Chapter Text
In my dripping (pain)
The balmer winds and terrors
Carry him off
-Sappho (trans. Anne Carson)
The first time Dean ever fucks Cas it’s dizzying and desperate—but they don't kiss.
It’s on a hunt. Brutal and sickening in ways Dean really didn't think he’d be shocked by anymore. That is, until they wandered into a cabin in the woods and found one of the missing mothers trying to pull what was left of her son's spine out of his neck so she could mount it on the pike properly. She hadn't been alone. There were at least seven other women cheering her on, singing in haunting harmonies while blood crept up their arms. Dean wasn't alone either, and he wasn't going to forget the look on Castiel's face as long as he lived. Which, barring any more miracles, wouldn’t be that long.
{-_-}
It starts in a diner, unassuming. Sam glued to his laptop and Cas gazing out the window like he does. Sometimes Dean wonders if he can see stuff they can’t—well, he knows he can, but he wonders what that stuff is. What lurks on the outside edges of his gaze in ways Cas is familiar with? In ways Dean can't even casually daydream about?
Cas’s gaze flicks to meet his own, quick and reflective. Dean takes a massive bite out of his turkey club—one that would make Sam flinch and throw napkins at him. Cas just maintains eye contact, tilts his head the slightest bit. Dean chews with his mouth open. Cas gives him a ghost of a smile over the dirty formica table top.
Sam throws a wad of napkins at him. “Stop it, dude. I’m trying to read. The font on this PDF is so small.”
Dean rolls his eyes and wipes the mayo-mustard-tomato-seeds off his face and tosses the napkins back at his brother's shaggy head. Sam makes a deeply affronted noise. Dean casts a quick grin at Cas, who’s watching them from his spot, untouched tomato soup and a pile of saltines in front of him—another little mockery of human need that Cas sometimes spontaneously decided to put up.
“This is serious, guys. This is the seventh mom to go missing and if we don’t figure it out soon—“
“I already did, Sammy. MILF sex cult.”
“Dean it is not a MILF sex cult.”
“It may be a MILF sex cult,” Cas says. Watery light is pouring onto their table from the window. It washes him out, makes the reds on his nose and knuckles that much flatter. Dean beams.
“See. It may be a MILF sex cult.” His voice is so smug it pisses even him off for a moment. Sam's mouth tightens and his eyebrows pinch, but he doesn’t say anything.
{-_-}
It turned out it was a MILF sex cult. In a way.
Nothing is ever just a MILF sex cult, that would be too easy. That’s a world that nobody, no matter how righteous, gets to live in.
It’s some sort of Greek cult thing. Cas and Sam correct him in haunting unison that the Bacchic cults have just as much Roman history but Dean couldn’t care less.
The point was: moms everywhere were peacing out of their everyday lives with no warning and sexing each other up in the woods for five days straight every month. And Dean… Well, Dean kinda wanted to see.
“Dean. There’s an entire fucking play about why that’s a bad idea. We just have to see if they’re being brainwashed, gank the leader and call it a night.”
“Oh come on, Sammy. Like you dont wanna be peepin’ no toms tonight.” Dean laughs, shoving a stake of myrtle through his belt loop. He tries his best to put on the Samwise Gamgee accent, but the joke seems to fly past the two of them. He glances over at Cas across the motel room, who seems pretty entranced with a carved panther they found at the scene of the last disappearance. It’s some sort of sparkling sharp rock and Cas looks at it like it holds the secrets of every universe.
Dean wonders if Cas will finally start decorating his room. If this filched maybe magic item will have a spot on his bedside table that looks the exact same as when Dean dragged it in there months ago.
Dean had a habit of carving little notches on motel bed frames, pulling free pieces of cracked tiles in the bathroom or peeling up the silicone where it was rotting away from the fixtures. When he was a kid he did this mindlessly, but as he got older, and started thinking about it, he realized he was trying to make marks places. He wasn’t gonna remember any given motel room, but this way, even if only for a short time, the room would remember him.
Feels wrong to have a place and not decorate it. But Cas isn’t quite wired that way, maybe.
{-_-}
Something about traipsing through the woods at night always makes Dean feel like a little kid. In some ways that’s a good feeling, but in most ways, it makes him feel a little bit mashed up inside. Like someone put him in the bed of a truck and rattled him around for a few miles.
