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spn fic: love will bring us somewhere else
Title: love will bring us somewhere else
Pairing: Castiel/Dean
Rating: PG
Words: ~2,900
Summary: Dean doesn't know why he says it, except that it's been a weird thirty-six hours, even by Winchester standards.
Notes: Episode tag; spoilers for 10x12
[AO3]
love will bring us somewhere else
Dean glances at the bus one last time before climbing into the car.
"The Royale Motel," he mutters, shaking his head.
He tells himself that Tina will be all right. The ninety-three dollars Sam gave her won't go very far, not when she's headed to a city as expensive as Los Angeles, but she's tough and determined, and she's starting over with the benefit of knowing better. She'd seemed excited about finally living someplace warm.
"It'll be fun," she has said, flashing him a crooked smile. "Hey -- maybe my next ex-husband will be a movie star."
Dean settles into the driver's seat and reaches for the radio dial.
+
He doesn't know why he says it, except that it's been a weird thirty-six hours, even by Winchester standards. He's still kind of jittery from being jerked between two different bodies, and the Mark is quiet -- quieter than it's been since the days right after the demon cure, when he'd still be riding a purified blood high.
He doesn't know why, but about four hours southeast of Pendleton he looks over at Sam and says, "I'm in love with Cas."
+
Sam chews on that for a little over five miles. They're on a dead stretch of I-84 between Boise and Twin Falls; there's nothing on the radio but a farm report that's more static than noise, and Dean fidgets in the silence, shifting in his seat and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
"Look, Sammy," he says eventually, his voice creaky with nerves. He can still taste cake and yarrow flowers in the back of his mouth. "I'm --"
"I know."
"What?"
"I know," Sam says again. "How you feel about Cas -- I know. I just never thought you'd actually admit it."
Dean shrugs and looks out the window, frowning at the green and boring Idaho landscape. He's not surprised that Sam knows, but he wonders when and how he gave himself away. He has always tried to be careful, has tried not to look at Cas too long or let too much warmth crawl over his voice when they talk, but he has loved Cas so long he can't really remember how he'd acted before -- back when Cas was just another dick angel who'd wanted him to fall in line and kiss heaven's ass.
+
They spend the night at a pink and yellow no-tell in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and they grab breakfast in the morning at a Biggerson's just off the interstate. It's the smallest Biggerson's Dean has ever seen, and it's busy as hell at eight-thirty; they end up crammed into a tiny booth alongside the server station. They don't talk much because of the noise -- the clink of dishes, the hiss of the soda machine, the constant gurgle of the industrial-sized coffee percolator -- until Sam leans across the table while Dean is pouring syrup on his pancakes and says, "He feels the same way, you know."
Dean's hand shakes a little as he sets the syrup aside.
"You do know that, right? I mean --"
"Yeah," Dean mumbles, looking away. Cas is more inscrutable than humans in some ways, but more transparent in others. After all this time, there's no way Dean couldn't know. "I -- yeah."
Sam stares at him for a second. "And you guys have never --"
"No," Dean says quickly. He stabs at his pancakes, but he isn't hungry anymore, feels a little sick. They haven't talked about it, which -- yeah. Dean knows that's cowardly, that he should at least be man enough to tell Cas it isn't going to happen, but he doesn't trust himself that far. He's not sure he'd be able to walk away once everything was out in the open. "I can't. We -- we can't."
"Why, because of the Mark?"
"That, yeah, and -- because of everything." The Mark is still quiet, but it feels restless, like it's waiting, gathering its strength. "Just -- no."
"Look, dude, our lives are bullshit," Sam says, pausing as the waitress refills their coffees. He wraps a giant, sasquatch hand around his mug after she moves on, flashing Dean a quick smile as he brings it to his mouth. "There's never going to be a good time."
+
"It might be good for you," Sam says quietly, his face yellowed by oncoming headlights. They're about an hour away from the bunker, pushing down US 183 toward the Nebraska-Kansas line. "It might help, having something to ground you."
"Maybe," Dean grumbles, doubtful and irritated at once. It's easy for Sam to say Dean can beat this thing down without having the Mark removed; he's not the one dreaming of bruised skin and broken bones, doesn't have Cain's bloodlust itching behind his teeth. "But that's not --" he clears his throat, ignores the sickly pulse on the inside of his arm, steady like a drumbeat "-- that's not --"
"Not what?"
