Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cas stirs the sauce in an absent-minded trance.

Lots to think about, he has: from the stress of moving halfway across the continent for his new job, which at least comes with the perk of having his siblings closer at hand – to dealing with the anxiety and pressure of said new job as a kindergarten teacher, which comes with perks such as constant physical and mental exhaustion, low salary, and self-righteous, know-it-all parents.

He has e-mails from the school board and the principal to answer. The Parent’s Association needs to be notified and the notification, evidently, needs to come from him. The apartment he has rented in town is still unfurnished, his wardrobe requires a woollen update if he is to survive – the town is in the heart of a winter wonderland, and for the three days he has spent here, the snowfall has been ceaseless – which means he needs to go shopping, in person, and pick and choose stuff out himself.

Yet each of these issues, monumental as they are, occupy but a small portion of his attention.

The bigger portion is busy reliving the incident which occurred four days ago at a no-name airport hotel – an incident so mortifying the mere memory of it is making him flush down to the very roots of his hair.

Oh, the things he’d said and done that night –

“Penny for your thoughts, Cas?”

Michael’s voice brings him back to the present.

“What? Oh. Oh, no, it’s all right,” says Cas, hoping Michael ascribes his burning ears and cherry-red cheeks as consequences of spending time in the kitchen. He turns the stove to simmer. “Just taking a mental tally of all the things I need to purchase – Furniture, books, clothes. Not to mention, food.”

“You’re welcome to stay with me as long as you want.”

“I find the imposition to be too much.”

Michael blinks at him. “You’re my baby brother.”

“No, I meant that you are too imposing to live with.”

Michael flicks him on his temple. “I’m serious, Cas,” he says. “I basically live at the hospital, so the house is empty most of the time. I wouldn’t be in your way.” 

“I get that,” says Cas. “And it isn’t that I don’t enjoy living with you. You’re great. I just need to have a place of my own.”

“I’m offering you rent-free accommodation for the foreseeable future, peace and privacy included, and you keep harping on –”

“Agreed,” Cas cuts in sensibly, before Michael’s logical arguments get the best of him. “Economy being what it is, and my finances being what they are, I’d be an idiot to refuse. But I have… other… concerns.”

“For instance?”

“Well, what if I wanted to have someone over for the night? A one-night-stand or something? Would you be all right with that? Because if the situation were reversed, I wouldn’t be.”

Michael laughs. He titters, rather. He goes on tittering until he realizes this isn’t Cas’s silly attempt at a joke. “Wait. You’re serious. You’re actually serious.” He chuckles again as he wraps a brotherly arm around Cas’s shoulders. Cas prepares for a patronizing platitude to follow. “Not implying you can’t hook up with someone if you wanted to – you’re an adult, you can do whatever you want – but the idea of my sweet angel of a baby brother trolling bars for a one-night-stand is –”

“I dare you to finish that sentence,” Cas growls, arms crossed. “Go on. It’s been a while since I last dismembered someone. And for your kind information, bro, your sweet angel of a brother has in fact –” he stops dead, eyes bugging out.

No. It's no good getting vexed over big brother’s playful ribbing and blurting out his shameful secret. Pettiness will bring only dishonour here. What happened in that airport hotel room needs to remain in that airport hotel room. Let Michael persist in his view of his baby brother as the sweet innocent little angel, and not the lustful demon who – No.

“You have… what?”

“Nothing!”

Michael’s eyes narrow. Adding fuel to fire, Cas panic-spins back to the sauce and starts stirring with renewed vigour.

“Is this done, do you think?”

“It’s Gabriel’s recipe,” says Michael, the cat still perilously curious. “Shall I go and get him?”

“Please do. By the way,” says Cas, desperate to draw Michael’s attention to something else. “Exactly who is this feast in honour of? You haven’t told us.”

“A colleague of mine by the name of Mary Winchester. She’s RN at the hospital. She’s been having some trouble adjusting to the town – she’s a recent transplant like yourself – but she’s a hard worker and I enjoy her company very much, so I thought why not do the neighbourly thing and have her over for dinner?”

“Oh. Is it true love, then?”

Michael huffs. “She’s fifty-four, Cas.”

“Love isn’t bound by age.”

