Coming around you may wake up to find
Questions deep w ithin your eyes
Now more than ever y ou realize
And then you sense a change
Nothin' feels the same
All your dreams are strange
Love comes walkin' in

- "Love Walks In," Van Halen

The last day of Dean's Heat is usually the worst. Not because the urges are stronger, that stupid biological clock wired into his physiology ticking down to the next screaming alarm telling him he needs to be fucked right the hell now . . . but because he's beat. Sex can be great, sure, but three days is a damn long time to maintain any physical activity.

By day three, he's usually a psychological wreck, sleepless from the nightmares and nauseated by the flashbacks, malnourished because of the effort it takes to choke down food when you're already tasting bile, more than a little tender from the rough treatment he gives himself, and he just wants it to stop, wants to know that it will stop, that the next time won't just drag on without relief, leave him in that state forever, weeks and months on end without it going away no matter how many times he's used.

When it finally leaves him, he doesn't believe it immediately. There's not some timer that dings and tells him he's done; he has to wait, tense and nervous, unable to move on with his normal routine or start the necessary chores and tasks that'll make the place liveable again, make him himself again. And then he has to be ready to walk into the garage the next day and pretend he had an awesome fucking three day weekend fishing, or visiting an uncle, or whatever bullshit excuse Bobby backs for him, thanks. It usually takes a couple of days for him to really settle back into his own skin again, shove it aside and flash a grin that isn't calculated and practiced bullshit.

The last day is usually the worst.

But there's something about this entire experience with Cas. . .

He woke up just long enough on the second night to realize that Castiel was kissing his temple, tugging him closer, half asleep but apparently alert enough to have recognized a nightmare before it got its hooks in too deeply, before it got too bad. Dean doesn't know if Cas had been watching him sleep, or if his body's response to Dean woke him, but they end up spooned together, Castiel rocking into him after the knot has taken, soothing him back to sleep while the Alpha stays awake and deep within him.

On the third night when he wakes up, the heat is there but not the terror. He wakes Castiel with a blow job to get him hard again, ready again, and then promptly mounts him when he's just beginning to swell beneath Dean's hands, ignoring the twinge of pushing that increasing girth past his rim and ending up draped across Cas's chest as the Alpha props himself in pillows to keep the angle and wraps around him again.

Cas's plush lower lip looks bruised and tender all three nights, come morning, at his efforts to keep himself quiet and gentle and let Dean doze even while he was split open around Cas and pumped full. The guy with zero sex experience is the one who isn't even getting to catnap after they knot like Dean is. In retrospect, this entire experience is probably the first time Dean hasn't envied the extended orgasm factor of being an Alpha. Not that Cas is complaining. He sleeps between waves of heat, and even when he's entirely unconscious it's like he's trying to crawl beneath Dean's skin, get a little closer. Dean tries to reward him as best he can with touch and by taking a page out of Cas's book and kissing him like he can pour all of his gratitude into the gesture without having to talk about whatever this is that's happening.

That last day, though. . . a day that is usually so painful and so miserable, is in some ways the best this time. Lazy, lethargic sex with a rumple-haired, sleepy-eyed Castiel cuddling into him immediately afterwards like he's the best fucking thing in the world is. . .

God, it's nice. Tangled limbs and slow movement and Cas wrapping around him in some state between sleep and wakefulness and completely unabashed affection until he has to tumble out of the bed and get their meals, or bring both of them to the bathroom to soak in the oversized tub and have sex that threatens to slosh the water out, before rolling back beneath the covers again once they're able. Dean will never admit to being a cuddler, but . . . well, Cas clearly is, and who is he to say no to the guy during this, right?

Right.

It's getting late in the course of things, and he's between right now. Castiel's head is pillowed on his chest, a heavy arm thrown over him, legs tangled together, but Dean's more awake than the Alpha is. He's in that state where he's not sure if he should expect to be jumping Cas's bones again in another twenty minutes or so, or if he's finally home free, but he's generally. . . well, he's more okay with it either way than he'd like to really think about. Pressing a kiss to the top of Castiel's sleeping head, he fumbles for the remote control on the nightstand, turning the TV down to a comfortable level, and he waits to see if it's going to bother the sleeping man curled around him.

Nothing. Not a twitch.

Once he's confirmed Castiel's general state of sex-induced coma, he lets himself channel surf. And by 'channel surf' he means deliberately flip past two car shows, a half dozen action flicks, and a sci-fi to end up on Doctor Sexy.

