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Dean’s least favorite monster to hunt- well second to witches- were ghouls.
It was their burrows that he hated.
And now, he was dying in one.
Bleeding out, growing cold, delirious; he hadn’t realized he was praying until he heard that pretty flutter of wings through the ringing in his ears.
“Dean?”
He tried hard to blink the black from his eyes, to open them and see Cas. He reached out with a clumsy hand, blindly grabbing for- for something, he doesn’t know. His shortened breaths punched from his lungs when a large hand encased his. He only now realized they were slippery and cold from his own blood as he was holding his guts in.
“I’m going- I’m going to die like this?” He croaked, finally peeling his eyes open to be immediately nailed with Castiel’s. In the dark they were angry tempests, ocean storms and hurricanes and rogue waves. Dean choked just a little bit under them.
“No,” Cas finally said, steady and even. He pushed down on Dean’s stab wound, the resolution of a solider as he ignored Dean’s sharp cry as pain curled wicked and vicious through his belly and up to his neck. “You’re not dying, Dean.”
The blood was seeping between Cas’ pale fingers, viscous and stark. He pressed harder and Dean choked around the flesh bubbling up in his throat. The pain was bright, infernal and burning. It was like the sun had bloomed in his stomach, tenderly lighting up his insides and burning him from the inside out.
He took his hand from the Castiel’s to ball it up in a weak fist at his side.
Dean’s gasp was more of a rattle. For the first time he heard the angel, who was trying his damndest to staunt the stab wound at the bottom of Dean’s guts, curse. It was soft, a rush of stunned and desperate breath that broke on the side of Dean’s face in a cold plume; “Fuck.”
“C- C-” Dean chattered into the dank air. “Cas, I-”
Another strong hand fit atop the one already pinning him and this time the raging light sharpened and twisted in him. Dean howled with it, his ribs squeezing and his muscles jumping to escape. His instincts were warring between the idiotic need to scramble away from the source of this agony and staying pinned to cold Earth by slippery strong hands.
“Dean,” Cas called to him, his tone of voice the one that never fails to remind him that it belongs to a celestial warrior, something bloodthirsty and dripping in God’s favor. Deep and clear as a pure lake, rasped and honeyed. Dean felt his muscles unbunch, just a bit, just enough to pull in one good breath for the first time in what feels like hours. “Stop talking. It’s alright.”
More blood, bright red and horrific, audibly gushed from him and around Castiel’s palm. Dean raised a cold and numb arm into the air and let it fall on one of Cas’ forearms with a slap that echoed in the dark air. “It’s not, C- Ca- Cas. It’s-” his voice gurgled and he spat out the blood onto his chest. Through the heavy supressing darkness, Dean could still make out those stormy eyes and watched as they dropped to the bad omen Dean spat all over himself.
Dean, from the moment Cas stepped into that barn and reminded him of what terror felt like, was a fish caught on a hook when it came to those blue eyes. He stared into them now, as they radiated with all that pent up power beyond comprehension. However, now they were shaking in their sockets. Unbridled with fear and desperation that vented into the shaky hands pushing down on guts and blood and sinew.
Castiel’s vessel was thoroughly human, fooling anyone who looked. But as it was in that barn, even before the shadows of great wings unfurled and filled the air, you take one long look into those eyes you can see clear as day that what breathed beyond them wasn't human. Back then they scared Dean shitless, but now he felt a different sort of heat curl through his chest.
“Cas-”
“There’s only one way I can heal you,” he gushed, the words tumbling over themselves, all raw nerves. Dean had never heard the angel sound like that before. Slowly, that radiating behind Castiel’s eyes encompassed his whole vessel. Beneath the skin golden light glimmered and glowed, moving and writhing. He brought up one shaking hand, and gently prodded at Dean’s brow to trail down to his eyelid. “Close your eyes, Dean.”
Without a thought or a skipped heartbeat, Dean fluttered them shut.
All there was was the dripping of the wet and cold Hell he was dying in, Castiel’s gasping breaths harmonizing with Dean’s shallow and rattling ones. Then, bright light flared beyond the thin webbing of his eyelids. It doused his vision with yellow and red.
