Tfw you want to write canon-compliant Rule 63 Dean/Cas cos that’d be the best femslash arc available but the current SPN arc makes Rule 63-ing so deeply uncomfortable you barely can get yourself to start

He Was Wrong (He isn’t Now)

“He was wrong about us,” says Castiel, firm, into Dean’s shoulder.

Dean doesn’t even sit up, just mumbles, “Who, Cas?” because there’s dozens of people who’ve passed judgment on their relationship all over the years and they’re all wrong, the two of them get that now. Dicks with wings, dick demons (and that’s still sore, that spot, but who knows if Cas knows), friends of both of theirs, even the mutuals (don’t get him started on Sam, frankly, though Sam usually places the closest bets).

“Jimmy, my—former vessel.” Eyes still closed, Dean just stares at the backs of his eyelids and wonders what in the world brought that up. According to Cas’s angel logic, Jimmy’s been history since Raphael redecorated Chuck’s place with his insides that first time. Who cares what he thinks?

“Yeah? What’d ol’ Jimmy say? Back off that dumb righteous dude, angel, he’s not worth it?” Dean jokes, fighting a yawn, finally opening his eyes in time to see Castiel’s stern expression. Cas isn’t real fond of Dean’s sense of humor when it involves bagging on himself; Dean maybe might do it sometimes just for that look.

Castiel looks only too happy to squash Dean’s expectations when he says, “Actually, he encouraged me to pursue you, as long as he was—removed. Unable to, feel it, that is. But that’s why he was wrong.”

Dean’s sleepiness slips away, because Cas is being even less understandable than usual, unless Dean’s usual he doesn’t want me certainty is about to be rewarded. Pretty damn unlikely, considering what they just got finished doing. Dean might not know what Cas’s original face looked like or exactly how many times he stuck his wings out for the hopeless fucks on Earth, but he knows Cas, and Cas isn’t the wham bam type.

“You’re gonna have to be specific, Cas, ‘cause I’m not really getting the message here, unless you’re about to pull a God-level plot twist on me and get up and leave.” (Again, Dean thinks privately, but that’s not really fair, cos Cas has never fucked him before, so it’d be different.)

Cas looks thoughtful, staring down at Dean with a furrowed brow where he’s propped up on a pillow, sweaty and messy and gloriously human, apart from his expressions—which sometimes still cross back over into alien and awe-inspiring every now and then. (Not dying, not being drained of damn destructive angel mojo, not being dragged into wars or chased by “family”, safe in the Bunker and securely in Dean’s bed. Sexily in Dean’s bed, if it has to be said.) He doesn’t know what the guy’s thinking, but he sure looks like a big dork doing it.

“He thought I was…interested, then, when we’d only met. I couldn’t argue with him, feelings were difficult for me. I couldn’t always identify why I was connected to you.” Castiel’s thoughtful look turns troubled, his eyes moving away from Dean’s face. Dean shakes the wrist that’s carelessly draped over his chest, trying to grab his attention back, but he remains diverted. “I thought it was my grace, or some form of—” and finally he faces Dean again, pressing his hand flat where it lay. “Ownership, forgive me, Dean. I thought it was because I’d returned you to yourself, that it was pride in creation, and it was unclean, blasphemous, because the only true creator is God.”

Castiel’s mouth tightened, and Dean felt his stomach jump at another reminder of the severity the guy seemed to be trying to express. “I knew you well, Dean, after Hell. I will always know you, the way you were then. Humans are wild and artless, hard to predict, confusing for one as foreign as I was. Jimmy was helpful, but nothing was more relieving—and, and frustrating,” he glares, a little, at Dean, and Dean offers a half-sheepish smile, remembering his gleeful asshattery after dodging the bullet of demonhood (yeah, that lasted long) and coming up against the cold, callous dicks who’d arranged it, “than to be so exposed to your myriad emotions and so unclear about any of the why.”

“You were interesting to me, because I had been told so much of you, and yet, you defied the telling. I found… something in you, and I didn’t know what, but it was—as I said, relieving. You were unkind, uncooperative...uncowed by humility we—they, I, typically inspire, and yet. Dean, you were still so good, and I was unprepared and dangerously affected. But it wasn’t what Jimmy Novak thought.”

Dean might be shaking now, and if Cas’s little glance at him mid-monologue is any indication, it’s not unnoticed, but what is he supposed to say to that? He struggles for composure, his lips half-lifting, smirking, trying to. “So you liked me but you didn’t like like me? Is that what you—the point we’re getting to? Did Uriel know this, cos he kinda seemed—”

Castiel’s eyelashes fall and his eyes sadden, and Dean cuts himself off. “Uriel was a friend, I thought. He warned me away from any feeling for a human, any at all, because you were our mission and nothing else. I know now, of course, that this was betrayal, of myself and our Father, but then. Then I believed him.” He gives Dean a dry look, sadness falling away. “I never know when people are lying, remember? You’ve been most invaluable to me in that.”Among other things, his slow, soft smile seems to add, and Dean can’t remember ever being this sure of that kind of sentiment before, so, ditto, Cas, ditto.

Shaking his head, Castiel does something unprecedented (Dean kids, he kids) and returns to the point. “But yes, that is the appropriate translation. I was fond of you, as I am of Sam now, as I’ve been of Anna, of Balthazar, even of M—” Dean makes a little disgusted noise and Castiel’s mouth twitches as he closes it with a snap. That affection is one thing Dean will never get, and Cas has tried but he can’t seem to even explain it himself, so it’s better left unsaid.

“Fond, but now I know, I can distinguish emotions, Dean. I know what this feels like now, and I did not feel it then. I did not…” Castiel pauses, his eyes boring into Dean’s, and yeah, no longer creepy, hasn’t been for years, especially when they go all dark and his lips part like it’s instinct, “did not hunger like this,” his voice has gone somewhat faint, and Dean’s belly’s full of warmth, though his body’s spent, “or experience the same pain from separation.” Ouch. Boner killer. But the guilt isn’t the same anymore, even if the remembered gut-stabbing pains linger for them both sometimes.

Dean leans up and does his best to suck the hurt out of Cas’s voice with open-mouthed, affectionate kisses, making his mark, saying I’m right here asshole stop missing me. Castiel kisses back, putting actions to the word hunger, clutching him close, hands desperate, but gently, as though he’s forgotten his strength is diminished. Dean pushes him harder, as is his usual technique, dragging him even tighter against him and rubbing a foot down his calf, and Cas leans over him, holding his face with quiet, unshakable intent, panting on his lips when they have to stop to breathe.

He can’t help but smile, gooey as it is to let himself. “So when’d it get to this then, o all-knowing one?” Dean’s emotions aren’t as weird, don’t really need the same kind of scientific observation or whatever. He felt like a sleaze for wanting to hit that even back in the barn with Bobby lying on the floor, as soon as he realized the guy was being possessed, but that’s truthfully where he’s been for years, until it got serious, and then he got scared; the sex part was always there, even if he ran from the rest, and he…really can’t remember where or when the other stuff started. Alternate dimension Detroit, maybe? Ill-spent night in Maine iniquity? Or fuck, the creepy angel Room, when Cas put a hand over his mouth and Dean realized they weren’t near as “done” as he’d guessed. Who even knows. It’s been forever, feels like.

Castiel’s answer is almost inaudible. “At first, thinking of your regard was odd, off-putting. The brothel, in Maine, was especially enlightening to me, but even then, I didn’t want—not Chastity, or you...I don't think. I felt differently, but it wasn’t like this.” His words get louder as he leans in to kiss Dean once more, their swollen lips almost unpleasant against each other’s, “I think it may have been a discovery I only understood once our end was imminent. But, I felt, when you had chosen otherwise.”

Dean could feel his face shaping into confusion again against Cas’s, and Cas hurried to clarify, kissing again and again, “I went to you, Dean, before—before Crowley’s deal. You were raking, as Lisa wanted, and there was peace for you. I could not ask you to let that go, and Crowley—he knew.” Castiel growls against Dean’s lips and squeezes him tighter, “He always knew. And the feeling was used against me.” Dean’s pulled away from the sharp arousal of that noise into the bloody memory of that manipulative bastard’s fitting end, and Cas’s dazed face says he’s not alone; he shakes Cas again, gets them back on track.

“So you were gonna, then, but you didn’t want to—what? Fuck up my failed try at apple pie?” Cas looks puzzled at first, but then he nods, carefully. Dean sighs, wishing this had been told to him then, but he can’t help but be…touched. He doesn’t want to be, and his anger from back then was still totally right, okay, but it’s kind of sweet, that Cas, the big dumbass, left him alone cos he thought he was happy. He might’ve hated it back then, and part of him does now, but he can see, now, why Cas would do that. Even if he didn’t like it.

Also, he’s more on Cas’s team than ever after getting his own taste of a deal with Crowley. And he owes Cas for a lifetime and more for helping him get that done, so he can—yeah, he can admit to this gratification here.

“…Thanks, Cas. Y’know, even if you were wrong. Even if you’re pretty much always wrong about that.”

Castiel rolls onto him and presses his forehead against the reinstated anti-possession tattoo with a sigh. “I’m aware, now, Dean. But I couldn’t even—I didn’t know. I just knew your safety, and this peace of yours, was important to me, a priority, if of course not the only. I tried, to keep you out of it, if I could, and now, now I realize that was love—the kind of love you taught, that aimed for protection above all else. You must know that, Dean. You must know it was love, then.”

Dean rubs a hand through the nest that is Cas’s hair and kisses where he brushed his fingers. “I do, Cas. We’ve all fucked up, but we all got back here because of—that, at least a little bit. Not the whole protection thing, not always, but man, I know you’re part of that, I got that loud and clear, and.” He’s quiet, eyes closed and face in Cas’s sweaty hair, his voice choked. “We both are.”

Cas holds him and he holds Cas, and they’re both silent, everything said. It’s rank in this room and they’ll have to shower soon—still weird, that Cas has to shower like he does—but they can take a minute first.

“Moaning like a slut” or any variation thereof should really be taken out of fandom’s collective vocabulary.

Bad Ideas Galore.

He's flirting back. 

The son of a bitch is actually flirting back.

Jo has no idea, of course. Cas doesn't flirt like people, he flirts like Cas. Big, peacocking gestures and insistent, sincere verbalizations. Acknowledgments that he may have grown up devoid of social graces and interest in people's daily lives, but you, you yourself, are getting to him.

