Bed of Stone

by bendingsignpost

Summary:

The Chamber of the Sleeping God is exactly what it says on the sign. At least, that’s what the priests claim. Inside, their god sleeps upon a bed of stone, his blessings slumbering until a woman pure of heart offers herself as his bride.

Dean thinks it’s all bullshit.

The Chamber of the Sleeping God is exactly what it says on the sign. At least, that’s what the priests claim. Inside, their god sleeps upon a bed of stone, his blessings slumbering until a woman pure of heart offers herself as his bride.

 

Dean thinks it’s all bullshit.

 

Sam, though, Sam loves the history of it. He tells Dean all about it, citing books he’s rebound in service to the library, echoing lectures he’s overheard while returning the tomes to their privileged owners. Sam loves all that shit about the end of the Golden Age, all the crap leading up to the clusterfuck Dean refers to as reality.

 

Long ago when there were many gods, yada yada, war of monsters, blah blah, Castiel the Victorious, mercy this, blessing that. The sick were healed, the children shod as well as clothed, and there was meat for every meal. But humans, fallible and corrupt, learned to scorn their own good fortune and became ungrateful.

 

In a fit of butthurt, Castiel sulked off to nap on a bed of stone, which was a really stupid move, in Dean’s opinion. It clearly only made the god grumpier. Trying to win back his favor, the priests sent down the most beautiful and deserving women with golden offerings to wake him from his slumber, but he responded to none. In turn, the priests cast out each woman for her false claims of purity, because the priests have apparently always been assholes like that.

 

For the first few decades, there were lavish celebrations as the nobles promised to revive the god. When each sent in his daughter only to have her return alone, both noble and daughter were cast out. Some were killed.

 

Eventually, the attempts to revive the god became purely private affairs, leading to the system that even uneducated people like Dean know. The pious attend the temple—at least, the pious wealthy enough to take time off for prayer—and the priests enlist the women in many charitable works. With that blanket excuse in place, each woman may attempt to wake the god without having her failure revealed. They all continue to strive for the public good, each claiming they will make their attempt after completing some great work or another.

 

And all that’s been going on for centuries, Sam says. About three, longer than the king’s dynasty.

 

Sam claims repeating every little fact to Dean helps him remember everything better, but Dean knows his brother has his heart set on being one of those lofty teachers himself someday. All the sacrifices their father could muster only lifted Sam as high as an apprentice bookbinder, but that’s just the first boost, the initial foothold on the ladder.

 

Listening to Sam’s regurgitated lectures, Dean’s figured out how to lift his little brother the rest of the way. There’s no way Sam isn’t smart enough to pass the entrance exams to the university. All they need is the exam fee. And the tuition fee. And money for books and ink, room and board, and better clothes. And shoes that fit. All of those well-to-do students have shoes. Some, Dean knows, even have more than one pair.

 

He knows they do, because it was a shod man who tried to chase him down after Dean stole Sammy’s last pair. Unfortunately, the man was just a little too small in the feet. Sam only wears the shoes during book deliveries. The scholars treat him better now.

 

If Dean can pull this stunt off, they’ll treat Sam the way he actually deserves.

 

Barefoot himself, Dean creeps up the steep cliff surrounding three sides of the hilltop temple. It’s meant to be unassailable, but no one ever told that to Dean’s buddy Benny. They certainly never told that to Benny’s girl Andrea, who lives in the temple and is far more dedicated to charity than chastity. She may not be able to wake a god, but she’s not exactly available to be any god’s bride, either.

 

A large pack on his back, Dean fits his hands and toes into the rocky crevasses Benny had described for him in painstaking detail. Dean has to feel around for each subsequent hold. He backtracks twice, scraping palms and feet in the darkness. The clouds cover the moon and stars for now, masking Dean’s progress, but the threat of rain lingers in the air. It’s a distant threat for now, giving Dean perhaps a few hours to blaspheme with the best of them.

 

Muscles straining, he pulls himself up the final stretch, the cliff giving way to more deliberate stone. He scales the ornate carvings of the wall, drops lightly over the side, and holds down a surprised noise when his feet hit soft, damp earth. Right, he’s in the garden.

 

Squinting through the darkness, he makes his way to the apple tree by the scent of its blossoms. After the cliff, he scales this with ease, even with branches snagging on his pack. Working hand over hand on a bending branch, he reaches the temple itself where the roof slopes low. The tiles here are familiar in the way that the roofs of the wealthy always are. Climbing higher is easier than catching his breath, at least until roof becomes wall. Sam says the extra stories were added to the temple two hundred years ago, but Dean’s feet say the roofing was definitely redone in the last ten.

 

In the lowest of these extra stories are windows within easy reach of the older, lower roof, and it’s on one of these that Dean carefully knocks a memorized pattern, staying out of the line of sight.

 

From the other side, the window opens. Dean looks in.

 

Holding an unlit candle, Andrea frowns at him. She looks different than Dean expected.

 

Dean brings a dirty finger across his lips.

 

She lets him climb in.

 

“Who are you?” she hisses. “Where’s Benny?”

 

“He sprained his ankle,” Dean whispers back. “He sent me with gifts for your birthday. He’s sorry he missed it. Three days ago, right?”

 

Her frown stays, but she nods. Quickly, silently, Andrea closes and latches the window. She leads him out of the room with its looms and spinning wheels and into a second chamber full of strange smells. The vats of dyes lining the near wall reek the strongest, far more so than the rainbow of wool skeins hanging from the ceiling. In the far corner, shielded by tables and drying racks, there’s a small nook with bags of carded wool that look soft for fucking on. The dyes probably cover the sex smells.

 

“Who are you?” she asks again, sitting in the secluded sex corner. She lights her candle with matches from a pocket hidden in her linen skirts.

 

“Dean.” He gently slings his pack down onto the floor. “He’s mentioned me, right?”

 

“The bookbinder’s brother,” she says, which is worse than the carpenter and much better than the thief.

 

Nodding, Dean pulls out Benny’s gifts. A box and game set made by Dean himself, wrapped in a fumbling mess of a scarf. It looks like the ones the Sisters of Charity teach children to make by hand, and that design is intentional. There’s no other garment Benny could give her that Andrea would be permitted to wear openly. Dean lays down the last between them and unfolds the old cheesecloth from the long-cold hotcake.

 

The soft noise she lets out is pleased and pained at once. “This must have cost him…”

 

“I gave him a discount,” Dean whispers, indicating the game set in its box. “He has a little stored away, he’ll be fine.”

 

“What about his ankle?”

 

“I’m supposed to tell you they’re letting him work the counter until he can run deliveries again.”

 

Andrea nods. “And the truth?”

 

“If he can’t pay rent, he’s moving in with us. Me and my brother,” Dean promises. They don’t have the space, but they’ll manage. They’ll have to. It’s a break, not a sprain.

 

She looks him over in the candlelight. She looks at his dirty hands and his worn clothes, at the cheapness of the patches. Her eyes drop down to his bare feet.

 

“It’s getting worse out there,” she says, not a question.

 

“The fines are getting bad,” Dean says. “Can’t see how good, honest work is supposed to keep up, these days. Pay your rent, don’t sell outside your quarter, apply for permits if you want to try to move the store, pay for the application…” Dean shakes his head. People aren’t paying for dinner tables when they can’t afford dinner. If Sam had gotten apprenticed to a binder inside the university’s quarter, they’d be starved themselves by now.

 

“I’ll keep praying,” Andrea says with more resignation than hope.

 

“Thanks,” Dean says anyway, watching her hands as she reaches out for the cold hotcake and breaks it in half.

 

She holds out the larger half to him. “You’ll need strength for the climb down.”

 

Dean doesn’t argue. As they eat, he quietly teaches her the rules for the game set. It’s some new fad brought in from the docks for the wealthy, but that doesn’t stop anyone from playing with rocks and lines in the dirt. The longer Benny has to sit still, the more mad he goes for the game. Dean warns her about that as they play, but when she handily beats him on the second match, Dean decides she’ll probably be fine.

 

Chewing carefully on the good side of his mouth, Dean broaches his goal. “I don’t know if this is blasphemy or not to ask, but I figure, I’m never getting in here again, so I gotta know.” He looks to her for permission. When Andrea nods, Dean asks, “Is the Sleeping God really in this temple?”

 

Andrea nods with certainty.

 

Dean swallows. “You ever seen him? I know you’re not gonna marry him with Benny out there and all, but you go down and say you tried?”

 

Face abruptly hard, Andrea shakes her head.

 

“Sorry.”

 

Andrea keeps shaking her head. “We keep from trying as long as we can, because of what happens after.”

 

“But they keep you around, right? Making stuff, doing servant things.”

 

With a hard look at Dean, Andrea says, “The day I know Benny’s given me a child, I will go down to wake the god, and that night, I will have my excuse for the baby.”

 

It takes Dean a second. “Guess it’s not ‘cause you’re gonna say the god knocked you up.”

 

“No,” Andrea says.

 

They sit in silence, finishing the tiny cake.

 

Andrea blows out the candle.

 

“Happy birthday,” Dean says.

 

“Thank you.” She bundles up the game set inside the scarf. Dean assumes she has some place to hide it and doesn’t ask.

 

Instead, he asks, “Do the priests ever go down to see the god? Are men not allowed?”

 

“There’s no hiding from them there,” Andrea says. “They can get past the barrier.”

 

“Barrier,” Dean repeats.

 

“The older women say it’s like a wall of blue glass, but the priests can step through it like a curtain of water. That’s what they claim, anyway.”

 

They must be wearing something that lets them get through. There’s no way those sons of bitches are pure of heart.

 

Meaning, if they can reach the god’s chamber, so can Dean.

 

“Can I go down to see?” Dean asks. “Just this once. It’s my only chance, and my brother’s the biggest believer I know. If I don’t at least try to look, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

 

Andrea looks at him and flatly says, “You’re going to steal the offerings, aren’t you.”

 

“...No?”

 

She keeps looking at him through the dark, her silence loud enough to fill the entire city.

 

“...Yeah, fine, maybe,” Dean says. “Like you said, it’s getting worse out there.”

 

“Swear to me on the blood of your brother that you’ll take care of Benny.”

 

Dean looks her in the eyes. “I swear.” He even means it. He’s long given up on having Benny the way Andrea can, the way only a woman can, but that doesn’t mean his love hasn’t hardened into stubborn protectiveness.

 

Scarf-wrapped bundle in hand, she stands up. “Follow me.”

 

They move silently through the halls. Down stone staircases and across cold floors. They listen at doorways, and Dean replicates her deliberate footsteps around the lush carpets of the lower floors. He knows very well the kind of dirty trail he’d leave, but the urge to touch still tempts him. He resists, his goal greater.

 

Creeping past the priests’ dormitories is the worst part. There’s some shuffling noises, some low voices.

 

They get by, ducking through what Dean assumes is a side door and into pitch blackness. Closing the door softly behind them, Andrea lights another match and then the candle. To their right is a grand pair of doors, ornately carved and elaborately painted. To their left is a wide staircase descending into the depths of the hill.

 

Andrea leads him down. For all the fancy door behind them, the steps are dusty. Not good. On one hand, no one is likely to come this way, but on the other, if someone does, they’ll immediately know someone was here.

