Fic: Each Prayer Accepted, And Each Wish Resigned (Sam/Castiel, NC-17)
Title: Each Prayer Accepted, And Each Wish Resigned
Pairing: Sam/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~4,500
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and I do not claim ownership of the characters.
Notes/Summary: This is for morganoconner, who bid on me as part of the auction for Queensland. She asked for hopeful, current-canon Sam/Castiel, in whatever guise I saw fit. I hope this works for you, honey. ♥ Title from Alexander Pope.
Warnings: Very mild D/s. Ish. Maybe.
Sam knew something was different from the moment he saw Cas's face. It wasn't the swoop of relief in his belly that was new: he'd always felt that when Castiel responded to him, a natural sense of awe at an angel caring anything at all for the boy with the demon blood. It was stronger now, perhaps, intensity of it pulsing out from deeper in his gut, but that was perfectly explicable, given the circumstances. This was the first time he'd seen Cas in over a year - the first time since Sam watched him explode in the space of a moment - and it was absolutely reasonable that Sam should be pleased to see him, the familiar inclination of his head and the half-smile on his lips.
The degree to which Sam's body was pleased to see other parts of Castiel, though - the hollow of his throat, his eyes, his long fingers - this was the part that Sam found troubling. The way saliva pooled under Sam's tongue when Cas moved towards him, arms half-raised as if to touch - that was new, the sharp spike of want that twisted in his stomach like a knife and sent him reeling backward, as if from a conflagration. He could smell Cas's skin under the faint tang of ozone that always bled through a room when an angel materialised in it, and the combination was familiar, but the way it sent Sam's blood rocketing away from his brain was not; left him shaken and breathless. Obviously, this couldn't have sprung out of nowhere, but Sam couldn't remember having felt any inkling of this, before, and he couldn't even begin to fathom where it might have come from.
It was only after Cas had spilled out his secrets, awkwardly, and disappeared again that inspiration began to dribble back to Sam in flashes, tiny darts of suggestion prickling at the edges of his mind. Sometimes, the darts were random, caught on the cusp of sleep. Sometimes, though, they would blaze up on the back of a spark from something else, some echo in the here-and-now holding up a mirror to the dark side of Sam's mind.
They were in Indiana the first time Sam really caught a whammy, stalking the bones of a poltergeist that just wouldn't quit. As it turned out, there was a sharp-cheekboned mechanic making the spirit's job a hell of a lot easier, mostly because he hadn't yet accepted that the thing in the old Marsters house was no longer his sister. He had moved the girl's bones into his back yard, 'to keep her safe', and dispatched more than one hunter who'd come poking around.
"Listen, sir," Sam began, in that reasonable way that still made Dean smile at him dewy-eyed.
Marsters was less impressed. "No," he said, crowding up against Sam's chest, "you listen, boy -" and there was more to it than that, but Sam was abruptly rendered incapable of hearing it. There was something else, suddenly, rising up inside him, superimposing itself right over the present like a double-exposure: the smell of Cas, close, and a heat between Sam's legs at the grit in his voice. The details were hazy, elusive, but the sense of Cas was clear, all rolled up in the visceral tug of arousal.
They wasted the poltergeist, in the end, after Sam had snapped out of it and backed the guy up against the wall with a full-body loom until the message got through, but everything felt like it was on autopilot, the real world intangible. All Sam could think about was that flash-flood of heat and the blue of Cas's eyes, aggressive and close. He told himself it had only been a stray thought, but the insistence didn't stick, not when he could still taste the craving in his mouth.
After Bristol, Rhode Island, Sam was horribly afraid that he understood. After all, if RoboSam - if he - had been capable of dispassionately beating an officer of the law to a bloody pulp; of indiscriminately banging a whole string of chicks with no concern for their marital states - well. It sounded as if he'd been sort of a basic instinct guy back then, and all of Sam's basic instincts, right now, were straining toward Cas. Cas, who had volunteered independently that it would be awkward for them to hug, which Sam found depressingly to easy to interpret as angel-speak for 'you inappropriately attempted to touch me in the bad place, and then did not take rejection well.' It made all too much sense, Sam thought, ruefully. At least he was certain there was no way he could have overpowered an angel, because otherwise, frankly, Sam would have had no reason to think it out of the question.
The thing was, though, that none of the flash-memories (which continued to break bodily over him on an irritatingly semi-regular basis) showed any evidence of attempted groping or ostentatious displays of physical strength on Sam's part. If anything - and this part confused Sam utterly - the remembered pull in his stomach seemed to take on quite the opposite cast, a desire for Cas's attention rather than a violent urge to assert his own. One afternoon shortly after the Rhode Island incident, Cas materialised briefly for what turned out to be a false alarm with regard to a couple of heavenly loose nukes. Cas didn't let himself get angry in his disappointment, not quite, but there was irritability in his voice that made Dean's face pull tensely; the sort of tone which would normally set Sam's teeth on edge from anyone. Hearing it now from Cas, though, Sam felt weirdly above irritation, whole body gearing toward something else. When Cas flicked pedantically at the cuffs of his shirt, straightening the sleeves, the something slid hard and sudden over the crest of a wave of heat that broke over Sam in fragments, a stilted cascade of images. Cas, unbuttoning his cuffs with long, deft fingers; rolling his sleeves past his elbows to reveal neat wrists and the strong curves of muscle in his pale forearms. Cas's face, then, intent and close, and a memory of pain-not-quite-pain welling up in Sam as Cas breached him, pierced him, pushed inside of Sam to learn the shape of him there.
