Name: Bound and Gagged (a song by Creature Feature)

Place: US; heaven
Starring: Dean; Sam; Castiel
Guest starring: Other angels; Alastair; Other demons
Time: 4th Season; Another Ending to the On the Head of a Pin episode and after that
Mood: Scared; Cruel; Worried; Craving; Serene

Warnings:
AU. Not cannon.
Contains mentions of torture (partly descriptive), light insanity, swear words and Castiel
Angst
A bit bitter (as everything I write, unless it's my other, trying-to-be-funny style)
Anything else that insults you, saddens you, frustrates you, makes you furious. That is not the intention. I am not Steven Moffat

Note: I just loved the way Alastair said that Dean was finally complete after torturing him, that he finally got back that part of his soul that Castiel left in hell.

NoteII: I dislike the way Dean and Sam get a problem, a state of mind, which is the source of their inner turmoil trough one season, yet in the next season there isn't anything of that left (like Dean being in hell).

Enjoy!

This was it. The top of the world. The deepest pit of hell. Heaven. This was it, the breaking point, the thing he needed to get back together. This was what he had been waiting for.

He ran the cut down from the captive's collarbone, slow, precise, loving movement of the knife. He didn't cut any muscle, why should he? It was enough for now to just trace the skin, watching the blood travel down and down and down and down.

The sound was sickening. The sound when a droplet of blood finished it's travel on the ground.

Dean pressed the knife deeper. The demon was still talking, maybe he should of cut his tongue. It didn't matter much, Dean wasn't listening. He wasn't asking questions. He didn't say one word since he stepped inside of this room. That was his own little cherry on the top.

He had told Castiel to come in twenty minutes time, knowing that by the time the demon should be sick of Dean's company. Scared of him. Enough to beg for the angel to stay. Freaked out by the joy with witch Dean elicited screams and groans past the demon's lips.

There was nothing else about it. No questions to answer. No offers to be made. No reason behind this little meeting. Just a way to pass the time. Fun.

Flicking his eyes up at the demon's face wasn't very smart idea, Dean noted, he froze on spot at what he found in Alastair's eyes. Pride. Fucking hell.

Alastair screamed when Dean flicked the knife over each of his eyes, just a small cut led from above the eyebrows and only stopping when meeting the resistance of the demon's cheekbones. That forced him to close his eyes, unseeing and drowning in blood.

Good. Dean chuckled.

Twenty minutes proved to be long enough, in the end. Dean was done and finished, the tools he had used laying neatly on the table and Alastair just hanging where he had been all along.

As soon as the door opened and in stepped Castiel, looking completely out of place with that awkward little look on his face, Dean slipped out of the room.

He didn't wait for the angel to turn his ever-seeing eyes on him, he knew what he would see in those. Pity and fear.

Dean dropped his bloodied shirt in the 'waiting' room and went to find some angel that was scared of him enough to take him home.

Any angel that was not Cas, because surely he would notice Dean's soul as he always did. Surely he would see the taint that Dean could feel with his whole being.

He found a young kid, nervous and just as awkward as every angel he had ever met. Had he not been so exhausted and sick, he would have commented on her eyes flicking nervously from Dean's bare chest to his eyes.

One light touch – too light to be anything but hesitant – to the back of his palm and he was in front of the motel. Dean rolled his eyes and turned to face the angel, maybe wanting to thank her, but probably just to tell her that bloody hell, she could have brought him into the room he told her the number of, because dammit, he didn't have his shirt and it was freaking cold outside.

The spot next to him was as empty as he should have expected. He had called it an 'allergy to straight answers', but really, it was more of an allergy to completely everything that was Dean, and it seemed all of the angels shared it. So no reaching to someone, no friendship offers, no trying to get to know them. Alright, he got it.

The motel room was quiet and the air was cold, Sam was away god knew where.

