Sorry about the wait, apparently writing sex scenes aren't my forte (I do hope they are at least readable).

Thanks to everyone who has favourited and followed and reviewed! You guys are awesome!

Enjoy!

...

It was light when Cas woke. He turned his head to where the electric glow of the alarm clock read 10:30am.

He glanced down at the sleeping man who had shifted in the night and whose head now rested on his chest, legs tangled in his, one arm hidden beneath the pillow while the other was flung out over Castiel's stomach.

Cas smiled, stroking a thumb over the smooth cheek. It twitched and Dean grunted, brow furrowing momentarily before smoothing again. Cas smiled and moved to stroke a hand through the dark blonde hair. Dean shifted and hummed, eyes blinking open, lashes brushing along Castiel's bare chest as he woke.

"Hmmmm." He murmured happily as Cas continued to card fingers through his hair, propping himself up on one arm once Cas was done.

"Hey." He smiled, voice cracking as he struggled to blink his eyes open.

"Hey."

Dean ran a thumb over the hair that covered the lower portion of his face.

"Trying for a more rugged look?"

"More like couldn't be bothered to shave." He answered wryly.

"Well, whatever the reason, it's sexy as hell."

Cas blinked, "Really?"

"Hell yeah! I mean, do you see yourself? All that time spent in front of the mirror not shaving? You are one hot piece of ass." He dragged his gaze down Cas' exposed torso and Cas for once in his life felt as though he was finally being seen. A blush crept up his neck and heated his cheeks at Dean's words.

"What?" Dean asked, chuckling at Castiel's obvious discomfort.

Cas shook his head. "Nothing, I've just never really thought about myself that way. I'm nothing special, especially compared to someone like you."

"Hey." Dean countered, "I'm not that special trust me and you..." He shrugged, looking away as a soft pink blush bloomed in his cheeks, "You're beautiful."

Cas could see that Dean was uncomfortable with the words and he smiled, pulling Dean down for a deep kiss.

"Just for the record, so are you. And I'm not just talking about your looks."

Dean's blush deepened and he resumed the kiss, exploring every facet of Castiel's mouth before moving lower, stopping for a moment to appreciate the sounds Cas made when Dean sucked at his nipples, and then continuing down. Cas' head shot up from the pillow as warmth engulfed him and he realized what Dean was preparing to do, but any protests died on his lips as heat began to build, starting low in his belly and he sank back into the mattress, head straining back against the pillows as Dean continued to do things with his mouth and tongue that Castiel hadn't previously thought possible. He came with a groan, blissed out and barley registering the sounds of panting above him and movement that sped to a frenzy until Dean collapsed beside him.

"Sorry, I should have..." He gestured idly to Dean who glanced down and chuckled.

"It's all right." He gave a lazy wave, "You seemed a little out of it."

"Yeah, well, that's the first time anyone's ever done that for me."

Dean looked up with an expression like he wanted to say something, but instead he just pulled Cas in, placing a soft kiss to his temple and running his fingers through Castiel's hair.

…

They lay in bed for the rest of the morning, chatting occasionally or just enjoying each other's company in silence. Castiel spoke about Claire; her love of dance, her serious, studious nature, her wisdom that constantly awed and amazed him, the moment he'd first held her, first learned what it was to truly love another person wholly and completely, what it meant when people said they would die for their children. In that moment he knew he would have given up his existence in an instant for her.

It had at once thrown into perspective the emptiness between himself and Amelia and, at the same time, made it all worth it just to have this brilliant, beautiful new life in his.

Dean in turn talked about Ben. The shock and surprise he'd felt when he'd heard the news that he was going to be a father from gossip channels rather than Lisa who had been in Europe filming and touring at the time. He talked about the joy of teaching him to ride a bike, throw a ball and his fear of turning into the type of absent father his own dad had become.

"It just got to the point where even when he was there, he wasn't you know? He never recovered from my mom's death. Even twenty years later he was still consumed by it. And Lisa and I are often not even the same country, let alone the same city most of the time, that's one of the reasons we didn't work out. I'm just worried I'm going to wake up one day and Ben's not going to want to have anything to do with me."

"I've seen you with Ben. It is clear that you care very deeply for him and he for you. I imagine you are an excellent father."

Dean blinked at him and nodded.

"Thank you." He said softly, brow creased in a frown.

"What?" Cas asked.

"It's just, no one's ever said that. Not outright. It's nice to hear."

