Girls had always told Dean that he had a nice body. But now he looked at himself critically in the mirror every chance he got, and there was just no comparison. He was toned, more or less, not round. There was little to hold onto in the back, if you were looking for that sort of thing.
Evidently Cas was, because after Sam's observation Dean realized that every girl he'd seen the former angel go home with had well-placed curves. He'd seen his friend slip his arm around the flavor of the evening and let his hand linger in the small of her back, in that particular hollow made by a rounded bottom.
It was just physiology, as Cas said a million times when he saw his friend's unhappiness at Castiel's new success with the ladies. But Dean didn't really blame the poor guy for getting his kicks however he could get them. The new human was still figuring out what goes where. Dean's birds and bees lesson from way back when Cas first incarnated haunted him now with the "here's how tab C goes in slot A" lesson about the other way he could get with girls.
Now, imagining Cas trying out that lesson with his latest female conquest caused Dean endless hours of masturbatory misery as he imagined Cas' explorations into that gloriously naughty place.
It might not be so painful if Dean hadn't been in Cas' position so many times before and knew that there would always be another girl's body to discover. Dean still dug chicks, but something had happened when Castiel went from being a meat puppet directed by an electron cloud and became Cas con Carne. To know that each hair on the newly-human arm was connected to a nerve that mainlined into Castiel. For Dean to now graze the back of this man's neck in the middle of a fight and know that he felt that, not through several jacked-up nerve connections and across another life form, but Cas felt it—
Dean couldn't bounce back from that.
The word "bounce" seared at his awareness and he kicked himself for even thinking it. Knowing that Cas was at this moment underneath some floozy who was bouncing her way to ecstasy on top of the brand-new, very curious human—it was an image that Dean played over and over in his mind until gradually the head thrown back in gluttonous pleasure had short hair instead of long. Cas' hands were sliding down from muscular shoulders and a broad back to a narrow waist that ended in…
Hips that Cas was cupping with total absorption. In the daydream, Dean was always looking back and watching the pleasure he was able to give Cas. The throaty voice of the ex-angel as he gave guttural approval to their movements made a totally alien whimper well up in Dean's throat. No chick had ever made him whimper, but the vision was always replete with coos and pleas coming from a Dean that he could scarcely recognize as himself.
After comparing his physique to every woman and man he saw, Dean was getting somewhat self-conscious. He wasn't flabby by any means, but he didn't have that all-over good shape that guys who worked out did. He now detected this muscle done in his brother because Sam did his pull-ups and pushups every morning, unfazed by Dean's heckling from under the covers as the older brother clung to a few more moments of sleep.
Dean tried to join Sam a few mornings, claiming a desire to be more flexible in a fight, but the teasing Sam dished back was too much. So he went to a gym.
Transients as they were, it was easy to get a trial membership at a gym, Dean discovered, so he started making a point to go in whatever town they were in, rather than hit the bars. "I'm getting a little chubby as I get on in years and the beers are going straight to my gut," Dean explained away this new habit of his. Through much repetition, he was able to make Sam see fat that wasn't there, and Dean was left to his healthier lifestyle with the minimum of ribbing.
Just because you can't have the one you want, it doesn't mean you can't make yourself more worthy of them, he reasoned as he began eating vegetables other than potatoes and went into withdrawal from the trans fats that must have been gluing his system together.
Dean was actually losing weight, not what he wanted at all, so after a workout session he hit the shop in the gym's lobby where you could buy unpronounceable things that claimed to bulk you up or thin you out, as you chose.
"Hate to break it to you, friend, but that's not going to do what you want," a voice said over his shoulder.
"It's not going to turn me into Schwarzenegger within a month?" Dean asked, turning around with protein powder in hand to see who was talking to him.
A guy a couple inches shorter than Dean, maybe 5' 10", was smiling at him in a friendly way. "No, take it from someone who knows, I've tried a lot of this stuff, and some of it has an ingredients list a mile long. The natural route worked a lot better for me than the unnatural way." He allowed himself to be evaluated the way guys could only do in a gym.
"You look pretty cut," Dean observed. His eyes got caught on the man's backside. It was a majestic bottom, firm, round, everything that Dean had been wishing he could try out on Cas.
"I have my methods, and you can see the results," the man said, and Dean blushed a little. "Hey, no sweat, let's have something at the juice bar and I'll tell you how I reached my fitness goals."
