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"Go hard or go home, Clarence."
"I don't have a home," Castiel says, of course, and there's a lack of bitterness in his tone. He says it like it's an acknowledgement of punishment that's trying not to veer into grief. Yes, I deserve this. He will never say he doesn't.
Meg laughs and pushes him back against the headboard, straddling his hips. "Guess that means the only choice you have is to go hard."
He can't stop himself moaning as she sinks down on his cock, and Meg is caught on the sound, mesmerized by how easily she can take him apart. Castiel closes his eyes and knocks his head back against the wall, and she watches his throat bob up and down with every small adjustment of her hips.
She tells him what to do and how to do it, and he bends to her will like a tree in a storm.
+
Terry McKenna used to live an entirely ordinary existence as an insurance salesman before he became a vampire. 401k, probably. Thinks he should go the gym more, probably. Friends he'd grab a beer with after work, complain to them about the boss. A wife at home, complain to her about his friends. But ever since his run-in with a vampire a few months ago, Terry McKenna has become the local ghost story. Don't hang around near those caves outside of town if you don't want to disappear. Meg is not unfamiliar with misinformation as a survival tool. Case in point, she convinces Castiel that Terry should be their next target. The angel wants to hunt? Rid the world of evil? Well, here's a trail of blood.
Terry McKenna is a monster who doesn't want to be a monster. He knows he can no longer live among humans. This is his compromise. For all that Terry has retreated from civilization, his underground lair is littered with the evidence of it. There are several empty cans of beer, a few empty bottles of whiskey. Boots and a pair of sneakers arranged neatly against the cave wall. A stack of paperbacks by the mattress. (How he got a mattress down here, Meg has no idea.) There's a pile of clothes on top of the mattress, next to two folded shirts, like Terry was going to fold the whole pile then went, "Ah, fuck it," and decided to feed on another hitchhiker instead.
Upon closer inspection, most of the clothes in the pile have blood stains on them. She points this out to Castiel, who scowls and says yes, he can see that.
On top of one of the book stacks, there's a portable phone charger. Who do vampires need to call? There can't be any signal down here. Out of curiosity, Meg picks up the phone and checks the frequently used apps. Angry Birds is number one.
Castiel picks up a copy of Slaughterhouse Five from the stack of books and opens to the dog-eared page. "Dean says this one's not as good as Cat's Cradle."
"It's no Breakfast of Champions," Meg murmurs, flipping through the photos on Terry's phone. A woman reading a book in an adirondack chair. A girl playing the piano on a stage. Some guy in a button-down shirt and a tie, beer in hand, smiling in that way people do when they're trying to look sober.
Terry McKenna hides out in caves like some creature from a horror movie, but he is still human enough to read Vonnegut and play Angry Birds on his phone. Meg's plan just might work. This just might work.
"I don't understand," Castiel says, placing the book back on the stack. "Why can't we go to where the vampire is and kill him right now?"
Meg taps on the phone's video library. Nothing there though. "God's lil' cherub all raring to smite, huh?"
"Seraph," Castiel corrects sharply, as if cherub is an insult.
"Refresh my memory." She tosses the phone on the mattress and hooks her fingers through Castiel's belt loops. "Is a seraph the one who gets extra cranky when they're not killing things, or is that just you?"
Castiel narrows his eyes. "That depends on why we're not killing things."
"What did I say about patience?"
"You never said anything about patience, just impatience," Castiel points out, which is true enough, and he doesn't pull away when Meg presses their bodies together and slides her palms along his hips.
She says, "You just have to trust me."
And then the thing happens again.
It's been happening more and more: Castiel would zone out momentarily, and when he zones back in, something's shifted. She can't quite put a finger on what. From time to time, he would go blank, and when he comes back, he would be focused on some other thing.
He looks at Meg now like he's surprised to find her so close, and Meg pretends she's not creeped out by it. She usually chalks it up to a weird after-effect of purgatory, but sometimes she questions her own dismissiveness. On the one hand, the guy's been through a lot and it would figure that he has some screws loose. On the other hand, bad things happen to those who underestimate Castiel.
"Yes, I trust you," he recites.
