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Castiel had always known that the adoration he felt for Dean extended beyond the physical form, had started in fact with the radiance of his soul, but looking at him now only served to prove it. Even the physical elements he had come to love were more due to the innate Dean-ness that suffused his movements than trite human aesthetics. Michael was not Dean. Michael's smile wasn't crooked, his legs didn't bow quite right, his eyes didn't hurt the same. It was wrong. Michael wasn't beautiful. Michael could have been described as handsome, no matter how Castiel hated to admit it, but in the way that a statue can be considered so. Life was attractive and Dean was full of that, he clung to it, with the desperation of one who knew that it was limited. Michael on the other hand was like a dead thing, or perhaps something that had never been living was more accurate. Cold and cruel, so painfully not Dean. Even in Dean's most violent days he had never been cruel, scared and broken perhaps, but always good, in a way that was far more genuine then Michael's forced piety.
Castiel wanted to reach out and touch, drag Dean out from the prison of his skin, but he knew that those chiseled cheekbones might cut him now. Michael laughed a not-Dean-laugh and Castiel knew that he could tell somehow. He was wearing everything on the sleeve of his trench coat, when had he become so transparent?
He squared his shoulders, shrugged the ghost of his wings, and begged the monster to be kind.