Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A grabbing snag of dry branches, a surprise that shattered his concentration and stopped his breath, hit like betrayal.

Dappled moonlight and the relative safety of a flat packed-dirt trail—paired with decades of practice moving without being noticed—should have been ample protection from the creatures.  In the light breeze, the dizzy shadows should have been forgiving, concealing movement while he tried to put distance between him and them.  The darkness should have hidden him.  

Hell, if they tracked based on scent, the breeze moved fast enough that it oughta’ve thrown them off.  

Forests had been a sanctuary during childhood, and remained refuge well into adulthood. They were a trusted place. They were safe. So when, unseeing, he ran into the dried up briar patch and the crackling canes announced his location to anybody in a goddamn mile radius, when thorns dried to razor-sharpness clawed into his skin and painted him with blood, Dean felt, above all else, hurt.

And then he felt terrified.

Where the first leg of his flight had been controlled and careful, the second was a blind scramble through a suddenly unforgiving landscape. His pursuers had dogs, and they laughed, relaxed like this chase was sport. Like it was all a game to them. Dean could hear them, and their voices rattled in his bones. They made his teeth hurt. His heart felt like it was going to give out, and the closer they got, the worse it got.

When wet leaf litter revealed not firm footing, but a steep slide into a creekbed, Dean shouted—the first sound he'd made since leaving Eden Glen—and ripped at loose earth and harsh stone. The almighty rip of his jeans against a rock was accompanied by a deep, bruising impact and then blood. A lot of blood.

Too much blood, actually. It didn't even feel cut, which, when accompanied by blood, was always a red fucking flag. 'Cause red. 'Cause blood was red.

Nobody appreciated how funny he was, and he grabbed at the tear in his jeans wishing that Sam was here. Except it was kinda fucked up to wish Sam was here, because here (wherever here was exactly) fucking sucked.

His fingers felt around his lower leg for the source of the bleeding. It was hard in the dark, and if he thought it'd been disorienting to sprint headlong through unfamiliar woods, he'd discovered new levels of disorientation when the creatures got close and pain and blood loss entered the equation. He sobbed when his fingers identified a gash that was long and vicious, running nearly knee to ankle. The creek sat deep in a valley, choked up the sides with dark foliage that swam in Dean's vision, and the terror only grew more oppressive.

Creatures shaped like humans, but that didn't... fit... inside human bodies descended upon him, and maybe it was the blood loss, and maybe it was the terror, and maybe it was the exhaustion from the desperate sprint through the woods and the terror of seeing the creatures, and maybe it was his heart finally giving in to the oppressive grief that had chased him as doggedly as his pursuers since well before the verdict. Maybe it was just... everything, but when the two creatures with their dog-that-wasn't-a-dog put hands on him, the fight left Dean.

His swimming vision went dark and his legs went out from under him. He had only just enough presence of mind to feel a flash of indignation that his body chose this moment to faint.

“...did the right thing, bringing him here.”

Somebody was talking, but Dean’s heart was doing something wrong. It was going so fast, like he was still running, but... he wasn’t. He was lying on his side on linoleum tile, which was the opposite of running, and maybe about to die of heatstroke because the creatures—that looked like a couple teenagers, which was pretty fucked up in Dean’s opinion (and he knew a thing or two about fucked up)—had freaked out and wrapped him in a sleeping bag and then another sleeping bag, and then tied the thing onto him, turning him into a bleeding, sweaty, terrified cocoon.

“Why did you chase it?” Another voice asked, and Dean would have appreciated the question more—he agreed with it wholeheartedly—but he was feeling faint and he genuinely wasn’t sure if that was because of the blood loss or the heat.

Or both. Why not both? It could be both.

“Rex smelled them,” one of the ‘kids’ said, “And we didn’t think it would get hurt—”

“Yeah!” The other one cut in, “We just wanted to see it up close!”

So far, nobody was looking at Dean, which... It was hard to decide if that was a good thing or not. On the one hand, if nobody looked at him, then it seemed like the terror rays weren’t quite as strong, which was probably a good thing for the continued functioning of his heart. Dean wasn’t a doctor or anything, but he was pretty sure that his heart shouldn’t go that hard for that long. Just... generally speaking. So, yeah. Good for his heart on the one hand.

On the other hand, unless somebody looked over at him and decided to get him out of these sleeping bags, he was going to sweat so much he turned into a dried-up, freaked-out hunk of Dean-jerky and maybe die of whatever exactly planned to take him out—the heat or dehydration or blood loss... ‘Cause that was still happening. It was getting real dam squishy in the knee-to-ankle region, and he was sure it wasn’t ‘cause his knees had pissed themselves.

Yeah.

So on the one hand, he was fucked if they noticed him, and on the other hand, he was fucked if they didn’t. And on the secret, third hand, fuck these guys. Fuck this weird... Jesus, but it looked like a vet’s office, and Dean didn’t like anything about that... And fuck the apparent medical professional who was letting him bleed out wrapped in not one, but two goddamn sleeping bags, and fuck these kids who did this for what? For shits and giggles? Seriously, fuck them kids.

“It’s a Miracle you weren’t hurt!” Somebody scolded, but Dean couldn’t see them and he didn’t want to move.

(And, secretly, he worried that maybe he couldn’t, because he was feeling pretty bad. Pretty rough. Not super great at the moment. He’d thought the ol’ John Winchester Rub A Little Dirt On It^TM treatment had been sub-par in the medical care department, but these ‘people’ were really taking the cake.)

“We were careful,” one of the kids protested, and Dean rolled his eyes.

“You shouldn’t chase wild animals like that,” the... doctor? Doctor was the best case, so Dean decided to go with that. “There’s a reason we usually collect them in live traps, and it’s for their safety and ours.”

The Terror Ray suddenly hit Dean as the younger kid turned its gaze on him, and Dean choked on a humiliating noise. He would not show fear. Fuck them all! He opened his mouth to curse at them, and the doctor took the opportunity to spray something into his open mouth.

If Dean wasn’t sure it wasn’t blue KoolAid powder, he’d have been sure it was blue KoolAid powder.

What the fuck? What the fuck? What the...

What the fuck?

Dean blinked.

His heart was slowing.

Jesus Christ, this had been an option all along? Magic panic-banishing KoolAid powder?

“Let’s just see what we’re looking at here,” the doctor said, taking round-tipped scissors to the rope keeping him fatally burritoed up in his nylon prison.

Looking at the doctor, Dean clocked plenty about its appearance that said ‘this is a human woman,’ but there was a certain offness about it. A distinctive ‘eldrich terror in a human meatsuit’ vibe that he couldn’t quite put a finger on, but he knew to trust. Dean had a finely honed gut, and so he trusted when it told him to go limp as the doctor cut him out and pulled away two sleeping bags that smelled like wet feathers and pennies.

The room swam. Cold air hit like a polar plunge—not that Dean would know. Sammy was the ‘try anything once’ idiot of the family.

“’S cold,” Dean croaked, his voice weird in his ears.

“Hush, you,” the doctor murmured, otherwise ignoring Dean, which was a dick move.

“I think it’s cute,” one of the kids said.

Dean whipped his head around to the kid. “Fuck you—”

He was cut off by the press of a palm to his windpipe, and his whole body spasmed. The doctor let off immediately, but the gesture was terrifying.

“How did this happen?” The doctor asked.

“It fell—”

“It wasn’t our fault!”

It was one hundred percent their fault. He tried to say so, but the hand went again to his throat, and he shut up.

“I’ll take it from here,” the doctor said, gloved hand resting threateningly on Dean’s throat. “Remember, it’s considered cruel to antagonize them in the wild like that, so no more chasing, and if you can’t control your hellhound with words, you need to keep him on a leash.”

There was a squall of ifs and buts, and the motherly voice cut in with, “Say thank you to Dr. Ross,” and with that, they left.

Dean struggled to see this as any kind of improvement in the situation.

“Easy there, little guy,” the doctor said, and Dean thought there was probably literally no situation on earth that made him less likely to want to take it easy. The creature seemed like it was talking to itself more than Dean, or like it was talking to a nervous dog, when it said, “Ouch,” and touched Dean’s leg.

Yeah, fuck this... lady? Dude?

“Let’s get you patched up and settled down, huh?”

The question was rhetorical, but Dean spat weakly in the doctor’s direction anyway.

“Get you processed in the morning, I think.” The doctor said, looming over Dean where he lay on the floor. “For now, just the leg and the implant, I think.”

Oh.

Oh, he didn’t like the sound of that at all.

Chapter Text

The KoolAid powder made a return several times as the alleged doctor used what Dean could only assume was magic or sci-fi or fantasy shit to fix his leg. Why the hell the world’s best minds couldn’t figure out a cure to the common cold, but there were weird hair dryer things that could shine magic healing light that didn’t even leave scars was beyond Dean. He tried to keep up a pretty constant stream of abuse, but the ‘doctor’ was pretty content to ignore him.

No, instead of talking to him—which she... it... fuck it, it didn’t matter! What mattered was that the doctor could have talked to him, but instead she just slapped him or grabbed his throat when he did something she didn’t like, and made a sharp little “Ah-ah!” sound. It was Dean’s new least favorite sound.

When she approached with a needle, he mustered his strength and shouted his own petty little “Ah-ah!” back at her, which made her laugh.

Which sucked.

And then he was shouting and fighting with everything he had, and that KoolAid was strong fucking stuff. It made his body so damn weak that she seemed the evil daughter of Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, and maybe a crackhead thrown in there just for the crazy factor.

There was no amount of fight that was going to change what she was doing. Dean knew that. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew when he was beat. The whole fighting back thing wasn’t because he didn’t understand the situation—he did. It was just that losing a fight while fighting was just that: losing a fight. Losing a fight while not fighting back, on the other hand, was also called getting beaten. Between losing and being beaten, even if the results were the same, Dean preferred the dignity of the Rocky route, even if it was a rocky road.

Yeah, it was for sure better to go down swinging.

And oh boy, did he put the ‘go down’ into ‘go down swinging.’

The doctor strapped something around Dean’s throat that was too tight and... and it was a dog collar. No two ways about it, it was definitely a dog collar, and Dean had to suppress the urge to growl because that seemed a bit on-the-nose and he didn’t really want to make the doctor’s point for her. So he shouted abuse at her while she held him down and strapped a collar around his neck and little canvas bags over his clenched fists so he couldn’t use his hands—and that was unsettling has hell—and strapped him down so he couldn’t even thrash while she stuck a needle with... Well, Dean didn’t know. But he knew he didn’t want it in him.

He was pretty clear about that, too.

Maybe he didn’t go to college, and maybe he wasn’t some fancy little shit like Sam, but nobody had ever complained that Dean wasn’t clear in his displeasure. Not that it mattered. The doctor numbed the base of his neck, and Dean made a... Well, he’d have preferred a growl or grunt, or even some cursing, but it was more of a pathetic little sound.

He might have... whimpered at the pressure of something sliding and scraping in—and, he knew he didn’t know everything about...doctor stuff... but his gut told him that things shouldn’t scrape against... God, he hoped that wasn’t his spine. He really hoped it wasn’t. He was pretty confident that he could cut something out from under his own skin, maybe even muscle if he could get hammered enough—that was less of a DIY project and more of a phone-a-friend situation, but Dean was pretty sure he didn’t have friends left to phone, so... best not to think too much about that. Anyway, if it was actually in his spine—which didn’t seem that possible, but these people had magical healing hair dryers, so it also seemed like the normal rules didn’t really apply—then he was fucked.

If it was actually in his spine, he’d kill himself trying to get it out.

So, yeah. He might have kinda whimpered, but honestly, if anybody deserved to be cut a little slack for that, it was him.

It had been a really fucking hard day.

With his leg brand-spanking-new and shiny, and his neck feeling really goddamn stiff, and his hands forced into fists inside of little canvas bags, and a literal dog collar sitting high on his throat, Dean struggled as much as he could. It wasn’t much. There was only so much struggling that one man could achieve in a day, and Dean had apparently maxed out today. His whole body shook with the dregs of a year’s worth of adrenaline—all concentrated in the last couple of hours. He was apparently the last... patient?

God, he wished he was a patient.

This wasn’t a particularly patiently way to treat a person, what with the fact that the doctor had locked him in a stainless steel crate with a couple towels thrown in for the appearance of comfort. In the darkness, he tried to pick out shapes, but she’d shut off the light when she left, and the only light was the occasional green blink of a smoke detector in the ceiling.

Without anything to pit himself against (beside maybe trying to chew the canvas bags off his hands, but that seemed like a great way to break a tooth, and Dean didn’t earn enough to be cavalier about dentistry), he had no choice but to sit quietly. It didn’t take much of that for him to drift off into an uncomfortable sleep.

Dean wasn’t much of a rise-with-the-sun kind of guy, not the biggest morning person he knew, but he did rise with a decent recollection of where he was and exactly how much he liked being there. He woke to the click of the light switch and the entrance of a new person... creature? The vibe was different, but Dean wasn’t sure how or why. It didn’t inspire the bone-deep blind terror that the others did, but it still gave the distinct impression of being somehow larger than its body. His first instinct was to flip the guy off, but the canvas were a bit of a cock-block—would have been pretty fucked up if he only spoke sign language.

Luckily for Dean, and unluckily for everybody in his immediate vicinity, he was highly proficient at using spoken language, particularly four-letter words, which he rained down in the... well, he hated to use the word because it had certain unpleasant implications for what the future held, but there was no better description in the harsh, fluorescent light of day: it was a kennel. It was a kennel he filled with the foulest, most colorful, and least repetitive cursing he’d ever mustered. It was with a certain satisfaction that Dean noted the newcomer’s expression. Shock and awe, baby. Dean was no historian, but if he remembered correctly, the strategy had been one hundred percent successful in both the short and long term for America, so it would probably work great for him, too.

God damn, but a little rest really helped make things seem more manageable. He was on fire this morning.

Ok, so, as satisfying as it was to give the vet tech (yep, confirmed, and Dr. Ross was, in fact, a veterinarian—a fact that Dean decided to put a pin in until he had a little alone time to unpack) a piece of his mind, it h was, in retrospect, the wrong choice.

The tech had gotten the vet, and the vet had been annoyed as hell, and so far so good, right? That was a win. Except, apparently, she’d had about enough of Dean. When she’d come for him with the KoolAid-tasting powder, he’d fought to keep his mouth shut, but she just pulled his cheek away from his teeth and puffed it against the inside of his cheek, and that really seemed like cheating. Apparently, whatever the drug was, it absorbed right through the inside of the mouth, and the doc charmingly suggested that if Dean really didn’t want to open his mouth, there were other ways to get it in him.

Rude.

Not that Dean had much room to talk. But he was currently abducted and shackled to a chair with stirrups that he was valiantly trying to avoid thinking about, and wearing a dog collar, and trying really hard to scrub away the rough patch that the powder had left on the inside of his cheek. What was the doctor’s excuse? Busy schedule of abduction-and-torture stop her from getting her morning latte?

She’d tightened the collar until Dean had to focus a good eighty percent of his conscious attention on breathing, which had effectively stopped him from shouting constantly, though he did still manage to call her a cunt. Usually he wouldn’t talk to a woman that way, but she was for sure not a human woman, and he didn’t want to be too much of a cultural chauvinist, but Dean reserved his best manners for members of his own species and not for the terrifying whatever-these-things-were that wore the bodies of humans around like halloween costumes.

“Sweetheart, you’re going to have to learn to stop trying to talk like people,” she said, addressing Dean like a person for the first time. He’d’ve killed to give the bitch a piece of his mind, but as it was, he could only glare at her and try hard to keep air moving in his lungs. “You’re scaring the other pets. If you can’t control yourself, I’ll help you, but I’m pretty sure you’d prefer to just do as you’re told now.”

And Dean was pretty sure this vet could snort a quarter, but he kept that thought, like all his other thoughts, to himself.

“I was hoping you’d settle a bit,” she mused, manhandling Dean’s weak-ass body until he was buckled and strapped to the chair like at any second it was gonna join a roller coaster. “This can be so stressful for rescues. Just show me that you can be good during your intake exam and then I’ll see about getting you wet food as a special treat.”

Wet. Food.

Never before had he been so emotionally ready—and so physically unready—to choose violence. Even though it was a stupid use of his terrifyingly limited oxygen and completely futile with the whole Houdini-proof system of restraints, he lunged at her and bared his teeth, coughing when the collar snapped his neck back.

She grimaced at him.

“Yeah, never mind.” She snapped gloves on and beckoned the tech nearer. “On second thought, let’s just start with the botox.”

Somebody needed to invent a new word for the now-persistent emotion that Dean felt. Some uneasy swirl of rage, terror, and confusion. Confrragusion.

Nope.

Somebody better with words.

Sam would have probably known the word, but thinking about him was worse than thinking about the vet and her tech and his confragution that deepened with every cryptic goddamn hint at the future she dropped. How fucked was that, huh? Maybe even more fucked that Dean, and, given his current position and the tech approaching his torn clothes with the safety scissors, was saying something.

Chapter Text

The tech made it seem humiliatingly easy to strip Dean of both his clothes and his dignity. Between the too-tight collar and the safety scissors, there was really nothing Dean could do to retain a shred of modesty or clothing, and his heart was starting to go despite the powder. The vet’s “calm yourself or I will,” was also not particularly helpful as he fought to breathe at all.

She was clinical in her examination, touching him and then making notes on a computer, and it wasn’t until the tech cooed and tried to wipe a tear away that Dean realized he... must be allergic to all the bullshit.

“It’s okay, buddy,” the tech said, and Dean was really getting sick of the condescension. “We’re gonna be so qui— Ow!”

He pulled his fingers away from Dean’s face, and Dean grinned and coughed against the collar.

“He bit me!” The tech was further away now (good) and nursing his finger (even better), and Dean just smiled at him. It was totally worth the lightheadedness and sense that he might die at any second.

The vet only sighed. “That’s gonna make him harder to place,” she said, “Just watch your fingers and remember: he’s a wild animal. Fresh out of Eden, not in a state of Grace. I know he’s cute, but it’ll be a while before he reclaims his Innocence, and that’s going to be a difficult road if his behavior is anything to judge by.

There was no air to say it, but Dean’s lips traced the outline of the phrase, “you can go to hell.”

When the vet took his collar off, Dean panted for several moments, mouth open to pull in huge lungfuls of air. Navy blue spots floated across his vision, which was probably why he missed the gag until it was too late. A big, u-shaped mouthguard like they used in football, that was insultingly comfortable, and a nylon strap that tightened with a pull tab. He guessed it was better than the collar, but he could also recognize a punishment for mouthing off when he saw one.

It was... His old man had always preferred corrections that required fewer accouterments. Generally, if it required more than a belt, it wasn’t worth John Winchester’s time, and Dean could respect that. While the gag wasn’t uncomfortable, and it seemed like a sinisterly logical consequence for being a dick, he thought he’d prefer the Winchester way. And fuck if that didn’t take him back.

“Okay, hold him still,” the vet said, and suddenly Dean found himself really goddamn interested in what was happening in to him. The tech had his hands wrapped under Dean’s chin, but not to strangle him. No. To raise his chin, and the vet had a syringe of something that Dean couldn’t see because he was staring at the ceiling slightly behind him.

He grunted and the vet puffed powder into his nose where it burned like hell before making his brain go numb. His muscles went slack after the third spray, and this was the highest he’d been on the KoolAid to date, and he felt... distant. Like words were far away. Like he was watching himself lay still and calm while the vet sank a needle right into his throat, guided by hell-if-Dean-knew.

It felt deep and sharp. A sting, and something that was weird and hard to quantify, and he tried to make a sound, but something was wrong. He tried again, fighting the sluggishness, but his body wouldn’t do it. There was something about the whole experience that reminded him of reflexively playing a game on a disconnected controller. That sense that what was happening didn’t quite match up with his inputs.

Fuck. Maybe he did want the powder. Sure, maybe it was a manifestation of the same evil that had him strapped naked on a chair while a veterinarian injected his throat with something, but he was about ready to trade what was right for what was comfortable. Just for a little while. Just a couple moments. With the needle in his throat, he had to force himself still, and it would have just been nice if the devil’s KoolAid would do it for him.

The needle went in and out, and it reminded Dean of getting numbed at the dentist. When the Ross finally pulled away, the tech let Dean go, and he tried to cough, feeling like everything in his throat was off. Wrong.

He tried to make a sound and...

Nothing.

No noise. No sound. Just air like some kind of nightmare, and Dean screamed.

Or, he would have.

But there was no sound. He thrashed and rattled the restraints, thick leather lined with fleece, because heaven for-fucking-bid something chafed while they were mutilating him. Even with no sound, he was pushing as hard as he could, trying to make any noise—fucking anything! Anything to prove he was still alive, because he’d always been able to talk his way out of a bad situation, and now... And now?

“Oh, I know, honey,” The vet petted his hair like this wasn’t all her fault to begin with, “I know. It’s terrible, it really is, but you’re alright. You’re fine. And won’t it be so much nicer not needing a gag?”

Dean shook his head. Could she undo it? Could it be reversed? Or was he going to be like this forever? Every breath was agony, and they were so many and so fast right now. How could he ask anybody for help like this? How could he sweet-talk his way out? Fuck!

He shook for several long moments, his heart in his throat—where his voicebox apparently just... wasn’t. The way he was breathing shook his body, and he would have taken a little pride in the fact that he wasn’t making any noise while he cried, except he wasn’t exactly in control of that. When the panic subsided, his body just kind of went limp. Like he’d died. God, that sounded almost preferable. Bolt from the blue, c’mon, why not? He’d—

No, stay present, stay here. What if they did more weird shit. He’d need to know what they did if he wanted to undo it later, right? That’d be an option at some point, right? He’d get out of this. Even if nobody was coming for him.

Even if he was alone.

He couldn’t let the pointlessness get to him.

It was fine. He’d earned this little breakdown, and he could get it together later. He could get it together when they put him back in the stupid fucking kennel, because maybe it sucked ass, but at least it was quiet and he’d be left alone. That was good, right? That was something to look forward to.

“Why is he still so antsy?” The tech asked, and Dean thought it was maybe the dumbest question he’d ever heard, and he would have said so, too, except...

“It’ll be easier when he’s on the appropriate human diet,” the vet answered, tapping Dean’s mouth to give him more of the powder. It smoothed the edges down, so he opened his mouth for it, feeling the way it dried his tongue out. “And once he’s regressed a little, returned a bit to a state of Innocence, he’ll feel a lot better. I know he looks rough now, but I’ve seen these really violent ones settle beautifully. It’s all about consistency with humans. Consistency is kindness.

“I’d rather have done this after the exam, but I don’t think he’d be able to settle if he was tempted to vocalize. “Just keep an eye out for any airway issues and keep an eye on his oxygen for me, would you, hon?”

Dean let it wash over him. He’d fight later. He would. Right now, though, he closed his eyes, the false-calm of the powder lulling and dulling him. He could always fight later.

Chapter Text

A lot of the exam was decently familiar from the required physicals before school. The vet had already felt the glands in Dean’s neck, so she left that alone, but otherwise pressed on his stomach with gloved hands and listened to his heart and lungs. She kept Dean pretty high for it all, and his mind floated over the top of everything, spilling away from the action like the head on a beer, just airy and unattached. The powder—including the blue KoolAid taste—was pretty awesome, and Dean caught himself sticking his tongue out further than he had to when the doctor told him to open his mouth so he could check if his tongue was blue.

She pushed his tongue down with a used popsicle stick—wait... not used... but that was a pretty depressing thought. He could really go for a popsicle after all the dust that kept drying his mouth out—Jesus, he was not able to focus for shit except that just as he got annoyed by how long it was taking, she slid something into his mouth over top of the tongue depressor, and right into his gag reflex.

Dean heaved and struggled, tears immediately springing to his eyes (which was one hundred percent the gagging thing this time) but he hadn’t eaten in... Since before. He’d had breakfast. A silent affair in the diner across the street from the courthouse. There’d been coconut cream pie in the lazy susan, slowly rotating under the bright display lights, and Dean had watched it turn.

He’d had breakfast, and then he’d had that apple…

“OK, call that seven and note it,” the vet called. “With that face and those eyes he’s probably going to end up as a companion animal, so better start getting him trained up early.”

The tech acknowledged, and Dean quietly contemplated the options available to him now for inconveniencing these assholes. As the vet took his limbs out of the restraints one at a time to examine them, he contemplated pissing on her. At no point had anybody offered to let him take a leak, so it seemed not only justified, but also just. If there was going to be any justice in this situation—an idea that Dean didn’t put all that much stock in, but which was a nice thought anyway—he’d have to manufacture it himself.

When the vet seated herself between Dean’s legs for reasons he absolutely didn’t care to think about, he cackled and said, “nice fucking try, lady!” and let go. They wanted to treat him like an animal? Fine, he’d play. He was getting pissed off, so she was getting pissed on. It would have all been a lot funnier if she’d been able to hear him.

Still, he’d take a win where he could.

His disappointment when she just said, “Whoops, there we go, little guy,” and immediately began cleaning up was immeasurable. That was... That was the big guns! How the hell did she not even care? How was she just calmly pressing a towel over his crotch and patting his leg with a real grating kind of good dog energy?

“What the hell is this place?” he demanded to absolutely no response. Maybe it was because he couldn’t do more than whisper, but pissing on people did seem, in retrospect, like it would burn bridges. Not great for communication. Sam probably would have had an opinion. He’d always had opinions.

When the towel came away and was replaced with a dry one and some way-too-rough drying off action, Dean protested again, pulling against bonds that really weren’t going anywhere.

“Wetting’s a good sign,” the vet offered, paying way too much attention to Dean’s junk now, pulling back his foreskin and lifting his balls one at a time, and making fucking notes. Jesus Christ, what was this lady’s fucking deal?

“Let’s get him prepped and then do the internal,” she said, pulling an IV stand closer, and Dean glared at her. It didn’t seem to do much, but what was he supposed to do here? Just lie down and take it? While he was... forced to lie down and take it.

Because Dean wasn’t under any illusions about this. He was strapped down to a chair that had stirrups for his legs, dick out, suddenly mute, while this whatever-it-was treated him like a wild animal. He shouted—tried to shout—when she rubbed something cold and slippery over his asshole, then shoved a fingertip up there without so much as a ‘by your leave.”

“Jesus, give a guy a little warning,” Dean snapped, but he was glad for once that he couldn’t make any sound, because he was pretty sure his voice would be shaking. It wasn’t like he’d never been with a girl who wanted to get a little frisky like that, but he’d turned down every offer for a reason: that was a one-way street as far as Dean was concerned.

Nobody was listening to him. He wanted to have the energy to be furious, but more and more, he was just feeling scared. When the vet shoved something long and slippery through the valiant resistance of Dean’s asshole—and hell, it was like a real, bona fide alien abduction, complete with anal probe, which would have been funnier if it wasn’t happening to him—Dean tried to focus on the way the tech was petting his arm. He was scared to pet Dean’s hair after the bite.

“Hell,” Dean said, “Buy me dinner first, huh?”

“He’s still trying to talk,” the tech observed.

The vet hummed and then something started to... happen? Whatever she’d shoved up his ass made him feel like he desperately needed to shit, but now she was pumping up a blood pressure cuff, except there was no blood pressure cuff, except there was, and Dean was pretty sure it was somehow inside his ass.

“Little pressure, sweetheart,” the vet said, and it was absolutely not a ‘little pressure.’ No, it felt fucking huge in there, and Dean sobbed and tried to curl forward, which he couldn’t do because of the restraints.

“Just gonna help you keep that good medicine inside,” she said, before pumping again, but this time the pressure came from outside his asshole, and it was like his hole was sandwiched between two beachballs, and that sucked more than enough for him to be done for the day, but then the vet did something else—and why was there always something more that she wanted to do to him, huh? Why couldn’t she just leave him the fuck alone?—and the thing seemed to shiver inside him just a little, and he started to feel really fucking full.

“Hey,” he said, to absolutely nobody, because there was absolutely nobody who’d listen. “Hey, I gotta drop the kids off at the—Fuck!” The sensation of fullness was increasing, and suddenly it went from a lot to too much, a sharp pain lancing through his lower belly, the cramp sudden and vicious, and exactly why he always vetoed Chipotle even though Sam liked it.

One time he’d felt like this on a road trip. He’d thought there was probably nothing worse than feeling this shitty while trapped in a car where he couldn’t easily do something about it. How he longed to be that unimaginative idiot again, because this was for sure worse. This was way, way, way worse.

Dean shook his head, tears leaking down his temples and into his ears, and the vet did something that tilted the chair back until Dean’s head was lower than his hips. A warm, gloved hand came to rest on Dean’s abdomen over the terrible cramping and Dean rattled his restraints in helpless fury.

“Easy does it,” she drawled, rubbing over Dean’s belly, ribs to pelvis. “It can be a little uncomfy if you tense, so let’s just relax. That’s it. Relaaaaaax.”

Relax? Fucking…. Fucking relax? He was gearing up to give her a piece of his mind, because even if nobody heard him, it did help to get to say his piece, when another cramp gripped him. He couldn’t even scream. He couldn’t do fucking anything, so he just tried to breathe through it as the vet rubbed him with her warm hand. He wanted so badly to hate everything about that, but it did help. The cramp eased.

He’d never admit it helped, and not just because the bitch had stolen his voice like he was the goddamn Little Mermaid and she was the sea witch.

Sea bitch more like.

There was at least some satisfaction to be had in imagining all the ways he’d wreck this whole place, doctor-fucking-Ross included, as he alternated between squirming in pain and collapsing when the pain temporarily receded. He didn’t even know what Ross was. Usually that was a Sammy thing, the research, but Dean was no slouch. He knew his way around a library. He had a hunch that she might be a demon, but maybe that was just her personality.

“Just a little more,” she said the fourth time Dean couldn’t stay still any more and really fought the restraints.

“Thanks, but no thanks, lady,” he whispered when the latest hit of powder slowed his brain down. He could do that, apparently. He could still whisper. “I’m all set.”

He tried to watch her eyes, and when he did, something in her expression grew soft. She smiled and smoothed a hand over his sweaty forehead. Pupil shape seemed normal. That was… Her vibe gave demon. That weird sense that she was bigger than her body, the way her attention still caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up… It was all so, so demon, but the eyes were wrong.

“We’re going to give that a couple minutes to work, and then you can let it all out.”

Dean blinked.

That was… Yes. Good. Out was the best place for whatever she’d been funneling into his ass. He let his head fall back. A couple minutes was still too long, but at least there was a time limit on this now. That helped.

So did the vet’s hand.

“Look how relaxed he is,” the tech cooed, hands busy with some task, but attention focused on Dean enough that he realized he was having a harder time sensing the creatures’ attention.

“Like hell I’m relaxed,” he grumbled, trying to decide if the likely benefit to his heart outweighed the decreased not-exactly-demon spidey sense.

The vet kept petting him like he was a fucking dog or something, and Dean whispered whatever nasty names floated to mind. It was all pretty middle school shit, but they were starting to come slower.

“Is it all from the infusion?”

“Some of it’s the infusion,” the vet said, “But some of it is just being handled. They really do want to settle and be good. Just gotta be gentle with them, isn’t that right, buddy?”

Dean shot the vet the dirtiest look he could muster and told her to step off a bridge.

“I hope you find a cockroach in your lunch,” he whispered, to zero response.

And then a timer went off, and Dean perked right the hell up. The vet moved back between his legs and deflated something in his ass, which was both great and also made Dean terrifyingly aware how tenuous his control of his bowels was. Real Bambi meets ice situation, and the cost of losing it was gonna be catastrophic.

There was being abducted by some heretofore unknown breed of demons, having his voice stolen, being forced through a medical exam that was way too invested in his junk and ass, being pumped up like a human water balloon, talked down to like a spooked horse, and kept in a literal cage—that was bad on its own—and then there was all that plus shitting his britches with an audience.

Well, not britches. His underwear were just cut up scraps in the red biohazard bag lining the trash can.

But still.

“Let me up,” he whispered, eyes wide and searching. “Come on, let me up. I gotta—”

The tech came closer with a… no. No way. Absolutely not.

“Ok, seriously,” he hissed, “We’ve all had our fun, it was a great time, Ha-ha, we’re all in on the joke, but for real.” His heart was going as fast as it’d been in the woods.

“I know,” the vet cooed, “You did such a good job. Good boy, holding it like that. Let’s relax now.”

“What? No!” Dean didn’t even dare thrash lest an errant movement disrupt his precarious control. “No, seriously. I can… I can to by myself, I—”

And then the chair tilted back up and gravity became his enemy, and he fought it as viciously and tenaciously as he’d fought any wendigo or skinwalker or djinn. There was no fucking way, and he breathed so fast he thought he might faint.

“A little stopped up, are you?” The vet asked, and… no? No, Dean was whatever the opposite of that was, and he was fighting tooth and nail to not release the goddamn mudslide of the century into the mop bucket the tech was holding under his ass, so no. No, he wasn’t ‘stopped up,’ but the vet was uninterested in any of Dean’s whispered protests. Her hand went to his gut and he shook with the effort of preserving this last shred of dignity.

“Please, no.”

He shouldn’t have bothered. What was the point? There was nothing he could do when she started firmly massaging his belly in long, horrible strokes, and when that didn’t work, she pressed a gloved finger to his asshole.

Something in him just kind of… snapped. Not the fly-into-a-murderous-rage kind of snapped (he wouldn’t have needed that to murder these fuckers anyway), more like some vital tentpole in his personal resistance gave way and the ripstop came down. This was hell. That had to be it. The way his body pushed the ‘medicine’ out also forced the air out of his lungs, and he kind of hoped he’d just fucking die already.

This wasn’t better. It just wasn’t. How the hell was this more humane than prison or execution? Did they know? Had Bobby known? Had Sam?

In a moment of weakness… in a river of weakness… Dean wished bitterly that the last things he’d said to Sam had been kinder.

Chapter Text

Dean had always prided himself in being able to bounce back.  If there was one thing he was, it was bouncy.  From broken hearts to broken bones, he could always put on a brave face, and he’d always been alright in a couple days.  Even the indignity of getting the shit kicked out of him at home or at school, the humiliation of being singled out in class… It couldn’t touch him.

John had taught him better than to mope and malinger.  He was stronger than that.

And how different was this, really?

They’d put him in a bigger kennel with a raised cot that he could sit on, and that was… better than last night.  What the vet’d done to his throat made it harder to breathe, air getting stuck on the inhale, and he kept feeling like something was stuck in his throat, but he couldn’t cough properly.  When he’d tried to lay down to rest, get his weight off his ass, he’d swallowed spit wrong and ended up on his hands and knees panicking as he tried to cough and breathe at the same time.

So he didn’t lay down.

And he didn’t think about the rest of the exam, the way the vet had cranked him open with some kind of ass-ratchet and felt around while Dean alternately flinched away and played the Anywhere But Here game.

And on some kind of schedule, the tech checked on him and chatted at him like Dean was a pet or a baby.  He offered Dean something that he insisted was water, but had a weird, thick consistency.  After the first time he’d choked, he didn’t want to drink.

“Okay, buddy,” the tech said, peering into Dean’s kennel.

Dean hunched on the cot, wrapped in the blanket to hide himself as much as possible, and didn’t look up. He’d bounce back and start hurling insults again, just… not yet.  He just needed a little time.  H’e get there.

He just needed to stay absolutely still so the blanket didn’t fall because with the canvas mitts on his hands, it had been a bitch and a half trying to get the blanket over his shoulders.

He just needed to stay absolutely still so he didn’t make any sound, because after the exam, when he’d thought it couldn’t get any more humiliating than it already was, they’d put him in a diaper and some kind of cover that had a buckle at his waist, which would have been child’s play to open if he’d just been able to use his hands.

He needed to not be reminded of that, though, because if he thought about it too much, then he’d need to scream, and he couldn’t scream anymore.   

Around what Dean assumed it was mid-day, Dean overheard the tech saying he was worried that Dean wouldn’t drink any water or juice, and Dean thought that was kind of bullshit.  Whose fault was that anyway?  Not Dean’s.  Even if drinking didn’t freak him out at the moment (which it very much did), and even if it wasn’t exactly drinking with the weird goop the tech offered, it didn’t look like they’d let him out to take a leak, and he’d already pissed himself once today, and that was plenty, thanks.

Why drink if it was just going to speed along the inevitable?

The answer to that question came late in the afternoon when the vet sighed and instructed the tech to pull Dean out, which the tech did way too easily.

Was Dean weak, or were these demons crazy strong?

He hated how much it upset him when the tech pulled the blanket away, leaving him clad in only the diaper, and he hated the way he sat, too exhausted and disoriented to do anything, while the vet brought a straw to his lips and tried to coax him into drinking.

“Oh, honey, I know,” she murmured, rubbing Dean’s back in a way that felt distinctly not-terrible.  Don’t think about mom, don’t think about mom, don’t think about mom.  “Just a little, sweetheart.  I know you know how, just take a sip.  You were so brave today.”

God! Those words cut through him to an awful wound, a hole that John had never been able (or inclined) to fill, and Dean recoiled back, then recoiled again at the way the fucking diaper felt and sounded and… Fuck!

Goddamnit!

“This is the worst part, sweetheart,” the vet consoled.  “It’ll get so much better once we get you out of the shelter and to your forever home.”

When Dean didn’t react, the vet and her tech exchanged looks.

Ross sighed, looking warm and worn, and Dean wanted so damn badly for her offers of comfort to be real, because he really needed that right now. He felt one of those abandoned barns he and Sam used to look at along side country highways, sagging under their own weight, slowly rotting away until they were just bones reaching for the sky. It was fake, though. It was fake, and he had to remember that, because this woman was a demon.

Probably.

This woman was probably a demon.

“Do you want me to get the...”

Ross shook her head, and the tech fixed Dean with a concerned look.

“They do so well with skin contact at this point, and I’m certain he’d take a bottle feed well given how good he’s being, but this one’s been really struggling since the devoice.” She talked over Dean like he wasn’t there, and Dean tried to pretend that he wasn’t there too. He tried to imagine the open road and Sammy, but not mad at him. Not shouting him down ‘till Dean started hitting where it hurt and then storming off.

“I mean...”

“No, I agree. Go ahead, Hess,” the vet waved the tech toward the door, “I’ll just get us settled here a little. Two birds, right?”

This was clearly a conversation they’d had before, and they were rehashing it because Dean wasn’t doing what they wanted, and fuck them for wanting anything from him.

“I know it’s scary that you can’t talk, sweetheart,” she said, finally addressing Dean. “It’s not forever. It’s going to help you.”

“How?” Dean didn’t bother trying to voice it this time, just letting his mouth trace the word.

It was hard to tell if the vet was responding to Dean’s actual question, or if she was just looking at his body language when she said, “Oh, honey, it’s been a hard day for you.” Dean looked up and met her eyes, and something twisted painfully in his chest, and it wasn’t real! The second he lost sight of that, she won, and he couldn’t let her win.

“It’s been so scary, and you’ve been so strong, sweetheart. Look at you.” There was something sickeningly earnest in her expression, and Dean frowned. “You’re still being so strong. It’s going to be okay, we’ll take care of you.”

Her hands started tugging Dean until he was leaning against her, his forehead pressed against her chest, and her hands stroking up and down his back. He’d thought he was done with raging today, but apparently she just had a way of bringing out the worst in him. He clenched his fists inside the canvas mitts, digging his nails hard into his palms just to feel something real.

The straw returned, and Dean turned his head away. It was looking like she might give up, might let him... just let him have this. Let him win this one, and somehow he knew that if he won, it would be because she let him. There was no victory for Dean here.

“Hester says you don’t want to drink, but I think you can do it,” she murmured, and Dean could feel her voice vibrate in her chest, her heart beating under her ribs. He imagined sliding a knife in there and then twisting it until she shut the hell up permanently. “Just a little bit, sweetheart. This one’s juice, it’ll taste so nice. Can you?”

Dean wanted to tear his hair out, claw his ears so he couldn’t hear this bullshit. He wanted to burn this place to the ground.

“You gonna let me go to the bathroom on my own if I do?” He asked, but he knew she wouldn’t hear or listen. He was talking to a preternaturally strong, terrifying wall.

“Good to go?” The tech, Hester, asked.

“Yeah, I think we’re just a little overwhelmed,” Dr. Ross said, “We can try again tomorrow. Does that sound good?” She rubbed Dean’s back with a little extra vigor.

Hell yeah. That’s right, baby! He’d fucking won. She couldn’t make him drink a goddamn thing. She and the tech and those fucking kids and their parents—this whole fucked up place could get fucking bent.

Dean was internally celebrating his victory over the vet right up until she said, “Where’s the numbing spray?”

At that, Dean wrenched himself away and shot across the exam room. There was exactly zero reason that numbing spray needed to be anywhere near Dean, and he pressed himself as far from the vet and her fucking henchman as he could. The tech held a plastic bin, almost like a bus tray, with a bunch of ominous shit inside, and Dean wasn’t careful and inhaled wrong, and suddenly he was trying to cough again.

It was all the opening they needed, because between one terrifying moment and the next, the Hester had Dean pressed tight against his chest, sitting on the floor, and Dean couldn’t get any leverage. One arm was pressed like a steel band across Dean’s chest, and his free hand gripped Dean’s forehead, pressing him back and baring his throat in a gesture of primal defeat.

“Get off me!” He shouted, but there was no sound. Nobody could hear him, and even if they could hear, nobody would listen. “I’ll drink, I’ll drink, I’ll drink—just let me go!”

“Oh, I know, sweetheart,” The vet murmured, moving with quick, economical movements. “I know, this is no fun. Little push now—” She sprayed something way into the back of Dean’s nose, and he tried to shake his head, but these demons were so damn strong. They were too strong. “Okay, and now the big push. It’s gonna feel better if you can swallow a little, sweetie. I know, I know...”

There was something pushing against weird, numb pressure at the back of Dean’s throat, and he wanted to puke or yank away. The straw was back, taunting him. There had been a choice earlier. He could have picked that instead of this, but now...

And there was a choice now.

The choice had never been compliance or non-compliance. It was just compliance without suffering or compliance with. Dean was salivating, and he was afraid to swallow, so the drool was just leaking out of his mouth, but the juice was going to be thick, right? Like the water earlier in the day? And that had been okay to swallow. That had been manageable. Did it even matter if he fought when there was no way to win? Who was he trying to impress anyway? John was dead, and he’d never see Sam or Bobby again, so what was the fucking point?

He pulled a mouthful of sludgy juice through the wide straw, and both Ross and Hester cooed with praise. The long tube in Ross’s hand slid down his throat with the juice, and Dean struggled to breathe. Every inhale was like rolling a boulder up a hill, only to lose the progress when he let out the breath. There was fussing, then, with a syringe and with the tube, but Dean was having a hard time staying present. He flinched when Hester taped the tube to his cheek.

“Good job,” Ross praised, pulling something up over Dean’s chin. It just covered his mouth, rigid and leather-scented, and buckled behind his head. He stared at Ross, feeling betrayed even though it was stupid to feel betrayed by somebody who had worked as hard as she had worked to make absolutely certain Dean knew she was his enemy, because it was a muzzle.

“I know, sweetheart,” she stroked his hair and cheek, and didn’t act so ginger about his mouth now. “Sometimes it’s just a hard day, and sometimes we bite Hess, so sometimes we need a little help remembering not to bite.”

Hester passed her a heavy cotton blanket, and she wrapped it behind Dean, using it to pull him closer to her.

“Start with his meds,” she said, and Dean flinched at that, too. “Then feed slow. Not trying to overwhelm him any more than we already have, right, sweetie?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Dean said, for all the good it did.

Maybe the worst part of everything was that it took forever. The tube felt like something caught in his throat, but since they’d paralyzed his voice box or whatever they did, he constantly felt like something was stuck in his throat, so it barely registered.

What did register was Ross’s warmth against Dean’s bare chest and arms, and the softness of her bare hands and arms, and the way she ran her nails through his hair. And he could feel whatever was in that first syringe—the meds—making his shoulders unlock and his breath come easier. It robbed him of even his right to panic, and he let his eyes close. He’d fight later—he would. He’d escape and come back and level this place. He’d go scorched earth on them, just... later.

