Archive of Our Own ^beta

“It’s clear,” Dean concludes as he opens the front door of the cabin, met with Cas waiting on the front porch for him to clear the seemingly-abandoned home. His breaths puff visibly in the cold. 

“Come on,” he beckons the shivering ex-angel, stepping aside and holding open the creaky front door that he’d just come out of. “We’ll make a fire once we’ve got everything in here,”.

About the “ex-angel” thing. It’s a given.

After Chuck was finally defeated and left to his wasting, there was only one way that they managed to rescue Cas from the Empty: human. Leave his grace to the entity in turn for him having a human life to live out with the Winchesters. 

So far, it’s been nothing like he imagined in his guilty fantasies, nor anything like he hoped for during his time in the empty. 

Sure, he’s back, but at what cost? Everything that he’d laid out for Dean to hear in the dungeon was meant to be a dying speech that he’d had the opportunity to escape consequence after. 

He wasn’t supposed to live. 

Now, he has to face everything that he confessed to Dean, and worse: the bitter truth that the hunter simply does not feel the same way. 

Dean has made it exceedingly clear that there is nothing between them. Even more than in the past, the hunter seems keen on adding “buddy” or “pal” to every other word. 

Strictly friendly, nothing more.

“Freezing out there,” Dean mumbles under his breath as he shuts the door behind them, trying to fill the empty space between them in the frigid atmosphere. 

“Frigid” is actually a great way to describe their attitudes toward one another lately. Awkward, even. Basically, it’s been every adjective that had been Cas’s worst nightmare every time he fantasized about saying those 3 words to Dean like he finally did in the dungeon.

And look where that got him.

Today’s only happening because it was supposed to be a three person hunt. 

Dean, Sam, and Cas. 

The tag-along. The weapon. What he’s good for. 

It wasn’t supposed to be just he and Dean, but such circumstances have unfortunately arisen. “Eileen needs help with a hunt she’s on,” Sam had explained when Dean asked why he was suddenly deciding to ditch them midway through the hunt. 

Despite how sound of an excuse Sam had given due to Eileen needing assistance a few states over, Cas had watched the way that a nervous sort of agitation bled into Dean’s body language the very moment Sam explained to his brother that it would “just have to be you and Cas for this hunt”. 

And, even worse: Cas heard the way that dread coated Dean’s every word in response. 

Dean must have thought that Cas wasn’t in ear-shot when he said it, or maybe he really just didn’t care at all (Cas wouldn’t blame him), but it hurt irregardless when Cas heard the hunter’s hushed and gritted, “You know why I don’t wanna be alone with him right now,” to his brother in response. 

The words have circulated his head throughout the remainder of the hunt up until this point, barely speaking two words to Dean unless he absolutely has to. Dean clearly doesn’t want to be alone with him, and Cas knows exactly why. 

It probably makes Dean uncomfortable. Looking at your best friend of over 11 years, now knowing that said “best friend” always wanted to be more. 

“Cas,” Dean barks, getting the zoned-out ex-angel’s attention. 

Cas’s head snaps up from where he’d been mindlessly staring at the faded, old-grain wood of the floor. 

“Did you hear me?” the hunter asks, annoyed (or that’s how Cas perceives it, at least). 

Obviously not, the ex-angel thinks. 

He doesn’t say it, though. Saying anything too sassy would risk pushing buttons in a way that he’s not comfortable with anymore. They used to bicker like an old married couple, but he’s too scared for that now. 

One wrong word, and Dean might kick him to the curb once and for all. 

“No,” he answers quietly. 

The tension between them buzzes like static in the air around them, nearly louder than the quiet flurry of snow outside the cabin walls. 

“I asked if you can go grab the firewood from where we parked Baby,” Dean directs with a huff and a point towards the direction where Baby is parked by the cabin, repeating what he apparently already said. He turns back around, fiddling with the kitchen faucet to see if the water works.

They’d been driving for miles, no motels in sight. He knew that they would be in the middle of BFE for this hunt, but assumed that A) Sam’s navigation skills would come in handy if they got lost and B) there wouldn’t be an unforeseen winter storm. 

Both of those assumptions were wrong. 

They were at less than ¼ of a tank of gas, no phone service available for a GPS to direct them to the nearest motel, and snow accumulating heavily on the windshield even with the wipers on. When they eventually came upon this little cabin off to the side of the road in a clearing of the woods, it felt like finding a diamond in the rough. 

Yeah sure, it’s not the fanciest option, but it’s better than spending the night alone in the impala pulled to the shoulder of the road as snow piles around them and their dwindling gas supply; better than being stuck in the tiny space of Baby’s interior with nothing but he, Cas, and the ex-angel’s confession still unacknowledged in the air between them. 

Cas is ripped from his thoughts immediately when he opens the front door to exit the cabin. The icy wind blasts freezing, making the door heavy and hard to hold open. He has to slip out back onto the porch quickly before Dean inevitably fusses at him for letting in more of the cold air. 

His nose burns pink from the chill and his teeth chatter audibly; all reminding him of his unignorable humanity.

It’s becoming a more pressing matter by the minute that he and Dean figure out a way to get a fire going and warm up. Before long, they both will be at health risks due to the hypothermic conditions of the blizzard taking place. 

He marches through the snow, quietly crunching beneath his shoes as he walks over to the pile of firewood that they parked Baby beside. 

Even his trench coat wasn’t made for withstanding weather like this. 

It’s a struggle to gather even half the wood into his arms. It’s already damp from the snow, and he fills with a preemptive dread in knowing that Dean will likely be even more frustrated because of it. Lighting a fire will take significant effort if the wood is wet. 

Deciding that this will simply have to take two trips, Cas stands with half the firewood in his arms. His knees struggle beneath his weight, creaking as he gets up from the crouched position. 

He curses quietly under his breath as he crunches back across the snow to the porch, freezing in the bitter cold. Icy flakes accumulate on his hair, his lashes, just about every surface that snow can accumulate on. His breath puffs visibly.

As he approaches the porch to bring the first batch of firewood to Dean, he mentally blames the tightness of his chest on the wintery conditions, even though he knows that the actual reason has nothing to do with the cold.

“Cas, at least come over here so you’re not freezing,” Dean beckons, trying to get the fire started now that the ex-angel has brought in all of the firewood; having taken 3 trips in total through the snow and back.

If Cas’s perception of he and Dean’s current relationship weren’t so drastically skewed in the favor of his own self-consciousness, he’d be more aware of the poorly-hidden concern in Dean’s voice. He’d be aware of the tinge of guilt; the tinge of need.

Instead, all he hears is impatience. Annoyance. Resentment.

As he silently walks over, he doesn’t bother mentioning that his shoes and socks are uncomfortably wet, nor that his feet are freezing because of it. He doesn't bother mentioning that his chest still feels tight, nor that he feels like he belongs anywhere but here. 

He knows where he feels like he belongs. Dark black; a realm of trickling goo.

If Dean doesn’t want him, why is he even alive again? Why would they subject him to all of this if it’s for nothing? 

“I’ve almost got it, I think,” Dean small-talks as he tries to get a flame going.

The cabin isn’t big. It’s one main room, one bedroom, one bathroom. A small kitchen. The water’s either turned off or the pipes are frozen, and electricity obviously isn’t working either.

However, there is a silver lining: the fireplace. 

On the wall adjacent to the bed is a nice stone fireplace, perfect for spending the night while keeping warm amidst the blizzard flurrying outside the log walls.

Silence falls over them. It’s not abnormal these days. 

Dean wants Cas to say something. Anything. 

He can’t be the one to bring it up first; it has to be Cas who addresses it.

Cas has been acting all standoffish and distant towards him, so of course Dean isn’t going to pour his heart out. 

He doesn’t want to say how he feels, because maybe Cas has now decided that that’s not what he wants. Now that Cas has a whole life of humanity ahead of him, maybe he doesn’t want Dean anymore.

The hunter can’t just drop a sudden, “Hey, I love you too, by the way,” if Cas keeps acting the way he is lately; like he’s trying to pretend as if he never said it in the first place and that nothing happened between them at all.

It’s not that easy for Dean. He can’t get himself to forget what happened in the dungeon, how broken he was after it. How much he wanted nothing more than for Cas to come back to him. 

Yet, now that Cas is back, it’s like a shell of the man he used to be. A shell of the man Dean desperately wanted to come back to him more than anything.

A shell of the man Dean desperately wanted more than anything. 

“I can hear your teeth chatterin’ from here,” Dean murmurs, casually failing at attempt number lost-count of trying to get the fire going. 

Seconds pass before Cas belatedly hums in acknowledgement. Nothing to give away any semblance of emotion, nor fully responding like a contributing person in the conversation. Just a bystander, like he couldn’t care less about anything going on around him. 

Seconds pass again before Dean finally bites the bait. Or, at least, what he hopes is bait of some sort. He wants Cas to want his attention.

He wants Cas. 

“You alright?” he asks, briefly glancing from the firewood to the man sitting a safe space of at least 5 feet away even after having come closer as instructed.

Cas blinks, then realizes Dean is talking to him. Nodding, he mumbles, “Just cold,”. 

The silence falls again. The tension buzzes. 

It’s unfortunate, really. Every silence that Dean perceives to be a distant, uninterested sort of silence on Cas’s part is at the same time perceived by Cas to be a distant, unwanting sort of silence on Dean’s part. If only they could look through the eyes of the other.

…Or just talk it out like normal people. That would also be pretty beneficial.

Things never go that easily for them, though.

“Finally,” Dean blows out on a relieved sigh, kneeling beside the finally-lit fire. The flames light up the fireplace, illuminating the room dimly. 

It’s already going dark, especially considering that the sun sets so early during this time of year. It’s barely past 6:00, but it feels like 10:00.

Proud of himself, he pats his hands on his lap and looks over to the ex-angel; eager for some validation from his “best friend”.

His smile drops as soon as he sees him. 

Cas is sitting with his knees tucked up towards his chest, trench coat around him like a blanket, shivering visibly even from 5 feet away. He’s pale as a ghost, even in the warm lighting of the fire.

“Cas,” Dean calls gently to get his attention. The ex-angel has been zoning out frequently as of late, only furthering Dean’s concern. 

Cas looks over with a feigned normalness, but Dean catches it; catches the sluggishness of the movement immediately.

He knows the signs of hypothermia. He may not know exactly what said signs look like on Cas, but he knows what to look for in situations like this—and does not like that pale, sluggish look that Cas currently bears.

“Are you good?” he asks with more obvious worry. 

The ex-angel starts to nod, but a violent shiver wracks his body before the gesture can be finished. His breath shudders as his teeth chatter.

“Hey,” Dean worries with more urgency, getting up. “You okay?” he asks again as he steps over to help Cas stand, the ex-angel clumsy in movement.

“Cold,” Cas mumbles in answer, jittering. 

“I know,” Dean agrees, but his worry doesn’t die down whatsoever even once Cas is stood up. He guides them to stand closer in front of the fireplace, wanting to get the ex-angel as warm as possible.

He knows that Cas is new to humanity, but that reality is making itself extremely clear right now. 

Humans in general are extremely sensitive to changing temperatures, and that’s especially true for the one who’s not been human long enough to build up a tolerance for it.

Cas dutifully avoids making eye contact with Dean, instead keeping his line of sight on the fire. His gaze is a little glazed, and his condition is on the rapid downward trend.

Dean’s hands continue to rest gently on Cas’s shivering shoulders, examining the ex-angel. Aside from the obvious shivering and chattering, he really looks like he went on three trips through the snow to get firewood while Dean tried to get water working and a fire started inside, even as short as those trips back and forth in the snow may have been.

His hair is a little damp from the snow, messy in a way that reminds Dean of how it used to look when they first met. The trenchcoat beneath his palms is also dampened from the melted snowflakes.

But that’s only what Dean can see.

Cas, on the other hand, knows that his shoes and socks and lower pant legs are secretly soaked and freezing. He should probably say something, but what would Dean be able to do about it? The hunter already has to handle enough of his problems.

Dean purses his lips, mentally realizing that he’s about to have to make a decision that’ll likely be difficult to get the emotionally-distant ex-angel to agree with. 

“Look, why don’t we go ahead and get in the bed so we’ve got blankets to warm up under?” Dean gently suggests, or more-so directs. “Obviously the fire isn’t gonna be enough to fully warm up with,” he reasons.

Despite Cas’s worsening condition, he seems to sober up significantly as he processes Dean’s words. 

His gaze snaps to the hunter’s; confused, as if he’s wondering if he heard correctly, but also offended, like he’s baffled that Dean would ask such a thing after the way they’ve been lately.

And, most troublesome: disbelief, like he can’t believe that Dean would be willing to do such a thing with him. 

The hunter’s hushed and gritted words to his brother, “You know why I don’t wanna be alone with him right now” plays again through Cas’s mind, making his chest tingle with shame. 

“Cas. We’re friends, man. It’s not weird for us to share a bed in this kinda circumstance,” Dean reassures, even as much as it stings to say that they simply are “friends”. 

He wishes they were more than that, but that’s clearly not what Cas wants from him anymore.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Survival is of the essence here, and—judging by Cas’s pale, clumsy shiveriness—that’s exactly what they need to be prioritizing right now.

Unbeknownst to the hunter, his attempt to add some casualness to the situation with the reminder that they’re “friends” did not go properly interpreted by Castiel; something not uncommon lately due to their lack of proper communication.

To Dean, the hunter assumes it’s obvious that he’s saying “we’re friends” in the sense of: “we’re still friends; nothing has changed between us (unless you want it to) (please want it to)”.

To Cas, it couldn’t be interpreted further from that. To Cas, he automatically takes Dean’s words to insinuate: “we’re just friends; don’t make it weird”.

“Cas, at this point we need to huddle for warmth whether that’s what you want or not,” Dean reluctantly argues. 

He doesn’t want to push Cas’s boundaries, especially in such a physical way, but this is survival. The inclement weather doesn’t care about their feelings. 

“I’m getting worried that you’re starting to get hypothermic,” he explains, gentle yet serious.

Cas visibly cringes. Of course he’s still causing problems even when he’s trying so hard not to. His mind wars with itself as Dean stares at him with those annoyed (read: concerned) eyes. 

Internally, it feels like he may explode from how uncomfortable and out of place he feels. He can’t stand this feeling of being an inconvenience in such a way, especially after what he said in the dungeon. 

“Come on,” Dean decides a few seconds later instead of continuing to wait for Cas to verbally agree (knowing that Cas likely won’t), taking a few steps over the furthest side of the bed from the fireplace. He’s obviously waiting for Cas to walk to the side closest to the fireplace, but the ex-angel is frozen with indecision.

He also just literally feels frozen. His knees are starting to feel weak from how icy his feet feel. But, mostly, it’s indecision.

“Cas. Seriously, just come on,” Dean begs. “For my peace of mind, just get over here,” he beckons, impatient. 

Again, to Dean it is clear that the impatience is out of urgency; an urgency borne of concern. 

To Cas, the impatience is just that; impatient, and tired of dealing with Cas in general. 

“It’s not weird,” Dean reassures again, as if that’s what’s holding Cas back from joining him. “It’s literally the protocol of what to do in these kinda situations so that we don’t freakin’ freeze to death,” he explains, trying to get Cas to get over it and just join him in bed.

An internal part of him wilts in insecurity about why Cas is so hesitant to join him in bed. 

He thought that Cas loved him, but now he’s only gathering more and more evidence that Cas clearly doesn’t anymore. It stings.

Cas sighs in defeat, and it shivers on the tail end of the way out. He walks over to the side opposite of Dean, feeling the heat of the fireplace behind him as he stands beside the bed. 

Dean doesn’t verbally acknowledge his compliance, but Cas can see the noticeable glint of relief in Dean’s eyes. It confuses him. 

Mirroring what Dean’s doing currently on the other side, he bends down on creaky knees to untie his shoes. His fingers feel clumsy and uncoordinated as he tries to handle the laces of the dress shoes and get them undone, hands shaking.

God, it’s cold. 

“Good over there?” Dean asks from the other side when Cas has taken more time than usually necessary to get the shoes untied. 

“Fine,” the ex-angel mumbles, shivering. 

He finally gets the laces undone, using the mattress as support to stand himself up on weak knees afterward. He toes the left shoe off, then the right. The cold is making his fine motor skills feel clunky; making everything more difficult than usual.

When he looks up, Dean’s already in just his t-shirt and his jeans.

Cas tries to pick up the pace, growing a little embarrassed at how long it’s taking him to get his shoes off. He reaches down to peel his socks off, gasping quietly at how cold they are to the touch as he peels off the left and then the right.

He really hopes he’s not getting frostbite. That would be such an inconvenience for Dean to deal with.

Cas reaches for the covers as he stands in the damp spot where his wet socks had just been,, but Dean stops him with an “aht-aht” sort of sound. His eyes snap to the hunter to figure out what he’s somehow already done wrong before they’ve ever even gotten in the bed.

“Dude. Coat?” Dean says, gesturing to the trench coat that he knows is cold and damp.

If his body were able to take a break from prioritizing the circulation of his blood flow solely around his trunk and organs located there, Cas is sure that the blood would quickly be rushing up to his cheeks and making them heat in embarrassment. 

A guilty part of him still has such a crush.

He shrugs the coat off, dropping it on the ground by his shoes and socks. 

“That one too,” Dean gestures to the suit-coat that had been beneath the trench coat. “You gotta get everything off that got even remotely wet or else it’ll keep you cold,” he explains with an apologetic tone.

Cas gets the next coat off, feeling clumsy just trying to move like a normal person. It’s like his nerves are frozen; like the signals being sent from his brain to his muscles are delayed and slowed down.

“Cas,” Dean stops again when the ex-angel reaches for the covers a second time, a little flatter in tone. 

There’s even a hint of amusement in Dean’s tone, but, in Cas’s brain, the amusement doesn’t register nearly as innocently as it actually is. Automatically, he perceives that he’s being laughed at, not with.

Admittedly, he doesn’t know what he’s done wrong this time. He glances in confusion down to his clothes; only in his dress shirt, his slacks, and the boxer briefs beneath.

Well, he’s only confused for a second, because he soon notices Dean’s jeans.

Unzipped.

“Everything that got wet, Cas,” the hunter repeats as a reminder, that apologetic tone coming back as if to assure Cas that he’s not doing any of this with the intention of tricking him or violating him somehow. They’re just doing what has to be done.

“I promise I’m not tryin’ to pull anything weird, buddy, it’s just how it has to be,” he explains with a painfully obvious friendliness, shimmying his cold jeans down and stepping out of them until he’s in nothing but his t-shirt and boxers. 

Cas stands there staring at him, expression dreading and a little dazed. He wishes he could blame it all on the cold simply getting to him. 

“Body heat is the most important part of this, so we have to be in layers thin enough to actually feel body heat,” Dean explains as he stands waiting for Cas to unfreeze and finish undressing. 

Cas is silent. 

“Plus, I’d be willing to bet money that the ankles of your pantlegs are wet and cold and you’re just trying to pretend like they aren’t,” he tacks on a little playfully, trying to lighten the mood.

He’s 100% right.

The fire crackles quietly, and the tension between them continues to buzz. The faint whistle of the blizzard wind outside highlights the absence of Cas’s response. 

That is, until he sighs; defeated again and shivering on the tail end.

His hands reluctantly begin to fumble with the button of his pants, clumsily trying to get it undone so that he can unzip them and take them off. 

“…Do you need help?” Dean asks after a few seconds of Cas fruitlessly attempting to get his numbing fingers to work with him.

“No,” the ex-angel automatically answers.

Yes, he thinks dreadfully as he fumbles with the button, but doesn’t dare say it.

Dean comes around the bed anyway. 

He doesn’t say anything other than a soft, “Let me help,” as he gently nudges Cas’s hands out of the way. His own hands are trembling lightly as he easily undoes the button of Cas’s slacks and draws the zipper down, but it can’t be blamed on the cold as much as he wishes it could. 

His movements are clinical; friendly. Nothing more.

“There you go,” he mumbles kindly afterward with an awkward, pursed-lip smile before walking back around to his side of the bed. Cas can at least handle the whole pulling-his-pants-down thing on his own. 

The ex-angel uses the bed for support as he steps out of the pantlegs once they’re around his ankles, leaving him in just his dress shirt and boxer briefs. 

This time, the blood does reach his cheeks. Somehow, Dean’s ability to unintentionally fluster him overrides his body’s natural response to the extreme cold and makes excess blood circulate up to where it doesn’t direly need to be, warming the skin below his eyes.

Dean lifts up the covers and gets under, this time not stopping Cas when Cas does the same. 

