Cas's grace was the final ingredient for the spell to cure the Mark, turning him into a human again. But Dean's finally realized what it is he wants out of life, and he's going to make sure Cas knows it.

Rated K for all audiences.

A Different Feeling

"That's it?" Dean asked, warily looking at the small vile in Sam's hand. It was no bigger than his pinky finger, and glowed a vague blue in the low lighting of his bedroom. There was a cork in the top, and as Sam sat down on the bed beside him, Dean was sure he saw a kind of white shadow inside it, moving and shifting like smoke. "What was the final ingredient?" His voice was hoarse, tired, and he was fighting the exhaustion that constantly threatened to overwhelm him – resulting in pale, sweaty skin, bloodshot eyes, and shaky breathing.

He didn't know how long he could really keep fighting this curse.

"Something rare, naturally," Sam offered him a small smile. "I'll tell you about it after. First, let's see if this is even going to work." He'd taken Dean's arm, the sleeve already rolled up to reveal the Mark. Careful not to drop the vile, he uncorked it and plugged the top with his thumb before lowering it to the scar.

It was a spell of sorts, one they'd gotten after thoroughly threatening Metatron. The rare ingredients they'd haggled through Rowena and Crowley, who'd wanted a fair share of the bunker's stores. It's been a considerable loss, but if this worked, Sam knew it will have been worth it. He just hoped he'd put the spell together right. Sure, Sam had dabbled in witchcraft, but he was no master by any means.

The only snag they'd come across was the last ingredient of the spell, which Cas had told Sam he'd translate from enochian once they had everything else ready. He'd come through on his word, and now it was the moment of truth.

"Ready?" Sam asked, catching his older brother's tired green eyes.

"I guess so," Dean replied, a kind of fighting hope apparent in his expression. Because he wanted this to work, but had given up already and was afraid to be optimistic.

Taking a deep breath, Sam steadied his own hands before slightly tipping the vile. Removing his thumb, he hovered it just above the Mark on Dean's arm, careful to make sure the first thing the liquid touched was that damnable scar.

It sunk into the crevices of the Mark, seeming drawn to its outline before the glowing blue settled. They watched it, breath held tight and eyes intent. At first, nothing happened – it just sat. Which was disconcerting and disappointing to both. They'd expected something flashy, something painful. Anything but this calm coolness Dean could feel sinking slowly into his arm.

Like an icepack without the freezer burn.

But then, right before their eyes, the concoction suddenly seeped away. Like water eaten up by dried, desperate dirt, it simply vanished, a vague outline of the mark left for only a second before that too disappeared.

With little in the way of pomp and circumstance, Dean's arm was smooth again.

"Is-is that it?" Sam stuttered, the fact that the mark was gone a slow realization after how calmly it'd seemingly been destroyed. Like by a simple balm or healing cream. "Is it really gone?"

"I…" Dean pulled his arm back from Sam, gingerly touching the recovered skin. But, more importantly than any scar, it was the weight he searched for. The heavy dread that had perpetuated his whole body since Cain had given him the curse. He was almost afraid to believe it was gone – that within the moment, whatever Sam had given him would fail and it'd all come rushing back. But even as they both waited in the expectant silence, nothing happened. Dean remained empty of all the urges and needs, his shoulders gradually dropping as his body hunched atop the bed.

In relief, perhaps, his throat drying some as he swallowed the wetness that threatened his eyes.

"I just… it seems too easy," he choked out, Sam watching as he gripped at the skin where the Mark had been. "What did you do?" he glanced up at Sam. "What was the final ingredient."

Sam's lips pursed. "Well, that's it," he muttered quietly. "It wasn't easy."

Though the mark was seemingly gone and Dean was better for it, he still managed to narrow his eyes in suspicion, not liking where this was going.

"What did you do, Sam," he asked almost harshly.

"It wasn't something I did," he replied, looking away. "We just got lucky is all. Lucky that we had someone willing to give us the final ingredient." Dean waited in tight-lipped silence, only registering in the back of his thoughts how much better his focus was without the constant impulses the Mark had run through him.

"The last thing we needed was…" Sam knew this wasn't going to go over well – that Dean was going to be angry. "It was an angel's grace. That was the last thing we needed." The one part of the spell Cas had refused to reveal until it was needed. Because he'd known Dean wouldn't have allowed that, and that given the thought, Sam would have stopped him too.