A year ago, Dean was thinking, it would be totally ridiculous for him to be drinking carrot juice, in the first place, and in the second, talking about bodies with another man. He was so eager he bought the guy's juice.
"Thanks. I'm Tim, by the way."
"Dean. I'm actually super-careful about what I put in my body," he said, belatedly thinking that this might be a demon or some other creature trying to poison him. "If it was made over a cauldron, for instance, I'd rather take my chances with the chemicals over there."
"I'm related to one of the witches who was burned at Salem," the guy said with disarming candor. "In my family we've always known that spells and things are real enough to cause real trouble. I wouldn't play around with a Ouija board and you can't drag me into a fortune-teller's."
The full force of his hunter instincts trained on the guy for a moment, and then Dean laughed despite himself. He almost never met people who knew the score on the great beyond. "Then maybe we have a little more in common than I would have thought, because my family has its own traditions about not playing around with weird shit."
They smiled at each other until Tim continued, "I saw you, up there in the exercise room. Tonight and the last two nights. You seem really unhappy with your appearance, because your eyes are glued to the mirrors watching other people or looking at yourself, and you're not getting off on it either way."
Dean was relieved that his wandering eye didn't mean he'd have to admit to any particular allegiance, because he had no idea which team he batted for these days. "I'm not here looking to pick anyone up," he asserted.
"No, I know you're not. You remind me of myself about a year ago, and I was too insecure to go after what I wanted." The man made a soothing gesture. "In my case, guys, but it's none of my business where your tastes lie."
Dean let out a sigh of relief that he wouldn't have to field any awkward come-on and focused on his curiosity. "Then what is this natural remedy? Is it safe? Is it legal?"
"Completely," Tim said, and Dean's conman sensors told him the guy was telling the truth. "It's a combination of Chinese herbs and a few targeted yoga exercises that produce results much faster than the machines up there."
They discussed the details for a while when Dean's hunter instincts kicked into action once more. "Why are you doing this for me? What do you want in return?"
"I don't want to take anything from you," Tim said. "I want to give something to you, and if you want me to swear an oath to that effect I will. You stood out to me as someone who would benefit a lot from a little boost in self-esteem, and I want to pay it forward. It's not like you need a lot of improvement." Dean looked doubtful. "Well, if you're still interested, you can pick up your herbal mixture from this address," he slid a card across the table. "Tomorrow. This is kind of a time investment on my part, so I do ask that you commit to two months of the regimen. Is that a problem?"
Two months? Dean had been planning on blowing town the next day. He couldn't remember the last time he spent a month anywhere.
"No, that won't be a problem at all," he said.
When a sated-looking Cas met him and Sam for breakfast the next morning, Dean was able to tell them with relief, "Why don't you two go on without me? I've got some stuff I need to do on my own, but I'll see you up the road a little ways."
The crappy thing about it being the three of them now was that Dean was subjected to two sets of probing eyes looking for the latest way he'd started to crack up.
"You're troubled," Cas said with that directness he hadn't lost yet.
"Are you having a mid-life crisis?" Sam demanded.
"No, I just looked over at Cas the other day," Dean's voice caught for a moment, "and realized that there's finally somebody else watching your back, Sammy, so I can take a break for a minute."
Sam looked hurt while Cas seemed touched. "I would be honored to be entrusted with such a responsibility," he said, and Dean stood up hurriedly before he threw his heart at Castiel's feet for being so damn exactly what he needed.
"Great, it's settled, then. I was going to go out for a while, so when you guys clear out the room make sure they don't think we've all checked out. Here, take the car." He tossed the keys and left, Sam staring at the evidence in his hands that his brother was relinquishing his beloved Impala.
There was no way for him and Sam to go their separate ways without somebody getting all in a twist over it, but this time it wasn't Dean. He had a pleasant walk to the address on the card, which turned out to be a Chinese restaurant that ran a small shop full of smelly medicinal herbs marked only in Chinese.
"You're Mr. Dean?" the elderly woman asked in a thick accent. She had a pile of jars ready on the counter.
"Yeah. If you wouldn't mind, could you tell me which thing is which?" He pulled out the instructions Tim had written down for him and she helped him mark each jar in a way that he could follow the regimen set by his new friend.