“Dean.” Castiel’s voice came, but it wasn't only one. The deep one of his vessel cut through the air like a bass drum, but echos floated over it. It was like a hundred voices, some wispy and high and others melodic and even, and distantly there were some that sank below the one Dean recognized as Cas, all thunder and sediment. “Dean, when it gets bright you can not open your eyes under no circumstance. I will not mutilate you.” A hand, cold and malleable, like liquid silver, ran down his cheek. Dean didn't fight the way he leaned into the fleeting touch, whimpering when it escaped him. He was so cold and despite the way heavenly light encompassed him and shone through his eyelids, black was creeping in and pulling him down by arms wrapping around his chest. The sensation was familiar and comfortable, but Cas pushing down harder on his wound had him resisting them with a sharp gasp. “I'm going to sing for you, Dean.”
He could hardly process those words, his brain stumbling over the layered voices, but a memory popped up behind his eyes. It could have been weeks or years ago, Dean couldn't really tell you right now.
They were in the impala. It was dark and Dean kept casting looks at the angel where he sat straight yet relaxed in the passenger side. His face was angled out the window, jaw set and serious as it always is. Dean had found himself wondering if the stars he was looking at reflected in his eyes, he wondered what Cas was made of, what he sees when he looks into the sky, what he sees when he looks at anything. He was suddenly desperate to know what was going on in the angel’s head.
“Do you miss it? Up there,” Dean had blurted.
“Up there?”
“Heaven.”
The silence pulled at his chest, but Dean waited. When Cas’ answer came, he would have waited longer.
“Of course I do, Dean,” he murmured so soft it was like the gentle buzz of an old box TV, wind whispering through grass, distant church bells.
“What do you miss?”
The sad smile was audible in the angel’s next words. “I miss singing.”
Dean was expecting power, being in his true form, the camaraderie of being with his brothers and sisters. Not- not being in a choir. “I, uh- okay. Singing?”
Cas laughed quietly. “You never did read the bible like I told you to, did you?”
“I thought you were just being a bratty sarcastic son of a bitch. Didn't know you were serious.”
Cas rolled his eyes and let it go. “Us Seraphs, we congregate in God’s throne room and sing him praise. It’s- I witnessed Mozart in his prime, Dean. I’ve sat for symphonies that have physically altered human souls. Nothing has ever compared to the beauty of all of us singing. I would give anything to hear it one more time, but it will never happen again.”
“Well, dude, sing then. Not gonna judge you."
Cas gave him an unimpressed look before looking back out the window. “It’s not like the way humans sing. It’s only in our true form. We don’t have vocal chords. The way we speak and sing it’s like if light had millions of strings and our throats were a bow.”
Dean didn't say it at that moment, but there was nothing more he wanted than to hear Cas sing. Nothing.
Suddenly, the memory wiped clean as pure white light erupted. He felt it against his skin, a paradoxical sensation that he couldn't make sense of and not only because his brain was dying. The light of Castiel’s true form pushed against him in the raking of jagged and bitten fingernails, the graze of a feather, flower petals, the plunge and rip of a knife through flesh.
Dean squeezed his eyes tighter to the burn, to the warring sensations. The pain of his stab wound was leaving him, sapping from him. He was boneless on the ground. The only thing he could feel was something wholly indescribable besides for Cas- he could only feel Cas.
He was in his lungs, pumping slowly through his struggling arteries, prancing around in the dying light of his brain, threading through each nerve and cell.
Then, the angel began to sing.
It was a choir of those voices from before, but the one of his vessel silent. Melodic ringing, low sweeping of cellos and contrabasses, and above it was sung Enochian. It was light personified, it was as if cats could sing.
He could only contribute it to the sound of light as it beckoned you, what you hear as you are dying. It floated high above Dean’s head, ethereal. It took away all suffering as it filled him. He felt safe wrapped in the holy light of Castiel’s form and the angelic voices that sewn up the gaping wound at his guts.
In the back of his mind, he heard a woman’s voice. Gentle and wispy, but strong. "You have angels watching over you, Dean."