The bed creaks quietly with the weight of them both getting in. It’s not large at all; likely just a full size, not even a queen. Despite how abandoned this place seems, it at least hasn’t been abandoned for long. The bed isn’t very dusty, almost seeming as if it’s barely been a week or two since it was laid in. 

Cas’s foot accidentally brushes Dean’s bare leg while they’re midway through getting in.

“Jesus,” Dean jolts in startle.

Cas’s foot is gone as soon as it was there, pulled away like he was burned.  

The ex-angel doesn’t move any further, staring at Dean like he’s trying to quickly analyze whether he’s about to get angrily shoved out of the bed or not; worried he’s somehow overstepped already.

But the touch was not what Dean was startled by. 

It was the temperature.

“Why the hell is your foot so cold?” the hunter asks, clearly worried. 

Cas stays silent. Both of them are still frozen in their positions halfway through trying to come closer to one another.

“...My shoes were wet,” he eventually mumbles when Dean’s still waiting for an answer.

“Your shoes were—” the hunter starts to repeat, then cuts himself off with a flat expression. “Your shoes were wet,” he repeats in a mutter under his breath as he returns to scooching closer toward the middle of the bed. 

It’s not an annoyed mutter, but rather a “really, dude?” sort of tone.

Cas stays silent; nothing new. He’s hesitant to reach the midline of the bed, barely scooching closer until Dean eventually notices.

“Cas. Come here,” he beckons adamantly, again with that impatient (urgency borne out of concern) tone.

The ex-angel obediently scooches a little closer, this time careful to keep his feet from touching Dean. He’s doing everything in his power to get his brain to ignore that he and Dean are both laying in a bed together in nothing but boxers and shirts.

“Closer,” Dean beckons again, a little more amused but just as adamant.

Cas barely scooches again, silent. He’s supporting himself on an elbow as he scooches, halfway laying on his side but not fully relaxed; ready to bolt if he needs to. 

“Dude, I don’t bite,” Dean chuckles a little, amused at the near cartoonish hesitance from Cas. “Just come here,” he beckons for a third and final time, laying on his side and snaking his left arm under the gap of where Cas’s closest armpit to the mattress is a few inches off of the bed. 

Cas reluctantly scooches to where Dean’s trying to get him to; facing one another, laying mere inches apart. Dean’s laying on his left side, Cas laying on his right. The fireplace crackles behind Cas, illuminating Dean’s face just enough for the ex-angel to perfectly see.

He hesitantly tries to mirror Dean’s arm placement; not sure if he’s allowed. 

Dean shifts to accommodate the movement as Cas snakes his right arm in the space under Dean’s closest armpit to the mattress just like Dean did to him, then wraps his left around Dean’s back so that his hand rests between the hunter’s shoulder blades, just as Dean is doing to him.

Essentially, excluding the fluff of the explanation: it’s a sideways hug; plain and simple. 

…Except for one part. 

“Cas,” Dean says as if expecting the ex-angel to already know what he’s about to lecture him about this time. “Y’know the whole point of this is body heat, right?,” he says, raising his eyebrows in question with a small smile of amusement.

Cas gulps. 

“Yes,” comes the gravelly answer, quiet and barely unclenching his jaw enough to speak. 

“...So you know we have to be touching in order to feel each other’s body heat, right?” Dean says next with a small chuckle.

Cas’s legs shift a little nervously. 

Legs that, notably, are not currently intertwined with Dean’s like they’re supposed to be. 

“Almost there,” Dean encourages playfully, finally almost finished with all the “closer”s and softly encouraging “come here”s. He uses the back of his ankle to hook around Cas’s calf, drawing the ex-angel’s reluctant legs close to his own. 

Their legs intertwine naturally from there, as if it’s something beyond voluntary as their bodies relax into one another’s. Cas doesn’t even have to think about where what is supposed to go; their bodies connect and attach as if it’s what they were created to do with each other. 

Finally, after long effort, they’re there. In this foreign bed, curled up beneath the blankets, huddling for heat in this frigid cabin as the fire crackles in the stone fireplace. 

One long minute passes now that they’re finally in close contact, and, as much as Cas is reluctant to mentally admit it: it’s a lot better. 

Dean still quietly cursed when their feet touched again, but didn’t pull away; that’s the point of this. Sharing body heat means putting up with feeling the coldest body parts of the other and simply withstanding it until both of them are equally warm.

Well…and some of the other not-coldest body parts. 

Their combined warmth is slowly growing searing; the heat of their legs stacked like Jenga blocks on top of each other’s, the heat of their arms wrapped around one another. The heat of warm breaths puffing against each other’s faces.

“Is this okay?” Dean asks quietly as he gathers Cas a little closer. 

The hunter can’t deny how much the touch is doing for him in ways more noticeable than simply warming him up. He’s not held someone nor been held by someone like this in many more years than he’s willing to admit. 

Especially not with someone he loves the way he loves Cas.

“Yeah,” Cas answers honestly. Greedily, he gathers Dean a little closer as well. 

A guilty part of him is reveling in this; indulging in it despite how hard he’s trying to resist the urge to do so. As the frostiness of his bones dissipates, he can’t deny how much he needs this, and needs it from Dean specifically. 

“Feels a lot better,” he admits in a gravelly murmur. 

They’re both whispering, even though they really don’t need to. They’re out in the middle of nowhere, so they could be as loud as they want, but nobody is listening but the two of them.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, wrapping his legs closer around the one of Cas’s between his own.

The combination of their body heat under the heavy blankets is creating a contained bubble of warmth just for them; like they’re all that exists, and all that matters. Frozen in time and space, just here in front of the fire together as the snow flurries outside the cabin walls.

He hasn’t seen Cas this close up in as long as he can remember. The ex-angel has hardly let him get within feet of him ever since he was rescued from the Empty; let alone allowed their faces to be inches apart like this.

Even though Cas is the one currently being backlit by the fire’s light, Dean can still see every feature this close. The evidence of age in his skin. The wrinkling; the crow’s feet. The faint bags beneath his eyes, the dark circles.

“You look tired,” Dean murmurs, speaking without thinking. It’s hard to think this close.

Cas swallows, but doesn’t look away. He can’t get himself to.

“I am,” he whispers honestly, absentmindedly wrapping his legs a little closer around the one of Dean’s between his own.

Dean isn’t thinking. 

Or, at least, that’s what he’ll tell himself when trying to find a reason why he does what he does next. 

His hand moves from Cas’s back, snaking up to pet shamelessly at the ex-angel’s dark hair.

“Your hair’s still a little wet,” he mumbles softly, watching his own hand as he combs it gently through Cas’s hair. It’s just as soft as he’s always imagined.

“Mm-hmm,” Cas hums in agreement with a small nod, not even trying to pretend like he doesn’t use the movement as an excuse to lean into the touch. The pillow rustles under his cheek when he does so. 

He can’t stop looking at Dean like this. 

It’s too easy to admire the way that the fire lights up his green eyes and illuminates his freckles. The way the flickering flames spotlight the pink hue of his plush lips.

A shiver wracks Cas’s cold-but-warming body, and it hardly has a chance to finish before Dean’s already drawing him nearer. 

They’re close enough at this point that their abdomens and chests are touching lightly; t-shirt against dress-shirt.

Dean’s hand keeps carding through his hair, now more towards the back of his head than up at the top. His nails are short, but are just noticeable enough to create constant tingles throughout Cas’s body as the hunter gently scritches his scalp in slow motions.

This isn’t necessary. 

The huddling is necessary, yeah. The combined warmth is necessary for survival, and the lack of clothes is necessary to share body heat. 

But the whispering isn’t.

The tender whispering. The hand combing through hair. The admiring eyes.

None of it is necessary, but they’re doing it anyway. The frost is melting, as is the tension that has so constantly been buzzing between them. 

Dean glances to Cas’s lips and back up to his eyes, and Cas doesn’t even try to pretend like he doesn’t notice. He doesn’t even try to resist doing the same to Dean right afterward.

A beat passes; charged. Tentative, like both know that they can’t lay like this any longer without something happening. 

They can’t lie like this any longer and be capable of ignoring the elephant in the room. It’s one or the other, and survival is of the essence.

“Dean—”

“Cas—”

Both stop; not speaking over each other. 

Patiently, Dean murmurs, “You first,”. His hand doesn’t stop gently moving in Cas’s hair, constantly indulging and drinking up the opportunity to touch.

Cas swallows, then licks his lips in preparation.

“...I’m sorry,” he whispers, barely audible even despite the few inches between them. “About the…” he glances away nervously, but can’t keep his gaze away long. His blue eyes come right back a second later, finishing his apology, “...about the dungeon. For what I said,”.

There, he thinks with relief. It may have felt like nails scraping along the soft tissue inside of his throat to finally force the words out, but he finally has addressed it. A weight off of his shoulders.

Even if Dean shoves him away right now for bringing it up, he at least got to experience this; got to experience Dean’s face inches away from his own and Dean’s hand carding through his hair.

Dean is silent, but his expression is unreadable. His hand doesn’t stop.

The fire crackles, and the snow flurries.

“Why?” Dean asks after a few long seconds.

Cas’s brows furrow, and Dean watches the wrinkles form on his forehead as he does so. It reminds him that they’ve grown older; reminds him of what they’ve overcome. 

The wrinkles remind him that every decision they’ve made, from “We’re making it up as we go” all the way to “Goodbye, Dean”, have led them to this moment; have led them to the here and now, in this foreign bed, nestled in one other’s body heat in the bedroom of this blizzard-coated cabin with the crackling fire.

“Why…what?” Cas asks; confused, and a little scared to hear the answer.

He expects: “why are you sorry?”. 

He expects: “why would you say that and ruin our friendship?”.

He expects: “why would you hope I could ever feel the same?”.

“Why would you tell me all of that if you didn’t mean it?” Dean clarifies weakly; unexpected. 

If Cas isn’t mistaken, Dean sounds…hurt.

The ex-angel’s brows remain furrowed, but tweak in a different way. Something of realization, like his understanding of the world around him has suddenly tilted on its axis.

“What do you mean?” he asks. 

This isn’t going how he planned. Every time that he’s mentally rehearsed this exact conversation ever since being resurrected, it never went like this. It always ended in anger, in fighting. 

It always ended with he and Dean separate forever; no more gazing at each other in that silent sort of sanctity they’ve always looked at the other with, and no more passing hands on shoulders to mitigate their craving for the other’s touch. 

It always ended badly. 

But, instead: Dean’s legs wrap even closer around the one of Cas’s own with a quiet desperation, pulling their bodies even closer together.

Chest to chest, abdomen to abdomen, groin to groin. 

Thighs stacked on thighs, knees stacked on knees, calves stacked on calves, feet stacked on feet. 

T-shirt to dress shirt.

There’s barely space between them; barely enough air between their bodies to allow for Cas’s quiet gasp when Dean clarifies with a fragile whisper of, “Why are you acting like you don’t love me anymore?”.

Even in the dark cabin with nothing but the glow of the fireplace, Cas can see the mistiness of the hunter’s eyes. 

“Dean, I…” 

He can’t just say it. 

He can’t say, “I do love you,” right now, because what then? 

“You can’t even say it,” Dean whispers, devastation bleeding into each vowel and consonant. Like it’s hitting him here and now how much it hurts. How much he wants it, and how Cas isn’t giving it to him.

Cas can feel the hand in his hair trembling, and he knows it’s not from the cold. 

His brain is functioning with newfound efficiency now that his body isn’t fighting off the freezing, so the realization that he has greatly misunderstood something is swift. 

While a part of his brain tries to warn himself that he shouldn’t get his hopes up, the other part looks at Dean in front of him and knows that he’s never seen such sensitivity color the face inches from his own.

“Dean, I…” he gulps, shoving the fear down and forcing his vocal cords to form, “...I do love you,”. 

“Then why aren’t you acting like it?” Dean whispers immediately; choked-up. He says it without skipping a beat, as if he’d already expected to hear those exact words and already expected how much they wouldn’t feel true.

Cas is baffled, to say the least. It feels like someone is reaching into his chest and holding a tight fist around his heart as he watches the hunter’s green eyes gloss over with a sheen of tears. 

His understanding of the world around him is not only tilting on its axis.

It's rolling off the axis, and it's rolling away. 

“Dean,” he whispers sadly, and suddenly his hand is moving before he thinks about it. 

He gently cups the hunter’s cheek with his left hand, thumb on his cheekbone and other four fingers resting just below his ear.

“I do love you,” he promises with more ease this time, sure of it. Something tells him that he doesn’t have to be as scared to say it as he’d thought, and that “something” is the look in Dean’s eyes inches from his own.

“Then why are you acting like you don’t?” Dean asks.

Hurt.

Cas sputters for the right words. He can’t exactly say “I thought you were disgusted with me” or “I thought you’d rather kick me out on the street again”. He has a feeling that that’s not what Dean needs to hear right now.

Before he can find a suitable answer, Dean’s already speaking again.

“You won’t talk to me, you won’t be alone with me, you won’t look at me, and you looked like you’d rather get frostbite than get in the bed with me,” Dean rambles, voice getting thick and hoarse in an attempt to keep tears choked back.

The hunter’s words jog the memory of, “You know why I don’t wanna be alone with him right now,” in Cas’s mind, but it only leaves him more confused to remember. If he’s clearly misunderstood this so greatly, what else has he apparently misunderstood?

“Dean, it’s not—” his mouth opens and closes, lost for words, “—it’s not like that,”.

“Then why?” the hunter begs. “You said all of that, but then when we finally get you back, you act like you don’t even wanna be around me,” he rambles, throat tight and eyes glassy. 

“I thought…” Cas starts with a shake of his head rustling the pillowcase, unable to form a complete sentence with how shocked he is. 

He would say, “I thought you didn’t want me that way,” but it suddenly seems stupid to think such a thing while he and Dean are curled up together like this; so obviously wanting each other that way.

Maybe it’s been evident this whole time, has been here right in front of him, and he’s just been too afraid to open his eyes and see it. Too afraid to believe it.

“I didn’t think that you felt the same way,” he admits, leaving he and Dean 2-1 on the leaderboard in terms of confessions. “I didn’t want to mess up our friendship because of the way I felt,” he solemnly explains, “and I’d rather have you as just a friend than not have you at all,”.

He sighs quietly as soon as he finishes saying it, a little ashamed of himself but also so relieved. Even if he’s still confused by Dean’s current reaction, he’s finally said it.

His own words parrot in his head; his dying words from that day in the dungeon with Dean. 

It’s in just saying it.

“I just thought you couldn’t feel the way about me that I feel about you,” he repeats solemnly, simplifying his explanation.

“But I did,” Dean argues desperately. “I do,”.

A beat passes.

The tension between them has melted in full, leaving an ooey-gooey sort of tenderness in its wake.

Cas hesitates for a few moments, calculating something. 

As if to prove a theory, he gently whispers, “You what?” as he strokes Dean’s cheekbone with his tender thumb. 

The hand in his hair stills, but the stillness is nearly unnoticeable due to its trembling. 

“I…” Dean starts before the lump in his throat cuts him off, heart racing. He swallows painfully, and his eyelids burn with tears.

The heat of their bodies suddenly is almost too much to handle, even though the point of this was to keep them from freezing. 

Cas’s firm, hairy, masculine leg between his own bare thighs is suddenly all too noticeable. His manly size and stature within Dean’s embrace is suddenly all too different than the many women Dean has held in the past.

Cas’s manliness is the complete opposite of the women that Dean is accustomed to loving; polar, just like the wintery storm that has led them to this warm, blanketed embrace beside the crackling fire.

“You can’t say it either,” Cas gently points out, theory proven correct by Dean's silence.

He’s 100% right. 

The 3 words stay stubbornly stuck behind the hunter’s vocal cords.

Dean sniffles, but it’s not because of the cold. The pitiful whisper of, “Sorry,” comes out barely audible, but Cas hears it all the same.

Evidently, despite Dean having allowed Cas to go first when they’d accidentally begun to speak at the same time, they were both planning on saying the same thing to each other. 

The ex-angel shakes his head to dismiss the apology, continuing to brush his thumb back and forth on freckled skin.

A tear dribbles across the bridge of the hunter’s nose and down to the pillow, that glassiness finally shattering. Another follows right afterward as his jaw clenches tight, dampening the foreign pillowcase.

It feels like kneeling in purgatory all over again, atoning and admitting his feelings while still never being able to admit the words that he wants to say. 

“You don’t have to say it. I heard your prayer,” Cas had said when Dean finally found him.

The only thing that Dean had wanted in that moment was for their stupid battle with Chuck to end so that he could hold Cas like this, and now he finally can. 

He finally has the opportunity he’s longed for, waiting right at his fingertips; fingertips that they both can feel now that the numbness of the frost has thawed in the comfort of one another’s body heat. 

Dean’s mouth opens and closes, wobbling. His warm hand trembles in Cas’s hair. 

“You don’t have to say it,” Cas reassures just like he did that day, stroking his cheekbone and briefly swiping some of the wetness from the outer corner of his eye.

Dean nods paradoxically in denial.

Yes I do.

Even though it feels like he’s trying to speak around peanut butter thickly gluing his throat shut, he forces it out. He has to. 

Knowing them, it’s now or never; and, for once, he’s ready for it to be now. 

“I love you,” he croaks as his hand absentmindedly tightens a bit in Cas’s hair as if to keep him in place; not letting him run away. Not letting Cas get swept away this time; not letting black goo trickle in to steal this moment from them again. 

Cas inhales sharp and quiet, even though he could tell it was coming. His thumb trembles lightly on Dean’s cheek, but he’s warm now. 

“Dean…”

“Say it back,” Dean interrupts a little pitifully, voice choked and tight as he immediately follows up with a pathetic ramble of, “Why aren’t you saying it back?” as a few more tears slip over the dampened bridge of his nose. 

“I love you too,” Cas is quick to softly reassure, because of course he does. “I love you too, Dean,”.

His promise is accompanied with a small smile, wobbly as it may be. It almost looks identical to the one in the dungeon that day. 

Almost. 

This time, there’s an absence of dread; an absence of knowing what’s about to come, and instead a shared nervousness of the knowledge that neither of them know what’s in store after this.

Dean’s breath hitches quietly. Maybe they can blame the rampant emotions on the cold.

“I love you too,” Cas repeats again, absentmindedly shifting his head a little closer as he keeps stroking his thumb soothingly. 

Dean meets him halfway; he scooches his head on his pillow, closer to the midline. It makes them close enough that can tip his forehead forward to rest against Cas’s, and his breath stutters again as he does so. 

Cas’s forehead is warm, and his dark hair is just as soft tickling his forehead as it was when carding between his fingers. The thumb on his cheek still brushes back and forth, and his eyelids still burn.

They aren’t tears of hurt, though. Not anymore.

Cas can feel the way that Dean’s chest rises and falls against his own, bodies pressed close enough together that he can feel each hitch of Dean’s breath; can feel the way it makes the hunter’s abdomen jolt and his chest jump.

He could take a leap, here. They’re in a perfect position that he could lift his forehead from Dean’s own, replace it with his lips, then set his forehead back down again. 

He’s been so uncertain for so long, but suddenly feels certain of something. 

This isn’t an act from Dean. This isn’t a fabricated lie, nor something for personal gain. This is something cracked-open, right from the heart—laid out for Cas and Cas only to see.

And, for that, the leap is worth it.

Cas pulls his forehead back to separate it from Dean’s, bravery keeping him steady.

His chin tilts up to press his lips to the hunter’s forehead right in the warm center; hearing a quiet, wet gasp from Dean when he does so. 

He lets the kiss linger, soaking up the warmth and the sensation of skin beneath his lips. The hand in his hair tightens.

He tips his chin back down, resting his forehead right back on the spot as if to seal what he just planted there.

Dean’s breath shudders, close enough to puff warm against Cas’s lips. 

There’s an electric current between them; as if being even inches apart requires resistance against the magnetic pull of their bodies.

His nose brushes against Cas’s, and Cas’s brushes against his. 

Dean has kissed people thousands of times. He knows how to kiss. He knows how to initiate it, how to make a moment out of it. How to tease it, how to make it worked-for once it finally happens.

All of that goes out the window with this; replaced by pure, mindless instinct.

He slowly moves his chin forward as another tear dribbles over the bridge of his nose when his eyes slip shut, breath shaking as he uses his lightly parted lips to search for Cas’s own. His hands pull Cas closer, body pressing forward against Cas’s with more purpose.

In a haze of desperation, a near-inaudible whine sounds quietly in his throat; low, matching the octave of his voice, but needy. 

And then, finally, they brush.

The plush of his lips meet Cas’s so lightly that he almost doesn’t register it at first. It’s tentative, new, and nervous.