 

At the bottom, the path splits, doubling back on itself and merging into yet more stairs. At the bottom of this, there is a doorway, and in this doorway, there is light. Not light that illuminates the stairs, or the walls, or either of the two mortals standing before it. This is light, contained within itself, sharing itself with no one.

 

Fitting, Dean thinks.

 

“If you can’t get through, we’ll go back and search the priests’ vestments for some kind of key,” Andrea says. “If we’re lucky, it only keeps out impure women .”

 

Dean and Andrea think a lot alike, apparently.

 

Nodding, Dean steps forward in the yellow candlelight and lifts his hand toward the blue glow. His palm close to touching, he feels no heat. Incrementally, he moves his hand closer and continues to experience absolutely no sensation. It’s only when the light swallows up his fingertips that he even realizes he’s technically touching it.

 

Andrea lets out a tiny gasp.

 

Dean presses his hand through to the wrist, if pressing is the right word. He might as well be pressing on air.

 

He looks back at Andrea and grins.

 

Eyes wide, she shoos him onward.

 

Above them, a door closes.

 

Andrea’s eyes grow wider.

 

Heavy footsteps scrape against the stone above.

 

Andrea blows out her candle and vanishes into darkness, her cloth slippers next to silent on the stairs. Not about to lose this chance to any priest, Dean sinks further back against the light, the rest of his body passing through it as easily as his hand. He keeps just his face out, peering into the dark, and that’s when he sees a robed man with a lantern come around one side of the staircase split. In the shadows, Andrea slips around on the other side, still unseen, but the priest starts to turn back.

 

Dean whistles sharply. The single note pierces up the stone stairs, echoing high, and the priest nearly stumbles on the steps, clearly seeing Dean.

 

“You-”

 

Dean pulls back inside the light barrier to find himself in the doorway of a lavish sitting room. He ducks against the wall, waiting for the priest to run in blindly, but the man doesn’t follow. Not even his shouts make it inside.

 

Looking around for a good weapon—huge vases with glass flowers, giant bookcases, a couple couches and tables, a modestly sized curtain-covered door, absolutely no obvious light sources for so well-lit a room—Dean counts out the time it should take anyone to climb down the rest of those stairs.

 

He counts a bit longer.

 

He leans over and looks through the doorway, where an enraged priest is silently smacking his fists on nothing at all.

 

Just for the hell of it, Dean stomps the guy in the shin through the barrier, using the side of his foot to scrape down. The priest silently yowls, but he won’t be chasing anyone anytime soon. If Dean can grab something good and race out by him, this might still work. He’s confident in his ability to get the rest of the way out. Plus, if those grand doors open up into the main area of the temple, open to the public, it’ll be a snap to get out. All Dean has to do is yank the robe off this guy before he makes his escape.

 

He’s just gotta hope no priest with a talisman key or whatever comes down before then, or this younger priest climbs the stairs.

 

With that shaky plan and a wish for luck on Andrea’s sake, Dean ventures deeper into the room, toward the far door. Nothing glitters with a steal me shine, but the bookcase gives Dean pause despite the need to rush. If he were Sam, he might know which of the books are rare enough to steal. If he can’t find anything better, he’ll go with one of those.

 

That far doorway pulls his eye, and he hurries toward it. After all, he’s looking for the Chamber of the Sleeping God, not the guy’s library. Maybe the gold and shit is in there.

 

Dean passes through a curtain, the fabric soft and as impossibly free of dust as everything else behind the barrier. Now here, here is definitely the chamber. Glittering weapons hang on the walls, their shine of a practical bent. The matching wardrobes against the far wall are feats of craftsmanship that make Dean want to cry, but it’s the bed they frame that immediately dominates Dean’s attention.

 

It’s a four-poster bed, its curtains pulled back and fastened with golden string. The mattress is nearly as wide as it is long, and a body-shaped lump lies beneath the blankets.

 

The bed is also entirely made of stone. Marble sheets and an ebony frame.

 

Statue , Dean tells himself as the hair on the back of his neck prickles.

 

With great effort, he forces his feet to move. There are the wardrobes to search, the dressing table to inspect, and is that a jewelry box on top of it? Jewelry box first, then maybe the metallic flower in the crystal vase next to it. The tiny vase looks fragile, but the flower’s petals resemble gemstones far more than they do colored glass. If Dean can grab enough small, expensive trinkets, there will be remaining room in his pack to bring Sam books.

 

He crosses plush, beautiful carpets on dusty, scraped feet, ignores the stone bed behind him, and lifts the lid on the jewelry box.

 

Without warning, a sweet chime rings out from the box. Then another, and another, the beginnings of a song—and Dean slams the lid down.

 

Behind him, easily seen in the dressing table’s mirror, something moves.

 

Shoulders hunched high, Dean turns. He twists at the hip, unwilling to take a step and make another sound.

 

In the stone bed, under solid stone sheets, a man rolls over. The light tan of his skin and the dark shock of his hair mark him as alive and separate from the blue slate under which he sleeps. Or not so static. The sheets move with him, waves of stone rippling to follow the lines of his legs.

 

Mouth hanging open, Dean turns around fully. His pack bumps something, and Dean spins back to catch the gemstone flower and crystal vase before they can topple over.

 

He rights them, steps away carefully, and then turns back to the immense stone bed.

 

The god doesn’t move again.

 

Dean holds his breath and waits anyway. Every moment he wastes is another for the young priest to wake up one of his elders, but the threat of discovery is no longer forefront on his mind.

 

And still, the god lies motionless.

 

Against all semblance of sense he’s ever claimed to have, Dean edges forward. His feet savor each step across the carpets, delighting in the soft plushness even as his mind races and heart pounds.

 

Reaching the corner of the four-poster bed, Dean touches the nearest post.

 

Stone.

 

He touches the blankets.

 

Also stone.

 

He stares at the sleeping god, lying on his side with the indent of a stone pillow marring his cheek. The god has stubble, but not nearly enough for someone who’s been sleeping for over three hundred years.

 

Dean circles around to the side of the bed. He watches, transfixed, as that little red line fades. The stone over the god’s side slowly shifts, an incremental rise and fall with each breath. Holding his own breath, Dean touches higher on the blanket, at the base of where it must encounter the god’s body beneath. Very faintly, the stone moves beneath his finger, riding each of the god’s breaths, and yet is still very much stone.

 

What, Dean thinks, the fuck.

 

He backs away.

 

He tries the dressing table again, this time avoiding the box full of music. He also avoids looking into the mirror, hardly needing to see his own weary face or limp hair. Inside the drawer, there’s a length of thick fabric, soft when stroked in one direction and rough in the other. Dean’s never felt or seen anything like it. There are little slits in it as if for buttons, and most are filled with matching pins. They might be pins, maybe some strange kind of double-sided brooch. What they definitely are, is expensive.

 

Gold paired with ruby. Silver and sapphire. Wire-wrapped diamonds as wide as a fingernail. Matching sets of weighty pearls. On and on, pairs and pairs of them set into lush fabric, a piece of fine cloth with the sole purpose of holding fine jewelry.

 

Dean rolls it up into a tight bundle and tucks it down into the bottom of his pack. A small fortune, and his bag is still nearly empty.

 

With another careful look to the god, Dean draws closer again. He eases open the wardrobe, wary of its long-untouched hinges. Only one squeaks, the noise faint but enough for Dean to stop. Immediately, his eyes go to that of the god, but those eyelids don’t so much as flutter. Dean resumes his quiet search.

 

Hanging in the wardrobe are rows of shirts and jackets. The style is ancient, the sort Dean’s only ever seen in old drawings. The shirts are oddly plain for all the finery of the fabric, white in color instead of a more popular plaid.

 

On one of the doors, long strips of cloth hang, soft and useless and colorful. They’re sorted by color, though not in any particular order Dean can see. Most are primarily blue. When Dean touches them, he assumes they’re silk, but these thin strips won’t sell for much.

 

Hanging on the other door, Dean finds exactly what he’s looking for. Some of the belts are leather, their buckles simple and sturdy. But others…

 

More than one is a ripple of woven metal. On two, tiny gemstones frame each hole. All of them, in so many ways, are works of art. Functional art that people will pay for. Even the least of these will fetch a good price if Dean can’t find anything better.

 

With a steady hand, Dean lifts the grandest from its hook, holding it by the buckle. The belt is heavier than it looks, and the wardrobe door clearly agrees, creaking open wider once relieved of its burden.

 

Dean freezes anew. His eyes flick past the traitorous door.

 

From atop the stone bed, a pair of blue eyes stare back.

 

In a single panicked motion, Dean sticks the belt back on its hook, slams the wardrobe doors shut, and springs away to show he hasn’t taken anything. His pack bounces against his back, its weight making Dean’s unspoken claim into a lie.

 

The god sits up.

 

The cobalt falls from his chest as a blanket might, only to freeze as a statue of cloth halfway down his chest. Without ever taking his eyes from Dean, the god pulls back his stone sheets. They arc to the other side of the bed and hold that way in midair, eternally in the midst of that toss.

 

The god swings his legs out of the bed, the stone mattress sinking beneath his weight. His clothes are jarringly normal, which is to say, made of cloth. Both shirt and pants are striped white and blue. The shirt’s sleeves stop above his elbows, revealing shapely biceps, and the pants sport a drawstring tied with a bow. Beneath the hems of his pants, the god’s feet peek out, clean and unmarked by scars or ragged nails.

 

Dean takes another step back across the thick carpet.

 

The god stands.

 

Run, whispers panic.

 

He’ll close the barrier, whispers back despair.

 

Inscrutable, the god approaches, and with a giddy note of disbelief, Dean realizes he’s taller than a god. Not by much, but it’s a strangely comforting detail to learn before his imminent death.

 

In a deep voice rough with sleep, the god Castiel asks him, “Are you to be my husband?”

 

It’s not a combination of words Dean would expect from any man, let alone a man who is a god. “I’m Dean,” he says instead, because it’s good to stick with certainties in times of absolute insanity.

 

“Hello, Dean,” the god says. A faint smile pulls the creases of his face wider. Behind him, the blanket finishes falling in a single abrupt whump. “Are you to be my husband?”

 

Maybe Dean died when he passed through the barrier. Or maybe he slipped down the stairs, smacked his head, and fell into some strange dream. Because this isn’t happening. This is the god who’s meant to turn Dean to stone and smash him to sand for the blasphemy of lusting after his fellow men.

 

“I… I wouldn’t presume to tell a god who to marry,” Dean responds.

 

Castiel’s smile widens, but in looking Dean over, that smile quickly hardens into a frown. “You are unwell.”

 

Dean is young and strong. He has a body nearly unmarked by pox, and he has almost an entire mouth of teeth. Besides the diversity of his carnal interests, there’s nothing wrong with him. “I’m fine.”

 

Expression stern, the displeased god reaches for him, two fingers outstretched. Rooted to the spot, Dean can barely lean back, but the moment those fingertips touch his temple, the panic vanishes—and so too does the pain.

 

The ache of his back. The pressure behind his eyes. The pain of his jaw. The weariness of his feet and the faint sting of his scrapes. The hungry gnawing of his stomach abates, silenced by a nothingness somehow more filling than any hotcake. A fog of lethargy lifts from his entire body. The room turns brighter, warmer. His skin itself feels different, cleaner. His very bones are firmer, his muscles somehow thicker. The taste inside his mouth has changed, and the scent of his clothing becomes noticeable by its sudden absence.