"Oh," Sam said, involuntary, as the phantom pain speared him, sharp and strangely good as it persisted, although there was no denying that it hurt. Cas's eyes snapped to him immediately, and Sam felt himself colour under their scrutiny; crossed his legs awkwardly under the table and said hurriedly, "Sorry - it's nothing. Go ahead."
Dean's hand found his shoulder, fingers clenching reflexively over bone and the rise of muscle there. "Sammy? You sure?"
"It's nothing," Sam reiterated, throwing his brother what semblance of a smile he could manage. "Dean, really. I'm fine."
Dean didn't look fully convinced, but then Dean never was, these days, overprotectiveness working overdrive as it hadn't since Sam was twelve and Dean had seemed to want to keep him wrapped in cotton wool. It was more the look on Cas's face that concerned Sam, although he did his best not to see it: the pensive, studying expression that made Sam wonder uncomfortably, not for the first time, whether angels could read human minds like books. He told himself that the idea was stupid, but he couldn't help thinking, later, as he wrestled with his frenetic thoughts in a futile attempt to make them stop for sleep, that it would surely be child's play to a member of the Host with all the powers of heaven at his disposal. It wasn't a comforting thought.
The next time Cas showed up, Sam was well on his way to drunk. This was not in any way by design; it wasn't as if Sam often went out of his way to throw back enough liquor to leave him horizontal and reeling - not, at any rate, under ordinary circumstances. But Dean was thirty miles away in the next town over, chasing up loose ends on the case they'd rolled into Arizona to check out and, left to his own devices, Sam had gotten to thinking. Predictably, this had led him within moments to fits of anxiety about what the hell else he had managed to fuck up while soulless, and after that it had seemed only logical to start on draining the minibar. Doubtless, if he had anticipated Cas's company, the logical part of his mind might have steered him as far as possible in the other direction, but as he had not, the point was immaterial. The fact of the matter was that Sam was sprawled across the bed with a half-bottle of whisky in his hand when Cas swept in, and there was nothing he could think of to make the situation look like anything other than what it was.
Sam found it difficult enough to think clearly around Cas at the best of times, these days. In this state, it felt like there was something crawling under his skin, clogging up his airways and loosening his tongue. He said Cas's name stupidly more than once, mainly because it had sprung to mind and Sam just happened to be that sort of drunk. Cas smiled faintly, but there was no real humour in it.
"Sam," he acknowledged, with a little inclination of his head. "I thought I'd drop by and see how you were readjusting to the return of your soul." The corners of his mouth tightened. "I see now that it appears to have driven you to drink."
Oh, God. Sam was not together enough to hold his own in this conversation, which fact made itself swiftly obvious the moment he opened his mouth. "No, I - " He paused; took a deep breath and attempted to assert control over the neural pathways between his brain and his vocal cords. "I'm okay. Just - thinkin' about stuff, you know?" Sam shrugged loosely. "Stuff I did. People I let get hurt. You know how it is."
Cas drew his brows together in a contemplative furrow, and his shoulders tensed in a way that made Sam sure, at first, that he was about to disappear again without trace. When Cas moved, though, it was not into a different sphere of existence, but only onto the edge of the bed, where he perched himself a little awkwardly. "Sam," he said, "you had no moral judgment. You cannot be held responsible. I'm sure your brother - "
"Dammit, Cas!" Sam waved a hand weakly in dismissal. He didn't have the energy to hear this right now, not with Cas so suddenly close, his eyes dark with concern. His proximity alone set Sam's skin tingling, which would have been quite inappropriate enough without the fact that Cas was now trying to justify Sam's actions. Sam felt beyond awkward, flagellating himself for his misbehaviour like this without knowing what the hell he might have done to Cas; what horrors Cas was willing to forgive him for. He couldn't understand why Cas was even here, after everything Sam had done, walking around an empty insult to heaven and all its creatures.
Cas, though, was unrelenting. "This is not helpful," he pointed out, reasonably. "You will be no better able to rectify any of your unintended wrongs by giving yourself alcohol poisoning."
Sam snorted. Above him, Cas only stared down at him mildly, until his greater elevation made Sam feel abruptly vulnerable. He shifted, feeling his cheeks flush hot as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, hauling himself into something more closely resembling a sitting position. On the one hand, it did serve to offset the sense of exposure he'd felt when spreadeagled on his back. On the other, however, it put him in still closer proximity to Cas, close enough to feel the superhuman heat of him, smell the clean edge of something that was not quite human sweat. Sam felt his own sweat prickling at the nape of his neck in visceral response, and shut his eyes in mortification. "No, well," he spat out, embarrassment edging his words with something bitter. "You're not rectifying anything, either, muscling in on my pity party." Sam exhaled slowly through his teeth and forced himself to look at Cas. "Look, I - I'm sorry, for whatever it was I did to you. Really. Please just - let me be sorry?"
