Between Love and Agony - Duckyboos (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Appearances can be deceiving. At least at first glance, because there’s usually no opportunity for the second, third, fourth, fifth. Everyone makes split-second judgments about the people they pass on the street, the barista who spells their name with an erroneous ‘e’, the red-faced woman in the booze aisle with five kids and no volume button, the Cheeto-fingered dude trying to upskirt a woman on the L.

But then again, appearances can be exactly what you expect.

And that’s the thing about Jimmy Novak. The only thing, because Jimmy’s predictability is his sole trait. He’s a good man, but that’s also predictable, because he looks like a good man. He goes to church, donates his time and money to charity, rarely swears or raises his voice, and has never touched a harder substance than aspirin.

Just like you’d assume from a single glance.

Dean doesn’t know which came first: Jimmy looking like he does those things because he does, or doing those things because he looks like he does.

Though as he stands there on the morning of his wedding, on the threshold of their shared Chicago home, staring at the mirror image of his soon-to-be-husband, Dean has a pretty good idea.

Those blue eyes on Jimmy are soft and warm-lit. On his identical twin, Castiel, they’re calculating and sharp.

If Dean believed in such things, he’d assume the brothers were co-eternal representations of good and evil. But, of all the things The Simpsons got right, the relevant one for Dean is that the bad twin is rarely actually bad. And so, in this instance, he’s willing to assume that the look Castiel drags up and down Dean’s body like a sexual harassment charge, is nothing more than piqued interest.

After all, it’s their first meeting, despite Dean and Jimmy having been together for eighteen months. Castiel is some kind of fancy art and antique dealer, which means he travels a lot. Something Dean understands because he spent his youth in bars and parking lots all over the country, performing small cons and big miracles. He’s past the empty-stomach-need to get on his knees for crumpled twenties now — thanks in no small part to Jimmy — but sometimes wanderlust twists through him like a Dear John letter; a kind of wistful yearning for an indescribable feeling and freedom.

He doesn’t feel trapped, no, that’s not fair to say at all. If Dean really wanted to go to some far-flung corner of the earth, he has no doubt that Jimmy would follow him there and over the edge, it’s just that… there would be no excitement to it. No spontaneity. Jimmy would plan it all to the nth degree, making plans B, C, all the way through to Z. Just in case. Once, just once, Dean would love for them to do something completely impulsive. Simply get on a random train with nothing more than the money in their pockets, the clothes on their backs, and see where it takes them.

But Jimmy’s predictable.

It might have only been ten seconds, but Dean can already tell that Castiel is the yin to Jimmy’s yang; edgy, mysterious. Unpredictable.

“Hello,” Castiel says, all polite-like, in a voice that’s a good octave lower and a twenty-a-day habit rougher than his twin’s. “Dean.”

There are lots of ironies in the world. According to Alanis Morissette, rain on your wedding day is one of them. Another, Dean would suggest, is meeting your fiance’s identical twin for the very first time on said rainy wedding day and realizing that you feel more attracted to him simply saying your name than you’ve ever managed for your husband-to-be.

Castiel is wet. Very very wet. The jacket of his triple black suit is folded over his arm, so Dean can see how his thin shirt is sticking damply to the firm swell of muscle in his chest and arms. His dark hair is plastered to his head, droplets of water clinging to his thick, pointed lashes and dripping off the tip of his nose.

Dean’s mouth is dry. Very very dry. He licks his lips and manages to croak out a breathless, “Hi, Castiel.”

A hint of a smile flickers at the corner of Castiel’s mouth. The mouth Dean absolutely isn’t staring at, because he knows exactly what it looks like on his fiance, even if he’s never seen this precise expression.

“Can I come in?” Castiel asks, leaning closer like it’s not really a question, more a formality to maintain a facade of societally-enforced politeness.

Dean sways forward a little, magnetized, and there’s a heart-stopping moment where he’s about to find out whether Castiel tastes as fascinating as he looks, but he catches himself at the last half-a-heartbeat, drawing back enough so that he’s no longer sharing breath with his almost-brother-in-law and is instead stepping aside to let the man inside his house.

Where he’s alone.

Charlie isn’t due to arrive and pretty him up for the big day for a couple more hours and Sam’s expected even later, with the rings and transport to the venue.

Which resolutely is not a church, ‘cause Jimmy might be religious, but Dean’s been pretty blasphemous during his life; he’s not looking to get reduced to a pillar of salt.

(And yeah, Jesus forgives, but only if you repent and get dunked in the tank of holy backwash to prove it.)

Castiel steps past him, closer than strictly necessary, the heat and scent of his skin so f*cking close, all fresh rainwater, earth, and masculinity. Dean breathes in as Castiel breathes out and the air around them is utterly still, the silence only fragmented by the soft pelt of rain outside.

Goddammit.

Castiel’s presence is intimidatingly intimate and Dean’s at a complete loss. He’s never felt this pull toward someone before, this... staticky connection that smooths out into a perfect signal, clear and calm as the eye of a storm whenever that soul-f*ck stare lands on him. It’s f*cking with his head, heart, and dick on completely separate tracks, but it's all heading toward either a derailment or casualty-creating crash.

“Uh, a towel?” Dean manages, smooth as crunchy peanut butter, scrambling for seconds and distance before he makes an even bigger idiot of himself. “I’ll get you a towel.”

Castiel’s mouth quirks and he nods.

Absent-mindedly closing the door, Dean leads Castiel into the study, leaving him there dripping all over the imperial teak flooring while he scurries off to fetch a fresh towel from the downstairs bathroom; the one with the walk-in shower that's still running because Dean was about to get in when the doorbell went.

He snatches the nearest full-size towel, turns off the shower, and rushes back, halting in the doorway and watching as Castiel drags dexterous fingers over the spines of Jimmy’s leather-bound first editions. Dean’s transfixed by the uncanny valley of seeing his fiance’s body wrapped around a completely different personality. Just the way he holds himself, the way he moves… f*ck.

“Jimmy’s staying with a friend until after the wedding,” Dean blurts when Castiel notices him standing there like a lovestruck moron in nothing but ratty gray sweats and the kind of bedhead you only get from tossing and turning the night before your wedding. He proffers the towel, keeping himself and Castiel separated by an arm’s length. It still doesn’t stop Castiel’s fingers brushing Dean’s as he takes the towel — and then mercifully buries his face in it so he can’t see the way Dean’s cheeks heat all high-school-virgin-like at the contact.

When Castiel emerges a handful of seconds later, his hair is tousled and sticking up in all directions. His eyes are bright and roguish when he replies, “I know,” with an undercurrent of mirth in his voice that makes Dean squirm. “It’s you I came to see.” He drops the towel on Jimmy’s desk next to his discarded suit jacket and digs into the knot of his tie with deft fingers, yanking it loose and pulling it through the damp collar of his shirt.

This is how far too many p*rnos start.

sh*t.

As soon as Castiel begins unbuttoning his shirt, Dean turns away to give him some privacy and to hide his own reaction. From behind him, he hears a soft huff of laughter. Desperate to fill the silence only punctuated by the sound of Castiel undressing, Dean stares blankly at the hallway clock and says, “You here to give me ‘the speech’ then?”

There’s a short pause, a rustle of clothing. Dean squeezes his eyes shut, forces himself to think about literally anything other than Castiel getting naked behind him. “That’s what a good brother would do,” Castiel says after a moment. “But, as I’m sure you’ve no doubt heard, I’m not a good brother.”

Not in so many words, but the way Jimmy speaks of him doesn’t denote a close brotherly bond. Dean knows of Castiel’s exploits through snatched hushes and campfire tales told here and there: how he used to be a man of faith, like his twin — volunteering at soup kitchens, helping little old ladies across the street, doing everything right — until he decided that burying himself in men, women, and decadence was far more fun.

Jimmy doesn’t approve of Castiel’s lifestyle and his laissez-faire attitude towards his sexuality, that much is clear.

Dean’s not sure what to say to that. It’s not his place to get in the middle of whatever their issues are with each other and especially not on his wedding day. Save that sh*t for a family reunion ten years from now.

“I’m decent,” Castiel says and at first, Dean assumes it’s Castiel defending himself against Jimmy’s disapproval, but when he follows it up with, “you can turn back around,” Dean realizes he’s being mocked.

Not least because — as Dean finds out when he turns around — Castiel isn’t decent, not by any literal or metaphorical meaning of the word. His shirt is unbuttoned and hanging off his broad shoulders and his pants are gone, revealing dark boxer briefs that are riding low on the sharp jut of his tattooed hip bones.

Oh.

He’s perfectly indecent; thick and firm with life-lived muscle and sinew, where Jimmy is slender and willowy. They’re both gorgeous in their own way, of course they are, but Jimmy is the handsome, “I’ll have him home by nine sir,” to Castiel’s hot, “Your son calls me daddy too.”

Dean swallows around the constriction of his throat. Dragging his stare up and away from the swirl of grayscale lettering that curls around the angled muscle of Castiel’s abdomen, he forces himself to remember that he’s getting married today.

To his f*cking goody-two-shoes twin.

There’s tension thick in the ensuing silence. It’s not awkward, just… filled with potential. For what, Dean isn’t sure, but it has him shaky with racing adrenaline, and he needs to get the hell outta here before he does something irredeemably stupid like f*ck his brother-in-law. Staring at a fixed point over Castiel’s shoulder — the chunky spine of one of Jimmy’s boring-ass theology books — Dean offers, “I, um, can put your clothes in the dryer if you want?”

Apparently endlessly amused by Dean’s awkwardness, Castiel smiles, just the barest twitch of his lips, as though he’s finding this whole pathetic display endearing. “Thank you.” He slips the shirt down his arms and hands it — along with his slacks, tie, and socks — off to Dean who beats a hasty retreat to the laundry room, not sparing Castiel a below-the-neck glance.

In the safety of a room he only visits when he's run out of underpants to turn inside out or apparently when he’s having a crisis of conscience, Dean leans against the washing machine, and blows out a frustrated breath.

This is Not Good.

His first instinct is to let the steadily rising panic swallow him whole, because Jesus f*cking Christ, but instead, he shoves Castiel’s clothes into the dryer, not bothering to check the labels to make sure that they won’t shrink or whatever, and tells himself that everything’s fine. It’s just physical appreciation for someone who looks like his fiance. In fact, it would be weird if he wasn’t attracted to Castiel, right? ‘Cause he’s just Jimmy with a couple of body mods and extra time at the gym. No biggie.

So Castiel’s hot. Of course he is. Jimmy’s hot too.

It’s fine. It doesn’t mean anything.

Dryer on the go and mantra in his head, Dean returns to the study, determined. Jimmy’s a paid-up member of the chastity-ring-wearing-no-sex-before-marriage club, so Dean hasn’t gotten laid since he and Jimmy became exclusive, and Castiel is attractive and charismatic and mostly naked. That’s all this is. Tomorrow, Castiel will be gone again and he’ll be relegated to nothing more than the brother-in-law with no sense of personal space or boundaries.

Yeah.

Castiel’s in Dean’s half of the study now, which, when considered against the academic tomes on Jimmy’s side, looks like the kid’s corner in a library. His back is turned, so Dean gets an unobstructed view of the intricate Giger-esque ink tripping down the ridges of his spine.

It’s kind of macabre, but fascinatingly beautiful too, and Dean wants to close the distance between them and lick it, to taste Castiel’s skin, to press their bodies together, to f*ck.

He stays rooted to the spot though, watching as Castiel selects one of Dean’s battered paperbacks from a middle shelf. Flipping through the pages, eyes scanning over the content, Castiel murmurs, "He told me to stay away."

It takes a protracted moment for Dean to realize that Castiel is talking to him, rather than merely thinking aloud. "Huh?"

“Jimmy,” Castiel answers, looking up at — and right through — Dean. “He told me not to come to the wedding.”

“Why?”

Castiel arches an eyebrow — all ‘you know why’ like he’s again assuming his reputation precedes him — and Dean reconsiders Jimmy’s disdain for his twin; tiny slivers of envy in a wash of revulsion. The brothers’ paths have diverged considerably since the thumbed-through photos Dean’s seen, tucked away in the bottom of a drawer. The two of them as toddlers with wide eyes and chubby limbs; as surly pre-teens at school events; as adolescents growing into themselves — Jimmy the good citizen and Castiel the enchanting savant. The pictures dwindled away to nothing for their adult years; no catalogue of their relationship for better or worse, and Dean — as an older brother himself — can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to not know if his sibling was dead or alive on the other side of the world.

Or care.

“So you came anyway,” Dean says carefully, not wanting it to sound like an accusation.

“You invited me,” Castiel responds reasonably, closing the book — Eric, by Pratchett — and sliding it back into place. Dean catches the glint of a thin silver ring through Castiel’s left nipple when he moves over to another shelf, intent on another book. “It would have been rude not to come when you asked me to.”

When they were sending out invitations and Dean asked his fiance for a forwarding address for his brother, Jimmy provided one willingly, giving no indication that he didn’t want Castiel to attend. It’s kind of a dick move. But also a sneaky one. Sneakier than Dean thought Jimmy capable of. It has pinpricks of irritation blooming under his skin like blood in the water.

“Well, no matter what Jimmy thinks, I’m glad you’re here.”

Castiel’s smile is as sharp as his cheekbones. “As am I.” He regards Dean in a way that makes Dean hyper-aware of Castiel’s semi-nakedness all over again: the shape of his biceps, the thick muscle of his strong thighs, the tattoos, the piercing. “I had no idea you existed until I received the invitation, so despite my brother’s warning, there was no way I wasn’t going to be here to see him married. To a man no less.”

Oh. While Jimmy’s sexuality is something he’s battled with, finding it often conflicts with his spirituality, Dean had naively assumed that his family knew of his existence at least. Jimmy’s mom is dead, Castiel estranged, but his dad is alive and kicking (and ultra-religious to the point of puritanical.) Dean’s always figured that the man refused to meet him because he disapproved of Jimmy’s late-in-life discovered hom*osexuality, choosing to shun the wedding for the same reason. Now though, Dean’s wondering if the lack of familial involvement is an extension of Jimmy’s own insecurities and deity-inflicted shame.

Or because Dean’s f*cked people for money before.

Sometimes, when they kiss, Dean can feel the reluctance in Jimmy, the way he draws back into himself. Dean can’t decide if it’s a God-bothering thing — y’know, it’s okay to love who you love, but God will send you to Hell if you allow any kind of physical blasphemy to occur as a result of that love — or whether it’s because Jimmy is tip-toeing around the edges of Dean’s (supposed) trauma.

It’s exhausting, either way. Dean’s used to showing his affection physically. He loves sex, loves the pleasure it brings all parties, but hates how it’s a bone(r) of contention in his and Jimmy’s relationship. Jimmy touches him like he’s made of glass or the sands of Sodom, and Dean’s not sure which is worse.

Castiel continues as he advances on Dean with what can only be described as predatorial grace. “Of course, I researched you to see what kind of person my brother was marrying.”

Dean most likely would have done the same if the situation was reversed. Maybe gotten Charlie to hack into accounts and Facebook pages. Just to be thorough.

“Of course,” Dean croaks as Castiel reaches him, invading his personal space and senses. He tries to take a step back as Castiel steps forward, but he bumps up against the wall.

Castiel crowds in close and Dean lights up all over. The thrum of desire that’s been steadily rising makes his breath pick up, makes his pulse start to throb low and hot and insistent in his balls.

sh*t.

Castiel’s lips brush the shell of Dean’s ear when he pitches his voice low and suggestive and whispers, “You’re even more beautiful in person. A feat I didn’t think possible.”

Dean’s blood freezes and boils at the same time. It’s a miracle that he doesn’t spontaneously combust or rip a hole in the universe. Instead, he makes a grab for the nearest thing to steady himself — which turns out to be Castiel’s waist —and rather than halting the tilt-a-whirl, it only speeds up, spinning into high gear when Castiel pulls back, his heavy-lidded eyes flicking between Dean’s, studying his reaction. “I think he told me to stay away because he knew that I wouldn’t be able to be near you and not have you. He knew how much I’d want you.”

Dean has the flutter of a sooty lash to decide what he’s gonna do before he actually does it. Before he drags Castiel in and kisses him. Before they surge together, Castiel forcing a knee between Dean’s thighs, their mouths fitted together, lips parting and tongues teasing. Chests flush, Dean rocking down onto the firm thigh between his own, Castiel sinks his fingers into Dean’s hair, thumbs digging in under the hollow of Dean’s jaw.

f*ck, it’s so good. And not just ‘cause Dean hasn’t been kissed like this in years, but because Castiel is everywhere; so firm and insistent, bleeding body heat all over him as he angles Dean’s head exactly where he wants it.

This is it. What Dean’s been wanting from Jimmy, what he needs.

Jimmy makes Dean feel safe. Castiel is making Dean feel desired.

The twins are two halves of one soul; the fingerprint impressions Castiel is pressing like bruises into Dean’s flesh contain the exact same whorls and loops as Jimmy’s.

It’s that thought that has him losing any sense of propriety or regard for what this might mean for the future, and he arches into Castiel, rolling his hips until the momentum forces his shoulder blades up off the hard wall. Clinging to each other, they stumble, wet mouths panting between frantic presses of lips, tongues, and teeth. Their hands are all over; Castiel’s palms skating down Dean’s body to curve under the loose waistband of his sweatpants and over the swell of his ass; Dean’s fingers spanning Castiel’s lower back, grinding his hard dick against Castiel’s bare hip.

“Show me your suit,” Castiel orders hotly between one kiss and the next. “I want to see it. Show me what you’re going to look like when you promise yourself to my twin.”

It should be a turn-off, a douse of cold-water reality. He’s marrying Jimmy, not Castiel, yet it’s Castiel he’s making desperate little unh noises for, it’s Castiel he’s hot all over for, it’s Castiel he’s gonna bend over for.

His heart’s pounding through his chest, lust welling up like blood from a wound. He needs this, has to get it out of his system.

“Yeah,” Dean says as Cas’ stare burns right through him. “Yeah, okay.”

***

They make it maybe two-thirds of the way up the stairs before Castiel has Dean on his hands and knees right there on the carpeted steps, sweatpants dragged down around his thighs.

“f*ck,” Dean pants and it’s almost a sob as Castiel’s grip on his ass tightens, palms pulling his cheeks apart and holding him open for his tongue. Dean’s skin prickles with a hot rush of filthy-good shame, feeling exposed and shaky, but his dick is hard and leaking, betraying his desperation.

Castiel’s breath is heated as he murmurs, “beautiful,” against the small of Dean’s back. Thumbs slipping inside to get closer, to breathe into the soft pink center of him, Castiel presses an open-mouthed kiss over Dean’s tailbone, a quick tease before he flicks his tongue over Dean’s hole.

“Cas— tiel,” Dean shivers out, hands curling uselessly into fists when the rough rasp of Castiel’s stubble scrapes the tender flesh of his inner thighs, his tongue working Dean open, shoving hard and slick through the tight ring of muscle. Dean’s breath catches in his lungs, and he curves his ass back, trying to spread his legs as wide as he can get whilst trapped and pinned down. He moans into the crook of his arm, face on fire, thighs trembling, pleasure ratcheting higher and higher as he lets his brother-in-law eat him out on his wedding day. He can feel his ass clenching as Castiel’s tongue works, penetrating him over and over again. It’s oh so dirty, but Dean needs, he wants; hanging suspended between guilt and desire on a gossamer string. Dean’s agonized moans only spur Castiel on, and he sinks his middle finger inside, alongside the dip of his tongue. f*cks it in and out a couple of times, breath hot and damp on Dean’s overly sensitive skin, and Dean’s dick is on the verge of causing a scene, jerking with each broad lick of Castiel’s tongue, with each push of Castiel’s finger, smearing tacky pre-come against his stomach.

“Cas,” Dean hisses, not entirely in his right mind, not able to think beyond this thing between them, incapable of forming a rational thought that doesn’t result in him getting f*cked in the next thirty seconds. “Please, please. Cas .”

With a low grunt of acknowledgment, Castiel gives Dean one final tonguef*ck before he withdraws. Hooking an arm around Dean’s middle, Castiel manhandles Dean up the rest of the stairs, sweatpants falling below his knees and almost tripping him up on the way to the second door on the left.

Inside Dean’s bedroom — because he and Jimmy don’t share, not before being joined in the eyes of god — Castiel practically tosses him to the bed with a strength that Dean certainly appreciates, even if he doesn’t quite catch himself in time to prevent the bounce that rattles the teeth in his head. He braces himself for Castiel’s body on top of his, but it doesn’t come.

Instead, when Dean forces his eyes open, he sees Castiel is over by the mirrored closet, admiring the slim-fit gray wedding suit hanging up on the sliding door.

Dean pushes himself up onto his elbows, kicking his sweatpants off the rest of the way and about to get started by himself when Castiel comes over to the foot of the bed, now relieved of his underwear and wrapping Dean’s wedding tie around his fist like a boxer getting ready for a fight.

Dean looks his fill, ‘cause holy sh*t. The sight of him naked is almost enough to have Dean reaching down to get a stranglehold around the base of his own co*ck. Castiel is six feet of undeniably masculine strength: broad shoulders, firm swell of lean muscle, miles of toned skin. His co*ck is hard and thick and long, curving towards his stomach, and Dean’s suddenly nerveless, voice deserting him.

Castiel watches Dean watching him and his pearl-white smile is all the more feral for the way he hides the sharp edges of his canines.

“C’mon,” Dean tries after far too long, dry throat clicking. “Please.”

The mattress dips beneath Castiel’s weight as he kneels on the bed. He leans over Dean, gaze trained on his face. With his free hand, he reaches out to Dean’s face, cupping his jaw, thumb moving over Dean’s cheekbone in a proprietary, almost protective manner.

Dean doesn’t lean into the touch like an attention-starved cat, but it’s a close thing. It’s been so long since he’s had someone touch him like this. Jimmy loves him, sure, but he doesn’t want or need him with this kind of ferocity.

“Turn over,” Castiel orders. “And cross your wrists in the small of your back.”

Dean scrambles to obey, rolling over onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow. There’s a long moment of nothing and Dean’s skin tingles, breath hot and humid in his face as he breathes into worn cotton.

Finally, Castiel touches him, but it’s with the silk of Dean’s tie as he binds his wrists in position, right in the dip of his back, just above his ass. It takes an excruciating amount of time where nothing is said between the two of them, so all Dean can focus on is the smooth, cool feel of the tie on his skin, the pattern of the weave of fibers, the slightly rougher rub of the seam running up the center.

Once Castiel is done, Dean tests his restraints, but he’s secured nice and tight. He couldn't get loose even if he wanted to and there's a strange kind of freedom in that knowledge: that this has been taken out of his hands, literally and metaphorically.

He hears the sound of his nightstand drawer being pulled open and seconds later, there’s the cold drip of lube smeared between his ass cheeks. Breath caught on a sharp inhale, Dean turns his head to one side, sucking in fresh oxygen and moaning, canting his hips back and spreading his legs wide.

Lube-slick fingers rub at the furl of his asshole and Dean whimpers, his heart thudding so hard and fast that he’s worried he’s gonna crack a rib. Castiel presses a finger inside, pushing slowly up to the second knuckle in an excruciating tease.

“Hold still,” Castiel commands in a strained voice, but Dean ignores him, desperate to get more of him inside, to have him turn Dean inside out, to make him come all over the sheets, to leave him f*cked out and sore.

A sharp smack to the meat of his ass makes Dean cry out and his toes curl so hard his calves cramp. It sets a blazing trail of fire alight up his spine and back down, pooling low in his abdomen. His left leg twitches and Castiel takes the opportunity to slide in another finger alongside the first, this time pushing deeper, barely grazing his prostate. Which is about when Dean forgets to breathe, his co*ck so hard that it’s bordering on painful. He gasps out a soft “f*ck” as Castiel crooks his fingers, and Dean’s been fingerf*cked with more digits than this, harder than this, longer than this, but he’s still trembling, on the verge of begging and tears.

Showing Castiel just how well he hasn’t learned his lesson, he rocks his hips back, forcing Castiel’s clever fingers in deeper, f*cking himself where the bastard is content to just torment him with barely-there touches and a slow push and grind.

He gets another spank for his troubles, a strike of fresh pain and a pink handprint to his left asscheek, but if anything it just spurs Dean on, has him humping back against Castiel’s hand. And then Castiel finally, f*cking finally, gets with the program, pinning Dean down with a splayed palm on his bound wrists, and forcing his fingers in deep enough that it’s verging on over-stimulation against Dean’s prostate, a constant pressure, not even trying to spread out the lube anymore, just trying to torture.

It hurts. It hurts so good.

“Cas,” Dean sobs, voice catching, legs shaking as Castiel presses into him again and again, tiny jolts of unbelievable pleasure that have his vision blurring and his mind blanking.

“Is this what you wanted?” Castiel’s voice is low and dangerous, a dark possessiveness infusing every syllable, and Dean’s a sweaty, strung-out mess; co*ck straining, pleasure seizing him. How the f*ck can he be expected to think past the pleasure-pain of those relentless fingers on his prostate to process the question, let alone answer coherently?

“Tell me,” Castiel demands, his palm rising up off Dean’s ass again and coming down even harder.

Dean gurgles his response, a kind of jumbled mish-mash of nouns and pleas all tied up as tightly as Dean himself is.

He must’ve done good though, 'cause Castiel finally eases up and Dean can breathe through the tremors wracking his body. Castiel pumps his fingers in and out a couple of times, adding more lube and a third digit for a couple of mind-numbing thrusts that have Dean twitching uselessly, before he pulls out, leaving Dean empty and open.

Dean’s arms are hurting and his ass aches, but it’s exquisite. For all the sex he’s had (and it’s a lot ), it’s all been pretty straightforward and vanilla, but this, this is something else.

And he’s already addicted.

Castiel roots around in the still-open nightstand drawer, most likely searching for the condoms that Dean has, because while he and Jimmy have never slept together, Dean’s nothing if not a horny optimist.

Behind him, he hears the tearing of foil and the uncapping of the lube bottle. His skin prickles as he waits for Castiel to come back, to touch him again. A couple of arrhythmic heartbeats pass and then Castiel is there, bearing his weight down on Dean, Dean’s bound hands caught between the crush of their bodies, the backs of his knuckles brushing against the silky head of Castiel’s erection.

Between one breath and the next, Castiel’s palms are on Dean’s ass, holding him open, and then he’s filling Dean in one long push, nice and slow, making sure that Dean feels every inch. Dean’s eyes flutter shut against the flare of pain, breath caught in the back of his throat as their bodies come together, pulses throbbing in sync.

“Dean,” Castiel snarls, mouth a wet smear between Dean’s shoulder blades as he draws back, body curved possessively over Dean’s, full weight pressing Dean into the mattress as he angles his hips and thrusts, co*ck fully sheathed inside Dean, grinding in deep where their hips are flush.

Skin sliding against skin, feeling the thick stretch of Castiel’s co*ck inside him with a thin layer of lube slicking the way, Dean’s riding that knife-edge of pleasure and pain, but in the best way possible. It’s hot as f*ck, pinned down as he is, rendered completely immobile, caught on his brother-in-law’s dick, the cradle of his tattooed hips smacking against Dean’s ass with every thrust, stealing the breath from Dean’s lungs with the sheer force of it.

Dean whimpers, “Cas— tiel,” on the back of a fragmented moan, his mouth slack, spine arched in a way that he’ll regret later, greeting Castiel with little cants of his hips, spreading his legs wider, the outside of Castiel’s thighs against the tender inside of Dean’s.

His cheek is pink hot, rubbed rouge on the sheets as Castiel drives forward, sharp and hard, forcing Dean to shape himself around him. His grip is bruising on Dean’s ass and hips, nails cutting crescents into his flesh. Dean’s voice breaks over a high whine, face turned against the bed covers so that he can just about catch sight of the overwhelmed expression on Castiel’s dark-eyed, flushed face as he f*cks into Dean. The loud, wet slap of skin on skin, the smack of their bodies coming together again and again, intermingles with their harsh pants for breath.

“Yeah,” Castiel growls, voice low and thick, all sex drawl, nailing him good and proper. Dean’s dick is achingly hard, trapped between his stomach and the rough chafe of the sheets, hips twisting against Castiel’s, body taut, breath held in his lungs. “Does my brother do this for you — to you?”

It’s vicious and unnecessary and only adds to the bordering-on-cruel sensation of the hard drag of Castiel’s co*ck pushing pushing pushing all the way up inside, fat head slamming that sweet, shocky spot inside Dean time and again.

“No,” Dean whimpers brokenly, hyper-aware of every place where they touch, his numb fingers crushed between their bodies, brushing against the flat expanse of Castiel’s pelvis, tracing the dark curls of hair framing the base of his co*ck. “We’ve never—”

The interrupting “f*ck,” sounds like it’s torn from the depths of Castiel’s soul, dragged up through his entire being. It has Dean shivering around the co*ck in his ass, leaves him slack-jawed and awed, his whole body flushing with the knowledge that he’s going to wear the goddamn tie that’s bruising his wrists right now, going to sit next to his soon-to-be husband at the head table on an ass that his twin brother spanked, licked, and f*cked.

And it’s f*cking hot.

sh*t. Dean’s gonna come without a hand on his dick. He can tell it’s gonna happen, even though it’s not something he’s ever experienced before, always needing some kind of stimulation, and he’s almost panicking at the raw edge of pleasure, the pins and needles, the white-hot spark of pain.

“Cas,” he manages to stutter, as Castiel keeps driving in, f*cking Dean to within an inch of his sanity, twisting his hips on every back stroke in a way that drags infuriatingly against Dean’s insides, possessive strength hauling their bodies together. “Please— I gotta— I’m gonna come— please Cas, please .”

All these sensations, so much sensation. Dean’s never felt this much, never been forced to feel this much. It’s both too much and not enough; the stinging pain of the handprints on his ass, the overwhelming intensity of Castiel pounding into him, the building tension that Dean knows is gonna result in the best org*sm of his life, the way he can’t touch, can only feel, only experience.

He’s drooling against the pillows, arms and ass aching, muscles cramping as his pleasure winds tighter and tighter, coiling in his abdomen. Castiel makes a low noise in his throat, each violent thrust of his hips growing more and more urgent and less and less consistent, desperation finally breaking through his cool exterior, as destroyed and wrecked by this as Dean is.

Castiel’s hand slips from Dean’s hip, palm skidding through their combined sweat, finding Dean’s painfully hard dick, and touches him, just barely, a light grazing of his fingertips. But combined with the dead aim of Castiel’s next thrust, it knocks the org*sm right out of Dean, his mouth shaping around a silent scream as he comes in thick ropes up his own stomach and on the bed, clenching so hard around the co*ck in his ass that it hurts.

Everything goes fuzzy around the fringes of Dean’s vision as he just keeps on coming, lungs hurting with every gasping breath that he tries to pull down into them, abdominal and leg muscles cramping, and there’s a weird ringing in his ears that he realizes a couple of erratic heartbeats later is actually a whine coming from his own throat.

“Dean,” Castiel grates between one thrust and the next, rocking his hips in a tight, filthy-hot grind, so close to his org*sm that Dean can taste it. “f*ck. So good. God, so good.” With a guttural sound, he pulls out of Dean, snaps the condom off and tosses it, before sliding his bare co*ck between Dean’s cheeks, the head catching and slipping over Dean’s hole, rubbing his dick all over Dean like he’s staking a claim.

He’s breathing faster and harder, and Dean can tell that Castiel’s close, but then he draws back entirely, leaving Dean open and used and feeling more than a little vulnerable.

“Cas,” he gasps, hazy and barely coherent after his own org*sm. “Come on me. I want you to.”

In the next second, Dean catches the slick sound of skin on skin, of Castiel swearing under his breath as he jerks himself off. Dean wishes he could turn over and watch, ‘cause he bets Castiel is magnificent right now, firm muscles bunching and coiling with every pass over his thick co*ck, a gorgeous sweat-sheen to his skin, a possessive and triumphant expression on his handsome face.

He has to lie there though, still bound and helpless as Castiel kneels over him, completely in control.

A snarl of his name is all the warning Dean receives before hot pulses of Castiel’s come hit his stinging ass cheeks, his thighs, and his bound wrists. Castiel groans as he palms Dean’s ass, thumbs pushing through the mess, rubbing it into Dean’s skin. He keeps going for endless minutes, massaging the stickiness in until it dries and Dean’s half-hard again, craving a repeat performance.

“Don’t shower,” Castiel murmurs, stroking under the curve of Dean’s ass. “I want you to feel my come on your skin when you marry my brother.”

f*ck. It’s so f*cking wrong that Dean’s all the way hard again like he’s eighteen and refractory periods ain’t a thing.

“Jesus,” Dean chokes out as Castiel’s hands keep massaging, palms easing Dean's cheeks apart, spreading him wide.

Castiel makes a considering noise. “You’re still so open for me. So willing, so beautiful.”

Dean jolts against the bed when Castiel’s tongue laps at him, shoving inside him, stubble a rough scrape against Dean’s tender, oversensitized skin. He gasps, twisting against the sheets, until Castiel tightens his grip, a silent warning to stay still.

It’s the worst-best thing, Castiel’s skilled tongue inside him again, f*cking Dean into incoherency. It feels amazing against the raw jangle of his post-org*sm nerves, but it feels awful for the exact same reason.

He never wants it to end.

“Mm,” Castiel breathes against Dean’s hole and Dean feels a heady mix of embarrassed and turned on that Castiel is seeing him like this. Wants him like this. “I could f*ck you again, couldn’t I? Make you come on my co*ck, make us both feel so good.”

“Do it,” Dean grits out, burning up with need, knowing precisely what Castiel wants to hear. “f*ck me. Make me yours.”

Cas’ grip tightens incrementally. “You want that?”

It might not have any witnesses the first time, but somehow this declaration feels more important than any that are gonna come after it. “I do.”

***

Untied, but still sprawled on his stomach, Dean lies there enjoying the pleasant ache in his muscles, the stretch, the burn, satisfaction sunk bone deep.

