Chapter Text
It was creeping up on three o' clock in the morning when it happened.
It should have been a grand entrance: a flood of light, wind whipping through the room, doors ripped from their hinges, the ear-bleeding screech of an angel's truevoice. At least, that was what Dean had been waiting on for weeks, the scenario's grandeur expanding each time he envisioned it. And he'd envisioned it a lot, obsessively if he was being honest.
How it would look when Cas came home.
But, it wasn't any of those things. It was entirely quiet, like a cat slipping back home after being missing for weeks, finding it curled up contently in its favorite spot like it had never been gone, a few leaves in its ruffled fur.
Cas had been dead.
And now, he was back.
Dean was laying on the right side of his bed on top of the covers in nothing but boxers, bulky noise-cancelling headphones blasting music that he'd stopped paying attention to hours ago, strangling a bottle by the neck and pickling himself in alcohol.
Dean's legs flailed as he scrambled to rip off his headphones, eyes wide with pure shock. By the time a thought traveled sluggishly through his boozed-soaked brain down to his mouth, the important words had fallen away and all he was left with was a strangled: "How?"
Cas came up to the bed in fast strides, Dean could see from his tight expression that he was barely keeping tears at bay. Before Dean could process that he was coming closer, strong arms were already squeezing him tight. Dean's chin rested on the shelf of Castiel's shoulder as his arms instinctually wrapped right back around him. He was hit with a smell, that familiar, comforting scent that was unmistakably Cas.
Cas was here, hugging him like he hadn't made the ultimate sacrifice, leaving a Cas-shaped absence so painful that all Dean could do was curl up and cry on the cold concrete floor as he broke over and over and again: just when he was convinced this was it, this was rock bottom, that the pain couldn't possibly drill down any deeper, it did. Over and over.
Dean hadn't been able to pick up the phone even when it was Sam calling on the other end, everything Cas had confessed in a vicious playback in his head. Each time it looped Dean wished he could have just said something, anything. Something even half as poetic as what Cas had said, instead of gawking there like an idiot, struggling to process it as it all unfolded so damn fast.
Cas was back, yet his drunken mind was struggling to accept it. Fuck, he was beyond wasted. It had been a while since he'd let himself go this far, let himself get to this place— since Jack had come into their lives. Dean had cut back so the kid wouldn't have to see him in this state, but with Cas gone, that rule broke along with Dean.
"-managed to escape with my grace intact, but I'm on borrowed time."
Crap, it seemed that Cas had been talking to him this whole time, and Dean had entirely forgotten to pay attention, fully distracted by the warm pressure of the pair of arms around him, his scent, his simple solidness, how it felt to rest his swimming head on the angel's firm shoulder.
"A deal is a deal, and my grace still belongs to the Empty. I'll have to cut it out from my body, but I'll be able to live. Here. As a human. I'll have to-" Cas interrupted himself with a sharp intake of breath that snapped Dean out of it, he was struggling hard to be present.
Cas suspiciously eyed a peek of white tape at the hem of Dean's red plaid boxers, brows crumpled together in confusion and concern.
"You're injured." Castiel's nimble fingers made quick work of cinching up the thin fabric all the way up to the base of his legs, like it was nothing, as easily as if he was lifting up a sleeve. "Let me heal you, while I still can."
Dean couldn’t help the thrilling roller coaster drop in his stomach. A leg was different than an arm. Really different. Everyone knew it was a sexually charged body part, but Cas was notorious for missing every memo that made up the human world.
"...Wait," Dean slurred entirely too late, head bobbing with the absence of Cas's shoulder to hold it in place. "You're not- s'ppsed to see-"
Dean's bowed inner thighs were padded with matching squares of white gauze, edges strapped down into place with white athletic tape. The dressings were fresh. Cas skimmed his fingertips along the gauze, his expression pinched from pain. The angel met Dean's eyes, water already brimming in his.
Dean scrubbed down on his scruffy face that had gone a while without a shave, heaving out a sigh. Cas wasn't supposed to see this, no one was ever supposed to find out how he coped when things went to shit. His face stayed hidden away in his palms when he slowly started to speak. "Life withoutcha Cas... wasnn't worth living. Couldn't feel a damn thing. You were... gone, and I..."
"You hurt yourself." Cas breathed, his tone warbling ever so slightly. Cas's fingernail snagged at an edge of the tape which was puckering the milky white skin, dusted with freckles and blondish hairs. "May I see?"
“It ain’t pretty.” Dean grunted. "-But yeah."
