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He’s standing in the library holding a book under the light, trying to read the cracked writing on its spine, when he hears the front door open and close. It’s got to be Sam, so odds are good Dean’s search for a missing volume on werewolves isn’t about to be interrupted: he and his brother have been maintaining a frosty distance since their chat last night.
“Dean.”
Not Sam, then. Dean lowers the book and there’s Cas in the doorway, same (new) tan coat on his shoulders, hair more disheveled than his usual look of late, and a level of concern in his gaze that’s already making Dean want to roll his eyes. “Hey, man. How’d you even get in here?”
Cas takes a key from his pocket and holds it up. “Sam gave it to me.”
“Oh, cool.” Dean lays the book on top of the rolling cart next to him. “I didn’t even know we had more.”
“I want to talk to you,” Cas says, before Dean’s even finished his sentence, and walks over to take a strategic spot a few feet from him.
“Aw, come on. Sam told you about -- ?”
“The mark of Cain.”
Cas’s tone is so dire Dean could almost laugh. “Look, what’s going on with you? Sam said you left to find Metatron. What’s happening?”
“Nothing worth reporting--” eyes downcast for a second (he’s easier to read since becoming mortal this last time) then back to business: “Will you let me see it?”
They both look at Dean’s arm, then, where his sleeve is rolled up far enough to reveal about half of the jagged symbol. Dean clears his throat. He doesn’t especially want to show it to Cas, to be honest. It’s got this shameful permanence to it that thrills and disgusts him at the same time, and he generally tries not to look at it. But what’s he going to do? Admit he’s scared of Cas’s reaction and how real that might make everything? There’s not a lot of options. He offers his arm.
Cas holds Dean’s wrist with one hand and pushes Dean’s sleeve back with the other.
“All right, are you satisfied?” Dean grits out, when the staring has gone on a bit too long.
Cas holds his wrist even when Dean tries to tug it free. “Just a second,” he says, voice faraway-sounding. He traces his thumb near the edge of the scar tissue.
"Just--" Dean makes a frustrated sound and yanks his arm back, hard. With a shatter and tinkling of glass, the picture hung on the wall behind him breaks where he's smashed his elbow into it; shards in his skin, blood on the floor.
The world narrows around them in the ugliness of the moment; Dean can’t name a single thing that exists except Cas in front of him: Dean’s dearest friend, looking so sad for him.
It barely hurts.
"Can I?" Cas asks after a moment, reaching for his arm but not taking it yet. He looks as sorrowful as a puppy who knows he’s done something wrong.
Dean shakes his head. "It's nothing."
"Dean." Cas's eyes are wide with hurt and apology.
The ugly symbol inside Dean's forearm looks darker than it did before, now that he's looking at it while trying to check out this cut. It looks primal, like it was branded onto him around a fire, and not like it was carved with a vague old magic Dean only understands the gist of. "It's nothing," he says again, more sure of it now.
"You don't have to do this, you know!" Cas says, hands thrown out in exasperation. And then, with forced calm: "I know how difficult things are between you and Sam right now."
Dean mutters, "Trust me, you really don't."
“But why couldn’t you come to me before you met with Cain? You didn’t think that an angel might have some insight into his motives that you lack?”
“I didn’t have time to wait around while you finished healing Sam,” Dean says, waving it off. “Abaddon wants that throne and she’s taking it the bloody way. I gotta deal with her like yesterday.”
“Believe me when I say I want her out of the picture as much as you do. But she’s not the only piece on the chessboard you should be worried about. And when you do things like this -- this decision -- when it’s obvious you have no idea what the consequences are -- Dean, killing her will be useless if all it does is open up a seat for Crowley and leave the field clear for Gadreel and Metatron to slaughter on Earth and in Heaven as they see fit.”
His pragmatism annoys Dean. “So, what, you think I’ll end up dead too and you need me for a couple more fights before that happens?”
“No, you think you’ll end up dead.” Cas draws himself up to the full height he rarely uses, a finger thrust into Dean’s chest. “You hope you do. But killing her isn’t worth your life -- killing ten like her wouldn’t be.”
