The battle didn't happen quickly and it didn't turn out to be one for the ages, but to the hypothetical relief of everyone involved, it at least had the decency to get over with in time for anyone who cared to get home and catch the football game.
The problem with this reality was that no one particularly cared about the football game. Dean and Sam cared only for saving the world once again, Castiel cared for making sure that his Father's creation stayed protected, and anyone else involved had their own motivations. Crowley rather wanted to get out alive so he could take Bobby to Bali for ten days of perfect, 'so help me, Robert Steven Singer, we are not going to talk, think, or any other verb of your choice about hunting or I will let Bruiser have his way with your glorious member' relaxation, just like he'd lovingly threatened to do the first time they'd fucked on Bobby's sofa. Gabriel just wanted to avoid seeing the angelic Limbo ever again. So it goes.
Things opened up as all good hostage scenes do, with the captor continuing to lord it over her prey that she thought she had everything in the bag. Belial had always had a particular talent for doing so; it was one of the things her father had praised her for until his dying day. She strolled aimlessly around the four would-be sacrifices, tossing her knife up and down because she could, and saying things like, "Well, you know, it's just a shame that the Virgin Bitch has to be so pretty. Trust me, sweetheart? If you weren't pregnant with the Christ child, I would show you a whole fucking world full of things you've never even dreamed of."
"...I'm not really a virgin anymore, you know that, right?" Becky asked. "I mean, yeah, Chuck and I never slept together, but I think Lisa's a lot better than he would've been anyway. She doesn't need semi-constant reassurance that I love her and not Sam Winchester. ...And you know, it's really not fair to anybody to say that lesbian sex isn't real sex, because that makes it seem like we need a man for it to count and that just perpetuates the partiarc—"
Meg cut Becky off with a smack on the face, for which Lisa kicked her on the back of the calf. As soon as the demon turned around, Lisa added: "Besides, Becky's dreamt of a lot of interesting things. She wrote this one fic of you-inside-of-Sam, Dean, and Jo... totally priceless." She grinned, even though she was facing down a nephil, born of the chief of the fallen angels, and Lisa didn't let any of Meg's untoward curses affect her expression. It wasn't that, on the inside, she wasn't quaking with fear and doubt — she was. But Lisa Braeden didn't just let herself quiver in uselessness when there were people to save, lives to look after, and other important things to do.
Meg glowered. She was good at glowering. Taught lessons in it to the junior demons, even. She tossed a barb at Gabriel, who didn't dignify her half-assed attempt at wit with a retort, so she snapped at Crowley, who was still a mite sore over how she'd gotten her pet Hell-hounds killed back in Carthage, Missouri. And so on. And so on.
Finally, the moon came up and the stars came out, and Meg smiled because the time was nearly perfect for the ritual. It might have gone off without a hitch, too... except for the popping noise and jubilant, "Hi, sweetheart!" that made her turn away from her carefully prepared makeshift altar. When she saw Cupid standing there, in all his pale, smiling, nude, chubby glory, she furrowed her brow.
"...Who let you off the sprout farm, Barachiel?" she huffed.
"Oh, nobody," he replied with a shrug. "I just thought, you know... I really don't appreciate what you're trying to do here, because these are some nice people — well. Becky and Lisa are nice people, and Crowley's a nice demon, and Gabriel doesn't want people to think he's nice, but really, he has his moments, and it's sort of like—"
"Oh my God," Meg said, rolling her eyes. "Can you not sense my complete lack of interest in your treacly inanities? You can't stop me, lover boy. Go hug a cactus."
Barachiel had actually tried to hug a cactus, once. They'd only just been created, and he'd been trying to prove his point that no matter how prickly something was, if you gave it the proper amount of hugs and love, it would always love you back. Israfel had pulled spines out of his flesh for six hours. But, as it went, Barachiel only tilted his head and frowned at Meg.
