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The ghost drops Dean, its human form exploding into ash right as Dean lands on his bad knee. Blood gushes from the hole in his shoulder where a rusty hunk of whatever-the-fuck skewered him to the wall, and he pants for breath, there on the earth floor of a civil war-era shack in Massachusetts. It hurts like a bitch, but he thinks it missed anything major, and otherwise he’s fine—except—
“Cas?!” he tries to call, but it’s more of a wheeze.
“Dean!” Oh thank fuck, close, alive. Cas crouches over him, one huge hand coming round to brace Dean’s back while the other slips under his collar—Dean hisses—and seals the wound shut in a slow swell of power. Dean fumbles for Cas’ coat, and they hold each other, Cas’ hand still blanketing Dean’s bare chest. “It could have killed you, what were you thinking?”
Dean’s relief at Cas’ touch is interrupted by a lurch of shame. He shakes Cas off, dizzy from the blood loss despite being healed. “Looked like you could use some help there.”
Cas sits back on his heels and holds his hands out, somewhere between stern and imploring. “You cannot ‘take a bullet’ for me, Dean. You always do this, and it is foolish.”
When Dean saw that rusty spike cut the air, headed for Cas’ heart, he didn’t think. He can’t even say that he acted. He blinked, and then Cas was staggering from his push, the spike hewing into Dean’s shoulder instead. “What, you think you’ve got dibs on self-sacrifice?” he says with a shrug. “You ought to know better by now.”
Voice controlled, Cas asks, “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
Dean’s knee throbs, but it’s not like that’s new. It’s a waste of Cas’ waning grace to keep healing something that hurts if he looks at it wrong. He shakes his head. “Are you?”
Loath as he is to admit it, the truth is Dean’s been off his game this whole hunt, even before that thing tried to impale Cas. It was just a ticked-off spirit, albeit a strong one. Low-level creepy-crawly the likes of which Dean and Sam were handling just fine in their twenties. But Dean’s been moody and distracted all week with the not-really-news Sam just dropped on them, and clearly, Cas ain’t firing on all cylinders, either.
“No, I’m fine. I heal from wounds that would kill you, Dean. I know you understand that.”
“Hey, your mojo’s been off for months! You should’ve been able to repel it.”
“Nonetheless—”
“Jesus, Cas, calm your tits. You ganked the thing, we’re both fine, now let’s pack up and wash this shit off.” They’re both covered in blood and ash, and dammit, he liked this jacket and now it’s ruined. “God, it’s frickin’ freezing.” His bones creak haunted staircase-style as he starts to get up. Cas reaches out, and Dean takes the hand up, suppressing a gasp at the twinge in his knee. Then he lets go. Cas’ hand is nice and warm, but he’s obviously still pissed. He hardly says a word to Dean as they trek back to the Impala to head for their motel. He thrusts a water bottle at Dean and insists on driving.
Now he’s in the grubby little bathroom with the door shut between them, taking too long to get ready for bed. More often they shower together these days, but tonight he told Dean to go first, then slipped into the bathroom as soon as Dean emerged in his towel. Dean just wants to look at him, remind himself Cas is whole—but Dean’s pissed, too, Cas is such a hypocrite. Dean sits in his boxers on the chintzy brown bedspread and drinks whiskey and flips through channels, never settling on anything for more than a few seconds. He mutes the TV when the noise starts to give him a headache.
He flops onto his back, groaning. He ought to sleep. It’s a day’s drive back to Kansas, and he wants to hit the road as soon as he’s got his four hours in. But his brain won’t shut up, and his heart is a guilty ache. He doesn’t like it in this two-star room, which could be a hundred others: a hundred stained bedspreads in a hundred colors, a hundred carpets, ceilings, shitty landscape paintings. Dimly lit rooms where in his youth Dean waited—prayed—for his dad to return, and cooked mac ‘n cheese ninety-nine ways in a desperate bid to keep Sammy from running away. Later, they were rooms where he knew without a doubt how alone he was; later still, they were part of the terrain where he and Sam struggled with and against each other.
Rooms like this were home once, for better or worse, but now it feels wrong. The bed sucks and it’s drafty and the whiskey hasn’t numbed his fucked up knee. He wants to be back in his bunker with his epsom salts and heating pads, flannel sheets and memory foam, his fridge of fresh food and high end gas range he installed last month. Knowing his brother and angel are just in the next room, if not in his sightline—near and safe.
The shower turns off with a squeak. Dean waits, but Cas doesn’t come out.
He can’t help but think of that chimera hunt in ‘01, one of his and Dad’s first after Sam left for Stanford. Little town in Kentucky, a dozen townspeople infected with chimera blood, bodies twisted into an unrecognizable mass of mismatched parts. It was fucking horrifying, at least by the standards of twenty-two-year-old Dean. They’d had to buy hazmat suits to protect themselves—even a drop of its blood could do you in—but Dad’s suit was torn open by its long talons, and the chimera was wounded already and dripping blood. Dean had panicked. He’d charged it with his knife, never mind it was so strong that a full-force collision with Dean didn’t even budge it, and the knife lodged in its flank unnoticed. And it had turned on Dean, looming over him with its huge-ass hippo teeth (seriously, terrifying), and it would have ripped his guts right out of his body if Dad’s swinging machete had come any later.
