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Dean’s told Cas about the knives in hell.
He’s told him about the way the blades reflected firelight, the way they caught and flashed in the flames, like the glare of the sun as it’s dipping below the horizon and you’re heading west. He’s told him about being carved, Thanksgiving turkey-style, filleted like a fish, slaughtered like a lamb, butchered like a pig. I carved you into a new animal, Alistair had said, and he was right. He had sliced and diced until there wasn’t anything recognizable, until he was just negative space, displacing atoms by virtue of being less than the sum of his parts.
Sometimes the memories are clear, razor sharp, surgical cuts. Sometimes they’re hidden behind strobe lights, stop motion and chugging. And sometimes, they take on a hazy and dreamlike quality, which is probably the worst, because Dean already deals with the subject of many a nightmare every day. He knows what they can do. Knows how they can twist. He’s also come to learn that some dreams are more real than reality ever could be, and hell, unfortunately, fits the bill. Hell is real to him, present, in the same way Sam runs his hands through his hair when he’s frustrated, in the same way Cas fucks him up so bad he doesn’t even know which way is up anymore; that is to say, hell is a constant. Some days- most days- he walks with one foot here and one foot there, like standing halfway across a state line, even though the boundaries between hell and earth are quite a bit different than some frivolous politically drawn imaginary line.
Without a doubt, there’s a part of him that will always be scorched by hell- irreversible as the tides, black as tar. He can save as many people as he wants, but it’s not going to change the fact that he butchered hundreds –thousands, millions?- of others. He was an artist of sorts, albeit with a much sharper paintbrush. There is no universal karma, no cosmic balance to the world; Dean knows this. Has known it since the day he was deemed worth raising from the pit, even if that turned out to be just another big corporate, angelic fuckup all its own. So he doesn’t even try to balance an imaginary scale anymore. He does what he can, hunts and eats and shits and fucks.
He’s irredeemable. He’s an animal. He’s a monster. Doesn’t matter the sticker you slap on it, he’s something bad. Something base, primal, and inherently bad. It’s easy to forget in the interim moments, when he’s cooking burgers or watching a good movie or reading a good book. But when he kills a monster, and he sees the blood and feels that echo of excitement, of rightness, flare up in his chest and burst across his torso like Fourth of July fireworks, he remembers.
Before hell, he didn’t understand the significance, the itch under his skin that told him to kill things. He chalked it up to frat boy like stress relief, a human instinct to destroy, something that everyone deals with at some point in their lives. But hell taught him differently. Hell reached into his guts and pulled fire out of him. Fire that had been there for his entire life, unquenchable and unquestioningly malevolent.
He’s marred.
Then again, to be marred, to be stained, tainted, one has to be pure in the first place, and Dean’s not sure he could ever claim that title. So maybe he’s not just stained, but an ink blot, never not a destructive force.
Sam doesn’t see, is too biased to ever see. But Dean thinks Cas knows. And it doesn’t really bother him, if he’s being completely honest. Because Cas sees it, and even though he’s under no familial obligation, he stays. Not only that, but Cas does him the favor of taking that darkness out of his hands, even if only for still, extended moments of time where Dean doesn’t have to feel responsible for every single thing he’s ever done, both good and bad. The thing about Cas, is that he lifts with his legs, and subsequently, he can bear Dean’s weight better than most. When he’s with Cas, when Cas takes care of him, he’s weightless.
Cas likes knives. Dean likes knives, if only in the parts of himself that hell still lives- which, if he’s being honest, is every crevice, every pore, every atom.
So Dean likes knives, too.
They remind him of the pit, of course. The cool cut of the blade, the flat sting as it slaps against his denim clad thigh, harsh.
He was dead in hell, but the knife makes his skin sing. Downstairs, he was of the opinion that the most alive any of those people ever were, was when they were on his rack; dead.
He doesn’t lament the discovery of his true nature. The apocalypse may not have been inevitable, but he knows his limits, and knows that he’s his own limit. What doesn’t matter is that fact that he doesn’t have a limit anymore, knows it because he’s currently lying on a scratchy motel room comforter, watching Cas walk towards him with a sheathed knife in his hand.
