Benny sleeps.
Dean's been doing this salt-and-burn shit for so long that he thought surprises were a thing long done with, but apparently not; the vampire next to him is sleeping, his big body propped against a tree trunk, arms folded over his chest, head lolling to one side. If his eyes weren't closed, it would be like he was still sitting up, talking to Dean, telling him about his fifty years in Purgatory. The stories don't vary much – some monster or beast attacked him, he killed it – but they pass the time. Now, though, but for the sound of Benny's guttural snoring, Dean is alone with the forest, the darkness, the never-ending silence that means anything but 'we're safe'. The clearing they're in is defensible, the best they could find before Dean started sleeping standing up, or worse, hallucinating from exhaustion. He had a brief nap, all he could manage, then woke and nodded in surprise when Benny asked if he could keep watch while the vampire himself got some shut-eye.
The silence is excruciating; and they're no closer to finding Castiel.
Quietly, with a self-conscious glance at Benny, he shifts on the ground, moving himself so that he's kneeling. He doesn't know if it makes any difference – he's never really done this, before – but Sam always used to kneel when he prayed, so it just seems right, somehow, to do the same.
With yet another look to make absolutely sure Benny is sleeping, Dean clears his throat and presses his hands, flat, together; fingers pointed towards the sky.
"Castiel." He begins, then feels like a dick, so he starts again. "Cas." That's better. "Hey, Cas." He laughs, a small, bitter chuckle, and feels profoundly stupid, but pushes on. "I don't even know if you can hear me. Uh." He draws a long, shuddering breath. "It's been about three weeks since I last saw you. Since we got here. I'm travelling with a guy, uh-" He shakes his head, eyes still closed, and presses the side of his folded hands to his forehead. "You wouldn't like him." He sighs. "Where are you, you stupid son of a bitch?" He looks up at the blank, endless sky, though he knows Castiel isn't there. Hell, it's questionable whether anyone is there, anymore. Certainly, no one is listening.
He stares into the black for a little while, the noise of Benny's snoring the only thing audible, and then lowers his head; closes his eyes again. "I could do with your help here, Cas. I know you're out there." He laughs again, mirthless. "I always knew." His knees start to ache, dug in the dirt, and he shifts to try to get comfortable again. "Anyway, if you're – here – drop in, maybe? We could use you, man. We-" he hears Benny's snoring change – a snuffling noise from the direction where the vampire is sleeping, and his pulse quickens at the prospect of being caught like this. It's dumb to get embarrassed about praying to Castiel, but Benny has made his feelings about their 'quest' abundantly clear.
Dean can't really blame him; he's right; it's probably a mistake. But Dean isn't leaving here without the angel, and that's the end of it. No one gets left behind. Not now. He draws breath quickly, again. "So. Yeah." He mutters, staring at the floor from under his lashes before he closes his eyes again. "Get your ass over here, Cas. If you can." He coughs awkwardly and sits on his calves. "Amen, I guess. Roger." He parts his hands; lets them drop into his lap. "Copy that, you feathery bastard." But there's no acid in his words, no bite. He sits for a moment in the quiet clearing, feet uncomfortable where they're pressed into the dust. He tilts his head towards the sky, again.
Castiel once mentioned that the heavens and their servants were connected, at least in concept and lore, with the stars themselves. He'd pointed out a cluster and said 'my name corresponds to one of those', throwaway, as if it meant nothing – but Dean had wondered, ever since, exactly which one it was.
There are no stars in the sky in Purgatory.
Xxx
'Copy that, you feathery bastard.'
Castiel, crouched by the shore, allows himself a small smile.
His mind is a mess; words come thick, thought is unconnected and vague. He is healing but it's coming slow, new links made every day, but the process so slight that it may as well not be detectable at all.
And then, there are the prayers.
When Dean's voice first rang in his ears he thought he was imagining it. It had happened before; Dean's voice at his ear, or Balthazar's, or Sam's, but usually they were harsh, accusatory, violent; Sam's especially, for what he had done. His brother's came less frequently but hurt more. Balthazar had been good to him, had loved him when few of his brothers would risk coming to his aid, and he-
He learnt recently that dwelling on these things does nothing to assuage his guilt, but it is difficult not to.
