Dean wakes up in the middle of the night, having never been a particularly restful sleeper, this isn't that odd. For a moment he doesn't know where he is, lying in a large bed that smells different to his own home and his college room. Warm and vaguely sticky under sheets that feel new and different. The light from between the slats of the blind at the window reveals a room stacked with books and the odd shadows cast from a potted plant on the top of a bookcase. Somewhere a cat mewls softly. Wind whimpers at the window.
He has no idea where he is.
Dean jerks upright, feeling his naked body brush against cotton as the sheets slide down. He looks around the darkened room and it takes him a second to notice the dark head of hair on the pillow beside him, the softly rising sheets where another body, slimmer than his own, is covered.
Castiel blinks up at him, newly awoken and looking more than a little dismayed by Dean's sudden movements and worried, almost panicked expression.
Dean remembers exactly whose bed he's in, where and why. He subsides back onto the mattress, lying closer to Castiel and laying an arm soothingly around his waist.
"Hey...it's ok." He rubs Castiel's side as the other man tenses guiltily. "I just got confused for a sec." He mutters, feeling Castiel's body so near his own, unable to prevent the slight twitch of interest that goes through him. Castiel shivers a little and presses closer. Dean strokes his hair.
"One day, we're going to sleep together and it won't put that look on your face...that, 'I did something wrong' look." Dean mumbles, feeling Castiel move closer, until his mouth trails across Dean's collar bone.
"One day." Castiel mutters, then lets out a soft groan as Dean shifts, rolling on top of him and pressing down lightly, touching and feeling his way in the dark. "It feels better now...a little better." Castiel sighs, Dean's hands tracing his ribs and hips in turn as his own hands grasp Dean's back, feeling his shoulder blades under his palms. They kiss shyly, softly in the dark, and Dean's breath hitches in a way that Castiel knows he will one day be able to call 'delicious'.
"So...uh..." Dean kisses him, quick and deliberate. "We're making up for lost time here?"
Castiel can't answer, not with Dean's hand gently brushing his groin, lifting his erection and sliding down on it with a gruff sound, still open from before and a little sore. Castiel presses his head back into the pillows, teeth sinking into his lower lip as a startled cry of pleasure escapes unhampered. Dean presses down with a whimper.
"We've never done this before." Dean whisperers hoarsely, and Castiel thinks, somewhat redundantly. They've barely done anything like this together, and yet in other things they are so far ahead of their years, so much pain and loss, especially in one as young as Dean. Dean rises up and down again, Castiel fists the bed sheets as urgent warmth flares in his abdomen, pleasure snaking up his spine.
One hand finds Dean's waist blindly on the next rise and fall.
The other joins it soon after, while Dean grunts slightly, a rough noise at the back of his throat. He picks up speed, moving as quickly as he can and fighting the need to double over from sensation.
Somehow, with Castiel's hands now on him, the older man's feet pressed into the mattress as Dean bucks and writhes down, epithets and praise falling from his mouth, somehow Castiel grasps the notion that he's being ridden. Ridden into the mattress and at the same time, fucking upwards with deliberation as pleasure flares strongly and skates alone his nerves. It's glorious. The part of his mind that whispers guilt finally tired and curled up like a vicious old cat, and he's watching Dean come apart at the new sensation they have created together, teeth sinking into his full lower lip, hand gasping himself and jerking, twisting as he moans, moving up and down urgently.
Damp with sweat, tired and exhausted, opened out and scraped raw by orgasm, Castiel holds the limp body of the boy against his chest. Dean shivers with the last of his pleasure, stomach wetted again with it.
"Cas?" he finally murmurs, raw throated. "Tomorrow...can you just look happy? Just for me?"
Castiel rubs his fingers against the dips of Dean's spine.
"I'll be happy." He sighs. "You make me very happy...I just...I need time to work that out, when I wake up."
Dean tips up a little to look him in the face.
"You're happy now?"
Castiel holds him a little tighter.
"Very."
Everything looks different in the morning.
It's something Castiel's mother used to say, and he knows she meant that problems which arise for us one day can be diminished by distance in time.
In this case however, he wakes to realise the enormity of the undertaking he has committed to with Dean. To be a couple, lovers, in the public eye...it's a fearsome trial that awaits them he knows. Trial by fire. Looking at the sleeping man beside him, he tries to hold onto the fact that it's worth it, whatever happens. In the wake of Father Gabriel's words he censors his thoughts, trying to crush and deny the words sin, hell, damnation, corruption, iniquity, faggot, sin as soon as his mind conjures them from whatever hole in his mind such filth and hash doctrine comes from.
He clears the concern from his eyes when he sees Dean stir. He will look happy. Dean makes him so happy and he should see, should get to witness the warmth that Castiel feels for him.
Dean is not fooled.
He wakes, sits up and looks Castiel in the eye. He brushes his lips against his forehead and leans against his shoulder.
"It'll be ok Cas, I promise."
For Dean's ability to see through him like a sheet of glass, Castiel is profoundly thankful.
With their naked limbs cleared away under pyjama pants, both sets belonging to Castiel, they pull together breakfast from his under stocked refrigerator and end up lying back in bed again to eat, despite the messy sheets. He can't bring himself to question it, the idea of sitting far enough from Dean to occupy separate chairs is one that is oddly unthinkable.
"So..." Dean gnaws at a pop tart, head resting against Castiel's leg. "I'm going back to college today."
Castiel runs his fingers over Dean's hair.
"I'm meant to be giving Michael a ride home...and I was thinking I'd tell him about us, the whole story."
"Is that wise?" Castiel asks.
"He'll have to listen at least, can't exactly bail out on the freeway." He turns a little. "plus, we'll have to tell people eventually, about how we met...just ,you know, not that we did anything while I was a minor." Dean shrugs. "and he's my friend...I think."
Castiel sighs.
"I realise that we must tell people our story." He dusts crumbs from his fingers. "But Michael already despises me for being far older than you...the truth about my former calling will only worsen his feelings...and your parents..." He shakes his head. "When your parents discover me for what I am, they will hate me."
"I won't." Dean sits up. "Anyone else...I've moved away from home, I can live without going back."
"That's not what I want for you."
"My decision, remember? I'll tell Michael, and my parents and Sam...and I'll try my hardest to make them understand – then it's up to them." Dean thinks for a moment. "Can I see you, next weekend?"
"Of course." Castiel touches the side of his face. "I'd love for you to come."
Dean smiles slightly.
"For a moment there..." He shakes his head.
"What?" asks Castiel softly.
"Nothing...you just looked happy." Dean murmurs.