Fic: Leave Thy Gift Before The Altar (Dean/Castiel/Sam, NC-17)
Title: Leave Thy Gift Before The Altar
Authors: tiptoe39 and obstinatrix
Pairing: Dean/Castiel/Sam
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~8,600
Summary: Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. (Matthew 5:24) Like every loving God, Castiel needs to be loved in return.
Warnings: Dub-con. Mind control. D/s elements. Incest. Do we need to warn for Godstiel? ;) Spoilers for 6x22.
Castiel is tired. It is a long road from day to day, and he is usually in thirty places or more at once. Overseeing the birth of new star systems, maintaining a trillion heavens, averting war and apocalypse at every turn. Even now, in the chamber where he holds court, the beautiful room reinvented as his sanctum, his attention is divided. He needs a distraction, as much as a god can have one. And he has an idea in mind.
Once, a few days or years or lives ago, he had watched the hearts and minds of the Winchesters, seen their desires and their sinful hearts. And he had seen, too, the love they held for him, seen it dissipate beneath a cloud of betrayal and hurt. It had been so painful, he had turned away, not wanting to watch it die entirely.
Now, he no longer has to worry about their feelings. He controls them, he can bend them one way or another. Maybe it doesn’t quite measure up to his promise to protect free will, but they did not measure up either, when it counted, and he can afford this indulgence.
He brings in Sam first, because Sam is easier to look at and not feel like his heart is being wrenched from his chest. Sam is made to kneel, the collar around his neck clanking as its chain goes taut, pulls him like a marionette toward the floor. He’s long and lanky and delicious, and Castiel smiles at him, slides a hand under his chin. This is a blessing, to be brought into his Lord’s presence. Sam can surely see that by now.
Sam does not smile back, but then, he very rarely does, unless he is asked to do so. It is, perhaps, a sign of his respect which verges, still, on fear, and Castiel knows it is right that Sam should fear him. He is gentle with both of them, always, but he is powerful beyond the reach of anything their human minds can encompass, and it is fitting that they should both be aware of this; that they should show it on their faces when Castiel raises their eyes to his. It is their fear, after all, that makes them pliable. Soon, if Castiel is sufficiently gentle with them, there may be a measure of love behind it, too, but for now he is dependent upon the fear.
When Castiel smooths his thumb over Sam's lower lip, pad of it catching on the wet silk inside, it is gently, gently, and Sam doesn't resist. "Sam," Castiel says, low, a benediction, but Sam does not betray by any flicker of his face that he hears, that he understands the many levels of love in Castiel's voice. Castiel bites his lip, pensive, and sighs. Respect is one thing, but absolute passivity is quite another, and not necessarily desirable. Like this, Sam may as well be a beautifully fashioned doll, yielding but unresponsive, and Castiel called him here to respond.
He sits back in his chair after a moment, withdrawing his hand; smiles when Sam's face twitches in noticeable surprise. "Sam," he says, again, louder, "Stand up." He gestures, palm upraised, and Sam follows the motion of his arm obediently, the length of him unfolding. There's a lot of him, golden and unmarked, years of scarring erased by Castiel's own hand. Castiel takes a moment to admire his handiwork. Sam, both hands clasped at the small of his back, stares forward mutely, lets him look as if he had a choice in the matter. He is beautiful, undoubtedly, but still as stone, and that will no longer suffice. Castiel spreads his thighs, making room between, and snaps his fingers to draw Sam's attention back to himself, out of whatever dream world it had wandered into.
"Come here." The splay of his legs is an obvious invitation on its own, and needs no embellishment. "Please."
For a moment he thinks Sam’s responding to him, he thinks he sees a glimmer of warmth in the face in response to the please. But it’s gone as soon as it appears, and in the end it doesn’t matter whether it was ever there or not. What matters is that Sam obeys, that he steps forward, stands in between Castiel’s knees, and gazes down at him, face impassive and unsmiling, an object there to be played with.
That expression hurt Castiel once -- no, it still hurts him, but Castiel is far beyond crumpling in response to his own pain. Instead, he reaches a hand forward and lays it flat against the expanse of Sam’s chest. The flesh beats beneath his fingers, human warmth molding to his touch, and he can feel every rush of blood in his capillaries, every nerve ending firing beneath Sam’s skin as he moves his palm upward, scoops it to the side to mold to the ridge of his pectorals and slides, again, down his side.
“There was a time when I was afraid to touch you,” he says, amusement glinting in his eyes as he meets Sam’s even gaze. “I feared it would be... awkward.” A sad smile touches Castiel’s lips, but the melancholy doesn’t last. “How times have changed.”
Sam gives no response beyond a brief, almost imperceptible nod.
Castiel lifts his other hand, skims fingertips over Sam’s stomach and comes down to clamp against his hipbone. Over him like this, Sam is a marble statue, still and majestic, and Castiel is at once grateful for his shade and dispirited from his coldness. he pulls gently on Sam’s hips, beckoning him an inch forward, so that Sam’s thigh presses into Castiel’s own. Leaning forward, Castiel brushes his lips against Sam’s chest, his tongue gliding a wet streak across one taut muscle to catch on the protrusion of his nipple. Sam makes no sound. Castiel thinks he sees, out of the corner of his eye, Sam’s features flinch -- but still, no sound.
He draws back, perplexed. He could order Sam to respond -- and Sam would, he has, before -- but he’s tired, the souls within him have been churning nonstop, and he just wants that simplicity of connection he used to know when he looked at Sam and Dean and saw two people he loved, two people he could trust. Or thought he could trust. Those days are long past now. He no longer knows what to do to please them. Now he has no choice but to ask.
“What can I do for you?” His brows furrow, his lips purse around the words. “Is there something you want, something that would make you happy?”
Sam regards him quietly for a moment, soberly. It's an almost pensive expression, a contrast to the stony immobility of before, and for a hopeful second, Castiel thinks he may be considering a reply, an honest suggestion Castiel can work with. Castiel wants to work with Sam, to function with him as the well-oiled machine they'd all three operated as, when the stakes were desperate. Then Sam's mouth twitches, drawing up slightly at one corner, and he shakes his head minutely. His eyes close off again, the momentary flash of humanity in them gone, and he looks away, returns his gaze to the safe place a little to the left of Castiel's shoulder.
Castiel tries hard not to feel the ache of disappointment in his chest, but even through the turmoil of so many souls in tarantella within him, it is there. Two years ago, the human part of him might have driven him to bite at his lip, now, to duck his head, but now he is a god, and gods don't do such things. Castiel reaches out, slowly, as if Sam were a woodland animal liable to shy, and brushes the backs of his fingers against the outside of Sam's thigh. "Sam. Please." He hasn't been much given to pleading, lately, but perhaps it will help. Perhaps that spark of earlier wasn't entirely imagined out of false hope. "Don't be afraid to speak. Is there anything you want?"
The realist in him half-expects Sam only to shake his head again, unresponsive and tight-lipped. The optimist expects a collapse of Sam's reserves; a request for music or clothing or food, something that Castiel might magnanimously provide. No part of him expects the sudden tightening that takes root in Sam's shoulders; the way his forehead draws in, jaw jutting, although the moment he sees the expression, he recognizes it, and wonders why he had failed to figure it as an option. Sam is angry. It's a long time since Sam has dared to be angry with Castiel, and he's fighting it now, every muscle in his body pulled taut. Castiel has always disliked other people's anger, but now he almost craves its genuineness, its measure of truth. He takes a sharp breath; takes firm hold of Sam's hip, prompting. Needling. "Sam."
His tone is calculated to provoke, and it works. Sam snaps back to look at him, and his eyes are blazing, despite the schooled control in his stiff features. His voice, when he speaks, is equally unconvincing, laced with barely-restrained fury, something bitter and dark. "No, Castiel," he says, and Castiel feels his habitual pang at the loss of the nickname that once made him theirs; made him real. "There's nothing I want. Thank you." Sam stops, but his jaw works, as if there is more, and Castiel wants to hear it. He glides his hand sideways, brushes it pointedly against the thick weight of Sam's cock between his legs.
"But?" he prompts, low and soft.
Sam hisses out a short breath through his teeth. "But nothing," he retorts, eyes still fixed on Castiel's face, his body carefully motionless beneath Castiel's hand. "I want things to go back to normal. I want to see my brother, I want to be with him, at least, if we can't be where we want to be, but those aren't things you're willing to give us, are they?" Sam halts abruptly, as if aware of the way his voice is lifting; as if he is suddenly afraid again, although Castiel has not moved, has not betrayed his feelings by a flicker. "Sorry," Sam mumbles, sullen, but sincere, "I'm sorry. It's just - this is hard for us."
Castiel feels his throat soften, something in his chest clench. This is anger against him, he knows, but still, it is the most he has heard from either of the Winchesters in months, and something gentle in him wants to respond to it, to reward it. A god must love, after all, as well as punish. "Sam," he chides, lifting his hand to brush against the swell of Sam's bicep, the soft place between shoulder and chest. "If you want to see your brother, you may." He shrugs. "I can have him brought in here now, if you like."
Sam’s eyes widen, minutely - they’re back again, in a moment, to their careful narrowed slits. But he holds his tongue, measuring how to respond. Castiel watches the gears in his mind fly, synapses clicking back and forth. If he wanted, he could pinch here, siphon there -- turn Sam into something else, change his responses, mold the man he keeps hoping Sam will be. But he doesn’t. He cares about Sam, doesn’t want to change him. Despite everything. Despite the fact that he has earned the right to do so. He’s earned at least some respect, some love.
He tucks his hand behind Sam’s arm and draws him forward and down. Sam bends his knees, a breath drawn short and sudden from his lips. Castiel leans in to him, inhales the scent of his skin (soaped, oiled, cleaner than it ever was before Castiel’s ascent) and presses his lips against the firm flesh of his shoulder, then to his neck, then his jaw. “Sam,” he murmurs, “”Let me do this for you.”
He continues to lavish kisses across Sam’s jaw, one hand holding him firm, but Castiel extends the other, calling with a gesture. Yes, he thinks, this is how he wins them over. They will be happy to see each other, relieved. And then they will turn to Castiel, and they will thank him.