Because it took a long time for the bag of... Actually, Dean didn’t really want to know. Whatever it was, it was going in, and it’d end up coming out, which was gonna be tomorrow’s trauma, and there was no point worrying about tomorrow’s trauma today. It wasn’t like he could do anything about it. Not today. The best he could hope for was a minimum of discomfort until he could spot an opening and blow this popsicle stand.

And he could see that—barring the pretty big fucking detail that they’d stolen his damn voice—the vet was trying to be... nice? If Dean imagined for a moment that he really was just a scared animal like she said he was... He didn’t know where that thought was going, but it seemed important somehow that she didn’t seem to get that he was a person.

His head dipped, exhaustion catching up, and Dean flinched hard, startled back to wakefulness, and the vet encouraged him to lean more heavily on her.

The bag emptied slowly, and the vet’s gentle chatting and back rubbing outlasted Dean’s fury and his terror. And when they receded, there was just a raw, aching need for something that didn’t hurt, because ever since John died, everything—talking to Bobby, being around Sam, working on the car, the trial, the exile, this whole mess—everything hurt.

But the feeling of whatever meds had been squeezed into him didn’t hurt. They were a fleecy fuzz that wrapped around his brain and made the tension bleed out of his body. And the vet’s warm hands hugging him didn’t hurt, and neither did the times her hand would move north to gently scratch or massage his scalp.

The absolute worst part of it all was that he could see how easy it would be to fall into this trap of things that didn’t hurt.

The absolute worst part of it all was that some part of Dean wanted to fall for it.

Chapter Text

So things weren’t going how Dean’d thought they would. That was fine. Plans weren’t perfect, things sometimes went all sideways. It wasn’t like Dean had really had much of a plan anyway—nobody knew what lay outside Eden because people who left didn’t come back, which was kind of why sending people out was such an effective thing to do.

So, no. Dean hadn’t had a plan exactly, but he’d had a backpack and field rations and a couple of the good water purifiers that were hard to buy in the U.S. anymore ‘cause a bunch of idiots insisted on making meth instead of just getting drunk like civilized people—and why would somebody ruin something as pure and beautiful as those little bottles of non-shit-tasting water purification was and would always be beyond Dean. He’d brought his pistol and shotgun, and a backpack full of all the good shit for getting supernatural shit off his ass.

Actually, if anybody should have been prepared to blink into the forest in this world, it was Dean. It was embarrassing in retrospect, but Dean had actually thought he’d pretty much had this in the bag.

A week in a kennel, during which they only freed his hands once to clip his nails and rub lotion into his hands—and Dean relished the opportunity to flip the demons the bird—had proven to Dean that his preparation was lacking. The tube had stayed taped to his face for three days, during which they fed him three times a day, and Dean got more clear-headed. He didn’t think they were giving him less of whatever drugs accompanied the food—and calling it food was pretty crazy—but Dean wasn’t going to try and parse words about that. He just figured he was getting used to whatever they had him on.

Anyway, being drugged was about the most dignified excuse for the way his body seemed to melt into the vet’s attention when she held him and Hester fed him during those early days. Not that dignity really mattered there when they’d also been putting shit in the food that made his body into a fucking debris chute at a construction site, just... whoosh. Easy come, easy go, (and by ‘go’ he did mean ‘go’), making it impossible even to decide when he... voided was the word the vet used, and Dean thought it was probably the least awful word for using the diaper.

Actually, it was kind of funny in a fucked up sort of way. He felt like one of those pet monkeys that occasionally made news for losing their shit, all wrapped up in a fucking diaper, and taken out a couple times a day to be cooed over by the Hester and sometimes volunteers who apparently fucked with people for fun. (And that was pretty wild, too, actually. It was one thing to do all this weird shit for a paycheck—everybody gotta eat—but for fun? One of the demons had mentioned that she was doing this for her National Honor Society volunteer hours? Jesus, but this place was fucked up.)

He particularly hated National Honor Society kid, so when nobody else had been looking, he let himself fall off the bench she was sitting on with him, and then scrambled across the room and cowered from her. That’s fucking right, assface, he’d thought when she started stammering excuses to Hester and insisting that she hadn’t done anything wrong. The feeling of pure, unadulterated victory when NHS wasn’t allowed to handle him anymore was probably the best thing to happen to him since the trial.

The day after they took the feeding tube out, something that made Dean’s body curl over itself in its new, awful attempts to cough without his voice—and it was fucking weird that he couldn’t hold his breath or cough or even sneeze normal with his vocal cords all fucked up—they also took the canvas bags off his hands in what turned out to be a not-so-elaborate sting operation.

Like any sane human, he waited until the demons weren’t watching, and then went right for the diaper, tearing it off and shoving it through the bars of his kennel. It had seemed like a great choice at the time, and honestly, Dean thought he’d probably do it again if he could.

But he couldn’t.

There’d been a struggle, the usual, and next thing Dean knew they’d strapped him down and injected shit into his forearms, which seemed like a punishment unrelated to the crime right up until Dean realized that he’d lost the strength and coordination in his hands. He couldn’t get his fingers to work a button or a buckle.

He could still hold the cups of juice they gave him between meals, so he threw them and their goop back out through the bars in his cage, because fuck these people. Like, actually fuck them.

But still, despite the absolute clusterfuck of the whole human-pet-captive thing, Dean thought he was figuring out how to navigate the situation. It was a lot like… It was like getting really damn good at playing Bubsy II after Sam, as a toddler, had superglued the cartridge to the GameBoy. The game sucked, and Dean hated it with all his heart. And it was the only game.

So, yeah. Dean was getting good at the only game in town.

He’d been at the shelter for at least ten days (that he could remember, but he knew that there were some pretty big gaps) when something new happened. The vet strolled in with a dude, chatting about Dean. That was… new-ish. He thought he’d seen this guy before. He looked kind of like a skinny Big Boss Man, but maybe it was just the goatee. Still, the association didn’t feel new—if there was one thing Dean was really goddamn good at remembering it was… well it was monsters, but if there were two things Dean was really good at remembering, they were monsters and wrestlers.

So yeah. This skinny-ish goatee’d guy fiddling with a leash had been here before, and he’d looked at Dean before, and Dean had thought he looked like Big Boss Man before. That had been on a kind of weird day, Dean thought. He’d lost his shit a little while Hester was bathing him and they’d loaded him up with the KoolAid. Shit. There was a joke in there somewhere. He’d really drunk the KoolAid?

These jerks had for sure drunk the KoolAid, just a bit more figuratively than Dean who could swear he tasted the weird sweetness clinging to his mouth for hours and hours after.

So, actually, the guy he’d seen could have been anybody, but this one looked familiar, and Dean pressed back into his kennel and snarled silently at him.

“… fear aggression, but he does really well with consistent, gentle handling,” the vet said, and the idiot trailing her nodded and reached out toward the ars of Dean’s kennel.

“I will make you regret the day the condom broke, you walking accident,” Dean mouthed. “If you so much as lay a finger on me…”

It wasn’t like talking did much, but it made Dean feel a little better to just speak his mind, even if it was silent. Even if nobody heard.

“Careful,” Ross said, and the guy pulled his fingers back. “He bites.”

He nodded and fiddled with a leash.

“Won’t be our first,” he said, and Dean didn’t love that. It just seemed a little ominous for his tastes.

“I know you and Lisa are good with the medical fosters, just keep an eye on behavior.” Ross pulled something up on her computer. “He struggled a little during the devoicing procedure, so I’m hoping we don’t have to repeat it. Thickened liquids, and if he starts having issues again you can always bring him back and we’ll place an NG tube again. He did really well with it early on, isn’t that right, hon?”

Dean resented that he couldn’t get his hands to cooperate with any of the rude gestures he imagined making.

“He should start regaining his ability to vocalize in a couple weeks, but if it’s problematic we can always repeat the devoicing,” Ross said, and Dean perked right the hell up at that. He’d get it back? His voice? And the ability to cough and hold his breath and strain his muscles without passing out? There was… there was a time limit on this? It was the first hope he’d had in a long-ass time.

“His hands too,” she continued, “Probably four weeks, maybe five before we have to repeat anything. I know you and Lisa usually focus on the medical side, and he’s high needs in that department right now, but consistent training is also going to be really important for him. If you need resources, reach out. Alisatair was going to be our first choice for socializing and training, but he’s not as comfortable with managing medical treatments.”

“Alastair?” The guy seemed a little wary of the name, but Dean didn’t really put much stock in that. In fairness, though, he also didn’t put much stock in the vet’s faith in this Alastair character.

Ross shrugged. “He’s good at what he does,” she said. “And his fosters always leave in good condition and with excellent behavior. His adoption rate is… But you know what? That’s not a fair comparison.”

The guy laughed at that, his attention on Ross instead of Dean now. “I guess you could say that,” he chuckled. “Doesn’t he exclusively foster companions?”

Ross laughed this time. “That’s the other reason we’d considered Alastair for this little guy.”

“Bitch,” Dean whispered.

“He really is gorgeous,” the guy said, and Dean was not gorgeous.

He was ruggedly handsome, thanks, and one of the better hunters in the Midwest. He was strong and capable… or… He used to be those things, but his looks hadn’t changed as far as he knew, so he’d really appreciate if this fucking jabroni could get it right.

Jabroni was fun, actually. Dean could roll with that as a name, ‘cause this guy sure as shit didn’t seem like he was gearing up to introduce himself. Asshole.

Maybe not Dean’s most original, but he’d been pretty fucked up on the KoolAid and whatever other drugs for a couple weeks, so he figured he deserved a little slack in the clever names department. Anyway, it wouldn’t matter what he called this guy, because he had zero intention of spending much time with him.

“Hey, bargain bin Big Boss Man,” Dean said as the dude looked over the vet’s notes, “You wanna be my ticket out of this dump? Let’s blow this popsicle stand, man.”

The guy looked at Dean with a warm smile.

“You ready to go home, buddy?” He asked, and Dean tried to give his best puppy dog eyes, because all the buttmunches in this shelter seemed to eat that shit up.

“I’m going to steal your car,” Dean said.

Chapter Text

Dean rolled his eyes when he saw the crate in the back of Bargain Bin’s car. It tracked—Dean felt like he had a pretty good radar for the kinds of bullshit that these people were going to throw his way—but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He sat in it cross-legged, still clad in nothing by the diaper from the shelter and the “restraint pants” (and wasn’t that just such a fun little name for the extra little prison keeping him from being able to take a leak like a normal person?) while Bargain Bin drove.

He didn’t want to be a sissy about it, but Dean’d always insisted on driving because he got carsick, and being shoved into a crate and unable to see the windows wasn’t helping that any. In fact, it was probably making it worse. He was jostled when the car turned or stopped, and about twenty minutes into the car ride, Dean could feel his stomach starting to turn, his gut cramping. It was the morning meds kicking in, he was pretty sure. Whatever they gave him with breakfast, it cleared him right the hell out by about four—something that Dean recognized meant he never had to spend the night stewing in filth, but it was also...

Thinking about it wasn’t going to change it. He just had to suck it up and wait for his opening, and now he knew that he’d get his hands back, and he’d get his voice back. The worst parts weren’t going to be forever, so all he had to do was bide his time and play the game and wait until he was recovered enough to get the hell out of dodge. And yeah, so a lot of his defiance had a distinct edge of desperation to it, but this time it was different. This wasn’t chucking juice through cage bars, it wasn’t biting Hester, it wasn’t fucking with the volunteers. Those things had been...

Ok, so nice would be a stretch, but they’d been distracting, and anything that distracted from the friggin’ soul-grinding, bleak-as-hell, rip-your-hair-out-just-to-not-think-about-it boredom was pretty welcome. And Dean wasn’t stupid. He got that his little rebellions were annoyances to his captors at best. He understood that he was a minnow caught in their net.

But minnows were little and slippery and fast as hell, and everybody underestimated minnows. And everybody underestimated Dean. Yeah, he wasn’t a big guy, and yeah, he wasn’t built like Sam or their dad. And yeah, he never finished high school, and yeah, he hadn’t read a lot of books, and yeah... yeah. He wasn’t stupid, though.

He wasn’t.

Even though he kept pitting himself against shit that was never gonna give. Even though he kept believing in some dumbass divorced-from-reality part of his brain that if he just tried to hold it he’d be allowed to hit the head, or that if he opened his mouth this time his voice would come out, or if he just tried hard enough his hands would work again... It wasn’t because he was stupid.

He wasn’t.

No matter how much he was hearing his dad never quite saying it, but making it so damn clear in every line of his face and every pause in his words. There’d been an extra dose of whatever they gave him to keep him calm, about a half an hour before they’d loaded him into the car, and that shit always made his brain foggy and his thoughts wander, and it was hard to stop it from wandering to good ‘ol John Winchester, and Dean wasn’t stupid. He knew why.

That was the stupid part—the why. Because there’d been some dumbass part of his brain that felt something like the ache where his mom should’ve been when the vet fluffed her fingers through his hair and told him to be good. Now that was stupid.

“Yeah, c’mon, Lis.” Bargain Bin’s voice was muffled, and it woke Dean. He’d fallen asleep after the life-ruining horror of the morning meds catching up with him and being forced (again) to shit his britches, and it was so beyond fucked up that he thought he was just getting used to it. But what else was he going to do? The weird grief that he’d fallen asleep to escape dogged him back into wakefulness, which seemed kinda like cheating, kinda unfair in Dean’s opinion (not that anybody was asking). He stayed lying on his side, minimizing his ability to feel the mess, and stared at the inside of the trunk.

“He was great in the car, needs a change, though.”

Yep.

That was Dean: great in the car, needs a change, don’t let him get his hands on a lighter because he will burn this place down given half a chance.

When the trunk opened, Dean stared at Lisa and wanted to fucking cry. Why? Why did the friggin’ universe send him a beautiful woman hosting a likely demon to witness his absolute fucking degradation? Couldn’t she have at least been ugly? And Dean was aware that was a shallow way to think, and that Sam would have something to say because he’d taken a women’s studies class, and that Bobby would have told him to suck it up because he didn’t know what real suffering was like, (and that John might have gamely offered to give Dean something to cry about).

“You have got to be kidding me,” he said as the woman opened the crate and reached in for him.

“Come on out, hon,” she said just as her… husband? Dean had no idea how a guy like that landed a chick like her, but this was upside-down-and-backwards land, apparently, so…

But her husband stopped her, cautioning, “Careful, he bites.”

“No muzzle?” She asked, giving Dean a little frown.

“Nah,” the guy said, “it’s mostly fear, so as long as you don’t overwhelm him, he ought to be okay.”

Jesus! Dean was fine! He wasn’t going to friggin’ bite this lady—the thing with Hester had been… Ok, so it wasn’t totally a one-off, but it wasn’t like he had many other options, and also... Sue him; he just really didn’t like Hester, and that was on Hester, not on him.

So he climbed out of the car, forced into a humiliating, bowlegged gait by the diaper and the pants, and he followed the not-quite-demons into their suspiciously normal-looking house, and he didn’t fight when they changed him and bathed him and helped him take pills—and it wasn’t because he was beat. He wasn’t.

He wasn’t beaten, he was just waiting. Just getting the lay of the land.

Slowly, one moment at a time, a plan was emerging, and Dean just needed to let it.

Several things in the home where Dean was being kept as an unwilling houseguest stood out as positive signs.

First, Lisa was going to spend the most time with Dean. She worked from home doing something on a computer all day, and she seemed like a soft touch. Dean had tactically deployed puppy dog eyes a couple times so far, and every time she fucking melted. The meds made his stomach cramp something wicked, and when they did, he usually curled on his hands and knees or leaned against the back wall of his kennel to try and ride it out, but when Lisa saw him in obvious discomfort, she left her desk and sat with him on the couch and rubbed his stomach, and Dean realized that he could get her wrapped around her finger in no time.

He gazed at her, trying to look as worried and pathetic as he could (not hard, he was plenty worried, and pathetic? He was a grown-ass man who’d had his voice, hands, and control over the bathroom stolen—he didn’t have to fake that feeling either), and she fucking melted. She hummed and cooed and lavished him in affection.

“That’s right,” Dean couldn’t say, “Drink it up, lady.”

Second, it was clear that this house was significantly lower-security than the shelter. These idiots didn’t seem to lock anything, and, sure, it wasn’t like Dean could use a door handle now, but that would change. There were lots of unlocked doors, the guy—Dean was pretty sure he’d heard Lisa call him Brett—left his keys just... out. Like right there on the counter. Like there wasn’t somebody living in his house just waiting for the perfect moment to steal his car and blast out of this place.

When he realized that, and the sedatives in his lunch hit, Dean spent several hours muzzily trying on one-liners for his inevitable escape.

Third, neither Brett nor Lisa seemed interested in correcting Dean’s behavior.

When he decided to wander around, they let him. When he sat on the couch, they allowed it. He wasn’t restricted to the floor like he’d thought he would be. They really did seem like they were mostly interested in helping him “recover,” which seemed like it was really just “stay on meds” by another name.

Why they wanted him in diapers and on meds and not talking was... Dean wasn’t about to kid himself and say he didn’t judge other people’s kinks or whatever—he totally did. And this seemed like some sick, fucked up kink thing, except it really seemed like every one of these creatures did it. So then what? Where did that leave him? If it wasn’t a sex thing (and Dean was decently confident it couldn’t be), then why did they want to keep humans?

Demons wanted souls, but nobody had offered to make a deal with him, so... these were either super weird demons, or they were something else. They were so human-like. That was what kept tripping Dean up. They were like humans in every way, except that there was something brain-tinglingly off about them (though Dean was picking up on that less the longer he was on these meds).

Also, Brett and Lisa seemed... big. Like, it was weird that one couple would both be so tall. Dean hadn’t been on his feet much since the woods, so he couldn’t say exactly how big Dr. Ross or Hester were, but Brett and Lisa for sure were crazy tall. Like, they both had to be north of six foot.

He was good about meds, he was good about food, he didn’t fight changing or bathing, even though it made him want to rip somebody’s hair out (his or Brett’s, most likely—Lisa was okay). He even perked up when they called him “little guy” even though he was a grown-ass man. It wasn’t like anybody had asked his name. It wasn’t like he could tell anybody.

And honestly, coming from them—and they were freakishly tall—it almost made sense. Like, Brett could have been in the NBA. Bargain Bin Big Boss Man? More like Bargain Bin Larry Bird. And they had to have had their furniture made custom or something or... was there a “big and tall” furniture store? Because that would make sense. Everything about their house was non-standard... or... non-human-standard. It was friggin’ weird.

And then one day Lisa was in a long-ass meeting and there was a miscommunication about Dean’s meds (facilitated by Dean purposely acting like he’d recently been doped up and sticking his tongue out at Lisa before bumping into a doorframe and staring blankly out the window until she got distracted and focused back on her work. That’s right, lady, lap it up. He was just a helpless, dopey little pet, right?

Dean shot a feral grin at the wall and wandered out to sit on the couch and watch TV, forced to decide between his back touching the back of the couch and his legs getting to bend. Listening to the TV, Dean stared at his hands, practicing moving his fingers. The movement was coming back slowly, in weak little twitches. It wouldn’t be long now. Breathing was easier, too, and he sometimes practiced making little sounds when nobody was listening, just proving he could.

He marveled at the progress as his brain slowly came back online, and he started to notice weird things. The door had to be seven feet—it was wildly tall—and the countertops were weirdly high, too. If Dean was judging by his own body, the counters were probably close to forty inches.

And then his brain started chugging through details, because when he’d first tried to sit on this couch, it hadn’t been too big for him.

And the realization hit like a fart in an elevator—intense and inescapable: Dean was shrinking.

Chapter Text

Being high had been nice while it lasted, but Dean couldn’t afford to take these people’s weird Honey-I-Shrunk-The-Dean meds anymore, so Dean did what he always did: He adapted.

Also, he might have killed the potted ficus tree in the living room by forcing himself to quietly (and thanks, Dr. Ross, for making sure he couldn’t make noise) puking his meds up into the pot every morning. That had been a rough little adjustment, but on the upside, the nausea did help him remember to puke, so... Dean figured he’d take a win where he could find one.

Although, that particular not-loss felt more like a draw. More of a tie. Ross: 1, Dean: 1, game, set, match or whatever.

He could tell his scheme to stop the shrinkage had been a success when, a week after he’d started and the first yellow leaves had begun to rain off the ficus, he overheard Lisa on the phone with the vet’s office.

“It looks like he’s hit his final size,” Lisa said, and Dean could have danced a goddamn jig. Hell yeah! It wasn’t great that he’d lost like a foot of height, as a matter of fact, that was probably gonna take some therapy or something—but at least he’d stopped it. He’d figured it out, and he’d stopped it. Dean: 1, Demons: 0*.

*Except for the whole... everything else so far.

But he was slowly but surely evening the score.

“Yeah, no problems, I’ve been posting pictures and people think he’s adorable.” Lisa continued, and Dean wandered closer so he could overhear the conversation, leaning against her and letting his head rest against her tit because she had nice tits and Dean deserved something nice.

On the other end of the line, Ross asked, “Have you and Brett done any training with him?” and Lisa scratched her long nails through Dean’s hair.

“No.” She kept scratching Dean’s scalp, and he had to fight to keep paying attention. “That’s not our area and he’s had some fear aggression, though you’d never guess it seeing him now—he’s so relaxed!”

“So maybe a consult with Alistair?” Ross suggested, and Dean perked up. Movement meant a break in the routine, and that could be an ideal opportunity to gather a little intel, maybe scope out an escape route.

Lisa laughed and looked down at Dean. “Maybe a couple,” she said, “Got a nervous little guy here, it might take him some time to adjust.”

“He might do better if he can train with Alistair and you,” Ross offered, “I can ask him to be there for his follow-up—and by the way, how’s he doing with vocalizations?”

“Nonverbal and nondisruptive,” Lisa said, and Dean kicked himself. He’d thought nobody heard him testing his voice, but apparently Lisa’s ears were sharp. “Only words I’ve heard have been when he’s dreaming, but it’s all names.”

Oh, what the hell? That was... To say that was humiliating, or invasive, or... It wasn’t that it was more of a violation than anything else that had happened, but it was more of a surprise. Dean clenched his jaw and stared at his feet.

“Well, let me know if you think we’ll need to repeat the devoice,” Ross offered, “But it sounds like he’s doing great. We’ll get his final size to add to the official file—with his aggression I was hoping he’d get a little smaller...”

Lisa hummed and wrapped her arm around Dean, and her body was warm. She was warm and alive, and Dean turned his face into her tits. It wasn’t his fault that he was tit-height now. It was Ross’s fault and Brett’s and Lisa’s too, though he had a harder time pinning as much fury on her. He told himself she just had nice tits, because she was obviously otherwise a dumb bitch who was keeping him prisoner in her home. Tits were a better reason to not hate her than the fact that she pulled blankets around him when he was ready to sleep or that she scratched his back when he woke from nightmares.

Better to like Lisa’s tits than to like Lisa.

And Dean was kidding himself if he thought Lisa wasn’t growing on him, but if there was one thing Dean could do, it was kid himself. Brett could kiss his ass, but Lisa could get away with touching him casually now, and Dean only ever remembered too late to flinch away from her. So when she hummed, “it’s going to be fine,” when putting him in the crate in the car—a much more comfortable fit now that Dean was down about a foot—he believed her.

And she hadn’t been wrong about some of it.

The exam sucked, but Dean was used to Dr. Ross and he was annoyed but not scared. They tested new things this time, too. They pulled his body this way and that, stretching his limbs and Dean didn’t remember being as stretchy as he was now. Ok, so that was… That was a win, he guessed. Flexibility was… good.

It was fine.

It was weird as hell going all Gumby, and he kept thinking about his old Stretch Armstrong action figure as they pulled and measured and noted. Goddamn, but that was weird.

Then came the second part of the exam, where Dr. Ross stuffed things in his ass, and Dean was decidedly less chill about that, but he forced himself to stay quiet except for a little pained sound when the ass-ratchet hit its biggest size and he thought the stretch was going to rip him in half. Why the hell they needed to know how big his asshole would stretch was way the hell above his pay grade (actually, everything was above his pay grade, because nobody was paying him, so suck on that, Ross), but he sure as shit wasn’t a fan of it.

But Ross seemed pleased.

“Wow, that’s excellent,” she said, noting something in Dean’s chart. “We could try one more with the amyl nitrates, but honestly, he’s a natural.”

And Dean hadn’t been sure exactly what he was a natural at until Lisa had scratched his head and squeezed his shoulder and told him to be good until she picked him up, and then he’d met a trainer.

That had been… memorable.

“Don’t try that, buddy,” he’d said when Dean stared at the window instead of acknowledging the trainer. “I know you can understand me. In this space you’ll be allowed to ask clarifying questions, and use approved language.”

Okay, so, win some, lose some, right? This was different, but different from dogshit had to be better, right? And the trainer was a dick, sure, but that was about the baseline here, and it was easy to not take him too seriously with his whole… was it a fashion sense? The guy was kinda short (still taller than Dean but that didn’t mean what it used to), a little heavy-set, and he was dressed like some bizarre combination of a guy about to go on a golf outing with his rowdiest friends from college, and an emo sex club leather guy.

It was the combo of the lime green polo shirt and the horse whip that was really clinching the look, but the boat shoes… were a choice. Dean sneered at the guy.

“Let’s start with the basics, bud,” the alleged ‘trainer’ said.

“Got a goddamn name,” Dean whispered when he was decently sure he wouldn’t get caught using people words.

“What’s that?”

Oh.

Oh shit. He’d kind of forgotten people could understand him at all—Lisa and Brett were so damn committed to pretending Dean was some combination of a baby and a big dog that he’d gotten… well, he’d never actually been careful about what he said, but he’d at least been aware of how other people would read what he said.

Dean shook his head, and there was a sudden cracking sound followed by, burning stripe of pain across the meaty part of his thigh. Holy shit! Holy shit, what the hell was that? He hadn’t even said any—

“It’s okay, bud,” the trainer went all nice again as soon as Dean froze. “I’ll teach you what words are allowed, but until then let’s stick with ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.’ If things go well, I’ll teach you a couple more things you can say.”

Who the hell did this chucklehead think he was? The guy looked like a pair of Oakley sunglasses come to life. He looked like the human embodiment of a backwards baseball cap. Where the hell did he get off thinking he could treat Dean like this?

Before he could parse the indignation into four-lettered eloquence, the trainer grabbed Dean by the shoulders and started manipulating his body. Too used to being manhandled, Dean just kind of went with it, which sucked, but it sucked less than the whip, so he took the little victory where he could.

“This here,” the trainer pressed at Dean’s lower back until his spine curved, his chest up and knees spread, hands on the floor between them, “is gonna be how you show off that gorgeous little body of yours.”

Until this point, things had been suspiciously asshole-focused, but not explicitly sexual, but this pose was really pushing it. The diaper protected Dean’s meager modesty (and wow! Kind of amazing that he’d found a silver lining to even that. It was a God-given talent—he ought to get an award).

“Do you remember how you’re allowed to answer me?” The trainer stroked long lines down Dean’s back, and he wanted to crawl right out of his goddamn skin. There was creepy, and then there was creepy, and this guy was a goddamn, honest-to-god, perving-at-innocent-people-through-their-windows creep.

“Yeah,” Dean grit out, his voice still hoarse and breathy and hard to control.

In a staggering bout of unfairness, the whip came down, this time lighting up the sensitive skin behind his thigh.

“What the hell, man?” Dean demanded before he could think better, and the whip came down again.

“Stay in position, bud,” the trainer said, and he didn’t even sound mad. What the hell? “I know, it’s hard. Nobody likes getting corrected, but you can do it.”

Condescending little fuck!

The whip went away and his hand returned, rubbing away the pain on Dean’s thighs. Soothing and smoothing over his heated skin. Dean made a frustrated sound, unable to keep it locked behind his clenched teeth. He thought the guy would go right back to unreasonable demands, but he paused and let Dean breathe until he was calm again.

“Ok, you’re okay, little guy.”

Yeah, obviously. Dean was fine, no thanks to this jerk. Literal fucking pain in the ass. Legs. Whatever.

“Take a minute and think about what you’re supposed to say,” he said, “I know the meds can be a doozy at the start, but it should be getting a little easier soon. Deep breath, come on, and now: Do you remember how you’re supposed to answer me?”

What. The. Hell?

Yes, Dean remembered! Who the hell did this dipshit think he was talking to? Dean had fucking said he remembered! He was supposed to say—

Oh.

Oh hell no.

This asshole who probably thought cornhole was a sport wanted him to call him sir? John-fucking-Winchester hadn’t gotten that out of Dean since he was a teenager, and how this fucking guy thought he could get Dean to call him…

But what else was he going to do?

Refuse? Tell him to go suck an egg? Make a few suggestions about exactly where he could shove that whip? The guy was just gonna… Dean actually wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he was pretty sure he didn’t really like how not listening was going to go for him, but fucking sir?

And then he remembered that Lisa was coming back.

Lisa was coming back, and he was slowly getting back use of his hands and his voice, and if he could just play the fucking game, if he could just fake it a little bit, then he’d be able to escape. He’d get out of this. He just had to…

He just had to..

He swallowed, and it was laborious still, and it still made him scared he’d choke even though he hadn’t done that in weeks now. But he swallowed and looked at the whip, and said, “yes, sir.”

And then nothing happened.

Dean had been literally forced to shit himself—on the regular—and it still didn’t compare to how dirty he felt calling this lite-beer-come-to-life “sir.” Dean panted and stared at the floor, feeling hot, humiliating tears threatening to spill.

Give you something to fucking cry about, he heard, his father’s voice clear and rough in his mind. And it sucked. It all sucked, everything sucked, every moment since he’d eaten that apple had fucking sucked, but something went quiet in him when he called the asshole in the lime polo “sir.” The rage got less fractious, quieter in him. It banked into a low ember, something that he hoped could survive damp and cold. Something safer. Something lasting.

The trainer praised him and rubbed him and manhandled him into three positions then had him move between them, correcting him with occasional strikes, rewarding him with praise and at one point a Listerine strip which Dean would have spit out, except it melted really fast, and also he clung to the way it made his mouth feel clean and fresh and good. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth for a long time after that, chasing the flavor that tasted like being allowed to brush his own teeth and popping a breath mint before trying to talk up some bar chick.

When it was finally over, he wrapped an arm around Lisa and didn’t look at the trainer while he gave her a sanitized recap of their time together, then texted her a video of Dean moving through positions so she could reinforce with him at home.

He was going to get out of here.

This wasn’t forever, and he was going to escape. He was going to steal Brett’s stupid car and he was going to drive back to the forest, and he was going to find a way back to Sam and Bobby.

He had to.

Chapter Text

The sun cast a listless pool of damp light on the floor just inside the window, and Dean sat and watched it. He’d been watching it since Brett had “practiced” poses with Dean, a process that was a lot more of Brett calling out poses and then Dean moving into position, and Brett praising him or giving him sections of an orange until the orange was gone. Dean had made the mistake of accepting a peppermint when they finished, and he was still regretting that choice even though the unpleasant combination no longer clung to his tongue.

He could have gotten water, he supposed. His fingers worked well enough to hold a cup, to turn on the sink. He just didn’t feel like it.

He didn’t really feel like anything.

He didn’t even hate Brett, which was pretty unusual. There’d been two other “consultations” with the trainer at the shelter, and everybody thought Dean was doing great, so obedient, ready for adoption. He was listed on the site, and he learned that he was being weaned off all his meds, which was convenient, because he didn’t really like making himself puke on the ficus, and the tree didn’t look like it was going to recover.

Nice to know that he could make something else join him in his suffering, even if Lisa thought it was a fungus and Brett thought Lisa was overwatering it. Lisa wasn’t overwatering it, Dean was.

If he’d been able to, he’d’ve pissed on it too.

Actually... Dean looked at his hands, and then at the buckle on the restraint pants. He could probably undo it. It might take a little fumbling, but he probably could. He could probably free himself, and then what?

He followed the light out the window and watched the elastic limbs of the mulberry tree in the yard.

What was the fucking point? He’d gone from terrified to drugged out to this. This blah empty feeling that made his bones feel heavy and made him sleep. Maybe that’s what he’d do. He’d been awake for nearly four hours, now—he could nap. Lisa would wake him up when it was time to eat.

He shuffled up, knees screaming from sitting so still so long, one leg asleep enough that it kept landing weird and twisting, but the drugs had made his body more elastic. Before, it would have been a sprain, but now it was nothing. No sign of the damage.

No signs of damage.

That thought hurt, but Dean didn’t dwell on it. He wasn’t going to be some little bitch and think about his fucking feelings all day. He was going to sleep, and he was going to do it on Lisa’s side of her and Brett’s bed, because it was the harder side of the mattress and he liked the back support.

Not because it smelled like Lisa.

Because fuck that bitch for letting this happen to him. He resented the knowledge that when she woke him up by climbing onto the bed and cuddling around him and calling him “handsome little guy,” he was going to forgive her. It was a foregone conclusion. He always did, because he needed her kindness even more than he needed his rage.

What had anger ever done for him, anyway?

“Come on, let’s hop in the car.”

Brett looked expectant, which was pretty stupid. Dean wasn’t going to look enthusiastic about wherever they were going. Every time they put him in the car, they went somewhere that sucked, and no amount of that weird cheery voice was going to make Dean think they were going somewhere less shitty than home.

Shit. No.

Not home.

This wasn’t Dean’s home.

“Suck my dick,” he whispered when Brett wasnt’ listening. Because fuck these people, but he wasn’t about to poke the bear and get them to take his voice again. And then he got in the car into the seat he’d graduated to and let Brett buckle him in. It was hard to decide if it was more or less humiliating to sit in a car seat or a crate in the trunk, but he figured it was better to be able to see out the window at least.

Dean generally had low expectations of Brett. He was no Lisa, that was for sure. He lacked Lisa’s one… two redeeming qualities, her wit and charm so to speak. Dean’s humor was deeply underappreciated, and the whole not being allowed to talk thing really wasn’t helping. He deserved more credit. Wit and charm, D cups at least.

His low expectations were thoroughly subverted, though, when they pulled up to an ice cream shop and Brett took Dean by the hand and led him in. He was allowed to wear an overlarge t-shirt (probably one of Brett’s if the band logo was any indication) and kept on a leash, but still. It was… hot damn, the smell of waffle cones being made and that specific mix of ice cream and whatever they used to clean for floors was an intoxicating mix. He’d eaten the gross thin porridge and drunk the nasty thickened juice ever since his capture, and he’d almost forgotten how deprived he was. How much better food could be, because food had been the least of his worries for so long.

“You can point at one you want,” Brett encouraged, and Dean tried to wrap his legs around Brett because being held like this felt precarious and he would never admit that he was scared of falling, but the black and white checkered tile really didn’t look like a comfy landing.

Dean scanned over the flavors, and it turned out demons liked the same flavors as humans—yet another bizarre and unsettling fact. Just as he was going to point at one, he spotted another… Jesus Christ, it was another human. Like Dean. Another real person, not a demon. The guy was only a foot tall and being carried in a purse and Dean blanched.

That could have been him.

On second thought, he was good without ice cream. He felt sick. That was what these people wanted to do with him—they wanted to make him…

Nope. No way, Jose. He was good with his current size, thanks. He was happy with being four foot whatever. He was actually kinda hoping he was rebounding a little, but he’d been careful not to stand too tall or anything just in case Brett or Lisa noticed and told the vet.

He had to make sure he never went back there.

He’d waited plenty, cased shit out. He’d noticed a forest on the way here—might not be the right one, but Dean was over the whole biding-his-time strategy. It wasn’t going to work, he needed to get the hell out of here, and lucky for him, Brett was an idiot.

The guy didn’t even bother keeping Dean away from his car keys on the table, and he’d fatally underestimated Dean’s dexterity (nearly back at a hundred percent, and he was practicing daily). The key went into the top of his evil diaper pants, hidden, and then all he had to do was wait for Brett to get distracted by a game on his phone.

Brett wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, so slipping away from him was easier than slipping a cop a doughnut. The hard part, it turned out, was actually driving the car—something Dean had long taken for granted. Demon cars were about the same as human cars, but being suddenly a lot shorter, everything was unfamiliar and weird. Even so, Dean was quick on his feet and resourceful, and he realized after sitting in the driver’s seat that there was no fucking way he was going to be able to safely drive Brett’s car, so he decided to do it unsafely.

Using a water bottle on the gas pedal and the emergency brake to keep things manageable, Dean made a break for it. The minute rubber hit road, he wanted to laugh. He wanted to whoop and holler because he was fucking free! Suck it Dr. Ross, Brett could eat his dust, the trainer could get fucking bent, and Lisa could... Lisa was fine, he’d miss her tits.

He was thinking of Lisa’s tits when he tried to slow down to turn a corner, laying on the horn to warn other cars that he had exactly zero control, when things went a little sideways. The emergency brake was doing its level best, but so was the engine, and the engine seemed to be just a little stronger.

Dean shifted to neutral, the brake working better, letting him take the turn, then put it back in gear to a truly horrific sound. Had his baby made that sound, Dean would have stopped, but as it was, he didn’t give a shit about this car, and he could see the dark canopies of trees down the road. Just a little further and he could find the gate, and then... he wasn’t quite sure what then, but he’d figure something out. He’d... He’d get back through. He’d go home.

Even if Sam hated him, Bobby... also probably hated him. But Bobby’d take him in anyway. He would. He had to. It was a block away, and the car was speeding up and Dean was starting to worry about what would happen when he hit the treeline, but it turned out that he didn’t need to worry about that, because before he hit the treeline, somebody hit him, and the world became a spinny blur, like the view out from inside a blender.

The car stopped, finally, and Dean flopped out the door, feeling very much like a fork recently escaped from the garbage disposal. He wasn’t at the treeline, but there was a gap in the fence, and they’d made him smaller. He’d fit. The gap was narrow, and the fence was long, so anybody coming after him was going to have to waste a lot of time, and Dean didn’t think anymore before worming his way through.

Hills rolled, dotted with trees and bushes. Not great cover, but Dean’d make it work. Broad daylight was also less than awesome, but again, Dean was no slouch. He was John Winchester’s son, and he wasn’t about to let a fence or a half dozen shouting demons or a car crash stop him from finding Sammy.

It was the clarity of purpose his mind needed right now: find Sammy.

He clawed up the hill, skidded down a dip, then looked back and was gratified to see that the road was out of sight. Good. If he couldn’t see people on the road, people on the road couldn’t see him. Dean patted himself on the back for killing a shitload of birds with one stone... car... Inconveniencing a shitload of demons with one car.

All up and down the rolling hills were stones, jutting out of the earth like narrow teeth. Graves. Holy mother of Andre the Giant, a demon cemetery? He could... Oh wow. He could really...

He glanced at Brett’s credit card poking out of the stupid diaper pants.

With a positive attitude and some gasoline, he could have a real little demon barbecue out here.

Chapter Text

Castiel browsed the pictures of humans on his phone and sighed. Michael was probably right, he had time for a pet and resources. He was patient. He liked humans—they were cute and they could babel and they were made in God’s own image, much like the angels and demons. Castiel thought it was wrong to pluck humans out of the garden, though, and there was a certain... harshness to the ones that ate of the apple and had to leave. He’d read somewhere once that the ones who ate of the fruit of the tree were often made to, that they tended to be humans the other humans didn’t want around, so it wasn’t unreasonable that the rescues were all a bit rough around the edges.

It was why there were such excellent rescues, vets and trainers who would mold the wayward souls back into creatures uncorrupted. Souls could be cleansed of their worst impulses, brought back to a state of Innocence. They became small and childlike, they became trusting. Castiel liked the idea of caring for one. He liked the idea of deserving its trust.

“And it doesn’t hurt,” Michael pointed out, “That they have certain needs that they can’t fulfill on their own. Pick a pretty one and you’ll never notice that nobody calls you back for a second date.”

“Thank you, Michael.” Castiel stared at his screen. Maybe not. Maybe he didn’t want a human. That part seemed like a lot of work.

But there was one he couldn’t stop thinking about, one with green eyes and short, soft hair. Something in the way it looked at the camera left Castiel unable to close the tab.

“What do you mean?”

“—not coming in.”

“I mean it makes sense... medical fosters...”

“...behavioral issues, mostly...”

Dean’s cheek was wet.

Facedown on the cot, drool pooled out of his mouth and quickly became cold. Voices moved around the unfamiliar shelter, and he couldn’t make sense of any of the words. This wasn’t the little room off Dr. Ross’s clinic. This was somewhere big and institutional and the sounds of other humans shouting or crying jangled around the stainless steel walls—good for hosing down.

He wasn’t in the restraint pants. It was a detail he kept coming back to. Ought to be promising, really. One less think between him and freedom. His hair smelled like smoke and dirt clung to his body, and he would have moved, except whatever they’d given him made that impossible.

“...new one?”

When is Lisa coming? He would have asked, but all his body would do was lay face down and drool. Soon, he hoped. Every thought was slippery. Hard to hold. Minnows that flashed in the sun, but even the fastest hands came back empty but for sand and water.

“Alistair’s is gonna take him at the end of the week.”

“Not ‘till the end of the week?”

The voices were coming closer. Come on, tongue, fucking move. Ask about Lisa.

“They don’t have any openings now, but apparently they’d been doing consults for this one in his previous foster placement.”

Dean managed, with a truly herculean effort, to groan when the voices seemed close. The sound was weird, the room had the acoustics of a walk-in freezer. The temperature, too. It was friggin’ cold and Dean’s body didn’t care enough to shiver about it. The wire cage door opened, and there were footsteps.

“Hey bud,” somebody said, and a hand fell warm on his back. “Time for that next dose, keep you feeling good, huh?”

Dean groaned again, trying to ask about Lisa, but the guy just untaped Dean’s diaper and pricked his butt with something, then patted him and left. Didn’t even tape the diaper back up. Dean blinked and blinked again, and it was late, and somebody was opening the wire cage door to his little stainless steel room. Good for hosing down. When was Lisa coming? Dean didn’t like it here.

“You’re a bit of a head case, aren’t you, buddy.” It wasn’t a question. The words fell like gravel, loud and disconnected and too much all at once in the weird noise of this shelter. “I heard you dug up dozens of skeletons in the graveyard, dragged them all to the forest, and burned them.”

Yeah, but not Lisa’s, so she should be here, right? Where was she? Dean wanted to shiver out from under the hand that was roaming his body, trailing down his back, over his ass, down his thigh to his knee, then up the inside of his thigh again. He wanted to squirm out of his body to avoid that touch. He’d spied around in his month or so of freedom. He’d seen things. Just because things didn’t get sexual for him, didn’t mean they wouldn’t. Just because he was... diminished in size...

His mind cheerfully supplied the image of a warmly lit window, and just through it, a human who had been shrunk down to barely two feet tall, belly distended grotesquely around—

Jesus, no! Why did he keep thinking about that? Why wouldn’t it leave him the hell alone? Dean didn’t want to think about that.

“Like you thought they were demons or something,” the person touching him interrupted his thoughts, and Dean’s mind froze.

Thought they were demons? They were, weren’t they? Why else would they...

“Humans are so cute,” he said, and Dean really didn’t like the way that hand kept dipping between his ass cheeks, the way it was touching his hole with each long stroke over his body. “Don’t be afraid, little guy. We’re the good guys, we’re the angels.”

Angels?

Like the things that worked for God? Like the ones that ran around saying “be not afraid,” and telling people messages? As in the things that guarded the Garden of Eden with swords of fire?

There was no way these things were angels—they were terrifying. They were inhuman.

The alleged—no, fuck that. Angel Dean’s ass. The fucking delusion demon’s hand was roaming over Dean’s body now, getting more purposeful with each pass, and Dean remembered the other humans he’d seen. He thought about how they’d changed him, made him smaller and stretchier, less breakable.

He wanted to puke, except his body only really wanted to sit still, and that wasn’t great. That really wasn’t great.

“Wait,” he finally managed, as a finger pressed expectantly at his asshole, and to his surprise, the finger stopped.

“Oh, little buddy, what is it?” The alleged angel asked.