Cas doesn’t need a flashlight, but Dean and Sam cast weak, yellow light over rotting plant matter, slick spaces where the puddles lay in shadow and never really dried up. The snow had left the woods ages ago, but the melt lies heavy on the remains of last years’ fall leaves.
They hear the singing before they spot anyone through the trees. It weaves its way through the trunks, strangely physical and clear despite the distance and the fact it was… you know. A sound.
Something about it feels off. Feels like a dislocated shoulder. The harmonies should be sweeping but instead they creep. The rhythm is syncopated in a way that puts Dean’s teeth on edge. He doesn’t want Sam anywhere near this.
It’s suddenly such a core truth that Dean has to get Sam out right-now-this-instant that his fingers twitch on his gun and he whirls around to face the other direction.
Around him the chant builds.
“Sam. Impala. Now.”
“Dean, what ?”
“Now, Sam.”
And he doesn’t want Sam anywhere fucking near the wrongness that is screaming inside him. Urging him and tugging at him to do something bloody and brutal. His vision swims and Sam is still there. Still refusing to move. It feels like all of his teeth are loose and garbled in his mouth, like his bones are breaking in fistfuls and all he wants to do is rend.
“ Now , Sammy.” Dean’s reaching for something else to say, to actually convince him, because it’s not like Sam is going to fucking listen . Then Cas reaches past him and puts a hand on Sam’s shoulder, and they both vanish.
“Cas?” Dean asks the empty woods. He appears again a second later, in that same swish of wings. Without Sam. “Cas? What’d you do?” He tries to keep the edge out of his voice, feeling like a rabid dog.
“I took Sam to the car, like you said.” Cas says this plainly, flatly. But there’s something in the way his eyes linger on Dean’s face that isn’t quite as smooth as normal. Something jagged that sticks to him; the serrated edge of a hunting knife.
They sprint the rest of the way without saying a word to each other. Keeping pace even though Cas could fly ahead. If Dean didn’t know better he’d think Cas was enjoying stretching his legs out, long and lean, eating up the muddied earth.
The chant echoes on.
They arrive at the cabin. Dean can’t even make a joke, the terror and the hunger biting at him— through him. He’s so aware of Cas breathing jagged beside him. Electric and winded in ways he doesn’t need to be.
Never needed to be. Choses to be. Another human facsimile.
Ruddy red is brushing over Cas’ nose, joined on the back of Cas’ neck and across his cheekbones.
Dean drags his eyes away and is met with a very different red.
The woman’s name is Abigail Themus and her son’s name was Peter. He had been named Peter, at some juncture, in some hospital, by someone who (theoretically) loved him. Pieces of him are strewn across the floor, strings of muscle hanging from the joints like an unravelled sweater. Skin doesn’t rip clean, like hitting the wrapping paper in the exact way with a pair of scissors, or tearing cloth along the selvedge. It rips jagged; elastic snapped— taut and breaking along invisible tension points.
Seeing Abigail wiggle a vertebrate out of her son’s neck and push a broom handle into the space left behind is what does it. The bone slaps onto the floor, bright bright red and ruddy. It rolls across the ground and one of the other women picks it up. Dean doesn’t recognize her but he sees the bone rising to her lips and her naked greedy smile and he cracks her skull faster then blinking. A chunk of her hair catches his watch and it lifts the part of the skull it was attached to, spraying gore out across a floor that was crying out for varnish. Blood soaks in fast on dry wood. Dean whirls and his eyes fix on the next mother.
He doesn’t even take out his gun.
It’s brutal and savage and unhinged. His feet skid across the gore on the ground and he hasn’t felt this untethered since hell herself laid a razor in his hands and crooned at him to start slicing.
The mothers keep chanting.
He catches a glimpse of khaki coat and it registers in him that Cas is fighting at his side, terrible and beautiful. Dean wonders if maybe, years ago, this was how they clawed out of hell together.
If they pulled each other up hand over hand, wrecking everyone’s shit on the way out the door. Something about that image catches hold of him; Dean and Cas, Cas and Dean, strong and lethal and united .
It’s unbearable.
They stumble out of the cabin. Dean is covered in gore. Cas hasn’t fared much better. He isn’t squeamish. Ask anyone, he’s the furthest thing. But... this--he shucks his jacket off. He needs it off, and then he reaches for Cas, and he pulls his coat off too. And Cas just looks at him, blank. Or not blank. That evaluating look all angels have, like they’re tallying up the sins against the good deeds, with that extra Cas flavor, like he’s never seen a face before, and he wants to know it inside and out.