Cas — Castiel is too formal for someone who’s been inside him twice — is lying on his back beside Dean, one arm tucked under his head. After untying Dean and flushing the condoms (can’t toss them where Jimmy might find them, so f*cking up the plumbing it is), Cas had disappeared for a few minutes, leaving Dean floating on a cloud of endorphins by himself. At first, Dean had hazily wondered if Cas had gone looking for his clothes to get dressed and get the f*ck outta here, but he returned quickly, his cell in one hand and a carton of foreign smokes and silver lighter — engraved with some kind of language Dean can’t get a read on — in the other.

Cas pulls a long drag down into his lungs, breathes it in, and then out on a thick gray curl of smoke. They both watch it twist upwards, thinning out as it rises toward the ceiling.

The sun is peeking through the steel-gray rain clouds and Dean’s bedroom blinds, striping the two of them in weak ochre light, cutting through the smoke and scattering color, reflecting blue and white.

Dean rolls onto his side and props his head up with one hand, the other reaching out to trace his fingertips over the words Cas has inked over his ribs. The skin is warm, still slightly damp with sweat. “Did it hurt?” he asks.

Cas looks down the length of his own body. His smile is wry when his eyes meet Dean’s. “In a good way.” He passes the cigarette to Dean, who tastes Cas’ mouth on the filter, the smooth, rich quality of the nicotine. He turns the air milky with smoke when he breathes out.

“A good way, huh?” Dean says after a long moment, watching Cas’ chest rise and fall. Cigarette pinched between middle and forefinger, he brings his thumb into the mix to tug on the ring through Cas’ nipple. “How ‘bout this?”

“Even better.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm.” Cas reaches out with his free hand, dragging a thumbnail over Dean’s nipple, rolling it between thumb and forefinger. Pinches. It’s a sharp-edged fuzz of pleasure and Dean whines, his co*ck making a valiant effort to respond. “You should get yours done.”

Dean’s feeling reckless and wild and high on endorphins, so he inhales on a breath of smoke and hands Cas the glowing cherry of the cigarette, and dares the both of them to back away from this. “You should do it for me.”

Cas’ eyes darken, glittering dangerously. “Maybe,” he says, not giving an inch, even as his gaze darts to the bracelets of bruises around Dean’s wrists. The something borrowed (and blue) for his wedding day. Dean wishes he could keep the mottled skin as a forever keepsake, something to remind him through the dream-like haze of smoke and lust that this was real.

Lips parted on something he’s battling within himself to say, Cas settles on silence instead, pushing himself up and away, and this time, Dean gets to watch him as he walks to the ensuite bathroom.

And watch Dean does, ‘cause damn. Cas is completely at ease in his own flawless skin, no sense of insecurity or uncertainty, even as he’s totally naked and exposed.

He’s perfect. It’s the only word Dean can think of as his eyes trace the tattoo down Cas' back, starting between his shoulder blades, following down to the dip of his spine where the ink stops and the full curve of his ass begins.

Yeah, he’s perfect.

A couple of seconds after Cas disappears from view, Dean hears the toilet flush and Cas reappears sans cigarette. Once he’s back at the nightstand, he scoops up his phone and tosses it onto the mattress beside Dean. “Put your number in there.”

Surprised pleasure lighting him up, Dean grabs the cell and sinks back into the pillows, navigating Cas’ unlocked device. Deliberately ignoring the crowd of notifications vying for attention at the top of the screen, he taps his number in, feeling Cas’ attention on him the whole time, reveling in it. Even if it’s only for the here and now — as temporary as the bruises on Dean’s skin, but just as f*cking real.

When he’s finished — eggplant and peach emojis next to his name and all — he tosses the phone back to Cas, who catches it with both hands, the dexterous f*cker.

Cas’ smile is sharp, his gaze like a snare, when he says, “My clothes are probably still drying.”

Probably.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, staring back at Cas staring at him. “Can’t have you getting dressed in wet clothes. You might catch your death. Wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”

“Of course not,” Cas says reasonably. “And I would hate for you to have a guilty conscience.”

***

Tie around Dean’s neck this time, they f*ck for a hat-trick, slow and lazy, and curled around one another, Cas’ chest molded to Dean’s back, his mouth at Dean’s ear, whispering filth and promises. Right before Dean’s about to come, Cas slides his palm from Dean’s hip up the base of his throat, under the knot of the tie, and squeezes, constricting Dean’s airway.

Dean comes hard, gasping for air, brain fuzzing on midnight static, Cas’ name a wordless plea on his lips.

***

A few hours later, Dean marries Jimmy.

Cas sits near the front during the ceremony, never taking his eyes off the tie still around Dean’s neck.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

The first time someone called Dean pretty, he was nine years old. He didn’t like it. Girls were pretty, not boys, and Dean wasn’t a girl, especially not since that time he cried in kindergarten because Doug Easton stole the truck Dean was playing with and his dad told him that boys don’t cry.

Ever since then, he’s done his best. Even when he fell over and skinned his knee, he didn’t cry. Even when he broke his wrist. Even when his mom died.

He was a boy. Boys don’t cry. Girls cry. Girls are pretty.

So when some friend of his dad with lank hair and ruddy cheeks bought him a chocolate-vanilla-swirl ice cream and pushed Dean’s too-long mop of sandy hair out of his eyes and said, " You're real pretty, kid. You're gonna grow up to be a heartbreaker” as he watched him with the kind of intensity Dean himself usually reserved for cheeseburgers and Scooby-Doo cartoons, Dean had no choice but to take offense.

“Not pretty,” he corrected, licking his way to the center of the iced treat — a secret to be kept between them, dad’s friend had insisted — trying to ignore the squirmy feeling the man’s hungry stare gave him.

Dean might have been young, but he was never innocent.

That guy was just the first in a long line of men and women who saw something they wanted to take from Dean.

The one good thing about having — what essentially amounted to — a traveling doomsday prepper for a father was that Dean knew how to handle himself from a young age. It was a skill that proved invaluable for protection against hungry-wrong stares and palms that strayed a little too low under the pretense of guiding him through crowds or moving him out of the way.

Until he figured how to work the attention in his favor.

After a stint in a home for delinquent boys when he was sixteen (for attempting to steal from a convenience store in order to feed himself and his starving brother after their father had left them alone for months), Dean learned the hard way that morality and legality are rarely compatible.

The very next time he and Sam needed food, Dean went about it all honest. He took advantage of a stranger’s offer to buy him food in exchange for services rendered.

The man called Dean pretty as he pushed him to his knees behind some dive bar attached to the sh*t motel. He was scrawny, with a co*ke-can co*ck that tasted like cotton and sweat, but Dean came out of the encounter forty dollars richer. He was able to buy enough food to feed himself and his brother for two weeks, so he was okay with the way the scent of the dude’s skin lingered even after a couple of rinses of the mouthwash Dean invested in.

(Sam still complains about that time they had nothing to eat but rice, lentils, and cheap ground beef that had too much gristle.)

From then on, it was easy. In the years after Sam left for college (funded partially by Dean) and their father died, Dean lurched his way from one short-term job to the next, unsure of which career to follow and choosing to supplement his part-time wages with sex work.

He didn’t always go about it in the safest of ways, but at least when he was on his back instead of his feet, he could make his own hours and choose his own clients. He’s not ashamed of it, of the things he had to do, even though it was humiliating many times and stultifyingly boring all of the time.

It was bad sex, mainly. That’s all. But to Jimmy and his bleeding heart, Dean’s another charity case in need of guidance and trapped-animal-handling. The dude’s seen Pretty Woman a few too many times and fancies himself the Richard Gere to Dean's Julia Roberts. The one to save Dean from himself and his trauma.

Which is a crock; the only lasting damage from Dean’s hustling days is his hatred of being called pretty. He might’ve grown out of the sh*tty-father-installed hom*ophobia and misogyny, but he never quite got past the “pretty” thing.

Which is why it’s kind of a big deal that Castiel called him beautiful. “Pretty” comes with a leer and gravel-pitted knees, but “beautiful” comes with reverence and intrinsic value.

Dean’s too cynical to go all gooey-eyed simply because some disgustingly handsome dude said he was beautiful, but he isn’t quite cynical enough not to let him affect him entirely.

Hence the lapse in judgment.

If sleeping with your brother-in-law on your wedding day can be referred to as a lapse and not a sincere attempt to f*ck it all up. Which Dean doesn’t think it was. Because Jimmy’s nice. He’s a good man whose only real crime is not knowing what the f*ck he wants or how to go about getting it (despite having a plan for almost every minor, day-to-day occurrence, which is kinda f*cking hilarious if Dean thinks about it too much). He obviously loves Dean in his own way, even if he’s not sure what to do with that love, and when they got together, that was all Dean needed — someone who gave a sh*t about him beyond how tight his ass was, or how well he gave head. Someone who wanted Dean for who he was, not what he looked like.

Because, as Dean learned when he was an empty-bellied sixteen-year-old, good looks are currency. They can buy you desire, sex, skin-deep admiration. But love? Real, genuine, romantic love is difficult to stumble across. Especially if you’re pretty. People always want something from you, think that they’re owed something from you. Which makes any relationship beyond the one-night variety a game of character negotiation and kowtowing.

And sure, there are plenty of decent-looking people out there who think they’re in love, think they understand what it entails, but as far as Dean’s concerned, pure romantic love has no strings attached. Unfortunately, most people are inherently selfish and therefore incapable of it. Most people keep score sheets — “Hey, remember that time I took it in the ass? Well, now you have to go to the ballet with me.” Most people want something in return for their so-called unconditional love.

Generic, mortgage-with-kids-and-a-white-picket-fence love complicates what would normally be a simple transaction. Genuine, I’d-kill-for-you-or-die-to-be-with-you love takes the bargaining out of it entirely and instead elevates everyday love to make it greater than the sum of its participants.

Not that Dean’s an expert or anything, but he’s seen (and f*cked) a lot of the former. Men who married their wives because it’s the done thing and the respectable way to get sex on tap; had kids because it was what their wife wanted and their family-friendly boss suggested, but they’re not happy. They’re resentful of their wife and their kids. And their wife is resentful of them because they drink too much, expect the wife to deal with the emotional labor on top of holding down a job, taking care of the kids, and doing seventy-five percent of the chores.

It’s fairweather love. It’s bullsh*t. And it’s unfair to both parties.

In that respect, Dean’s lucky. He’s married to someone who loves him unconditionally. Jimmy Novak wants nothing from Dean that he doesn’t want to give; only wants Dean to be present with him. Which in the grand scheme isn’t a huge ask.

But Castiel called Dean beautiful like it meant something. Like Dean means something. Like it wasn’t just two people scoring a quick high on each other’s bodies, but something deeper, more profound.

The problem with Jimmy’s love is that he’s reluctant to consider Dean in a sexual light. He wants to be gentle and considerate at all times, even when Dean asks for more, tells Jimmy that it’s okay, he can take it. And while that was refreshing in the early stages of their relationship, it also makes what they have a friendship with extra steps, rather than any kind of romance.

That kind of love is perfectly valid, but it isn’t what Dean wants; not now he knows what it’s like to feel both revered and desired by someone.

Jimmy loves him. Jimmy thinks the world, the stars, the galaxy, the universe of him. Perhaps that’s what should actually matter; not the fleeting buzz of a physical connection. Dean should be happy. Why can’t he be happy? What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he be satisfied with being loved?

Since the wedding, Jimmy’s been trying, been touching Dean more, but as soon as Dean gasps with pleasure, Jimmy pulls back, so afraid of being like Dean’s ex-johns, so afraid of what it means to want another man like this. But he’s trying. He’s trying for himself and for Dean and shouldn’t that be enough?

Before Cas, it might’ve been. Dean was willing to try and meet Jimmy halfway. To lead Jimmy by the co*ck through sex and pleasure and make him realize that it can be good. That they’re not incompatible, that Dean isn’t damaged and Jimmy isn’t dirty, that neither of them is broken.

But, then. Cas.

It’s been three weeks and five days (but who’s counting?) since their forbidden tryst. And it’s torture. Every living, breathing moment, Dean’s thinking about his brother-in-law, completely obsessed, a man possessed. He wakes up from the wisps of his dreams hard and aching, desperate to relive the experience, wanting nothing more than to slide onto his husband’s dick and pretend that it’s his twin. But Jimmy’s tentative touches do nothing except pull Dean out of the fantasy.

Dean hates himself for wanting more than soft kisses and faltering handjobs, hates Jimmy for not being Cas, hates Cas for showing him how it could be and then taking it away, departing for Eastern Europe the day after the wedding, leaving Dean with watercolor bruises and an ache in his ass like the most visceral of forget-me-nots. Jimmy and Dean left for their structured-to-within-an-inch-of-drill-sergeant honeymoon the same day, and their trip to Bora Bora was... nice. The photos came out well and Dean’s smile in them is genuine; the affection he feels for Jimmy is genuine.

But it’s not romantic love. He loves Jimmy, but Not Like That.

It’s complicated, because Dean wants to be loved for who he is, but at the same time, he wants to be desired. He wants to feel safe and respected, but also be spanked and tied up. Unfortunately, he has no idea how to articulate that to Jimmy, who balks at the word “ass” and thinks that golden showers are something only the super-rich have access to. Yet, with Cas, he didn’t need to say a word. Cas just saw him. He knew exactly what Dean wanted and how to provide it, and f*ck if just thinking about it doesn’t get Dean horny and frustrated every. Single. Time.

Maybe Dean’s reading too much into this. Maybe he’s mistaking fantastic sex for something deeper, but he’s had enough empty encounters in his life to know one when it’s dicking him in the ass, and you don’t travel halfway across the world just ‘cause someone’s pretty and you might have a chance of scoring.

(You do it because they’re beautiful and you see something in them that you might grow to love.)

*~*~*

It’s raining again. Big fat heavy November drops that Axl Rose whined about in the nineties. Dean can see the steady pelt of it against the windowpane, hear the gurgle of the guttering and drains struggling to cope with the deluge.

He’s supposed to be working on a purchase order for the auto shop where he’s a mechanic, but he’s been staring out the window for what could be minutes or hours now. The lawn that wraps around the side of the house is filled with dandelions and their bright, happy shade of yellow; blobs of color in a washed-out skyline of gray.

It’s a Sunday morning, so Jimmy is out at church, content to go along with friends of his who won’t sizzle upon stepping across the threshold. Dean’s got paperwork to catch up on anyway; their honeymoon only pushed back Dean’s workload rather than erasing it for the two weeks, so he’s been working overtime on both cars and administration since they returned.

Though, the ratio of doing work to daydreaming about Cas is probably what’s been slowing him down more than he’d like to admit out loud. His colleagues have time-and-again called him out for the glazed-over, dick-whipped look he gets that gives him away almost as quickly as his fake grin when they joke and jostle about what they’d do if they married into identical twins.

(Dean’s pretty sure they’re talking about p*rno threesomes, not screwing the wrong [right] twin on their wedding day.)

Focus. Don’t go there. Bad Dean.

He tries to settle back into brake pads and suspension strut bearings, but his mind refuses to budge from the hard coil of strong thighs and heated focus of blue eyes, the images enduring like screen burn.

On the desk, next to his computer keyboard, Dean’s cell rings.

Thankful for the distraction, he doesn’t bother checking the caller ID before he swipes to answer on autopilot, lifting it to his ear, assuming it’ll be his boss, or Sam or Charlie.

“‘Lo?”

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean’s heart kicks into high gear, and all his concentration is suddenly narrowed to the tinny speaker of his phone, the tiny crackles and slight fuzziness indicative of a globe-spanning connection. “Cas?”

There’s a small sound at the other end, a shuffling. Dean can just about make out the low murmur of another voice in the background. “You’re the only one who calls me that.”

Dean doesn’t tell Cas that he’s the only one who calls him beautiful, so it feels like a fair trade-off. Instead, he clears his throat and switches the phone from his left to right hand, buying himself a half-second to think past the steady thrum of holysh*tholysh*tholysh*t. Full of shaky nerves, he says, “You must have some kind of spidey sense for when it’s raining here.”

“Or alternatively, a weather app.”

Dean can’t help himself: he grins. And just like that, his apprehension seems to recede into the shadows. This feels right. “You checkin’ up on me, Cas? Making sure that I haven’t been getting carried away with any other handsome men that show up on my porch soaking wet?”

Amusem*nt laces through Cas’ voice when he replies, “Admittedly, I have been thinking about you.”

Dean’s dumbass heart lurches, like he’s the main character in an early-aughts rom-com about to be swept off her feet in the third act. Any pretense he’d constructed about his and Cas’ wedding day f*ck being meaningless crumbles to dust and now all he can see in his mind’s eye is Cas in this study again, standing so close that he can track a raindrop that slips down the slope of Cas’ neck, can taste the rainwater on his skin, can feel the heat of him through his wet clothes.

“Yeah?” Dean asks, trying to drag himself back to the here and now and not entirely succeeding, stuck on the way Cas had looked at him like he was something worth looking at. “Wanna share those thoughts?”

“Mm. I would, but I think it’s more fun if I show you.”

The words are deliberately inflammatory, spoken to invoke a specific response, which Dean gives up with little resistance: a telltale snag of breath catching in his throat. The butterflies in Dean’s stomach are suddenly armed with flick-knives and knuckle dusters and he’s nauseous with nervous excitement. Still, he plays it as cool as he can when his skin feels this hot and tight. “Oh?”

Dean can hear the sly smile in Cas’ voice. “I’ll be back from Hanoi next week. Do you know the Langham hotel? It’s downtown.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, even though he doesn’t — f*ck it, he’ll find it.

“I’ll be there from 3 p.m. onward on the twenty-first.”

Staring down at the titanium wedding band on his left ring finger, Dean confirms, “Then so will I.”

“Good.”

Feeling brave, right before they hang up, Dean decides to go for broke, to push just a little. “Y’know, it’s interesting how you’re coming back so soon... Jimmy mentioned that it had been years since he saw you before the wedding, and now you’re back in the U.S. twice in as many months?”

There’s nothing but the static of their connection for an agony-age. Dean counts the seconds, gets down to two minutes to midnight and figures that something catastrophic is coming.

Until Cas says, “Maybe I found something worth coming back for.”

*~*~*

James Novak is the older twin by a whole eighteen minutes.

For 1,080 seconds, Jimmy was an only child on this earth. His mom, the undivided attention of the nurses, the choked air he sucked into his tiny lungs — it was all his.

But then Castiel Novak came along and Jimmy had to adapt to his entire life being split down the middle. Dean can’t imagine it was easy. Sharing a womb with someone and then your whole existence — your personal space, clothes, CDs. It sucked bad enough that Sam came along when Dean was four. At least he got those few years where he was everything.

But Jimmy’s never been the star. He’s always been outshone and outdone by Cas. Dean knows this, because how could he not be?

Cas is a sensitive subject in their household. Before the wedding, he wasn’t talked about a lot, but like a teenage girl with a crush, Dean’s been seeking opportunities to crowbar him into conversations. Which isn’t as difficult as you’d think when you’re this infatuated and determined — “I’m so pleased your twin could make it to the wedding, Jimmy; remind me, how come he wasn’t your best man?” “I liked that color suit on your brother. You should get a suit like that.” “Isn’t it nice that Castiel traveled so far to come and see us get married?”

It’s perverse and Dean doesn’t know why he does it; he just can’t help himself. It’s like tonguing a tooth that’s hanging by a thread of sore gum. It’s f*cking compulsive.

In the wake of Cas’ phone call, however, Dean tones it down, figuring that now he’s actually seeing Cas again, he can offer Jimmy some peace from his twin.

Which means that he ends up internalizing his messiness. For the intervening six days, Dean wavers between excited nerves, terrified nerves, and excited terror. He wrestles with his conscience, wondering what the hell he’s doing; he’s not a cheater, never has been, but Cas is everything he wants, everything he needs. Jimmy… well, Jimmy had Dean to himself for eighteen months. If Cas had been born first, met Dean first, things might’ve been different.

Despite Dean’s best attempts to rein his neuroses in, Jimmy notices his ants-in-the-pants behavior. Being the gracious man that he is, he doesn’t say anything for a couple of days, just studies Dean from underneath thick lashes at the dinner table as they sit eating their lasagne, casserole, tacos in stilted silence, punctuated only by banal conversation about their day.

It’s not until the night before Dean’s due to meet Jimmy’s twin in an upscale hotel (Dean knows, he checked) for a quick and dirty f*ck, that his husband puts his fork down carefully on the table and asks, “Are you okay?”

Around a mouthful of Jimmy’s buttery mashed potatoes, Dean makes a noise in the affirmative. He follows it up with an enthusiastic head nod, 'cause he read somewhere that lying is easier without all the verbal embellishments.

Jimmy narrows his eyes. “Are you sure? Since the wedding, you’ve been… I don’t know, moping? And now you’re—” He gestures in the air with the slice of steak on his fork. “—agitated. Excited, even.”

Taking his time swallowing the food, allowing a few precious seconds to come up with a response, Dean says, “I’m fine, honestly. Just looking forward to seeing Sam next weekend, y’know?”

It’s not even a lie. Sam and his girlfriend, Eileen, live across the country, so getting to see them is a treat usually reserved for life events and the occasional getaway. The two of them came over for the wedding a couple of months ago, but what with all the stress, and the Castiel Thing, and the caterers last-minute replacing the pulled pork sandwiches with friggin’ cucumber, there wasn’t much time to socialize. So now they’re back for a long weekend of going on river cruises and looking at buildings. Which is as thrilling as it sounds, though Dean’s not even mad about how nerdy it is.

Plus, Dean loves Eileen and her reluctance to let Sam’s dumbass puppy dog eyes work on her. Any opportunity he gets to team up and rag on his sasquatch brother, he’s game.

Jimmy’s expression smoothes out and he glances down at his plate, jaw clenched, a tell-tale sign of him feeling guilty.

Which in turn makes Dean feel guilty. Not enough to consider canceling on Cas, but his conscience gains a few pounds.

He reaches out for his husband’s hand, across the table and the gravy boat. “You gonna come with us on Saturday? I think Sam’s got tickets for the River Architecture cruise.” Including Jimmy ain’t a hardship; if anything, it gives Dean and Eileen some grownup time while their spouses nerd out over… whatever there is to nerd out over when you’re into buildings.

Jimmy looks back up at Dean then, blue eyes shining like he’s just been told he’s a real boy, his wish came true! “I’d love to.”

“Awesome,” Dean says, channeling his excitement at seeing Cas tomorrow into the megawatt smile he gives his husband. “So now we can both look forward to it.”

*~*~*

The Langham is an architect's (or a dude who nerds out over buildings’) wet dream. Simple and elegant, the hotel stands out for its clean lines and entrancing shine. Of course, Dean feels completely out of place as his weathered boots squeak on the polished-stone lobby floor.

This is a place where people come to do business and high-class hookers.

And have clandestine affairs.

The concierge shoots him a haughty look as Dean makes his way over to the bank of burnished elevators to the left of the front desk. Dean pretends not to notice, instead tilting his head back as he waits, staring up at the high ceiling, trying to ignore the squirmy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He’s so f*cking nervous. On the phone, this seemed like such a good idea. But the cold, hard reality of it is something else entirely. He snuck out like a teenager slinking off to a rave, leaving his husband a bullsh*t note about having to work late because of blah blah blah.

What the f*ck is he doing?

Screwing your fiance’s identical twin in a heat-of-the-moment decision on your wedding day is one thing (and bad enough), but this is premeditated cheating on his husband.

Dean wavers with indecision. He could just go home now. He should just go home now. Cas will get over it. It’s not like he doesn’t have options all over the world.

But then the elevator doors open to a couple intertwined so tightly around one another that they may as well be one person. They spring apart when the doors start to close again, the pair of them flushed and giggling and obviously completely smitten.

“Sorry,” the dude says as he blocks the doors with his arm, his lips a blush pink and swollen from their make-out session. “You know how it is.”

No, Dean doesn’t. But he'd really like to.

He smiles pleasantly at them both as they exit, and the petite blonde girl considers him like a lion considers an antelope.

“No,” the guy laughs as he pulls her away. Dean hears him say, “You’re insatiable,” as they round the corner into the lobby.

As he steps inside the elevator and presses the button for the fifteenth floor, Dean reaches into his front pocket for his cell. Cas’ text is on the screen when he unlocks it.

C: Room 1521. See you soon, Dean.

Dean watches the elevator’s ascent, each number lighting up behind the glass panel above the doors, his nerves rising along with the floor count.

When the doors ding open on the fifteenth floor, Dean steps out into the carpeted hallway. The decor is all warm tones and dark wood paneling, and there’s the subtle curl of luxurious vanilla scent in the air — probably the result of an expensive diffuser rather than one of those cheap plug-ins.

Classy.

He's counting down to Cas' room number as he navigates the immaculate corridor, passing a blonde with a high bun and a suitcase on wheels. She flashes him a knowing, ruby-red smile, like she thinks Dean is here for the same reason she is, which is kinda flattering, 'cause Dean was never a five-star, high-class, wine-and-dine whor*. No, Dean was the get-reamed-in-the-truckstop-bathroom-for-fifty-bucks-and-a-bag-of-Funyuns whor*.

He makes it to Cas’ room and stands there, staring at the pristine door, buying time to scrape himself together. He hasn’t reached the point of no return yet. He could still go home, no harm no foul. He could let Jimmy—

The phone in his hand vibrates with an incoming text.

Purely as a time-delaying-slash-distraction tactic, Dean looks at it.

C: Are you going to stand out there all day?

Stupid smile on his face, Dean texts back: Are you spying on me? Creeper.

On the other side of the door, maybe a couple of steps inside, a phone chimes. Followed shortly by a dark curl of laughter.

Then the door opens, and Dean doesn’t want to be all Harlequin romance about this, but goddamn, Cas is gorgeous. This time, he’s dressed a little more casually, but it does nothing to lessen how f*cking hot he is. His soft-looking navy shirt is open at the throat, two buttons undone so that Dean can see a sliver of tanned skin and collarbone, and the dark jeans he’s wearing are thin and frayed at the knees, his feet bare on the plush hotel carpet.

“Hi,” Dean manages, heart jack-rabbit fast, just as f*ckstruck as the first time.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas replies with eyes that are bright with dangerous glee. There’s no flirt in him today, Dean can tell, no predator-prey anticipatory thrill. Dean’s already caught, a sure thing, and Cas is gonna enjoy devouring him. “Come in.”

***

Dean’s had a fair amount of sexual experience. He’s done and seen a lot, but he’s never been brought to the edge of his org*sm time and again until he cries.

First time for everything.

“Cas, please,” he begs, voice reaching a pitch that he thought only Ariana Grande and dog whistles were capable of. His face is burning, tears tracking down his cheeks and practically evaporating off his hot skin. Arms at his sides, he lies on the high-thread-count comforter, nothing but his own determination keeping him from touching Cas or himself.

Cas’ smile grows teeth. He kneels over Dean, still mostly dressed where Dean is bare-skinned, and Dean promptly swallows his own tongue, so turned on that he feels sick with it, with how bad he needs to come, how much he wants Cas.

It’s real. Whatever this is between them, it’s real. His memories of their first time have worn thin, replayed over and over like an old cassette, getting chewed up in the machinery, but it’s gratifying to know that he didn’t imagine this.

He gasps in a breath, so close, eyes locked on Cas’, mesmerized by the depth of feeling he sees reflected back.

sh*t.

Dean didn’t know it could be like this. Theoretically, he knew that sex could be more than just two (or more) bodies getting off, but this is something else entirely. Something f*cking amazing that he’s never experienced in his thirty-four years of life.

Like he’s both lost and found.

He can feel the familiar sensation hurtling up on him, the hot rush of it under his skin, tugging behind his navel. f*ck, he’s gonna come untouched, his co*ck slu*t-red and curved toward his stomach, his balls pulled tight. Oh, f*ck it's too much. sh*t sh*t sh*t —

Wordlessly, Cas gets a hand around the base of Dean’s dick again, halting his org*sm, snatching it right out of Dean’s reach, making him jerk helplessly and damn near yell his frustration. Cas’ breath ghosts over Dean’s ear, his voice scarcely a low murmur when he says, “Bentham theorized that feelings of pleasure and pain are on a continuum, rather than mutually exclusive. Pain feels good because it kickstarts the body’s own narcotic manufacturing process.” He strokes Dean’s leaking co*ck once, hard. Dean jackknifes on the bed, caught completely, unable to articulate just how awful-amazing it feels. “Better than pills, right?”

Dean’s response is a feeble noise that he’s not proud of. He shoves his hips up, begging with his whole body rather than just his mouth, desperation and misfiring synapses rendering him temporarily mute.

Cas’ grip tightens to the tipping point of agony. “Don’t move.”

“Cas—”

“No.”

Dean shudders on an inhale and forces himself to be still. He waits. It would be so easy to slip into the headspace he used when he was turning tricks, almost like a second skin, but he doesn’t wanna zone out like he used to with his johns. He wants to feel every second of this so he can store it and loop it later.

“Good boy,” Castiel hums into him, mouth brushing over his, dragging just the barest hint of fingers up and down Dean’s co*ck, the touch feather-light and deliberately cruel. His teeth graze Dean’s throat as he thumbs the slit of Dean’s co*ck, painting the wetness over the head.

Dean makes a choked sound, but doesn’t dare move. He holds his breath, waiting to see what Cas is gonna do next, flinching with every touch to his overheated skin, sweat trickling down his sides.

Drawing back, Cas does that thing where his eyes flick between Dean’s, studying him, looking into him, and Dean's co*ck leaps against his stomach. "I’ll let you choose. You can come on my fingers or my co*ck, but whichever you choose, you can’t come on the other. If you do, I’ll make sure you regret it.”

It takes Dean a few addled blinks and seconds to parse out the meaning. “You’re evil.”

Something glimmers in and out of Cas’ expression and his mouth twitches. “I could always just leave you like this.” He releases Dean’s dick and sits back, dark eyes glinting from beneath inky lashes.

Dean’s stomach swoops. He doesn’t dare tell Cas that he wouldn’t, because they both know he’d happily send Dean back to Jimmy, aching and unfulfilled, secure in the knowledge that he’d stay that way.

Weighing up the options, trying to figure out which is gonna involve the least amount of torture, Dean eventually settles on, “co*ck.”

“Good choice,” Cas murmurs, slowly divesting himself of his remaining clothes, pulling the open shirt down his broad shoulders, popping the button on his jeans and removing them to reveal his lack of underwear.

“Cas.” Dean’s voice is barely there, hitched onto the tail end of a moan as he watches Cas crawl between his legs, all smooth lines and firm muscle. He cups Dean’s balls, squeezing softly until Dean moans, jerking his hips up on pure instinct alone. He’s so hard that it hurts, desperation twisting through him in sharp little bursts.

Cas’ hand continues lower, fore and middle fingers slipping between Dean’s cheeks, rubbing teasing circles around the furl of his hole, smoothing the slick around, before dipping just the tip of his finger in, lube from the previous hours of torture easing the way.

“Don’t come,” Cas reminds him with far too much sad*stic glee.

Dean fights to stay still. Every muscle in his body is pulled taut, every sensation he’s experiencing amplified right to his limit. He nearly bites through his lower lip in an effort to keep quiet as Cas spears him on two fingers, pushing deep, seeking out the sore bundle of nerves tucked up inside.

Sharp pleasure under his skin like needles, Dean squeezes his eyes shut. Forces himself to focus on anything other than the way the pressure is building all over again, inevitable and inescapable.

Don’t come, don’t come, don’tcome, dontcome.

“So beautiful,” Cas murmurs, brushing his thumb over Dean’s ribcage. “You’ve been so good for me.”

Dean whimpers, shivering at the sound of Cas’ voice, his co*ck blurting out another pearl of precome. “Please, Cas. f*ck me. Need it, need you.” His whole world is narrowed to Cas’ hands, his mouth, his dick, and nothing else matters.

“Beg me,” Cas commands, voice throaty, sounding substantially less controlled than mere moments ago.

Dean’s eyes fly open and he pins Cas with what he hopes is a hungry stare. “Please Castiel. Want you to f*ck me, wish you could f*ck me all the time. I’d get on my knees, my back for you anytime you asked, do whatever you want, please, just need you inside me, feel so good, your huge co*ck filling me up—”

His babbling is cut off by Cas removing his fingers and grabbing Dean by the backs of his knees. Dean squeaks as he’s yanked down the bed and hauled into a sitting position in Cas’ lap, his legs forced wide over Cas’ splayed knees, head of Cas’ dick pushing up the cleft of Dean’s ass, trailing wetness across his perineum.

Oh f*ck, f*ck, f*ck.

After hurriedly slicking his co*ck with a thin sheen of lube, Cas lines himself up and sinks into Dean in one smooth thrust, shoving deep, one hand digging bruises into Dean’s hip and the other on the small of his back. They fit together, Cas’ thighs flush with Dean’s ass, Dean’s dick trapped between the crush of their bodies.

“Cas,” he manages, dropping his damp forehead to the sweat-slick curve of Cas’ collarbone, burying his face in Cas’ pulse. He’s so full, his skin so tight that it doesn’t feel enough to contain him, so close to the edge that he can see sweet oblivion below. “Can I move? Please.”

As gorgeous as this is, the two of them frenetic heartbeat to frenetic heartbeat, the air between them humid with their shared breath, if Dean doesn’t come in the next five seconds, he’s gonna f*cking die. No exaggeration; his heart’s gonna give out and he’ll have “org*sm denial” listed as the cause on his death certificate.

Death by edging.

They’re pressed so close together that Dean’s chest rumbles when Cas speaks, “f*ck yourself on my co*ck.”

sh*t. Dean flushes hot with the growled instruction, but he doesn’t need telling twice. Palms braced on Cas’ shoulder and chest, he cants his hips, tired thigh muscles quivering as he pulls himself up Cas’ dick, and it’s a slow, exquisite drag against his tender insides. They moan together when Dean sits back, body adjusting around the intrusion as the burn recedes, beginning to ride Cas’ co*ck deep and hard, barely lifting himself off, just rocking and grinding, the mattress shivering with their weight.

