a long moment Zachariah says nothing, the tension coiling up in Dean’s body until he’s just about ready to rip apart, twang into the air like a rubber band stretched too far. Zachariah does not move, but rather quietly searches Castiel’s motionless body with a fascinated kind of empathy. Finally, he says simply, “Yes.”
Dean blinks expectantly when Zachariah doesn’t seem to be doing anything except inspecting the wounds cut into Castiel’s flesh. “So? Help him, he’s probably in a hell of a lot of pain.”
“Agony,” Zachariah chimes as he straightens his stupid purple tie. “He’s in agony. So much that you can’t even begin to fathom it.”
Dean’s fists ball up at his sides, jonesing for a wall to punch or a throat to crush, preferably Zachariah’s. Or Belial’s. Shit, at this point he’s not going to be picky. He’ll take down any motherfucker that messes with him right now, because Castiel needs healing and this is the only straw he’s even got to grasp for. Beyond this, it’s nothing. He shifts uncomfortably when Zachariah still isn’t doing anything, just standing there with that rat-faced smile, all stuffy and corporate and egomaniacal as usual. Dean blinks as he throws a hand in the direction of Castiel’s bed. “What, do you want a cookie? Friggin’ cure him, Zac, come on!”
The archangel snickers at the comment, then shakes his head lightly. “Love to, but no can do.”
Dean draws a shaking breath. He keeps his voice low and drawn, more of a command than a question. “What.”
Sam eyebrows draw into a tight furrow. “Why not?” he asks curiously.
Zachariah shrugs an open palm toward Castiel’s body. “He did it to himself.”
“Belial did this to him, he didn’t slice ‘n dice himself up like that.”
“It was his choice, Dean,” Zachariah snaps coldly. “He chose to let this happen. It was purely a matter of free will, oft the fall of many great souls.” He wags a finger at his words, then perches it behind his back. He lips twist into a dissatisfied frown as he surveys Castiel’s body. “Shame, too. He was one of our best soldiers. Followed orders so well.”
Dean takes a determined step closer, and oh fucking Christ it takes just about every ounce of reserve in his body not to just go completely batshit on this bastard. Throw his fists out and claw out his goddamn eyes, squeeze the life out of his fucking throat, and really? Yeah, Dean doesn’t even give a shit if it lands him back in Hell at this point. “You can’t possibly be serious,” he bites. “He sacrificed himself for me. Aren’t you angel guys supposed to be big on that stuff?”
“Dean,” Sam warns quietly.
“He put his neck on the chopping block so I could go free,” Dean growls, taking another step forward. “What happened to your mercy, huh?”
“Oh I do have mercy,” Zachariah says smoothly in that same cheery nasal chime that makes Dean want to punch a fucking hole through something. “But I can’t undo the choices that Castiel makes of his own God-given free will. That’s the gist of it, Dean; the catch-22, if you will. Free will is a gift, but you have to be willing to accept the consequences of the choices you make, because they will last the rest of your life. Human and angel alike.”
Dean turns then, spins quickly, because if he keeps looking at Zachariah he’s going to end up doing something that can’t be good for any of them. His fingers card tightly through his hair as he paces. “Zac, don’t you try to pull this crap now,” he hisses.
“But there has to be something you can do,” Sam offers. “He gave himself up to save Dean. I mean, that’s pure selflessness. That’s martyrdom if I’ve ever heard it.”
Zachariah bites his cheek thoughtfully. “This disturbs me,” he says coolly. He looks down at Castiel again, mouth all twisted up a tight grimace when he says, “Yes, we’re going to have to have a talk about your priorities, aren’t we.” His fingers move in a quick rhythm at his side before he looks to Dean again. “Alright,” he sighs.
Dean spins he so fast he would swear he gives himself fucking whiplash. “Alright?”
Zachariah offers a smartly artificial smile. “Alright. You have your deal. I’ll make an exception. Just this once, though, and it’s only because there are much bigger things than Castiel’s… insubordination going on here,” says Zachariah, bitter and tinged with annoyance. Not that Dean could give a fuck if he’s annoyed or not, because alright, he’d said alright and Castiel was going to live, they hadn’t been too late to save him after all, and Jesus fucking Christ that one stupid word is about the best news Dean’s ever received in his life.
Alright.
Zachariah neatly folds the blankets down to Castiel’s waist and makes an almost comical face of disgust as he leans close. He seems to know exactly where to find the buck knife under Dean’s pillow without even asking, which frankly Dean finds a little disconcerting. The archangel withdraws it, inspects the tip with a quiet pinging flick for a second or two, then doesn’t even pause before cutting into the already-lacerated flesh of Castiel’s chest, dragging the blade through the wounds without hesitation, breaking open stitches and drawing weak flows of new blood to the surface. Castiel’s utter stillness is probably the worst part of the whole thing; Dean’s voice nears a yell when he cries out, “Zac, what the hell?!”
In his peripheral vision he sees Sam grimace, raising a palm to cover his mouth uneasily.
“Relax, Dean,” Zachariah replies, shockingly cavalier about brutally carving another sigil into Castiel’s chest over the ones that are already there, like he’s painting a fucking canvas or something, not raking through skin and nerves and muscle already torn by what must be hundreds of slices and dices. There must have been at least a small amount of blood left in Castiel’s body, Dean notices, because a thin line sneaks along the curve of his ribs and bleeds into the sheets as Zachariah works. Dean swallows thickly as he tries not to watch the slow soak of rich crimson into the fabric.
When he’s done, Zachariah’s hands are bloody and his sleeves are stained as he sits back and regards his handiwork. With a contented sigh, he twists the blood from his hands into the covers. Dean watches with wide eyes; Sam simply blinks.
“Dei Gratia, ego te absolvo pecata tua,” Zachariah mutters in a surprisingly gentle tone, passing a hand over Castiel’s eyes. Dean squirms, straightens at immediate attention when a slight flutter shifts across Castiel’s eyelids.
Zachariah casually stands and smoothes the wrinkles from his suit. “The proverbial slate is not wiped clean just because of this,” he says, and he’s out the door right after, no you’re welcome, no have a nice day, no fuck you very much, nothing. He just goes.
But Dean hardly notices, because his eyes are trained on Castiel.
At first nothing much happens, just a slight tension in his forehead. Dean glances to the door when it clicks shut, and when he looks back to Castiel, holy shit. His jaw fucking drops.
A dramatic bend builds in the small of Castiel’s back, sharpening the angle of his body as he rises from the bed. Dean can’t peg the expression on his face, whether it’s pain or something else, something undefined, but Castiel’s eyes squeeze into tight lines and his jaw goes from tightly-clamped to agape in a few short seconds. And as he squirms, the covers slip down to settle around his hips, those gaping jagged slices down to the bone that Dean couldn’t manage to stitch up, so that Dean can see the full effect of Zachariah’s blessing or spell or whatever the fuck it was.
One of Castiel’s hands grips the edge of the bed tightly, white-knuckling in the covers as he arches, and even if Dean had ever wanted to tear his eyes away it was fucking ridiculous at this point. He watches with wide eyes as the dark blistered burns around Castiel’s wrists sink completely into his skin, mangled red ridges blanching to pale white, flattening and smoothing away until they don’t even exist anymore. Color blossoms into Castiel’s chest right in the center, spiraling outward like tree branches searching out sunlight as the wounds begin to seal, as the flesh weaves itself back together and the stitches slip out completely, falling away unneeded onto the bed or the floor, wherever they land after Castiel’s body pushes them out. The deeper gashes seal together from the inside out, fusing together muscle and nerves, then arteries and veins and finally skin, building it up like pure creation from square one before they fade to barely-reddened streaks, then evaporate completely as if there was never a damn scratch there at all.
