Yooooo 🥺🥺🥺 🫴🫴🫴 with Dean being the one forced 👀 (or of course you to you)
Pushing Whumpee's head down to make them stare at the floor and keeping them in the uncomfortable slumped posture
Oho, this was so fun to put my own spin on, mighta' taken some creative liberties but oh well... CW for blood and general SPN stuff, hope this is good for you Jenny o7
---
“Hey, Cas…” There’s a burning in Dean’s ribs when he breathes, an ache that goes too deep to be ignored, “I think we’re lost.”
The angel doesn't reply right away, just keeps unevenly dragging the two of them through the underbrush. Dean thinks he’s supporting his own weight, he’s not really sure, he hasn’t been able to feel his foot since those demons got the drop on them back at the cabin.
‘Routine poltergeist’ his ass.
“Cas…”
This isn’t the worst place to be lost, honestly it looks right out of Dean's dreams, a lake as smooth as glass, stars filling the otherwise unlit sky, a sandy beach that backs up to woods thick with cedars and hemlocks. But they lit that cabin piled with demon meat suits up almost an hour ago and Dean’s starting to feel the cold in his bones.
“Cas-” They stumble and Dean wheezes out a cough, “Can we take a breather?”
He really just wants to lay down and nurse the wounds Cas refuses to heal.
The angel turns to him and, wow, have his eyes always been so blue? Maybe it’s just the splatters of red across the bridge of his nose that’s really making the color pop.
“We need to keep going.”
Cas is hurt too- He’s pretending he isn’t but Dean can read him like a book, and he saw that demon stick Cas with a weird looking pole before Cas’ angel blade found a new home in its sternum, he’s hurting too.
“Just a quick break,” Dean’s not begging, he’s not, “We’re both hurt.”
“I’m sorry.” Cas stumbles forward a few more steps before his resolve begins to sway. Dean can see the moment of acceptance in Cas’ eyes, when he decides to stop, when he decides that they’re not going to drop down into the dirt and instead hauls both of them out of the bushes and onto the sand, “I- I’m sorry.”
“‘S okay.” Dean drops down to his knees, looking towards the surface of the lake and feeling a detached sense of awe.
There’s worse places to rest for a while.
“I can’t heal my vessel.” Cas is on the ground next to him, chest heaving, “They- they warded me-” He lifts up his shirt and it’s hard to tell exactly what he’s showing off through the blood; It looks like there’s a shape underneath it all, formed from split, bubbling skin.
A brand, Dean’s brain provides.
“I can’t heal you.”
Dean reaches out to ghost his fingers over the wound, “What’s it doin’?”
“It’s-” Cas swallows, looking up at the sky for a moment, looking like nothing more than a man from Illinois begging to be something more, “It’s a trigger. I tried to use my grace to heal you, Dean, I swear but-”
The edge of Dean’s vision is starting to get a bit hazy.
“I could feel myself leaving.” The angel looks frightened, it doesn't suit him, “I think it will separate my true form from my vessel once I use my grace.”
“That sucks.” The ache in his ribs has spread to the rest of his chest, “Think I could use some healing right about now…”
The world shifts a bit then suddenly stops, when moved to stop him from face planting into the sand, Dean can’t say.
“I want to heal you.” There’s a hand in his hair, it’s comforting, “I don’t know…”
Cas trails off and Dean focuses on the feeling of Cas holding onto his hair- His knees hurt and his back is slouched at an odd angle and the beach is so thin that Dean’s hands are nearly in the water, but that doesn't matter.
“If I told you not to look back, would you listen?”
What kind of a question is that? Of course he would, he’d listen to Cas even if it killed him.
“Dean?”
“Yeah, Cas,” Why does his mouth taste like copper? “I’d listen.”
“Good.” The hand in his hair tightens and his head is forced downwards and- despite the promise he just made- he tries to lift it back up to ask what the angel is up to, only for it to be shoved back down.
The hand in his hair hurts now, it’s too tight, too hot, there’s heat radiating off of Cas in waves and it hurts, it’s blinding-
He’s firmly pushed forward enough that he needs to brace his hands on the shore just to stay upright, back screaming in protest. He didn’t even realize he’d tried to look at Cas again.
His own face is staring back at him from the surface of the lake, bloody and battered, lip split, and then there’s Cas.
Maybe it’s the concussion talking but Cas damn near has a halo above him, reflecting in the water brighter than the stars. His eyes too, are glowing, and his hands-
The water ripples from a breeze Dean doesn't feel and all he sees is wings, wings, wings-
Gone is Jimmy Novak, now there’s something new, something so vast even the lake can’t fully catch its reflection. In the corner of Dean's eyes it burns, so bright he knows it’d be the last thing he ever saw, but in the water it’s clear.
“Hey, Cas.”
A skeleton smiles sweetly back at him, framed with the mane of a lion, then the antlers of a stag. The rings of Saturn wrapped around its wrist bones, a rib cage filled with birds Dean’s only ever seen in museums, and wings.
There’s something wrong with them, they’re barren and, in some places, just bone. But they’re spread wide, they’re touching his shoulders, they’re scraping heaven itself, they’re beautiful.
His head is so foggy from blood loss, from the sheer drunkenness of this moment, that he doesn't realize how close he is to turning towards the light till he’s forced back to the ground with those painfully gentle fingers.
“Hello, Dean.”