Cas’ hands slide from Dean’s hip and back, palms fitting to the curve of his ass, squeezing tight. Split apart around Cas’ co*ck, Dean mouths at Cas’ jaw, his org*sm just under the surface of his skin. “Gonna come,” he warns, dick leaking wet against Cas’ abdomen, length sliding slick through the mess with every incremental shift of Dean’s hips. He’s close, so f*cking close, white-hot lightning rushing up his spine. “Please can I come?”

Cas swears under his breath, hot against Dean’s neck. “Yes.”

Relief floods Dean and Cas reaches up to turn his head, to tilt his face, kissing him right as Dean tips over the edge into pure bliss. His entire body locks up, co*ck spurting between their bodies, and his vision whites out as his pleasure crests. He has no idea whether he screams or not, can’t stop shaking long enough to begin to figure out whether the roughness of his throat is because of his choppy breathing as he comes down or the kind of yell that gets heard two rooms down, even in a swanky hotel with thicker walls.

Cas’ groan is muffled as he comes, the sharp points of his teeth in Dean’s neck, his broad hands wandering all over Dean’s back, clutching frantically and convulsively at Dean’s shoulders as he pulses thick and hot inside Dean, nothing but a heartbeat between them.

Wow.

Still joined and clinging to each other, chests rising and falling together, Dean’s the first to attempt speech as they recover. “Jesus Christ.”

“I doubt he’d approve,” Cas deadpans, the last five frenzied minutes a lifetime that’s flashing in front of both their eyes.

"Well, he died for our sins, so I like to think that he’d be pleased his sacrifice wasn’t in vain.”

He feels before he hears Cas’ laughter. It’s a good laugh, deep and genuine. Cas presses a soft kiss to Dean’s swollen lips, smiling right over his mouth, and Dean melts for it, fingers splayed wide over Cas’ cheek as he deepens the kiss.

Yeah. There’s nothing imagined about this.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

After that, it becomes a regular thing. Once or twice a month Dean and Cas meet up in a swanky hotel to f*ck.

It’s nothing but f*cking and everything but f*cking.

They play kink roulette; seeking out each other’s weaknesses and riding them hard, redefining and reworking the boundaries of pain and pleasure. One time, Cas wedges a vibrator inside Dean, alongside the thick throb of his co*ck, packing both in deep and brutal until Dean’s thrashing and sobbing, shooting in creamy stripes up his chest, completely untouched, and still trembling hours later. Another, Dean sits on Cas’ face, forces Cas to eat out the creampie he f*cked Dean full of, to feed it back to Dean through traded kisses, ‘cause Dean loves all kinds of pie.

But they talk too. A lot. With sweat and come still cooling on their bodies, Cas tells Dean about a bazaar in Turkmenistan where he found a sixteenth-century dild* that he sold to a collector for thirty grand. While they’re eating room service after mutual hand jobs in the shower, Dean regales Cas with a story about the time Sammy cried because Dean told him that Babe was the sausage in his hotdog.

Dean doesn’t wanna say that it’s comfortable. That’s not quite it — Cas always walks that razor’s edge of danger and safety that keeps Dean on his toes, right on the bounds of his upper limits, always pushing pushing pushing.

It’s natural, intuitive, real.

Educational too, ‘cause with Cas, he’s learning new things about himself. He likes to be forced to his knees when it’s Cas doing the forcing, he likes to be told he’s a good boy when it’s Cas doing the telling, he likes to go all p*rnstar foamy with his spit when it’s Cas shoving his co*ck past Dean’s gag reflex.

When they’re apart, they sext; long strings of explicit messages that Dean reads to himself over and over when Jimmy’s at Mass. He gets off hard, imagining Cas there with him, whispering the filth on his cell screen in his ear, telling Dean how bad he wants him. Hand around his co*ck, Dean hears Cas’ low rumble demanding that he stay still as Cas spanks him, that he needs to be a good boy, because only good boys get to come.

There’s nothing in the world like being the center of Cas’ focus. Dean wants it all for himself. Which is kinda inconvenient because, well, he’s f*cking married (to the wrong twin) and Cas values his independence above all else.

Sometimes, when Dean’s lying in bed next to a softly snoring Jimmy, he imagines that it’s Cas. If he closes his eyes and really concentrates, he can conjure the phantasm of Cas’ touch, channel the spirit of his intent, like a bunch of kids with a Ouija board pushing the glass with the tips of their fingers. It’s not real, but it’s real enough that Dean feels Cas’ hands on him, just like those kids feel the demonic force of Pazuzu.

Except, there are plenty of times when that’s not enough, and tonight happens to be one of them. He’s feeling particularly frustrated by the distance, so after he’s come with a loud cry, spurting white over his fist and up his abdomen, clenching hard around the two fingers in his ass, he sends Cas the evidence of his org*sm — a single photo. His hands are still shaking enough that he hasn’t got the wherewithal to type out actual words, and a picture of his come-streaked chest and stomach, his waning hardness resting against his abdomen, should be worth a thousand of them anyways.

A few minutes later — and 7:38 a.m. London time, ‘cause Dean checked — he receives a message back.

C: I thought I told you that you couldn’t touch yourself. Am I going to have to buy you a co*ck-cage?

f*ck. Dean loves it when Cas gets all dommy. Which is precisely why he decided to be such a disobedient little brat in the first place.

Dean: I’m sure your brother would notice that.

It gives him a wicked-hot little thrill, reminding both himself and Cas that what they’re doing here is wrong and selfish and stupid. It’s not gonna stop him; Dean wants to be adored, wants to be chased, wants to be wanted, dammit, and Cas is so forward in his desire for Dean that it’s hard (heh) to give a damn about the consequences of what they’re doing here. Dean’s spent the majority of his life making sure everyone else around him is safe, fed, and cared for. Why can’t he put himself first for once?

His cell silently lights up the darkness with an incoming call. Scooping it up off the desk, Dean quickly rises out of his chair to close the study door completely, ‘cause Jimmy’s asleep upstairs and it would absolutely suck if he got caught out right now. He answers with a hushed yet breathy, “Cas?”

Cas’ voice is harder than Dean’s dick ten minutes ago. “Are you sure you want to go down this route?”

Dean’s skin prickles. “What if I do?”

Cas makes a noise of consideration, drawing out his decision until Dean’s starting to sweat — metaphorically and literally. “Do you remember when I withheld your org*sm for over five hours?”

He won’t be able to forget anytime soon. “Yeah.”

“Next time I see you, we’ll make it eight.”

***

True to his word, Cas spends a white-collar working day edging Dean until he can see the outer limit of his own consciousness. It’s one of the best-worst things he’s ever experienced. Easily top five material (the other four spots are all filled by other Cas-related sexcapades, obviously).

*~*~*

For their sixth(ish) month anniversary, Dean decides to surprise Cas by meeting him at the airport. It’s the first time Dean’s gonna see Cas in the wild, outside of an environment that he’s either curated or quickly and masterfully gained control over.

O’Hare is as f*cking crammed as it always is. There’s no way Dean’s gonna wade through the sea of people waiting near the exit of the customs area with their cute and cheesy pickup signs, so Dean hangs back, watching the arrivals board to see which carousel Cas’ flight gets assigned to.

Jimmy’s out of town on a domestic missionary-trip-slash-retreat thing, so they’ve got breathing space to really make something out of their time together, instead of it being a f*ck and run. Which, while illicit and fun (‘cause holy sh*t, it really is)… Dean’s beginning to wish that things were different, that he was here picking up his actual boyfriend, rather than meeting his brother-in-law-with-benefits.

Which only sets him off down the path of panic, wondering if he’s overstepping by being here; only two steps and a claim of pregnancy away from going full bunny boiler.

sh*t. Is this weird? It’s kinda weird, right?

Jesus Christ, they’re only f*cking. Sure, they have a connection that cannot possibly be one-sided, but Cas has never shown any inclination that he wants to manacle himself to Dean in any way other than possibly some kind of kinky cop play.

This was a bad idea. Cas is gonna run in the other f*cking direction the second he rounds the corner. He’s gonna get right back on the f*cking plane to St. Petersburg and laugh it up with all the other passengers about his near-miss with a pretty psycho.

sh*tsh*tsh*t.

Dean’s about to get the f*ck outta here, eyes darting around as he searches for the nearest exit, feet already carrying him there...

But then Dean sees him.

Cas is striding through the airport, carrying himself with the kind of confidence that Dean admires the f*ck out of and Jimmy seems to lack. People actually move a couple inches to the left and right of him, out of his way, which is practically throwing a coat down over a puddle in front of royalty as far as this city is concerned.

He’s wearing a navy button-down and dark jeans; comfortable but stylish, and his hair is an artless mess. He’s not trying to impress anyone, he’s just going about his day, and it still turns Dean inside out.

Dean is so utterly f*cked.

Stomach full of lead, he moves into Cas’ line of sight, hoping against hope that he hasn’t screwed this up by being a barnacle, clinging for dear life to something far more majestic and complicated and interesting.

Like he knows someone is watching him, Cas’ previously weightless gaze zeroes right in on Dean, his expression softening when their eyes meet, the spark of their connection running right through Dean like a current (and just as dangerous for his heart).

f*ck.

Dean’s going nowhere.

He stands there, caught out mid-escape like an old bank robber cartoon.

Cas’ lips twitch into a smile as he approaches. He stops a few feet away, those blue eyes sparkling with amusem*nt; a joke that Dean’s not in on. “Hello, Dean.”

“Hi, Cas,” Dean responds, all breathless Marilyn Monroe on the President’s birthday.

It’s not awkward, but it’s… something. Heavy.

Cas is the one who decides to close the charged distance between them, curving a strong-fingered hand around the base of Dean’s skull, tugging the short strands between his fingers as he kisses Dean. His mouth is soft and wet and he tastes of mint and whiskey. Dean opens up for him right there in the airport, getting his hands on Cas’ back, fingers tracing his tattoo through the shirt. They fall in together, natural and easy, ignoring everyone else around them: the holidaymakers with their matching suitcases, the first-class passengers in their crumpled suits, the air hostesses with their shiny heels that click across the terrazzo.

There’s nothing else but this. Them.

At least for the next forty-eight hours.

It’s heady and inebriating, all slick tongues and harsh insistence, and Dean crushes in closer, kissing more deeply, wanting to feel more, always more.

Lack of oxygen soon becomes an issue, so reluctantly, Dean breaks the kiss and they pull apart. Dean’s attention immediately settles on the candy red of Cas’ mouth, the spit-shiny glisten of their combined saliva a gloss on his plush lips.

Goddamn.

“Mmm,” Cas agrees even though Dean didn’t verbalize anything, his liquid-dark eyes dropping to Dean’s mouth. Heat flares low in Dean’s abdomen and he makes a soft noise in the back of his throat. Cas reaches up to cup Dean’s jaw, the pad of his thumb dragging through the mix of their saliva on Dean’s bottom lip. “I have a surprise for you.”

“Yeah?”

Cas makes a noise in the affirmative against Dean’s lips as he leans in for a barely-there chaste kiss. The two of them sharing breath, Cas says, “I think you’re really going to like it.”

***

Turns out that — as usual — Cas ain’t wrong.

Dean’s never been to a club with a dress code before, but The Boiler Room has a bouncer who tells a couple of f*ckboys in ponchos and crappy costume-shop animal masks at the front of the line that the dress code is for everyone’s safety — theirs included.

According to Cas, this is one of the more lenient fetish clubs in the area, so this is him going easy on Dean for the first time.

Easy ain’t the word Dean would consider using. These pants were not easy to get into. This chest harness was not easy to get into. They’ll both be even harder to get out of, because Dean can feel the latex and leather clinging to the sweat drying on his skin, acting like an adhesive that’s only gonna bond the superf*ckingtight garments to his flesh permanently.

Cas, of course, in contrast to Dean’s discomfort and general awkwardness, looks downright f*ckable. Dean cannot stop staring at him, at his kohl-rimmed eyes, the curve of his muscles, the shine of the black latex braces on his bare chest, clipped to the tight leather pants that accentuate the thickness of his thighs and perfect ass.

Judging by the admiring glances he’s been getting in the queue, Dean’s not the only one who’s been busy noticing.

Cas half-turns to answer a question posed by the women behind them, dressed in matching squeaky purple corsets with their boobs out, their modesty protected by four little x-marks-the-nipples, and Dean takes the opportunity to stare at Cas’ spine tattoo.

“...with me, yes…” Cas is saying, but Dean isn’t paying attention, caught up on the ink beneath Cas’ skin, climbing the ladder of his spine. There’s no way in hell that getting tattooed there didn’t hurt like a motherf*cker, nerve endings so close to the surface that Cas had to be feeling the buzz of the needle in his bones for weeks.

“...Dean,” Cas finishes, and all of a sudden, there are three pairs of made-up eyes on him.

“Huh?” Dean says stupidly, glancing between Cas and the two busty women. He deliberately doesn’t let his eyes drift south of their necks. He can be a gentleman.

Cas’ voice is warm with fond amusem*nt when he tells Dean, “I’ve been talking with Poppy and Connie. They were asking me about you.”

The two women drag their eyes up Dean’s bare chest, over the criss-cross of leather, to his face, and gawk.

Dean’s gotten that reaction a few times now and he’s starting to worry that he’s smudged his eyeliner or something. Back in the hotel room, Cas had poked and prodded at him with the same pencil he’d used on his own eyes and since then, Dean knows he’s been rubbing at his face, unused to wearing freaking make-up and having to be careful.

“You two are gorgeous,” Poppy — possibly, Connie — says, all gushy and excitable. “Are you gonna scene?”

Cas flicks Dean a glance out of the corner of his smokey eye. Dean has a working knowledge of BDSM and the terminology, understands what they’re asking, but he doesn’t know what it all entails, whether they’d have to book a room for something like that, whether Cas has booked a room for something like that.

The thought sends a jagged bolt of desire through the core of him.

“We’ll see how it goes,” Cas answers with the kind of smile that Dean’s learned means trouble (for him).

The queue shuffles forward a couple of steps and Cas turns back around so that his shoulder bumps Dean’s. “Nervous?”

“Nah,” Dean bluffs. He might not be intimately acquainted with the particulars of this lifestyle, but he used to be a sex worker for f*ck’s sake (pun absolutely intended). He doubts there’s anything sex-and-kink-related that would shock him anymore.

***

Shock is probably the wrong word.

Outside of a skin flick, Dean’s never seen so much flesh on display. The place has more breasts and rump than a meat counter, and Dean tries to avert his eyes as he and Cas push through the crush of gyrating bodies on the main dance floor, but it’s impossible. Between the chick in the latex Snow White outfit grinding up against a wiry dude in a full gimp suit, and the nearly-naked-save-for-a-few-well-placed-chains girl swallowing fire, Dean doesn’t know where to look.

There are so many beautiful people in their element, all moving in sync with the pulse of the throbbing industrial-metal bassline. Cages are chained high above the heads of the writhing crowd, anchored into the rafters of the arched ceiling, containing bodies that dance to their own beat, swaying to some unheard music, ethereal and sprite-like. There are aerial dancers bound up in long swathes of silk, unraveling themselves at terminal velocity until they stop inches away from the ground before wrapping themselves back up again, limbs weaving through the dark fabric as they ascend.

Horns, feathers, spikes, nuns, priests, saints, sinners — it’s all here.

Nobody purposefully touches Dean as he trails after Cas, nobody tries to harass him, and it’s such a marked difference from Dean’s usual experience in clubs that he makes a mental note to mention it to Cas when his soul isn’t vibrating.

Awe might be the right word.

***

The two of them drink and dance until Dean’s wasted from the shots of Jäger and hard from the way he and Cas have been grinding up against each other.

They kiss again and again, swapping spit back and forth as their hips roll and their hands explore naked skin, leather, and latex. Anywhere else, this kind of dancing would be positively indecent, but here, Cas and Dean are just one couple in a sea of other couples, throuples and polycules.

There’s a sense of freedom in this that Dean doesn’t get to experience in his day-to-day existence. It’s exhilarating and liberating; the two of them able to breathe each other in and just exist in a place that doesn’t assume anything, that only serves as a space for them to be themselves.

Dean can hear the thickness in his own voice when he ghosts his mouth over Cas’ ear, asks, "Are we gonna f*ck?"

Cas’ grip tightens on the small of Dean’s back. "Do you want to?"

"Why are you answering a question with a question?"

"Why are you?"

“Is this a rubber-glue situation, ‘cause it’s already gonna be a challenge to get out of these pants.”

Cas breaks their childish stalemate first and Dean resolves to commit the curve of his smile to memory, the way the strobing lights color him in washes of pinks, greens, and blues. He shakes his head. “What am I going to do with you?”

“f*ck me?” Dean suggests with a cheeky grin.

“Is that consent?” Cas is trying to keep things easy-breezy-beautiful-Cover-Girl, but his dark eyes are telling a different story. One that would probably be sold in a glossy magazine on a newsagent’s top shelf.

Dean might live to regret this, getting f*cked in a roomful of strangers, but at least it’ll be an experience to not tell the grandkids. “Yes.”

***

Dean’s no stranger to public sex. In his younger years, he f*cked men and women in parks, public restrooms, and on one memorable occasion, in the backseat of a car during an automatic car wash. He’s not been particularly discerning about who might accidentally see him on his knees, or with his ass in the air, because most people pretend to be horrified and look away.

But there’s public sex and then there’s voyeuristic sex. Voyeurs don’t look away with faux disgust. They lean in, wanting to be a part of the fantasy without breaking club rules that are strictly enforced by monitors who stand impassive, even as the noises coming from the other scene rooms would be enough to make anyone cream themselves while waiting in line at the Post Office.

Cas is on form tonight, possessive and commanding with a little extra spice. Dean’s naked ass is a modern art piece of red-hot handprints from all the spankings he earned before Cas graduated to a round-ended wooden paddle.

As Cas smacks the meat of Dean’s ass again, Dean loosely wonders if Poppy and Connie are watching. Cas has him blindfolded with a silky-something that feels like it’ll do wonders for the bags under his eyes, and he’s cuffed to a padded bench with knee and arm rests that have him splayed on all fours comfortably enough that he can take the spanking without pulling a muscle.

Maybe his love muscle, ‘cause he’s been achingly hard for what seems like several lifetimes.

A strike hits the tender skin of his thigh and Dean bites back a yelp.

The audience is completely silent. The only sound in the room is of Cas’ boots on the dungeon floor, the whistle of the wooden panel through the air. The room smells like incense, the cool air thick with the rich scent of benzoin.

It smells like church.

Pretty sure this ain’t the kind of kneeling Jimmy does.

“Why are you smiling?” Cas challenges, voice a soothing liquid silk that Dean has learned the hard way is more dangerous than his commanding, pissy tone. His footsteps come to a halt to Dean’s right, near his shoulder. “I must not be doing my job properly.”

Dean doesn’t answer, choosing the safety of silence over admitting what he was just thinking about.

A warm palm strokes over the raised welts on Dean’s ass. “I don’t believe you’ve earned the right to be f*cked.”

Dean whines in the back of his throat. “Please,” is all he manages to squeeze out.

A hand comes down on the base of his neck, squeezes. Cas is suddenly there, fierce and possessive, pinning Dean’s cheek to the bench. “You should see how many people are watching us, Dean. How many people want you. They can’t have you, you’re mine. I don’t want to share you, I don’t want them to see you come.” More quietly, so there's no hope of anyone overhearing, Cas whispers, "I don’t want to push you too hard on your first time in a place like this. Next time, I promise.”

Cas’ words settle in Dean’s stomach like molten honey; hot yet sweet. Both the possessive and caring parts for precisely the same reason. Trust. Dean trusts Cas to know his limits, to let him come, to make sure they both come away from this experience satisfied and respected.

“f*ck my face,” Dean compromises, “Want you to. Need you to.” Cas has never left him hanging before (outside of edging, at least). He knows that he’ll be taken care of once they get back to the hotel room. Right now, Dean just wants to give Cas as much pleasure as he can, to show him in front of everyone that he belongs to Cas.

“f*ck,” comes Cas’ bitten-off response and then he’s gone, the pressure from Dean’s neck removed. Unable to see, Dean strains to listen, catching the sound of a zipper, the drag of leather. “Open.”

Dean does as he’s told, dropping his jaw immediately, anticipation winding tight through his nerves. Cas feeds Dean his co*ck, the musky, salty scent of him familiar and reassuring in this very unfamiliar situation. Opening his mouth wide and flattening his tongue against the ridge of Cas’ co*ck, Dean sucks him down, hot and wet, the blood-rich length of him perfect.

“Take it,” Cas grates out, forcing more and more of himself into Dean’s mouth, until the head prods the back of Dean’s throat, almost triggering the gag reflex Dean trained out of himself decades ago.

He swallows around the velvety thickness in his mouth, throat fluttering. “You feel amazing,” Cas tells him on a slur of praise that warms Dean to his core.

Underneath the blindfold, Dean’s lashes are spiked with wetness, tears leaking out the corner of his eyes, smearing his eyeliner. Cas reaches out, stroking a thumb across the curve of Dean’s cheekbone, wiping away the tear tracks, his touch so gentle compared to the rough way he’s f*cking Dean’s face, and the thick, wet, nasty sound of it.

A mix of precome and spit drools down Dean’s chin, and he fights for air, breathing through his nose, his entire focus narrowed to Cas.

Cas pulls out, letting Dean haul in a deep breath. “Cas,” Dean gasps, then coughs, clearing out what he’s been holding in his throat. “Blindfold.”

Cas gets it, ‘cause on his next thrust to the back of Dean’s throat, the blindfold is ripped away and Dean’s vision swims. The room is dark, but hued with mood lighting and a few scattered candles.

Above him, Cas is staring him down, blue eyes lost to pitch-black, pink mouth hanging open, as he watches Dean take him as far as he can, the tip of Dean’s nose grazing Cas’ happy trail. It’s intoxicating making Cas — carefully controlled Cas — come apart, knowing that he’s the one responsible for Cas’ descent into incoherency.

“So f*cking good. Dean— f*ck.”

Cas’ thrusts become jagged, a sign that he’s skirting around the edge of his org*sm, so Dean swallows again, the tight clutch of his throat convulsing, and on a harsh curse, Cas pulls out. With two jerks, he comes all over Dean’s upturned face, warm wetness hitting his cupid’s bow, his eyelashes, his cheek. It drips to the floor and Dean swears he hears someone in the audience murmur, “ Wow. ”

So yeah, Cas wasn’t wrong. Dean really likes it.

*~*~*

A first-year anniversary may traditionally warrant paper, but Cas is all about the surgical steel.

He sits Dean down on the hotel bed after their shared shower where he thoroughly finger-f*cked Dean, promising him all kinds of filthy things if he would just be patient, even though Dean’s been crawling out of his skin with need since they met up at the airport.

But, Dean can be good, so he does as he’s told, watching with increasing curiosity as Cas gathers his supplies: a travel sewing kit, his lighter, a bucket of ice.

It’s not quite a serial killer kit… more a confused grandma’s?

Dean makes himself a little more comfortable on the bedspread, bringing one knee up beneath the towel around his waist, not really caring about the Basic Instinct view he’s giving Cas, ‘cause at this point, Dean’s convinced that Cas needs the distraction.

“Are you taking up needlepoint?” Dean asks, flippancy his go-to in situations where he’s apprehensive.

Cas arches an eyebrow at him as he pulls out a miniature spray bottle from his overnight duffel. “Embroidery,” he deadpans like the unrepentant asshole he is. His hastily yanked-on boxer briefs are riding low on the jut of his hip bones and Dean finds himself impatient. It’s been a month since they last saw each other and they’ve only got tonight, so he’s eager to get f*cked hard enough that he can’t sit down until the next time Cas is here.

The sewing kit has several sizes of needle, from minuscule to kinda chunky. There are some mini spools of thread in basic colors too, as well as a teeny wire thing that looks like a flimsy torture device, and a pair of plastic-handled scissors that no human — adult or child — could fit their fingers into.

Maybe they’re scissors made for those creepy-ass, long-fingered aye-ayes.

“So what, you’ve decided the antique business ain’t as lucrative as selling bee embroidery kits on Etsy?” Dean’s funny, he knows he is, plenty of people have told him so. But Cas is unimpressed, waiting for Dean to finish cracking his jokes like a tag-along at a Dane Cook show, who only came because there was an extra ticket and they already used up their hair-washing excuse this week.

“I’m done,” Dean says, after an excruciating pause as though Cas is just letting Dean stew in his own crap joke. “I won’t try to make you laugh ever again.”

“Promise?” Cas snarks as he sits down on the bed facing Dean, mirroring his position.

Dean doesn’t dignify that with a response, choosing to watch as Cas peers into the ice bucket, before digging into it and coming up with a single cube.

For all the fun sh*t they’ve done to each other in the last year, they’ve yet to get into temperature play. Which is fine with Dean; he’ll give anything a go once, but getting involved with molten wax, melted butter, or ice ain’t exactly at the top of his list.

Looks like today’s the day.

Staring at Dean’s chest, Cas seems to be considering something. Dean’s about to remind him that his eyes are up here, but before he gets the chance, Cas is pressing the ice to Dean’s left nipple.

The shock of it stutters Dean’s breath and he jerks away on instinct, ‘cause holy f*ck that’s cold!

“Stay still,” Cas warns, touching the cube back to the bud of Dean’s nipple. The chill makes it pucker and jut out and Dean grits his teeth, forcing himself not to move. It’s a weird kind of burn that tapers off into numbness after about half a minute.

“Hold this,” Cas says after another handful of seconds, and Dean takes the melting cube from him, the cold dripping between his fingers and down the back of his hand.

Dean glances down at his own chest, at his pebbled skin and hard-but-numb nipple. “This ain’t exactly the kind of kink I had in mind, Cas.”

He receives a withering look for that one as Cas picks the thickest needle out of the kit. Grabbing his lighter off of the nightstand and rolling the ignition wheel, Cas holds the point of the needle above the orange flame.

Dean can be pretty slow sometimes. Tonight is apparently a prime example of his dumbassery, ‘cause it’s taken him this long to figure out what the f*ck Cas has planned.

Holy crap.

Cas’ eyes are liquid-dark and fathomless when he shuts the lighter with a metallic clink. He waits a beat or two, watching Dean’s hand move in small circles with an intensity that would knock any sane person on their ass.

Satisfied that the needle is as sterilized as it’s gonna get, Cas shuffles closer on his knees and bats Dean’s hand out of the way, reaching for his nipple. He pinches the bud between his thumb and forefinger. “Can you feel that?”

Barely.

Dean shakes his head, a mix of anticipatory nerves and cold shaking his bones.

“This will hurt a little, but I promise you it’ll feel good too.”

Dean’s gaze automatically drifts down to the ring through Cas’ nipple. “Okay,” he agrees on an uneven exhale, scrambling for his zen when there’s a maniacal glint in Cas’ eye and a sharp object in his hand. “Do it.”

Visibly pleased, Cas ducks his head and presses his mouth to Dean’s. Dean makes the most of it, surging up into the kiss, fingertips curling against Cas’ face, holding him in place as he assaults Cas’ mouth, lips parting, tongue teasing.

It’s verging on tender, the way they kiss, and Dean’s reluctant to pull away, but he also wants the piercing over and done with. Cas’ breath is uneven as it ghosts across his face, his lips, and whether he’s turned on from the kiss or what he’s about to do, Dean can’t decipher, but either way, it makes him squirm. Even more so when Cas chastises him with more gravel in his voice than usual. “Sit still.”

The last thing Dean sees before he squeezes his eyes shut is Cas’ devious smile. His own breathing quickens, whole body tensing, just waiting for Cas’ next move.

He doesn’t have to wait long; a moment later, Dean feels a sharp bite of pain in his nipple as Cas forces the needle through his flesh. It tapers off into a pleasant, yet indistinct ache straight after, a satisfying burny-buzz. Eyes open, Dean finds the needle right through and sticking out horizontally from his nipple.

Cas is already leaning over to reach for the nightstand again, coming back with a silver-colored ring identical to his own. “This is probably the worst part,” he murmurs. “Take a deep breath.”

Dean does and closes his eyes again. The sensation of the needle getting pulled out is indescribable; it tickles like an itch under the skin, but it’s nothing compared to when Cas forces the open ring through the tiny hole left by the needle, which aches bizarrely until it doesn’t, the time-delayed rush of endorphins feeding straight to his dick.

Jesus.

Cas wasn’t wrong.

It feels good. His nipple is tender and hot, his dick hard, as Cas closes the loop, and when Dean risks a glance downward, he can see that Cas is as turned on as he is.

“Done,” he says, a pleased rumble to his voice. “Good boy.”

Wordlessly, Dean gets up off the bed and goes to the mirror in the bathroom. He touches his fingers to the heated skin, stares at his reflection.

It looks good.

It looks like ownership.

***

The next night in bed with Jimmy, Dean refuses his husband’s timid, touching-a-hot-stove advances. There’s relief warring with disappointment visible in the lines of his handsome face. Dean’s doing them both a favor; Jimmy won’t have to wear a cilice for a month or say a million Hail Marys or whatever, and Dean doesn’t have to fake-moan his way through the faltering exploration and pretend that he’s anything other than uncomfortable with anyone except Cas touching him these days.

*~*~*

Jimmy must know something is going on. He’s just about the furthest thing from stupid, so Dean often wonders if it’s willful ignorance that’s brought them this far without divorce proceedings getting invoked, rather than Cas and Dean being any kind of subtle about their regular meet-ups.

Dean’s fresh outta the shower and in a rush to get ready for work when Jimmy catches him half-naked in the hallway, zeroing in on the glint of the unfamiliar jewelry through his nipple.

He stops and gapes; a reaction Dean wishes he could see more often on his husband, until he realizes with a cold rush of panic that it’s actually more to do with Jimmy’s shock at the nipple ring than lust for Dean’s wet body.

“When did you—” Jimmy starts, then stops himself. Tries again. “Why did you mutilate yourself like that?”

Dean shrugs faux-casually. “I like it.”

Jimmy’s indignant. “I don’t.”

“Lucky that it ain’t through your nipple then,” Dean smarts, moving to breeze past him, but Jimmy catches him by the bicep, his grip surprisingly tight for someone who’s always clutching his bible instead of Dean’s thighs.

“I don’t know what’s going on with you, but don’t think I haven’t noticed your erratic behavior.”

Jesus H. Christ, who’s gonna tell Jimmy that he ain’t my dad?

“Good to know that you noticed something about me.”

Jimmy’s expression crumples. “Dean, I—”

Dean shakes himself free of Jimmy’s hold, shoves past. “I’ve gotta get ready for work.”

Jimmy follows him into their bedroom. “Tell me what I’m doing wrong, please. I can’t fix it if you won’t let me.”

“Nothing to fix, Jimmy,” Dean tells him, back turned as he rifles through his drawers for a clean shirt. “I’m not some broken toy or a f*cking charity case.”

Dean usually refrains from using profanity around Jimmy, just as a respectful thing, ‘cause he’s not a complete asshole, but today, he’s building up to the kind of rage he welcomes in like an old friend.

Jimmy’s gotten under Dean’s skin deeper than the damn piercing.

Admittedly, it’s not his fault that Dean married the wrong person, but it is his fault that he won’t even attempt to meet Dean halfway, that he’s so stuck on being a good Christian, he won’t even consider the possibility that his version of events isn’t one that his maker would approve of.

And that, right there, might be the crux of the issue, ‘cause for all outward appearances, Jimmy’s a decent human. He gives money to the right causes, he does his missionary work to help bring the word of god to those that supposedly need it… But he’s married to a man. And Jimmy’s internalization of the principles taught by the Roman Catholic Church triggers a daily conflict wherein the only way he reconciles his belief with his sexuality is to tell himself that he’s saving Dean’s ex-whor* soul or some sh*t.

It’s the lie he tells himself until he’s begun to believe it, and over the span of their relationship, the divide between them has only gotten worse as Jimmy digs himself deeper into the trench of denial.

By refreshing contrast, there’s no pretense with Cas, no bullsh*t. He’s not some repressed fantasist, insecure in himself due to a fear-induced dogma. Cas is free to be whoever the f*ck he wants to be and it scares the hell out of Jimmy, makes him resent Cas for that freedom he can only view from afar rather than being able to grab for himself.

Jimmy’s voice is cracked around the edges when he speaks again. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Dean.”

Not, ‘I’m sorry I made you feel that way, Dean.’ Or even, ‘You’re right, you’re not broken.’

Dean slams the drawer shut, balled-up shirt in hand. Behind him, he hears Jimmy make a swift exit stage right. Which might be the smartest thing he’s done this morning.

Self-righteous asshole.

f*ck him.

(Or, f*ck his twin brother.)

***

Fueled by the heady combination of spite and dirty-wrong lust, on Jimmy’s next trip out of town, Dean demands that Cas f*ck him in the marital bed. Dean rides his brother-in-law like it’s his honeymoon f*ck, while Cas’ hands maul bruises into Dean’s hips and thighs, punching the thick length of his co*ck inside Dean with a brutal precision, leaving Dean aching and leaking, and used so f*cking good.

Yeah, definitely f*ck his twin brother.

*~*~*

As the months and years slip by, Dean and Cas’ meet-ups get less sex-focused, and they start to do things together that don’t explicitly involve their genitals (usually saving it for after, ‘cause holy sh*t, the sex is still hot as hell and they’ve yet to run out of things to do to each other).

It’s almost like dating. But obviously not, because Dean’s married and Cas doesn’t wanna be tied down; he enjoys his freedom to come and go as he pleases far too much to even consider staying with Dean.

Which is cool, it really is. Dean will take Cas any way he can get him and he doesn’t wanna f*ck up the good thing they have going by being clingy.

Still, it’s hard not to go a little weak-kneed when Cas starts making the effort to search out things to do and actually surprise Dean with some of the activities he lines up.

So far, there’s been visits to niche restaurants that Dean never would’ve heard of otherwise, gigs for some of Dean’s favorite bands, ax throwing (Dean was a big fan of that one), and going to a drive-in movie on the outskirts of the city that Dean had to persuade Jimmy was a trip to collect parts for his car.

