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Dean’s prayer comes, surprisingly, not from the motel he currently resides in, but from elsewhere, from nowhere. He says Santa Barbara, California, and he says opposite the shed with the blue windows. He says I’ve got a hell of a story for you, man.
Castiel hesitates. Before him, a blinding orange sun is rising over the snow-clad mountains and it is quiet, the air moving gently around him. He checks in on Dean again, considers the likelihood of a false prayer and dismisses it, because no demon could imitate a human so thoroughly, and certainly not one with whom Castiel is so intimately familiar. This is something else.
He flies, finds the place with the blue windows on the pier. It’s busy, and he wonders if that was deliberate, if Dean has sequestered himself in people the same was he has hidden himself from Castiel. Castiel turns his head and finds him instantly, not four steps away, leaning against the railing with his head tilted back to the sky, one ankle crossed over the other. He smiles before he sees Castiel— mouth curling, jaw lengthening, canines flashing.
“Dean,” says Castiel, too abruptly.
“Heya, Cas.”
Castiel doesn’t say anything. Dean’s hair is longer, his jaw covered in what he would call an eleven o’clock shadow, and his body is much better fed. Castiel rakes his eyes over him, searching and cataloguing differences; the sharp line of his hips, the downward slope of his shoulders, the tanned skin at the nape of his neck.
“You’re different,” he says, and Dean smiles wider.
“Yup.”
“You are— not you,” says Castiel, blinking. He looks at Dean’s chest again, his hands, unsettled by the way Dean is looking back, not stepping away. It’s not the proximity that bothers Castiel— it’s something else. “Not now-you, at least.”
The corner of Dean’s mouth is divine. “Sure ain’t. You here to fly me back to my page on the calendar?”
Thoughts like that are why Castiel’s superiors are starting to question him.
“Is that why you called?”
“Nah,” says Dean, easily. “I had something else to take care of. Got a few more hours on the clock, figured— who else would I wanna see?”
“I don’t— me?” says Castiel, and Dean winks, clicks his tongue.
“Got it in one, sugar,” he says, which is baffling. Castiel blinks.
“You’re older.”
He nods, drums out a rhythm on his belly. “Twenty years and change, and looking good on it.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not? You gonna tell on me?” The slant of his mouth is infuriating, the blatant disrespect insulting, and yet— Castiel is worried that he doesn’t seem to mind. “Cas, relax. I’ve got it on good authority that I ain’t gonna screw anything up.”
Castiel narrows his eyes. “Whose?”
“Yours,” says Dean, and grins at him. “Now, come on, I’m gonna buy you a drink.”
He reaches out an puts a hand on Castiel’s nape, pulling him forward in the direction of the shore. Castiel allows it, because— he does. Dean’s hand is heavy and large and the press of his index finger is hot where it’s slipped under the collar of Castiel’s shirt. Their bodies move together, as extensions, and Castiel curls his hands into fists, drags fingernails slow and torturous across his palms.
He reasons with himself: Dean has travelled from the future, where he is looked after. He’s been cared for. Castiel’s mission has been successful. There is information that can be gained here. This is acceptable.
Dean leads them to an establishment not far from the waterfront, and he keeps his hand on Castiel’s neck, then his shoulders, then his lower back. It drags a line of awareness down the spine of Castiel’s vessel, makes it difficult to concentrate on the people passing them, the wooden boards under his feet.
“I never come this far West,” he says, as he slides into the booth and drags the menu across the table, “but we swung by a couple years ago— or from now, I guess— and had an alright time. Can’t see shit for the tourists, but the food’s good.”
He pushes the menu towards Castiel, drums out a beat on the table. A waitress comes by and Dean orders the catch of the day for himself, turning a smile on her that makes the lines at his eyes go deep and creased. Castiel asks for a coffee even though he’s never had one before, because Dean told him once that coffee was the best way to stay in a restaurant without getting kicked out. The waitress smiles at him.
“Just black?” she asks, and Castiel hesitates.
“Yes,” he says, and she writes it down.
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Great! That’ll be about twenty minutes for the food, and the coffee will be out in a sec.”
She walks away, and Dean stretches out more comfortably in the booth, propping one elbow up on the windowsill. The entire restaurant is reflected in the glass, yellow-toned and hazy, but Castiel can still make out the people on the boardwalk, the shifting shapes of their shadows.