Dean heard his seemingly astonished, "I think I'm starting to feel something." five minutes ago and he's still reeling. Cas is every alcoholic white dude smashed into one guy, Russian, German, all kinds of English and Scottish and all the white -ishes. Whiskey like gasoline, stuff Dad wouldn't even touch, hadn't even given Cas a stutter as he swallowed a double.

There's no way the piss water Jo gave him, six shots in a row or not, would faze him. He's flirting back.

(If it were anybody but Cas, Dean would think it's the unusually tight jeans Jo wore tonight. But it's Cas, so he's just flummoxed.)

Sam sits down across from Dean and turns around to see what he's staring at so intently, before Dean can look away and give Sam his usual "What, 'dya fall in?" routine to recover himself.

"Wow. Talk about a bad idea." And Dean stops thinking about Cas to talk about Cas, naturally. Ain't that how it's always been?

"What? Cas and Jo?" The last time Sam said that sentence like that was a warning to Dean when he declared with thirteen-year-old bravado that he was going over to Cas's house to woo his eighteen-year-old sister. Dean told Sam about the part where Anna kissed him back indulgently and gave him a kind smile (cos she did); now twenty-two, he's still never told him about the part where she slipped ice down his pants the next time she saw him and made him promise he'd never kiss a girl without asking again. Sam would never shut up about it if he knew.

"Yeah. Cas and anybody, really, but definitely Jo." Sam sounds about as confused and put out as Dean does. Interesting. He'd wanted Jo a little when they were both eleven but Jo had always had her eyes fixed on the elder Winchester, so he'd gladly done with friends instead; has that finally resurfaced now Jo has become infamous for turning Dean down once every couple years?

----

It takes almost a metric ton of booze to get Dean as wasted as he is right now, usually. Dean should ask Ellen what was in that last thing he kept ordering to save himself some cash.

"You sly dog," he murmurs with a smirk, leaning on Cas on their way back to the apartment they share. As he suspected, Cas is completely unfazed by all the stuff Jo gave him, holding Dean up with a mostly exasperated expression (fonder than anybody else's exasperated look, take that Jo).

The look goes more exasperated (and less fond, but it's never totally gone). "Dean, I've told you before, you make even more incomprehensible references when you're this gone."

Dean scoffs. That was an Uncle Jesse-ism, Cas always gets those (and if he were anybody else, Dean would be pretty damn convinced the starry-eyed way Cas watches that show indicates a hard-on for leather jackets and great hair). "Like hell you don't 'get that ref-rence', dog."

Cas shoves Dean away for a moment, just enough for him to almost fall over and realize abruptly how much he needs Cas with him right then (always but definitely then), before grabbing him again with a huff. "If this is your way of refashioning Sam's old nickname, and for me, I'm going to drop you on Miss Miller's doorstep first chance I get."

Dean clutches Cas's coat a little desperately, shot through with more fear than he should be able to feel this many sheets to the wind at that thought. Miss Miller's got six cats and a wildly inappropriate crush on Dean's little brother; she spends all the time she gets with him pumping him for information while he tries not to sneeze. It would be cruel and unusual punishment to leave him there.

Cas would do it too. Dean still remembers the time he tracked mud all over the rug Mr. Missionary Milton brought up from South America for his second youngest and woke up with his eyebrows shaved. Cruel and unusual is Cas's area, really. (Dean's more for the classics, which is why Cas pissed himself the next time he slept over, hand buried in a bowl of water.)

"Nah, nah, I'll be good, whatever, just didn't know y'were into blondes, dude," Dean says, and he's finally gotten it out, finally dealt with it, after he cut off Sam's conversation starter at the knees and refused to mention Cas for the rest of the night. The therapist Mom made him promise to see will be thrilled that Dean is 'communicating his feelings to people he loves'.

Castiel, this is all Castiel, none of Dean's pal Cas, stares at him blankly. Not annoyed anymore, but just blank, which is never good. 

Dean babbles, trying to make up for whatever he just did, "She's fuckin' hot though, so uh. Not like she's not a great choice for you to finally…y'know, go for it."

"She?" No, fuck, that hadn't worked. And Dean would backtrack but Cas's face is turning a funny color. It reminds Dean distantly of last year, watching Cas's face when Meg Masters pressed him against a wall and went at him. He pornoed all over her in front of Playboy Cousin Gabe, but his face was…whatever color this is, as he subtly wiped his mouth later. 

Dean had quietly handed him a drink, patting him on the back and mumbling something about "Might wanna find yourself a motel for the night with that one," feeling a bit furious when Cas mumbled, "Why would I want that?" cos "always ask before you kiss somebody" for a reason, apparently. (He doesn't hit women, but he'd been fucking tempted; this was Cas, after all.)

"Yeah. Uh. Joanna Beth, kinda incestuous flirt, remember? You had all the moves, tonight. She'd go for it, man." And all of a sudden Castiel's expression--yep, back to Castiel, fuck fuck fuck--is like a storm. The kind of look that usually makes Dean pull a blanket or a book over his lap, but nobody needs to know that shit, and he's too drunk to worry about it right now.

"Don't talk about Jo like that, Dean. Interested or not, I respect her too much to hear this." So he's defensive. Dean's good at this though; getting under Cas's skin is a honed skill of his.

"I love her, right, yeah, she's respet--awesome, but that don't keep her from tossing herself all over you. Like a salad." Dean laughs at his words, leaning more heavily on Cas, but then suddenly he's on the sidewalk on his ass and Castiel is glaring. No more Cas tonight. Dean fucked up.

"She was being friendly, Dean. We're friends, and frankly we deserve each other, which is more than I can say for you right now."

Oh, that's it, Castiel has done it, fuck him now. Dean doesn't need no help knowing what he's not worth, all right.

"I hope you'll be real happy together having lots of tight-assed kids, then." Dean says softly, trying for anger and falling flat, and pushes himself up; he wavers and Castiel doesn't move to help him. He'll walk his own ass home and lock Castiel out, he can deal with the cat lady next door, or maybe call Jo herself. Cas and Jo, a nauseatingly cute couple. They'll be great.

They'll be fine without him. Because even if Dean's not sure when his bemusement turned into betrayal, he kinda never wants to talk to them again. Fuck, he's so drunk. Sam's probably having a Dean-induced stress migraine across town, totally unaware of why.

"Dean," Castiel says, deathly soft, following Dean's clumsy steps with his usual purposeful, careless gait. Dean tries to walk faster and nearly trips face first into the sidewalk. Cas saves him again. Cas is always saving him; as a tiny eight year old throwing himself at ten year old Al Hellson to protect six-year-old Dean; as a gangly fourteen year old who came out of the fog of losing his father just long enough to shatter his cousin's kneecaps with a baseball bat (and get suspended for it) when he punched Dean; as a stocky, intense nineteen year old who found Dean post-funeral with eight pills and a bottle of Jack down his throat and curbed his own phobia to force Dean to vomit; just…always. Dean's never deserved it but he does it anyway. Maybe all that heroism'll impress Jo.

"Dean." Cas isn't taking no for an answer. He spins Dean around fast with a hand on his shoulder, too fast, but no matter how sick with disappointment he feels, he can't bring himself to let the bile go, can't do that to Cas. He swallows.

"Yeah?" Casual, it'll work, Cas'll take it as disrespect and leave and Dean'll be able to go home (and maybe start packing, he thinks glumly). Where did all this even come from, he wonders, but Dean's never had all that much defense against his own insecurities, especially not drunk. 

"I'm not interested in Jo, Dean." He says it quietly, but firmly, as though Dean really needs to believe it. He doesn't, not at first, but Cas is a shitty fucking liar, so if his face says it's truth, it's truth.

"Whatever, Cas. Not like it makes any difference," he tries, but Cas doesn't let him keep walking. He halts him with that hand on his shoulder, tilts his head at him, that famous Cas squint making its appearance. Is he pissed or is he just curious? The squint is weird this time.

"Doesn't it? You're angry, Dean, so it must mean something to you." And that's the fucking crux of it, right. That it does. It does mean something to him, but Dean doesn't wanna talk about it, and he's not gonna.

Someone should've relayed that message to his mouth before it says, "Just be weird 's all, Cas. You and Jo. You and…I dunno, whoever. Anyone. Meg or Daphne or Chastity or Balt-Bath--that dude at the frat thing a while ago."

Cas, it's Cas again, thank God, lets Dean lean on him and wraps an arm around his shoulders, sighing thoughtfully, staring at Dean out of the sides of his eyes.

"I don't want any of them either, Dean, but if I did, you'd have to step aside, you know that." Cas looks hesitant, like he's not sure of what he's saying. Dean's not sure of it either; he's never been without Cas, not since they were kids, and letting anybody else have him, letting anybody else be Dean's kind of close, kind of hurts to think about. It's not just Jo, it's any person with that potential.

He'd do it, 'course he would, for Cas, but he wouldn't like it. He doesn't like it now and it hasn't even happened yet. 

"I know," he grunts, not looking at Cas. Their apartment building's across the street and they're almost there and if he can just stall long enough, he can claim blackout and never talk about this again.

"This can't be like you and Sam, Dean," Cas says quietly, ten feet from the door maybe, and Dean exhales heavily, cos as much as he shares with Cas, nobody talks about 'Dean and Sam' with Dean, ever, and he doesn't wanna start.

It's not like Sam, anyway. Dean wants to be with Sam all the time, wants Sam to be here with him more than the summer, wants to protect him and make sure he's not eating college slop while Mom's home making Dean a pie every Sunday, wants to slip him some cash he earned at Bobby's garage on the weekends so he's never hard up. Dean just wants Cas. It's undefined and unlabeled and undeniably strong, how he wants Cas, but it's there underlining every interaction they ever have, making Dean shove Cas to arm's length and then beg him not to go on retreats with the clubs that're lucky enough to get him cos he hasn't even beaten Cas at Mortal Kombat yet.

Dean is pretty sure Sam's never really gonna leave him, not forever; it's one of the only things he's sure of when it comes to relationships, but Cas isn't like that. Cas is gonna find a Jo or a Bath-face someday, someone who keeps up with him, and ditch Dean in the gutter like the grease monkey he is. He's terrified of it and resigned to it and so it'll never be like Sam.

"It's not," he says, gritting his teeth as Cas drags him up the stairs to the second floor with their place and Miss Miller's. It's been a few minutes and he can feel Cas's frustration in how he presses Dean against the wall near their door as he gets the key, with one hand, like the fucking badass he is. He thought it was him but no, he can see Cas's fingers shaking a bit as he vibrates with impatience and anxiety to get this resolved, just as much as Dean is vibrating with how much he wants to get the fuck away.

