Hey! This chapter has some fluff followed by some justification for the M rating. Don't get too excited though...
Was anyone else confused by how thoroughly forgotten poor Daphne was after Cas stopped being Emmanuel? And even though I've gone along with the canon that Cas was a virgin before April (ugh so glad I got rid of that bullshit in this fic), I'm still not sure why Dean and Sam thought so. Meg? Daphne? Was Dean just willfully ignoring all the probable sexual partners Cas appeared to have had before April? Lol yeah probs.
Thank you for all the reviews, beautiful people! They make me super happy.


I jerk awake after barely two hours, whimpering and trembling. Scrambling onto my knees and pushing the covers off of me in a desperate panic, I feel the sweat running down my back, tracing my spine unpleasantly. I let out a groan and wrap my arms around myself, screwing my damp eyes shut and squeezing the tears out. I try to take a calming breath but it hitches and catches and I end up crying brokenly, unable to rid myself of the image of all the angels I slaughtered in Heaven, blackened wings outstretched in a silent, belated plea for mercy. Mixed up with that memory is one that shouldn't be worse but it is, and they form a grotesque set of mirror images. Deans, hundreds of Deans, bloodied and staring, littering the floor, all dead by my hand. I'm sobbing out loud, the sound too shocking in the silent room, distressing me further.

Dean. I should go to Dean, he said I could, he said it would be alright. But then I remember his face when I asked, the reluctance with which he made his 'compromise'. He doesn't want me there. He doesn't want me.

So I curl in on myself, kneeling on the rumpled bed with my chin tucked into my chest, fingers digging painfully into my sides as I press my folded arms against my stomach. I can't seem to stop myself from crying, still too loud, still too broken, but maybe if I let myself go it will all drain out somehow and I'll be exhausted enough to sleep in peace. Dean, I want Dean, I need Dean...

"Cas?"

It's him. Dean's voice is hushed and muffled though the door but it's unmistakably him. I give a surprised hiccup and freeze, staring at the sheets in the almost-black of the room. I'm not sure what to do, but a moment later the decision is taken out of my hands as the door creaks open. Light spills in and Dean steps through the gap, shutting it quickly behind him. He repeats my name in a whisper and I heave a ragged breath, feeling ashamed and confused. Why is he even here? Why does he have to encounter me like this? I hate being the weaker one.

"I'm sorry, Dean," I mumble dully, well aware that my voice sounds shattered. I don't even hear him move but suddenly he's there, climbing onto the bed beside me and wrapping strong arms about my shoulders.

"Sshhh, it's OK, Cas," he breathes into my hair, and something in his voice sounds almost relieved as he draws me gently back down to my pillows, settling me against his side and dragging the covers over us. I choke out a shocked thanks and he shushes me again, warm breath tickling my scalp. I snake my arms around his waist and rest my face against his firm, cotton-covered chest, bewildered that he's here but feeling beyond grateful for it. I'm calmer already, my gasps turning to deep breaths, my tears slowing to a halt. Eyes closed, I breathe in his smell and feel the way his stomach muscles ripple and then relax beneath my arm.

"How did you know?" My voice is barely there, a husky murmur spoken mostly into his shirt, but he gives a huff of laughter in response, expelled breath ruffling the hair on my crown.

"I didn't. I got up to pee and I heard you on my way back. Why didn't you come see me? I told you to come see me if this happened again."

"I didn't think you'd want me to. I don't want to be a burden to you, Dean."

Dean's arm tightens around me, hugging me to him, strong and sure and so warm.

"Bullshit, Cas. Bullshit. You're not a burden. You're family."

His thumb strokes soothing circles into my shoulder and I screw up my eyes against his chest, overwhelmed by emotion. I can hear and feel his heartbeat, swift and strong like mine. It slows as I listen and I match my breathing to it. I feel safe in a way that I never have before, cocooned in Dean's scent and guarded by the weight of his arm, heavy across my upper back. Drifting off to sleep is pleasant this time around, possibly one of the most serene experiences of my entire existence.

Waking up is not so peaceful.

I awake suddenly, jostled into consciousness. My face is mashed against warm, stubbled skin and my left arm is curled against a solid chest. My left leg is similarly positioned, hitched up over a blunt hipbone, inner thigh pressed against the other hipbone-

Wait. Fuck. No. That's not the other hipbone.

My eyes snap open just as Dean jostles me again, clearly trying to slide out of my embrace without waking me. He bites back a small moan as the action drags my thigh against his erection and I shut my eyes again, head spinning. I hear his barely-audible cursing and feel his throat move against my mouth. I suddenly want to smile, which is bizarre. I take a moment to try to analyse my own feelings, because they are truly baffling. I feel oddly pleased by this whole situation. Aroused, yes, but it's more than that. I feel... smug. I feel smug because Dean Winchester's erection is digging into my leg.

I press my lips together, determined not to let my smirk break free. Emotions are ridiculous. I know how human biology works. Dean's current situation has nothing to do with me. It's a common occurrence for men to have symptoms of physical arousal in the mornings, as I have discovered firsthand. I should not be feeling this happy over a simple quirk of nature. It has no connection to my presence in his arms.

But my proximity to his problem is definitely having an exacerbating effect on it, I reason with myself as he inches further out of my grasp and gives another frustrated whimper. And that is something to feel legitimately smug about.

"Cas," Dean gasps, the sound muffled, and I realise that he's got his hand pressed to his mouth, his whole body tense and shaking, breathing fast and shallow. The blood rushes to my groin and I bite down on my lip, using all of my meagre self-control to stop myself from dropping my sleeping act, climbing on top of him and seeing where my desire leads me. Dean is helpless and aroused and uttering my name like he's praying and it's the most exciting thing I can imagine.