Dean just blinks, and he’s pretty sure that’s all Sam is doing too.
Things go quiet as the last of Castiel’s wounds heal, as his hips ground down and his chest juts into the air, hands gripped tight around the side of the mattress, in the sheets, with his head thrown back and his jaw clenched tight, and even though this is some bizarre holy rebuilding ritual, even though it’s something spiritual, angelic, pure even, it would be one hell of a lie for Dean to say that watching Castiel twist and writhe around on the bed like that wasn’t turning him right the fuck on. However wrong it might be.
Then Castiel’s eyes rip open with a sudden jerk and when they do, Dean instinctively has to throw up a hand against the two bright streams of light pouring from Castiel’s eye sockets, stabbing in twin golden-white beams up to the ceiling. Dean thinks he hears Sam grunt, maybe curse under his breath, before he squints his eyes tightly against the light, so bright it’s like staring straight into the fucking sun. Another column manifests, spearing out of Castiel’s mouth in a wide shining band. Dean’s eyes burn and he can feel them watering, but it’s not so bright his eyes can’t adjust, and besides he really fucking wants to see just what the hell is going on, so he gradually lowers his arm and bears the sting.
He watches, not a little disbelieving, as Castiel’s veins recreate their blood supply, as his arteries swell and engorge themselves to healthy color again, quickly burying beneath the softly blushed surface of his newly-mended skin. His lips flushing back to a healthy shade, the beds of his fingernails seamlessly shifting from sickly dark gray to soft pink right before Dean’s eyes.
It’s pretty fucking amazing, really.
“Dean?” Sam asks, but Dean doesn’t tear his eyes from Castiel’s rebuilding body.
“Yeah,” is the only thing he offers in reply, and for whatever reason, the tension in Sam’s voice, how he sounds just as freaked out as Dean is right now, makes Dean feel much, much better.
The light shafting out of Castiel’s eyes fades quickly, drawing back into his body along with the one from his mouth. A stray groan cracks from the angel’s throat finally, and oh god. It’s dry and wrung-out and guttural and weak, and it’s the most beautiful fucking sound Dean has ever heard in his life.
Dean releases a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding as Castiel’s back settles against the bed, as his breaths lower into a healthy rhythm instead of ragged gasps or shallow, uneven pants. The only marks remaining on his body that haven’t healed are the binding seal dug by Belial and the sigil Zachariah carved over it, but as Castiel’s face smoothes out and his chest slowly begins rising and falling in a predictable calm cadence, those too begin to slowly fold in on themselves. Dean watches intently as the flesh stitches itself back together, fusing the frayed ends of the wounds together until, within just a few short seconds, Castiel’s body is whole again. Smooth as a pale virgin canvas, completely untouched, perfect, like nothing ever fucking happened at all.
“Cas?” Dean says, though it’s quiet and unsteady.
Castiel’s tongue darts out to run along his lips, slowly, and when he says, “Dean,” like it’s the only word he knows, there’s so much relief and joy and affection wrapped up inside the single syllable that it almost shatters Dean clean into a million little pieces.
Dean is at his side in a heartbeat, his hand around Castiel’s in the next.
At his back, he hears Sam mutter a quiet, “Holy shit,” and Dean thinks with a laugh that yeah, that’s a pretty fair and well accurate way of putting it.
~ ~ ~
{to be continued...}
ONTO PART NINE
Before the shenanigans:
Dear Livejournal,
Your word limits raep my soul. 14K words is not too much to ask, is it? When you do things like cut my chapters off before some pornographic fun important plot information, you are killing my happiness. And possibly kittens. Or nuns. Or all of the above.
In summation: PLEASE STOP SUCKING MKAY? YOU'RE KEEPING PORN FROM THE PEOPLE. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.
Disgruntled-ly Yours,
Vin.
*grumble grumble*
Title: The Propensities of Good Men, 8/15
Characters: Castiel, Dean, Sam, Zachariah
Pairing(s): Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~9,895
Disclaimer: Pffft, I wish.
Warnings: Blood and gore, language, torture, dark!Sam, manly tears of manliness, um crucifixion, Zachariah being a dick. You know the drill.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
~ ~ ~
It didn’t happen for almost an hour, but eventually the demons did come. Dean was surprised when it happened - even demons were smarter than this, usually - and, okay, yeah, he did feel a little bad for putting Sam in harm’s way, but technically it was his own damn fault. Dean had suggested Sam hang back at the motel, but he should have known better. Sam was smarter than that; he knew what Dean intended to do. So when Dean said hey maybe it would be better if you just wait at the motel in case Cas comes back, and Sam had stared at him with his eyebrows crinkled in that bitchy, offended way of his, Dean hadn’t pressed it any further.
At the school, the demons were wasted fast, throats split wide open in one fiery slash from Ruby’s knife - their knife, Dean’s and Sam’s, now that the bitch was dead - all but one of them.
They set up the devil’s trap in what looks like a biology classroom, colorful posters of tree frogs and amoebas and the skeletal system smattering the walls. The demon is tied to a chair, brooding and silent before them. Dean hardly waits for Sam to finish sealing the door with a salt line before he slugs the bastard right in the cheekbone, the silver glint of his ring opening a gash beneath the possessed man’s eye. A mechanic, by the looks of him, and if the film of grimy black smudges on his clothes said anything. Dean sees a nametag glitter on his shirt - Jose - and rips it off in one easy movement. He hovers the knife in front of the demon’s face.
“Tell me where he is.”
“No,” the demon says easily.
“Tell me where the fuck he is!” Dean shouts. He fists a hand in the demon’s shirt and presses the tip of the dagger hard into his throat, prompting a hushed whimper from the creature’s mouth. “Where is Castiel?”
The demon hesitates, eyes fixed on the blade, as a smile bleeds onto his lips. “Me vale madre, pendejo,” he growls, prompting another hasty blow to the jaw.
“Where?!”
“Dean,” Sam interrupts, “Let me.” Dean hesitates, but Sam raises his eyebrows. “Let me.”
The demon’s eyes flash when he glances to Dean. He squirms uncomfortably in the chair, twists against the knots of rope and duct tape around his wrists, and hisses spitefully when Dean sprinkles a few drops of holy water on his skin, satisfied with the crisp sizzling and popping sounds that follow the contact. It’s not hard to recognize the emotion clouding the demon’s features - or, well, this Jose guy’s features, though he’s hardly more than an unfortunate muppet at this point - the one that chases away the black in his eyes and shrinks his shoulders into a tight shrug.
Fear.
He’s afraid of Sam.
“Stop squirming,” Dean says flatly as Sam steps forward.
“You heard him,” Sam says. The demon shakes his head, so Sam quirks a smile on one side and tilts his head just slightly. At the movement, the demon shrieks something awful and guttural.
“Where,” Sam sneers. Dean swallows behind him, not really knowing if he should be more wary of the demon or of his brother. Then kicks himself for even thinking there’s a competition, because what the fuck?
The demon relaxes when momentarily Sam lets up. “Vete al carajo, gabacho,” he says with a laugh.
Sam raises a hand.
“Tell us where he is, or I kill you right now,” he says, the slide of his voice smooth and cold and black, more than a little terrifying. With the motion of Sam’s hand the demon seems to collapse in on himself, short spurts of black smoke curling from his mouth between screams. Dean watches over Sam’s shoulder; his grip on the knife tightens instinctively. He considers laying a hand on his brother’s shoulder, telling him to lay off a little, that they can’t kill the bastard yet, they need to find out where Castiel is and this guy is their best shot, but he keeps his distance. He tries to tell himself it’s out of discipline, out of trusting Sam to know what he’s doing well enough to stop on his own when he needs to stop. Not out of - well, fear.