"I can't ask him to do that," Dean snaps, leaning on the gas. He doesn't want to talk about this anymore, still can't believe he brought it up in the first place. "It wouldn't be fair."
"I'm pretty sure he'd disagree."
"Yeah, well, Cas is a stupid, stubborn sonofabitch." Dean heaves out a sigh and glances over, but Sam is looking out the window, watching the dark, misshapen shadows of Holdrege, Nebraska. "He has enough of his own problems right now." Cas' grace could go sideways at any moment, and heaven is still kind of a shitshow, although Dean is starting to think that's just situation normal upstairs. "The last thing he needs is me expecting him to babysit the next time I go off the rails."
Sam pauses for a few seconds, then says, "You always think you have to do all the work." Slowly, like he's choosing his words. If he doesn't knock it off, Dean's going to pull onto the shoulder and punch him in the face. "Relationships go both ways. You're suppose to give, but it's okay to take, too."
+
They roll into Lebanon a little after nine, which is too late to start searching for another case but too early for Dean to go to sleep. He rarely turns in before midnight, even when they aren't on a job, and he's still keyed up from the coffee he bought when they stopped for gas in North Platte, and from the constant, angry buzz of the Mark.
Dean's room is stuffy from being closed up for a week, and lore books are still strewn everywhere, stacked on the desk and dresser and floor and fanned across the center of the bed. His hunter instincts scream at him to get back to it, to keep digging until he finds something useful, but he knows there's no point. He's been over every one of them at least a hundred times.
He sits on the edge of his bed, the mattress creaking as he leans to one side to pull his phone out of his pocket. He stares down at it for a few minutes, then thinks of Tina, who got on a bus with nothing but ninety-three dollars and the belief that whatever was waiting for her at the next stop had to be better than three ex-husbands and a mountain of debt. If she can do that, he can send Cas a fucking text.
He sets his phone on the bed, tells himself he's going to go do something while he waits, maybe pour himself a drink, but Cas quickly sends him two messages in a row.
Dean sighs. He's starting to hate that fucking question.
He sets the phone down again and starts unlacing his boots; it buzzes again as he's pulling off his socks.
Dean hesitates for a second, then thumbs the buttons to dial Cas' number. He doesn't have the patience to explain such a bizarro case a handful of words at a time.
+
"Hansel and Gretel," Cas says, his voice a dull burr through the phone. It's familiar in a way that eases something anxious at the base of Dean's spine. "That's interesting."
Dean snorts. "Interesting?" He pushes some of the books to the floor so he can lie down, ends up curled on his side with the phone tucked between the pillow and his ear. "That's all you got?"
"I'm not surprised. Many of the stories humans call fairy tales are based in truth. The details have simply been embellished through centuries of telling and retelling."
Hansel had said more or less the same thing, and Dean chews on that idea for a minute, trying to think of a reality that would explain something like Rapunzel or Donkeyskin. He comes up with nothing, then realizes he's really just listening to Cas breathe. Underneath that he hears television noise, murmured voices and canned laughter.
"Where are you?" he asks.
"A motel in Woodward, Oklahoma."
"A motel?" Dean rolls over and leans up on his elbow, knocking a leftover book to the floor with his foot. "Why are you -- are you sleeping again?"
"No."
"Are you sure? You sound tired."
"Dean, I'm fine," Cas says. "This grace is still intact." He falls silent for a moment, and Dean hears shuffling on that end of the line, like Cas is kicking off his shoes or shrugging off that ugly coat. "I booked a room because I dislike hunting out of my car."
"Hunting?" Dean asks, his voice sticking in his throat. "Are you still looking for Cain?"
"Yes."
"Any luck?"
Cas sighs heavily. "Yes and no."
Dean lies back down, falls asleep listening to Cas tell him about a beekeeper he met in Sioux Falls.
+
Dean wakes to the prickle at the back of his neck that means someone else is in the room; he has his hand halfway to the knife under his pillow before he realizes it's Cas.
