Sometimes, the best thing you can have behind you, is God.
Sometimes, the worst thing you can have behind you, is also God.
Sometimes, God is the only thing you've got.
And he's behind you.
Many things have changed, Dean supposes bitterly, but probably as many didn't seem to change at all. The new, despite being an order, is still chaos. So it isn't all that easy for Dean to tell whether this sort of balance is a shift towards the worse or the better. He's trying to equilibrate between feeling hopeful and feeling guilty, but for a mind like his, it isn't simple to do when the world around him is too silent these days, and all he can hear is the waves of contrasting thoughts filling his head, with very little distractions to keep him away from the sharp jabs of pain striking him as the currents of it's wrong and it's fine clash.
He should have known he would be this easy to be bribed. Here he is now, the man who feared no God, willingly following the footsteps of a self-proclaimed one, carrying his metaphorical ermine coats and regalia. Well, technically he just accompanies Cas when needed. Most of the time, he sits in Sam's room, convincing himself that he's made the best choice given the circumstances and that overall it isn't that bad. Because overall, it isn't. It's mostly silent. Sometimes blood falls thick blots on his eyes, or actually, in front of them, but he too, had shed plenty down in the pit. Now, he is the only thing that makes Cas's hand stop mid-judgment. This is the second reason why he's here. He uses this curse-blessing of his, soothing Castiel's twisted and raw take on justice into something more compassionate, saves heads from falling when they don't deserve to fall. Sometimes Cas and he argue about it, which is when they speak the most, when they speak fierce once more instead of exchanging words flat and empty. Dean rages that the people Cas wants to punish are still human and that it isn't in him, and shouldn't be in Cas, either, to bleed them dry like rodents. And Cas hisses back that some of those humans aren't even people, they're predators, rapists, killers, fiends and abusers. That Dean knows it just as well, he's seen it in dark alleys, in bars, in many sad eyes and even more broken homes and that he, despite lack of faith, kept wishing through his gritted teeth for a God that would take care of that fucking plague of trash, and now that he's got it – now that Dean's got everything he needed – he's ungrateful. That's where Dean can swear he can hear a God actually suffer because the accusation Cas throws at him is blistered with so much pain he can feel it radiating onto his own skin.
So he says: "I would've been grateful for you. But this isn't you."
This is the third reason why he's here. There's still a Cas for him to dig out of this darkness somehow. He knows this from how he told Dean not to call him God or anything of the shitty sort, from how he looks at Dean with his embarrassingly yearning eyes that are at once too full and too empty, from how he only ever lays a hand on his now brand-vacant arm to keep him grounded, from how he lets him look away from all the genocides he sometimes commits, from how he still lets Dean keep himself unchanged: attitude, attire, passive aggression, lets him hunt monsters even though they now envelop Cas whole like silk blankets. From how he saved Sam, most of all, which is the first reason why he's here. Why he agreed to this in the first place, not turning nor shying away from the new Shepherd entirely. It's almost as if things hadn't changed at all, but he doesn't know how to lie to himself when they walk side by side and he sees angels, demons, monsters, deities, everything alike, stare at Castiel in sheer, wordless terror. He's never before seen anything this afraid. He's heard dread-filled murmurs saying this isn't God, spoken by those creatures who could see beneath Cas's human façade. And he can't help but wonder, what is it that they saw before they met the bloody end of their monster fate. He looks back at Cas and he just sees him smiling softly right at him through the tiniest curves of the corners of his mouth. Cas looks a bit sad, but serene. But monsters see beyond that and whatever they find, makes them shudder and scream, makes their vessels weep without knowing. This keeps Dean up at nights often.
Cas said he needed the power of the souls to be able to gradually, in small steps, cure his brother completely, not just give him yet another fragile wall to lean on. Make it as if the cage never happened, never tore him apart. Said it takes time, small doses, cause Sam's soul is still too tender to expose it for too much powers. Slowly, thread by thread, Cas sews it whole back together, and seeing the pain falter from Sammy's ever unconscious face, he believes it's true. He believes it's worth it. Watching his brother slowly bloom back into health, he finds solace. He's there, as usual, becoming one with the room's unyielding stillness when Cas opens the door, walks in to join him by Sam's bed. When not necessary, they don't ruffle their silence. They don't speak much these days. Don't speak much ever since Cas ascended and Dean showed no delight to the novum, coldness of his stance implying rather the opposite. Both he and Castiel directed their efforts to the inside, trying to think of something that could cleanse their intimacy of the thorns and weeds that grew out on the soil of the change. Or at least, they're trying not to make it worse. One step after a cold war is MAD, Dean knows, but he knows also, he can't assure Cas anything that even looks like destruction, where Cas on the other hand, most likely is the nuclear arsenal himself among the things he once thought they were something of the sort.
