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“You know what I want,” Castiel growls. His face is hard-set, with brow and jaw determined. He’s immovable in this. Even with only a weak trickle of Grace running through him, he is still an angel, and he will not be defied.
Not for long.
His mark is before him, hunted and captured and imprisoned on the upended metal bed frame against the wall. His quarry had been clever during the chase, evading Castiel with impressive tenacity. But, as with all things an angel sets to pursue, evasion is imperfect and, given time, it always fails. Time is something Castiel does not lack. Whether the pursuit had taken moments or weeks, it would have made no difference. Even now, Castiel knows he will get what he wants. He will pry, and scrape, and dig, little by little, for as long as it takes. Death by a thousand cuts. Each will be minuscule. Each will seem endurable. But built upon each other, Castiel knows, stroke upon stroke upon stroke, his target will break. In time.
—
Holy fuck, Cas is a scary mofo when you’re on the business end of his warpath.
Dean’s still trying to catch his breath, and it’s been at least twenty minutes since he stopped running. Or, was forced to stop. Caught. Christ, that had been terrifying. That heart-pounding, leg-burning, chest-constricting chase, being primally stalked and hunted, knowing there’s a cosmic wavelength of fucking intent on your ass – he’s pretty sure his adrenal glands won’t recover until he’s eighty. Assuming he makes it out of this alive.
“You know what I want.”
Yeah, Dean knows. And he’s sure as hell not just handing it over.
“Fuck you, buddy,” he mutters, scanning the sparse room again while his pinkie feels for a weakness in the steel frame. The ropes looped around his wrists and ankles aren’t chafing, at least. There’s a burr on the metal crossbar near his left thumb, but there isn’t enough give in the restraints to let him rub them on it. The frame is leaning at enough of an angle to the wall that he wouldn’t be able to tip it off-balance, even if he weren’t strapped down at every major joint and unable to throw his weight.
Cas tips his chin up just slightly: an acknowledgment that Dean is going to be difficult. Damn right he’s going to be difficult. He wouldn’t have nearly collapsed a lung trying to quell his panting while crouched in ductwork that smelled like death if he weren’t going to bother to be difficult.
It’s still a challenge not to squirm, though, when Cas steps over to the surgical tray set up next to the frame. Two knives, a box cutter, and three different types of scissors round out its collection of sharp things. There’s also a framed hourglass, ebony-stained with pale sand settled in the lower globe, which seems equally quaint and sinister. The angel contemplates them all before flipping the hourglass and choosing one of the scissors.
Dean instinctively shrinks back when the tip nears his abdomen. Cas opens the blades and, keeping eye contact because he’s an intense fucker, eases one sharp edge under the hem of Dean’s shirt. A sharp snip cuts the fabric. Then Cas takes hold of the edges and rips. The shirt tears clean up to the neckband, revealing Dean’s chest underneath, and okay, that was dramatic only for the sake of being dramatic. Screw anybody who thinks that Cas is too robotic to pull power moves when he wants to make an impression.
Fuck if it isn’t working as intended, though. The horror-dirty reality of everything has been sinking into Dean’s psyche like rusty fishhooks, and his reptilian hindbrain is scrabbling at every corner to find an escape.
Which is kind of the whole twisted point, isn’t it? he thinks.
The scissors make simple work of the rest of his shirt. Dean wants to smirk or wink or make a salacious comment once he’s left bare against the steel slats, but the knowledge that Cas is one-hundred-percent serious is sobering. The angel isn’t joking or playing pretend. He is absolutely, unshakably convinced that this is the only way; do not pass Go, do not collect $200, do not let up until Dean Winchester is a broken man.
“You will give me the key,” Cas says. His tone is even, but there’s something guttural lurking under its surface. “How long that takes is up to you.”
Dean spits back, “Go to hell,” just before all the air is forced out of his chest.
