In the beginning, it hadn't been intentional to leave Sam out of the hunts, but now it was.
Dean couldn't find it in himself to care though, not when Cas looked so good in the passenger side of his Impala, humming along to the songs from the speakers.
They could sit for hours in silence, or talk about nothing at all. It was amazing. Castiel would come up with the oddest questions. Sudden desperate inquires about human things that seemed evident to Dean but not to the fallen angel.
"How long did you believe in the tooth fairy?"
"Do you ever, as a human, get used to having an itch?"
"How long can you hold your breath? The longest I could was two minutes and eight seconds before my head started to hurt,"
And Dean would sit there with a smirk and shake his head, dutifully answering each question as it came.
"I never did, but Sammy did for a long time,"
"No,"
"I guess I've never really timed myself, Cas,"
On and on, they would go, stopping along the road to diners and dive bars, ordering enough burgers to make Sam sigh.
"I love beef," Cas sighed, staring at his burger.
Dean glanced at it, suddenly a little jealous of the sandwich.
"Me too buddy, me too," He took a chomp out of his burger, but found himself enjoying watching Cas eat than chowing down on his own food.
That, for sure, was a first.
"Can we get pie after this?" Castiel hummed, licking ketchup off of his thumb.
Dean was fairly certain that the waitress wouldn't take too kindly to him diving across their corner booth and kissing the daylights out of the man sitting opposite him, but he thought about it for a long moment.
"Uh, yeah, we can get pie," Dean replied gruffly after staring for too long at the thumb that had briefly disappeared into Cas' mouth.
Cas nodded enthusiastically at the promise.
"I get it now, the pie. I didn't get it for a long time, but now I do,"
"You understand pie now?" Dean asked, not able to keep the smile away.
"Yes," Cas answered sagely. "It's delicious. I get it now."
The waitress bustled back, a woman that John would have nudged Dean in the leg and winked at, but John wasn't here, and thank any god for that.
"Can I get you two gorgeous boys anything?" She drawled out, winking at Cas, who smiled politely back up at her.
"The check, please," Dean responded, hardly having enough patience to say please.
"Yessir," She simpered, sauntering back to the counter.
A moment stretched by, and Dean could feel Cas' eyes on him.
"She's right, you know. You are gorgeous," He said gravely.
Dean spluttered.
"What?!"
He cocked his head in the way that adorable puppy way, and Dean found himself blushing. Blushing. Like a fucking teenage girl.
"Are you surprised? You shouldn't be. It is exceedingly difficult to ignore that fact. I noticed it back even when I had my wings,"
Dean couldn't close his mouth. He worked words over in his mouth, thinking of anything to say, but found nothing. On anyone else, he could shoot back a compliment almost instantly, but not then.
The vivacious waitress came back and set the bill on the booth. Dean scooped it up immediately and followed her to the register.
"I know I'm out of line asking you this," She said quietly as she punched in the numbers on the machine "But how long have you two been dating?"
Dean's heart stopped beating.
Someone knew.
She had seen through the macho bullshit, the not touching, and the minimal eye contact.
If she could figure it out, then so could Sam. Bobby. Any other hunter or monster that wanted them dead. Anyone that would use Cas against him because of it.
The twenty-dollar bill was frozen with his hand, halfway to the register.
His mind raced, and his heart surged in his chest, threatening to break out of his ribcage.
Someone had figured it out, and it wasn't a secret anymore.
The waitress sighed, chastising herself. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything, I probably read the situation all wrong, I'm sorry again,"
"Four months," Dean interrupted, uncharacteristically fast. She stopped.
"We've been together for four months," He forced the words out, almost choking on every syllable.
He hadn't felt this free in a long time. She was a stranger in an even stranger town, one that he would never go to again, so it didn't matter. She didn't know their names, anything about them, but the duration of their relationship.
She grinned at him, handing him his change.
"Congrats. He's quite the cutie," She looked over to Cas. Dean followed her gaze and looked at his angel sitting passively at the table, content look on his face, hair all scruffed up.
The free feeling didn't ebb; it only grew as he looked at Cas for longer.
