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Castiel chooses humanity, and he delights in the pleasures of the flesh.
He is alive in this body and he intends to honor his Father’s work by tasting all it has to offer. He will do this as fervently, righteously, and to the fullest extent of his ability. He will learn its faculties and relish the experience of living in it completely until that life ends, or until his brothers and sisters call him back to Heaven.
He moves into the bunker -- and, to the surprise of absolutely no one, Dean’s bed -- and settles back into the routines of food and sleep and hygiene. When he is confident in those fundamentals, he begins the work of exploration.
Well, he tries. Dean is a worryingly reluctant teacher. It’s paradoxical given that Dean once took him to a brothel to feed him alcohol and divest him of his virginity. Now he’s cagey, as if each new curiosity that draws Castiel’s attention is a cause for concern.
When Castiel asks to try peyote, Dean presses his lips together into a thin line. Three days later, though, he comes home to the bunker with a few buttons of the stuff, and they go out driving until they find a good field in which to lay their blanket and trip the night through together.
Dean seems only marginally less uncomfortable when Castiel asks about yoga, though maybe that’s because Sam is there, and offers to run him through some asanas. He turns out to be surprisingly apt at yoga. He likes the way it makes him sweat, the way it makes him feel long and limber. Yoga, he decides, is a thing he will keep.
Dean brings him increasingly spicy hot sauces, a TENS unit, and a pair of gravity boots that he can use to hang from Sam’s pull-up bar. Dean brings him IcyHot and Pop Rocks and feathers and sandpaper and a Wartenberg pinwheel. Dean brings him everything he asks for, no matter how simple or strange.
Dean denies him nothing except his approval, and it aches. Every time, Castiel kisses him over and over until the crease leaves Dean’s brow, but no amount of kissing takes the haunted look out of Dean’s eyes.
More than once he considers just not asking anymore, but he can see no way that doing so would breed anything beyond resentment and distrust. And, because Dean is Dean, there is no way to address this constructively. To address a thing directly with Dean before it hits a crisis point has always been to push too hard.
He resolves to stay his course. The waiting is terrible, but it’s the least worst of an array of difficult choices, and it’s the only one likely to provoke real action.
“Have you ever done ecstasy?” Castiel asks one night, and he is strangely relieved by the way something in Dean almost audibly snaps. Not outward at Castiel but inward, as if he’s been hit by a stray bullet. Everything -- his eyes, his expression, his posture -- practically blanks.
Castiel reaches out to touch Dean’s hand, but Dean pulls it away.
“Just don’t,” Dean says and crosses his arms, eyes firmly pointed down and away.
Castiel ignores the warning and wraps an arm around Dean’s waist and presses Dean’s forehead to his. He refuses to drop his gaze even though Dean is clearly a wounded animal quivering with the desire to fight or fly.
“Cas--”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Dean’s whole body practically screams violence in its stillness, but Castiel calls its bluff. When Dean tries to push away, Castiel refuses to let him. His grip is no longer steel, but he’s strong enough.”
“Damn it, Cas. Fucking let go of me.”
“No.”
“Do you want me to score you some E or not?”
“This isn’t about the ecstasy.”
“So what the fuck is it about?”
“You.”
Dean scoffs and tries to tug back again, but not as hard this time. “I’m fine, Cas. Let go.”
“You’re not. This is not fine,” Castiel says, and lets his own hurt show. Every pained swallow, every worried look, every sign from Dean that something must be wrong is a thing he has had to carry, and this crack in Dean’s facade is the best opportunity he’s had to try and lay it down. “Whatever you’re doing, whatever you think you’re protecting me from, you need to tell me what it is so that I can quit hurting you.”
Dean’s eyes close and Castiel feels the fight go out of his body. And oh, how can a man so hardened look so much like a wounded boy?
“Just tell me, Dean. Whatever’s wrong, I need to know.”
When Dean finally speaks -- and it is a long time -- it is not words but a name that falls from Dean’s lips.
Zachariah.
Castiel’s heart creaks under the weight of it, like glass on the verge of shattering. He has known for years about his brother’s hand in urging Dean to become Michael’s sword, but it never occurred to him that the specifics of how might have left these kinds of scars. It’s a comfort to Castiel that human anger can match an angel’s wrath. It’s a further comfort that Zachariah is already dead because it saves him the trouble of hunting his former brother down to slay him.
