watching over me

With the will to look away When I was fallin' down Crawlin' in the dirt? Is it fair enough to say That I needed you through the crazy pain Of livin' here with all this hurt and what I feel? All I touch and how I steal? The fantasy was far too real Oh, I let it slip away... Didn't hear the strength within your words And what they mean You were watchin' over me.

[seraphic-anachronism]

Chapter 6 of Purgatorio

Alrighty, folks, it's Thirsty Thursday - here's Cas's quite interesting response to Dean's dreams.

I dunno if you can even label this smut... it's like mind-soul-grace-fucking!?!??

XD XD XD

Anyhow, enjoy :D comments, criticism and anything in between feeds the muse!

❣️XX,

LynZ

Chapter 6

by seraphic_anachronism

Summary:

Castiel's POV involving Dean's very, very wet dreams (while perched in a tree, avian-like)! This should be fun - short n' sweet ;}

Notes:

Lol, after much ado, we are finally earning that E rating, albeit in a weird-ass way. Tags updated to reflect such changes :P Mostly self-beta'd (following in Pandora's footsteps/advice from Stephen King's "On Writing") the last few chapters.

Castiel punishes himself to the played-out tune of “Dean’s safety being his #1 priority” with his deliberate distance. But that night, beneath the swollen moon, the rip currents of his human’s subconscious longings threaten to pull him under, sucking Castiel into its tsunami source through the seabed of trees.

His eyes squeeze shut against the abstractions of his human’s naked lust, vermilion waves crashing over him only to ebb into spiderwebbed strands of thickening dissociative desire. It’s like sentient tentacles of want – no, need – so fat and sticky they wrap around his entire being and squeeze to the point of suffocation.

He’s an angel, and could technically survive without oxygen, but right now Cas can’t breathe.

Nestled within the dense fauna of another tall tree, he clings to its rough trunk for dear life. Castiel presses his lips together so tightly his teeth cut into their soft mortal flesh.

The metallic, perversely tantalizing tang of blood suffuses his tastebuds, and Castiel wishes darkly that it were Dean’s lips he was tearing into instead. The unparalleled power of Dean’s soul pulses his primal sexuality straight into Cas’s astral body, throbbing through their unbreakable bond like the pumping of two hearts in sync.

This assault of his senses renders Cas little more than a heaving, trembling mess of delirious desire. Distantly, he notes his physical body is reacting with enthusiasm to the onslaught of psychic pleasure, cock swelling and hardening to the point of pain.

He wonders if he’ll come from the power of Dean’s dreams alone.

And then – swhoosh, his wings manifest from the aether in an involuntary flutter, shaking the leaves of the surrounding branches down in a drift of green.

Oh my – I did not intend for that to happen. I appear to be losing control over basic functions. Dean, you make it increasingly difficult to stay away from you, whether in dreams or lucidity…

Castiel shudders, flapping his wings about helplessly as Dean’s unconscious fantasies crescendo, a tightening, blazing razor’s edge of almost unbearable pleasure cutting a brutal path, using his grace as a conduit and spreading like wildfire throughout his corporeal and incorporeal forms, and the angel can only hyperventilate and grit his teeth, bracing himself for the inevitable climax.

Unbidden images overtake the cacophony of twisted lechery in his mind’s eye; now he sees as Dean sees, now he feels as he feels –

They are writhing together as ethereal bodies and souls collide, stripped of all conscious barriers and streaming with light, and it is utter bliss beyond anything comparable in Cas's vast existence. Castiel can’t tell whether the ephemeral, ecstatic moans are emanating from him or Dean’s souls at this point, and he can’t bring himself to care – it just feels too goddamn good, and it steals his very esoteric breath away again and again and again until he’s just gasping through that pulsating psychic link, sans coherency and far beyond comprehension.

Still, he senses Dean’s soul curling around his grace like a predatory feline, satisfied and purring sensually as their joining crests. Human language - or even Enochian - leaves much to be desired to accurately express the transcendental sensations coursing through him, replacing the blood and grace in his veins with something so much more profound and inexplicable, inescapable – they twirl and twine together in an infinite loop, heavenwards and unapologetic in their furious pursuit of pleasure; he hears (or senses) himself cry out for his (forever) lover:

“Dean…”

And there’s that warm, dominating, all-encompassing song of a voice he’s all too familiar with, replying with so many unuttered emotions contained in that single, most meaningful syllable, unfettered and unleashed, resplendent and desperate and gorgeous:

“Cas…”

Blinding, beautiful light overtakes all his senses. Its loving purity is too much, too much…

Castiel barely manages to not shrink away and, against all instinct, welcomes it inside of him to white-wash away all that he ever was.

When he comes back to, Castiel is aware that he’s still shivering, but not from the cold; there’s a growing dampness inside his pants, spreading alongside a bone-deep sensation of alien satiation, cascading across the span of his wings that have stretched out luxuriously to their fullest.

He instinctively starts praying, seeking spiritual sanctuary, but not within his absent Father.

Dean… oh my God…

After the avalanche of Dean’s astral adventures finally cease, it’s long before Cas regains his composure, pupils still blown like black hole moons in the late starlit navy of twilight. Dimly, he registers the contradictory rising sun in the distance casting a lukewarm, hazy light politely blanketing the apathetic forest. He adjusts himself within his pants, suddenly shy and uncomfortable at the realization of the telepathic intimacy they just shared.

I believe Dean would refer to this type of situation as a “mindfuck”. Hmmm, there were minds that were fucking indeed – our minds.

What bothers him most is not knowing if Dean felt him on the same level, if he truly wanted it or if it was just another wet dream, a subconscious projection of his obsession to find his angel… and if he will remember any of this upon dawn’s half-hearted breaking.

Despite all Cas does to reluctantly shake the lingering link with Dean, it’s dug its hooks into every fiber of his being, pierced and inseverable. He’s half an inch away from breaking, cracking wide open and taking flight into the skies of this forsaken realm to seek out the magnet of his heart’s desire that pulls and tugs at him in a way that has him questioning his lack of a soul, inherent to every angel in existence.

Dear God, if there ever was the true existence of an angelic soul so unbeknownst to Castiel (as to all other seraphim), Dean would (and should) be the only one to hold the key to that controversial lock within him, safeguarding a place which should not rightfully exist…

Unintended display of wings now tucked back into the aether, Cas exhales a lung-rattling breath of air that’s more despair than carbon dioxide. Aches of longing and wanting and needing invade his system, deadly enough to paralyze him, physically and otherwise; the best he can do is maintain his perch, hidden within purgatory’s arboretum, evidence of his forbidden love staining his only pair of battered khakis.

The farther away from Dean he gets the better, so as to elude the ever-pestering hordes of Leviathan that, he curses bitterly, are the only real threat separating him from Dean. Gods, I almost wish I had a valid excuse to go to him regardless… it’s not as if we haven’t fought off majorly intimidating supernatural beings together in the past; perhaps I am overexaggerating my care by staying so far away despite both of our (obvious, if unconscious on his part) true desires?

Be careful what you wish for, Cas – later in the afternoon that very same day, his wishes would be granted (though in a fashion far from his liking)...

⊰⋯ ҉ ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

Notes:

Uh oh... could it be a cliffhanger!?!? O.o For those of you still following this story with genuine interest, I'd like to sincerely thank you for your dedicated readership. Despite this being my least-popular and longest slow burn of a fic, I can tell you with 100% conviction that it's been the one I've poured all my shriveled heart and crippled soul into. Purgatory is a state of mind I find myself trapped within more often than not these days (I'm sure others can relate), so I'm right alongside Dean and Cas as they fight their way through what seems an impossible impasse. Having the privilege of pounding out this darkness and angst and loneliness into the keyboard and knowing someone else on the other end reads it and feels something means more to me than I can verbalize. I love you, reader, whoever you are and whatever you may be going through. You are not alone. ❣️ forever, LynZ P.S. - HMU on Tumblr :) Shy Aquarius here in need of friends lmao

[seraphic-anachronism]

Chapter 5 of Purgatorio

Hey, y'all - back this week with another peek into Dean and Castiel's quest to find each other in the wastelands of purgatory! This one's mostly insight into Dean's mind and contains flashbacks of his traumatic past as he continues to seek out his angel. Let's hope Cas senses his longing and comes around soon ;)

Just an FYI, this fic is also located on AO3 for those who would rather peruse that site instead (my personal reading preference). I shall keep up my custom of mirror-posting on here, though :D

❣️XX,

LynZ

Chapter 5

by seraphic_anachronism

Summary:

After his encounter with Amy, Dean's lost in the nightmare of his own mind as well as the labyrinthine purgatory forest. Will Cas sense his intense longing and find a way back to him?

Notes:

This chapter's mainly atmospheric (admittedly most of this fic is totally just colors and vibes), and comprises Dean's traumatic flashbacks, so if that's not your cuppa tea feel free to skim over :) don't fret, there's still much more to come... next chapter's looking to get a bit 🌶️in a weird angelic telepathic way ;D

Between plotting how to ferment the berries into some ghetto jungle hooch and the scattered slaughterings of that next day, Dean distracts himself from any wayward thoughts by belting Led Zeppelin at the top of his lungs (for an audience of absolutely no one). He’s only met with the secretive sighs of the trees and burbling laughter of the placid river. Tough crowd, he thinks with a sardonic twist of his lips. Maybe some Metallica or Pantera’ll get the juices flowin’.

Overriding his overenthusiastic, off-key refrains of “Ramble On”, recollections of the mixtape he made for Cas (“Dean’s Top 13 Zepp Tra XX”; hmmm, wonder what those double X’s stand for… not a thought that’s ever surfaced in Dean’s conscious awareness, nope!) manage to muddle his cavalier delivery. It fizzles out in a hoarse, longing croak, and drags at his dread-weary heartstrings with the nonstop force of a possessed spinning loom.

Helpless, Dean’s caught dead to rights in the web of lies that he’s woven. He’s crushed between the repressed taboo desire for his angel and layers of rockbed-deep denial so carefully cultivated throughout his insecure, overcompensatingly masculine years of formative growth – courtesy of none other than His Unhinged Majesty, John Winchester (and the way his overbearing, deep voice still just digs into Dean like nothing else ever could).

What the hell’re you doin’ smilin’ like that, boy – be a fuckin’ man, for Christssake’s! Ya wearin’ ‘em faggot clothes ‘cause you wanna be an even bigger pansy’n you already look? Ugh, you’re such a goddamn pretty boy, Jesus fuckin’ Christ – your only saving grace’ll be learnin’ to shoot this gun bettern’ your own fuckin’ dick – c’mere and lemme show you how it’s done, boy.

Ah, you look just like your Mother… I’ll tell ya somethin’, though – that pretty face of yours is only good for gettin’ ya into trouble y’ain’t bargained for. Grow your scruff out, for Goddsake’s son, and try to at least come off as a fuckin’ man so the rest of ‘em don’t wanna either walk all over ya or take you as a nancy bitch.

Flashbacks of his father’s gruff words, delivered with the intent of an executioner sharpening his blade upon the grindstone so as to cleave the heads off his victims most cleanly. Daddy’s blunt – or rather, sharp – little instrument: always honed and ready to kill, just the way he wanted me.

It’s like a shot of icewater to his veins, dousing his churning thoughts of Cas with hypothermic shock.

It’s not that his misguided, half-or-mostly-drunken father didn’t mean well, and that’s the worst part of it; roads to hell, good intentions, et cetera. In this case, quite literally, Dean thinks, face souring into a grimace of regrets which should’ve long since been interred alongside John Winchester’s sacrificial ashes.

In the life of a Winchester, though, Dean’s found that dead things which should stay dead have an uncanny tendency of resurrection. Whether this will qualify as “good” or “bad” remains to be seen, as far as such subjective judgments can be made in this morally ambivalent expanse of life’s endless shades of grays. For Dean, this zombified guilt serves both as a shield and a sharp, cruel whip for self-flagellation; these weapons are not mutually exclusive.

Hell, man, who the heck would Dean Freakin’ Winchester even be without my good ol’ buddy guilt and his partner-in-crime shame, he admits in a rare flash of self-honesty. A nearby squirrel running up a tree chitters its sage assent.

Dean really wants to muster up the courage to hate John for every unfair thing he put him and Sammy through. He really, really does. As always, he ends up drawing a blank.

For all of John’s numerous sins and careless mistakes, for all of Dean’s skipped meals and groceries stolen to keep his baby brother fed, for John’s one-track revenge-obsessed mind that skewed the entire course of their lives (yet serendipitously led to the prevention of numerous apocalypses) – John Winchester still easily condemned his own life to an eternity in hell to save Dean’s.

Frankly, when the shit really hit the fan, John was just about the only rock Dean could lean on, no matter how cracked or unstable.

Well, until you factor in the guy who filled those shoes better than John ever could (and boy, did he hate him for it) – Bobby, in all of his trucker-capped, scruffed-surly glory, who tucked these two scrawny boys underneath his wings and ended up gifting them the best moments of their childhood. He knew with one look that day John showed up on his doorstep, dusty and travel-weary with two tousle-haired children in tow, that what these boys needed was everything they never had: a safe home and a stable parent.

After bearing the heaviness of the cruel, twisted loss of his wife, these two scrappy kids were a fresh breeze lightening his burden and brightening his eyes. Bobby wasn’t much for “words of affirmation”, but every time John dropped them off at his slipshod, homely abode, the twin beds in the guest room were always made and the fridge fully stocked. Bobby taught him how to toss around a baseball and take a hit like a man, while John taught him how to shoot to kill.

For every ounce of cutthroat, take-no-prisoners warrior John instilled in Dean, Bobby fortified that with the stalwart honor of a soldier willing to die for his convictions.

John’s silent pride for the soldier Dean became that followed commands as well as any marine made Dean feel as if the secretly ragged scraps of himself held together by the superglue of sheer willpower were maybe, perhaps, worth just a lil’ somethin’. Meanwhile, Bobby’s genuine high regard and unconditional love for him (and Sammy) eclipsed his father’s breadcrumbs of approval by far.

In the end, all of this seemed to be for naught, as Bobby met death on eerily similar terms as John – goin’ down in a blaze of gunfire guarding his boys.

Tough old bastards really took that whole “no guts, no glory” shit way too seriously, he thought glumly. Formerly enthusiastic acapella refrains of Zepp dry up in his throat that's now being pummeled by some invisible fist.

But wait, there’s more greatest-hits PTSD-edition tapes still playing in his brain –

Sammy. Now he’s cradling the lifeless body of his brother in his arms as he carries him inside the derelict house, settling him ever so gently on the stained mattress as if trying not to wake a sleeping baby.

Standing shivering at the crossroads, bargaining down the red-eyed demon, defiant and in near-denial of what he had to do. When he hears Sam’s choking gasp as he intakes new air into what were just-dead lungs, he can nearly convince himself it was all a bad nightmare.

Then inescapable hellfire, and the gut-rending shrieks of the forever damned, he chiefly amongst them. Towards the end of what felt like half a lifetime, the Righteous Man finally breaks, and he finds himself wearing a familiar red grimace of both pain and pleasure, holding the whips and chains and flames which'll just flay the soul of another in his stead.

And the miracle of Castiel, his guardian angel coming to swoop him up to the surface because the angels and “God in heaven” had other plans. Luminous, otherwordly eyes drawing him in with their ethereal siren song and giant black wings begging no question as to the immense power thrumming within.

A record skip, then – the desolation of Stull Cemetery, and images of his baby brother hurling his Lucifer-ridden body into the bottomless, yawning maw of Hell in a last-ditch effort to stop Armageddon, making all of Dean’s self-sacrificial suffering in vain.

Panic overtakes him, grabbing onto the grief-ridden coattails of all the other traumas overcrowding his brain.

There’s loud overlapping sounds of screaming. He’s unsure whether they’re coming from his mouth or his mind.

Somehow he’s back at the river again, kneeling in unconscious supplication. Fingers digging into the gritty mud upon its bank, Dean reacts unthinkingly and plunges his entire head into the icy water.

When he opens his eyes to the cool, muffled clarity underneath, the mottled rocks and scattered branches littering its bottom are a welcome sight. The aquatic silence slides around his senses. For a brief moment he holds back his pain alongside his breath until it's stabbing back through his air-deprived organs.

Dean’s beyond bamboozled why everyone he loves reciprocally eventually ends up hog-tied alongside him on the most evil, twisted carousel of martyrdom that the devil himself couldn’t even conceive of. Even Cas – hell, especially Cas – shit, no one made it out alive. Eh, some of us were technically reanimated, but still…

He finally resurfaces with a gasp, head soaking wet and plinking droplets back into the water like muted piano keys, carrying an eerie sound of musicality in this forest of unnatural stillness.

The cold shock of the submerging has purged the most poisonous venoms of his mental masochism from his system. Blowing out a shaky, drawn-out breath, Dean swipes the moisture from his face before bracing himself on busted knees to stand and leave the (pathetic, really) scene of his solo pity-party.

In the abstract landscape of his dreams that evening, he’s with Cas again. They’re morphing from clutching each other amidst fiery fields of hellishness to soaring above the stratosphere, Dean laughing giddily while Cas’s ginormous wings fly them far past the bounds of physics and reality. They’re running and tumbling down a hill of the softest grass together, but they leave a ruby red smear of fresh blood in their wake, soiling the crisp verdant blades.

It all feels too much like a blessing and a curse (or destiny), and he wishes it would never end.

What sticks in his head most of all is Castiel entangled with him in a naked jumble of limbs, and they are burning and burning up with the delicious agony of each other’s touch, like they flew too close to the sun together and were scorched beyond recognition into something so beautiful it hurt to think of. It wrenches him into the bright gray light of dawn gasping and sweaty, leaving him with a conscious, throbbing hard reminder in his jeans.

⊰⋯ ҉ ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

Notes:

Uh oh... esoteric mind-fuck smut next chapter!?!?!! >.> Lmk what y'all think so far. Feedback is life! ❣️XX, LynZ

[seraphic-anachronism]

Chapter 4 of Purgatorio

Okay, just straight business here, folks! If you're still curious as to the state of Dean and Cas as they navigate Purgatory as seen through one particular person's creative lens, here's the next installment.

We are also back to our regularly scheduled programming of Thursday updates, after momentary turbulence with my muse (and my actual life, lmao) has been corrected ;)

❣️, LynZ

Chapter 4

by seraphic_anachronism

Summary:

Dean's chance encounter with, of all people............ and plenty of unreliable narrator flashbacks. He grapples with his feelings of loss and more complex emotions regarding Sammy and Cas, but refuses to give in or give up.

Notes:

Omg guys, for anyone still following or just now getting into this fic - my deepest apologies for being MIA for such an extended period of time. Anyhow, to spare you the sordid and unhinged details of my personal life, let's just say I'm baaaaackk!!! Let's see when these two boys can reunite... it seems so close, like something you can sense in the air... *fingers and toes crossed*

Dean awakens the next morning unusually refreshed. There're no immediate threats about, and the giant tree still curls around and above him like an old friend. He stretches hugely like a large feline, spine arcing and crackling, a sliver of tan skin flashing underneath his weathered coat. Making sure the feather is safely tucked away before taking off, he smiles a bit dreamily to himself as he assesses its potential significance.

The sure-footed hunter moves with a rare lightness to his step. He walks, leaving just a brief ghost of his tracks, the dense layers of fallen leaves loathe to hold onto memory.

It’s been way too many months for this feather to not be newly shed, Dean thinks, hunched over the stream with cool water trickling from his face and hands. Cas must still be alive – I couldn’t track him from that tree yesterday, but he’s somewhere in this hellscape and I ain’t resting til he’s found, dammit!

The "breakfast" of bland, dried jerky he chews doesn't do much for his tastebuds; he'd give his left toe for a bacon cheeseburger right about now, but thinks he'd realistically settle for just a bit of salt.

Hmmm, don't seem to be a whole lot on my tail today for a change – might not be a bad time to pick some berries. I'm bound to get some kinda scurvy just eatin' all this meat 24/7.

The day is oddly peaceful, and Dean tries to allow himself to relax into it, a war-weary, watchful soldier in much need of respite yet afraid of its price. There's a lushness to the quality of the quietness surrounding him, flecked with the shimmying, dry rustle of the sun-and-wind kissed foliage and distant bird calls. It's moments like this that are the most surreal to the hunter... after being welcomed into consciousness most mornings by snapping branches preceding snarling promises of violence, there's much disbelieving trepidation towards this type of rare tranquility.

After all, it's not even just about the perpetual fight club of purgatory – Dean's entire life, outside of those four tender, womb-encased first years of his existence that literally went up in a ball of tragic flames, consisted of a near-constant stream of mortality-challenging gauntlets.

He grew up a half-orphaned, natural-born killer, annealed by the paramilitary survivalist fires of the only upbringing his ex-marine, revenge-possessed father knew how to provide for his sons. The sweet fairytale bedtime stories his Mom had read to him, smiling and soft, resplendent with blonde curls cascading across the pages (he recalls the scent of roses and lavender), were replaced by gruff lectures from John to watch over his baby brother and always triple-lock the door when he's gone.

Instead of stuffed animals, he got to sleep with a .45. Rather than picnics and birthday parties, he got to toast his cold hands over bonfires of burning bodies. Hell, by now his parasympathetic nervous system was probably the most maladapted, engorged monstrosity that’s ever existed, adrenal and pituitary glands crispy as chicken-fried steak from regular overdoses of norepinephrine and adrenaline. You could even say by now, the hunter has transformed into a predator, through-and-through; the beyond dark, pitchy blackhole voids of his irises when he’s decided to make a kill tell just enough of the story.

Dean's sole source of comfort – and simultaneously the biggest burden he's saddled with, in lieu of any actual responsible parents being around – is Sammy. There’s a twisted, gentle smile playing across his weathered face at the nostalgia that wells up within him at thoughts of his precious baby brother.

Sam, with his bright hazel eyes and sharp wit only outmatched by his cutthroat straightedge of a brain; Sam, who always preferred books over people, even the thick, dreary textbooks of higher education that Dean secretly went without for just so his brother could have them and soar; little Sammy, with his pudgy cheeks and busy hands, always too curious for his own good – Dean feels like he blinked, and came to to the unbelievable sight of that small, shy kid with his mop of tousled brown hair perpetually in his eyes having sprouted into a giant, genius, invincible moose of a man (albeit still rocking hippie-length hair that Dean threatens to buzz off every other week).

Pride is too tame of a word for the emotion he ascribes to Sam. Who else but Sam, the boy with the demon blood unknowingly pumping through his veins, could’ve undergone all these insurmountable trials and tribulations – with Dean (and Cas) by his side, of course.

I mean, shit, finding Cas – that’s obviously #1 on my list, but after I finally track down that sonofabitch, the very next thing is to get home to Sammy. I don’t give a flying fuck if we have to tear a literal hole through reality to get it done – me and Cas’ll find a way. We always do, Dean thinks grimly as he plods onwards to hopefully scout out some wildberries.

Scraping his brain for the relevant wilderness survival tactics, he favors the fringes of this clearing he’s now within, searching through sun-drenched spots where the wildberries are most likely to grow. In the recesses of his subconscious, he remains scanning for potential threats and even a hint of Castiel’s trail.

Eventually, once the faded sunlight reaches its peak overhead and Dean wears a fine sheen of sweat across his golden neck and shoulders, he’s rewarded with several handfuls of ripe, aubergine berries, sweetly tart and bursting with warm black juice on his tongue.

Looks like my eagle scout training à la John Winchester paid off yet again, he crows to himself before the copse of berry bushes, cramming more of the refreshing fruit into his mouth. Can’t say y’ain’t never did nothin’ for me, Dad…

Peridot-hued eyes which were lit up with simple joy during the berry raid now cloud over with the cognitive dissonance and dissociation of childhood trauma. His small harvest of the purgatory-strain blackberries (a cross between earth blackberries and blueberries) are laid upon a large leaf on the ground, and he flings himself down onto the adjacent fallen log, weighed down by unbidden memories of his late father.

Dean is a rather predictable creature of habit. He’s got his demons and more than fair share of skeletons in not just a closet but a huge, yawning cavern locked in the basement of his mind, and that’s just the way he copes – by not coping whatsoever.

Nope, the caliber of his lifelong tragedies, much of it centered around the monolithic, controversial figure of John Winchester, is so overwhelming that it’s best left untouched and buried six thousand feet below where he can hardly hear its screams. He likens it to living with a degenerative disease of some type, incurable and terminal, eating away at the core of you like a worm in a rotten apple – you’d want to heal yourself, of course, but the price of that healing may be so great that it debits out your life itself. This parasitic cancer has so intricately woven itself within the fibers of your being that it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins, a Frankenstein of natural and unnatural horror.

So Dean, cheeks puffed out with other-dimensional berries that fill his mouth with just barely enough flavor to provide a modicum of distraction, burrows down into himself, into familiar, guarded territory.

The only treatment Dean trusts for his ailment, AKA the devil he knows, is to numb it and shove it as far away from his waking reality as possible. Denial (The Nile) is so much more than a river that runs through just you.

Unfortunately, he’s trapped in this alcohol and substance-free (and pie-and-burgerless) realm, and he suspects any potentially “magic” mushrooms he may encounter here would cause more harm than good. So Dean settles for his perch upon this rotting log, gorging on alien fruits and the remainder of his venison – this is the closest he’s gonna get to eating his feelings in this barren place.

A nearly inaudible whisper of leaves parting way for what sounds to be a larger creature freezes him mid-mastication. Dean’s dilated pupils and surreptitious demeanor indicate the hunter’s instantaneous shift back into his all-too comfortable predator mode.

Blackberries all but forgotten, he melts back almost soundlessly into the thickets bordering the harvestable bushes. The serrated demon knife finds itself back in his clutches, and Dean crouches as low as he can get within the camouflage of overgrown wild bushes and trees. There he lies in wait for his enemy to show its face.

Louder crunching and snapping sounds herald the arrival of this newest unidentified foe – to Dean’s mute surprise, it appears to be a woman, startlingly human-like in appearance with shoulder-length streaky ash blonde hair and a hunted look darkening her eyes. Dean holds his breath in anticipation of the inevitable confrontation due to transpire as soon as they recognize each other’s presence. Clothed in inconspicuously ragged clothing, her eyes dart around the clearing until she’s satisfied with her seemingly safe status. She begins to pluck overripe blackberries from the nearest bush, a small smile of delight tugging up the corners of her lips in a creaky, seldom-used gesture.

Dean’s eyes narrow as he assesses her more intently. He’s hidden in the bushes across the clearing from her, half-ducked behind a tree, but he can see her clearly enough to make out her features. What the hell is she doing here? She practically looks human, but I know better than to make stupid assumptions that can get me dead, he reminds himself. Shifters and many other monsters can camouflage themselves as humans. Something significant niggles at the back of his mind when he looks at her, itching in a strangely reminiscent irritation that he just can’t quite place a finger on, like a shy but persistent feeling of déjà vu.

And then, out of nowhere (as is typical to purgatory’s schedule), a vampire comes crashing through the woods, snarling and headed right towards the vulnerable woman. By the time Dean even realizes what he’s doing, he’s already leaping out at the vamp and swinging his machete with deadly precision. Before it has a chance to sink a single bite into her flesh, its head separates cleanly from its body with such momentum that it careens straight through a forked tree branch on the opposite side of the clearing; a most macabre slam-dunk.

“That’s a three-pointer right there,” Dean drawls, grinning, with a pointed look up at the girl he just saved who’s frozen in shock. He casually wipes the bloody blade of his machete upon the grassy ground until the worst of the gore is gone, then sheathes it. I don’t know why, but my gut ain’t never led me wrong before, and there's just something about her...

He brushes off the bits of grass and leaves stuck to him the best he can before extending a callused hand to the woman, who is now staring at him with the most dumbfounded expression upon her pale face.

“Hey there – I’m Dean. Dean Winchester. What’s a pretty girl like you doin’ in a fucked up dimension like this?”

She squints at him with barely concealed mistrust. “Yeah, Dean, I know exactly who you are. Save it for the next damsel in distress who may actually wanna hear it, since you’re the asshole who stuck me here in the first place.”

His hand slams to his side like it was bit. A slowly coalescing recognition pools in his eyes, and everything comes rushing back to him in toxic bursts of shame and regret. “Holy shit – is that, you’re... Amy? Oh, god…”

“I’m sorry it had to be like this.”

A sickeningly smooth plunge of his silver blade through her heart til the hilt meets the ruby-reddened fabric of her shirt. Her shocked blue eyes that lock onto his, shifting from human to something other as the final flickers of life drain from her body. He lowers her corpse gently down to the bed in this darkest caricature of intimacy, face set in stony lines that manage to hide whatever feelings threaten to spill over.

As he cleans off his weapon and prepares to slip away from the scene of the crime, there’s a slight hiccup in the script. There before the open door stands a small boy (with a mop of brown hair resembling that of a young Sammy’s) with an almost identical expression of paralyzed fear in those same blue eyes, a shattered mirror of the woman he had just killed.

“Mommy?”

All the strength abruptly abandons his legs, and Dean drops back onto the fallen log he’s been favoring like his feet have been replaced with lead anchors.

Man, that kid did say the last thing he was gonna do was track me down and kill me, but he sure missed that freakin’ bus… unless he ends up dead soon – that’ll be a helluva family reunion: Thanksgiving in Purgatory with the Kitsunes, featuring Roasted Pituitary Gland à la Winchester as the main course with plenty of wildberries for dessert.

Amy Pond looms over him, glaring unflinchingly with arms crossed over her chest strongly suggesting no apology he’d cough up could possibly penetrate her defenses. It doesn’t stop Dean from trying anyhow (his Guiness-world record level of guilt is a strong motivator). The words grit out from his mouth, trite and hackneyed even to his own ears.

“Look, Amy… I – I really don’t even know what to say to you. I know what I did was wrong, but I was only trying to protect my brother. I am so s –”

“Just cut the crap already. Your apologies mean jackshit to me. Thanks to you, I’ll never see my son again until he dies and ends up in this same hellhole. But that’s what you wanted, right? To keep things like me from ever killing again? Joke’s on you, though, ‘cause all we ever do here is kill one another. I don’t even have a choice, not anymore. And neither do you. So I hope you’re happy now, and saving Sam the burden of having to kill me was worth it.”

The forest’s suffocating stillness swallows the barely perceptible sounds of her footsteps as she turns and walks away, leaving Dean alone with his berries and miserable conscience. The lingering remnants of tart sweetness in his mouth now curdle, sour and tainted upon his tied tongue. When he looks down at his trembling hands, the vermilion of the vamp’s blood blends all too easily with the dark purple berry juices, tie-dyeing him the mottled color of a fresh bruise.

The hollow-eyed hunter ends up back at the river, a bit farther upstream than where he was that morning, scrubbing furiously at the stains on his hands that refuse to come off. It seems the dye-like properties of the berries imprinted the bloodstains deep within the creases of his fingernails, a permanent ink reminder of this day he could do without.

Just when you think shit can’t get any more fucked up, life has to go and one-up ya, Dean thinks numbly, traipsing forwards on his mechanical search for Cas and someplace he can seek shelter.