"You threw this same fit about Ruby, Dean." Cas reminds him (unpleasantly, what a dick move that is, bringing that up), tugging Dean by the sleeve into their apartment and pushing him toward the couch. He's not wrong, but Dean's not up for this.

"Jo ain't Ruby, Cas. Ruby's a raging bitch and she's lucky I gave her her pants before I kicked her out of Sam's room. Serve her right, getting him hooked on that shit. Dunno why he didn't just go after Jess like he was gonna."

Cas rolls his eyes as he sits on the coffee table untying his boots. "You're proving my point here, Dean. If Jo 'ain't Ruby' then where are your objections?" Kicking off the clunky, shiny disasters he wears nearly always, he gives Dean his full attention.

Dean chokes. "I don't…who cares, cos you're not even with her, Cas. You said. Right?" Cas nods, slowly, never looking away from Dean's face, even when he slides onto his knees to go for Dean's boots. Dean isn't going to think about how close he is, but he doesn't want to talk about this, so maybe he should… misdirect with it.

"Both of us in one night, eh, Cas…anova." It's not his finest, but hey, he's still speaking in complete sentences, so he figures it's forgivable. Cas's eyes are gonna get stuck like that though, all that rolling, and he smacks Dean's heels hard with the insides of his boots as he tugs them off, as though in admonishment. (Cas is almost Mom-like in his gentle but unrelenting punishments, sometimes; it's creepy.)

"Don't be crass, Dean, it's none of you." 

Dean looks mournfully down at their boots in a small, mismatched pile (his are brown and dirty and Cas's look like someone spit-shined them ten minutes ago; fuck, he's drunk if he's having thoughts about shoes). "Yeah, none of me."

Cas pauses in sliding his tan trenchcoat over his shoulders so that it's half-on, half-off. Dean wants to laugh but instead he just stares, cos Cas's gunmetal blue eyes have always been like glue and he can't look away. They're so intense, and Cas is so intent on him. He looks at him like he's shiny and new, all the fucking time, and Dean keeps proving him wrong but that never stops.

Cas is studying him carefully now, finally pushing his coat off. "Why would you say something like that?"

Dean shakes his head and half shrugs, probably looking like the drunk ass he is. "No reason. Just talking shit, like usual."

Cas is squinting again, and no, he's not pissed this time, just curious. Just really curious, getting up off his knees and leaving the coat on the coffee table as he gets gracefully onto the couch next to Dean. His head is tilting again, damn him, and Dean is nervous.

"I don't think so, Dean. There's something else." Damn him. Cas knows him too well.

"I'm just fucked up t'night, man, don't worry about it. I'm gonna go to bed." Dean shoves himself up, not all that sturdily, off the couch, and heads toward his bedroom. He can hear Cas's deep sigh behind him, but Cas is used to Dean being a fortress when he wants. He'll get over it this time like he has all the others.

Dropping into bed with the door closed, he can hear Cas get up, too, and the little bit of tinkering he does before he goes to his own bed. Cas is a little louder than he'd usually be, audibly upset in the way Cas wouldn't want to show if he knew Dean could hear, and Dean feels guilty for the few bleary minutes before he falls asleep.

Dean of Iniquity.

AO3

“Cas,” Dean said, gruff and abrupt, “we gotta talk about something.”

Castiel nodded and followed him, with Sam looking after them curiously. Dean made a cutting motion across his throat, and Sam, apparently getting the gist of how fragile things still were with them, backed off visibly.

---

They walked into the motel room, Sam left out by Baby, and Castiel stood, stiff, expectant.

“You know what ol’ Zach did to me?” Dean asked, wondering how much he had to tell, and Castiel shook his head.

“Something to ensure your cooperation. Zachariah is very concerned with that.”

Dean just kind of stared at Cas for a moment, because “Yeah, thanks, Captain Obvious, but it’s a little more involved than that. He sent me to the future, and you were there, I was there, but Sam, he—”

Castiel stared back, even harder, as he faltered. “Dean? Where was Sam?”

Dean looked down and rubbed a hand on his jaw. “He was Lucifer, Cas. He was full-on, suited-up Devil Gone Wild. You and me, we were hunting him down with the Colt, and the whole world was monster central, and Sammy said the big Yes.”

“I assume this is why you asked him to return.” Cas said, quiet, inquisitive, “And why you would—Dean, you know I will change.”

Dean’s head shot up fast. “Cas?”

“I know you’re uncomfortable with that, but I will, as I Fall, I will change. There’s nothing to be done.”

Castiel sounded little except disapproving of the reality, but Dean’s body went cold, and he started to sweat. “Yeah, Cas, I know but—” He could hear the laugh of Cas the drugged out hippie as clear as a bell still in his head, and it was like being hit in the stomach every time, the memory.

“I’m not sure why you’d resist this. In Maine, you seemed to enjoy the idea, even when I did not.”

Castiel’s voice was vaguely admonishing, and Dean clenched his jaw, fighting the encroaching guilt of forcing an angel into “iniquity”. He figured the guy wanted it, right? It’s not a big deal, and it never happened anyway. It never happened. Just like hippie Cas is still just hypothetical, if Dean can say something, do something, to stop it.

Destiny can’t be changed, Cas had said once, but to hell with that, that was Dean’s stone number one, fuck all that crap.

“I was wrong, Cas.” He stepped toward the angel, who seemed to be digesting Dean’s words, his expression barely changing, and sighed, softened his voice. “Listen, Zach showed me that world, where you’re... me, drinking and fucking and who the fuck cares. Where the damn stick’s gone.”

Castiel tilted his head, confused, and Dean waved a hand. “Nevermind. The point is. It was cool, Cas, it is cool, that you want to stick around, help us with this, but you don’t have to change, you and me can be completely different, and we can still be friends—still fight this damned Apocalypse together. Okay?”

Castiel nodded, his brows scrunched, lips falling open with, “Dean, I—” and Dean put up a hand, stopped him.

“You don’t have to say nothing, Cas. I know.”

Castiel then looked frustrated. “Dean, please listen to me. I don’t know, exactly, what will happen to me once I am human. I don’t know for sure how I will feel or act. I do know, however—we are different. You and I are not at all the same. Whatever Zachariah said, whatever was shown to you, was likely a very distant version of myself.”

Dean bit his lip and shoved his hands in his pockets. “That mean you wouldn’t stick around that long? Was Zach funnin’ with me there too?”

Castiel was the one to step forward this time, his gait as awkward and purposeful as always. “I cannot tell you our entire future, Dean, but I can say that there hasn’t yet been a battle I would not follow you into.”

They were very close, and for a moment, Dean thought of that weird feeling between the other them, that past they seemed to have, and things got weird. Dean reached out and touched Cas’s hand, just to try it, and Cas’s lips tilted up.

“I don’t think a handshake is meant to be conducted with the same hands, Dean,” he said, voice dry, unsuspecting.

“But these ain’t your hands anyway, right, Cas? Yours are all powerful and shit, made of the universe or whatever.”

Castiel’s smile smoothed out into his usual line. “James Novak is gone now, Dean, and I am Falling, so no. They are my hands. This vessel is mine alone.” Despite the unhappiness in his tone, Cas clutched Dean’s fingers a little tighter.

Dean clung back, licking his lips anxiously. “So the rest of you, that’s all you, then. Not stepping on anybody’s toes with the hooker, or, uh. Anybody else.”

Castiel’s head tilted again. “That is what I just said. Why?”

Why? “Well, like, we don’t want to—you don’t, you don’t want to. Jimmy shouldn’t be there for that, that’d be…disrespectful, I think.”

“But I said, I’m not interested in iniquity, Dean. So why ask me that?”

Dean looked away, but never let go of Cas’s hand. “The other Cas, the…the one who’s not you. I got the feeling we—the other me. The other me and the other you, that we were—”

Castiel made a quiet sound of exasperation. “What, Dean? What were they doing?”

Dean swallowed hard and met Cas’s eyes. “I think they might’ve been together, at one point. Like. Like fucking.”

Castiel’s face was stormy; he mouthed the word, ‘fucking’ to himself, and then nodded once. “You and I engaged in loving acts with each other. As James did with his wife.” He looked curious, and Dean’s stomach dropped heavily.

“Yeah, man, I think we did, and I just thought, uh, what if—” Dean used the hold on Cas’s hand to pull him closer, making sure to stay still himself, and looked at him, differently, like he would any number of hot chicks at a bar. Castiel gazed back with his usual intensity.

“Are you wondering if I would? Dean—”

Dean shook his head and started to back off. “Don’t worry about it, Cas, I get it. Even if you were a sexy kinda guy, I’m no Chastity. We should probably—”

Castiel shook Dean’s arm once, and Dean shut up. “Please, stop that. I wanted to say, it is a possibility.”

Dean’s jaw dropped with shock. “What? Cas, if you’re doing this for me, again. You don’t have to, I told you that.”

Castiel started moving, pushing Dean forward until his back hit the wall like an abandoned bike in the path of Baby slowly backing into a driveway, and glared at him a little bit. “I wish you’d stop, Dean. Not everything is for you.”

“And you would? Like, with me, you’d do it? For you?” Castiel’s eyes flickered and he took a step closer, until one of Jimmy’s sensible shoes was between Dean’s ragged boots. Carefully, like he was measuring a sigil or something, he put his hands on Dean’s hips and, looking down at the hold, murmured,

“I can say honestly there is no one else with whom I could imagine wanting it.” He looked up again, and now his eyes were flooded with pupil, intent on Dean’s face. “Not Chastity. No one.”

Dean gulped loudly, and Castiel’s eyes fell to his bobbing Adam’s apple. “Cas, this is the no-going-back zone, are we good?” he asked, just one more time, because how. This wasn’t even possible.

A fucking angel, for fuck’s sake.

The angel in question made a sound of frustration and lifted Dean easily against the wall where his hands held his hips, pushing the closest yet to breathe over his mouth. “We’re perfect, Dean, as soon as you stop questioning me.”

His lips tingled and Dean swallowed again, leaning down to kiss Castiel, fingers sliding over his coat as he gave Cas what he was pretty sure was his first kiss. Castiel answered him in kind, slow and a little clumsy, biting him once by accident, moving in on him like that same car on that bike until they were melded, chest to chest, hips to hips, hardening dick to hardening dick. Dean tugged on the lapels of that damned trench, pulling Cas harder against his mouth and dipping his tongue deep. It didn’t taste like what he was expecting—mostly it tasted like a mouth—but it was Cas, and Cas was making noises, and it was time to get down to business.