“Don’t. Where... I...” was all Dean could manage. Where the hell was Lisa? They’d caught him hours ago and even though he knew he’d made an impressive fucking escape, he was sure he hadn’t gotten that far. Lisa should be here by now.

“You don’t wanna wear this?” The hand tugged at the diaper, and Dean moaned in despair. No. Actually, for once, he really did prefer to keep it on, thanks. Fucking of course nobody would ask his opinion about wearing a goddamn diaper until his choice was shit himself with an audience or have some psycho demon try and go the wrong way on a one-way street. God, he thought he’d gotten over the impulse to think this was a dream, but Dean suddenly thought that if this was a dream, it probably said some weird fucking shit about him.

The thought, amid all the terror, ripped a laugh out of him, jostling him bumpily. What the hell would it even mean about him if this was all in his head? Demons that said they were angels trying to make him into a fuckable pet baby?

“It says you’re not trained to this yet,” the asshole touching Dean’s asshole said, “So let’s just get you settled and comfy for the night, huh?” Another prick, and goddamn they were keeping him really sedated here, weren’t they? This seemed like a lo... like a... like a lot. A lot.

“Get you feeling really good, you can just sleep right through it, huh, buddy? You feel good, I feel good.” The guy didn’t really seem like he was talking to Dean at all, and the dread tried to spike, but Dean’s body refused to brace with it.

Dean’s next breath was deep and slow, heavy like he was already asleep. His body was so relaxed. He couldn’t move a muscle, and he felt something wet on his asshole and the demon pulling him until he was curled into a little ball, ass to heels, with the overwhelming heat of its body pressed up against him. His eyelids fluttered shut, and he felt a sudden, huge pain, but his body was too tired to do anything about it. Even the noise punched out of Dean was soft.

He tried to stay awake, to catalogue this latest horror. He tried to be aware so he could remember, but between one breath and the next, he slipped into the warm, beckoning darkness.

When he woke, he was in so much pain that he couldn’t stop crying. He never used to cry when he was hurt. He never used to cry at all, but now? Now his eyes leaked like it was a bad pollen day in Kansas and he felt the way something was too tacky between his legs, hidden by a fresh diaper.

His hands were free.

He could look if he wanted.

He didn’t want.

When they changed him and fed him, somebody called for a supervisor and they pulled Dean into an exam room and the vet said someone had accessed him without permission, and Dean wanted to ask about Lisa, but he was starting to think maybe she wasn’t coming. He was sure that if she wasn’t coming, he didn’t want to know.

With a tch and a sound of mild irritation, the vet pressed white gauze to Dean’s asshole and made even more disappointed sounds when it came away.

“This is somebody on the night shift,” somebody said, but Dean didn’t really care enough to see who. “Third time this month.”

“Move him to the secure area, I guess,” came the careless reply. “I’d suggest a foster, but...”

“Yeah, probably better to just wait for Alistair with this one.”

“Just make a note in his file,” the Vet turned his attention on Dean fully, and Dean didn’t like that one bit. “You feeling a little sore, little guy? Did somebody bother you last night?”

Dean didn’t even know what to say to that. They’d let the sedation wear off enough that he could shuffle where directed, but he knew he wasn’t supposed to talk—he didn’t want them to take his voice again. And what would he say anyway? And what was the point in telling anybody anything?

“I wanna go home,” he whispered, and the tech wrapped an arm around Dean and hugged him, giving him a brisk little rub as another fucking tear fell from the tip of Dean’s nose. Why did that keep happening? ‘Cause you’re a pussy, he reminded himself. Dad tried his hardest, but look at you.

The tech cooed and the vet sucked air through his teeth, annoyed again, and Dean tried to make himself smaller, but that sharp pain ripped through his lower belly again, and he stiffened.

“Couple of days, little guy,” the vet reassured, “—Note in the chart that he’s verbalizing, and I want the volunteers to keep an eye out for that— Your new daddy is going to pick you up in just a couple days. Can you be good while you wait for him?”

Dean nodded.

“At least he doesn’t know what happened,” the tech shrugged, helping Dean down from the table. “Ignorance is bliss, right, bud?”

Dean shivered.

He nodded.

Locked in the secure area, nobody bothered him, and Dean didn’t bother anybody. He stared at the walls and slept and listened to the sounds of other humans chattering or fighting or crying. He tried to imagine Sammy or Bobby telling him to get the hell up and quit wallowing in shit, but their ghosts were silent in his mind.

He tried to dissolve into the silence.

Chapter Text

When the profile on the city’s adoption website disappeared, Castiel realized that he did want a human. Not any human. Not one of the little lap humans, or the easy ones, but the one with the green eyes that watched him with accusation and demand. The one that seemed to be asking, “why has the world denied me safety and kindness? Why haven’t you come for me?”

When he told Michael, he laughed.

“The big ones can be a handful anyway,” he said, “You’d be better suited to one of those lap-size ones.”

Castiel tried to imagine, but he’d always found the really small humans strange. They made him uneasy, even though he knew they were designed to be happy and healthy when used as God intended, returned to Innocence and used for pleasure in the grand recreation of the joys of the Garden. Plenty of things he could know without being fully comfortable, Castiel figured.

“I can handle a big human,” he insisted, to Michael’s amusement.

“Then look for one,” he prompted, and Castiel didn’t. He’d already looked at other rescues, other adoption sites. Hell, he’d even looked at some breeders—a very expensive option because they’d been bred for temperament from stock that predated the current human practice of only banishing those whose crimes were unforgivable—harming children and the elderly and the like.

The thing was, he ought to have just stopped thinking about the human with those green eyes, shining and intense. He should have let it go, but instead he looked for his human every chance he got.

“It really is a Miracle he wasn’t hurt, out in the wild like that,” the handler said.

Dean didn’t catch the guy’s name, but he sure as hell caught some flack when he made the mistake of glaring for too long. His ear still felt tender and hot after the quick slap. The dude was short and mean, and he commanded Dean to follow, barely even gripping the leash in his hand like Dean was just going to…

The other handler took less intereste in Dean, which Dean appreciated. Where Tweedle Dumb jerked Dean around by a leash and used the forced proximity of the car to fondle Dean in a way that reminded him way too much of the guy back at the shelter, Twedle Dumber mostly just watched the road, occasionally offering a thought here or there about how Dean might be improved as a pet. Dean had some of his own thoughts about improvements. He could think of several ways to improve his captor’s faces, in fact. Several available in the car, even. A tire iron, for example.

“I think he’s coming out of it,” Tweedle Dumb said, and the driver nodded like that both made sense and was a good thing.

The fog.

Must have been the fog. Dean had been feeling clearer lately, that made sense. He’d have liked to say that it was for sure better being not drugged, but… Some things were probably easier to deal with when his thoughts were wrapped in that chemical bubble wrap, stuffed full of cotton wool.

“Keep an eye on him, then.”

Yeah. Keep an eye on him. Dean was famously good in the car, right up until he stole the car. No amount of watching him would warn these assclowns when he planned to strike. They wanted to test him? Fine. They could test away.

Tweedle Dumb here wanted to keep squeezing his dick through the diaper? Fine. He was calling the fucking thunder with every stroke and squeeze that Dean was still too weak to fend off (because maybe the sedatives were less, but they were for sure giving him something to make him weak and relaxed all the time, too).

The hand migrated up to Dean’s mouth.

He’d done this with the trainer. He knew what this idiot though the was going to do. He’d been beaten into sucking fake cocks and fingers enough, that he knew how to make his mouth soft and inviting in that way that would have made Brett praise him and offer him a popsicle afterwards (and Dean absolutely refused to miss fucking Brett. Fucking Brett!), so he let his lips part under the barest pressure and he let Tweedle Dumb’s finger in, and he made eye contact with Tweedle Dumber in the rear view mirror.

And he bit down hard.

Call the thunder and get the lightning, chucklehead. Dean grinned, a bizarre euphoria racing through him as the handler cursed and tried to pull away and discovered that fighting would only tear his skin. Triumph felt fucking good.

And, yeah, it was short-lived. And, yeah, maybe it resulted in the asshole choking Dean out until his mouth fell open. And, yeah, maybe now he was dosed to the gills and gagged… But for a minute there, it had been fucking great.

“Why not look at Alistair’s?” Michael asked.

Castiel watched a cloud slowly transforming itself over and over. It was to the east, which was the direction of the Garden, and he wondered again where the green-eyed human had gone. He’d been a medical foster. Castiel had thought there’d be a little more time—he wasn’t listed for adoption yet.

He supposed the foster parents might have decided to adopt.

If the green-eyed human had been his, he’d have adopted.

Castiel stopped that thought in its tracks. He didn’t know anything about the human. It might have been terrible. It could have been so sick it didn’t make it—the pictures didn’t exactly show a paragon of good health.

That thought troubled Castiel. He didn’t like to think his human—What? No, not his. The human, because it had never been his and it still wasn’t. He didn’t like to think the human had died. That was rare once they were out of the Garden—angelic medicine was far more sophisticated than the humans’ primitive ways.

Still, he knew it was possible. Some humans wandered the wilderness for unknown times before being brought in, and some humans were ejected from the Graden with injuries or illnesses that made recovery difficult.  And some humans just… couldn’t thrive.  Some souls were beyond the reach of even the most skilled angels.

The methods they had were proven to wipe away the dark rot that grew on the souls ejected from the Garden, but on occasion, it just didn’t work.  On occasion, a soul would wither on the vine and a human simply wouldn’t be able to make it.

There were theories, and Castiel, unable to locate his—the—green-eyed human, wound up link-diving into human metaphysical theory, the function of angelic interventions, the effects on the soul, the actual substance of Innocence.  It was all fascinating to learn, but somehow when he read about the effects of true depravity on the human soul, he had a hard time picturing the green-eyed human.  There was something… mournful about him.  Something that Castiel couldn’t shake.

So he read about studies.  He dove into the academia, fascinated by the researchers who wrote on the ethics of directly examining souls—the process was invasive and carried the potential to cause trauma, but was also an infallible and direct way to determine the efficacy of any intervention designed to heal the human soul. There were theorists who suggested that not all souls ejected from Eden had lost their Innocence, and that those with intact Innocence could be hurt by the interventions that helped the damaged souls. That the ways they cut away rot could, when a soul wasn’t rotted, cut into healthy soul.

It left Castiel feeling strange and uneasy.  He both hoped that the green-eyed human was one of the rare few that left Eden with a soul unsullied, and he hoped that he wasn’t. He hoped that the theorists were wrong, but their research was solid. Their reasoning was sound.  He didn’t like what it might mean if both he and the research were right.

“But,” he said, hoping against hope that he could get Michael to see what was no so obvious, “If their soul is still Innocent—“

“If, if, if!”  Michael laughed it off, “So what would you recommend, then?  Have somebody examine each soul directly?  And how would we even regulate something like that?  They hate having their souls touched, I don’t think it would be any less traumatic than the training.”

“Well, there’s a professor… Theophania, I think, who’s been looking at ways to screen souls.  Non-invasive—“

“Promising, promising,” Michael said, about as interested as he ever was in Castiel’s odd interests.  “Let me know if it’s something actionable and I’ll recommend it to the town council.”

That was… That was nothing.  He was offering nothing.  Castiel didn’t know what to say, though.  He’d explained the research, and he’d explained it well. And Michael wasn’t interested.

And maybe that made sense. Humans exiled from the Garden weren’t like they used to be. Early on, it was a coin toss whether or not a human would be exiled for some strange quirk like knowing math or sleeping with the wrong person, but they’d refined themselves over time. They were judicious in their exiles now, and it was exceedingly rare to find a human whose soul hadn’t been corrupted, their Innocence damaged. All the contemporary research acknowledged it—it was why the few contemporary studies were all case studies.

It was exceedingly unlikely that Castiel’s odd gut feeling about the human was anything more than projection.

At first, Dean had thought that maybe Alistair would be like the last trainer. A little less… bespoke, sure, but just a dude who would ask him to go through the weird poses and positions, and critique him with a stick until the half hour was up. For the first hour, that was about how things went.

And then Alistair had gone for what Dean could only describe as super-rapey shock and awe. He’d put Dean on hands and knees (an unfortunately familiar position) and slid an enema syringe into him over and over, filling him until he was panting and whining with something that wasn’t water. Usually it was water. (Usually, it was done by the vet, and she rubbed his back and her stupid tech, what’s-his-name would encourage him, which was stupid, but better than Alistair’s coldness.)

When he finally stopped, Dean felt like he was going to shit himself, which was unlikely since they’d switched him to a weird diet and controlled when… fuck, actually, Dean didnt’ really want to think about that. It was all fucking gross, and he was much happier if he could pretend that below the belly-button, his body just kind of… didn’t exist. Like Dean was Dean in his head, and, to a limited degree, in his hands, but when it came to everything else, it was just better to not think about it.

So when he finally stopped, Dean kind of registered, but he was doing a really good job of playing the “anywhere but here” game, trying to remember the contents of every cabinet in Bobby’s kitchen, every scratch on the floor. Every birthday mark on the doorframe of Bobby’s office, Sam’s marks overtaking Dean’s. He’d been so pissed.

He’d hated that Sammy got taller, even though it made him proud.

But when he finally stopped, Alistair didn’t let Dean stay safely in his head. He pressed fingers only briefly against Dean’s ass, something that Dean had learned to ignore, and then manhandled Dean into his lap. Everything was… not fine, but tolerable, until the slick-looking demon (and he was for sure a demon, he had the weird-ass alligator eyes thing going on) pried Dean’s thighs apart and pressed the huge head of his cock to Dean’s slippery hole.

He clenched. He couldnt’ stopp himseself—he didn’t want this. He hated it.

Not that it made any difference.

He shoved himself half-way into Dean and Dean puked right down his chest, shivering and shaking with the sudden horrifying invasion.

What the hell? What the hell?? Why was this… he’d… He tried to say something—he tried to say “stop,” but he couldn’t get words out. He couldn’t make his stupid mouth move, it just gaped like a fish as his chest jumped with too-fast breaths. He felt sick. He felt like he was going to pass out, like his vision was getting loud at the edges and the shapes in his eyes didn’t make sense. Like he knew Alistair was happy with himself about this, but he couldn’t make it resolve into anything useful.

He was crying like a fucking girl over this, and why? Why? It wasn’t like… He could have predicted this, right? This wasn’t a—

He shouted when Alistair started shifting, manipulating Dean’s hips and grinding hard into him, and it hurt! It hurt bad. Things that hurt like this… Dean’d been hurt a good bit in his life, he wasn’t a pussy. He could handle himself, but this? This wasn’t… Things weren’t supposed to hurt like this. He felt like he was choking on it, and that couldn’t be right. It couldn’t.

It couldn’t be right.

There was something… a hard, grinding push, and then a feeling… a popping feeling, and Dean slumped, numb-lipped and limp against the literal fucking demon. Against Alistair.

“That’s it, buddy,” he murmured, smoothing a hand up and down Dean’s back in that slow, sure way that the vet used to, and it helped. Dean hated so goddamn much that it helped. He wished to God that he could just pass out. He’d rather have slept through a million sneak-fucks at the shelter than another second of this.

Rape.

The word made his hands itch. He hated it, but he made himself think it anyway. It was rape. Even though he was a guy.

Even though he was Dean-fucking-Winchester and he should have been able to stop it, even though he ganked freaks like this guy for breakfast, even though he wasn’t biting or fighting and he hadn’t the other time, even though he was desperately breathing through a whole-body sense of invasion and clinging to the sure feeling of a warm body against his and slow breathing and a gentle hand against his neck. It was still rape, wasn’t it? It was.

It was.

The pressure inside him made it feel like he was going to pop or piss himself (which would serve the demon right, so Dean didn’t hate that idea as much as he usually did—fuck this guy), and Alistair massaged Dean’s belly with his thumbs on either side of where his WMD of a cock was buried in him.

“You’re doing just fine, don’t you worry anymore.” The voice rumbled through a big chest, and Dean tried to cover his face with his hands, like that could block out Alistair’s voice. “You were made for this. This is the hard part, but it gets easier from here. You’re almost there.”

Almost total in his surrender.

Then he started to move. It was encompassing and overwhelming, terrifying in its intensity. The outward drag felt like Dean’s insides were getting pulled through him like a sausage casing, and the brutal plunge back in pressed every last drop of air from his lungs. It controlled his every breath, turning any attempt at sound into a desperate, loud choke on the inhale or a shout. His mouth watered, his nose ran. Around Alistair’s cock, the lube was being pushed out of him, and every bit that escaped lessened the terrible pressure in his guts and made him want to claw his skin off. It dripped down his legs and joined every other fluid that was rushing out of his body, sweat and tears and snot and drool, rats off a sinking ship. He felt like a slide whistle, and the image was momentarily so funny to him that he choked on a laugh, then choked for real on his spit.

“Don’t fight it,” Alistair crooned, “Just let it happen. Even the difficult ones learn to love this; all you need to do is relax. You can say what you want to, go ahead.”

“Please,” Dean begged, the word riding another breath that wasn’t his choice, squeezed out of him from the inside.

Alistair’s arms wrapped around Dean, his hands soothing a hurt that nothing could possibly soothe—where the hell did this guy get off acting like he could be nice to Dean? This was... This was...

This wasn’t ‘training.’ This wasn’t that. It was...

“Please, what?”

Stop it, let it be over, leave me alone, let me go, take me home.

He couldn’t say it. Any of it. He just... couldn’t.

He shook his head, and Alistair made a pleased sound, and fucked harder into Dean, and he retched again.

“The first night is the hard one, but look, your body knows what it wants.” Alistair’s fingers were rubbing Dean, and he realized that he was hard in the demon’s grasp. He was hard, precome leaking. Add that to the list. He was hard? But this was...

Alistair rolled his hips, grinding deep in Dean, and he felt his whole body twitch hard around Alistair’s cock. It was impossible. In the demon’s long fingers, his cock twitched.

No.

Why was it doing that?

“There you go,” Alistair purred, “You’re figuring it out. Took a minute, but we found what you like.” He rolled his hips again and Dean shouted, his dick jumping, pre drooling out onto Alistair’s shirt. Why was it doing that? “Just relax and feel me. I’ll give you what you need.”

What Dean needed was to fucking shower in bleach, then take a nice soak in Purell, and to down enough of the cheapest whiskey he could find to kill a dozen rhinos. He needed to sleep in the springy back seat of his car while, outside, a million frogs chirped and crickets sang. He needed to apologize to Sammy for how thing’d shook out. He needed this to be rape, and not whatever bastardized version of liking it this was.

When he came around Alistair’s cock, his whole body spasming in waves of pleasure beyond anything he’d ever felt before, Dean bit his own arm until he drew blood. Alistair purred his pleasure, coming inside Dean well after the continued stimulation had turned painful. He thought his prayers were answered for once when Alistair lay Dean over the odd leather bench that had sat ignored at the edge of the room. He lay a blanket over Dean, and Dean didn’t realize until too late that the thing had thick velcro straps.

Burrito wrapped and strapped down, Dean couldn’t even twitch away when something long and hard and rubbery slid into his abused asshole.

“Wait—” he managed, before the thing slid deep and he choked on the unfairness of it.

Life’s unfair, quit being a pussy, he chastised himself, but it didn’t work. He couldn’t quit being a pussy because his dad had been right. He hadn’t needed to stay late to help his fifth-grade teacher—she only wanted him to stick around after school to feed him anyway—or to join the baseball team or to take an art class or... John was right to pull him out of all that froofy crap and try and make him a man, but Dean was too... He was too whatever the hell he was to be a man. At his core, he was just a little bitch who cried when he didn’t get his way and had to fake tough.

Against all sense, he fell asleep being slowly fucked by the impersonal, humming machine the demon had mounted behind him, and Dean tried to tell himself the tears were a reflex from the fucking, and not because of John.

Chapter Text

“Up you go,” the handler said, and Dean limped up to the exam table. It took a minute, but he eventually made it, wincing when a hard landing caused pain to lance through his sore insides.

“Open up,” she said, and Dean opened his mouth, swallowing the pills without a fuss.

“Good boy.” She fluffed Dean’s hair and pressed a lidded cup of water into Dean’s hands, encouraging him to drink more than just the sip he needed to get the pills to go down. “You’re gonna like that, bud. Got a little something in there to take the edge off that soreness and help you feel good. Does that sound nice?”

Dean sipped water out of the cup.

He’d been on the fucking machine all night, and something was wrong. He was pretty sure he was hurt, but who could tell anymore? It was all a terrible blur.

“Boss is gonna be here in a couple minutes to check you out,” the handler wiped Dean’s face with a baby wipe, coaxing away crusted up tears and snot and sick. “We don’t have a name on file for you, though. You wanna tell me your name?”

Dean looked at the handler.

It was so fucked up that she had a kind face. If she was going to work for the literal devil, the least she could do was look kinda mean, but no. She had dark brown eyes and she looked genuinely interested, and she had a firm insistence about her hands that scratched at a mom-shaped scab on Dean’s soul.

That was probably on purpose, he realized. They wanted to “restore his innocence,” which seemed like some weird euphemism for turning him into a baby, so it made a terrible sense that they would try to seem like parents. Dean could almost imagine letting himself be taken care of like this. Letting her wash his face and feed him and care for him. Actually, knowing what he knew now about what things could really be like, he’d have taken Lisa and Brett in a heartbeat. Minus the... what he’d done with Alistair, it wasn’t so bad.

The handler wiped at the scabs on Dean’s arm. He’d bitten himself. He’d almost forgotten, but it was sore and hot to the touch and stingy even with the wipe. She sucked air through her teeth when she saw that the scabs still wanted to bleed a little, and petted Dean’s hair.

“Ow, oh, did you do that?” She seemed so sad. Like it bothered her that Dean was hurt, and he felt something getting fat in his throat, a water balloon of whatever whiny bitch bullshit he’d tried his whole life to grow the hell out of. He stared at his hands. The cup had handles and a short, soft straw. He let it tilt and it didn’t spill.

“You must have been so scared,” she said, and something in Dean cracked. His next breath was a gasp, but he didn’t give in. He clenched his jaw and stared down. “Oh, honey, it’s alright,” she said, and Dean realized he wasn’t playing it as close to the vest as he’d hoped, and he wanted really badly for this lady to not be some kind of psycho, even though she probably was. Everybody here was.

God, if everybody else was crazy in the same way, at what point did that just mean Dean was crazy? Either every other person he’d encountered needed to get with the program, or he was living in la la land, and lately the latter was seeming more likely.

And what was the harm in telling her his name? What could she do to him that hadn’t been done worse already? He needed this. He needed whatever exactly she was offering him, and it hurt his throat to try to speak around the thing clogging it, but he made himself. He made himself say, “Dean,” then glanced up at her, and she smiled at him. Not like she’d won, not like she was getting one over on him.

She smiled a normal, soft smile, and said, “Dean? That’s a wonderful name. It suits you. We’re going to take such good care of you here, Dean.”

He really, really wished that were true, but these people had zero idea how to care for somebody if their prior hospitality was anything to go by. He’d been fucked to within an inch of his life and then fucked again all night on an impersonal machine, he’d been drugged, he was, like, ninety percent sure he’d been shrunk (but maybe the angels and demons were just big?), he’d been kept in fucking diapers—which was still the biggest goddamn indignity of it all—for... it had to be months by now, didn’t it? There’d been his brief hiatus while he impulsively used Brett’s card at as many self-checkouts as he could before it was cancelled, and then shoplifted a good bit, taking advantage of his smaller size to sneak places, but that’d been pretty brief.

Trying to think about it was like trying to remember a dream, all slippery in his mind’s clumsy fingers. The withdrawal from the drugs they had him on had been brutal, and he wasn’t sure if he successfully ganked a single damn demon, what with the voices that kept chatting at him constantly and the shifters he saw and the sudden, terrifying thoughts that would strike out of nowhere, vivid visions of hurting himself, of crushing his hands and feet with stones, of the utility knife he’d stolen sliding cleanly into the spaces between his bones.

Lucky him, he’d been too sick to do any of those things, but it had been… not something Dean particularly wanted to repeat.

The door opened, but Dean just looked at the cup with it’s spill-proof straw. He was vaguely thirsty, but he didn’t want to drink. Probably drugged—no. It probably wasn’t. These people didn’t need any help drugging him, Dean opened his mouth and swallowed like a well-trained animal.

He did exactly that when Alistair came back, only flinching back from him a little when he first moved to touch Dean.

Alistair tutted unhappily as he examined Dean, taking issue with the bite mark and whatever he saw or felt when he slid a painful finger into Dean’s asshole, hurting him in a way that made his body tense and gasp. The demon glanced at Dean, something calculating in his eyes, then he said, “You didn’t finish the course of Grace, did you?”

Dean didn’t know what that meant, but his body gamely froze up like he expected punishment.

“This shouldn’t be injured like this,” Alistair pressed against that blinding place in Dean that made him sure he was going to bleed out and die. “But your healing is appropriate. I think we’re going to restart you on a lower dose—I like you this size, it suits you. Do you want to stay big… Dean?”

Did he want… of fucking course he wanted to stay big. He didn’t want to get all honey-I-shrunk-the-kids just so freaks like this guy could treat him like a personal pet pocket pussy. They’d already taken a foot off the top, and while being tit-height had its perks, he didn’t think being dick-high would be similarly… well, not fun, but definitely the ‘perks’ seemed less appealing.

“I think you like things to feel a little more real, a little more intense,” Alistair mused, “We’re lowering some doses for you, which should let you feel a little more like yourself.”

Dean clenched his jaw as his heart sped up. He didn’t want to be sick again. Not like when he’d escaped. Watching his brain flip out without any way to stop it had been terrifying in a way the angels couldn’t even hope to compete with.

“Some trainers would say I shouldn’t talk to you like this. There are competing theories, but I’ve always been one for transparency,” Alistair said, something calculating in his gaze sending ice through Dean. “It’s unusual for a human to be so resistant to rehabilitation, which is why you’re here with me. Until your innocence is restored, this is probably going to be rather difficult for you, but it will get better. I’m very good at this, Dean, but it’ll be easier if you try to cooperate.”

Dean stared at the wall. Were they going to put him in a diaper again? Or was he just going to run around naked forever? He didn’t know which was worse.

Would he just let these assholes do whatever they wanted? The thought scared the hell out of him, but Dean realized that eventually he’d end up doing what they wanted. Alistair would… he’d do what he’d done to Dean, and they’d make him take whatever pills they wanted, and they’d force him to eat if he tried to starve himself…. The thing he had control over, as far as Dean could tell, was how much he got hurt in the process. So maybe he couldn’t change what happened, right? But maybe he could change how bad it was? Because it wasn’t all bad, was it? After all, Alistair had made him come, and Dean was pretty sure he hadn’t done that since before the trial and the apple.

Alistair rubbed something sticky up inside Dean’s asshole, and he shivered and waited it out. He was quick, at least. He wasn’t trying to make it worse than it had to be, so Dean didn’t either. He could… it wasn’t cooperating. He was just trying to make things easier on himself. If he was hurt and freaked out all the time, he’d never be able to make a break for it if he didn’t play along with their stupid game.

When Alistair pulled a thin pair of disposable briefs up over Dean’s hips, he was confused.

“You can go potty if you want to, bud. It’s going to be optional as long as you’re doing well in the rest of your training.”

Dean stared at the… thing. It wasn’t thick or babyish, and he felt suddenly terrified, because what if… what if his stomach was bad all of the sudden and he couldn’t make it? What if his traitorous body made a mess and he was… he imagined himself covered in it, and unable to get help, trapped in the stainless steel kennel with no hands and no voice and he could feel his hands trying to shake, so he squeezed his fingers harder.

“We’re going to try it for the morning, but if you hate it, you can tell somebody. You’ll tell somebody, won’t you, Dean? I promise, things are going to get better soon. Just hang in there. You’re going to have a little rest, and then you’ll get to play with the other kids.”

Dean couldn’t make himself say anything. What the hell was wrong with him? Wasn’t this… okay, so not exactly what he’d wanted, but close. Closer than a fucking diaper, that was for sure. So why was he freaking out?

The handler from before came in, and clocked his upset right away. Jesus Christ, he wasn’t hiding anything anymore, was he.

“Oh, Dean-bean, what’s wrong?”

That was fucking rich. What was wrong? Christ, where to start… Dean clenched his jaw and blinked hard.

“Just… why?”

“Baby, humans in the garden are all safe and pure, but if you eat of the apple…” She stroked Dean’s hair. “If you eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil… Humans who have hurt other humans, who have done wrong, it creates a sickness in their souls, but we can purge that sickness. No soul left to burn. Whatever it takes, buddy, we won’t let you go to hell.”

“But…”

Words were hard. Hell? Souls? They were… those weren’t real. Banshees and wendigos? Real as hell, but hell? No goddamn way. he hadn’t thought about what would happen when he died since he realized the answer was death. Nothing. An end to everything, stretching into forever.

It was honestly one of the more comforting things Dean had to look forward to, and now this asshat wanted to ruin it? Fuck her. Fuck hell, fuck all of this.

“I’m not going to hell,” he said with as much conviction as he could muster.

“Honey, have you knowingly hurt people? People who didn’t have the power to protect themselves?” She asked.

Dean stared at the cup in his hands. It was the hunter’s life. It was just… it happened. It was part of the job.

“Did you do it on purpose?”

Oh.

Yeah. He’d done that. He’d… he thought of Sam, the things he’d said to him, the times he’d let Sammy deal with John instead of standing up and facing his dad like a man. He thought of the innocent people who’d been caught in their path of righteous destruction. John had never cared, but Dean had known it wasn’t okay to be as cavalier as they’d been toward the end. He’d known, and he’d gone along with it, signed off on every one of John’s bad choices right until those choices caught up with them. Nobody had made him go to that school, and hadn’t he known, deep down, that it was going to be a disaster?

“Let us help, sweetheart,” she said, and Dean wanted somebody to help him, and here was this lady offering to help.

He shook his head, but lying in the cot they’d assigned him in the otherwise empty little room, watching the light-shadows from the little nightlight they’d put by the door, he wondered if it would be better. Everything he’d ever known was gone, and nobody ever came back after eating an apple. He was never going to see Sammy again, or Bobby. He’d never be able to pour one out for his dad and get hammered in the cemetery and tell him what a dick he’d been to Sam and Dean their whole lives. He’d never be able to hunt again, or apologize to the parents of those kids from that last, awful job.

He hadn’t offed himself when he had the chance, and he probably wouldn’t, given the chance again.

If it wasn’t so damn awful, he’d probably want what they were offering, and that, more than anything else, terrified him.

Chapter Text

There were good days and bad days. If Dean was being honest, there were actually more good days lately. The yardstick for what made a day good had changed with time. It’d adapted. Because Dean had adapted. Because he was adaptable and he was smart enough, and he was a survivor. Whatever else happened, he’d make it through.

He’d be okay, because there really wasn’t any choice.

So he was okay today, and today was a good day.

He’d made it to the bathroom, and he was allowed to manage those needs on his own today because he’d been… Because Alistair had liked his behavior. And the price hadn’t been too high yesterday. Yesterday, they’d asked him to show off the body positions he’d learned back before he ran away, and then they’d made him fuck himself on a dildo that wasn’t unreasonably huge, and he’d done as he was asked because it meant a slice of pie with his dinner and being allowed to be a “big boy” today, and that had to count for something, even if it only granted him a pair of white briefs and a t-shirt and French fries with his lunch.

He’d take what he could get, and he’d get through this.

“Dean-bean?”

His heart stuttered in his chest and he startled at the handler’s touch. Rachel. That was her name. Miss Rachel.

“Did I startle you, honey?” She asked, rubbing a circle on his back.

He swallowed the urge to apologize.

“C’mon, hon,” she held out her hand. “It’s official: you get to meet some friends today.”

Friends sounded ominous, but Dean knew what fighting got him. He knew better than to fight, so he took Miss Rachel’s hand and let her lead him into the hall, and then into a room he didn’t recognize. There was the usual, unsettling combination of babyish toys and sex toys, something Dean didn’t want to get used to because it was so obviously fucked up. Sitting on a mat on the floor, surrounded by arts and crafts stuff, was a woman who’d been turned into a baby like Dean.

She’d shrunk further than Dean had, though. She wasn’t quite doll-sized, but her stocky frame and childish frills made her genuinely look like a kid until Dean looked at her face and saw that she was probably in her forties, maybe older.

“Hey there Miss Emmy,” Rachel said, and the girl/woman beamed back. “This is Dean who we talked about before. He’s going to play with you for a little bit today.”

Dean suddenly wondered if maybe they wanted him to fuck her. He swallowed dryly and stared all around the room for some hint of salvation. Was this why they wanted him to be “big” today? Shit. And fucking Molly Marigold over there didn’t seem phased in the slightest.

The door closed and Dean pressed himself into the corner, soothed momentarily by the walls at his back.

“You can come sit with me,” the woman said, and she didn’t speak in the kind of high, childlike tone Dean expected when he looked at her.

“I’m fine here,” he husked, his voice betraying his nerves and uncertainty.

She shrugged and poured two miniature cups of tea and set one as far from her as she could reach without getting up.

“That one’s for you,” she said, pointing. “Have it if you want it. My mommy said you’re having a hard time adjusting.”

Nausea rolled over Dean's insides like a loose cannonball, knocking him hard and unpredictably. Something was wrong with this lady. Something was unspeakably wrong, and he wanted to sink through the wall. He wanted to claw and fight to get away and it wouldn’t work. It never worked.

“It was hard for me, too,” she said, sipping at her tea. “It took a long time for me, and I hated it at first.”

“Do you live here?” Dean asked. Wasn’t this just for whatever sick training they did? Wasn’t it temporary? It needed to be, because otherwise Dean was never going to get out, and he couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t.

She shook her head.

“Mommy told me about you, and she asked if I would talk to you.”

“Who’s, uh… who’s mommy?” Dean asked.

“Rachel, the angel who brought you here—“

“Are they really angels?” Dean couldn’t stop the question. There’d been nobody to ask and he’d been going around in circles about it. “I mean, they can’t be, can they? Angels aren’t real, right?”

The woman shrugged and smoothed her princess-like skirt, straightening a little satin bow.

“I don’t know,” she refilled her teacup. “Have some,” she insisted, “it’s not really tea, it’s juice, but the fun is drinking out of the pretty little cups.”

Ok. This lady was clearly a little loony, but she wasn’t the craziest bitch Dean has encountered today. He didn’t need to hide in the corner.

Actually, he needed to not hide in the corner. It was friggin’ weird and this place had enough weird without him.

Dean sighed and forced his body to move. He could drink juice. That was fine.

“How long have you been here?” He asked, sitting well out of grabbing range just in case.

“It’s been years,” she said, “years and years.”

“Uuuh… not super helpful.” Dean stared at the little teacup of apple juice. He ought to quit being a little bitch about it and drink the juice. Emmy clearly wasn’t trying to poison him, and maybe it would make him feel a little steadier. That’d be nice.

“It’s been a long time,” she shrugged. “Do you want a shortbread?”

“Can you talk?” He asked, “I mean, what’ll they do to you if they found out you were talking to me?”

“Nothing?” The woman shrugged again. “I think my mommy is going to take me for ice cream, but she’d do that even if I didn’t talk to you.”

What the he’ll kind of ass-backwards punishment was this?

“You know she’s not your mom,” Dean spat, furious at somebody, but unable to pinpoint who—Emmy or himself or Miss Rachel or Alistair or Sam for— No! Jesus, why the hell was he going there? There was literally no reason for Sam to think… He’d wanted Sammy to do what he’d done, he had no right to be hurt over it now.

Emmy gave Dean a sad, tired look.

“I know.”

“Yeah, well, you’re acting real freakin’ weird for an adult who got all abducted and forced into… whatever the hell this is.” Dean couldn’t help the wave of self-consciousness that slammed through him when he realized what he must look like, fuming, standing over this lady, wearing nothing but white briefs and a t-shirt. He sat, pulling a stuffed… sea turtle over his lap to restore what little dignity he could.

“Yeah,” Emmy shrugged again, “I know. But what does it matter? Mommy likes taking care of me, and I like being cared for. Do you know how long I went without that before I came here? Or are you not like me?”

“I’m not like you,” Dean answered almost before the question was out of her mouth.

“Ok,” she said, sipping her juice. “So, what? You had a great childhood the first time? You were loved and cared for? Nobody hit you or ignored you or made you feel like you weren’t worth the effort? And you wound up happy and well-adjusted and you didn’t go on to spread the hurt around to people who didn’t deserve it?”

There was something shockingly hard in her voice, and Dean balked.

“Must have been great.” She watched him with cold eyes, every bit the woman Dean imagined she once was—still was? But why would she allow this?

“It wasn’t bad,” he ground out, but the words had tasted like lies for years now. It was bad enough that he wanted more than anything to get Sammy away from it, right until he decided to throw Sammy into the woodchipper that was John’s ambition in the vain hope that he could catch a break.

And then Sammy had left them.

And Dean had reaped the fruits of his cowardice.

And he tried to believe that it mattered that Sammy had come back, but there was something crushingly lonely about being John’s only company, and Dean wanted to be grateful that he’d gotten to spend that time with his dad. There were people who’d’ve killed to get to have a relationship with their dads—and Dean had killed for the privilege of John’s time and regard, so…

“It was fine.”

“Yeah, seems like it.” She shrugged again, and Dean was getting a little fed up with the noncommittal bullshit. “Mine wasn’t.”

He looked up from his untouched juice.

“I knew my mother didn’t want me, and she blamed me for her problems, and she always liked my little brother better, so one day I drowned him in the bath.”

What. The. Fuck?

Dean stared at Emmy—this woman who acted like a little girl, and had murdered her own brother—and fought the urge to grip the turtle to himself. That was childish. She wasn’t going to murder him.

“She never found out, but when two husbands died, she suspected.” Emmy broke off a piece of a shortbread cookie and nibbled it. “But she still comforted me every time we lost somebody. For just a little bit, I was the center of her world, but you wanna know what? I don’t have to do anything to be the center of my mommy’s world. When I wake up and the weight of the things I did is crushing the life out of me, my mommy holds me and comforts me. I know there’s some kind of… powers or something that they use, but all they’ve really done is give me the things I always wanted and never had.”

“Yeah?” Dean challenged, “Well, sounds like it was a great time for you.”

“It was awful at first,” Emmy said, her voice certain and flat. “I hated it. I didn’t trust it. It terrified me, because I couldn’t imagine still being me if I wasn’t twisted by all that pain. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live without that anger and fear, because they took up so much space in my head that I thought they were me.”

It was awful at first.

“You killed...”

“It turns out, people don’t corrupt their souls because they think it’s fun,” she picked up the teapot and smiled as she traced the floral design on the side. “It’s strange looking back at how I was and realizing that I kept doing terrible things because I wanted to not have to do terrible things—I don’t think I could have understood why I did the things I did until I didn’t need to do them anymore.”

Dean knew monsters. He’d seen monsters, and he thought he had a good nose for them. He could smell evil and deception a mile off, and Emmy wasn’t pinging on any of his RADARs. She was... Fuck. She was for real. She was real, actual, bona fide, drank-the-kool-aid crazy town, and... And she seemed so...

How was it fucking fair that she—an actual goddamn fratricidal, patricidal maniac who’d been forced out of Eden—got to be so... so...

“You don’t have to ‘give in’ or whatever you’re thinking,” she said, offering half a shortbread. “I thought I’d have some huge moment when I either decided to do what they wanted, or, like, changed somehow, but it wasn’t like that at all.”

“What was it like?” Dean’s mouth was gummy and the words stuck to his dry tongue.

“It was like for ages they kept just giving me everything. Caring for me, no strings, no questions. All love and affection and... I’ll be honest, the sex stuff was weird at first, but a girl’s got needs, you know? And I didn’t want it and I didn’t want it, because I didn’t trust it.”

Dean wasn’t sure if he’d describe it like that, but he nodded anyway. Know thy enemy and all.

“And then one day I needed a diaper change, and instead of freaking out because it felt bad, I got mommy’s attention because I just... I knew she’d take care of it. I knew. It kind of wrecked me, if I’m being honest, because it was... I never had that with my mother.”

“But you’re not wearing a diaper now,” Dean pushed, deeply unsettled by the conversation.

“Oh, no, I’m not,” Emmy smiled and wiggled the shortbread at Dean until he finally took it. “Some people stay babies, but I like to be a little more grown and some people keep growing up until they’re back to... normal, I guess. But I think I’m always going to want to be mothered, and mommy loves to mother me.”

“Does anyone...” Dean had to fight to get the question out, because it was one thing to assume there was no escape, but it would be another thing entirely if... “Do people ever get out?”

“Out?”

“Y’know, like, no rapey angel masters?”

“Yeah, I guess.” She shrugged again, “It’s not unheard of. My mommy told me one day I might grow up and want to leave, and that she would love me no matter what, and I’ve seen other humans who were clearly on their own, but...”

“But what?”

“I don’t want that,” her voice sounded small, suddenly. “I’ve been alone, and I’ve had to be my own mom, I’ve had to care for myself because nobody else gave a shit. Why would I ever want that again?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,” Dean’s mind was going a mile a minute, “But it’s possible, right? It’s possible? Some people decide... whatever that means... but they can decide to ‘grow up?’ They get to... I don’t know... be people again?”

“Yeah?” Emmy was clearly uninterested in this topic, and Dean wanted to shake her.

“Yeah. Cool. Awesome.” He shoved the shortbread in his mouth and washed it down with apple juice. “That’s great, Emmy. Thanks. You’ve been helpful.”

“Oh, good,” she beamed. “Do you want to get ice cream too? I’ll bet mommy would bring you if you asked.”

“Nah,” Dean waved her off, moving for the door. “Full schedule today, sweetheart. Lots of rape and torture and I’ll bet it’s all very creative stuff. Appreciate your time, though. Good talk.”

“Dean,” Emmy’s voice carried warning. “It’s not a game, it’s a process. Stop trying to win.”

Chapter Text

He didn’t see Emmy again, and after a couple weeks she started to feel like a dream. It was probably the drugs. Bunch’a supernatural assholes needed to keep Dean drugged so they could supernaturally mess with his asshole… The amount of butt stuff was actually making the insult ‘assholes’ less fun, which was a crime in Dean’s book. That was the real indignity here, he decided. They’d gone and fucked with his insult game.

Assholes.

Today was going to be a long day, Dean could tell.

The sex… toy seemed like a bit of a crazy word for something that looked so threatening. Sex accoutrements? Sex decorations? Dean snorted out a little laugh, or maybe the breath got punched out of him by the fist-sized dildo on the fucking machine, but who was counting? Volition was more fun anyway, so he laughed, because “sex decorations” was funny.

A hand stroked his back, and Dean would have struggled, but he didn’t want to upset the delicate balance in his body that had left him almost comfortable. They’d explained it to him, the thing with the huge toys. He still had a sex drive, so any angel or demon who eventually adopted him would want to satisfy his needs, and that was... The thing was, it did make sense. Like, from their fuck-warped perspective, it wasn’t ridiculous. And it was also boring.

So he got bored.

So he ended up turning everyting over and over in his head, looking at it every which way, trying to understand why these people were doing the things they were doing.

And the more he did, the more they kind of made sense to him. He closed his eyes and felt the rhythmic push-pull of the fucking machine, the way it scratched his mind like sandpaper because Alistair had stopped making him take the meds.

“Some humans do well with them,” he’d said, cupping Dean’s cheek in his palm. “Some seem to take to this quickly and easily, like they were holding on, waiting to fall until they knew somebody would catch them.”

Dean had thought it sounded a little stupid, but he’d also been a little preoccupied, so he hadn’t said anything about it, focusing on keeping his gagging to a minimum as Alistair pressed a long, smooth toy against the back of his throat in firm, predictable presses.

“But I don’t think you were waiting to be caught,” he continued, “I think you dread being caught because you can’t see who will catch you, so we’re going to try letting you see us better, and see if that helps.”

Yeah. That had sounded pretty good. It really had, except it turned out the meds sort of existed to suppress the instinctive, reflexive terror that rushed through Dean’s body when an angel was near. Not demons, though. They were fine, apparently. The bad guys were apparently Dean’s speed.

