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“Dean, we do not need to do that here,” Castiel reminds him gently.
He flutters around the shoreline like a real wingless fowl.
Dean lowers himself further into the water, faster than he would if it were legitimate cool lake water. There’s no temperature to the water here. It’s not hot or cold, so much so that it barely feels like it touches his skin. And despite Castiel’s warning, Dean does need this. He wants to feel clean. He’s spent so many nights here feeling filthy, covered head to toe in impossible muck.
Most of his clothes lay by the trees which line a circumference around the lake.
“If I don’t need to do this, why is it I can get dirty in the first place,” he mumbles, wading around lazily to get his whole body soaked. He dunks his head under, pulls back up and shakes it all off.
Regardless of the water quality, it feels like shaking off so much more than just liquid and debris. He moves to dunk again, feeling some mud trickle down his cheeks. He wishes he could smell it.
He misses Earthy scents. Dirt, salt.
“Dean,” Castiel repeats his name, like Dean couldn’t hear it the first time. Like he never hears it; the one hundred other times Castiel says his name per day. As if Cas has the power to stop him.
Just by saying it.
“I want to wash up, Cas,” Dean argues waspishly.
“You’re making yourself vulnerable.”
That’s technically true. Purgatory is full of monsters, and they could swarm the shore in seconds. But, he copes better with Benny on the perimeter scouting for the safest road least traveled towards the portal. Meanwhile, Dean knows they won’t find water for a time again, and he wants to take advantage. He knows it’s a risk but life is a risk. It was a risk hunting down Castiel first.
And yet here they are.
He decides to make light of it, get Cas to snap out of the stick-in-the-ass mentality he’s had since getting jettisoned here. He usually has one lodged up there, but not to this extent. Not permanent.
“You talkin’ about how I’m almost butt ass naked in the middle of purgatory?”
Dean flashes him a sly grin. He loves to throw Cas off with jokes like that. Ever since they met, it’s been one of his favorite pastimes. Even now, from behind layers of solemn resignation, Cas sputters and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He steps even closer to the shoreline.
The tips of his shoes touch the mud.
“You’re wearing boxers.”
“That’s why I said almost.”
“Please hurry.”
“It’s going to take Benny another half hour at least, if not longer,” Dean continues, dunking his head again to really work the water through his hair. He can see the gray dirt from his clothes and skin drift away into the dark water as he does this, and relaxes in increments. “Chill out, Cas.”
Castiel sighs, the huffy way a dog does when you tell him it’s not time for dinner yet.
He stays put, even stops pacing.
Though Dean hasn’t felt hungry or tired (relative to real bodily needs and not any type of metaphysical emotional version of the word tired) in a while, he’s starting to feel a bit uncomfortably hot the longer Cas stands there silent, staring at him with his arms crossed.
“You getting in?” Dean prods, rubbing crust out of his eyes.
“No.”
“It’ll make you feel better.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“It’s not like it’s refreshing or something, but it’s water.”
“I don’t…”
“I know you didn’t, uh, grow up with the ol’ nostalgic reset of a basic shower, but—”
“You will simply get dirty again. And there is little reason to clean other than appearance,” Castiel lectures, and Dean thinks to himself come on, you should know better than this by now. “There are few scents in Purgatory, and your body should not be producing sweat or oils.”
“It’s an emotional thing. Emotions, remember those? You should try it again sometime,” Dean cracks, working the water under his arms. Dirt seems to be caked everywhere, dusty and thick.
“I’m on edge, Dean. I’m not exactly looking to, as you might say, ‘kick back’.”
Dean shifts gears because Cas is on edge. He’s on edge and he’s been wearing that trench coat for almost a decade, and he’s dirtier than Dean’s looking, so much so that the skin of his face is barely visible. He appears tired in a way that he knows Castiel has never experienced before.
“Just humor me.” Dean droops his eyes, pleading. “C’mon, angel.”
Cas sighs again, resigned, though obviously wearing down.
