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spn fic: there's an angel on my shoulder, in my hand a sword of gold
Title: there's an angel on my shoulder, in my hand a sword of gold
Pairing: Castiel/Dean
Rating: NC17
Words: ~4,200
Summary:"It's not unlike prayer," Cas says slowly. "The words are directed at me, even if you only intend them for yourself."
Notes: Beware masturbation, phone sex, and complete abuse of the SPN universe's concept of prayer. I regret nothing.
[AO3]
there's an angel on my shoulder, in my hand a sword of gold
Grantsburg is a long way from Lebanon, nearly seven hundred miles. It's the kind of haul Dean could make in one shot if he really wanted to, two cups of coffee and two stops for gas, maybe one extra breather to piss and stretch his legs, but the sun is starting to set by the time he hits Interstate 35, the sky a slow burn as it curves around Wild River State Park and stretches down toward Minneapolis. Traffic is rush hour slow, all brake lights and people anxious to get home for dinner. Everything on the radio is either static or news, and Sam hasn't said a word since he climbed into the car.
Dean takes the next off-ramp with a lodging sign, humming under his breath to break up the silence, squinting against the road dust smeared on the Impala's windshield. He'd planned on cleaning it when they fueled up down the street from Garth's, but that gas station had only been a short walk from the underpass where they'd ditched Sam's stolen Dart, and Sam had looked impatient while he'd waited for the Impala to finish drinking, ready to bolt, his arm out the window and his fingers drumming on the roof, every line in his body twisted with second thoughts. He'd accepted the orange juice Dean handed him with a grunt, let it sit in his lap until the condensation on the bottle sweated a damp patch into his jeans.
The last place on the motel-and-burger strip is a yellow and white no-tell, two rows of squat bungalows framing an empty pool; Dean parks beside the bank of weathered vending machines and doesn't complain when Sam comes back with two sets of keys.
"See you in the morning," Sam says, gruff, his bag bumping against his hip as he shoulders into his room, and Dean keeps his apologies to himself, turns away before the door closes in his face.
The inside of Dean's room is as yellow and white as the outside, the white dingy with age and cigarette smoke. The single queen bed has a slight dip in the middle, just visible under the faded, flowered bedspread, and Dean fits himself into it, exhausted and still in his clothes, staring up at the popcorn ceiling until the water stains start to blur. He can hear Sam puttering around in the next room, the squeak of his closet door, the thrum of his shower, the low murmur of his television set. Dean drifts off to the muffled, second-hand sounds of an old M*A*S*H episode; when his phone rings he's half-dreaming about hunting Abaddon through an army camp with a bent length of pipe the color of old bone, and he answers it with a grunt and his heart hammering in his chest.
"Sammy?
"Dean."
"Hey, Cas." Dean clears his throat once, twice, then sits up and rubs his hand over his face. He feels shaky and slow, his not-quite-nap still a fuzzy weight in his arms and legs. "What's up?"
"Where are you?"
"Rush City, Minnesota," Dean says, fumbling with the matchbooks on the nightstand. "Daisy Inn. Room, um -- room twelve." He's still a little sleep-drunk, enough that he looks up half expecting to find Cas standing at the foot of his bed, just like the good old days, but after a long pause he remembers that Metatron's party trick clipped everyone's wings, and Cas rumbles out a noise like he's sighing with his mouth too close to the phone. "What about you?"
"Gillette, Wyoming."
"Did you find Gadreel?"
Another pause, this one brimming with frustration. "Not yet. I found a spell that allows me to track him using his name alone, but each time he disappears before I arrive at the location." He sighs again, and the sound rattles in Dean's ear like laundry dancing on a clothesline. "I'm not -- I don't enjoy driving the way you do."
"You must be doing it wrong," Dean says, his voice creaky at the edges, bending around a yawn. Cas probably drives like a stiff, his hands at ten and two and his back as straight as a board. "You still riding around in that hooptie?"
"It gets the job done," Cas replies, and Dean rolls onto his side, falls asleep listening to Cas complain about the traffic on Interstate 90.
+
They have a Fuel & Go breakfast, stale bagels and coffee thick enough to chew. Dean warms his hands around the orange and brown cup as a gust of wind whips through the parking lot; he has a dull headache behind his eyes and his feet hurt from him falling asleep in his boots.
"Here," Sam says, breaking twenty minutes of near silence by tossing a wrinkled Grand Forks Herald on the Impala's trunk. "Three teenagers were chased out of a cemetery by a floating white figure."
The article is six days old and reads like a slumber party story -- strange noises, dark shadows, disembodied voices, eerie fogs. Dean stares at it for a minute, then shrugs and chokes down the rest of his coffee.
"What about it?"
"We should check it out."
North Dakota is three hundred miles north and west when the Impala is already pointed south, and haunted boneyards are usually frat-boy pranks or local kids mixing their mushrooms with malt liquor, but Dean looks over at Sam and his arguments die before he really opens his mouth. Sam is watching the cars up on the highway, his head tilted to the side, just like when they were kids, when they were stuck on long, boring, backwoods drives, nothing to look at but trees and empty fields, and Sam would perk up at every car they passed, excited for the distraction, elbowing Dean in the side as he pointed it out and making up stories about the people inside, how they were going home to their normal houses and their normal lives.