With a sharp flick of the wrist, Cas unsheathes the knife, and Dean feels his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows thickly. It’s not fear that runs through his veins, but adrenaline, coursing hotter with every beat of his heart. Cas’ eyes are dark, predatory, and Dean gives Cas all that he can, metaphorically hands everything that he is over to Cas, wants to watch Cas slash it to pieces.
He stops at the foot of the bed, running his finger over the base of the blade, reverent. His gaze meets Dean’s, and holds for a moment, tenuous and fleeting. Cas runs the pad of his thumb up the length of the knife, smooth, not hard enough to draw blood. He never draws blood, because the threat of it is enough to hold Dean still. One wrong move, one knee jerk reaction, and he’s bleeding out, right back downstairs. (Maybe upstairs, but neither of them is sure which way is up anymore, anyways, and really, does it even matter?)
Cas pushes the point of the knife into the soft flesh of his index finger, and they both watch the skin turn white under the pressure. He eases off (never blood no bleeding it’s a rule) and the divet inflates slowly, turns pink and happy again, not a trace of evidence. Cas runs his index finger up and down, up and down the blade, repetitive movements meant to ease, meant to tease, meant to ratchet up the tension to eleven. Dean follows the movement, heavy lidded, and thinks he sees a flicker of light out of the corner of his eye.
Cas rests the knife on the bed, in between Dean’s thighs, and bends down. He unties Dean’s boots, unlaces them with deft fingers. The only sound in the room is Dean’s heavy breathing; Cas is quiet, the steady rise and fall of his chest enough to convince Dean that he’s not dead, not in the pit, not a hallucination, just Cas.
Once both his boots are off, and gently set aside, Cas picks up the knife again. With his free hand, he brushes his knuckles down the sole of Dean’s foot, as slightly as possible. Dean sucks in a quiet gasp, bites down on the inside of his cheek to stifle it. Cas hears it, if the slight smirk playing at the corners of his mouth is anything to go by.
Cas peels his socks off, sets them alongside the boots. He runs the knife down the same path his knuckles just took, touch just as light, and Dean has to put a hand over his eyes, all the breath blowing out of him in one fell swoop. It’s always like this when the knife comes out to play. Always intense, always on the precipice. Feeling the kiss of a blade is kind of like coming home, in a different way than Sam is home, in a different way than sleeping next to Cas is home, but no less legitimate. Hell has just as much a claim on him as Sam or Cas.
The flat of the knife scrapes along his ankle bone, catch-drag of the invisible serrations on the blade leaving a delicious trail of sensation, a burn without the accelerant. Cas reaches up, presses the side of the blade to the inside of Dean’s thigh, denim providing on an unwanted barrier.
“Cas. Pants,” he grates out, heels of his palms kneading his eyes. It’s always so much. Hell and Cas mixed up into one, a thought both horrifying and electrifying at the same time. After all, they met in hell. Dean doesn’t do fate, but he does do inevitability. Maybe it’s inevitable they’ve come full circle. Maybe Cas and hell are a packaged deal, sort of like how Dean comes bundled with enough baggage to send an airplane into a tailspin.
Cas ignores him, crawling up Dean’s body so that they’re face to face. He drags the knife down Dean’s cheek, under his jaw, to the hollow of his throat. For a moment, he presses, a pinprick of pain, and then his thumb is replacing it, erasing the mark, cool texture against overheated skin. The knife continues on its path, over Dean’s shirt, down to where his cock is tenting his jeans. Cas slots the knife (blade facing away from the skin) into the crevice where Dean’s upper thigh turns into his pelvis, and Dean whimpers, and this time bites down on the palm Cas silently offers him. Dean feels the muscles shift under his teeth, tastes the salt slick of sweat on Cas’ hand. His teeth vibrate when his moans hit the obstruction of Cas’ palm and bounce back, a sound boomerang.
