#pastrymisha

“You taste so sweet, Dean. I could just eat you all up,”she says, in his gravelly voice. Her fingers twitch, making a bid for her own throat maybe.

“Down, boy. You want me to take you for walkies? Shall we go out and see Sam at the bunker? Remember, Dean, you can’t hide your thoughts from me.”

It’s hopeless, he realizes. The thought tumbles into him like a colossal wave, spinning his world into chaos. She knows about Gadreel, about Dean finds his voice, then, even in the back of their shared mind he is loud. An echo that carries emotion, not acoustic strength.

‘If you try to hurt him I’ll kill you.’ No flowery language, no mechanism to fulfill threats disclosed, and yet, she believes him. Azazel, Alastair ought to have too. None of them got to go inside Dean, /truly/ inside him. Never like she has. She lulls the jealousy about not getting a chance to break him in Hell by stepping over to the mirror, preening her features. She stares into the wide green eyes and sees only herself smiling back.

Josie’s body has no brain activity, but Abaddon is protective. Folds up the redhead into her arms like a fallen soldier on a battlefield, walks her to the motel bed, tucks her beneath the sheets for safe keeping. A beautiful china doll, still made up perfectly. What was Dean’s hand fixes the curls into place. A man’s physique is quite a novelty, with its angles and its lean power. She looks again at her body in the mirror.

‘I knew you were into me,’ Dean gloats, the only chance he has to bite back at her, now confined completely. He feels like he’s a viewer, strapped in like something out of A Clockwork Orange, unable to even shut it out. An invasion of his privacy, his mind, his body. No matter what he strains, he moves only as she desires.

“I’m not just into you, Dean. I’m in you. You know what I do to rude little boys like you?” She doesn’t explain, though, and Dean doesn’t have the heart to ask. It feels like she’s won, and this is a victory lap. He’d let this happen, though. Let himself get drunk, wander off into the sort of bar a demon could just be in. Maybe he’d wanted a fight. It’s all his fault, letting someone follow him back to the motel. Another toxic mistake.

“Don’t get all morose on me, Green Eyes,” she laughs through his mouth, somehow pretty and feminine. She runs a hand down his chest, flicking open buttons. He doesn’t have time to panic before she’s picking up a fresh t-shirt. It slides over his skin, hiding the already healing cut, and she takes great joy in smoothing out wrinkles, a little too intimate.

“Burning your bunker down is so, oh, Lucifer. No, no. I think a bit of humiliation. You let Crowley make me look like a fucking idiot, Dean.”

‘Bite me.’

“I’ll eat you up, I love you so,” she quotes sardonically.

“But Dean, darling, you’re going to wish I were wearing my own body. By the time I’m through with you, boy, you’re going to regret all this mouthiness.” He stops being miserable to be restrainedly afraid. Then the world is flashing around him, like Cas flying him but with less feathers, and he’s face to face with a display of lace. Rhonda. She must know about the darkest parts of his past. All his secrets, all his sullied history. Not the first time he’s been in lace like that. Like she can tell he’s afraid, she reaches forward, his freckled hand brushing the fabric. He is fowl to her red fox smile. She’s breaking him open, and he’s sure she’ll rip his heart out of his ribcage. Now, though, now he is looking at red lace and satin.

“Expensive,” she breathes, unhooking a pair from the display, “but it’s on your card, I suppose.”

