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The door of the motel room slams shut behind Dean’s back, and even though it was his own hand that forced it he still wants to peel out of his skin at the loud noise. Teeth on edge, he stomps his wet boots on the rough brown carpet that probably hasn’t been cleaned since the day it was installed. The action leaves behind mud and oozing rain puddles in the exact shape of his boot tread. The perfection of its symmetry makes him scowl. He puts his foot down and scuffs it back and forth, over and over, until the spot underneath him is nothing but a congealed patch of mud and fraying carpet fibers.

The unhappy turn of his mouth doesn’t let up as he stalks further into the room. Again, though he had suspected it, hoped it wouldn’t be the case, Sam is missing. Two empty queen beds, both made, stare back at Dean until his jaw locks up and his pulse throbs in the tendon of his neck. He’s gonna fucking string the kid up.

Dean hadn’t even needed to waste the gas going to the nearby convenience store to pick up a six-pack and some beef jerky, he only made the trip because he was hoping that the scene he would find upon returning would be different than the one he left. Well. He never claimed to be the luckiest bastard alive or the racehorse to bet on. Still, even with his suspicions that Sam’s disappearance would be prolonged, it doesn’t stop Dean from being angry about it. He’s not sure if the frustration is entirely from the lack of communication on Sam’s part, but Dean will tell himself it is because he’s in no right headspace to admit to himself that he’s angry that Sam left Dean alone and scared.

He gets angry easily now in ways he never had before. Maybe he was just stupid before. Stupid, stupid, and naively hopeful like a fucking fruit basket. Being twenty-nine and still thinking someone was gonna save his sorry ass? That he would be able to get away from all of this? Maybe he’ll reach back in time and throttle himself, right after he’s through with Sam.

Don’t look forward, he’d say. Be bloody, be crass, and be stupid enough to think that something like Hell just gets played up for the movies. That torture just twists funny like the bunny ears of a shoelace, instead of having someone peel his skin-

Dean gulps and forces his mind very strategically blank until the groan of the old floorboards under the old motel carpet sound like nothing at all, and the rainwater still rolling in beads from his hair down into the collar of his shirt are nonexistent pesters. He walks across the dark room to the kitchenette table where a lap sits and he clicks it on so that the room is covered in a muted yellow light. He should shower. He takes another step towards the bathroom that’s at the far end of the space. He stops. He doesn’t want to see his naked body. It’s all intact, whatever, thanks to the freak claw machine that yanked him up to his pine box, but just because it’s in one piece doesn’t mean that one piece is his anymore. He wears the thing because he doesn’t have another choice.

His soul is vicious inside of him. Gleeful to be out of the pit, terrible to be forced back to Earth, irksome in its goal to be sent to Heaven.

No shower.

Not even bothering to take his dirty boots or soggy clothes off, he walks precisely to the foot of his bed- not that it would matter if he used Sam’s because Sam isn’t here- and lays down on it. On his back. Stares up at the ceiling and doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe. Maybe if he’s still for long enough he can be dead at the same time that he’s alive.

There are only two stories to the hotel, and this room is on the second. The rain outside makes direct contact with the roof in a blanket of harsh white noise that Dean doesn’t find soothing so much as it builds his paranoia over not being able to hear what’s happening outside. Some storm is blowing in to cover the state of Georgia, like a terrible omen sent from the ocean itself. Thunder builds up in the distance and travels at a snail’s pace until it rumbles all the way to the motel, all the way to Dean’s exact spot so that the cardboard walls around him groan and the mattress under him shudders. Dean doesn’t take his eyes off of the piss-yellow stain that has somehow found itself a home on the popcorn ceiling.

He aches so deeply in his bones that he wouldn’t know the difference between marrow and decay. There’s the impulse to toss and turn, but that sort of movement would only stir up other things, other hurts, the way that a steady tide stirs up dirt on the bottom of a creek, so he holds himself very still as another crash of thunder rolls through the Sandcastle Inn.

The knock on the room’s door nearly sends Dean through the popcorn ceiling he’s been staring at. It’s not overly polite, it’s not hysterical, and it’s not the rhythmic pattern that Sam knows to use in order to signal that it’s him trying to gain entry. Just three firm raps to the wood that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than a knock, even in weather like this. Dean rolls from the side of his mattress as he reaches for the gun in the waistband of his jeans, his heart up in his throat and staying stuck there. It beats so hard that he can feel it against the roof of his mouth. His eyes are wide and peeled as he crouches low. He waits to see if there’ll be another round of knocking, but it never comes. Just those three steady raps.

He cocks his gun and holds it close to his chest, pointing towards the source of the noise, as he inches to the door slow enough that the floorboards won’t creak and give him away. It takes at least ten seconds, but once he’s there he very carefully stands upright again in order to look through the peephole that leads out to a view of the now soaking wet walkway that attaches all of the second floor rooms to each other.

There’s a figure. Dean holds his breath as though it alone would be loud enough to give away his presence to the person outside. His left eye squints shut while his right peers through the milky glass. Just barely, he makes out short dark hair. Broad shoulders under some sort of overcoat. Definitely male. His gaze strains against the low-quality view to take in the long, straight set of a nose… Suddenly, as though knowing impossibly that Dean is pressed up to the other side of the wood door, blue eyes train themselves on the peephole so that they stare right back at Dean with pinpoint accuracy.

Dean’s knees nearly buckle as he tosses the gun onto the bed behind him before reaching a clambering hand towards the cheap, golden doorknob. He unlocks it just to lock it accidentally again with how hard his fingers shake. His teeth are on edge in frustration because he needs to get the door open now- right now-

When was the last time Dean saw that face? Years ago. Oh God. Until he dreamed about it, both in his sleep and while wide awake, staring forward out of the Impala’s windshield, every Southern highway mile looking exactly like the last while Dean replayed the soft affection of blue eyes that had been looking at him, at Dean. He remembers the way warmth used to bubble up in his stomach until it made him wanna suck his thumb like a goddamn baby.

He would shiver at night remembering that Louisiana bar and the way that a broad hand had pet through his hair. It’s cut even shorter now than it had been then, and Dean wonders, stupidly, numbly, if that will be a problem.

With a yank, the door swings in a broad and powerful sweep, partially from Dean’s force and partially from the strong wind and rain that has taken an invitation into the now open room. The door has no friction at its hinges, so it flies fast until it's forced to stop against the wall perpendicular to it with a bang that’s as sharp as a gunshot. Dean’s skittish body jumps, but he ignores his own response because his crawling skin is riding backseat to- “Castiel?”

“Hello, Dean.”

Cas is completely drenched, not that you’d know it from his facial expression, which seems nonplussed about standing outside in a torrential downpour. And Dean, who had just finally gotten dry after his own walk from the Impala to the motel room not even ten minutes ago, now finds himself pelted with oncoming droplets. He blinks the water out of his eyelashes.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Dean drags a hand over his face to try to get rid of the newfound dampness and doesn’t wait for an answer from Cas before he’s saying, “Get in here.” He reaches out to grab the lapel of Cas’s trench coat and tugs until Castiel is over the threshold entirely.

Only then does Dean reach for the door to push it shut again against the elements trying their damndest to flood the room. Just as the door shuts with a click, another rumble of thunder rolls across the building. Once the vibrations settle, they leave Dean with Cas alone in this room in a way that makes Dean feel buttass naked. An awkwardness lingers in the air that Castiel does nothing to try to break. Maybe it would be a little less queasy if Dean wasn’t so struck down remembering the way that Cas kissed the side of his head three years ago.

Finally, Dean huffs a nervous breath and says, “This isn’t how I was expecting my evening to go, huh?”

He’s been practicing this persona that he puts on now. The version of himself that he’s supposed to be to make other people feel better, to reassure them that he doesn’t remember Hell and really everything is fine and don’t think too hard about any of it. Throw in a joke the way he used to. Put on a smirk and a sliding sort of confidence that everyone, including Sam, seems to gobble right up.

The charade feels even more lackluster at this moment than it has before, because even as Dean smiles his hands are still shaking.

I missed you, he almost wants to say. Almost. It’s been so long since the last time that he saw Cas that he almost wonders if he actually misses Castiel or if he just misses the paradise of his memory that’s long since been fawned-over and faded. It’s only been stretched out in daydreams for three years on Earth, but Dean had practically loved that moment raw during his forty years in Hell. Alastair would cut into Dean’s fleshy side and Dean would remember the LSU game- he thinks maybe they had been playing Ole Miss- and how the score had been 7 to 13 when Castiel had first walked into the bar. Replaying Cas’s tender touches every time Alastair would pull out Dean’s teeth.

Someone loves me, he would cry inside his own little walnut skull. Someone up there loves me. I only met him once.

The emotions of seeing Castiel like this again are far too massive for some dirty motel room to contain, and yet, here they are.

“No, I’m sure it wasn’t,” Cas replies.