"Dude," he says thickly. He'd rolled onto his stomach during the night; now his face is jammed in his pillow and his phone is digging a hole in his sternum. His arm is hanging over the edge of the bed, and his wrist bumps Cas' leg as he heaves himself onto his back. "What the fuck?"
Cas smiles. "Hello, Dean."
"What are you doing here?"
"I was... in the neighborhood," Cas says, like northern Oklahoma isn't three hundred miles from the bunker. "I wanted to --"
"Check up on me?"
"Dean."
Dean sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed, wincing at the dull ache in his shoulders and back. He's stiff all over from sleeping in his clothes. "It's good to see you," he says, rubbing his hand over his face. "I'm just suprised. Last night, you sounded like you were in the middle of something."
"You said you had an idea about the Mark."
"I did?"
"Yes. Right before you started snoring."
Dean grunts. "I don't snore."
"You kinda do," Sam says from the doorway. He lurks there like a sasquatch for a couple of seconds; he has an old book open in his hands and a quirk at the corner of his mouth Dean doesn't appreciate.
"Is that it?" he asks.
"What -- oh, yeah," Sam says, passing the book to Cas. "I can't be certain, since Hansel's hex bag went up in flames with the witch, but this -- the main ingredient is yarrow flowers."
"This," Cas says, a frown pulling at his mouth as he reads, "this is a de-aging spell."
"Right." Dean stands, which puts him way too close to Cas. He can smell him, ozone and a hint of stale leather he probably picked up from driving that terrible car all across the country; he wants to kiss the skin below Cas' ear, hide his face in the curve of Cas' neck. "When Hansel kidnapped me, he hit me with some mojo that turned me into a teenager. That body didn't have the Mark."
"As far as I can tell, it's permanent unless reversed," Sam says. He takes the book back from Cas, closing it around a finger. "We wouldn't have to turn the clock back as far as Hansel did, we could just -- you know. Shave a year off. Just enough to get him into a body without the Mark."
"No," Cas says, shaking his head. "It won't work."
"What do you mean it won't work?" Dean snaps. Anger chokes up into his throat, and the Mark throbs on his arm; he sits on the bed again to give himself some space, so he doesn't -- so he doesn't. "Of course it'll work. It already did work! The Mark was gone!"
"You were in that body less than two days. Had you remained in it, it's likely the Mark would've returned."
"Likely? That's all you got?"
"Very likely."
"It was gone," Dean says, his voice rough. "It was -- I couldn't even feel it."
Cas sits on the bed beside Dean, close enough that their hips and knees bump. "Dean, this--" he gently touches Dean's sleeve "-- this isn't some base, childish witchcraft. It is a curse, and a very powerful one. It must be removed or endured. It cannot be tricked."
"Well, that's great," Dean says, shifting a little as Cas' shoulder nudges his. He wants to kiss the hollow of Cas' throat, but he also wants to hold his hand there, press down until he can feel Cas struggling to breathe. "That's all we had. Sorry you drove up here for nothing."
"Not for nothing. I have located Cain."
+
"Cain? Are you -- Cain?" In the corner of his eye, Dean catches Sam leaving -- leaving and closing the door behind him. Fucking subtle. "Did you talk to him?"
"No. I thought -- as a demon, he'll be able to sense me, what I am. I was concerned that approaching him alone would... spook him."
"Right, yeah. He isn't real big on visitors."
"I believe he would welcome a visit from you, since he --"
"Yeah," Dean says, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "He's still expecting me to kill him." Dean stands, unable to deal with Cas sitting so close, with the honest, hopeful look on his face. "I don't -- I know Metatron said the river ends at it source or whatever, but I doubt Cain knows how to remove it. I mean -- if he did, he would've removed it from himself hundreds of years ago."
"You're right," Cas says, the bed creaking as he turns sideways, facing Dean where he's pacing in front of the dresser. "If Cain knew how to remove it, he wouldn't have carried it as long as he did. But we still should -- if you talk to him, he can at least tell you how he learned to live with it."
Dean pauses, his hands clenching at his sides. He feels anxious and angry at once, ready to fight and unable to breathe. "I know how he lived with it," he says, the Mark thrumming as he forces the words out. "He -- he told me, the day he gave it to me."
"What? He -- how?"
