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Dean drives for twenty minutes way over the speed limit before he catches up to himself, and the come down is so bad he has to pull over to the side of the highway, gravel rumbling beneath the Impala’s tires, as he practically collapses over the steering wheel. His shoulders are shaking and fists are pulled tight enough that his knuckles are bone white. Everything smells like blood and his gut is open, yawning, a black hole that’s trying to suck him down to a place he can never escape and he hits his fists against the steering wheel as hard as he can and his eyes are hot and itchy but the tears refuse to fall. The red he’s been seeing for the last twenty four is still pulsing at the edges of his vision, and everything has taken on a strange, surreal tint to it since he fled the bunker, filling in the cracks like the blood of that Styne kid he just put a fucking bullet in.
His phone is so tight in his hand as he pulls it out of his pocket that he flubs it, drops it immediately. His hands are shaking as he tries to pull up Cas’ number, and he tries to find it behind the blur in his eyes but the red seeps back in and the next thing he knows he’s thrown his phone at the passenger side window hard enough that a crack has begun to spiderweb across it. He breathes heavy against the car, even opens the door to try to give himself more air to gasp at as he works his fingers in a clenching motion, feeling the blood crack and stick across his knuckles.
There’s nothing he can hold onto. He’s fallen so fast and so hard he can’t even remember if he had good intentions to start with. The angel blade vibrated in his hand as he thrust it into the book beside Cas’s face, and his elbow is still ringing, his head still reverberating. The blood had bubbled out of Cas’ mouth, red as the wrath that still singes the edge of Dean’s vision, and he finds himself scrabbling for the door handle, launching himself out of the Impala and onto the shoulder of the road, dry heaving on all fours.
Nothing comes up, but oh, god, he tries to get rid of it all. He wants this backwards highway in the middle of the nowhere to know his shame, his guilt, his sin. He punches the ground until his scabs break open once again, and he bleeds out, begging the rocks and the air and anything that happens to be listening for some kind of retribution. It’s the middle of the night and he begs the dark to swallow him whole, crunch him beneath its teeth and prove to him there are still things out there worse than him.
He clutches at the cooling body of the Impala, lying his head against her exterior as he stares at the sky and tries not to think about anything. The pain of losing Charlie is scratching, begging, pleading to be let out somehow, but Dean curls tighter around himself, fighting the inevitable pull of the tide like a swimmer lost at sea. He refuses to let himself be carried away by the naked current of grief quite yet, because he isn’t grieving everyone. Not everyone is dead.
He almost murdered Cas. Cas, his friend. Cas, who he loves. He was ready to strike that final blow, ready to bury an angel blade in Cas’ heart because why? What kind of revenge streak is he on when he’s holding a knife to his friend’s throat? He can almost hear Charlie now, shaking him by the shoulders as she shouts some sense into him. What use is anything if he’s turning on the people he loves? He makes a horrible noise, something that sounds more animal than human as he yanks up his shirt sleeve, staring at the freshly reddened Mark as it pulses smugly on his arm. It seems to smirk at him, reclining as it pumps more poison into his system, further indebting him to the disease. He chokes out something, he doesn’t know what, and he pulls out the knife he always keeps in his boot. It’s a short, inefficient thing, but Dean thinks it’ll get the job done.
He holds the blade to his arm, to the neck of the Mark. It writhes under his skin, urging him forward, hotter and hotter with the promise of blood to sate him, and he briefly wonders if this has all been part of some long con orchestrated by the brand on his arm that’s owned him since the first moment it appeared. He wonders if the final blood he’s supposed to take is his own. But then he thinks about that kid, who’s dead. And Charlie, who’s dead. And Cas, who’s alive and didn’t fight back like the dumbest motherfucker Dean’s ever seen. Dean knows Cas is made out of stone, has known it since the moment they met in that barn, since the day he thought it was a good idea to try and punch Cas in the jaw in the angel’s beautiful room and all he got were bruised knuckles for his trouble.
Congratulations, Dean Winchester, he tells himself. You finally made a stone bleed.
