log: dean + cas WHO: Castiel + Dean Winchester WHEN: June 9, some time in the late afternoon/early evening WHERE: Their room! WHAT: Castiel steals proper equipment for taking his own blood to give to Crowley, but while he's in the process of hiding it he's caught by Dean and is forced to fess up. WARNINGS: Brief references to self harm/suicidal thoughts; Crowley's addiction to human blood; the Mark of Cain's influence on Dean nearly causing violence
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Castiel gave Crowley the first vial of blood in the morning.
Rather, he gave Crowley a three-ounce Dixie cup, because he hadn't found a way to get into medical and ask for supplies without drawing attention or being asked questions as to why he required syringes and vials. He could have kept going with a pocket knife and paper cups, but he didn't exactly heal the way he used to, and he couldn't keep gouging holes in his arm if he was going to keep doing this. However, he did have a friend in medical, and he paid Hawke a visit later that afternoon to talk and to ask to see the infamous boxes of condoms in the hospital supply room.
He walked out with one pocket full of condoms, given with Hawke's blessing, and one pocket full of blood testing supplies, taken without Hawke's permission.
He tucked everything he took into a tin box and stuffed it under his bed. Sam knew what his plans were, but Dean didn't, and Cas hoped to keep it that way for as long as possible. His timing, though, was somewhat off — he hadn't expected Dean to come back from his mechanical work for at least another hour, but Dean walked in on Cas while Cas was on his hands and knees by the bed, closing up the box and tucking it away.
For the… what, umpeenth time recently? Dean was totally out of the loop on all the drama.
He'd been quiet since he found out that Charlie had up and died in their future. He didn't have details, except that it had something to do with the damn Book of the Damned (trying to fix his mistake), and now fuck knows how long she'd have to live if they ever got to go home. And Bobby was gone, too, disappeared to wherever people disappeared to. Dean was starting to suspect that mysteriously disappearing without a trace was how people got home, and that wasn't much better. That they would end up in Heaven was no real consolation when Heaven was its own shitshow.
For certain reasons, it didn't occur to him that much of anything was going down between Cas and Crowley.
Dean was headed back a little earlier than he was expected and stopped in the door.
"Looking for a monster under there?"
Cas glanced over his shoulder, startled. Certain things still surprised him when he lacked his usual extrasensory perception. "No," he said gruffly. He hesitated, fumbling for a moment, before pulling out half a handful of the condoms and tossing them onto the mattress.
"I got these."
He closed the box and gave it a shove under the bed.
Dean laughed; it was good-natured, the way he only seemed to be around Castiel when the rest of his life was complicated. "You trying to send me a message, Cas?"
Cas attempted a casual lean against the side of the bed and an awkward smile. "I know what everyone means when they say protection now," he said. He raised his eyebrows pointedly. "And you're an ass for not telling me."
Dean shrugged. "You were too funny." He moved in, initially going for a kiss until he noticed Cas's arm, bare except for a bandage. Frowning, Dean took his hand and pulled it toward him, looking over the awkwardly-tied wrapping. "Did Nurse Ratchet take your blood today?"
Cas had taken to wearing flannel over t-shirts like Dean and Sam, but his long-sleeved plaid shirt was currently hanging on a chair. He looked down at his arm, frowning slightly. "I don't know who that is," he said. "No."
He gently pulled his arm away, fiddling with the bandage in an attempt to straighten it. Administering first aid to himself wasn't a skill he'd learned yet. "I cut myself. I was carrying some … stuff, and it slipped."
"I'll fix that, come here." Sitting on the bed, he pulled Cas up to sit next to him. "I'm surprised you didn't go to Hawke. Seems like a slow day around here."
"I … did." Damn it. It hadn't even occurred to Cas to ask Hawke to heal the cut, or at least to bandage it in a better way. "That's where I got the condoms. There are thousands of them." He plucked one up off the bed, crinkling the wrapper a little bit. "Everyone's going to be well-protected."
He glanced at Dean, squinting slightly. Tried to imagine what Dean was like as a demon. With Crowley. It made his stomach twist in an uncomfortable way and he wanted to punch Crowley all over again.
"Did you tell him you got hurt? It would've saved medical supplies, you know how they are about hoarding that stuff." Dean carefully started unraveling the bandage, just enough to loosen it and readjust so it was straight.
