Dean never officially left the priesthood. He stayed long enough to arrange his replacement, making excuses and dodging questions until he was exhausted with it. Castiel was a godsend during those times when Dean was bone-weary and not sure how he was going to dodge the next concerned question. The boy would climb onto Dean's lap and slide his arms around Dean's neck, would smile at him with his sweet smile and everything would be ok.

"Why is it important that I remain a priest?" Dean asked, petting Castiel's hair and holding the boy close; The contact innocent and loving as if he hadn't just had his cock buried deep in the boy's body just minutes before.

Castiel smiled at him, almost a pitying smile, like he knew something that Dean didn't know. "It's just important," he replied. "It'd make me happy. You want to make me happy don't you, father?"

Dean should hate how hearing Castiel call him 'father' sets low hum of arousal churning in his stomach. He has the feeling that he's entered a contract with a demon, but with Castiel's small, smooth hands against his face he can't find it in himself to care.

He leaves in the dead of the night only two days after his replacement arrives. He gets into his car and finds Castiel already waiting for him in the back seat, sitting beside an already-packed bag and yawning prettily behind a hand. Dean tells himself it's not kidnapping if the boy wants to go. He tells himself that the lube in the glove box is only there because he forgot to take it out when he bought it.

He drives all night and stops only when he can't keep his eyes open any longer, pulls into a rest stop and naps in the front seat. He wakes with Castiel curled up on the seat beside him, the boy's head in his lap and his big blue eyes staring up at him. Dean smiles down at the boy and brushes hair from Castiel's forehead.

"I am doing the right thing," he says to himself, not at all convinced.

"Can we get icecream?" Castiel asks innocently. And then in the exact same tone; "Can I suck your cock?"

"Yes," Dean says, practicing for the rest of his eternal damnation. "God. Yes."

Castiel opens Dean's pants right there, smooths cherry-flavoured lube over him and sucks him down as far as he can as if Dean's cock is a treat so delicious that he just has to have it all. The priest watches him, marvelling at Castiel's raw beauty in the morning sunlight. At the same time scared to death that anyone could walk past the car at any moment and see them.

Dean finds himself a job in a large town and rents a motel room for two weeks before he can find a house. Castiel is the one who suggests school, who suggests that he enrol with Dean's last name so things don't look suspicious. The boy calls him 'father' when they're in public, it's so easy to let people assume.

There are two beds in the house but Castiel sleeps in the master bedroom with him, his smaller, lithe and youthful body pressed against Dean's chest or side or back. Just like the other bed in the other bedroom, the boy's pyjamas are only to fit other people's perceptions. He never sleeps in them, instead wearing one of Dean's t-shirts - ridiculously large and beautiful on him.

"We can't stay here for more than a year," Castiel tells him in bed one night.

"Why not?" Dean asks, familiar enough with the boy's too-intelligent, too-adult ways of thinking that he doesn't question the statement itself.

Castiel rolls onto his side so he's facing Dean, eyes glinting just a little in the light from the digital clock on the nightstand. "I promised you I wouldn't grow up," the boy replies, taking Dean's hand and putting it on his body. "Sooner or later someone will notice. That's the price you have to pay, Dean. Either I grow up or we move, which one do you want?"

Dean thinks about it for a moment. He feels sick and guilty, chases away the feeling when he thinks about Castiel's body under his. "We'll move," he agrees finally, and doesn't question why he believes that the boy wont age. "We'll move wherever you want to, baby."

The boy smiles at him and Dean's heart breaks just a little more. He wants to touch, to taste, and he rubs his hands over Castiel's body, mouths at his skin and touches him until the boy is coming against Dean's stomach and they're both sticky with sweat and semen.

A few months later he gets a phone call on his cell, asking if he knows anything about Castiel's disappearance. Dean lies, looking right at the boy, and says he hadn't seen Castiel since the very last choir practice that he'd overseen. He lies again when he's asked where he is. And again when he says he'll call straight away if he ever does hear news about the boy's whereabouts.

"I can make them stop looking forever," Castiel tells him as soon as the call was over. "I can make it as if I never existed. Do you want me to? Do you want me to be with you forever, Dean?"

"I love you," Dean answers, placing a solemn kiss to the top of Castiel's head.

"Then I'll make them stop looking."

That night Dean wakes up to find that Castiel is crying, curled up into a ball on the other side of the bed. Dean touches the boy's shoulder, tries to soothe him with soft words and kisses and receives tearful pleas in response. The boy begs him to let him go home, to stop touching him, tells him that he'll never tell anyone what Dean did if he'll just take him back home.

