Shut Up (Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is) | CHAPTER FIVE
From: winchesterd@gmail.com
To: swinchester@law.standford.edu; singerauto@sbcglobal.net; kittykat1985@gmail.com; ellharvelle@theroadhouse.com
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2013 05:54 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: SPAM: Re: Re: Still alive?
Well, we got most of the funky wiring replaced on Saturday, and this joker kept trying to charge us for punching out extra outlets. It’s like, dude, I can cut the holes myself, just get up that ladder and make sure my chandelier doesn’t catch on fire, okay?
The highlight of the weekend was the new sump pump. It’s overpowered as hell, but if we put a bathroom in the basement we’ll need the wallop. It’s loud, too. The few first times it went off Cas jumped three feet in the air, I swear, just like the cat does. Hilarious.
Took the old boiler to the dump. Thing was seriously forty years old, I have no idea how Cas has been living with ten minutes of hot water for so many years.
The bookshelves in the living room are all in, finally, but I’ve still got to sand them out and put primer down. That’ll be a job. Too bad you’re downstate, Jo, I could really use some slave labor!
-DW
The house is definitely still a work in progress, but it’s getting there. They’re getting there- not without a few funny moments and odd hiccups along the way, yeah, but Dean is still having the best time he remembers in ages. Definitely since Sam left for Stanford.
One time, he's elbow-deep in grout and tiles for the new backsplash behind the stove, and he sends Castiel out to pick up another caulking gun, some wood glue and few more pieces of timber. Dean tells him the size and the amount and even the exact bin number, so all he has to do is physically go to the lumber yard and get it. Dean tells him to call if he has any questions, and makes sure he takes his phone.
Castiel comes back four hours later with half a dozen hanging baskets full of riotously pink petunias and an interesting piece of wood he found on the side of the road.
“Okay, first of all, we don’t have anywhere to hang those. We tore out the deck roof last weekend, remember? Second, you stopped in the middle of the highway to pick that up?” Dean says, eyeing what looks like half of a gnarled young tree. “Sticks stay outside, Cas. Bugs. Sap.”
Castiel apparently has an entire wall of interesting twigs, which Dean hasn’t noticed because they’re nailed above the enormous fireplace in the east wing.
“I will build you a display rack,” Dean wheedles, “as big as a room, and you can put as many sticks and branches and crap on it as you want. Please do not put another hole in that brick. It has to be a hundred years old.”
“But I like them where they are,” Castiel says stubbornly, gripping the branch tightly as Dean tries to pull it away.
“Please.”
It’s a fraught battle, but he eventually allows Dean- more specifically, Dean’s hands on his waist and the lingering kiss Dean presses just below his ear- to persuade him, and the branch is thankfully banished to the potting shed.
There’s a cold snap in the last slow days of September that coincides with a nasty virus sweeping through the building, and Castiel goes down like a baby deer with a broken leg.
“This is because you don’t take care of yourself,” Dean scolds, but gently, tucking the comforter Castiel keeps weakly pushing away back up to his chin. Dean’s well aware of Castiel’s tendency to go in early and stay late when Dean isn’t driving, and he’s lost count of the number of times he’s woken up to find Castiel out of bed and at the computer in the ridiculously wee hours of the morning. “Go back to bed. I’ll pick up some cough syrup on my way back, okay?”
“It’s the end of the fiscal year, I can’t be sick,” Castiel protests hoarsely, congested and gummy-eyed, waving a handful of disgustingly damp tissues. Dean mentally adds Kleenex to his list for the local pharmacy, and scoops the not-stray cat off the foot of the bed. He drapes her over Castiel’s stomach, where she immediately spreads to cover him like a melting chocolate bar.
“Stay,” he says, ostensibly to her, but Castiel’s narrow glare shows he knows exactly who Dean is talking to.
Castiel sneaks onto a bus and goes to work anyway, which Dean only finds out about when Alfie calls up to his desk at eleven and says in a tremulous whisper, “He’s face-down in a pile of liquidity reporting and he hasn’t moved in an hour. I think he might be unconscious!”