He lifted his hand from where it fell over his stomach and he hadn't realized. He reached out into the light and the millions of strings of heavenly voice, his arm quaking. Castiel’s voices shuddered almost imperceptibly before something cool, something that held just enough tangible shape to wrap around Dean’s forearm met him. He dug his fingers into what he had described before as cold liquid silver and let those voices lap over him like water, like light, like love.
He wasn't worthy of it, but he bathed in it all the same.
Before the black finished creeping in and Castiel’s singing slowly snuffed out with a relieved sound, that heavenly light began to dim. Dean found himself sad and disappointed he couldn't see what Cas truly looked like. However, he got to hear him, all those melodies and strokes of strings, and that’s enough.
He’ll hear it every time he falls asleep and wakes. He’ll hear it the day he dies, beckoning him towards everlasting life, and maybe then- maybe then he’ll get to see Castiel for all that he is.
The last thing Dean registers is human arms gathering up his cold and listless body, the gentle motion of Cas rocking him back and forth. Dry lips pressed to the clammy skin of Dean’s forehead. “I got you,” Cas’ voice came, deep and firm, and Dean let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. A hand came up to hold his head, fingers threading through sweat matted hair and tugging. “You’re going to be okay now. I got you.”
“Your- your true voice- you sound like a cat,” Dean laughed, hollow and tinny.
Cas huffed out one in turn, disbelieving and fond. “Shut up, Dean.”
“Like a whole choir of the damn things.” A pause. “Can cats sing?”
“Everything sings.”
“Why?”
“It’s the way God wanted it. It’s his design.”
The smile that grew on Dean’s lips felt sickly. “I like it when you wax poetry to me.”
A quiet exaltation of breath, a private laugh. Then two fingers were pressing to his forehead. “Sleep now.” A pause. “You idiot.”
And everything went a peaceful and relieving black.
~
Consciousness came in waves.
The first time he recognized his breathing. There was the low hum of a TV playing late night infomercials, and a very comfortable pillow beneath his head. He heard a distant lilting voice that was all rasp and Dean couldn't make much of an effort to do more than listen to it. It was so familiar it lulled him right back to the sweet cocoon of sleep.
The second time he felt the cold and heavy blanket that is draped over him, tucked under his feet and pulled up and under his cheek. It felt like a hug.
The third time he felt morning sun across his face, light and airy and cool.
The fourth, there was a hand swooping at his hair so delicately Dean dubbed it to a trick of his still sleeping senses.
The last time he tried cracking an eye open. He yelled a curse when the late morning light hitting his corneas invoked a pain so intense behind his eyes that all he could do was whimper and squirm.
It writhed around in his skull before dripping down his spine, unfurling through his limbs. It was like something had set his nerves afire. It was getting worse with each breath, each pump of his arteries.
“Dean,” that voice from earlier shouted in alarm, but Dean could hardly hear it as he thrashed in the bedding, trying to snuff whatever fire that was consuming him from the inside out.
Steady hands grabbed hold of his shoulders and pinned him to the matress, but the fire rolled through him mercilessly. It was eating him alive, nerve by nerve, cell by cell.
“Make it stop,” he felt the words rip from his throat, all guttural in animalistic suffering. He fought the strong hands that held him down. “Please! Please, please, just-” And his capacity to speak left him and all he could do was scream.
To scream and cry and bend to the torture.
Then, through the blistering heat and agony, he felt a hand slam down on his sternum with so much force he felt his breath shudder from him. Choppy and clumsy words were shouted into the air and a giant blew out the forest fire burning Dean alive out like a candle.
He fell back on the bed, not realizing he was arching against the pain with his throat scraping screams until the small of his back hit the soft mattress. He bounced, feeling the sweat covering him from head to toe.
He was numb, lost, out of body. He could still feel something warm and gooey moving within him, liquidized fire sluggishly creeping along his bones like some snake.
Cold hands were on his cheeks, rolling his head side to side. “Dean. Dean, are you alright?”
Cas.
Dean reached up and slapped his hand around Cas’ wrist in a surprising vice. He felt the knob of a wrist shift between his tight fingers. His mouth parted with a sound of paper shuffling against one another. When he spoke, his voice was a dry scrape. “Cas. Cas, wha- happened?”