He bites off a strip of his canvas jacket and ignores the yank in his jaw that fights him. He ties it around his bicep as some layman’s tourniquet, his fist tight enough that his nails leave white crescent moons in his palm. He’s not thinking straight, but he makes sure his hand is steady as he starts slicing. The flesh slides off like any flesh would, mere meat off the bone, and Dean clenches his teeth until everything aches with the effort. Blood gushes from his arm as he tries, once and for all, to pull this curse off him with nothing more than itchy eyes and the unsteadiest steady hand he’s ever worked with. He doesn’t even feel the pain, sharp as it is. This is just another job. Putting something down that needs killing.
He drops the cut of skin to the ground, the blood from his arm leaving bright red drops on top of it to remind him that everything he’s done has come from no hand but his own. He douses it in lighter fluid and lights it up, leaving it looking like more of a firecracker than the thing that dragged him to the very bottom and then ground him into the floor with its heel.
It’ll come back. He knows that. The infection is in his blood. It’ll scar and it’ll get uglier and it’ll get meaner, but for the time being, it’ll hold. He scrounges a stick from the ditch by the shoulder of the road, sticking it between his teeth. He squats next to the Impala’s trunk as he heats up his blade with his lighter until it turns red, then takes three deep breaths before pressing the glowing metal to his wound, cauterizing it. The smell of his own flesh burning dizzies him, reminding him of his stint in hell, and he cries out, feeling the tendons in his neck strain as he watches the sky above, trying to think of anything else. Because of the width of the wound, he has to do one more pass to fully seal it up, and the second time he presses the flat of the blade to his skin he drags his other hand through the rocks at his side, reminding himself that every single second of pain could never in a million years make up for the suffering he’s dealt out. To the ones on his rack in hell, to Charlie, to Cas. He’ll never be able to undo any of it.
The night grows cold around him, but he doesn’t pay it any attention. He presses his forehead to his knees and breathes, hidden from the occasional passing car by the bulk of the Impala. He selfishly thanks God, of all people, for helping him spare Cas. If Cas had died tonight –at his hand, no less- after everything, Dean can’t even imagine it. It takes him a while to catch his breath, to properly allow his lungs to fill before breathing out, and sometimes he can even feel his heart beating in his chest and that simple realization alone is enough to steal his breath away again, leaving him to start the process all over.
Eventually, he crawls piteously into the backseat of the Impala, his head aching and his arm pulsing and the rest of him dented, shredded, reduced.
***
The grey of incoming dawn feels like a jackhammer in his head as he comes to awareness in the backseat of the Impala. His mouth is dry, his hands sticky, his clothes stiff. His arm sends a dull throb through his body, and when Dean looks at is, he has to swallow heavily and drop his eyes. The section where the Mark used to be is completely charred, scabbed over with angry red fault lines that look ready to burst at any moment. And yet, even through the horrific burn damage, Dean can see the familiar shape of the Mark already working its way back onto his arm, red as ever.
He doesn’t have much time.
For all he knows, Cas got the hell out of dodge and bought the cheapest plane ticket to somewhere far, far away from Dean last night. Dean wouldn’t blame him, and he certainly wouldn’t fight him on that decision. But just on the smallest chance of that not being the case, Dean stops off at the local drug store on his way back, stocking up on bandages, Neosporin, and fucking pork rinds because he’s a sentimental asshole who remembers that Cas liked them when he was human. The cashier looks at him strangely when he dumps it all on the counter, and Dean just has enough self-awareness to bullshit his way through a two line explanation for all the blood on himself, citing a fake disaster where he’s just an idiot trying to repaint the living room and upended the entire bucket of red all over himself.
Dean makes it back to the bunker just as the sun is bursting over the horizon, and everything feels upside down as he trudges through the morning mist, the dampness of the early hour at least settling over his arm like a temporary balm.
As soon as he opens the front door to the bunker, he hears shuffling in the room below and realizes his time to compose himself has become severely limited.
He hears an urgent, “Sam?!” and then Cas’ face is appearing below, completely blood and blemish free. His trench coat and suit jacket are gone, presumably flung somewhere since Cas isn’t big on hanging up either of his coats. All he’s wearing is his white dress shirt, slacks, and shoes. As soon as he realizes it’s Dean standing there, his face completely changes, guardedness and relief warring for primary territory.