Kinda embarrassing if he thought about it too much, but... whatever. It was hardly the biggest worry he had.

No, the biggest worry he had was that Alistair said he was going to an adoption event soon.

“I’m not too proud to admit when I don’t have the answers,” he’d said. “Some humans don’t thrive. It’s rare, but between forcing you until your mind breaks and finding you a home with somebody you gets you...”

Alistair shrugged.

“I’m a good trainer, but sometimes I don’t have all the answers.”

“Just... let me go,” Dean had mumbled, afraid to make demands even though Alistair didn’t punish him for talking during training unless that was the point. “I wouldn’t... You could let me go.”

“There’s no way back to the Garden once you’ve eaten of the fruit,” Alistair said, and that, at least, Dean knew to be true. It was the whole point of making people eat. Everything outside the Garden was a punishment.

Dean nodded.

“But I could just... live. In the woods or something. Keep to myself...”

Alistair tapped Dean’s knee and he adjusted his posture.

“And how long do you think you’d last?” Alistair asked, and Dean closed his eyes. Not long, and he didn’t like the little part of himself that whispered, but that’s the point.

About a week after that, Dean had just kind of... changed. Something in his mind clicked into place, and he could see everything so clearly. There was a version of survival that wouldn’t hurt, and maybe he’d never be able to apologize to Sammy, and maybe he’d never see Bobby again, but... But the other things that hurt? They didn’t have to hurt. He could decide how much he hurt, and he could decide for that to be none.

And he decided that he didn’t want to hurt anymore.

You will never believe this, came the text from Michael.

Castiel looked at his phone and almost slid it aside in disgust, annoyed because it was another human, because Michael was on some strange cursade to set Castiel up with a human. And then he glanced at his phone again.

“Hey, I’m going to have to call you back,” he said to his computer screen, and hung up before Theo could say anything.

Where did you find him? Castiel demanded, his heart rabbitting with excitement.

Alistair’s, Michael replied, and Castiel’s heart dropped. He’ll be at an adoption event this Saturday.

Those green eyes stared past the camera, haunting and haunted. He’d never make it to Alistair’s and back in a weekend, the distance was too far and the notice was too short.

Bring him home for me, Castiel texted, I’ll pay you back.

Chapter Text

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Cas,” Michael drawled, clearly lacking the urgency that Castiel felt. “He said the little guy isn’t ready yet.”

“Well, did you tell him—”

“I told him everything you asked me to, and I even embellished a little because I know you want him,” Michael sounded annoyed, which was... it wasn’t right. Castiel was supposed to be annoyed, but not Michael. “He wanted the little guy to see an adoption event, but he said he isn’t ready. Hasn’t taken to the conditioning yet.”

“Well did you give him—”

“The fucking book report?” There was that familiar disdain. “Yeah, Cas, I gave it to him and let him know that you have theories or whatever, but that—and this is gonna shock you—didn’t actually change his policies.”

Castiel took a deep breath and closed his eyes, and he could hear Michael’s little huff on the other end of the line.

“Look, he said there’s another event in six weeks, and if you want he’ll meet with you and maybe earmark the guy for you, because he really does want to get him into a home that’ll be a good fit. Apparently the little dude escaped and was picked back up in Birchwood Cemetery digging up graves and burning bones. They think he got fucked up on fumes from siphoning gas tanks and had a psychotic... moment—no idea what he thought he was doing. All that’s to say, he’s probably going to be a handful.”

Because he’s not corrupted, Castiel thought, Because he’s probably scared and confused and alone, and humans weren’t created to be alone.

“Ok,” he said, resigned, because what other options were there? “Ok, thanks, Michael. It was kind of you to go in my stead, I will attend the next adoption event to bring... Dean... home.”

The adoption event had really highlighted how good Dean had it.

He’d sat with Alistair, dressed in pretty normal clothes... for this place, at least—fucking tighty-whiteys and a t-shirt with a picture of an angel on it—and watched the other humans. Some were like babies or toddlers, and the angels and demons cooed over them, while others were like pets and they... Jeez, Dean had never thought he’d use a word like frolick, but they did. They damn near frolicked, big happy smiles that Dean knew were real.

An angel had come up to Alistair about halfway through the thing and Dean wished they’d given him the meds, because his whole body panicked when the angel got close, shaking and frozen and afraid to breathe while his heart went a mile a minute. He couldn’t even tell what they were talking about over the ringing in their ears, but afterwards, Alistair handed him a clear-front folder with a fat sheaf of papers in it and asked him to “be responsible for it” for the evening, and... It was nice to have a job, even if it was just looking after a report of some kind.

Dean was allowed to be a boy, not a baby or a pet (also not a man, but that was honestly some back-burner bullshit knowing what else had been on the table), and he probably needed to focus, because today was going to be a training day. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, chin tucked to his chest, eyes down. He’d been bad yesterday, which meant a punishment today, and he thought it might have something to do with the extra soft dildo sitting on the counter, flopped over itself but stretching a truly terrifying length—long enough that if Alistair put the whole thing in Dean, it would have to curl over in his belly or else it’d come out his mouth.

God, he hoped he was wrong. Becoming a human shish kabob was not on his bucket list.

“Look at you,” Alistair purred as he walked into the room. “I heard you were very naughty last night, Dean.”

Fuck. Okay, yeah, he...

“I didn’t mean to,” he breathed, like it would make any difference, except it might. It really might, actually, because sometimes Alistair was... charmed? Was he charmed, or did he just fake it like Dean faked it? Did it matter? Because sometimes if Dean was contrite and... little... about it, Alistair would ruffle his hair and ask him why it was bad, and hold Dean in his lap and it... God help him, but it was nice. It felt so good to be held and safe and to know nothing bad was going to happen, and maybe Alistair would fuck him, but when Dean was good Alistair always made it feel good, always made him come, and...

His chest hitched on an inhale, and Alistair hummed sadly.

“Did you get scared?” He asked, and Dean nodded. “And what do we say about when we feel scared?”

That seemed unfair, because it was... They’d put him in the playroom with the rocking horse and somebody had put a different saddle on it, and the dildo was literally a fist, and Dean knew it wouldn’t fit and he didn’t want to, and it was fucking wrong to make him pretend to ride the rocking horse with something like that inside him, and he didn’t... He didn’t... Crazy how now that he was off the weird-ass lose-control-of-everything meds he cried at every little thing now.

Fat tears were rolling down his cheeks and he hated them more than anything, and they weren’t even helping. He didn’t mind as much when they helped, but now they were just insult sprinkled on injury. The icing on the cake of awfulness that was today.

“Dean,” Alistair’s voice was sharp, but Dean was afraid he wouldn’t be able to actually talk, because they’d apparently really stripped off the thin layer of Winchester and bared the crying little bitch underneath, and Dean hated the whiny bitch almost as much as he hated the Winchester that kept inviting punishment.

“It’s okay to be scared, but I can’t be mean,” Dean said, because at the very least he could get this answer right, even if he couldn’t do fucking anything else right.

“And what did you do when you got scared yesterday?”

“I...” Fuck, actually, there was kind of a lot... “I trashed the cabinet with the toys and broke the horse’s leg and then... I think I... It’s kind of a blur, sir, but I think I stuck the leads for the electro-thingy into the wall outlet to short it out and... I think I also snapped the canes and broke one of the whips?”

Alistair looked vaguely impressed, and Dean had thought it was pretty impressive, too. But that was before he’d realized just how bad the consequence was going to be.

“Were those things for you to break, Dean?” Alistair asked, keeping his cool remarkably well.

Dean just shook his head, stomach roiling.

“No. Those were shared equipment and by damaging it, you took it away from all the others, too.” Alistair lectured, “Was that fair?”

Oh, fuck this guy. Fair? Fair? He wouldn’t know fair if it sat on his face and called itself the queen.

The mutiny must have shown on Dean’s face, because suddenly Alistair’s fingers were wrapped tight around Dean’s upper arm, and he was marching Dean into the playroom. Right up to the rocking horse with the broken leg, which now wobbled precariously, stable in no directions.

“I can see that you aren’t ready to apologize, or to fix the mess you made, so I think instead you can stay in here for the day.” Alistair’s voice was slippery smooth, an oil slick over the thinking parts of Dean’s mind. “I think we’re going to give you some time to think before we talk like big boys about our choices—don’t move from there.”

He turned on his heel, leaving Dean at the epicenter of his wreckage, shivering finely, and Dean thought this might be as bad as the day got.

And then he thought again.

Because Alistair came back with the impossible dildo and a hard glint in his eye, and that honey drip in his voice, and it was like the ability in Dean to think or want or make decisions just... turned off. His whole mind went empty, like the dizzy empty that came with ringing ears and buzzy fingertips. His eyes tracked Alistair as the demon approached and then pointed at the blanket on the floor, indicating with his hand sign that he wanted Dean to present.

Fuck.

Fuck.

His chest hitched again. Breathing was hard, but he still knelt then lowered himself to his elbows and knees when Alistair pressed him down.

“I know you’re upset,” he rumbled, “But you knew bad boys have to make it right when you decided to throw a tantrum here.”

He had known. It was just that... He couldn’t think, and he’d been so... Something. He’d been so something that he couldn’t think and he’d just... Why had he done this? Why had he decided to tear this place up?

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and Alistair stroked a warm, dry hand up under Dean’s shirt.

“I know, buddy,” he said, “And you’re going to be for a while, so just relax for me and make this part easy.”

Dean swallowed. He nodded.

He had to try.

The first thing to touch him was Alistair’s lubed finger, brief and testing Dean’s asshole, satisfied when it could press in without much trouble. Next was the syringe of lube. That was... it wasn’t that it was unwelcome—any time it came out, Dean was glad to have the lube—it was just that it typically meant something Dean wasn’t going to like going... He blinked and grunted a little when cold lube filled him, making his lower belly feel unsettled. Again, Alistair stroked his back, played with the hem of his underwear, sliding his fingers around the band, touching Dean’s thighs.

“Deep breath,” Alistair warned, and Dean obeyed because this was... It was nice of Alistair to warn him, and it was easier when he took a deep breath. It was better this way. He didn’t want it to hurt. Even though it was a punishment, he didn’t want it to hurt.

The blunt tip slid into him without any real resistance, and it felt comfortable on his hole. Hard toys with no give, but this one was almost cushy, which almost made up for the fact that it was as long as Dean’s torso, maybe longer.

No point in worrying about that. He tried to focus on something else, maybe something useful. Not a lot in here to focus on except... The mess. The wreckage. The toy slid deeper and even though it was soft, when it started pushing at the bend that led to his guts, the bend that Alistair had taught him about and trained until it could straighten around his massive cock, Dean whimpered. He always hated this part, because it always seemed, for a moment, like it would punch through him, tear him, leave him to bleed out. For all his bitching about the place, Dean didn’t want to die, and so he very intentionally shifted, trying to get the angle that would admit the thing further inside before it shoved past and made him scream.

All around him, the room stood like an accusation. Why had he done this? Why hadn’t he just done his homework? Looking at what he’d done, he hated himself for inviting this punishment, and he whined and shifted and Alistair shushed him.

“Just let it in, Dean,” he murmured, and Dean was trying. He really was. He was bearing down. Relaxing as much as he could, except that sometimes a thread of pain would make him suck air and twitch, and Alistair would make a disappointed little sound and rub his back some more, and that was just… The room was a mess.

His insides were about to feel like a mess, too. There was a press, and an almost tickle that made his ears ring and a little swell of nausea rise, and then the sudden sensation of not resistance and Alistair said something that Dean didn’t catch, but he sounded pleased. His stomach lurched, and he forced himself to stay in position, and the thoughts trickled past him without ever really touching his mind. He’d really messed up this room.

There was another push and another wave of nausea with its almost-pain sensation of pressure and fullness and wrongness, and Dean grunted and pressed his cheek to the floor. It was cool, and that helped, and Jesus Christ this thing just… It just kept coming. It was so big, it was so long, and he wanted desperately for this to be over, but he’d gone and done all this, and at least at the end of it somebody was going to tell him he did good.

Between a beating he’d have to hide from his teachers—that hopefully Sam hadn’t seen or heard… Between a famous John Winchester heart-to-heart and this… Well, at least with this when it was over, somebody would take care of him. Somebody would hold him and tell him he’d been good and that it was over and he wasn’t in trouble anymore. He just kind of wished the person telling him he’d been good, that he’d taken his punishment well, that he could rest now, was Bobby. His chest hitched again on a sob, and he fucking missed Bobby, and he was so physically overdone that he couldn't even focus on how crying made him seem like even more of a pussy, because the monster dildo was shoving every thought out of his head and filling it with this sick mix of regret and bees.

Another push and suddenly it wasn’t a distant feeling of pressure and a vague nausea. Dean shot up on his hands and knees, pushing hard against Alistair’s palm on his lower back, and he tried to warn Alistair, but he wasn’t fast enough. breakfast burned its way back up his throat and he choked and moaned through the wave of sickness. Squeezing his eyes shut, he couldn’t unsee the mess he’d made. He was making it worse. Making more mess.

Why had he done that?

“’m sorry,” he choked and Alistair made a sorry sound back, rubbing Dean’s back and encouraging him back to his elbows like he didn’t see the new mess. Like he didnt’ care. Fuck.

Dean wanted to not care. It was his fault the mess was there, so he’d have to deal with it, right? That was only fair, right? But he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to touch it, and he gagged at the smell and struggled a moment against Alistair’s insistent hand before a swift clap to his thigh made his whole body go limp.

He was just this empty thing for Alistair to fill, and he closed his eyes, sick against his cheek, in his eyelashes, and he tried to imagine how it would be when this was over and somebody came and put him in the bath and… He grunted when something much wider than the rest of the dildo started pushing insistently at his asshole.

Ok, so that meant it was almost over. Almost there. He tried to breathe, and gagged on the smell and the knowledge and the too-much-please-make-it-stop, and again, Alistair rubbed his back and shushed him.

“Just let it in,” Alistair said again, and it wasn’t what Dean wanted him to say. He wanted him to say, you’re doing such a good job, Dean bean, just a little more for me and then we’ll do something nice.

He whimpered and tried to relax, but it was hard when his stomach kept lurching, trying to be sick again. It was hard, because the knot at the base of this toy was the size of the fist toy, and Alistair hadn’t really stretched Dean for that.

“Deep breath, Dean,” he murmured, and Dean could tell he was thinking, and he hoped Alistair thought it was enough. It was! Dean was ready to apologize, he was— “You’re resilient, but you’re not going to like this.”

Like what?

Not going to like what?

And then Alistair gave an almighty shove, and Dean screamed. His vision whited out and he forgot that he was humiliated and that he was in a puddle of sick, that he hated this place and he missed Bobby and Sam and he wanted nothing more than to just get in his car and drive until the roads ended and he could stare into the huge emptiness of the heavens and imagine a world with no angels and no demons—he even forgot the constant, low-grade desire to die. The whole world turned into a terrible ringing and a radiating pain, and the certainty that he was going to die because why the hell else would this hurt so much?

And then…

He was babbling. Begging.

And Alistair was… When had he been turned onto his back? He could feel the awful thing way the hell up in his guts shifting sickeningly with every movement, the horrifying pressure at his asshole, from the inside now. And Alistair was taping a diaper around Dean’s hips.

“Tantrums are for babies,” Alistair said, cold and certain, and Dean’s head swam with the possibility that he was going to have to go back to… fuck…

“But big boys fix their mistakes.”

Yeah. Ok, that tracked.

“The plug stays in until you’re finished cleaning up your mess. You can ask for whatever you need, but no changes and no relief until this room is fit for use again.”

Fuck.

Dean nodded, and Alistair patted his head and stood to leave.

And what else was there to do? So he wiped his face with a dry paper towel then began the long, achy work of making things right.

It was only fair.

Chapter Text

The dude… Shit… Dean couldn’t remember his name—not that it mattered that much, but Dean did like to keep track of names and stuff—he groaned, though. His head tipped back and his knees spread further apart, and Dean nestled closer. There was something nice about getting to pace himself like this, and he was good, so he was allowed. The dude was fucking loving it, too. He couldn’t get enough of Dean, and that was… That was really good. That was really good.

Alistair was going to hear about this, and… Dean wasn’t sure exactly what that was going to mean, but he’d just about clawed his way back into the guy’s good graces, and this was a test. He knew it was a test—Alistair had said so—and he was passing with flying goddamn colors.

Actually, everything was a test. Like, always, which had seemed kinda stupid at first, except that he understood now. At first, he’d been fucking up most things, but now? Now he got most things right, so that meant most things earned rewards, and it was good. It was really good. And this was a big test, which meant he would get to ask Alistair for whatever he wanted.

“Oh, fuck!” The guy’s fingers clenched into Dean’s hair, and hell yeah! He thrust a couple times, forcing Dean down hard, and Dean went nuts on him, just sucking and swallowing around him and making damn sure that he wouldn’t be able to talk about anything but how good Dean was for weeks. The guy was damn near babbling, cursing and calling Dean “perfect” and “baby” and other nice little things. He pulsed hard in Dean’s mouth and his throat, and it kinda sucked (haha, sucked, ‘cause… dick, and it was nice to be able to have his little jokes again), sure, but it also meant he was almost done.

That was fine. Plenty of things worth doing kinda sucked, right? He hated running (he wasn’t crazy like Sammy), but that was worth doing for some people. And the hassle of getting new fake credit cards or ID cards. That sucked, but it was always worth it. This was gonna be so fucking worth it.

His vision was kinda staticky at the edges, and his body was so fucking close to fighting or fainting, and Dean wasn’t actually sure which it’d do, so he was really friggin’ glad when the guy pulled out, leaving a trail of come on Dean’s tongue.

“Oh, buddy, you did such a… Holy cow! Such a good job, bud.”

That’s fuckin’ right.

Dean smiled up at the guy and big hands pulled him close, and he let the guy cuddle him, and he managed to keep pretty pliable through the whole thing. When Alistair saw them come down the hall into the reception area, he took in the guy and then gave Dean an approving look.

“Thanks for playing with me, mister,” Dean said, voice croaky after the throatfucking, but still game for the little script Alistair had hammered in to his skull. “And thanks for giving me a treat.” Look up through his eyelashes? Check. Lick lips? Done. Tuck chin and look at floor? Nailed it.

God damn, he was killing it today.

He looked at the car and hated that it had a crate in the back, but he wasn’t sure if Dean would be more comfortable in a crate or in a seat. He knew that if he’d been mostly treated like a pet, Dean might prefer the familiar. He’d emailed Alistair’s to ensure his preparations were sufficient, but the trainer who called him back had seemed bored by the conversation and had no idea what Castiel was talking about when he asked if Alistair had read the report he’d sent.

Castiel sighed.

It didn’t matter. In a couple of days, he’d make the drive and bring Dean home. Theophania doubted he was one of the increasingly rare Innocents cast out from the Garden, and nobody else seemed to even care much, but Castiel just... he just had a feeling. It was a powerful feeling, and he didn’t know exactly what to do with it other than to let it guide him, so he did. He tossed a hoodie and sweat pants with a drawstring into the passenger seat, as well as two heavy blankets because the gut feeling told him to, and then he stocked up on human-friendly snacks and made up a bag which he stashed in the footwell.

The gut feeling was making a million suggestions, and starting to feel like low-grade anxiety when Michael finally rescued him from himself and plied him with drinks, then sent him stumbling back through his front door to sleep it off. it wouldn’t be long now.

Just a couple days.

The floor wasn’t even that hard, but holy shit did it feel like it was slowly murdering his knees with a million tiny knives. Jeez. The timer was set for twenty-five minutes, which wasn’t even that long, thanks, and still... He sucked a big breath through his nose and blew it out slowly through his mouth.

He tensed and relaxed his leg muscles, trying to keep blood moving. That usually helped, and he needed to stay like this. The timer would ring, and it would be over, but he needed to stay like this to practice. He just needed... He just had to hang in there for another minute, maybe five... or seven. Probably less than ten. Dean could kneel for friggin’ breakfast. If it weren’t for the fact that his hands kept shaking and pain-tears kept falling, he’d be making this shit look easy.

A handler walked past a little close, and for a split second he looked up, trying to make eye contact to ask, is it almost time? before an overwhelming goddamn tsumani of pure nope crashed into him and his eyes dropped, his heart going a mile a minute. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck, he’d almost... had they noticed? Fuck! No. Probably not. It was fine. He knew better, he’d kinda almost fucked up a little bit, but he was fine. This was fine. It was all hunky dory, copacetic.

“You doing alright, bub?”

Balls. It was Miss Rachel, and she noticed fucking everything.

“Yes, miss,” Dean said, careful not to sound upset or pained. Sweet. That’s what Alistair called it, though Dean did kinda prefer “badass” or “gravelly.” Whatever. Gotta know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em, and he’d take what he could get in the complimenting-how-he-talked department.

“Oh, Dean-bean, you’re crying, sweetie.”

Uh... yeah. And?

He didn’t scoff, because he knew better than to scoff (no reason to think about how he’d learned better), but it was a near thing. Sometimes these people really said the dumbest shit.

“Do you need to get up?”

Yeah, he needed to get up, what the hell kind of question was that?

A test.

Obviously.

God, fuck him sideways, it was always a test. What the hell else could it be?

He shook his head, not trusting his voice. Just a couple minutes more. Probably less than five. Probably almost none. He might be running out his last minute now.

Dean was patient, and he was tough, and he would adapt to whatever the hell these people put in front of him. He was good. This was nothing.

Except his knees were going to actually kill him. He was going to have to cut his legs off in self-defense if this kept up.

Jesus. When was the timer going to ever go off? He wanted so badly to ask, but he couldn’t because this was a test and he needed to just keep it the fuck together... He tensed his legs and the pain was so much worse since he let himself get distracted. It took every lick of strength he had left to keep from making a sound, doubling over... tipping forward to lay on the floor until he could remember what it was like not to be in fucking agony...

Leave, lady! He just wanted to finish his time alone, but Miss Rachel had stepped back to quietly observe him.

Ok, fine. If she was going to watch, then he was going to make this goddamn good.

He squeezed his leg muscles, working one group at a time, tensing and relaxing over and over, forcing his breathing slow as he knelt. Any minute now. Any second. Any—

There! The alarm. Okay, just to stand and turn it off. Ignore everybody and everything, don’t wobble even though your legs suck. He coached himself through steps as fire screamed through his lower legs. The timer was close, and he just had to get to it, and...

There was a note, and Dean wanted to fucking cry.

Five-minute break, time it, and then twenty minutes on the kneeling fucking machine, yellow attachment.

Fuck! He stared for a moment, then punched five minutes into the timer, and since it was a break, he let himself collapse, landing hard on his already-slick ass. He really didn’t want to cry, except he’d kinda already been crying—He could see himself in the mirror when he was on the fucking machine and he knew he was going to ugly cry on that thing after the first couple minutes when his muscles started screaming and he had to sit all the way down (ow) or keep holding himself up (even more ow).

Rachel watched him until the end of his break, then petted his hair when he settled onto the machine.

Chapter Text

Castiel held the thin manila folder in his hands, its label displaying only a number and a photo of Dean glaring into the camera paper clipped to the folder’s outside, likely for Castiel’s benefit. There were other photos, and other information. There was a letter describing Dean’s progress that Castiel didn’t love, but… He took a deep breath. He was going to take Dean home today, and the human could be whole again.

“Right this way, Dean-bean,” the handler said, leading him out into the reception area. The human walked with poise and confidence, maybe even a little swagger in his stride, and Castiel immediately loved him. That ancient instinct to love humans was strong in him, particularly toward this one. It had been strong when he first saw the photo, and it had grown stronger, and he loved that Dean was nearly full-sized, and and built strong, and his eyes were full of…

This was him, certainly. Castiel recognized him in an instant, but where was the challenge? Where was the accusation in his green gaze. Eyes like the sky before a tornado, they’d been full of demands and calculation, and now? Now… Now they flicked over Castiel only once before falling to the floor. They wouldn’t touch him.

“Be good, sweetie,” the handler ruffled his hair, and Dean’s whole body seemed tense enough to shatter. His file said he had a nervous disposition, but he did well with praise, so at least Castiel knew where to start.

“Yes, miss.” The words were… off. This wasn’t right and it wasn’t what he expected, and Castiel wanted to smooth away the strangeness, so he reached out his hand, encouraging Dean nearer, and the human’s breath went from tense to too fast, but otherwise he betrayed nothing.

“Come on,” he said, and Dean nodded and stepped toward him. “Do you want to get changed before you get in the car?”

Castiel held out the sweats and hoodie and Dean looked at them like they were a stack of smallpox blankets, but forced shaking hands up to take them. What did he think Castiel was going to do? He would have asked, but the next thing he knew, Dean was hurrying back the way he came with the clothes, and Castiel was glad he was going to wear them, because the briefs and a t-shirt outfit seemed… impractical.

When Dean returned, clasped in his new too-big hoodie and sweats that seemed... The fit was odd, but Castiel didn’t think too hard about it, because he was moved by the way Dean seemed to nestle into her side, clinging to whatever warmth he could get. Castiel ached to give him that same affection, but Alistair had explained that Dean would require more patience than most people were willing to afford. He was slow to warm, but Alistair had assured him that it would only mean he was more loyal in the long term.

“Do you want to hold my hand when we walk out to the car?” Castiel offered, and there was a moment of blankness on Dean’s face, like he didn’t fully understand the words, before his hand reached out, cold fingers limp in Castiel’s hand.

“You can pick where you sit,” he said as they walked out together into bright fall sunlight. The drive was going to be beautiful. “It’s a longer drive, so I got snacks, you can pick what you want from the bag and I’ll eat whatever you don’t—I like all of them.”

Dean was nodding, but he was looking ahead, so Castiel couldn’t get much of a look at his face.

“And let me know if you want to stop anywhere,” he offered to little acknowledgement. “Really, anywhere at all. It’s probably been a while since you could go where you wanted, so... If you see a sign or anything and you want to stop, you just say the word.”

Alistair had once said that the people who adopted humans that didn’t know how to behave were either real sadists or looking for a project, and Dean had said, “good,” and kept on fighting every damn thing Alistair asked him to do. He’d been an idiot back then because he hadn’t actually understood what a sadist was. He’d thought Alistair liked hurting him, but it was obvious now that Alistair just wanted him to act a certain way. Like, yeah, he’d hurt Dean, but that was never the goal. This guy, though…

He’d done a frantic eenie-meenie-miney-mo to pick his seat, because there was no goddamn clue about which answer was right, and then he’d hated that he landed on the passenger seat, because that was right next to the guy—and he was definitely an angel. Dean could tell he was an angel because his heart couldn’t calm down and his hands shook and he felt like he was about to shit himself (which had been pretty much taken off the list of Fun Daily Dean Activities ever since he shaped the hell up, and he didn’t really want to bring it back for a reprise in Shitting Myself Two: Electric Boogaloo).

Whatever.

Miss Rachel had diapered him when he brought her the sweats, shaking and losing it as quiet as he could manage. At least he’d for sure not have to ask to pull over. He knew better than to make demands. He knew people hated that shit. He wasn’t going to give this asshole any more reason to make his life a living hell. There was something supremely unfair about getting kicked out just as he figured out how to make his life at Alistair’s comfortable. Seemed like bullshit, but it wasn’t like anybody asked Dean. (It wasn’t like he’d have had the answers if they did).

The guy talked a little, and Dean did his best to respond right, but Alistair hadn’t given him much training on conversation beyond the basics because Dean wasn’t meant to be… big. He for sure had his “thanks, mister” and “yes, sir” stock phrases, but nobody had prepared him for the fucking firehose of open-ended bullshit this guy kept throwing his way.

Just… If the dude would just act normal then Dean would know… He’d know. Instead the bag of snacks pressed accusingly at his ankle, and he didn’t have shoes, so his socks were dirty from walking in the parking lot, and he really fucking wished he’d eeny-meenied his way to the crate, because even though it was demeaning, it at the very least meant that he’d be left the fuck alone, and the more this dude talked to him the more he wanted to be alone.

There’d been a time when he could focus on conversations, when Sammy could talk about school and girlfriends and.. and all kinds of stuff basically forever, and it would all stick to Dean’s brain, and he could go ignore it and be an ass and prioritize dad and the missions and… But he’d remembered. Sammy had thought he didn’t care, but he did. He cared, even if he kept choosing their dad. Even if every time he could have done something good for Sammy, he’d fed his baby brother’s future into the John Winchester Life Woodchipper, he’d still cared.

Yeah, but what the fuck good is your caring if that’s what it does? He couldn’t even tell if it was his dad’s voice or his own that wanted so badly to cut him down. His eyes went unfocused, relaxing onto the yellow line, and his thoughts started to go still. Miss Rachel had palmed him some blue pills to help with the whole being near an angel thing, which sucked, and he felt the edges of one. His first dose shouldn’t be wearing off yet, but already he was feeling the press of something huge against the edges of his mind. The knowledge that whatever he was sharing the car with was not human. An angel, and Dean was really starting to see why they all started things off by saying, “be not afraid,” because it was terrifying. It felt like his friggin’ lungs were shaking, and that was just… Could he take another pill without being noticed?

He couldn’t just take a pill.

But maybe if he took a snack?

Except they were a test. They had to be a test, so what was the test? Was he supposed to leave the bag until instructed? Or was he supposed to offer the things in the bag to the angel? Or was he supposed to guess what the angel wanted and just give that to him? Dean was pretty good about that in… other circumstances, but he didn’t know this guy and he didn’t have practice playing the guessing game with food and…

Fuck.

But what if the test was whether he’d be self-sufficient and feed himself? But then he had to feed himself the right things, right? So what were those? And what if he guessed wrong? There was no timeframe attached to the task, so he had no idea how long it could go on for, and he always hated the things that were untimed the most, because if there was a timer it almost didn’t matter how much something sucked, because at least it would end.

God, he just wanted this to be over.

Surreptitious glances at the clock were about as much snooping as he dared, and the minutes pulled with the improbable stretch of saltwater taffy, and being in a car like this (even if this was nothing like Baby) was achingly nostalgic. When the guy asked again if he wanted to eat any of the snacks, this time sounding a little let-down, Dean’s world narrowed to the paper bag. He hated the bag more than just about anything, and if he wasn’t sure it’d make everything unimaginably worse, he’d have thrown the thing out the window. He wondered if there would be a way to offload it, maybe when they stopped for gas...

A brief fantasy of rolling down the window as the car zipped down the highway, of shoving the bag out the window and they guy being totally fooled, shrugging as if it just did that itself, was both balm and a nauseating vision of the future. The’d put it in his file, hadn’t they? Alistair said they’d put it in his file that he liked structure, because he did. If he could just… if he could see the pattern, he wouldn’t be as freaked out. Alistair had told this guy, right? Or was this guy the type who liked to scare people? Did he get off on the power?

“We might need to stop soon,” the dude said, “See anywhere that looks good to eat?”

Wow. Great. Dean had thought he’d finally managed to shove his heart back into his chest, and here it went trying to crawl out of his mouth again. Trying to escape his body, and he couldn’t help thinking that it would be pretty nice to roll down the window and maybe throw himself out with the evil paper bag. Maybe it was redundant, but redundancy would for sure solve the whole mind-read-my-paper-bag game, and Dean didn’t like to half-ass things.

Fuck.

He needed to know what food the guy wanted.

He’d been avoiding watching the angel, because there was something skin-crawlingly wrong about all angels, and he didn’t like looking at them directly, but now? Goddamnit, he’d been a pussy about it, and he’d failed to note what billboards drew the guy’s eye. He’d had a to-go cup when he came to pick Dean up, and if Dean could just remember the color he could probably figure out where he’d gotten it, and then… He could… He could… But he didn’t remember, so he had nothing.

Fucking nothing.

It’d been an hour and a half, and he was supposed to have been observing the guy’s little tells to figure out where he wanted to eat, but he hadn’t fucking told Dean that, and it was unfair! Rage bloomed and wilted in time-lapse, fast-forwarding through its life cycle and leaving Dean feeling hollow and hurt. He looked around for any goddamn evidence and there! There, a brown napkin, and he shifted in his seat, trying to see if it had a logo and HELL YEAH! Oh, Dean was so goddamn good it was scary sometimes.

“Wendy’s, sir?” He said, and the angel glanced over at him and nodded.

God, being looked at really turned up the unsettling on the whole angel-meter. Thank god his stomach was empty, or Dean might have puked. Instead, in a genuine masterstroke of self-control, he looked at the dude’s adam’s apple and gave a little smile. That one was a gamble, but he knew he’d given the right answer, and a he didn’t think this guy was going to throw a flag over excessive celebration.

“Wendy’s?” The angel asked, and boy was Dean getting to ride a roller coaster of high highs and low goddamn lows. “Yeah, sure, we can do that.” He didn’t sound all that enthusiastic, but maybe he just wasn’t an enthusiastic guy, right? Maybe he was just kinda flat like this, right? That could be it. Because Dean had… He’d solved the case, hadn’t he? He’d figured it out, and…

“My brother really likes it there, but I swear I can never find something I like…” He sighed, and it turned out this wasn’t an emotional rollercoaster—it was an emotional Tower of Terror. “Gotta remember what’s any good there—do you know what you want?”

No? No! What the hell? And he was already signaling his turn, already moving to an exit, and Dean didn’t—he couldn’t—Nobody had said he had to pick food, and how the fuck was he supposed to eat? Maybe if he could sneak another pill, but he only had a couple, and it had only been a couple hours, and already he didn’t think he was going to survive this guy.

Jesus, he’d thought Emmy was crazy, wanting to be so little, liking being treated like a goddamn baby, but actually? Actually? Upon reflection, Dean figured she had this shit figured out. Because nobody asked Emmy what she wanted, they just gave her whatever she needed and left her the fuck alone.

“You can decide when we get there,” the angel offered, and that was also pretty goddamn useless, actually, because Dean didn’t know what this guy wanted him to eat, so unless there was a “human pet” menu there, it wasn’t like he was going to magically fucking know.

“Do you want to go in? Or we can just go through the drive-through if you’d rather stay in the car, but if you need a rest stop, just let me know, okay?” Was this dude made of questions? Jesus Christ, it was like the Spanish Inquisition except Dean thought maybe that would be preferable at this point, and Dean thought again about the crate in the trunk and wondered if he’d picked wrong. Would he have been left alone if he’d chosen it? Or was this always the plan? If he had just let himself be treated like a dog, would he have at least been left to his own devices and not grilled and tested at every turn?

“Dean?”

Shit.

He’d been quiet too long. Ironic that it was an angel turning this car ride into Dean’s personal hell. What question was he supposed to… It was bullshit to ask so many questions at once. Like, scientifically provable bullshit.

“Any—” Dean coughed, his voice tight and unpleasant, and sticking in his mouth. “Anything’s fine, sir. Thank you.”

The angel smiled, and that was just peachy.  Just awesome.  Friggin' great.

Just an eternity of this.  

Chapter Text

Dean had been uncomfortable ordering at Wendy’s, and Castiel wasn’t all that hungry, nervous as he was. Still, he got them both drinks, and Dean seemed like he didn’t know what he wanted, but Castiel had expected that, at least a little. He wasn’t used to making a lot of decisions, and he’d have been fed a pretty simple diet until now.

According to Alistair, he was pretty versatile and could adjust to most kinds of companion, though Alistair warned that it would take a good deal more training to teach Dean to enjoy latex (not something Castiel particularly cared about), or to train him into a service top. That... It wasn’t that Castiel was against sex with Dean, it was just that it wasn’t his first priority. Dean needed to be comfortable and happy first, and no matter what, he’d let Dean make the first move.

So he got fries and made sure Dean knew he could share them, and then tried to make friendly conversation over the next hours of driving. It was a quiet drive. Dean listened, but he didn’t offer much. He didn’t chime in with his own stories or thoughts, but that seemed pretty normal, too. Castiel understood that training houses were rigid, and the goal was to instill in the humans they served a belief that their angel or demon would provide for them.

He couldn’t help the pride in his voice when he showed Dean the room he’d prepared for the human. There were posters from the human side of the wall, sportsmen and cars and one with a kitten clinging to a branch with the caption “hang in there” that Castiel had found particularly charming.

“This room is yours,” he’d said, showing Dean the dresser with its couple of fresh sets of clothes. “The house is old, so don’t bring food upstairs or it’ll attract mice.”

Dean had nodded pretty enthusiastically at that, so Castiel figured he might be a tidy person, so he then showed Dean the kitchen and all the cleaning supplies, making it clear that Dean could use anything he wanted in his room and the attached bathroom. Opening the fridge, he pointed out the casserole he’d made the previous night.

“I made that for you,” he said, proud again that he’d managed a homemade meal amid his general nerves. “It’s a really good recipe—I’ve made it before. You should try it. I thought maybe you’d want some for dinner, but you should help yourself to it whenever you’re ready to eat.”

Again Dean nodded and thanked him, and... Castile gave him an encouraging smile. If Theophania’s theories were right, then Dean might be having a bad reaction to the conditioning—it could work to mend souls damaged from birth by true evil, but it could have profound negative impacts on humans whose souls were formed correctly and strong. He puttered around, occasionally peeking at Dean where he’d stood next to the door until Castiel told him he could sit on the couch.

Shy and nervous, Dean had carefully appraised the sofa before perching on a cushion’s edge. He seemed to relax when Castiel moved away, and that… stung a little. It wasn’t that Castiel didn’t understand—of course Dean wouldn’t be comfortable around him yet. Still, something tender stirred in his heart when he glanced across the room to see Dean, back, ramrod straight, chin up, with a sad green eyes, gazing out the window.

He sat for an hour and a half, his posture never wavering, eyes occasionally traveling around the living room. When Castiel checked on him, glad that Dean didn’t flinch or startle at his touch, his fingers were cold.

“You didn’t eat anything in the car,” Castiel observed, and Dean didn’t like hearing that.

“Sorry, sir—”

“You don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ Dean.” Castiel moved his grip from Deans’ fingers to his shoulder and Dean swallowed.

“Sorry, mister,” he said, voice smaller.

Was that… Was that better? It seemed childish, almost. Versatile companion, he reminded himself. Dean had been exposed to younger modes of being.

“It’s fine, Dean.” He pulled the afghan from the back of the couch and arranged it over Dean’s lap. There was a fine near shiver in his body, and Castiel hated the idea of letting him be cold. “I didn’t see you drink anything either.”

Dean’s eyes seemed to move fast, taking in everything. They checked and rechecked Castiel’s face, cataloguing his features without making any lingering eye-contact. Nervous, then.

“I didn’t—” Dean started, then snapped his mouth shut. “Sorry, mister. I can drink it now.”

Huh. Okay. The soda was in the fridge, not because Castiel would usually keep soda but because he’d felt bad buying something for Dean only to throw it away right away.

“Sure, let me grab that for you,” he ruffled Dean’s hair as he stood, and Dean shot him a nervous smile. Good.

This was good.

Things were getting better.

Dean finished the whole drink in a matter of minutes and sat in the window, his fingers tracing patterns in the condensation, while the sun slowly went down.

Dean had been through some stuff. He was aware of that. Nobody, in fact, was more aware of that than Dean. If anybody knew what a bad time was like, it was Dean, so he felt confident in his assessment that dinner had been a Bad Time to rival all other Bad Times.

First was the fact that he’d chugged like a liter of pop. That was... a lot of caffeine, which wouldn’t usually have made a difference to him, except he’d been cut off cold turkey from the good stuff since the day of the trial. So yeah. The caffeine was making his already nervous body into a fucking jelly-tremble, his heart was doing something in his chest that tickled in the literal worst possible way, and his thoughts were going so fast that they had turned sluggish. And that was just the good parts of the caffeine, because the other delightful little side-effect was that Dean had to piss with the power of Niagara-Fucking-Falls, and he hadn’t been dismissed and he was not about to try to dismiss himself when he had, thus far, been so successful at keeping the angel happy.

And that was all before he’d been “invited” to “join” the angel for dinner. The casserole battle had begun then, and Dean hated that casserole with more passion than he’d hated the corrupt asshole who’d set John up, and the bottle for making John think going to that school was a good idea, and himself for not stopping him combined.

And it wasn’t that it was bad, probably. Dean didn’t really taste the thing, but it seemed like normal-ass people food (which he was aware was significantly better than it could have been, though it was hard to be all silver liningey when he needed to piss so bad his teeth were floating and the dude wasn’t saying he could go anywhere, and he still had the diaper from the car ride (which, thank god for small mercies or whatever—’cause it didn’t really feel like that much of a mercy when Alistair would have let him go to the bathroom before dinner, and also wouldn’t have insisted on watching him eat—

But Dean was a Winchester. He was John’s son, and maybe he’d done his damndest to make sure that didn’t mean Jack shit, but it at least meant that he wasn’t a fucking quitter, so he’d eaten the scoop of casserole, and he’d thought he made it look like it wasn’t the literal last thing in the world he wanted to be doing. Dean’d done everything right, and then the angel—the fucking asshole tree-topper—went and said, “There’s more,” and Dean must have given him some kind of look, because something crossed his face that Dean was too distracted to read because he had to piss so bad he was drowning, but he knew. He knew, he knew, he knew that he shouldn’t have looked... however he looked.

And then the guy put more food on Dean’s plate, and Dean wanted to cry. Die. Whatever.

But he’d eaten it, and the dude said he didn’t need to eat so fast, he wasn’t going to take the food away, and put more on Dean’s plate.

And he’d eaten it but slower while his bladder tortured him and he knew it was too late to just go a little and let the diaper take it, because once those floodgates were open there’d be nothing he could do, and he’d eaten more in a sitting than he had since before the trial... maybe even before the school, and he didn’t realize how much a full stomach could hurt.

It hurt.

By the time dinner was over, Dean’s vision was weird, and his stomach hurt in ways that were starting to scare him. He had to focus all his attention to understand when the dude said, “You’re looking pretty tired, why don’t you go get ready for bed—do you need me to show you where things are in the bathroom?”

Sweet fucking relief. Dean could have fallen to his knees and cried, except that he couldn’t fall to his knees, and any liquid anywhere nearby was going to open the floodgates, but he couldn’t run. When he’d eaten too fast, the angel had given him more food, and he didn’t want to know what would happen if he was too eager to go to the bathroon. His stomach lurched. Why hadn’t he just eaten slow? He could have, and then maybe the guy wouldn’t have gicen him so much food, and he could have... Oh fuck.

The momet he was out of sight of the kitchen, he broke into a shaky sprint, one hand clapped over his mouth and the other in front of him, grabbing for the bathroom door handle, and the door got stuck, his sweaty palm slipping over the knob, and he grunted in pain or frustration (or both, because why not? It was just one of those days) and frantically wiped his palm and tried again, and this time his stomach was rolling and he needed to piss and puke and it was all happening at once, but at least he’d made it, and the door finally swung open and he rushed forward to where he remembered the toilet being and...

And...

So maybe it wasn’t so dignified to heave big, ugly sobs while also heaving up half a casserole. And maybe the whole strong, badass Winchester thing wasn’t exactly strengthened by the fact that the force of his sob-barfing finally broke the seal and he pissed the stupid diaper. So maybe he kind of lost it a little—sue him. He had every fucking right to lose it a little, because the stupid fucking door—the Stupid. Fucking. Door! It didn’t open into the bathroom. It wasn’t a bathroom, and Dean half-processed it as his body curled forward on the rug, shaking with... Honestly, too many things to count.

He should have just fucking puked at the table, even that would be better than this.

Because this wasn’t the bathroom, and it wasn’t his bedroom. This was the angel’s bedroom, and Dean was absolutely destroying the rug next to his bed.

The angel’s footsteps hurried near, and Dean kinda just... left his body. He kinda just went away when the angel grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him away from his mess and threw a blanket around his shaking body and said, “Dean, why...?”

Haha, buster, Dean’s unhelpful brain replied, though his body was too useless to say it, Where the hell to start.

Chapter Text

It took a while for Dean to un-lose his shit.