A muscle near the edge of Sam’s mouth twitches when his wrist angles slightly, prompting a sharp cry from the demon. A larger wisp of smoke leaks from his mouth, but he sucks it back in immediately. Dean can’t see Sam’s face from where he stands, but he can almost feel the burn of his eyes, even from behind him. Sam’s eyes that he very desperately hopes are still brown.
Finally, the demon breaks.
“A shipping warehouse,” he chokes out. Dean tries to hide the frantic worry in his voice, but he does a piss-poor job of it and honestly he just can’t bring himself to give a shit right now. All that matters is Castiel. Finding him, making sure he’s safe. Making sure he’s even alive.
“Where? What warehouse, where is it?”
The demon winces and huffs out a series of heavy breaths. “East 10th,” he says, “Behind Berger street.”
The line of Sam’s arm straightens again and he steels his fingers. The demon gives a terrible screech and bows backward in the chair, nearly tipping it straight over. “I told you already!”
An amused smirk plays on Sam’s lips as he slowly turns his hand. He sounds alarmingly comfortable when he says, “I know.”
Black smoke barrels out of the demon’s mouth, collecting around his feet and soaking into the floor in a dirty gray residue. A few seconds pass before Sam lowers his hand, then when he turns around his eyes seem to be darker than usual.
Dean tries not to notice.
Sam jerks his head toward the door. “Come on,” he says.
~ ~ ~
It’s a cargo train loading station. Dean sees that when they arrive and there are ISO crates and railcars stacked idly around the complex. They make it through the first building, a squat corrugated steel structure with cramped offices and a small section of lockers crammed against the far wall. When there’s nothing in it, Dean starts wondering if maybe the demon lied, maybe Castiel isn’t here. And Jesus fucking Christ, he wants to punch something…
The second building is brimming with tall shelves, industrial grades ones all cluttered and crammed with crates and beams and train components, huge pieces of metal that Dean can only guess what the hell they are. It seems weird - that demons would choose a place like this to have their fun. The place is chock full of iron - railroad spikes, track bars, crowbars, tools, everything under the fucking sun sucked dry of color and shoved into dark dirty crates. But then he’s thinking that Belial’s probably far too powerful to be affected by anything as elementary as iron anyway, and he’s remembering how the bastard stepped clean over their salt lines back in Eminence without even flinching, and he’s thinking that yeah, they’re probably in way over their heads this time, and that’s precisely the same instant he rounds the corner of the first row of shelves and sees Castiel.
The angel is tied up, arms drawn up into obtuse angles, link chains wrapped around his wrists and a two-foot railroad spike driven straight through the thin white bones of his feet - fucking crucified. When Dean’s stomach does a flip, he’s pretty sure it’s not gonna stop flipping for a good while. What little of Castiel’s skin that is still visible behind the bloodied mess of sigils and symbols carved into his flesh is a ghostly bluish color, some meeting point between blue and gray that skin should never be. Castiel’s clothes are gone and nowhere to be seen, even if Dean had been able to tear his eyes away from the angel’s body long enough to look for any. When his name instinctually rips out of Dean’s throat, Castiel doesn’t respond. He isn’t moving.
Christ, he isn’t even breathing.
Dean is at Castiel’s side in less than a heartbeat, tangling with the chains that hold him in place, but he jerks back instantly at the touch, spinning on his heels at a bright searing pop of pain. “Fuck!” he yells, clasping his hand tightly between his knees. Sam makes it around the corner at the sound, eyes widening and jumping from the crucified angel on the wall and his brother bent sharply at the waist, breaths heaving as if he can’t decide which one he should pay more attention to.
“What happened?”
“The chains,” Dean pants against the lingering sting on his fingers. “They’re too hot to touch.” Whips his hand through the air in a quick snap, pacing in a circle, bending again, fucking anything to chase away the burn. “Fuck!”
And he figures, fuck it, his hand already hurts like a bitch anyway, and if he doesn’t get some of this tension out right the fuck now he’s going to blow a fucking gasket, so he spins and crashes his fist against the metal wall in a hard ringing smack. He sees Sam flinch at the impact and thinks he’s probably going to hear the obligatory are you okay? any minute now, and he really can’t deal with that right now, really doesn’t want to hear something so predictable and stupid and pointless right now, because Castiel, oh god Castiel…
The tension builds in his jaw until his teeth hurt. “No,” he mutters in a voice that’s so weak it frightens him.
Sam blinks. “No?”
“No,” Dean snaps loudly. “As in no, this is not how this is gonna happen. We gotta get him down. Think!”
He scrubs across his jaw. Paces to his left, to his right. Keeps his eyes fair and well the fuck away from Castiel’s body six short feet in front of him, close enough to reach out and touch, smooth away the blood and the pain and, fuck, just touch him.
Sam’s hands shrug out at his sides as his mouth works, opens and closes. “I don’t know.”
Dean paces some more, because what the fuck else could he do? “There’s gotta be something, Sam, gotta be a - a spell or a ritual or something.”
“Dean - I have no idea what to do,” Sam says softly, and Dean hopes to God or whoever’s currently not listening that his brother can’t see the formation of tears in his eyes.
And then Dean’s fists are in his jacket before he even knows what he’s doing, sprung clean across a ten-foot gap to white-knuckle hard into the fabric, and his breaths are erratic and his eyes are wild and desperate, less than a few inches separating their faces. Sam stumbles back a step or two before he steels himself. Dean doesn’t let go. “So what, you just wanna leave him?”
“No!” Sam counters, sounding offended. Dean releases him with a jerk, rubs over his lips again. He turns around so Sam can’t see his face and stilts a hand on his hip, the same one that still stings with white fire, throbbing and welting and swollen, the rough grate of denim too rich against his sensitized fingertips. He can picture that wilted, puppy-dog sparkle in his brother’s eyes as he stares at his back, the same one he’s seen a million times. The one that made an appearance every time Dad’s back spun and built up like a wall, Sam on one side, Dad on the other, Dean in the middle, the torn mediator. That was before Sam gave up on communicating, before Dad shut down with the predictability of go to your room and Sam did, holing up for the rest of the night and forcing Dean to take the couch. Before Dad got impatient and Sam got bitter. Before Sam said fuck it and threw in the towel, before he left. Dean knows that look all too well. It aches like a heart attack knowing that that must be what Sam looks like right now, but really he can’t bring himself to care enough to turn around, because there’s Castiel. Castiel who is cold and carved up and crucified, who’s been sliced seven ways from Sunday and then some, by the looks of it. Castiel who’s not moving, not breathing, not emanating that faint staticy hum Dean has grown so used to over the months of having his angel at his side.
Castiel who’s just - gone.
The sound of his own name barely even pulls him back to present. It’s Sam, and when Dean spins around quickly he’s got this sprawling smile on his face like he’s just won the fucking World Series. “Holy water,” Sam says as he scrabbles through his pockets for a flask. Dean watches as he twists the cap off and pours the water over the chains. “Belial sealed them,” Sam explains, “Holy water washes away any demonic spells. Blesses them.”
And any other time, Dean might have felt stupid for not thinking of it earlier, might toss out some smartass comment about Sam beating him to the chase, but he’s not really thinking about any of that as he watches the chains around Castiel’s wrist light up with a dull orange glow at the sprinkle of holy water. They bleed into yellow first, then into white, before they fade back to regular dull gray. Really all he’s thinking is that he needs to find a spike and a hammer, fast, and that he really loves how much of a dork his little brother is sometimes.