“Course it would.” Dean scoffs and shoves Cas’s hand away. “To fix everything? Come on, to set Heaven right? Throw all those demon sons-of-bitches back in Hell for good? That’s worth a Hell of a lot more than my life. Trust me, I’ll die happy if I die doing that.”
“Please don’t. Please don’t hope for that.” The anger in Cas’s voice falls away as he says it, and leaves behind something so quiet and vulnerable Dean feels a tug somewhere between his stomach and his chest.
“Cas...”
Cas shakes his head and looks away.
How far to push this? Guiltily, Dean runs a hand through his hair and asks, “Cas, really, though? You know what it’d mean better than I do, to fix Heaven. All those dumb angels on Earth, causing trouble and missing home?”
“All the work you and I do is important. And yes, we are responsible for some of the problems -- the imbalances. I know I might die in service of those causes. But that is different from needlessly going on suicide missions. You have so much to offer. So many people who love you.”
“Stop.”
“Your brother --”
“No, I’m serious.”
“Fine.” He holds up his hands in surrender. “Fine. Just... I would be... very happy, if you didn’t die.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Well, he’s succeeded in one thing, at least. Dean isn’t mad anymore. It’s hard to be upset when Cas sounds so frustrated and is struggling to tell Dean something nice in a way he isn’t going to hate. He rubs a hand over his face and peers at Cas through his fingers before dropping it. Cas gives him a small smile. “Okay. So what would you have said if I told you I was going to see Cain?”
“I might have advised you not to deal with him.”
“Like...” Dean squints. “Oh.”
“Did he ask you for something?”
“I promised that when he called, I’d come and kill him.”
Cas nods and thinks that over. “Okay. It should be fine.”
Dean raises his eyebrows.
“He could’ve asked you for something more serious, really. Some sacrifice. He probably found you... relatable.”
“Yeah, something like that. Anyway, didn’t have much of a choice.”
“You’re alive and you’re here. I think everything will be fine.”
“That’s... nice?”
Cas holds his hand out. “Can I heal your arm now?”
“I guess,” Dean says, and offers it.
Cas places his hand above Dean’s elbow, and that stolen grace clean’s Dean’s skin of the glass and blood and tearing. As they both watch, the mark on Dean’s arm glows briefly with some interior light and then returns to normal. “I’m sorry,” Cas says, and removes his hand. “Did that hurt?”
“Nah. It was just... Actually, it felt like the handprint. I don’t know if you...? After you, well, after I crawled out of that coffin in Pontiac I had this handprint on my shoulder, from where you grabbed me, I guess. And when you’d heal me, back then? I could always feel the outline of the handprint when you did it. Like there was a hand there. And it’s the same with this, the same feeling.”
“What does it feel like instead of a hand, now?”
“The blade, I think,” Dean says carefully. When their eyes meet something passes between them: a moment of regard and camaraderie: an acknowledgement that big things are coming and they’re going to face them. Whatever else the mark has done, and however upset Cas initially seemed about it, it’s put them on equal footing, for once. Surely, whatever Dean is now, he isn’t exactly human.
“We’ll kill Abaddon,” Cas says quietly.
“We’ll kill Metatron, too,” Dean agrees.
“And Gadreel,” Cas adds.
The name still pulls at Dean’s insides. “Him twice.”
They’re standing so close together that it’s the easiest thing in the world to reach up and touch Cas’s cheek. It’s shocking how different it is, from Cas’s hands on his arm before. In truth Cas is as strong and unfathomable as a wild animal, really, that’s his nature, except he could kill you faster than any wolf could. And for whatever reason that’s the side of him Dean’s thinking about as Cas tilts his head just slightly to press his cheek against the pads of Dean’s fingers, although Dean could also think of the part that’s more stray-dog, lonely and kind.
Cas closes the distance between them with a sound like a happy sigh in his throat and tilts his forehead to Dean’s. It would be weird if they were hugging, it’s stupid, but it would be, but this: noses side by side, forehead to forehead, breathing a few inches apart, it feels natural even though Dean’s 100% sure he’s never done it before. Dean’s eyes are closed and he knows without needing to look that Cas’s are too. And he also knows, with no reason behind it, that when he does this, it’s going to work:
Hey, Cas, Dean thinks as intentionally as he can, can you hear my thoughts again now that you’ve got your grace back?