"Well... you did get that right," he acquiesced, shrugging. "I can't stop you. I'm a lover, not a fighter, and I know that, Meg. I always have. And if that's wrong, then I never, ever want to be right... but, see, I... I have some friends with me. And they know how to stop you."
That was the cue that Sam had come up with, and right on time, the chorus-angels swooped in from out of nowhere. Meg staggered backwards, staring at them, and her utter loss for words wasn't at all helped when they burst out into a spirited rendition of "Rock You Like A Hurricane." (This is a somewhat liberal description of their singing, "spirited." The readiest criticism of their song was that they had the most gorgeous voices in all creation, short of Israfel's own, but that they seemed entirely unfamiliar with The Scorpions, the period of rock and roll that they'd come out of, and, indeed, rock and roll at all. Which made sense. They'd learned the song from hearing it through the Imapala's speakers.)
As soon as she recovered the use of her voice, Meg called up the cadre of demons that she'd brought with her. They attempted to charge the angels, only to meet the business end of Ruby's knife (wielded by Damien) and demon-banishing powers (wielded by Sam). He knew that Dean didn't want him using them, but as soon as Sam pulled his first demon into his chest and laid his hand on her forehead, he knew that this type of power was different than the control he'd gotten from chugging Ruby's blood. Pure, white-hot energy shot through his arm and met the darkness inside the demon's meat-suit; his whole side trembled; the demon's eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open; and in an explosion of bright light, Sam destroyed the evil. Damien stared, until another demon thwacked him on the head and reminded him that there was still a battle he needed to fight.
Dean, Barnes, and Bobby had to fight their way through demons too, once the sons of bitches noticed that they were heading for the altar. But a few handy rounds of rock salt-and-holy water bullets incapacitated most of the things, and the last one just smoked out when it became obvious that there was no way he could match the hunters — even the tall, skinny one knew his stuff better than the demon liked admitting, but turning coward was better than dying. Meg might have tried to fight back, and she might have been able to put up some kind of effort in her own defense — but the problem with that idea was that Bela had better skills with a knife. They tussled, they knocked each other to the ground and fought tooth-and-nail despite the excessive mud, and for all Meg put into salvaging her attempt to bring back her Father, Bela still got the magical knife from her. She smirked and, embedding the blade in Meg's meat-suit's heart, whispered, "I would've preferred doing this to Lilith, but she was more fun to deal with than you."
And Castiel's role in everything was rescuing the hostages: while the demons were sufficiently distracted, he showed up by their collective side. He called a nearby rainstorm in to put out the burning holy oil. This had the pleasant side effect of making the devil's trap's paint run. And once these things had been handled, he cut the rope bonds that had kept them hostage. The last thing that Belial-at-one-point-known-as-Meg-Masters saw before her spirit ceased to be was Gabriel charging Sam and flinging his arms around the younger Winchester's shoulders, all but screaming, "My hero!" For being so tiny, the archangel was powerful, and both of them wound up knocked flat on Sam's back, in the mud beside a tombstone. Without any semblance of respect for the dead, Gabriel threw a forceful kiss in Sam's direction, claiming the boy's mouth with his own.
He only stopped when Sam hit him on the ass in a way that decidedly did not say thank you, sir, now give me another before we fuck. "Not here," Sam explained, giving Gabriel a Skeptical Look as though demanding to know if he'd suffered any recent head trauma. Gabriel shrugged; Sam pointed at the hunk of marble at the head of the grave. It read Mary Campbell Winchester, 1954 — 1983.
"Oh," Gabriel said.
"...Yeah."
Gabriel snapped his fingers, transporting them to the other end of the graveyard, and resumed kissing Sam as though nothing had happened. When they separated to come up for air, Sam ran his fingers down the archangel's neck and chuckled, "Took you long enough." And, normally, Gabriel might have needed to fall into a fight of 'who can snark better than whom,' but just this once, he thought, he could forgive Sam for getting cheeky with him. Neither of them particularly cared that Bela perched on a nearby headstone, filing her nails again and watching them the way that Dean watched burgers cooking.
