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There was something loose, shaken to Dean’s core, about his pull towards Amara. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe the validity of his distaste for it, but more like there was an elusive tide sweeping up over him in the low light. It scared him, but the way it scared him was nothing even close to the terror he felt when he thought about Castiel.
It’s not that he didn’t trust Cas. He did. That was the problem. And what’s even more is that he didn’t trust himself. Not that he’d push his feelings for Cas, not that he’d even bring them up to sit stale between him (he already did that, on his knees, bones broken and covered in blood). But he knew that Cas would either take anything he’d throw at him (fists, angel blades, words meant to barb) or he’d leave (unfathomable).
He thinks of Cas, beating him of his own volition, yelling righteously in that alley years back, Dean certain Cas was about to kill him, and Dean yearns.
Every second he’s terrified of losing Cas, losing control of himself and hurting Cas, losing Cas through losing control of himself. It’s constant, desperate, unending. It’s not his vulnerability, his heart’s deepest desire, somehow, and that is sickening, to him, because what is Cas then? Cas is a million glass scrapes of guilt and fear and horror all wrapped up together. The universe even laughs in Dean’s face.
Which is why it’s shocking when Cas knocks on his door one night, trenchcoat off, sleeves rolled up, and tilts his head when Dean asks to come in, eyeing him unusually.
“Dean,” he says, voice gravelly, and Dean’s trying not to be distracted by his forearms.
“Hey, Cas, what’s up?” Dean says, trying to go for casual. It’s getting quite late, so Dean’s not certain on wanting to watch something more, but his nightmares have been really bad lately, so it’s not like he’d say no to an excuse not to sleep. He doesn’t want to wake up unsure if he missed with the scythe again. It’s a constant repeat shock of sharp adrenaline to his chest.
“I know your connection to Amara terrifies you,” Cas says, and wow, don’t ever expect that guy to beat around the bush. Dean feels small at it, but it’s not anything less than he’d admitted. “But I was wondering, are you drawn to anything else?” Cas walks in, closer to Dean, sits at the edge of his bed, and fiddles with the bottom of his rolled up sleeves. It’s adorable.
“I’m not sure what you’re saying, Cas? It’s not like she’s everything to me. Hell, I don’t even know what she is to me. I certainly don’t want it.”
“I understand,” Cas says. And he turns to look Dean straight on. “I understand that, but do you want me?”
Dean’s throat seems to constrict. He wets his lips subconsciously, his breath catching like it’s stuck in some broken tire spoke.
“Uh,” he starts, eloquence wrapped up in a tight ball compressed inside his ribs. “Uh, what do you, you know, mean?”
“I mean, if I told you to strip naked right now for me, would you?” Cas says. Dean’s head is suddenly dizzyingly light. The air is so thin, and he feels some sort of buzzing anticipation rising past static. He feels it too, feels it so distractingly he doesn’t know how to wade these waters safely, how to see if this is some miscommunication Cas has wandered into, or some cruel cruel joke.
“What, looking for some action, there, Buddy?” Dean mutters out, voice a bit incredulous to his dismay. It’s the best he can do.
“Yes,” is all Cas responds with. “I am. So are you, are you not?”
“I, uh,” Dean starts.
“Strip,” Cas repeats. He’s undoing his own boots, ready to lounge at the end of Dean’s bed, eyeing him intensely with his searching blue eyes.
“This is, isn’t this, it’s happening fast,” Dean makes out, throat wrapped up convoluting like seaweed wrapping around an oar.
“Dean, I’m losing my patience,” Cas says, rather disapprovingly, and it makes Dean’s heart jump. Before he realises what he’s doing, he’s lifting the bottom of his shirt over his shoulders, hands shaking slightly, throwing it to the side. Cas pulls himself completely on Dean’s bed, sits there, gazing at him, like he’s trying to study him. Dean’s body feels alight.
“The rest,” Cas eggs on. Dean nods, feeling too high and fuzzy to do much else or question anything. He shimmies his jeans off, socks too, and is left just in his boxers, erection very much visible. Cas eyes him smirking, raising his eyebrow, and Dean pulls them off too, faster than he’s even able to process the gravity of the situation. His brain is never clear when someone else takes control.
