Sleeping next to Dean is often the only way that Castiel truly enjoys the process; an attempt to sleep by himself on Bobby's sofa proves that it isn't nearly as gratifying without the warmth of Dean's chest at his back, and Dean's strong arm slung around his waist, and Dean's soft snoring at his neck. It's not the same as being an angel, or having his Grace there to protect him, but when Castiel feels Dean's rough fingers skirting the edges of the scar on his chest (the banishing sigil that Castiel himself carved there for his lover's sake), it's something better: he feels at home.
Tonight, he does not have that opportunity. Fully-clothed (although both his jeans and his black t-shirt are technically Dean's), Castiel sits up in against the head-board, with his lover's head in his lap. Sporadically, Dean makes some kind of noise — often groaning, sometimes grunting, once or twice whining, and always, without fail, sounding pained — and Castiel runs the back of his fingers through Dean's hair and down his cheek. Without his angelic abilities, Castiel can't intervene or even peek inside of Dean's subconscious to see what terrors trouble him. But he can sit up with Dean — despite his (still new to him) mortality, he can go longer without sleep than Sam and Bobby. More often, this talent makes itself useful out on hunts, when someone must keep watch, but now, he can use it to try and see Dean through the night.
At some point after Castiel's lost track of the time, Sam stops in the room with an oversized mug, filled nearly to its brim with coffee. For all Castiel does not much care for the taste, he takes the beverage and drinks it anyway. Staying awake is more important than his personal comfort. "You don't have to do this for him, you know," Sam points out, hovering by the bed, arms crossed over his chest. His brow knots in concern; he frowns when Castiel's only response is to tilt his head and stare. "Cas, I just mean... There's nothing you can do for him. There's nothing any of us can do."
Castiel shunts the coffee cup into his left hand, and holds up the right one, where the silver ring and its clumsily carved lettering glint in the lamplight. He meets Sam's eyes, but does not glare; that would be an unnecessary expenditure of the energy that Dean needs from him. Without losing his intent, he whispers, "He would stay awake for me."
Sam nods and says nothing further before making his exit; Castiel sighs and sets the remainder of the coffee on the bedside table. He casts one last look down at the pallor on Dean's golden cheeks. Dean twitches, moans, momentarily curls up; pain furrows his entire face, and even though he mutters, "Alastair," he doesn't rouse. Feather-light, Castiel ghosts his fingers down Dean's jaw and, knowing that they won't do anything against nightmares, mutters a few Enochian syllables of protection against evil. Laying his hand on Dean's shoulder, right over its perfect imprint, Castiel turns off the light.
Dean has it good when he's awake, but sometimes, when he dreams, he finds himself in Hell and he's never chained up to the rack.
Tonight starts in a memory: in life, this woman before him had everything. A husband who loved her, children who worshipped her, a position of power at Niveus Pharmaceuticals, more money than she could spend, more excess than she needed, and more extramarital affairs than she could keep up with. Here, though, she's just another soul to rip apart. Sweat stains her white dress yellow and plasters her ginger-colored hair to her pale, squarish face, and tears run over the paths where their fellows dried. Her body is short, commanding, spread-eagled, stretched out in an X; her voice cuts through the silence in shrill, wailing protests that she shouldn't be here; Dean looks her up and down three times before frowning at the superiority that reeks off her, even in the Pit.
Alastair stands beside her, not in either of his meat-suits, but in his Hell-bound true form: tall and gangly, skin blue from bloodlessness, grey from lack of sunlight, pink and silver from the faded scars that seemed to hold him together, and tinted green in the appearance of decay; parts of it peeled away to show his twisted, black bones and his shining, white eyes stood out — unmarred and perfect — stark against his grizzled face, despite their similar coloring. Shushing her softly, he runs a long, gnarled finger down her cheek. "Oh, come on now, don't be like that," he whispers. "Surely, you had to know that this was coming for you, at the end... Don't you think so, Dean? Shouldn't our Mrs. Vice President have known that this was coming?"
Dean supposes that he doesn't want to guess after what she used to think.
