Chapter Text
Loveland, Ohio
Branches snapped to his left when something moved through the forest with steps much heavier than those of a deer.
Between the shadows, Dean caught a glimpse of moonlight reflected on obsidian skin, too smooth and slick to be human. He tightened his grip on the cold metal of the angel blade in his hand as he quietly followed the creature.
The silence reminded him uncomfortably of what had happened earlier that day, when they’d been out here the first time to hunt down this thing that had killed three hikers so far. The frozen moment of certainty that something had happened to his brother still made him shudder.
Sammy’s safe, Dean had to remind himself. Probably laying in his motel bed doing more research instead of relaxing, the nerd.
That last hunt could have ended in something so much worse than just a sprained ankle and a mild concussion. Dean tried hard to banish the mental images of everything that could have happened to his baby brother the moment Sam had slipped and hit his head, then fallen unconscious in the middle of a hunt.
He couldn’t even blame Sam, the light rain around here was a real bitch, spraying every surface with a coat of wetness. Worst thing was, it never seemed to stop falling.
Annoyed at the dampness clinging to his own skin, Dean tried to wipe the rain out of his face with his sleeve, but it was hopeless.
He waited for the telltale sound of another set of steps to chase the monster back his way, but nothing other than dead silence surrounded him.
“Cas?” he finally dared to ask into the stillness of the forest, monster be damned.
There was no sign of the angel.
“Goddammit,” Dean muttered, wondering why nobody ever seemed to be able to stick to the damn plan.
A nagging sense of foreboding told him that something bad was about to happen for the second time that day.
Dean tried to ignore it, focusing on the fact that Cas was an angel—he couldn’t just get knocked out by falling over a slippery root.
But he couldn’t heal Sam, the thought sprang into his mind. He's been low on grace ever since he healed that Ishim douchebag.
“Cas!” Dean tried again, fully aware that his intuition was usually right when it came to such things.
More branches snapped ahead of him, deeper into the forest where the trees grew closer together, blocking both the moonlight and the rain. Steps thumped heavily, and that sure as Hell wasn’t Cas.
Now that Dean thought about it, focusing fully on his hearing because the darkness ahead was too thick to see anyway, it didn’t sound like steps at all. Too forceful, too spaced out. More like—
It was only thanks to his hunting instincts, fine-tuned over decades, that he managed to pull his arm over his head just in time to deflect an attack coming from the unexpected direction of above, followed by something wet and… slimy on his wrist.
A stinging pain let him know that he was probably bleeding, but a scratch was the least of his problems right now. He took a swing with the angel blade into the shadows above, but the only thing he hit was a twig of withered leaves, rustling fiercely in reaction. Then he heard another thump, and now he was pretty sure that those sounds were leaps from tree to tree.
What the fuck are you? Dean thought at this attacker he couldn’t spot or reach. Still slightly crouched in a defensive position, he stumbled backwards in the direction of the treeless clearing he’d come from. The rain on his face was a welcome change this time because it meant no more treacherous branches were looming over him.
Not even Sam had been able to work out a theory on what they were dealing with here. Dean had made the call that angel blades were their best bet without knowing more about this thing. It had to be something new, something that couldn’t be found in dusty lore books. There hadn’t been a single living witness, nobody who could have given them any information, just people dying all kinds of crazy deaths. Most of all, though, he and Sam had hoped that working a case as a team could help to break Cas out of his funk.
Dean narrowed his eyes, staring intently at the treeline near the edge of the clearing, the rain pattering down on the leaves all around him. Only now did he realize that the pain in his arm was changing into pinpricks of numbness slowly spreading all over his skin. This was probably not good.
Cas, man, where are you? I could really use some backup here, he prayed, feeling kind of stupid for having called out loud earlier instead of praying right away. Please be okay, his thoughts added against his will, and that right there was why praying wasn’t his first choice of communication.
His vision swam, so he wiped his sleeve over his face again, with as little success as before. Worry ran spirals of nausea through his stomach, and he was starting to hate this stupid forest where everything always seemed to go wrong. He hated that Sam had to sit this one out, hated that he had no way of finding out if Cas was all right.