The other couples had similar experiences. As soon as they both were safe, Barnes and Damien tried running at each other like some starry eyed couple in the movies... however, both had used their full allowance of coordination for the day, and they tripped with a good fifteen yards still between them. The ground's instability in mind, they shoved themselves to standing and settled for a slower, but no less passionate, embrace. Bobby helped Crowley to his feet, and as a reward for this action, promptly found himself being cuddled by the King of the Crossroads. While they were both still standing. And in full view of anyone else who'd cared to look. With a sigh, he patted Crowley between the shoulders and muttered, "Good to see you too, dumb-ass."
Lisa cuddled Becky from behind, being careful of her tender pregnancy boobs; she lowered her hand to Becky's stomach, and splayed the palm there just in time to feel the baby kick. Becky hummed, and smiled, leaning her head back onto Lisa's shoulder. Turning her head just so, she managed to press a kiss on Lisa's neck. "I'm kind of reconsidering the name Samantha Dee," she chirped.
"Oh, really?" Lisa arched an eyebrow playfully. "What are you thinking of now?"
"What about Ellen?" Becky offered. "Or Joanna Beth?"
Lisa sighed and tucked a piece of hair behind Becky's ear. Well... they might've been another set of names from the Supernatural books, but at least they didn't involve havingWinchester as a middle name. Lisa smiled, and hoped that they didn't, anyway.
Dean and Castiel watched all of this happen, and they had widely differing thoughts on the scenes that played out before them. For his part, Dean just wished that everyone would chill the fuck out and stop acting like they'd never been in a life-or-death, we-have-to-save-the-world-again-this-time situation before... but the feelings that welled up in Castiel's chest were far less simple, and more difficult for the angel to understand. Instead of trying, he stormed away, heading for the thicket of trees that laid just behind the cemetery. He heard Dean following him, but for a long while, he tried to ignore his charge.
Even though Castiel put his best efforts into paying Dean no mind, his ears refused to stop ringing with the sound of Dean's footfalls behind him, of Dean crushing snow and twigs and not letting up in his pursuit at all. "What do you want?" the angel snapped. Dean griped with some complaint or other about the fact that Cas had just up and run off. "I have served my purpose here and decided to take a walk. It was my belief that I could do so without fear of judgment or stalking."
"I wanted..." Dean stopped underneath a tree and, almost like a reward for the bemused expression on his face, got a branch's worth of snow dumped atop his head. "You just... Is it suddenly a crime for me to want to make sure you're okay?"
"I can make it back to Heaven fine, but it was considerate of you to offer to walk me to the door. Even if there is no door and, were there one, you couldn't see it until you died again." Castiel's shoulders hunched like those of a wolf on the prowl; he didn't enjoy the lupine sensation that this position brought, it felt so base and degenerate, but controlling his emotions had, so far this week, only served to make him miserable. He didn't turn to look at Dean, or else he might have noticed that the hunter's face had paled, that his jaw had fallen slack, and that, despite his best efforts, shock had made Dean's eyes start watering. "You should go," Castiel said, voice low and dangerous. "Sam might not be able to defend himself from Gabriel's libido for much longer."
"Yeah, well... I don't really give a fuck. It's been too long since Sammy got laid, and—"
"For wanting to make sure that I am okay, you seem all too willing to disregard my thoughts — the ones that I have expressed to you countless times before — about the wordfuck and your nonliteral over-use of it in conversation."
"Sue me, Cas! It's a part of my freaking vocabulary!" Sighing, Dean ran his hands back through his hair, then let them drop to his sides. "...Fine. Go back home. Go back up there and never answer your phone or send a fucking text or acknowledge me ever again. See what I care. The mutant ninja angel's probably trying to steal your spot on the ass-clown throne, right?"