“Dean?” he says, much quieter.
The drug store bag rustles as Dean’s grip on it tightens. Of course Cas wouldn’t need bandages or Neosporin or even fucking pork rinds. He’s an angel again. He probably whipped himself back into shape the moment the bunker door closed behind Dean last night.
He walks down the stairs and Cas’ gaze follows him cautiously, hopefully. Dean has no idea what to say, has no idea what the protocol is for when you nearly murder your best friend for merely trying to help you.
He stops in front of Cas, but something out of the corner of his eye catches his notice, and when he turns to look at what he expects is the mess the Stynes left the library in, he sees only a small, neat pile of books on the table. His perplexity must show on his face, because Cas stirs in front of him, drawing his eye again.
“Re-organizing the stacks by hand helped me… process,” he says, still quiet as if afraid to disturb the stillness the room has adopted since Dean left. “Helped me clear my head.”
Dean feels something he thought long dead stir in his chest, and he suddenly finds himself having to blink rapidly to keep his vision clear. The words- any words- still refuse to come out, stuck in his throat like he’s choking on them.
Cas glances down at the bag he’s holding, and reaches forward to gently pry it out of Dean’s hand. As he does, Dean catches him staring with wide eyes at the charred patch of skin just below his elbow, though he keeps any thoughts on it to himself. Cas drops his gaze to what’s in the bag, and with sad eyes he looks back up at Dean.
“I don’t need any of this,” he says, voice laced with regret as if he wished he still had some kind of wound for Dean to patch up. “I’m sorry.”
That finally breaks something in Dean, and he has to turn his back on Cas and take a few steps away because he’s afraid he’s about to lose it again.
“Don’t say that, Cas,” he says, feeling like he’s literally gouging the words out of his throat, “God, don’t say that to me.”
There’s movement behind him, and then Cas says, “What do you want me to say?”
Dean whirls around, and for a brief moment he feels the familiar sting of the Mark well up. “Say you hate me! Tell me to fuck off forever! Fucking deck me back, Cas, God, I don’t care, but do something.”
Cas remains still, only his eyes solemnly following Dean’s frenetic movements. Once Dean tires himself out, his arms fall back to his sides and he stares at Cas, completely defeated.
“Why’d you let me beat the shit out of you?” he asks quietly, hating the way his voice breaks.
Cas lets out a long breath.
“I couldn’t risk it,” he admits. “If things had gotten… out of control, I could have ended up killing you.”
“Right, obviously,” Dean says bitterly, “And then we’d be right back to demon square one.”
“Well, yes,” Cas says, frustration in his voice now, “That was one concern.” He steps forward slightly, just on the brink of too close. “But I also didn’t want to hurt you, Dean.” He makes a face. “I don’t,” he amends. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Dean shakes his head, small movements at first but they get more pronounced as he steps further away.
“No, no, no, Cas,” he says. “I just beat the shit out of you and you are not gonna turn this around to try and coddle me about it.”
“Dean, you need to look at me,” Cas says firmly. “I’m unharmed. My injuries took mere seconds to heal. I’m fine.”
“It’s not always the outside shit that matters,” Dean snaps. “Take it from someone who knows. You can be walkin’ around looking like the fucking Queen of Sheba and you try and ignore the rattling sound in there, but it'll catch up with you every damn time and before you know it you’re stranded on the side of the road, in the rain, in the snow, in the middle of a fucking hurricane, okay? It happens.”
Cas is the one shaking his head now, just as sad.
“I don’t think you understand, Dean,” he says. “This wasn’t like the Styne boy. You got the upper hand only because I allowed it.”
Dean swallows hard, scrubbing a hand over his jaw in frustration.
“What am I supposed to do with that, huh?” Dean asks. He flexes his fingers, feeling the dried blood crack and flake off his knuckles .
“If you’re looking for some kind of punishment, you won’t get it from me,” Cas says, softly but firmly.
“So, what, you’re just gonna be my punching bag from here on out?” Dean says darkly. “That’s fucked up, Cas.”
