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“Do you want more?” Cas asked, against Dean’s thigh. His thumb strummed gently at the soft, folded-up pocket behind Dean’s knee.
It tickled, but… didn’t.
Dean didn’t know what the answer to that was. If there was an answer. The rope—hemp, Cas had assured him, as if he thought Dean might actually know what the damned difference was between different kinds of rope—rasped gently against his wrists, his ankles, climbing up his shins. He didn’t feel it as much around his thighs, where they were held apart, or his chest.
He could bring his legs just a little closer together, but whenever he tried, it pulled. It was sort of nice, the scrape and pull. He did it again. That squeezed at his thighs.
Cas kissed the bony curve of his kneecap. “Alright,” he murmured, like Dean had said something even when he was pretty sure he hadn’t. Or, had he? Maybe. “Oh, you look so lovely, Dean.” He trailed his fingertips through the rhythmic bands of knots and rope. Dean felt his knife-calluses trickle, tickle, catching on each rope. “This pattern, here, is called ‘hishi-futomomo.’ Each of the four ties binds your calves and shins to your thighs, and the knots between prevent pressure. It is means for support during suspension. I thought you would enjoy the security of it. Do you like it?”
“Mm,” Dean managed, the sound of it warm and blurred. He ran his tongue against the back of his teeth with a soft sigh. It didn’t matter if he liked it—Cas did.
But he did like it. He liked how secure it felt. He couldn’t unbend his legs at all. But why would he want to? He hummed into the gentle constriction of it, content. Cas had given him this.
“Oh, Dean. Come here.”
Come where? With his arms banded together in front of him, wrists to elbows and curled up against his chest, his thighs apart, there was nowhere Dean could go. But there was nowhere Dean wanted to go, either. He settled his back against memory foam, and closed his eyes. Maybe that was what Cas meant?
A small pillow tucked itself behind his neck, supporting the curve of his head. A finger trailed down the bridge of his nose. Dean blinked his eyes open, momentarily startled, but he only got the first sharp hint of cold light before Cas’s palm settled over them, warm and firm. The pressure of his palm against Dean’s eyelids felt very good. His fingers smelled like grain, like rope. “Do you want a blindfold?” Cas asked, gently. “You don’t have to answer aloud if you don’t want. Blink once for yes, twice for no.”
Dean thought about the question, but it seemed to take a long time. He breathed, deeply, but the gentle diamonds of rope crisscrossing his chest and holding his forearms to them in careful angles made themselves known, a tickle and rasp, tickle and rasp. Finally, he blinked once. Or he thought he did. He meant to, anyway.
“Of course.” Cas curved up along him for just long enough to press a kiss to his cheek. “Keep your eyes closed, please. I’m going to turn off the lights anyway.”
Dean didn’t want to open them in the first place. So he didn’t. The red glowing soft behind them dimmed to a dark, comfortable black as the lights came off. The feel of something soft and silky coming to rest over his face, elastic straps tucked gently behind his head with Cas’s fingers carefully making sure his hair didn’t get tangled into them, made him smile.
Cas saw it, of course. Dean didn’t try to hide it: he knew better than to try, in moments like this. That wasn’t what this was about. He felt, more than heard the movement of Cas sitting back on the bed, beside him—the warm curve of his body, the rustle of clothes, ‘cause Cas didn’t take any of his own off.
He felt the whisper of it before Cas’s lips pressed to his, and Dean smiled wider. He felt the soft scrape as a hand cupped his cheek, the snag of them as fingers smoothed back his hair.
“Come here,” Cas said, again, and this time Dean understood what he meant. It sounded like a command, but it was a request.
He nodded, and felt Cas smile into the next kiss at the corner of his mouth.
The next kiss was at Dean’s chin; the next, the cusp of his collarbones. Dean couldn’t feel the rest of them on his skin as Cas pressed his lips to each of the knots anchoring the diamonds of rope, but he could feel the coarse nudge of each of the knots against his chest. Cas wasn’t kissing him anymore, but he was kissing what was holding Dean into himself. That was alright.
Then Cas got to his hands, tucked up against his chest. He kissed each knuckle, the edge of his coat trailing down Dean’s thighs. “I love your hands,” Cas rumbled, with what sounded like pleasure.