Underneath the table, Dean slides one leg out and inbetween Castiel’s, hooking their ankles together. Their shins touch.
The waitress comes back with water and the cup of coffee, which Castiel drinks from. She stares back at him in horror.
“Cas blasted off all his nerve-endings in ‘93,” says Dean, taking the pitcher from her slack grasp and setting it on the table. “Chemical accident with some kinda experimental toothpaste. Freaky, ain’t it?”
“No,” says the waitress, recovering herself. “No, I’m sorry, I just—”
“It’s hot,” Castiel surmises, and she laughs.
“Yeah. Okay, well, enjoy, I guess? Food’ll be right out.”
Dean grins at him when she’s gone.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says, as he pours himself a water. “Just, y’know. You. Scaring the locals. It’s funny.”
The sentiment does something to him, and Castiel looks down at his hand around the coffee and then back up at Dean. “I see,” he says, and puts the coffee down. Dean raises his eyebrows over his glass.
“So,” he says. “How are you, Cas?”
Castiel doesn’t answer. Perhaps it would be easier to say that he doesn’t know how to answer, except to say that he is undergoing what could possibly be termed a crisis of faith. Dean looks at him and Castiel knows that to lie would be pointless, because against all odds, the man that sits across from him knows him. He can see it in the colours of Dean’s soul, in the way his body has been stitched up again and again by Castiel’s hand. Twenty years, Dean had said. Castiel hadn’t expected him to live past this one.
(Wanted it, of course. But not expected it).
“I’ve rebuilt you,” says Castiel, and Dean doesn’t flinch.
“Couple times over, yeah.”
He tilts his head, considering. “It was an exception,” Cas says, and realises only after he does that he is echoing Dean’s own words back at him, you made an exception for me. “On raising you from Hell, I was granted that privilege, but it was a privilege then removed. I shouldn’t be able to heal you, and yet—”
“The angel tattoos,” interrupts Dean, nodding as if he understands. “Yeah, uh, you get an upgrade. +20 Healing, or whatever. Saves my bacon twice a week.”
He holds out his left hand, where Castiel’s grace has layered itself over and over in constant repair, leaving a thick metaphysical scar across what the human psychics would call his head line. It’s clumsy work, and the grace feels foreign when Castiel runs his finger across it. He forgets to ask if it’s alright to do so— Dean has plenty to say on the subject of personal space— but this version of him says nothing.
“I’m still on Earth,” he guesses, and Dean nods.
“Yep.”
“I’m still—” Castiel pauses. “—working with you.”
“Yeah.”
He holds back the question he wants to ask, whether Heaven’s plans have truly extended that far forwards, or whether Castiel will then serve something else. He is long through the metaphorical doorway to doubt, but he finds himself still clinging to the hallway walls, attempting to sneak past unseen. Wanting to help, and wanting not to be caught.
He wonders, looking at Dean across from him, whether twenty years is a long time or not. It must be for the humans, for there’s a silver crown adorning Dean’s head, and he understands that only happens with age. He wonders if it feels like a long time to an angel.
The food comes. Castiel is content to sit, feeling vaguely twitchy that Zachariah might be watching, and experiences what he has come to recognise is grief for Uriel. He wouldn’t have approved of Castiel sitting here, but Uriel was used to Castiel’s quirks, and they were friends for many years. Castiel misses his friends.
“You okay?” asks Dean, discarding his knife and fork in favour of his hands. The oil runs over his fingers and picks up crumbs of batter. Castiel swallows.
“I’m considering disobedience.”
He’s not sure what he expects— something, probably. For Dean to say, like Anna, good. For Dean to say, I know. For Dean to say about freakin’ time, Cas. He doesn’t expect Dean to carefully pull apart his fish and avoid his eyes.
“How’s that going?”
“Peachy,” returns Castiel, and is gratified when Dean laughs; it had taken a while to make that idiom fit. Dean kicks his ankle.
“What’s the rub?”
Dean must know already. He must.
“Your brother. You.”
“Ah.”
“Yes.”
A muscle twitches in Dean’s cheek, and he peels the battered outside of the fish clean from the meat and sticks it in his mouth, crunching it in his teeth. Castiel turns one thumb around the other.
“Sam is— not what I expected,” he says, frowning at himself. “His coming battle is long foretold, it’s his destiny, and yet I find— I wish—”
Dean is looking at him again, and there it is, the problem, that niggling sense of shame.