Real thoughtful sh*t, yanno?

Today, they’re at a carnival, knee-deep in a sea of neon colors, deafening dance music, garish lights, and the scent of fried sugar.

It might be a gooey-eyed-teenager-who-hasn’t-yet-got-to-third-base date, but Dean loves it.

They’re not holding hands or anything like that, but they are walking close enough together that the edge of Cas' pinky catches Dean's as they navigate through the crowd. It’s so easy like this with Cas; they just seem to slot together — jagged edges and all — so that, rather than rubbing each other up the wrong way, they connect with the kind of effortless satisfaction that most people spend their lives searching for.

But yeah. They’re not dating. And Dean’s not mad about it, because why would he be? Cas is only the man who once made Dean org*sm in such quick succession that he actually Googled ‘male multiple org*sm’ after, who always comes back for Dean no matter where in the world he is, because Dean’s ‘worth coming back for,’ who takes Dean out on these thought-through excursions, because one night, Dean accidentally let slip about his childhood or lack thereof.

Dean’s not mad about it because his actual husband is a (mostly) kind man. Which is his entire personality trait, and it’s not like that’s a bad thing, because it’s not. The world is kinda sh*t sometimes, and everyone needs a little kindness, but Dean needs more, and Cas provides it, so it’s really f*cking unfair that Dean met Jimmy first, and why the f*ck did he go ahead with the wedding—

Okay, so. Maybe a little mad.

Cas’ voice is thick and velvety against Dean’s ear when he crushes in closer than strictly necessary — like personal space is only for lesser beings — to make himself heard over the noise. “What do you want to do first?” His mouth brushes Dean’s cheek as he turns his head so that he can hear Dean’s reply, a palm on Dean’s shoulder to hold him still — as if there’s anywhere in the world Dean would rather be than standing here, heartbeat in his throat, wondering whether he can persuade Cas to f*ck his face on the Ferris wheel.

A harried-looking mother with four little sticky-fingered tag-alongs rushes past them, zigging and zagging, clipping heels, running over toes, using the stroller as a cow-catcher. One of the kids stops and stares directly at Dean over Cas’ shoulder, a melting popsicle in her tiny fist.

“I want a popsicle,” Dean tells Cas, pushing pushing pushing, always pushing his goddamn luck.

Cas’ smile is roguish, his blue eyes bright when he pulls back to look at Dean, doing that soul-f*ck scrutinizing stare thing. If the roles were reversed, Dean would be making a co*ck joke right about now, but Cas is the epitome of self-control, so he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “I’m not sure my willpower could take it. What about some cotton candy?”

Dean grins, pleased with himself for the poke of Cas’ half-hard dick he can feel against his own. “Sure.”

They find a striped cotton candy stall in the shadow of the tilt-a-whirl and join the back of the winding queue. The ride rumbles past on a loop with screaming and laughing passengers, the music a crazed remix of twenty pop hits from ten years ago, and Dean experiences a weird kind of nostalgia for a childhood he didn’t have.

Cas’ arm slinks around Dean’s waist, fingers of his left hand curling possessively over Dean’s hip. “You okay?”

Yeah. Yeah, he really is.

Dean presses himself along Cas’ side, lips against the shell of Cas’ ear. “Can we go play games after this?”

This time, Cas’ smile is fond, the edges of his tone soft. “Only if you’ll let me win you a disgusting stuffed toy.”

***

They spend the rest of their time at the carnival racking up wins on the skill-based games — the ones that are mostly winnable, unlike the rigged ones Cas warns him about. Cas is scary good at them; obliterating the red star sitting in the middle of a paper target, managing to score a hoop on the basketball game, and popping multiple balloons with the darts he’s handed by the vendor.

As a result, Dean ends up with an array of brightly colored, plasticky-scented stuffed animals that includes a blue unicorn, a green squirrel-looking thing, and a giant purple and black dog with a smushed face that only a mother could love.

Dean’s less successful at the same games. He wins some trash — a balloon hammer on the tin ducks and, on the ring toss, a cheap keyring that he’d be surprised to learn cost more than fifteen cents — but mostly just has some actual fun for a change. It’s not like he doesn’t have a social life, ‘cause there’s Charlie and their regular nerd-outs and movie binges, but the rest of the time, life feels so heavy. The responsibility of not measuring up to his father’s standards years after his death weighs on him sometimes, and Jimmy’s disapproval only compounds it.

He’s free with Cas.

Not long before they leave, Cas goes off to get some corn dogs, ‘cause he’s apparently decided to lift the embargo on the phallic foods now that it’s almost time to go back to his hotel room. So Dean sits and waits on a slatted bench that he had to elbow through the throngs of people to get to right after another couple vacated it. He people-watches as he waits, spying a couple who seem determined to win an ugly piglet plushie on the hook-a-duck game, when the same kid from earlier, the one with the popsicle — now with some kind of drippy baked good in a cardboard tray — approaches him with wide, hopeful eyes.

It’s not him she’s looking at this time; it’s the purple and black dog with the ugly face. He holds the thing out to her. “You want?” he asks, loud enough to be heard.

She nods slowly, unsure.

“Take it,” Dean prods, leaning forward further, reluctant to stand up in case someone thinks he’s trying to abduct a kid using cheap carnival junk.

She steps forward and snatches it out of his hand, then retreats. She considers him for a long moment, her eyes darting between the food in her one hand and Dean on the bench. She offers him the tray of syrupy mess.

Dean grins. “Nah, thanks. You enjoy it, kid.”

She flashes him a gap-toothed smile, then darts off into the crowd.

Cas returns at the same moment, food in hand, turning his head to watch her disappear. “Should I be jealous?” He passes Dean a corndog as he stands to greet him.

Dean waggles his eyebrows, then turns his attention to the battered sausage on a stick. “If you like it, you shoulda put a ring on it, Cas.”

The moment he says it, he wants to swallow the words back down. Just pause and rewind and scrub.

f*ck. Way to make things awkward, Winchester.

He opens his mouth to apologize, to write it off as his brain-to-mouth filter not being engaged, but before he can, Cas reaches out and tugs on Dean’s nipple piercing through his shirt. “I thought I already did.”

***

When Cas checks out of the hotel room the next morning, he sends Dean a picture of the blue unicorn and the green squirrel sitting together on the pile of pillows.

*~*~*

Somewhere between the anal beads and the morning-breath kisses and the cotton candy, Dean falls in love. He’s probably been in love since the first moment he saw Cas; it’s just taken a while for his brain to catch up.

The problem is two-fold, because firstly: he’s never been in love before, not like this, and he doesn’t know what to do about it, and secondly: he can’t actually do anything about it. He’s just gotta carry the knowledge around with him like he’s the accidental recipient of the most generous airline-cabin luggage allowance ever.

So Dean does the one thing that he excels at (aside from blow j*bs): he represses. He shoves down the scary feelings that are bigger than him and his punk-rock-chord-progression emotions and he simply pretends that sh*t doesn’t exist.

He and Cas are just buds who f*ck and go to carnivals and denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

In a pretty flimsy attempt at distraction-slash-reconciliation, Dean opens his heart to Jimmy’s efforts to connect with him. They go out on a series of dates like they used to before they were married and BC (Before Cas), but the talk is small and the food a little too highbrow for Dean’s tastes.

He tries to kid himself that he’s trying, that he’s not heartsick for Cas, that what’s trapped in the cage of his ribs with his other vital organs isn’t gonna destroy the one good thing in his life. But there’s no fooling himself, even if he can fool everyone else around him. Which, apparently, he can. Jimmy looks happier than he’s been since they married and even Cas seems to buy the bullsh*t Dean is selling after a quick interrogation where Dean remains tight-lipped and single-syllabled.

In short, the only person Dean has to convince is himself. And he’s never been particularly good at that.

*~*~*

“There’s a box,” Cas says one night when they’re lying next to each other on a mattress in the attic of Cas and Jimmy’s childhood home.

The twins’ father is square dancing around the mortal coil, shuffling closer to death with every pureed banana meal he’s fed in palliative hospice. Which means two things: firstly, his house is empty, and secondly, Jimmy’s busy looking after the man who instilled the kind of religious conservatism in one of his sons that would make even the Westboro Baptist Church flinch.

Safe to say Dean and his sinfulness ain’t invited, so he’s happy to take advantage of Jimmy’s distraction and the old man’s place while they wait for him to die. Cas hates his dad more than Jimmy hates himself, so he’s happy to take perverse pleasure in using his puritanical father’s house as a base of gay-sexytime operations whenever he’s in the country. It mostly manifests as the two of them f*cking on every surface — horizontal, vertical, and everywhere in between — then hiding like naughty teenagers in the attic when the maid comes around, probably wondering why too many of the household surfaces are a little crunchier than usual.

Dean bites back on the urge to say something lewd-and-or-flippant in response to Cas’ statement. Instead, he watches the slow melt of wax from one of the candles pooling pitch-black on the bare boards and asks, “What kind of box?”

“It was made by a French toymaker in the eighteenth century, Lemarchand. According to legend, it was commissioned by a wealthy aristocrat who was obsessed with dark magic. He wanted to experience something beyond human understanding and imagination.”

Interest piqued, Dean pushes up on his elbows. “What are you telling me, Cas?”

Cas’ eyes flash to him briefly, guttering light from the candle reflecting in the shine of his pupil, before he tucks a hand underneath his head and looks to the rafters. “According to the stories, the Marquis De Sade had possession of it briefly, while imprisoned in the Bastille, and used it to barter with the guard for the paper on which he wrote The 120 Days of Sodom .”

Holy sh*t.

“And you believe the stories?”

Cas doesn’t answer him. “Supposedly, the box itself is a puzzle, a type of configuration. And to solve it is to travel to other dimensions where pain and pleasure are taken to and then beyond the limit.”

“So that’s why you’re interested.”

“Mm,” Cas says, casting a glance in Dean’s direction, but not actually looking at him. “Partially. And only if it’s all true, of course. I’ve heard a lot of nonsense over the years. But I suppose half the fun is finding out.”

Dean thinks back to their first encounter. Yeah, he really can’t disagree with that. In fact, he’d argue that it’s all the fun.

Rolling onto his side and propping his head up with one hand, Dean stares at Cas’ profile in the soft light, the smooth slope of his nose, the pretty swell of his mouth. His fingertips follow the trail his eyes blaze, mapping out the curve of Cas’ cheekbones, the stubble-rough skin of his philtrum. “So what’s the plan? f*ck around and find out? Or, find it and then f*ck around?”

Dean feels like he’s earned the smile he ekes out of Cas at that, but his sense of achievement is quickly tempered by a feeling of wrong in the pit of his stomach. There’s a tense set to Cas’ jaw, and his refusal to meet Dean’s eyes is mildly concerning, ‘cause Cas and eye contact are the best pairing since Bonnie and Clyde.

Clearly, Dean’s missing something here.

What if he knows about you catching feelings?

He doesn’t. He can’t.

The silence stretches out between them, one tense moment barging into the next. It’s another deadlock, like the time Dean gay-chickened them both into making something of this.

“Everything okay, Cas?” Dean asks, feigning nonchalance he doesn’t really feel, pulling back from Cas’ face to watch him properly.

Cas answers like he’s been thinking on it and prepared a to-go response for Dean’s convenience. “It’s worth a great deal of money. I could do a lot with the amount I’ve been offered to find it. Maybe invest in property…” He trails off, voice rough, gaze slanting away.

Dean blinks, surprised. He never pegged Cas for the type to wanna enter the property market, always choosing his nomadic lifestyle over settling down.

Maybe that's just settling down with you, dumbass.

Dean flinches, stung.

Raking the shards of his shattered heart together, he manages a weak, “Cool,” before clearing his throat and trying again. “I mean, yeah. But if you find the box, maybe we can have some fun with it before you sell it.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively, covering his hurt with flirt. “Best of both worlds and all that. We get the org*sms, the buyer gets the box, you get the money. Everybody wins.”

*~*~*

Nothing stays hidden forever. Just ask those employees who buried the ET Atari 2600 cartridges.

Dean’s a good liar, perfected the art of it the first time a paying customer pulled out his stubby co*ck and Dean cooed over it like it was the size of a baseball bat rather than a softball. But that’s short-term lies; for long-term bullsh*ttery in the faces of people you care about, you’ve gotta have stamina and a good memory. And also be motivated to keep the truth from coming out.

It’s that last one that’s proving problematic for Dean, ‘cause since their conversation about Cas’ intention to buy property (and possibly settle down with someone who almost certainly won’t be Dean), his brain’s been going haywire with thoughts of: what happens if it is you he wants? But why would he want you? You’re not real relationship material, are you? Yeah, but what if he’s thinking about buying the property so you can both live there —

His consciousness cuts those thoughts off at the pass, but his subconscious? Turns out his subconscious has other plans that it neglected to clue Dean into.

They’re in an upscale hotel in Palo Alto this time — Dean ostensibly on a week-long visit to see Sam while Old Man Novak breathes his hateful, bitter last, but four days in, Dean has yet to leave Cas — when he f*cking says it. Just opens his stupid f*cking mouth and puts it out into the universe like bad juju.

They’d been in such a rush when they’d stumbled into the room that Dean barely got an impression of the place beyond the crisp white duvet, the eggshell blue walls, the classy-and-functional style of the Scandinavian furniture. He gets a good eyeful now though as he looks around at every nook and cranny rather than meeting Cas’ steady gaze. As he pretends to take a specific interest in a particularly fascinating lamp, Cas’ intensity gets a touch too weighty and Dean folds beneath it like he always does.

“Cas,” he exhales on a sigh, still not facing him. “It was just…”

Nope. Can’t do it. Can’t lie.

Cas picks up the thread. “Just what? ‘Heat of the moment’?”

And yeah, the finger quotes that Dean doesn’t need to turn around to see are adorable, are about the only thing about Cas that is cute rather than badass, and it just compounds the problem, really. This was never supposed to happen. It should’ve just been sex and nothing more, but then Dean f*cked it all up.

Which may actually be the story of his life. It’s at very least the linchpin chapter, where the protagonist realizes what a f*ckin’ dumbass they are.

“No,” Dean says, because he doesn’t lie to Cas. Just everyone else. He takes a couple of deep, steadying breaths before turning to face Cas. Sex and emotional vulnerability go together like Jäger and co*ke, and Dean should have given Cas a wrong number on his wedding day and just chalked it up to temporary insanity, but he didn’t. And now here they are. “It wasn't the heat of the moment. I meant it.” His chest is tight and his pulse frantic as he adds a moment later, “I love you.”

Cas makes a thoughtful noise. Which isn’t quite the response Dean was expecting. Or hoping for.

The summer is thick and hot and even though the room is air-conditioned, Dean feels like he’s out there roasting over an open fire right now.

Cas’ voice — when he finally speaks — is woven luxurious with mirth. “I know.”

“Oh,” Dean manages, dry throat clicking. “Good?”

Cas looks at him, eyes clear and honest. “I love you too. I thought it was a given at this point.”

Which, what?

And yeah, it’s been years, maybe he should’ve had faith in this, in them, but sh*t’s complicated, and Dean might’ve been in love with him since his wedding day, just didn’t realize it ‘til recently. The way Cas is observing him, like he knows, like he’s always known, just makes Dean feel like the dumbest motherf*cker alive.

“I told you,” Cas says slowly, so imperious, so in control. “You’re the reason I keep coming back to a country I was happy to leave behind over a decade ago.”

Dean’s caged heart flutters. “Yeah?”

“You’re mine,” Cas says like it’s irrefutable, just a tenet of the universe. He holds Dean’s head in the cup of his palms, and promises, “I’ll always come back for you. I’d come back from the dead for you.”

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

Dean hasn’t heard from Castiel in more than a week.

Even if he can’t call, Cas usually drops Dean a quick email when he’s passing through Marrakesh or whatever. But now, it’s been all quiet on the Western Front since the voicemail Cas left ten days ago: "Dean, I found the box I was looking for. I'm coming back to you so we can talk. It's nothing bad, I promise. I'm hoping it'll be just the opposite." A couple of beats of stillness, nothing more than the sound of soft static. Then, "I love you. I'll see you soon."

It’s not like he can ask Jimmy — “Oh, hey dude, you know your hotter twin? Yeah, the one I’m f*ckin’ on the side? Uh-huh. I don’t s’pose you know where he is?” — and so Dean frets in silence.

Fortunately, his anxiety is easily disguised, because he and Jimmy are in the process of moving into the old Novak family home. And, as everyone knows, moving house is one of the three major life stressors (the other two being seated next to a table of unruly children with parents who do nothing, and a strange, slobbery dog charging at you in a park).

The house itself is nice enough. Big and probably the kind of home that adolescent Dean would’ve loved to grow up in. Secluded among trees with a screened-in front porch and grass so green that there’s no way it’s natural, the place is essentially death by suburbia.

“You like it?” Jimmy asks as he walks past, carrying a color-coded and neatly labeled-on-all-sides box.

Eh. Dean was indifferent the first time he saw it. Now, on what’s probably his tenth visit to the place, he’s no more or less enamored with it. At least this time, Old Man Novak’s awful orthopedic furniture won’t be there.

(Though admittedly, Cas and Dean did have a lot of fun with the wipe-clean lift assist recliner.)

Of course, Jimmy thinks Dean’s seeing it for the first time, so he dredges up some enthusiasm. “Yeah,” Dean says to Jimmy’s departing back as his husband climbs the porch stairs. “I like the…” he gestures vaguely, “... brown tile roof?”

Amelia, Jimmy’s fellow zealot and longtime, previously long-distance colleague (and the one who seems the most pleased that they’re moving from Chicago to Pontiac), follows Jimmy into the house, not sparing Dean a glance. Which is just fine with him.

Dean checks his phone for the gazillionth time. Still nothing from Cas.

He sighs.

This is gonna be a long f*ckin’ day.

***

Inside the house, Dean heads straight upstairs to the attic, which is the room he knows the best in this place.

While he and Cas really did make the most of every inch of the not-insubstantial-square-footage of the Novak home, the attic is where they kept their kink locked away from prying eyes and the maid’s feather duster. Not only did they spend long afternoons up there, lazily f*cking while the sunlight peeked through the dust-sprinkled blinds and striped them in pastel oranges and blush-pinks, but they also made use of equipment that they wouldn’t be able to lug to a hotel room. (Or use in a fetish club without voyeurs attached.)

The problem is this: Cas was in charge of making sure the place was cleaned up, and with him going AWOL, Dean has no idea whether he’s going to find it pristine or full of sex swings, chains, and various other toys.

His hopes aren’t high as he opens the door and flicks on the single light; a weak, bare bulb that illuminates a circle spreading no further than a few feet. That it broadly resembles an interrogation light is no coincidence.

sh*t.

The room is almost exactly how Dean remembers leaving it about six weeks ago. The mattress to the right of the open door in the east corner is still laid on the bare boards, a couple of paddles at the foot of it, haphazardly stacked next to a pair of Dean’s lace panties on the edge of the mattress. Leather hanging cuffs still dangle from the exposed load-bearing beam near the lightbulb.

Dammit, Cas.

Normally, Dean’s knee-jerk interpretation would be that this is Cas’ deliberate attempt to goad his pious twin by leaving the stuff he’s used on Dean lying around, because that’s just the kind of little sh*t Cas can be. But the sex swing is down and folded up along the same wall as the mattress, stored along with some plugs and vibrators. It’s as if Cas started to clear everything away, but got interrupted before he could finish.

Dean checks his phone again. Nothing.

Still in the doorway, he types out a quick message.

Dean: Cas, where are you? I’m freaking out and the attic is a mess.

He takes a couple of steps inside, and it’s immediately obvious that the air in here is chillier than the rest of the house. Stagnant too, as though the room has been sealed up with nobody inside.

Certainly no one’s been here within the last week or so.

The blinds are drawn across the window, keeping the waning sunlight at bay, so Dean crosses the floorboards, intending to open the blinds, hoping that with a little bit of outside illumination, the room will seem less f*cking… creepy? Except, since Dean was last here, Cas must’ve nailed the blind to the window frame. Why, Dean’s not sure, and when he tries to pull the material free, all he succeeds in doing is snagging it.

Weird.

He’ll have to take a claw hammer to it once he digs out his tools from the piles of moving boxes.

Dean turns from the window, eyes still adjusting to the dark stillness of the room. This is his and Cas’ space; the place where they’ve laughed, cried, f*cked, tormented each other with pleasure and pain, so it should feel full of life. Full of them.

And it does, but it’s bound up with something warped and twisted and gnarled. Something sinister. Something malicious.

Gooseflesh pebbling his arms, Dean goes to leave, to return downstairs, but as he’s making his way toward the door, skirting the edges of the lightbulb’s circle of illumination, his foot makes contact with something in the darkness.

Cursing under his breath, he pulls out his cell and taps onto the flashlight app. He shines the beam a couple inches in front of his foot, half expecting to see the stub of one of the many candles he and Cas would light up for teenage-goth ambiance.

Nope.

It’s a box. Maybe six inches square.

Huh.

Dean stoops to retrieve it, turning it over in his free hand. It’s elegant and ornate, with six black-and-gold lacquered faces.

Is this the puzzle box Cas was talking about?

Something crawls up Dean’s spine, long, slimy tendrils coiling around his insides and squeezing. “Cas?” he whisper-shouts, confident that Jimmy can’t hear him a few floors down.

Silence.

What the f*ck.

He must’ve left it?

Footsteps sound on the metal of the spiral staircase that leads up to the attic, and seconds later, Jimmy appears in the ochre light of the short hallway beyond the room’s door.

sh*tsh*tsh*tf*ckityf*ck.

“There you are,” Jimmy says, chest rising and falling lightly with exertion. He steps inside the room, eyeing the mattress in the corner. The mattress his brother and Dean have f*cked on more times than Dean can count. “Squatters?”

Dean makes a non-committal sound, too scared that if he opens his mouth, all he’ll be able to wring from his vocal cords is a widow’s wail or a banshee screech.

Jimmy turns in place, surveying the room, gaze sticking on the slim vibrator Cas made Dean come untouched on three times in a row. “Or Castiel.”

The disdain is almost a physical thing in Jimmy’s voice as he goes over to inspect the items piled up around the mattress. Thanks to the light from the hallway, Dean can see the blush staining his husband’s cheeks as he hums and tuts his disapproval at the range of sex toys.

“Your brother?” Dean attempts after a tell-tale clearing of his throat.

Smooth.

Jimmy kicks at the sex swing. “Yes. This is exactly the depraved sort of thing he’d bring here. Probably with a revolving door of sex-obsessed wretches.”

Wow.

“Really? He’d do that?” Dean asks, voice small. It bothers him that Jimmy thinks so little of his brother when it’s fairly f*cking obvious that he knows nothing about the man.

“Yes,” Jimmy tsks, irritated, crouching down and plucking out something that’s wedged between the wall and the mattress. He turns on his haunches to face Dean, grit under the toe of his sneaker. In the palm of his hand is Cas’ silver lighter. “This is his. It used to be our mother’s. I was always annoyed that he got it.”

Dean clamps his jaw shut, stewing in confused anger, and not sure what to do about it; split between frantically tearing the room apart looking for signs of Cas and telling Jimmy to go f*ck himself.

“Oh,” Jimmy says in the face of Dean’s silence. He pushes to his feet, attention on the box Dean’s still holding limply. “What’s that?”

“I dunno,” Dean answers honestly. He’s considering putting in a claim for compensation for the whiplash this conversation is giving him. “Just found it on the floor.” He reluctantly hands it off to Jimmy who inspects it.

“Hmm, looks like one of Castiel’s trinkets,” he says thoughtfully. “Seems as though he made a hasty exit.”

Jimmy’s words are a meat tenderizer to the heart, ‘cause that’s exactly what Dean’s been thinking too. Wherever Cas is, it’s apparent he went there in a hurry, and without telling anyone. Which may have been his MO prior to meeting Dean, but they’re in love, for f*ck’s sake. Cas was coming back for Dean. He f*cking said so. He promised.

Cas, you gotta come back. Please, I need you.

*~*~*

Over the next couple of days, Dean tries — and fails — to ignore the weird magnetic pull toward the attic room. Jimmy barely notices Dean’s malaise, too busy with Amelia, the two of them painting swatches of color on the dining room wall, like it f*cking matters whether it’s Lafayette or Tarrytown green.

Cas still hasn’t been in touch and Dean’s freaking the hell out.

He goes up to the attic. Stands there in the untouched space. It gives him a strange sense of comfort in spite of its creepiness; a sense of them, a sense of Cas that overwhelms the disquiet.

Downstairs, Amelia laughs too loudly at something Jimmy’s said. While Jimmy has been known to deliver a zinger worth a chuckle on occasion, it’s painfully obvious to everyone but Dean’s oblivious husband that the woman has a crush on him.

Good luck to her. Dean’s got his own issues with an unresponsive Novak.

Dean sits down in the center of the floor, beneath the unlit bulb, content to exist in the dark for a while. He lets his eyes slip closed, hands on his knees, Cas’ lighter — the one he stole back from Jimmy — resting in the cross of his calves.

Cas feels alive in here somehow. Probably because his DNA is all over this room; his blood sweat, tears, sem*n. In fact, he hung Dean by the handcuffs still dangling from the beam to the left of where Dean is sitting right now, and came all over him in thick stripes; his back, his thighs, his feet.

Dean shifts a little at the memory, the casually possessive way Cas had rubbed the evidence of his org*sm into Dean’s skin, vowing that Dean was his.

“Yeah?” Dean had asked, muscles in his arms tired from supporting his weight, toes scant inches above the boards. "Tell me again."

“Yes,” Cas confirmed, tilting Dean’s head up to kiss him. “I love you.”

Dean’s vision blurs as he blinks back tears, wiping his face on the long sleeve of his overshirt.

Godf*ckingdammit. Where the hell is Cas?

He’s about to grab his cell out and press it to his ear to listen to Cas’ voicemail again, to hear Cas tell Dean that he loves him, but he’s interrupted by another, similar — but far from the same — voice shouting his name.

“Dean!”

It’s followed by the hollow thump-thump-thump of his husband racing up the stairs, but Dean doesn’t move from his position on the floor. At least not until his brain comes back online and he realizes that he’s gonna have to come up with an explanation as to why he looks like he’s auditioning for a ‘90s witchcraft movie.

“sh*t,” he mutters, scrambling to his feet and shoving the lighter in his pocket. Fumbling for the key, and an excuse to justify his presence in the room, Dean makes to leave, but Jimmy’s already in the doorway, crossing the threshold, rushing toward him, right hand clamped ineptly around his left. Blood is flowing in abundance, welling up between Jimmy’s fingers and dribbling down his arm, dripping from his elbow, adding stain to the bare boards.

“Jimmy,” Dean murmurs, unable to take his eyes off the thick, red gush. “What the hell have you done?”

Dean receives a look for the blasphemy, but rather than pay attention, Dean takes Jimmy’s hand in his, and while Jimmy turns away — squeamish as all hell, Dean’s husband, but of course, Cas is the opposite — he prizes the palm away from the cut. It’s a pretty sizable wound, still pumping blood.

“I cut myself,” Jimmy answers, face milk-bottle white.

Well, duh.

Dean refrains from voicing that opinion aloud. Instead, he says, “You should probably go to the emergency room.”

“It’s that bad?”

Dean looks again at the deep, dark blood pouring from the three-inch gash. “Yeah, man. C’mon. Amelia can drive us.”

***

They wait at the emergency room for a couple of hours, Amelia enthusiastically fetching them coffee from the machine, just how Jimmy likes it , and constantly fawning over him as though he’s gonna need major surgery rather than stitches and a tetanus shot.

Dean feels nothing. Not a twinge of jealousy, annoyance, nothing.

Well, maybe a touch of amusem*nt at the flash-fry badspousebadspousebadspouse glare she sends his way when Dean doesn’t know Jimmy’s blood type for the paperwork.

(Turns out it’s type O negative, which is useful to know ‘cause, according to the harangued nurse who gave Dean the stink eye when he slunk up to her station to ask, identical twins share the same blood type.)

In the blank-space vacuum of the emergency room, Dean repeatedly checks his cell out of heartsick habit, but he’s not particularly hopeful about finding a surprise text anymore.

Doesn’t mean it’s not soul-crushing when there are no new notifications.

Cas, c’mon. You gotta be okay, man.

In lieu of literally anything else to do but nose over other people’s shoulders, Jimmy notices Dean’s constant glances at his cell. “Expecting something?” It sounds casual enough, but the intent behind it is likely anything but.

Dean clicks the phone screen to sleep, dredging up a watery smile for his husband. “Nah. Was just checking to see if Sam had got in contact, ‘cause I know he’s been looking at rings for Eileen.”

Jimmy perks up at that, a bright smile reaching his eyes. “They’re getting married?”

“I think Sam’s hoping so.”

Jimmy’s smile dims, fading out until it’s replaced with a wistful look. “I’m sure they’ll be very happy together.”

On the other side of Jimmy, Amelia sits back down in the plastic chair. She leans in to tell Jimmy, “They’ve assured me that you’re next in line, after I reminded them how un-Christian it is to ignore a good man’s suffering.”

Dean’s pretty sure that suffering is something god was big on back in the day, but he remains quiet, thankful for Amelia’s can-I-speak-to-the-manager attitude that’ll get them the f*ck outta here sooner rather than later.

It does. Jimmy’s called through by a nurse less than fifteen minutes later and gets stitched up with a minimum amount of fussing from Amelia. The nurse gives her the instructions for redressing the wound, assuming that she’s the one married to Jimmy and Dean’s just a tag-along-friend, but Dean doesn’t bother to correct her.

Amelia drops them off at home with sweetheart eyes and deep sighs just for Jimmy, and rather than being all claws out for his man, Dean spares her a sympathetic smile.

He knows what it’s like to be in love with someone you shouldn’t be.

*~*~*

“Did you clean up the floor in the attic?” Jimmy asks Dean the following day.

Dean glances up from his phone. He’s been Googling the hotel he knows Cas was at last, in hopes of tracking him down. The next step is figuring out how to file a missing person’s report in Germany. Maybe get Interpol involved or something. “Huh?”

“I went upstairs to mop up the mess from yesterday, but it’s gone.”

“I didn’t clean it,” Dean says, returning his attention to his cell. “Maybe it soaked in?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy mutters thoughtfully. “Maybe. Will you take a look? I’d hate for the boards to rot.”

And, well. Any excuse for Dean to be up there.

***

That evening, Dean calls Cas’ friend in France, the one whose address he posted Cas’ wedding invite to a couple of years ago. He doesn’t have anything other than a name, doesn’t know how much this Balthazar knows about Dean and Cas’ relationship, whether he even knows of Dean’s existence beyond his calligraphed name on an ivory invite sent out with optimism.

Dean waits until Jimmy’s out for evening mass, before he locks himself in the attic and positions himself near the window for the best signal.

It’s eight o’clock in Chicago, which means that it’s approximately 3 a.m. in Paris, but this is an emergency and Dean’s run out of patience. He dials the country code, followed by the just-in-case number Cas gave him a while back.

Dean paces as he listens to the line ring, chewing absent-mindedly on a hangnail. He daren’t look toward the mattress where Cas’ Zippo and the box sit innocently; a summoning ritual waiting to happen.

A clipped British accent answers after another handful of rings. “Hello?” He doesn’t sound tired, just puzzled.

“Er, hi,” Dean says. “My name’s Dean, I’m a… friend of Cas—”

“—I know who you are!” Balthazar interrupts, suddenly far too chipper for 3 a.m. But then again, he is in Paris. He was probably up banging some impossibly beautiful chick. Or dude. “Cassie’s told me all about you.”

Dean’s heart misses its rhythm, falling somewhere between the cracks. Cas has talked about him? “Er, well. I was wondering if you knew where he might be? I haven’t heard from him in a while, and I—” This time, Dean cuts himself off. Best not to give too much of himself away.

There’s a long moment of silence. Then, “He’s not with you?”

Dean shakes his head, says, “No. He’s been here, but I…” He eyes the box. “He’s gone. But he left his lighter and this box behind.”

“A box?”

“Yeah, f*ck, I can’t remember what the thing is called. He told me about it a while ago. He’d been looking for it in Minsk, then Budapest... Beijing, I think. Istanbul too. Apparently, he found it.”

“sh*t,” Balthazar spits, voice fading in and out. “I told him, I told him not to go after it, but does he ever listen to me? Does he bollocks.”

A sense of dread trickles down Dean’s spine, cracking like ice. “When did you last speak to him?”

“When he touched down in Illinois a couple of weeks back. He didn’t say anything about the box to me, the sneaky little f*cker. Probably knew I’d tear him a new one over it.” The line crackles as Balthazar blows out a frustrated breath.

Cas has been in the country for weeks?

What the f*ck? Why didn’t he call?

Reading Dean’s thoughts, Balthazar says, “I can only assume that he was going to surprise you when he was there. Some grand gesture most likely. But something went wrong.” His voice is a little quieter, more subdued, when he adds, “Goddammit, Cassie.”

“What does this have to do with the box?” Dean asks, not wanting — but needing — to know.

Balthazar sighs. “When he first came to me to see if I had a bead on where the Lament Configuration — that’s its proper name, by the way — where it might be, he told me that he had a buyer in New York for it. A buyer who was willing to pay him the kind of money you can retire and live comfortably with your paramour on.”

His pointed tone is not lost on Dean. Replaying the reel of his and Cas’ conversation about the box, Dean goes through it frame-by-frame, searching for the cue dots. Cas mentioned that he wanted to sell the box so he could buy a place. Now Dean’s getting confirmation that the place was for them? Dean had hoped, of course he had, especially after the whole love declaration, but f*ck.

Mind suitably f*cked, Dean tunes back into Balthazar’s explanation. “...he told me he’d given up hope trying to find the damn thing and had managed to scrape enough money together via other means. Which I was pleased about, because that box has a trail of missing persons and dead bodies behind it that spans centuries.”

Panic claws at Dean’s insides.