Dean’s eyes drink him in. Dean doesn’t bother to hide it. “What are you doing here? Haven't seen you ‘round in a while.” The last of his words have a sarcastic blade to them in a way that they never would have before Hell, and he’s still getting used to the metallic tang in his mouth.

His tone makes Cas’s face drop from something neutral into something harsher. The reaction makes Dean’s heart slam against his lungs in agony at the same time that he almost revels in having any sort of autonomy that allows him to make someone else angry at him. He almost feels worse about not feeling bad at all than he does for upsetting Cas in any small way. The masochist in him jumps with joy. Yes, yes, I deserve to have Castiel know what a terrible person I am.

Cas’s eyes narrow. “I suppose I had a… hunch that you may be in need of company.”

The words punch an incredulous laugh out of Dean’s throat. “Well, that’s quite a premonition you had.” He doesn’t know why he’s being so standoffish but he can’t stop. Every single second that he’s been living since he got out of the pit just gets more and more bitter.

“Is it untrue, then?” Cas’s words are pleasant, but his voice is just as cutting as Dean’s had been.

They stand there staring at each other. This isn’t how Dean imagined their reunion to be at all, and boy, did he imagine it. After John died, after Sam died, Dean would hold on to the minute comfort that Castiel had offered him over a whiskey neat and a beer. Maybe he’s just angry that Cas didn’t come back sooner.

“I don’t know what’s true anymore,” and it’s meant to be a joke, but the words soften at the end into something honest. It makes Dean want to hide immediately. It doesn’t matter how happy- too happy in a way that he doesn’t deserve after what he’s done- he is to have Cas here. Dean wants to go lock himself in the bathroom until Castiel leaves. “More changes in four months than you’d think.”

“I suspect that it felt like much longer than four months for you,” Cas says with a quiet sort of sympathy.

Dean’s skin crawls.

“Sit down,” he says in lieu of actually answering Cas’s implication. “Have some beef jerky.”

Castiel offers no resistance, just makes his way over to the little side table that’s tucked up beside the kitchenette, pulling out one of the two chairs that had been pushed in underneath it and settling down. His dark hair is still soaked in a way that makes it frizzy and unruly. Dean very carefully keeps his eye line trained on Cas’s face so that he won’t be able to feel any sort of way about Cas’s damp dress shirt collar, how the white of it has become semi-translucent, and how water droplets trail from Cas’s hair down his tan neck to make themselves a home in the knot of Cas’s tie.

It’s not that he’s into men- he’s not- he- So what if there were a handful of nights where he woke up from wet dreams that featured a beige trenchcoat? His eyes fluttering open to a dark motel room, hard in his boxers, while the hazy remnants of the dream revealed that he was hard just from dreaming about Castiel kissing his neck and holding onto Dean’s hips with hands like oversized cradles. Turned on from being cherished.

After Hell, it seems like the denial of these feelings inside of him matters even more and simultaneously even less in equal measures.

“I don’t see you for three- four years now, and you decide tonight’s the night to show up. Tell me why you’re really here, Cas. Don’t bullshit me.”

Cas’s expression is blank in a way that clashes with Dean’s memories of the adoration he wore so openly that night at the bar. “I am not ‘bullshitting’ with you. I’m here because you need company. Being on your own at this time is cause for concern.”

Dean scoffs. “Yeah, concern from who?”

“Me.”

The word cuts right through the thin skin of Dean’s belly until Cas’s care greets the terrified and shaking version of Dean that he became under Alastair’s knife, which he holds protected deep inside of himself. His body rejects the loving sensation immediately.

“Well, I don’t need company. What I need is a beer and a 24-hour-diner waitress riding my dick.” As soon as the sentence leaves his mouth he wants to gag over it. He doesn’t mean any of it. Not a single word is true. The welling disgust inside of his chest is finally enough to overthrow the masochistic part of his brain that is dead set on punishing Dean for what he’d done in Hell. When Cas does nothing but continue to stare at Dean with that same blank look, Dean gulps. “I didn’t mean that,” he admits.

“I know,” Castiel finally says, deeply. His expression doesn’t change.

It makes Dean’s eye twitch. One second Dean is swimming through his affections like a child in an oversized coat and the next he wants to wrap his hands around Cas’s neck and start wringing. Not that it’d do much, if Dean’s memory serves him correctly about how un-human Cas was and continues to be. Dean has aged three years while Castiel looks the exact same as he had in Louisiana, albeit much wetter. Dean thinks his tie might even still be crooked to the same side.

“You don’t know shit.” Dean feels his haunches raise in agitation that he can’t put his finger on. As though every frustration he’s felt since he broke ground from his grave is being taken out on Cas, who just sits there watching him. “Don’t fucking pretend like you know me- or anything about what I think. You wanna ride into town on your high horse whenever you damn well please and start talking like you understand a goddamn thing that I just went through. Where were you when I needed you, huh? Huh? You got a fucking answer for me? I spent-” Embarrassingly, Dean’s bottom lip has started to tremble in a way he can’t stop- “forty years down there. Getting my guts tied into balloon animals while they were still inside of me. You got no clue- Not about me, not about what I’ve been through, and not about a single fucking thing I feel right now.”

His teeth are clenched so tightly that when he breathes out, little drops of spit hiss from between them.

Much to Dean’s aggravation, Castiel’s face gives nothing away as he stares Dean down with intent blue eyes that don’t blink.

Five more seconds go by, and when it’s clear that Cas isn’t going to respond Dean snarls, “Aren’t you gonna say something?”

Castiel’s head tilts almost imperceptibly to the right.

“Stop looking at me like that!”

He’s stomping towards Cas’s chair before he thinks twice about it, violence singing in his veins, damn the consequences. He’ll be satisfied even if he only gets one good swing in before Cas uses whatever hoodoo powers he possesses to kill Dean with a snap of his fingers. Dean is winding back his arm just as Cas stands from his seat to rise to meet him. In that split-second they stand chest to chest before Dean throws his punch. Castiel catches Dean’s fist in the mitt of his palm as though it were nothing more than a poorly thrown playground baseball.

There’s a moment of panic where Dean thinks Castiel is going to twist his arm until it breaks.

Instead, Cas just tugs on it. Dean feels his eyebrows peel upwards in shock as Cas pulls him forward bodily.

“What are you doing? Dude, let go of me.” Dean reaches up to intercept Cas’s hold, using his left hand to grab around Cas’s outstretched wrist, just for Castiel to grab him again right back so that Cas’s fingers are handcuffs around each of Dean’s forearms. His stomach throws itself forward when he yanks away from the capture just to realize that there is nothing even close to human about the nonexistent give in Cas’s muscles. Dean may as well be bound in thick, time-hardened glass, globs of it dripped across his wrists and turned into a flawless holding cavity that is inescapable. The realization of being trapped makes Dean yank even harder. “Let go of me.”

But Cas just stands there like a statue, even more obvious in his stillness in comparison to the way Dean is practically writhing in order to get his arms back. Castiel is watching him struggle with those big blue eyes- blue eyes- like some sort of mindfuck fever dream that Cas is actually here right now after all these years- and Castiel says, “Dean,” the way a parent tries to calm their child after a tantrum is thrown.

“Let me go!” Dean shouts. His eyes have started to water and his lips have started shaking. His teeth bare not so much in defense as in defenselessness.

He’s not entirely sure what the emotions inside of him are, he just knows that they’re worming their way into a chokehold around his esophagus. Maybe, given the circumstances, he should be feeling fear, but he’s not afraid of Castiel even if he has every right to be. Less panicked about what Cas might do to him, and more terrorized by the way that Cas hasn’t said another word as his expression softens until it’s much more reminiscent of the Castiel that Dean remembers from Louisiana. Dean is more than unworthy of Cas’s affection, he’s scum to it.

“Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!” he cries. A tear peeks from the corner of his eye as he struggles pointlessly. “LET ME GO!” There’s barely enough pillow in Cas’s palms to allow Dean to knock his fists to Cas’s chest. “LET ME GO! LET ME GO! LET ME GO!”

“Dean,” Castiel says again. It’s so quiet.

But Dean is already falling forward against Cas with a sob, his arms still bent at the elbow and pinned between them. His shoulders round up to his vulnerable ears while his fists uncurl so that his fingers can find purchase against Cas’s dress shirt, his bitten-down nails scratching in a way that does nothing other than indent the already wet, wrinkled fabric. The force of each breath billows out of him into Castiel’s neck, which is so close to his mouth, and all he wants is to curl up tight and never open his eyes to anything other than the darkness of the nook between Castiel’s chin and his collarbone.

Make it end right here, he thinks. Give me a kindness I don’t deserve and strike me down while my eyes are closed and while Cas has got me.

Of course, no lightning bolt of karma comes his way, so he’s stuck in this mortifying moment of emotional breakdown without any escape. He doesn’t deserve to be up here living again, and he certainly doesn’t deserve to cry over it after what he did to all those souls- all those screaming things that used to be people- and yet the terrified version of himself that lives in his belly is clinging to Cas’s dress shirt.