Fully naked, Cas stares at him, not saying anything, and Dean always predicted he’d be weird, different, adorable during sex, but he mostly seems cold. It almost seems like some cosmic joke. It’s like Cas is just trying to examine him. Eventually, he moves towards Dean, fully clothed, and puts his right hand on Dean’s cheek. The mere contact has Dean riding a high, and he leans desperately into it, forgetting everything even his fear and shame, as Cas moves his hand down Dean’s body, circling his nipples just to flick the right one, then down, down down, marvelling as Dean gasps out as he grabs ahold of Dean’s cock. Dean’s overwhelmed with pleasure for a few moments, as Cas moves his hand up and down, before he pulls away completely, leaving Dean heaving and trembling a foot away from him.
“I see,” Cas says. Dean wants to ask what he sees, but his tongue is twisted, tied up in his honey mind. He feels so vulnerable he thinks his head might explode. Cas pulls something from his pocket and throws it at him. “Prepare yourself. I want to fuck you,” Cas orders tonelessly.
That fully jolts Dean into some rounded out anxious twine.
His thoughts are getting convoluted, looking at Cas, looking at his best friend who he wants everything with, and the situation gets clearer for a second, and Dean just wants to slow down, to ask Cas what he really wants from this. Is this just sex? Is Cas just curious about what sex with a man is compared to April? Before today, it was unfathomable Dean would be someone Cas would want. And there’s a whole web of complications spinning out of control before Dean has time to process anything.
He’s also never done this before. And it’s just going way way too fast.
He’s so vulnerable, sitting there naked on his bed with Cas just eyeing him, eyeing him like he should be getting on with it already, fully clothed, as if he’s not even interested beyond some kind of fucked up science experience.
“Cas, what’s, uh, what are we doing?”
“Having sex. You do want me to fuck you, right?” Cas says, simply. Finally, he seems to break a bit, smiles, shakes his head. “It’s supposed to be fun, right?”
“Okay...” Dean responds, but it hasn’t unravelled the haywire in his head at all. Cas sighs.
“Do you need me to prepare you instead? I assume you’ve done it before?”
“Uh...” Dean starts. He feels like he’s drowning, failing at this. It’s not even that he’s bad at going into subspace when a pretty woman starts pushing him around. But the stakes are so so high right now, and navigating it feels like walking through a minefield while his brain is wrapped up in gauze. “Not, not with anyone else.”
“Yes, but by yourself, right?”
“How did you know?” Age-old insecurities are rifling through Dean so fast he can’t keep up.
“You seem the type,” Cas says, and it makes Dean feel ashamed, seen, and he thinks he might not be able to do this at all. “I see this is getting to be a lot for you. I’ll help. Lay on your back and spread your legs.”
Dean’s heart is hammering loudly in his chest, but it’s Cas, and he trusts Cas, and he wants him so badly he feels every nerve end on fire, and he can’t help but obey.
And Cas goes too fast, Dean can’t help but recoil, can’t help but wish things would slow down, but he breathes deeply, reminds himself how new Cas is at this, and that he doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be like anyways. He usually runs towards masochism, not in the dangerous shades he does sadism, but it’s too much as it’s too new, but it runs his head dizzy. When Cas is moving three fingers inside him, Dean has to tell him to slow down. When he does, even though it’s nearly as overwhelming, the reassurance that he would makes everything slot more intense than simply disconcerting.
Cas throws the condom he’d been using over his fingers out, and goes to unbuckle his pants, which reminds Dean of how bare he is. He keeps feeling shame, and like he should be caring more, paying more attention, but then those feelings slip him farther into a dull sense of euphoria, and he gets too lost to analyse it.
He dimly registers he wishes Cas would tell him he cares about him, or even just, likes him, instead of being so impersonal. It makes his chest feel weak.
Dean watches as Cas unbuttons his shirt the rest of the way. Cas smirks at Dean’s rapt attention. Eventually, finally, Cas is naked, and Dean is overcome. He wants to put his hands all over him, kiss him and mark him, but he also wants to obey and be good, so he continues laying, watching. His heart swells when Cas tilts his head and smiles. It’s all unnerving, but it’s so so so good.
“Turn over,” Cas says, which causes Dean to suppress a whine. He wants to be able to look at Cas. But he follows the order hastily.
