#michaelxdean

Of course, going up alone against the kind of scum that had no problem using infant blood and live organs as ingredients in a spell was never a good idea, but getting to land a bullet in the monster's face was worth all the telekinetic gutting that came after.

 Dean exhaled sharply, breath punched out of his lungs in a way that once again confirmed that any spellcaster this far into the dark side was also stupidly, stupidly powerful. He was pulled upright before he could reach for his gun, and pinned to the wall by an intangible, hateful energy that made his skin crawl. 

 “You ruined my altar,” the warlock informed him. “But not to worry. You’re no innocent lamb, but your heart will do just fine."

 Dean grunted at the pain in his chest; at the horrifying sensation of muscles and sinew being wrenched apart to get at the pulsating thing behind them. His vision turned a bloody white when the first rib broke, but it wasn’t until the second began to splinter that he gathered the breath to ask for a miracle. The first thought which rose from the throes of his pain was a prayer to Castiel, but the invocation that wound around his tongue was older and much more potent than the wry soundbites he used to call on the seraph.

 The syllables of this terrific poetry that tasted like warm copper on his tongue manifested as a burst of coruscating light that streamed into the windowless basement through the very pores of the walls. 

 Everything quaked; brick dust rained from the roof, and what couldn’t hold its structure under the force of this approaching cataclysm, shattered. Including the warlock, Dean realized, because in between gasping for air and searching for his gun, he hadn’t even noticed the harrowing whine of an angel’s true voice above far more human screams.

 He stood up clutching his chest, staggering like a wounded animal in the eye of a storm made of holy light.

“You summoned an archangel? You?!” the warlock screeched in spiteful disbelief. “Who are you?!” 

 Dean barely registered the demand. There was a pyroclast at his back, folded into human form with deceptively sweet green eyes, who filled the acrid lair with an equally sweet, green smell of earth and pine. Michael’s footsteps were soft and purposeful as he approached. Dean sensed his grace rippling in askance.

 “I’m your true vessel,” he gasped roughly, still glaring at the thing he came to hunt. “That’s gotta mean something, don’t it?"

 “It means everything." Michael did not hesitate, as if the mere inkling of Dean’s wishes drew the words from his mouth. 

 “Good,” Dean had his hands around the warlock’s throat even before he finished that single syllable, and Michael slid his own palm over the hunter’s shoulder. Now, they were both that pyroclast—what was Michael flowed through Dean, like a river and its branch for him, but much worse for the warlock whose eyes and mouth exploded into flames. Pure holy fire seared away the monster’s flesh and the profane stanch of black magic until it was nothing more than a handful of ashes. Time seemed to slow, but the last of the embers died eventually and Dean shivered.

 Tied to a comet was an apt description—it felt like his body contained a swarm of stars, and the contradiction between their immensity and his own smallness was giving his brain vertigo. Dean was only vaguely aware of Michael’s arm looping around his chest to steady him; he was fascinated by his palms, which perversely didn’t look any different even after roasting a person alive?

 “Holy shit!” Dean exclaimed, when the magnitude of the act finally hit. “That was—uh…”

 “I know,” Michael hummed against the nape of his neck, as if he just knew the human tongue couldn’t possibly describe what had occurred. For Dean’s part, the pain in his chest was no more, but the archangel’s normally comforting warmth made him feel more lightheaded. Divine wrath was different when it was under one’s own skin, like a solvent that was too harsh, that cleansed a little too deeply and left a patch of the world stripped bare instead of merely tidy.

 Dean swallowed thickly and swept his eyes at the debris of dark witchcraft still scattered just beyond their hallowed radius. “I thought it’d be more satisfying,” he explained, more steadily than he felt. “but maybe I’m getting old.”

 Michael patted his flank in response, his vessel’s fingers slipping under the torn jacket that made up Dean’s FBI disguise. “This kind of vengeance is never about satisfaction,” he replied softly, the rolling timbre of his voice pulling Dean’s attention back to into their single square space containing just them. “It’s about burning the weeds. To save the whole garden, so to speak.”