He can’t breathe, he doesn’t want to breathe, because breathing will expand his lungs and inflate his ribcage and he can’t, he can’t will himself to advance into the assault – but he must, he has to, because the air is dragging back in and it's got nowhere else to go. Cas’ fingers are on his ribs, deadly accurate in their strokes, and fuck, it tickles.
Dean’s arms jerk where they’re bound, elbows bent and hands above his head. He’s completely exposed and there’s nothing he can do to stop it, and the sounds he’s making are stupidly embarrassing. Castiel chased him down like a goddamned fox hunt, caught him and tied him up in a murder basement, and out of all the bizarre, painful, psycho crap that could be happening right now, Cas is fucking tickling him.
No one can find out about this, ever.
Especially since Dean is super fucking ticklish and Cas is somehow really good at this. He’s tickling the taut skin over Dean’s ribs as though his hands are venomous spiders, reeling in their prey with soft, quick legs that offer no chance of escape. Dean is caught fast in the web, tangled in silk threads that refuse to break, and it drives home just how helpless he is that Cas can skim dangerously gentle fingers across his chest over and over and over, unimpeded.
“Give me the word, Dean, and this goes no further.”
Like hell is he gonna just give in like that. Dean might be humiliated that he’s already gasping and trembling to hold back laughter, but he can take this. Even though Cas’ fingertips are smooth and wiggly and lighting up his nerve endings in the most ridiculously unbearable way, Jesus.
The problem becomes apparent only a moment later: the longer the tickle goes on, the more tickly it feels. The angel isn’t moving, planted in front of him with a determined eyebrow cocked sharply, and the sides of Dean’s ribs are getting panicky with how much it tickles and how much it’s not stopping. He gasps, hiccups, squirms more and more urgently against the restraints, but they hold him resolutely immobile, splayed open for the taking, and Cas, the asshole, is definitely taking.
“Y-you’re a twisted freak, y’know that?” Dean grits between clenched teeth. If it comes out strainingly high-pitched and a bit hysterical, so be it.
Said freak squints and suddenly digs in with a single sharp tweak of his fingers. The brief intensity is startling; Dean yelps, and Cas goes right back to that maddeningly gentle dance of fingertips right below the sides of his pectorals because asshole, but the crack has successfully been made and Dean’s laughing out loud now. He drops his head, twitches uncontrollably, curls his toes, and he can’t stop the bubbling flow of giggles that are being driven out by the damned endless tickle.
“Fffha! You– fucker– shhhihihit!”
“This will not stop until you talk,” Cas says, speaking just over the volume of Dean’s laughter. “We can stay here for as long as necessary. You will suffer no marks, no blood loss, no lasting injuries. You will simply be tickled until you decide you don’t want to be anymore and I am given what I need.”
The worst part of any torture is knowing that the threats are absolutely true. Sam is three states away on another hunt. Dean’s phone was the first thing that had been lost in the scramble at the beginning of all this. Nobody is going to stumble across this place by accident. There is no help to be had. The methodical nature of his imminent demise is being telegraphed in every persistent stroke of fingers. Castiel is a ruthless tickling machine, and he’s going to slowly dismantle Dean, bit by sensitive bit.
What makes it all the more terrible is that Dean can already feel the threads of his resolve starting to fray with every futile pull on his bound limbs. The sand has formed a piteously small pile in the bottom of the hourglass, and Cas has touched nothing but the stretched-out expanse of his ticklish ribs. It’s sinking in now exactly how fucked (and pathetic) he is. His vision is blurring with tears of laughter and he still has an entire body’s worth of vulnerability on deck to be exploited. The angel is going to tickle-torture him until he breaks, and that’s that.
(And what a surprisingly effective torture it is. Dean knows how to harden his mind against inflicted pain, but the crazy, continuous electric-shock nature of a sensation his body keeps trying to interpret as flippant or playful is remarkably unbalancing. Being tied down makes this wildly different than a play of childish battle tactics in a tussle over the remote. It’s doing insane things to his nervous system, and his ribs are screaming for relief.