Sam stiffens in his grasp at the clanking sound of chains, and his hand comes up boldly to lean on Castiel’s shoulder, pushing him away as he turns, looks over his shoulder. Castiel knows the expression - gaping mouth, wide eyes. Hope and anticipation quivering in every feature. He envies Sam’s ability to express so much emotion without a word, without an action. Castiel himself has always found it a painful process. He sits back, lets his grip slacken and then fall off from Sam’s arm, and smiles. He will enjoy watching this.
Dean is beautiful in chains. Castiel has always thought so, admiring the bunch and pull of the muscles in his arms, his broad shoulders. His face. Dean is a creature worthy of any king's bed, fine-featured and upright, and Castiel has always been very firm about the fact that his face is never to be touched. Dean is his favorite. It's not a secret. Castiel loves every last inch of him, from the green-gold of his eyes to the sullen expression he wore for so long, until it faded into a general resigned blankness. Castiel misses it, sometimes. He misses Dean.
It is evident from the way Sam jerks, chains pulling taut as he moves, that he has missed Dean, too. Castiel, at least, has seen him almost every day for the duration of the Winchesters' stay with him here, even if Dean has often seemed absent. Sam...it is a long time since Sam has seen his brother. Castiel had thought, at first, that keeping them apart would be the surest way to prevent any kind of mutiny, stirrings from the united Winchester front, and it has worked, in many ways. The outcome, though, has been this strange flatness common to both of them, a passive unresponsiveness that is not quite the sort of love he had once hoped for. They neither of them respond to Castiel any more, not naturally, as they used to.
To Sam, now, Dean responds. He hasn't said an unprompted word for weeks, but the change in his expression when he sees his brother standing by Castiel's chair is almost comical - might have been amusing had it not been so painfully reminiscent of the Dean that once existed, to whom Castiel had recourse whenever he wished for it. His face turns open and soft before he has an opportunity to prevent it, hands stretching out, clutching at Sam's, and Sam is there, fingers twining through Dean's, smiling at him desperately as their knuckles turn white. Strange, Castiel thinks. He's never really seen them touch before, not like this, shackling themselves together with their fingers, with bone, the way they have always been shackled by blood. It makes his heart feel tight and hot and confused as he watches; painful, when they remember themselves and, after a last squeeze, let go. Dean takes his position by Sam's side, the way he has been trained to stand with other pets, and his expression is once again neutral, but there are distinct flickers in it, every line in his body vibrating with the desire to turn and look at his brother. He wants to drink him in, after all these months, Castiel can tell - wants to paw him all over as if to be sure he still exists. He is resisting with every fibre of his being, but Castiel isn't sure that he wants him to resist.
Dean is Dean when he looks at Sam. Dean is the man Castiel once fell in love with.
He leans back slowly in his chair, eyes settling calmly on Dean's face, although his chest is thrumming with anticipation. "Hello, Dean," he says.
“Hi, Cas.” Simple, guttural syllables, no needless complication. Once, Dean was like that because he chose to be. These days, it’s because he feels he must be.
“Are you surprised?” Castiel’s fingers are gripping his thighs, anxious, anticipating the release of emotion.
Dean glances at Sam, and something that’s almost a smile flickers at the corner of his lips. It’s not a smile, though -- it’s counterweighted by the twitch of his brows, making the expression sardonic, not simply pleased. Dean is still watching himself. Still being careful. “Yeah, you could say that.”
Castiel’s not satisfied with the response. “I did this for you,” he says, eyes darting between the two of them. “To make you happy. I do, still, want you to be happy.”
“You want to make us happy, Cas?” Anger flushes through Dean’s cheeks. His fist clenches. “How about letting us go, huh? How about--”
“Dean.” Sam grabs his wrist. Dean turns, and his eyes go dark again. Castiel’s heart both soars and sinks. For a moment, that was him, that was the lightning-flash temper and energy of Dean in full, the brunt of his personality flung at Castiel bare and beloved. But it wasn’t Dean’s good humor, or even his angst, but raw anger that he’s unleashed. It’s not the emotion Castiel wanted to inspire. Despite the reunion with his brother, Dean’s bitter. And Sam, though he holds Dean back, has the same resentment hovering in his eyes.
But his fingers remain on Dean’s wrist, and Castiel seizes on the opportunity that contact represents. Their will to be together is not yet broken.
“Take your time,” he says. “Talk to each other. I know it’s been a while.” He waves a hand, urging them together with a gesture.
They don't flow together immediately; don't meld into nonchalance the way Castiel half-wishes they would. He wishes it, but he knows that it is impossible. They watch him closely, tracking him sceptically out of the corners of their eyes, and make no grand movements, no grand statements. If Castiel was not here, he knows, they would have plenty to talk about, but these two were trained in caution long before Castiel trained them in anything else, and they're guarded, hesitant. Through it all, though, Sam's hand is still on Dean's wrist, and Castiel doesn't miss the way Dean turns it in Sam's grasp so their palms touch, his own fingers loosely bracketing the heel of Sam's hand. It isn't a way in which Castiel has ever seen them touch each other, but there is something raw in the gesture that makes him feel it was once commonplace between them, this clutching, when they were children.
He's been stupid not to realize that the Winchesters cannot be themselves without each other. If Castiel wants their love, as well as their submission, he must permit this. He must permit them these familiar touches, raw and ancient and anchoring.
After a long minute, Dean turns, abrupt but careful, as if Castiel might not notice the way he hitches himself close to his brother, mouth held close to his ear. "Sammy," he says, low enough that a human could not have heard it - but Castiel isn't human. Castiel hears. "You okay?"
They are still watching him occasionally, shooting him looks under their eyelashes, and Sam's eyes skitter away when they snag on Castiel's, contrite, maybe irritated. "Fine," he mutters, flush against the bolt of Dean's jaw. "Physically, anyway. You?"
Dean nods shortly, the movement jagged. When he next looks back to Castiel, it is warily, but for longer than before, eyes lingering on Castiel's face until Castiel has to smile, spread his hands.
"I meant it," he clarifies, gently. "You can talk. I would never hurt you, Dean. Either of you. I want you to do what you want. Be happy."
For the majority of his comment, Dean's face is cautious, but unmoving, as if he is considering. It isn't until the last two words leave his mouth that he recognizes quite how unwise he has been to say them, watching the way Dean's face shutters in, lip curling back in something like a sneer.
"Oh," he rasps out, "Do what we want, huh?" He moves his arm jerkily, irritably, as he speaks, and the chains clank faintly in its wake. "What do you want with us, Cas? Why the hell did you really bring us both here together after all this time?"
Castiel regards him with a look that would have once been a scowl of confusion. But he understands, now -- there is very little he does not understand. He has too much experience, too much sin and avarice and mistrust riding within him, to be ignorant of Dean’s feelings right now. “I know you suspect an ulterior motive,” he says calmly. “But the fault was mine in keeping you apart. I understand that now, so please, be together.”
“Bull, Cas,” Dean says. His scowl is fast darkening. “There’s something you want. What the hell is it?”
Sitting back, crossing his arms, Castiel responds in a low voice. “I cannot tell you an intention I don’t have,” he says. “You’re here. Use this opportunity well, before I decide to take it away.”
There’s enough of the threat in his voice that Dean shrinks. He’s familiar enough with Castiel’s darker moods and the extent of what he can do; he falls back, now, into the broken and glazed shell of himself that has been at Castiel’s beck and call over the past weeks. Castiel sighs. This isn’t what he wanted, either.
It occurs to him little by little, a creeping realization of the solution to his dilemma. He’s read it, occasionally, in their minds, and it’s still burning in their eyes as they turn to each other, speak in halting, broken halves of sentences. And the slope of Dean’s body as he leans in toward Sam, the forward droop of Sam’s head to catch Dean’s gaze more fully. It’s a longing Castiel himself has felt for longer than he cares to admit. These two have felt it even longer, and they have not broken. It’s high time they did.
He stirs the air, reaches into them with tendrils of power and allows them to breathe away inhibitions. He guides Dean’s gaze to linger on the line of Sam’s thigh; shows Sam through a glint of light how well Dean looks with his neck collared. Dean loses his train of thought and trails off. Sam stares at Dean’s lips and has to shake himself away. Watching them, Castiel breathes faster; he leans his forearms on his knees, his body slanting forward, and smiles.
They have forgotten him. It's evident in every tense line of their bodies, the way their muscles shift reflexively under the leather and manacles, the way their breath has shallowed as if by mutual accord. Castiel can feel himself swelling, arousal licking a slow-burning heat up the base of his spine, arrowing down between his legs, and he sees it echoed in the thick shove of Dean's cock against the fabric of his shorts, Sam's obvious want as he watches his brother. Oh, certainly they have forgotten him. Castiel's heart pounds fierce in his throat as he waits.
He doesn't have to wait long. Castiel has seen the magnets beneath the Winchesters' skins for years, the pull of their shared blood impelling them together, but always there have been social pressures blinkering their vision, guilty surges of can't and shouldn't and won't. Now, thanks to Castiel, all these are gone, leaving only the animalistic drive that crackles between them like elemental electricity. A minute, and Sam's broad palm is on the side of Dean's neck, curving softly, his grip gentle and firm. Dean's breath hitches, muscles flinching and releasing beneath his sun-warmed ivory skin, and Sam's hitches with it in reaction, but he doesn't move, and Dean does not make him.
"Dean," Sam says, low and plaintive and desperate. The strangest thing is that it is so entirely Sam's own voice, even after what Castiel has done to him. This is Sam, on some deep buried level, pouring reverence on his brother like oil; and this is Dean shuddering at it, leaning in until their foreheads touch.
"Yeah," Dean says, and his soul is blown wide open in his voice, raw and unshielded. "Yeah, Sammy. I'm here."
