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~*~
Oxygen used, he can’t quite bring himself to take a breath.
How long had he been holding it, never letting it out in case it emptied him.
Of words unsaid. Of the lies he’s told to himself. Of an answer to the questions in Castiel’s eyes.
Empties him of his fears. The doubts he holds as self-evident truths.
Who is he, without those?
Who will he be if he exhales.
The one who ruins him. More completely than all the ways the angel has already been debased and diminished.
Though in his heart, Dean knows he already has.
I did it — all of it — for you.
They didn’t know each other, then.
Maybe didn’t even like each other.
Yet those words have echoed, resonating louder in the years since through every trial and bloody fight, every death they’ve witnessed, perpetrated, and suffered. Through every lie, and every buried truth.
That was a fuckton of responsibility, you asshole, Dean thinks, hauling himself by the bootstraps out of the dank well of memory he’d fallen into somewhere during their study. The book he’s meant to be skimming for Aramaic is slumped in his lap. He blinks away his resentment, unaware of when he’d lifted his eyes from the page to the face on his right, still earnest in concentration and oblivious to Dean’s distraction. He begins mentally outlining the angel’s profile, like he means to photoshop him into another reality, but the way the lamplight catches Cas’s cheekbone paints shadows on his face in such a way Dean wants to measure them with his fingertips to reconfirm his friend’s substance in this one.
Castiel discards the book he’s been leafing through onto the pile in front of their outstretched legs. “I’m not sure I can take much more of this,” he declares, the sandpaper in his voice catching in the quiet surfaces of the bunker library. Dean’s brain does a double-take despite knowing full well the angel was referring to the examination of seemingly countless files and books that held the promise of answers but haven’t delivered. At some point they’d ended up on the floor, meshed from shoulder to hip and leaning on the empty couch despite its initial six-foot-five occupant having retired to bed hours ago. “You should sleep, Dean,” his friend adds with a side glance.
Maybe it’s the way those words settle on him—laced with endearment and delivered with remorseless concern and a featherlite touch to Dean’s thigh, like Castiel wants to infuse his wish with his scant grace—which finally punctures the seal. Maybe it’s the tiny flare along his bare forearm as the hairs are illuminated; his broken angel, wholly in the body leaning warmth into Dean’s side.
When Dean lifts his left arm, it’s deliberate. Though he feels outside himself, bones like concrete and the skin covering them rubber, he no longer wants to stay insulated.
Before Castiel can withdraw his hand Dean reaches, decisively tucking his fingers under the wide thumb and squeezing. The clasp is returned, gently obliging. No, Dean thinks. This isn’t what he intends. They’d shared touches like this in Purgatory, or after near misses. The kind of reassurances offered and received when stripped of everything, divine and human. Touches that flickered on the edge of something, like a badly tuned radio. Malnourished gestures that have haunted their shared spaces. This time, he has something to give.
Uncurling his grip, he ghosts fingertips over Castiel’s knuckles and slots them in the gaps, the fastening punctuated by a frail, wet gasp; from which of them he can’t tell. He turns the angel’s palm and lets his gaze roam, beginning at Castiel's bare wrist, up and over the divinely unwrinkled white dress shirt to his jawline, and he’s startled in the best way. An almost comical confusion parts Castiel’s mouth, but his eyes harbor something bewildered before they drop demurely to the side. It’s the last thing Dean expected to see on the angel’s face and for a second it’s so fucking cute he can’t stand it.
For a second, he forgets he’s shit-scared.
Eyes locking on Castiel’s lips, he drops his shoulder to press sideways, catching the corner of the mouth just as it’s turned from him, only enough to avoid the kiss. It’s not a rebuff – he can tell by the smirk pulling at the cheek he follows upwards, pressing affection to the soft patch in front of Castiel's ear.
His angel is shy.
