Something Stupid

The room is poorly lit, but not so dim that Castiel can’t see the stains on the walls, and the worn patches and cigarette burns in the carpet. It’s barely furnished: a closet with one door swinging open so he can see the towels stacked on the shelves, and a small nightstand next to the bed, which is large, covered in shiny black fabric, and scattered with cushions shaped like hearts. When he glances up, there’s a mirror on the ceiling, and there are pictures on the walls too, lurid erotica, entwined bodies performing acrobatic-looking contortions Castiel is fairly sure aren’t anatomically possible, many of which feature the application of fruit.

He’s aware enough of modern standards of attractiveness to know that Chastity is aesthetically pleasing, and he can already feel a skipping sensation in his chest as she reaches around behind him to lock the door, his chest because now he’s tied to the world and this human body, he thinks of himself as a real person. A real boy, Dean often jokes, even if the smile rarely reaches his eyes these days.

The woman lets go of Castiel’s coat sleeve and plucks the roll of banknotes from his hand before glancing up at him through clumpy, spiked black eyelashes that don’t look real. She smiles, and he notices abstractedly that she has lipstick on her teeth.

“I have a toy box, sugar,” she says breathily, and she stabs an incongruously businesslike finger towards a small chest he can just now see, on the other side of the bed. “Go look. Pick something you like. We can play.” She flicks her scarlet-painted nails through the money with practiced ease, crosses to a small door set into the wall, glances back over her shoulder and motions her head to a basket on the nightstand. “What flavor?”

Castiel isn’t sure what she means, and that makes him uneasy. “Flavor?” He clears his throat, but his voice still squawks out high-pitched and strained. “Uh… I’m not allowed to order off the menu. My… Dean said so.”

She smiles, winks. “Silly. I mean the Jimmy hats. What flavor?”

Castiel takes a step forward, hovers uncertainly, stares harder at the basket, full of small flat packages in bright colors. “Jimmy?” he broaches cautiously, and he drifts his eyes back over to the door, his escape route, and it’s only a few feet away. “You have a hat for Jimmy? Only Jimmy isn’t here any more.”

The woman turns, a flash of irritation in her eyes. “You’re so sweet, baby,” she doles out mechanically. “Jimmy hats. Rubbers.” She giggles, soft, girlish, false. “Bareback costs more. So I guess it’s off the menu, huh?”

She swivels her hips in Castiel's direction, backing him up against the wall and crowding right up into his personal space. It’s closer than any human who isn’t Dean has been to him, and Castiel’s mouth goes suddenly dry.

Chastity flicks her hair back off her shoulders, cups his cheek, smiles and licks her lips slowly. “Why don’t you tell me what you’d like, baby?” she murmurs seductively, so close Castiel can smell mint when she exhales. “I’m gonna fly you straight to Heaven…”

Castiel startles, rising up onto his toes as she starts leaning in, tilting her face up towards his. “You are?” he says, dubious because he doesn't think what she is offering is possible. “You can do that?”

“Oh yeah, baby…”

She closes the inch or so that separates them, teases Castiel’s lips with her tongue, pushes it through the seam to slip-slide the tip of it against his teeth, and he can feel his heart start to thud even faster. She trails her fingernails down his neck, loosens his tie, and unfastens his shirt buttons at the top as she nuzzles his skin. Her breath is warm against the line of Castiel’s jaw, she presses soft breasts against his chest, moans against the notch where his collarbone meets his shoulder, and he can feel her eyelashes-that-may-not-be-real scratch the underside of his chin. She grinds the heel of her hand against his crotch, and Castiel hears his zipper slide down, feels her fingers snake their way in and grip him, kneading and twisting the sensitive flesh through his shorts.

Castiel tips his head back against the wall, closes his eyes, tries and fails to suppress the faint gasp he hisses out. His heart is sprinting hectically now, and he knows this is normal, that the human heart speeds up when the body is overexerted or sexually aroused, that even now his veins and arteries are dilating and blood is rushing towards his groin to engorge his penis and swell it erect, and that soon he’ll be ready to—

“You having a problem, sugar?”

The woman's voice is suddenly sharp, and Castiel blinks at her. He’s breathless, his chest feels like a giant hand is grasping him and squeezing him tight. The strange gnawing feeling he has had in the pit of his stomach since Dean heaved him out of the car and marched him into this den of iniquity is getting worse.

Chastity narrows her eyes. “You’re real pale.” She pats his crotch. “And nothing’s happening down here. And it’s forty-five minutes tops, baby.”

Castiel swallows, because he recognizes the relentless tattoo beating in his chest for what it really is now, remembers that the heart also speeds up in response to stress, anxiety, fear. “I think it’s fight or flight,” he croaks. “You don’t – arouse me.”

Scowling, the woman steps back, her eyes cold and her lips a thin line, her voice bordering on harsh now. “No refunds, buddy.”

In a drab no-tell-motel off route ninety-five, Dean sprawls on the bed and pronounces Castiel the forty-million-year-old virgin as Castiel watches him take enthusiastic gulps from a bottle of Jim Beam he rooted out of his duffel.

“Her dad ran away to the circus. Jesus.” Dean rolls his eyes dramatically. “The fuck was that about?”

Castiel sighs, throws up defensive hands. “It was the post office,” he corrects ruefully.

Dean shakes his head in disgust, slouches there, confident, self-assured, and sarcastic. But Castiel can see into his friend, knows that it’s a bluff, a lie. He knows that Dean plans to drink himself into a stupor just like every other night, knows that he’ll lapse into unconsciousness fully clothed at some point, knows that he’ll scream himself awake and shaking with hazy, confused terror after just two, or three, or four hours of restless, tormented slumber. Castiel knows what Dean sees when he sleeps, knows his dreams are like an open, oozing, jagged wound that will never heal. Even the second-hand knowledge of it is so vivid that thinking about it stuns Castiel, sets his nerves on edge and has him biting his lip.

Dean stares up at him, oblivious. “You, uh…” He takes another swig, creases his forehead, and he’s suddenly tentative. “Sticking around for a while?”

Castiel doesn’t answer, just makes his way to the bed, sits on the end, lifts one of Dean’s feet onto his lap and starts pulling at the boot. “It was the post office,” he says again. “And he ran away from it. Not to it.” He huffs out his own irritation as the boot stays put, gives up pulling and starts unpicking the laces. After a minute of this, Dean starts nudging Castiel’s thigh with the toe of his other boot, increasing the pressure until Castiel gives in and slants his eyes up to the top of the bed, where Dean is glowering at him, drumming the fingertips of his free hand on his thigh.

Castiel shrugs. “You’ll be more comfortable with them off. And I take it you’re pissed at me?”

“You’re damn right.” Dean sinks another mouthful, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Top-of-the-line cathouse, two hundred and fifty fuckin’ bucks to pop your angelic cherry, and you never even made second base,” he marvels sourly. “Jesus.” He whistles out a frustrated huff that turns into a yawn, and rubs one eye.

Castiel stares at his friend, tries not to focus too much on how tired Dean looks, at the shadows under his eyes. He makes a mental note to ensure that Dean eats solid food before he starts drinking from now on. That’s what Sam would do, he reasons. “She was troubled,” he replies. “I wanted to give her something to hold onto.” He pauses a beat, frowns as he remembers the many and varied ways in which fruit was being used in the pictures on the walls of Chastity’s room. “And I fail to see what cherries have to do with any of this.”

“You were supposed to give her your dick to hold onto,” Dean parries tartly. “Fuckin’ idiot. And it’s a saying.” He flexes his toes as Castiel frees the boot, flops the other foot up on Castiel’s lap and smirks when Castiel raises his eyebrow.

“What? I’ll be more comfortable without that one too.”

The second boot is tougher, takes Castiel longer. He has to concentrate on the knot more closely, work patiently and methodically, turning it this way and that to see how it loops so he doesn’t pull it tighter, biting his lip and humming under his breath as he does, finding the chore surprisingly relaxing.

“You need to watch some porn,” Dean declares as the boot finally comes free. He waves haphazardly at the television. “Find out how it’s done. Maybe they got pay per view.” He nods, thoughtful. “Yeah. Porn. That’ll do it.”

Castiel is gripping Dean’s foot, finds he’s rubbing his thumb along the top of it, massaging the skin through the wool of Dean’s sock. The fabric is threadbare, torn at the top. Castiel can see the tip of Dean’s toe poking through the hole, and he doesn’t understand why, but it makes his throat ache and swell. He swallows thickly, squeezes his fingers up into the sole, and Dean lets out a tiny groan that might be appreciation.

When Castiel flicks his gaze over again, Dean’s expression has gone rapt and faraway, his lips parted just barely. “I know the mechanics of the act, Dean,” Castiel says softly, as he brings his other hand up to massage Dean’s toes, covering the oddly defenseless sliver of exposed skin, feeling protective of it even though he knows it’s ridiculous of him.

“Getting laid is more than just mechanics, Cas.” Dean holds the bottle up to the light as he speaks, squints at the amber dregs as a rivulet of whiskey meanders from the corner of his mouth down his chin. He starts sliding across the stained wallpaper then, inch by inch, until Castiel sucks in a breath of alarmed air and pushes up, the discarded foot slipping back onto the bed.

He reaches out his hand to Dean’s face, holds him there. Dean blinks slowly up at him, the tips of his eyelashes fluttering against Castiel’s thumb. The tingle of contact thrills its way up Castiel’s arm and he has a split second of clarity when he realizes that Dean’s lashes are longer and softer than Chastity’s were.

They stay like that, both of them poised at something Castiel suddenly fancies is a fork in the road, and they have a choice, can choose to go left, or choose to go right.

“I bet you don’t even remember why you chose me,” Dean slurs then, as if he can read Castiel’s mind. “I bet you wouldn’t if you could go back.” He gazes blearily up at Castiel, with eyes that are suddenly sad and worn-out. “Cas,” he says, and his voice is unsure and childlike. “Please. Don’t go. Stay with me.”

Castiel knows that Dean is lonely, damaged, disintegrating right before his eyes. And he knows that Dean is still the most important, precious, beautiful thing he has ever held, knows that the invisible thread that connects them is the only thing that soothes him in the absence of his brothers, even while it constantly reminds him he betrayed them for this man.

He doesn’t consciously make the decision to shrug his coat and jacket off, but he finds he’s doing just that, sitting on the bed and shuffling his butt over. “Of course I remember why I chose you, Dean,” he chides mildly as he leans back against the wall, his exasperation coming out casually, almost by rote, because Dean frustrates him so often and so thoroughly it seems like schooled patience has become Castiel’s modus operandi for dealing with him. “I’ll never forget. Although I didn’t realize I’d be required to watch porn with you.”

Dean doesn’t answer, and maybe he didn’t even hear. He yawns, pats his hand about for the remote control, points it at the television and flicks through channels, curses unintelligibly when there’s no porn to be found and then continues surfing randomly until the hand with the remote flops lethargically. He lists over, drowsy and sleep-soft as he settles himself on Castiel, makes small, snuffling noises and pulls his tee up to scratch languidly at his belly.

Castiel tells himself he steals his arm around and drapes it across Dean’s shoulder for the sake of practicality, resolutely ignores how his heart starts beating percussion. He glues his eyes to the small screen, where a rumpled looking man with a bad attitude who walks with a cane is telling another man in a white coat that an abnormal heart rhythm called atrial fibrillation can cause the heart to judder erratically. He can feel the tickle of Dean’s hair under his chin, and the heat of Dean’s body seeps in through the thin cotton of his shirt. And he feels the moment when Dean tenses, almost imperceptibly, and then Dean’s breath is suddenly warm on Castiel’s neck, like Chastity’s was, and his lips are tender as he mouths the hinge of Castiel’s jaw.

“What you do to me…” he whispers. “Cas. You got no clue.” And then, hopefully, “Do you?”

Dean creeps his hand up and lays it on Castiel’s cheek, tilts Castiel’s face just so. His palm is rough and callused, but it’s more gentle than Chastity’s was, and it has an electric charge that sears through to every nerve ending in Castiel’s body, sending his stomach dropping into the abyss.

“Do you know?” Dean murmurs. “What you do to me, Cas… make me feel like I might do something stupid one day. Or now, maybe. Real stupid.” He swallows, chooses his words carefully, in the way Castiel has come to realize he always does when he’s drunk and maudlin. “Say my name, Cas. You say it like I mean something. You look at me like I matter.”

He’s staring up, unblinking, and Castiel is suddenly hyperaware of every tiny detail, of DeanDeanDean, red-rimmed eyes tired but expectant, a fading bruise just south east of his temple on the left, his cheeks flushed pink and sprinkled with freckles, his hair spiked haphazardly. Dean licks around his mouth, and for that frozen second all Castiel can see is the tip of his tongue playing pinkly along the swell of his bottom lip, leaving moisture glistening in its wake.