Everything was very reasonably priced, considering that it was a month's supply. Dean took the long way back to the motel to be sure Cas and his brother were gone. Eagerly, he ran some hot water through the coffee maker and dissolved the first set of powders. When it was cool enough to drink, he choked down the ill-tasting brew and decided to get a workout in at the gym before meeting Tim for his first training session.
The hunter on hiatus actually enjoyed lifting weights this time, focusing less on the fact that he felt unloved and unlovable, and more on the movements. He had just enough time to jump in the shower before going downstairs to meet Tim in the lobby. While in the shower, Dean surveyed his body again with a new hope. How would Cas know he was a pre-programmed heterosexual if he was new to having a body and he never tried being with a dude? Dean was resolved to make that a more attractive proposition.
"You look chipper. The medicine doesn't take effect that quickly," Tim said from downstairs. "I'm glad you've put aside your fears that I'm some kind of serial killer because I've invited you back to my place for your first lesson."
"This guy just radiates health," Dean was thinking and then wrested himself back. "I haven't told you that much about me, but let's just say I know how to handle myself," Dean smirked.
"We'll see about that. I'm going to make you hurt in places you never knew you had," Tim warned.
And he did. Dean had never done anything remotely like yoga, and Tim had him in positions he didn't think a man could get in.
Then that thought led to the idea of expanding his manly positions with Cas, and Dean stumbled in the pose he was holding with shaking muscles.
"Whoah there, this is supposed to be good hurt, not bad hurt," Tim cautioned. "Let's take a break." And he cheerfully prepared some more disgusting tea in such a natural manner that Dean could only think Tim hadn't seen him looking at that perfect behind.
They met almost every day. Tim was a graphic designer who worked from home, so unless he had some crazy deadline he knocked off in early afternoon. There was something about the guy that made Dean comfortable despite himself. For one thing, anyone who asked too many direct questions got off on the wrong foot with a hunter and stayed there. But this guy didn't ask him anything. Dean told him the minimum—that he was on the road a lot with his brother and sometimes somebody else, it was kind of an undercover thing and so he couldn't talk about it further than that.
"Hence the lone wolf persona," Tim said one day after a session that was a little easier. "Making yourself impossible to pin down is a great way to avoid having to figure out what you want or whether to go get it."
"If you're so confident about yourself, why is there only one toothbrush in your bathroom?" Dean retorted. Actually, he'd wondered about that. At the gym he'd seen his friend's body followed by many roving eyes, but Tim had never given anyone a second glance.
"I've played around plenty, enough to know that that's not what I want," Tim said with that open way he had.
"I kind of know what you mean," Dean returned in kind, thinking of his skirt-chasing days just behind him. Then his preoccupation returned. "Do you think that I'm bulking up at all?"
"For me, it happened all of a sudden," the other man said. "You just have to be patient."
When Dean wasn't having his training sessions at Tim's place, he tried to be doing some healthy activity that would take his mind off Cas. That's why he took a few days' work a week from an auto body shop. He also helped out at a rifle range in exchange for a couple hours shooting out his frustrations. He would still see guy-girl couples together and get a twinge of pain. Why did he have to be the one to have the strictly-heterosexual blinders ripped off his eyes at this point in his life, when the guy who admitted to having feelings for him all along couldn't muster up the slightest bit of physical attraction at all?
He was learning a lot of things from Tim, but maybe the biggest thing was that ass. It wasn't big, like freakishly huge, it was just, there. It was so perfectly sculptured, so eminently do-able, that Dean would swear some of the guys ogling it at the gym weren't even gay. Dean was sure that before everything changed for him, if an ass like that caught him in a drunken weak moment, he would've gladly taken the secret of that brief encounter to his grave. So far, Dean himself had felt no interest in other men, and that included his yoga instructor, but that one feature made fine masturbatory fodder, either imagining screwing it or visualizing it as his ass being screwed. There were a few things that were constant in life, he liked to think, and a behind like a work of art transcended gender boundaries.
Or so Dean's considerable time investment was supposed to prove.
Their second month was drawing to a close, and Dean was enjoying the structure and the company so much that he was considering putting off joining Sam and Cas for a little while longer. All this preparation for seeing Cas again was a safer kind of excitement than actually facing his wingless wingman. He went to sleep on a Tuesday, thinking he would call Sam in the morning and tell him he was still off duty.