Dad had yanked him off the ground by the hand, patted him all over to be sure he was whole, and then hauled off and hit him so hard he half fell over again, slamming the hard edge of the protective goggles into his temple. He said, “How could you be so stupid?” and he said, “I can’t lose you too.” And Dean gaped and wanted to strike back, because it went both ways. Dean didn’t want to live in a world Dad wasn’t in. (And that was one of those wounds that never quite healed. Even if a voice sometimes whispered that he was a little glad.) Dad had been drinking even more than usual in those days. He’d been sloppy that night, it wasn’t all on Dean. Sam leaving had sent both of them into a tailspin.
Dad hit him, then hugged him, big , and the part of Dean that said it was unfair shut all the way up. They went back to their shitty motel, watched surreal late-night TV till the sun came up, and got a big diner breakfast at the joint down the road. When the nice waitress had asked about the bruise, which was distinctly rectangular and looked weird as fuck, Dean came up with a workplace accident that was not only convincing but funny—they all three had a laugh. And Dean felt like a good son. It was always better when Dad just hit him. When Dad hit him he forgave him, and didn’t send him away.
Now Dean and Cas are hunting alone, because Sam’s left the business. Next month he’s moving in full-time with Eileen. He hasn’t bought a ring, but he’s getting there. Of course it’s different this time—Sam isn’t just up and leaving with no warning. He’ll only be about thirty miles away. He said he’d help with the research, that they’d see each other. And Dean believes him. Yet he panics whenever he thinks of it, then gets pissed at himself—can’t he let his brother have a life?
The door finally opens, steam and shampoo on the air, and Cas appears damp-haired, dressed for sleep in a t-shirt and sweatpants. His suit and trenchcoat are balled up in his arms. He’s gotten more inventive with his wardrobe, but reverts to his Jimmy Novak ensemble for hunts.
Dean sits up a bit, aiming for a casual sprawl despite his sore limbs. Cas would look really touchable if he weren’t so distant, eyes flicking judgmentally over the bottle of Jack in Dean’s hand. He stands with his back to Dean and starts hanging his clothes in the shallow closet. And Dean knows he’s not packing to leave, Cas wouldn’t, but those jerky motions are so familiar, and Dean can’t take it.
“The silent treatment, really?”
Cas casts a frowning glance over his shoulder. “My ‘silence’ isn’t any kind of ‘treatment,’” he says, bitchily. Dean scoffs at him.
“Come on, man. You got something to say, just say it.”
“I’ve already told you what I think about you putting yourself in needless danger. You just won’t listen.” Primly Cas does up the buttons on his hanging shirt. Always keeping his stuff neat, ever since he was human.
“And I’ve told you that you’re a hypocrite.”
“And I’ve told you that that is patently illogical! If we are going to continue hunting then we must be smart about it. You seem determined not to be.”
If we’re going to keep hunting. Like that’s a question. Of course Dean’s tired, of course he wants to stop. But he’s a shark that dies if he stops moving. Sometimes he forgets, with life so good these days, but it’s there in the quiet moments between family breakfasts and home projects and movie nights: a scream like he screamed on the rack in the back of his mind, and it only shuts up when he’s maiming and killing. Or blackout drunk. He doesn’t think you come back from that.
You and Cas will have more space to yourselves, Sammy had ventured, when they talked this week. He’d sounded about fifteen, and Dean had made himself smile, because of course Sam was right that that was a good thing, more privacy for him and Cas. But maybe that prospect is part of why he’s panicking. They haven’t really put a name to what they are, and that’s fine with Dean: Cas is Cas, and he means what he means to Dean. But they haven’t discussed their plans long-term, and Dean has the sense that he’s living on borrowed time, that if the shape of things changes he won’t be able to change with it. Cas has rediscovered his love of bees—pollinators, broadly, he corrects Dean—and the types of native vegetation they like best. Sometimes he speaks wistfully of restoring a meadow; of a little farm nearby, and a little house there. Dean doesn’t have anything he wants like that.
“Well, you know me,” he says finally. “I’m not that smart.”
Cas turns around and glares at him, looking totally done. Dean wants to touch him so badly, but he’s backed himself so far up into his own head he’s about to lose it. He rolls to his feet, ignoring the pain in his knee. It comes out of his mouth without conscious input: “Hit me, then.”
“What?” Cas says. “No.”
“Like when—I was gonna say yes to Michael.” Ten years later, the memory still makes his heart race.
“Dean.” Castiel stares at him. “Dean, why?”