Castiel knows the mechanics, knows how sex happens, and his head suddenly swims with possibilities, with the memory of Chastity’s tongue, warm and wet against his skin. Right then he realizes he’s getting tight in his pants, feels a twitching sensation in his crotch that he knows isn’t fight or flight this time. And he feels helpless, undone and unbalanced, feels like he has finally come home at the same time as he understands that he never really left, that he has always been right here in this moment with Dean, from the second he reached out to Dean’s soul in the Pit. He feels like his heart is suddenly too large for the ribs that contain it, feels like he wants to kick down the doorways to doubt Uriel and Zachariah raged about, stride through them, do things he never dreamed he’d ever want to do.

“Cas… say my name like I matter.” Dean’s eyes are intense, and his voice is sandy rough, but soft too. “Cas. Can I…? I think I want to—”

“Don’t.”

Castiel chokes it out, shakes his head, flinches back, because Dean is right there in his arms, and the pad of Dean’s thumb is dragging slow and lazy across his lips. It isn’t what he wants to say, because he wants to say Dean’s name just like Dean wants to hear it, wants to say that Dean makes him feel like he might do something stupid right now. And Castiel knows that his voice comes out low and unsure, and that it would be so easy to close that distance if he wanted to, close it like Chastity did. He wants to, and he suppresses it. “You don’t—”

“Yes I do…” Dean frowns. “I mean – I have. Long time ago. It was gay-for-pay, but it had its moments. I’m an equal-opportunity slut, Cas.”

Castiel reaches up an arm gone weak and heavy, covers Dean’s hand with his own and slides it down to rest on his chest, where his heart flutters one second and pounds the next, where he feels split open and he aches with something he thinks must be want and need. He crosses his legs and wills the growing bulge away, steadies his voice. “You don’t know what you’re saying, what you’re doing.” He doesn’t say Dean’s name, even though it’s right there, craving to be said. “You’re drunk. It’s a bad idea. And you’re missing Sam, you—”

Dean snorts. “I don’t even know where he is. And I’m not that drunk.” He slumps on Castiel’s shoulder again. “Fuckin’ cockblocker,” he snipes, irritable but affectionate too. “Emotionally stunted fuckin’ cockblocker.” His hand is right over Castiel’s heart, next to where his amulet rests on Castiel’s skin. “It isn’t a bad idea, Cas,” he mutters. “And I can feel your heart going like a jackhammer in there. Don’t think I can’t.”

Castiel keeps his hand over Dean’s because can’t bring himself to let go. “It’s an abnormal heart rhythm,” he says hoarsely. “Atrial fibrillation.”

Dean grunts derisively. “You just saw that on House. Well, fuck House. Fuck him sideways.”

He shifts, but shows no signs of moving away, and when Castiel looks down he can see that Dean is gazing at the television again. He relaxes, the tension draining out of him, and Castiel can feel him go pliant.

“Gonna give you some advice, Cas,” he mumbles. “For situations like Chastitygate. S’advice that’s stood me in. In. Uh.” He furrows his brow, momentarily confused, before he sighs. “S… good advice,” he says again. “When shit hits, you ask yourself a real important question. Got it? It’ll help you, y’know. Make sense of it all. It’s a question. But it’s the answer too. To – everything.” He angles his face up again, and his eyes are slipping to half-mast, his features going slack and dreamy at the same time.

Castiel gives him a shake. “Dean,” he says, finally giving into the temptation to say the word. “What’s the question? The question that’s the answer to everything?” He’s urgent and slightly anxious, because he has been lost for some time now in this slow tumble down to Earth and humanity, and maybe he’s even doomed. But if Dean knows the answer to everything, then maybe he can find the way back to the right path again.

Dean sniffs. “What would Jack do?” He nods sagely, flaps a hand vaguely at the television. “My man, Jack. Right there. Totally badass. What would Jack do?”

He places the hand on Castiel’s hip, seems oblivious to the way Castiel’s whole body shivers at his touch. “You need help, Cas. You know, to fit in better, get the stick out of your ass. And stop staring at people without talking, man, it’s fuckin’ freaky. Unless it’s me.” He pats Castiel’s hipbone, rubs it gently with his fingertips, and the touch shoots through the fabric of Castiel’s pants straight to his groin, so that he has to stifle a gasp.

“Watch,” Dean says. “Learn. Movies… they’re educational. Long as you watch the right ones. And porn, too. Hell, yeah.”

Dean’s breathing evens out then, and he starts to tip forward, so his body is pressed up close and warm again. And the glory of Heaven and the companionship of the Host might be lost to Castiel, but he has this, and he clasps it tight. “Once I filled the sky, Dean,” he whispers, when he thinks Dean is asleep and can’t hear him. “I blazed a trail across it. And I stretched up and touched the stars. And now I’m growing weaker. I need to rest, to breathe. Now I’m tired. I’m – less. But I would do it all again. I would choose you.”

Dean is still awake, barely. “It’ll be fine,” he sighs. “You’re with me now.” He burrows his face in Castiel’s chest. “Dick,” he complains. “Atrial whatever, my ass. I can still feel your heart. And you fuckin’ spoiled me for anyone else.”

Castiel lays his hand on Dean’s hair, finds that it’s softer than he expected as he strokes his fingertips through it, and then he trails his hand down to rest it on Dean’s shoulder, fits his palm to the precise spot where he burned his brand into Dean’s skin. “You won’t even remember this tomorrow, Dean,” he says quietly, and it gives him a tight, constricted feeling in his throat to match the one in his chest.

“Yes I will,” Dean insists tiredly.

Castiel brushes his fingertips across Dean’s brow. “Sleep, Dean,” he says. “No dreams tonight.”

Dean drifts off, fisting his hand in Castiel’s shirt, and Castiel keeps his eyes glued to the television, where Jack is battering down a door to gain access to a terrified young woman who seems to be attempting to conceal her whereabouts. “I believe Jack wishes to smite her,” he muses curiously.

Dean wraps himself around Castiel in increments as the hours pass. He sleeps deeply and peacefully, and Castiel watches over him, gazing at the flickering images on the screen as they lie there. It’s a vision of what life is like, and Castiel learns how to fit in better, until he extricates himself from their tangle of legs when gray dawn starts seeping through the curtains.

Dean doesn’t remember when he wakes. But Castiel takes it to heart, what Dean said, and he keeps watching and learning.

III

Dean snatches four hours of sleep in the Century Motel, Kansas City.

Castiel stands by the roadside in the dark, opposite a luridly fluorescent Pump & Go gas station. He sighs, supposes he’s lonely, wonders if Dean might tear him a new one if he arrives in Kansas City early. He tries to think of things that aren’t Dean, but that means thinking of things that are his brother, of Michael, of the breathtaking horror that would come from seeing Dean burnt out of his own mind and body, slumping and drooling like Raphael’s empty vessel. It makes Castiel’s head spin with anxiety, and there’s that fluttering in his chest again.

He needs a distraction, so he pulls out his cellphone again and flicks down to Bobby, before remembering that the last time he troubled him, the old man barked hesitate to fuckin’ call at him before he hung up. Sam then, to find out how he’s enjoying his separate vacation. Castiel clicks on the name, holds the phone up to his ear again, and the voice tells him he is now officially out of minutes. He briefly considers heading for the nearest motel, so he can continue learning from the television, but decides his time will be more productively spent plotting an Ocean’s Eleven of a heist that will secure them the Colt that might kill the devil. He formulates plans for tracking the demon Crowley, tricking the demon Crowley, turning the demon Crowley to dust.

As the time ticks slowly by, three truck drivers stop as they pull out of the gas station and offer Castiel a ride into town. A fourth stops to offer Castiel a ride on his joystick and ask him how much he charges for a piece of that sweet ass.

“Can I interest you in the word of the Lord?” Castiel deflects blandly. “Since God will soon raise the dead, condemn the wicked to annihilation, call His anointed ones to Heaven, and establish His everlasting kingdom on Earth for the righteous. I have a pamphlet we can study together and discuss if you’re—”

The man’s face takes on an expression of blind panic. “I’m an atheist,” he blurts out.

“Yes,” Castiel agrees. “I thought you might be. Born again, I take it?”

Castiel watches the vehicle’s tail lights disappear into the darkness, wonders if what he just did counts as blasphemy in any way, shape or form, concludes that it doesn’t really matter since he’s becoming more and more convinced Uriel spoke the truth when he said there was no God. He sucks in an appalled breath at his own acknowledgment of his dying faith, raises his eyes up to the heavens with something like terror, reaches up to press his fingertips to the hard outline of the amulet under his shirt. It’s cold still, no searing heat to signal his Father’s presence and the imminent lightning bolt of divine wrath.

He narrows his eyes, breathes it out in the faintest whisper. “Jesus Christ.” Nothing happens, and he swallows, dares again, louder this time. “I said, Jesus Christ.” And still no response. He grips the amulet tight, balls his other fist. “Goddammit.” Nothing.

He remembers a line from one of the movies he watched on that long night in Waterville, with Dean pressed up heated and solid against him and across him, and he hollers it out, wincing as he does. “Jesus H tapdancing Christ, I have seen the light.”

Again, nothing. And he stands and stares up at the peaceful, inky sky and considers how godfuckingdamn ironic it is that right at this moment he’d welcome being smited to a pile of ash and cast down to the lake of fire for betraying his brothers, simply because it would prove God hasn’t left the building.

“You okay, buddy? Only you’ve been standing there a while now, and it’s pretty late.”

The voice startles Castiel back to reality, and he finds himself gazing at one of the gas station attendants, Vic, according to the patch on his shirt, standing on the other side of the road. The man is observing Castiel warily, shifting nervously from foot to foot, and he’s shooting glances back over to the brightly lit building he came from, where a woman is squinting out at them through one of the windows.

Castiel realizes he’s staring back without talking, and remembers that it counts as fuckin’ freaky. “I’m – harmless,” he offers firmly. “I’m just…” He throws up his hands. “I’ve seen the light,” he says. “Just now, in fact. So I was just, uh. Clarifying that.”

Vic sniffs. “Yeah, I got that.” He roots in his pocket and produces a pack of cigarettes, proceeds to light one up, blows out smoke. He studies Castiel silently for a minute from behind the hazy fumes. “Forecast’s for a cold night,” he says then, and his tone is less suspicious now. “We’re open twenty-four hours, if you have nowhere to go.” He shrugs. “I’ve been there buddy. It’s no fun. Least it’s warm in the shop.”

Castiel nods respectfully at him, pastes on a smile he hopes is reassuring. He isn’t used to smiling, and he suddenly realizes this is the first time he has smiled at anyone who isn’t Dean. “Thank you,” he says hesitantly. “I’m waiting for somebody. A friend. We have an appointment. But thank you.”

The man winks as he stubs his cigarette out in the dirt. “Well, you know where we are if you’ve been stood up,” he says, as he turns to stroll back. “We got coffee and donuts.”

For a moment Castiel wonders if it’s a sign, if he’s supposed to see his Father in this simple act of kindness. “God would not leave us in a place of emptiness,” he murmurs. “Nor does He make us poor in spirit.” He looks up again. “Would you?” And then, from nowhere, he can hear Dean’s voice in his head as clear as if he’s right there next to him, so there’s this guy drowning, Cas, and a boat comes, and the dude driving it says, do you need help?, and the drowning guy says, God will save me. And then another boat comes and the drowning guy says it again, God will save me. Anyhoo, he dies and goes to Heaven, and he says to God, why didn’t you save me?, and God says, I sent you two boats, you fuckin’ idiot…

The sky stares back, silent and empty except for the moon. “You are there,” Castiel decides out loud. “You’re testing what remains of my faith. You’re sending me signs. Boats.”

He’s still gazing up as a carload of giggling young women crawls by. It u-turns and crawls by again, and they wave, and blow kisses, and beckon Castiel over. He wonders if it might be a boat, goes to see what they want. When he leans down beside the driver’s window, the young woman at the wheel snatches at his tie and uses it to pull him closer. Her eyes are shiny and wide and she exhales the familiar smell of alcohol. It reminds Castiel of Dean.

“We’re cheerleaders, gorgeous,” she trills, through brightly colored lips. “How would you like to be our wide receiver for the night, and we’ll be your tight ends?”

Her friends hoot and heckle so enthusiastically the car shakes as Castiel searches for the right thing to say, the sociable thing to say, something that might make him fit in instead of standing out because of the stick up his ass. He seizes on a mental image of Dean leering contentedly at a movie featuring cheerleaders on a stopover as they drove to Maine, and picks a random line that seems ideal.

“Let’s not put the duh in dumb.”

The woman lets go of his tie, scrunches up her nose, skeptical. “Say what?”

He straightens up and shrugs. “It’s something cheerleaders say,” he offers. “I thought you might be familiar with it.”

She clicks her fingernails on the steering wheel. “Do you want a good time or not?” she snaps. She motions her head to her friends in the back. “We have whiskey, vodka. Rubbers too.”

Castiel considers her for a moment. “You’re inebriated, and shouldn’t be in charge of a vehicle in this condition,” he concludes disapprovingly. “You’ll have an accident.” He touches a fingertip to her brow and her face falls. She frowns up at him and looks even more puzzled. “Buckle up,” he advises, as he waves her away. “And drive safely.”