“She has two grown-up sons, one of whom is a practicing lawyer.”

“Perfect! You wouldn’t have to raise kids that aren’t yours. Talk about winning the lottery.”

“I’ll smack you,” Michael grumbles. “She’s a nice woman who had to raise two sons all by herself – husband died in a drunk-driving incident, I think; I didn’t pry for details – and managed to make something more of her life after they were grown up and settled down.”

“Are you sure you don’t have a crush on this woman?”

“I’m sure. I like and respect her, but only as a colleague.”

“If you say so,” says Cas gamely. “So, is it just her or are her two sons also joining us for dinner tonight?”

“Well, she asked if she could bring her younger son, Sam, with her.”

“The lawyer?”

“Yeah. Good guess.” Michael high-fives Cas. “There was some talk of her older son also visiting her this week or next, so it’s possible we might be entertaining all three Winchesters under our roof tonight.”

“Does this older son have a name?”

“Can’t remember; she only mentioned it in passing.” Michael scratches at his chin as he tries to jog his memory. “Don? Dan? Dick? Starts with a D. David. Donald. Dom. Dominick. Dwight. Dre. Drummond.”

“You’re just listing names that start with the letter D. It’s no problem, regardless of what his name is. Gabriel’s cooking enough to feed a small army.”

“Maybe Dean?” Michael murmurs aloud, and a jolt like an electric shock shoots up Cas’s spine, thrilling him where he stands. “Yeah. Yeah, I think the guy’s name is Dean. Sam and Dean. Yup. That’s them.”

Dean, he wonders –

Dean.

“Hey, my name’s Dean –”

Cas nips the memory before it takes hold of him. Pure coincidence, he reasons, willing his thumping heart to calm down. There were a lot of people named Dean in the world; probably millions in America alone. He need not work himself into a state over such a commonality, because what are the chances the Dean he met at the airport and the Dean who is Mary Winchester’s son are one and the same?

Zero.

Having regained his composure, Cas remarks in chirpier tone, “Excellent! So, Mary Winchester and her sons, Sam and Dean, and all four of the Novak brood. Splendid. We’ll have a merry little get-together, the seven of us.” He laughs a hollow little laugh as he adds, “A couple of weeks late, brother, and we could have had ourselves a merry little Christmas get-together. You have no sense of timing.”

The Winchesters arrive at seven – and admirably on the dot. The second-hand of the clock strikes twelve and the doorbell rings.

Mary Winchestes proves to be kind and smart, as Michael described her, but also attractive in a pleasingly old-fashioned way, like an actress from those black-and-white movies everybody pretends they have seen and loved – something Michael failed to mention. Looking at her, you’d have thought she sprang out of a pinup from the Roaring Twenties, the very picture of graceful loveliness.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she says to Cas as introductions are being made. “Michael raves about you. You are Castiel, right?”

“I am, but please call me Cas.”

“You do have a unique name,” she says, with her green eyes sparkling.

“That’s one word for it,” says he warmly. The more he observes her, the better he likes her. It could have something to do with the greenness of her eyes: he’s fonder of green eyes these days. “I tell people it’s Biblical in origin and usually they believe me. But there’s always that one person who goes, ‘I read the Bible an’ I never read no Castiel in it, who you tryin’ to con, you heathen?’”

Mary laughs. “I get it. Cas is easier to say and requires no explanation. You’ve had a hard life, haven’t you?”

“Indeed,” says he, smiling back. “Please, do make yourself at home.”

Sam Winchester accosts him next, and eyeing him from head to toe, Cas is sure that if a Rottweiler was given human form, plus floopy gigantism, it would materialise in the shape of Sam Winchester.

“It’s an honour to meet you,” says Sam, oozing nervous gratitude.

“Why would it be an honour?” says Cas, taking Sam’s hand in a confused shake. “We have never met before, have we?”

“We’ve never met, but I know you. Well, I know of you. In a purely academic, non-stalker-ish sense. I based my Master’s thesis on your Master’s thesis.”

“Oh. You’re a Stanford survivor as well?”

Sam nods. “You’re something of a legend at Branner.”

“Then I guess we should get together and have ourselves a trip down memory lane. We can reminisce about how things were in the days when I was a student there and how they haven’t changed a bit in the years since and how they probably never will.”