"All right," Dean says. "Let's hit the road."
+
They stop for a motel just south of Grand Forks in Thompson. Sam asks for two singles again, leaning his elbows on the counter as the manager sorts out the paperwork and keys, and Dean lets it go, even though they're down to about eighty in cash and a credit card nearing its two thousand dollar limit. Dean's room is frontier chic, a horse blanket on the bed and a deer head above the door, and Dean tosses his duffel on the dresser without bothering to unpack.
The cemetery really is haunted, but it turns out to be the quickest, easiest salt-and-burn they've had in years. It's only one spirit, and she rises up out of her own grave before attacking them; Sam keeps watch with a shotgun and Dean digs up the corpse, and an hour later they're back on County Highway 81 and headed for the motel. Dean pops Led Zeppelin III into the tape deck, hums along to Gallows Pole as the cemetery shrinks in the rearview mirror.
He says goodnight to Sam in the dark, narrow space between their doors, feeling awkward, his need for reconciliation a living thing in his chest, gnawing at everything soft beneath his ribs, but once inside he's almost grateful for the solitude. He has graveyard mud on his hands and face and his body aches from the top of his spine to the back of his knees. Rooming alone means he doesn't have to fight Sam for the shower; he can use as much hot water as he wants, and he can jerk off without stuffing his fist in his mouth to muffle the noise.
He's lazy about it at first, his hand easy and loose and his head tipped back against the dingy tiles, rubbing his thumb under the head as the water runs down his shoulders and chest, as it relaxes his sore muscles and pushes the sweat and dirt from the case down the drain. Everything is slippery and wet, just this side of perfect, and he starts working his hips, fucking roughly into his hand. He ends up thinking about Cas, which isn't a new development, just one he usually doesn't dwell on for his own sanity, but he's tired and alone and Cas is in Wyoming, driving a hideous car and acting like an angel, and Cas has a dangerous mouth, would look glorious on his knees, his lips flushed and red, stretched around Dean's dick, making filthy sounds in the back of his throat as Dean nudges in deeper, knots his hand in Cas' hair.
"Cas, fuck," Dean hisses, his thighs shaking, come splattering in the water between his feet. "Fuck, fuck."
+
The motel is attached to a greasy spoon with checkered curtains and no name; Dean orders country-fried steak and eggs, hashbrowns and a shortstack, and he eats it while plotting the trip back to the bunker, spilling syrup on the map when he misses his mouth. The morning sunlight is watery and weak, but it slices through the window at Dean's back like a knife.
Thomspon to Lebanon is about six hundred and thirty miles, most of it boring and flat, but it's a straight shot south, down Interstate 29 and US 18, and they could stop in Sioux Falls tonight, save money on a motel by crashing in Jody's guest room. Sam has talked to her on the phone once or twice, but they haven't seen her since she helped them tangle with Vesta. They could grab an early dinner at that diner Bobby had liked, get pot roast sandwiches with mashed potatoes and gravy, and afterward one of them could cruise the dives looking for a pool game, and the other could do the laundry they've both been putting off.
He should ask Sam instead of telling him, because telling him is part of what got them in this mess, why Sam keeps wasting money on separate rooms and why their car rides are full of long silences and sideways looks, but he ends up just watching Sam instead, his long hair and his ugly plaid shirt, his shoulders hunching as he frowns at his laptop. Dean leans back in his chair a little, ready to call him Samantha or crack a joke about the oatmeal and fruit combo plate he ordered for breakfast, the way he's pecking at his cantaloupe like a bird, but the feeling isn't there yet, and there's a chance it never will be. A wretched corner of Dean's brain could probably live with that as long as Sam is alive, but that's part of the problem as well, maybe the biggest part, the things he's willing to do or put up with if it keeps his brother breathing.
"Hey," Sam says, looking up just long enough to catch Dean's eyes. "Six exsanguinated bodies over the last two months."
"Where?"
"Kalispell, Montana."
Dean studies the map as he finishes his coffee. That's nine hundred miles west, and it's probably snowing up where US 2 cuts through Blackfeet Reservation and Glacier National Park, and the Impala needs a new set of chains, but they've driven farther for less trouble, and bloodless bodies that far north can't be anything but vampires. Chupacabras need warmer weather, like the Badlands and southern deserts, flat stretches with cattle ranches between the empty spaces, don't normally attack people anyway. Kalispell is only twenty or thirty minutes from Rufus' old place in Whitefish; they could always squat there for a couple of days, eating c-rations and sleeping in front of the fireplace.
+
Dean is right about the snow, only it pushes further east than he expected, meeting them before they've even covered two hundred miles, so they spend two days stranded outside Minot, sitting on their thumbs while they wait for the road crews to plow and salt the highway. The motel is a 60's psychedelic nightmare, all square furniture and avocado Formica and a heater than smells like burning hair; the storm knocks out the cable halfway through the first day, and Dean snaps late on the second, trudging over to the liquor store on the corner and blowing his last twenty on a fistful of Slim Jims and a 750 of Red Label.