In some ways, it’s exactly what Dean imagined tickle torture might be like. In others, it is so much worse.)
“How about this,” Cas muses, as though he’s only thought of it just now. “If you give me the key in the next twenty seconds, this all ends. But if you don’t, it will be twenty minutes before I’m interested in anything you have to say.”
Christ. What kind of fucked-up is that? Especially since Dean is already feeling unsure of his powers of speech – but then, that’s what prayer is for, isn’t it? Cas can hear him even if he can’t get his tongue to form words. Dean could be gagged with a sack over his head and Cas would still be able to extract what he’s after.
“You’re a dick,” is what he tries to say, except it comes out all broken up in giggly sputters. The delicately spidering fingertips start to track slowly downward.
“Fifteen seconds, Dean.”
He squawks in laughter as Cas flutters over a spot on his lower ribs. No way.
“Ten seconds.”
He won’t say or think or pray or plead a single damn word. He’s not going to break. He’s not.
“Three, two, one…”
Oh, shit, please, no–!
Cas’ busy hands glide to his stomach, at the places on either side of his navel where he knows Dean is stupidly sensitive.
“No-no-no-nnaahah!”
Dean wonders where that version of Cas went – the Cas that would lay next to him and smile into his ear while tracing teasing patterns over his belly. The Cas that would pretend Dean was entirely unfunny even while suppressing a grin that couldn’t be banished from his eyes. The Cas that would raze Hell itself to keep Dean safe.
Maybe this is the strained, grinding compromise: refusing to physically harm Dean while still tormenting the daylights out of him. Dean expects he’d be somewhat grateful, except holy shit his stomach is so fucking ticklish, he’s kind of being murdered.
“Nghhh– ss– ssst-aaahp!”
The damned hourglass just keeps trickling away, slowly, so slowly, to the erratic soundtrack of his laughter. Dean’s middle feels like a black hole, every part of himself collapsing toward it, every muscle straining inward for some kind of defense or relief. But he can’t, can’t stop it, can’t escape, and the tears leaking from the corners of his eyes are mocking his inability to wipe them away. He wonders how resolute Cas actually is; if Dean were to give in now, verbally or not, would Cas keep that twenty-minute promise? Dean suspects that he might. And that would be so much worse – conceding defeat and still getting tickled to bits for failing to fail earlier. No thanks. Dean’s pretty sure he’s got no dignity left, but he can at least keep the balance at zero instead of going negative.
The sand is barely a quarter of the way up the sides of the glass globe. Is this hourglass even representative of actual time? It feels like it’s been ages, and Cas’ fingers are still wreaking soft, scribbly havoc on Dean’s bare stomach. He’s never had a six-pack in his life, but he may just challenge Sam’s physique if this keeps up.
Speaking of – Dean belatedly realizes his muscles should probably be sore. Everything has been clenched and seizing, but there’s no ache in his abdomen where his laughter is being squeezed out of him. The fatigue is there, but not the pain.
Fucking Cas. He’d better not be spending down his limited Grace, pulling shit like that.
God, though. What’s the record for how long a person has been tickled before going insane? Because Dean’s wheezing and wailing and cackling like he’s out of his goddamn mind. Cas still looks just as steely as he did at the outset, tenacious as a guard dog clamped down and refusing to let go. That prods at some sort of psychological pressure point: the calm, collected, pitiless tormentor versus the helpless, writhing, desperate victim. It makes Dean feel weak and useless, like resistance is futile, like the battle is already lost, so why suffer the fight?
Because you’re a stubborn bastard, he reminds himself while hiccuping laughter. Because you’re Dean freakin’ Winchester and you’re not gonna be cracked by tummy tickles, dammit.
Because you basically asked for it.