“True: the appeal is in the stagnancy. But sure. Anytime. I mean it.”

“You live in L.A., right?”

“Used to, until two weeks ago. I relocated here to be closer to mom.”

“Are you opening your own practice?” Cas enquires curiously. Sam looks to be on this side of thirty, very likely younger: too green about the gills to manage a private practice. “I may be running the risk of ageism here, but aren’t you too young to be striking out on your own so soon?”

Sam grins at his rude remark. “I do hope to have a practice of my own one day, but that day is far, far into the future.”

“Oh, so you’ve joined a local firm?”

“Yeah.”

“As far as I know there’s only one in the area, Blake & Caldwell, where my brother Lucifer is a senior associate.”

“That’s the one.”

Cas stares at Sam. “Allow me to be the first to offer my condolences.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s the devil.”

“I’m sure he’s not that ba–”

“He’s the devil. This is his kid brother, who loves him to pieces, telling you. He’s a ruthless slave-driver who has been identified as the leading cause of no less than fourteen nervous breakdowns this year alone.”

“You’re pulling my leg,” says Sam, aghast. “Please tell me you’re pulling my leg.”

“Forewarned is forearmed.”

“What do I do?”

“Pick any of the other senior associates and stick to them like glue?”

“Junior lawyers don’t have that privilege.”

“Pity,” says Cas, delighting in the way Sam looks so thoroughly rattled. Lucifer can be a brute to work with, and the horrors of his workplace tyranny is no exaggeration, but it is all because he’s a perfectionist who doesn’t tolerate simpering idiots. Sam, with his calm, quiet gravity of manner, should do fine.

Not that Cas is going to tell him; seeing him sweat is tickling his funny bone.

“Cheer up. I’ll put in a good word for you.”

“Will that help?”

“It will. I’m the baby of the family, and the family’s motto is, ‘the baby of the family gets what he wants, no exceptions.’”

“Perks of having big brothers,” says Sam, his good humour returning a little. “Dean’s like that too. Protective and indulgent.”

“Speaking of whom, where is your brother?” Cas asks him, now that he’s noticed the distinct lack of the third Winchester in their midst. “Is he not coming?”

Sam sighs. “He will,” he says, shoulders slumping – which speaks volumes to Cas. “He’s just – um.”

“There’s no need to explain.”

“Between ourselves, Dean’s been down in the dumps lately. I don’t know why. He got into town last Saturday and he’s just been moping all day long. Well, not all day. He goes to Bobby’s in the afternoons – uh, that’s my uncle – to work on cars – Dean’s a mechanic, did I tell you? He’s going take over Bobby’s business when he retires – but Bobby told me Dean doesn’t so much ‘work’ there as ‘takes a hammer to a wreckage and just smashes and smashes and smashes.’”

“Sound like he has issues.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. And I understand. I understand wanting to take out your frustrations on something, the need to just hit and hit and his – it’s visceral and cathartic –” Sure, thinks Cas, “– and Dean’s preferred mode of relieving stress has always been destroying cars with his hands. Well, if I’m being honest, his go-to mode of relieving stress is actually sex.”

“Quite common.”

“But he’s not having sex, which is also quite strange and out of character for him. No, it’s he’s either home grumbling about something at the tv, stuffing himself full of beer and burger, or he’s at Bobby’s, hammering cars to scraps. He doesn’t go out at all. And if you knew Dean, you’d know how big of a warning sign it is.”

“Have you tried talking to him?”

“I have; but I may as well try talking to a wall.” Sam takes a breath, while Cas waits: obviously Sam needs to get it all off his chest. Cas has been known to play the unwitting therapist to many a harrowed soul. It has something to do with his face, he imagines: it rather invites distressing confidences. “I guess I should mention Dean’s a bit of a – well, no. There’s no getting away with it: he’s the poster child for toxic masculinity.”

“Ah, the strong, silent, stoic, cigar, women, chainsaw, monster-truck, America for Americans type of guy?”

“Definitely the strong, silent, stoic, cigar, women, chainsaw, monster-truck type of a guy, but not so much the other thing. He loathes politics. He’s not a bad person. Truly. He’s smart, funny and charming sometimes to a fault. He just has some outdated ideas about what makes a man a man, you know? He’s learning; but it’s one step forwards, a bazillion steps back with him.”