For some reason, Castiel expects them to fall upon each other like beasts, devouring each other's open mouths with all the fury of a decade's bottled-up need. He expects fire, desperation - these, he would know what to do with. What he doesn't expect is the way they bleed into each other, achingly gentle at first, mouths barely brushing at their first contact. Sam is so big, every inch of him muscled and ready, but with Dean, he is careful, hand cradling the base of his skull, holding him steady. Against him, Dean moves with painstaking slowness, breath catching hotly as he mouths at the curve of Sam's lower lip, little sipping kisses. They are both of them trembling; Castiel is trembling, too, as this first kiss spins out between them like some delicate thread, fine and slow until Dean tilts his head, seals his mouth over Sam's, and presses deep.
Then, even from this far away, Castiel can feel the weight of it; his mouth opens with Sam's, lower lip dropping under the assault and the insistence of Dean's hard mouth. He has tasted the firm wetness of Dean's tongue on his own; he imagines it now as Sam's jaw lengthens, as he gives a startled little whine at what must be the first taste. Dean's fingers dare move first, trailing down the line of Sam's neck to rest a flat palm on his chest, and Castiel has felt the hot brand of those hands too. Now, his heart thumps under the imagined sensation.
Dean's name wrenches itself from Sam's mouth, his head tips back like it's on a hinge, and Dean's lips slide down across his neck as he repeats himself. "Dean, please." Please, but Dean's already doing it, wrapping his arms around Sam's ribcage to cross at his back, mouthing along Sam's shoulder like he's trying to devour him. Sam shuffles forward, locking their bodies together, skin against skin against skin from torso to thigh and downward. There's a long moment after Dean's lips lift when they just stand still and feel it, the electricity and the heat that crackles between them, rising up in bursts of static.
Castiel thinks it is time to draw them in closer. But he doesn't dare speak, doesn't want to break the bright line of the connection between them. So he whispers, then, into their mind, an indistinct voice murmuring, are you happy? is it good?
Yes, their hearts whisper back, yes.
Come closer to me, he whispers, show me how good.
They move towards him as immediately as if he had hooked iron through their flesh and pulled them, one gesture flowing, dreamlike, into another as they turn and shift. Like this, the two of them moving in perfect tandem, Castiel can see the Winchester in them, even through the blur of his enchantment, his benevolent corruption. They are two halves of a whole as they press against him, Dean's hand sliding over his clavicle, Sam's thigh slipping between his legs, so that Castiel wonders again why he didn't do this sooner, reunite his pieces to see the sum of them restored. Dean's mouth is hot when it latches beneath the bolt of Castiel's jaw, sucking a bruise into the fine skin there, and Castiel cannot help but let his head tip back with the hedonistic pleasure of it. When Sam, straddling Castiel's knee like a slave-boy in a Roman fresco, leans down to echo the gesture, the pleasure wrenches out of him in a startled gasp. It is not the tendency of immortal gods to whimper, but Castiel feels he has a fine excuse for his misdemeanour on this occasion.
Before, Dean kissed obediently, skilfully, but entirely without passion. Sometimes, Castiel had instilled the passion into him, peeled away the many layers of Dean's betrayal and resentment to find the narrowing vein of his old love for Castiel beneath. Then, he had been fierce, burned hotter, but it had never been like this. Like this, Castiel can almost believe that Dean is kissing him because he wants to; that the hot path he licks up to Castiel's mouth is born of love. When Castiel lifts his face for it, Dean responds instantly, tongue stroking up over Castiel's soft palate, over the ridges of his teeth. His hand has abandoned its attentions to Castiel's collarbone; has crawled instead up the length of Sam's forearm, across his chest, onto the muscles of his abdomen, where it makes frenetic circles. Castiel cannot blame him - does not even want to. The longer his skin is in contact with Sam's, the more deeply Dean kisses, as if Sam's presence reminds him of who Castiel is, under the power and the glory. As if he is reminded of why he should profess to Castiel his love: because he feels it, and not because he must.
Perhaps Castiel is delusional. Even gods have been guilty of pride; even his own Father of jealousy. Nevertheless, the heat flooding through him is no figment of his imagination, nor the strong pressure of Sam's naked thigh against his cock, the heart-wrenching intensity of Dean's deep kisses. Sam's mouth is moving as his hand moves on Dean, palming the small of his back beyond Castiel's sight. When it finds Castiel's, sucks messily at the corner of it where it meets Dean's, Dean pulls away, turning to lick into his brother's mouth. Sam groans, the sound of it gravel-deep and wanting in his chest, and Castiel's stomach dips hotly at the sight of them so close, their lips clinging, the wet flash of their tongues between their mouths.
Their skin glistens as the flash of a neck touched with kisses gleams wet against the light, and Castiel’s mouth waters. He leans down, kisses the stretch of Dean’s throat and runs his tongue along the thick cord of his vein, and Dean gasps, groans into Sam’s mouth. His arousal pulses against Castiel’s thigh, and now it is Castiel’s turn to gasp, to press his hips forward and up into the hot skin of Sam’s leg, demanding contact and friction.
Sam stiffens against the assault, and for an instant Castiel fears the spell is broken; but then he smiles against his brother’s mouth and leans in, latching a hot mouth onto Castiel’s jaw just behind his ear and shifting to find Castiel’s thigh with his hand, massaging with teasing fingertips as he sucks dark marks into Castiel’s neck, down to his shoulder blade. Dean has been dotting his lips over Sam’s shoulder and arm, but as Sam starts to travel down Castiel’s body, he turns, too, and begins his own assault on Castiel’s flushed skin. Their hands lock briefly between Castiel’s knees, then resume dancing over his thighs.
A deep thrill of triumph runs through Castiel’s system. This is what he’d missed, what he’d wanted all those lonely, sad, incomplete indulgences he’s had with each of them. This is what he’d wanted since the first time he told them they were to profess their love unto him. Not halfhearted kisses and shameless, mindless displays of bodies that had ceased to mean anything even to their owners. Not the indulgent smiles of dolls so broken down that their old selves barely registered in their eyes. This is what he’d hoped for from the beginning -- the two of them, harnessing the power of their love for each other and bestowing it, freely, without reservation, on Castiel. Perhaps all he’s ever wanted was to be the recipient of the same love they hold for each other. To be within their circle. To be part of them.
And maybe, were he less sure of his path, he might regret all he’d done to reach this point. But Castiel is far beyond regrets now. So he pushes those thoughts away and molds a hand to the crown of each brother’s head, urges them to fall lower on his body, to the point when they are literally on their knees before him, mouths and hands eager on his stomach. Soft murmurs of low voices are the melody, and the smack of lips and tongue the percussion, of desirous music below him. Castiel watches and listens hungrily.
He has not long to wait. The boys have never done this before for Castiel, but it is only another in a long list of acts they perform better together, feeding off each other's energy, becoming stronger on each other's strengths. Castiel is shivering, the muscles of his stomach taut and trembling under the onslaught of their touches, and when someone - Sam? - draws his mouth a little lower, Castiel cannot help but jerk his hips into it. Sam is undeterred, tongue flickering wetly into the fine-skinned crease between pelvis and thigh, and Castiel scrabbles mindlessly for Sam's hair, fingers tangling in it, holding him in place. "Oh," he breathes, hips hitching; and now might have been the point at which he would have made some demand: lower or now or suck me, dammit, but Sam is learning his skin of his own accord, and Castiel has no wish to interrupt him. His mouth sets a brushfire trail along the cut of Castiel's pelvis, mouthing at his stomach so close to where his cock strains against it that Castiel feels his spine clench up in anticipation, but he will not push. He doesn't want to.
In the event, he does not have to. He is on the edge of desperation, head tipped back and teeth making a white indentation in his lower lip, and Sam is still teasing him, teasing, but this, how could Castiel forget, is not a one-man job. One moment, he is aching, cock still painfully untouched and drooling precome onto his belly, and the next, he is engulfed, swallowed into a heat so sudden and searing that his eyes flash colors behind their lids.
"Dean!" The word wrenches itself out of his throat despite his best efforts, free hand clenching hard in the longer hair at Dean's crown. Dean has always been good at this, suckling at the head with just the right degree of suction, tongue dipping into the slit and smearing Castiel's slick down the length of his shaft. Like this, though, now, it is better than Castiel can ever remember it feeling, Dean humming low and wanton around him as he slides down his length, tongue pushing hard and tastebud-rough against the pulsing vein. Like this, with Sam tonguing patterns on his thigh while Dean swallows him down, Castiel feels that nothing could ever be more perfect.
And then Sam moves. Immediately, instantly, it is too much, Sam turning his head to mouth at Castiel sideways-on, wet and hungry; but Castiel cannot push him away, not now that the pleasure has escalated to a pinnacle so far above anything he has ever experienced. Dimly, he is aware that he is probably keening, some low, animal sound escaping him against his will, but the boys are relentless, Sam's mouth slicking upward as Dean's descends until they meet in the middle, Sam licking at Dean's lips stretched pink around Castiel's cock. It is beyond overwhelming, a sensory overload that lights up every nerve in Castiel's body like a supernova. Castiel half-wishes that he could see it, the way they shift upward together until the head of Castiel's cock is caught between them; the way their tongues tangle around the crown of him, sucking at each other's mouths over his leaking tip. He wishes he could see it, but he feels as if the sight might burn his eyes out of his head like angelic fire, all the fury of the grace he has lost - or gained. Castiel is never clear on this point.
He doesn't dare look but he also can't help but imagine -- the strain of Sam's cock as he leans in across the gap that separates him from Dean, the way their bodies arch in response to each tangle of tongue and slide of lips over Castiel's cock, the earnestness with which they ache for each other. Castiel's nerves are far past the point of fraying, and he's trying not to jerk up, but every time he fights one urge down another image comes up clean and perfect in his mind -- Dean reaching out with a free hand to massage Sam's hip in soft circular moments; Sam's sudden and brusque tug on Dean's cock as he grunts aloud, tries to balance the intense lust burning through his system with some measure of giving and generosity; the two of them fighting over Castiel to get to each other, using him as a proxy for the passions they only barely held in check before Castiel changed the world to permit them free rein.
He fists his hand deep in Sam's hair, slides down to the back of Dean's neck with the other hand, and holds on tight as the soft licks around his crown, the huffs of urgent breath against his base, take him so close to the edge that he can look down and feel eternity looking back up through him.