He wriggled, trying to push down, still lapping at Cas’s mouth, and only managed to torture himself when he got a groinful of Cas, a hot bump in his slacks nudging against Dean’s jeans and hitting his libido hard with the friction.

Dean groaned, pushed down some more just for fun, and then mumbled into Cas’s mouth with a smirk, “I know you’ve got strength right out of a porno, man, and trust me, we’re gonna play with that later, but you can let go for now.”

Castiel looked at him with intensity ramped up to ten times its usual, but he did, he followed the instruction and dropped Dean back to his feet—feet he immediately liberated of his boots, tapping Cas’s shoes with his socked toes to remind him, yeah, Eldritch dude, it’s time to get the clothes gone. The shoes disappeared, Dean’s boots appeared with them near the door (good god, what a nerd, Sam would be proud), and then their coats were gone too, cos Cas was exceptionally good at getting with the program once he had a plan.

Castiel looked smaller—not small, by a long shot, but smaller—without the coats, just in that fucking backwards tie and ill-fitting collared shirt, and honestly, it comforted Dean just a tad that the guy could even look at all human, even if he was barely in need of air and mentally undressing Dean in the most literal sense. Drawn back to him, Dean grabbed Cas close and kissed him hard again, using all of his considerable skill to actually get him panting; he felt smug when it worked, even as Castiel sent pleasant hnngh through him with his hands shoving up under Dean’s shirts and scratching lightly into skin.

“Eager, aren’t ya,” he said, soft, into Cas’s mouth, and Cas bit him in retaliation, eyes popping open with a glare. Dean’s lip throbbed and he bit back, smiling to soften the hurt. He didn’t want this to go super fast, but he wanted to keep the angel interested, y’know? So he pushed Cas back, glare or not, and unbuttoned that shirt until there was honeyed skin and way too good of a figure for Jimmy the ad guy or whatever to have, all in view, all Dean’s. And then it was game fucking over.

Castiel actually shuddered when Dean dropped to his knees, because oblivious kinda asexual Falling angel or not, he apparently got the gist of what that meant. Dean didn’t let him dwell, moving his mouth over that skin and leaving a trail of kisses just over his waistband. Cas was hard as fuck, probably in some freaky way where it wouldn’t even go away after Dean got him off the first time, and damn, Dean had never been as bi as he was this fucking moment; he was gonna blow Cas until neither one of them could stand it, just as soon as he—yeah, there was the nod, and he opened up those slacks.

The boring briefs came down with the slacks and there he was, girth and moist tip, ugh, so hot it was criminal (and Dean would know, seasoned felon he was). Castiel was watching him, too, which made it even better. His curiosity was palpable, almost, so much focus that he barely reacted when Dean actually gave him some with that first wet, openmouthed kiss right where it was wettest. It had no taste, and Dean glanced up at Cas, confused, cos come always tasted like something.

“Is angel come like water or something, or something else, cos like, Cas, I need to know if—” Cas looked a bit guilty as Dean got back to it, murmuring something about trying to help Dean by blocking his tastebuds.

Dean choked on a laugh. I have seen reactions to this, Dean; the taste has never seemed pleasant. Jesus fucking Christ.

Wrapping his mouth around the end, he glanced at Cas and thought real hard at him, Let me taste you, asshole.Then suddenly his buds were back and holy shit, the flavor, unlike anything. As weird as he was expecting the tongue to be, and seriously not bad at all, totally worth the having. He wanted more, actually, and drove himself down, down, so far down that he should’ve gagged.

His eyes flicked up again and Castiel’s lips were turned up. He lifted his eyebrows once with a visible smugness despite the way his mouth fell slack when Dean’s throat worked around him, like he was saying You’re welcome. God, having an angel in his mouth was proving to be seriously auspicious; no fucking discomfort, he slid Cas back in his throat until his nose was up against his groin, and he could feel the flesh going tighter, until he would have choked, but didn’t.

Cas was panting again, his nostrils flaring, like he was losing control of his vessel, and Dean gulped a few times, loudly, making sure it was heard, staring up, making sure he was seen.

Taste good, Cas, he thought at the angel, and Cas’s eyes slammed shut as his body slumped, lax and open. Dean started licking him then, pulling off to slide his tongue up and down both sides and under the head. Cas made a loud noise, a noise Dean doubted he’d ever made before, and Dean slid back on like a glove, shoving past his nonexistent gag reflex and starting to bob.

As dangerous as it was, Dean couldn’t help but laugh with absolute joy when he sucked faster, digging a hand into Cas’s ass, and the angel actually tilted off-balance, startled into a shout of pleasure. He held Cas up, as much you could an angel, and laughed some more, until Cas actually bucked, sliding long fingers through Dean’s hair and mumbling under his breath, “Dean, you must—I’m not—ah Dean—”

Normally, his jaw’d be tired by now, so he knew Cas had to be doing something weird with his body. You can come, he thought, loudly, and yeah, there it was, Cas letting go; Dean could feel the pulse in his mouth and very suddenly he was swallowing come, as with a sharp cry, Cas’s hips wavered, jerking, and they both almost fell backward.

Cas caught them at the last minute and then they were falling into the bed; Dean dropped, newly naked, onto Cas’s surprisingly soft stomach beside the glistening erection still remaining, listening with satisfaction to a job well done in the angel’s harsh breathing and turning up to smile at his chin.

“Told you it was a perk,” he said, voice hoarse, unable to stop smiling. Castiel made a snuffling sound that almost sounded like he was laughing.

“I didn’t know at the time that you were offering yourself as iniquity,” Cas said dryly, and Dean smacked his hip.

“I wasn’t, actually, then. But seriously, sex is awesome, can’t deny it Cas.” He rubbed the injured hip and kissed the pink mark, tracing the line of his hipbone with his tongue.

“It’s not as boring and pointless as I’ve thought before, I admit.” Castiel wrapped legs around Dean and tugged him with his powerful thighs (damn) up his body until they could face each other. “Sex is immaterial, but I do want you, Dean. That’s...novel.” Cas was kind of smiling, even as he lifted his head to kiss Dean, punctuating his confession.

Dean bore down on the angel, twisting his hips until he was mostly straddling the thick body beneath him, kissing back for all he was worth (but honestly he didn’t want to get into that right now). Cas clutched him at the small of his back and rubbed a hand up to his shoulder, learning fast how to match Dean with his mouth, his wicked tongue.

“Fuck. You too, Cas,” he whimpered over Cas’s swelling lips as Cas rolled his hips upward, rubbing his cock over Dean’s groin and Dean’s own aching erection. Dean was sweating, his fingers claws in Cas’s shoulders as his shirt fell open, his mouth slick over Cas’s as he kissed him, deeply.

Cas, of course, wasn’t, even as he exhaled abruptly with what could have been exertion as he gently rolled them over, into a different position but with that same torturous friction.

He slid his dick through Dean’s sweat, made Dean gasp, took that gasp down his throat, and didn’t let Dean make much more sound than that for a long, long time.

---

So long that, even when they came out perfectly clean (thank fuck for abusing Cas’s remaining mojo) and presentable, Sam was smirking, twirling the keys near Baby’s open door on the driver’s side.

He punched Sam on the shoulder, gave him a warning look, and turned to share a commiserating glance with Castiel.

Who, of course, was gone. Off on the God hunt again, no doubt.

Dean shifted as he adjusted the driver’s seat, feeling Baby purr, and the dull ass ache he’d implored Cas to leave him with, when he’d swept grace over them, after the headboard had stilled, to clear their bodies of the residue of a marathon.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, he forcibly soothed the creases of his reflexive, entirely involuntary, smug smile, hopefully before Sam could notice.

Cas’d be back. There was no way that was the last time.

Tfw Destiel

No but ha um Amelia could be arguably a Dean mirror in this episode.

The waking up screaming. The #self harm. The having her soul sucked away even as she tries to cling to her loved ones. 

The searching for her love at any cost. (”Where’s the angel?” anyone?)

And it just got me to thinking about that last scene. With Dean.

Dean sacrificing himself for both Sam and himself, using some spell that will separate his soul from the Mark when it/he ends up in Heaven.

Castiel greeting him in his Heaven with open arms. Reversing/foiling Purgatory when he finds him immediately.

“I need you. We’re going home.” Home being Earth, for both of them, and the bunker.

Dean, experiencing people. feelings. in ways he hasn’t before. And Castiel?

In love with Dean and humanity and disobeying Heaven one last time, to take him back to where they both belong.

Don’t mind me. I’ll just be over here sobbing at my own bullshit mind.

Profound.

He can’t see Dean’s soul anymore.

He remembers it, of course. It was the memory he clung to, when humanity started to deteriorate his capacities. The light, the warmth, the kaleidoscopic rush of emotion. A comfort, when he himself was experiencing such darkness, and cold—confusion and pain, and he yearned to be all grace again, to blanket himself in the core of Dean once more.

It brings him sorrow, thinking of how long it has been. Years now, and longer in Hell, since the secretive “standard” mission, since his grace first burnt Dean’s soul, since the claim his brothers had mocked. Years since sewing the truth of Dean’s being into his empty, destroyed body, leaving him behind with a reluctance that caused discord among the ranks of the garrison.

Years since his fascination at first touch, since that instantaneous connection. Years since he felt Dean the way he did then—and since he understood, in a singular, significant moment another angel might have discounted, the existence of humanity.

He can still sense it. He can feel it, a riddle of his creation, without seeing it. At times it’s been torment, to be that close and not close enough. His grace has ached before, begging to be nearer. Times have gone such that he has even wondered before if that connection were severed, if he had never felt what he felt when raising Dean—would he and Dean be what they are?

A question for another day. One for when he is less sure of his depth of feeling for Dean, regardless of the grace inside him now, not his, not held to Dean the way he is as a whole.

Dean’s soul is…difficult, right now. It fights his senses when he’s near; his grace recoils and he mourns. It feels sharper, angrier, and Castiel can only speculate how that affects Dean, can only fail in reaching for him when Dean shows signs of avoidance, and marvel at distance where once there was attachment.

Can only care, soft, steadfast, and try not to falter when Dean’s salvation seems beyond his reach this time.

Who Will Save Your Soul

She cackles when he brings it up, what Sam said, and it’s right about then, as she’s—laughing, what passes for genuinely from her, for like three minutes, that he realizes it revealed way too much.