Dean's voice is in his ear, every night, now. So far they – the prayers - have ranged from cautious, to exhausted, to desperate; Dean, pleading for his help at the end of a long day; Dean, whispering his name softly as light dimmed over the horizon; Dean, shouting for him in the forest. Castiel hears him only when Dean calls to him on purpose, but the prayers get more conversational as time goes on. The less hopeful Dean is that he's listening, the more he says. It is worse every time.
There have been seventeen prayers so far; Castiel is counting.
He knows there will be more, in the days to come, and wishes beyond anything that he could answer them. He wishes, slightly less, that they would stop.
Xxx
He tilted his head back, laughing. "Okay, so. Hands at ten and two. Remember what I told you?"
Castiel looked at him, haughty, and frowned. "Dean, I'm not a child."
Dean only laughed again. Sam, in the back, leaned forward, resting his elbows on the front seats, and grinned between them. "Don't worry about it, Cas, it's a hazing ritual. He's full of shit."
Castiel looked only slightly happier. "Nevertheless," he began, voice level, "I am over a million years old. I highly doubt this… thing will evade my understanding."
Dean, still snickering beside him, shook his head. "Just go." He said flippantly, and then caught himself. "But be careful or I swear, Cas, I will banish you."
Castiel chuckled himself at the absurdity of that, but placed his hands in the exact spots that Dean had indicated, and breathed in deep, eyes fixed on the field ahead. Dean was foolish to worry; there was nothing in the vicinity to crash into, even if Castiel was likely to crash (which he was not). He started the car, methodically going through the motions which Dean had told him, and then stared in dismay when the car choked forward only briefly before coming to a stop. He took his hands off the wheel and looked to Dean, who was, of course, bent double in his seat again, laughing. Sam reached over and patted his shoulder, rolling his eyes at Dean.
"Don't feel bad. He taught me when I was fourteen and I still never hear the end of it."
Dean's laughter redoubled at that; he blinked away tears of mirth. "Yeah, because you nearly killed someone."
Sam lifted his head indignantly. "I did not! I might have, I dunno, grazed her-"
Dean cut him off. "You knocked her over."
"Yeah, well, maybe I just had a crappy teacher!"
Dean was no longer listening; he was laughing again. Castiel, goaded by his cockiness, started the car once more. He breathed in levelly, more to keep a rhythm than anything else, and felt the car. Summoning the last shreds of his grace around him, tiny pieces of residual power, he used it to whisper, quietly, Go.
And go she did; the Impala roared to life, rocketing suddenly forward, covering half the length of the field they were in in one enthusiastic jump. Dean, who never wore his seatbelt anyway, was so startled that he flung his hands out in front of him to clutch the dashboard, looking to Castiel with terror in his eyes as Castiel steered them over the dirt.
"Okay! Okay! Uncle! Stop!" Dean yelled frantically, as Sam took his turn, now, to collapse in a fit of hysterics. "Cas!" he shouted again, and Castiel looked at him smugly before whispering to the car in Enochian, stop.
He didn't mention that he never turned the key in the ignition, never even started the engine; that was irrelevant. The aim of his exercise had been achieved; Dean was slumped in his seat, one hand clutching the chair, the other against his face, as Sam roared in the back and the Impala rolled quietly to a stop, as if they hadn't just been going in excess of ninety miles an hour. Castiel, hands still at ten and two, met Dean's eyes and smirked, just slightly. Dean leaned over and punched him in the arm, before withdrawing, muttering 'fuck. Ouch.'
"Yeah, alright, you fucking cheater. You made your point." He muttered childishly, and kicked the underside of the dashboard (gently, Castiel noted).
"Shall I drive you home?"
Sam barked another laugh as Dean wailed, "Fuck no!" and pulled the keys out of the ignition, leaning over Castiel to do it. He clutched the keys in his fist and then got out of the passenger door, stomping around to the driver's side. "Get out. Neither of you are ever touching my baby again."
xxx
That didn't happen.
There has never been enough time, enough joviality between them for something so… ordinary. So organic. Castiel feels a strange pang of loss, though he knows it was never to be.
He is crouched by the riverbank, watching the water spin past him.