Said tummy tickles are starting to drift again, which is a source of both relief and dread. Cas’ ever-gentle skittering fingers crawl out to his sides and begin to creep back upward.
“Tell me,” Cas says.
The twenty godforsaken minutes must be up. Dean squirms jerkily and gasps for air between whimpering chuckles. He’s beginning to believe it was stupid to think he could take this. His ribs are starting to be rudely awakened from their well-earned nap, and he doesn’t want Cas to start in on them again, not for another extended stretch, please, don’t...
“Now is your chance, Dean. I’m listening.”
It strikes Dean that this isn’t even an interrogation, technically; Cas hasn’t asked one single question. He’s only made demands. Dean must continue to refuse, he must. Except he doesn’t think he can if his abused ribcage is the target again. All the going-bonkers signals in his brain have been focused on his stomach, but now with that distraction gone, he can feel the lingering tingles of overstimulation across his chest. He whines when the slippery spider-crawl catches his lower ribcage.
“Nnnh…!” Dean manages. His face should probably hurt from being contorted in laughter, but it doesn’t because apparently Cas wants this to last as long as possible before Dean could conceivably tap out due to anything other than tickle-overload. “Ffff… fuh-huh…”
“Dean. The key. Now.” Cas doesn’t sound remotely sympathetic, or smug, or teasing – it’s a command and nothing else.
“Fffffuck you,” Dean gasps, “and... and the...” He can’t get the rest out before collapsing into giggles, because now his armpits are being assaulted. The frame he’s strapped to rattles against the wall as his upper body jerks and writhes. And the horse you rode in on! he finishes in a pointed, mental spit at his captor.
Cas narrows his eyes. One hand keeps sensation dancing smartly in the hollow beneath one arm while the other reaches back toward the surgical tray. For about half a second, Dean actually gets nervous that he’ll grab a knife, but instead Cas flips the partially-finished hourglass. The accumulated sand pile reverses course.
It can’t actually mean anything, since Cas clearly intends to keep this up for as long as it takes. But it still feels like Dean fucked up, like he pissed Cas off enough to undo time, to walk back on whatever progress has been made so that it can be reworked all over again. Every grain that falls back between the globes represents a threefold stroke on his tortured nerves – the initial pass, the backtrack, and the eventual forward progress that will come again. It also feels like a childish punishment, which, okay, is maybe warranted for something as dumb as mouthing off like that. (Even if his mouth didn’t actually do most of it.) Getting his ribs and stomach tickled is one thing, since they’re generally out there in the open and theoretically anybody could get at them, but his armpits? It would take someone bigger and stronger than he is to hoist his arms up like this, to force that exposure and hold him down while tickling the vulnerable spots underneath. Dean’s a misbehaving kid getting manhandled by the adult in the room, too weak to do anything about it but shriek with laughter. It’s humiliating, but he’s much too distracted by the merciless scritching in his underarm hair to feel ashamed.
He’s slipping deeper and deeper into the feeling of powerlessness. That reptilian corner of his brain is scrabbling harder, hissing that this isn’t going to end even if he caves. That he’ll break, sobbing and laughing and spilling that key at the angel’s feet, but it won’t be enough and the torment won’t stop. Cas will keep him here for days, weeks, sustaining him through more than his body was ever designed to take until he’s crazed with it. He’s going to be tickled to literal death, and then Cas will doggedly latch onto his soul wherever it goes and keep him howling for the rest of eternity.
Please, he finds himself mentally repeating. He doesn’t know how long he’s been doing it. Please, please, pleheheease…
It turns out that the soft skin under his triceps is surprisingly sensitive. Dean’s laughter takes on a rasping, squeaky quality and he trembles against the restraints while Cas’ feathery strokes venture up that way from his armpits. Never in a million years would Dean have put arms on a list of Suspected Tickle Spots, but Cas finds a place on his upper arm next to the bend of his elbow that makes Dean want to squirm straight out of his body. It’s even worse when Cas tickles gentle paths back and forth between there and his wrist, right over the thin-skinned underside of his forearm. Every instinct screams to make it stop, to protect the vital bloodflow snaking just beneath the skin where one harsh snag or slice could mean the difference between living and not. But of course Cas doesn’t scrape or scratch – he just tickles,
and tickles,
and tickles,
and tickles, while Dean struggles and twists his hands into useless claws and throws his head back against the frame.