"No?" Alastair muses. He sighs — pensive, reverent, exasperated — and brushes a clump of hair off of her face, tucking it behind her ear. "I mean, it's obvious, really, if you stop to think about it. There are some people, Dean, as you'll come to learn, who just couldn't end up anywhere else. And this one…" He shakes his head and his knotted clumps of black hair seem to hiss like snakes; as if inspecting her for quality, he taps his fingers on her cheek, and leans in to inhale deep her scent. "…Well, she wasn't quite so bad that we got her soul before she died and let a demon wear her body. But, oh, we have been keeping this seat warm for her." Alastair caresses her like slapping her across the face, wrapping his hand around her jaw with cold, slippery affection. "It's an accident, for some people — ending up here. They slipped up once, but badly enough, and they couldn't make it better. And then there's cases like you…" Glancing over at Dean again, his smile turns fond. "Crossroads deals for reasonable things, even good things… And then we have denizens like… this little bitch here."
Finally, Alastair steps back from her, ambling to his assembled collection of torture instruments, all spread out on a table and waiting to be utilized. He looks up and down the line of saws and razors, of swords and forks, of flails and whips and thumbscrews — and after several moments' consideration, he settles on one of the simple ones. A razor, neither too long nor too short, with a hilt of polished ebony, perfectly sharp and glittering in the Hell-flames that illuminate this cell. Whistling idly, he turns it over in his hand — and then thrusts it into Dean's. Dean stares at him, wide-eyed.
"Come on, now," Alastair tells him. "You can't learn how to do it from just watching me. And you did say to sign you up — didn't you?"
Dean swallows, and nods. Wrapping his hand around the razor's hilt, he watches his knuckles go white instead of watching his feet advance toward the rack. He looks down into this woman's face — her sagging, pale breasts, her blue eyes horrified at his presence here, at the fact that he looks so human and so unlike Alastair. They ask, without her lips moving, if he's here to save her or let her down at least — and Dean smacks her across the mouth, his hand like a granite brick. When he grabs her by the back of her neck and shoves her face toward his, there is none of Alastair's care or poisonous friendliness. If Dean is to do this, then at least he'll do it honestly.
"Lady," he snaps, "you wouldn't have given me a second thought while you were alive." He curls his fingers up in her hair and yanks until a clump rips off her scalp. "I fought hard, and I got hurt, and I watched my father and my brother die, and I gave up my life, my shot at happiness — so I could protect smug, self-righteous shits like you from things that make your worst nightmares wet themselves. …And you people?" He smacks her again, and shoves her, by the forehead, back into the rack. "You well-dressed career people with your degrees, and your caviar brunches, and your fancy European sports-cars — you always treated us like we were scum." Slowly, he drags his hand down her forehead, and her nose, coming down to cover her mouth as he holds her against the scalding metal stays. "But since we're all here now… time seems right for a little payback — don't you think? Because I sure do."
Dean rests the razor on her shoulder for a moment before pressing it into the skin, causing first a purplish imprint and then a welling up of red, red blood. She winces, and makes a whining noise, wrinkling her nose and asking: why me, why me, why me… As the blade sings through her flesh, as Dean jerks it down across her collarbone and curves through one of her tits and slices it clean off, as the lumpy, surgical scarred and stretch-marked hunk of fat tissue and saline hits the ground between his feet, Dean hears whispers smoking out of her wound. All her secrets start pouring out, her vulnerabilities… Dean clenches his free hand on her intact breast, digs his nails into it until he feels her blood pool up beneath them.
"Seems a shame to destroy these," he tells her. "Doctor What's-his-name did good work. …But don't worry: they'll grow back. And then we'll cut them off again, until I figure something out…"
"What? What?" she begs, voice raw from the screaming. "What do you want to know? I'll tell you anything, just please — please, let me go…"
Keeping his hand on her teat, he leans in close, presses the razor to her cheek, and whispers: "Why did you really get your tits fixed up? Was it for your husband, or your boyfriend number five, or to secure that nice promotion with the cushy corner office and the thirty-thousand dollar bonus…" He draws the knife down, slices up her jawbone, and then carves a hard, long line from her jugular vein to her carotid arteries. Her eyes double in size as she gasps for air that can't get past the leak. "…Or was it just so you could break your daughter's self-esteem? …She's gonna be down here soon, by the way, if she keeps refusing to eat. And then I'll get to shove my razor into her too — and it'll all be your. fault."
