Ok, I have a lot of assignments to do, so updates will slow if I am to have any hope of passing my course. I will make this and Me and Mine, a priority, and I will hopefully finish both soon. So please be patient

Castiel feels Alistair spread his thighs with hands that are too soft, too gentle to be part of this, part of this act. A hot rivulet of blood courses down the crease on his hip and falls between his legs. Castiel turns his head to one side, eyes closing over his blurring view of the room. He hears a rustle of cloth, Alistair opening his pants, and then the bed shifts with his added weight as he plants his hands on either side of Castiel's head.

"So good, so good..." Alistair shushes, one hand cupping his face as the other drops and roughly scrapes its nail over the pucker between his legs. "There's no one like you out there...I looked..." Castiel doesn't respond and Alistair doesn't care, he strokes his cheek softly. "I did, but no one does the things to me that you do..." He leans and licks the pursed lips of the man beneath him. "...I might have to keep you." He hisses it close to Castiel's ear and the smaller man moans softly despite himself, a despairing, pained sound. Alistair moves his fingers to Castiel's jugular and squeezes. "Would you like that Baby? Staying with me...?"

He can't breathe, there's a rushing in his ears that might be his heart or the blood in his brain.

Castiel opens his eyes despite himself.

Alistair bears down on him like a storm, filling his vision with sour breath and haggard features. He feels his eyes water, his chest burning with his need to breathe, one of his hands claws at the urine soaked mattress, fingers meeting damp clothing and something else. As he grasps it desperately, swinging his arm upwards towards Alistair's reddened face, he wonders vaguely what it is.

It doesn't matter.

The thing makes contact with Alistair and the pressure on him vanishes. That's all he cares about, the weight is gone, air floods his lungs and he curls on his side, gasping and shaking. It takes a few fear mangled seconds for him to get together enough strength to look at where Alistair has fallen, and to register that not all the blood that soaks his chest and is splashed across his face, is his own.

The knife, abandoned on the bed while Alistair manhandled him into position, is still buried in the man's throat. Blood runs out onto the floor and Castiel feels bile boil at the back of his throat.

Dean...

He staggers over the body and out into the hall, knees shaking and hot blood slick on his skin. He has to keep a hand on the wall to steady himself, feet catching on the floor, bare now that Alistair has relived him of his shoes, his pants lost somewhere on the bloody floor of the bedroom. Half naked he staggers over glass and splinters into the living room.

"Dean?" It comes out as a croak, his throat ruined. He tries again, looking frantically for a sign of Dean's presence. "Dean?"

"C...s..." He dives for the noise, finding Dean on the floor between the couch and the coffee table.

Dean's throat is wrapped with the cord torn from a lamp, one side of his head bloodied from where he was presumably struck down before being choked. He takes hold of the cord and carefully unwinds it, hearing Dean wince and cough as it stops biting into his neck. A hand clasps his thigh, pulling slightly at one of the cuts.

"Cas...?" Dean manages to get out.

Castiel drops down and holds onto him, burying his face in Dean's shirt and closing his eyes. The panic and pain that he'd managed to fight now return and he can't stop shaking, helpless and small and hopeless. Dean's arms go around him.

"S'ok..." he presses his face into Castiel's hair, mumbling softly, voice scratchy. "We need to call you an ambulance, ok?" Castiel just trembles against him. "Where's he?" When Castiel doesn't answer Dean just sighs, half lifting him carefully so that they can rest on the mostly intact half of the couch while he calls 911. Police and ambulance both on their way, he turns to assessing the damage done to Castiel, noticing for the first time that his pants are gone and that there is a larger amount of blood on him than he'd first thought in his fuzzy state.

"What did he do?" he looks down at Castiel, balled tightly against his side like a child. "Cas...what did he do?" Castiel shakes his head, eyes squeezing shut. Dean stops talking about it, hoping that the ambulance will be there soon. He has no idea if Alistair is unconscious or what, and he could come out of the bedroom any minute.

He's not going to leave Castiel for the few seconds it would take to check. He'd left him for a moment before, and that's how he'd wound up on the floor half choked and half concussed while in the other room...

He holds onto Castiel tightly. If Alistair woke up it would be the last glimpse of light he got before Dean killed him. The rest of his life, his parents, Sam, finally getting a settlement from Uriel? Could go to hell for all he cared, as long as he got his hands around that fuckers throat.

If he'd raped Castiel, Dean would skin him alive and burn him to ashes.

The violence of it is a raw taste in his mouth as he nuzzles Castiel's hair and tries to keep the bundled, shivering boy that used to be his grown lover, calm. Castiel's sobs and hacking breaths turn quieter and he succumbs to the exhaustion of the past hour, lying relatively still and pliant in Dean's arms.

When the ambulance arrives Dean lets them lead Castiel away, following them with the other EMT and taking a seat in the back of the truck with Castiel at his side, bloodied and half naked and practically catatonic. Alistair is wheeled down on a gurney and quickly put in a second ambulance, tubes are hanging from him and there's a lot of blood soaked into his clothes and on his skin.

The knife is still sticking out of his throat, and Dean gets a good look at it as he's wheeled past. He slowly lays an arm over Castiel's blanket covered shoulders.

"It's over..." he murmurs. Horror coating his words as he realises what Castiel had to do to get out of that room alive. "It's all ok now...it's all going to be ok..." he repeats softly, rubbing Castiel's back like he's a child. "I'm so sorry I couldn't get to you..." he feels his eyes grow wet, his voice shaking as the doors bang shut on them and the ambulance begins to move. "I'm so sorry...Cas..." Castiel's fingers touch his hand, drawing it into his lap. He looks like he wants to say something, but shakes his head, pressing close to Dean's body and hanging onto him tightly.

After a long time, about thirty minutes into the ride back to the hospital, Castiel licks his dry lips and open his cracked throat.

"I thought you were dead." He says numbly, blue eyes fixed on his lap, but hazy and unseeing.

Then the walls crash down and he grasps Dean tightly. Dean hold onto him right back and doesn't move until Castiel grips him tighter and pleads nonsensically, "Don't die." He just squeezes him back and promises, stupidly, that he won't.