“I wish he didn’t have to. I wish there was another way.” Castiel leans forward, onto his elbows, and turns one of Dean’s own phrases on him. “It’s not exactly the company line.”
Dean opens his mouth, hesitates, and Castiel cuts him off.
“Don’t answer me,” he says, looking away. “I don’t want to know. I will— I will make my own way, in this. It’s alright. I don’t—”
He feels reckless. “I don’t want my judgement clouded.”
Dean closes his mouth, and he does look old, now. He looks tired, and sorrowful, and understanding. “Good luck with that.”
“Thank you.” Castiel breathes in and out, looks down at his hands. “And how are you, Dean?”
“Wise to your tricks,” says Dean, but gently. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it? I know it all already, so it’d be kinda like praying to God.”
It shouldn’t make Castiel smile, but it does. “That’s not necessary.”
Dean considers him. “Hm,” he says, and continues to eat his fish. “So, you’re not up for talking. You up for anything else? I’ve got a whole evening to spare.”
His eyes are bright, and Castiel fights the unusual urge to squirm. Dean is looking, and this has never bothered Castiel before, because he has often felt that he could quite happily stand and stare at Dean Winchester for most of eternity in an effort to know him, but this Dean is different, and Castiel is frightened of it.
“I’m not needed anywhere,” he says at last, and Dean grins.
“Awesome. I got a sure-fire way to take your mind off it. Finish your coffee.”
Castiel obeys, though this time he copies the way Dean has been drinking his water, and sips at it slowly. Dean finishes his meal, and Castiel watches the people around them, the evidence of humanity that has been crammed into this tiny space. It’s endearing. It’s right.
He thinks of Dean on the park bench, his words to Castiel. I don’t know what’s gonna happen when these seals are broken, but what I do know is that this, here? All of it is still here because of my brother and me.
Dean chose the few over the many, and Castiel wanted it to be so. He wants to save Sam Winchester, wants to shoulder the burden that rests on Dean’s back. He wants to stop the apocalypse, and he wants to know when it started to feel like he wasn’t.
“You want me to tell you something?” asks Dean, drawing Castiel from his thoughts. “Not about the future, just something you don’t know.”
“Alright.”
Dean leans forward on his elbows. “Terminator,” he says. “1984, James Cameron. It’s a film. I don’t reckon you’ve seen it yet.”
Castiel hasn’t.
“When you make a movie, you’ve got get all these permits, right, if you want to film in a public place. But my man James Cameron, he goes, hell no. I ain’t doing that. ‘Cause you’ve gotta understand, they had, like, three dollars to do this with. So he’d drag the crew and the cast out to wherever he wanted to shoot, and get it all done before the cops showed up to kick ‘em out. Frigging awesome.”
Dean grins at him. Castiel finds himself smiling, as well.
“I see,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They smile at each other in pleasant understanding, and Dean’s mouth softens out into something gentler, something fonder, the way he might look at a lover or a small child. “You ain’t changed a bit, you know that?”
“I’m an angel. We don’t.”
Dean snorts.
“Yeah, sure,” he says, and sits back in the booth. He drags his shin against Castiel’s, possibly by accident, and Castiel’s mouth feels unnaturally dry. He drinks from Dean’s cup in an effort to dissuade it. “You keep telling yourself that.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” says Castiel. “You just said— why are you looking at me like that?”
Dean looks up slowly.
“How am I looking at you, Cas?”
“Like—” Castiel doesn’t have the word for it. “I don’t know.”
Dean hums. Castiel wants to be sitting beside him in the booth. He wants to crack open Dean’s jaw and inspect his teeth, see if they’re the same ones Castiel restored to him after Hell. He wants to touch. He wants to rebuild. He wants to know why Dean is looking at him like he knows all of this, like he’s familiar with it, and why he doesn’t look afraid.
“I’m an angel of the lord,” he says, and is surprised to find that it sounds like a defence.
“Yeah,” says Dean, and quirks his mouth. Salt sticks to his bottom lip. “Maybe that’s why I’m doing it.”
Castiel wants.
“Come on,” says Dean, and nudges his ankle. “This is an up-front joint. Let’s go pay.”
There’s two people waiting to settle their bill that Dean and Castiel have to line up behind, wedged in the entry corner of the restaurant. Castiel stands beside him, the tips of his shoes just shy of touching Dean’s, and then he remembers the personal space conversation and steps back.