The wind is so cold and thin it has teeth, sharp enough to bite through Dean's clothes, forcing him to kill the neck of the bottle as he's walking back to the motel. He's halfway thawed out by the time he gets inside, and after a couple more drinks he's feeling pretty warm, and this prompts him to knock on the door between his room and Sam's, even though it's almost midnight, blinking in confusion when Sam answers wearing tired sweats and a terrible case of bedhead. He rambles about road salt rusting the Impala's undercarriage, then blurts out a series of drunken apologies, the words all jumbled together, tripping over each other as they crowd on the tip of his tongue. Sam's face darkens like a thundercloud, his mouth pulling into the kind of tight, angry line that spells retreat, and Dean jerks the door closed before it turns into an argument, or the sort of adult conversation Dean should probably have sober and would definitely chew off his own foot to avoid.
He passes out in his clothes and boots, his face smashed into the pillow and his nosed stuffed up from the dust in the heater, wakes up gasping and confused, clutching at the polka dot bedspread, half hard from a dream about Cas fucking him back in his room at the bunker, Cas opening him up first with his fingers, his mouth open and wet against the crease of Dean's thigh as he slowly worked them in and out, then with his dick, sucking slow kisses into the hollow of Dean's throat as he inched his way in, making a low, rough noise against Dean's jaw when he finally bottomed out. In the dream Dean had been desperate for it, digging his nails into Cas' hips and begging for more in Cas' ear, his dick aching and hard, leaving a sticky trail of precome where it rode against Cas' belly, and once he wakes up a little more, takes a few deep breaths and surfaces through the whiskey-fog, he can't deny that he still is. He has turned bullshitting himself into an artform over the years, but deep down he wishes Cas was here with him now, that he could kiss Cas, push Cas down on the bed, pull Cas on top of him, something, anything.
Dean rolls onto his back, opening his jeans enough to wrap his hand around his dick, and he comes thinking about Cas sliding into him from behind, Cas' mouth at the back of his neck and Cas' hand pressed sweaty and warm to the stretch between his shoulders.
+
Cas calls their second hour on the road, sounding irritable and cold, demanding, "Where are you?" in a tone that could sharpen rusty knives.
"Fuckall, North Dakota."
"That is not a real place."
Dean turns down the radio; it's the same farm report he's heard five times, and Cas' voice is arcing like a live wire. "Hey, what's got your grace in a knot?"
"Nothing. I just want to know where you are."
"We just passed Tioga."
"Are you working a case?"
"Actually, yeah," Dean says, tucking the phone against his ear. "We're heading to Montana, to check out a possible vamp nest. If the weather holds, we'll be at Rufus' old place in two or three days."
"Fine," Cas grumbles, and hangs up in Dean's ear.
+
It starts snowing again just outside Wolf Point, hard enough that Dean finally gives in and pulls off the highway; he'd hoped to eke out another hundred miles, but visibility is nearly zero and the winds keep nudging the Impala toward the ditch. They end up in Glasgow, a tiny town that looks mostly closed up for the evening, but it has a motel and a bar, and that's all they really need to get by.
"I'll go," Sam offers, shivering outside Dean's room, the storm gusting in around him through the open door.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
Dean hesitates for a second -- of all Sam's qualms about the job, hustling for money has always bothered him the most -- then shrugs and tosses him the car keys. He isn't going to freeze his balls off if Sam is volunteering. "Okay. See you in the morning."
He pours himself a drink as the Impala rumbles out of the parking lot, then sprawls out on the bed, shaking his head as he flips through the motel's pathetic handful of channels. The porn is pay-per-view, and HBO is playing a romantic comedy about weddings, and everything else is reruns or local news. He digs his phone out of his pocket, thinking he might call Cas to pass the time, find out what Cas is doing right now, why he'd been so grumpy earlier, but that just reminds him of how Cas had sounded in his dream, needy and breathless and hoarse, Cas' lips brushing the shell of his ear, and then he's hard, his dick twitching as it pushes against his fly.
"Fucking Cas." He rubs himself through his jeans, then pops the button and zipper and slips his hand inside. "Jesus fucking Christ."
His phone rings. He answers it without looking at it, worried it's Sam calling with some kind of trouble, but then he hears Cas breathing on the other end of the line and he bites the inside of his cheek.
"Dean?"
His voice is lower than usual, rougher than a rasp, and Dean shifts on the bed, pressing down on his dick with the heel of his hand.
"Are you there, Dean?"
Dean's mouth feels dry; he has to clear his throat twice before the words will come out. "Yeah, I'm -- I'm here."
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"Dean."
"I'm just -- "
"Dean, I can hear you."
"What?"
"I can hear you, when you think about me."
Dean freezes. He still has his hand on his dick, and shame burns sourly at the back of his throat. "Fuck, Cas. I'm -- "
"It's not unlike prayer," Cas says slowly. "The words are directed at me, even if you only intend them for yourself."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm not -- "
"Is that why you called earlier?" Dean asks. He slides his hand away from his dick, twists his fingers into the fabric of his jeans. "Is that why you were angry?"
"I wasn't angry."
"Cas."
There is a short, horrible silence; Dean considers hanging up, just to put an end to it, but Cas makes a soft, thoughtful noise that digs at the heat coiled in Dean's gut. "I wasn't angry, earlier. I was frustrated because we're currently apart."
"Fuck." Dean sucks in a sharp breath. There's no way he's hearing this right, no way at all. "Cas, I -- "
"I enjoy hearing you think about me. I just thought you should know that I can."
