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Dean can just about hear the rap of knuckles against his bedroom door over his racing pulse. The blood in his veins feels hot. He can’t focus over the throbbing of the Mark. He wants to scratch it off his skin. Wants to be free. More than that, he wants to kill something.
“Yeah?” Dean says, voice raspy and hoarse.
It’s Cas, which is probably what he was expecting. He’s not altogether convinced that Sam can look at him straight right now, not when they both know just how screwed he is. And here history is, repeating itself all over again, just like it always seems to around them.
“Hello, Dean,”
Dean wants to slam his head back against the wall, bleed, have the pain to focus on. It’s difficult to think. He wants to be up, moving, have the blade back in his hand – act, fight, kill – and forcing it down is dominating his will power. He’s not sure if Castiel’s presence helps or not, but being down on will power makes him nervous; he needs to fucking focus, because it’s Cas so he needs his game face on. Needs them both to keep pretending that they’re okay, even after everything they’ve been through.
“Hey,” Dean returns, resting his head against the wall instead. It’s a happy medium. He can feel the brick against his skull, at least.
He’d had a vague notion of sleep, but he’s not sure it’s possible. He hurts plenty, aches all over in fact, but the adrenaline is still there. He’s fucking high off the motion of knife-in-body, blood and flesh, killing, murder. Feels like he’s got a purpose. Hands itching for the blade. Too het up to sleep. Too broken, anyway.
He’s still got Cain’s blood underneath his fingernails. He can’t stop thinking about how good it felt to slice through his bones.
Cas steps into his room. Dean can count the number of times he’s done that on one hand. Cas hasn’t been here all that much, given the length of time Dean’s called this place home. There’s always shit going on. Always something dragging Cas away.
Dean had been newly re-humaned, last time, unsure what to think, a bunch of foreign memories in his head. Too flayed for that strange, nervous, queasy feeling. Apparently, he has room for it now, which is the icing on top of the fucking cake. Fate has dealt him another bullshit destiny hand and he still feels like a teenage girl waiting for a date to pick her up for the prom because Castiel is in his bedroom. Utter bullshit, the lot of it.
“You here to babysit me, Cas?”
“I prefer the term ‘company’.”
“Right,” Dean says, moving just to give him something to do that isn’t look at Castiel, with his trench coat 2.0 and his steadily fading grace. He definitely doesn’t have room in his head to think about Cas burning his grace out again, because that changes the direction of the angry itch under his skin into something other than bloodlust. The Mark doesn’t want that. “Sit down, dude, your hovering is making me nervous.”
That’s a mistake, because then Cas is sitting on the edge of his bed, and Dean’s stomach flips over. Definitely not less nervous.
“How are you, Dean?” Cas asks, sitting like he’s never sat on the edge of someone’s bed before, all awkward angles and tension. His body language has softened since his stint as a human, but he still couldn’t pass off as one on most days.
Dean’s not dignifying that with a response, because he’s fighting destiny all over again, he’s can’t get the stench of Cain’s blood out his head (and he likes it) and the Mark wants vengeance. Wants to kill. Wants to kill Crowley, Castiel, Sam.
He pours himself a glass of whiskey instead.
“Sam said you stopped drinking,”
“Yeah well, shit happens,” Dean says, then, fuck, Cas is pushing up his sleeve to run a thumb over the mark, like that kind of physical contact is suddenly fucking normal. He’s caught between pushing him away and punching him in the face and the other thing.
Dean’s hands are useless without the first blade. He can’t uncurl his fists.
Castiel is less awkward when he’s in motion. He has the dregs of angelic gracefulness when he moves, hints of the fact that he’s this great, powerful, celestial being. Dean wouldn’t be able to look away even if the Mark wasn’t flaring up, but he’s trapped watching Cas stare at him. And, goddamnit, this could be now or five years ago, and either way the world would be teetering on the brink, both or either of them with a foot in the grave or a target on their backs, and he’d still be pulled in by Cas’ staring act.
