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Say rather, I am no one, or an atom,
Say rather, two great gods, in a vault of starlight,
Play ponderingly at chess, and at the game's end
One of the pieces, shaken, falls to the floor
And runs to the darkest corner; and that piece
Forgotten there, left motionless, is I . . .Tetélestai, Conraid Aiken
Dean hits the wall with a tremendous crack, pain slamming into him like a freight train. He can hear Cas screaming his name, can hear Sam cursing and yelling for Cas to be careful, but the sound is distant and awash with static. He gapes up at the ceiling, throat convulsing as his stomach recoils from the pain. Even flat on his back, the room is tilting wildly. Each staccato breath is a knife through his ribs, cracking them open one by one.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dean can see the brilliant flash of white of Castiel’s borrowed grace as he blasts one of the ghouls backwards. There were an even dozen of them in the warehouse when they’d arrived, expecting three or four at the most. They’d been unprepared, reckless, overconfident—ghouls are scavengers, damn it, not true predators. And now they’re paying the price—Sam with a horrendous slash across his chest and a sprained, if not broken, wrist, and Cas getting torn to shreds because the son of a bitch still thinks he’s invincible even though he’s fading, even though his bank-loan grace is burning him out.
Dean slides his palms along the floor until he finds his bowie, fingers slipping along the blood-soaked blade before curving around the handle. He goes to prop himself up on one elbow, and just barely manages to choke back a scream when fire alights along the curve of his ribs. “Fuck,” he gasps, vision blurring. He has to take several long, shallow breaths to steady himself before he can muster up the strength to push himself up into a seated position. This time, when agony flares along his ribcage, Dean grits his teeth and rides it out. He’s had worse—he’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.
Bracing one palm against the wall, Dean manages to get his knees underneath him, and then his feet. When he finally manages to stagger upright, he has just enough of a warning before a ghoul lunges at him to get the blade up between them. The thing shrieks at him, breath foul with the scent of decaying flesh, hands coming up to slam Dean’s shoulders back into the wall. Dean does shout, then, vision going momentarily white as his ribs flare with agony. As the ghoul leans in, mouth open and filled with sharp teeth, Dean flips his handle on the bowie and rams it upwards, through the ghoul’s ribcage, into its heart. It shrieks in pain, human features twisting, and stumbles backwards; and Dean yanks the knife free before slicing it across the ghoul’s neck, ribs screaming, putting enough power behind the hit to take the ghoul’s head cleanly off.
Dean stumbles a little when he pushes the thing away from himself, panting heavily. The pain makes him gag briefly, throat convulsing, but he leans back against the wall and gets himself under control. He’s had worse. He’s had much, much worse.
“Sam!” Dean hears Cas shout, and his eyes snap open (when had they closed?). Sam’s pinned down by one of the bastards, his machete knocked several feet from his grasping hand. Cas is too far away to help, forty feet across the warehouse and struggling with two of the ghouls himself.
Dean launches himself across the warehouse with a sound like a roar, something that bubbles up in the cavity of his chest and burns his ribs. The ghoul shrieks when Dean slams into it, hands scrabbling at Dean’s back. Dean pins it down, one knee pressed on its belly, and brings his blade down—once, twice, three times, blood splattering across his face and lips, his bared teeth. Its entire body jerks as the spinal column is separated and the head rolls free.
The warehouse seems all of a sudden very quiet, still except for the heavy thudding of Dean’s heart in his ears. “Dean,” Cas says gently, and when Dean looks up from the gore Cas is crouched next to him, blue eyes huge and worried. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” Dean rasps. He struggles to his knees, taking Castiel’s offered hand to help haul himself upwards. He swallows back the moan that wants to rip out of him, his ribs throbbing with white-hot pain. “Sam?”
“I’m okay,” Sam says. Dean turns to look at him, letting go of Castiel’s hand and flexing his fingers to banish the sudden cold. The long slash across his chest is still bleeding sluggishly, and there’s a rash of abrasions on his forehead and cheekbone, but he’s standing, balancing on his own two feet. “You hit that wall pretty hard, man—are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” Dean snaps, and he points at Sam’s wrist, which is quickly swelling up. “Broken?”