Cas fixes him with a look. “I’m an angel , Dean. For the most part, that means I can be whatever I want to be.” He spreads his arms in an awkward, all-encompassing gesture. “If you need a punching bag, I can be your punching bag.”
“I don’t want a punching bag,” Dean snaps, stalking away from Cas and perching on the end of the library table. He sags, dropping his face into his hands. “If you had still been human, you probably would have been in a fucking coma,” he mumbles to his palms. “Or dead.”
“Well I’m not human anymore, am I?” Cas says. “But I’m certain if I was, our confrontation would have gone differently.”
“Yeah, exactly,” Dean says, “I would have fu-”
“No,” Cas interrupts him, “You would have held back.”
“How can you know that?” Dean asks, and the desperation inside him is welling up now, because he wants to believe he could never do that to Cas, but after last night he’s not so sure.
“I’m an angel, Dean,” Cas repeats, a touch of wryness in his tone. “You may have forgotten that I can see souls, but I certainly haven’t.”
Dean blanches. “While I was busy beating the shit out of you, almost killing you, you were staring at my soul?”
Cas comes over to where Dean is sitting, leaning on the table beside him.
“You’re a complicated man. What you say or do doesn’t always match up with what you want.” He shrugs. “If you had any intentions of truly killing me last night, I would have known, and I would have done something about it.”
“What, like-”
“Defended myself,” Cas clarifies. “I had multiple chances to disarm you, slow you down, or even knock you out cold.”
“But you didn’t do any of those things.”
Cas shrugs again. “Because I didn’t have to.”
Dean looks down at his lap, where he’s fiddling with a stray thread on his jeans.
“Either way, I shouldn’t have done it,” he mumbles. “Cas, I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”
“I accept your apology,” Cas says. He lifts the drug store bag that he’s still holding and puts it on the table next to him. “You’re sick, Dean,” he says, pressing a feather light fingertip to the skin just above Dean’s burn. “The Mark is infecting you, and this irrationality and violence are symptoms of said infection. You know that.”
“Of course I know that.”
“Well then you should know that this isn’t all on you. The Mark is pushing you to these extremes.”
Dean snorts. “Yeah, sorry, guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one. I’ve gotta own up to my own shit, Cas. What kind of man would I be if I tried to blame this whole mess on a shit ugly tattoo on my arm, huh?”
Cas inclines his head, watching Dean carefully. His eyes are bright blue and achingly sincere, and it’s only then Dean realizes how close they’re sitting.
“Mark or not, you’ll always be the best man I know,” he says simply.
Dean feels his face heat, and he turns his head away.
“Cas…” he mumbles, embarrassed. “Stop.”
“I won’t,” Cas says. “Ever.”
Dean’s still looking away, and he has to swallow past a lump in his throat.
“What you said last night,” he mumbles, “About… um. If we don’t get the Mark off, and I turn. Centuries from now, or whatever. You said-”
“I’ll be there,” Cas confirms. “No matter what happens, I’ll be there.” He puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder and Dean automatically leans into the touch, letting out a breath. Very slightly, Cas starts kneading, and Dean tries not to shudder beneath his hand.
He looks down at his forearm.
“I cut it off,” he says dully.
“I know,” Cas says.
“It’s going to come back.”
“It is,” Cas says.
Dean lets out a heavy sigh, and on the exhale finds himself swaying further into Cas’ space. He’s so tired he feels boneless. He’s so exhausted, in fact, that when he feels Cas’ fingers gently wind through his hair he doesn’t even protest, allowing Cas to bring his head down to rest on his shoulder. Dean closes his eyes, trying to forget about the Mark and enjoy the sensation of Cas carding his fingers through his hair. He shivers in a good way, and almost tears up when he feels Cas press a chaste kiss to the crown of his head.
They sit in silence for a while, Dean in his bloody, sticky clothes and Cas with his blood-free face. He tries not to worry about the future, because he knows that no matter where he ends up, Cas’ll be by his side to keep his ass in check.
And, of course, Cas’ll just be by his side, period. That thought more than anything else is what has him briefly turning his head so that he can kiss Cas’ shoulder through his shirt.