Most of these remarks made Castiel's lip twitch — Dean being emotionally dishonest with him wasn't new, but that didn't mean he disliked it any less — but one thing, above all the others, stuck out at him. "...My phone has not rung since I returned to Heaven in the first place." Dean balked at this, and started listing all the different times he'd called, and the messages he'd left and the fact that hearing Castiel's voicemail message had, on some days, been the only reason why Dean had made it through the shit his life threw at him.
"Between putting up with... demons, and vampires, and Sam, and trying to be a dad, and failing worse than my old man did, and Lisa, and Becky, and Lisa hooking up with Becky, and Sam, and more Sam, and worrying about Sam, and Bela and Crowley stalking Sam... I mean, listening to that always ripped my fucking heart out Cas, but at least it was yours."
Castiel said nothing, and instead pulled out his phone. The damned thing had apparently turned itself off, or run out of batteries, at some point and with a sigh, Castiel ran his thumb down it. A shock went from his skin into the device and revived it, and while Dean seethed behind him, Castiel opened his voicemail box and started playing back the old messages: Cas? ...Cas, it's Dean. I'm trying to make things work with Lisa, and, well... I don't really think you could help with that, you're sort of clueless about this shit, but... it'd really be nice to see you. You know... when you're not too busy making your brothers act their ages.
The volume of Castiel's phone was turned up enough that, even without it being on speaker-phone, Dean could hear the playback as it went. Each successive message made him blush a little bit more and, eventually, he just turned his eyes away from Castiel's back. The snow was much less judgmental, and probably less dangerous, at that. Dean had had his daily fill and then some of pointlessly dangerous things.
Hey, Cas, it's me again and I just... Lisa and me broke up. Sam coming back sort of made the whole relationship thing... well, it doesn't matter. Me and Sam are back on the road now, and he said not to go looking for whatever dragged him out of the Hot Box but he won't tell me why, but... If it gets boring Upstairs and you need a little action, you can always come down here and hack the heads off some blood-sucking freaks with us. Wouldn't mind the company. Sam's been whining like a bitch anyway.
I want you to say your name because I fucking miss you, okay? Come pay me a visit, or just... call me back, I don't know. Why'd you have to run off on me in the first place, I know I'm not Mister Commitment, Cas, but fuck that fucking noise, I tried my damndest to be good to you, okay, and if you had an issue, we could've fucking worked it out. Instead of just... This one ended not with the same beep that accompanied hanging up, but Sam's voice unintelligibly demanding something, the sounds of a Winchester wrestling match, and Sam muttering an apology before ending the call.
"...I was kind of drunk when I sent that one," Dean explained sheepishly.
"I could tell," Castiel pointed out. His eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed as the next string of messages started:
Cas, it's Dean. I know you can't be that busy with fucking politics. Call me.
Cas, it's Dean. It's late, and I'm bored, and me and Sam are at the... Gemini Motel in Greenfield, Iowa, room seventeen, and... I know this is totally unclassy and you'll probably kill me for it, but if you get this message, can you please, please, please swing by for a booty call? I haven't gotten laid since Lisa and my hand's just not cutting it, okay?
Call me back, you junk-less son of a bitch. It's not fair, you know that? Making me feel like this and then fucking off to the Cloud City. I'm going out of my mind, Cas, now stop being a bastard and let me know that Raphael hasn't fucking killed you or something.
Cas… please.
The rest of them passed in similar fashion, with Dean growing all the tenser as Castiel heard everything it had entered into Dean's head to say — how Cas should've been able to get cell service in Heaven, since he was some big-shot angel now; how Dean deserved to hear from Cas, even just to say that he was alive; how, fuck it, it wasn't fair to just run off like that. Finally, they came to the last message: What the Hell. Seriously, Cas? Thanks for sticking me with your freaking voicemail — again. Don't know how it's not full yet. I keep calling you — don't know why, since it keeps getting me jack-crap nothing. But, just… What the fuck, Cas. You were supposed to be here. I thought— The phone stopped replaying, and gave Castiel a dial-tone instead.
