In His Image: Tr(e/an)sfigurer
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In which Castiel asks for something, and Dean gives it to him; and Gabriel asks for something, and Sam denies it.
Dean, Castiel, Sam, Gabriel.
tresfigurer [v refl] (Anglo-Norman): to be transformed.
transfigurer [v refl] (Anglo-Norman): to transform oneself.
He could feel Castiel coming, weaving his way between the old fig trees that lay behind the house they were squatting in. Didn’t know how he felt it. Didn’t really care right now.
Dean took another swig of Jack, and stared up at the dark lattice of branches against the stars.
Castiel sat down on the rock beside him, a warm shift of air in the dark. Dean wondered if the stars would keep on after this whole Apocalypse business, or if Lucifer was bent on snuffing them out too.
It was the end of things. They weren’t going back to Sioux Falls: tomorrow they were pushing on to Detroit. East, not west. Dean was pretty sure that was a damned good reason to talk, to offer himself, to open and share and tell each other deep important weighty things, but a lifetime of shut-up-and-carry-on sat heavy on his tongue and wouldn’t let him make the words.
“Hey, Cas.” It came out muted and croaky and slurred, so he cleared his throat. “Not good company right now.”
“Then I shall be silent,” Castiel said, easy as that.
And he was. They sat quiet together for another hour, watching the stars drag themselves slowly along between the black silhouettes of leaves, long past the time when all good little heroes with a world to save tomorrow should be in bed.
Of course, most good little heroes got a happy ending.
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to let this happen,” Dean confessed at last.
“I don’t really understand how any of us will.” Castiel’s voice sounded almost like just another rustle in the night, not disturbing anything it touched. Almost. “But he will. And we will. Because we must.”
Weird. The thought that he wouldn’t be the only one to miss Sam. ’Course, there would always have been someone else who would have missed him - Bobby, Dad, Jess, Pastor Jim, maybe Ellen and Jo for a while there - but it had never felt like that mattered before. Like it wasn’t just Sam and Dean at the centre of the world, and screw everybody else.
Dean sighed, and rubbed his forehead. It felt too tight, and kind of fuzzy. “Just… it feels like I’ve only just got you all back together, you know? Feels almost like family. Is that all I get? Just for one day, one freaking day, Cas, it felt like home.”
“Yes,” was all the angel said, but there was a hell of a lot in it.
Dean breathed out slowly, and moved his little finger just a smidgeon on the cool dimpled surface of the rock, so that it brushed against Castiel’s. “You too, huh?”
Castiel’s hand moved. His little finger lifted, hesitated a moment, then traced a warm trail across the back of Dean’s knuckles, followed a little higher up by his ring finger. Then the patient weight of his palm settled itself hot and solid over the back of Dean’s hand, fingers nestling into the valleys between Dean’s fingers. Like it was made to fit there. Like he’d rebuilt Dean’s hand to suit his, and how could Dean not want that?
Dean swallowed, hard. It seemed to take some kind of geological age to turn his hand over under Castiel’s, to slide his fingers between Castiel’s fingers and curl around them like they mattered. To hold him back.
“I know I have to let him do it.” His voice sounded like a strange and heavy thing to his own ears. “I gotta trust him. Just… I always knew there’d be a catch, you know? It was too easy. Everything was… ha, coming up roses. Or angels. You. Gabriel. Sariel. Working things out. Shit going right for once. Guess I should have seen it.”
All he could see of Castiel was the gentle, definite-as-fuck line of his mouth, and the faint gleam of one eye in the dark. He could feel him, though. Feel his heartbeat, strong and deep, just through that one line, palm to palm, heart to chest to arm to hand to hand to arm to chest to heart.
Huh. He had a soul. Gotta remember that. Whatever that meant.
“After Van Nuys, after you were gone, I told him…” Dean’s eyes were stinging, but that was nothing new this evening, so he ignored it. The rims were damp enough that anything welling in there could just slip over and out. Was gonna do it anyway. “I told him, if you’re grown up enough to find faith in me, least I can do is return the favour. And I’ve tried, Cas, I really have. I just - don’t know how. This is - well, like Jo said. Last chance to treat him like a real boy.” He laughed, a harsh soft little bark of nothing. “Gotta let him choose.”
Castiel’s fingers tightened around his, just for a moment, the shift of muscle and bone under breakable skin.
“I think you do every day, Dean.” His voice rubbed like velvet against Dean’s senses, soft and decadent and dangerously attractive. The sort of thing you wanted to roll yourself up in and stay there all day, and never get out of bed to face the real world. “You trusted him to hold the line against Pestilence’s demons. You didn’t turn back when you heard how bad the Croatoan situation was. You didn’t stand in his way when he started to speak of Gabriel more fondly, and to devote more of his attention to him. You didn’t rebuke him for keeping this possibility a secret.” A dry vein of humour threaded its way delicately through his tone. “You even let him drive the car.”
Sneaky feathery bastard. That little familiar kick of affection in Dean’s stomach. Wishing he could wake up with that half-smile and his peevish morning attitude - not just in the same room, but pressed up against him, known and beloved and accessible and never going to leave. There to be traced all over, every inch, with mouth and hands and all of Dean, to be protected and trusted and to know that he was allowed, that he made Castiel happy.
Dean swayed in a little to test the solid push of Castiel’s shoulder, warm through light cotton. “I guess. I don’t know. Still feels like…” The words wandered away from him, uncomfortable and too much like exploring things he really didn’t want to think about just now. Too much, rising up to stifle him.
He disentangled his fingers from Castiel’s, and tapped him sort of gently on the inside of his wrist, so it wasn’t like pushing him away. “So, you. All souled up. When’d that happen?”
