wings [dean/cas, r]
They go months without seeing one another, one time. It drives him mad til it gets to the point that Dean swears he can see the angel everywhere; in the face of his waiter one tired morning in a breakfast cafe, in the blue eyes of a girl he saves from a bar fire. He sees Castiel in window shop reflections and in the hitchhikers on the side of the highway.
The thing is, Dean never knows if he’s daydreaming, wishing or whether Cas has really been checking in on him. He never tells Sam or asks if his brother has spied any tired-looking dudes in tan overcoats lately, because firstly he knows Sam hasn’t and secondly he knows Sam would only worry about him.
He doesn’t need to be worried about. This was the deal. Castiel’s always been an angel, is always going to be an angel, and Dean is always going to be a hunter, and Dean is always going to have Enochian carved into his chest that obscures him from those eyes. On the one very uncharacteristically misty afternoon up at Singer Salvage when Castiel kissed Dean over the hood of the Impala, and Dean kissed back, they knew this was never going to be something normal.
It’s stressful. It’s strange. Dean has spent his whole life pulled to beautiful women with shape and long hair and tight clothes and with one hard kiss, a rough drag of stubble on stubble, Castiel’s mouth inexperienced but more than willing - with that, it all changed. A wake up call, a bucket of cold water washing over him and bringing him to recognise that there was something more between them, something more than brotherhood and comraderie.
But Dean knew how this would be, and so he doesn’t want someone, anyone, least of all Sam, to worry. So now when they’re in cafes, Dean plays lazy and makes Sam order, when they walk down streets he doesn’t stop to gaze in windows, when he meets people with blue eyes he tries not to look at them, and as they drive down roads he makes Sam drive increasingly more so he can shut his eyes to people on the pavements, on the lines of the highway.
“Dean.” A hand slaps him hard on the chest and he jerks awake in surprise, flailing his limbs. He can hear Sam laugh and then vision swims into focus. “Dean, look.”
“Whassmatter?” He mumbles, rubbing his eyes hard with the heels of his palms, sitting up and stretching. Dean sniffs. “Why aren’t we driving? Where are we?”
“Bobby’s,” Sam says, and then insists, “Dean, look.”
Dean scowls and peers out into the pink-red light cast over the salvage yard, the light of dawn and the shape of Bobby’s house. He peers harder. “What am I - ” He stops short, seeing it. The figure walking down towards the car, growing gradually larger, and he fumbles fast to get his seatbelt off and then launches himself from the car. He has the most curious impulse to run to Castiel’s side but he resists, starting at a jog but slowing near immediately to a walk. A fast pace, but a reasonable, un-embarrassing one.
“Cas,” Dean breathes, and when he’s within touching distance he grasps at the folds and flaps of that dirty tan overcoat.
He’s afforded a half-smile, as though it hasn’t been months, as though Dean isn’t burning up on the inside with a thousand kinds of missing and longing and want. “Hello, Dean.” Castiel’s hand closes over one of the hands clinging to his coat.
There’s the crunch of footsteps from all directions - Sam walking up to them from the car and Bobby walking down to them from the house. Dean drops his hand and Castiel drops his, too, and Dean says, “How long have you been here?”
“Not long,” Castiel answers.
Bobby chips in, elaborating, “Rolled in around midnight. First thing I did was call you and Sam answered ‘cause you were asleep.”
Dean could say a million witty things, bitch and groan about anything possible, but it’s been too long. He doesn’t have it in him. He says, “Thank you.” He looks between his family and Castiel, and back again, and tries to find a way to articulate the things he needs to say. He fails.
“Go on,” Sam says, and Dean nods gratefully at him and holds on to Castiel as two fingers come up and touch his forehead.
If Dean has ever been able to relate to Jimmy Novak’s state, it has been in the brief moments of flight as they change locations. It takes a lot of journeys and a long time to realise that you move at all, that it is flight and not being beamed from place to place. It is what Dean imagines being chained to a comet would be like.
They never go far - in fact, all they’ve done is go to the nearest nice motel. Bobby made a firm rule a long time ago that Bobby’s bedrooms are for sleeping and resting and nothing else.
They check in impatiently. One room, for the night, and yes, one bed, and it always gets them a funny look but Dean long ago stopped caring what people thought of him. He is contained in public with Castiel, far more contained than he’s ever been with women, but it’s never been a matter of pride or appearance. It’s simply not them to do anything else. They hadn’t even hugged before their first kiss.
The door shuts behind them as they enter, and then mouths are together. Hungry, loving, wanting. Castiel tastes always a little metallic, and the slide of tongue always sets Dean’s hairs on end. He holds the angel’s jaw, cupping it with one hand, gripping at a bicep with the other, and Castiel mirrors him almost, with a palm splayed across his neck, fingers pressing down and thumb stroking across his jaw, his other hand gripping around Dean’s forearm.
“I hope you’ve been well,” Castiel whispers, between kisses that burn down Dean’s jaw, sear his neck.
“Tired,” and thats a whole state of being that that also means lonely, and it’s weird to be lonely when your entire time is spent with your brother. Dean pulls them toward the bed. This is something he can never get used to; this very male body, with hard lines and and no uncertainty in the anatomy, that he’s compelled by, spellbound by. The thing he can’t wait to undress and have and hold again.
“Two birds with one stone,” Dean jokes, and Castiel frowns at him. “You’re a dude and you’re not human.” He realises it was a rather out of the blue crack to make and closes off the moment by sealing their mouths together, pulling at the trench coat to get it off and yanking hard on the blue tie in an afford to remove it that only tightens it. He grumbles in frustration and gives up; Castiel eases it off in moments and then takes over, supernatural dexterity shedding fabric from them both faster than Dean can ever anticipate.