Water has always held significance for them. Water is from where Humanity first emerged; the Styx stands for change, the Ganges rebirth, the Jordan cleansing of sin; the Nile, transience. Absolution. One never steps into the same body twice; one never enters water, or leaves, quite the same.
The irony that he died in a river is not lost on Castiel.
He rocks slightly on the shore, boots drawing slippery trenches in the grit and the sand by the edge. He hears, again, Dean's voice, and squeezes his eyes shut to try to block it out.
Xxx
He wakes unbidden, stirs the dust in the bedroom with one bare foot as he dredges himself away from sleep, drowsiness sluicing off him like water. He leans back and finds him, blindly, with a hand; traces the long, low, easy planes of his body with just the tips of his fingers.
"Morning." he says quietly, but the body in the bed hardly shifts. He leans back, places his hand more firmly on the dip of Dean's spine, and draws himself close. "Dean." He murmurs, and Dean mumbles something incoherent in response. "I should go." Dean opens his eyes; looks at him, blinking away sleep, then closes his eyes again as if the effort to open them for that second was too much. He throws an arm out blindly and takes Castiel's arm in his hand.
"Yeah." He mutters into the pillow, "Probably." And then he pulls Castiel back down, and the angel – fool that he is – lets him. He lies facing the ceiling, Dean's fingers still around his arm, hands laced together over his stomach.
"Your brother will be awake soon." He says, not wanting to break the silence but having to, because Dean might not want him to leave, but he wants Sam to wake and find them even less. Dean knows this, too, but he lets go of his arm and touches his chest, instead, laying his palm flat over his collarbones, fingers curling slightly around the slope of his shoulder.
"He won't notice." Dean says, amusement in his voice, eyes still closed again the pillow, but Castiel, smiling despite himself, shakes his head and pulls himself away from Dean's touch.
"I'm sure." He stands and is dressed, instantly, and Dean looks lost, the way he always does when he leaves. Suit on, tie done up, he is a soldier again; and the loss, the distance, that the clothes put between them is palpable. "Sorry." He says, though it makes no clear sense why he says it. Dean rolls over onto his back and then pulls himself up to sit pillared with his elbows. He shrugs, lazy.
"S'okay. I'll see you when I see you, yeah?" his voice is hushed, still, and Castiel leans over the bed to kiss him, lingering longer than he must, a hand briefly grasping Dean's before he pulls away.
"Call for me, Dean, and I'll be here."
Dean laughs. "Yeah, alright. I'll keep that in mind."
xxx
"Hey, Cas." Dean never feels any less stupid doing this. He's sat by the cave wall, whispering. He should, by rights, be asleep; Benny is at the mouth of the cave, taking first shift; but he hasn't yet prayed today, hasn't yet said Castiel's name; where's the angel? Tell me what you know about the angel - and this is one ritual he's determined to hold onto, even when all his others are now lost.
"Killed some wendigoes today." He breathes, and laughs gently. "Me and Sammy, that was our second job after we went on the road again. But you know that, I guess." He sighs. "I miss him. It's been almost two months, now, Cas." A pause. "But I guess you know that, too." He looks to the entrance of the cave, but if Benny hears him, he gives no indication – he's standing still and tall at the end of the cave, shoulders back. The air is damp, almost wet, muggy and thick, like Dean could put a hand out and grasp handfuls of it. Dean draws another breath. "I, uh, dreamed about you last night." He mutters, embarrassed, though he's almost sure Castiel can't hear him. "I dunno if you're trying to contact me. It was – weird. It wasn't a memory, it was-" he closes his mouth, then tries again. "It was…new." He doesn't mention how the dream – if that's really what it was – stayed with him all day. How warm he'd been, fucked out, soft, the pleasant burn on his skin vivid as if he'd lived it himself. He doesn't mention how he can remember, now, with accuracy, the sound of Castiel's broken voice as he came inside him. How he'd woken flushed and sticky, face wet. "You're a weird guy." He says, though he's pretty sure the dream didn't come from Castiel. Only from himself.