He feels Cas breathe out against his lips, and it’s hot.

It must be his body’s natural, biological response to the cold; inclined to chase after heat wherever it can get it. Another low whine slips as his lips enclose right on Cas’s bottom one with a desperation, nearly too firm and overeager; uncontrolled. 

Unrestrained, better yet. 

Cas’s lips close on his top one with a little more control, but Dean can’t help himself. He nods into another kiss right afterward with a heavy huff of an exhale, diving deeper as if his air source is Cas’s mouth.

Cas makes a low sound of enjoyment in reaction, and ex-angel’s right arm (the one around his back from under Dean’s body) wraps more purposefully; reaching all the way across the stretch of Dean’s upper back to pull him as close as possible. 

It’s pick-up after pick-up after pick-up in regards to the energy surrounding them as their mouths set a rhythm like a well-oiled machine. 

The fire continues to crackle at just the same pace as it has this whole time and the flakes of snow continue to blow in the blizzard around the cabin at just the same speed as they have been, but he and Cas get faster.

Cas’s hand on his cheek becomes an anchor; manually angling Dean’s face to kiss with more depth as each one after the other leads to a steady increasing of heat. Dean’s hand clutches tighter in Cas’s hair, soft locks getting twisted into his fingers.

They’ve barely been at it for two, maybe three minutes before Dean’s eagerness overtakes him. Without thought, he abandons any remaining shame and licks.

He normally knows better. You don’t tongue kiss during the instance of the first kiss. That’s for the second date, for the first make-out on the couch watching a movie together. 

But there is no first date, no second date for them. They are long since overdue, and have 11 years worth of waiting for the “first make-out”. They’ve been the secret star of one another’s guilty fantasies for longer than either would be willing to admit.

His tongue laps boldly into Cas’s mouth, brushing with Cas’s own and mingling with the taste of the man he’s loved from afar for far too long. It draws a low groan of pleasure right up out of the ex-angel’s vocal cords, sounding like it came from deep within his chest and traveled all the way up as the result of Dean’s doing.

Dean wants to hear it again, and wants to hear it for the rest of his life. 

He wraps his legs tighter around Cas’s own, shameless as he grinds against it with another pathetic whine. 

It’s with a slightly overeager—and maybe a little rougher than intended—tug of Cas’s hair that the sound happens again, but it comes out on a moan this time in shock. He keeps Cas’s head tugged back, diving in where the angle has allotted him more skin to work with.

Dean covers Cas’s cheek with open-mouthed kisses, sloppy and mindless but God he has never needed something so badly in his life.

It’s not even that he’s just horny. He’s been horny plenty of times before, but this is next-level. The end goal here isn’t even just getting to the goods, it’s savoring it. Trying to get as much of Cas as possible in his hands, in his mouth, in him in a way that he’s never craved from someone.

He needs Cas in every way that Cas can provide, and he needs all of it now, here, around him, in him, at once, everything.

Dean’s kissing down the side of Cas’s neck with a fervor that he didn’t admittedly know he still had in him. He’d thought he’d be a little rusty doing this, but his desperation is taking the reins for him.

But not for long. Soon, something much more stable is taking the reins instead.

Through heavy pants of pleasure, Cas’s hand moves from Dean’s cheek to the back of his hair, gently gripping it with a soft and out-of-breath, “Dean, honey, slow down,”.

“Honey,” Dean registers with a sappy feeling in his chest. He moans against the skin that his mouth is assaulting, rutting with abandon against Cas’s thigh.

“Dean,” Cas pants again, gripping a little tighter in his hair as a means of control.

Dean leans back obediently (albeit reluctantly), panting hard. Despite how freezing they’d been going into this, he feels close to overheated now. Which, likely, is why Cas is trying to get him to calm down, but it is a task much easier said than done.

Cas revels in the look of need burning bright in Dean’s eyes, face flushed and lips reddened while looking at him like he holds the world in his hand.

“Just slow down a little bit,” Cas instructs softly, keeping his hand on the back of Dean’s head to draw him for a gentler kiss. 

He can feel the restraint of Dean’s lips against his own when they reconnect, but he wants to savor this. While yes, he feels just as ramped up as the hunter currently is, rushing through this in a haze of half-conscious horniness is not the way he wants this to go tonight.

He wants to mentally catalogue each expression of Dean’s pleasure, wants to locate each spot more sensitive than the rest that makes Dean squirm and twitch. He wants all of it, and, for once, he’s certain that he can have it. 

The hunter is here for him like an endless buffet, an all-you-can-eat indulgence of Dean for Cas and Cas only to feast upon. 

The hunter tries to speed it up, but Cas’s kisses remain achingly slow and steady, forcing Dean to maintain the speed instead of getting out of hand again. He whimpers all the while, desperate for more.

This isn’t like Dean’s experiences in the past. Often, he’s the one in charge. 

It’s not that he never has been the submissive one (thank you, Rhonda Hurley), but he most often takes the lead naturally. He’s always the one setting the pace, switching it up, flipping the positions, moving from one thing to the next. 

But not tonight.

Tonight, he’s not in charge. It’s obvious that he’s still trying to be the dominant one, but it’s even more obvious that Cas is.

The ex-angel keeps a hand gently twisted into the back of Dean’s hair, keeping his head perfectly in place so that the hunter can’t dive back in to resume leaving bruises on Cas’s neck like he wants to, and can’t try moving on until Cas is ready to. 

A part of Dean nearly wants to pause just to ask where the hell Cas learned to kiss like this, but he’s far too caught up in how good it feels to worry about where this practical experience must be coming from. He’s just happy to be the lucky recipient of the ex-angel’s expert attention.

Cas knows exactly how to lick into the kisses, exactly how to close his lips around one of Dean’s right afterward. 

He knows how to differentiate the pace so that Dean never knows what’s coming next, switching from a few eager and steady ones in a row to a lingering drawn-out kiss that ends with him gently catching Dean’s bottom one between his teeth to savor it.

Dean’s not been entirely paying attention to what he sounds like, but he’s also not been paying attention to how he’s physically reacting either. All that he can focus on is how he feels; or, more-so, how it feels to be Cas’s.

He may be a little embarrassed later when remembering how he’s currently grinding on Cas’s leg like an untrained dog, but right now can only focus on how good the firmness of Cas’s bare thigh feels between the two of his own. 

He’s nearly as hard as steel in his loose boxers, and everything is making him feel like a blushing virgin. 

Cas’s kisses start to trail down the side of his cheek to find the side of his neck, but it’s still more controlled than Dean had been when he’d tried doing the same to Cas. The sensitive, cracking moan that slips out of him when Cas starts to suckle above his pulse point is a sound that he’ll never claim as being one of his own.

Slowly, Cas rolls them amidst the process of wetting the side of Dean’s neck until Dean’s on his back beneath him. It’s easier to bask in the beauty of Dean’s body if the man is laid beneath him, sprawled like something delicate for Cas to take apart and put back together.

Dean lets it happen, allowing himself to be moved however Cas wants. 

He’s never been laid beneath a man before and it admittedly makes his heart race at a concerning speed, but he can’t imagine being laid beneath anyone other than Cas like this. Sure, this is a little terrifying, but Cas is being so gentle with him. 

The ex-angel is suave and sensual in a way that Dean has only ever fantasized about, but is simultaneously taking care of him like he’s something so fragile and special that it’s making the hunter’s eyes prickle all over again.

He lightly grips the back of Cas’s head and desperately holds onto the dress shirt to keep himself tethered, feeling out of control of his body as he arches up into Cas’s magnetic touch while bruises get suckled into the side of his throat.

The pathetic beg of, “Cas,” that slips from his lips hardly registers as being his own from how needy it sounds, but the way that Cas groans against his skin in response quickly makes him eager to own up to the sound he’d made. 

He gets lost in the sensations, feeling drunk off of Cas’s touch. His vision feels staticky; his brain tingly like each of his nerves are getting the massage he’s needed for the past 40 years.

Having gotten so used to being bathed in warmth, Dean suddenly is reminded very swiftly of the freezing temperature.

The hunter gasps in startle, jolting and arching hard when Cas’s hands sneak up beneath his t-shirt. All they do is settle lightly on the sides of his torso, but they’re cold. 

“Your hands are cold,” Dean rushes out, barely able to speak around all of the conflicting sensations. The heat of Cas’s mouth on his skin. The cold air of the bedroom. The warmth accumulated beneath the covers. The icyness of Cas’s hands on the searing skin beneath his t-shirt.

Cas kisses his way up to nibble at his ear, and Dean squirms in a way he’ll never admit to in reaction to the simple sensation. 

He never used to be this sensitive, and he can’t tell if it’s just because it’s Cas or if it’s because he’s not been touched like this in years. Or if it’s a combination of both. It’s probably both. He just isn’t used to—

Dean cries out with a harder arch of his back when Cas’s cold thumbs suddenly come up the thumb at his nipples beneath the t-shirt, startled and aroused in one conflicting burst of pleasure through his groin.

“Your hands—” he gasps before cutting himself off with a whine, hands flying from Cas’s hair and dress shirt to instead grip tight around both of the ex-angel’s un-budging wrists. “Cas, your hands are freezing,” he pants desperately, writhing under the heavy weight of Cas above him.

Pausing from the wet nibbling of the shell of his ear, Cas affectionately nudges the side of Dean’s face with his nose.

“I’m warming them up,” he teases as he grips and squeezes at Dean’s warm pecs while thumbing at the hard nubs, voice even lower than usual from his heightened arousal.

Dean’s hips involuntarily buck up against Cas’s thigh between his legs with a shaky moan, the thrust hard enough that his whole backside tries to lift off of the mattress in the process.

“...You like it,” Cas whispers with a fond heat in his tone like he’s telling a secret, exhilarated by successfully doing exactly what he wanted: learning what little movements, places, and sensations make the hunter squirm.

Cas leans back enough to be able to look at Dean beneath him, and a humiliating (albeit soft in volume) moan punches out of the hunter just in reaction to seeing Cas above him. 

Part of it is the relief. After everything that had going on between them lately, after the way he’s felt like Cas was being dismissive of him and that he didn’t love him the way he’d said in the dungeon, after all of that…to see Cas above him like this, peering down at him with adoration, is so relieving.

And arousing.

…But mostly relieving. 

“You’re beautiful like this,” Cas praises, gently circling his thumbs and feeling Dean’s hips buck again against his thigh, breaking the rhythm that the hunter already has been continually grinding steady against it with. “You’re always beautiful,” he murmurs, reveling in his newfound lack of shame in thinking these things about the hunter, “...but you’re especially beautiful like this,”.

Dean does not have enough composure to speak so eloquently to Cas in return right now, and can only manage to helplessly buck his hips out of rhythm again with a desperate whisper of, “Cas,” as his hands tighten around the ex-angel’s wrists. 

Cas leans down to his lips again, but stays just far enough away to tease instead of coming all the way close enough. 

Dean sits up as much as he can with Cas’s hands keeping his torso on the bed, shamelessly chasing his lips with a needy sound until Cas relents a few seconds later, leaning down fully to let the hunter’s lips latch onto his own.

Clearly, Dean is not the only one who knows how to make a kiss “worked-for”.

However, Dean does still certainly have a trump card that works in favor of cracking Cas’s controlled composure. 

Their faces are barely separated before Dean is breathlessly panting, “I love you,” while looking the ex-angel right in the eyes, nearly saying it even more with his gaze than his words are capable of.

Cas groans quietly, leaning right back in with an earnest, “I love you too,” in return. His lips move with purpose, and his hands slide back down the sides of Dean’s torso beneath the t-shirt. 

Admittedly, the previously-icy palms are much warmer now. 

“Is it okay if I take this off?” Cas asks softly once he pulls back the next time, lightly lifting the t-shirt to show that that’s what he’s asking about. 

Dean nods breathlessly, though adds a somewhat sassy, “Long as you let me take this damn thing off after,” with a gesturing tug of the dress-shirt. 

The long sleeve shirt leaves pretty much everything to the imagination, and Dean’s so desperate to see what Cas looks like shirtless that he feels like he may spontaneously combust.

With a fond smile, Cas sits back on his knees to get Dean’s t-shirt off. 

The hunter sits up to help the process go faster, cursing under his breath at the blast of cold air now that they’re not laying bundled in their bubble of under-blanket heat. He quickly drags Cas back down under the covers as soon as his t-shirt is off, though this time takes the initiative to roll them over so that the ex-angel is now the one laying on his back. 

Cas lets him off the hook a little, this time not telling him to slow down when Dean starts mouthing a little rougher than necessary at the side of his neck. He’s eager to make his mark on Cas; to stake his claim in a purely biological, animalistic sort of sense. 

His full weight is on top of Cas, and it’s extremely cozy in a long-awaited domestic sort of way. Cas is like a human-generator of warmth underneath him with the added comfort of the covers overtop of them and the fire crackling next to them, making Dean want to cling to him even more than already wanted to to begin with.

And, now that he’s laying flat on top of the long line of Cas’s body beneath him, he can also feel that he most certainly is not the only one who’s nearly as hard as steel.

Cas’s warmed-up hands start to trail over his newly bare back. 

His head momentarily drops his face to the crook of Cas’s neck with a soft moan to just lay there and feel for a minute, a non-blizzard-related shiver racing up his vertebrae when Cas’s hands begin down on either side of his lumbar spine and slowly trace blunt fingernails all the way up his back to the top of his shoulders.

He rocks his hips helplessly, this time with his groin right above Cas’s. 

The sound of a punched-out moan of pleasure leaving Cas’s throat is extremely arousing to hear in this spot; his ear right next to Cas’s vocal cords. 

He does it again, rocking with more purpose to coax the sound out again. He can feel the shape of Cas against himself, though Cas is kept better in-place due to his underwear definitely being tighter fitting than Dean’s.

The pleasured sound rumbles in the chest beneath Dean’s own again, and he this time feels Cas’s hands come down to grip tight at either side of his hips to stop the movement. 

Yeah right, like Cas’s large hands firmly gripping either side of his hips while they’re dry humping is somehow gonna encourage him to stop. 

He rocks even harder, burying his face in Cas’s neck and whimpering in a way that he knows is turning Cas hotter by the second—literally and metaphorically. The restless grinding of his hips feels ironically feverish in nature, even though this all began due to a serious risk of hypothermia. 

All of it is just a preview for what’s coming after all of the foreplay, and the shared knowledge of that makes it all the more pleasurable.

“Dean,” Cas grumbles in complaint, clearly enjoying the stimulation but knowing that Dean needs to stop if they want this to last more than 30 seconds.

The hunter lifts his head up, but it’s only so that he can catch Cas’s lips. 

Neither have much self-restraint left in the tank anymore. The kisses are sloppy and uncoordinated, and the clumsiness of it would worry Dean about the whole hypothermia-symptom thing if it weren’t for how damn hot they currently are. 

But, hot as their bodies are, he wants to feel what’s even hotter: Cas’s bare skin. 

It takes great willpower to get his mouth to disconnect from Cas’s, but he’s on a mission. A determination to feel Cas’s bare chest beneath his palms has filled him to the brim. 

He can’t tell if it’s the determination or the desperation, but one of the two is what causes him to not think twice before he’s suddenly sitting up on top of Cas, eager to get this stupid dress-shirt unbuttoned. 

The ex-angel bucks up into him unintentionally, hands gripping tight on either side of Dean’s waist to keep him from moving around too much. The feeling and view of the shirtless hunter straddling him is nearly too much to handle. 

Dean makes quick work of undoing the buttons, not even caring about how much cool air he’s letting beneath the covers by sitting up like this. He’s certain that, from this point forward, their bodies are only about to be generating even more body heat as time goes on.

He’s barely gotten the bottom button undone before he’s tossing the sides of the shirt wide open, immediately moaning behind a bitten lip while roving his hands over broad pecs, shoulders, and soft chest hairs. So different, but so good.

Cas jolts at the feeling with a shocked yelp, complaining, “Your hands are cold, Dean,”.

Dean only smiles, a pleased sort of smirk as he leans down to press a brief kiss to the ex-angel’s lips with a playful tease of, “Payback,” as he continues sweeping his hands along Cas’s warm, bare torso. 

He sits back up, absentmindedly chewing on his bottom lip as he slides his hands all along the skin. He briefly thumbs at the nipples, but doesn’t spend as much time paying attention to them as Cas did. 

Instead, he already has other plans of how he’s going to give Cas special attention, but really just wants the shirt off first so that he has a better view while he’s doing it.  

“Sit up so I can get this thing off,” he directs, leaning his weight back a bit while still straddling Cas to give room for the man to sit up and move his arms around.

Cas does so immediately, sitting up quick and getting the dress shirt tugged off and tossed to the ground. Warm, muscular arms wrap around Dean’s bare upper body as soon as the shirt’s off, immediately drawing a pleased moan out of the hunter. 

The covers have fallen from around them, and the cold air of the bedroom just makes the contrast of their body heat in comparison seem so much hotter. 

Cas mouths along his jawline with heavy breaths, grinding up into the weight of Dean straddled above him. Dean in turn grips the back of Cas’s hair with his other hand on the ex-angel’s shoulder, grinding down into him and matching his rhythm.

“Don’t flip us over,” he eventually requests after a few long, mind-melting moments of rocking and grinding like this, adding a vague explanation of, “M’not done with you yet,” that works perfectly well to make Cas want to obey the request. 

He actually was about to flip them so that Dean’s on his back again, but now easily complies with whatever Dean’s wanting to do instead. 

He pulls back and looks up to Dean—who’s slightly higher in this position—and feels all sorts of warm and fuzzy and horny as hell when the hunter just peers unblinking down at him in return while they continue moving in tandem, breaths heavy together as Dean cards his hand gently through Cas’s hair in a petting sort of way; admiring. 

Preview for later, both think.

The hunter’s hand eventually trails down to Cas’s shoulder, then gently pushes to get him to lay back down like before. 

His cock kicks in his boxers at the sight of Cas 90% naked underneath him, and doesn’t know how the hell he’s gonna handle it once Cas is actually naked. 

…But he’s ready to find out ASAP.

He bravely shimmies back a bit, scooching down Cas’s legs until he’s closer to his ankles. Cas waits patiently, eager to see what Dean has in store.

The hunter mentally preps himself as he gets into position. He’s never done this before, but he’s had it done plenty of times to know exactly what feels good; the perfect build-up, the teasing, all of it. 

Sitting down at Cas’s ankles between his legs, he leans over; being sure to make sure his back is nicely arched when he does so. He’s always had a particularly good back, and it’s one of the features of his body that he’s the most confident about how good-looking it is. 

…Especially when he bends over. 

Cas’s hand flies down to hold on to his shoulder when Dean gently presses a kiss overtop the boxer briefs, right above his tip. The hunter barely blinks; peering up at him with those familiar green eyes.

Familiar green eyes that he’s imagined looking up at him like this a guilty amount of times.

Dean presses open-mouthed kisses to length overtop the thin fabric, feeling Cas’s cock kick beneath his lips and pretending like he’s far more confident about what he’s doing than he actually is. 

He’s excited to do it, he just doesn’t have any experience with being on the giving end of this and therefore is understandably nervous.

Cas already seems quite pleased though, and he hasn’t even taken the ex-angel’s underwear off yet.

He licks a stripe from base to tip over the fabric, then lines it back down with open-mouthed kisses once again. A few seconds are taken to shamelessly indulge in the natural scent of Cas, nudging his nose around the shape outlined beneath the briefs. 

His hands slide to rest on either side of Cas’s hips, returning to the previous pressing of lips to the head over the fabric. Just to watch Cas squirm, he suckles for a moment, looking up at the man through wispy eyelashes.

It earns just the reaction he’d hoped for, and can’t help the egotistical part of him that automatically thinks damn, I’m actually kinda good at this.

But he can’t resist any longer.

He carefully settles his hands on the waistband of the underwear; teasingly slowly (and maybe stalling just a little bit for his own sake).

“Can I?” he asks, a question in his eyes.

Cas nods immediately, breathless as he politely tacks on, “Please,”.

Let off his leash, Dean draws back the waistband, simultaneously reaching his hand under the fabric to take Cas into hand and pull him out like he simply can’t wait long enough to get the underwear down beforehand. 

Cas twitches visibly at the exposure to the cold air, then has to briefly drop his head back to the pillow when Dean presses a warm kiss to the tip without even giving Cas time to brace himself. He makes quick work of removing the briefs by drawing them down Cas’s legs and tossing them off the bed, then gets himself comfortable right back in position. 

Immediately, he gulps at the sight. Cas is literally laying in front of him, fully naked. Holy hell.