He wants to shake his head at himself, but that would only shove him further under the bus. Unicorn. He shouldn't have even bothered.

“Sweetheart, you and I both know that doesn’t exist.” She shifts in her chains and brushes her pants off, cooing, “Dear ol’ Sammy’s a romantic, but you and me? We know better.”

He does his best to give away nothing, but she sees it, anyway, her coo turning into another sharp cackle, “Or do we? Do you, Dean? Do you know you’re about as damned as I am?”

She’s quieter for a moment, almost sincere—if he were the type to believe demons could ever be, “That he can’t save either of us, no matter what he wants. It can't do much of anything for things like us.”

And yeah, she’s right, he knew, but it’s still a slam to the solar plexus to have it said. He turns away to gather himself, clenched from jaw to hip, clutching at composure. She snickers at his back. Of course she does. He would.

“I don’t need him to save me,” he growls, eventually, back to himself or so he hopes. She rolls her eyes, believing it about as much as he would expect. Damn demons; it’s like they’ve got X-ray specs, the way they just pick up on your shit like that.

“You’ve got the fucking Mark of Cain and you walk around here like a ticking bomb, ready to explode in a messy shower of violence. Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the tension, but please. You’re barely the Dean I know and hate anymore, admit it.”

“I’m not admitting jack to you, bitch,” he mutters, his teeth gritting. He wonders how long he can keep this up before either Sam or Cas come down to check whether he lost himself and caught Meg in the crossfire; nobody’d mourn, probably, but the mess would be hell to clean up (and he’d be cleaning it, as soon as they got him back).

“Fine, then. Let me ~*tell you your future*~. …You’ll spend your whole miserable life thinking you can’t be saved until you fuck up bad enough that you can’t be saved, and Clarence’ll be on that sinking ship till the day his fuckhead Father lets him kick it. I’ll watch and laugh, Sam’ll watch and cry, and Crowley’ll step in to work you somehow toward what he wants.”

The dungeon is silent as he reels and she smirks, smug—he can feel it—at his trembling shoulders. “Looks like I hit the mark. Takes one to know one, bitch.”

He stomps toward the doors, his fists clenched, the Mark burning, his breath shallowing. If he stays in here another minute, he’ll take off her fucking head, newly-dyed brown hair and all.

“I’m nothing like you,” he manages, a snarl of air, a half-hearted conviction, and she snorts and starts to answer, but he’s gone already. Doors slammed shut, heading toward the kitchen at a near run and almost pulling the refrigerator door off its damn hinges in effort to get his hands on a beer.

You’re about as damned as I am.

He stares at the wall and clutches the counter while he downs one, two, three swallows, fuming, and when next he’s looked down there’s a fucking dent and the bottle clings to his hand in bloody pieces. The Mark burns on.

He goes for the fridge again, hoping he can feed it something else, but when he turns around, there’s Casti-fucking-el, leaning silently, almost like the old days, against the doorway. He looks tired, but then the only power he’s got is making him ill so. Naturally.

Cas watches him, blue eyes wary but not scared, and Dean marvels at how little self-preservation he’s got, before letting out a huff of a laugh because look who’s fucking talking. He turns away from Cas like he turned from Meg and keeps toward the fridge, grabbing a towel to wipe his hand (though he heals scary fast lately), but he can’t drown Cas out any more than he could her—can less, actually.

“We warned you, Dean. Her power lies in words. And you’re… particularly susceptible right now.”

Dean scoffs, tossing the towel and ripping sandwich makings out of the fridge with a jerk and slapping them onto the counter. Cas doesn’t jump; damn the unnaturally unfazed son of a bitch, so calm while Dean is coming apart at the seams—at the soul probably, and maybe he will be a demon, what a pleasant fucking thought.

“Yeah, ‘ignore ‘em and they’ll leave you alone’ is grade school technique, Cas. I know.” Cas’s brow furrows, but he doesn’t move, just takes a breath and stares, watching Dean make a sandwich like he’s the Food Network or something.

“I heard… some of it,” Cas eventually says, sounding guilty, as though he could turn his fucking celestial ears off—and wait, can he? Something to ask later. Right now, he’s got to brake this fucking guilt trip.

“Good, saves me a family meeting or whatever later. You can help me puzzle it out once I’ve got food in me.”

Cas doesn’t look up to puzzling it out, really, though. He looks… well, tired, like Dean thought earlier, and… sad. Did Cas always look that sad? Is it only cos Dean has a minute to just look at him that it’s that freaking obvious?

“I could… I just wanted you to know you’re not sinking, Dean. The water may rise, but your boat is not at a stop.”

Dean laughs into his first mustardy bite, bitterly amused. “Tell that to the Titanic, man. Moving ships still sink.”

Castiel’s sadness dissipates, replaced by resignation just as bitter and twice as firm, “Well, I managed to un-sink that, I’m sure I can manage one—exceptional—human.”

The food turns to mush in Dean’s mouth and he chokes when he swallows. Cas’s faith in him is never founded, but god, it’s there, right there, unchanged whenever Dean tests it. “That was Balthazar, though,” he says, but it’s weak, a butterfly against a hurricane. He supposes that’s kind of what’s happening here, human will versus that of an angel, but hey, he’s taken some pretty big fish.

Somehow, though, when Cas smiles ruefully and murmurs, “I hadn’t been sure until now that that lie had worked.” Dean doesn’t want to take this one. He wants to swirl in this hurricane, or whatever the metaphor is; he wants Meg to be dead wrong, for Cas to be able to save him. He wants to be saved, just this once, just this once.

(And he’s lying to himself, because it wouldn’t be once, it’d be always, since the moment they met. Pyrrhic victory against Raph and dick move shove out of Purgatory and all. But when doesn’t he; the truth might kill.)

He smiles back, sets down his sandwich audibly, and stares at Cas head-on when he looks up. And that’s all they do for a second, just smile at each other, until he says, almost laughing at something that’s not funny, “Hadn’t been sure it was a lie till now—should I be impressed or pissed?” The Mark burns on his arm, but hell, he knows what it wants. What does Cas want?

Cas’s smile turns strained, “In my experience, both. That’s how you often respond.” He probably thinks he’s holding up well, but Dean can see how much he hates himself for even bringing it up. It’s familiar. He wants to comfort him, but how can he? Dean’s help rarely turns out good for this particular angel, if it even does for anyone.

“Yeah? What if we just skip the badness this time? Good on you for learning how to lie, Cas, but next time, not to me, all right?” Castiel, angel of the goddamn Lord, has eyes that actually shine when Dean lets him off the hook, but he says nothing, just nods and stares at his feet, still somehow radiating gratitude.

“I’m going to go check on Meg,” he eventually says, and a cold wash goes down Dean’s back, through his system, making the Mark feel on fire by comparison. It’s not jealousy, can’t be—Meg’s not that important, but. It stings, and he snaps a little,

“Yeah, make sure she hasn’t slipped her cuffs, who knows what the fuck tricks she knows.”

Cas stares at him, confused, and then just tilts his head in acknowledgment, walking away. Dean notices the softening sandwich half-finished on his plate, then, and finishes it like someone might steal it if he doesn’t, listening for Cas’s steps and worrying at how clear they are—that’s not human, right?

Cas disappears toward the dungeon, further and further away, and Dean stares in horror at his empty plate when he hears, clear as day, “You’re very unkind to Dean.”

And her amused retort, before he closes the doors, “Not nearly as unkind as he is.”

He walks out of the kitchen and into his bedroom and shuts the door on anything else.

He wonders whether she means to her or to himself.

Then he pulls the case notes for the possible tulpa in Jackson off his nightstand and onto his lap, because she’s right either way and it’s pretty fucking pointless to focus on it.

All Your Punk!Cas are Autistic and Demisexual

Letting the Unicorn Roam

BAM.

Ruby and Anna broke apart with a wet smack as Castiel’s door slammed open.

Meg chased Castiel out of it, as he moved with stiff, angry purpose as far away from the room as he could get. They got all the way to the back door and slammed that before Ruby and Anna stopped watching and hopped up, with legs awkwardly tugging off laps too fast, to follow them and find out what the fuck. They were out back, in the cold, Castiel notably tense, trembling in his button down and jeans, as Meg gestured with pale hands hanging out the end of her corset top, both breathing clouds into the air: far less drunk than they’d looked about an hour earlier when they got back from the Roadhouse.

Ruby glanced at Anna, confused. They were friends, right, those two? Anna put a finger to her lips and cracked the door open quietly so the shouting was audible, and they both leaned in to listen. It’s not like Cas would be all that forthcoming later if they didn’t.

“You’ve been throwing it at me for months, Clarence! Don’t act like this came out of nowhere.” She pointed below his waist with a savage snarl, her wrist purpling in a recognizable pattern of certain familiar fingerprints.

“Meg, whatever I’ve said—done, to make you think— I’m sorry. But this isn’t what I wanted. This is not what I thought we were doing.” Castiel sounded upset—as upset as he could, notorious stone wall he was, standing at least five feet away from her with every bit of him closed off and looking almost frightened, no matter his anger.

“You told me that time we kissed at Crowley’s place was—” Castiel took a seemingly involuntary step toward Meg as she crossed her arms and glared at him, his face lined with frustration.

“A good memory, yes, in the past. Have I asked you for more? Ever given any indication I wished to repeat the experience? I can’t recall an occasion.”

Meg looked a little taken aback, her tightly held posture slackening, but she stood her ground in her high-heeled boots. “Well, you did talk about me a lot last year, Clarence…called me beautiful and whatever…” She trailed off, mildly triumphant, and Castiel stepped away from her and turned around to leave.

Anna and Ruby had to pull away from the door quickly to avoid being seen, but they could see him. And his expression was defeated, resigned.

“You don’t give a shit about our friendship, Meg. You don’t give a shit, if I don’t want you. All you’ve been doing is working me, like you did Sam freshman year, right? You don’t care. ‘Put up or shut up’, right.”

There was a soft growl inside the house, and Ruby had to catch Anna round her waist, fingers clutched in her blue cardigan, before she ran out, after Meg. Nobody ever made Cas sound as close to tears as he was sounding. Even Dean never hurt him like that, despite how prickly they both could get, despite all the pieces of himself Cas always put into that relationship. Meg was damn lucky Ruby had a hold on her girlfriend, or she’d be dust.

“Clarence, damn it, of course I—” But Castiel appeared to be quite finished, and he waved a hand, faced away from Meg and inches away from the back door.