He stops for a moment and feels sleep surge up, almost overtaking him, exhaustion thick and heavy on his frame. Not yet. "If that was a message, Cas, I'm not sure what you're gettin' at." The uncertainty in his own voice surprises him. "I hope you can hear me." He says, quieter, then finally closes his eyes. "Night, Cas." He mutters, as consciousness finally leaves him in one long sweep, melting out of his bones, carrying him swiftly away.
Xxx
Castiel, on the shore, digs his nails, hard, into his knees. "Dean." He says back, every unheard syllable a danger to produce.
The water laps at his feet, sucks the toes of his shoes with a wet, obscene sound; the slosh is a siren's call, and the endless stretch of water before him tempts louder than he'd like to admit. But, Dean's voice still in his ears, he won't go.
Not yet.
Xxx
"So, this friend a' yours. Cas." Benny says, out of the blue, hacking at branches as they walk. They're both breathing hard, and Dean is clutching his side where the rugaru slashed him, its eerily human eyes fixed on his as he smashed its head in with the blunt end of his club.
"Castiel." He corrects, automatically, and Benny spares him an odd, sidelong look.
"Cas-tee-el, then." He echoes, drawing out the syllables as if they sit funny on his tongue. "How d'you even know he's alive?"
Dean doesn't pause – shoulders his way through the trees ahead, Benny close at his heels. "I just know."
Benny grunts his disapproval. "You got a hunch? That's what we're doin' here?"
Dean frowns, but still doesn't turn to look at him; there isn't time. "Not a hunch. I know."
The vampire laughs in barely disguised derision; not out of cruelty, but simple disbelief. "'Scuse me if I call bullshit."
Dean shrugs grimly in response. "You can call bullshit all you want. He's alive."
Benny makes a noise, acknowledging that this thread of conversation is a dead end. He draws level with Dean, cutting through the undergrowth to reveal a small clearing. He catches the hunter's eye, and gets only a short, resolute nod in response. This will do.
Later, when Benny has made a small fire and the two of them are sat around it, alert but sleepy, in relative silence, he speaks up again. "What hold has this guy got on you, brother? You owe him a debt?"
Dean lifted his head and despite himself, grinned. It was a sad, crude thing, but a grin, nonetheless. "Nope."
Benny looks even more perplexed. "So you're goin' through all this just to collect?"
Dean shakes his head. "No, man, it's – it's complicated."
The vampire raises one eyebrow incredulously. "Well, shit, it's a shame we ain't got more time on our hands, ain't it?"
Dean pauses for a moment, then nods, defeated. "Alright. You got me –" he lifts his hands, dirty palms spread wide in surrender, then drops them in his lap just as quickly. "But it's the short version." Benny nods, rolling his shoulders non-committally. "Cas and me, we're –" Dean looks down at his hands, remembering when they were new, so long ago. "It's a pretty messed up situation."
"Dean, c'mon. Shit or get off the pot."
"He pulled me out of hell." Dean says simply, because even thought that was only the beginning, the beginning is still pretty fucking important.
Benny leaned back, one knee lifted, his arm resting on it, weapon still in hand. "And you don't owe him." He said flatly, and Dean chuckled gently.
"Well. Uh." The story in its entirety plays over in his mind, and he shakes his head, still hardly believing that this is his life. For a moment, Purgatory fades out; replaced by the road, by a million motel rooms, by his brother; by two benches in a park, by a copse of felled trees and the shattered windows of a gas station kiosk. "Sit tight. This is gonna take awhile."
Xxx
Sometimes it's like he's the one who drowned, and he wakes sweaty, shaking, at the image of those two pale hands jutting out of the water like jagged teeth; skin is wet and slippery, tearing through his hands, catching damply and then ripping away.
The dreams are fractured, different to how it really was; skin slipping slick, water surging, crashing around his thighs, around his waist, over his head, until in blue silence he is enveloped, sealed in water, floating still as a corpse in endless miles of blue, with nowhere to go; and Castiel is not there.
xxx
The Leviathan know where he is, but they are biding their time.
Castiel hears them whisper constantly; sometimes even during Dean's prayers they are talking, a hideous susurrus in tongues so old that Castiel can barely understand - We Are Here. Over and over. When they were inside him they had whispered too, though their warnings had fallen on ears too foolish to listen. We Are Here. Just that, over and over. We Are Here. It is typical that God's oldest creatures might also be his most vindictive.