Using his left hand to keep the length in place, he takes a deep breath of mental preparation before then starting at the bottom; planting slow, unblinking kisses up the right side of Cas’s cock up to the tip. 

Cas hot and heavy in his hand is making him think things he’s never thought and feel ways he’s never felt. He’s never even held another guy’s dick in his hand, but all of this just makes him feel like a natural. Like it’s not something that needs practice like he’s always thought it would; only needing the right person. 

Which, naturally, is Cas. 

Watching the ex-angel’s abdomen twitch in response to the barely-there stimulation encourages him, and the hand moving from his shoulder to pet gently over his hair eggs him on in a purely submissive sort of way that he’d never otherwise admit to.

He kitten licks at the tip first, then gives a swirl of his tongue to get the head wet. Watching the pleasured expressions etch onto Cas’s face is addicting. 

Cas’s hand petting his hair keeps some of the longer strands from falling onto his forehead and covering up his eyes, making it all feel a little more real. It’s been longer than usual since he’s cut his hair and given himself a trim; having begun to let it grow out a little longer as of late. 

He dips down to lick a long stripe from base to tip next, then does it again; getting Cas effectively wet.

…It also may be to continue stalling, but that’s besides the point.

He continues a few more seconds of the small assortment of moves before he briefly takes a second to resituate the covers with Cas’s help, starting to grow cold from prolonged exposure to the frigid air. 

It’s actually a little impressive that both of them are even able to be this hard with how cold it is, but they do have 10+ years of pent-up sexual tension finally being let out. He probably couldn’t get un-hard right now if he tried.

Well, he definitely could. He’s like 47.

Y’know what, whatever. He’s definitely stalling. 

He settles back into place, warmed by the blanket this time. Cas’s torso is probably cold due to the air exposure, but he doesn’t seem to be complaining. It’s either that they can fully submerge Dean in the blanket or have the top half of Cas’s body outside of the covers, and it’s obvious that Cas’s priority is wanting to see Dean’s face.

The hunter continues to just give little licks and swirls of his tongue. Nothing that isn’t providing pleasure effectively, but, realistically, it’s not the intended act. What he’s doing is more or less just simple teasing. 

With a slightly embarrassed sigh, he takes a break for a moment to look up to Cas and reluctantly mumble, “I don’t really know how to do this,” in confession.

The ex-angel’s expression is confused for a moment, then switches to one of gentle concern.

“You don’t have to,” Cas easily reassures, clearly not wanting Dean to feel forced. 

“I want to,” the hunter explains, eager. “I just…I’ve never been the one doing it, so I don’t know if I’m gonna be good at it or not,” he mumbles, clearly a little shy but not wanting to kill the mood. 

“Well, if it makes you feel better, it’s not like I would know if you’re doing something right or wrong,” Cas suggests, somewhat playful and obviously trying to lift the hunter’s spirits.   

Dean sighs, absentmindedly stroking his hand slowly along Cas’s length.

“That’s part of the point, though,” he explains. “I want it to be good ‘cause it’s the first time you’ve ever gotten it,”.

He knows that Cas has had sex before, with the reaper, but doubts that there was as much foreplay as this involved. I mean, she did try to kill him the morning after. It wouldn’t make much sense to do something as intimate as this.

“I’m not going to judge you on how ‘good’ you are at it or not, Dean,” Cas reassures with a fond expression. “Whatever you're comfortable doing is plenty,” he promises, sappy and sweet and everything that Dean has fantasized about hearing. 

Dean mentally still has a brief panic of “but what if I look weird doing it?” and “what if it turns out my gag reflex is really bad?” and “or worse: what if it turns out my gag reflex is really good and then I inevitably get a Dean-Winchester-typical complex about that?” but takes a deep breath and shakes the thoughts out of his head. 

He literally has Cas’s dick in his hand. None of this is normal. Him giving a blowjob for the first time is actually like the least-abnormal abnormal thing in this entire situation.

“Kay,” he mumbles; a Dean-WInchester way of saying “thank you” without actually saying it. 

Cas barely has time to respond before Dean’s going for it. Ripping the band-aid off. 

He’s never done it, but he’s had it done enough times to be able to figure it out well enough. Lips carefully covering his teeth, breathing out on the way down so that he doesn’t gag.

Cas makes a shuddered noise when he does so, and it pulls an even better moan out when Dean inhales and sucks vacuum-tight on his way back up before repeating the whole process over again.

He isn’t brave enough yet to make eye contact with Cas during this part, but hopes his mouth is making up for it. 

And, judging by Cas’s reactions, it currently is.

The feeling of Cas hot and heavy on his tongue is intoxicating. The fleshy, slightly-salty taste is a flavor he hadn’t known he was craving, and he can feel every bead of his own precome that dribbles into his own boxers every time Cas makes a new sound or twitches in reaction. 

While still fairly difficult, this really isn’t as daunting of an activity as he’d been expecting. The hardest part is keeping himself from gagging, but continuing to bob his head on just the upper portion makes that easy to avoid. 

Evidently, he’s really damn good at this part. Not phenomenal maybe, but for a first-timer? He’s doing a pretty okay job.

He tries to switch up the rhythm at times, never going too fast but switching between short nods and occasional longer sucks upward. Briefly, he simply noses around the base and presses kisses to the soft skin and coarse hairs when he needs to catch his breath, but then gets right back into it. 

There’s no rhyme or reason; just instinct. He really had only intended to do this for a short amount of time, but a few minutes gradually pass as he loses track of his tempo. 

“Dean,” Cas pants in pleasure with a strained voice, gripping tighter than intended in the hunter’s hair. 

It all spurs Dean on further. 

If anything, his own eagerness is what makes this more exciting for both of them. The obviousness that he’s trying so hard to make Cas feel good makes it more enjoyable for Cas, which makes it more enjoyable for Dean, and so on.

It’s constant, and it’s good. 

He goes a little deeper as he steadily gains the confidence to do so…but Cas is big. 

Above average. 

Ego-worthy, even.

…And Dean’s a newbie at this.

On the next over-eager descent, he gags accidentally from going a bit further than he was prepared for. 

It is not a pleasant feeling.

It’s something almost claustrophobic, and a little panic inducing. Gagging around something and still having it there in his throat afterward is a very foreign sensation, and one that will obviously take more getting used to than one attempt at this. 

He quickly pulls up and off to catch his heavy breath, trying to discreetly swallow a little frantically around the discomfort lingering in his throat. 

“Oh honey,” Cas worries softly when it happens, immediately sitting up to reach Dean better and have him in closer gentle-hair-petting distance. “Are you alright?” he asks.

Dean nods, catching his breath. He’s honestly just more embarrassed than anything else. 

Though he may regret it later when looking back on this experience, he’s not currently thinking about trying to look sexy or whatever in the meantime. The arousal momentarily halts; focusing solely on getting himself together before he makes any worse of a fool out of himself.

He knows that some guys get egotistical about people gagging because it’s proof that they’re big enough to make someone gag, but the ex-angel clearly is not of that sort.

“Come here,” Cas murmurs, but doesn’t give the hunter much of a choice because he starts guiding him back up towards him anyway. 

Dean really would have kept going, and doesn’t particularly love stopping the activity on a slightly sour note, but—judging by how hard Cas has gotten amidst the activity—he has a sneaking suspicion that Cas may be trying to keep him from continuing so that he doesn’t get close.

The ex-angel’s lips are shamelessly on his own as soon as he’s laid back down on top of Cas like they’d been before; now bare chest to bare chest. It’s not as heated of a makeout as earlier, rather a simply comforting one.

Warm.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Cas checks once he pulls back, gently petting over his hair and carefully examining his face to detect any lies.

As much as it’s a little embarrassing to have ended the activity like that, Dean can’t deny feeling all warm and fuzzy being pampered and fretted over in such a way. Cas just cares about him so much, and he’d really missed this. Missed them. 

He nods, still breathing a little heavy.

“Your eyes are watering,” Cas points out with a raised brow, sleuthing to detect deception. Dean knows good and well that Cas will keep them from moving forward until he knows for certain that Dean is alright, and it all just makes him love him a little bit more. 

He isn’t teary because of an emotional issue, though; he’s teary because of what he was just doing. It’s a physical reaction, like tearing up after getting knocked in the nose by something.

A small snicker slips as he counters, “Well yeah, ‘cause you were just halfway down my throat,”. 

Cas gives him an unimpressed expression, but Dean can see the amusement hiding behind it. 

The ex-angel leans in a beat later, a gentle peck.

“You were very good at that,” he reassures while resituating the covers to ensure that they’re both covered up, referring to at least the first half of the blowjob. “If you hadn’t told me it was your first time doing so, I really would’ve had no idea,” he swears, watching the hunter’s cheeks turn pinker in reaction to the praise.

Dean doesn’t know how to answer, so he just leans in for another kiss. Thank God he finally has that as a response option now for when he doesn’t know what to say.

Unintentionally, he grinds against Cas’s bare body beneath him; still extremely worked up and unsatisfied even despite the small bump in the road that just occurred. Cas at least has had a chance to blow off a little steam (no pun intended—”blow” off some steam), but Dean hasn’t.

Cas sighs in pleasure, pulling back to be able to look at him. 

Dean feels the ex-angel’s hands wander, expecting them to stop on either side of his waist.

The wandering hands don’t stop, and he gasps quietly when he feels Cas’s hands come to the waistband of his boxers.

“Can I take these off?” Cas asks, gentle as ever. 

Dean nods, then leans in for another satiating peck like he can’t resist. 

The boxers start to get pulled down, and Dean has to move around on top of Cas for a minute; bending his legs so that Cas can get them all the way off of his ankles before he can lay flat on top of the ex-angel again like before.

He immediately drops his head to the crook of Cas’s neck so that he can take a second to process everything going on, a quiet sound of pleasure low in his throat. The bareness of their bodies is nearly too much to handle, and it’s perfectly warm.

It’s all hitting him at once how bizarre this is. He’s naked. On top of Cas. 

…And it’s so good.

He uses his face being in the crook of Cas’s neck to his advantage, beginning to gently press his lips over and over to the velvety skin so accessible to him.

Cas groans quietly, the sound rumbling in his chest underneath Dean’s. His hands roam over Dean’s back again like they did earlier, roving up to bare and broad shoulders then all the way down until he reaches bare cheeks.

Dean gasps quietly when Cas shamelessly squeezes, forehead pressing to Cas’s shoulder with his face buried. The feeling of Cas grabbing him in such a way is already obscene, but the sound that Cas makes beneath him in reaction is even lewder.

Dean’s hips automatically arch back into Cas’s hands like it’s what he was made to do, then rock forward right afterward to chase the friction. His cock brushes Cas’s, drawing a sound from them both. 

A strike of panic rushes through him, but it calms right afterward. He couldn’t possibly stay panicked long in Cas’s arms like this. 

He’s just never had another man’s erection against his own. It’s a little jarring. 

…And, though he’ll probably feel guilty about this particular aspect once this is over: it’s exciting.

That energy circuit of constantly picking up intensity begins again as they explore the newness of one another’s bare skin, comfortable and safe beneath the warm sheets beside the crackling fireplace. The snow flurries quietly outside, but it can’t be heard over the sound of one another’s breaths and quiet moans. 

Despite the aroused sort of desperation that he feels, it’s all peaceful more than anything else. A rustic log cabin, nighttime sex by the fire, a blizzard whirling on the other side of their windows. And, the most peaceful part, by far: one another’s bare skin, vulnerable and each other’s to indulge in.

Really, Dean could probably fall asleep right this second if it weren’t for how horny he is. He feels drunk with pleasure, and Cas hasn’t even gotten into him yet.

The ex-angel’s left hand gently stays on the flesh of his backside and continues to knead mindlessly, but, on the next explorative sweep of his right hand—

His fingers brush.

Dean jolts, resisting the reflexive urge to scamper away from the feeling. 

There’s nothing to be afraid of, and he knows that; even if he has to mentally remind himself of it. It’s just Cas. Nothing violating or intrusive; only a gentle, welcome attention from the man he’s longed to have it from for so long.

He turns his (face) cheek to rest on Cas’s upper chest/shoulder at his collarbone, soaking up the scent of his lover and internally reminding himself to chill out as Cas’s fingers tentatively brush near his rim again. 

“Is this okay?” Cas murmurs, lightly leaning his cheek against the hunter’s head.

Dean nods, honest.

They don’t need to have some long-winded talk about who’s going to be doing what. Just in their usual dynamics of being, in the way that they take care of each other in their deeply distinct ways, it’s obvious who takes on what role—especially in a situation such as this.

“Hmm?” Cas hums as his featherlight fingers brush dryly on the hunter’s rim; more purposeful than simply brushing past it. 

Dean lifts his head and effortlessly meets Cas’s lips. He’s gonna love getting used to that. 

Because the ex-angel obviously wants some verbal clarification, he murmurs a genuine, “More than okay,” just to display his enthusiastic consent. 

He feels Cas’s lips crack into a small, fond smile amidst the next kiss; unable to resist. 

“Unfortunately, I’m going to make a likely guess that we don’t have any lubricant with us?” the ex-angel asks with a sigh.

“Dude, please just say lube,” Dean snickers as he drops his head back to Cas’s shoulder, nuzzling affectionately against the skin in a chick-flicky way that he usually pretends like he doesn’t adore.

He can practically hear Cas’s eye roll. 

“Okay, well do we have lube with us?” Cas repeats, playfully sarcastic. 

Dean inhales the scent of Cas, exhales relaxation. 

“Think I’ve got some in the car, but…” he starts, “...I don’t wanna get up ‘n go out there,”.

“I don’t either,” Cas agrees. Getting up from this moment is the absolute last thing on his mind.

It would normally be funny to Dean that such tender discussion is casually taking place while Cas is literally rubbing his rim with one hand and kneading his ass cheek with the other, but it just feels right. Like this is meant to be something regular for them. 

Not casual, but regular. It’s an important difference. 

“I also doubt it wouldn’t be frozen if we were to even get it,” Cas murmurs. 

“Yeah,” Dean agrees. “And I don’t trust usin’ anything from in here,” he mumbles, letting his eyes slip shut to bask in the comfort.

“Me either,” Cas says, a laugh slipping at the absurdity of potentially using some random lube found in an abandoned cabin. 

But, when the laugh dies down, all that’s left is the realization that there’s nothing to help support what’s meant to come next in this situation.

Cas shifts his head to press a kiss to Dean’s temple, then leans his cheek again. Reluctantly, he suggests, “Maybe we should just wait until—”

“No! No,” Dean quickly argues as he lifts his head up to see Cas’s face, denying it a little more eagerly than intended and quieting down with a much more controlled, “I don’t wanna wait,”.

Cas sighs; conflicted. The look of desperation in Dean’s eyes is hard to resist.

“Dean, it could hurt for you if we aren’t careful about this,” Cas reasons, speaking softly. 

“I don’t care,” Dean shakes his head. “Just—I don’t know, use like…spit or something,” he argues, face very quickly flushing when he actually realizes what he’s saying. 

Amused, and fond as always, Cas raises an eyebrow. 

“I’m serious, Cas,” Dean complains. “I don’t want to wait,” he argues again with more articulation than the first time.

Then, it strikes him: he could definitely be doing more to sway the argument in his favor right now.

“Dean…”

Cas’s words trail off for a moment as the hunter leans in to press slow kisses to the side of his face and neck beneath his ear, stubble scraping stubble.

“Dean, I just don’t want us to make a hasty decision like that and regret it later,” he restarts, but Dean can hear the slight shakiness of the sentence. 

“We won’t regret it,” Dean murmurs. He kisses right beneath the lobe of Cas’s ear, simultaneously giving a light grind of his hips.

Cas sighs, and Dean can’t tell if it’s in defeat or in pleasure.

“I don’t wanna wait,” the hunter complains again, mayhaps potentially possibly putting on a bit of a whinier tone to try and persuade Cas to realize how much he needs this.

And, if that wasn’t enough, he nibbles the shell of Cas’s ear for a few prolonged seconds before following with a craving whisper of, “...I can’t wait, Cas,” and a more purposeful grind against where he and Cas are both steel-solid brushing against one another. 

The fingers on his rim absentmindedly start to rub with more purpose. 

Giving in.

“Dean…” the ex-angel sighs, conflicted. He grinds up into Dean’s grinds against him. He can’t resist.

Dean stays silent other than some played-up, more-exaggerated-than-necessary whimpers in the crook of his neck, continuing to rock his hips while mentally willing Cas to agree with him.

Cas sighs. 

“Roll over,” he instructs with reluctance but obvious fondness, giving in. “I want you on your back for this,” he murmurs in explanation, gentle despite how casually lewd the words seem in this context.

Dean’s quick to obey, rolling over off of the ex-angel and on his back on the mattress before Cas can change his mind. 

Cas rolls over on top of him to naturally take his place between Dean’s parted legs, situating the blankets as he does so just to ensure that they stay covered up. It’s nearly too hot under here, but the only other option is the frigid cold that they finally have managed to combat.

…I mean, they could get cold again. Getting cold again just means they’d get to warm up again.

Cas’s lips are on his, and it’s admittedly shocking how used-to-this he already feels. It’s almost as if he’s imagined enough times that it already feels like something they’ve been doing for years; they have been in his fantasies, anyway.

Teeth gently sink into his bottom lip, drawing a whine and arch and all the things that he’s still surprised his middle-aged body is still capable of acting like. You’d think after nearly 30 years of having sex that he’d have learned to be less sensitive by now.

With Cas though, that seems impossible. He’d need another 30 just to learn how not to throb just because of a look Cas gives him.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” the ex-angel checks again once their lips part, soft in tone.

Dean blinks his eyes open—they must have shut during the kiss—only to be met with the sight of blue eyes, messy dark hair, and rosy cheeks right above his face. 

His hips buck without intention, just because of the vision above him.

It’s all the answer Cas needs. 

The ex-angel’s left forearm stays in place for support by Dean’s head on the pillow, but his right hand starts to trail. Invisible to the open world outside of the covers, his palm glides down the side of Dean’s warm ribcage, the dip of his waist, the bare crease where the top of his thigh softly meets his hip.

His hand briefly caresses up and down the hunter’s thigh, purely self-indulgent. Only once he sees Dean discreetly squirm in impatience does he finally go for the main attraction; the main course.

All-you-can-eat.

…Except he doesn’t; not quite yet.

His hand comes up and slips out from under the covers, earning a quiet complaint of, “Cas,” from the man underneath him.

Dean watches in awe as Cas looks down to his cupped palm, brings up to his mouth, and spits—somehow making the whole arousing ordeal look gentlemanly in nature.

The whole “spits” thing isn’t in the sense of a tacky, lazy spit like onto the grass while walking along the sidewalk. Though the word sounds harsh in its nature, and feels as spat-out to say as it literally means, it’s not like that. 

When Cas does it into his cupped palm, it’s slow, neat, and mostly-silent; as delicate as simply gathering honey from a nest or sap from a tree. 

Dean’s hands quickly hold onto Cas’s back more purposefully from where they’d been lazily grazing the ex-angel’s skin when he feels a saliva-lubed palm gently wrap around him without hesitation, an unprepared moan falling from his lips.

His gaze is locked onto the sight between their bodies where Cas’s hand is slowly spreading the spit—delicate—along the length of where he’s aching. 

It’s too dark beneath the covers to be able to fully see what Cas is doing, but he can feel it perfectly. God, he can feel it.

A quiet whimper of the ex-angel’s name slips as his pelvis reflexively thrusts up into the too-slow strokes of Cas’s palm, earning him no response except for another kiss on the forehead like earlier. It’s better than any words could’ve sufficed. 

He’s not felt someone's hand on his dick in ages. And, not to mention: he's always been with girls. 

He’s only ever felt this type of intimate touch by smaller hands than his own. It always used to be a little like that “some guys enjoy getting physical proof that they’re big enough to make someone gag” sorta thing. 

The daintier hand of a woman is usually a big ego-thing. It makes the guy feel like they’re much bigger than they even are when held in a woman’s palm, simply because it’s a smaller, feminine hand wrapped around them. 

And it is a pretty great feeling. Dean can attest to that. That “small-hand = big-ego” part of sex is always pretty nice.

But this?

This is even better.

Cas’s hand is close in size to his own, but it’s different. Cas’s palm is large and wrapped around him, enclosing his girth in one palm with ease. The size of the ex-angel’s hand means that he’s able to wrap with the perfect pressure, the perfect hand-shape, the perfect glide of his thumb past the underside of his head with every upward stroke. 

Cas’s palm is large, and it’s masculine, and it’s perfect.