Dean then has the dubious privilege of carting his catatonic husband out of his workplace via his rolling office chair and, when he can finally be persuaded to get to his feet, by practically carrying him to the car. Castiel is so incredibly sulky about it, coughing pathetically and using up an entire box of tissues in the time it takes to drive to the house, that when they get there Dean just picks him up and carries him inside as well, ignoring the man’s feeble but adamant objections.
“I am not a child,” he rasps, arms folded over his chest exactly like a pouting two-year-old.
“Could have fooled me,” Dean says, ruffling Cas' hair and getting an aggravated swat for his troubles.
He goes back down to the car to get the supplies he’d left in the back seat, and when he returns Castiel has actually crawled out of bed and is at the computer, hunched over and shivering visibly. He loops an arm around Castiel’s waist and pulls him bodily away from the keyboard.
"This is absolutely vital forecasting," Castiel croaks. "The president of the firm-"
"Shush," Dean says as he kicks off his shoes and wades into the mess of pillows and snot-covered tissues on the bed, dragging Castiel along with him. “You’re staying home if I have to lay on you like the goddamn cat. Here, Nyquil. Drink up.”
“I hate Nyquil,” Castiel says grouchily, and is asleep seconds after he swallows the first dose.
He snores like a freight train and he’s a rumpled, surly mess the next morning, eyes glazed over with fever. Dean stays home and makes him French toast and chicken noodle soup from mostly-scratch and watches horrible daytime television with him, until The View is just too much and they switch to Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer.
“You’re going to get sick, too,” Castiel grumbles in one of his more lucid moments, turning his head to squint at Dean. On his back, the tiger seems caught mid-sneeze.
Dean shrugs. “Maybe,” he says, dutifully swinging his arms as Dora yells “¡Date prisa! ¡Date prisa!”
Castiel gazes at him for another long moment, then turns his face back into his pillow. “Ugh.”
Dean doesn’t get sick, and the next day he goes back to work with Castiel solemnest promises to take his medicine and stay in the freaking bed, come hell or high water.
That lasts until about mid-afternoon.
CM 03:23PM - Im at the hospital
Dean, surreptitiously checking his phone under the table during yet another color scheme grudgematch, almost drops it in surprise, and swallows hard against the sudden panic flaring in his throat.
DW 03:25PM - What happened?
DW 03:26PM - are you okay??
DW 03:28PM - CAS
CM 03:30PM - Im fine, Castiel writes, then:
CM 03:31PM - the animal hospital, not human
CM 03:31PM - the cat is sick
DW 03:32PM - so are you!
CM 03:32PM - I dont know whats wrong
CM 03:33PM - she might be dying
Ah, Christ.
DW 03:34PM - where are you? address
CM 03:36PM - 303 cabot st in beverly
"Sorry, guys," Dean says to the room, standing up. "I've got to go, family emergency."
"The green is too bright," Victor snaps at Benny, ignoring him completely. "This is an autumn layout-"
Charlie makes a worried face and mouths call me, and Dean nods before making his escape.
The address Castiel gave him is a tidy old house turned commercial building with charmingly steep gables and gingerbread trim. Castiel is slumped in a chair to the right of the door as Dean walks in, and he wobbles to his feet the second he sees Dean.
"Dean-"
"Hey," Dean says softly, striding up to him, a hand going to his forehead, then the back of his neck. “Aw, Jesus, you’re burning up.”
Castiel's face is an unhealthy red and he's still in that damn trenchcoat, with at least two scarves around his shoulders and head and wearing what looks like Dean's old NYU sweatpants. "I'm tired," he says in a small voice, and sags into Dean like a deflating party balloon.
Dean lets himself just hold him for a minute, because the gap between those first and second texts had shaved years off his life.
"Did they say what was wrong with her?" he asks the top of Castiel's head. Castiel shakes his head mutely, and Dean squeezes a little tighter before he releases him and nudges him back into the chair.
"Stay here. I'll go talk to the receptionist, okay?"
"Okay," Castiel parrots, eyelids drooping.