On Wednesday morning, Dean woke up, groggier than usual since he'd started his healthy living, and walked into the bathroom, turning towards the shower.
He stumbled against the wall.
The reflection that looked back at him from the dingy motel mirror was of Dean, all right, but Dean and then some.
He'd given up studying his reflection because he was trying to be in the present-the mental training that Tim believed was an important part of wellness. His defined chest had become two sculpted pecs. He had a washboard stomach you could cut yourself on, but the best part was below the belt.
The mirror wasn't reflecting two nice, polite pauses between his back and his legs. He had twin show-stoppers begging to be lingered over. The hunter was fascinated by what he saw, though the rest of his body wasn't sure if it wanted to do what it saw in the mirror or have it done by someone else.
Dean spent the rest of the day inside imagining what he was going to do with his new feature. "Yeah, Sam, I'm going to be joining you real soon," Dean said happily over the phone that evening, interrupting one of his brother's periodic updates. "I only have a couple things to take care of first."
Then Dean went over to Tim's a little later than their usual time. His friend hadn't replied to his voicemail telling him he'd seen progress and then some, but depending upon his workday, that wasn't unusual.
Which was why Dean was surprised to see a note with his name on it stuck in the grate covering the front door to Tim's building.
"Dear Dean," it said. "I was called away for a death in the family, and I plan on working from my parents' home for the next little while. If you have to move on before I get back, it was a pleasure to know you and train with you. It's all about mindset, you'll come to see."
Dean checked his messages. He'd been so absorbed playing with his new assets that he hadn't seen a text message he didn't notice coming in that said much the same. Dean made a mental note to make a condolence call at some point before he left. But he was too excited to see Cas again to think very much about this person who had shared his fitness secrets with him.
He rushed over to the Chinese restaurant and finally communicated to the herbalist that she should give him as much of his medicine as she had, and send the next ration to a PO box that was in the direction he was heading.
He wasn't sure if the effects were permanent or not, and Dean was taking no chances that he might let his new body slip through his fingers before he tried to slip it through Cas'.
Then Dean went shopping. He bought new jeans and underwear—one kind in a cut to minimize his new feature, and another kind to flaunt it, though he would surely never have the courage to wear those. Then he went somewhere far outside the mall and had the most mortifying 10 minutes of his life buying something he'd never considered purchasing, much less using on himself.
He had to. It was like he was on fire. He wanted Cas so terribly he burned with desire, and this one implement was needed to get to the places he couldn't easily reach. Dean looked at himself every chance he could, and he paid attention to the avid eyes tracking his movements when he went out. Dean felt this glow of health he'd never experienced with his fast-food diet, and people seemed to reflect his extra wattage. He decided: with eyes closed, Cas wouldn't care what gender he was.
Ever since Dean was gobsmacked by Cas' humanity he was never sure if he wanted to make his fantasies happen. Each sexual possibility between the two of them was both titillating and terrifying. Did he really want Cas to, you know, go there? He'd never let a chick do that.
But apparently, Dean did want to, because he crossed that taboo pretty far before he'd remembered this was something every straight guy should view as the ultimate indignity.
The browser history on his phone quickly filled up with sites filling in all the nuts and bolts of having sex with somebody else that had nuts. He read with a mixture of arousal and alarm about everything his body could do, if only the one he had set his heart on wanted to do him too.
If a lifelong heterosexual could be enjoying these actions this much, then a heterosexual for a couple months could, Dean reasoned.
For several more days, the new and improved Dean imagined Cas in the place of plastic. Finally, he wrested himself away from the town that might have solved all of his problems. The elder Winchester traveled to where Sam was to meet up in a bar.
"You look—healthy?" Sam said, studying his brother's face.
"I went on a cleanse. Now I'm sound of mind and body, Sammy." He looked around, barely daring to hope. "Where's Cas?
Sam looked sheepish. "He took good care of me, but I didn't do as good a job taking care of him as I should have. It's hard to remember he can get hurt."
"He's hurt?" Dean registered the panic in his voice but hoped Sam didn't.
"It's nothing major. A sprained ankle, the ER said. They had a field day looking at some weird things about his bones in the x-ray. I guess you can tell he didn't grow them naturally."
"That's good. Listen, brother, I've been hitching for days. I'm dying to lay flat on my back."