Dead bodies? Surely he would’ve found Cas by now if that’s the case?

Unless he left in a hurry, like Jimmy thinks.

Oh, f*ck. If something bad has happened to him, he could be anywhere.

Balthazar continues, unaware of Dean’s inner freak-out. “I’m assuming that he’s told you what it supposedly does? The whole pleasure-pain spiel?”

“Yeah,” Dean squeezes out past the lump in his throat.

“Well, my best guess is that he brought the box to Pontiac to experiment with you before he sold it off, decided he couldn’t wait, and opened it to see what all the fuss is about.”

Yep. That sounds exactly like what happened. ‘Cause it’s precisely what they talked about, ain't it? Except Cas was just too impatient.

Dammit, Cas.

“So what now?” Dean asks, focusing on keeping his voice level. “Where the hell is he?”

Balthazar hesitates. Dean’s convinced that he’s gonna say something like, ‘your guess is as good as mine,’ but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “I’ll ask around. Find out as much as I can. You — hold on tight to that box, but do not open it. For the love of God, do not open it.”

*~*~*

Dean hates parties.

At least the kind Jimmy throws, ‘cause without the booze, the music, the horny couples sneaking off to f*ck in bedrooms, what you’ve got is a glorified gathering.

Still, Jimmy’s enthusiastic about making a good impression on their new neighbors and his new colleagues with his food, and Dean’s in no mood to put up even a token protest. The sooner he gets through this performance, the sooner he can get back to finding Cas.

While Jimmy’s busy in the kitchen, Dean stands out on their porch, Cas’ lighter in his palm, running his thumb over the skin-warm metal, digging his thumbnail into the engraving. The sky above him is heavy and painted in bruise-like purples and blacks, threatening to tear open at any second. The scent of petrichor permeates the air.

If he closes his eyes, he can see Cas standing in front of him on the step of their old house, soaked to the skin and so f*cking gorgeous that it makes Dean’s soul ache.

Cas, where the f*ck are you?

“Dean?” Jimmy's voice calls from inside the house. Dean turns around right as his husband appears in the open doorway, a tray of something garlicky and delicious in his oven-gloved hand. “What are you doing out here?”

Dean lifts his shoulder in a half-shrug.

Jimmy doesn’t notice, already disappearing back inside and reeling off a series of instructions for Dean to follow so that the souffles rise just like Jesus on the third day.

***

Jimmy had no reason to worry; the food is good, and normally Dean would be pig-trough deep in it, but he can’t bring himself to eat more than a few mouthfuls. Even under Jimmy’s watchful scowl. Everyone else around the table — Amelia, Zachariah, Naomi, and a pastor whose name Dean can’t remember — are making encouraging noises as they politely stuff their faces.

But Dean cannot stop thinking about Cas. About that f*cking box. About what it all means.

The more his mind turns over the conversation with Balthazar, the worse it gets, but as he keeps grinding it over and over until his thoughts become dust, two things are simply too large to get through the sieve.

Firstly: What the f*ck is the box? How does it even work? For a supposed portal, it’s impossible to get into. Dean’s studied it this way and that, run his palms and fingertips over every inch of the lacquered faces trying to figure out how it even opens. There are no joints, hinges, or anything that can be pressed, maneuvered, or rearranged in any way. He can’t see a way in, which is both frustrating and more than a little insulting to Dean’s intelligence.

Secondly: Assuming Balthazar is on the up-and-up about the box and not just blowing smoke up Dean’s ass, then where is Cas? Dead? Balthazar said that the box had left a trail of dead bodies, which implies that the box could be linked to them, which to Dean suggests that the box was found with the bodies. Right? So, the fact that he hasn’t found Cas is a good sign. Which brings Dean back to: where is Cas?

It’s a question that feels infinitely more important than the one Amelia asks him, as she politely dabs at her mouth with the cream napkin from the set she and Jimmy picked out. “Jimmy tells me you’ve been married for a couple of years now. How did you two meet?”

They’ve got a cover story, having had to wheel it out and prop it up in their dating days, but Jimmy’s old group of bible-bashers had heard the saccharine lie a million times; now Dean’s gotta be a storyteller for the new band of Jesus freaks.

They’re used to believing fairy tales though, so Dean figures he can have some fun with this sh*t. Jimmy shoots him a warning glare from the opposite end of the table, but it’s a glancing blow, barely a graze, so Dean opens his mouth.

“Well,” he begins, making a show of placing his cutlery down on the edges of his plate as if he’s about to take them on an epic journey of love. “My darling Jimmy approached me at work and told me that he’d like to get to know me better.”

Not strictly a lie. Jimmy — in the midst of his sexuality crisis — figured, like so many closeted men do, to visit a hooker.

“How very forward of him,” Amelia says with a slanted smile in Jimmy’s direction.

Dean hums his agreement. “Right? Very proactive. Well, I liked him straight away.”

Not a lie either. He was actually semi-interested in performing the service Jimmy was paying for, ‘cause, well, dude is hot, and there’s not many of those visiting whor*s. Not in Dean’s experience, anyways. From time to time, he’d get a pretty, rich woman who wanted discreet, no-strings-attached fun, but most of Dean’s clients were a couple of chromosomes away from pond slime.

Dean takes a delicate sip of his wine before continuing with his story. “We ended up talking for a long time while I was on the clock.”

True. Dean managed to get in one kiss, just a gentle press of dry lips, before Jimmy broke down like the engine on the Chevy Dean was working on in his day job. They stayed up all night on Jimmy’s dime, only venturing out of the grubby motel room to an all-night diner around the corner.

“He was so kind and thoughtful.” Dean doesn’t need to fake the softness in his voice at the memory. Jimmy was compassionate toward him when he didn’t have to be. They helped each other that night, and it’s part of the reason Dean agreed to go out on a(nother) date with him — no pressure, no payment, just two lost souls sharing some food.

Amelia’s starry-eyed gaze in Jimmy’s direction reminds Dean of a Manson Family member staring lovingly at Charlie. He wonders whether he’s ever looked at Jimmy like that. Whether he ever doesn’t look at Cas like that.

“So I said yes to a date, and the rest is history,” Dean finishes up, feeling dumb for his earlier vindictiveness. Their marriage is bullsh*t, but their friendship never was. Jimmy married him as a means to legitimize the feelings he internalized as wrong. And Dean went along with it because, like they say, if you’re not fed love on a spoon, you learn to lick it off of knives, and Jimmy’s blunted edges were less painful than Dean’s previous attempts at relationships. The two of them were naive to think that between Jimmy’s gay panic and Dean’s need for physical affection, legally binding themselves together would solve their problems. People have gotten and stayed married for less, sure, but probably not when one of them is ultra-religious and the other is head over heels for their partner's sibling.

sh*t.

Tears burning hot at the back of his eyes, Dean looks down at his plate.

He just wants Cas. He needs him. He can't escape this fatal case of melancholia until he knows that Cas is okay. That his disappearing act is just a magic trick and not something that exists in reality.

“Dean?” Jimmy says, waiting expectantly for Dean’s answer. All eyes around the table are on him and Dean has absolutely no idea what the f*ck they’re talking about.

He glances to his left, looking to the man with the dog collar for holy assistance. The pastor seems oblivious to Dean’s obliviousness.

Damn.

“Er, sorry,” Dean sighs, worn out. “I’m kinda tired. Long day.” Another truth, threaded onto the longest string of ‘em Dean’s told in years. “What did you say?”

The lady with the short blonde hair and angel brooch repeats her question. “What is it that you do, Dean?”

He doesn’t even consider being spiteful about this sh*t, doesn’t consider revealing that his last career involved him getting down on his knees more than he does now. He drains the dregs of his wine, then explains, “I’m between jobs at the moment due to the move. But I’m a mechanic by trade.”

There are low, relieved murmurs around the table, as if they were worried Dean was gonna turn out to be a dreaded astrologer or something equally un-Christian. Next to firefighters and cops, mechanic is about as red-blooded male as it gets. Dean figures the fact that he isn’t a dancer or a flight attendant or something perceived to be equally — and outwardly — queer makes it more palatable that he and Jimmy are getting freaky between the sheets every night. (Even though, of course, they’re not.)

f*ck them and their hypocrisy.

Done with Jimmy’s guests and the evening, Dean checks the clock behind his husband — the same clock he stared at years ago when Cas was getting undressed in the study at their old place. It’s just after midnight. Respectable time to retire for the evening. “I think I’m gonna go to bed.” He flashes a stiff-lipped smile around the table at everyone in turn.

Jimmy’s mouth rounds on a perfect ‘o’. He scrambles, mirroring Dean as he pushes his chair back and gets to his feet. “Should we call it a night?”

Dean holds out his hands, palm up, “No, no, it’s fine. You’re enjoying yourselves. Stay.” He makes a swift exit before anyone can say anything else, calling out his goodnights as he goes.

He doesn’t give a sh*t if he’s considered rude.

Upstairs on the main landing, Dean pauses to consider his options — bedroom or attic. A fresh bout of laughter peals from the dining room, Jimmy’s the loudest bray of them all.

f*ck them.

Decision made, Dean climbs the next set of stairs, fingering the smooth, cool key in his pocket.

As he opens the attic room door, he immediately senses that something isn’t quite right. He flicks on the light and the bare bulb flickers to life. Normally, Dean finds solace in the darkness beyond the bulb’s scope, but tonight it has him on edge.

He steps inside and the door slams shut behind him, lock clicking into place.

Dean’s breath catches. The f*ck? “Er… hello?” he calls out into the darkness.

Nothing.

Except for a shifting sound that Dean can just about hear above the noise downstairs and the patter of rain outside.

Abruptly, the bulb explodes, its filament burning unearthly bright for a split second before it fizzles out and there’s a ‘pop’ in the quiet of the room.

Dean’s heart thuds. He doesn’t dare call out again. He stares around the room, trying to make sense of the shadows.

Nervous, he approaches the far wall, on which several streaks of light from the outside world fall. His attention snaps toward the window, realizing that the blinds have been opened. There are bloody fingerprints on the slats as though someone has pulled them apart to look outside. Which is impossible, because since his conversation with Balthazar, Dean’s been the only one with access to this room. He’s kept the key on his person the entire time. There’s no way.

Suddenly, he’s afraid.

He stands absolutely still, eyes wide in the gloom.

“I know you’re in here,” Dean says, ironing the tremble out of his voice as best he can. “Show yourself, whoever you are.”

On the far side of the room, a movement in the shadows catches Dean’s eye.

Holy sh*t.

Damn near every instinct in his body is telling him to run, to get the f*ck outta here, but something else is keeping him rooted to the spot. He keeps on staring into the murk, wanting it to make sense, and it’s then that Dean sees… something. Too real to be a shadow, but something not real enough to exist. Crouched in the corner, squatting and unable to lift itself into a standing position.

It’s human, or at least, used to be. But the body has been ripped apart and sewn together again with most of its pieces either missing or twisted and blackened like a burn victim. There’s an eye — bloodshot and blue — and the ladder of a spine, the vertebrae stripped of muscle; a few unrecognizable fragments of anatomy and gossamer tissues of flesh hanging from bone.

Unable to tear his eyes away from the thing that shouldn’t be, Dean staggers back a step, poised and ready to run.

Until it says something that makes him exhale the dead air in his lungs, makes him suck in living. He goes calcified-corpse still when it burbles, “Dean,” barely above a pained rasp, “help me.”

The headspin of it knowing Dean’s name is eclipsed by the very next realization. “Cas?”

“Dean,” it — Cas — repeats, the word weightless, yet full of meaning.

The room smells like slaughter and pennies and petrichor, and Dean's both horrified and morbidly fascinated.

“What the f*ck?” he blurts, because it’s his first seedling thought growing too slowly for it to bloom into coherency. There’s no link in his mind between Cas, his Cas, and whatever the f*ck this is, this remnant of a human form made of twisted, blistered strands of flesh. His Cas has always been the unreal kind of beautiful that doesn’t need exaggeration, gathering worshippers wherever he goes. People have become zealots for less than the way Cas smiles. Reconciling that Cas with the abomination in front of him is something that his brain is bald-faced lying about to spare him the trauma.

“His blood… it brought me back.”

Dean unspools his memories, trying to find the thread of what Cas could be talking about. Blood. When has there been blood up here? Jimmy’s injury? “Jimmy’s blood? Is that what you’re talking about? Brought you back from where?”

“His blood… my sem*n... Our shared DNA... created a loophole.”

“Brought you back from where?” Dean demands again, unable to not look at the meninges layers saran-wrapped over folds of pale brain.

How is he even a-f*cking-live?

Cas’ vocal cords sound like his throat’s been slashed over and over, and the tossed razorblades stored in his windpipe. “I… came back… for you.”

I’d come back from the dead for you.

f*ck.

Fresh peals of laughter carry up from downstairs. Dean wants to drag them all up here, into this circle of hell, and demand to know where their f*cking god is now.

But he doesn’t, because this is Cas, his Cas. Whether he likes it or not, and he f*cking hates it.

“Help me, Dean… please .”

Something in Dean breaks loose and falls away, and f*ck it, ‘cause he probably didn’t need it anyway.

Romance isn’t the same for everyone. Some appreciate roses and chocolates, others want adventure, most crave stability.

Dean just needs Cas.

This has gotta be a f*ckin’ hallucination though, right? Some kind of weird monkey-paw-wishful thinking and one too many sleepless nights combined with whatever psychedelic Jimmy must’ve put in the cornbread.

Dean rubs hard at his right eye with the heel of his hand, flares bursting in his vision.

Nope. Not a bad trip.

What now?

It’s still raining outside and Dean’s always known that theirs isn’t a fairweather love. Theirs is an all-weather, all-terrain kinda love. Cas, who saw him, who saw past the ex-sex worker with ten bucks to his name and realized that Dean was someone worth looking at, rather than something worth discarding. Cas, who called him beautiful with the kind of reverence that most reserve for religion or art or a diamond the size of a fist. Cas, who always comes back for him, and now, apparently even from the dead.

Dean’s been surviving on the prospect of seeing Cas again. It’s the only thing that’s kept him from Romeo-and-Julieting it off this god-forsaken rock.

Dean needs Cas. Cas needs Dean. It’s a pretty easy equation to solve, ‘cause there's only one thing Dean believes in more than his own insignificance and it’s this. The two of them.

“Yeah,” Dean says eventually, lungs crackling in sympathy with Cas’ expanding unevenly like a broken accordion. “Yeah. Of course, I’ll help you. You just tell me what I gotta do Cas, and I’ll f*cking do it.”

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

An old Shakespears Sister song is playing when a dude slides onto the bar stool next to Dean’s.

He smells of rich-guy cologne; something that comes in a blue bottle and gets splashed all over the counter beneath his oversized bathroom mirror, ‘cause firstly, he doesn’t care, and secondly, he’s got the money to burn. He’s the type of person with a Bluetooth clipped to his ear and who demands five walnuts — no more, no less — on his salads so that he doesn’t go over his self-imposed 400 calorie limit for lunch, ‘cause that’s self-control, folks! He’s someone who has 2.4 kids and a wife who’s f*cking the gardener.

In short, he’s already a dead man. He just doesn’t know it yet.

“Hey,” the guy says, slick and self-assured, god’s gift to whomever he chooses to grace with his presence. “What are you drinking?”

Dean glances down at the dregs in his glass. “Whiskey,” he answers, feigning disinterest, even if his heart is pounding like crazy, palms sweating. “On the rocks.”

“A man of impeccable taste.” He calls the bartender over and orders the same for himself.

Annoyed by the bland compliment, Dean doesn’t respond, instead choosing to watch the sharp suits come and go. Lawyers and accountants, stopping in for a liquid lunch.

Dean’s been sitting here for a good forty minutes or so. He’s garnered some admiring glances in that time, from parties of men and women alike; groups in gym gear, hardcore alcoholics sitting alone, housewives tittering amongst themselves. He’s caught sight of people watching his reflection in the bar mirror, but this guy is the first one brave (stupid) enough to approach.

Even now, he can feel the weight of the other man’s gaze on the side of his face, but Dean continues to ignore him.

“You’re real pretty,” the dude says eventually, as though he’s just cycling through the bare minimum steps necessary to get into Dean’s ass. A password requirement with two compliments, some negging, and a capital letter.

Dean flashes a grateful smile at the bartender when she places their drinks down and takes the note she’s offered from between four-walnut-salad guy's manicured thumb and forefinger.

“Yeah?” Dean says, lifting the tumbler to his mouth, ice cubes clinking against each other and the glass. “So I’ve been told.”

“I’m surprised to see you drinking alone,” the man continues. “Someone like you. Woulda thought they’d be lining up ‘round the block.”

Time to bait the hook. “How d’you know I’m here alone? Could be waiting for someone.”

“I’ve been watching you,” the guy answers without an ounce of shame. “Either someone’s stood you up, which I find hard to believe. Or you came here lookin’ for something, and judging by the way you’ve been eyeing up every suit that walks in and out of here, I think I might be that something.”

Hook, line, and sinker.

Dean takes his time with his whiskey, really making a show of it, drinking real slowly, letting the guy get an eyeful of the way he swallows, the way he licks the stray drops of alcohol from his mouth. “I think you might be that something too.”

***

The guy — Bartholomew, he tells Dean on the drive over — plasters himself to Dean’s back as Dean fits the key into his and Jimmy’s front door. Once the door gives way, they tumble in and within seconds, Bartholomew is trying to manhandle Dean where he wants him. Dean skirts away from his grasp each time, backing up toward the stairs.

He tries to make it sexy, crooking a finger, channeling his inner Swayze, even as he’s shaky with adrenaline and a decent dose of fear.

Predictably, Bartholomew follows, chasing after Dean up the stairs. He keeps up easily, that 400-calorie lunch working in his favor as he catches Dean a couple of times. Dean has to fight his shudder as Bartholomew paws at him, rucking up his shirt to get at skin that hasn’t actually been offered to him.

Each time, Dean shoves him off — which Bartholomew seems to view as a challenge — but they eventually reach the top of the house, and Dean leads him halfway along the landing to the attic room.

The door is still ajar.

Dean slips inside, Bartholomew hot on his heels and ass. He’s panting lightly, puffs of vaporized alcohol ghosting over Dean’s cheek, arms around his waist, and Dean grits his teeth, bile rising in this throat. Mercifully, before Dean can lose his lunch over them both, Bartholomew detaches himself from Dean as his eyes fall on the mattress and sex toys in the corner.

Freed from the other man’s grasp, Dean moves quietly to close the door. Earlier, in preparation for this, he’d hung his wedding suit jacket on the hook of the door and, in the pocket, he’d left a knife. Subtly, he checks to make sure it’s there, feeling the outline of the blade through the fabric, as he glances around in the gloom, eyes searching out Cas. He’s nowhere to be seen. But he’s watching this, has to be.

The thought sends a little thrill zinging through Dean.

“You should take off your jacket,” Dean tells Bartholomew, deliberately pitching his voice low.

Bartholomew’s attention swings from the mattress to him. “You wanna do this here?”

“Why not?” Dean asks, shrugging out of his leather jacket and tossing it to the floor in what he hopes is a reckless, come-take-me manner. He’s kinda rusty at the whole seduction routine. It’s not like he had to work hard at it, even before Cas and Jimmy.

Bartholomew seems to consider for a moment, eyes gleaming, before he follows suit, going one step further and removing his tie, beginning to work on his shirt buttons.

Dean steps closer to Bartholomew and helps him with his shirt, untucking it from his pants. He’s tanned and toned, good-looking, and clearly takes care of himself.

“You’re so f*ckin’ pretty,” Batholomew says again, like it bears repeating.

Which, maybe it does. If only to remind Dean why he's doing this. And why it's so easy.

Dean’s been objectified his entire life, to the point that he weaponized his looks to get what he wanted. He married the first person who was interested past the pretty and is thoroughly in love with the second.

Cas. You’re doing this for Cas.

And for every f*cker who degraded Dean, dehumanized him in the name of their own pleasure.

It’s not a difficult mentality to find within himself and settle into. It should probably scare him more than it does.

“Am I?” Dean asks, feeling dangerous. He backs away from Bartholomew, towards the door and the knife.

“You know you are.”

“Take off your pants,” Dean orders.

“You too,” Bartholomew says, hands on his belt.

“Sure,” Dean agrees easily, fingers itching to reach for the blade. “Just let me get some protection.” He turns his back. Behind him, he hears the clink of a belt buckle.

“You came prepared, huh?”

“Absolutely.” Dean’s fingers curl around the handle of the knife, right as Bartholomew comes up behind him.

Before either of them have time to blink, Dean pivots on the ball of his foot and sinks the shine of the blade six inches into Bartholomew’s abdomen, slicing his stomach open as he tries to get away, mouth open around his surprise.

Dean drags the blade out, plunges it back in. Again and again. He slashes and stabs with a feral determination, keeps going even when Bartholomew is on the floorboards, gurgling his death rattle.

There’s blood everywhere, Dean and the room covered in it, the coppery scent hanging heavy in the air, spilling out from beneath Bartholemew, almost black in the low light. Bartholomew’s wheezing, gasping body between his thighs, Dean leans forward and whispers, “Who’s pretty now?”

In a f*cked-up way, it’s kind of cathartic. He feels repaid in blood and pain. A sense of power trips through his veins, pulsing thick and fast through his body, a shot of soft-focus that has the rough edges of his conscience blurring.

He delivers the final blow, completing Bartholomew’s transformation from a somebody to just a body.

Poetic f*ckin’ justice.

Something stirs the atmosphere beyond where Dean’s straddling the corpse. Breath held in his lungs, heart in his mouth, Dean freezes and listens, catching the scratchy sound of movement.

The knife in his hand clatters to the boards. “Cas?”

“Leave,” the shadows rasp. “Please… I don’t want you to see this.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees on a rushed exhale, clambering to his feet on newborn-deer legs, blood seeping toward the tread of his boot; forensic evidence in the making. “Yeah, okay. I’ll be back though. You hear me, Cas? I’m coming back.”

***

Two floors below, Dean stares himself down in the bathroom mirror. He reeks like someone else’s death; his clothes, skin, and hair carrying the last seconds of a man’s life.

There’s blood on his face, sprayed up his neck and under his chin. His cheeks are pink and his eyes dark; the pupil damn near eclipsing the bright green.

This is f*cking crazy.

But it’s also the only way to be with Cas.

Dean chokes back a sob as it all rushes in on him in a sudden swell of emotion. Cas had been here all along, tethered to the real world by the strands of DNA left behind. The same ties that bind him to his identical twin and Dean’s husband. Dean knew Cas was in that room, could feel him, even though he was not of this living and breathing world anymore. The membrane between life and death was stretched thin enough that Cas was able to claw through and make contact, even though he’s currently nothing more than raw nerves and viscera.

But, killing these men will solve that issue.

Cas can be whole again. With blood and organs and skin. Dean’ll bring Cas whatever he needs to come back to him. Stay with him. He’ll do anything to pull the love of his life out of hell. Or purgatory, or the empty spaces between. Wherever. Whatever it takes.

Because Cas truly is the love of his life. There’s no escaping that.

Dean strips out of his soiled clothes, leaving them in a heap on the bathroom floor. He turns the shower on and steps under the water once it’s at the right temperature.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he turns into the hot spray. It hits him full in the face, fills his mouth, spills down his chin, washing the crimson away.

He doesn’t wanna think of what Cas is doing to that man’s body, what his regeneration is gonna entail. The logistics of it all aren’t of interest to Dean. He just wants Cas back. Whatever it takes.

Dean bows his head, letting the spray soak and mat his hair, heating his scalp. It feels good. Soothing. Bizarrely life-affirming. Like things might be okay.

Not for the man that Dean’s murdered, obviously, but there’s no use crying over spilled blood.

Turning around, he begins to soap himself, fresh scent mingling with the steam. He wonders what Cas will look like once he’s finished with this guy. How many more will he need before he’s whole again? How did he escape from wherever the hell he’s been? What the f*ck is that box?

There’s a lot to unpack and to hang out to air, but Dean can be patient. After all, he’s waited two years for this. He can wait a few more days. Find some more victims.

And Dean will find more victims. Cas came back from the dead for him. The very least Dean can do is kill for him.

***

Murder clothes in the machine with the enzymatic cleaner Jimmy uses for when he gets the blood of Christ on his church slacks, Dean returns to the attic dressed in nothing but black sweats, carrying some trash bags in one hand and a roll of kitchen towel in the other. He has no idea of what he’s gonna find — how gruesome the crime scene is gonna be — but he’s in this for better or worse, so on a deep, fortifying breath, he opens the door and steps inside.

Immediately, movement snags Dean’s attention: something — someone, Cas — retreating into the shadows. He only gets a fleeting glance, but he can see that while Cas' body is still horribly vulnerable, it’s fuller than before; more meat on his bones (literally).

The room stinks of death; a pungent, sickly sweetness overlaid with the metallic scent of blood. The grotesquely misshapen shell of Bartholomew’s corpse is on the boards, a trail of blood leading away from it into the darkness. Dean moves in for a closer look. The muscle and fat is withered on Bart's bones, the eyes sunk into the skull, the lips drawn back to expose the gums.

Dean shudders.

Gross.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, less than enthused about disposal.

“I doubt he’d approve,” comes Cas’ strong, full-sentenced response, a repeat of something said all that time and all those f*cks ago.

Cas.

It’s reassuring in a way Dean didn’t realize he craved; both what Cas says and the fact that he can say it now without a stilted breath wedged between words. Dean’s response is a no-brainer. "Well, he died for our sins, so I like to think that he’d be happy his sacrifice wasn’t in vain.”

Cas’ muted husk of laughter is everything and Dean can’t stop himself from blurting, “f*ck, Cas. I missed you, man.”

The words hang in the air between them. “I don’t disgust you?”

Cas doesn’t give Dean an opportunity to respond — as though he’s scared of the answer — before he stretches his arm into a passage of light from the slats of blind. The flesh glistens and pulses, muscle knitting itself back together over bone. “It’s working. It’s making me whole again.” He turns his arm this way and that, seemingly for Dean’s inspection and appreciation. “Every drop of blood you spill puts more flesh on my bones.”

“How many?” Dean asks, even though it doesn’t matter. It could be five or fifty and he would still do it. "How many more bodies?"

“Another three, maybe.”

A small price to pay to have Cas back.

Dean dumps his cleaning supplies on the floor. The roll of bags unravels across the boards. “Are you gonna tell me what happened? How you got like this?”

The seconds that pass threaten to carry Dean away from calm acceptance towards the fear-flag of dread. It’s bad, Dean knows that by the state Cas was in, but is he prepared to actually hear it?

The moment stretches on, the truth pulled taut right before it snaps. Dean’s certain Cas isn’t gonna answer until he does, carefully picking his words out of the glittering shards of his psyche. “As I said in the message I left you, I found the box. At a flea market in Düsseldorf. I was still planning to sell it to that buyer. I came back here fully prepared to ask you to leave my brother, to come with me. Once I sold it, I thought we could be together. I’d have more than enough money—” Cas cuts himself off and Dean’s stomach swoops out. He’s heard this from Balthazar, but Cas telling him his intentions directly is something else entirely. “I know we agreed that we were going to experience it together, but… I’m glad now that I decided to try it alone, because what they did…” His voice falters. He takes a beat, two, three, to try again. “My biggest mistake was assuming that my definition of pleasure overlaps with that of the Cenobites.”

“Cenobites?” Dean repeats dumbly.

Cas isn’t listening, too caught up in his story. “They brought incalculable suffering, overdosing me on sensuality, until my mind teetered on the brink of madness. I… I was in hell, I think. Or some place like it. They understood suffering, cultivated it, created a sophisticated, sad*stic art form out of it. It’s not of this world, Dean. It was horror, pure and simple.”

“f*ck.” Dean’s breath isn’t staying inside him long enough to do any good. “How’d you escape?”

“A loophole of sorts. A back door. ‘But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.’ My sem*n was left behind in this room and, when combined with Jimmy’s blood, it allowed enough of my body to be remade. The Cenobites can’t escape their realm. They have to be summoned—”

“—By the box?” Dean interjects.

“Yes, by the box. There has to be an invitation. Someone solving the puzzle is their invitation. I don’t think they can follow me here, even though I’m an escaped prisoner. But I don’t know for sure.”

“Holy sh*t, Cas.”

Cas hums his agreement. Then, “Can I touch you?”

He’s never asked before; by mutual agreement, he has a standing invitation, an all-access pass, and that he would ask now has Dean agonized.

Determined to prove a point, Dean wordlessly takes a step toward the shadows and Cas’ outstretched arm. The rough tips of Cas’ fingers brush Dean’s face and he shivers with fear and want. The cloying smell of blood on Cas’ fingers tears at Dean’s paper-tiger heart as Cas traces the line of Dean’s jaw, his lips, smearing wetness there.

“Dean, I—”

They both flinch as a sound comes from downstairs; the front door opening and closing. Followed shortly by Jimmy shouting, “Dean? Are you home?”

Dean curses. Obviously, this is a less-than-ideal scenario. He and Cas are used to defying most of the commandments, but he’s pretty sure that murder is the big one in any religion — even if Jimmy wasn’t devout, there’s no doubt he wouldn’t turn Dean in to the cops.

“Don’t go to him,” Cas says, palm sliding down to Dean’s shoulder, leaving a bloody smear there on Dean’s naked skin. “Stay with me.”

“Cas—”

“Dean?” Jimmy’s on the stairs now, shouting up as he moves.

sh*t sh*t sh*t.

Dean withdraws, backing away from Cas and the slant of shadows that disguises the worst of him. The bare heel of Dean’s foot clips Bartholomew's corpse as he tries to get to the door without taking his eyes off of the slimy section of Cas that he can see: a flimsy scrap of muscle barely clinging to his ribcage, the organs pulsing inside. Like Imhotep at the beginning of The Mummy, only wetter.

Opening the door and fanning in fresh air, he leans out and shouts down to his husband, “I’ll be down in a minute! I’m just... cleaning out the attic.”

Not entirely a lie.

Behind him, the air moves and Dean senses Cas before he feels his touch.

The steps on the stairs halt. “Oh! Do you want help or…?”

“No, that’s okay,” Dean responds as Cas rubs a wet thumb over Dean’s hipbone. “I could do with a coffee though. Please. I’ll come and get it in a minute?”

There’s a short pause. Then, “sure,” and the steps begin to recede.

Dean releases a hot breath.

“Close your eyes,” Cas commands and Dean instinctively does as he’s told; so ingrained is it to obey Cas at this point. “Keep them closed.” With the hand on Dean’s hip, he turns Dean so that they’re facing each other, or would be if Dean didn’t have his eyes squeezed shut so tightly that he’s in danger of giving himself a headache. He’s morbidly curious about what Cas looks like — a kid who has a frog to dissect in class and wants to slide it under a microscope to see all the squishy insides up close, but immediately regrets it, ‘cause death is too big and scary — though not so curious that he wants to skip-through-the-field-of-flowers past Cas’ wishes.

And Cas clearly doesn’t wanna be seen right now.

“What’s it like being married to my brother?” Cas asks, after a long moment of fingerpainting the mix of his and Bartholomew’s blood on Dean’s skin. Dean can feel it drying in the baby’s breath of his vellus hair, tiny little pinches and pulls on his abdomen and chest where he’s otherwise bare.

Dean answers without thinking. "Like being married to a real-life Ned Flanders.”

"Ah," Cas says, humor in his voice. "I understood that reference."

"Oof," Dean says, falling easily back into this. "I can always rely on you to have your finger on the pulse of the cultural zeitgeist, Cas. That’s why you deal in antiques, ‘cause you’re so with it that you’re proud of understanding a thirty-two-year reference the entire English-speaking world is aware of.”

“Just because I can’t do anything about your impudence now, doesn’t mean that I won’t in the future.”

Dean’s quick intake of breath is stab-sharp. “Cas,” he gets out through the grit of his teeth as the bastard tugs on Dean’s nipple ring. “Don’t do this to me now. I gotta figure out what to do with Bart before Jimmy comes up here and all is revealed like a prize on a game show.”

“You’re right,” Cas says, but doesn’t release Dean. Quietly thoughtful, he adds, “I missed you too, you know. I missed you every single time I had to leave. There were so many occasions I wanted to tell Jimmy everything. Just show up and tell him that you’re mine. That he can’t touch you. That when he lets you go, you run to me. Where you belong.”

Dean shivers under Cas’ words and touch, about to reply, same; that he used to dream of Cas appearing on their doorstep again and going all officer-and-a-gentleman on Dean's ass. Being married to Jimmy ain’t bad, not compared to what some men and women go through in their relationships, but it is essentially a loveless, guilty experience.

Just like being an actual Catholic.

“You're in my heart,” Cas tells him on a barely-there murmur. “You're in my blood. You're in my skull. You're in my bones.”

“Cas,” Dean croaks, a swell of emotion pushing up against the containment of his skin. He’s sure there comes a point where all murderers convince themselves that they’re either doing the right thing, that they don’t care, that it turns them on, that they’re reclaiming something lost, or that they’re f*cking crazy.

Dean’s run the gamut like the five stages of grief.

But the one he keeps circling back to is that he’s doing the right thing.

There’s no chance that the way he feels can be wrong. How can killing for true love ever be wrong?

***

In fact, sitting on the couch next to Jimmy is what’s wrong. And not for the obvious reasons either. Dean’s done a lot of questionable sh*t in his life, but nothing quite this irrevocably damaging for his soul.

Stealing life to parcel it up and gift it right back to Cas, like repurposing an old sweater.

Reuse, reduce, recycle.

Dean feels fundamentally changed. As though there’s a black spot on the core of his being, seeping into the fibers, a stain of red wine that’s slowly baking in until it’s just there, a part of the fabric that makes up Dean Winchester.

Sitting next to Jimmy Novak in their normal house, situated in the kind of neighborhood that probably has block parties and barbecues where multiple people bring potato salad, is the very definition of mundanity. Especially compared to the extraordinary things that have taken place upstairs. Cas is gonna be alive and whole — a f*cking Jesus-esque miracle, really.

