Chapter 15: Pain

Obviously, it was the wrong thing to say.

Dean stirred under him, and then Cas found himself pinned down on the floor again, Dean´s face above his own. Dean´s tense, suspicious face. His eyes were piercing. The relaxed atmosphere had gone in this one instant...Cas could almost feel the tension filling the air.

„What?"

Dammit. Goddammit. What do I tell him now? Cas´mind was working frantically. Does it even matter, as he´ll probably kill me anyway, no matter what I say?

Because the professionally trained Yakuza businessman/killer was back, Cas saw it in the cold shade of green Dean´s eyes had taken on, felt it in the pressure of his arm across his chest. It wasn´t meant to give pleasure, this time.

„You´ll SAVE me? From what!"

What the hell, Cas thought. We won´t be able to do this without his consent, anyway.

„Yakuza", he simply said.

A flash of surprise. „You know", Dean said, and his eyes took on a murderous expression.

He was on top of Cas before Cas had even batted an eyelid, body tensed and ready to strike. One of his hands closed around Cas´ throat. One move, and I´m dead, Cas thought, strangely indifferent. At least we´ve had this one earth shaking sex experience together.

„What are you – CIA? Police? A damn spy?" His voice was strained, words spit out like venom. „Has the ambassy set you on my trail? The government?" He let go of Cas´ throat. His fingers traced Cas´ chin, up to the cheekbone, stroked his brow. It was gentle, and more frightening than anything Cas had ever experienced. „My shy little translator", Dean sneered, and Cas could see his teeth again, his wolf´s face. „I should have been more careful, right? Should have suspected something was off when you turned out to be such an experienced whore." His fingers wandered up to Cas´ hairline, into his messed up hair, a tender caress...and then the strong hand grabbed Cas´ hair abruptly, balled to a fist, and he jerked his head back, exposing Cas´ throat, pulling so hard it made Cas tear up, and Dean bent down...Cas could feel his lips on his skin, then his teeth, just gracing the surface, and he shivered, finding a sick pleasure in it all, but also from fear.

So that´s how I die, he thought. Not too bad...straddled by the hottest man I´ve ever met in my life...

Dean had found the marks he´d left earlier, and dug his teeth into the already bruised skin, but slowly, and deeper than before, and Cas whimpered unvoluntarily, and tried to get away from the pain...

Dean´s malicious grin appeared in front of his face again, his eyes were literally sparkling with contempt. Cas saw blood on his lips, my blood, and wasn´t even surprised any more when he felt his cock twitch.

„Have you lost your voice, little translator? I sure remember you talking a lot earlier...and oh, such dirty words in that pretty mouth of yours...", Dean snarled.

He came closer, lips almost touching Cas´ now, ghosting over them softly, teasing him, wandering to his ear.

Dean whispered so low now it was almost inaudible. Cas felt the other man´s breath rush over his skin, tickle the fine hair on his ear.

„Don´t you know we don´t like traitors and spies much, Castiel?" The way he said the name, it was an insult. Cas´ body started to ache from the pressure on his chest, but this...this hurt more, the words, and the cold hate seeping from them.

„Don´t you know", Dean´s words were barely audible now, „what we do with people who want to wriggle their way inside our family to destroy it?" His lips wandered back over his face, a tender touch, so caring, and so wrong. Then Dean sat up again, but bent down to stare into Cas´ eyes, gently drawing a line around them with his index finger. „What a pity...what a waste. Such a beautiful face, and such talented lips..."

Cas was beyond fear now. If anything, he was turned on, which honestly made him question his sanity again. He was pretty sure he wouldn´t live to see the next morning, and he accepted it... Poor Sam, he thought. Poor, deluded Sam, looking for phantoms from his past who don´t exist any more...

He looked up into the cold, beautiful face, showing a cruelty that made Cas cringe inwardly. What the hell...I owe it to Sam, he thought.

„I´m here for your brother", he croaked. „And, believe it or not, for your sake."

Dean went completely still.

Ta-damm, ta-damm, ta-damm, went Castiel´s heart.

A weird expression flickered over Dean´s face. „My brother", he whispered, the sneer gone.

„My...Sammy?" For a moment, there was a longing in his eyes, and a pain so deep and old it cut right into Cas´ heart. Then his expression changed. Rage flamed up in the man´s eyes. Cas flinched.