“Dean.” The sigh of his name trails down Dean’s neck as Castiel inches away and risks a glimpse. But Dean doesn’t allow the retreat for long. Crystalizing his grip, in conviction, or perhaps a lifeline for them both, he plunges into the tumult of Castiel’s stare. Hanging his forehead forward until their brows bump and noses slide, he takes a small inhale before navigating surely to Castiel’s mouth.
Of all the first kisses Dean’s shared, he knows instantly this will be the most memorable. Kissing an angel should be nothing less, right? A part of him waits for the other shoe to drop, like it always does. For his brother to interrupt, or for Castiel to flap away like a bird caught out in the open. But no intrusion comes, leaving nothing but them, here and now, making a tentative offering.
Dean’s breath slowly expands like hope, his fingers bracing the curve over Castiel's wrist to find a fluttering pulse he didn't know existed. He should have, he thinks. He’s felt his friend’s heartbeat under stolen contact before. “Dean,” Castiel whispers against his smile. An acknowledgment or one-word soliloquy Dean isn’t sure. “De—” he starts again, but Dean snatches it away, swallows it as he twists his weight and lifts his palms in careful prayer. The hinges of Castiel’s jaw slot into his hands and the angel sags into him, into his touch, his veneration.
Mouths now matched in intent, Dean deepens his worship, taking his time to learn the arc of Castiel’s upper lip, each crease in the lower. He learns the texture of the crest of his cheek, the flavor of his tongue, the growing tremor of Castiel’s want shuddering his iron frame.
“Be gentle with me,” Dean implores, hoarse against stubble, and in spite of how he’s ascended to the angel’s lap to pin him against the furniture. Maybe he’s asking it of himself, though there are parts of him that want whatever comes next to be anything but gentle.
Castiel is faithfully tender as Dean finds himself tipped backward, cradled to the floor among the scattered books, floating for a moment like how he’s imagined more than once Castiel laid him in his grave fresh from hell. Above him, fabric stretched to capacity across his shoulders, the angel’s cobalt eyes lock onto him: dazed, triumphant, and panicked all at once. Dean guides him downward so he’s cloaked in what amounts to a hug, Castiel wrapping an arm above his head and pressing his face against his neck, shivering into the crook.
“Cas?” Dean asks, hovering between amused and unsure. But then his mouth is being claimed, his body compressed against the linoleum. Castiel kisses like he fights: precise and powerful, urgent but restrained, and Dean needs more. Wants more, now he’s given himself permission to want. And receive.
“Cas,” he manages to whisper, something half-formed striving to break free. The angel gives him room to continue, but he founders in the depths of Castiel’s eyes, as close and bottomless as they’ve ever been. “I…I’m—
“Dean, promise me…” Castiel interjects urgently, hands planted beside Dean’s ears, “Promise me you’ll stay.”
“That’s my line,” says Dean, huffing a strained, quiet laugh that dies on the sharpness in Castiel’s eyes. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” he quips, regretting it as soon as it leaves his tongue as thunder gathers instead in the hovering angel.
“Dean Winchester, if you think I will let you...” Castiel pauses, visibly stowing the censure before starting over. “Loving you has caus–” Dean halts him with a bruising kiss, then drops his head back to the floor.
“Say it again,” he pleads. “The second part,” he adds to Castiel’s perplexed frown.
The angel’s brow softens in understanding, but the determination in his expression remains. “I love you, Dean,” he affirms. Dean closes his eyes, urging the words to leach outward from where they land like a punch in the pit of his stomach. “I have loved and love you.” The second avowal arrives rumbled against his clavicle, and he feels warmth beginning to trickle up towards his sternum. The third, fourth, and fifth are accompanied by deft kisses bestowed on the shell of his ear, his temple, the tip of his nose. Droplets begin to inch into his limbs like the first summer rains finding the cracks in parched earth. The benedictions continue, muffled and mumbled against Dean’s chin, his hair, then back to his lips. He drinks in each gravelly syllable so it can seep into every vein and capillary. He needs to be bloated with it. Then, maybe, it won’t all evaporate and he won’t turn to dust.