He became acutely aware that not a soul in this Arizona town knew who he or Cas was, and they didn't give a shit about them. They didn't care that Dean liked guys or that Castiel was a fallen angel.
It was a wondrous thing to feel.
"He is, isn't he?" Dean agreed. He waved away the change, letting her keep the ten dollars as a tip, and walked back to their booth.
"Ready to go get pie?" He questioned.
Cas nodded and slid out of the bench, completely caught off guard when Dean locked their fingers together.
It was the first time he had held his hand, and it was nerve-wracking.
He didn't know the hell why it was so scary, especially compared to everything else he did every other week, but none of that ever happened in front of the public. No one could ever see him covered in vampire blood and judge him, because no one ever saw.
But they could see their hands pressed together, open for all to see.
And no one said a single god-damned word as they walked out the door, the exception being their waitress who tossed them a knowing wink.
Dean's heart thrummed in the back of his throat, wild with the new adventure.
He laced their fingers together again when they got into the Impala, rubbing his thumb over Cas' knuckles. They were without scars, no fistfights in his past. Dean wondered what it would be like to live without scars, torture marks on his soul, bites on his legs, or one too many falls down the stairs courtesy of a ghost.
Cas seemed to bask in the added affection, his hand laying palm up next to the gear shift, Dean's fingers on his pulse. It was reassuring to have it under his fingertips to feel the drum of his heart. Sometimes it was hard to forget how easy it is to lose something like a heartbeat.
~0~
"Are you my boyfriend?" Castiel questioned after a stretch of silence. He was always so nonchalant about this sort of thing. It never bothered Dean, but it caught him off guard.
"Umm," Dean stuttered, fork froze in the air, caught in the expectant gaze of Castiel.
They had found a small cafe that served pie, and they had gone into the building hand in hand, refusing to let anyone ruin the night.
"Boyfriend? I thought angels didn't have genders," he deflected with a slightly panicked chuckle.
"I'm not an angel anymore, and this body has a penis, so I think it would be accurate to say 'boyfriend'"
Dean spluttered, unable to look away from Cas.
"I guess you're right," he conceded.
"That I have a penis or that we're boyfriends?" Cas' brow wrinkled in confusion.
"Please stop saying penis," Dean sighed, closing his eyes for a brief second.
"Does that make you uncomfortable?" Castiel inquired, the apple pie forgotten in front of him.
"Oh, Cas, nothing about you makes me uncomfortable," Dean grinned, a hungry sort of smile.
Castiel didn't understand why he blushed when Dean said that.
"I guess the question I should have asked was, do you want to be my boyfriend?" asked the angel, well, ex-angel.
Dean stilled, his mouth shrinking into a smaller, harsher line than before.
He wanted to say yes, emphatically, repeatedly. He wanted it so badly that it sometimes hurt, carving a hollowness in his chest that he could only fill with Cas. He wanted it more than he had wanted anything in a long time.
But Mom had died.
Jess had died.
Bobby's wife died.
The only reason Lisa was still alive, and Ben too, was that Dean wasn't there with them. A factor in their survival was the absence of Dean.
The hunter's curse. The death of the people you loved the most.
But how could he say that? How could he tell Cas that he couldn't say that they were together, that as soon as this was real, he would find Cas dead in the morning?
"Yes," Dean replied honestly, his gut wrenched at the loophole he had found. Cas had asked if Dean wanted Cas to be his boyfriend, and the answer was a resounding yes. But not that they were.
He grinned back at Cas, the guilt already finding a home in his stomach, and it settled in for the long haul.
Castiel beamed at him with crinkled eyes and flushed cheeks.

"This is very inaccurate," Castiel commented, sprawled across the motel bed, bible in his hands. He was already in his pajamas and was silently thrilled at the way Dean's eyes paused at the line of his stomach that was visible.
"Oh?" Dean asked around the toothbrush in his mouth, amused.
"Yes. Noah did not have sons; he had daughters. Six of them. And they were wonderful people. I haven't met anyone yet who is on equal to them in kindness and strength," He flipped the page, frown intact.