The cut in question was neat and precise, deep enough to bleed rather significantly and far different than the accidental scratch Cas had described it as. "I don't think they want the bandages back now," he said flatly. "Dean, it's fine."
Dean could see the shape of it through the stained gauze underneath the bandage. It was too deep for Cas's explanation, a suicidal kind of cut and too neat to be some scrape from a box or another sharp edge. "So… you wanna tell me what's actually going on with this, or you want me to start guessing?"
Cas pressed the bandage back down against his arm, drawing it back against his chest. "I said it's fine."
"It's obviously not. Did someone hurt you or did you do this to yourself?" Dean was intense, more concerned than angry. If he suspected what was going on with Crowley, he was doing an awesome job lying about it.
"No one hurt me." Cas sighed, with the same sort of impatience that usually seemed to suggest I'm an angel of the fucking Lord, I don't have time for this shit. He started to retie the bloody bandage himself, tightening it around his arm again. His cut had probably been too deep and too large, and it had bled a little too much for what he needed, but Cas hadn't put any of this on his list of human skills to master.
"Then talk to me." Dean grabbed his arm again, reaching up to swat away Cas's hand. "You'll cut off your circulation if you tie it too tight, and you really don't want these people hacking off a limb because you made a fucking tourniquet."
Cas gave up, holding out his arm and letting Dean mess with the bandage. He was silent.
The silence stretched out for a couple of seconds while Dean gave Cas an (apparently useless) chance to say something. Eventually, he started guessing, as he said he would: "Cas, did you do this to yourself? I know a few years ago feeling responsible for everything in Heaven put you near suicide, and I know being here took you away from helping them."
Dean wasn't wrong to ask. Cas had confessed a couple of years ago that he thought suicide was his best option, that guilt over his mistakes ate away at him, that he struggled to handle being without his grace. Dean was smart to check in, at least, to pay attention.
However, what followed Dean's question was something of a non sequitur. "Did you have sex with Crowley?"
Dean flinched like he'd been smacked. "What?"
Cas tipped his head slightly, waiting. He didn't sound angry. Not particularly.
"No."
Cas squinted at him, but after a couple of seconds he just let it go. "I …" He sighed. Keeping this from Dean was going to be impossible, wasn't it. It was easy to lie to him when they didn't share a room, when Dean wasn't always in his space. He had no idea how Dean and Sam did it to each other. "Yes, I did this to myself. I needed the blood."
"For what? For Crowley? Fucking Christ---" Dean sighed and ran a hand over his face. The last thing they needed was goddamn Crowley shoving his nose where it didn't belong. "Don't give Crowley your blood, dude."
"Too late."
"Why? You know that's a stupid idea."
"Because he wants it. Sam says he has an addiction to human blood ever since you tried to cure him." Cas neglected to mention the rest of the deal, but at least he was being honest about this.
"So? Let him squirm. It's not like going clean made him any less of a sappy bitch." The last thing Dean remembered from home was giving the King of Hell a damn pep talk about his mama. Clearly the whole addiction thing hadn't worn off even when he wasn't feeding it.
"I'm not taking that chance," said Cas. "If I can keep him a … sappy bitch, then he can be kept in line." He hesitated, looking down at the bandages. "I wasn't going to tell you, Dean."
"You weren't going to tell me about your plans to keep Crowley under control? God damn it, Cas!" Dean pushed off the bed and threw up his hands, his shoulders tense. "Sam's keeping shit from me and now you are, too? Even Charlie didn't want to tell me what happens. Is Kevin the only one around here who wants to tell me the truth about anything?"
Cas frowned, staying perfectly still in contrast to Dean's movement. "I'm telling you now," he said solemnly.
"Because you got caught," Dean snapped. "That's not the same as being honest."
"I…" Cas averted his eyes, uncertain as to how to answer. Deception for the sake of supposedly doing the right thing had become so common between them all that it seemed like the way to go about things, like honesty was going to blow up in their faces. No one ever felt like they could tell the truth about the things they were planning to do, because most of it was phenomenally stupid.
But he'd told Sam.
"I made a deal," he said after a moment. "My blood in exchange for Adina's grace."