Dean wraps his hand around his dick again, unable to stop himself now, not with Cas' voice rumbling in his ear, not with Cas saying that he likes listening to Dean's dirty thoughts. He strokes himself a few times, long and slow, rubbing his thumb over the head, where he's already sticky and wet, biting his lip as he swallows the greedy noise that builds in the back of his throat when he pictures his dick in Cas' hand.
"Are you touching yourself?"
"Yeah. Sorry, I -- "
"I don't want you to stop," Cas says, his voice a little lighter, curling up at the edges like he's smiling. "Your thoughts were particularly loud last night. Do you really want me inside you?"
Dean chokes out a moan, his hips twitching off the bed, his dick pushing in and out of his fist. "Yeah, fuck. I -- yeah, I do. I want it."
"Tell me. Tell me how you want it."
"Your fingers first, your fingers and your mouth, and then you -- fuck, Cas. I can't. I'm gonna come."
"Please. I want to hear you."
Dean shivers through it, gasping into the phone as the hot tension at the base of his spine breaks and crashes over him like a wave, his toes curling and his back arching off the bed, his dick twitching hard and wet, come spurting over his hand. It takes a couple minutes for his breathing to even out, for his heart to stop beating in his throat; when he snaps back to himself he hears Cas making soft, desperate noises in his ear.
"God, Cas. Are you touching yourself?"
"Yes. I wasn't -- I wasn't going to. I'm in my car on a public street. But listening to you, I couldn't -- oh."
"How does it feel? Tell me, I want to know."
Cas moans, throaty and low. "Good. It feels -- I wish you were here. I wish it was you."
"I wish it was me, too. If I was there I'd touch you everywhere, make you come all over yourself."
Cas comes gasping Dean's name, and Dean closes his eyes, his sticky-wet fingers twisting in the bedspread.
+
It takes them two days to cover the last four hundred miles to Whitefish, two days of wretched weather and Gas & Sip cuisine and Sam slowly thawing in Dean's direction, less long silences and sideways looks, more half-smiles and smartass remarks.
Dean sends Cas about fifty text messages, most of them filthy, a few of them so filthy his face flushes as he types them out.
"Are you all right?" Sam asks, when he catches Dean chuckling at thin air at a diner in Columbia Falls. "You've been kinda -- you know."
"Yeah, Sammy. I'm fine."
When they pull up to Rufus' cabin, Cas is waiting on the front steps. His horrible car is waiting for them too, parked in a way that hogs almost all of the driveway.
"I've located the vampires," he says, tilting his head to the side. "If we hurry, we can clear the nest out before sundown."
+
Dean's stomach is rumbling by the time they get back to Rufus' place; Sam volunteers to make a food run, and Cas pushes Dean back against the wall while the Impala is still idling in the driveway. Dean is tired, exhausted in a way he can feel in his hands and feet, and they're both streaked with vampire blood, but Dean pulls him closer by the lapels of his coat and kisses him long and slow and dirty. He runs his hand over the line of Cas' jaw, knots his fingers in Cas' hair, presses his thumb to the corner of Cas' mouth as he nips at the well of Cas' lip. Cas makes beautiful noises, all throaty and deep, murmurs Dean's name into the hollow of Dean's throat.
"I can't stay," Cas says, when they're both restless and out of breath, when Dean is sucking dark kisses into Cas' neck and Cas' hand is inside Dean's jeans.
Dean slides his mouth up to Cas' cheek and pops the button on Cas' pants. "I know."
He jacks them off together, one hand curled at the back of Cas' neck and the other wrapped around both their dicks. Cas moans into it, his eyes fluttering closed and his lips moving against the corner of Dean's jaw; he slides his hand down to join Dean's, squeezing lightly, and Dean pushes up into it, the pressure and friction sparking the heat beneath Dean's skin. Cas comes first, his hot face tucked in the curve of Dean's shoulder, digging his fingers into Dean's hip, stroking Dean's dick until Dean follows him over the edge.
After, when they're both hovering at the door like awkward teenagers on a first date, and Dean is three rational thoughts away from begging Cas not to leave, Cas slowly lays his hand on Dean's arm, right where Cain's mark is hidden under his sleeve.
"Were you going to tell me?"
Dean sighs and rubs the back of his neck; he should have known this shit would start falling apart faster than he could enjoy it. "I hadn't figured out how yet. Is this -- are you angry?"
"I dislike that you've marked yourself for hell again," Cas says. He nudges at Dean's sleeve with his thumb, explores the skin around the scar with careful fingers. "I assume you had a reason."
"It's the only way I can kill Abaddon."
Cas kisses him, slow and easy and sweet. "Once she's dead, we'll find a way to remove it."
+
"Where's Cas?" Sam asks, hovering in the doorway with a sack full of diner food.
"He had to take off. Angel business."
"What kind of angel business?"
"The boring, no-humans-allowed kind," Dean says, because he's not going to mention Gadreel's name out loud when Sam finally seems to be warming a little.
Sam considers this for a minute, then shrugs and sets the bag of food on the table. "So, I heard something weird on the radio. Dead bodies, completely drained of fat."
"Fat?"
"Fat."
"That's a new one."
"What do you think?"