“You promise you’d take me out,” Dean says. He’s not even sure it’s possible, anymore. Cas might not have enough mojo left. Dean fucking hates that. Hates that, one way or another, it can be traced back to Dean. Sure, it’s a winding road of good intentions and diversions into purgatory, but it started in hell with a hand on his shoulder.
“On my terms,” Cas says, thumb still resting on the Mark.
*
“We have a theory,” Sam says, glancing at Cas, then at Dean, then back to his notes. It’s pretty much a guarantee that Dean isn’t gonna like it given how Sam’s stalling, not that their ways out have ever sounded like good ideas. He’d peel every damn layer of skin off if it was that kind of mark. He wants it off. He wants out. He wants something he can sink a blade into. Something that bleeds.
“Get on with it, Sam,” Dean snaps.
“Colette,” Cas says, voice deep gravel and cutting through the clusterfuck in his head. The fact that Cas’ voice is clearer and more commanding than Sam makes him feel worse. It’s easier to focus on him through the haze of anger and the pulsing need to get up, out, hunt.
“Colette,” Dean repeats, “Cain’s wife.”
“She asked him not to kill,”
“That’s your solution?” Dean asks, balling his fists up, “Metatron could have spared you the Disney crap, at least.”
“It…it might work,” Sam says, not looking up at him.
“How? You wanna cure me with true love’s first kiss, or some bullshit, Sam? You forgetting the part where I’m not a fucking princess.”
“We’re talking about love, Dean.” Sam says, and that’s fucking it , because he can’t take this with Cas standing there and looking at him, and Sam’s uncomfortable expression, and the Mark fucking throbbing.
Slamming the door shut curbs the smallest portion of his aggression. He’d like to punch either one of them in the face. He’d like to break a door down. Like to stab someone and watch them bleed out. Like to close his fingers round someone’s throat till their eyes roll back in their head.
He pours himself more whiskey.
*
Castiel ventures into his room a few hours later.
“I was a crappy demon,” Dean says, “Don’t remember all of it, but I remember how disappointed Crowley was. Screwed one of his deals sideways. More tequila and karaoke than anything else. Pretty sure there was some girl.” He doesn’t look at Cas at the mention of the girl, even if the feeling of betrayal is irrational. He doesn’t owe Cas anything in that regard, even if he owes him for everything else. “Nearly killed some guy defending her honour, like a first class jackass. Man, I’m pretty sure I did less damage when I had black eyes and that’s just…”
“Humanity has always been profoundly dangerous.”
“I’m so angry,” Dean says, and even saying it aloud is enough to spark the need for him to stand up and pace his bedroom. His photographs and the bits and pieces that made this place home have long since been shoved in a drawer, because he can’t look at a picture of his fucking Mom when he was dreams about killing every damn night.
Cain’s prediction keeps ringing in his ears. He’s going to kill Crowley, then Cas, then Sam. It makes sense to him. He hates how much fucking sense it makes, but there’s something almost poetic about it; it’s circular, neat, the Mark wants it. The Mark wants to destroy everything, but most of all it wants to destroy Dean. And that would do it. There’d be no coming back from that. Couldn’t, wouldn’t.
“You can control this, Dean.”
“Maybe,” Dean says, still pacing, “Maybe I can hold out for a few years. Use hunting to stave off the bloodlust, but that ain’t gonna last.” Cas looks at him. “And then who’s gonna stop me? Sam? He’s already proven he can’t do it, over and over. Then there’s you. You’ve got, what, a month’s of grace to burn through?”
“Dean,”
“And instead of lifting a damn finger to fix that, you’re sat here trying to sell me some fucking fairy tale.”
“Dean,” Cas says, and Dean can’t fucking deal with that, because this is the same Castiel who dragged him out of hell, who ditched him at Lisa’s for a whole fucking year, who betrayed him to win Heaven, who tried to kill him, who he’s forgiven again and again but who keeps making the same fucking mistakes over and over. They all do it. Dean knows that. They’re trapped in this circle of bad decisions and good intentions and he’s so fucking fed up of it. He’s been angry at Cas for as long as he can remember; lugging round the colossal weight of all the ways they’ve screwed each other over in every damn conversation, never once having a spare five minutes to talk about it.