The remainder of his day returns to the quiet of its beginning; no news is simultaneously good and bad news – there are no more bloodsuckers or other undead to dispatch, but there are also no more signs of his lost angel. Dean’s rapidly losing steam by the time he decides to settle down underneath the overhang of the ancient fallen trunk of a tree, protected by its massive broken splinters and bones of dry wood.

A neverending maze of funhouse-mirror faces haunt his troubled dreams. The final one that smacks him into a rude awakening is Sammy, lost and crestfallen after discovering what his brother did to his brief childhood (monstrous, through no fault of her own) sweetheart behind his back.

“She sacrificed her own mother to save me, Dean – and this is the thanks you repay her with?? I owe this girl my life, and now you’ve taken hers away in cold blood without even giving me the respect of honesty. You always think you know what’s best for me, when you don’t even know what’s best for yourself! I don’t even know who you are anymore…”

The dead, dessicated log above nearly knocks him out as he shoots up from his fitful sleep, wide-eyed and panicked. Dean chokes back his brother’s name and the pitiful sobs that try to crawl from his mouth, operating on autopilot and shoving, shoving, shoving it all so far down that it’s practically buried into the ground beneath him.

⊰⋯ ҉ ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

[seraphic-anachronism]

Chapter 3 of "Purgatorio"! (and hopefully less oversharing by author)

Howdy, folks! Who's ready for some more gut-wrenching purgatory Destiel angst >:}

I know I sure am, especially after nearly escaping death yet again by the trainwreck of my life's previous trajectory... yikes!!

So anyhow, chapter 3 has been long-posted on AO3, but I figured I'd go ahead and add it to this blog as well, per tradition. The brand, spankin' new, shoe-polished and spit-shone chapter 4 immediately follows (... at least I can dream, can't I !?!?)!

Buckle up and enjoy the ride, and note the scenery changing as we near our first destination...

❣️, LynZ

Chapter 3

by seraphic_anachronism

Summary:

We've seen enough of what Dean's been up to... how about how Castiel's been hangin'? (Bad pun fully intended. If you wanna survive this journey through my version of Purgatory, you'll have to learn to love these ;P) ❣️always, LynZ P.S. - sorry for the late update. Life has been as cooperative as a rabid bear lately.

From up above, Cas watches Dean’s prone figure with a profound sadness shining in his cobalt eyes.

If he allowed himself to feel the cold, the draftiness of the night air around him would make him shiver alongside the gently rustling leaves encircling him, but he feels nothing but painful emptiness, souring his stomach with bitter bile. To hear another one of Dean’s heart-rending prayers, and to be right there yet so far out of reach is far more torturous than the scorching hellfires he endured to rescue this Righteous Man in the first place.

Cas clenches his jaw, fingers tightening until they’re practically clawing into the rough tree bark. He knows that he’s barred within this self-imposed prison of secrecy and isolation for Dean’s own sake, but that does nothing to soften the stinging behind his eyes he recognizes as the prelude to tears while he watches his estranged hunter sleep.

Dean appears so tiny and alone from this vantage point, as high up in the tree as he is. The elevation doesn’t bother Castiel one bit, naturally, with him being a literal angel that flies with wings broader and faster than those of a dragon’s. I don’t imagine Dean was able to climb all the way up here on his adventure today, he muses, corners of his lips quirking up in that barely-there smile (the one Dean adored so, so much but would kill him for ever suggesting it).

He considers Dean’s intense aversion towards heights, and how difficult it must have been for him to brave that climb just to fight that much harder to find Castiel. The sorrow etched into the lines of his forehead softens at this thought, but his insides churn more violently in protest at his own helplessness and inability to give Dean the one thing he wants: him. Because if Castiel does cave and allow himself to be in Dean’s presence again, the peril to him by association would be too much for the angel to bear.

The branch he’s perched upon is as comfortable of a spot to rest tonight as any, but he dares not stay for long. The leviathans stalk him incessantly, day and night, and the first thing they'd encounter this time would be a defenseless, unconscious Dean (that the angel can’t even fly away with, like he could on Earth – here in Purgatory, he’s mostly cut off from Heaven’s ethereal power source).

With his inhumanly sharp vision, Cas sees all the details of his hunter’s face half-hidden in the crook of an arm, relaxed and peaceful in sleep. Soft in slumber and away from nightmares, there’s a devastating innocence about him, all the usual worries and fears held taut in the lines of his face smoothed out by the blissful blankness of sleep. Dean looks young, tender, vulnerable, touchable…

Castiel’s breath hitches as it rushes in and then out again, swaying with the ebb and flow of grief and regret and longing. He lingers for as long as he can possibly justify before taking flight with a big whoosh-flap of his etheric wings.

Even as he soars into Purgatory’s midnight skies, he feels a tugging sensation leading him back to his charge, an invisible, unbreakable tether made of something he can’t quite ascertain. He wants to dismiss this as simply being due to Dean’s possession of one of his alula feathers (that he somehow shed at the top of the tree several days ago when he was perched in it, resting), but in his heart of hearts Cas admits this is a piss-poor explanation.

Feather or no feather, the type of connection he and Dean share - their “profound bond”, as he once so aptly put it - is a once-in-an-immortal-lifetime experience; Castiel should know this, being beyond easily quantifiable years of age…

⊰⋯ ҉ ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

When the seraph had first emerged from the nothingness of the void that was all there once was, he never could have imagined the endless eons stretching before him towards infinity. His Father had given careless birth to him and countless others, this Being who held the impossible ability to breathe life into nonexistence and yet felt no urge to provide a guiding hand to that life like a good parent should.

No, Castiel and all his brethren were simply tossed out into the coldness amongst the tiny stars of the infant universe, and told to watch over this magnificent creation with vague enough direction to cause much argument and fragmentation amongst them.

God was a lofty, oversensitive, contentious romantic with overzealous notions. Funnily enough, pared down to his core and in spite of his awesome abilities, he was really just an egomaniac with an inferiority complex, plus saddled with a sibling counterpart who was the equivalent of the ultimate black hole.

That, however, did not do a damn thing to stop him from splattering his cosmic paintbrush around, every which way imaginable and unimaginable, stars and suns and galaxies blooming beneath his inspired hand. “Let there be light”, He had boomed, and lo and behold, an abundance of light shattered prismatically throughout the infinite expanse of blackness like so much broken glass.

Castiel remembers huddling around the swirling origins of the Milky Way with Michael, Gabriel, and Lucifer, conferring amongst themselves in speculation of what further magic tricks their Wizard of Oz Father held up his sleeve.

The angels were too naïve, however, and remained blessedly ignorant of the insanity to come ‘til it reared its hideous face.

God, knowing no bounds, became increasingly manic, flinging matter and light onto the universe’s walls to see what stuck, creating works of art so beautiful and terrible that they challenged the very etymology of existence itself.

Case in point: humanity, resplendent in all its inherent flaws and indescribable loveliness (and fathomless depths of evil, juxtaposed against breathtaking levels of benevolence). These sentient sapiens transcended any other being in creation thus far, including Castiel and his siblings, the first examples of celestial life. God, for a multitude of reasons and ill-planned fantastical ideas, favored these “mud monkeys” enough to make them in His image, and so gifted them with his amazing ability to create, and sewed within each human a heart and soul in addition to consciousness.

Meanwhile, the Darkness, his estranged sister, stood on the sidelines and watched with envious, narrowed eyes, booing him every step of the way; as He was Creation – the yang – She was Undoing – the yin.

By the time the initial confusing whirlwind passed and the cosmic dust had settled, the archangels, seraphs and other angelic beings held strict orders to obey their Father’s command above all hammered into their skulls.

The seraphim fell into ranks of their own accord to keep the chain of command clear. Castiel took up the position of captain over his garrison, right underneath the archangels Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer. He, being a good, steadfast soldier, was more than happy to carry out his heavenly duties, whether above in the ethereal or below upon the terrestrial (and later, even further down into the very bowels of hell itself).

Their first mission was taming the Darkness’s destructiveness; after God’s lego towers were knocked over by his sister’s malicious malignity one too many times, his angelic legion began waging a holy war against her. She refused to succumb despite the shredded, awful state of her, and being the Forsaken Sister of God Himself, the seraphim’s powers alone could not contain her. With a sigh of dull exasperation, God snapped his fingers and imprisoned her eternally within the first ever Curse in existence – the Mark – and slapped it onto the closest thing to him: his favorite son, Lucifer.

All was well for a brief while; the Darkness vanquished, Heaven’s construction completed, and earth populated, teeming with plentiful, exotic life. Castiel would smile (not physically, moreso in an esoteric sense of an expression of pleasure, since he existed as a multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent) inwardly as he watched these miraculous humans stumble their way into consciousness. He found himself inexplicably drawn to their antics, taking great delight in their discoveries of verbal communication through rudimentary languages, and of course the pivotal alighting of the first fire, stolen by the notorious Prometheus (another story for another time; I’ve got plenty of those).

And everyone agreed readily, all the seraphim and angelkind lining up to bow before his heavenly throne. But being the greedy, insatiable God that he was, he was still dissatisfied with this extent of worship. He sent several angels down to earth to inhabit human vessels and impart the Word of God unto mankind, commanding them to exalt Him as well.

In this manner, he continued inflating like the biggest hot air balloon to ever exist.

Standing instructions for the angels were to love and revere his human creations on earth; to protect and guide them in remaining worshipful as they struggled to self-actualize.

Now, God gave man two precious gifts that would forever differentiate them from their angelic counterparts: a soul, and the awareness of their own free will. This was both wonderful and truly terrible. As angels, however, the will of their Father superseded everything else, programmed and embedded deep into the source code of their Grace. They would interfere on earth when told to, answering prayers or providing critical aid, but otherwise remained stoic and detached in their heavenly home above, kneeling blindly at their Father's feet in praise.

So the status quo was set: all of creation’s sole purpose revolved around God, who burned brighter than the sun itself, and was the ultimate axis to the smooth turning of the cogs of reality. Everything and everyone was in its proper place, neat little pawns on a chessboard prepared to defend their King with their lives. The Darkness was imprisoned and no longer a threat.

But there was one amongst Castiel’s brethren who dissented in the worst possible way: the archangel Lucifer.

Here it must be emphasized that human biblical writings upon the subject of Lucifer (as well as most other tales in the bible) and how he wormed his rotten way into the proverbial apple, so to speak, are rather incorrect. The zoomorphism of Lucifer in the popular version of this tale was apt, though, as he really was the most sinister and coldly calculating of all snakes. Castiel supposed the human prophets cannot be entirely blamed for taking the word of God so literally, and the retellings only grew more fantastical as time went on.

“The Garden of Eden”, the paradisial oasis of humanity’s origins according to the traditional Judeo-Christian bible, was really just the Earth itself in its inception. Humanity, whom God gave form to with a casual exhale of omnipotence on a day which would later be deemed Friday, lived on this green, thriving planet in relative happiness and peace.

the live animal and human sacrifice was most distasteful to all of us, including God), was all he could ask for from his children. Humans were quickly establishing dominance as the favorite child in his eyes, and his prodigal son Lucifer, ailing more and more each day from the Mark’s Curse, absolutely abhorred this.

Although death and suffering were always integral to the cycle of life, given the laws of entropy governing the universe that God for some reason saw fit to put into place (he always got bored easily, and he knew this about himself, of course, being – rather irritatingly – all-knowing and all-seeing; this dimension was his first experiment, and he made sure to incorporate some planned obsolescence in here), humanity was still mainly ignorant to “evil” and crossing the line of taking another's life.

Following the most spectacular fight with his irate Father, Lucifer refused to concede to second place behind these so-called “perpendicular talking pigs”. He instead turned down a much more sinister path, precipitating the downfall of mankind and cementing his eternal servitude to Hell.

This ultimate deception took place in the “Garden”/Earth so many millions of years ago it has faded even in Castiel’s immortal memory, but he insists Lucifer was not an actual snake after all. No; after being cast out of heaven to crawl in the dust and muck with the rest of the lowly earth-dwelling creatures, Lucifer took possession of a man with a chink in his spiritual armor just wide enough for him to slither inside.

The man’s name was indeed Adam (that part they got correct, at least), and he stood at the precipice of premeditated immorality as it was – him and his wife Eve.

To be fair, “sin” as in small letters, no caps, was already hard at work amongst humanity: things like adultery, lust, theft, gluttony, covetousness, anger, and pride, since humans were saddled with these intrinsic vices by nature. (why would he create anything in his image as actual equals? That would spoil all the fun in his sick games)

Overcome by her own lust, Adam’s wife Eve had stumbled into an extramarital affair with another man, and Adam’s suspicion grew like poisonous weeds in his mind, choking out the love he once nurtured for her.

When Lucifer, whispering to him in his darkest dreams, offered him a way to gain the knowledge and power to identify her lover and dole out his sweet revenge, Adam fell to his knees immediately. This was the Devil Himself, after all; what chance did that poor sap even stand?

Now the ancient creationist lore goes even deeper: the Tree of Life (and of All Knowledge of Good and Evil) had organically manifested upon the Earth as an offshoot of the immensity of God’s power that it took to build this planet. Mankind had been severely warned by angels (such as Gadreel, the irresponsible guard, and Joshua the Gardener) to stay away, for consuming its fruits would lead to a most terrible death.

So far, nobody dared venture near this behemoth of a tree, with its magnificent widespread, gnarled branches of colorful leaves spanning the spectrum of the rainbow, and the moat surrounding it filled with vicious crocodiles and piranhas.

Once Lucy had ahold of Adam, however, it was all too easy to fly him past its defenses directly to that tree and have him partake of the forbidden fruit.

Eve was blamed falsely for that first bite, because in reality it was her husband Adam; in a roundabout way, though, they were both at fault, as it was her unfaithful actions which broke him enough to allow Lucifer to snake his way in, constricting around him til there was nothing left of Adam but murderous blackness.

And thus the Garden of Eden crumbled around them; Adam’s original sinful bite into that delectable, juicy quince (it was certainly no apple, such as the stereotypes usually go) was sweeter than any taste he ever knew, but it tore open his consciousness in an overwhelming flash – all knowledge in the universe belonging to God himself, good and evil and everything in between, rushing in, rendering him momentarily speechless and sightless with the sheer magnitude of it all.

Though he didn’t physically die, the fruit still tasted of the most delicious death of his innocence, cloying and tart with a lingering bitterness. In that instant he knew true evil and picked up a heavy stone to take care of the man who dared to lay with his wife – his very own brother.

When Adam stood that night over the dead body of his brethren-turned-enemy, chest heaving and glistening with sweat, crimson vengeance dribbling from the rock still clutched in his hands, Lucifer rejoiced, for he knew the Fall had been set in motion. The first domino had tipped, and the rest would soon follow.

Castiel recalls observing these events from a distance with some undefinable emotion swirling at his center. He had no real experience yet with the concept of “feelings”, as he mainly existed in the ether with no body or soul, but there was still that nagging sense of unease, prickling at him like a gnat. He wasn’t terribly close with his elder archangel brother who had betrayed them all and was now self-proclaimed ruler of the realms below, but even in his limited scope of understanding saw the wrongness infiltrating the world and was scared.

Still, he held his head high as the heavenly soldier that he was, leading his garrison’s missions with unerring precision and deadly strategy. Anna, Uriel, Balthazar, Hester and Inias were all loyal subordinates who followed his command quickly and without question. There was no real bond or relationship between them, however, as they were angels and without the capacity for the ever-elusive human emotion of “love”.

Predictably, humanity fell deeper and deeper into Sin’s black tar pit-trap. They created empires only to tear them down through perpetual warfare, hurting and torturing and conquering in the name of false idols and power-hungry despots. Castiel and his garrison swept in occasionally to clean up their mess, or to eliminate the new demonic threats crawling out of the freshly created Hell that Lucifer reigned over.

Rarely was it necessary for the seraph to take possession of a human vessel, but each time he did, the experience peeled away more and more chunks of the wall around his ambiguously shifting, soft center until the sunlight blazed through the cracks to illuminate him from the inside out, painful and blinding and enlightening.

Castiel remembers standing at an arched window within a gilded, otherworldly cathedral of heaven, watching civilization after civilization climb to the skies only to crumble and burn at the hands of that very same species who so painstakingly erected them in the first place. This vicious cycle would repeat throughout centuries untold, waxing and waning with ring-around-the-rosy dawns and bloody revolving-door dusks.

Eventually he had to turn away in sorrow, unable to look on as his Father’s most favored creation ran themselves ragged in caustic circles, consuming their own tail like a collectively unconscious ouroboros.

He wasn’t the only celestial being unable to bear humanity’s spiritual failure to ascend; after a resetting flood or two, then purposefully sending his literal Son to die on a cross for their sins and there still being no significant turnaround, God threw his figurative hands up in the air, for once in all of existence at a complete and utter loss. He chalked this world up to a failed experiment, with it having fallen into Lucifer’s greedy, malevolent hands anyways, and whisked away to create other worlds with which to entertain himself.

So ages and eras carried on in this fashion, painted by much bloodshed amidst triumph and tribulation in equal parts. Castiel remained steadfast as captain of his garrison and watchful, secretly sympathetic Angel of Thursday (for some reason, Thursdays were always the busiest prayer-wise, so I suppose I just naturally assumed the role. Humanity continued to hold his fascination, what with their infallible perseverance even in the face of impossibly daunting odds, and boundless talents for learning and creativity.

But beyond all the sophistications and fantastical technologies of their developing cultures, what held Castiel most enthralled was their fathomless capacity for this “love” that they shared for one another… Love which was almost inexpressible in its eternal depth and power, love that was a dualistic begetter of happiness, yearning and suffering, and love so stubborn that it defied logical explanation and even death itself.

⊰⋯ ҉ ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

It would be many centuries before this unwitting angel would undergo his own metamorphosis of love, emerging from his confused cocoon a changed creature of free-willed flight.

And all because of one human: Dean Winchester, the Righteous Man whom he was destined to rescue from hellfire. The one who he, with a touch of his palm, branded and carried away from an unjust, eternal damnation… Castiel cradled the Righteous Man’s lacerated, battered being to his chest with a protective wing furled tightly around him like armor, slashing furiously through all the bloodthirsty demons and scorching flames of Hades, flying them high above it all until the screams of the damned finally faded away.

Castiel has photographic recall as an angel, obviously, but there was never any experience he could relive so vividly as the very first time he made contact with Dean’s soul. It may have taken him and his garrison over forty years of Earth-time to fight their way through the most vicious of the demonic, down into the deepest, darkest, hottest pits of Hell where they forced Dean to torture others upon a rack of most evil proportions, but to Castiel it was worth every second spent.

Upon the seraph’s initial impression of Dean, there was a sharp note of (what he could now define as) empathy for the poor man/soul splayed out behind that rack, broken and limp, looking just as likely to be the next victim as the torturer. The only signs of life from the fallen Man were the rhythmic flicking of a long, spiky whip which he lazily twirled about from his position on the ground, and the occasional incoherently muttered curse-word.

As the angel approached his charge, his seemingly nonchalant attitude quickly escalated into hostility, now perceiving him to be a threat due to the enormous levels of power the man could feel emanating from this mysterious creature. He hauled his rusty, jig-saw body up with considerable effort and staggered towards Castiel until he stood almost eye-to-eye with the angel. Truly righteous and courageous to the last drop, Castiel thought in admiration.

Dean Winchester, even after 40 years in hell, possessed the most alluring, hypnotically spring-green eyes, windows to a soul of glowing, lilypad-gilded depthless ponds in which he could easily drown without either of them having said a word. And that’s exactly what transpired: the fallen Righteous Man having some kind of odd staring contest with the Angel of Thursday, who was struggling valiantly to not just lose himself within those lucent jade eyes and golden-warm soul forever.

Dean’s own struggle with this silent dilemma lay in the fact that he’d never been confronted with such an otherworldly pair of arctic-blue, sapphire-ringed irises before, nevermind the type of stare with such intensity to it that it slid right through his midsection.

Inadvertently pulled towards it, as helplessly as an iron object’s draw to a magnet, Dean had no choice but to allow himself to be drawn into this strange being’s orbit. I know he ain’t human, and he sure ain't like no demon I ever saw, he thinks with the last remnants of coherence in his massacred mind. Saw his ass just flap right on in like there weren’t no layers of intense hellfire and brimstone lakes of blood to get through first. The hell is this dude??

The silence dragged on while, still true to form, Dean made sure to be as obvious and lewd in his up-and-down appraisal of Castiel as possible.

“Y’ain’t here to hurt me, or you would’ve done it by now. So, is this it – you the cavalry, man?”

The croaking rasp of Dean’s brutalized voice as it was made Castiel frown deeply. His entire condition warranted Castiel having to restrain himself from simply gathering this wretched creature within the safety of his huge black wings on the spot. Instead he rolled his eyes and indulged the Righteous Man’s inquiries.

“Yes. My name is Castiel, I’m an Angel of the Lord, and I’m here to lift your soul away from this damnation where it does not belong. My apologies for the delay.”

“Pffft… yeah, guess you could say we’ve missed that fucking train by now,” Dean replied sardonically.

The human managed to inch himself closer to Castiel with each word spoken. The two were such a scant distance apart that the angel could easily count each individual, thick eyelash upon the man’s hooded lids, and same with the lovely smattering of caramel-colored freckles across his nose and cheek bones.

When the drawn-out, meaningful eye contact got to be a bit much even for him, the dumbfounded angel shook his wings out, took an awkward step back and away from Dean’s alluring magnetic field, and geared back into commando mode.

He was clearly out of practice in terms of interacting with humanity; it’d been more than a few centuries at that point, and it showed. Granted, Dean Winchester, as the Righteous Man foretold an eon ago, would have the most breathtakingly beautiful soul that Cas had ever laid eyes upon, and a gorgeous human body to boot (even as beaten and emaciated as he was), so he was already batting way out of his league as it were.

At any rate, Captain Castiel of Heaven's fourth garrison was never one to back down from a mission or a challenge, so if his rescue of the Righteous Man goes as he hoped it would, he’ll have two down for the price of one.

Despite his futile attempt to escape both Dean’s reach and beguilement in equal measure, the bemused seraph ended up standing stock still while the curious human edged ever nearer. Castiel finally saw that what really had Dean enthralled, reaching forward with grabby-hands like a toddler seeing his first ever lollipop in a candystore, were his huge, onyx-feathered wings, which he did not realize he had spread fully outwards in a protective fan over them both.

“A goddamn angel, huh… hey, lemme see – ”

Swish-flick – said angelic wings must’ve felt pressured by all the unwanted attention; Castiel had them folded and tucked primly behind his back before Dean could either finish his sentence or have his way. Dean raised an eyebrow inquisitively at the angel’s defensiveness. Funny how out of all the devils in hell, this so-called angelic warrior of the lord's reacting with hackles raised, thanks to my puny human ass.

“'Kay then, what’s the gameplan, Commander?” sneered Dean in all his bratty sarcastic glory, as Castiel fought and lost to his acute desire to fawn over the bulges of his scarred, crossed forearms. Beaten down, ground up and spat out as he may be, there was no greater an ideal of human perfection to the angel as the man right in front of him.

Castiel cleared his throat in annoyance at his own inexplicable fugue of weakness and plowed on.

“I, the warrior angel Castiel, am charged with flying you, Dean Winchester of the Righteous Soul, free from these hellfires and back to Earth. You will be resurrected into a brand new body, more or less identical to the original. You will then await further instruction, as Heaven has much work for you to do.”

As he was speaking, the seraph was sizing up Dean from all angles, scowling so strongly at the pitiful state of his body that the line between his brows seemed to become a permanent fixture upon his intense visage. Dean also tracked Cas self-consciously, feeling like a cattle at an auction sale.

“So do I live up to your heavenly standards or what? You need to weigh me next, see if my shots are up to date?” The man’s eyes narrow in shrewd contemplation. “Ain’t nothin’ free in the world of the living, and for damn sure ain’t nothin’ free here in this next hell. What kinda work’re you referrin’ to?”

Castiel just enacted another one of his full-body eyerolls and started to reply when a deafening roaring and crashing from behind stole their attention. The hellfires had amassed into colossal pillars and a thunderous storm loomed, as if to hem them in, and the rageful shrieks of the demonic legion on their way did not bode well for our interlopers.

“Dean, just hold on to me! No time to explain. Grab onto me and don’t let go, no matter what!!!!!”

With saucer-round eyes and a wordless plea to Cas to also never let go, Dean felt a large, warm hand grip him tightly by the right shoulder, and the other arm wrap around his waist to clutch his lower body tightly to the angel. Indigo-darkened eyes meet shocked emerald-green ones in mutual understanding. Dean screwed his eyes shut and did exactly as Cas commanded: hold on to the seraph for dear life.

Whoosh-flap.

By the time the demons swarmed the torture rack where they were barely standing, Dean and Cas had vanished.

⊰⋯ ҉ ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

One of Castiel’s most well-guarded secrets is how incredible liberating Dean Winchester’s soul from hell was, and that initial flight with Dean was everything. The human was cradled in Castiel’s downy raven wings that were soft yet so solidly strong – powerful enough to maintain a leisurely flight while Cas worked his angelic healing mojo. He began the painstaking process of reassembling The Righteous Man, atom by atom.

Yes, it went as ‘twas foretold for millenia: Dean Winchester, possessor of the purest of souls, so awfully tormented and maimed and twisted during his decades in hell, would finally be saved…

The seraph stroked long, obsidian-inkspill feathers soothingly up and down Dean’s marred skin, hoping his caresses would heal him faster. Castiel’s nonexistent sense of “time” blurred just how long they remained in the stasis of flight, and just how long it took replacing each particle of light so brutally shattered and scattered of Dean’s irreplaceable soul.

Ensconced within the safe cocoon of Castiel’s wings, Dean finally fell into a physical and spiritual slumber of the sweetest reprieve. He not only allowed but embraced the singing fibers of rejuvenation the angel wove expertly around his shriveled chrysalis self. Seeing the fantastical metamorphosis and true resplendence of the Righteous Man unfold before him, Castiel smiled with genuine, unadulterated joy for the very first time in his entire existence.

Dean, floating on a lazy stream of semi-consciousness, long-lashed eyes closed in contentment, and a crooked smirk gracing the dimples of his mouth – this right here was the holiest of visions Castiel ever recalled witnessing in all of Heaven and Earth.

Castiel found himself struggling to remain the consummate warrior and staying within his role as stoic captain of the fourth garrison. In his defense, there likely is no creature on earth (or elsewhere, for that matter) that would be unaffected by the rescue and reassembly of this most perfect male specimen. The glow of his soul bathed everything around them in warm golden light so lovely it put the sun itself to shame.

And he wasn't perfect in just a physical sense, by far – no, not enough import can be stressed upon the rarity and purity of his soul, the essential goodness of his spirit. Reconstruction of that most Precious Soul was of paramount importance, to get each and every subatomic particle down to the very last quark correct. No – this refurbished Soul right here can afford no margin for error.

Because Dean Winchester and his Righteous Soul will soon be all that stands between Earth and its impending apocalypse.

A great while had passed for this pair in this space between spaces. Castiel and Dean were enfolded by crevices of the ether as the seraph imbued the finishing touches upon his body, spirit and soul. When it came to the large, angry-red welt upon Dean’s shoulder in the shape of Castiel’s hand (an unpleasant parting gift from the scorching hellfires they had to flee), Castiel couldn’t find it within himself to heal that brand, as it was the very first connection Castiel and Dean had shared.Bound by pain and flames...

Dean continued sleeping sweetly, out like a newborn babe throughout all these restorative therapies. After his wretched, mangled soul was rehabilitated to the best of Castiel’s angelic abilities, stitched together with the finest shining threads of his Grace, he moved on to heal his physical form. Regrowing muscles and reknitting brittle bones back together was child’s play compared to the intricate difficulties of soul reconstruction, in particular this most crucial soul of all.

Once he’s lovingly laid down every slip of skin, every curve of joint, and every strong cord of muscle is wrapped up the way God always intended, Castiel moves onto Dean’s head. A truly one-of-a-kind, industrial-strength-thick-skulled and obstinately willful one, and even now full of so much love overflowing from his broken heart.

As much as he’d like to play God and remove all Dean’s undeserved and unresolved trauma, he both cannot and will not. Castiel would love nothing more than to white-out that negative self esteem reel, to replace his self-destructive-and-sacrificial tendencies with healthier coping mechanisms, and most of all de-toxify his codependent relationships (which would be all of ‘em), but he knew this was not his place. So the seraph patched together and shoved that dark, throbbing mass of a brain back inside his poor skull (which is at least thick enough to be a real menace).

The Angel of Thursday sighed, looking down upon his handiwork, lying still and unconscious and appearing as an actual Adonis. Suddenly he wanted to touch this Righteous Man for some reason; see if his dirty blonde hair is as soft as it looks, see if his callused fingers are as rough as they seem.

This was not only forbidden, but time has done its irritating relational trick, trickling through his grasp like water. Castiel has no choice but to let him go, tuning out the telepathic, shrill demands of his superiors best he could.

⊰⋯ ҉ ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

Cas shakes himself from his fond reminiscing with the reluctance of an old man closing a treasured photo album. He dusts it off so lovingly, then shelves it back within his endless memory.

The impact of reliving this most treasured moment between them (which Dean, fortunately or unfortunately, has forgotten) fortifies his will to defend the Righteous Man at all costs.

His Righteous Man, because of and beside whom Cas had undergone the most elucidating transformation of his almost eternal existence. He’d be content to carry on with Dean, fighting side-by-side in a hail of bullets until one of them went down and the other would tear up the ends of every single universe to find him.

Just like Dean was doing now, trapped in actual Purgatory with no end in sight other than the evanescent but pervasive hope of Castiel.

The angel, mid-flight, does not feel the tears falling from his face like scattered raindrops. He swoops down one last time over his best friend (he’s more than that, though; there’s not even a word in existence to describe what he is to me), dipping just below the treeline so he can memorize every detail of Dean’s face, placid and lovely in sleep, before soaring off as far away as he can get from the one thing he’s sworn to protect.

Two delicate teardrops land upon Dean’s hand and cheek, the latter rolling down the slope of his face as if he were the one crying.

Dean’s dreams are unusually peaceful that night, filled with gentle, sprinkling rainfall as he sits on Bobby’s porch with a cold beer in hand and Castiel next to him, an enigmatic smile lighting up his sky-blue eyes.

⊰⋯ ҉ ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

[seraphic-anachronism]

Chapter 2 of "Purgatorio"! (and author's oversharing trauma-dump)

Hi there, fellas (oops, been writin' in Dean's POV so long I'm starting to sound like him by default XD) - great to be back after being hit with not one, but two separate instances of the AO3 author's curse.

You can skip the next couple paragraphs until the chapter's been introduced unless you want some scalding hot tea that is the mess of my life. May be triggering for those w/ panic disorder/anxiety/fear of dogs.

Ended up in the ER over what was deemed a panic attack after several hours of extensive testing and medication, but I cannot even begin to describe to you the all-consuming terror those of us who suffer from anxiety experience when this occurs. Just basically imagine your heart's pounding through your chest, you're having cold and hot sweats, your body's shaking like a leaf, you can't breathe or move and you're just lying on the cool tile floor waiting to meet your maker (I was making foxhole prayers like that stupid Kodak Black song :'().