It’s while Cas is ghosting cruelly soft fingertips over the straining tendons of Dean’s bound wrists that the angel finally asks, “Are you better prepared, now, to be more respectful?”
Dean’s thoughts are scrambled static. It takes a long moment, while he squeaks and snickers, for his brain to untangle and rewind the words to make sense of them. Yes, if it means Cas will just stop, yes, please–!
“Very good.”
And just like that, all sensation ceases. It’s like walking out of a rock concert into a padded room after standing right in front of the giant speakers. The silence across Dean’s skin practically rings in his ears. He can’t really feel his own movement as he heaves for breath, for equilibrium.
The hourglass clacks quietly on the tray as it’s re-turned and set back down.
Dean sags in his restraints, not even feeling the firm hold of the ropes in comparison to the dull, buzzing echo of Cas’ fingers on his skin. He’s fucking beat and he almost wants to laugh at himself for how, before, he’d thought that Cas just… wouldn’t really do it. Wouldn’t buckle down and turn into a ruthless goddamned tickle-Terminator. Dean should really know better by now than to underestimate his angel.
The key-phrase floats groggily up through his thoughts until Dean catches himself and hastily blocks it away. Cas can’t straight-up read his mind, but if Dean gets too foggy, he can’t risk blurting the key alongside any other pleas he might leak in Cas’ direction.
“We will try this again.” Cas’ features are blurred by the tears clinging to Dean’s eyelashes, but he sounds just as resolute as he has been since the beginning. “Give me what I need now, or suffer twenty more minutes. There will be no in-between, Dean.”
Twenty straight minutes again? God, that’s not fucking fair and Cas knows it–
“Twenty-five minutes, now.”
Wait, what? He can’t just–
“Thirty.”
Fuck you...!
“Forty minutes it is.” The tools jingle on the medical cart; Cas slides open a shallow drawer Dean hadn’t even realized was there under the tray. He plucks out something that blurs wetly into everything else past Dean’s lashes, and Cas sinks to the floor.
There’s a tug on Dean’s left boot, a pull-and-release of pressure as Cas slides a knife under the laces and slices them cleanly up the tongue. The same process repeats on his right foot. Cool air filters through his socks when the boots are worked free and discarded. Cas’ fingers hook the backs of his socks and pull them just partway off, only past the swell of his heel, which seems like a weird place to leave them – and then Dean is suddenly made to come to terms with his ankles being ticklish.
“Oh, shit–!”
Leave it to Cas to find all the unexpected additions to that Tickle Spots list.
There’s something about the vulnerability of the tendon behind his heel; that urban legend about killers hiding under cars, waiting to slash out with blades to disable their victims, makes the endless soft sweep of fingertips all around his ankles feel remarkably threatening. Dean’s feet wag and flail as he snorts, legs jittering as if he can shake off the tickle like an unwelcome insect. The slack in his socks loosens around his toes, making the fabric flap with every shake. Still, Cas tickles his ankles: the bony sides, the dips of his Achilles, the unexpectedly sensitive fronts leading into the top of his foot. It’s not as unbearably intense as the other tickling Dean has endured thus far, but his calves are starting to wear out with all the foot-waggling. His struggling gradually slows as the muscles tire, and Dean realizes suddenly that this is what Cas had been aiming for: muscle fatigue.
It’s frustrating as hell that Dean can only give weak shakes of his feet as the angel pinches the floppy toes of his socks and slowly, deliberately pulls them the rest of the way off, leaving his toes curling in the open air.