Castiel shifted restlessly against him, stretched out his legs in front, a long line of supple warmth and possibilities in the dark. “I don’t know. Gradually. I felt it there, but I didn’t understand. Sometime between the first time you died and the last.”
After pulling Dean from Hell, when he was strong and righteous and sure with the whole Host behind him. Before Dean visited Heaven, and brought back news that made him look like someone had torn his faith out and slashed it to bloody little ribbons.
“A grow-your-own soul, huh,” Dean said intelligently. “Who’da thought.”
Castiel made a quiet little noise in his throat, something like agreement, something like puzzlement.
“So what does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Castiel said, low. “It has always been thought that a soul is… our father’s gift to humanity. His favourite children.”
“Only it turns out that you guys can earn one too, if you start thinking for yourselves a bit. Optional upgrade.” Dean prodded his knee. “Hey. Gotta say, I think I like the big guy a bit better for that.”
The pale light of the moon snagged for a moment on the faint curl of a smile at the corner of Castiel’s mouth, and the dark burr of stubble over his lip. Just on that little detail, but it felt like all of him. So much in so little.
They lapsed back into silence for a while. Dean listened to the sound of the air being dragged into Castiel’s body, falling out again, slow like thoughts in the morning, when nothing really mattered outside the cocoon of the blankets.
Just one day. One day of his little brother grinning at him like everything was easy, like Sam was happy. Teasing him about Castiel, without ever actually mentioning it, little smirks and twitched eyebrows and comments that were definitely not about that at all. Of Castiel and Sam and Bobby, easy in each other’s space, moving around each other like a habit. Of Castiel reaching out to touch Dean, deliberately, repeatedly, rough little brushes of skin that meant… something. Something full of weight and intent. Something Dean would have really liked to have had the time to explore.
“Didn’t Anna have a soul?”
Castiel was quiet for another moment, considering, the tilt of his head like a question. “I believe perhaps she did, when she was human, or something very like one. But either the violent restoration of her grace, or… or what was done to her in Heaven burned it out of her. When she came for Sam, she was pure angel.” He sounded like he regretted that. As if he’d liked her, once.
Dean grunted, uncomfortable with that thought for reasons that he couldn’t quite pin down, and Castiel turned his head to look at him as if he’d only just remembered that Dean and Anna had been - well, not friends really, but Castiel didn’t know that.
“I’m sorry, Dean.”
Dean shook his head, a bit curt, not wanting to think about more people lost, worse than dying, becoming not themselves. “How about your wings? Lady Back-to-the-Future fixed them up, didn’t she? Just that?”
Castiel stood up, a series of smooth movements all sliding into each other, leaving Dean’s side to the cool touch of night air. The sharp line of his shoulders cut black against the sky. Dean, looking up at him for once, was suddenly fiercely aware of the physicality of him, in a way that felt strange and almost blasphemous when it was Cas. The way he moved like he was comfortable now, enjoyed the power of his own body. The tense and roll of his hips as he half-slid, half-stepped down the little slope in front of them, to where the creek chattered in silver and black at the bottom.
Dean’s chest ached, viciously. It was getting harder to remember that he couldn’t want that. That Castiel couldn’t understand it, couldn’t want it, would hate being taken so far out of himself.
“She healed my vessel, and restored me control of the physical manifestation of my wings, which is almost the same thing,” Castiel said, soft and exact. “Doing more - recharging my batteries - would have required her to make of herself a conduit for the power of Heaven. Which would have been… inadvisable.”
“Right.” Dean found the edge of a chuckle caught somewhere in his throat. Something so familiar and right about that diplomatic little pause before the last word. “I’m guessing that means it would have sent up a homing beacon the size of Krakatoa, Mr Understatement?”
There was half a smile hidden under Castiel’s voice, under the sound of water. “Something like that.”
“Can I see?”
Something croaked in the distance, a bird or a bat or a frog or whatever, Dean wasn’t into that whole wildlife shit unless it was trying to eat them. Castiel turned to look at him in the dark, only the faint liquid gleam of his eyes visible through the shadows.
“I mean…” Dean’s voice stumbled on that half-glimpsed look, snagged on it like rough silk on rough hands. Because what if this was some violation of angel code, or something? “Would it burn my eyes out? Seeing your wings? Not just the shadows?”
Castiel’s voice was as careful and flat as Dean had ever heard it, not giving away a thing about what was going on inside his head. “Not as I am now. There is nothing to them but bone and muscle and feathers.”
Dean swallowed down the gruffness in his throat, put his head on one side and tried his best charming grin around the weird knot of sick misery and clinginess that had been sitting cold and heavy in his stomach ever since Sam had dropped his little bombshell. “So can I? I mean, obviously, not if it’s some kind of private thing for you guys, like asking a chick to strip down just because you’re curious, but if you’re okay with it…”
Castiel shifted, a long heavy shape in the dark, mottled with shifting glimpses of silver light that didn’t tell you a thing. Dean couldn’t make out whether that one step had been forward or backward. “Why?”
The distance between them felt like something taut and stretched, almost ready to snap. Dean leaned forward into it, eased up on it a bit, revelled in the pull of it, even though he was pretty sure almost any answer here was going to be the wrong one. “Because they’re part of you. And…” He squinted through the dark at the rumpled line of Castiel’s collar as it flickered in and out of moonlight, tried to work out why it seemed suddenly so important that he see this, before everything fell to pieces. “Well, they’re kind of useless right now, yeah? I mean, you can’t actually fly or anything. But… it was still important, getting them back. They’re important. Because they’re you, not because of what they can do. And I haven’t really seen them.” He shrugged, shifting uncomfortably under the weight of that stare, but not letting go of it. “I’d kind of like to.”
