Chapter One
The Apocalypse is coming, and the summer is boiling, and all of the air conditioners go bust. And Castiel won't take that damn coat off, ever. Even inside the hotel room with the windows shut and nothing but a fan and a pan of ice cubes Dean's planted himself in front of.
Cas said something once about how the heat did something to his freckles and his eyes, made him look "ravishing" and Dean had laughed at the word. But he secretly likes it -- Cas' vocabulary. In comparison, he feels kind of crude. "You haven't gotten off in a long time, Cas."
"That shouldn't matter."
Dean squints in the light. "But doesn't it? Matter just a little?"
"Dean. I think you're becoming obsessed."
"I know. Deal with it. Sammy's been busy lately."
"Sam is dealing," he began.
Dean waves his hand. "Forget it. I don't want to talk about it."
"But you want to talk about sex. Again."
"Humor me, ok?"
"Fine." Cas shrugs. "I expected it to be different."
"Different from what?"
"From the types of experiences I've had before."
"What ‘experiences you've had before', Cas?"
"It was a long time ago, I can barely remember it, but angels once experienced a kind of comparable feeling."
"What? How?"
Cas just shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. Not anymore." Then the sad face is there, the one that's been bothering Dean for weeks.
Then nothing, as Cas runs away again.
Dean is left with a sweat-soaked t-shirt and too-tight jeans, left to run through the logic in his head. With bad television.
Cas loves humans, yes. Cas is superhuman, yes. Enough to really spoil Dean a ridiculous amount. But he hasn't asked for anything from Dean except to let him fight by his side in this battle. Even if he was the only one on that side.
But Castiel isn't some alien sent to save mankind. He was created to serve mankind, and god -- in ever more limited and specialized ways, apparently. He was created for glory, but he existed in limbo.
He doesn't have power, except for how he can influence humanity, and he wants no part of that. He doesn't even seem to want answers. All he wants, at the end of all of this, is a clean conscience, a way to quiet the storm Dean started in his head.
Only, you can't have sex and a clean conscience. That's one of Dean's cardinal sex rules.
Things happen. You take chances, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But you have to get a little dirty if you want to get anywhere. And Castiel is always dirty when he's with Dean. That's one of the reasons it works.
Dean also knows that dirty isn't cheap. Dirty and messy and good and right are the rarest things all together, and Cas is all of that, all the time. He just knows that Cas doesn't want to actually be all of that.
When Castiel comes back, Dean doesn't mention a word of what he's been thinking. He's just kind of pissed.
"What do you do when you disappear like that?" Dean asks it with a voice devoid of feeling.
"I spend time alone."
"I know. But what do you need to do when you're alone?"
"I reveal more of myself."
"Cas?"
"I manifest my grace."
"You show your... wings?" Dean doesn't want that to sound so disappointed.
"If that's how you want to describe it, yes."
"Does anyone see them?"
"What does that matter?"
"It doesn't, it doesn't." He lies. "And why do you keep saying nothing matters? I'm talking about your quality of life here."
"What?"
"Your life, Cas. The one where you still have wings and I still haven't seen them. What do they feel like?"
"They can't be touched."
"What do you mean?"
"They aren't to be touched by anyone, human or angel."
"Why not?"
"It's a long story. Stop asking questions."
"Cas, you can travel through time and space. You can kill with a word, raise people from the dead, take a knife to the heart."
"I know that."
"So, you don't have to pretend that you can't. I know what you are, Cas. It's in everything you do."
"I know. You're often scared when I act too much like the rest of the Host."
Dean throws up his hands. "But no other angel acts like you."
"Yes they do." His voice is nothing but insulted.
"No, they don't. You don't hide it as well as they do."
And Cas frowns.
"It's ok, I like it. I'm used to weird. It's my thing."
Cas winces at his lame excuse.
Then Dean does. "You miss being with other angels. I get that."
"I also know they betrayed me. They betrayed you too, all of them."
"Well, it's not like they're all gone for good. We both betrayed Anna."
"Yes. Those around us die."
Really? Dean runs a hand over his face. "I think you're depressed, Cas."
Cas stares. "Are you serious?"
"You're not expressing anything, and I know that's not your thing, but it's making me kind of want to shoot something."
"I've never had feelings to express. I don't think that's a problem now."
"It is if you're finally feeling them. For real this time. Not vicariously through one of us."
"Don't push me, Dean."
"You're pissed."
"I've hijacked you from heaven and done everything you've asked of me and you still question my motives. No, I'm not pissed."