Dean reaches out and hooks two fingers in Castiel’s slacks. His fingers get sandwiched between layers of cotton and polyester, and he tugs Castiel so close that their knees touch. He’s still looking at the trout mounted behind the counter.
“If I wanted to tempt an angel,” says Dean aloud, and then he looks back at Castiel. “How would I do that?”
“What?” says Castiel, eloquently. Dean grins. He leans his head in like they’re sharing a secret.
“You know,” he says, “I wondered. I mean, Anna, she was fallen, right? But something made her fall. She must’ve been— curious.” His eyes are green, his fingers are warm. A third slips behind Castiel’s belt. “You curious, Cas?”
The lights flicker, but it doesn’t matter. Castiel is only looking at Dean. He wants, and wants, and wants. He is a strategist. He is reckless. He thinks he might be in love.
“Yes,” he confesses, and the Apocalypse and his orders slink far away from him. “Yes, Dean.”
Dean gives him a sharp tug, and Castiel lets him, lets him pull his vessel close and command Castiel’s wavelength of intent. He is close enough now to see the paint strokes of Dean’s body, the maker’s marks that couldn’t help but be left. Here is where Castiel formed his nose, here is where Castiel cradled his ear. Here are the blood vessels that break and expand under Cas’s focus, here is where Dean lights up pink.
“Sounds like a prayer,” Dean says, so low, and Castiel feels woozy, feels like he might do something unwise. Dean’s nose brushes against his cheek in one deliberate, torturous move, and he grins. Castiel feels the drag of his teeth. “Not here, sweetheart.”
He pulls away. Light floods Castiel’s awareness, noise and humanity and credit cards scraping on leather wallets, and it has only been moments, but Castiel was so thoroughly oblivious to their passing that it feels like minutes. The floor has stuck to his shoes and there are people, people moving around them and talking and settling bills, and Castiel considers the knowledge that it is well within his power to ensure that none of them notice a damn thing occurring in this well-lit corner.
Dean chuckles. “I know that look,” he says, and removes his hand to flick through his wallet. “Come on, you freak. I’ve got a motel.”
He reaches around the person in front to throw a few bills down on the counter alongside his hasty explanation, and then he grabs Castiel’s hand and pulls them clear, heedless of the confused shuffle in his wake. “It’s not like I’m coming back,” he says, as they flee into the night. “They can sort it out later.”
He leads Castiel down the boardwalk, releasing his hand and shoving both into his pockets. It’s a move Castiel’s seen before, but it doesn’t read as defensive in the way that it usually does. This Dean moves simply, comfortably. He wears his skin like it fits him, like it was made for him, and it gives Castiel a sense of ease just to look at him, because for so long Castiel has worried that he did something wrong. It seemed impossible, as he rebuilt him, that he could ever craft something worthy enough to hold Dean’s soul, and he’d done his best, but to see Dean in it— he’s always worried that something he did left Dean wanting. It doesn’t look that way now.
“You married,” says Castiel, because he had felt the ring on Dean’s finger. Dean draws his hand from his pocket, surprised, and turns his palm over to look at it.
“This old thing? I’ve worn it for years.”
Castiel smiles. “Yes,” he says, “but it’s on the other hand, now. You’ve changed it.”
For the first time in the evening, Dean looks caught out. He scrunches up an eye and turns faintly pink.
“You sure are sly,” he says, running the hand over his mouth and avoiding Castiel’s gaze. “Yeah, alright, I did. That a problem for you?”
He considers the question. Marriage means nothing to him, despite the ceremony’s religious connotations, and he is glad that Dean found someone to rest with.
“No,” says Castiel, and Dean grins.
“Homewrecker,” he accuses, looking pleased. He knocks Castiel’s shoulder. “Good thing you’re my freebie, huh?”
Castiel, as he does most of the time Dean says something incomprehensible, says nothing.
They walk further along the beach, and Castiel admits to himself that it’s pleasant. It’s not the mountains, and it’s loud, but— he’ll miss this. He hasn’t been here for two thousand years, likely wouldn’t have come back to Earth at all if not for Dean, and yet he has found himself instantly enveloped in the life here, and he will mourn it when it’s gone.
Not for the first time, he thinks that the great plan is cruel.
“Up ahead,” says Dean, after they’ve walked a while. They’re in the motel’s complex, now, a carpark at Castiel’s right and stairs to the second-floor before him. “You wanna see inside?”