A kiss presses gently to his temple, then his cheek. He’s still giving little thrusts up into Cas’s hand, desperately chasing the friction and holding on to Cas above him damn near like a koala bear. He doesn’t think he’s ever needed something so much in his life, and they aren't even to the main act yet.

The center of Cas’s palm swipes all the way over the tip—earning him a moan nothing short of wanton—as he then switches the orientation of his wrist; a sort of “backhand” type of stroke with the back of his hand facing himself instead of Dean’s abdomen.

Dean rolls his pelvis desperately into the feeling, arms wrapped around Cas’s back for hopeless leverage. 

He needs more.

“Look at me,” Cas whispers, still stroking slowly.

Dean’s eyes snap to his; finally leaving the too-dark-to-fully-see site of where pleasure is erupting under his skin.

With anybody else, the deliberate eye contact might make him shy, but not with Cas. With Cas, this is like a familiar, safe home-base. The ex-angel’s blue eyes locked onto his own are one of the only constant things he’s ever had in life.

Furthermore, looking into Cas’s eyes during this isn’t something he’s shy about in general. Not after everything he’s fantasized about over the past nearly two decades.

It’s like the kissing thing; he’s imagined it so many times that it feels like they’ve actually been doing it for years by now. He’s imagined a lot of scenarios of him holding eye contact with Cas during moments like this. 

A lot of situations, and a lot of circumstances.

A lot of positions. 

A lot.

The ex-angel presses a soft, not-enough kiss to the soft spot between his eyebrows.

“What are you thinking about?” he murmurs, truly curious to find out what’s making Dean’s cheeks redder as the seconds pass by.

Dean’s breaths come heavy, still humping up into Cas’s backhanded strokes with a barely restrained rhythm.

He huffs quietly through his nose; unsure whether it’s frustration, pleasure, or both. Shaking his head, he can’t form a response long enough to effectively answer Cas’s question. 

He’ll just say what he knows for certain, instead.

“I love you,” he whispers to the ex-angel, because of course he does. 

Cas’s hand only slightly falters in slow rhythm, though certainly picks up pace a bit as though he simply can’t help himself.

Dean receives a soft, “I love you too,” in return, but the kiss of crumbling composure he receives afterward says it even better than the words did.

Utilizing the distraction of what’s happening with their mouths, he takes advantage of the brief handjob-intermission. They’ve stalled long enough; he’s ready to take what he wants.

Dean’s hands slip off of Cas’s back, weave between their bodies and navigate to find Cas’s hand. He may also indulgently feel up the plain of Cas’s lower abs in the process, but I mean…can you blame him, really?

Cas pulls back from his lips when Dean’s hands start fumbling with his own one, unsure what the hunter is trying to do. 

Before Cas can even have a chance to worry that Dean is trying to stop what they’re doing, the hunter picks the eye contact back up right where it left off as soon as their faces are just a few inches apart, finally getting Cas’s hand off of his cock to be able to move it. 

Then, before he can chicken out: he redirects it.

Cas gets the gist immediately as Dean does so, a spike of arousal rushing through him as Dean’s hands manually maneuver his own one to a spot just a little further down; his fingers being made to gently graze the hunter’s rim. 

He takes the hint, rubbing more intentionally just as Dean is obviously trying to get him to do. 

The hunter’s back arches in reaction, but he keeps one hand around Cas’s wrist and the other overtop Cas’s hand to keep “guiding” the movement of Cas’s fingers rubbing him (even though Cas obviously doesn’t need Dean to do so anymore now that he’s understood what Dean was wanting). 

The eye contact never breaks.

Dean keeps his hand there anyway for a few more seconds, though it then joins his other to hold onto Cas’s wrist; lightly holding Cas’s forearm. 

Something feels indescribably intimate about the way that he’s holding Cas’s arm like this as the ex-angel shamelessly rubs his slightly-too-dry fingers back and forth on such a vulnerable part of him; something of surrender.

It’s as if the way that both of his hands holding dependently onto the arm of Cas’s one is proof that the ex-angel has more control in the situation than he does—and that he’s allowing that to be the case. Proof that Cas can make him fall apart with just one of his hands, while both of Dean’s hang on to his muscular arm like an anchor in raging sea. 

His hips rock minutely into the gentle rubbing of Cas’s fingers, using his grip on Cas’s arm for leverage. 

This is something else that he’s never had the opportunity to experience. Holding on to a man's arm, one that’s the length of his own torso; one that’s the length and size of his own arm (though, now that he’s finally seeing him without the trench coat, Cas may actually be a little beefier than he is). 

He couldn’t hug a woman’s arm like this. I mean, he could, but it wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable.

The feeling of what Cas’s fingers are doing is ramping him up hotter by the second (in both senses of the word), and the feeling of their current position is simply so intimate. Cas is right above him; one arm on the pillow for support by Dean’s head, the other arm reached straight down between their bodies so that his hand can be in its rightful place between Dean’s legs. 

Dean is helplessly holding onto the straight, muscular arm with both hands; even occasionally grinding up against the underside of it—that softest, smooth part of the underside of the forearm—when his cock brushes near it. 

He’s never felt so taken care of in his life, has never felt like him being taken care of is simultaneously doing just as much of a favor for the other party as it is for him. Cas so obviously enjoys having him like this, and he so deeply enjoys being had. 

“I’m still worried you won’t be wet enough to do this, Dean,” Cas murmurs, breaking the hunter from his pleasure-addled daze of thoughts. “I just don’t want to hurt you,” he explains, murmuring so comfortably quiet that it’s nearly as if they’re speaking through the feeling of the low vibrations of speech instead of actually hearing the words. 

“You won’t,” Dean denies, shaking his head immediately. He knows they’ve been keeping eye-contact, but only just now has become consciously aware of it; aware of the adoration, but slight hesitance, in Cas’s eyes. “I promise,” he swears.

Cas’s brow raises, fond and amused at once.

“As much as I appreciate it,” he begins, leaning to press a kiss to his forehead and another swifter one to his lips, “...that promise unfortunately isn’t capable of changing the way that it will feel for you once we start,”.

Fair. He has a point. 

But Dean wants this, and he wants it now, and he can tell that Cas is in the very same boat.

He mulls over Cas’s words in his mind, still reflexively rocking back and forth to match the rubbing of Cas’s fingers. “I’m still worried you won’t be wet enough to do this,” were Cas’s precise words.

While yes, Dean is a man and therefore is not capable of getting “wet” like a woman might…

…They do have other ways to make that happen. Lube or not. 

Dean leans up to close the small inches between them, lips to lips for a few indulgent seconds.

A boldness fills him. 

Maybe it’s the blizzard outside that’s messing with his brain, or the hypothermic close-call they had earlier. Or maybe it’s the fire crackling, or the warmth beneath the covers. Or even the foreign bed, or the log walls of the cabin. 

Maybe it’s just Cas above him, looking at him like that.

Either way, some dormant form of intrinsic bravery that has never awoken within him prior to this moment suddenly emerges, and it takes over in full. 

He takes a hand off of Cas’s arm, moves it down to take hold of the ex-angel’s hand just like he’d done earlier. Cas, now familiar with the process of Dean moving him around as he pleases, allows himself to be moved. 

Dean brings the hand up between their chests, and up a little higher; both hands holding on to Cas’s wrist as if the shape and size of his palms were created solely to fit Cas’s forearm just like this.

He doesn’t know how to ask for what he wants, and truly doesn’t think that he can, but the intrinsic bravery thankfully speaks for him. It speaks for him, communicating in a language that he hadn’t even known he was fluent in. 

Cas suddenly (albeit a bit belatedly) realizes the intentional placement of his hand that Dean has brought it up to.

The hunter’s breaths are puffing warm against his knuckles as Dean patiently waits for him to pick up what’s being put down. The tips of his fingers are only millimeters from the plush of Dean’s pink lips.

Oh.

Just as he’s moving his hand enough to close that distance of millimeters, Dean’s lips part; reassuring proof that he’s on the right track. The tip of the hunter’s pink tongue lolls out just enough—barely past his bottom lip—to make it clear to Cas that the ex-angel has picked up exactly what was being put down. 

Dean watches Cas’s shoulders rise and fall heavily with a pleased deep breath, awe coloring the familiar blue eyes.

He can’t focus on those things very well at the moment, though. All that he can focus on is the feeling of Cas’s middle and ring finger gently sliding into his mouth up to the second/mid-finger knuckles; resting lightly on his tongue. 

Cas groans quietly and unintentionally at the sight of Dean’s lips closing around his fingers. 

Something like this had always been a rare fantasy. 

It’s something he always forgot was even an option, and would only remember it at a point of his alone-time that it would often be the very thought to drive him over the edge into a guilt-ridden climax.

Tonight, however: it’s only the beginning. Tonight, there is no guilt.

He gently slides his fingers back and forth, enthralled by the sight of Dean holding on to the sides of his forearm and nodding his head into the sucking movement. A mirror image of the treatment he received earlier, only now on a different body part. 

“Dean,” he sighs quietly, unsure what words to say that could possibly measure up to the way he feels. Nothing can compare to the air of devotion surrounding them; warming the cold.

Dean thoroughly wets the fingers. Cas’s fingers are undeniably masculine in size and shape pumping slowly in and out of his mouth, and he’s addicted. Luckily, they aren’t in his mouth quite deep enough to make him worried about gagging, making it a purely comforting (yet effective) act.

Tonight has been a constant atmosphere of a sort of 50-shades meets Hallmark type of energy, and this moment is just as strong a contributor to that as everything else has been; sensual, but sweet.

“You’re beautiful,” Cas whispers with a shake of his head in reverence, the same praise he’d said to him when this first began. It’s still just as true.

It’s not necessarily a “you’re beautiful” in a girly or feminine sense, but rather a “you’re beautiful” in the way one might call a rushing waterfall in a lush forest beautiful. Like a weeping willow over a pond, dripping sap from its bark; delicate. 

Like a log cabin in a clearing of the woods as snow flurries outside and piles on the roof, complete with a stone fireplace perfect to keep warm and a foreign bed perfect to bundle up bare within. 

That kind of beautiful. 

Dean isn’t able to respond, but it’s fortunate, because he really wouldn’t know what to say anyway. He just hums softly around Cas’s fingers, committing the taste to memory as his breaths puff against the skin of the ex-angel’s hand. 

“Get them as wet as you can,” Cas whispers to him; encouraging, not demanding. “It’s all we have,” he reminds.

Dean obeys dutifully. Who is he to say no to that?

Some 15ish seconds pass before Cas draws his fingers back with a soft, “Good,” of praise. It’s over all too soon for Dean’s liking, but he’s admittedly still extremely impatient to get Cas inside of him already, so he doesn’t complain. 

He can’t complain, anyway. Not when Cas’s hand unhesitatingly slips back down between their bodies, between his legs, and doesn’t skip a beat before beginning to gently slather the saliva over the area that the ex-angel had previously been dryly rubbing. 

Dean can’t even gasp at first, just arching at the sensation with a crease of his brows in inexperienced pleasure. His hands weave under Cas’s armpits to wrap around his back, wanting to feel as much of the ex-angel within his arms as he possibly can. 

He briefly panics, but quickly remembers that he doesn’t have to. 

“I’m trusting that you’ll say something if it hurts,” Cas says expectantly, not doing anything other than the continual rubbing until he explicitly hears Dean confirm that he won’t hesitate to stop him if something doesn’t feel good.  

The hunter pecks the lips close above his own. “Promise,” he swears, a small smile tugging his lips and a wonderfully chick-flicky feeling buzzing within his chest. 

The smile doesn’t last long, twisting right into a pleasured grimace when one of Cas’s fingers—he thinks it’s the middle, but it’s honestly a little hard to tell—gently begins to press inside of him. 

His legs shift a little restlessly in their current position—bent and limply parted to allow space for Cas between them—to try and open wider, unsure whether to run towards or away from the feeling. 

He is no stranger to sex, but this is completely different than anything he’s ever done. He’s admittedly a little shocked that he’s not more freaked out about it than he currently is, but it surely has something to do with the ex-angel’s innately comforting touch.

“Just relax,” Cas murmurs to him; encouraging, not demanding. “If you tense up, it won’t feel as good,” he explains. 

Really, the reality of the statement is that if Dean tenses up then it just probably won’t even be very possible, but those two explanations are basically one and the same. It can’t feel good at all if it can’t happen. 

Dean nods a little jerkily with a deep breath. 

This is only one of Cas’s fingers. Jesus Christ. 

He knows what will be going inside of him after they get him fully prepped, yet this is already feeling overwhelming enough. It’s overwhelming in the best way possible, though.

“There you go,” Cas murmurs, but Dean doesn’t really know what he did differently. He probably just relaxed involuntarily or something. He can’t think straight (in any sense of the word).

The saliva did most definitely help. It’s not as good as lube probably would be, but, as opposed to if they were doing this dry, it’s definitely helpful. 

Since it’s their first time, they at least won’t know what they’re missing out on in regards to their current lubeless condition. Lube or not, it’s the first time—and therefore the best time thus far. 

Cas presses a few slow, purposefully-distracting kisses to his temple, and Dean can feel that Cas’s finger is in him all the way to the base knuckle now. It’s definitely the middle finger, judging by the shape of the knuckles now snug against his cheeks. 

A part of Dean starts to cringe. This goes against everything he’s been raised to believe in and behave like. The feeling of Cas’s manly body above his own, a finger inside of him in such a vulnerable place that it kinda makes him wanna cry, stubble scraping his temple as Cas presses kisses to it—it’s all almost a little too much. 

But then Cas crooks his finger.

Dean’s arms clutch desperately, trying to wrap tighter around Cas. He’s not sure what kind of noise just came out of him, but he is sure that he probably couldn’t replicate it if he tried. 

He’s never felt something like this in his life. I mean, duh, of course he hasn’t because he’s obviously never done this before…but he’s like really never felt something like this. Has never stimulated that part of himself; never allowed it.

It’s strange, discovering a new part of his body. It’s the same body he’s lived in for 40+ years, another 40 if you count Hell. He’s always been certain that his body is something that he’s more familiar with than anything else ever. 

Yet, here he is: suddenly feeling a new part of it—all because of Cas.

“That’s it,” Cas murmurs in praise even though Dean really isn’t able to even do anything except lay here and take it, voice low and gravelly with a noticeable hint of proud right beside Dean’s ear in a way that makes the hunter keen. 

His finger rubs within the hunter, simply getting Dean used to the sensation. He keeps his finger crooked so that it can press gently against his inner wall—there’s really no better way to word that, honestly—with every careful glide of his finger in and out. 

The hands on his back grip tighter, nails digging in deep enough to make Cas realize that—if this is how Dean handles one finger—he likely will be extremely scratched up by the end of tonight. 

And, quite frankly: he’s perfectly okay with that. 

“Do you think you’re ready for another?” Cas asks as he peers down at the starstruck hunter. “Or just stay like this for a little longer?” he questions, not wanting to rush this. They have forever, after all.

Dean pants, glancing down between their bodies even though it’s a little too dark under the sheets to fully see what’s going on.

“Another,” he decides a few seconds later, gaze coming back up to Cas’s like he can’t stand looking away for too long. 

“Are you sure?” Cas checks.

Dean’s eyes are begging as he nods. “Another,” he repeats breathlessly; the bravery speaking for him.

Cas pulls the one finger out until it’s only inside of him barely deeper than the base of his fingernail. Then, when it slowly slides back in: a second accompanies it.

Cas leans down to connect he and Dean’s lips, slowly exhaling through his nose against the hunter’s upper lip. Dean mirrors the exhale instinctively, but his own is far shakier. 

“Just breathe,” Cas murmurs as he slowly pumps his fingers back and forth, peppering slow kisses onto his face wherever he pleases. He’s spent so long being patient; it’s too hard to resist now that he has Dean underneath him like this.

Dean attempts to follow the instruction, but it’s much easier said than done. 

His cheeks redden darker, mainly in arousal but also in a slight twinge of embarrassment. He’s usually well-controlled in the bedroom, able to mostly hide how turned on he is for the sake of pouring all of his attention into the girl. A man of few noises, only some soft moans, grunts, rough panting.

Not tonight. 

Tonight, he can’t help it. He doesn’t know how the hell some people manage to do this and stay quiet. He can’t get himself to quiet down. He’s tried a few times already, but each attempt turns up thoroughly unsuccessful. There’s no way to control himself when Cas is rubbing parts of him that have never even been grazed by anyone.

He’s just never heard himself make half the noises he’s making, has never writhed and squirmed in the way he’s been doing tonight. 

The only reason that he’s not utterly humiliated at himself is because of the way that Cas is looking at him; the way that Cas’s eyes seem to beam when he crooks his fingers just right and draws out a whimper that Dean didn’t know his middle-aged vocal cords were capable of making.

As if on cue with Dean’s pleasure-hazed inner monologue, Cas’s fingers crook—but crook in a different way than before. He starts to curl his fingers repetitively in a deliberate “come here” motion, rubbing gently against the inside of the hunter's body. 

Now look. As previously mentioned, Dean is no stranger to sex. 

He knows good and well how to properly finger a girl after all of the experience he’s had; knows how to do that exact “come here” motion against the little spongy spot within her, rubbing the sensitive bundle of nerves from the inside. He knows the way that some girls shake because of it, the way that a few rare ones even squirt—sorry, motel cleaning lady who had to clean up the next morning. 

He knows how to do this. 

He just didn’t know that Cas apparently knows exactly how to as well. 

“How does that feel?” the ex-angel asks, but Dean can easily see the knowing smugness lurking behind the gentle look in his blue eyes. 

He tries to speak, but it doesn’t work. All that comes out is a pitiful sound as his arms tighten around Cas and his blunt nails seep desperately into warm skin.

Cas is pinpointing one certain spot within him as he steadily curls his fingers over and over, just like Dean always did with the girls. 

He’s known that he has a g-spot just like they did, he just…never knew where it was. He never knew that it was so easily reachable either, nor how the hell to do anything with it.

But Cas clearly does.

All that Dean can do is stare up into the gentle-but-smug blue eyes, moan even when he tries to keep quiet, and feel.

Stars are showing up all over his vision as if he stood up way too fast, eyelids prickling with tears as an involuntary reaction to the heat radiating all the way up from Cas’s fingers to the backs of his eyes.

He doesn’t know when he started rocking his hips in tandem with the rhythm of Cas’s fingers, but can’t get himself to stop now that he’s noticed. 

Looking up into Cas’s eyes like this, surrounded by the all-encompassing touch of the ex-angel, all he can think about is what their lives would’ve become if they hadn’t pulled over to this lonely log cabin off the side of the road in the clearing of the woods. 

They both were viewing one another’s distance as something so skewed, never considering that maybe they both actually do love each other and that both of them just thought that the other didn’t feel the same, forcing that awkward tension to arise between them and buzz like it did.

He’s so thankful that the tension has melted. So thankful, even for reasons other than the fingers rubbing pleasure into his body. 

Speaking of said fingers, he whines in complaint quietly when he suddenly notices those very same fingers slowing down. 

“Are your eyes watering in a good way, or am I hurting you?” Cas asks softly, a near-accusatory tone to his voice as if he’d already anticipated that Dean wouldn’t be willing to admit it if it didn’t feel okay. 

The hunter shakes his head, dismissing both claims. I mean yeah, he is teary because of how good it feels, but it’s more than that. 

He tries to open his mouth to respond, but quickly has to instead bring a hand in front of his face between he and Cas as he turns to look toward the fire; face barely resisting the urge to crumple.

He doesn’t know when his vision became as blurry as it is, and doesn’t know why he feels so damn emotional right now. 

“Dean,” Cas worries, gently pulling his fingers out. “What did I do?” he asks with no shortage of soft, sympathetic guilt, trying to find out what must have hurt or felt uncomfortable.

The hunter’s breath hitches, but he lowers the hand that was shielding Cas’s view of his face with a choked reassurance of, “It’s not you,” as in “the tears aren’t because of you” so that Cas doesn’t get the wrong idea. The ex-angel didn’t do anything wrong. 

If anything, Cas did everything right, and that’s exactly what’s making Dean all sensitive and sappy like this. 

To be fair, he did just confess his feelings to the literal love of his life who had been dead (who also then resurrected and had Dean worried that he’d been resurrected without the feelings for him that he’d died with), has finally gotten to feel Cas’s naked skin against his own like he’s dreamed so dearly of, is confronting the fact that he’s having sex with a man and he’s in love with a man and he’s okay with that, and just had his g-spot touched for the first time. 

Understandably, his emotions are a little all over the place, and for good reason. 