If anyone should be able to appreciate someone rising from the dead, it really ought to be Jimmy.

On the TV, a busty woman cheerily reminds viewers not to forget the vanilla extract. Dean sips at the coffee made by his husband. It’s slightly too bitter, just like it always is, but it barely registers on his Richter scale of earth-shakes; he’s too distracted by planning his next victim for Cas.

“I can’t slip back, Dean,” Cas had said while Dean was bundling the corpse formerly known as Bartholomew up in his designer suit; the desiccated body weighing less than half of its healthy, alive weight. “I need to become whole quickly or I might lose my grip on this world. The Cenobites may or may not be able to come for me without being summoned, but they’ll certainly be waiting for me on the other side.”

Dean had shoved Bart’s body into trash bags, tying them up as tight as he could. But the smell, oh the smell, it seeps. “Other side? ”

“The Schism. The tear through time and space that allows them to travel between worlds.”

So, yeah, there’s a little more at stake than vanilla meringue cookies.

“Dean,” Jimmy says, his nose wrinkled, turning away from the cooking show he watches every day, like clockwork, eyes on the side of Dean’s face. “No offense, but you smell awful.”

Like death.

And well, yeah. He probably should’ve at least had a cat-lick wash after Cas went all kindergarten-Van-Gogh on his skin, but he needs something tangible, something to remind himself that this is all real. That’s why, rather than being sane and uncatchable about all this, the shirt Dean yanked on after he’d bagged Bart is the thin layer between what Dean and Cas have done, and the real world.

There’s a perverse pleasure in knowing that Cas’ bloody ownership prints are right there, contained only by cotton and Dean’s single-minded determination not to get caught before he can make Cas whole. Which, yeah. He should probably be a little more sensible, so he rubs at the itch on his jaw, wets his fingers and adds saliva to the blood mix there, making a show of pretending that he’s grossed out by whatever’s caked over his stubble.

Hiding in plain sight. He’s almost daring Jimmy to say something, to notice. To react. Just give Dean a reason to finally tell him everything.

Jimmy merely gestures to the painted-red of Dean’s mouth, says, “You’ve got a little something there… yeah, right there. A little to the left… Now it’s gone.”

“I’ll take a shower later,” Dean offers as a half-hearted apology for something he’s not close to being sorry for. “I’ve discovered some stuff up there, and it’s kinda gross, so you’re probably better off staying out of the attic.”

Understatement.

“Don’t worry,” Jimmy says, turning his attention back to his show. “I’m happy to keep out if it’s that disgusting.”

Well, that was easy.

*~*~*

The man in the navy tie and tight shirt hasn’t stopped sneaking not-so-surreptitious glances at Dean for the last hour. He’s handsome enough; kind of brash-looking with the gold Rolex on his wrist, and probably a Merc in the garage at home.

(A douchebag, basically.)

The bar Dean’s in tonight is a different one from last time, because if he’s learned anything from those sh*tty cop procedurals that’re always on at least a handful of channels at any given time, it’s that murderers get tripped up by repeating the same MO.

So rather than the wine bar he visited a couple of days previously, today it’s an Irish pub with soccer on the huge TV screens positioned all around the wood-paneled space. It’s got a comfortable, worn-in feeling, with Guinness on tap and fish and chips on the menu.

He and this guy probably stick out like sore thumbs.

sh*t.

The last thing he wants is for anyone to remember either of them.

So when the guy inevitably approaches with the confident swagger of someone who clearly doesn’t take rejection well, Dean braces himself.

“What are you drinking?” Rolex-douche asks, like it’s the smoothest line ever and as though he doesn’t smell like the kind of body wash teenage boys think is the height of sophistication and-or a puss* magnet.

“Nothing that I need help buying,” Dean answers, not even looking at him, pretending to be interested in whatever the f*ck is going on in this soccer game between two European countries he’s only heard of because of Cas.

“Oh, come on,” the guy wheedles, leaning against the bar in an effort to put himself in Dean’s line of sight. He tosses his suit jacket over his shoulder, holding it by one finger, all cheap catalogue model. “You’re not even gonna let me buy you a drink?”

“Nope.”

The guy turns to the bartender, who's busy minding his own business. “It’s always the pretty ones who are stuck up, ain’t it?”

The bartender doesn’t even pretend to humor the douchebag, instead addressing Dean. “Just say the word and I’ll kick him the f*ck outta here.”

His accent is straight outta the Bayou and Dean finds himself warmed by the misplaced chivalry. Not many people have stuck up for Dean over the years, so he appreciates anyone who makes the effort. “Thanks, man. But I got it.”

The bartender looks him over in a casual, completely non-sexual way. “No doubt,” and with that, he moves down to the other end of the bar to serve a couple of women.

“Asshole,” the guy says after the bartender. Then to Dean, “Wish I hadn’t tipped him that quarter now.”

Dean can feel himself smiling against his will. Dude is practically begging to be murdered. Dean’ll be doing the world a favor. “Tell you what,” he says, turning to face the guy fully. “Why don’t you come back to my place? We can have some drinks there.”

That smug face lights up, and Dean can see the p*rno movie playing behind the guy’s eyes like a movie theater projection. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great.”

***

This time, Dean doesn’t bother with the whole stripping charade. He doesn’t want to be caught out by Jimmy again, so time is of the essence. As soon as Daniel is inside the attic, Dean’s got the knife in his hand hidden behind his back.

Daniel glances around the room. “Creepy, but cool. I dig. I knew you’d be into some kinky sh*t. Pretty little weirdo like you.”

Ugh.

The shadows growl.

“What the f*ck was that?” Daniel asks, swivel-eyed and reeling as he tries to peer into the dark corners and recesses of the room.

“What was what?” Dean asks, feigning innocence.

“That noise!” Daniel moves away from Dean, taking off across the floorboards. “There’s somebody—”

“I wouldn’t,” Dean warns mildly.

“—here.” The last syllable falters on his lips as they both glimpse Cas in the corner by the window, loose-jointed and only half-formed; tendons and ligaments visible and clinging to the off-white of his bones.

Dean takes Daniel’s distraction as his opportunity. He slinks up behind the guy while he’s preoccupied and gaping — “what in god’s name?” — and slices his throat, ripping it open to the collarbone. Blood leaps out immediately, spurting in great big fat rushes, hitting the support beam with a wet thud. Daniel’s palm reflexively reaches up to his neck to try and stem the flow, but Dean slashes at his hands, slicing into his fingers and face as he hopelessly tries to escape.

He staggers toward the door, shoving past Dean, but makes it only a couple of feet before he collapses to his knees. “No,” he gurgles before hitting the deck completely, face-first, legs twitching, the pool of blood beneath him seeping between the floorboards.

“Good boy,” Cas praises as they watch a man die. His voice is gritty and abraded, and it sends a gut-punch of desire straight to Dean’s core.

“Yeah?” he asks, not taking his eyes off of Daniel. The twitching has all but ceased.

“Mm,” Cas agrees, at Dean’s side. Just like he always should be. “You’re good at this.”

***

The clean-up this time is easier. Cas has been thoughtful and dismembered the corpse so that Dean doesn’t have to wrestle an entire body into trash bags.

“I’m stronger now,” Cas says, appearing from the shadows, allowing Dean to get his first proper horrific look at the man he loves. There’s ripening layers of muscle over cartilage and bone; the map of his veins and arteries is being drawn anew, thrumming with stolen life. The whites of his eyes are crisper, less bloodshot, and his irises are a brighter, sharper blue again.

Despite his lack of skin, he’s more recognizable now, which actually makes it worse. His humanity marks just how badly he has suffered alone in another realm, making it all that more real and tragic.

It hurts in so many different ways to see Cas, his Cas like this. Fragile and raw. All Dean wants to do is touch him, be close to him, take comfort in him, give him comfort. But they can’t. Not yet.

“My nerves are working again,” Cas says, voice a rough scrape. “And they hurt.”

“What can I do?” Dean asks, awed and agonized. “Anything. Whatever you need, Cas.”

“Maybe some bandages. Help me bind myself together.”

Even in the depths of this sh*tty situation, Dean manages to pull out some humor. “Halloween’s comin’ up. We could always rent you out in full Mummy garb and make a fortune.”

“I’d much rather be a Daddy.”

It’s dumb and stupid and cheesy, but also kinda hot, and Dean’s heart kickstarts a rush of blood to his dick.

“Cas—”

“I’ll be whole again soon,” Cas says it like a promise; like he’s chasing Dean’s thoughts down a dark alley and pinning them against a chain-link fence. “I just need your help a little longer. Then we can be together.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, glancing down at the floor to where a dead man’s hand lies between them. “I’m here Cas. For whatever you need. Now and forever.” Without thinking, he reaches up and touches Cas’ cheek. He’s hot and damp, his heartbeat everywhere. In every aching nerve; in every flourishing sinew.

“Can you feel me, Cas?”

“You’re all I can feel,” Cas answers, his eyes heavy-lidded, the pulse in him seeming to quicken in response to Dean’s careful exploration.

It excites Dean, touching Cas like this. It’s almost as if until this moment, Cas and this entire situation weren’t quite real, could be written off like Dean tried to write off their first encounter as a far-away dream. Now though, in amongst all this craziness, Dean realizes it’s through his own actions that he has made this man, the one he loves. Or remade him, in fact. Used his brains and beauty to give Cas life again, to put blood in his veins and muscle on his bones. The thrill he feels, touching Cas’ vulnerable body, is the thrill of ownership. Not through superficial body modifications like a nipple piercing or a tattoo, but through Dean putting his hands on the most tender parts of Cas, on the raw insides, and knowing that he did this: he’s the one making Cas whole again.

“We belong together, to each other,” Dean murmurs, fascinated by the soft, but tough strands of muscle beneath his fingertips.

“We do,” Cas agrees solemnly. “Through life and death. In this world and any others that exist.”

***

Dean’s barely started wrapping Cas’ left arm in the rolls of bandages he had to run out to the store to purchase, when the doorbell rings.

They both freeze, Dean gaping at the way Cas’ blood stars the flimsy gauze around his bicep. “sh*t,” he hisses, momentarily concerned that he might be trapped in a comedy of errors.

The doorbell goes again, ringing for longer this time.

“You should answer that,” Cas says, taking the roll from Dean, smearing it with scarlet. “It doesn’t sound like they’re going away.”

Dean’s not expecting anybody. Jimmy’s due home from work in around an hour, so unless he’s home early and forgot his keys, there’s no reason for someone to be on his porch right now.

“Go,” Cas says when the bell rings for the third time. “I’ll do what I can with the bandages in the meantime.”

f*ck.

“Okay,” Dean agrees, turning slowly toward the door and the hallway light. He looks down at his hands as he walks, streaked with Cas’ blood. As he jogs down the stairs, shouting out, “Coming!” to whoever is beyond the door, he gingerly lifts up his shirt, tucking the hem underneath his chin and wipes the worst of the blood off on his chest and stomach. Satisfied he’s done a passable job, he releases the shirt and lets it fall to cover the prison sentence waiting to happen.

The bell rings again as he reaches the hallway.

Dean opens the door, pasting a welcoming smile on his face, which falters a little when he sees who’s there on the porch.

“Amelia,” he says on an exhale, physically unable to hide the bored, ‘oh yay, it’s you’ note in his tone.

“I was just about to give up on you,” she says, plucking at an invisible thread on her powder blue cardigan. Prissy and precise, just like Jimmy.

Then why didn’t you?

“Oh,” Dean says blandly. “I was asleep.”

Her eyes drop to Dean’s abdomen, where his shirt didn’t fall the whole way. His sweats are slung so low that it’s obvious to anyone with a singular brain cell that he’s not wearing anything underneath.

Dean reaches down, tugging on his shirt to cover himself up like he’s got something to be ashamed of, even though it’s just his f*cking skin. He hates it, the way she and Jimmy make him feel sometimes, the two of them with their holier-than-thou bullsh*t.

She’s standing there waiting to be invited in, Dean can tell, like a f*cking vampire, but there’s no way she’s coming inside. “Something I can help you with? Jimmy’s not here.”

“It’s you I came to see, actually,” she replies primly, mouth downturned.

Dean responds with a half-shrug and a peppering of irritation in his voice. “Now’s not convenient.”

“I see,” she says. “Jimmy asked me to stop by for a chat.”

f*ck’s sake.

“Doesn’t change the fact that it’s not a good time,” Dean says, patience stretched thinner than the crust on an Italian pizza (that Cas — practically a Chicago native — insists he prefers to the standard base, the heathen).

Her attention slips past Dean to where Daniel slung his suit jacket over the banister in his hurry to chase Dean up the stairs.

Ruh-roh. Better hope she hasn’t memorized all Jimmy’s suits like the creepy stalker she is.

“Okay,” Amelia says after an awkwardly long pause, her face giving nothing away. “I’ll call again another time.”

“Great,” Dean lies, already halfway to shutting the door.

sh*tsh*tsh*t.

He watches through the door’s fisheye, making sure that she really is f*cking off rather than simply circling or getting the binoculars out or phoning Jimmy, ‘cause this is a holy emergency.

Mercifully, she gets in her car, and Dean sighs, slumping against the closed door.

Worst case scenario? She puts two and two together and comes up with four, despite her workings being wrong. She figures that Dean’s having an affair through Dean’s state of undress, his hurry to the door, his excuse about being in bed, and the suit jacket that she would be right to assume is a) not Jimmy’s and b) not the kind of thing Dean would wear. Best case scenario? She thinks Dean’s an asshole.

So either way, she’s mostly right.

*~*~*

See, the good thing about Jimmy’s predictability is that Dean knows precisely how much pressure to apply to get him to crack wide open and spill his secrets.

An evening of (mostly) silent treatment works. Single-syllable responses to dinner suggestions, one-sided conversation over the gooey lasagne, no acknowledgment of Jimmy’s woeful work tales — “Mr. Buchanan doesn’t understand 1 John 4:18 no matter how many times I explain it"— and ignoring Jimmy’s attempts to engage Dean in conversation about the boxing match he switched over to in a transparent Hail Mary to get Dean to acknowledge him.

By the time they turn in for the night, Jimmy’s wound tighter than a mechanical toy and Dean has to slap himself across the face a few times in the bathroom to halt the upturn of his mouth that threatens this whole operation.

Get it together, Winchester.

In bed, sitting up against the headboard, Dean pretends to read a book that he’s not absorbed a word of from the last five pages. Next to him, Jimmy sighs.

Dean licks his finger, then flips the page.

Jimmy sighs again, more dramatic this time. On his back, staring up at the ceiling, he interlocks his fingers over his chest, looking for all the world like a corpse waiting to be embalmed.

Above them, a floorboard in the attic creaks.

“I hate it,” Cas had said earlier after Amelia’s visit. “I hate being up here when he gets to be down there with you.”

Dean hates it too. But they’re halfway. If Cas f*cks it up now, Dean’ll kill him all over again.

“Did you hear that?” Jimmy asks, focus snapping to Dean. “Upstairs.”

f*ck.

“It’s an old house, Jimmy,” Dean mutters, feigning disinterest, even though his heart is racing faster than a decathlon sprinter. He flips another page a little too quickly. “Things creak and shift.”

There’s a wryness to his voice reminiscent of Cas, when Jimmy asks, “What’s the book about?”

Realizing he’s been played, Dean slams his book closed, not bothering to check the page number. Along with his reading glasses, he places it on the nightstand. “Are you actually interested or are you just trying to get a response?”

Jimmy doesn’t say anything for a long moment, seemingly weighing up his options. He’s subdued when he says, “I know something’s going on, Dean. I’m not stupid. I just thought that— I thought that with the move, we might be able to start again. Whatever you were up to in Chicago might not follow us here.”

Ah, sh*t. Deflect deflect deflect.

“That why you sent Amelia to the house to spy on me?”

Jimmy’s face flushes with guilt. “I’m just worried about you. Since the move, you’ve been all over the place. I never know what’s going on with you. You don’t talk to me anymore.”

“That’s not an answer, Jimmy. Did you send her to spy on me?”

Jimmy breathes deep and looks down at his hands. “I thought you might need someone here to talk to. It was a mistake.”

“You’re damn right it was.”

Jimmy’s attention ricochets back to Dean, eyes indignant at his use of the mildest blasphemy ever. It must be exhausting to be so offended all the time. “Why are you so concerned? I was just trying to help; there was no malice.”

It’s hard to miss the insinuation. That Dean would only be concerned if he had something to be concerned about, a.k.a., if Dean was harboring a gang-bang of writhing bodies and painting the walls in spunk and fluids.

Which is probably precisely what Amelia thought was happening and reported back to Jimmy.

Snitch.

Dean tears a jagged page out of Cas’ book and answers a question with a question. “Why do you think I’m bothered, Jimmy?”

Dean can see Jimmy’s eyes change as he considers saying what Dean’s been half-dreading, half-desperate for, since his wedding day. “I don’t know,” he chickens out at the last minute, backs down from the challenge. Just like Dean knew he would.

Dean’s happy to follow his lead on this one, so instead of blurting out every batsh*t crazy thing in his head, he simply says, “The move is gonna take some getting used to, that’s all. There’s no need to be worried about me or whatever.”

Jimmy studies him. It’s not as intense as Cas’ all-consuming stare, but it still makes Dean feel like a butterfly pinned to a board. “Okay,” he says eventually, apparently finding whatever he’s looking for in the side of Dean’s face. “Okay.”

*~*~*

The third man Dean picks in order to earn his serial killer stripes is easily the nicest one of the trio. If he saw the dude as anything other than a stepping stone between him and getting Cas back, he would almost feel guilty. Larry is painfully polite, talking about his kids and showing Dean a foldout of photos of his cherub-faced spawn as Dean drives them to his place.

Out of the car and on the graveled driveway, Dean senses eyes on him, so he throws a glance up to the attic window, knowing — even without being able to see him — that Cas is there, watching.

***

They’re getting pretty good at this murdering sh*t by now, so Dean’s got body parts in plastic bags within the next half hour. Cas is stronger too, layered in thick muscle and thin fat in the way he was when Dean first met him.

He’s wearing one of Jimmy’s cheap, ill-fitting suits because Cas walking around naked is getting to be obscene and distracting, the bandages wrapped around him earlier in the week stained rust-red with his blood and starting to unravel. He looks like the Invisible Man got into a fight with some cranberry juice. But. He’s nearly reformed, almost all there, apart from his skin, which he informs Dean is going to be the tricky part.

“I need someone of a similar height and bone structure,” he explains to Dean, cigarette between his lips now that his nerves are dulled enough that his need for nicotine outweighs the pain of touch. He breathes in on the smoke, the filter coming away with lipstick-red smudges.

“So, what are you telling me?” Dean asks, leaning against a beam, arms folded across his chest.

“I need skin to contain me. A vessel, if you will.”

What Dean needs is a moment to process, ‘cause his brain is stuttering over the logistics like a dying engine. He’s not up-to-date on the metaphysics of raising the dead, but he thinks what Cas is saying makes sense. Which may be the forty-ninth sign of madness, though at this point, Dean’s simply sinking into the insanity like quicksand, regardless of the surrounding warning signage. “Am I gonna have to skin someone? That what you’re saying?”

“I can do it.”

Dean can’t tell if Cas is missing the point on purpose or if he’s just being difficult. “One of us is going to have to skin someone.”

Cas tilts his head and narrows his eyes. “This is the point you decide to have a problem with what we’re doing?”

“No,” Dean shakes his head. Because, well, anything for Cas, yadda yadda. “I just… It’s a little different, that’s all.”

Yeah, Ed Gein different.

“From sucking the marrow off their bones?” Cas asks, and yeah, he’s being facetious now.

“Do you know how long it takes to skin big game?” Dean says, irked by Cas’ casual approach to something that will take planning to get right. There’ll be no grabbing a random yahoo off the street this time. “Because I do, alright? And it’s a f*cking skill. If you’re gonna wear it for the rest of your unnaturalborn days, then we’ve gotta get it right.” He thinks for a beat, then adds, “Plus, I happened to like your face and body before. Like, a lot. How am I supposed to find someone who matches up to that? Especially quickly.”

Cas shrugs, but the gesture isn’t quite as easy as he’d like Dean to believe. “I can think of someone.”

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

When Dean was seven years old, he stopped talking.

He used to never shut up, was teased mercilessly about it by family members who took him and three-year-old Sammy in while their dad left on his never-ending quest to find himself.

(He always seemed to find himself at the bottom of a bottle.)

Which is why it was all the more concerning when the periods of silence began to grow, the periods of speech shrinking, until one day, Dean was completely mute. In the space of a couple of weeks, Dean had stopped speaking altogether — never uttering a word to his brother, his uncle, the kids and teachers at school. Nobody.

He doesn’t remember much of that time, except for an overwhelming sense of feeling like a burden. If Dean could just man up and look after Sammy as he should be able to, then maybe Dad wouldn’t have to keep shoving them off onto people who clearly had better things to do than raising kids that weren’t theirs. Maybe Dad would actually stick around.

He does remember that he wasn’t taken to a therapist, because “therapy is a waste of time, son, and it’s not like you can talk about your feelings anyway, is it?”

After a couple of months, Dean miraculously recovered the power of speech. It was gradual, as the fading-out process had been, but by the time his eighth birthday rolled around, he was the loudest one at the party their uncle Bobby threw for him, his first (and last) ever — “Boy’s been through a lot, John, he needs this.”

He doesn’t know what caused his abrupt selective mutism back then, has it locked down deep in the recesses of his mind, but he sure as f*ck knows what’s causing it now.

“Why do you have this?” Jimmy asks, holding up the lighter. It had been in the back pocket of Dean’s sweats, which Jimmy, for some reason, took it upon himself to rifle through.

The more important question is probably why Jimmy is doing this now, when Dean needs all his resolve not to give in to Cas. Sure, stealing Jimmy’s skin is the perfect solution; aside from the body mods, he and his twin are identical, but… Jesus H. Christ, there’s a difference between killing randoms who could reasonably be said to have it coming (mostly), and murdering the dude you’ve been married to for the last couple of years.

There’s a reason Ted Bundy didn’t want it reported that he was a necrophiliac. Because, even to the seriously f*cked up, there are just some things that are beyond the pale. Murdering your husband so you can gift his skin to his brother is probably that level of bugf*ck nuts, at least without some kind of mind-altering drug like PCP involved.

The main problem is that Dean’s not convinced he wants Jimmy dead. He might not be in love with him, and some days, yeah, he’d love to throttle him until he gets to meet the God he’s so f*cking enamored with, but Dean still cares about him.

If it’s a choice between Jimmy or Cas, of course, he’ll choose Cas every time. But Dean’s not convinced that his choice is a binary one — there are other options; Dean could just find another body for Cas to slip into.

Maybe even a woman. Could be fun. Change it up a bit.

“Dean,” Jimmy says, coming around the bed and clicking his fingers right in front of Dean’s face. f*ck, that’s obnoxious. “I asked you a question. Why do you have this?”

Dean shrugs, all attempts at forming a lie dying on his tongue. There’s literally no reason for him to have the damn thing and any he gives is just gonna sound like bullsh*t.

“Have you taken up smoking?” Jimmy presses, flippant now. “Is that what’s going on with you?”

f*cking hell, it’s like being fourteen all over again. Any minute now, Dean’s brain is gonna reboot and he’s gonna yell out something like, “You’re not my real dad, Jimmy!”

For now though, Dean has to hope that his glare is enough of a response.

“Alright. Well, were you going to sell it?”

Dean raises an eyebrow, à la Cas. Which is almost certainly the wrong thing to do in this situation, ‘cause Jimmy’s eyes get real big, an ocean of blue that Dean can see his own dawning horror reflected in.

The cogs turn in Jimmy’s brain, slowly arriving at a conclusion that nobody currently in this house wants him to come to. Jimmy’s not dumb. He may not know exactly what Dean’s been up to over the years, or who with, but the pieces are all there. He only needs to actually let himself think about it to complete the picture, which cannot happen, not now they’re so close. So Dean does the only thing he can think of to grind that thought process to a halt: he reaches for the front of Jimmy’s shirt and reels him in, pressing his mouth to his husband’s. It takes a moment, but Jimmy melts against him, kissing Dean back, close-mouthed, like the chaste, good Christian boy he is.

It buys Dean enough time so that when they pull apart, hand over Jimmy’s heart, he explains, “You said it was your mother’s, so I was going to surprise you by having it professionally deep cleaned.” Dean’s got a bag of tricks, from when he, well, used to turn tricks. Such as the perfect pitch to talk a client down from a ledge. “You ruined the surprise.”

Jimmy blinks. “You were going to have it… cleaned?”

Dean nods. He pulls out his most beguiling smile; the one he reserves for chicks who give him coy grins, and cops who give him speeding tickets. “Why else would I have it?”

It’s an unspoken challenge to shine a light in the dark corners. One Jimmy thankfully still chooses not to rise to. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Why indeed.”

***

Dean’s not convinced that Jimmy's convinced by the time he leaves for work, but he does lean in to kiss Dean again right before he goes; something he hasn’t done for at least a year. Dean graciously allows it to happen, because he’s gotta play nice until he and Cas can get the f*ck outta here without the neighbors thinking that Dawn of the Dead is happening for real in middle America.

As soon as Jimmy’s car pulls out of the drive, Dean’s running up the stairs two at a time, not stopping until he’s standing in the open door of the attic, chest heaving, heart pounding.

Cas is there at the window, staring between the slats. He doesn’t turn to face Dean, simply says, “Did he tell you that she left me that lighter in her will?”

Ah.

“So you heard then?”

“Mm. I heard.” He slowly turns, fixing Dean with a look. “Did you kiss him?”

There are lots of things Dean could say. Things like “only to shut him up,” or “it was just a peck, it means nothing,” or “no, of course not,” but Dean’s forever pushing the boundaries of Cas’ carefully constructed control, shoulder-barging his patience and testing their relationship. Even now, with so much at stake, he can’t help but pushpushpush. In an act of eleventh-hour defiance, Dean says, “He’s my husband.”

Cas smiles, showcasing the pearly white of his teeth.

“He is,” Cas agrees slyly. He moves away from the sill and advances on Dean, slow and easy. More graceful in death than Dean could ever hope to be in life. “But do you tell him that you love him?”

Dean chooses silence, his blood a hot rush under his skin.

Cas’ laugh is a taunt, a thrust against their bond, shoving right back at Dean. Strong where Jimmy is weak. Challenging where Jimmy backs down. He crosses the entire room in five inches and two steps, getting right up in Dean’s personal space, his breathing a slow, shaky push in Dean’s ear. “Do you let him f*ck you?”

Dean’s eyes flutter shut. Lashes on his cheekbones, he tries to steady his breathing, not wanting to give himself or the game away in the uneven cadence of his inhales.

It doesn’t matter, of course it doesn’t. Cas has always known how to slice right down to the intimate parts of him, how to scoop out his core. Dean happily handed the correct tools right over. “Does he make you come?”

Dean whines when Cas touches him, wound so tight that he’s tempted to offer up his own skin for Cas to climb into, probably would if Cas hadn’t already been residing under it for the past couple of years.

Cas’ bandage-free fingers go to the button, then zipper, on Dean’s pants. “Stop me,” he whispers. “Stop me from touching you.” His hand slips into Dean’s boxers, stroking his fingertips along the underside of Dean’s hardening co*ck. “Tell me again that you’re married.” Thumbing through the wetness gathered at the tip, mixing blood and (pre)come again. “Tell me to leave you alone.” Dean’s hips jerk into Cas’ grip, so good, so wrong, the texture of the bandage cuff and the drying tackiness of blood working as the worst kind of lube, snagging Dean’s sensitive skin. It’s exquisite torture. “Tell me you don’t want me, even like this.”

“Cas,” Dean manages, breath and blood quickening. “I’ll always want you.”

Cas crowds in closer, his hand stroking fast and rough, letting Dean f*ck into the tight tunnel of his palm. “Do you love me?”

“Yes,” Dean hisses, eyelashes fluttering, his dick blurting out another drop of precome that Cas smears down the length and back up again. “You know I do.”

“Are you going to let me f*ck you?”

Dean reaches out to steady himself, fingers curling around the pulse of arteries in Cas’ bicep, following the slippery slope of muscle. Mindless and caged-in, he begs, “Yeah, yeah, please. f*ck me.”

There’s a smile in Cas’ voice when he asks, “Do you want me to make you come?”

Somewhere in Dean’s lizard brain, he gets that Cas is as f*cked up over Dean as Dean is over him, but it’s nigh-on impossible to remember that when it feels like he’s the only one losing his goddamn mind here. “Please, f*ck please, Cas. Make me come. Please, make me—”

“Are you mine?”

The pressure building is unbearable, the ebb and flow of the way Cas keeps taking and giving, so when Dean gasps “Yes,” right as Cas twists his wrist, that’s all it takes. He comes hard, co*ck jerking, Cas breathing in his airless moans as he shudders his way through it.

Licking the strawberry-and-vanilla swirl of their fluids off his thumb, Cas smiles serenely at him. Like the cat who got the cream. Literally. “Good boy. Now go and find me a body.”

*~*~*

Jimmy Novak is not a curious man. He’s never been one for questioning his faith, which Dean supposes is the very definition of what it means to actually have faith. You don’t know, you just hope like crazy. You trust, you believe.

Organized religion isn’t for Dean, but he reluctantly admires anyone with the faith it requires. To believe in something so strongly that you devote your existence to it has — until very recently — been an experience that bypassed Dean entirely. He knows that there’s no god, and even if there was, he wouldn’t want anything to do with the capricious f*cker, but the idea of it? Of there being something more than all this? Sure, he can relate to that.

So yeah, he admires Jimmy’s belief and his unwavering faith, even if it’s also his downfall, because his faith in god is something that he’s applied to multiple areas of his life. Including his marriage to Dean, and it’s at least half of the reason it’s taken him this long to confront Dean about the affair. He’s probably suspected for the last year, but has refused to allow his faith in the sanctity of marriage to waver.

The problem with devout Christians — like all good fanatics — is that they lack empathy. They believe that what works for them, works for everybody. They can’t fathom what prevents people who don’t believe in the same sky daddy watching over them from committing crimes. Which is pretty self-damning, Dean’s always thought, ‘cause does that mean Jimmy’s one religious meltdown away from murder? Rape? God obviously takes care of things behind the scenes though, because atheists ain’t out there doing those things every day. And certainly not at a rate greater than Christians.

By that logic, the same force that’s keeping Jimmy on the straight and narrow vis-a-vis his marriage, well, it’s the same force that’s supposed to be keeping Dean in check too. To admit otherwise would be to poke a giant f*cking logic hole in the wool over Jimmy’s eyes, which, for a lamb of God? Unacceptable. Impossible. Humans don’t have free will, because if they did, that would mean there’s nobody upstairs watching us.

So yeah. Dean always knew that the day Jimmy finally decided to locate his backbone and confront Dean about the state of their marriage, it would be f*cking nuclear.

***

The next evening, after an unsuccessful trawl through the bars for a meat suit for Cas, Dean comes home to find Jimmy sitting in the low light of their living room, Lament Configuration balanced on his knee.

Here we go.

“It’s a puzzle box,” Jimmy says in lieu of ‘hello’ or ‘I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Bond.’

“Yeah?” Dean can hear the nervous twitch in his own voice as he hangs his jacket up in the hall. He wipes his clammy palms on his jeans and takes a deep breath, steeling himself for whatever’s about to come.

“Yeah,” Jimmy confirms as Dean enters the living room. There’s a bottle of Jack open on the coffee table, lid twisted off and flung somewhere, no doubt. There’s no tumbler. “I’m surprised he left it behind when he disappeared, because based on my research, it’s worth a fortune.”

f*ck. “Oh?”

Jimmy’s staring him down again, his eyes hard. In this moment, he looks more like Cas than Dean’s ever fully given him credit for. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Dean’s been keeping the f*cking thing in the top drawer of his nightstand since his failed attempts at opening it. He hasn’t even mentioned it to Cas yet, wondering if he should destroy it or hand it back to Cas, so he can sell it on as originally planned.

He doesn’t want anyone else to ever have to go through this, but at the same time, he and Cas have been through it and so maybe, just maybe, they deserve to reap some of the reward that selling the box would bring them. They could go anywhere, be anyone with that kind of money.

(‘Cause yeah, Dean does know what it’s worth.)

He watches his husband sway a little, his eyes watery and unfocused. This could still go one of two ways. He could think Dean’s a gold digger and a thief or an adulterer.

Deny deny deny.

“No,” Dean lies. “I just thought it looked cool. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

Jimmy’s laugh is a choked-off, bitter sound. “First the lighter, then this. You must think I’m stupid!”

“No,” Dean says carefully. “I don’t think you’re stupid, Jimmy. But you’re gonna need to clue me in to your thought process here, because I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me. Are you mad because you think I’m trying to steal Cas’— tiel ’s property or something?”

Nice save.

Jimmy narrows his eyes.

Oops. Not nice enough, apparently.

“Cas?” Jimmy sneers. “Did you just call him ‘ Cas ’?”

Aw, f*ck.

“No,” Dean defends. “I just tripped over his name, that's all. It’s a mouthful.”

Not even a lie.

But Jimmy’s not listening, too far gone in his own head, Dean’s accidental slip all the confirmation he needs to plummet off the deep end. “My own brother—” He reaches for the bottle, almost overbalancing.

“sh*t,” Dean mutters, diving to stop his husband from breaking his face open on their glass coffee table. Luckily, Jimmy catches himself before Dean gets there. He swats Dean’s hands away with an annoyed grunt, before taking a swig directly from the bottle as if he hasn’t been tee-total for his entire life.

This is not gonna end well.

“My own brother,” Jimmy continues, sloshing liquid around like rough seas, as Dean stands there uselessly. “I knew you were up to something back in Chicago, probably with someone, but Castiel?” He spits his twin’s name like he’s sucked out the poison of it from a wound.

Dean pleads the fifth, choosing to keep quiet, to let Jimmy rant himself out. Before hopefully passing out.

“I mean, I knew he was screwed up, but this? This is deplorable, even for him.”