"Hey," Dean mumbled, quirking an eyebrow. "What about me?" he asked. It sounded more like 'wha' 'bowt we?' but Cas understood him.
"Earlier today, I watched you violently shoot a werewolf to death," He commented drily, his point lost on his tongue when he realized that he wasn't wearing a shirt.
"That's fair,"
Dean walked back into the bathroom and finished brushing his teeth. Castiel kept his eyes on the book in his hands, pretending that all of his focus wasn't on Dean as he walked around the room and the way his pants were low on his hips. The hunter checked all of the salt lines on each window and made sure that the door was locked. When he was convinced that every shade was drawn and every crack was sealed, he turned to the beds. There were two of them, side by side, an equally horrifying pattern on the bedspreads.
But Dean settled next to him all the same, purposefully knocking the book around in his hands while he settled in on his stomach, side pressed tight against Cas'. His bare stomach pushed into Cas' arm, hot and smooth.
"Are you in the bible?" He mumbled into Cas' shoulder, causing him to forget that he was holding the book.
"No," Cas sighed back. "I am never mentioned by name, but I was part of the garrison that slaughtered the firstborns in Egypt," He replied quietly, freezing after a moment of consideration about how Dean might feel about that.
The man said nothing, his arm locking around Cas' stomach and pulling him closer, humming gently in the back of his throat. The sound shivered through Cas.
"You're not angry with me for that?" The fallen angel asked, equal parts mollified and befuddled.
"Cas, both of us have done shitty things at the request of our fathers. And that happened like a thousand years ago, and I think I can forgive you."
"Alright," he sighed, wriggling more in-depth into the hold.

Sleep was something that the angel had yet to grasp fully. He needed it, and sometimes it was wonderful, but right now, it was a forgotten concept.
Dean was so beautifully human.
Castiel had been astonished the first time he had seen the man without his angelic influence. It had been a revelation, to say the least.
And once in a while, Cas' breath was swept from his lungs at just how gloriously human the Winchester was. The way his skin moved over rippling muscles, the way the tendons fit with the bones, how fantastically distracting the veins and arteries in his hands were. He liked kissing those hands, feeling the rough, callused palms at his lips, and he enjoyed the soft, surprised look on Dean's face as well.
And now he lay there, sleep evading him without a care in the world, studying the magnificent person draped across him.
Not able to keep his hands to himself for a second longer, he traced a featherlight touch over Dean's collarbone, reveling in the grooves and dips. He skimmed his fingers down his shoulder and skated across his bicep, following a particularly large vein to the top of his hand. He drew patterns on it while the minutes ticked by, the hunter happily sleeping in his arms.
Like a cat, Dean stretched out under his touch, a drowsy smirk on his mouth.
"Why aren't you sleeping?" he asked, fingers splayed across Castiel's stomach. The pressure points from his fingertips had Cas curiously warm.
A few weeks ago, he would launch into an explanation about how he still wasn't fully adjusted to being a human, and he hadn't quite grasped any circadian rhythm yet, but not now. He wasn't nearly as clever with his words as Dean, but he was figuring out how to make a sentence work for him.
"You didn't kiss me goodnight," he tried the words on for size, hoping that it would have the desired effect.
Dean huffed out a laugh, but he didn't try to hide the way his body tensed up, or how his hand was pressing a little harder into Cas' stomach.
"Well," he drawled," Then why didn't you wake me up sooner?"
Dean tasted sharp like mint toothpaste, and Cas's hands were cold, where they settled on his shoulders. It melted something in Cas, making him feel warm and liquid.
A brave tongue peeked out from behind rose lips and carefully ran across the seam of Dean's mouth. They laid side by side, bodies impatiently waiting for the right moment to come together.
"You're eager," Dean commented, fingers lazily tapping at the hollow of Cas' throat, making his heart erratic at the casualness of the action.
"It's not every night I have you in bed, Dean," he replied, running his hands over his shoulders and settling nicely on the back of his neck, toying with his hair.
Dean laughed into his neck, tracing the cut of Cas' jaw with his nose, words murmured against his fevered skin. It took every ounce of Cas' self-control not to squirm. There was no helping him when that control broke, though.