Dean wades closer, runs a hand over his face so water droplets aren’t clinging his eyelashes together. Cas is still watching him intently, gaze wandering to the surface of the water around him, rippling as he floats. “If we get ambushed?” Cas asks with monotone, insistent concern.
The angel’s been too numb to drudge up anything close to his regular fiery care and Dean can’t blame him, with everything lately, but he does miss the way Castiel often used to look at him like he’d tear the world asunder to keep him safe, protect him. No one’s ever looked at him like that.
It never feels real until it’s gone, as do most things in life.
He supposes Cas was really ready to throw away his life to save Dean and keep him safe from Leviathan hunters here, and he’s grateful. He wants to give back, wants to show Cas there’s a way to survive here without making it all about being able to take the next breath, and the next. It doesn’t have to be about surviving to the next moment. It’s about keeping your humanity as close as possible. Maybe that’s something Cas won’t be able to understand. However, Dean has to try.
He doesn’t want the Cas that comes out of purgatory with him to be as broken as the last version of him. It’s his responsibility to try.
“Cas,” Dean says, keeping his voice commanding but soft.
He rises from the water, and tries not to think about the fact Cas uncrosses his arms as an instinctual gesture to invite Dean into his space. He tries not to be hyper aware of the fact he’s in nothing but damp boxers when he tugs at Cas’ trenchcoat. Imagines it would look gray as a rainy sky if color were something he could remember. Imagines it wouldn’t feel like sandpaper on his palms. Cas’ lips part as he’s divested of the article of clothing. For the first time since Dean reunited with him in purgatory, ironically also by the water, there looks to be something alive swishing around in his gaze. Like he’s just woken up from a long sleep, all from Dean’s touch.
He didn’t wake up when Dean hugged him, so Dean is mildly taken aback for a moment, before he folds the trenchcoat and tosses it down on the dry pebbles behind them. Cas remains silent.
They stand there watching each other and Dean thinks, Cas is right, I am making myself vulnerable. But Cas then says, “The last time I walked into a lake, I didn’t come out of it.”
Dread fills Dean’s stomach; it’s not that he forgot, it’s that he thought it would be different. Different if Dean were here with him, to help make him forget. He should’ve known better.
He runs a hand over his face, nodding belatedly.
“I should’ve, uh, thought it through,” Dean grinds out, and if he could shiver, he would. “I don’t want to stress you out more.”
“That’s not to say—” Castiel pauses, searching thoroughly for the right words. He’s playing with the drawstring of his hospital scrubs absentmindedly when he meets Dean’s eyes. “You misunderstand. I want to.”
Dean is used to Sammy pushing himself to do things he doesn’t, to please Dean.
“Then why’d you bring it up?” Dean questions with delicacy. “Cas, they drowned you.”
“I remember,” Cas answers tightly. “It’s different. You’re here.”
It’s different.
Dean blinks in rhythm with his stuttering heart, and waits for God knows what.
“It’s different with you,” Cas elaborates, though it barely is enough to quell Dean’s increasingly rapid heart. It is different. But not because he wants me to help him forget. “I won’t be scared.”
Cas mentioning at all that he’d been scared when—shit.
Dean’s head drops so he’s staring at their feet, submerged in lake water. He can’t meet his eyes again. Can’t face the fact he’d watched Castiel enter that lake and not come out, and he’d been scared. Scared to death and till his death. A wave of emotion roils through him and he feels sick.
Then, it passes.
Cas has his hand on his wrist, and it’s passed.
“Do not worry about me.” Castiel looks regretful. “There is much worse in the world, in Purgatory.”
“I don’t care much about the rest of the world,” Dean answers gruffly. “So, you don’t gotta tell me what I need to worry about or not, okay?” Castiel emits a quiet, hoarse laugh, which annoys him and thrills him in equal measure. He’s made him laugh, and at least, smile. That’s a start.
“Dean—”
“You taking this shit off or not?” Dean interrupts, throat thick with cotton. He tugs at the scrubs and Castiel fiddles with the hems of the shirt and pants again, considering Dean’s suggestion.