“Uh. Can you do some kinda. Angel laundry?” Dean tries, gesturing to his discarded jacket. His voice comes out rougher than he expected. Cas is closer than he realized. He doesn’t stand this close anymore, but he used to. He used to stand so close that Dean could stumble and--
That train of thought runs into a wall. He wants to shake himself out, but the feeling, whatever it is--it’s in deep. Embedded far under the skin. Thunders to the same beat of that chant, lingering in his bones.
“Dean,” Cas says, and it’s rough too--although he’s always rough. It’s urgent, demanding, somehow. Dean realizes he’s holding Cas by the bicep. He’s so close.
Dean steps back, lets go of Cas. He’s been holding him so tight his fingers tremble with nothing to clench onto.
“Is Sam gonna come help us clean up this mess, or...?” He isn’t going to get an answer about cleaning the clothes. For the most part Cas is constant, but sometimes his powers seem to… fritz.
“No. I locked him in.” Cas stays standing where he is.
“So what? He’s a grown man, he can just pop the locks.”
“No. I made them inaccessible from the inside.”
“You seriously gave Baby child safety locks? Are you kidding me.” The banter is almost normal. It could be a conversation like any other day, but for the breathlessness hiding behind Dean’s teeth.
Cas looks at him. The same way he always does. Like there’s nothing else to see in the whole of creation. Dean can’t fucking stand it.
He tries to turn and start walking. The chant keeps moving through him, that same odd syncopation.
Abruptly, Cas takes back his coat. He pulls it from Dean's hands where it was bundled with his own. Cas slips out of his suit jacket. Unrolls himself from the soaking blood and running brains. Folds the overcoat inside the suit to keep his shirt clean as he carries it. Dean feels the night air worm its way up his back, trace along the divot of his spine.
They haven’t moved from the brightdark clearing; night fencing them in. But the noises of the wild are pushing around them, free and without consequence. Dean feels drunk. He can tell his pupils are blown wide and dark, trying to catch every hint of movement from Cas. His eyes feel itchy and heavy, the weight of his eyelashes pulls his blinks slow. He breathes and wants Cas closer, so he goes to him.
Tossing his ruined coat on the ground he fiddles carefully with the angel’s tie, loosening the knot with one hand and brushing the gore from the ribbed fabric with the other.
Castiel’s mouth is open. Dean is so so so aware that it’s open, the breath hot. He can feel his own warm breath swelling like an ocean tide over his lips, the cool air of the wilds lays against his sensitive skin. Does Cas feel it, too?
God, the number of times Dean’s asked himself that. With wonder or frustration, rage or trepidation. Fear or hope. Can Cas feel it too?
Cas’s fingers catch on his, tumble into them. Warm and thick, they roll over the hand trying to brush the tie clean. Dean feels it catch in his throat, flare through him in a way it shouldn't. Has no damn right to. That Dean has never asked for.
“It’s useless, Dean.” Cas mutters. Dean can feel the stirring of air against his cheek, and lets his eyes flick to Cas’ face anyway. He knew Cas would be this close, but he didn’t know he’d be tilting his head like that . That he’d curve his neck into a perfect slope, that his chin would be tilted up just the perfect number of degrees to nearly have their lips brush. Perfect, perfect perfect.
“Useless?” He breathes, lost in the meaning of the words, no understanding of what Cas was talking about. The other man shifts, ever so slightly, and Dean sways with him.
“The tie.” Cas sounds wrecked. Timbre heavy and rolling, a boulder dragged along a riverbed. “It’s ruined.”
“Oh.” Dean’s voice is all breathy again. So low it cracks. “That’s—uh. That’s too bad.”
“ Dean .” Hairs raise on Dean. His arms, his neck, his shins. “I don’t care about the fucking tie.”
His fingers tighten on Dean’s and the noise that slips out is involuntary and completely compromising. Dean swears. Yanks Cas in with his tie. Cas groans and pushes him into the closest tree, hand on his hip the other sliding up Dean’s body fast. It finds its home tangled in Dean’s hair as they pant, joining the night noises.
He’s ripping Cas’ tie free, undoing his fly and jerking the fabric down the not-quite-a-man’s thick thighs, wiry with black hair. Cas’ belt clinks somewhere in the vicinity of his knees. Dean drags his fingers up through it on the way back up, delighting in the texture as he mouths at Cas’ neck.