“What’s going on?” Cas asks; now notably calmer after the choked-up reassurance, but obviously concerned. He gently caresses the soft flesh of the hunter’s inner thigh as he patiently waits for an explanation. 

Dean’s looking at him again now, but the look in his eyes unfortunately isn’t quite enough for Cas to fully understand what’s going through his mind. 

“I just—” Dean starts before stopping with a pitiful clear of his throat, wiping at his cheeks and letting his hand linger for a moment as he wills his face to look normal and not all teary and embarrassing. “M’just really glad we didn’t keep driving,” he whispers around the thick emotion in his throat. 

It’s chick-flicky, it’s Hallmark-y, but it’s honest. 

The movies are proving to be cliché for a good reason; art imitating life, or whatever. 

Cas makes a touched, soft noise; something akin to an “aww” but coming out too quietly to fully count as a coherent sound. Something more internal. 

His lips are on the hunter’s forehead immediately, learning throughout the evening that it seems to be a comforting gesture for both of them. 

“I am too,” he agrees, still gently grazing his hand up and down the hunter’s thigh—a half-tender, half-horny reminder of what they were in the middle of. 

Dean leans up to catch his lips—a little urgent in nature, like the first kiss they shared a little while ago. A tear or two slip out of the outer corners of his eyes, running down his temples and onto the pillow.

“Please keep going,” he breathes once he and Cas separate, still a little wobbly but clearly desperate nonetheless; matching the look he’s giving Cas.

Predictably, Cas hesitates.

“Dean, I don’t—”

“Please, Cas,” Dean begs, nothing short of pathetic. His hips rock upward, but no friction is gained; nothing to his aching groin, and no fingers within.

The ex-angel might normally take a bit more convincing to be swayed, but he admittedly is more worked-up than he’s probably ever been in his entire millennia-long years of life. He leans down with a soft, “Okay,” and a peck to the hunter’s lips, reassuring, “We’ll keep going,”.

Dean relaxes heavily, briefly gives a final swipe to his tears and wills himself not to start crying again simply out of sheer relief that they aren’t stopping even after his brief moment he just had, then weaves his arm to wrap around Cas’s back again with his other like he’d been doing beforehand.

He takes a deep breath, feeling himself calm down a little bit now that they’re getting back into position. A shiver runs through his spine when he feels Cas’s fingers gently begin to rub at him again, but they don’t go in quite yet.

Cas’s hand briefly comes up between their bodies, cups below his mouth just like he did earlier, and returns to Dean’s rim—freshly slicked with saliva.

Dean keens when Cas’s fingers slowly press back into him with less resistance than before.

It’s the first time that either of them have done this (as in: with a man, not a woman), but it feels as natural as remembering how to ride a bike; like this is knowledge that has been dormant within them, simply waiting to be woken up. Like the bravery.

Cas’s fingers crook and rub repetitively again in that “come here” motion.

Dean writhes, gripping Cas tighter.

“I’m glad we didn’t keep driving as well,” the ex-angel murmurs, barely blinking as he drinks up the sight of Dean falling apart beneath him. The contrast of his put-together, steady voice is stark compared to Dean’s helpless whimpering.

His fingers never stop, only keeping that somewhat slow but achingly steady rhythm. He leans to press a kiss to the hunter’s sweating temple; something symbolic, considering that this began with them both nearing hypothermia.

“And I’m sorry that I’ve been making you think that I no longer feel the way I did,” he apologizes with a following, “The way I do,”.

He pulls back as he says it, wanting to be able to look Dean in the eye as he does.

The hunter can’t respond very coherently at the moment, and he mentally realizes that it’s probably on purpose that Cas is deciding to use now as his opportunity to say all of this. Like this, Dean can’t deny the words, can’t brush off the importance of them, and can’t pretend like he’s the regular ol’ unemotional, unaffected, “single tear rolling down the cheek”, stone-cold man that he pretends to be.

Cas knows that that’s not who he really is, and such has made itself obvious plenty of times; even just during the span of tonight alone.

“I love you,” the ex-angel promises, because of course he does.

He briefly dips to press a kiss to Dean’s cheekbone right below the one he’d just pressed to his temple, and the skin is still somewhat salty from where tears had dribbled over it just minutes ago. 

“Very much,” he tacks on. 

Dean gasps as Cas’s fingers reach a little deeper inside of him during an upward rock of his hips, a near sob of a moan punching out of him at the feeling. He tries to return the statement, but the only bit of “I love you too” that manages to come out successfully is breathless.

Cas is pleased with the answer either way.

He switches up his pace some 15 seconds later, slowing down to an even slower speed so that the hunter can catch his breath. He’s really not trying to purposefully make Dean fall apart like this; it’s just happening, just how sensitive the man is.

He is so excited to get used to this. 

Dean pants heavily, starting to rut his pelvis more restlessly in the absence of the previously-steady rhythm that now has slowed.

“Calm down,” Cas murmurs, soft and soothing. 

His fingers slow to stillness inside of the hunter, instead focusing on catching his reddened lips with his own. Dean moans into his mouth as soon as he does, and it very nearly is enough to convince him to take the hunter right here and now.

Still, he waits. This doesn’t have to be rushed, even as much as the ramping adrenaline of the situation makes it tempting to do so.

Long-awaited as this night and experience is, they have time to take their time. 

He also just isn’t quite finished yet with what he wants to see out of the hunter beneath him. He wants to see just how desperate he can make Dean; just how broken out of his shell Dean can possibly become.

“Cas,” the hunter complains in response to the lack of stimulation, not obeying the whole “calm down” thing that Cas said to him a few seconds ago in the slightest. “Why’d you stop?” he whispers helplessly as he tries to grind on the still fingers within him.

He’s never done this before, but damn if he’s not a quick learner.

“Shh,” Cas shushes, starting to press slow kisses to the side of his face. 

Dean whines frustratedly low in his throat, an “mmm” sort of sound in understimulated discontent as he rocks his hips with little reward. He loves this, loves all of it, but he really wants a little more than kisses right now. 

At this point, he’s so worked up that he’s worried he’ll get pushed over the edge the second that Cas starts to actually fuck him, and he really wants this to last longer than that. But for that to be the case, he needs Cas to get on with it already.

“We have time, Dean,” Cas murmurs fondly.

“No we don’t,” the hunter argues right back, petulant. 

They don’t have time, because if they keep dragging this out then he’s barely gonna be able to last.

“Yes we do,” Cas denies with that same fond sort of softness as before.

Dean doesn’t bother trying to argue anymore; simply rolling his eyes with another pathetic rock of his hips in search of stimulation. 

“I’ve waited…” Cas starts, speaking between the kisses he’s trailing down towards his jaw, “...so long for this,”.

Dean’s lip catches under his teeth, hips rocking restlessly.

“Let me savor it,” Cas finishes, making his way back towards Dean’s lips.

The unspoken, read-between-the-lines words of Cas’s sentence can be heard loud and clear without even having to be explicitly said:

Let me savor you.

Dean makes another sound into Cas’s mouth as soon as their lips connect, at this point not even bothering trying to be quiet.

Then, Dean makes another sound into Cas’s mouth when the fingers gently start to move within him again—another one of those “probably couldn’t recreate if he tried” sort of sounds.

Cas pumps his fingers in and out, taking a break from curling them. Part of this, admittedly, is to give his forearm a break before it winds up cramping from the repetitive movement.

Dean simultaneously grows more desperate and relaxes at the same time; finally getting the stimulation he’s craving, yet trying his best not to blow his load every time Cas’s fingers press a little deeper.

The ex-angel kisses from his mouth over to his ear, nudging his nose against his warm temple.

“Touch yourself, Dean,” Cas whispers, and a shiver that has nothing to do with the cold air wracks Dean’s body from head to toe. “I want you to feel good,” the ex-angel murmurs.

A kiss presses to the lobe of Dean’s ear, then the shell of it.

“I know I’m not the only one who’s been waiting a long time for this,” Cas whispers like a knowing tease into his ear, rubbing the inside of his walls as he slowly glides his fingers in and out.

Dean nearly obeys without thinking, because good God that sounds like a great idea, but he manages to wrangle up his dwindling self control and shake his head in response.

“Can’t,” he pants reluctantly.

Cas pulls back enough to see his face, and looks genuinely curious. 

“Why?” he asks, reveling in the sight of how red Dean’s face is; his heightened blood flow bringing out the features that Cas already loves to look at even when he isn’t flushed and sweating from arousal.

Dean continues to breathe heavily, but his expression turns to one nearing amusement. “I’ll come, Cas,” he answers, as if this is the most common sense that common sense has ever been before.

Like, hello? Cas is a man. He should understand Dean’s current predicament better than any of the girls Dean’s been with in the past. 

Cas merely gives him a somewhat sassy “okay, and?” sort of expression in return. Their faces are saying more than their words quite often this evening. 

“Then come,” he says casually, not seeing the problem.

Dean’s mouth drops open in shock at the answer.

“No, Cas,” he denies, sounding in disbelief that Cas would even suggest such a thing. He refuses to allow him coming before they even get to the main act to be the reason that the evening gets cut short. 

“Why?” Cas asks without skipping a beat.

Dean opens his mouth to speak, but Cas’s fingers crook right as he does. That bastard. A cracked moan comes out of him in reaction, clutching tighter onto Cas’s back.

The fingers inside of him unfurl back to a straight in-and-out pumping just a few seconds later, giving him the opportunity to speak again. His arms stay wrapped just as tight, body nearly off the mattress because he’s clinging to Cas so hard that it’s nearly that koala-bear situation again.

“Because,” he answers vaguely, a bit of a whine to the tone. Their faces are close enough that the breath of his words easily reaches Cas’s lips. “I still want us to…y’know,” he explains with a sheepish breathlessness.

Oh, I know, the ex-angel thinks slyly to himself, permeating the sweetness of his thoughts with a lewd contrast. Dean is not the only one wanting that; not in the slightest.

“I just don’t understand why that would mean you can’t come for me right now,” Cas answers, fond and casual as if he’s not currently saying what he definitely is saying.

Dean’s brow furrows in an annoyed look of confusion, but the expression washes over with pleasure when his eyes squeeze shut as Cas’s fingers brush past a particularly sensitive part of his insides. 

“Only one of us has to be hard for what's about to happen, Dean,” Cas points out as he watches the wave of pleasure wash over Dean; sultry in tone, undeniably correct. 

Dean would argue, but…Cas is right.

He’d just never really considered it. He’s always the only man; the only one with the goods to get the deed done. Normally, it’s not an option to have an orgasm halfway through, even when he’s already getting close.

Tonight, he can.

…It’s just a little hard to let that happen so easily.

“But…”

“No,” Cas shakes his head, gentle as ever but serious in a way that makes Dean’s toes curl up. “Only one of us has to be hard,” he repeats, engraining the reality of the situation into the hunter’s brain. 

Dean hears it for exactly what it is.

Permission.

He quietly whines again, but it’s in conflictedness this time rather than frustration. 

He wants to, but must admit: he’s a little scared. He hasn’t come twice in one night since he was in his early 20’s. 

…He’s also never come with someone’s fingers in his ass, so he’s admittedly just still pretty timid about that part as a whole.

Normally, he would never admit any of that aloud, but this is Cas. This is different.

“...M’scared it’s gonna—” he swallows with a dry throat “—scared it’s gonna be too much,” he quietly confesses with a slightly terrifying amount of vulnerability, voice barely loud enough to hear. 

But Cas hears it, loud and clear.

“Let it be ‘too much’ then,” the ex-angel says to him; encouraging, not demanding. “I want you to experience everything that your body has to offer,” he explains, or requests. Maybe instructs.

“But Cas—”

“There’s no need to be scared of it,” Cas soothes with a shake of his head. “I’m right here with you,” he reminds, as if Dean could’ve forgotten that. 

But, maybe, he did. At least for a moment. 

The hunter swallows hard. Cas is right here, he thinks to himself; reminding.

He gives a hesitant, tiny nod as he takes a chest-rising deep breath, slowly unweaving his right hand from behind Cas’s back. He briefly cups it below his mouth, spits into it with only slightly wavering eye contact, then slips it between their bodies to reach for himself.

This, at least, he knows how to do. 

He wishes he could say that the reaction he lets out at the feeling of finally wrapping a hand around himself is exaggerated on purpose, but it’s really not. He and Cas both know it, and the hungry look in the ex-angel’s eyes only encourages him further.

And God he really is not gonna last. 

Cas is beginning to move his fingers within him more purposefully, and the feeling of that combined with his own hand slicking himself up is just as he feared: a little too much to handle. 

He presses his forehead to Cas’s shoulder, gaze locked between their bodies even though—as previously mentioned—it’s still mostly too dark under the covers to fully see what’s going on. He just can’t look at Cas while this is happening; not yet, at least. He needs to get used to it first.

It's a real struggle to keep himself at a regular pace, resisting the urge to let his wrist flick at the instinctive speed he feels the need to do. He knows Cas said that he can come, but he wants to prolong himself solely for the sake of how good this feels.

And, evidently, things continue to only get better. Cas’s fingers crook; “come here”.

He moans louder than intended as his forehead presses harder to Cas’s shoulder, abs jolting at the combination of being so deliberately stimulated inside and out. 

Cas groans in a way that unintentionally reassures him that this is enjoyable for more than just him, and he only gets a little bit embarrassed when he feels himself literally clench around Cas’s fingers in reaction to hearing it. 

His body is behaving in ways he didn’t know were possible, like Cas has the magic touch to make his body bend to his will.

“Let me look at you,” the ex-angel whispers, bordering on a beg. 

It takes a second to gather the courage, but Dean allows his head to drop back down to the pillow so that Cas’s face is right above his again. 

Cas doesn’t even have to say it. Dean can tell in the little sigh he lets out as soon as he sees him. He can feel the adoration in Cas’s gaze.

“You don’t have to go so slowly,” the ex-angel murmurs with a fondness, tender and sweet as if he’s not actively rubbing the hunter’s prostate in a way that’s making him see stars.

“Don’t wanna come yet,” Dean complains breathlessly, nearing tears. “Feels really good,” he admits in a whisper; the vulnerability of such a simple statement somehow hitting harder than half of everything else he’s already said tonight.

“It won’t stop feeling good once you do, honey,” Cas reassures in reminder, obviously sensing the resistance of the hunter’s conflicting emotions; as if Dean isn’t even holding back on purpose, but rather out of a learned instinct that he can’t go against. 

But, tonight, he will.

“Honey” Dean registers again like earlier, a small whine sort of sound coming out of him simply from hearing the gentle pet name. He hasn’t had somebody to call a pet-name in so long that it nearly hurts to hear.

He’s spent so much time guiltily fantasizing about what pet-names he and Cas might use with each other. 

“Honey” obviously is a contender, just as he’d expected.

“Sweetheart” would be his pet-name of choice to use, paired with a classic country, midwestern drawl to it.

“Dear” was one that he could picture in occasional fantasies, but it always was Cas using it in those instances. He just feels like he speaks too crudely most of the time to be a convincing “dear” guy.

Suddenly, he feels it. 

Cas feels it too; the tightening around his fingers, the way Dean’s lower body starts to squirm more as he involuntarily tries to compensate for the intensity of the impending climax.

“Cas,” Dean gasps, hand faltering in rhythm. His eyes are watering, but both of them know it’s not in a bad sort of way.

“It’s okay,” Cas soothes with a small shake of his head. The hunter’s visibly-growing panic carefully gets swept away by every “come here” curl of Cas’s fingers against the sensitive spot inside of him. 

Dean’s face is flushing a furious shade of red as it all increases within him; the glow of the crackling fire highlighting the way the blush slowly creeps all the way up to his ears, his neck, his upper chest. 

“Just let it happen,” Cas encourages softly, working him right up to the edge as he rubs a little harder. He watches with awe as every rub of his fingers seems to spring more pleasure-borne tears along the hunter’s waterline.

He’s imagined this more times than he can count, and now he has it right here at his fingertips. Literally.

Dean’s wrist flicks without control, quick in speed and lewd in sound. He only distantly cares about how he must look, how desperate he must appear to the ex-angel above him; he can only think about all of the sensations that are starting to hit all at once.

“Don’t be afraid of it,” Cas reassures, own voice a little shaky from how quickly blood is rushing to his groin while watching the absolute vision that Dean is beneath him. He’d probably be pressing kisses to the hunter’s face if he weren’t busy being so enthralled by the sight.

The hunter’s inner thighs start to shake lightly in a way that he’d probably be embarrassed about if he weren’t so overwhelmed at the moment, his left arm holding desperately tight around Cas’s back as his right hand beats without restraint.

Tears start to run down his temples from the outer corners, burning just as hot as the sweat gathering along his hairline and the quick rivulets of precome that dribble out of him. The back of his hair gets all mussed and tangled lightly as the back of his head slides on the pillow to match the arching motion of his back. 

It’s terrifying, it’s a sensation he’s never experienced, it’s technically a sensation he has experienced but now so much more intense that it feels like a whole new experience, it’s too much, it’s not enough, and—

And it’s perfect.

He doesn’t even have time to give warning; no announcement that it’s about to happen or anything.

It just hits him like the slam of a truck, his insides suddenly clamping down hard around Cas’s fingers as his groin begins to throb a little painfully from how intense it all is. 

Milky-white splatters nearly all the way up towards his collarbone, all while he’s making innately sensitive sounds and expressions that he’s sure he’s gonna look back on later and be embarrassed of in hindsight. 

“Oh good, Dean,” Cas praises in awe as he keeps steady to carry Dean through it, encouraging him with a proud, “That’s it,”.

The hunter’s insides pulse around his fingers with every throb of release from his cock, torso contracted forward in a curve as his abdomen jumps and twitches with every spurt.

The tears continue to slip as his toes curl up almost tight enough to give his calves a cramp, but he’s never felt a bliss like the one he’s currently feeling. 

He can’t tell if he’s sobbing or moaning (or both) as he rides it out, and can’t fully process the many reassurances and praises that Cas is promising to him, but he’s never felt this good before. Like his body has completely lost control; feeling separate in mind and flesh. 

It’s as if he’s switched to being a third-party observer sitting peacefully within his brain, watching from an outside perspective as Cas expertly works the orgasm out of his body like a musician mastering their instrument; perfectly in tune. Harmonizing with the crackling of the fire and the quiet flurry of the outside snow. 

Only when Dean’s cries of pleasure turn to ones of overstimulation and when he starts to “run” from the touch does Cas finally relent; fingers slowing to complete stillness while gently shushing the trembling, softly sobbing man beneath him.

“It’s alright,” he promises soothingly even though he can very obviously tell that—even despite them being such uncontrollable tears—the tears aren’t anything other than tears of pleasure. The tears aren’t bad, even as much as the sight of Dean crying strikes an instinctual, small twinge of panic within him.

More than the panic, however, is a distinct pride. A pride in the fact that he and he only is capable of rendering Dean to such a state as this; that he and he only is allowed the privilege of witnessing the hunter at such a deep level of vulnerability. 

“You’re alright,” he whispers as Dean barely catches his breath beneath him, gently slipping his fingers out and giving a light rub of the effectively-softened rim. 

It’s a few more torso-trembling, tensed-up seconds until Dean relaxes with a shudder. His wet eyes crack open—though he’s not entirely sure when they’d squeezed shut—to see Cas staring down at him, a worshipping sort of awe in his eyes.

True to himself, a part of him immediately gets the instinct to crawl away, cover his face up, and pretend like none of that just happened as the post-orgasmic clarity begins to shove him to his senses.

But more than that, a part of him waited so long for this, and now he finally has it. He not only has it, but he’s actively experiencing it; actively experiencing something that he spent so much time believing would only remain a product of his deepest darkest fantasies. 

So, instead of crawling away, covering his face up, and pretending like none of that just happened, he keeps looking up at Cas above him. Cas carried him through the terrifying too-much-ness, and he trusts Cas to carry him through the aftermath. 

Which Cas, effortlessly, does. 

The ex-angel presses that calming kiss to his forehead again in a way that’s growing delightfully familiar, soothing some of the dizziness from his whirling thoughts.

He’s still rubbing his rim lightly, and it's proof that he’s fulfilling his previous promise: even though Dean’s already come once, the goodness isn’t stopping here. 

With a press of lips to his temple, Cas begins with a playful slyness: “Y’know…” he starts, moving his hand up between their bodies. 

Dean gasps quietly when Cas’s fingers swipe in an almost-scooping motion at the splattered splotches of milky substance on his chest and abdomen, collecting it on the pads of his fingers. 

“Now we at least have something else to use other than spit,” he murmurs, carefully bringing his fingers back down to unhesitatingly rub the substance into the mix of saliva already slathered between the hunter’s cheeks.