“I am not wearing any undergarments,” Castiel warns.
Dean short circuits.
“Excuse me?”
“I could enter the water in the clothes, but I would weigh significantly more were we to be ambushed before I dried.”
“No, no, uh, well…” Dean’s really got nothing for that one, and that hot feeling from earlier returns tenfold. “Cas, buddy, why the fuck aren’t you wearing underwear under this stuff?”
“Their institution regulation briefs were constricting.”
“Jesus.”
“I can remain clothed.”
“No.”
Cas looks at him sideways.
Dean doesn’t know why he was so quick to say ‘no’ and needs to get away from the reasoning for his haste and fast. “Look, we’re both guys. I shouldn’t have a problem dropping trou, so you shouldn’t either.” To emphasize his point, before he thinks about it too much, he does just that.
“C’mon,” Dean urges sternly, the hot feeling consuming him as he reaches out a hand to Cas, naked as the day he was born. “Nothing to be scared of. It’s just purgatory.” It’s just me.
He’s overcompensating his non-chalance, he knows he is.
He knows some part of Cas knows he is too.
But Cas does as he suggests, stripping himself down to nothing. Dean doesn’t have an excuse to stand there and watch, not just wade back into the water and let Castiel do his own thing. He doesn’t want to leave him alone to enter the water, maybe there’s that. Maybe he’s selfish.
Maybe he knows whatever happens in Purgatory has no permanence in reality.
Maybe it’s easier to pretend like this is something he’s allowed to want, here.
Castiel isn’t a human; he doesn’t give in to any impulse to look between their bodies, catch a glimpse of something unseen between them, or look bashful at the fact Dean is doing just that. Dean isn't even sure Castiel has such impulses, but then Cas takes his hand. And his hand is trembling.
It stalls Dean where he stands, then he intertwines his fingers with Cas’ and reaches out the other to repeat on that side. Castiel’s eyes are piercing into his own, so ferociously that Dean almost hallucinates their vivid color. He moves backwards, guiding Cas into the water, with great care.
Cas tenses when his waist is subsumed by the lake, either from memories or new sensations.
Dean stops them, holding his hands gently above the water.
“And the purpose is to feel rejuvenated?” Cas questions softly. “I don’t fully understand.”
Dean offers a half-smile and loosens his grip on Castiel’s hands. “Maybe I can help you with that,” he offers, moving as close as he dares. Sand and dirt slides between his toes, grainy and inviting. He jolts with the tips of his toes brush Cas’ but he doesn’t move backward.
On the surface, back in his world, he would’ve moved backwards.
Here, he reaches out a palm, cupped with water, and lets it pour over Castiel’s hair, face. Cas blinks droplets away as Dean strokes a hand through his hair, working dust and grime out of the thick locks. He gathers more water and applies it across his forehead, so it flows over his beard, bringing a grayed filth with it as it drizzles down back into the lake. Dean works a thumb over the stains on his cheeks, cracking the hardened, survival-ridden shell Cas has built up recently.
He’s scraping away layers to the angel who dragged him out of Hell.
Castiel shivers as he cups water over his shoulders, rubs his fingertips over bruises that could easily be misconstrued as smudges of dirt. He doesn’t think about how much he’s touching him.
“I haven’t felt hungry since I got here,” Dean admits. “No matter how much I think about burgers, and beer, I just can’t get myself to want it. Not being hungry for food feels weird.”
“I’ve experienced hunger only a few times in my thousands of years of life,” Cas admits quietly, still as a statue. He doesn’t seem to have a comment or opinion about Dean touching him all over.
“When a man loses his need to eat, other hungers become pretty apparent.”
Cas has been looking him in the eye for the past fifteen minutes now, but he seems to tense at that, stare at him harder. Trying to mentally uncover the full meaning of what Dean is saying.
Dean meets his eyes, hands resting on Castiel’s forearms.
“I don’t know how you stand it.”
“Dean?”