Castiel growls. Holy shit.
Dean bites him sharp, a reward. He thuds back into the tree, shirt riding up and the bark digging into his exposed tender skin. Dean sucks in a breath, the spring night air still clinging to a hint of winter past, even this late in the season.
Cas yanks three layers of shirts off Dean’s shoulders and tugs them down his arms, unweildy and awkard, but incredibly fucking hot.
By the time Dean’s pants are around his ankles he’s rock hard and has Cas pinned instead.
He’s aware, trembling on the edge of acknowledgment, that Cas is only pinned because he wants to be— and that’s a heady recognition of frustration and attraction all its own. In another, even more distant part of himself, Dean is aware that they had not talked about this at all beforehand. Part of him always thought they’d talk about it before—
He viciously twisted that thought off at the pass. Something was going on, yes. But, fuck he could not care less.
Cas grabs his ass and grinds up against him, brutal and precise— calculated. Somehow knowing exactly what would drive Dean completely past the point of no return. Dean grins into the angel’s warmth, greedy and hungry.
Cas starts making little rhythmic noises into the side of his neck, insistent and suggestive— and how could Dean say no to that?
So he fingers him open against the tree trunk, pants hanging off one of Cas’ ankles; it managed to slip off over his slim shoes. They sway a little with the rhythm, brushing up against Dean’s hip where he’s hitched Cas’ leg over to get better access to his asshole. It’s not nearly wet enough, so Dean spits on his fingers while maintaining eye contact with Cas, rolling their foreheads together. He moves to lower his hand but Cas snatches it and sucks .
“Holy shit .” Dean hisses, feeling something inside him shake and break apart, claw and snap and lash trying to hold onto what he wanted most. Luckily, Cas was already in his arms, scrambling for balance, mouth so hot and so wet and so sloppy it was going to send Dean to therapy after this.
“Dean. Hurry up ,” Cas hisses, shoving Dean’s hand back to his ass, arching his hips to meet him. “I want you inside me yesterday ,” he growls. Dean sees stars. Almost fully whites out. He has to take a second to gather himself. Breathe and let his fingers shake a moment before pushing one up against Cas’ entrance, rolling and experimental.
Cas loosens under him, fast and thoughtless as he murmurs against Dean’s neck—breathless. “Come on, come on, come on .”
Dean can't stop himself from obeying, sliding the first knuckle in, shocked at how warm and hot it is. Cas groans through gritted teeth, his jaw jutting out and eyes drifting shut, hands still impatient on Dean, tapping against his shoulder. Urging him on. “You can’t break me, Dean. Angel, remember?”
Cas— needy and rolling, wide and hot, fucking himself sloppy on Dean’s fingers-- two of them now.
And holy shit. Holy shit . He gets to do this to Cas. He’s doing this to him. And Cas is letting him. He pants and begs in Dean's ear to keep going. And Dean does.
That is, he pushes his dick into Cas and fucks him against the tree without mercy or slowing. Cas almost yanks his hair out and Dean is practically drooling with it, mouth open and frantic— painting wet into the thick muscle just before Cas’ shoulder, ruining the angel’s dress shirt.
Cas starts pulling harder, breath in short gasps. Dean takes this as a cue to go deeper. Judging by Cas’ noises, he’s right, and that alone has him gagging for it; moving slow and deep. Cas is tight around him, and Dean can barely stand it. How is this real?
Cas’ nails sink into Dean’s back and rake , and all thoughts Dean had fly out of his head.
Cas latches onto Dean’s neck and sucks , and what gets Dean isn’t the pain or the pleasure or the warmth— it’s the knowledge that Cas just marked him.
“Cas—I’m gonna—” he tries, and Cas makes a noise as if to respond, but it’s too late, and he cums without meaning to.
Cas blinks up at him, blue eyes wider than Dean’s ever seen them.
Oh, fuck.
“Oh,” Cas says.
//////
Castiel can tell the moment everything went wrong.
He exists huge and sprawling, but he feels the pinprick of sand rubbing his grace incorrectly and knows that something has just come into being that should not have. His and Dean’s baby.
Dean’s soul and Cas’ grace were already… well acquainted. Grabbing the soul of a struggling righteous man with a knife and teeth–who hadn't felt a kind touch in forty years–was a dangerous undertaking.