"I never thought you'd be a thief, and a bad one at that," His chest was pressed solidly against Castiel's now, the deep rumble of his voice vibrated against him, and he couldn't think of anything better. He spoke the words so close to Cas's ear that goosebumps erupted all over his body, eliciting an unwanted shiver.
"What do you mean?" he questioned. "I haven't stolen anything,"
Dean stilled, and Cas mentally kicked himself. He didn't know what he said wrong, but it had been something.
"What did you say?" He pulled far enough back that he could see Cas's face, even though it was dark in the cozy room. The pale blue light from the moon bathed him with a layer of ethereal that Cas has never seen before. Stars above, he is beautiful.
"Uhm, that I haven't stolen anything?" He choked out, face hot but not out of embarrassment. Something wild turned in his lower stomach in the hungry way that Dean was looking at him.
"Is that so? Well, I've changed my mind, the shirt you're wearing is actually mine, and I want it back,"
Castiel stared up at him; mouth popped open.
"Now, please. And close your mouth, you never know what might get in there when you keep it open," though Dean's words were commanding, his cheeks filled with color.
It was one of Dean's better-kept secrets. The personality he used around other people called for him to be controlling and dominant, aloof, and indifferent at all times. But it wasn't him, not really.
He hasn't been reduced to flustered blushing and butterfly assaults in his stomach since he was in his teens. Now, there was one of the most beautiful human beings he had ever met wearing his clothes; delicious pink lips parted, leading to a glistening mouth, looking up at him with flushed cheeks and heavy brown eyes. And my god, he looked just as ravenous.
Cas sat up slowly, the sheet pooling at his waist. In one fluid, drawn-out movement, he pulled the shirt over his head and handed it to Dean.
Dean's mouth went cotton dry.
He wasn't scarred up from a childhood of monsters and shotguns. There was no healed up keloid mark on his back from where he got shot with rock-salt when another hunter's shot went wide. No burns on his waist from putting too hot guns back in his belt, no jut of uneven bone tented under his flesh where a rib had set wrong, no skinned elbows that Dean somehow managed to have even though he was thirty. The only scars were where his wings were torn from his body and the now pale pink mark on his side.
Miles of smooth, tan skin and Dean wanted to touch so bad it almost hurt.
"Here," He dropped the crumpled shirt onto Dean's chest, running his hands over his now bare arms as they met the cold air.
"I didn't think your generosity would fail you so quickly," Cas commented, still sitting up.
Dean formed words with his mouth, but he couldn't carry on this menial conversation, even though on most days, he found himself capable of talking with Castiel for hours about nothing at all. But he had nothing to say that his tongue could articulate, his vocabulary was too small to cover the big feeling in his chest that propelled his arm up and out. His warm, rough palm rested gently on Cas's lower back. If they were strangers, this is where Dean would touch if he were trying to get past him, so it seemed like an innocent enough location to begin. His hand was dark against his satin skin, too harsh and scarred to truly belong handling such soft skin. He moved his thumb back and forth as gently as he could.
Cas shivered, goosebumps erupted up the lumps of his spine, tightening the skin under his touch.
Dean wanted this, everything about it. Especially the words, telling him that this wasn't wrong or bad, that he wasn't alone in the heat that gobbled up his body and craved the weight of Cas's body on top of his own.
"I like it when you touch me," It was a simple statement. Castiel was not one for long, drawn-out speeches about feelings or motives. While some had a gift for lengthening sentences to convey, Cas was in the department of blunt, bittersweet deliverance of information.
He turned his head and rested his chin on his naked shoulder, cheeks pink. "Is that an odd thing to say?"
"No," Dean managed to say, his voice was a bit gruffer than he intended.
Cas nodded and slowly laid back down
Dean's hand still tucked away nicely in the small of his back.
He left the blankets at his waist, long, tan torso on display. A sweet hum began in his lower stomach, hungry.
"Can you say that again?" Dean's mouth hovered over Cas's neck, waiting for the dinner bell to be rung. His pulse sang under his tongue.