When it came down to it he knew he was a needy little shit.
“Dean?” The question draws him out of the haze he’d once again slipped into. He tries to focus.
“Mm?”
Castiel’s eyebrows pinch, like he’s weighing a hefty decision, though there’s a hint of mischief lurking in the darkened stare. “I don’t mean to be forward, but may we continue in your room?” The proposal is followed by the most endearing blush Dean has ever had the pleasure of seeing on the angel, and he’s pleased to have caused a few over the years. “Only this floor is, well, the floor, and you look ready to fall asleep, and I’m sure you’d prefer to not see Sam walk in.”
A grin pulls at Dean’s cheeks at the stumbling qualifications. “Only if you promise to be less polite ‘bout it,” he chides, hastening the rise of pink to the angel’s ears in just the way he hoped. “C’mon,” he says, sensing Castiel’s hesitation as they pick themselves up off the ground. He stuffs down his own as he leads his friend by the hand along the dim corridor to his room. It’s not like he hasn’t spent the night in here before, Dean reasons against the mistrust prowling the back of his brain. In his bed, for that matter, when he’s been injured, or the nightmares start stringing together. Just not like this. Not since…
The world shut out, he toes off his boots and peels out of his button-down while the angel guards the foot of the bed, arms limp. “You just gonna stand there, Cas?” he teases.
“No. I…I’m just not sure what you—” Dean doesn’t prolong his friend’s torture, stepping into his space to start working at his shirt buttons. “I suppose, I’m surprised,” he finishes faintly.
“This ok?” Dean checks, flicking a glance at Castiel’s face, receiving a silent nod in return. His angel doesn’t say a whole lot but he’s rarely speechless, and he quite likes having the upper hand. Pushing the fabric from Castiel’s shoulders, he decides to slow down a little. He wants to remember this. He needs to remember it, in case this memory becomes a lighthouse.
He rests his mouth at the juncture of Castiel’s shoulder as he pulls at the stubborn shirt cuffs, finally tossing the garment to the floor while issuing a soft bite, satisfied with the sharp inhale close to his ear. “Surprised at what?” he finally enquires, running fingertips around the rim of the belt at his friend’s waist. “That I want this?”
“That you know I do.” The reply is said with enough fervor it stops Dean in his tracks.
He swallows, a spike of anxiety throwing him off balance. “I didn’t know,” he replies, voice turning reedy. “I wish I’d known. Earlier, that is. I didn’t know, Cas.”
Finding his friend’s eyes already searching for his, he waits, stricken by indecision. But the next question is delivered so softly his unease calms as quickly as it arose. “What is it you want, Dean?”
The answer arrives like the crash of a wave, flooding his heart with the remnants like it always does. But as much as he wants to, desperately wishes to, he can’t say it. Not yet. So he says the next best thing. “Just be here .”
Outwear soon discarded, Dean pulls his friend down to the pillow and adjusts the covers over them both, only to have Castiel envelop him. They meld together trading murmurs and kisses, and emboldened explorations, Dean drinking in every brush of fingertips and budding disclosure, every spark where bare skin meets. Gradually, he turns supple and formless, the angel wholly engulfing him inch by inch like the heartbeat tide of a mountain-deep lake.
Dean wakes, feeling like a stone cast on the bottom. Launching for the surface he fights for air, each inhale lancing his lungs with shards of ice. Looking down, he's clothed, boots and all, and beside him his bed is empty and cool.
Gone
You didn’t even give me a chance…
A snuffled whine from the dog steals through the gap under his door, but it’s not enough to distract his panic rising to a cacophony as the dream ebbs. Helpless, Dean instinctively draws up his knees to curl on his side, but grief picks him up and effortlessly hurls him back to sink into the dark center of the pool. He knows no one is there to notice the ripples.
~*~