Oh yeah, good times. In fact, I had an every better adventure at the next one, where I'm limping into the ER (in a different city, where I was staying with who I thought was a friend at the time that really did me dirty), bloody sports bra and shorts on but no shoes 'cause I was in the middle of trying to take a shower when the ferocious canine mauling went down, and these so-called "friends" wouldn't even treat me with an ounce of dignity or humanity.

I'll spare you the gory details - I don't think the main r/ao3 thread appreciated my (kinda graphic) pic of my bandaged hand I posted lmfaooooo. It's taking me a painstakingly long time to hammer this out with my non-dominant hand, but by god this story is going to receive the justice it deserves, even if I'm waving a pen in the air as they're trying to lower my casket in the ground (scared people nervously whispering how they thought I was cremated XD XD XD)

TLDR; sustained 2 AO3 ER curses thus far. I shall be looking into protective measures, maybe need some goofer dust 'cause this salt just ain't cuttin' it lol.

Alrighty, so without much more ado, here she is!

Chapter 2

by seraphic_anachronism

Summary:

Aight, folks, apologies for the late update (AO3 curse ***AWAY WITH YE*** /throws an irresponsible amount of pink Himalayan rock salt over my shoulder/)... let's switch it up a bit and make this fun! Who wants to bet on what kind of retarded, typical-to-true intrepid Winchester style shenanigans will transpire in Chapter 2? Points for creativity, because when I wrote this scene I couldn't stop giggling on the inside. And as always, a heartfelt thank you to my wonderful beta Pandorakiin, who's the only one capable of dissuading me from some of my more, er, outlandish ideas XD XD ❣️always and hope you enjoy (which can kindly be expressed through kudos and comments 👍), LynZ

          ⊰⋯ ҉  ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

Untold months pass in this violently monotonous manner.

By now, Dean doesn’t even bother going through the pretense of time-keeping. With each passing day, he hacks his way through foliage and foes only to be met by the silent hollowness of the fathomless forest yawning back at him, while his patchwork hopes fray at their unraveling edges into threadbare tatters.

So far, he’s been unable to locate any identifiable trace or evidence of Castiel, yet Dean can’t bring himself to give up on this perhaps foolish mission to find his angel. It’s the only ember still burning within him strong enough to withstand these brutal days and desolate nights.

Determination to find an escape route from this hellscape dissolving, the wayward hunter clings onto his sole hope of finding Castiel with all his despairing might.

Above all, Dean just wants to go home somehow, someway, but there’s no way in Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, or any other dimension of existence he’s leaving without his best friend. Hey, we beat even more impossible odds than this before, and the stupid sonofabitch angel who saved me from the worst of those scrapes is here... I’m gonna find his feathery ass if it’s the last thing I ever do.

Alone in the forlorn forest, he has only his venomous, self-flagellating thoughts for company, eating him up from the inside out with its battery-acid shame.

Most of Dean’s conscious (and unconscious) thoughts are plagued with all-encompassing guilt surrounding every instance where he’s erred with Cas, leading up to this awful moment. Other significant facets of said guilt focused on every one of his screwups in regards to his forever ward, brother, and only kin in this world, Sammy.

By sheer dumb luck, Sam was alive and well when the Sucracorp shit hit the fan, albeit a bit dinged up (alongside Kevin); they both were (blessedly!) outside the blast radius of Dick’s volcanic eruption.

Hence, his long-lost Castiel is priority number one for this tunnel-visioned, hellbent hunter, and God help who or whatever’s in his warpath.

That path’s torn its way through the wicked woods and winding river, cutting through the endless evergreen thickets for countless miles. Dean uses this ostensibly Nile-length trickle of water as a main landmark, following it loosely as he prowls along making kills and camps.

Other than the usual infestations of vamps and the occasional leviathan or two, he’s laid waste to several ghouls, wraiths, and werewolves unfortunate enough to encounter the lethal swing of his blade (the last flash of light they’ll ever see).

Dean’s always pretty much had a “take no prisoners, shoot first and ask questions later” kinda attitude, but this neverending stream of monsters and aimless wandering, while still no closer to finding Cas, has done him zero favors in this department.

His fingers are on autopilot by now, drawing and deploying his weapons with eerie accuracy, blurred in their superhuman speed. If I’d’ve piled all these fuckers up and set ‘em ablaze, the size of that pyre would put Burning Man to shame, Dean thinks to himself with a dementedly cheeky grin as he staggers away from his latest victims (an unlikely pairing of a ghoul plus werewolf).

Of course he bothers with no such thing, leaving the corpses where they fall to presumably decompose and fertilize the cursed ground.

Trudging onwards, Dean habitually takes in each minute, mundane detail of the space around him, seeking out any sign of Cas’s presence. Of course there is nothing to be seen except the usual tangle of overgrown forest, in addition to some deer scat he takes note of in case he needs to double back to follow its trail for tonight’s meat.

His exhaustion burrows bone-deep inside of him, polluting his muscles and bone marrow and burdening each particle of life within him with dead, heavy hopelessness. Mechanically, he continues prowling through brush, leaves and vines that threaten to choke him with a creeping, suffocating claustrophobia. Dean cuts and chops and brutally forces his way through the dense green maze, trying (and failing) to not think of his AWOL angel.

All his prayers have gone unanswered and – he’s afraid to even consider this possibility – perhaps even unheard... there’s no real way of telling what happens to the scarily intimate words he whispers to Cas, sometimes locked within his head like shameful secrets and sometimes spoken aloud with a painful, yearning devastation that leaves him shaking beneath the weight of it.

Dean reaches a clearing within the woods containing a huge tree of such soaring heights that its top towers over the forest canopy.

Desperation welling up like blood from a fresh wound, he makes an impulsive decision to simply scale the enormous tree. Maybe he’ll be able to see more clearly from a higher vantage point; maybe, somehow, he’ll find Castiel soaring above him in the monochromatic skies like the most beautiful and sought-after oversized bird in all of existence.

The hunter scales his way up the thick trunk with an unexpected dexterity until he reaches the first of its sizable branches. After satisfactorily testing it to make sure it’ll hold his weight, Dean hoists himself up.

It’s a long ass climb to the very top, and he has to stop three times to quell the queasiness in his stomach at his increasing distance from the ground and safety. Heights are still a no-go – don’t ever try this friggin’ suicide attempt again, genius, he chastises himself. Dean’s two-thirds of the way up the tree, teeth gritted tight, stoutly refusing to look down while sweating bullets.

Now he’s committed to the task too deeply to back out, but the insanity of his decision and full extent of his acrophobia has set in. He takes several deep breaths in and out to steady his trembling hands.

Don’t look down, don’t look down, he chants to himself as he grabs onto the final branch big enough to support him, carefully pulling himself up.

From his crouched position, Dean plasters his arms around the trunk, then latches onto the branch above him as he very gingerly straightens.

Standing almost at the very top of the tallest tree in the forest (he decidedly does not consider how far up in elevation he is right now), he scans the forest below in all directions he’s able to see, neck craning at ridiculous angles.

Up here, Dean can even feel a slight warmth emanating from the cloud-smothered sun, and there’s a gentle breeze that’s enough to freak him out a half degree further. Down below, he disappointedly notes, there’s only the subtle curve of the stream breaking up the thick treetops aside from a few hills or clearings here and there. Oh hey, check it out - I think there’s the two spooks I just ganked lyin’ dead over yonder, he notes with a humorless smirk. And of course after doing all this, still no Cas in view any-freaking-where.

Seized by an onslaught of some brand of hysteria-induced brashness, Dean cups one hand around his mouth for amplification: “CAS!! CAAASS!!! CASTIEELLLL!!!! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOUUU?!?!?”

His voice cracks a little at the end of what is seeming more like a rageful rhetorical question to the universe at large rather than an actual attempt to reach his angel. The sheer volume of Dean’s full-chested bellow reverberating high above the forest is still not enough to disguise the pitiful loneliness at its core.

He’ll never admit this, but right now more than ever he feels just like the scared little boy that he was, waiting (with a loaded pistol in hand) within a dingy motel room lined with salt while Sammy slept for a father who rarely came back when promised.

That same hollow ache of abandonment clangs in his chest, and he quickly claps a hand over his mouth as if afraid of what might come bursting forth next.

The leaves on the branch above him tremble minutely with the fading vibrations of his shouting fit. A couple float down onto Dean’s shoulder, and as he’s swatting them away he senses something almost imperceptibly light land on his head. His fingers tangle amongst a feathery texture when he grabs at it.

Frowning, dizzying fear of heights momentarily forgotten, Dean examines the large black feather with an acutely ambiguous emotion swelling inside of him.

It’s about five inches long with a strong core, jet black and shiny all over except where the sunlight hits and the edges gain an oilslick-rainbow colored striation. Oddly enough, although the feather feels more than real between his fingers, he swears he sees it flicker into translucency as if glitching in and out of existence, accompanied a static-electricity shock when he touches it.

Leaf-green eyes widen enormously, and his mouth falls open in a silent gasp as unbidden flashes from four years ago of a certain stormy night in a ramshackle barn replay in his head.

Flashes – literal flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder as a gale sweeps in, then all the lightbulbs are flashing out too, fizzling out one by one in tinkling fireworks of sparks and shattered glass.

The bolted barn door flings open as if in invitation of the creature that’s stalking confidently through the silvery shadows.

There’s Bobby, crouched in a battle stance and popping off rock salt rounds from his shotgun as fast as if our lives depended on it (we sure thought so at the time, and were right in a twisted sense), but the shells explode against this being like snow pellets just melting away in their uselessness.

Maybe this was a huge mistake, and me and good ol’ Bobby here are about to meet our maker…

He or It gets close enough for me to see that whatever this is looks just like a mortal man, and a pretty regular one at that (but unusually attractive, in a stern, rumpled white-collar kinda way)… minus the piercing, otherworldly icy blues staring me down as if trying to bore a hole into my very soul.

When He/It tells me in a rumbling, low voice like the thunder outside that he’s the one who “gripped me tight and raised me from perdition” (guess that explains the freakin’ bright red cattle brand on my shoulder, asshole), I smile and thank him with a demon blade to the heart.

He smiles in return and slides it out of his body like plucking a butterknife from cake before effortlessly disabling Bobby by placing two fingers to his head and rendering him unconscious.

At that point, I’m as shocked as I’ve ever been in my life, and that’s really sayin’ somethin’. This apparently indestructible entity announces that he’s “Castiel, an Angel of the Lord” and proceeds to inform me that I have no faith (winner winner, chicken dinner).

Then this “Castiel, Angel of the Lord” decides to put on a show for my sole benefit, fluffing up his (invisible?) feathers in a clear display of dominance and power. Thunder and lightning clash dramatically overhead, and the shadowy silhouettes of magnificent, huge wings spread behind him.

This moment is one of few, admittedly, where I’m rendered speechless for real. Gaping wide-mouthed, I wonder to myself about the real wings themselves, and have a sudden, somehow shameful desire to see them manifest beyond just these impressive shadows.

The conversation that follows goes by in a blur; mainly I remember being too acutely aware of my body’s physical sensations, clammy fists clenched tight and heart pounding away like a jackrabbit’s. Those hypnotic ocean eyes suck me in like a portal into some unknown universe, and it’s hard for me to focus on what he’s saying.

We’ve somehow managed to edge well into each other’s space when the angel whispers something to me that I’ll remember to the end of my days: “What’s the matter, you don’t think you deserve to be saved?”

A loud ca-cawing of a nearby crow startles Dean out of his reverie. The feather’s clutched tightly in his free hand, clenched and white-knuckled. Grimacing at the unpleasant realization of just how far of an altitude adjustment he’s got until he’s once more secure on a flat surface, he tucks the feather into the safety of his front jean pocket.

The hunter then descends the tree as rapidly as he can manage, sure-footed, mouth set in a grim line of concentration, every movement tense and calculated. He forbids himself to look down past the branch directly below him until he knows the ground isn’t a disturbingly long distance away.

Reaching the lowest branch, he rests for a minute, mind racing with precarious thoughts. After a brief internal debate, Dean hangs from the branch like it’s a monkey bar before releasing it and landing on the dry bed of leaves below with a grunt.

He exhales a long, shaky breath that he didn’t realize he was holding. That can’t’ve been good for my damn knees, man – shit, he scowls, giving himself a once-over to ensure nothing got lost during the treacherous climb.

He’s taking the mysterious black feather out of his pocket before he knows it, twirling it in spots of sunlight to catch glimmers of its multicolored edges. Dean can’t say how or why he knows it, but he can say with certainty that this is not just any old bird feather. It’s Cas’s – he’s been here, Dean thinks with a rising tide of giddy hope. Maybe he’s not too far away and I can try to track him!

Things are never this easy for a Winchester, though – Dean scours the surrounding areas a mile out from the giant tree in every direction, practically on his hands and knees, until the sickly light from the setting sun renders visibility insufficient. He dourly sets up camp back at its base, improvising a rough bed of dead leaves and pine needles nestled between large gnarled roots growing from the mammoth trunk.

There isn’t enough light to hunt by, either, and he’s really not up to start a fire with nothing to cook over it. He’s deflated and demotivated, crashing after the adrenaline high of that crazy climb and discovering Cas’s feather, only to fail in tracking him any further than that stupid tree.

Dean curls up on what passes for a mattress these days, scrunching himself into a fetal position against the nighttime chill. I honestly don’t know what I miss more right now: my family or my memory foam mattress, he thinks bitterly. There’s a perpetual tiredness and dull, throbbing pain in his body that pervades, sinking into his deepest cracks and crevices in a way that surpasses physicality. The lone hunter lies in the dark unmoving, with only the ragged clothes on his body and his small cache of weapons to keep him warm.

His only motivation for waking up and dragging himself through another day comes in the form of a silent prayer: Hey Cas, I don’t know if you can hear me right now, but I found one of your feathers at the top of a tall ass tree today while looking for you. Don’t even ask how I got up there, dude; waytoo soon. What was one of those doin’ up there anyhow – your feathery ass goin’ through some kinda molt?

Anyways, still tryna hunt you like you’re my next case or somethin’... Wouldn’t kill ya to make some kinda contact, would it? ‘Cause to tell ya the truth, I’m gettin’ kinda desperate here, buddy. It’s been months since we got separated, and I still don’t know what happened to you – if the Leviathans got to you, if you’re alive and okay… I guess I keep praying to you anyway because you’re all I have to hold onto in this godforsaken place.

You better fucking be alright. Also, if you’re actually listening right now, just to warn ya: I’mma be super fucking pissed when I find you. I owe you an ass-whoopin’ of a lifetime for makin’ me worry so much.

Well, that’s about it for now… Castiel, if you’re hearing this, I am coming for your angelic ass, so you best just show yourself and get it over with. You can’t hide from me forever, man. I will find you and we willfind a way outta here together, because the only way I’m giving up on us is over my own dead body.A-fuckin’-GAIN.

With that torrential mental word-vomit of a prayer, Dean passes out with one hand resting upon the hilt of his knife, and the other gripping the inky feather curled over his heart.

          ⊰⋯ ҉  ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

Notes:

Okey-dokey, y'all - so my therapist says I need to "make new friends"... she didn't specify whether online or IRL ones (HAHA introvert loophole), so here we go, Destiel (and Rickyl) fandoms!! Help me be able to honestly and proudly tell my therapist I've been "socially interacting within healthy norms" 🥲 Oh yeah, and I've also included the Profound Bond Server Invite Link! Other than the obvious one right here, you can generally find me (lurking, per usual) on these sites: 🌠Tumblr 🌠Reddit (on here I'm smokey_cat19) 🌠Personal Discord 🌠Profound Bond Invitation Link for Discord ****just make sure you read over all of their guidelines/etiquette. Prob the best Destiel spot on the interwebz 🪽 Come say hi - I need fwiends and am too shy to approach anybody lol. Won't bite, am friendly and have all my shots! :D

[seraphic-anachronism]

My 3rd ever fic: "Purgatorio"!

Alrighty, folks - some of you asked for this, so you shall indeed receive :)

This is my headcanon of what truly transpired in this brutal place - how Castiel rescues Dean yet again from Purgatory, their journey through the impossible, and the ultimate price the angel would pay for the man he sold the world for.

Not one of them had a clue how everything was about to change, least of all the oblivious hunter and his reticent guardian angel...

Purgatorio

By: seraphic_anachronism

          ⊰⋯ ҉  ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

Purgatory may lie between Heaven and Hell as an impenetrable prison dimension, but the status quo is about to get shaken the fuck up.

What terrible lengths are Castiel willing to go to in order to save Dean Winchester, the (sometimes not so) Righteous Man? Whose secrets are held within the seraph's heart, and how much can he really bleed before the gore infects the very thing he's doomed to protect?

Things are not as they seem, and both will be put to the test to see just how strong their profound bond truly is...

          ⊰⋯ ҉  ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

My first ever slow burn, and I'm feeling the Maillard reaction already, lmao. Chapter 1 is up, followed by weekly Thursday updates (auDHD permitting XD)! All comments and critiques are welcome - feedback feeds the creative machine ;P

So happy to be a part of this thriving fandom - y'all are friggin' awesome, and don't you ever forget it!!

Anyhoo, if you're stumbling upon this right now and are too lazy to hit up AO3, here's Chapter 1 - more to come next week!

All the credit in the universe goes to my loyal beta and unerring sounding board, Pandorakiin. Without her, you'd be left with some convolutedly garbled, run-on-sentence nonsense :''''') Much love to you always, my friend!!!

⊰⋯ ҉ ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

Chapter 1

Part 1 - Across the Acheron

So this is the world you left behind, This is the guilt that consumes you So die alone, this is the one thing that I won’t do Say your prayers, ‘cause I ain’t leaving here without you – “Natural Born Killer”, Avenged Sevenfold

Running, racing, failing but still trying in vain to escape a fearsome forest of darkness and danger.

He pants, huffing and harsh, drenching his lungs with high-octane oxygen, adrenaline permeating his system and keeping him on high-alert. That’s where he needs to be – a trained killer with honed instincts just sharp enough to stay one step away from the ever present, razor-sharp knife’s edge of death’s abyss.

It’s hunt or be hunted, kill or be killed in this godforsaken plane Dean’s trapped within, and he’ll be damned if he succumbs here at the teeth or claws of any monster he’s already ended in the world of the living.

Their telltale growls and the rustling of leaves approach rapidly behind him. He snakes away from the path he’s on, winding sideways to mislead the vamps on his trail. A seasoned hunter with his rough-hewn, homemade machete in hand, he’s not afraid to face them by any means. But outnumbered, Dean would rather lure them to a vulnerable position and spring a surprise attack versus barrelling in, hacking recklessly with no real plan.

He’s seen enough of what that kinda guns-blazin’, half-cocked attempt accomplishes…

Breaking through the dense brush, he finds himself on top of a small bluff, surrounded by bleak woodland vistas crowding the mottled-gray horizon.

The sun never seems to come out from behind the scraggly clouds on this plane of existence, if there even is one here. A singular, sorrowful caw from a crow echoes, bouncing off of the claustrophobic tree clusters in warning.

Seeking somewhere he can hide and catch his wind before his enemies rush him, Dean spies a yawning black cave entrance halfway hidden behind a thicket of thorny vines. He darts inside.

He’s immediately encircled by hushed blackness. His heart hammers behind his ribcage, a visceral, persistent reminder of the life (if this can still be called living? Where the hell do we even go when we die again in here?!?) he’s compulsively compelled to protect.

Dean has no earthly clue how much worse it can get than this place, other than the very bowels of hell itself. And he sure don’t want another taste of that unspeakable horror nor to encourage that morbid thought any further, so the Righteous Man swallows his complaints and carries on valiantly, doing what he does best: fightin’ the good fight ‘til he can’t fight no more.

I’ll be goddamned if I don’t go down swingin’. Ain’t scared of these nasty fuckers.

The vampires’ animalistic snarls precede them as they clamber up the hill towards him. Dean’s grip tightens on the handle of his machete and he grits his teeth in anticipation of the inevitable showdown. From his hidden vantage point, he watches as they burst into view, mangy heads swiveling and hissing rabidly through hungry fangs.

Now it’s just a matter of seeing who’s most determined and bloodthirsty out of the bunch – Dean Winchester, or the trio of purgatory bloodsuckers after his sweet ass?

Oh, and it’s sweet alright, but these motherfuckers ain’t never gon’ get a taste, he thinks, exiting the cave in a smooth lunging attack motion.

The all-too familiar thin veil of maroon-tinged battle bloodlust descends, draping over his vision and countenance like a deranged security blanket.

Time seems to slow to a tenth of its usual speed, suspending him in its delayed, deadly momentum.

Dean easily sidesteps their leader’s attempt to tackle him, arcing gracefully to slice its head off with a clean sweep of his weapon and a grunt of exertion. The other two now converge upon him, shrieking with rageful vengeance, but neither get close enough to even so much as scratch his skin before their heads are also rolling to the ground with gross, liquidy squelches.

Breathing hard, Dean casually kicks aside the decapitated vampire head in his way as he heads over to wipe his machete clean on a swath of something resembling dreary, overgrown heather. Well, folks, at the conclusion of this Battle Royale, we have a winner! The score reads Winchester: 3, and Purgatory Vamps: 0. And the crowd goes wild!!!

Dean snorts in sardonic amusement at his own thought theatrics, tucking his trusty ol’ MacGuyvered machete back into its rawhide sling at his back next to the handmade bow and arrows. I mean, hey, shit – if I ain’t talkin’ to myself in this goddamn place I’d likely be screamin’ and cryin’ to myself instead, so obviously option one’s the only way to go.

His throat burns with a thirst that screams to be slaked. Creases and cracks in his fingernails and skin on his hands are stained crimson from dealing out death, so he trots down the side of the slight cliff and seeks out the nearby river.

Scanning and surveying areas surrounding him which may harbor potential threats is second-nature to him; easy as blinking and natural as thinking. Dean takes a private moment to appreciate the accuracy of his internal compass, which has never been more necessary to his survival than now.

When he reaches the river, he kneels, splashes his face with the clear, cold water and scrubs at his bloodied hands perfunctorily before cupping them and drinking down water they hold with greedy gulps until his stomach begins to ache. Stumbling to his feet, liquid sloshing about in his stomach and cursing at the way his bad knee creaks, he assesses his current situation during this brief lull in the near-constant violence.

Perversely, he ponders the point of purgatory being just like Earth, but on steroids and injected with nothing but straight-the-fuck-up violence – no masks, no disguises, no bullshit. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten; as Above, so Below.

Dean’s lost track of how long he’s been stuck here (and how long it’s been since Cas vanished), but it has to be over two months at a conservative estimate since Dick’s fatal eruption (So, hey, get this: did you know that standing too close to exploding Dick apparently lands you in purgatory??! I didn’t, but it actually makes sense in retrospect). He’s unsure of this place’s time scale relative to that of Earth’s, but he’s hopin’ and prayin’ to an absent God to escape this demonic dimension before he loses too much time from his real life.

Ever the friggin’ optimist, now are we, Dean thinks to himself acidly. As if getting outta here is anything more than a fart in a pipe dream… and as if finding Cas ain’t nothin’ beyond my wildest wishes coming true, too…

He’s unaware, but his whole face falls as if caving in on itself with worry and despair, pain etched in every wrinkle and pulling his lips down with its weight, reflected in sorrowful virescent eyes. Cas, goddammit man…

Dean’s helpless to replay that first hour in Purgatory when he lost Cas over and over and over in his head, like a broken, skipping projector, stuck in a perpetual loop and mercilessly reminding him of this epic failure until it’s engraved onto the backs of his eyelids and he sees it when he sleeps.

The leviathans had converged around them, eyes glowing red in the darkness of the trees like a serial killer’s Christmas lights. Dean was searching frantically for a weapon that could behead them, knowing all too well how useless his Colt would be against these creatures.

When he’d called out to Cas to figure out their gameplan, his best friend was gone. Seemingly vanished into thin air – flown away, leaving Dean behind with insatiable monsters on his tail. Where exactly he’d gone and why; an unsolvable mystery to this day…

Strangely enough, after a while, the blazing coals of the leviathans’ evil eyes disappeared, as if they lost interest in the aroma of Dean’s human flesh versus the temptation of something or someone else’s.

Dean had stood there all evening, awake and glued to the forest floor, switchblade in hand and jaw clenched against the fear and loss threatening to creep up on him until ink-black midnight gave way to a murky, pale dawn.

All his nonstop efforts the next several days to locate Castiel left him empty-handed and heavy-hearted, a trail of bodies in his wake and bloodstains accumulating on his clothing like accusations. Why did that sonuvabitch have to be standing right next to me? Why did I talk him into coming with us to the final Levi bossfight when he was all about being a “peace-love-and-bees” crazy kinda hippie? He offered to go with me, and look what happened. And dear God who is most certainly not above, where the hell did he go???

These and more useless, guilt-ridden, cyclical thoughts chased each other around the inescapable maze of his mind for weeks on end ‘til Dean was about ready to implode. While physical violence raged on in the outside world, enemies respawning like he’s stuck on hard mode in the most wicked, brutal RPG singleplayer videogame ever made, the internal battles were what threatened to truly break him.

Dean didn’t so much as “wake” from sleep most nights – no, that was far too gentle a term to apply to his sudden jerking and thrashing into consciousness, followed by immediate, frantic flailing for a weapon. Unfortunately or fortunately, about half these times were no nightmare-induced false alarms but rather sharply honed hunter’s instincts at play – he found himself thrust into combat within seconds of awakening.

Yeah, you could say things were not going too well for Dean (or Cas, presumably) since Dick’s inopportune implosion.

When not actively engaged in deathmatches with creatures he’d probably already killed once in the real world, Dean again found himself on the torturous hamster wheel in his head, slave to his traumatic memories, negativity and self-loathing he held within; at this rate, he’ll end up frozen, floating in this suspended state of Frankenstein animation forever.

I wonder if Sammy’s out there looking for a way to get me back home. Hell, I hope he’s even alright, he ponders half-heartedly, sighing a wistfully bitter breath before slamming the door shut on all his self-deprecation-slash-pity.

The hunter then refocuses his pragmatic side, and trudges off to take care of basic necessities for survival.

The wild turkey goes down clean and without a fight, his flint-headed wooden arrow piercing straight and true through its heart. It lies dying, twitching on the ground that’s thickly carpeted with layers of dead leaves, red and brown mottled feathers giving a slight shiver in the last of its death throes. Shit, can’t tell what kinda turkey or bird or whatever weird species of purgatory poultry this is, but it does taste just like chicken and it ain’t killed me yet, so I reckon’ that’s good enough for me. Dean yanks the arrow out from the bird’s carcass, then snatches the fowl up by its hind legs and sets back off towards the convenient cave he stumbled upon earlier.

Being an extraordinarily skilled hunter of terrifying, superhuman monsters did have its perks, as far as survival skills went. Plus, say what you want about John, but he sure did train his boys right when it came down to brass tacks and bullet shells (as he was wont to say), so Dean’s tracking skills and knowledge of the wilderness are just as on point as his marksmanship. At least all of these combined abilities give him a fighting chance, so long as he manages to keep re-slaying these vamps, leviathans and other eldritch creatures of the night before they can get the best of him.

Later, after setting up a makeshift shelter, Dean sits within the relative safety of the cave by a small fire that he started with a bowdrill, lots of kindling and love. The turkey’s plucked and gutted (feathers set aside to make more arrows with later), and it’s roasting nicely over a makeshift spit he jerry-rigged from some strategically balanced branches. Sure could use a cold beer and some good company right about now, he mopes to himself as he tears into a piping hot leg without much enthusiasm, chewing mechanically despite his stomach gurgling its approval. God only knows when that’ll happen again, if it even ever does… Somewhere over the freakin’ multidimensionally travelling rainbow, man.

Shifting, evanescent flickers of orange flames reflect off of tired verdant eyes. Dean stares into the fire’s blazing center until most of the turkey is devoured and it dies down into glowing embers littered with discarded bones. Wiping greasy hands upon the moss that creeps up the cavern’s walls, he grimaces at the filthy state of himself. Dick sure didn’t give us no notice to pack a change of clothes or nothin’ before zappin’ us here, the damn prick, Dean grumbles inwardly. He has no mirror, but from the status of his dirt-and-blood encrusted clothing, he’s positive that the rest of himself has never wanted more for a shower in his entire combined life than it does at this very second.

Little does he realize, though, how the stubborn nobility of his beauty manages to pierce through all the layers of grime and muck anyhow (Cas would see it, if he were there to do so).

Dean sleeps (or tries to) curled into himself on a rough bed of heather and wheatgrass that’s far enough from the remnants of the fire to not catch flame, but close enough to its waning warmth to lend him the barest hint of comfort throughout the cold, empty night. He’s fitful and restless, tossing and turning within dreams of distorted desire and torturous desperation flooded with the blinding blue-white light of Grace that keeps slipping through his fingers like smoke.

          ⊰⋯ ҉  ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱

[seraphic-anachronism]

Freaky Thursday - Final chapters!

Okay, y'all - buckle up for the rivetingly explicit (and unexpectedly sweet) ending of this story!

Please comment/like/and also view on AO3 if you're more inclined :)

Chapter 7

Summary:

This is a short one; the aforementioned, much-too-wordy gratuitous smut shall directly follow! ;P

Determinedly marching Dean along like a teacher dragging a reluctant student into detention, Castiel paused once they reached his doorway and frowned. With great difficulty, he pried Dean’s claws from his hand and turned the panicked man by the shoulders to face him squarely.

“Dean, calm down and look at me.” Earnest green eyes seek out wildly rolling blue ones; finally, he had to grasp Dean’s face with both hands, physically forcing him to focus. “It’s okay, just stay with me and slow your breathing. We’ve been through much worse together and survived. I promise everything will be alright. Just breathe with me, okay? Inhale… hold. Exhale… Inhale… hold. Exhale…”

Soon enough Dean, breathing obediently with Cas and clinging onto the arms that framed his head like a barnacle, began to relax. He unclenched his jaw, and then his fingers so they weren’t digging into Cas too hard. The two found themselves unavoidably caught in each other’s orbit, gazes gravitating towards each other as if abiding by undeniable laws of physics (or physical attraction, in this case). All Dean saw when he fell into the verdant depths of what were technically his own eyes was the intense, caring and ultimately so Cas-like expression of his best friend staring back at him. If the eyes were truly the window to the soul, then what peered through the panes of his own irises was Castiel’s essence, that piece of his “trueform” perceivable to the human senses.

With his breath unconsciously held, Dean entered a semi-hypnotic trance, sucked into the portals of Cas’s borrowed eyes; if I look closely enough, I swear I can see little glimmers of his grace in there like tiny electrical sparks. Cas, in turn, was reciprocating Dean’s stare with such ardor that it transcended physicality. He could feel Dean’s soul churning within his vessel behind his ocean eyes. It yearned to reach out and touch his grace, which was so entrancingly threaded throughout Dean’s vessel and radiating pure, unadulterated joy and longing.

What could have been seconds, minutes or hours passed before either of them moved, heads huddled close together and quietly breathing in the mingled air between them. It was Dean who broke the mesmerizing spell they were under and took over this time, grabbing Castiel’s hand and leading him into his room. He shut and locked the door gently behind them with a soft click.