And so Dean started a routine. He shrugged off the rest of his clothes and stuffed those into a bin not really caring that these were his only jeans and that he will be forced to wear dresspants till they meet some shop. Shower was next. Burning hot and then freezing cold. Repeat. And repeat. Until his skin was raw and red and aching.

His stomach still felt as if on water so he didn't eat anything, didn't even take a gulp of beer to calm down as he normally would.

Sleepless night followed.

Castiel dropped by later, Sam in tow, to tell him Uriel was behind the dying angels and he's dead now. And his blue eyes were trying to see trough into Dean's soul, to break the curtains he had pulled down, to pick the locks he had used to separate that afternoon from the rest of his life.

Dean won and nothing was mentioned. He couldn't quite escape the eyes following his every move, but he found that if he stared at the angel back, Castiel would divert his eyes sooner or later.

Days went by without much change. Everything was back in norm. They hunted. Traveled. Talked. Lied.

When Castiel went to get him for the second time (not Alistair, but it didn't make much difference in the end) Dean wasn't so scared. His fingers were tingling, anticipation and dread both coursing trough his veins.

He was feeling way too energized, unable to stay still for longer than two seconds. Dean guessed it must have scared Castiel a bit; the way he paced the 'waiting room', different from the previous time but actually still the same, not looking at anything and not saying anything at all, either.

Up until the point when he picked up his demon knife, standing to a stop in front of his 'victim'. The demon was laughing, but looked a bit uneasy and that was almost like a switch; Dean felt calm and content, peaceful, as he weighed the weapon in his hand.

Ten minutes proved to be quite enough for the demon to start yelling every smallest piece of information he knew, but Dean ignored him until he heard the door unlock when his twenty minutes were up. He cleaned his blades with a great care and tidied them on a wooden tray, not even paying attention to Castiel questioning the prisoner.

Dean quickly finished and once again found himself slipping trough the door without a look at the blue-eyed angel.

They were already waiting for him, and he probably should have expected it. Two angels, reminding Dean a bit of Uriel in the way they looked to have an 'expertize' of their own. Bodyguards, probably, because they crowded him as soon as he stepped into the waiting room.

Dean guessed they answered to Castiel, their orders being not let him leave. But he had learned a thing or two about angels; they got confused when faced with a person having a will on their own.

At first he really considered just giving them a punch both, but they were two heads taller then him and angels. Besides, talking could prove to be just as effective, or even more.

He asked them first; what their mission was and why. Then he refused to cooperate and then he pleaded with them, for the first time since he could remember letting his eyes show just how broken he felt. Telling them it would be cruel to make him stay and that angels should be kind. The kindest thing they could do for him would be to kill him and tear his soul to pieces just as it felt to already be, since otherwise Michael or some other son of a bitch would resurrect him again; he didn't say that, though.

He got what he wanted, strong grip on his arm to fly him back home. And one of the angels stayed behind, struggling with the human tools to make tea.

Dean climbed into his shower fully clothed, as he decided not to scar the poor guy by shedding his clothes as he went.

Third time was a bit surreal.

Fourth time was almost funny, but still his skin would crawl and he would feel cold, thinking about what he was doing.

It was the fifth time that made difference. It was the fifth time that was easy. Easy in the way that Sam didn't even argue with Castiel about taking him off to do his 'work'. Dean didn't argue either, of course. He had been waiting for it, craving the moment he would get a nod, an allowance to press his blade just the tiniest bit under the skin of the next fucker that was on the holy agenda.

That it was a demon didn't come as a surprise. Dean stopped for a moment, standing in front of the shaking prisoner, with his head titled and eyes unfocused, wondering whether the angels questioned demons only, or not. For it had been proven that sometimes angels knew more than demons. And sometimes even humans did.

He sprung back into motion, finishing the cutting open the demon's tunic he had started before his brain got otherwise occupied. Of course they probably asked humans and angels. And of course Castiel would never ask that from him, to torture humans. Dean would refuse, if he did. Angels, on the other hands..