"So you're going to sulk around until I start to tell you what to do? Or until I beg for you to tell me?"
"I don't care if you know or not."
"You really are a dick sometimes, you know that. Would you just show me already?"
Cas sighs. Uses his favorite tease. "Yours is a complicated joy, Dean."
Then Cas places his hands, flaps his wings.
Then it's just Dean and Cas alone in the forest -- enjoying being alone, far away from the outside world, so difficult, so untrue.
"Why this place, Cas?"
"It makes me homesick. For a place I haven't seen in a very long time."
The trees stretch up like the highest cathedral towers into the sky. Tendrils of tree trunks make paths in the mossy dirt and soft patches of clearing. There's utter silence. The air smells like heaven.
What is this if not paradise? But Cas has spent a long year on earth, for his sake. It must feel like an eternity anyway. A place like this might remind him of home.
"We were giants in heaven's garden once," he says. "Perfection."
Dean doesn't really know the difference between what humans and angels think. He thinks he's ready to stop guessing.
"It's nice to see you naked again. It's been awhile you know."
Cas looks over his shoulder. "You've missed me."
"Yes." Dean follows him into a clearing, stepping over a tree root with bare feet.
"It's not like there's anyone else, you know. The more you fuck me -- the less you do -- the more I'm gonna miss you."
Cas doesn't say anything at all to that. It's kind of the whole problem.
"What do you do here, Cas?"
"I get naked, manifest my grace, think of you when I don't think I can stop."
"You think of me."
"Yes. I do."
Dean kind of feels a rush at that. "Cas, I know you're the one getting the short end of the stick here."
"I know. But I don't see it that way most of the time."
"Do you jerk off when you think of me? Have you tried?"
Cas wears his I love you/Are you shitting me? face. He's pretty expressive for an emotionless dick.
"Had any luck?"
Cas turns toward Dean, looks at him with eyes narrowed in focus, not intent. He kneels in the dirt, touches himself.
And Dean crouches a few feet away. "Show me, show me." Dean talks him into it. Just a little. Places his hands on Castiel's thighs. Sidles up to him. Doesn't touch.
Castiel grabs Dean's chin in his free hand and looks down his nose at him, the judging, desperate, pleading look, pleading to see him wide-eyed, young and innocent. Scared. There.
Cas holds his face, and shows him.
There's lightning in the forest, raining down from heaven. Dean's seen it before, the night they took Alastair from the sidewalk right in front of him. White sparks and clouds of ozone and then empty space.
This time, the space isn't empty. Light rain falls in the clearing filled with strange new shadows. Castiel's wings are blindingly white, covered with what look like feathers, but made from nothing on earth. They even move in unison, like leaves before a rainstorm. And they are massive, so massive they reach past the edge of Dean's vision, blotting out the sun.
"Castiel," and Dean's on his back, with Castiel's hand resting on his cheek.
Yeah, Castiel's an angel. He's the most angel of any angel Dean's ever met.
That shouldn't hurt, but it does. It hurts a lot.
Cas is either so turned on or so scared, he looks like he's in pain. "Help me, Dean. Please. I don't know what this is."
Every sense Dean has is telling him to touch Cas' wings, and he can't stop staring. But he has to think of something else.
Be good, Dean, be good.
Be bad, Dean, and help the angel who loves you.
Castiel flexes his wings up and up, until they meet in a point far above them both, like the tree spires. Dean is already hard, but he's not breathless yet.
Then he looks at the fanned-out underside of the wings, spread out before the sun and creating a golden haze, and he's never seen anything like it, or so beautiful. And everything about it is telling him to touch.
He can't breathe at all when he moves around Cas, touches him on his lower back and begins to breathe again, against his skin.
Dean gathers the fingers of his right hand together and begins to press into the warmest part of the angel. Cas doesn't jump at all, he just spreads his knees and feet wider in the dirt.
Dean presses in, one knuckle at a time, as Cas lowers his head to the ground, so he can see. There's never any blood, never any fear of hurting him when Dean does this.
Cas keeps his wings high and faraway, but Dean can't stop looking; Cas said don't touch. Then Dean twists his fist, corkscrewing into Cas, whose whole body twists, his eyes fluttering closed and open again to watch.
The wings shudder in unison.
Dean does it again. And again. His hand is rough, calloused, creased in ways that none of Cas is. He twists and presses until he's buried down past his wrist. It's obscene, but it's so perfect, so so perfect.
Cas groans and groans but he's still making human sounds, still feeling this like a human would.