 

“I,” Dean starts to say, and his tongue hits against teeth he didn’t have a second ago.

 

Castiel withdraws his hand. Dean chases the touch, stumbling into him, drunk on the god’s power, and Castiel catches him easily. He wraps one arm around Dean’s waist and brings the other back up to Dean’s face.

 

Wanting nothing more than to duck his head beneath the god’s chin, Dean presses hard into the touch on his cheek, into every touch. His body has never felt so good, so whole, so clean. He could fall asleep standing here, his arms against Castiel’s chest, his hands on the god’s shoulders. The pleasure of his own skin and bones is enough to have his eyes falling shut. The noise he lets out is pathetic and shameless, but Castiel doesn’t push him away like a drunk having second thoughts behind a bar.

 

No, Castiel strokes his thumb across Dean’s cheek. He gently rumbles, “Now you’re fine.” For all that he slept for centuries, his breath is a warm, inoffensive breeze against Dean’s lips.

 

“Oh my god,” Dean says, because nothing makes sense. It cannot make sense. There’s no logic or reason to be found inside of bliss, only confounding pleasure.

 

“My human,” Castiel replies. He curls his fingers in the small of Dean’s back.

 

With a sharp gasp and an arching spine, Dean opens his eyes. The god greets him with a warm, smug smile.

 

“If you wish to change clothes, you still may,” Castiel tells him, now stroking confidently up and down Dean’s spine. “These were beyond even my ability to make anew.”

 

“Huh?” Dean looks down at himself, at the warm, whole cloth of his shirt. Its colors remain faded and muddy, but Dean couldn’t rightly say what they were supposed to be anyway. The patches look festive, the bright, mismatched threads a whimsical element of decoration. His pants, on the other hand, are even more obviously made of a pair of old flour sacks. One of the faded labels is new again, the dye of the letters bright against the rough brown of the cloth. “Wow.” He looks back up at Castiel, at a face of beauty upon a creature of power, and Dean says, “Thanks.”

 

Castiel’s delight spreads across his entire face like never before, as if the restoration of Dean’s body and clothing is no accomplishment at all compared to Dean’s weak utterance of gratitude. His teeth are straight and pristine, his gums a healthy pink. His eyes are black and blue and white, in that order. No scars mar his features. His arms are lined with muscle, and yet there is a softness to him that hints at a layer of fat.

 

He is perfection.

 

Dean stares openly, unthinkingly. The god continues to smile at him, continues to hold Dean close and steady with an arm around his waist. Dean’s own body greets him like a long-lost friend, devoid of every ache and pain that life has long inured him to. The relief itself is its own kind of bliss, rivaled only by the soft touch on the side of his face.

 

“Do you?” Castiel asks, his mouth pink and soft-looking and only a tiny lean away from Dean’s. .

 

“Wuh?”

 

Castiel’s eyes crinkle at the edges, revealing faint lines of wisdom. “You were about to change your clothes? Do you still wish to?”

 

“...Right,” Dean says, because sure, why not. That is a way better reason than the truth, especially since Castiel is clearly fine with that option. “I mean, if I thought I’d actually meet a god tonight, I would have dressed better. I was, uh. Embarrassed.”

 

Castiel’s frown is a slight narrowing of the eyes, but the tilt of his head implies curiosity, not displeasure. The way he strokes his fingers through Dean’s hair when Dean looks down in the semblance of shame is also promising. “Do you not consider yourself righteous?”

 

Years of lying immediately offer up this half-truth: “Not righteous enough for a god to deem worthy.”

 

“You are here,” Castiel states. “You are worthy.”

 

Finally, after a suicidal lapse of judgment, Dean’s survival instinct slams back into his body. Reflexively, he pushes back on Castiel’s firm chest. All he accomplishes is moving himself back a step. One of Castiel’s hands slides from the small of Dean’s back and down to his hip. The other drops from Dean’s face to his shoulder, his elbow, his hand. Though there’s a gentleness to the god’s touch, this is clearly as far away as Dean is permitted to move.

 

“So some of the priests are probably on their way in here, too,” Dean begins to explain, only to be interrupted by Castiel’s obvious amusement. “What?”

 

“They cannot enter,” Castiel says, openly finding Dean’s mistake both foolish and adorable. He squeezes Dean’s hand. “We need no officiant.”

 

“...Right.” Dean clears his throat. “That makes sense. Look, about the whole husband thing…”

 

Castiel looks at him expectantly.

 

“If I get married without my brother attending, he’s gonna be pissed,” Dean says.

 

Again, that tilted frown. “Does he not celebrate while awaiting your return?”

 

Dean opens his mouth with no answer ready. “He knows I’m here, but he… I think weddings have changed a bit since you fell asleep.”

 

Castiel nods. “I assumed as much from your question. My way of marriage is a private affair.” With that, the god shifts his weight, and Dean looks past him at the bed.

 

Dean’s mouth goes dry.

 

“That was stone,” Dean hears himself say.

 

“It was,” Castiel replies, “but no longer.”

 

The immense bed is now wooden in frame, the same impossibly fine caliber as the matching wardrobes. The curtains are the deep blue which circles the moon at midnight, and the gold tying them to the posts is now golden ropes. Where the blankets, blue and stitched with gold, have been swept aside by the god’s exit, the sheets are a pristine cream color.

 

Castiel looks very pleased about this.

 

“Do we get to know each other first?” Dean asks. A risk, to be sure, but less risky than jumping into bed with a god. Better the god discover Dean unworthy through conversation than in the throes of passion. Castiel’s in a pretty good temper right now, although the same can be said of anyone certain they’re about to get laid.

 

Castiel pulls him toward the bed, and Dean follows like the supplicant he’s never been. Without releasing Dean’s hand, Castiel sits. Dean stands dumbly before him until Castiel nods to the space beside him. Dean sits on a jarringly soft surface, and Castiel twists to better face him.

 

“What would you ask me?” Castiel says.

 

It’s a theologian’s wet dream, but all Dean has is panic. As far as he can tell, there are only two ways to go when a god asks you to marry him, and Dean missed the window of opportunity on the first one when he didn’t immediately run away screaming.

 

“I… don’t even know how to address you,” Dean says, because laying down some basic respect seems like a good way to cover his ass. Maybe all of this is some bizarre test to determine Dean’s depravity. But then why let Dean in and not the priests? It’s not like those assholes aren’t depraved either.

 

“My name is Castiel,” states the formerly Sleeping God. “Has my name been forgotten?”

 

“No,” Dean says, quick about it. “I know it, we all know it. I just, uh. Didn’t want to presume.”

 

Castiel strokes his thumb across Dean’s knuckles. “Presume,” he instructs with a rumble that vibrates all the way down to the soles of Dean’s feet. .

 

Against every remaining shred of Dean’s admittedly limited better judgment, a giddy giggle wells up inside his throat. Just barely, he manages to catch it in time, but Castiel looks at him with victorious knowing.

 

“What else would you ask me?”

 

The obvious question looms. “I’m a man,” Dean says. “And you’re, um. Is that… all right?”

 

“You will not be the first mortal I have wed,” Castiel replies, answering nothing. Dean’s bewilderment clearly shows, because Castiel says, for the first time tentative, “My last spouse was a private man. Knowledge of him wasn’t commonplace. Do you accept a widower?”

 

“Yes,” Dean squeaks in a voice he hasn’t used since puberty. “I mean, I’m, uh.” It’s only the god’s sheer incomprehension of Dean’s concern that makes Dean finally stretch his neck out over the block. “I’ve had sex in the past. Not married, but. Sex.”

 

Castiel registers no surprise.

 

“With women. And, and men,” he adds, speaking a truth known only to himself, to anonymous men behind bars and beneath docks, and to an ever-concerned Sam.

 

“Have you known joy?” Castiel asks. His thumb continues to stroke Dean’s hand, and Dean’s entire body continues to fixate upon that touch.

 

Mutely, Dean nods.

 

“Then I am glad.” His thumb stops its motion. “But you will lie with them no longer.”

 

The thing about facing the choice between agonizing death and chastity, is that chastity includes the option to change one’s mind, whereas agonizing death does not.

 

“Nope,” Dean agrees. “I save my body for your will alone, I know the drill.” It’s what the priests are supposed to do, but Dean hardly needed Andrea to tell him that was a load of bullshit.

 

Terrifyingly, Castiel frowns. “You’re frightened.”

 

Understatement of the century. “You’re kind of a big deal,” Dean says.

 

“I have waited long for you to wake me,” Castiel replies. “You are also ‘kind of a big deal.’” He gestures oddly with his free hand, curling two fingers around nothing.

 

Wondering if this is some strange way of pointing, Dean looks around, only to spy an unfamiliar figure in the dressing table’s silver mirror. The figure sits upon a lavish bed beside a breathtaking being. The figure wears a worn shirt with plaid patches, flour sack pants, and no shoes.

 

The figure is hale and hearty and beautiful.

 

Dean stands up, bewildered, and so does the figure. Their hands slip free from that of a god. Dean turns his head from side to side, and the figure copies. The other man. With a healthy glow to his skin, with a golden gleam to his brown hair. A man with a face untouched by hunger, a face consumed instead by confusion. Dean reaches up and touches thick, soft hair on his own head.

 

He turns back to Castiel, who watches him with undisguised curiosity.

 

“Is that me?” Dean asks.

 

Castiel nods. “I have made you well.”

 

Sam. Benny’s broken ankle.

 

For the first time since he was young enough to blindly believe, Dean kneels for his god. He will beg. He will bargain. He will do whatever he must.

 

Before Dean can begin, Castiel stands, grips Dean by the shoulders, and draws him back up to his feet. Dean grabs a god by the elbows, pressed forward into welcoming arms, and kisses Castiel full on the mouth.

 

His lips are soft and smooth, but do not immediately respond. Were it not for the hands that slide over Dean’s shoulder blades, Dean would stop, would apologize and beg forgiveness, whatever it took to secure those two further blessings, or even just the one.

 

Castiel’s mouth opens beneath his, and Dean immediately licks inside, tasting something that is not human. It is a wet and messy presumption, but Castiel simply strokes his back instead of striking him dead. And so Dean kisses those lips. He threads his fingers through thick, dark hair. He presses his body against the soft fabric barrier that keeps him from prostituting himself entirely.

 

He clearly does something wrong, because Castiel pushes him back, as gently and inexorably as the moon upon the tide. Castiel is frowning.

 

“Thank you,” Dean pants, but that only makes the frowning worse.

 

“You already thanked me.”

 

“For, for my clothes,” Dean explains. “I thought…” Heat blazes in his cheeks. “I thought this,” he continues, gesturing at himself, “I thought it was just what touching you felt like.”

 

Castiel kisses him.

 

Abrupt and hard and merciless, Castiel kisses him. Beneath his hands, there is fire. His mouth is the mouth of a mountain spring, and his breath is a rooftop wind. Dean holds fast and lets himself be destroyed. He takes what he is given, fails to withstand it, and invites more.

 

The world spins. Vision ends. All there is, is heat.

 

Beneath his legs. Against his side. Cradling his head and pressed to his lips.

 

Drunk and dizzy, Dean opens his eyes.