Dean springs into action instantly, tearing the place apart for tools he can’t possibly find fast enough. Luckily there’s a bin of spikes at his back and another one beside it where he finds a hammer, so he’s back at Castiel’s side with the spike inside one of the links and the hammer in his other hand before his brain even has time to catch up to what his body is doing. It’s an irresolute shot, one he’s not sure he’s going to make with how stupidly shaky his hands are, but it’s their only choice and fuck if he’s going to leave Castiel hanging up there all broken and naked and cold any longer. He glances to Sam, nods, and works his fingers on the slick hammer handle.
And then he swings.
Dean’s eyes slam shut with the impact, but open again when he hears the quiet clink of metal on metal. He drops the hammer with a loud clatter when the weight of the chains jerks Castiel’s arm down, pulling his body forward along with it in a wilted curl. Dean braces his hands on Castiel’s waist to hold him up, stomach lurching in a sick spin of nausea when he feels his fingers pierce places of the angel’s flesh, sink right into open wounds through crusted-over damp scabs of dark blood. He winces, rests his forehead against the wall. Fuck, Castiel is cold as a fucking stone slab, boneless, limp, nothing but dead weight.
Dean just about loses it then.
Sam snaps into action, stooping to pick up the hammer before he puts it right back down again. Dean is vaguely aware of him saying, “Hold him up,” before his eyes close against the sight of the thick spike of iron, blackened with half-coagulated blood, Castiel’s blood, jarring in a weak jiggle as Sam pulls it out. Against his better judgment Dean opens his eyes again, and - yeah, he really fucking shouldn’t have done that. A shiver like a thousand volts ratchets along his backbone when he sees the dark gape left in Castiel’s flesh, the hole gone clean through to the other side.
Sam doesn’t warn him before striking the hammer through the chains securing Castiel’s other wrist. Behind the jarring clang ricocheting around his skull, making his damn teeth chatter with the impact, Dean hears Sam call his name again and then he’s almost losing his balance as the rest of Castiel’s body weight falls against him.
Dead weight, Dean thinks, and his skin goes gold and sweaty and his eyes burn and his hands tremor and he forces the words out of his head.
He lies Castiel down slowly, lowers him to the floor taking care to keep the angel’s head and shoulders in his lap as he wrestles his jacket off. It doesn’t seem right to have him so exposed and bare, not in front of Sam; it feels sacrilegious and ten kinds of wrong, so he drapes his jacket across the thin stretch of Castiel’s hips as carefully as he can. The blood’s going to stain, he knows, going to ruin his favorite army-green terrain jacket, but at this point he couldn’t give a fuck less. Because Castiel is bleeding and Castiel still isn’t breathing, and they’ve got him down already so why the fuck isn’t he healing?
Dean’s eyes crawl across the reckless tangles of stabs and slashes on Castiel’s body, thick as a bramble field, like he’s been run through a fucking razor wire gauntlet, those and the blistered burns on his wrists, angry red welts encircling the slender white stalks. He swallows back a bundle of nerves as big as a fucking tennis ball as he watches Castiel’s chest, waiting for a rise or a fall that never happens.
“Cas, hey,” Dean whispers. He taps Castiel’s cheek lightly, then a little harder a second time. “Cas.”
Beside him, Sam rakes in an unsteady breath, and just - just fuck it. Dean’s not even going to try to hide the hot well of tears in his eyes anymore. It’s not worth the effort. And he knows Sam will ask him about it later, knows he will lay an understanding hand on his shoulder and ask if he’s okay, try for one of those deep heart-to-heart acknowledgments of pain he always goes for. Truth is he doesn’t even care. He’ll take the soulful looks and pleading eyes. Take the uncomfortable stretches of silence behind the question are you alright, man, because Castiel’s cold and still and dead weight, just dead weight. He’s ravaged and cut up beyond what stitches could fix, and Dean’s never seen anything like it before, with all the fucked-up shit he’s seen, he’s never seen anything like this, nothing that hurts this fucking much to look at, and just -
Fuck.
Cas.
Dean feels the tears sneak down his face in long lines as Sam’s hand brushes against his forearm, ghost-light like he’s not sure if he should or not. Dean doesn’t confirm or deny, doesn’t encourage or pull away; he’s busy staring at Castiel, how his eyelids are bruised and his lips are split open, the line of his jugular mapped with one precarious long sweep like some fucked up dissection slice or autopsy line or something. Dean resituates, jerks Castiel a little. His stomach clenches painfully when nothing happens but the awkward angle of Castiel’s neck as his head lolls to the side, dead arm falling to the floor with a hushed smack.
“He’s cold,” Dean says, though he doesn’t know why.
Sam’s hand sneaks up to find the place beneath Castiel’s jaw where the pulse should be the strongest, and oh fuck no, Dean doesn’t even want to know. Wants to knock Sam’s hand away and pull Castiel to him and hold him, clutch at his back, say of course he’s got a pulse, what the fuck, he’s going to heal, of course he’s going to heal, but none of that happens and instead Sam’s hand pulls back and Dean’s stays coiled loosely on the devastated stretch of skin over Castiel’s ribs.
Sam is quiet when he says, “He doesn’t have a pulse, Dean.”
A sound like a sob rips from Dean’s throat before he can stop it, tossing around the building in a ghostly echo before it makes the seamless transition into a bitter, “No.” Beside him, Sam’s eyes glitter, catching the sparse light of the warehouse as if he’s trying hard to hold himself together too. Which is the last thing Dean needs right now, because with all the shit that this is doing to him - tying him in knots seeing Castiel like this, ruined, torn up and shredded and degraded - he needs Sam to be the strong one, dammit. He needs him to pull some role reversal crap and act like the unshakable pillar for once, just be the constant one. If he doesn’t have somebody to hold the pieces of him together, he’s not sure he’s going to make it out of this shitstorm alive.
“No, no, no, Cas, this can’t happen, you can’t die,” Dean mumbles. When he gathers Castiel to his chest, it’s hard to ignore the coldness of his skin, how it doesn’t have much give when Dean moves his mouth against the soft sweep of unscathed flesh below Castiel’s ear, fuck, no, no, this is all kinds of wrong, all kinds of unfair, fuck fuck fuck.
“You’re a friggin’ angel, man, come on,” he’s still muttering when a warm weight that must be Sam’s hand presses against his back. He lowers Castiel back into his lap, studies the unchanged pallor of his dead skin and the lack of tension in his jaw and how his eyes don’t seem to close all the way. “You can’t die,” he repeats, because maybe if he says it enough, maybe if he prays to that stupid holy whatever that Castiel is always talking about, grace or God or Archangels, whatever the fuck it is, maybe, just maybe it will come true. Maybe he’ll be right.
Then again, Dean’s never had much luck with praying.
He skims blood-stained fingers down Castiel’s face, tracing the dent of his temple to the curve of his cheekbone, the line of his stubble-rough jaw. That mouth that had tasted so sweet prying open below his, bleeding all the doubt out of his brain when Castiel kissed him senseless and Dean had kissed back, just like he’s doing now when he leans close to the angel’s face and presses his lips softly to his, fuck if Sam’s watching, fuck if his brother is right there probably freaking the fuck out right about now. Dean doesn’t give a damn because there’s no warm puff of air on his face, no tension in the lips against his own, and he feels the hard scrape of his chest hollowing out because he’s kissing Castiel and Castiel isn’t kissing back.
And that? That’s when he breaks.
~ ~ ~
Sam watches it happen with eyes widened in astonishment.
Dean’s eyes draw tightly together, squinted into tight commas as his forehead lowers against Castiel’s and a sound like a whimper, something too small and pained to ever be something that should come out of Dean, fights from behind his lips. The same ones that were just pressed against Castiel’s in a tentative kiss that lingered just a little too long.
