There's also a podfic for this story. Podfic is fanfiction read aloud. Like an audiobook. You can find it on the audio archive. dot com
"This wasn't suppose to happen," Dean roared, fisting his hair as he paced the ratty carpet of the motel. "This is why I hate witches! They go and they work their mojo and crazy shit happens and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it!"
Blue eyes watched him with some level of exhaustion from a safe distance away. "We merely need to find the witch and get her to correct this. There has to be some way to reason with her, to let her see the… predicament she's put us in."
"Calling it a predicament would be the understatement of the freaking century, Cas."
The angel glared at him, patient demeanor cracking under the stress of the day and Dean's egotistical stance that everything that happened was always in order to make his life more difficult.
The angel shoved to his feet. "You seem to forget you are not the victim of this curse. I am!"
Power pulsed like a heartbeat between them and Cas quickly sat back down, hands on his thighs and not looking at the hunter, while Dean back-pedaled several steps. Green eyes flicked around the room uneasily, waiting to see if there was another pulse of power, another warning, or if something even worse would take place.
"At the very least," began Dean slowly, "I suppose this having happened revealed a lot about both of us."
"More than I would like."
Dean looked wounded. "You don't want me to know you care what happens to me? That you're almost obsessively protective of me and Sammy?"
The angel scoffed. "Protective of you doesn't matter now that I'm reduced to a mortal's strength because that –that thing absorbed my power-"
"We'll fix it, Cas," interjected Dean.
"How?" snapped the angel. "I can't get anywhere near you or it without my own desire to protect you being used against me. Am I suppose to just walk away from you? Stay on one side of the earth while you and your brother dwell on the other? If I was willing to fall from Heaven to stay by your side, do you really think I'd be able to stay away from you? Regardless of the risks to me? Or even to others?" He was on his feet again, angry and beseeching. A sound from the square cage taking up half the bed made both of them look, Cas glaring. "And why is that abomination here? If we deposited it on the other side of the planet, rather than myself, this might remedy itself."
Dean regarded the bird in the cage; it's beautiful copper and rust colored body giving way to the deep blue and forest green of its tail. It sat roosting, black eyes focused on Dean in a way that suggested a higher intelligence; because no bird could be so focused on a target they weren't hunting.
"Look, Sam's getting food. We can try to sit down together, real peaceful and normal like, see if maybe that allows us to get closer without a bomb going off. Maybe… maybe the trigger is linked to our emotions," he tried. "We're both rightfully agitated, right? Okay, maybe we need to be mellowed out, calm. Maybe this curse doesn't differentiate between our being mad and our being mad at each other, so it just lashes out."
"I can't be calm, Dean," growled Cas. "I was hit with two separate curses. One stripped me of my powers and the other plays on my weaknesses because I don't know how to fight them as a human. And this is all your fault!"
"How is it my fault?" he asked, affronted. "It was Sammy who insisted we take this hunt. I friggin hate witches."
"You are my weakness, Dean!" snapped Cas. "Why have you not realized this yet? I would give or do anything for you and the witch knew it! She knew it and she's using it against us for her own amusement a-and suddenly I'm a pawn in someone else's game and-"
Another pulse of power shook the cheap pictures on the wall, Dean holding up a hand to his friend.
"Cas, I get that, feathers, I do. I've been a pawn on the board enough times to know, but I really need to you to calm down."
"I can't be calm!" barked the angel. "The second curse has me…" he struggled, searching for the words, "jonesing for you like a addict for a hit. Every cell in my body screams for you, to be completely in your 'personal space' until I can't breath and I drown in you. The other curse won't let me even approach you and I feel like I'm being ripped in half at the molecular level. I can't be calm, Dean!" He pointed accusingly at the bird in the cage. "Worse still, according to the witch, the source of my torment is also my salvation? I can't get near the damn thing!"
The walls shook in warning, the bird in the cage making a disgruntled noise, as the power swelling in the room made the hair on Dean's neck raise in warning.