“Not your thoughts,” Cas says, voice amused and impossibly deep. “Your prayers. And... no, not really, not usually. It doesn’t line up. This isn’t my grace. If you’ve prayed before, I didn’t hear it. But right now... I think it would be very hard for me to miss anything you said to me, no matter how you said it.”
Sorry about before. And sorry I didn’t talk to you before the Cain thing. I didn’t wanna get you more wrapped up in this mess than you already are. I just wanted to do it myself and be done with it.
“But you know I’m involved already, because it’s an important fight and it’s my duty. And because we’re a team, and I’ll fight by your side whenever you need me to.”
Dean can’t help smiling a little. “Yeah, well.”
It’s unbearable, how good Cas smells this close up, his skin and his clothes, and beneath that the size and power of his true form manifesting in something that just smells like angel to Dean: sky and Heaven, violence and a taste like gold in Dean’s mouth whenever angels heal his body, holy oil burning, something very clean like a stream at the top of a mountain over cool stone surrounded by evergreens...
Dean tilts his head and presses his lips to Cas’s, nuzzles his nose into Cas’s cheek and then kisses him again. At the first touch Cas doesn’t resist but he doesn’t reciprocate, but now his lips part and he kisses back. When Dean takes him by the waist in his hands, Cas’s arms come up to Dean’s shoulders. Cas’s breath is hot; his whole body is hot, his thighs --
Cas takes his mouth back and separates them, hands still on Dean’s shoulders. “Dean...”
“Come on, man, how do you look that sad right now?” Dean asks, breathless, his hands on Cas’s sides under his coat and suit jacket, on the fabric of his button-down.
“Are you sure about this? You were upset.”
“I’m not upset now. Well, right now, a little--” and squeezes both sides of his friend’s waist where his hands rest.
Helpless, casting around for the words, then squinting at Dean -- “You know what you’re doing, though? You’re sure?”
“Cas.” His thumb on the side of Cas’s neck, fingers grazing his shoulder. “Relax. We’re on the same page here! But I don’t wanna -- let’s not make a big deal out of it, okay?” This isn’t coming out exactly right; it would be better if he could focus enough to pray.
Something has shifted. Cas hasn’t moved but he’s more distant. “I don’t know, Dean.”
“Seriously, you don’t feel this?” Dean asks, gesturing between them. The skin on his chest is hot; he’s turned on and embarrassed and angry.
“I do, but I’m not sure what this means to you.”
“So read my mind,” Dean says.
“I can’t.”
“Whatever. I’m -- fine. If you don’t want -- I guess it’s just me, then. Look, I’m going to bed, okay?” He’s already walking away as he says it, leaving Cas looking stunned and angry. In the hall he thinks, Why didn’t I ask him what it means to him? but it’s already way too late to go back. That ship has sailed. More accurately, that grenade has exploded, there are definitely no survivors, it’s going to be a challenge to find any identifiably body parts in the wreckage of that scene. Cas can’t even flutter off. Dean’s left him awkwardly standing in a room in Kansas. Jesus Christ, this is too much, it’s way too dumb to be real.
He does go to his room, and even undresses to a t-shirt and underwear and gets in bed -- the blind panic carries him that far. It’s no good, though. The scene in the library is impossible to process and he can think of nothing else. Sitting up, head in his hands, elbows on his thighs, it hits him that Cas’s only objection was to Dean saying the kissing wasn’t a big deal. Except, it’s also not super clear what Cas’s opinions on the whole thing are. The leap would be that it means a lot to Cas and he wants it to do the same for Dean, but he didn’t say that.
Of course, when have they ever needed the other one to say something in order to know it?
Cas, Dean prays. If you can hear this, I’m sorry.
