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“Just keep the volume down enough for me to sleep,” Dean tells Castiel while making himself comfortable on the motel bed. The one bed, for the only one of them that sleeps. Even though Castiel had remarked on the pointlessness of it, Dean had still gone through the motions of asking for an extra pillow and blanket for the couch.
Not about to sleep again, now or ever, Castiel perches on the foot of the bed, his attention nominally on the TV’s glow in the otherwise dark room. Behind his back, Dean has stripped down to a t-shirt and switched into soft pajama pants. He makes Castiel think of the past, of the Dean-that-was, a young man sleeping atop the sheets, fully dressed down to his boots. A Dean who didn’t want or trust Castiel watching over him.
“Cas?” the Dean of now says.
“Yes?” Castiel answers, taking the excuse to look back at him.
At Dean, in bed, dressed for comfort.
At Dean, in bed, asking for Castiel’s attention.
“Turn the volume down,” Dean says, not irritably. He shifts around, pushing the blanket down, adjusting the sheet over his body. “We’ll miss our rendezvous with Sam tomorrow if I’m falling asleep at the wheel.”
“Of course,” Castiel answers. He rises to his feet and backtracks to where he’d left the remote: on the bedside table opposite Dean. He sits with his back against the headboard, his hip near Dean’s head. He puts his feet up on the comforter and looks straight ahead, adjusting the TV’s volume.
If he looks at Dean now, Dean might tell him to move.
Castiel doesn’t look.
Dean’s silence stretches, thick indecision straining into flimsy strands of indifference. Finally, Dean huffs a tiny sigh and rolls onto his side, his back to Castiel.
Castiel looks then.
At the side of Dean’s face. At his hair fading into the shadows upon the pillow. At the curve of his ear and the jut of his shoulder.
Close enough to touch.
Castiel does not touch.
He watches. Only that. And listens. And breathes, even though he doesn’t need to. Tasting the air. Looking. Not touching.
He waits until Dean’s breathing evens out with slumber before he lets himself think about touching.
Because there is trust in Dean sleeping. There is trust in Dean with his back turned. There is a trust Castiel cannot break, and thus bound into inaction, he can safely think about touching.
The TV plays commercials, no longer offering even the pretense of a distraction. Instead, it tints the shadows in one color after another. Once, a faint pink like a blush. Not the red flush of anger, but that soft tinge on a softly dressed Dean.
Castiel does not lick his lips in consideration.
He has more restraint than that.
He has restraint enough to look at Dean in the near dark, occupy the same bed, and value Dean for his friendship, and his trust, and his compassion.
He values these aspects very much.
And then Dean shifts, adjusting just the one leg. One knee shifting higher, one leg moving over the other. The shape of Dean’s rear changing its curve beneath the sheet.
Castiel is no longer breathing. Because he doesn’t need to. Not because, sometimes, he forgets.
An angel’s mind is an immense and mighty thing. It can hold, at once, both the rhythm of air and the fact that Dean, being a human, possesses a posterior.
The gluteus maximus allows humans to stand upright. It is an evolutionary advantage for a pursuit predator, which humans are in general and which Dean is in particular. Due to driving, Dean largely sits on his, but it is still present and very functional.
Castiel looks at the shape of it, obscured by the sheet. Unlike Dean’s arms and shoulders, unlike Dean’s face and head, it is a piece of Dean that Castiel has never touched with his hands.
Castiel continues to not touch.
He pulls his attention elsewhere, to better continue not touching.
The thickness of Dean’s thigh, draped in cotton and shadow. The minute impressions of his feet, lost in the jumble of the comforter, pushed down. And higher, the gulf behind his gently folded knees. The active absence of that place, so much like the vacuum behind Dean’s spine. Empty areas, easily filled.
Castiel turns his head and looks at the TV. Stares at its glow, not seeing, too much blinded by a different afterimage.
Dean’s back, still curved. Dean’s knees, still bent. But pictured upright. Formerly upright.
Dean, bent. Bent over… Anything.
Everything.
The thought cascades in an instant, rippling from one location to another.
Dean bent over the desk in his room. Over the kitchen table. Over the Impala’s trunk, or hood.
Dean, allowing himself to bend, to be bent.
Dean, completely shielded by Castiel’s own body.
Protected.
Held.
Just that. Just the logical escalation from watching Dean’s back to covering it.
Of course just that.
...But wanting more than that.
Dean wanting more than that. Dean making that decision.
Dean turning over and holding Castiel against his front. Not the way Dean normally does, not with arms alone.
Dean’s legs wrapping around his waist, or a foot hooked around the back of Castiel’s thigh. Dean pulling Castiel in with the utmost of finite human strength, and Castiel moved regardless.
Dean reaching for him in every way possible.
Dean touching, and thus declaring permission. Invitation. Declaring Castiel welcome. Clutching him tight to implore him to stay.
Staring at the side of Dean’s sleeping face, Castiel bites the inside of his own cheek.