"That one got cut off," the angel huffed. He shuddered and whatever the feeling was that had wandered into his chest, he didn't enjoy it. It wormed around like it was trying to find his emotional center and devour it, and worse than that, Castiel couldn't even begin to parse out where one sensation ended and another began. More than worms — it was like having a hurricane inside of him.
"Your box was full," Dean explained. "...I was kind of ready to go on some more, but—"
"You have more nerve than anyone else in Creation, Dean. Did you know that?" Castiel's words crackled in the air as though they were made of pure electricity.
Dean put up a false grin, regardless. "I like to think it keeps my nipples perky—"
Castiel turned around; his glare was white hot. Dean wanted to find it funny, getting that look from a guy in one of his old t-shirts, but he just couldn't find it in him to laugh. "All of those messages you sent me, the fact that you're following now, they say one thing and one thing only, Dean." Dean shrugged and inquired as to what Castiel meant by that. "That you don't trust me."
"Cas, man, I didn't mean to—"
"No, I know you didn't mean to, but..." He sighed. How could human beings put up with feeling like this all the time? Their endurance made them the true inheritors of Creation, but Castiel found it difficult to appreciate the theological point that his intellect had when every part of his body itched to do so many different things — hit Dean, kiss him, fight him... Castiel's hands twitched, curling into fists but otherwise staying still. "You thought that I was involved in some plot with Gabriel and Cupid. …Do you have any idea as to the full extent of what I have dealt with for your sake?"
"Well, yeah, you kind of made that point with your knee and a brick wall — not to mention the whole... hacking a banishing sigil into your chest thing."
"And yet you continue to act as though I will turn on you, or manipulate you as I used to do, or... or desert you at any given time, for no reason whatsoever—"
"You sure fucked off back to Heaven for no reason whatsoever—"
"Because you were going to Lisa's, Dean! Because you made Sam a promise to try and live like a normal human being — because you told him that you would leave well enough alone, and because you were in pain." The anger emanating off of Castiel started coming harder, faster — Dean could feel the heat of it from where he stood, and it wouldn't have surprised him if Cas had gone and burned the entire forest down. "Which is to say nothing of the fact that you all but told me to leave... And what kind of life would you have had if I'd stayed, initially? What kind of life would Ben and Lisa have had?"
"I would've had you, you stupid son of a bitch!"
There was a certain logic to that statement, one that made more sense than Dean's statements usually tended to. Castiel's nails started digging into his palm, and he was sure that he would draw blood eventually. "You didn't seem to want me," he pointed out. "But that much, I could forget and move on from. You are difficult, and insensitive, and as you say, you aren't exactly Mister Commitment, and you have an overinflated sense of your own cosmic importance coupled with one of the worst martyr complexes I have ever encountered, and I say this as someone who had to tell several early saints that they didn't need to get themselves killed — and all of that, I could put up with." He sighed as if breathing fire. "That, all of it, is what I love about you. ...But after last night—"
"Wait, what the Hell did I do last night—"
Rolling his eyes, Castiel parroted, in an exact mimicry of Dean's voice: "You were fucking lying to me this whole time, weren't you, Cas? ...Please. As though I care what Barachiel gets up to in his spare time, and worse, as though I would let him sway my emotions such as—"
"Yeah, well, it kind of tends to happen once Birthday Suit starts flitting around. And, come on, it's not exactly like you're a picture of emotional intelligence." Dean crossed his arms over his chest and grimaced.
"I lived for millennia without them! I was never meant to feel these things, and yet..." There came a flurry of rushing wings, one that stirred up the snow around them; it came down and resettled as though it hadn't been moved at all, and suddenly, Castiel was well infringing on Dean's personal space, craning his neck to get his face as close to Dean's as he could without kissing him. "And yet... I met you, and everything — literally everything that I had ever known — started changing. Not even the fact that I fell, or that I killed my brothers for the sake of your mission — everything that I thought I knew about myself stopped being as true as I thought it had been."