“Cas,” Dean murmured, just for the enjoyment of saying his name. His voice sounded too low; it vibrated.
“You’re doing so well,” Cas said, a low, dark purr of praise.
For a second, it didn’t make sense. Why would Cas say that? Dean wasn’t doing anything at all. But Cas nuzzled gently at his bare, untied shoulder, and it didn’t matter. If Cas said it, then, at this moment, it had to be true. Why wouldn’t it?
Dean let the taut lines carry him on his back, supported in the stillness by mattress and immobility as Cas’s hands lingered—touched along the curves of his ribs, to the side, ran down the bare, soft line of the squish of his belly. Dean felt a chuckle curve along his throat at the tickle of it, Cas’s fingertips skirting his hipbones as far as they could go with his legs bound up like this, then up his sides. Apologetically, Cas kissed Dean’s lower lip, but he could feel the tightness that meant Cas was still smiling. Cas tugged at a rope that stretched just under a rib, adjusting gently, and that made the rest of the complicated series of ties across Dean’s chest and arms rub pleasantly against his skin.
The back and forth of Cas’s fingers counting each of his ribs, sliding along his slide—up one, then another, then another, felt like dominos falling. Tick. Tick. Tick. When the last one fell, Cas would just set them all up again.
“What’s this one?” Dean asked, voice a throaty blur.
“Hmm?” Cas murmured, and this time, it was against Dean’s shoulder.
Dean didn’t try to move, but he wiggled his fingers. The rope didn’t budge, but he didn’t expect it to. “This one.”
“Dragonfly sleeve,” Cas answered. “And hishi karada, on your chest. I am very happy you want to know, Dean.”
Dean tilted his head towards Cas’s, and felt the press of Cas’s lips against his cheek. There was a soft scratch of scruff against scruff as he nuzzled. Sometimes Dean shaved before they did this, sometimes he didn’t. The friction felt good, like the tension of the rope against his skin. “Like it,” he whispered, because it was a secret. The secret—just theirs. Shy, because it wasn’t for him to like or dislike, but he did.
Cas slipped down beside him, and an arm wrapped over his waist and hips, more secure than the ropes. Cloth dipped between the straight lines of the ties, and the edge of Cas’s trench coat felt like a blanket. His chin settled on the little dip where Dean’s shoulder met chest, like it had been molded just for him. “Thank you for telling me,” he murmured. “That was very brave. I’ll remember.”
Dean smiled again. Silly. Cas never forgot a damned thing.
Cas’s hand lingered on his hip, and traced up to where Dean had once had a handprint. It settled there, on a patch left bare by ropes and ties. Yes.
Dean floated, Cas’s arm heavy on his chest. Cas kissed his ear. Kissed other places. His fingertips counted each hair on Dean’s head. Dean had asked for the number, once. Cas had known it.
The muscles of the backs of his shoulders were just starting to feel tight when Cas stopped stroking and petting, and carefully pushed away. Dean felt the mattress shift and when Cas abandoned him, his breath caught, bereft. He yanked at the ties on his arms—
“Easy,” Cas whispered, in the dark. His hand brushed Dean’s knee, rounded itself against the hard curve of it like he could soften Dean’s own sharp edges by doing it. “I’m here. I would not leave you.”
“Not like this,” Dean said, and felt an old, familiar discontent try to rise, sharp and bright and harsh, like fluorescent lighting. Not like this, anyway.
“Not ever,” Cas answered, and it sounded like an angel’s promise—one he didn’t know how to break, because it was a part of him. “Not of my own will or choice.” His other hand pressed on Dean’s other knee. “You’re so good, beloved. You deserve so much more.”
Dean didn’t know about that, but he was here—safe in the dark, and his eyelashes moved against the soft silk covering his eyes. He deserved what Cas wanted him to have, what Cas offered him. He deserved…
“You deserve praise, Dean Winchester,” Cas said, with the power of a vow. “You have worked so hard to be strong, to protect. But you also deserve happiness. You deserve love.”
Dean didn’t know if he’d ever believe that, any of that. But he knew Cas would keep on saying it until, someday, maybe he could.
And curved like this, bound in harsh rope that would leave soft blurred lines against his skin, crease his thighs and shins for a day, maybe two… maybe he wanted to believe it was possible.