It felt curiously liberating, to hear the words taking shape in the world outside of his head and to know that, sober, he almost certainly would not have dared put them there. He was sorry, and, God, sometimes a man just had to be allowed to say that. But Cas didn't look like he was gearing up for any magnanimous expression of forgiveness - didn't look, in fact, like he'd actually grasped what was going on at all. On the contrary, his head was tilting sideways in that animalistic gesture Sam had rarely seen in Cas since he had learned to manipulate his body, begun to explore its full range of expression.
"Sam," Cas said, slowly, "I do appreciate the human desire for forgiveness. It's something angels crave, too. But I don't understand what it is you're apologising for. I am far stronger than this vessel. What makes you think you could have done anything to harm me?"
For a moment, they only looked at each other, Cas's eyes steady and curious, Sam's uncertain as his mind sought sensible responses, some other way to make his position clear. Then Cas's hand inched out across the bedspread, tentative, and brushed the back of Sam's, a chaste, encouraging little touch. The bolt of lust that twined itself around Sam's gut was entirely disproportionate to the stimulus, and sensible words were suddenly a thing of the distant past.
"Jesus Christ," Sam gritted, strung out on whisky and frustration. "Cas - every time I see you these days, I want to touch you. I remember wanting to touch you, wanting you to - do things to me." His face felt like it was burning up, pulse rocketing furious and hot in his throat, but he'd started, now. There was no way out but through. "That's - I mean, don't get me wrong, I've always wanted your friendship, but this - it's new. It's some kind of fundamental urge, and I can't help thinking - " he shrugged " - I wasn't exactly resisting the fundamental urges, before, was I?"
Cas's voice, when it came, was uncharacteristically halting and soft, as if he were completely unprepared; like he was actually surprised by what Sam was suggesting. "You want me to - touch you?"
Sam closed his eyes, wishing that he could just sink back into the goddamn Pit and stay there. "Yes."
Cas hesitated a second. Then he said, "You have never attempted to force yourself upon me, Sam, if that is your concern."
Relief sluiced over Sam like summer-warm water. "I didn't?"
Cas shrugged. "Your body, without its soul, was uninhibited by moral concerns, yes, but not by intellectual ones. If you have never felt this - draw - before, then it's quite likely that the lack of inhibition allowed it to manifest, where possibly it had been repressed before, for reasons of morality. But without your soul, you were very methodical. You would have been highly unlikely to make any advance if the evidence indicated that it would be summarily rejected."
The sense of respite was brief; the twinge of disappointment irrational and abysmal. Sam bit his lip and cursed himself for his idiocy in feeling such chagrin at the expression of something he had assumed to be true from the beginning. "Of course," Sam said, struggling to keep any sign of his weakness out of his voice. "That does make sense. Of course I'd have known you didn't want me."
Cas laughed only rarely, and Sam certainly would not have expected to hear him do so now, as they picked through the pieces of Sam's half-human past. And yet, Cas was laughing; the rough, bright sound of it startled out of him even as he shifted, fingers threading incredibly, unmistakably through Sam's. Sam swallowed down an exclamation of protest in favour of blinking back at Cas wide-eyed. Cas only smiled at him and gave his hand a little squeeze. "Of course," he corrected, "you knew I wouldn't have touched your body without your soul's permission, Sam." His face softened, eyes sweeping over Sam from brow to mid-chest and back again. "I do find your body pleasing, but it isn't my major interest."
For a brief moment, while he stared at Cas open-mouthed, Sam considered the possibility that the alcohol had finally tipped him over into a hallucinogenic state. The next thing he knew, though, Cas's hand was on his face, heel of his palm cradling Sam's jaw, and the warmth of it was too solid, too present to be imagined. "Cas," he got out, barely above a whisper, "what are you doing?"
Cas's face moved in the way that meant he was considering his words, but his hands never ceased their exploration, one coming up to curl gently around Sam's throat while the fingers of the other traced a cheekbone. "You said you wanted me to touch you."
The hand on Sam's throat tightened, just barely, but enough to startle a gasp from Sam, cock twitching hotly, reflexively in his jeans. "God, yes, Cas," he said, setting aside his disbelief in the face of the power he knew controlled that long-fingered hand, the square palm flat to his windpipe. "Yes, if you want to."
"I want to," Cas whispered, and leaned up to press his mouth to Sam's.
It was gentle at first, brief, dry brushes of Cas's lips against Sam's until he tilted his face to slot their mouths together, tongue venturing out to trace a line of wet heat along the seam. The pressure of Cas's hand at Sam's throat, though, did not relent as it eased Sam flat again, the steady force of it belying the delicacy with which Cas pushed the kiss almost tentatively deeper. Sam strained for closeness, hips seeking the weight of Cas's body, but Cas held him still, slid the wet inside of his mouth against Sam's. It was evident that Cas was unequivocally in command of the situation, and the knowledge set Sam sweating out shivers of heat, groaning into Cas's mouth as the heel of that pinioning hand ground him down against the bed.
"Cas," he gasped out; nipped at the swell of Cas's lower lip and bucked up hard, dick pushing out the front seam of his jeans.
