Febuwhump Day 24: Too Weak to Move. Dean is attacked on a hunt with Cas. At the risk of dying without ever confessing, Dean tells Cas how he really feels.

Title: Bathed in Blue

Dean didn't think it would be easy — nothing he did was ever easy — but this was not how he expected it to go. Sam had scrolled across two cases, one in Arkansas and one in Kentucky. He proposed they complete them both together, but Dean declined, saying that they could handle them individually. He didn't want to let innocent people die when they could easily split up and take care of both monsters at the same time.

If Dean wasn't eating those words now. He took Cas with him. Since his powers had become weaker, Dean could tell he was beginning to feel useless. When the case was brought up, he volunteered to accompany Dean and although he would be of no help, Dean accepted the offer.

So Dean and Cas took the case in Arkansas and Sam hit Kentucky. A slew of bodies had turned up in a forest, clawed apart. With few leads to go on, Dean decided to plow through and investigate the woods.

Big mistake. Huge.

As they traipsed through the wooded thicket, feet crackling on a floor of twigs and dead leaves, he heard a guttural growl behind him. He spun around in time to see an unfamiliar creature that shot shivers down his spine. It stood on four long, spindly legs with hindquarters arched above its body, covered in ash-gray fur, but attached to its neck was the face of a human. It had wild, black eyes and a grin that spread wide across its face, flashing sharp, yellow teeth. Dean took a step back and the creature burst out into high-pitched cackles, then crouched and sprung forward. He pulled the trigger of his gun three times as the creature flew through the air, but it was unperturbed by the bullets and its claws ripped through his shirt and into his skin. He gasped out.

"Dean!" Cas shouted.

Dean held a hand over the cuts as blood gushed from them. The creature tilted its head and giggled as it observed him. "Run!" Dean shouted. He spun around and took off in a sprint, but the sharp nails of the monster cut slits in his back. He toppled to the ground and tried to squirm away as the scratches continued, across his back, his legs, his neck.

A high-pitched squeal sounded and Dean was lifted off the ground. Cas propped him up, fixing Dean's arm around his shoulder and wrapping his around Dean's waist. "I- I can't," his legs gave out and Cas clung to him to keep him from face-planting, lowering him slowly to the forest floor.
"I have to carry you," Cas informed him, picked him up, and threw him over his shoulder. Dean would have been more embarrassed about being carried like this, completely useless and with his ass next to Cas's face, but the blood seeping out of his body prevented him from caring much.

"I see a cabin," Cas announced. Thank God. Cas's shoulder was digging into his stomach and the movement burned the cuts on his chest and back.
Cas raced to the cabin and jostled the handle. Dean thought he might have to break it down, but fortunately the door clicked open. Cas placed Dean on the wood floor in the cabin and the pain on his legs immediately flourished, knocking him onto his side so that none of his wounds were being directly touched. "Where is it? Did you kill it?" Dean asked.

"No, I used my grace to wound it, but I don't think it's dead," Cas hurried over to a chair and dragged it across the room to position it beneath the door knob. He paused when he was done, taking a moment to catch his breath, before turning back to Dean.

Dean could feel himself fading. It all happened so fast after the monster materialized, the dozens of slashes on his body carved in a matter of seconds. He was sticky and his clothes were damp with blood. Everything was colder than it had been before, uncharacteristically chilly for a summer night. "I'm freezing."

Cas crouched beside him and held a hand to his chest. His face contorted with concentration, but the sweet relief that usually flooded Dean's body when Cas healed him did not come. "My powers aren't working," there was anger in Cas's voice. He curled his hand into a fist and slammed it against the cabin floor.

"What was that thing?" Dean asked hoarsely.

"I've never seen it before."

"It was creepy," he winced as pain shot through the cuts on his legs.

Cas raised both of his hands to Dean's chest, focusing intensely. Dean waited, but the pain did not subside and the realization dawned on him that he was going to die here. He tried to push himself off the floor, trying to get into a more dignified position, but his arms trembled and gave out.

"Stop straining yourself," Cas ordered. He seemed to switch strategies and reached into his pocket to pull out his phone, but Dean could read from the fury on his face that there were no bars in the remote forest.