Lightly, Castiel wraps his fingers around Dean's wrist. Waits to see if he doesn't flinch away before making it an actual hold. When he's sure the gesture is accepted, he speaks.
"You'll come back to him shortly" he states, implying imminent departure.
"Did something happen?" Dean asks, hoping there wasn't a city, or hell, a whole country stupid enough to earn Cas's rather sharp-edged attention.
Cas just turns around without letting go and Dean follows him out of the room, sparing Sam a glance goodbye.
"I've found the solution" comes the explanation, voice sure and oddly pleased.
"For what?"
"For you" Cas says, to which for a moment Dean's muscles stiffen, alarmed. Dean doesn't exactly remember requiring a solution. Castiel's grip however tightens only so slightly to subtly become one of actual substance and purpose. Apparently, whatever it is to come, it's not optional for Dean to see.
Even in this world of everything eerie, this is new.
They're in a different room, separated from Sam's only by the length of a hall. The room is bland. Like Cas's face and their talks these days, having only the most basic elements. The space drowns in yellows and whites, as light from a single window pours all over it and the two of them. Castiel's skin shines in a healthy gold glow, he doesn't look like he's got something eating at him for once. Dean isn't sure if it's the sunny walls doing the job, or Cas's sparkling smile, or the abundance of skin he reveals after suddenly having his coat and jacket off, sleeves conveniently rolled at his elbows. Dean doesn't know when did that even happen, but he sees the missing pieces hang over a chair. He decides to take his surroundings in rather than wasting eyes on Cas's forearms. There's nothing more in the exceptionally small area other than the chair, a simple desk and a moderately spacious bed which, considering the size of the whole room, still ends up taking most of it. And then there's of course Cas and his alien, honey-warm hands opening the silly little window, to let in some spring air in the freaking fall, because for whatever reason, he wants to be that fucking nice. Which, okay, what, Dean asks himself and immediately asks Cas in consequence.
"Spring air, Cas?" Dean raises an eyebrow as he watches Castiel pull the white lacy curtain back on the open ajar window. "It this my solution?" he huffs. "To what?" he wonders out loud and Cas finally turns around to face him, small enigmatic smile painted all over his lips and eyes. "Do I need this?" he asks with disbelief.
"I'm all you need right now" Cas says, voice flowing on the simmering flare of the same conviction that puts his words ablaze when they fight.
"All I need right now is a hell of an explanation" Dean barks. "Possibly fast because, Cas, this sort of subtle Matrix-glitching is actually starting to scare me" he adds, hates how he has to let out an implication of fear out of his mouth, being scared of Cas can't possibly be a good sign. And he can't help but think of how the angels and demons were afraid, too, and how one of them right before dying, stared into Dean's eyes with bitter pity and whispered: all teeth, and teeth, and teeth as Cas extinguished it, an old, old Seraph in a middle-aged brunette's body, as if it were a candle.
"Don't be afraid" Cas tells him now soothingly, which is exactly the same thing he said back then, lifting his gaze from the dead angel's form, meeting Dean's horrified eyes. "Had I harmed you, Dean?" he asks warmly, sadly, a soft small, curled up accusation to pick at his human conscience.
"Cas" Dean starts, shaking his head from this nonsense, sight subtly searching for the clearly now missing door.
"Had I harmed you?" Castiel repeats, voice somber, tone more insistent this time.
"No" Dean admits flatly and ostentatiously stares at the spot where the door through which they came in once were.
"And I won't" he says, but that doesn't make an impression on Dean. He knows that, old record, same song, different verse and obviously it doesn't change the fact that playing God is a shit move to pull, not to mention having it as the constant strategy to go with.
"Do you want a cookie for that, Cas? Slow-clap? Swiss-dancing?" he groans. "I already know you won't. It's cool. Can I have that door back, please?" Dean sighs, last word coming sharp through his teeth.
"Not until we fix what's broken."
"Nothing's broken" Dean mutters.
"You need me" Cas states.