 

Their mouths barely brushing, their breath shared, Castiel stares back.

 

Sitting upon the lap of a god, Dean leans back within the circle of his arms until he can look at Castiel without his eyes crossing.

 

“Wow,” he says.

 

Castiel turns quiet and smug. “Yes.”

 

“Wow,” Dean says again.

 

“That is what touching me feels like.” Castiel leans in and presses his lips against the pulse pounding in Dean’s throat. Just that. Nothing more.

 

Head lolling in the opposite direction, Dean immediately buries his hand in Castiel’s hair to keep him there. “Fuck.”

 

Castiel chuckles, his amusement far removed from mockery. “I would know your mind before your body.”

 

That’s sobering enough that even Dean’s baser urges have to take note. Blinking up at a ceiling devoid of chandeliers in a room devoid of lamps and sconces, Dean reminds himself that this being he’s sitting on has powers far beyond keeping a room impossibly lit and rebuilding a man with the health of the society elite.

 

“What-” He tries to look at Castiel and has to stop to involuntarily lick his lips. “What do you want to know?”

 

Castiel settles his arms around Dean as if his lap is simply where Dean lives now. Dean’s certainly slept in worse places. Fucked in ‘em, too. Eyes intent, hands folded on Dean’s far hip, Castiel asks, “What brought you to me tonight?”

 

There’s no way Castiel can miss the tension flooding Dean’s body. As if to confirm that, Castiel tilts his head.

 

“This is gonna sound stupid,” Dean says, resorting to half-truths. “I got this buddy. Friends with a Sister of Charity upstairs. The Sisters of Charity?” When Castiel just looks at him blankly, Dean says, “I guess that’s a new thing. They’re basically what they sound like.” As long as Dean leaves out the intended bride thing, and the liberties the priests take. Besides that, it’s exactly what it sounds like.

 

“So my buddy commissioned her this Three Jump set for her birthday. It’s, uh, a game. I made it, I’m a carpenter-” not a thief “-and dropped it off tonight. Then we just figured, y’know, since I was here and all, and they probably weren’t gonna let me in ever again-”

 

“What,” Castiel interrupts.

 

“What what?” Dean says, prepared to lie his ass off about whatever Castiel’s taken issue with.

 

“Who would keep you out?” Castiel demands. Even directed at another target, his anger is enough to make Dean want off this lap. Unfortunately, the anger is paired with a tight grip around Dean’s waist. “These sisters?”

 

“No, no no no,” Dean’s quick to answer. If Dean gets Andrea killed by her own god, Benny will never forgive him. “The priests.”

 

Castiel’s glare fails to abate. His eyes grow bluer and brighter until Dean has to shield his own.

 

With a frustrated sigh, Castiel pulls Dean’s arms down from over his face. “Why would they keep you from me?”

 

Once sure it’s vaguely safe to do so, Dean stares back at him. “I’m poor…?”

 

Castiel’s frown again worsens, but this time, he closes his eyes before the shine of his rage can blind Dean. “You were too unwell to work. They ought not-”

 

Like the idiot he is, Dean has interrupted an angered god by laughing.

 

Dean clears his throat.

 

“I see no humor in this,” Castiel tells him. At no point does he loosen his grip on Dean, much less release him.

 

“I’m working,” Dean tells him. “Of course I’m working, I’m fit to work.”

 

“You are now,” Castiel says, for the first time speaking as Dean imagined a god might speak, as an adult to an ignorant child.

 

“No,” Dean says, far too full of sass for anyone sitting on a lap, let alone the lap of a god. “I was before.”

 

“Why?” Castiel asks, and now it’s him who sounds like an ignorant child.

 

“Because I don’t want to starve?” Dean retorts.

 

Castiel stares at him long and hard. Around them, vibrant fabrics fade. The wood of the posts becomes petrified before fully transitioning back into stone. The carpets harden, subsumed into rock.

 

Dean holds very still and tries not to touch anything with his legs. Furtively, he checks his own sleeves to make sure they’re still cloth.

 

“This is not what was meant to happen,” Castiel says at last.

 

With no idea what to say or do, Dean settles for quietly putting his hand on Castiel’s back and rubbing in little circles. By now, the stone has reached the closest walls and transformed both wardrobes. Dean’s bag, dropped in front of the closer wardrobe, is now a very realistic sculpture.

 

Staring through Dean, Castiel presses his lips against Dean’s shoulder.

 

Dean presumes this means to keep rubbing his back.

 

The stone climbs the walls. It consumes the dressing table, the couch, the doorway.

 

Dean kisses the side of Castiel’s head. “Hey, hey, look at me,” Dean says, commanding a god, or maybe just begging.

 

Castiel looks up at him. “I’m sorry,” he says, and through the sorrow of his eyes and the frustration of his voice, it’s every inch the apology Dean has never thought to pray for.

 

“Why did you leave us?” Dean asks.

 

“Because my husband was dead, and when I asked them, my people claimed they could go on without me,” Castiel answers. “I was so tired, Dean.” He looks to Dean with a thirst for forgiveness, but Dean himself is already long parched for the same.

 

Even so, there’s only one response.

 

“I’ll be your husband, Castiel,” Dean tells him. He looks a god in the eyes and promises. “I’ll marry you, I’m yours, let’s do this.”

 

Castiel’s expression vaguely softens, even if his surroundings do not. “You’re meant to let me ask three times.”

 

“Just said yes three times, I think that counts.”

 

“You said it four times.”

 

“Guess you should marry me, then.”

 

Dean glimpses a flash of returning color out of the corner of his eye, and then Castiel pulls him down for a kiss. It’s chaste, as kisses go, little more than dry lips slotted together.

 

Drawing back, his hand once more upon Dean’s cheek, Castiel asks for the third time, “Are you to be my husband?”

 

Something in Castiel’s emphasis reveals the correct response.

 

“I am your husband,” Dean says, and this time, Castiel’s kiss isn’t simply to silence him.

 

This is the kind of kiss that starts off on a lap and ends up beneath a firm body. It’s the kind of kiss with phases, with stages, where fast and hard turns to rough and twining without their mouths ever parting. Castiel’s hands blaze through Dean’s clothes, and Dean clutches at strong shoulders as Castiel rocks him down onto the sheets. Dean breaks the kiss with a low moan, as bewildered by the supreme comfort beneath him as he is by the god above him.

 

Castiel wastes no time in crawling on top of him. He urges Dean farther up the bed with upward strokes of the hand, with kisses pressed to the underside of Dean’s jaw. When Dean scoots back toward the headboard, Castiel snags him by the waist of his pants. Without hesitation, Dean lifts his hips, and Castiel pulls the garment off him entirely.

 

Kneeling on his bed in the soft, striped clothing he’d slept in for centuries, the god carefully folds Dean’s pants, each leg a former flour sack. He looks down at Dean admiringly, no doubt pleased with his own handiwork: Dean’s legs, though always toned, have taken on muscle. They’ve lost scars and gained hair, both skin and hair looking softer than before, less strained, less brittle.

 

Keeping it beneath his shirt, Dean’s almost afraid to see what’s become of his own cock.

 

Castiel sets the pants aside. He places a warm hand on Dean’s knee, fingertips skimming across Dean’s new hair.

 

“There is much to be done,” Castiel tells him, serious and somber despite his obvious lust. “Before I begin, I will give you the night you deserve.”

 

“I’m, uh.” Propped up on his elbows, heart pounding a dizziness throughout his body, Dean licks dry lips with a dry tongue. “I can wait. You got all your important… god stuff. To go god-ing. And stuff.”

 

Castiel’s smile is faint but pleased. More pressingly, he starts to unbutton his own shirt. His fingers are large and strong, a matching fit to his graceful hands, and Dean’s shameful mouth begins to water the same way it does for a shapely cock.

 

“I will not neglect you on our wedding night,” Castiel promises. He sheds his shirt in a fluid motion and folds it just as quickly. What a jarringly domestic image he is, the folding of laundry combined with the undeniable strength of his torso. A god who folds his own clothes.

 

And his husband’s.

 

Dean scoots a little farther up the bed, and not moaning at the slide of the blankets across his skin is an accomplishment in itself. Castiel watches every inch of motion. Dean sits up against the headboard, shirt still held in a pretense over his own hardness. He’s pretty sure his balls were on display during that little trip, though.

 

“How do you want to do this?” Dean asks, trying for casual confidence and utterly failing.

 

“You like my bed,” Castiel states, his stare unrelenting.

 

“It’s a really good bed,” Dean says.

 

Castiel crawls up it to join him, his shoulders that of a stalking feline. He straddles only one of Dean’s legs, his knee high between Dean’s thighs, and he leans forward for a kiss he expects more than demands. Even before Dean gives it, it already belongs to Castiel.

 

“You should enjoy it fully,” Castiel murmurs against his lips, long after Dean has forgotten what they were talking about.

 

Mind useless, Dean simply hums and tightens his fingers in Castiel’s hair, pulling him down for more kisses. He gets one arm around Castiel’s neck, around his shoulders, across the musculature of his back, and Dean was wrong. There was a statue in this bed after all. Because that is what Castiel feels like beneath his palms, sculpted perfection made flesh. Where Castiel doesn’t wish to move, he is immobile.

 

In the attempt to pull Castiel closer, Dean sinks down instead, the better to ride Castiel’s thigh. He makes a choked off noise at the sublime smoothness of the fabric still clothing such muscle. He’s sure he leaks onto the garment, but Castiel grins at him, pleased beyond measure. One hand on the bed, his body poised over Dean’s, Castiel reaches down, his fingertips stroking up the outside of Dean’s thigh.

 

They trail up to his hip.

 

They slip beneath the hem of his shirt.

 

Castiel’s hand stops there, his eyes fixed upon Dean’s.

 

Right. Dean needs to let go to lift his arms.

 

He whips his shirt off and chucks it on the floor.

 

Castiel looks at him in absolute dismay.

 

“I’ll… go pick that up?” Dean offers.

 

Castiel pretends to let him for all of a second before wrestling Dean back down against the bed. Even in Dean’s improved condition, it takes exceedingly little effort to accomplish. Castiel holds him down with a single hand in the center of his chest. Dean lies there, straining, reaching, as Castiel looks his fill. He tries to hook his legs around Castiel before realizing that might give the god the wrong impression… although to expect a god to fill such a role has to be a smite-worthy offense. Probably best for Dean to spread his legs after all.

 

“We will work on your manners,” Castiel rumbles. He walks forward on his knees to fully straddle Dean, his striped pants tented. Dean’s hands fly from Castiel’s wrist down to his knees. “For now, how would you have us begin?”

 

Pinned to the bed by that one large hand, Dean swallows hard. “Kinda thought we’d already started.”

 

Faintly, Castiel smirks. “How would you have us continue?”

 

Tiptoeing despite his libido, Dean says, “You sayin’ we’re done with the kissing part?”

 

With a real smile, Castiel comes back down to him. He sinks on top of Dean, hot and firm and heavy. The plush softness of his lips rivals his bed. Dean is surrounded on all sides, pressed into comfort beneath a blanket of lust. His hands sweep up and down Castiel’s back, seeking a firmer handhold. When Castiel trails kisses to the corner of Dean’s jaw, Dean surrenders sanity and grabs a god’s ass with both hands.

