Fic: "Your Best Dress" [PG-13 - Dean/Cas]
TITLE: “Your Best Dress”
AUTHOR: nanoochka
RATING: PG-13 for mentions of sexuality
PAIRING: Dean/Cas
SPOILERS: 5.04
WARNINGS: AU, mild horror, trenchcoat abuse
WORDCOUNT: ~2500
SUMMARY: It’s not like he can take Cas shopping while the world ends.
DISCLAIMER: Total hogwash, this.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Like most things, I don’t really have a good explanation for where this came from-I think it might have been a combination of wanting to get Cas naked, wanting to take him shopping, and speculating about whether it was possible to write an unironic sartorial!fic. The result is a bit unusual, but altogether something I’m happy with. I’d also like to add here that this takes place in the 2014-verse, but before ‘The End’. Bobby is still alive, and Dean and Cas haven’t yet had a chance to turn douchey on each other. Otherwise, love as always to the missus fossarian for pushing me to commit, and to cautionzombies for the speedy, ever-helpful beta.
"Your Best Dress" by nanoochka
They fled in the night, half-dressed and blinking the sleep from their eyes, Dean cursing all the while for having dozed off during his watch. Pushing a naked Cas out of bed and down the groaning stairs of the house where they’d been squatting for almost two weeks, Dean found Chuck already behind the wheel of the Jeep while Yaeger shoved Bobby into the back. The first vehicle was halfway down the gravel drive, kicking up stones while the headlights picked out shadowy Croats swarming over the front lawn. Risa fired off rounds from the back and shouted for the rest of them to hurry the fuck up.
Dean didn’t hesitate. He threw his duffle bag, stuffed almost to bursting with clothes and weapons, into the backseat of his own vehicle, and handed the rifle to Cas, who caught it with a deft touch. Despite his bare skin-the others barely blinked at the free show-and the blizzard swirling around them, Cas seemed not to notice the cold, hopping into the passenger side with an urgency that belied his calm. He aimed the rifle out the window, covering his quadrant without waiting to be asked, just like Dean showed him. A moment later they ploughed after the others, tires squealing, Dean not bothering to swerve when a couple Croats bolted in front of the truck with teeth bared. It was a mercy to splatter their blood on the snow.
“You fell asleep?” Cas murmured, once they were clear and speeding into the night. In a few minutes Dean knew he’d get a call over the walkie from Bobby to discuss where they should head next. There’d been no time to plan.
The question, though fair and without judgement, made Dean grit his teeth. Earlier that night he’d let Cas hold him down and fuck him into the mattress with long, deliberate strokes until Dean’s head swam and he whined Cas’s name; two orgasms later, it was nothing but foolish to pretend he didn’t want to curl up with his lover and sleep for three days. Rookie fucking mistake.
"At least I remembered to put my clothes back on," he snapped, already reaching into the backseat for the old army blanket, one hand casting about for the rough fabric while he tried to keep his eyes on the road. At last he found it and handed the thing over.
Despite the unimpressed look he shot over at Dean, Cas dutifully wrapped it around his shoulders and tucked the ends beneath his thighs, skin pale and shadowed against the olive-green material. The effect was young, haunting, and Dean realized how much he’d come to associate Cas with the clothes he inherited from Jimmy. How vulnerable he looked without them. Dean didn’t think Cas ever had much attachment to that cheap suit and stupid, wrecked trenchcoat, but it’d be weird not to see that oversized silhouette from the corner of his eye, to not be able to tease Cas about the inappropriateness of his dress in a war zone. Then again, Cas was hardly the same person he’d been back then, so maybe it was just as well.
“You’re gonna catch your fucking death,” Dean said uselessly. No matter how quickly his grace fell away, Castiel never bothered to adopt certain human traits like social awareness or sensitivity to temperature changes. He slept and ate and fucked like the rest of them, but through it all never quite became one of them. Not a day went by that Dean didn’t still feel like he had an obligation to keep Cas safe, and not just from the Croats. They were a matched pair, honour-bound to protect one another. He couldn’t see that changing, not while there was a fight left in him.
Responding to Dean’s concern with little more than a sidelong glance and a slight purse of his lips, Cas shrugged and tugged the blanket tighter around him. “I’m not worried,” he said. “There are a lot worse ways to go.”
