Build The Moon
Prologue
By BrigadeOfOctopi
Dean Winchester is many things.
He is arrogant. He is reckless. He is proud. He is angry and frustrated. He is possessive, protective. Demanding, confused.
He is lost.
Castiel can see it in the shine of his eyes when he passes him in a crowded hallway. A kind of feigned indifference peppered with yeah-I've-seen-you-around, but just below the surface is a pool of help-me-Cas-I'm-drowning.
But Cas can't help him. Dean won't let him.
He likes fucking in the backseat of his '67 Chevy Impala one moment and pretending they're strangers the next. He silently accepts Cas's prayer-soft whispers of "I love you" during those post-coital moments of bliss, when he's dangling off the edge of now and contemplating diving into oblivion. But then his heart rate slows and his lust-addled brain clears and he refuses to let himself get swallowed up in this-feels-right, slams the door behind him without saying a word.
And Castiel is left alone, unable to stop the tears from free-falling down the planes of his face, dripping onto leather and mingling with sweat, the remnants of the moment he made love with Dean Winchester. And no matter how many times this happens, Cas cannot stop it because he knows there is some piece of Dean that needs him, hidden deep in the farthest corners of his heart.
But he will not acknowledge that, so it always ends the same: The fissures of Castiel's already-broken heart spread a little bit farther and he's not sure how much more of this trauma it can take before it crumbles altogether.
But he cannot stop. He needs the reassurance of his touch just as badly as Dean needs the reassurance of hers, and hers, and hers. Castiel long ago accepted that Dean Winchester would be his downfall, just as he will be his own. When they fall, they will fall together, and Cas will smile when it happens because his last happy thought will be, "I've always loved the gold flecks in his eyes."
Cas was fourteen years old when they first met, an awkward freshman clinging to his quickly disappearing childhood yet still trying to grow up as fast as he could. His family had just moved in to their new house and he was sitting on the front porch; he always did like being in the sun. Dean was lying in the grass next door, staring up at the bright blue sky, head resting on his right forearm.
Cas remembers thinking he was beautiful. Not just beautiful – no – the most beautiful person he had ever seen. He was all hard lines and soft contours and pretty green eyes with little golden flecks. Cas found himself fantasizing about running his hand along the curve of his jaw, the top of his spine; about kissing the sensitive flesh behind his ear and curling his fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck.
"Hi." And that was all it took for him to tumble over the edge of reason and into that dangerous, dangerous void of love-at-first-sight. That raw, gravelly voice of Dean's sent shivers all the way to the tips of his curling toes, all rational thought pushing itself to the edge of consciousness as every organelle in his body screamed that this was it.
He said his name was Dean Winchester. "Dean," Cas whispered later that night as he was lying in bed, testing the sound out on his tongue. Dean. He liked it. It seemed fitting.
Dean kissed him for the first time when they were sixteen. He'd just had his first beer and was feeling on top of the world. The kiss was bitter and sloppy and more perfect than Cas had ever imagined. He still remembers the feeling of his tongue sweeping across the roof of his mouth, licking the backside of his teeth.
Six months later, they made love on Castiel's four-poster bed, just days after his seventeenth birthday. When they were finished, lying side by side in that perfect moment where you're hovering between the physical world and the spiritual realm, Dean sat up and said, "Thanks, Cas," before standing up and getting dressed. All Cas could do was stare, mouth agape as Dean walked out the door without so much as a single glance backward.
He cried for hours after he realized what happened, locking his door so nobody would come in and see him lying naked in a puddle of sweat and cum, crying more than he had since he was six.
Dean came to him four days later, that look on his face saying more than he ever could or would. It promised sex – raw and pure and illicit, if Cas wanted. And he did. But it also asked for something – something like forgiveness – something Cas couldn't deny him.
Only after he was gone did it occur to Castiel how pathetic it was that he was so happy to see Dean on his doorstep and so willing to give him exactly what he wanted.
He could not say no. He will never be able to.
Dean Winchester is many things, and loveable is not one of them. And yet he does. He loves him with his entire being, with all the Grace in Heaven and all the hope on Earth.
But Dean Winchester will never allow himself the freedom to be whole, so Castiel is destined to be broken.