Castiel nods. He’s not naïve— he understands what he’s agreeing to. Perhaps it should feel like a betrayal, but he wants, and this version of Dean is the only being he knows who seems willing to answer him. The Dean of this year is so young, so furious, so uncertain of his place in the world, and Castiel often feels that the two of them are hurtling along, chained to each other as they crash towards the end, and he doesn’t think he can be blamed, really, for wanting to know what lies at the end.
“Hey, Mrs Robinson,” says Dean, and Castiel realises he’s lagged behind by the stairs. He has one hand on the motel’s door, gold from a nearby sconce draping over his shoulders, and the grated iron landing casts criss-crosses over his face. “Are you coming?”
“Yes,” says Castiel, and follows him in.
*
The room Dean’s booked himself is small but comfortable, and an obvious step up from the ones he and his brother currently frequent. The walls are a plain white, the bedsheets clean, and Castiel frowns, put off by the unfamiliarity of it.
“Yeah, I know,” says Dean, on seeing his face, “I’ve gone soft. But they’ve got these fancy little soaps, Cas, they’re awesome.”
He shrugs off his jacket, folds it over the back of the chair that also holds his duffel. Castiel can sense something hidden within the bag, some source of power, and wonders if he should have been more concerned with what brought Dean back to this time. Dean hesitates, and then he drapes the jacket over the bag instead.
“Don’t ask. It won’t be bothering you for a while.”
“Alright,” says Castiel, unwise for the second, third, fifteenth time in the evening. His hands feel restless, and he curls and uncurls his fingers, running his eyes over Dean. “Dean, I— why are you doing this?”
Dean purses his lips.
“Big question,” he says, purposefully light. “Big answer. You want me to talk biblical to you?”
Castiel doesn’t respond. Dean blows out a breath.
“Maybe not, then,” he says, and he comes and takes Castiel between his hands, bracketing his shoulders and holding firm. “I’m doing it ‘cause I want to,” he says, ducking down slightly to catch Castiel’s eye. “‘Cause I’m here, and you’re here, and I want to.”
He holds onto Castiel’s shoulders, and something flares bright in his soul, like he really does want to. It should make him easier to understand, but it doesn’t.
“Why?” says Castiel, and Dean squints at him.
“Where are we, now?” he asks, all of a sudden. “2009, I’m kinda fuzzy. Post-Hell, I got that, but… we done Lilith yet?”
Castiel holds the gaze, and hopes that’s answer enough.
“Early days,” says Dean quietly, and not without wonder. His mouth pulls slightly up, his eyes flicking between Castiel’s own, “And you’re lookin’ at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you want me,” says Dean. “Like you want me and you haven’t got a goddamn clue what to do about it. I didn’t realise this whole fuck-or-fight dilemma was so literal.”
He grins. “Maybe I just wanna tip the scales.”
His hands slide down Castiel’s arms and fall back to his sides, and that feeling of awareness makes itself known again.
“You know me,” says Castiel, testing the words.
“Sure do, bud. Beer?”
He crosses and lifts one from the mini-fridge, holding it out to Castiel. It is cold and wet in his hand. He puts his palm over the cap and pulls it off, wisps of condensation curling around his fingertips. Dean swallows.
“Jesus,” he says, slightly hoarse. “You’d think by now you’d be out of tricks.”
Castiel looks down at the beer. “Was I not supposed to?”
“Nah, it’s just— I forgot you could do that. You kinda—” He stops, uses his ring to pop the cap on his own beer, his ears slightly red. “Just, uh, you ever seen a statue? One of them brass ones you sometimes see about the place. People pat ‘em and turn ‘em gold, lots of dog snouts and boobs, that sort of thing. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you full-brass, that’s all.”
Castiel tries to parse this comment. “I… rubbed off on you?”
Dean laughs. “More than you know.”
“There’s a connotation,” says Castiel, squinting, and Dean smiles again.
“You betcha,” he says. “Wanna take it for a spin, make like the monkeys?”
He steps out from and into Castiel’s space, curving around him with familiarity, and that’s when it hits Castiel, what it is that’s different about Dean: he moves his body like it’s Castiel’s vessel.
He said yes.
The realisation slams into Castiel, and the beer bottle slips out of his grasp. It falls to the floor and liquid spills out, and Dean swears.
