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The first time, it was like being pulled under by a riptide. Castiel had cornered Dean, getting far too close and backing him up against a wall. The impossibly blue eyes had bored into his. Dean had trembled with the intensity of it.
"Stay still." A command. And frozen, terrified, Dean had obeyed. He thought for sure there must be some demon in the room with them; Castiel got that predatory look only when they were in danger. Dean's eyes flickered back and forth like the pendulum of a frantically ticking metronome. He almost didn't see Castiel lean in to kiss him.
It was firm, brief, overpowering. Dean's knees knocked together and he grabbed Castiel by the shirt -- not to pull him in but just to stay upright. Castiel's eyes stayed hard as he stood back and cleared his throat. "Now you know my intentions," he said. "I won't force you. "
"Oh, no, you can force me all you like," Dean had said in a weak voice. That had very nearly brought a smile from Castiel. Nearly.
They'd fallen to the bed in a tug-of-war of shirts and ties that Dean had no chance of winning, even from the beginning. Castiel had been blindingly fast and hot, skimming his mouth over Dean's skin and making him jerk upward needily into each press and suck. Dean had heard himself making noises that he didn't think it was possible for him to make. He was so needy, so stripped raw at that point that his pride had long since been buried. And Castiel had dazzled him, torn out every nerve in his body and taken it past the breaking point until Dean was shouting and sobbing with ecstasy. He'd clung to Castiel like the angel was his last hope. He might fall forever without him.
In subsequent days and weeks, fighting was foreplay. They'd face down demons and monsters of every shade, and Castiel would have the gleam of death in his eye. It made Dean ache for him. This guy, this angel, who could smite a creature with a single look, wanted him in his bed. He got hard just considering the concept. He was fucking an angel. Not just an angel. A goddamn badass warrior angel.
Just, lately, he didn't seem so very angelic anymore.
Something had happened after he'd come back to them. He was more guarded, more cautious. His power was tempered by prudence. He came only when he had to, and fought only when fighting was inevitable. For the most part he stuck to the shadows and the sidelines. The side-by-side battles Dean had treasured, the ones that whetted his hunger and served as an adrenaline-soaked aphrodisiac, rarely happened.
He'd even been jealous, briefly, of Sam. Castiel had stayed behind on one job to pore over untranslated documents that Sam had pulled up with a Web search or two, and Dean had watched Castiel lean over Sam's chair and thought maybe, just maybe, Castiel and Sam were developing a connection. What if Cas was fucking both of them? What if he was just a big Casanova in angel's clothing?
But that wasn't the case. Dean knew how his brother acted when he was getting laid, and Sam wasn't showing any of the signs. No, the problem here was Cas. Prudent, timid, conflict-avoidant Cas doing his best to stay off the battlefield. Because it was no longer a matter of the angel coming in and saving their asses. They spent just as much time, these days, saving his.
Clearly Castiel was losing his mojo.
Nothing as literal as the loss of grace. It was just that Castiel was no longer the proud warrior he used to be. He was kind of turning into an shrinking angelic violet. Hell, he was acting downright human.
Castiel was willing to talk to them these days. Make conversation. Ride with them in the car. Do research. He was even having a drink with Dean right now. All of that stuff would be fine, even welcome, if Cas was human like them. But he wasn't. Or, at least, he hadn't been when he and Dean started fucking. And that wasn't what he was supposed to be doing with his time. It wasn't the Cas he thought he knew.
It pissed Dean the hell off. Dean spent all his time facing down the terrors of the end of the world without flinching. Why? So Castiel could hide behind him and turn into a fucking… well, "mouse" wasn't the word he wanted to use, but it was more politically correct.
And now here he sat next to Dean, making faces at his beer and carrying on a slow conversation with him. The guy's words were starting to slur. The Five-Shot Wonder was slurring his fucking words.
Dean forgot what they'd been talking about. He cocked his head and said, "What's the matter with you?"
"What do you mean?" The squint he got was not the keen gaze of an angel but the sloppy focus of a drunk.
Dean rose to his feet. "That's exactly what I mean." He grimaced. "That. That look. You never used to have that look. What's going on?"
"I'm not understanding what you're getting at." He didn't have a single emotional response. He didn't seem upset or defensive in the least. It pissed Dean off. If Cas was going to be so goddamn human, he at least ought to have some pride, some ego to protect.
Hands went to fists on his hips. "You still an angel, Cas? Cause you're not acting like an angel."
Castiel's eyebrows twitched. "You've never complained about my human behaviors before."
"You're talking about the sex, aren't you?" A thick flare of anger. "Don't you dare, man. Don't you hold that over my head."
"Whatever you're imagining I'm doing, Dean, it's you imagining it." Castiel took another drink. "You're making up intentions I don't have."