“If you did, you wouldn’t have done it. I may not have many, but I know friends don’t do that.” Castiel reached the door and Anna and Ruby dove toward the fridge, pulling it open just as he got inside. He took one look at them, sighed heavily, and stomped back into his room.

It was less than five minutes of soft murmuring behind Cas’s door before Dean Winchester arrived, and Meg was still there, lording it on high as usual from the treehouse Gabe and Michael had built before taking off for college. Jamming his hands into the pocket of his leather jacket so sharply it must have hurt him, Dean glared hard enough at Meg for her to catch fire, and hissed at her, just as Anna opened the door to let him in, “I trusted you with him, and you did that. You did that, to Cas. I should pull you down from that damn tree, friggin’ sitting there like Queen Bitch of the World, and—”

“Dean,” Anna called—interrupting him, because shit person or not, they’d already gotten into this argument about hitting girls before and she wasn’t looking forward to doing it again. “Leave it, all right, you’re here for Cas.” She waited there for him pointedly as he stared, with eyes still narrowed into slits, up at the tree house, at a cross-legged Meg who gazed back blankly, disturbingly unrepentant.

Eventually he scoffed, a sound of blatant disgust, and stalked past Anna into the house, scuffed boots leaving a trail of mud across their nice pale kitchen floor. Meg glanced at Anna herself then, still imperious and unfazed, jean-clad legs sliding to hang off the edge of the hexagon to bang her boots against the ladder while her arms piled on the railing at chest level, and Anna set her jaw and looked away; she wasn’t positive what had happened between Meg and Cas, but she knew enough to know it was bad—to guess just how bad, and Meg could stay out there like a chastised dog all night for all she cared after this. She shut the door and left her out there, and watched through the window, but her expression and position didn’t change at all. Shaking her head, she walked back into the den, toward that warm, quiet, dark space she’d been enjoying a lot with her girl before this shit went down.

Ruby welcomed her into her arms and closed them, strong and browned, around her. The comfort was undeniable, but then she heard muffled yelling, and sobbing, and the thunk of what was probably Cas collapsing onto his best friend in the world and knocking him into the door, and it just didn’t quite work as well as it should. She could hear a low rumble, like Dean was trying to ease Cas anyway, despite his own rage, and as much as she wanted to help—ached to help her brother, nobody got to Cas like Dean did, and it was better to stick it out and wait for their bond to work its magic.

She nodded toward the doorway, asking Ruby to come with her, and got up off the couch, shutting the TV off and pulling Ruby by the hand out, up the stairs, to her room. They crawled into her big, expensive, messy bed, ankle-socked feet curling up together, and Ruby held her, as she tried to pretend like her eyes weren’t watering, as she buried her face in the musky shoulder of Ruby's old Heart sweatshirt and mumbled apologies for getting it wet.

“Hey, shut up, you cry yourself out all you want. I have a sister, I know the drill.”

They fell asleep like that, and from what she saw the next morning, when she left Ruby in her bed with a kiss to her wild, tangled hair and walked down to check on Cas, so had Dean and Castiel: Cas’s fluffy dark head pillowed on Dean’s arm where he was curled into a quotation toward his friend, Dean hanging halfway off Cas’s bed on one side, his pretty mouth lax and one foot sticking out of the covers, both of them still in their jeans (Jesus, boys) but at least without shoes or jackets this time.

Meg was gone when Anna walked into the kitchen and reached for a pan to make breakfast, huffing at the shock of cold tile against her bare feet beneath her thick cotton pajama cuffs where she'd kicked off her socks in the night. She tilted her head, looking at other angles through the lace curtains, even opened the back door to the freezing morning--rubbing her bare arms in her ribbed tank top as the cold seeped in, to make sure, and yeah, she was gone.

That was the last Anna saw or heard of her for a month and longer. Cas went out with her and Ruby, with Jo, and with Charlie and Dorothy and Gilda, went out with Sam, with Dean, with Balthazar and Inias, with cousin Hannah even, despite the strained ties he’d had for a while with that whole family—her; her mom Naomi; her baby sister Hael; after they’d started something that had gone ugly fast with Dean once at a family reunion. He never once even mentioned Meg on his own, and after the first time she had called and Cas answered the declaration with, “Tell her to go back to Hell where she came from,” Anna stopped answering the number. If Cas was angry enough to blaspheme in a way Mom and Dad would have destroyed his social life for, it was pretty much over.

---

C’mon, Clarence, I’ve seen how you look at me.

What? Meg, what? I’m a little drunk, you’ll have to—

You think I’m a queen, right. Queen of your kingdom, at least. Part of you wants to be ruled by me, kid, admit it.

You’re a good—um, Meg, you’re all right, but—

I know how bad you want this, Clarence, just chill out and—fuck! What the hell? That fucking hurt!

—

Castiel’s eyes snapped open and stared upward at his slightly spinning warm beige ceiling, when his cell phone broke him out of the deeply unfortunate daydream he’d been having as his favorite movie soundtrack played quietly in the background and he flirted with the potential of sleep. It had been a month of this at least, and every single time, it made him so sick he found himself swallowing bile. He always had known Meg was a bit overzealous with sex, had been a little and then a lot wary about setting her up with anybody he knew, but he had never guessed she’d—

He squeezed his eyes shut again, searching for peace, for forgetting, and his phone broke him out of it a second time before he could recover.

She was calling him. Of course she was. After this long, you’d think she would have given up.

Did that mean she…cared?

Dean would say no. So would Sam, and about half a dozen of his friends.

He answered it anyway.

“What do you want?”

“Long time no see, Clarence. You remember little ol’ me?”

“Don’t call me that. It’s been a month—never really know when to stop pushing, do you. I’m unsurprised.”

“Aw, c’mon, don’t be like that. I miss our jam sessions and that thing you do with your hands, kid. You were the only one who’d let me call you whatever and still come running, and hey, I loved that about you.”

“I should throw myself a party then, finally telling you to fuck off.”

“Maybe you should, but you know you’re not going to. You’re stuck with me, Clarence. I’ve got a pretty great gift to sweeten the deal, though.”

“Meg, I’m not going to—”

“Blind date with the greatest guy for you I’ve seen yet. No me, no us, just you and this guy. A goodbye gift, even, if you don’t like him enough to like me.”

“A what? You aren’t serious. You know how I feel about that. Dating and, and sex, and—”

“Yeah, got the bruises to prove it, doll, I know. But just, for one last time, trust me as much as you ever did?”

“That trust is gone, Meg. But…you can have one chance. One. If this person tries to extol your virtues, or something of that nature, I will personally guarantee you’ll never see me again.”

“You sound so tough, Clarence, good for you, but we both know you’re dying to meet the guy and be honest, you miss me, don’t you, just a little. You know I make everything more—”

“Goodbye, Meg.” Castiel hung up and dropped his phone onto the pillow beside him with a long exhale, melting into the maroon bedspread.

Such a fool he was, such a fool, to trust her again, even for this.

One Minute in Hell is Worth Seven in Heaven

Dean fears what he might taste when he kisses him.

It’s something Castiel has known for a while, something that makes Dean close his mouth when his lips touch Castiel’s, something that makes him leave open, sucking marks that swell his vessel’s flesh everywhere but there.

He can’t protest this, even though he loathes the shamed face Dean shows, when Castiel pokes his tongue against them and he immediately backs off. He can’t be sure he would be comfortable inhaling the smoke—cannot even be sure he would not hurt Dean mixing with him in this way.

But he wants to wipe that face out of Dean’s repertoire. It is the first time that he can remember feeling a demon should not be hated for its nature, but this feeling persists nonetheless.

“Come here,” he whispers, when Dean and Sam return from another hunt, loudly quarreling as usual about the things both and neither will do for the job. Demonic abilities are useful; potential unplanned exorcisms are not. And the Winchesters are by nature too reckless sometimes.

Sam glances at Castiel and then watches Dean’s face, sees it change as does Castiel simultaneously. His eyes flick black once and then back, and he slides a glance toward Sam, clocking whatever that look he’s sending him means, before a pleasant enticement of an expression Castiel sees often drags itself slowly onto his features. His hair is sweaty and his shirt is ripped and he looks tired, but he comes to Castiel far more easily than a demon should to an angel, always, no matter what.

“Missed me, huh?” he murmurs, soft and deadly, a lure in every sense from head to toe when he wants to be—befitting his species, but in a way so specific to Dean Castiel cannot fathom what he’d do if the eyes beckoning weren’t that familiar shade of green.

Castiel catches a glimpse of Sam’s rolling eyes over Dean’s shoulder and quickly turns back to smile at his lover as the door closes behind the younger Winchester, honestly happy to see him. Sam will be gone an hour at least; their routine is very sound by this point.

“I did.” Simply, quietly, he confirms Dean’s half-serious flirtation. Dean is thrown off a mite by this, though he recovers admirably fast.

“Enough to give me a ‘gee, Dean, glad you didn’t die yet’ passionate movie makeout?” Dean’s boldness is endearing, but he lies. (Again, Castiel smiles privately to himself, befitting his species, that he so despises.)

“Enough to offer far more than that.” His eyebrows rise, expectant, and Dean smirks, closing in on Castiel’s “personal space”. (He has never had the issue with it Dean has; from very early on in their acquaintance, he enjoyed the thrill of intimacy.)

“Well then,” he says against Castiel’s mouth, and tamping down his grace is quite worth the sensitivity to being physically loved by this demon. His mouth tingles as Dean’s moves over it, skillful with the small allowances he makes, from corner to corner in small, light kisses. Hands holding the lapels of his overcoat, Dean lips at his bottom lip until it’s almost burning with feeling. Not once does his mouth open, and by the time he goes to slip down to Castiel’s neck with those dedicated lips, Castiel has had enough.

“I want more than this, Dean,” he says, low and firm, dropping his vessel’s hands to Dean’s hips and snagging him further into Castiel’s space, so there’s centimeters or less between them. Dean laughs, joy and taunting in the sound.

“Working on it, angel.” Dropping to Castiel’s jaw, he bites there, and Castiel has to force his grace down as his being unfurls with a sudden burst of feeling, but he stops Dean, regardless.

“No,” and Dean jerks up so fast he’d hurt mere men with how their faces collide, his eyes narrowed.

“No? You’re mixing your signals here, buddy,” Calmly amused though he might seem, his restraint fades with the shock and his eyes fully darken for a minute or longer before he controls himself again. Castiel is very grateful sometimes for this particular indicator.

Leaning in, reassuring, he drapes his hands over Dean’s shoulders, curls fingers over the back of his neck.