“He sounds… interesting,” says Cas, somewhat dishonestly. The image he’s conjured out of Sam’s description of his brother is… off-puttingly Republican. Sam hasn’t mentioned it, but Cas is sure this Dean sports a crewcut. “I can’t wait to meet him. If he decides to show up, that is.”

“He should. He will put in an appearance for mom’s sake,” says Sam with a scowl. “Not sure if he’d stay.”

“Not even for good food, if not for the good company? Gabriel’s a great chef. That’s not biased talk of a very proud brother either.”

“With the way Dean’s been carrying on lately, hating everything and everyone? No chance.”

Sam will have never been more wrong, but it is for time, and Dean, to tell – in about fifteen minutes, when the doorbell rings and Cas answers it and by so doing, alters the course of everybody's lives.

Meanwhile, out in the streets, right across Michael Novak's pretentious suburban villa, in a sleek black car which has turned heads of no less than one closeted car-enthusiast, Dean Winchester is sitting by his angry lonesome. He has his phone in his hands and he is staring with singular intensity at a photo he has pulled up - a photo he has been pulling up a lot the past few days, a photo featuring a blue-eyed angel who'd stolen his heart away, one stupid fucking terrible joke at a time, one who had given him the absolute best fucking night of his life - then fucked off in the morning without so much as a goodbye.

Dean had woken up to an empty bed, to a pillow, bedside table and every other flat surface in the room devoid of a piece of paper with a phone-number on it, and to a heart slowly breaking into pieces.

"If I ever get my hands on you again, you son of a bitch," he mutters, seething with fury.

Chapter Text

“Cas, would you quit daydreaming and fucking focus?”

If you didn’t know the speaker and happened to walk past the kitchen just as these words were being spoken, you’d be forgiven for assuming the speaker is a German General, albeit a bilingual one, or at least someone who idolizes German Generals.

But it’s only Gabriel, the third eldest brother or the second youngest depending on your preferred birth order for listing siblings, who has a bee in his bonnet about the dinner, which is scheduled for eight, and preparations still a few inches of parchments away from completion. Adding to his pressure is the fact that seventy percent of the guests are already here, and if thirty percent of them is to be believed, the remaining thirty percent will be with him ‘soon-ish’.

Cas, on the receiving end of Gabriel’s perfectionist character and the joys that come with it, keeps stirring the sauce, feeling like he has been stirring sauces since the beginning of time.

“You need to stir it clockwise for five minutes,” Gabriel directs him while he chops carrots and cucumbers for a salad with an efficiency that astonishes Cas whenever he witnesses it, “then you stir it counter-clockwise for two, let it sit for one, then clockwise again for five, and then ten minutes counter-clockwise. Then you repeat the cycle for three quarters of an hour, let it cool for fifteen, then slow simmer again for five minutes. How haven’t you got it down to pat yet?”

“You forgot the most important step,” Cas says – saucily. “The one where I dump this… goop on your head so that you can roleplay as the human chocolate fountain but for sauce.”

“How dare you call my masterpiece goop!”

“I was going to call it something far worse – a bit more befitting its brown look and texture.”

“Okay, Christopher Hitchens, I can’t have your wit wreaking havoc on my sauce, so if you’re gonna act like a sarcastic bitch in my kitchen, then I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

“Oh, perfect. I have so many things I need to be going –”

“Having said that, I realize beggars can’t be choosers, so – uh – you’re the light of my life and I couldn’t have done it without your assistance – you’re the woman in the ‘there’s a woman behind every successful man’ of my story – and I’d be grateful if you could keep helping me.”

“That’s more like it,” Cas cedes, not that he minds helping at all, or that Gabriel, otherwise the chill-est of his brothers, is a fastidious little bitch about his cooking. If not for the fact that he has only two hands and can be only in place at any given time, Gabriel would rather do everything all by himself. “And I want equal credit when everyone’s complimenting the food.”

“You’re literally only here for the sauce.”

“Yeah, and this sauce is what’s going to bring the whole thing together. It’s the most pivotal element.”

