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“Would you hold still,” Dean mutters, straightening Sam’s tie. “Feel like I’m decorating a Christmas tree.”
“I know how to tie a tie.” Sam stays put anyway, his cheeks a little too pale, the bags under his eyes a little too dark.
“It’s just the first day of school, except bigger,” Dean says, checking his misnomer of a little brother over for lint. The suit’s a good fit. Though the points of contrasting color between socks, belt, and tie invite the eye to linger, making Sam appear even bigger, the accessories still tactfully declare Dom all the way up. “I made you lunch and everything.”
Instead of gratitude, Sam gives him a look of utter horror. “Dean, I can’t take a PB&J to the Senate.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “It’s one of your fiddly salads with the goat cheese.” He retrieves Sam’s leather satchel from the floor and passes it over. “You’re gonna be fine. Now get out there and do law stuff.”
Sam pulls a face, but manfully refrains from hugging Dean. They walk out of Sam’s office and into the waiting room for Sam’s office, and ain’t that something.
“You don’t have to walk me there,” Sam mutters as they exit into the hall.
“Maybe I wanna see,” Dean responds in a similarly quiet tone.
His lips twitching at their corners, Sam straightens his back and leads the way. Dean follows half a step behind, broadcasting the image of a rolled Dom as best he can. Despite politics being a realm of civil servants, there’s not as much serving going on as the name might imply, but Sam’s campaign on the family values of a service Dom show there’s definitely a desire for more of it in the care—and aftercare—of a country.
In Kansas, at least. Sam might have thirty-nine co-workers in the state Senate, but he’s also the youngest, and polling at the top of the newest senators.
Dean’s fucking proud.
He holds the door open for Sam, lowers his head as Sam passes, and watches his baby brother head down to his desk in the Senate chamber. There’s a stupid look on his face and he knows it, but screw it. They’ve made it.
Dean makes a bit of a splash when socializing with the other assistants and secretaries. Dynamic stereotypes sometimes hold firm for a reason, but the subs here aren’t wilting flowers; these are fast-paced, high-processing people, craving a proper challenge to prove their worth. Whatever submission is here, is solely to the needs of their representative. The only punishment they take is that which their jobs dish out.
That’s all something Dean knows very well how to do.
Dean shifts his posture and adjusts his vocabulary as he interacts, and as the weeks pass into months, people stop treating him like a Dom lost on his way to his real job. There’s never the full comfort of being thought a sub among subs, but he’s no longer greeted with the bored wariness of those who must professionally deal with entitled idiots.
There’s paperwork, and schmoozing, and making sure Sam’s schedule doesn’t break Sam in half. There’s filtering news and organizing meetings and endless, endless phone calls. There’s donor dinners and press conferences. There’s a continuous slog that is, somehow simultaneously, also a light-speed race.
Somehow, they’re a year in. Two. It keeps speeding up.
Sam goes to fancy shindigs with various members of his team in tow, Dean included, and it draws a greater-than-average amount of attention when Sam starts dating. Eileen is a law historian who’s never known a collar, but what people focus the most on is her deafness.
Some journalists go for the accessibility spin, both pro and con. Due to Sam’s relative youth and looks for his profession, Sam and Eileen show up in an unnerving amount of local tabloids, blurry photos often cropped around Sam’s hands, the accompanying articles positing that Senator Winchester could be ordering Eileen indecently in public with no one else the wiser.
Watching Sam’s jaw tighten in response to all this has Dean almost grateful he’s been stuck living the single life. Dean might pick up a sub now and again, but it’s never anything with staying power, always a clear cut deal instead of a relationship. He never brings anyone to those fancy shindigs, and he deals with the ache that occasionally itches inside his throat.
A couple times, Dean meets someone there. Once, Dean meets someone extraordinary. Suit just large enough to make the sub look smaller in it, the neck of the shirt unbuttoned wider in the old fashioned style, his tie provocatively loose. Discipline all the way up and down his body, too, standing at attention, staring at attention until Dean had to consciously keep himself from tightening that tie nice and snug, from holding the other man on a short leash.