“I can’t-” he admits on a wet gasp. Full of so many holes that he’s leaking everywhere. His whole body shivers, shuddering, as it tries to hit the eject button on the memories of what he went through. Abort mission, we don’t want to remember this. But now that he’s started he can’t figure out a way to stop as he stutters- “They- They- He made me-”

Cas doesn’t answer with words, but Dean feels it when their bodies bump awkwardly as Castiel frees his hand from between them in order to cradle the back of Dean’s head. His fingers are long where they settle between the strands of Dean’s hair and get cozy against his scalp.

The touch of it opens the last of the floodgates, so it seems, because suddenly Dean can’t seem to escape the way his memories chase him. His fingernails claw into Castiel’s chest harder against Dean’s own will. He can’t get his breathing under control- too much- too much- The blood was real and the pain was real. What was done to him and what he did to others. His own body is so small on him now that it vacuums to his bones, suffocating him. Maybe that’s why it feels like he can’t get any oxygen in his lungs.

The gasp of each of his stunted inhales is audible even to him, and the way it sounds like broken machinery turns the knob of his panic up even higher. He pulls back from Cas’s hold and uses the hand that Cas had set free to touch the base of his own throat, where his pulse is wild and where his tears are burning. Far enough away now that he can look Cas in the eyes, their gaze meets as Dean wrings frenzied fingers around his neck. What’s happening to him? Is he dying? Is he drowning? Like some horror movie contraption that sucks each oxygen molecule from his body one by one until his head spins. His knees are so weak. Sweat starts to bead at his hairline.

“Don’t fight against it, Dean. There’s no reason to panic. Your body is trying to protect you from a perceived threat. What you’re experiencing is heightened adrenaline and a faster heartbeat to allow more blood into your muscles. Fighting against it will only increase your fear. There’s nothing to be afraid of, I am here, we will move slowly until the adrenaline works its way through your system.”

Are you crazy? Dean wants to yell. I think there’s a witch hex on me that’s trying to turn me inside-out and you’re saying I should let it happen?

But Cas is looking at him so earnestly with the slightest crease between his brows. His hand is still in Dean’s hair that apparently wasn’t too short after all.

It’s then that Dean’s knees decide that they’ve had enough of the fun and they buckle underneath him. Even though Dean’s body feels like lead he’s surprised to find that his reaction time is sharp, his hands moving from where they’d been shaking to grab a hold of both of Cas’s shoulders. Cas seems to be on the same wavelength of deftness when he wraps a definitive arm around Dean’s waist. It’s a belt of stone.

“To the bed,” Cas’s gravel voice says.

He makes motion towards the mattress, and Dean feels a little bit like a rag doll as he limps half-carried across the room. Once they hit the edge of it, Dean wants nothing more than to throw his body down and let it shrivel up. Cas must have other ideas, though, because when Dean gives in to his own body weight with a yell of Timber!, Cas’s arm of stone catches him and lowers him very softly to the bed.

At that moment, Dean is small. His heart parachutes, frozen to that exact second when he was cared for. That one precious action that made Dean feel precious in turn. For the first time since Hell, he’s the right size for his body.

He doesn’t know how to communicate any of it.

“Alright. Here, on your side.”

Cas’s hands are coaxing where they move Dean around. Dean is tired of fighting, tired of anger, and he wants someone to touch him in a way that doesn’t sting. Cas is here. Touching Dean’s arm and then his hip and then his leg. He watches through the half mast of his watery eyes to see the look of concentration on Cas’s face, and Dean is suddenly met with the clothesline of comfort that Castiel is really here after all of these years.

His ragged breath is still moving too fast inside of him, but now it’s less like he’s a paper bag and more like he’s a wind chime.

“Curl up into the fetal position. It will feel better if you protect your stomach, your subconscious knows that it’s a vulnerable part of your body.” Dean does as he’s told and finds that Castiel is right. The clutching in his throat loosens as he wraps his arms around his center. He flicks his eyes in Cas’s direction and nods. Castiel nods back. “It may take another five to ten minutes for this to fully pass.”

Dean’s expression must morph into something stricken at the words because Cas gives him one of those lopsided, honest smiles that Dean can’t believe he forgot, and says, “You’re going to be just fine, Dean.”

Maybe Dean even believes him.

There’s a type of home to be seen there in Cas’s blue eyes that Dean’s only been fortunate enough to stumble upon twice in his miserable life. He didn’t know a damn thing the first time they met, back in that dive bar, and Dean would sift over the memories of that night and regret not reaching out. Regret not asking more questions, not holding on to Cas for longer. It got to the point where he would see strangers in a crowd and convince himself that it was Castiel. At an amusement park hunting down a funhouse ghost and looking over his shoulder to see someone with a khaki jacket on to shield against the fall weather. Dean had taken off in a run, Sam be damned, just to find that it was a father of two girls who were holding either of his hands. He’d looked up at Dean’s approach and his eyes had been brown. It’d been a bad hunt after that. Restless nights of blue-eyed dreams and-

Timid and innocent, Dean wants to raise a hand to trace the contours of Cas’s face until his fingers know every bone, feature, and wrinkle. His inspection drops from Cas’s face to the tan, broad hand that’s resting on top of the motel comforter, indenting it with pressure. He’s been waiting so long for this. Dean thinks hazily, Hold me.

Cas’s throat bobs so obviously that it catches Dean’s attention all the way from down on Cas’s hand. Then, to Dean’s utter shock, Castiel is shuffling onto the mattress until he can extend his legs down the length of it. Dean is still panting as he watches, eyes wide and wonderstruck, while Cas lies fully there beside him. Cas looks over. Their faces are so close. All Dean can do is blink at him.

“I…” Castiel starts. It’s the first time that he’s been truly awkward, the way he’d been in Louisiana, and Dean wonders what’s going to come out of his mouth next. The last time this happened, Cas told Dean he loved him. “I’d like to offer you physical comfort.”

Dean makes a noise around his breathing. It’s definitely not a squeak.

“If that would be agreeable with you,” Castiel finishes as if Dean never made a sound like a church mouse at all. A small blessing.

It doesn’t take any more permission than that before Dean is scooting across the few inches still separating them in order to curl up at Cas’s side. A part of his gut squeals in agony and paranoia, telling him not to get too close, that he doesn’t know what tricks Cas might have up his khaki sleeve and how they might be used for mutilation. He has to swallow down the nausea of it as he comes to rest his temple against Cas’s reclined shoulder, the trenchcoat covering finally starting to dry. Dean’s teeth chatter.

There’s a pause where everything is still again before Castiel wiggles his arm down to find Dean’s waist. It wraps there between Dean’s body and the mattress until Cas’s hand is resting on the swell of Dean’s hip. The new intimacy of the position makes Dean want to blush red, and for the first time that night, he really hopes that Sam doesn’t come back.

It’s still raining outside. The white noise sounds a lot more like a lullaby than static now that Cas is here. Dean’s eyes are swollen, heavy, tired, and they close in relief instead of fear like some sort of miracle.

It’s enough to be like this for now. The seconds trickle by into minutes as Dean’s breathing turns from rusty to shallow to settled. The whole time Cas’s hand is the perfect amount of heavy on Dean’s hip, a reminder of companionship that Dean isn’t sure he’s had so honestly in his entire life, other than a single night in Louisiana.

Maybe that’s what makes Dean brave enough to swallow his own pride and say, “You were right, before. About me needing company.”

Cas moves a little after Dean says it, like the sound of Dean’s voice breaking the silence after all these minutes startled him. “Everybody needs company, humans are a social species. It’s how you’ve survived for so long even with everything stacked against you in the natural world. So there is no shame in not wanting to be alone.”

Dean doesn’t think he’ll ever get over how Castiel cuts to the wick everytime, his sentiments skipping right over what could have been a lengthy conversation and instead nestling up right where Dean needed them to go.

He sniffles. “Ya know, you’re pretty Fountain of Knowledge for a guy dressed like an accountant.”

“Time brings wisdom, and wisdom heals wounds.”

Dean makes a face in the direction of Cas’s navy blue tie that’s just inches from his nose. The red singing panic in his blood has turned pink, but the rot in his stomach steadfastly remains.

“I don’t know how I’m gonna do it, Cas,” he admits like that was the conversation they were just having.

And Castiel seems puzzled by the redirection because he prompts, “Do what?”

“Keep going.”

There’s a pause while the words seep into the air. They perfume it and become unavoidable, in contradiction to the way that Dean has been trying to avoid thinking about the sentiment altogether now that he’s above ground. It’s foul to look at your own misery head-on, but it also might be the only way out.

Cas’s hand squeezes Dean’s hip. “Well,” and Dean doesn’t think he’s imagining that Cas’s voice wavers just slightly, “from what I know about you, I would wager that you keep going the way that you always do: with reckless abandon, bullheaded stubbornness, and a type of love the likes of which have not been seen in millennia.”