Gabriel scoffs at him, and starts on the beetroots. “Sure,” he says.

The doorbell rings.

“Can anybody get that?”

Unbeknownst to each other, the two oldest and the two youngest Novak siblings say it at the same time.

Cas and Gabriel exchange deadpan glances – Michael and Lucifer, they’re sure, do the same in the living room where they are talking with Mary and Sam.

“I’m not doing it,” Cas say resolutely. “I’m not. We’re not kids anymore. We are all adults. We are all equals. And we are all equidistant from the front door, so really…”

Gabriel cocks an eyebrow, then puts the knife and crosses his arms.

“This – this is exploitation!” Cas declares passionately. “Bullying!”

The other eyebrow joins the first on Gabriel’s forehead.

“Fine!” Cas grumbles as he undoes the apron. “You geriatric assbutts can stay put. See if I don’t throw each of you in a care home when you’re –”

He complains all the way to the door, and wrenches it open.

Then slams it immediately shut, heart in his throat.

It can’t be.

There’s no way.

He looks through the peephole and –

That’s Dean. His Dean. Dean from the airport. Dean who –

“God, you feel so fucking good, baby!”

“Mind if I go a little harder?”

“The hell do you do to me, Cas?”

– who is Sam’s brother. Mary Winchester’s son – Dean Winchester.

There’s a knock, and Cas jerks badly. The knock is followed by a series of thumps as though Dean was slamming his palms against the wood. No polite ‘let me in, please’ kind of palm-slamming, either, this – it’s the ‘let me the fuck in, or I’m gonna pound this door in and then pound you in’ variety of palm-slamming.

Grabbing his nerves in a stranglehold, Cas opens the door noiselessly and, when Dean tries to bully his way in, pushes him back on to the porch, steps out and shuts the door behind himself.

“It is you,” Dean rumbles, sounding so pissed off that Cas has half a mind to run for the hills, which are right there – against the horizon. “Wasn’t sure earlier, didn’t get a good enough look. But it’s –”

“Me, yes, I heard you,” says Cas, feigning a normalcy of manner. “And it is you, Dean. Winchester. Fancy meeting you here. What a, um, er, happy – coincidence! I never thought I’d see you again!”

Dean glowers at him. “Yeah, I bet you didn’t after the stunt you pulled.”

It’s never an easy thing to share breathing space with someone who does not like you and makes no attempts to hide it. But it’s a still more difficult thing to share breathing space with someone so attractive, who does not like you and makes no attempts to hide it.

“If you’re referring to… um, the way I – uh, left –”

“What else would I be fucking referring to, you son of a bitch?”

“Name calling is never conducive –”

“Do I look like I care?”

Dean does not. A blind man can unoffensively see that. Dean does not look like he cares about anything in the moment apart from, maybe, unleashing his rage on Cas. His entire demeanour is that of a bull in a cage snarling and raking his hooves against the ground as it prepares for a bloodthirsty charge against the matador.

“What is the issue here, really?” Cas asks, bravely.

“Seriously?”

“You’re angry that I left you that morning without a word – presumably. But if you think about it, if you dig deep, that is, from an objective point of view, you’ll see that I did both of us a favour.”

“Oh, you think so, do you?” says Dean, crossing his arms. “Enlighten me, ’cause I don’t.”

“We had… an alcohol-fuelled… night together,” Cas begins awkwardly, unable to look at Dean directly. “Come morning, there would surely be embarrassment, humiliation… um, regrets –”

“You talking about me or yourself?”

“…Both, I think?”

“Did you regret what happened that night?”

“…No.”

“Well, if you hadn’t fucked off, I was –”

Gabriel calling his name interrupts Dean, who swears under his breath, “Cas? Cas? Where the hell did you vanish to?”

The doorknob turns.

In the grips of a sudden, irrepressible panic, Cas does the only thing he can think of: as hard as he can, he shoves Dean into the snow on the ground, just as the door opens and Gabriel steps outside.

“What are you doing out here? Who was at the door?”

It takes Gabriel a moment to notice the heavy-set figure trying to right itself from the snow.

“It’s Dean Winchester, Gabriel,” Cas says – blurts rather, palms sweating. “Sam’s brother. He slipped and fell, and I was just about to give him a hand up.”