"You have to be shitting me." Dean made a frustrated sound, pacing so he wouldn't turn back toward Cas and do something stupid. It made sense this would make him angry, but everything about him -- his tone, the heavy footfalls as he paced and fidgeted, the clench of his fists -- was too tense to be normal, and it was clear that if Cas came too close, Dean would probably take a swing at him. "The grace that nearly burned you out? No. Fucking no."
Cas watched Dean's feet, watched his fists. He couldn't seen Dean's face, but he understood the body language, and Cas was probably smart to stay where he was, sitting on the bed and not making any move to go near him.
"I don't want it in Crowley's possession." He kept saying that to make people feel better, but it didn't ring true. He didn't just want to possess it. He wanted to use it; he didn't really understand what stolen grace would do. Sam and Dean knew, Hannah knew, and they'd all told him. Cas knew it was dangerous, but at this point the idea of having stolen grace was better than having none at all, and he'd deal with the consequences and how wrong it was later.
Dean was quiet for a few long moments, and for a while it seemed like he wouldn't say anything at all. And then: "Fine. Do you have it?"
"The grace? I … no," Cas admitted.
"What's your deal with Crowley? When are you getting it?" Dean finally turned back to face him, his expression dark.
"He wants more than what I gave him," said Cas.
"Then you give it to him one more time and demand the grace before anything else. Don't hand the blood over until you have it. And then you're coming straight to me and I'm taking it. We're not keeping someone else's grace where you can get at it." Dean remembered watching Cas die this way, and there wasn't going to be a magic bullet to save him. Even if this wasn't Dean's decision to make, he was making it anyway.
"I can't do that. That's not the arrangement." Even if Cas was willing to give the grace to Dean for safekeeping, it wasn't happening. "He needs a certain amount before he'll even consider it."
"I don't give a rat's ass what the arrangement is!" With a huff, Dean turned away again to go to his bedside drawer and grab his gun. He almost walked away, backtracking to snatch up his flask of holy water and the small reserve of Devil's trap bullets he kept in the back of the drawer. "Your deal's off, Cas."
"Dean!" Cas finally stood, grabbing Dean's wrist while he was reaching for the bullets. "Stop. Put the gun down. We're not solving it this way."
"I'm gonna go shoot the son of a bitch between the eyes and find that damn grace without some stupid deal." Dean yanked out of Cas's grip. He was either stronger than usual, or Cas was just human enough that Dean seemed overpowering. "Let them stick me in a cell for it, I don't care, but I'm going to bury him in pieces first and do everyone a favor."
"You know that's not going to work," Cas growled. He was smaller than Dean, and without his grace he was little more than human, but sometimes he still looked like he could rip someone apart with his stare alone. "This place doesn't play by Winchester rules, and Crowley's already making friends. Believe me, I want him in pieces as much as you do, for a lot of reasons, but I'm not losing you over it." Being in this world aside, Cas wasn't about to let Dean start feeding the Mark of Cain, even if it involved finding ways to make Crowley miserable.
"What are they going to do, execute me? Watch them try." Dean shoved the flask into his pocket before sliding the magazine out of his pistol so he could switch the ammo. "Taking out that smug bastard will be worth the shot."
"They will execute you, Dean," Cas snapped. "If you even get that far. Crowley may use an attack as an excuse to kill you, and think about what happens when he does." Dean wouldn't die as long as he had the Mark — but he'd become a demon.
"So what? He'd just be giving himself a fight he can't win, and he know it. He doesn't have the balls." Dean hadn't killed a person -- or something like one -- since showing up here. He was managing, he even seemed normal most days, but the Mark was eating at him. The idea of killing Crowley was like waving a needle in front of a barely recovering heroin addict.
Cas closed in on Dean, invading his personal space and making certain Dean couldn't move unless he shoved him aside. "You don't. Get. To kill."
Dean took a fist full of Cas's shirt, knuckles pressing into his chest. "You want to get out of my way right now, Cas."
Cas stood his ground. "Put the gun down or be prepared to shoot me first."
Dean was quiet, staring Cas down for a few long seconds -- and then he put the gun down, setting it on the bedside table. "Fine. For now. But you're giving me the grace once you have it."
"Fine," said Cas, whether or not that was actually true. He relaxed slightly, his shoulders drooping, and he looked down at the gun. "Then you're going to teach me how to use that."
"No." Gesturing toward the condoms laying on the bed, Dean added, "First, I'm teaching you how to use those."
Cas glanced behind him, raising his eyebrows. "Deal."