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“I want you to trust me again, Dean,” Cas said, frustrated. “I know that a lot has happened between us, but we have trusted each other through more. I just don’t know what I need to do--”
“Stop,” Dean said, retreating into himself at the unexpected harshness of his own voice. He tried to remember the last time he had spoken softly and couldn’t; pushed through to find some forgotten store of it anyway. “I mean… shit. Cas, it’s not that I don’t trust you. God , it’s not that. I don’t know how you can trust me .”
Cas had been pacing, wearing a line into the floor across the room from Dean, but at that he stopped short.
“What,” he said flatly.
“Don’t act like that doesn’t make sense,” Dean snapped, then clenched his fists, shoving them into his pockets. “I’m sorry, I don’t want-- I’m trying not to fight with you here, I just--”
“Dean.” Dean could picture exactly the expression on Cas’s face from the way his name fell into the room, and didn’t look at him for that precise reason. He listened to Cas’s footsteps start up again and flinched at the hand that came near him, stopping short of touching. “Dean, can I…”
“Do whatever you want, man,” Dean said tiredly. The hand landed on his shoulder, so gently that it made him shudder.
This had been easy for the two of them, once. The innate intimacy of their first meeting carried over to the first time Dean kissed him, flushed and energized after an easy hunt gone well, simple despite the newness of it. Their fights were more like tides than cataclysms, a natural rhythm to the push and pull. But at some point they stopped healing, and each break seemed more and more insurmountable, and without ever discussing the decision, eventually they stopped trying. Dean lashed out and Cas pulled inward and now they were here, the first gentle touch between them in what had surely been years, what felt like lifetimes.
Dean felt the old urge to pull away, his skin prickling under Cas’s hand, but for the first time in ages he stayed still. He didn’t know whether it was progress or just that he was too tired to enforce the distance between them, but after a moment of his stillness Cas’s hand squeezed once and Dean made a choked, longing sound.
It was the sort of moment where Cas might have said any number of things-- what happened to us, what happened to you, I miss you, I love you, I hate you, what have you done, what have we done- - Dean didn’t know what cosmic entity to thank for the fact that he didn’t. He just pressed closer, maneuvered Dean against him, surrounded him. Dean’s first, frantic instinct was to feel trapped, and after that, to fold himself into Cas like a flower into a book, let Cas crush the blood and sighs out of him.
Dean was shaking. Cas was too.
“I’m sorry,” Dean said, his face muffled into Cas’s shoulder. He felt an answering apology whispered into his hair. Neither of them voiced an acceptance.
They moved to the bed on unspoken agreement, Cas’s movements somehow both deliberate and hesitant as he landed over Dean with a knee by each of Dean’s thighs. The motions were familiar but their bodies were strange and raw and new. That felt right, somehow. It felt just that when their lips met for the first time in so long that it seemed like the other firsts belonged to other men, the taste of each other was like dust and ash but, distantly, like new growing things. Dean reached for Cas’s face and he wasn’t afraid of what his hands would do when they landed, skin on skin without the flare of blood and bone. Cas pressed forward, thighs tightening around Dean’s hips, holding him together.
The sensation-- contact without pain, pressure without force, passion without anger-- was overwhelming. Dean fell back across the bed, guiding Cas with him. Cas’s mouth followed the line of his throat, found his collarbone and ran into the neck of his tee shirt with a soft noise of exasperation, endearing. No sooner had he wrestled the shirt over Dean’s head were his hands moving to Dean’s jeans, sliding inside, cupping his packer and pressing the base of it up into his dick. Dean moaned, his own hands on Cas’s belt, pulling him closer, crushing their hips together. A little maneuvering and he was able to push his hands under the layers of fabric, over his ass. Cas made a crushed-up little sound in his throat. Their hips rolled together in concert.
“We should undress,” Cas said, the words rumbling against the skin of Dean’s sternum.
“Yeah,” Dean agreed breathlessly, one hand moving to Cas’s shoulder so he could get the leverage necessary to lean up and press his lips below Cas’s ear. Cas laughed, a fragile, uncertain sound. Neither of them wanted to separate long enough for that. They kissed for several long moments more before Cas finally sat up with a groan, only to slide down Dean’s body, taking his jeans and underwear with him.