 Instinctively, Dean wrapped Michael’s arms tighter around himself, to ground the angel as much as himself. “Yeah, well, maybe it’s best if I stick to my own weed-whacker from now, and leave yours to you.”

 Michael laughed at that, and the swooping plumes of light that Dean now recognized as the archangel’s wings threw dramatic shadows against the decrepit walls. “Whatever you say, Dean.”

 -

 From the fringes of the operation, Dean watched the local police raid the warlock’s house and a team of paramedics receive a shivering kids who’d gone missing over the last few days. There was nothing more heartwarming than the sound of families reuniting. Unless, of course, it was his own.

 “That was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done!” Sam was yelling, despite the police chief and at least one deputy side-eyeing his decidedly un-FBI like behavior. “All you had to do was wait a couple minutes and—“

 “Come on, Sam, you’re making a scene,” Dean interrupted, flashing the cops a placating gesture before turning back to his infuriated brother. “You know damn well you’d have gone in after those kids, too. And it all worked out, didn’t it?”

 Sam looked anything but impressed. “Did it?” he countered. “Dean, do you have any idea how lucky you were that an archangel happened to have his ears on?”

 The beginnings of Dean’s reply were lost in a sudden flutter of wings, and Michael’s formidable reappearance to inform them that the lair had been purged of supernatural booby traps.

 “Trouble in paradise?” the angel asked, looking at the two of them over a small bundle he held in his arms.

 “Eh, Sam’s just hangry,” Dean replied and promptly earned an appalling bitch-face from his brother. The hunter frowned warily when the bundle in Michael’s arms began to move. “Uh, what is that?”

 “Oh, this?” Michael asked innocently even as he deposited said ‘this’ into Dean’s arms. It was a baby, one of the ones kidnapped by the psycho they’d just taken care of, and whose cherubic serenity lasted for two whole seconds before the crying began.

 “Oh man, come on—“ Dean floundered, but it wasn’t long before the sound attracted the attention of a paramedic and a tearful woman who’d been restlessly hovering behind the police tape. There was a general ruckus headed their way after that, led by desperately relieved mantras of ‘you found her, you found my baby!’

Michael flicks his eyes forward, to his true vessel’s wry expression shrouded in shadow.

“I’m fine,” he replies mildly, sitting up until they're mere inches away from each other under the Impala’s black frame. He can discern each freckle dotting Dean’s face from here, and hear the rhythmic notes of an increasingly frantic heartbeat. The Mark of Cain sets Dean's nerves on edge at his proximity to its natural enemy, but the man doesn’t move. In fact, Dean leans in without hesitation when Michael pulls at the back of his neck for a kiss.

Yet even as their lips meet, the hunter’s skin blooms in goosebumps under his fingertips. Michael is not what he was before his entrapment in the Cage, but his diluted grace would still grate upon Dean like salt on a demon. He thinks about his true vessel, branded with Lucifer’s sigil and averse to his touch, and his current body seizes under a surge of possessive anger. Michael’s hold turns tight and bruising, as if he could draw Dean’s soul close and never let go.

“Mmph!” Dean nips at his bottom lip and pulls away. “Not that I don’t appreciate this,” he says. “but we’re on a case.”

They certainly are, and Michael lets go without bothering to hide his reluctance.

“I know,” he replies, sliding his palm over the top of the driver’s seat. “but I thought it looked...familiar. It was a night like this, wasn’t it?” he gestures to the sky and the woods. “when you made love to Anna in this car?”

Dean predictably recoils. “Dude, what the fuck? Were you perving on us or something?”

“Wouldn’t that imply I enjoyed what I saw?”

“Holy shit!” Dean pushes off the frame of the car and throws up his hands. “You’re sick. You’re all sick!”

Michael ignores the accusation in favor of getting out of the car. Wrath is harmless; but the ache in his chest, less so.