When Cas enters him, his mind is blank, lost, in the pleasure, the pain, all the sensations. It’s so much, his cock getting enough friction to be tantalising, his body sweating and bracing against the bed, his breath heavy, unable to focus on much at all but the movement in his ass. Cas fucks him fast, and hard, and Dean can’t stop moaning, can’t stop being obsessed with the pleasure to the point he never wants it to end, the burning pain aside, pushing it higher, if anything. It’s too much, too fast, but Dean trusts Cas, and he’s so overcome he feels unsure how to change it.
When Cas comes, the sensation is less than welcome, but not long after he flips Dean back over, rings his cock out time and time again before Dean’s coming too, hard, crescendoed to riveting euphoria.
Dean feels himself become clean, too exhausted and worn to do much, but distinctly still feels how sore he is. He wants to go ask Cas to heal him, maybe after he rests a bit, but then he notices Cas is already getting dressed again.
It makes him feel sick, wrung out, and he doesn’t know what to do, what to say, where they stand. He’s dropping hard. He’s in love with Cas, and he’s beginning to see how none of this meant anything. But he’s still naked, and Cas just fucked him, and he feels like he’s shattering at the impossible vulnerability of it all.
“Cas, wait,” Dean says, hoping against hope that Cas won’t just leave. Cas sighs with contempt, but he lies back down on the bed. Dean moves to put his boxers back on because maybe it can make him feel some semblance of normal. He feels like his chest is being fried.
They lay there in silence for a bit. Dean’s too terrified to admit anything or start any type of conversation about what happened. But he relishes Cas’s presence.
“Hm,” Cas notes, and Dean looks at him. He’s biting his lip, looking at Dean curiously. “I don’t understand.”
“What?” Dean asks.
“I don’t... get the appeal,” Cas says. He shrugs his raised shoulder. A litany of possibilities rush to mind. Did Dean do poorly? Was this just some failed sexual experimentation?
“In what, Cas? You need to be more specific. Sex? Men?”
“No,” Cas says, and he rolls his eyes. “I don’t get the appeal in you.” Everything twists, long and dark, and Dean feels nauseous. He’s crashing so low meaning is taking a swan dive.
“Then... why,” Dean trails off, incapable of explaining what he means, how he’s hurt. He kind of gathers he has no legs to stand on, that he didn’t talk to Cas before they decided to do this. That it’s not Cas’s fault that Dean ended up hurt. But Cas also didn’t even care to check either. And Dean is so sick and so low he just wants to be livid.
“I wanted to compare, I guess. I don’t really know why I care about him, but at least it makes sense compared to you.” Cas gives out an empty laugh. “Much prefer fucking your brother.”
Dean feels a sharp hook in his chest. That knocks him off guard. Confused and bitter betrayal boils over. He didn’t see that coming.
“You had sex with Sam?” Dean says, and bizarrely the idea that he somehow didn’t know about it hurts more than the concept itself. He wants to radicalise himself into accepting this, shock himself into the sound of Cas telling him I don’t get the appeal in you . The actual repercussions of the statement are wild buffaloes so far in the distant Dean’s head won’t reach there. None of this makes sense. Sam isn’t even gay. Dean would know right? Why wouldn’t Sam tell him?
“You just... don’t measure up,” Cas says, and Dean’s not sure why he’s doing this. Why he’s doing it like this of all things.
“You know I get that you’re shit at social stuff, Cas, but some things you can keep to your fucking self,” Dean says. He feels so off-centre, sitting there in his boxers on his bed Cas just fucked him on. The entire situation is too much. It’s too new and too intense, and Cas doesn’t even get the appeal of it. Dean feels weirdly used. He’s used to one-night stands, and sure he was going to never handle no-strings-attached sex with Cas well, but this just feels cruel.
He’s adamantly not thinking about Sam and Cas.
“I don’t really care,” Cas says. “I was just curious.”
“Sam isn’t. My brother? Sam?”
“I mean. Do we need to get into your other brother right now?”
“Cas, what the fuck? This isn’t. I’m not going to go crying about my broken heart if you just tell me straight up you don’t want anything with me. Lying about Sam? Is that supposed to be helpful ?”
“I don’t lie,” Cas says.