Cas sighed and stroked a hand down the man's face, letting his eyes wander over the features that were so familiar to him and yet so new. Dean Winchester was in his bed. Mega star Dean Freaking Winchester had given him a blow job not two hours ago. A month and a half ago, Castiel was sitting on Charlie's couch with his sister snuggled up to him watching this man singlehandedly take down a corrupt organization all the while agonizing over the death of his wife and yet here he was, staring up at him, face open and honest, sharing things he had never told anyone. The thought picked up his perspective and sent it spinning, dizzying him as he fought to make sense of it.

"You okay?" Dean asked.

Cas blinked and nodded.

"Yeah, yes." He grinned wide, "I'm great."

…

They got up eventually and Dean made pancakes, slathering his short stack in so much butter and maple syrup that Cas was forced to ask, "How can you possibly maintain you figure when you eat like that?"

Dean grinned through a mouthful of food that he was kind enough to swallow, before speaking.

"Just got done shooting a picture so I'm taking a well deserved break from the torture. I mean come on, just cause you stick chicken in a salad doesn't make it a meal."

"Vegetables are very important Dean."

He rolled his eyes.

"Oh god, not you too."

…

The day was sunny and warm and they spent some time on the back porch with Castiel helping Dean run lines for his upcoming film.

"So I'm this guy who hunts supernatural monsters and I sell my soul to save my brother's life and then this angel comes and rescues me from hell."

"Angel huh?" Cas asked with a smirk.

Dean rolled his eyes.

"Just read the lines will you?"

Cas fumbled his way through he script as best he could, drawing on what little he could remember of childhood nativity pageants and school plays to give at least some semblance of a good performance. He must have done something right because he'd barely given a gruff reading of the line, "You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of Hell. I can throw you back in." before he was attacked by Dean's lips and the pages fell to the wayside.

…

Castiel was flipping through an old paperback, his feet stretched out on the coffee table, a cooling cup of tea sitting by his elbow as Dean attempted to focus his attention on the script that they'd eventually picked up off the porch floor following a rather heat-filled makeout session. Poor Mrs. Jenkins from next door, who had only come out to water her begonias, might never recover from the shock (although if truth be told, Dean could have sworn he spied a note of interest in the way she'd eyed them as she hurried back inside).

He sighed and dropped the damned thing onto the side table, his knee bouncing as he looked over at Castiel sitting serenely across the room from him.

He'd never been good at sitting still. Perhaps that was why he hadn't been quite as averse to their nomadic childhood as Sam had been who, like Cas, could sit for hours without moving. Dean on the other hand liked to do, and up until he'd met Cas, very few people in his life had been able to make him stay put (his mother had been one of them).

But Cas seemed to have a special calming power over him that stilled his racing thoughts and urged him to just be.

Cas jumped as the sofa dipped down beside him. Amelia had occasionally lamented his propensity for getting lost in a good book, losing hours of the day lost in some fictional world or another. She'd never had much time for make believe. He looked down to see Dean's head laying in his lap, legs curled up to fit his frame onto the smallish couch.

"What are you reading?" He asked into Castiel's soft sweatpants.

"Persuasion." Cas answered, "by Jane Austin." He added when Dean looked up at him with a frown.

"Oh." He murmured as he lowered his head once again to Cas' thighs.

"Read me some."

"Pardon?"

"Read me some. Sam always liked being read to. Couldn't get enough of it."

"Do you want me to start from the beginning?"

Dean shook his head. "No. Just read."

Cas turned back to his book and his fingers found Dean's hair, combing through the soft strands as his eyes found where he had left off.

"How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! How eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence! She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning…"

…

The door slammed in the darkened house. Balthazar paid it no heed. At this hour Castiel would already be asleep and even if he wasn't, the most he could do was scowl at him.

He trudged up the stairs. Even in a private jet, the flight from Dubai was a long one and he had been tired when he'd boarded. Noises stopped him in his tracks. Moans and groans that he was intimately familiar with but not in this house (unless he was involved of course), certainly not coming from prissy Cassie's room. He moved silently to the landing and slowly towards the sounds, careful to step lightly. He was like an animal planet documentarian, moving with quiet caution so as not to spook the wildlife.

The door was open a crack and Balthazar held his breath as the sound grew in volume.

Castiel's deep voice let out a moan and he stopped in shock.

"Deeeean!"

His mouth hung open in shock at the portrait the two painted in the room beyond. He stared for a beat before bringing up his phone and snapping a quick picture. He looked for a moment more - who knew virginal Cas had such a mouth on him - and then turned, pulling up the picture and tapping out a quick message.

