Bright as a Gorgon's Eyes (4/4)
Previous chapter.
It was strange that, in the end, it should be Lucifer’s demon who set things straight.
Dean had halting explanations that meant very little, and Castiel was wary of trusting them again so quickly when he didn’t know how much Dean really understood. They sounded like promises; but so had everything else, and Castiel had to face down the remains of an archangel, and he could not trust his own judgement to know where his dream-Dean ended and the real Dean began, or to lead him to do the honourable thing by either of them. And so he walked out onto the field, and did his best not to think about any love but the platonic as he prepared to face down the creature in whose image he had remade himself.
Lucifer’s eyes, though, were a revelation - because they were blank.
Dean’s eyes could make Castiel shudder, and burn, and smile, and hope, and unfurl new leaves along a pattern that he’d almost forgotten and had never really understood. Dean’s eyes made a new man of him, something that wasn’t just Dean and wasn’t just Castiel but was some strange promising compound of both. Dean’s eyes held potent alchemy, even in their sleepiest and quietest moments.
And then there were Gabriel’s eyes: infuriating and ever-changing, a mockery and in some distant way a reproach. Gabriel’s eyes made Castiel itch to shake him and demand why, to push and to push until he found his brother again under all those layers of silent years between them, want to shove him up against a wall and growl in his face to make him do something, or to weep. Gabriel’s eyes made Castiel feel like the lost, idiot child and the only responsible adult all at once; but he did have Castiel’s back. He stood beside Castiel solid and strong and broke down the great demon’s pretensions with lazy, viciously felt words, and he tried to take Castiel’s doom on himself.
But Castiel looked into the eyes of the Lucifer shade, and saw nothing of kinship. There was nothing in the cold demonic steel that touched him.
It had only been an act, after all. Only a study.
Castiel had made compromises, but he had not compromised himself; and when he lofted his sword to wield it against the demons, he knew he could fight, and die, with a true heart.
Only he didn’t die. Castiel hadn’t calculated on that.
***
So, now he knew what he wanted. If Dean wanted it too.
One day, and Castiel tried to keep his eyes off the long, supple lines of Dean’s body, the fluid, confident strength of his arms, the deft familiarity of his hands in wielding a gun or a bread knife or fondling a dog’s ears. He did his best not to revel in the thought of Dean laid out below him, pinned below him, body straining up against him and lips trailing hot over throats and collar bones and faces. When Dean turned towards him in Ellen’s Roadhouse, Castiel tried not to imagine what it might be like to tug the worn blue cotton of his shirt loose from its belt and drag it over Dean’s head, turn him around against the table and kiss his way down the sweat of his back, taste the salt at the base of his spine and spread his hands out over the slope of Dean’s waist.
And he tried not to notice that Dean’s eyes were raking over his own body hot and lustful as anything Castiel could imagine, because he might be noticing wrong, layering reality over with dreams again. And even when Dean slid up behind him and wrapped himself around Castiel’s body (all warmth and weight and damp drunken breath) and purred endearments into the back of his neck... well, surely Dean had received new information, and taken it on board, and anything he now did was done in light of this information and therefore was better informed and couldn’t Castiel just...?
Except that Dean was drunk, and no, Castiel couldn’t just because Dean hadn’t said anything, not really. And so he took him home.
... and Dean tried to say things. But he was still drunk.
Which wasn’t so bad, really. Castiel only had to try to hide the fact that he thought drunken Dean was actually rather endearing. Also the fact that his stomach was almost sick with lurching back and forth between one prospect and another all day, and all yesterday, and all the day before, and really, couldn’t he just...
No.
Not tonight.
***
Dean needed space, to make a proper, carefully thought-out decision, without being influenced either by Castiel’s desires or the lusts that Castiel might inspire in him by his presence.
Castiel gave him space, for a day, and courted him from a distance. Just to make doubly sure Dean knew what was going on.
Then Dean cornered him, and proposed marriage.
... Which was fairly unambiguous. All things considered.
Dean had terrible timing. Castiel spent most of the final, decisive council meeting that immediately followed trying to work out if there was any way Dean could possibly be misunderstanding just what he had offered this time, instead of paying attention to the minutiae of the charter they were drawing up.
He was almost sure there was no misunderstanding.
***
Definitely no misunderstanding, as it turned out.
***
Two weeks after the bonfire night, at which Dean had announced their engagement and Sam and Gabriel had settled it between them that they would be leaving together, Castiel finished his changes to Gabriel’s old bracelet.