Sure, Cas ain’t an angel, but Dean’s never quite grasped why the two of them hate each other so much. All he knows is that it’s something to do with their parents, a lighter, and religion. Like all good American family fallouts.

Abruptly jumping tracks, Jimmy holds the configuration up in the palm not around the neck of a bottle. He squints at it. “This box is supposed to be magic, you know. Opens gateways to other dimensions.”

Dean shrugs, feigning indifference. “Don’t believe everything you read on Google.”

Jimmy’s slow smile is devious. “How about everything you hear from Balthazar?”

Ah.

Dean fights to not react. Because that’s all Jimmy wants, all this is: just a last-minute gamble on the roulette wheel to see if his final chip will come up on eighteen red.

Dean’s sticking with the odds. Sure, it’s possible Jimmy’s spoken to Balthazar. But is it probable? Nah.

Sensing Dean’s skepticism, Jimmy adopts a rough approximation of his twin’s deeper timbre, “Hello, Balthazar.” It wouldn’t quite fool anyone he was in a room with, but on a scratchy cell, thousands of miles away? Yeah, it might be good enough.

Well, sh*t.

In his own voice, Jimmy delivers the death blow to Dean’s shaky confidence that he’s bluffing. “What was it you said at the dinner the other week? I’m ‘ very proactive ’?”

f*ck.

“Jimmy, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dean can hear how his lie spikes off the page, but what choice does he have other than continue to play dumb? He and Cas are close, so f*cking close to being out of here, but in the very final act, Jimmy’s proving to be smarter than the both of them.

“Oh okay,” Jimmy says. “So, if I solved the puzzle, you wouldn’t have a problem with it?”

“No,” Dean answers, probably a touch too defensively. “Why would I?”

“Why indeed.” Jimmy smiles serenely, glancing down at the box. Before Dean can stop him, Jimmy strokes his thumb over the gold surface of one of the sides.

Dean blurts, “Don’t!”

Jimmy ignores him, his fingers speeding over the smooth faces, looking for some way in, testing its strength.

Dean’s reaching for the f*cking configuration before his brain catches up. “Jimmy, dammit!”

Jimmy snatches it out of his reach, staring him down with fury in his blue eyes. In them, Dean sees that he truly knows. He’s known about Dean’s infidelity for a while, thought he could get over it, but can’t. He’s not bullsh*tting to get a response outta Dean.

f*ck.

“Jimmy, don’t do this.”

Dean’s husband pauses, chin raised defiantly. “What’ll happen if I do?”

If Jimmy’s spoken to Balthazar, he already knows. But it bears repeating, ‘cause it’s pretty much the sticking point of Dean’s entire existence right now. “Cas’ll die.”

Jimmy scoffs derisively, but the hurt beneath the translucent veneer of contempt is right there. He feels genuinely betrayed. “Even if that were true, I don’t see why you’d care beyond being concerned for my bereavement. It’s not as if you two are close. Unless you’ve got something to tell me.”

He’s goading Dean into confessing. And if that’s what it takes to save Cas, well, Dean’s done a lot worse recently. He closes his eyes in agony. Can’t look at his husband when he says, “I love him.”

There’s a deathly silence that lasts like radiation until Jimmy asks flatly, “How long?”

“Jimmy—”

“How. Long.”

“Years,” Dean answers. “Since the wedding.”

Jimmy swears, the very first time Dean’s heard anything other than a harshly spoken ‘heck!’ out of his husband on occasions when he gets really heated about watercress sandwiches or whatever. Abruptly, there’s a click, and Dean’s eyes open to the sight of the puzzle box in Jimmy’s hands, halfway to being solved, enabling him to slide a part of the box open, revealing new intricacies.

“Let’s hope you and Balthazar are right about what this box can do.”

It’s vicious, the way he says it, vitriol for his twin far surpassing what Dean had imagined Jimmy capable of. Sure, he pulled the dumb stunt with the wedding invitations years ago, but that was petty sibling sh*t. Or so Dean had thought.

And then the weighted implication of Jimmy’s words hits Dean like a sucker punch to the jaw, leaving him just as stunned.

Cas really will die. Again.

Jimmy wants Cas dead. He opened the box knowing that the possibility existed. Whether he fully believed it himself or not, he knew Dean (and Balthazar) did.

The living room lights flicker in and out. Somewhere nearby, bells toll.

What the...

Unearthly blue light splinters from the lines of the box, filling the room, the foul stench of sulfur permeating every square inch, until Dean’s on the cusp of retching, turning his face to breathe into the long sleeve of his shirt. A scratching sound starts up, like rats in the walls.

In the next moment, backlit by a strange phosphorescence that has no visible source, four creepy-ass looking figures appear, as if by twisted magic. Each of them is horribly mutilated by systems of hooks and pins and sharp tools. The garments they wear are elaborately constructed to marry with their flesh, laced through skin in places, hooked into bone. They look like something right out of a BDSM club; all leather and fetish gear.

Dean doubts they adhere to the Safe, Sane, and Consensual principles though.

The leader of the quartet is deathly white and has pins driven into his head at inch intervals. At his side, a bald woman whose neck is pinned open like Dean’s ninth-grade vivisection frog. Accompanying them is a feature-less creature whose bloody mouth is wired into a gaping rectangle — the exposed teeth sharpened to points — and the fourth is a grotesque, sweating slug-monster whose eyes are covered by dark, John-Lennon-esque glasses.

Dean gapes, fascinated and terrified in equal measure. These must be the Cenobites, the f*ckers who tortured Cas, ripped him apart again and again.

“Where on Earth…?” Jimmy starts, trailing off, staring in alarmed amazement.

“Not this Earth,” Dean mutters.

The lead Cenobite — the one with all the pins — points at the configuration on the floor next to Jimmy’s foot, where he must’ve dropped it. “You opened the box,” he says in a voice several octaves too deep for a human’s. “We came.”

“What are you?” Jimmy asks, and Dean could f*cking strangle him right now. Just squeeze the life outta him until he goes purple. This is all his damn fault; if he’d just waited, if he’d just not f*cking interfered—

“Cenobites,” the one Dean's gonna call 'Pinhead' for obvious reasons answers. “Explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others.”

Dean tries not to think of Cas upstairs, doesn’t wanna run the possibility that these chucklef*cks are telepathic on top of everything else. It’s no use though; his mind is consumed by Cas’ injuries, the pain he described being put through again and again, all in the name of some higher experience for these world-hopping assholes.

"You look familiar," Pinhead says to Jimmy, his pitch-black eyes and soulless expression giving nothing away. "Have we tortured you before?"

Dean thinks ‘oh, sh*t’, before he realizes that it’s this thing’s warped sense of humor. Nobody escapes the Cenobites, not without incredible luck and a convenient loophole in the form of an identical set of double helixes.

But what if they do know about Cas’ escape?

"No." Jimmy shakes his head sluggishly, like he can't quite believe this is happening, like he’s wondering if this is the booze or the breakdown. Then he remembers himself and his self-righteous anger. "I have a twin. He had the box before me. Maybe he summoned you.”

Jesus f*ckin’ Christ, Jimmy.

He has yet to grasp the seriousness of what he’s brought to their doorstep. He believes that there’s a way out of this. That what he’s done doesn’t have a hundred percent mortality rate.

Pinhead smiles. His teeth are foul, discolored and coated in a film of grime. “It doesn’t matter. You must come with us.”

Jimmy’s eyes widen in shock. Apparently, he’d never considered that these creatures wouldn’t come all this way just to go back empty-handed. “What? No, I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to open the box on purpose. You can just go back wherever you came from—”

Thoroughly bored by the whole thing, the female Cenobite — ‘Deepthroat’, Dean decides — rasps, “We can't. Not alone. It is a transaction of sorts. A contract. We must fulfill it.”

The third creature, who so far hasn’t spoken — possibly because he can’t — begins to chatter, his wired-open jaw moving frantically.

“This can’t be real,” Jimmy says, shrinking away as ‘Chatterer’ starts to advance on him. “It’s not real.” Backed into a corner, he squeezes his eyes shut and begins reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

Pinhead’s laugh drowns him out. “You think religion can save you?” He spreads his arms out wide, a blasphemous parody of Jesus on the cross. “I... am the way.” The living room light bulbs sizzle with unnatural brightness before dimming again. Thunder rolls in the distance. “We’re more real than your god ever will be.”

Holy f*cking sh*t.

Staying in the midst of this insanity seems like something only an individual with a deathwish would do. So, in an attempt to subtly escape the situation by drawing as little attention to himself as possible, Dean side-steps out of the Cenobites’ line of sight, hoping against hope that avoiding eye contact will be enough to see him through this.

Abruptly, a sharp pain spikes him in the neck. Dean’s hand automatically reaches up, his fingers following the curve of metal. “Take another step and we’ll slit your throat,” Pinhead booms, the sub-bass of his timbre reverberating around the room, cracking the coffee table and Jimmy’s whiskey bottle.

A careful glance shows Dean that it’s the Cenobite with glasses — ‘Butterball’ seems appropriate — is the one holding onto the other end of the hook embedded in the thin skin inches from Dean’s carotid. He’s removed his glasses now, revealing that his eyes are sewn shut.

“Message received,” Dean confirms unevenly as a trickle of blood oozes down his neck and over his collarbone.

Pinhead turns his attention back to Jimmy. Chatterer has him now, trapped in a bizarre embrace. Jimmy’s voice sounds raw, hollowed out, and his eyes are shining when he demands, “What do you want?”

“You,” Deepthroat rasps, sandpaper-like.

“No!” Jimmy cries, unshed tears threatening to spill over as he does his best to resist the supernatural strength of the creature holding him, his movements panic-stricken and frenzied. “No, get off me!”

“No tears, please,” Pinhead calmly tells Jimmy over the sounds of his anguished struggling. “It's a waste of good suffering.”

“Wait!” Jimmy tries a different tack, even as he’s being dragged by the deceptively strong Chatterer, yanked from this life into another with all the effort it takes to move a leaf out of one’s path. “Wait! My brother… my brother, Castiel, he’s the one who found the box. Not me! What if I could bring him to you instead?”

Wow. 1. Jimmy still hasn’t figured this sh*t out. 2. What a self-serving little douche.

“Castiel is already ours,” Pinhead says, bored.

That stops Jimmy’s struggles. “Yours?”

“Yes,” Deepthroat confirms, and she’s so ghostly pale that if she were alive, her veins would show at the temples. “A deal with the Cenobites is eternal.”

They don’t know. Or at least, they’re doing a good job at pretending they don’t know. Dean’s eyes flick to Pinhead, who’s watching him with far too much acuity.

sh*t sh*t sh*t. There’s gotta be a way out of this. Even if the Cenobites really don’t know about Cas’ escape, it’s only a matter of time before they do. And then? They’ll drag Cas back to whatever hell dimension they’ve stepped out from. It’s not definite, ‘cause like Cas said, who knows whether they can chase down escaped prisoners without the usual invitation via puzzle-solving. But it’s not like Dean can ask — “oh, hey dudes, if someone escapes you, well, can you actually come and get them without some other dipsh*t opening the box? Oh, you can? Haha, no, this is purely hypothetical, what escaped prisoner?” And if there’s even a one percent chance of it, then Dean and Cas will spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders, never knowing which day might be their last.

Which simply ain’t an option. He’s not losing Cas ever again, and well, he doesn’t particularly wanna lose Jimmy either right now, ‘cause thanks to his dumbassery, they’re on a bigger time crunch, meaning that Dean doesn’t have the time not to kill him. They need his skin, and compared to what the Cenobites have planned, it’ll be a mercy that Dean and Cas get to him first.

There’s only one choice left, and it’s the least bad of the bunch. Still kinda (read: super-f*cking-holy-sh*t-balls) bad though and Cas is gonna be furious.

It’s cards-on-the-table time, and Dean just has to hope that his crummy two pair will beat whatever hand they’re holding. Deep breath, Winchester. “But he escaped you, didn’t he?”

Silence drops like a curtain at the end of a tragedy and everyone stops. The sudden collective attention on Dean burns hotter than the fires of hell.

“No-one escapes us,” Deepthroat lies at the same time Pinhead says, “You have seen him?”

So Dean’s inkling was right: they were bluffing. Praise be. But also, f*ck.

“Yes,” Dean answers, not faking his desperation. “I’ve seen what you did to him, I’ve seen the raw, bloody pulp he crossed the Schism as.” It hurts to even think about it, but he pushes on, determined that this plan will work. It has to. “I'll find him for you and then you can take him back with you instead of Jimmy.” As an afterthought, he adds, “and me,” just in case.

It’s Deepthroat who speaks again after a long few moments. “We’ll consider your offer. Find him and bring him to us. But if you cheat us—”

“—We’ll tear your soul apart,” Pinhead finishes on a loud cracking boom that resonates through the entire house like a roll of thunder, splintering the drywall in a lightning strike. And then they’re gone, the hook in Dean’s neck plucked out, and Jimmy collapses to the carpet on his hands and knees, gasping for the breath that the Cenobites tried to steal.

Holy Christing f*ck.

That was intense. Like sky-diving-into-a-tank-full-of-hungry-sharks intense.

Dean steps over his husband to retrieve the configuration. It’s closed again, as if the Cenobites shut the door behind themselves. But not quite, ‘cause now there’s a tiny snag on the otherwise polished surface, and Dean yanks his hand away with a curse when it pricks his skin, blood welling up on the tip of his finger. He watches with morbid fascination as his blood fills in the infinitesimal cracks, tracing the complex relation of the parts. A blood pact; dark magic binding Dean to his word.

sh*t.

Looks like they’ll actually have to follow through.

Any guilt Dean feels about what he and Cas have to do to Jimmy is tempered by the fact that it’s the lesser of two evils. An eternity of pain and suffering, versus a quick merciful death that enables someone else to live. Absurdly, the old hunting adage about using every part of the animal pops into Dean’s head.

Staring down at Jimmy, nothing but contempt in his bleeding heart and venom in his veins, poisoning the well of positive emotions he once had for the man at his feet, Dean tells him, “You’re welcome, James.”

***

“You did what?!”

Cas isn’t taking Dean’s fragile deal with the Cenobites well, at all. He's barely even touched the burger Dean brought him, now that he's finally getting his appetite back.

“I have a plan,” Dean tells him, palms up in a placating manner as Cas paces in front of the window. For now, Jimmy’s scurried off to church or Amelia’s after Dean’s insistence that Cas would never come near the house knowing that his brother was there; the Cenobites have f*cked off to their shadow realm or whatever thanks to Dean’s promise; and if Dean and Cas were smart, they’d tuck tail and run too, just try to figure this sh*t out as they went.

But they’re not smart. Certainly not enough to be able to keep themselves hidden from the Cenobites forever.

So maybe it’s for the best that it turned out this way, even if the shaky confidence Dean had in his deal twenty minutes ago is slowly trickling away, leaving him with nothing but the icy grip of fear.

He cannot lose Cas again. He f*cking won’t.

Dean lets his head fall against the beam at his back, tipping his face up to the rafters. “Jimmy found out about us.”

That stops Cas in his tracks.

Dean takes the opportunity to explain the whole sorry story from start to finish, Cas’ eyes darting to the thin line of oxidized blood on Dean’s neck when he gets to the part about Butterball meat-hooking him. “So, that’s why I did what I did,” he finishes, silently daring Cas to tell him that it was the wrong thing. “If they think they’ve got you, they’ll stop looking. That Pinheaded f*cker knew you were missing even if the others tried to toe the company line and pretend you weren’t.”

“Alright,” Cas says slowly. “Now tell me the plan again.”

Dean scrubs a hand over his jaw. “Okay, so. We do what you wanted: we use Jimmy as your vessel. Leave his skinned body in here. Then we summon the Cenobites again, say that we’ve found you, but oopsie, we had to kill you because you didn’t want to go back. But of course it’s Jimmy’s body they’re looking at. They won’t know the difference. I’ve technically fulfilled my end of the bargain, you can live in Jimmy’s skin undetected for the rest of your life, the Cenobites get the dead body of someone they think outsmarted them, and Jimmy gets to find out if Heaven is real. Win-win-win-win.”

Sure, laid out like that, it’s so unhinged that the door’s about to fall off, but what about this situation ain’t pure madness?

Cas blows out a frustrated breath along with a fine mist of blood. “They’re not stupid, Dean. What happens if they figure it all out?”

Dean shrugs with a nonchalance he doesn’t feel. “Then I guess the three of us have first-class tickets to hell. Hope the view’s nice.”

Shaking his head, Cas tells him, “I never wanted you involved like this. I never thought you’d—”

“—I’d what? Throw myself on a supernatural grenade after murdering three people for you?” Dean interrupts, shoving away from the beam and into Cas’ personal space, annoyed that even after everything, Cas still doesn’t get it. “I wonder what it was about me that said I was anything other than in this with you until the end of the f*cking line, Cas.”

Cas’ eyes dip. It’s perhaps the first sign of insecurity Dean’s ever seen on him, just a sliver of vulnerability. “You’re willing to kill a fourth now. Someone who means something to you, whether I like it or not. When did finding another body cease to be an option?”

“The very second your brother summoned the f*cking Cenobites and made it so that it’s you or him. I’ll always choose you, Cas, you know that. Yeah, I didn’t particularly want to kill Jimmy when there was another way, but now there isn’t, so.”

“Okay,” Cas agrees, eyes lingering on Dean’s face as if he’s searching for a crack in the facade. Finding none, he a-little-too-nonchalantly asks, “Did it take Jimmy long to open the configuration?”

Dean frowns. “No, actually. Which is weird, ‘cause I tried to get into the thing and couldn’t.”

Even without skin, Cas’ bitchface is impressive. The ‘what the hell were you playing at, trying to get into the box, you dumbass’ inherently unspoken, but still the loudest thing he’s said tonight. “The configuration is… complicated. It can’t be forced open. You can’t open it for another, and the person opening it has to have — to some degree — a dark soul. They have to be amenable to what opening the box entails.”

Huh.

“Huh,” Dean says. “So this is a ‘stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back’ kinda thing?”

Cas huffs a reluctant laugh. “Yes. I suppose that’s a good way of putting it.”

Double huh.

Interesting that Good Christian Jimmy had no qualms about his potential to turn into a monster after gazing into the abyss. Either because he just believes reallyreallyreally hard, or because he’s already a monster. Just by a different name. “So, does this mean you’re telling me that Jimmy has a ‘dark soul’?"

Cas’ interest switches not-so-subtly to the burger Dean brought up for him. It’s probably cold by now, but if Dean’s understanding of zombie and vampire movies is correct, then the undead (less-than-alive?) generally aren’t picky about what they eat. Stiffly, Cas responds, "The fact that we're in this situation answers your question."

Eh. It does and it doesn’t.

Sure, Jimmy’s an unmitigated asshole for opening the configuration, but there’s always been something Marianas-Trench-deep about his and Cas’ barely disguised mutual dislike for one another. Something that goes far beyond sibling rivalry and veers into June and Jennifer Gibbons territory.

“Maybe you should answer my question, Cas.”

Cas pokes at the burger, leaving a smear of crimson on the brioche bun.

They’re not exactly swimming in time here, but Dean figures they’ve got just enough to doggy-paddle through some trauma. So he folds his arms across his chest and waits.

He can’t quite see Cas’ bitchy eye roll, but he knows it’s there. “Jimmy and I…” Cas starts, but it’s a false one, so he recalls his scattered thoughts and tries again. “I knew I wasn’t straight by the time I was fourteen. I enjoyed looking at people of all genders, finding them aesthetically and sexually appealing. But, of course, my family was — is — very religious; it was impossible to talk to them about it. I kept my sexuality to myself so I could continue being part of a family who unknowingly hated my very existence.”

Dean feels as though there’s a block of concrete resting on his chest, slowly crushing the breath out of his lungs.

John Winchester died before Dean was ever forced to have the sexuality talk with him, but he just knows that the news would’ve gone down a lot worse than Dean himself did when he first started hooking. He can’t begin to imagine the pressure of being anything less than an ultra-religious family’s idea of biblical perfection. How the guilt would shovel itself onto a pile of shame and humiliation.

“Everything was fine until we were seventeen. Jimmy found a p*rnographic magazine underneath my bed.” Cas stares out the window, watching a rust-colored squirrel climb a tree on the other side of the driveway. “He was flicking through it when I came home early from serving food to the homeless. He started calling me names, telling me that I was unclean, queer, a fa*g, whatever.” Cas rolls his shoulders, shrugging off the sting of the words. “He was scared, I could see it. He was hiding just like I was, but rather than talk about it, he distanced himself from me.” Taking a moment to breathe deeply, Cas visibly gears up for the real bad sh*t. “And then, one day after school, I was called into the study. My parents were both there and so was Jimmy. On my father’s desk was a stack of dirty magazines. Some of them were mine, some of them weren’t.”

“Holy sh*t, Cas,” Dean murmurs, unable to stay silent any longer.

“My mother had been crying. Her eyes were all red-rimmed, and knowing I was responsible for her upset was probably worse than my father’s words.” Cas’ throat bobs as he swallows hard. “He told me that either I go to conversion therapy or get out of his house. My mother begged and pleaded with him to let me stay, that there had to be some other way, that I was God’s child as much as Jimmy — virtuous, straight Jimmy — but my father didn’t want to hear it. So I left.”

Dean doesn’t need to ask, but he does anyway. “You’re sure Jimmy’s the one who outed you? Your parents or the maid didn’t find the magazines by accident?”

Cas’ smile is wan. “It was Jimmy. Most likely to avoid being outed himself at some point, but there was a degree of malice there too.”

After tonight, Dean totally believes it.

“He wasn’t expecting our mother to side with me though. I think he thought it would be a clean break and he’d get all the love and attention he’d always felt that I stole from him by virtue of being his twin. For months after I left, she would send me little care packages. Tins of things and packets of rice. The occasional chocolate bar.”

Cas must’ve been so lonely. Dean knows how horrible the world can be — experienced it himself in his youth — but the fact that Cas was going through it too (and alone, ‘cause at least Dean had Sam), upsets Dean more than he’d like to admit, makes him want to rub at his chest to get rid of the ache.

“And then after about six or seven months, the packages suddenly stopped. I assumed that she’d grown weary of helping her abomination of a son, or that our father had discovered what she was doing and put a stop to it.” Cas’ voice wavers. “I didn’t find out she’d died until after the funeral. I was barely in time for the will reading, determined to give my father and brother a piece of my mind. She didn’t have a lot of possessions that were solely hers. Most of them she donated to charity.” He eyes the silver Zippo on the sill, the patinated gleam of it. “But she left me this.”

Outside, rain begins to fall. “What does the engraving say, Cas?” Dean asks quietly.

“It’s in Enochian; the supposed language of the angels,” Cas responds just as quietly. “It’s the name of a verse in the bible — 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Do you know it?”

Dean shakes his head.

“‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’”

Goddammit, Dean's gonna f*cking cry.

He desperately wants to hug Cas, to make physical contact and just bury himself in the man he loves, but can’t without getting blood all down the front of his shirt and-slash-or ever letting Cas go. So he settles for clearing his throat along with some of the tension in the air. “That twin of yours has a dark f*ckin' soul alright.”

Cas hums his agreement. “I’m not innocent either, I know that. I didn’t turn up to the wedding with good intentions. At the very least I was intent on telling you about the family you were marrying into. At the most… well.” He drags a look up and down Dean’s body, reminiscent of that morning over two years ago. It still sets Dean’s soul on fire. “I was going to try and f*ck you to get my own form of petty revenge on Jimmy. But then you were just so beautiful standing there in that boring, stuffy study with your sci-fi books and I… I wasn’t prepared.”

Dean’s gonna melt listening to how he’s a revenge-f*ck-turned-love-of-Cas’-life. It’s the fairytale romance every queer boy dreams about. “You old romantic, you.” He goes to turn away, partly to get this sweet-but-kinda-f*cked-up moment off of him, and partly ‘cause time’s a-tickin’ and they’ve got a twin to skin and Cenobites to fool, but Cas catches him by the wrist.

“I’m serious, Dean. You need to know that the moment I touched you, I was lost. When I walked into your house, I had absolutely no intention of seeing you ever again. But I fell in love that day. I knew I’d never be able to keep away, even though I tried. I really tried. I spent weeks trying to convince myself that I was imagining things. That it wasn’t real. That it was just sex, that you weren’t the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.”

Dean’s breath catches. “Jesus, Cas.”

He remembers that long month after the wedding, remembers doing the same. Driving himself crazy with the memory of Cas’ mouth on his, the way Cas looked at him, f*cked him.

“I love you, Dean,” Cas tells him with bone-deep sincerity, absent-mindedly rubbing his thumb over Dean’s pulse. “I’ve always loved you.”

f*ck.

“I love you too, Cas. I’d do anything for you.”

Making a small disapproving noise in the back of his throat, Cas releases Dean. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

Spell broken with the loss of contact, Dean mentally shakes himself down. Refocuses. “Alright,” he says on a deep, steadying breath. “I’ll go make the call to Jimmy and get him over here. You — eat your food, and then you can help me get everything we need together. I’ll make a list.”

Sharp knives, oh, those suspension cuffs could come in useful, gloves, bleach, plastic sheeting...

Cas sighs as though this is all a mere inconvenience — someone at the deli put his pastrami on rye instead of sourdough — rather than (his) life and freakin’ death. “You’re sure this will work?”

“Absolutely not,” Dean admits, one foot out the attic door before he turns back to Cas still standing by the window. “But what other choice do we have?”

*~*~*

Throughout life, there are moments where you have to ask yourself: what the actual f*ck am I doing?

Usually, it’s when you take home a dude with questionable facial hair or a chick who is very obviously already naming the kids she’s planning to subpoena child support for. Often, you ask it when you’re stuck in the kind of dead-end job where a customer tells you to find what’s causing a clunking sound when their car stops or moves — is it the engine, the bearings? (Nope, it’s a f*cking bowling ball in the trunk.) Sometimes, you ask it when you’ve done something sh*tty-and-or-stupid, like cheating on your significant other. And then there are times like now.

Times that there’s absolutely no coming back from. Where whatever you’ve done or are about to do is so far outside the realm of acceptable behavior that it’s more of a soul vibe check.

Mostly to make sure that you’ve still got one.

As he leads Jimmy upstairs, Dean loosely wonders if the water his husband’s savior walked on is drowning him yet. Whether he’s able to reconcile kneeling before a god who hates the sin, but loves the pain.

Of course he is, ‘cause he’s all about the faux-compassion too, up on his high horse supplied by the grace of a god who encourages him to highlight his own virtues against the perceived sinfulness of others.

Because forgiveness — like sex — is a transaction. Conditions need to be met, people have requirements to fulfill, starting with repentance. Which is precisely why Dean and Jimmy’s relationship was doomed from the start. Dean didn’t realize (or at the very least, care) that Jimmy bought into him via marriage on the assumption that he would be worth forgiving in the future. He thought Jimmy loved him — the sinner — but hated his sins.

Nope.

To love someone, to truly love them without strings attached, is to see them eyeballs to entrails and accept them for who they are, not who they might be.

Not who you want them to be.

Jimmy’s love was never unconditional. Cas’ love always has been.

The two of them climb the metal stairs to the attic, Jimmy following behind Dean on the curve of the spiral, sober now and probably wishing he wasn’t. “How did you get Castiel over here?”

“Does it matter?” Dean asks, shoving open the door for Jimmy, who shoots him a dull look. “Go on.”

Inside, the blinds are fully open, the autumn storm outside making a ghost-train of the house. The plastic sheeting hangs from rafters to floor, slung over every surface to catch the mess Dean and Cas are about to make. It smells like it always does up here — death and blood and damp — and Jimmy visibly recoils, covering his nose with the back of his hand.

The sky lights up, silhouetting Cas and giving away his location as he stands underneath the popped bulb, naked and scarlet, shining with blood from head to foot like a living, breathing muscle diagram. Beautifully macabre.

“Castiel?” Jimmy gasps in the safety of darkness while Dean counts the beats between the flash and the fury.

Five.

“Jimmy,” Cas responds. Calm and collected. Cordial.

Lightning spills through the window, flash-lighting Cas again before plunging the three of them back into darkness. This time though, Jimmy gets a full enough look that if he had a rosary, he’d be clutching at it. “My God.”

Four.

“Nah,” Dean says, clicking the lock into place behind them and pocketing the key. “Don’t think God’s got much to do with this one, Jimbo.”

Another flash right as Jimmy twists to look over his shoulder at Dean. His eyes glitter. “What are you doing?”

The storm is rapidly approaching; just a three-count away now.

“You two have a lot to talk about,” Dean says with a shrug that suggests equanimity, even though the hands behind his back are shaking. “Can’t have either one of you leaving.”

It’s the first time since the wedding that all three of them have been in the same room. And even back then, all Dean could think about was getting to be with Cas again.

Some things never change.

Dean might not be able to see Jimmy’s face in the darkness, but he can pick out the quiver in his voice when he says, “Him, I expect this betrayal from. But you?”

“Me?” Dean repeats, incredulous. “I’ve been f*ckin’ him for over two years. If you’re expecting any loyalty from me, you’re delusional. Especially after you threw him to the Cenobites.” He clicks his tongue. “Wrong move, sweetheart.”

Jimmy’s wide-eyed, panicked attention switches to his twin. “‘What’s done in the dark will come to light’,” Jimmy quotes, visibly clutching at straws in lieu of the nearest bible. “This is what you deserve, Castiel. This is what God thinks you deserve.”

Cas’ smile grows teeth. He tilts his head, right as lightning flashes. “Do I look like someone who cares what God thinks?”

Two.

Jimmy has no answer. He can only begin backing up as Cas moves forward. Recanting his morbid fascination in favor of self-preservation, he tries to buy seconds that he doesn’t have the credit for. “You’ve been here all along, haven’t you? That’s why Dean was eager to spend time up here.” When that gets no response, he goes for Cas’ soft underbelly, hoping to slip the proverbial knife in somewhere vital. “It won’t bring her back, you know. Whatever you think you’re doing here, it won’t bring her back.” And finally, “This has always been your problem Castiel, this impulsiveness. Selfishness. That’s why dad sent you away, why you—”

They’re identical twins, but Cas seems taller, bigger, stronger somehow as he advances on his brother faster than Jimmy can escape. Within seconds, he’s got Jimmy by the throat, the saddle of Cas’ broad palm crushing his windpipe, lifting him inches from the ground. “If it’s any consolation, it’s your blood that brought me back,” Cas says with a serene smile, like he’s considering tearing the petals off of Jimmy to decide whether a cute boy loves him or loves-him-not. “So, I owe you a thanks. Consider us even. Almost .”

With the last of his breath, Jimmy gasps, “What are you going to do?”

Lightning flashes again.

One.

“What you always wanted, James. I’m going to become you.”

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

Jimmy’s skin fits Cas like a… well, first skin. Aside from a little blood at the temples, where the flesh is still knitting itself back together with some help from whatever supernatural force brought Cas this far, nobody would ever know.

“It’s a little tight,” Cas complains, stretching out his fingers right to the tips, rolling his neck.

Above and around them, the storm continues, pouring ice-cold water down in wave after unrelenting wave. It soaks through Dean’s bloodied clothes, plastering the thin fabric to his skin, but Cas isn’t suffering from the same, clammy problem.

‘Cause the only thing he’s wearing is Jimmy’s skin.

He’s just as gorgeous now as he was then, even without the body modifications that Dean loved to touch and trace with his fingers and tongue. His muscles — the ones Dean’s seen for himself, up close and personal — flex and bunch and work, water sluicing between his shoulder blades as he helps Dean roll up the bloodied sheets into the dumpster. Dean’s eyes eagerly track every drop of liquid that trails down over Cas’ bare back and ass, before he valiantly drags his eyes back up, trying to shake himself out of the pervy pervy thoughts. But it’s not much better up here, ‘cause the rain is dampening Cas’ hair to the curve of his skull and thickening his eyelashes, the cold sting of it making the already-obscene fullness of his mouth even redder.

Ogling his lover in his husband’s body like this is f*cking Dean all the way up; making him both teary-eyed and horny. The former, because having Cas back is exactly what Dean wanted, and seeing Cas inhabit the same skin that Jimmy was ashamed of reminds Dean of the freedom in acceptance of who you are. The latter because, well, it’s dirty-bad and wrong to feel that way. But the taboo of it all, the dirty-wrongness, is exactly what makes it super f*cking hot too.

“Eh,” Dean says, squeezing in a joke between the thick emotion. “Some alcohol and vaseline and you’ll be fine.”

“Mm,” Cas says with the mouth that used to belong to Dean’s husband. “Sounds like a good start to me.” He half-turns to face Dean, catching him around the waist and hauling him in, trapping Dean between the dumpster and the heat of his body. Skin-warm rain drips off the tip of his nose. He smells of grime and grass and rainwater and tangible things. He smells like life. “Thank you,” he says seriously, the ghost of his breath over Dean’s wet mouth. “Without you, I never would’ve tried to pull myself out of there, and I certainly wouldn’t be standing here now. I owe you my life, Dean Winchester. And I intend to spend the rest of it never letting you forget that or taking you for granted.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Dean murmurs, pressing in to kiss Cas. He feels wild and reckless and invincible. Even though he’s fully cognizant that their priority should be the Cenobites rather than their dicks, it’s not like he could resist the first time he saw Cas in the rain like this. Now that he’s in love and riding high on Cas’ full-bodied proximity after weeks of uncertainty and worry and death, he’s got no chance. The kiss is breathy with too much teeth and tongue, Cas’ hand sliding up the side of Dean’s neck, thumb brushing over Dean’s jaw, holding him in place. Dean’s breath hitches, tied by an invisible string to his co*ck, and Cas notices, pulling back with just the twitch of a smirk.

Dean knows exactly what he’s thinking, and while — f*ck yeah — they also need to prioritize, and getting their dicks wet should fall quite a few tasks below getting out of this situation alive. “Later,” Dean says, airless shake in his voice that gives him away more than the hardness in his pants.

“How about now?” Cas demands, nose brushing against Dean’s temple, his mouth close to Dean’s ear. “How about I f*ck you right now until the only thing you can say is my name?”