Dean’s chest rises and falls with a deep breath, blissfully relaxed. He doesn’t know when his right hand came back up to weave back around Cas’s back, but simply gathers Cas impossibly closer with his both-arms embrace once he realizes. 

There’s not much that gets said, simply swapping kisses, pecks, occasional sweeps of tongue into the other’s mouth. They don’t need to say much, simply existing in the moment together.

Taking a break from the kisses, Cas briefly cups that same palm beneath his mouth like he’s done so often already, getting enough saliva to reach down and slick himself up once he’s deemed Dean wet enough—as wet as they can manage tonight, anyway. 

Dean still feels a little dizzy from it all, but snaps very quickly back to full consciousness when he feels a never-before-felt but unmistakeable feeling. 

He feels it rub against his rim, hard and undeniably not Cas’s fingers like what had been rubbing against him before. It reminds him of that promise that Cas is fulfilling, but also that holy shit they’re doing this.

“Just breathe,” Cas murmurs, doing nothing but rubbing the head back and forth; both spreading the slickness along both he and Dean where it’s needed while also getting the hunter accustomed to the sensation. 

Dean nods, taking another breath as instructed. He’s still reeling from the orgasm, but appreciates that Cas isn’t taking some long break for him to calm down from it. Too long of a break would allow him to probably find some way to talk himself out of it, but going straight forward like this keeps him willing and wanting at an instinctual level. 

Still, just to be safe, Cas checks, “Do you still feel ready to do this, or do you want to wait?”. It’s a selfless question, considering how he’s practically harder than steel at this point.

“M’ready,” Dean answers honestly as soon as Cas’s question is finished, barely giving time for him to finish asking it. 

“Okay,” Cas whispers after a beat of silence as though to try and discern if Dean’s being honest or not, pressing a kiss to his lips where they’re still flushed a deepened shade. “Can I go ahead?” he asks, beginning to lose his patience even despite preaching that “they have time”. 

With a hard swallow, Dean nods. He’s not ready-ready, but he’s ready enough. He probably won’t be fully ready until Cas just does it.

The ex-angel leans his head down, lips pressing slowly along the side of Dean’s face; distraction. It’s soothing, but not nearly enough to draw Dean’s attention away from how it feels when it starts. 

The tip slowly—but surely—begins to press at him, straight and hard and undeniably having more power than the softness of Dean’s insides.

The hunter’s hands quickly clutch much tighter at Cas’s back, feeling like there’s no breath available in his lungs to even gasp with.

Any time he’d guiltily imagined this in the past, he never expected how powerless it would actually feel in the moment. He always imagined that if he tensed up just enough then Cas wouldn’t be capable of pressing into him whatsoever. 

Such is not the case in real life. 

Even if he tenses up, sure it may make it more difficult for Cas and less pleasurable for himself, but it’s no match for the straight firmness of Cas’s length pressing into him; something explainable down to the very physics of it. 

Even if he tenses up, it won’t stop unless Cas chooses to stop it. The firmness and shape of his erection has more of an innate force in comparison to the soft suction of Dean reflexively clenching around the feeling of it slowly sliding into him; moving forward with ease.

But, paradoxically, the powerlessness isn’t something bad. Not like this. 

This, more than anything, is trust.

Cas, low and gravelly and even better than Dean had ever imagined it could possibly sound, moans. The sound is right by Dean’s ear, unable to be controlled. Even only breaching maybe the very first inch inside of the hunter is almost too much to handle—for Cas even more than Dean.

Specifically, the almost-too-much part is one that he hadn’t anticipated nor prepared himself to feel in such great magnitude, all-encompassing around him: 

It’s hot. 

“Cas,” Dean chokes, hands restlessly shifting and clutching for purchase at his back. His legs twitch like they’re trying to fall open to the sides wider, but his lower body feels too paralyzed to move as he tries to adjust around Cas pressing into him. 

“Breathe, Dean,” Cas shakily instructs, and it’s probably the least-composed sentence that’s come out of him this entire night. 

The further he sinks, the hotter it gets.

It’s addicting to feel the soaking heat surround him as he presses into Dean, a feeling similar to running icy hands beneath steaming water. Pins and needles light up every nerve receptor on the surface of his skin as he presses inside, sending a sensation of static throughout his groin.

Sinking inside of Dean like this, it is abundantly noticeable of the utterly humane warmth that radiates non-stop within the body. A reminder that their bodies have a primary function of internally warming up, like a generator constantly supplying efficient heat.

All of it is just hot to a nearly overwhelming extent.

His own flushed face, so warm and so close to Dean’s sweating one. 

The fire crackling in the stone fireplace of the wall adjacent to the bed, emitting the only source of warm, glowing light within the cabin. 

The firm arms wrapped tightly around his back, keeping their searing bodies almost entirely pressed together so that not a sliver of sensation can sneak past unaccounted for. 

The wetness of Dean’s insides surrounding such a sensitive part of his body with heat, making pins-and-needles prickle the skin of his cock like liquid fire cascading along the nerves of his body.

The contained, almost too-hot warmth that their huddled-close and writhing bodies are constantly continuing to generate between the sheets. 

The heat is all-encompassing, and it’s beyond compare.

It is suddenly so, so noticeable that the inner walls of Dean’s body are kept warm by the consistent circulation of rushing blood; keeping his insulation heated to a perfect temperature of 98.6° Fahrenheit.

“Cas, it’s—” the hunter moans with a crack amidst the sound, as if even his vocal cords don’t know how to handle the sensation occurring at the opposite end of his body, “—it’s too much,” he begs as he holds on to the ex-angel’s back desperately, coming out close to a sob. 

His typically gruff, rough voice sounds so vulnerable that he hardly recognizes it coming out of his own mouth so sensitively.

“You have to breathe, honey,” Cas encourages with a slightly strained voice and heavy breaths, forehead on the pillow beside Dean’s head.

It’s taking all of the self-restraint he possesses to go so slowly; but, knowing that he’s holding Dean’s delicate trust in the palm of his hands, he keeps control of himself as best as he can.

“I am—”

“You’re not breathing,” Cas counters softly before Dean can even finish denying it, and there’s an unspoken encouragement to breathe written within the words. 

Dean tries to take a shuddering breath in, but his lungs feel locked. 

It’s not that he feels bad, it’s just that he’s never been so acutely overwhelmed in his life by such a sensation. It feels like this is changing his perception of how he’s about to feel, experience, love for the rest of his life—all in this very moment. 

Cas shifts his face, pulling back just enough to be able to lock his lips onto the hunter’s. Dean returns it with a passion, as if their lips moving against one another’s is the only thing he knows for certain in this moment. 

Only halfway in, Cas slowly and carefully draws his hips back just a little bit before sliding in further. The shape of himself rubs against the hunter’s insides in the process, stimulating on the backward draw and the gentle forward thrust.

And Dean’s hooked. 

His body keens with a guttural moan into Cas’s mouth, and it’s suddenly Cas’s new goal in life to earn that reaction again. 

The ex-angel draws back carefully in just the same way, then pushes a little deeper as his hips rock forward again.

Dean’s nails sink into his back, breathing open-mouthed and heavy against Cas’s lips as he fails to return the kisses in lieu of focusing on processing the sensation. Everything is so sensitive; emotionally and physically.

He has that mental holy shit we’re doing this thought again, but it’s not panicked. 

It’s relieved.

Proud of himself, even. Proud of them.

On the tail end of a moan when Cas gently rocks again, he mewls, “Cas, I—”

“I know,” Cas pants against his lips, not letting him get the words out; assuming it’ll be an overwhelmed complaint or plea of some sort.

“I love you,” Dean continues without skipping a beat; talking over him like he can’t not say it and can’t stand for Cas not hear it.

It rewards him in ways he didn’t know he was craving, earning a deep groan from the man above him and an even deeper thrust within him. 

Cas’s effortless return of, “I love you too,” nearly gets drowned out by the sound the hunter makes.

It’s only a few tiny more rocks back and forth before Cas’s pelvis gently presses flush; soft curls at the base of his cock meeting the smooth skin of Dean’s rear end once he's fully buried. 

His right hand gently grazes up and down the outside of Dean’s right thigh; the hunter’s legs still bent and limply parted open instead of wrapping around Cas or anything yet. 

Their bodies are one with one another’s; one being. Chest to chest, abdomen to abdomen. A tangle of arms and legs. Buried deep within 98.6° heat.

Dean’s breaths are still a little off kilter, still feeling like he’s gotten the wind knocked out of him despite how good it all feels. But, thankfully, Cas just waits. He doesn’t continue rocking his hips, merely laying flush within Dean as he lets the hunter’s body adjust to the intrusion. 

The ex-angel plants kisses to the corner of Dean’s jaw, affectionately caressing the soft skin of his outer thigh as his lips explore the stubbled skin of his jawline.

“Still okay?” Cas murmurs after a few more moments of stillness within the hunter, waiting for Dean’s breaths to even out better as an indication that he’s adjusting.

Dean nods immediately, panting quietly. 

Cas’s kisses trail to the velvety-smooth skin on the underside of the hunter’s jaw, to the top of the side of his neck.

“You feel…” Cas starts, pausing to suckle on a spot of skin. He can’t find the right words. There’s no words that could amount to the feeling of Dean wrapped around him; no words that could amount to the connection. “...Amazing,” he finishes, even though the word doesn’t even measure up to the half of it.

Dean whines quietly, but can’t hide from Cas. The ex-angel could feel it clear as day when Dean’s body instinctively clenched around him in reaction to the praise.

It’s not even like when he’d clenched around Cas’s fingers, when it simply made the feeling of the fingers inside of him more noticeable. This is constant stimulation, like Cas’s girth was designed with the sole purpose to fill Dean like this. 

“So warm,” Cas whispers, getting a little more eager with his mouth than the gentleness he’d been kissing with before.

Dean lets his head tip in the opposite direction of the side Cas is working on, allowing better access to the skin of his neck. He sighs Cas’s name in pleasure like it’s the only thing he remembers how to say anymore, used cock twitching just barely where it’s still laying limp on his lower abdomen.

Cas uses his teeth to gently keep a small portion of skin in place as he suckles it to coax blood up to the surface, but can’t hide from Dean. The hunter could feel it clear as day when Cas’s cock instinctively twitched inside of him.

His teeth sink in a little harder in a way that draws a soft sound from the hunter, coupled with a reflexive buck of the hunter’s hips that accidentally winds up making his insides perfectly stimulate Cas’s cock within him.

The ex-angel’s hips twitch forward into the sensation; unintentional, but extremely welcomed as soon as it happens. 

Dean gasps immediately, thrusting up again like his body is hungry for something his mind doesn’t know how to crave yet. 

Cas moans against his neck—like, moans moans—in reaction. Even despite his pelvis being flushed to Dean’s ass, the sides of his glutes clench as he reflexively attempts to press deeper, rocking forward with nowhere to go.

Every movement of one’s body feeds right off of and into the movement of the other’s body. Like a well-oiled machine, each movement of Dean’s body is simultaneously the reaction to Cas's movement and the instigator of Cas’s next movement, creating an endless cycle of pleasure that quickly begins to intensify as the seconds pass.

It cycles and cycles, cycling until there’s a steady rhythm of Cas rocking back and forth within him as Dean thrusts up into every rock. The ex-angel only ever pulls out to maybe halfway, but the thrust forward of his hips feels mind-meltingly deep each time. 

The noises spilling from Dean are purely organic, unable to be replicated or reproduced if he were to consciously try. Cas’s face is buried in the crook of his neck, still pressing sporadic kisses to that velvety-smooth skin of Dean’s neck between the soft moans and groans slipping from the ex-angel’s lips in tandem.

It’s not like earlier, not like when he was teasingly pressing kisses to the hunter’s neck. The nature of Cas’s mouth on him now is hungry. Like his goal isn’t to tease, but to devour.

Pants of one another’s names every few thrusts start to pollute the air around them. The atmosphere buzzes with a charged energy, and it’s so different from the tension that they entered the cabin with that it feels like they could probably get high off of the relief it carries.

Cas’s hand stays on his right thigh even when, without thought, Dean’s legs come up. His inner thighs press to the sides of Cas’s body as his ankles link behind the ex-angel’s back beneath the covers, and Cas’s hand only encourages it as he squeezes the meat of his outer thigh with a near territorial sort of sound. 

The heat—in both senses of the word—is intensifying so quickly that it’s hard for both of them to mentally keep up, bodies beginning to function purely on emotions. Purely on the hormones, on the hunger. 

The rustic bed squeaks over and over beneath the weight of their movements, and the headboard lightly hits against the wall on every other thrust; something so intrinsically lewd, yet so right. 

Every sound, every smell; all of it belongs in this moment, just as they do in one another’s arms.

Dean’s current leg position is making the covers lift up just enough that the cold air of the cabin is starting to permeate the contained heat that their bodies had created beneath the sheets, but it doesn’t matter. The cold is no match for their nakedness held so tightly together; no match for the 98.6° heat of Dean wrapped around the ex-angel.

Despite what frequent talkers they’ve been throughout foreplay, now isn’t the time for that. It isn’t needed. All that matters is the here and now, in this foreign bed, with the crackling fire and the snow flurrying outside the log walls.

Cas lifts his face to see Dean beneath him, and mentally thanks every molecule in his body for not blowing his load the second that he does. 

Debauched is the only way to describe it. 

Red in the face, teary-eyed, hair a mess. The glow of the fire makes him so much more beautiful than he even usually already is, and that’s a tough standard to beat. He’s looking up at Cas like the ex-angel holds all the power in the world; resting in his palm, right beside Dean’s trust.

Cas is not the only one who has an enjoyable sight, though. 

Despite how spent he already feels, Dean’s cock weakly twitches to life as soon as Cas’s face is in his line of sight. 

He never has seen Cas in such a state. A mess, but a hot one. Flushed cheeks, reddened lips. Lust-blown pupils and sex-mussed hair that makes him look like an earlier version of himself, some 1 ½ decades ago. 

On top of that, seeing Cas with no clothes is something he still hasn’t gotten used to, even after everything they’ve done tonight. Seeing the ex-angel’s bare shoulders makes him feel like that blushing virgin all over again. Or a Victorian-era man seeing an ankle. 

He’s spent the past entire time he’s known Cas barely ever even seeing him without the trench coat. This is next-level, and it’s mind-blowing in the best way possible.

Even without lube, the feeling of getting accustomed to this is probably the closest way to get himself to nearly astrally project without being on some type of hallucinogen. Now that the pain of the stretch is subsiding, the feeling of Cas rubbing every surface within him over and over is making both his mouth and eyes water. 

He never really thinks about how the actual shape of such an organ matters, but he’s definitely thinking about it right now. The way that Cas’s cock curves upward just enough to glide back and forth over his prostate makes his brain feel numb, and the shape of Cas’s tip just makes the glide back and forth over that sensitive spot even more prominent as the rest of his length caresses the softness of his insides. 

The eye-contact is back, and the pants and pleads of one another’s names haven’t stopped.

Dean’s had sex plenty of times before, but it’s never felt like this. Probably because this has had nearly 15 years of sexual and romantic tension pent-up between them, but still. It’s unlike anything he’s ever experienced.

Cas’s pace grows a little faster, obviously beginning to lose composure as time goes on. Dean’s still trying to wrap his head around the fact that Cas is literally fucking him. And damn if the ex-angel isn’t good at it, too. 

Although, he’s beginning to feel the way that Cas’s thrusts are growing a little less controlled, and has a brief moment of panic. 

His cock is only half-hard by this point, but the constant stimulation to his g-spot is seriously making him feel like he could come again—and he’s been beginning to expect that he will.

…But not if Cas stops. 

Seeing the look in Dean’s eyes switch from good-overwhelmed to a less-good sort, Cas slows. His own cheeks redden when he notices the stark difference of volume in the room as he slows down, having been so lost in the moment he hadn’t even realized how loud they’d gotten. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, bringing his right hand up to swipe at some of the dribbling tears. 

The tears have been dribbling the whole time, so it’s not that those are what’s concerning him. What’s concerning him is the faint look of distress in Dean’s eyes; noticeably different from the blissed-out look of pleasure that had been there before. 

Dean nods, still slightly thrusting up like he’d been doing even though Cas is stopping.

“Are you sure?” Cas asks, gently stroking his thumb back and forth on the hunter’s cheek. His hips are almost completely still, but still just barely rock within him; unintentionally chasing the sensation that he’s forcing to die-down at the moment.

Dean is okay. That wasn’t a lie. He just really wants to come again, and can’t do that if Cas is already starting to lose it. 

The impending orgasm, still fairly distant but certainly on the horizon, is just taking too long to build up in the position they’re in. He’s getting too used to it, and it’s not enough like it was at first. 

He licks his lips, trying to get his voice to form a word. He’s gotten so accustomed to only moaning or saying “Cas” that he has to briefly remind himself how to talk.

Normally, he might be more embarrassed of how outwardly sensitive he seems at the moment, but he currently has no shame left in the bank. All of it has gone out the window tonight. 

“I need more,” he complains quietly. He might not have shame, but he does still have his shyness. 

The shyness simply doesn’t match, though. His brain might be shy, but his body most certainly is not. He’s hasn’t stopped lightly rocking his hips despite Cas having gone still inside of him, quite literally fucking himself on Cas’s cock without one ounce of shame or fear of dwindling dignity. 

His mind, his body, his soul—all of it is just Cas right this moment. 

“What do you mean?” Cas asks softly, still stroking his cheek with that worried tweak in his eyebrows. A perfect example to callback to that whole 50-shades meets Hallmark sort of energy.

He doesn’t know if Dean is trying to ask him to go harder, deeper, faster, or what. “More” could mean a lot in this instance.

Restless, Dean whines quietly in his throat with a squirm in a way that normally would be wholly out of character, but not tonight. Not underneath Cas like this, with the smell of sex in the air and the ex-angel still buried within him. 

“I don’t know, I just—” he huffs, rocking hips a little rougher to try and make Cas to get the hint to at least move a little bit while they talk. “Just need more,” he complains.

Cas sighs softly, still at a loss. Just like earlier when the hunter was experiencing some sappy tears, the ex-angel can’t understand just based off of the desperate look in Dean’s eyes. He needs words. 

And, to Dean’s dismay, the hand on his face slips down between them, gently grabbing hold of his hip. 

Cas’s hand keeps him in place, not allowing him to keep moving while the ex-angel tries to figure out what’s wrong.

A part of Dean kinda wants to slap him for it, but a larger, louder part of him thinks God, that’s hot.

“Tell me what you need,” Cas murmurs gently but seriously, obviously trying to get Dean to focus only on communicating instead of continuing to chase the pleasure. 

With a desperate crease in his brows, Dean tries (and fails, thanks to Cas’s hand) to roll his hips up with a quiet complaint of, “Need to come,”. 

He feels a little greedy saying it. He already came once, and came hard.

Yet, here he is, begging for it again. Cas just seems to have that effect on him. 

The worry seems to leave Cas’s expression at once as soon as he hears Dean’s answer, but his eyes still remain incredibly soft and fond (if not a little amused, too). 

He still can’t hide his arousal though. Dean felt that twitch within him. 

“You will,” the ex-angel reassures plainly, like there’s no doubt about it. 

Dean’s head tosses a little more deliberately back against the pillow; dramatic. That’s not the answer he wanted. He wants Cas to somehow magically snap his fingers and make it better. 

“I can’t,” he complains, nothing short of disheveled from desperation.

A soft laugh slips from Cas. “Why?” he asks. 

“Because,” Dean immediately returns with no shortage of aggravation.

The fact that he’s able to talk again is only adding to his sexual frustration. He had finally gotten to a state where he could barely form a thought, let alone talk this coherently. He needs more, and needs it now.

“It’s not enough,” he argues, still trying to writhe even despite the hand on his hip keeping him firmly and hopelessly in place. He tries to clench around Cas, but it only earns him a controlled deep breath and a fond expression; like Cas knows exactly what he’s trying to do, and it isn’t going to work.

“It’s sure been seeming like it’s enough,” Cas teases lightheartedly, observing the deep pink of Dean’s face, chest, and neck. The hunter’s ankles are still linked behind his back. 

Dean makes a needier expression; one that Cas is fairly certain he hasn’t seen yet. It’s like the much-more-obscene version of giving someone the “puppy-dog eyes”.

The ex-angel sighs, giving a somewhat unimpressed (but still fond) expression in return. He leans to press a soothing kiss to the hunter’s forehead. 

As much as he appreciates it, a gentle forehead kiss is the last thing that Dean wants right now. He’s more in a getting pounded into the mattress sorta mood by this point of the night. Maybe after Cas gets him to come again, then he’ll be more tolerable of the gentleness…but right now? He wants anything but gentle. 