If Dean felt like being generous with himself—which he didn’t—he had to realize that it had been a long time coming. This angel was terrifying in that bone-deep way that the angels who’d originally caught him were, and besides that, he’d had a pretty friggin’ awful day. By the time he was really, truly, actually back with it, the angel had somehow negotiated him out of his dirty clothes and the wet diaper, and into the bath. He encouraged Dean to drink water from a cup with no handles or lid, to rinse his mouth, and Dean didn’t feel like doing anything. He let himself be moved and cleaned like a doll, and he hoped it was the right thing. Sometimes people just wanted him to be pliant, so maybe...

The angel didn’t stop talking, but he stopped asking questions, which helped. Instead, he narrated what he was doing, saying Dean’s name enough that it started to sound weird.

“I’m going to help you out of the bath now, Dean,” or, “You’re going to sit here for a minute, Dean.”

They weren’t instructions, which would have been better, but at least the dude wasn’t adding anything on top of the pre-existing angelic terror. By the time Dean’s brain caught up, Castiel had parked him back on the couch by the window and there was a cup of warm water in his hands. A blanket was draped over his shoulders, and Dean had the urge to shrug it up until he was buried and invisible. He tamped the urge right down. That wouldn’t be good. He’d been put here, and he could just wait. He didn’t need to do anything, he could just... stay here. Sit quietly. There was no reason to move right now.

Outside, there was almost nothing to see. The driveway was long, and it wound out of sight into some trees, and all around there was just grassy field and woods. There had been a point when they drove onto a ferry, and the ride had been a bit less than an hour, Dean thought. He’d tried to take a quick look at the clock in the dash before and after so he’d know how far there was to swim. Too far was how far. Too far to swim. Not that he’d be able to get out of this house anyway.

Not that he could really do anything at all.

The angel was in the kitchen, quietly typing, working on something that Dean didn’t know or want to know about. He wondered if there were deer in these woods. They looked like the kind of woods deer would like. He wondered if he’d be let outside sometimes, if he’d be allowed to sit here sometimes and watch them. They got to be out there, out in the woods, curled up in their grassy nests under the moonlight, picking through the woods on those long, quiet legs.

Across the room, the angel made an unhappy sound and huffed at his computer screen. A fast bout of typing, then another, and then he looked up at Dean. Even at this distance, his attention sent terror dripping icy down Dean’s spine.

Dean dropped his eyes, staring at his fingers where they clutched the cup. He’d barely drunk. Was that the problem? Did the angel expect him to have drunk the water? He hadn’t told Dean to drink, but he kind of sucked at telling Dean to do thing in general, so that didn’t seem like a very good indication. The deer in the woods didn’t have to think about this stupid shit. They were probably sleeping.

He glanced up at the angel, and the dude was frowning at Dean, and that… Holy shit. His heart lurched. Nausea (and wasn’t it just friggin’ rich that his body could still muster that feeling after he’d hurled out more food than he’d eaten in the last week—after he’d made himself clean as a goddamn whistle inside, puked ‘till it was clear and he was so tired he almost fell asleep with his face in the toilet bowl) squeezed like a python around his insides. If apologizing would have helped, he’d throw himself on the floor and beg forgiveness, but this angel had been totally uninterested in Dean’s apologies so far. If anything, he seemed like he didn’t like them.

So Dean did nothing. He stayed as still as he could, kept his breathing silent even as his heart raced like he’d just taken a sprint.

The typing resumed.

“Well…” the angel muttered, and Dean glanced at him across the room, a necessary risk. “Well that wouldn’t make any sense.” He scowled at his computer and typed, paused, typed again. His shoulders were up at his ears, and he kept glancing at Dean and then back down at his computer.

A ringtone made Dean jump, and his water nearly spilled, and he gripped the cup with all his strength, because he was not going to make another mess. He wasn’t. Because what if… If…

If this guy just didn’t know what he was doing and hadn’t figured out how to correct Dean, then he wouldn’t go learn unless Dean needed correcting, which was… That was actually a best-case scenario as far as he was concerned. He wasn’t about to fuck up a best-case scanario. And if this guy was just waiting for his moment, and he had some fucked up sexy-torture (or torturous sex) dungeon hidden in his basement, then Dean didnt’ really want to give him any reason to show it to Dean (not that he needed a reason).

God, he’d thought being a pet was so humiliating, but that was simple. It wouldn’t have required anything from him. But no. He just had to go be a great proud man about it, and this was what pride had gotten him. It had cometh before one doozy of a fall, that was for sure.

“Castiel?” A cool female voice sounded over the computer’s speaker, and Dean hunkered smaller. A moth fluttered against the window, bumping into it several times before giving up and looking elsewhere for the moon.

“Theo, it’s kind of you, but—”

“Have you asked?” She put some real stank on the word ‘asked,’ and Dean was almost offended on his angel’s behalf. The sass of this woman…

“It hasn’t exactly been a great time,” the angel, Castiel, grumbled.

“No time like the present, Castiel. There’s no version of this that he’s comfortable with, but you can make it predictable and quick, and then take good care of him afterwards.”

Oh.

Dean considered him pretty seasoned in predicting how much he’d dislike something, and right now the about-to-hate-this meter was at a solid nine.

“Wouldn’t it be better to wait?” Castiel asked, now sneaking glances at Dean. “He’s…”

His eyes met Dean’s, and Dean felt the dread intensify.

“He just seems like he’s having a hard day.”

Hah. Hard day.

“And if he remains Afraid, do you think he’s likely to have a better day some other day?” She asked, and something about the word ‘afraid’ seemed... relevant. Dean couldn’t put his finger on it, and he for sure wasn’t about to ask a follow-up question—no Columbo-style ‘Oh, one more thing...’ from him—but it still seemed... important.

Castiel sighed, and his expression seemed... pained? Constipated? His mouth was a tight line, drawn down at its edges. Whatever. He didn’t look horny or angry or... hongry... angorny... he almost made himself laugh, the words were stupid and his brain was exhausted and fried and something fucking terrible was about to happen—that was basically for sure, but it wasn’t like Dean could do anything about it—and he was so tired that his brain was starting to go all slap-happy. When was the last time he’d slept?

He couldn’t imagine sleeping while the Angel From The Black Lagoon was in the same state as him, but... Well, Dean had a pretty decent track record for getting through impossible shit, so... who knew. Maybe he was about to set the new world record for least restful sleep.

“Okay,” Castiel said, eyes locked on Dean. “Thanks, Theo. I think you’re right. I’ll let you know how it goes with him. I’ve got to go.”

Oh, yeah. Thanks, Theo. Thanks-a-fucking-lot, Theo. Things were getting... Not good per se, but not awful, and then she had to call and fuck it all up. Thanks. Theo. For ruining this tiny sliver of fucking peace.

Theo could go screw herself.

“Dean.” Castiel said his name a-fucking-gain, and Dean tried to school his expression, because he knew he’d be looking mutinous right about now and people generally liked to wipe mutinous expressions off Dean’s face. He shivered remembering the time Alistair had literally wiped the expression off his face with a cheese grater and then just magicked the damage away, offering to let Dean try again.

Nope.

Not gonna do that shit.

Dean forced himself to answer nicely. “Yes, mister.”

The angel got up and approached, and he didn’t look like Dean had given the right answer, and that was bullshit! It was bullshit—it was unfair! It was... How was he supposed to know what to say? How was he supposed to know?

“Dean, are you Afraid of me?”

What the fuck kind of question was that?

“You don’t have to...” Dean stared at his lap, he couldn’t look at Castiel. “I’ll be good, I’m sorry. I’ll be so good, I won’t... I’ll do anything, just... please...”

A hand landed on the outside of his knee and Dean flinched. It was like his soul was trying to cringe out of his body to get away from the angel’s touch. It didn’t even hurt.

“Please just tell me what to do,” he managed. Was it begging? Dean didn’t really want to think of it as begging, so... so it wasn’t. There. He’d said so, so it wasn’t begging. It was constructive feedback.

“Alright, Dean.” Castiel’s expression was just getting more... constipated... as this conversation progressed, which was... hard to categorize. “Here’s what I need you to do: Just answer honestly. When I am near you, are you Afraid?”

Dean nodded, and Castiel’s hand retreated.

“Alright. Thank you, Dean.”

Dean glanced up, then dropped his gaze again. Alright? Jesus, he didn’t get this guy at all.

“If I ask you to stay still,” Castiel said, “ Is that something you can do?”

Dean nodded. Yeah. He could stay still. He could stay still through things that would have made any normal person run away screaming. He was a fucking Winchester, of course he could stay still. Bring it on, buster.

“Alright, Dean.” Castiel was looking right at him, and the sense of overwhelming dread and terror was... God, it was inconvenient. It made it really hard to think at all, and Dean desperately needed to be able to think.

“Alright. I need you to stay still. Your kind, you... humans, are naturally Afraid of my kind. There is a remedy for this, and I am going to perform it. For a moment, I will be in my True Form, and I need you to keep your eyes closed and stay very still—can you do that, Dean?”

He nodded again.

“Very good.” Castiel met his gaze for the briefest of moments before Dean could look away. “Okay, Dean. Close your eyes, now. Whatever happens, don’t look at me until I tell you it’s safe.”

Dean nodded again, squeezing his eyes shut.

There was a sudden sense of wind-that-wasn’t-wind, and a rustling of feathers, and the sense that there was something enorous in the room with him—something that couldn’t possibly fit inside Castiel’s skin, and then something touched Dean’s chest, and started moving through him.

He wanted to scream, but the fear was so paralyzing that he couldnt’ even breathe. He couldn’t do anything. The other presence was invading his body in a way that no fucking machine or cock ever had or could. It was pressing into his very soul, and then a voice-that-wasn’t-a-voice whispered so boomingly that Dean thought the ears of his ears would go deaf.

And the voice said, “BE NOT AFRAID,”

And...

And...

And Dean wasn’t.

The terror that had held him, had been his animating force, went slack. He tumbled from its grasp right into a waiting darkness that might have been sleep or might have been death.

Either way, he wasn’t afraid.

Chapter Text

Castiel was unsure what to do with the human in his arms.

Certainly before his Command, Dean would have been… unhappy… with this arrangement. Castiel could relate. He wasn’t particularly happy with any of how the evening had gone, from the tense dinner to its awful aftermath, to the uncomfortable truce, to the Command. It was now clear that nobody had Commanded Dean’s fear away until Castiel, which was utterly cruel (and which Theophania had correctly predicted).

He’d had a certain… vision for how this night would go, and it was in ribbons now. Tattered beyond salvation, except for this moment here and now. He’d imagined something like this, though in very different circumstances. Very different precursors.

He moved his hand to reach for his cup of tea, and Dean’s brow, smooth with sleep, creased. He made a small, unhappy sound, but settled when Castiel slid his hand under the loose collar of Dean’s shirt, pressing his palm to the smooth skin between his shoulders.

“Humans are social creatures,” Castiel said to nobody in particular. “You aren’t like us: you aren’t born with purpose and programming. You don’t know that God is missing, so you spend your lives searching for something to fill that god-shaped hole in you.”

The mug made a quiet noise when it came back down to rest on the table. Dean’s eyes fluttered, and Castiel hummed low in his throat.

“There’s something noble about that,” he mused. “We know He’s gone, but your kind just keep looking. The devotion you have, that drive that you’re born with to seek something greater than yourselves… Such strange creatures.”

Dean nestled into the blanket and Castiel ran gentle fingertips over the sensitive skin of his back. Up through the short hair at his nape and over his scalp.

“This is better,” he said, and this time it was definitely to Dean. “I’m sorry I didn’t do this earlier, Dean. I didn’t realize that nobody had made you Unafraid.”

Dean wasn’t awake, and Castiel suspected he would sleep for some time. He didn’t rouse for musings or apologies, but even in sleep he leaned into touch. It broke Castiel’s heart that Dean’s body was so starved for affection that it clung to him even in so much-needed sleep. He dragged up another of the blankets he’d brought into the front room when he realized that Dean was likely going to stay asleep here. He heard the chime of a notification on his computer.

Tucking the blanket around an unhappy Dean, he moved from the human to retrieve his laptop.

Several questions from Theophania were present. She had been fascinated in Castiel’s suggestion that they make a case-study in rehabilitation from Dean. Truly, it was a win-win. Castiel had access to knowledge, expertise, help from Theophania and her colleague. Nathaniel, whose research revolved around human psychology. Theophania’s research into the human soul was interesting, but human minds were truly incredible works of Creation.

They needed no programming—they came with hardwired drives for safety and connection, and everything else was shaped through observing their environment. Brilliant, self-sustaining pieces of work, certainly, but challenging when they became injured. Angels were, by comparison, simple creatures. Angels’ minds were unbending, and when one became broken, it took a single simple Instruction from another angel to right the damage.

Humans, on the other hand, learned through observation. Their minds were constantly changing, adapting, molding to environments. It was why the most spiritually corrupt could be changed through a controlled environment and the unflinching provision of those basic human needs—safety and connection. It was why they could be returned to a state of Innocence and regrown healthy (an angelic tradition of which the current fashion of keeping pets was a horrifying perversion according to Nathaniel).

They could be damaged, too.

Castiel watched Dean. It had been almost an hour, and his sleep had cycled from dead faint, to fractious clinging, to something deeply still with strange, subtle movements in his face, to a new phase in which he mumbled and his fingers twitched. How badly had he been damaged, Castiel wondered. Would he be able to understand what Castiel wanted to do for him, or would he be functionally a child again—Theophania’s research had shown that, cut down to the roots, human sold could regrow healthy, but to cut a healthy soul to the roots was nearly impossible. Had Dean’s soul been healthy before?

It wasn’t a zero-one proporsition—souls could be sick or damaged, and though the kind of rot that would eat through a soul’s heartwood was enough to make them otherwise doomed, there was much damage that could be repaired. Many angels still answered the prayers of the soul sick, and Castiel wondered if Dean had ever prayed. He’d touched the man’s soul as briefly as he could in order to Command him, but even in that small time, he could feel both the strong living center of Dean—so warm and luminous and precious that the answering emotion in Castiel was nigh overwhelming—and the wounds to it both new and old.

Something had scarred Dean long before he left the Garden, and Castiel wondered how things might have been different if somebody had answered his prayers.

In the kitchen, his computer chimed again. The sound of an incoming call.

“You have to let go,” Castiel said, tugging at Dean’s grip on his shirt.

Dean mumbled something, his grip iron even in sleep.

“I need to go, Dean,” he tried to reason with the sleeping man. “I’m not leaving… not that you would be worried about that… But I’m just…”

“Bobby, wait,” he choked, and there was something so hurt and small in his voice.

“I’m not Bobby, Dean,” Castiel had to push the words past something thick in his throat. Something that felt like grief.

He sighed and tucked the blanket tighter around Dean, feeling the way Dean’s body relaxed into the squeeze in hard-won increments. With his free hand, he smoothed down Dean’s back, letting each long pass leech a little more tension from him until his fingers went slack. The call had long been abandoned.

Turning the lights low, Castiel retreated to the kitchen where he could keep an eye on Dean without forcing an interaction if he woke. It had been a long night. It had been a long day.

Missed you. Sorry, he messaged Theophania, and was surprised when the typing indication appeared moments later on the screen.

Was he? She asked.

Yes.

What else was there to say? He had been left Afraid. Somehow, nobody had bothered to make him Unafraid. And he understood that being in the presence of an angel in its True Form, having their soul touched, would cause distress. It could… there was a human concept of trauma—an event that forced unwanted adaptation—and seeing an angel in its True Form could be traumatic. How could any human truly feel safe in the world knowing there were beings as powerful as angels? Many a prophet back before the Disappearance had gone mad.

A couple moments later, a call came, and Castiel turned down the volume to accept it.

“What happened after?” She asked, forgoing any small talk.

“He collapsed,” Castiel said. He was tired, he realized. His voice was flat. “He… I felt his soul.”

“You did it quick, though?” She asked, “You didn’t let it go on? Soul contact distresses them—it’s not like it is for us.”

Castiel nodded, glad that he didn’t have to say it. Glad he could remain quiet. Then, “He was… The damage to his soul wasn’t from within, it was from without.” The unfairness of it gripped Castiel by the throat. “If somebody had just… If anybody had bothered to check, they would have seen that he didn’t need Innocence, he needed Grace.”

“He’s the one in five thousand? Ten thousand?” Theophania’s voice was almost sympathetic, but it was clear she was also tired and Castiel should already know this. “Once, this wasn’t rare, but now? Humans keep their own. They heal their own, and they’ve become far more sophisticated than they once were. There was a time when a soul-touch for each human exiled would make sense, but now? The few expelled are creatures so damaged that no human methods could repair them, and they are precisely the ones for whom the angelic methods would work.”

Castiel nodded. Humans were similarly judicious with their radiation-images—bombarding the body with radiation was harmful, and was only used if it was believed to be a lesser harm. He understood this, but still resented that Dean should fall through the cracks. He deserved to have been caught.

Caught and held and cared for.

“He said something,” Castiel looked over the screen to where Dean rested. “While he was sleeping. I think he was... I don’t know. Unless he thinks my name is Bobby, he was confused.”

Theophania nodded like this made perfect sense to her.

“What happened?”

“They call it dreaming,” she said. “Their programming isn’t like ours; they need time to clean their memories, to sort and organize, so they dream. They relive or recall or invent what they need to in sleep.”

“Dreaming.” Castiel watched Dean’s head tip to the side, his lips trace something unheard. “He dreamed that I was somebody else.”

“I can send you some reading on it,” Theophania offered, “It really is a fascinating little solution to their programming problems. But for now, let’s focus: He’s going to wake up and when he does...”

Chapter Text

The first thing Dean felt for when he woke up were the pills, secreted away in the pocket of his pants. His head was clear-ish, and with that clarity he realized that there was no way he’d be able to handle the angel without something to take the edge off. A little tricky, what with the only having four of them to last… eternity? But Dean was resourceful, and, as long as he could think straight, he was pretty good at thinking his way in and out of things.

No pills.

Fuck.

He tried to be subtle. There was a thick blanket over him, and the angel couldn’t be very near because he felt normal, but still. What if there were cameras? What if he moved the blanket and the angel came in and Dean’s whole-ass brain just noped out on him again. ‘Cause that was pretty much how yesterday… or… Jeez, he hoped it was only yesterday, but with the sleep hangover he was nursing, complete with body aches and stiff joints, it could have been a friggin’ week. With how exhausted he’d been—for ages now, since before the trial—he could have slept a friggin’ week and still been tired.

No pills, no pills, no pills. Every way he felt, there were no pills, and Dean realized these weren’t the sweats he’d been wearing when he hid the pills. He’d… he’d really fucked up dinner, and the punishment had been… The angel had taken away his clothes and put him in… these thin, sad pajamas, and then done…

Dean’s mind recoiled from the memory of something huge, something terrifying touching him. Something that felt like pure intent, light and warmth and desire to… he couldn’t understand what it was, exactly, but it had been so much. Too much. It had been… awe-inspiring. And awe was a terrifying thing to feel. Footsteps nearby, and Dean wondered if there was a demon nearby. That seemed… He thought the house was otherwise empty, but there could have been literally anything here and he’d have been none the goddamn wiser because his whole brain was just… losing it. Really off its rocker. Like a runaway truck with no ramp in sight.

Whatever. He could worry about how to deal with the angel fear-rays when the angel came back. For now, he was burritoed up in blankets, a little overheated, stiff, awake, and in need of a bathroom. Probably needed a shower, too.

God, and he was hungry. Not that he’d admit that probably ever—his last meal had put him off eating entirely. He’d just photosynthesize or something. A sudden, nauseating flash of those early days, when he’d refused food and the vet had fed him with that tube down his nose… Nope! Actually, Dean was fine. He’d eat. Didn’t matter how much the thought made his stomach clench and roil, he’d force himself to eat so somebody else didn’t do it for him.

The footsteps passed by him again, and Dean realized he was probably shifting too much. The pain in his lower back from sleeping curled up on the couch was getting unmanageable. It had probably been what woke him up, and it was a lot. He tried to relax as the footsteps approached. There was nothing he could do if whoever it was wanted to… well, anything, really. They could drag him off the couch and make him crawl around like an animal just as easily as they could leave him tangled in the blanket and ruck it up just enough to fuck him rouch and dry into the couch, make him choke or beg or scream no matter how still and quiet he tried to be.

Then, a voice. A question: “Are you awake, Dean?”

It was the angel, but something was… something was…

He thrashed out of the blankets in a single fast movement. Afternoon sunlight clawed his vision and his body howled its protest at the movement, but he was a Winchester. He was a fighter. A little pain was nothing, so he stood in borrowed clothes, shorter than he ought to have been, body one big ache, and faced down the horror in the living room.

“Oh.” The angel looked disheveled. Tired. He looked like he’d been up all night and all day. “Hello, Dean.”

Dean’s feet were planted firmly, his fists balled and then he remembered they could take his hands away. Sharp words melted like so much ice on his tongue, because they could take his voice away, too. There was nothing that was safe, so Dean tried to quiet his mind and relax his body, to hide what things were still his.

“You’re awake.”

He had a name. The angel did.

He was watching Deanwith a wariness, exhaustion. Looking around, Dean could see the forensic evidence everywhere: the coffee pot sitting off the machine, the cup and half and half out on the kitchen table, the laptop now plugged in where before it had been loose, the balled up sweater on the table where the angel would have rested his head—he’d stayed up and watched Dean, and that thought was… not scary.

Not exactly.

He tried to take emotional stock, because it was strange to be so near an angel and so clear-headed. He was usually high as balls, hardly able to think, just a big wad of instincts and needs, leaning into every touch, but now he was tense and anxious and…

“What did you do to me?” He demanded before he could stop himself. Before he could remember that he wasn’t supposed to make demands.

“Hello, Dean. I’m Castiel,” the angel said, giving the distinct impression he’d rehearsed this. “Last night I performed an angelic ritual on you to make you Unafraid. You were… distressed and I’m… You didn’t give your consent. I’m very sorry that I—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean brushed off the apology. He didn’t want… He didn’t know what to do with an apology and he’d rather not have one rattling around the place with nowhere to go. “Angelic ritual?”

“Yes, Dean.” Castiel—and now that he heard it, that name did sound pretty familiar to Dean—said. “It was… to make you Unafraid. I Commanded you, and you should… Do you feel Afraid still? When you’re near me?”

Yeah, even if Dean was still shaking out of his friggin’ skin, he wasn’t about to invite another close encounter of the Castiel kind. Not his idea of a good time, thanks.

“Nah, I feel great, thanks, mister,” he said, doing his best to affect the childish air that had kind of worked before. He was waking up, his brain coming back online, and he realized the first words out of his mouth had been wrong. The low-grade certainty that failure could prove catastrophic was almost comfortable in its familiarity, and Dean assessed the situation and Castiel for signs of what would most effectively get the guy to go easy on Dean.

Except this time, Castiel cringed a little when Dean called him ‘mister,’ which was going to be a problem because then how the actual fuck was Dean supposed to address the friggin’ guy?

“That’s good,” Castiel said, flat and weird, like nobody ever taught him about pitch or whatever. He looked dead on his feet, like he was about to fall asleep. “This is… I’m glad you’re feeling better, Dean.”

There was something cold about this guy, and Dean’s mind was going a mile a minute trying to figure out what that was about. Obviously, Dean wasn’t giving him something he wanted, but what? What did he need? He seemed like one of those Nice Guys, so he probably wanted Dean to mind-read (which was the most annoying kind of guy to deal with, honestly), but he also seemed like he’d be happy with whatever he got. So… win some lose some, Dean figured. The Read-My-Mind game was stupid, but at least this dude seemed like he’d be pretty nice once Dean figured him out.

So this was a recon mission, then. He just needed to gather information—ideally quickly—and make his move.

Dean’s waking had been a success as far as Castiel could tell, though his body was exhausted from its vigil over Dean’s dreaming. He’d been still for long stretches, then muttered through others. There had been times when his fingers twitched and Castiel had the oddest sense that he needed something—a sense that only eased up when he sat near to Dean, either on the floor or on the sofa’s edge, and stroked long and firm down Dean’s back or let Dean hold his fingers in that strong grip.

The odds were astronomically low that it meant anything; it was most likely an odd aftereffect of the Command, but Castiel felt... connected to Dean. He felt calmest when he touched Dean through that sleep, and now that Dean was awake, he felt a constant, low-grade anxiety. Part of him thought it was because he knew the human must distrust him, and he was overthinking every action. Part of him, though... Part of him suspected the improbable just because he had some strange, hard-to-explain draw toward Dean, some odd need to see him safe and cared-for.

It was hard to think about all that, but it was easy to think about Dean.

He needed to eat, for example, and the moment Castiel suggested breakfast (even though it was mid-afternoon), Dean agreed. He ate with gusto, though Castiel guiltily withheld seconds lest they have a repeat of last night.

Dean had been silent, watching the extra bacon and pancakes with unreadable eyes, and Castiel had forced himself to say, “If you want more later, I’ll put it in the fridge for you, but for now, breakfast is over.”

Unmoving, Dean had remained at the table while Castiel covered the plate with plastic wrap and put it away for later. Whatever exactly had happened to Dean, it made him stuck. He had an immense inertia that he couldn’t overcome on his own. He waited at the table, still as a statue, until Castiel intervened. He asked him if he wanted to see his room, and Dean swallowed and nodded and called Castiel ‘mister’ again and Castiel couldn’t shake the sense that something bad was about to happen.

Chapter Text

“This door locks,” Castiel said, and... yeah. That wasn’t exactly a surprise. Dean wasn’t new to being locked into his room at night... or during the day... or whenever nobody needed him... or sometimes when somebody particularly unpleasant wanted to spend some Good ‘Ol Quality Time with him—something he particularly disliked because if he was going to get fucked within an inch of his life or degraded or forced to do things that made him wish he could just stop existing forever, it really was better if it didn’t happen in his room, on his bed, where he slept.

“If it’s closed, I won’t open it unless I think you’re in danger, so if I knock, please respond so I know you’re alright.”

Ok, that was new, but Dean was adaptable. This guy had apparently used some weird angel mojo to magic away the oppressive terror (and Dean was kinda curious about how that worked—like was it pheromones or something? Bad Vibes? One of those high-pitched noises that only teenagers could hear?), which meant he probably didn’t want Dean to be freaking out all the time. Just... some of the time. Just during weird-ass conversations like this one where he was trying to explain rules to Dean that made zero goddamn sense, while Dean nodded along knowing that he was never going to end up in the bizarre circumstances the angel was planning for.

There were rules and contingencies for if Dean needed to get food in the middle of the night (what?), or if he wanted to go for a walk outside (nope), or if he wanted to see a doctor instead of telling Castiel something (not fucking likely), or if he needed Castiel to know something but he didn’t want to talk. Really, anything that involved Dean wanting somebody else to know something was right the fuck out, but Castiel seemed certain that Dean was a regular Kahn Academy, trying to give out free information on literally every subject for reasons that Dean simply could not fathom.

He glanced at the bed, and his heart sped up a little.

Fuck... not here. Just... If this really was going to be where he spend most of his time, then he really didn’t want to... He’d already pissed and puked in Castiel’s room, so he’d rather keep all the really bad memories there so he could sleep here unbothered. The posters, the sports cars and the cat, were stupid, but they were exactly the kind of stupid think he knew he’d fixate on when things got really bad, and those memories were sticky, and he kind of thought the Camaro poster was cool, and he didn’t want to think about getting double fisted every time he looked at it, or whatever weird shit this guy was probably into.

Jeez, he’d just slept like fifteen-sixteen hours, and he was already exhausted. He eyed the bed again, trying to force himself through the discomfort of looking at it. There was a plaid bedspread and a couple pillows, and the sheets looked soft, like flannel. Like they’d be a bitch to clean, which might mean Dean was going to have to spend a LOT of time cleaning them, or it might mean that Castiel didn’t really give a shit if Dean had to sleep in dirty sheets or not. There was a stuffed toad on the bed and a pillow shaped like a hamburger, and Dean resolved to hide both of them as soon as he had a chance. He was nothing if not a pragmatist, and he knew that he didn’t want those out when Castiel came a’ knocking.

“Do you want—” Castiel began, then stopped himself, and Dean probably could have checked his face, but he had enough new information for right now. He was tired and he had some rearranging he urgently wanted to get done, and he’d eaten a pretty decent breakfast and there was bacon being saved as a reward, he was pretty sure, and he wasn’t sure what he’d have to do for it, but he figured it kind of didn’t matter. He’d end up doing whatever the angel wanted, if there was bacon in it for him, all the better. Or... all the less-worse. Whatever. It didn’t matter how he felt about it—all that mattered was making this situation as survivable as he could, because right now, things were looking pretty survivable.

“Dean, I’m going to leave the door ajar when I leave. You can open it or close it if you like. I’m going to come check on you in one hour—so at three-fifteen. You can use the clock on your night stand to see when that will be.”

King of dry deliveries over here, Dean thought, smiling a little at his fingernails—‘cause sue him, he was funny. The guy really had a way of making himself sound boring. Three-fifteen. Okay, that was... maybe true, maybe a lie. Hard to know, but either way, Dean was going to find some stuff out today. He glanced up again at the toad. It had chunky, plush bumps over its body, and its belly was made of corduroy and it looked like it’d feel good to touch.

“If the door is open when I come back, I’ll look in to see if you’re alright. If it’s closed, I’ll knock and you can tell me you’re alright. It it’s ajar, I’ll knock then look in, then put it back.” Castiel droned, like Dean was stupid or something. “This water cup is for you. You can fill it in the bathroom if you need more and you don’t want to come downstairs. I’ll be working in the kitchen if you need me.”

Yeah, okay, great. Dean forced himself to nod again.

And then the angel left, the door open enough that Dean would be able to see somebody passing outside, but not open enough that it made a good window into his space. His room.

It took a minute... It took six minutes (thanks, clock) for Dean to make his body move, and once he did, his hand grabbed for the stuffed toad. It was big. Dean was kind of small, but the toad was big even by adult standards—as big across as his chest, and the stuffing was really packed in, so it was firm when he squeezed it. It was heavy.

He glanced around frantically for someplace to put the toad, somewhere where its green, glass eyes wouldn’t be able to see whatever was going to happen at three-fifteen. Somewhere where Dean could find it again when everything was over and hold it, because it did feel good to touch. He could imagine its heavy weight pressing on him.

There was a closet, but Dean didn’t want to open it, because he figured ignorance was bliss when it came to things stored in closets. He hadn’t found anything good in closets any time lately, and something about his discovery (and then the subsequent ‘demonstrations’) of the impact tools in Alistair’s closet had really helped Dean lick his old curiosity. It may not have killed the cat, but boy had curiosity killed his appetite for knowledge.

There was a dresser, too, with a mirror (which was going to be a bummer, Dean just knew it). The drawers weren’t locked—Dean jiggled them all to check—but he didn’t open them. There was plenty already in this room. In one corner there was a book shelf, which he had no intention of disturbing, but which was nonetheless nice to see. Books were... more of a Sam thing, but he was a decent reader and maybe once he figured things out a little better he’d poke around, see what these angel freaks were into reading. Or what they thought humans were into reading. Dean’d kill for a newspaper.

Under the bed was an option. Not the most sheltered, but it was dark and clean, and Dean was smaller now, so he could easily slide his whole body under the bed with the toad. The rug only went a couple inches under, and past that it was smooth hardwood, and it didn’t seem the most comfortable, but then again, neither was most of the stuff Dean figured the angel was going to be into, so... win some, lose some, right? Under the bed it was. He shimmied under, tucking the toad into a corner, then shimmied out to grab the burger and stash it too. It wasn’t as firm, but the fill was squishy and kinda satisfying, and it would be nice to have in his little cave when he next visited. If Castiel didn’t seem to notice under the bed, he might try and sneak a blanket down, too.

Once he’d finished, he walked the perimeter again. The clock read two-fifty-one. A little less than twenty-five minutes until Castiel came back, if the angel was to be believed. Okay. He looked at the Camaro poster. It was toward the foot of the bed, so as long as he was facing the head, he wouldn’t see it. Okay. That was fine. He didn’t need to move it, he could just make sure he was facing away from it. Cool.

The cat poster implored him to hang in there, and he flipped it off before peeling back the bedclothes one layer at a time, examining everything, feeling for velcro or that fleecy shit it stuck to, searching for restraints that were hidden when the bed was made. He stripped the bed methodically down to the mattress, then checked the time. Three-oh-nine. Good. Just to put things to—

Footsteps in the hall, and Dean froze.

It wasn’t time yet.

On the nightstand, the red glowing number ticked forward. Three-ten. Fuck! He froze, heart racing, as the footsteps paused for a moment, then continued down the hall, past his door. The angel of death passing over his room.

A held breath.

A door down the hall opened and closed.

Dean exhaled.

Jesus Christ, okay. Three-fifteen. Five minutes.

He rushed to remake the bed, swift and silent, army corners like John would have expected, and Dean was so goddamn tired. He set the pillows back into place, then sank down between the narrow side of the dresser and the wall, and looked at the window. There was a curtain drawn part-way back, navy blue with a yellow sheer underneath it that admitted a warm, muted sunlight. The adrenaline of trying to put the bed back to rights was finally gone, and Dean’s eyes were heavy.

Just a moment. He had a minute left. Just a minute, then, and he’d deal with whatever happened at three-fifteen. For now, though... for now...

For now, he just needed to rest his eyes. Just for a moment. Just a second, really.

Just...

Dean’s whole body jolted when he heard the knock on the door. Each rap was gunfire, close to his ear, recoil he could feel through his whole body. And then, the door swung open, and Dean had been tired. He really hadn’t meant to do it. He hadn’t even thought about how the door would open, because before the doors always opened out, not in. And the door opened, and Dean was cupped in the little triangle between the door, the dresser, and the wall, and Castiel said, “Dean?”

Dean didn’t dare breathe. He could see the shadow of the angel’s feet under the door, but with the door open, he couldn’t escape his little corner. He’d built a trap for himself then gone and gotten caught.

“Dean?” A note of worry in the angel’s voice. Not so calm anymore. “Dean, where are you?”

Chapter Text

“Dean?” Castiel said it louder this time, because where was he? The bed was nearly untouched—the plush toys he’d bought were gone and so was Dean, and he stepped further into the room, frantically looking for the human. How had he… The bathroom. It had a door connecting to the bedroom, and another to the hall, and Dean must have… He must be in there. In the dark.

“Dean, are you alright?” He called, because maybe Dean didn’t want to see him right now. Maybe he needed space, but maybe he was hurt. “It’s three-fifteen, I came to check on you, are you…”

The shower curtain clattered open to reveal nothing. Just the gentle soap and shampoo he’d chosen, the loofah he’d originally gotten for himself with the terry cloth yellow duck head because it was charming and made him smile whenever he looked at it. The row of green tiles glared accusingly out at him. Dean wasn’t here, and Castiel had been irresponsible. He was supposed to make a safe place for Dean to rest and recover, and instead...

“Dean?” He couldn’t help the frantic edge coloring his voice, and Nathaniel had been really clear that Castiel needed to remain calm in his interactions, that if they were right about Dean—if he’d correctly evaluated the state of Dean’s soul—then Dean likely had learned to fear angels and demons, and every interaction with Castiel would either reinforce or challenge that learning, and he needed to be calm, but Dean was gone. There was a horrible, choking dread filling his mind, filling his lungs, and it was so unlike the kinds of intellectual, muted emotion Castiel was used to that it was nearly paralyzing.

“Dean, where did you go?”

His voice rattled around the bathroom, the tile reflecting mockingly. People didn’t disappear from safe places to rest. They didn’t... Castiel stopped, bracing a hand on the counter. The racing of his heart was... that wasn’t his. That wasn’t a thing his heart did. Neither was the shortness of his breath. His body was an expression, not his true self, and unlike a human soul, his soul wasn’t gummed up in this body, it was huge and largely free. It was only natural for his soul to worry about Dean, but why would his body react?

It wasn’t natural, and he pressed the heel of his free hand to his sternum, hating every inch of the feelings racing through his body. Why was it doing this? Why?

Because it couldn’t be what his ridiculous, magically hopeful soul kept supplying against all reason. Because the odds of that were astronomically low. The odds were vanishingly small. They were nothing.

But the more he focused on the strange panic jittering around his body, the more Castiel felt the terrible, all-consuming need to be shielded. To be covered and safe and held, and that wasn’t Castiel’s need. Sure, he liked nice bodily sensations, and sure he enjoyed feelings of connection, but that need was...

Almost certainly not human.

Castiel was an angel. This was probably a glitch in his programming, and he could ask somebody responsible to see to it when he had some time. It was just something to note and observe and otherwise ignore, because it had nothing to do with the situation at hand. It had nothing to do with his monumental failure to create a safe place for an exhausted human to rest, and suddenly, he realized that the frog and hamburger were gone.

That meant Dean had moved them.

Instantly, he began to search through drawers and cupboards. Beneath the sink, the empty medicine cabinet. He moved the still-wrapped toothbrush and realized he should have made Dean brush his teeth last night when he was empty-eyed and shuffling, because it wasn’t like being asked to brush his teeth at that point would have made things worse. Last night was already terrible; tooth-brushing would have been just a drop in the bucket.

Or a drop in the swimming pool.

Castiel stopped and swayed a moment. His body was really doing something wild. He didn’t like it at all.

No signs in the bathroom, but he left the door open just in case... Just in case. Then on to the closet, but no toad and no hamburger, just the sharp smell of mothballs and several cardboard boxes of old records from Before. He checked through drawers, though it wasn’t like they led anywhere. He’d cleaned them out before Dean came home, but there were several changes of clothes and sheets for the bed. The fidget toys and drawing supplies had been left untouched, but Castiel supposed he hadn’t mentioned that they were for Dean, so...

He stared at the bed. The spot where he’d set the two plush toys not two days ago. It felt like an eternity. Then his eyes dropped to under the bed. He went to his hands and knees to look, and there they were, hiding in the dark, clearly stashed there for reasons well beyond Castiel’s ken. Dean had done that. He’d put them there, and that meant... He must have done it for a reason, though that, too, was beyond Castiel.

His heart hammered in his chest.

On his hands and knees, cheek to the floor, he scanned around, the room unfamiliar from this angle. Alien. And there, beneath the door, was a misplaced shadow.

“Dean,” he breathed, the relief not easing his bod‘y's strange behavior in the slightest. “Is that you?”

He swung the door closed, and it was. It was Dean, pressed, stricken, deep in the corner, body tense and unmoving. He stared at Castiel, and a huge, nauseating wave of terror crested in him, that strange bodily urge to be small and hidden, and Castiel didn’t know why he did what he did. It was probably a glitch. It was probably nothing, because he’d never meet anybody who’d found their Ward, and the numbers, the probabilities... But if it wasn’t Guardianship that drove him, it was some other equally mysterious force.

He froze only a moment, eyes locked with Dean’s, before reaching for the bed and pulling free the thick, heavy duvet. There was a brief spike in the terror when he wrapped the blanket over Dean, around him, when he bundled Dean in the thick blanket and then hugged him tight.

“You’re afraid,” he whispered on shaky breath, clutching a shaky body in his arms. “I’m sorry, Dean. I never meant for you to be so afraid.”

Dean had nothing to say, and there was a strange moment of some other feeling, during which Dean’s body twitched, but then he began to shiver and the bodily panic started to ebb from Castiel. The slow emptying of his vessel.

“It’s alright, Dean,” he said, and Dean’s fingers peeked out only to squeeze the edge of the blanket in a white-knuckled grip. “I think...”

He tried to stop himself from uttering the crazy thought in his head, but there were forces at play here that Castiel simply didn’t understand. That he couldn’t understand. He felt... Moved. Like he was being guided once again by God’s Light, and he followed it, letting himself curl around Dean as he shivered and shook, as the shaking slowed to a stop.

“I think I’ve been searching for you for a long time,” Castiel blurted, and in his mouth the words felt truer than before. “I think I was meant to find you.”

He stared into the corner, feeling something resonating in his soul, something ripple through the space at his words.

“I should have found you before you ever left the Garden,” he murmured, even though Dean wouldn’t understand. Because no human in living memory (for humans, at least) had had a Guardian.

Because Angels had stopped seeking their Wards when God went missing.

And yet, like a miracle, here Dean was.

Here in Castiel’s arms, was the Ward God had Chosen for him.

And here Dean was, at last in the arms of his Guardian Angel.

Chapter Text

The blanket was warm.

It was heavy, and underneath it was dark. With the blanket, he couldn’t really tell what was arm or leg or dresser or what pressing up against him, and that was odd. He could almost feel the angel’s heartbeat through the blanket. The arms around him shifted with every slow breath, and Dean rubbed his cheek against the blanket. The angel had… hugged him.

Still was, actually.

Dean’d seen some strange things, but this was something entirely new. This was some bingo-bongo crazy shit, but he didn’t want to fight it. Not right now. He could fight later, but for now, he just wanted to sit still. Later he could cuss and spit, but right now… Right now his heart had slowed down and his mind was quiet, and the angel wasn’t actually touching him, which was good. Maybe later it was going to suck to be wrapped up like, this. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to struggle away, but, then again, it wasn’t really like he could really struggle away anyway.

For now, for just a minute, nothing bad was happening.

Slowly, slowly, the arms around him eased, and some strange, ridiculous part of Dean wanted to keep the embrace. It was strange, it was ridiculous. At least the blanket stayed.

“I’m going to go downstairs, Dean,” Castiel said, and his voice didn’t rumble through Dean this time. This time, he was distant. “Are you… There’s food for you. There’s more breakfast, or I have soup. I imagine that you don’t want more of the casserole…”

Dean didn’t move.

“You don’t have to decide right now. I’ll make you a plate and if you’re not down in an hour, then I’ll bring it up.”

An hour. There was food, and Dean tried to think ahead. It was a lot of food, he wasn’t used to being fed so often or so much. Castiel really liked feeding him, and Dean wondered if maybe the angel wanted him fatter. He’d seen a pet who’d been fed up until he could hardly get up. The girl had been tiny, and huge all at once, and he’d watched her eat as much as a normal-sized person at a meal during an event with Alistair. He’d had nightmares about it afterwards, being trapped not just by the world but by his own body. Being unable to move, not just because of the punishment that would follow, but because his body wouldn’t.

He waited, still and silent, until the angel was gone before shuffling out from under his blanket.

Dean had stashed away the toad and the hamburger. Castiel couldn’t stop turning over the two of them stashed under the bed, and he immediately went to his computer to message Nathaniel.

“They’re animals,” Nathaniel said, once he was on call, “So it makes sense that he has a drive to hide. If he’s made himself a den of sorts, then respect that space. Unless something causes a hazard to him, don’t touch anything in there, and if it seems like he would appreciate them, consider giving him more nesting materials. He may be made in God‘s image, but he’s still a beast of the Earth.”

“But what about the… bodily sensations?” Castiel asked.

“The kind of link is…” Nathaniel frowned “ You would need to speak with Someone who’s experienced that kind of like. I don’t have the kind of expertise to tell you if it is or is not Guardianship.”

“Who does?” Castiel asked. He’d somehow imagined that Theophania and Nathaniel had all the answers, even though their areas of study were nature of the human soul, and God’s fingerprint on Creation, which were... separate from Guardianship.

“A lot of the angels who’ve been around a long time have been Guardians at one time or another, but I don’t think I know anything you don’t,” He shrugged, “I do know that it’s a good sign that he’s interacting with his environment, though. Has he spoken at all?”

Castiel sighed and refocused. Nathaniel had questions about observations, and he was graciously acting as a behavior consultant in exchange for this information, so the least Castiel could do was give him the information that could fuel his thesis.

“No,” Castiel’s voice was clear, the conversation one-sided, as Dean cautiously peered around the corner and into the kitchen. “Not yet, at least. I think he wanted some, but he didn’t ask, and he wouldn’t take any when I offered.”

A long silence and Dean glared at the angel’s headphones. Here he was trying to run a little surveillance operation, and this fucking guy had to go and foil his best efforts with headphones. He was nodding, so he agreed with whatever the pervert on the other end of the line said, and Dean suddenly wondered if the reason there were so few rules was because this was going to be some kind of cam show thing. If he’d be pretty much left alone until showtime. That might not be so bad, actually, especially if he was allowed to keep his room to himself. There hadn’t been any camera equipment in there, so it was quite possible that the studio was set up somewhere else, in a room complete with all the machines and accoutrements that could make an afternoon (or evening, or morning—any time, really) deeply unpleasant.

