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It tastes like sulfur when Castiel kisses you for the first time.
His lips are all wrong—too wet, too intending. His hand’s in the wrong place, on the opposite arm, far away from a mark that was once emblazoned into your skin. His tongue teases yours, and you fall into it anyway, your hand cupping his cheek, his creeping to the back of your neck. ‘This could be a good thing’ echoes in your ears, and it’s enough of a realization that you jerk back, Castiel’s touch suddenly frigid, burning you to your bones. “Something’s wrong,” you say, his taste still on your lips, the fires of Hell tainting your mouth.
Castiel just smiles, lopsided, like he knows something you don't. That light isn’t in his eyes anymore—that caress you saw just a few days ago, when he went over your symptoms, touched you like you were the world. Now, his hands hang at his sides, like they itch to rest on his hips, to wave in exaggerated patterns. His lips twitch ever so slightly, a smirk you know he’s dying to show. Your stomach drops at the thought.
Whoever this is, it isn’t Castiel. “What’s wrong?” Not-Castiel asks, treading the shortening distance to you, reaching out to touch the wrong shoulder again. You jerk away, covering what’s not there, what was never there in the first place. His confusion only deepens, and for a split second, you wonder whether you’ve gotten it all wrong. If this is Castiel after all, if this is just him in the moment.
But then he palms your cheek again, and you can see the fear in his eyes, hidden deep within blue irises. You wouldn't have noticed it otherwise, but he’s so close now, lips almost touching your own. You want to give in—you want to taste him again, let him devour you. Let him eat your soul alive and leave your body for the wolves. But you can’t—not when you know that this isn’t right.
The air is different—he’s different. “When was the first time you told me you loved me?” you ask, quiet. It’s an easy enough question—one Castiel can’t answer.
But the thing in his body replies anyway, a smile curling his lips when he says, “The night before Stull.”
It’s a lie. A laugh bubbles up with the answer, and you just shake your head and back away, away from his touch, from the chill that seeps from his fingers. You want to scream at him—tell whoever it is to leave, because in the back of your mind, you know what this is. Who this is. And you know that Castiel said yes. In the heat of the fight, Castiel said Yes and threw himself upon the pyre. He’s still in there—not visibly, but you know his Grace is there, curling towards you in a last vestige of hope.
A tear threatens to fall the longer you look at him. I’ll get him out of there, you pray, hoping desperately Castiel can actually hear you, I’ll save you. Lucifer watches you with subdued mirth, Hellfire burning behind blue eyes.
You run—for the first time, you flee, unsure of what to do, how to save him. Castiel’s unheard admission weighs heavy on your heart, a living thing constricting your chest until you can’t breathe, until you collapse to your knees on the library floor, a hand on the table and the other clutching your shirt, like that’ll stop your heart from shattering.
Castiel said Yes—and somehow, you can’t shake the idea that it’s your fault.