It falls quiet again after that, apart from the chirp of cicadas, and the traffic eases down to just the odd car flashing by. Castiel pauses briefly from his planning to revive an unlucky raccoon after it collides messily with a utility vehicle, needing some proof he still has the power to give life, and figuring that it won’t interfere too much with the cosmic balance if he resurrects a small mammal. The task takes him several moments of fierce concentration and he’s breathless and dizzy as he nudges grace out of himself in tiny doses, sensing vacant space where it once was and wondering how much is left to tap into. Bad idea, he thinks too late, because healing is particularly draining and he knows he should be conserving what’s left of him for the things that matter, for this fight, for Dean if and when it’s ever necessary. For a second, he wonders what he’d do if there wasn’t enough of him left for Dean, and it sparks the same flurry of panic in him as thinking about Michael does.

When the raccoon stirs, it rewards Castiel by hissing and sinking its teeth into the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. “Of course,” he sighs resignedly, as it scampers off into the undergrowth. He pushes to his feet, hoping the animal won’t end up like the cat in Pet Sematary, then watches idly as a car turns off the road and grinds to a halt outside the gas station. Two men debark, wearing masks over their faces, and slink into the small store.

Castiel stares over, can see frantically waving arms and shaking heads through the windows, can hear panicked shouts floating across, because noises are louder at night. He remembers the gas station attendant’s kindness and concern, remembers that the man might have been a boat. He remembers that in most of the instructional television he has been watching on the nights when he can’t fight his exhaustion and he Obi-Wans a motel room to rest in, the bad guys get their just desserts. And in the next beat, he’s standing between a freezer full of canned soda and beer, and a chips and snacks display, directly opposite one of the masked men.

The man barks out an alarmed, muffled expletive, and then demands, “Where the fuck did you come from?”

Castiel eyes him for a second, sizes him up. At some point, he supposes philosophically, his grace will weaken so much that he meets his match in one of these humans he sacrificed everything he knew for. But unfortunately for this human and his friend, it won’t be today. “Outside,” he supplies matter-of-factly. “I’m waiting for someone, and I couldn’t help noticing you were attempting to…” He trails off, fumbles for the right term. “Conduct a heist. Turn this joint over.” He frowns. “Something like that, anyway.”

The man cocks his head and his eyes go slitty. He raises his hand. “Don’t be a hero, pal. I’ve got a knife.”

Castiel eyes the weapon critically. “You call that a knife?” he says acidly. “That’s not a knife.” He lifts his own hand, his blade gleaming silver where it materializes. “This is a knife.”

The man bristles. “Who the fuck do you think you are, bitch?” he bites out, high and aggressive.

“I’m an ang…” Castiel stops, remembers Dean’s words of advice back in Waterville. “I’m the law,” he lies smoothly, because it’s getting easier now. “Agent Eddie Moscone, FBI. Put down your weapon and prepare to be judged.” He trusts that it’s suitably badass, steps forward and peers past the end of the aisle, sees heads craning to stare back. “That means you too.”

A gunshot cracks out, and the woman behind the checkout shrieks. Castiel feels the dull thud of the impact and glances down to where blood is trickling down his shirtfront. He looks up and meets three sets of variously horrified, anxious and enraged eyes. “Luckily, I have a high pain threshold,” he announces, as he leans across and touches his fingertips to the knifeman’s brow.

The man’s knees buckle and he crumples sloppily to the ground, coming to rest wedged up against a shelf from which brightly colored packages of something called Funyuns rain down on him. Castiel hears a collective gasp of astonishment, followed by a brief, puzzled silence.

“What the fuck did you do to him?” barks the other masked man then, brandishing his firearm at Castiel in a lively fashion.

“I gave him the magic finger,” Castiel explains, and he nods towards the gun, his interest piqued. “And is that an AK-47? I’m told it’s the very best there is, and that when you absolutely, positively, have to kill every motherfucker in the room, you should accept no substitutes.”

He can see the man goggle at him through the eyeholes in the mask. “Fuck you, asshole,” he growls. “I’ll blow you and this place to pieces if you don’t—”

“Go ahead, make my day,” Castiel cuts in dismissively. “I don’t shop here anyway. But as you’ve already seen, Arnie etiquette doesn’t work on me.”

The man lets out a strangled, irate whine, takes aim and fires the gun again, and Castiel ducks, rolls, reaches up as swiftly as a fraction of a thought, and snatches at the air. It falls quiet again, and he holds out his hand, the bullet sitting on his palm. “You dropped this,” he says. “Are you aware that littering is an offense punishable with a fine as set out by local statute?”

The man is dumbstruck and motionless as Castiel rises to his feet again. He can still see into people if he concentrates hard enough, can see their hopes and fears, their intentions, and what motivates them, their many and varied gifts and flaws, and their sins. He doesn’t do it if he can help it, because what he sees there is frequently dispiriting. This man is no exception, petty, savage, a nonentity who has no weight, or worth, or redeeming features. “Your soul is a pitiful, diseased thing,” Castiel says softly. “Sometimes it troubles me that so many of you aren’t worth the time or effort.”

The man’s mask doesn’t extend all the way down his neck, and Castiel sees his Adam’s apple bob nervously. “What are you going to do about it?” he snarls.

Castiel pauses for a second, reasons that just because he doesn’t like to fight dirty doesn’t mean he can’t, or won’t, and concludes that in this particular instance he actually wants to. “I’m thinking extreme violence,” he clips out dangerously. “If you aren’t already convinced you’ve made the wrong decision in choosing a life of crime.”

The man bellows incoherently, flings his gun to the floor and lunges forward, loosing a poorly controlled haymaker. Castiel catches his fist in mid-air, calm. “Rule number one,” he observes. “Never be too eager to rush your opponent.”

He twists the man’s hand like he’s turning a doorknob, along to the dry snap of bone and a howl of pain. And then, because he’s irritated, he doles out a couple of hard cross punches, first with his right hand, then with his left, both slamming into the man’s chin on either side in swift succession. He grunts out in satisfaction as the blows land home, because there is much to be said for old-fashioned physical violence. The man sways on his feet, and Castiel regards him for a few seconds, then reaches across and places a hand on each shoulder before headbutting him full in the face. He rams his skull in swiftly, accurately, economically, pulling back slightly at the point of impact, since he has no real desire to crush the man’s delicate facial bones or kill him.

It’s brutal, and as a surprise shock maneuver, it works perfectly. Castiel sidesteps gracefully, so the man has sufficient space to make landfall as he poleaxes, and then he squats and heaves the man easily onto his side, bending him at the knees and tilting his face up to keep his airway open. He glances over at the friendly gas station attendant and the woman, who are gaping at him. “I placed him in the recovery position to prevent him from choking,” he informs them, almost as an afterthought. “I suggest you call the five-O.”

As he stands, he hears the woman gasp. She’s pointing at his chest. “But he shot you,” she squeaks.

Castiel looks down to see his shirt is now pristine. “I don’t have time to bleed,” he acknowledges offhandedly, as he steps over the man and bends to pick up the gun. He holds it at each end and brings it down hard and fast onto his thigh, snapping it clean in half. As he drops the pieces to the floor, his eye is caught by a camera fixed to the wall up high behind the counter. He points at it and it snaps, crackles and pops vigorously, sparks bursting out and wafting through the air.

“That was a total coincidence,” Castiel tells the huge-eyed couple. “It wasn’t anything I did.”

As he pulls the door open to leave, Vic gasps out, almost accusingly, “You said you were harmless.”

Castiel pauses, bites his lip. “Yes,” he concedes finally. “My apologies. I took the liberty of bullshitting you.”

The next time Castiel uses his fists and feels the same sense of base, squalid pleasure and gratification in doing so is when he beats Dean into submission in an alleyway in Cicero, Indiana.

In a motel room in Lawrence, Kansas, Castiel comes round gradually, on the memory of weakness, of his head exploding in strobing pain, of rematerializing three decades further on and four feet behind Sam, and the sheer relief of seeing both Winchesters alive and well as the room spun chaotically around him.

He blinks up at moonlight playing across the ceiling. It’s quiet where he is, a hush more profound than any he has ever experienced, and it takes him a moment to realize he can no longer hear the distant, sibilant whisper of his brothers. Their silence is abrupt and deafening, and his sorrow and regret overwhelm him. Tears flood his eyes, and he has to bring a hand up to his mouth and bite down on it to muffle his cries as he weeps.

After he doesn’t know how long, and once the wave of grief and disorientation has subsided, Castiel realizes that he is lying on a bed, the rough fabric of a cheap blanket scraping his neck. He cranes his head to see Sam sprawled across the other bed, one arm dangling over the edge, fingertips grazing the carpet. He becomes aware of a warm, solid shape next to him, and breath puffing out onto the side of his face. He slants his eyes left, can just make out the thick fringe of lashes. One of Dean’s hands is curled in the blanket where it covers Castiel’s arm, and the other is resting on his hip, loosely gripping the neck of a whiskey bottle where it leans against him.

Castiel sits up, pulls the blanket across Dean. He scrubs a shaking hand across his eyes, breathes in deeply. He reaches to gently tug the bottle from Dean’s lax grasp, studies the contents for a minute. He plants his feet on the floor before he takes a long draught, and the alcohol burns down his throat and makes his eyes sting even more. He thinks suddenly of a table busy with upended shot glasses and Ellen Harvelle’s eyes staring at him, bright and alive, daring him, of her daughter’s perfect, youthful amusement as she watched, in thrall to their drinking game.

He can sense that Dean is awake before he speaks.

“Are you getting a buzz from that?”

Dean’s voice is rough with sleep, but there’s something unsaid in his words, something that sounds like apprehension, and when Castiel glances over his shoulder and down, he can see that Dean’s eyes are wide open and watchful, so alert that Castiel wonders if Dean might have heard his sobs. He thinks on it for a few seconds, ignores the warm haziness stealing out from where the liquor pools in his stomach. “No,” he lies.

“Well, don’t.” Dean looks up at Castiel for a long moment, his gaze liquid and knowing in the moonlight. “It’s bad for you.” He shuffles further up the bed, pulls the pillow up to wedge underneath his neck, and links his hands behind his head. “Took you quite a while to get back,” he ventures, less snippy now. “I was, uh. Concerned.”

Castiel wants to reassure Dean, wants to reassure himself. “I’m falling, Dean,” he whispers instead. “It won’t take much longer. After it happens, I won’t be able to protect you from Michael.” He hears the bedsprings creak and feels a poke in his lower back, glances around again, and Dean is wearing a lost, worried expression now.

“The bottle, give it here.” Dean almost rips it from Castiel’s hand, stows it on the nightstand. “I don’t want you drinking,” he says shortly. He raises a meaningful eyebrow. “You got that?”

Castiel starts to respond but there’s a sound from the other bed, and he follows Dean’s gaze as it flicks past him. Sam is facing them now, his eyes moving around hectically under their lids, a muscle twitching in his cheek, his shoulders tensing. Castiel leans across the small space between the beds, touches his fingertip to Sam’s brow. He can feel that whatever mojo courses out of him is sluggish and unwilling, but Sam sighs, and his body relaxes. Castiel sits back, shifts sideways so he doesn’t have to twist to see Dean, pulls up one leg, bends it at the knee and rests it on the bed.

Dean’s gaze drifts back to him, and he’s picking at his lower lip with his teeth. “Do you think he was dreaming about him?”

His face is drawn and desolate, and Castiel swallows back his own despair and whatever he might have wanted to pour out, makes his voice purposeful and authoritative instead. “He won’t for the rest of the night. Assuming he was.”

Dean sighs out a faint, weary puff of breath, and his relief has him sagging visibly. After a brief pause he speaks again. “Cas, why isn’t Michael dreamstalking me?”

His voice is small, puzzled, and Castiel contemplates it for a minute. It’s the first time Dean has asked him about his brother since the hospital in Maine, and he wonders if it might be because Dean isn’t as sure as he once was. It’s unsettling, and he feels a tingle of unease track up his spine. “If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it’s because Michael is sure you’ll see the bigger picture and do the right thing,” he says carefully, and then he stops, reconsiders. “I mean what appears to be the right thing. So he feels no need to expend his energy persuading you. Lucifer, however, is less sure your brother will do the wrong thing, so he exerts pressure. But…” He hesitates, and after a few seconds Dean nudges him with his knee.

“But what?”

“It could also be because Michael knows you’re strong enough to resist his manipulation, but Lucifer knows Sam may be… somewhat less likely to hold out.” Castiel sighs. “My brothers are very… perceptive.”

Dean huffs out. “Ever the fuckin’ diplomat, Cas,” he says, louder now Sam is out for the count. “But I just pow-wowed with Michael. Perceptive didn’t spring to mind as much as psycho with a God complex and an even bigger stick up his ass than you have.” He blinks, makes his voice apologetic. “Uh – had. I mean.”

Castiel smiles tightly. “Michael is a traditionalist, much like Raphael,” he concedes. “And yes, he’s… badass. Like the Terminator.” He shrugs. “He’ll be back.”