"Patience," Cas said, but he slid one thigh between Sam's, rolling down against him so the hard ridge of his cock sparked off Sam's. "You will let me do this, Sam."
The sound that tore out of Sam at that was near-feral, surprised; the inclination of his head was a signal of acquiescence. Cas's mouth sought out the line of his jaw, working its way to the soft place behind Sam's ear in a series of little nips and swipes of tongue, half instruction and half reward. Sam turned his face, allowing Cas access, and when Cas began sucking a bruise he simply let his head fall back, let the white-hot surge of submission flood his body like electric current.
After that, things disintegrated. Sam's breath rasped short in his throat as Cas's fingers opened and closed at his larynx, working a slow heat out of him as Cas's hips rocked down hard against his. It was only when Cas released his grip in favour of laving the reddened place with his tongue that Sam registered that both of them were naked. He assumed some angelic mojo was responsible, but then, he almost felt that Cas could have stripped him manually and Sam might not have noticed, so tightly focused was he on the pull in his groin, the driving desire to be spread out and reshaped under Cas's hands. When Cas's fingers insinuated themselves between Sam's thighs, he opened to them easily, back arching upward off the bed. Cas was quick, deft as he was in everything, and he lifted Sam's legs over his shoulders as easily as if they had been weightless. Dimly, Sam was aware that he was making sounds, pelvis bucking jerkily as Cas worked fingers into him, but his ears felt full of water, the world strangely caught at a remove wherever Cas wasn't touching him.
"Cas," he managed, and his throat ached, a pure, cleansing burn. "Cas, come on, please - "
And then he felt Cas against him, bare and slick and leaking, the tip of him smearing wet where Sam was open to receive him. In the back of his mind, some part of him insisted that this was unsafe, that precautions ought to be taken, but Cas was already pushing, branding him, and Sam couldn't bring himself to stop him; not when he wanted so badly to feel Cas coming apart inside him. Angels could cure anything, anyway; it wasn't as if Sam could pass on any kind of venereal disease.
Cas slid into him easily, spreading him open, his grip bruisingly tight on Sam's hips as he thrust. Sam rocked up, involuntary; torqued his hips and - there was the bright white spark of heat as Cas bottomed out against his prostate. "Fuck," Sam got out, head tipping back against the pillows in reaction. Above him, Cas was breathing hard, whimpering low in his throat, and Sam bucked up again, half-encouragement and half-plea.
Cas, as it transpired, was in no state to hold out for begging, although Sam, taut with desperation, would almost certainly have obliged him. With Sam's legs slung over his shoulders, he was able to pull out almost entirely before slamming forward again, breath punching out of him hard and wordless; his thrusts were steady and smooth at first, but Sam was shivering and breathless beneath him, jerking with every stroke to his prostate, and the metronomic precision could not last long. Sam was close, fingers scrabbling at Castiel's shoulders, at his hair; and Cas, chest heaving with exertion, picked up his pace accordingly until everything was blurred and raw, Sam's back arched up tight as Cas hammered into him frenetic and fierce.
"Oh, fuck," Sam ground out as his orgasm built, like a bank of heat, inside of him, "fuck, fuck, Cas - "
He seized up, startled into stillness, as his climax took him, pulsing out hotly over his fist, spattering his stomach so that Cas slid through it as his own thrusts picked up, rhythm disintegrating. Cas was beautiful, working above him like that, sweat shining in the hollow of his throat, and Sam clenched down on him almost reflexively, one hand coming up to swipe weakly over Cas's nipple.
That, it seemed, was all it took, the final grain of sand to tip the balance and send Cas careening forward into climax. His hips pulsed forward, jerked, stilled; and then he was coming, the heat of it palpable and perfect inside of Sam, like a blessing. "Sam," Cas was gasping, "Sam, Sam," and it could have been poetry for all Sam cared; in that moment, he had never heard anything sweeter.
Sam's legs were trembling, aching with the strain of their position, but still he felt the loss when Cas shifted, slipping out of him, his body seeming suddenly barren and void. Cas moved away momentarily, and Sam braced himself for a brisk clean-up and goodbye; and, really, what else could he expect? Cas was not his to command, after all. Cas had many concerns more pressing than the Winchesters.
When Cas resettled himself, then, pressing his cheek flat to Sam's heart, Sam's breath caught just a little in his throat, hand coming up tentatively to cradle Cas's back. "Cas?" he ventured.
Cas raised his head slightly; turned his face to mouth at Sam's chest in a soft suggestion of a kiss. "I had planned to stay the night," he said. "Your brother is unlikely to be back before nine tomorrow morning, so we should be undisturbed." He paused, then, wrinkling his nose, as if suddenly aware of Sam's silence. "Unless you would prefer me to leave?"
"No!" The word burst out of Sam rather overemphatically, he knew, but he'd known Cas too long to even attempt to get by on subtle suggestions when a simple statement of fact could be employed. "No, I - I want you to stay." His arm tightened a little, quietly possessive. "I feel better when you're here," he added, quietly.
Cas nodded a little, and laid his head back down. "Well, then," he said, soft and gruff and brief.