+
Between Dean and Bobby, there was a lot of indecision over where to go next. Dean was in favour of hitting the coast, Bobby for sticking close to Sioux Falls. For reasons relating to easily defensible territory and its familiarity to other hunters, Bobby seemed to be winning the debate, same as always. Instead, the small motorcade stopped to rest outside of Casper, Wyoming, an unintentional compromise between the two; they headed into the mountains, avoiding grasslands that were too risky and barren and open, in case shit went belly-up again. An old Ranger station seemed as good a place to make camp as any, big enough for everyone to bunk down for the night and an effective shelter from the storm. Dean planned to take a few people into town once they got the lay of the land and the snow started to let up.
The first thing out of Dean’s mouth was, “How the fuck did those Croats get so goddamned close before someone sent up the alarm?” as he slammed the door of his truck. He didn’t expect a good answer-the entirety of the US Military couldn’t defend them from the infected. Cas had the best eyesight out of anyone, but it figured they’d get attacked the first time he agreed to a break, having spent the better part of a week on night watch.
Risa was the first to speak up. “Until now they’ve been easy to spot,” she said grimly. “They barely made a sound coming up to the house last night, stuck to the shadows. A goddamned SWAT team couldn’t have planned it better.”
A look flashed between Dean and Bobby. “Fuckers are adapting, sounds like,” said the older hunter. “It was bound to happen eventually. Pretty soon they’ll be almost impossible to tell apart from the rest of us.”
“Yeah, well, there won’t be a rest of us for much longer if we don’t start paying closer attention. Cas here didn’t even have time to put his boots on.” A couple of the others chuckled, and even one side of Castiel’s mouth went up in a smile.
Suddenly self-conscious about his lover’s goods being the subject of open scrutiny, Dean holstered the gun he hadn’t realized he was still clutching like a security blanket. “Yaeger, grab a team and check the perimeter,” he barked. “Let’s make sure we aren’t bunking down in a nest and we’ll figure out our next steps in the morning. One way or another, we’re gonna need gas and provisions.”
As the team dispersed and went to secure the vehicles for the night, Bobby gestured at the Ranger station and then to where Cas stood off to the side, bare feet turning red from cold. Unsurprisingly, Cas seemed not to care, but Bobby, like Dean, was in the habit of worrying about the things that sometimes went over Castiel’s head. “Go find that idjit something to wear before he freezes his balls off,” he suggested. “The rest of us can wait outside as he gets dressed. We’ll see if we can get that generator running while you’re in there.”
“You just made a non-sexual reference to Cas’s balls,” Dean pointed out smugly, still finding it in him to crack a joke. Bobby rolled his eyes in response and wheeled himself away before Dean could say anything else.
With a sigh, Dean grabbed his duffle out of the truck and wandered over to put an arm around Cas’s neck, an affectionate headlock, and felt indulgent and shitty enough about his lost clothes to press a warm kiss to his temple. He didn’t care what the others had to say about their relationship-Cas was a good soldier and they kept each other from going too crazy. There was so much anger in Dean sometimes, he needed Cas around to keep it in check, keep it from spilling over to the others. Cas, more than likely, needed Dean to remind himself of what he once was, too. It was a good arrangement they had going, easy when everything else was like pulling blood from a stone, even with so much blood already on the ground.
“Let’s go shopping, shall we?” he quipped.
Together they climbed the short set of stairs up to the Ranger station, Dean pausing to pick the lock respectfully, whereas Cas would have broken it off with his residual angel strength. Inside the cabin it was dark and chilly, a bit too cold to hint one way or another how long the building had gone unoccupied. While nothing suggested much of a struggle, Dean still checked each room with his flashlight and gun once again at the ready, just in case. Spotting a couple packages of toilet paper in the bathroom, he made a mental note to tell Chuck about the find later.
In the main room, Cas tried flicking on a few of the lights, to no avail. Giving up, he turned to Dean with his hands on his hips, looking halfway hilarious and sinful with the blanket fallen open to reveal his pale torso, the dark bed of hair around his sex, trailing from his lean stomach. “This will suffice for an evening or two, I think,” he informed Dean. “If we push the furniture aside there will be enough room to lay out the sleeping bags.”