“I messed up,” Dean spits out, like a chunk of tooth. He knows he’s acting crazy, but he can’t stop. “You’re, you’re right. It was a bad call.” It was a bad call, but he truly couldn’t help it. He can’t even really regret it, with Cas standing there whole and unharmed in front of him.
Dean wants Cas alive as he can be. He wants Cas’ holy fury, full-blast, flattening him to the wall. Except this time they could screw, and Cas wouldn’t be mad anymore. He’d still been mad after knocking Dean’s lights out in that alley. Which had felt unfair. Why hit him if not to forgive him?
“Dean,” Cas says. He makes an aborted movement toward him, and Dean twitches. Cas’ hand falls back to his side. “I should not have done that.”
“No sweat. It was kinda hot. Terrifying, but hot.”
“Even so.” Cas’ lips purse. He has so little patience for Dean’s bravado these days. Surely it’ll run out sooner than later. “Yes, I’m frustrated that you won’t prioritize your safety. But I’m not going to physically harm you over it. I’m—sorry if I made you think that—”
“Maybe I want you to,” Dean cuts him off.
They do kinky shit sometimes. Nothing too intense. But Cas can be pretty assertive for a little dork. He’s called Dean a brat and bossed him around. A few times he’s pulled Dean across his lap and spanked him until there were tears on his face and endorphins fizzing through his body, and Dean rode that high for a week. But they’ve never done anything like that when Cas was really mad at him.
“That’s what you want?” Cas says now, and his gaze is boring into Dean. It makes him go hot and cold all over, that flat look Cas wore the last time he told Dean to count. (Cas studies porn like he studies ancient texts.) But the feeling now isn’t the same. There’s need, but there’s fear too.
“I—yeah,” Dean says, and he means it. “Do it, hurt me, I don’t care.”
Cas hums low in his throat. His brow knits as he studies Dean. “I’m not so sure about that.” He comes closer, till the backs of Dean’s knees bump the bed—the bad knee complains—and Cas moves and Dean braces himself, but Cas just grips his shoulder, a concerned frown niggling at his brow. Relief and disappointment flood through Dean, and a wounded little noise sneaks out. Then—“Dean”— Cas’ arms lock around him, pulling Dean into his chest. Dean clings like an octopus. He fists his hands in Cas’ shirt, feeling the give of the strong flesh beneath it.
“My goodness, Dean, you’re trembling.” Cas pulls him closer and tighter, like he would engulf him. Dean wishes he would.
In that embrace there is total forgiveness. Even Dean can’t deny it. But it feels like too much, or not enough; big feelings swelling up in Dean’s chest, like he feels driving past houses with picket fences, watching young mothers kiss their kids on the forehead. Something that’s too good for the likes of him. He pulls back from Cas’ embrace just enough to nudge Cas’ jaw with his nose, drag his lips over Cas’ chin up to his mouth. He kisses him too hard, and their teeth clack together.
Castiel pushes him back by the shoulders, and says, “I’m concerned about you.” Sincerity in all the lines on his face.
Dean shuts his eyes against a wash of tears. His fists clench at his sides. “Can you just let me have this?”
“I want everything for you, Dean, but I have concerns about being intimate in your condition.”
Dean cringes all over at that. “I’m okay.”
“You are not.”
“I, I need—”
“Tell me. What do you need?”
“I don’t know, man. I just feel like I’m gonna—” He clenches his still-trembling killer-hands over his stomach, like a lynchpin he could drive through himself and hold him together. “I need to get out of my fucked up head. I’m going in a million directions.”
Cas thinks about that. “Alright, Dean.” He spins them so it’s Dean’s back to the wall, and that alone settles something inside him. He takes Dean’s chin in a just-painful grip to look him over, and Dean closes his eyes as Castiel kisses him slowly. He wonders, wincing, what Cas will do—if he’ll hit him after all, spank or slap him. It’ll hurt when he’s tense like this, but when it hurts enough his body will flood with the good chemicals and he’ll feel less shitty.
Cas’ hand on his jaw abruptly loosens, and Cas exhales, sharp. Dean opens his eyes to find Cas’ on him, large and liquid. He seems about to pull away, then makes a conscious move to cup Dean’s face again, gentle now, his thumb stroking nervously at Dean’s jawbone. “Forgive me, Dean, but as much as I want to give you what you need, I find that after—tonight’s events—I don’t wish to harm you, even if it’s only playing.” His hand slides down to cover the patch of new, pink skin below Dean’s collarbone, where earlier a piece of scrap metal punctured through. It’s still tender to the touch, prickling against Cas’ palm.
Dean makes himself nod, because this is Cas’ as much as it’s his. If Cas doesn’t wanna do something, that’s that, that’s the deal. He starts to draw back. “Oh. Right. Sorry, I’ll—”
“Wait.” Cas presses closer, boxes him in. “I won’t hurt you,” he says, low near Dean’s ear, “but perhaps I can show you what I’d do to keep you here with me.” His hands gravitate down to encircle Dean’s wrists. He pins them by Dean’s sides, thumbs stroking the soft inner skin. He kisses Dean’s earlobe.