The blood had been washed out long ago, but adding Gabriel’s red and gold and copper threads to it had made it broader and brighter than it had been when it had only held the memory of their parents; and it was heavier too, woven through with the tiny glass beads that meant archangel. Which was why Castiel had made it into an anklet, and worn it that way for years: it was too wide for a forearm in a war, when Castiel needed his shielded with vambraces and leather straps.
Now he reshaped it into an armband.
He didn’t remove Gabriel’s colours, this time. He loosened every thread and cord, just enough to let him weave Balthazar in there as well: steel grey, a few threads of silver, and one solitary strand halfway between purple and grey. And he added himself, this time: black, and several different dark blues that bordered on it; and silver charms for both their symbols: his own falcon and Balthazar’s magpie threaded beside their father’s egret on the scarlet ribbon of their mother. All of them there together, this time: all five of them again, the living and the dead, woven together as they hadn’t been for a very long time.
He gave it to Gabriel.
Gabriel tried to refuse it, but not very well.
By the next day he was wearing it firm and bright above his elbow; and Castiel never saw him afterwards without it.
***
Now.
“Ouch,” Castiel complained.
“Also don’t get yourself killed,” Dean shouted helpfully from the living room, where he was doing something complicated with the vents and little iron doors in the oven above the fireplace. “Didya trip over the flour bags again, honey?”
Dean was really being far too gleeful about all these endearments. Castiel hadn’t got tired of it yet.
“For some reason,” Castiel called back pointedly, moving more gingerly this time as he crouched down to peer into the cupboard, “my thighs seem to be sore.”
... If Dean believed Castiel couldn’t hear him snickering from the kitchen, human senses were much feebler than he’d thought.
“Funny how the badass angel never whines when his wings get torn up by a demon but he won’t shut up over a bit of muscle strain from horse-riding.”
Castiel eyed the bewildering pile of pots and trays and vessels teetering in the cupboard in front of him, and didn’t mention that he liked grumbling because of the way it made Dean’s voice go all warm and indulgent. “Which tray, Dean.”
“The baking tray,” Dean clarified, unclearly. “For baking. Thick and black, about as long as your arm, big dint in one corner because Sammy was clumsy as fuck when he was shorter.”
“That one was your fault,” Sam yelled from the bath house.
Castiel found one that looked right, dragged it out, and was noisily assaulted by a landslide of kitchenware.
“... Okay in there?”
“Why do you need so many different pots,” he grumbled, and tried to work out how on earth they’d all fit in there in the first place. Possibly through some kind of arcane human-specific magic?
“Says the guy with nine different combs on his side of the bed,” Dean pointed out, coming back into the kitchen. “You can’t just shove them in there, dude, there’s an art to it. And handles to the door side, or you’ll pull them all out again next time you try to grab something.”
Castiel sat back and watched Dean’s deft hands slide everything back into its precise, incomprehensible arrangement in the cupboard. Definitely some magic going on there.
“We have two pots for the whole garrison,” he said thoughtfully, and shifted his right wing just a bit so that it brushed against the back of Dean’s thigh and calf as he leaned over Castiel. “We usually prefer to travel light. Especially on campaign.”
“See? Horses,” Dean pointed out with a grin, and nudged his knee against Castiel’s shoulder. “Carry your wounded, carry your supplies, carry all the extra shit people like Sammy like to drag along with them just in case they need a book or a fourth pair of boots or a pie dish.”
“I still don’t understand why we’re making cookies,” Castiel said patiently. “We’ve eaten lunch, and from your description cookies are hardly an essential food anyway. And by the time they’re done it will be time to start preparing dinner, and there’ll be barely any time left in the day for everything else.”
“Because it’s not an essential food. And cookies are awesome.” Dean closed the cupboard door and stood up, ruffling up the lesser coverts at the top of the wing closest to him as he passed. “Wash the tray, dude, it’s kinda dusty.”
It was a long time since anyone had just casually thrown orders at Castiel.
He applied himself to the task carefully, then to greasing the tray with butter according to Dean’s next instructions, then to helping shape the dough into small round balls, just large enough to sit in the hollow of his hand. (His own were far neater than Dean’s, a fact which Dean kept sabotaging by stealing little pinches from Castiel’s and grinning at him while he ate them, like he was waiting for Castiel to do something other than frown and tidy them up again.)
They were just over halfway done when Sam came in, reddened and damp from scrubbing the sheep smell from his body, let out a yelp of delight and wrapped himself around Dean from behind.