“It’s so loud. What I feel...when the rest of it isn’t there to distract from it, to block it all out. Makes it easier when there’s more to deal with. When I can prioritize all the other needs in my life instead.” Dean picks up one of Castiel’s hands. The only sound between them other than their breathing is the water droplets falling from his palms. He traces the lines there, of his vessel’s age, and then begins a meticulous process of working the dirt out from underneath his fingernails. It’s something Cas could have accomplished in seconds with his grace, a long time ago, and now Dean is tending to it the way he tends to a wound, yet with even more attention.
“I’m not a mind reader,” Cas reminds him. “Even before I lost my powers.”
“Aren’t you? You hear me whenever I pray to you.”
“It’s more of…your essence reaching out to me. Something I can feel.”
“When I pray to you…it’s tangible?” Dean asks, shocked.
“The way wind might feel on your skin. Untouchable, yet felt.”
That has implications, Dean doesn’t say.
“When I pray to you, it feels like wind.”
“Not you,” Castiel disagrees. “Most. With you, it feels like a storm.”
Dean’s face falls, as if Cas has said something cruel.
“Dean,” Cas pries when Dean remains silent, thumb drawing circles on the underside of his own, hypnotic and lost. “Dean, please explain what you meant before. I would—I want to know.”
“Is ‘want’ easy for you? Because you don’t have to feel all the different layers of it?” Dean asks, deciding rather pointedly, again, to be elusive. Castiel holds in a sigh and offers a minimal shrug.
“I should want for nothing, as an angel,” Castiel replies. “But that changed. I’m an anomaly.”
Dean shakes his head fiercely, though doesn’t debate him. Probably because he knows how Castiel feels about his position in Heaven currently is tumultuous at best. As much as Dean could attempt to comfort him about the upsides of being more human, being more than a machine—
He’s lost his grace, and that’s too much to bear.
“When did that change?”
Castiel’s head tilts and he looks down at him in a way he hasn’t in a long time. With the wisdom of someone who has been alive as long as he’s claimed. Dean tries not to flinch from the look.
“Are you truly asking me a question you know the answer to?”
“It’s a human habit,” Dean admits. “To do that.”
“It would make you feel better if I told you something you already know?”
“Yes,” Dean admits, with devastating truth. “It would.”
“When I put you together,” Castiel confesses simply, like that isn’t incredibly damning. “Not long before I raised you, I thought to myself that I’d never been in the presence of a soul so beautiful.”
Dean is finding it hard to breathe; his grip on Castiel’s hand is bone-tight.
“That doesn’t answer my question, though,” he forces out, his voicebox completely shot.
Castiel’s head tilts further, and he says,
“How could anyone, or anything, not want a soul like that to exist in and around them for eternity?” A beat passes. “Maybe then, it is easier for me. Wanting. I didn’t question a feeling so easy for me to understand.”
Dean feels sick. He drops their intertwined hands below the water.
“The things I want, I’m ashamed of. Not because I think they’re bad, but because I can’t let myself…it’s stuff that I don’t deserve. Everyone deserves food, shelter, even me. But there’s things that I want that I don’t think I could ever earn the right to say are mine to have.”
Castiel is the one to shake his head now, like he's said something undeniably wrong. He lifts a hand and strokes over one of Dean’s eyebrows, dislodging a speck of leaf that was plastered to his face. He trails that hand down to Dean’s shoulder, where he’d left a mark a long time ago. So long, Dean’s almost forgotten how it stung.
“You’ve always underestimated how much you deserve, Dean.”
“That’s a nice way to frame my self-loathing,” Dean manages to crack, somehow, amidst the world-ending feeling building inside him, that Purgatory can’t mask how real this is becoming.
“You don’t have to be afraid, either.” Cas caresses his shoulder, like he wants to, like Dean really is the most beautiful thing he’s ever set his eyes to. Like he wants him. “It’s purgatory.”
“And what happens in Purgatory stays in Purgatory?”
“Whatever hunger there is here, depriving yourself is not the answer.”
Is it the equivalent of starving?
On purpose?
