VII.

Sam and Dean dealt with Castiel's prisoner, a trusting little dork like every angel ever. The whole time, Dean had a semi that just wouldn't quit, all thanks to the fact that he was in the same building—hell, the same zip code—as Cas. God, he was pathetic.

He hadn't talked to Cas since... that... though he kept flashing back on the memory at inconvenient times, blood rushing to his groin and away from his brain, which was unfortunate when he needed it because he had a ghost at his throat and Sammy unconscious in the corner, or when he had some nerd chained to a chair and the Mark singing "Cherry Pie" at the prospect of delicious torture. He let Sam take the lead, and he was grateful his brother was up to it.

Sam's brilliant interrogation technique had the prisoner singing like a canary.

They talked over what they'd learned while they walked out, but Dean's mind was partitioned like a crazy man's, one part following what Sam was saying, another part marvelling over what Cas had built from nothing—yet again—and yet another part muttering, low and deep, about He never told me this, and How long has he been working this? and How can I get him alone?

Dean sneered at his ability to reduce celestial civil warfare down to the most basic principles of its general and his dick, but the edge of self-contempt in his thoughts didn't make the slightest headway into changing what he wanted, even as he scrambled to justify it to himself. Cas would be able to focus better if he weren't a jagged bundle of nerves, right? And same went for him; his brain would work better without the Mark of the Satanic Mosquito whining and whining without any respite. So getting Cas alone was for a good cause, all about saving people—or, in this case angels, who were all suicide cases anyway, but Cas seemed to think they were important.

That bullshit didn't clear even Dean's admittedly low bar, like it mattered. He was damned anyway.

After Sammy finished debriefing Cas, he clapped him on the shoulder and said, "Cas'll give me a ride back to the bunker."

Sam stared at him. "Fight Club?" he asked, his voice bland.

Sammy had returned from his run to a smelly room and Dean's cell phone in the far corner with the last call from Cas. It didn't take a hundred and forty IQ to work out what had happened. He was, so far, keeping his suspicions to himself, but Dean could feel him wanting to talk about it. He wanted to talk about it now, but he'd stopped him from drawing blood and the Mark was singing and so. Yeah. Not happening.

"I'll see you," he said, spinning his brother and giving him a gentle shove down Cas's ultra-secret Saturday Morning Cartoon good-guy base of operations. Like, seriously. When the fuck had this happened? And then Dean walked through the door to Cas's office.

Cas turned from one of his monitors, withdrawn, face clotted by all his important thoughts and feelings, about which Dean did not care as he hurtled towards him like a stone streaking fire through Earth's atmosphere, a plummet only checked when Cas's back slammed against the wall with a force that rattled the maps. As Dean rammed his tongue between his lips, he thought, He shoulda stopped me.

But Cas opened for him. Dean sighed into his mouth, unaware until just that moment how much he fucking needed this, for Cas to give it up to him, his tongue clean and wet, his mouth a potential space. In that moment of surrender, nothing else mattered.

"You hung up on me," Cas said, when Dean broke for air.

"Yeah, I did," Dean said, staring at his lips, the flash of teeth and ripple of tongue behind them, and he bent to them again. His cock pulsed heavy and painful behind his zipper.

Cas tore his mouth away and lowered his chin, glaring at him beneath lowered brows, through sharp eyelashes. Dean instinctively took a step back.

"Unless there are different rules at play for telephonic intercourse, I believe that was rude."

"Did it hurt your baby feelings?"

"I think it calls for correction."

"Oooh," Dean said, swiveling his shoulders campily, mocking both himself and Cas and the whole damned situation and most of all, the voice in his head screaming, Since when are you so gay for this? "Sounds saucy."

If he'd been sincere, Cas might have smiled, but instead his glare took a level in intensity, angel grace glinting violet within all that cobalt blue.

He, Dean thought, as Cas flinched across the small space separating them, is not, he thought as Cas grabbed his wrists and forced them behind his back, human, he thought as Cas bound him, with what he did not know, but it burned like acid as Cas bent him over the desk, Cas's erection pressed against him, his own lust nagging louder than even the Mark.

Teasing a seraph was a terrible idea.

He knew this as Cas brought his lips to his ear, skimming the stiff upper edge in ways that made him twitch and writhe as the angel rumbled, "You saw just one of our dungeons. You know we have more."

X

Which is how Dean found himself bound wrist and ankles inside an angel-warded cell, Cas prowling around the perimeter, in the dark where he couldn't see him.

He flinched, couldn't help himself, as the angel blade began tearing through his shirt.

"Let me explain the rules," Cas said against his ear as he broke out in goosebumps. "Every time," he said, as he tattered Dean's third-favorite shirt into so many dust rags, "you want me," and there went Dean's undershirt, the angel blade a hot line against his spine—Cas wasn't being too careful, and the edge of the holy weapon stung, "to stop what I'm doing," his belt whisked away into the darkness to slap against an unseen wall, "you are going to have to," Shhsk shhsk went the angel blade, up one denim leg and then the other, "ask for a kiss," and the pants were gone, along with his boxers.