“No privacy for a while, then,” answered Dean with mock exasperation. “Too bad that house got swarmed by Croats; I kind of liked having a whole bedroom to ourselves.”
Cas snorted. “Priorities, Dean,” he reminded. “We were lucky no one got hurt this time.”
“You’re right, though I might still say a few words over that damn jacket of yours later.” Catching the swift roll of Castiel’s eyes-tough crowd tonight-Dean slipped the gun back into his thigh holster and made for the duffle bag. “I’ve got some spare clothes you can wear until we find something else,” he said. “Might be a bit big on you, but it’s better than letting you flash everyone.” This earned him a snort, which Dean ignored, and he beckoned with the hand holding the flashlight. “Come hold this for me.”
Accepting the light, Cas shuffled closer and pressed himself along Dean’s side, a weird combination of curiosity, helpfulness and no doubt intentional distraction, especially when Dean stopped digging through his clothes long enough to feel Cas shift again, rubbing a growing erection up against Dean’s hip. With a sigh, Dean tried to ignore the gentle flop of want in his stomach and shot him a look instead, only to have the flashlight beam aimed directly in his face.
It was almost comedic, the inappropriateness of Castiel’s timing and unstoppable sexual urges, but Cas just blinked innocently and made a nonchalant humming noise that Dean correctly read as encouragement-like he should just drop trou and get on his knees right there, while the rest of the team froze to death outside. At times it was so easy to look about them, to consider the state of the world and everything in it, and ask, ‘This is my life, really?’ But oddly enough, it was Cas and not the world, the idea that Dean should be making a kind of life with a grouchy, sex-crazed ex-Angel of the Lord, that made him stop and mull over this question most often.
“There’s a goddamned blizzard out there,” Dean reminded him. Long fingers crept beneath the hem of his jacket and shirt, finding skin; he almost yelped at the shock of Cas’s icy-cold hands, flinching away to grate out, “You’re not the one Bobby’s gonna ream out if we keep them waiting.”
Smirking, Cas tilted his head and leaned in to nose a gentle kiss behind Dean’s ear with just a hint of tongue, hands still stroking. “We could be fast,” he suggested, adding, “They wouldn’t know,” as if the whole place wouldn’t reek of sex after.
The indecision frayed at Dean’s nerves for a second before he turned and caught Castiel’s fingers in a tight grip, wrestling them down to his sides where they weren’t half so tempting. Still, he leaned in to slide a warm, regretful kiss against Cas’s lips. “Much as it kills me to say it, let’s just get you dressed and get these people in from the cold. Rain check, okay? These are the types of tough calls you gotta live with when you share the fearless leader’s bed.”
Something akin to a pout twitched between them for a moment, and Cas breathed hotly into Dean’s mouth as if considering the faults of this logic. Dean thought he was about to get more grief, more of Castiel’s careful, sweetly-manipulative powers of rationalization, but instead his hands received a brief squeeze. “You aren’t fearless,” Cas murmured unexpectedly. “Fear means there’s still something left to care about. When you lose that, I’ll start to worry about how screwed we all are. But until then…” He trailed off, and pulled back to look at Dean with a shrug.
“Okay, I get your point.” Dean disentangled their hands with a small smile of thanks, grateful as always for Castiel’s odd brand of reassurance. He pressed the flashlight back into Cas’s palm and gestured at the open duffle bag. “Clothes. Then we can talk about how to work out these scary hedonistic tendencies of yours without waking anyone up.”
He dug around for a moment, searching for whichever items he thought would be the most appropriate in terms of size, warmth and utility. Boots they would have to drum up from elsewhere, because Cas had alarmingly big feet for his frame, but for the time being Dean thought they could make do with what he had. Satisfied with his selections, Dean withdrew a pair of frayed jeans and a dark T-shirt from the bag, along with an extra Henley, and socks.
“Feels like an end of an era now that you don’t have your trenchcoat anymore,” he said wistfully, but Cas just huffed, face indifferent.
“It was just a coat. And whatever it might have symbolized before…” He shrugged again. “I’m not that person anymore.”