Well, they can probably spare some time before they recall the Cenobites.

“Challenge accepted,” Dean grins, feeling hot and dizzy all over. “Jimmy.”

***

They f*ck bare and hard, the two of them dripping rainwater all over the kitchen, Cas in his stolen body, using his twin’s co*ck to f*ck Dean deep and dirty. Violent pleasure shudders through Dean with every smack of Cas’ pelvis against the meat of his ass, every core-deep drive inside, shoving time and again up against Dean’s prostate with bone-jarring accuracy.

Folded in half over the kitchen counter, bent knee brought up and held there to splay him open wider, Dean breathes out on a series of uh uh uhs, punctuated at the end by a guttural groan of, “Jimmy,” that just spurs Cas on harder and rougher. Dean can’t do much other than lie there and take it; pinned face down by the spread of Cas’ strong fingers at the nape of his neck, the skin of his cheek pink hot from the friction against the countertop, and there’s a fog on the surface of the black granite, expanding with every uneven breath that Cas f*cks outta him.

“Yeah, Jimmy,” Dean moans thick and exaggerated over the wet sound of their bodies coming together. “So good.” His cheek skids painfully across granite as Cas f*cks into him so hard that he nearly overbalances, forcing Dean up onto the ball of his foot. His dick is achingly hard, trapped between his stomach and the countertop, so amazing-awful, body taut and breath catching in his chest.

It’s adrenaline and lust fueling them both, with the lurking layer of so-bad-so-wrong that’s always permeated their sexual encounters. But underneath the screwed-up teasing and the crazy way that Cas knows Dean inside and out, knows exactly where to dig in deep and f*ck, there’s a shadowed sense of here and now being the last time they might get to do this. Dean’s positive about his plan, because he has to be, but there’s a dead pixel in the middle of his otherwise perfect picture, a persistent black pinpoint that threatens to spread, and the desperate way Cas is f*cking him speaks to him having the same malfunction. They’re not talking about it, they’re f*cking about it, because that’s what they’ve always done, how they’ve always communicated about the important stuff, and goddamn, it’s a wonderful, glorious way to communicate, but… but with each punched-out gasp, it loosely occurs to Dean that they’re drawing out what may be inevitable instead of facing it.

Though of course, Dean’s not gonna pull the emergency brake on this crazy train any time soon, ‘cause holy f*ck is Cas scorching like this, hot all over Dean inside and out.

Cas slides his palm up Dean’s neck, fingers gripping between the still-damp strands of Dean’s hair, yanking his head back sharply. Grinding in slow and deep, he growls, “Say my name.”

Dean pants, “Jimmy,” and grins when the fist in his hair tightens.

Cas releases Dean’s leg in favor of mauling bruises into his hip, dragging Dean back onto his co*ck, and Dean yelps in both surprise and sharp pleasure-pain as he gets split wide, moaning with more vowels than necessary as the muscles in his thighs tremble, pushed up on the tips of his toes, spine arched.

Cas is ruthless; his whole body behind every thrust, the hard length of his co*ck driving in, shoving right up inside Dean, so deep that Dean’s breathing around it in staccato bursts, and it’s a deliberate attempt to pull Dean apart at the seams, to break him down until he gives in.

Because Dean always gives in to Cas eventually.

He scrabbles for purchase, palms flat against the counter, attempting to get some leverage to lift his upper body into a half-push up in order to gain a modicum of control, to push back into the thick, heavy length of Cas’ co*ck. The change in angle makes them both moan, and Dean’s so tense that it hurts, dick still trapped and trailing slick over the countertop.

He’s gonna come outta his skin and provide Cas with a f*cking spare if he doesn’t get to come soon, but he grits his teeth against it, curling his hands into fists, pinioned but determined not to give Cas the satisfaction of hearing him say the right (wrong?) name.

Of course, that’s precisely when the doorbell goes, its cheery sound disparate from the possessive, nasty f*cking taking place in the kitchen.

sh*t.

Dean tenses. Behind him, Cas makes a pleased noise in the back of his throat, but doesn’t stop, doesn’t even slow down. “J—Jimmy, you gonna— oh, f*ck — get that?”

There’s no answer, nothing in the quiet but the wet sound of their bodies and their harsh pants for breath. Cas nails him on a particularly skilled thrust and Dean moans. “Ca—Jimmy, c’mon. The door’s unlocked.”

It’s apparent that Cas takes it as a timed challenge, because he redoubles his efforts, and Dean swallows a mouthful of spit, caught on Cas’ co*ck, the risk and horror of the situation drip-drip-dripping into his veins like an IV filled with dopamine.

The doorbell rings again.

“Stop,” Dean hisses, reaching back to slap at Cas’ thigh.

Undeterred, Cas curves his body over Dean’s, crushing him to the countertop again, scraping his teeth up the side of Dean's throat. “Should I call out to them? Invite them in and let them see you like this? It might be a friend of Jimmy’s from church. The pastor, maybe. Do you think they’d just watch or want to join in?”

f*ck. It’s so wrong, so hot, that Dean can feel his org*sm edging up on him, his whole body threaded through with urgency, bound up tight. “Fuuuck. Please, Cas, I’m gonna.” He doesn’t know whether he’s begging for Cas to stop or keep going until they’re both laying in a sweat-and-rain-soaked heap on display for who-the-f*ck-ever is at the door.

“Again,” Cas demands, co*ck flexing inside Dean, hips moving in a jagged, uneven rhythm, on the verge of coming himself. “Say my name again.”

“Cas,” Dean grates, dick slip-skidding through the pool of precome it’s been steadily drooling since they started. “Cas, Cas, please. Cas .”

The front door opens.

Dean loses it, coming hard, hips jerking, spilling sticky over the countertop, smeared up his stomach and chest with the momentum of Cas’ thrusts.

“Oh, f*ck,” Dean’s whole body is wracked with tremors, muscles in his thighs and ass burning, legs unsteady and knees weak. Behind him, Cas snarls Dean’s name as he comes too, rocking his hips in a tight grind, f*cking Dean full with his load, creaming up his insides.

They hear Amelia’s voice in the hallway. “Jimmy?”

Oh no.

“Cas,” Dean gasps, trying to think through the syrupy good endorphins. “Get off of me.”

Miracle of miracles, Cas does, pulling gingerly out of Dean on the slide of lube and come. Dean can feel the gross leak of it, trickling down his perineum, catching in the soft hairs of the inside of his thigh, but Amelia’s about ten short steps away from seeing both him and Cas full-frontal, so he’s got more important things demanding his immediate attention.

Clothes. We need clothes.

The ones Cas tore off him fifteen minutes ago are a wet splat on the linoleum floor, and the ones Jimmy had on are upstairs, twisted around what’s left of his corpse.

f*ckity f*ck.

There’s probably some in the dryer, but to get there, Dean’ll have to Takeshi’s Castle himself around Amelia.

“Jimmy? Is everything okay?”

Naked as the day he was (re)born, shine of lube on his softening co*ck, Cas strides toward the kitchen door, his bare feet stick-releasing on the lino, easily side-stepping Dean’s attempt at stopping him. “Don’t,” Dean warns, but Cas puts his index finger to his lips, shushing him. He peeks around the kitchen door before looking back over his shoulder at Dean.

“What’s her name?” he asks quietly.

“Amelia.”

Cas knocks his voice up a half octave and, cracking the door just enough to be heard, says, “Hi, Amelia. Dean and I are in the kitchen, but we got caught outside in the storm, and we’re in a state of undress. I would advise against you coming in just now.”

Kinda creepy how easily he slips into Jimmy. Again.

There’s a pause. Then Amelia’s muffled voice saying, “Oh. Are you okay? I was worried when I didn’t hear from you.”

Cas raises an eyebrow. And yeah, Jimmy had obviously arranged some kind of failsafe here. The irony of course being that it failed and he’s not safe. “Yes, we’re fine. You can go home.”

Another stretch of silence. Dean shifts his weight restlessly.

“Are you sure? I mean, after everything you told me…”

f*cking Jimmy.

Cas slants Dean a look, all 'is this woman for real?' “Yeah. It’s over now.”

“But your brother? Have you forgiven him?”

So Jimmy probably just told her about the affair?

There’s no real way of knowing, but Cas is doing a great job of keeping his answers vague enough and open to interpretation. It’d be useful to get an understanding of exactly what she knows, but not at the risk of exposing themselves further.

Literally or metaphorically.

Squinting as though he’s trying to remember something, Cas replies in a perfect mimic of Jimmy’s preachy bullsh*t. “God's forgiveness is a product of His grace.”

Dean can’t see Amelia nodding, but he just knows she is. “And Dean?” There’s a hopeful quiver in her voice.

“Dean’s my husband,” Cas tells her, first glancing at the wedding band on Dean’s ring finger, then the one on his own. “We’ll work it out. I love him.”

“Oh.” Disappointment colors her tone. “Yes, yes of course. Marriage is sacred and, like you said about your parents, no matter what happens, those who are bound before God will always be so.” And then because she can’t help her petty self, she adds, “Even if one party isn’t deserving of such a commitment.”

Bitch.

A muscle in Cas’ jaw tics. Something murderous flits in and out of his eyes and Dean can see the end of Amelia’s life in the clench of Cas’ fists. Dean shakes his head, mouths a firm ‘no,’ in Cas’ direction, ‘cause yeah, it’s tempting as hell to reunite her with Jimmy, but it’s also not at all wise to murder people simply ‘cause they irritate you.

That really would be a bad precedent to set considering Dean’s the kind of person who chews noisily, explains everything that’s going on in a movie right as it’s happening, and sings loudly over the radio when a decent song comes on.

Cas’ eyes narrow at Dean, like he’s solely responsible for ruining Cas’ fun. “Indeed,” he grits out, still trying to channel Jimmy.

“Alright, well, as long as you’re okay…” She trails off — but doesn’t f*ck off — and Dean glances toward the ceiling, not asking god to give him strength, but just seeing if the old guy might be able to cut them some f*cking slack here.

“We’re fine,” Cas assures her, sharing a look with Dean, who is doing a piss-poor job at keeping still, largely due to the sticky trickle of come drying on his inner thigh.

“I’ll see you at Mass tomorrow?”

Cas’ lips quirk. “Of course. In order to live a good life, we just have to follow the three C's: clean living, chewing thoroughly, and a daily dose of vitamin church.”

Dean almost chokes on a laugh.

“Oh, I like that,” Amelia says. “Where’d you hear that?”

Not having the heart to tell her it’s a Ned Flanders quote, Cas replies, “I just heard it around. I’ll see you tomorrow, Amelia.”

“Yeah. Goodnight, Jimmy. May the Lord bless you and keep you.”

Dean holds his breath in his lungs while they wait for her to leave. As soon as the front door closes behind her, he slings a half-hearted punch into Cas’ upper arm. “You’re a dick,” he says, but he’s smiling.

Cas grabs him around the waist, sliding his hands up between Dean’s shoulder blades, and says, in his normal voice, “You’re just upset because you need Jesus. Maybe you should spend less time on your back and more time on your knees.”

Dean’s grin widens. “Later,” he says, and it’s a promise for more than just a blowj*b; it's an unspoken assurance that they’re both gonna still be here for it. That everything’s gonna be okay and Dean’s plan — which feels dumber by the second — is gonna work. “But for now, we’d better get dressed and dial 1-900-Cenobite.”

***

“Hey, I’ve got a crazy idea,” Dean says, watching Cas lace himself into a pair of Dean’s boots, unfolding the hem of his pant leg over them. “Could we just not open the box again? I mean, what if we just don’t summon them? What if we just get the f*ck outta here?”

Theoretically, it sounds like the greatest idea either one of them has had since Cas opened his mouth months ago and said, ‘There’s a box.’

Cas stands up, dressed in Jimmy’s Sunday best. “You and I both know that would be too easy. They will want to fulfill the contract that Jimmy created by invoking them in the first place. Until it’s done, they can return at any time. At least with us summoning them, we get to choose the battleground, to prepare.”

*Sigh*

Dean drags his lucky Zeppelin shirt on over his head. “Cas, I gotta tell you, buddy. I’m beginning to regret you opening that box.”

“Beginning?” Cas quips with a self-deprecating smile. He eyes Dean for a long moment, bottom lip pulled between his teeth. “Come here.”

Dean goes, of course he does, folding himself into Cas’ embrace, burying his face in Cas’ pulse. Even though everything he’s wearing belongs to Jimmy, he still smells like Cas .

Standing there mirrored up against each other, Dean tries not to let the panic seep in around the edges of this moment, as the two of them simply exist together, breathing each other in, but it’s still there, permeating the seconds that tick by. Cas tilts Dean’s jaw, eyes flicking between Dean’s, searching his soul, peeking in the nooks and crannies, trying to find signs that Dean doesn’t wanna be here.

“Stop looking for ways to boot me from the A-team, Cas. I’m with you in this.”

Cas leans in and presses their lips together. Just a brief, reassuring touch to remind them what’s at stake.

As if Dean could ever forget. “Alright,” he says on a deep inhale. “Let’s do it.”

***

Cas’ fingers are just as nimble in his brother’s skin as they were in his own. He works the Lament Configuration, already having spent hours figuring out its intricacies and patterns, staring at the way colored shadows appear to move in the gloss.

Dean’s jittery with nerves. This is the moment of truth.

Cas coaxes each section out in turn, the hallway light guttering in and out as they stand in the doorway of the attic, Dean trying not to look at the skinned body laying on the boards. It’s warmer up here now, the air filthy with a greasy miasma that sinks into invisible potholes around them.

What they’ve done… it feels more real now that Dean’s coming down off the initial high of having Cas back. You can’t avoid reality, even if that’s precisely what they spent the last hour doing whilst in the throes of invincibility; f*cking and kissing and reveling in their victory. Counting Cas’ life as his own before they’ve done the most difficult part. Because, no matter how grueling divesting Jimmy of his skin was — both physically and morally — the next part is gonna be the real trick to pull off.

Cas slants Dean a glance, more serious than Dean’s ever seen him. “Are you ready?”

No. But if this is it... If Dean’s about to get dragged to hell, to be torn to shreds on chains, and tortured on a rack day after day until the end of time, then he’s glad he did it for love. He’s done little with his sh*tty life up until now. Dying for true love is something he wouldn’t mind defining him.

“Yeah,” he answers, voice teetering right on the edge.

“Dean,” Cas says, touching his forehead to Dean’s. “I won’t let them take you, I promise.”

I won’t let them take you either.

The last section of the configuration pops out, and with it, the lightbulb in the hall.

The familiar light show begins inside the attic, the multi-toned blue making the storm outside look trivial by comparison, like Mother Nature has to abide by the same physics as everything else in this world, but the Cenobites don’t have any such shackles binding them.

As the room rolls and creaks like a ship, the four of them appear on the other side of Jimmy’s body, apathetic and disquieting. They flash in and out of focus, and with them, the attic. It becomes an abattoir with scarlet walls, then a hotel room with blue walls, then reverts to its original form of death-scent and bare boards.

“You invoked us,” Pinhead intones once the nausea-inducing display settles down.

Dean fights the urge to pat himself down and say something stupid and flippant like, "Yeah, have you seen my keys?" Instead, he swallows hard and nods. “Yeah. Yes.” Against every instinct in his body except the urge to protect Cas, Dean steps into the attic, putting himself between the Cenobites and the man he’s willing to go to hell for. “I found Castiel.” He gestures to the body.

Deepthroat and Pinhead look. Chatterer and Butterball stay focused in Dean’s direction.

“He is dead,” Pinhead says. “What use is he to us dead?”

Cas is at Dean’s back, a hand on his shoulder to move him out of the way so he can put himself in the line of fire. Dean refuses to budge, forcing Cas to step around him so that they’re side-by-side. Which he’ll allow for now. ‘Cause he’s not letting Cas do anything stupid. Not after they’ve come so far.

“The deal was that Dean finds Castiel,” Cas says in Jimmy’s voice. “He has fulfilled his part of the bargain.”

“We wanted him alive,” Deepthroat rasps.

Panic slithers in at the edge of Dean’s consciousness.

f*ck.

It’s apparent that Cas is starting to fray a little around the fringes when he insists, “You didn’t tell him that. You promised—”

Pinhead’s voice crackles with electricity when he interrupts, “We did no such thing. We did not promise anything.”

Deepthroat adds, “We said that we would consider sparing your souls in exchange for the one who escaped us.”

Damn.

Dean flips through the picturebook of his life, slowing down when he gets to the latter pages with Cas, flashbulb memories hurriedly and haphazardly glued in because their time together has always been limited. It’s them in hotel rooms, at the carnival, downstairs in the kitchen a half-hour ago. He’s terrified of putting himself through the agony of what Cas went through — getting torn apart over and over again until the end of time — but he’s more terrified of a world without Cas in it.

If this is all he gets, he’d still do the deal all over again exactly the same. No regrets.

“Okay,” Dean says, not wanting this extremely precarious situation to go on long enough that they get discovered. This can’t have been for nothing. Jimmy and the others can’t have died for nothing. Cas can’t have died and come back for nothing. “If I go with you, Jimmy stays here."

“Dean,” Cas’ voice drops to his own timbre, before he pulls it back. “Don’t. Please.”

Pinhead watches their interaction with growing interest. “You are more invested than before,” he notes. “Before, I could sense your warring motivations, but now…?” He smiles that god-awful smile, the one full of menace and sulfur and grave dirt. “Ah. Castiel.”

Goddammit. They’re both f*cked.

A theory that’s confirmed when the dead bulb hanging above Jimmy’s body sizzles impossibly back to life, the filament burning brighter and brighter until it’s excruciating to look at. A high-pitched noise accompanies it, ringing louder and louder, becoming a barrage of color and sound until Dean doesn’t know whether to cover his eyes or ears.

The house moves beneath their feet, swaying like a pair of teenagers on prom night.

“We warned you what would happen if you tried to cheat us,” Deepthroat tells them, her voice still the same papery scrape even over the noise.

“Run!” Cas yells and Dean’s hard-wired to obey, so, grabbing Cas’ arm, he does.

Back in the hallway, the light flashes like firework explosions, coloring the walls in too-bright shades of blues and reds and yellows.

“Don’t leave us,” Deepthroat calls out after them.

“We’ve got such sights to show you,” Pinhead adds, voice thick with taunting and laughter.

Dean’s hand slips from Cas’ forearm to his wrist, but he’s not letting go dammit, and together they stagger down the stairs, near blind and deaf, the two of them bouncing like pinballs between the walls and banister.

Somewhere in the melee, a church bell begins to toll for them.

The house itself appears to be coming apart at the seams; a yawning rumble beneath them, originating from deep in the earth, cracking the drywall, creating huge fissures as they run down and down. Plaster dust fills the air like a mushroom cloud. Dean can’t breathe, can’t hear, can’t see. All he can feel is the heat of Cas’ skin where he’s refusing to let go.

He keeps pushing on, mercifully staying on his feet long enough for them to reach the bottom of the stairs.

It’s worse here; like being at the epicenter of an earthquake that’s shaking the foundations of the house. Dean stumbles down the hallway toward the front door and hopefully freedom, but then Cas’ hand is yanked out of his, and something pointed shoved into his palm in its place.

“I’ll hold them off,” Cas yells above the din, wind kicking up and swirling through the house.

“Not leaving without you, Cas!”

“Go!” Cas orders. On the floor above, Chatterer appears, dragging a hooked rod through the drywall, bisecting the wallpaper, snagging photo frames and sending them crashing to the floor. “Close the configuration!”

“No! I’m not going anywhere!”

Cas’ expression runs the gamut; from annoyance to amusem*nt, settling on fond exasperation. Closing the space between them, he presses a kiss to Dean’s forehead. “I love you.” Then, with his reanimated, supernatural strength, he shoves Dean away and bolts back up the stairs.

Dean goes to follow him, because f*ck this, but the box in his hand shudders. He glances up the stairs; Cas is no longer visible, having disappeared into the bright white light, all Patrick Swayze at the end of Ghost, and Dean swears under his choked breath.

Close the configuration. Right.

The pieces are all pushed out, raised like the spires of a cathedral.

In the dining room to Dean’s left, the furniture is smoldering charcoal, foul-smelling and turning to ash like a vampire in the sun. The clock has stopped. A crack in the flooring spiderwebs between his feet.

“f*ck, f*ck, f*ck,” Dean mutters, fingertips slipping blindly over the configuration, trying to manipulate the box into closing.

His hands are shaking and the house is howling. He’d be better off doing this outside, but he flat-out refuses to leave without Cas.

Cas.

Dean’s heart turns over and restarts.

f*ck it. Win or lose, he and Cas are in this together. Death, life, whatever it all means.

Box still in hand, Dean starts back up the stairs. He manages to shove a spiky piece of the configuration back in, spurred on by his desire to save Cas. Halfway up, he begins to struggle, fighting against hurricane-strength winds, suspended in time for long moments as he gets nowhere, coming up against a wall of nothing that only lets up enough for him to move when he yells Cas’ name over the train-tunnel howl.

He catches himself on two steps above, his palms and the configuration plunged into viscous blood that materializes like quicksand, painting his hands a rich red, but Dean ignores the gag at the back of his throat, forces himself to push on, to reach Cas.

When he makes it to the main landing, the sound of rattling chains yanks Dean’s attention to the master bedroom. “Cas?” he shouts.

An anguished scream answers him.

No no no no no.

Now contending with the wind up here, Dean shoulders the bedroom door open, stumbling inside to absolutely no resistance and unnerving tranquility. Like a tornado that has passed over and dissipated as quickly as it came.

Chatterer and Deepthroat are there on either side of the bed. They have a mimicry of Dean bound and chained down, bloodied and thrashing silently with instruments of torture sticking out of his body. But Dean doesn’t give a sh*t for their parlor tricks and mindf*cks; his one-track mission is to save Cas.

“Where is he?” Dean demands, the only weapon in his arsenal the box that seems to have a f*cking mind of its own; closing at completely random intervals. Like now for instance. “What have you done to him?”

“Which one?” Deepthroat asks as the Chatterer approaches Dean. “Your husband or your lover?”

“Castiel!” Dean snarls, and another piece of the puzzle slots back into place. Three down, three more to go. “Where the f*ck is he?”

She looks upward to the attic. On the bed, Dean’s replica breaks its silence and releases an ear-piercing scream that bursts the windows, sending shards of glass through the air. A fragment slashes his cheek and Chatterer’s jaw works faster in excitement, his deformed fingers reaching out for Dean.

“f*ck you both,” Dean tells them, dodging out of Chatterer’s grasp, slow crunch of glass beneath his boots as he turns back into the chaos, bolting for the second flight of stairs.

Come on, Cas, just hold on. I’m coming.

The fourth spire clicks into place as Dean takes the steps two at a time.

“Cas!” he calls out, hitting the top of the spiral staircase, darting across the short landing. The attic door is shut and he tries to turn the knob, but it burns white-hot in his bloodied palm. Undeterred, he pounds on the door. “Cas!”

Half of the roof is missing now. The sky above Dean is clear and starless, the storm a thing of the past, despite the one taking place inside the house.

“Give him back and I’ll do whatever you want!” Dean shouts through the door, desperation seizing him. The fifth section of the configuration settles down.

One more.

The door is flung open and Dean staggers inside.

Cas is hooked through in at least a dozen places; Jimmy’s flesh, Cas’ body. Suspended far above the boards, fresh wounds gouge him, tearing him open in his shoulders, his ribs, his buttocks, his calves. He’s nothing but blood and pain, in the throes of excruciating torment.

Dean feels the hot spill of tears on his cheeks before he realizes that he’s crying. “Cas!”

Cas’ head lifts. Even pulled apart as he is on chains, he still has the wherewithal to appear annoyed about the fact that Dean hasn’t done as he was told. “GO,” he mouths, blood staining his teeth.

“I’m not leaving you,” Dean tells him, meaning it wholeheartedly. If they both get dragged to hell, then so be it.

Dean’s never loved anyone as much as he loves Cas. Not the brother whose childhood hunger was the driving force behind Dean selling his body, not the father he desperately wanted to emulate as a kid, not the mother who died when he was four and who used to cut up his PB&J sandwiches. Not the husband who showed him kindness, but nothing else.

Not himself. Cas.

Dean would give Cas the last breath in his lungs just so he could live a minute longer.

The sixth piece folds back into the configuration.

This time, the bellow doesn’t come from Dean or Cas, but the Cenobites. The lights flicker and grow brighter still, the noise building toward a crescendo. Dean has to turn his head, the strength of the light like a minor sun. It burns hotter and hotter, brighter and brighter, louder and louder, reaching a peak that pushes Dean to the cliff’s edge of sanity, staring into the abyss below with unseeing eyes.

And then, nothing.

The sound, the light, it all disappears. Reality snaps back into place. The house stops its decay. Ash and plaster flutter down like snow. Dean’s ears ring in the silence.

Letting the sealed configuration fall from his open hand, Dean stumbles toward Cas’ lifeless body on the floorboards next to Jimmy’s, almost womb-like, the two of them surrounded — and bound — by blood and viscera, yet separated in birth, life, and death.

“Cas.” Dean collapses to his knees and crawls the rest of the way, tears freefalling now. “Nononono.” He reaches Cas, bowing over him, his shaking hands finding the wounds caused by the meat hooks the Cenobites took back to hell with them. “C’mon Cas, you’re not allowed to leave me. You promised, man, you promised you’d always come back.” He’s sniveling, snot and tears and spit mixing, but Cas is barely breathing, his chest stuttering with each drag, his pulse weak and thready, and Dean’s never been so scared in his damn life.

This close to death, the smell is richly vile, the pungent scent of rotting meat in Dean’s nostrils, and he knows, knows it isn’t Cas — it’s Jimmy — but Cas is dying and soon it’ll be the both of them, and Dean can’t, he just can’t. He’ll burn himself and Cas both to ashes before he lets Cas rot.

“Cas.” Dean’s voice is a drained thing, tapping the exsanguinated vein of emotion for one last plea to whatever might be listening. “I need you.” One of Dean’s palms supports Cas’ head, while the other is over the wound underneath Cas’ ribcage, right where his tattoo used to be in his old skin. Blood gushes between Dean’s fingers, staining the mangle of Jimmy’s ripped-open clothes, the knees of Dean’s jeans. It’s everywhere; in the thicket of Cas’ blood-stiffened hair, the lines of Dean’s palm, writing and rewriting his fortune in crimson and ichor. Spine curved as he cradles the body of his love, Dean begs Cas to stay with him, bargains with the universe to allow Cas to fight his way back to him one more time.

Pumping sluggish but steady, the blood just keeps coming. Until it doesn’t — abruptly turned off like a faucet — and then… then Dean lifts his hand and it’s like someone pressed rewind on the universal remote because Cas’ skin is healing, fusing itself back together, closing the wound until all that’s left is a jagged red scar, and even that begins to fade to a puffy pink as Dean watches, dumbfounded.

Cas’ lungs rattle with the breath he hauls down deep. Again and again, rate picking up, his heart thumping strong and fast again beneath his breastbone.

“Cas?” Hope rises in Dean’s chest, baby bird-like in its fragility.

A beat, then two. Cas’ eyes flutter open, his lashes a dark smudge against pale skin that’s getting brighter with every passing second. “Hello, Dean.”

Surrounded by the debris of Cas’ childhood home, next to the body of his husband and Cas’ twin, Dean laugh-sobs. “Hi, Castiel.”

Cas’ brow creases in consternation. “Do we have anything to eat?”

***

Standing in the ruin of the kitchen, Dean hands Cas a sandwich on half a plate from his and Jimmy’s wedding set. Dean’s always hated the things; ugly as f*ck and style over substance. He’s glad that most of ‘em are laying in smithereens at his feet, and the ones that aren’t? Dean might just add them to the pile.

For now though — “So are you gonna explain to me what the f*ck happened back there?” He could be referring to a great many things: the whole Cas coming back from the brink of death thing (though, really, considering the last couple of weeks, that’s kinda the least miraculous), Cas sacrificing himself for Dean at the last minute, Dean being able to close the configuration that now sits on the fractured countertop they f*cked on less than an hour ago.

“I had a hunch,” Cas says, devouring the sandwich like it’s haute cuisine rather than just something Dean slapped together with the bits he managed to forage out of the carnage of the kitchen. There’s disaster all around them, but Dean only has eyes for Cas as he chews and swallows.

“ You had a hunch ?” Dean repeats.

Cas’ laugh is coarse, his vocal cords hacked to pieces by plaster dust and chains. He reaches up to stroke a thumb over the curve of Dean’s cheekbone, rough drag of his fingerprint across the sliced-open skin. The gesture is a tender one. Too tender for all the sh*t that’s happened tonight, and it has Dean’s battered heart kick-thumping behind his ribcage. “Everything you’ve ever done is out of love. No, listen to me. Everything you believe makes you dirty and bad, everything Jimmy and others made you feel dirty and bad for, you did for love. For your brother, for your family, for me.” He draws back, dialing down the intensity so that Dean can breathe again. “The Lament Configuration feeds off of darkness and self-interest. I had a feeling that a more pure motivation than greed or self-indulgence might be the thing to seal it. It doesn’t get much more pure or selfless than love.”

Cas put his faith, his life, in this being real.

Dean clears his throat, shoving all that gooey emotion — along with the urge to burst into a Jennifer Rush power ballad — right down. “So… what you’re saying is that Jesus forgives?”

“No, but apparently, some world-traveling supernatural sad*sts do.” When Dean rearranges his expression into one of ‘what the f*ck’ incredulity, Cas’ lips quirk, and he amends, “Or, I suppose it could have been the French toymaker dabbling in black magic who built the mechanism into the configuration. Either way.”

Dean needs alcohol for this conversation, so he wrenches open the twisted metal of the refrigerator door and pulls out a beer. It’s still cold and he pops the cap on the edge of the counter, something Jimmy used to bitch at him for. “So we’re still going to Judeo-Christian hell for all the murders, but we’re free from a bunch of unearthly weirdos who took their fascination with BDSM ten steps too far? Good to know.”

“I think the most apt phrase is ‘you win some, you lose some’,” Cas responds wryly.

And yeah. Yeah. Today is definitely a win, ‘cause he’s got Cas back. He’s tempted to leave it there, because really, it’s the only thing that matters.

But. Dean’s never been one to leave sh*t alone, and he’s pretty f*cking curious, so he’s gotta ask one more thing, ‘cause, y’know. Enquiring minds and all that. “Do you know how you managed to rewind your death scene, ‘cause man, I gotta tell you…” Dean trails off, hoping that he won’t have to actually elaborate. The choke in his throat is already giving him away. If he has to say ‘I almost lost you again’ aloud, he’s gonna start bawling.

Cas’ face is a response in itself, but he still elaborates. “The regeneration process has made me stronger. My best guess is that my body healed itself.” He half-shrugs like that’s a thing people just say — “You wouldn’t believe the week I’ve had. Monday, I almost burnt the bake sale brownies, Tuesday I came back to life because my lover and I murdered four people, Wednesday, the kids spilled juice all over the car seats…”

Apparently, killing people does a body good. Maybe Elizabeth Báthory was onto something after all.

Dean takes a pull of his beer. “That mean you’re like Wolverine or some sh*t?”

Hardly seems fair. Dean wants to be virtually indestructible too.

Cas’ expression is pained. Probably because of Dean’s nerdy reference. “I’m not immortal—”

Dean keeps his lips zipped, not wanting to incur the wrath of the Stare™, for explaining that, technically, neither is Logan.

“—I’m just a little less susceptible to wounding. But I don’t know how long it’ll last, whether it will last, whether it’s a battery that needs to be recharged…”

So, they might have to kill more people so Cas can survive?

Eh. It doesn’t seem as much of an obstacle for them being together as it probably should be.

They’ll figure that sh*t out as they go. Whatever they gotta do, they’ll do. It’s that simple. Whatever it f*cking takes.

And hey, maybe they can give religion a whirl and get themselves absolved by a priest bound by Catholic canon not to tell a soul. Might be worth a shot, ‘cause if Dean goes to Hell-hell for murder, he’s gonna expect Cas to get his ass into gear and pull him the f*ck out. “So, what now?”

Cas produces his pack of smokes and the lighter Dean returned to him. The flicker of orange flame lights his features up in interesting ways as he dips the end of his cigarette into it. He breathes in on the smoke, exhaling through the next few words he speaks. “Now we can do whatever you want. We could get on a random train with nothing more than the money in our pockets, the clothes on our backs, and see where it takes us…” He trails off, eyeing the box. “Or we could buy a house together.”

Dean wants it all: the adventure, the hot sex, the stability and security.

“Why not both?”

*~*~*

Appearances can be deceiving. At first glance, you'd assume that Dean is happily married to his husband Jimmy. But, if you knew Jimmy, the real Jimmy, you'd know that his eyes were warm where his twin’s are sharp. You'd know that Jimmy never smoked a day in his life, even though these days, he always carries a packet of smokes and an engraved lighter. You’d know that Jimmy thought piercings were mutilation, even though there’s now a silver ring through his left nipple, put there by Dean.

Because yeah, actually, appearances are rarely what you expect.

And that’s the thing about Castiel Novak. One of many things, because Cas’ unpredictability is merely one of his traits that always keep Dean on his toes. From surprising Dean with a night in a Swedish ice hotel, to f*cking him in the restroom of the tattoo parlor where they get their first matching ink, to making Dean the perfect cup of coffee after a long evening of murder and cleanup, he never ceases to amaze and please.

It’s not perfect. They argue like assholes about the stupidest things — Dean sometimes leaves the lid off the toothpaste and Cas sorts the groceries in the fridge like an eighteen-year-old college student — but it’s them just as much as the good; the dirt, the anger, the grief next to the sparkly pinnacle of happiness. The roots of human experience. And there’s nobody else Dean would rather have by his side for it all than Cas.

Gods, monsters, angels, demons; Dean doesn’t know what exists, what awaits them when they die, or the next time they accidentally open a portal to another dimension.

But him and Cas? Dean knows that it’s the real thing.