“No, Sam, Sam would've told me, Sam, Sam isn’t,” Dean’s aware he’s losing himself. Cas just starts laughing.
“I’m pretty sure I know all the things Sam is and isn’t,” he says. And Dean can’t handle it. He feels like he’s being lied to, but also he just can’t think straight.
It doesn’t make sense. Sam doesn’t even have sex that much. He’s slept with like, a couple girls in the last several years. He’s not just randomly hooking up with Cas on the side. Or is that exactlywhy? Because he has Cas?
Dean’s rushing to put his clothes on, and Cas is still just watching him. He feels out of his mind, sick, wrapped up in coiling wire.
“This is a cruel thing to lie about,” he says angrily, upset that Cas is staring at him with the same intensity he did when he watched Dean strip. He angrily goes to Sam’s room, knocking with enough force to damage his knuckles.
“Dean?” Sam calls from inside. He blearily opens the door, and Dean has to fight the urge to punch him in the face.
Dean has a million things he wants to say, a million confirmations he needs to try to grasp. But what comes out instead is, “So, what, you fuck men now?”
The alarm on Sam’s face seems to say it all. It’s taking everything in Dean to not punch him, but it’s not Sam’s fault, really. It’s not like he ever told Sam he was into Cas. But he’s having trouble caring about most of that right now.
“I uh,” Sam says. “Dean, what’s brought this up? Are you okay?”
“I asked you a question,” Dean says.
“Look, Dean, this isn’t,” Sam takes a deep breath, then a few shorter faster ones. “Does it matter?”
“Does it matter you’ve been lying to me your whole life?” Sam looks down chastised.
“It’s not that simple,” he says quietly. He sounds quite hurt.
“Not that simple!” Dean exclaims, and he’s sure he has some witty hypocritical addition, but instead, he just says, “Fucking Cas of all people.”
That jolts Sam out of whatever melancholy he’d worked himself into it. He looks up confused, and Dean hears Cas huff a laugh from behind. He’s overwhelmingly embarrassed now, face hot, chest tight.
Sam’s looking at him with some sort of terror. It vaguely registers to him he should be some type of supportive instead of accusatory, that everything he’s doing right now was purely hypocritical. But it doesn’t matter because he’s fucking heartbroken.
“Dean, I uh,” Sam mutters. “I never slept with Cas.”
Dean looks over at Cas fast, who’s looking pleasantly amused at the whole situation. For the first time, Dean worries that maybe Cas is under some sort of spell.
“He said--” Dean starts.
“I mean,” Cas interrupts, and he walks past Dean in the doorway, stands closer to Sam, who for some reason looks horrified, chest rising unevenly with every stolen breath. “ I did fuck you Sam,” Cas says, and he looks so pleased, head turned towards Dean, with a smile on his face. Sam’s breaths accelerate.
“Cas, I don’t, I don’t remember it,” Sam says, and he’s looking at Dean and then to Cas, and there’s something akin to precipitant wetness in his eyes. “Was it,” Sam looks somewhat sick. “Could it have been Gadreel instead?”
The question stuns Dean so much, at first he processes it as an attack. That Sam is once again trying to shock and punish him about the tricking-him-into-possession thing. But there’s a haunted type of shame on Sam’s face that shakes Dean to his core.
“You’re really just whoring it up, aren’t you Sammy? Letting all sorts of folk inside you,” Cas says, and it rings so needlessly unhelpful and cruel, Dean tries to move towards Cas, put his body between him and Sam. Cas must be cursed in some way.
The horror dawning on Sam’s face is sickening. He draws his eyebrows together in confusion.
“I don’t remember having sex with you,” Sam says, quiet and monitored.
“Really? You don’t remember being my bitch?” Cas says, and something sick washes over Sam’s face, as Dean is about to go full protect-your-daughter’s honour on Cas.
“Cas, what the fuck is going on with you, you can’t mess with people-- ”
“Dean, that’s not Cas,” Sam says, rushed, the words seemingly biting him from the inside, and in a rush so fast Dean can’t comprehend it, he’s flown back towards a wall, muscles weighed down and pinned, while Cas (or not Cas) has rushed against Sam, choking him against the opposite wall.
“So you remember?” the thing that looks like Cas says.
“Lucifer,” Sam rasps out.