Dean stood chained and naked except for his socks and boots, the erection drooling stiff and upright against his belly a complete embarrassment. He wanted to be sure he had this completely right.

"To stop you, you want me to ask for a kiss?" He flushed until he felt sunburned from the tips of his ears to his navel.

Cas shrugged, too much shoulder, an exaggerated imitation of a human frown. "If you want me to stop what I'm doing to you, yes," he said. "I've learned these are the rules for this sort of game."

"My safe word is 'Nickelback,'" Dean said, smiling sarcastically.

"I don't care what your safe word is," Cas snarled, and fuck his life, if he weren't supported by chains, that would have put him on his knees. Cas pressed in, his breath hot and floral-sweet on Dean's mouth as he growled, "I told you what you have to do."

"All right, Cas," Dean said, giving him a completely human shrug of his own. "If that floats your boat, get to it. I've been tortured by experts."

The Mark seemed to like the idea, but he did not. Having Cas beat the shit out of him was one thing, a kind of acceptable violence. Like a really brutal hug, it acknowledged his existence, gave him a chance to fight back, even if he didn't take it. This, though? Would be a dismantling, Cas slicing him up, reducing him to an object that bleeds and whimpers and, apparently, begs for kisses. Dean felt something break inside him at the thought.

Cas looked broken, too, but he shuttered his expression so quickly Dean thought he might have imagined it. "You think I want to hurt you?" he asked. "Far from it, my friend."

Friend. That word stung like the edge of the angel blade, but he put it aside. Of course, Cas wouldn't understand the meaning behind what they'd been up to, and that was for the best.

Cas walked behind him, and as soon as he was out of Dean's sight, Dean tensed up. Being bound like this brought up too many bad memories. His heart tripped and staggered as his stomach roiled. The edges of his vision flickered red. Screams cut in and out of static. He was used to his flashbacks by now, but they soured things, like a bad headache.

Then he felt Cas's fingers on his neck, on his shoulders, petting, denting into his tight muscles. "Relax," Cas said in his ear. "You're with me. I've got you."

What?

Cas ran his palms over his trapezius muscles, draped his long fingers over so the tips could read his collarbone, his palms flexing, bringing warmth and blood to the wired muscles.

Cas had chained him up so he could—give him a massage?

"This is bullshit, Cas," he ground out.

"Shut up," Cas said mildly. He ran his thumbs up the channel of Dean's neck towards his scalp, and the tingling sensation of old knots getting plowed made Dean slump in his chains and groan with a heretofore unknown pleasure. Cas cupped the back of his head as it lolled, rubbing at his scalp, joy bursting through him in little tingling fairy gusts.

This was stupid. There was no reason to chain him up in a dungeon just for this. What a waste of time. Cas had a war to coordinate, Dean had Abaddon to hunt; nobody had time for freakin' massages.

"Kiss me," he said, his voice rough with impatience.

"What's wrong?" Cas asked.

"This is pointless," Dean said. "You wanna rub my back, drop by the bunker sometime. I'll mix you a friggin' cocktail to sip while you do it."

"You know you'd never let me," Cas said, and Dean had to admit, that was fair.

Cas slipped around to face him, his blue eyes clear and serious, and Dean twitched inside his chains with the urge to wrap his arms around him. Cas tipped his chin up with two fingers and ghosted the softest kiss Dean had ever had over his mouth. It was chaste but it lit his veins on fire, and Dean thrust against him, baffled by layers of overcoat and belt and slacks and whatever else.

"Too many clothes, Cas," he said.

"It's going to stay that way," Cas said.

"Why?" Dean demanded, needy as a child. Cas only smiled in response.

He traced the muscles of Dean's torso with the tips of his fingers, going under the pectorals, down the sternum in a holy cross, his fingers a cool knife edge down the line in the center of Dean's abs, blessing him. The angel's grace tingled in his touch, or maybe that was just Dean's blood, crying out for that hand to go lower. His erection, which had slumped a little in his confusion, perked up now at the hope of some real action, but Cas, infuriatingly, ignored it, choosing instead to trace the lines of his hipbones around his flanks, up to his ribs, bumping over raised scars from knives and teeth and what the hell else he didn't even know. Cas touched those white, puckered lines as though he'd like to erase them.

"Kiss me," Dean growled.

Cas's head snapped up with a righteous glare. "What is it now?" he said, eyes burning blue, and Dean felt a flash of guilt at interrupting him, because it seemed he'd been enjoying that.

"You know what I look like; hell, you built it," Dean said. "You don't need to fucking Braille me."

"I love touching you," Cas said.

"What the fuck?" Dean said, because that was the only rational response to such an asinine statement, but Cas caught the final word in his mouth as he sealed his lips with his own, drove his tongue inside, the exact opposite of the first kiss.

After it lasted a thousand years, Cas broke away to stare down his body. Dean, staring at his eyes, expected the desire, but he didn't expect the worship. It made him feel young and stupid and clumsy and unworthy. Totally uncalled-for tears stung his eyes.

"It's mine," Castiel said, and Dean gasped. "Close your eyes," he commanded, and Dean obeyed.