When black creeped into the edges of his vision, he realized that he also hated not having a tree to lean against for support. Rain dripped heavily from his eyelashes as he blinked, and suddenly there was a tree right next to him. One that hadn’t been there before. But it didn’t matter, he was just glad to feel something solid that could help him stay upright, so he placed one of his palms against the tree trunk and leaned his forehead against the tan bark.
It was surprisingly soft. Trees were awesome, actually. They helped you stand. They could shield you from the rain. And they smelled good. Why had he tried to stay away from them again? He couldn’t remember.
His arm was tingling and there was a useless weight in his hand that his fingers just couldn’t hold any longer with the numbness spreading further. So he opened them, released the metallic weight to the wet grass with a soft thunk.
The sound shook loose a memory, something too important to let go of. He was… there was something he had to do, he was sure of that. And it was related to the thumping sound that was now echoed by a louder one nearby.
If only he could manage to carry a single thought all the way through to the end, then he could figure out why that sound set every muscle in his body into high-alert mode. But it was as if his head was stuck in a ball of cotton wool, muffling thoughts and feelings and noises. Not even the patter of falling rain pierced through the fog around his mind any longer, the only thing that did were those thumps.
The next thump returned his remembrance that trees were, in fact, not awesome. They meant danger. He was… he needed his weapon. Why the fuck had he dropped his weapon? Bending down hastily, he picked the angel blade back up with his good arm. He’d be forced to fight with his left, but he’d manage. He had to.
The cool metal against his palm soothed his nerves, let him breathe more calmly again. His head still didn’t seem to work quite right, but did that really matter as long as he had his weapon to face whatever shit he’d gotten himself into this time?
He was ready when a creature dropped down from the tree, red eyes piercing through the darkness no more than a single step in front of him. A cloud passed by above, allowing the moonlight to fall down into the clearing so that Dean could make out more details.
The creature was shorter than him and no clothing concealed its skin, dark as night and glistening with slime. Blue spots ran down its limbs and face, giving it an even more otherworldly appearance. It was crouching weirdly, as if its legs couldn’t hold it straight. And then it leaped.
The movement carried it high up into the air, only to crash directly into him with enough momentum that Dean was pushed to the ground, a stifled grunt escaping his throat. He rolled sidewards, just barely evading something that shot out of the creature’s face at incredible speed, hitting the grass instead of him with a wet smack.
Trying to tune out the chorus of incredulous whathefucks in his head, Dean jumped back to his feet, keeping a tight grip on the angel blade this time. He still didn’t understand what had possessed him to drop it earlier, but he’d be damned if he let that happen again.
Slicing through the air in an arc, he hoped against hope that an angel blade could even kill this thing. A creepy-as-fuck noise, somewhere between a seriously pissed-off cat and a deflating balloon, told him he must have scored a hit. His enemy was fast, leaping away in a direction his eyes couldn’t even track. Dean managed to avoid being in the landing zone the next time, but something wet hit the back of his neck, pricking his skin.
As if this fight on its own didn’t already suck enough, the nausea in his stomach rose to new peaks. For a moment, he was convinced he had to throw up in the middle of combat, staggering like a drunk. Luckily, his buddy the tree was still there to support him, though he could have sworn it should have been on his other side. He could barely feel the bark under the fingers of his free hand that was almost entirely numb by now.
Frantically scanning the darkness for movement, he wondered if he had really exerted himself enough to be this short of breath. He was pretty sure the creature was doing something to him, and whatever it was only seemed to get worse with time. His reflexes were suffering as much as his ability to think clearly. He figured his only chance of getting out of this alive was to gank this thing now.
So he waited, all of his muscles tensing up in preparation for a movement fast enough to even scratch such an agile enemy. When the moonlight threw the shadow of something falling down from above onto the tree, Dean reacted quickly. He put everything he had into a rapid stab to the spot between himself and the tree where he was anticipating the beast to land.
It never did.
Instead, his blade buried itself deeply into the tree trunk with a squish that sounded wrongwrongwrong. His stomach revolted and he tumbled backwards. He had no frigging clue why a cold dread froze him in place, until a blinding light erupted from the tree, burning white-hot in his eyes.
Angel, Dean’s mind provided sluggishly as he squinted against the brightness.
Then his full awareness returned with a jolt hard enough to shake the core of his being.
“CAS!” he screamed, finally seeing the tan-colored tree for what it really was now that the explosion of grace had somehow lifted the fog from his brain.