Dean wants him to be here just about as much as he can’t deal with him being there. It’s too complicated, too broken, too close to the bone. He needs Cas, but he doesn’t know what the fuck he needs him to do, and now it’s too late. Dean’s dead. The bits of him that are worth anything are, anyway, and the second Sam and Cas can accept that and start planning his fucking funeral the better. There’s no salvaging it.
It’s going to happen exactly how Cain painted it: Dean is going to kill Crowley, then Castiel, then Sam.
“You’re no good to me dead,” Dean all but yells at him, fist clenched, chest to chest. He hates that he’s stronger than him right now. Dean could make him bleed. He swapped the knife under his pillow for an angel blade a while ago, in a move that was almost fucking sentimental, and it’s within arm’s reach now. He’s faster than Castiel right now. He could have the blade through his heart before Cas even reacted because, even after everything, Cas still looks at him like he’s good. Like he’s worth something. Like he can win this battle. “Why don’t you save yourself before wasting your damn time trying to save me?”
Cas walks out without saying another word.
Dean punches the wall. It helps, so he does again and again, until he’s bleeding and able to focus.
Sam thinks love is going to save him which is hilarious, actually, because all love has ever done is ruin him.
*
It’s bought up again three days later, during which Dean’s near enough on house arrest and itching to kill something, anything. He gets why they’re still hauled up at the bunker. He does, but that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it.
It’s just him and Sam, this time. Dean’s itching to ask where Cas is. He hopes he’s fucked off back to deal with the angels, because then Dean has a reason to be angry at him. It’s much safer to be angry at him than think about anything else. The Mark likes anger. It’s easy.
“We’re asking you to consider it. I’m asking you to consider it.”
“Consider what, Sam?” Dean snaps, setting down his whiskey with enough force that it nearly shatters. Sam doesn’t wince anymore, he’s too used to this version of Dean; balancing on a knife edge, a second away from totally fucking losing it, fist clenched even when he’s trying to sleep. “There’s nothing to consider. It didn’t work for Cain and it’s not going to work for me.”
“But Colette died.”
“What are you crazy? Everyone fucking dies, Sam.”
“If Cas –”
“– stop talking,” Dean says, pulse beating so loud he can barely fucking hear. His got his hand gripped around the knife he keeps in his pocket, his thumb pressed against the blade to keep him grounded. There’s a certain comfort in Cain’s prediction right now. He’s going to kill Crowley, then Cas, then Sam. Sam is going to make it through this conversation in enough pieces that he’ll still be kicking, even though Dean feels like he’s back in the ring with Cain right now, his adrenaline’s spiked that hard. He feels like he could easily cut Sam’s voice box out just to stop the damn conversation. He feels like it would take a while before he regretted it. “Sam, stop talking right now.”
It’s not a surprise that Sam knows more about that then he’d like. Sam knows fucking everything about him so, yeah, he figured, even though they never talked about it. None of them talked about it. There was barely anything to talk about. Someone was getting killed or someone was getting ridden by some evil Mofo or they betrayed each other or the timing was wrong, or maybe none of that made a damn bit of difference and it was just Dean that was the problem all along. Maybe the rest was just the excuses he told himself, but none of that crap mattered as long as it stayed locked up, unacknowledged, in some stupid fucking box in the corner of his head.
What is a surprise is that Sam would have the fucking audacity to bring it up to his face.
“Dean, we’re running out of options. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t mention it if…”
Dean presses his thumb against the point of the knife into his pocket till it slips past his skin. The pain isn’t enough. It’s nothing compared to the throbbing of the Mark. He’d need to amputate his fucking leg to be able to think past it.
“Don’t.”
“But you… Cas, he... he’s there too.”
“Sam, I am warning you.” Dean says, voice more of a growl, blood boiling, head throbbing, everything itching to fight, break, attack, maul, cut ; the Mark wants him angry. He needs to calm down before something happens, but he can’t do that with Sam pushing at this. There’s a reason or maybe five hundred fucking reasons why he doesn’t talk about this. Why no one should ever talk about it.