Silhouetted against the broken pieces of starlight on the ripples of the stream, Castiel’s hand, which Dean hadn’t even noticed was clenched, uncurled itself very slowly until it hung tense and empty against his thigh.
Dean would really, really like to be able to see Castiel’s face just about now.
“Um. Cas?”
“Dean,” Castiel acknowledged quietly.
Then there was that muffled, wet-paper-tearing sound, like the world refolding itself into something just a bit less (or a bit more) real, like feathers fading into distant thunder, and Castiel’s silhouette wasn’t just shaped like a man’s anymore.
So, apparently he hadn’t been exaggerating, back in that barn. Dean suspected there weren’t many rooms short of a freaking ballroom where Cas wouldn’t be able to touch opposite walls without an effort, just by kind of rolling his shoulders. Useful life skill, that.
“Um,” he contributed again.
Except it wasn’t like back in the barn. These were real. Dean could feel the flutter and shift in the air as they moved - as Castiel moved them - up and back, to half-mantled, a shape that looked strangely defensive and vulnerable against the dark trees behind him. Flesh and muscle and feathers. Not just shadows. Not two-dimensional. Proof of how far Castiel had fallen, that Dean could look at them at all. Proof of what he still was, that they existed. Proof of… something, something, that he’d show them to Dean, let Dean see this. Have this.
“They are scarred and reduced,” Castiel said gruffly. Like he thought he had to apologise. Like he thought they were anything less than miraculous.
… Like he thought scars were something to be ashamed of.
“’Cos of what you did, Cas,” Dean growled, low and fierce. “’Cos of what you chose. Don’t you tell me you regret that, not now.”
He watched Castiel go still, all still except for the quiver in his wings, and the brief flash of the whites of his eyes in the moonlight.
Then the wings folded forward and in, half around his shoulders so he looked like a chrysalis or something, and he came forward and knelt in front of Dean.
… He knelt. In front of Dean.
Dean’s brain scrambled away out of reach of a whole host of really inappropriate thoughts. Then a lot of other really terrifying ones, like, angel. Cas-angel. Kneeling in front of me. And who the hell - really, Hell, he’d been there, done that, so who the Hell was he to have an angel on his knees for him? And looking like this? with his head tipped back and his throat all bare and clear in the moonlight, like Dean’s touch could absolve him of…
Shit. Shitshitshit.
Dean’s hands suddenly slid forward from where they’d been clenched tight on his knees, bridged that little far-too-much distance between them and curled around Castiel’s shoulders (the sharp jut of his collarbone, the smooth shift of his shoulder blade, the little tickle just against the curve of one little finger where something warm and inhuman emerged incongruously right through the fabric of his shirt). Because suddenly Dean knew that Castiel didn’t expect to make it through this. Didn’t expect to be here this time tomorrow.
“Cas,” he hissed, angry and desperate, and shoved one hand up into his hair to pull the angel in against him, to press his forehead into the tacky cooling sweat on Castiel’s forehead, too close, too strong.
Long, hot hands landed on his knees, reactive, defensive, pressing tight. Castiel rumbled his name again, something sort of exasperated and tolerant and maybe just a bit breathless, and Dean huffed out a bit of a laugh despite himself, because honestly, didn’t he get it? Idiot angels.
Castiel made a questioning abrupt sort of noise against his cheek, breath sliding hot over Dean’s jawbone and down his neck, and Dean gave in and slipped his other hand (the one not pressing Castiel into him, holding him where he was so he wouldn’t vanish) down just a little so it could curl around where that powerful, velveted limb arched up from behind his shoulder, hold it tight and keep it there. Something warm, thudding softly with Castiel’s heartbeat. Something that had always been there, but that he’d never been able to see, because Dean had always been so busy stubbornly trying to make Castiel into a human. Into his own image.
The feathers were soft and quivering like a promise under Dean’s palm, and that first joint fit perfectly into the curl of his hand. Solid and real and alive.
Castiel’s breath stuttered uncertainly against Dean’s neck, under Dean’s hand. Dean swallowed thickly, tilted his face just a little further, and murmured against the sharp ridge of Castiel’s cheekbone, “Hey. Is this like, angelic bad touching?”
Castiel growled. “No.”
Dean felt two-day stubble scrape against the corner of his lips as he smiled, and honestly, didn’t Castiel remember about razors without him around, or what? “Good.”
Then he was pulling back, gentle, because it wasn’t fair. And his body was screaming hey, no, what? at him, because it wasn’t fair, but screw that, no way was he pulling something like that on Cas. Castiel’s body stiffened against his shins, under his hands; then, as Dean reluctantly moved both hands back to the relatively neutral spot on his shoulders (hey, what, Cas’ hands were still on his knees, shoulders were fair game), the tension eased out of him in one long shuddering breath, and the wings folded away into the nothingness they’d come from.
“Dean,” he rumbled, and then again “Dean,” like it was the most important word in the thousands of languages stored up in that enormous angelic hard drive of his, which just, wow. How could anything Dean had to offer ever compare with that? “Do not think that Sam’s death would be meaningless. The power of a willing sacrifice-”
Dean closed his eyes against the gleam of stern conviction under those dark lashes. “Cas. Don’t. Just. Stop trying to help, yeah?” He had to pause, to chase too-heavy air out of his lungs, to make sure he wasn’t growling. “No matter how you spin it, the best-case scenario here is my brother ending up in the highest-security cell in the downstairs block, with the fucking devil as his cellmate.”