He felt the rapid shake of Cas’ head. “One moment.” He tried to move away, but Dean’s grip tightened even more. He wasn't entirely aware of what it is he’s doing. “Dean. Let me go.”
He licked a dry tongue on dryer lips. “No.”
“I have to get something for you.”
“I was dying.”
A beat of silence then a sigh of resignation. “Yes.”
“I am not dead.”
“Evidently-”
“Stop,” Dean coughed. “What happened?”
“I healed you. Now, please let me-”
“How?”
Cas yanked frustratedly in Dean’s hold. “Dean, please. I’ll tell you everything once I take care of you.”
Dean’s grip slowly laxed. “Promise?”
Cas sighed, taking back his appendage. “Yes,” he said, sounding tired, but he’s been sounding tired since he saved Dean from Hell.
Dean listened to his footsteps as they retreated, the clicking of plastic, then the chink and scrape of ice. They must be in a hotel room. Not a motel room, but a hotel room. This bed was too nice, the room smelling of air freshener and not of mildew. The TV’s speakers that were still streaming quiet noise were too clear, too new. It was the sound of the original Scooby-Doo playing and Dean smiled to himself for a moment.
Cas came back to Dean’s bedside. He angled his head where he thinks he feels Cas standing, mouth opening and closing but not wanting to say anything because it just hurts too damn bad. However, he was still able to choke out Cas’ name.
The angel softly shushed him and gingerly lowered something atop Dean’s closed eyes. Initially it was soft cotton, but soon cold water seeped through. Question and protest was welling up in him, but it died when relief filled his burning eyes from what must be ice cubes wrapped in torn bits of Cas’ shirt.
Dean sighed, sinking even further in his bed.
Two fingers pressed to his forehead, but before Cas could force him back under Dean grabbed his wrist and Cas let him lift his touch from his head. “No. You promised.”
“To put you at ease,” Cas said easily. “I already told you. I healed you.”
“How?”
Two beats of silence. Cas ripped his wrist from Dean's hand. “You need water.”
Dean squared his jaw to the irritation bubbling low in his belly. His hands dropped down to his sides heavy, hitting the bedding in two dull thuds. “I need you to-”
A glass nudging his bottom lip cut off his words. “Drink. I’ll talk.”
Dean’s stubbornness only held out for a few moments before he lowered the hand bearing the glass of water to his lips. Cas carefully tipped it into his mouth and Dean gulped it down greedily. He relaxed back in his bedding with a satisfied smack of his lips.
“Now, get to ‘splaining, sweet angel o’ mine.”
There was the rustle, some awkward and stilted steps, before a familiar long-suffering sigh filled the air. “I- I don't understand what you want me explain to you.”
Dean ground his jaw. “Yes, you do. Don't play ignorant, Cas.”
He could practically see him through his eyelids and the fabric wrapped ice placed over them. See that thinned mouth, the wringing of hands, hunched shoulders. In Cas’ slowly budding sense of humanity and emotion, the first way it’s showing is through nerves and Dean kind of hates it.
He felt the anxiety mirror in him, fluttering in his chest. “Cas.”
“You lost too much blood. You were- your organs were spilling. I couldn't heal you at that stage, not completely,” the angel word vomited, an edge to his voice Dean had never heard before.
“I thought I was just stabbed.”
A sound of silence rang out, loud and irritating. Dean wanted nothing more than to swat the melting ice from his eyes and open them, to look at the angel standing before him. To see his face and the frayed nerves all over his body language even if it makes him feel sick.
He needed to, but a phantom shudder of the pain he felt when he opened them just moments ago reminded him to keep them sealed shut.
“No,” Cas finally said thickly. “You didn't fully understand how badly you were wounded.” There was the clicking and shifting of grinded teeth before Cas spoke again, his soft murmuring voice now firm and dark. Dean shivered. “That rogue ghoul gutted you. A little stab, I would have had you running after him in just a moment. But he- that-” His voice tapered and cracked. Dean was struggling to breathe as when he tried to call out to the angel, his voice came out a raw and weak pant. “I was holding your intestines in, Dean. There was so much blood, the brightest red I’ve seen since Heaven, just oceans of your life pooling under my knees. I- I had to do something drastic.”