“It was a manipulation,” Castiel whispers, unable to keep the harshness off his lips. “Whatever he showed you--”
“Was you. Human.”
“And the worst possible version of it, no doubt.”
Dean opens his eyes and pulls back slightly. “No. I mean, you weren’t…” His eyes search around, as if they might alight on the right words somewhere in the bunker’s library. “You were still you, but cut off: no mojo, no angel radio, nothing. And you were so broken, Cas. You were...”
“Degenerate?” Castiel says, realization blooming ugly and sad in his chest like a bruise. Dean’s reluctance, infuriating as it’s been, was rational.
Dean huffs out a weak, sore laugh. “More like broken, but yeah. You made me look like a priest.”
He presses his hand to the side of Dean’s face. He likes the roughness of early afternoon stubble under his palm, and the softness of the skin just above Dean’s cheekbone as he strokes it with his thumb. There’s not another face on the planet Castiel loves as much as Dean Winchester’s, and he wishes he could make that feeling sing through the airwaves, or shine out through his eyes, or even just seep into Dean’s skin where they touch so that it could take the edge of the pain away.
“Do you think I’m broken?” he asks, and presses a soft kiss to the corner of Dean’s mouth.
“No. But I’m scared, Cas. I’m scared you’ll change. I don’t want you to change.”
Castiel leans back a little, brow furrowed. He tilts his head a little, and tries to understand. “I’ve changed a lot since we first met. We both have.”
“Yeah, but…” Dean struggles, visibly, for difficult words. “I see him in you, sometimes. That version of you that Zachariah showed me. You dive into things so deep that sometimes I’m scared you’ll never come back up to the surface. You know as well as I do how much easier it is to just give up and kill the pain.”
“You think I’m in pain?”
“Yeah, Cas. I do. You’re human. Humans -- humanity -- hurts. And you’ve gotta admit it’s a hell of a step down from what you were doing before.”
“You mean being cast out by Metatron with no warning into desperate circumstances? You’re right, Dean. That was, as you say, one hell of a step down,” Castiel snaps. He doesn’t mean to, but the words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. This whole exchange between them, the last few weeks? They do hurt. Very much.
He watches the guilt cross Dean’s face and lets it linger for a moment tracing his fingers down Dean’s arm and taking his hand.
“Do you understand why this time is different from before? Or even from what Zachariah showed you?”
Dean shakes his head.
“It’s different because I haven’t been thrown away, Dean. I’m not abandoned or cast out. I’m here with my family’s blessing. My humanity isn’t a loss, Dean. It’s a gift.”
The confusion on Dean’s face is as plain as the freckles on his skin. “But if you’re so happy, why the sensation fest?”
Castiel blinks. “What do you mean?”
“You know. The drugs. The stimming. The weird-ass fitness shit.”
“You think I’m trying to anesthetize myself?”
Dean swallows and nods. “Well yeah. I mean, that’s how most people roll.”
Oh, Father. Castiel wants to laugh. This moment, it would be absurd if it didn’t make so much sense.
“Dean,” he begins, and squeezes Dean’s hand. “Most people didn’t start out as angels. I’m eons old, but as a man? I’ve been a sheltered child. Being mortal is...it’s finitude and potential crashing together. I’m not running away from pain, I’m running toward experience. I don’t want to numb anything. I want…”
He bites his lip and looks up. What does he want?
“I want to drag you to a rave and do drugs and make you dance with me even though you hate the music. I want to find a hundred foods I hate just to prove I tried them. I want to learn to fix a car and paint a house and play guitar. And Dean, I want so badly for you to understand how much I love being in this human body, right now, with you.”
There is a quiver in Dean’s lips when Castiel kisses him, and if Dean’s eyes are a little shinier than usual when they break that kiss, he’s not going to say.
Instead, he leads Dean to their room.
It was Dean’s room once, but now the vinyl and guns have been supplemented with other things, like a ceramic bowl full of feathers, bones, and shiny stones, a stack of books in various languages, and a broken antique table clock that Castiel has been trying to learn to fix.
Hey layers kisses upon kisses on Dean’s mouth. He revels in the taste of him, this Righteous Man. There is magic in the scrape of stubble, and the way Dean’s kisses in return ignite him and make his blood thrum. He strips away Dean’s shirt, then tugs his own up and over his head so they can press together, skin-to-skin. They are warm together, Dean’s skin flushed and pink against Castiel’s more tanned complexion.