He doesn't know what they are waiting for; every day they tell him they are close, closer, sometimes so close he can feel their breath on his skin, feel their fetid flesh sliding over their ancient bones in front of him, the stench of rot so strong he can almost taste it on his vessel's tongue. But they never come closer, never touch him, but for perhaps a single, intimate swipe across his cheek. They do not tear him, as he knows they want to. They're waiting. And Castiel, angel of the lord, one of God's soldiers, is terrified.
He thinks maybe sometimes they hear Dean's prayers, and laugh.
It's been a long time. Too long, now, for Castiel to keep track in human terms. Dean's prayers grow more desperate, more candid, more thin, every day.
Cas.
He can feel the taste of Dean's breath against his ear, warm and wet. The smell of the leviathan, their constant threat, mingles with the sharp tang of Dean's skin, his individual, road-worn scent that Castiel has grown to know so well. He concentrates on one instead of the other; tries to focus his mind on the leviathan, on the danger. He digs his hands so hard into his knees, even as his wings unfurl of their own volition. Dean is his responsibility, his charge, and his duty runs deep. Every bone in his body, every thread of his being, his shaky grace, calls for him to go to him; except one. And Castiel clutches at that one thread like a dying man to his last, shuddering breaths.
I don't even know if you can hear me.
Dean's breath on his cheek is thick, blood-sweet, drawing shaky and soft.
Give me a sign.
So like a usual prayer. Not Dean's usual brand of blasphemy; this isn't a recap of his day, this isn't 'I will find you'. This is Save me. Dean has prayed to Castiel like this before, though he probably doesn't know it. He has called the angel's name in dreams, has called it after Castiel died, so that Emmanuel - the man Castiel never really was - heard them in his sleep and writhed and sweated with it.
I need you.
Castiel pushes Dean's voice away, though it still breathes, desperate, against his mind. He pulls the leviathan's words closer, concentrates on them instead, tries to calm the steady beating of his wings, the tensing of his limbs, the impulse to pull, up, up, away; to go to Dean, his charge. His.
The leviathan laugh, tease his foolishness, pluck at his skin and pull it briefly from his bones. They twist, achingly close, and mix their breath with Dean's again his neck. They kiss and suck at him. They snicker.
We Are Here.
xxx
Benny lifts him under his arms, pulls him to his feet before he ever registers that he's on the ground. Blood is in his eyes, making him blink thick, and Benny's chest vibrates against his back. "What'd you do without me, brother?" Benny's amused voice cuts through the roaring in his ears. Dean lolls against him, trying to right himself, feet struggling to find purchase against the ground. He tries to shrug Benny's arms away.
"I'm fine." he burbles, and then is ashamed of how pathetically the words emerge.
Benny just laughs, again; Dean lets him drag him across the forest, then prop him against a tree. Blindly, he hears Benny tearing fabric, then blinks, free, when Benny wipes the blood from his forehead and bunches the fabric - presumably part of his shirt - hard against the wound above his eye.
"This is why you call me when you get jumped." Benny looks confused for a moment, not his usual gung-ho self, and squints at Dean's face, at the wound. "This ain't a one man mission, brother. We're in this together. You hear me?"
Dean nods because he can do little else. Then he frowns. "I did call you."
Benny looks at his eyes, still pressing the makeshift bandage, hard, against his skin. The cut is already healing. "Well shout a little louder next time, padre, 'cause I didn't hear a fuckin' thing."
Dean is, for a moment, mystified. "I'm sure I called. I must've." and then he realises; he called. Not Benny, but Cas. Not out loud, but in his head. And someone - quiet, desperate, unsure - someone had sighed in response. He fought Benny's hand away. "The angel. I called the angel, Benny."
Benny draws back to sit on his haunches. "You what?"
"I called the angel, and he - he said something back."
"What'd he say?" Benny asks him, in much the same way as you would ask a child what their invisible friend thought of all this.
"Nothing." Dean says, realising, then shakes his head. "Nothing, but he- he wanted to. I felt it."