"Apparently, he fell in love." It sounds ridiculous when Dean says it out loud; he can't turn around, can't look Cas in the eye. "Colette -- her name was Colette. She knew who he was, but she didn't care as long as he behaved himself. So he stopped killing. Even after she died, he -- he just stopped."
"And that was enough?"
"For him? I guess, yeah."
The bed creaks again; Dean only jumps a little when a hand squeezes his shoulder. "Dean."
"Don't. I -- don't."
"Dean, look at me."
Dean takes a deep breath, then another. The Royale Motel. Ninety-three dollars. Maybe my next ex-husband will be a movie star. If Tina could get on that bus, Dean can look at the guy he's been in love with for the last five years.
Cas stares at Dean for a couple seconds, all wide, blue eyes and disheveled hair, then grabs Dean's face in both hands and kisses him. It's soft and sweet but also a little dirty, and Dean leans into it, fists his hand in the front of Cas' coat before he finally makes himself pull away.
"We can't -- we're not doing this."
"Why not?" Cas asks, cocking his head to the side in a way that reminds Dean of the apocalypse days. "I want it. You want it."
Dean does want it, and the Mark is screaming for him to take it, to do it hard and fast, to shove Cas down on the bed, leave bite marks and bruises behind.
"I could hurt you."
"You can't."
"I might try."
Cas is still holding Dean's face; he strokes his thumb over Dean's lips, and it's all Dean can do not to kiss it, suck it into his mouth. "You won't. Your brother is right -- you are strong enough to beat this. Let me help you."
"Cas," Dean says, something horrible gnawing at the center of his chest. Cas' faith in him has always confused and terrified him; this is no exception. "It's not fair. I can't ask you to --"
"You're not asking. I'm offering." He kisses Dean again, light and quick, then pulls back a little, slides one hand down until it's resting over Dean's heart. "Do you remember the day we met?"
Dean snorts out a shaky laugh. "Of course. You nearly burned down that barn with your fucking light show."
"I asked you if you thought you deserved to be saved."
"I didn't," Dean admits, ducking his head. "I still don't."
Cas smiles. "I didn't listen to you then. What makes you think I'm going to listen to you now?"
Pairing: Castiel/Dean
Rating: PG
Words: ~2,900
Summary: Dean doesn't know why he says it, except that it's been a weird thirty-six hours, even by Winchester standards.
Notes: Episode tag; spoilers for 10x12
[AO3]
Dean glances at the bus one last time before climbing into the car.
"The Royale Motel," he mutters, shaking his head.
He tells himself that Tina will be all right. The ninety-three dollars Sam gave her won't go very far, not when she's headed to a city as expensive as Los Angeles, but she's tough and determined, and she's starting over with the benefit of knowing better. She'd seemed excited about finally living someplace warm.
"It'll be fun," she has said, flashing him a crooked smile. "Hey -- maybe my next ex-husband will be a movie star."
Dean settles into the driver's seat and reaches for the radio dial.
+
He doesn't know why he says it, except that it's been a weird thirty-six hours, even by Winchester standards. He's still kind of jittery from being jerked between two different bodies, and the Mark is quiet -- quieter than it's been since the days right after the demon cure, when he'd still be riding a purified blood high.
He doesn't know why, but about four hours southeast of Pendleton he looks over at Sam and says, "I'm in love with Cas."
+
Sam chews on that for a little over five miles. They're on a dead stretch of I-84 between Boise and Twin Falls; there's nothing on the radio but a farm report that's more static than noise, and Dean fidgets in the silence, shifting in his seat and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
"Look, Sammy," he says eventually, his voice creaky with nerves. He can still taste cake and yarrow flowers in the back of his mouth. "I'm --"
"I know."
"What?"
"I know," Sam says again. "How you feel about Cas -- I know. I just never thought you'd actually admit it."
Dean shrugs and looks out the window, frowning at the green and boring Idaho landscape. He's not surprised that Sam knows, but he wonders when and how he gave himself away. He has always tried to be careful, has tried not to look at Cas too long or let too much warmth crawl over his voice when they talk, but he has loved Cas so long he can't really remember how he'd acted before -- back when Cas was just another dick angel who'd wanted him to fall in line and kiss heaven's ass.