Dean acknowledged this truth with a jerky nod, feeling foolish for having brought it up at all. Amongst the topics they tended to avoid on a regular basis, Castiel’s diminishing Grace was pretty much at the top of the list, along with Sam’s unknown whereabouts and whether or not this war was remotely winnable.
Quick to change the subject, Dean held up the black boxer briefs with his eyebrows raised. “You want these?” he asked, wiggling them a little in Cas’s direction. “Kinda gross to be wearing another man’s underwear, but it’s not like we haven’t already passed the point of personal boundaries by now. And they’re clean.”
Cas accepted everything else but the briefs. “Those aren’t necessary,” he said. “They’d just get in the way later.” Ignoring the roll of Dean’s eyes, Cas unfolded the t-shirt and shone the flashlight onto it, revealing the faded colours of a Led Zeppelin design. Their eyes met, and Dean saw that Cas’s had gone a bit wide with astonishment. “This is your favourite,” he said. Funny, thought Dean-he didn’t think there was much left out there that could surprise Castiel, much less some crappy T-shirt from a million years ago.
Really, no debate was necessary. Come hell or high water, Dean was going to make sure they slept in their clothes from now own; even undressing to fuck was a bit of an extravagance when they might have to flee at any moment. He would miss seeing Cas spread out and naked under him whenever he felt like it, but having him there in that old T-shirt of Dean’s, smelling of old motor oil and guns and traces of Dean himself, well… that was probably the next best thing.
There was a sharp rap at the door, followed by Risa’s angry voice demanding to know when the hell the rest of them could stop freezing their asses off; both Dean and Cas stifled snorts of laughter, Dean’s trailing off in a sigh and an I-told-you-so expression. He pushed the blanket off Castiel’s shoulders and slid the T-shirt over them instead, nudging his arms up to get the fabric down, and caught the quiet shiver as the chilled cloth whisked over Castiel’s skin. Having Cas stand there naked from the waist down certainly did little to kill his libido, but Dean managed to smile ruefully and give a playful smack to his bare ass as well.
Helpless against Castiel’s sullen glare, Dean pulled away, but not before giving that generous ass a final squeeze, one more appreciative glance before they turned their attention back to the tattered world around them. Grinning, he said, “Keep it.”
Fin
AUTHOR: nanoochka
RATING: PG-13 for mentions of sexuality
PAIRING: Dean/Cas
SPOILERS: 5.04
WARNINGS: AU, mild horror, trenchcoat abuse
WORDCOUNT: ~2500
SUMMARY: It’s not like he can take Cas shopping while the world ends.
DISCLAIMER: Total hogwash, this.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Like most things, I don’t really have a good explanation for where this came from-I think it might have been a combination of wanting to get Cas naked, wanting to take him shopping, and speculating about whether it was possible to write an unironic sartorial!fic. The result is a bit unusual, but altogether something I’m happy with. I’d also like to add here that this takes place in the 2014-verse, but before ‘The End’. Bobby is still alive, and Dean and Cas haven’t yet had a chance to turn douchey on each other. Otherwise, love as always to the missus fossarian for pushing me to commit, and to cautionzombies for the speedy, ever-helpful beta.
"Your Best Dress" by nanoochka
They fled in the night, half-dressed and blinking the sleep from their eyes, Dean cursing all the while for having dozed off during his watch. Pushing a naked Cas out of bed and down the groaning stairs of the house where they’d been squatting for almost two weeks, Dean found Chuck already behind the wheel of the Jeep while Yaeger shoved Bobby into the back. The first vehicle was halfway down the gravel drive, kicking up stones while the headlights picked out shadowy Croats swarming over the front lawn. Risa fired off rounds from the back and shouted for the rest of them to hurry the fuck up.
Dean didn’t hesitate. He threw his duffle bag, stuffed almost to bursting with clothes and weapons, into the backseat of his own vehicle, and handed the rifle to Cas, who caught it with a deft touch. Despite his bare skin-the others barely blinked at the free show-and the blizzard swirling around them, Cas seemed not to notice the cold, hopping into the passenger side with an urgency that belied his calm. He aimed the rifle out the window, covering his quadrant without waiting to be asked, just like Dean showed him. A moment later they ploughed after the others, tires squealing, Dean not bothering to swerve when a couple Croats bolted in front of the truck with teeth bared. It was a mercy to splatter their blood on the snow.