All of Cas’s take-charge, commanding attitude seemed to dissipate on the spot once they breached the barrier of Dean’s territory. His initial thought was that Dean, who was so freaked out and frightened out of his wits by the entire scenario, might feel more safe “doing the inevitable deed” within the walls of his innermost sanctuary, so he led them there. Now that they were actually inside Dean’s room, Castiel was the one beginning to quiver in his proverbial boots. After all these drawn-out years privately (and painfully) pining for his hunter, he would be lying if he said it didn’t bother him that it took a goddamn curse for him to be pushed into acting on these feelings. He felt his existence’s sexual inexperience acutely, and hoped the unconditional devotion and unquantifiable passion he harbored towards Dean would be enough to compensate for his lack of tact. Most of all, he prayed to his absent Father that Dean even felt so much as an inkling of interest in him as he did for Dean.

Luckily for Cas, these fears would soon prove entirely unfounded.

Dean, alternately, felt as if during this entire episode, he was ascending to the top of the tallest roller coaster of his life, looking down at the increasingly far away ground with mounting unease, hyperventilating while gripping the safety rail until his knuckles grew white.

But now that they had finally reached the dreaded dropping point and were freefalling, he was more than fine with just letting gravity take its course. His only remaining fear was the natural nervousness of confronting your long-standing, unrequited forbidden crush for the first time… What if I mess this up? Jesus, I can’t afford to do that by any means. Cas is my – well, he’s my everything, if I’m gonna be honest with myself for a change. Fuck it – time to nut up and face the music, Winchester, ready or not...

They stood awkwardly in the middle of Dean’s room, dressed in each other’s bodies but in their own respective clothing, still staring at each other but now with guarded, ambiguous reservation on both ends. Dean cleared his throat, and both of them began rubbing the backs of their necks in a simultaneously sheepish movement. “Well, uh, as much as I really don’t want to, I guess we gotta talk about this now that it has to go down for real. C’mere and pop a squat, Cas – we should – we gotta – let’s, eh, iron this out and… try to make it as not weird as possible…?”

He sat down on the edge of his neatly made bed, patting the soft, grey checked comforter next to him invitingly for Cas to sit as well, who did so with slow, gingerly movements. Slim inches of space separated the two. After a short moment’s deliberation, Dean bridged the gap between them by gently grasping Cas’s hand and cradling it between his own (and boy, wasn’t that an odd sensation – holding your own hand within someone else's; but I digress). He soothed over the roughened calluses on Cas’s hand with the slim, smooth fingers of his own, rubbing comforting circles into his palm as he took a deep breath and started to speak.

“Look, Cas, you know that you’re my best friend. You have been for ages, and like I’ve said, you’re like a brother to me… but also, like, not exactly in a brotherly sense of the word, if ya catch my drift?” Here Dean paused, looking up from where he was speaking into his lap where their intermingled hands lay to gauge Cas’s reaction so far. What he saw in the warmth of his ex-angel’s eyes must have been encouragement enough for him to continue. He took a deep, fortifying breath and pushed on. “So, um, obviously this whole situation has been beyond insane, but I – with what Rowena said we have to do to fix it, I, uh – I get it if you ain’t on the same page as me with what I’m feeling, what with you being a multidimensional celestial wave or whatever, and if – if you’re not okay with any of it, I’m really sorry, buddy, but looks like we got no choice here, so just tell me if there’s anything I can do to make this better for you, so it doesn’t change things between us afterwards, ‘cause I don’t want it to get all awkward since I – just ‘cause I, uh, kinda like you like that, and – ”

Cas, smiling softly, placed two of his fingers to Dean’s lips to shush his tirade in the nicest way possible. “It’s alright, Dean. Say no more. From what you just told me, I believe we can now safely assume we want the same thing from one another.” A brief lull in his paced, deliberate wording where he grasped Dean’s face with reverence, stroking the stubble upon his chin ever so lightly with his thumbs as if he had never held anything so precious in his near-eternal existence. Dean melted into his touch like hot wax dripping down a lit candle. “I am millions upon millions of years old; by now I have lost count of the years I have spent upon this planet and amongst its surrounding stars. I have watched galaxies explode into being, and observed as the miraculous sentience of mankind evolved from a single cell of life. I have been the obedient soldier, ever ready to march into battle as instructed, used to following orders instantaneously and without question.

It wasn’t until I laid a hand on the unparalleled radiance of your soul in hell, broken and maimed as it was, that I found myself experiencing what would come to be the most impactful, enlightening eight years of my vast lifetime. You changed me, Dean Winchester – irreversibly so; you taught me to think for myself, to discover my free will and my identity so I could challenge my destiny in this universe, as well as the motives of my so-called superiors. Without you, I would never have even begun to understand what the meaning of love is, for you are the living, breathing embodiment of love to me. The sacrifices you’ve made for this world, for your brother, for me – they all come from the purest place of selfless love within your soul, that shines brighter and stronger and more righteous than any I have ever seen.

You astound and amaze me each day I have the privilege to be in your presence, Dean. And now, hearing from you through what I will now forever label the ‘happy hourglass accident’ that you actually reciprocate the unspoken romantic feelings I have carried for you for many years, I feel as if I may burst into a million particles of light from uncontrollable happiness. So, no, rest assured our relationship will not get ‘weird’, as you so put it – if you are as okay with the implications of the act we are about to perform together as I am, all this will do is strengthen us, and transform our friendship into something much more wondrous.”

Dean was staring starry-eyed at him, Cas’s sky-blue eyes glistening with what looked suspiciously like unshed tears. He found his hands moving of their own accord to clasp onto the hands that were so tenderly cradling his face. “I am yours, Dean, if you would have me.”

“Yeah, wow – okay, Cas. Yes, yes to everything you just said. Uh, me too,” Dean answered eloquently. No longer able to hold it back, his face cracked wide open into a stunned, spectacular smile, crinkling the edges of Cas’s azure eyes with laugh-lines of radiant joy. The two inched closer and closer until the tips of their noses were brushing in the gentlest of eskimo kisses. Falling into the dazzling emerald pools of what were ostensibly his own eyes through which Castiel gazed adoringly back at him was the oddest sensation he had ever experienced… So this is the part where I kinda have to kiss myself, right? Okay, just for the record, I’ll be more than thrilled when we’re back to normal, mostly so I can properly kiss Cas’s lips.

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

Chapter 8

Summary:

Ahhh, and here it is, folks - without further ado, here's the (much-awaited? Lol, I hope so) long-promised obscene amount of the smuttiest smut that's ever smutted. ... Well, that's an exorbitantly tall order, but here's my best attempt at filling it! And yes, there is an Elton John reference tucked in here for y'all XDD Hope you enjoy this even a fraction of the amount as the boys did ;) do tell me if you liked it, or otherwise, in the comments section!

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

When their lips finally met, it was a tentative, tender thing, tasting so tantalizingly of each other’s sweetness. They both moaned into each other’s mouths, shocked at the strangely sensual feeling of exploring what was actually their own tongues and lips sliding against the other’s. Dean’s fingers curled into thick sandy hair before he realized it, grabbing palmfuls and yanking lightly, making Cas gasp harshly against his lips. All the old pent-up frustrations and repressed emotions came bubbling up to the surface as they coalesced into one, bodies entwining and locked together in a cathartic embrace. Cas’s hands lowered to claim Dean’s hips with a tight, fervent grip, grabbing Dean and slotting their legs together the best he could in their seated position.

To Dean’s surprise, the effect of kissing “himself” wasn’t as awkward as he feared; he swore that the specific scent, taste and feel of Cas penetrated through Dean’s vessel and overpowered it altogether. There was an almost intangible building of pressure in the air, a static electricity humming to life in the space they shared, tinted with the smell of ozone and the fresh, spring air of pure wilderness. A delightful heat and giddiness bloomed deep in his chest and belly like honeysuckle tea slowly steeping in boiling water. They kissed and kissed, mouths moving slickly together with a gentle ease and, for Dean, an almost painful vulnerability in this most delicate of slow dances.

It seemed like ages before either of them had to come up for air, as if the very oxygen they breathed had become secondary to what was now transpiring between them. Oh my god, this just blew my freakin’ mind. Why haven’t we been doing this for the past however many years now?? We are really a couple of grade-A idjits, in the immortal words of Bobby Singer.

Dean pulled back to take a breath and a good look at Cas, who was already a disheveled wreck, hair mussed to all hell with glassy green eyes, pink cheeks and red-swollen, thoroughly kissed lips. He smirked, knowing his own condition must not be any better off. After a second or so of considering each other, they dove back in enthusiastically. Cas was now kissing like he was dying for it, clutching onto Dean urgently and sucking on his tongue with filthy, pleasured noises that Dean swallowed hungrily. Cas’s hands migrated down from their grip on his hips to massage at the mounds of his asscheeks, causing him to groan appreciatively and throw one leg onto the bed and over Cas for easier access.

The executive functions of his higher cognition leaked steadily out of his brain as all the blood rushed south. Their kisses grew rougher and more desperate as they pawed at each other with overeager hands, Dean’s having made it up all Cas’s layers now to scratch lightly at the strong, rippling shoulder muscles underneath. All of a sudden the room felt way too hot, and Dean decided they were both wearing too many clothes. He extracted his mouth away from Cas’s just long enough to growl, “Clothes. Off. Now!”

He ripped off Cas’s trenchcoat and suit jacket in a frenzy, leaving them in haphazard piles on the floor. Then he began attacking the unnecessary number of buttons on his undershirt, and that stupid backwards tie. “You wear too many layers,” Dean complained, pouting petulantly as he rushed his way through undressing Cas as quickly as he’d ever stripped anyone in his life. Castiel was compliant up until the moment Dean pushed him down onto the bed and slid his slacks and socks off, leaving him in only white boxers tented with his obvious desire.

Then Cas mounted his counteroffensive strategy, climbing on top of Dean and swiftly yanking his AC/DC shirt off before shoving his sweatpants down and throwing that plus his socks every which way. Cas looked down at Dean from where he straddled him and caught himself honest-to-God admiring his own muscular form, especially his thick thighs and derriere encased in Dean’s tight black briefs. It was absolutely more so the knowledge that it was his Dean inside of that familiar vessel, panting and heavy-lidded with arousal that he elicited, that got his engine revving into overdrive.

Dean waggled his eyebrows, grinning up at him predatorily before canting his hips up to grind their erections together with the most teasing hint of friction. Both of them moaned at the sensation, the fabrics of their underwear growing moist with precome where their cockheads rubbed against the soft cotton.

“Tell me what you need from me, Dean,” Cas rasped out, running his hands, slow and deliberate, down Dean’s chest and abdomen with almost religious intent, mapping out the smooth planes and hard angles of his own flesh with care. “I want to make you feel so good. Let me worship you as the precious gift that you are. Tell me how you want it, boaluahe el¹.”

The last part of this sentence was whispered directly into Dean’s ear, hot breath puffing against the sensitive pink outer shell and raising the hairs on the back of his neck. A full-body shiver wracked through him at the incredibly erotic sound of what were most likely Enochian endearments from Cas spoken in the hushed, honey-sweet drawl of his own voice.

The gears and machinery in Dean’s head suddenly shifted to life at this (really, so Cas-like and earnestly intimate) request. There’s things that I’ve wanted, things I would never speak of, secrets to be buried with me when I die… Am I really gonna tell Cas all of this, to open myself up to him in that way? I mean, I guess we’re already halfway there, what with the love confessions and impending sex in the air and all, but still… I ain’t told nobody none of this before… Dean’s eyes were downcast, his brow crinkled in thought as he chewed on his lower lip, caught in the breathless suspense of indecision.

Cas, waiting patiently as he watched his lover visibly experience the first (but certainly not the last) of what would become a series of internal sexual identity crises, gave him a soft, fond smile. He tipped Dean’s chin up with gentle fingers, trying to get the blushing man to make eye contact with him. When shy blue eyes finally lifted to lock onto warm green ones, Castiel soothed him again with his fleece-soft words. “It’s okay, Dean. You’re safe here with me. I will never judge you or dismiss how you feel; you are far too important to me. My only wish is to fulfill your desires, as my delight mirrors yours. So, please, ol monons², speak your mind – tell me what you need from me.”

Cas leaned down and captured Dean’s lips in a silken kiss, pouring every ounce of love and compassion within his ethereal being into his beloved’s mouth. When they finally parted, Dean’s eyes shimmered like a deep lake on a sunny day, inexpressible emotion floating within their fathoms. “Cas, I – I need you to – no, I want you t-to be… inside me. Wanna feel you, Cas, every inch of you in every inch of me, I – I want, no, I need all of you…”

With this earth-shattering confession finally released from the confines of his heart and coming out in a voice like cracked glass on gravel, Dean was helpless to do anything but bury his face in the warm crook of Cas’s neck and breathe in the grounding smell of his sweat, cleanly natural and harkening to a stormy mountainside. He mouthed at the salty, damp skin there, pressing lingering kisses to the side of his throat in unspoken vows. Cas’s arms encircled Dean in an all-encompassing embrace, a solid warm line of protective adoration keeping him tucked into his angel where he would always be safe. He kissed the top of Dean’s head with great seriousness and covetousness, his own ruffled hair tickling his lips.

“And I also want all of you, micaloz³. Yes, Dean – I would love nothing more than to be inside of you,” he whispered into soft dark locks, stroking his fingers down Dean’s shoulders as he wished he could do with wings he no longer possessed. “Though the situation is somewhat unconventionally reversed, still I have dreamt of this moment for so long... I cannot express to you in words how much you mean to me, what a privilege it is that I can hold you, touch you, kiss you, have you…”

Dean made a muffled, jagged sound against Cas’s neck, tightening his own fingers involuntarily, digging into Cas’s back like he was trying to find a home there. After several long, quiet moments of unabashed devotion declared wordlessly with mouths and hands, Castiel untangled his arms from around Dean’s shoulders and propped himself up so he could dip down to kiss his lover’s puffy pink lips once more. Though they’d been wrapped up in each other for what seemed like hours by now, neither felt he would ever tire of the taste and feel of each others’ mouths enmeshed together (regardless of who owned what parts). Their tongues twirled around each other’s with little flicks and twists, not vying for dominance but rather engaged in a delectable, drawn-out courtship. Cas’s breath was hot upon his lips as he exhaled between deep kisses, so caught up that they were still staring into each other’s eyes, making out furiously like it was their last night on earth.

He progressed down his hunter’s face and neck, pressing a trail of wet, warm open-mouthed kisses from his jaw all the way down to the hollow between his collarbones, where he paid special attention by sucking a hickey into the spot, making Dean sigh heavily and utter low, pleased noises. Sitting up slightly for easier access, Cas slid his big, callused hands across the tan, muscled expanse of skin below him, pausing at each nipple to pinch and pet them until they were stiff, flushed peaks of nerves on edge. Dean was letting slip a constant litany of half-formed curse words mingled with Cas’s name, losing himself entirely to the heated, tingling pleasure suffusing his being. His eyes drifted closed as he enjoyed the languid worship blessing his entire body from Cas’s surprisingly skillful mouth, hands and hips. I am coming allthe way undone… And I couldn’t ask for more, unless he wants to set me back to rights when he’s through with me…

“Cas, oh god, you feel so good,” Dean slurred, eyelids drooping and visible slivers of dark blue irises unfocused and hazy. He reached out instinctively to grab each of Cas’s thighs that were straddling him, clutching tight to gouge deep indentations in his flesh. As Dean watched through half-lidded bedroom eyes, Cas continued his passionate assault upon his body, seemingly determined to learn each and every one of his hot spots so he could file them away for future reference. It’s funny, he would fuck the same way he does everything else – with this inhuman intensity and laser-like focus. Makes you feel like you’re the only thing in existence when he’s honed in on you like this.

“Mmmmm, and you taste incredible. The sweetest thing to ever pass my lips,” Cas mouthed against where he was now licking at his hipbone, slithering down his body and methodically touching and kissing everything in his path. Cas’s lust-tarnished green eyes flicked up to land on pupil-dominated indigo ones from where Dean stared out at him longingly. “The only thing I am anticipating even more is when I can finally touch and taste you, once we have been restored into our proper bodies. Of course I love you in any way, shape or form, even in my vessel, but I must admit your original packaging has that irresistible, authentic appeal.”

Dean let out a very masculine giggle as Cas worked his way down and around his pelvis, purposefully avoiding his prominent erection that was practically screaming for attention, instead latching onto the sensitive undersides of his thighs like a lamprey. “Hmm, gotta agree with ya there, pal. As much of a handsome devil as I admittedly am, I’ve been dreaming of getting my hands all over you yourself, angel, not you as my doppelganger.”

Castiel hummed his agreement against Dean’s leg and moved steadily downwards, leaving damp spots cooling in the air after he had ravished the warm flesh. Once he got all the way down his ankles and onto his feet, Dean’s head shot up in alarm. “Whoa there, cowboy, no foot stuff! There are many kinky things on our to-do list, but that is not one of ’em.”

Cas huffed out a soft chuckle before picking up his foot and placing the most feather-light of kisses upon each toe, setting it down before repeating the actions with the other. “Relax, Dean. I am also not a foot fetishist, lest towards my own. I am simply worshipping every single piece of you I can touch. Please allow me this, to lavish you with all the attention you so dearly deserve.”

Dean couldn’t help the bashful grin that broke out across his face at yet another one of Cas’s sickeningly romantic declarations. “Alright, Casanova. Tell us what you really want, damn. Just hurry it up and quit teasing, willya? My balls are about to moonlight for the Blue Man Group.”

Castiel rolled his eyes theatrically and crawled back up his body, draping himself across Dean’s groin and snapping the waistband of his briefs with obnoxious emphasis. “Quit teasing, hmm? So I take it that the thing of most import lies somewhere beneath these undergarments?” He murmured this sentence in a series of small, hot puffs of air against his boxers, speaking directly into Dean’s hard dick like it was a microphone. “I think we could find a decent remedy for your quite… prominent problem.”

His hot, wet lips now mouthed at the tip of Dean’s (well, his own…) cock which had an increasingly large damp spot darkening the cloth around it. It gave an enthusiastic twitch at the newfound attention, Dean’s hips rocking unconsciously forward to tempt Cas into further activities. “Mhmm, I think we could too. You’re gettin’ pretty close, if you just wanna get those pesky boxers outta the – ohh –”

Dean’s sentence tapered off into a high, breathy moan as Cas sprung into action, shoving down his underwear and swallowing his throbbing length down to the hilt without warning. His eyes slammed shut reflexively with the powerful bolt of pleasure slicing through him at the stunning sensation of Cas sucking him off (at last!). After a few seconds, he slitted them open to watch the unbelievably sexy, filthy act being performed upon him. It shouldn’t have been as arousing as it was to witness his own head bobbing up and down Cas’s girthy cock from this vantage point, but oh god it was, so just strike him down and call him a sinner. A long, rumbly groan escaped his pursed lips as he watched Cas go to town on his dick, licking and sucking thirstily as if it were the most succulent dessert he’d ever had in his mouth. Lust-blown ivy-colored eyes locked onto Dean’s nearly black sapphire ones as Castiel planted obscene, smacking kisses from the base of his cock all the way up to where the thickest vein bulged along its underside. He traced it with a slow, torturous lick that ended with a series of rough swirls at the tip that had the hunter snapping his head back against the pillows in ecstasy.

“Mmmmph, Caaaass, Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Dean swore gutturally, hands now gripping as best he could onto Cas’s short dirty blonde crop of hair and pulling hard enough for him to take notice. Cas let out a matching groan that vibrated up his length and managed to ratchet things up even higher. He is going to be the first person – or whatever – to successfully suck out someone’s soul through their dick, Dean thought with the last bit of brainpower in his possession, slack-jawed and glaze-eyed with more pleasure cresting through him than anyone should have the ability to endure. He began involuntarily thrusting into the glorious wet heat of Castiel’s mouth, hitting the back of his throat a couple times before he caught himself, forcing his hips to still so as not to gag his lover (who actually showed no signs of discomfort or hesitation at the onslaught – no gag reflex, go Cas!).

He felt Cas attempt to grin around the thick length stretching his lips, speeding up his ministrations. The heightening heat flared more and more furiously in his groin, tightening his balls and threatening to erupt until Cas pulled off his cock with an obscene pop, smiling up at him wickedly with a thin string of saliva stretching from Dean’s dick to his mouth. He licked his red, swollen lips with relish, sinful smirk still playing at their edges at Dean’s shrill whine of protest. “Shhhh, ol monons², I’ve got you. Let’s not forget about your original request before our climax.”

Dean glared crossly down at his lover, wearing a becoming pout on wide lips. “Don’t tease, Cas, you’re driving me nuts! Get on with the program already.”

“As you wish, Dean,” Cas crooned, crawling back up his body to kiss him breathless before kneeling between his legs and gently spreading them, guiding his knees to fold up so Cas was framed within them like a live painting of a Greek god. Castiel’s own dick stood straight and iron-hard against his stomach, neglected and leaking precome, and apparently the last thing on his mind as he dove down to spread Dean’s cheeks wide open.

“O-okay, clearly getting with the program now – uhm, lube’s in the nightstand on the r –”

His halting sentence came to a screeching end as he keened loudly in surprise at the feeling of Cas’s warm, wet tongue lapping at his entrance. Holy fucking shit, did he learn this from the pizza man too!?!?? ‘Cause goddamn, if so he was sure up to a whole lot with that freakin’ babysitter…

All cohesive ideas flew straight from Dean’s skull and out through his mouth in a series of strangled-sounding gasps and moans. If he thought Cas had a wicked tongue before, now it’s descended into straight evil, flicking teasingly at the edges of his rim, going around and around like he was savoring a lollipop. Dean bit down hard on his bottom lip in a useless attempt to muffle the wanton noises he was making. The dizzying sweetness suffusing his system was enough to make his body clench down compulsively in every which way, one hand clawing at the bedsheets and the other squeezing helplessly at the juncture between Cas’s neck and shoulder. When the stiffened tip of Cas’s tongue finally penetrated his slick, quivering hole, he’s sure his fingernails scratched lasting scars into his fallen angel’s skin.

“C-cuh-caaaaaasss, ohmy f – shit – fuck yes, pleasedon’tstop…”

Dean’s eyes rolled far into the back of his head at the onslaught of pleasure, rendered a babbling disaster underneath Cas’s merciless assault of his most sensitive, secret treasure. His lover’s agile tongue fucked in and out of his tightness, sloppy and wet, going so deep in there it was almost probing his sweet spot. He bucked mindlessly into Cas’s face, squirming on top of him as if attempting to drive his tongue impossibly deeper. Then a hard digit began squeezing in alongside that relentless tongue and Dean totally lost it. His sordid vocalizations were replaced with a sharp, ragged intake of air let out on a choked-out sob as Cas’s thick finger pressed its way in and crooked, just so —

“Yesyesyes, right there – ohhhshh — goddammit Cas, holy fuuuck…”

Castiel looked up from between Dean’s legs to take in the beautiful, debauched sight before him of Dean, shaking apart inside of his vessel, head thrown back and throat bared with a sheen of sweat overlaying his tan skin as he writhed in ecstasy. “So gorgeous for me, Dean. So lovely as you fall apart beneath me…”

Dean could only quiver and moan brokenly, clutching onto Cas with a deathgrip as if he were the only thing still anchoring him to this reality. His cock was even more incredibly engorged, throbbing with need and weeping copiously at the tip, untouched and aching for release that seemed to tease at him with fluttering butterfly wings within his belly.

Cas finally unsuctioned his mouth from Dean’s spit-drenched pucker with an audible smack and removed his finger too before scooting up the bed alongside his sex-stunned hunter to retrieve the lube from the nightstand drawer. Dean lay there watching him behind hooded eyes, panting and flushed with legs fully spread-eagled and lax.

“Mhmm, that’s the idea Cas, get those fingers and that dick inside of me... can’t wait much longer… you’re killin’ me here, sunshine,” he slurred out drunkenly with a lopsided, wide Cheshire cat grin. Still, before getting down to business, Castiel couldn’t stop himself from leaning over and instinctively bruising Dean’s lips with a passionate kiss. Hmm, I can taste myself on his tongue. That's... disturbingly arousing…

Cas poured a copious amount of the clear, slippery liquid onto his palm and rubbed his fingers throughout to coat them and warm up the lubricant. Crouching down again between his legs, Cas smiled reassuringly up at Dean, who was beginning to tense in anticipation. “Relax for me now, micaloz³, so I can make this as incredible as deserved by one so perfect as you. Becoming one with you means everything to me…”

Dean sipped in a shaky breath and forced himself to loosen up his muscles. Now that the moment had actually arrived, he felt as if he stood on the very edge of a precipice, preparing to leap into waters of no return that would carry him away to unknown seas. He gazed upon his own countenance poised above him, so similar yet so utterly changed with Cas’s adoring expression etched across his features, softening them and turning his face into one he no longer knew. It’s Cas, it’s always been Cas… if there’s anyone on this planet I can trust with all of me, it’s him.

A finger entered him again, twisting around, grazing his prostate and zinging white-hot pleasure up his body like a bolt of lightning. Dean moaned and thrust his hips down in encouragement. His thighs were shaky by now, having been spread apart for so long already, and he whined pitifully when Cas dragged his other hand across the tender flesh of where his inner groin area met his leg. Two, then three fingers were soon scissoring him open with steady, deliberate stretches that lit up his insides in a cascade of intense sensation. All Dean was able to do was keen and grasp helplessly at the bedsheets. Jesus, if this is what his fingers feel like, I don’t think I’m gonna live through the actual fucking!

When Cas at last slid out his fingers, apparently satisfied with his work, Dean felt strangely bereft. He didn’t get long to mourn their loss, though. After slickening himself up thoroughly, Cas straightened and spread out his body to bracket Dean protectively within, lowering himself with hands framing Dean’s head. With eyes shining with wonder and rapture never leaving his lover’s face, Cas began sheathing himself within that hot, tight space oh so slowly, both men moaning in relief the moment his cockhead breached the resistant ring of muscle.

Every time he’d sink in just a half an inch, is what it felt like to Dean, Cas would slide back out to allow both of them to adjust… the next breach would go further and longer, in and out, in and out, deeper and deeper…

It seemed to take ages for him to bottom out, with Cas wanting to cause Dean the least amount of discomfort possible. Such an all-encompassing fullness overtook Dean on all levels, and he sighed in soundless satisfaction. So, looks like I’m back inside my body now, in a really twisted, roundabout way, went the inane blurb popping into his head that very second. He bit back a situationally absurd giggle before refocusing on Castiel.

His lover’s face was scrunched up in an almost pained grimace, whole body locked up as he tried his best to hold back, arms trembling with exertion. When the angel opened his borrowed eyes, their indescribable expression was enough to freeze the very rhythm of all Dean’s vital organs before they stuttered back to life in overdrive.

“Dean……” was the only word Cas was seemingly capable of breathing out, making it sound beyond holy in his hushed, worshipful tone.

“Castiel,” replied Dean in kind, reaching out a hand to trail fingers down the side of his lover’s face, fingers catching on his stubbled jawline. Cas’s eyes widened in surprise and what looked to Dean like pride at his full angelic name being spoken aloud like a sacrament by his hunter (who rarely ever used it like this). Smiling warmly, Dean curled his fingers around the back of Cas’s head and pulled him down for a long, ardent kiss involving much tongue, feasting upon each other’s pleasured groans. Lips separating from Cas’s with a damp smooch, Dean stared him down intently and whispered into his still-open mouth, “Move.”

With a jagged noise of assent, Castiel started rocking his hips in and out in a gentle motion, the drag of it unhurried and delicious. Dean’s eyes drifted shut and he allowed himself to be swept away in the syrupy-slow sway of their lovemaking. His arms automatically locked around Cas’s broad back, trying to pull him so flush against his own body that they just about melded together as a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Little breathy moans interspersed with nonsensical syllables of either praise, Cas’s name or curse words escaped his lips in a constant stream as the two men converged in this most sacred of all synergies.

By now the kisses had devolved into merely trading sloppy inhalations as they plummeted further within each other, moving as one in a sweet symphony of limbs, lips and lascivious noises. As Castiel went to suckle at Dean’s throat, his careful, controlled thrusts into that incredibly addicting vice-like furnace shifted against something that knocked Dean clear into outer space.

“Ohhmygod, f-uh-uuck yesss Cas, just like thaa-a-aat, don’t s-stop…!”

Screaming out his pleasure, Dean’s back arched off the bed as if electrocuted, hips jerking up convulsively as Cas rhythmically pummeled his prostate. His vocal encouragement seemed to urge Cas on to even more enthusiastic heights. Biting down hard on his kiss-swollen lips in concentration, Cas braced himself on strong forearms, ensuring he was hitting that magical bundle of nerves every time he plunged deeper and deeper inside with powerful snaps of his hips.

It was all Dean could do to clutch tightly at those pistoning hips like the reins of a wild, unbroken horse and pray he survived the ride.

“Mine,” Cas hissed through teeth clenched tight against the paralyzing pleasure threatening to short circuit his system. In a sudden display of animalistic dominance, he yanked Dean’s head to the side and bit down on his neck just this right side of painful, leaving decisive red teethmarks of ownership in his wake. Dean yowled and thrashed about wildly, the sting of the bite forcing adrenaline through his veins that mingled intoxicatingly with a flood of endorphins into a veritable cocktail of orgasmic neurotransmitters.

They climbed higher and higher together, soaring on the fumes of each others’ pheromones. It wouldn’t be long now before they would peak, ascending into heaven on earth together as if riding on the wind of Castiel’s long-lost wings. Dean’s white-knuckled fingers were sure to leave bruises upon Cas’s sharp hipbones as he drove into him again and again and again, speaking his fierce love into him with the almost brutal joining of their bodies, slamming his swelling, stiff cock into the slick, clinging heat of his hole that felt increasingly and overwhelmingly full with each press inside, and Dean, oh Dean could only keen out these desperate pleadings so fraught with fragile, frantic yearning –

“Ahh, fuuuccckk yesss, yesyesyes – CasCasCas right there, rightthere rightthere! Please, oh please ohplease, please God yesssss…”

All cognitive abilities had long since fled his brain; Dean Winchester was reduced to a sobbing mess of incoherent pleas for a release which teased and licked at him with pulsing, fevered edges. Castiel was more than happy to oblige him, of course, as he continued his relentless assault with forceful passion, as if concentrating all of his pent-up longing and tensions throughout the last eight years into each deliberate thrust.

The fallen angel grew shakier and more out of breath as white-hot pleasure coalesced in his lower belly like a star preparing to go supernova. A single bead of sweat trickled down the side of his temple. His grass-green glass-cutting gaze, crackling with barely contained desperate desire, remained locked onto Dean’s shining sapphire eyes that were now swimming in a shallow pool of tears threatening to leak over their dark-lashed edges.

“Ol boaluahe g turbs⁴, Dean, oh Dean, Dean… I’m –”

Castiel crushed their lips together so they could both taste his shattered groan, connecting to his lover at every possible point of contact so Dean could catch him as he fell apart completely.

“Cas, come in me –”

Obediently, he bit down hard on Dean’s lower lip and came explosively, shuddering with jittery jerks hijacking his body. His orgasm tore through him like a hurricane of torrential sensation, flooding every single nerve in his body with almost unbearable ecstasy. Lust-blown eyes squeezed shut against the smoldering fires raging within as his consciousness floated far, far away into a nebula of indescribable nirvana.