Dean licks his lips, thinking about it, eyeing the tie, and the sub dares him with pink cheeks and a raised chin, baring his entire front.
It’s tempting as hell, clearly mutual, but Dean doesn’t risk it. Can’t risk the complications.
If they’re gonna get Sam all the way to the Senate in D.C., Sam’s team will have to be as squeaky clean as Sam himself.
Three terms. Twelve years. Sam had popped in as a snot-nosed kid of twenty-three, and here they are now, their big boy senator turning thirty-five.
“Time to run for president,” Dean jokes as Sam blows out the candle. Just the one, stuck into a tiny grocery store cake Dean bought on his lunch break. There’s a bigger party on the weekend, but for now, they’re crowded around Sam’s desk, family only.
Eileen looks to Dean a second after he speaks, clearly missing the chance to read his lips, and Dean adds “President time” by hand.
Sam looks between them both, and there’s a glint in his eyes that Dean knows much too well. “Soon,” Sam signs before gesturing for his wife to cut the cake.
During Sam’s fourth term, they decide to take the leap up the ladder. Not the big jump, no, not yet. To the national Senate.
“What do you think?” Sam asks, eyes closed, rubbing his temples. “I gotta grab one of them, fast.”
The printouts of speeches cover the dinner table between them, all covering Sam’s major issues. “What does your campaign manager say?”
“Helped me narrow it down this far,” Sam says. He flops over one packet, then another. “I think I’ve met a couple of these people, but my brain’s fried.”
“Sleep,” Dean tells him, and for once, Sam lets himself be rolled without any issues, faceplanting into the absurdly long couch in the adjacent living room. Dean reads against the backdrop of Sam snoring.
“What do you think?” Eileen asks an unknown time later, sending Dean jumping upright in his chair. “Do you have a favorite?”
Rubbing at his eye with the heel of his hand, Dean nods. “Might be biased,” he says once he lowers his hand.
She lowers her eyebrows into a question, lips pursed.
“This guy,” Dean says, sliding her the packet. He waits until she’s done scanning it before adding, “He’s smart as hell.”
“I like Novak, too,” Eileen says.
Behind Dean, through the wide doorway, Sam lets out a groan of stretching.
“Sam, we agree!” Eileen calls, just slightly too loud.
“Baby asleep?” Sam signs instead of covering his yawn.
“Baby asleep,” Eileen confirms. Aloud, she repeats, “We both like Novak.”
Sam glances at Dean before pausing.
Then he side-eyes Dean.
“What’s the story there?” Sam asks.
“What?” Dean says, absolutely innocent.
“What’s the deal with Novak?”
“It’s nothing,” Dean says. “Christmas party couple years back. Got to talking, that’s all.”
“Just talking?”
“Just talking,” Dean promises.
“And?”
“He’s smart,” Dean says. “Articulate, quick in person, maybe a little dry, but funny about it. If he doesn’t care, he fakes it well.”
“And?” Sam prompts a second time.
Dean sighs. “And he’s a really fucking hot sub, okay?”
“If I bring him on, I can’t have you chasing him off,” Sam says, so blunt that Eileen actually swats at his shoulder. The picture of a modern Dom, Sam grimaces. He winces an apology at Eileen, though not at Dean. “Can you keep it professional? At least until I don’t need a speechwriter?”
“Dude, I’ve been single going on two decades,” Dean says, only now offended.
Sam’s frown deepens. “Okay?”
“I can keep it professional,” Dean insists.
“...Wait,” Sam says. “Maybe it’s the tired and the baby talking, but...” He squints at Dean through the dual exhaustions of campaigning and parenting. “Have you been keeping single for my career?”
Eileen shoots Sam a look, a clear Don’t be silly even with her mouth and hands still.
“Uh, yeah?” Dean says.
The look Eileen shoots Dean is basically the same, except a hundredfold.