“Shit,” he says, flinching. “You okay?”
“I’m not— you didn’t,” says Castiel. “You didn’t.”
Dean steps carefully over the beer. “Didn’t what, Cas?”
“You didn’t,” says Castiel. “I wouldn’t.”
Dean’s eyes flick between his own, and he moves to slowly put down his own beer, taking Castiel’s shoulders in his hands again. Something is wrong with Castiel’s vessel, some sort of malfunction, because it wants to breathe, it wants to fire adrenaline all throughout his body, and Dean said yes.
“You said yes to me,” says Castiel, feeling dizzy. “You— Dean. Why?”
“Woah, now.” Dean grips his shoulders, slides his palms up to the sides of Castiel’s neck. “I did no such thing. I mean, I would in a heartbeat if you needed it, but you didn’t. I’m all me. Promise.”
“But— the way you move.” He contemplates the pronouns in his head, unable to choose which one feels more accurate. You, and me, and I. “Like we’re extensions of each other.”
“Oh,” says Dean, and his thumb presses into the skin behind Castiel’s collar. “Yeah, well.”
He steps forward, and Castiel realises he’s been backed against the door, just as he realises that he could easily end this if he wanted to, could simply refuse to move. But he doesn’t. The plural truly was correct.
“More’n one way to possess someone,” says Dean, and then he kisses him.
It’s pure. That’s the only word Castiel can settle on, as Dean presses his mouth against his own. Human language is so limiting, but it is also wonderful in its simplicity, in its ability to distil concepts to only their most important syllables, to say here is something magnificent, and here it is in one word. Dean kisses him and it is pure, it is good, and it is right.
He puts his hand on Dean’s jaw, drawing him closer. He copies his movements; he’s not certain he understands the appeal, as of yet, and is certain that he would care even less were it anybody but Dean, but it is Dean, and he likes that. His skin is hot under Castiel’s hands, smooth, covered in a layer of fake tan that seems to be half glitter. He burrows into Dean’s collar and inhales.
“Jesus,” says Dean, as one of his hands lands hard and fast on the wood by Castiel’s head. He’s gasping, clutching at Castiel’s belt. “Zero to sixty, every time.”
“Stop talking,” says Castiel, and investigates his mouth again. His molars are the same, even if a tongue proves an ineffective method for inspection. He’s had three new fillings put in. Dean crowds him against the door and the wanting gets stronger, amplified by the presence of Dean’s own, a feedback loop.
“Hey, hey,” says Dean, covering Castiel’s hands with his own and attempting to pry them off his skin. “Dude, just— just chill out a second, hold on—"
“Why,” demands Cas, and Dean groans.
“Because,” he says. “You gotta take it easy, alright, or I’m gonna blow my load before we get to the good bit. My refractory period’s not what it was.”
“That seems like a design flaw,” says Castiel, seriously. Dean stares at him for a second, and then he slides one hand around the back of Castiel’s head and pulls him close.
“God,” he says, laughing, and the corresponding prayer ricochets within Castiel like the prayers of old used to do, when the angels were known to be beings of fire and destruction. “You’re so— I don’t— you don’t even know what you’re doing.”
“Then teach me,” complains Cas against his neck, because he is tired and he’s angry and he’s scared and he wants to be told what to do, he wants answers and not the discovery that he can want even more than he knew was possible, even after being given it. Dean takes a shuddering breath.
“Alright,” he says, and pulls away. “Alright.”
He pulls Castiel over to the bed, nudges him to sit down on the edge. He removes Jimmy Novak’s tie, loosening the knot so that it hangs over Castiel’s sternum. “Take that off.”
Castiel does. He unbuttons his shirt, too, because it seems the thing to do. Dean smiles when he does, like Castiel’s chest is an old friend he hasn’t seen in a while. Castiel bundles it and places it at the foot of the bed.
“Lie back.”
The mattress dips under his weight, and Dean’s too when he crawls over it. He hooks one thigh over each of Castiel’s, bracing himself above his pelvis, and the motel’s light curls around his head in a profane mockery of a halo. Two fingers of each hand touch the skin atop his hips.
“You sure?” asks Dean. “This is pretty ethically dicey for a first time.”
“I’m a billion years your senior,” says Castiel, and Dean makes a face.
“Fair enough. You know how it goes?”
“I’m aware.”