Benny stands up, then offers Dean a hand and hauls him to his feet. He looks unhappy, but grimly determined, and Dean feels a strange surge of gratefulness, even for Benny's particular brand of reluctant loyalty. "Thanks," he says abortively, unsure, and Benny spares him only an incredulous look; one that says Don't mention it, brother, and you're a damned fool, all at once. They stride out without another word, Dean leading the way, and though his limbs ache; though he's hungry and lost; his prayer was answered.
Cas might be broken, might be crazy, might be captured or even half-dead; but he's alive, as sure as Dean heard him breathe for the briefest of seconds, and that means that Dean will find him, no matter what corner of this godforsaken place he's in.
xxx
They dredged his body from the lake on a Thursday.
The man with the blue, blue eyes. Naked as God intended, his long, white body a thing of beauty. The way he moved was soft, hesitant, as if he was more creature than man, though he had tufts of hair down his chest and around his abdomen, and lines around his eyes, like the rest of them. He did not laugh or smile, for the first few weeks, as if he had to learn how.
Dean was the one who pulled him out; his carer. Emmanuel was his charge. Dean was the one who discovered his healing touch; he'd fallen from a ladder, landed flat on his back, thought that was that, until Emmanuel held him in his long, sweet hands and all, suddenly, was well again.
The tiny town had no idea what to call him, except a miracle. Dean agreed.
Emmanuel kissed his forehead, once, when they were outside, in companionable silence. He didn't know much, but he knew how to kiss, how to talk, how to move his hands as if there were galaxies held between them. Some days Dean was happy just to watch him heal; how he would place his hands on the chest of a colicky infant, a blind old woman, a cancer-ridden teenager, and how all of them would be brighter afterwards. New.
Being with Emmanuel made Dean feel new, though he had no more injuries to speak of. He was riddled with scars, his mind so much older than his bones, but Emmanuel held his heart in his hands and breathed it new life, and there was, whole and unprecedented, suddenly a reason for Dean to go on. Go on where, he didn't know. Emmanuel talked about Faith, about Belief, but that wasn't it, either. There was something to find. Something real. He didn't know what.
Emmanuel held his jaw and kissed him on the mouth, just once. His body was from Heaven, of that, Dean was unquestionably sure; his breath was odourless, uninfluenced by food or drink or exhaustion. Not like Dean's own, rancid by comparison. Dirty.
Emmanuel held his jaw and kissed him on the mouth, just once.
Then he walked into the river; he went back.
xxx
Dean presses the knife so hard against the monster's throat that it is as if every vein in his body is screaming in response, blood pounding hard at the walls of his flesh, trying to escape.
It is like before, almost exactly like it, minus Alastair; his own pulse thudding loud in his head, the weary, horrible sweep of pleasure that rushes through him as his blade, just barely, draws a thin trail of blood from the monster's throat. Dean catches himself, sometimes, wishing he could do the things he could do in hell; tear a man's head off and still have him screaming, pull organs from a body one by one, and still hear a voice pleading him to stop. If he could do those things, do them again, they'd have found Castiel in no time. He learned from the best, but not on this plane, and it's never quite like it was in hell.
Benny stands uneasy behind him as the monster's decapitated head slides sluggishly from its shoulders and lands wetly in the dust. "Christ almighty." he breathes, half impressed, half terrified. "You don't mess around, huh?"
Dean doesn't validate him with a response. He shoulders the club, pockets the knife, stands up straight. He stares Benny down, daring him to say something, something that Sam would say; telling him to stop, that it's not worth it; but he says nothing. He nods, and he leaves the clearing. Dean follows suit, in silence.
xxx
We Are Here.
Dean, beneath him, rapturous. Dean driving a blade through his heart. Dean mouthing at his neck. Dean, eyes cold, staring at him like he's a monster. Dean, teeth sharp, rearing his jaw back off its hinges and devouring him whole. Dean, whispering curses in enochian against his weary flesh. Dean, kissing a line down the slope of his spine. Dean asking for Castiel's hands. Dean signing his hospital papers Castiel Winchester. Dean with black eyes, chanting. Dean with wings, staring him down, accusatory. Dean dead, and slack-jawed. Dean alive, with eyes as hard as stone.