Castiel’s eyes narrowed, and his voice - Jesus, if he was going to keep doing that now that he was as good as mortal, angel or not, he was going to need to invest in lozenges, because Dean was pretty damned sure Jimmy Novak had never rattled around in his poor throat like that. “I am not spinning anything, Dean. Did you never read the Bible? Or any other human work of semi-historical mythological significance, across the entire cultural history of your incredibly stubborn and infuriating race?”
Dean looked at him, looked at the hot familiar irritated shadow of him pressing close in the dark and laughed, desperate and fond and, well, screw it, might as well try, nothing left to lose. “Cas, promise me something.” He inched one hand in closer against Castiel’s neck, pressed his fingers into the muscle under his collarbone. “After this all goes down. Whatever way it goes. If we’re both still alive. Promise you’ll stick around? Not, you know, every day, if you don’t want to, if you’ve got other stuff you gotta do. Just, don’t… vanish. I just… look, Sam’s gonna be gone, either way. And doing this alone…” He stopped, tried to force a quip. “Well, if you’re not here I’d have to ask Gabriel, if he doesn’t dive back underground, and that just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen every day. I mean, can you imagine the prank wars?”
Castiel’s voice under his fingertips was something between a soothing purr and a growl of absolute possession that went straight to Dean’s gut. “You and Gabriel could make a strong team, I believe. Given time.”
How the hell did he do that? Dean chuckled weakly, looked at the sliver of light illuminating his fingers and the strain of the tendon in Castiel’s neck right in front of him, so close. “Cas. Stalling, dude.”
“Dean.” Castiel’s fingers pinched painfully tight into the joints of his knees, frustrated and hot and almost worried. “I promise to do the best by you that I can. No matter what happens to us, or to the world.”
“Jesus, Cas.” He let out a breath, shaky and brittle and far too light. There were traces of cloud in the sky now - Castiel was only a shape, with no silver in him at all. “Don’t sugarcoat it, will you?”
“Dean,” Castiel said quietly, and it was low and soft and so very, very close, shaking right through his bones. “Dean.”
A tiny sound escaped from Dean’s throat, the sort of thing he’d never acknowledge in the daylight. Pushed beyond anything he could name. Because how could Cas do this? push, and push, and just know what Dean needed, be what he needed, all the time, beyond challenge and terror?
His voice shook, and his body.
“You keep being here for me. You fucking self-sacrificing idiotic son of a bitch. You never ask for anything, do you?”
One hand slid up from his knee, a slow hot push of possessive impatience. Castiel’s hand, always Castiel. It curled firm and just a little too tight around his upper thigh. Latched on there like he was laying a claim, and stayed. “Dean. I am asking.”
Dean went very still.
“Cas.”
“Dean,” he growled back, all that impatience and just a hint of that fondness and humour and everything in between, as the other hand left Dean’s knee and curled around the collar of his shirt to pull him in against Castiel’s hot mouth.
Again. Shit. And he’d had to try so hard not to freak out or jump him last time. Keep it chaste, keep it warm, keep it comforting, keep it what Castiel needed. Except he was having a hard time now, through the sort of clumsy slide of Castiel’s lips around his own bottom lip and the really not clumsy slide of Castiel’s insistent fingers around to the back of his neck, remembering why. A really hard time. Of something. Something that was not kissing, not opening his mouth against that sweet, fierce mouth as it pressed just there, not… pressing back.
Except for certain bits that weren’t hard, and that just weren’t going to be. Not tonight.
… Like that mattered. Dean growled into the stubble at the impatient corner of a mouth, and shoved his hand right back into the stupid beautiful mess of dark hair where it belonged. Let his mouth fall open, surrender, under the determined graceless push of his tongue. Castiel wanted this, needed this, or thought he did. Was asking for it. Hardly ever asked for anything. Not drunk now, not high, no painkillers, no desperate adrenalin. No excuses. Screw that, screw the rest of it, this was something he could do. He could look after Cas. If only just for one night, one hour. Hell, human or angel or angel-with-a-soul-without-power-with-wings-trapped-in-a-human-shape or whatever the fuck that made him, he was Castiel. He’d earned the right to ask for stupid things, to make mistakes, to be indulged and forgiven and to recover. Not to always be the grown-up.
To have his last night on earth, if that was what he wanted.
Shit. And he wanted Dean.
“Castiel.” Dean’s voice hitched against the demanding shove and slide of chapped wet lips, and fell away into something loose and desperate. “Cas.”
He let his knees fall apart under the tug of Castiel’s hand and the push of his hips, let Castiel shove himself forward against Dean’s chest and belly and crotch, burrow into him, surround him in his arms and warmth and desire. And, well, hello, even if Dean junior wasn’t anywhere near likely to come out and play today, apparently same couldn’t be said for little Cas, because the desperate push of Dean’s tongue against the slick, generous crease of Castiel’s lips was mimicked by the hungry push of Castiel’s heat against Dean’s loins, and, okay, that felt like it had been there for a while actually, so apparently Dean hadn’t been paying as much attention as he probably should have been.
Idiot. Seriously. How often did he miss something like this? Apparently Castiel was distracting. Or, you know, Sam in the Pit tomorrow was distracting. Or something.
Castiel tore his mouth away, just long enough to growl into Dean’s throat. And if libido had been on the cards for tonight, the shake and promise of that would have done it for him. But now..?
“Cas,” he murmured, soft into the taut, overheated ridge of tendon under his ear. “Cas. Hey.”
Castiel… froze. Like he doubted this. Like he thought Dean could possibly ever shove him away.
Dean’s fingers clenched reflexively into the soft hair at the base of his skull, the gentle slope of his waist, not letting him pull back.
“You know I would if I could, right?”
And there, there was the break in the clouds and the pale starlight, just when he really needed it, giving him a glimpse and enough of the pale, frantic gleam in Castiel’s eyes, asking, confirming.