Dean was clearly affected by the news, though the conglomerate of emotions that ran across his face were hard to distinguish. Anger, grief, regret. Appreciation maybe, but it was soiled with guilt and frustration. Other things that Sam knew he shouldn't be privy to seeing.

"That idiot," Dean finally managed to mutter out. "He knew as soon as he saw that spell and he didn't say anything."

"It was his choice," Sam offered quietly. "He knew what he was doing when he did it."

"And you just let him?" Dean had looked at Sam accusingly. "After all he went through to get his grace back?" And how happy Dean had known he was to have it. To be himself again, powerful and in control. No longer sick and helpless and weak. They all knew how important Cas's grace was to him – it was the essence of being an angel.

His soul – everything.

"I told him he didn't have to," Sam explained, not having to say that his objections had only been halfhearted. After all, he wasn't about to stop Cas from doing anything if it meant Dean would be alright.

"Where is he? Is he okay?" Because an angel removing their own grace was a painful, terrible experience, or so they'd learned from Anna all those years ago.

"I think so. He didn't let me in the room when he did it. I didn't… hear him scream or anything, but that could just be Cas being Cas." Not voicing his pain even when it was excruciating. "It really took it out of him though. I had to practically carry him to the couch, and he passed out as soon as I got him there."

"You kept an eye on him though, right?" Dean asked, suddenly rigid and tense. "Checked his breathing, made sure-"

"Yes, Dean," Sam smiled weakly. "He's alive. And breathing normally." For a human. Because he was mortal. Again.

Dean's guilt hit him even harder. It was strange, really, because the Mark was gone. He was healed, yet there was no celebratory atmosphere. He was tired, and Sam was tired. They'd all been suffering because of this, and more than anything they just wanted to sleep. A quiet kind of solution. Perhaps because getting to it had cost them all so much.

"I'm going to…" Dean wanted to say "go check on him," but he knew that Sam would have kept a vigilant eye. That Cas was fine. But still, he just…

An angel have given up their grace for him. Not had it stolen, not wanted it gone. Given up their power, their immortality. Their wings. All that he was Cas had given up, and that was such a huge gift that Dean wasn't even sure how to respond. If he'd known, he would have tried to stop it. He would have put up a fight even if Cas had been determined anyway. But without his knowing, it'd happened, and he couldn't just let that go.

"I need to go talk to him," he finally settled on, pushing himself to his feet. He staggered slightly, Sam reaching out as if to steady him, but Dean waved him off. Going for the door, he headed out into the dimly lit hall of the bunker, dragging his fatigued body into the open until he'd come upon the general living room. The back of the old couch faced him, but he could see the very ends of Cas's black shoed feet sticking over the arm.

Taking a deep breath, he rounded the sofa, hesitating for only a moment before carefully sitting down on the coffee table in front of it.

As Sam had said, Cas was asleep. Dean could see the gentle rise and fall of his breathing, his hands pulled up under his head as he laid his cheek on the side of a pillow. His mouth hung open slightly – a very human pose – and Dean almost couldn't stand to look at him.

He closed his eyes for a moment, jaw tightening, before he pushed away everything that wanted to hold him back and reached out to Cas. Gently, he placed his hand on his shoulder and shook.

Despite any exhaustion, Cas's eyes gradually pulled open, their blue slits flicking back and forth before they focused on Dean. As if surged from any remaining fatigue, he sat up, unstable and clumsy and… human.

"Dean," he muttered out, looking him up and down. "Did… did it work? Did Sam finish the spell?"

"Yeah, Cas," Dean murmured out, his gaze falling to the floor as his fingers gripped at his knees almost nervously. "He did it. It worked."

"Really?!" The enthusiasm in Cas's deep voice was apparent, Dean betting that if he dared to look up, he'd see one of those rare, broad smiles. But he didn't – wasn't deserving of such an expression. "That's wonderful," Cas continued. "I'm so glad."

"Cas…" Dean shook his head, gulping. "Your grace is gone." After everything he'd done to get it back – all he'd gone through – just to give it up again. It didn't seem right, or fair. "If I'd known what it took to-"

"Don't, Dean," Cas wasn't even going to let him try, voice deep and commanding. "I chose to give up my grace for the spell. You knowing wouldn't have made a difference."