Not so long ago, Dean sat next to Cas at a bar during what they thought might be their last time together. They hadn’t said much. Dean made a joke about Cas being like E.T. But that moment, sitting at that bar in the low light, has a glow to it in Dean’s memory. For a few minutes, before Cupid showed up, they were happy just to be in each other’s presence. It means an embarrassing amount to Dean, that memory. Like, he thinks about it whenever he’s sitting at a bar alone, and it’s so nice it makes him lonely. And every time it comes up, he’ll think about calling Cas, and then he won’t.
Dean finds his abandoned jeans on the floor and pulls them back on, his head finally clear. He pulls open his door and almost walks into Cas, who’s coming down the hallway at a similar pace to Dean’s own room. “Did you hear me pray?” Dean blurts out.
Cas looks kind of sad at that. “I told you I can’t. I was just coming to see you.”
“Well --” Dean pushes the door opens and gestures for Cas to enter.
In the privacy of Dean’s room, Cas pauses a few steps in and looks around. His eyes settle on the guns hung on the wall, the unmade bed, the desk. The overhead light is off and they’re lit only by the desk lamp. Finally, Cas looks to Dean, who’s still standing just inside the closed door. Cas almost says something, then just shakes his head. There’s humor in it, and an apology: it’s a dismissal of the way they left it in the library. “Did you pray? Just now?”
“Yeah.”
“I wish you wouldn’t, if I can’t hear it.”
“Maybe you’ll get all of ‘em when you get your grace back. Like voicemails.”
“Or you could just --” Cas takes a step toward him-- “tell me.”
Dean meets him in the middle of the room. “That’s not as good,” he says, and takes Cas’s hand. What about now?
A flash of something on Cas’s face. He pulls Dean’s hand to his chest and presses it there under both of his.
Now?
Cas nods and smiles his rare smile, and Dean thinks this could probably be it. He could probably do this for the rest of his life. But so close together and touching and thinking all the same thoughts, the momentum between them builds like it did earlier. Dean wants to put every inch of their bodies together, but he waits, for the moment, and lets the pull get more and more inevitable.
“I wish I hadn’t stopped us,” Cas admits. “It was... a lot. I didn’t really doubt you. I want...”
Me too.
Cas releases Dean’s hand and takes his face in his palms instead. He touches their noses together just quickly, just enough to let Dean hesitate if he wants to, just enough to make Dean want him closer so much there’s a physical ache in his chest. Then Cas kisses him.
It’s worse than before, how bad they suddenly need each other, because they’re in a bedroom now or because of the false start before. Cas’s hand on Dean’s lower back pulls them against each other. They’re kissing furiously, inexactly, Dean’s face against his neck, Cas petting Dean’s hair. Dean pushes Cas’s coat and suit jacket to the floor. Then Dean’s unbuttoning Cas’s shirt and he thinks to say, I was coming to tell you that, too.
“Mm,” Cas says into Dean’s jaw. He turns them a little and moves Dean backward toward the bed. Once Dean’s pulled Cas’s shirt free of his pants and got it all the way unbuttoned, Cas pushes him down onto the bed first and climbs over him. He pulls up Dean’s t-shirt and bends to him, kissing and mouthing at his stomach and then higher.
It makes Dean squirm and arch his back, the tease and tickle of it. He slides his fingers into Cas’s hair, pulling him closer, until they collapse into each other side by side, Dean hugging Cas to him again and again. Dean sits up enough to strip his t-shirt off and when he raises his eyebrows and grins, Cas pulls off his button-down then does the same. Cas is beautiful, lean, proportioned like a runner, dark hair lovely against all that skin. He’s more muscular than Dean. It’s funny, because this isn’t what the dearly departed Jimmy Novak’s body used to look like -- the guy was kind of skinny. It’s not just a vessel anymore, this form; in a way Dean doesn’t fully understand, this body is really Cas.
“Can I?” Cas asks, hand on Dean’s belt.
Dean nods and lets Cas undress him, putting his weight back on his elbows to lift up his hips so Cas can pull his pants off. Cas removes his own without ceremony, kicks off his shoes and socks and then the pants are gone, and barely breaks eye contact with Dean to do it. It’s awful, in fact, the reality of this -- so fast and obvious. Even while it’s happening, even before it’s really happening, Dean has this sense of regret that they didn’t do it earlier. All this time has passed already. He’s not young anymore.