“Is it really worth you dying because you don’t want to have this conversation?” Sam asks, voice rising. He knows Sam isn’t taking well to Dean’s resignation, but Sam isn’t in his skin. Sam isn’t fighting this every single minute of every fucking day, and Sam isn’t facing down a future of killing every damn person he cares about.
The knife is out of pocket and slamming down on the table, inches away from Sam’s fingers, deep into the wood before he’s even had time to think. It's got his blood on it. He didn’t mean to do it, but that doesn’t mean he regrets it for a hot second, because Sam actually shuts the hell up.
Dean’s out of the room before Sam can so much as blink at him.
*
“If I replenished my grace,” Castiel begins, back in his room again, after Dean’s spent the past three hours staring at the walls and thinking about how much he enjoyed he killing Randy and all his men, whilst his head throbs they were human, human, human . They were shitty humans, though, and right now that seems like enough to justify it. He's on his feet now, though, he's not letting himself get into a situation where they both sit on his bed again. “I could help.”
That's a loaded statement and the closest thing to a confession Dean's ever got. He's been trying not to think about the conversation Sam and Cas had right before they pitched the Colette theory to him, but he knows they must have talked about it. Extensively. Sam probably sent him back in here after their earlier discussion, like the only problem with the whole stupid plan was Dean not believing him.
“You mean if you rip out another angel-soul? You couldn’t bring yourself to do it.”
“You underestimate me,” Castiel says, voice that low, deep gravel that makes it difficult for Dean not to listen on a good day. The kind of tone that feels like it controls gravity, that reminds him of glass breaking and ears ringing, when he could barely believe Cas was real. “After all this time, you still underestimate what I am willing to do for you, Dean.”
“Don’t put that on me,” Dean says, but Cas is close enough that it’s pushing the anger out. Without it, there’s just exhaustion. “I’ve got enough blood on my hands, man. You’ve got enough blood on your hands. Maybe it’s time.”
It’s a low blow, but Dean’s passed caring about it. He sees them all clearly this side of turning dark side.
“Time?”
“Time to bow out,” Dean says, but it’s hard to mean it when Cas is this close, the way he looks at him, because he’s not sure he can give this up. That’s part of the reason he can’t let himself have it; it’d be worse than the blade, more addictive, more likely to have him doing terrible fucking things because that’s what Dean does when he cares that much. He’d damn a hundred people to hell to save Sam or Cas. He’d have chosen Sam over stopping the apocalypse if Sam had let him. And he can’t. He doesn’t get to have that. He doesn’t get to care.
“No,”
“No?” Dean repeats, and this is dangerous territory. They haven’t been this close to something for fucking years and he can’t .
“Your brother thinks –”
“– I know what my damn brother thinks,” Dean snaps, swallowing. He’s watching the shape of Cas’ lips form every damn word, and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t, but it’s the first time he’s wanted anything but blood. “I wanna know what you think about it, Cas.”
“I think that I am not prepared to let you die again, Dean,” Cas says, “When Metatron told me I –”
“Tell you the truth I’m not sure I can die, anymore,” Dean says, he’s smiling now, a bitter thing that’s still the closest to a real smile he’s come to in weeks. He’s been putting in a good effort. “Not that there’s anything good left rattling round in here. Might as well be dead.”
And then, and then… and then Cas is looking at him with the same type of anger as when he beat him to a pulp for considering saying yes to Michael; raw, emotional betrayal. It’s the same distress call. They’re reliving the same damn story line over and over, because Castiel is angry because he had faith in him and Dean’s given up. Castiel hates that because it hurts , because Cas loves him, and Dean knows that, he’s known it for fucking years… it just doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. Cas has too much faith, too much heart, and Dean doesn’t have either. Or he does, he just doesn’t trust them.
In the end, it doesn’t fucking matter what their problem is because either Cas is going to make good on his promise and take him out, or Dean’s going to stick an angle blade through his heart, and then none of their fucking feelings will make a damn bit of difference.