Dean smiled softly and turned around to his tool table to get four clips and an needle-less injection of holy water. After all, he had been trained on human souls. And demons, the twisted humans they were, were just easy. Not even Alastair had known how to try with an angel, though. Dean wanted to know.

He faced his special guest again, with practised moves forcing his eyes open, clipping the skin above and under so that he would be unable to close the lids.

It was almost a work of art, Dean nodded to himself, what he had in front of himself after the first few minutes.

Maybe it was only his imagination, but the twenty minutes seemed to be shorter than he remembered from the first time, but he couldn't decide if it was because he had been enjoying himself, or because Castiel wasn't, so he had cut it short.

This time Cas didn't bother asking questions; having probably heard all of the answers already trough the thick door. Instead the angel stepped to Dean and forced him out of the room, not even giving him time to tidy up the tools. Not that Dean had to, of course. Those weren't his. Those weren't even the ones he had used the last time. But it just felt right to clean the blades, turn the empty bowls upside down to get them to dry.

But Castiel's palms were on his shoulders and there was no fighting angels, and there was definitely no arguing with Cas since he already knew all of the tricks Dean was willing to try on him.

He was already waiting behind the door, the angel-bodyguard from the last times, the one who had made him tea and stayed over for it and a pie and a game of tic-tac-toe, until Castiel – the ever scary commander, or whatever the hell he was, the spoilsport – came and sternly sent him back to heaven. Dean kind of grieved not remembering his name, but then again, angel is not a friend.

The Winchester, feeling a bit high, detached and dreaming, almost giggled when he remembered a saying he didn't know where he had gotten. He turned to Cas to share it, but the blue-eyed angel was arguing about something with Dean's last-times-knight, so he pouted and kept it to himself.

He was expecting Cas to hurry off and get back to his holy business, dumping Dean on the other angel – not that he would complain, they hadn't gotten to finish the game the last time – but instead he clasped his forearm and with a flap of wings they were in his and Sammy's apartment.

Sam was there; that was the first shock to his routine. Dean clutched at his stomach as soon as they landed, the familiarity of his daily life feeling like a punch to his body after what he had been doing just minutes ago. He sprinted to the bathroom, having only enough of self awareness to lock the door before he was bending over the toilette, coughing out the content of his stomach.

Shower followed, but all the while was Dean painfully aware of Sam and Cas talking in the next room. He had the feeling they were talking about him, judging him, hating him, pitying him.

Dean let the water fall down, background noise, even though he was already drying himself. He leaned against the doorway, hoping against all hopes that Cas wouldn't be able to pick up on the sound of him moving, and listened in to the fragments of conversation he could catch.

"...go on, he's-"

"He looked alright."

"To you, maybe! He's fucking not fine! This got to stop!"

"I can't loose the best.. specialist I've got, Sam."

"Well, too bad, 'coz you're about to."

Dean could almost see Sam's unimpressed face, able to imagine his baby brother crossing his arms over his chest and staring Castiel down. It wasn't safe, Dean scoffed, and really he hoped Sammy knew better than to pick a fight with an angel.

"Sam.." There was pretty clear sigh coming from Castiel, Dean almost chuckled. Sam had always been expert in frustrating people, a treat they obviously shared. For a moment he allowed himself to forget they were talking about him and that they were talking about him torturing people and just enjoy Sammy annoying someone other than him.

"Don't you 'Sam' me you bastard! Dean's is not going to do this ever again. Ever. And if I have to angel-proof every damn motel room we stay in, then so be it!"

Well, Dean guessed, that was pretty much the end of it. He heard the edge in Sam's voice, knowing that whatever Cas could say would never change the hunter's mind. Leaning closer to the door, he eagerly awaited the frustrated resort, but it didn't come.

He must have missed the sound of Castiel flying away, because there was only silence from the other side of the door.

And things slowly got back to normal in the days and weeks and months after that; only the craving never left and the dreams never stopped.

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