Frustrated, Dean shoved over a barstool. The bartender gave him a warning glare, and Dean's upper lip twitched as he bent to right the stool again. He mumbled a gruff apology.
"You're making a scene," Castiel observed.
"You haven't seen me make a scene."
"You seem determined to show me."
"Damn, it, Cas!" A fist on the bar.
Castiel remained implacable. "What? You're arguing about nothing."
And Dean yanked his fist back through the air and sent it flying at Castiel's face.
It was caught with a steady hand; Castiel's eyes focused with an immediacy Dean hadn't expected. He jerked his hand free. Castiel rose to his feet and stood unguarded. A fresh round of rage billowed up in Dean's gut, and he took another swing. This time Castiel stood aside and let him stumble past, his feet carrying him forward with the punch, a roar coming from his gut. At the last moment, Castiel grabbed his wrist, swung him around to face him, and socked him squarely in the face. Dean went reeling, falling over a table, his unruly feet crossing and tangling with the legs of a chair as he fell. Table and chair upended. Dean hit the floor.
Back up in a second, he wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and fixed his eyes on Cas again. Now Castiel was serious, and his fists were up. Somewhere miles away the bartender was shouting and people were huddling together at the other end of the room. Pissed, bleeding, Dean went at him, coming just into range to invite a punch he was expecting, one he easily dodged and followed up with his own. Triumph flashed through him as he grazed Castiel's cheek with his knuckles and the angel stumbled to the side, momentarily dazed. Swinging around into another punch, Dean felt Castiel's head roll with the contact. The movement of a man who knows how to get hit. Who has a comeback planned. His mouth opened in surprise and dread.
Castiel's fist might as well have been a bullet for how fast it came around and how hard it hit. And there he was again, pivoting to the other side and landing another blow, this time in the gut. Dean coughed. Blood spattered against Castiel's face. Big hands seized Dean's collar, brought him up close, breath to breath.
Castiel's chin tilted up. "We're leaving," he announced to the bar. "Right now." And to Dean: "I'm only ever as drunk as I allow myself to be."
Dean wanted to laugh through the pain. So there was the angel warrior he'd been missing. He hadn't gone away. Sneaky bastard had been keeping him hidden this whole time.
Instead of laughing, though, he just blacked out.
The warm orange glow of a hotel room was the next light he saw. A lump of seeping cold was keeping his forehead heavy. A wet washcloth, or an ice pack. Another one froze his bloodied knuckles into stillness. Weighed down, aching and freezing, he struggled to take the measure of the room.
Castiel was there, his trenchcoat off and his tie loosened, standing against the far wall. Dean's vision was too blurry to interpret the look in his eyes. As he watched, Castiel stepped forward, coming to hover above him. "You are lucky that your brother was not with us tonight," he said. "You acted shamefully."
"I did… what? You judgmental son of a-- you punched me out!" Three separate sentences, none of them finished and all of them foolhardy. Dean thought he might have even squeaked a little on the final one. "Why in the hell did you do that, man?"
"It seemed the easiest way to quiet you. I was embarrassed."
Dean groaned. "See, that's just the whole problem. Since when are you embarrassed? Since when do you even get embarrassed? I don't know you anymore, man. You've turned into this… this mouse."
Castiel's brow furrowed. Dean watched it like he was watching the sky darken, a time-lapse video of a cyclone approaching. His teeth grated along his lower lip. He should apologize, should move back, but he was still too drunk and too proud, and instead he pressed further. "Why? What happened to that guy who raised me from the dead?"
"He began to care about you," Castiel said.
Quiet. Simple. Spoken as a fact.
It irritated Dean further. He sat up, tossing off the cloth that lay across his face, ignoring the onrush of blackness that clouded his vision. "What the fuck does that mean, care about me?"
"You're my weakness," Castiel said. "Since I met you, I've been steadily losing my power. The more earthly connections I have, the less heavenly power I can retain. Now that our relationship is… deeper, I'm much more human."
"You mean that you're weaker because we're fucking?" Dean's voice was low. "We've got a solution, then. Cause I don't want to fuck this guy who's standing in front of me. The angel, that guy, was hot. You're nothing."
"Dean." Castiel's face shifted, just subtly, but enough for Dean to tell that remark had hit home.
"I would have given you anything," Dean said. "Goddamn, Cas. I was so far gone, I would have gone back to hell for you."
"And I?" Castiel's eyes were mournful. "Am I not allowed to do the same?"
Dean blinked.
"This was my sacrifice to make," Castiel said. "I knew the ramifications of my decisions. Of allowing myself to get involved with you. I would be giving up my powers, my ties to heaven. And this is how you thank me for it."
"Why should I thank you?" Dean had a mighty urge to shove him, but instead he just stood up, angling a stubborn chin. "We're at war, Cas. We need your strength. What use are you like this?"