“Right,” drawls Gabriel, eying Dean with renewed interest. “Well, some introduction, eh, Dean?”

Cas omits to actually give Dean a hand up, so he is left to straighten himself, himself, brushing the snow off his clothes, his hair and his boots with brutal, hostile quickness. Frozen with dread in his own winter-appropriate footwear, Cas regards him with wide, frightened, pleading eyes.

Dean grunts something unintelligible under his breath: a damnation for Cas, perhaps. “Yeah,” he says to Gabriel, not sparing Cas so much as a glance. “The stone’s slippery. Lost my balance. Fell. Cas was just helping me out.”

“We don’t know each other!” Cas tells Gabriel anxiously, then appalled at what he’s just said, marvels at his own idiocy.

“…I know that,” his brother says, giving him a weird look. “Come on, let’s get inside. Gonna freeze my balls out here.”

Gabriel goes back into the house and the door slowly swivels shut.

“Um,” says Cas, then stops. He trains his gaze decidedly away from Dean. “I’m sorry,” he starts again, “for shoving you. Erm. It was childish –”

And he’s being pushed up against the door and kissed within an inch of his life before he’s aware what’s happening.

Dean bites into his mouth, all pent-up anger and frustration, and Cas, no slouch in this department now that he’s had plenty of experience – courtesy of Dean and their night of carnal revelations – gives back as good as he’s getting. Fingers clutch at his waist, one hand snags on Cas’s sweater and shoves it up, shirt and all, and the combined sensation of absolute iciness of Dean’s glove digging into his back and the scorching heat of Dean’s proximity at his front electrify every nerve in Cas’s body.

He gasps, dragging his smarting lips away from Dean’s so that he can heave lungful of air, while Dean, the opportunistic bastard that he is, starts nipping at his chin and jaw, and down to his neck, where he proceeds to suck bruises into Cas’s heated skin.

“Dean,” he manages to stutter out from under the heady haze of his arousal. “Dean.”

There’s no response apart from an extra hard suck he feels intensely conscious of at his collarbone.

“Dean,” he whispers again, hanging onto his sanity by a thread. He closes his fingers in Dean’s hair and tugs.

Dean grunts in impatience, but pulls back enough that Cas can look into his eyes.

“My brothers are in the house,” Cas warns him. “As are your mother and brother.”

“So what?”

“So I’d rather we didn’t have sex out against the front door.”

Dean’s expression clouds. “We weren’t going to have sex out here, Cas.”

“Oh. Well. Wonderful. Glad to see you still have some –”

“At most we were going to engage in some light frottage.”

Cas gapes at him. “And that’s better how?”

“It’s better than what you were implying, you fucking pervert.”

“Sure. I’m the pervert. You pounce on me the minute my brother has left us alone and I’m the one getting heat for it?”

Dean smiles cockily at him. “That wasn’t me pouncing on you, sweetheart,” he says, leaning in and kissing the corner of Cas’s lips. “It was payback.”

“Payback for wh– Are you serious?” Dumbfounded, Cas tries to put some distance between them by an elbow to Dean’s chest, but Dean resists. If anything, he draws his arms even tighter around Cas. “I thought I explained it well before. The reason I left without telling you was so that we could both avoid the painfully awkward aftermath of our…”

“Intense, passionate lovemaking?”

“…sexual congress,” Cas says, blinking in surprise at Dean’s phrasing. “‘Intense, passionate lovemaking?’”

“Calling it like it is.”

“That’s cheesy.”

“But true.”

“That’s, like, so cheesy. How are you not red with embarrassment for having said something like that? I’m embarrassed just having heard it.”

“What’s there to be embarrassed about?”

“Plenty.”

“It’s a great thing I don’t have stupid hang-ups like you do,” says Dean, amused. “How are you this dumb?”

“Again with the name-call–”

“Did you enjoy our time together?”

Cas considers lying for a split second, but his own conscience revolts. “I did.”

“Well, joy. So did I.”

“You did?”

“It was hands down one of the best nights of my life.”

“It was?”

Dean kissed him, a charming, comforting press of lips to his. “It was, and then some. And I gotta be honest with you – I didn’t think it was going to be.”