That night, for the first time since Hell, Sam dreamed of a garden beyond the confines of the Cage, and Lucifer could not reach him.
Pairing: Sam/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~4,500
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and I do not claim ownership of the characters.
Notes/Summary: This is for morganoconner, who bid on me as part of the auction for Queensland. She asked for hopeful, current-canon Sam/Castiel, in whatever guise I saw fit. I hope this works for you, honey. ♥ Title from Alexander Pope.
Warnings: Very mild D/s. Ish. Maybe.
Sam knew something was different from the moment he saw Cas's face. It wasn't the swoop of relief in his belly that was new: he'd always felt that when Castiel responded to him, a natural sense of awe at an angel caring anything at all for the boy with the demon blood. It was stronger now, perhaps, intensity of it pulsing out from deeper in his gut, but that was perfectly explicable, given the circumstances. This was the first time he'd seen Cas in over a year - the first time since Sam watched him explode in the space of a moment - and it was absolutely reasonable that Sam should be pleased to see him, the familiar inclination of his head and the half-smile on his lips.
The degree to which Sam's body was pleased to see other parts of Castiel, though - the hollow of his throat, his eyes, his long fingers - this was the part that Sam found troubling. The way saliva pooled under Sam's tongue when Cas moved towards him, arms half-raised as if to touch - that was new, the sharp spike of want that twisted in his stomach like a knife and sent him reeling backward, as if from a conflagration. He could smell Cas's skin under the faint tang of ozone that always bled through a room when an angel materialised in it, and the combination was familiar, but the way it sent Sam's blood rocketing away from his brain was not; left him shaken and breathless. Obviously, this couldn't have sprung out of nowhere, but Sam couldn't remember having felt any inkling of this, before, and he couldn't even begin to fathom where it might have come from.
It was only after Cas had spilled out his secrets, awkwardly, and disappeared again that inspiration began to dribble back to Sam in flashes, tiny darts of suggestion prickling at the edges of his mind. Sometimes, the darts were random, caught on the cusp of sleep. Sometimes, though, they would blaze up on the back of a spark from something else, some echo in the here-and-now holding up a mirror to the dark side of Sam's mind.
They were in Indiana the first time Sam really caught a whammy, stalking the bones of a poltergeist that just wouldn't quit. As it turned out, there was a sharp-cheekboned mechanic making the spirit's job a hell of a lot easier, mostly because he hadn't yet accepted that the thing in the old Marsters house was no longer his sister. He had moved the girl's bones into his back yard, 'to keep her safe', and dispatched more than one hunter who'd come poking around.
"Listen, sir," Sam began, in that reasonable way that still made Dean smile at him dewy-eyed.
Marsters was less impressed. "No," he said, crowding up against Sam's chest, "you listen, boy -" and there was more to it than that, but Sam was abruptly rendered incapable of hearing it. There was something else, suddenly, rising up inside him, superimposing itself right over the present like a double-exposure: the smell of Cas, close, and a heat between Sam's legs at the grit in his voice. The details were hazy, elusive, but the sense of Cas was clear, all rolled up in the visceral tug of arousal.
They wasted the poltergeist, in the end, after Sam had snapped out of it and backed the guy up against the wall with a full-body loom until the message got through, but everything felt like it was on autopilot, the real world intangible. All Sam could think about was that flash-flood of heat and the blue of Cas's eyes, aggressive and close. He told himself it had only been a stray thought, but the insistence didn't stick, not when he could still taste the craving in his mouth.
After Bristol, Rhode Island, Sam was horribly afraid that he understood. After all, if RoboSam - if he - had been capable of dispassionately beating an officer of the law to a bloody pulp; of indiscriminately banging a whole string of chicks with no concern for their marital states - well. It sounded as if he'd been sort of a basic instinct guy back then, and all of Sam's basic instincts, right now, were straining toward Cas. Cas, who had volunteered independently that it would be awkward for them to hug, which Sam found depressingly to easy to interpret as angel-speak for 'you inappropriately attempted to touch me in the bad place, and then did not take rejection well.' It made all too much sense, Sam thought, ruefully. At least he was certain there was no way he could have overpowered an angel, because otherwise, frankly, Sam would have had no reason to think it out of the question.
The thing was, though, that none of the flash-memories (which continued to break bodily over him on an irritatingly semi-regular basis) showed any evidence of attempted groping or ostentatious displays of physical strength on Sam's part. If anything - and this part confused Sam utterly - the remembered pull in his stomach seemed to take on quite the opposite cast, a desire for Cas's attention rather than a violent urge to assert his own. One afternoon shortly after the Rhode Island incident, Cas materialised briefly for what turned out to be a false alarm with regard to a couple of heavenly loose nukes. Cas didn't let himself get angry in his disappointment, not quite, but there was irritability in his voice that made Dean's face pull tensely; the sort of tone which would normally set Sam's teeth on edge from anyone. Hearing it now from Cas, though, Sam felt weirdly above irritation, whole body gearing toward something else. When Cas flicked pedantically at the cuffs of his shirt, straightening the sleeves, the something slid hard and sudden over the crest of a wave of heat that broke over Sam in fragments, a stilted cascade of images. Cas, unbuttoning his cuffs with long, deft fingers; rolling his sleeves past his elbows to reveal neat wrists and the strong curves of muscle in his pale forearms. Cas's face, then, intent and close, and a memory of pain-not-quite-pain welling up in Sam as Cas breached him, pierced him, pushed inside of Sam to learn the shape of him there.