“Just sprained, I think,” Sam says. “I’ll bind it, it’ll be fine—I just need you to stitch me up.”
“Let me heal you,” Cas starts, and both Sam and Dean say, at the exact same time, “No fucking way.” Cas actually startles, mouth parting as if he’s going to protest, but Dean shakes his head tiredly.
“No way, man—you’re falling apart as it is, you’re not expending that sorta energy. You keep the grace for emergencies, that’s it.”
Cas grimaces, eyes squinting into a glare. But Dean’s firm on this, and Cas knows it—they’ve argued about it enough in the last few weeks for Cas to know Dean’s not gonna budge. Just in case, Dean shoots him a pointed look as he says, “We’ll get back to the motel and stitch you up, bandage your wrist, and you’ll be good to go. And then I’m taking a fucking shower, because I am disgusting.”
They torch the place before they head back to the motel, spilling accelerant liberally over the bodies before flicking down a Bic at the doorway and watching the entire warehouse light up. It’s abandoned and in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere, so it’ll likely burn uninterrupted until there’s nothing left but ash.
Every breath Dean takes is agony, but he keeps his mouth shut and tries to keep the grimace off his face. Sam’s starting to get dizzy with blood loss despite the torn flannel they’ve tied around his chest as a field bandage, and Cas—although he’s healed by now—is covered in blood, both his own and the ghouls’, and his face is white with exhaustion. They’ve got enough to handle without Dean whining about what’s probably just a couple of bruised ribs.
Once they get back to the hotel, Dean wastes no time in crushing up several acetaminophen pills into a glass of water and handing it to Sam to swallow down in one long go. He takes several swigs of whiskey for himself and downs a few Advil before finding the needle and thread. Stitching up Sammy is second-nature at this point, but even so, halfway through his hands start to shake too badly for him to continue. Adrenaline crash, Dean thinks dully, so he hands off the materials to Cas and lets him finish patching Sam up. Castiel’s stitches are neat and tight. Professional. Dean can’t help but feel a little proud.
After they finish taking care of Sam, he yawns, big and loud, and says he’s going to bed. They’d gotten two attached rooms, one queen in each; ever since this … thing with Cas started, Sam’s insisted.
The door clicks behind Sam and then they’re alone, just like that, Dean sprawled out on the bed and trying not to breathe too deeply, Cas sitting perched on the edge in just his white button-up, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Sometime between them getting in the Impala and Sam leaving to his room, he’s cleaned himself off; he’s just as pristine and rumpled as he ever is. They sit in silence for a few minutes, breathing the same air. Then, very quietly, Cas says, “I was … when you hit the wall. I was—frightened. You weren’t moving.”
“Yeah, getting the breath knocked outta you always throws you for a spin,” Dean says. Speaking makes his ribs ache. He reaches out blindly and settles his hand on Castiel’s knee. After a moment, Cas sets his hand down on top of Dean’s, feather-light. After all this, he still doesn’t have callouses.
Dean sighs and forces himself upright in one quick movement. The pain, delegated to a low throbbing, comes back with a roar, and Dean chokes on a whimper.
“Dean?” Cas asks, alarm in his voice. He squeezes Dean’s hand, leans in close to him. “Are you alright?”
“Just a little bruised,” Dean says, grimacing. “It’s no big deal, just—I’ll be a little sore for a few days.”
Cas gave him a flat look, one eyebrow raised. “Are you lying to me? Because you do have a tendency to minimize your own pain.”
Dean rolls his eyes, ignoring the prickle of guilt at the base of his throat. “Seriously, man—I’m okay. Promise.” On an impulse, he leans forward and, ignoring the pain stabbing at his ribs, pressing his lips to Castiel’s, once, twice, then again. “I’m gonna take a shower,” he says when he draws away. “D’you mind cleaning the blades? Then we can get some sleep—I’m fucking exhausted.”
Castiel’s mouth tightens, but after a moment he sighs and lifts Dean’s hand to his lips. After he kisses Dean’s knuckles, as soft and careful as butterflies alighting on flower petals, he murmurs, “Alright.” And then, a wry smile twisting his mouth, he adds, “You reek.”