“No, thank you,” Castiel said. “Really, I’m happy to help however I can, you have no idea how helpful you’ve been.”

Great.

Dean preferred when his masters didn’t need a lot of help, but... you can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but can’t pick the supernatural bastard that buys you off a pervert-demon hell-bent on turning you into a living sex doll.

“I’ll do that,” Castiel assured whoever was on the call, “No, I have to go. It’s about two and a half hours since he ate, so I want to offer… No, not after last night.” He chuckled, then, and Dean wondered what exactly had been so funny about last night. The angel hadn’t made him clean the rug yet, but that was probably coming. Maybe that was it. Maybe there was some particularly humiliating way Castiel would make him clean up. Dean only hoped it wouldn’t be like… Alistair was, hopefully, uniquely creative.

“Yes. Of course, we’ll be in touch.” Castiel glanced around, and though dean froze in place, the angel’s eyes locked on him (and the overwhelming terror was for sure gone—score!). “Thank you for your time, Nathaniel. I’ll fill out the schedule sheet tonight.”

He pulled the headphones from his ears and Dean didn’t dare move.

And then, he just… didn’t do anything.

He sat there at the table, typing on his computer, and glancing occasionally over at Dean, and otherwise did nothing.

And Dean was trapped. He couldn’t retreat because the angel knew he was there, and he couldn’t advance because the angel was there, so he was just… stuck here. The floor gripped his feet, sticky and swallowing, his toes pressing to the cool floorboards as they warmed from his body heat. And then nothing just kept on happening.

That was maybe the most bananas part of all this shit—the nothing kept on going. Castiel kept working, then, after some time, glanced briefly at Dean and slid out of his chair in the non-Deanward direction and refilled his water glass from the sink. Then he filled another glass half-way and set it on the table as far from his seat as he could before sitting back down.

The wall refused to swallow Dean, which was kind of annoying. He was trying his best to disappear and the house wasn’t cooperating at all.

“That’s for you if you want it,” Castiel said, indicating the cup. “There’s food in the fridge for you. In about ten minutes I’m going to make my dinner, and I’ll make enough for you, too. If you want food before that, your leftovers are in the fridge. You’re allowed to get food whenever you want.”

Yeah, right, buddy. Dean knew a trap when he heard one.

But the angel’s attention returned to his work, and Dean was left… alone? Kind of alone-ish. He was in the room with the dude, and nothing kept on happening, and that was crazy, and he wanted to go back, because at least with Alistair people had the decency to tell him what was happening. Here, it was anybody’s guess.

I wouldn’t mind your hangin’, he thought, but you wait in jail so long.

Chapter Text

Three days had passed.

Three days of consistent meals, being left in the bedroom with its posters and bed and under-the-bed sanctuary. Three days of watching the sun move outside the window while waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it was a persistent fucker. It just refused to fall.

For three days, Castiel talked at Dean in his weird, boring monotone with his weird, earnest concern. He knocked on the door before coming in, reminded Dean to brush his teeth after meals (which was actually pretty cool, because it seemed like he could brush his teeth whenever, which would come in handy later—he didn’t like the taste of come lingering obtrusively around his outh). Things were actually going fairly well until, on the third day, during a lunch of tomato soup with little star-shaped pasta, the angel reached into a bag and pulled out a big plush shark. It had a heavy body, nearly as long as Dean was tall (which wasn’t saying all that much, but the thing was probably a yard long, so it was impressive). Something heavy made a slinky hissing sound inside when he moved it, probably sand, and the whole thing was solid and heavy, its glass eyes totally black and smooth on its head.

“Thank you, sir,” Dean said automatically, and there was something unreadable on Castiel’s face for a moment, and Dean knew it wasn’t the right thing to say. Okay. Okay, so what did he want, then? What was the… What was the angle?

“Dean, you don’t have to thank me,” the angel deadpanned, and, yeah. Yeah, okay. Okay. Dean got it.

He nodded and held the shark. It was worth it. It wasn’t like there was any avoiding where this was going, but if this angel could be suckered into essentially paying Dean with little luxuries… Well, then, who was Dean to complain? He wasn’t about to look this gift horse in the mouth, so he made a little bit of a gamble. He made his voice small, fragile-sounding, and said, “Can I really keep him?” And, there! There it was! A look of affection, of softness on the angel’s face.

“Of course, Dean.” Castiel’s voice had never heard of tone, apparently, but his face was lined and soft and his eyes were warm, so that was good enough for Dean. “The bull shark is yours. Do you want to put him in your room?”

Yes. Fucking hell, yeah, Dean wanted to go sit a couple minutes to gather his thoughts. This had been… illuminating. Good intel. Useful. It was like fuzzy edges of this terrifying new world were coming into focus, and Dean’s mind was working overtime to catalog his observations.

So, the thing was, he couldn’t move too slow or too fast. He needed to choose his moment. To strike when the iron was hot, he needed to wait for the iron to be hot. And he’d had a kind of big breakfast. Sue him—he liked sausage, and he wasn’t going to slow down when the mook made enough to feed a small army and then didn’t tell Dean to quit. In fact, he seemed pleased when Dean put on his ‘love me daddy’ voice and asked for more.

It was workable.

Maybe not Dean’s first choice—he was personally a little creeped out by the whole daddy thing—but for sure better than a whole mess of alternatives. If he was right, then this situation would me manageable. he’d manage it all just fine.

Alright, so he couldn’t move too fast, and breakfast was still sitting a little heavy, plus he’d had lunch, but he hadn’t been that hungry, so conditions ought to be favorable by dinner time. He could just say he wasn’t hungry and stick to a glass of milk (and maybe a little bit of pie, because there’d been pie last night and goddamn! Dean hadn’t realized how much he wanted it until it was on a plate in front of him with no stated conditions, and Dean started running through all the things he’d be glad to do for it in his head.)

Yeah. Okay. So milk for dinner (and pie), and then he’d let it settle a little and maybe pretend to read a book downstairs, and when Cas called bedtime, Dean would make his move.

He stashed the shark under the bed, but he was decently sure that as long as he stayed on top of things, he could keep his room untainted. Still, if things went really bad, it would probably feel safer to be under the bed than on it. Hell, even if things didn’t go bad, under the bed was… It was close and quiet, and he could pit the shark between him and the outside so he could see out but more of his body could be hidden… Real friggin’ manly. Real tough. Thabk god Dad was too dead to ever find out about this, ‘cause tonight was not going into the Winchester Men’s Hall of Fame for any good reasons.

Which didn’t matter, actually. Because Dean was stuck here and Sam didn’t want to see him ever again, so even if he could escape—which he couldn’t—he’d just be running away. Nowhere left to run to.

No way out but through.

After a dinner where Castiel seemed unhappy that Dean wasn’t eating more, (and thank God for that disastrous first night, because Dean was pretty sure if he hadn’t had such a spectacular meltdown, then the angel would be much more aggressive in pushing food on him) they sat for the usual forty-five minutes in the living room while Castiel watched some kind of angel show on the TV. Dean wasn’t actually sure that it was a show. It could have been how he received programming or something. It was just a mess of black and white shapes, sometimes split through with color, that moved and morphed in ways that made Dean break out in a cold sweat. Looking at it for more than a half a glance made him feel light-headed and shaky. Castiel, on the other hand, seemed entertained by the program and would occasionally huff out an amused grunt (about as close as he ever got to laughter).

Once, while watching the shapes, he turned to Dean and said, “Have you ever touched a bee? They live in the Garden—I’ve always wanted to follow one for a day, to see what they do. Have you ever seen a bee?” And Dean had squeezed the little wooden tiger in his hand hard enough that the tail snapped off, and Castiel jumped off the couch, and Dean kind of blacked out for a minute.

The next thing he was actually aware of, Castiel was pressing a finger hard to the puncture wound in the palm of his hand, and making soothing sounds, and then there was… it was like a light, but not a light. It was like the feeling of stepping into the sun, and the wound was gone, and Castiel was pushing Dean’s unresisting body against the sink so he could rinse the blood off Dean’s hand.

Tonight, he didn’t look at the TV. The little wooden animals were out, and he held the tailless tiger, and carefully didn’t look at the TV. He stole occasional glances up at the angel, seated on the couch, while Dean sat on the floor. The image was… He probably looked like a kid, actually—which was gross—with his brightly colored monster truck T-shirt and sweat pants and bare feet, sitting on the floor holding little wooden circus animals.

Whatever.

He set the giraffe on one of the squares of fabric that came in the animals’ box (it was designed like a little stable that could be shut and locked with little hinges on the outside, and even though it was SO not Dean’s thing, he could appreciate a clever design). The giraffe was Castiel, and Dean crept the tiger up the imaginary stairs as he tried to imagine what he would say.

He knew how to make those big, soft eyes, and he’d tried it a couple times, and he knew Castiel was a sucker for them. He could picture it:

“It’s time for lights-out, Dean,” Castiel says, double-checking that the night lights in the hall light, keeping the otherwise dark hall bathed in low, amber light. Dean nods from his bed.

He’s wearing the orange pajamas—his least favorites. They’re easy to get out of, and he doesn’t care if they get ruined. He’s also pretty sure that if they do, Castiel will let Dean pick the new ones, and he’d like something a little more substantial and less tight to his body. Also he thinks the construction equipment pattern is stupid.

Castiel retreats from the doorway, like a shark into the inky darkness of the nighttime sea, and Dean waits a couple moments before slipping out of bed. He’s practiced this before, moving soundlessly through the house. His bare feet feel the features of the old floorboards, aware of each creaky spot, each uneven bit that could compromise his mission. He slips down the stairs and into the kitchen unobserved. He is a hunter. It feels good to move like this.

First thing’s first: he goes into the cabinet and pulls out the shortening. He’d feel weird about this, except he knows just how bad it’ll be if he doesn’t use it. Spoon in, spoon out, slap it on the hand, then push the still hard chunk up inside himself before his beady heat can soften it. The extra, he rubs into his skin, not wanting to loosen himself too much right now but wanting to warm up the muscle a little. . It’s a balancing act. He doesn’t want to lose the lube.

His heart is racing a little, and the feeling of pushing something inside himself is familiar and not terrible. He’s practiced this too, in the shower, fingers slippery with conditioner, just to make sure he still remembers how to make his body relax.

Next, he washes his hands. The hand soap smells like grapefruit, and that’s… It’s good to focus on things like that. It helps him feel calm, and feeling calm helps him relax, and relaxing makes it better. Easier. Sometimes, if he really gets into it, it even feels good.

Dean paused, looking at the wooden tiger by the part of its stable he’d decided would represent the kitchen. Would Castiel be the kind of guy who wanted him to hurt? To cry? He’d learned pretty early on that he didn’t have to make people fight him for his tears. He could give those reactions, not make them work so hard, and he’d hurt but not as much.

He glanced over at Castiel who was leaned forward, watching the unsettling shapes, head cocked to the side like he was seeing something confusing. Dean swallowed. He didn’t peg Castiel for the kind of guy who wanted that. He seemed more like he wanted to be the doting, indulgent type. He probably wanted Dean to like it.

He looked at the tiger again.

He pulls the milk out of the fridge and takes three big swigs from the gallon. It’s not a sure thing that he’ll puke, but if he does, he doesn’t want it to hurt, and this’ll help the acid. He’d learned that somewhere. Not Alistair, though. He can’t remember where, but he knows it’s an important step. He knows because…

Jesus. It wasn’t even go time, and he was already getting weird in the head. Dean sighed. It was fine. This was why he was going over it now. He could make all the mistakes now, get distracted now, it was fine. When the rubber hit the road, he’d be ready.

Okay, so he takes a couple swigs of milk, then gets a little of the hand soap on his sleeve so he can smell it. It really is a good soap.

Ready as he’ll ever be, he eases his way back up the stairs. He’s light, agile. He moves with a boxer’s grace. Castiel always leaves his door ajar at night. He says he wants Dean to be able to get him if he needs anything. He wants Dean to be able to come find him, so Dean is going to find him. He’s in his room. He’s…

What would Cas be doing? The wooden tiger was paused outside the giraffe’s room. Was Castiel a reader? Or would he be sitting, pencil in hand, filling out a weird little grid with strange symbols—some kind of angelic crossword puzzle. But maybe he only did those in the mornings. Maybe he’d have his computer open, maybe he’d be watching a private pattern show. Maybe he’d be touching himself, watching something, ready and wanting and most of the way there. Maybe he’d give Dean that small, soft smile if his and invite Dean in, let Dean set the pace. That’d be the dream—minimal work, better payoff.

Maybe Castiel was the type to want to be gentle. Maybe his hands would be soft. Maybe he wouldn’t try to kiss Dean. Maybe he’d go slow. Maybe it would be almost nice, maybe it would even feel good.

Sometimes it felt good. Dean didn’t love that he liked it sometimes, but maybe he wouldn’t hate it with Castiel. Castiel was… he was pretty okay.

Okay. He thumbed the nub where the tiger’s tail used to be. This was a good idea; he felt a little better now. It was helping, and a shower and the shark would be waiting for him when he finished.

He nestled the tiger up against the giraffe and imagined that the tiger was happy. He imagined that the tiger was okay.

Chapter Text

“Are you hungry?” Castiel asked, his usually scowly expression more pronounced than usual. “You didn’t eat much at dinner… There’s more food if you want it. You can…”

He was being careful. That was pretty understandable. It actually seemed like the angel was more shook up about Dean’s little accident… freak-out… than Dean was. Dean might’ve pissed (himself) and moaned about the whole situation, might’ve ruined a little corner of rug, but he’d had worse, and there wasn’t any immediate punishment, and Castiel seemed… Honestly he seemed upset, but not really at Dean, which was fine. He was an idiot, but he was Dean’s idiot. Dean would rather deal with a million weird, awkward, confused Castiels than some of the potential masters Alistair had lent Dean to.

Dean shook his head, minding his posture, careful to stay small and soft. “I’m full,” he said, and chuckled a little internally. Not as full as he was going to be. Jesus. Bad joke, but whatever. The strategy session with the animal toys had been a big help. He felt clear and ready; the dread wasn’t gone, but it was stowed away for the moment, letting him concentrate.

And then everything went to plan.

Castiel paused outside Dean’s room, double checked the hall night lights, reminded Dean to brush his teeth, and that Castiel’s door would be open if Dean needed him. It was a nightly invitation, but tonight Dean was ready. He hadn’t been ready at first, but Castiel had been patient, and Dean wanted to be good for him. This was about the easiest he’d had it… maybe ever. Like, except for the sex (and possibly including the sex, depending on how Castiel decided to take Dean and how rough he actually was), this might even be an easier existence than living with John had been—no volatile moods, no alcohol, no sudden bursts of shouting or hitting, no need to put himself between the threat and Sammy, no moralizing about toys and fun… He looked guiltily back at the little stable of wooden animals. Cas hadn’t even been mad when Dean accidentally broke the tiger—he’d just healed the cut and washed Dean’s hand while Dean spaced the fuck out.

There was something wrong with Dean, probably, but it for sure wasn’t something new. It was probably some new, obnoxious manifestation of the pathetic streak John had valiantly tried and failed to stamp out. It made him want to tote around the corduroy toad and make little habitats for the wooden animals out of the construction paper Castiel said he’d bought for Dean. It was getting worse, but that was probably the angel’s fault—he seemed to lack the basic sense to correct Dean, and Dean was too weak to police himself.

But he wasn’t too weak for this.

“Good night, Dean,” Castiel said, his voice no more or less expressive than it ever was. Weird fucking guy. Should he call Cas daddy? He could. Maybe better to save that one, though. He really didn’t want to call him daddy. Dean’d already had a dad, and he was set on the father front now. No need for another.

“Good night,” Dean said, voice soft, eyes softer. He gazed through his lashes at Castiel and something about the performance made Castiel’s usual routine stutter for half a second. A half-double-take, and Dean crowed. “Thank you for the shark.”

Castiel smiled a little, then frowned as he glanced around, and Dean realized his shark was hidden. Castiel couldn’t find it. Shit. Okay, he’d just have to make sure the angel didn’t remember. Dean figured he could manage that. He could make the guy forget a stuffed shark while he was stuffing Dean. Hah… Dean didn’t smile at his own humor, but just barely.

Lubed and ready, he tip-toed past his bedroom to the inky spill of shadow that came from Castiel’s room. The angel slept… or… Okay, Dean wasnt’ so clear on the specifics, he didn’t know if angels slept, but he was pretty sure Castiel slept, so… The angel slept in total darkness, and Dean could relate. John hadn’t been much of a fan of night lights, even thought Dean had stolen one and snuck it for Sammy when he had nightmares as a little kid.

The darkness bristled, and Dean was acutely aware—but no longer terrified—that the creature in that darkness was not human. The angel had enough weird tells. Even if his dwelling looked like a human home, it was a facsimile, never quite right. Standing in the dark threshold, Dean felt his smallness acutely.

He wasn’t procrastinating, exactly when he paused, out of the line of sight from within the room, and palmed the front of his pants. His dick was soft, but the feeling of pushing the stolen shortening into himself and the little stretch and the nerves and anticipation were… they were going to make it easy to get turned on if Dean made a little effort, and if he was turned on, then his body would forgive a lot more rough handling.

The door was silent on its hinge, and the rug ate up sound, so Dean stood a moment, blind and deaf, as he adjusted to the dim gloom of moon through the window. As the shapes resolved, Dean thought for a moment about the giraffe, strange and gentle, an impossible creature. Time to be the tiger.

Castiel woke startled by a touch. A hand on his arm, a rustle of his blankets. He pulled in a breath, smelling the pleasant grapefruit scent of his kitchen soap, the mild mintiness of Dean’s shampoo.

“Dean?” He asked, not expecting a response. Dean didn’t speak much.

Instead of waiting, Castiel reached over, his hand brushing past Dean, to turn on the lamp. Warm, low light pooled, and Dean’s eyes were dark, his expression a little startled.

“What’s going on, Dean?” He asked.

Dean paused an almost-pause before sliding a hand over the mattress toward Castiel.

“I wanted to come see you,” he said.

He’d been doing this a little bit, speaking in these plain sentences, sounding more confident than usual. Castiel was glad for the confidence, but it was strange. It was the middle of the night. Why would he want to see Castiel in the middle of the night? It was dark. Humans were famously bad at seeing things in the dark.

Maybe that was the problem.

“Do you want me to leave my light on?” He asked, uncertain. “So you can see me?”

Something passed very quickly over Dean’s face, and then hid nose was pointed down, his hand curled, just barely touching the edge of Castiel’s hip.

Dean swallowed.

“You can keep the light on,” Dean said. “Can I lay down with you?”

That was… Yes. Castiel had read about this. Humans were very… attached to their physical forms, and required contact with other humans. They could, of course, substitute by touching animals—many humans kept animals specifically to touch them—but they could become starved for contact if not carefully maintained.

Perhaps Dean was seeking contact. Nathaniel had said that even if Castiel didn’t understand them, Dean’s behaviors all had reasons that could be understood. It’s all fun and games until you identify the function of the behavior.

“Yes, Dean. You’re welcome to sit, stand, or lay anywhere you want to in this house, or outside, though I don’t recommend lying in the garden beds—they are… muddy this time of year.”

Excellent. Castiel congratulated himself for a clear and consistent answer.

Dean paused, then sidled up onto the bed, apparently unaware of his hand where it moved over Castiel’s hip. He carefully guided Dean’s hand back away from his… intimate… area, and scooted back so that Dean could rest his head on a pillow if he wanted to. Again, Dean paused.

Something was bothering him.

Castiel wondered if it was a nightmare, but Dean didn’t seem frightened. If anything, he seemed… some odd, vacillating, phased mixture of urgency and annoyance and vulnerability. His hand wandered again, toward Castiel’s body, and maybe Dean just needed… He was seeking touch, but Castiel had a strange, nagging unease that he just couldn’t shake. He’d never had a problem with anybody touching his vessel, but he didn’t want Dean to touch him.

Why didn’t he want Dean to touch him?

Again he moved Dean’s hand, and again there was that flash of something, a rigidity in him that was unfamiliar.

“Dean,” he said, voice strange in his throat, “How can I help you? What do you need?”

Dean’s mouth opened and closed. His eyes never ventured to Castiel’s face, which wasn’t totally unusual—Dean often avoided eye contact for long stretches, only to then gaze at him with eyes that made Castiel’s chest pull and twist.

He tilted his head, trying to see Dean’s face. “Dean… I want to help,” he said.

“You can…” Dean licked his lips, pulled in a deep breath, then looked Castiel right in the eye. His eyes were the green of drying mosses, of soft lichen. They were mournful, warm summer ponds, the memory of something precious and long gone. Castiel’s heart did something in response, it made a terrible lurch, and it was all Castiel could do not to gather Dean to his chest and hold him like he had when he’d gone missing.

Nathaniel had been clear that it was best to only touch if Dean indicated it was wanted. But wasn’t Dean indicating that he wanted to be touched? Wasn’t he signaling that he wanted Castiel to… engage somehow? Would it upset him if Castiel ignored his behaviors?

“You can touch me,” Dean said, his gaze unwavering, shadowed by his lashes. He licked his lips again, and Castiel tilted his head again, trying to see Dean’s face better. His hand moved for Castiel again, this time for his waist, and he didn’t want that either, but it wasn’t as upsetting, so he allowed it. “I want…” Dean swallowed again. “I want you to.”

A churning unease washed back and forth through Castiel, and Dean slid his hand toward the hem of Castiel’s shirt. His heart was going too fast. Dean was doing something, and it seemed like he wanted something but Castiel didn’t want it. Was it even reasonable for him to deny Dean? Dean had survived so much, he’d endured so much, and Castiel had been too late. He’d failed to pursue his Ward and terrible suffering had befallen him, and Castiel knew he didn’t understand it. He’d failed to protect Dean, so what right had he now to deny him?

But he didn’t want to be touched.

The petty preference drove him, though, and again he removed Dean’s hand from his body. And again, Dean stiffened. A muscle in his jaw jumped. He was upset.

Castiel glanced around the room. The dim light of the lamp cast a honey glow that sparkled on Dean’s hair and tangled in his eyelashes. Dean needed… something. He kept touching Castiel, so probably he needed touch, but he kept touching Castiel in ways that made him uneasy. Dean’s fingers went for the waistband of Castiel’s pants, and Castiel couldn’t stay calm.

“Dean, stop!”

The hand flinched back, and Dean’s body went rigid. His eyes were locked on Castiel’s chest. He was scarcely breathing.

“Please, I just… I meant…” Castiel wanted to cringe back from the naked fear—Dean was a broken bridge, unsteady underfoot, and yet he needed to cross. Safety was on the other side, and he tried to remember what made Dean calmest.

Instructions. Orders.

Dean was seldom calm unless he was being told what to do.

“Alright Dean,” he said, “I’ll touch you. Just lay down. Just like that, Dean, face down, show me your back.”

Chapter Text

“Just lay on your stomach, Dean.” The angel’s words cut through the growing chaos in Dean’s head, and he listened. He still had the whole daddy thing in his back pocket, but for now... for now he could just listen.

He could do this.

Castiel made room for him, and Dean felt so terrifyingly small. He was so acutely aware of just how badly Castiel could hurt him, but he’d played this out in his head—Dean was doing everything right, and Castiel didn’t seem mad, just a little confused. Confused was workable. Dean could help. He could make sure Castiel understood that he was okay with it. He was ready.

And he was, wasn’t he? It wasn’t just that he’d prepared his body, he… Castiel was pretty okay, and Dean… Castiel noticed that Dean liked pie and then he went out and brought home three different pies. He’d be gentle. He wouldn’t make it bad.

Scooting into place, Dean hooked his thumbs into the hem of his pajama pants and pulled them down to just below the swell of his ass. That was… If the angel wanted less pants, he could always tug them or ask Dean. This was… This was just a little tease. Just a taste.

His heart raced as the bed shifted a little, Castiel adjusting. Getting ready. Dean hoped he wouldn’t just shove right in—it would go so much better if he stretched Dean out ahead of time—but he was slick and as relaxed as he could be without focused prep. He let his body weight pin his arms under his chest. The sheets smelled like laundry and like the spicy soap Castiel used and like… something else. Something a a little heavier, a little darker. Something earthy like a forest, and he wondered if that was how Castiel smelled.

Weirdly enough, even though he was the angel’s… pet? Kid? Sex slave? (Frankly, Dean wasn’t sure, and he was sure Castiel wasn’t sure, but that was what tonight was for, wasn’t it? Get everybody on the same page.) Well, whatever exactly he was supposed to be, it would be easier for both of them if they just ripped off the band-aid and figured out what the fuck they were doing. To that end, Dean spread his knees a little and fisted his hands into his shirt just in case something surprised him. He didn’t want to lash out.

“Just stay there, Dean,” the angel’s gravelly monotone stopped Dean’s squirming dead in its tracks.

Yeah. Okay. Message received. Castiel wanted to lead.

There was a little more shifting, some dipping of the mattress. He heard pillows moving, and then the blanket… Castiel pulled the blanket up, covering Dean’s bare ass.

“I’m going to touch you now, Dean,” he announced—but fucking how? Dean didn’t want to complain about something that had been largely non-terrifying and totally painless so far, but how?

And then a warm, heavy hand came down softly between his shoulder blades and stroked down his back. It traveled down almost to the hem of Dean’s shirt, then reversed course, which was not what it was supposed to do, and Dean struggled to stay still. He had his orders, he’d been told to stay here, to be still, to…

“Try to relax, Dean,” Castiel said, and Dean squeezed his eyes shut and tried.

Goddamnit, he really, really did try. He knew he was fucking up, though, because instead of doing more, Castiel just kept rubbing his back, up and down, big and slow. Sometimes his hand would travel up to Dean’s neck, and he would comb fingers through Dean’s hair—never grabbing and pulling, never twisting fingers through it so he could control Dean’s head, pulling it around wherever he wanted—then down his back again. Sometimes he would press his fingers against places that made Deans shiver, muscles coiled into dug-in spasms, their constant, low-grade ache a childhood companion.

He couldn’t help but gasp when Castiel pressed into a knot that sent pins and needles tingling up Dean’t scalp and radiating down his arm. He sometimes did that on doorframes—leaned into those spots just for the fizzy pain and relief of them—it always made him dizzy, but it wasn’t a bad kind of dizzy at all.

Dean tentatively pushed the covers down a little, renewing the invitation, because he was sure now that it wouldn’t be bad. Castiel was trying to make him feel good—why would he do that now just to turn around and make Dean hurt?

“You can…” Dean forced himself to say, his voice half-lost in the pillow.

“Ok,” Castiel murmured, “Alright, Dean. I understand.”

Okay, but did he? Because Dean was starting to think Castiel had all the sexual awareness of Big Bird. Castiel seemed, more than anything, out of his depth, which… Okay, maybe it was a little wild for Dean to comment on—he’d been consistently out of his depth since… Since the school, probably. Maybe before that. Maybe he’d been out of his depth since Sammy left him and John to hunt on their own, or maybe he’d been out of his depth since before then. Or maybe since he’d first started assisting John on hunts. Maybe since their mom died and Dean suddenly had to become his own mom and Sam’s too.

So, yeah, maybe Dean was a little out of his depth, too.

And it was really easy to feel bad for himself when the angel asshole kept petting him and not asking him to do anything. He was tearing Dean like a kid, and it was doing something to Dean’s head that take needed to not be happening. He’d done kind of a lot if work to get ready, and fucking Cas was ruining it. Something like a balloon was filling and expanding in Dean’s chest, pushing his lungs, filling his throat, pressing the backs of his eyes. He had to fight against it for breath.

Castiel had started talking, and it was about as close to telling a story as the guy could probably manage; a dry, factual recounting of the island’s geological history. His voice was just a warm drone, just background. Just… damnit!

The tight coil resisted Dean’s every attempt to breathe normally, and he sucked in a noisy breath.

“Oh, Dean,” Castiel’s voice rumbled and his hand smoothed up and deviated from its pattern, squeezing Dean’s arm, “I’m sorry.”

What was he sorry for? What the hell was he sorry for? How the hell did that make any sense at all?

Castiel’s fingers went to comb through Dean’s hair, and Dean couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He slapped away the offending fingers and then froze.

Jesus Christ.

Oh God.

Oh, he’d just—why did he do that? Everything was going fine, everything was… why did he do that?

He waited for the retaliation. Alistair had never struck him in anger, but the bracing had become reflex long before Dean ever left the Garden. He hoped Castiel would be more like his dad. At least with him, it started swiftly and ended fast.

His mouth shaped an apology, but his voice wasn’t cooperating. He couldn’t even look sorry, face down on the bed. If he could… Castiel was treating him like a kid, maybe Dean could take advantage. Maybe he could salvage this, act like it tickled, like he didn’t mean it. He could whip out the big guns, call him daddy, maybe cry—Cas was a sucker for tears.

He was just trying to figure out how to get himself into position to make big sad eyes and swallow his pride enough to say what he needed to say when Castiel’s hand returned. It wasn’t rough, and it didn’t go for his face or for his hair again. It just settled back in his shoulder, warm and heavy. “Alright,” he said, and he didn’t sound mad. He didn’t. He sounded… careful? Like he was thinking. “I won’t touch you there, Dean.”

Dean couldn’t even breathe. Every muscle was locked in place, every cell in his body straining to listen.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he continued after a moment, just as bland and monotone as if he were describing how the island formed. He hadn’t fucking startled Dean, he’d— “Dean, can you tell me if you don’t want to be touched somewhere?”

Dean had to be breathing, but he didn’t feel like he was. He felt like… he felt like he was about to fall off a ledge. He wanted to say, ‘it’s fine, you can keep going. You can touch me anywhere, any way you want. You can grab my hair—they let it grow just for that—you can fuck me with your cock or toys or your hand, I’ll let you, just do it slow. Just be gentle.’ He’d have said it, too, but he could only make himself shake his head. He couldn’t make himself speak.

“I’m sorry, Dean. That must be… unpleasant.” The angel didn’t sound like he knew what he was talking about, but Dean was beyond caring. “If you want me to stop, it would please me if you let me know, by tapping on the bed perhaps.”

Dean didn’t really have anything to say at that, and he wasn’t sure any part of his body would listen if he needed the angel to quit. Want was also a slippery concept, because what the hell did Dean even want? He wanted to do this, because he wanted to rip off the band-aid. He wanted to make Castiel happy because he wanted to stay here. He wanted to crawl under his bed with the long shark and the corduroy frog and the hamburger, and he wanted to brush his teeth because his mouth tasted like milk and that was weird.

Castiel sighed, and his hand dragged down Dean’s back, long and slow and warm. The emotion caught in his throat was so big that Dean couldn’t even tell what it was anymore; all he knew was that it was too big. Too much. All he knew was that each pass of Castiel’s hand was loosening it, and it hurt inside him. It ached.

And then, Castiel started talking again, but this time it wasn’t about rocks. This time, he said, “I think this is hard for you, but I’m honored that you came to me. It’s normal for humans to require… affection… touch. Dean, I’m sorry I haven’t been offering more.”

Dean teetered on the precipice, Castiel’s hand on his back both safety and threat. He’d been so careful, but everything was going to shit. Everything was falling apart. He didn’t want to be sent back, he wanted to stay here. He wanted Castiel to want him, but he wasn’t letting Dean do the one fucking thing he was good for, and instead he just kept rubbing up and down Dean’s back.

He thought about how Cas had tried to pet his hair, and Dean wished he would. Castiel probably would have made it feel good, and the unfairness slammed Dean like a truck. The loosening emotion in him budged, bulged, burst like a balloon, and suddenly he was crying. It would have been nice if he could lose his shit quietly, but apparently, he sucked at every aspect of being the angel’s pet today, because he had to muffle his ugly gasps in the pillow hard enough that he couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t about to make more of a scene than he absolutely had to, but holy cow was his stupid body fighting him on that.

And Castiel just kept going. He just kept rubbing Dean’s back, occasionally making a flat, understanding noise.

Dean curled up on himself a little, his fingers curled over his head, and then into his hair, and he hated how long it was. He hated how it existed to be grabbed, to hurt him with. Buc he wrapped his fingers in it and pulled and pulled, trying to feel something other than the storm battering his insides (and God, he thought he’d genuinely prefer Alistair’s fucking machine battering his insides to this), and all the while that hand never stopped. It was heavy and warm, and it pinned him down to the bed, and it was probably the only thing that was stopping him from being ripped apart by the huge, silent sobs wracking his body.

“It’s alright, Dean,” Castiel said again, like that could possibly be true.

It took a long time for Dean to stop shaking. Slowly, incrementally, his fingers released his hair, and the tension went from his body. He slumped, and Castiel just kept touching him because humans needed to be touched. It was simply how they were Created. It took a long time for Dean’s breaths to become even and smooth and deep.

“Dean,” he said, once he was sure Dean was sleeping. “I don’t know what to do.”

He watched the blank wall opposite his bed. Some angels gravitated toward art or music or other expressions of God’s Divine Perfection, but Castiel had never been Called to those things. He’d never been Called to anything until he saw that picture of Dean, but Dean... Dean had Called to him. And Castiel sat in his bed, Dean’s small body finally at peace for a moment, finally at rest, and he felt the terrible weight of truth: He’d been too late.

Dean had needed him, and he’d been too late, and the feeling was a wound through the very center of Castiel’s being, a wound in the shape of Purpose. He wasn’t like Dean; he hadn’t been Created to bumble about the Garden like a bee, sun-warmed among the lilies of the field. Castiel had been made for a Purpose, and the echo of his failure was a tangible itch in every bone in his vessel.

“My heart...” He rubbed absently at his sternum, but it didn’t help. It didn’t do anything. “It hurts.”

Chapter Text

Dean slept a long time. It was probably for the best.

The night had been exhausting, but Dean had slept. After an eternity of shaking distress that made Castiel want to crawl out of his vessel and wrap Dean in his essence, Dean finally went still and quiet and drifted off, and something about sitting beside him, about soothing what could be soothed, felt deeply right to Castiel. It had felt like a great, monumental breakthrough. He’d told Nathaniel as much when he finally carried Dean to his own bed and tucked him in snugly beside the stuffed shark (recovered from the floor beneath Dean’s bed).

For the first time in a while, Castiel felt light. He felt his Purpose, and he moved with a vigor in his step. He cooked breakfast (just for Dean—the long night left him feeling energized but not hungry), and then prepared a special lunch, but Dean was nowhere to be seen. His absence was just becoming worrisome when Dean appeared in the hall, peering into the kitchen with wary eyes.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel greeted appropriately. Theophania had suggested that, because names held power, returning Dean’s name often might be beneficial. “There is… food for you. Perhaps you would like to eat?”

Dean didn’t move or say anything, but sometimes he was just like that. Sometimes, he just preferred to observe. Nathaniel had said he should let Dean, that he shouldn’t pressure Dean into responding, even if a response would be immensely helpful. Still, Castiel preferred the weird, still silence to all the touching Dean had attempted to engage in last night. He would not be upset if Dean decided not to do that again.

“I’ve procured some specialty foods, famous for protecting the health of humans,” he offered, and again, Dean just stared into the kitchen.

The lunch was unusual. Soup that came from a steel cylinder imported from the Garden, some bread that Castiel had been keeping in the freezer for a special occasion—it had interesting seeds in it—and cut apples because humans apparently believed that apples warded off disease (or perhaps healthcare professionals, he wasn’t quite sure how literal the human aphorism about apples was meant to be), and he imagined that Dean might appreciate the gesture. He had gone very quiet and had seemed upset when Castiel offered to let him see a doctor when, for a third meal in a row, Dean explained that he wasn’t hungry. After that, Dean was appropriately hungry at mealtimes, and Castiel didn’t mention doctors anymore.

The apples were a thoughtful gesture, and they were particularly good this week. As a bonus gesture, he also reheated the breakfast foods under Dean’s watchful eye.

The human hadn’t moved from his shadowed place by the hall, and Castiel’s body buzzed with unease.

“There are two pancakes,” he said to the room, because Dean wasn’t saying much. “And there are two of us. That’s rather convenient. We can each have one pancake. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for Divine symmetry, but there’s one piece of bacon left. Not so symmetrical after all. Would it be better to split this piece of bacon? There was a foolish human king once who offered to split a child—thank goodness that there was a clever woman to end the conflict by offering to give up the child entirely—but it seems inappropriate to compare a piece of bacon to a human child.”

In the absence of extreme distress, Castiel couldn’t sense Dean’s state beyond cataloging his posture, facial expressions, and behaviors. Currently, Dean was a foot closer to the kitchen table than he’d been ten minutes ago, and he was staring at Castiel like one of those puzzle cubes that could be given to humans to dispense treats and prevent boredom. He didn’t have a treat-dispensing puzzle cube. That was... perhaps an oversight. Dean might want one. He would have to get one.

Still, though, it was clear that there was something stimulating in the environment, because Dean’s mind appeared to be engaged.

Dean was still trying to take stock of his body. He’d woken in his own bed, unsure of when or how he’d gotten there, but with no signs that Castiel had done anything with him in his sleep. He was groggy and thirsty and stiff—too much sleep riding the heels of too much worry—and the food didn’t seem nearly as appetizing as putting his mouth under the faucet and just letting it run.

And here was Castiel the fucking angel wandering around in a bathrobe and pajamas, prattling about divine whatever and pancakes and Bible bacon babies, and he was kind of an idiot. Not like Brett, who had probably just been Lisa’s trophy husband, ‘cause he was dumb as a brick and never tried very hard. Castiel didn’t seem stupid, just… Just profoundly weird. Just kind of like a space alien, and for a brief moment, Dean kind of liked him.

“The soup is made from a bird, and, as you can see there are… inventive… shapes. I believe they mimic the shapes of phonetic symbols, but don’t try to search too much for meaning in the soup,” he continued, bizarrely. “The phonetic symbols don’t actually form words—I checked.”

“You checked?” Dean was torn between desires to laugh at Castiel’s obvious unfamiliarity with alphabet soup, and to make him shut up before he embarrassed himself.

“Yes, Dean. As your Guardian, it’s my responsibility to ensure the food I provide is safe and appropriate for a human. This, of course, extends to ensuring the metaphysical safety of foods as well. I compiled a list of anagrams for the specific symbols in the soup in case you don’t believe me,” he explained, serious as a heart attack, oblivious to the absurdity. “Really the more significant worry was the bird. They are… unusual creatures. The bird was a cock, which are prized for their large breasts and ability to tell time. All cocks live within the Garden- I had to gain access in order to obtain this cock soup with scrambled words.”

“Alphabet soup,” Dean corrected, because actually, how could this dude be so weird? He must have spent ages doing these weird, tedious, useless tasks, and for what? For Dean? “And it’s called chicken—the bird—it's called a chicken.”

“I believe it is a cock. It is the creature that crowed three times—”

“Yeah, Cas,” Dean cut him off, “It’s called a chicken.”

Castiel tilted his head, a deep furrow cutting between his dark eyebrows.

Dean froze. He wanted to shrink back into the darkness, to flee back up the stairs. Castiel was staring at him, and he’d called him… There were so many appropriate things to call him: Sir, Master, Mister, Daddy… Hell, Dean could have just said nothing! What the hell was he doing opening his big mouth when all it had ever done was get him in trouble?

He had no idea what the angel was about to do. Last night had been a clusterfuck, Dean’d meant to get the whole … thing done and out of the way, and then Castiel had gone and been weird as hell, and Dean’d… Goddamn undignified, treating him like that. Acting like he was just some pathetic, sad little…

Dean bit the inside of his cheek.

This was okay. Sometimes, things went a little haywire. Sometimes he did his best but the monsters were too clever, or there was an issue with the car, or John was sick, or… or he didn’t know the rule yet, or the dude was just straight sadistic sometimes. It didn’t mean things were going to suck forever.

Sometimes he could regroup a little, roll with the punches, and come out the other side alright. He could to that. Castiel went out of his way to get alphabet soup, and he’d researched Chickens, apparently. He was… He was goddamn nurturing was what he was, and he’d rubbed Dean’s back last night while he cried like a little fucking girl, so… Dean bit his lower lip with calculated slowness, tilting his chin down. Alistair had made sure he knew how to do this. He’d shown Dean video of himself, shown Dean how to soften his posture, how to make himself irresistible. How to make himself lovable.

Who could be angry at you, pet? When you’re this sweet… What do we say when we make a mistake?

“Sorry, daddy,” he said, and the scowl changed. Something new painted Castiel’s face, but Dean didn’t stick around to see what. His heart raced and his legs burned as he raced up the stairs, catching himself on his hands, half crawling until he hit the landing.

He raced into his room and closed the door and stared at the lock. He wanted to lock it. He wanted to turn the little lock in the door handle, but that wasn’t real. It wouldn’t really keep him safe. Castiel probably had a key. A door could only buy seconds, and he stared frantically around the room, searching for anything that could keep him safe. Safer.

He glanced at the bed, at the inviting gloom underneath it. He wanted that, too, but there’d been that time… There’d been that… He hadn’t even meant to hide that time, he’d just been… It was just that he’d been in the middle of one of those shitty bouts when he kept dreaming of his mom and the fire and he’d see it whenever he closed his eyes, and the panic dogged him. He’d just… He wasn’t even hiding! It was just that he kept smelling that specific smell of the smoke from polyester curtains and seeing his mom, and he just needed to get away from it.

“Damnit!” Dean shouted, swiping the little mantle clock off the dresser. It bounced harmlessly off the rug, and he stared at it, shaking. Something was wrong with him. Something was really fucking wrong.

It took a lot of self control not to follow Dean up the stairs. There were instincts in Castiel that pulled at his soul, that seemed to hook into the most essential parts of him to bring him nearer to Dean, and they warred against Nathaniel’s advice to allow Dean to retreat. If he sought space, Castiel needed to give him space.

Water ran upstairs, and Castiel stared at the soup. Alphabet soup. Alphabet soup with chicken. The pancakes were cold, and the bacon was too. He absently ate one pancake then set aside the other and the bacon for Dean. He hoped he could be the wise woman and not the foolish king who thought to split a child.

Dean had called him ‘Cas,’ and that wasn’t his name. Castiel had thought for a moment that he liked it.

And then Dean had called him ‘Daddy.’ Castiel hadn’t liked that at all.

The bath kept running. How long had it been running? Was it too long? Should he check? Or was that just his desire to observe Dean’s every move, to disregard his need for space and hover?

Not-words hovered in the soup. C-A-U-H-S-L-S-I… He stared at them, but there was no meaning in the soup. There was no hidden message to be deciphered. The symbols held no power and they offered no words. They were… Looking at the meaningless letters was like expanding past his vessel only to feel the vast, aching absence where God had once been, where His light had once warmed and His love had once held. It must be nice for humans to be so tied to their bodies that they never felt the vast, unending nothing.

But now Castiel had two emptinesses. There was the absence where God had once been, and the emptiness where Dean ought to be. Because he could feel it now, after a night watching over Dean, as he had always been meant to, Castiel could feel the Dean-shape of his Purpose. He could feel the specific pain of failing.

“What do I do?” He asked a God who wasn’t there to hear.

Upstairs, water ran.

Chapter Text

From his vantage point, kneeling on the rug beside his bed, Dean stared at the Camaro poster. It was a classic, long body and curved nose, chrome gleaming. Might have been the same year as the Impala. He tried not to imagine the way the Impala’s headlights would swallow up darkness, casting a cone of brightness over a midnight road, the comfort of stretching out in the back seat to catch a few z’s between one thing and the next. John guarded that car jealously, but he let Dean drive her. Nobody got to touch that car, but Dean still remembered the first time he’d driven, John smelling like a still and sawing logs. The growl of the engine was the sweetest lullaby, and once he’d started letting Dean get them from point A to point B, he’d never stopped.

Dean had loved it.

And the Camaro wasn’t an Impala. It wasn’t the same, but it had that same nostalgic something about it. He stared at the poster until he realized that he was going to focus on it, and if he did, then he was going to ruin it.