At the bottom of his well of guts, they turned to cold and hard metal. He felt sick and cold and uncomfortable. Shock sodden apprehension was a chilled creek breaking forth in him. When Cas says he has to take “drastic measures” of some sort, it’s what most would call halfcocked and fucking insane.
“Drastic?” Dean echoed, his voice faraway to his ears. “What do you mean drastic? ”
“Contained within my vessel, as perfect as it is for me, I am not at full capacity. I don’t have enough mojo as you call it. So, I- well, I, you know-
“Spit it out, Cas,” Dean pressed lowly.
“In my true form is the only way I could save your life.”
Dean’s thoughts blanked, or rather began to run absolutely wild in a way he couldn't make sense of. His mouth opened and closed, trying to say something in reply to that, but he kept falling short. One thing prevailed over all the chatter and the disorientating rush of images and he choked it out. “How did you know you wouldn't kill me or burn my eyes out?”
An awkward clear of the throat. “I didn't. I was acting on a guess- or hope, rather.”
Dean’s eyes flicked open from behind the wrapped ice cubes as anger rocked through his spine, tingling down to his fingers. He swiped the things off his eyes and sprung up in the bed, peeling his eyes open to see Cas a visual of panic where he’s stopped mid step towards Dean.
The pain wasn't as bright and agonizing this time, only settling behind his eyes in a migraine.
Cas slowly relaxed the longer Dean held his eyes open without screaming in torment.
“Can you run that by me again?”
Cas blinked and then something shocked the anger from Dean. He watched as a deep red flush crawled up the sides of the angel’s neck. Is he… embarrassed?
“You were dead either way and if there was the smallest chance I could save your life, I was going to put all my faith in it.”
Dean blinked itching and burning eyes. “How did you know there was any chance?”
Cas’ answer was his eyes falling to the center of Dean's chest, running along his side. If he shuddered, he’s letting you know now you’re seeing shit.
“I remembered in that moment, right when you were starting to- to fade,” Cas began in a deep timbre that Dean felt in those ribs the man was staring at as though we were looking at the bones themselves, like he was looking through the skin. “When I saved you from Hell, when I built you up ash by ash and dust by dust, I- I wasn’t in a vessel, Dean.” Suddenly, that handprint that was once seared into his flesh began to phantom itch. “I think maybe that might have given you some immunity, not to mention the sigils I had carved into your ribs.”
“But I- uh, I thought those were just to keep the angels from finding us,” Dean said thickly.
“Yes, but I took some other countermeasures as well. On the underside of your ribs there are protection sigils, warding ones more like. They did enough to keep most of the grace and light from eviscerating your flesh and bone-”
“They did enough?"
Cas gave a slow nod, his eyes finally leaving Dean’s ribs to flit around the room. His nerves were practically buzzing like cicadas, filling the air. Dean tried to not let it pick up his own tired heart, but he thinks it might be too late for that. “That burning when you awoke, what you probably still feel moving in your veins, is my- my grace. The warding sigils did their part to keep my light from quite literally combusting you, but I didn't account for the grace.”
Dean had no idea whether to feel disgusted, intrigued, or fucking content about the fact a heavenly angelic piece of Cas was running rampent through his veins. He could feel it, thick and bright as it pumped through his arteries.
Dean swallowed dryly. He searched desperately for something to say, but a high ringing in his ears that has gone unawares to him was now too loud. He let out groan, rubbed at his ear, but the sound only got worse.
Cas was calling to him, but the ringing was prevailing over him.
It wasn't like the usual kind of ring either, that high pitched whistle that comes and goes once in a while. As it morphed and took shape in Dean’s ears, it was melodic, symphonic.
Pretty.
Then, Dean remembered.
He remembered the light on the other side of his eyelids, the feeling of it against his skin where it caressed and scratched and speared.
He remembered the singing.
Dean looked at Cas and could tell the angel knew he remembered now. That flush had engulfed his neck, unfurling at the underside of his jaw. He swallowed thickly and looked everywhere but Dean.