“Did you love my sister?” he asks, and his hand tightens around the open door even as the words leave his mouth— as if a ton of cold metal could be any comfort if the answer tore at him.

Dean whirls around, fuming. “You can’t be serious,” he says, voice rough and pained. "Man, I went to hell. I could still smell sulfur on my clothes, blood on my hands, and the screaming just—”

He stops mid-tirade to scrub his fingers through his hair. “I was a goddamn mess,” he sighs. “And Anna was there."

Michael takes measured steps toward him, just as he would approach something wounded. He’s more cautious these days, and tries to choose his words more carefully because tact, he’s learned, is more valuable than grace.  

Dean scowls when Michael touches the side of his face, but it doesn’t quite hide the haunted look in his eyes. The night is now familiar in all the wrong ways, and Michael doesn’t even need to read his mind to understand why.

“I am sorry.” he says plaintively, and something in him does regret the can of worms he’d opened in pursuit of his jealousies.

“Don’t,” Dean pushes his hand away without force behind it. “‘Cause it ain’t like it's any better. At least back then, I could say Alistair tortured me and made me carve up those souls, but now—"

Michael watches the hunter’s right arm clench involuntarily under the constant, low-frequency hunger of the Mark.

“You did what you had to,” he offers.

Dean snorts, busying himself once again. “Ain’t that the thing,” he grunts, yanking open Baby's driver side door. He pauses before he gets in and turns to look at Michael.

“Hey, y’know, back when I told Zachariah I’d…” he starts and stops, brow wrinkled in a thoughtful frown. However, he quickly shakes his head at Michael’s piqued expression. “Never mind, forget it, I…I gotta catch up with Sam."

With that, he gets into the car and starts up the engine, not even blinking when Michael teleports shotgun. They don’t talk, and they don’t need to because the archangel stares out the window and memories pass by like the trees surrounding them.

Himself descending into the green room, following the clear syllables of Zachariah’s invocation and the promise of destiny; Dean, with the raw and defeated expression of one who would save the world...

If Michael compared the man in his mind’s eye to the one right next to him, he would no doubt find that same despair. But Dean never did say Yes. He shut that door and un-wrote destiny in the moment he chose Sam. Or so it seemed.

Michael knows better than to think a random chance could change written fate, or that it's coincidence that the seals to the Cage broke after Sam could not be there to stop his brother from saying yes to Cain.

Glancing at Dean’s reflection in the windshield, Michael thinks about how to replace what Hell took from his true vessel. He is neither compassionate like Sam nor kind like Anna; he is fire and vengeance and all things opposite of comfort.  

But when the wolves start to circle; when the Mark awakens to sharpen his teeth; when it comes time to resist perdition once again, it won’t be comfort that Dean will need.

When Castiel first told him what Michael had done, the news had burst like a floodlight on the otherwise gray and hopeless stretch of his and Sam’s silent battle of wills over the Mark of Cain. They make the drive from the bunker to Warsaw, Missouri in record time, Dean’s heart swelling with each closing mile until they finally arrive at Garth’s houseboat.

It’s abandoned, of course, except for the lonely figure of Cas standing still on the dock to wait for them. But Dean lets his ecstasy spur him forward, leaving Sam to catch up, and casts a wide glance around.

“Well, where is he?” he asks the seraph. “Where’s Benny?”

The apologetic look that Cas gives him in place of an answer must have been far more obvious to Sam, because the last thing Dean hears before Castiel places two fingers on his forehead are his brother’s urgent footsteps and the panicked shout of his name.

The good news is that Michael hadn’t lied: Benny Lafitte had been resurrected, but the utter delight of his old friend embracing him with an enthusiastic “Dean fuckin’ Winchester!” is short lived because for all that Michael took a risk invading Leviathan’s territory on a half-ration of grace, he expected equal return. In this case, his true vessel would reap the dubious benefit.

To that end, Benny glances at Dean’s forearm. “Heard about your problem tattoo, brother,” he says. “I’m here to help.”