"It might be playing our song." Dean smiles a little; his phone is buzzing in his pocket, and Sam brought him back a burger and pie. "We can check it out in the morning."
Pairing: Castiel/Dean
Rating: NC17
Words: ~4,200
Summary:"It's not unlike prayer," Cas says slowly. "The words are directed at me, even if you only intend them for yourself."
Notes: Beware masturbation, phone sex, and complete abuse of the SPN universe's concept of prayer. I regret nothing.
[AO3]
Grantsburg is a long way from Lebanon, nearly seven hundred miles. It's the kind of haul Dean could make in one shot if he really wanted to, two cups of coffee and two stops for gas, maybe one extra breather to piss and stretch his legs, but the sun is starting to set by the time he hits Interstate 35, the sky a slow burn as it curves around Wild River State Park and stretches down toward Minneapolis. Traffic is rush hour slow, all brake lights and people anxious to get home for dinner. Everything on the radio is either static or news, and Sam hasn't said a word since he climbed into the car.
Dean takes the next off-ramp with a lodging sign, humming under his breath to break up the silence, squinting against the road dust smeared on the Impala's windshield. He'd planned on cleaning it when they fueled up down the street from Garth's, but that gas station had only been a short walk from the underpass where they'd ditched Sam's stolen Dart, and Sam had looked impatient while he'd waited for the Impala to finish drinking, ready to bolt, his arm out the window and his fingers drumming on the roof, every line in his body twisted with second thoughts. He'd accepted the orange juice Dean handed him with a grunt, let it sit in his lap until the condensation on the bottle sweated a damp patch into his jeans.
The last place on the motel-and-burger strip is a yellow and white no-tell, two rows of squat bungalows framing an empty pool; Dean parks beside the bank of weathered vending machines and doesn't complain when Sam comes back with two sets of keys.
"See you in the morning," Sam says, gruff, his bag bumping against his hip as he shoulders into his room, and Dean keeps his apologies to himself, turns away before the door closes in his face.
The inside of Dean's room is as yellow and white as the outside, the white dingy with age and cigarette smoke. The single queen bed has a slight dip in the middle, just visible under the faded, flowered bedspread, and Dean fits himself into it, exhausted and still in his clothes, staring up at the popcorn ceiling until the water stains start to blur. He can hear Sam puttering around in the next room, the squeak of his closet door, the thrum of his shower, the low murmur of his television set. Dean drifts off to the muffled, second-hand sounds of an old M*A*S*H episode; when his phone rings he's half-dreaming about hunting Abaddon through an army camp with a bent length of pipe the color of old bone, and he answers it with a grunt and his heart hammering in his chest.
"Sammy?
"Dean."
"Hey, Cas." Dean clears his throat once, twice, then sits up and rubs his hand over his face. He feels shaky and slow, his not-quite-nap still a fuzzy weight in his arms and legs. "What's up?"
"Where are you?"
"Rush City, Minnesota," Dean says, fumbling with the matchbooks on the nightstand. "Daisy Inn. Room, um -- room twelve." He's still a little sleep-drunk, enough that he looks up half expecting to find Cas standing at the foot of his bed, just like the good old days, but after a long pause he remembers that Metatron's party trick clipped everyone's wings, and Cas rumbles out a noise like he's sighing with his mouth too close to the phone. "What about you?"
"Gillette, Wyoming."
"Did you find Gadreel?"
Another pause, this one brimming with frustration. "Not yet. I found a spell that allows me to track him using his name alone, but each time he disappears before I arrive at the location." He sighs again, and the sound rattles in Dean's ear like laundry dancing on a clothesline. "I'm not -- I don't enjoy driving the way you do."
"You must be doing it wrong," Dean says, his voice creaky at the edges, bending around a yawn. Cas probably drives like a stiff, his hands at ten and two and his back as straight as a board. "You still riding around in that hooptie?"
"It gets the job done," Cas replies, and Dean rolls onto his side, falls asleep listening to Cas complain about the traffic on Interstate 90.
+
They have a Fuel & Go breakfast, stale bagels and coffee thick enough to chew. Dean warms his hands around the orange and brown cup as a gust of wind whips through the parking lot; he has a dull headache behind his eyes and his feet hurt from him falling asleep in his boots.
"Here," Sam says, breaking twenty minutes of near silence by tossing a wrinkled Grand Forks Herald on the Impala's trunk. "Three teenagers were chased out of a cemetery by a floating white figure."
The article is six days old and reads like a slumber party story -- strange noises, dark shadows, disembodied voices, eerie fogs. Dean stares at it for a minute, then shrugs and chokes down the rest of his coffee.
"What about it?"
"We should check it out."
North Dakota is three hundred miles north and west when the Impala is already pointed south, and haunted boneyards are usually frat-boy pranks or local kids mixing their mushrooms with malt liquor, but Dean looks over at Sam and his arguments die before he really opens his mouth. Sam is watching the cars up on the highway, his head tilted to the side, just like when they were kids, when they were stuck on long, boring, backwoods drives, nothing to look at but trees and empty fields, and Sam would perk up at every car they passed, excited for the distraction, elbowing Dean in the side as he pointed it out and making up stories about the people inside, how they were going home to their normal houses and their normal lives.
"All right," Dean says. "Let's hit the road."