“How do you look so sad right now?” Cas asks him, his voice kind on the gentle call-back to Dean’s words earlier.
“Dumb, right?” (Cas just shakes his head fondly.) “I’m not really. Come back.” Dean slides his palm around Cas’s forearm and tugs him back down to the pillows so they’re lying side by side.
"I promise we'll fix it," Cas says, indicating the mark on Dean's arm. Indicating everything that's wrong on four planes of existence.
Dean accepts that for the kindness it is and nods, once. They kiss and their legs slot together. For the first time, they thrust against each other. Gently at first, just in response to the movement of their bodies. When Cas’s breath hitches and it’s more urgent, Dean reaches between them and gets a hand around Cas’s dick. Their foreheads press together and they burrow their heads into each other’s bodies: it’s too hot in the bed and the movements of their bodies are too vital to do anything as exact as kissing. Dean pumps Cas fast and hard while Cas thrusts into his hand. Dean’s halfway to getting off by humping himself against Cas’s leg (it’s not even conscious, his leg is just there and Dean’s body can’t help it) when Cas shoves him back and climbs over him.
It doesn’t break their contact too much, their hipbones still lined up, but now Cas leans heavily on one elbow so he can get a hand on Dean, too. Dean’s own hand freezes, still wrapped around Cas, at the feeling of a warm hand between his legs. Cas cups him, rubbing gently down over his balls and lower a few times before circling his fingers firmly at the base of Dean’s erection and stroking up once.
Dean squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them (paralyzed by the pleasure as though moving is going to break the spell), to see Cas watching him from just inches away. Cas quirks up one corner of his mouth and starts to jack him off more seriously.
Dean’s never seen him like this, looking like he loves having this power over Dean, and part of him wants to just let Cas get him off so Cas can smirk at him after. But he also wants to make Cas lose it, and when he starts moving his hand over Cas again, Cas makes these needy sounds in his throat and there’s no way he can stop.
They’re both panting and shoving their bodies together and for a second the moment is suspended in time -- it seems to go on forever with both of them on the brink -- their movements frantic again and again, Dean pulling the sounds from Cas: “Mm, oh, yes,” then it’s too much and Dean’s coming hot and wet in Cas’s hand. Some sound tumbles from his mouth as it happens, “Ahh,” and he sort of manages to hang onto Cas during it because Cas is coming a second later, folding himself down into Dean as he tenses then slackens.
After they breathe for a few minutes, Dean gets his hand free and wipes it on the sheets, then lets his palms rest on Cas’s back. He touches the dip of Cas’s spine, above his hips, his fingers across Cas’s warm skin.
Cas pushes himself up enough to move back just a bit and look at Dean. He blinks at Dean sleepily and it makes Dean smile. “Hey,” Dean greets him.
Cas smiles in response and says, “Hello, Dean.”
Dean touches his hair fondly and shifts. “Let me up? I wanna clean this off.” His voice comes out quiet and a little hoarse.
Cas moves off Dean and onto his back, and Dean climbs out of bed and walks naked to the bathroom, where he cleans himself off enough that it’ll be comfortable to sleep. His face in the mirror is red and full. For Cas, he takes a wet cloth and a dry one with him. When he steps back into the bedroom, Cas’s form on the bed stops him: Cas has one leg straight out and one bent, and his head is resting on one hand, elbow cocked to the side. Stupidly, it makes Dean shy.
Still, Dean joins him back on the bed. He lays a hand on Cas’s extended leg and gives his thigh a reassuring squeeze. “Do you want me to?” he asks.
“Okay,” Cas agrees, and watches as Dean cleans the slick mess from his torso. Cas’s stomach is thrillingly hard beneath his hands, which, the thrill doesn’t even make sense because this form isn’t even really Cas, but still, he’s so perfectly put-together. “You’re --” Dean says without thinking and then stops himself, lost in the task of making that skin flawless again.
He knows Cas wants to know what he was going to say, but he doesn’t ask. Instead, Cas says, “I wish I could pray and let you hear it, like you do for me.”