That's a lie. Or at least, it's not the whole truth. Meg smiles, showing teeth. As long as Castiel doesn't act on it, he can go ahead and mistrust her all he wants. She has bigger things to deal with.
She goes in for the kiss, rougher than usual, and Castiel freezes momentarily before kissing back. He absorbs her aggression, is an immovable object against an unstoppable force. These days Castiel has learned to temper his lust with curiosity if not patience, and that's at least an improvement on his first few tries, which were nothing more than the subsuming of his lust into the angelic instinct for conquest. Castiel's kisses are thorough, and his touches are exploratory, gentle not from tenderness, but from precision.
He breaks the kiss and says, "We have to focus," like he's the one in charge. Like she didn't just yank a feather from his wing. Pure grace becomes corporeal in the physical realm, but before it turns into something you'd find on the ass of a bird, Meg slips the feather into her jacket pocket.
"Terry should be getting back now," she says. "Get up there and tail him, make sure he comes right down here."
"This is an unnecessarily complicated plan for killing a vampire," he points out, and it's true, but not the point, so she distracts him by appealing to his pride.
Meg arches an eyebrow. "Can you not remember the plan?"
"Of course I can remember the plan," Castiel says with such disdain that she wants to pinch his cheeks and ruffle his hair.
"Then go."
Castiel goes.
Meg doesn't have much time. She takes her knife from her boot and cuts into her hand, then takes out Castiel's feather and burns it with a lighter. An angel feather is a powerful but crude amplifier of magic. In other words, it does the job in a pinch. She mixes the ash into her blood, then uses it for ink. Alastair was able to do this faster and more easily back when everyone was still breaking seals, but then again, he wasn't on the run with limited resources.
Meg imagines what he'd have to say about the situation. The tools are unsophisticated, but points for creativity. And then, perhaps, he would smile, razor teeth gleaming in the darkness of hell.
By the time Terry appears, she is ready.
Terry says, "Who the-"
"Castiel!"
On her signal, Castiel lays a hand on Terry's head and destroys him with a light that nearly blinds her. Before the light flickers out, Meg slams her palm down on the angel-banishing sigil.
When the darkness returns, the brightest light comes from Terry McKenna's soul, held in the cupped hands of the furious reaper standing in the middle of Meg's trap.
"You let me go right now," the reaper demands.
"Well, hey, Tessa," Meg grins. "I'm fine, by the way, thanks for asking."
She frowns. "How do you know my name?"
"My father possessed you, or don't you remember?" Meg cants her head. "I could give you a refresher if you want. Get right up in that pretty noggin of yours."
Meg sees the memory unfurl in Tessa's gaze before the reaper looks away and down. When Tessa speaks again, Meg expects to hear bitterness, maybe rage. If Meg lets her desperation turn into hubris, she might expect fear. But instead Meg hears amusement in Tessa's voice.
She scuffs her boots against the sigils on the floor. "You realize your trap is a temporary binding."
"Right to the point, my kind of girl," Meg says. "I need you to call your boss. I wanna talk to him."
Tessa laughs, and Meg tries not to let her irritation show. "You're kidding."
"I'm waiting," Meg says.
"I'm not calling Death to have a conference with some random demon," she scoffs. "What on earth do you want him for? Unless maybe you want him to take you before your time, because we may be amenable to that."
"Lucifer is back in the cage," Meg states, trying to not be distracted by the inconvenience of the human body telegraphing her own panic back at her. The quickening heartbeat. The heat in her cheeks. "I need Death to bring him back."
"This is ridiculous."
"He brought Sam Winchester back," Meg snaps. "If Death can bring that degenerate gorilla, he can bring back Lucifer!"
Tessa slips Terry McKenna's soul in her pocket, but that's not the only reason the cave is getting darker. The glow of the reaper trap is fading. Tessa glances at the fading sigils, then looks back up at Meg. "Looks like you're running out of time, kiddo."
Meg blurts out, "I'll make you a deal."
"Who do you think I am? A demon? Besides, you don't make deals with death."
"Some have," Meg says, and hates the quaver in her voice.