He should stop.
He can stop.
He has restraint enough for that.
But he has restraint enough, too, to look at Dean’s clothed body, to picture Dean’s body otherwise, and not give himself away.
Minimal imagination is required, not when Castiel has already been granted the intimacies of friendship. Of the way Dean’s body moves when he drops his jeans and kicks his way free in just his underwear. This, Castiel focuses on. The tiny, quick wiggle as Dean pulls on his pajama pants, while endearing, is temporarily ignored. Temporarily forgotten. As if Dean in his customary numerous layers would come to bed with Castiel with his legs so bare.
Dean lives in those layers, sheathed in jacket after jacket, shirt after shirt. And yet. Those needn’t be discarded.
Merely his jeans, falling to mid-thigh. Merely his boxer briefs, following that path.
Castiel could do similarly, could do even less. Trouser fly unzipped, then the open fly of his boxers used.
Such small, simple actions.
Legs bound by his jeans, Dean wouldn’t be able to pull Castiel in with them. It would be the other way around, Dean’s back to Castiel’s chest. Castiel fitting them together. Dean, trusting him to the point of physical vulnerability.
Castiel would heal him, of course. Any strain, any discomfort. He could heal him throughout the act itself. He could thread his grace through Dean’s body, filling Dean on two planes of physicality. Pleasuring Dean in two realms of sensation.
Rocking into him. Covering his body. Holding Dean between himself and another, less sturdy surface.
The war table in the bunker.
The tiles of the shower.
The concrete walls of the garage.
Anywhere Dean willed it.
Because, of course, Dean would have to will it. That is the entire point.
Dean only ever does what he chooses to do. There is no forcing him. There is no intimidating him.
There is only Dean, with his will, his priorities, his decisions.
His desires.
There are times, precious, rare, when Dean has asked Castiel to help fulfill his desires.
A light in his eyes, an eager twist to his lips as he said, “Hey, Cas, y’know what would be awesome? ”
Castiel had carried two recliner armchairs into the newly appointed “Dean Cave” as Dean had converted beer kegs into light fixtures. Castiel had carried in a Foosball table. A jukebox. With each new item, Dean’s joy had glowed ever brighter. They’d carried in the bookshelves together, due to the awkwardness of size, Dean chattering away the entire time.
Most precious of all: the confusion on Dean’s face when Castiel referred to the second chair as Sam’s.
“Dude, no,” Dean had said, outright dismissive of the idea. “This is my space. Fortress of Dean-a-tude.”
“Two chairs,” Castiel had replied, gesturing.
“Uh, yeah. How am I supposed to make you watch my movies if you’re standing the whole time? That’d be weird, Cas.”
Castiel had smiled, and Dean had smiled back, their expressions mismatched—Dean at imagined absurdity, Castiel at a revelation.
A space for Dean.
A space for Dean, with Castiel presumed to be already inside it.
Castiel, permitted entry.
Dean, open to him.
In the motel, far from the place Castiel doesn’t dare call home, he watches Dean’s sleeping breaths. The gentle rise and fall of him. The exposed expanse of his back, the undefended territory of his nape.
Dean could open further.
Perhaps Dean presumes himself already open. Assumes Castiel would recognize his awarded place and move into it on his own.
Maybe, in Dean’s mind, there is that second unoccupied armchair, waiting.
In Castiel’s mind, he has replaced those two chairs with a love seat. They continue to sit side by side, now with Dean’s arm slung over his shoulders. Their legs press against each other from hip to knee, and the only place Castiel can put his hand is upon Dean’s thigh.
Were Castiel to fit himself against Dean in this hotel room, chest to Dean’s back, their legs pressed together all the way down, there would be many more places he might put his hand. Were Castiel to start, he would start high, hand over heart as if he might steal away a metaphor. He would trail lower, firmly, so as not to tickle. Dean wouldn’t appreciate that sensation. Or, more precisely, Dean wouldn’t appreciate his own giggle.
That would have to come later. Later, should Castiel succeed in the decade long endeavor to convince Dean to embrace his own joy. Dean, embracing happiness. Castiel, embracing Dean.
The same thing, really.
Castiel watches that space, the one against Dean’s back where he himself isn’t. The one where he could be. The place he could take for himself, and destroy in the taking.
But, oh, to take it.
To imagine the taking.
To see himself stripping off layers and slipping between the sheets. Fitting his arm around Dean’s chest, his lips to Dean’s nape. Inhaling. Savoring.
Sitting with his hands clenched together in his lap, his legs crossed at the ankles in self-restraint, Castiel inhales from his current, friend-appropriate distance. The fading scent of familiar laundry detergent only partially masks the day’s dried sweat. All those organic human odors, tinged by diet, obfuscated by habits of cleanliness. Castiel can fill himself up with these.
He will.
He will breathe Dean in, and look, and not touch.
He is allowed to breathe.
He is allowed to look.
He is not permitted to slide his hands beneath Dean’s shirt.