“In the flesh,” he says, and he turns his head to the side so Dean can see Cas’s face grinning.
The horror of what has happened doesn’t hit Dean immediately, overridden by the intense desire to protect his brother, but flashes he can’t compartmentalise make him sick.
He didn’t know. He didn’t know he didn’t know he didn’t know--
Lucifer lets up on choking Sam, keeping him still pressed against the opposing wall with a hand on his chest, his body hovering and trapping him in.
“Why are you here?” Sam asks, something absent in his gaze.
“Maybe I wanted to see what all the fuss was about,” Lucifer says. “Does it hurt your feelings, Sam? That I went and slept with your big brother? Worried there won’t be enough attention to go around?”
Sam’s shaking his head, one two back forth three four, run out the door. Dean’s head is spinning. There’s a magnetic spider web. It’s singing. Dean’s so angry he can’t even make sense of at what or why until he remembers and the guilt and rage spiral tenfold over themselves. Tripping dominos. He gets off track. He misses out on Lucifer saying “Yes,” mocking Sam and his shocked denial.
“Cas, I’m sorry,” Sam says, quietly and defeated, and Lucifer laughs.
Cas.
Dean can’t handle this. He wished Lucifer could have at least knocked him unconscious. Preferably long-term. Stretching towards infinity.
He refuses to remember. He can’t not. It’s blurry until it’s too vivid and it’s too vivid until it’s blurry but either way he’s sick and he’s horrified.. Sam’s just there, Lucifer’s moved back to holding his throat, not strangling him to death but rough, and Dean needs to stop it. He needs to wrap away everything and save his brother and his best friend. But he can’t fucking move.
“I would have left your brother alone, you know,” Lucifer says. “And Cas. If you’d said yes. I’d have been down to business, chop chop, defeat the Darkness!! You could have been a hero again. But you were willing to what? What was it Sammy? You were willing to die? Watch the people you love die? Well I guess I could kill Dean right now couldn’t I?” And Sam’s shaking his head again, adamantly. For some reason, Dean doesn’t feel anything but calm, like the threat of his death is a wash of warmth over his head.
“Don’t--” Sam tries to say, but Lucifer’s hand tightens, the veins on Cas’s hand prominent.
“But you weren’t ready to be my bitch,” Lucifer says. Sam’s grasping Lucifer’s hands, his airways obviously compromised. But from an aerial view, fields from outer space, Dean notes he doesn’t seem to be actually fighting back.
Lucifer lets up a bit, uses one hand to stroke Sam's hair and it's bizarrely intimate, and Dean can hear Sam’s hoarse intake of breath. “I don’t need you,” Lucifer says, and Dean can’t even begin to comprehend the mess of what Lucifer is to Sam, but Lucifer’s denial here seems almost laughable.
Lucifer lets go of Sam completely, and watches Sam collapse on the floor with disgust.
Sam’s trembling, even as he takes in deep, shaky breaths. Lucifer moves towards him, and he full body recoils. Lucifer, nonetheless, grabs his hair, pulls him on his knees.
“Should I kill Dean fast or slow? Remember in the Cage, how you’d ask to see him be killed slow? You always had interesting choices of what was the worst of two evils.”
“No--”
“I know you remember,” Lucifer says, and Sam is glowering now. But Dean looks at Lucifer. Dean just can’t stop seeing Cas. “Anyways. Want me to have mercy? Beg me not to kill Dean.”
“No,” Sam says. Dual emotions of pride in Sam’s defiance and heartwrenching betrayal scatter across Dean’s chest. It’s too much to imagine Sam not giving a fuck about him right now. Maybe he just thinks Dean deserves it, now that he’s inferred what Dean’s done.
But Lucifer looks even more shocked. “No,” Sam repeats. “You want to take down Amara. Don’t you think Dean could be useful with that?”
Lucifer ponders that for about half a second, not long enough to truly deliberate, and Dean finally sees what Sam must have. Lucifer’s playing a game on them. “Fine,” he says, and suddenly bright coursing agony is going up across Dean’s body.
It’s incomparable, incomparable caustic and twisting so sharp he can’t even remember anything. Doesn’t even realise how loud he’s been screaming. By the time it stops, and he comes too, he half expects to open his eyes to Hell.