The angel sank to his knees with the blade still stuck in his chest, pure white glowing in place of his eyes and mouth.
Loss slowly carved its way through Dean’s body like an icy rivulet and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t accept that he had really killed Cas.
So he just reacted. No thought, no plan—the only thing that mattered was keeping the grace in as he let himself fall into that dying body in front of him, knocking them both fully to the ground.
His hands trembling in desperation and his own eyes barely functional in the blinding brightness, Dean reached for the blade with his good hand. The movement of pulling it out of Cas’s chest was the stuff of nightmares creeping over into reality. He let the offending metal drop to the ground.
Then he pressed his palms against the glowing eyeholes, effectively shutting off the stream of light. There was heat under his fingers, but not the kind that burned skin. And even if it did, he couldn’t have cared less at this moment because he saw the ember outline of wings appear beneath Cas’s body, turning blades of grass to ash as a herald of death.
Cas, don’t leave, dontleavedontleavemeNO, Dean thought and prayed and begged indiscriminately.
He’d give anything. Anything.
For lack of more hands to stop the flow of grace, he covered Cas’s mouth with his own, another string of thoughts shouting through his head.
Stay, you have to stay. Ishim got it all wrong, you have a home. You’re home, Cas. Use my soul, do it, heal yourself, dontmakemeloseyouPLEASE! CASTIEL!
Something latched inside of him and the icy despair in Dean’s veins heated up rapidly, turned into searing lava that coalesced in his chest. It was like getting torn apart from the inside and he could no longer hold back a dull scream straight into Cas’s mouth. His voice unleashed all of his pain and fear and desperation, his affection and longing and love until the fire passed from his lips to Castiel’s.
He could actually feel it happen, felt the raw power that got drained from his body to restore the angel’s connection to his vessel. This, more than anything else ever had, reminded him of how different Cas truly was. He was a wavelength, not just some dude in a trenchcoat. An actual angel who, for some insane reason, prefered their shitty company to that of his kind.
An angel who had once more chosen to stay with him, Dean knew when the heat of grace stopped pulsing under his own palms and lips as the white glow ceased. He didn’t dare to move even when the tingling sensation of eyelashes against his palms told him the angel was blinking.
Cas gasped into his mouth and they shared a breath because Dean refused to let go, even as he felt the angel tense under him. Not before he was absolutely sure that Cas’s grace wasn’t going to bleed out any longer. A muffled sound that was probably his name was spoken into their shared space.
Cas? Dean prayed hesitantly, still unwilling to fully trust their narrow escape. Are you… good? Promise you’re not gonna die on me if I move?
Nothing happened for an excruciating moment until Cas nodded under him. Dean slid his hands to the sides, revealing a wide-eyed blue look of shock. Then he moved his palms into the wet grass to support his own weight and push himself up a little to give Cas room to breathe. When his lips detached from Castiel’s, he realized in stunned disbelief how similar to a kiss this had been. And once that idea had sparked in his mind, it was impossible to extinguish, no matter how inappropriate it was.
“Dean,” Cas broke the silence between them, his voice full of surprise as if he’d been convinced never to see him again.
Even though Dean’s earlier prayers had made more words stream out of him than he would have liked, suddenly he had no idea what to say. The taste of Cas still on his lips, he glanced at the wing shadows on the ground, nothing but blackened outlines now that no longer sparked embers by themselves. Cas’ gaze followed his to the wing prints, and Dean heard another soft gasp.
Thinking about what a close call this had been returned an echo of Dean’s earlier despair, of his own conviction that Cas had left him forever—just like that, from one second to the horrifying next. But when he directed his look back to the angel’s face, very much here with him and alive, his treacherous brain started to wonder what a real kiss would have felt like.
“I should be dead,” Cas stated matter-of-factly, though Dean knew him well enough to recognize the fear in his eyes. “Dean, how did you…”
“Yeah, uh…” Dean cleared his throat and plastered on a smile as if his insides hadn’t just shattered to dust a mere minute ago. “I think we discovered angel CPR.”
Cas frowned at that. Dean should push himself further up instead of hovering over the angel in the most awkward of positions, basically straddling him in the middle of the forest clearing. Instead, he found himself entirely unable to avert his eyes from Cas’s lips, licking over his own. The ghost of their earlier point of contact tingled on his skin. He wanted to… damn.