“You guys are making cookies?”
Castiel was left blinking as the scene devolved in the space of a few seconds into a flurry of flailing and grabbing limbs, of “make your own damn dough!” and “come on, Dean, just a taste!” and Sam trying to pin Dean’s hands to his side and Dean trying to bat Sam’s hands out of the way, and Sam’s broad, laughing mouth and Dean spitting curses and trying to get his little brother in a headlock, and cookie dough smeared all over faces and tangled into hair.
It ended as suddenly as it had begun, with Sam leaning against the bench grinning and licking smears of dough off his wrist, and Dean making sad faces at squashed balls of dough and fixing it by eating some of them, and Sam charitably rescuing the ones that had fallen on the floor and eating them so that they didn’t have to be reshaped, and Dean’s dog peering hopefully around the kitchen door and eyeballing the crumbs on the floor.
“And that’s the point of making cookies,” Dean informed Castiel cheerfully, nipping a blob of dough off the back of his own hand.
Castiel eyed the smear of brown sugar and butter decorating the line of Dean’s jaw, and licked his lips.
“You said the point of making cookies was ‘delicious chewy goodness’.”
“That’s the point at the end. The point during is that you know Sam will always try to steal the cookie dough. Also the fact that the whole house will smell like heaven in about half an hour.”
Sam snickered, and tossed a misshapen lump into his mouth.
“You were stealing the cookie dough,” Castiel pointed out thoughtfully, rolling a perfectly spherical ball between his palms.
“Yeah?” Dean’s grin stretched into something sly and challenging, with that dark twinkle in his eyes that was just for Castiel. “Whatcha gonna do about it, big man?”
And just like that, the last distance in Castiel’s head between Dean the dream and Dean the man closed, quietly and without fuss, and the two images clicked softly into one.
Castiel blinked, slow and thoughtful; looked down at the sweet sticky ball in his hand, and back up into the basilisk brightness of his beloved’s eyes.
They went wide with alarm, just before Castiel slid in and smeared the cookie ball all the way down the back of Dean’s neck.
By the time they got the cookies into the oven (“and close the door! Meat gets to taste like smoke, and sometimes bread, but not cookies, man, that’s just wrong”), Castiel and Sam had both lost their shirts, Castiel had very sticky feathers on his back, Dean had an accidental black eye, and Sam had half a rude word written across his back in melted sugar from when Dean had managed to pin him down for a minute.
Castiel was rather surprised to find there were still enough cookies to fill the tray. This was the reason, he was informed, why it was important to make a double batch. And the smell, after about half an hour, was very good.
If this was domesticity, Castiel was very happy to learn it.
Possibly the point of cookies was not their function as food.
***
“So go on then, my pissy little barn cat.” Dean reached out, hands spreading out to span Castiel’s hips in a possessive cradle, pulling them in towards each other. “Why’d you ask me to teach you to ride?”
Sam had taken a plate full of the cookies and run away to find Gabriel, to work on the new wagon they were building together. Which meant that Castiel had Dean to himself until well into evening, because Sam would not hurry back.
He slanted Dean a look, one of the new ones he was learning just for him: solemn, and halfway to a tease. “Because you insisted that I should learn.”
“Uh-uh, that pig ain’t gonna fly,” Dean murmured, mouth hovering close to Castiel’s cheek as he let himself be pushed back toward the sofa. “Not until you remember to pick up your clothes from all over the bedroom floor just because I insisted.”
Dean looked very good spread out all over the dark cushions of the sofa. Castiel took a moment to contemplate that, before he slid his knees carefully into place on either side of Dean’s thighs, and settled astride his lap.
“Because I like your hands on me,” he growled, and leaned in to kiss the traces of sugar from the rough skin of Dean’s chin.
Dean made a small noise, one of Castiel’s favourites, and ran his hands up to slide over the bare skin of Castiel’s waist. “Mmm, you got that anytime. And soon’s you can hold the reins yourself I’ll be back on Leapfrog and you’ll be on your own. Try - try again.”
Castiel took his time chasing the line of sweetness, curling his tongue around the bolt of Dean’s jaw and down in front of his ear, watching the way he shivered when Castiel breathed on the damp skin.
“Because,” he pressed into Dean’s throat, “when we go back to my people. To confirm the Charter, and to be married. You will be on horseback. Why would I want to fly when I could ride beside you for days.”