“No to your firmly closed lips, Dean Winchester,” he says, directly staring, watching Dean’s unblinking response, feeling Dean startle under his hands. Dean likely hadn’t realized he’d noticed—or even that he’d been doing this.

Castiel will not humor his ignorance. For good or for ill, he wants to taste Dean, once at least.

“Is this your way of telling me to scream your name more?” Dean asks, sharp, defending himself. Castiel smiles, fond of this walking horror with a hesitant heart.

He shakes his head, removes all space between them until their noses brush and Dean’s eyes are too close to meet.

“This is my way of saying I want your tongue in my mouth,” he says, clearly, making sure he is not misunderstood. Dean gasps a bit, and wonderfully, his breath does not repulse where it puffs onto Castiel’s lips.

“But, Cas, you don’t…I’m a—” Dean almost never says the word. When he can, he surely likes to forget.

“I know what you are, Dean, but it isn’t of import. Who you are makes me want to kiss you, sharing breath, an intimate act I never had the taste for before.”

Dean trembles, barely noticeable except for Castiel feeling it through his fingers. He would read Dean’s mind, but he has promised not to, and honors that promise as much as he can. “Might be bad for you,” he warns, but Castiel remains undeterred. This will happen.

Dean apparently grasps his determination and sighs, nodding. “Okay. Okay, yeah, sure. We can do that.”

Castiel rubs at the shortest hairs on Dean’s neck, soothing him—hopefully. “Please, Dean,” he asks, nearly silently, drawing away to give Dean room to instigate.

And instigate he does. Beginning with the tactic from before, he sets Castiel’s lips tingling again, and then pokes them with his tongue, too gentle, worsening the sensation until it’s nigh unbearable. By the time Castiel is prepared to part his lips, the combination of Dean’s ministrations and Castiel’s purposefully stifled grace has him panting, sharply, through his nose. His entire body is heated, moistening beneath his vessel’s choice of plain cotton underwear, hard and solid near Dean’s thigh.

And then Dean opens his mouth, and tugs Castiel’s lip between his two, pulls at it and slides, tender, along its soft line. Castiel’s mouth falls agape, and his being curls up, balled like a miniature sun inside his vessel with delight.

Dean works a little faster, lips barely apart but moving over Castiel’s mouth, catching his lips and gripping tight, leaving them swelling (and he would not at all deign to heal them, not from this, not yet). Castiel’s hands start to shake as everything inside him reacts, and by the time Dean allows their mouths open both at once and their tongues touch for the first time, Castiel’s been lifted so high he could almost end from that first jolt of wet tip on wet tip.

He nearly does, relaxing almost into a slump, his wings lazily brushing the floor unseen, as Dean coaxes his tongue into a dance foreign to him, out of their mouths enough that he can’t quite taste yet but still drifting across, muscle on muscle, overcome in waves by the novel stimuli that Castiel’s being cries out with feeling.

He makes a noise, unrestrained, in his throat, and it makes Dean’s eyes open, the green hazy, focused but not entirely grounded. Dean tugs away his tongue to smile, and miraculously, it only fades a little when he leans back in, this time working their tongues by degrees back into Castiel’s mouth. Charcoal and copper, minuscule particles of smoke like that off an altar, brush past his open lips into his mouth, and it doesn’t stop him for a moment, as he grips Dean closer, fingertips digging into his upper back, so close their legs are split around the other’s and Dean’s nudges him low: harmless, elongated torture. The taste is not entirely desirable, but when Castiel gives as much as he’s getting, pushing Dean’s lips wide and licking deeply, stroking Dean’s tongue, Dean starts to choke out noises with it until Castiel’s throat is full of them, and that wonder makes the taste a nonexistent priority.

“Mm, nngh,” Dean breathes over his lips, when they finally separate. Castiel’s eyelids lift as slowly as Dean’s did before, and Dean looks pleased by whatever they are communicating to him, seems to lose all his previous reluctance as he shoves back into Castiel’s mouth with aplomb until both of them are, again, panting.

Castiel lifts Dean at the hips, so that those strong bowlegs automatically circle his waist and the walk to the bed is perhaps three steps at most. He presses down as they lie on the bed’s softness, touches the blanket beneath and cleans it for Dean’s comfort, rolls his lower body again and again until Dean’s eyes are squeezed shut, nearly pained, and he’s groaning, “Fuck, Cas.”

Indeed. That is where the evening is likely headed. The mechanics are as yet unsure, but fucking will occur, and so will more “making out”—Castiel thinks, enormously satisfied by this accomplishment as he mouths over Dean’s bottom lip, eagerly, pushing them both into another kiss that lasts through the gasping breaths at grinding hips.

What if Dean'd been a demon when Cas found him in S4?

Castiel finds him flayed.

Alastair laughs at him when he takes the demon out of that place in Hell, out of the darkest realms where the High Inquisitor holds court. He can hear the laugh behind him as he grabs onto the smoke, nearly extinguishes it with grace, and leaves, flying up and out and far, far away.

The demon protests with screams being sewn back into his body; Castiel wonders how righteous a man can be if he fights the work of angels. If he becomes a demon—beyond broken, scarred and burnt and without solidity.

The demon forgets, until its blade is dug into the chest of Castiel’s vessel. Jimmy winces behind Castiel’s consciousness, and Castiel sets him to sleep, watching Dean’s human visage carefully. He’ll heal, and Dean’s adjustment is far more important.

“Get the hell out of here, there’s no such thing.” The demon says, tone gruffer than the slyness of his kind. Castiel knows he can see more than he acknowledges. He isn’t sure why Dean resists, but that will end soon enough.

“We have work for you,” he asserts, staring undeterred into Dean where black smoke twists.

“He almost killed me, and man. He should’ve.” Dean says to the night, and Castiel tries hard not to hear it—these emotions Dean has somehow held onto are ill-understood and distracting.

Invisible, he rests against the other side of Dean’s car. He had not stayed with Dean for too long, and counts himself lucky in the face of his superiors’ rage that Sam spared the demon’s life. No one has ever really briefed him on the protocol of retrieving a demon after death.

‘The Righteous Demon’ doesn’t have the same gravitas. Human languages are diverse, however; English is perhaps limited. He’ll find other words, other symbols, to denote Dean’s importance and quell his doubts.

Dean is shaking, his countenance visibly soured. Castiel asks himself and his Father once again, silently, why. Why ask this of him and of this demon? He decides quickly, as ever, that it isn’t his place to ask, but still, he wonders.

“Doesn’t even know I knew that was Ruby,” the demon spits, and Castiel pays attention again. A conflict between the brothers over another demon will hold much significance. He listens to Dean’s diatribe with intent.

“I have questions. I have doubts.” He reveals to Dean. With another demon—any other—this kind of intimacy would mean death, dismemberment, or defeat of some kind. Trusting Dean is as daunting as trusting anyone with the fact that he, an angel, wonders of Heaven’s righteousness. He does, nevertheless.

Strategist.

Sitting in the corner of his favorite compartment of Heaven, the breeze whirling past his Form as the autistic man flew his kite, Castiel sighed.

“God had faith in you, Castiel” said Rachel.

“O brilliant Castiel, you must lead us now,” said Jedadiah.

And others had spoken, a cacophony of voices begging him for guidance and assuring him of their belief.

“We have heard tell of your skill, but you have surpassed expectations.”

“Raphael will be no match for you, of course! You were chosen.”

How wrong they were. How very, very wrong. He could still feel the curdling cracks in his Form where Raphael had torn into him and beaten him thoroughly.

The end of Heaven, or Earth, or both, was upon him if he did not act, and he, Castiel, “God’s favorite”, had no idea what to do. At the end of this day, one day of Earth time, everything he and those he had fought with had fought for would meet the same end before denied it.

They would be disappointed. Everyone.

Well, they would be dead before too long, but before that, yes. They would think him a failure. Loathe him as he’d never before been loathed.

He’d been known for millennia as one of the best strategists the Host could offer. And here the world would end because he could not create a plan to prevent it.

A failure, indeed. A rebel with a cause, who would “go down swinging”, as Dean had said so many times, and forfeit Earth in the process of his defeat.

Dean. Dean would help. Dean would want to—

Castiel left Heaven hurriedly and went to where Dean had been last.

Something inside him recoiled from Dean’s idle peace. He almost flew from it reflexively.

There was the man who had bloodied himself against his prized possession, by his loved one’s hand, to save his species.

He raked in an ill-conceived manner, crushing more than grabbing any leaves, and Castiel’s Grace reached for him, but.

But he was at peace. He deserved peace—all of humanity did, and if Dean could not have Sam, maybe he could keep this at least. Maybe Castiel could do that for him.

He was one of the best strategists, wasn’t he? What blasphemy it was for him even to suggest needing Dean for this.

Where he stood, Castiel frowned, hands in pockets, a kind of deep loss and a craving more deep than that of Famine both taking hold of his True Form and slowing his vessel’s intent for departure.

It was many minutes before Dean made any progress, and Castiel felt discomfort—shame perhaps, realizing he’d wasted time he could have spent saving the life of this man and every other like him on Earth, simply watching.

Glancing at the ground but then quickly to Dean again, Castiel was unprepared for the sly voice behind him.

It was unwelcome, to say the least.

He humored the demon, anyway, for now, somewhat glad to turn away from everything he saw, close enough to touch but yet as unreachable as the Father himself.

Talk to Me

I was thinking about part of this, and basically (lol #long post again!).

Give me the scene from Goodbye Stranger, but without Naomi's control, without a trauma bond, with an actual bond to make that scene much less uncomfortable, much more soothingly nostalgic and revealing about character. Give me that scene, but between a demon and an angel who actually don't want to be those things, who actually are friends, who actually can reminisce about things from the past, who should, because the two of them have not shared a few things they really ought to.

Give me a scene like the one from Road Trip, but without Sam in peril.

Sam's gone to bed, Crowley's running from Dean's rage upon getting close enough to himself again to loathe him, and Dean and Castiel are up late in the dim light of the lamp, sitting in two chairs on the same side of the table, passing back and forth their second bottle of booze (of your choice). With Dean still somewhat Dean and Castiel's Grace dwindling, they can both feel it about the same.

"Crowley's a dick," Castiel starts a new topic with. They've been talking for hours, and this is a very important thing to discuss. 

"Yeah, he is." Dean says, no hesitation, and that's a relief, because a month ago it would have been much more of a struggle.

"I should've known when he suggested a civil war."

Dean blinking, surprised. "What? He did?"

