(AN: Been a while! Here's a new chapter finally :D Behold the angst! Oh, and um, warnings for the last part due to non-explicit um.. stuff.)
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Cas laid back on the cot, staring up at the sigil-marked ceiling of the panic room as he allowed his mind to drift. The steady whump, whump, whump of the intake fan had become his only real company in the last few days since the almighty Dean Winchester had decreed that the heavy iron door was to be his guardian for the time being. He found himself missing human contact.
It wasn't that he as being ignored, not at all, in fact. Dean still brought him his meals and asked him how he was doing and had even brought him clean clothes, asking if he wanted to go out for a bit and get some fresh air. Cas, of course, refused. He felt like being petulant.
He didn't have any good explanation for his behaviour. So far as he could tell, he had been in Bobby Singer's home in this alternate past for just over two weeks, and in that time he had done little more than throw himself at the elder Winchester and make a constant spectacle of himself.
Since the day after his run-in with the law, and his last real interaction with Dean, he'd had a lot of time to reflect on his current position. For two days now, he had gone all his waking hours without the pain of withdrawal.
His hands still shook, and he craved substance of any kind in the worst way- but the wanting no longer caused him physical pain.
Perhaps that was a good thing.
He knew that he was being a complete dick, constantly pushing and pulling at Dean, trying to find the broken man that he was used to, the Dean of 2014.
He wanted the violence, he realized Wanted the familiarity of that frustration, Dean's voice pitched low in anger, or shame. He wants the painful indifference that falls between them when they aren't all rough hands and gnashing teeth.
What did that say about him, that he wanted nothing more than to be bruised, in body and spirit, but the man he loved? That he loathed the caring, comforting Dean of this time?
No, loathing was too strong. It wasn't loathing, or hatred. It was annoyance. No, not even that- this Dean frightened him, made him ashamed of his vices, and he didn't want that. He didn't want the pity, or the concern. It was too powerful to take, too much to know that this Dean still cared beyond the Mission- there was no Mission here.
Cas sighed, rolling to sit on the edge of the cot, staring at the door. There was no buffer here against the harshness of his reality. There was no Apocalypse, no Croats, no Lucifer; but he was still fallen, so fundamentally human, with human emotions and wants and needs, and it left a pit within him that felt deeper than the Marianna Trench, more vast and vacuous than the space between worlds, colder than the furthest reaches of the Solar system.
In short, he felt cold and worthless, and without the familiarity of the alcohol and the pills and the weed and the mind-numbing sex, he felt his humanity like a mantle weighing him down, pulling him into the Earth.
The compassion from Dean, Sam and... hell, even Bobby in his own way- it was going to kill him. It had been a long time since anyone had cared about him in any way beyond what was purely physical.
"Cas," Dean's voice called to him from the beaded doorway leading into the room. "What the fuck, man?"
Cas didn't know any more how long they'd been at camp, but it seemed now as though they'd been there forever. The pills and the alcohol caused the days to blend together, and the women (and some men) blurred each moment into the next until days no longer mattered; there was awake, and there was asleep. The moments spent awake were spent either indulging or retrieving supplies from the scant resources left in the surrounding towns.
He turned his face toward his Fearless Leader, but everything was so blurry and dark; he could barely make out the familiar shape standing with his arms crossed, staring coldly down at him.
He had a damned good reason to be laid up at the moment, swimming in a haze of narcotics; he'd broken his damned foot two days before, and it hurt like hell. He wasn't going anywhere, so Dean could go fuck himself, and he told him so.
Or, at least, he tried to. It seems as though he might have taken too much this time.
Not that that was anything new. These days, once in a while, he liked to push his limits, to see how much he could take before he could no longer open his eyes to the world, before the weight of the world crushed him while he was too stoned to notice or care.
"Are you trying to fucking kill yourself?" Dean was rifling through the empty bottles on his night stand now. The noise was irritating.
He was shaken from the memory by the shifting of the heavy bolts on the iron door.
Must be visiting hours, he thought bitterly.
"Hey," Sam greeted as he let himself in, carrying a chipped plate and a bottle of water.
Cas nodded his acknowledgement of the other man's presence, unable to bring himself to meet the younger Winchester's eyes. It was still too raw, too unfamiliar; this Sam who wasn't Lucifer, who had managed to beat the odds set against him by cosmic destiny and remain Sam Winchester.
Sam wasn't exactly comfortable with Cas, either. He could practically feel the chill coming off the former angel whenever he was in the room, his unwillingness to acknowledge him beyond a nod or a terse word or two. And honestly, he was too tired to try and fix it. He felt like he hadn't slept in a week, and to be honest he probably hadn't. Every time he closed his eyes, his mind inevitably woke him again. Lucifer's voice and face filled almost his every waking moment, and the tricks he had used before, pressing the scar in his hand, no longer worked to dispel the Devil.