"Oh," Sam said, involuntary, as the phantom pain speared him, sharp and strangely good as it persisted, although there was no denying that it hurt. Cas's eyes snapped to him immediately, and Sam felt himself colour under their scrutiny; crossed his legs awkwardly under the table and said hurriedly, "Sorry - it's nothing. Go ahead."
Dean's hand found his shoulder, fingers clenching reflexively over bone and the rise of muscle there. "Sammy? You sure?"
"It's nothing," Sam reiterated, throwing his brother what semblance of a smile he could manage. "Dean, really. I'm fine."
Dean didn't look fully convinced, but then Dean never was, these days, overprotectiveness working overdrive as it hadn't since Sam was twelve and Dean had seemed to want to keep him wrapped in cotton wool. It was more the look on Cas's face that concerned Sam, although he did his best not to see it: the pensive, studying expression that made Sam wonder uncomfortably, not for the first time, whether angels could read human minds like books. He told himself that the idea was stupid, but he couldn't help thinking, later, as he wrestled with his frenetic thoughts in a futile attempt to make them stop for sleep, that it would surely be child's play to a member of the Host with all the powers of heaven at his disposal. It wasn't a comforting thought.
The next time Cas showed up, Sam was well on his way to drunk. This was not in any way by design; it wasn't as if Sam often went out of his way to throw back enough liquor to leave him horizontal and reeling - not, at any rate, under ordinary circumstances. But Dean was thirty miles away in the next town over, chasing up loose ends on the case they'd rolled into Arizona to check out and, left to his own devices, Sam had gotten to thinking. Predictably, this had led him within moments to fits of anxiety about what the hell else he had managed to fuck up while soulless, and after that it had seemed only logical to start on draining the minibar. Doubtless, if he had anticipated Cas's company, the logical part of his mind might have steered him as far as possible in the other direction, but as he had not, the point was immaterial. The fact of the matter was that Sam was sprawled across the bed with a half-bottle of whisky in his hand when Cas swept in, and there was nothing he could think of to make the situation look like anything other than what it was.
Sam found it difficult enough to think clearly around Cas at the best of times, these days. In this state, it felt like there was something crawling under his skin, clogging up his airways and loosening his tongue. He said Cas's name stupidly more than once, mainly because it had sprung to mind and Sam just happened to be that sort of drunk. Cas smiled faintly, but there was no real humour in it.
"Sam," he acknowledged, with a little inclination of his head. "I thought I'd drop by and see how you were readjusting to the return of your soul." The corners of his mouth tightened. "I see now that it appears to have driven you to drink."
Oh, God. Sam was not together enough to hold his own in this conversation, which fact made itself swiftly obvious the moment he opened his mouth. "No, I - " He paused; took a deep breath and attempted to assert control over the neural pathways between his brain and his vocal cords. "I'm okay. Just - thinkin' about stuff, you know?" Sam shrugged loosely. "Stuff I did. People I let get hurt. You know how it is."
Cas drew his brows together in a contemplative furrow, and his shoulders tensed in a way that made Sam sure, at first, that he was about to disappear again without trace. When Cas moved, though, it was not into a different sphere of existence, but only onto the edge of the bed, where he perched himself a little awkwardly. "Sam," he said, "you had no moral judgment. You cannot be held responsible. I'm sure your brother - "
"Dammit, Cas!" Sam waved a hand weakly in dismissal. He didn't have the energy to hear this right now, not with Cas so suddenly close, his eyes dark with concern. His proximity alone set Sam's skin tingling, which would have been quite inappropriate enough without the fact that Cas was now trying to justify Sam's actions. Sam felt beyond awkward, flagellating himself for his misbehaviour like this without knowing what the hell he might have done to Cas; what horrors Cas was willing to forgive him for. He couldn't understand why Cas was even here, after everything Sam had done, walking around an empty insult to heaven and all its creatures.
Cas, though, was unrelenting. "This is not helpful," he pointed out, reasonably. "You will be no better able to rectify any of your unintended wrongs by giving yourself alcohol poisoning."
Sam snorted. Above him, Cas only stared down at him mildly, until his greater elevation made Sam feel abruptly vulnerable. He shifted, feeling his cheeks flush hot as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, hauling himself into something more closely resembling a sitting position. On the one hand, it did serve to offset the sense of exposure he'd felt when spreadeagled on his back. On the other, however, it put him in still closer proximity to Cas, close enough to feel the superhuman heat of him, smell the clean edge of something that was not quite human sweat. Sam felt his own sweat prickling at the nape of his neck in visceral response, and shut his eyes in mortification. "No, well," he spat out, embarrassment edging his words with something bitter. "You're not rectifying anything, either, muscling in on my pity party." Sam exhaled slowly through his teeth and forced himself to look at Cas. "Look, I - I'm sorry, for whatever it was I did to you. Really. Please just - let me be sorry?"