"Now," he whispers, throat dry and grazing. He doesn't know if he's asking or telling. "Sam, Dean-- right, right-- right now."
Sam and Dean stop for a fraction of a second, then slide their lips over his tip, tongues moving in smooth wet unison, sliding an impossibly beautiful spiral that wrenches his orgasm from within him in agonizing slow motion. He cries out, digs blunt fingernails into their skin, hips jerking forward uncontrollably as his voice breaks and everything inside him, light and flesh and desire, pours out in one abrupt spurt, then the next. He doesn't know whose mouth takes the most of it, if they share it, if his come is now spattered white and sticky over Dean's chin or Sam's neck. He knows it's both of them, together, accepting him, the gift of his love, and that's enough of a miracle to take him through the voice-breaking, head-spinning crest of it and into shuddering relief.
Then he finds the strength to open his eyes and gaze down at them.
The picture they present is enough to set his spent cock twitching feebly, even while the last of his aftershocks are still sparking through his veins in pinpricks. Sam's eyes are closed, tongue working wet and busy through the mess of come on Dean's throat, but Dean's glint fever-green and bright as he returns Castiel's gaze, heavy-lidded, his head tipped back. He is beautiful, perfect, his skin sheened everywhere with sweat, long throat rippling with the hitching of his breaths as his brother licks the love of their god from its hollows. Castiel is stunned into stillness, but he cannot look away, fingers clenching tense and helpless into the palms of his hands as Sam bites at the underside of Dean's jaw, the swell of his lower lip where a few stray drops cling in shimmering strands. Only when their mouths meet does Dean break his thrall, and Castiel ought, perhaps, to be outraged - he, after all, is the god in their midst; it is Dean and Sam who should by rights, be enthralled to him. But Dean's hands are spanning his brother's broad shoulders now, grasping at the shifting muscles in his back, and Castiel cannot summon the energy. The scene before him is too viscerally perfect for him to feel the urge to pick faults in it.
Then Sam shifts, changes the angle of their mouths, and Castiel feels his stomach knot hotly, watching the tangle of their tongues, at first, and then the whiteness spun out, glistening, between their lips. Strands of it, saliva and his come, and Castiel cannot hold back a whimper in his throat at the way Dean takes it, swallows it and then surges up into the heat of his brother's mouth, as if eager for more. The image they make - it is all Castiel can do not to close his eyes again, something about them so intensely intimate as almost to be painful to watch, the way Dean's back arches as Sam frees him finally from his undershorts; the sinuous twist of Sam's body as his brother leans in to return the favour. And then they are naked, flesh of the same rib, and Sam's hands are huge and strong on Dean's thighs as he half-lifts his brother, manhandles him bodily into his lap. Dean doesn't resist; only spreads his legs, the easier to straddle Sam's thighs so that their cocks slide together, thick and hard and smeared with their slick.
"Dean," Sam is murmuring, "Dean, Dean," and then Dean's mouth is on his again, both hands cradling his face as they devour each other, and Sam takes both of their cocks in his hand, wraps long fingers around them and strokes them together. Castiel is breathless, the world in a strange sort of fluorescent haze as his own hand drifts back to his lap, cradles the weight of his balls. The brothers are, for the moment, entirely unaware of him, lost inside each other, but like this, perhaps, Castiel can be with them, even as the taste of him is caught between their mouths, his essence lingering still on their skin. Like this, his fist closing around his half-hard shaft as he watches Sam's hand fly over theirs, he is with them, the three of them reaching together for the heights.
Dean’s making soft almost mewling noises, catches of breath and moans all intertwined with one another into a long string of sound, rising and falling in intensity as he rides into the pressure of Sam’s hand, the closeness of his body. One of his palms drops to the space between them, his hand sliding into a perfect tandem with Sam’s, tugging and teasing and pulling, and here, too, they work better together, arm muscles tightening and relaxing in turn as their fingers slip over the taut skin of their erections, each touch overlapping the last, giving way to the next.
Castiel only has the one hand on his own cock, but it doesn’t matter, he’s tingling all over, hardening quick again in the remembered experience and the vicarious one, remembering their hands and mouths on him and savoring them on each other. Sam sucks on Dean’s collarbone, Dean arches up with an open-mouthed, voiceless gasp, and Castiel feels the touch on his own skin, his own shoulder, under his own lips. He’s both Sam and Dean, both the giver and the taker, and within his eternity of experience now he owns both their excitement, both their love.
Sam’s whispering now, soft little half thoughts like “touch--” and “good” and “more,” the rhythm rocking upward until it all sort of swims together into “touch there God good Dean more please,” a river of sound, his hand faltering, his thighs trembling as the thrusts of his hips against Dean’s become more erratic. And Dean responds, his words more coherent, more encouraging. “Yeah,” he mutters, and “come on, Sammy,” and then, with a growl, “harder.” He catches Sam’s lower lip between his teeth and sucks.
Castiel feels the fervour of that touch, the tingle of blood under skin and the afterwash of everywhere-heat, so intensely that, for a moment, it is almost as if it is truly his own mouth under Dean's, his own pulse flaring. Then Sam groans, a helpless little sound of surrender, and Castiel comes back to himself with a bitten-off cry and a gasp, fingers tightening as he speeds his thrusts through the tunnel of them, slick with precome. Before his eyes, now, Sam is coming apart, every clear-cut muscle in his long body tensing as the force of orgasm takes him, setting his hips working faster, his head tipping back. Dean reads the signals perfectly, of course, and breaks away; lets Sam moan uninterrupted as Dean nips along his jaw, settles in the hollow of his throat and teethes at it.
"Dean," Sam grits out, "Dean - !" and that's it, his thrusts losing their rhythm and dissolving into a series of staccato stutters, furious and slipping as his hand shakes and falters, cock fattening impossibly in the second before he shoots. It seems endless, come pulsing out over their joined hands in long hot spatters, and Castiel draws in his breath on a groan even as Dean echoes the sound, his own cock visibly jerking against Sam's. Castiel feels the urge to cry out his pleasure like an ache in the back of his throat, but something stops him - the quiet intensity on Dean's face, perhaps, the aching intimacy of the way he watches Sam's face in the moment before his eyes close, one hand firm on Sam's shoulder as he fucks up hard and stills.
Perhaps the way Sam breathes, "Dean," the word a benediction of the kind Castiel has always wished Dean might accept from him. The way Dean's face goes slack at the sound of it; the way Sam holds him up when his limbs turn liquid as his climax drags him under like a riptide, adding his own sticky spurts to the mess in their laps. They're beautiful, and Castiel is reluctant to interrupt, although he is near-dizzy from holding in his breath, just in case it should emerge as something raw and wild. Beautiful, and Castiel is clenching his toes and coming before their chests have ceased heaving with their panting breaths, their waves of aftershock.
"Dean," he cannot bite back as it takes him, a crest of pleasure no less intense than the last, for all it was engendered by his own hand. "Sam - " After all, they walked him to the water all the same; only a fool would have failed to stop and drink. They are so close, still, that his come spatters like hot wax across the swell of Sam's bicep, and Castiel need only move a step in order to insinuate himself between them, show them to whom they belong.
He doesn’t need to take that step; they move toward him as one, folding him in. Their kisses begin at his legs, find his hands, pressed into palm and wrist and waist. “Thank you,” Sam murmurs, and again, as he gets up, aided by the push of Dean’s solid hands, “thank you.” Dean follows, his hands still holding his contact with his brother, to lick up the sticky come from Castiel’s belly and press penitent, supplicant kisses against his thighs. He, too, mutters thanks.
Castiel opens his arms to them, accepts their gratitude, his whole body shivering with the grace of their touch. This is what he’d wanted all along, this is what he’d waited for. The thanks and the worship he’s deserved, for his magnanimous act, his giving nature and his eternal love. He lowers his head, finds Dean’s gaze -- Dean, sweat gleaming on his taut muscles, magnificent as he always is -- and Dean rises to his feet, kisses Castiel’s mouth, and all the while whispers “Thank you.”
Sam follows, his lips pausing in the crook of Castiel’s elbow before traveling upward to lick at Castiel’s collarbone and up to his shoulder. He tilts his head to find a hollow between Dean’s face and Castiel’s, licks in with a flickering tongue across the stubble at Castiel’s chin, then finds the corner of his mouth. Sam runs his tongue from Castiel’s lips to Dean’s and back, an electric connection running across the closed circuit of their mouths, shaking it to bright life.
And with the electricity comes a sadness, too, because Castiel has a decision to make, in this perfect moment before it all ends. He could lift the veil on their minds now, let them see the truth of themselves and face it with clear heads. And perhaps then he’d gain the full forgiveness and appreciation he deserves. But that’s only one way it could go. He could also face anger, betrayal, disappointment. And though the Winchesters have often exceeded his expectations for them, they have also fallen short of those expectations, often enough that Castiel fears the repercussions. No, he cannot set them free in an instant.
But does he have to set them free at all? Could he live, from here on to forever, with them as they are now, undeniably themselves but free of the worries of the world that once kept them resistant and more recently keeps them distant, at mental arm’s length from the god who loves them so? To keep them under the honey-languid grip of lust and bliss that has given him this perfect interlude, permanently?
No, he cannot do that either. That would be a betrayal of the principles they taught him. Free will, freedom of choice, respect and sentience. He cheats often, but he never breaks those rules, not permanently. So he pulls back, and smiles at them. “Go rest in your rooms now,” he says, and they nod obediently, kiss his shoulders, and turn to share one lingering kiss together before they are parted again.
As they kiss, he slides a hand onto each of their cheeks and takes hold of the string of his spell. He tugs on that thread, unravels it from around their hearts slowly, gradually, as they walk toward the opposite doors, chains clanking around them. With each step comes more self-awareness, until at last, pausing in the doorway, Sam turns and says, in a low, murmuring voice, “Dean?”
Dean stops. He looks across the room at Sam. The color drains from his face. “Oh, my God.”
“Dean, did we--”
But the chains lead them away, and the door closes behind them. From just behind the door, Dean calls out Sam’s name. There’s shock and confusion in his voice.