„How dare you", Dean pressed out between his teeth. „How dare you even mention him, you filthy slut." The blow came as a surprise, and so did the pain that whitened out Cas´ vision for seconds, throwing him into a spinning world full of too bright stars piercing his eyes, his head, his whole body. When he came back, to a sharp throbbing at the side of his face, vision blurred from the tears of pain running down his cheeks and temples, he saw Dean straighten up, face stony.

„My brother is dead", he said. „Has been dead for a long time. You chose the wrong pressure point, Castiel...your secret service should have given you better information. Or did they just sacrifice you ... sending in the little innocent lamb ... such a tease..." his hand wandered down to Cas´ throat again, pressing down, constricting Cas´ breathing.

„Not...dead...Sam...here...Tokyo", he choked out. „Met ...him..."

The pressure was released just the tiniest bit. That´s your last chance, Castiel, Cas thought.

„Should know, as I slept with him several times..."

Slap-slap. His head was thrown left, then right, panging against the floor, and for seconds, Cas´ head was nothing but a balloon full of rhythmically pounding pain. Nice job provoking the beast that has pinned you down under its claws, teeth bared and tasting blood... Cas ´ thoughts were oddly detached again. Funny how Dean falls back into the fist fights of his youth, and doesn´t use the refined fighting technicques they sure drilled into him at Yakuza...

Before Dean could go on with whatever punishment he´d had in mind, hand already raised above Cas´ face, Cas just plunged on, speech already slurred from the swellings that started to deform his cheeks.

„He´s come here..to find you...save you from...Yakuza, and...take you..home." Talking wasn´t exactly pleasant, or easy. „Looked for..you...years..and waited for..opportunity..."

The hand sank down, minimally. „Found...your father´s ...secret archive...information...on your abduction...Sam...prepared...for years...and now...he´s here."

Cas saw the fist clench tight again, knuckles white. „My father was a dirty cop, trying to save his own hide sacrificing his family. He did nothing, NOTHING, to find me, or even look for me!" Dean pressed the words out through teeth clenched so tightly he was barely intelligible. „He crossed paths with the wrong mob, got my mother and Sammy killed, and me – me..." Dean closed his eyes, squeezed them shut, and for a moment his face showed such desperation it made Cas´ eyes water.

Then Dean had caught himself again, and bowed deep over Cas. His face wasn´t the cold mask any more, now it was a display of emotions, I´ve never seen him that beautiful, Cas registered somewhere at the far back of his crazy mind.

„It was Yakuza who saved me", Dean whispered, in a choked voice, „it was them who pulled me out of that cage, out of the darkness and away from the – the pain, and...and taught me to fight and gave me a home. Not my FATHER!" He spat the word out, and Cas flinched at the hate in Dean´s voice, his distorted face.

„My family was slaughtered by thugs sent by the scum of New York, but I found a new one. Yakuza is my family now, and believe me, they are nothing like the filthy mob back in America."

And Cas understood, finally he understood, how Dean had been able to fit into Yakuza´s army so well, and never even look back at his life before he had been abducted. Why he never even tried to find Sam. Yakuza had made him completely compliant, twisting his memories, turning everything he remembered into a lie, and burning their own version into his brain ...using his desperation, the sense of betrayal, to turn him into their most devoted soldier. They turned him into their own Samurai Masashige, loyal to death, he thought. How can I, how can Sam erase all those lies, and the years of hate and rage? Make him see the truth again?

„They lied to you", he whispered, tears constricting his voice, „Dean, they lied. Sam is alive, and he´s here to see you. I -"

Dean´s fist crashed down on Cas´ nose, and he could feel the bone shatter before his vision blackened out.

He wasn´t gone for long, barely 30 seconds, and when he tried to focus his eyes again, choking blood and barely able to breathe through the blood streaming out of his nose, running down his cheeks, and lips, and chin, the first thing he took in was Dean´s naked form crouching at his side, leaning against the wall, arms slung around his knees, and although the pain was blurring his vision, and doing strange things to his brain, he noticed that Dean´s face was wet. Did I punch him too?, he wondered for a moment, thoughts disconnected and floating around his head in tiny pieces...

No...that´s not blood...it´s tears. He is crying.

And suddenly, he didn´t see the tough, cold businessman, nor the perfectly trained killer. What he saw was a 16 year old boy cowering on the floor, rocking back and forth, crying in desperation, mourning the loss of everyone he´d ever held dear and loved in his life, and the loss of his whole world.

Cas scrambled to his knees, the blood was choking him, and he grabbed for something to still it; finally, he pressed his shirt to his face. No use keeping it clean...I´m dead anyway.

