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Nightmares again.
Dean woke up in a cold sweat, his chest heaving and his heart skipping beats, hair plastered to his forehead. He cast a frantic look about his hands, waiting to see them coated in thick, red blood, smearing stolen life all over his sheets, but there was none. Just his own clammy skin, just his own crooked fingers.
“Fuck.” Dean squeezed his eyes shut, shifted into a sitting position, and rested his feet on the cold tile of the floor, shocking some sense into his sleep-addled brain.
When he had finally woken up enough to move, Dean carefully tread across his room and stalked through the dark hallway, wearing nothing besides a pair of loose-fitting boxer shorts. He ran his fingers through his damp hair as he navigated the bunker in the dark, quickly finding his way to the kitchen.
Dean poured himself a glass of cold water, barely sipping it, his mind far away. He just stared at his hand where it rested on the counter, hating himself.
Man, he hated his hands. Hated those damn calluses. Hated the fucking impression of a shotgun pressed into his palm, the grime that never came out from beneath his blunt and broken fingernails. Dean wasn’t vain, but his hands were fucking ugly . He hated them. Hated thinking about all they had done.
“Dean.”
He whirled around, vision astoundingly poor, but relaxed when he made out Cas’ familiar outline.
“Cas, what—”
He cut himself off, startled, when he recognized Cas’ regular trench coat was gone and had been replaced with a ratty old t-shirt. Dean’s ratty old t-shirt. His Led Zeppelin t-shirt. Heat flooded his face as his vision adjusted and he could see the firm cut of Cas’s lithe figure in his thin shirt, all other thoughts having briefly deserted Dean’s brain. There was a hole in the collar. Dean could see a spot of his skin.
“Dean?”
“Uh, yeah sorry,” he said, and then quickly closed his eyes, forcing himself to focus solely on Cas’ face when he opened them again. Which didn’t help much, to be honest. It never did. Cas was squinting at him, as per usual, his dark hair a messy mop atop his head. Perfectly windswept.
“What are you doing up?”
His question didn’t register, as Dean was wondering exactly how Cas came to be in possession of his Led Zeppelin shirt, why he would be in possession of his Led Zeppelin shirt, and did he even realize that he was wearing his Led Zeppelin shirt?
“Dean?”
“Sorry, what?”
“You’re distracted.”
Dean realized he had been staring directly at Cas’s chest this entire time and snapped his gaze up again.
“Just… couldn’t sleep,” he said absentmindedly. “What—uh, what’re you doing?”
Cas tilted his head, frowning. “You know I don’t sleep.”
“Yeah, but, I mean…” he waved a vague hand around, which caused Cas’s frown to deepen. “Is that my shirt?” Dean couldn’t help but ask. Cas glanced down at his chest, like he didn’t even know he had a shirt on.
“Yes.”
When he didn’t elaborate further, Dean raised his eyebrows at him.
“Why… Why do you have that, Cas?” he asked nonchalantly.
He pressed his lips into a thin line, glancing down at the shirt again.
“It reminds me of you,” he said bluntly. A shudder ran down Dean’s spine at the words, and he cleared his throat. And even though Dean had about a thousand more questions, none of them seemed to make it off his tongue. Dean just stared at him.
“Who’d ever want to be reminded of me?” he said after too long a moment of silence, going with the first thing that popped into his head, tiredly trying for a joke. Cas furrowed his brow, put-off.
“Me, obviously.”
“And… damn it, what does that mean ?”
His eyes raked across Dean’s face, intense and confused. He shuffled closer, not seeming to notice, but it was the only thing Dean was able to notice. He turned his face away in self-defense. Self-preservation.
“I don’t understand you,” Dean said, frustrated. “You’re gone all the time, and when you’re here, you’re stopping me in the hallway in the middle of the night wearing my clothes and saying you want to think of me.”
“What’s not to understand?” Cas murmured, his voice low.
All the breath evaporated from Dean’s chest. “Everything,” he managed. “I don’t understand anything about you.”
“Dean…”
He took another step closer. Dean couldn’t seem to move away, though his instincts screamed at him to make space, to save him from proximity.
Cas caught Dean’s wrist, and he violently flinched out of his grip, but Cas was holding him too gently, and didn’t try to fight off Dean’s protestations. He loosened his fingers so that he was barely touching him, and Dean instinctively leaned back into his touch, allowing Cas to pull him in closer. A burst of heat flared from the feather-light contact.
“Dean,” he said again.
Dean’s breath hitched, his gaze sliding down to land on Cas’s lips, flicking back up to meet his blue eyes, flicking back down to his lips, and back up once more. He couldn’t decide which feature he liked more.
Cas moved forward until there was no space left between them at all, and slowly—so, so slowly—craned his neck up to press his lips against Dean’s. Dean’s pulse spiked and his eyes fluttered closed as Cas eased his hand off Dean’s wrist and carefully moved it around his waist, tugging him against his abdomen while his mouth worked magic.
Cas’s other arm came around Dean’s waist as well, his hands splayed against his spine as he kissed him softly, carefully, gently.
Dean shuddered away from him, unable to take it. He shook off Cas’s grip, stunned, and then stared at him, at his puckered lips, his dazed expression.
No one had touched Dean like that before. No one had ever touched Dean like that before.
No one had ever held him gently like that before. No one had waited and cradled him and tasted easy like that before. No one, no one, no one had cared like that before.
“What was that?” he asked, pained. Dean couldn’t handle being touched like he deserved it, being handled softly and sweetly. It went against everything he knew, everything he knew he deserved.
Cas frowned. “A kiss?”
Dean stared at him some more, feeling flustered and fluttery and fearful.
“Did I do it wrong?” he asked, confused. “It didn’t feel wrong.”