Dean chuckles, but it’s hard and humorless. “I don’t doubt that.” He cocks his head where it still rests on his hands, changes the subject. “The Terminator?” he says, with forced lightness. “You been catching up on all the movies you missed in your two-thousand years off-world, Cas?”

Castiel nods, but he doesn’t bother reminding Dean of his sage advice that night in Waterville. “I hope it might help me ascend the learning curve,” he affirms, and he taps his temple. “It’s all in here.”

Dean narrows his eyes. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

“Jaws,” Castiel fences back.

“Yippee ky-ay, motherfucker.”

“Die Hard. And its many sequels.”

“May the force be—”

“Star Wars. And its many sequels.”

Dean’s lips twitch upwards at the corners. “Gotcha,” he says, all smug. “Some of them were prequels.”

They fall into an easy silence, and Castiel tracks Dean’s gaze as he examines the cracks on the ceiling. After a minute or two he opens his mouth as if he’s going to speak, and then shuts it as if he thought better.

“What?” Castiel prods.

“You like all the same movies I do,” Dean says, and he looks at Cas with soft eyes.

Castiel nods. “So it would seem. Although I think the prequels were—”

“I’m sorry,” Dean cuts in abruptly, and then he’s hurrying words out, earnest and heartfelt. “About you falling. You gave it all up for me and I’ve never… and you never – judged me. For what I did down there. You never looked at me like I was worthless. Which I am, really, when you think about it. I mean, if it wasn’t for the Michael thing…” He trails off, rubs at his jaw, and his expression has gone nervous and uncertain.

“I didn’t choose Michael’s vessel, Dean,” Castiel says. “I chose you.” And I hold fast to you so you won’t break, because if you break, I will break, he wants to say, but he doesn’t know how.

“He told me I’ll say yes.” It’s flat and unemotional, like Dean hasn’t registered what Castiel said. “Michael said it’s all planned and it’ll play out to their blueprint. He said that I don’t have free will. That I don’t have choice.”

Castiel stares back at him, and even in the dim light he can see that the gleam in Dean’s eyes has dulled into hopelessness.

“Am I – are we – going to say yes, Cas?” Dean asks him haltingly. “Is that really just how it’s going to be? Are we going to end the world, are we going to lose? Are we—”

“Dean…”

Castiel knows he barely manages to scrape out the name, and he finds himself reaching, gripping Dean’s hand. He tightens his fingers around it, scrubs the other hand through his hair. He feels his stomach clench and his heart pound at the raw fear in Dean’s voice, tries to even out his breathing and settle his nerves, because he feels the creeping dread he always feels at the thought of losing Dean to his brother, and he would give anything, he knows, do anything so that doesn’t happen. He steadies his voice. “I’m not really sure what I can tell you, Dean,” he says, with a kind of desperation. He searches for the right words to reassure, tries to be less blunt than he might usually be, because he heard the tremor when Dean spoke. “Just – maybe we need to focus on the fundamentals we’ve gone over time and time again and not get caught up thinking about winning or losing this game.” He nods his head for emphasis. “If you put your effort and concentration into playing to your potential, to be the best that you can be, well – I don’t care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game. In my book, we’re going to be winners.”

He’s staring down at where Dean’s hand grips his, and when he looks up, Dean is furrowing his brow, bemused. “Cas, that’s from Hoosiers. It’s Coach Dale’s pep talk.”

Castiel shrugs before he replies. “But did it work?”

“A little.” Dean awards him a weak smile. “You know, I wish I had your faith that God is watching over us,” he offers somberly.

“It isn’t God I have faith in Dean, it’s you,” Castiel says. Because you are my reason, my touchstone, he wants to add, but he doesn’t know how to say that either.

Dean interrupts his thoughts. “And you honestly don’t have any regrets? Zachariah had you on the fast track for a while there.”

He’s looking at Castiel curiously, eyes locked on his face as if he’s analyzing him, trying to figure him out, maybe even memorize him, and Castiel wonders if that’s how he looks at Dean. He considers the possibilities, considers his loneliness and the sense of loss he feels for his estranged brothers even while they hunt him. And he tamps it down, focuses instead on what he has gained. “I still wonder sometimes what’s worth saving about this world,” he murmurs. “But there’s no doubt in my mind that there are things, certain things, that I don’t ever wish to lose.”

Dean doesn’t take his hand back from Castiel. “After you fall, you won’t be alone,” he says. “You know that don’t you?”

On Castiel’s long plummet to earth, he senses Michael’s anger and knows what it means, that his brother was thwarted, that Dean refused, and he feels joy. As he falls, his grace shreds and burns, and he screams out white-hot agony. He is reborn to pain and confusion, bright lights and noise, endless questions he can’t answer from people he doesn’t know, a bug bite that won’t stop itching no matter how much he scratches it.

At thirty-three thousand feet, hurtling along at five-hundred thirty-two miles per hour towards Sioux Falls Regional Airport, and with cold sweat trickling down his spine and his fingernails embedded in his palms, Castiel concludes that now he’s human, he’s a nervous flyer. And alongside a sharper fear and anxiety than he ever felt when he had his grace, he has other basic instincts too: thirst, hunger, the need to take a leak, a dump, the need to sleep. When he sleeps he dreams, seeing pictures in his mind, a hectic jumble of emotions, sensations and half-formed ideas that he thinks must be fantasies, and he wakes to find himself rock hard and aching for release.

All of these cravings and urges are somehow familiar, as if Castiel can recall feeling them before. He remembers how Famine tapped into some deeply buried echo of Jimmy Novak even though he thought Jimmy was gone, and he wonders if the feeling of déjà vu is sense-memory, an imprint of the consciousness his body housed before he took it as his own coming to the fore now that his grace is lost. He finds it reassures him, makes him feel like he knows the human condition intimately, and can succeed at it. But alongside whatever vestiges of Jimmy Novak are woven into him are Castiel’s own memories of what he was, compared to what he is now. His existence was once crystal-clear clarity of purpose and vision, and he simply knew. Now he knows nothing, and as he wonders, and guesses, and assumes, his lack of certainty leaves him floundering. His mind was honed to a sharp edge that cut through doubt, ambiguity and hesitation, but now he struggles to absorb the world and process what he sees, hears, feels, thinks, believes. And he didn’t expect his body to feel so heavy after the fall, didn’t expect his feet to drag as much as they do, didn’t expect to be so earthbound and constrained by gravity, didn’t expect to feel so useless. He stands on Bobby’s porch each night as darkness falls, drinks whiskey and stares at the sky as he grieves the loss of himself. And his confinement on Earth is the solitary kind, because it turns out that Dean lied, that Castiel is alone, and invisible too, his distress the least of their problems now that time is running out.

Dean is gray-faced and tense, constantly moving, fingers nervously strumming the air, eyes bruised, distant and distracted. He looks straight through Castiel, rarely speaks, and when he does it’s a terse, edgy snap. Sam is still and seems tranquil but he’s thinking constantly, Castiel can see it in his expression, set and intent, see how Sam’s eyes ponder, and assess, and calculate, see how his cheeks and jaw twitch as he chews at the inside of his mouth, like he’s working out a plan of action. When Sam voices his plan, Castiel tells him it could work partly from hope and partly from the lack of it, and partly because he knows that he can bear to lose Sam.

At Stull, before Lucifer snaps him out of existence, Castiel finds Dean’s gaze and he sees love, respect, fear, sorrow, because in that brief instant of eye contact before it all goes black, Dean doesn’t look through Castiel, Dean looks at him like he matters.

After Stull, Dean’s eyes are empty, and he averts them as he tells Castiel what he’s going to do, what Sam told him to do.

In the Impala, streaking along a rain-shiny ribbon of highway at night, Castiel ventures to tell Dean what he supposes he’ll do himself, but any barely acknowledged hope that Dean might ask him to reconsider, to stay, is crushed, because now he has a brand-new, shiny set of wings, Castiel is God’s bitch again.

Castiel knows everything there is to know about the world, but he doesn’t know how to live in it without Dean, so he leaves.

In Heaven, Castiel’s problems are twofold.

Firstly, his angel skills are rusty, something Barrattiel comments on as Castiel passes the time picking disconsolately at the scab of his all-too-human temper tantrum that one time he took it out of Dean’s hide. And every time he thinks of Dean, which is constantly if he’s honest, he feels as if he—

“Why do your photons ripple in that disturbing way, brother?” Barrattiel emotes at him.

“I’m not rippling my photons,” Castiel replies testily. “It’s atrial fibrillation.”

Barrattiel recoils dramatically. “What is that strange sound you just made, brother?”

“It was speech,” Castiel sighs, as he raises one hand and ensures the rain clouds clear and the sun shines on Ben Braeden’s baseball game.

Secondly, Castiel is a follower by nature, not a leader. The fact he has come up through the ranks doesn’t really help him with the brewing civil war against Raphael, because the vast majority of his brothers naturally cleave to an archangel with actual grandeur rather than a malakh with what they see as delusions of grandeur, a malakh who fell for love of his mudmonkey, no less. Castiel acknowledges this inside himself and not to his brothers, because, sign of weakness, Cas, he can hear Dean’s voice say, in what passes for the back of his mind on this plane of existence. He sometimes muses that he followed his orders too well on Earth, carefully obedient to the whims of the Righteous Man and the intentions of Team Free Will when he perhaps should have pulled rank and given Dean the laser eyes of badassery more often. Perhaps if he’d done that he’d have the air of authority necessary to command some degree of respect as Sheriff of Heaven. But he didn’t, and it all adds up to him being up shit creek, Cas, and with trouble afoot at the Circle K.

Anyway, “What is it you want?” he shimmers listlessly at his brother.

Barrattiel glows incandescent with the latest skirmish between the factions, some craptastic bullshit about Barquiel knocking skulls with Dabriel, because Barquiel thinks his powers as ruling angel of the eleventh hour of the day take priority over Dabriel’s supremacy as angel of the first Heaven who rules over Monday.

And fuck it, Castiel suddenly thinks. He’s had it to here with this angel douchebaggery and trying to be diplomatic about this epic fucking snafu he has landed in because he threw a hissy fit and Dean didn’t ask him to come back, even though he hovered above the Impala from Sioux Falls as far as Peoria before he gave up and flew his feathery little ass back to Heaven.

And the solution is suddenly so clear, as clear as bright green eyes glittering at him in the darkness outside a den of iniquity while Dean laughed like he hadn’t laughed in years.

What would Jack do?

Something like this, apparently, roared out in Castiel’s most enraged badass motherfucker smiting voice, so that it rings to every corner of this dimension. “Barquiel. Dabriel. Raphael too, while I’m at it. Whatever you’re thinking, you’d better think again. Otherwise I will rain down a Godly fucking firestorm on you. You’re going have to call the fucking United Nations and get a fucking binding resolution to keep me from fucking destroying you. I’m talking about a scorched earth, fucker. I will massacre you. I will fuck you up.”

Castiel’s wrath peaks with abruptly dark skies and a clap of thunder. He glances across to where Barrattiel’s shine has visibly dimmed. His brother even looks smaller and somewhat less judgmental.

“I’m paraphrasing,” Castiel supplies helpfully. “It’s from Tropic Thunder.”

It’s effective, albeit briefly. But Castiel still thinks longingly of the days when he was able to do his actual job, even if it did mark him as being among the lower orders in the angel hierachy. He remembers that he liked being a messenger to mankind, a fuckin’ diplomat, as Dean termed it. But then he came back here, and found that Heaven was going straight to Hell, and after that he didn’t even have the luxury of time to answer Dean’s sporadic, choked-out pleas for CasCasCaspleaseCas, for company in his loneliness, for guidance in his despair, for something, anything, a sign that Castiel was still there. At the time, Castiel reasoned that if he took his eye off the ball and Raphael gained the upper hand, Dean would be top of Raphael’s to-do list.

And Dean never asked him to stay.

The calls for help gradually dwindled and became less frequent, until Dean stopped whispering Castiel’s name in the darkness. There was never a thread linking Castiel to Sam, so when Sam called him it was even fainter. And Castiel knew Sam would make his way to Lisa Braeden’s anyway, so it was easy to ignore.

When Castiel hears Dean’s voice again, out of nowhere, one-hundred twenty Heaven years after he left, it feels like going home.

VII

For some reason Castiel can’t pinpoint, Balthazar is somewhat irked by the fact that Dean is somewhat irked by Castiel’s need-to-know approach to conducting his war in Heaven and his diplomacy on Earth.

“Your boyfriend is absofuckinglutely insufferable,” he tells Castiel, his vessel’s diction fussily precise. “He needs to see past his little Sammy to what Raphael will do to his pretty face if he gains the upper hand in this fight. Have you even told him Raph’s plans for Apocalypse-the-Final-Frontier? With him and his gigantic brother in the starring roles again?” Balthazar has taken up smoking, and fumes wreathe around him, lending him a certain rakish charm as he paces up and down and gesticulates his ire animatedly. He pauses, sucks frenziedly on his cigarette before continuing. “He needs to start seeing the bigger picture, or Raphael will have him faster than he can say God with his mouth already open. Maybe I should—”

“Don’t push it, Balthazar.” Castiel keeps his tone level even though his own irritation is starting to spike, along with a dull throb of concern at just where his brother might be going with this. “I agreed to your plan for the weapons because you assured me you would tell Dean it was a set-up.”