"I didn't do it to be useful."
"Then why did you?"
Castiel took a deep, huffing breath. He turned and stomped back a few paces. "If you don't know," he began, and stopped.
"What?" Dean grabbed his shoulder and pulled him around.
Hands seized his face. Dean opened his mouth to protest and got a mouthful of probing tongue, so deep in his mouth it was uncomfortable. It dragged over his, drawing goosebumps out of his skin everywhere with its powerful, measured stroke. Dean's voice rose up through his throat but could make it no further than a pitiful whimper. This wasn't a kiss, it was an invasion. He could choke on it.
Pain at his arms, clamping tightness of hands that had bruised his face with tightened fists, and his balance was gone. He was falling forward, then back, as he crashed against Castiel's body and was shoved, firmly, onto the bed. Castiel followed in tandem, crashing atop him and pinning him down with the same unforgiving hands. His teeth trailed along Dean's bottom lip and bit hard enough to split it. Dean tasted blood for the second time that night. His eyes opened wide to see the cyclone over him.
"I'm still much stronger than you," Castiel said. "Much stronger than you'll ever be."
Dean knew. God help him, he knew. "Fuck," he breathed. "Cas."
A growl. Cas' mouth near his ear. "You don't like it when I'm not strong?" he said. "Fine. I'll be strong." He shifted forward. A hot thigh surged between Dean's legs. Dean tried to lift his arms to wrap around him, but Cas' grip was too sure -- his arms were useless, locked by his side. Sucking pressure on his neck, and Dean thrashed on the bed. His blood was running hot paces through his body. His cock was throbbing with need, and he ground hard against the pillar of Cas' thigh.
"Jesus." He sounded like an asthmatic. He could barely get a word out and when he did it was tinny, a wheezing whistle. "Jesus Christ."
"What else do you want me to be?" Castiel's words were as hard as his stare. "Tell me what you want me to be, Dean. Tell me what would satisfy you."
"I don't--" Dean's mind was mired in quicksand and fire. He couldn't think, he just needed Cas' body against his. This was what he wanted, this intense domination. His ass rose off the bed and he ground his groin hard into Cas' thigh, surging up even further so he could feel the soft press of Cas' balls against his own leg. "Fuck, Cas--"
"I've done everything for you." Castiel was not interested in Dean's intense want. He was interested only in making his point. "Every decision I've made has been for you, Dean. Think about that."
"Can't think." Dean panted. His hands, useless claws pinned to the bed, somehow found Cas' kneecaps and tightened around them. "Fuck me. Jesus, Cas, I need it so bad."
"So this is what you need?" There was horror mingled with the hardness in Cas' voice. "You need me to be merciless? You want me to be the same as I was when you met me?"
His jaw remained open, but the words didn't come. Castiel slid off Dean and sat on the edge of the bed.
Wanting, left in the void, Dean convulsed with the sudden cold. He couldn't speak. His mouth kept flapping open and closed, like a carp at feeding. Shivers wracked his body.
Desire drained only slowly, and left him with a gaping chasm in his chest, pain and breathlessness and rejection each carving out its own series of holes. He was as riddled with wounds as if he'd been in the line of fire of an automatic weapon, "Cas," he gurgled, the liquid in his throat not blood but burgeoning tears. "Why…"
His eyes settled on the back hunched over at the edge of the bed and he fell silent.
Groaning, Dean sat up. The world was still spinning a little, the aftermath of alcohol and need. He inched his way down the length of the comforter and found his way to Cas' side. Cas didn't straighten up or look at him. At a loss, Dean reached over and placed a hand on the small of Castiel's back. "I'm sorry," he said.
"I'm not here to fulfill your fantasies, Dean," Castiel said without looking at him. "I want you, too. Did you forget that?"
Dean wanted to say funny way of showing it, but he couldn't muster up the pride, not after all this humiliation. He stayed silent.
"You think I've turned into a mouse instead of a man." Cas' voice was bitter, and the emotion sounded alien in his voice. "You're wrong. I've been more careful, but not for the reason you think."
He turned now, faced Dean for the first time. His eyes still commanded respect and silence, but their gaze was intimate. "It's just that for the first time in my life, I have something to lose."
Breath and voice betrayed Dean. He choked on his own exhalation. His hand came up to cover his mouth.
"You wanted me to know what was real," Castiel went on. "That time I broke you out of Zachariah's prison, you said, this is real. Families are real. Love is real. I wanted to know that for sure. I heard you, and I believed you, but I wanted to feel it."
Dean cleared his throat. He felt sheepish, but anger was still riding low along the edges of his consciousness. "Cas," he said. "Did I ever tell you what Zach showed me? When he sent me into the future?"
To Castiel it was a non-sequitur. His jaw closed.