Although he was indeed previously a fully functional angel, this was the closest in all of Castiel’s near-eternal existence he’d ever come to a true religious, out-of-body experience (no pun intended). He was unsure of how long it actually carried on, but the convulsions of each waning shock of pleasure jolted through him for an indiscernible time as he released his spend into Dean.

It could have been any of these things or a combination thereof that pushed Dean himself over the edge, where he had been teetering for what seemed like ages – Castiel’s reverberating, impossibly low moan that he sucked down greedily, that hungry kiss speaking volumes without a word, his own hijacked darkened eyes with Cas looking through them soulfully as if reading his mind while ruining him physically…

But the final straw was the feeling of Cas’s cock swelling somehow even further inside of him, twitching and spurting hot fluid that filled him in a way he had never felt before. Being owned, surrounded, saturated, completed like that ignited Dean’s own climax, and he clenched and spasmed uncontrollably around that throbbing hardness as he came and came and came on Cas’s cock, untouched but undeniably better than anything he’d ever had.

A harsh gasp and pitiful, weak whine eked out of Dean’s mouth as he lay there twitching underneath Castiel, roiling waves of aftershocks crashing over him and threatening to take him all the way under. The spasmodic squeezing of his ass managed to milk the last of Cas’s orgasm out of him, and they let out simultaneous wrecked moans as the last of his slick come dribbled into him.

“Oh, Dean…” was all Cas was capable of whispering creakily before collapsing on top of his hunter like a marionette doll with its strings suddenly severed. His forehead rested on the juncture of Dean’s neck and shoulder right above his collarbone and he breathed heavily against him, their skin sticking together all over with sweat and sex.

“Mhmmm, yeah, Cas,” slurred Dean in reply, eyes unfocused and slack-jawed, bowled over and utterly spent. One of his arms had wound its way around Cas’s back, flopping across it bonelessly, while the other was semi-crushed between them. His legs felt simultaneously stiff and jelly-like where they were still hooked loosely around Cas’s waist. If this goddamn curse ends up being lethal and this is somehow our last night on earth, I think I’ll actually die a happy man…

They sprawled prone upon Dean’s mattress, wrapped in a sacred silence and entangled in the hazy afterglow. Neither felt the need or had the capability to speak or move, unwilling and unable to break the crystalline spell they were under. The bizarre and climactic events that had transpired over the past 24 hours already told all that was there to be said. Now totally deflated and sated, the fallen angel and his at-long-last requited lover could take as much time as they wanted to enjoy simply just being in each other’s presence and embrace.

Dean’s jackrabbiting heart finally began to ease up, and he felt Cas’s heartbeat right against his own slowing too with each relaxed exhalation. Drying sweat (and other liquids) cooled upon his skin, leaving sticky goosebumped flesh in its wake. He was secretly glad for the reassuring weight of Cas on top of him and the warmth it lent to his naked body, nevermind the fact that his right hand was now tingling numbly. Castiel’s dick was softening while still inside of him and would likely slip out of its own accord soon in a gush of messiness, but for now they remained conjoined in this most intimate of ways for as long as it would last.

Cas pressed the gentlest of closed-mouth kisses below the jut of Dean’s collarbone. Each one felt like it was intoning a nonverbal message of love in all its myriad forms, precious and innocent and pure in that special manner of expression that was just so Cas. It made Dean smile, wide and gummy and guileless, into the damp shock of his angel’s hair (fallen or not, cursed or not, he’d always be Dean’s angel), chest squeezing tight with an undefinable emotion that was honestly outside of his usual spectrum of understanding. He wanted to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth in order to form some semblance of a sentence significant enough to encompass this moment, but found himself mute and wanting for words. Instead, he settled for kissing the top of Castiel’s head too while softly stroking the solid muscles of his back with his free hand, trying to channel that unnameable, warm and elusive feeling into each action.

Cas was the first one to finally break the silence. “Dean, that was…” here he trailed off, uncharacteristically at a loss for words as he craned his neck up to look at his lover, searching his open face for a way to finish his sentence.

“Incredibly, insanely, mind-blowingly and astronomically awesome?” There, success – Dean was no longer nonverbal! He raised an eyebrow and smirked suggestively while jiggling his hips a bit, cherishing Cas’s shy smile and light blush coloring his freckled nose and cheeks. The movement caused Cas’s soft cock to slide free of Dean’s well-used hole, the hunter letting out a small hiss at the slight stimulation to his oversensitive flesh. He would also deny this until blue in the face, but fact of the matter was Dean didn’t mind the foreign feeling of the warm, viscous fluid oozing out from between his legs given who was responsible for that situation, not one bit.

“Yes. It was most definitely all of that, and more,” said Cas in return, grinning in a stunned, dazed kind of way. He pushed himself up on his forearms and leaned down to give Dean a proper kiss on the lips, chaste and tender and lingering. When he tried to pull back Dean made a noise of protest and grabbed the back of his head, crushing their mouths back together in a more fervent kiss, licking against the seam of his swollen lips until he was readmitted inside to plunder that delicious mouth. The two lovers kissed with impressive enthusiasm given the energetic sex that just occurred, making happy sounds against each other’s lips until they soon wore out, heated kisses burning down to the embers of soft smooches. Cas lowered himself onto his side and curled into Dean’s body like a possessive comma.

“Mmmm, we should probably clean up. We’re gross,” Dean muttered with half-closed eyes, yawning widely as sleepiness began settling into his limbs, making them pleasantly heavy with unmotivation. He wrapped an arm around Cas’s shoulders, pulling him in as close as he could get with his head pillowed upon his chest and hand over his steady heart. Cas made a noise halfway between agreement and dismissal, burrowing into Dean even further, tangling their legs together as he tried to kick the blankets up.

Dean took mercy upon him, reaching down to grab his fuzzy gray fleece blanket and pulling it up to cover them both. The seductive pull of sleep seemed to win out against hygiene needs, and the two men were soon awash in its dark, tranquil comfort like paper boats floating away down a moonlit river.

“Olani hoath ol⁵, Dean,” Cas whispered into his ear, making him shiver. I’m gonna have to ask him what all these Enochian phrases mean, went Dean’s final musings before the black tide of unconsciousness washed over him.

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

Notes:

Enochian Glossary (rough, imperfect translations): 1.) boaluahe el = adored one 2.) ol monons = my heart 3.) micaloz = shining light 4.) Ol boaluahe g turbs = I adore you, my beautiful one 5.) Olani hoath ol = I love you

Chapter 9

Summary:

Okay, we've reached the conclusion of Cas and Dean's turbulent, topsy-turvy journey being body-swapped with each other at last! I will give you an actual cookie if you can correctly guess the ending... As always, I hope you, Dear Reader, got as much out of reading this as I did writing it! Kudos and comments make the very air I breathe that much sweeter :D <3, LynZ

Sometime in the middle of the night, Dean awakened with a start from a nightmare, shooting straight up in bed and reaching for the gun resting perpetually underneath his pillow. Panting and sweaty, he looked around the dark room wildly, fingers already wrapped around the cool pearl inlay of his 1911’s grip, before reorienting himself to his bedroom and registering the solid warmth of the sleeping figure next to him (well, partially on top of him, to be precise). Looking down upon the man draped across his lower body like a nocturnal clinging vine, he relaxed visibly and smiled at Castiel’s peaceful countenance. He flicked the safety back in place on his pistol and returned it to its conveniently accessible hiding spot.

With Dean’s superb night vision, the subdued sliver of hallway light slipping underneath the crack of his doorway was enough to illuminate the barest hints of the edges of Cas’s sharp, aristocratic features. An expression of rare softness caressed his face as he watched his fallen angel in his very human slumber, dilated peridot eyes shining with adoration in the womb-like darkness. Carefully, Dean shuffled himself back down into a horizontal position, trying not to jostle Cas awake. There was no need for that particular care though, it seemed – Castiel was sleeping like the dead, having not shifted an inch other than the quiet, snuffling breaths that lifted his chest in a regular rhythm.

His arm was slung across Dean’s belly, and a thick thigh was thrown over his own legs beneath the covers, resting comfortably on top of him like the best weighted, heated blanket ever. Cas’s dark head lolled against his side, soft hair tickling his arm and just asking to be tucked back into a proper cuddle. Dean curled a possessive arm back around his lover’s shoulders and drew him in, stroking them absently as he continued studying his – wait – long, straight nose and the side profile of a Greek god? Thick thighs?? Rumpled, dark sex-hair??? Oh my god, we’re ourselves again?!?!

Dean almost jolted up again, startled as hell by the realization, but caught himself at the last moment as Cas shifted in his arms, emitting a small, contented noise and nuzzling into his chest like a sleepy koala. Hardly believing he was actually awake and himself after the trippy events of Thursday, Dean reached up with his other hand to feel across his own face, tracing the familiar contours of his thick, curly lashes, high cheekbones, plush bowed lips and the slight bump at the bridge of his nose (a lasting gift from a broken nose gained during some ancient barfight or another).

Exhaling a long breath of relief and holding back a hysterical giggle, Dean thanked whatever gods or spirits or cryptic supernatural forces were at play involving that crazy ass hourglass that saw fit to restore them back to normalcy.

Well, what passes for “normal” around these parts anyhow, Dean thought giddily with a wide grin. He, the infamous elder Winchester brother, desperado womanizer and all-around tough guy, macho hunter extraordinaire, placed a tender kiss on top of the head of his also very tough, very male (in only physical appearance, of course, with angels themselves bearing no real gender identifications), practically immortal ex-seraph. His newfound lover and forever best friend, who was now restored to his proper vessel, snuggled closer. This is the permanent body Cas was once invited to possess (previously belonging to the devout James Novak), now rightfully his after many deaths, physical and spiritual reconstructions (the resurrections were on both of theirs and Sam’s parts, in fact – this had occurred a multitude of times to the point of irking Death to, well, death; real thorns in his side, these Winchesters and their angel were).

Yep, just another narrowly averted crisis during a day in the life of, Dean’s increasingly sluggish thought process declared rather smugly before his eyes closed and he slipped downwards into unconsciousness, rejoining his fallen angel in dreamland.

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

Sam and Rowena crowded together near the head of the map table, hunched over a copper spell bowl where she was showing off a new spell of her own devising (she had bragged to him about an energy and stamina booster she concocted which multiplied your physical and mental strength thrice; Sam took this as a challenge to both sample and learn its recipe). The pair remained in their respective seats that had somehow migrated closer together throughout the course of the evening, empty crystal tumblers and a half-demolished decanter of top-shelf BMOL scotch forgotten next to them amongst the litter of her magical collection and the remnants of his salad.

The younger Winchester apparently had an aptitude for witchcraft that excited this centuries-old sorceress to no end, plus access to one of the most well-stocked magical pantries known to modern man, and she fully intended on capitalizing upon this. They were getting along like a house on fire, and Dean and Cas’s awkward predicament only added fuel to those flames. Rowena threw her head of lustrous red curls back, laughing raucously with a manicured hand resting upon Sam’s forearm, who was also guffawing in an uncommon display of hilarity.

“So, oh my god – that is just too funny – ” He wiped a literal tear away from the corner of his eye as his cackling died down. “Should we tell them that there was no actual sex required to break the curse?”

Rowena smiled wickedly, arching an elegant eyebrow. “I don’t think so, Samuel. Don’t you think it was high time those two worked all that unresolved sexual tension out of their wee systems? I for one think all the years of their staring-contest sex was getting to be a bit much.”

Sam snorted unbecomingly and gave the bowl a stir as she sprinkled in some fairy dust. “You’re damn right about that. Hopefully everything’s all worked out now, and we won’t end up caught in the crossfire of all that weird unrequited lust anymore. Jeez, man. I’m already traumatized enough!!”

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

Little did the poor Moose know, the traumatization (read: obnoxious, in-your-face 24/7 PDA, and more) was just beginning… By the end of the next several months, he’d need gallons of bleach for his braincells and eyeballs.

In the meantime, Rowena laughed merrily all the way to the bank, so to speak, purple amulet and little silvery hourglass in hand. She reclined on an ornate loveseat in her luxurious abode, a glass of expensive French wine swishing about in her hand, garnet tones sparkling on her ponderous, impish smirk.

“Hmmm, wonder if those boys ever got to fifth base?”

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

Notes:

I've had this idea fermenting in my brain ever since I heard Misha mention in some random interview or another how he'd have loved to have a body swap episode... so yeah, here it is in all its demented glory! Misha, if you are lurking AO3 and find this by some stretch of a miracle, I hope you aren't too scarred (might wanna skip the X-rated parts XDD).

[seraphic-anachronism]

Freaky Thursday - Chapters 5 & 6!

Hi yall - got an update on my WIP for ya. Here's the next couple chapters of "Freaky Thursday" - you can also check it out on AO3 if you're so inclined :)

Have fun, and please tell me what you think! Feedback is the oil that keeps this engine running!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Freaky Thursday

by seraphic_anachronism

Chapter 5

Summary:

Coincidentally, it's Thursday, and that means a 30% off couple's special at Dean's favorite burger place... what could possibly go wrong?

Their usual waitress squealed excitedly when she rounded the corner from the Brasshead’s kitchen to see the pair crammed into their proprietary corner booth (with full visibility of all exits and nothing but a wall at their backs, thank you very much). “Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen you guys in forever! How are you two sweeties!? And you look just adorable wearing each other’s clothes. Freaky Friday on a Thursday - or is it Opposite Day, eh?”

Dean winced visibly as the full force of her peppiness smacked him with alarming physicality. “Um, hi Stacy, just felt like switching it up I guess. My, uh – Dean’s clothes are more comfortable than they look,” he joked with a feeble smile for her benefit. She beamed at him before turning expectantly to Cas/Dean (the one she was used to hearing all the glib comments from, now unusually silent).

Castiel sat uncomfortably squished against the wall by Dean’s off-kilter bulk, piping up only after a not-so-subtle elbow in the ribs from the hunter. “Yes, and I am Dean, who is wearing Castiel’s clothing. Everything is normal today; the only thing we’re opposite of is that empty bench facing us.”

Stacy burst into giggles at his deadpan delivery, throwing her blonde head back with a hand pressed to her mouth in mirth. “Oh goodness, I forgot how funny you two are. So, cute and hilarious, no wonder you’re practically joined at the hip! Hmm, where's our third musketeer at, though?”

“Sam is, er, otherwise indisposed,” answered Cas as Dean glared daggers at him, then paid the hunter back with a stomp on the foot.

“Oh. Well, you’ll just have to drag him with when y’all come back!” She grabbed her pen from behind her ear and clicked it snappily before pulling her order pad out from her apron pocket. Stacy smiled brightly at the two saucer-eyed men. “So, the usual? Or are we feeling as adventurous as we look?”

“Actually, I’ll have the bacon cheeseburger with extra bacon and fries, and he’ll take the mushroom Swiss burger with extra ‘shrooms and onion rings this time. Cokes for the both of us. Oh – and a Caesar salad with almonds instead of croutons, dressing on the side, to-go please,” said Dean, glancing at Cas for confirmation, who nodded minutely. Great, now here she’ll go about our orders being –

“Wow, you two are really swapping things out to the max, huh?” A strained, tight lipped smile from Dean and a resigned look of tired acquiescence upon Cas’s face were the only responses she received. She raised her eyebrows and tucked her pen and paper away with another sunny grin.

“Alrighty then, no worries! Your burgers and pops will be right out, and I’ll bring your third wheel’s to-go order when you’re through. Be back in a jiffy, boys!”

As soon as the disturbingly perky girl was out of sight, Cas shoved Dean hard in an attempt to reclaim some of the seat for himself. “Personal space, Dean! Isn’t that what you always lecture me about? You leave me no room in this booth whatsoever!”

Narrowing his eyes, Dean grudgingly shifted to allow Cas to peel himself off the wall he was plastered against. The hunter rolled his eyes exaggeratedly, mouthing under his breath in passive-aggressive mimicry, “Personal space, Dean! Like I pay you the respect of showing at all times.”

The two had a brief Mexican standoff featuring sexually charged stares of menace; to the onlooker there was uncertainty whether they would actually come to blows or kisses. Oh my god, we may actually be turning into each other… can’t really tell where he ends and I begin.

Dean exhaled a long-suffering sigh, blowing at a stray strand of Cas’s inky hair. He astutely changed the subject to diffuse the lingering tension. “Dude, if that chick had any more energy she would go super Saiyan and explode us to death with all that unholy cheerfulness. They’re lucky their food is so good here, ‘cause otherwise I would never come back.”

Castiel nodded in grim solidarity, picking at the napkin-wrapped silverware laid before him in uncharacteristic nervousness. “I agree, Dean. She’s making me uncomfortable. And I do hate having to lie to her, but I understand that our current predicament would be rather socially unacceptable to discuss, in addition to being absolutely unbelievable to a civilian. It’s best for all involved if this is least disclosed as possible.”

“You got that right. Let’s just inhale our food when it gets here, then split.”

Dean gave the restaurant a cursory once-over as they waited for their food, noting the familiar homely brick-inlaid walls and atmospheric, buttery lighting from the hipsterish metal-caged fixtures above the tables. Succulent cactus arrangements lived on small floating shelves on the wall before them, while the large easel-style menu board to the right bore today’s special (their proprietary Southwest Brassburger with jalapenos and habanero jack cheese). There was also an announcement for the “Thursday Date Night Discount for All Couples - 30% Off Your Romantic Meal! ❤”, all written in thick yellow-chalked cursive. A few scattered tables were occupied by other patrons – two older, presumably married couples and a gaggle of rowdy teens.

He tried not to squirm at the sensation of Cas still pressed up against him on his side, arm to arm and leg to leg, a muted heat emanating from where they touched. Torn between wanting to scoot even closer and pretty much climb onto Cas’s lap (personal space be damned) versus putting some much-needed distance between them, Dean was as conflicted as he’d ever been in his life. Increasingly stupid ideas arose in his head despite his best efforts to quell them. Jesus, could this get any more confusing?? Here I sit, wearing my best friend’s meatsuit and having urges to touch him, who is currently wearing mine! This is more than nine kinds of crazy – and that’s saying a lot coming from the likes of me!

Cas appeared equally put out and disoriented next to him, worrying at Dean’s plush lower lip until it turned a bright rosy pink (which Dean, in turn, was doing his best to not stare at… was he so narcissistic that he’s becoming attracted to himself??). “I hope Rowena has contacted Sam by the time we return. She did say we would hear from her by tonight.”

Dean slouched down with his legs kicked out and one ankle crossed over the other, mirroring the action with his arms in a defensive posture. “Yeah, tell me about it. Can’t say the last time I’ve been so eager to hear from Her Witchiness. Well, she did save my ass from that amnesia spell a couple weeks back, but at that point I didn’t even recognize her, let alone my own goddamn self. Ugh, did I mention how much I hate witches? …Except Rowena, of course.”

Dean snapped his mouth shut at the end of his inopportune sentence just in time for their waitress to come breezing over with their drinks and food. She set everything down in front of them with a flourish and manic grin. “There you are, boys! Anything else I can get for you? Ketchup, hot sauce, other condiments, more napkins?”

“No thanks, Stacy. This all looks great though,” Dean said, wearing Cas’s face and a plastered-on fake gummy smile stretching his lips too wide.

“Great! Well, dig in and enjoy! Just flag me down if you need anything else.” She winked saucily before sashaying off to attend to another table.

“What I need is for this damn day to be over, and for us to be back in our own bodies,” grumbled Dean as he took an angry bite from his cheeseburger. “Ain’t like I’ve got any delicate sensibilities to offend, but this is too much even for a Winchester.”

Cas hummed his assent, chomping down on his own burger with relish. “Yes. As much as this has been a novel and educational experience for me, I too would not object to reinhabiting my own vessel.”

A vague noise of agreement from Dean, who was now eating with gusto, cheeks puffed out like a squirrel (Crowley was eerily apt with his nicknaming) and a bit of sauce dribbling from the corner of his mouth. Cas looked over at his glutton of a companion and smirked fondly. He reached out and swiped the errant sauce from Dean’s mouth with a gentle thumb, causing the other to tense up and stare at him with round eyes and pink cheeks. “Um, you just had a little something – okay, I’ve wiped it off now.”

“‘Kay, thanks Cas.” Dean’s breath caught in his throat alongside his half-chewed bite of fries at their too-close proximity. He stared trippily into the gold-flecked green depths of his own eyes (framed with thick, curly lashes; sheesh, have I always had such girly-looking eyes?) that held some unknown emotion lurking below their surface. For a moment the two men existed suspended in time. The magnetic force of their eye contact lingered much longer than platonically necessary; food was left half-eaten and forgotten on their plates.

Inversely, he could only imagine the intense, blazing blue-eyed gaze Cas was being subjected to, and the odd effects it may be having on the ex-angel. It’s like looking into the world’s most messed up funhouse mirror. It’s you, but you know it’s totally not. This is for real turning into an extended acid trip gone down one too many wrong turns…

A light, feminine clearing of a throat interrupted their convoluted eye-sex. “Just here to bring you two lovebirds some refills!”

The two men tore their gazes away from each other and swivelled to face their waitress, both looking like kids with their hands caught tangled together in the proverbial cookie jar.

“I’ll just drop these off and be outta your hair so you can enjoy each other’s company. By the way, we do have a couple’s special running for today! I’ll even include your other friend’s meal for the 30% off, ‘cause y’all are too adorable!! I could just eat you up!”

Holy shit, fuck our lives – she thinks we’re… together… Twin looks of sheer mortification and horror appeared on both of their faces, Dean almost shooting out of his seat and Cas stiffening into stone. Dean’s blush bloomed beautifully, deepening quickly into crimson territory. He made a few abortive attempts at speech which ended with him emitting nonsensical monosyllabic protests.

The only viable option was to kick Cas under the table and prompt him to hopefully save their asses while Dean floundered. Castiel, with the tips of Dean’s ears turning a most eye-catching pink, took the reins this time with his terse reply to her (rather valid, anyone with eyes would agree) presumption. “I appreciate you mentioning this to us, but D – Cas and I are not dating, Stacy. Thank you for the refills. We’ll take the check and a couple boxes now, please.”

Her plucked eyebrows went as far up her forehead as physics would allow, and she shot them a knowing smirk. “Oooookay boys, whatever you say. Still doesn’t change how cute you look together! I’ll be right back with your bill and to-go stuff, honies.”

As she bounced away to presumably bring them one step closer to exiting this disaster zone, Dean plunked his head down and cradled it in his arms as if he were trying to bury himself in nonexistent sand. Maybe if I can’t see them, they can’t see me either, he inanely justified, feeling more and more deranged by the minute. If I can just hide until this is over, I could probably get through it without entirely losing my shit.

Cas, concerned as always for his best friend, placed a consoling hand upon his arm. “It’s okay, Dean. We’re almost able to leave this establishment and go home to the bunker, where we feel less exposed.”

“And have less obnoxiously happy and meddling waitresses trying to play cupid with us!!” Dean mumbled from the nest of his arms, missing the minute, disappointed look flashing across Castiel’s countenance before he regained his composure.

“Hmm, yes – as a matter of fact, the frequency of us and Sam being perceived as being in some form of homosexual relationship is quite interesting to me. I wonder why that is?” Cas mused. He picked at his fries, swirling one in the ketchup puddle on his plate before popping it into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully.

The scowl on Dean’s face about broke the disgruntled-meter at this statement. Really don’t even wanna scratch the surface of that one, pal. Lifting his head up to attention and making an executive decision to change the sensitive topic of conversation, Dean then attempted to divert Cas with some angelic technical queries.

“Hey Cas, I got a question for ya – I know you, like, recently fell, and you’re mostly human now. But when we got switched up, did the last scraps of your grace travel with you into my body, or do you think they’re still knockin’ around in this vessel I’m in right now?”

Cas paused for a beat, and Dean could see him visibly go inwards as his green eyes unfocused and took on a faraway hazy appearance. When he resurfaced and his gaze sharpened again to focus on Dean, a typical Cas-smile of the very subtle variety shone in his eyes alone as he addressed him. “It appears to have ‘hitched a ride’, as you often say,” ohgod the air quotes, “with me into your body. For all intents and purposes, it seems to be pleased with this new development… I have my reasons to believe that ever since I pulled you from hell, this profound bond between us possesses a very strong pull upon my grace. In other words, my grace enjoys the physical proximity of your body, particularly the area of your shoulder bearing my handprint where we were first joined.”

“Oh,” was all Dean could manage to say, another powerful blush spreading across his cheeks right after the previous one had barely dissipated.

And for the first time that entire afternoon, Stacy chose to show up with divine timing. “Alrighty then, my darlins’! Here are your boxes and a bag for ‘em, and here’s your Caesar salad with almonds to-go.” She set these items plus a slim bill holder on the table. “Just go ahead and pay whenever you’re ready! Take all the time you need – we love havin’ y’all in here, believe you me.”

“Thanks, Stacy!” Dean said, beaming winningly at her with unspoken gratitude for her interruption of his and Cas’s potential minefield of a moment, which he was not prepared to tackle in the middle of this diner on a Thursday afternoon while in their respective mismatched bodies. Looking down at the receipt, however, his fleeting good mood was soon shattered to sad little bits. He saw that the total price of their bill had been reduced by 30% anyways, despite Cas’s emphatic disclaimer of their alleged lack of relationship status.

Scooching out of the booth (and grimacing at the twinge in his lower back; argh, he was getting old) with a moody huff, Dean threw down several twenties upon the table, more than covering their original tab plus a tip (which he seriously debated leaving her, but the good angel on his shoulder won this particular battle, haha). Cas grabbed their takeout bags and slid out of the seat after him, the retreating backsides of both men being followed closely by Stacy’s appreciative eyes.

“Bye now, see y’all soon! And bring the big lug with you next time, too!”

Without turning around, Dean tipped two fingers at her in acknowledgement as he pushed through the front door and was released into the freedom of the outside air.

“Phew, let’s get the hell outta here, Cas – pedal to the metal time, buddy.”

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

Chapter 6

Summary:

Gay panic time!!!

The drive back to the bunker was less eventful than the one from, both men with full bellies and unspoken thoughts swirling through their minds. Dean cranked the music up to the max and belted along to “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, as if the ear-splitting volume could somehow ward off any additional stray evil energies set on coming their way. Cas’s singing voice surprised them both with its perfect pitch and rich resonance.

Cas smiled inwardly to himself as he snuck quick glances at Dean, enjoying the unselfconscious way he vocalized and how his whole body swayed to the beat of the song in a semi-choreographed dance. This was extremely interesting to see on Castiel’s usually taut body; apparently it did know how to groove, and just needed the proper guidance to get down to boogeying. He managed to miss the furtive looks that Dean shot him in return, eyeing the profile of Cas/himself silhouetted against the rushing, increasingly rural landscape outside Baby’s window.

The air was thick with words unsaid, and the usual low-thrumming background static of their unresolved sexual tension had been amplified, as if feeding off of Dean’s loud singing and music (and sly thoughts). As he sang his heart out along to Metallica, Dean was hyperaware of the scant distance between him and Cas, whose hand lay innocently upon the leather seat between them with its palm facing upwards as if anticipating a touch.

If I thought things couldn’t get any weirder between us before, I was sorely mistaken… I’m pretty sure that shower earlier made things a lot worse on top of the pile of crap we’re already sitting on. And goddamn that matchmaking waitress to hell!! This is even more confusing now, which is really a stretch – if Cas being in my body still makes me want to touch him as me, would I still be feeling this way if he were body swapped with, oh let’s say, Sam!?!?!! Okay, no, no, NOPE, that’s a definite red light and where I draw a hard line – bad brain, we are not going there – not today, Satan!!! No sweet home Alabama shit, we’re in freaking Kansas!!

Both men were beyond relieved once they pulled up to the bunker. It was getting exhausting fighting internal battles involving whether to run like hell and get as far away from each other as humanly possible, or latch onto each other as tight as humanly possible and never let go. Some physical distance between them to diffuse that high-strung fight-or-flight (or-fuck) energy would likely be a good thing.

When they emerged into the confines of the bunker and plodded down the stairs, they were met with the happy surprise of Rowena and Sam seated together at the map table. Its surface was littered with her long laundry list of arcane magical rarities like any witch’s wet dream. The troublemaking object in question perched right at the edge of the table in front of her like the guest of honor, and she seemed to be deep in conversation with Sam about it upon Cas and Dean’s arrival.

She peeked through long, curled lashes at them coquettishly before a slow smile spread across her pointed features in greeting. “Why, hello there, boys! Thought you’d never make it to the party.” An appraising up-and-down look raked over both of their bodies as they stood there uncomfortably, Cas clutching Sam’s food bag in front of him like a shield. “My, my, my, playing dress up the fancy way today, now are we?”

A look of trepidation mixed with hesitant hope and not a small dash of fear passed between the two. Rowena rose to a standing position, all 5 feet of her gliding majestically across the room to where Cas and Dean were rooted to the spot. Sam remained seated, watching the new proceedings with a twinkle of amusement in his narrowed eyes.

“Uh, hey Red, how’s it goin’?” Dean managed to eke out; like I’m beyond thrilled to see her right now, but I forget how imposing she is – someone that tiny should not be able to loom over a big guy like me… “So I’m gonna go out on a limb here – you know what’s up with that freakish hourglass thing, and you’re the masterful and merciful witch who’ll spell us back to normal now?”

Cas’s voice rose to previously unused high registers, reflecting Dean’s optimism and stubborn belief that within this ancient, powerful and petite Scottish sorceress lay the answers to all their problems. Rowena, head held high and a regal expression of regard upon her perfectly made-up face, began laughing in a tinkling and lengthy titter. “Oh, you poor wee thing, if only it were that easy! Although I am quite flattered by your compliments, dearie. Not to brag, but it is always nice to be recognized as the obviously superior witch of our times.”

At the despondent faces Cas and Dean showed at this news, Rowena rolled her mascaraed eyes with another chuckle before setting them straight. “Now, no need to get our knickers in a bunch! If you two are so eager we’ll skip the foreplay and get right down to the nitty gritty. Here, boys, come and stand on either side of this hourglass so I may get a proper reading on this entire mixup. I’m highly confident of my grasp on the nature of this issue and its remedy, but I need psychic confirmation from the afflicted and their binding object first.”

The two men assumed their positions. Dean glanced at Cas nervously, who tried to smile reassuringly at his friend in return. “It’s okay, Dean. Just as we thought, Rowena has the solution to our problem. We’ll be back to normal in no time.”

Rowena, resplendent in her shimmery skin-tight floor-length dress of deep crimson fading into a black ombre edge, tossed back her impeccable curls and reached out a manicured hand. “Now boys, go ahead and grab my hands on either side, then touch the hourglass with your overlapping hands. I will glean its effects and confirm my theory on this curse.”

They took Rowena’s delicate hands, which were swallowed up within their bigger palms. Cas gave Dean a questioning look, then held out his hand for the other man to take ahold of. Dean did so with minimal reluctance and blushing, to his credit, then rested their interlaced hands upon the hourglass. If whatever Rowena’s cooking up works, I am so sending her flowers and a fruit basket, or whatever the witchy equivalent of that is… a bouquet of obscure herbs and an assorted bunch of virgin parts?