"I like it when you touch me-" he shivered as lips met his skin, Dean's tongue loving the cut of his jaw and the hollow of his throat,
"I want you." He exhaled, dangerously close to a moan, the noise surprising them both.
It was the most delicious thing Dean had ever heard.
Dean devoured him.
He put on a good show of being a ladies man, but Dean could count on two hands the number of people he had sprawled out like a canvas beneath him.
They had kissed before. Dean had stood between Cas's legs weeks ago and wondered the rest of him tasted like, and it had all been a prelude to this moment.
But this was fantastically different.
Cas's hands roamed Dean's body like a musician learning a new instrument. As their mouths got to know each other better, teeth and tongues and lips, Cas's nimble fingers searched his body.
Unlike Castiel, whose body was unblemished from years of indoor life, Dean was a roadmap of every indiscretion he ever lived through.
His piano fingers loved each faded bruise and old scar, found each mark on his body that hadn't healed right, and said not a word.
He also found the demonic possession tattoo on his left pectoral. He stopped his touches, gave it a gentle kiss.
He murmured gently to the ink, thanking it for the years it had protected him.
"How are you this perfect?" Dean could hardly breathe with those eyes on him like that.
"You haven't seen all of me yet," Castiel flirted back.
"Is that a challenge?"
"More of an invitation,"
It had been about a year since someone had been wrapped around Dean so tightly, fingers woven deep in his hair, legs circling his hips, mouth exhaling noises that made his blood run hot in his veins.
Cas was a change from what he had before. It has always been a soft body with curves, long hair that got tangled around his fingers, and painted fingernails trailing up his spine.
He had never before pressed a hard body into a mattress, a person without much give and no curves, blunt fingertips biting into his shoulder and something hot and stiff against his thigh, not the other way around.
As Cas ran his fingers through his hair and sighed softly into his mouth while Dean traced his lips with his tongue, Dean waited for the disgust to come boiling through his body like half of his conscious brain thought it would. Dean, ten years ago, hell, a year ago, would have balked at the thought of shamelessly kissing another man, eagerly swallowing up his quiet noises and loving the feeling of his back under his fingertips. But there was nothing, just the shivering ache of what was to come.
There were no condoms in the bedside drawer. Castiel had checked. He hadn't had the foresight to pack any, and he couldn't make himself ask Dean if he had brought some. He hardly understood the purpose of them, but he had seen on a television show once that you needed condoms to have sex. Though the hunter as thoroughly enjoying himself, he could feel as much; he was scared that what was happening was a fragile little bubble they were in, and asking for such a thing would shatter it like a wine glass on concrete. That would make it real. It would make all of this terribly real, every kiss and touch, and lingering stare.
"What?" Dean asked, teeth dangerously close to biting his chest. Cas's stomach danced at the thought.
'Huh?" He gasped out, not able to look away.
"I just lost you for a second, where'd you go? Am I going too fast?" He frowned, his body flushed and bathed in pale moonlight coming in through a crack in the shades. Just looking at him made Cas's throat dry. He wasn't shaped like a swimsuit model; he was built like someone who owed every ounce of muscle they had to work with their hands and living in environments where they worked hard manual labor.
Cas supposed it was the only good thing that came out of a hunter's life.
"I was uhm...actually thinking the same thing. That maybe I was going too fast for you..." Cas cracked an awkward smile, as shy as he could get with a part of his body that was not shy in the slightest, straining out to touch him.
Dean sat back on his haunches; head cocked as he surveyed the person before him. Cas's hair was wild from greedy fingers trying to take root in it; his tan skin was marked up with purpling bites and hard marked kisses. But his eyes, nothing could make his heart beat faster. Savage and gleaming with what he was sure could be seen in his own, but Cas was still in there, always evaluating and calculating things at speeds that Dean could never comprehend.
Dean licked his lips, and Cas's breath hitched in his chest as he watched, no other choice but with eyes wide.
"I think we're going at a pace that will take us exactly where we want to go," he trailed his palms over his knees and up to his thighs, all while a shivering Cas watched until his fingers curled at his hips. "Don't you think, Cas?" He asked, sincerely.