“Oh.”

“It had nothing to do with you, baby. I – uh, I’d never been with a guy before, you know? Didn’t think I could be attracted to guys, never did while I grew up, so the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about you – thinking about talking to you, being close to you, touching you, fucking you – it was throwing me for a loop. The moment I saw you in the waiting lounge, Cas, I was a goner.”

“So you approached me because you… you know…”

“Absolutely,” Dean grins his rakish grin and thumbs Cas’s lower lip playfully. “I had only one thought running through my mind back then. Get you naked and under me. Stat.”

“You had no misgivings at all? You feel attracted to a guy for the first time in your life and you just go for it? For some – for many, I’ll wager – it’s a life-altering realisation. It takes them years and years to come to grips with it. You just took everything in stride.”

“I’ve learned to trust my instincts,” says Dean, so attractively confident. “I saw you. I wanted you. I was gonna have you one way or another. You being a guy didn’t seem important. Not important enough to stop me, anyway.”

“Whereas for me,” Cas confesses unhappily, “that was the sticking point which drove me out of our hotel room. I thought it was something of an experiment for you. Sure, it seemed to have been an… enjoyable – experiment for you, but an experiment none the less. I feared you’d wake up, realise what you’d done and run away as fast as you could.”

“That’s what you did.”

“I know. I was afraid of what you might say, Dean,” says Cas in a small voice, eyes cast downward. “I liked you – far, far more than I was willing to admit to myself. I didn’t think I could bear have you wake up and look at me as someone you wish you’d never met. It was an agonizing idea.”

“And that’s what makes you,” Dean says tenderly, titling Cas’s chin up and kissing him deeply, “the dumbest fucking son of a bitch on the planet.”

“Is that something you should say to someone you were a ‘goner’ for?”

“Just because I’m stupid for you doesn’t mean I won’t kick your ass.”

“You wouldn’t if you hope for a repeat of our nocturnal activities.”

Dean rubs his nose against Cas’s, their lips gently brushing. “Do you want it?”

“Like I’ve wanted nothing before.”

“Me too.”

“But not right now,” says Cas in a sweet but firm tone. “And definitely not here.”

“I’m sure there are a zillion rooms in this fucking mansion where we could be alone?”

“This is still my brother’s house, Dean. And the rest of my brothers are here too.”

“Mine included, plus my mom.”

“Yes, both of our families. None of them know about us and I’d rather it stayed that way – at least for the time being. Which means you, my good sir, you’re going to have to behave yourself. No suggestive glances. No lewd comments. No touching.”

And yeah – even as he says it, Cas realises he shouldn’t have said it.

A smile of such inveterate naughtiness splits Dean’s face, such an impish glint lights up in his eyes, that Cas sags into Dean’s arms with blissful resignation.

“Be warned, Dean Winchester,” he says, licking and tasting the hollow of Dean’s throat. “My brothers are over-protective bulldogs whose bites are so much worse than their bark. There have been hospitalizations, even a few police cases.”

“Bulldogs, you say?” Dean presses a kiss to the shell of his ears and says, “Then, I’m gonna take your brothers out for a fucking walk. And then I’m gonna fuck you. Better brace yourself, baby.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“It’s a promise.”

If they stand on the porch for a few more minutes, kissing each other with every fibre of their being in the deepening twilight, at least there’s no one around to witness it.

“Oh, god.”

It is Sam Winchester muttering soundlessly to himself in the hallway of Michael Novak’s pretentious suburban villa.

No one to blame but yourself, he chastises himself, eying the peephole with a sordid bitterness. You couldn’t have just knocked. You couldn’t have called out to them. No. You had to have a peep first. Well, excellent peeping, Sammy boy. You caught your brother lip-locking one of your hosts.

Sam turns on his heels and heads for the living room, shaking his head.

“So that’s why Dean had been acting like a grumpy asshole all week. Because a guy he had slept with – and isn’t that an eye-opener of a discovery – a guy he had fallen for, and fallen hard by the sound of it, had ghosted him. And Cas is the guy.”

For a moment Sam pauses, immobile with the weight of what he knows.

Then he giggles to himself, picturing the dinner that is to be and the fun he’s going to have messing with his brother.