Instead, his baby brother is on the ground, kneeling with the devil’s fist in his hair, shaking, screaming through a battered throat, “Please, stop, okay please.”
Lucifer is grinning like he’s having the fucking time of his life, expression so eerie splashed across Cas’s face.
“What do you say, Sam?” Lucifer asks, sing-song sweet, absolutely self-satisfied. Dean’s nerves are calming down, enough to see the horror of it. Sam darts his eyes Dean’s direction, then shoots them down again, full of shame.
“Thank you,” he bites out, eyes and head lowered as much as Lucifer will allow them. Lucifer lets go of Sam’s hair, and Sam collapses onto the ground.
“Get up,” Lucifer orders, and Sam does, fumbling without complaint. “That was lacklustre, where’s your spunk gone kid? You used to make an orchestration out of prostration. But it doesn’t matter. Because the thing is. You’re right. Dean is the one with the link with Amara? So why have I been trying to spare you? Is it some old sentimental attachment?”
Lucifer slams Sam against the wall. Now, Dean’s brain is shot bright back to life. He still can’t move, can’t do anything to help or protect Sam. He failed before, and he can’t stop failing. He can’t fucking stop.
“I mean maybe it's because you're like the girl who kept turning me down at the prom.”
Lucifer sticks his hand in Sam’s chest.
And Sam starts screaming.
The moment feels dragged out. Like there’s a rafter up in one of those abandoned buildings where a single bright note would echo in the October emptiness.
Until suddenly Lucifer is retracting his hand, and he looks at it in horror.
Then, he looks at Dean, with a wide-eyed, sickened expression, before he looks back at Sam, who starts to pull away in fear with Lucifer’s hand still grasping his shirt.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, and Dean can hear it, in his voice.
And then he disappears from in front of them.
--
Dean collapsed, ridden in shock. Doesn’t know how to respond. Doesn’t know how to try to help his brother shaking like a leaf across from him, fucked up and terrified.
Sam seems to pull himself somehow together, though to Dean he thinks perhaps it’s more like smothering himself into a form that isn’t really himself anymore, and he moves towards Dean.
“Are you okay?” Sam asks, cringing while asking. He knows how it sounds, given the context. And Dean does want to give him the feedback he’s looking for. Whatever Lucifer did to him has left him feeling singed throughout his body, but he doesn’t think he’s actually physically hurt.
He can’t reassure Sam of that though.
Instead, he just says, “ Cas. ”
Sam closes his eyes, breathes deeply, and a tear escapes his face before he furiously turns away before turning back again, expressionless again.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you, Dean,” Sam says. It’s not until now that Dean really hears how mechanic Sam always sounds. It doesn’t matter. Because Sam has just referenced that something has happened. And Dean really doesn’t know how to handle that.
“You ever think maybe it’s important to not keep secrets about the devil raping you?” Dean asks. He knows it’s cruel when it’s coming out of his mouth, but of all the brutal things he’s said to Sam, he’s never seen him react like this. Sam’s whole face gets crunched up, and he rocks, slightly breath out of place, before he stops, and his hands are trembling.
“You knew he tortured me. I didn’t think every ... it was necessary. I'm sorry,” Sam says, eventually, and he sounds tight and terse, but not angry. He should sound angry.
“Well maybe I could have been more prepared,” Dean says, and it’s not fair. It’s classic transference in the worst possible way, and it is literally making Sam cry. But Dean can’t see past himself. He can’t see anything but what he’s done to Cas.
“I thought he was gone. I thought he was in the Cage. I’m sorry, Dean... I’m so,” Sam stops, shakes his head a few times. It’s not until then that Dean is able to really see, understand, that Sam’s torturer, Sam’s rapist, was just here, again, tormenting him, real in this plane, all over again. And Dean’s doing nothing to help.
“Sammy...” Dean starts.
“I didn’t want it, not really,” Sam says, fast and slurred and Dean sees him harshly digging his nail into his palm.
“I know. Sammy. I know.”
Dean doesn’t think he can say the same thing.
Sam starts making retching movements. Stops. Says, “It was torture, this all was torture. It’s torture.” Retches again, this time spitting out bile.
Dean thinks he’s supposed to be helping Sam. Usually, his brain kicks into some type of gear. But it’s static. Static, static, static.