Dean's soul was grabby. And bitey. And clawing and brutal and full of mistrust and hurt and radiance and pain. And Cas was a giant target. His soul had raked and yanked and pulled and, in a manner of speaking, got quite a bit of Cas tucked under his fingernails.
It wasn’t a problem, for the most part. The leftover grace had seared itself into a handprint after Dean struggled up out of the mud and blood of hell. After Castiel’s grace wrapped and swaddled him, warm and expansive and eventually—calming.
It wasn’t a problem. Until just now, when Dean came inside him.
Dean stumbles back a step, face flushed in embarrassment, presumably.
“Did you—um. Should I?” Gesturing to where Castiel’s erection used to be. “Oh.”
Feeling like he just took a brick to the face, Castiel shakes his head.
“No. We should get back. It’s fine,” he says, quickly pulling his pants on and fumbling to do up his belt. Dean has to turn away to pick up his own discarded top layers, and Cas braces himself on the tree for a second. He does not breathe out of pattern, he stays even, because even as things are unravelling inside his true body he at least has control of his vessel. Some control.
That was the moment he felt some of Dean’s come slide down his inner thigh, already cooling. Naturally. He reaches for Dean’s shoulder to fly them back to the car, but Dean flinches.
“Uh. Maybe we outta walk,” Dean says.
“Right,” Cas forces out. His underwear hasn’t been Jimmy Novak’s in a while. Arguably, that first time that the archangels tore him to shreds, whatever got remade was “new” in some sense. But sometimes it’s a reflex to think of his clothes as belonging to Jimmy. After all, they still reflect him. It’s still the same outfit that Jimmy left Pontiac in, even if all the parts have been destroyed and remade or re-bought at some point. He stalls out at the thought: Dean’s come is getting on Jimmy’s boxer-briefs. Because it isn’t true, but it is massively more tangible than the thing that is happening, unbidden, inside his grace.
Dean clears his throat loudly, but says nothing.
And now, during their sexual congress, Dean’s soul had gotten far too close, and dragged its fingernails across the furrows it left years and years ago. It gathered together Castiel’s trailing grace, like a magnet sweeping up fine iron filings. Alive and thrumming. A little ball of combined soul and grace, grace and soul. The bond between them was too strong. It might have been okay if this was the first time. It was okay the first time. But things inside Castiel had shaken loose. Dean came and his soul, vibrant and screaming and still so radiant— had left a piece of itself in the iron filings of Castiel. And something sparked. Life had sparked.
They walk back to the car, where a furious Sam is hammering on the rear window. Castiel remembers the locks, and releases them. Sam unfolds himself from the car, nostrils flaring.
“What the hell , guys?” he demands.
“We took care of it,” Cas says, and then to Dean: “Call if you need something.” He feels like he’s going to spread his wings and find himself unable to fly, but then he’s away. He’s on a street somewhere in Cleveland, staring at a telephone pole full of staples—blessedly far from the Winchesters. But not far enough.
There is no distance that would be far enough.
////////
“What got up his ass?” Sam asks, to the space that Castiel had been occupying a second ago.
Dean often gapes at Sam slack-jawed. It’s one of his default expressions. This, however, looks like he’s shorted-out. Sam looks him over more closely. There’s a bruise starting to form on his neck--kind of a weird shape.
“What happened to you, anyway?”
“We got the MILFs. Cult dealt with. Let’s go home.”
“Uh, are you going to explain why you had Cas put me in time-out?”
“Spell was making me want to kill you. Best solution: get you outta there.” Dean climbs into the car, probably as a means to end the conversation, the way he always tries to when he’s decided to play “dad” and make all the calls with zero justification. But honestly, it’s late, Sam’s tired, the cultists are taken care of. Cas wouldn’t lie, and Dean doesn’t have a reason to. Sam slides into the passenger seat with a sigh.
“So what? We’re just not gonna talk about it?”
“Correct.” Dean starts the engine, and Sam throws a glance out the window and thinks about how much, by horrific percentage, of his life he’s spent in this car.
“Did you do something to Cas? He seemed kinda pissed. And if the spell was making you want to kill me ...” Sam says. This is a peace offering, even though Dean’s the one being an asshole, as per. But rather than respond, Dean clenches the steering wheel so tight his knuckles go white, and presses the gas harder.
“Cas is just being Cas,” he snaps. Sam doesn’t think that’s ever been true. But he’s known Dean long enough that he doesn’t bother pushing the issue.
Cas may be Cas, but Dean is Dean, too.