"Small-Cell Carcinoma."

The episode is only ten minutes in when Castiel scares the shit out of him by suddenly speaking without moving at all, his voice gravelly with sleep and faintly bored. He casts a baleful eye up at Dean as the remote control whacks him in the shoulder when Dean drops it in surprise at having been found out, before closing his eyes again and nuzzling his cheek against Dean's skin, an action that is becoming more and more like being cuddled by sandpaper as their stay lengthens.

"Holy shit you scared me."

"Mm. Clearly." Castiel grunts in agreement, apparently comfortable with having tenderized his pillow and settling again. "Small-Cell Carcinoma. The shrill voiced woman's patient. The male doctor everyone is fawning over, the blood transfusions are killing his patient. Vibrio vulnificus. They made too much of a production out of her ordering oysters for it to be otherwise, and it's summer. Though the bacterial infection is likely complicated by a secondary condition suppressing her immune system. I'm sure they'll conveniently find that out before the next commercial break to allow time for him to treat her."

Dean stares down at Castiel until he cracks an eye open again, an eyebrow arched questioningly. "They're too obvious about it. The diagnosis could be picked out of a table of contents from a medical text and their patients present their conditions like they're acting out a bullet list of symptoms." Castiel turns his eyes to the TV screen for a moment, corners of them creasing as he squints critically. "Those boots are stupid and impractical in a hospital setting. His feet would be killing him by the end of the. . ."

"Leave the boots alone, Cas." Dean grumbles warningly. "I'm willing to overlook you criticizing the medical crap, but Doctor Sexy's boots are sacred."

Castiel pulls away finally, muting the television with the remote before propping himself up on his fist beside Dean in the pillows, eyeing him suspiciously. "You told me that the 'doctor talk' wasn't sexy."

"No, I told you that your 'doctor talk' wasn't sexy. Dude, you were. . ." He doesn't get the chance to finish criticizing Cas's technique. Castiel rolls on top of him neatly, one hand braced into the pillow and the other cupping Dean's cheek, and for a moment they're just breathing each other's air, Castiel's lips close enough to brush Dean's when he speaks, and there's a clear sense that a challenge has been thrown and then accepted by the doctor.

"Did you know. . ." Castiel catches Dean's lower lip between his with barely any pressure at all, tongue swiping across the plump flesh. Dean can feel it even once Castiel is done, leaving his lips tingling as Cas continues in a voice that is rich and dark. ". . . That there are more nerve endings in your lips . . ." Castiel's tongue dips into Dean's mouth, the lightest caress before he withdraws ". . .and your tongue. . than you have any other single part of your body?"

"Not sure what you're. . ." Dean is not going to be drawn in by this, damnit, but Castiel smiles faintly and he can feel the movement tug against his lips before Castiel kisses him slowly, deeply, and God that's good. It's over too soon, leaving him straining to try and reconnect them and being deliberately rebuffed by Castiel's forehead resting against his as he continues huskily.

"Ten thousand nerve endings, Dean . . ." He tilts his head again, teeth scraping over Dean's tender lip gently, and repositions himself with both elbows braced, bracketing Dean in and propping Cas up above him. "And every one of them is singing messages back to your brain . . ." His fingers slide into Dean's hair, as if he can follow the path of those zinging neurons, racing with sensation into Dean's skull. ". . . Blood vessels dilate, flood your brain with oxygen. . ." Cas runs the tip of his nose along Dean's, his breath still washing over Dean's slack lips, and he presses another brief kiss to them because he can't resist. "Makes you dizzy." His fingers scrape over Dean's scalp now gently, bringing him back to the brain. "A good kiss sends sensation straight to your limbic system. . . the brain's center for emotion, passion, love. . ." Castiel raises his gaze away from Dean's mouth at that last word, blue eyes meeting green, and he has to swallow before continuing, not as unaffected by his own speech as he would like to appear. "That's where your soul lives, Dean."

Oh, yes. He's contrarily combining neurology and endocrinology and religion, "priest talk" and "doctor talk." It's a large part of who he is, now, well beyond if he's actually employable in either role any longer. Whatever Dean's earlier protestation about combining those two professions when describing him, this is clearly working. Dean is tired of being teased, and he shoves Castiel off of him finally, rolling them on the king-sized bed to take control again. Castiel digs the remote out from under his back and throws it indiscriminately, quite happy with the change of positions. On the screen behind Dean, Dr. Sexy is determining that his patient suffers from hereditary hemochromatosis complicating the bacterial infection that Cas correctly diagnosed. Castiel would be arguing with the screen that they should have simply gotten a better patient history and spared the world thirty minutes of overblown medical 'drama' to go with their soap operatic hospital romances, but he currently has Dean Winchester naked and kissing him for all that he's worth, and he doesn't give a damn at all any more about the sudden jealousy he'd felt of over his mate's clear attraction for a fictional doctor, or the fact that the TV remote hits the wall and sends batteries rolling.