Balthazar shrugs elaborately, his shoulders hovering up around his ears, his hands high, fingers fanning out. “I didn’t have the time. And anyway, it was more convincing this way. I had to be sure Raphael’s pleb would take the bait.” He chuckles mirthlessly. “What’s the matter, don’t you trust me? Don’t forget, you’re my inspiration. The wind beneath my wings.”

Castiel appraises his brother, the only one who stood by him during his trial, or, as he now thinks of it, his ass-reaming. He thinks of their millennia-long journey together, considers comradeship, kinship, loyalty, faith, and love. He sets them against Balthazar’s ego, his self-proclaimed superiority over the hairless apes, so unsettlingly like Uriel’s. Like Lucifer’s. “Did I really set you on this low road of choosing expediency over what is morally right?” he asks quietly, and it chills him inside to think that he might be responsible.

“I don’t think of it as expedient,” Balthazar challenges loftily. “I think of it as strategy. As tactics. I think of it as a practical, logical means to an end. And sometimes expediency is right. The bigger picture, remember?” Annoyance flashes in his eyes. “Once you would have thought that too. I haven’t forgotten why Zachariah made you Winchester’s babysitter, even if you have.” He exhales a perfect smoke circle, sniffs. “You know, Cas, maybe you need to start seeing the bigger picture too. Putting him down would be the quickest way to end Raphael’s scheming.”

The words spill out detached, reasonable even, but Balthazar’s eyes are hard and flat with dislike, and it sparks Castiel’s suspicion even more. “I trust two beings on this plane of existence,” he replies bluntly. “One of them is me. The other one isn’t you. And if you harm Dean, I will hunt you down and destroy you. Slowly. With extreme prejudice. It will be loud, and it will be messy.” He pauses, frowns. “And it’s Castiel. And while I share a profound bond with Dean, he isn’t my—”

“That sounds like dialogue from a neo-noir movie based on a graphic novel, Castiel,” Balthazar interjects dryly. “And is that what they’re calling it these days? A profound bond?”

Castiel cants his head, stares his brother out, a long, relentless gaze that has the other angel break eye contact first. “I mean it, Balthazar,” he reiterates somberly. “You and I may have known each other since the Christians were fighting the lions, but Dean is my charge. Don’t force me to choose between you.”

Balthazar looks up again, his eyes flinty. “I think you just did,” he accuses bitterly, through a mouth pinched thin and peeved.

Castiel smiles, just slightly, the barest curl of his lips. “He’s still the Righteous Man,” he adds softly. “And Michael’s true vessel.”

Because they have a history, Castiel knows that Balthazar can see right through him, and that means his brother’s smirk comes as no real surprise. But even so, Balthazar shakes his head, suddenly concerned, and when he continues his tone is sympathetic, like he thinks Castiel has missed something, when Castiel has known all along why he chose Dean and guarded that knowledge deep inside him, like a secret.

“That isn’t why you fell to Earth for him, Castiel. And given that he looked like he was coming in his pants when you growled and flapped your wings at Raphael, the feeling’s mutual.” Balthazar’s eyes go warm, kind even. “Looks like the Righteous Man finds your sturm und drang quite the aphrodisiac.”

VIII

In Cody, Nebraska, three of Raphael’s followers corner Dean for an industrious bout of Biblical wrath, and he spends seven minutes alternately fending them off and hollering out frantic prayers for help before Castiel manages to drag himself away from the field of battle.

When Castiel materializes, he barrels in without thought or care, without entreaties to his brothers, and he holds them at bay as Dean stumbles dizzily out of the line of fire. A sword flies towards Castiel, a bolt of quicksilver moving faster than the human eye can see, and he snatches it out of mid-air. “You look familiar,” he tells his brother brusquely. “Have I threatened you before?”

He spins smoothly, all controlled, fluid movement as a figure darts up behind him, and he swings his arm up and across in a graceful, slicing arc, scything his sword across his brother’s neck before the other angel can strike. His blade opens up a gaping wound, and in his peripheral vision Castiel sees Dean duck down behind his raised arm as the sky strobes with the lightning flash of dying grace. Castiel ducks a streak of luminous metal that streaks through the air above him where his head was, drives his sword up into the flesh of the second vessel, and pulls it back through another explosion of incandescence.

“Castiel.”

Castiel whirls to see the last remaining opponent standing next to the Impala, Dean on his knees in front of him. The other angel’s hand is fisted in Dean’s hair, the point of his sword caressing Dean’s neck lovingly. Dean’s eyes are huge with a mixture of fear and fury, blood is trickling down his face, and Castiel can see a thin scarlet ribbon of it welling up where the tip of the blade just pierces his skin.

He gazes at his brother, and the disappointment is like a body blow. “Barrattiel,” he says softly.

“You know this guy?” Dean wheezes, and he lets out a strangled yelp as the sword digs deeper.

Castiel ignores him, takes a step forward, holds his hand out, palm up. “You made a mistake, brother,” he placates. “But it isn’t too late to do the right thing…”

Barrattiel’s reply isn’t so firm Castiel can’t hear the tremor that underlies it. “I am doing the right thing, Castiel,” he grinds out. “Your war effort flounders, while you dally down here with your mudmonkey—”

“Dally?” Dean spits out ferociously. “We haven’t dallied. What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Shut up, Dean,” Castiel clips out succinctly, as he sees his brother's expression harden. “Right now.” He extends his wings for effect, feels the draught as they unfurl and fan the air heavily, ten feet on each side of him as he flexes his pinion muscles. And he sees Dean gulp, sees his mouth hang open slightly, thinks he might see Dean’s eyes go glazed and awestruck as they track up above his shoulders. It suddenly reminds him of what Balthazar said, and Castiel can’t help snorting inwardly despite the circumstances. Sturm und drang indeed, he thinks.

He lowers his blade, circles around them, his voice deceptively gentle, the threat that underlies his words explicit in his sheer calm. “Don’t make me hurt you, brother. Raphael is persuasive, I know this. But it isn’t too late to reconsider, to make the right choice.” He extends his hand again. “Come with me if you want to live…”

Dean brays out an incredulous, insolent laugh. “The fuckin’ Terminator?” he scoffs.

Castiel slants frosty eyes down towards him, forces tolerance, and clenches his fist. “This is not helping, Dean,” he scathes out thinly.

“And if I don’t?” Barrattiel throws back. “Castiel, what are you doing? What are you doing with this?” He jerks Dean’s head viciously, the blade opening up a thin slash now, and Dean lets out a choked sound of anger and discomfort, strums the air with his fingers.

“You lower yourself, Castiel.” His brother’s tone drips scorn, as he points the sword at Castiel now. “Perhaps you should reconsider. It isn’t too late for you to make the right ch—”

Barrattiel’s voice is choked off mid-sentence as Castiel’s blade buries itself brutally deep in his chest, and the air around him explodes in a milky way of light effects.

Dean crabs away, boots slipping on the gravel, hauls himself up and swipes a hand across his eyes before touching his fingertips to his neck and wincing. “Jesus,” he eases out shakily, and then his tone turns distinctly pissy. “What the hell took you so long?”

Castiel strides up, reaches out to tip Dean’s head, briefly examines the cut. “I ran out of gas, Dean,” he snips out. “I had a flat tire. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake, a terrible flood. Locusts.” He leans in so close the tip of his nose almost touches Dean’s, and Dean goes cross-eyed trying to focus. “It wasn’t my fault. I swear to God.”

Dean plants a hand on his chest, shoves him back aggressively, his voice a barbed growl. “That’s from the fuckin’ Blues Brothers.”

Castiel ignores the dig. “I was pinned down,” he snaps. “I came as quickly as I could. It’s just a flesh wound, you’ll live. Raphael wouldn’t want to damage the merchandise too much. Michael wouldn’t like it.”

He turns, starts to walk away, and Dean taunts him, smug and contemptuous.

“Sure you weren’t just using me for bait again, Cas? Because you’re full of surprises these days.”

Castiel stops dead in his tracks. He sets his jaw, turns around again slowly. “And you’re full of the usual,” he replies coldly. “Try to keep in mind that I just slaughtered three of my brothers for you, Dean. Since you always come first.” He cocks his head. “Will that be all for now?”

He beats his wings, takes to the air, and he doesn’t look back.

Castiel takes time out to catch up with Samuel Campbell in Bolivar, Missouri, just over a month after Campbell threw his grandson to Crowley’s ghouls. The man is holed up in a condemned warehouse, fast food cartons scattered about him. He’s partway through his second bottle of whiskey when Castiel drops by, sitting on the floor with his legs sprawled out akimbo and his daughter’s photograph in his hand as he weeps.

“Your grandson is alive,” Castiel says dispassionately. “I expect you’re aware of this.”

Campbell starts, blinks up at Castiel, and recognition sparks in his eyes. “Are you here to kill me?”

“No,” Castiel says, still neutral. “I won’t kill you unless Dean asks me to. If that happens, then I’ll come for you. But if you cause him to be hurt again in the meantime… well. Then I won’t kill you at all.”

The old man is pale in the gray dawn light that seeps in through broken windows. “And I suppose that’d be worse for me?” he grinds out.

Castiel inclines his head. “Considerably.”

Campbell hoiks up phlegm, spits it onto the cement floor next to him. “What are you, judge, jury and executioner?”

“No judge,” Castiel replies evenly. “No jury. No appeals. No deals.”

The other man sneers. “What is this, Deathwish?”

Castiel shrugs. “That depends on whether you have one of those. But…” he sighs. “Perhaps it’s academic. After all, I believe you have an appointment with Dean in the near future.”

Campbell barks out a sarcastic laugh. “He doesn’t have the balls. He’s soft. He’s good.”

Castiel considers. “The first time I ever saw your grandson he was painted scarlet with the blood of tens of thousands of second deaths,” he says finally. “He was wearing their entrails like a scarf, and their hides like a cloak. He was feasting on their flesh, and gnawing on their bones, and singing along to their screams. He told me he had found his niche, and he took pleasure in his skills. He didn’t want to leave that place. So I can assure you that he isn’t soft. And that he has balls to spare.” He takes a few steps closer, bends to pluck the photograph out of Campbell’s lax fingers, and the man doesn’t protest. “But you’re right,” he continues. “He is good. He’s the best man I know.” He pauses, studies the faded snapshot, and Mary Winchester is as beautiful as Castiel remembers her. “I wonder what she would think of you,” he murmurs. He stares into her sunny, smiling face, thick-lashed doe eyes, rosebud lips, and the heart he still thinks of as his own jolts restlessly behind his ribs, because he could be gazing at her son. “He looks just like her,” he observes. “That must present you with a real dilemma.”

The response is vicious, defiant. It’s bravado, but it tears raggedly out of the man infused with pain and regret. “Fuck you, pretty boy. How can you possibly understand? I love her…” His voice trails off to faint and broken. “Loved her. You don’t even know what that is.”

Castiel slants his eyes down again. “I understand more than you realize,” he says simply, and he can hear regret in his own voice too. “And I can assure you that I know what it is to love.”

Campbell jerks into uncoordinated motion suddenly, flails his leg out, and his boot kicks impotently into Castiel’s shoe. “Get out,” he sobs. “You don’t scare me. Nothing does any more. Except living without her.” He draws his knees up, curls sideways, presses his cheek against the rough brick of the wall.

“Well, we all go a little mad sometimes.” Castiel squats, tucks the photograph into the breast pocket of Campbell’s shirt, before reaching out a hand, using it to angle the man’s face around to ensure their eyes make contact. “And I should scare you,” he says, low and dangerous now. “I may be scrawnier than you pictured, Samuel, but I should scare you very much. In fact, if self-preservation is an instinct you possess, you’d better damn well be scared of me.”

Campbell snorts weakly. “Or what?”

He flinches as Castiel leans in close, whispers in his ear. “I know where you live, and I’ve seen where you sleep. If you hurt him, I swear by all that is holy… grown men will weep when they see what I have done to you.”

Three miles outside of Troy, Ohio, Sam hollers for help, nowfuckCascomequickpleaseit’sDeanhe’s—

“…driving me fucking crazy.”

Sam is standing beside the Impala in an otherwise deserted parking lot adjacent to a shabby looking structure claiming to be the Motel Deluxe, although Castiel immediately doubts the veracity of that claim.

Sam spins as Castiel’s wings buffet the air around him, runs a hand through his hair, biting out the words irritably. “Thank God. He’s like a bear with a wasp up its butt.”

He looks agitated, and he stares at Castiel after he blurts it all out, has the good grace to add an apologetic note to his voice. “Look,” he says uncomfortably, as he rubs his hands together in the cold and blows on his fingers. “I’m sorry. I know you have better things to do than my brother…” He trails off, scrunches up his nose. “That came out wrong. But I mean it, Cas, he really is—”

“In there, I assume?” Castiel interrupts, jerking his head towards the long, low building.