She holds them up pointedly as she walks to the counter, then thinks again, walks toward a more risque section of the sex shop. Nobody noticed him arrive, apparently. Abaddon is an artist of infiltration, when she wants to be. She runs a hand across a larger leather corset, calls over an assistant and asks to try it on. Dean shrinks into the back of her mind as she has an assistant fit his body for what looks almost like dominatrix gear, complete with a shiny leather riding crop. Almost absurdly, the cost scares him too. They walk out dressed in Dean’s clothes, with a discreet blood red bag, Abaddon humming Monroe under her breath. Anticipation is going to drive Dean half insane without her having to raise a finger. There’s a special thrill, feeling him flounder, know they’re alone together and nobody can save him. She’s back in the motel room, slowly, sensuously stripping down in front of the mirror. T-shirt first, casual, crumpling lifelessly onto tiles. His own hands loosen his belt, dropping it, hitching the slacks off his hips. He has too much pride to plead. If the body were his own, he’d be a pushing, writhing mess by now. Instead, her collected, calm eyes bear down on him. Another inch, and then she just steps out of them, licking her lips. The briefs next, which Dean feels hotly ashamed about. She pulls on the briefs, snug but not constricting (a good eye for sizing) and then carefully laces her own corset around him. Worse the second time, now that he’s naked. Small enough, but still effeminate. He’s squeezed like putty, twisted to look as vulnerable as she makes him feel.  She buckles the choker tight around his neck, then pulls out the crop. She doesn’t flinch at the pain as she brings it down sharply across her own thigh, but Dean is getting more confused by the sensation than she is. It’s a power play. A mind game. She drags the folded leather down, holding her own gaze in the mirror. Pretty green eyes. Oh, she could just eat him all up. He looks so much prettier in red. Dean can’t even flinch away as she brings it over her shoulder, a loud snap against his delicate skin. Again, over his chest. This time, up his left thigh, a slow drag.

“Beg me to stop.”

‘I am not participating in your kinky little game, bitch.’

“Beg me to put your clothes on before we knock on the door of your precious bunker, boy.”

Silence. The red welts are coming up, and she brings the crop down, a shuddering slap to his inner thigh, a bright red burn.

‘Please.’

Singular, stark sound. She laughs with his mouth, a rolling, pretty sound, brings the crop down again. She’s barely even started with him.

“I’ll take the couch,” Dean says, dropping his duffel on the table by the window. He needs to take a piss, but he unzips the bag first, pulling out the extra t-shirt he stuffed in there. “Don’t sleep in your shirt, you don’t wanna show up looking wrinkled. There’s a hanger in the closet, I think, you can just put it there.”

Cas looks solemn as he accepts the offered clothing, a plain grey thing that Dean bought in a bulk pack, ages ago. He holds it reverently, like it’s an extension of Dean’s own body, and the thought makes Dean twitch, so he goes back to digging through the duffel. The first aid kit is buried at the bottom, and once he’s pulled it out, he sets it on the table.

“’m gonna take a leak real quick,” he says, careful not to let his eyes follow the deft movements of Cas’s fingers, loosening the buttons of his shirt. “I’ll take care of that cut in a sec, okay?”

“Okay,” says Cas. The look he gives him is altogether too grateful, too appreciative for such a small promise, and Dean has to turn away, go lock himself in the bathroom before he does anything stupid.

He takes a moment to lean against the closed door, let his head fall back on the plywood and release a shaky breath. He can’t do this.

This all would be so much easier if Cas were angry. If he were moody and taciturn, hurt by how Dean made him leave just weeks before, if he were being an uncooperative little shit, maybe then Dean could figure out how to deal with this. Maybe then he wouldn’t hate himself so much.

But Cas is here and he’s offering smiles to Dean, something akin to adoration, acting as if Dean is the one doing him a favor.

What’s worse, what makes Dean feel so sick to his stomach, is that he’s letting him. Each little smile, every gentle touch and confiding glance – Dean soaks it all in. He wonders at himself, that he’s willing to go to these lengths just to find some momentary relief from the guilt that burns at his insides and leaves him raw.

He flushes the toilet and goes to the sink, washing his hands quickly before splashing a bit on his face. It’s a momentary relief too, but he towels dry and squares his shoulders, putting on his game face again.

Except when he steps back out, game face is the last thing on his mind. Cas sits on the end of the bed, his edges looking soft in the warm lamplight, and Dean’s worn shirt hangs loose on his shoulders. The word human comes to mind again for the hundredth time, but it’s never felt like having the wind knocked out of him, never felt like something so intimate.

Cas fiddles with the strip of cloth Dean had wrapped around his wound as a makeshift bandage, loosening the knot so he can pull it free. He glances up at Dean.

