Summary- It all started as a simple hunt - the usual crazy that Sam and Dean dealt with on a daily basis. Cas came along because, well, he was Cas, and unpredictable was his middle name. And then things got complicated.
(The exact time this happens is up to your imagination)
Pairing- Destiel.
Blessing or Curse?
BluebellFic
0o0o0
The whole thing started with deep, insane love, and that was unusual in itself for hunters. It was even more unusual, perhaps, if you were a Winchester. God knew they had a bad history when it comes to romance; especially the younger one.
Dean was struck with a fatal case of Cabin Fever, and Sam knew that the brothers had to get out of the bunker before they lost their minds. There was no word from Kevin, Cas was holding up a steady radio silence, and all the two were doing nowadays was mindless research, looking at the same books and papers over and over. By now, Sam didn't even know what they were looking for anymore. So he'd looked into news reports - most local - and the news headline had seemed like the perfect excuse to get out of the bunker. After all, 'Businessman's Fiancé Falls Madly In Love With Hamster, Leading To Brutal Murder' seemed like their branch of insane. Dean was already pushing himself to the limit. Maybe this would help relieve the tension.
"So where are we going again…?" Dean groaned, still half asleep. He lazily fiddled with the hem of his shirt, which was pulled on the wrong way.
Sam swung a duffle bag onto his shoulder, and raised an eyebrow at his brother. "I figured we needed to get out of the bunker for a few days, so I found us a case." He slid the article across the table.
"Alright, alright," Dean muttered, voice rough with sleep. "So what's the job?"
"Get this - this guys fiancé just randomly starts acting strange a few days before their wedding, and when she's spending time with her friends she says that she's-" -Sam frowned sceptically- "'found her true meaning in life'."
Dean wrinkled his nose. "Where'd she find it?"
"In the family pet - a hamster. And when her soon-to-be husband tried to feed it the night before the wedding…"
"She pulled a Jack the Ripper on him," Dean finished. "Just sounds like an old nutter to me. You sure this is our kind of case, Sammy?"
"Well, what makes me think that it's our kind of thing is that the police found 'a strange, small brown pouch' in the wife's pocket. A hexbag."
Dean sighed, rubbing at dark-circled eyes. "Okay, how far is it?"
"Three hours." Sam threw Dean his own bag. "We should be able to get there by morning." The younger hunter left the room, heading down to the garage to get Baby.
0o0o0
Half an hour later, the Impala roared down the highway. Sam was slumped against the window, fast asleep, and Dean's eyes were itching with fatigue as the dark road stretch out in front of him. There wasn't another car in sight… So maybe Dean could pull over and just… Take a nap for a few minutes. Sam, fast asleep, wouldn't notice, and surely, if they got there a few hours late it wouldn't matter.
Dean started scanning the roadside for a place to pull over, but as he squinted into the gloom, a fog suddenly seemed to drape itself over his mind. His ears rung. Dean's green eyes slowly started to close, and the steering wheel was suddenly closer to his face, and his surroundings melted away-
"Dean!"
A screech of wheels on the road, and the roaring boom of a truck flying down the road towards them. Dean jerked upwards, swerving Baby to the right and out of the way of the blinding headlights with an ear-piercing shriek of brakes. Sam yelled in panic as he woke, covering his head with his arms as the truck sped past and out of sight. As the blue spots bled out of Dean's vision, and the ringing in his ears calmed to a buzz, he glanced to the side at his brother.
"Heh… Uh… Sorry about that, Sammy…?"
Sam shot him a distinctly unimpressed look.
"Wait… If you just woke up, then who called my name?" Dean asked, suddenly remembering the low, gravelly voice that had called out a warning as the truck nearly ran them over.
"Hello, Dean."
Sam jumped violently, smacking his forehead on the roof of the car, and Dean had his gun out of his pocket and pointed into the back of the car quicker than he'd drawn for a long time. One glance in the mirror, though, told Dean that it was somebody the brothers knew - Dean in particular.
"Cas?" Dean asked, and Sam let out a puff of air through his nose. "What'd I tell you about turning up like that?! A little warning would've been nice…" The last part came out whinier than Dean wanted, but he ignored it.
"I apologise," came Castiel's deep monotone from the back, as the angel shifted in his seat. "Are either of you hurt?"
"No," Sam said, "Cas, where've you been? It's been months since we heard from you, are you okay?!"
"My grace is… Overused," Castiel replied in a weary voice, and now that Dean looked at him more clearly he could see the sickly pallor of his friend's skin, the light bruises creeping up his face like shadows. Dean pushed open the Impala's door and stepped into the cold grass, pulling Cas out of the back seat and looking him up and down.