Sam looked disappointed. "Oh, I was hoping I could tell you more about how things have been going on our end. There's this spirit we've had a hard time convincing to give up the ghost." He made no move to get up. "And I kind of have a waitress I've been flirting with."
"Tomorrow morning, Sammy. Once I get this kink of out of my back." Dean stretched illustratively and checked to see if his brother was checking his new contours. Sam didn't appear to focus on any one part of his body during the few minutes in which he made small talk about yoga and the person who taught it to him. Then his brother dropped him back at the motel.
Dean walked through the door with his heart pounding. Cas looked up with that hilariously intent expression he wore whenever he watched television. "Dean, it's so good to see you. You look very well."
"Thanks, Cas, I've been trying to live right for a change and it seems to suit me."
"See you guys later," Sam said and the door shut.
Dean sat awkwardly down on the other bed. "Listen Cas, you know that thing I asked you not to bring up? I'd like to talk about it."
Cas slowly looked over at him and turned off the remote.
"My explorations with women have bothered you, and for that I am sorry," he said with that sincere growl in his voice. "But as I told you, it has nothing to do with what you and I share. You have gotten closer to me than anyone has ever cared to in all these many years, simply by being you, Dean. No one has ever challenged me, how do you say, gotten under my skin like you, and I'm discovering that without that investment, everything else is only skin-deep."
"But," Dean began and then mentally added a hopeful 't'.
"But my body has a mind of its own. While you were gone I decided I was being selfish, asking you to tolerate this situation. If you prefer, I can stop traveling with you and your brother. You'll never see me again, if that would make this easier, though I would miss you a great deal."
"That's everything we've already said before," Dean said urgently. "I think we've been looking at this all the wrong way."
His hunter's reflexes had the blindfold tied before Cas could react.
Dean pulled down his jeans and placed Cas' hands on his backside. He posed there very still, letting the other man explore, knowing that he would ruin the illusion by saying anything. All that mattered was when he looked down and saw the other man's clear interest.
"This is very arousing," he heard startlingly close to his ear. Cas had grasped onto Dean's waist and scooted up as well as he could with his ankle, unzipping his pants in the process. He felt the hands try to pose in various places before settling on the small of his back.
He felt Cas' hot breath in his ear. He was just thinking of the small tube he had been optimistic enough to carry in his jeans now on the floor. "Wait, I have," he began.
"Oh," Cas said regretfully, laying back suddenly and taking off the blindfold. "I am sorry." They both watched his excitement wilt. He reached for Dean's face and forced him to turn his shame to meet him in the eye. "That was everything I wanted it to be for us. Everything I wish these casual trysts were to me."
"And then you realized who you were doing it with," Dean said bitterly.
"And then my physiology got in the way, something it does irritatingly often." He gestured to his elevated ankle. "I used to exist as pure thought, and many of those thoughts were for you." He laid a hand on his friend's arm. Dean knew Cas too well to think he was lying, and that made it worse, somehow, that he did care but just not enough.
Cas still had his hand on the arm. "You know, maybe there are things we can do. I was finding your body hair somewhat distracting. What if you got rid of it?"
"I'll take a bath in Nair if that's what you want. I'll do anything you ask me to," Dean said in a craven tone before he could stop himself. He saw Cas studying him. "One of the things I discovered in my time off is that I really want to do this with you."
"I assumed you were having your usual liaisons at night," Castiel said stiffly.
Dean's heart jumped a little. Cas was jealous! "Dude, I haven't wanted to get within ten feet of anyone else. Nobody does it for me these days but you," he said on a falling note while the rest of him was doing anything but.
"That's how my heart would look, if you could see it," Cas admitted, indicating Dean's enthusiasm. "This is also painful for me, don't you see, to be limited by flesh not corresponding to what I feel?"
Dean reached out tentatively and squeezed his shoulder in what he thought was a natural manly way, until he remembered he wasn't wearing any pants. He scrambled back into his new jeans.
"How did you manage to make yourself so—sexy?" They exchanged a timid glance. "You look very well, in every way," Cas said as they settled back against the pillows. Dean turned on the TV in case Sam came home early, and then explained the herbal regime, letting the other man smell the herbal powders and even demonstrating some yoga poses.