+
They stop for a motel just south of Grand Forks in Thompson. Sam asks for two singles again, leaning his elbows on the counter as the manager sorts out the paperwork and keys, and Dean lets it go, even though they're down to about eighty in cash and a credit card nearing its two thousand dollar limit. Dean's room is frontier chic, a horse blanket on the bed and a deer head above the door, and Dean tosses his duffel on the dresser without bothering to unpack.
The cemetery really is haunted, but it turns out to be the quickest, easiest salt-and-burn they've had in years. It's only one spirit, and she rises up out of her own grave before attacking them; Sam keeps watch with a shotgun and Dean digs up the corpse, and an hour later they're back on County Highway 81 and headed for the motel. Dean pops Led Zeppelin III into the tape deck, hums along to Gallows Pole as the cemetery shrinks in the rearview mirror.
He says goodnight to Sam in the dark, narrow space between their doors, feeling awkward, his need for reconciliation a living thing in his chest, gnawing at everything soft beneath his ribs, but once inside he's almost grateful for the solitude. He has graveyard mud on his hands and face and his body aches from the top of his spine to the back of his knees. Rooming alone means he doesn't have to fight Sam for the shower; he can use as much hot water as he wants, and he can jerk off without stuffing his fist in his mouth to muffle the noise.
He's lazy about it at first, his hand easy and loose and his head tipped back against the dingy tiles, rubbing his thumb under the head as the water runs down his shoulders and chest, as it relaxes his sore muscles and pushes the sweat and dirt from the case down the drain. Everything is slippery and wet, just this side of perfect, and he starts working his hips, fucking roughly into his hand. He ends up thinking about Cas, which isn't a new development, just one he usually doesn't dwell on for his own sanity, but he's tired and alone and Cas is in Wyoming, driving a hideous car and acting like an angel, and Cas has a dangerous mouth, would look glorious on his knees, his lips flushed and red, stretched around Dean's dick, making filthy sounds in the back of his throat as Dean nudges in deeper, knots his hand in Cas' hair.
"Cas, fuck," Dean hisses, his thighs shaking, come splattering in the water between his feet. "Fuck, fuck."
+
The motel is attached to a greasy spoon with checkered curtains and no name; Dean orders country-fried steak and eggs, hashbrowns and a shortstack, and he eats it while plotting the trip back to the bunker, spilling syrup on the map when he misses his mouth. The morning sunlight is watery and weak, but it slices through the window at Dean's back like a knife.
Thomspon to Lebanon is about six hundred and thirty miles, most of it boring and flat, but it's a straight shot south, down Interstate 29 and US 18, and they could stop in Sioux Falls tonight, save money on a motel by crashing in Jody's guest room. Sam has talked to her on the phone once or twice, but they haven't seen her since she helped them tangle with Vesta. They could grab an early dinner at that diner Bobby had liked, get pot roast sandwiches with mashed potatoes and gravy, and afterward one of them could cruise the dives looking for a pool game, and the other could do the laundry they've both been putting off.
He should ask Sam instead of telling him, because telling him is part of what got them in this mess, why Sam keeps wasting money on separate rooms and why their car rides are full of long silences and sideways looks, but he ends up just watching Sam instead, his long hair and his ugly plaid shirt, his shoulders hunching as he frowns at his laptop. Dean leans back in his chair a little, ready to call him Samantha or crack a joke about the oatmeal and fruit combo plate he ordered for breakfast, the way he's pecking at his cantaloupe like a bird, but the feeling isn't there yet, and there's a chance it never will be. A wretched corner of Dean's brain could probably live with that as long as Sam is alive, but that's part of the problem as well, maybe the biggest part, the things he's willing to do or put up with if it keeps his brother breathing.
"Hey," Sam says, looking up just long enough to catch Dean's eyes. "Six exsanguinated bodies over the last two months."
"Where?"
"Kalispell, Montana."
Dean studies the map as he finishes his coffee. That's nine hundred miles west, and it's probably snowing up where US 2 cuts through Blackfeet Reservation and Glacier National Park, and the Impala needs a new set of chains, but they've driven farther for less trouble, and bloodless bodies that far north can't be anything but vampires. Chupacabras need warmer weather, like the Badlands and southern deserts, flat stretches with cattle ranches between the empty spaces, don't normally attack people anyway. Kalispell is only twenty or thirty minutes from Rufus' old place in Whitefish; they could always squat there for a couple of days, eating c-rations and sleeping in front of the fireplace.
+
Dean is right about the snow, only it pushes further east than he expected, meeting them before they've even covered two hundred miles, so they spend two days stranded outside Minot, sitting on their thumbs while they wait for the road crews to plow and salt the highway. The motel is a 60's psychedelic nightmare, all square furniture and avocado Formica and a heater than smells like burning hair; the storm knocks out the cable halfway through the first day, and Dean snaps late on the second, trudging over to the liquor store on the corner and blowing his last twenty on a fistful of Slim Jims and a 750 of Red Label.