“You saved me,” the angel said, his eyes boring into Dean’s.
“I stabbed you,” Dean corrected, swallowing hard as Cas’s gaze darkened in the memory, a flash of hurt inside. “Fuck, Cas, I’m so sorry. Would it help if I told you that I thought you were a tree?”
“I really don’t see how that would help at all,” Cas said. As close as they were, Dean could see every miniscule change on the angel’s face and was able to make out the exact moment understanding dawned on him. “Venom. I was wondering why the creature was constantly spitting, but the saliva must have hallucinogenic proper—”
“He slimed me,” Dean interrupted with the first thing that jumped into his mind, grinning wildly in the high of his relief after those terrible moments of sheer panic over his best friend’s life.
“I… understood that reference,” Cas replied with a deadly serious face. When the corner of the angel’s mouth ticked upwards after a second of delay, Dean was completely helpless against that warm feeling spreading through his chest, pride and fondness and… something else fluttering weirdly inside of him.
Even though the rain was soaking them both, the angel made no attempt whatsoever to push Dean’s heavy ass off of him. He merely turned his face to both sides searchingly, then asked, “Dean, did you kill it?”
“Nah, but I cut it. Must have hurt like a bitch because it made that weird-ass noise and fled.”
Cas’s eyes dimmed and his face fell back into that look of defeat that Dean had seen him wear far too often lately.
“Dean, I’m sorry I wasn’t of more use on this hunt.”
He was a warrior, Ishim’s voice echoed through Dean’s head. Now look how far he's fallen. No wings, no home.
Dean’s flare of defensiveness was just as strong now as it had been two days ago, even if the only person he had to defend the angel against today was Cas himself.
“Cas…,” Dean started, then trailed off because he had no idea how to fix a fallen angel’s broken parts.
You know what I like about him? Cas’s voice had bitten back at Dean’s own passive-aggressive comment in the car. It’s that he's sarcastic, but he's thoughtful and appreciative, too.
Cas’s eyes were resting on his face now, looking for all the world like every word coming out of Dean’s stupid mouth mattered.
“Just…,” Dean tried again. “You know that I appreciate you, right?”
That goddamn flutter made another big entrance when the light returned to Cas’s eyes and his lips twitched in a hesitant smile. Dean tracked the movement and felt like he was slowly going insane because he couldn’t get that ghost touch of Cas’s mouth against his out of his head.
“Dean,” was all the angel said in reply, his voice stifled enough for Dean’s simple statement to have been the best thing he’d heard in his entire life.
Dean wanted to say more, wanted to really make Cas see, but words only seemed to come easy to him when he didn’t want them to. During the prayer, they’d just flowed out of him without asking for his permission.
The prayer.
Maybe that was just it.
I appreciate the Hell out of you, Dean prayed and savored the next little gasp of astonishment he managed to lure out of Cas beneath him.
He wondered what noise the angel would make if Dean pressed his lips back to Cas’s. And God, how Dean wanted.
Testing the waters by lowering his head a bit, Dean stared directly into Cas’s eyes, unable to ask for what he craved. Rain dripped from the tip of his nose directly into Cas’s face.
Cas stared back. Of course he did.
This was insane. Cas could never want this. Maybe not in general, but surely not with a fuck-up like him. Not with someone who bitched at him over the dumbest things on a constant basis, someone who ruined everything he touched. He’d ruin their friendship, too. He’d push Cas away somehow and make him leave after only just getting him back from what had felt like certain death for several long, painful moments.
Losing his nerve, Dean decided this was a terrible idea and finally tried to push himself up and away. They could just get out of the rain, go back to their lives and never mention this again. Clueless as the angel often was, he probably hadn’t picked up on what Dean had been tempted to do.
But Cas’s arms shot upwards without warning, and Dean felt hands against his back keeping him in place.
“Cas, what…,” he started in confusion until he saw the look in the angel’s eyes, calm and dark and so damn sure that it sufficed for both of them.
“Dean,” Cas said his name again, insistently.
Are you really sure about this? Dean prayed and the hands on his back dug deeper into his soaked jacket.
“I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life,” Cas said without hesitation, his voice even rougher than usual. “And I’ve lived a very long life, Dean.”