+
They spend the night at a pink and yellow no-tell in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and they grab breakfast in the morning at a Biggerson's just off the interstate. It's the smallest Biggerson's Dean has ever seen, and it's busy as hell at eight-thirty; they end up crammed into a tiny booth alongside the server station. They don't talk much because of the noise -- the clink of dishes, the hiss of the soda machine, the constant gurgle of the industrial-sized coffee percolator -- until Sam leans across the table while Dean is pouring syrup on his pancakes and says, "He feels the same way, you know."
Dean's hand shakes a little as he sets the syrup aside.
"You do know that, right? I mean --"
"Yeah," Dean mumbles, looking away. Cas is more inscrutable than humans in some ways, but more transparent in others. After all this time, there's no way Dean couldn't know. "I -- yeah."
Sam stares at him for a second. "And you guys have never --"
"No," Dean says quickly. He stabs at his pancakes, but he isn't hungry anymore, feels a little sick. They haven't talked about it, which -- yeah. Dean knows that's cowardly, that he should at least be man enough to tell Cas it isn't going to happen, but he doesn't trust himself that far. He's not sure he'd be able to walk away once everything was out in the open. "I can't. We -- we can't."
"Why, because of the Mark?"
"That, yeah, and -- because of everything." The Mark is still quiet, but it feels restless, like it's waiting, gathering its strength. "Just -- no."
"Look, dude, our lives are bullshit," Sam says, pausing as the waitress refills their coffees. He wraps a giant, sasquatch hand around his mug after she moves on, flashing Dean a quick smile as he brings it to his mouth. "There's never going to be a good time."
+
"It might be good for you," Sam says quietly, his face yellowed by oncoming headlights. They're about an hour away from the bunker, pushing down US 183 toward the Nebraska-Kansas line. "It might help, having something to ground you."
"Maybe," Dean grumbles, doubtful and irritated at once. It's easy for Sam to say Dean can beat this thing down without having the Mark removed; he's not the one dreaming of bruised skin and broken bones, doesn't have Cain's bloodlust itching behind his teeth. "But that's not --" he clears his throat, ignores the sickly pulse on the inside of his arm, steady like a drumbeat "-- that's not --"
"Not what?"
"I can't ask him to do that," Dean snaps, leaning on the gas. He doesn't want to talk about this anymore, still can't believe he brought it up in the first place. "It wouldn't be fair."
"I'm pretty sure he'd disagree."
"Yeah, well, Cas is a stupid, stubborn sonofabitch." Dean heaves out a sigh and glances over, but Sam is looking out the window, watching the dark, misshapen shadows of Holdrege, Nebraska. "He has enough of his own problems right now." Cas' grace could go sideways at any moment, and heaven is still kind of a shitshow, although Dean is starting to think that's just situation normal upstairs. "The last thing he needs is me expecting him to babysit the next time I go off the rails."
Sam pauses for a few seconds, then says, "You always think you have to do all the work." Slowly, like he's choosing his words. If he doesn't knock it off, Dean's going to pull onto the shoulder and punch him in the face. "Relationships go both ways. You're suppose to give, but it's okay to take, too."
+
They roll into Lebanon a little after nine, which is too late to start searching for another case but too early for Dean to go to sleep. He rarely turns in before midnight, even when they aren't on a job, and he's still keyed up from the coffee he bought when they stopped for gas in North Platte, and from the constant, angry buzz of the Mark.
Dean's room is stuffy from being closed up for a week, and lore books are still strewn everywhere, stacked on the desk and dresser and floor and fanned across the center of the bed. His hunter instincts scream at him to get back to it, to keep digging until he finds something useful, but he knows there's no point. He's been over every one of them at least a hundred times.
He sits on the edge of his bed, the mattress creaking as he leans to one side to pull his phone out of his pocket. He stares down at it for a few minutes, then thinks of Tina, who got on a bus with nothing but ninety-three dollars and the belief that whatever was waiting for her at the next stop had to be better than three ex-husbands and a mountain of debt. If she can do that, he can send Cas a fucking text.
He sets his phone on the bed, tells himself he's going to go do something while he waits, maybe pour himself a drink, but Cas quickly sends him two messages in a row.