As Cas knelt on the floor, wrestling with Dean’s boots, Dean wiggled further back onto the bed so that when Cas stood again he had space to sit between Dean’s legs. He mouthed at the harness around Dean’s hips, at his packer, behind the balls to reach Dean’s skin. Without stopping Cas got Dean’s legs over his shoulders, heaving Dean’s hips up for better access, leaving Dean to throw his head back against the comforter and moan.
Cas took him apart with fingers and mouth for long minutes, the desperate desire to be gentle warring with the need to devour after so long without this. Here between Dean’s legs, listening to him cry out, surrounded by the warm real humanness of him, Cas felt as if he had come home after centuries in the wilderness, but also as if the sense of home might vanish at any moment, making it impossible to decide whether to take his time or rush for fear of what might happen next. Ultimately the urge to savor won; Cas didn’t think he could let go now that he’d begun.
Cas didn’t have a strap, wasn’t even sure what might have happened to the one Dean bought him years ago, but this barely registered as an obstacle to him. Gripping Dean’s packer and pushing it up against him as a distraction from his absence, Cas leaned over and rummaged messily in the side table until he found lube.
“Cas,” Dean gasped, the first full word he’d managed since they hit the bed. Cas looked at him, holding his gaze directly like he used to do all the time. Dean’s face was shining with sweat, mouth partially open, chest heaving with breath, pupils wide. He was stunning.
“Dean.” Cas held up the bottle of lube in a silent question. Dean’s eyes closed and his head fell back once again; Cas’s errand was momentarily forgotten in the face of his exposed throat, which he leaned up to kiss frantically. It took him a moment to realize that Dean was answering.
“Yeah, Cas, yes, please,” he was saying. “God, I’ve missed you, yes--” Cas made an inarticulate noise into Dean’s neck and pulled away, refocusing. He let Dean help him out of his pants and underwear as he slicked up his fingers, then kissed one of Dean’s hands that had wandered up from his hips. Dean’s touch was hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure anymore where he was allowed, and Cas did not know how to tell him that he was allowed anywhere, everywhere.
Cas dropped the bottle of lube over the side of the bed and after just a few moments of readying touch he pushed two fingers into Dean, his other hand a steadying force on Dean’s hip. Dean made his loudest cry yet, shoving his hips down onto Cas’s hand with surprising force. Cas’s third and fourth fingers came quickly and then he was pushing in and out of Dean up to his knuckles, fingers curving and fluttering inside, his forehead falling to Dean’s shoulder. The push and pull was all they knew for a moment, Cas fastening his mouth to Dean’s collarbone to anchor himself, overwhelmed. Then Dean said “more,” and Cas gasped, and after a moment of repositioning, he slid his hand into Dean again, this time to the wrist.
Dean nearly screamed then, but the look on his face was rapturous. Cas held perfectly still, feeling the muscle pulsing around his wrist, tension increasing and fading as Dean’s body acclimated. When Dean’s face smoothed and his eyes were able to open again Cas started to move, the tiniest motions setting Dean off again. Connected this way, Cas felt the world start to settle around him, feeling real and solid and for once, not as if anyone was about to snatch it away. In the stillness he finally found what he wanted to say and mapped it to Dean’s skin with his lips: I love you. I never stopped. I missed you. I trust you. Let me come back.
He would have to say it all again when he could be sure that Dean’s repeated yes, yes, yes was in response to his words and not his hands, but it would come easier then, he thought, now that he’d begun. He found Dean’s dick with his free hand and stroked it until he felt it pulse with release, Dean hanging onto his shoulders like he would never let go again.
It took time for Cas to carefully work his hand out of Dean, making nonsensical hushing noises as he did, pressing soothing kisses to Dean’s hips and stomach when it was free. In another time he would have been able to vanish the aches in Dean’s body in an instant if he had asked, but now all he could do was carefully arrange Dean’s limbs into comfortable places and wrap himself around Dean from behind. He unbuckled Dean’s harness with careful fingers and dropped it over the bedside, stroking the red marks left behind.
“We will still have to talk about this,” Cas said finally, when they were both curled close under the covers. They still fit together seamlessly like this, even in bodies remade a dozen times over since the first time they touched.
“Yeah, we do,” Dean said. He took Cas’s hands in his and pulled them to his chest with a lack of self-consciousness that reawakened Cas’s hope-- one day, things between them would be easy again, if they could just make it there. “Later.”
“Later.” Cas pressed his forehead to the nape of Dean’s neck and closed his eyes. It would be hours before “later” came.