Sam blinks.
He’s confused, extremely confused and it’s safe to say a little freaked out, but right now they’ve got Legions at their heels and Belial hot on their trail. Even coming here at all was probably a stupid idea, monumentally stupid, though he’d never admit that to Dean in a million years unless he was in the mood for a serious beatdown. Really he wouldn’t even be surprised if Belial turned up any second, a victorious laugh lighting out of his lips and a whole army of Legions at his back, trained and ready to pounce at a snap. Shit, they’re practically sitting ducks in a place like this.
Sam clears his throat as quietly as he can. “Dean, I’m sorry, but… We have to leave.”
His brother doesn’t respond. Doesn’t even move.
Sam shifts around until he’s crouched at Castiel’s side, ready to stand. “We need to go,” he repeats, trying not to notice how there’s a fringe of tears collecting on the tips of Dean’s eyelashes, a warm line sneaking down the torn streak of Castiel’s cheek. “The Legions -”
“I heard you,” Dean cuts in without any real venom, and when he looks up he just looks so fractured, completely broken, directionless, and - Jesus Christ. Everything is written in his eyes, and suddenly Sam feels like he’s just plunged headfirst into the Arctic fucking Ocean at a million miles a minute.
It’s hard, what with the hundred questions colliding in his head and fighting to tear out of his mouth, how the fuck did this happen, when did you decide to switch teams exactly, have you forgotten he’s a fucking angel, your generic what the fucking hell, but Sam shakes most of the surprise away and his eyes soften. “Let’s get him to the car,” he says after a hesitation. “We’ll figure out what to do from there.”
Dean’s shoulders jerk with a sharp sniff when he lowers his head again, crooking a hand behind Castiel’s neck to ease him softly to the floor. He nods, though it’s stiff and awkward. “Okay,” he says in a cracked whisper. The sound of it alone nearly breaks Sam’s heart in two.
But then he pauses. He stares up at Sam and Sam stares right back, before suddenly Dean’s gaze abstracts and he becomes lost. Sam’s eyebrows crinkle in confusion as Dean leans in close to Castiel’s face. He reaches to find the angel’s hand, pulls cold wilted fingers to his lips. “You’re not gettin’ outta this so easy,” he says.
“Dean?”
Sam watches with wide eyes as Dean rips at his henley until he’s just in a t-shirt. He bunches one sleeve up, exposes the brand of Castiel’s handprint on his shoulder. Sam’s jaw tightens. “Dean, what are you doing?”
“It’s okay, Sammy,” Dean says too calmly, “Just returning something that’s not mine.” He raises Castiel’s hand again and presses it firmly, perfectly, inside the brand. When his eyes close and his forehead creases with concentration, Sam feels a distinct nauseating rush of dark panic.
“Dean, wait,” he protests, but it goes unheeded.
And then as much as he wants to list all the reasons why this whole charade is a really bad idea, drag Castiel’s corpse out of his brother’s arms and throw Dean into the Impala, burn the tires up lighting out of New Mexico forever, he can’t. Because even with how Sam always seems to have something to say about the crazy shit that his brother pulls, all the impossible messes Dean always seems to get into, right now he doesn’t have any words that could possibly work.
At first the change is subtle, a barely-noticeable brightening in the room, but over the span of ten seconds or so, it grows to a bright golden burn. Castiel’s hand and Dean’s shoulder seem to be fusing, melting together in a glow that’s too bright to look directly into. Sam has to hold up a hand against it, but as soon as he does, the light blinks out and the only thing he can hear is Dean gasping crudely for breath at his feet.
“Dean!” he cries, catching his brother around the shoulders before he falls clean over. “What the hell was that?” Dean shakes his head, looking like he’s just been fed ten thousand volts through the brain. Stabbed with epinephrine. Something.
“I have no idea,” he breathes. With a jerk of his head he swallows, and then there’s the biggest damn smile on his face Sam might have ever seen. “But it was amazing… and hey. It worked.” For a moment Sam just stares, blankly searching Dean’s face for answers he never gets, before following the unwavering line to where his brother hasn’t stopped staring since he fell flat onto his ass, clawing for air.
The instant he turns, Sam’s eyes grow wide.
“Oh my God,” he stammers as he watches the subtle rise and fall of Castiel’s chest settle into a passive rhythm.
~ ~ ~
It’s definitely a miracle. Both of them know this, but they can’t deny the constant tremor of fear vibrating in the atmosphere throughout the short drive back to the motel. Castiel’s wounds haven’t healed and he hasn’t woken up. He’s breathing, and he has a weak erratic pulse, but that’s about it. He’s alive, but not really.
Dean winces when a string of the motel washcloth catches on a frayed tag of skin on Castiel’s stomach. He’s managed to get most of the dried blood off, leaving the wounds clean and open to the air, stitched up the worst ones as best he could, though it’s taken hours and his patchwork isn’t the best it’s ever been with how much his hands are shaking. Sam fell asleep a long time ago, an hour into the infomercials. In the back of Dean’s head he does the math, and from that he estimates it to be around four AM. Maybe later, but it doesn’t really matter. All that really matters is the slow rise and fall of Castiel’s chest in front of him, the rhythm by which he bases all others. He inhales only when Castiel does, exhales when he does, because in some distant, stupid way it makes him feel better about this whole massive shitstorm. Makes him feel a little more in control. As if as long as he is breathing, so will Castiel. It’s a ridiculous thought, he knows, but it helps him get through the night so he’ll take it. He’ll take anything he can get right now.
Castiel himself is practically carved into fucking pieces. There’s a slice through nearly every muscle on his body, top to bottom, front to back, every visible vein and artery opened in long lines. Dean can’t decide if he’s nauseous or angry, perhaps just heartsick, when he sees that in some places, the cuts go straight down to the bone, down past skin like ribbons and wet muscle, dull white peeking through the mess of red so dark it’s almost black.
It’s been nearly six hours since they found him and Castiel’s only been breathing for five and a half of them; it’s taken four others to clean the blood from his body. He’s still disconcertingly cold and his pulse still hasn’t strengthened, and goddammit, he’s still not showing any signs of healing himself or waking up at all. When Dean sits back and surveys the ruin of his body, that marble-white flesh usually so perfect, the same flesh that shifted smoother than marble beneath his hands, warm, lean, alive, he feels the unfamiliar weight of futility settle in his chest. The seared print on his arm has been tingling with a pleasant warmth since the warehouse, but when he had tried pressing Castiel’s hand to it again two hours ago, nothing had happened this time. Just the vaguely warm weak pressure of a human hand against a human arm.
Dean heaves out a frustrated sigh and gives Castiel’s hand a light squeeze before turning his back to go into the bathroom. When he pours it out, the redness of the water against the white porcelain makes his stomach flip. He intentionally doesn’t look in the mirror; he knows he must look like a fucking train wreck at this point, or worse. He’s lost count of how many times he’s been punched in the face today, and then there were the cuts from Belial’s knife.
His eyes narrow. Belial’s knife.
He leaves the bowl on the bathroom counter with the water still running and carefully sinks onto the bed near Castiel’s hip. His skin is an unreadable tangle of symbols and swipes and seals, but after a long stretch of minutes, Dean sees it - a pattern. A binding seal, right over Castiel’s heart, carved deep enough to nick ribs. Dean’s eyes close as his head drops with a sigh.
Even between him and Sam, hell, even with Bobby thrown into the mix, they knew fuck all about breaking a binding seal powerful enough to contain an angel. Anna was out of the equation; Uriel was dead; Zachariah was a fucking prick who probably wouldn’t give a damn either way. There’s no written lore, no instruction manual on how to counteract ancient demonic sigils and free an angel of the fucking Lord from his physical bonds. So how the fuck were they supposed to break this one and get Castiel back? How could they expect to save him?