“Yeah?” Dean asks, moderately more comfortable with Cas being fully naked and splayed out now that they’re talking. He tosses the paper towels into the trash from where he sits. “I’ll pretend. Just say it.”
Cas sits up then, turned to Dean. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, like it’s been on the tip of his tongue forever. “I’m afraid to say anything to you. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” This with a flash of a small, bracing smile in apology. “I want to stay next to you -- even now, you’re right here, and I feel -- what, lonely? It’s... confusing.”
It doesn’t make Dean uncomfortable, though, not really. “Beautiful” is a little much, flowery, but he’s had the sense before of Cas wanting to say more to him than he expects Dean will allow, so the concept isn’t foreign. And the loneliness, in truth, he feels too -- this emptiness because they’re not holding each other anymore. But he wouldn’t have asked Cas for anything if he hadn’t brought it up first. Lucky for him. He palms Cas’s cheek and then they’re wrapping their arms around each other, sitting on the bed and hugging like young children, heads tucked.
You could stay here with me tonight if you want. I know you don’t need to sleep, though, so you might not want to, Dean prays into Cas’s shoulder, feeling silly.
“I don’t know how much you know about the reproductive behaviors of angels while they’re in human vessels, but I don’t actually need to have sex, either.”
“Smart ass,” Dean says aloud, insults apparently not wired to be translated into prayer by his brain. “You don’t sleep, though. Except when you’re powered down.”
“I can, though. Or something like it. I’ll stay with you tonight. It’ll be just like sleeping next to a human,” Cas promises.
“Right, I definitely know what that’s like,” Dean says, because when was the last time? He can’t think of anything, so it’s probably Lisa. He pulls back so he can search Cas’s face. “Actually, I didn’t know for sure that you did this either. Uh, have sex. I mean, I know before, when you were kind of human?”
Cas nods. “It’s nothing to do with that, though. It’s just a choice. Since this stopped being just a vessel, at least. It just didn’t come up much before recently, when I was powerless.”
“Huh.” There are a few other things Dean would like to ask, like what does that mean about Daphne? But he doesn’t especially want to grill Cas tonight. Doesn’t especially want to do anything except be nice to him. “Okay, well. You know. Glad you can.”
Cas matches his smile. “Me, too. Are you ready to go to sleep?”
“Sure.” Dean gets up to switch off the lamp while Cas pulls back the covers. They cuddle together and Dean ends up on his back with Cas facing him, lying on his side with an arm tossed across Dean’s stomach. He feels sleep pulling him under almost immediately -- it hasn’t been this easy in months, even when he’s drinking.
When he blinks awake early in the morning, sated and warm, he finds he’s turned onto his side at some point in the night, and Cas is spooning him from behind. It’s like there’s been a chill in the center of his bones until just now, and no warmth that could reach it until this. He’s barely awake, so these dumb thoughts are easy enough to have. Cas, he’s pretty sure, isn’t technically asleep, despite whatever promises he made. His guess is that Cas is in a meditative state, fully aware of his surroundings but calm enough that he can stay motionless for long periods of time. And, to test that theory, and for other reasons, Dean shifts his hips back so he’s pressing against Cas.
Sure enough, Cas’s fingers tighten on his forearm and Dean feels a breath in his hair. “Good morning,” Cas says. “Did I sleep like a human?”
I don’t know about that, but you’re pretty good to sleep next to either way.
Cas rolls his hips forward sharply and holds Dean to him, against his chest. “Don’t pray right now.”
“Ah, sorry, man,” Dean says, too everything to be too embarrassed by it, although he does feel bad for whatever part it is that made Cas uncomfortable.
His remorse must show in his voice, because Cas says, “No, it’s -- it’s just that it’s too good. While we’re -- I mean you could pray at the end, if you want to. But if you want us to do this with our bodies together...”
“Say ‘do this with our bodies together’ again,” Dean smiles, and reaches behind him to get a hand on Cas’s thigh so he can pull it toward him.