The young woman behind the counter is happy to tell him that the stray ("She's not really a stray," Dean explains, pained, and young woman smiles her understanding) was admitted with signs of acute distress and abdominal tenderness, and that she's currently in surgery. The second they know anything, they'll be sure to tell him.
Cas looks like he's having trouble sitting upright, and Dean sits down and gives him a shoulder to lean on while he checks his work phone for calls, for lack of anything more constructive to do. There's a text from Charlie (CB 04:01PM - is everything okay????!?) and an email chain Victor and Benny keep responding to with escalating levels of passive-aggressive posturing. He sends a reassuring update to Charlie and digs a packet of tissue from his pocket to hand to Castiel when he starts coughing again.
"When was the last time you took anything?" Dean asks.
"Don't remember," Castiel manages around the coughs. "Maybe- hour ago?"
Dean glances at the clock and the receptionist, and sighs. "Okay. We're going to give this another hour and you're going home and getting some rest."
Castiel looks like he'd like to argue, but the coughing is getting worse and when an older man with a small Scotland terrier in a crate beside his leg offers cherry cough drops, Castiel takes them gratefully.
Dean's trying to negotiate a diplomatic truce between Benny and Victor via Blackberry when a thin man in a lab coat comes out of the back and calls, "Mr. Milton?"
When he sees Dean helping Castiel up, he crosses the floor himself.
"You know, if you were a puppy I could give you something for that," he says with a smile. "I'm Dr. Fitzgerald, but everyone here calls me Garth."
"Dean Winchester," Dean says, and shakes his hand. "Is the cat-?"
"Oh, she's fine," the veterinarian says. "She just came out of anesthesia and she's doing great. One of them was wedged in sideways, but we helped the little guy out and got the rest while we were in there. Everybody's happy now."
"The- what was wedged where?" Dean asks. "Did she swallow something?"
"Oh, you didn't know? Then surprise! It's kittens!" Garth says cheerfully. "Five of them, three boys, two girls. Congrats to the happy kitty grandparents."
"Can we see her? Them?" Castiel butts in, wiping his nose.
"In a bit, sure," Garth says. "You'll be able to take them home tonight, if you want. Let me walk you through taking care of the stitches-"
Thirty minutes later, Dean and Castiel are staring down at the sleeping stray, five small scraps of particolored fur nudging hopefully at her stomach.
“We shouldn’t give them names,” Castiel says pedantically, and Dean shoots him an incredulous look.
“So, what, we call them Things One through Six?” he asks, hushed. They're keeping their voices down out of deference to the kittens.
“'Kitty' or 'cat' has been a completely adequate general term,” Castiel says before blowing his nose as quietly as possible in an already much-abused tissue. Dean hastily rips out some new ones from the box on the counter and hands them over.
“Nice thought, but no way, Cas. I’m not going to let you make my life harder,” Dean says, and reaches forward to gently lift a tiny orange puffball. The kitten barely fills his palm but has lungs like an air raid siren, which it uses with full force and vigor to object to the handling. “This is Steve Tyler, okay? We can call him Stevie. And the one who looks like his mom, he can be Jimi-”
Axel Rose (Rosie), Voltaire, and Tolstoy follow shortly.
"It literally translates to fat, you know," Castiel says, scritching under Tolstoy's chin. "And he is very fat."
“And since we've gotten over that weird hangup,” Dean says, pointing at the stray cat. “Her name is Coco.”
“No, it isn’t,” Castiel says mulishly.
“Oh, come on!”
“It isn’t,” Castiel insists, interrupted by a coughing jag.
“Coco is a perfectly good name, look, she’s mostly black and tan-”
“It’s Nabokov,” Castiel says.
Dean stops short. “What's Nabokov?”
“Her name is Nabokov.” Castiel pronounces it with slight accent, staring at Dean as if daring him to comment.
“... Nabokov?” Dean asks.
“It was before I knew she was female.”
“So she always had a name,” Dean says, starting to grin. “Cas, you big softy.”