“You fell asleep?” Cas murmured, once they were clear and speeding into the night. In a few minutes Dean knew he’d get a call over the walkie from Bobby to discuss where they should head next. There’d been no time to plan.
The question, though fair and without judgement, made Dean grit his teeth. Earlier that night he’d let Cas hold him down and fuck him into the mattress with long, deliberate strokes until Dean’s head swam and he whined Cas’s name; two orgasms later, it was nothing but foolish to pretend he didn’t want to curl up with his lover and sleep for three days. Rookie fucking mistake.
"At least I remembered to put my clothes back on," he snapped, already reaching into the backseat for the old army blanket, one hand casting about for the rough fabric while he tried to keep his eyes on the road. At last he found it and handed the thing over.
Despite the unimpressed look he shot over at Dean, Cas dutifully wrapped it around his shoulders and tucked the ends beneath his thighs, skin pale and shadowed against the olive-green material. The effect was young, haunting, and Dean realized how much he’d come to associate Cas with the clothes he inherited from Jimmy. How vulnerable he looked without them. Dean didn’t think Cas ever had much attachment to that cheap suit and stupid, wrecked trenchcoat, but it’d be weird not to see that oversized silhouette from the corner of his eye, to not be able to tease Cas about the inappropriateness of his dress in a war zone. Then again, Cas was hardly the same person he’d been back then, so maybe it was just as well.
“You’re gonna catch your fucking death,” Dean said uselessly. No matter how quickly his grace fell away, Castiel never bothered to adopt certain human traits like social awareness or sensitivity to temperature changes. He slept and ate and fucked like the rest of them, but through it all never quite became one of them. Not a day went by that Dean didn’t still feel like he had an obligation to keep Cas safe, and not just from the Croats. They were a matched pair, honour-bound to protect one another. He couldn’t see that changing, not while there was a fight left in him.
Responding to Dean’s concern with little more than a sidelong glance and a slight purse of his lips, Cas shrugged and tugged the blanket tighter around him. “I’m not worried,” he said. “There are a lot worse ways to go.”
+
Between Dean and Bobby, there was a lot of indecision over where to go next. Dean was in favour of hitting the coast, Bobby for sticking close to Sioux Falls. For reasons relating to easily defensible territory and its familiarity to other hunters, Bobby seemed to be winning the debate, same as always. Instead, the small motorcade stopped to rest outside of Casper, Wyoming, an unintentional compromise between the two; they headed into the mountains, avoiding grasslands that were too risky and barren and open, in case shit went belly-up again. An old Ranger station seemed as good a place to make camp as any, big enough for everyone to bunk down for the night and an effective shelter from the storm. Dean planned to take a few people into town once they got the lay of the land and the snow started to let up.
The first thing out of Dean’s mouth was, “How the fuck did those Croats get so goddamned close before someone sent up the alarm?” as he slammed the door of his truck. He didn’t expect a good answer-the entirety of the US Military couldn’t defend them from the infected. Cas had the best eyesight out of anyone, but it figured they’d get attacked the first time he agreed to a break, having spent the better part of a week on night watch.
Risa was the first to speak up. “Until now they’ve been easy to spot,” she said grimly. “They barely made a sound coming up to the house last night, stuck to the shadows. A goddamned SWAT team couldn’t have planned it better.”
A look flashed between Dean and Bobby. “Fuckers are adapting, sounds like,” said the older hunter. “It was bound to happen eventually. Pretty soon they’ll be almost impossible to tell apart from the rest of us.”
“Yeah, well, there won’t be a rest of us for much longer if we don’t start paying closer attention. Cas here didn’t even have time to put his boots on.” A couple of the others chuckled, and even one side of Castiel’s mouth went up in a smile.
Suddenly self-conscious about his lover’s goods being the subject of open scrutiny, Dean holstered the gun he hadn’t realized he was still clutching like a security blanket. “Yaeger, grab a team and check the perimeter,” he barked. “Let’s make sure we aren’t bunking down in a nest and we’ll figure out our next steps in the morning. One way or another, we’re gonna need gas and provisions.”