Castiel managed to keep his composure when he peeled back an edge to reveal striped gashes underneath, skin stained a bright orange from iodine. Dean could tell it scared him by the subtle flare of his nostrils, the clenching down on his jaw. The angel’s hand rested on his thigh, his touch so kind. The welling tears in those cobalt blues spilled over his cheeks in two shiny lines, without even blinking.
Without another word, Cas was painstakingly gentle as he peeled the rest of the dressings away, one side after the other. Now Dean felt well and truly exposed, and he tossed an arm to bar over his eyes. His face felt hot. He couldn't stomach that Cas had found out, that Cas was looking.
Dean knew the angel didn’t have to touch to heal, he’d seen him hover a glowing hand above victims many times. Still, he touched Dean now, the wounds knitted together with a brief itching and warmth like sunlight as he skimmed his palms and glided his fingers along the sensitive skin. It wasn’t just affecting his legs: Dean felt a crick in his spine straighten out with a satisfying pop, knots in his neck muscles releasing out from their tight coils.
“Ahh... feels good, Cas.” Dean sighed sleepily, melting back into his mattress. “Mmm.”
Crap, he realized. If the healing was full body, he was already feeling a lot less drunk. No- he was plummeting to sober. All of the sudden, he could smell the reek of alcohol on himself.
"Better?" Cas's face suddenly came into focus, still wearing that worried expression and furrowed brow even though the injuries were gone.
They simply looked each other for a moment, noses pointed squarely at one another's, like they'd done countless times before. The world had sharpened so dizzyingly fast that Dean was left reeling in his sudden sobriety, reality rushing up on him like he'd done a line of blow. He realized he hadn't spent any time sober since Cas died, not for longer than the first few minutes of waking up. Even then, he always kept a bottle handy on his nightstand.
"Holy shit." Dean's heart only now got the message that Cas was back, his pulse spiked and Dean could hear the blood pounding in his ears. His hand shot out, pawed at the back of Cas's head in disbelief, finally decided on a spot and his fist closed down hard over a tuft of dark hair.
Dean's wide green eyes roved over his face in utter disbelief.
"Cas-" Dean managed to choke out. Forget the time of night, he was electrified.
"I know." Tears were shining in the angel's eyes as he gripped right back onto the front of Dean's tee.
"Cas, you-" Dean couldn't find it in himself to finish that sentence. You told me you loved me, his mind screamed. Then you went and fucking died on me.
"I'm sorry Dean." Cas's hand then found its way to the side of Dean's face, cupped it into his palm. "I'm so sorry."
They both angled forward, faces crowding in until they finally closed that ten year gap with a hard collision of closed lips. Dean didn't think he’d ever kissed anyone that damn innocently before. By all means, it shouldn’t have made Dean tremble somewhere deep in his core, but it did. It was too good, too perfect, something he'd never been able to have before. So, why should he be allowed now?
Would it get ripped away again?
"...If we do this," Dean croaked, dropping his eyes down until they were nearly closed. "I can't go through that again, Cas. I can't lose you again."
"You won't." Castiel assured him, tipping his face to look at him, to see how serious he was about this. "I won't let that happen."
Dean's eyes flicked upward, meeting his. His hand found the back of Cas's neck again and he tilted his head to one side, mouths sneaking open before colliding again. Castiel shivered at a sensation so different from before and made a low growl of interest, a sound somehow even better than what Dean imagined he'd sound like. It was nothing like the exaggerated sounds that came from porn. Cas's weren't played up and performative like those always were. Every sound that leaked out of him was so damn genuine it ached.
Their hands roamed, squeezed at shoulders and hips, clasped together, Cas's smaller fingers wedged between Dean's. Soft, wet suckles came from their pursing lips, the nuzzled pushing of their faces. Stubble scratched across Dean’s chin, a sensation that was so new it was jarring, nearly pulling him out of the moment. Nearly flooding his mind with what had been drilled into him, how he was supposed to feel about men.
No, Dean fought it back with a mental snarl. This is Cas.
He loves a broken, messed up thing like me.
He told me so.
The two broke the kiss to breathe. Castiel was rendered a little slack-jawed as he looked at Dean, breathing picked up a hitch, the seam of his lips hanging just barely open because yes, they were really, finally doing this after toeing the line so many times, but never getting the courage to cross it. Dean was transfixed by that full upper lip, shiny with their shared spit, pinker now, more swollen than usual. He'd always wondered what it would feel like to kiss that lip. It didn't look quite so chapped now.