Sam nods. “The grand prize lies behind door number nine,” he announces, and he gestures in the opposite direction with his thumb. “I booked myself another room at the end of the row, so have at him.” He grimaces, backtracks hastily. “It. Have at it, I mean. Not him. That came out wrong too.” His breath mists out in the chill night air. “Word to the wise. He’s been fighting. And a guy in the bar puked all over him, so he doesn’t smell too good. He’s pretty drunk, too.”

Castiel swallows past an odd sense of weary reluctance to confront this coupled with relief, a feeling that this is a chance to stop, to take stock, a feeling that might be at last. He lets the shadow of a smile play on his lips. “Oh, he’ll sober up for me.” He turns, and Sam reaches out, catches his arm.

“Cas, wait…” He drops his hand back to his side, fingers twitching anxiously, and he doesn’t look at Castiel. “He’s lost so much. And I’m to blame.”

Castiel isn’t sure how to respond, frowns as he gazes back. “What happened to you wasn’t your fault, Sam,” he ventures carefully, after a moment.

“But what I did is.” Sam reaches up and shields his face with his hands, looks down at his feet and closes his eyes, as he shudders a long, harsh, remorseful breath. “I know Dean is telling me it’s okay,” he mutters. “But I need to try to – make amends.”

“Perhaps you need to let go of your guilt,” Castiel says gently. “Sam.” He waits until the man looks up. “We’ve all done things we regret. Things that are… expedient. As opposed to morally right. I’m not immune from it myself just lately.” He doesn’t elaborate, just raises his eyes up, rueful.

Sam’s face twists, stricken. “But Cas,” he whispers. “I fed him to a vamp—”

“And I can understand your desire to atone,” Castiel cuts in swiftly. “But if you endanger your wellbeing, you also endanger your brother’s. He went to great lengths to get you back. He may not cope with losing you again. So don’t do this. Don’t do it to yourself. Most of all, don’t do it to him.”

Sam looks back at him, digests what he said for a long moment. “Still all about Dean, huh Cas?” he murmurs, and then an earnest expression forms on his face. “Well, he has you back too. So maybe you need to stop and think about what you’re doing to him by shutting him out. Because you and him… you and him lock eyes, and man. It’s like everything else is just gone.” He throws his hands out expansively on gone, huffs out in emphasis. “I’ve never seen him look at anyone like that. Anyone. I mean it. So don’t take that from him. Please.” A brief, wry smile flits across his face. “I guess maybe have at him is what I meant to say.”

Castiel stares back at Sam, opens his mouth to reply, but before he can speak Sam continues bluntly.

“Samuel is dead.” He swallows thickly, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Jesus, we need to catch you up with all this, it’s important.”

Castiel digests the news for a second. “Did Dean—”

“It was me.” Sam grimaces. “He was possessed. He was going to spill what I did after Hell. I shot him.”

Castiel clears his throat. “Perhaps it was for the best.”

Sam drags his fingers along the line of his jaw, drops his eyes. “I was tempted,” he says softly. “So damn tempted to just let him do it. To know.” He looks up. “This wall. You think it’ll hold?”

Castiel blinks at him, considers. “I don’t know,” he says simply. “I’m sorry.”

Sam nods his head slowly. “Cas, listen. If anything does happen to it and you can’t fix me…” He shivers, hunches his shoulders. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my days drooling in Bobby’s old wheelchair. And Dean won’t – I don’t think he’ll—”

“You won’t spend the rest of your days drooling in Bobby’s old wheelchair, Sam,” Castiel says quietly. “You have my word.”

Sam stares at Castiel with dark, grateful, resigned eyes. “Thank you.”

Another nondescript motel room, drab brown and orange, mismatched comforters on the beds, peeling formica, and a television chattering faintly over in the corner. A lamp glows golden on the opposite side of the room, an incongruous splash of warmth, and a fluorescent light beams cold and stark through the open bathroom door.

Dean is slumped on the bed, bleary-eyed, a whiskey bottle parked between his thighs. It sparks Castiel’s memory of Dean in another motel room, long ago, and it has his heart flopping messily in his chest for a moment. There’s a cut bisecting Dean’s right eyebrow, and his eye is puffy, half closed, already purpling around the brow and under the socket. His nose is caked with dried blood and his lip is split. He’s hugging his left hand and wrist protectively close to himself, and seems unaware of the vomit congealing on his shirt. He exudes hostility.

Castiel clears his throat, rocks on his feet, hands thrust into his pockets. “Apparently you have a bear’s butt,” he ventures. “Complete with a wasp. Or something like that.”

Dean bristles. “Something like that. You know why?”

“No…” Castiel replies warily, because he hasn’t been in the room ten seconds and he already feels like he’s been ambushed. “But I sense I’m about to.”

Dean smiles like he’s baring his teeth, starts tapping the fingers of his right hand irritably on the arm he’s cradling. “Angels. Fuckin’ dick angels. Conspiring, and conniving, and plotting behind my back, manipulating me and my brother, steering us right smack bang to where they need us. Sound familiar?” He swallows, and his voice is stretched taut with anger. “Is it really all just tactics to you guys? Strategy? And screw the collateral damage?”

Castiel squares his shoulders, smiles thinly. “Well, I am a fucking diplomat, Dean,” he airquotes acidly. “Those were your words. And diplomacy doesn’t just mean peacemaking, it means doing whatever is needed to gain a strategic advantage. Which I just might have now, thanks to this.”

Dean’s frame goes rigid with anger, and he adjusts his hold on the whiskey bottle, gripping it so tight now that Castiel sees his knuckles flare white. He snorts belligerently. “I’m not drunk enough for this shit,” he bites out. “And you and me, I thought we were – thought you were – better than that, Cas. I honestly did.”

Dean’s voice catches harshly as he speaks, and it streaks right to Castiel’s human heart, makes him reel inside. He scrubs at his hair, shakes his head in frustration as his composure fails him. “Dean, come on,” he appeals defensively. “Don’t be naïve. Why do you think Zachariah charged me with your care in the first place?”

He pulls up, bites his lip, because this is something they’ve never really confronted, both of them burying it under layer upon layer of denial based on that morally right choice Castiel made as the countdown to the Apocalypse ticked. He takes a steadying breath and throws it out there for Dean to do with as he sees fit. “It was because he knew how damned unscrupulous I could be. I can calculate and scheme just as well as him, just as well as Balthazar. I can be cunning and callous if it’s required of me. You know I manipulated you, Dean, you know that I freed your brother to go to Lilith. You know all this.” He throws up his hands. “Not Michael Landon, remember?”

Dean manages a bleak smile. “You watched Highway to Heaven?”

Castiel nods ruefully. “I spent more than few nights channel-surfing in what you’d call crappy motels when I was falling, Dean.” And he leaves it there, watches, alert for a sign as to how they move forward from this.

Dean looks down and away, and as he does the fight seems to drain out of him so he slumps, dejected. “I can’t deal with you lying to me, too, Cas,” he says dully. “Not now. You’re the one good thing that came out of this whole mess, and I thought…” He falters, shakes his head. “Can’t there be someone who I know will never lie to me in all this, someone I can trust without question?” he mutters. “Is it really so much to fuckin’ ask?”

Castiel exhales a long sigh. “You must know I didn’t use you to bait my brothers in Cody, Dean.”

Dean makes a face, wincing as it pulls on his split lip, waves his hand in a way that might be conciliatory. “Yeah, whatever,” he says grudgingly. “Sorry about that.”

Castiel crosses to the bed, sits down on the edge. “And I haven’t lied either, Dean, not per se,” he insists quietly. “I’ve…” He stops, fumbles for words, finally steels himself. “I’ve omitted to tell you everything,” he continues, as evenly as he can. “I couldn’t tell you how precarious my position is, you had enough on your mind. So yes…” He can feel his cheeks heat up with his shame before Dean’s frank gaze, and he shrugs awkwardly. “I’ve avoided it, avoided giving you chapter and verse on how I’ve failed in this.” He smiles weakly. “Denial isn’t just your area of expertise, Dean. And it isn’t easy for me to appear vulnerable to you.”

There’s a long, excruciating silence while Dean studies him with serious eyes. And they soften abruptly into some emotion Castiel isn’t sure if he understands, and the last of the tension fizzles away as he finally leans forward, offers Castiel the whiskey.

“You look like you could use a drink.”

Castiel takes the bottle, studies the label for a second. “It’s a myth that liquor helps you achieve restful sleep,” he admonishes mildly.

“I don’t drink it to achieve restful sleep, Cas,” Dean says wearily. “I drink it to get comatose.”

Castiel bends and parks the bottle by his foot, tsks as he reaches out, carefully lifts Dean’s hand up from where it rests on his belly. The knuckles are split and swollen, blood pooling under the skin, the fingers stiff and unyielding. Castiel holds the hand on his thigh, rubs a thumb gently across the back of it, and he can feel his heart twist sympathetically in his chest. “Your hand is broken,” he says softly.

Dean quirks his lips, sardonic. “Bar brawl. It’s my coping mechanism, you should know that by now. A fight or a fuck.”

It’s a throwaway comment, Castiel knows, but he considers it, fancies it could also be an opening, another fork in the long and winding road they’ve traveled together. And he can choose to go left, or he can choose to go right at times like this. He casts his eyes up from where he’s watching his fingertips play over the damage, cooling the inflammation, repairing the torn ligaments, unlocking frozen nerves and knitting the fractured bone back together. “I sincerely hope you don’t intend picking a fight with me, Dean,” he says deliberately.

Dean’s gaze has drifted off to the side but his eyes swivel back immediately, quizzical, and he doesn’t look away as he flexes and fists the newly-healed hand. “You disappear and ignore me entirely one minute, and then pop up out of thin air and feed me some crap to shut me up the next,” he fishes cautiously. “Before teleporting off to God knows where again.”

Castiel holds his stare. “I didn’t say that just to shut you up, Dean. And I don’t plan on teleporting anywhere tonight.”

Dean licks his lips, and his eyes narrow. “Are you, uh…” He hesitates, swallows. “Staying then?”

“Sam got another room. So yes, I’m staying. With you.” And it’s an easy decision, Castiel realizes in that instant of saying the words, a decision made a long time ago, in the split second when he materialized behind Dean and slammed him up against the wall with a hand pressed to his mouth to silence his alarm.

He can already feel a nervous, expectant churning in his gut, already feels like he’s unwinding in some way. He fakes a veneer of detachment, eyes Dean critically. “You smell. You need to sleep. You can’t sleep smelling like that.” He stands, shakes his coat and jacket off his shoulders and throws them across the other bed. He reaches out a hand. “Come on,” he says, softer now. “I’ll get you cleaned up.”

XII

Dean leans against the tile, a small bottle of shower gel in his hand, as the water streams down over him. He’s already hard, his cock alert and beckoning, and his vision tracks up and down Castiel’s body as he strips. His one good eye is gleaming dark, dangerous and greedy, and Castiel shivers under the weight of his gaze.

Dean clears his throat as Castiel kicks his pants and boxers over into the corner, and his voice comes out more nervous than he looks. “You’re uh… not as scrawny as we thought then.”

Castiel raises his eyebrows, steps into the cramped shower cubicle. He’s slightly shorter than Dean, has to look up, and the water is already soaking his hair so it curls down across his eyes. He offers his hand, palm up, and Dean wordlessly tips the liquid onto it.

Castiel rubs his hands together until bubbles froth. He lays his palms flat on Dean’s chest, and Dean flinches, licks his lips. His skin is smooth and warm under Castiel’s touch, lightly tanned, freckles sprinkled chaotically. Castiel presses slightly, feels the give of toned muscle, muscles that were rotting fiber the first time he did this. “I remade you,” he breathes out in wonder, and the knowledge overwhelms him for a moment, so that all he can hear is the thunderous roar of blood in his ears, and the thud of his heartbeat. He slides his hands across Dean’s skin, in ever-wider circles, inscribes intricate soap symbols around Dean’s nipples, draws geometric shapes up towards his neck and across the top of his shoulders. “I know you,” he murmurs. “I know every part of your body, down to each individual cell. I stitched them back together. I held your heart in my hands, and saw it beat again for the first time.”

Dean’s eyes drift closed, and he tips his head back, exposing the long line of his throat. Castiel leans forward, traces the tip of his tongue down Dean’s neck, and Dean sighs out a long breath. “I know you,” Castiel repeats. “But I don’t know you at all.”

He ranges long strokes down Dean’s chest, around and under his arms so the fingertips of both hands meet at the bony, pebbled ridge of Dean’s spine. He maps his way south, past the dimples at the base of Dean’s back, feels the muscles in Dean’s flanks jump urgently as his hands play over the softer flesh of his butt. He slips a foamy finger deep inside the crease, down to the perineum, where he accurately details every hidden millimeter. Dean doesn’t open his eyes, but his cheeks flush red and he makes a muffled, desperate sound.