Something wet and hot touched his left shoulder, where Cas's handprint once shone before he healed him back in all that Apocalyptic mayhem. The tip of Cas's tongue traced where those fingerprinted weals used to puff, red and bragging. His saliva on Dean's skin cooled like the touch of a spirit.

Something weird begin to happen, and with the weirdness came fear. It was like Dean separated from himself, began to float, so he could see Cas loving him with his mouth. Cas's tongue was on the line of his collarbone now, moving over to the other shoulder, but Cas got distracted by his neck and sucked a hickie up there, which made his cock bump against his stomach in excitement. Because there was still excitement, but it was distant, not the driving, murderous force it had been. This was almost peaceful. Scary, but peaceful.

"Kiss me," he whispered, his voice wavering, and he thought, Oh shit I'm about to burst into tears.

Cas didn't ask this time, just moved up from his neck to slip his tongue between Dean's lips, as gentle as going to sleep. Dean sucked at it greedily, needing to come back down to Earth, to find some connection to his own body.

"I don't deserve this," he said when Cas turned him loose.

"You deserve everything," Cas said against his mouth.

Dean did cry then, tears spilling out beneath his closed lashes, but he was still hovering and could see them, sluicing down his cheeks in bright lines. Cas's tongue accepted them, lapped them up, his lips pressing little kisses on his cheeks. Because this was a holy being standing in front of him. This was a creature one step removed from the Father Himself. And Dean? Was a profanity. Not far from demonic. Like, he could go pick up a six-pack from the neighborhood Hellmart. He did not deserve this and it hurt like hell to accept it.

This was the most brutal torture he had ever been through.

Cas didn't move away from his mouth, as though hearing his thoughts, which perhaps he could. Instead, he wrapped his arms around Dean's waist, pressed against him, not caring if Dean's drooling cock stained his slacks, his own long-neglected erection pressed hot and strong against Dean's stomach. He kissed Dean's neck, found Dean's earlobe, sucked it in, and Dean's breath shattered against his shoulder as he collapsed, supported by chains etched with spellwork and Cas's arms.

Then Cas turned him loose. He whimpered, loathing himself even as the lost little sad sound escaped him, missing the warmth, the envelopment, the feeling of being home.

Cas went to his knees.

And, okay, so, this was very sweet, and Dean could appreciate what Cas was trying to do, but Cas on his knees? Goddamn. Hot.

Cas looked up at him from that position, his brow crumpled, his eyes smoking hot and blue, and madness danced not too far beneath the surface, like Cas could hardly hold himself back. That was damned hot, too.

Holding his eyes, Cas licked Dean's hard-on from root to tip.

"Cas," Dean groaned, the vowel spinning around a pole, the sibilant strung out the length of the Transatlantic cable, the whole syllable a century's worth of speaking. as Cas took the head of his cock into his mouth.

Oh God, oh his God, if He had His ears on He could damn well listen to this shit, Cas's mouth was hot and wet, his throat was tight and pulsing, oh God, it was like nothing he'd ever felt oh God help him he was lost.

Pretty much like the handjob, Cas had no idea what he was doing, but unlike a handjob, enthusiasm made up for a lot. He wanted to drink Dean, and that came through loud and clear as Cas did his best to swallow every inch, and Dean didn't need a ruler to know he had an impressive amount of inches.

"Cas, you gotta listen to me now," he said, because yeah, he was the one in chains, but he was also the one in this compromising position. "No teeth, okay?"

Cas hummed an affirmative sound deep inside his throat, which was, coincidentally, exactly where Dean was at the moment, and he moaned and bucked, even though it was totally rude.

Cas, he realized after a few minutes, didn't really need to breathe.

Cas, he realized after maybe one minute more, was fucking talented at this.

Cas, he realized as he came down his throat with a strangled scream, was born to do this.

"Cas!" It ricocheted off the walls of the dungeon as Dean came. He wasn't sure if he was having some kind of girly multiple-orgasm experience, or if he was just coming really fucking hard, but it was intense, whatever it was. Even as he was sure the spasms were about to stop and he'd live through it after all, Cas would do something—seriously, what—with his throat and there'd be another wave, melting his bones, his brain, his veins, everything turning to light and disappearing down inside the angel.

As Dean came, he believed. Cas had salvaged his soul from Hell. Cas had rebuilt him. Cas knew him. Cas had made him a part of himself, and he imagined his seed like dark demon smoke coiling inside all that bright grace, imagery that threatened to depress him until Cas's blue eyes flicked up beneath the black slashes of his eyebrows and the heat in their depths burned it out of his head.

And when it was all over, there was Cas, kneeling between his feet, a softening cock between his lips, which were every bit as hot as Dean had ever hoped they'd be wrapped around him like that. Dean had double vision, so there were two of Cas smiling up at him, and shit, that was a fantasy he really hadn't needed but it was there and he was stuck with it.

Cas released his cock and slid up his body. He popped open the first shackle on his left wrist.

"It really seems you hated that," he said, with a smug, self-satisfied smile.

"Kiss me," Dean said, because the only alternative was punching him.

He tasted himself, salty and bitter, in Cas's mouth when Cas obeyed, and that was the only reason why, later, he believed he hadn't dreamed the whole thing.