The wind is so cold and thin it has teeth, sharp enough to bite through Dean's clothes, forcing him to kill the neck of the bottle as he's walking back to the motel. He's halfway thawed out by the time he gets inside, and after a couple more drinks he's feeling pretty warm, and this prompts him to knock on the door between his room and Sam's, even though it's almost midnight, blinking in confusion when Sam answers wearing tired sweats and a terrible case of bedhead. He rambles about road salt rusting the Impala's undercarriage, then blurts out a series of drunken apologies, the words all jumbled together, tripping over each other as they crowd on the tip of his tongue. Sam's face darkens like a thundercloud, his mouth pulling into the kind of tight, angry line that spells retreat, and Dean jerks the door closed before it turns into an argument, or the sort of adult conversation Dean should probably have sober and would definitely chew off his own foot to avoid.
He passes out in his clothes and boots, his face smashed into the pillow and his nosed stuffed up from the dust in the heater, wakes up gasping and confused, clutching at the polka dot bedspread, half hard from a dream about Cas fucking him back in his room at the bunker, Cas opening him up first with his fingers, his mouth open and wet against the crease of Dean's thigh as he slowly worked them in and out, then with his dick, sucking slow kisses into the hollow of Dean's throat as he inched his way in, making a low, rough noise against Dean's jaw when he finally bottomed out. In the dream Dean had been desperate for it, digging his nails into Cas' hips and begging for more in Cas' ear, his dick aching and hard, leaving a sticky trail of precome where it rode against Cas' belly, and once he wakes up a little more, takes a few deep breaths and surfaces through the whiskey-fog, he can't deny that he still is. He has turned bullshitting himself into an artform over the years, but deep down he wishes Cas was here with him now, that he could kiss Cas, push Cas down on the bed, pull Cas on top of him, something, anything.
Dean rolls onto his back, opening his jeans enough to wrap his hand around his dick, and he comes thinking about Cas sliding into him from behind, Cas' mouth at the back of his neck and Cas' hand pressed sweaty and warm to the stretch between his shoulders.
+
Cas calls their second hour on the road, sounding irritable and cold, demanding, "Where are you?" in a tone that could sharpen rusty knives.
"Fuckall, North Dakota."
"That is not a real place."
Dean turns down the radio; it's the same farm report he's heard five times, and Cas' voice is arcing like a live wire. "Hey, what's got your grace in a knot?"
"Nothing. I just want to know where you are."
"We just passed Tioga."
"Are you working a case?"
"Actually, yeah," Dean says, tucking the phone against his ear. "We're heading to Montana, to check out a possible vamp nest. If the weather holds, we'll be at Rufus' old place in two or three days."
"Fine," Cas grumbles, and hangs up in Dean's ear.
+
It starts snowing again just outside Wolf Point, hard enough that Dean finally gives in and pulls off the highway; he'd hoped to eke out another hundred miles, but visibility is nearly zero and the winds keep nudging the Impala toward the ditch. They end up in Glasgow, a tiny town that looks mostly closed up for the evening, but it has a motel and a bar, and that's all they really need to get by.
"I'll go," Sam offers, shivering outside Dean's room, the storm gusting in around him through the open door.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
Dean hesitates for a second -- of all Sam's qualms about the job, hustling for money has always bothered him the most -- then shrugs and tosses him the car keys. He isn't going to freeze his balls off if Sam is volunteering. "Okay. See you in the morning."
He pours himself a drink as the Impala rumbles out of the parking lot, then sprawls out on the bed, shaking his head as he flips through the motel's pathetic handful of channels. The porn is pay-per-view, and HBO is playing a romantic comedy about weddings, and everything else is reruns or local news. He digs his phone out of his pocket, thinking he might call Cas to pass the time, find out what Cas is doing right now, why he'd been so grumpy earlier, but that just reminds him of how Cas had sounded in his dream, needy and breathless and hoarse, Cas' lips brushing the shell of his ear, and then he's hard, his dick twitching as it pushes against his fly.
"Fucking Cas." He rubs himself through his jeans, then pops the button and zipper and slips his hand inside. "Jesus fucking Christ."
His phone rings. He answers it without looking at it, worried it's Sam calling with some kind of trouble, but then he hears Cas breathing on the other end of the line and he bites the inside of his cheek.
"Dean?"
His voice is lower than usual, rougher than a rasp, and Dean shifts on the bed, pressing down on his dick with the heel of his hand.
"Are you there, Dean?"
Dean's mouth feels dry; he has to clear his throat twice before the words will come out. "Yeah, I'm -- I'm here."
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"Dean."
"I'm just -- "
"Dean, I can hear you."
"What?"
"I can hear you, when you think about me."
Dean freezes. He still has his hand on his dick, and shame burns sourly at the back of his throat. "Fuck, Cas. I'm -- "
"It's not unlike prayer," Cas says slowly. "The words are directed at me, even if you only intend them for yourself."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm not -- "
"Is that why you called earlier?" Dean asks. He slides his hand away from his dick, twists his fingers into the fabric of his jeans. "Is that why you were angry?"
"I wasn't angry."
"Cas."
There is a short, horrible silence; Dean considers hanging up, just to put an end to it, but Cas makes a soft, thoughtful noise that digs at the heat coiled in Dean's gut. "I wasn't angry, earlier. I was frustrated because we're currently apart."
"Fuck." Dean sucks in a sharp breath. There's no way he's hearing this right, no way at all. "Cas, I -- "
"I enjoy hearing you think about me. I just thought you should know that I can."