He is not permitted to drag Dean tight against his chest. Nor is he to persuade Dean that this cage of arms is his new home.
More commandments:
Castiel shall not fit his body against Dean’s and persuade him that this is the meaning of relief.
Castiel shall not trespass upon Dean’s body and persuade him that this is the truth of pleasure.
Castiel shall not trespass upon Dean’s heart and persuade him that this is owed.
But.
If he could.
Castiel pictures it.
The if.
Dean, open. Arms wide with welcome. Eyes alert with deliberate choice. And…
Castiel swallows, an all too human motion he oughtn’t need to perform.
He swallows, picturing Dean’s ass open to him. The trust. The vulnerability. The things Dean prefers to act out rather than state.
It’s about the trust, Castiel reminds himself, hands in his lap, eyes on his sleeping friend. Dean trusting Castiel to care for him, to heal him, to be good for him.
Because Castiel could be good for him. He can learn to be. He could use his grace in conjunction with his body. He could manipulate Dean’s nerve endings in ways no human could match. He could take Dean, be taken into Dean, and convince his lover’s body that even a motionless hold was sublime.
He could breathe his grace, breathe himself into Dean’s waiting mouth. He could touch Dean from the inside in so many ways. He could be so deep within him as to make separation foreign.
He could make Dean cling to him. Reach for him. Hunger for him.
He…
Castiel comes back to himself as Dean makes a very particular sort of sound in his sleep.
Almost a grunt. Somewhat a groan. Slightly higher.
Less pained.
More needful.
Castiel stares. Not at the wisps of grace that have escaped his own body and twined around Dean’s sleeping form. No, not at this leaking proof of his own cracked restraint.
At Dean, affected, shifting and seeking in his sleep.
His eyes moving beneath their closed lids, Dean rolls over, palm landing on the bed between them. Fingertips close to the side of Castiel’s thigh, Dean fists the sheet and furrows his brow.
And Castiel, for all his sins, gains another: he hesitates.
He does not pull his grace in.
He does not remove his influence from Dean’s body.
He thinks, instead, as he has been thinking, of fucking Dean against every possible surface he’s ever seen. Of Dean on his knees, praying around Castiel’s cock. Of Dean on his back, legs wrapping around Castiel’s waist.
With a quiet moan, Dean grinds his hips into the mattress.
Castiel should stop.
Dean’s cheeks flush.
Castiel should stop.
Dean’s lips part.
Castiel should…
Dean nuzzles against the pillow, and Castiel barely manages to keep himself outside of Dean’s dreams.
He could enter them. He could change them. He could leave a sense of unreality to cover his presence.
Shame and desire battle within him, and only their reflection on Dean’s face turns the tide.
Wresting his gaze away, Castiel drags his grace back inside, traps it tight within himself. He turns and stands and leaves the bed, his grace restrained so completely as to render his extremities numb.
Behind him, still sleeping, Dean makes a noise of both confusion and arousal.
Castiel, weak, looks back.
Only faintly illuminated by the glow of the long-ignored TV, Dean lies beneath the sheet. His arm stretches out, palm resting in the warmth of Castiel’s vacated spot. Whether sincere or compelled, the motion transfixes Castiel all the same.
He watches throughout the rest of the night, though of course he’ll claim to have viewed multiple movies and several infomercials for ill-conceived products. He watches Dean and he watches himself. He forbids his restraint from cracking again.
When morning arrives, an agony of time later, Castiel slips outside to the motel’s vending machine. He returns with a row of tiny donuts, crinkling within thin plastic. He adapts to the idiosyncrasies of the motel room’s coffeemaker. He places these symbols of contrition at Dean’s bedside table and retreats to the single desk chair.
He pretends to watch the TV.
He pretends not to notice Dean’s waking moment of confusion at Castiel’s absence from the bed.
He pretends, most of all, not to take pleasure in Dean’s subsequent scan of the room, or in Dean’s resulting relief at finding himself still protected.
“Hm? Oh, hey. Coffee.” Rubbing at his eyes with the heel of one hand, Dean props himself up and reaches for the paper cup. “Awesome.” An almost absent remark, that word. A grumble blown across the steaming liquid. He opens the packet of tiny donuts and eats nearly all of them before asking, one cheek bulging, “Where’d these come from?”
“Vending machine,” Castiel says, nodding toward the door, his vessel’s eyes on the TV.
“Aww, you got bored waiting for me to wake up?” Dean teases, food having appeased his morning irritability into playfulness.
“Bored, yes,” Castiel answers with the ease of a practiced liar.
“Nothing good on the boob tube the whole night?”
“I didn’t find anything worth watching,” Castiel lies, eyes tracing Dean’s features.
“Yeah, they’ve only got like ten channels or something,” Dean says with a careless shrug. “Lemme shower, then we can hit the road.”
Castiel glances toward the bathroom.
Castiel looks to Dean.
“If it’s all the same to you,” Castiel says, “I think I’ll wait outside.”