Dean’s eyes start to water again while his lip wobbles. He’s glad that Cas can’t see his face with the way it’s tucked up to Cas’s shoulder. “I think you got the wrong guy.”

“See what I mean about bullheaded stubbornness?”

The words shock a laugh from Dean’s throat. Still, even as he blisters a smile he says, “I don’t know if I could be stubborn enough for ten bison farms to shoulder whatever this mess is about to be. Sam ain’t acting right, disappearing on me and thinking I don’t notice those shifty eyes he’s got going on. And then whatever pulled me out of the pit- Cas, I mean, you should’ve heard the way the demons were talking about this thing. None of them know what’s going on, and they were so spooked that they actually came crawling to me and Sam for answers. I don’t know what brought me topside, but I’m sure it’s something I haven’t seen before, and I have to assume that whatever it is… it wants something from me.”

It’s not so much that Cas tenses beside Dean, more that his body does a weird sort of almost undetectable rocking. It makes Dean want to steady him even though Dean isn’t actually brave enough to lay his hand on Cas’s chest. Instead, he covers up his own nervousness at the thought by continuing to talk.

“I mean, it’s gotta be power levels off the Richter Scale, to pull a human soul out of Hell? No wonder the demons are pissing themselves.” Feeling a flush start up on his cheeks, he feels strangely embarrassed when he adds, “And it left this scar on my shoulder that looks like a human hand, but there’s no way it was a- a person, ya know? Cas, man-“ Dean shakes his head. “I’m freaked.”

There’s another one of those moments of silence between them. It’s only the stillness that brings Dean’s attention to the fact that Cas’s chest, right there next to Dean’s face, isn’t rising or falling at all. The rain outside continues its threatening, but Cas doesn’t breathe. Sure, Cas isn’t human, but he’s at least a creature, and creatures are alive. Alive things breathe. Dean’s eyes widen as he blinks.

Before he can say anything, Cas interrupts his spiraling train of thought with just the word, “Dean.”

The way his voice goes gravel quiet makes Dean’s body fill with tension.

“I-“ Cas starts and stops again with hesitation. “Things will be alright, in the end. There is no reason to be afraid.”

But Dean knows a thing or two about telling the truth in the middle of a lie, and he can hear the nuance of that dance in the strain of Cas’s tone. Dean’s jaw clenches up against it, his eyes darting back and forth without actually taking anything in.

He braces himself. “Cas.” He knows he sounds accusatory but he’s too scared not to. “Do you know?”

Castiel’s whole body goes stiff in an instant.

Dean feels his stomach cramp. “You know what pulled me out, don’t you?”

“I can’t, Dean.”

“I thought I told you not to bullshit me.”

“I don’t know what it will affect- change- What I’m doing right now by visiting you is already a risk large enough to sever multiple timelines-”

The excuse makes Dean rear his head back, up from Cas’s shoulder and away so that he can stare at Cas’s face in defiance. “So it’s worth the risk if you’re deciding but not if I’m the one asking?”

“You have no idea what you’re asking me.”

“Don’t play that game. You don’t think I’m not shitting in my britches right now over this? I want answers.”

“And you’ll get answers when the time comes for it.”

“You wanna go on about my stubbornness? Fine, then you know me well enough to know that I can do this all night with you.”

“Then I’ll leave.”

“Like Hell you will.”

“Dean, stop- Just-”

“I’ll stop once you tell me the goddamn truth-”

“You want the truth?” Castiel growls. Dean is immediately cowed by it, pulling back away from the threat in Cas’s voice, shining in his eyes, and yet the most secret part of Dean almost hopes that Cas would chase him down if he ran right now. “It was me.”

Dean’s ears ring with the new weight in the room and with Cas’s now heavy breathing that Dean is pretty sure Cas doesn’t even have to do to survive. As though it was just some human trait he picked up on.

“What?”

Some of the ruffles in Cas’s feathers smooth out. His face isn’t upset, just serious when he repeats much more softly, “It was me.”

The urge to fight that seems to build in Dean in cycles has deflated once again. Dean’s frustration leaves him in a rush of hot air as his head recalibrates to adjust for everything that has happened with Castiel to this moment. All he can do is stare. Where is he, in this timeline with Castiel? When did they meet? How far ahead is Cas looking back from? That bar in Louisiana, was that before or after Castiel saved him? And Dean very much does mean saved, now that he knows who his knight in shining armor was.

“It was you?” Dean’s hand that had been too cowardly to rest on Cas’s chest now seems to have no qualms when he raises it to curl his fingers into the white dress shirt in a tight fist.

“I saw you,” Dean continues. His heart hammers at the instantaneous shift the words bring to Cas’s expression. “You were- It was this light. It was the only light I ever saw in forty years.” Now that he’s watching Cas’s blue eyes, it’s like he remembers things he didn’t even realize that he knew. But it was Cas- This whole time- And- “You asked me to come with you. You didn’t make me.”

Castiel gulps so thickly that the swell of his Adam’s apple almost hits the knot of his tie.

“That’s right,” he says. “I remember.”

Dean takes in the high points of Cas’s cheekbones and the dark stubble contouring his jaw. The way that somehow Cas being the one to save Dean makes sense because Cas just looks so… heroic. “Do you know what else happened?”

“During your rescue?”

Dean nods. “It’s just a blur. I only remember all of it in pieces when I- when I get my nightmares.”

“I remember all of it down to the last detail, even now, where I am from. It was and continues to be the most important task I was set to in my entire existence. It wasn’t just me, who came for you. There were many others of my- kind.”

“Any chance you tell me what ‘your kind’ is?”

Cas gives him this humorous sort of side-eye that is so to the point, so obvious and quick without being harsh, that Dean wonders how often Castiel gives him that look in the future. Whether they sit together over drinks and when Dean makes a fool of himself, Cas looks at him like that. Or if they watch movies together, and maybe Cas shoots him that look when Dean guesses a plotline that would never actually happen in a Hollywood film. Back in Louisiana, Cas said that Dean had made him pancakes in the morning. Maybe in the future they’re domestic together. Warmth floods Dean’s sternum for the first time in forty years.

“Right,” Dean says. “I’ll keep the questions to a minimum.”

“You should put that in writing for me.”

“Smartass,” Dean mutters.

“Do you want to hear what happened or not?”

Dean makes a Go on gesture with his hand.

“As I was saying, it wasn’t just me who was set to raise you from perdition. It was not a miraculous rescue either, but a bloody one. The very day you were taken to Hell was the day the legion of us was tasked to return you to Earth. I fought through each layer of Hell, killing thousands of demons, not knowing whether I would be the one to reach you or even if I would survive. You were in Hell for forty years because it took forty years for us to get to you.”

The weight of those words forces a shiver along Dean’s spine. It makes him feel sappy, makes him want to play flirtatious with the length of Cas’s tie that’s laying (still crooked) across the flat plane of his chest that doesn’t breathe. He’s not one for being shy, but the clear devotion in Cas’s voice makes Dean’s cheeks burn.

“The others believed that the demons would be holding you in one of the main sectors, given your status among them as a hunter. My kind assumed that it would be a sort of showing off of your torture.” The words are to the point, without sidestepping what Dean had just been put through, and part of him wants to flinch at the same time that he’s grateful that he doesn’t have to pretend the agony he experienced would go by any other name. Castiel continues, “That was before any of us had realized that you had made the deal to release yourself from the rack.”

Dean’s blood freezes and his ears ring. “Cas, don’t-”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“We both know that’s a crock of shit,” Dean spits.

Before anything can escalate, or Dean can puff up like an aggravated cat, Cas’s hand moves from Dean’s hip and into his hair. It wraps around the strands and tugs sharp enough that Dean shouts, “Hey!”

“Look at me.” Cas’s eyes are pinpoints, inescapable. Dean’s breath catches in his throat. “Not every soul is made that offer. It is used as its own form of torture. To be made to constantly choose between your own agony and someone else’s? To be put through that level of pain and know that you have the option to get away, but only at the cost of some other soul? And then, when it is too much, because it will always become too much no matter how strong you are, the new torture that you find yourself collapsing under is the weight of your own consciousness. You are righteous, Dean. The demons knew that. It is why they offered to let you off the rack in the first place. They could not hurt you in any way that mattered beyond the physical, and they knew that the real torture would begin for you when you were forced to lose your humanity. Your love.”

Tears build hot in Dean’s eyes, his chin tucked in soft to his neck. He has to gulp down the burn in his throat twice and even then he can’t manage words. Instead, he shakes his head.

“Do you have any understanding of what you were up against? You survived on the rack for thirty years. Before you, the longest that a soul lasted under that offer was seven months, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. You are extraordinary. You are built on both your innate and learned levels of empathy. It is unprecedented. That’s how I found you in Hell when others of my kind couldn’t. They had assumed that you would have been beaten down, raw, on display in center square for all of Hell to see. But even after forty years, your soul was a beacon in the darkness. I could feel it, the way that you were hurting, needing someone to peel you away from the monster you felt you’d become. I could no sooner ignore your soul than I could pretend that the bloody fight of those forty years had not been worth it. As soon as I laid eyes on you, I knew you were worth it.”