The three stood before the silvery hourglass holding hands, and Sam continued observing the unfolding scene with interest. Rowena paused to remark, “I do want to thank you lads sincerely, though, for fetching all my magical accoutrements. I know that the wee bind you find yourselves in is fallout from pursuit of my amulet. I’m obligated to set things to rights before I whisk away all my plunder and take my leave of you.”

Dean gave the witch a genuine, wide grin of gratitude. “No problem, Rowena – you know I technically owe you one for the whole rescue from the edge of brain-melting oblivion thing I had goin’ on. So, uh, any collateral damage can just be chalked up to bad freakin’ luck. Anyhow, you’re about to fix us up good as new, right?”

A most cryptic look towards Dean from Rowena’s smoky-eyeshadowed eyes before she uttered some strange, guttural incantations. A purplish glow began pulsing from the object, through Cas and Dean and up Rowena’s arms in tiny tendrils. It concentrated in her eyes, now a blazingly bright violet color, before snaking back down to coil around the hourglass like ghostly lavender vines. Leaned back in his chair and scooted slightly away from the spectacle, Sam gaped openly at the bewitching sight.

After a few beats Rowena released the boys’ hands, and the all purple St. Elmo’s fire fizzled out. Dean let go of the hourglass, flexed his hands with concern, and after noting no physical damage turned to Cas to check that he was equally unaltered. His eyes then flicked over to Rowena, who was still poised between them, a devilish smirk playing about the edges of her ruby lips.

“And the verdict is in – just as I had suspected, this artifact is indeed an ancient Chinese marriage-related ritualistic item. In wealthy, aristocratic Chinese families at the time, arranged marriages were the norm, but many of them tended to fail due to incompatibility. Can’t say I blame the poor things – can you imagine being forced upon some stranger, expected to not only immediately hop in the sack with them for a jolly good shag, but also be shackled to them for the rest of your natural life? Even I shudder at the mere thought. Anyhow, the mages at the time concocted this object here, whose function is to resolve sexual incompatibility, as well as help the prospective spouses grow comfortable with each other’s bodies.”

Cas and Dean let out an almost synchronized choking noise, followed by Sam’s loud gasp that quickly dissolved into the immature sniggers of a younger sibling that’s finally gotten (a freakin’ great) one over on his older brother.

“In a nutshell, after two people touch the hourglass and turn it over, once the sand runs out they will be in possession of each other’s bodies. The only way to return to their own bodies is to have sexual intercourse with the other while still in the other’s body. To begin that process, you simply flip the hourglass one more time,” here she paused, ignoring the slack-jawed expressions of shock upon all three men’s faces, and turned over the hourglass, “and then you have until the sand runs out again to copulate. Once the consummation is complete, you should be back to yourselves when the last grain of sand hits the bottom of that hourglass. See – easy peasy pumpkin squeazy, right, boys?”

By now, the shade of red Dean was assuming just about put Rowena’s dress to shame. Cas himself was looking more and more the petrified, doe-eyed virgin he was back at the “Den of Iniquity”, eyeing Dean with open fear as if he were Chastity reincarnate. Hopefully he’ll keep his comments about deadbeat dads to himself this time – no need to beat a dead horse, Dean thought hysterically to himself upon recognizing the terrorized expression on Cas’s face, transforming that of “Dean’s” into quite the scandalized, innocent blushing bride.

After shaking his shaggy head thoroughly to clear out the disturbing images of his brother and best friend doing the horizontal tango, Sam was the first one to speak. Scrubbing a hand over his mouth and adjusting his glasses with the other, he turned to address Rowena. “So does that mean their time starts now, since you just turned that thing over?”

Her returning leer was nothing less than lechery of the seventh degree, dark green eyes sparkling with ill-contained glee. “Always the observant one, aren’t we, Samuel? Yes, you two lovebirds’ timer has now begun. I would suggest you swallow any remaining posturings of heterosexual masculinity and get on with the show before it’s curtain call permanently. And by permanently, I mean if you don’t sexually congress within the time limit, you will be trapped inside each other’s bodies forever.”

“T-trapped? Forever!? Unless we – ” Dean cut himself off mid-squawk like the rest of his sentence just up and died inside his creaky vocal chords.

Castiel, noticing the hopeless drowning state Dean was bogged under, finally decided to take matters into his own hands. He was a warrior, and if this was the battle strategy they had to undertake in order to win the fight, then so be it… (Nevermind that this is actually what both of them have harbored and pined for in their deepest of hearts; we just won’t go there because they’re already having enough of a crisis without any earth-shattering revelations of that sort at this very second.)

He noticed that his and Dean’s hands were still clasped tightly, Dean squeezing him in a death grip as if hanging on for dear life. Cas used this harness point to start hauling Dean away to their destination.

“Thank you, Rowena. We greatly appreciate your assistance in this matter. I will do my best to help Dean through the process as painlessly as possible. We will be in Dean’s room; either you or Sam please knock on the door if you notice the hourglass’s sands reaching a critical low point. Goodnight.”

Dean, being dragged bodily down the hallway and with Cas’s blue eyes so wide they were about the size of pie dishes, seemed to suddenly find his voice again, albeit with the articulation skills of a severe tourette’s syndrome sufferer who was also having a seizure. “Wait – Rowena, you mean me n’ Cas really gotta – but how – w-who’s gonna – a-and how long, wha – aahhhh, HELP!! SAMMMYYYY!!!”

Sam and Rowena watched their slow-motion trainwreck of a departure with equal parts morbid fascination and amusement. “Uh, I’m sure you’ll be okay, Dean! We’re all rootin’ for ya!” Cue two feeble, gigantic thumbs’ up from the bemused Moose as his big brother went off to what would either be the gallows or the best time of his life (or perhaps both…). “Just, erm, yell if you need me! O-or yell for Rowena, actually – yeah, that’d be a better idea. Okay, good luck, bye!”

Meanwhile, Rowena did her valiant best to contain her giggles behind both hands clasped firmly over her mouth, bouncing with muffled laughter.

“Do not worry, Sam. I promise to take good care of Dean,” Cas reassured him solemnly with Dean in tow as they rounded the corner, the latter of whom was stricken and pale with two blotchy, bright red spots high upon each cheek.

“Oh, he’ll be taking care of him, alright,” Rowena muttered under her breath with a self-satisfied smirk, unable to resist such a golden opportunity. She received a not-so-gentle kick underneath the table from Sam as a reward. “Ouch, Samuel! Was that really necessary? We were all thinking it!”

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

Notes:

Hai :) If you've made it this far, you shall be rewarded accordingly with the juiciest of chapters next week! <3 Stay tuned and watch this fic more than earn its "E" rating (if there were an "XX" rating, I believe it would qualify by the time chapter 8 is all said and done)...

[seraphic-anachronism]

Hey folks, if you're as embarrassingly huge of a Jensen Ackles fan as I am and loved his new action series that got cut down prematurely despite top-ten list shattering US-based engagement, go ahead and sign this petition to force these bastards to make a season 2!!

They can't just leave us on a cliffhanger like that, goddammit!! It just ain't right.

We want Meachum and Oliveras back!!!!!

Sign the Change petition to get Countdown back on Prime!!!!

[seraphic-anachronism]

Suptober Day 7 - Surprise!

Hey girl hey ;) so I'm posting this (fashionably) late as a part of this year's Suptober, filling in the square of "Surprise" for day 7. It's a WIP that's been in my head for months, so I'm beyond thrilled to finally get it out there! It's also on AO3, so feel free to check it out on there as well.

This is a wacky, cracky crazy kinda fic written for the pure fun of it. I hope you like it - please leave any comments, criticism or feedback, as I welcome all of it!

Here's the first half - I will get the second up within the month's end at a minimum. Work has been crazy lately, so it hinders much of my progress, but I am determined to get the resolution to Dean and Cas's insane misadventures posted ASAP so our poor boys aren't in suspense for too long.

<3, LynZ

Rating: E (for Extra Spicy!)

Pairing: Dean Winchester/Castiel

Word count (so far): 11,077

Summary:

“Sam, is that truly you? Or is Gabriel up to his no-good tricks again?” Cas questioned, assessing Sam with suspicion, who was now looking back and forth between the two of them as if watching the world’s most perplexing tennis match. “It seems unwise that we haven’t come up with a quick check-point for base reality yet, like in that movie Inception with the spinning tops...”

Sam’s eyebrows rose higher and higher until they almost met his hairline.

- OR -

While repaying their debt to Rowena for lifting Dean's memory curse, the boys accidentally activate another (even more shocking one)! Shenanigans ensue.

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

Freaky Thursday

Chapter 1

Notes:

By the way, in case anyone's a stickler for details, I applied creative liberties to make season 12 Cas more or less human for the purposes of this story. ... And yes, that is a March of Dimes reference. Miss ya, Frank!

It began as a Wednesday like any other.

“Be careful, guys – we haven’t fully inventoried and catalogued all the cursed objects yet,” Sam called out from the library after Cas and Dean’s receding figures. The two were headed to one of the MOL’s numerous subterranean storage vaults on a mission from Rowena. He ran a hand through his scraggly (much too long, if you asked Dean) brown hair, then began leafing gingerly through the ancient tome before him. If they didn’t uphold their end of the bargain, the boys would be witchified toast.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, Samantha, don’t get your panties in a bunch. Me and Cas’ll manage just fine,” Dean called over his shoulder at his brother with an eyeroll. “It’s hardly our first rodeo.”

“It’s ‘Cas and I’! And wear gloves!” Sam shouted back, the sound of his annoyed voice diminishing as the pair wandered farther into the bunker’s labyrinthine hallways. Art deco sconces on the walls illuminated the way with their warm, orange glow. Their quiet footsteps upon the stone floors echoed softly down the empty corridors they traversed. Cas moved in his usual controlled, efficient manner and Dean with his signature sure-footed swagger, although he was internally struggling to recall the location of the missing artifact.

After Rowena had saved him from certain death via an extreme case of amnesia inflicted by the obliviate curse, he supposed the least they could do for her was procure the one-of-a-kind occult talisman (amongst a plethora of other unorthodox spell ingredients, plus a couple priceless archaic spellbooks from the extensive MOL archives thrown in) she requested. Fortunately, Dean knew they actually possessed this bauble, having ran into it prior while searching for a magicked bow and arrow set that could kill a shtriga not made vulnerable while feeding.

“Hey Cas, do you remember where that purple amulet thingy is? What was it, like a coupla months back on that last shtriga case when we found it on the third floor down?” Dean asked, absently scratching the side of his face as he wracked his brain.

“Yes, Dean – you are correct, it is indeed located on the third lower level. Take the first hallway to the left, a right at the next juncture, and then straight ahead for approximately eleven yards to door number 77. The artifact in question should be in the seventh box on the fourth row of the right wall’s shelving,” Cas answered smoothly, lingering near-perfect angelic recall activated.

“Show-off,” Dean laughed in response as they began descending the multitude of staircases. “Could you get any more specific? How many inches deep is it inside the box? Gimme a police sketch too, while you’re at it. Oh yeah, and what was the weather like that day, Rainman?”

Castiel rolled his eyes in an admirably human-like fashion (a habit picked up from none other than Yours Truly: Dean Winchester, Snarkmaster Extraordinaire) at the hunter’s good-humored teasing. “I am not an artist or weather reporter, Dean, nor an autistic man with uncanny mathematical genius, but I can assure you it’s deep enough in there to warrant us having to dig around quite some,” he deadpanned with a poker-face, confusing Dean as to whether he was being his usual overly-serious self or applying the dry, sardonic humor he favored these days. Whatever the case may be, as always, Dean found himself wryly amused by Cas’s flat comments. I am never gonna get used to him actually “understanding that reference”. Thanks, Metatron!

On other memorable occasions, the guy just came out sideways with unintentional yet hilarious remarks that caught him off guard and made him laugh so hard his face hurt. That’s Cas for ya, keepin’ you on your toes, he thought affectionately as they continued their downward trudge. His bad knees began their creaky protests once they reached the top of the final staircase leading to the third basement level floor. These damn fancy MOL, for all their technology and high class tastes, couldn’ta bothered installing a freaking elevator in this underground skyscraper of a bunker??

“’Kay, buddy – you know exactly where we’re headed, why don’tcha lead the way,” Dean deferred at the third sub-level landing, sweeping an arm theatrically before him in invitation. Castiel marched past him down the dimly lit passage with the hunter trailing in his wake, whistling an obnoxiously off-key rendition of the Pink Panther theme song.

Before long, the duo reached the entryway of the storage room. “Now let’s see what’s behind door number 77, folks,” Dean quipped, riding high on his good mood. There had been a bakery caramel apple pie of grand gastronomical heights consumed earlier at lunchtime, and he was still sugared up and soaring.

“But Dean – I thought we just had that conversation,” said Castiel, momentarily confused.

Ignoring him, Dean threw the door open with gusto. Cas stepped inside and immediately flicked on the lightswitch upon the brick wall (looks like the bastard remembered exactly where that was too). The air within was stale with long-term disuse. A waxy singular bulb provided a dullish yellow light, illuminating shelf after shelf filled from floor to ceiling with dusty unlabeled wooden boxes.

“With the sheer volume of artifacts on hand, it’s a wonder to me that the Men of Letters did not possess a more comprehensive organizational system,” the former angel mused as they made their way over to the fourth shelf on the right. “We may have overlooked a misplaced master inventory list or tracking system.”

Dean groaned good-naturedly, reaching above him to grab the seventh box on the shelf situated just beyond his height. “Do not remind Samsquatch about any more cataloguing bullshit. I’ll pass on spending the rest of my days sorting through ancient crap that’s more liable to hex or kill me than not.”

The large crate was tossed upon the floor with an unceremonious thud. Dean crouched down and blew off the thick layer of dust that had accumulated over its top, Castiel peering curiously over his shoulder. “Let’s just grab this stupid necklace for Rowena and get the hell outta granddaddy’s closet.”

Immediately Dean bit down on his full bottom lip, blushing slightly at his unintended ‘coming out of the closet’ remark, with the object of his subconscious fantasies standing more or less on top of him.

Okay, so I been having too many “happy” dreams featuring a certain blue-eyed bed-headed somebody in ‘em lately, so sue me, he griped at himself in his head, grateful that Castiel had explicitly stated his refusal to use mind-reading powers (which he oddly still possessed) on any of his companions out of ethical concerns, cause oh boy would that’ve led to a mortifying conversation he was so not ready to have.

With what he hoped was a surreptitious glance behind him, Dean confirmed that Cas was either none the wiser to his accidental euphemism or purposefully remaining neutral in the name of diplomacy. He cleared his throat with an unnecessarily loud cough. Refocusing his efforts upon the box, he yanked off the lid and squinted at its contents.

“Dude, I’m with ya – wish these damn highfalutin’ Men of Letters had organized this crap better,” Dean griped, pawing through the haphazard pile of miscellaneous objects while blithely ignoring Sam’s instructions to don protective wear (much to his later chagrin). “Don’t wanna ruin this awesome day gettin’ zapped by something nasty and witchy.”

Cas knelt down to assist him, his hands equally bare. “Dean, did Rowena mention what she requires this amulet for? We did not ascertain its function the first time we stumbled upon it.”

“No idea, Cas. All’s I know is she’s been giving her list of ransom demands to Sammy, who’s vague about everything except what she needs. And I really don’t even wanna know – c’mon, it’s Rowena we’re talkin’ about here. I’m sure she’s not planning on donating this stuff to the March of Dimes.”

Growing impatient, Dean plopped down on the ground cross-legged and started removing items one by one from the box to locate the charm (which was, inconveniently, a small spherical amethyst amulet on a fine gold necklace; a veritable needle in the haystack). He placed several assorted objects on the floor beside him as Cas also shoved his arm into the box. Dean’s sole motivation for getting this mini-milk run over with ASAP was his strong (and snackish) desire to return to the Dean Cave, the leftover apple pie siren-calling his name from the kitchen three floors up.

Suddenly, Dean straightened with a startled jerk, hand flying out of the box as though it came into contact with something scalding hot. Cas paused in his rifling from where he was now seated right next to Dean and looked at the hunter with barely concealed amusement twinkling in his gaze. In reality, it was just the briefest incidental brush of fingers between the two, but Dean was, hilariously enough, behaving like nothing less than a skittish colt about it.

“Are you okay, Dean?” Cas asked with false concern, bright blue eyes widening in a convincingly innocent inquiry. “Did something hurt you?”

“Uh, no, ’m good, just a papercut, or – somethin’ stupid, no worries,” Dean mumbled quickly with a sheepish glance downward, eyelashes feathered against his freckled cheekbones, refusing to meet Cas’s stare. Sheesh, why the hell you actin' like a dumbass schoolgirl with a silly crush all of a sudden?? Get a grip, Winchester, he lectured himself, squaring his shoulders and reaching back into the box. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner he could get away from Cas, whose alarmingly close proximity set his nerves on edge. He could smell his distinctive and somehow lovely ozone and dewy forest scent, and it was very distracting. At this rate, he needed a cold freakin’ shower before his date with that apple pie.

“Go figure – this stupid friggin’ thing would be the first to pop up when we were lookin’ for something else, but probably’ll be the last thing we find today when we actually need it. Ugh, Murphy was a real douchebag,” the flustered hunter complained huffily as their thus far fruitless scavenger hunt marched on.

The next thing Castiel found captured their attention immediately, though it was not the object of interest: a small, delicate hourglass filled halfway with light pink sand, a vine of silver engravings interlacing its surface. For some inexplicable reason Dean felt his gaze drawn to it. He watched intently as Cas turned the fairytale-esque item over in his fingers.

On its top was an etched silver carving of the infinity symbol, but with two alternating-direction arrows within the emblem. Flipping it over revealed a bastardized yin yang symbol where the two opposing jade dots merged in the middle to form a small backwards green gradiented ‘S’ weaving through the black and white halves. What appeared to be tiny Chinese characters (no doubt delivering some cryptic riddle key to the function of the hourglass) wound around the circle.

“Whoa, Cas, what the hell is that?” breathed Dean in a strangely hushed, intent tone of voice.

“I don’t know,” answered Cas in one of his truly perplexed moments. “I’ve never seen anything like it until now, but I may be able to translate the Chinese ideograms.”

Frowning in concentration (with the most adorable little crease between his eyebrows… awww, cooed Dean silently and somewhat obliviously to himself), Cas squinted down at the mysterious writing, struggling to decipher its meaning. “This is not modern-day Mandarin Chinese, but rather an ancient derivative which is more difficult to read,” he muttered, turning the hourglass this way and that to access all of the winding text.

“I think it loosely translates to this: Two halves of a whole transmute into one another. To know their infinite truths within will restore them to their origins,” Cas finally declared after several minutes of deliberation.

Dean’s eyebrows raised with skepticism. “Wait, what the hell does that even mean? Trans-mutant-what, now?”

Castiel sighed and looked indulgently at his best friend. “Transmute. It means to change form,” he explained with his usual kind and patient air. Dean was secretly grateful for his ex-angel’s endless well of tolerance for his, at times, lacking vocabulary (and even further lacking decorum). After all, he more than made up for it in excess of balls, good looks, and his give-’em-hell attitude. Plus, his combat and cooking skills were nothing to scoff at. Throw the GED and Baby in the mix, and I don’t see why I ain’t president yet, Dean thought smugly.

“Thanks, Cas, but that still doesn't really explain it. Damn ancient Chinese and their cryptic-ass riddles,” Dean said with a shrug.

Cas remained silent, gears in his semi-angelic head spinning at top speed in an attempt to decode the puzzle. Both men kept on staring with rapt interest at the hourglass as if hypnotized; before he knew it, Dean reached out to grab it from Cas, who handed it over willingly enough for the hunter to examine. He shuffled it curiously, flipping it over to watch the odd pink sand reverse directions a couple times before finally setting it down on the edge of the bottom shelf. The sand slid down in a smooth trickle, so infinitesimally slow its progress could hardly be tracked with the naked eye (I’m sure Cas can practically count the grains of sand as they fall, though, the Mensa bastard).

In sudden synchronicity, Cas and Dean extricated themselves from their stupor. The former angel delved back into the seemingly bottomless box of wonders in determined pursuit of the amulet while the hunter shook his head in a series of small jerks reminiscent of a dog drying itself off. That was weird, Dean thought to himself as he too resumed what was becoming a much longer search than anticipated. Hmm, another one for the books, I guess.

By the time the boys located the amulet (which was indeed at the very bottom of the box), shoved all the other crap back into the crate and returned the room to its previous condition, it was well into the afternoon.

In the darkness of storage room 77, the Chinese hourglass sat forgotten on the very bottom shelf, rosy sand draining at a snail’s pace and silver accents gleaming mischievously.

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

Upon resurfacing to the Bunker’s main floor, the dynamic duo delivered the sought-after artifact to a satisfied Sam. As planned, Dean then happily delegated himself and Cas into the Dean Cave for TV time, apple pie tucked possessively under his arm and two ice cold beers dripping enticingly with condensation clutched by their tops in his other hand. Following close behind him, a newly human (and hungry) Cas cradled a bowl of popcorn in his arms overflowing with buttery goodness.

Feeling magnanimous thanks to the presence of his favorite ingestibles, Dean even allowed Castiel to commandeer Netflix, who predictably chose a comedy called “Man Vs. Bee”. Dean grudgingly got into it and ended up laughing heartily at the bee’s antics, occasionally spitting out popcorn kernels as he guffawed, much to Cas’s fond annoyance. And if Dean sat a little closer to Cas than was strictly necessary, nobody acknowledged it.

Sam popped in during the last half of the movie with more beers and a plate of turkey sandwiches (which were welcomed and scarfed down). He also proffered an obnoxiously healthy assortment of snacks including nuts and dried berries, which Dean derisively dismissed as being ‘bird food’ as he merrily plowed through his own carb-laden confection. A couple episodes of “The Great British Bakeoff” following the bee movie (which all three men unanimously agreed to be an acceptable binge-watching guilty pleasure) were streamed before Team Free Will was ready to turn in for the night.

After a nice long, steamy shower, a quick teeth-brushing, and some self-assisted happy times with his laptop, Dean’s head hit the pillow with relish, relaxing fully in his t-shirt and boxers into his memory foam mattress. Man, we really oughta take more time off; today was great... His last thoughts drifted through his mind pleasantly as he sank down into a comfortable sleep.

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧

Chapter 2

Notes:

Uh oh... what have we here??? :O

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, a groggy Dean was awakened by a bladder so full it was fit to burst. He hauled himself out of bed with an odd sense of unfamiliarity (the mattress seemed uncharacteristically hard, and his slippers were missing from their usual spot beside his bed). He shuffled sleepily through the darkness, out into the hallway and towards the bathroom. Eyes half-closed, he stood before the toilet inside a stall, pulled out his dick (which also felt strange in his hand… somewhat girthier and heavier than normal?) and started whizzing with a relieved sigh (that came out rather scratchy and low, maybe he was coming down with a cold…).

In the background, he heard the outer door open and close softly. Slippered feet padded into the stall next to him, followed promptly by the sound of a healthy stream of piss splashing into the toilet bowl. Hmm, looks like I wasn’t the only one those beers went straight through. It’s probably Sammy. Kid’s got a bladder the size of a walnut. He was too drowsy to attempt any smartass remarks at this ungodly hour, though, so he kept his mouth shut while they both did their business.

Once finished, Dean staggered out to wash his hands – which, come to think of it, also really did not look or feel like his hands (longer, slimmer fingers covered with coarse, dark hair), he noted with a confused frown. As his alarm grew so did his wakefulness, but even having regained some semblance of consciousness, Dean was entirely not prepared for the sight before his eyes as he looked up into the mirror.

Where large green eyes normally stared back at him were a pair of wide blue ones, and his mouth fell open in abject horror as he took in the rest of his – CAS’S!?!?!??? – face. One fumbling hand came up to palm feebly at the dark stubble gracing a wider jaw than he was used to, and his – CAS’S!!??!?!!!??? – shocked blue eyes trailed up to meet the green ones staring back, reflected from the all-too familiar figure – ME!?!?!???!!??!!! – that just walked out of the other stall. What looked to be Dean himself immediately froze in place as they both regarded the hallucinatory sight before them.

“Wait just a goddamn… CAS!!???? What the fuck is going on – please tell me that’s you in there,” spluttered Dean in Cas’s trademark gravel tones after a stunned pause, spinning around and gaping some more at his own body standing before him like a fever dream gone wrong. Holy shit, did I get trapped in another crazy alternate reality? Is that demonic-me here again, playing some sick kinda mind games??

“You’re – Dean?!? Is that… you? Me?? What in Hell’s name???” squawked what was apparently Castiel (with a decidedly uncharacteristic curse) in Dean’s voice. It was pitched much higher and squeakier than usual, though, as if he somehow hadn’t hit adolescence yet in his early 40’s. He stepped forward haltingly, and Dean saw his body double was wearing his absent fluffy white slippers on his feet. By now Dean (or do I refer to myself as Cas now? WHAT THE SHIT???) was goldfishing his mouth open and closed in a most interesting expression on Cas’s normally neutral visage. The one commonality between the two shell-shocked men was the completely and utterly floored expression on their faces.

“Okay, at the risk of repeating myself, WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK!?!?!!!” Dean bemoaned loudly. He goggled down at what was now his body, plucking at Cas’s blue-striped pajamas and working himself into a wonderful panic. He abruptly turned, stalked towards the mirror again and started slapping himself (upon Castiel’s face), alternating sides and punctuating each strike with a hysterical chant of: “WAKE – ” slap “ – THE – ” slap “ – FUCK – ” slap “ – UP!!!”

“Dean! Stop!” yelled Cas in Dean’s rough Midwestern intonations (and boy is this gonna take some getting used to), lurching forward to grab his wrists and force them down to his sides. “That’s my face you’re slapping, and I don’t possess angelic healing abilities anymore!! And I do not believe we are asleep. Trapped within an alternate reality, perhaps, but that’s nothing self-flagellation will fix!”

“Hey, can you guys keep it down? It’s 4:30 in the freaking morning,” complained Sam. He had wisely chosen this inopportune moment to lumber into the bathroom amidst peak chaos, yawning widely and scrubbing at his gummy eyes. Both men pounced on him like drowning people to a liferaft, Dean gesticulating wildly with Cas’s arms and Cas wearing a wide-eyed puppy dog look of pure confoundment on Dean’s face.

“SAMMY!! Oh my god, you have to help us. I’m stuck in Cas’s body!!!” shrieked Dean, shaking a bewildered and suddenly alert Sam by the shoulders. Meanwhile Cas rounded upon him on the other side, narrowing his eyes and tilting his head, which was really quite the novel look on Dean.

“Sam, is that truly you? Or is Gabriel up to his no-good tricks again?” Cas questioned, assessing Sam with suspicion, who was now looking back and forth between the two of them as if watching the world’s most perplexing tennis match. “It seems unwise that we haven’t come up with a quick check-point for base reality yet, like in that movie Inception with the spinning tops...”

Sam’s eyebrows rose higher and higher until they almost met his hairline, then started addressing Cas, who he (of course) thought was Dean. “Are you guys okay? If this is your idea of a prank, Dean, it’s horrible timing. I was in a dead sleep, and all your yelling was a rude-ass awakening.”

He turned towards Dean, who was dragging Cas’s hands through Cas’s hair and muttering incomprehensible curses under his breath. “Have you two been up drinking all night? What the hell, Cas! I mean, I’d expect something like this from my brother – ” here he shot a venomous glare at poor undeserving Cas “ – but I held you to a higher standard. Damn, I gotta say I’m really disappointed in you, man.”

Sam shook his head disgustedly, looking at the two bugged out men with severe disapproval. “Go drink some water, take some aspirins and go to friggin’ bed, you idjits. Joke’s over, haha, very funny. You got me, happy now?”

“NO, SAM!!! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!!!! It’s me, it’s Dean! I’m trapped inside of Cas right now!!!!!” Okay, not gonna touch that line with a freaking twenty foot pole. Ugh, why did I say that? “This is not a joke, Sammy!! I’m dead ass serious, you have to do something!! POUGHKEEPSIE, GODDAMMIT!!! POUGHKEEPSIE!!!!” Dean pleaded, turning Cas’s earnest, big blue eyes upon poor Sam, whose confusion levels were threatening to break his brain. Dean had a death grip on his bicep that was veering towards actual pain. With considerable effort Sam shook his arm free, grimacing.

“It’s true, Sam. I am Castiel,” said Cas in Dean’s voice, ratcheting Sam’s eyebrows up yet another impossible notch. “Dean and I appear to have… switched vessels. My working theory was this being an alternate reality we’ve somehow been transported into, yet I’ve realized there are too many consistencies from last night that make chronological sense up until this point. That’s not typical for interdimensional travel.”

“Um, yeah Cas, that’s true as far as my experience goes,” Sam replied haltingly, still glancing back and forth between the two mismatched figures before him but at a much slower pace, as if attempting to not spook an easily startled animal (we won’t name any names, Dean). “Slow down a bit though, guys – maybe you should start off by retracing your footsteps? What’s the last thing you remember before you, uh, ended up in each other’s bodies?”

Oh great, the accidental innuendos crescendo, Dean griped internally. And the unintentional poetry too. Great - becoming Castiel is getting me all kinds of inspired, and in all the wrong ways… He made a valiant effort to restrain himself from inspecting the rest of the ex-angel’s body in front of Cas himself and his brother, although he was dying of curiosity now that the freaking out had subsided a bit. Damn, should’ve taken more advantage of that bathroom stall time! No – nope, nope, time and place, Dean, time and place, and both are totally wrong for that kinda occasion right now. Down, boy – wait your turn, he thought in strict tones towards his – well, Cas’s – dick.

“Actually, yesterday seemed an uneventful day, as far as our days usually go,” Cas said thoughtfully. “I woke up at a late hour after 10:30am, drank several cups of coffee and readied myself for the day. After awhile, we all had lunch, which consisted of leftover pizza and pie. Afterwards, Dean and I were tasked to retrieve the amulet for Rowena from storage, which we located after some unusual difficulties. Then, the three of us enjoyed beer, sandwiches, and snacks in The Dean Cave while watching that bee movie which I thoroughly enjoyed, followed by several episodes of the British baking show. I then performed my nighttime hygiene routine and got in bed around 10pm. I also read some excerpts from a tropical animals encyclopedia before falling asleep.”

Sam pursed his lips as he listened to Cas recount his day in great detail, his hippie-haired head deep in thought. “Hmm, alright. Sounds par for the course as far as what passes for a normal day down here. What about you, Dean?”

By now Dean was pacing around the kitchen, chewing on Cas’s lip and periodically dragging his hands across his face in aggravation. He looked up at Sam with an affronted glare.

“Other than waking up earlier than Cas and having breakfast, pretty much the exact same thing… except I stayed up later for a couple hours last night and had a few more beers while watching some, er, cartoons,” he replied with a sheepish grimace, looking away from his brother while awkwardly scratching the side of his neck.

Sam huffed out a laugh and shared a meaningful look with Cas as Dean continued staring at the tile floor, turning progressively pinker.