Dean sighs. He's starting to hate that fucking question.
He sets the phone down again and starts unlacing his boots; it buzzes again as he's pulling off his socks.
Dean hesitates for a second, then thumbs the buttons to dial Cas' number. He doesn't have the patience to explain such a bizarro case a handful of words at a time.
+
"Hansel and Gretel," Cas says, his voice a dull burr through the phone. It's familiar in a way that eases something anxious at the base of Dean's spine. "That's interesting."
Dean snorts. "Interesting?" He pushes some of the books to the floor so he can lie down, ends up curled on his side with the phone tucked between the pillow and his ear. "That's all you got?"
"I'm not surprised. Many of the stories humans call fairy tales are based in truth. The details have simply been embellished through centuries of telling and retelling."
Hansel had said more or less the same thing, and Dean chews on that idea for a minute, trying to think of a reality that would explain something like Rapunzel or Donkeyskin. He comes up with nothing, then realizes he's really just listening to Cas breathe. Underneath that he hears television noise, murmured voices and canned laughter.
"Where are you?" he asks.
"A motel in Woodward, Oklahoma."
"A motel?" Dean rolls over and leans up on his elbow, knocking a leftover book to the floor with his foot. "Why are you -- are you sleeping again?"
"No."
"Are you sure? You sound tired."
"Dean, I'm fine," Cas says. "This grace is still intact." He falls silent for a moment, and Dean hears shuffling on that end of the line, like Cas is kicking off his shoes or shrugging off that ugly coat. "I booked a room because I dislike hunting out of my car."
"Hunting?" Dean asks, his voice sticking in his throat. "Are you still looking for Cain?"
"Yes."
"Any luck?"
Cas sighs heavily. "Yes and no."
Dean lies back down, falls asleep listening to Cas tell him about a beekeeper he met in Sioux Falls.
+
Dean wakes to the prickle at the back of his neck that means someone else is in the room; he has his hand halfway to the knife under his pillow before he realizes it's Cas.
"Dude," he says thickly. He'd rolled onto his stomach during the night; now his face is jammed in his pillow and his phone is digging a hole in his sternum. His arm is hanging over the edge of the bed, and his wrist bumps Cas' leg as he heaves himself onto his back. "What the fuck?"
Cas smiles. "Hello, Dean."
"What are you doing here?"
"I was... in the neighborhood," Cas says, like northern Oklahoma isn't three hundred miles from the bunker. "I wanted to --"
"Check up on me?"
"Dean."
Dean sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed, wincing at the dull ache in his shoulders and back. He's stiff all over from sleeping in his clothes. "It's good to see you," he says, rubbing his hand over his face. "I'm just suprised. Last night, you sounded like you were in the middle of something."
"You said you had an idea about the Mark."
"I did?"
"Yes. Right before you started snoring."
Dean grunts. "I don't snore."
"You kinda do," Sam says from the doorway. He lurks there like a sasquatch for a couple of seconds; he has an old book open in his hands and a quirk at the corner of his mouth Dean doesn't appreciate.
"Is that it?" he asks.
"What -- oh, yeah," Sam says, passing the book to Cas. "I can't be certain, since Hansel's hex bag went up in flames with the witch, but this -- the main ingredient is yarrow flowers."
"This," Cas says, a frown pulling at his mouth as he reads, "this is a de-aging spell."
"Right." Dean stands, which puts him way too close to Cas. He can smell him, ozone and a hint of stale leather he probably picked up from driving that terrible car all across the country; he wants to kiss the skin below Cas' ear, hide his face in the curve of Cas' neck. "When Hansel kidnapped me, he hit me with some mojo that turned me into a teenager. That body didn't have the Mark."
"As far as I can tell, it's permanent unless reversed," Sam says. He takes the book back from Cas, closing it around a finger. "We wouldn't have to turn the clock back as far as Hansel did, we could just -- you know. Shave a year off. Just enough to get him into a body without the Mark."
"No," Cas says, shaking his head. "It won't work."
"What do you mean it won't work?" Dean snaps. Anger chokes up into his throat, and the Mark throbs on his arm; he sits on the bed again to give himself some space, so he doesn't -- so he doesn't. "Of course it'll work. It already did work! The Mark was gone!"