Castiel is silent as he brings the hand back, holds it out again, and Dean doesn’t speak either as he loads it up. Castiel pins Dean with his eyes as he trails his hands down Dean’s abdomen. He soaps the coarse hair at Dean’s crotch, swirls foam down around and under his sac, and then reaches tentatively for Dean’s cock. It rests heavy on his palm, and Dean says his name, tiny and stifled.

“After I fell, Dean, I would wake hard like this,” Castiel says, and he sees Dean’s eyes widen as his fingertips brush up, along, around, slowly. “I learned my body with my hands, learned what it could do…”

He closes his fist around the root, imagines the biology of it, the blood coursing through the tissue, engorging it, imagines it coursing through his own penis, and he feels a corresponding twitch in the organ that has him biting back his own gasp. He hears Dean hiss out a breath as he strips his length gently, leisurely strokes, once, twice, and it feels like silk swathed over steel. He drifts his gaze across to his brand, sees Dean’s eyes track his movement as he hovers his other hand there, before fitting his fingers to the raised welt, barely visible now. Dean’s shoulder is warm under his touch, and he can feel that Dean is tense, and shaking.

“Shhhhh,” Castiel soothes, and he reaches his hand up to touch the deep cut on Dean’s brow. “I accused Balthazar of doing what was expedient,” he says softly then, as he trails a fingertip down over the swollen skin, sees it restored as he does so and Dean blinks at him with both eyes now. He cups the nape of Dean’s neck, and Dean’s lashes flutter closed. “Sometimes I think I did the same when I chose you. That I made my choice out of self-interest.” He smiles as he draws Dean into him. “So perhaps I’m no better than him.” He touches his lips to the raw wound splitting Dean’s lower lip, floats the tip of his tongue across it and tastes Dean’s blood as the cut seals.

Dean nuzzles his way across Castiel’s jaw and down his neck, mouth warm, desperate, leans his head on Castiel’s shoulder. “Cas, don’t run from me,” he chokes out. “Don’t run from me like you did in Waterville.”

Castiel looses his grip on Dean’s cock, rests his hands on Dean’s hips, flattens his palms against the skin, and spans his fingers out. “You remember that?” he asks. He steps in closer, and he can feel a growing, aching heaviness, low down and satisfying in the pit of his gut, can feel the tingle of anticipation gradually swelling his own penis rigid, can feel it thrill at the contact of skin on skin as it rubs against Dean’s thigh. He feels Dean’s voice vibrate against the water running down his chest.

“Of course I remember. I told you I wasn’t as drunk as you thought I was. I knew what I was doing and what I wanted. Just like I know now.” Dean pauses, and Castiel can feel his tongue lick along his collarbone. “Do you remember?”

Castiel tears his gaze away from where the tip of his penis bobs next to Dean’s, runs a hand slowly up Dean’s ribs at the side, feels the tantalizing twitch of muscles as he does. “My heart is racing,” he murmurs, close to Dean’s ear. “It isn’t atrial fibrillation. It’s you, just like it was then.” He fists his fingers gently in the longer hair at Dean’s brow, raises his head to stare into his eyes. “Do you know? Do you know what you do to me? You make me feel like I might do something stupid one day. Or now, maybe.”

Dean’s expression is astonished, dazed and disbelieving. “Say my name, Cas,” he whispers. “You say it like I mean something. You look at me like I matter.”

Castiel tilts his head. “Dean,” he gravels out. “Dean… Dean… Dean… Put your hands on me, Dean.” He smiles. “Remember, I know the mechanics of the act.”

Dean makes an explosive sound, snakes his hand around to spread it across Castiel’s lower back and tug him closer, snatches the other around Castiel’s penis, along with his own. Castiel can’t help the moan that breaks free at the feel of Dean’s capable grip, at the solid, hot press of Dean’s cock against his as Dean slides his hand up and down, dragging his thumb across the heads where they nestle together in the prison of his fingers. It’s all Castiel can do to hang onto the illusion of control as he watches, and it abruptly occurs to him that maybe he has never really had control of this.

Dean leans his forehead in against Castiel’s. “You’re such a fuckin’ tease,” he manages. “I’ll show you the fuckin’ mechanics of the act.”

Castiel ghosts his lips across Dean’s, pulls away at the last moment as Dean’s mouth opens, lips soft, eager and ready. He ignores Dean’s growl of protest, plants his hands against Dean’s chest, slides down, turning his head sideways as he goes, and the slippery, smooth hardness of Dean’s torso against his cheek as he sinks to his knees has him dizzy with desire. He kneels at Dean’s feet, in supplication, his thumbs resting on the creases of Dean’s thighs, and Dean’s cock is right there in front of him, curved ready, flushed purple at the head, and Castiel wants. He wraps a hand around it, hears Dean’s bitten-off curse at the contact, and he feels his heart hammer even faster. He looks up from under his eyelashes to where Dean is staring down at him, heavy-lidded, looking like he’s hypnotized. “I know how you work, Dean,” Castiel murmurs. “Now I’m wondering how you’ll feel in my mouth. How you’ll taste. What you like. Tell me what you like, Dean.”

Dean huffs out a bemused laugh. “Are you for real?” he marvels, and he lays a gentle hand on Castiel’s cheek, threads his fingers up into Castiel’s hair. “Your mouth, my cock. Lips, tongue, easy on the teeth. Lots of spit. Right now, or so help me—”

He cuts off with a grunt as Castiel leans to kiss the tip. Castiel tastes soap there, and a hint of something else, something darker and more basic that he guesses must be arousal. He glances up at Dean again, and Dean’s eyes are naked and wanting. Castiel slips his tongue out slowly and deliberately, moistens his lips, and Dean’s eyes glaze slightly. He shuffles an inch or two closer on his knees, licks a delicate swipe around the ridge that joins the shaft to the bulb, along to a guttural cry and the wet slap of Dean’s hand against the tile. When he casts his eyes up again, Dean’s head is lolling back. He’s shivering under the rapidly cooling stream of water, and Castiel frowns.

“We need to take this to the bed,” he decides, and he doesn’t wait for an agreement, pushes up, leans in to grasp Dean around the forearm. Before Dean can even react, Castiel is heaving him up and over his shoulder, walking him out into the motel room and throwing him down.

Dean’s eyes are huge and distracted as he sprawls there. “Jesus, Cas,” he sputters. “Manhandling? That is such a fuckin’ turn-on, I can’t even…”

His voice trails off as Castiel kneels on the bed, straddles his lower legs, and falls forward onto all fours. Castiel ignores his own cock’s clamor for attention, fastens his lips around Dean’s, worships the head, bathes it on his tongue, a hand braced on the sharp jut of Dean’s hip. He feels Dean’s fingers claw and dig at his upper arm, can hear a long, continuous keening noise stuttering out from above him as he mouths the glans and nuzzles the satin curve of the corona with his lips, before biting his incisors down.

Dean yelps, grabs a fistful of hair, pulls Castiel’s head up. “Teeth, watch the fuckin’… fuck, Cas.” His eyes are glittering bright, his cheeks are pink, and his smile is brilliant. “Careful with the teeth.”

Castiel grips Dean at the base, pulls off with a pop. “Learning curve, Dean,” he declares. “I’m learning you.”

Dean snorts. “I’m getting my revenge for this, you bastard. This isn’t over till you’re bent double and I’m fucking you into the mattress.”

Castiel smiles himself, rubs Dean’s cock along his jaw, licks up and down the shaft, finds it just as smooth as it felt in his hand. He works the head diligently with his tongue, accompanied by a soundtrack of inarticulate, garbled praise for his efforts. He tastes beads of salty pre-come at the tip, watches his spit trickle a glistening trail along its length and seep beyond it, onto Dean’s balls. He chases it, feels the distracting tickle of dense hair irritating his nose as he mouths the looser, malleable skin there. He swipes at the sac with the flat of his tongue, and Dean writhes under him, stammering out disjointed curses. He bends Dean’s leg to lift him up for better access, laps at the puckered indentation further back, then probes it experimentally, and Dean’s hips buck violently, along to a raw, strangled sound of pleasure.

“Fuck. Jesusfuck. Cas…”

Castiel nuzzles his way back up, feeling his own need throbbing now, and he pauses, fists himself briefly before he fastens his lips around the head again. He slides them down smoothly until the tip is nudging the back of his throat, bites down just barely, and Dean moans, incoherent and frantic, one hand floating up to cover his eyes and the other plucking at the blankets.

Castiel scrapes back up to the head, around flesh soaked slippery with saliva, pokes the tip of his tongue into the slit, where more fluid is leaking out, scissors his teeth gently from side to side against the delicate fold of skin underneath. Dean cries out, pulls up his knees, locks Castiel in place with his thighs either side of his head, his fingers grabbing at Castiel’s hair again as he starts to rock his hips up, pushing slowly into Castiel’s mouth. He’s propped up on his elbow, staring avidly, eyes black with lust, as Castiel glides his lips down to meet the shallow thrusts, wrapping his tongue around Dean’s length each time he pulls up and suckling so hard on the tip he can feel his cheeks go hollow. And Castiel sees the muscles of Dean’s neck suddenly tense and lock, sees Dean’s eyes close, sees his mouth drop open in a soundless cry. He feels Dean’s cock surge upwards and twitch against the back of his throat, feels it start pumping warm, brackish liquid. He swallows once, lets it slip from his mouth, sees familiar thin ribbons of milky semen spurt out and splatter Dean’s belly, and he feels his own cock leap enthusiastically at the sight.

Dean doesn’t hesitate as he empties, reaching down to haul Castiel up and flop him across his chest. He cradles Castiel’s face and seals their lips together, licking around inside Castiel’s mouth hungrily, his teeth clashing against Castiel’s. He flails a hand, finds Castiel’s, and tears his lips away, slapping Castiel’s fingers down in the messy splotches on his skin and sliding them around. “These,” he rasps out recklessly, as he holds up the digits. “In me. Now. Then your cock.”

He lifts a long leg up and wraps it around Castiel’s waist, shifting to give Castiel access and trapping him in place. Castiel groans as his aching penis finds the pressure it craves, and he grinds down against Dean, trailing a come-slicked finger over the sensitive ring of muscle, circling it around as he starts to push in. Dean shudders, his eyes flaring panic and flitting away, and Castiel falls forward, bites down on Dean’s bottom lip. “Look at me,” he orders. “Dean. At me. Tell me you want this.”

Dean’s eyes lock back on his, wild and heated, as Castiel stills his finger. “You are emotionally stunted, Dean,” he whispers tenderly, and he presses a gentle kiss to Dean’s lips. “I, on the other hand, am not. Which means I can tell you that I died for you, I fell for you, and I died for you again because I love you. Through all of this, I’ve loved you, and through all of this I will continue to love you, no matter what happens.” He tilts his head. “Now. Do you want this?”

Dean huffs out a shaky cackle. “That passive-aggressive thing you do is so damn hot, Cas.” He runs his tongue along the seal of Castiel’s mouth. “I want this. You have no fuckin’ idea how much.”

Castiel smiles, drops his head down again, nips along Dean’s jaw, swivels his finger slightly and hears Dean whimper as he breaches the entrance. He kisses his way back to Dean’s lips, and Dean’s mouth opens to him, his tongue dueling wetly with Castiel’s as Castiel dips his fingertip in and out just barely a few times, before shoving resolutely past the resistance and into tight heat, on and up, to a moan he swallows down. He pulls back, feels the muscle cling jealously, and then drives in relentlessly again, his cock swelling even harder between them as Dean pushes down to meet him. “Relax,” Castiel murmurs. He knows the mechanics, the biology, knows what he’s looking for, and he buries his finger as far as it will go, bends it forward slightly and rubs at the small bud, hears Dean make a wrecked sound and feels Dean’s whole body tremble at the spark that just exploded. He withdraws, swipes his fingers through the slippery mess on Dean’s groin again, and Dean is ahead of him.

“Wait, wait… just a—” He pushes up awkwardly onto his elbows again, reaches across to grab at the spongebag on the nightstand, upends it violently, so the contents spill across the bed, and snatches up a small bottle. “Lube.” He flips the lid, oozes the clear gel onto Castiel’s fingers. “Two now.”

Castiel obeys, two digits slotting gradually into place this time, and Dean hisses out. Castiel leans down and kisses him hard and thoroughly, and Dean bites at his lower lip like a starving man as Castiel slides his hand back and forth, long minutes ticking by as he twists and pushes against the stubborn wall of flesh that surrounds and squeezes his fingers, adding a third, forcing, stretching, circling inside, opening Dean up, stroking across the gland on each pass, so that Dean gasps against his lips, and rutting against Dean’s thigh as his cock burns its own need.

Dean is twitching erect again against Castiel’s belly, and he babbles out words into Castiel’s mouth, a mantra he chants breathlessly. “More. Fuck… Cas. More, need more, need your dick in me. Please. Cas, please, more, do it now…”

Castiel pulls his fingers free, heaves himself up. Dean gropes for the lubricant, squirts a generous glob onto Castiel’s penis and slides his fingers along and around it, before flopping back, shielding his face with his hands. His body is wracked by tremors, gleaming with sweat, the tendons of his neck corded.

Castiel lines himself up, pauses. “Look at me, Dean,” he says softly. “I want to see you when I do this.”