Then, without warning, the pressure from the knife is gone, and it’s back on his cheek, and the blade is soft, lilting against his skin. It’s a caress, a moment of connection that’s not about the metal between them, but about the unspoken words. It’s a moment of thisishellyou’rehelli’mhellwe’reallinhell, it’s a moment of thank you and a moment of fuck you, because even after all this time, Dean’s not used to having someone validate this part of him, and it feels equal parts dirty and liberating.
Cas pulls the knife off Dean’s cheek, catches it between his teeth. He shuffles down Dean’s torso, and starts pulling at the hem of his shirt, trying to get it off. Dean obliges, wriggling out of the shirt as quickly as possible, and as soon as it’s thrown haphazardly off to the side (a far cry from the neat placement of the boots and socks) Cas is straddling his stomach again, slapping the knife flat against his chest, tracing planes and lines and peaks and valleys, the metal leaving a sharp, exposed flavor behind, along with the accompanying tingling sense of impending lethality. Whenever Dean inhales, his chest goes up and the knife stays flat, and it presses just that much more into the skin, leaving white indentations that disappear almost as soon as they’ve appeared, a roadmap of potential scars-that-weren’t. Cas traces a pattern around Dean’s left nipple, and there’s a choked off gasp stuttering out of his mouth, an oath or maybe Cas’ name or a combination of the two. Cas twists the knife, just enough, and Dean keens.
The knife dances down his torso, eventually settling on the denim still covering his dick, and it’s instinct for Dean to thrust up against the pressure, and Cas immediately puts his other hand on Dean’s abdomen.
“No,” is all he says, and it’s all Dean needs. Cas is the one holding his burden right now, Cas is the one holding the knife. He calls the shots.
With the tip of the blade, Cas pops the button on Dean’s jeans, and then hooks the end in the zipper so he can pull it down as well. He leaves the knife on Dean’s bare chest this time, and Dean does his best to even out his breathing so the knife will stay where it is. Cas pulls down his jeans and briefs in one go, he hears the soft slap of denim against the wall, and the knife is against his cock now, flat along the underside, and it takes every single vein of restraint in Dean to keep from bucking at the touch. Cas presses, relents, and ever so carefully, slides the knife off Dean’s dick. Dean lets out a breath he doesn’t realize he’s been holding, and then there’s the sting of the knife coming down on his thigh, and he winces, pinpricks of bright lights dancing at the corners of his vision. At the same time, the hit travels down south (up north, actually, since it was his thigh) exceptionally fast. He hears the flames, this time, and it sounds like they’re whispering to him. Cajoling.
“Fuck, Cas,” he hisses, even though Cas isn’t the one on fire, Cas isn’t the one in the flames. Cas fans them, maybe. Douses them in gasoline. He has no idea anymore.
Cas doesn’t answer, just smooths the stinging skin with the cool of the blade, presses his palm flat on top, sandwiching everything together. It’s a strange, but fitting feeling. Dean burns, hot as a fever, consuming, constantly consuming, and Cas is the cool, the blade, the calm sweep of lines that can put out a fire and then raise it from the ashes on a whim. Cas is ice and stoicism and collected, and Dean thought he would melt when he put his hellfire into Cas’ outstretched hands, but then Cas did what Dean never thought could be done, and he melted the fire. Tamed it. Shaped it into a knife that cuts cold and burns hot.
It’s absolution, maybe. Release, always.
And, like always, Cas will throw the knife away at the last minute. He will jam it into a wall or toss it behind the headboard or fling it towards the bathroom, but when Dean comes, the knife isn’t there. The knife is the architect, and Cas is the demolition crew fifty years later. He breaks down what the knife builds, plows through walls and debris to find whatever lies at the core of Dean Winchester. Dean’s not sure what it is, has never asked. Obviously Cas is okay with what he sees, though, because he keeps coming back.
Cas jacks him, even, nice and slow. Firm grip, loose grip, both at the same time, Dean doesn’t know how Cas does it, but he does. He comes, and he knows Cas isn’t far behind, knows the nuances of Cas’ orgasms better than he knows his own.
They’re together on the bed afterwards, knife nowhere in sight.
But Dean can see Cas.