 

Dean’s never been much for necks or ears before, but when Castiel sucks on his pulse, Dean bucks wildly, futilely against him. Castiel flicks his tongue against damp skin, painting the limited canvas he holds between his teeth, and Dean clutches at him, hips fighting to thrust without leverage. Dean sobs when Castiel stops, only to cry louder at Castiel drawing his earlobe into his mouth.

 

It’s simple and small and should be nothing, but under Castiel’s ministrations, Dean’s body comes alive in so many ways, too many ways. He rocks upward, twisting to touch. His legs wrap around Castiel’s. His erection slides against slick fabric and an answering hardness. His bare back, his ass, all of him in contact with the bed is relentlessly ground into woven bliss.

 

Despite a desperate attempt to the contrary, Dean comes all over the god’s pants. He shakes long and hard, face flushed, muscles jumping and twitching.

 

“Fuck,” he curses into Castiel’s shoulder. “Fuck, sorry, I-”

 

Castiel cuts him off with a kiss. He shifts, sneaking a hand down between their bodies to directly touch Dean’s softening erection for the first time.

 

Dean gasps into his mouth.

 

Castiel hums in return, continuing to kiss Dean as if nothing strange has happened. No tingling in the balls, no abrupt return of lust’s demands. One hand on Dean’s hip, the other above Dean’s head, Castiel works their lower bodies together in a slow, filthy grind, clothed erection against nude, slicking Dean up with his own spent seed.

 

Rocking back against him, Dean tugs at Castiel’s hair. He turns his head to the side in the attempt to resist more kisses, but Castiel simply transfers his attentions to Dean’s ear. Despite having never cared for it in the past, this oral affection quickly has Dean straining against another too-quick finish.

 

He rocks for it, twists his crotch toward the hand on his hip, and he feels his own wetness smear deeper into Castiel’s pants. He feels Castiel’s heat against his own, feels lips and breath against his ear, feels a chest and stomach pressed against his own. Their motions slide together no matter how fast Dean strains to rut against him and, fuck, fuck , “Fuck!”

 

He spills a second time, cock pulsing between them.

 

Lightly brushing their lips together, Castiel squeezes his hip, and Dean stays hard. His arms tremble around Castiel’s shoulders. Castiel lifts up and moves down Dean’s body, heedless of Dean’s fingers slipping through his hair.

 

Dean fights his eyes open. The blue canopy of the bed glitters with embroidered constellations. Chest heaving, Dean stares blankly. A drop of sweat rolls down the side of his head, leaving a prickling trail through his scalp.

 

Gentle fingers stroke his hip.

 

Barely lifting his head, Dean looks down into Castiel’s unrelenting gaze. Kneeling over Dean’s shins once more, Castiel strokes Dean’s thighs. Those striped pants should be filthy, but the only spot of damp is from the tip of where they tent.

 

“Pants?” Dean asks.

 

“When I’m ready,” Castiel promises.

 

He pets Dean’s sides. He traces the juts and curves of Dean’s pelvis. He anchors Dean with weight and power, as if the orgasmic lethargy wasn’t enough. He awakens Dean’s skin as it has never woken before. It’s the only explanation. When Castiel lowers his head above Dean’s navel, a hand length between lips and vulnerable underbelly, when Castiel blows a breath at once hot and cold across his stomach, Dean cries out, back arching. He doesn’t come from that—from a breath, not even against his cock—but it’s a close thing.

 

With quiet, soothing shushes, Castiel eases him back down. “Tell me when it begins to pain you.”

 

“Whuh...?” Dean slurs.

 

In answer, Castiel slides his hand down Dean’s chest, five short fingernails barely touching him, five knives prepared to split his skin.

 

The pain, the threat of pain, goes directly to Dean’s cock. He comes again, spilling hard enough to hit Castiel’s chest where the god leans over him.

 

“Sorry,” Dean gasps. “Sorry, I-”

 

Castiel swallows him down.

 

Air punches out of Dean’s lungs. Colors explode behind his eyes, before them, through his entire body. Before he can come to terms with the wet, silky heat surrounding him, before he can try to adjust to the firm pull of those lips or the playful press of that tongue, he’s coming, he’s shaking, he’s sobbing.

 

It doesn’t stop.

 

Castiel doesn’t stop.

 

The tension coiled low in his belly tightens and lengthens even as Dean releases it. Over and over, endlessly, continuously, into Castiel’s mouth. It must be one moment, stretched, for no come escapes Castiel’s determined mouth. Not even a god could swallow fast enough to match the fevered sex dream Dean’s mistaken for reality.

 

He twists and aches and cries. With one hand, he clings to Castiel’s fingers where they cup his hip. With the other hand, he commits the rudest blasphemy imaginable, pressing down hard on the back of a god’s head. His legs flex for leverage, his toes curl, his back arches, and someone is begging, someone is pleading, someone is shouting for Castiel.

 

Lips red, hair mussed, Castiel climbs up over Dean’s prone body. He crouches over Dean on hands and knees, the posture inquisitive.

 

Dean croaks something incoherent.

 

Castiel bends down for a kiss, and the tongue Dean weakly sucks on tastes of his own spend. He sucks to show willingness. Castiel must understand. He pulls back a fraction of an inch to look down at Dean, their noses brushing.

 

“Would you like a turn?” Castiel asks.

 

After that, there’s only one thing Dean can say. “Fuck my face.”

 

Castiel smiles, wide and pleased and fond. “Sit up.”

 

“Can’t.”

 

Rolling his eyes but never losing his smile, Castiel hooks his hands beneath Dean’s armpits and hauls him up against the headboard. He tucks cloud-like pillows behind Dean’s neck and back. He pets Dean’s sweaty hair back from his forehead. The bulge in his pants bobs with the motions of his body, a compelling, straining sight.

 

Dean’s aching dick twitches as if still untouched by pleasure.

 

Shaking, Dean’s hands somehow leave the bed. He reaches, his eyes flicking between his goal and Castiel’s face. Eyes alight with something closer to joy than lust, Castiel unties the drawstring himself. Dean hooks his thumbs into the fabric near Castiel’s hips and pulls, revealing a secondary garment, white and impossibly smooth. Castiel pushes down both layers to mid-thigh, and his cock springs up, thick and eager.

 

This is the dick of a god. It is very obviously the dick of a god.

 

Dean would open his mouth, but it’s already fallen open.

 

Gripping Dean firmly by the hair, holding himself around the base, Castiel rubs the rose tip of his cock over Dean’s lips. Straddling Dean’s torso, Castiel feeds Dean one tiny thrust at a time, stretching Dean’s mouth until his lips are tight, his jaw aching. Castiel pushes in, and in, and in.

 

Dean sucks air through his nose and cock with his mouth. He tries to play, to use his tongue and bob his head, but Castiel’s grip on his hair keeps Dean where he is, his mouth a hole made for fucking.

 

Holding Dean in place, Castiel drives into him further, faster, far past Dean’s ability to take—and Dean does not choke. He does not gag. He does not cough. He cannot breathe, but though his mind grows ever dizzier from the musk of sex and the vision above him, over him, increasingly inside of him, his lungs make no demand for air.

 

Burning lust-hot, Castiel’s cock fills his mouth, rides his tongue, presses back into the depths of his throat, and yet the only discomfort comes from his own dick, its demands neglected. His eyes blind, his throat a moan, Dean grabs at Castiel’s hips. His hands slide back, covering the flex and thrusts of a firm ass.

 

“Is this what you like?” Castiel asks, the question pleasingly breathless. “Does this bring you pleasure?”

 

Dean squeezes Castiel’s ass with both hands and swallows around his cock. There’s no air left inside him for sound, only Castiel’s hands hot on the sides of his head, and somehow, this is a fair exchange.

 

Castiel thrusts deeper, kneels higher, angles Dean’s head and mouth and throat however he desires, and Dean should choke. Dean should pass out. Dean should be a broken, suffocated mess, as well as a mindless one.

 

Instead, he takes it.

 

He takes it, and takes it, and takes it.

 

Every scrape of fingernails against his scalp, every pass of cock between his lips, every low groan caressing his ears. He takes it all, body euphoric, his senses spasming with stimulation. It’s so much, too much, and yet it keeps heightening. The sweat trailing down his neck, the sheets beneath his ass, the pillows behind his back, the very air against his skin, all of this combines with the strain of his jaw, the taste on his tongue, the endless, steady thrusts that dominate his mouth from lips to throat.

 

Without warning, Castiel stops.

 

Dean inhales sharply, only to let out a coughing protest.

 

“That was too much,” Castiel murmurs, hooded eyes bright with affection, hard cock shining with spit and precome. His hands lower to cup Dean’s face. His thumbs stroke across Dean’s cheekbones, Dean’s face damp with sweat. Castiel sits across Dean’s lap, watching with attentive eyes as the world blurs.

 

“Whuh?” Dean asks.

 

“I used you too hard,” Castiel explains, only to frown when Dean snorts a giggle.

 

“More,” Dean rasps. He wraps a hand around Castiel’s cock, his fingers fumbling and clumsy with the angle.

 

Castiel inhales hard and doesn’t stop him. He shakes his head, however, still rubbing thumbs over Dean’s cheeks as if to erase his freckles.

 

“You’re crying,” Castiel tells him.

 

“Nuh-uh.”

 

Castiel presses his thumb between Dean’s lips, presses the pad down on Dean’s tongue, and his skin tastes of salt. “Yes.”

 

Sucking on Castiel’s thumb instead, Dean flops a shrug.

 

Castiel leans down, drags his thumb free with agonizing slowness, and slots their mouths together. As he moves down Dean’s body, the pants around his thighs encounter Dean’s cock. Just a brush. Just an incidental touch.

 

Shaking, whining into Castiel’s mouth, Dean comes hard, each spurt ripped out of him with a fresh surge of tears. He’s crying, gasping, and when it’s over, he’s still hard.

 

“Oh,” Castiel breathes out, his voice threaded through with wonder. He kisses Dean anew, his tongue charting the territory his cock has conquered. He reaches between them and Dean spills yet again over his fingers. Castiel slicks Dean with his own come, the slide becoming slipperier by the second.

 

Dean’s weeping openly by now, gasping for air against Castiel’s mouth, but then Castiel breathes into him, silencing the protests of his lungs. Castiel keeps going until Dean’s hands don’t know if they’re pulling Castiel closer for more or begging him to be still.

 

But not to let go. Never to let go.

 

Breaking their kiss, pressing their foreheads together, Castiel murmurs, “Touch yourself.” He pulls Dean’s hand off his cock and wraps both of their hands around Dean’s dick.

 

Dean shouts, immediately spilling between their fingers. Or did he imagine that, the pleasure only aftershocks? He thinks, for one vague second of thought amid a storm of sensation, that there isn’t enough mess. But that quick moment of confusion vanishes in the onslaught of two hands, of a nose brushing against his own, of hot breath kissing his lips.

 

Dean’s calloused hand has never been rougher. His cock has never been harder, hotter, slicker. His body is made new beneath these touches.

 

“Don’t stop,” Castiel urges, as if there could be any alternative, but then he himself stops. Dean cries out in deprived agony even as he climaxes yet again, spilling over his fingers and yet still not coming hard enough to truly finish. Castiel moves back, moves away even as Dean paws at him with one come-streaked hand. “Keep going, Dean.”