"I don't have all the senses I used to, but these all seem to be substances that have been used medicinally for centuries." Dean sighed with relief, because he'd not done too much research before he started taking them, and he wasn't about to stop. "Maybe I should take them too. I could use something to make my body stronger." He looked at his ankle.
"No," Dean said, taking the sack of jars away from Castiel. "Don't change. I like you like this."
They heard the key in the lock and Dean sprang to the other bed.
"Don't you two look cozy," Sam remarked. "I guess I get the floor because I don't have a bad back or a bum ankle."
"I am pretty comfortable. What about you, Dean?" Cas replied with a glance at the other bed.
"I feel better than I have in a long time—lying on soft bed," the other man stopped fantasizing long enough to add.
In the middle of the night he woke to Cas' open eyes gazing at him from the other bed.
They looked at each other for a long time. It was such a charged mixture of hope and hopelessness and, in his case, longing, that he was amazed his brother slept through it, or that he went back to sleep himself.
"Damn, Dean I need to get on that stuff," Sam said when his older brother easily bested him in pushups and then went through his morning yoga poses before having his first mug of tea. "You're never in a good mood in the morning."
"What can I say? Clean living helps keep your priorities straight," and he twitched his lip in Cas' direction at that last word. "I'm dying to kick some spectral ass. How's the ankle?"
The ex-angel scratched his hair, which was sticking up in all directions, and tested his foot on the floor. "I think things are getting better. I'm willing to bet they can."
In the coded language they were developing in Sam's presence, Dean was sure Cas had just said he was wiling to give it a try, the two of them.
Breakfast was full of the pleasure-pain of their eyes skittering away from each other. The same nervousness they had when Cas had become fully human but they hadn't learned that they couldn't be together.
It wasn't easy to arrange time for it, but Dean showed up at the waxing studio full of resolve. "I'm afraid we don't take full-body walk-ins," the woman said. When he claimed some last-minute modeling job, the woman looked him over good and relented.
Usually Dean dealt with the discomfort of getting stitched up by imbibing a fifth of whiskey. He wished he had thought to bring one, because it hurt. It hurt something terrible. It hurt so bad he forgot to be embarrassed about having his junk yanked around by a grim 50-something lady named Lupe.
"Good luck," the receptionist said when he emerged on shaky but smooth legs.
"Thanks," he said. "I've got a good feeling about this one."
By the time Cas showed to their agreed time-out from hunting, Dean's nether regions had stopped aching from the wax and were now throbbing with need.
"See, I've been looking forward to meeting you." Cas pointed to some amount of excitement.
"That's great, because you won't believe how smooth is smooth."
Dean turned out all but one of the lights and had everything set up by the bed. "You sit here and I'll do the rest."
Cas let the blindfold be tied around him and then Dean began the delicate business of turning him on.
He let Cas explore his roundness while being methodically stripped. When Cas felt the smooth legs being rubbed against his, he gasped. Dean bit his lip. He didn't expect his companion to touch any of his male features, obviously, but that need was pushed to the side. They clumsily enacted some of Dean's fantasies with Cas' hands focusing on his most interesting contours.
"This is, it's hot as I don't know what." Cas still wasn't good with the metaphor. Dean giggled a little but it was apparently a unisex sound because the other man laughed a throaty laugh of conquest. Comments like "This is the most satisfying sexual stimulation I have yet experienced" alternated with porno-derived things like "That's right, take it."
Finally it finished in an explosion on the rear of Dean, who was surprised to see Castiel ripping off the blindfold at the crucial moment. "Lie down," Cas ordered and then fit his body behind him, one hand exploring his curves again. "You can talk now," Castiel whispered in his ear. "Was it good for you?"
Dean whimpered and that raspy voice chuckled.
"I was a little surprised you took the blindfold off."
"It occurred to me with my last few operative brain cells that a man is never more malleable than the moments before, during and after orgasm. It seemed wise to try and acclimate in that moment."
"Acclimate. Gee, that makes it sound spontaneous." Some of Dean's afterglow dissipated.
"How's this for spontaneous?" Cas reached around and caressed Dean's chest. "We're going to be all right, Dean. I have never felt this sensation of—rightness—that I do now. This was a wonderful experience." There was a silence. "Was this not what you'd hoped? Did I hurt you in some way?"
"Only in a good way," Dean said, pressing himself backwards. "I can't help but imagine you picturing one of these chicks you've banged while you're doing me, though." Cas had proved that he'd learned a few things in his little time on earth.