“Shut up, okay, it’s not what you think it was…” (Insert intense glower of skepticism from Sam here) “Okay, yeah, I lied – it was exactly what you think it was, and then some. Um, Sammy – do us all a favor and leave this one alone,” Dean amended with a pout on Cas’s full, chapped lips. He was unusually abashed while discussing his pornographic viewing habits, which he was wont to do with overzealous aplomb, as it just felt so strange hearing all this stuff come out of what was not his mouth in Cas’s husky monotone.

Sam was straight up giggling by now, which was rather incongruous with his gargantuan stature and manly appearance. “Okay, okay, thanks for sharing, dude. Um, did any of you notice anything unusual in the storage room? Cas, you had mentioned having some ‘difficulties’?”

Oh, crap. Cas and Dean looked towards each other at once, dawning realization and trepidation in their downturned lips and widened eyes. “Wow – nothing gets past you, huh, Sherlock,” said Dean in exasperation. “Uh, yeah, there was this weird hourglass thing we got ahold of by accident – it had like, pink sand in it and a really cryptic Chinese riddle?”

Cas nodded in confirmation, stray strands of unstyled honey blonde hair flopping onto his forehead. “Yes, I distinctly recall the object in question. I myself have not seen anything remotely similar in my substantial life. The riddle engraved upon it went something like this: ‘Two halves of a whole transmute into one another. To know their infinite truths within will restore them to their origins.’”

Sam’s face blanched with increasing concern. “That’s 100% the cursed object that did this to you. Let’s go grab it – then we’re calling Rowena to see how bad it is, and how to get y’all fixed.”

Dean groaned disheartenedly. “It’s too freakin’ early in the day for curses and witches, man! At least lemme get some caffeine in me. And I gotta change – I feel like a damn senior citizen in these PJ’s, Cas,” he complained, earning a very Sam-like bitchface from Castiel using Dean’s own features. This whole thing was really too much of a trip, even by the boys’ generous standards. Rowena better pull through, man – she’s the reason we’re in this shit to begin with, her and her stupid ancient artifacts…

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

“AAARGH!! Why won’t it fit!?”

Cas’s normally deep tones reached an almost falsetto level screech coming from the direction of Dean’s room.

“Dean? Are you alright?” Castiel himself called out as he exited his room outfitted in his usual Constantine garb of white dress shirt, backwards tie and tan trenchcoat, Dean’s bowed legs encased in what were quite baggy dress pants on him.

“No! I’m the friggin’ opposite of alright! These…” grunt “goddamn…” grunt “jeans…” grunt “will not go on!!”

Cas popped his head in to witness a most amusing sight: Dean huffing and puffing, shirtless and red in the face, one leg shoved into denim so tight that it qualified as skinny jeans on Cas’s thick lower half, and the other fighting its own valiant battle to squeeze into the second leg. He blushed in confusion at seeing himself in a state of partial undress, with the mind-splitting knowledge that it was actually Dean occupying said body. “Um, Dean, I don’t think those jeans are going to comfortably fit my legs. Perhaps sweatpants, or I could bring you a pair of my pants instead.”

“Fucking hell, Cas, why did this have to happen to us?? We had an awesome day yesterday, and now it’s Chinese finger-trap curses making my own goddamn clothes not fit me, because I’m you now, who apparently has more-to-love legs??” Dean continued bitching bitterly and flailing about in his vain attempts to wrestle the too-tight pants into submission (carefully omitting how his cheeks had been aflame at the sight and sensation of Cas’s sturdy, muscular thighs and shapely bubble butt stretching out his boxers when he pulled them on earlier).

Cas sighed, blowing out a resigned puff of air and stepping fully into Dean’s room to take a seat in front of his desk. “I’m sorry this has been so upsetting for you, Dean. Heeding Sam’s warning about the gloves would have been wise… We were lucky enough the previous time when we hadn’t somehow activated it.”

Dean finally relinquished his futile mission, tearing the half-mast jeans off of Cas’s (thick and delicious like a damn good milkshake) bottom half with a vengeance. He rifled through his dresser, fishing out a pair of dark grey sweats he then rudely yanked on, followed by a plain black tee. “So what now, we just wait for Rowena to show and see if we’re in her evil graces enough for her to put us out of our misery?”

“That is what Sam suggested.” The ex-angel dared venturing a quick glance at Dean and bit his lip at the sight of his body, now belonging to his human, wearing Dean’s clothing and looking thoroughly put out. “As you would say, that hourglass won’t get itself out of storage. Sam needs to take a thorough look at it so he can properly inform Rowena.”

This announcement was met with a dramatic groan of epic proportions from Dean, a startling contrast to Cas’s habitually stoic visage. “Sonofabitch! Sammy better have that coffee ready. I need at least 3 cups before I can deal with this fucked up, funky fortune cookie of a day.”

Castiel snorted – a very Dean-like noise – and rose from his chair to follow Dean out the door before his own reflection in the mirror upon the wall stopped him short. The sight of himself, now for all intents and purposes a doppelganger of Dean, donned in his trench getup elicited an even stronger reaction than the reverse. He inhaled sharply, taking in the sight of himself with Dean’s moss-green eyes. Momentarily mesmerized, Cas blinked a few times before tearing himself away from the mirror and jogging out of Dean’s room in his wake.

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

The small, silver-gilted clear hourglass held centerpiece at the kitchen table amongst the remnants of a hasty breakfast, gleaming innocently with pink sand filling its bottom. The boys were exceedingly cautious while moving it upstairs, gloved up to the nines and making sure to not jostle it lest they activate another unknown dormant insanity within.

Sam leaned in close, squinting studiously through his reading glasses as he tried to make out the details of its silver embellishments. Dean sat with his chair pushed as far away from the damned thing as he could get, protectively cradling his third cup of coffee to his chest and eyeing the cursed item with intense loathing. Cas remained standing, leaned against the counter as casually as he could manage. His overly observational nature was distracted by various aspects of the differences between Dean’s body and his own as he sipped from his own mug (a yellow and black-striped one endearingly resembling a honeybee, an impulsive purchase and impromptu gift by Dean from a farmer’s market he had dragged the hunter to). Their height difference was negligible but still noticeable for Cas from his upright pose. The lip of the counter hit his hip at a slightly lower point than he was accustomed to. Dean’s fingers were meatier and his hands overall bulkier than Castiel’s, he noted with curiosity as he ran one thumb over the other’s palm.

“What’s the deal, Sammy, you called your witch girlfriend yet?” Dean asked wearily as if all the jet fuel coffee he had chugged thus far – courtesy of Sam, who knew how his brother liked it – was in fact decaf.

“Rowena didn’t pick up the phone when I tried her just now, so I left her an SOS message. And she’s not my girlfriend,” sniped Sam, tucking loose strands of his lengthy mane behind his ears. He maintained his intense staring at the hourglass in wishful hopes that it would reveal its secrets to him.

Cas frowned, Dean’s lips downturned with displeasure. “Like I’ve said, this artifact is altogether alien to me, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been stumped by any magical object in existence. If Rowena is presently unavailable, our next move should be researching for any practical information we can find on it.”

He set his mug down on the counter with a determined thud and looked between the two brothers. Sam’s bespectacled eyes met Cas’s as he nodded, oozing nerdy eagerness. “I think it’s time to hit the books.”

I will never get used to seeing myself in the third person talking to my brother like some astral projection trip gone wrong - fucking hell, moped Dean.

The three extricated themselves from the kitchen and plodded in a morose single file line toward the expansive MOL archives, Castiel gingerly relocating the hourglass to one of the long library tables. Dean found himself struck with sudden gratitude at their fortuitous luck in discovering this treasure trove of a bunker. Well shit, if you’re gonna get cursed by some random sorcery, it might as well be where you’re most likely to find answers to that problem, if only for convenience’s sake.

Soon the boys were busy with their noses buried in ancient witchcraft tomes and arcane books on metaphysical, psychokinetic and transcendental spiritualities. Sam got into his groove, with four books laid out in an organized sprawl around him and a notebook he scrawled rapidly into, plus the occasional self-directed under the breath muttering. Meanwhile, Dean half-heartedly flipped through some heavy leather bound thing featuring more advanced Latin than he was comfortable with. Cas was dutifully applying his residual angelic mental resources and plethora of relevant memories on the subject, a growing stack of books beside him. He leafed through them with the speedy confidence of a reader with photographic recall.

After several hours of drudgery, Dean’s already thin patience wore down into threadbare agitation. He slammed the seventh book he had tried in vain to glean any inkling of information from shut with a loud thud, sending an indignant puff of dust into the air. Damn thing’s written in Chinese ideograms – could Bobby even read this shit??

“You got anything, Cas? I’m going friggin’ nuts over here, man. Can’t find any comprehensible shit at all on this pain in the ass thing.”

The former angel shook his head, rising from his seat and heading back towards the bookshelves in search of an ever-elusive answer. “Not yet, Dean. However, I am confident that between Sam and I’s extensive research skills we should soon be able to resolve this.”

“Oh, and Rowena just texted me back and said she’s in the middle of some coven-thing. She’ll get back to me real soon, though; can’t stay away for long when we’ve got her entire magical wishlist right here. An occult Christmas in July – you know she won’t be able to resist,” Sam chimed in.

Sam glanced at his forlorn brother, who was wearing a look of glumness involving Castiel’s signature knitted brows, with sympathy.

“Don’t stress, Dean. We’ll get this squared away. It ain’t like we haven’t been through worse. You – well, you could’ve ended up as mah jong pieces or something – then we’d really be having fun with you two stuck as inanimate objects.”

Dean blew out a long-suffering sigh that petered out into a childish pouting raspberry of sorts. Just kill me now – this is not how I imagined getting intimately acquainted with Cas’s body. I mean, I’m as kinky if not more so than the next person, but goddamn!

“Okay, whatever. I’m gonna go take a shower and try to chill out. Have fun, geeks.”

On his way out of the library he casually tossed the last book he had to Cas (who was somehow able to catch it one-handed while keeping his eyes trained studiously upon his book).

“There ya go, sunshine. You’re the only one out of the three stooges here who can read Chinese, unless Samantha here took a Mandarin Rosetta Stone course behind my back. Happy birthday.”

With that, Dean sauntered out of the library before Cas could eke out a confused reply.

“But it’s not my birthday, Dean! In fact, my creation was so long ago that the advent of any type of primitive human calendar would not occur for hundreds of millions of years, so I do not know how to quantify the date of my actual ‘birth’.” Cue air quotes, and an absent-minded chortle from Sam who was still busily researching away. “Perhaps I will ask Gabriel, as he was created before me and may have a better grasp on the precise chronology of events.”

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

Chapter 3

Notes:

This is where it gets realllll steamy, if you catch my drift.

Ahhh, I could never get tired of the perfect water pressure in these showers…

Dean tilted Cas’s dark-haired head back, closing his eyes and relaxing fully underneath the pounding hot water. Tension throughout his body began uncoiling, dissolving from his stiff muscles and sluicing down the drain. The shower had always been a place of comfort and rejuvenation for Dean; in his chaotic, dangerous life, it was one of the only relatively safe and secluded spaces he could simply allow himself to be, cleansing his mind alongside his body.

Streams and droplets of water ran down his unfamiliar sculpted body. Coarse, dark hairs plastered flat to Dean’s skin on thick thighs and strong forearms, and were also strewn across a surprisingly well-built chest, he noticed with a smirk. Damn, Cas, there’s a lot you got going on here hidden underneath that holy tax accountant getup. After washing his face underneath the spray, he pushed his sopping wet hair off his forehead and swiped his hands over his eyes to dry them.

Now that he was alone, he was certainly going to take full advantage of this new and exciting opportunity to inspect Castiel’s (really very nice) body. It was like the best kind of VIP advance sneak preview of a soon-to-be-released movie you’ve been anticipating – you’re the only one in the theater, sitting front and center, popcorn and Slurpee at the ready!

A flushed tingle of anticipation coursed through Dean. He slowly soaped up Cas’s limbs one by one, starting with his shapely hands and arms. He took great care with each slender digit before moving up his sinewy forearms, reveling in the strange intimacy of the moment. For all the times he had imagined himself with these fingers threaded through his own, now they actually were, but in an all-manners-mixed-up kind of way.

Rosemary and lavender scented steam rose up in soft billowy clouds around him enveloping him in a cocoon of sensuous warmth. Okay, I borrowed Sammy’s girly bodywash, so sue me. Dean worked his way up the bulge of Cas’s biceps, then let out a deep groan of relief as he began massaging out the tight, sore muscles of his neck and shoulders, aided by the shower’s steady hot spray of water. His right shoulder was conspicuously absent Cas’s raised handprint that he’d grown so accustomed to on his own body. Seems like Cas holds most of his stress in his shoulders and neck, just like me. Talk about Atlas Shrugged, man – the weight of the damn world and all its apocalypses can sure wear a guy out.

Next came his back (or as much of it as he could reach), chest and abdomen. Enjoying the flex and give of slick, defined trapezius muscles underneath his exploring hands, Dean then moved to grope greedily at his pecs, tugging at the sparse hair lightly. When he reached Cas’s dusky brown nipples (noting the small freckle above the right one with intrigue), he couldn’t resist giving one a nice tweak. A bolt of pleasure pierced straight down into his gut, simmering into a low heat near his groin as he repeated the action with the other one, intaking a hiss of air through gritted teeth. Oh shit, somebody’s sensitive in the nipple department. This should be fun!

After a furtive glance around (for whatever nonsensical reason; he was obviously alone), he took a soapy finger and swirled it in a tantalizingly slow circle around each nipple, staring with rapt fascination as they hardened into peaks, intensifying the burning in his lower abdomen and causing him to bite down on Cas’s full bottom lip. When his nipples grew overly sensitive, Dean slid his hands lower to appreciatively trace the visible ab muscles of his belly and side, then down to work at the attractive jut of hipbones.

As his relaxation deepened and his achy muscles softened further, another part of him was perking up at all the loving physical attention. Dean ceased his ministrations and glanced down at Cas’s half-mast cock between his legs, cheeks pinkening at the sinful sight of its flushed tip and lengthening girth. It gave an interested twitch as if aware of his keen interest. He took one finger and curiously traced its underside from base to tip, pressing lightly into the sensitive frenulum on his way up. His dick responded by swelling more, and he let out a low moan under his breath at how he could feel it fattening as the blood rushed in.

He fondled Cas’s heavy ballsack, petting the thin, fuzzy skin and feeling the easy give of it beneath his gentle touch. Naturally, this only increased the urgency of his burgeoning erection. Unable to resist, he wrapped his fingers around it and gave it a slow, sensual tug, just to gauge the contrasting physicality of the sensation in Cas’s body. He closed his eyes, biting back a louder noise threatening to pass his lips at the heightened pleasure that touch ignited.

Cas’s cock was heftier and wider but a bit shorter in length than his own, jutting out proudly between his legs like a ramrod; overall Dean deemed it an exceedingly attractive penis, as far as the aesthetics of those can be lauded. Damn, that feels awesome. Cas is really very sensitive all over, now ain’t he? Filing this away for future reference, hopefully…

Not wanting to rush the experience and have it be curtain call before the main event, Dean eschewed further play in that area for the decided joy of grabbing a handful of each supple asscheek and kneading to his heart’s delight. Oh yeah, this was everything I had dreamed of and then some! he crowed mentally, squeezing the firm flesh with great relish before smoothing over it soothingly with slippery soap. With each caress he felt himself getting even harder, arousal snaking warmly up his spine and causing him to shiver oh so subtly.

Dean wanted to draw out the teasing for as long as he could stand it. After lingering on Cas’s (awesome, so awesome) ass for several minutes he slid his hands across thick, tan thighs that were just the right amount of hairy and severely tempting in all their muscular glory. He washed them with the same tender care he showed the rest of Castiel’s breathtaking body, then scraped his nails lightly down the delicate, soft skin of the inner thigh area.

By the time Dean finished with his calves and feet (Dean was not a foot guy, but oddly enjoyed washing Cas’s, which were nice and uncallused), his sense of urgency to finish what he started was peaking. Cas’s cock was achingly hard with anticipation by now, neglected and purplish in color. After almost a decade of pent-up sexual frustration, Dean was more than excited to return to the main attraction. Although occurring in a most unconventional fashion, this lazy, heady exploration of Cas’s body while wearing it as his own felt like coming home.

Dean took ahold of his hard length with eagerness, stroking it in a firm, slinking motion with one soapy hand while the other kneaded at Cas’s balls. His head fell forwards and he sighed out a breathy moan, pleasure cascading across his body like the hot water that rained down in a steady stream upon him. Jacking himself off at a slow, sensual pace, his other hand wandered even lower; curious fingers sliding past his balls and across his perineum, Dean wondered how it would feel if he just – oh shit, fuck yeah that’s nice – and yes, the finger circling the pucker of his rim felt more than amazing. Castiel’s body was adorably receptive to each and every light touch delivered to each and every part of it, almost as if it were welcoming him specifically, receptors lighting up at Dean’s careful caresses.

Emboldened by the arousal coiled tight in his groin threatening to bubble up and spill over like a volatile volcano, his hand tightened its grip on his dick and sped up while he ventured even further into unknown territory with the other, probing lightly with a soapy finger at Cas’s tempting entrance. Dean took a deep, steadying breath and pushed inside the tight ring of muscle, and oh –

“Goddamn,” he groaned involuntarily, other hand tightening even further on his erection and Cas’s bass tones dropping into an impossibly lower register as sharp, burning pleasure-pain sparked from where he was slowly penetrating himself. He sucked his lower lip between his teeth and bit down hard as his finger pressed in deeper and deeper, Cas’s ass searing hot like a furnace and tight as a vise. Holy shit, this is fucking incredible… now I’ve just gotta find that special spot to really set off some fireworks; it’s gotta be right around – he crooked his finger just so, and then -

“OhmyfuckingGod, yes, right there,” he choked out. He’ll be damned if hearing those wrecked words spewing from Cas’s mouth while knowing he was pleasuring himself in Cas’s body didn’t just about make him come right on the spot. It was a close call as it was; he had to squeeze the base of his cock painfully hard to stem the flood that almost poured out of it.

Widening his stance for better access, Dean added a second, pumping his fingers in and out of that glorious hole in sync with his strokes, unheeding of the wanton moans that leaked steadily from his mouth as he crested his climax. Nearing the point of no return and wanting to stave it off a little longer, he slid the hand that was gripping his cock up his belly and chest to flick at his nipples. A torturous, sizzling ecstasy pulsed through his veins, making him light-headed and so deliciously turned on he was practically feral with need.

Now Dean fisted that hand into Cas’s thick, short hair and yanked his head back to bare his neck, steamy water cascading down his throat in shining rivulets while the other still fucked into him below, ramming into his prostate with every other thrust and alighting his nerves with an intense, fiery pleasure. Shaking with his imminent release and chewing the insides of his cheeks raw to keep from crying out too loudly, he closed his eyes and fully immersed himself in fantasy:

Cas is in the shower, just as his body is right now, but I’m standing right behind him with my fingers tangled in his dripping black locks, forcing his head to the side so I can latch onto his neck and suck at the delicate skin there hard enough to leave bruises. With my other hand, I trail a blazing path down his chest, pausing to rub at each nipple until they’re stiff and puffy beneath my fingertips. Once I reach his cock, I grasp it firmly and jerk him off until he’s squirming and grinding back against my own hardness, begging for more.

I smile against the reddened flesh of his throat and give him what he needs. When my soap-slick fingers breach his tight hole, he cries out and bucks in my arms, thick thighs opening invitingly and the weight of him leaning back into me solid and warm. Cas turns his head in a desperate search for my lips, crashing them together with muffled groans of almost anguished-sounding pleasure as I wring every single drop of it I can out of his beautiful body with my skillful hands.

The arm that was holding his head circles around his waist to grab his rock-hard cock and sets a quick and dirty pace, stroking and twisting while my angel shudders and keens passionately, caught at my mercy between both hands that are hellbent on making him come harder than he ever has in his life. His greedy hole is sucking my fingers in as he fucks himself down upon them, and I crook them deep within where I know that awesome spot of electrifying pleasure lies, then I whisper into his ear –

“Come for me, baby, I wanna see you c-cuh – oh shit – ahh, DEAN – !”

And at the unbearably erotic sound of his name riding on Cas’s destroyed raspy moan spewing forth from his own mouth, Dean came hard. A huge, white-hot burst of overwhelming sensation overtook him, eyes rolling into the back of his head and an involuntary, deliriously hoarse scream clawing its way out of his chest. His cock jerked spasmodically, spewing ropes of thick pearly come that seemed to eject endlessly from its flushed, plump head while his hot, slick hole clenched around his fingers in sync with his ejaculations. Shockwaves of gradually receding pleasure shook him as he gently milked the last of his orgasm from his oversensitive dick and ass.

Dazed and more than a little confused (basically seeing stars at this point), Dean let go of Cas’s dick, then removed his fingers from Cas’s hole and placed a steadying hand upon the shower wall. Son of a fucking bitch, that was incredible. Beyond awesome, like whoa… wonder if Cas always comes this hard or if I just really know how to push those angelic buttons?

“Dean? Are you alright in there? I thought I heard a noise,” came the sound of Cas calling out disconcertingly in Dean’s own voice as if on cue. And boy, if that wasn’t enough to snap him out of his reverie! OH SHIT, speak of the opposite of the freakin’ devil!! How long has he been standing there – how much has he heard?!

“Y-yeah, Cas, I just, uh, stubbed my toe,” Dean sputtered out lamely in reply, wiping his hands down on his new pair of distractingly thick thighs. His face heated with guilt as crystal clear lucidity doused out his post-orgasmic bliss in a hurry. Somehow, this embarrassing turn of events was not enough to quell his troubling state of arousal which chose to stubbornly persist. He noted with considerable chagrin that he was still rocking a semi. Perhaps – annoying and inconvenient as his libido was known to be at times – it was unconsciously spurred on by the sudden and taboo presence of the object of its affections at such a pivotal moment.

“Um, okay… I’ll just be outside in the hallway if you need me. I actually have a small piece of news to deliver when you’re through.”

“Awesome. I’m – I’ll see you in a sec, gotta get dressed.” And possibly bash my brains out against this tile rather than do the walk of shame out of this bathroom, in your body that I just secretly defiled, to talk to you – but hey, we’ll just gloss over that part, right?

Now that his faculties and five senses had been restored to him, Dean heard the quiet click of the outer door to the bathroom close as Cas stepped out. God, it’s embarrassing how into that I got that I didn’t even hear the dude come in, he chastised himself as he swiped hurriedly at his groin and stomach to rid himself of all traces of his “extracurricular activities”. I pray to whatever absent God is out there that he wasn't in time for the really incriminating stuff. Can’t imagine what kinda psychological scarring it’d cause the poor guy to witness his body-swapped best friend jacking off in his body!!!

Shaking his head with a scowl, Dean stepped out of the shower, snatched the towel from its hook on the wall and hastily dried himself off. Whatever the hell kinda “news” this is better be freakin’ good – I don’t know about Cas, but I ain’t gonna survive much longer like this!

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

Chapter 4

Notes:

Poor Deanie-Weenie hits Defcon-2 levels of nuclear explosiveness; Cas tries to placate him with one thing, and one thing only...

Chapter Text

True to his word, Castiel was standing rather awkwardly in the middle of the hallway not an inch away from the bathroom door waiting for him. His stiff, soldier-like posture looked weird as all hell on Dean’s body, which normally would have been much more at home leaning crookedly against the wall.

Dean came to a dead stop in front of him, practically skidding on his heels to prevent a head-on collision. The two men stared each other down from a distance of about 2 inches away, as was customary, before Dean couldn’t take anymore, blushing and breaking eye contact to look studiously down at his borrowed feet, which were now properly sheathed in Dean’s fuzzy slippers, thank you very much. He may not be able to possess his rightful body for now, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to compromise on his own comfy attire.

“Okay, Cas, spill the beans,” Dean mumbled to the floor, rubbing at the back of his neck in a very Cas-like gesture of embarrassment, dead guy robe wrapped around him protectively like some kind of emotional safety blanket. “And please, please tell me it’s good news. I can’t handle any more crazy curveballs today, man.”

There was a forebodingly long pause before Cas began speaking. “Well, it depends on what your definition of ‘good news’ is.” He glanced at Dean worriedly to assess his status – not great, but not totally losing it – before continuing. “Sam and I decoded one of the glyphs. We’ve concluded that its purpose is relevant to ancient Chinese arranged marriages.”

“ANCIENT CHINESE ARRANGED – THE FUCK!?” If Cas’s eyes bugged out of Dean’s skull any further they would be dangling from the sockets by their optic nerves.

“I know, it does sound concerning…” Cas trailed off, following Dean’s progress down the hall as he paced back and forth. He squeezed his head between his hands, appearing afraid to let go lest it roll off his neck and across the floor like a bowling ball possessed.

Castiel decided to try his hand at the best way to distract Dean he knew of. “You must be hungry by now, Dean. Why don’t we go to your favorite burger place while we wait for Rowena’s response?”

The diversion worked just as successfully as Cas had hoped. Upon hearing the mention of food, Dean immediately ceased his hair-and-hand wringing to pause and look up at Cas with wide, hopeful baby blues. “You wanna hit up Brasshead Burger with me? Well, shit, I ain’t gonna turn that down.”

Castiel smiled secretly to himself as he watched Dean perk up, who was now full-on grinning and rubbing his hands together in anticipation of the tasty paving of the way to his heart (which, true to form, is through his bottomless pit of a stomach). “Let’s grab Sam too and get the hell outta here. We’ll clear our heads with a drive and put some food in our stomachs. Maybe things’ll be easier to piece together once we’re fueled up.”

They came upon Sam in the library still seated, unmoving and bent over his tomes, laser-focused and oblivious to their presence. It took Dean stalking right up to his brother and physically blocking his view of the book he was so engrossed in with obnoxiously waving hands to gain his attention.

“Yo Sammy, we wanna head out to the Brasshead. Get your gigantor ass unstuck from that book and let’s go, cause I’m starvin’. Already ‘hungry’ here, and we all know it is not pretty if I hit ‘hangry'.”

Sam, with reading glasses perched at the tip of his long nose, somehow managed to peer down through them at a standing Dean. He gave the usual mid-tier bitchface at his pain-in-the-ass older brother. “That’s okay, you guys go ahead. I’ll just stay here and focus on research. There’s a lot of unusual lore I’m getting into – this book on ancient Taoist alchemy and paranormal anomalies of that region may be able to solve you guys’ little, uh, problem. Just grab me a, um, Caesar salad with almonds instead of croutons to-go. Thanks!”

“Of course, Sam. Dean and I will bring your salad home. Thank you for being so invested in this; I have complete faith that between us and Rowena we can solve this predicament,” Cas replied with an air of confidence that Dean was clueless as to how he could muster up. Well, at least two out of the three of us are feeling positive about this shitshow. Although, I have to admit I did just enjoy the best shower of my life before Cas barged in…

Sam held out a silent thumbs-up in acknowledgement, already back to his notations.

“‘Kay, we’ll be back soon with your rabbit food, bitch. Hold down the fort and tell us if you hear from our favorite witch,” Dean called out in farewell, cut off by a loud clank from the closing hatch.

"Jerk," Sam mumbled to himself with a lopsided half-smile, flicking hair out of his face and flipping yet another page.

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

The pair exited the bunker’s sequestered entrance out into the blazing Kansas summer sunshine, squinting against the sudden brightness. They made their way over the rocky dirt to Baby and climbed in their respective seats. Dean immediately relaxed upon settling into her driver’s seat. He wrapped his (albeit still uncannily long) fingers firmly around her steering wheel, anchoring himself into a familiar and controlled environment where he was in charge and deciding which way they were headed.

He popped an Iron Maiden tape into the deck and was happily humming along with “The Number of the Beast” by the time they pulled onto the main road. Cas sat upright with his typical rigid posture next to him, hands placidly resting on his thighs. He alternated from looking out the window to stealing peeks at Dean/his own body. The disconcerting sensation this produced would likely never cease; the shock was now dulled from repeated exposure, but it was doubtful to completely vanish while they still occupied each other’s bodies.

Dean consciously decided to eschew further conversation about the disturbing tidbit Cas had just sprung on him. He kept on humming to the music, privately enjoying Cas’s voice in those deep, dulcet tones vibrating pleasantly through his vocal chords like the steady purr of Baby’s engine around them. In fact, he thought, I’m just gonna do what Dean Winchester does best: sit back, relax, and pretend like nothing’s wrong while the world crumbles around me in fiery piles of destruction. It’s fine, I’m fine, this is all totally fine! Just me and my best buddy ex-angel pal on our way to grab some lunch at my favorite spot across town. Nothing out of the ordinary, still in my usual clothes, and don’t gotta make any eye contact with myself unless I have to look at Cas. See, everything’s fine!

Unfortunately for him, Castiel had other plans. After noticing several extended staring sessions and a kicked-puppy vibe emanating from his passenger, Dean huffed out an annoyed sound and turned to confront his best friend.

“Cas, you’ve always said that I’m a loud thinker, so maybe your thoughts are on loudspeaker now since my damn body’s hosting you. What’s up?”

No response. The only sound in the car was Iron Maiden’s thumping tunes and the underlying rumble of Baby’s tires pummeling the road beneath them. Castiel pointedly looked away, suddenly finding the unremarkable scenery outside of urgent interest. Dean tapped his fingers on the edge of the steering wheel in a fidgety beat, Cas’s brow set in its familiar furrow of consternation upon his face.

“C’mon, man, spit it out already. I’m not digging the whole silent treatment thing.”

An acidic glare was all Cas had to communicate on the matter, clearly not picking up what Dean was laying down.

“... Okay, so usually I’m all for not talking about our ‘feelings’ and avoiding any and all chick-flick moments, but your vibe is throwing me off, pal. Just tell me what’s wrong so we can hash this out before it ruins our lunch.”

Cas gave him one final suspicious, green side-eye before opening his mouth and speaking haltingly in Dean’s whiskey-laced drawl (though in a more self-conscious tone than usual). “Dean, does it make you unbearably uncomfortable to be forced to inhabit my body? I noticed your levels of distress have been disproportionately high compared to mine.”

Dean looked up into the rearview mirror in an automatic gesture to check the road behind him. He accidentally caught onto his tousled dark hair and cornflower blue eyes, startling himself into a magenta blush that spread attractively over Cas’s high cheekbones. Dean silently cursed himself and his downstairs brain for its choice to now flood his brain with flashbacks of the shower incident. He set his jaw, put an arm as casually as he could manage over the back of Cas’s seat, and switched lanes. Meanwhile, there’s a long, silent pause where he groped for an appropriate answer to the ex-angel’s question.

“Well, uh, it’s actually not the worst thing in the world. I mean, I could’ve ended up body-swapped with some other random asshole instead of my – my best friend, or even stuck in Sammy’s giraffe body, banging my head against doorways and ceiling fans, so yeah… once you get past the shock, I guess it ain’t as bad as I’ve been making it out to be. I guess I’m just… scared that we’ll be trapped like this forever? And, well, I’ve never even seen you naked before until my shower today, and you’re usually in so many layers, so um – yeah, just takes some mental adjustments,” Dean babbled articulately, face reddening even further until the blush bloomed all the way down his neck, looking anywhere but at Castiel/himself.

It helps that he’s driving and technically has to keep his eyes on the road. OH GOD, just stop talking, Winchester!! You’re making this so much more awkward, you absolute IDIOT! Just quit while you’re ahead and shut up before you say something even more retarded, like maybe letting it slip how much you liked seeing him naked!!