When he looks at the blank draw of Castiel’s face, those rich eyes like mirrors now obstructed by bruised motionless eyelids, the subtle slack part of his lips and how barely any breath seeps from between them, Dean has to bite his lip hard to keep the sob in the back of his throat and the tears in his eyes. He only manages the first one.
~ ~ ~
Shortly after seven AM, Sam rouses from a restive sleep. He draws a long clear breath and yawns, cracking a few joints before he looks over.
Castiel is still unmoving. He looks much better without all the blackened blood crusting his skin, but the naked wounds are almost worse to see now that they’re cleaned. Sam swallows hard as he studies the angel’s body, and for a moment he panics when Castiel’s chest doesn’t rise as quickly as he expects it to. He sits up fast and trains his eyes on the anticipated movement. When it comes, he breathes out long and low and passes a hand through his sleep-mussed hair.
Dean is across the room, sprawled in a chair in the darkest corner. He’s resting a temple on his fist, his face drawn and tense in a clearly restless sleep. As Sam curls up in a moment and just watched his brother, it strikes him all at once how tired Dean looks. His skin is dotted with dull purple and yellow marks, small red blotches where the blood vessels have burst. The gash on his arm looks nasty, like it’ll probably need stitches, but the one time he brought it up last night, Dean had slid a glare at him like he was trying to kill him with fucking laser eyes or something, so Sam had dropped it. It did look bad, though, even worse because Dean obviously hadn’t even bothered to clean it up yet.
Apart from all the bumps and bruises, small places where his skin’s been opened up by a knuckle, Dean’s obvious exhaustion isn’t just physical, either. He’s got thick lines underscoring his eyes and his forehead holds the permanent crease of a frown, a two-day shadow scrabbling along his jaw and filling out nicely. Even the posture of his body screams exhaustion, Sam notices. The slump of his shoulders, the tension in his neck. And it’s not a new thing; he’s been like this for weeks. The last time Sam actually saw his brother look healthy was when he and Bobby pulled him from the cabin in Montana. Ever since then Dean’s been degrading slowly, gradually eroding into something less than himself. Quiet, resigned, sinking into long spells of silence at a time.
Sam could see the gradual shut-down of his body, how he was caving in on himself slowly, the progress doubling, fuck, tripling on itself since they found Castiel crucified on the warehouse wall. He saw the burn of saltwater gathered into pockets beneath Dean’s eyes, how it created a tense redness in the whites of his eyes and clumped his lashes together in awkwardly speared sections, even though no actual tears fell. It almost scares Sam how much Castiel’s situation affects Dean; and even as much as he tries to keep it a separate issue, his mind still keeps coming back to that kiss in the warehouse.
That, he hasn’t even tried to decipher.
Not yet, at least.
He feels like shit when he shifts his bag around on the dresser and it wakes Dean up. “Hey,” Sam offers quietly, and leaves it at that.
Dean blinks hard and rubs his eyes clear, as if embarrassed he fell asleep at all. He clears his throat casually before glancing at his watch. “Mornin’. How’d you sleep?”
Sam waits a few seconds before answering, trying not to notice how that was probably the most unenthusiastic good morning he’s ever heard from his loudmouth, caffeine-addled brother. “Fine,” he says after a spell. “Doesn’t look like you can say so much, though.”
Dean halfway laughs, letting the bitter sound suffice as his only response. He immediately migrates to Castiel’s side, checking his pulse and the temperature of his skin and the saddening lack of movement behind his eyelids.
“Should try to get some,” Sam suggests as he pulls fresh clothes from his backpack. “I’ll just take a shower and go get us some breakfast. I can wake you up when I’m done.”
Dean offers a miniscule smile. “It’s cool, Sammy. I’m already up.”
Sam nods slowly, a little sadly, and watches Dean for a few seconds before shutting the bathroom door behind him.
~ ~ ~
Dean cannot fucking stand it anymore, and even if it means some holy hand of Jehovah is going to descend from on high and bitchslap him, or it means a gang of Archangels is going to flutter down with their trumpets or harps or what the fuck ever and burn his eyes clean out of his fucking skull, he gets up and flies out the door all the same. Because if he sits one more second in that goddamn motel room, with the dull whine of the shower backed up against the TV wall and the depressing lack of progress at healing Castiel, Dean’s going to chew his fucking fingers down to the bone. By the time Sam emerges from the shower and calls after him, he’s already out the door and in the parking lot, yelling Zachariah’s name with every thread of his voice that’s left.
Sam storms out after him, all wet hair and inside-out t-shirt clinging to his skin beaded with still-warm water, a sharp crease etched between his eyebrows. Just by the looks of him Dean knows he’s about the get an earful, another one of those righteous logical schpiels Sam practically has a fucking library of. There’s a crowd of room service maids amassing a dozen rooms or so down the way, already gaping at the crazy screaming guy in the middle of the parking lot. Dean doesn’t give a shit. He calls the Archangel’s name again.
“Dean!” Sam calls as he half-jogs into the courtyard, but Dean doesn’t respond.
“Zachariah!”
“What are you doing?” Sam growls when he makes it over, crowding half a foot away from Dean’s face, close enough to feel the frantic hot sifts of his breath. He hooks a hand around Dean’s elbow, drags him back toward the room, but Dean rips away from the contact easily.
“Come on, you sonofabitch!” he yells. Sam holds up a hand to the maids as they shuffle around obliviously, pausing to watch the spectacle with pillowcases in their arms, rubber gloves on their hands. Dean knows it’s only a matter of time before one of them has the foresight to call 911, and when that happens, they’re fucked, but still.
“Zachariah, you asshole, get the fuck down here! Your soldier’s dying, you heartless sonofabitch!”
“Dean, stop,” Sam says with a forced smile, obviously straining to keep his voice calm. “People are looking, you’re gonna get us thrown out. Or they’re gonna call the cops. Seriously. Stop.”
Dean scoffs and barely makes eye contact with his brother, but when Sam clamps a hand around his arm again, this time he can’t pull away. The hiss of Sam’s words is bitter when he leans in about two inches from Dean’s face, maybe less. Dean doesn’t know how it happens, he just opens his eyes and Sam is suddenly there, uncomfortably close.
“That is the last thing we need, Dean. We got a half-naked comatose guy carved to pieces lying in our room that’s checked out under a goddamn fake credit card.”
Sam seethes as Dean’s eyes crawl across his frame, swallow the dark glimmering slant of his eyes, the part of his lips and the tension of his jaw, the twin lines of muscle that pique at the curve when he gets pissed enough. After a stretch, Dean nods and resituates his shirt where it’s bunched up in careless hand-wrinkles. He follows Sam back to the room silently, pulling a hand over his face, and well, fuck.
That had been it.
His last-ditch effort for a solution to save Castiel. He understands the logic of Sam’s argument, but part of him still wants to try calling Zachariah, wants to break away from the room and burn his lungs out yelling for the fucking Archangel in the parking lot until he shows face. Merciful creature of light, yeah, fucking right, sure. His soldier lay dying, strapped to a meatsuit, sliced up like he’s been run through a fucking blender, and he doesn’t even think to show face. It makes Dean sick, really physically fucking sick.
When Sam leaves under the pretense of getting breakfast, Dean takes the opportunity to get Castiel in the shower. It’s not an easy thing, carrying an unresponsive grown fucking man through an already too-small bathroom and fitting both of their bodies into the uncomfortably tight space. It’s awkward, but Dean hardly notices; worry eclipses everything else at this point. Castiel’s still not healing like he should, and yeah, it’s freaking Dean right the fuck out.