"Don't need Marseille august lavender fields in nowhere in November" he hisses, looking at the window now. Worst part is that it does smell nice and calming, and in normal circumstances, he wouldn't exactly mind waking up for another day of hunting having this flowing through his nostrils. "What are you trying to do here, Cas? Woo me?"
"I don't have to" he replies. "You already need me. I don't have to hear it back from you. I don't have to beat it out of you to make it surface" he adds coyly and Dean tsks at that. "It's just that now I see what the problem really is. And I want to help" he says, smiling a bit wider, has Dean thinking about all teeth, all teeth, all teeth all over. Cas makes a few steps towards him, Dean doesn't back off. He's not afraid of this.
"And what is my problem, Cas?" At this point the tips of their shoes touch, but Dean doesn't let himself be intimidated by this. Or by Cas's hand reaching to his temple.
"It's that you think even though it's not in here" he says, pointing his finger at the middle of Dean's forehead, dragging it downwards until it reaches his chest, "there's another me hidden here, waiting for you to gnaw at it until you pull it out" Cas sighs, letting his hand rest on Dean's heart, putting no pressure, merely feeding on the echo of his heart beating, doing it faster. "You think you can't trust me until you achieve that. The remains of the bond that we shared wilt and die out." Cas explains, piercing Dean's gaze with his own. He's certain of his words. They still manage to hurt him as he speaks. Dean can hear it in the smallest uneven notes. "You don't trust me. You can't sustain the connection like this. One day I'm going to be a stranger to you."
"I trust you" Dean deflects.
"No, Dean. You want to. It's different. But you're having hopes for something that isn't there, you lose yourself in the stagnation of waiting. I'm losing you in the stagnation of your waiting. There's nothing to reach out for. There's just one me. I'm more, but I'm the Cas you seek."
"You're not Cas. You're a mutation" Dean snarls. "Cas is when you shed this shit and quit the holy vengeance crap" he insists. "And I know Cas can do that. So let him."
"Shed what, Dean?" Cas lets out a sharp sound that perhaps was supposed to be a bitter chuckle but sounds like mountains collapsing. Thanks to this Cas, Dean knows how a collapsing mountain sounds like. And he knows the terrified human screech that follows such an occurrence, too. And how it falls dreadfully silent. "How can I remove the power that has grown a mould on my grace, its fumes from my light? How can I remove the things that painted my wings all over, fed them and made them grow? Remove all I am, and I'm made whole into eyes, countless, endless, fated to see you and your safety?" he asks gloomily.
"Stop talking Cas, please" Dean tries, voice breaking.
But Cas doesn't stop.
"Do you hate me all that much you want to saw off my limbs, tear out my wings, skin me of my grace? Are you able to hate me so much because I gave all I was to the unknown on the silver platter of my halo, all of it for you, so a single hair wouldn't fall off yours or your brother's heads? Can you hate me for loving you, Dean?" he cries out. "For being the God that walked with you as Enoch walked with my Father? And when you walk, Dean, when you wail about being abandoned, seeing only one pair of footsteps on the shore, you cry I left you behind, all alone in the hardest of times –"
"If you're there, Cas, you did" Dean hisses out a sob.
"No, you don't understand" Cas croons, grabs Deans by his hips abruptly, lifting him effortlessly, and reluctantly, Dean wraps his legs around him for support. "I never left you, my friend. In your darkest hours I carried you in my arms, I cradled and soothed you as a child."
"Fuck you, Cas" Dean spits, but clutches even more desperately at Cas's shirt, at his back as he embraces him, sobbing in defeat. "What have you done to yourself?" he whispers to the crevice of his collarbone.
"Nothing I wouldn't do again, if I had to" Cas answers sternly.
"So it's you. The only you there is" Dean murmurs, throat hoarse. Cas nods. "Figures. Only you could've said something this stupid."
"I've been studying the art of recklessness from the best."
Dean huffs. He's too tired to find that funny. Or particularly insulting.
"So now what? You fetch that door back and we work things out slowly until we're buddies again?"
"No. I need to fix our bond. You'll never be able to trust me again after it fell apart at the seams. The connection is what made you unafraid"
"I am unafraid."
"Are you?" Cas asks, deliberately sounding menacingly probably to prove his point, but it sends a shudder down Dean's spine anyway. "I'm all eyes and I see you" he says, tightening his embrace around Dean, fingers gripping hard at his navels, burying beneath the fabric of his Henley. "And my fingers, they're all eyes and they see you" he hears a whisper, feels electricity, unnamed disturbing presence seeping through the touch, he tenses involuntarily.