As the team dispersed and went to secure the vehicles for the night, Bobby gestured at the Ranger station and then to where Cas stood off to the side, bare feet turning red from cold. Unsurprisingly, Cas seemed not to care, but Bobby, like Dean, was in the habit of worrying about the things that sometimes went over Castiel’s head. “Go find that idjit something to wear before he freezes his balls off,” he suggested. “The rest of us can wait outside as he gets dressed. We’ll see if we can get that generator running while you’re in there.”
“You just made a non-sexual reference to Cas’s balls,” Dean pointed out smugly, still finding it in him to crack a joke. Bobby rolled his eyes in response and wheeled himself away before Dean could say anything else.
With a sigh, Dean grabbed his duffle out of the truck and wandered over to put an arm around Cas’s neck, an affectionate headlock, and felt indulgent and shitty enough about his lost clothes to press a warm kiss to his temple. He didn’t care what the others had to say about their relationship-Cas was a good soldier and they kept each other from going too crazy. There was so much anger in Dean sometimes, he needed Cas around to keep it in check, keep it from spilling over to the others. Cas, more than likely, needed Dean to remind himself of what he once was, too. It was a good arrangement they had going, easy when everything else was like pulling blood from a stone, even with so much blood already on the ground.
“Let’s go shopping, shall we?” he quipped.
Together they climbed the short set of stairs up to the Ranger station, Dean pausing to pick the lock respectfully, whereas Cas would have broken it off with his residual angel strength. Inside the cabin it was dark and chilly, a bit too cold to hint one way or another how long the building had gone unoccupied. While nothing suggested much of a struggle, Dean still checked each room with his flashlight and gun once again at the ready, just in case. Spotting a couple packages of toilet paper in the bathroom, he made a mental note to tell Chuck about the find later.
In the main room, Cas tried flicking on a few of the lights, to no avail. Giving up, he turned to Dean with his hands on his hips, looking halfway hilarious and sinful with the blanket fallen open to reveal his pale torso, the dark bed of hair around his sex, trailing from his lean stomach. “This will suffice for an evening or two, I think,” he informed Dean. “If we push the furniture aside there will be enough room to lay out the sleeping bags.”
“No privacy for a while, then,” answered Dean with mock exasperation. “Too bad that house got swarmed by Croats; I kind of liked having a whole bedroom to ourselves.”
Cas snorted. “Priorities, Dean,” he reminded. “We were lucky no one got hurt this time.”
“You’re right, though I might still say a few words over that damn jacket of yours later.” Catching the swift roll of Castiel’s eyes-tough crowd tonight-Dean slipped the gun back into his thigh holster and made for the duffle bag. “I’ve got some spare clothes you can wear until we find something else,” he said. “Might be a bit big on you, but it’s better than letting you flash everyone.” This earned him a snort, which Dean ignored, and he beckoned with the hand holding the flashlight. “Come hold this for me.”
Accepting the light, Cas shuffled closer and pressed himself along Dean’s side, a weird combination of curiosity, helpfulness and no doubt intentional distraction, especially when Dean stopped digging through his clothes long enough to feel Cas shift again, rubbing a growing erection up against Dean’s hip. With a sigh, Dean tried to ignore the gentle flop of want in his stomach and shot him a look instead, only to have the flashlight beam aimed directly in his face.
It was almost comedic, the inappropriateness of Castiel’s timing and unstoppable sexual urges, but Cas just blinked innocently and made a nonchalant humming noise that Dean correctly read as encouragement-like he should just drop trou and get on his knees right there, while the rest of the team froze to death outside. At times it was so easy to look about them, to consider the state of the world and everything in it, and ask, ‘This is my life, really?’ But oddly enough, it was Cas and not the world, the idea that Dean should be making a kind of life with a grouchy, sex-crazed ex-Angel of the Lord, that made him stop and mull over this question most often.
“There’s a goddamned blizzard out there,” Dean reminded him. Long fingers crept beneath the hem of his jacket and shirt, finding skin; he almost yelped at the shock of Cas’s icy-cold hands, flinching away to grate out, “You’re not the one Bobby’s gonna ream out if we keep them waiting.”
Smirking, Cas tilted his head and leaned in to nose a gentle kiss behind Dean’s ear with just a hint of tongue, hands still stroking. “We could be fast,” he suggested, adding, “They wouldn’t know,” as if the whole place wouldn’t reek of sex after.