Instead, he uses the moment Dean's lips travel the curve of his jaw to his neck to close his eyes to desperately try to remember what he was saying, keep going. "Kissing floods your brain with dopamine. . . chemical happiness and elation and craving, Dean. The addictive centers of our brains. . ." He can't keep his hands off of Dean, now, needs the sensations, and he knows he's proving his own point but he needs more, laying an open mouthed kiss to Dean's shoulder as the Omega drags his lips over the stubble painting his skin before kissing the bend of his neck, feeling his Alpha's pulse beneath his lips. "But kissing on the mouth, Dean. . ." He hauls his mate back into place, cupping his cheeks and kissing him again to illustrate the point, slow and intimate, then breathing his next words into the cave of Dean's mouth. "Oxytocin. The bond between souls. Strongest between parents and children or mates." He's having trouble again finding words, but that could be the fact that Dean has used their position to slide back onto Castiel's traitorously hard cock. Dean isn't interrupting him, though, forcing him to stop, and that's practically an order to keep going. His mate is riding him slowly, shallow thrusts, nothing like the desperation of the past three days.

Castiel is all-in. He can't pretend to be unaffected by this change between them. Closing his eyes, he tips his head back as the wet clench of Dean's muscles seems to react around him, tightening, and he's breathless when he makes himself continue, hoarse and rasping, his hands sliding up and down Dean's skin without taking control of the pace. "Alpha and Omega, Dean. We're not just transmitters and receptors of lust and mating pheromones. That's. . . God, Dean. . ." His eyes open again at the tail end of his moan, wide and blue and earnest, and he cups his hand to Dean's neck to bring him back to his lips. He thrusts his hips just once against Dean's rhythm, indicatively. ". . .that's brainstem." And then he kisses Dean softly, to illustrate the difference, as if he can feel his soul light up at the sensation. "Limbic system. Dopamine and Oxytocin. We're a. . ." Dean is singularly distracting ". . . a closed feedback loop for sharing happiness and contentment and love."

It's the second time he's used the word, and Dean hasn't missed it either time. This time, Dean doesn't let him speak again, captures his lips and keeps them as he rides Castiel slowly, and neither of them can pretend this is the Heat. Their kisses linger, they make love without any chance of denying that is precisely what they're doing.

Dean's heat is officially over.

xXx

It's four o'clock in the morning and Dean Winchester is wide awake, sore and exhausted but sated . . . and loved.

Castiel is once again flung halfway across him, and despite the acres of bed and the abundance of pillows he's snoring softly with his head on Dean's chest as if he needs the reassuring thump of Dean's heartbeat just to sleep. The hotel blankets are pulled up to just under his chin, and there's something almost childlike and vulnerable about that, making Castiel seem smaller and less intimidating than he is. Dean splays his hand against Cas's back and watches the light of a muted infomercial paint the Alpha's features in light and colors, changeable shadows like digital firelight. They couldn't find both of the remote batteries, there's no damned buttons on the stupid fancy television itself, and the dresser is bolted into the floor, keeping them from reaching the plug, so they've been stuck with a silent television through meals and naps and a level of quiet domesticity that Dean should quail against. Instead, he petted Castiel's ridiculous untamed sex-hair and concocted increasingly ludicrous plots for the silent dramas on the TV, winning a few of Castiel's silent chuckles and one full-bodied laugh that Dean wishes he could have bottled and preserved because he already knows how rare they are.

Cas insisted on staying the extra night, and he should have fought that harder, but there's a sense of oasis here. Dean can't help but feel that their happiness is soap-bubble fragile, delicate and just waiting for life to come pop it. Even now he could reach out and end it with a harsh touch, and there's a small part of him that thinks he should. It's going to burst anyway, and the aftermath is easier to handle emotionally if he's the one that controls it.