Castiel’s footsteps were soft on the stairs, and Dean felt his pulse quicken. His ears started to ring and he looked at the kitten poster, its recommendation that he “hang in there,” and he wanted to scream.

No.

That was stupid.

He forced another deep breath into his lungs and tried to exhale out every desire and wish and just be an empty vessel. Alistair had been an ass, but he taught Dean lots of good visualizations and breathing exercises and shit, and Dean wasn’t about to be too precious about where his tools came from. He traced the sensitive skin between his fingers with his nail and tried to breath in for as long as it took to trace his whole hand. He’d always liked this one the best. It wasn’t good if somebody was watching him, but it was great on his own. In-trace the hand, out-trace the hand, rinse and repeat.

He’d had his little freakout, he’d sat in icy cold bathwater to force his brain to think about something that wasn’t how monumentally he’d fucked up, and now he’d just kneel here until Castiel came looking for him. Alistair had prepared him for this, too. He could kneel a long time—almost half an hour before he started to hurt, and sometimes up to forty-five minutes before he physically couldn’t hold position anymore. He wasn’t even hurting yet, but he still kind of hoped Castiel would look in now rather than waiting.

The footsteps paused outside his door, and it was actually kinda amazing how quickly ‘I hope the angel comes in right now’ could turn into ‘actually, I think I’d rather eat all the paint off the walls instead,’ when faced with the possibility of seeing Castiel. Even with the breathing thing, he still shivered, and he didn’t hurt enough yet for that to take up all his concentration. Maybe it’d be better if he was hurting. Hard to worry about pride with knees that screamed so loud he couldn’t hear himself think.

It was going to be okay. He tried to imagine the way it had felt when Lisa held him, the closest thing to a mother he’d felt in a long, long time. The way she had let him sling an arm around her waist, the way she would pet his head back before his hair looked stupid like Sammy’s. That, of all things, helped. Because Lisa had always been kind. Even though she sucked, she had been kind, and Brett had been an idiot, but he’d been pretty nice except for the stupid training. And maybe... Maybe Castiel would be okay too. He seemed like he wanted to be... He didn’t seem like he wanted to hurt Dean. Not really.

He was right there. Right outside the door, and he wasn’t shoving in and grabbing Dean and pushing him into the bed. Dean could see the shadow of his feet by the door, and it wasn’t moving, so he wasn’t going through a closet or a drawer looking for the whip or strap or cane that would help. (Alistair never bothered with floggers, because Dean didn’t mind them. They were all bark and no bite in his book, even the stingy ones were mostly noise.) Castiel had already made up his mind, and this was... Dean traced his hand and breathed out and imagined Lisa’s tits pressed against his face. This was good. He’d see what a punishment looked like, and then he’d have a better sense of how bad the bad was. The good here was pretty damn good, so either the bad was gonna be some of the worst shit ever, or the window was shifted pretty far like with Lisa and Brett, and... Either way, Dean’d rather just know.

Yeah.

The door handle turned, and Dean’s posture was perfect. He was calm, cool, and collected. He was ready. Yes, he was in trouble, but it was useful trouble and after today he’d know. And if today was the worst day of his life? Then by tomorrow it’d be yesterday. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dean was okay.

And then Castiel, the fucker, opened the door, spotted Dean on the floor, and said, “Dean, I’m not upset. You are free to call me by my name, or whatever name you choose, or the title of your choosing. You are... upset, so I am going to comfort you now.”

He stood, watching Dean where he knelt, as Dean reeled. What the hell? Comfort?

Castiel grimaced at him, frowned, and then gave a tired little smile and a thumbs up.

“This is a gesture of affirmation,” he explained. Because he was a goddamn space alien. “Is it... Do you feel comforted?”

Dean clenched his fists against the tops of his thighs and tried to keep perfect posture. His legs didn’t hurt nearly enough for him to ignore how weird this was. How was a thumbs up supposed to be comforting? Dean watched the thumb, the short nail, the dusting of dark hair on the back of the hand. He wanted to check Cas’s—Castiel’s—face, but he didn’t really want to look up.

Intel. This was all intel. And he’d be able to use it once he’d gathered it and sorted it. Because maybe... Maybe... It didn’t matter. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, he traced the words with his tongue and used the sets of five to force his breath slow.

“Please, Dean,” Castiel said, and that sounded... not exactly like an order, but close enough. “I need you to tell me, does this help?”

He’d been standing there, holding out that stupid thumbs up for a minute. His arm probably hurt. Dean shook his head minutely.

“No, sir.” He breathed. It felt good to drop the other stuff. He preferred ‘sir’ to other addresses, and this was a punishment, so the whole daddy thing was probably tabled until things were good again.

“I didn’t think so,” he said, and his hand slowly lowered to his side. And then he slowly lowered, too, until he was sitting across from Dean. He arranged his legs in a criss-cross and rested his hands palm up, open. Like he was showing Dean that they were empty. “The... The training guides say to just... do as you’d like to. They say that trained humans are excellent at adapting to their masters’ routines and expectations.”

Yeah. That’d be great, actually. If Castiel would just friggin’ ignore Dean until Dean could figure out what was going on in his Crazy Town, U.S.A. brain, that would be absolutely freaking ideal, thanks.

“But Nathaniel, you wouldn’t know him—he’s a doctoral student working on a thesis on human cognition and post-theistic morality—says it’s important to give agency and choice, and that you have to ask and know humans are aware that they can deny you, and...” Castiel sounded... Usually, he sounded like a robot, but there was something urgent and earnest in his voice now. Something almost wounded. “And he also says that it’s true, humans regulate their emotional states through social gestures, including touch, but... Dean, I’m not going to ask you this. I’m just going to... I’m just going to put my arms around you, and if you try to pull away, I’ll let you go, but I don’t think asking you anything would mean very much now, and I can...” The air shimmered and something thrummed. Like his ears were smelling something dark, or like his eyes were hearing something low and huge. “I can tell that you’re... Nathaniel could explain it better than me—he studies this. I’m just... You are my Ward.”

Dean swore he could hear some extra stank on the word ‘ward,’ but it was hard to say what exactly that was about. Before he could worry, though, Castiel was scooting his ass over next to Dean, and tugging the blanket off his bed again, settling it over Dean’s shoulders. The shark, previously buried under the blanket, was suddenly revealed, and Dean had a horrible vision of Castiel tearing it in half, its innards pulling like taffy and falling to the floor, soft and white as snow.

And then, nothing happened. Castiel wrapped his arms around Dean, but didn’t touch Dean directly. He just kind of hugged the plaid Dean burrito that he’d made, and he tugged Dean until he wasn’t kneeling anymore, until their legs jumbled a bit on the plush rug with its pictures of flowers and beetles. And he didn’t say much. He just sat there with his arms around Dean until Dean’s body gave up its tension and his hands unfisted and his shoulders migrated away from his ears. He breathed slow and steady, and after a long while he said, “Is this better?”

Dean wanted to answer, but he was tired—how could he be so tired when he’d just slept? It seemed weird that he’d be so tired. He nodded his head, hoping Cas would feel it because he didn’t want to talk.

“I wonder if you would have been happier with somebody more... prepared,” Castiel said, “But I just... I was Created by my father to be a soldier in a holy war, and then, one day, he left. And some of my brothers and sisters decided to become like His favored children, you strange, hairless apes with your long hair and hinge joints all over the place and teeth—I’m shocked you were the favorites, honestly, because there is a species of octopus that your kind... I don’t think you’re aware of each other, actually, and it’s probably for the best because I don’t think you’d get along well at all, and we all thought those were going to be our Father’s favotire, but... He works in mysterious ways—But living like your kind brings some of us solace. The octopus partisans, of course, have adopted octopus vessels, but they’re an... odd bunch.”

Dean snorted at that. Castiel “come eat this cock soup with scrambled words” the Angel calling somebody else odd was... That was one for the history books.

“I digress,” the angel continued, “I bring up my Father only because... It’s been a very long time since I’ve felt the call of His will, but when I saw you, I felt it again. I’ve felt... attracted... drawn to you since I first saw a photograph on the Helping Hands Human Shelter website. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and perhaps you will decide you don’t want to be around me, but... Dean, your consciousness is too tiny, likely, to comprehend this, but, I finally feel like I have Purpose again.”

Ok, that was... kinda rude. Dean would have held a bit of a grudge, except he was now one hundred percent sure that Castiel didn’t have any sense at all of how he came across. The dude was... bizarre. He’d said he was ‘attracted’ to Dean, but that seemed more like a cock soup moment, and not like he was trying to communicate sexual desire or whatever.

Desperately curious, Dean warred with the urge to ask questions, his mind sorting through what little he knew about angels. There were plenty of weird creatures, monsters, wendigos, skinwalkers, people who didn’t signal their lane changes… But there was precious little he remembered about angels. Bobby probably had books and an old urge reared its head to just be in Bobby’s office, the familiar clutter of his home, the smell of antifreeze sweet near the door to the garage, the floor scuffed and stained. He bit his cheek, holding it to stop himself from asking something as the pressure of Castiel’s hands shifted.

“There is evidence that skin contact has positive outcomes for human emotional regulation.” The words were like kibble: dry, boring, and dense. Castiel sighed, “But I think we’ll wait on that. I’m going move with you, Dean. We’re going to sit on your bed because the floor is… uncomfortable.”

The bed.

Dean stiffened again. He didn’t even want to, it was… it was just instinct. He didn’t think Cas was going to do anything, but that couldn’t convince his dumbass brain that it was fine. Castiel was… odd. Friggin’ octopus person—not just because he seemed to want nothing more than to wrap himself around Dean and just hold him, but because he was probably weird enough to have picked becoming an octopus when God went… missing? Dean was unclear whether this was a missing persons situation, or more of a ‘went to pick up milk and cigarettes fifteen years ago, but he’ll be back any day now’ situation.

Chapter Text

Things really had improved in the past several weeks. Everybody agreed, and Castiel was beginning to think that maybe he was good at being a guardian. Dean seemed... not relaxed, exactly, but his wariness was different. He moved even when Castiel was looking at him, he ate food without prompting, he’d come and go about the house without hesitation.

Dean spent long hours each day in the living room with its big bay window that overlooked the largely unkempt garden. Though it had been the fashion to emulate human lives, and Castiel had done for a long time because it was the final reminder of his lost Father, the garden had somehow never become a priority. Some angels had humans complete tasks like that, and Castiel supposed that it would be fine, except that humans were not like angels. Humans were not Created to be slave to God’s will, but to act independently of it, and it just seemed like they wouldn’t be able to do jobs when they were Created like that.

Nonetheless, it seemed like Dean might enjoy being outside.

Castiel had chosen a home from Milwaukee and moved it here (something he was sure the people of Milwaukee found strange when they woke to find a great sinkhole and no house where it once was), to the vast solitude of this wooded island. He was not the only resident. There were several hundred angels who lived here as any number of God’s creatures, without Purpose and seeking only to be part of the great tapestry of Creation they had been created to love. Separated from the wider world by a great expanse of water and the inconvenient time it would take to get here, life was slow and peaceful. Dean spent his days holding the wooden circus animals Castiel had chosen for him, and he’d taken to carrying around the tiger and giraffe, setting them up near each other.

“You’re very brave,” Castiel said one day, as Dean sat, looking at the tiger and giraffe in his hands. “It is an... admirable quality.”

Dean just looked at him with unreadable eyes, then nodded once and returned to looking at his toys.

Work was easy enough. It wasn’t necessary, but Castiel, like many angels, did work simply because it reminded him what it was like to have Purpose. He found and corrected errors in the computer programs that decided whose needs would be provided by insurance and whose would not (the programs were riddled with errors, almost as though humans intended to simply let their own die rather than help them), and on occasion, Castiel would avail himself of things he wanted from the Garden as fair exchange for his labor.

Several hundred years of caring for God’s Creations and lifting the occasional small payment had been enough, but now Castiel wanted something new. He wanted... a connection with Dean. He wanted to see Dean happy and at peace, and it just seemed like he was flat and nothing when he spent all afternoon gazing out the window at the field and forest. He did bring Dean outside, but the human seemed tense in the larger world. Wary eyes darted around, then went still, and his hand went limp in Castiel’s, where usually he held on with a gentle strength. Too much.

But Dean was brave. He faced his fear, staring down the outdoors each day with a determination that Castiel was beginning to think was uniquely Dean.

“You were not always this size,” Castiel observed one day as he sat receiving information about the angel world through the TV, while Dean sat cross-legged on the floor watching the giraffe and tiger. “Do you like it? Do you prefer to be small?”

It was a reasonable question. Small humans were easier to comfort and hold, but Dean didn’t seek comfort and he didn’t ask to be held. There were times when Castiel still did—he’d drape Dean in a blanket and hold him, and Dean sometimes chose to come sleep in Castiel’s bed—but Dean seemingly had no desire to be picked up and carried. (He did have an apparent desire to sit on Castiel’s lap, but it made Castiel uneasy, so he selfishly avoided allowing the human to indulge that impulse.)

Dean shrugged. He was doing that more, giving these noncommittal answers rather than a frantic freeze followed by ‘sir’ or ‘mister.’ It was... less helpful.

“Your tiger,” Castiel said, “It’s broken.”

Dean nodded and turned the toy in his palm. “Sorry,” he said, but that wasn’t what Castiel meant at all. He hadn’t meant to make Dean apologize.

“Do you want a new one?” Castiel asked, “One that isn’t broken?”

Dean thumbed over the broken-off tail and swallowed. Tension in every line of his body, hunched over his tiger. “No, thank you, sir.”

“It’s just a symbol,” Castiel mused, and as he said the words, he felt the truth of them. The tiger was a symbol of something, but what?

“It’s important to you, isn’t it,” Castiel said, “The tiger? It’s meaningful.”

Dean gazed at the tiger and nodded, and leaned against Castiel’s leg. The touch did something to Castiel’s programming; it sparkled over his mind and soul. It... He couldn’t help how it made his whole being lean in, and this was almost certainly why so many people wanted to have humans. In moments of calm, it was easiest to feel the strange high of Dean’s touch, and Castiel relaxed into the couch.

“Thank you,” Dean said again, and Castiel felt a great urge to pet Dean’s head where it leaned against his thigh.

Dean did this more now, too. He leaned. He sought contact to increasing degrees. His hand came to rest on Castiel’s shin and paused there. He was waiting to see if Castiel would move it. He usually did, but lately he’d been lulled by the touches, by how good they felt, how natural and right.

“I’ll be away tomorrow,” Castiel offered some time later. “I need to go off the island. Do you want to come with me?

He was ready for Dean to be upset by the question. Dean was often upset by questions.

Instead, Dean shook his head and looked at the tailless tiger.

“Is there anything you’d like from the mainland?” Castiel asked, “Or perhaps the Garden? I may be able to arrange something, if not tomorrow, then the next time I go.”

Dean slid his hand up a little and stopped, palm on Castiel’s knee. He needed to stop doing that. Castiel didn’t mean for it to happen, but if Dean touched him like that, certain places in particular, his vessel became hard to manage. He didn’t know much of the specifics, but he was certain Dean had been trained to engage in sexual behaviors, and Castiel didn’t want that. He wasn’t naive—he just... didn’t use his vessel like that. That wasn’t what it was for.

He didn’t want it to frighten Dean or... he didn’t want Dean to excite his vessel. Perhaps it wasn’t the altruistic thing Castiel hoped it was. Perhaps he just didn’t like being touched in that way, and he was unwilling to give Dean what he wanted. He both didn’t want to leave Dean in this strange, needy state, and didn’t want to be around it because of how it unnerved him.

When night came, Dean again came to Castiel’s bed, nestling himself under the covers. There was something feline and fierce about him, like he was on a mission. Like he had God’s orders and he meant to carry them out. Casteil envied him his surety, his mission.

He rested. His eyes went unfocused, and his consciousness shrank within the vessel, down to a pinprick of light. A focus. The concentrated Will of God, meditating on its place in the barren universe. Shielded from the outside by the vessel, and shielded from the vessel by a thick layer of focus, Castiel’s mind rested until he felt something like an itch.

Something strange.

Castiel focused harder. When focusing properly, when truly concentrating themselves into the smallest possible space (and endeavoring not to overlap with others), sixteen angels ought to be able to dance on the head of a pin. It wasn’t exactly something often done, but it was good practice, and Castiel tried to stay in practice, focusing himself into the smallest possible point.

But something was intruding.

In retrospect, it was obvious that it was some intrusion into the space of the vessel, but Castiel was an angel—he was not truly one with his vessel. He occupied it like a hermit crab occupies a shell, capable of filling it and wearing it, certainly, but ultimately not part of it. (Hermit crabs had, regrettably, never been in the running for God’s favored children, much to the chagrin of those who loved the Divine Symmetry of wearing vessels who wore additional vessels, though perhaps God saw no need to gild the lily so.) Castiel was aware that there were physical boundaries to be respected with vessels, but to an angel, all touch was more or less the same unless it did damage, and even fairly severe damage was easily mended with a little Grace.

And so the itch intensified. The sense that something wasn’t as it should be. The sense of being somehow invaded.

He shuddered to external awareness when Dean’s hand slid, tightly squeezing, from the base to the tip of his erect penis. He wanted to... Castiel didn’t know what he wanted to do, and so he breathed hard, staring at the ceiling, as Dean’s fingers gripped him and Dean whispered... something. Dean was whispering something, and perhaps he was angry. Perhaps this was a cry for help or a signal of distress, but Nathaniel hadn’t talked about this—He’d said Dean choosing to touch him was a good thing, it meant Dean wasn’t afraid, and that Castiel should allow him to do things that he felt safe with. He’d said that Dean had been hurt and terrified and that it might be hard to understand the ways he chose to digest that, because humans couldn’t simply understand external events, they had to digest them, and pain and terror were hard for humans to digest—And this was hard to understand, so did that mean that Castiel should just... He should just let Dean, right? He should.

“You’ve been really good to me,” Dean said, his voice like crushed velvet. Like short fur. Soft, but only in one direction. “Let me make you feel good too.”

Castiel’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Did this feel good? The vessel was flooded with hormones and neurotransmitters that all said it did, but that was... That was just biological. Just the machinery of the vessel functioning the way God intended. It didn’t mean anything.

But it was doing something to his soul. Something like the sparkle of a sunrise off water, like the blink blink blink of fireflies out in the meadow. Castiel was responding to it, and that was the part that terrified him. It left him unable to move away, unable to speak. Unable to tell Dean that he didn’t want this, because this had to be some part of God’s Design, and Castiel’s heart broke on the knowledge that his Father had intended this for him, just as he wanted to crawl out of the vessel.

And he...

Outside the vessel was the vast, empty nothingness where God wasn’t. It was a horrifying place. It was a soul-destroying place.

But it wasn’t here.

Dean was doing something between his own legs, not with his penis, though, and Castiel tried to say something. Anything. But what could he even say? And then Dean straddled him, and Castiel felt his penis touching something, sliding wetly behind Dean’s scrotum, pressing at the tight furl of his anus, and Castiel made a decision.

He fled.

And the moment he expanded out of and past the arbitrary boundaries of his vessel, he felt his Self brush against Dean. He felt the great, desperate desolation in Dean as well, and Castiel had no body with which to weep for them both.

Chapter Text

In the end, it had been pretty easy for Dean to give Castiel what he wanted. He’d been making slow advances for a while—nearly a week, actually—and gauging how Castiel handled them. There was a certain rush of power in being able to just touch an angel. It was pretty awesome, actually. He could go up and lean on Cas’s leg or even grab him a little, and nothing would happen. No answering touch, nothing weird, just whatever Dean took. Whatever Dean opted in for.

Even talking got easier, because now that Dean could act sweet, he knew he could get away with talking more. Before, he had to act perfect because he wasn’t doing the one thing he was actually for, but now? He could make deposits in that goodwill bank account, and he figured that initiating and then getting Cas off would be a pretty significant deposit. Plus, Dean was sure he’d done a good job (with a dead lay), ‘cause after a couple moments of supremely awkward silence and not looking at Dean (which was fine, the guy could imagine whatever he wanted, no skin off Dean’s back), his eyes went half-lidded and hazy and he started to sound like he was having a good time even though he still made Dean do like eighty percent of the work.

Honestly, even though Cas was clearly imagining something else, it was still one of the better fucks Dean’d had in a long time, and he pulled out all the stops. Even made himself come right there on Cas’s cock, murmured a long stream of thanks and praise when he did, made sure Cas came inside him and thanked him for that too. Whatever. That bit… It wasn’t like it hurt, and it was less messy than if he came on the bed, and it was Dean’s responsibility to clean up anyway.

By the time he got back with a wash cloth, Castiel was dead asleep, and Dean chuckled a little. He didn’t really want to clean Cas with his mouth, so he didn’t. He felt… powerful. He wanted to go back to his room to sleep with the shark and the frog, to watch the tiger on the night stand, but he didn’t want to lose out on any potential brownie points, especially easy ones. Making sure Castiel woke up next to him was easy. It was hard to remember why he’d ever been scared of the guy, now that he knew how to work him.

He was awake when Cas gasped and shuddered, his body going rigid for a moment, before robotically sitting up in the dark and leaving the bed.

“I’m going to…” He trailed off in the dark, and Dean waited. He wasn’t hurt or even particularly tired, so he could go again if Castiel wanted. Hell, if Cas wanted to fuck his own cum out of Dean, that could still be arranged. Easy. Dean made a little, encouraging sound and reached for Cas, but he was suddenly out of reach.

“I need to get ready.” He said, just a vague deeper darkness in the lightless bedroom. “I… the ferry leaves in…” He must have looked at the clock, which read 2:37. “Three hours and twenty-three minutes, and it’s an eight minute drive from here to the dock, and I want to arrive five minutes early… that leaves only… three hours and three hours and ten minutes.”

What the hell?

“Three hours and ten minutes,” Castiel repeated, and Dean heard his footsteps pad away before the bathroom light came on, illuminating the far side of the bed, haloing it in yellow light. “I’d better get ready.”

In theory, Dean could go outside the house when Castiel was away. He was allowed. It wasn’t like at the shelter, or at Lisa and Brett’s, or Alistair’s (which had several outdoor “play” areas that Dean was not a fan of). There weren’t rules about where he could and couldn’t go, what he could and couldn’t do. He was pretty much free to do whatever he wanted as long as Cas was happy, and Cas was basically always happy.

He left for the dock an hour before the ferry was going to leave, and maybe that was just how he was. He’d stayed on the island since he brought Dean home, occasionally dipping out to grab something at the general store or the dry goods store, and he’d gone a couple times to the bar to bring back prepared foods, but the mainland was a hike. Dean recalled the ferry ride lasting nearly an hour, which meant that Cas would stay gone a minimum of two hours from the time the ferry left the island.

That meant a minimum of three hours, because apparently Castiel was the kind of neurotic that meant he needed to go to the dock an hour early, and maybe that meant four hours because Castiel was going to want to give himself lots of time to Catch the ferry back.

Whatever, even two hours was plenty to snoop around the house. He could go through Cas’s room today, see if the guy was hiding anything, and maybe get ready to go for tonight. Dean honestly didn’t think he’d mind fucking Castiel almost any time if it was like last night.

The sun hadn’t come up yet, but it would soon, and maybe Dean could poke around a little outside. He was… It was embarrassing, but ever since his whole escape attempt, and a couple subsequent attmepts to leave Alistair’s, Dean had… he wasn’t super into the whole escape thing anymore. Alistair’s corrections had been memorable.

Yeah.

Memorable.

But he wasn’t trying to escape. He was just casing the joint. Just poking around a little to figure out what he could. Maybe stash a couple knives around. Dean’d never regretted having a couple knives stashed around. And Cas had a drawer of steak knives, which made shit weapons, but also, Dean doubted that he counted them… or ever sharpened them… or knew that he had them, actually. Cas cut his steak with the paring knife in the block.

Dean could stash the knives today and then go back around and sharpen them later.

After a full day of snooping, stealing, stashing, and then going back to sharpen two of the knives that he thought would be most useful (the ones in his bedroom and under the sink in his bathroom), Dean sat in the living room and watched out the window. He’d come here in the late summer, and the leaves of the trees had been dark and cool. Now, trees here and there in the forest around the meadow were turning yellow, spots of brightness in the canopy. He idly toyed with the giraffe. It lay on his thigh as the tiger stalked around it, unmoving. It was such an alien creature, like a horse that got stretched out like taffy.

It lay, delicate and strange, and more breakable than the tiger, now that Dean had snapped the tiger’s tail off. He tried to remember things about giraffes, but all that really came to mind was the time John had gone a little crazy, taken things a little too far, and the next day he’d taken Dean and Sam to the zoo. He’d palmed Dean a twenty and told him to watch his brother while John drank and basked in the sun. There’d been a place to buy romaine lettuce leaves for five bucks a pop, and an overlook with a zoo keeper where the giraffes reached their heads over and accepted snacks.

He remembered fisting the back of Sam’s shirt when the giraffe reached out with its purple tentacle-tongue, wrapping it around the leaf of lettuce while Sam grinned. He had to have been in the first grade, because he was missing both his front teeth and Dean had said he looked stupid and Sam had pretended to be a giraffe the rest of the day, sticking his tongue through the empty space where his teeth used to be. He’d heat a hand on Sammy, but Dean’d been captivated by the giraffe. It’s long-lashed brown eye and nudging lip, how, up close, its fur looked soft in some places and rough in others. How it was big enough to fuck everybody up, but it was still gentle.

Dean ran a fingertip down the wooden giraffe’s neck, vaguely perplexed by the way that thought hurt. Not the bit about Sam—everything about Sam hurt—but the gentle giant. The bizarre, alien, peaceful creature he’d seen that one Sunday in who-knows-where between hunts, when his ribs were still so sore he couldn’t laugh or cough or sneeze without tears coming to his eyes. He remembered wanting to ride the giraffe, which was kind of stupid ‘cause no matter how chill an animal was, jumping on its back was a terrible idea. But he’d imagined that if he climbed on the giraffe, he could have seen the tree tops and that would have been pretty cool. He’d have been so high up that nobody could reach him.

In the growing gloom of twilight, Castiel’s headlights stared up the lane, growing brighter and nearer by the second. Seconds after the light appeared, Dean could hear them crunching gravel through the open window. Castiel was back. Dean looked at the giraffe and frowned, then rubbed his sternum. It hurt almost like guilt.

“Dean,” Castiel said as soon as he was inside. “There are some things I need to bring inside, and I brought dinner.”

“Thanks,” Dean nodded, trailing Castiel to the kitchen door and stopping short of walking through it. He waited while Castiel went out and grabbed a large box, which he put in the living room, and then went back for several shopping bags.

“How was, uh,” Dean cleared his throat. “How was the mainland?”

“It is six miles, as the crow flies,” Castiel replied, unpacking boxes of food that smelled like Chinese. “But it’s eight miles by ferry. The roads are excellent.”

Dean smiled at that, embarrassed on Cas’s behalf even though he was sure Cas would never think to be embarrassed himself. He was… Not a nerd like Sammy. No, he was kind of an alien.

“That good, huh?” He asked, accepting a plate with rice and something fried in sauce and what looked like beef with broccoli.

Castiel smiled earnestly, spooning rice onto his own plate. “Yes. The roads were repaved just under a year ago, and they are truly a pleasure to drive on. You may remember, them. We drove the same highway when I first brought you here, though you might have been distracted by your Fear. I… regret that I didn’t relieve your Fear earlier.”

Yeah, this was going… probably good? Castiel was hard to read, but Dean was pretty good. He was turning into a regular angel whisperer.

“Did you get everything you need?” He asked, curious about the contents of the box and the several bags that hadn’t been groceries.

“Yes.” Castiel did not elaborate.

It should have been annoying, but again, Dean had a hard time being annoyed. Cas was just… He was Cas. It was just how he was.

“You do anything?” He prodded, ‘cause fucking Cas had to mean he got to be a little freer with what he said, right? It was the whole point of scoring points like that, and hey, it worked. “See anyone? Solve the world’s problems or something?”

“Yes,” Castiel said, moving for the kitchen table, where he had made it clear that he preferred Dean to sit on a chair rather than kneeling on the floor. It was easier to sit on the chair when he knew he’d done what he was supposed to last night and probably would again soon. Easier to rationalize it as something he was allowed. “I had lunch with Nathaniel—you wouldn’t know him, he’s a scholar who focuses his research on humans—and we spoke about… Well, several things, actually. We spoke for quite some time.”

Dean grunted something encouraging, inhaling the food. Cas might be pissed if he found out Dean didn’t eat while he was away even though he’d told Dean to help himself to food if he was hungry, but he figured he could just make up for it now. He’d been fine last night, a big dinner wasn’t going to make anything impossible if last night was anything to go by.

“What’d you talk about?” Dean prompted, because it’d been a long day, and he’d take even Castiel’s deeply weird conversation over no conversation.

“You,” Castiel said. “This is very good. It’s not actually from China, despite what the containers say.”

Dean glanced at the paper boxes, but the symbols were all in Chinese. “False advertising,” Dean chuckled. “Can you believe the nerve of some people? So, uh, you talked to Nathaniel? About me?”

“Yes,” Castiel nodded, finishing his bite of food before continuing. “He asked after you. As I’ve mentioned, he’s writing a thesis on human-angel interactions and he’s very interested in our… bond. He had some additional information for me about Guardianship, I’d be happy to share what he collected for me—you can read, right?”

Dean nodded and Castiel went on.

“Yes, well, we discussed how things are going so far, and some… concerns I was having.”

“Concerns?” It was like the room went ten degrees colder and Dean felt his face burn.

Castiel looked supremely uncomfortable, which was kind of fucking unfair, because he was the one who’d just said there was a problem, apparently.

“Yes,” he shifted nervously under Dean’s scrutiny. “But there’s nothing to worry about now. I just needed advice and he made some suggestions that make a lot of sense, actually—” Cas stood up suddenly and Dean’s eyes went wide. “That’s what this is for.”

He strode into the living room and retrieved the banker’s box, setting it down on the table. Dean lifted the lid, and immediately his brain ground to a stop. He stared. Blinked. Stared some more.

“Hey, uh, Castiel, sir?” Dean asked, “Is this a box of dildos?”

Castiel beamed like he’d done something that was not only very sweet, but that also made literally any sense.

“Yes, Dean,” he smiled. “For you. You may use them any time you wish.”

Dean blinked again. This was… So what the hell was last night, then?

Fuck.

Chapter Text

The initial shock couldn’t last. Dean started for several more moments before rolling up his metaphorical sleeves and getting elbow deep in the box. With a discerning eye, he catalogued the tools. The dildos were neatly packaged for the most part, unopened boxes announcing their contents with bright photographs. There was variety, that was for sure, but none big enough nor long enough that Dean thought they’d really hurt. Not after some warmup, at least.

And it wasn’t only dildos. There was a vibrator, too. A big white thing with a huge head, and he slid it out of the box just to feel the intensity. It was… like a V8 rumbling to life in his fist, and Dean pressed it to his wrist to test the sensation. Maybe pressed to the base of a toy it’d be okay, but he didn’t want the thing anywhere near his dick.

“I choose when and how?” Dean confirmed. He didn’t figure Cas was blowing smoke or anything, but he felt better with confirmation.

“Of course,” Castiel said.

“Is there...” Dean stared. Did he want this answer? “Are there any plugs or anything?”

Castiel’s face fell a bit, the shy smile retreating, and Dean had the most ridiculous urge to—

“It’s okay,” he assured, which it was. It categorically was okay, because Dean didn’t like having to wear a fucking butt plug, he didn’t want to, and the fact there were none meant he didn’t have to—it was so okay that all other okay things were like okay candles against an okay forest fire—but something about saying it annoyed Dean to no end. “It’s all good. Copacetic. Don’t need ‘em.”

Cas gave an apologetic little smile. “If you want anything, there’s a catalog. You’re welcome to browse, and if there’s something you... desire... simply let me know.”

Dean shook his head. He didn’t want to look at a catalog; the horror show in the banker’s box was enough, thanks.

“You said this is because of last night?” Dean prompted, white-knuckling past the shaky feeling in his chest. He’d thought he did good last night. He’d kind of hoped... It wasn’t like this was going to be awful; it was just that toys were humiliating in a way that getting fucked by somebody never was. Some nasty part of him taunted, little fucking princess got your feelings hurt? You wanted Daddy, not some cold plastic toy? He blinked at the sting of it.

How pathetic.

“Yes, Dean.” Castiel said. He always sounded like a damn robot. He always sounded unaffected. He could be telling some cosmic bullshit about God or how the roads were, and he always sounded the same. And his voice sounded the same as always, but there was something wary and twitchy about him. Like at any moment he’d rear back and run away. “I... Last night, I noticed that... I noticed you decided to... engage in... sexual behaviors.”

Dean smirked. “Glad you noticed,” he tried for a nonchalant lift in his voice, something almost humorous, but the illusion was thin. Whatever. Cas wasn’t Alistair. He let Dean get away with unconvincing performances all the time.

Cas exhaled, an unhappy little huff. “Yes, well, I noticed that you decided to...” He grimaced and scrubbed a hand over his face. “It is normal for humans to experience sexual urges, and it is both natural and healthy for humans to... indulge those urges.”

Dean watched him across the box of dildos.

“I do not wish to discourage you in any way, Dean. I bought you the dildos because I believe you deserve to experience pleasure.” Castiel seemed like he was building up to something, and Dean could feel himself bracing for it. “I hope you use them whenever the Spirit moves you to, but, in the future, I would prefer if you did not use my vessel to satisfy those urges without my consent.”

Dean stared at him for a moment, mind not quite keeping up with what Cas was saying. Cas wanted him to fuck himself on the dildos, that much was pretty damn clear, but...

“Your vessel?” Dean asked.

Castiel gestured toward himself. “My vessel,” he repeated. “The... body I wear. It is... I know there are some... cultural differences between your kind and mine, but it’s considered rude to be... intimate with an angel’s vessel without their consent.”

It was a sudden spill of ice water through Dean, and suddenly, he didn’t want to be downstairs. He didn’t want to be around Castiel. His hands were already moving, packing everythign back into the box, and then he tossed the tiger and giraffe in as well.

“Yeah, of course, sir. Thanks,” He nodded and picked up the box. “Thanks for dinner. I’m just... I’m just gonna head upstairs to... I’m just gonna be in my room.”

The words spilled automatically, and Dean’s body moved without any conscious input. He moved on autopilot up the stairs and then into his room and the banker’s box was short enough to fit under the bed, but he didn’t want it under there. He wanted that space for himself, but the comfortable safety of it felt forbidden somehow, like Dean didn’t deserve it.

He tried to shove the box under the sink in the bathroom, but it was too big, and he didn’t want to unpack the dildos, but he didn’t want them out so he had to, and Cas had said that it was rude to... whatever he’d said exactly without consent, and Dean just... His hands shook around the soft silicone body of a dildo and he didn’t know where to fucking put it, so he threw it at the shower. And for a moment, he stood in silence staring at the way the dildo just kind of bounced harmlessly off the tile and wobbled, suction-cupped upright on the floor.

Ridiculous.

Like even the dildo wouldn’t take him fucking seriously.

And then Dean grabbed the whole box and threw it at the wibbly dick standing erect in his shower.

“God-fucking-damnit!”

There was no satisfying clatter, just the muffled sound of the banker’s box hitting the dildo and the packages inside jumbling around a little, and that somehow only made Dean angrier. He’d done everything right. Every fucking thing! And then Castiel had said he didn’t want Dean to do it again, that he didn’t want Dean touching him at all, that he wanted Dean to put on a humiliating show for him instead of just… Instead of…

Dean cursed and kicked the box, then punched the tiled wall.

He didn’t even want to fuck Cas. Not really. Not… Not like… Like, it had been good, it hadn’t hurt or anything and Dean had been pretty into it considering, and… And he’d come, which counted for something—Alistair almost never let him come, and if he did, it was always so he could do some post-orgasm fuckery that ruined it for Dean—and Cas had come, so it had been good for him, right? It had been…

Without consent.

That’s what Cas had said.

He grabbed the dildo from the shower floor, fighting momentarily against the strong grip of the suction cup, and threw it roughly in the box. That… helped. It felt a little better, and Dean just wanted them to all be out of sight. He started roughly shoving the toys under the sink, letting his hand grip roughly, grab cruelly. He didn’t want them. He didn’t want to look at them or think about them, and he quietly cursed them for what they were and what they were for, what that meant, as he hid them away.

And then, at a rough, unseeing grab into the box, Dean’s hand caught on something sharp, and he pulled back with a hiss. His hand was bleeding.

Why the hell was his hand bleeding?

The sight of the blood, the sudden bite of pain, cleared Dean’s head a little. Calmed him down. He ran his hand under the sink, tracing the bleeding gash over the back of the web between his thumb and forefinger.

In the bought clarity, he tried to replay last night. He’d done it right, as far as he knew. He’d offered himself. He’d… He’d grabbed for Castiel when the angel was sleeping because it was less threatening to him. It gave him more control. And Castiel had gotten hard, right? He had. He’d gotten nice and hard and he’d woken up, and… He hadn’t told Dean to quit it or anything. He hadn’t told Dean anything.

Or done anything.

He’d stared up at the ceiling, and the more Dean sorted through how things had gone, the more wrong they seemed. The more dire. The more obvious it was that Cas hadn’t… Castiel was an angel—he could have stopped dean. He could have grabbed him or said something or punched him or… literally anything, and he hadn’t, so where the hell did he get off saying Dean had… Dean had…

But when was the last time Dean had cried out or fought back?

Without consent.

Glancing into the box, he saw that there was really only the vibrator and one more box and the tiger… And the giraffe was in there too, wasn’t it?

Dean dried his hand and licked the tiny bead of blood that still leaked from the small cut. He lifted the box with the vibrator and something in him just… stuttered out when he saw it. Lying there, at the bottom of the box, was the giraffe. Sharp splinter where its leg should have been, gentle and weird and hurt. He’d cut himself on on the giraffe’s broken-off leg.

Lifting it from the banker’s box, Dean wanted to apologize to it. He gripped it in his fist, mindful of its sharp edge and searched for the missing leg. Why had he done that? Why had he gone around throwing things like an asshole? He’d known the giraffe was breakable, its thin, long legs vulnerable. He’d already broken the tiger, so he knew the wood could snap. Why the hell did he have to go throwing things?

He threw the vibrator into the cabinet with another curse and slammed the door, the vibration itching his cut, the sound satisfyingly loud. Then he did it again.

And again.

And then—

“Dean, stop.”

Castiel was in the bathroom, and he had Dean’s hand in his, and Dean was staring at Cas, but he wasn’t actually sure why. He was just so… scattered.

“Get out,” Dean shoved against Castiel, and the angel backed off for a moment. The urge rose so fast in Dean, so intense. So much. “Get the hell out!”

“Dean, you’re bleeding,” Castiel said, backing away, finally—finally—ceding some space, and Dean looked to the sharp giraffe, the broken-off leg. The place where he’d carelessly gotten his arm on the edge. “Please let me help.”

“Get off my ass!” Dean shouted, “Fuck off, don’t touch me—”

“Dean, I don’t understand,” Castiel said, eyes wide and blue and Dean fucking hated him in that moment. He hated everything about him. “What did I do?”

“I dont’ know!” Dean grabbed at his hair, and he hated it. It was too long. “I don’t know, just go away! Just leave!”

And he knew that this was the literal worst thing he could do, that, even if Castiel didn’t like to punish him, there’d be no other options now, but whatever was coming out of Dean was an infection that needed to be purged. It was this awful rot that was scraping free from him, because that’s all he was inside. Just rot. Just whatever this awful shit was, and he’d just keep on doing the same stupid things, hurting the people he was close to because this was what was inside him. This was what was at his core.

Castiel looked hurt, and Dean couldn’t even start to parse that, because he was bleeding into his hair, and he hated it so much. He hated it. He stared at his reflection in the shower glass, and his hair was long enough that he could wrap his fingers in it and pull and make it hurt. Long enough that he could be restrained by it and dragged and pulled.

And the next thing he knew, the sharpened steak knife was in his hand, and he was sawing through the hair, piece by piece, cutting it away so nobody could grab him anymore. So he didn’t have to look at himself looking like Sammy and remember how the same rot that he’d poisoned Cas with had poisoned Sam and poisoned John, and every other good thing too.

And whatever animated him through his haircut didn’t outlast his hair. When it was done, he knelt on the floor, nicked a couple places, but fine, breathing hard, and he saw the giraffe on the tile.

He picked it up, and pressed his head to the shower door, and cried.

Chapter Text

It was hard for Castiel to fit into his vessel. Something about the situation was pulling him, and Dean had told him to go away, but… But he hadn’t listened. Perhaps Nathaniel would have something to say about agency, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave. He sat on Dean’s bed, head in his hands, trying to understand what was happening. Why.

Why?

He’d been careful and followed Nathaniel’s advice. He’d been clear that he didn’t want Dean to sexually engage with his vessel, he’d made a point to explain that it was natural and not sinful and allowed. He’d offered a safe alternative that Dean could use. And Dean had seemed… He was a little cold, a little distant. Distracted, perhaps, but not distressed.

He hadn’t seemed like he’d go upstairs and begin to throw things, to shout. To curse and slam doors and cabinets. He hadn’t seemed like he’d hurt himself, and then Castiel had rushed into the bathroom, fearing for Dean, to find that he was bleeding and that an overwhelming swirl of emotion was drowning him, and Castiel’s entire being listed toward Dean. He clawed at the edges of his vessel, pulled like iron filings to a magnet, but Dean had told him to fuck off.

He’d said to go away.

And so Castiel forced himself to stay seated. To stay on the bed. He forced himself not to move.

It was like feeling the absence where God should have been, this absence where his Ward should have been, this hollow in his chest. Pressing the heel of his hand to the center of his chest, Castiel recalled the flash of bleakness when he’d brushed momentarily past Dean’s soul. Was it possible for a human to feel as abandoned as the forsaken angels? To feel such a profound absence?

Did he still feel that? Adrift and alone, striving for something that was always just out of reach? Castiel yearned for the bathroom, the door ajar.

“Dean?” He called, when silence began to cut, when the ache of unknowing itched so desperately through him that he worries he might burst free from his vessel. “Dean, please say something.”

And then, like a miracle, like the first light at God’s command, like every subsequent dawn, a sound. A quiet sob from the bathroom. A thousand-year siege of the senses, condensed into a breath. What will still held him back crumbled under the onslaught and Castiel fell into the gravitational well of the bathroom.

Dean was curled up like a fist, curled like a question mark, leaning against the cupboard under the sink. Castiel feared to touch him. Dean wanted him to leave, but he could not.

“Dean, please,” Castiel asked, but he didn’t know what he was asking for he didn’t know how the sentence ended. He just knew that he needed to do something. Anything. Dean needed something. “I don’t know what to do.”

And before he could remember that he did know what to do, and that he was supposed to leave Dean alone, Dean uncurled his hand. In it was the wooden giraffe toy he carried around, its leg snapped off, just a jagged spike where the wood grain made a fang of it. And from the terrible silence, Dean said, “I’m sorry,” and Castiel had no idea what for.

He didn’t need to know.

“I forgive you,” he said, covering the giraffe with his hand. Gently, he tugged it loose from Dean’s fingers and laid it beside the sink. “There is nothing you could do that I would not forgive.”

Somehow, that was the wrong thing to say, because Dean choked on his next breath and pitched forward, trying to conceal his distress.

“Dean, I don’t know what I did,” Castiel pleaded, “But, I promise, whatever it is, I’ll make it right. I never meant to make you suffer, Dean.”

Dean shook his head, and Castiel took advantage of his open hand to slide their palms together. Dean’s grip was so strong. He held on like he might fall if something happened, and Castiel usually put something between them so they wouldn’t touch when he held Dean, but there was nothing to grab and he needed to hold the bright little soul. The wounded thing.