One of his hands came up to Dean's forehead. The hunter didn't even try to move, just shivered as Castiel ran his fingers down Dean's face, as the sensation of pure love rocketed throughout his body — the affection hit first, like warm soup hitting Dean's stomach; then came the passion and the desire, which made his heart race; the anger, the lust, the fear, the concern, the frustration, the gut-wrenching trust, the disappointment that was really more a fear that someone might be cracking around the edges, the willingness to overlook major character faults... Dean paled, felt his knees wobbling as though they couldn't manage supporting him when he was going to go having those kinds of emotions. They blazed through his chest, dropped his mind in the middle of the ocean and told it to swim or drown and put everyone out of its misery; the aftershock, when Cas's hand dropped to his neck and the circus of feelings subsided, was nausea, a sourceless fever, and a sudden preoccupation with whether or not Dean's heart would come up through his throat if he happened to sneeze. He swallowed thickly — this was probably the closest he'd been to having the flu since he'd been ten years old.
"...Do you feel that, Dean?" Castiel whispered. "...That is everything that you have ever done to me. From even before Cupid decided to involve himself. All of them weremine."
"...How the Hell do you put up with that kind of shit?" Dean balked. Even without shooting through all of those things that Cas had felt, Dean still felt as though he might collapse.
Castiel flexed his fingers. He splayed his palm across the back of Dean's neck and asked, "How do you?" Without another warning, he jerked Dean down into a kiss.
Since he'd had his first kiss at age eleven, Dean had kept a running mental tally of which ones were the best. Before the Apocalypse had failed to happen, the only one that Cas hadn't beaten was the one that Dean had shared while making his Crossroads Deal — kissing the Demon had felt like he was kissing an oil-covered penguin, but even when he and Cas's lips had met for the first time, Dean hadn't been able to regret the action that had brought Sam back to life. This collision, however, left that kiss in the dust: Castiel's entire mouth tasted like he'd made Dean feel, a forceful mixture of pure love and the other sensations that tended to follow at its heels — along his teeth, Dean tasted something soft and sugary; underneath his tongue, there was something more like Vindaloo curry, and when Castiel bit down on Dean's lower lip, even though Dean was certain he'd draw blood, it made him shudder as though he'd been thrust into a heat straight out of July in Texas. As one of his knees faltered against his will, bringing his heel up off the ground, Dean was fairly certain that some of the snow around them had started melting.
When Castiel knocked him to the ground, he was absolutely sure of it. The mud cushioned his fall, but Dean still noticed the lack of snow — the lack of anything even remotely cold where it should have been freezing. He didn't have much time to think about this, though: with a flick of the wrist, Castiel sent Dean hurtling toward the closest tree with the lowest-hanging branches, and in another rush of wings, the angel was on top of Dean. He reached into the pocket of Dean's old jeans and pulled out what looked like his old tie — "Where'd you find that?" Dean said, brow furrowing, nose wrinkling, and Cas-class bemusement encroaching on every part of him, from the facial expression to the way his shoulders slumped against the tree trunk. Meeting no resistance from the hunter, Castiel tore off his leather jacket, letting it settle behind Dean's back, and yanked off the two layers of shirts Dean wore underneath it.
"...No, seriously, Cas," Dean muttered, narrowing his eyes at the tie. "I thought that'd just up and disappeared... where'd you find it?"
"Does it matter?" Castiel asked — and as the angel positioned his arms above his head, bound them around the wrists and attached the ties to the tree, Dean had to suppose that, no, it didn't matter, not really. He tried to struggle against his makeshift handcuffs, just to test how secure or not they were, but this earned him Castiel's palm atop its imprint on Dean's shoulder; that contact already made Dean gasp, but when the angel's fingers clenched over the scar, that noise turned into a bone-deep moan. Sensations like fire and electric shocks went through his body, making his muscles twitch and convulse; every time Cas dug his nails into Dean's flesh, there came a worry over what would happen if the angel drew blood, which always found itself drowned out in a resonant, over-satisfied groan; and somewhere in the back of his mind, Dean was aware of the fact that this probably wasn't supposed to feel so good. But Cas kept fingering the mark, and waves of something — part pleasure, part pain, part different mixes of the emotional responses Cas had given him before — kept hitting Dean as deeply as they could, and when the angel finally withdrew his hand, its impression on Dean's skin was as scarlet as it had been on Dean's first day of coming back to life.