“Would you prefer the table, or here on the bed?”

Dean blinks.

Oh. The cut. He means cleaning up the cut.

“The table works,” he says, and the two of them move in sync to sit down together, angling their chairs so that their knees bracket each other. Cas lays his arm out across the wood, his knuckles brushing against Dean’s elbow as he opens up the first aid kit. Alcohol swabs, paper towels, cotton bandages, and medical tape – this is clinical, this is something Dean can do with complete focus, and as he works, it’s easy to push out of his mind the little hitches of breath Cas makes at the sting of alcohol.

He pats the wound dry, holds the bandage down as he wraps the tape around it to stay put. He almost wishes that he weren’t so good at this, that it would take a little longer, because there is canyon of time between now and tomorrow morning when Cas will go back to work.

When he finishes, he finds it hard to let go of Cas’s hand. Dean runs his fingers along the seams of tape, maybe pretending that he wants to be sure that it’ll hold, but Cas begins to move his fingers too, following the heart lines of Dean’s palm, and soon their fingers will tangle and there will be tugging and lost breaths and heavy hands and –

Dean pulls away, breathing deeply. “All good,” he says, voice gruff, and leans back in his chair.

He scrubs his hands over his face, through his hair. He holds so much inside, everything is so heavy, that he knows that if he even begins to let those barriers down, it will all come tumbling out, a mess that he wouldn’t even know how to begin cleaning up.

When he looks up again, Cas is still facing him. Instead of the disappointment he expects, even something resembling hurt, all he finds in his friend’s expression is understanding.

“Cas,” he whispers. “Don’t—don’t look at me like that.”

Cas frowns. “Why?”

He laughs, an empty bitter sound that dies out almost as soon as it began. “I don’t deserve it,” he says, looking down at the garish orange carpet. “Your empathy or… forgiveness.”

“That hardly matters,” Cas says. “Whether or not you believe you deserve it, I’m giving it to you anyway.”

Something fierce takes over him then, and as they meet each other’s gazes, neither budging, it reminds Dean of the days not so long ago where they would stand toe to toe, locked in a war of wills. He can’t decide if it was all more intense when Cas’s stubbornness was backed by angelic power or now by the force of human emotion.

Suddenly, he is very tired. He lays his head in his hands, a fragile cradle of arms supported by a fragile brace of knees.

“How?” he asks.

“How what, Dean?” says Cas.

“How are you not pissed at me? How do you not hate me for hanging you out to dry when I just—” His voice breaks, and he swallows the rest back down, head still heavy in his hands.

“I’m afraid,” Cas begins, and Dean hears him shift forward before he feels a gentle hand on his crown, smoothing down his hair. “There’s not much you could do to make me hate you, Dean. You are… you’re a good man. The best man.”

Dean feels his eyes burning, and he catches hold of Cas’s wrist as he looks up at him. “I’m not,” he says.

Cas moves his hand, reaches down to cup Dean’s cheek. “You are,” he says again. He rubs his thumb across Dean’s skin, following the gentle curve of cheekbone. “You carry so much and you try so hard and you are good.”

“Cas.” It’s too much, these words, it’s everything that he never knew he needed to hear and all that he doesn’t deserve, but he can’t help leaning his face into Cas’s hand. Tears fall, hot on his cheeks, and somehow it seems the most natural thing when Cas leans forward and kisses them away.

His lips trail down each cheek, soft and warm on his skin, and Dean seeks them out with his own mouth. The two of them hover for a moment, breaths mingling as their lips barely catch each other, but it’s Cas who presses forward first. He kisses carefully, precisely, like if he moves just right, everything he wants Dean to understand will be imbued within. Dean opens his mouth, lets it pour into him, because in this moment he wants to understand. He wants to know just what it is that this beautiful, fallen creature – his truest friend – sees in him, that he can still feel so much for Dean in spite of everything.

“You are wonderful,” Cas breathes out, and Dean inhales it in.

“You are immense,” Cas traces into his skin, and Dean memorizes the pattern.