Someday, maybe.
“Okay,” Dean said. It was just a breath. Maybe it wasn’t those words at all.
Cas kissed his knee. “Very good.”
Dean hadn’t realized he was hard, because it hadn’t mattered. The pleasure started with a slow, wet-slick lick up his length, ending with a small flick of the tongue off the tip of his cock. For the first time, he wasn’t sure it was even happening. He didn’t know whether the slip and sip and ache of it was just a memory at the back of his mind, because curved like this, his mind was a quiet place, and Dean hadn’t had that that often.
The soft, suckling kiss against his very tip made reality blur, sweeter than memories. A hand combed gently down his left thigh, skipping against the lines of rope.
“Cas,” he murmured.
“Mmm,” Cas agreed, the vibration of it buzzing softly against Dean’s skin.
He didn’t shift Dean, but he didn’t need to—not with Dean’s thighs already parted, not with Dean’s cock already curving, aching and cold-hot in the air as Cas made his way down with small, lapped licks, his head moving in a bob. It was kisses as gentle as those that Cas placed on Dean’s shoulders, his nose, his freckles. Cas caught the soft web of skin that ran from the underside of Dean’s cock to the front of his sack between his lips, and there was no bite to it, no nibble. Just a gentle, suckling pull.
For the first time, Dean pulled harder at the ropes around him—but he wasn’t even sure why. It wasn’t to get out of them. He didn’t need to. Maybe it was just to pull, but they were secure. They always were. There was nothing to fight against.
He didn’t need to fight.
He didn’t need to.
Dean settled.
“Oh, yes,” Cas sighed, and the breath of it against Dean’s groin made him shiver. “Yes,” and Cas took Dean into his mouth as if that was what he had been waiting for. He bobbed. Once, twice, the blade of his tongue a swirl. Then again, uncountable. Dean was used to the sharp bite of pleasure, but there was nothing sharp about the pull of this, leading him into immobility. He couldn’t even pant. His breath came in deliberate draws. Cas’s tongue tickled carefully into his slit, and Dean didn’t know whose wetness it was gathering: Cas’s or his own.
Cas laved him slow—top, then bottom, then each side, deliberate straight lines of tongue—cardinal directions of wet heat, a circumference of it along the ridge where shaft became head. It was a tease, but the affection in it bound Dean as surely as the ropes. When Cas came back, it was to breathe warm on just the head of his cock, taking it between his lips. He pulled in soft, gentle smacks. The noise of them filled Dean’s core to pulsing.
Dean’s lips parted, but he couldn’t ask. He didn’t get to ask, not at times like this.
“Yes, Dean,” Cas murmured, his lips a release, breath moving into the tender stretch just under Dean’s belly button. “Come whenever you’d like. Whenever feels good for you. You have been so wonderful.”
He returned.
Dean did come, at some point. Eventually, after time ceased to mean anything for how deeply he was melted, like he could slip out of the ropes without undoing the ties. It was a long ripple of it, as slow as Cas’s mouth moving in careful suction, the purl of pressure and lips drawing it out, out, out. When Dean’s back arched, he found he was still solid: the ropes abraded, sweetly, at his chest.
Cas coaxed at his orgasm with the tip of his tongue, flirting gently with it back and forth until it was spent and shaky and trembling. Or maybe that was just Dean. Dean felt Cas swallow, the purse and ripple of it, tight and neat. There would be no evidence that anyone could see.
Cas would, eventually, unbind him. The world would, again, be fluorescent and harsh. He would have back the motion of hands that killed, legs that ached, a mind that moved too quickly for its own good, pushing in deep spirals of responsibility and violence and loathing. The fury would have him again. The family business was not kind to its employees.
But that was later.
Cas pressed his hand on the silk covering over Dean’s eyes; Dean nodded, and Cas lifted it away. The room was still dim and soft. Cas was barely visible in the darkness, but Dean liked the shadow of his jaw and the way the wet, swollen curve of his mouth still shimmered.
“I love you,” Cas told him, looking into his eyes as he tucked a fingertip into a knot. “And I will say it as many ways as you need to hear it.”
Dean smiled, and felt the ropes loosen.
~fin~