His hands were so hot like he had held them over a fire before grabbing him. His thumbs stroked the cut of his stomach, and Cas felt himself shallowly surging up, shocking himself.
"I think if we go any slower, I very well might scream." He responded.
He recognized his questionable choice of wording as Dean's smile turned downright wicked.
"I think you've got it mixed up Cas," he purred, callused hands tightening on his hips, and in one solid, strong motion, Cas's entire body had slid a foot and a half down, his ass colliding with Dean's thighs. He let out a soft surprised noise that made his neck and face flush deeper, but Dean was hovering over him, hot breath on his neck and in his ear as he whispered, "I'll make you scream, no matter how slow we go,"
Oh fuck.
"Prove it then, take off my pants," Cas's hands smoothed over his fevered skin, fingernails trailing up and down his back, Dean growled against his throat, vibrating his whole body. Neither of them was sure where the angel's dirty mouth was coming from, but they weren't going to complain.
Warm, calloused hands rested on his waist, long fingers curling around the elastic of his flannel pajama pants. Cas lifted up his hips, and Dean slid them down past his thighs and off his body entirely. Though this was happening all under the blankets, a streak of nerves shot through the both of them.
Dean was the only one who really knew he what he was doing, and that was a long shot at the moment.
Dean lowered himself down until his chest was brushing against Cas's, pressing him into the bed with his whole body.
Dean swallowed the soft moans Casexhaled. Cas's parted legs grew curious and brave, bored with just laying splayed; they traveled up until they were looped around Dean's waist.
"Why are you still wearing pants?" Caspanted, grinding himself up against Dean.
"Fuck," he growled, face buried in Cas's neck as he involuntarily thrust back.
Something witty wanted to leave Cas's mouth, but the feeling of Dean surging up against him, the way he didn't slam into him but swept him up into it like an ocean wave, it made every nerve in his body squirm and bask in the heat. It was exciting like he hadn't felt before.
They danced on the edge of something beautiful and something terrible, but right then, they were the only two left in the world.
Dean opened his mouth to apologize, but Cas beat him to it. "The word sorry is not allowed in this room."
"Okay," he ground out, teeth dragging on the side of Cas's neck as he slowly sat up.
It as too dark to tell exactly what he was doing, but Cas heard him shuffle for a second, then the soft sound of his pajama pants hitting the floor.
The realness of the situation struck them both as he hovered over Cas, now that both of them were naked. Dean was on his hands and knees, palms on either side of Cas's head, knees between Cas's. He didn't want to say that he didn't know what he was doing, that if he weren't a man, he would be in his element. Though he didn't breathe a word of that out loud, Cas seemed to understand all of it. With his left hand, Cas cupped his face and kissed him gently, so sweet it made him hungry.
Slowly, he wrapped his legs around his lower back, bringing their bodies together. The noise that Dean made had Cas grinning. It was caught between his name and a cuss, a moan and a growl and it settled over Cas's body like a weighted blanket, giving him courage. He craved to know what other sounds he could make him utter.
Dean was hot, everything about him was burning and boiling and sweltering, his lips on Cas's mouth, his hands by his shoulders, the delicious heat of their bodies touching but not yet moving, holding perfectly still.
A brave hand slid between their bodies, loving the way Dean's body shivered at the touch. He still had yet to move, on his hands and knees, hovering over Cas, scared that the already burning coil around his spine would ruin the fun too early if he moved.
As Cas wrapped his fingers around Dean, a clear and growling "Fuck," was said against his shoulder as his head dropped to it.
"If you say so," Cas whispered back, sliding his curled hand up and down, tortuously slow.
Dean chuffed out half a laugh against his skin.
Cas pressed himself tighter against him and slowly started shallowly thrusting his hips.
Neither was ready for anything more in-depth that night, supplies, and bravery were lacking in that department. But that didn't stop them from this tangled sheets masterpiece of messy kisses and sharp gasps as they slid against each other, rolling their hips against each other's, reveling in the wash of feeling that splashed over them with each movement. Feeling Dean's lips moving in random patterns and hearing panted mumbles in his ear, Cas felt the need to raise questions.