He backs Dean up against the mattress and they tumble down together. They’re all hands, it seems: Dean’s on Cas’ chest, his shoulders and back, Cas’ cupping Dean’s face, in his hair, tracing lines down his belly.
Castiel undoes Dean’s belt and the button of his jeans, then draws down the zip tooth by tooth, as if fascinated. Dean lifts his hips and pushes down the waistbands of his jeans and underwear, and Castiel slides off the bed and between Dean’s knees to loosen the laces on Dean’s and his boots. He puts both pairs next to one another next to the nightstand, and Dean kicks away his jeans and his underwear.
“You’re so beautiful naked,” Castiel says, stroking up Dean’s thighs before he spreads them further apart. He nuzzles and sucks at the soft sack of Dean’s balls and grasps Dean’s slowly rising cock. He works it gently, drinking in the sighs of pleasure coming from further up the bed.
There’s no rush here. No urgency. Castiel undoes his belt and the button of his trousers, but doesn’t bother to touch himself beyond pulling his dick up against his belly so it won’t get caught. Instead, he is content just to tongue and suck and stroke until Dean reaches down to pull him up onto the bed.
They rearrange themselves so that Dean’s on the mattress properly now, with Castiel on top, straddling him.
Castiel hums satisfaction as Dean touches him, hands gliding down his back to his hips. Dean’s thumbs hook under his waistband and guide the fabric down past the curve of Castiel’s ass. Dean’s fingers ghost over that curve, then cup the flesh there possessively. He rocks up, his bare cock rubbing against Castiel’s belly as they kiss.
“So good,” he murmurs against Dean’s lips as they rock together, bodies close, Castiel’s cock pushing free from his clothes. He lets Dean set the pace with his hands and his hips.
He kisses every part of Dean he can: lips and face and fingers and neck. Chest and collarbone and shoulder. He strokes himself, then Dean, then both of them together.
Castiel wants more.
He slips a leg between Dean’s so that they can wiggle his pants and briefs down far enough for him to kick them away. They roll together onto their sides, face to face with legs entwined, hands caressing and clutching on for purchase. Dean’s mouth closes on one of Castiel’s nipples, and he breathes out a low moan because Dean’s teeth are the perfect balance of pain and pleasure.
“I could fuck you if you want,” he whispers in Dean’s ear. They don’t always -- there are dozens of ways they’ve found to get off together just as intimate -- but some nights Dean just wants to be taken, and Castiel knows it’s hard for him to ask.
Dean shakes his head, then bites at the soft skin where Castiel’s neck and shoulder meet, just hard enough to sting but not to bruise. It’s powerful, a tang of pain in all this pleasure.
Castiel arches, glories in sensation, loves how Dean growls and pushes him onto his back. Dean grasps Castiel’s cock and works him, less gentle now, and starts a trail of bites: collarbone, the soft skin beside his nipple, along his ribs, his soft belly, his hip. When Dean’s mouth closes on his cock, Cas thrills a little to the fear that he might just bite there, too.
He doesn’t. His mouth is soft and hot and greedy, with the occasional light scrape of teeth to push the pleasure further.
Castiel watches, captivated by the way Dean’s whole torso moves when he starts to jerk himself off while he sucks, and the way his freckles stand out on his flushed skin. He can tell when Dean is getting close by the way the rhythm shifts and the desperate way Dean’s tongue begins to work him.
“Gorgeous,” Castiel says, and allows himself to touch Dean’s hair, to cup his skull, to fuck his ready mouth instead of being passive. Dean’s hand closes around the base of him, maybe to keep him going too deep initially, but then Dean starts working him with hand and mouth together.
It’s too much. It’s perfect.
Castiel comes in Dean’s mouth, one hand gripping the sheets and the other still in Dean’s hair. He whimpers at the suction when Dean swallows, and he’s still woozy and flying from the rush when he pulls Dean up the bed to embrace him, big spoon-style, and finish him off with his hand.
“Fuck,” Dean gasps, panting. He rolls onto his back after a moment, and Castiel nestles up against him, head on his chest, one arm over his waist.
He traces lines across Dean’s skin with his fingertips.
“You still want me to tell you about E?”
“Maybe later,” Castiel says. He tilts his head up to look at Dean. “I’m kind of engrossed in this other thing right now.”
“Yeah?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He snuggles back up against Dean’s chest. “I think it may keep me busy all night.”
“Man, I hope so.”
Castiel rests, content, glad in what he has chosen.