“Shut up,” Castiel grumbles, though there's a smile creeping around the edges of his mouth as he looks down at Nabokov and her brood. "It's- it's hard not to get attached, when they just keep coming back."
"Okay, softy."
"Dean."
The cat and her kittens are installed in a quiet corner of the newly-habitable library, and Nabokov promptly decides she doesn't like it and moves them in under the kitchen sink instead. Garth had basically said to let her do her thing, but Castiel tends to hover unless Dean can distract him with something.
Castiel fights off the virus and goes back to work just in time to file some kind of extension on end-of-the-year reporting (Dean doesn't even pretend to understand what he's talking about), to the abject and embarrassing gratitude of his coworkers. Castiel describes the hugging and the cake in tones of great bafflement to Dean over the phone.
A few weeks later, he goes away on some kind of accountants-only retreat and Dean dragoons Victor and Benny into a beer-and-pizza-fueled painting extravaganza. He could have hired a professional team, and he'll probably still have to for the crazy-big rooms in the east wing and the foyer, but it wouldn't mean as much, Dean thinks. He wants to do something big for Cas.
The three of them (briefly four, when Charlie shows up on her way somewhere else and gets coerced into finishing the downstairs powder room) manage to fully cover the library, kitchen, three of the five bedrooms and the master suite in a 48-hour binge of blue painter's tape and careful reference to Castiel's painstakingly-organized planning binder, which has specific paint chips labeled for rooms, ceilings and accent walls.
"Never call me again," Victor says very early Monday morning, slumped across the kitchen table. "You are dead to me, Winchester."
"Mon dieu, je vais mourir," Benny moans from the floor.
"Pansies," Dean mutters, but he hasn't made it off the floor himself, so who is he to judge? Also, he thinks there may be Cranberry Dapper in his left nostril, but he's just too tired to scrape it off.
"Dean?" comes a distant voice from the direction of the front door.
Dean freezes, cheek mashed against the tiles. "He was supposed to call me to pick him up!"
"I ain't hiding so you can yell surprise," Benny says. Victor grunts in agreement.
"Dean!"
"Shit," Dean says, trying to peel himself off the floor and just barely managing to roll over.
"Dean, what-?" Castiel steps into the kitchen, looking utterly flummoxed.
Dean throws his arms out from his prone position. "Surprise?"
"You're covered in paint," Castiel says uncertainly.
"So are your walls, cher," Benny points out, not unkindly.
Castiel slowly turns in place, as if just noticing that his kitchen's gone from a dingy off-white to the bright, sunny Bay Morning Yellow he'd spent hours agonizing over in the aisles of Home Depot. "Just in here?"
"Three bedrooms, master suite, two bathrooms, kitchen, library," Victor tells the table. "Why the hell is there so much house?"
Castiel's eyes are a little wide. "... you used my colors?"
"Even that celadon bullshit," Victor mutters.
"Don't mind him, he's got a thing about green- Cas?"
"I think you two need to leave," Castiel says evenly, hands trembling a little as he sets aside his suitcase.
Benny and Victor blink at him. "Uh, sure," Benny says slowly.
They gather themselves, and Dean sits up. "I- I'm sorry, I thought-" he starts, "I really thought you'd like it. It's okay, we can paint it over, I can-"
"Dean Winchester," Castiel starts angrily, and then grabs Dean by his paint-encrusted tee shirt and hauls him into a speaking kiss, something rough and deep while his other hand moves to cup the back of Dean's neck and drag him even closer, until Dean's straining up on his knees and making noises he's not strictly comfortable with his friends hearing.
"Okay," Benny announces loudly on the heels of that thought. "I'm just going to-"
"Oh hell no," Victor echoes, and there are retreating footsteps and slamming doors but Castiel's mouth has all of Dean's attention until it draws away, Castiel's eyes heavy-lidded and his mouth pink and wet.
"You are an idiot," he announces. "I love- I love it."
"Oh." Dean says dazedly. "Good?"
"Yes, good," Castiel says, and kisses him again.