He swallowed thickly. "Then let me come to you," he said. Cas looked at him in surprise. "If you can't come to me, maybe it can still work if I come to you."
Frowning, the angel seemed to steel himself, bracing for pain. "Do you not realize what it is I want from you, Dean? To what extent?" Dean took a cautious step forward, closing some of the distance between him and the angel. Cas countered by taking a step away, looking pained and frightened all in one. "I want you. In a very human and completely physical sense."
Dean took another step forward, then two until Cas was backed against the wall in his attempts to keep the same amount of distance between them. "I know, Cas," murmured Dean lightly, his heart hammering in his chest. "And it's okay, so just be calm."
"Stop telling me to be calm!" he ordered, panic clearly rising as Dean crept across the room with all the care of a man walking on thin ice. "Everything I've worked so hard to keep hidden so as to not complicate or risk ruining our relationship is being thrown in my face, so stop telling me to be calm! How are you so calm?"
"Because I feel the same way about you," he stated carefully, risking another step forward so that he could probably reach out and touch Cas now if he wanted.
"You…"
"Feel the same way, yes," repeated Dean, then snorted. "And it took my least favorite thing on the planet to get that confession out of me. I think that's called 'irony'."
"But…" The angel shook his head, not fighting off the hand that reached out and curled into the lapel of his jacket. "I don't understand."
"Shut up and kiss me and you will," growled Dean before crushing his mouth to the angel's.
Cas groaned into the kiss, pressing his body to Dean's even as the hunter pinned him to the wall, devouring his mouth with heated kisses, his tongue delving into the angel's mouth as the other man opened up to him. Pulling him forward, Dean slid his hands up the angel's body, shoving his coat off of his shoulders and down his arms, letting it hit the ground in a pile. Cas followed after the hunter, dizzy and desperate, the force of the one curse already causing him to shake with need for this man. The hunter's name poured off the angel's lips as Dean's mouth left his, lowering to rake his teeth over the angel's neck, nipping and biting at it, while eager hands shoved away Castiel's suit jacket, discarding it with the other as he continued to back them towards the bed.
The hunter's mouth was on Cas' again, the angel's fingers in his hair as Dean's calve made contact with the end of the bed, one hand leaving Cas only long enough to fumble with something down by his side, then coming back up grab the angel's hand, guiding it lower down the length of his body until fingers delved into softness.
Castiel's eyes flew open in shock, power pulsing so strongly through the room, Dean jumped a step back, both he and the angel staring at each other, a slow grin stretching across the hunter's face.
Sam came burst through the door then, Ruby's knife in one hand as he looked around frantically, having felt the surge of power from even outside. His eyes fell to where Cas stood, one hand on the bird that had been in the cage, then flicking to Dean who was grinning like a maniac.
"What is that?" he asked, going for the simpler questions first.
His brother grinned at him. "It's a magical healing cock. What does it look like?"
"It looks like you stole someone's rooster for reasons I can't fathom."
"It gave Cas his powers back once we figured out how to get him close enough to it to actually touch it." Those dancing green eyes swept to the angel who now looked angry again.
"That was a stupid risk to take," he growled.
"It worked, didn't it?"
"Samuel, you will need to get your own room for the night. Your brother and I need to speak." Warily, Sam nodded, depositing the food on the table, then backed from the room. "And take this poultry abomination with you."
When the door was locked and they were alone again, Dean was immediately all over Cas again, the angel gasping out as fingers loosened and removed his tie. "Such recklessness could have gotten us both killed. That stupid bird could have smited us."
Dean turned them so that the back of Cas's knees hit the edge of the bed and he went down, the hunter going with him, his body hovering over the angel's as he lifted his head to grin at him.
"We're down by one curse though now, right?" Cas nodded, and then groaned loudly, eyes rolling back as Dean rolled his hips against the angel. "Let's see if I can't take care of the other one as well."