“Asshole,” Dean says, but he punctuates it by kissing Cas on the forehead before standing. The pain washes over him like a wave, but he’s used to it at this point—he can ignore it. He stops by his duffel, open on the armchair, and scoops out a fresh pair of boxers and a soft t-shirt to change into after he’s done.
It takes Dean longer than he thought it would to get undressed. His jeans and boots are relatively painless, though bending over makes Dean grit his teeth. Taking his shirt off is trickier—raising his arms to bring it over his head makes him gasp out loud, squeezing his eyes tightly shut as if he can force the pain away. He struggles with it for a long minute before he manages to drop the stained shirt on the floor. He eyes it, frowning a little; the blood’s probably set for too long for the stains to ever come out. Damnit—he’d fucking liked that shirt, too.
Something dark catches his eye, and Dean turns his head, frown deepening. Once he catches sight of the mirror, he freezes, eyes widening. His right side is a massive swathe of purple-black, solidly bruised from just below his armpit to the base of his rib cage. Hell, by the looks of it, he’s broken at least one rib—and if Cas knew, the self-sacrificial idiot would try to heal him, even though his grace is rotting him from the inside. “Awesome,” Dean mutters. “Just fucking awesome.”
At least, he thinks as he steps under the spray of the shower a minute later, the water pressure’s not bad.
Dean emerges from the shower fifteen minutes later, confident that he’s managed to get every particle of dried blood and gore off from his skin. He brushes his teeth to get rid of the last of the salt-laden taste of blood, then pulls on his boxers and grits his teeth through putting his t-shirt on. He fills the tub partway with cold water and dumps his dirty clothes in. He doubts it’ll do anything to get the stains out, but, hell, he can try.
Cas has finished with the blades and is turning down the covers of the bed when Dean steps out from the bathroom. He’s dressed in a pair of Dean’s boxers and an old AC/DC shirt that’s so stretched-out that it slips well past Castiel’s collarbone. The strip of bare skin is tantalizing, so soft that Dean itches to reach out and stroke his fingers along the jut of bone, then follow the path with his mouth. He forgets, just for a moment, how heavy his eyelids are.
Cas notices him looking, and smiles, just a little upward quirk of the corners of his mouth. His cheeks even go a little pink.
“Hey,” Dean says, padding closer. Cas’s smile twitches up into a grin before he ducks his head and straightens his face, then looks back up at Dean more solemnly.
“Hey, yourself,” he says, and Dean chuckles a little before reaching out and reeling Cas in by his shoulder, pressing his forehead against Cas’s and breathing against his mouth. Cas shivers lightly against him, hands coming up to curl gently around Dean’s bare biceps. Dean nudges Cas’s nose with his own, ghosting his lips across Cas’s cheek. This close, he has to lean down to kiss Cas; not much, just a little, but it ignites a warm thrill in Dean’s belly anyway. His ribs protest sharply, but they fade back to a dull throb soon enough.
“Bed?” Cas murmurs against his lips after they’ve separated, mouths close enough to share breath.
Dean sweeps his hand up and down Cas’s arm once before nodding and stepping back. “If you steal all my covers again, I will make you sleep on the floor.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cas says primly. Dean has to hide his smile behind his hand.
Cas turns off the lights as Dean gets into bed, groaning a little as his ribs twinge. Sleeping on his side is out of the question, so he tries to get comfortable on his back. He misses his mattress at home; the motel bed is too hard, kind of lumpy, and it makes his ribs flare up in pain. No use complaining, though—there’s nothing he can do about a broken rib, and like hell will he let Cas try to heal him.
He waits for Cas to lie down at his side, but instead Cas comes over to his side of the bed and climbs on top of Dean, knees slotting on either side of Dean’s hips. His hands rest lightly on Dean’s stomach, thumb smoothing over the material of his shirt. He’s not resting his weight on Dean just yet, is hovering a few inches above his lap, but Dean’s cock gives an interested twitch anyway.