The indecision frayed at Dean’s nerves for a second before he turned and caught Castiel’s fingers in a tight grip, wrestling them down to his sides where they weren’t half so tempting. Still, he leaned in to slide a warm, regretful kiss against Cas’s lips. “Much as it kills me to say it, let’s just get you dressed and get these people in from the cold. Rain check, okay? These are the types of tough calls you gotta live with when you share the fearless leader’s bed.”
Something akin to a pout twitched between them for a moment, and Cas breathed hotly into Dean’s mouth as if considering the faults of this logic. Dean thought he was about to get more grief, more of Castiel’s careful, sweetly-manipulative powers of rationalization, but instead his hands received a brief squeeze. “You aren’t fearless,” Cas murmured unexpectedly. “Fear means there’s still something left to care about. When you lose that, I’ll start to worry about how screwed we all are. But until then…” He trailed off, and pulled back to look at Dean with a shrug.
“Okay, I get your point.” Dean disentangled their hands with a small smile of thanks, grateful as always for Castiel’s odd brand of reassurance. He pressed the flashlight back into Cas’s palm and gestured at the open duffle bag. “Clothes. Then we can talk about how to work out these scary hedonistic tendencies of yours without waking anyone up.”
He dug around for a moment, searching for whichever items he thought would be the most appropriate in terms of size, warmth and utility. Boots they would have to drum up from elsewhere, because Cas had alarmingly big feet for his frame, but for the time being Dean thought they could make do with what he had. Satisfied with his selections, Dean withdrew a pair of frayed jeans and a dark T-shirt from the bag, along with an extra Henley, and socks.
“Feels like an end of an era now that you don’t have your trenchcoat anymore,” he said wistfully, but Cas just huffed, face indifferent.
“It was just a coat. And whatever it might have symbolized before…” He shrugged again. “I’m not that person anymore.”
Dean acknowledged this truth with a jerky nod, feeling foolish for having brought it up at all. Amongst the topics they tended to avoid on a regular basis, Castiel’s diminishing Grace was pretty much at the top of the list, along with Sam’s unknown whereabouts and whether or not this war was remotely winnable.
Quick to change the subject, Dean held up the black boxer briefs with his eyebrows raised. “You want these?” he asked, wiggling them a little in Cas’s direction. “Kinda gross to be wearing another man’s underwear, but it’s not like we haven’t already passed the point of personal boundaries by now. And they’re clean.”
Cas accepted everything else but the briefs. “Those aren’t necessary,” he said. “They’d just get in the way later.” Ignoring the roll of Dean’s eyes, Cas unfolded the t-shirt and shone the flashlight onto it, revealing the faded colours of a Led Zeppelin design. Their eyes met, and Dean saw that Cas’s had gone a bit wide with astonishment. “This is your favourite,” he said. Funny, thought Dean-he didn’t think there was much left out there that could surprise Castiel, much less some crappy T-shirt from a million years ago.
Really, no debate was necessary. Come hell or high water, Dean was going to make sure they slept in their clothes from now own; even undressing to fuck was a bit of an extravagance when they might have to flee at any moment. He would miss seeing Cas spread out and naked under him whenever he felt like it, but having him there in that old T-shirt of Dean’s, smelling of old motor oil and guns and traces of Dean himself, well… that was probably the next best thing.
There was a sharp rap at the door, followed by Risa’s angry voice demanding to know when the hell the rest of them could stop freezing their asses off; both Dean and Cas stifled snorts of laughter, Dean’s trailing off in a sigh and an I-told-you-so expression. He pushed the blanket off Castiel’s shoulders and slid the T-shirt over them instead, nudging his arms up to get the fabric down, and caught the quiet shiver as the chilled cloth whisked over Castiel’s skin. Having Cas stand there naked from the waist down certainly did little to kill his libido, but Dean managed to smile ruefully and give a playful smack to his bare ass as well.
Helpless against Castiel’s sullen glare, Dean pulled away, but not before giving that generous ass a final squeeze, one more appreciative glance before they turned their attention back to the tattered world around them. Grinning, he said, “Keep it.”
Fin