Castiel slumps on the shore, cheek pressed against the pebbles, as the images flash by. He can feel the wet breath of the leviathan. He can taste sulphur and ozone on his tongue, and under it all are the words of Dean's prayers, longing, angry, cautious, lovely, by turn. He is torturing again, he says. He hopes that Castiel will understand.
Getting closer. Dean tells him, voice weary. We'll find you, Cas. Whatever's got you - It doesn't matter. I'll find you. We're getting out.
Castiel closes his eyes, lashes touching the stones that dig into his skin. We're going home. Cas. I promise.
The voices of the leviathan rise. they are laughing, again.
xxx
They were on the hood of the Impala, and Dean was next to him. There' was a bottle in his hand but it was only half-gone, and was getting forgotten. Sam was on his other side, long limbs folded to sit indian-style on the hood, face tilted towards the stars.
"So one of those is you?" He asked, his lasting fascination with Castiel and his brothers ringing clear in his voice. Castiel allowed himself an indulgent smile.
"Not quite. We are represented by the stars, my brothers and I. No particular star is mine; all of them, and none of them, are. It's... complicated." he looked at Sam apologetically, and heard Dean, beside him, grunt.
"You don't even get your own star? You can have the fuckin' things named after you for fifty bucks a pop, Cas. You can name a star monkey fucker if you really want." Sam leaned around Castiel's back to treat him to an offended glare, but Castiel just shrugged.
"It's not a question of naming. The stars don't exist on the same plane as ours. They are our past, our present, our future. They are us and they are nothing. They are balls of gas, just as much as they are individual souls, or indeed my entire Garrison."
"It's too late for this shit, Cas." Dean lay back against the windshield of the Impala, and stared up into the sky. "So, what? You become stars when you die?"
"At this very moment I am dead and alive, simultaneously, Dean. As are you, and your brother, and everything that lives, or has once lived. It isn't a question of when."
Dean squirmed uncomfortably. Sam made a noise of assent. "So, you're talking about non-linear time, right? You don't experience it the same way we do?"
"I never used to." Castiel told him thoughtfully, sparing him a glance and then looking back at the sky. "But with each day I find it easier to imagine. Things are - slower, this way. It's not unpleasant."
"Does that mean you're falling?" Sam asked him, worried, and Castiel shook his head.
"No, not falling. Just - changing." He said quietly, and there was a noise from Dean as he raised his head to look at Castiel, arms pillowed behind his head.
"That a good thing?"
Castiel smirked at him. "It really depends on who you ask."
xxx
He's having trouble remembering what's real and what is not. The leviathan conjure apparitions; they stick close or draw away, never striking, never doing anything but pressing themselves intimately against him, leaving their taint on his skin. They make memories, falsehoods, or recall Castiel's worst experiences in full, achingly real detail. They put him on Dean's lawn again, watching him rake leaves, and his heart drops in his chest, just the same. They trap him in the circle of fire. They put him in that bathroom, bulging, skin stretching, his vessel crying out against the pain.
When Dean arrives, as he is fruitlessly washing his face in the water, Castiel mistakes him for a cruel vision; a mirage that will soon disappear. He stands anyway, to meet him head-on. To take what the leviathan can throw at him.
What he doesn't expect is Dean, real, the same flesh, the same breath that has been whispering against his ear every night for so long. He certainly never expects an embrace.
xxx
He's hungry. So hungry he's never felt more human, more like one of the true living. He pushes Dean, grasps at him, fists his hands in the cloth at the back of his shirt, presses his nose as close to his skin as he can. Takes him in, all of him, with his hands until he lifts his head and does so with his mouth, as well, the sensation almost alien, but not quite.
It does nothing to satiate him; if anything he burns harder, fiercer, especially when Dean opens his mouth in response, draws breath heavy against him, lets him push him down on the bed and cover his body with his own. Dean doesn't know it but his wings are spread, invisible, across the room. He has never felt more free, more human, more like filth and yet rapturous, holy, newly baptised in this body, like the first day he came to earth. He bites at Dean's skin, earns himself a noise, a groan, the single gasped syllable of his new name.
They rut against eachother; he strips Dean of his shirt and mouths at his own handprint and Dean all but arches off the bed, says his name again, squeezes his eyes tightly shut. Castiel sucks, hard, on the flesh there, presses the flat of his tongue against one of the fingerprints; groans, guttural, a prayer in Enochian. It doesn't translate well into english, doesn't translate well into any language, really, but its words hold a power and it means binding, it means posession; but also thankyou, also please, also take me, for I am all I have to give.