Dean took a deep breath and leaned in; drew shaky fingers up over Castiel’s shoulder to nestle in the corner of his collarbone and throat; pressed his mouth for the first time in against Castiel’s and opened there, soft and definite.
Castiel’s hip jerked hard against the inside of Dean’s left knee. Dean groaned and pressed in with his whole body, nuzzled his face and his mouth into the soft-rough of Castiel’s throat, stubble and far-too-young skin. Pulling him back in. Offering up the pale line of his throat, his neck, his breastbone, his mouth, for whatever Castiel wanted to do to them.
“Okay. So. Anything. Anything you want, yeah?”
Because it was that easy. There was nothing he hadn’t given already to someone else, but if he hadn’t, if there had been any virginity left, holy fuck yes Cas could have it, because anything he wanted from Dean was so far, far beyond Dean to deny. And okay, so Dean was probably a bit drunk by now, but he was used to thinking drunk and this wasn’t it. These weren’t the usual blurry calculations of one or two too many and should-I-take-her-back-to-the-motel, this was do-I-trust-him-to-write-this-chapter-for-me, and hell if that wasn’t going to be yes, every time.
Castiel’s breath came in short, hot puffs against the exposed skin of his throat, just under his chin. Once, twice, three times, too long. Hesitating.
“Cas,” Dean growled, and tipped his head just far enough to bite, firm and unmistakeable, into the hard ridge of Castiel’s jaw. “Don’t you punk out on me now.”
Castiel’s hands clenched on the back of Dean’s neck and the jut of his hip, held onto him like he was already breaking a promise.
“When will you change your mind?”
… the hell?
Dean pulled back and blinked at him. Way to ruin the mood. No, wait, what? “What?”
Castiel’s eyes were narrow with the sort of furious wariness that was halfway to anger. “You said I was crazy.”
“What? When?”
“Last time.”
Last time? “I said…?” Crazy. You wouldn’t be the only one to try for something crazy. And Castiel had backed down, shaking, with empty eyes. Dean had figured he’d just worked out that he didn’t really want to be doing this, that he wasn’t enjoying it, but -
Shit.
Dean’s hand knotted in Castiel’s hair, tugging his head firmly back so he couldn’t help but look right at Dean, couldn’t help but see. “Cas, man, no. I said people do crazy shit at the end of the world. Not bad-crazy, just…” He bit his lip, leaned in to bump his nose gently against Castiel’s. Begging him to see. “Just. Things they might be too scared to do other times. Things they… never thought they could.”
Castiel tipped his head back, eyes boring into Dean’s stern as judgement, but his hand spread out over Dean’s ribs like he wanted to cover and keep all of him. “For a man of so many glib words you are maddening, irreverent, stubborn, and bewilderingly uncommunicative.”
Dean smirked at him, a bit shaky. “Sweet talker.” He pushed back in, helplessly seeking out the heat throbbing just under his skin, the faint elusive scent of something like burnt spices, nosing along his jaw and back behind his ear, because he could. Because Castiel was tilting his head in a mute sort of plea, asking him to do it. Because just for this night Castiel was here, he wanted, and that was… so far beyond reassuring it was kind of overwhelming.
“Trust me?”, Dean murmured, begged, into the dark sweet hollow at the edge of his jaw.
Castiel’s throat jumped under his lips as he swallowed. Dean caught his breath and held it, carefully stored up impressions he’d probably never get to repeat. The taste of Castiel’s skin after a long day. The deep throb of the breath and the life of him between Dean’s thighs. The way he shuddered when Dean ran one hand gently down the inside of his arm, when his fingers brushed inside the crook of Castiel’s elbow. The beautiful weight of his body as he pressed in against Dean’s hips, crotch, stomach, chest, neck. The heat and tender demand in the breath huffing into the corner of his shoulder. The way that familiar, hopeful little half-smile of his curved slow and hesitant against Dean’s ear. The scrape of stubble against Dean’s neck, as he nodded.
“Good,” Dean purred helplessly into his hair. “God. Good. Come here.”
He tugged at the wiry brown mess under his fingers, black in the moonlight, slid down his other hand far enough over the flex and strength of ribs to pull at Castiel’s belt. Up.
Castiel resisted, growled a low gravelly protest into his neck that reverberated all the way down Dean’s breastbone into the pit of his stomach. Dean grinned into his neck, then licked it shamelessly.
“Here, here, sweetheart, come here.”
And hey, apparently the good thing about weakened angels was that you could manhandle them without them turning into a bloody statue. Haul them up between your thighs, shove your knee in between their legs, tug at their hips until you had them sitting across your lap, just where they’d be a hell of a lot more comfortable than kneeling on the bloody stones. And, hey, access. If, you know, Castiel wanted that. Which he probably didn’t. But hell, who knew, five minutes ago Dean hadn’t thought he’d wanted -
Castiel hissed something annoyed and possessive into Dean’s hair, and then he was moving with it, one long demanding shove from the foot braced against Dean’s ankle and the ground all up along Dean’s straining calves, thighs, legs flexing taut against-over-around Dean’s, surrounding and covering and engulfing him with one arm hard around the back of his shoulders and the other hand spanning his whole jaw to tip his head back for Castiel’s mouth to devour, to take, to claim. And it suddenly occurred to Dean that he’d never actually had sex with someone stronger than he was.
… Also, never had sex where he wasn’t actively trying to get off. Also never had sex where he didn’t have to worry about physically damaging the other person if he let himself go.
Also, never had sex where he really cared. Not like this.
Dean let Castiel push him back into one loose, welcoming curve under the long slender line of angel heat, taking, just taking, letting him push anything into him and adoring it. Castiel’s left hand fumbled back down Dean’s side, scraped breathlessly over the curve of muscled ribs, and settled just next to the buckle of his belt.