Still half convinced that this was some sort of insane misunderstanding, that they couldn’t possibly be talking about the same thing here, Dean hovered above Cas’s face. And blinked. And swallowed.
This was Castiel. His best friend. An angel. Dean couldn’t just…
One of the hands on his back slid up to his neck, and warm finger pads ran a gentle curve over his damp skin. Then he realized the prickling heat spreading all over his neck was more than just a touch. It was grace.
The tiny sting that he’d entirely forgotten about disappeared from his neck.
“Don’t—don’t waste your grace like that, man. That was nothing. You need to recharge.”
“You recharged me.”
“Oh. Right.” Dean felt stupid for that reply, but he was completely unable to think of anything else because of how damn distracting it was to have Cas directly under him, looking at him like that.
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
No longer accompanied by the sparks of grace, the fingers caressed Dean’s neck in another gentle pattern until Cas reached his hairline. Dean exhaled deeply, unable to remember the last time he’d been touched like this. The isolation in that prison had been enough to drive anyone mad, but even before that, nobody had cared like this for a long time. Maybe ever.
“Stop thinking,” Cas said, and if Dean hadn’t already wanted to kiss him, he really would have now.
So he did.
Still unable to believe they were really doing this, he lowered his head hesitantly until their lips met in a short brush wet with rain. He was kissing Castiel. The angel had gone very still beneath Dean, staring up at him with the same kind of incredulous wonderment that Dean felt.
Time seemed frozen, both of them gauging the other’s reaction with held breath. The hands lifted from Dean’s back.
He thinks I’m gonna bolt, Dean realized, and something stung in his chest at how open and vulnerable Cas looked in that moment.
So Dean did the only sane thing and kissed him again.
He’d been badly mistaken to think their earlier touch when he’d been fighting for Castiel’s life had been like a kiss. Because that, that had been nothing like this.
As soon as their mouths found each other again, Cas melted into the touch with the sigh of someone who was freed of a heavy burden. The soft slide of Cas’s lips against his lit up every nerve in Dean’s body, making him feel more alive than he had in a long time.
He still couldn’t believe that Cas seemed to want this, one of his hands running through Dean’s hair and applying soft pressure to his head in a request for more. Dean parted his lips and couldn’t suppress a sound at the first contact of their tongues that caused another one of those weird fluttery sensations in his chest.
As if there was any chance in Hell that Dean would want to miss out on this, Cas’s arm returned to his back, locking him in place. Dean dropped his restraints and let his tongue circle around Cas’s, caressed it for more of that tingly feeling he was quickly getting addicted to. Cas, this was Cas he was kissing, and it was the best decision he’d ever made in his entire life.
The angel full-out groaned into the kiss, tightening his arm around Dean’s back to pull him even closer. The possessive gesture spread warmth through Dean’s body, now resting flush against Cas’s. No longer having to support his own weight with his arms had the amazing side effect that Dean suddenly found himself with two hands free to roam.
His first instinct was to use both of them to frame Cas’s face, so he let them, still not fully caught up with the insight that he no longer had to shove aside every impulse to touch, to feel, to want. He was allowed now to run his thumbs over Cas’s sharp jawline, following that defining feature of the angel’s face that had drawn Dean in from the moment of their first meeting.
Cas canted his head, allowing Dean more access to his throat. It was doing things to Dean how the angel’s breath sped up against his face, how he opened up more to Dean’s tongue and hands like he was reveling in every little touch. Dean buried one of his hands deeply into Cas’s hair, gaining an insane amount of satisfaction from finally having the answer to the question what the softness would feel like against his palm.
Fuck, how long have I been attracted to Cas?
A wall crumbled somewhere inside of Dean, but he paid it no mind. It didn’t matter when he could instead focus on the fabric of Cas’s tie in his fist, pulling on it to get the angel’s upper body closer. Following Cas’s invitation, he broke the kiss to nose down the side of the angel’s throat, feeling the stubble against his lips and tongue as he licked a wet stripe down the offered skin.
The way Cas moaned his name in response sent a wave of heat through Dean’s body, distracting him enough that it took his brain a few seconds to process what Cas said next.
“Six weeks, four days, and two hours.”
No, so much longer, Dean thought to himself in reply to his earlier question, but then he realized Cas must have been talking about something entirely different.
Dean leaned back to frown at the angel, both of them panting, the drizzle raining down on them.