“Thirty-two minutes left,” Cas announces blithely, “in case you weren’t keeping track.”
Dean groans. “You’re an asshole and I hate you.” He braces for the inevitable fingertips on his bared soles.
Instead, there’s a sharp poke right on the ball of his foot. The ropes around Dean’s ankles are the only things that keep him from kicking Cas right in the damn face with his reflexive recoil; he yelps in surprise.
The thing Cas took from the drawer is apparently a feather. And because Cas is Cas, he’s not even using it the way any normal person would use a feather to tickle someone. Freakin’ figures.
The hard quill-end pokes Dean’s foot again. It’s like that rubber-hammer-to-the-kneecap effect. Dean’s leg jolts to get his foot away, but doesn’t actually get anywhere. Another sharp poke, another and another, coming more rapidly now, and Dean’s body is jumping from the uncontrollable force of his leg jerking despite its fatigue. The faster the pokes come, the less individually shocking they are but the more they build into a crazy tickle that makes him feel like he’ll die if it doesn’t stop.
He’s almost more yelling than laughing, at least until Cas pulls a second feather across his toes – the soft end this time, instead of the pointed quill. Cas must be good at that dumb pat-your-head, rub-your-belly game, because his dexterity is flawless. The pace of the sole pokes remains perfectly unbearable while the silky-smooth feather vane slips along the valley of the underside of his wearily curled toes, and it is absurd how badly it tickles. Dean crumbles into whimpering laughter. He’s so tired and his body can’t keep up the intense reactions his nerves demand of his brain. There’s a brief energy renaissance when Cas switches to the other untouched foot, but all too soon he’s jello again. His legs have given up and he can’t even wiggle his feet anymore. Of course, that’s when Cas ditches the feathers and begins scribbling his fingertips all over Dean’s helpless arches, both feet at the same time, and Dean bleats with exhaustion-mangled giggles. There is absolutely nothing he can do but lay strapped there and take it as the hourglass trickles on.
The twenty-minute stretch before had been bad enough; forty is proving to be a marathon Dean was never prepared to run. Like the original runner in Greece, he just might drop dead by the end. They must be getting close to the finish by now, though…?
“You may prepare to give me the key in fourteen minutes,” Cas says. “I suggest you begin thinking about how you might gift-wrap it.”
Almost a quarter hour, still? That can’t be right–
“By all means, keep questioning me. I’ll stop giving you updates and you’ll be welcome to guess how much more time has been added.”
Cas suddenly abandons his feet and stands to worm an insistent finger into his bellybutton. Dean squeaks embarrassingly as it squiggles around, and it takes a few seconds for him to realize that Cas’ other hand is occupied with opening the button and fly of his jeans. He gasps brokenly for air when Cas’ evil freakin’ finger finally leaves his navel in favor of tugging on the waist of his pants. The air is cool on his thighs where Cas works the denim out from under his ass and down his legs. Dean’s throat clicks dryly around a swallow.
“The fuck?” he croaks, finding words again between the heaving of his chest. “You… You gonna jerk me into submission, Cas?” He manages a weak smirk while letting the backs of his eyelids curtain his blurred vision. “Kinky.”
“No.” Cas imbues the word with more gravity than one syllable should be able to hold.
His hands alight on Dean’s hips in a way that would be equal parts threat and promise no matter the situation, but all Dean feels is how Cas’ thumbs rest forebodingly in the crease of his groin.
Oh, no. Oh, fuck.
Dean’s diaphragm shudders, clinging to something just this side of hyperventilation at the current menace of those thumbs. Let Cas tickle anything, everything else but there; torment him with fingers and feathers and poking; goad and demoralize him with words that solidify his helplessness like set concrete; but please, please don’t…
“I’m simply going to impress upon you that you should give me what I need, when I next ask for it,” Cas says gravely. “Because if you don’t, this is what you’ll endure until the time you change your mind.”