"You look like hell," Cas said conversationally, watching the other man in his peripheral as he set the plate and bottle on the small table against the wall.
Sam blinked at him, giving a nervous laugh. "Yeah, well..." you're one to talk, he thought. True, the fallen angel looked better now than he had when he first dropped in on them; his wounds were pretty much healed and he no longer looked like a stiff breeze could knock him over. Not to mention the dark circles under his eyes and his waxy complexion had improved with a combination of kicking the dope and Bobby's cooking.
Cas looked at him thoughtfully, as though considering what had been left unsaid. Studying him now, he looked haunted. His eyes bore an unnatural shift, sunken into skin that looked pale and bruised in the false light of the room.
"So how did you get so lucky," Cas mused aloud. "What made this version of history so special?"
Sam was taken off guard by the cadence of the question, the bitterness that rippled beneath it.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you still said yes, right? You dragged Lucifer and Michael into the pit with you, and everything's just all sunshine and rainbows," Cas stood, hands on his hips, regarding the other with wry contemplation. "You and your brother changed destiny and brought down the Devil."
Sam rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, not really wanting to have this conversation.
"In another time, you did this, Sam. I have to admit, I'm impressed. Look at what we did together, you and me. Least he got that stick out of his ass..."
Sam grit his teeth, trying desperately to ignore the taunting voice of the figure he knew wasn't standing beside Cas in front of him, appraising the fallen angel like he was some work of art.
Cas didn't miss the younger man's wandering eyes, the way he stared intently into the space beside him. He couldn't help but glance to the side, following Sam's gaze.
"Such a wounded creature. Really ought to be put out of his misery, don't you think?"
Sam's eyes widened in horror as Lucifer disappeared, reappearing abruptly behind Castiel, a sickening, ripping, crunching pop drifting through the room as the tip of a silver blade appeared through the fallen angel's chest, right where his heart would be.
Cas' look of wide-eyed surprize, the trickle of blood that trailed from the corner of his mouth forced the air from Sam's lungs, his thoughts derailed momentarily.
This had never happened. This was beyond the usual hallucinations that kept him awake. Never before had Lucifer interacted with the physical world on this level. Was this real? Had he underestimated the Devil's presence?
"Cas! No!" He felt himself fly forward, gripping the fallen angel by his shoulders as he fell away from Lucifer's blade- only to be met with a bemused stare, cocked eyebrow and a very tense, very un-injured Cas radiating confused apprehension at Sam's sudden outburst.
Cas watched him as he let him go as though he were on fire, back pedaling so quickly he nearly fell on his ass. It would've been amusing if he hadn't at one time known Sam Winchester to be reserved, in control of his faculties, if not always heeding common sense.
"Are you all right?" It seemed like a stupid question, but he felt the need to say something to break the silent panic that filled the room, emanating from the young hunter.
"Fine, sorry," Sam murmured and excused himself from the room, fleeing up the stairs without securing the door fully.
Cas sighed, sitting down at the table and picking at the strip steak and mashed potatoes that he'd been brought, staring at the door and debating whether or not to take advantage of his potential freedom.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
It had been one of the warmer days of the season so far, and Dean wasn't about to let it go to waste. His baby needed a little TLC, and he now had her parked out in the yard, hood open as he replaced a couple of spark plugs and a valve that was getting a little too crusty for his liking.
It seemed like things were going from bad to worse lately, and being up to his elbows in grease alleviated some of that. It was a sort of meditation, and he was thankful as hell that Bobby'd put up with having all this bullshit around.
In addition to Marty McFly, Sam was slipping and sliding away from him in the worst kind of way. He could see it, how tired and jumpy his little brother had gotten over the last week or so, ever since the job in Worthing. Sam barely slept, barely ate, often nodding off in his Cheerios and jumping at nothing.
Dean had his suspicions. There was really only one explanation; Lucifer was in his head again, driving him nuts.
It had been months since Castiel had broken his wall and unleashed the memories of Hell. For a while, it'd seemed like Sammy had it all under control, able to dispel the Devil whenever he reared his head. But now, it seemed like that was all crashing down around him.
Dean had to wonder what had prompted it.
He had just set down the wrench and picked up one of the new plugs when he felt a pair of arms slide around his waist, a warm body pressing against his back.
Whirling, he was greeted by a catty grin beneath a mop of shaggy, dark brown hair.
"Cas!" Dean yelped, shoving the fallen angel back firmly but more or less gently, "What the fuck! Fuckin' rapey ninja-hippie, don't do that shit!"
Cas chuckled softly, leaning his hip against the frame of the car.
"What the hell are you even doing out here?" Dean sputtered, gaping at the other man as his heart beat it's way back down his throat and into his chest.
"Sam," Cas shrugged, picking up one of the spark plugs and examining it as he turned it over in his slender hands. "He's not right."