And Dean really, really wants to know what those things that look like feathers feel like...
He only lifts one finger, just one, and his thumb...
And he feels nothing.
Then a searing pain.
Then a stabbing pain in his ears and his hand is pulled...
Nothing but light.
Silence, Cas yelling something at him but it's silence...
"Dean? Dean, what did you do?"
He thinks for a moment, remembering doing several things. Then looks at his thumb, the redness there like a tattoo. Oh crap. "I... did the one thing you told me not to do." He stops long enough to witness Cas start to wind up. "Wait, I know I'm acting like a kid here, but hear me out."
"Why should I listen to you?"
"Because I just got you off, right? And you seriously needed it. Give me five minutes here."
Castiel's wings are low now, covering as much of his body as he can, and most of the clearing. The way the feathers wrap around the angel – cling to his skin – leaves a weight in Dean's chest he thinks it will take years to get rid of, even worse to know they'll never wrap around him that way.
And Dean realizes he's sitting far away from Castiel, at the other side of the clearing. Castiel had left him there.
"Cas, you can touch them, right?"
"I'm not supposed to."
"Why not?"
"Angels are incredibly vain. We used to enjoy each other's beauty. We used to touch, but then we stopped caring about anything else."
"You guys kind of are like lotus flowers with wings. Addictive." He strokes his thumb.
"We simply had no other needs. Man was young, and few. We didn't think of them very much. We ourselves had no means of doing any of the other things we do together. We found it felt very intense to feel our grace. And each other."
"So you did have orgies in paradise, I fucking knew it." Dean's eyes crease a little at his own joke, but just a little.
"Then came the fall. Some were thrown out of heaven for good. Most were just made to leave the most holy parts of paradise."
"Your Eden wasn't really Eden anymore."
"No, it wasn't."
"And when you said that you felt homesick, you weren't just talking about recent events."
"No, I wasn't."
"So your punishment was being banned from your home, and from your own bodies? That's sadistic".
"I know that now. I've believed otherwise in the past."
"Then do it now, Cas. Nothing's stopping you. I can't touch them, but you can."
Cas moves, his wings unfolding behind him, grabs Dean's hand and rubs his burned finger, looking at it closely.
"I won't touch. I'll stay way back." Just because Dean can't even trust himself at this point doesn't keep him from promising.
Dean watches as Castiel finds the single feather Dean touched, hanging low at his back, white in a sea of white. He smoothes it down, fingers it lovingly.
There's a layer of rain over everything, slicking down the leaves and Dean's hair and Cas' feathers, and he's still fingering the one Dean touched, threading his fingers like a musician. The wing is spread out parallel to his arm and he starts to play his fingers through it like a harp, ruffling the feathers up and then down again.
Dean watches Cas throw his head back with the sensations, open his mouth in silent cries. The wings shudder, calling out to be touched. Cas grabs the long feathers at the bottom of his wings and tugs and pulls, but he only has two hands, and his wings are gigantic.
It frustrates Dean just to watch. He clings to the root tendril, the bark scratching him, leaving dark bits on his skin for the rain to wash away. The roughness is as good as anything, anything to curb the frustration.
Cas is feeling it even worse. Dean watches him slam his back against a giant redwood, slide to his knees and drag his wings against the deep-ridged bark. Cas' mouth is open but he bites it closed, and begins to flap his wings against the tree, slapping them against the bark. The ground shakes and Dean covers his ears.
Cas doesn't stop. Not until the tree is missing strips of flesh. Not until Dean sees blood streaking the feathers.
Cas is so close, but he stops and falls to his knees, crawls forward until he's covered in mud up to his forearms. He's curled up on his side, panting and lost.
Before he knows it, Dean's at his side, crawling through the mud, but he keeps slipping in it, until he's covered shoulders to toes. Before he knows it, Dean's pressing on Castiel's shoulders, using his body weight to push his wings into the mud.
Cas arches, and his wings flap against the earth, spraying mud in all directions, then they're flapping in succession, wallowing in the mud, covered and soaked.
Dean goes to move back to get out of the way, but Castiel is writhing so beautifully, in that angelic limbo between heaven and hell, he can't stop watching, and he doesn't move very far.
"Don't stop, don't stop," he says under his breath, "you're ok, you're ok."
Then Dean has to cover his eyes and ears again, because Castiel is crying out and the very sun seems to be shining in the clearing...
Then it stops. When Dean opens his eyes, Cas is kneeling and bent over, the tips of his wings still buried in the mud.