“Cas-”

“It was an honor for me to bring you to salvation. When I asked you to come with me, at first you refused. You believed that you did not deserve to be saved. You looked at the soul that you had on the rack and you begged me to see what you had just done, and why it should be that soul that was retrieved instead of you. Even then, you were trying to save others.”

“But I- I said yes,” Dean says, looking between Cas’s eyes. “What did you say that made me change my mind?”

Cas’s jaw clenches and his eyes close like he is experiencing some swell of precious emotion. When he opens them again, his mouth is pulled into a hurtful frown. “All I did was offer to hold you as we escaped. I wrapped you up within my armor. That’s how the scar on your arm came to be from my hand.”

Unconsciously, Dean flexes the bicep of his left arm where the scar is still new enough that when he moves it, he can feel the stitching of the inside of his flannel sleeve catch on the raised surface. “All of that’s true?”

“It’s more than true, it’s how we first met.”

“You knew who I was before, in Louisiana. And I knew you. I thought about you when I was in Hell before we actually met each other.” At the words, Cas gets a pinched sort of look on his face. “That’s what you meant about whacking out the timeline.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen when I return to my rightful place in time. I can only hope I didn’t alter anything so severely that it cannot be righted.”

“If it was so risky, how come you came back at all?”

Cas’s head tilts to the side in a way that Dean is starting to associate with him. It’s strangely easy to be affectionate of the little quirks that Cas has. Just as awkward and severe and kind as he had been three years ago in Louisiana even though the entire world has changed since then.

“I already told you. I did not want you to be alone.”

Someone loves me, Dean shouts inside of his own little walnut skull.

All of those nights dreaming about Castiel- about bumblebees and trenchcoats- and wishing that he had done more. Imagining the ways that Cas would be a steady warmth at the back of Dean’s body, cuddling up to him. The way that Cas’s arm would wrap around his waist before making its way down. The terrifying thrill in Dean’s stomach at the way the imagined Castiel would be so gentle with him, would kiss the back of his neck, would work a strong hand into the front of Dean’s boxers to hold that private part of him, too- until Dean was safe- until-

And maybe, he thinks, he hasn’t really been alone at all since that night in Louisiana.

Dean looks between Cas’s eyes, his heart stopping in the middle of a beat as he holds his breath, leaning in to close the space between them so slowly. His chin tilts to move his mouth forward. The small shift in angle makes Cas move his head back in confusion before his eyes widen in fear. The give of his once comforting body turns stiff in an instant, into that rock that he somehow knows how to become on command, while he presses a hand to Dean’s chest in order to keep him from closing any more of the distance.

“Stop-” Cas says. He’s shaking so badly that his voice shakes, too.

It makes Dean peel back in alarm. “Cas?”

“Where I am from, we don’t do this. You do not feel this way.”

Cas is still staring at him like any second Dean might do something terrifying. This whole time Castiel has seemed to know Dean down to the molecule, but now it’s as though he’s never seen Dean at all. There’s something absolutely bewildering about the way that Cas, in all of his incomprehensible strength, looks about two seconds from running away. He doesn’t actually get off of the bed, but he does shuffle from where Dean lays, as though if Cas puts enough room between their hip bones then nothing bad will happen.

All of it rings out wrong. Dean knows what rejection is like and this isn’t it. No, this is itchy, guilty, fearful like the collar of a turtleneck against your throat.

“I don’t feel this way where you’re from,” Dean repeats.

Castiel gives one sharp nod.

Dean swallows hard. He thinks he understands, can taste it in his mouth. Quietly he says, “But you do.”

Cas’s whole body is wracked with tremors while his eyes yank harshly from where they had just been meeting Dean’s to instead drill holes through the popcorn ceiling. Aside from the shaking, he’s as stiff as a board. For the first time since Hell, Dean feels his empathy kick back in. It starts in his fingers and then works its way to his stomach, where the urges to soothe and to touch very gently live. He didn’t even think they had survived.

“Cas,” he practically whispers, “Cas, don’t be scared.”

The words make Cas’s gaze flicker to Dean’s face for a split second before it finds itself a home on the ceiling again.

“I- I’m not mad. It’s okay.” Wearily, Cas looks back at him again and Dean counts it as a win when he holds the eye contact. “Hey, I don’t know what happened where you’re from or what- what I do or don’t do, but me, right now? I feel that way.”

Cas’s eyebrows furrow down and he shakes his head. “Please, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

Meekly, though the tone of it is ill-fitting on Cas’s strong body, he says, “Being resolved to the end hurts less than the hope does.”

Maybe Dean’s too stupid to get exactly what Cas means, so he latches on to the only part of Cas’s sentence that makes any sense given the context. “Hope isn’t supposed to hurt.”

“Well, it does,” Cas’s lip curls. “Do not give it to me.”

“I’m not giving you anything.” Dean grows, moving so that he can shift his upper body over Castiel’s to keep him from escaping. He watches how the closeness makes Cas squirm, refusing to meet Dean’s eyes even though it’s the easiest place for Cas’s gaze to land. “I’m telling you the truth. I thought about you after you left in Louisiana.”

Dean exhales harshly. Castiel finally looks at him.

“I thought about you,” Dean repeats before pinching his expression against the upset tremor in his voice. He wills Castiel to get it, wills him to hear the words that Dean can’t even begin to articulate, let alone get out in conversation. Very carefully, he starts to lean in again. Cas watches him the whole time like a skittish rabbit. Just as their mouths are inches apart for the second time in as many minutes, Cas finally speaks.

“How… How did you think about me?”

Not What did you think about?, a question that Dean might have answers for if he were a little bit braver, but How did you think about me?, like there’s a chance that Castiel has imagined all of this too, and that he has fantasized that Dean would think about him in a very specific way.

Dean brings both of his hands up to hold Cas’s face, his palms a cradle for each bristly cheek. He changes the angle of his mouth to peck a kiss just underneath Cas’s left eye. “Like I was hopin’ for something.”

“Dean-” Cas starts to say, but whatever was going to come next gets cut off by the pressure of Dean’s mouth over Cas’s own.

In the many years that Dean fantasized about this moment so quietly that it was almost a secret to himself, he had always thought Cas would make the first move. Brave, strong, and severe, Cas would lean in and kiss Dean like it was a kindness token, and it would have been. Maybe one of Cas’s hands would cup Dean’s jaw while it happened. Just like in Louisiana, Cas would turn the two of them invisible to the rest of the world so that Dean wouldn’t have to be afraid of anything because nothing could see him. That protection would make him feel safe and feeling safe would leash away any shame he might have had from enjoying the way that Cas’s stubble felt against his lips.

This is okay too, though. Getting to push all of those fragile freshwater feelings into Cas’s mouth with Dean’s own. At first, the sensation is nothing more than a press of lips, but when it quickly becomes clear that Cas is frozen from the contact, Dean takes the matter of moving into his own hands. He tilts his head to the right as he presses into Castiel’s space even further. Catching Cas’s top lips in between his own, breathing out against it, before licking in to the little den created by Cas’s mouth.

It’s the first intimacy that Dean has gotten after forty years of being prodded and branded. The skin of his scalp prickles as goosebumps raise across his forearms, making the hair stand on end like it’s reaching out to Castiel, too.

He kisses to the corner of Cas’s mouth like a thank you. He pecks there. Thank you for everything. Then he kisses lower to Cas’s chin, leaving a damp trail behind as he traces the stubbled curve of Castiel’s jaw with his mouth. When he moves down further to lick at Cas’s neck, he finds the same sea-salt smell of him that had lingered in Dean’s dreams for months until he finally forgot the subtleties of it altogether. Every time that he and Sam had worked a case near a coastline since then, Dean would raise his head to the ocean and breathe. It was never quite the same, though, trying to fill that quilt hole inside of him with cheap, imitation threading.

Now, Dean huffs in through his nose, buried into Cas’s skin. Knowing that Cas saved him from Hell doesn’t give Dean any more answers to what Cas is, but it also doesn’t stop the way he feels so human underneath Dean, with the strong tendon of his neck, the dark hair follicles of the start of a beard pushing through resilient pores, and the way he breathes, “Dean.”

“I thought about this,” he admits. Oh yes, it’s an admittance, one thing to act on the physical and other to put words to the reason behind it. “Not- not right away, but a few weeks after Louisiana I had this dream. And I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about it.”

There’s a pause that holds between them before Cas responds, “What did you dream about?” His voice is curious and then terrified, as though afraid that some sort of punishment would immediately follow the question.

Dean lifts away from his stubbled hiding spot to see what expression Cas is sporting to match that tone of voice. The answer turns out to be something that resembles worry. It makes Dean pet a hand over Cas’s cheek, an urge inside of him telling him that it’s important that his next words are the truth.