"You were in that body less than two days. Had you remained in it, it's likely the Mark would've returned."
"Likely? That's all you got?"
"Very likely."
"It was gone," Dean says, his voice rough. "It was -- I couldn't even feel it."
Cas sits on the bed beside Dean, close enough that their hips and knees bump. "Dean, this--" he gently touches Dean's sleeve "-- this isn't some base, childish witchcraft. It is a curse, and a very powerful one. It must be removed or endured. It cannot be tricked."
"Well, that's great," Dean says, shifting a little as Cas' shoulder nudges his. He wants to kiss the hollow of Cas' throat, but he also wants to hold his hand there, press down until he can feel Cas struggling to breathe. "That's all we had. Sorry you drove up here for nothing."
"Not for nothing. I have located Cain."
+
"Cain? Are you -- Cain?" In the corner of his eye, Dean catches Sam leaving -- leaving and closing the door behind him. Fucking subtle. "Did you talk to him?"
"No. I thought -- as a demon, he'll be able to sense me, what I am. I was concerned that approaching him alone would... spook him."
"Right, yeah. He isn't real big on visitors."
"I believe he would welcome a visit from you, since he --"
"Yeah," Dean says, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "He's still expecting me to kill him." Dean stands, unable to deal with Cas sitting so close, with the honest, hopeful look on his face. "I don't -- I know Metatron said the river ends at it source or whatever, but I doubt Cain knows how to remove it. I mean -- if he did, he would've removed it from himself hundreds of years ago."
"You're right," Cas says, the bed creaking as he turns sideways, facing Dean where he's pacing in front of the dresser. "If Cain knew how to remove it, he wouldn't have carried it as long as he did. But we still should -- if you talk to him, he can at least tell you how he learned to live with it."
Dean pauses, his hands clenching at his sides. He feels anxious and angry at once, ready to fight and unable to breathe. "I know how he lived with it," he says, the Mark thrumming as he forces the words out. "He -- he told me, the day he gave it to me."
"What? He -- how?"
"Apparently, he fell in love." It sounds ridiculous when Dean says it out loud; he can't turn around, can't look Cas in the eye. "Colette -- her name was Colette. She knew who he was, but she didn't care as long as he behaved himself. So he stopped killing. Even after she died, he -- he just stopped."
"And that was enough?"
"For him? I guess, yeah."
The bed creaks again; Dean only jumps a little when a hand squeezes his shoulder. "Dean."
"Don't. I -- don't."
"Dean, look at me."
Dean takes a deep breath, then another. The Royale Motel. Ninety-three dollars. Maybe my next ex-husband will be a movie star. If Tina could get on that bus, Dean can look at the guy he's been in love with for the last five years.
Cas stares at Dean for a couple seconds, all wide, blue eyes and disheveled hair, then grabs Dean's face in both hands and kisses him. It's soft and sweet but also a little dirty, and Dean leans into it, fists his hand in the front of Cas' coat before he finally makes himself pull away.
"We can't -- we're not doing this."
"Why not?" Cas asks, cocking his head to the side in a way that reminds Dean of the apocalypse days. "I want it. You want it."
Dean does want it, and the Mark is screaming for him to take it, to do it hard and fast, to shove Cas down on the bed, leave bite marks and bruises behind.
"I could hurt you."
"You can't."
"I might try."
Cas is still holding Dean's face; he strokes his thumb over Dean's lips, and it's all Dean can do not to kiss it, suck it into his mouth. "You won't. Your brother is right -- you are strong enough to beat this. Let me help you."
"Cas," Dean says, something horrible gnawing at the center of his chest. Cas' faith in him has always confused and terrified him; this is no exception. "It's not fair. I can't ask you to --"
"You're not asking. I'm offering." He kisses Dean again, light and quick, then pulls back a little, slides one hand down until it's resting over Dean's heart. "Do you remember the day we met?"
Dean snorts out a shaky laugh. "Of course. You nearly burned down that barn with your fucking light show."
"I asked you if you thought you deserved to be saved."
"I didn't," Dean admits, ducking his head. "I still don't."
Cas smiles. "I didn't listen to you then. What makes you think I'm going to listen to you now?"