The den Dean had saved for the two of them, because it's where he and Cas have spent the most time together since Dean... came to stay. For a bit. They tackle it the week after, when both of their schedules have settled down.
“Cas, you don’t have to get it exactly perfect,” Dean says, demonstrating with a wide white streak against the blond wood and over the bare wall. “We have to prime everything, so just avoid the baseboards and the ceiling and we’re golden, ‘kay?”
“Okay,” Castiel says, frowning in concentration as he rolls out another perfectly parallel line of paint just beside his first.
“Loosen up a little,” Dean coaxes, turning back to the shelves with a fresh brushful of thick primer. “It’s a wall, you’re not restoring the Mona Lisa.”
“Perhaps I’m simply trying to avoid getting paint on myself,” Castiel replies, looking pointedly down at Dean’s well-splattered jeans and t-shirt.
“You’re wearing an apron. You’ll be fine.” And who goes out and buys an apron specifically to paint in? It’s still creased from the package and annoyingly clean, and surreptitiously Dean dips a finger in the paint can. He laughs when Castiel immediately leans away. “C’mon, after the first smear you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
“I like these clothes,” Castiel says, brandishing his paintbrush at Dean. “Leave them alone.”
It’s Dean’s shirt and Dean’s sweatpants he’s working in, because Castiel has a very limited casual wardrobe and being sick has completely exhausted his supply. The new washer and dryer are getting in sometime next week, and until then, Castiel shuffles around in Dean's old jerseys and track pants and Dean doesn't mind one single bit.
With a final warning look, Castiel turns back to the section of wall he’s so carefully painting, and Dean’s ring glints on his finger as he puts the bristles to the paneling and starts painting again.
Dean’s smiles at that and shies away from knowing why, so he turns away, working in brisk, wide strokes, coating the blond wood of the shelves with bright white. They haven’t decided if they’ll leave them white as an accent color or paint them the same stormy blue as the walls, so he figures an extra-thick layer won’t do any harm.
"You seem very skilled at this," Castiel says, after a moment.
Dean shrugs. "I did a lot of odd jobs when I was a kid, and my old man was pretty handy. We, uh, we moved around a lot. Fixing up houses was one of the ways we made money."
"Why not do it professionally? Why work in advertising?"
Dean throws him a look. "Well, why did you become an accountant?"
Castiel shrugs, laying down another careful line of paint. “I like numbers.”
“That’s it?”
Another shrug. “A school counselor suggested it after I told her I enjoyed math class more than English.”
“And you just,“ Dean makes a motion like a fish swimming upstream, “until you became assistant finance controller or whatever?”
Castiel sits back on his heels and absently wipes his forehead with the back of a hand, leaving a long streak of white at his temple. “Yes?”
“Wow,” Dean says. Castiel frowns at him. “No, that’s cool, just." Dean shakes his head. "It was a lot more roundabout for me."
Castiel looks at him expectantly, brush poised above the can.
“Hey, keep painting,” Dean orders. “We’ll be in here all day if we take a break for storytime.”
Castiel goes back to painting, but he keeps his eyes pointedly on Dean, and Dean sighs loudly as he turns back to the shelves.
“It’s not really that interesting,” he says, reaching in deep to get the back corners. “I already told you we moved around a lot. Looking back, I think Dad had something going on, y’know,” Dean taps his forehead, “up here. My mom died when I was barely four, but he talked about her all the time. He couldn’t let go. He was a Vietnam vet and probably a paranoid son of a bitch to begin with, so.” He shrugs. “I thought it was cool, living off the grid, skipping town in the middle of the night, jumping across states. I hated school, so I was glad to miss as much of it as I could. Sam, though, Jesus that kid could whine.”
“Sam didn’t like moving?”
“Sam didn’t like anything. He started arguing with Dad when he was barely out of preschool and I swear they didn’t stop to take a breath until Dad was in the ground.”
Castiel’s brush stops moving. “Your father-?”