Cas’ thumbs dig in and his fingers skitter like spiders, and it is instantly the most intolerable thing Dean has felt in his entire life.
The scritching strokes are cruelly deft, soft enough to scatter sensation across the breadth of his pelvic dips and planes, intense enough to inject hitching, writhing impulses directly into his nerve clusters. It is the very definition of insufferable, of relentless, of excruciating. He cackles despite his exhaustion, jolts and heaves in ticklish convulsions and cries out with the agony of it.
If Dean has felt betrayed by Cas’ exploitation of his body up until now, then this is the peak of the mountainous Judas kiss. His hips are a nexus of their shared intimacy. Cas knows how Dean responds to touch there, how he warms when Cas lays a palm on his hip to guide them both through a doorway; how he hums when Cas holds his waist to anchor their kiss; how he melts when Cas worships the topography of his pelvis with reverent hands and lips. Cas has capitalized on that sensitivity in order to win impromptu wrestling matches or cinch one of their inane arguments, and Dean could never find it in himself to mind the treason. Gasping and squirming under Cas’ gentle persuasion isn’t exactly misery.
Except, here, now, Cas is wielding his intimate knowledge as a weapon, and Dean is powerless beneath that blade. Its keen edge effortlessly divides tendon from bone, slips between joins of cartilage and carves his hips clean. The filleted-open spread of his bound thighs heightens the exquisite, erotic subjection of it, and Dean cracks like a wishbone.
“I’ll give it to you,” he sobs deliriously between courses of cackling laughter. “I’ll give, I’ll give!”
Cas ignores him.
The unendurable tickle torture continues, steady and unremitting as the hourglass sand.
Dean’s lizard brain evacuates.
Whatever is left is a step below sentient. He is no longer capable of thought, only feeling. The train has left the panic station and cruises now on the tracks of surrender. Bodily responses are all he has, and tormented laughter is the only one he has strength to muster. This is a dream world and waking won’t come.
—
“I won’t be aware,” Cas had said. “I won’t be able to stop myself to check in with you.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s the point.”
“But–”
“I want that. I want you to lay into me like you mean it. Put every ounce of that awesome focus into breaking me down, no matter how hard I fight it. Let’s see what you’re really capable of when you don’t pull your punches, hotwings.”
Cas had sighed in that longsuffering way, as if he wasn’t intrigued himself and hadn’t put in the hours twisting the spell just so, giving the target enough agency to take the full length of the leash without snapping it. “You’re placing yourself in the path of a hurricane, Dean.”
An anticipatory quiver had taken up residence in his belly at that. He’d winked and waved the notecard with the release key-phrase written on it. “I’ve got my flood insurance.”
“The spell won’t end until you speak it. Or pray it. I’ll be compelled to extract it from you, by any and all means necessary. Within the allowances, of course.”
“Yeah, yeah, no physical harm, no Geneva Convention violations, nothing you’d know I’d actually hate if you were fully with-it. Bases covered.” Dean had leaned over the table, then, inspecting the spell components one last time. He grinned. “Ready to get hypnotized into Heaven’s most terrifying interrogator?”
Cas had cracked his knuckles, just to be a dick.
Dean laughed and lit the match.
—
“It’s time,” Cas says stonily.
Dean’s still sniggering, dumb chuckles stuttering through his wheezes. Maybe Cas is still tickling him. Maybe he isn’t. Dean can’t tell. His veins feel like they're vibrating.
“Your forty-minute limbo is complete. It’s time to give me the key.”
One of Cas’ hands palms the side of his face. The other comes up beneath his jaw, with spread thumb and forefinger fitting up under Dean’s chin to hold it up, because Dean’s neck sure isn’t doing the job. That’s two hands, which probably means Cas isn’t still tickling his hips. But Dean doesn’t have a clear grasp on the limits of reality right now, so who knows.
“The word, Dean. You indicated you were ready to provide it. I am now ready to receive it.”