But Castiel is satisfied. He expected as much, but he also has faith. They will see the truth. And they will come to know he was right, once again.
It will just take time.
Authors: tiptoe39 and obstinatrix
Pairing: Dean/Castiel/Sam
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~8,600
Summary: Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. (Matthew 5:24) Like every loving God, Castiel needs to be loved in return.
Warnings: Dub-con. Mind control. D/s elements. Incest. Do we need to warn for Godstiel? ;) Spoilers for 6x22.
Castiel is tired. It is a long road from day to day, and he is usually in thirty places or more at once. Overseeing the birth of new star systems, maintaining a trillion heavens, averting war and apocalypse at every turn. Even now, in the chamber where he holds court, the beautiful room reinvented as his sanctum, his attention is divided. He needs a distraction, as much as a god can have one. And he has an idea in mind.
Once, a few days or years or lives ago, he had watched the hearts and minds of the Winchesters, seen their desires and their sinful hearts. And he had seen, too, the love they held for him, seen it dissipate beneath a cloud of betrayal and hurt. It had been so painful, he had turned away, not wanting to watch it die entirely.
Now, he no longer has to worry about their feelings. He controls them, he can bend them one way or another. Maybe it doesn’t quite measure up to his promise to protect free will, but they did not measure up either, when it counted, and he can afford this indulgence.
He brings in Sam first, because Sam is easier to look at and not feel like his heart is being wrenched from his chest. Sam is made to kneel, the collar around his neck clanking as its chain goes taut, pulls him like a marionette toward the floor. He’s long and lanky and delicious, and Castiel smiles at him, slides a hand under his chin. This is a blessing, to be brought into his Lord’s presence. Sam can surely see that by now.
Sam does not smile back, but then, he very rarely does, unless he is asked to do so. It is, perhaps, a sign of his respect which verges, still, on fear, and Castiel knows it is right that Sam should fear him. He is gentle with both of them, always, but he is powerful beyond the reach of anything their human minds can encompass, and it is fitting that they should both be aware of this; that they should show it on their faces when Castiel raises their eyes to his. It is their fear, after all, that makes them pliable. Soon, if Castiel is sufficiently gentle with them, there may be a measure of love behind it, too, but for now he is dependent upon the fear.
When Castiel smooths his thumb over Sam's lower lip, pad of it catching on the wet silk inside, it is gently, gently, and Sam doesn't resist. "Sam," Castiel says, low, a benediction, but Sam does not betray by any flicker of his face that he hears, that he understands the many levels of love in Castiel's voice. Castiel bites his lip, pensive, and sighs. Respect is one thing, but absolute passivity is quite another, and not necessarily desirable. Like this, Sam may as well be a beautifully fashioned doll, yielding but unresponsive, and Castiel called him here to respond.
He sits back in his chair after a moment, withdrawing his hand; smiles when Sam's face twitches in noticeable surprise. "Sam," he says, again, louder, "Stand up." He gestures, palm upraised, and Sam follows the motion of his arm obediently, the length of him unfolding. There's a lot of him, golden and unmarked, years of scarring erased by Castiel's own hand. Castiel takes a moment to admire his handiwork. Sam, both hands clasped at the small of his back, stares forward mutely, lets him look as if he had a choice in the matter. He is beautiful, undoubtedly, but still as stone, and that will no longer suffice. Castiel spreads his thighs, making room between, and snaps his fingers to draw Sam's attention back to himself, out of whatever dream world it had wandered into.
"Come here." The splay of his legs is an obvious invitation on its own, and needs no embellishment. "Please."
For a moment he thinks Sam’s responding to him, he thinks he sees a glimmer of warmth in the face in response to the please. But it’s gone as soon as it appears, and in the end it doesn’t matter whether it was ever there or not. What matters is that Sam obeys, that he steps forward, stands in between Castiel’s knees, and gazes down at him, face impassive and unsmiling, an object there to be played with.
That expression hurt Castiel once -- no, it still hurts him, but Castiel is far beyond crumpling in response to his own pain. Instead, he reaches a hand forward and lays it flat against the expanse of Sam’s chest. The flesh beats beneath his fingers, human warmth molding to his touch, and he can feel every rush of blood in his capillaries, every nerve ending firing beneath Sam’s skin as he moves his palm upward, scoops it to the side to mold to the ridge of his pectorals and slides, again, down his side.
“There was a time when I was afraid to touch you,” he says, amusement glinting in his eyes as he meets Sam’s even gaze. “I feared it would be... awkward.” A sad smile touches Castiel’s lips, but the melancholy doesn’t last. “How times have changed.”
Sam gives no response beyond a brief, almost imperceptible nod.
Castiel lifts his other hand, skims fingertips over Sam’s stomach and comes down to clamp against his hipbone. Over him like this, Sam is a marble statue, still and majestic, and Castiel is at once grateful for his shade and dispirited from his coldness. he pulls gently on Sam’s hips, beckoning him an inch forward, so that Sam’s thigh presses into Castiel’s own. Leaning forward, Castiel brushes his lips against Sam’s chest, his tongue gliding a wet streak across one taut muscle to catch on the protrusion of his nipple. Sam makes no sound. Castiel thinks he sees, out of the corner of his eye, Sam’s features flinch -- but still, no sound.
He draws back, perplexed. He could order Sam to respond -- and Sam would, he has, before -- but he’s tired, the souls within him have been churning nonstop, and he just wants that simplicity of connection he used to know when he looked at Sam and Dean and saw two people he loved, two people he could trust. Or thought he could trust. Those days are long past now. He no longer knows what to do to please them. Now he has no choice but to ask.
“What can I do for you?” His brows furrow, his lips purse around the words. “Is there something you want, something that would make you happy?”
Sam regards him quietly for a moment, soberly. It's an almost pensive expression, a contrast to the stony immobility of before, and for a hopeful second, Castiel thinks he may be considering a reply, an honest suggestion Castiel can work with. Castiel wants to work with Sam, to function with him as the well-oiled machine they'd all three operated as, when the stakes were desperate. Then Sam's mouth twitches, drawing up slightly at one corner, and he shakes his head minutely. His eyes close off again, the momentary flash of humanity in them gone, and he looks away, returns his gaze to the safe place a little to the left of Castiel's shoulder.
Castiel tries hard not to feel the ache of disappointment in his chest, but even through the turmoil of so many souls in tarantella within him, it is there. Two years ago, the human part of him might have driven him to bite at his lip, now, to duck his head, but now he is a god, and gods don't do such things. Castiel reaches out, slowly, as if Sam were a woodland animal liable to shy, and brushes the backs of his fingers against the outside of Sam's thigh. "Sam. Please." He hasn't been much given to pleading, lately, but perhaps it will help. Perhaps that spark of earlier wasn't entirely imagined out of false hope. "Don't be afraid to speak. Is there anything you want?"
The realist in him half-expects Sam only to shake his head again, unresponsive and tight-lipped. The optimist expects a collapse of Sam's reserves; a request for music or clothing or food, something that Castiel might magnanimously provide. No part of him expects the sudden tightening that takes root in Sam's shoulders; the way his forehead draws in, jaw jutting, although the moment he sees the expression, he recognizes it, and wonders why he had failed to figure it as an option. Sam is angry. It's a long time since Sam has dared to be angry with Castiel, and he's fighting it now, every muscle in his body pulled taut. Castiel has always disliked other people's anger, but now he almost craves its genuineness, its measure of truth. He takes a sharp breath; takes firm hold of Sam's hip, prompting. Needling. "Sam."
His tone is calculated to provoke, and it works. Sam snaps back to look at him, and his eyes are blazing, despite the schooled control in his stiff features. His voice, when he speaks, is equally unconvincing, laced with barely-restrained fury, something bitter and dark. "No, Castiel," he says, and Castiel feels his habitual pang at the loss of the nickname that once made him theirs; made him real. "There's nothing I want. Thank you." Sam stops, but his jaw works, as if there is more, and Castiel wants to hear it. He glides his hand sideways, brushes it pointedly against the thick weight of Sam's cock between his legs.
"But?" he prompts, low and soft.
Sam hisses out a short breath through his teeth. "But nothing," he retorts, eyes still fixed on Castiel's face, his body carefully motionless beneath Castiel's hand. "I want things to go back to normal. I want to see my brother, I want to be with him, at least, if we can't be where we want to be, but those aren't things you're willing to give us, are they?" Sam halts abruptly, as if aware of the way his voice is lifting; as if he is suddenly afraid again, although Castiel has not moved, has not betrayed his feelings by a flicker. "Sorry," Sam mumbles, sullen, but sincere, "I'm sorry. It's just - this is hard for us."
Castiel feels his throat soften, something in his chest clench. This is anger against him, he knows, but still, it is the most he has heard from either of the Winchesters in months, and something gentle in him wants to respond to it, to reward it. A god must love, after all, as well as punish. "Sam," he chides, lifting his hand to brush against the swell of Sam's bicep, the soft place between shoulder and chest. "If you want to see your brother, you may." He shrugs. "I can have him brought in here now, if you like."
Sam’s eyes widen, minutely - they’re back again, in a moment, to their careful narrowed slits. But he holds his tongue, measuring how to respond. Castiel watches the gears in his mind fly, synapses clicking back and forth. If he wanted, he could pinch here, siphon there -- turn Sam into something else, change his responses, mold the man he keeps hoping Sam will be. But he doesn’t. He cares about Sam, doesn’t want to change him. Despite everything. Despite the fact that he has earned the right to do so. He’s earned at least some respect, some love.
He tucks his hand behind Sam’s arm and draws him forward and down. Sam bends his knees, a breath drawn short and sudden from his lips. Castiel leans in to him, inhales the scent of his skin (soaped, oiled, cleaner than it ever was before Castiel’s ascent) and presses his lips against the firm flesh of his shoulder, then to his neck, then his jaw. “Sam,” he murmurs, “”Let me do this for you.”
He continues to lavish kisses across Sam’s jaw, one hand holding him firm, but Castiel extends the other, calling with a gesture. Yes, he thinks, this is how he wins them over. They will be happy to see each other, relieved. And then they will turn to Castiel, and they will thank him.