"This feels wonderful," Cas breathed in that blunt way of his, so unfazed by the complex, unspoken rules of the human world.
Dean could remember that feeling, even if it was more of a distant memory now. That initial discovery of how it felt to kiss someone you had feelings for. A weird, decaf sex you had with your faces. How the longer it went on, the more you'd crave. How intoxicated you could get on it, the way it could say so much without words.
They simply gazed at the other for a moment, heavy-lidded as they took each detail of the other man in. For some reason, it startled Dean all over again at how close Cas was. That they could do this with no need to pull away.
Their eyes were just inches apart, nose tips even closer, centimeters apart. Dean could suddenly see so many of the little details in the angel's face from here and Jesus fuck, he was handsome. Cas's eyelids had gone droopy over large pupils rimmed by thin rings of deep blue. A few of the prickly dark hairs sprouting from his cheeks and chin had gone white: he'd allowed his vessel to age alongside Dean and Sam. Had his eyelashes always been that long? Even the lower ones were lush, spidery against those endearing eye bags that carved out arcs just beneath his eyes.
He was looking at Dean with an expression that pleaded for more.
"C'mere, Cas." Dean's chest constricted in a painful pang at that expression, when he realized just how long they'd been staving this off. Their eyes folded shut at the same time they gathered the other in close, warm mouths inviting the other in. Castiel pressed his face in closer desperately and their legs tangled, fell into the gaps of the other. Dean's thigh found itself tightly nestled between two of the angel's.
This wasn't even close to sex yet, and Dean couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this damned high on kisses alone. Never, maybe.
How did Dean ever convince himself that he didn’t want this? Whenever the thought that he and Cas could be something more passed his mind, he'd beaten it back, stomped it down, forced it out. The mind that was strong enough to cage Michael himself, the mind that had fought back tooth and nail against the Mark of Cain, that was the very same mind that had sabotaged himself out of his own happiness for so long.
Cas walked on his knees to bracket Dean's hips, settling into his lap and laying his hand to the side of Dean's face, smudging his thumb ever so gently, skimming over his bottom lip. Dean let his lips sneak open, teasing the fingertip with a soft amount of suction. Dean then reciprocated, reaching out so his hands could cradle Cas's face between them for a moment, thumbs slipping down to rest just beneath his cheekbones, taking in his blown pupils and kissed-out expression as Dean fought back his disbelief. Something they'd both always wanted, but thought they'd never have. It was just... here, now, finally. All that tension had lifted away, easy, like a spell gone right.
Dean pulled him in again by the face for more, one hand slipping around to curl at the base of his neck.
Why had Dean been so afraid to pursue this? He should have known there couldn't be anything else waiting on the other side but the pure love of an Angel of the Lord.
Dean's spread open his freckle-dusted thighs in his red plaid boxers and wrapped them around Cas's hips, locking his legs together at the ankles. Castiel planted a hand between his shoulder blades and lowered Dean gently down onto his back, where he sank into memory foam. Fuck, it felt good being treated like this, Dean thought. Like he was a goddamn 'handle with care' package.
Dean licked his way inside his mouth and swallowed up all of Cas's tiny, pleased noises as they laid chest to chest. He'd never pictured it going this way, him flat on his back with Cas on top, but now that it was happening it felt perfect.
Then Cas shifted his hips, just right, and they both gasped together at the spike of pleasure from the delicious drag of friction. Dean's hands slipped up below the hem of Cas's shirt, calloused hands dragged up to his shoulder blades and he held on tight. The angel's skin was radiating heat. Then there was that incredible angle again, Cas's shifting hips nudging their growing erections together.
Cas's moan vibrated deep and throaty, arms that had hugged Dean close so many times wrapped him up tight, the pair of hands that had rebuilt him molecule by molecule after Hell kneaded and squeezed. The angel's head tucked into the pocket Dean's neck offered, open mouth pressing a wet, warm O shape against the skin.
"Keep on going, Cas, yeah, just like that." Dean muttered, soft and encouraging. It wasn't the first time he'd coached someone through things, but he'd be kidding himself if he said he'd never wanted to be Cas's guide.
In one long slide, Dean's palms grazed across the roundness of his ribs, past the flat small of his back, fingers wriggling under the elastic around his waist and getting two handfuls of his ass, starting a nearly tidal push and pull of his hips. The needy noises this drew out of Cas was better than a fucking symphony.