"Are you all teeth, Cas?" he finds the courage to ask. For a moment, his question meets nothing more than a wall of silence.
"I am teeth" falls the confirmation.
Dean swallows thick and hard, a fact not missed by Cas's eyes, all eyes.
"Are you—" he starts, not entirely sure what precisely he needs to ask after hearing that, but Cas cuts him off anyway.
"This is why I have to re-establish the bond. I can have you disagreeing with me, arguing with my judgment. but I can't have you fearing me, mistrusting."
"Can you even have me, Cas?" Dean snorts.
"By all means, I intend to" he deadpans.
"You're joking" Dean tries, startled, but Castiel doesn't even shake his head, his expression molds into one with the blandness of the room, again. "Hell, you're not joking."
"It's a necessity to have the closest available proximity of my grace and your soul."
"That explains the bed" Dean sighs. "So this means you've planned this" he rises an eyebrow, amazed only as much as his weariness lets him. "What if I said no?"
"Then you can always use the door" Cas says casually, dropping Dean on the bed. Curious, he turns his head to check. The door is still gone.
"Do you even realize how many levels of wrong what you just said passed by and waved at?" he groans, wanting to start an actual tirade on the subject, but a sudden new sensation of chill takes him off whatever internal balance he maintained. Because he's naked. Because Cas is looming above him, also naked, gold of his skin all over his nostrils and sight. He relishes it with his gaze, curious of every uncovered part he sees. He's been achingly curious of that body for quite a while, but the stalemate of their little war made his urges go dormant. Here, now, his dick begins to fill, interested in the prospect.
"God, you're really down to business about it" he decides to comment.
"Not the time to call me god" Cas retorts, measuring Dean with gaze borne of fire. "When you clench around me, it will be" he says, nuzzling Dean's neck, leaving wet kisses and tiny bites at the juncture with his jaw. "Your body will know when, Dean. And then you'll mean the worship" he murmurs, mouth sliding lower, lower, right to the crown of Dean's cock, and wraps itself over it, focused, sharp stare never leaving Dean's face, the sight of it reddening as his breath abruptly hitched, startled with the sensation. In response to Cas's subtle act of tease-like sucking, Dean mutters out a few fuck fuck fucks through his teeth.
"Easy" Cas growls upon abandoning Dean's oversensitive head. "Ask and you shall receive" he says and returns to performing his languid pleasure-torture.
"Ask what, Eyes-Teeth" Dean hisses in irritation, but Cas instead of regarding that immediately, pokes his fingers at the soft skin of Dean's lips, demanding entrance and further cooperation.
"Suck them well" he simply says and Dean parts his mouth, eliciting a soft moan from Cas when his fingers meet its warm insides, without any further incentive he sucks them off as if he milked a dick. He knows where those fingers will soon be going so he doesn't want to have them dry. Cas plays along, fucking his hand into Dean's greedy pie hole, is kind enough to shock Dean once in a while with diving throat-deep on his shaft, then returns to his excruciatingly slow doings.
He leaves Dean's flesh at the mercy of temperature and the faux-spring breeze, pulls his fingers out of his mouth also and Dean whimpers at the sudden emptiness.
"Oh, those will come back to you" Cas promises softly.
With a smallest flick of his wrist in the air, he makes body turn around to have him resting on his side. He joins him, marvel gleaming in his eyes, and without a word, buries his warm palm between the cheeks of his ass. Dean excitedly spreads. He pushes one digit in, groans triumphantly after having it crossing the ring of muscle. Quickly adds another, sets up a pace, feeding his skin with the heat of Dean's tight insides, while he breathes heavily and wetly, coming to terms with the intrusion and raw, wonderful friction it offers. "Look how obedient you can be" Castiel coos. "Such a good little thing, waiting that patiently to be filled and defiled for so, so long" he murmurs, moves his fingers faster, prodding deeper, jabbing at Dean's prostate with his thrusts. "Oh, Dean" he sighs. "To think I've wasted so much of our time, when I could've just fucked you weeks before."
"Then do it now" Dean manages to groan. The fingers aren't enough. He wants to be full, whole, filled until he's steady.
"You'd spread and take even pissed from your Castiel" comes a chant, and the fingers go.