"I saw you in there," Dean said. "You had become human. The angels had left you behind. And you were…. you were so sick of the world. You didn't care anymore. You fought beside me out of some sort of loyalty, or because you didn't want Lucifer to win after all that, or something.. But everything I knew about you was gone. You were just this sleazy guy. And the truth is, I didn't like him much.
"I don't want you to become that guy. Not like that. I guess you're scaring me a little lately because I keep seeing him. And he's not you. He didn't have any… any principles, any spirit left in him. He just laughed, and drank, and slept with chicks, and…"
Castiel peered at him. "It sounds like I turned into you."
Dean wanted to be mortally offended, but he couldn't quite hack it. "Maybe," he said. "Maybe you're right. And I had turned into you at that point. I was this insufferable hardass…"
"I don't want you to change, either, Dean."
Castiel put a hand on his. Color rose in his cheeks, and his fingers fidgeted.
"But we are changing." Dean sighed, his shoulders lifting and falling again. He gazed at the floor. "This war is changing us. That's fucking scary."
"Yes. Yes, it is."
"And the scariest thing for me is that you 're showing it." Dean angled his neck to look at Castiel. His eyes were pleading. "You never used to seem scared of anything, Cas. Now I just.. I get the feeling you are."
"I've always been," Castiel said. "I just have come to accept it. Admit it. It's not so different from what you're going through."
Dean's lips quirked. "I guess we're both turning into squeaky little mice."
Castiel's hand traveled from Dean's hand to his knee. "You can be frightened and brave at the same time," he said.
"Oh, leave off that Aesop's fable crap," Dean said. "This is the end of the world, not an afterschool special."
"You're smiling," was Cas' only reply.
Dean touched his own face and realized it was true.
"So, uh..." He squeezed Cas' hand. "Now that we know that we're both scared little boys, can we go to bed now?"
"You're still in the mood." Castiel's eyes darted down to confirm it.
"You punched me out, dude." Dean laughed. "I hate to admit it, but that was kind of a turn-on."
"I'll keep that in mind." Castiel tucked a hand under Dean's chin and kissed him.
The kiss was more possessive, more powerful than it had any right to be, and Dean heard his own whimper, saw through still-open eyes his hand weaving into Castiel's hair even before he could feel the short-cropped bristles against his fingers. Castiel lay him down slowly, but not gently -- it was an exercise of control, not tenderness.
And Castiel's body coming to rest over his was fast, heavy, unexpected. Dean gasped, felt the wind go out of him as chest and mouth sank deep onto his. Teasing tongue darted at his teeth. One of Cas' hands grabbed his wrist, forced it up over his head.
"Damn," Dean whispered, gasping for air between heavy kisses. His trapped hand rolled from side to side beneath the handcuff of Castiel's fingers. He lifted a thigh to lock one leg over Castiel's backside. An "oh" burst from round lips above him, and he felt Cas' cock twitch near his. Small triumphs. Dean growled his laughter.
From clothed to half-naked to naked in a rush of air and warping reality, and Castiel was there, there already, pushing him open and slipping in. Dean never needed it so badly, never felt so complete as he did right now, grinding up into the press of Castiel's body. "Fuck," he breathed. His eyes stayed open, watched every tic and flinch in the face above his.
Castiel was beautiful lost to pleasure. He straddled the gap between angel and human perfectly in this moment, his brow furrowed, his lips tight and uneven, sucking in breaths too quickly and letting out long, tortured grunts on every exhalation. Dean kind of wanted to freeze him like this, this perfect permutation of Castiel, finally in balance between the worlds.
But freezing would mean no more movement, no more change, no more fulfillment. Dean wasn't that much of a fool. He committed each expression to memory and then let his eyes sink closed, concentrating instead on the swell and push of bodies.
Soft kisses dotted his neck, too tender and too mild. He fought back with his own angry bites of flesh. Castiel laughed against his ear-- laughed!-- and dragged surprisingly sharp teeth down across his jaw. Dean cried out and opened his neck for more.
Cas could still kick his ass, could still fill the room with his presence and make everyone stare. He was still a brilliant motherfucking angel, and that brilliant motherfucking angel had his mouth pressed to Dean's skin, was fucking him slow and deep, and Dean was an idiot for ever thinking there was anything that needed to be improved upon because this, yes, this was perfection. He arched hard and wormed his hand in between them, jacking himself furiously as Castiel's fucking turned him to pieces and then turned the pieces inside-out and upside-down. When he came, he was shaking with the force of it.
And as he fell back down to earth, Cas' mouth captured his in small rosebuds of kisses. Accepting those kisses, letting them melt into his mouth and letting their meaning sink low into his heart, was like listening to a story. Not a morality tale or a post-apocalyptic vision, nothing whose ending was set in stone, but the simple and open-ended story of the two of them.
Some things were indeed changing, that story said. And some change was good.