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 fucking 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 fucking 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 cock, and Cas notices, pulling back with just the twitch of a smirk.
Dean knows exactly what he’s thinking, and while — fuck 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 fuck 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 fuck bare and hard, the two of them dripping rainwater all over the kitchen, Cas in his stolen body, using his twin’s cock to fuck 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 fucks 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 fucks 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 fuck, 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 fucking him speaks to him having the same malfunction. They’re not talking about it, they’re fucking 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 fuck 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 cock, 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 cock 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’ cock. 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 fucking 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 fucking taking place in the kitchen.
Shit.
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, fuck — 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’ cock, 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?”
Fuck. It’s so wrong, so hot, that Dean can feel his orgasm 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-fuck-ever is at the door.
“Again,” Cas demands, cock 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, fuck,” 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, fucking 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.
Fuckity fuck.
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 cock, 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…”
Fucking 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 bullshit. “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 fuck 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 fucking 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 blowjob; 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 fuck 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; fucking 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 shitty 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.
Fuck.
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 fucked.
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 amusement, 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 fuck 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.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” 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.
Fuck 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 shit for their parlor tricks and mindfucks; 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 fucking 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 fuck 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.
“Fuck 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 fuck 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 fuck 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 fucked 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 shit 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 sadists do.” When Dean rearranges his expression into one of ‘what the fuck’ 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 shit alone, and he’s pretty fucking 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 shit?”
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 shit out as they go. Whatever they gotta do, they’ll do. It’s that simple. Whatever it fucking 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 fuck 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 fucking 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.