Dean stared at him, snatching the plug ot of his hands and turning to seat the plug in the cylinder. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean."
"Well," Cas breathed, getting handsy again and picking up the old valve that Dean had just replaced, picking at the carbon that coated it, "he just freaked out on me for no apparent reason, and then all but ran screaming back upstairs."
That got Dean's attention. He turned, looking up at Cas over his shoulder, scowling. "What the hell did you do to him?"
"You always assume the worst," Cas mused, raising an eyebrow. "I didn't do anything to him, though he was staring at something that I assume only he could see. He's in the study now, with Bobby. He seems... all right for the time being."
Dean huffed out a sigh, ratcheting the plug into place and replacing the wires and cap, stepping back to drop the hood.
Cas stepped back, getting out of the way as the hood fell into place with a heavy thunk of metal on metal. Dean stared at him as he wiped his hands down with a shop rag, looking him up and down with heavy scrutiny.
"You good now?" he asked. Cas was talking to him again, so he guessed that was something.
Cas shrugged in response. "If you mean 'am I going to run off and raid a bar', no. I'm not. Nor do I particularly feel like spending the rest of my life in that room, so I suppose this is an impasse."
Dean grunted, grabbing a beer from the cooler in the shade beneath the stairs.
He paused as he held his hand over the cap, preparing to twist it off, then thought better of it as he saw the fallen angel watching him. Or, rather, watching the bottle.
Cas surprised him, though, by drifting past him, back into the house.
Sighing, he tossed the bottle back into the cooler and followed into the kitchen, where the angel was now seated at the table.
"I owe you an apology, Dean," Cas said, not looking up at the hunter as he spoke.
"Yeah?" Dean huffed. "For which part? The part where you've been a complete asshole to everyone? Or how 'bout for constantly trying to molest me every chance you get? Or even better, on that note, for sticking your tongue down my throat the other night and then shutting me out?"
Cas raised an eyebrow at him, and he realised that what he'd just said didn't exactly convey what he'd meant. It had sounded like he'd wanted Cas to kiss him, and was just pissed that the fallen angel had turned his back on him afterwards.
He felt his face heat up, and turned away quickly to fill a glass of water from the tap.
"What do you want, Cas? I mean, really. I know you didn't ask to be stuck here, but you're here now, and I just don't know what the fuck to do with you."
"I don't want anything, Dean," Cas sighed, his tone not convincing in the slightest.
"Well, there's no Apocalypse here," Dean continued, "you could do whatever you wanted."
The look Cas turned on him stopped him dead in his tracks. It was painful, heartbroken and so completely weary and worn down. There was more, too, and Dean tried to ignore it but it was blaring so forcefully in the other man's eyes that it hit him like a sledge hammer.
There was longing, broken hope and an ache so deep that it pierced him.
Dean sighed, sitting down across from the fallen angel, watching him contemplatively.
"What were we," he asked, needing to know, "in that other future, what were we really? You looked like you couldn't stand each other, so what happened?"
Cas chuckled bitterly, looking away from Dean to focus on something across the room.
"You said I kissed you first," Dean probed, keeping his tone hushed so as not to carry to the adjoining room, "for fuck's sake, Cas, you were my best friend! What the hell happened?"
The fallen angel sighed, lifting bloodshot blue eyes to meet his again, all the false humor gone from them now, stripped down to the bare framework of the man he'd become. He looked lost, vulnerable and so utterly overwhelmed – but that weight of years still remained behind it all, all of that knowledge and experience of millennia of existence.
"We had nothing left to lose, I suppose," Cas said with a shrug. "And then the Mission took over, and there wasn't any room left for 'us'."
Dean sighed, taking stock of the other man for what felt like the first time. He'd never taken that plunge with his Cas. He didn't know if he ever would have, if given the chance – it just seemed too remote, and too against every fibre of his being to give in to that idle want. There had always been something about Castiel that had drawn him to the angel, no matter how he had fought it. Thoughts, feelings that he had forced down for the sheer impossibility of it all. Yet now, evidence of the contrary was staring him in the face. He could have had that, and the look in Cas' eyes said it all.
Before he had even formulated a thought about what he was doing, he had risen from his seat, moving around the table toward the fallen angel. Red flags shot through the back of his mind like an alarm; what the fuck am I doing, as he leaned down, tilting Cas' face upward with his fingers, pressing their lips together in a slow, tentative kiss.
Cas was shocked, not sure how to react to an advance that he hadn't initiated. It was too kind, to gentle, and it was almost cruel. He allowed it for a brief, painful moment before pushing Dean away gently with both hands.
"You don't want this," he murmured breathlessly.
The hurt look in Dean's expression was almost a physical blow. What had he expected, after flaunting it in his face these past weeks? He had wanted to get a rise out of the hunter, but this wasn't what he had expected. He hadn't anticipated that Dean might willingly reciprocate.