To put it crudely, Cas looked awful. His face and neck were slightly bruised - 'why hasn't his grace healed him?', a nagging voice in Dean's head asked - and his trench coat was frayed and dirtied. His eyes seemed dull, lifeless.
"What the Hell Cas?!" Dean shook his friend lightly. "What happened to all that immortality for angels crap?!"
Castiel looked down at himself vaguely, as if only just noticing how bad he looked. "I'm… When angels use their grace too consistently for too often, their powers start to weaken under the strain. It's a stage all of us go through, so I'm just trying to use my powers with caution."
"And caution means letting yourself be in pain by not healing yourself?!"
"It's… It's not permanent," Cas said pathetically.
"Right, and I'm Bon Jovi."
"Guys, stop." Sam, ever the peacemaker, stepped out of the car gingerly, nursing his forehead. "Look, Cas is back, so we should just save all this for when we reach the nearest motel, okay?"
Huffing in annoyance, Dean nodded and started to get back into the car.
"Oh no, no way." Sam cut him off, shooting his brother a deadpan look. "You nearly killed us. I'm driving."
0o0o0
"Doesn't this all seem kind of… Off to you?" Sam asked.
Dean looked up from the stack of case files in his lap, raising an eyebrow. One of his feet was rested on Cas' knee, and he honestly couldn't remember when it had gotten there, but Castiel didn't look like he minded, so Dean left it there. The group were attracting a few strange looks, hidden behind piles of books on a low table, but Dean couldn't find it in himself to care.
"What's off about it?"
Sam struggled for a second. "I mean witches, sure, but using love? That's unusual even for us. Why didn't the witch just kill them outright?"
Dean shrugged. "Fetish?"
0o0o0
"Ego amare eu vim!"
The curse rammed into Dean like a bullet, and he crashed to the floor with a sharp yelp of pain. "Dean!" Sam yelled, panic flooding through his veins, but then Cas was by his brother's side, and Sam forced himself to calm down, turning back to the grinning witch with a dark scowl. He didn't notice the blue mist surrounding Dean, or how it melted into Cas when the angel first touched Dean's shoulder. "What the hell did you do to him?!"
The middle-aged woman gave an unusually low cackle - if Sam didn't know any better, he would have thought her voice was male. "That's for me to know, and you to find out." With a sharp 'crack' she was gone, and when Sam turned around it was to see Cas slumped, unconscious, across Dean's prone form.
"Dean, Cas!" Sam sprinted over, kneeling beside the pair and frantically feeling for Dean's pulse. After a second he found it, slightly sluggish and slow but there, and Cas' breath was a silver fog over Dean's chest. They were alive, and seemed fine physically. So what had the witch cursed them with? Sam ran over his limited knowledge of Latin in his head, but his thoughts were too jumbled and nothing obvious came to mind.
0o0o0
The first thing Dean registered when he opened his eyes was a small, stinging pain over his lower ribs, like he'd been hit there with something small and hard. There was a soft, yellow light behind his eyelids, but he didn't open his eyes - not yet. 'What happened…?' The last thing Dean could remember doing was catching up with that weirdass witch, and then Cas-
Cas.
Cas.
He wasn't in the small, dingy motel room, and there was no sign that anybody had been there for a while. Morning light slowly streamed through the grimy window, but Dean could have cared less about his surroundings. Where. Was. Cas?
Deep down, Dean knew that there was something off about this - this strange urge to find Castiel, make sure he was okay, protect him. But that part was very, very deep down. Right now, all Dean wanted to do was find the angel. For the first time in months, despite his worry about Castiel, Dean felt light, happy; he felt like nothing could go wrong today, nothing at all, as long as he was with Cas, and Cas was happy.
The green-eyed hunter pushed himself off the ragged motel bed and pulled on his jacket in record time. As he laced up his boots though, the motel door clicked open, and there was his angel.
(Even after the curse wore off, Dean wouldn't know what came over him, only that his hands were in Castiel's hair and his lips were warm and wet and sweet and his arms were around him like he'd never let go)
0o0o0
"Dean?" Sam called as he shut the door to their motel room, shaking rain-soaked hair out of his eyes. His arms were weighed down with more lore from the library, as well as a cardboard box of steaming fast food (it was Dean, after all). If his brother still hadn't woken, Sam didn't know what he was going to do.
Luckily though, it didn't come to that. When Sam looked around, the first thing his eyes landed on was his brother. Dean was sprawled out on the musty, brown couch, hands behind his head and a large grin on his face. Sam also noticed Cas perched awkwardly on the arm of the couch, but what he didn't notice was the fact that both Dean and Cas' lips were slightly swollen.