"It freaked me out at first, how much I liked it. I wasn’t- I didn’t think about guys that way. But that one night in my dream, you-” Dean’s cheeks burn hot- “uh- found me sleeping in the Impala. Guess I couldn’t find a motel for the night. We were in the middle of nowhere, you crawled into the backseat on top of me. You pinned me down- God, I kept thinking about how strong you were- and you kissed me a- all over.” Dean clears his throat as he gravels out, “I could feel your beard. It was- I woke up hard.”

Castiel doesn’t so much as blink, eyes rapturous at Dean’s poorly-done retelling.

But it’s about more than just the wet dreams, it’s about the way that Dean treasured that first meeting, turning it between his fingertips over and over until he polished it like stone.

“I would dream about you holding me. I would- I would think about you coming back to kiss my head one more time, tell me you loved me one more time. I wanted you to take care of me. I-”

He’s cut off when Cas grabs him by the waist, flipping them both over on the mattress with skill so coordinated and razor-blade steady that it knocks the breath out of Dean’s lungs. Then Cas with his big blue eyes and his big tan hands is propped up over Dean, caging him in.

“I will always come when you call,” Castiel blazes like something ethereal. The light of the motel room flickers with a buzz and Dean doesn’t know if it’s from the storm or from something that Cas is doing.

When Cas leans in to capture Dean’s mouth, it’s much closer to the fantasies that used to well up inside of Dean on long, cross-country drives. The hunger in it makes Dean moan.

“I thought about-” He mumbles between presses of Cas’s incessant lips- “you when I was in Hell- and you came.” His eyes squeeze shut tight against the emotion. “You came and got me.”

“I held your soul in my palms, fixed every broken piece of your body. And now here you are before me in all of your righteousness.”

Cas’s hands crawl up into Dean’s hair, never tugging or tangling, though Dean doesn’t think he’d mind if they did. Instead, Cas’s fingers card through the hair over and over again, holding Dean’s head near so that Cas can keep kissing him deep. Dean’s legs twitch while his toes curl in his boots from all the attention.

“Uh-huh,” Dean says pathetically.

Cas licks into Dean’s mouth like he owns the place, tongue cataloging Dean’s molars. He pulls away and a thread of spit stretches between them. “I love you.” The way he says it- Dean doesn’t know if he’s ever believed in something so much in his life. “I want to care for you. I want to keep you safe, keep you well. You mean everything to me.”

“Cas.”

Dean hasn’t actually thought about sex once in the last three days since the holy stone got rolled away from his tomb. Not when all he remembered was the suffering, when his dick had been just another organ in range of a wielded knife and Alastair’s bloody grin. For forty years, he was dry up on anything close to pleasure or to intimacy, and the way that Cas sets to tending to Dean now is a shock to the body. With Cas looking like a wet dream hanging over him, he’s already hard in his jeans.

“Take care of me, c’mon, fuck, I want you.”

“You want me.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” Dean reaches down between their bodies to pop the button of his pants. “Help me get out of these.”

“You’re going to- Dean, wait-” Cas grabs hold of Dean’s wrist, stopping him from going for the zipper next.

“What, what’s wrong?”

For a second, Castiel just stares at him. Then he looks up, eyes scanning around the motel room like it’s the first time that he’s seeing it. When his gaze drops back to Dean’s face, his expression is distraught in a way that puts immediate brakes on part of Dean’s brain that was just rearing to go. The heat that was just coursing through Dean’s system very quickly morphs into anxiety.

“We can’t do this.”

“Cas, I think it’s fair to say that we’re already doing it.”

“No. No, this has gone too far. I apologize, but I…”

Just like that, Castiel is pulling away from Dean, leaving Dean to blink up at the ceiling in confusion. “I don’t get it.”

“Where I am from, you don’t feel this way,” Cas says like he did earlier. He cups one of Dean’s cheeks in his hand like a nest. He sounds sorry, for himself or for Dean or for both of them, when he adds, “I should have never let you kiss me, Dean. You deserve to have your boundaries respected. At this moment, you may feel these things, but that doesn’t mean you always will as time goes on. I feel that I’m taking advantage of the situation. I have no excuse to do so.”

“Taking advantage? I’m right here being the Yes Man.”

“I’m sorry.”

He’s just about to start shifting away to move completely out of Dean’s orbit, and the thought makes Dean panic, breathing in sharply through his nose. “Wait- Just, isn’t there anything you can do? Use whatever powers you have to go back and fix the timeline or- or erase my memories after we’re done-”

“I won’t meddle inside of your brain even if you believe that is what you want. I know better than to take away your autonomy in that way. I would never forgive myself.”

“Well, I don’t care!” Dean exclaims loud enough to surprise them both. “I don’t care what I do or what I say or how stupid I am in your time, I need you right now. I can’t keep- I haven’t- I spent forty years getting shredded alive without a single good feeling. It’s not about the fucking sex, okay?” He reaches to clutch at Cas’s jacket lapels, feeling so desperate that he’s almost made ashamed by it. He makes Cas look him in the eyes when he says, “I need you to take care of me. Please.”

Castiel shakes his head like he’s heartbroken. “Dean.”

“Please,” Dean repeats with a quivering lip.

“I-” If Dean wasn’t telling the truth about how badly he needs this, he’d feel genuine regret at putting Castiel in this situation. But right now it feels like Dean is so broken that he doesn’t know how to do anything other than beg for salvation, and he can see the line to being soothed drawn directly to Cas’s hands. “I won’t have sex with you, but I will help how I can.”

Before Dean can ask what that means, blood roaring in his ears over the relief of Cas staying, Cas is moving to settle Dean back down fully against the mattress to make him comfortable. Then Cas rearranges himself so that his left leg fits into the slot between Dean’s own before lowering his weight in a blanket over Dean.

“It may not be the most delicate plan of action, but you can use my hip to bring yourself to orgasm. That way you are the one in control.”

God, why is the awkward way Cas says that still doing things for Dean?

“O-okay,” Dean stutters. “Will you at least keep kissing me?”

Castiel bites at the inside of his cheek, clearly torn. When he reaches his decision he doesn't answer with words, instead leaning down to fit his mouth to Dean’s again. Some of the passion of it is gone, but it's just as soft as the first kiss was. Dean lets his eyes slip shut as he kisses Castiel back, his hands lowering to grip Cas’s waist and find a good hold there in order to get better purchase on Cas’s hip.

It’s strange at first, the one-sidedness, but when Dean rolls up against the swell of Cas’s hip to finally get some pressure on his dick, it feels nice enough for him to sigh into Cas’s mouth. He does it again, again, slowly finding a rhythm with the single beat of his own drum. If he notices the way that Cas’s kisses fumble whenever Dean groans in the back of his throat, Dean doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t speak at all, afraid that if he says the wrong thing or pushes too far that the straw will break the camel's back and Cas will leave.

Dean will take what he can get. At the very least, Cas’s nose is pressed into Dean’s cheek with each kiss. The intimacy of it urges Dean on, closer to an orgasm that’s been forty years in the making. It doesn’t take much and it doesn’t take long for Dean’s belly to simmer, for his balls to start drawing up to his body. His fingers scratch uselessly at the seam created where Cas’s shirt is tucked into his belted slacks. He whimpers against Cas’s lips.

“Getting there,” he murmurs.

“Yes,” Castiel says just as lowly. It’s plain the way he wants this, and it’s plain the way he’s holding it back.

Dean’s brows furrow in sympathy. He pushes up into Cas’s kiss just a little more forcefully than he had before. “Cas, you don’t gotta be scared. It’ll be okay.”

They slow against each other until they’re entirely stopped. Dean is panting and Cas doesn’t breathe at all. He does, however, grip Dean by the shoulders like maybe he wanted to hold Dean’s face but didn’t know how to.

“You don’t know that,” Cas says wetly.

“No, but I know myself, even though some days I’m sure it doesn’t seem like it. No matter what I go through to get to where you come from, I’ll know the choice that I made. And I’ll know why I made it.” He leans up just slightly to press their foreheads together. “I’ll know it was you, that’s what I’ll know.” Pecking Cas on the lips, “C’mon.”

“I-...”

“C’mon, let yourself have this. Let me have you like you got me.”

It’s enough, apparently, because Castiel finally cups both of Dean’s cheeks in a move that’s more desperate than graceful, holding him in place so that he can kiss him deeply, lovingly. Dean groans so that Cas’s teeth can hear it, and both of them open at the same time so that their front teeth clack together. It’s sloppy wet, saliva catching in the corners of Dean’s mouth, and it’s the most honest they’ve been with each other since Cas stepped through the door.

Finally, Cas gets in on Dean’s rhythm, enough pressure that Dean gasps, “Yes.”