Dean’s hands fall away and his eyes snap open, lock on Castiel’s. His mouth forms an awestruck O around a harsh whine as Castiel pushes in. The muscle fights him at first, and Castiel winces at the pressure squeezing on the head of his cock as it eases in achingly slow, watches, fascinated, as the shaft disappears in tiny increments. It’s tight inside Dean, hot, a sleek tube that clutches and compresses him as he sinks into it. It’s bliss, and he gasps out, “Dean… you feel… God. So good. Dean…”

Dean is shuddering, breath wheezing in and out. His leg hooks around under Castiel’s butt and his hand reaches to grip the arm Castiel is bracing on, fingers digging in. “Did you mean all that crap?” he pants. “All that crap about dying, falling, dying again?”

Castiel bends at the elbows, lowers himself so his lips hover just above Dean’s. “What do you think, Dean?” he murmurs.

“I think I love your cock,” Dean whispers raggedly. “That’s what I think.”

Castiel smiles, rains kisses on Dean’s face, his sweat-spiked hair, presses his body the length of Dean as he nests himself gradually deeper, until their bellies are flush. He waits for Dean to adjust, teasing his tongue, slippery passes around his mouth as Dean parries back, until he can’t hold off any longer, needs to move, needs to feel himself against and inside Dean. He shifts his hips just barely, and a lightning bolt of pleasure electrifies its way up him so suddenly that he curls in on himself, blinks hard and sobs out words in the ancient tongue, blessings and endearments he knows Dean won’t even understand.

Dean’s arms close around him instantly, the fingers of one hand sliding up into his hair and burying themselves there, playing across his scalp. “Hey, sshhhh…” he reassures, low and gentle. “It’s okay, buddy, stay with me. It’s all good…”

Castiel drops his brow down against Dean’s as it hits him, a wave of delight, elation, rapture, and he can’t help himself, he stutters out his disbelief and his joy. “I’m inside you, Dean… Dean…”

Dean splays out his other hand on Castiel’s back, smoothes it languidly up and down. “Yeah, you are,” he says reverently. “You really are. You feel so fuckin’ good.” He sighs out a long breath as Castiel nudges in again, and his voice is a comforting purr in Castiel’s ear. “Just like that… you’re doing just fine, buddy, we can go slow and easy. Fuck, yeah… Cas… again. Right there…”

Castiel slides his penis out a few inches and back in, groans at the perfect satisfaction of being sheathed to the hilt in sultry heat, cocooned by smooth, velvet skin, massaged on all sides by resilient outer muscle, and Dean rolls his hips up sinuously to meet him, gripping his butt and pulling him in on the upthrust, easy and unhurried, crooning encouragement and lewd appreciation. Castiel focuses on what he’s doing, remembers the mechanics, butts the tip of his penis up against that spot, deliberate, shallow nudges, the briefest, slightest circular movements, punctuated by deep, careful, devoted kisses, Dean’s tongue twirling lazily around his. He can feel the hard line of Dean’s cock pressed in between them, feel Dean pulsing against him inside, grasping him as he glides in and out, and he hears Dean moaning his name now, and speeds up his thrusts instinctively.

“Harder,” Dean mutters, and his voice cracks. “You’re doing great. Yeah. Cas… so fuckin’ good. Faster now… fuck.”

Dean’s hands start to twitch on his back, blunt fingernails scratching and digging into his skin as Castiel’s own urgency grows. He pushes up onto both hands, changes the angle slightly, and Dean cries out as he snaps his hips forcefully, ramming in, hearing the slap of flesh on flesh. The friction is almost abrasive now, exquisite, and it scorches through Castiel’s nerve endings. He becomes aware of a tickle deep inside, feels the muscles in his butt drawing up, feels his legs stiffen and his toes curl, feels a growing tightness and pressure screaming for release, a pressure more powerful than he ever experienced in his fumbling attempts to learn what his body could do after his fall. He whimpers out a mixture of panic and ecstasy as he starts to convulse inside, the explosion building from within as Dean flexes against him.

Dean reaches to grip his own penis, starts pumping it fast and hard, staring intently down at the tangle of dark hair where they join, biting on his lip and puffing out frenzied gasps. Castiel sees the moment when it hits Dean, sees his face go slack and his eyes roll up dreamily as white stripes paint his belly again. Castiel’s rhythm falters as Dean clenches tightly around him, and his own climax tingles and throbs up through his shaft in response. He pushes in once, twice, freezes for an instant of slow-motion disorientation that swells into giddy euphoria and then erupts in warm, wet, fiery sensation that pulsates up and out, washing around him, slippery slick. He cries out Dean’s name, and collapses on top of him, chest heaving, heart pounding, sweat and tears stinging his eyes. “Dean,” he chokes out again. “Dean…”

Dean’s breath heaves out in concert with Castiel’s, and he wraps his arms and legs tight around Castiel, grounding him. He nuzzles his lips against Castiel’s brow, oddly chaste. “S’okay, I’ve got you,” he slurs exhaustedly. “You did good. I’ve got you… You hear? Cas. I’ve got you.”

XIII

Dean is warm and solid lying on his front next to Castiel, a long, smooth, hard press of flesh starting at Castiel’s shoulders, an arm heavy and careless across Castiel’s belly, fingers stroking the jut of his hipbone.

“I think you broke my ass,” he mumbles out from somewhere deep in the pillow.

“Don’t panic, Dean,” Castiel deadpans. “I can heal it with my magic finger.”

He feels Dean’s shoulder shake beside him, hears a muffled chuckle, and then, “You wore out my dick, too.”

Dean sounds impressed, utterly sated, possibly even respectful, and it makes Castiel feel content. His chest swells, and he breathes out a long, satisfied sigh. “Then you should sleep, Dean,” he suggests smugly. “We need to preserve your stamina for next time.”

He hears an amused huff. “You’re preening,” Dean says. “Pride is one of the seven deadly sins.”

Castiel reflects for a second or two. “So is lust,” he observes philosophically. “I appear to be working my way through the list. I wonder if this counts as sloth?”

Dean is miles away. “Next time you should get the wings out,” he mutters randomly. “Yeah…”

It falls silent, apart from the sound of them breathing in tandem and the distant roar of cars from the highway, and an eerie glow of moonlight spills in through torn curtains.

“I’m sorry about your grandfather,” Castiel says then, out into the dark in front of his face.

Dean stretches, stifles a yawn. “He was, uh…” He sighs. “Different, somehow. Older. Sadder.”

Castiel chews his lip thoughtfully. “Yes, he was.”

Dean surges up, flops down on his chest, startling a whuff of air from him. “How do you know that?” He’s confused, peering at Castiel, skeptical and suspicious.

“I paid him a visit,” Castiel admits. “I didn’t hurt him,” he adds hastily. “Let’s just say I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

He can just about make out the shape of Dean’s face as he shakes his head, blinks slowly. “You been learning from the movies again, Cas?”

“The Godfather is a classic,” Castiel concedes wryly. “And yes, your advice has come in helpful when it comes to diplomacy. My people skills are rusty, after all.”

It’s warm under the blankets, and Dean is draped half across Castiel now, sweaty and sticky, smelling acrid. Castiel knows it’s the smell of sex, and it gives him a curling sense of fulfillment and gratification low in his groin. Dean’s leg is wedged in between his, and nudging just close enough to his crotch to promise more without arousing him to distraction. It’s comfortable, and it feels right.

“You should sleep, Dean,” he says again.

Dean tenses slightly. “Are you leaving?”

Castiel smiles to himself. “No,” he says. “I’ll watch you.”

Dean snorts. “Well, that’s all kinds of fuckin’ creepy.” His lips are a soft, moist tickle in the crook of Castiel’s shoulder as he speaks. “The last time I slept properly was in Waterville with you watching me,” he adds suddenly.

Castiel frowns. “But – at Lisa’s?”

There’s a brief, complicated pause. “Not really,” Dean mutters offhandedly, then. “Too much on my mind.”

Castiel brings up his arm from where it hangs listlessly off the bed, uses a finger to trace the notches of Dean’s vertebrae. “You weren’t… alright there?” He doesn’t wait for the reply. “I’m sorry about Sam,” he continues carefully. “I thought he’d make his way to you.”

Dean shifts uncomfortably. “It wasn’t just that,” he says. “I mean – I love her. Loved her. Least, I think I did. The kid…” He huffs out ruefully, and his voice goes quieter, subdued. “I thought it could be mine, all of it.”

“Maybe it still can.”

“Nah.” Dean sniffs. “She’s moving on. And she should. It’s safer for her, for Ben.”

Castiel feels the brush of skin as Dean shrugs. He tries again. “But you could—”

“Cas, just…” Dean slides his chin up onto Castiel’s chest, and Castiel can see his eyes glinting. “Can we not? That life, in so many ways, it’s just – not me. It never was. I was pretending, living a lie. Biding time. Lisa, Ben… they kept me going, but they never really knew me. None of those people there who thought they knew me really knew me at all. And if they did… well, they wouldn’t want to.” He exhales sharply, the puff of air making Castiel blink. “But you know me. You know what I did. You saw me. I don’t have to pretend with you.”

Castiel hooks his leg over Dean’s, runs it up and down the back of his calf. I’ve done things too, Dean, he thinks. If you knew some of the things I’ve done, you might not want to know me. He thinks it, but he doesn’t voice it. “You’re worth knowing, Dean,” he says instead.

Dean is still for a moment, and the atmosphere is thicker, until he chuckles, sarcastic, and changes the subject. “More than your demon girlfriend?” he mocks.

Castiel raises his eyebrows. “Meg…” He stops, thinks on it a moment. “Meg helped clarify matters for me,” he muses. “Much like Chastity did.”

“The hooker?” Dean sounds baffled. “In Waterville?”

“Let’s just say that neither of them had the effect on me that you have,” Castiel replies dryly. “In fact, nothing seems to have quite the effect on me that you have.”

“Yeah, right,” Dean retorts. “Don’t forget the porn-flick boner, buddy.”

He’s counting his fingers down Castiel’s ribs as he speaks, and he cups the peak of Castiel’s hip, kneads the softer flesh behind it. He starts circling his thigh slightly against Castiel’s penis, and Castiel sucks in a long lungful of air as he feels it perk its interest. Dean kisses his way along Castiel’s collarbone, sinks fierce teeth into the flesh of Castiel’s shoulder and then tongues the indentations sloppily.

Castiel forces out breath, has to fight to keep the strain of his want from making him hoarse. “Perhaps it wasn’t the porn that aroused me, Dean. Perhaps it was the punishment. The spanking.”

Dean stops abruptly, his whole frame going taut. “Fuck…” he croaks out endlessly, awarding the word far more than its single syllable as he does so. “Fuck.” He ponders it briefly, then nuzzles his lips in beside Castiel’s ear, torments the lobe with a slick, predatory tongue. “Before this night is over, I’m learning you so hard you won’t even remember your own name,” he whispers, and Castiel’s jaw goes slack.

Dean snakes his hand in, rubs the heel of it against the base of Castiel’s penis, and Castiel hears himself moan softly, thrusts up to meet the pressure. “I love your body,” Dean rumbles throatily. “It’s hard. Sharp. And I love your skin, it’s so damn smooth. Tonight I’m licking every part of you, nooks and crannies you didn’t even know you had.” He slips a finger further back, slides the pad of it past Castiel’s scrotum and presses in, the promise in his touch unmistakable. “You’re going to scream for my tongue,” he teases. “I’m going to strap you to this bed with your tie on one wrist and your belt on the other, and I’m going to spank your ass so hard you’ll have a handprint scar to match mine…”

Castiel tips his head back, grinds it into the pillow, hisses out wetly as Dean starts kissing and nipping his way up his neck, his teeth savage and stinging.

“And then I’m going to flip you over, and suck you dry.” Dean lunges for Castiel’s lips, plunders his mouth with a greedy, prehensile tongue, and Castiel chases it as it curls and collides against his. “And then you’re going to beg for my cock to split you in two,” Dean breathes into Castiel’s open mouth. “You’re going to weep for it. And after I’m done learning you, you’ll feel me for a week, angel mojo or—” He stops abruptly, stifles a yawn that has tremors dance across his whole body.

Castiel reaches up a hand, places it on Dean’s cheek. “Idiot,” he smiles. “There was no porn-flick boner. I was looking for it, not at it. Like I said… nothing has quite the effect on me that you do.”

He presses Dean’s face down onto his chest. “Sleep, Dean,” he says gently, brushing his fingertips across Dean’s brow before he can protest.

Dean sleeps.

What Castiel watched...
House • Highway to Heaven • The Shining • Ocean’s Eleven • The Blues Brothers • Bring It On • Pet Sematary • Crocodile Dundee 2 • Judge Dredd • Cobra • Sudden Impact • The Pacifier • Jackie Brown • The Terminator • Star Wars I-VI • Die Hard • Jaws • Hoosiers • Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure • Tropic Thunder • Psycho • Sin City • Pirates of the Caribbean • Deathwish • Pulp Fiction • The Godfather

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