Dean’s breath suddenly went all stuttery and shallow, and his hips pushed themselves up hopefully into the hovering weight of Castiel’s hand, which went carefully still for just a moment. Then Dean moaned deep in his throat, Castiel growled into Dean’s collarbone, and Dean’s hand slid down from shoulder to rib to rib to heaving rib to hover over Castiel’s hip. Because apparently he did want, and that was enough to sort of blow Dean’s mind. This hip, this hip, Castiel’s untouchable body, pressing in against the flat of Dean’s palm like a demand, as Castiel’s hands suddenly went into a flurry of greedy motion. Zippers and buckles freed themselves next to Dean’s navel, and long, slender fingers tweaked them out of the way, traced their path down in a shivery ladder to where Dean would have really really liked to have been craving them, their warm quivering curiosity. Just a bit too sensitive, a bit too raw and unprepared and far too soft for that kind of touch.
Castiel’s fingers hesitated, hovered just under the band of Dean’s boxers, where it was really embarrassingly obvious that Dean wasn’t in the game. Castiel’s breath was suddenly too shallow, and Dean gulped and answered the unspoken worry in the patter of pulse under his lips. Slid his own fingers down where his brain was still telling him was forbidden territory, down to linger in the hollow of Castiel’s hip. A question, a breathless suggestion. Then (when Castiel’s breath caught and his body shifted helplessly against the touch) inwards, over hot tented denim and the faux-silk underneath.
“Cas, Cas.”
Castiel’s breath groaned against Dean’s temple, but his breath stuttered uncertainly, and Dean wrapped his other arm tight and protective around Castiel’s hips, tugging him in safe against his thighs and his one audacious hand.
“Another time, it’s okay,” he lied. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Castiel snarled, hot and demanding, against his ear, and Dean tipped his head out of the way to surrender his neck to Castiel’s mouth, to let him have at it, just like Castiel’s hips were angling in hard and instinctive against Dean’s hand as his thumb did one of its few clever tricks down there and slipped the button of his jeans.
Skinsweathairheatwant.
And, yes. The tiny desperate sound that he caught out of Castiel’s mouth. The wave of desire, the ripple of sensation, all up Castiel’s body and echoed with a shiver through Dean’s. The push of curved hot flesh into his hand, just familiar enough to be comprehensible, alien enough to be so very very Castiel, and the slick sharp scent of him as Castiel’s teeth shoved Dean’s mouth open in a wordless plea. The unfamiliar arch of a very familiar back under the splay of Dean’s other hand, as he tugged him in precious and forceful against his body. If there’d been any doubt in him left, any at all, that would have done it for him.
“Dean,” Castiel hummed into his ear, harsh and questioning.
Dean mumbled something incomprehensible in return, stopped, backed off, started to draw his hand out all nice and soothing, and got fucking bitten for it.
“Ow. Fuck. Cas.”
Apparently Castiel had a mouth thing. And a possessive dominating kind of thing. Dean was so, so not surprised by this.
Castiel hissed and just sort of relaxed all over him, a loose sort of drape of too-long limbs over Dean’s thighs and hips and shins, shivering in against his hand, and Dean sighed acquiescence and leaned in obediently to meet the hungry, hopeful curve of his mouth.
“Never done this before, huh,” he whispered against it, and pushed his hand down once, twice, a loose circle, made a bit of a rhythm of it.
Castiel shuffled in a bit closer against him and grunted something breathy and beautiful and noncommittal that Dean totally decided to take as a confession.
“Cas, you stupid wonderful son of a bitch,” Dean half-laughed into his throat, cradled it for a moment in his open mouth. “Bobby gave you your own room. You’ve got two hands of your own, you know.”
“I like yours,” was whispered hopelessly honest into his neck. Quiet, like Castiel couldn’t really face saying it out loud.
So Dean swallowed the bitter-sweet in his mouth, because how could he possibly argue against that?
“Yeah, okay,” he mumbled soothingly, smiling into the crook of Castiel’s neck, letting him feel it as he stroked firm and gentle and easy. Nothing fancy, everything honest. Letting him get used to the slide and press of Dean’s palm.
Castiel’s chest heaved against his, uneven and rickety, pressing bone against bone like there wasn’t even a sliver of skin between them, and Dean’s hand burned like it was wrapped around a brand, something marking him as possessed, owned, belonging. Claimed.
His breath stuttered into the curve of Castiel’s ear, making him shudder, making him belong in return, and he didn’t let go.
He let Castiel press in against and over him, a little harder, delighted in it as Castiel’s hand finally, finally took control and fastened in his hair just like he’d done in Castiel’s earlier, tugged his head back in a burning mass of prickles of sensitivity, and Castiel licked a hot demanding stripe up his neck. There, and Dean’s body reacted on instinct, desire without arousal, tugging Castiel in against his hips as he surged up against him, making Castiel ride it out and take the reaction, shove harder between slippery fingers, just like that.
Dean’s hand slid slick and persuasive down a little lower, abandoned the main thrust of it just long enough to tease, to cup the damp soft flesh behind into his palm and roll it gently, offer a promise that the judder of Castiel’s breath and the tense grip of his thighs said he was far beyond.