"It's been too long, Dean. Thousands of years." He's whispering.
"What's wrong?"
"It's too much. Too much for both of us. I'm going to hurt you."
"No, you wouldn't."
"I wouldn't. But I will." Cas is angry.
"You can be angry, you can be frustrated and still do this. Sometimes it helps. Believe me, I know."
"I know. Alastair taught you much."
Dean kind of wants to stab him in the face, but instead he uses his fingers, and his nails, and goes straight for Castiel's eyes.
"How dare you say his name, you sonofabitch!"
Cas pushes Dean back, softly as he can manage. Heals any cuts on his face with the wave of a hand. "Don't tell me you don't recall him. That none of this has anything to do with him, and you. Even if you don't think it does, it matters, Dean."
"What if I don't want it to matter, Cas?"
"I know you don't. That's why I never mentioned it before now."
"So what then?"
"I just want you to know that I understand. When this goes too far – and I already think, perhaps it has – it won't be from ignorance. Neither of us would have been a fool."
Dean nods once, and meets Castiel's gaze. They don't move for a long while.
"I'm alone, Dean. That's just a fact. It's not your fault either."
"So let me help." Dean crawls to him until they're face to face, chest to chest, sex to sex. He knows Cas says he's done, but he also knows he's close, and can be persuaded.
Castiel places his hands on Dean's hips and bends him back, sucks every trace of mud and dirt from Dean's cock in a few well-suctioned strokes. Then his mouth is tight and loose and a little bit wild all at once, and Dean can't breathe for the rhythm.
And Dean thinks he's going to come any second, any second. Then he's on his back, lifted onto his shoulders as Cas licks a wide line down the underside of his hardness, over the skin between his balls, to where his tongue catches, then he presses in.
Cas holds onto him, holds him still however he wants him, opens him wide with his tongue and feels his pulse. When Dean moans he feels like he's moaning around that wide, hard, fantastic tongue. He's twisted around on his side, held completely still, so the only muscles he can move are involuntary ones, and they never stop shaking. He doesn't care that his cheek and forehead are getting pressed into the soft dirt, or that he's so close to coming that one scream would do it. Only that Castiel knows, knows everything, and he knows enough not to stop.
Then Dean is facing upwards and all the blood in his head rushes to his dick and the rush almost makes him fucking swoon.
Then he really does because Cas pushes him on his back again and brings his feet high above his head. It's the feel of that entire otherworldly angel hardness being pushed into him that brings him to, and back to Cas, hovering over him, wings extended to the sky, throwing mud.
Then Cas looks him in the eye – otherworldly, true, regretful – before he brings his wings down, sweeps them in and flat against his back, and the rest of Cas' length is shoved into Dean with the impact.
Cas flaps his wings -- again, again, again -- uses them alone to propel himself forward, keeping them low to the ground, and holds Dean's hips close. His knees are grinding into the mud, their bodies slipping in it. Dean feels the air rush out of him, the force of the impact half before it hits, and the aftershocks, building like waves.
It's the sound, the rush of air, the grunt when their bodies meet, that's doing Dean in. The slap of the mud and the flap of wings, and their skin.
Cas' wings are jerking, muddy, shiny with a sheen of sweat and rain.
Cas puts his head, his soaked hair, to Dean's heart, feels the rise and fall of his lungs. He stills his wings, just uses his hips the rest of the way, rocking and rubbing the rest of the way.
Dean comes, screaming over the din in his head, sobbing he's so grateful.
Cas grabs him as he rides it too, and his wings are vibrating with the sensation, in time to the pulse of Dean's coming.
Dean feels it go on forever. And then he doesn't care – he reaches down and grabs handfuls of Castiel's feathers in his hands, wherever he can reach, knowing he will feel nothing, but Cas, Cas will feel this...
When Cas finally comes inside Dean, Dean's so raw he would swear he feels throbbing all the way through him. Pressure on his chest where Cas is screaming. Then it doesn't stop, a deep throbbing through him and around him, and growing deeper and deeper... A rumbling through the earth itself...
And Dean's hands are burning now, but he holds his hands steady and twists. Pulls hard. He feels his arms burned as Cas opens his wings upwards, his ears go silent except for a humming growing louder in the din, and Dean is pressed down into the ground by a shockwave that rolls away from them.
He feels something warm and wet pool under his back.
Then he feels nothing.