 

“No, no, please,” Dean begs. His eyes snap shut as another wave breaks over him. He tries to move, tries to pull his legs under him, but he can’t stop his hand and he can’t stop coming. When he can again focus his eyes, it’s to find Castiel entirely nude at last, kneeling and carefully folding his pants. Giving up on his attempts to sit up, Dean reaches with his legs instead, hooking his toes behind Castiel’s closer knee. “Please.”

 

Castiel gazes upon him with eyes bright with power and dark with lust. He traces Dean’s features with a palpable, physical force, and then he tosses his pants off the side of the bed.

 

Dean chokes on a laugh, his throat already occupied by a moan. Castiel returns to him, covers him, presses him down against the blankets with mouth meeting mouth, chest against chest, their cocks sliding against each other between their stomachs.

 

“You’re even more than I dreamed you’d be,” Castiel murmurs against his lips. He rocks them together and Dean convulses, hands splayed across a strong back. Shoulder blades and spine and muscle, Dean touches all of him he can reach. He bucks up wildly, a frantic, frotting thrust, and Castiel says, “Yes, yes,” while rising up, while Dean grabs for him to come back, and then Dean’s shouting, back arching as he spills endlessly inside Castiel’s ass with no idea how he got inside.

 

Castiel rides him with ruddy cheeks, his nipples pebbled against his flushed chest. His head drops forward as he pleasures himself on Dean’s dick. His hands roam Dean’s chest, and he takes even Dean’s wildest thrusts in stride. The only control of their motions Dean has is in falling away, in falling back against the bed after thrusting up however high Castiel allows. When Dean plants his feet and bucks hard, he slams his hips up against immobile thighs, he crams his dick into a tight, tingling hole.

 

Something’s going on in there, something only comparable to lube in how it slicks the way. This is some strange power, a filthy miracle. Dean spills and spills inside of him, shaking too hard to properly thrust, to keep a rhythm, and looking down below Castiel’s mouthwatering girth, he sees the telltale drip of his own semen leaking out.

 

Dean whites out. The world spins. He’s on top and wild, balls slapping against Castiel’s ass. Castiel’s chest rises and falls beneath Dean’s hands. His mouth is too far away, but his face is plainly visible in the fleeting, flickering instances Dean can stand to force his eyes open. Such adoration. Such possessive joy at Dean inside him, filling him, pleasuring him.

 

Dean keeps adjusting his hold, gripping hips, pushing at thighs. He tweaks nipples and pulls desperately at Castiel’s cock before losing his balance to yet another climax. He collapses forward, still thrusting. Perhaps he falls out in his abandon; perhaps Castiel’s ass is simply too full of come to accommodate Dean’s cock any longer. In whichever case, Dean’s frantic motions can only continue as Castiel pulls him back down, holds them again chest-to-chest, frotting.

 

His face against a pillow, chin hooked over Castiel’s shoulder, Dean gasps for air he abruptly no longer needs. What he needs is to be closer. What he needs is something more, something greater than climax, something to break this rising tension that release cannot relieve.

 

Castiel grabs at Dean’s back as Dean ruts against him. Dean fumbles a hand down between their bodies, and he comes over their cocks when he discovers he can’t fit one hand around them both. He pants broken kisses against Castiel’s neck, his ear, his shoulder.

 

All of Dean’s body is consumed with the need for touch. His lips on skin. His hands, everywhere. Chest against chest, thighs between thighs, even the sharp pain of hipbones aligning with his own for too hard a thrust. The sheets slide beneath his shins, tugged by his toes as he strains for better leverage, for a strong enough foundation to fuck a god through his own bed.

 

Castiel’s strong hands stroke down his back, and Dean curls upward like a cat straining to be petted. It ruins his rhythm, but it also lifts his face from the crook of Castiel’s neck.

 

They look into each other’s eyes.

 

Castiel drags him back down into a kiss made of demands. He rolls them over and Dean rolls them more, and then they’re simply bound together, play-wrestling while Dean’s strength leaves him one orgasmic burst at a time. They stop somewhere out of the wet spot, or maybe Castiel has banished the wet spot as he has with so much mess. It’s a small concern, there and gone, because while Dean has Castiel once again on his back, Castiel has his hands on Dean’s ass.

 

He squeezes, fingertips dipping down between Dean’s cheeks.

 

Biting his lip hard, Dean shakes the sweat out of his eyes—only to groan in disappointment when Castiel moves his hands higher.

 

“Ass,” Dean grits out. Images fill his mind, so strong and true as to be phantom sensations.

 

Castiel brings one hand up to cup Dean’s face. Instantly, Dean’s forehead and nape are again dry, and he can stop blinking back the sweat. “Yours or mine?” Castiel asks.

 

“All of it,” Dean answers, the only answer. “Both, all, more.”

 

Castiel kisses him hard. Dean groans down into it, his lips parting for a questing tongue, that touch mirrored by the fingertip brushing against Dean’s hole. The tingling happens again, working past the ring of muscle and into Dean’s abruptly emptier ass.

 

There’s a burn without pain, a stretch with strain. There is a new hint of tantalizing fullness, pressing in from behind. Dean ruts high against Castiel’s stomach, Castiel’s head tilted back to preserve their kissing. The tingling spreads deeper, plunging inside Dean far faster than Castiel’s finger. Dean spills and spills, and then Castiel removes the touch to pour Dean over onto his back.

 

Limp, Dean rolls all the way onto his side, but before he can flop over, Castiel slots up behind him. He positions Dean’s legs as he sees fit and, his personal playground thus arranged, begins to finger Dean open at superhuman speed from behind.

 

“Cas!” Dean swears, but Castiel simply rewards the blasphemy by sucking at the freckled skin of his shoulders. The thick finger inside him works deeper, following the tingling sensation that’s already skewered him through.

 

“Do you-” thrust “-want my-” nudge “-cock?” Castiel grinds the knuckles of his other fingers around Dean’s hole, his fingertip pressing just pass the sweetest spot. “I could-” pull “-just do this.” Press.

 

With one hand, Dean clutches at the arm folded under both of their heads. With the other, he desperately works himself to yet another unfinished finish. As Castiel presses both his finger and the tingles against that inner place, Dean shoots off so hard, his seed makes it over the edge of the bed.

 

“Cas!” Dean shouts again.

 

Castiel scrapes his teeth against Dean’s neck. “More of my fingers?” he rumbles behind Dean’s ear.

 

“Both,” Dean pants, rocking back against him, at once grinding down against Castiel’s hand and trying to press back against his chest. “All of it, all of it, fuck.”

 

Castiel works a second finger in alongside the first. Dean’s dick leaks onto the bedspread.

 

“You want all of my cock?” Castiel asks, inquisitive enough through his lust that Dean has a flash of self-preservation.

 

“Fuck, I, I dunno. So fucking big, I dunno. Too big to take.”

 

Castiel hooks his fingers inside Dean and pulls, stretching him tight and straining. “But do you want it?”

 

“Yes,” Dean gasps, the word punched out of him. “Fuck, I do, but I can’t-”

 

“You can,” Castiel corrects in a low growl. “I can make you take it.”

 

Dean comes with a desperate sob. One hand tight in Castiel’s hair. One hand clenched around his own cock. Shaking. Seizing. Fucked beneath the skin in a way that has nothing to do with the fingers working hot and firm inside his ass.

 

“I think I made you too sensitive,” Castiel says with a vague note of concern—and a cool blanket drops across Dean’s twitching body. Inside his body.

 

Dean sucks in hiccuping gasps of air. The room seems dimmer, his limbs looser, his lust less consuming, and yet he’s still more than half out of his mind with wanting.

 

“Are you all right?” Castiel asks. He pulls his fingers from Dean’s ass. Ignoring Dean’s whimpers, or perhaps inspired by them, Castiel sets his hand against Dean’s sternum and pulls Dean tight against him. They slot up, back to chest, ass to crotch, and Dean groans with so many kinds of relief. “I’m sorry, I got carried away.” His lips buzz against Dean’s nape. His fingers, impossibly clean, stroke across Dean’s pectorals and travel down to his navel. His erection presses against the small of Dean’s back, but Castiel simply holds him still, feeling Dean breathe.

 

In a heroic show of strength, Dean drags his hand away from his dick and over Cas’ side, reaching for a handful of god ass. He tries to rock back but only manages a weak undulation. “More.”

 

Castiel’s lips shift against Dean’s skin, the smile unseen but unmistakable. “More?”

 

Dean tugs Castiel tighter against his back.

 

Before Castiel even moves his hand off Dean’s stomach, the tingling returns. It vibrates Dean open, easing the way for more fingers. The thrusts and pulls aren’t quite slick, definitely aren’t dry, aren’t lined by any sensation Dean knows how to properly name. It might be called yes. It might be called more .

 

With one last kiss to Dean’s nape, Castiel rolls him the rest of the way onto his front. Castiel follows effortlessly, his knees pushing between Dean’s, his cock pushing between Dean’s cheeks. Dean’s back freezes as Castiel pulls away to kneel, as Castiel seizes Dean’s hips with both hands.

 

“Don’t move,” Castiel orders.

 

Dean can’t. He can splay his legs wider, but he can’t tighten them. He can fold his arms beneath his head, but he can’t free his hips from Castiel’s grip, can’t lower his raised ass. Even when Castiel holds him with a single hand, there’s no pushing back onto the broad blaze of flesh Castiel presses against his hole.

 

It burns.

 

The tightness.

 

The heat.

 

“Relax.”

 

Forehead dropped onto his folded arms, Dean groans.

 

It’s thicker.

 

It’s so much thicker.

 

And then.

 

Finally.

 

Impossibly.

 

The head makes it past his rim.

 

“I can come from this,” Castiel promises in a low murmur. “I can come from so many things, you don’t have to take any more.”

 

Taking his weight on his cheek and chest, Dean flails an arm back, reaching. He gets as far as Castiel’s hand on his hip. He squeezes.

 

The tingles come alive as never before. They spread through Dean’s flesh, beneath sweating skin and strained muscle and his little remaining fat. They push him open before Castiel ever presses forward. They lessen around Dean’s hole, allowing even the tiniest amount of progress to be keenly felt. Their intensity changes in patterns, in waves, like countless fingers pleasuring him in the home of ecstasy.

 

Pulses of some lesser euphoria interrupt the sensation, and it takes Dean a long, breathless eternity to recognize these as climaxes, to realize this is his own ass clenching around Castiel’s cock. The blankets beneath him grow filthier by the second, soaked with seed and sweat and saliva.

 

He’s keening, groaning, begging. He’s wriggling back only to be held in place by implacable hands.

 

It keeps going.

 

Deeper.

 

Deeper.

 

He’s split in two and held together.

 

He’s broken.

 

He’s pristine.

 

He can take this.

 

No one can take this.

 

“Cas,” Dean croaks into the pillow. He can’t get the rest out.

 

One hand curled around Dean’s stomach to hold him up, Castiel strokes Dean’s side. “Dean,” the god answers, and he sounds lost.

 

Dean gathers up his bravery and tightens his ass.

 

The low moan that escapes Castiel is the most noise Dean’s had out of him all night. The most uncontrolled. The most pleasured.

 

“Fuck me!” Dean shouts, ready for it.