That’s when Dean realizes he’s been played. He’s been played, and now, he’s alone at the proverbial crossroads where angelic lunacy intersected with unspeakable temptation and the life of a good man hung in the balance. Not that it makes a lick of difference to Michael.

“It’s a good deal, Dean.” he advises flatly. “And you have the advantage, for once.”

“Shut up!” Dean snaps back, fear battling with anger within the hallow of his chest. “I can’t believe you think I’d…you sick son of a bitch—”

“Dean!” With a firm voice and a small shake of his head, Cas manages to grab his frayed moorings and rein him back. Something inside Dean strains at the anchor, eclipsing even that part of him which is usually relieved to not have to give in to the Mark’s falsely amplified anger.

He pins Cas under the weight of his glare. “Did you know about this?” he demands, letting reproach color his voice.

Cas looks back like a defiant kid who is in trouble nevertheless. “I…told Michael about Purgatory,” he admits. “And I guessed his plan when he started crossing realms, but—”

Dean cuts him off with a disappointed noise. “Man, what happened to you? You’re supposed to be one of the good guys!”

“There is no ‘good’ way to remove the Mark of Cain!” Cas retorts, complete with air-quotes and indignation. “At least this way, you’ll live.”

The hunter gives a short, painful laugh.

“Yeah, only because someone else gets to die!” he says bitterly, then turns pleadingly to the vampire. “Benny, listen man, you don’t gotta do this. You don’t gotta listen to angels! You’re back on Earth; you can live your life.”

“I tried that, remember?” Benny tells him ruefully. “I tried makin’ a life here and I couldn’t, and I’m tired of dodging Leviathan and the rest of the bottom-feeders in Purgatory. Now, your archangel promised to give me an out on the condition that I take your Mark with me, and I said yes.” 

Benny squares his shoulders and extends his arm. “What d’you say, brother? Send me on my way?”

Dean feels his chest clench further under a wave of despair, but as much as he wishes it weren’t the case, he’d seen this before. Offering to free Benny from his brutal afterlife—it’s no different than when Michael promised John his wife, or Adam his mother. The vampire would get what he wanted, but not until Michael was done using him.

Archistratege of Heaven, as Dean starkly remembers from the lore, of course his MO never failed. But what gets him the most is the way Michael looks at him—with that familiar, obstinate, irritating confidence that Dean will say Yes.

After all, he’d already said yes to bearing the cost of Cain’s curse, and the Mark would collect its pound of flesh sooner or later. Better to offer it Benny, better to sacrifice this monstrous brother-in-arms than his real brother.

And doesn’t that make it easier to swallow? That Benny, who’d saved Sam’s life on behalf of Dean Winchester once, would do it again one last time?

//

The Bunker, Kansas - 3 months ago

Considering how it had begun, Dean wonders if perhaps he should have seen how it would end.

He and Sam had dragged themselves back from one of those bothersome jobs that involved wading through sewers and entrails, which added a whole new layer of literal and figurative crap atop both brothers’ constant stress about the Mark.

He could feel it even after his post-battle steam shower—something restless and wicked baying for blood just behind the fractured wall of his self-possession...which was probably a big part of the reason why things unfolded as they did when Michael appeared in his room in a rustle of wings.

Dean considered himself lucky that the archangel liked sex, even if he often got lost in the tempest of his own vessel, in which case the hunter was more than happy to take lead. They didn’t speak a word, not when Dean yanked Michael out of his clothes in between kisses, not when he fucked the angel like he wanted to drown in grace while Michael ran sun-warm hands down the knots in his back, but the silence was actually therapeutic.

“Would you ever return to Heaven, Dean?” Michael had asked after, when the hunter knelt exhausted between his thighs.

Dean lifted his eyebrow, hazy and bemused. “Uh, is that a threat?”

“No, it’s just a question.”