It had felt wrong, but in a way that was so right it made Dean want to feel it all over again. He wanted Cas’s hands back on him, Cas’s lips back against his, wanted to be held in his loving embrace long enough that he forgot himself, lose himself to Cas’s taste and the smell of his hair. He wanted to get lost, desperately lost, and never find himself ever again.
But he didn’t deserve it. He couldn’t ask for something that he had no right—no privilege—to accept or to return.
“I’m—” he cut himself off, searching for the words as he ignored the aching need to have Cas close to him again. “I can’t—don’t do that again.”
He briefly widened his eyes. “Why?”
“I don’t—I don’t deserve you, Cas. How can you do that to me when I can’t—” he broke off, unable to coherently form the sentence. But Cas looked angry now.
“You don’t think you deserve me?” he reiterated, incredulous. “You don't think you deserve me ? Mine are the hands of a killer, Dean, and I’m sorry because—if anything—I don’t deserve you.”
And wasn’t that just fucking ironic. His hands were those of a killer. Ha.
“Cas—”
He spread his arms wide, talking over Dean, exasperated. “You can’t be so hard on yourself. Can’t you see all the good you’ve done, all the lives you’ve saved, all the love you spread?”
“What about all the lives I haven’t saved, huh? What about all the lives I’ve taken?”
Dean was rooted to the spot as Cas reached up one of those hands—those big, strong, savior hands—and cupped the side of his face, causing Dean to look into his eyes again, a sincere expression that Dean just couldn’t swallow.
“No one can be everyone’s hero, Dean. You save who you can.” He quirked his eyebrows, serious. “But you have to let someone save you. You deserve to be saved. And you deserve to be loved. Let someone love you, Dean.”
Dean couldn’t breathe.
“Let me love you,” he whispered, a tumble of honey and gravel off his tongue that did something to Dean’s body.
This time, Dean fell into his kiss like a moth to a flame, drawn to his warmth and perfect dishevelment. Cas was so gentle with him. And Dean hated it, but it was also everything he had never allowed himself to want.
He didn’t want to ruin anything about the moment, but when Cas pushed forward again with newfound strength and tilted his chin up for a better angle, his hands loose around Dean’s hips, Dean stopped breathing, deserted from himself as he pushed back.
Dean was lost, was saved, was something different inside Cas’s hands and his heat. Dean loved it.
I think you love him , Dean told himself, not for the first time.
When they broke for breath, Dean couldn’t help but smile at the sight of Cas’s swollen mouth.
“I don’t believe you,” Dean told him, carrying on from earlier. “But I want to. I want to let you… you know.”
Dean blushed furiously as Cas smirked a little bit, holding back a laugh.
“I love you.” Confusion infused Cas’s tone. “I don’t think I’m supposed to, but… I’ll love you how you need me to. I think that’s how this works.”
“I—”
“You don’t need to say anything,” he said. “I mean, you don’t even have to kiss me if you don’t want to. I only want you to know that I’m yours. You don’t have to be mine.”
Dean closed his eyes as he savored the speech. It was… exactly what he needed to hear, even if he didn't trust it completely. But—actually, Dean supposed that he did. Cas (usually) honestly meant what he said, even though he may not have understood what he was signing up for.
A smirk toyed across Dean’s face, and he grabbed onto the hem of Cas’s t-shirt, enjoying his utter bafflement as he pulled the fabric—and Cas with it—closer to him. His fingers brushed over the planes of Cas’ torso, and Dean shuddered at the sensation of Cas gasping in a breath.
Dean laughed an endearing sort of laugh. “Hey, I’m not good at this kind of crap, but… I do want to kiss you. I mean, I’ve been yours. Hell, I’m living this life for you, man. Wouldn’t be here without you.”
Cas cas just kissed him then, and so Dean kissed him back. Dean kissed him and kissed him, gently moving him backwards so that Cas was leaning against the wall, Dean’s hands planted against the surface on either side of him. Cas looped his arms around Dean’s neck, tilting back as Dean fervently moved his hands to wrap around his torso, his breath hot against Cas’s cheek.
Cas gasped against Dean’s mouth, and suddenly all the lightbulbs flickered to life, buzzing with electricity before they all exploded, light flaring and glass spraying before dying down again. Cas and Dean just stared at each other, catching up on lost breaths until Dean finally smiled, glancing around the destruction.
“That good, huh?”
A door slammed open and a second later Sam was stumbling out with a gun raised and ready in his hand, his eyes small from sleep. He lowered it, confused, when he caught sight of Cas and Dean, tilting his head.
“Guys?”
“Go back to bed, Sam,” Cas said, hoarse. Sam’s jaw clenched as he really took in their position in the dark, and without a word, he turned his back on them, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like “About damn time”.
When Dean looked back to Cas, he saw that he was staring intently, something alight in his eyes. He straightened his posture and Dean let out a grunt when Cas grabbed a fistful of his own shirt, twisting it up in his grip and yanking Dean in.
He didn’t say anything, but his look changed to tenderness as he pulled Dean along after him, all the way back to Dean’s bedroom. He closed the door behind them carefully until they both heard a satisfying click .
“Better than good,” Cas admitted.
Cas certainly deserved better than whatever good Dean was able to offer, but Dean didn't tell him as much, since his mouth was, once again, a little occupied. And Dean knew he wasn’t worthy of Cas’s good, but he could be selfish, and he was going to take as much of this—as much of Cas—as he possibly could.
Cas wrapped one of those hands around Dean’s bare shoulder—a perfect imitation of that handprint of his from years ago (which Dean secretly found really fucking hot, like Cas had branded him) and that was it, Dean was gone. His body was on fire. It was like being raised from Hell all over again. He felt that same sense of electrifying Grace, a calm wrapped up inside of utter chaos.
Cas was saving him again—over and over, just like he always was.
Dean let him this time.