Little fic I wrote after 4x09/10, main idea is that the handprint formed a connection but the connection flares to life whenever it is touched. So Cas can feel, well, everything.

Ever since he had pulled the Righteous Man out of hell, things had been… unusual. There was the new awareness, a constant, thrumming, pulling, sentient thing at the outskirts of his very being, and it was something that he could not understand and he could not explain.

He had become more susceptible, more susceptible to the whims of a certain pair of brothers instead of following the traditional orders their Father had mandated. Stranger still, very base levels of emotion, which he had only experienced remotely from an observational standpoint or from the memories of the vessel, but those were distant and cold and small compared to the bright flashes of sensation that were penetrating the back of his Grace.

There had been a few times when the sensation had come through sharp and bright and clear, and he could feel a hand, a human hand, shoving its way through time and space and dimension on a winding thread to rest on his consciousness. He could feel, feel the confusion, feel the anger and the fear and the guilt, always the guilt, he could feel it as the hand brushed the connection.

Then again, soon after, when the unfortunate event with the psychic woman had occurred, the connection had flared. It was impossible to tell what the woman's paltry powers could detect, but her call had run its way along the invisible thread that somehow connected him to emotion, connected him to what could only be Dean. He had felt the growing sense of trepidation, of fear, nothing like the self-assurance and righteousness that filled every particle of his existence.

What had caused the connection could not be doubted. Rescuing Dean from hell, holding his very soul in his, well, what would be labeled as his arms was a surprisingly intimate experience. It was strange, exceedingly strange, but then again so was everything regarding Dean Winchester, so was very nearly everything occurring in that plane of existence. In all his long, long, long years, he had never felt doubt so strongly and so keenly as he did now.

But Dean Winchester made points that he could not counter with his blind faith, Dean Winchester inspired in him an unwise, blind sort of trust that he could confess his deepest, darkest secrets too. He had never felt anything like it, a connection so completely unlike what he had with his brothers, what he had with his father, absent as he might be.

The connection was rough at times, streaked with dirty strands of dark hell, festering doubt, nightmares beyond imagining to those who did not witness it. Castiel supposed that it was remnants of Dean, remnants of the place where the connection had been forged. But as the humans with their endless confusing analogies involving flame would say, Dean was through the fire.

But broken as the man was and stained as the connection was at time, Castiel found himself wanting for the first moment from the very beginning of his existence. Wanting to understand, wanting to heal, wanting to help, wanting something he could not even begin to understand.

He had attempted to voice his concerns to Uriel, but the other angel had merely given him a strange and unsettlingly perceptive look, and proceeded to make some sort of comment about weaknesses. Dean Winchester was not a weakness. But apparently they were somehow bonded, connected by more than hell. Castiel had left his mark on Dean's soul, not just his shoulder.

But Castiel had never imagined the true capabilities that the bond allowed for. It seems that he had underestimated the sheer capacity that humans had for certain activities. Naturally, he had been aware of all the intercourse occurring around him through history. In fact, on several occasions it had been his duty to ensure that these activities would take place.

But sitting in the dingy backroom motel where he had landed after the banishing sigil, Castiel felt something stronger, something musty and dirty and overpowering flow through. An echo of Anna's lost Grace, too, slipped through the bond, even though she was not an angel, he would always know her. And he was suddenly filled with an extremely irrational emotion, a jealousy and anger completely irrelevant to the situation. Angels are righteous, not angry. Angels are righteous.

Suddenly overwhelming his line of thinking, an usual sort of stimulation started to flow through the bond. He could feel it, the want, humming in Dean's body, in his soul, and then a thing even stranger than bonding occurred. His vessel was… stimulated. Very stimulated. He knew Dean's body as well as he knew Dean's soul, but Castiel had never had reason to sexualize it in the way most humans seemed to from the moment they laid eyes on him.

But now, now he could feel their bodies, both their bodies, as their languid kisses sped up and the heat began to fill the car, steaming the windows, and then they were rocking together and Castiel was becoming confused for the first time in a long time. He could feel it. Everything. And his vessel was most certainly responding, but it didn't feel like just the vessel. His Grace was thrumming with pure Dean, with pure pleasure, and just as all the sensation came to a crescendo, just as Dean let out one, long, shaky groan, so did Castiel's vessel release itself and his Grace flung out his wings and simply sang with rightness.

He spent a long time sitting there after that, a very long time. He had intruded in private affairs, in DEAN's private affairs, without permission. He had felt Anna, too, through Dean and through the faint echo of her making itself along the bond. But mainly, he had felt Dean. Dean's beautiful, strong, body, the way he was rough and caring at the same time in an impossible mix that made him want to scream and… experience that again.

No. No, it was immoral, it was unrighteous, it was wrong. Angels could not experience emotions and desires the same way humans could, so why…

His thought process was interrupted by Uriel's return from the church down the street. Apparently, one of the priests had just had a very interesting accident that unfortunately interrupted his attempted relations with a younger female member of his congregation.

Now was the time to be righteous, now was the time to be good.

And if Uriel was right, if Dean was becoming his weakness, then it should feel like a bad thing. But the faint feed of emotions whispering on the edges of his Grace, and then that pure, whole moment of fulfillment, it had felt like a perfect thing, a sacred thing, a thing to be cherished.

But he was an Angel, still, a righteous warrior of God, and whatever strange sensations were beginning to overwhelm him, to change him, righteous he would remain. Righteous he must remain.

Dean wasn't sure why sex with Anna had been so, well, weird.

It wasn't like she wasn't a great lay or anything, because damn, as last nights go that was pretty god damn good. Actually, it was literally god damn good, fallen angel and all.

He didn't know. It had sort of felt like when you're the kid making out in the corner of the dance and there's a couple of horny loser buggers snickering. Not that he was ever the kid making out in the corner of the dance. Dances were NOT his deal.

But he'd had a few peeping toms in his lifetime. Even when he wasn't really doing anything sexual. But hey, he was Dean Winchester, whaddaya gonna do?

It had just been… strange. Like he was there, but he wasn't, he was off somewhere else in some crap motel room, or being pulled there at least.

And then there was the whole weird-ass thing when he came. He could have sworn, well, for lack of a better description, that it was two different orgies simoultaneously. Which was quite frankly disturbing.

But hey, bigger fish to fry, bigger demons to kill. There were bigger things to worry about than himself here.

And why he'd had a flash of the biggest, bluest eyes in the world in his head and why he could hear this… singing, like a crapload of choir boys exalting the Lord or some such shit, but times 1000000, well, that was just going to have to be another one of those problems that got put down, down, deep inside that hole in his chest.