Where their skin touched, Castiel’s vessel was electrified. There was a wave, a ripple, a shiver of aliveness that he wasn’t used to, and it was hard to know if it was the vessel’s reaction to skin contact or Castiel’s reaction to Dean’s soul so near, but whatever it was, it briefly overwhelmed him. His lungs shivered and his eyes itched, and he curled his shoulders around Dean and pressed his face to the rough scratch of Dean’s newly short, uneven hair. There was blood on Dean’s scalp, blood on his palm, and Castiel knew he ought to treat the cuts. It was first among his responsibilities: to guard Dean’s physical safety, but he couldn’t pry himself away.

In his arms, on the sea green tile of the floor, an aerated version of Dean’s eyes, Dean’s body went rigid for several moments. He ought to let him go. It was important to let him go.

Dean would want to be let go.

And then the rigidity evaporated. Between one breath and the next, Dean’s hands reached out and gripped Castiel, his arms suddenly squeezing in. His back shook with something, and Castiel realized he was crying. Whatever he’d done, it had made Dean cry, and Castiel’s eyes leaked onto the side of Dean’s head, behind his ear where the hair was a longer tuft and his scalp bled from a small cut. He tried to say something, but he had no words for this moment. No words for this feeling that everything was terrible, and everything was falling apart, and like, as long as he could just hold Dean, everything would be okay.

Dean apologized again, and then again. The words stuttering and stalling in strange places, hobbled by his erratic breathing and the urgency with which his body purged the emotion. Held in place by the berm wall of Castiel’s arms, he was a river over spilling its normal banks.

“Nothing you could do would make me care for you less,” Castiel murmured, feeling the Truth of it echoing in the substance of his soul. “There has never been a day when I did not love you, Dean, and I am so—”

Castiel’s throat stopped the word, his vessel affected by the strength of his feelings. Strange, because the vessel was often so vague in relation to him.

“I should have found you sooner, Dean,” he said, and he knew Dean did not understand. Humans were not born Knowing, and their nature was simple and experiential, and Castiel resented it. It was unfair, unjust that God would have made Dean such that he couldn’t simply Know Castiel’s love. It wasn’t right. “I should have been with you from the moment your soul entered your body, the moment you took your first breath. I should have been there. I am the one who should be sorry.”

For a moment, the bathroom grew a mossy stillness. The kind of post-rain peace of a forest where the creatures might soon begin to stir. In that moment before the first birdsong and after the storm, Dean shifted in Castiel’s arms, pulling back enough to look into his eyes. Enough to fix Castiel in that angry, hurt, defiant look that had Called to Castiel from a photo all those months ago.

Dean was a wreck, and still, he was lovely. His face was reddened and blotchy and smoothed from the strain of crying, of containing the storm. He released Castiel’s arms slowly and just as slowly settled his hands in his lap.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and Castiel still didn’t understand why.

It must have shown on his face.

Dean scrubbed his hands over his face and shot the giraffe on the sink’s edge a weary, hurt glance before turning his whole posture inwards.

“I raped you,” Dean told his hands, and for several moments, Castiel struggled to understand what he meant.

Because he hadn’t.

Because rape was a human transgression, and Castiel was not human. Rape involved the violation of a being, and Castiel’s being was not tied to his vessel.

And yet...

There was an... aesthetic parallel.

“I know...” Castiel said, “That it was done to you.”

He paused, trying to gather the right words, the right ideas, because words were so paltry a substitute for actual meaning. Were they both angels, Castiel could have simply overlapped with Dean, and Dean could have Known.

“But I cannot know what that means to you, and I know that, to you, it means much. My vessel is not a part of me as your body is part of you, Dean, and yes, it was... exceedingly rude of you to use my vessel as you did, but it did not harm me. To me, it is a... preference. It was no more or less violating than if... If I used your toothbrush without asking. Or at all, I suppose.”

Castiel’s thoughts stalled for several moments, and in his arms, Dean was listening. He was always listening, paying attention. He was trying to understand.

“What?” Dean croaked, and Castiel grimaced.

“Perhaps toothbrushes are a poor example; they’re... not typically shared, but people do choose to...” Dean seemed no less confused, and Castiel wished he didn’t have to use clumsy words to express the Truth. Dean had done no wrong, and he was loved and safe, and it frustrated Castiel to no end that Dean didn’t already Know it.

“I digress,” he said, dragging himself back on track. Trying to address Dean’s worries. “What I mean to say is that you didn’t harm me, Dean. I know you believe you did, but you did not. And even if you did harm me, I would forgive you because I am your Guardian and it is my Purpose.”

Castiel tried to catch a hint of what Dean was thinking, what he was feeling, as he listened. “And yet, I’ve harmed you. Again. Dean, how can I ask forgiveness for harming you when I keep doing it? How can I ask you to learn that I will care for you when I keep...”

Dean had calmed significantly, and Castiel touched his hair, short and rough. In his arms, Dean stirred, and Castiel didn’t want to let him pull away. It was hard to force himself to allow Dean to claim space, to move back.

“I broke it,” Dean said after a long, terrible wait. He reached up and took the giraffe off the sink. He looked... shattered. He looked like, by breaking the giraffe’s leg, he had somehow destroyed all the good things in the world, like he was surrounded by nothing but the ash and ruin of some holy war.

“Dean...” Castiel struggled to understand the depth of Dean’s emotional reaction to a toy giraffe. It was one in a set of two. It wasn’t unique or special, and giraffes weren’t known for being particularly friendly animals—they could kick large predators to death and otherwise were known for blocking human traffic. Dean’s attachment to the toy giraffe was illogical, and yet it was written in Dean’s every gesture and expression.

Perhaps it was the wrong thing to ask, but Castiel didn’t know what else to say, so he asked, “do you know where the rest of its leg is?”

Dean reached for the box with which Castiel had carried the many tools for sexual stimulation. From the bottom, the thin, spotted leg emerged, and Dean held it with reverence.

“We can fix it,” Castiel promised. “Look, the pieces want to fit together; it’ll only take a little glue.”

Dean’s next breath was a sudden, sharp, shuddering gasp, and he curled forward, letting Castiel have the giraffe and its leg. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said, and Castiel was both fairly sure Dean was, once again, referring to the rather uncomfortable way he had chosen to handle Castiel’s vessel, and also quite confused by the speed with which Dean was changing subjects.

Mildly perplexed, Castiel returned to the only sure bet in the situation and stroked Dean’s back, encouraging him to lean against Castiel’s larger body. “I know, Dean,” he reassured, “I never thought you were trying to hurt me.”

Do you think I’m trying to hurt you? he didn’t ask, because it would be a Blessing if Dean didn’t, but understandable if Dean did. Castiel hoped for the former, but he knew he didn’t understand Dean.

“It’s not just a giraffe,” Dean said, and Castiel nodded. It wasn’t actually a giraffe at all. It was a wooden toy that Castiel had brought home for Dean to play with. He wasn’t sure why Dean was affirming his knowledge that it was only symbolic of a giraffe, but he nodded anyway.

“It only looks like one,” Castiel said, “And it only looks hurt, Dean, but it can be repaired.”

Dean nodded like Castiel had said something profound, which didn’t make much sense. Lots of things weren’t making much sense lately, but Castiel had taken a bit of a zen attitude about it. Whatever helped Dean in this moment was good, and he could figure out why or what it meant later.

“I’m sorry,” Dean said again, brushing away heavy drifts of silence as he straightened up. “I’m really sorry.”

“What did it mean to you?” Castiel asked, curious, hungry to understand Dean’s alien experience of the world. He was God’s chosen Ward for Castiel. The drive, the urge, the need to understand him was primal and undeniable. “What does a body mean to you, as a human?”

Dean looked at Castiel, then—looked right at him—with green eyes framed by tear-spiked lashes, and Castiel felt the air pause in his lungs. His vessel responded to the closeness, the humanness, in such strange ways. Unfamiliar ways.

Unangelic ways, perhaps.

“It’s just a body,” Dean said, “It’s not me.”

“But you can’t leave,” Castiel pressed. He could imagine being chained inside his vessel, but even then, it was just… “My vessel is one place that I can go. I can occupy all of it or some of it, or I can leave. I am an expression of God’s will, I have no physical form; existing in my vessel is… like standing under an umbrella. But I can set down the umbrella and walk away, which is what I did, but… I keep thinking, ever since last night, that I could leave, but you can’t.”

Again, Dean seemed to just watch him. The quiet grew.

When finally he spoke, Dean’s voice was the dry whisper of cornstalks in the fall, rasping on itself. “I think I was able to leave sometimes,” he said, and Castiel occupied every inch of his fingertips that touched Dean’s skin, something despairing leeching through the points of contact. “Sometimes, my body was just a vessel.”

Something about those words hurt. Castiel didn’t understand it, and he couldn’t put his finger on it, but the pain crested and reached up through Dean’s skin, soaking into Castiel’s being, when Dean thought about his body.

“It hurt you,” Castiel felt the truth ring through the places where they touched, the resonance of some distant bell, but Dean shook his head.

“It was fine.”

It wasn’t.

But Castiel didn’t know what to do about it. He stared down at the giraffe, it’s splinter-leg cupped protectively in Dean’s hands. Dean loved the giraffe and the tiger.

Castiel ached when Dean eventually pulled away and washed his face, his body small and fragile. He wore the smallness like it was new and uncomfortable, but he wore the pain like a pair of broken-in boots. The seas would burn before Castiel stopped trying to take away that pain.

Chapter Text

Things were fine. Post-bathroom meltdown, Cas had retreated and whatever fucked up their version of normal had been, it had reasserted itself in the silence and they both kind of ignored that anything really fucked up had happened. Castiel cleaned up Dean’s hair for him when Dean brought him scissors (turned out the guy had clippers, so the scissors were unnecessary). He’d also brought out a little wood glue, and informed Dean that, “Once it dries, wood glue is stronger than the wood itself,” which was the most dadly thing he possibly could have said. It tugged at something in Dean’s chest and made him want to tease the angel, or maybe curl up and hug him.

Fucking weird.

There was a calm to the current situation, though. Dean spent a lot of time just… looking out the window. He’d worried and freaked out and planned and tried to be good, and none of it had really gone all that well, so now? Now Dean watched out the window.

A flock of turkeys strutted across the field in the distance, and Dean glanced back toward the trees to see if he could spot any more deer. Somewhere in the distance, audible through the open window that admitted fresh air and the odd not-quite-seasons outside, a bluejay screamed. The leaves sometimes fell, and sometimes the field was lush with spring grasses, and sometimes there was snow on the ground or it sweltered, but the order and duration were seemingly random. Like the world woke up and just decided on a whim what to do, or like it was pulling seasons out of a hat.

Once, he might have been deeply unsettled by that. It would have been a mystery to solve or a curse or something. He would have leaned on Bobby and Sam to figure out historical precedent and he would have snooped around, looking for clues. Now, Dean watched it with a vague, impassive kind of interest.

He was too fucked up to make himself go outside anymore. He’d been there. It had sucked.

The tiger stayed in Dean’s pocket most of the time, but today he held the giraffe. Its glued-back leg was a little wonky, but it could stand up again when Dean placed it on the windowsill, so it was basically better. He didn’t put it down, though. Instead, he watched the turkeys fussing in the field and ran his thumb over the giraffe’s wooden mane like a worry stone. It was stained, not painted, and at first, it had been a little splintery to rub its mane, but Dean had been undeterred, and now the wood was smooth and shiny over they giraffe’s neck.

With a sigh, Dean climbed out of his little nest on the couch. He could sleep down here. Castiel never minded if he napped downstairs, but Dean preferred to sleep in his bed. Nobody had ever fucked him in his bed to ruin the safety of the space. He couldn’t say as much for Castiel’s bed, now, and even though Cas had been really clear that Dean didn’t need to feel bad, Dean couldn’t fully shake the guilt. He got that Cas wasn’t human. He kind of got that Cas didn’t experience things the way Dean did, that he existed… differently… Dean didn’t think he even really felt all that bad about hurting Cas now that he knew he hadn’t. It was more that…

Something about the whole messed up thing had been sticky though. His brain kept chewing it over and over, fixating but unable to figure out why. He’d even thought about asking Castiel, but that seemed pretty selfish what with the whole trying to rape him thing Dean had planned out and done. He sighed and pushed himself up. Castiel was quietly typing in the kitchen, and Dean wondered if he had moved his base of operations to the kitchen so he could more easily watch Dean.

He wondered what the hell Cas did all day on a computer. He was an angel for Christ’s sake.

Dean snorted to himself at the pun as he slowly ascended the stairs. He put the tiger and giraffe on the dresser before shimmying under the bed and squishing himself between the shark and the frog, their big squishy bodies heavy and comforting, their textures grounding. The hamburger was a little too tall to be a good pillow, so Dean had dragged a pillow down under the bed, and the hamburger was purely decoration. He was hidden, but he could see the bottom of the door.

He was safe.

Nobody could touch him without warning.

And more importantly, he couldn’t hurt anybody. He couldn’t hurt Castiel.

As he often did, Dean napped under his bed, shielded and surrounded, and Castiel left him alone until it was time for dinner.

Seasons passed in chaos. Time slipped by without any real resistance, nothing to catch or snag on. Nothing was really scary, and Dean slept a lot, but that didn’t feel bad. He learned the habits of the deer and the turkeys. He started to notice which birds came close to the window and which mostly stayed off in the forest. There were juncos and cardinals that came by on the winter days, and in the summer there were eastern bluebirds and titmice, and Dean swore he saw some kind of hawk, which Dean couldn’t quite identify from the glimpse he’d gotten, despite the bird book Castiel had started to leave conspicuously near where Dean sat every day.

Cas was weird, but he seemed kind. It seemed like he was always paying attention to Dean, and he’d do these thoughtful little things. Sure, some of them were kinda “cock soup” things, divorced from reality and deeply weird, but caring nonetheless. There was something innocent about him that Dean increasingly wanted to be around.

Except, Dean didn’t really deserve to be around that if he did things to hurt Cas, and he did. Things would be fine, Castiel would be watching the TV with it’s weird shapes that left Dean uneasy, and he’d run his fingers through Dean’s hair while Dean sat by the couch and arranged the toys Cas had gotten him on the rug, which was fine. And Dean would walk back through shit that had happened, stuff that kept grabbing and grabbing at his mind, shit that woke him up in cold sweats, trying to make sense of it. Everything would be nice—or as nice as it was going to be, laboriously chewing his way through stuff—and then Dean would just… He’d snap. He’d hiss and pull away and stomp off and hide.

He’d remember the wrong thing, and then the feeling of Cas’s fingers in his hair or his hand on his back would become intolerable and he’d say cruel things for no good reason. For no reason at all.

One day, for reasons that Dean could not understand, he took one of his hidden knives to the shark. He didn’t even realize he was doing it until he blinked and there was stuffing everywhere and the shark was pierced through a dozen or more times, the wood floor scored and nicked where the knife had gone all the way through its thick corduroy body, coarse sand leaking out of the muslin innards.

“I killed it,” he muttered to Castiel when the angel came to wake Dean for dinner.

Castiel nodded sagely, like he understood something profound. Like whatever had possessed Dean made total sense to him.

“You certainly did, Dean,” he said. “You’ve conquered it.”

It was probably a week and a half later that Castiel’s cryptic remark started to make sense.

“I got you a hippo, Dean,” Castiel greeted him in the kitchen with a shy smile and a pastel, plush hippo. He remembered getting the shark and had to swallow down a wave of shame.

“Why?” Dean stared at the plush hippo in the angel’s hands.

“I noticed you like symbolism.” Castiel said, and for a moment Dean felt immensely caught-out about the giraffe. Like Castiel had seen right through him. He flushed with shame and stared at Cas and then the plush hippo.

“Symbolism?” He asked.

“Yes, the toad is a replica of an extremely poisonous variety, and the hamburger is a symbol of metabolic disease—one of the most significant dangers to aging humans. I noticed you moved the car posters as well, and automobile accidents are the single most deadly threat to humans in your age demographic. You seemed to like the objects that symbolized threats, maybe because in conquering them, you wield control over the danger. You become the master of those fears.” Castiel sounded dead serious, so Dean wasn’t sure what to do, how to respond.

He wasn’t afraid of hamburgers.

The hippo had sleepy button eyes. There was a little white bird plush in its mouth.

“Ah, I think... You see, hippos, Dean, are vicious animals. They kill more humans than lions, they do it not out of fear or hunger, but pure malice. So...”

Dean blinked, then looked down at the hippo in Castiel’s hands again. Its body was fat and squishy-looking, and a tie-dyed pattern of pink and powder blue. It did not look vicious in the slightest.

Castiel sighed and made an unhappy sound.

“Perhaps, like Icarus, I’ve flown too close to the sun. Perhas the hippo is too potent a symbol of danger.”

Looking deflated, Castiel dropped his gaze the hippo in his hands.

“I can put it away in the—”

“Give it here,” Dean held his hands out, hating the bizarre wave of protective affection he felt for the angel. “Terrifying, Cas. I’ll just put it with the scary hamburger.”

Late that night, Dean carried the hippo, slung under his arm, to Castiel’s room. The door was ajar, as it always was. Even after what Dean had done, Castiel didn’t start closing his door. He didn’t make any effort to keep Dean away, to protect himself from Dean. He still checked on Dean before going to bed each night.

Dean let himself in, avoiding the floorboard that squeaked, and crossed the room to Castiel’s bed. He was sitting up, reading a book, which he closed as he noted Dean’s approach.

“Hello, Dean,” he said. Always that same, stilted greeting. Fucking robot.

“Hi, Castiel.” It was hard to look right at him when all Dean could see was Big Bird, so he looked at his feet.

“Is there something…” Castiel focused carefully on Dean, like he was a puzzle. “Do you require… stimulation?”

Dean cringed. That was… fair. He deserved that.

“I uh,” he cleared his throat, “I was… can I sit with you?” He asked, “Just, only if it’s okay.”

A brief pull between Castiel’s eyebrows, and then his face was placid again. He pulled back the covers but scooted away from Dean’s spot a bit. That stung.

It made sense.

“Of course, Dean,” he said, but there was a wariness there. Earned.

“I’m not gonna… just to…”

It was friggin’ embarrassing, but Dean wasn’t about to be a pussy about this. He’d made his bed, time to lie in it, he figured. No use crying over spilt milk. Bobby might’ve said something like that, told him to suck it up and man up or stand up and fess up… all up, up, up with Bobby. Up and balls.

Castiel continued to look troubled.

“Did you… enjoy… or… Did you desire the… things… you did?”

Balls.

Dean swallowed. He shook his head.

Castiel rubbed his neck, paused another long, terrible moment, and asked, “Do you want to do something like that again?”

“No!” The answer was forceful enough that it surprised them both, and Dean hugged the hippo tighter, like he could protect it from hearing this, from knowing how poisonous he was, how everything he touched turned to shit.

But Cas didn’t say anything shitty. He didnt’ say anything at all. He just nodded and lifted the edge of the blanket, and beckoned Dean in. He didn’t shrink away from Dean, even though that would have been fair. In fact, when Dean settled, beside Cas with his hippo tight in his arms, Castiel eased a little closer and encouraged Dean to curl into the space under his arm so that he was bracketed in and curling close. He could see the pages of the book Cas was reading, and he tried to read it but it wasn’t like the bird book. It was written in an alphabet that was hard to look at very long. Much like the TV, the shapes unsettled him, so Dean looked at his hippo and listened to the sound of Castiel breathing, his heart. The occasional rustle of pages. The whisper of blanket when he shifted his feet.

Slowly, slowly, he let his hands and arms relax. Maybe they wouldn’t hurt Cas, even if he wasn’t squeezing them tight to his body, trapping them with the hippo. When his hand finally relaxed enough to lay down on Castiel’s chest, over the steady march of his heart, Cas put down the book.

“If you didn’t like it,” Cas asked, “And you didn’t like it, then why…?”

Balls.

Dean wanted to furl away and apologize for thinking it was okay to steal whatever exactly he was stealing from Cas right now. He wanted to hide, but he was a goddamn Winchester. He was a hunter, and he was John’s son, and he wasn’t about to pussy out just because he’d fucked up and things sucked.

He was gonna man the fuck up.

“I thought it was why you got me,” Dean croaked. “I thought you wanted…”

“But I told you what I wanted,” Castiel sounded more confused than anything, and he soothed Dean with a hand on his back when he flinched.

“I thought it was a game,” he admitted, “I thought I was supposed to read your mind or something—Alistair always had these fucked up little games, these… ‘training’ things where he’d say one thing and I had to know better, had to be better. Not get tricked.”

Castiel’s arm tightened around him, possessive, almost. Safe, actually.

“I would never lie to you, Dean,” he whispered. “I… I don’t think I can. I don’t know… how to do… human things. I’m not studied like some of my brothers. I don’t understand your kind, but you… I want to understand you, Dean. I want very badly to understand you.”

Dean nodded. It twisted his ear against Castiel’s chest, but he knew Cas could feel it and that was nice. That was good. Slowly, he curled his fingers up, leaving his thumb extended, smiling a little at the memory of when Cas had done this and angel-splained what a thumbs-up was.

“This means good,” Dean extended a thumbs up so Cas could see. “Like, ‘are you good?’ You can use it to check in, make sure.”

Castiel was very still, his hand still pressing tight to Dean’s back. He was thinking, Dean could tell.

“So, are you good?” Dean asked.

“I…Lately, I find it difficult to believe in things like good and evil… at least, since God‘s disappearance,” he replied, weighing each word carefully. “But I wish to be good. I strive to be.”

After several moments, Castiel returned the thumbs up gesture, setting his hand next to Dean’s. His hand was bigger than Dean’s.

“Good.” He said, and angled toward Dean until he could curl his legs a little, until Dean let his legs drape over Castiel’s, like sitting in his lap but not totally. Dean was used to feeling small—it had happened a lot lately, what with the whole shrinky-dink drug cocktail and probably demonic bullshit—but this was a different kind of small feeling. He was bunny in its grassy tunnel-nest, safe from the blades of the mower. A mouse curled away in a dark crack in the wall, safe from the swiping claws of cats.

“I think you’re good,” Dean offered and pressed his thumb to Dean’s.

“Well,” he said, his shy little smile audible, “I suppose that’s what really matters.”

Chapter Text

The thumb gesture was a revelation.

Every time he caught Dean’s eye, he showed his thumb, and Dean would respond with the same thumb gesture. It was incredible. The odd little high he got from communicating so effectively with his Ward was addictive. He wanted to do it all the time. Forever. To confirm over and over and over that Dean was good. He was well. He was not in distress and he was uninjured, and good.

The thumb gesture was excellent, but lately bedtime was not.

Dean liked to be close to Castiel, which was good and appropriate. That was desired. Castiel wanted to Guard Dean, and having Dean near made that easier. It was God’s Design. But Castiel’s vessel was strange and insubordinate. It responded to... something. He wasn’t sure what, but he wanted to speak to Nathaniel about it, except he worried that it wasn’t actually relevant to Nathaniel’s research. It would just be a bother. An inconvenience.

It shouldn’t be more than a minor inconvenience, except that whatever exactly his vessel was doing when Dean was around, it was clouding his mind. Like the vessel made such loud noise that he couldn’t hear his thoughts anymore.

As he did every night, Dean crept on quiet feet to the door, then peeked in to see Castiel. He flashed a thumb, and Castiel returned the gesture, and Dean crept through Castiel’s room and into his bed. His body was small, it curled easily against Castiel’s chest, and his shorn hair was rough in one direction and smooth in the other, and Castiel loved the way it felt. He loved the way Dean relaxed under his hand. The way Dean would lay a hand over Castiel’s chest and his fingers would slowly go limp and relaxed as Castiel combed his hair.

It was beautiful.

Except that his vessel was misbehaving lately.

Stop it, he insisted to the foreign body when Dean eased into his spot curled into Castiel’s side. Stop it, he begged as tingly sensations curled through the vessel’s belly and tickled the testes. He wanted to will the blood away from the vessel’s penis, stop it from becoming engorged, and prevent the spongy tissue from hardening. He didn’t want it. It was... Inappropriate. Overwhelming. It hurt his soul, because this was not what a Guardian did.

Angling away from Dean, he turned off the lamp and meditated, making himself small and then filling only the desirable parts of his vessel. The hands and eyes and nose and mouth, the ears, the legs and arms. But not the insubordinate bits. Not those.

With one hand, he pinched and hurt the insubordinate parts until they stopped their nonsense. Until the sensation gave up and retreated, hiding itself away.

Dean wouldn’t like those parts any more than Castiel did.

There was a way that Dean stretched before he got up from the sofa. There was a way he glanced at Castiel, just a little wide-eyed, before giving a skeptical look while Castiel was working. A way he set the wooden animals on the windowsill each morning. All of it was... distracting.

Castiel was unaccustomed to feeling distracted.

He was an angel of the Lord, and he did not like being distracted by these strange things. He did not like his insubordinate vessel acting of its own accord. He wanted to be holy, but his vessel was an animal thing, and it did animal things, and Castiel found himself disturbed by it.

Sometimes he thought about Dean. The way his hands made electric sparkles fix under Castiel’s skin. The way he moved like he knew exactly where he was going, what he was doing. Sometimes he wondered what it would have been like with Dean… touching him… if it hadn’t happened while Castiel was sleeping. If it hadn’t been a shock, hadn’t driven him from his vessel. Would it have been electric sparkles there too? Like the place where their hands brushed when he passed a cup to Dean, or Dean handed a dish over to him, but more? If it happened again, what would it be like to… to let Dean.

But it wouldn’t.

Because Castiel had said he didn’t want that, and Dean had said he didn’t want that. And Because Dean had thought it was like when humans did those things, and it wasn’t, but Dean didn’t know that. He didn’t uderstand that. Dean was a human with a human body and human experiences, and it had hurt Dean so much when Castiel said he didn’t like the way Dean had touched him, and now the well was poisoned. Dean wouldn’t.

And Dean didn’t want to.

He didn’t like it.

But Castiel… He didn’t like it either, right? Theophania didn’t specialize in this, and neither did Nathaniel. There was nobody to ask, except…

“Cassie,” Michael’s voice in his headphones was familiar and beloved. “Are you just lovinghaving a little pet? You haven’t sent me a single picture of the sweet little thing.”

Castiel closed the door behind himself, certain that Dean wouldn’t follow him outside because he’d never once seen Dean leave the house, even though he was allowed. Settling on the porch swing, Castiel sighed.

“He’s incredible,” Castiel smiled. It was true. Dean was so strong and clever and brave, and strange and alien. He was human, a pure expression of God’s will, made to be greatest among His creation, Created in His image.

“But…?” Michael always knew. Castiel often wished he didnt, because he could be a bit rude about it, but at times like this, it was nice when somebody else could be the knower.

“I don’t want to talk about Dean—”

“That’s an adorable name,” Michale purred, “Did you come up with it?”

“No.” Castiel didn’t want to go this direction, and he had millennia’s experience redirecting his single-minded brother. “I wanted to talk about my vessel. It’s been… unusual.”

“An unusual vessel?” Michale sounded altogether too amused by the admission.

Castiel lacked Michael’s emotional expressiveness, especially when he was irritated. “Yes,” he deadpanned, and across the line, Michael tutted.

“Unusual how, brother?” He asked, and at least he was taking the reidrection. Sometimes even that was a lot to ask.

“It’s been… responding.”

“How?” Michael drew out the word and Castiel grumbled in irritation.

Castiel tried to catalog the odd sensations, the strange reactions, the unwanted and unusual unconscious itches.

“When he touches my vessel,” Castiel picked through the words like a briar patch, “It responds. The… skin… has a reaction, and sometimes there’s… inflammation?”

“Are you allergic to your pet, brother?” Michael chuckled, and again Castiel wanted to hang up the phone. Why did he bother? “Oh, I’m only teasing you, Castiel! You’re too serious! So you’ve been playing with him?”

Playing.

“We… sometimes play circus animals?” Castiel volunteered, to Michael’s delight.

“I’ve heard about pups and ponies, but please tell me he’s a lion or a trained elephant!”

Castiel looked at his thumb then pointed it to the ground, grimacing.

“Michael, I need you to listen like you’re trying to understand me,” Castiel said, flickering through every color of nervous, flashing like the heartbeat of a pulsar, casting in every direction, a beacon of distress. “I’m… I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Michael was silent for several loud moments before he sighed over the phone.

“Alright, Castiel,” he said, the teasing edge gone. “What makes you think something is wrong?”

Castiel sighed. He didn’t want to talk about this, he realized. He dreaded putting it into words, as if words made the sin real.

“My vessel… He… One night as I was in prayer—”

“Brother.” Michael’s tone was chastising.

“No,” Castiel corrected, “I will pray if I wish. I will… That is not why I asked for your… That is not why I need you.”

Silence hung for a moment, and Michael respected the pause. He did not rush to fill it with quips or cleverness, with worldly knowledge because he had gone to live among the humans when their Father disappeared while Castiel had searched for Him.

Castiel still searched for Him.

“I was in prayer, and not… I was called to my vessel, but not because of damage, and Dean was… He had… he was penetrating himself with… I mean, it’s not really mine, is it? It was just…” He trailed off. Why was it so hard to talk about this.

“It’s what they’re for, Castiel,” Michael said, but there was nothing cruel in his voice. Nothing teasing or pushing, just brotherly. “They have physical needs, and they’re taught ways to meet those physical needs. You don’t have to allow it if you don’t like it—I know you don’t have the same appreciation that some of us do for the sensory landscape of human vessels—I’m frankly shocked that you didn’t choose an octopus vessel.”

Castiel nodded. He couldn’t articulate why he’d opted for his vessel—not at the time, at least. It had been a pull, a Calling that he neither deny nor defend. He had chosen that which had been chosen for him as if by predetermination.

And now he knew why.

“I think…” he weighed the words carefully, “I may be his Guardian.”

Michael chuckled, light and friendly, but wrong for the weight of Castiel’s admission.

“Guardians and Wards is a fun game, no shame in that,” Michael offered, but Castiel’s very being recoiled from the thought of making a game of it.

“Michael,” he said, unsure how to say more.

“No.”

The silence was hungry. It was constricting.

“Castiel, you know—”

“I know!” Castiel barked, shocked at the force in his voice. “I know. I just… What if that’s why I was Called to this vessel? What if it’s… What if…?”

“Castiel,” Michael sounded almost wounded. Sadder than he ever sounded. “You know.”

Of course he knew. It was the same absence felt by every angel and every fallen angel. It was a universal wound.

“I haven’t felt a Callling like this since before.”

Across the line, Michael said nothing.

“What if there is Divinity in the tatters of what was left behind?”

“How do you know it’s a Calling you feel,” Michael asked, “And not just some grief-echo? Some thin reminder of what it was like to be Called?”

“The humans can’t know,” Castiel countered, “And yet thei know. They call their knowing ‘faith.’ I know without knowing—I’m not mad, brother. But I know with everything that I am. I feel it in every part of me.”

“He was exiled from the Garden—”

“Wrongly!” Castiel cried. “He was wrongly exiled—Michael, he was not corrupted. I have touched his Soul, it was wounded—terribly, both recently and long ago—but not corrupted. He is the human he was in the garden, he was always meant to be Guarded. I was meant to find him, and I didn’t. I… Michael, I feel that I’ve found my Calling too late to answer it. I…”

“Castiel…”

“It’s breaking my heart,” Castiel whispered, and Michael listened. He said nothing. In the great hollow of the admission, the hurt deepened and Castiel pressed a hand to the aching chest of his vessel. “My vessel…” He cleared his throat. “My vessel has been strange. That’s why I wanted to speak to you.”

“Yes,” Michael seemed to pull himself back. “Yes, of course. Tell me,” he cleared his throat and Castiel wanted to tell him that it was fine, that he didn’t have to worry. Michael meant well, even if he never quite understood Castiel’s eccentricities. “Tell me what’s been happening.“

He did. He tried to explain the strange feelings that echoed from his vessel into his soul when Dean curled up close, the strange, wonderful feeling of Dean warm and near and peaceful, safe and close. The way his whole vessel seemed to yearn toward Dean, the way he wanted to coil out of his vessel and become the air Dean breathed, to guard his dreams and fend off his waking fears. He wanted to be the warmth of sunlight brushing Dean’s cheek and the cool breeze caressing his brow. He wanted to pour his soul through Dean until Dean knew as the angels knew God that he was cherished and beloved and protected, that he would always be held in the Light.

Even though there was no more Light.

But his vessel was not as pure. It responded. It reacted. It was a hungry, predatory thing that demanded and demanded and demanded, and no matter how viciously Castiel rebuked it, it would not relent.

“How do you restrain the vessel?” Michael asked, caution coloring his voice.

“I strike the offending parts—”

“Castiel!”

“You do not understand, Michael!” Castiel shouted, soul and vessel both a fractious buzz. “I cannot—I can not—allow myself to hurt him.”

“Punishing the vessel will not banish its urges,” Michael argued, but Castiel wanted to hear none of it.

“It tempers them,” Castiel murmured. “I could… There must be other options. Medical interventions—”

“Masturbation, Castiel.” Michael drolled, “It’s called masturbation. You touch your cock until you orgasm, and your vessel will, for a time, stop demanding. It can actually be quite pleasant, if a little loud.”

Castiel wanted to recoil out of his very skin. The thought… The thought was repugnant.

“God doesn’t care,” Michael pressed on, “He is gone, Castiel. He sees nothing, He cares for nothing. He has no more will, and He never cared much what we did with our vessels anyway.”

“I can’t.” Castiel nearly choked on the words.

“Why?”

Castiel stared out at the meadow, the uncold snow that piled silent and soft over the earth. It was a sweet winter, though Castiel preferred late summer. Perhaps tomorrow it would be summer again. He didn’t want to think about his vessel or its vulgar physicality. He didn’t want to be a physical thing at all—he was meant to exist beyond the physical, but the great Absence was so crushing that he had no choice. He had no other refuge.

Except that Dean felt almost like refuge. Strange, because Castiel was meant to be the guardian.

“I don’t know,” Castiel said. “I don’t understand it. I just… I can’t.”

“What if—and I’m not suggesting you do anything, to be clear, this is purely hypothetical—but what if he did?”

Castiel swallowed.

“He didn’t want to. He called it rape.”

Michael sighed. “That’s… unusual for humans. They usually crave it—it’s normal for human bodies to seek sexual stimulation. He said you raped him?”

Castiel stared at his feet and the weathered boards of the porch for a moment.

“He said he raped me.” Castiel corrected.

Mighael sighed explosively. “What a fucking mess.”

Chapter Text

Gun to his head, Dean could not have explained why he opened the front door. He never went outside, and he never opened doors without permission. It was crazy—bananas—the urge that pushed him first to lean his ear against the door, and then to slowly open it, letting in the not-cold air that sent goosebumps up his spine anyway. It was winter out there, snow and everything, but it wasn’t cold.

This whole place was weird.

He crept around the porch, keeping an eye on the open door, mindful of his escape if he needed it. The porch wrapped around so that Dean could keep mostly out of sight while he eavesdropped on Cas, which was convenient. Just around the corner of the house, Castiel was staring out into the meadow, fingers toying idly with some snow on the banister. His gray eyes were bright with reflected snow, the beep blue of winter sky. High up, a buzzard milled idly, which seemed strange but Dean knew more about cars than birds.

Too bad there were only birds here to look at.

His cell phone was on his seat, untouched and silent, and for a moment, Dean thought Castiel was just out here watching the sky, until—

“So talk to him,” a voice said over the phone. “If you think he can understand, then talk to him, and if you realize he can’t, then, there’s your answer.”

Castiel’s mouth pulled into a tight line.

“I can’t.”

“Why?” The phone hardly distorted the voice at all.

“I don’t know, it’s not like me, is it?” Castiel reached forward and gathered a little more snow off the banister. “I was… I recall being so decisive once.”

“A lot has changed.”

Castiel nodded, but said nothing.

“Castiel, I’m not going to agree with you about God’s Will, or about your supposed Ward,” the voice said, “But we have no Higher Purpose left. We simply… exist. I know He was never particularly warm, but I… I like to believe that His Will would be for us to find what peace can be found.”

“I still feel His Will,” Castiel told the field. “I don’t think I ever stopped feeling it, even when His Absence was… so huge.”

“He left us,” said the voice, and there was something mournful there, something deeply pained. “What does His will matter if He isn’t coming back? What kind of existence is that? Waiting for… Waiting forever. I think we were amusing once—

“He loved us!”

“Of course He loved us!” The voice snapped and Castiel flinched. “He loved us just as His creations love the things that amuse them. He loved us until He didn’t, and it hurts me to see you waiting for Him, because He is not coming back.”

Dean leaned closer to the wall. Castiel didn’t see him, and he wanted… He wanted to go to him, actually, which was a crazy person thing to want, so Dean figured he ought to just curb that instinct. Just nix that real quick. But he also wanted to hear. Because Castiel cared about this, and he never talked this much to Dean. He never argued or said he wanted things, and here he was showing himself to whoever he was talking to (not Nathaniel or Theophania, both of whom Castiel had introduced Dean to over the phone, and both of whom seemed to manage Castiel better).

“Castiel, He isn’t coming for us. It’s been so long. He’s gone and made something new—he talked about it after the first flood, about just starting from scratch. We all just thought He would take us with rather than remaking us, but… If you can do anything…”

“Michael, stop.” Castiel’s voice was small, and again that crazy person urge yanked at Dean’s heart, demanded he go to Cas. “I can’t… I can’t be without Purpose like that—”

“None of us can!” Michael cut in.

“You know what I mean!” Cas insisted, and a silence stretched out into the sunlit snow. “You know… I wasn’t made for… autonomy.”

“I know.”

Castiel gazed out into the meadow. His eyes watched nothing.

“I want you to have whatever gives you Purpose,” the voice over the phone said after a long, long silence. “We were not made to suffer.”

“We were made to inflict suffering,” Castiel muttered, a shade of resentment in his voice. “We were made to rend and destroy—I was made to rend and destroy—It is perverse that I cannot stop thinking of nurturing and protecting. It is… I need it to be my Purpose, Michael, because if it is not, then it is a rejection of the last thing...”

The snow crumbled out between Castiel’s fingers and fell soundlessly to the ground.

“What can I do, Castiel?” Michael asked, “As your brother, what can I do?”

Castiel shook his head then scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked lost. Bereft.

“Nothing. I’ve… I’ve imposed enough upon your time—”

“Castiel—”

“No, it’s… I didn’t mean to make demands on your time or your energy.” Castiel picked up the phone. “I should… I could work. I could… There are mistakes to correct.”

“They’re not mistakes,” Michael said.

“They can’t possibly be on purpose,” Castiel snapped. “It’s impossible. The whole reason those companies exist is—”

“To turn a profit.”

Castiel scowled at the phone and made some disbelieving noise as Michael explained—for what sounded like not the first time—that insurance companies decided not to pay on purpose. Dean smiled to himself a little. It was just so Cas, that naïveté. That earnest need to do good, even when he didn’t understand what he was doing.

He crept nearer, no longer really committed to staying hidden. No longer a tiger stalking down its prey. Now, he sidled up to Cas and slid himself close, and Castiel gave him a wide-eyed look before letting Dean fit himself under Cas’s arm.

“I’ve got to go,” Castiel said, and hung up before the conversation could go on any longer. Then, “Dean,” he said. “Hello.”

“Hey, Cas,” Dean said. And then he didn’t say anything. He shivered a little, not because it was cold, but because he was outside and it made some part of him that feared consequences itch.

“You alright?” He asked, after several long moments, and Castiel straightened a little.

“I am in excellent health, and in no acute distress,” Castiel replied, and Dean sighed.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, “But, like, are you alright?”

Something hurt passed across Castiel’s features, and Dean wanted to grind his teeth against the frustration, because he knew Cas was… He didn’t even think he knew how good or not worked with angels, but something in Dean pulled him. Something called him near, and he wanted to throttle Cas for being so goddamn proud and fussy and weird, for not acknowledging that he needed something—even if there was nothing Dean could do.

“I just…” Cas was stiff against Dean, and he’d been like this lately. Stiff and distant, and he was Dean’s literal only human connection, even if he wasn’t human.

“I just want to be good to you,” he said, finally. “But I don’t think I… I don’t know how.”

“We’ll come up with something,” Dean reassured. “Two heads is better, right?”

Castiel blinked at him for a moment, frowning.

“Two heads.” He repeated.

“Two heads is better than one?”

“Ah, yes, of course,” he said, sounding like he hadn’t actually made sense of anything. “Two heads. But you see, Dean, we have foreheads, though I still applaud your mathematical… enthusiasm.”

Was he… Dean look at Cas and caught the ghost of… Was that a smile? Was Castiel fucking with him?

The smile widened, a warmth climbing into Cas’s eyes. Dean wasn’t trying to sound like a girl or anything, but that warmth was nice. Castiel’s eyes when he smiled were really nice.

“Two heads, foreheads?” Castiel prodded, like it was a funny enough joke for Dean to laugh at. Dean wouldn’t. He didn’t laugh like that. Maybe a little in triumph, but triumph was so distant lately that he couldn’t remember what it was like. “Because one could misunderstand the prefix and believe we were describing numbers, you see.”

“Yeah, Cas,” Dean said warming him self against Castiel, trying to stave off the melancholy.

“Was it good?”

God, he was… Dean just wanted to punch him sometimes. And hug him. He’d seemed so sad, but here he was trying to joke. Always trying.

“This is good,” Dean said, burrowing a little closer, pressing a little nearer.

Cas angled away a bit, but Dean decided to press forward a little. Keep up the contact.

“My brother, Michael—you wouldn’t know him… unless… you’re familiar with the archangels—I do believe he did work on earth, though that was some time before you were born, if I recall… Do you recall the fall of Rome?” Cas began to ramble, and Dean hugged him a little closer, regretting that he was smaller than Cas. Regretting that he couldn’t wrap the angel up in his arms. “Regardless, Michael, my brother… I… Did you overhear much of that conversation?”

Dean nodded.

“The bit about my, uh, my vessel?”

Castiel was stiff and obviously uncomfortable, and Dean briefly considered telling the truth—he hadn’t caught anything about bodies—but then ne nodded and Castiel went stiffer beside him.

“I know Michael said I should… engage with you.” Castiel sounded brittle enough to shatter. “But I swear, no matter what my vessel does, I won’t… I wouldn’t… not without your permission—”

“You’ve got my permission, Cas,” Dean said. He had no idea what the hell posessed him. Maybe getting shrunk had shrunk his brain and now he was stupider—that seemed pretty plausible. Sammy might have something fancy to say about that idea, though Bobby had always said he was an idiot, so… six of one, Dean supposed.

Cas also clearly thought Dean had gone stupid, because he had quit breathing.

“I don’t think you should give me permission…” Castiel said, and… yeah. Yeah, he was probably right. It was probably really friggin’ stupid to give Cas blanket permission that Dean didn’t know shit about, but honestly? Enough things had happened to him with zero regard for his permission, and Castiel didn’t seem to have much of a sadistic streak, and if it sucked then he could always just say no next time, right?

“Tough,” Dean said, affecting as much confidence as he could. He sounded good. “I already did. What’re you gonna do about it?”

Castiel stared at him with that familiar, exhausted look.

“I want to…” Castiel pulled away, and Dean braced for something really fucking weird, because why the hell else would Cas be so bashful about this. (It wasn’t gonna be weirder than diapers and daddy shit, or crawling around like an animal, or… actually, better not to think about it.).

“I really want to hug you,” he said.

“You wanna hug me?” Dean confirmed, because that was… Like, there needed to be a new word for tamer than tame.

Castiel nodded and Dean pressed his lips together, took a deep breath, and dove in. Castiel wrapped his arms around Dean after a stiff second, and Dean pressed his ear to Castiel’s chest, listening to the seashell-ocean sound of Cas’s heart. He wrapped arms around Cas’s bigger body and closed his eyes, and Castiel squeezed him tight, and holy shit.

Holy shit, he’d needed this.

Hadn’t even known how bad, but he’d needed this, and he could feel the way the tremor left Cas’s arms. The way his body went a little looser. The way he breathed in the top of Dean’s head like Dean smelled some kind of way.

“Just keep saying what you wanna do, Cas,” Dean said into Castiel’s chest, and immediately Cas’s arms tightened around him. “You’ve got my permission.”

Castiel nodded.

The snow ate up the noises of a flock of quails rummaging through the forest’s edge.