“What’ll you do?” Dean breathes out, barely a whisper.
“Your words, Dean?”
“Red, yellow, green. I’m green.”
“Then lie on the bed,” Castiel says. “Face down.”
He steps back, and Dean shudders, with loss, with anticipation. He stumbles to the bed, heart pounding in his ears—and his knee buckles, jolts so badly he hisses aloud.
“Dean? Are you alright?”
“Yeah, fuck, fine. . .” Pitifully Dean crawls onto the bed.
“It’s your knee again, isn’t it?” Dean feels the bed dip as Cas sits down, one hand already on Dean’s ankle.
Dean groans as he curls himself around a pillow. “Yeah, but don’t waste your energy. It’ll be fine in a day or two.”
“There’s no need to wait a day or two.” Cas is already bending Dean’s leg back carefully, his other hand coming to cup Dean’s knee. Dean hisses again. “Dean, it’s very swollen. I’m healing it.” Already Dean can feel the inflamed tissues cooling in Cas’ grip. He sighs in relief as Cas goes on massaging his knee and calf in tingling waves. “My grace is fine, Dean,” Cas tells him. “It doesn’t tax me to heal you. I want to know if you’re in pain.”
“Your grace is not fine,” Dean mutters darkly. A surge of prickly, irritated shame has risen at the soft rebuke, a dozen past minor injuries coming to mind. They never seemed important, when Dean was young. If he could take care of something himself, of course he wasn’t gonna ask his dad for a kiss and a band-aid.
“Is there anything else you need to be comfortable?” Castiel’s asking him. “Would you drink some more water?”
For Cas to fuss like this, when Dean’s not even actually hurt, it’s like he’s saying Dean’s not a real man. And yes Dean knows that Cas would never say that, and yes Dean knows it’s a screwed up thought to have. Maybe the truth is that it’s just too much, that he wants the attention so bad it makes him sick. Dean pushes up onto his elbows, leg twitching out of Cas’ grip.
“Dean?” Cas touches his hip questioningly.
“Are you gonna do the thing?” Dean forces out.
“Oh. Yes, Dean. Shush now.” He moves his hand to the center of Dean’s back and presses him back down. His hand stays there, callused and hot, and oh, that’s better already. “Your color, Dean?”
“Green,” Dean says, like get on with it.
“Then hold onto the bedpost. You little brat.”
Dean holds onto it so hard his knuckles ache. The admonishment travels through him, spiky and good. He hears Cas rummage through their travel bag, and then he’s back with his blue necktie, looping it around Dean’s wrists and securing them to the bedpost in a deft knot. It smells like him, like earth after the rain, and the fabric bites into Dean’s skin just right. “How is that?” Cas asks, and Dean gives the bond a tug, makes an OK gesture with his right hand. “Can you behave if I leave your legs free?”
“Fffuh—” Dean stutters at the word behave .
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah,” Dean says, almost subvocal. “I’ll behave.” He’s wavering on the edge of surrender, the relief of just being needy and fragile and weak, and not needing to be embarrassed, ‘cause that’s how Cas wants him, and it’s Cas’ call.
And then Cas climbs astride Dean’s hips and drapes himself over Dean’s back, part by part, sinking down and compressing him into the mattress. Dean muffles a gasp in the pillow as that weight bears him down. Every pound thrumming with living energy. Cas holds the back of Dean’s head to guide it gently sideways, clearing his airway, and his thumb strokes fondly behind Dean’s ear. He lays his own cheek down along the ridge of Dean’s shoulder. Dean moans softly at the scrape of Cas’ stubble on his skin.
“You’re going to stay right here,” Castiel rumbles.
“Yes, Castiel,” Dean breathes.
“You’ll stay here where it’s safe. I take care of the one I love.”
It’s both possessive and sincere, and Dean chokes, cringes, curling into himself as far as he can, which isn’t very. He doesn’t know how it’s possible to crave and dread something so much at once. And part of Dean just wants Cas to beat his ass or fuck him hard, to thunder sensation down on him till he’s not aware of the contradiction anymore, and he’s mad that Cas won’t do it, and he’s guilty— “No, wait!” Cas is lifting away, and Dean jerks against the restraint as he tries to reach back for him. “No, don’t go.”
“What’s your color, Dean?” Cas asks, like it’s not the first time.
“Yellow I guess, but don’t go, please don’t go.”
Cas eases himself back down. Dean can feel him breathing, deliberately slow.
“Hey, Dean. Breathe with me, will you? In for four—one, two, three, four. Hold for four, two, three, four. Out for four, two, three, four.” He keeps counting, breathing, and in fits and starts Dean’s breath finds sync with his, lulled by the act of obedience. “Can you feel the air in your nostrils? Can you feel that it’s cold when you breathe in, and warm when you breathe out?” Dean can feel it. A crease in the pillowcase flutters softly against his nose.