The priest turns away. This isn't the Castiel he knows, with the slow and beautiful smiles. He leaves the bedroom and locks the boy in, returns only after two cups of tea and ignores the curled-up body already in the bed. When Dean wakes up in the morning Castiel is pressed against him again, acting as if nothing unusual had happened.

"I'm all yours now, Dean," Castiel tells him, solemn blue eyes staring up at him.

"You were crying last night," Dean says, even as he knows it wasn't really Castiel who was crying.

"I won't do it again," the boy promises with a smile, rolls away and stretches his body out on the bed. "Fuck me, Dean? Fuck me so I can see you?"

Dean wants to say no, just for a moment. Then he's reaching for the bottle of lube by the alarm clock. He puts his fingers inside the boy, worships him from the inside out and bends down to suck on the boy's smooth, silky flesh. "Forgive me," he whispers when he pushes in, sheathing his cock in beautiful, familiar heat.

"Forgive me," he says when Castiel's legs wrap around him, when the boy's hands clutch at him.

When he tries to say it again all that comes out is a groan, a choked off noise countered by Castiel's panting and breathy whispers of "yes, more" and "please" and "father". Dean comes too soon, lowers himself down on top of Castiel until the boy's body is completely covered by his and Dean is panting against the side of his face.

"You're doing so well," Castiel murmurs into his ear. "So good for me. You love me so much it hurts sometimes, doesn't it?"

"I think you're a demon," Dean says softly, afraid to look into the boy's eyes in case he sees black instead of blue, "you came to tempt me from my path, to make sure that there's no means of salvation left for me."

"You'll say yes when you get to hell, won't you?"

"I'll do anything for you."

Castiel smiles at him, wraps his arms around Dean's neck and tells him; "It's ok. I'll never make you do anything you don't want to."

-

-

One move and two jobs later and Dean celebrates what should have been Castiel's fourteenth birthday. The thirteenth had been lost in the early confusion of figuring out how to get by with a child that wasn't his and not arouse any suspicions. Castiel hasn't aged a bit since Dean first saw him, but age is only a number and numbers are like anniversaries.

He brings home a small cake that afternoon and finds Castiel lying on his stomach on the living room floor, homework that he's done at least twice before being ignored in favour of a sleazy talk show on TV.

"We could make this show's producer vomit in disgust," Castiel murmurs without looking at him.

"I bought a chocolate cake," Dean replies, placing the small confection on the kitchen table where it won't be disturbed. He doesn't want to think about how other people would perceive them - it always makes him uncomfortable and leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

But, precocious and wilful as ever, Castiel persists. "An ordained catholic priest and a twelve year old boy, travelling slowly around the country so nobody finds out that they're fucking. What would you do if someone found out about us, Dean?"

"We move because you don't age," Dean corrects, not wanting to think about how he's technically still a priest even after everything he's done with this boy. "Not because we're sleeping together."

"But if someone did find out about us," Castiel presses, looking up at Dean as he stands, "what would you do?"

"... I don't know."

"You wouldn't let them take me away, would you?"

He has no answer for that, but Castiel hugs him anyway, pressing his face against Dean's chest. It's just a measure of how used to deflection Dean is getting that he asks softly; "Do you want icecream with your cake?"

He doesn't find out about the body in the bathroom until after dinner. There's no blood, only a shocked, terrified look on the woman's face. After a moment or two Dean recognises the woman as Castiel's teacher. He gags, throwing up in the sink, and when he looks up next he can see Castiel through the mirror, the boy standing in the doorway with a sober look on his face.

"She found out," he says softly.

Dean feels cold all over. He asks through the foul taste in his mouth, half-imagining that the words themselves are the source of the bad taste; "What did you do?"

"She never liked me," Castiel protests, starting to look scared - like he thinks Dean is going to walk away or go to the police. "She thought there was something strange about me. She followed me home and told me she knew who you were, that she'd looked your name up and you didn't have any children. Please, father - Dean..."

Deep down he knows it's manipulation, but he doesn't care. Dean would rather do this than lose Castiel, he's given too much of himself to Castiel already. In some ways this next step feels inevitable. The priest turns around, looking at Castiel without the barrier or the mirror between them. "What do I do?"

"We have to get rid of her, and her car."

"Her car...?" He hadn't noticed a car.

"It's the blue one, the one parked on the side of the road." Castiel comes forward and takes one of Dean's hands in his own. "We need to put her in the car and drive it out of town, then burn everything so nobody will ever know who did it. Can you do that?"