In minutes they’re on the bed, clothes entirely gone, just heated skin against heated skin. Through kisses and hands exploring everywhere, rediscovering territory that is long ingrained in their memories, Dean says, “I missed you, Cas.”
Those big, soulful blue eyes come up to meet his, and Castiel tells him, “I love you, Dean.” It’s a strange sentence from a self-confessed soldier, from a warrior of God. It’s almost hard to think that Castiel has room within himself to love anyone else, and admittedly he has told him that it’s rare for angels to experience such emotion, and yet, Castiel loves Dean.
Dean has never said it back, but it makes for nothing uncomfortable. There’s just no need to. Not everything has to be said out loud, especially when one of you is an angel so powerful that sometimes Dean has been frightened by the sheer strength of it all.
“C’mon,” Dean encourages, and they make their way up the bed. Dean swiftly arranges the pillows so that he can rest against them, leaning back, and Castiel straddles his thighs. Dean sighs reproachfully and says, “Wallet.” Castiel vanishes from his lap and returns a moment later, settling down and handing the object in question to Dean.
As cheap as it seems, Dean rarely has bottles on hand when he and Cas are together, but he manages to keep a small supply of sachets of lube in his wallet. He finds one and tears it open now, squeezing it over his fingers, and then he reaches behind Castiel who rises up on his knees to make it easier.
In the middle of it all, Castiel places a surprisingly chaste kiss to Dean’s forehead. Forehead kisses seem to be the angel’s thing, and Dean admits, they always make him smile. He tips his chin up to steal a true kiss, soft and kind, and then leans away to focus in on what he’s about to do. He presses the first finger in, gentle and then not so - he knows Cas can take it.
In fact, stretching is more about making it comfortable for Dean than for Castiel. Pleasure and love and joy are things, Castiel once explained, that he is vulnerable to experiencing, but pain is one of those things that as a soldier he has long been trained to withstand.
He pushes in a second finger beside the first, relishes in the way that Castiel’s eyelids flutter minutely. Dean has learnt to be tuned in to every reaction. He loves that with a little work he can break down a freakin’ Angel of the Lord. The rush of power and intensity is amazing.
Castiel’s hands brace on Dean’s shoulders, one curved against the join of his neck and the other haphazardly grasping the burn on his shoulder. Their joining mark. Dean once joked that it meant that Castiel was always inside him, a dirty throwaway innuendo, and Castiel had mused, “I would not be surprised if my grace had touched your soul. Perhaps we were always meant to join.”
“Hey,” Dean had said, pushing Castiel down by the shoulders and leaning over him with a sincere expression on his face. “Fate is dog crap, Cas. We’re together cause we want to be, not for any agent of destiny or long foretold story.”
“I’m ready,” Castiel says, and Dean draws back into the now, twisting his fingers before he pulls them out. The tips of Cas’ fingers tighten on Dean’s skin. Dean takes a moment to slow the pace, to not be so neglectful of one another, and wraps his fingers around the angel’s length, squeezing and stroking. Castiel groans, a low, delightful sound, and drags a hand down across Dean’s chest, then down, and touches him with those firm and calloused hands.
Dean snags Castiel’s mouth in a kiss and lets out something that’s half a moan, half a sigh, and then Cas pulls back to meet his eyes.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dean says, nonsensical and heated, as they shift and tug and twist into the right position, hands gripping and guiding, and then with low, breathy groans between the pair of them, Castiel sinks down as Dean pushes his hips up - and there, finally, after months of nothing at all, Dean feels like he’s driven home again.
Hell if it isn’t cliche and awful, but with the angel, his angel, all around him, on him, touching, kissing him, Dean feels like a blanket of peace settles over him. Like it always does, everything else fades out of focus as Cas begins to work his hips, like the man in front of him becomes the brightest thing in the room.
“Dean,” Castiel groans, rising and falling, hands reaching and grasping, touching everywhere, and Dean shifts his hips the way he knows Cas likes. He rubs his palms across the surface of his waist, slinking down to hold his hips, and he kisses him on the mouth.
They move together, the air thick with heat, and one move elicits a particularly loud moan from Castiel. Dean’s eyes slip shut, and he tips his head back, and when he opens his eyes - “Holy crap.”
Wings, silent but beating and stretched out from Castiel’s shoulders, feathered and golden, shimmering blues and greens when the light catches them. They are beyond unnatural, shining, almost incandescent, near transparent at points, as if they’re barely there. “Cas, what,” he breathes, unable to finish his sentence, unable to stop, but chills run through him at the sight of these things he’s only ever seen hinted at in shadow before.
“Your senses,” Castiel murmurs, his sentences infinitely even more composed even as he comes apart in Dean’s lap. “Our connection.” He rests his forehead against Dean’s, breathing heavily, and his eyes flutter open and shut, his wings arching up, “You can see my wings because we are… You are tuned in to me. And I you.”
Dean’s fingers grip hard against Castiel’s hips. Words should complicate things, should make it more difficult to feel everything he feels, but Dean only feels more as Castiel says, his voice strained, “I was hoping…”
He trails off, sinks down, and comes hard with a strangled cry, his wings tensing small and then flaring out. Dean comes after the angel, with his entire body feeling like it’s burning up and then the release, the tiring peace washing over him.
Castiel eases away and onto his back, and Dean slides down to lie flat, sneaking a last glance at the wings splayed out everywhere before they vanish from his vision. “They’re amazing,” Dean says, and swallows hard as he admits, “They’re beautiful.”
Castiel smiles, fond and wise and with that experienced look in his eye that always drives Dean round the bend. “Not many years ago you were afraid. You would have found them a terrifying spectacle.”
“Times change, Cas,” Dean points out, and he leans down to kiss him.