Dean wraps his hand around his dick again, unable to stop himself now, not with Cas' voice rumbling in his ear, not with Cas saying that he likes listening to Dean's dirty thoughts. He strokes himself a few times, long and slow, rubbing his thumb over the head, where he's already sticky and wet, biting his lip as he swallows the greedy noise that builds in the back of his throat when he pictures his dick in Cas' hand.
"Are you touching yourself?"
"Yeah. Sorry, I -- "
"I don't want you to stop," Cas says, his voice a little lighter, curling up at the edges like he's smiling. "Your thoughts were particularly loud last night. Do you really want me inside you?"
Dean chokes out a moan, his hips twitching off the bed, his dick pushing in and out of his fist. "Yeah, fuck. I -- yeah, I do. I want it."
"Tell me. Tell me how you want it."
"Your fingers first, your fingers and your mouth, and then you -- fuck, Cas. I can't. I'm gonna come."
"Please. I want to hear you."
Dean shivers through it, gasping into the phone as the hot tension at the base of his spine breaks and crashes over him like a wave, his toes curling and his back arching off the bed, his dick twitching hard and wet, come spurting over his hand. It takes a couple minutes for his breathing to even out, for his heart to stop beating in his throat; when he snaps back to himself he hears Cas making soft, desperate noises in his ear.
"God, Cas. Are you touching yourself?"
"Yes. I wasn't -- I wasn't going to. I'm in my car on a public street. But listening to you, I couldn't -- oh."
"How does it feel? Tell me, I want to know."
Cas moans, throaty and low. "Good. It feels -- I wish you were here. I wish it was you."
"I wish it was me, too. If I was there I'd touch you everywhere, make you come all over yourself."
Cas comes gasping Dean's name, and Dean closes his eyes, his sticky-wet fingers twisting in the bedspread.
+
It takes them two days to cover the last four hundred miles to Whitefish, two days of wretched weather and Gas & Sip cuisine and Sam slowly thawing in Dean's direction, less long silences and sideways looks, more half-smiles and smartass remarks.
Dean sends Cas about fifty text messages, most of them filthy, a few of them so filthy his face flushes as he types them out.
"Are you all right?" Sam asks, when he catches Dean chuckling at thin air at a diner in Columbia Falls. "You've been kinda -- you know."
"Yeah, Sammy. I'm fine."
When they pull up to Rufus' cabin, Cas is waiting on the front steps. His horrible car is waiting for them too, parked in a way that hogs almost all of the driveway.
"I've located the vampires," he says, tilting his head to the side. "If we hurry, we can clear the nest out before sundown."
+
Dean's stomach is rumbling by the time they get back to Rufus' place; Sam volunteers to make a food run, and Cas pushes Dean back against the wall while the Impala is still idling in the driveway. Dean is tired, exhausted in a way he can feel in his hands and feet, and they're both streaked with vampire blood, but Dean pulls him closer by the lapels of his coat and kisses him long and slow and dirty. He runs his hand over the line of Cas' jaw, knots his fingers in Cas' hair, presses his thumb to the corner of Cas' mouth as he nips at the well of Cas' lip. Cas makes beautiful noises, all throaty and deep, murmurs Dean's name into the hollow of Dean's throat.
"I can't stay," Cas says, when they're both restless and out of breath, when Dean is sucking dark kisses into Cas' neck and Cas' hand is inside Dean's jeans.
Dean slides his mouth up to Cas' cheek and pops the button on Cas' pants. "I know."
He jacks them off together, one hand curled at the back of Cas' neck and the other wrapped around both their dicks. Cas moans into it, his eyes fluttering closed and his lips moving against the corner of Dean's jaw; he slides his hand down to join Dean's, squeezing lightly, and Dean pushes up into it, the pressure and friction sparking the heat beneath Dean's skin. Cas comes first, his hot face tucked in the curve of Dean's shoulder, digging his fingers into Dean's hip, stroking Dean's dick until Dean follows him over the edge.
After, when they're both hovering at the door like awkward teenagers on a first date, and Dean is three rational thoughts away from begging Cas not to leave, Cas slowly lays his hand on Dean's arm, right where Cain's mark is hidden under his sleeve.
"Were you going to tell me?"
Dean sighs and rubs the back of his neck; he should have known this shit would start falling apart faster than he could enjoy it. "I hadn't figured out how yet. Is this -- are you angry?"
"I dislike that you've marked yourself for hell again," Cas says. He nudges at Dean's sleeve with his thumb, explores the skin around the scar with careful fingers. "I assume you had a reason."
"It's the only way I can kill Abaddon."
Cas kisses him, slow and easy and sweet. "Once she's dead, we'll find a way to remove it."
+
"Where's Cas?" Sam asks, hovering in the doorway with a sack full of diner food.
"He had to take off. Angel business."
"What kind of angel business?"
"The boring, no-humans-allowed kind," Dean says, because he's not going to mention Gadreel's name out loud when Sam finally seems to be warming a little.
Sam considers this for a minute, then shrugs and sets the bag of food on the table. "So, I heard something weird on the radio. Dead bodies, completely drained of fat."
"Fat?"
"Fat."
"That's a new one."
"What do you think?"
"It might be playing our song." Dean smiles a little; his phone is buzzing in his pocket, and Sam brought him back a burger and pie. "We can check it out in the morning."