“Are you serious?” Sam asks, blanching. “I know it’s more complicated for you, but-”
“We don’t need complicated,” Dean interrupts.
“You’re complicated,” Sam says, “and I need you. So yeah, I do need complicated.”
“I’m complicated,” Eileen adds, over-enunciating. “We all fit.”
Dean rubs at his eyes again. Dry and itchy from lack of sleep.
“I know the shit Dad told you, but that’s the world we’re changing,” Sam says. “If I’d thought you were...” Sam shakes his head. “Stop holding back on my account.”
“Once we get you to D.C.,” Dean insists. “This is my job too, all right?”
The baby monitor at the table crackles with abrupt cries. Pathetic in his tiredness, Sam puts his hand over the LED that lights up anytime little Robbie makes a noise, but Eileen’s already noticed both of them looking at it.
“No, no, I got it,” Sam says. He points at Dean, standing. “Robbie’s one hell of a ‘complication’ too, but that didn’t stop us from having him.”
“Okay, okay, I get it.”
Once they’re alone, Dean ignoring and Eileen mercifully unaware of Sam’s attempted lullabies, Eileen doesn’t press him further. She just goes to the linen cupboard, pulls out the usual mix of sheets, and shoves them into Dean’s arm. “I should charge you rent,” she jokes before leaning up to kiss him on the cheek. “Good night, Dean.”
“Night, Eileen.”
Sam hires Castiel Novak as his new speechwriter, and Dean may or may not spend a week quietly reliving a dolled up evening rife with sexual tension. It takes that week for Castiel to relocate down from Illinois, and Dean wasn’t part of the hiring process, outside of that one evening at Sam’s.
No matter how Dean tries to put it aside, that awkward conversation has left its mark on Sam. Nearly every time Castiel comes up, Sam glances in Dean’s direction. It’s even worse when it’s down to just Sam’s main team, but maybe that’s just Dean reading too much into too little.
The night before Castiel’s set to join them, Sam calls Dean with frankly awful timing. Luckily, Dean hadn’t started preemptively getting the tension out, but it’s a close thing. “Yeah?” he answers, not even bothering to get out of bed.
“Wanted to double-check something,” Sam says.
“Okay?”
“Did you say Castiel was a Dom or a sub?”
Dean feels his eyebrows lift. “Sub.”
“And you’re sure.”
Something coils low in Dean’s stomach. “...What do you mean?”
“Just wanted to check,” Sam says.
“And I wanna know what you mean.”
“He’s been presenting very professionally, I guess,” Sam says like a fucking politician.
“All the subs we work with present professionally. You can still tell they’re subs.”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Okay, gotta go, thanks.”
And the fucker hangs up.
Dean takes a quick break, gets his head back into the game, and gets at least some of the tension out of his body. There’s always gonna be porn of subby brunets getting ripped out of formal wear, and thank fuck for that.
Dean walks into the meeting room, sees Castiel, and the world tilts.
The suit is still slightly too big, the collar still unbuttoned at the top. The temptation of his tie hangs loose and round.
The rest of him has changed.
When Castiel rises from the table to greet him, Castiel stands with shoulders squared, with spine straight. He holds his head tall in a way that has nothing to do with baring the throat, and he reaches for Dean’s hand first, gripping tightly, refusing to look away.
Recognition flares behind those startlingly blue eyes as their hands touch, but the result is far from the warm or even sultry smile Dean had hoped (daydreamed) for.
Subtly, Castiel tenses. Around the eyes. Across the palm.
Castiel looks at Dean the way Dean’s looked at people he’d hoped to trust, partners he’d thought he could keep.
Please don’t tell, Castiel at once begs and commands.
“Pleasure to see you again,” Dean says smoothly, a smile plastered across his face.
“Yes,” Castiel says, his voice just as deep as Dean remembered. The nerves ruin it, though.
“Good to have you,” Dean continues, his mouth running away with him. His brain has certainly already fled the room. “If Sammy gives you any trouble, just lemme know.”
And then he winks.