As she weeps, Dean feels a chill advance, leaning into his back; Alastair's bony fingers wrap around Dean's wrist. "Good, Dean," he says, nuzzling into the back of Dean's neck. The kiss he adds is brief, and leaves red marks on Dean's skin in the perfect image of Alastair's fangs. "Very good… I like the anger, and that righteous indignation, it's a very… personal touch." He slides the backs up his fingers up Dean's hand, until he holds the razor with him. Guiding his arm through the motions, through a clean, precise incision all the way down her torso to her cunt, Alastair instructs, "But your technique could use some work — don't you lose your pretty little head about it, though; you'll get better."
The dream-memory plays out as Dean expects it to, unaltered from the night he really broke the First Seal: Alastair presses into him just so, slides one leg between his two and pushes an emaciated thigh into Dean's muscle. He paws at the front of Dean's jeans and kisses the pulse point above his jugular; against his will — all he's thinking, on a loop, is: stop touching me, this is wrong, no… no, this is wrong… no, no, this is wrong, stop touching me… — Dean hardens and he moans. Leaning up into Dean's ear, Alastair whispers, "You know… That sounded like a, 'yes' to me."
He throws Dean to the ground; Dean's clothes disappear before he feels the thump shake through his bones. Before he even understands what's happening, Alastair swoops down on him and jams his cock into Dean. The pain shoots up through Dean's body first, and he flushes from his forehead down his neck as Alastair rips through his flesh and finds secrets that Dean managed to keep during the past thirty years — and in the gritted teeth and the contorted face, in how he keeps his screaming bottled up inside him, Alastair sees one thing that he knew already: how much Dean likes the pain. He slams against Dean's prostate, though, and again, and again — and amidst the pain, the pleasure starts. Dean's breath catches in his throat, and a moan chokes out. Chest heaving, Dean glares up into those white, soulless eyes. Alastair smirks; his next thrust is slow, and gentle, and comes accompanied by his hand caressing Dean's cheek.
"Come on, you son of a bitch," Dean grunts. Despite how much he doesn't want it there, another moan worms its way into his voice. "Get it over with before this turns into some chick flick."
"Oh, but you don't want that, do you?" Alastair runs his fingers through Dean's hair, stroking it and (with his other hand) Dean's cock so tenderly it makes Dean groan in frustration. "Ask for it nicely, Dean. …I want to hear you beg me to hurt you." But as Dean opens his mouth to do so, Alastair does something unexpected: he lies down on Dean's chest and kisses him — biting his lips so deeply that he almost rips them off. He grinds his hipbones into Dean's, and his next thrust hurts, but Dean takes no satisfaction in it. "…You know, Dean, I remember this night more fondly than any of our other fourteen-thousand six-hundred and ten."
Dean pales. This is not how his memory goes. "…This never happened," he tells Alastair, looking him in the eyes. "You're not real."
Alastair trails a finger down Dean's cheek and neck, down to the midpoint of his collarbone. "I'm every bit as real as you are."
"You're dead. Sam killed you."
"Physically, yes," Alastair muses, kissing Dean again. He tongues down through Dean's throat, to the self-deprecating that his sense of humor couldn't hide. This time, he doesn't bite, but nips at Dean's lips. "But I told you before… you can't escape me, Dean. And as long as I'm somewhere inside your head? …I'll never be truly dead."
When Dean wakes up with a start, Castiel is there for him. Without asking questions, he takes Dean in his arms, wipes the sweat off his brow, and gives him a gentle kiss. Dean accepts it, but still whispers, "Cas… not now. Please."
Castiel nods, and says a silent prayer to the Father. He tries to spread his wings, to turn them into a protective covering, even if they won't stave off Dean's own psyche — momentarily, they seem to rustle, but remain dead, unmoving. All they do is stay there as reminders of loss, and Castiel only holds Dean close until he falls asleep again.