“What?”
“That’s how long you were gone.”
Oh, fuck.
Something settled heavily in Dean’s stomach, rendering him speechless at the thought that Cas had been counting the freaking hours since their disappearance while Dean had given him the silent treatment after their return to the bunker. Dean had never even stopped to consider what that time had been like for Cas. Goddamn, he was such an asshole.
“Cas…”
“I missed you, Dean,” Cas added as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on him.
Dean still didn’t even know how to react to the whirlwind of emotions that was currently tossing him around, guilt featuring heavily, but Cas didn’t seem to expect a reply. Instead, the angel embraced him with his whole body, held him close like something precious, his hands running all over Dean’s shoulders and back. He started kissing a line down from Dean’s chin to his collarbone. When Dean’s shirt got in the way, Cas made a disgruntled noise.
“Dean,” he said as if he’d been personally offended. “You’re wearing far too many layers of clothing.”
Dean couldn’t help it, he laughed, his chest barely having enough room to contain the tight ravel of fondness he had for this dork. His eyes ran down the familiar trench coat that had become synonymous with Cas over the years, making Dean feel weirdly attached to the damn thing currently clinging to the angel’s body in wet disarray.
“Buddy, hate to tell you this, but pot—kettle.”
He pulled Cas fully upright into a sitting position and felt a strange thrill as he peeled the rain-wet trench coat off the angel’s shoulders and arms. A part of him had wanted to do this for a long time, he understood that much by now. Dean got as far as loosening the tie to open three shirt buttons when Cas apparently grew too impatient to wait any longer. He grabbed for Dean’s jacket, carelessly letting the trench coat slide into the grass.
Because there was no way to get between Cas and something he had set his mind on, Dean allowed the angel to make quick work of his flannel overshirt, getting hit by another flash of surreality at the fact that Cas was currently undressing him. Goosebumps rose on his skin as soon as his arms were laid bare to the drizzle. Cas frowned, one of his hands resting against Dean’s upper arm.
“You’re cold.”
“Yeah, uh—that’s what we humans do when we’re out in the rain for too long.”
Cas looked up at the sky, apparently not even having realized it was raining until this very moment. Frigging angels. But Dean was sure he got his priorities straight here, some things were worth getting a cold for.
He should have known that Cas would have none of it, though. What he didn’t expect was for Cas’s eyes to flare blue while the angel pushed both of his hands to the sides, then upwards in an arc. Suddenly Dean couldn’t feel the drizzle on his skin any longer. He glanced up and saw the drops just stop in midair, rolling off an invisible dome formed by nothing other than Cas’s will.
Fascinated, Dean reached out to touch it. His hand didn’t meet any resistance whatsoever, though it did get wet again as soon as it hovered in the area outside the dome.
Heh. An invisible umbrella.
This was one of the coolest things he’d seen in a while. Even the temperature inside seemed much warmer already, and the ground and their clothes were drying rapidly.
“You weren’t kidding when you said I recharged you, huh?”
“Of course not. And some things are worth using some grace for,” Cas said in an echo to Dean’s earlier thoughts, the hint of a smile twitching around the corners of his mouth.
Dean wasn’t quite sure if he’d rubbed off on the angel that much or if he’d accidentally transmitted some of his thoughts in a prayer again. But he found to his own surprise that it didn’t really bother him anymore.
“Dude, you couldn’t have done this before we got all soaked?”
“I didn’t notice the rain.”
“How could you not notice the rain? It was literally pouring down on us all this time.”
“I was distracted. And you thought I was a tree.”
The treacherous movement returned to the corners of Cas’s mouth, revealing his dry humor only to someone who knew where to look. Dean looked. And grinned. And appreciated how far the angel had come ever since their first meeting. This—their banter, all of it—it felt like home.
You’re home, he prayed, completely intentional this time.
Cas’s barely-there grin turned into something much softer, crinkling the corners of his eyes. And then the angel was kissing him like some floodgate had opened, his hands roaming all over Dean’s upper body, through his hair, over his face, leaving sparks of grace in their trail that drove away any remaining cold in Dean’s body and even mended the small wound on his wrist.