“Yeah.” Dean doesn’t look up from the shelves. “When I was seventeen. It was-” Dean sighs. “He was crazy, yeah, and a drunk. Not the world’s greatest dad, not even close. But he helped wherever he could. For every job he got paid for, he did three or four for free. He was big on- not charity, really, but… karma?” He shakes his head. “Something like that. Then he gets hit by a runaway semi, dies instantly on impact. The driver was asleep at the wheel. I was really angry about it, for a long, long time.”
“I’m sorry,” Castiel offers softly.
Dean gives him a crooked smile. “It was ten years ago, almost. I got better at dealing. I had Sam, and he needed me, and that got me through a lot of shit.”
“You’re a good brother."
“I am the best brother,” Dean declares, slapping on a huge glob of paint. “I worked my ass off to support that kid. We moved in with Bobby, who was one of the maybe two or three people Dad would have called a friend. I did every kind of odd job under the sun. Bobby owns a junkyard in Queens and does mechanic’s work on the side, so I got pretty good at selling parts.”
“And advertising?”
Dean glances over at Castiel, his interested look and unmoving roller. “Hey, don’t just let the paint dry, put it back in the tray if you’re not using it.”
Castiel goes back to painting the wall, but he casts an expectant glance at Dean, who laughs and says, “Spanish inquisition much?”
“I’m curious,” Castiel says primly. “You’re interesting.”
“I’m interesting?” Dean protests. “Who here has a tiger for a tramp stamp?”
Castiel’s unimpressed stare makes Dean laugh again. “Fine! Yeah, I did some advertising for Bobby. Kid stuff, calling around to local church bulletins and newsletters for grocery stores, things like that. It was pretty low stakes, so Bobby let me design them. It was fun, and I was good at it.
“So I did some ads for the Harvelles, who were friends of Dad’s too. They have a bar and grill called the Roadhouse, great place, good food. I did this little jingle,” Dean says, “and it was so damn cheesy but it worked. By the time I was nineteen I had six local chains letting me mess around with their ads. But it was just a hobby, you know? I was still working on cars and sorting scrap metal at Bobby’s most of the time.
“And then one day Bobby leans over and says, why don’t you go to school, get something like a marketing degree, make more money and not have to work on the side. I wasn't buying it. I was pretty happy with what I had, for once, and not really wanting to rock the boat in case all that went away."
"What changed?" Castiel asks, stretching up to paint closer to the ceiling.
Dean finishes one shelf and moves on to the next, shifting closer to him. "Nothing, really. Bobby's good at the long game, and he'd bring it up every now and again, and after I got a few more ad jobs around town it started looking like the smart thing. I got applications to the local community colleges for associate's degrees with night classes stuff I could do any keep working. I wanted to be realistic, you know? We weren't exactly swimming in dough.
“Then Sam gets wind of it. He starts coming at me with these brochures for five-year bachelors-masters combos from places like CUNY and Columbia, and I'm like, whoa, kid, I've barely got my GED, don't get too crazy. But that's Sam," he says with a grin. "Kid's a menace."
"I'd like to meet him someday," Castiel murmurs, like it’s mostly to himself.
"Yeah? You two would probably fall right in together," Dean says, leaning down and grabbing the paint can. "I talked him down from Columbia, and I wasn't about to let him talk me up from community college. But then Bobby, the sneaky old fart, tells me he's got a college fund with my name on it, almost fifty grand just sitting there." Dean shakes his head. "I couldn't believe it. Who the hell would bet that kind of money on me?"
Castiel is smiling at him. "It sounds like you had a lot of support."
Dean snorts. "Yeah, and good thing, too, because it was fucking hard, even harder than I thought it would be. I barely did anything else but study and work for four years. I had sixteen-hour days and more all-nighters than I really want to remember. But I had Sam, at least until the little smartass fucked off to Stanford on a full ride, and Bobby and Ellen and Rufus and Jo.
"And then, right when I graduated, Talbot himself shows up at our senior exposition. Offers me the junior creative designer position and it was everything I wanted, you know? Good salary, strong brand, lots of 'opportunities for forward advancement' and all that. It was perfect, you know? But it was in Boston, and I didn’t want to leave Bobby in New York if it wasn't to go to Sam in Palo Alto. You know what those assholes said to me?"