The corner of Tessa's mouth lifts. "Don't follow their example."
"You take Lucifer out of the cage or you tell me how I can do it!"
Tessa just crosses her arms, and waits for the trap to fade.
With an enraged scream, Meg lunges forward and tries to grab the reaper, ignoring the pain as her hands penetrate the wards. She manages to grab Tessa's arm and see the reaper's expression turn almost pitying. And then Tessa is gone. Meg is grasping empty air, alone in the dark.
+
When Lucifer fell into the cage a second time, she felt it. The sudden blankness was so jarring, the shock so complete, that Meg didn't even realize she had fallen until she noticed she had scraped her palm on gravel. It was late at night just outside of Montpellier, France, and Meg was eviscerating a German tourist for the fun of it, celebrating the advent of freedom, and then she too was screaming.
She left the tourist to what was left of his innards – maybe he'd survive, but probably not – and went to whatever there was to find about Lucifer.
There was no one in Stull Cemetery. No one would have been able to tell that an apocalyptic showdown took place here today. The place looked completely ordinary. Meg couldn't even tell where they ripped open the veil between the worlds to toss him in. She kept walking, wandering between headstones as if she might be able to find - by instinct, or sheer desire, or the knot of grief in her chest - the last place where Lucifer stood in this world.
There was nothing.
Thousands of years. She had been at this for thousands of years, and it had all come for nothing. Suddenly all the exhaustion she never allowed herself to feel crashed upon her like a wave, and she fell to her knees. Meg doesn't fall to her knees for anyone, but here where no one could see, she fell to her knees for Lucifer.
This is no Gethsemane. She would know. She was there, watching from a distance as the world changed around her. The world was changing now, but her lord would not rise, not by his own miracle. It was up to her.
She allowed herself to not think about that responsibility right now. Meg had been going nonstop for years, but now she allowed herself to fall to her knees and look at the sky, where people think heaven is, and she thought of what was promised to her and then taken away, and she allowed herself to mourn.
+
Castiel finds her, as Meg knew he would, even though she literally went to the opposite side of the world as if… as if, what, Meg doesn't even know anymore, she just wants to be somewhere where the sting of Tessa's laugh won't distract her as she tries to patch together some kind of backup plan. Where she's at right now is, sitting on the edge of a Hong Kong skyscraper, legs dangling over a perilous drop, and she's a few too many drinks into a bottle of tequila. No backup plan in sight.
Meg raises the bottle to him and smiles mirthlessly.
To her utter lack of surprise, Castiel looks like maybe he's going to walk right over and put his hand on her head and burn her out of this existence. For a second, the thought doesn't anger her, doesn't even frighten her, what with the weight of Tessa's refusal still heavy on her shoulders. There's that opaque single-minded hardness in Castiel's eyes that anyone else would mistake for pride. But she wouldn't. She knows what pride looks like on him.
He strides over to her and Meg stands to face him, waiting to see if she should flee or fight.
"Back so soon?" she slurs.
He bristles, but instead of smiting her like she expects, he takes her arm, and pushes up the sleeve of her jacket.
"What-" she says.
She can't heal her host body as fast as she used to. In addition to the cuts from the knife, the wards from Tessa's bindings leave ugly burns that have begun to fester. Castiel puts his hand over them and she jerks when she feels the burn, the searing pain of grace and the way it tears apart the very heart of her. It lasts a few seconds and forever. Meg screams and wrenches away, calling him names, preparing to strike back. But then she sees her arm: free of scars.
"Don't do that again," Castiel says.
"Do not," Meg seethes, and grabs a fistful of his shirt, "heal me without my say so. Do not take my scars."
He knows. He knows, more than the pain will hurt her, the idea of being anyone's repentance is anathema to her. Castiel heals her because angels are petty. Angels are fucking douchebags.
"Why did you do that?" Castiel demands.
"Shits and giggles," Meg hisses.
"I should kill you right now."
"You keep barking that but I don't see a lot of bite, Clarence."