There’s a quiet rustle of the drug store bag, and then a louder crackle as Cas pulls a separate bag out of it. Dean doesn’t even remember what it is until Cas opens the bag one handed and holds it out to him.
“Pork rind?” he asks wryly.
Dean’s completely surprised when a laugh bubbles out of him, unbidden. “Thanks,” he says as he takes one, biting it half. He chews it maybe twice before saying “ugh”, and putting the rest of it on the table beside him. “Those are great. But they’re terrible,” he says. Beneath him, Cas shifts so that he’s square to Dean, the hand in his hair sliding down to rest on his neck, and Dean feels the trajectory of their conversation veering towards something very different than pork rinds. Cas is looking at him almost as if he’s in pain.
“I wish I could explain to you what your soul looks like, Dean,” he says, and it’s not a subtle subject change at all, “Maybe trying to cure the Mark wouldn’t feel so futile to you if you knew just how hard your soul was fighting it.” Cas refuses to break eye contact with him, and when Dean tries to turn his head away from Cas’ hand, Cas simply slides both his palms to cup Dean’s face. “You have to remember,” he murmurs, thumbs stroking over Dean’s cheekbones, “yours is the same beautiful soul that even the fires of hell couldn’t successfully snuff out. When I found you in the pit, you were beaten and lost, frightened and angry. Your soul reached for me, but the body you had constructed refused to go.” Cas smiles, knowing and small. “Like I said before, what you do and what you say don’t always match up to what your soul wants.” His smile grows, just a little. “But I can promise you that every single part of you, soul and all, is just as stubborn as you’d expect,” he says fondly, and Dean knows his eyes are wet at this point but even he has to huff out a laugh at the undercurrent of exasperation in Cas’ voice. “You didn’t want to leave the pit,” Cas continues, more somber, “But you did. You didn’t think you deserved to go, but you wanted out all the same. You confused me from the very first moment we met, Dean Winchester, what you wanted and what you needed and what you thought you deserved pulling you in a thousand different directions all at once.”
A tear slips down Dean’s cheek, and Cas catches it with his thumb.
“Your soul burnt so brightly, Dean. So determinedly. Honestly, there were times I thought it was calling to me specifically, but after coming to know you over all these years, I understand now that that’s just what your soul is and always has been and always will be. An enduring, infinite sunburst that will continue to burn just as brightly despite the color of your eyes or the dimension you find yourself in.” Even Cas is a little choked up, his voice rougher than usual and his eyes wide and unguarded. A few more of Dean’s tears drop onto Cas’ hands, running down his wrists and forearms and probably staining the sleeves of his shirt. Dean can smell the dried blood that’s coating almost half of one side of his face, but Cas hardly seems to mind. Dean thinks about how some of this blood is probably Cas’, and his chest aches.
“If there’s anything that can convince me you will make it through this,” Cas says, “It would have to be that.” Cas slides one hand down so that he’s cradling Dean’s jaw, the pad of his thumb pressed gently to the fullest part of Dean’s bottom lip. When he adds just the slightest bit of pressure there, something in Dean shifts into place that he thinks has been waiting to move for a very long time, and reaches up to grab the hand that’s still on his cheek. He weaves his fingers through Cas’ and kisses the tip of Cas’ thumb. It tastes like salt.
Cas drops the hand on Dean’s lips so he can lean forward and capture Dean’s mouth with his own, and a fresh set of tears rolls down Dean’s cheeks as he kisses back, his chest cracked open and raw as if Cas had spent their entire conversation- their entire relationship, more like- rooting around in there until he found every single one of Dean’s hidden weaknesses, or fears, or dreams he was too afraid to dream, and left fingerprints on all of them. Cas sure as hell couldn’t fix them all, and his presence in Dean’s life has even added a few more to the pile, but there is so much to be said for the fact that Cas just knows. And anything he doesn’t already know, Dean will tell him.
He pulls away from Cas, breathing heavily. “I’m scared,” he admits, and he’s talking about the Mark, and he’s talking about the future, and he’s talking about the huge leap him and Cas just took.
And Cas just looks at him, like Cas always looks at him. Like he’s with him till the bitter end. Like he loves him. Like he knows him.
Cas just looks at him and says, “I know,” because he does.