“I told you no hippie meditation shit,” he mumbles, after this has gone on for a minute or maybe five.
“Dean,” Cas says. Long-suffering and relieved. “Breathing techniques are scientifically proven to lower blood pressure.” A pause. “Are you alright?”
“I don’t—know.”
“Was it ‘the L word’?” Cas ventures, fingers scrunching in Dean’s skin as they make air quotes.
“No.” He doesn’t know. It was, but he doesn’t want Cas to stop, doesn’t want to stop being the one Cas loves. He wants to be worthy, he just isn’t sure.
“I don’t have to say it,” Castiel offers. His face feels frowny, pressed into Dean’s skin.
“No, I just. . .”
“Tell me.”
“Just, fuck. Just don’t go.”
Cas settles heavier over Dean. He kisses the nape of Dean’s neck with the side of his mouth. “I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you.” He takes another long, slow breath beside Dean’s ear. “You’re doing well.”
Dean hates to admit it, but Cas isn’t wrong about the breathing. It’s like the sky is slowly clearing in Dean’s mind—for the first time in hours he’s reacquainted with the parts of himself that are rational and calm. With Cas’ body weighing him into the mattress, he feels acutely the movement of his own breathing body. Gradually it seems to fill back up—with blood and with feeling, and with himself.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, just to let himself have this. It’s been a long shitty day. He could have this for now.
“Better?” Cas asks.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe I should keep you like this all the time, tied to our bed. Then you can’t get yourself into any more trouble.”
That makes Dean shiver. “I wouldn’t hate it.”
“Then I can pleasure you all the time, and give you good things to eat—”
Dean grumbles, “Who exactly is cooking, if I’m tied up?”
“—and I’ll always know that you are safe.”
“I thought it was gonna kill you, Cas,” Dean blurts suddenly. “And I couldn’t—I couldn’t do that. Not again.”
“. . .I know, Dean. I was afraid for you as well.”
“So you get why I did it.”
“I do—get it.” Cas sounds pained. “I just want you to value yourself the way you value me.”
“I mean. Pot, kettle, dude.”
Cas huffs, neither a laugh nor a sigh. “That idiom makes no sense.”
“I’m too tired to explain it to you.” Dean tucks his face into the pillow. Now that he’s calmer he’s kind of embarrassed again, kind of wants to hide like a turtle, except if he’s a turtle then Cas is the shell. Cas is still fully clothed and no dicks are in play, but this kind of closeness is more intense than sex. He feels selfish, just lying here with Cas on top of him, like it should be his turn now to do something for Cas. Never mind that Cas is a freak who seems to get great pleasure out of, for example, watching Dean work his way through two sticky cinnamon rolls at the cafe earlier. During sex, Dean’s gotta be the one to keep them focused, or else Cas will spend an hour kissing every freckle on his body.
He can get almost no leverage with his hands tied and Cas on his back, but he tilts his ass against Cas’ half-hard dick. Cas says, “Mmm,” and stiffens up a bit more, but he doesn’t make a move to escalate, just kisses the back of Dean’s neck again, strokes his thumb over Dean’s thumb. Despite himself, Dean relaxes again. Cas’ mouth moves to the side of Dean’s neck, kiss after kiss, adding flicks of tongue, dragging slack lips over the skin. Then he sucks the join between neck and shoulder. Dean hears himself breathe, quiet pants through his open mouth, and before long he’s wriggling helplessly against the bed, barely able to move between the crush of Cas’ body and the constriction around his wrists. Overheated, damp, surrounded. And increasingly horny.
“Cas, fuck.”
“Was there something you wanted, Dean?”
“Yeah, you dickhead.” Dean’s body wants to ripple. He loves how Cas’ chest and belly feel against his back, hot and heavy and secure. “Go on and fuck me.”
Cas hums, teasing now, and Dean actually whines. “Cas!” He sounds like a spoiled little kid, but Cas seems to like it.
“Since you asked so nicely,” he says dryly. “How are your wrists?”
Dean tugs a little at the tie, makes fists with both hands. “Good. I can still feel ‘em.”
“Alright then. Lift up.” Cas eases off of him, and Dean almost whines again, a real jolt of the earlier anxiety returning once Cas’ weight is gone. But Cas just tugs down Dean’s boxers once Dean’s lifted up on his knees, and then delivers a quick slap to Dean’s ass after all.
“Oh—”
“That’s for being a brat,” Cas leans down to growl in his ear, and strikes Dean’s other cheek, and the sting of the word and the slap stay with him when Cas leaves. Cas drags their duffel over, digging around for the lube, opening it with a small snap.
Dean is blushing all over; he wants more spanking. He twists his head around just enough to see Cas. “Hey,” he whispers. “Take your shirt off.”
“If you insist.” Cas grabs the neck of his t-shirt and pulls it over his head, revealing his tanned, solid torso.