They’re two boats together. Rocking back and forth like a pair. Dean likes the idea of being one of a two-piece set, and that maybe Cas could be at his side always, just waiting for Dean to hold onto the khaki sleeve of his jacket between his fingers in solidarity and in comfort.

“That’s it- That’s it-” Dean stutters. Castiel grinds down into him forcefully. “Oh god, I’m gonna come.”

This time it’s Cas’s turn to moan. The noise pulls Dean’s stomach ever tighter. “You are?” Cas breaks the kiss to ask, his voice filled with awe and fleeced curiosity.

The strangeness of the question doesn’t even penetrate Dean’s skin anymore, no more caring about the usual social structures of sex than he is about the storm just now starting to wane outside.

“Yeah,” Dean grits. He examines that good feeling inside of himself, and it’s like the moment he looks at it too closely it starts to shrivel up again. Close but no cigar, where his body builds, builds- but when he squeezes his eyes shut out of the habit of pleasure he sees the ghost of Alastair’s grin. Immediately, his movement stalls out. “Wait-”

“Don’t look at him, look at me,” Castiel commands. Not a military order, but a voice in the dark telling you to put one foot in front of the other even when you’re scared.

It makes Dean’s brain record scratch until his eyes fly open, so quickly they might as well be cartoon window blinds flipping back into place after being pulled down too far. Where Alastair’s expression just burned, grimy and bodily, Castiel’s face hangs like the moon. His blue eyes bore into Dean’s, intense even though the line of Cas’s mouth is soft.

Dean sucks in a sharp breath that makes his front teeth sting from the cold of it.

“Look at me, Dean,” Cas repeats. “Just me.” It seems like all it took was Dean’s need for reassurance to have Cas going from hesitant to present in the moment. He’s no longer holding himself back, looking guilty, looking sad, instead he blazes over Dean in some sort of avenging flame that only keeps the bad stuff out and the good stuff in.

“Okay,” Dean says even though he definitely doesn’t feel okay.

“I got you out. It was me, remember? You’re here, I’m here, you’re safe.”

“I- I-”

“You’re going to come,” Cas reassures him.

Then Cas is crowding into Dean’s space so that Dean is forced to look up at the popcorn ceiling because Cas is so close that he’s practically in Dean’s skin. Suddenly, a broad hand splays across the left side of Dean’s head as though to hold him in place before he feels Cas’s breath hot on his other cheek. It’s only present there for a second before it moves towards Dean’s right ear.

Dean’s eyebrows furrow. “Huh?”

“In rebuilding your body, I was able to recognize patterns of your nervous structure- places where you had the most nerve endings.”

“Okay?”

“Did you know that you have particularly sensitive ears?”

“Dude, what are you talking ab- uh.”

Cas literally just licked his ear. The peculiar sensation sends Dean’s shoulders up around his neck, almost as though his body isn’t sure whether to recoil or accept. It reminds him of that one time he was going heavy with some frisky girl and she started tickling him. Too much and bizarre even as it plays friendly with the parts of Dean’s brain that say This is good.

It’s also foreign. Enough of an outlier that Dean can’t think of a single moment in Hell that felt anything like this, so that Cas’s tongue licking another broad stroke over Dean’s ear rips him away from the thread of Hell like a reset of his mainframe. He’s here in some cheap motel staring up at a yellow stain on the ceiling while someone else’s saliva starts to cool on the scar of the ear piercing he had when he was twenty-two.

“Hmm.” The noise comes from the back of Dean’s throat.

There’s no more conversation to be had about it before Cas is diving in. First, he nibbles at Dean’s earlobe, then he mouths at the shell where he pulls the thin cartilage between his lips. It’s all wet- hot- coming from the pressure of Cas’s mouth that is in no way hesitant about the action at hand the way a human might be. Not shy or self-conscious, Castiel sticks his tongue into the recess of Dean’s ear, and even though every part of Dean’s internal voice is telling him this is really goddamn weird, he’s actually into it.

“Oh- Huh-”

He feels his jaw fall open on a silent sound when Cas licks just right. Dean can hear it, literally all of the action happening right there next to his eardrum, when Cas’s lips smack, wet, dirty, like he’s trying to eat Dean alive through that single point of contact. It’s sloppy and uncoordinated enough that Cas’s spit is starting to drip down onto Dean’s neck.

Cas is a heavy weight over Dean now, rolling down with little abandon so that his hip presses against Dean’s hard dick with each wave of motion. Dean doesn’t have to be able to see him to know that he’s stunning like this. Strong and masculine, a real hero’s hero. Here to save Dean from the grainy film reel of Hell still fluttering behind his eyes.

“Holy- hmm- hmm-” he clamps his lips shut against the undignified noises trying to escape him. He holds Cas’s precious waist tight to his body, that hipbone giving such wonderfully sharp relief that forces his eyes to clench shut. “Fuck-” He humps up- “Fuck- C-Cas. Uuuhhhh-” and then he’s filling his boxers with streaks of come while his shoulders shudder. He doesn’t black out or see stars, but he feels it when his body finds a peace that it hasn’t known for longer than Dean can remember.

He chases that feeling even past his own overstimulation, whimpering in the back of his throat as he rubs against Cas’s hipbone until he physically can’t take anymore. Only then does he lay his body back wholly into the cheap, coil spring mattress that feels a little bit like paradise right now. The heat of Cas’s mouth leaves Dean’s ear to grow cold in the motel air, and when Dean blinks his eyes open it's to find Cas staring down at him. Maybe Dean’s a little bit proud that he got Cas to start breathing heavy after all. He grabs the knot of Cas’s tie and uses the leverage to tug his weight down on top of himself.

“Awesome,” he mumbles, rubbing his hand up and down Cas’s back over his jacket. And he knows his brain is melted from coming when he adds out loud, “God, even your back feels sexy.”

“You’re not the first person to say that.”

“What?” and, okay, sue him if it sounds a little jealous because Dean is a little jealous.

But then Cas, the bastard, has the audacity to start chuckling there right next to Dean’s ear and Dean knows it’s at his expense.

“You’re a real shit, you know that?”

“You’re not the first person to say that to me, either. Actually, you’ve said it to me on several other occasions.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You get easily aggravated when I pretend I don’t know the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek.”

Dean laughs- really laughs- for the first time since Hell. His eyes wrinkle up as he pushes at Cas’s shoulder hard enough to roll him off of Dean’s body and onto the bed beside him. “Dude, of course I’m aggravated, that’s a fireable offense.”

“I don’t understand, fire me from what?”

“Your full-time job as a comedian.”

His own self-referential joke makes Dean laugh one last time before he’s gazing fondly at Cas across the pillow. It’s comfortable in a way that Dean’s never had with a hookup. Sometimes, he thinks he might be a little too eager to leave after some of his one-night stands. Now, though, he lets himself be lazy. Lets his eyelashes catch yellow lamplight and fondness when he blinks.

Cas blinks back at him, and his voice is closer to melancholy than actual fear when he says, “I hope that when you get to me, you will be able to forgive me for what happened tonight.”

Maybe Dean has been willfully stupid this entire night, but for the first time this evening, he realizes that Cas isn’t talking to him- not really. Earlier he had been, but right now as they lay in bed together curled up and facing each other on the tiny mattress, Dean understands that Cas is talking to his own Dean, the one where he is from however many years in the future. The one that apparently doesn’t feel this way, though Dean highly doubts that. Cas is looking through Dean as he is right now in 2008 and apologizing to someone that he loves in a future that Dean cannot comprehend.

It makes Dean’s eyes water, makes him feel weak and naked. If he could see what he becomes in the future, he’d take himself by the shoulders and shake. Maybe he’d even hit him for making Cas so scared like this. At this moment, as he stares into Cas’s blue eyes, he brands a message into his own brain with such viciousness that whoever he becomes will have no choice but to see it.

You be better to him. You give him the person he deserves even if you think it’s impossible, because he doesn’t think it's impossible. He thinks you’re worth loving and, Jesus Christ, you better figure out a way to be. You better say thank you. You better hold him longer, tighter, give him a reason to stay and to feel like you’d never let him go if it were up to you. Make him know you love him, you coward. You’re the reason he came to me shaking and scared- thinking you’d be mad at him for loving you. How dare you let him feel that way? You better love him for me.

A single tear makes its way down Dean’s cheek in a different sort of crying than he’s done all night, all decade. This tear is hot and ripe. He reaches out to thumb at the sharp angle of Cas’s right eyebrow.

“Castiel,” he says just for the two of them, “there ain’t nothing to forgive.”

You better love him enough for both of us.

He kisses Cas’s mouth first, then his cheeks, then his fluttering eyelids, before pulling away again. He watches where Cas very gently touches his own cheek in the spot that Dean had kissed.

After a pause, Cas’s sweet expression falls. “I have to go soon.”

Dean squeezes his lips together to stop himself from begging when he knows there’s no point anyway. “Yeah, I sorta figured.” He lets his eyes rove around the room, dragging the back of his hand over his cheek to get rid of the stray tear before his gaze falls on Cas again. “Probably can’t answer this, but, uh, when will I get to see you next?”