Dean’s hands tightened on Castiel’s back. Then he slid one up between Castiel’s wings to nestle between his shoulder blades, and tugged Castiel into a fierce hug.
“Gonna get sick of me, dude,” he mumbled into the crook of Castiel’s neck, as Castiel tried to remember how to breathe around the sudden clench of his heart. “Don’t have that much conversation.”
“Dean,” Castiel grumbled into Dean’s hair, because if he used any other tone of voice it would have come out all scratchy. “Do I have to remind you that you talked without prompting from me for three summers straight. You have never bored me.”
Dean laughed helplessly, the warmth of him tickling against Castiel’s collar bone, then he lifted his head and found Castiel’s mouth to kiss.
And this - this, he and Dean were learning very well. And Castiel delighted in the fact that he had followed Dean’s lead before, learned to enjoy the leisurely route rather than hurrying to the end, because the long hours they could spend together just kissing, hands cradling faces or heads or hips or pressing tenderly into the small of a back, were far more delicious and awe-inspiring than Castiel could ever have guessed.
Only now, when they came to the point where Castiel’s blood was pounding in his throat and groin and Dean’s hips were shifting restlessly against nothing and his fingers slipped daringly just under the waistband of Castiel’s pants to hover just above the base of his spine, Castiel didn’t have to pull back and stop.
Or - technically he did, but only far enough to lick his lips and stare at the slick swell of Dean’s lips, at the heavy, dazed look in Dean’s eyes and the flex of Dean’s fingers where they dug hard into Castiel’s thigh.
“Dean. May I.” Castiel slid his eyes down to the heaving planes of Dean’s chest, down to the bulge straining the fabric over Dean’s lap, and shifted his weight up onto one knee to try nudging Dean’s legs open with the other. “Can I use my mouth again.”
“Uh.” Dean’s eyes went wide, and his throat bobbed twice as he swallowed hard. “Uh. Not gonna argue, I - hell, yes, knock yourself out.”
And then, then there was the delight of sliding down to the floor and making a space for himself between Dean’s legs, the beautiful clumsiness of working out how to drag Dean’s pants off without him actually standing up and the little huffs of shared laughter that still had a trace of nervousness in them, until Dean’s self-consciousness vanished into groans and Castiel’s into the hot, dark flavour in his mouth and the pound of blood under sensitive skin shivering against the flat of his tongue, and ache in his jaw and the weight on his tongue that he’d been itching to try again ever since the first time, weeks ago, and the only laughter was shared little snickers and snorts over ridiculous noises, or Dean’s leg kicking out in a spasm and tangling Castiel in the leg of the pants that were still attached to his ankle, and laughter for no real reason other than you’re here and I’m here and we can.
And then there were Dean’s fingers digging into Castiel’s hair and pressing into his shoulder, and the leap of Dean’s stomach under the tracings of Castiel’s fingertips, and the sheer wonder of coaxing such sounds and such delight out of someone. Out of somebody that Castiel loved, and who honestly seemed to love him.
And then came the heady pleasure of being stretched out along the sofa himself, with one wing flung carelessly over the back and the other trailing out over the floor and Dean’s hot, teasing weight between his legs and Dean’s clumsy, beautiful mouth investigating Castiel’s flesh in excruciating detail, and the inexplicable urge to open his legs wider and wider even though Dean had plenty of access already, and the warmth of Dean’s thumb rubbing comforting arcs against his inner thigh, and the almost agonising pleasure of release, and a breathed “Fuck, I love you” that shivered against the skin of Castiel’s stomach.
Dean hadn’t spoken those words before, not out loud; but it certainly wasn’t the first time he’d said it. That much, at least, Castiel had always been able to read in his gaze.
***
It was the wonder in Dean’s eyes that Castiel always found strangest, in the weeks and months that followed. Even in the midst of an argument, kneeling up over Dean’s naked thighs, fists clenched and eyes dark with unaccustomed anger (because Dean could make a child of him again in more ways than one, and it was only Dean who managed to be so very infuriating and yet so very trusting that Castiel could rediscover his temper, and not fear it). And Dean, even when he was pinned to the bed with Castiel looming over him and his wings bristling out like a storm cloud around him, and Dean was so terrifyingly fragile that if Castiel were push just a little too hard... even then, even then, Dean could stop and look up at him with amazement, with that little curl of childish delight creeping in at the side of his mouth, and reach out his fingers to trace the ruffled feathers behind Castiel’s arm. And just like that the argument would be gone: Dean’s wonder and his adoration were infectious, and so was his desire.