The hand on his cheek slides down his neck, running a finger down his jugular. When he doesn’t speak, because he can’t quite remember how words go, Cas begins stroking up and down his throat. He does remember how giggles go, though, so those take charge of his vocal cords beneath Cas’ fingertips.
Cas forces his chin higher, tickles his neck a bit more insistently. “Give me the key, Dean.”
The key. He knows the key. What’s the key?
B. Broken. Im– imp– impel...
Cas leans in close, and for a moment Dean is certain the flutter on his collarbone must be Cas’ tongue – like it so often is, so persuasive in its tease – but no, Cas’ mouth is visible there in front of his face, asking intently while his pattering fingers coax for the answer,
“What… is… the key?”
“The. The…” Dean gulps and regurgitates air, struggling to work something usable past his rasping snickers and hiccups. “The impellent sh– shackle lies broken.”
Something melts away from Cas’ demeanor.
Then there are warm hands on Dean’s cheeks, lips on his forehead, gentle words and touches releasing his bonds, and Dean falls pliably into them all.
—
Long afterward, when Dean has been rested, nourished, spooned, and soothed, Castiel asks,
“Was it like you hoped?”
Dean nuzzles under his chin and hums in thought before answering. “No.” Before Castiel can respond with concern, Dean chuckles tiredly and continues, “Way worse. And by worse, I mean better.”
Castiel makes a pleased sound and squeezes him tighter. It’s strange how he can remember each moment, but can’t put reasons behind his decisions. He can’t help but feel a little proud, though, that he has the ability to break Dean Winchester. He is among a small, elite number across all creation.
“I can hear you smirking, you smug bastard,” Dean says into his neck.
“I have every right to be smug.” Castiel rubs Dean’s back. “All I did was tickle you, and you sang all your secrets.”
Dean frowns. “One secret. And you can’t say ‘all you did’ like it was an accident.” He lifts his head to scowl at Castiel. “The hips, man… that was…” He shudders. “Cold-blooded.”
“I am inhuman,” Castiel concedes.
Dean snorts and snuggles back down. After a quiet beat, he says, “Would you do it again?”
Castiel raises his brows. “The spell?” He considers for a moment. “Would you want me to?”
“Mm. I haven’t felt like that in…” Dean trails off.
The pause is allowed to linger, while Dean absently rolls a wrinkle of Castiel’s shirt back and forth between his fingers.
Eventually, he says, “Everything else was gone. I mean literally, everything and gone. Like I was dead asleep, for all the rest of the world mattered. I didn’t – couldn’t – give a damn about anything beyond the moment I was in.” He huffs through his nose. “Maybe that shit about ‘being present’ or ‘mindfulness’ or whatever has a point. Felt good.”
Castiel smiles. “I’m fairly certain Donna meant something different when she used those words. But you’re welcome to tell her about your breakthrough.”
Dean grumbles and kicks at Castiel’s legs. Castiel worms a teasing finger down Dean’s side in retaliation.
Castiel then answers, “I would do it again. But I’ve already cracked you once, and my strategy would only improve each successive time. I imagine we could get to the point where you don’t last five minutes.”
Predictably, Dean rises to the bait and begins to huff his bravado. Castiel tickles him down again while he narrates, “Maybe I’d use nothing but my mouth. Or I’d try vibrating tools. Or perhaps I’d hogtie you and tickle your hips for hours on end, just for the satisfaction of it. It’s impossible to predict what I’d do, but I have plenty of ideas.”
Dean bats at his hands, still weak and uncoordinated as he laughs. They tussle together for a moment until Castiel lets him prevail and curl up against his side with a sigh.
“You’re a menace.”
Castiel runs fingers through Dean’s hair, scritches his nape. “You’d complain if I wasn’t.”
Dean grins into his chest and hugs him tighter. “Yeah, let’s do it again sometime,” he mumbles.