It felt curiously liberating, to hear the words taking shape in the world outside of his head and to know that, sober, he almost certainly would not have dared put them there. He was sorry, and, God, sometimes a man just had to be allowed to say that. But Cas didn't look like he was gearing up for any magnanimous expression of forgiveness - didn't look, in fact, like he'd actually grasped what was going on at all. On the contrary, his head was tilting sideways in that animalistic gesture Sam had rarely seen in Cas since he had learned to manipulate his body, begun to explore its full range of expression.
"Sam," Cas said, slowly, "I do appreciate the human desire for forgiveness. It's something angels crave, too. But I don't understand what it is you're apologising for. I am far stronger than this vessel. What makes you think you could have done anything to harm me?"
For a moment, they only looked at each other, Cas's eyes steady and curious, Sam's uncertain as his mind sought sensible responses, some other way to make his position clear. Then Cas's hand inched out across the bedspread, tentative, and brushed the back of Sam's, a chaste, encouraging little touch. The bolt of lust that twined itself around Sam's gut was entirely disproportionate to the stimulus, and sensible words were suddenly a thing of the distant past.
"Jesus Christ," Sam gritted, strung out on whisky and frustration. "Cas - every time I see you these days, I want to touch you. I remember wanting to touch you, wanting you to - do things to me." His face felt like it was burning up, pulse rocketing furious and hot in his throat, but he'd started, now. There was no way out but through. "That's - I mean, don't get me wrong, I've always wanted your friendship, but this - it's new. It's some kind of fundamental urge, and I can't help thinking - " he shrugged " - I wasn't exactly resisting the fundamental urges, before, was I?"
Cas's voice, when it came, was uncharacteristically halting and soft, as if he were completely unprepared; like he was actually surprised by what Sam was suggesting. "You want me to - touch you?"
Sam closed his eyes, wishing that he could just sink back into the goddamn Pit and stay there. "Yes."
Cas hesitated a second. Then he said, "You have never attempted to force yourself upon me, Sam, if that is your concern."
Relief sluiced over Sam like summer-warm water. "I didn't?"
Cas shrugged. "Your body, without its soul, was uninhibited by moral concerns, yes, but not by intellectual ones. If you have never felt this - draw - before, then it's quite likely that the lack of inhibition allowed it to manifest, where possibly it had been repressed before, for reasons of morality. But without your soul, you were very methodical. You would have been highly unlikely to make any advance if the evidence indicated that it would be summarily rejected."
The sense of respite was brief; the twinge of disappointment irrational and abysmal. Sam bit his lip and cursed himself for his idiocy in feeling such chagrin at the expression of something he had assumed to be true from the beginning. "Of course," Sam said, struggling to keep any sign of his weakness out of his voice. "That does make sense. Of course I'd have known you didn't want me."
Cas laughed only rarely, and Sam certainly would not have expected to hear him do so now, as they picked through the pieces of Sam's half-human past. And yet, Cas was laughing; the rough, bright sound of it startled out of him even as he shifted, fingers threading incredibly, unmistakably through Sam's. Sam swallowed down an exclamation of protest in favour of blinking back at Cas wide-eyed. Cas only smiled at him and gave his hand a little squeeze. "Of course," he corrected, "you knew I wouldn't have touched your body without your soul's permission, Sam." His face softened, eyes sweeping over Sam from brow to mid-chest and back again. "I do find your body pleasing, but it isn't my major interest."
For a brief moment, while he stared at Cas open-mouthed, Sam considered the possibility that the alcohol had finally tipped him over into a hallucinogenic state. The next thing he knew, though, Cas's hand was on his face, heel of his palm cradling Sam's jaw, and the warmth of it was too solid, too present to be imagined. "Cas," he got out, barely above a whisper, "what are you doing?"
Cas's face moved in the way that meant he was considering his words, but his hands never ceased their exploration, one coming up to curl gently around Sam's throat while the fingers of the other traced a cheekbone. "You said you wanted me to touch you."
The hand on Sam's throat tightened, just barely, but enough to startle a gasp from Sam, cock twitching hotly, reflexively in his jeans. "God, yes, Cas," he said, setting aside his disbelief in the face of the power he knew controlled that long-fingered hand, the square palm flat to his windpipe. "Yes, if you want to."
"I want to," Cas whispered, and leaned up to press his mouth to Sam's.
It was gentle at first, brief, dry brushes of Cas's lips against Sam's until he tilted his face to slot their mouths together, tongue venturing out to trace a line of wet heat along the seam. The pressure of Cas's hand at Sam's throat, though, did not relent as it eased Sam flat again, the steady force of it belying the delicacy with which Cas pushed the kiss almost tentatively deeper. Sam strained for closeness, hips seeking the weight of Cas's body, but Cas held him still, slid the wet inside of his mouth against Sam's. It was evident that Cas was unequivocally in command of the situation, and the knowledge set Sam sweating out shivers of heat, groaning into Cas's mouth as the heel of that pinioning hand ground him down against the bed.
"Cas," he gasped out; nipped at the swell of Cas's lower lip and bucked up hard, dick pushing out the front seam of his jeans.