When Castiel's fingers cupped his jaw, Dean found them more tender than he'd expected, after the gripping and the grazing of nails against skin — and the kiss that Castiel bestowed on him was a cool breath of wind compared to the fevered panting that the previous one had been. The angel took it slow, massaging Dean's lips in long, thorough motions, and for all it didn't make sense at first, Dean trembled as the muscles in his back and shoulders twisted up, then released the tension they'd stored up since God only knew when. Each brush of lips on lips had enough space between their mouths for Dean to breathe, but he still felt his lungs start writhing as though they'd been deprived of air. Finally, Cas pulled back and gave him time to settle; Dean tried to smirk up at him, and the end result was more an intoxicated grin. "...Gotta say, the Metallica shirt looks good on you."
"Oh, does it." Castiel arched his eyebrows and let his trench-coat slip off his shoulders. It hit the ground, and the Metallica shirt followed close behind it. Underneath the pale rays of moonlight, the scars on Cas's chest shone bright enough for Dean to see everything around them. "I think that you might prefer me like this, though," Cas pointed out. He let his hands drop to Dean's thighs and took to rubbing them, slowly at first, and then harder, faster... Each time he found a spot that displeased him, he paused and worked it over until he got Dean moaning like this was the first time he'd had a massage. And maybe it wasn't — but it was the first time that a stroking session made him feel relief in the deepest part of his chest. It shot through him like getting stabbed, and once it hit his middle, twisted until his toes curled and his knees tried bending up, and when that sensation stopped, something warm and consoling spread out through his extremities.
Dean sat there, limp and still quivering, despite how much he wanted to do something — and when Cas kissed him another time, he tried to fight back against the lips that encroached on his own, to claim the angel's mouth instead of letting Cas claim his. This clash of mouths did not last long; Castiel withdrew just enough to put an end to it and caressed Dean's face. "You need to understand," he whispered, "just how much I trust you."
Another rush of feathers hit the air between them, and this time, Castiel didn't go anywhere; instead, two sets of wings erupted from his back. The feathers were white enough to make the snow look gray, and Castiel bent one close enough for Dean to finger it. "Take it," the angel said, brushing the tip against Dean's fingers — and Dean obliged. He snatched at the offered wing and, first, ran his thumb up and down the underside. Somehow, he'd thought that feathers would feel different — coarser, and not as comforting against his skin... but he couldn't stay focused on himself, not when Cas's cheeks and neck flushed a deep pink, not when the muscles of the angel's stomach started tensing up and shivering the way that Dean himself had done, not when an erection visibly strained against the front of the angel's jeans. Wrinkling his nose, Dean decided to get more creative: he slid his fingers down the feather with a calculated delay, getting as much as he could out of every centimeter of exposed feather — Cas's face twisted up so that Dean couldn't tell whether or not he enjoyed it; his breath started coming in shudders and ragged gasps — and then paused, just long enough to give Cas a shallow breath.
With an earnest smirk, Dean jerked his hand back up Cas's wing; the groan this earned him was that of an angel who'd kept his Urges pent up for far too long. He took a deep breath; his wings quivered. Tilting his hand away from the clutch of feathers, wriggling his wrists around just to feel the cool material of Cas's tie against his skin, Dean let his eyes drift down to Cas's waist. Another groan escaped the angel's lips — the majority of the ejaculate stained the front of his jeans, with some escaping onto the angel's skin, creating a messy constellation on his stomach — and the wings disappeared into his back again. In a warm, swooning sigh, he let himself drop onto Dean's shoulder. One hand wrapped around the other, giving him enough support to stay up — and not a moment later, a deep breath apparently gave Cas enough stamina to start kissing the pulse point above Dean's jugular vein. He started slowly again — gently, but it seemed to be more for his sake than for Dean's; soon enough, he sucked on the skin, and Dean felt the gnashing of his teeth down into his lungs; fucking angels and their ability to send sensations where they didn't necessarily belong.