"You're awake?! Dean, how do you feel?" Relief filled Sam's voice, but Dean continued to grin at him, completely at ease. The tension deep-set in his shoulders and the stress in his posture that had built in the last few months was all but gone.
"I'm great, Sammy!" Dean exclaimed in a slightly slurred voice, staggering up from the sofa to sling an arm around Sam's shoulders. "In fact, I'm fantastic!" He gave a high-pitched snort.
"Dude, are you… Stoned?!" Sam asked incredulously, as Dean's shoulders shook with gleeful laughter. He couldn't smell any alcohol on his breath (any more than usual, anyway), but that didn't mean that he hadn't taken anything he would regret the next morning. Glancing up at Cas, Sam was shocked to see that even the angel had a small grin on his usually stoic face.
"Nope, jussst happy…!" Dean's speech was drawn out comically. Sam wasn't laughing. "Hey, hey Sammy?"
"Yes, Dean?" Sam gave an irritable groan, pushing his brother off him.
"I found it."
"Found what?"
Dean whispered in his ear, as if it was some huge, untold secret. "Love."
Sam's eyebrows rose into his hairline. "…What?"
Frustrated, because Sam clearly wasn't getting the point, Dean practically bounced over to the angel on the arm of the couch, squeezing on beside him and wrapping an arm around the black-haired man. "Is that face," Dean asked, hugging Cas even closer and gesturing to his face, "not the most incredible face you've ever seen?"
"…No?" Sam replied cautiously.
"Then you're blind," Dean replied bluntly.
"No, Dean," Cas cut in, and Sam almost cried in relief because somebody was still sane. "I really must insist that your looks far proceed mine."
The younger Winchester gave himself an experimental slap in the face.
0o0o0
"Ok, so I think I've found the translation of the curse, and if I can translate it, that means I can find a way to reverse it," Sam reeled off, eyes fixed on the heavy book in front of him. Bobby had laughed his ass off when Sam called him earlier, but, after calming down, he'd recommended the best sources for the translation - the translation of a language that certainly wasn't normal Latin. "The word 'amare' is an abbreviated version of the word 'love', so if the spell was simplified, then it means that it'll wear off quicker… Most likely in around twenty-four hours from when it was first cast. That means that the curse'll give out at about eleven tonight and- Guys?"
Dean completely ignored Sam in favour of furthering his efforts to reach Castiel's tonsils, the angel sinking into Dean with a low, happy sigh. All around the diner, people stared. The waitress's nose was wrinkled in distain. A hulking, brutish man from the bar suddenly let out a low growl and, to jeers from his companions, stood and started to clomp towards the trio's table. Dean, sensing somebody behind him, gave up on trying to suck Cas' face off for a moment and turned around, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah?" he asked casually, under a glare that would have made another man shrink.
"Take it elsewhere, pretty boy," grunted the thug, crossing tattooed arms over his chest intimidatingly. "You're not welcome."
Dean bristled - Sam could see the anger pulsing through him as he pushed himself out of the booth and squared himself up against the man. Cas, though, Cas was different. There was a silent rage around him like a fire. For a second, when the thug had spoken, something like hurt had flashed through Dean's eyes. It was tiny, unnoticeable, but it was there. And as Cas was surrounded by a powerful aura unlike anything Sam had seen in a long time, Sam immediately knew- this had nothing to do with the curse.
"Dean?" Cas slid out of his seat to stand beside the older Winchester, shoulders back, eyes glinting with something deadly. "May I?"
Dean's eyebrows furrowed in worry - sure, Cas was powerful, but what if he was hurt? - but stepped back all the same.
The man chortled, chins wobbling. "Really? A runt like you? Go back home to mommy before you get your lungs ripped out."
Cas made a small noise in the back of his throat and made to turn away, but just as his opponent was distracted, he turned back around and sent a fist right into his meaty, sweaty face. There was a satifying 'crack'. Castiel couldn't use his powers, and Jimmy Novak was hardly the most experienced vessel to fight with, but it still sent the man reeling backwards with a howl of pain. Fire exploded in Cas' knuckles, burning and biting, but now almost-human adrenaline was pumping through him, Sam and Dean fighting alongside him as hell broke loose. After a few minutes, the fight wasn't even about them anymore - sweaty bodies filled with pent-up anger swinging at anything close to them, and as Cas wrapped his arms around Dean in the fray, he couldn't help but think that starting this fight had been one of the smartest things he'd ever done.
0o0o0
"That was one of the stupidest things you've ever done!" Sam exploded as the motel door slammed closed behind them. Dean, nursing a bloody jaw and a rapidly swelling wrist, slid down the wall, grinning like he'd just won a marathon. Cas, face turning a deep, muddy purple as it bruised, dropped gracefully onto the carpeted floor beside him and nuzzling his torso between Dean's knees, resting the back of his head on the hunter's chest.