Like an idiot.
Sam clears his throat. “Just ‘Sam’, thanks,” he says, giving Dean a look of caution.
Because Dean just hit on a co-worker.
Who looks like a Dom.
Where the rest of their team can see.
Dean takes the rope Sam just threw him and yanks on it. “C’mon, Sammy...”
They have a classic sibling spat of banter, the kind they usually pull out on long night to keep the team amused and focused, to diffuse tension.
Dean can hope no one else noticed, but Castiel clearly has.
“Dean.”
Dean looks over his shoulder at the low rumble of a voice, more than a little startled to find Castiel so close. In front of him, the elevator doors ding open.
They both step inside.
The doors close.
Castiel stands facing those closed doors, his hands folded in front, his head bowed. His reflection in the doors is everything Dean remembers. More.
“Typically,” Castiel says, “I speak extensively with a candidate and their family to better capture their voice and their values. I know you’ve been involved with Sam’s campaigns since the beginning, but if you would prefer, I don’t have to involve you in this process.”
Dean tears his eyes away from the reflection to stare at Castiel directly. For a long moment, that’s all it is: Dean staring at a man who won’t look back, the dropping feeling inside him far more than a side effect of the elevator.
“If you wanna know Sam, you gotta know me,” he ends up saying.
Castiel nods.
“Cas,” Dean says.
Maybe it’s a mistake to use his Dom voice, but when Castiel looks at him, it can only feel right.
That is, until Castiel says, “I don’t know what you told Sam, but he was taken aback when he met me.”
“I guess I told him about a night I misremember,” Dean says. “Been awhile, after all.”
Eyes never leaving Dean’s face, Castiel nods slowly, sternly.
Suspiciously.
The elevator doors open.
They both exit, but Castiel walks away faster.
When it’s Dean’s turn for a private chat with Castiel, the private part makes it difficult. Every public location is out, and the wrong private could easily feel far too private.
They end up meeting in Sam’s house, Dean chatting away as he helps Robbie wobble back and forth, each of his thumbs gripped by an entire tiny hand. The position folds Dean down, makes him smaller, less imposing. Sam’s given Dean his blessing to try talking it out with Castiel, although how much of that is from the free babysitting for him and Eileen to have a date night, Dean’s not sure.
“Sam’s always cared about right and wrong, even when that meant tearing down what was conventional,” Dean says after they get done with the more basic interview questions. None of it’s going outside this room, but Dean still wants to softball his way in to the subject they’ve been dancing around.
“I’ve noticed that in his voting record,” Castiel says. “Sam’s walked me through some of the more controversial decisions. We should be able to express the sentiment behind at least a few of them, but it will be difficult to keep the opposition from twisting that.”
“Our dad was way more conservative,” Dean says. “Getting right and wrong from tradition, instead of thinking through morals.”
Castiel nods. “Sam mentioned as much” is his vast understatement of a reply.
Dean snorts and pulls Robbie up onto his lap. He hands the kid his stuffed rabbit. “So, uh.” He helps Robbie shift around to lean against his other shoulder. “When we were looking over your speeches, I gotta say, you’re really good at your dynamic work.”
Castiel sits very still and dignified for a man who is sharing a love seat with a chewed on teddy bear. His sweater fits him better than the suit, but the unzipped neckline keeps distracting Dean almost as much as the rest of Castiel’s torso combined.
“I mean,” Dean continues, “there’s a lot of conservatives attacking Sam for ‘indulging the voters like they were bratty subs’ or all that shit. Talking about how Sam needs a firmer hand and that he’s not tough enough. That he rolls over and shit.”
“That kind of language is everywhere in society,” Castiel answers coolly. “Anyone paying attention picks up on it.”
“Yeah, but not everyone uses it well,” Dean counters. “Commanding, controlling. Stringent, draconian. Is Sam going to train the country into shape or is he gonna indulge it? But you’re all listen and guide and cultivate. You know your shit.”