“Ok, well then, no?” Dean mumbled uncertainly, squinting down at Michael’s face. “I mean, the Mark of Cain doesn’t exactly make a guy Heaven material, right?”

“The Mark is not forever,” Michael pointed out. “Even Cain himself managed to be rid of it.”

“Yeah, and that worked out so well for him,” Dean returned sarcastically. Swiftly, he untangled himself from the archangel’s legs to crawl over onto his side of the bed. The Mark on his skin was still restive, despite three rounds of horizontal tango. Awesome.

“Cain did not have me.”

Something in his voice made Dean look over, unsure whether he wanted to laugh or cry. “Cain didn’t have Sam, either,” he had supplied instead. “or Cas, or Charlie. I do, but sometimes, I wonder if they wouldn’t be better off moving on with their lives.”

Then, it was Michael’s turn to raise himself up on his elbows and loom over Dean. He pushed back the damp hair sticking to the hunter’s forehead, touch reverent if not gentle.

“You have to understand something,” he’d said, holding Dean’s gaze like it was the most important thing in the world. “The universe is a lot bigger than you know—bigger than Sam’s library, Charlie’s network, bigger than this planet. It’s bigger than even Castiel knows.”

“Yeah?” Dean breathed.

“Yes,” Michael confirmed, the corners of his vessel’s mouth upturned. “And here’s the most important thing: I know Lucifer better than anybody, Dean, even Sam. My brother’s schemes are difficult to outmaneuver, but not impossible.”

“Preachin’ to the Apocalypse stopping choir, pal.” Dean sighed, too tired at the moment to contemplate the impossible.

“Then, have faith.” said Michael, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Let those you’ve fought for fight for you now.”

“Uh-huh, and when did I fight for you?” the hunter returned, teasingly, taking the opportunity to skate his hand up Michael’s bare ribs.

“If I asked, Dean, I’m almost certain you would.” came the earnest reply, and then the archangel kissed his mouth, seraphic and searing.

//

And therein lay the trap. If only Dean hadn’t been taken by Michael’s sunburst eyes, craving light and purity to counter the sulfurous blackness in his veins; if only he had recalled what it really took to do the impossible, he might not be here in the woods.

(And yet, he’s so relieved—oh God so damn relieved—at the thought of getting rid of the Mark...)

“So, I just give it to him? And then what?”

“I would dismantle him, body and soul, at a subatomic level,” Michael replies. “And the Mark with him.”

And that’s all there is to it. For all that he’d carried this soul crushing burden for the better part of a year, it’s over in seconds. It’s almost as if the Mark wanted to leave, given the way it leapt into Benny’s veins and crawled up to settle on his forearm. Dean is a little relished at the thought; means he’d been starving the thing good and long. 

Benny doesn’t actually look much different when they separate, but Dean knows enough of what might be going on inside him that he still feels sick. It only becomes worse when, after a moment of assessment, Michael nods at Cas to produce the First Blade.

A grain of glee rolls across the vampire’s face, glimmering redly in the depths of his eyes, when his fingers close around the Blade.

“Benny?” Dean tries to keep his voice from shaking.

Benny grins, teeth sharpening into needles. “Don’t worry about me, Deano,” he says, his husky voice verging on sinister. “I feel great.”

Wrong answer. Dean tenses, ready to fight, but Michael gets there first. The archangel deliberately moves between the vampire and his true vessel like a faithful bodyguard nudging a nuisance away from his charge. Then, he strategically places one hand on the vampire’s shoulder, and Benny bursts into flames.

There’s no scream, but a frozen expression of shock that takes an even more horrific turn when the Mark fights back against the archangel. Benny glows red, red, red until he’s a wicked flame himself and Michael’s masque of indifference slips as he pours a little more of his flickering strength into the fight.

Luckily, whatever he has left after his time in the Cage is considerable. It’s like watching a welding torch without protection and Dean glues his eyes to the pure flame of grace as it finally overcomes the Mark’s defenses, and his once brother-in-arms is nothing but a smear of ash on a pile of leaf litter.