"Are you saying something?" Cas asked, and in Dean's opinion, he had no business looking the way he did. Tan body flushed, hair wild and eyes gleaming, with each soft snap of Dean's hips, his whole body rocked with him, sliding him up and down on the white sheets.
"Yes," he whispered, knowing anything louder would have come out a groan.
"Why?" He marveled, lip catching between his teeth as Dean changed their position. No longer where his legs around the hunter's waist, but flat on the bed, spread wide while he shamelessly rutted against him. He slid a rough hand under Cas's lower back and changed the angle of his hips, an action that elicited a low moan from his clenched jaw.
"I'm apologizin',"
"For what?"
"Whoever changes these sheets is gonna need a raise,"
Cas laughed until Dean swallowed the sound, crushing their mouths together, his body never ceases to move.
It had been too long for Dean, and he knew it would cut his ministrations shorter than he wanted, but from the glassy eyes, open-mouthed panting happening from Cas underneath him, he knew his end would be a shared thing.
Cas's hands scoured his body, finding a spot on the backs of his thighs, pulling Dean against faster and harder.
He fought with himself for a second, but for reasons, he never thought. Do I kiss him or watch his face?
He pulled far enough away from Cas's face to get a good look at it, and just watching his face almost pushed him over the edge. Impossibly blue eyes barely shut and fluttering with every thrust, head tilted back and mouth open.
Balancing on the one hand, he slipped the other between their feverish bodies and curled his fingers around both of them.
With his newfound grip, he snapped his hips against Cas's, letting him set the pace with his hands at the backs of his thighs, fingers biting his flesh in a way that only felt good right then.
From the way he pushed and pulled, Dean thought for a fleeting second that he might not be able to keep up with him, but Cas didn't seem to notice.
A low, continuous hum bounced from Cas with every surge against him.
Dean heard his name leave his lips twice, once as a warning and the other significantly louder. Cas's back arched, hands abandoning his legs and holding on to Dean's shoulders as he cried out.
Dean was right for wanting to watch. It was art if he ever saw it.
Hearing his name gasping on Cas's breath did him in. He shuddered long and hard, riding out the tremendous waves with slow hips and murmured words.
He collapsed on the bed, not all of him missing Cas, his shoulder coming to rest atop his.
Both of them rolled over to face each other, bodies intertwined, and eyes locked. They floated in their little bliss bubble for a few minutes before Cas finally whispered, "Hello,"
"Hey," Dean grinned, slow and lazy.
"I'm sticky," Cas observed.
"Huh, wonder why,"
Cas dreamily ran his fingers through Dean's hair, pressing their lips together for the sweetest kiss.
"I understand it now, sex,"
Dean laughed, a throaty, warm sound. "Oh, you think so?"
"Yes. Before, I could never grasp why people would want to do something that required so much effort and," his cheeks flared a bit pinker, "and fluids, but I understand now,"
"So, does that mean you'll want to do it again?" Dean joked but was completely serious. He would always abide by the angel's wishes, but it would still be a stab to the heart.
"Oh, absolutely," he affirmed emphatically.
Dean smiled, unable to keep the feeling in his chest contained. It was an expanding feeling, pushing out and pressing on his heart, like a balloon of sunshine in his chest. He hated how it sounded, but he refused to think about it further.
His rough palms captured either side of Castiel's face, holding it steady. Dean's mouth worked for words, lips twisting, and tongue searching for how to say it.
His eyes, oh those beautiful eyes, eyes that Castiel had fallen for in every sense of the word.
He saved him from the agony of the search and kissed him gently, pouring every ounce of heartbreak and understanding into the gesture. He knew what he was trying to say and why he couldn't say it.
"You don't have to say it. I know. And Dean," he paused, "me too."
Dean sighed and relaxed, nodding.

The night was black, and the company was excellent. They drifted in and out of sleep for hours, curled tightly around each other.
From Castiel's calculations, it was almost dawn. In less than five minutes, the first morning rays would peek over the horizon.
Dean seemed to see this too.
"I love you," he whispered, letting the admission slip out before the sun could see them and tell the world, tell all of the monsters and fate herself.
The moon was better at keeping secrets.
"I love you too."