Slowly, moving nothing more than his eyes, Castiel lowers a fraction of his guard. “...Thank you.”
“Well, um. You’re welcome.”
“Sam said you recommended me,” Castiel says, as if this is something he’d meant to say.
“Eileen liked your stuff too.”
“Sam also implied you told him I was a submissive,” Castiel continues over Dean.
“Implied?” Dean asks, playing dumb.
“My appearance and manner surprised him.” Castiel levels a look at him. “What did you tell Sam?”
“Sam’s not the kind of guy who cares,” Dean says. “Trust me on that.”
“What did you tell him?” Castiel repeats, that guard going fully back up. Higher.
“I said you were a sub,” Dean admits, and goes for the plunge: “But I guess now he figures you’re like me instead.”
“He...”
Castiel doesn’t blink. He squints.
He studies Dean through narrowed eyes.
Tucking his nephew against his side, Dean lets out a tense breath and lowers his head.
Adjusts his body.
Lets his mind follow.
Only then, face angled low, does he look back up at Castiel.
“...You’re a Switch,” Castiel realizes.
“Yessir,” Dean murmurs, so much older than he was the last time he said it. More handsome, less pretty. But the feeling of it, that tiny rush of will you catch me, that still fits.
“I...”
They look at each other.
Robbie shakes his stuffed bunny against Dean’s chest. When Dean looks down, Robbie drops it to swoop his hand near his mouth in a clear sign.
“Food?” Dean checks, mirroring.
“Fuh!” Robbie agrees, repeating the motion twice.
“Food,” Dean tells Castiel, almost a little apologetic about it.
They stand together, Dean and Castiel, and Castiel follows Dean into the kitchen. Castiel sits beside Robbie’s high chair. Both Robbie and Castiel watch Dean intently, although only Robbie gets distracted halfway through Dean’s inspection of the fridge to frantically sign and shout for “Bun-bun!”
Castiel retrieves Bun-Bun from the living room, but Dean has to intercept before Castiel hands the stuffed animal over.
“Yeah, no, that’s how he ends up in the washing machine,” Dean says. “Bun-Bun holds the spoon.” Dean demonstrates, and this is how they get applesauce into Robbie instead of onto him.
They sit there watching a baby eat. Dean active, letting Castiel look, feeling his own heart pounding.
“You’re closeted,” Castiel says at last. “Because of Sam?”
“He doesn’t want me to be, but he hasn’t outed me either,” Dean replies. “Probably wouldn’t matter in some other states, but Kansas still runs pretty conservative on that kind of thing.”
Castiel says nothing to that, merely bounces Bun-Bun around with an incredibly serious expression as Dean wipes Robbie’s face off.
“We good?” Dean asks.
“You didn’t have to tell me this,” Castiel says. “I don’t need your secrets to write Sam’s speeches.”
“No, but maybe you do to feel comfortable around me,” Dean says. “Me and Sam, we’re a package deal, and Sam wants to keep you around.”
Only a little wary, Castiel nods. “Is that all?”
Dean can only withstand Castiel’s gaze for so long. He drops his eyes, ducks his head. “Maybe not all, but I don’t shit where Sam eats.”
“Crude.”
“I’m trying to anti-seduce you, okay?” Dean points out.
Castiel blinks. “Are you?”
“Theoretically.”
Dean cleans up both highchair and bowl, and Castiel keeps Robbie from losing his mind at being stuck in the chair. They free the kid before reconvening in the living room.
“Anything else you wanted to talk about?” Dean checks.
Castiel shakes his head. “What about you?”
“Maybe this is a little grade school, but, uh. Can we be friends?”
Again, Castiel pauses, so clearly taken by surprise. He nods with the utmost of seriousness. “Of course.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
Castiel tries to shake on it, but what the hell. A formal friendship is better than none.
The campaign stretches on. Dean can barely remember the last race where Sam wasn’t an incumbent, and the change is twisting Dean’s brain around. The two opposing forces: the fear of change, versus discontentment with the present. For so long, they’ve had to argue that Sam is the correct, trustworthy status quo. Now, the shoe is back on the other foot.