Dean huffs a laugh, ignoring the sharp flare of pain in his ribs as he does so. “Am I getting a reward for something?” he teases, sliding his hands gently along Castiel’s thighs until his thumbs are pressed against his hipbones. He slips his thumbs underneath Cas’s shirt, marveling at the silk-soft texture of his skin.
“You scared me today,” Cas says quietly, blue eyes dark and solemn. “I know you try to make jokes about it, but—I worry. I always worry. You are my friend, and my—my partner? And with the mark, you’re taking risks you didn’t used to—you’re being reckless, and if you get hurt—Dean, I can’t protect you the way I used to.”
“Hey,” Dean says, “listen to me. Stupid shit happens on hunts, okay? We make mistakes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been thrown into walls over the years—seriously, it’s a lot. But I promise, I’m not taking any more risks than I have to. I’ve got you and Sam to look after. I’m not going anywhere.”
Cas sighs, long and low. Then he leans down, down to brush his lips against Dean’s, mouth parting when Dean sucks at his lower lip. When Dean slips his tongue past the seam of Cas’s lips, flicking it slow and dark against the sweetness of his mouth, Cas settles himself onto Dean’s lap, grinding down in one sinuous move that makes Dean gasp and jerk his hips up.
“You are a miracle,”Cas murmurs against his lips. He rolls his hips forward, slowly, slowly, half-hard cock pressing firmly against Dean’s own. “A gift. And you are so … important. To me. To Sam.”
“Please don’t mention my baby brother when you’re practically friggin’ humping me,” Dean mutters. He hooks one hand around the back of Cas’s neck and draws him back in, drinking in the taste of him. Cas huffs against his mouth but falls silent. He keeps rocking against Dean, coaxing Dean into hardness. Warmth is pooling in Dean’s lower belly, a low simmer of pleasure that makes Dean groan in appreciation. Cas shifts atop him, arcing his back as he lifts one hand to his mouth. His eyes lock onto Dean’s as he swipes his tongue across his palm, long and slow. The display makes Dean ache: the intent in Castiel’s eyes, the movement of his tongue, the soft quirk of his mouth.
Cas reaches down between them and kneads Dean’s cock through his boxers, making Dean’s head fall back with a curse, before slipping past the slit in the front. He runs his hand along Dean’s length, first just the fingertips, then more solidly with his palm. “Oh, fuck,” Dean whimpers as Cas begins to stroke him, tighter at the base and loosening near the tip, thumb pressing at the sensitive underside of his head.
Cas shifts his weight, settling further back on Dean’s lap to give himself more room to work. His free hand trails up from Dean’s stomach, along Dean’s ribs—and Dean has to bite back a pained moan at that—before settling on Dean’s shoulder. “Can I suck you?” Cas asks, and Dean almost chokes. He asks it like it would be an honor, like Dean would be doing him a favor by letting him stick Dean’s dick in his mouth.
“Please,” Dean gasps, and Cas’s eyes gleam momentarily before he ducks down to kiss Dean again, messily this time, with too much tongue. He tightens his grip on Dean’s cock, quickens his pace so that all Dean can feel is tight, slightly-too-dry pressure and pleasure rolling in waves behind his eyes. Cas shifts again, hand tightening on Dean’s shoulder to steady himself before trailing down, curving around the breadth of Dean’s ribcage—
“FUCK!” Dean yelps, back arching as his ribs explode with pain. His vision goes black and nausea surges in his stomach, crawling up his throat. Cas practically leaps off him, knee colliding sharply with Dean’s right side as he tries to give Dean space, and this time Dean does gag, feeling the sharp acidity of bile burning at the back of his throat. His ribs are on fire, swallowing him whole with the pain of it, he’s drowning in it—
And then there’s a sharp crack, the strange feeling of his insides rearranging themselves, a surge of briefly terrible agony before the pain retreats as if it were never there. Dean lies gasping on his back, heart hammering with the memory of the pain, staring up at the ceiling before Cas’s furious face appears in his vision.
“Damn it, Dean!” Cas snaps, hauling him upright so fast their foreheads almost collide. “You told me you were okay.”