“Good,” says Dean, and he trails his hand up and over Castiel’s ribs, his shoulder, his arm. He loops his fingers around Castiel’s hand. “Move your hand here, that’s it.”
He puts it up near Castiel’s head, spins their palms to line up and threads his fingers between Castiel’s like an anchor. The TV crackles to life and Castiel does his best to reign it in, closing his eyes and breathing deep because he knows how humans take to these things, and he feels Dean laugh against his neck.
“S’okay, Cas,” he promises, kissing Castiel’s skin and pushing down with all his weight. “You be as loud as you want.”
The light is in his eyes; he blows it without a thought. Dean is kissing him, running his hand along Castiel’s side and into the space at his lower back, pressing calloused fingertips against his spine. Castiel’s ears are filled with the scrape of skin against skin, the wet sounds of Dean’s mouth. “I want—”
“Course, I’ve got the advantage,” says Dean quietly, sliding a hand beneath Castiel’s thigh and pulling it up, fitting himself into the new space he’s made. “Been round this block before. Know just how to make it good. You want that, Cas?”
“Dean—”
“‘Cause the way I figure it, you’ve been holding it all together. Heaven, Hell, doubt. Can’t’ve been easy. It’s why I’m here— God knows I’ve never thanked you for it. But I can do it now, Cas.” He slides his hand under Castiel’s waistband again, this time finding skin. “Let me show you I can be grateful.”
“Angels are not physical creatures,” says Castiel, unsure why he’s arguing, but Dean just presses his mouth to the dip between Castiel’s collar bones.
“I know,” he says, strumming his fingers along Castiel’s ribs, “I do. Doesn’t mean you can’t experience the other side every now and again.”
He drags his thumb down the muscle of Castiel’s side, maker’s marks in his wake. “I mean, hell, humans ain’t metaphysical, but it doesn’t stop us from wanting to trip the light fantastic.”
Castiel is coming around to the point, from Dean’s hands if not his words. “I don’t understand.”
“LSD. The brown acid. Metham—” Dean looks up, catches himself. “Drugs, Cas. It doesn’t stop us from doing the Pink Floyd.”
Irritation flares inside Castiel, because didn’t he just say—, and Dean ducks his chin sheepishly down to Castiel’s chest.
“Right. Sorry.” He shakes his head side-to-side. “Man, it really is early days, huh? You don’t got a clue what I’m saying.”
“I’m trying.”
“Yeah,” says Dean, looking back up with something like wonder. It makes Castiel sing. “Yeah, I’m getting that.”
He kisses Cas again, the slow drag of mouth against mouth. Castiel wants more, but the enormity of it keeps him still, accepting the gift Dean is giving him and not asking for more.
“Course, it doesn’t matter,” says Dean, and he smiles at him. “When it comes to you, I’m only ever saying the one thing.”
“Dean,” says Castiel, and he grabs Dean by the neck and pulls him close, presses himself in as far as Dean will allow it. His skin is hot and the singing beneath Castiel’s ribs is loud, his vessel demanding his attention and earning it every moment. Dean’s hand clenches around his and Castiel arcs. He knows what Dean means. He knows what Dean cannot mean.
“I’m not God,” he grits out, and Dean laughs.
“Oh, buddy,” he says. “As if I’d feel this way about God.”
*
The blasphemy gets washed from Castiel’s mouth with the taste of Dean’s own, with his thighs and his ribs and the pinkest parts of his body. Dean is an attentive lover, talkative, and Castiel thinks that he was right, that this is as close to possession as two human forms can get. He takes Dean inside himself and swallows him whole, allows himself to be swallowed in return, and checks on the state of Dean’s body. It is as perfect as it was when it was raised; Castiel likes it.
He comes back down from it with a new appreciation for physicality, and also, incidentally, LSD. Dean laughs when he tells him so.
“Yeah, it’s cool, right?” he says, carding his fingers through Castiel’s hair. “Not the drugs, you stay away from that shit, but the sex— yeah. Pretty awesome.”
There’s that human language, again. Castiel closes his eyes.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Sated,” he says, listening to Dean breathe. “Confused. Envious.”
“Of?”
“Myself. For the Castiel of your time, this is all behind him. His choices are made. He is— absolute.”
Dean’s fingers brush through his hair again.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, he’s pretty sweet.”