The only thing keeping him from walking out the door and screwing his head on straight is the Alpha cuddled into him. Not his physical weight pressing Dean to the bed, but the emotional weight of him. The past three days should have been horrible. . . but they weren't. It's a whole new view of life, a diametric shift of his understanding of the world, and it's terrifying as hell and he wants it. Going back to what he's had before after this would be torturous, and that's not a word Dean uses lightly.

Castiel has leashed him with gentle touches and soft words and fucking oxytocin and dopamine and limbic systems, and he feels rewired by it, like Castiel has tangled himself into Dean's 'soul' as much as around his body. Now that Cas has said it he swears he can feel the contentment rolling off of the Alpha in his arms, and it's heady and it's natural and uninvasive and warm, but it's also scary as hell. Because Castiel's actually, really, completely in love with him.

Dean's sure he's not capable of any kind of healthy love, and Cas deserves a hell of a lot better than what he has to give. It's selfish of him to crave something he can't offer in return, and he's scum of the fucking earth for using Castiel like this. He should break this off before he screws both of them over. . . but he can't. No, worse than that, he doesn't want to.

When five o'clock rolls around and he's still awake, he presses a kiss to the top Castiel's head and slips out of the bed and from beneath him to the shower, scrubbing himself down and leaving himself raw and healthy pink and clean-smelling and masked again. Cas is asleep on the bed still when he comes out, spooned around a pillow in his arms that by the faint frown on his sleeping face is an inadequate substitute for holding Dean, and it makes Dean snort softly and ruffle a hand over his hair affectionately, pulling back when the Alpha unconsciously leans into the touch rather than risk waking him.

"Be right back." He promises the sleeping man, and dresses quickly and far away from the bed in the fresh clothes Jo sent, peeling the static-clinging sweet-smelling dryer sheet off of his sleeve and blessing Jo for remembering how to handle his stuff. He grabs his phone and slips out of the room before Cas can wake or the smell of sex and heat permeating their space can wrap around him again, and pads barefoot down to the lobby with a nod for a wide-eyed clerk who is staring at him as if terrified he's going to lunge across the desk between them. How scary was Cas to get a room in this place without reservation when they showed up, anyway? He flashes the kid a faint smirk, and cancels the room service for the morning, and then goes to fill up a few plates from the complimentary continental breakfast instead.

The only other person in the room this early in the morning is a shorter man in an impeccable black suit and black dress shirt, a patterned slate tie neatly providing the bare contrast to his look and silver tie pin and cufflinks a purely decorative walking cane that pushes his outfit over into ostentatiousness. "Good morning." He greets in a deep voice with an accent that's Scottish or British or something, and Dean stops in the doorway and eyes him warily: dark thinning hair, a sharp intelligence in his dark eyes, and a faint smirk curling his lips like he knows something Dean doesn't.

"Morning." Dean offers cautiously in return, and piles his plate up higher.

"Honeymoon over, then?" The stranger asks, personable and slightly mocking, and Dean stiffens further and ignores him, before stalking back out of the day room with their breakfast. The interaction unsettles him and he's not sure why, but he puts it out of his head as he checks his email on his phone for the first time in three days, unsurprised when the first thing he gets is an email from Sam's personal account that starts with calling him a jackass for making him listen to Cas's sex moans, and goes on into lawyer-speak about depositions and the ringer attorney the jackasses apparently hired from out of state to represent them, some asshole named Crowley.

He doesn't have time to get much farther than that, shoving his phone back in his pocket and pulling out the key card instead. Creepy guy from the day room is coming down the hall, now, and he gives a little mocking half-wave with his fingertips to Dean as he smirks and slips into his own room across the hall. Dean glares after him, waiting until he's gone before opening the door, preserving Castiel's privacy.

Cas is sitting up in the bed, blinking sleepily, a worried frown on his face that melts away when Dean comes back in, as if he just woke up and realized Dean was gone and had no idea if he was coming back. His fucked up issues are giving the poor guy a complex. "Breakfast. Probably saved you thirty bucks or something, but it's better than nothing. Give me a sec, they've got one of those stupid little two-cup coffee pots on the counter, I'll get you some caffeine before we check out. . ."

He doesn't get the chance to step away from putting the plate down on the nightstand. Castiel catches his wrist and reels him back in for a good morning kiss that drives away all other thoughts, wraps him in that warmth and contentment and happiness that's gotta be coming from Cas.

"Good morning, Dean." Castiel rumbles against his lips, eyes closed from the kiss and hands woven into his hair, warm and naked and pleased.

Damnit. Dean can't give this up.

He's hooked.