Chapter Two
He comes to and they're back in the hotel. There aren't enough ice cubes in the world, but the heat isn't the problem. Dean feels physically fine, but he's having a hard time remembering his own name, or anything that's happened recently, and Castiel is as pale as he's ever seen him, wide red-rimmed eyes and a look in his eye that scares him.
"What happened?" Dean tries to sit up on the bed, but fails.
And Cas is still angry. "You almost died. When I came back to myself, you were unconscious in your own blood. The ground was soaked with it."
"But I'm ok. You healed me."
"It doesn't matter. That never should have happened."
It's slowly coming back to him, the mud and the wings that blocked out the sun, and the power and light...
"It was amazing, Cas."
"How can you say that? After all I've said – why can't you listen to me? Just once. Just to prove that you can. Just to make me not feel like a fool."
"I'm sorry, Cas."
Castiel sighs. "I'm glad you haven't give up on the angels. I'd like to think I helped with that. But we're different, Dean. Very much so." Then. "I will do what's right. You've already given me more than anyone has ever given me."
"That sounds like goodbye, Cas."
"You will risk your life for pleasure. To prove something to me. But you won't do anything I ask."
"I'll risk my life in order to live it. That doesn't mean I'm not listening to you."
"That makes no sense. Not really. After all this time, after all I've sacrificed, and watched you sacrifice too, you still don't respect me."
"Yes I do."
"Not the way you respect your brother, or even strangers that you meet."
"You're so repressed, Cas. I can't shut myself off like that. I can't take back what I already know to be true, even if you can't see it yet. I risk my life for all kinds of other reasons. Why not something good?"
"I don't think you learned your lesson when I saved you from Hell. I think I've helped you hide behind your excuses."
"What lesson was I supposed to learn?"
"That you are meant for a purpose. You should not risk your life frivolously."
"Frivolous? Is that what this is?"
"There are more important things."
"No, there aren't! I'm fucking tired of this, Cas!"
"Let it go, Dean. It's not important."
Dean moves to strangle him but he doesn't get very far.
He can't make Cas understand what it means to him. Understand if it doesn't mean anything to Cas, if he doesn't offer him anything, he knows Cas is going to implode on him, and he knows he won't be able to do this by himself.
And maybe he's never had faith in anything besides his baby brother and his loyal father – and he had that, all of that, once -- and he doesn't have any faith in heaven or the angels, and he doesn't care what happens to him, he just wants to think that someone is fighting for the world, and he wants to feel that his love meant something before it all comes crashing down. If it doesn't make a difference to anyone else, if it never had, it was enough to make this angel choose him, and follow him, and believe that he could make him feel and not regret a thing.
It was enough to make his whole life begin to make sense.
Ever since he'd returned from Hell none of this has meant what it used to mean. None of it makes any more sense than it ever had before.
"Life is shit, Cas! I know that. You got a glimpse of what's in my head and you were ready to throw it all into the fire. And I was with you, Cas. All the way. Take away Sammy and take away any meaning of life and death, and yeah, I saw it all once too."
Dean watches Cas look at the ground, the ugly worn carpet. He keeps talking. "I know about the most powerful things and the most fragile things, and how sometimes it's hard to know the difference."
Dean thinks of single feathers that can burn with a touch, and Castiel's gaze when he's sure. "But you used to show up, Cas, out of nowhere. These small entrances that seemed so amazing to me. And I'd think, he came for me. He thought I was worth saving, and maybe I was. At the very least, I owe it to him to try."
"You thought god sent me to watch over you."
"Yes."
"I did too."
Silence.
"You said you think of me, Cas. How much do you think about me?"
"All the time. Always."
"And you think that's going to stop when you walk out that door?"
"No. I know it never will. Everything else will seem wrong. I won't know what to think about any of it. About my own existence. But I won't feel like a fool."
"No?"
"No."
"Look, I just don't like being ordered around."
"I know that. It's one of the first things you taught me. But I'm not going to be your death wish."
"I wanted you to feel like an angel again. Like what you are. You said don't be ashamed of the way god made you. Didn't you?"
Cas doesn't answer.
"Well what about you? Cas, did god order you to leave your wings alone? Do you still believe that?"
"He made examples of us."
"You saw god?"
Finally, he shakes his head. "No. My superiors showed us what would happen to our graces if we didn't leave them alone."
"Bad things?"
"Horrible things."
Dean wonders it for the hundredth time. "Why did you accept them so blindly, Cas?"
"They offered us paradise. Our father's love. Who wouldn't accept whatever they wanted?"
Dean kind of understands that. Just a little. It hurts to spend your whole life following something and then find out it doesn't mean what you think.