Dean doesn't know the words but reacts as if he understands the gist; Castiel smiles against the handprint, even his breath on the skin there causing Dean's muscles to jump and spasm. He gasps, "Holy-" and Castiel laughs, not his first but the first he can truly remember, and Dean, half in shock, pulls him roughly from the handprint and kisses him, long and deep, kicking off his jeans as he does. Castiel pulls away and sits on him to pull the tie from his neck in one long loop, and then to shrug the clothes from his shoulders, coat, jacket and all, before covering Dean again, skin on skin, and touching the handprint with his own, human hand; the fit is not the same but the sensation is.
Raising him again, Saving him again. The beginning of Castiel's rebellion, and it's negotiable as to whether it started then, or here, with Dean's leg around his waist, pushing him closer. Dean is murmuring, voice edging on a shout, repeating his name, "Cas, Cas," and it comes from further inside him each time, until Castiel lowers his mouth to the print again and Dean arches, desperate, against him, and the noise must come from the pit of his belly, from the very core of him, for it wracks Castiel like a sob.
"I need you." Castiel tells him, for it is the truth, and Dean looks at him strangely though he is still breathing hard, still tugging at Castiel's underwear and then, by turn, his own. He pulls Castiel flat against him, brings their cocks into contact, encourages Castiel to slide, wet, against him; for the angel to wrap his hand unsteadily around both of them and jack them, fast, still talking even as their voices descend into little more than choked, half-animal noise.
"Yeah?" Dean asks him, shaky, and Castiel nods. Honesty is alright here, on the cusp of something so new, but which neither of them are truly surprised by. There is a time and a place for truth, with Dean, and Castiel knows this is one of those times, one of those places.
"Yes." He nods, resolute, then lowers his mouth to the handprint once more; strokes at its edge with a thumb, his other hand still wrapped around them both; he presses the flat of his tongue against the raised flesh and feels Dean seize, moving into his hand, shaking as he comes and says nothing but Castiel's name, the name Dean gave him, Cas, Cas, Cas, over and over. Castiel presses his forehead to the mark, drawing his mouth away, and follows, willingly, soon after. He holds himself shaky above Dean as the liquid between them starts to dry, and sweat and adrenaline and wonder blurs his vision. "Dean." he says quietly, his affection undisguised, and he kisses Dean's forehead, reverent. It's all he can manage; he pulls away, moves to lie beside him, and Dean puts out a languorous hand to touch his arm, to find his way down his wrist, to loosely take his hand.
"Really?" he asks, the question not needed, and Castiel lifts their joined hands to his mouth; presses his lips against Dean's wrist.
"Yes."
xxx
"I prayed to you, Cas. Every night!"
Castiel looks at him, hears his voice in his ear - I'll find you, We're getting out, We'll go home. Where are you, Cas? I need you, Cas. I need you. He is more than a charge, more than duty, though Castiel feels these things, too.
"I know." he says quietly, truthfully, because there have been too many lies between them already, but there are no words to express how those prayers plucked at him, how they tortured him and kept him safe, both. He knows he has to stay, that he should have gone by now, but his wings won't move, his body is grounded, sated, and the water that streams by is no longer as appealing as it should be. He should walk in, now, rather than face this selfish failure, but he doesn't. Can't.
"We're not leaving here without you."
"I understand."
xxx
He said, simply, "Dean.", and was visible to human eyes once more.
He stepped away from Crowley's beckoning hand; registered only dimly the look of shock on Dean's face, the rake falling from his hands. He didn't allow Dean time for questions; didn't want him to ask, where were you, how could you, why did you leave me, for Castiel hardly knew, himself.
He stepped forward and wraps his arms tight around Dean, pressed his chin into the curve of his neck, closed his eyes.
This was where he should be, should have been, should always have aimed for. This was the summation, the crux, the end game.
xxx
He trudges through the forest behind Dean, and feels lighter even with his growing dread. Sane, and unhurried, and increasingly human.
Exactly where he was supposed to be.