"Yeah, but we showed the guy, didn't we?" Dean's rough happiness seemed to have no bounds as he ran his hands lightly through Cas' hair.
"Sure we showed him, but now this isn't gonna fade for a week!" Sam said angrily, gesturing to the swelling bruise around his eye.
"It'll make a nice shiner!"
"Since when are shiners 'nice'?!"
"Stop being a bitch about it!"
"Jerk!"
Sam wanted to continue their pointless banter, but then he remembered - there was a chance that the curse would fade, and soon. A glance at the clock on the wall told Sam that it was just past eleven - just around the time that Dean had been cursed…
Dean seemed to realise that his brother was waiting for something to happen, because he paused in speaking too, looking around and waiting for whatever it was to start happening.
One minute, two. Silence. And then it happened - Dean and Cas were suddenly rigid against the wall, eyes staring and nothing, Dean's arms and legs tightening around Cas. It only lasted a few seconds though, and then the two suddenly snapped awake, flinching as if they were waking from nightmares.
"Dean…?" Sam asked cautiously, standing now and edging closer. Cas blinked rapidly as if to get sleep out of his eyes, then turned slowly to Dean. As they met equally surprised eyes, Sam allowed himself to hope - was the curse broken?
Abruptly, Dean and Cas both leant in at once, limbs tangling as they worked around each other and they sank into a soft, sweet kiss. Dean cupped the back of Cas' head gently, all of the possessiveness from earlier gone, and Castiel's hands brushed at the hair on the nape of the hunter's neck as they leant into each other, bodies moulding together and-
Sam turned away, feeling suddenly like he was intruding on something private, something special. He forced away thoughts of how much that embrace reminded him of… Well, she was dead now, and he could hardly compare her to somebody Dean was being cursed into loving. Evidently, the curse hadn't broken. They had to find another way.
0o0o0
The next morning, Dean woke to find Cas wrapped tightly in his arms, warm and secure and real. The two were tangled together on Dean's mattress, and in the corner of his eye, Dean could see Sam typing at his computer in the corner, his mane of hair sticking up in every direction. As Dean started to wake himself up, Cas seemed to sense his movement and pulled him slightly closer, burying his face in his neck. As Dean re-folded the angel into his arms, Sam gave a long-suffering sigh from the corner and went back to research.
0o0o0
"Me and Cas're getting food. You want anything?"
Sam glanced up, taking in Dean's swollen jaw and Cas' bruises from the fight. "I'm good, thanks. And it's 'Cas and I'."
"What?"
Whistling through his teeth, Sam turned back to his laptop. "Nothing."
Dean stared for a second, before he shrugged and started to lead Cas from the room.
"After this, should we have sex?"
"Sure!"
"Good!"
"And pie?"
"And pie."
Sam had to stop this witch, and fast.
0o0o0
When they finally caught up with the witch, it was a day later and Sam was at the end of his tether. Dean and Cas had had sex (loudly), gotten into another fight (messily) and spent most of Sam's money (pointlessly). While Sam had nothing against the two being in a relationship, he knew that the longer this went on the more mortified Dean would be when the curse broke.
The witch was slippery, sure, but slippery was something that the Winchesters were used to - occasionally literally. When they eventually cornered her, Dean found it hard to concentrate with Cas as a distraction, so Sam found himself doing most of the talking.
"Change my brother back before I shoot you!" The gun in his hands was steady, and they both knew that he wouldn't miss if he fired.
"Alright, alright." The witch seemed casual, short, honey-brown hair glinting in the light. Her voice was still unusually low. "Oh but what's this?!" She feigned surprise. "Apparently, that curse is only meant to last a day."
Sam froze, and this was all the opportunity that the witch needed to disappear into the shadows with a simple 'see you, kiddo'.
What the hell?
0o0o0
The next day, things were quietly tense. Sam and Dean had barely spoken since they got back to the motel, but as Dean loaded the last of their belongings into the trunk of Baby, Sam approached him. Cas wandered off to give the brothers time to talk.
"Look, I just wanted to tell you that I'm fine with you being with Cas, and I'm just glad that you're happy-"
"Dude. Stop." Sam looked up, surprised. "Don't make it gay- wait. Fuck. I can't use that excuse anymore."
Sam gave a short, happy laugh. "Oh and, by the way, you and Cas might want to keep it down. I don't understand Enochian, but something tells me that Cas isn't saying anything child-friendly."
"Can it, Sammy."
"Make me."
Even as the brothers squabbled though, Dean knew that, hopefully, things would look up now. That curse was really more of a blessing.
0o0o0