“It was just a couple of cracked ribs, I was fine—”
“You were not fine, you had four broken ribs, you reckless, stupid man, you aggravating—infuriating—you—why didn’t you tell me?” Cas’s face is deathly pale, and his hands are shaking.
Dean feels anger surge up in his belly, white-hot. “Because I didn’t want you to do what you just did, dumbass!” he snaps. “You can’t just go around healing people left and right, Cas. Every time you use that grace, it kills you a little more. Fucking look at you, man!” He gestures sharply, even though he knows Cas can’t actually see himself. He’s clammy, skin gone grayish, with sweat beading along his hairline.
“That was not your decision to make,” Cas snaps. “It is my right to decide how and when I use my grace, and I am damn well going to use it if you’re hurt like that.” His glare is ferocious, but Dean refuses to back down; he meets Cas’s stare with his own, even tilting his chin in defiance.
Cas is the first to break away, passing a shaking hand over his face. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you,” he says, voice hollow, “You are worth … everything to me. The fact that you see yourself as having so little worth—that you’d hide your injuries like that—is … it’s horrible, Dean. You are the best man I know. I wish I could make you see that.”
“I’m not worth you burning up all your grace just to stitch me up every once in a while,” Dean growls. “I’m not worth you fucking killing yourself over me.”
“Yes you are,” Cas snarls, with such force that Dean recoils from him. “I’m going to die no matter what, Dean. If using my grace to keep you safe, keep you whole, makes that happen a little bit faster, it’s worth it. If I’m going to die for anything, I’m going to die helping you. I refuse to let it happen any other way.”
They’re quiet for a long stretch of time, Cas furious and Dean reeling. He can hardly make himself meet Castiel’s vivid blue eyes. He doesn’t know how to tell Cas that the thought of him—of him leaving, of, of him dying, of him being gone, makes something deep inside Dean crack wide open. He doesn’t know how to tell Cas that he can’t leave, that Dean won’t let him—because Dean can’t do this without him, can’t deal with the mark, can’t keep on going like this, without knowing that Cas is at his side, solid and powerful and reassuring. Without knowing that Cas is there to—to love him, to keep him warm at night, to make the voice of the mark a little bit quieter.
Dean barks out a tired laugh and passes his hand over his eyes. “Man, look at us,” he says dully. “Two fucked-up toy soldiers with a death wish. Your grace is burning you out, again. I’ve got the fucking Mark of Cain turning me into a goddamn monster.” He laughs again, bitter and harsh. “We’re a real piece of work.”
The fury in Cas’s eyes subsides, like a candle snuffed out. He just looks tired now, pale and wan, like a normal, overworked businessman with chapped lips and sad eyes. “We make quite a pair,” he agrees quietly.
Dean pushes his palm deep into his eyes, like he can grind out the images of Cas gone still and cold. “Why does it always have to be us?” he asks. He doesn’t elaborate; he doesn’t have to. He knows that Cas understands.
Cas’s fingertips brush against his knuckles. Dean allows him to pull his hand away from his eyes gently, blinking to dispel the starbursts of colors in his vision. “We’ve survived anything thus far,” Castiel murmurs. “We can survive a little longer.”
“I can’t do this without you, man,” Dean whispers, turning his face away from Cas so he doesn’t have to see how his eyes well up, how his mouth twists. “If you—you’re not dying. Not on my watch.”
There’s a short pause, heavy with tension, before Cas breathes out a long breath. “I’ll be here as long as I can,” he says. “As long as you need me.”
“I always need you,” Dean says. “Don’t you fucking get that?” He chances a look back at Cas, and wishes he hadn’t; Castiel looks devastated, silent tears making their way down his cheeks. “Don’t you dare leave me,” Dean says. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Cas swallows hard and shuffles closer to Dean, until their foreheads are touching and their lips are close enough to exchange breath. “I won’t,” he says.
“Promise me,” Dean demands. He pulls Cas closer, hauls him in until Cas is in his lap and curled around him, until they’re so close he can feel Cas’s heart beating against his own. Cas hesitates. “Damn it, Cas, promise me you’re not going to leave.”
“I promise,” Cas whispers against his cheek. “I promise, I promise. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”