Meg was going to lose her shit when she saw this.

...

They were in bed. Dean had gotten up to fix a small breakfast for the two and brought it up in a tray complete with steaming hot coffee. Cas responded with a kiss, long and deep. No one had ever made him breakfast in bed and Dean could feel his overwhelming gratitude in the hand that tangled in his hair and the teeth that nipped at his lower lip.

Dean chuckled.

"So I did good?" He asked softly, nose brushing Castiel's.

Cas nodded, mouth widening in a sleepy grin.

"You did good. Very, very good."

Dean was biting into his toast when his phone chimed an incoming message. He looked down and frowned.

"What?" Cas asked over the rim of his mug as Dean continued to stare down at his phone.

"It's my manager." He said, swiping to unlock and entering his passcode. "He says check Twitter."

Dean had finally relented and gotten a Twitter account at the behest of his manager and agent, a smarmy Brit named Crowley who was aggravatingly good at his job. But he had drawn the line at letting his phone notify him for every single inane 'I love you!' or 'please retweet me' or the ever grating, 'Yr so hawt.' Thus, he was perpetually out of the loop on the minute by minute happenings on that god forsaken social platform.

He opened the app. He had twelve hundred notifications. And counting.

They ranged in tone from 'OMG that's so hot!' to 'I always knew Dean Winchester was a dirty little fag' and the picture that popped up again and again and again like a virus was a filtered Instagram from the night before taken through the open door of Castiel's bedroom and featured the two of them locked in a very passionate embrace. Despite the poor man's photoshop blurring it in an infuriatingly twee show of artistic intent (or lack thereof), it was very obviously him in a very obviously compromising position with a very obviously male Castiel.

His phone rang, Crowley's snarling face staring up at him as Sympathy for the Devil played, and when he dismissed the call, his phone chimed with an incoming message. Castiel's phone began to buzz loudly from the side table on the other side of the bed and all Dean could do was sit and wonder how things could have possibly gotten even worse.

...

"I don't know how it got there Benny, but the fucking picture's everywhere!" Dean fell silent as he listened down the line, phone sandwiched between his shoulder and ear as he fought to pull his pants on. "Look, I'm not concerned about that right now can you just come get me!? No, I walked here. 'Cause I needed to clear my head from the last fucking time my nearly naked body was on display for everyone to see!" He fastened his jeans and sighed, grabbing the phone in one hand and pinching the bridge of his nose in the other. "Okay thanks. Thanks Benny. Yeah, I'll see you soon."

He hung up and stared despondently down at the list of incoming messages he had from everyone from Sam to Bobby to, oh god, Lisa. He switched the damn thing off and shoved it in his back pocket, trying to ignore the incessant buzzing every time a new message came in.

He turned to see Cas sitting quietly on the bed, still in his pajamas, phone held loosely in his hand as he stared down at his own growing list of messages. Even Michael and Lucifer had taken the time to reach out to him, if only to say 'I knew this would happen'.

Dean stared at him and thought about saying something. It wasn't his fault he knew, but he could feel the anger raging in him and if he'd learned anything from his father it was to keep his fucking mouth shut until he calmed down. So instead he sat and began pulling his socks on.

"You're leaving?" Came the soft question from across the bed.

"Well I can't very well stay here while my career goes down the toilet now can I?!"

Obviously he hadn't learned his lesson very well.

A weary sigh sounded behind him and while a part of him felt bad for being the cause of it, a larger and more pig headed part couldn't care less because this whole mess was going to affect him far worse than Castiel.

And then Castiel had to go and say, "You know Dean, this isn't the end of the world."

Blood rushed in his ears as his anger rose and his hands shook because Castiel had no fucking clue what he was talking about.

"Excuse me?" He asked, turning, breaths coming shorter and shorter as he looked over at the unassuming expression on the other man's stupidly pretty face.

"It's just Twitter Dean. You of all people should know what a short attention span the Internet has. This is going to blow over before you know it."

Dean stared and then scoffed, shaking his head.

"You are so naive." He said softly, turning back to face the other wall.

He heard a huff from the other side of the bed but did not react.

"Look Dean-"

"No, you look." He spat, twisting on the mattress, "You have no idea how this is going to affect my life. My career. This isn't going to have any impact on your life because nobody knows who you are. Nobody cares!"

The words were unfair and Cas flinched at them as though he had been slapped but Dean was too consumed by anger to care.

"All I'm asking for is a little perspective Dean." His voice had grown a hard edge in the face of Dean's anger and a mask of indifference had fallen over his features. "I'm sure your career can survive one small scandal."