He ended up leaning against the wall, too, a few feet apart from Dean, who had stopped crying and stared into nothingness, lost in his own world.

Eventually, Cas´ nose would stop bleeding (not hurting, though); he leant his head back, closing his eyes, listening to Dean´s shallow breathing. He shivered. The room was cold after all, and without Dean´s warm skin on his own, being naked wasn´t that comfortable. He didn´t move though, too exhausted to do anything but sit, and wait...what for, he wasn´t even sure. Maybe death, he thought.

Sam´s face appeared in his mind, and, strangely enough, Takemi, his long lost friend. Maybe we are just doomed. Maybe fate has some epic plan involving us all, a giant chess play...

And then, he started to talk, just like that, as if they were two people catching up on each other´s lives for some reason...and Dean didn´t stop him, Cas couldnt´ tell if he was even listening, but he went on nevertheless. He told him about his childhood, and Takemi, how he´d ended up in Japan, about his work, and his anger, and then about how Sam had stumbled into his quiet life, Sam´s version of Dean´s reality, and about their crazy plan to bring down those who´d destroyed Sam´s and Dean´s family, right to the negotiations, and Alistair´s request that he, Castiel, should find out about the opponent´s flexibility, and he didn´t even hold back on the CIA´s vague suspicions about Yakuza´s influence in the whole process, and the anonymous source of those accusations.

„My boss was delighted when you requested me especially for these...`inoffical mediation´ talks´", he ended, voice hoarse, and muffled from the swollen, painfully pounding nose. He closed his eyes again, immensely tired all of a sudden.

„And for a moment, I thought – I believed that this hopeless mission could actually work...that we had a chance, against better knowledge and experience."

He huffed mirthlessly. „And whatever you believe...whatever you take me for...what we had before...the sex? I never ...I´ve never felt anything like that."

He fell silent, eyes closed. He didn´t open them when he heard Dean scramble to his feet, the rustling of clothes, broken porcellain cracking under heavy steps. Did we break something?, Cas wondered, listening to the steps moving away. When they stopped, he finally opened his eyes. Dean stood at the door, fully clothed, suit a little crumpled, and his hair not as perfectly combed as usual. He looked at the vase with samurai Kusunoki Masashige´s pictures on it, the scene where the traitor Ashikaga Takauji brutally slays him.

Cas flinched when Dean spoke, not expecting him to.

„He had a brother", Dean said, voice low, and rough. „Kusunoki...he had a brother who fell with him in the battle against the traitor. He woudn´t leave his brother in the hour of death." Cas watched the other man. Dean´s face was unreadable again, but something seemed different. It costs him, Cas realized, it´s not effortless any more.

Dean turned to the sliding door. He didn´t look at Cas.

„I´ll tell your boss Alistair that the mediations have been successful, and that the Japanese delegations will return to the conference table on Monday." Business voice again.

Finally, his gaze flickered over to Cas´ beaten up face, not meeting his eyes, though.

„You should take some rest until then", he added. His hand was already at the wooden doorframe when he added, „There´s an exit to the right of the backyard. It leads to a passage that ends right into the street we´ve walked up here." He slid the door open, and stepped out. Cas was sure he´d be gone, but then the tall man turned again, and this time, he looked right into Cas´ eyes.

„Be careful, Castiel", he said, voice low, and then the sliding door closed, and he was gone.

Castiel didn´t leave his flat during the next two days. He didn´t have many provisions at home, but as his face had turned into a red-bluish balloon anyway, and eating anything other than soup wasn´t exactly an option, he lived off stock soup (the Japanese miso version), tea, and rice crackers. He didn´t dare contact Sam personally; the whole situation somehow was falling apart, and honestly, he didn´t know what to do...they´d have to wait for Monday, and the next round at the ambassy. He only hoped Sam wasn´t in danger because of his epic mess-up with Dean...would Dean know about a new recruit? Would he make the connection? Would he...stop it. It´s useless, he scolded himself; nevertheless, he didn´t really sleep much, or eat much, or do much but stare out into the steadily falling rain, pace the room, replay everything he still remembered from his ...encounter..with Dean, and get a hard on, goosebumps from fear for everyone involved, or feel like screaming in frustration, or crying, in turns. He´d never been so glad the weekend was over, when Monday finally dawned.

His face was still a mess, of course. Rather greenish-blue by now, and the swelling had gone down; to make up for it, he sported black smudges under his eyes. His hat pulled low, and an umbrella to save him from too many curious glances, he hasted to the embassy early.