"What?" Dean tries to hiss, thoughts blurred but still present in this haze and Dean knows there was something disturbing with the words that he just heard. But he gets no time to try to think them through, cause Cas turns them around once more, spreads Dean's legs as far as they can go and pushes at his hole, blunt pain hits him and he lets out a whimper.
"This won't hurt for long" he hears soft voice of reassurance, alongside the pain, he feels hands stroking tenderly his calves to bring him comfort. Slowly, Cas pushes himself whole in. Only then, Dean can feel his ass suddenly filling with some sort of moisture which he takes as mojo. "Now tell me" Cas calls him, voice low with lust. "What do you need?" he articulates slowly as he makes his first languid thrusts. But Dean's too focused at the fullness burning through his ass, all he does is breathe harshly and release a few groans as he's trying to adjust. Cas doesn't stop moving inside of him, but takes one hand off Dean's hip and goes for his dick, proceeding to give it precisely measured strokes, building the pleasure inside of him, cheerful at the sight of Dean trying to buck into his touch. He takes a strong, bordering on painful grip on its head, earns an irritated hiss from Dean in reply.
"Not happy?" Castiel mocks. "We'll get you properly entertained, just wait" he chuckles only to almost entirely pull out of Dean and rapidly push in with force. He fucks him with heavy thrusts, hitting his prostate every single time, because he's all eyes and he sees, slapping of skin against skin gets lost somewhere among Dean's moans, louder and more desperate with each burning moment of contact. He leans in for a kiss, steals the air around Dean's lips, sucks out Dean's whimpers right out his mouth as he pounds into him mercilessly now and cruelly draws circles on his still too tightly held cock, firing him all to the top, but not letting the sparkles flow. "Pray tell, Dean" he groans. "What do you need?" Cas asks into his parted lips, nearly laying himself on top of him, pinning him with his weight and lets his hand wander onto Dean's neck and caresses it as if he were stroking a pet. "Say it" he orders. "Say it and the truth will free you".
"I need you" Dean stutters, voice strained with the burden of being on the peak for too long.
"Good" Cas murmurs. "Say it again."
"I need you, I need you, God, I need you" Dean cries out madly, hoarsely as Cas's hips fuck into him even more erratically and he can hear his breathing becoming overdriven with pleasure as well.
"Such a good girl you are" Cas whispers and Dean barely makes it out, but he's to blinded by the orgasm swelling out inside of him to have it in him to be worried. "And all mine" Castiel adds and bites at Dean's lower lip hungrily, drawing and sucking blood when Dean groans in pain.
A moment later, Dean can feel yet another painful sensation flowing through him, and it's strong enough he's able to distinct it as separate despite the haze that makes him forget all else. Fire, something burning on his neck so hard he knows his skin will blister. But Cas's words are even louder than that when they come, still, they do the opposite of making him focus. "All that I want, I now have" he gloats. "But what does my pet want?"
"More" Dean croaks. "Wanna go to the end" he manages to say, deciding to deal with the wrongness of those words later. He can't think with the surge of need in his balls, ass and dick intoxicating his whole system, he only wants it out.
"Very well" Cas muses. "You've earned your more."
There's something else, something more, probing at Dean's hole, and it stretches him to his very limits as it slides in alongside Cas's dick. It goes right to his prostate and hits, sending a jolt of obliterating pleasure through his bones. Cas lets go of his penis, finally lets him come. And he does, chanting "Cas, Cas, Cas" again and again, as release takes the remains of his strength away from Dean.
"Oh, Dean" Cas says, too sweetly as he digs himself into Dean several last times fierce enough the make the whole bed move, and Dean takes it with eyes shut, brain worn out, still panting for air. "You shouldn't have called me that, either" he croons, burying himself balls-deep for the very last time, shuddering and hissing as he comes, filling Dean until his ass leaks come and black ooze. He pulls himself out and a black tentacle retreats from Dean's insides as well. But it doesn't matter anymore, now does it, baby?" he murmurs, tracing the burning handprint he left on Dean's neck with his fingers. "You're mine."
"Yeah, all fucking yours, Cas" Dean mutters tiredly, wanting sleep and quiet. His nerves and bones are too tired, they demand peace and silence. "So shut up" he says and dozes off, deeply into unawareness, paying no attention to the hand petting his hair or whatever its owner says last.
"All fucking yours, Teeth" in a whisper comes an amused, proud correction.
But Dean doesn't hear it anymore. He sleeps as the fake lavender-scented wind caresses his face alongside with the all-eyed palm.