Cas looms over Dean again. Dean wriggles restively until Cas gets with the program and spanks him again, one-two-three. Dean sucks his breath in. Cas lays one arm possessively over Dean’s back while his fingers tease little circles at Dean’s entrance and ease in to stretch him, fingers so long and thick that, right off the bat, it’s a lot to take them. He’s so good at pushing without hurting. An awed, overtaken sound builds in Dean’s chest. Cas kisses the ridge of his shoulder blade and then shifts back, his fingers withdrawing, and Dean nearly cries in complaint. “Just a moment,” Cas says, firmly but softly, and he squirts more lube on his fingers, coming back to press three into Dean.
“Ah, nnuh—” Dean writhes when the fingers push and prod his sweet spot. “Aw, Cas, do it, do me—”
Again Cas retreats so he can lube his cock, and Dean’s whole skin shivers with the loss, but then Cas is back, pressing onto and into him. Splitting him open and holding him together. He wraps both arms around Dean, skin on sweaty skin, and holds him so tightly it hurts, the good hurt that stays. One hand paws firmly down the muscles of Dean’s torso, all the way down to Dean’s cock, and he fucks out and back in, pushing Dean through his grip. Dean undulates against him, huffing with effort, an equal frantic desire for the hand on his dick and and the dick in his ass and the body pressed up behind him. A sound comes out of his mouth like a kitten, lost and plaintive.
“Shhhh,” Castiel purrs in his ear.
“Please,”
“I have you, Dean. Unh—you are all mine.”
“Oh, Christ—”
“You are all mine, and I am all yours—” Cas’ breath punches out of him on the last word. “We are not going anywhere.”
“Fuck.” Tears well over in his eyes. All lit up from within, Cas’ grace glowing through him all the way to his fingers and toes.
“I lo—hah. I have you, I have you, I have you—”
“I love you too, Cas, fuck I love you so much,” Dean swears, and he whites out when he comes.
Cas fucks him through it, fucks in harder, babbling—“Oh, Dean”—“You are a marvel, you are so good ”—then spills into Dean with a cut-off groan, and they collapse panting onto the bed, and still Cas is all around Dean, inside and out. Dean’s mind is empty, hanging open just like his slack jaw.
Sometime later he’s vaguely aware of Cas pulling out of him, and he whimpers quietly when the warmth of Cas’ body disappears. Cas shushes him again, returning with a warm washcloth to wipe Dean down. He moves to sit at Dean’s side, slinging one leg over Dean’s waist to keep them in contact, and Cas works at the fabric around Dean’s wrists until the tie falls free. He maneuvers Dean’s arms to lay back at his sides, massaging out the cramped stiffness from shoulder to wrist. Cas bends down to kiss one wrist, then the other, healing the chafed skin as he does—Dean is too blissed out to even complain—and it’s the damp flutter of lashes on skin that tells him Cas is crying.
It takes Dean a moment to form words. “Hey, you OK?” he slurs. He curls onto his side to face him, wincing as he rolls through his own wet spot. He grabs at Cas’ hand.
“Oh, yes, Dean.” Cas’ voice is steady enough, but Dean can hear the current of suppressed feeling there. Cas continues stroking Dean’s forearm, methodically slow.
“Hey.” Dean urges Cas to lie down, and, after shimmying his own ass back into his boxers, he spoons up behind him, wrapping an arm around Cas to rub at his chest and the wiry curls of hair there. “You took amazing care of me, you know that, right? I just freaked out on you, and you rolled with it. You gave me exactly what I needed.” Cas sniffles. Dean’s words don’t seem to comfort him. “Buddy, talk to me.”
With no warning, as it sometimes does, Castiel’s mood shifts from upset to determined. “I know it’s selfish, Dean, but I’m growing tired of this,” he says, quietly vehement. “Seeing you harmed,” he adds, before Dean’s abandonment issues can completely take over. He turns in Dean’s hold to face him, and slings his arm around Dean’s waist, so their bodies mirror each other. “Fighting, killing. If you can stop, I want to stop.”
Dean stares at him, gobsmacked. Cas’ eyes are shining, serious and deep. Dean’s fuzzy brain struggles to catch up, to process, and he opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
“I know you think my grace is weakening. And in a sense you’re right. But really it’s urging me in a different direction.”
“What do you mean?” Dean manages.
Cas ghosts his hand soothingly over Dean’s ribs. Dean shivers, and Cas pauses the movement to reach back and drag the bedspread over the both of them. In the safety of that shelter, Dean presses close, hiding in Cas’ chest. “My grace belongs to a body,” Cas begins to explain, and Dean feels the vibration in his face. “And what this body wants is to comfort and please you. To help things grow, and in some small part, heal our damaged earth.”
Dean came five minutes ago after getting gently dominated through a breakdown, and now he’s receiving a very intense speech. It’s kind of a lot. “Sounds nice,” he mumbles, muffled in Cas’ chest.
“It does?”
“I mean, yeah.” Dean squints, searching for words. “Cas, I—trust me, I get it. Half the time, I wanna—” He clears his throat. “Dude, take a rest, if that’s what you want. You more than deserve it.”
