Wow, I've gone update crazy today, I'm clearly just a review whore. As always you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter.

Where is your boy tonight? I hope he is a gentleman.

Maybe he won't find out what I know,

You were the last good thing about this part of town.

Cas fingers the delicate chain around his throat as he lies, sleepless, in his untidy nest of a bed. A cigarette smoulders in his other hand. His body aches, there is sand lodged places he doesn't even want to picture, and yet despite these signs of revelry and the buzz still thumbing through him, he feels a heaviness in his chest that refuses to let him sleep.

"Tell me you love me."

Where had that come from? Cas was well aware, had been from the start, that love was not on the cards for him. He was a nothing, a zero on life's accounts. How could he be anything else? Knowing what he did about how he'd come into the world, how could he be more than one in a long line of someone else's fucks?

Yet tonight something, some part of him had begged Dean to see more in him, to feel more for him.

"He could, you know he could." Castiel's guileless voice tells him. "He'd take such good care of us..."

"Shut up." Castiel says, aloud.

"He found Mom's cross." Castiel reminds him.

Again Cas fingers the tiny trinket. Dean had found it for him, he had stopped Brian from hurting him, had allowed him in out of the rain and taken good care of him when they'd been together.

"You see?" Castiel tells him.

"He's a man." Cas tells the good twin that resides within him. "He's a practically middle aged, drop-out with a kid brother, a drunk dad, and one hell of cock, that's it." He sucks down some smoke, feeling it grate at him, tasting of coffee and copper, like blood.

"He's good." Castiel insists. "He bears so much for them, he would suffer for us, he would..."

"Toss us aside like a used rubber." Cas hisses, just to feel Castiel draw back from the crude words. He takes another drag. "Do you ever get tired of losing?"

"Do you?" Castiel responds.

"Awfully catty tonight, aren't we?" Cas chuckles, scratching the side of his face. "Where do you get that from?"

"I'm you."

"You're a tool." Cas yawns. "Go away and be quiet until finals."

Castiel doesn't respond.

"Good." Cas mutters to himself. "Hypocritical bastard."

He stubs out his cigarette and rolls over, trying to get some sleep.

"I love him." Castiel whispers miserably.

"Well, that's your own damn fault." Cas sneers, closing his eyes and burrowing into the pillows.

(-*-)

Cas doesn't feel like going to school the next day, or the next – so by the time he resurfaces people are over the news that Cas the stoner freak attempted to beat the crap out of Brian Summers. Mind you, Cas has smoked so much of his stash that he's almost forgotten the whole thing too. Therefore, Sam Winchester's interruption of his pleasant lunch period lying on the football field is not entirely welcome.

"Hey Castiel." Sam says awkwardly, his shadow throwing down over the teenager. Cas squints up at him.

"May we help you?" He rasps.

"No...I just...wanted to say thanks, for the other day." Sam stutters.

Cas looks up at him uncomprehendingly.

"When you stopped Brian from kicking my ass?" Sam elaborates.

Cas closes his eyes.

"I just wanted..." Sam says dumbly.

"You're welcome. Go away." Cas murmurs lazily.

Sam stays frozen where he is. Cas sighs.

"It was nothing." He says finally. "Thanks for getting your brother."

"I had to." Sam mutters. "He's Dean...he's the only person..."

"I know." Castiel says, and Cas frowns at the unsanctioned use of his mouth, his vocal chords. They'll have to talk about that later.

"So...are you sleeping with him?" Sam asks awkwardly.

Cas opens his eyes.

"Oh Sam, gossip is so unseemly." He murmurs.

"It's not..." Sam bites his lip. "No one else knows...but I saw him talking to you in the hall the other day."

Cas doesn't respond.

"If you're sleeping with him...can you stop...please?" Sam asks, an edge of worry in his voice.

"If you're jealous, I'm sure we can work something out." Cas lets his eyes fall closed again.

"That's...gross." Sam stutters. "I just mean...he's right, they might take me away if they find out about you."