"Dean-" The angel's brows came together to peak on his forehead, eyes shut tight. The power in the room suddenly surged, white bolts spitting from around the base of Dean's phone charger in the wall socket, the lights flaring brighter before the room settled back down.
"Hey, you okay?" Dean's fingers curled affectionately around the base of his neck as they both chased their breath, hearts pounding.
Cas nodded, gathering himself with his eyes closed. "I need to be careful, the Bunker's electrical system is old and delicate." He huffed. "I'm finding it hard to control my Grace under these circumstances."
Dean swallowed back the laugh that was threatening to bubble up out of his chest, not wanting Cas to feel like he was laughing at him. But dammit, that must have been the most endearing thing he'd ever heard.
"We've waited eleven years, what's a few more days?" Dean joked. "When you're human, we won't have to worry about it anymore."
Cas's resulting look was disappointed.
"Remember when I said killing is the one thing I know how to do? Guess it's kinda like that with sex too." Dean began, sitting back with his legs folded up beneath him, nervously carding a hand through the hair at the crown of his head. He didn't want to do this, use his words, but he charged forward anyway. "It became something I knew I was good at, and I got good at pulling chicks anywhere I went. Dad was proud of me for it, and it just- it all became a big, fucked up, lifelong game to me."
Dean swallowed his pride and kept going. "And when I dated, it was my crutch. I'm no good with words, so I used my body. If we were arguing, I fixed it with sex. It got me out of things, let me cheat my way out of conversations I should have had."
Cas was listening intently.
"That's gotta change. No more quick fixes: they don't work. It's a bandaid on a bullet wound." Dean admitted. "It can't be like that anymore, Cas, not with you. Not when I feel this way about you."
Silently, Cas reached for his hand and threaded their fingers together in encouragement.
"My whole life, I've had to fight back against everything my dad put in here," With his free hand, Dean tapped at the side of his skull. "Against his voice in my head telling me how wrong it is. How disgusting 'they' are. What he'd do to me if he found out I was one. So I told myself I didn't want men, and I've been doing that since... guess since I can remember. "
"Did it ever occur to you that I have the exact same problem, Dean?" Cas raised his brows, and because it didn't, Dean waited for him to explain.
"Angels were strictly forbidden to be with humans, and their offspring were deemed abominations. My brothers and sisters were disgusted with how much time I spent around you two, and when my feelings for you began to develop, they saw right through me. Nearly all of them wished to kill me for this fault, this... flaw." The angel's voice rumbled on, soft and low in his throat. He hung his head, scruffy cheek to Dean.
It dawned on Dean right in that moment, he felt so stupid for not realizing it earlier.
"Damn." Dean shook his head in disbelief that he could be so blind. He'd had Mr. Drill Sergeant Dad, but so did Cas. They were both drafted to fight their fathers' wars, both forced to believe a lie, that love for the wrong thing was sick. But love by definition was something pure: it could never be wrong.
"Jack is no abomination." Cas growled like the protective parent he was. "Our son is the best child I could ever ask for." Cas finally raised and leveled his eyes to Dean's. It was hard for Dean to look back into them, the emotion radiating from them was intense. "And my love for you certainly is no flaw."
So, they were bringing it up now. Fuck.
"I should've-" Dean choked. "I should've. Said it back. I just— I froze up, Cas. You were saying goodbye and I couldn't take it. I could barely breathe. The thought of losing you again... it fucking broke me, Cas."
Suddenly, Dean had clarity like he'd never felt. It was so painfully obvious what he needed to do now.
"Cas." He'd never tire of saying that short and sweet nickname, the way it rolled off his tongue and hissed through his teeth.
The angel's brows quirked upward in a silent 'Yes, Dean?'
"There's something else you have to do before your Grace goes back to the Empty." Dean outstretched his arms and clamped down on his shoulders. “I know I said it’s off limits before. But it’s the only way, Cas. I want it this time. This might be the last chance we get."
Understandably confused, the angel tipped his head to one side, narrowed his eyes in that quizzical expression Dean had gotten so used to over the years. "Dean, are you...?"
“Go on. Crack me open like a book and get reading. Because if you don’t- because I can’t-" Dean stumbled over his words, so Cas stepped in.
"You told me you wanted "privacy upstairs", and I've always done my best to respect that." Cas said skeptically.
"I know I did. But you poured your heart out to me, and I know I can't say how I feel like you can, Cas." Dean went for his hands instead now, clasping down on both between them.
Cas squeezed back, it gave Dean the courage to insist again.
"Please. I need you to know how I feel."