He doesn’t notice his own tears until Cas meets his anguished eyes and puts an arm around his shoulders.

“You’re free, Dean.” he states, like it’s a consolation after seeing Benny ground to dust under the forces of Heaven and Hell. Like he expects the hunter to ever look at the blank space on his forearm again without guilt.

And yet, he’s better than Michael, who just stares back at him impassively. Fucking winged dick and his fucking cosmic perspective. Dean wants to punch him for wrapping such a precious gift in such sour betrayal, but he settles on wiping his nose on his sleeve and turning away to head down the unfamiliar forest path.

“Let’s go, Sammy’ll wanna hear about this.” he rasps, even though they’re miles and miles away from his brother. Sam is probably worried sick and plotting something drastic to find him, but at the moment, Dean would rather crawl across state lines than fly angel air.

//

In the weeks following, Dean throws himself into the job. He scopes out every potential case, and a couple of them even turn out to be their kinda thing. Sam understands about Benny, of course, but he doesn’t pretend he isn’t happy to see Dean free of the Mark. Still, he’s the one who stays up all night with Dean, drinking bourbon in memoriam for a vam-pirate and doing what he can for his brother’s grief.

Dean sees Cas when their schedules permit, and Michael never at all since that day. It suits him just fine because he’s done with angels, and they’re done with him.

Or so he thinks, until one night he’s polishing his favorite set of knives in the bunker’s study room and suddenly, Michael is just there in the opposite chair.

“Castiel is worried,” says the angel in lieu of a normal greeting. “…about his darling little Deano.”

Dean rolls his eyes and buffs the blade harder, making a note to talk to Sam about getting some new runes etched on them.

“As am I.” Michael continues and starts again after a pause. “Dean, it’s over. The Mark of Cain is erased from the Earth, and you’re still angry?”

“I killed a friend,” Dean counters, tightly. “who saved my life and Sam’s. Sorry I ain’t happy.” 

Michael frowns. “But you didn’t kill anybody,” he says, like the whole thing actually confuses him. 

Dean looks up, unimpressed. “You dicks still don’t get it, do you?”

“Dean, I’m the patron saint of heroes,” Michael informs him flatly. “What I’ve ‘gotten’ from that aspect of my function is that being destined for greatness and being happy are two very different things. I wish I knew why.”

“Well, ain’t you deep?” Dean mutters, then clenches his fist on the table. “You act like life is some huge mystery, but you’re the friggin’ archangel Michael! You were on God’s VIP list, and you’re telling me you don’t know the meaning of it all?”

The archangel laughs at that, and weirdly, Dean detects embarrassment more than anything else.

“You know, as angels, our work is in symbols.” Michael explains, leaning in just slightly. “When you hear about signs from God…these days, it might be coincidence, but sometimes it’s us. We’re those dreams you can’t quite shake off, your weeping statues, your burning bushes.”

Dean raises his eyebrows, but wisely abstains from making the obvious joke.

A line of distress wrinkles Michael’s perfect features when the archangel meets his eyes. “Don’t you think it’s kind of ironic, then,” he says pointedly. “that I ended up in the Cage precisely because I failed to see the signs? And now you’re asking me the meaning of it all?”

Dean’s chest tightens in the ensuing silence. It’s not uncomfortable, but it’s there—something aching and only distantly familiar. He offers a chuckle, because sure, he supposes that is fucking hilarious and then suddenly, he’s laughing. He’s laughing like his sides might split.

Tears run down his face and his ribs hurt by the time he’s done, but it’s somehow easier to breathe again.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he says, leaning heavily against the table. “Dude, that was…fuck!”

“Dean…”

Michael says his name like an invocation and he shivers, and judging by the look on the angel’s face, he’s noticed. Dean’s eyes widen at the realization: with the Mark gone, he was no longer averse to the divine. He could touch Michael without his skin crawling; he could finally taste Michael’s grace, look straight at his true form...