“You- you told me something once,” Dean said hoarsely. It only earned a fleeting glance of blue eyes before they went back towards the window. “I asked you what you missed the most about being in Heaven.”
“Dean,” Cas stressed, his voice so low it hardly sounded human.
Dean didn't pay any heed to it. “I thought you were going to say your brothers and sisters, or whatever. The power. Maybe being in your true form, which I guess is part of it. But, you said ‘singing’.”
Cas’ jaw squared as his eyes fell on Dean.
Dean bunched the blanket in his fists. He wanted to get up so badly, to- he doesn't fucking know, but there was an itch under his skin that hated the distance between him and the angel standing guard at the foot of the bed.
Cas cleared his throat. Dean involuntarily held his breath. “I told you in the car why I miss singing.”
Dean blinked. Once, then again, before sighing and rubbing a harsh hand down his face. The migraine was splitting his brain in two and Cas being Cas just wasn't helping at all.
He didn't want to think, it hurt too damn bad.
The ringing- the singing in his ears wasn't stopping. It was relentless, but slowly, the frequency leveled out and it no longer hurt. The sound cleared and Dean found it hard to breathe. It was different listening to Cas’ singing while not in the throes of dying.
He listened to the sweeping sounds, the sung Enochian that floated above all the other chords and strings like hundreds of bells- some deep and red while others tiny and silver. He realized why Enochian sounds so clunky and awkward as it was never meant to come forth from vocal chords, but the chords of light. It was meant to be sung. The vowels were to be stringed along upon millions of chords, twinkling and sweeping and bellowing.
Yeah, Dean couldn't imagine what horrifying beauty it is when all the seraph’s sing together. He briefly wondered if Cas still hears the heavenly choir, when everything falls silent around him. He thinks how long it has to have been since the angel heard it. If it’s been a few years or a few millenia. He hopes it’s the former even if that means it’s his fault.
His headache disappeared, the aches and the burning dimmed into nothing but distant discomfort. The singing in his ears, a memory or caused by the residual grace he doesn't know, slowly faded until it was gone.
He blinked his vision back into focus and looked up at Castiel, feeling like he’s looking at the angel in a way he hasn't since the first few times in his presence. It’s like he had forgotten what Cas is.
Dean swallowed thickly, his throat clicking in the quiet room. “I-” His voice cracked and fell apart in his mouth. Suddenly, a rogue wave of guilt crashed over his heart. It washed over his body, drowning him. He tried to suck in breaths, but he just couldn't.
It was his fault. If Cas had never rescued him from Hell or if Dean just wasn't himself , Cas could be up there right now. He would still be Castiel, still beloved and favored and pure. Now, here he stands at Dean’s bedside. In the trenches, damned and sullied and tired.
And Dean was angry at him for slipping into his true self, something he had stomped and suppressed to be at Dean’s side, in order to save his life.
God.
Hands, so gentle and dry, held his cheeks. He hadn't realized his vision was blurred until he tried to see.
“Dean.”
God, he’s so sorry. His guilt has its hands around his neck and is choking him.
“Dean, you’re crying.”
He blinked and his vision cleared just a bit, cold water spilling from the corners of his eyes and running down his cheeks. He looked up into cobalt eyes. They were so close. Cas was so close.
The leaking tears ran along where Cas’ fingers cradled the sides of Dean’s head.
Then, his mouth opened with some pathetic whimper from the hollow of his throat. “Cas, I- I’m sorry,” lurched from Dean’s chest and not even the humiliation of it all was enough for him to get himself under wraps.
His vision blurred over again as more tears flooded his eyes. Even when he’d blink them away, more would come. Cas was just a blur of blue and dark brown and pale skin, but the hands on his cheeks were indisputable and steady. Dean reached up and curled his shaking hands around decievingly delicate wrists.
“There is nothing to be sorry for, Dean,” Cas said slowly and carefully. “You did nothing wrong.”
“I did everything wrong,” Dean sobbed, his voice wet and heavy and terrible. “I- I’m the- the reason you ca- can't sing anymore, Cas. I’m the reason you… why you’re not Castiel any- anymore.”