Dean quickly got with the program, breaking away only to toss his undershirt off. Because there was no way either of them wanted to interrupt the wild, deep kisses any longer than they had to, Dean fumbled blindly with the buttons of Cas’s shirt, and maybe kind of accidentally ended up tearing some of them off when he couldn’t get the shirt open.
Finally he got his hands on Cas’s chest, all muscle and hard lines, and Dean loved it, loved the feeling of it under his fingers, the way the angel’s breath hitched as he ran a thumb over his nipple.
Without any warning whatsoever, Cas man-handled Dean to the ground, reversing their initial position. Fuck, that was hot, Dean thought, sensing the fabric of the trench coat under his bare back.
His brain short-circuited entirely when Cas pressed one of his thighs between Dean’s legs, and Dean released a sound that he didn’t even know he was capable of while he chased the friction.
“Clothes,” Cas growled, kissing and licking his way over Dean’s collarbone and shoulder. “Too many.”
“Yeah,” Dean agreed, then forgot what they were talking about when Cas bit the junction of his shoulder and neck without much force behind it, another possessive gesture just on the right side of hurt to make Dean grow impossibly hard against the angel’s thigh.
What Dean meant to ask was why they had wasted so many years not doing this, but what came out instead was a garbled mess of, “Jesus. Fuck. Cas.” He pressed his hands into Cas’s buttocks, dissatisfied with the fabric of dress pants under his fingers.
Right, clothes. They’d talked about this.
Dean’s fingers wandered around to Cas’s front and though he’d never wanted a belt buckle open more, his desire to know if Cas was as aroused as he was won out. He palmed the bulge in the angel’s pants, heat shooting directly to his own dick when he found the hardness there and Cas hissed out a pleading, “Dean!”
Fuck, yes, Cas was very much into this. Dean managed to get the belt buckle open at the same time as Cas worked on his jeans, pulling them down Dean’s legs and tossing them away with enough urgency that they landed outside their bubble of dryness. Dean had zero issue with that, getting a small kick out of how much Cas wanted this, wanted him.
With Cas on top of him, Dean couldn’t manage to get a good enough angle to pull down the dress pants in turn, so Cas quickly kicked them off, leaving both of them in their boxers. Well, Cas also still had his open shirt and loosened tie, which Dean decided were allowed to stay. So he had a Castiel kink, sue him. He was completely fine with this discovery.
He snaked his fingers behind the angel’s waistband and down his boxers, closing his fist around Cas’s dick, his own twitching at the deep groan he received. More. He wanted more of those noises, more of Cas’s skin, he wanted to see the angel lose it completely and call out his name as he came, and god, the thought alone almost made Dean come.
He pumped loosely, just a single time, and Cas threw his head back with a sharp inhale and a hard swallow. Dean tracked the movement of his Adam’s apple, his head empty of anything other than fuckfuckfuck at the realization that he wasn’t going to last long, and Cas hadn’t even laid a hand on him yet.
Maybe his thoughts had been too loud again, or maybe they were just really attuned to each other right now, but Cas’s eyes found his, watching him so intently that it was Dean’s turn to swallow. Cas moved a hand to palm Dean’s bulge through his boxers, never averting his eyes from Dean’s face even for a second.
The experience of having one of their stare-offs while Dean was barely keeping it together with Cas’s hand on his dick was definitely working for him, especially when Cas moved his hand slowly to the inside of Dean’s boxers. He’s copying me, Dean realized. He’s never done this before either, not with a man. And he was so far gone on the angel that even this seemed hot as Hell to him.
Dean knew exactly what was coming, but the anticipation was still killing him. The moment the slide of Cas’s bare hand against his dick happened without any clothing between them, Dean finally lost their little staring game because his eyes fell closed in a shivery exhale. Cas started moving his hand up and down, and Dean was the one completely losing it here, a wild moan escaping his throat and precome just leaking out of him, even though they’d barely done anything.
It’s supposed to be the other way round, he thought deliriously.
The movement of Cas’s hand that shot sparks of sensation everywhere and let heat pool deep in Dean’s belly stopped after just a few pumps and Dean blinked his eyes back open, swallowing against the dryness in his throat. Cas released his dick slowly, oh so slowly, never taking his attention off Dean’s face as he pulled out his hand, the waistband snapping back softly against Dean’s belly.
“Let’s…,” Dean said, surprised at the rough sound of his own voice. “Let’s get rid of the boxers?”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Cas said, one corner of his mouth twitching in a self-satisfied grin. The fucker.