Instead of saying anything, Cas opens his mouth against Dean’s neck and works at the sensitive skin there. They thrust in time with each other, the line of Cas’s dick sliding hard and full against the cleft of Dean’s ass, over his hole, Cas’s balls pressing against the back of Dean’s when they’re lined up just right.
Dean uses Cas’s thigh to roll forward and pull Cas with him, so he’s laying fully on top of Dean. Dean ends up with one of Cas’s legs in between his once they’re settled there, so he shifts one outward so Cas is situated between Dean’s open thighs. Cas is a hot weight huge against his back, and now that Dean is face down on the mattress he can tilt his hips to meet Cas’s thrusts and also feel the rub of his own dick against the bed at the same time.
Cas covers him fully, even taking his hands and laying his own over them, Dean’s head resting on both of their forearms, elbows out, and Cas’s face nosed down next to his own so if he turns his neck far enough they can kiss.
“You feel so good,” Cas says into his cheek, lips against his sweating skin.
You, too. Keep going. Harder.
Cas makes a helpless sound against his neck, turning his mouth on Dean. “Dean --”
He forgot not to pray but it doesn’t seem to matter. Cas may have been a little too quick to dismiss prayer as a part of this, anyway, because it’s clearly driving him crazy.
It’s so hard, the weight of both of them on Dean when he shifts himself down into the mattress. And Cas pushing against him again and again from behind. Cas is everywhere over him.
Although earlier he couldn’t collect his thoughts enough to pray, now it’s simpler to just tell Cas his thoughts in that direct way, rather than trying to speak. He gasps against the pillow, though, his every inhale audible. Cas, he projects, ah, God, it’s so good. I’m so close.
“Yes,” Cas breathes. “Please. I want to make you come.”
Even though they’re not really fucking, not all the way, when they move in a certain way their skin slaps together and it sounds like they are. You are. You are. Put your finger in me.
The shift of Cas’s body is immediate and thrilling, his back arched up as he pulls back an arm and shoves a finger inside Dean, not that far but enough to make it the center of the known universe to Dean at that second. He has no idea what’s happening; he’s so close to coming that he’s pushing himself back against Cas’s hand, Cas’s other fingers -- the ones that aren’t inside him -- gripping him. And then there’s Cas’s other hand under Dean, taking him in his palm, Cas somehow managing this position by resting all his weight on that elbow as he kisses Dean’s back and pulls and pushes the orgasm out of him. It’s too much to pray now, and Dean makes sounds that he forgets as soon as they’ve left his mouth, until he’s collapsing spent and wired.
Cas falls off him to the side, and even though there’s still like 25% of their bodies touching it feels like a lot less than before. One of Cas’s arms is still trapped under Dean and the other rests on his back.
Dean turns to face Cas and pushes his face into the crook of Cas’s neck, still kind of twitching in the aftermath. Cas runs fingers through his hair, kisses his forehead. “You got off, too?” Dean asks him.
“After you prayed the last time. It's a good thing you're bad at listening.”
“I always thought so.”
“Are you okay?” Cas asks him. “You’re shaky.”
“Yeah, just... it was intense. A lot of friction.”
“I’m sorry,” Cas says, and pulls the covers back up over them from where they were kicked to their knees.
Dean moves back enough that he can see Cas’s face, both their heads on the pillows. “Are you kidding? I wanted it like that.” He touches his palm to Cas’s stomach, his chest. “Don’t be sorry. Unless you didn’t like it?”
“I liked it very much. I’m -- having this with you is more than I ever thought I’d have. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get the sounds of you under me out of my head.” He says this all calmly, half-drowsily, like it’s normal stuff, and it makes Dean roll his eyes fondly.
“So we’re in agreement it was awesome.”
Cas smiles at him, sudden and unguarded and sweet, and Dean has no choice but to take Cas’s scruffy cheek in his hand and kiss him on the eyelid and then on the forehead. Cas holds him there, with their faces close together.
They could talk about this more. About what’s going to happen next. About if they’re going to get up right now, because it’s got to be past Dean’s usual waking hour of six a.m. or whenever he can’t stand his own thoughts anymore. But Dean’s always understood Cas down to his bones, and for the moment it’s good enough to know that they’d both stay here all day if they could.