"Cas, it's okay. That thing, it's gonna come back and I don't think it'll be alone this time."

Cas stared at Dean, trying to force away the emotion leaking into his face. "Stop."

"You have to go. I can't even sit up. It's too late for me."

"Dean," Cas said in a tone that begged him not to continue with his deathbed speech. With renewed passion, he pressed on Dean's chest, earning a yelp from the man, and finally the wound glowed with blue light, but it was dim and after about ten seconds, flickered and died.

When Dean looked down, he found that the wound had begun to heal.

Cas panted from the exertion. "I can heal it, but not all at once."

"No, you can't," it seemed like he and Cas took turns being the irrational one in their friendship, and right now, Cas couldn't see clearly that this was unsustainable, "You're going to kill yourself if you keep this up."
"I don't care. I would rather die trying to save you than live without you," he held his hands over Dean's chest again and yelled as blue light twinkled then dulled. The wound was almost entirely healed, but Dean shoved away the hands. "Stop! I'm not going to let you do this."

The desperation was evident in Cas's body, the terrified eyes, the heavy breaths that heaved his shoulders, the tremors in his hands. "I won't let you die, Dean."

"Listen to me please. I need you to get out of here. I can't be the reason that you die. You'll be okay."

"No, I won't!" Cas cried and tears sparkled on his cheeks in the moonlight.

Dean tried to reach for Cas's hand, but it crashed to the floor. Cas picked it up and clutched it between his. Dean took a beat to gather his courage before he began, "There's something I need to say to you. I know what you gave up for me- for humanity. That you turned your back on Heaven and your dad. You lost your whole family. I don't know if I deserved all of it, Cas, but thank you. For everything. I've always had Sammy and I'd do anything for the kid, but since I met you, I feel like I learned to love like I never knew how. The fact that you believed in me blew my mind. Someone like you, not just an angel, but you Cas, saw something in me. That made me think that maybe I was worth something."

He smiled bitterly. "Now I'm wishing that I told you this sooner, but I never knew how. I was afraid of what you would say. I still am, but I'm more scared of dying without telling you this. I love you. I always have, even if I didn't know it. There's no one else in this world or any of the others like you. Sometimes I'm still shocked that I got to meet you. It doesn't matter if I die here 'cause I won the lotto just knowing you," Dean finished his speech. Tears streaked Cas's cheek and he clutched Dean's hand desperately, trying to keep him tethered to the Earth with the touch.

Cas's voice shook when he spoke, "I have known humans for thousands of years before I met you, but none ever made me feel what you have. I would do it all over again. Heaven means nothing compared to you. You are my Heaven, Dean. Meeting you made me wake up and I can't go back to existence without you, I wouldn't even know what that looks like. I see all the kindness, all the selflessness and beauty that you can't see in yourself and there is so much it's overflowing. I love you, so I can't let you go. I live with you or I die with you, but I am not going to walk out of here alone."

Dean's heart was so full it hurt. He had spent years hating himself, denying his feelings, pining from a distance, and the whole time, Cas had been right here for him. It was like a miracle, a one in a hundred billion chance that Cas could ever feel this way about someone like Dean. This man was his savior, had pulled him from the confines of Hell, and saved him again and again since then. He was otherworldly and beautiful and everytime he looked at Dean with those blue eyes, he thought he might faint, and somehow he had come to love Dean. "Kiss me."

Cas leaned down and pressed his lips against Dean's. All that mattered was Cas, his angel, and the rest of the world faded away. He had never felt like this before - complete. He spent his whole life aching for something and he didn't know what it was until this moment. Cas put his hands on Dean's face so that he didn't have to hold up his neck and the kiss turned from soft and worshipful to needy and passionate.

But energy was draining from Dean and when his body went entirely limp, Cas pulled away. "No," Cas said and held his hands over Dean's back. Light beamed through the cabin, bathing the walls in his blue grace. Neither of them could hear the sound of dozens of claws scraping against the cabin walls. "No, no. Dean! Dean!" the light dimmed and disappeared. Cas's body was tense with focus and again, light glimmered weakly through the rips in Dean's back.

"Dean!"