Sam stiffens in his grasp at the clanking sound of chains, and his hand comes up boldly to lean on Castiel’s shoulder, pushing him away as he turns, looks over his shoulder. Castiel knows the expression - gaping mouth, wide eyes. Hope and anticipation quivering in every feature. He envies Sam’s ability to express so much emotion without a word, without an action. Castiel himself has always found it a painful process. He sits back, lets his grip slacken and then fall off from Sam’s arm, and smiles. He will enjoy watching this.
Dean is beautiful in chains. Castiel has always thought so, admiring the bunch and pull of the muscles in his arms, his broad shoulders. His face. Dean is a creature worthy of any king's bed, fine-featured and upright, and Castiel has always been very firm about the fact that his face is never to be touched. Dean is his favorite. It's not a secret. Castiel loves every last inch of him, from the green-gold of his eyes to the sullen expression he wore for so long, until it faded into a general resigned blankness. Castiel misses it, sometimes. He misses Dean.
It is evident from the way Sam jerks, chains pulling taut as he moves, that he has missed Dean, too. Castiel, at least, has seen him almost every day for the duration of the Winchesters' stay with him here, even if Dean has often seemed absent. Sam...it is a long time since Sam has seen his brother. Castiel had thought, at first, that keeping them apart would be the surest way to prevent any kind of mutiny, stirrings from the united Winchester front, and it has worked, in many ways. The outcome, though, has been this strange flatness common to both of them, a passive unresponsiveness that is not quite the sort of love he had once hoped for. They neither of them respond to Castiel any more, not naturally, as they used to.
To Sam, now, Dean responds. He hasn't said an unprompted word for weeks, but the change in his expression when he sees his brother standing by Castiel's chair is almost comical - might have been amusing had it not been so painfully reminiscent of the Dean that once existed, to whom Castiel had recourse whenever he wished for it. His face turns open and soft before he has an opportunity to prevent it, hands stretching out, clutching at Sam's, and Sam is there, fingers twining through Dean's, smiling at him desperately as their knuckles turn white. Strange, Castiel thinks. He's never really seen them touch before, not like this, shackling themselves together with their fingers, with bone, the way they have always been shackled by blood. It makes his heart feel tight and hot and confused as he watches; painful, when they remember themselves and, after a last squeeze, let go. Dean takes his position by Sam's side, the way he has been trained to stand with other pets, and his expression is once again neutral, but there are distinct flickers in it, every line in his body vibrating with the desire to turn and look at his brother. He wants to drink him in, after all these months, Castiel can tell - wants to paw him all over as if to be sure he still exists. He is resisting with every fibre of his being, but Castiel isn't sure that he wants him to resist.
Dean is Dean when he looks at Sam. Dean is the man Castiel once fell in love with.
He leans back slowly in his chair, eyes settling calmly on Dean's face, although his chest is thrumming with anticipation. "Hello, Dean," he says.
“Hi, Cas.” Simple, guttural syllables, no needless complication. Once, Dean was like that because he chose to be. These days, it’s because he feels he must be.
“Are you surprised?” Castiel’s fingers are gripping his thighs, anxious, anticipating the release of emotion.
Dean glances at Sam, and something that’s almost a smile flickers at the corner of his lips. It’s not a smile, though -- it’s counterweighted by the twitch of his brows, making the expression sardonic, not simply pleased. Dean is still watching himself. Still being careful. “Yeah, you could say that.”
Castiel’s not satisfied with the response. “I did this for you,” he says, eyes darting between the two of them. “To make you happy. I do, still, want you to be happy.”
“You want to make us happy, Cas?” Anger flushes through Dean’s cheeks. His fist clenches. “How about letting us go, huh? How about--”
“Dean.” Sam grabs his wrist. Dean turns, and his eyes go dark again. Castiel’s heart both soars and sinks. For a moment, that was him, that was the lightning-flash temper and energy of Dean in full, the brunt of his personality flung at Castiel bare and beloved. But it wasn’t Dean’s good humor, or even his angst, but raw anger that he’s unleashed. It’s not the emotion Castiel wanted to inspire. Despite the reunion with his brother, Dean’s bitter. And Sam, though he holds Dean back, has the same resentment hovering in his eyes.
But his fingers remain on Dean’s wrist, and Castiel seizes on the opportunity that contact represents. Their will to be together is not yet broken.
“Take your time,” he says. “Talk to each other. I know it’s been a while.” He waves a hand, urging them together with a gesture.
They don't flow together immediately; don't meld into nonchalance the way Castiel half-wishes they would. He wishes it, but he knows that it is impossible. They watch him closely, tracking him sceptically out of the corners of their eyes, and make no grand movements, no grand statements. If Castiel was not here, he knows, they would have plenty to talk about, but these two were trained in caution long before Castiel trained them in anything else, and they're guarded, hesitant. Through it all, though, Sam's hand is still on Dean's wrist, and Castiel doesn't miss the way Dean turns it in Sam's grasp so their palms touch, his own fingers loosely bracketing the heel of Sam's hand. It isn't a way in which Castiel has ever seen them touch each other, but there is something raw in the gesture that makes him feel it was once commonplace between them, this clutching, when they were children.
He's been stupid not to realize that the Winchesters cannot be themselves without each other. If Castiel wants their love, as well as their submission, he must permit this. He must permit them these familiar touches, raw and ancient and anchoring.
After a long minute, Dean turns, abrupt but careful, as if Castiel might not notice the way he hitches himself close to his brother, mouth held close to his ear. "Sammy," he says, low enough that a human could not have heard it - but Castiel isn't human. Castiel hears. "You okay?"
They are still watching him occasionally, shooting him looks under their eyelashes, and Sam's eyes skitter away when they snag on Castiel's, contrite, maybe irritated. "Fine," he mutters, flush against the bolt of Dean's jaw. "Physically, anyway. You?"
Dean nods shortly, the movement jagged. When he next looks back to Castiel, it is warily, but for longer than before, eyes lingering on Castiel's face until Castiel has to smile, spread his hands.
"I meant it," he clarifies, gently. "You can talk. I would never hurt you, Dean. Either of you. I want you to do what you want. Be happy."
For the majority of his comment, Dean's face is cautious, but unmoving, as if he is considering. It isn't until the last two words leave his mouth that he recognizes quite how unwise he has been to say them, watching the way Dean's face shutters in, lip curling back in something like a sneer.
"Oh," he rasps out, "Do what we want, huh?" He moves his arm jerkily, irritably, as he speaks, and the chains clank faintly in its wake. "What do you want with us, Cas? Why the hell did you really bring us both here together after all this time?"
Castiel regards him with a look that would have once been a scowl of confusion. But he understands, now -- there is very little he does not understand. He has too much experience, too much sin and avarice and mistrust riding within him, to be ignorant of Dean’s feelings right now. “I know you suspect an ulterior motive,” he says calmly. “But the fault was mine in keeping you apart. I understand that now, so please, be together.”
“Bull, Cas,” Dean says. His scowl is fast darkening. “There’s something you want. What the hell is it?”
Sitting back, crossing his arms, Castiel responds in a low voice. “I cannot tell you an intention I don’t have,” he says. “You’re here. Use this opportunity well, before I decide to take it away.”
There’s enough of the threat in his voice that Dean shrinks. He’s familiar enough with Castiel’s darker moods and the extent of what he can do; he falls back, now, into the broken and glazed shell of himself that has been at Castiel’s beck and call over the past weeks. Castiel sighs. This isn’t what he wanted, either.
It occurs to him little by little, a creeping realization of the solution to his dilemma. He’s read it, occasionally, in their minds, and it’s still burning in their eyes as they turn to each other, speak in halting, broken halves of sentences. And the slope of Dean’s body as he leans in toward Sam, the forward droop of Sam’s head to catch Dean’s gaze more fully. It’s a longing Castiel himself has felt for longer than he cares to admit. These two have felt it even longer, and they have not broken. It’s high time they did.
He stirs the air, reaches into them with tendrils of power and allows them to breathe away inhibitions. He guides Dean’s gaze to linger on the line of Sam’s thigh; shows Sam through a glint of light how well Dean looks with his neck collared. Dean loses his train of thought and trails off. Sam stares at Dean’s lips and has to shake himself away. Watching them, Castiel breathes faster; he leans his forearms on his knees, his body slanting forward, and smiles.
They have forgotten him. It's evident in every tense line of their bodies, the way their muscles shift reflexively under the leather and manacles, the way their breath has shallowed as if by mutual accord. Castiel can feel himself swelling, arousal licking a slow-burning heat up the base of his spine, arrowing down between his legs, and he sees it echoed in the thick shove of Dean's cock against the fabric of his shorts, Sam's obvious want as he watches his brother. Oh, certainly they have forgotten him. Castiel's heart pounds fierce in his throat as he waits.
He doesn't have to wait long. Castiel has seen the magnets beneath the Winchesters' skins for years, the pull of their shared blood impelling them together, but always there have been social pressures blinkering their vision, guilty surges of can't and shouldn't and won't. Now, thanks to Castiel, all these are gone, leaving only the animalistic drive that crackles between them like elemental electricity. A minute, and Sam's broad palm is on the side of Dean's neck, curving softly, his grip gentle and firm. Dean's breath hitches, muscles flinching and releasing beneath his sun-warmed ivory skin, and Sam's hitches with it in reaction, but he doesn't move, and Dean does not make him.
"Dean," Sam says, low and plaintive and desperate. The strangest thing is that it is so entirely Sam's own voice, even after what Castiel has done to him. This is Sam, on some deep buried level, pouring reverence on his brother like oil; and this is Dean shuddering at it, leaning in until their foreheads touch.
"Yeah," Dean says, and his soul is blown wide open in his voice, raw and unshielded. "Yeah, Sammy. I'm here."
For some reason, Castiel expects them to fall upon each other like beasts, devouring each other's open mouths with all the fury of a decade's bottled-up need. He expects fire, desperation - these, he would know what to do with. What he doesn't expect is the way they bleed into each other, achingly gentle at first, mouths barely brushing at their first contact. Sam is so big, every inch of him muscled and ready, but with Dean, he is careful, hand cradling the base of his skull, holding him steady. Against him, Dean moves with painstaking slowness, breath catching hotly as he mouths at the curve of Sam's lower lip, little sipping kisses. They are both of them trembling; Castiel is trembling, too, as this first kiss spins out between them like some delicate thread, fine and slow until Dean tilts his head, seals his mouth over Sam's, and presses deep.