Cas doesn't like how much that makes him worry.

"Do you think...does he like me?" There goes Castiel again with the talking.

"I don't know." Sam mutters. "He doesn't talk to me about..."

"Get lost Sammy." Cas sighs, and he hears the other boy hurry away. At last.

"That was hurtful, you should be nicer to him."

"Shut. The. Hell. Up." Cas growls to no one in particular.

Thanks to Castiel throwing all his issues into the works, by the end of school, Cas feels the need for some serious relaxation. Smoking up on the beach isn't going to cut it right now, what he needs is something loud and fast and ugly.

The club he chooses is on the opposite side of town to his home. It's in an old warehouse and the only name it has is 'Simmons' the name of the company that had once occupied the space. Inside it's all pink and red neon, like the inside of an animal. Cas drinks five shots at the bar and on the crushingly overfilled dance floor he grinds up against a tall guy with black hair and a pierced ear, another guy presses against his back and Cas lets him. The more the merrier.

The music is suicidally loud, pounding base through the floor and the walls until Cas is humming with it, feeling a strangers mouth against the back of his neck, unfamiliar hands sliding under his vest top. Guy number one raises a small white pill to Cas's lips and he takes it, chasing the chalky taste away with the shot that Guy number two raises to his lips.

"Do you want to get out of here?" Guy number one yells over the music.

Cas nods, feeling his body spin apart with the music and the drink, shedding all that heaviness.

Castiel is silent, perhaps out of scorn, perhaps out of shame. Well, fuck him. Somebody should.

The ear piercing guy, Cas forgets which one he was, jerks a thumb at the side door.

"Out back, five minutes" he yells.

Cas nods again and runs a hand through his sweat slicked hair. He's hot but his hand feels cold, it's odd and he smiles at the sensation, making his way out of the building and into the alley. He leans against the wall and checks his pockets. Three condoms and some lube, perfect. He doesn't worry about whether they'll want him together or one after the other. He's going to do it anyway, what's the point in working out what he'd prefer?

The two guys emerge at last, one holding a bottle of vodka.

"Ease you up a bit." He mutters nonsensically.

Cas would argue that he's already plenty easy, but the guy holds the sweating neck of the bottle to his mouth and so he takes a drink, feeling the fluid burn him deep inside. Both guys take a swallow and then they press close to him, hands running over the burning skin of his bare arms and pushing up under his top, touching his belly and back. The vest comes up and over his head, Cas closes his eyes and lets his head fall back. He so needed this.

Someone's mouth sucks at his neck, he can feel fingers tugging at his belt. A dirty laugh sounds beside him and Cas shivers despite himself. It's so cold out here, he wishes they were somewhere a little warmer.

A hand slides down the back of his jeans, at the same time another pair of hands pushing him downwards. Ah, two at a time it is then. Cas sucks his cheeks in and then opens his mouth wide, stretching after all was important, irrespective of the orifice.

Then...nothing, and Cas opens his eyes to find both guys looking behind him, mouths moving angrily. As if coming up from underwater, Cas's ears ring and gradually the sound unscrambles itself into sensible English.

"...uck off!" Earring guy spits.

"Get your own guy." The other snaps.

Then there's a kind of flurry which he can't keep track of, and the guys are backing away, one clutching his nose as it streams blood.

For some reason he finds this incredibly funny.

He's still snuffling with laughter when Dean grabs his shoulders and brings their faces very close.

"Cas?"

Dean shakes him a little and Cas finds this less funny and kind of...upsetting. The shaking feeling continues even when Dean's holding him still.

Suddenly all he wants to do is sleep.

"Cas? What the hell were you thinking..." The water that isn't really there fills his ears again and he loses the rest of the words. "...guys at the bar talking about spit roasting a seventeen..."

Cas sways.

"Cas! What did you take?"

"I don't kn..." and then he's falling, only Dean's there to catch him before he hits the cold, wet ground.

"Thank God." Castiel almost cries in relief.

Cas's last conscious thought is that at least Castiel can run things until he wakes up.