He is change, and change is needed.
The first time Dean hears Sam deliver a campaign speech, he immediately wonders what the fuck they’re paying Cas for. Because what the hell.
Those words are all Sam’s.
All of them.
It’s not until Dean glances over and sees Cas mouthing the words along with Sam that Dean realizes:
That’s the point.
This is Sam. Pulled out, analyzed, organized, and set back together. Still Sam, but even more cohesive. Concentrated where needed, diluted where otherwise overpowering.
The words are all Sam’s.
The meanings are all Sam’s.
But the ways the words turn and dance and reach those meanings...
That’s gotta be Cas.
Long nights and short weekends blend together. Robbie gets bigger. Cas gets friendlier. Sam rises higher in the polls. Eileen goes from a perceived weakness to everyone’s darling favorite, standing up on stage beside Sam and signing out his speeches, perfectly aping his expressions and mannerisms.
Those speeches go viral, spreading Sam further across the internet than simply Kansas. Some corners think it’s too disrespectful, a submissive mocking her Dominant by that mimicry. Others think it amazing, a public act of how well synced the couple are.
Mostly, Dean just thinks it’s sickeningly adorable, and when he mentions it to Cas, the answer is an emphatic nod.
Election day arrives. They go together, all of them, even Robbie and Bun-Bun carried into the line. Everyone votes, except for Robbie and Bun-Bun, and then, in a fair world, they’d go home.
They don’t go home.
Instead, they go to HQ. They watch the news. The exit polls. The clock slowly ticking forward. They pay attention to other races, and Sam and Cas keep pulling one another aside, squirreling each other away to go over Sam’s victory and concession speeches. Whenever they return, Cas hands Sam off to Dean, and when Sam can no longer be placated by Dean’s methods, Dean passes him back to Cas. They make a good team.
Time crawls. Dean fidgets. Robbie cries. Everyone needs a nap. Robbie’s old namesake calls to tell Sam he’s watching the news, and then Sam nearly cries too.
They don’t so much eat dinner as they prepare a party that might suck before it’s even thrown.
Please, Dean keeps silently begging. Please.
The numbers come in.
Eileen yells so loud, she nearly breaks Dean’s ears, and then she hugs her husband, grabbing him tight and hard.
Samuel Winchester, junior United States Senator from Kansas.
They celebrate long into the night.
At Dean’s time of life, this means until three in the morning, and then he has to go and collapse. Cas is already ahead of him, sunk into one of the couches away from the merrymaking, but he shifts over when he cracks open an eye to see Dean.
Dean kicks off his shoes, loosens his tie, and climbs in, realizing only now that he has no idea where his jacket is. They like head-toe, and Cas rolls over to hug Dean’s shins. Dean sticks a couch cushion over Cas’ feet, the better to not be kicked in the head.
They sleep.
December is a strange mix of packing and saying goodbye. Some parts of the crew are eager for D.C. Some wouldn’t leave Kansas even if Sam had won the presidency.
Dean’s equal parts disappointed and relieved to find that Cas is coming too.
It must show on his face.
“...You’re not happy,” Cas says, frowning back at him across what is soon to be Dean’s former desk.
“No, no, I am, I totally am,” Dean says.
Eyes narrowed, Cas tilts his head.
“It’s stupid,” Dean says. Even though he knows they’re the only two left, he glances around the office anyway. Still just him and Cas, Dean packing, Cas helping.
“Then tell me, and I’ll argue you out of it,” Cas replies, practical as always.
“It’s really stupid,” Dean warns, inching toward embarrassed.
Cas crosses his arms.
“I kinda maybe wanna date you,” Dean admits. “But not if you’re working for Sam.”
“I already asked him,” Cas says. “It’s fine.”
Dean stares.
Cas tapes a box shut.
Dean keeps staring.
Cas labels the box. Which is to say, he fights the label maker.