Then, even from this far away, Castiel can feel the weight of it; his mouth opens with Sam's, lower lip dropping under the assault and the insistence of Dean's hard mouth. He has tasted the firm wetness of Dean's tongue on his own; he imagines it now as Sam's jaw lengthens, as he gives a startled little whine at what must be the first taste. Dean's fingers dare move first, trailing down the line of Sam's neck to rest a flat palm on his chest, and Castiel has felt the hot brand of those hands too. Now, his heart thumps under the imagined sensation.
Dean's name wrenches itself from Sam's mouth, his head tips back like it's on a hinge, and Dean's lips slide down across his neck as he repeats himself. "Dean, please." Please, but Dean's already doing it, wrapping his arms around Sam's ribcage to cross at his back, mouthing along Sam's shoulder like he's trying to devour him. Sam shuffles forward, locking their bodies together, skin against skin against skin from torso to thigh and downward. There's a long moment after Dean's lips lift when they just stand still and feel it, the electricity and the heat that crackles between them, rising up in bursts of static.
Castiel thinks it is time to draw them in closer. But he doesn't dare speak, doesn't want to break the bright line of the connection between them. So he whispers, then, into their mind, an indistinct voice murmuring, are you happy? is it good?
Yes, their hearts whisper back, yes.
Come closer to me, he whispers, show me how good.
They move towards him as immediately as if he had hooked iron through their flesh and pulled them, one gesture flowing, dreamlike, into another as they turn and shift. Like this, the two of them moving in perfect tandem, Castiel can see the Winchester in them, even through the blur of his enchantment, his benevolent corruption. They are two halves of a whole as they press against him, Dean's hand sliding over his clavicle, Sam's thigh slipping between his legs, so that Castiel wonders again why he didn't do this sooner, reunite his pieces to see the sum of them restored. Dean's mouth is hot when it latches beneath the bolt of Castiel's jaw, sucking a bruise into the fine skin there, and Castiel cannot help but let his head tip back with the hedonistic pleasure of it. When Sam, straddling Castiel's knee like a slave-boy in a Roman fresco, leans down to echo the gesture, the pleasure wrenches out of him in a startled gasp. It is not the tendency of immortal gods to whimper, but Castiel feels he has a fine excuse for his misdemeanour on this occasion.
Before, Dean kissed obediently, skilfully, but entirely without passion. Sometimes, Castiel had instilled the passion into him, peeled away the many layers of Dean's betrayal and resentment to find the narrowing vein of his old love for Castiel beneath. Then, he had been fierce, burned hotter, but it had never been like this. Like this, Castiel can almost believe that Dean is kissing him because he wants to; that the hot path he licks up to Castiel's mouth is born of love. When Castiel lifts his face for it, Dean responds instantly, tongue stroking up over Castiel's soft palate, over the ridges of his teeth. His hand has abandoned its attentions to Castiel's collarbone; has crawled instead up the length of Sam's forearm, across his chest, onto the muscles of his abdomen, where it makes frenetic circles. Castiel cannot blame him - does not even want to. The longer his skin is in contact with Sam's, the more deeply Dean kisses, as if Sam's presence reminds him of who Castiel is, under the power and the glory. As if he is reminded of why he should profess to Castiel his love: because he feels it, and not because he must.
Perhaps Castiel is delusional. Even gods have been guilty of pride; even his own Father of jealousy. Nevertheless, the heat flooding through him is no figment of his imagination, nor the strong pressure of Sam's naked thigh against his cock, the heart-wrenching intensity of Dean's deep kisses. Sam's mouth is moving as his hand moves on Dean, palming the small of his back beyond Castiel's sight. When it finds Castiel's, sucks messily at the corner of it where it meets Dean's, Dean pulls away, turning to lick into his brother's mouth. Sam groans, the sound of it gravel-deep and wanting in his chest, and Castiel's stomach dips hotly at the sight of them so close, their lips clinging, the wet flash of their tongues between their mouths.
Their skin glistens as the flash of a neck touched with kisses gleams wet against the light, and Castiel’s mouth waters. He leans down, kisses the stretch of Dean’s throat and runs his tongue along the thick cord of his vein, and Dean gasps, groans into Sam’s mouth. His arousal pulses against Castiel’s thigh, and now it is Castiel’s turn to gasp, to press his hips forward and up into the hot skin of Sam’s leg, demanding contact and friction.
Sam stiffens against the assault, and for an instant Castiel fears the spell is broken; but then he smiles against his brother’s mouth and leans in, latching a hot mouth onto Castiel’s jaw just behind his ear and shifting to find Castiel’s thigh with his hand, massaging with teasing fingertips as he sucks dark marks into Castiel’s neck, down to his shoulder blade. Dean has been dotting his lips over Sam’s shoulder and arm, but as Sam starts to travel down Castiel’s body, he turns, too, and begins his own assault on Castiel’s flushed skin. Their hands lock briefly between Castiel’s knees, then resume dancing over his thighs.
A deep thrill of triumph runs through Castiel’s system. This is what he’d missed, what he’d wanted all those lonely, sad, incomplete indulgences he’s had with each of them. This is what he’d wanted since the first time he told them they were to profess their love unto him. Not halfhearted kisses and shameless, mindless displays of bodies that had ceased to mean anything even to their owners. Not the indulgent smiles of dolls so broken down that their old selves barely registered in their eyes. This is what he’d hoped for from the beginning -- the two of them, harnessing the power of their love for each other and bestowing it, freely, without reservation, on Castiel. Perhaps all he’s ever wanted was to be the recipient of the same love they hold for each other. To be within their circle. To be part of them.
And maybe, were he less sure of his path, he might regret all he’d done to reach this point. But Castiel is far beyond regrets now. So he pushes those thoughts away and molds a hand to the crown of each brother’s head, urges them to fall lower on his body, to the point when they are literally on their knees before him, mouths and hands eager on his stomach. Soft murmurs of low voices are the melody, and the smack of lips and tongue the percussion, of desirous music below him. Castiel watches and listens hungrily.
He has not long to wait. The boys have never done this before for Castiel, but it is only another in a long list of acts they perform better together, feeding off each other's energy, becoming stronger on each other's strengths. Castiel is shivering, the muscles of his stomach taut and trembling under the onslaught of their touches, and when someone - Sam? - draws his mouth a little lower, Castiel cannot help but jerk his hips into it. Sam is undeterred, tongue flickering wetly into the fine-skinned crease between pelvis and thigh, and Castiel scrabbles mindlessly for Sam's hair, fingers tangling in it, holding him in place. "Oh," he breathes, hips hitching; and now might have been the point at which he would have made some demand: lower or now or suck me, dammit, but Sam is learning his skin of his own accord, and Castiel has no wish to interrupt him. His mouth sets a brushfire trail along the cut of Castiel's pelvis, mouthing at his stomach so close to where his cock strains against it that Castiel feels his spine clench up in anticipation, but he will not push. He doesn't want to.
In the event, he does not have to. He is on the edge of desperation, head tipped back and teeth making a white indentation in his lower lip, and Sam is still teasing him, teasing, but this, how could Castiel forget, is not a one-man job. One moment, he is aching, cock still painfully untouched and drooling precome onto his belly, and the next, he is engulfed, swallowed into a heat so sudden and searing that his eyes flash colors behind their lids.
"Dean!" The word wrenches itself out of his throat despite his best efforts, free hand clenching hard in the longer hair at Dean's crown. Dean has always been good at this, suckling at the head with just the right degree of suction, tongue dipping into the slit and smearing Castiel's slick down the length of his shaft. Like this, though, now, it is better than Castiel can ever remember it feeling, Dean humming low and wanton around him as he slides down his length, tongue pushing hard and tastebud-rough against the pulsing vein. Like this, with Sam tonguing patterns on his thigh while Dean swallows him down, Castiel feels that nothing could ever be more perfect.
And then Sam moves. Immediately, instantly, it is too much, Sam turning his head to mouth at Castiel sideways-on, wet and hungry; but Castiel cannot push him away, not now that the pleasure has escalated to a pinnacle so far above anything he has ever experienced. Dimly, he is aware that he is probably keening, some low, animal sound escaping him against his will, but the boys are relentless, Sam's mouth slicking upward as Dean's descends until they meet in the middle, Sam licking at Dean's lips stretched pink around Castiel's cock. It is beyond overwhelming, a sensory overload that lights up every nerve in Castiel's body like a supernova. Castiel half-wishes that he could see it, the way they shift upward together until the head of Castiel's cock is caught between them; the way their tongues tangle around the crown of him, sucking at each other's mouths over his leaking tip. He wishes he could see it, but he feels as if the sight might burn his eyes out of his head like angelic fire, all the fury of the grace he has lost - or gained. Castiel is never clear on this point.
He doesn't dare look but he also can't help but imagine -- the strain of Sam's cock as he leans in across the gap that separates him from Dean, the way their bodies arch in response to each tangle of tongue and slide of lips over Castiel's cock, the earnestness with which they ache for each other. Castiel's nerves are far past the point of fraying, and he's trying not to jerk up, but every time he fights one urge down another image comes up clean and perfect in his mind -- Dean reaching out with a free hand to massage Sam's hip in soft circular moments; Sam's sudden and brusque tug on Dean's cock as he grunts aloud, tries to balance the intense lust burning through his system with some measure of giving and generosity; the two of them fighting over Castiel to get to each other, using him as a proxy for the passions they only barely held in check before Castiel changed the world to permit them free rein.
He fists his hand deep in Sam's hair, slides down to the back of Dean's neck with the other hand, and holds on tight as the soft licks around his crown, the huffs of urgent breath against his base, take him so close to the edge that he can look down and feel eternity looking back up through him.
"Now," he whispers, throat dry and grazing. He doesn't know if he's asking or telling. "Sam, Dean-- right, right-- right now."