Castiel’s nearest hand whipped away from where it had pressed hot and fierce between Dean’s ribs and closed painfully on his wrist, a warning and a plea, and Dean let out a little hiccupping gasp of a laugh and let Castiel take charge, let him think he did, persuaded his fingers to thread between Dean’s and answer the heavy demand of flesh with him. To revel in the slick rounded dome at the end, moulding it gently under the damp centre of Dean’s palm. To brush a thumb just under the nape as he retreated down from it, nice and slow, letting Castiel notice it and anticipate it on the next stroke. The next one and the next, and Dean’s lips slid greedily back along Castiel’s jaw to capture the little gasping sounds falling from his mouth, because if this was his only chance there was no way he was letting those be lost into the night air, no way he wasn’t drinking them down and keeping them for himself.
Kissing Castiel, at the end of the world. Loving him.
Stubble dragged over stubble for just one moment, one moment that stretched out like elastic in the shadows as Dean opened his mouth over the loose gasp of Castiel’s. Then everything pushed and fell into shudders and sudden wet heat, and Castiel was shaking and making tiny pained sounds and trying to pull away and push into Dean’s hand at the same time.
Dean found himself tugging him close, making soft little soothing shushing noises into his ear. Whispering endearments he hadn’t known he knew, easing him through this very vital human terrifying thing with one hand and keeping the other wrapped protective and possessive, firm around his back.
Castiel gradually went limp and loose on top of him, breathing hot and wet and quick into his chest. Dean eased his messy hand out, wiped it a bit on the rock next to him, which was kind of doomed to failure, then chivalrously wiped the rest on his own shirt. Not that Castiel was likely to notice.
Then he inched the slightly damp hand carefully around to the small of the angel’s back (oversensitised, going by the shudder) and just sort of… cradled him. Trying to cling to something he thought he might be able to keep for himself, out of all this. Something solid. Which he couldn’t, because Castiel would be the first to throw himself in harm’s way to get them all through tomorrow, even if Dean pleaded with him not to. He’d choose that, and Dean couldn’t take that away, any more than he could from Sam. And if he didn’t die tomorrow, there was the next day, and the one after that, and there was Heaven and there was Hell, and there were thousands of Castiel’s siblings with millions of years of prior claim, and…
And all of that meant nothing just now, not next to the warm, trembling weight of his angel, here, now, just for tonight, across his thighs and against his shoulder and sticky-damp against his stomach. Just for tonight. Dean ran his hand down the back of Castiel’s neck, traced the curve of his spine, cupped the blades of his shoulders where he knew the wings were hidden, dragged nails gently along the curves of his ribs. Made Castiel groan into his shoulder, breathy and low. There was something meaningful and large he needed to say here, wanted to say, if only he knew what it was. To do something with this moment, make it last for Castiel at least. To give Castiel a part of him that he’d never thought was givable before.
He opened his mouth to breath in the sweet, damp scent of Castiel’s neck, and tried, murmuring into the skin, “Cas, I swear…”
“Please…” Castiel cut him off, a low thrum of voice that went right through him. “Don’t make promises to me, Dean. Not about this.” There was something raw and brittle in there that was seriously messing with Dean’s second-hand happy vibes. Or would have been if, you know, there’d been anything glowy and happy about tonight. Because, come on, Dean-promises always go to hell or something?
Dean whined, went for annoying-human-being rather than anything serious. “Cas. Afterglow, man, you’re harshing it.”
Castiel’s breath hushed its way over his neck for another moment, then, “When I was in the hospital. I thought I might never be permitted to see you again,” he said, annoyingly matter-of-fact given the circumstances. “It was rather unpleasant.”
Dean grumbled vaguely at him. “You didn’t seem all that relieved when I showed up. Mostly you looked kind of pissed.”
“Yes. There were… many different emotions.”
He still sounded sort of nonplussed about that. Dean grinned into his shoulder, a tired grin, with teeth in it. “Welcome to the club, soul boy.”
---
“Don’t you do that, Samuel Winchester.”
Gabriel’s voice rattled harsh and low in Sam’s ear.
Great. Thanks for the vote of confidence.
Sam’s mood, already flimsy and halfway to desperate, darkened. He had hoped there might be at least a “good luck” here. Maybe even, if he was deluding himself, something snarky that secretly meant “I believe in you.” Not this flat, scared denial.
Who was he kidding.
“Sorry you think I’m such a write-off.” He tried to sound wry, and came out low and poisonous.
“Sam,” Gabriel snapped, sharp and brittle. “I know my brother. You do not want Lucifer in there.”
Sam breathed out, slow, deliberately curbing the vicious flare of anger. Because of course he didn’t want Lucifer in his head. He didn’t want to jump into the Pit. He didn’t want any of this (what he wanted was his family and his friends and to keep on fighting together), but he was choosing it anyway, and who the hell was Gabriel to go all high-and-mighty on him now.
Because, like Sam had said to Lucifer, no choice was ever final. If Sam deserved free will, he needed to prove it. Like this. Just him, and the first and most selfish proponent of free will, inside Sam’s head.
“Yeah, well, it’s either Lucifer or you, and guess what? You’re not showing.”
Gabriel growled, actually growled, a harsh-edged stutter of frustration and hurt. “I can’t fly, Sam. I’m stuck. Useless. Remember? There’s not a damned thing I could do if I tried.” Then suddenly, his voice simultaneously intrigued and horrified, “Wait, you’d say yes to me?”
“But you haven’t even tried, have you?” Sam demanded. Tired of chatter and evasions and all that potential power that could be fixing things wasted on helping everywhere but where they needed it most. “And I promised Sariel.”
“Sariel? Sariel?” Bitter incredulous laughter, like Sam hadn’t heard it since the warehouse and you do not know my family. “That’s great. Just - wow. You really know how to go all out with the irony, don’t you? Shit.”
“I thought you liked her,” Sam snarled back, riding the hot surging tide of red.