Cas takes his hand off of his hip, but—even more to Dean’s dismay—uses said hand to gently guide himself out of the hunter. 

As if already anticipating the frustration, he’s quick to instruct, “Roll over onto your stomach for me,” before Dean has a chance to argue the argument that was already forming on the tip of his tongue.

The hunter huffs quietly, but obeys without hesitance. He flips over while Cas sits back on his knees to allow him room to move, readjusting so that he’s on his stomach under the ex-angel. 

Cas’s knees are on either side of his thighs, so Dean doesn’t have to worry about if he’s supposed to be up on his hands and knees or laying flat like this. Clearly, he’s right where he’s meant to be.

Cas doesn’t even give him a moment to prepare. Dean said he wanted more, so he’s getting more. 

The ex-angel uses his left hand to open him up, simultaneously using his right to guide himself right back inside as if they’d never stopped in the first place. 

Dean can barely get out a coherent, “Oh my God,” before he’s dropping his face to the pillow with a guttural moan. His hands stay bent beneath him, clutching the sheets under his shoulders; as though he’d been in a sphinx position, then let his chest lay down when he dropped his face to the pillow.

Cas doesn’t go hard, nor does he go very fast. He simply remains steady, but knows that this position puts more pressure on Dean beneath him, and therefore more direct stimulation on his prostate.

And Dean is learning this very quickly.

The moans getting muffled into the pillow are even more wanton and broken than the ones from moments ago in the previous position, especially with Cas practically laying down above him. 

His legs lay out long in line with Dean’s, but on the outer sides of Dean’s legs so as to keep Dean pinned down. His chest is flush to Dean’s shoulder blades, his abdomen to Dean’s back. His arms come to a sphinx sort of position on the outer side of Dean’s. 

He’s practically in the same position as Dean, but on top of him and surrounding. There’s nowhere for the hunter to go; trapped between Cas and the mattress.

It’s blissful.

Cas presses messy kisses to the side of his neck as he lifts and drops his hips in an endlessly steady rhythm, barely exiting the hunter halfway before he’s dropping his hips heavily to fill him right back up; repeating that process over and over and over.

Dean can only keep his face in the pillow for a few seconds longer unless he wants to lose complete consciousness, so he lifts his head up with a gasping moan as he readjusts his arms to be in that more proper sphinx. 

Cas’s head is right by his, in perfect kissing distance if Dean just turns his face to look at him.

So…duh. Of course he does.

Cas moans into his mouth as soon as their lips connect, his left arm coming across the front of Dean’s chest/collarbone until his left hand is gripping onto the hunter’s right shoulder. 

Yeah, that shoulder. The handprint one.

Honestly, they’re in an extremely similar position to when he raised Dean from Hell. Only, obviously, a lot more obscene than that. 

Dean can’t keep their lips connected for long at all. If he thought it was hard to contain his sounds in the last position, this one is a new level of holy shit. 

The weight of Cas above him, thrusting into him with such pressure even despite the gentle pace, is making his half-hard cock rub with toe-tingling friction against the mattress during every thrust.

He tries his best to keep eye contact with Cas once their lips part, even though it’s more difficult like this. Especially because his eyes keep starting to roll when Cas hits particularly deep or adds a grinding roll of his hips on the inward thrust. 

The hand on his shoulder helps keep his chest up instead of letting him drop back down to put his face in the pillow, fists clenching the sheets as Cas draws organic noises right up out of his chest.

The last position was loud and lewd, but this is an entirely different caliber. The cupped clap of every land of Cas’s pelvis straight against his backside is obscene, especially when it’s happening in neverending repetition as the bed squeaks loudly under their weight.

On a whim (though likely due to how exerting all of this is), Cas decides to lay down even heavier above him instead of slightly hovering like he had been, no space between their bodies whatsoever. 

Instead of the lifting and dropping he’d been doing, he doesn’t even let there be any space between his pelvis and the plush of Dean’s backside. He merely stays fully connected, only rutting back and forth while never even slipping halfway out.

It rubs so much deeper inside of Dean, and Cas is even heavier above him than he’d been before; like a weighted blanket.

This definitely is going to be enough. There’s no way Dean will be able to be here for even 5 more minutes without making a stain into the sheets of the stranger’s bed. 

Despite the previous hypothermic conditions, he’s never been so hot before. Being sandwiched between Cas’s full-grown-man weight above him and the warm sheets they’ve been laying on this whole time underneath him is sweltering, making him dizzy.

The sounds he’s making are wanton and foreign to even his own ears, but the shared vulnerability of the situation and lack of shame in the atmosphere makes him feel too blissful to even consider being self-conscious of how he looks and sounds right now. 

He’s never felt this way with anyone, physically or emotionally. Not even Lisa.

He’s never seen Cas in such an openly vulnerable and human state, and it continually keeps inspiring him to return the favor, letting Cas see more and more of him with no restraint. He wants to let Cas witness and experience him with no judgment or watching eyes, and that’s exactly what Cas is being given the opportunity to do.

And he is making wonderful use of said opportunity, not letting a crumb of Dean’s vulnerability go unrewarded—just as the hunter is doing in return.

Dean doesn’t hold back; neither of them do. The eye-contact they’re sharing right now (even despite how difficult it is for Dean to maintain) is unbreaking, and is saying more than words possibly could. 

Every sensitive sound or pleasured expression draws an equal one right up out of the other man, that same cause-and-effect situation happening again now just as it did when Cas first slid inside him. 

Dean has never seen Cas make that exact split-second expression when he slides especially deep, that exact tweak of the ex-angel’s eyebrows when he digs at an angle that makes everything clench around him, and Dean’s desperate to give as good as he’s getting. 

It’s a mindless effort to match each other’s shameless energy; feeding off of one another nonstop to see and be seen. 

There’s so much that Dean doesn’t know how to handle during this, but he knows one thing. 

“Love you,” he says without blinking, even if his voice comes a little jostled from Cas’s rocking pelvis.

The ex-angel lets out a soft moan, hand tightening on Dean’s right shoulder and cock grinding deeper. 

“I—oh,” Dean starts, tears bubbling up and over his waterline again, “—love you,” he promises with a beg in his wobbly tone.

“I love you too,” Cas breathes, not skipping a beat or faltering in rhythm whatsoever. 

Dean feels drunk off of the way Cas is stroking so good within him, like it’s exactly what their bodies were made for. Like puzzle pieces meant to fit perfectly together. 

A shameless, near-incoherent string of “love you”s spills from Dean’s lips as stars burst behind his eyelids along with the prickling tears.

Cas’s rhythm gets a little faster without meaning to as he listens to it. A little harder. He’s in awe of the man underneath him, and every second of this feels like what Heaven is supposed to feel like. 

The next sound out of Dean is more drawn out, and the eye-contact breaks. It’s more guttural than the last, rendering him unable to focus on maintaining the sight of Cas’s blue eyes. 

He feels like he’s getting an itch scratched that he never knew needed scratching, and Cas is the only one with the exact body needed to scratch it.

Tears start to flow even faster, and the incoherent string of “love you”s turns to “don’t stop”s with little sobs of pleasure woven in between. 

Cas doesn’t have to be a genius to know that the hunter’s getting close, and it takes 99% of his brain power to convince himself to hold out until he gets Dean there first. 

“I won’t stop,” he swears, promising it both to Dean and himself. 

Dean’s legs start to shift restlessly, but they have nowhere to go. Cas’s legs bracketing his own forces them to only be able to kick and squirm and straighten and bend in that small range of area.

Despite his pleas of “don’t stop”, Dean’s body and brain war with each other. Craving the pleasure, but fearing it all at the same time. 

“Don’t stop” turns to sobs of “too much, Cas, please, s’too much”, but Cas already has done this once tonight. He knows that Dean just needs a little extra coaxing to get there and to allow himself to experience it. 

If he’s already learning all of this in one evening, he can’t wait for what all he’s gonna learn once the rest of their life together takes off after leaving this cabin once the blizzard passes. 

He dutifully doesn’t stop, even despite the desperate pleas that it’s “too much”. He knows what the hunter needs, even when Dean’s too far gone to articulate it for himself. 

The hunter’s hands grip tighter at the sheets and try to use them for leverage to pull himself forward, but Cas is faster. His hand clutches tighter on Dean’s shoulder, gravelly voice comforting, encouraging, and warning all at once as he gently lectures, “Don’t run from me,” with probably the most strained voice he’s had all night. 

He like…really needs Dean to go ahead and get there, because it’s only getting harder to both A) keep going and B) watch Dean unravel like this and keep going at the same time. 

But, luckily, he doesn’t have to wait long. Not once he feels it around himself, just like he’d felt it around his fingers earlier. 

Tightening. 

“Come on, Dean,” he encourages, rutting his hips harder as both their breaths increase in harshness. It’s the final chorus, the loudest part of the symphony where all of the orchestra must work together at once before they can finally be done. 

But, just like earlier: Cas knows how to work it out of him, like a musician mastering their instrument. 

He pulls a little harder with the arm across Dean’s chest and the hand on his right shoulder, puts all of his weight into the deep grinding of his hips as Dean helplessly cries out beneath him. The “too much”s have turned to nothing but wanton moans and sobs, but Cas knows that the sobs are borne of pleasure. 

The bed creaks and squeaks hard enough that Cas has a distant worry of breaking it, but only cares about one thing and one thing only right now. There’s not room for anything in his thoughts other than getting Dean over the edge. 

It’s hot, it’s so hot, it’s sweltering, getting hotter by the seconds, and—

And it’s perfect.

A guttural moan of shock punches out of Cas when, all at once, Dean locks up around him. 

The hunter’s body snaps taut, legs straightening with trembling muscles and clenched insides. His eyes squeeze shut as his head drops down, his mouth drops open in a wide O. 

He barely makes a sound, like his vocal cords are locked up right along with his whole body. 

A second passes, then another, and finally comes the shudder. 

A shiver that has nothing to do with the blizzard outside wracks Dean’s body from crown of head to tip of toe, suddenly moaning in a way that Cas hasn’t heard out of him all night as the locked-tight clenching around his cock turns to rapid pulsing. 

It’s impossible to resist with Dean gripping so tightly around him. He barely realizes that he’s coming right along with him until he feels his entire groin start rhythmically throbbing, just barely out of rhythm with the clenches of Dean’s insides. 

Dean is trembling and moaning and crying and all the works underneath him, and even Cas is a groaning mess above him.

The room smells like sex and smoking firewood, and the unfortunate unknown owner of the cabin now has sheets stained with the little amount that Dean’s 40-something year old body had been able to muster up since his last orgasm. 

Cas presses them to the mattress even with his arm still wrapped around Dean’s chest and left hand clutching tight on his right shoulder, the hunter’s cheek smushing to the pillow as Cas’s forehead drops down right next to it.

His hips are still thrusting forward in tiny twitches, each pulse of pent-up release getting drawn greedily into Dean’s body with every vacuum-tight throb around him.

Riding out is a blur. Maybe it’s seconds, or maybe it’s minutes, but they’re practically a pile of heaving breaths and limp limbs by the time they settle into the aftermath. 

Cas is the one that finally manages to move first, gently lifting his forehead from the pillow and shifting a bit so that he can see Dean’s face better.

The hunter looks wrecked. 

Meant with love, of course. But wrecked. 

Cas gently leans his weight to the left a bit, just enough to carefully slip himself out of the hunter. It earns him an anticipated whine of discomfort from Dean, so he’s already preemptively shushing softly as soon as he slips out.

He lets his weight roll fully over to the left, landing with a quiet huff on his back as his left arm stays beneath Dean’s chest (just now straightened out). It effectively makes it so that he can use that arm to try guiding Dean towards himself, and the hunter gets the hint a few seconds later. 

Dean weakly scooches towards him to curl up so that his cheek can rest against Cas’s chest instead of the pillow, and the ex-angel’s arm wraps around the back of his shoulders in the process to gather him close. 

Cas’s right hand comes over to gently brush his fingers through the hunter’s slightly-sweaty hair, detangling some of the knots in the process. 

Laying here in the afterglow, fire still crackling and snow still flurrying, it hits him how much he did not expect this tonight. Everything progressed naturally, and it’s not like anything out of place happened, it’s just not at all what he expected. 

Laying here naked and sweating and post-coital cuddling cuddling with Dean snuggled close to himself is the last way he’d expected this night to go when he and Dean initially pulled off the road and found this cabin. 

Dean cuddling limp and exhausted against him is a stark contrast to when they’d first laid in this bed together. The hunter had even had to tell him, “Dude, I don’t bite,” because it was so tense to be getting under the covers with one another. 

It’s humorous to think of, now. 

He keeps gently massaging the hunter’s scalp, feeling their chests rise and fall steadily in rhythm with one another’s. The hunter’s inner thigh is resting warm on top of Cas’s quad, body curled close into Cas’s side-body. 

Simply savoring the moment and allowing their spiked hormones to simmer down to a regular level, Cas patiently waits to do anything other than lie here in the afterglow until Dean moves first. Still, even now that it’s over, they have time; nothing has to be rushed, even still.

The hunter shifts clumsily with a quiet wince, trying to convince his exhausted body to function enough that he can readjust into a slightly more comfortable position and lift his head to look at Cas. 

The second their eyes meet, all that he can think is holy shit they just did that.

He just had sex. With Cas. Ankles wrapped around the ex-angel’s back. Getting prone-boned into the mattress hard enough to nearly break the bed. Hard enough he cried throughout most of it.

And came twice. 

“How do you feel?” Cas murmurs fondly as he takes a brief moment to wipe some of the hunter’s lingering tear tracks, breaking the silence for the first time since…all of that.

Dean starts to speak, but only manages to stutter two half-formed and mostly incoherent words before Cas is already cracking an amused smile. He gives up, dropping his head back down with a groan in which the grin is audible.

“Holy shit,” he mumbles in the crook of Cas’s neck once he can get his tongue and vocal cords to work with him, a full-on giggle slipping out afterward and making his chest move with the laughter snuggled close to Cas’s own. 

A beat passes, and there’s no tension. Not anymore.

“Where the hell’d you learn how to do that?” he playfully asks the ex-angel, but really doesn’t care about the answer. All he cares about is how joyous it is to know that he’s about to get that treatment for the rest of his life. 

Cas is the one who stutters to find words this time, and it’s all so soft and chick-flick-y and domestic that it feels a little suffocating. In the best way, though.

The ex-angel sighs with a fondness, then seconds later tries to helplessly readjust the sweaty sheets surrounding them with a perturbed mutter of, “It’s too hot in here,” under his breath.

Isn’t that ironic?

The afterglow is spent mostly in silence, either 5 minutes or 30 passing. Neither can really tell, nor do they need to. The only thing they need to care about in this moment is one another. 

“Can I ask you about something?” Cas eventually murmurs, voice rumbling deep and familiar in the chest under Dean’s cheek.

A spike of panic races through Dean's mind—please don’t take it back—as he lifts his head to look at the ex-angel. It feels like he’s just experienced the in-person version of receiving a cryptic “can we talk?” text from a girlfriend.

“Hmm?” he hums, encouraging Cas to ask what he needs to ask.

The ex-angel hesitates for a moment, petting his right hand over Dean’s hair as he mentally mulls over how to ask what he’s trying to understand.

“It’s nothing bad,” he reassures a few seconds later, sensing the panic rolling off of Dean in waves. “I just…don’t understand something,”.

Dean stays just as tense as he was before the reassurance. Nothing will reassure him except for Cas saying what he needs to say, because his own brain is coming up with about 1,000 way worse things that Cas could potentially be about to ask.

Still, he stays silent; patiently waiting. 

“I um,” Cas starts, briefly taking his hand off of Dean’s hair to scratch at his own forehead with averted eyes.

Nervous, Dean reads from the obvious body language. His panic rises.

Cas sighs softly, looking back up the hunter’s eyes and petting his hand over the soft brown hair again. “I overheard you talking with Sam,” he says, then adds, “Yesterday,” for clarification.

He says it as if hopeful that Dean will easily connect the dots, but the hunter keeps looking at him with a lost, slightly bewildered expression. Clearly, he has no clue what the ex-angel is referring to.

“You told Sam that you, uh…‘didn’t want to be alone’ with me,” Cas explains softly. 

Hurt, Dean reads in the softness of the sentence.

“Cas it’s not…I didn’t mean it like that,” he’s quick to defend. “I swear I didn’t mean it like that,” he promises, voice barely louder than a whisper.

A beat passes, now technically Cas’s turn to speak, but Dean continues with another quiet, weak, but desperate, “I swear,” while hoping his voice doesn’t shake too much.

“I believe you,” the ex-angel reassures gently. “But, now—” he gestures vaguely to the two of them, to their nakedness, “—I just still don’t understand why you would have said that,”.

Dean swallows.

Guilt, Cas reads on the surface, but looks a little deeper to find the real emotion beneath it.

Shame.

“Sam knew about…y’know,” Dean reluctantly starts to mumble after a few long seconds of silence. Vague, and quietly ashamed of himself. “He knew about how I felt. About you,” he clarifies before explaining, “I only said that thing to him yesterday ‘cause I was nervous about us being alone together,”.

And thought that you didn’t feel the same anymore, goes unsaid at the end of the sentence but is heard loud and clear.

“Sam knew?” Cas asks curiously.

Dean nods, but then quickly adds, “I didn’t—I didn’t plan on him knowing. He found out by accident,”.

Cas hums in understanding. That sounds much more like the Dean he knows.

“...How did he find out?” the ex-angel asks next. 

He would stop asking so many questions for the sake of respecting Dean’s privacy, but privacy simply isn’t very existent to them right now. This is bared-all. Raw and vulnerable.

Dean’s jaw tightens as he gathers the courage to answer, and his eyes avert. 

Grief, Cas reads.

“Just…got a little too drunk one night,” the hunter mumbles, unable to look at Cas as he says it. “I don’t remember everything I said, but I know it all just kinda…came out. Couldn’t be bottled up anymore,”.

“When?” Cas asks softly. No privacy, but none needed.

Dean gulps. He briefly glances up at the ex-angel, and Cas knows that the mistiness of his eyes wasn’t there before. 

And, either way, it’s a different mistiness than earlier. This is not one of pleasure.

“Couple nights after,” Dean mumbles even quieter; choked. 

“After…” Cas starts with slight confusion to coax Dean to finish, trying to get the sentence out so that he can understand.

The mistiness turns to glassiness.

“After you…uh—” 

The hunter’s hand quickly comes up to his eyes, a quiet, “Damn it,” under his breath sounding terribly wet and emotional and sad in a way that Cas doesn’t want Dean to have to feel. Not in this moment.

Swiftly putting two and two together, he draws Dean’s face back down towards his chest again with a soft, “It’s okay,” and a following, “Shh,”. 

He’s quick to press kisses to the hunter’s head and temple and wherever he can reach; not heated, but reassuring. A silent “I’m here now”.

Dean sniffs quietly, and his arms and legs both wrap closer around Cas’s body without hesitance. The exhaustion from what they just did is (mostly) gone from his muscles, replaced instead by a clingy desire of close.

“I’m here,” Cas murmurs against his hair, just in case the communication of the kisses wasn’t enough. 

While it makes him deeply sympathetic to now know why Dean had said that to Sam and why Sam knew in the first place, it is incredibly relieving to have an explanation for why Dean had said such a thing.

He already thought that he’d been at his highest level of comfort possible with Dean tonight, but the new lack of “you know why I don’t wanna be alone with him right now” circulating anxiously through his mind is putting him at an even higher level of peacefulness.

“Thank you for telling me,” he murmurs as he lays his cheek on the hunter’s head, knowing that he somewhat just accidentally spiked panic and then grief within the hunter in a span of less than 3 minutes. Oops.

Dean nods against his chest, but doesn’t verbally respond. His arms wrapping tighter around the ex-angel—making his body basically sprawled on top of Cas’s at this point—says everything that his words can’t.

Minutes pass in peaceful silence until Dean shivers lightly, but Cas tucks the covers around them more carefully before he even gets a chance to complain about the cold. The cold is no match for the heat of one another pulled so close. 

They don’t know what tomorrow will bring, don’t know what will happen when they leave the cabin come sunrise, but—finally—there is one thing they know for sure. 

Cheek leaned heavily against the hunter’s head with eyes slipping shut, Cas barely has to vocalize it as he whispers, “I love you,” to the man in his arms.

Dean snuggles impossibly closer; warm.

“Love you too,” he whispers right back. 

Because, as proven beside the crackling fire for nobody but the foreign bed and flurrying snow to hear: of course he does.