Castiel turned Dean to face him. "I don't know how to explain what an angel's perspective is like, but I've told you that we don't, I didn't, see gender. Not as the most salient characteristic, anyway. I met you as Dean, a sentient being, and that's still how I see you, how I mate with you."
"'Mate.' Damn, that's dirty, Cas," Dean said with relief. He was disappointed their evening ws over when Cas reached over and turned out the light.
"This may be our only chance to do this for a while," Castiel said wrapping himself around Dean from behind. "I have often watched you sleep and wished I could do so with you." The fingers felt for Dean's lips. Then Cas carefully placed his mouth for the biggest shock of the evening, a kiss.
Dean let himself go at this longed-for contact and felt Cas pull away.
"The stubble is a little unnerving. Hold still."
Dean let himself be kissed as he had never surrendered his mouth before. It made him instantly hard once more.
"You just may have solved an age-old philosophical debate," Cas murmured as they were drifting.
"That at least some dudes can pick up the bat for the other team one day without any warning?"
"No, you have heard of Archimedes' fulcrum?"
"'R. Kelly's fuck'em? That sounds like some kind of sex toy," he mumbled into the pillow.
"As it happens, it may be. 'Give me a place to stand and I will move the world'?" The hands gripped his hips. "What seemed as though it could not be shifted is more mutable than you would think, from the right standpoint." The whisper filtered into Dean's ear in the darkness. "A fulcrum is no more than a place," the fingers traced lightly, "Where force is shifted into a different direction." And the full force of Castiel's male body flowed around Dean's as if it belonged there.
They fell asleep, Cas' leg thrown over his.
Dean felt Cas come awake with a start next to him, pushing back with some force and then gently extricating himself from the pose their bodies had attained overnight. He held his breath until he came back from the bathroom.
"If I promise not to talk, will you come back to bed?" Dean asked, still feeling Cas pushing him away roughly.
"Apparently, Jimmy had never woken up naked and in bed with a man, and his conditioning had not prepared him for it," Cas apologized. "I found last night very instructive in the possibilities for reprogramming the brain." He saw Dean's eyes still on him. "That is to say, properly managed, it was hot as hell."
"I'm ready for more," Dean said throatily.
"Sam will be back soon, and it would be very difficult to explain our situation."
"He's already suspicious about my health kick," Dean agreed, gathering his clothes.
"Shave and I'll kiss you," Cas said invitingly.
Dean leapt into the bathroom and forced himself to shave slowly enough not to cut himself. He was rewarded by a careful kiss that nonetheless took him apart and put him back together. He took a chance and raked his fingers through Cas' hair, who responded by palming his backside, though he drew back when he felt Dean's solidity pressing against him.
"I'm sorry—" Cas began.
"Don't be. I'll shave five times a day and wear a chastity belt if that's what it takes to get one of those," Dean panted. He'd left the idea of shame sometime back.
Cas' hand stopped him from gathering up his toiletries. "Let me look at you. There is something quite—interesting—in your face when we are intimate. I like it very much, this air about you that seems to be developing as we get closer, but I don't yet understand what it is."
Dean wasn't sure either, though he would develop suspicions over time. All he was sure about at that moment was that what was keeping him and Cas together was a lot more solid than air.
When Sam came back, Dean engineered a moment while he was loading the car so Sam and Cas could talk about him and otherwise analyze the Chinese medicines he'd left out on purpose. It was a good time to send a delayed thank you to Tim. He gave what he hoped was a not-too-gushing summary of how things were going for him and sent the text message. Shortly thereafter, he received an encouraging text from his yoga instructor telling him not to slack off after beginning to see results.
He was sitting in the driver's seat when the other two came back from turning in the key. "Everything ship shape?" Dean asked, trying not to smile too wide.
"Absolutely," Sam replied in a tone that said he'd not found anything but hadn't quit looking by a long shot.
There followed two weeks of nothing but fighting, ganking and passing out from exhaustion. Every time their bed rotation had either Dean or Cas taking the floor, they exchanged a rueful smile, neither of them averse to sharing a bed now, though the closeness was not without its dangers. They had a chance for a few post-shave stolen kisses and Cas slid his hand over Dean's ass every chance he got, but there wasn't a chance for more.