He reached for Dean’s boxers first, pulling them down slowly, his gaze alternating between Dean’s face and his legs. The second Dean’s dick sprang free, Cas’s eyes flashed up in the half-darkness of the moonlit clearing, pure hunger in those angel-blues as they ran down his body.
Dean tried to sit up to get a good look at Cas removing his own boxers, but a hand against his shoulder held him down, making his dick twitch and arousal curl inside of him. How the angel managed to push all his buttons so effortlessly, Dean would never know.
It took Cas only a few seconds to get rid of his underwear, then he returned into Dean’s field of view. Dean reached for the tie, pulling the angel down on top of himself again. He was already losing his mind at the slide of their bodies against each other, but then Cas reached down to wrap his hand around both of them. Those goddamn slender fingers of his sent grace-induced tingles directly into Dean’s dick, and all he could do was babble incoherently and cling to the tie in pleasure.
“Jesus, Cas! Do that again, ah, yes!”
Dean had no frigging clue if it was his own or Cas’s precome that made the slide of Cas’s hand so deliciously slick, but probably both of theirs. He wrapped the tie around his hand to pull the angel further down for a kiss, sucking in his bottom lip, while burying his free hand back in Cas’s hair, never getting tired of the way it felt under his fingers.
Cas, he prayed, nothing more than that one word as he kissed him deeply.
The prayer still seemed to have caught the angel by surprise because he gasped and lost the rhythm of his strokes around them.
“I…,” he said, tearing himself away from the kiss, speaking with the voice of someone spilling a dark secret. “I can feel your longing when you pray, Dean.”
And Dean would be damned if that wasn’t his way of getting his wish to see Cas totally lose it.
Cas, I want you, Dean prayed, letting go of the tie to cover Cas’s hand around them with his own.
Cas’s eyes widened and the most satisfying sound emerged from his throat, all low and visceral and completely without restraint.
Dean took over the push and pull of their hands when Cas’s fell into a complete standstill.
“Dean,” the angel breathed out, astonishment mixing with arousal in his voice.
I think I’ve wanted you for years, Dean continued, moaning when he felt Cas’s dick pulse and swell next to his own.
“Fuck,” Cas groaned, and hearing that word out of his mouth almost made Dean come instantly, riding far too high on the waves of arousal he could feel coming from the angel, heat coiling in his own belly. He savored it, savored every moment of seeing Cas in ecstasy, thrusting into their joint hands in wild abandon.
You’ve ruined me for anyone else, Dean prayed.
Cas seemed to have picked up on the hidden promise in that statement, surprising Dean with the intensity of his reaction. He threw back his head with closed eyes, going full angel mode and whispering something in Enochian that sounded like “ah-el-lah-rah” 1 while slotting his hand over Dean’s left shoulder with an iron grip.
Acting entirely on instinct here, Dean placed his own free hand over the one Cas had on his shoulder, thinking the angel’s full name at him.
CASTIEL!
Two spots of blue flared up above Dean and a breath-stopping clap of thunder rolled over them when Cas’s wings appeared against the moonlit sky, even more imposing in their ragged state than they would have been whole.
Cas came inside of their hands, yelling Dean’s name with a voice forceful enough to shake the trees. As if any of these things alone hadn’t been enough already to push Dean over the edge, the runaway trickles of grace shooting from Cas’s hand to their dicks would have done it for him. Dean came hard, seeing stars for a moment while clinging to Cas’s hand on his shoulder for dear life.
Neither of them said a word for several long moments that they spent just laying there, trying to catch their breath together. At some point throughout all of this, Cas’s invisible dome must have collapsed because the rain drizzled into Dean’s face again, though the refreshing coolness was welcome this time.
Dean finally gathered up his lost senses enough to rasp out a dazed, “Holy shit.”
He already knew his mind would never let go of the goddamn impressive image of Cas on top of him, completely out of control with glowing eyes and wings and all.
Pathetically weak, my ass, Dean thought with a defiant smirk, still feeling the irrational need to defend the angel against all the shit Ishim had thrown his way.
Cas provided a breathless laugh to Dean’s collection of new sounds he’d never heard from him before.
~
(Epilogue in chapter 2)
Footnotes:
1 ALLAR - bound