“Don’t mistake me, Dean. For as long as you continue to hunt, I will go with you.”
Dean rears back then, glaring. “What the hell? That’s like, emotional blackmail. Like, now I have to stop or I’m forcing you.”
Cas stares implacably back. “I’m simply ‘telling it like it is,’” he says firmly. “This isn’t blackmail. It’s my own choice to follow you, Dean. The most important choice I ever made.”
“Cas.” The panic is threatening again, loose as Dean is from the sex and the closeness. He lets go of Cas to cover his own face. “I can’t—”
“Okay, Dean,” Cas says, suddenly much gentler. He backs off, which both is and isn’t what Dean wants. A moment later he’s nudging something against Dean’s wrist. When Dean peers out from behind his fingers he sees it’s a water bottle, and Cas has an open package of peanut butter crackers resting on his thigh where he’s sat himself upright against the headboard. “Have some water, please, Dean,” he says, and Dean meekly allows Cas to lift his head and help him drink. Some water escapes down his chin and dampens the sheet. He’s shivering again.
“Oh, Dean. That was too much. I’m so sorry, my love. My dear Dean.” He tucks the bedspread closer around Dean, and Dean hides his damp eyes against Cas’ hip.
“I’m fine,” he says, but his teeth almost chatter when he speaks.
“No, I’ve been remiss.” Cas holds a sandwich cracker up to his lips. “Please eat, Dean, you’ll feel better.”
Dean bites into the cracker, and crumbs fall into the bed. Dimly he’s aware that this bothers him. On the third or fourth bite his body remembers how long it’s been since dinner, and he makes quick work of the packet. When he’s finished Cas scoots closer to him, and Dean lays his head on Cas’ lap. The food and the water have helped, and soon the shaking eases.
“I don’t know what else to do,” he eventually whispers. “I dunno what I am, if I’m not a hunter.”
Castiel strokes his hair sweetly. Dean doesn’t stop himself from pushing into it. “We don’t have to talk about this now, Dean. It can wait until you’re feeling better.”
“I really don’t think it can,” Dean says, and sits up a bit so they’re on the same level, side by side. He thinks he needs to be weak like this if they’re going to talk about anything real.
Cas lets his hand fall into his own lap. “In that case,” he says, “I can think of a number of things you enjoy and excel at besides hunting. You’re a capable mechanic, carpenter, and cook. You have an extensive knowledge of music, films, and pop culture of all flavors. You offer guidance and support to the young people in our lives.”
“I mean, yeah, I like cooking for you all, and it’s fun to build a chair every now and then, but that’s—the days get long, Cas.”
Cas is quiet for a moment. “A part-time job, perhaps?”
“Like what?”
“You name it. I believe there’s a hardware store hiring in Lebanon. I think you’re quite familiar with the inventory by now. Or, you keep complaining that there’s no vinyl record store in our area. Perhaps you should open one.”
“You think I should run a business?”
“Why not? It would certainly occupy some time.”
Dean struggles to process the conflicting voices in his mind. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “Just feels like I’m kind of locked in. I was six when I picked up a gun. Now I’m forty-three.”
“I was a warrior of God for literal millennia.”
“Okay,” Dean mutters. “Gotta give you that one.”
“Now I spend my days searching for organic solutions to septoria leaf spot. I’ve raised a child and loved a man. You can change, Dean. There is so much in you that—forgive me, Dean, for speaking this way—so many parts of you that can’t live fully because you repeatedly subject them to extreme stress. I wonder how these—episodes of yours might improve with a period of true rest.”
“Well, ouch,” Dean manages. He hadn’t realized Cas was aware how often that limb-from-limb panic takes him over. Maybe Dean wasn’t even aware of it. He thinks of how Cas and Sam tiptoe around him when he tries to drink his mind into silence. Too much like the way he once managed his dad. Next time he wishes they’d just yell at him.
Now Cas takes Dean’s hand in his. “Don’t misunderstand me. I love you as you are, ‘warts and all.’” Dean snorts. “But it concerns me, a bit, that when I was upset earlier, your solution was to… submit yourself to physical violence.”
“I submit myself to a lot of things.” Dean’s attempt at suggestiveness falls flat, and he says, to cover his hurt, “You getting shy on me now?” He thought Cas was into it, too, but maybe Cas was just doing all that stuff for Dean, like he’d follow Dean into a fight.
“I’m not referring to bedroom things, Dean. What happened earlier felt like something else. Have I—” He stops, restarts. “Did you really think it would make me feel better to strike you?”
“Doesn’t it, just a little bit?” Dean tries for coy.
“I’m not talking about spanking, Dean. Of course I enjoy doing something that brings you such relief and pleasure. And of course there is satisfaction in correcting a beautiful brat.”
Dean laughs breathlessly and blushes and edges closer, burying his face in the crook of Cas’ neck. “I don’t know what I thought,” he finally answers. It seems so stupid now. “I guess I did think you’d feel better. But I wasn’t thinking of you, as you.” His voice is small when he ventures, “It’s—a dad thing, I guess.”