“Gimme that,” Dean says, and takes it. He labels the box. “What, uh, what did Sam say?”
“That he understood, and he trusts us.”
“He understood what, exactly?” Dean tries not to wince at the possibilities.
Cas holds another box shut and nods toward the mailing tape. Dean applies it with only one minor moment of sticky tangling.
“I told him I’m already invested,” Cas tells the box.
“Yeah?”
Cas nods.
“Awesome,” Dean says. “‘Cause... Yeah.”
Ducking his head with a faint smile, Cas stacks the box with the rest. There’s not much left, not really, but they take their time checking. Opening drawers. Looking inside cabinets. The pair of them playing hide-and-go-seek with the tension, trying not to look directly at each other, lest one grin too hard, too fast, and pop this bubble.
“Looks like that’s everything,” Dean says at last. He hands Cas back the label maker, and Cas holds on, his fingers curling around Dean’s.
“I like you very much, Dean,” Cas says, formal to the last.
“Well, shucks,” Dean replies, but there’s only so far he can play it off.
This time, it’s Cas who checks the room, looking to the hallway door. “Before we... If we...” Cas licks his lips, looking up at Dean from very close.
Jointly, they set down the label maker, the better to hold on directly.
“You should know,” Cas says, looking fond and nervous in equal measure, “I’m not a Switch.”
Dean’s brain hiccups.
“Okay?” is what comes out of Dean’s mouth. “I mean, I thought, but...” He clears his throat as Cas visibly starts to withdraw. “You know I like all of it, man.”
“That’s the issue,” Cas says, tension clear in the strength of his hand in Dean’s. “I’m not any of it.”
Dean frowns. “I’m not following.”
“I’m not a Dom or a sub,” Cas says, “but not the way you are. I’m not anything. I don’t have a dynamic.”
“You’re asexual?” Dean says, piecing it together.
His frown very different from Dean’s, Cas shakes his head. “I hate having this conversation.”
“Sorry?”
Again, another head shake. “We need to have it.” Cas swallows. “I like sex. But there are things I don’t need. Pain play, bondage, challenges, games, props, it’s all... extra.”
“Uh,” says Dean, because it really isn’t. “You take that away, what’s left?”
“Sex,” Cas says, as if this could make sense.
“So you don’t like it...?”
Releasing Dean’s hand, Cas shrugs, a motion that tosses his hands up. “I can play the parts, Dean. I can fake them very well, but that’s acting, not being.”
“How about,” Dean says slowly, trying and failing to wrap his mind around what Cas is saying, “we try dating and making out and shit first, and if that goes well, we debate the nature of fucking then?”
Cas sighs, drooping and aggrieved.
“Give me time?” Dean asks. He almost risks touching Cas but stops short, hand hovering before his shoulder.
After an eternity of a pause, Cas nods and steps forward, into the touch. Farther.
Into a hug.
They hold tight.
“I like you very much, even if you’re an idiot sometimes,” Cas tells him.
“I like you too, you rude fuck.”
They hold tighter.
A week later, after a long evening boxing up Cas’ apartment, they sag on the couch together, an open pizza box beside their feet on the coffee table.
“I could play a sub in D.C.,” Cas says, apropos of nothing.
“Thor’s a Marvel movie,” Dean corrects on autopilot, gesturing to the TV with his beer.
Cas looks at him like Dean possesses the intelligence of a concussed brick.
“Oh,” Dean says. “Oh. Right. That.”
He drinks.
He swallows. “Only if you wanted to.”
“You play a Dom very well,” Cas tells him. “When I first met you, I thought that was all you were.”
“Yeah?” Dean asks, some tiny, bruised part of him forever desperate to hear that he passes.
Cas nods. “I played a sub for a reason, Dean.”
“Yeah?” Dean asks again, the word very different.
“Yeah,” Cas says, and he closes his eyes even before Dean kisses him. Their beers make it back onto the coffee table before their bodies shift, Cas melting beneath Dean down against the couch.