Dean thought that he might moan again, but instead of that noise, he choked out a smaller, more vulnerable one. Cas breathed on the work of his mouth, the wet, red spot that, in the morning, would be an enormous bruise; the warmth went all the way down to Dean's stomach. He sat up again, with just a brush of his fingertips over Dean's clavicle. Something, Dean wasn't sure what, glinted behind Castiel's eyes, and he reached back into his coat; when his hand returned, he'd wrapped it around the hilt of his angelic knife. Sword, or whatever the winged ass-monkeys wanted to call it. "That is something no one else has ever done for me," he explained, as though he hadn't just come all over himself, as though there weren't already another erection lurking underneath the previous one's remains. "No one, Dean... even I haven't done that for myself, because playing with an angel's wings could cripple him. Only your hands have touched mine... because you're special to me. And I have to wonder..."
He pressed the flat edge of his knife into the same spot on Dean's neck, the one he'd worked over with a kiss. Underneath the freezing metal, Dean shook; he felt his toes curl again, just when he'd thought that maybe he'd get out of having that happen again. "My sword can kill demons, angels, humans..." Cas continued, eyes darkened with yearning. "Do you trust me with a tool that could end you without any extra effort on my part?" Dean nodded; Cas rewarded him with a pensive hum. He tilted his weapon, so that the blade pressed into Dean's neck. "You know... I'm not sure that I believe you."
He dragged the blade over his handiwork, not even cutting deeply, but pressing it into Dean's skin enough to draw blood; Dean wrinkled his nose and squirmed, which made Cas roll his eyes and mutter something in Enochian. The next place that the blade hit him was his clavicle. Cas brushed the flat edge up and down the jutting angles of Dean's bone — leaning in again, he gave Dean a slow, delicate kiss — and while he had Dean's mind preoccupied with the acton at his lips, he sliced a long (but shallow) line down the space between Dean's throat and his heart. Cas next attacked Dean's button and his fly, hacking off the fastening and nudging the zipper down with his knife and not his fingers. He yanked down Dean's jeans and boxers, let them bunch up around his knees and repeated the process with his own confinements — and briefly, but long enough for Dean to notice, he let his knife stray toward Dean's erect cock.
Dean didn't react at all. Even when the flat edge pressed into the underside of his shaft, all he did was smile up at the angel, as though daring him to go one step further. Castiel dropped the knife; the hand that had held it snaked behind Dean's neck and nudged him up into another kiss. When they separated, he licked his index, middle, and ring fingers; one-by-one, he slid them into Dean's hole; the middle waited by itself, idly rubbing at Dean's prostate. With his head tilted in amusement, rather than its signature confusion, Castiel watched Dean biting on his lower lip, trying not to let the angel know just how much he was enjoying this, and how much he needed it to go one step further — Castiel smiled, and obliged. He wrapped his clean hand around Dean's shaft and shoved his own member where his fingers had been; Dean gasped, initially, and retaliated by grinding his hips into Castiel's. The angel fought back, bucking Dean back into the ground and nailing him there, plumbing deeper, and harder — he kept his motions within Dean polite enough to avoid hurting him, but as he quickened the pace of his hand on Dean's dick, so he sped up the rocking of their hips, and the rubbing of his head into Dean's prostate.
Castiel climaxed first, he made sure of it — and, sliding out, he brought Dean to it with a flick of his wrist. In a shudder and a groan came on Castiel's hand, then fell limp on the tree. Castiel snapped his fingers, undoing the bonds with a hit of magic, and despite the chill that rolled in around them, his wings kept both him and his lover warm until they were ready to rejoin the group.