"Oh you do! Do you? Well what the fuck would you know about it!?"

"What would I know about what? How announcing your homosexuality could have a negative affect on your life? News flash Dean, I have two brothers who won't talk to me! I have a daughter I haven't seen in almost a year! And you're worried about what a bunch of strangers on the Internet are going to think!?"

"Hey! I have a brother, and an ex, and a child too so don't go thinking you're so special! Because guess what? You're not!"

The words hung in the air between them as they stared at each other over the unmade bed. The doorbell rang, loud in the silence and Dean said nothing as he turned from the room. Cas stood for a moment, trying not to remember the sweet feeling of Dean's lips on his forehead that had woken him only an hour ago. He shook his head, as though the action could shake the memories loose and release them, and followed.

Dean was pulling the front door open when Castiel reached the bottom of the stairs. A large man, dressed in a sharp suit stood on the other side and Dean eyed him before moving past. Cas came to the door and watched as, without a backwards glance, Dean pulled open the passenger door of the town-car that sat parked at the curb and slammed it shut, the tinted windows blocking any view Cas might have had of the man. It was final in a way that cut deeply and he averted his gaze, swallowing and blinking against the onslaught of oh god it's happening all over again that welled up inside of him.

The man, Benny presumably, watched Dean go and then turned, his eyes a piercing shade of ice blue that seemed to see right to the heart of him and Castiel found he couldn't look away.

When Benny spoke, it was softly accented with a cajun twang, "Whatever he said, don't believe it. Boy's stubborn and he's got a wicked temper. But he's also got a good heart. Anyone with eyes can see plain as day in that picture how much he cares for you."

He held Castiel's gaze a moment longer and then turned, moving down the steps and around the car to the drivers side, tipping his cap before somehow fitting his impressive bulk into the car.

And then they were gone.

Cas shut the door and leant back against it, shutting his eyes and casting his mind back. Waking this morning to the smell of coffee and the feel of Dean's lips on his. The day they had spent lounging. Not doing just being.

It had been perfect. Perhaps that was why it couldn't last.

A door upstairs slammed and his eyes shot open as Balthazar appeared shirtless at the top of the stairs.

He stopped halfway down when he caught sight of Cas and a smirk stretched over his face.

"Morning." He greeted, descending the staircase like a prince, hand sliding down the banister. "Where's your 'friend'? I am to understand you…finally became a real boy."

He reached the bottom and Cas pushed himself away from the door, barely registering his feet carrying him forward until his fist pulled back and cut across Balthazar's jaw.

He stumbled back onto the stairs.

"Fuck! Jesus Fucking Christ! What in the bloody hell was that for!?"

"As if you don't know!" Cas spat back, shaking out the hand that was not accustomed to punching other people's jaws. "I know it was you!"

"What? Seriously Castiel, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh yeah? So what you're saying is you didn't take this picture?"

He held up his phone and Balthazar blanched at his photo with the hashtag Winchestersexpic trending on Twitter.

"I didn't do this."

"Oh come on Balth. Who else could have taken it?"

"I took it but I didn't post it."

"Then who?"

Balthazar frowned and then his face cleared, eyes growing wide with realization and fear.

And Castiel knew what had happened.

"You didn't."

"Sorry old chap." And to his credit, he did sound truly sorry.

But Castiel didn't care because this was just more time that Meg had royally screwed up his life. He sighed and shook his head, moving past Balthazar who thankfully let him go without a word. Cas didn't think his hand could take any more abuse. Instead he trudged wearily up the stairs, exhaustion stealing any energy he may have possessed from the last two nights of sleeping with Dean in his arms. He was tired, worn out from the tempest of drama he had been living for the past month. Perhaps it was for the best. If this was what Dean's life was like, maybe he wasn't meant to be a part of it.

He opened the door to his bedroom. The tray of breakfast still sat in the centre of the bed, the pot of coffee still steaming and Castiel stared in wonder at he evidence of just how quickly everything had gone to shit. He picked it up and set it on his dresser before pulling at the comforter, stripping the bed of sheets that still smelt like Dean.

His phone chimed as he was shoving them into the washing machine and he took it out with trepidation.

A text from Charlie asked simply, Do you want to come over?

He collapsed numb onto the floor beside the linens that spilled out from the open mouth of the machine.

He felt like crawling inside it, washing himself clean from the memories of the perfect day they had spent together and then tears fell as he realized that no matter how badly this hurt, he would never give up those moments, not for all the blissful ignorance in the world.