But I was raised in Heaven itself, after all, and I do have a strong moral compass even as a human. I shouldn't take advantage of this situation just to fulfill my own fantasies. Dean is a person, the most important person in my life, not a toy. If by some far-fetched miracle Dean ever does desire me as anything other than a friend or a comrade, I want it to be because he enters into the situation willingly, not because biology makes him weak and impairs his judgement.

Reluctantly, I feign a sleepy mumble and withdraw my knee, pulling it down to rest with my other leg far away from Dean's crotch. Dean gives another satisfyingly strained whimper as I move but after a few seconds of holding his breath, he lets out a rushed sigh of relief, warming my head as his breath fans through my hair. Shuffling carefully the last few inches away, he extracts himself from under my arm and gently gets out of my bed. I keep my face slack and my eyes closed, hands trailing out in front of me to where his body was moments before.

There's a moment of silence as he presumably stands by the bed and I wonder why he isn't leaving already. Surely he must be in some level of physical discomfort. I know I am. Is he staring at me? My room is totally bare so I can't think of what else he might be staring at. I feel unbearably twitchy. Staying still was much easier as an angel. Finally, he pads across the room and I hear the door open and shut. I wait another five seconds, making sure he's definitely gone, before I slowly crack open my eyes and roll onto my back, letting out an unsteady breath.

That was an intense experience. I'm still not sure what to make of it, so I replay the whole thing in my head, lingering on the sensations and the sounds and...

My hand has wandered down to the waistband of my boxers before I'm aware of moving it. I hesitate, but it does seem to be the practical thing to do. I've never done this properly before, though. I almost did, as an angel, more out of curiosity than anything else. It was when I was with Daphne. We were kissing and she ran her hand up my thigh then even further before pulling back, looking ashamed. Bless the poor woman. She refused to do more than gently kiss me, insisting that anything more would be immoral and wrong until I got my memories back and we could be sure that I was free to be hers. Besides, although we were 'married in the eyes of God', we hadn't completed a legal ceremony and she felt that it would be sinful.

Her exploratory touch, though, was pleasant and provocative. I touched myself more thoroughly, if hesitantly, in my room that night; wondering what her hands would feel like, easing myself into a rhythm. But the sudden image in my head at that point was of strong, male hands touching me and golden-green eyes gleaming in the dark. I stopped immediately, confused and distressed. Dean found me mere days after that, and it was weeks after regaining my memories before I thought back and realised what had happened.

Now, lying alone with Dean's scent still floating in the air, it doesn't feel forbidden or wrong to think of him that way. If I was fantasising about him when I couldn't even remember him then there isn't much point in resisting now anyway. Holding my breath, I slip my fingers slowly beneath the loose cling of my boxer waistband, feeling the warm, rough texture of the hair there. Skating over that, I run my fingertips aimlessly up the engorged flesh below it, exhaling heavily as I assess the way all my nerve endings there seem to be sparking and fizzing with desperate energy.

My head falls back onto the pillow and I moan almost inaudibly as my thumb strokes over the tip and spreads the meagre moisture around. Leaning heavily on instinct and trying to summon memories of times I've watched humans masturbate, I move my curled hand up and down hesitantly, twisting my wrist as I go. I shift in the bed, trying to find a comfortable rhythm, brain still flicking through memories until-

I tighten my grip involuntarily as one of my more deeply buried memories comes back to me, suppressed because it's stained with shame and guilt. It's from years ago when I first knew Dean, before I betrayed Heaven for him, before I allowed myself to admit how attached I'd become to the soul I rescued from Hell, before I really understood that I felt any kind of physical attraction to the man. I went to him in the early hours of the morning to relay a message from Uriel, appearing in the motel room almost silently, my wings making barely a whisper.

I was facing Sam's bed so I checked him first, seeing that he was fast asleep. A light sound from the other bed caught my attention and I turned to see that Dean was not asleep, although his eyes were closed. His hands were stretched down below his stomach, the leg closest to me drawn up and blocking them. His face was tensed as though in pain but even as I started to move towards him he gave a pleased hum, arms shifting on his stomach and lips curving in a smile. I cocked my head, confused, and after considering it for a moment I turned myself invisible and walked silently over to Dean's bed.

I understood immediately what he was doing as soon as I got a good view and I was aware that I shouldn't be watching him, since this kind of thing was considered private by humans. But I'd never really thought about Dean and sex before - probably because sex never usually crossed my mind in the first place - and I found the combination, along with the scene before me, oddly compelling. My vision unhindered by the lack of lighting, I allowed my gaze to travel across Dean, from the rapidly pumping loose fist to the exposed groin and stomach to the way his back arched off the bed to his face, and that was the part which captured me the most.

His eyes were mostly closed but they fluttered open now and then, the green colour muted in the dark room, rolling back as the lids squeezed shut again. His skin was flushed and gleaming with a layer of sweat, his lower lip caught firmly between white teeth, breath strained and quiet. He was almost silent but every now and then, he'd let a tiny groan or gasp out. They were becoming more frequent as I watched and I leaned forward in rapt attention, my guilt temporarily forgotten...

Back in the present, I come in tandem with the Dean in my memory, pressing the back of my hand to my mouth to muffle the noise. I'm not sure how long I lie there gasping, but it has to be at least several minutes later before a coherent thought floats through my scattered mind. I open my eyes with some effort and gaze at the ceiling, feeling much as I did after eating the Bolognese and the pie. I have just completed another important human experience, and I feel rather accomplished.