Silence rung out for a devastating amount of time. Cas was perfectly still where he was kneeled over him, like a rock. Dean squeezed his eyes shut and tried to look away, but the hold on his wet cheeks was unrelenting.
“I like being Cas.”
The tears grew stark where they pooled behind his eyelids and where they ran down his cheeks in cold streams. He was suddenly hyper aware of how painfully dry his throat was, of Cas’ weight over him, the breaths breaking on his face, of how his hips dug into the mattress beneath him. His heart was a hummingbird in his chest.
He refused to open his eyes as much as he wanted to.
“I fell to be Cas, to be here with you. I did that on my own.”
But those words had Dean fluttering them open. He looked up through his webbed eyelashes. Cas’ face was crumpled with concern and something desperate. The angel reaffirmed his hold on Dean’s face.
“But you miss it,” Dean croaked. “And because of me you’ll never have it ever again.”
Cas blinked, his head cocking to the side and Dean felt the sudden impulse to reach out and cling to the ancient being like some traumatized toddler. He bit it back hard, but the urge wasn't going away.
“I thought you knew this,” Cas stated, his voice soft and ruminating. He looked just as he had that night in the barn, standing too close and knowing Dean from the golden dust to the sordid ash that made him up, saying the words Dean keeps wrapped in cloth ready to be burned on a pyre. “I made it so clear. Dean, I would always pick you. I have always picked you. You or Heaven, you or being an angel, you or anything else, I pick you."
And with that last stressed word hitting him in the chest like a fist, Dean surged forward. A wet sound popping from his mouth, he grappled for Castiel.
The angel let him cling to him, let him wrap his arms around his neck and hang there, crying softly into stubbled flesh that smells like ozone and honey. Dean breathed in the smell, drowned in all that was Cas. He focused on the arms that wrapped about him in turn, strong hands fitting over the dips in his side and how right they felt there.
How they always felt right wherever they touched or grabbed or hit.
In a vessel or as an incomprehensible being of light and power, Castiel just felt right.
Slowly, the ugly sounds coming from his chest died out.
Cas’ lips parted where they were close to Dean’s ear. “It’s not your fault, Dean. I don’t know how many times I have to say those five words until you finally believe them, but I will keep doing so. Everyday if I have to. I- we stopped singing when God left, Dean. The grief, the confusion, the mourning, it- it dried up our voices. Singing in an empty throne room was a lot like what you humans call praying to an empty sky.”
Dean nodded stiffly against Cas’ neck, taking one last breath of that lightning and thunder and honey before pushing himself back on his bed.
He settled into the comfortable bedding, rolling his head to the side to see the late morning sun rising through a light blue sky.
Exhaustion was heavy anchor lowering down from his sternum and the migraine was amped up to something agonizing from his little breakdown. He casted a glance up to Castiel’s face where he was still hovering over him. Dean looked from the indescribable look on the angel’s face, to the nervous rising and lowering of his adam’s apple. Finally, he looked at the knee he had thrown over Dean’s hips and where it sunk into the thick white blanket.
Dean swallowed dryly.
“Can you put me to sleep now?”
He felt Cas nod. Two fingers pressed with a pressure no more than a butterfly landing in the skin between Dean’s eyebrows. “I’ll fly us home."
“Will you?” Dean echoed, listless, eyes closed, just wanting to go away for a while.
“Yes. Bobby and Sam are very worried. I promised I would return you to them as soon as possible.”
Dean snorted, but something twisted in his stomach at the thought of seeing the two of them. He doesn’t know why, but he felt sick at the thought of popping whatever bubble it was he and Cas had found themselves in. It wasn’t a peaceful one so why does Dean want to stretch this out as long as possible?
A thick writhing of Castiel’s grace in his veins served as an answer, but not an explicable one.
“A bunch of mother hens, those two,” Dean joked, but he knew that Castiel knew it wasn’t authentic. Castiel always knows.
There was a smile in his next words regardless. “Yes, that they are. See you in a few hours, Dean.”
And once again, everything went a blissful black, but distantly, there was that choir of cats.