Cas kisses back with firm confidence, but he twists his arms free when Dean wraps his hands around Cas’ wrists. It’s a hell of a mixed signal, the way Cas at once stops him and pulls him closer, wrapping his arms around Dean’s neck instead of allowing himself to be held.
Getting the message, Dean rolls them over, a disjointed process of being careful not to knee each other in the crotch. But there, on top, Cas simply buries his fingers in Dean’s hair, absolutely neglecting to pin Dean down. Cas doesn’t even pull or tug.
“Everything okay?” Dean asks.
Cas hums in the affirmative, shifting his weight to show Dean just how okay it is.
They keep kissing, and it’s very strange.
Not bad.
Just... strange.
Gradually, their motions slow. Though Cas remains reassuringly hard against Dean, the rest of Cas’ signals have Dean so crossed, he doesn’t know whether to ask for Cas’ safeword or simply do it for him and volunteer his own.
“This isn’t doing it for you,” Cas says with a sigh, his breath a warm puff against Dean’s jaw.
“I’m not sure what we’re doing,” Dean says.
Cas sighs again. “We can try it normal.”
“Jeez, don’t sound too eager.”
Cas sits up across him and glares.
Dean would have a smart reply if that position didn’t put Cas’ weight squarely on his dick.
“Don’t sound too eager,” Cas deadpans back at him, nevertheless circling his hips.
Dean holds on. “Ah, fuck. C’mon, Cas, talk snarky to me.”
Cas rolls his eyes, his signature full-bodied motion, and Dean can’t help but thrust up.
Catching himself with one arm along the sofa back, Cas gasps.
Dean smirks.
Cas grinds down and Dean grins up. Cas climbs off to pull Dean after him, and in the bedroom, it’s almost like fucking a Dom as a Dom, like fucking a sub as a sub. They wrestle each other around the bed when Dean discovers Cas’ ticklish spot. They plump each other up while kissing. Cas lets him top from the bottom, lets him bottom from the top, and that’s just the warm-up blowjobs.
For the first time in a long time, in too long a time, Dean gives head without worrying how he’s doing it, only that he’s doing it well. Cas doesn’t fuck his face, but neither does Dean have to make his command clear. With that stress out of the way, it’s just him, just Cas, the taste and scent and slick wet sounds, and Dean loves it all, latex aside.
Dean doesn’t last much longer than that. Once Cas takes his turn going down, Dean’s a goner, and not just from the sensation.
When Cas kneels, it’s like nothing else. Not submitting. Not daring Dean to defy him, in control despite the position.
Cas is something else entirely, something beyond, rooted in a different form of affection. It almost feels less like trust than normal sex does, right up until Cas looks up.
And then.
And then.
There’s nothing less about this at all.
After, Cas slumps against his side, idly thumbing Dean’s nipple, the perkiness evidently fascinating.
“Was that all right?” Cas asks in a voice so quiet, Dean nearly doesn’t hear.
“You remember that speech you wrote Sam for Kansas City?” Dean asks right back.
“Mm?”
“‘Change isn’t to destroy what we have, but to improve upon it,’” Dean quotes.
Cas kisses his shoulder.
In D.C., Eileen packs Sam his lunch for his first day at Senate. Dean still walks his little brother to the door, and then he heads back to their new offices. He attracts a few looks, not many but a few, because it’s a subtle thing he and Cas have decided on. No collars, not for them, no.
Tradition dictates which side Dean is meant to wear a bracelet on, depending on which side of the equation Dean is meant to confine himself to. Right or left, just the one, forever. Depending on who he felt like being, Dean even used to switch his watch from side to side in preparation, until he finally settled on pretending to be a Dom.
He has a phone instead of a watch now, and tradition can suck it. He opens their office door with a matching pair of bracelets, one on each wrist, and only a careful eye would be able to tell that the silver clasps on each match Cas’ tie clip. Maybe someone will finally notice when they go out for dinner tonight.
For now, Dean sits down at his new, gleaming desk and spares only a moment to admire the view.
He has work to do.