To his surprise, Cas actually offers up some information without having to be hassled out of it. “We will meet again sooner than you may realize. However, the version of me that you’ll see… He is not the same as I am now. He has orders to follow, things to do that he believes are right. The way that you know me, like this… It has only come from years of being in your company.”

“Me?”

“When I say these things to you, about stubbornness and bravery and love, I say it as someone who has learned it all from watching you embody those traits.”

“You don’t-” Dean puffs, feeling emotional. “You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t I?” Cas challenges. “I am very old, Dean, and yet there was so much that I did not know before our meeting. I just hope that… That as the years go on and as I make mistakes, you will have some grace with me even if it is undeserved. And I hope that you know that every wrong decision I made, I made because I thought I was protecting you.”

Even though Dean wants to argue that he’s sure he already knows that, where Cas is from, it occurs to him that maybe he doesn’t, given the stricken expression on Cas’s face. So instead of fighting Cas back from his own harsh self-talk, Dean simply says, “I’ll remember.”

Castiel’s throat bobs. His jaw strains. “Thank you,” he says softly, as though nothing has ever meant more to him than hearing those two words come from Dean’s mouth.

Around them, the motel rumbles with a low peel of thunder that shakes like a purr instead of a splitting. The noise makes Castiel deflate.

“The rain is letting up now.” The words hold more than the simple observation.

“Is that your cue?”

Cas nods.

Against the churning in Dean’s stomach, just to feel any sort of control over a situation that has already started leaking between his fingers in puffs of smoke, he says, “Let me walk you to the door.”

They watch each other for one more long second before they both roll their separate ways off of either side of the mattress. Dean’s boxers pull and stick against his soft dick in a way that has him grimacing and then rearranging his downstairs with a tug at his inseam. When he looks up it’s to the sight of Cas walking ahead of him, having been on the side of the bed that was closer to the door, and already Dean is watching him leave. Don’t go, he’d say, if that ever got anyone to stay with him. Instead he just tucks his swollen bottom lip into his mouth as he follows in Cas’s footsteps.

Once they reach the door, they face each other again. Dean’s muddy boot print is still ground into the carpet. The sight of it in Dean’s periphery has him battling the urge to cry, to beg, You can’t leave me.

“Guess this is goodbye?”

Cas’s head tilts to the side while the corner of his mouth raises in a little self-ironic smile. “You’ve said those exact words to me before, and it wasn’t a goodbye then, either.”

Dean clears his throat to stop the tears from coming. He nods his head. “So it’s a See You Later, then.” He smirks even though he doesn’t mean it.

“See you later,” Cas agrees.

Another moment where neither of them moves even though the farewell between them hangs heavy in the air. It needs to hurry, ripped off like a bandaid. If Cas stands here for any longer Dean might just never let him leave.

“Well…” Dean puckers his lips and makes a motion towards the door as though to prompt Castiel through it.

But Cas doesn’t step towards the door, he steps towards Dean. The toes of their shoes touch like children playing tag. As much as the intimacy of their physical closeness makes Dean want to hide again like everything that just happened between them didn’t, he also doesn’t know when the next time will be to see Cas’s blue eyes soft like this, so he makes himself stare back at Cas until he can burn Cas’s expression into his bones.

“You don’t need to pretend to be unmoved in front of me,” Cas says.

Dean feels the tension in himself deflate into a particular sort of sadness that feels too vulnerable to show off. At least, maybe to anyone but Cas. “Right.”

“Perhaps one last hug is in order… ‘for the road’.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees before stepping forward and wrapping Cas in his arms. He buries his face in Cas’s neck and breathes in and tells himself that this time- this time- he won’t forget that oceanside smell. Cas had made a comment earlier about being very old. How old, Dean doesn’t know, but maybe old enough that Cas doesn’t smell like the oceans, but the oceans smell like Cas.

He feels it when Cas shifts in order to turn his head to press a kiss into Dean’s hair. Dean sniffles into the dark of Cas’s throat.

“Dean,” Cas whispers in a way that feels as loud as calling out.

“Yeah?”

“Do not forget… Do not forget that I love you.”

Dean’s fingers clench in Cas’s trenchcoat. Take me with you. But there’s already a version of Dean out there on the other side of the line, waiting for Cas’s return most likely. Again, he begs the future version of himself, Love him enough for me, too. His crying doesn’t make a noise, seamless where his tears fall into the collar of Cas’s dress shirt.

“I won’t,” he chokes.

Castiel is the first to pull away and Dean has to let him. When Cas sees his tears and pink face, he raises a hand to cradle Dean’s cheek. “Be brave. You already have everything you need, just by caring the way that you do.” With that, Cas’s hand drops to his side and he turns to face the door. He looks just as unprepared to leave as Dean feels to let him leave. “See you later,” Cas repeats awkwardly.

He reaches for the doorknob.

“Wait!”

Cas turns to him at the outburst and Dean sheds the last of his reservation in this final moment together because it means something. Right now. Not just in the future, not just where Cas comes from, but how Dean feels at this exact moment at a solid-steel 29 years old. He’s the one that Cas saved from Hell, not the cowardly version of himself that he apparently becomes. He grabs Cas by the lapels of his jacket and tugs him close so forcefully that when their lips smash together so do their noses. Dean pours his affections into the movement of it in a way he hasn’t allowed himself all night. The way he feels about Cas presently is loving- hungry- wanting- and he’ll keep having dreams about Cas holding him long past the moment Cas steps out of this door.

When Dean pulls away, he’s breathing heavily. “That was from me,” he says. He nods to himself. Yes, Hell hasn’t figured out how to keep him from standing tall in order to mean this. “I don’t care what your Dean thinks. Maybe he doesn’t feel that way about you, Cas, I don’t know, but I do. Me. Right now. That’s real.” He unfists one of Cas’s lapels in order to push at Cas’s hard chest. “I don’t care if he doesn’t love you, I love you. And I- and I want you to remember that for me.”

Cas’s eyes shine in the cheap kitchenette lamplight. He looks wonderstruck, and Dean is proud to have put that expression on his face.

“You are spectacular, Dean Winchester.” He reaches down to squeeze Dean's wrist. “I cannot wait to meet you formally.”

“Me neither.”

Cas reaches for the doorknob again and this time Dean doesn’t stop him. He said what he needed to say. Cas heard what he deserved to hear.

“Until next time,” Castiel smiles- almost politely, almost like an inside joke.

“I’ll be there,” Dean smirks back- almost a promise, almost like a declaration of love.

With that pledge of More To Come, Cas is turning the doorknob and stepping outside into the darkness of the night that has been reduced from a torrential downpour to sprinkling droplets that fall into already standing puddles. Dean hears the dripping from the overhead gutter just before the door closes again. It’s quiet, just like that.

Dean swallows hard. The misery lurks underneath him in muddy waters, but he doesn’t let himself look at it, doesn’t let himself see his reflection in the ripples of it. Instead, he turns on his heel, cementing the mud stain even further into the cheap carpet, and he walks his sorry, loved ass to the bathroom. He can’t find it in himself to turn the light on when he strips, but a shower is a shower even if it’s in the dark. The hot water is more soothing than he’d thought it’d be. It washes away come, grime, sweat, and even a little bit of the unshakable feeling of paranoia that Dean has been shouldering the last few days. When he reaches for his shampoo bottle, his fingers miss the plastic by an inch because he can’t see it, and instead of getting angry all he can do is chuckle to himself when it falls to the shower floor.

By the time he makes his way back into the main portion of the room after toweling off and changing into clean boxers and a t-shirt, his eyelids have started to droop. Sam’s bed is still empty like a bad omen. Dean will deal with that tomorrow. For now, he turns off the kitchenette lamp and settles himself down underneath the comforter that he and Cas had just rucked up together. Proof that it was real, a relic like the Shroud of Turin that captures a holy moment that words can’t describe, long past the time that the holy moment happened. But it happened.

He lays his head on a pillow that smells just barely like the ocean.

Staring out the window that's parallel to the bed, all that Dean can see through the glass is the black of the night that’s occasionally pierced by headlights in the distance. He imagines that somewhere out there, far away, there’s a Castiel that hasn’t truly met Dean yet. A Castiel who apparently needs to learn a few lessons in stubbornness. “I’m coming for you, Cas.”

Down by Dean’s feet, the TV hanging on the wall flickers to life with a mind of its own. The channels skip multiple times with strange audio cutting and bleeding out of each before the TV decides what its final destination will be. Dean would recognize Captain Kirk’s voice anywhere as an old rerun of Star Trek starts to play. Just as Dean thinks to himself that the volume is a little loud, the TV turns itself down to a background hum.

“Alright, alright, I’m going to sleep,’ Dean bitches through the smile on his face.

His tired brain must be playing tricks on him, though, because just as he’s about to go under he swears he hears Spock say, “Goodnight.”