Title: His Merry Laugh and Wretched Smile
Authors: Lassroyale
Warning: none
Spoilers: Season 4
Rating: PG
Pairings: Dean, Castiel
Summary: The handprint Dean bears is not a mark of Heaven, but a parting gift from Hell.

His Merry Laugh and Wretched Smile

Dean missed Hell.

He missed it like he might miss a beloved family dog that had one morning disappeared from the backyard, with no indication of why or how; just a length of broken chain left attached to a stake in the ground. He missed it with the same bitterness of someone whose chronic pain - a familiar discomfort - had suddenly been lifted.

And Dean fucking missed Hell, because he and Hell had had an understanding. It was an understanding that had been reached without questions needing to be asked. Hell just knew.

Hell knew that he had been dead while he had been living. Hell knew that he had for the first time really lived, when he had been dead. Hell also knew that he had borne forty years of torture with something close to pleasure, his soul jaundiced by twenty-some years of disenchantment.

For its implicit understanding, Hell gave Dean pain.

Oh, and it was such exquisite pain, at that! It was the type of pain that slid through one's veins, poison that burned slowly and became as necessary as Dean's need for validation. It was the type of pain that nipped the ends of his nerves in constant reminder. It was the type of pain that came from experiencing pleasure so intense, that his very flesh felt pared and flayed, his body unable to understand the depth of what was being felt.

And Hell showed him pleasure, such damn pleasure that he could still feel a residual orgasm gather in the pit of stomach; an ache that could never hope to be abated while Dean was living.

Then there was the handprint.

Both Dean and Castiel knew that the hand print on his shoulder wasn't a holy mark from the angel, a symbol of his purification. No, it was a mark of Hell - and that was the rub. Hell wanted Dean to remember it. Hell had clung to him as he was being lifted away from its jealous embrace, clinging to him like a jealous lover unable to let go.

Hell had left its five-fingered brand on Dean, and nothing, not even the grace of an angel, could remove it.

And every single moment he still breathed, the handprint would remind him of the pain he was missing.

Dean used to think he needed that feeling fuck, he knew he needed it, still needed it, because it reminded him of Hell. It reminded him of the suffering, of the ecstasy, of the sweet ambrosia of damnation that he might never get to taste again.

That in itself, was a goddamn tragedy. Some days he couldn't go a minute without thinking about it; at night, when he sweat and shook and screamed, Sammy had thought it was because of nightmares. He was wrong. Those had been some of the most erotic dreams, all broken bits of glass, dull knives, and blunt teeth; all blood and innards, and sex that overpowered the smell of death.

He would wake, sweaty and hard, arching off of the bed in desperate remembrance of skin soft as a baby's cheeks and fingers; cold, skillful, and cruel. He would twist up, a strangled sob of loss smashed against the back of his teeth as his orgasm fell out of his sights.

And a chasm in Dean opened; a chasm that no amount of wanting would fill.

That was before the angel came to him, sitting on the edge of his bed when his brother wasn't around. His voice was low in the silence of the motel room, and his features were harshly beautiful in the yellow light of the lamp on the nightstand. His words disoriented Dean; the sound of his voice triggered a pain so fucking intense, that he felt muddled with a sort of lust that he hadn't experienced in oh-so-long.

Part of him felt ashamed, the guilt of denial; the guilt of needing something so pure to feel something so goddamn filthy.

Yet every time that Castiel stood near him, every time they touched, Dean could feel Hell in the pain that emanated from the handprint. It whispered against his lips like a lost love that that teased him with a soft, merry laugh and luring, wretched smile.

And when Dean smiled back, Castiel might smile too; and each time he did, Dean only saw Hell behind the angel's deep blue eyes.

(The End.)