 

“Not yet,” Castiel groans, pushing even further inside. “I’m almost, Dean, please, let me.”

 

“All the way,” Dean agrees, the idiot he is. “All the way in me, c’mon, give it to me, gimme all of it, c’mon, c’mon-”

 

He chokes on a gasp.

 

Castiel shifts his hips, rocking gently from side to side. Each pass slides him deeper.

 

Dean drops his head back onto his forearm. He reaches for his dick only to come at the first brush of his fingers.

 

Castiel makes it in another thick, tight inch as Dean’s pulsing ass pulls him in harder.

 

So Dean does it again.

 

And again.

 

He’s crying with how hard he’s coming, how full he’s stretched, but he keeps at it.

 

A dozen orgasms later, something hits behind his balls. Dean feels down, touches, and that’s Castiel’s sack. Soon after, those are Castiel’s hips pressed against his ass.

 

He’s in.

 

Castiel’s in.

 

“Dean,” Castiel croons, folding over Dean’s back. He blankets Dean, bringing him down to the bed beneath their combined weights, and the simple shifting inside him has Dean howling.

 

“Dean?” Castiel brings his fingers to Dean’s lips, as if to check that Dean’s still breathing.

 

Dean kisses his fingertips. Weakly, he sucks those fingers into his mouth.

 

Castiel gives a tiny, experimental thrust.

 

The drag of it.

 

Around his rim.

 

Inside him, the tug from the head of that dick, sliding across his inner walls.

 

The constant, unrelenting pressure on a spot Dean has only ever had touched in passing thrusts.

 

“Dean,” Castiel praises. “My Dean. My righteous man. My husband. Dean.”

 

The noise Dean makes is far less sentimental but no less awed.

 

“I’m going to move,” Castiel warns, but he doesn’t make good until Dean’s nodding, babbling, flexing his ass.

 

Everything inside him moves. Everything.

 

Castiel pulls back, pulls so very far away from Dean’s back that Dean tries to follow and has to be held still.

 

And then Castiel pushes back in.

 

Dean’s in a place beyond tears. Beyond sobbing. Beyond breath and choking.

 

He’s in the bed of a god, legs spread and asshole fucked open.

 

The thrusts begin slowly. So slowly.

 

They do not remain slow.

 

They hasten. They burn his hole brighter. They spear him open and shove him forward up the bed until his hands clutch the headboard. His arms collapse in a surrender of twitching muscle, but before he can strike his head against the wall, Castiel pulls him back, pulls them both back.

 

Shouting wordlessly, Dean manages to get one knee beneath him, then the other. He grabs at Castiel’s hands on his hips as Castiel settles back into a kneel to bounce Dean on his cock. Dean’s dick slaps against his thighs, his stomach. Even as Dean clings to Castiel’s hands, Dean spends all over the pillows, all over himself.

 

Holding Dean still between impossibly strong hands, Castiel fucks up into him. Dean’s head drops backward. His entire body gives up. Castiel’s shoulder is his pillow, Castiel’s chest his bed. There’s nothing left except Castiel.

 

Castiel inside him.

 

Against his back.

 

Castiel… pulling out.

 

Dean groans sluggish protest only to be poured onto his back. Leaning over him, Castiel quickly checks Dean’s eyes, his pounding heart. Castiel squeezes Dean’s reaching hands. Castiel grabs a jarringly clean pillow, lifts Dean with a hand between the legs, splayed across his ass, and sticks the pillow beneath his hips.

 

Leaning over him, looking down in equal parts lust and concentration, Castiel rubs the head of his cock back against Dean’s loose rim. He waits for Dean’s jerking nod, and it all begins anew. Faster, this time, but no less thick.

 

He hooks Dean’s legs over his elbows.

 

He fills Dean up.

 

Completely.

 

Eyes closed, chest heaving, Dean takes the fucking.

 

He takes every last inch, every single thrust and grind. As exhausted as the rest of his arms, his hands lie on the bed, useless.

 

All of it, everything leading up to this point, every kiss and suck and climax. That was foreplay.

 

For this.

 

Castiel’s motions grow like mountains, as gradual, as immense, as inevitable. He thumbs at Dean’s eyes to make Dean look at him, to make Dean nod with a boneless neck. His hands touch everywhere, or the tingles do. Because Castiel’s hands hold Dean’s legs, or they touch his face. They don’t truly twist his nipples or pull his cock.

 

Something else does. Something else that is still Castiel, something as intrinsic as his gorgeous fingers, something that can fit down Dean’s throat deeper than any kiss, something that keeps him hale and alive when his lungs can’t reach for air.

 

He’s full beyond measure. There’s space for nothing more.

 

Castiel drops his head low, moans Dean’s name, and spends inside him. He spends and he spills. He fills Dean past the breaking point, and Dean still does not break. Seed escapes his ass with Castiel’s final thrusts, before Castiel presses firm and hard while he pulses, while Dean pulses around him.

 

With a contented groan, Castiel gazes down at him with heavy-lidded eyes, and Dean is still dying of lust, still pleasured and unfulfilled in equal parts.

 

Gently shifting his hips, Castiel pulls out.

 

Desperate, weak, needful, Dean reaches with all of his body that will still obey.

 

“Please,” he begs, not knowing what for.

 

“Yes,” Castiel tells him. He knows what Dean needs. He has to. He brushes Dean’s sweaty hair back, immediately rendering both of them clean. His cock softens against Dean’s stomach even as Dean’s continues to strain for him, the only piece of Dean that can still stand.

 

“I need you,” Dean tells him, and Castiel nods in satisfaction.

 

Lying more than half on top of Dean, propping himself up on one arm, Castiel keeps stroking Dean’s cheek with his right hand. “Are you my husband?”

 

Dean nods, frustrated past the point of tears, driven to them from the other side.

 

Insistent, Castiel repeats, “Are you my husband?”

 

“I am your husband,” Dean rasps, and the tears fall anew. He comes again anyway, the pressure and heat of Castiel’s body against his too much to resist.

 

“Nearly there,” Castiel promises in a whisper. In a stronger, more authoritative voice, he continues, “Are you mine for all your days?”

 

“All my days.”

 

“Until Death robs you from my arms.”

 

Dean nods, at once lolling and frantic, and Castiel looks at him so urgently, Dean musters the will to actually say it. “Until, until Death robs me from, from your arms.”

 

“I am your husband,” Castiel tells him. “I am yours for all your days, until Death robs you from my arms.”

 

“Please,” Dean begs.

 

“Of course,” Castiel says.

 

Gripping Dean by the shoulder, Castiel rises up scant inches and presses his lips to Dean’s forehead in a jarringly chaste kiss.

 

Nothing changes.

 

“Hold tight,” Castiel whispers against his brow.

 

“What-”

 

Dean burns.

 

He incinerates.

 

Everything he ever was is gone, lost, remade, reforged, rediscovered, laid bare, and untouched. No body. No breath. No voice, no sight, no sounds.

 

He is beyond pain, beyond pleasure, beyond tears or gasps or moans.

 

And yet…

 

And yet.

 

He’d been wrong, about the foreplay.

 

It had been, all of it, even the fucking, merely foreplay for this .

 

The fire-beyond-fire blazes. The light-beyond-light burns. The wind-beyond-wind pierces that which never was.

 

The nothingness grows heavy.

 

The fire banks.

 

The light dims.

 

The wind quiets.

 

And Dean slowly awakens back to life, blinking to a haze of sensation. Sight: blue eyes, sex-tousled hair, pink bitten lips. Sound: the soft shifting of fabric, the rhythm of his heart, his breathing. Smell: the scents of sex, of masculine bodies entwining. Touch: the body above him, the bed below him, and the fire still burning in his arm.

 

It satisfies more than anything else he has ever known.

 

His fingers tracing the burn, Castiel presses another chaste kiss to Dean’s lips.

 

“You did very well,” he murmurs.

 

“Yeah?” Dean mumbles, exhausted and inordinately pleased.

 

“Very well.” Castiel kisses him again, his movements as gentle and lingering against Dean’s mouth as they are against Dean’s body. “You should sleep.”

 

Dean hums agreement, closes his eyes, and jerks awake in a quick panicked burst. “Not for years, right?”

 

A smile spreads across Castiel’s face. “No. For a few hours, until you recover.”

 

Dean closes his eyes. “All right,” he slurs, falling fast and drifting away, until he is the sleeping husband of an awakened god.

Body stiff, Dean tries to roll over.

 

He can’t.

 

Blaming his hard bed and a tangle of sheets, he tries to go back to sleep. He shifts, and his naked body rubs against stone.

 

His eyes shoot open.

 

He stares at a clothed hip. Immediately, he closes his eyes and tries to keep his breathing steady. He’s still asleep. He’s visibly and obviously still asleep.

 

In a bed made once more of stone.

 

With his right arm folded and trapped beneath a stone pillow.

 

With his entire body, save his head and left arm, imprisoned beneath a sheet of stone. It drapes across his legs and molds to his body as a blanket should, but no matter how Dean flexes his legs, he can’t move them. The stone doesn’t crush him, simply pins him.

 

Maybe… maybe this is just how the bed works? Maybe Castiel is in a mood and this is the result? Maybe if Dean can get things back in a sexy state of mind, it’ll go back to normal.

 

His body far better restrained than the panic within him, Dean opens his eyes and tries to look up at Castiel with all the post-coital glow he should be feeling.

 

Sock-clad feet crossed at the ankle, Castiel sits with his back against the headboard. His hands are folded in his lap atop blue fabric with the delicate sheen of quality. His shirt is white but well-cut, tucked into those pants with a simple brown belt circling his hips. His eyes are turned forward, at once fixed and unfocused on something in the distance.

 

“Hey,” Dean says, like someone who isn’t at all terrified.

 

Castiel looks down at him. He uses his eyes alone before he deigns to turn his head.

 

Dean tries to shift for a better viewpoint, but the bed doesn’t accommodate him.

 

“A little stuck here,” Dean says with a little grin, because this is definitely just something his, fuck, his god husband does. The last time he’d woken up, gods were myths and the only people who had husbands were wives. Now, he’s trapped in a stone bed under a temple full of irate priests probably out for his blood. Life is strange like that.

 

Castiel seem to doesn’t find it so amusing.

 

“...Mind letting me up?” Dean asks.

 

With an unblinking stare, Castiel replies, “I couldn’t find my cuff-links.”

 

Dean doesn’t know the term, but he has a sneaking suspicion he knows what they are.

 

“If you want me to help you look, you kinda gotta let me up,” Dean says, clinging to hope with his fingertips.

 

“I found them.”

 

And Castiel lifts his hands from his lap, revealing a shine of gold and ruby at his wrists.

 

Dean says nothing.

 

“Did you come here intending to steal from me?” Castiel’s voice flattens the question into a statement.

 

“From the priests,” Dean corrects before his silence can literally damn him.

 

“And yet, the only belongings in your bag are mine.”

 

“Yeah, about that…”

 

Castiel waits to hear Dean’s excuse, which is fair, because Dean’s waiting to hear it too.

 

“I could explain better sitting up,” Dean says instead.

 

“You’re fine where you are.”

 

Dean very much disagrees.

 

He clears his throat. “Right, well.”

 

Castiel folds his arms, his eyes never wavering from Dean’s face. He’s sitting close enough that Dean could touch him if he reached out. The question is, to what end?