There’s much to be heard in Dean’s voice, but Castiel only hums. He turns onto his side, dislodging Dean’s hand, and slides his own up Dean’s arm from wrist to shoulder, fitting his palm around the mark there. Like before, it makes Dean shudder, curving into Castiel’s body with the smallest intake of breath, barely even a hiss. His eyelids flicker, his eyelashes fluttering against his cheek.
“Aftershocks,” he explains, rough-voiced, and Castiel moves his thumb back and forth over the scar, the sensitive skin, and wants to fit his mouth to it again. It fills him with a great deal of pride, a self-righteous type of conceit.
“It’s still there,” he observes, and to his surprise Dean doesn’t berate him for stating the obvious.
“Yeah,” he agrees, sleepily. “Spent a couple of years with it removed, didn’t like it. Got it back about, uh, ten years ago, now.”
Castiel runs his fingertips over it. He hasn’t seen it since his choice to leave it on Dean’s shoulder, and at that time it was red and raised, as if the handprint pushed up from underneath his skin. It’s faded, now, but it still carries Castiel’s grace. It still bears Castiel’s mark.
“Why?” asks Castiel, and Dean shrugs.
“I’m old,” he says, shuffling closer to Cas so that their heads knock together. “I needed an easy access g-spot.”
Castiel laughs. He doesn’t think it’s the truth, but he allows Dean his secrets, and Dean grins, bright and pleased, when he squeezes Dean’s shoulder. “I’m glad,” he says, sincere. “I worried that stopping the Apocalypse would be the end of you, but you have found your own paradise, your own peace. I’m glad, that it ended like this.”
Dean fits his own hand over Castiel’s and drags it to his mouth, kisses the backs of his knuckles. “Not ended,” he says, and sighs, tucking his other hand beneath his head. “I’d do it all again, if I had to. Took a long time for me to get to that point, but I would. Every stinking bit of it, Cas, so long as it got me where you’re going.”
He slides his eyes up to Castiel’s, hand still pressed to his mouth. “If you could see it,” he says, and then he pulls a face. “Well. I guess you will.”
“In twenty years and change,” says Castiel, and Dean huffs.
“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “I’m sorry, Cas.”
“What for?”
Dean doesn’t answer. He just holds onto Castiel’s hand, and Castiel lets him. Eventually he lifts his eyes again, blinking away the heaviness that had so briefly taken root, forcing a smile onto his features.
“So, what did you think?” Dean asks. “Did I give you a good first date? Or a first, uh, whatever?”
“Is that what this was?”
He shrugs.
“Yes,” says Castiel, and means it. “Yes, I think so. I think I finally understand what it is that I have to do.”
“What’s that, then?”
Cas smiles. He covers Dean’s jaw with his hand. “Have faith,” he says lightly, and Dean grins.
“Yeah.” He squeezes Castiel’s palm. “You should get some sleep, Cas,” he whispers, soft and tender. “Rest up a little.”
“I don’t need to sleep,” Cas says, and Dean rolls his eyes.
“Try it out for me.”
Cas decides to humour him. “If you insist,” he says, shifting into a position more comfortable. He knows Dean very well, after all, and he knows his patterns. He knows Dean will not be here when he wakes, and perhaps he should feel sad, or grieved, but he doesn’t. He feels a clarity and a sense of purpose that is nothing short of freeing, and Dean Winchester waits in a motel room for him hours away, and months away, and years. Dean gives him one last smile, one final kiss to his hand.
“See you on the other side, Cas,” he promises, and Castiel closes his eyes. He doesn’t sleep in the human sense, can’t, but he keeps his eyes closed and his breathing deep, and it seems to satisfy Dean enough for him to extract himself from Castiel’s hold, resting his heavy palm on Castiel’s head a few moments in wordless prayer. He hears the shuffling noises of Dean redressing himself in his clothes, the zipper of his bag, and when he steps outside the motel room, Castiel opens his eyes to find that it is just past midnight— he must have had a prior arrangement.
Castiel sits up in the empty motel room and reacquaints himself with his vessel. There is a mark on his thigh that he smiles at, knowing he could heal it and deciding not to. He redresses in his shirt and slacks, in Jimmy Novak’s shoes and socks, and listens to the sound of the water. He presses his fingertips to his mouth. Then he dons his coat and thinks about Dean, about the waitress from the restaurant and the quiet mountain range from before. His hands start to shake. When he closes his eyes, he opens them to a fishing dock.
“We need to talk,” Cas says.