Dean bit his lip, his brain tying itself into knots trying to rationalize what he'd just done. The truth of the matter was, he did want this. Cas had, so he had thought, made it abundantly clear that it was there, that this could happen.
"Shut up," he said, though his tone wasn't quite what he wanted it to be. To make up for it, he leaned in again, and this time Cas went with it.
His Cas was gone, probably for good this time, and that hurt like a fucking bitch.
But at the same time, he'd been given an opportunity to sort some shit out, and here was this other Cas- another version that had once been the very same celestial being that had pulled his sorry ass out of hell, a Cas that he had failed in a future that had, thankfully, never come to pass.
It wasn't as though his life wasn't fucked up beyond belief as it was, so what the hell? Why not take what was given to him? Cas was broken, and it was his fault- but he could atone now. He could make things right and fix the mistakes that his counterpart had made. He could put his angel back together again.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Somehow, they had made it downstairs without Sam or Bobby being any the wiser.
That one kiss in the kitchen had opened a floodgate, and it hadn't taken long before Dean had to acknowledge they needed to be somewhere else, and the panic room seemed the most ideal.
Dean had never imagined how demanding and controlling Cas could be. He knew that the fallen angel had been a lascivious nymphomaniac in that other future, but it seemed as though the instant the panic room door was closed, their clothing had started disappearing as though they were being mojoed away.
He barely had a chance to catch his breath as he found himself laying on the cot, the former angel looming over him as their lips found each other once more, straddling his hips as they swallowed each other's moans.
He could hardly believe this was happening. Dean Winchester, lady's man extraordinaire, humbled and dominated by an ex-angel hippie. What was even weirder? Now that he was here, fingers tangled in dark hair as they moved together, nails raking across bare skin, he found he was oddly comfortable with it.
This was his angel, who knew him more intimately than anyone he had ever known him, inside and out- and who was more than eager to prove it.
Cas' cool, slender fingers sought out with surety places even Dean didn't know he liked, lightly tickling the flesh behind his ear, ghosting over a rib, nipping at his collar bone just so – he had never been with anyone who knew him so completely, and it was as unnerving as it was erotic.
Cas seemed content just to let Dean's hands wander over him, studying the way the fallen angel reacted to every touch, every caress; a slight shudder, a soft moan, a sudden gasp as he bore down when Dean drew his fingers up the others' spine.
He could do this forever, forgetting everything else; Sam's insanity, hunting, the world in general. He could spend hours mapping out ever inch of Castiel, from the mole on his left pectoral to the myriad scars that he'd acquired since becoming mortal, but it seemed that the fallen angel had other ideas.
To say it was the best sex Dean had ever had would probably be an unquantified overstatement, but he honestly couldn't remember the last time anything had come close. It was hot and electrically charged and rough bordering on violent, clawing and biting and marking each other. He'd had it rough before, but it was strange to see Castiel let loose like this, almost savage, and somehow that made it all the more erotic. It was almost a game, both of their frustrations beating against each other as they moved in time toward a climax that, as far as Dean was concerned, came all too soon.
As they lay together afterward, wrapped in each other beneath the threadbare comforter on the narrow cot, Dean couldn't help but feel completely sated, almost as though he'd been absolved of his sins – a weight lifted from him that he hadn't even known he carried.
He would have let these thoughts carry him off to sleep if not for the unsettling silence from his bedfellow and the slight trembling of the fallen angel's shoulders as he held him in his arms.
"Cas?" he called, quietly, brushing his fingers through dark hair.
The ex-angel tensed, fingers digging into the shoulder that once bore the mark of that same hand in a brand that had since faded but never disappeared completely, a soft, strangled sound muffled against his chest.
"Cas, hey," Dean tried, unsure, "you... you okay?"
"Why do you have to be so good," Cas murmured, the strain in his voice confirming that he was, in fact, crying.
Dean sighed, pulling his arms around the fallen angel a little tighter.
"I dunno, Cas," he sighed after a long moment. "God, how did I ever let you get so fucked up..."
Castiel laughed bitterly, threaded into a choked off sob, shaking his head.
"I'm so sorry, Cas," Dean murmured as he buried his face in the tangle of the angel's dark hair.
"Don't," the angel replied. "I don't want your pity, Dean. You didn't break me, the world did."
"I should've been there though," Dean argued. "I should've been there to catch you."
Cas sighed, relaxing against the hunter. "You did what you could."
Dean wanted to argue, to say that he could have done more – but he hadn't been there, had he? In a sense he had been, but he'd been too broken to do anything about his falling angel, had essentially left him to figure shit out on his own in a world he was unequipped to survive in.
That other Dean wasn't him, and never would be, but he wasn't above fixing what that other him had broken.