"Patience," Cas said, but he slid one thigh between Sam's, rolling down against him so the hard ridge of his cock sparked off Sam's. "You will let me do this, Sam."
The sound that tore out of Sam at that was near-feral, surprised; the inclination of his head was a signal of acquiescence. Cas's mouth sought out the line of his jaw, working its way to the soft place behind Sam's ear in a series of little nips and swipes of tongue, half instruction and half reward. Sam turned his face, allowing Cas access, and when Cas began sucking a bruise he simply let his head fall back, let the white-hot surge of submission flood his body like electric current.
After that, things disintegrated. Sam's breath rasped short in his throat as Cas's fingers opened and closed at his larynx, working a slow heat out of him as Cas's hips rocked down hard against his. It was only when Cas released his grip in favour of laving the reddened place with his tongue that Sam registered that both of them were naked. He assumed some angelic mojo was responsible, but then, he almost felt that Cas could have stripped him manually and Sam might not have noticed, so tightly focused was he on the pull in his groin, the driving desire to be spread out and reshaped under Cas's hands. When Cas's fingers insinuated themselves between Sam's thighs, he opened to them easily, back arching upward off the bed. Cas was quick, deft as he was in everything, and he lifted Sam's legs over his shoulders as easily as if they had been weightless. Dimly, Sam was aware that he was making sounds, pelvis bucking jerkily as Cas worked fingers into him, but his ears felt full of water, the world strangely caught at a remove wherever Cas wasn't touching him.
"Cas," he managed, and his throat ached, a pure, cleansing burn. "Cas, come on, please - "
And then he felt Cas against him, bare and slick and leaking, the tip of him smearing wet where Sam was open to receive him. In the back of his mind, some part of him insisted that this was unsafe, that precautions ought to be taken, but Cas was already pushing, branding him, and Sam couldn't bring himself to stop him; not when he wanted so badly to feel Cas coming apart inside him. Angels could cure anything, anyway; it wasn't as if Sam could pass on any kind of venereal disease.
Cas slid into him easily, spreading him open, his grip bruisingly tight on Sam's hips as he thrust. Sam rocked up, involuntary; torqued his hips and - there was the bright white spark of heat as Cas bottomed out against his prostate. "Fuck," Sam got out, head tipping back against the pillows in reaction. Above him, Cas was breathing hard, whimpering low in his throat, and Sam bucked up again, half-encouragement and half-plea.
Cas, as it transpired, was in no state to hold out for begging, although Sam, taut with desperation, would almost certainly have obliged him. With Sam's legs slung over his shoulders, he was able to pull out almost entirely before slamming forward again, breath punching out of him hard and wordless; his thrusts were steady and smooth at first, but Sam was shivering and breathless beneath him, jerking with every stroke to his prostate, and the metronomic precision could not last long. Sam was close, fingers scrabbling at Castiel's shoulders, at his hair; and Cas, chest heaving with exertion, picked up his pace accordingly until everything was blurred and raw, Sam's back arched up tight as Cas hammered into him frenetic and fierce.
"Oh, fuck," Sam ground out as his orgasm built, like a bank of heat, inside of him, "fuck, fuck, Cas - "
He seized up, startled into stillness, as his climax took him, pulsing out hotly over his fist, spattering his stomach so that Cas slid through it as his own thrusts picked up, rhythm disintegrating. Cas was beautiful, working above him like that, sweat shining in the hollow of his throat, and Sam clenched down on him almost reflexively, one hand coming up to swipe weakly over Cas's nipple.
That, it seemed, was all it took, the final grain of sand to tip the balance and send Cas careening forward into climax. His hips pulsed forward, jerked, stilled; and then he was coming, the heat of it palpable and perfect inside of Sam, like a blessing. "Sam," Cas was gasping, "Sam, Sam," and it could have been poetry for all Sam cared; in that moment, he had never heard anything sweeter.
Sam's legs were trembling, aching with the strain of their position, but still he felt the loss when Cas shifted, slipping out of him, his body seeming suddenly barren and void. Cas moved away momentarily, and Sam braced himself for a brisk clean-up and goodbye; and, really, what else could he expect? Cas was not his to command, after all. Cas had many concerns more pressing than the Winchesters.
When Cas resettled himself, then, pressing his cheek flat to Sam's heart, Sam's breath caught just a little in his throat, hand coming up tentatively to cradle Cas's back. "Cas?" he ventured.
Cas raised his head slightly; turned his face to mouth at Sam's chest in a soft suggestion of a kiss. "I had planned to stay the night," he said. "Your brother is unlikely to be back before nine tomorrow morning, so we should be undisturbed." He paused, then, wrinkling his nose, as if suddenly aware of Sam's silence. "Unless you would prefer me to leave?"
"No!" The word burst out of Sam rather overemphatically, he knew, but he'd known Cas too long to even attempt to get by on subtle suggestions when a simple statement of fact could be employed. "No, I - I want you to stay." His arm tightened a little, quietly possessive. "I feel better when you're here," he added, quietly.
Cas nodded a little, and laid his head back down. "Well, then," he said, soft and gruff and brief.
That night, for the first time since Hell, Sam dreamed of a garden beyond the confines of the Cage, and Lucifer could not reach him.