And then, instead of obeying his frontal cortex, his traitor mouth reopened, digging himself into an even deeper hole of mortification. “Uh, so – what I’m trying to say is no, I don’t hate it, Cas. You actually have a nice body. I’m just, er, getting used to it still, heh… learning curve and all that…” OH JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, JUST KILL ME NOW. LET THE SKIES OPEN UP AND STRIKE ME DOWN WITH ALLTHE LIGHTNING!!! I’m headed back to hell, yes I am; desecrating an angel’s vessel and just about advertising it to said angel, if he’s smart enough to read between the lines. OMG, I hope he’s his usual oblivious self today…

Cas was looking at him now with an expression halfway between pleased and bemused. “O…kay? I suppose that’s not as negative a response as I anticipated. Thank you for your frankness, Dean,” he replied, smiling shyly down into his lap. “I too do not mind having your body as a vessel. It is also quite ‘nice’, as you put it. I have not showered nor otherwise beheld your nude body, however, which I’m well aware is very attractive. I resurrected and reassembled you on an atomic level, after all. I am glad that we both won’t be unduly burdened before we reach a solution.”

Guiding Baby into her parking space in front of the burger joint, Dean made an unbecoming spluttering sound before gathering himself enough to press his lips into a thin smile at Cas’s rejoinder (so now we’re both riding on the oversharing bus together, that’s just awesome). He turned the car off and opened her door, calling over his shoulder, “Yep, no undue burdens whatsoever. C’mon, Cas, hurry up – I’m starving!”

~☙:❣⛧↫↞∞⧖☯↭☯⧗∞↠↬⛧❣:❧~

Notes:

I've had this idea fermenting in my brain ever since I heard Misha mention in some random interview or another how he'd have loved to have a body swap episode... so yeah, here it is in all its demented glory! Misha, if you are lurking AO3 and find this by some stretch of a miracle, I hope you aren't too scarred (might wanna skip the X-rated parts XDD).

By the way, in case anyone's a stickler for details, I applied creative liberties to make season 12 Cas more or less human for the purposes of this story.

... And yes, that is a March of Dimes reference. Miss ya, Frank!

[seraphic-anachronism]

First Ever Fic!

Hi y'all - this is my first Tumblr blog (with a focus on - you guessed it, my OTP Destiel!), so here's my first piece ever written for the SPN fandom! It's also on AO3, which is my preferred platform for posting, but I figured I'd give this whole Tumblr thing a shot and see what all the fuss is! I'm well aware that I'm quite late to the party, but hey - looks like it's still going strong, so I'll just hop right on in and make myself comfortable :)

Without further ado - here it is, in all its green glory. Please leave any and all feedback, whether positive or constructive! I'm here to grow as a writer and creator, so by all means I'd love to hear what all of you have to say!

<3, LynZ

(Rated E, slightly angsty and emotional one-shot)

______________________________________________________________

Repentence

“Yeah, something always does seem to go wrong - and why does that something always seem to be you?”

The harsh words came tumbling out of Dean’s liquor-loosened mouth before he had a chance to bite them back. Castiel immediately stiffened, his face collapsing into its default blank mask before any signs of hurt could show.

“Alright, Dean. I know what I must do… With the gate closed, I’m not needed here anymore. You and Sam have each other. I think it’s best that I leave now to find my own way.”

Dean stood rooted to the spot in the middle of the war room, stuck to the table he was leaning against like millennia-old petrified wood, frozen in a split second by Cas’s heartbroken stare. He was helpless, unable to blurt out any of the thousands of things he wanted to say in that moment to make his best friend stay. The previously warm, honeyed smoothness of the whiskey soon turned to sour dust in his mouth as his tongue attempted to unstick from its roof to make a sound, any sound at all, as he watched the angel’s retreating back march up the stairs to go out the door and into what felt like oblivion. Castiel’s (permanent? Please no, God no, we just lost Rowena, Dean’s thoughts carried on inanely) departure was sealed with an almost soundless click of the bunker’s hatch closing behind him.

His once fiery anger was tamped down immediately into the heavy ash of regret, mingling with the sharp pain of grief. Unwanted emotions sat like a stone in his stomach and threatened to drag him bodily down to the floor in a heap as he was faced with the emptiness of the room (and my life) now that Cas had finally left. The whiskey glass he was cradling in his hand felt like it would soon shatter under his panicked, white-knuckled grip. What am I going to do now?? Where is he going? When will he be back, if he plans on even coming back at all? Oh God, what have I done… his thoughts circled in his aching head like a broken merry-go-round as his body continued refusing to obey any commands.

Eventually, after what felt like hours but may have only been minutes, Dean was able to peel himself off the edge of the table and allow his feet to carry him numbly down the hallway towards his bedroom. On the way there he snagged up what remained of the crystal carafe of whiskey, carting the entire thing along with him in the false hopes that it would somewhat soothe the bitterness and resentment within him. Once within the room he plastered himself to the back of his door, then sank slowly to the floor like melting wax, completely bereft of strength or motion. Setting the glass down forgotten beside him, Dean takes an apathetic and gigantic swig of the brown liquor directly from the bottle because he is truly out of fucks to give.

I don’t know who I’m more angry at, Cas or myself - we’re both so fucked up, Christ, were his last coherent thoughts as his consciousness slipped into the dizzying darkness of a truly spectacular drunken blackout.

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

If Sam noticed anything out of place with Dean the following morning, he was wise enough to refrain from commenting after his quiet inventory of the lack of angel in the bunker. As it was, he was probably preoccupied with his own grief after the hellgate showdown and Rowena’s sacrifice that came out of left field and left everyone in absolute stunned, silent shock. He surreptitiously shot a few text messages to Cas’s number inquiring about his welfare and whereabouts, then clicked his phone screen off.

The next several weeks passed by for the brothers in a blur of successful hunts, which also managed to feel somehow empty due to Cas’s notable absence and the weight of Rowena’s death trailing behind them like an invisible ghost. They exterminated a small vamp nest nearby in Stillwater, Oklahoma, dispatched a gang of ghouls up in Aspen, Colorado, and completed a routine salt-and-burn all the way in dusty Rimrock, Arizona. The most recent hunt down in Pine Bluff, Arkansas involved a pair of rugaru and too many bodily fluids for comfort. As Dean was in the bathroom scrubbing his hands with copious amounts of disinfectant, he glanced up into the soap-scummed motel mirror above him while the blood and guts swirled down the sink drain in an unappetizing sea of crimson. There was the usual thousand-yard-stare lurking a few inches below the surface of his stoic expression, but beyond the depths of that dwelt a sickening sadness that caused tiny pinpricks of tears to fizzle up from behind his eyelids that never fell. It had been over 3 weeks since he had seen or heard from Cas, and he had opened and closed his phone more times than he could count, debating silently whether it was a good idea to text or call the angel to check on him. I’m probably the last sorry bastard he wants to hear from at this point, he thought bitterly. Best to let sleeping dogs lie.

But this particular dog, although lying down following a long, scalding shower, could certainly find no respite in sleep tonight. Dean tossed and turned like restless waves in his crappy single across the dim, dank motel room from his oblivious, passed out giant of a brother. Purplish light filtered through the dusty curtains in front of the only window, painting the room with an eerie, liminal ambience. If he held his breath for long enough, he could almost convince himself that any minute now Cas would be popping into view with a whooshwhoosh of invisible wings just like old times in similar settings. But that was then, when he had a mission to follow my every move like some sort of holy bodyguard, and this is now, when I’ve managed to piss off my best friend beyond anything I’ve accomplished thus far, and that is really saying something, he mused dryly. For awhile he simply lay there staring up at the popcorn ceiling, sleepless with poorly veiled regret clenching his jaw and stiffening his sore muscles.

Eventually he gave up on his futile attempt at slumber, slipped on his clothes and boots with the stealth of a trained killer, and slunk out of the room without Sam so much as stirring (ugh, sleeping hard as always, the lucky son of a bitch, were his jealous thoughts). Raking a hand through his dirty blonde hair and inhaling deeply of the crisp evening air, Dean set off down the open hallway to round the corner and attempt a raid on the vending machines to hopefully quell the aching pit within him via stuffing his stomach with junk food.

A wan fluorescent light flickered briefly above him as he stood eyeing his potential selections through the chilled glass, causing another deep and remorseful twinge in his gut as he was again reminded of Cas… Cas in the barn on the first night I met him, sparks from exploding lights showering down around us nearly blinding me before I stabbed him (rather impotently). Cas riding shotgun in Baby on hunts where Sam stayed home at the bunker (heading the “New Bobby” position as director of the underground American hunter network we were slowly building) and mischievously changing the radio to early 2000’s pop with a flick of his mind just to annoy me, who had rightful proprietary control over musical selection as driver. Cas, deeply irritated at Sam and I while we argued over case research semantics, with all the light fixtures and electronics in his immediate vicinity strobing in time with his ill mood.

With a frown, Dean morosely picked C7 and watched with a detached expression as the package of processed chocolate frosted donuts tumbled down into the slot where he retrieved them with cold fingers.

Not wanting to go back inside the room and potentially disturb a sleeping Sam, he pulled his leather jacket tighter around him as he walked the distance from the snack machines over to the side of the building where Baby was parked close by their doorway. He leaned back against her sleek and icy black trunk, unwrapped the donuts and proceeded to cram them in his face as fast as possible to avoid being out in the chilly fall air any longer than necessary (and also because, well, it’s Dean eating here). Wonder if Cas would still think these taste like molecules after having his grace restored, he pondered, dusting stray crumbs off his mouth and fingers. Did he retain any of his sense of taste whatsoever? Hmmm, taste… wonder what he tastes like - NO WINCHESTER, BAD, STOP IT!!!

Stuffing his hands back into his jacket pockets for warmth, he huffed out a resigned sigh at the realization that the angel just would not consent to unboarding his (sleep-deprived and increasingly inappropriate) train of thoughts. Maybe I should try praying to him, Dean considered. He may not be answering Sam’s phone calls or text messages, but he’s never ignored a prayer from me, especially if I’m making it clear that I’m requesting his presence… After a long moment’s debate in which the discomfort of the midnight Arkansas cold made itself more known to him, he finally settled on his next move.

Castiel, if you can hear me right now, it’s Dean. You’ve been gone a long time and radio silent too, and I’m worried about you, man. Please come if you are able to, I really need you right now, he prayed silently, breath coming out in little plumes of foggy steam. I know I was a bit of an asshole to you the last time I saw you, and I’m sorry, Cas. Come back to me buddy, I need to see you.

He waited in the stillness of night for a long beat, shuffling around in his boots and wiggling his hands around in his pockets restlessly, awaiting the telltale sound of invisible wings flapping to announce Cas’s presence. Okay, any day now, you feathery assbutt, grouched Dean with the taste of artificially flavored chocolate still stuck between his teeth. Freezing my ass off down here tryna talk to you. Show me a sign or something?? Cas???

Just when he was about to give up, call it a night and head back to his and Sam’s room to try another round at this sleep thing, the long-anticipated whooshwhoosh flapped from behind him. Dean whirled around rapidly, hand splayed on the Impala’s chilled surface for balance.

Standing a few feet away from Baby was Castiel, trench-coated and stony-faced as ever. His piercing blue eyes felt like they were boring a hole into Dean’s very soul as the hunter froze under his regard yet again like a deer in headlights. There was just something about the way the angel looked at him which was always able to render him both immobile and speechless at the same time. The eye contact carried on for much longer than platonically necessary, both men simply staring each other down as if communicating in silence via body language alone, which was probably close to the truth, considering their “profound bond” and all. There was many a sentence to be said from the brief, almost micro-expressions which would flit across their faces as they continued their staring contest (or “eye-fucking”, as Sam derisively referred to it, whispered behind their backs) – stark relief standing out in Dean’s forest green eyes as the tension left his face in a flash, then a questioning look from Castiel with a slightly arched eyebrow, moving to a more shuttered, hurt facial movement from Dean and its quick cover up by a manly shrug coupled with a jaunty half-cocked smirk, culminating with a simmering, rather angry glare from Castiel that shut him down in a hurry.

“Yes, Dean? What did you call me here for,” Cas rasped out in a deeply displeased manner, ignoring Dean’s uncomfortable squirming at the initial sound of his voice after almost a month’s absence. “I thought you sounded particularly desperate in your prayers, so I ensured my arrival would be swift. Now tell me what is going on,” he demanded.

Holy shit, he’s actually here, what now?? “I – you heard what I said in my prayer, right? Do I have to say… sorry… again?” Dean awkwardly mumbled, eyes downcast after the cessation of their drawn-out staring contest.

The angel edged towards the car slowly, never taking his eyes off the rather large hunter before him who was shrinking his shoulders into himself in an unconscious attempt to appear smaller, until he finally stood before that man who had so fervently prayed for his return. Cas’s mouth was compressed into a thin line of tension, and a matching furrow between his brows deepened as he considered Dean’s (questionably heartfelt) contrition.

“Is this your rather trite version of trying to apologize to me, Dean?” Cas practically growled, “personal space” between the two growing gradually less and less as he crowded his way up to Dean so that the other man’s lower back was pressed flat against the cold metal of Baby’s trunk. “I don’t hear from you for almost a month - in fact, the very last words out of your mouth to me were highlighting how big of a problem I am to you, and now all of a sudden you’re sorry?”

“Takes two to tango, Cas,” the hunter retorted back spitefully. “Ain’t been nothin’ on your end either, not so much as a ‘Hello, Dean’.” Here he lowers his voice in an imitation of Cas’s gravelly tone and classic greeting, much to the chagrin of the other, whose response was an acidly arched brow. Ha, take that, ya smug bastard! “Wouldn’t have killed ya to call and let me know you’re still alive or somethin’, jeez.” Here he paused. “And I am. Sorry, ya know. Or I wouldn’ta prayed to you tonight.”

Castiel had stalked even closer to Dean during this exchange, where it appeared that the hunter had now become the hunted. The taller man had an uncharacteristically cornered look to him, but stood his ground (well, Baby was also great support, both emotionally and physically, in this particular situation). The two were scant inches apart, glaring daggers into each other’s eyes as they continued bickering. Tension - sexual and otherwise - suffused the air thickly, making Dean’s hairs on the back of his neck stand on end like being too close to where lightning was planning to strike within seconds. This was not dissimilar to any other time he’d managed to upset Cas to this level of irateness, but there was a hint of something even more dangerous hovering in the atmosphere.

“So how truly sorry are you then, Dean? Why don’t you show me?”

Blue, his eyes are so blue, whoa, went Dean’s awestruck thoughts as Cas closed the barely existent distance between them. His gaze shifted down to Castiel’s lips, and then they were both lost. Their mouths finally crashed together, compelled by some invisible magnetic force that had inevitably culminated over the last decade into this exact moment. It was no tender, soft thing like Dean had sometimes (in a deep denial) fantasized about, but spoke of the violence inherent to them that ran through their blood just as natural as iron. Cas kissed with a bruising intensity that left Dean with no doubt as to what kind of inhuman creature he had somehow gotten entangled with, a righteously vengeful Angel of the Lord who was now here to put him in his place.

Holy shit, he managed to think breathlessly as they broke apart for a second before their lips collided again in a battle for dominance. All the pent up sexual tension and frustration of the last ten years or so had finally boiled over, and now they couldn’t keep their hands off each other if their lives had depended on it. Dean was clawing at the angel’s trenchcoat with the desperation of a drowning man as the other held his head firm and incessantly plundered his mouth. Cas’s lips were dry and slightly chapped, just as soft as Dean had imagined they would be, and his pure, electric ozone taste was everything he had dreamed of and more. When the angel’s tongue breached his mouth and touched his for the first time, he let out a deep groan. The delicious slip and slide of their lips and tongues together felt like nothing less than nirvana. The angel kissed wickedly, twining his tongue around the hunter’s serpentine-like before biting down upon his plush bottom lip, drawing out another loud moan.

Dean’s pulse was pounding, and he felt Cas’s heartrate quickening too as he clutched helplessly at his chest, letting the rough tides of lust pull him under. A warm ember of want stirred to life deep down in his gut near his groin, threatening to soon burst into full-blown flames. Cas had him caged in with his arms wrapped around his neck, one thick thigh shoved between his legs and the other on the left pinning him in place. He felt himself hardening against that muscular thigh which ground into him, another involuntary noise escaping his mouth.

“God, Cas - ” was all he managed to whine before punishing lips swallowed the remainder of his sentence, and he was left to moan wantonly into the other man’s mouth. When they finally parted for air again, Dean’s hazy brain faintly registered that their breaths were coming out in puffs of white condensation and was suddenly aware again of the coldness of the evening. His hunter’s instincts also hinted to him how exposed they were just making out in the open air in the middle of a practically empty motel parking lot (at an unreasonable hour too, at that).

“Wait, maybe we should - in the car - ” Dean managed to shove Cas’s solid body aside long enough to open the door to Baby’s backseat, grab the angel by the lapels of his coat and forcefully push him inside. Cas landed with an oomph of surprise, icy blue eyes comically widening as Dean clumsily clambered onto the leather seat behind him and slammed the door shut. Quickly regaining his composure and remembering his mission to thoroughly ravage Dean, Cas performed a slick maneuver that reversed their positions so he was on top. The angel then pinned the hunter’s wrists up beside his head to trap him beneath his unyielding weight. Cas pressed down to capture his prey’s lips again in a searing kiss, simultaneously grinding his hips in a filthy circle into the other’s, eliciting a throaty moan from the man below.

“Oh shit, fuck yes, angel…”

Where the hell did he even learn to do all this?? Whirled around in Dean’s head hazily as Cas continued his assault upon his lips and body.

Dean meanwhile despite his immobility was trying to give as good as he got, gyrating his hips back onto the reciprocal hardness he felt and sucking hard on Cas’s tongue when it dipped into his mouth, drawing out a sinfully low groan from the angel.

“Dean,” he growled into the other’s mouth as they pulled apart, “you should be wary of provoking me further. You have no idea what you do to me, what you have been doing to me. I can’t be held accountable for my actions if you continue this instigation.”

Never one to back down from a challenge (even when it may serve his best interests to do so), Dean smirked defiantly up at him. Cas’s pupils were black lust-blown circles steadily eclipsing his blue irises to match Dean’s own darkening green ones.

“Oh yeah, Cas? So what was that lil’ threat earlier about makin’ me feel sorry?”

If possible, Cas’s expression grew even smokier as he regarded the beautiful, willful mess of a man beneath him. Both of their lips were spit-slicked and swollen red from the debauched kissing that was occurring, panting into each others’ mouths eagerly.

“Yes, I distinctly recall and fully intend to honor what was not a threat but a promise to you, Dean.”

With that, in an inhumanly graceful movement, he removed one hand to palm Dean’s prominent erection while securing both of the hunter’s wrists above his head with the large palm of the other. An electric spark of pleasure shot up from where Dean was finally touched so roughly yet reverently by his angel (who was certainly behaving quite unangelically), travelling up his body and leaving a fiery trail of pleasure in its wake, burning and tingling and oh so delicious after so many years of holding back. The proverbial dam between them had finally burst, and even with that simplest of touches Dean felt like he was on the verge of bursting too.

“Goddamn, Cas,” he slurred as Cas’s hand continued its tantalizingly slow, firm exploration, tracing his rock hard cock with skillful fingers through the denim of his jeans which were suddenly much too in the way. Cas hummed deeply against his lips in response. He bucked up into his teasing touch and let out a breathy moan as Cas progressed from his mouth down to his neck, sucking hungrily at his pulse point like a vampire. That feels so goddamn good, how did he get so freaking skilled at this, Dean wondered dazedly as delicious desire ran through him, hot and molten as lava. There was such an air of desperation and urgency about them now that they had reached this breaking point in their relationship at last, neither able to restrain themselves in their aggressive advances that were almost more combative than affectionate.

Cas kept on attacking Dean’s neck (that was sure to leave a nice bruise for tomorrow) while his hand unbuttoned and unzipped the hunter’s pants at an agonizingly slow pace, causing the other man to swear and flex his hands underneath his iron grip in vain and thrash about as best he could while trapped underneath his bulky body. Long fingers dipped beneath the waistband of Dean’s boxers to tease at the wiry hair that grew around the base of his cock, tugging and petting lightly and strategically avoiding the area that demanded his attention the most.

If he doesn’t touch me soon, I am going to kill him, Dean thought lividly, wrapping his bow legs around Cas’s waist and attempting to grind up into him to find more friction. He could see and feel how hard Cas was too beyond the fingers that barely separated their crotches, straining against the fabric of his dress pants. Dean’s own dick was steadily leaking a dribble of precome now, soaking into the front of his boxers that were still aggravatingly on his body for some reason (‘cause Cas is a closet sadist, plus closeted in other ways I guess) as Cas’s tentative explorations in his pants carried on, driving him so wild with unsatiated lust he was practically feral. Dean snarled and bit harshly at Cas’s lips which had returned to latch back onto his like a bad addiction. He must’ve worried the lip a bit harder than intended though, because the coppery taste of blood soon suffused their joined mouths, somehow urging them on even more frantically in their joining.

Growing obviously impatient as well, Cas grabbed his jeans and boxers and shoved them down far enough to expose his hard, throbbing dick. Deft fingers wrapped around the base of his cock, squeezing just this right side of painful before sliding upwards possessively, thumbing the wet tip and spreading the slickness all around the head. Oh fucking hell, this bastard is gonna be the death of me…

A noise escaped Dean’s mouth which could only be classified as a whine (which he will never admit to, of course), making Cas smile evilly into the side of his neck where he was again busy sucking bruises into. His fingernails dug into his palm with a biting force that juxtaposed beautifully against the onslaught of pleasure being unleashed upon his body by his angel. Somehow the fact that his hands remained cuffed in place above his head by Cas’s single-handed grip made it even hotter. It was simultaneously too much and not enough.

“Fuck, Cas, please, please,” he begged incoherently, eyes rolling into the back of his head as Cas jacked him off with smooth strokes and that patented laser-sharp concentration with which he approached all things that needed doing. And right now, Dean was in the most dire need of a doing as anything Cas had ever undertaken in his long life.

“You are so beautiful like this, falling apart for me bit by bit as I take you apart with my bare hands,” Cas rasped out, sounding more and more wrecked his own self as they both came undone by each other’s touch. “Keep up the pretty pleas and I may just let you come.”

All Dean could do was buck helplessly into Cas’s hand that was taking its sweet time torturing him with its steady pace around his swollen cock, sometimes twisting on the upstroke in a way that made the most pitiful sounds come streaming out of his mouth (which he will again attest to never having made in his manly-man life, thank you very much). He was embarrassingly close to coming as it was like some fresh-faced virgin receiving his first hand-job in the backseat of a car.

It’s cause it’s Cas, Jesus fucking Christ nobody touches me like this, oh shit that’s so good, went the helpful and articulate commentary in Dean’s head.

Just when he was on the verge of exploding for real, Cas’s hand abruptly ceased its motion (like he knew, the mind-reading asshole), causing Dean to blurt out another colorful string of expletives. Those tricky fingers instead moved to finally unzip his own slacks and take out his hard length, causing the angel to hiss as his cock came in contact with Dean’s for the first time. Dean, who was skirting a thin line at the edge as it was, had to bite sharply down on his own tongue in order to keep from coming right then and there. The sensitive skin of their cocks rubbed together heatedly, eased by the slickness that leaked out of both heads as a precursor of what would come (literally). The hunter was keening a reedy sound of wrecked need, wildly thrusting up into the angel to try to create some friction. Holy fucking shit, oh dear God, I never want this to end, but goddamn do I need to come!

At this point, Cas seemed to lose his steely resolve and rapidly abandon any plans of extended teasing, as fun as the idea had seemed to punish Dean for his too-smart (and too pretty) mouth. The lust that pounded through his being set every nerve ending alight with an overwhelming urge that superseded rational thought. Gripping both of their aching cocks in hand with an animalistic growl, Castiel began stroking them in tandem in the tight tunnel of his fingers.

“Holy fucking shit, Cas, please, ohmygod - f-fuck - don’t stop, ah,” Dean choked out, eyes screwed shut in pleasure. He was whimpering, small beads of sweat starting to drip down his face as his angel steadily brought them to the point of no return. His toes curled convulsively in his boots as Cas’s hand sped up, the slick sound of their cocks sliding together sinfully loud in Baby’s insulated confines. “Oh fuck yes, I’m so close - shhiii - I’m, I’m gonna - Cas - “

“Look at me when you come, Dean,” Castiel commanded, and as green eyes obediently locked onto blue Dean orgasmed with a near silent scream. Spurts of pearly come shot out from his dick and coated Cas’s hand that was still moving around them, shockwaves of pure ecstasy rolling through him repeatedly, knocking the breath from his lungs and blurring his vision with its intensity. He moaned brokenly as the aftershocks took what felt like forever to taper off.

The sight and feeling of Dean falling apart beneath him was enough to send Cas hurtling over the precipice of his own climax. He felt what could only be likened to ascending to heaven itself for the first time, but even better. Celestial energy flooded his being and he shut his eyes against the searing white light that flashed from within him, protecting Dean from its potentially blinding effects. He cried out what sounded like a deep, stuttering Enochian curse mixed with Dean’s name as the onslaught of sensation overtook him. His vessel shook with indescribable pleasure as thick white ropes burst from the tip of his cock to cover them both, smearing onto their clothing and mixing with Dean’s spend in a messy pool of stickiness.

Castiel finally collapsed with exhaustion upon Dean, both panting like they couldn’t get enough oxygen after the incredible sex that just occurred. Baby’s once chilly interior had certainly warmed up significantly during their escapades, and it’s possible the air supply was indeed dwindling considering the incomparable enthusiasm of their tryst.

Holy fucking shit, that really just went down, Dean’s brain sluggishly supplied as his higher functioning cortexes slowly started to come back online after what was hands-down the most mind-blowing orgasm of his entire life. I had no idea it would be like this, or I would’ve made a move a decade ago.

He noted with an amused snort that the windows of the car had steamed up quite a bit thanks to their decidedly very steamy activities (of the last hour? Half hour? Time was irrelevant at this hushed and intimate moment of what could either be considered the latest of the evening or the earliest of the morning hours). Unable to resist, he reached an arm (that had now been released from the iron manacle of Cas’s hand) up and behind him to drag a messy handprint through the fogged up glass (in a clumsy nonverbal attempt at humor by referencing the Titanic, of course, in true Dean Winchester fashion).

“Hey Cas,” Dean drawled out smirkingly, “Who do you think would be Jack and who would be Rose in this situation?”

Cas did a dual move of the classic head-tilt combined with an eyebrow arch from where his head lay on Dean’s chest to stare up at him with a slyly humored glint in his eyes. “Are you sure you wish for me to answer that question, Dean?”

Flushing a pretty pink color that spanned across his freckled nose and cheekbones, Dean muttered some half-hearted curse about Metatron and his Godforsaken downloading of pop culture references into Cas’s brain. A halfway hysterical giggle threatened to burst from his quivering lips at the mental image this comparison conjured up.

Shamefully amused and at a loss for an answer that could properly defend his manhood, he instead hooked his fingers underneath Cas’s chin to bring their lips together for a sweet, chaste kiss. Drawing away, Cas stared unabashedly at him with what could only be called the utmost reverence and awe, a rare and slow smile spreading across his thoroughly-kissed and reddened lips that ended in the crinkled creases at the corners of his sky blue eyes.

“Well, just so ya know, I’ll never push you off the driftwood to drown. We can always share,” Dean murmured shyly against the angel’s lips as he leaned in to capture them once more between his. Their lips brushed against each other tenderly, tongues flicking lightly together, soft and innocent compared to the intense ravaging that had just taken place. Once the nuclear bubble of a decade’s worth of sexual tension had finally popped, the two (God, finally!) lovers could take their time exploring one another’s bodies without such pressing urgency and desperation behind their lingering touches.

“And I really am. Sorry, that is. I mean it, Cas, it was unfair of me to talk to you like that. I was just pissed off and upset we had lost Rowena and took it out on you. And just for the record, there ain’t nothing wrong with you at all… Actually, feels like we just fixed a lot of what was wrong between us now, don’t it?”

OMG, stop babbling, you idiot!!! There’s a lot more I wish I could say right now but can’t bring up without ruining this moment. I guess we have time to hash it out; meanwhile we can just do what we’ve always done and make it up as we go along…

A long beat while Castiel searched Dean’s eyes for any hints of dishonesty or other subversive motives. Seemingly satisfied with what he saw in their peridot depths, he pressed another gentle kiss to the hunter’s full lips.

“It’s alright, Dean. I forgive you now as I always have and always will, just as you have done for me countless times in the past. You mean… everything to me. Words are insufficient to express the depths of my devotion to you, and my joy and relief at the events which transpired tonight are unparalleled.” Here he paused to stroke a callused thumb across the delicate skin underneath Dean’s right eye. “I don’t know what the future may hold, and I don’t care about any of it except my desire to stay by your side through it all.”

Dean’s lips quirked up in a genuinely sunny smile, emerald green eyes open wide, bright and disarming, reflecting the light from the streetlamps outside Baby like a most inviting lilypad-gilded pond. “My very own guardian angel. Always knew you had a thing for watching me sleep, now you can do it with my permission right next to me,” he laughed, lightening up the seriousness of the weighty moment between them with a joke as he was wont to do.

“Yes, Dean, I will watch over you tonight and every night, if you’ll allow it,” Cas replied, his own starstruck smile growing miles wider, revealing rows of straight white teeth and pink gums. “Just make sure to behave yourself from now on, or run the risk of having to be taught another lesson,” he admonished with a significant raise of his eyebrows before directing his attention to tucking each of them back into their pants. A tingling, cool rush of grace then washed over Dean, cleansing away any traces of their coupling. Huh, that’s convenient!

Dean’s cock gave a valiant twitch in interest at Castiel’s thinly veiled threat combined with the electric feel of his grace and the physical touch of his fingers grazing against its oversensitive flesh. Down, boy, he chastised it in his head. Plenty of time for all that later. We ain’t 16 no more, wishful thinking aside. He smiled winningly up at Cas, teeth flashing sharklike and eyes twinkling with mirth, eyebrows waggling suggestively in typical Dean Winchester flirt-mode.

“Why, Cas, I’d be honored. Don’t threaten me with a good time,” he answered, all boyish charm and poorly concealed innuendo in his deep voice. “But first we have to get another room. Sammy’s asleep, and I sure don’t wanna traumatize him with the world’s rudest awakening involving you, me, and the horizontal tango.”

With a sigh of agreement, Cas hefted himself up from where he lay draped across Dean like the world’s sexiest oversized body pillow. Both men disentangled themselves from the other with noticeable reluctance, then exited the vehicle.

“Do you think there’s still someone at the check-in counter this late?” Cas pondered out loud as they walked together towards the front office of the shabby motel, Dean shivering slightly in the frigid night air. Castiel wrapped a warm, sturdy arm around his shoulders, pulling him in to the side of his (quite toastier than the average human) body.

“If not, I’ve always got my trusty pick,” Dean laughed, planting a big smooch on Cas’s stubbled cheek. “Since when have we let anything like locked doors get in our way?”