"I can guess," Castiel says.
"They told me to stop being a such a self-sacrificing dickhead and follow my dreams." Dean gestures broadly with the paintbrush. "Follow my dreams, right. Like some kind of after-school special."
“But here you are.”
Dean wipes his forehead and looks back, catches the gleam in Castiel’s eye. “Yeah. Here I am.”
Castiel very deliberately sets his roller on the painting tray between them and steps over it, plucking the brush from Dean’s hand and setting it across the open paint can.
“Cas, what-” Dean laughs.
“You amaze me,” Castiel says quietly, so earnest that Dean feels suddenly self-conscious.
“What?” he says on a chuckle, leaning away from Castiel’s reaching hands. “Why?”
“Do you know how few people there are who do what they love?” the man asks. “How few bother to fight for it when they have a chance? You are amazing, Dean Winchester.”
“I am not,” Dean protests, feeling the heat rising in his cheeks. “Cas, come on, I’m nothing like that.”
“Stop arguing,” Castiel says, pulling him away from the gleaming wet paint of the bookshelves.
“Yeah?” Dean says with a grin, amused by the intent, purposeful stare Castiel is leveling at him. “Gonna make me?”
Castiel backs Dean onto the ugly couch, which they’ve pulled away from the wall and covered with a drop-cloth. “I will do my utmost,” he promises, and pushes Dean down.
He pops up less than half a second later with a growl of, “Lubrication,” and Dean’s left splayed out and laughing helplessly while Castiel stomps from the room.
He shrugs off his shirt and sits up for a second to get his pants off, and he’s laying back against the rough canvas cloth with a grin and nothing else when Castiel comes back, also completely naked.
“Turn over,” he says imperiously, and Dean ends up on his knees with his arms braced on one of the armrests, making encouraging noises while Castiel takes several lifetimes to get the goddamn bottle open.
“Okay back there?” he teases, arching a little. “My ass is getting cold.”
The open-handed smack he almost expects. The bite, he does't.
"Ow," Dean laughs, then moans as a slicked thumb rubs firmly at his entrance, pulling the skin taut for the tip of an inquisitive tongue. "Fuck, just like that-"
It's so good when Castiel stops teasing him and finally gives what Dean's rolling hips and stuttering breaths are asking for, kneeling up behind Dean and sliding his hands from Dean's hips down to lace their fingers together as he works inside, unhurried, patient thrusts that have Dean sweating and swearing before he's anywhere close to being full.
The position puts more of his weight on Dean with each careful flex of his hips until Dean's elbows buckle and his chest is mashed into the couch's soft arm. It changes the angle from sweet to incendiary and Dean pants, "Yeah, right there, right there Cas please, I'm going to-"
Dean's trying to tug one of his hands away but Castiel holds him fast, and he keeps up the weirdly gentle rocking as he kisses his way along Dean's shoulder to his ear.
"No," he whispers hotly. "Come on my cock."
Dean laughs again, but it's a wild, gasping sound. "Are you serious?"
Castiel is very, very serious, and goes very, very slowly, backing off when he seems to think Dean's getting too close. "No, no, come on, Cas-" he says desperately.
Orgasm builds gradually, layer on slick layer into something almost threatening in its immensity. When Castiel finally lets him go, Dean slams into the wall at a hundred miles an hour and everything goes hot and airless and electric, body seizing under the power of it, breath stolen and blind eyes rolling into the back of his head.
Castiel bites him again, pain that mellows into a soft burn high on his neck, and Dean shudders out the last few pulses while Castiel comes, grinding it into Dean's body with short, sharp jerks.
The next thing Dean's even vaguely aware of are tiny paws walking up and down the valley of his spine, Castiel's quiet, "Shh, Dean's very tired," and the subsequent removal of the kitten.
"Nrm?" he asks, turning his face towards the light.
A hand replaces the paws, smoothing up and down his back. "Nothing. Go back to sleep."
"Nmhm," Dean says, and does exactly that.
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