Meg half-expects him to. Who knows, maybe this is it, maybe this is the point where he decides this isn't worth it anymore, the point where he wises up and admits to himself that no good can come of this, whatever this is, whatever is left when you take away the bigger picture, and worse than killing her, he might leave her on her own. He would kill her. He would leave her. Meg's despair insists Castiel will do both, but she knows from the way he looks at her that he would do none of these things.
Meg wants to know what it is that makes the angel take betrayal in a stride. Is it something in her? Is it some damage in him? She wants to ask Castiel why he came back. She needs to know for reasons that have nothing to do with a bigger picture.
She says, "Take me home."
+
Home is the penthouse suite at a five-star hotel in Dubai that she's decided to use as temporary home base because why the fuck not. It's easy, free, and no one's stopping them. Castiel's first comment about it was about how the Winchesters never stayed in a room so big, and Meg replied, "Thank your lucky stars I'm not the Winchesters."
They materialize in a whirl of light and wind, in a bedroom with a bed probably half the size of the Winchesters' usual motel room, and Meg kisses Castiel and rips open his shirt.
Later, when they're on the edge, Meg slows them down, makes him draw it out. She lies on her back, Castiel's forehead pressed against hers, and she doesn't even know what she's saying, just murmuring curses and encouragement, occasionally slipping into languages no one speaks anymore but she knows Castiel understands perfectly. They're at the point where every slow slide in and out feels good. The point where everything feels good. She is breathless and he is trembling with effort, trying to make it last. Castiel looks at her with something that looks like tenderness, and in a disconnected part of her mind Meg wonders what it really is.
Then his whole body goes rigid. His breath hitches. This is different from the zoning out. This is the other one. She knows that look on his face.
"It's him again, isn't it?" Meg says, and her voice is hoarser than she'd like.
Castiel doesn't reply, just squeezes his eyes shut like that can shut it out.
"He's praying again, isn't he?" she says, and Castiel still doesn't answer, as if saying nothing might make her unknow who it is.
Meg flips them over and pins him to the bed. She leans in and feels her predatory grin settle in of its own accord.
"What is he saying?" Meg asks, rolling her hips, and Castiel moans. "What does he want?"
She braces her knees on either side of his body and keeps one hand on his chest, within which - it delights her every time - a human heart still beats, telegraphing to him the Morse code of impulses he barely understands.
"Tell me," she hisses, knowing he will not. Castiel barely says a word about Dean in her presence. It's the one thing he never rises to her baiting about. He guards his thoughts of Dean so jealously, as if by not voicing them, he can hide them.
"How's he fucking up the world this time?" Meg whispers. "Speak up, Clarence. What's the big secret, huh?" She jerks her hips, and he moans. She bends low over him, her lips brushing against his. "I bet you wish you were right there back with him, don't you?"
Castiel says nothing. He doesn't need to.
Meg rides him and murmurs in her honeyed poison voice what she thinks Dean is saying, what she thinks Castiel wants to say back, reveling in Castiel's silence and the way he seems to fall apart that much faster at her speculations. It doesn't take long.
"Some guardian angel you are," she says, and with one final thrust of her hips, Castiel is coming, ragged, wrecked, calling out a name, a single syllable, and she smiles.
+
In the aftermath, they lie curled around each other. He strokes his hand over her belly, over the burn scars left by holy fire. By him. The first time they had sex, the first time Castiel's touch lingered over the scars, she guessed what he was thinking and told him no. No, these scars are to stay. His hands linger over them now again, and Meg can see the contemplation in his eyes. He won't do it, not with these scars, not without her say so. She will never say so.
"When you were looking for your father," she says, surprising herself that she is actually mentioning it now. She pauses. And then begins again, "When you couldn't find your father, what did you do?"
"What could I do?" Castiel grumbles.
"That's the question."
"I endangered everyone I cared about and nearly ended the world."
She chuckles despite herself. "Is that my only option?"
"It's not really a strategy I recommend."
She rolls over to face him, nips his chin. There's that soft look again, the one that looks like tenderness, and Meg wonders what it really means because surely it can't be what it looks like. Castiel kisses her forehead. He kisses her nose. Meg closes her eyes, and then Castiel kisses her mouth, and no one says anything for a long, long time.