 

“So I’ve changed my mind on a lot of things,” Dean begins.

 

“Have you.”

 

“Maybe,” Dean says. “I’m keeping an open mind.”

 

If looks could kill—and Castiel’s probably can—Dean wouldn’t even leave a corpse.

 

“You’re keeping an open mind.”

 

“Yeah,” Dean says, and then goes for it. “’Cause the way I figured things yesterday, either you didn’t exist, or you’re a complete sack of shit who couldn’t care less about us.”

 

Castiel climbs off the bed in a single fluid huff, brushing aside the stone curtain as if it were gossamer. His face a thundercloud, he turns on his heel to glare down upon Dean in judgment. “You come into my home-”

 

“The world is shit and you’re sleeping through it!” Dean shouts, trying and failing to lift himself any higher. He gets his cheek off the stone pillow, but that’s as high as he gets with his arm pinned and torso entombed. “Everything’s fucking broken and you’re having a nap!”

 

“You came to steal from me. You pledged yourself to me to conceal your crime.”

 

“Hey, how about maybe you don’t get people drunk off your, your you and and spring huge life decisions on them!”

 

“You came,” Castiel grits out, “to steal from me.”

 

His hands fisted, his eyes blaze blue, literal lightning in the storm of his face. Around Dean, rough stone turns smooth and cold, encasing him now in metal.

 

Uselessly, Dean fights against a prison already molded to his exact shape. His bare left arm is all he has free, and he hits and flails against the restraining blanket, achieving only pain. His hand aches with impact while his upper arm burns, a hand print etched into his flesh there.

 

“What now?” Dean demands. “You gonna kill me, huh?”

 

Castiel’s head tilts, his eyes narrowing in even greater displeasure. “What did you say?”

 

Dean doesn’t piss himself. If he pisses himself, he’s trapped in here with it.

 

Instead, Dean ignores the pain in his neck and lifts his head as high as he can. “I said. Are you. Going. To kill me.”

 

Castiel’s expression worsens. “Is that how marital disputes are handled now?”

 

“No,” Dean says, and then has to correct himself. “I mean, not legally.”

 

Every word out of Dean’s mouth clearly angers the god further, but Castiel draws closer, his thighs bumping up against the edge of the bed, bumping smooth metal into wrinkled sheets. “Is that what you think I am?”

 

“I don’t know what the fuck you are,” Dean shoots back. “Yesterday, me fucking a guy meant damnation, but you seemed to like it fine.”

 

“What?” Castiel asks, frowning, but Dean’s had enough of the god’s questions.

 

“You wanna know why I came to steal?” he demands. “Huh? Wonder about that at all? Why someone would be fucking crazy enough to climb a cliff and raid a temple for a bag of fancy button-replacements? ‘Cause it’s not like I don’t have a day job, you asshole. But there’s a famine out there and if they catch you growing a garden, that’s a fine. No permit, that’s theft of work from farmers. The sewers are running over into the wells, but we catch rainwater and that’s a fine. No permit, that’s theft of city property. We pay to use the wells, but then you gotta boil the water, and where do you think the wood comes from? I don’t sell chairs and tables anymore, I sell decorative firewood!

 

“Can’t fucking leave, either,” Dean keeps on shouting, the dam well and truly burst for all his throat turns dry and aching. “Can’t sell outside the district without being fined twice the cost of product, can’t move outside the district without authorization, can’t get authorization without paying, you starting to get the picture yet? You wanna be mad at me stealing, you gotta get in line and a wait a year. I got a brother, I got friends, I got a guy with a broken ankle and no chance at a doctor, and you wanna get huffy at a guy for pinching your buttons when you weren’t even using them? Screw you.”

 

He coughs and fights to keep going, but the terror and rage have dried out his throat. It sticks to itself painfully and Dean keeps coughing, encased in metal, striking the side his head against the bronze pillow on a particularly hard spasm.

 

Eyes thunderous, his mouth a harder line than the freshly iron posts of his bed, Castiel plants a knee on the edge of the bed and reaches for Dean’s face.

 

Dean jerks up his arm, the only thing he can do, and Castiel grips his wrist easily, his fingers wrapping around it entirely.

 

Dean can breathe.

 

His throat is cool.

 

And yet more shouting bubbles in his lungs.

 

Castiel releases him.

 

Dean lowers his arm slowly, peering around it.

 

Walking forward on his knees, Castiel’s progress pushes the sheets down, tightening Dean’s cage. “Tell it to me from the beginning.”

 

“Tell you what?”

 

Impatience joins the ire in Castiel’s eyes. “How it all changed.”

 

Dean stares at him. “Do I look like I went to school?”

 

Castiel looks away. He sits down and pulls his legs up, his arms wrapping around his raised knees. Dean gets a very good view of his belt again.

 

After a long, ominous silence, Castiel says, “This isn’t what was supposed to happen.”

 

“Tough shit,” Dean tells him, which is probably not the smartest thing Dean’s done today. It’s a very bad sign that it’s not the stupidest either.

 

Castiel looks down at him, cold and removed. The smooth metal beneath Dean’s naked body changes texture in a slow transition, the line of change crawling beneath him and over him. The bed is rock again. Finally thinking to look past Castiel, Dean belatedly notices that even the opposite wall is one of gleaming metal, no longer the elaborate combination of paint and panels it had been before. The longer Dean watches, the more of the wall transitions into stone.

 

Dean puts two and two together.

 

“We’re all tired of it, all right?” he says. “You don’t get to be the one special exception who gets to fall asleep forever until it’s all magically better.”

 

“I’m a god,” Castiel tells him.

 

“Then why don’t you do something about it, huh?”

 

Castiel shakes his head. “Would you exchange your masters for another?”

 

“Uh, no,” Dean says, because that’s finally the stupidest idea he’s heard today. “I’m tired of playing a rigged game. Changing the dealer won’t change that.”

 

Castiel looks at him long and hard, as if turning himself to stone.

 

Dean holds as firm as he can, undignified position or not.

 

With a sigh, Castiel looks away. “I waited for a righteous man.”

 

“You’re the one who let me in here,” Dean tells him.

 

“I know,” Castiel says. He reaches out. He touches two fingertips to the mark on Dean’s shoulder. “I wasn’t prepared for a world in which the righteous must be thieves.”

 

Faintly, incredulously, Dean starts to get the idea that he might get out of this bed alive. Erring too late on the side of caution, he asks, “What are you going to do?”

 

“Do you know where the poorest districts are?” Castiel asks. “The most broken, the most disease ridden?”

 

“Everyone does. It’s where you get sent if you can’t pay the fines.”

 

Castiel nods. He swings his legs out of bed, stoops, and rises with Dean’s bag in his hand. He opens the wardrobe—wooden once more—and begins to pull out shirts and pants, folding each before packing them away in Dean’s bag. He bends to open a low drawer and pulls out two pairs of leather shoes. The first, he pulls on. The second, he puts down.

 

Slowly, the sheets a strange mix of metal, cloth and stone, Dean manages to get his arm free from under the pillow. He grabs at the headboard and slides himself out, his nudity entirely on display.

 

Castiel glances up from his packing and responds solely by placing a shirt and pants on the bed as Dean tentatively knee-walks off the other side. “Get dressed,” Castiel orders.

 

The only other option being to run off into the temple butt naked, Dean comes around slowly, hands over his crotch. The rugs beneath his feet are soft and hard in a fractal-pattern of frustration. Dean reaches for his own clothes, the patched shirt, the flour sack pants, and this is what draws Castiel’s attention.

 

“No. Get dressed.” Castiel points to the clothing he’d placed on the bed. He turns to the wardrobe, opens another drawer, and holds out an extremely short pair of pants to Dean.

 

Dean takes them and haltingly complies. He doesn’t mean to groan at the sensation of silk surrounding his junk, but he hasn’t meant to do a lot of the things he’s been doing recently.

 

Bizarrely, Castiel’s expression softens.

 

Watching the god out of the corner of his eye, Dean pulls on the pants and shirt as well. They don’t fit as well as they might, but the crisp quality is unlike anything else Dean has ever known. The inner pants fold oddly within the outer layer, and Dean must commit some faux pas while adjusting them, his hands down inside both.

 

Castiel watches him.

 

Dean ducks his head and buttons the outer pants closed. They fall strangely over his hips without a drawstring, but Castiel pulls out one of the gold-lined belts. Castiel stands before him, looks up into his eyes, and threads it through the loops adorning Dean’s waist without ever looking away. Face burning, Dean lifts his arms awkwardly, allowing it.

 

“Sit,” Castiel orders, and when Dean sits on the bed, there’s only fabric beneath his hands.

 

Castiel kneels. He takes Dean by the ankle and rolls a sock up each foot, one at a time, as intent on this task as Dean is upon the best of his carvings.

 

The first layer in place, Castiel pulls over the second pair of shoes. He slides the leather onto Dean’s feet, and when the shoes don’t fit, Castiel places one hand at the heel and another at the toe.

 

On the second attempt, the shoes fit perfectly.

 

Castiel stands slowly. His hands trace the outside of Dean’s body from ankle to hips. The motion involuntary, Dean again lifts his arms, hands and elbows rising to shoulder height, and Castiel traces up his sides. He grips both of Dean’s arms and slides his hands down both sleeves to the open cuffs.

 

Castiel lets go.

 

He steps back.

 

He turns away and walks toward the dressing table.

 

Watching with wide eyes, Dean stands up in perfectly tailored clothing.

 

Castiel opens the drawer. Reflected in the mirror, his face is serious, his eyes tired.

 

When Castiel turns around, the exhaustion is concealed. He strides back to Dean with purpose, nearly with vigor. He reaches out, takes Dean once more by the wrist, and closes his cuff with links of gold and ruby. The other side receives the same treatment.

 

“Are you my husband?” Castiel asks, his face as inscrutable as his voice.

 

Dean looks down at a rug no longer metal or stone.

 

He looks up at a god.

 

“Guess so,” he says.

 

Castiel nods. “You mentioned a brother. Does he need shoes too?”

 

Dean stares at him.

 

Castiel waits for an answer.

 

“He’s got a pair that don’t fit right,” Dean says. Then, braver, stupider: “I stole those too. From a guy I let fuck me so he’d take them off.”

 

“I’m sorry you had to do that,” Castiel says, and he takes Dean by the hand. He hefts Dean’s bag onto his shoulder and starts walking out of the bedroom.

 

“Where are we going?” Dean asks, keeping stride.

 

“To heal the sick and infirm,” Castiel says, as if this is the only possible answer.

 

“And then what?”

 

“And then see what they’ll do this time.”

 

Fear and anger flip over in Dean’s stomach, perhaps too intertwined to ever separate. “That’s all?”

 

Castiel shakes his head, and for the first time since Dean woke, Castiel looks at him fondly. “That’s my part. But that isn’t all.”

 

Looking ahead, Castiel lowers the barrier. The impossible light in the rooms behind them cuts out, snapping forward into the immense stone stairs leading up into the temple.

 

Hand tight in hand, they climb, ready to remake the world.

Notes:

Beta'ed by Karbonring, a big thank you there! I've wanted to do one of those "accidentally mated to the village god, time to fuck!" fics for a while, and this is the result.

To see what else I'm working on, you can follow me on tumblr here.