Castiel nodding. "I was still the fool who agreed."

They drift through that topic, discussing Balthazar (Dean never felt threatened by him, he asserts, and Castiel doesn't know he's lying), Rachel, Raphael, and the culmination of Castiel's "corruption".

Dean coughs a bit, because booze and smoke sometimes mixes unpleasantly. "I had nightmares, after you exploded."

Castiel is quiet for a moment, and then, "Which time?"

They smirk at each other, weakly.

"The Levis, dude. Staying on topic."

Castiel makes a thoughtful sound, and then answers, confession for confession, "Oh. I had--dreams of you, too, as Emmanuel."

No sound except the slosh of the bottle, as both of them languish momentarily in memories the other can't hope to completely understand.

A sharp grin, an easy laugh, a companionable nudge of shoulders, and no name, just warmth, until he walked into Daphne's home.

Black goo, a maniacal, sadistic declaration of his best friend's death, a trench coat soaked in darkened water and crusted with blood: a frayed feeling, sinking that felt like drowning with him and never really stopped with him gone.

Desperate to change the subject, Castiel blurts, "It wasn't you I chose, Dean, I do know that now." and regrets it, warily, when Dean winces.

Dean smiles, though, voice dry. "Wow, Cas, harsher than I'd expect from you. Didn't know you had it in you."

Cas gives him a blank look. "It was humanity." 

Dean's smile fades, his ears ringing with his own voice, This is simple, Cas! "Ah, yeah. Right."

Hesitantly, unsure whether he should, Castiel adds, "At first, that is."

Dean wasn't expecting that, Castiel thinks, as his eyebrow rises abruptly.

"So when'd it change?"

Castiel's fingers clench into a fist, instinctually, remembering.

"In Lucifer's crypt."

Were Dean less demonic, he'd blush. He sure as hell can't keep eye contact, not with that out there. They haven't talked about it much since Metatron. Bygones being bygones with everything gone to shit, as usual.

"You left, though." It's mumbled, and it's been said, but Dean still isn't sure he wants Cas to hear it. 

(He does, of course. Fucking angels.)

"Family doesn't always give you a choice," Castiel quietly reminds him, and Dean stares in the direction of Sam's bedroom, picturing all the times there's been no other option but the one that hurts, that destroys, to save him.

"Got it," he says with a slow nod. 

That might've been the end of it, but it's not. Castiel's smile is sad when Dean looks at him.

"Not the whole picture, you don't. I wasn't just leaving you, Dean. I was recovering. From choosing."

Dean scoffs, but it's not whole-hearted. "C'mon, Cas, we're Team Free Will." 

And Castiel isn't wrong, when he gestures to Dean. "Our choices are not often free, Dean, look at you." 

Fair point, touché, all that, but. "Still, humanity or dicks with wings, it ain't hard."

Now Castiel won't meet his eyes, even when Dean's trying. "It is, when you're not built for it. When they can make you their marionette."

Castiel can feel the air change, but he doesn't see Dean freeze, only feels his wide-eyed stare. "So...it really wasn't you."

Without looking at him, Castiel snatches the bottle and takes a long gulp.

"No," he says, gruff, "it wasn't." He drinks even more, staring at Dean's scuffed boots on the table, wincing visibly as he speaks.

"Thousands, Dean, she made me kill thousands of you. Even then, I fought, and I wasn't allowed control of my body."

Dean's reeling. "You weren't--she didn't suggest jack shit. She made you."

Finally, Castiel looks at him, his face anguished. "And I begged her to stop. You must believe me, Dean, I wouldn't have done it, myself."

That was not in question anymore, not since Tessa and the angel army Cas gave up. Cas could've done it, then, would've been more than right to, but he hadn't. He couldn't. Monster or not, he couldn't.

Not to mention...

Dean stares off into the distance, as Cas pleads with dewy-eyed sincerity, thinking of all the times he's seen Power of Love in action, all the times he's made a face at the hero being broken out of mind control like that. His own eyes are green, and his lips tilt up involuntarily.

"So that time, you did do it all for me," he says, looking at Cas again, and Cas nods, seriously, wiping his mouth and handing back the bottle.

"And several after." No, I can't. They're both thinking it, then.

But then. And Dean wouldn't ask, not without the confidence of already being a monster. Before he turned into a black-eyed bastard, he wouldn't have ever pushed like this.

Huh. Silver lining.

"So...Meg or me, then. Say she wasn't dead. Demon versus demon, would it be all for me still?"

Cas's eyes squint, and Dean feels fond of that, of his voice, filled with confusion. It's always unnerving that he still can.

"I...Dean, what?"

He's nonchalant. "Well, you dug her smoke, right? Wanted to be her pizza man or whatever."

Cas's mouth twists. Interesting. "Not as such."

They stare at each other, and Dean tries again, "But her pretty pain, though, right?"

Castiel's stare sharpens, but he can't figure out what Dean's thinking--why he's asking. "She's no comparison," he says, firmly.

Dean rolls his eyes, waves a hand while the other lifts the bottle. "Yeah, I know, 's not like I played sexy nurse for you ever, I get it."

No matter what Dean is thinking, Castiel can't do much but glare. "Dean."

Before Dean can take a drink, Castiel grabs the bottle back and downs the last of it (at least this one). His jaw is tight, as he swallows the somewhat bitter molecules. "Have you not yet grasped this? No one. compares." 

Dean's boots clunk as his eyes go black and his body recoils, twitching too overtly for even Castiel to miss. "What do you...like how, Cas?"

Castiel licks his lips, a habit his dry mouth does not require anymore, and then just says it, no matter the consequences.

"She was my caretaker, but you are always my first choice. Heaven, angels, Meg, Nora, Daphne. No one compares."

Dean swallows, hard (though he doesn't need it either), and starts somewhat frantically opening another bottle. He regrets asking, feeling all tied up inside at Castiel's words.

Castiel can see Dean's hands shaking. "You don't have to return the sentiment, Dean. Just believe it, that's all I ask."

The bottle's open, then, finally--despite Dean forgetting they could both open it easily with their respective supernatural abilities, he managed.

He takes a long, long drink, and exhales loudly, then stops, deliberating.

(At least Castiel guesses that's what he's doing.)

"So, what about that time in Maine, then?" he asks, full of audible curiosity.

And Castiel remembers immediately. Kismet or what, buddy? "Well, since you asked--"

This goes on for the rest of the night. Neither of them have to sleep (though Castiel, in a bizarre turn of events, is closest to having to now), so when Sam wakes up and goes to pour himself orange juice, they're still there, intent, focus on nothing but their thirst for each other's truths.

It's the first time in years--in ever, likely--that one has said "Tell me how you felt about it." and the other has answered, "When? I'll tell you, as much as I know, whatever you ask." and Sam can hear the honesty.

Sam smiles, satisfied, despite all there is left to do, for the moment, and when his glass is empty, he walks quietly back to bed.

Dean's "You're kidding me, Cas, no way--" echoes, follows him down the stairs, and he chuckles, as Cas responds in kind.

Long post. (Accurate post.)

I know exactly what they're going to say to this, actually.

Were you--or anybody else who isn't too busy with their angel/demon fetish--paying attention to the structure, you very possibly would too.

They're going to say Dean still has way more humanity: what last episode did best was show us that even on the path to corruption, Dean is definitely still in there. Who knows how much he'll be in S10, but however much will be enough when he would hate what he's become.

They're going to say that Meg is one of the oldest and most powerful demons, too old to be affected by churches, Azazel's daughter and among Alastair's best, proud of this. That she was Lucifer's second-in-command for a reason; more the Zachariah to his Michael than anything, and that it wouldn't be a stretch to guess that she might never have been human at all, or that, considering how long she's existed as one, humanity could be impossible for her at this juncture.

They're going to say that Dean is an ailing, struggling soul with a demonic taint caused by the Mark's hold on it, and whether or not it may corrupt him somewhat, he is likely not an ordinary demon. Dean isn't a demon in the same sense Meg is, any more than Castiel's essence, what he wants to be and should be in the scheme of the universe, is a genocidal demigod controlled by bloodthirsty human-eating monsters, or Sam is the demon who killed Lilith, the Boy King, Lucifer incarnate. The reason these arcs are fascinating to watch is because they are so much not these things.

They're going to say that Castiel's reaction to Dean will prove even more so that he does not find demonic lovers appealing. Just as did his exponentially more powerful (or there at all) responses to Dean maybe dying (at his hand), and then to him actually dying, Castiel's response to Dean being a demon will use "Megstiel" to prove Destiel by showing a notable absence of things in one that appear blatantly in the other.

They're going to say that Castiel will want to save Dean--he won't find his being demonic hot or anything positive (except in one possible way I can think of, which is that if Dean's demonic selfishness allows him to be more upfront about his feelings with Castiel, Cas will find him hotter now that he consents to it), he'll find it heartbreaking, devastating, terrifying, guilt-inducing, deeply upsetting. He'll very probably gut Crowley with all the vengeance he couldn't unleash on Metatron, when he realizes what he did, and search everywhere for some way to get Dean back to what Dean wants to be.

They're going to say take your flimsy rape/abuse and shove it in the trash with the demon attraction/fetish Castiel never had and still doesn't have--it doesn't even compare to how much Castiel loves Dean, how much he believes in Dean's goodness and humanity (the real empathy he offers, as opposed to the false identifications, to the purposeful trauma bond, offered by Meg), how much he'd sacrifice again and again to fix this somehow both because he loves Dean as is and because he knows Dean will hate this, will hate himself, would rather be dead than demonic.

They're going to remind you that Dean doesn't belong as a demon; he'll be back, and Castiel will be there, having loved him all along because he knows Dean was better than that.

They'll remind you furthermore that Meg, however, does. And part of the reason they only gave the bare minimum of anything resembling his (according to Meg and a prompted Misha) "crush", part of the reason Castiel said no in a couple different ways to anything more than a Take That Kiss of dominance, is almost certainly that.

They'll look at the facts and the past precedent and assert that it wouldn't at all be in character for him to love or want Dean more for his being a demon: it would be entirely, however, in character for him to love Dean, to want him, despite his being a demon, with desperate faith that he can be completely himself again with Castiel's help.

(I'm presuming that's at least part of what neven-ebrez means when she talks about 'guiding light'?)

Castiel is not nor will he ever be Spike. At most he is S7 "Spike": William's soul warring with the harmful "passions" of the demon's still-waning control.

Some things fandom is missing when they talk about Spike vs. Castiel.