"Cas, you just got your grace back," Dean did look up at him then, trying to hide the guilty helplessness on his face and knowing he was failing. "Now you're… you're human again." Dean gestured to him shortly, as if that should signify something. "And it's-"

"Stop," Cas's tone was still possessing that firm resolve, yet was also gentler somehow. "It was my choice. If the spell had required my life, Dean, I would have given it."

"How can you say that?" Dean blurted before he could even stop himself, knowing he was creeping up on things he'd previously been ignoring. But facing his reality with the Mark – its slow, torturous progression – had made him see things a bit differently. Want things, maybe. Perhaps it'd given him a kind of courage he hadn't had before.

"Dean, you're my friend," Cas's gaze poured with honesty. "I'd do anything for you."

"Cas, you're a human again."

"And I'd rather live half a human life with you healthy than watch an eternity of you in misery," Cas admitted, the words too easy. Too sincere. More than Dean felt he deserved. But there was something else that coiled inside him as they hit his ears. A yearning that he'd never allowed himself to acknowledge before.

His whole chest shook as the word erupted from his throat.

"Why?"

Simple, but so important.

"Dean…" Cas leaned forward, his hand landing gingerly on Dean's knee. His eyebrows had furrowed together, eyes flitting back and forth searchingly. "You know why. You're… important to me. I'd do anything for you." Confusion momentarily crossed his face. "You know that."

Dean's lips quivered, eyes closing yet again as he forced himself to accept the words. To not push them aside like he had such things every day his whole life prior. Because it was moments like this that made him want to live, right? That justified what Cas had done, if that was even possible.

That hand squeezed Dean's knee, drawing their stares together once again as Cas's lips parted, "I need you."

Like a great wave had passed through him, the breath that left Dean's lungs seemed to surge outward, carrying with it all the insecurities and doubts he hadn't known had arisen since he'd started contemplating Cas. Since he'd begun entertaining that, maybe, what he wanted wasn't what he'd thought he did. That it'd been sitting in front of him – patient, constant, and always there – the whole time. He'd just had to get his priorities straight.

Teeth gritted, Dean forced himself through his hesitation. He reached out and allowed his fingers to trail along Cas's cheek, the dark stubble there both rough and familiar. Those blue eyes filled with curiosity, but Dean didn't allow him to question. He took the dive, his other hand falling over Cas's on his knee as he leaned forward.

As he closed the distance between them, his lips on Cas's for the first time as he closed his eyes and let the moment take him.

No matter the outcome.

He wasn't forceful however, or demanding. Rather, his inability to voice what he wanted had led to the action, his motion more of a question than anything else. The fact that Cas wasn't responding did eventually spur him to pull away, for once completely open and unable to hide as he stared at Cas's wide blue eyes.

Cas, who was blinking, appearing utterly and totally shocked by what Dean had just done.

"Is…" Dean knew he sounded like a nervous teenager, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Such things, he'd learned, weren't worth caring about. "Is that okay?"

Clearly Cas was trying to comprehend, his hand still tight on Dean's knee. Almost to the point of pain, but such was ignored. Rather, nervousness skittering all over him, Dean waited – each second worse than the last.

Until, finally, Cas seemed to comprehend.

Because he leaned forward. He repeated Dean's action, though with far more intent and force. Their lips came together again, Dean gasping into Cas's mouth as he returned the touch. As both his hands travelled to Cas's cheeks, holding him firm as fingers gripped at Dean's own shirt. Tightly – hungrily.

Behind them, looming in the doorway, Sam smiled but said nothing. Instead, he turned and headed back to his own room, any final words left to die in the ears of those who'd spoken them.

"I'd have given up eternity a thousand times if I'd known I could get this from you," Cas murmured, their breath hot on each others lips as their foreheads came together.

"You can have it every day for the rest of our lives if you want," Dean's words wisped, his heart pounding as Cas's hands twisted his shirt desperately. "Just promise you'll stay with me." Because Dean knew that was what he wanted now. Maybe he couldn't have the dream life with the big house and the dog and the white picket fence, but this was good enough. He thought he might even stand a chance at happiness, so long as he knew Cas would be there.

"I've always been with you," their noses brushed as Cas spoke, "because the only time I've known what it is to really exist is when I'm with you. You are my life, Dean; you're my whole world." Cheesy, romantic, sure, but it was exactly what Dean needed to hear.

Everything he'd decided he wanted.


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