Dean leaves Castiel at home when he drives the car out of town. He leaves the woman in the back seat, opens all of the car windows to let the air in, and pours gasoline over the seats. He sets fire to the body and walks away with the smell of smoke chasing him. It takes him an hour to get close enough to town to flag down a cab, he makes the driver stop outside a liquor store and buys himself a bottle of bourbon. He doesn't wait until he gets home to start drinking.

"Rough day?" The cab driver asks.

"You have no idea," Dean replies, alcohol and smoke burning his throat. He gives the driver the largest note he has and tells him to keep the change; Walks into the house with the open bottle in his hand and drinks until he can't see straight anymore only to find himself throwing up in the bathroom as Castiel strokes the back of his neck.

"It gets easier," Castiel promises.

He's right. It gets easier and easier. Some part of Dean suspects that Castiel is manipulating him like this on purpose, replacing guilt with innocent smiles and kisses from soft, plush lips.

-

-

Looking back Dean isn't at all amazed that his slow slide led him here. He drinks regularly now, never enough to get truly drunk, but enough to give him a pleasant buzz in the evenings while he sits on the couch with Castiel and fondles the boy through his pants. He lies with an ease that no longer shocks himself when people ask what their relation is or what happened to Castiel's old school records.

It's been years now. Castiel should be sixteen, but true to his word he hasn't aged a day. Dean had long ago thrown out his old phone, had stopped using his real last name when he applied for work or at the real-estate agencies he rented houses from. They had moved several times, always during the school holidays in the summer. He let Castiel pick where they went, and they spent a year in the sun or the rain depending on the boy's whim.

Dean didn't realise how badly he'd lost track of where exactly they were until one sunny tuesday afternoon, walking down a cafe-lined street with Castiel - the boy still in his school uniform. He's smiling at the boy, listening to him talk about reading satirical Russian literature under his desk, when a single word causes him to stop dead in his tracks.

"Dean?"

The former priest looks up to see a tall, familiar-faced man staring at him in disbelief. It takes him a moment to recognise the man, and when he does his stomach drops. He hadn't realised they were so close. "Sam."

"Dean!" Sam looked shocked, stunned like he'd just been hit square in the face. "Dean, what happened to you? Where have you been? Dad said you left the parish and just disappeared, nobody's heard from you for years..." As if slowly pulled there by some kind of magnetic force Sam's gaze slid from Dean's face to the boy standing next to him. "Uh..."

"You're Dean's brother," Castiel said, looking up (and up, and up) at Sam with a guarded look on his face. It was a look that Dean had never seen before. "He told me about you."

"... Dean?"

It wasn't an accusation, not yet. Dean could feel the lies rolling off his tongue, disconnected from the part of him that felt sick at the thought of Sam discovering the truth. "Sam, this is Castiel. We're part of that 'big brother' program they've got going on down at the youth hall. Castiel is a ward of the state -"

"My parents are dead," Castiel interrupted, staring right at Sam. "My foster parents don't have time for me so they foisted me off on the first 'program' they could find, saying it would be good for me. I like Dean. I wish I could live with him instead."

"We should catch up," Sam suggested, pulling out his phone. "What's your number?"

Dean reached into the pocket of his jeans, intending to give Sam a fake number, but Castiel rattled off the numbed for his mobile phone before Dean could say a word. "Great," Dean said when Sam had his number saved, not sure what the hell the boy was playing at this time. "Give me a call later tonight. Listen, I have to get Castiel back home. We can catch up some other time, right?"

He leaves Sam standing there on the sidewalk before his brother can say another word.

"What the hell was that about?" Dean demands when they're safe in the car, gripping the steering wheel too tight as he drives them back home. "Why did you give him my real number?"

"We're not ready to move again," Castiel replies, placing one of his soft, smooth hands on Dean's thigh. "Not as quickly as it would take him to find you if he wanted to. Your brother is a lawyer, he probably knows people who can do him favours."

"Sam is a smart man. He'll catch on pretty quick if he thinks something is going on."

"It's ok."

"I really hope you know what you're doing."

Castiel smiles at him and leans over to press a kiss to Dean's cheek. "I always know what I'm doing."

Sam doesn't call that evening and Dean spends a fretful, sleepless night just lying in bed with his arms around Castiel. He thinks about what he'd do just to keep the boy close, to see his smile every day and feel his body pressed tight against his own. Meanwhile Castiel just lies there, angelic in the dim light, young and beautiful and worth every shred of Dean's tattered soul.