"It's good to question people's motives sometimes."
"Like you do? All the time? Does that help, Dean?"
"Maybe it sucks." He shrugs. "But it's saved my ass once or twice."
"What are you motives here, Dean?"
Dean shrugs. Love seems like the wrong answer, but he can't think of a righter one. Cas knows anyway.
It feels like this argument is never going to stop. They are different beings, and experience gained from watching and experience gained from living are two different things.
Castiel sighs, but there's mercy back in his eyes. "You don't make stupid decisions very often. I wish you'd stop making them in regards to me."
"I'm trying to go with my instincts here. It just gets all screwed up."
"I can really hurt you, Dean." Cas looks at him firmly in the eye, making sure.
"I know." And Dean holds it.
"Do you?"
"I know! Ok? Only, are you going to stop trying now? Because of what happened?" Dean's eyes are lit up with regret. Even his faint hope shines.
And Cas' face is suddenly covered with pain and defeat. He looks like he doesn't understand why Dean asked the question.
"Cas?" It makes him feel like shit.
"I think so, Dean."
"But they're your wings, Cas. Your grace. They're like your dick and your soul put together. You don't just get rid of that."
"Some humans do. Sometimes in my father's name. Removing the foreskin, the clitoris, for different reasons. Parts of the body that serve no purpose but pleasure."
"Isn't that wrong? Isn't that really fucked up? To think god would want you to cut off your wings in order to serve him better? I mean, does that make sense?"
"It fits with what I know from everyone else but you, Dean."
"Maybe I'm right this time! How can something that feels good be wrong?"
Cas narrows his eyes. "Is that what you tell yourself – if god didn't want you to touch, he wouldn't make you feel?"
"It's a pretty good rationalization, you have to admit."
"Just because you can, you should?"
"No, because we should, we should. If I've proven anything by now, haven't I at least proven that your orders are not coming from the big man? You're on your own. That doesn't have to be a bad thing."
"That's a horrible thing, Dean."
"Well then how do you know he didn't plan for this? That we weren't supposed to figure out a way to get the angels' sexy back?"
"The what?"
"For you to get off again! In any way that's possible."
"Just because you keep making that argument doesn't mean it's true."
"Well how do you know it's not? Did anyone strike us down today? Has your dick fallen off? Is the world ending any faster today than it was ending yesterday?"
"If god doesn't strike us down, then it can't be wrong?"
"Hey, people have been using that one for years too. Maybe god cares what we do in bed. Maybe he doesn't. Ok, whatever, maybe this is stupid, but I've had nights with strangers, nights when I didn't care if I lived or died, but they've always come through for me. Sometimes it was getting off, and sometimes it wasn't -- just the conversations afterwards, or something they taught you. Someone to have a drink with, who you shouldn't by any rights feel close to, but you do. Maybe god has something to do with that. Like sending a messenger."
"God is speaking to us when we're most acting like animals?"
"Don't be a dick. Sex creates life, too, you know."
"Not the sex we have, Dean."
"Well then what about the already living? Don't we deserve a word too? Isn't that what you want?"
"That's the only thing I've ever wanted. But that doesn't change the fact that you almost died."
"And you healed me. Now I know our limits."
Cas scowls. "Do you even care?"
"Look, I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. Really, I am."
"Dean. Sometimes when I'm with you, and I know you're not paying attention as you should, I do get the urge to hurt you."
"I felt that too, right before you tried to suck my brain out through my dick. I wouldn't say it was a bad thing."
"I don't like how you're still reacting from hell." Cas says it softly, knowing it has to be said.
"And I don't know how you're still reacting from heaven. We just have to deal with it. Look, I go through this thing that begins the end of the world and destroys all that I am, and you, you're the only one that saves me from it, and you continue to, in every possible way. You're still saving me, and I got nothing else."
Dean just watches him at the window, coat still on. "You're so much, Cas. I'm just trying to return the favor."
"So what happens next?"
"Take off your coat. Stay awhile?"
Cas waves his arm and Dean hears a rumble from deep inside the walls. "Oh, yes..." he moans and falls back on the bed as the air conditioner clicks on.
In five minutes, he's asleep.
Cas has never tried it before, but he decides to remove his coat and shoes, and join Dean on the bed. He looks at his favorite thing – sleeping, silent, peaceful Dean, the profile of his eyelashes, his nose, his lips – as his eyelids grow heavy and he opens them again to see Dean in his dreams.
|
News 