He brought Cas in the water to bring him closer to humanity, but maybe he was the one who needed to be more in touch with himself.
Dean wishes he’d made this a less vague conversation when they first started it, because he feels terrified, despite Cas telling him he doesn’t have to feel that way. Terrified if he opens a door to doubt like Cas did a long time ago, that these needs he’d be fulfilling would bleed over into his homeworld.
That they would start to drown out hunger for food, sleep.
“You wanted to get clean,” Castiel pushes forward, the water rippling around them. “You wanted me to get clean.” He stops, an inch or so away from Dean’s face, having considered that Dean is deciding not to pull away like all the other instances in their past. “What else do you want?”
Dean gasps when he feels Castiel’s other hand find his hip.
“So much that I couldn’t bring with me to the other side,” Dean admits solemnly, a crack in his voice. Castiel is staring at him with a distant sadness, like he knows more than Dean does.
“You can treat our days here, like they’re our last together,” Cas gifts him softly. “They could be.”
Dean shakes his head fervently. That isn’t true.
He won’t let it be true, but he understands the sentiment.
What's even worse, is Castiel should be angry with him, should be outraged by his cowardess.
He understands that Cas is giving him an excuse, an out.
More things Dean doesn't deserve.
He fears Cas won't ever stop giving him what he doesn't deserve.
So, he leans forward, and he kisses Castiel.
There is no temperature in Purgatory, there is bare minimum sensation, there isn’t taste or smell. He isn’t sure it would matter if there were. He’s feeling Castiel for all that he is. The being most devoted to him in the universe. A man physically inexperienced and yet so wholly wise enough to hold Dean during the kiss like he’s a precious object, as fragile as the day he rebuilt him. Dean kisses him hungrily, because as he’s said, he’s hungry for nothing else, and it’s easy to let all the built up frustration he’s pushed down and down come out now, root itself inside them both and burn, the way a fire feels in a place where fire can’t burn. Icy to the touch, and unreal, crackling.
Their bodies are touching all over, and he’s hard, as well as Castiel.
That doesn’t matter aside from the fact it’s another physical sign of this being real, in a place where nothing is real or barely understandable.
Dean curls a hand into Castiel’s wet hair and tugs at it, kissing down his neck, like he can’t get enough. He won’t be able to. That’s the tragedy. He couldn’t have enough of this for an eternity.
Castiel doesn’t understand physical love the way Dean does; he didn’t grow up wanting to touch skin, to come. In many respects, even now, he’s still getting used to Jimmy’s vessel with how he's more a mirror than not, but the damning part of it all is that he trusts Dean enough to let himself be dragged through these motions. He knows Dean wouldn’t lead him astray, and he knows this must be as meaningful to Dean as rebuilding Dean’s soul piece by piece was to Castiel, so his angel intensely reciprocates.
There isn’t a closeness that Dean will be satisfied with, as tight as he holds Castiel to him, as far as his mouth digs into his neck, under his ear. He stops the kiss and mutters a curse against his cheek. Castiel is still holding him by the shoulder, the other hand tracing shapes onto his back.
“You’ve given me more than you know,” Castiel whispers.
He’s telling him it’s okay. That when they cross through the portal, it doesn’t have to be this way. That Dean doesn’t owe him anything by allowing this to happen, by giving into this.
“You were stupid if you didn’t think I found you just as beautiful,” Dean whispers back, feeling shattered by everything.
Castiel hugs him closer, and Dean knows him better than anyone, and knows touch after all the years Castiel had not experiencing it in the human way, means more to him than anything.
Soon, Benny will lead them to the portal, and this—Dean will have to let it go.
He’s ashamed, ridden with guilt, in ways he’s never been before.
Bereft, with all that could be.
“Dean, I l—”
He’s selfish, and he can’t hear it, because it’ll hurt every time he looks Castiel in the eyes. Every time Castiel touches him, because he’ll remember the fingertips on old scars, washing the dirt from his brow, with reverence and adoration. Devotion.
“I know.” Dean holds him back, even harder. “Me too.”