Cas is a little wiser now, though. He’s been human. Dean’s known from the off that that meant he’d better understand about how it feels to hunger, thirst, ache, break and that would colour all their past interactions differently. That it would change how Cas responds to the general crap that Dean put’s him through. He didn’t really want to think about how it would play out in the real world (because, sometimes, it felt like the only thing that was keeping them playing this stupid charade was the barrier of Cas’ grace and his inhumaneness), but it’s apparent that it’s changed things right now.
He’s expecting a fist to the face and instead Castiel is kissing him.
It’s the same move he used on Meg. He probably doesn’t have anything else in his arsenal – he doesn’t have a clue how it went down with April, doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to dig into the fact that it felt like a betrayal – but it’s still a good move, and Dean’s backed up against the wall with Cas’ fingers in his hair. He’s pulling Cas in by his hips before he’s managed a coherent thought, till they’re flush up against each other, and it’s angry, a fucking power struggle that Dean wants Castiel to win.
He wants . He’s wanted for so, so goddamn long, and it’s fucking awesome. It’s Cas. It’s Cas biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, Cas scrabbling at his skin, Cas pouring out six years of pent up frustrations and miscommunications and the agony of carrying the weight of this around for so damn long. He wants. He wants more of it, all of it, to lose himself in it till the Mark’s just a faint headache pulsing in the back of his head.
It’s a seductive idea. That Cas could ask him to stop killing and Dean would. He’d just lay down his weapons and stop. They’d go live on an isolated farm and Cas would keep some fucking bees. He’d stop dreaming about the first blade, about vampires he could slice the heads off, about finding someone terrible enough that he could justify cutting their throat. They’d kiss. Not like this kiss, which is lips and teeth and tongue and heat, but lazily, carelessly, in public. He wants to believe in it. He wants to think that he could retire, that he could be saved. That he could just love in peace.
If someone threatened Cas, he’d burn the fucking world down.
“Stop,” Dean mutters, his chest turning icy as he turns his face away. Cas freezes. “I can’t,”
“Why?” Cas breathes.
There are a hundred reasons. He’s not Cain. His road of good intentions led to hell long before Cain’s did. He’s been addicted to killing sons of bitches since he was fourteen. Cain killed his brother to stop him going from hell, but Dean’s collateral damage stretches a lot further than just his damn brother; he’d have let innocent people die to stop Sam from going to hell, he’d have killed, hurt, maimed without the damn fucking Mark clouding his judgement. He can’t blame Kevin on the Mark and Sam wasn’t even headed back to the pit; just a nice peaceful death that he'd been more than willing to accept.
Cain lost the one damn person he loved and let the bitch who did it survive for decades. That’s not Dean. He’s too fucking righteous to stay out of the battles and he’s too screwed up in the head to make those kinds of calls. As a foot soldier, he did okay; he can’t hold the power. He can’t.
Cas is fast running out of grace. He’s got enemies on all sides of the field.
Dean is going to kill Crowley, then Castiel, then Sam.
It’s going to break him already. This is only going to make it hurt more.
He turns back to face Cas, straight in the eye, when they’re still a breath apart.
“Are you going to kill me or not?”
“Not,” Castiel says, chest still heaving even though Dean’s not sure whether he’s actually required to breathe, looking at him with the open vulnerability that Dean wishes he’d never been entrusted with. He wants to drag Cas forward by his shirt and to kiss him likes he means it. He wants to talk about the last six years and be fucking honest about it for a change. He wants to take the knife out of his pocket and slit Cas' throat till his grace leaks out. Dean grits his teeth, arranges his expression to blank and holds his impossibly blue stare till it’s over.
“Then why the hell are you still here?” Dean asks, flat, emotionless.
The Mark burns.
Cas leaves the bunker for unspecified reasons that evening.
Dean spends the whole fucking night trawling the internet to find something he can justifiably kill. He finds something that sounds like a case in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and jumps on it. Even if it’s a dud, the drive will help and he can’t stand one more fucking second in his bedroom.
He doesn't hear from Cas for a while, though he suspects he's in contact with Sam. He wasn't really expecting to.