The jagged cuts littering Castiel’s skin don’t seem to be healing at all, and when Dean looks closer he can see that the only reason they aren’t bleeding anymore is because there’s simply no blood left in Castiel’s body to supply them. His skin is tinted a sickly gray color, almost bluish, unsettlingly cold to the touch, might as well be petting down a fucking sheetrock wall. There is no tension in his muscles when Dean grazes his fingers along them under thin rivulets of nearly steaming water.
Vapor builds in the room thick enough to make Dean’s head swim, but he doesn’t cool the water. He doesn’t know how long he’s at the edge of the tub, elbows resting on the porcelain. Doesn’t notice how wet his sleeves have gotten, or the slick of condensation meddling with sweat in the small of his back, on the crest of his upper lip. He simply sits, and watches.
A sigh floats out of his throat when he skims a hand through the damp, random spikes of Castiel’s hair. Without a word he climbs in behind him, settling the angel’s lacerated back to his still-clothed chest. He tries to map the slide of Castiel’s chest, slick the line down to his stomach, but the raised open gapes of the cuts won’t allow it and Dean’s stomach clenches at the feel of the sloppily knotted stitches failing to keep his flesh together. So he settles a hand on Castiel’s forehead and pets back his hair every time he says his name, the sound of it bittersweet and hollow on his tongue. He doesn’t even know why he says it, other than that it feels right, and that he doesn’t know what the fuck else to say. If he knew how to pray, maybe that would be acceptable, but he never saw the point in it until Castiel arrived. And now he’s kind of kicking himself for not learning, because if there’s one thing that could help right now…
But Dean never learned how to pray, and frankly he feels a little stupid trying, so instead he just tightens his arm around Castiel’s ribs and presses a kiss behind his ear, one of the only places he’s found that’s not nicked or carved or shredded. “Cas?” he says as he smoothes away more of the blood collected on Castiel’s skin. “You better come back, man.”
He tangles his fingers up in Castiel’s hair, nudges another kiss behind his ear, the protrusion of pale bone there smooth and solid. Inhales, exhales. Holds on just tight enough and doesn’t let go, lips moving against the disarmingly cold shell of Castiel’s ear.
“You hear me?” Dean whispers. “You better fucking come back.”
~ ~ ~
The knock on the door doesn’t come until halfway through the four o’clock local broadcast. Dean props up onto an elbow immediately, blinking sleep-clouded eyes at Sam. Momentarily a fit of outrage flashes across his mind, angry tumbling words like why the hell did you let me fall asleep, but he’s just too fucking tired to go that route right now. They’ve got a comatose angel in their room and a phantom knock on their door, and yeah, he’s got bigger fucking fish to fry right now than some stupid argument with Sam about responsibilities and priorities and fuck if he even knows what else.
He glances at his watch confusedly. “You order food?” he asks, and when Sam shakes his head, Dean palms his Glock quick as greased fucking lightning.
Sam nods when he’s got his gun carefully concealed, but cocked, under a pillow aimed at the door. Dean keeps his hand behind his back and almost opens the door, but then a voice says, “You won’t be needing those, I come in peace,” and Dean’s eyebrows hike all the way up to his hairline. He’d know that vexing, holier-than-thou voice anywhere.
When Dean swings the door open, Zachariah smiles down at him, clasping his hands pleasantly as he forces his way into the room. “I would have come sooner,” he says cheerfully, tracking the dirt from his shoes on the entryway rug, “But you didn’t leave a calling address.”
Dean blinks. “I thought - but you’re an angel. I thought you just knew that stuff.”
Zachariah sighs heavily and regards Dean with beady, judgmental eyes. “It was a joke, Dean. Of course I knew where you were.”
Sam swallows and eyes Dean hopefully. “You’re Zachariah?”
The archangel leers down his nose at Sam, just like he does with everyone else, arrogant bastard he is, and searches his form carefully. “Yes,” he says with a peculiar smirk that sends a dozen rails of shivers along Dean’s spine. “And you’re Sam. The boy with the demon blood.”
Dean flips the door shut and sets his gun on the entry table. “Can you help?” he asks, uninterested in skirting around the issue. Fuck the pleasantries.
For a long moment Zachariah says nothing, the tension coiling up in Dean’s body until he’s just about ready to rip apart, twang into the air like a rubber band stretched too far. Zachariah does not move, but rather quietly searches Castiel’s motionless body with a fascinated kind of empathy. Finally, he says simply, “Yes.”
Dean blinks expectantly when Zachariah doesn’t seem to be doing anything except inspecting the wounds cut into Castiel’s flesh. “So? Help him, he’s probably in a hell of a lot of pain.”
“Agony,” Zachariah chimes as he straightens his stupid purple tie. “He’s in agony. So much that you can’t even begin to fathom it.”
Dean’s fists ball up at his sides, jonesing for a wall to punch or a throat to crush, preferably Zachariah’s. Or Belial’s. Shit, at this point he’s not going to be picky. He’ll take down any motherfucker that messes with him right now, because Castiel needs healing and this is the only straw he’s even got to grasp for. Beyond this, it’s nothing. He shifts uncomfortably when Zachariah still isn’t doing anything, just standing there with that rat-faced smile, all stuffy and corporate and egomaniacal as usual. Dean blinks as he throws a hand in the direction of Castiel’s bed. “What, do you want a cookie? Friggin’ cure him, Zac, come on!”
The archangel snickers at the comment, then shakes his head lightly. “Love to, but no can do.”
Dean draws a shaking breath. He keeps his voice low and drawn, more of a command than a question. “What.”
Sam eyebrows draw into a tight furrow. “Why not?” he asks curiously.
Zachariah shrugs an open palm toward Castiel’s body. “He did it to himself.”
“Belial did this to him, he didn’t slice ‘n dice himself up like that.”
“It was his choice, Dean,” Zachariah snaps coldly. “He chose to let this happen. It was purely a matter of free will, oft the fall of many great souls.” He wags a finger at his words, then perches it behind his back. He lips twist into a dissatisfied frown as he surveys Castiel’s body. “Shame, too. He was one of our best soldiers. Followed orders so well.”
Dean takes a determined step closer, and oh fucking Christ it takes just about every ounce of reserve in his body not to just go completely batshit on this bastard. Throw his fists out and claw out his goddamn eyes, squeeze the life out of his fucking throat, and really? Yeah, Dean doesn’t even give a shit if it lands him back in Hell at this point. “You can’t possibly be serious,” he bites. “He sacrificed himself for me. Aren’t you angel guys supposed to be big on that stuff?”
“Dean,” Sam warns quietly.
“He put his neck on the chopping block so I could go free,” Dean growls, taking another step forward. “What happened to your mercy, huh?”
“Oh I do have mercy,” Zachariah says smoothly in that same cheery nasal chime that makes Dean want to punch a fucking hole through something. “But I can’t undo the choices that Castiel makes of his own God-given free will. That’s the gist of it, Dean; the catch-22, if you will. Free will is a gift, but you have to be willing to accept the consequences of the choices you make, because they will last the rest of your life. Human and angel alike.”
Dean turns then, spins quickly, because if he keeps looking at Zachariah he’s going to end up doing something that can’t be good for any of them. His fingers card tightly through his hair as he paces. “Zac, don’t you try to pull this crap now,” he hisses.
“But there has to be something you can do,” Sam offers. “He gave himself up to save Dean. I mean, that’s pure selflessness. That’s martyrdom if I’ve ever heard it.”