Sam and Dean stop for a fraction of a second, then slide their lips over his tip, tongues moving in smooth wet unison, sliding an impossibly beautiful spiral that wrenches his orgasm from within him in agonizing slow motion. He cries out, digs blunt fingernails into their skin, hips jerking forward uncontrollably as his voice breaks and everything inside him, light and flesh and desire, pours out in one abrupt spurt, then the next. He doesn't know whose mouth takes the most of it, if they share it, if his come is now spattered white and sticky over Dean's chin or Sam's neck. He knows it's both of them, together, accepting him, the gift of his love, and that's enough of a miracle to take him through the voice-breaking, head-spinning crest of it and into shuddering relief.
Then he finds the strength to open his eyes and gaze down at them.
The picture they present is enough to set his spent cock twitching feebly, even while the last of his aftershocks are still sparking through his veins in pinpricks. Sam's eyes are closed, tongue working wet and busy through the mess of come on Dean's throat, but Dean's glint fever-green and bright as he returns Castiel's gaze, heavy-lidded, his head tipped back. He is beautiful, perfect, his skin sheened everywhere with sweat, long throat rippling with the hitching of his breaths as his brother licks the love of their god from its hollows. Castiel is stunned into stillness, but he cannot look away, fingers clenching tense and helpless into the palms of his hands as Sam bites at the underside of Dean's jaw, the swell of his lower lip where a few stray drops cling in shimmering strands. Only when their mouths meet does Dean break his thrall, and Castiel ought, perhaps, to be outraged - he, after all, is the god in their midst; it is Dean and Sam who should by rights, be enthralled to him. But Dean's hands are spanning his brother's broad shoulders now, grasping at the shifting muscles in his back, and Castiel cannot summon the energy. The scene before him is too viscerally perfect for him to feel the urge to pick faults in it.
Then Sam shifts, changes the angle of their mouths, and Castiel feels his stomach knot hotly, watching the tangle of their tongues, at first, and then the whiteness spun out, glistening, between their lips. Strands of it, saliva and his come, and Castiel cannot hold back a whimper in his throat at the way Dean takes it, swallows it and then surges up into the heat of his brother's mouth, as if eager for more. The image they make - it is all Castiel can do not to close his eyes again, something about them so intensely intimate as almost to be painful to watch, the way Dean's back arches as Sam frees him finally from his undershorts; the sinuous twist of Sam's body as his brother leans in to return the favour. And then they are naked, flesh of the same rib, and Sam's hands are huge and strong on Dean's thighs as he half-lifts his brother, manhandles him bodily into his lap. Dean doesn't resist; only spreads his legs, the easier to straddle Sam's thighs so that their cocks slide together, thick and hard and smeared with their slick.
"Dean," Sam is murmuring, "Dean, Dean," and then Dean's mouth is on his again, both hands cradling his face as they devour each other, and Sam takes both of their cocks in his hand, wraps long fingers around them and strokes them together. Castiel is breathless, the world in a strange sort of fluorescent haze as his own hand drifts back to his lap, cradles the weight of his balls. The brothers are, for the moment, entirely unaware of him, lost inside each other, but like this, perhaps, Castiel can be with them, even as the taste of him is caught between their mouths, his essence lingering still on their skin. Like this, his fist closing around his half-hard shaft as he watches Sam's hand fly over theirs, he is with them, the three of them reaching together for the heights.
Dean’s making soft almost mewling noises, catches of breath and moans all intertwined with one another into a long string of sound, rising and falling in intensity as he rides into the pressure of Sam’s hand, the closeness of his body. One of his palms drops to the space between them, his hand sliding into a perfect tandem with Sam’s, tugging and teasing and pulling, and here, too, they work better together, arm muscles tightening and relaxing in turn as their fingers slip over the taut skin of their erections, each touch overlapping the last, giving way to the next.
Castiel only has the one hand on his own cock, but it doesn’t matter, he’s tingling all over, hardening quick again in the remembered experience and the vicarious one, remembering their hands and mouths on him and savoring them on each other. Sam sucks on Dean’s collarbone, Dean arches up with an open-mouthed, voiceless gasp, and Castiel feels the touch on his own skin, his own shoulder, under his own lips. He’s both Sam and Dean, both the giver and the taker, and within his eternity of experience now he owns both their excitement, both their love.
Sam’s whispering now, soft little half thoughts like “touch--” and “good” and “more,” the rhythm rocking upward until it all sort of swims together into “touch there God good Dean more please,” a river of sound, his hand faltering, his thighs trembling as the thrusts of his hips against Dean’s become more erratic. And Dean responds, his words more coherent, more encouraging. “Yeah,” he mutters, and “come on, Sammy,” and then, with a growl, “harder.” He catches Sam’s lower lip between his teeth and sucks.
Castiel feels the fervour of that touch, the tingle of blood under skin and the afterwash of everywhere-heat, so intensely that, for a moment, it is almost as if it is truly his own mouth under Dean's, his own pulse flaring. Then Sam groans, a helpless little sound of surrender, and Castiel comes back to himself with a bitten-off cry and a gasp, fingers tightening as he speeds his thrusts through the tunnel of them, slick with precome. Before his eyes, now, Sam is coming apart, every clear-cut muscle in his long body tensing as the force of orgasm takes him, setting his hips working faster, his head tipping back. Dean reads the signals perfectly, of course, and breaks away; lets Sam moan uninterrupted as Dean nips along his jaw, settles in the hollow of his throat and teethes at it.
"Dean," Sam grits out, "Dean - !" and that's it, his thrusts losing their rhythm and dissolving into a series of staccato stutters, furious and slipping as his hand shakes and falters, cock fattening impossibly in the second before he shoots. It seems endless, come pulsing out over their joined hands in long hot spatters, and Castiel draws in his breath on a groan even as Dean echoes the sound, his own cock visibly jerking against Sam's. Castiel feels the urge to cry out his pleasure like an ache in the back of his throat, but something stops him - the quiet intensity on Dean's face, perhaps, the aching intimacy of the way he watches Sam's face in the moment before his eyes close, one hand firm on Sam's shoulder as he fucks up hard and stills.
Perhaps the way Sam breathes, "Dean," the word a benediction of the kind Castiel has always wished Dean might accept from him. The way Dean's face goes slack at the sound of it; the way Sam holds him up when his limbs turn liquid as his climax drags him under like a riptide, adding his own sticky spurts to the mess in their laps. They're beautiful, and Castiel is reluctant to interrupt, although he is near-dizzy from holding in his breath, just in case it should emerge as something raw and wild. Beautiful, and Castiel is clenching his toes and coming before their chests have ceased heaving with their panting breaths, their waves of aftershock.
"Dean," he cannot bite back as it takes him, a crest of pleasure no less intense than the last, for all it was engendered by his own hand. "Sam - " After all, they walked him to the water all the same; only a fool would have failed to stop and drink. They are so close, still, that his come spatters like hot wax across the swell of Sam's bicep, and Castiel need only move a step in order to insinuate himself between them, show them to whom they belong.
He doesn’t need to take that step; they move toward him as one, folding him in. Their kisses begin at his legs, find his hands, pressed into palm and wrist and waist. “Thank you,” Sam murmurs, and again, as he gets up, aided by the push of Dean’s solid hands, “thank you.” Dean follows, his hands still holding his contact with his brother, to lick up the sticky come from Castiel’s belly and press penitent, supplicant kisses against his thighs. He, too, mutters thanks.
Castiel opens his arms to them, accepts their gratitude, his whole body shivering with the grace of their touch. This is what he’d wanted all along, this is what he’d waited for. The thanks and the worship he’s deserved, for his magnanimous act, his giving nature and his eternal love. He lowers his head, finds Dean’s gaze -- Dean, sweat gleaming on his taut muscles, magnificent as he always is -- and Dean rises to his feet, kisses Castiel’s mouth, and all the while whispers “Thank you.”
Sam follows, his lips pausing in the crook of Castiel’s elbow before traveling upward to lick at Castiel’s collarbone and up to his shoulder. He tilts his head to find a hollow between Dean’s face and Castiel’s, licks in with a flickering tongue across the stubble at Castiel’s chin, then finds the corner of his mouth. Sam runs his tongue from Castiel’s lips to Dean’s and back, an electric connection running across the closed circuit of their mouths, shaking it to bright life.
And with the electricity comes a sadness, too, because Castiel has a decision to make, in this perfect moment before it all ends. He could lift the veil on their minds now, let them see the truth of themselves and face it with clear heads. And perhaps then he’d gain the full forgiveness and appreciation he deserves. But that’s only one way it could go. He could also face anger, betrayal, disappointment. And though the Winchesters have often exceeded his expectations for them, they have also fallen short of those expectations, often enough that Castiel fears the repercussions. No, he cannot set them free in an instant.
But does he have to set them free at all? Could he live, from here on to forever, with them as they are now, undeniably themselves but free of the worries of the world that once kept them resistant and more recently keeps them distant, at mental arm’s length from the god who loves them so? To keep them under the honey-languid grip of lust and bliss that has given him this perfect interlude, permanently?
No, he cannot do that either. That would be a betrayal of the principles they taught him. Free will, freedom of choice, respect and sentience. He cheats often, but he never breaks those rules, not permanently. So he pulls back, and smiles at them. “Go rest in your rooms now,” he says, and they nod obediently, kiss his shoulders, and turn to share one lingering kiss together before they are parted again.
As they kiss, he slides a hand onto each of their cheeks and takes hold of the string of his spell. He tugs on that thread, unravels it from around their hearts slowly, gradually, as they walk toward the opposite doors, chains clanking around them. With each step comes more self-awareness, until at last, pausing in the doorway, Sam turns and says, in a low, murmuring voice, “Dean?”
Dean stops. He looks across the room at Sam. The color drains from his face. “Oh, my God.”
“Dean, did we--”
But the chains lead them away, and the door closes behind them. From just behind the door, Dean calls out Sam’s name. There’s shock and confusion in his voice.
But Castiel is satisfied. He expected as much, but he also has faith. They will see the truth. And they will come to know he was right, once again.
It will just take time.