“What the hell’s that got to do with anything? Oh, this is rich. This is fucking beautiful. Mr Free Will starts the Apocalypse, drags me out of my comfortable little rat hole and tears me apart, then goes and gives himself up to Lucifer on the advice of an even more fatalistic archangel. Great. Fine. Go braid pony-tails with the devil, or whatever you two get up to when you’re alone.”
And that was it. That was just it. “Starting the Apocalypse? We’re going there, Gabriel?”
“Why not?” Gabriel laughed, short and high and bitter. “Got free will, got a soul, gotta face up to what you do with it.”
The tide swirled in and swallowed Sam up into fury. “Sure. Sure, why not. Like not giving us a heads-up any time over the last three freaking years about what your brothers were up to? Just letting us run ourselves and the world off a cliff because you didn’t feel like throwing us even one anonymous little bone? That the sort of thing people with free will and a soul are meant to face up to, Gabriel?”
“Would you stop calling me that?” Gabriel pleaded, thin and ready to break.
“Gabriel,” Sam snapped. “Gabriel. Your name is Gabriel. Own up to it, would you? Look, enough with the bitching about not being an all-powerful archangel anymore. Dean and Bobby and I don’t have any superpowers. Hell, Cas is a mess and can’t even point a gun straight, and he’s still fighting. And it’s not like anything we point at Lucifer is going to hurt anyway. Short of, oh, I don’t know, the blade of an archangel. Which you screwed up.”
“I can’t get you out of the cage, Sam.” His voice was small and helpless and wrong. “Not even at the top of my game, trickster and archangel together. It’s beyond me.”
“Yeah, well, guess what, big guy. If you’d stepped up to the plate earlier, it wouldn’t have come to this.”
There was a moment of nothing but shaky breathing on the far end; then the line went dead.
Sam stared at his phone for a long minute, then he groaned and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“Samuel.”
Sam lifted his head, feeling all tired and washed-out and uselessly furious. Castiel was standing in the door, a long lithe shadow in jeans and ruffled hair and a scruffy old shirt that Sam thought, in the half light, might have been one of Dean’s. Too big for Castiel, anyway.
“You were speaking to Gabriel.”
And despite the grubby evidence of humanity, there was a sort of eerie calm around Castiel that felt far more angelic than anything Sam had seen of him for months. Like he’d made his peace with the world.
Lucky bastard.
“Yeah. He’s, um.” Sam’s voice rasped out through his throat like something unfamiliar. “He’s not happy about it.”
“He is afraid of losing you.”
And why did Castiel always have to be so damned direct? Like he saw fucking everything?
Sam abruptly flung his phone across the room, violent and hard, and it shattered into six irreparable pieces. “We’re all afraid, Castiel. Hell -”
He stopped and snatched his breath out of the air, held it and controlled it, and groaned.
“Sorry. I’m sorry.” Not Castiel’s fault. Not anyone’s fault that he could do anything about. Just Sam, expecting too much.
“I just… wanted to let him know. Say goodbye, I guess. I mean, I’d already figured he wasn’t going to show tomorrow, but I thought -”
He broke off again. No point going there, not now. Wherever there was. Castiel was very still and quiet in the doorway, waiting. Making him confess by not asking, making him call himself on his own douchebaggery instead of doing it for him.
“He had to go and bring up the whole ‘who popped Lucifer out of the box’ thing again,” Sam said at last, quiet and tired. “I was… not kind.”
Castiel made a small noise in his throat, one of those strange little half-human sounds that were all his. “You are beautiful, Sam Winchester.” In that simple, absolute way that meant everything. “I have been honoured and proud to fight alongside you. To call you my friend.”
“Huh.”
Sam found himself almost laughing. Looked down at his hands, where they were trembling a bit against his knees. Because, wow, awkward, anyone else, anytime else. But here, now - just Castiel. Just… well, unavoidably goodbye.
Castiel moved forward a step, held out his hand. A little soft, a little awkward, but certain. And Sam remembered that first time in the half-light of a dingy motel with Uriel looming in disapproval by the window, and an angel of the Lord looking at Sam’s offered hand like something perplexing and contaminated. And now here: shadowy and reduced and mussed up with day-to-day humanity, smelling faintly of sweat, but still upright. Still strong. Offering Sam his hand.
“Thanks, Cas.” The boy with demon blood took the angel’s hand, and squeezed it. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
---
“Hey. Can I come in?”
“Sure. Wasn’t going to sleep anyway. Cas send you up?”
“I can’t just want to talk to my little brother all by myself?”
“Sure you can. Only you don’t usually stand outside the door shuffling your feet around for five minutes before you knock unless you got something to say.”
“… Yeah, okay.”
“So. Spill.”
“Fuck.”
“Dean.”
“… I’m in, okay?”
“In with..?”
“The whole ‘up with Satan’ thing. I’m on board.”
“You’re gonna let me say yes?”
“No. See. That’s the thing. It’s not on me to let you do anything. Any more than it is with Cas. You’re a grown - well, overgrown man. If this is what you want, I’ll… I’ll back your play.”
“That’s… ha. The last thing I thought you’d ever say.”
“Might be. I’m not gonna lie. It goes against every fibre I got. I mean, watching out for you... it’s kinda been my job, you know? But more than that, it’s... it’s kinda who I am. But, like you said. You know. You’re not a kid anymore. Can’t keep treating you like one. Look. This is screwed to hell. I don’t know if we got a snowball’s chance. But I do know that if anybody can do it it’s you. If there was anyone I’d trust with the weight of the fucking world, Sam… you. Just so you know.”
“Thank you.”
“If this is what you want... Sammy. Sam. Is this really what you want?”
“I let him out. I got to put him back in.”
“Okay. That’s it, then.”
---
Sam said yes in Detroit. Gabriel wasn’t there.
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