Zachariah bites his cheek thoughtfully. “This disturbs me,” he says coolly. He looks down at Castiel again, mouth all twisted up a tight grimace when he says, “Yes, we’re going to have to have a talk about your priorities, aren’t we.” His fingers move in a quick rhythm at his side before he looks to Dean again. “Alright,” he sighs.
Dean spins he so fast he would swear he gives himself fucking whiplash. “Alright?”
Zachariah offers a smartly artificial smile. “Alright. You have your deal. I’ll make an exception. Just this once, though, and it’s only because there are much bigger things than Castiel’s… insubordination going on here,” says Zachariah, bitter and tinged with annoyance. Not that Dean could give a fuck if he’s annoyed or not, because alright, he’d said alright and Castiel was going to live, they hadn’t been too late to save him after all, and Jesus fucking Christ that one stupid word is about the best news Dean’s ever received in his life.
Alright.
Zachariah neatly folds the blankets down to Castiel’s waist and makes an almost comical face of disgust as he leans close. He seems to know exactly where to find the buck knife under Dean’s pillow without even asking, which frankly Dean finds a little disconcerting. The archangel withdraws it, inspects the tip with a quiet pinging flick for a second or two, then doesn’t even pause before cutting into the already-lacerated flesh of Castiel’s chest, dragging the blade through the wounds without hesitation, breaking open stitches and drawing weak flows of new blood to the surface. Castiel’s utter stillness is probably the worst part of the whole thing; Dean’s voice nears a yell when he cries out, “Zac, what the hell?!”
In his peripheral vision he sees Sam grimace, raising a palm to cover his mouth uneasily.
“Relax, Dean,” Zachariah replies, shockingly cavalier about brutally carving another sigil into Castiel’s chest over the ones that are already there, like he’s painting a fucking canvas or something, not raking through skin and nerves and muscle already torn by what must be hundreds of slices and dices. There must have been at least a small amount of blood left in Castiel’s body, Dean notices, because a thin line sneaks along the curve of his ribs and bleeds into the sheets as Zachariah works. Dean swallows thickly as he tries not to watch the slow soak of rich crimson into the fabric.
When he’s done, Zachariah’s hands are bloody and his sleeves are stained as he sits back and regards his handiwork. With a contented sigh, he twists the blood from his hands into the covers. Dean watches with wide eyes; Sam simply blinks.
“Dei Gratia, ego te absolvo pecata tua,” Zachariah mutters in a surprisingly gentle tone, passing a hand over Castiel’s eyes. Dean squirms, straightens at immediate attention when a slight flutter shifts across Castiel’s eyelids.
Zachariah casually stands and smoothes the wrinkles from his suit. “The proverbial slate is not wiped clean just because of this,” he says, and he’s out the door right after, no you’re welcome, no have a nice day, no fuck you very much, nothing. He just goes.
But Dean hardly notices, because his eyes are trained on Castiel.
At first nothing much happens, just a slight tension in his forehead. Dean glances to the door when it clicks shut, and when he looks back to Castiel, holy shit. His jaw fucking drops.
A dramatic bend builds in the small of Castiel’s back, sharpening the angle of his body as he rises from the bed. Dean can’t peg the expression on his face, whether it’s pain or something else, something undefined, but Castiel’s eyes squeeze into tight lines and his jaw goes from tightly-clamped to agape in a few short seconds. And as he squirms, the covers slip down to settle around his hips, those gaping jagged slices down to the bone that Dean couldn’t manage to stitch up, so that Dean can see the full effect of Zachariah’s blessing or spell or whatever the fuck it was.
One of Castiel’s hands grips the edge of the bed tightly, white-knuckling in the covers as he arches, and even if Dean had ever wanted to tear his eyes away it was fucking ridiculous at this point. He watches with wide eyes as the dark blistered burns around Castiel’s wrists sink completely into his skin, mangled red ridges blanching to pale white, flattening and smoothing away until they don’t even exist anymore. Color blossoms into Castiel’s chest right in the center, spiraling outward like tree branches searching out sunlight as the wounds begin to seal, as the flesh weaves itself back together and the stitches slip out completely, falling away unneeded onto the bed or the floor, wherever they land after Castiel’s body pushes them out. The deeper gashes seal together from the inside out, fusing together muscle and nerves, then arteries and veins and finally skin, building it up like pure creation from square one before they fade to barely-reddened streaks, then evaporate completely as if there was never a damn scratch there at all.
Dean just blinks, and he’s pretty sure that’s all Sam is doing too.
Things go quiet as the last of Castiel’s wounds heal, as his hips ground down and his chest juts into the air, hands gripped tight around the side of the mattress, in the sheets, with his head thrown back and his jaw clenched tight, and even though this is some bizarre holy rebuilding ritual, even though it’s something spiritual, angelic, pure even, it would be one hell of a lie for Dean to say that watching Castiel twist and writhe around on the bed like that wasn’t turning him right the fuck on. However wrong it might be.
Then Castiel’s eyes rip open with a sudden jerk and when they do, Dean instinctively has to throw up a hand against the two bright streams of light pouring from Castiel’s eye sockets, stabbing in twin golden-white beams up to the ceiling. Dean thinks he hears Sam grunt, maybe curse under his breath, before he squints his eyes tightly against the light, so bright it’s like staring straight into the fucking sun. Another column manifests, spearing out of Castiel’s mouth in a wide shining band. Dean’s eyes burn and he can feel them watering, but it’s not so bright his eyes can’t adjust, and besides he really fucking wants to see just what the hell is going on, so he gradually lowers his arm and bears the sting.
He watches, not a little disbelieving, as Castiel’s veins recreate their blood supply, as his arteries swell and engorge themselves to healthy color again, quickly burying beneath the softly blushed surface of his newly-mended skin. His lips flushing back to a healthy shade, the beds of his fingernails seamlessly shifting from sickly dark gray to soft pink right before Dean’s eyes.
It’s pretty fucking amazing, really.
“Dean?” Sam asks, but Dean doesn’t tear his eyes from Castiel’s rebuilding body.
“Yeah,” is the only thing he offers in reply, and for whatever reason, the tension in Sam’s voice, how he sounds just as freaked out as Dean is right now, makes Dean feel much, much better.
The light shafting out of Castiel’s eyes fades quickly, drawing back into his body along with the one from his mouth. A stray groan cracks from the angel’s throat finally, and oh god. It’s dry and wrung-out and guttural and weak, and it’s the most beautiful fucking sound Dean has ever heard in his life.
Dean releases a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding as Castiel’s back settles against the bed, as his breaths lower into a healthy rhythm instead of ragged gasps or shallow, uneven pants. The only marks remaining on his body that haven’t healed are the binding seal dug by Belial and the sigil Zachariah carved over it, but as Castiel’s face smoothes out and his chest slowly begins rising and falling in a predictable calm cadence, those too begin to slowly fold in on themselves. Dean watches intently as the flesh stitches itself back together, fusing the frayed ends of the wounds together until, within just a few short seconds, Castiel’s body is whole again. Smooth as a pale virgin canvas, completely untouched, perfect, like nothing ever fucking happened at all.
“Cas?” Dean says, though it’s quiet and unsteady.
Castiel’s tongue darts out to run along his lips, slowly, and when he says, “Dean,” like it’s the only word he knows, there’s so much relief and joy and affection wrapped up inside the single syllable that it almost shatters Dean clean into a million little pieces.
Dean is at his side in a heartbeat, his hand around Castiel’s in the next.
At his back, he hears Sam mutter a quiet, “Holy shit,” and Dean thinks with a laugh that yeah, that’s a pretty fair and well accurate way of putting it.
~ ~ ~
{to be continued...}
ONTO PART NINE