“Ah.” A loaded syllable.
“And a Sam-leaving thing. And—a hunting thing, I don’t know.”
Cas squeezes Dean’s hand. “It sounds… complicated.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“You know Sam isn’t really leaving, right? He loves you very much, and I’m sure he will always want to be part of your life.”
“I know,” Dean says, a little miserably. “I guess I just feel better with both of you under one roof.”
“It’s understandable that you feel that way, given past experience.”
“Are you gonna tell me to see a shrink, too?”
Cas is quiet a moment. “This ‘in-the-know’ doctor Jody and Donna recommended does sound promising,” he says slowly. “It might be wise, Dean.”
“Cas. I don’t—I can’t.”
“I admit I share your hesitance to unburden myself to a stranger. I just don’t like to see you in such pain.”
“I’m not in pain,” Dean protests. “I’ve never been so happy in my life.”
“I feel the same way. I never thought I could have so much.” Dean feels Cas smile. “But I think perhaps we both have a skewed frame of reference. I wonder—” Cas’ voice grows shy. “I think perhaps we can be much happier than we’ve imagined. I think about, free from the shadow of death, the life we could have together.”
Yeah. Dean thinks about it. Picket fences, forehead kisses. Notes in lunches and beach vacations and family photos. It’s just that the world has shown him time and time again that a life like that is not for him. “I don’t know if I can,” he says numbly.
Cas turns slowly in Dean’s grasp, and traces his fingers softly along Dean’s cheek. His eyes flicker blue-white in the flashing light from the muted television. “Will you try?”
Dean exhales in a burst, closing his eyes tight. “Think you could get on top of me again?”
“Of course.”
Dean turns onto his back while Cas reaches for the remote on the bedside table and shuts the TV off, leaving them in darkness. It helps Dean focus on the feel of Castiel’s body lowering onto him. Cas rests his head on Dean’s chest, fingers stroking through the lighter thatch of his chest hair, and Dean squeezes Cas around his ribcage, fits his hands over Cas’ shoulder blades. It’s so wrong, but Dean will never stop being grateful that Cas lost his wings. Cas can say it till he’s blue in the face, but his body’s solid presence is what Dean can be sure of.
Again he thinks: maybe he could have this, just for a while. Maybe he doesn’t even need to deserve it. Maybe it’s enough that Cas wants it, and Dean wants Cas. He could try it out, the apple-pie life: trial run, and you can still cancel before you get charged. To even consider it feels like asking for his heart broken—to consider that they might be happy like actually happy—but, holy mother, they’re alive; is he really gonna look that gift horse in the mouth?
“Uh. You still think about buying that piece of land? The meadow, and the farm?”
Cas sighs dreamily, and Dean’s hit with a fierce desire for Cas to have this thing he wants so much. Dean wants it to happen. He wants it more than he wants things to stay the same. And maybe it’s not the same as wanting something for himself, but does it matter?
“I mean. If you still want one of those miniature houses, someone’s gonna have to build it.”
“Tiny house, Dean.”
“Sure, okay. I’m just saying… that’d probably take up some time. ‘Specially if I’m going to figure out how to stuff a functional kitchen into a house the size of our current kitchen. And run it all on solar.”
“Dean. That would make me. Very happy.”
Cas sounds a little choked up again. Dean closes his eyes and hugs him tighter. “Okay,” he says. “Then it’s a deal. And we’d—step back from hunting while we’re building it. Getting established on the property, all of that.”
He can’t commit to retirement, not yet. But his mind’s warming up to the thought of the tiny house—medium-tiny, if Dean has anything to say about it, else they’ll be halfway to killing each other in a week. But, a space built by his own hands just for him and Cas, personalized to be everything they need and nothing more. He can get behind that. “Guess we’re in for some DIY YouTube marathons once we get home.”
“It’s a deal,” Cas says solemnly. “Of course we’d look for land close to the bunker, and we could split our time between the two. I know how much the bunker means to you. It’s your home.”
“You’re my home,” Dean says quietly.
“Well. You’re my home too, Dean. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be attached to a physical place.”
“Okay,” Dean whispers. “Okay. Good plan.”
Cas snuggles down, smiling up at him, pink and pleased. He’s just so cute. Dean’s breath catches—he’s afraid to move a muscle, for fear this will all disappear. But the slow rhythm of Cas’ breathing swells and falls against him, like a fact.
They doze for two or three hours, murmuring to each other in little spells of wakefulness. Dean’s exhausted, but some part of him doesn’t want to miss this, no matter how much he needs the sleep. Quiet in bed with Cas, with silvery dawnlight glowing into the corners. Even the same-but-different motel room feels safe now, perhaps because he isn’t coming back soon. Goodbye, old friend: may you always shelter the lost and weary.
The sun rises. Armed with gas station donuts and coffee, they start the drive home.