Title: But the Fire is So Delightful
Author: kototyph
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: M
Warnings/Tags: Alternate Universe - College/University, First Time, Technical virginity, New Year's Eve, Dorms Masquerading as Canadian Shacks, Dean is a Douchebag Fratboy with a Cherry Ass, Castiel is Angry and Aroused, Mildly Dubious Consent, Hate Sex (but not really), SPN J2 Secret Santa
Summary: For spn-j2-xmas and comedicdrama. Apparently, it's been snowing all day.

But the Fire is So Delightful

Apparently, it's been snowing all day.

Castiel had been blissfully unaware until this moment, sinking deep into the dense mess as he steps outside the overheated womb of the graduate library. After all, the carrel where he spends most of his time is a tiny, windowless room tucked in a wall between bookcases, hidden deep within the main stacks. It's dim, cramped, and the flaking ceiling always inspires vague worries about plaster dust and asbestos, but he has his books and a swiveling lamp, and a highly illegal space heater. He could be happily ensconced there for days at a time, completely oblivious to the weather and the world outside, if the librarians hadn't long since learned to always check before they locked up for the night.

Now he stands bemusedly at the top of the stairs to the loggia, hands tucked under his arms and already chilled through by the scouring wind, and wonders what right it has to be so incredibly wintery in December. Surely by now there are enough coal plants and sport utility vehicles to take care of this sort of weather.

"I'll expect I'll see you again soon enough, Mr. Milton," the rare manuscript curator says cheerfully from beside him, giving her key a few brisk turns before pulling it from the lock. "But until then, happy holidays!"

With a pat to his shoulder, she edges down the granite steps and slogs off into the snowfall, leave Castiel shivering in the scant cover of the shallow alcove.

He's still groggy from being dragged so abruptly from his reading, and he gazes up at the sky and the miserable clouds there, the color and texture of wet wool, in confusion. His watch says it's half-past four, and it must mean four in the afternoon because there's still a little light filtering through them, but why on earth is the library closing at four in the afternoon? It's winter break, true, but break hours were only slightly curtailed as he recalls, and the graduate library should be open until at least eight...

Castiel rummages through various pockets for his phone, which upon its discovery informs him that he has a snapchat message from Gabriel (he deletes it without opening), several missed calls from Anna, and that it is in fact New Years Eve.

Ah. That explains it. Although it does beg the question of what happened to Christmas. Castiel tries to remember Wednesday last, if he did anything or saw anyone special, and stirs only the vaguest memory of being annoyed by the shortage of cashiers at the drugstore. Or was it the grocery store?

Either way, he probably owes one or more of his siblings an apology. He thinks he was supposed to come to dinner at some point.

There's a bus stop closer to the library's east entrance, and if Castiel had known he'd be walking through calf-deep snow he might have chosen to go out that way instead. Beyond the shelter of the Georgian granite, the wind is sharp and cruel, small snowflakes stinging his cheeks as he shuffles across the quad towards the 20th Street bus stop. With any luck, the number 27 will be headed south sometime in the next few minutes, and he won't actually lose any toes.

The flashing signboard tells him instead that all bus traffic has been suspended until further notice due to inclement weather. Castiel glares at it, then, wearily, he turns around and goes back the way he came.

When Castiel had first applied to be to be the resident advisor for small, innocuous Richards Hall, he'd done so primarily for the gratis room and board— secondarily for the stipend and debatably useful résumé-padding. His field is ancient linguistics, so a stint as a glorified babysitter to three dozen college-age boys is less likely to garner attention than, say, the thesis he'd been working on before the curator had torn him from the warm embrace of his carrel tonight. But the pay is decent and the room is quite nice.

That he didn't think to factor in the neighbors before accepting is an oversight he regrets to this day.

The journey across campus to Richards is wretched, heavy wet snow clinging to his hair and his shoes and the cuffs of his pants, soaking through them in minutes. With no gloves or hat, the coat he's wearing might as well be a plastic bag, and Castiel is very cold and very, very cross by the time he rounds the corner to the back entrance of Richards and sees a figure huddled on the stoop.

All thirty-odd residents of the dorm, with their strange smells and sudden noises and increasingly complex and pitiful love lives, have long since gone home for the break. Castiel is quite sure of this, because he'd presided over the last of their departures and thrown himself a party in the tiny communal kitchen afterwards— ice cream and Maryanne Wolf's Proust and the Squid. He squints through the evening gloom, trying to make out a face.

The figure's posture is one of abject misery, hunched shoulders and visible shivers, and Castiel's irritation ebbs away as he comes closer. There are sleeping bags stashed away upstairs somewhere, he thinks. Perhaps he can—

The figure resolves itself into a man, who lifts his head as Castiel's crunching, sliding steps draw his attention.

"Oh thank f-fucking God," Dean Winchester says.

"Oh good God, why," Castiel replies. "No, I don't actually care. Go away."

"The electricity is out in th-the house," Dean informs him through chattering teeth. The house he means, of course, is the fraternity directly to the east of Richards, normally the noisiest building on campus. Now it sits just as dark and quiet as the dormitory, abandoned until January. Or so Castiel had hoped.

He shoves past Dean to unlock the door. "And I care about your misfortune, because...?" he says, jamming his key in the lock. "Go. Away."

"C-cas, come on," Dean pleads, his always-distracting lips a chill violet-blue. "I need a place to stay until I can g-g-get someone to fix it."

"You should have thought about that before the goats. Or the condom balloons. Or the lard," Castiel says, and slips inside.

Dean gets a sopping-wet sneaker in the door before Castiel can close it completely, wrapping his fingers around the side while Castiel pulls on the handle. "You can't just leave me out here! I'll f-freeze to death!"

"I only ask that you die safely hidden in the bushes, where you won't upset the residents," Castiel says through gritted teeth, yanking hard.

"Have a little human d-decency!"

"Let go!"

"I'll be good, I p-promise," Dean pants with his full weight pulling on the door, wedging his leg in as Castiel braces his feet on the threadbare welcome mat. "You won't even know I'm h-here, Cas-"

"Stop calling me that," Castiel growls, stomping on the intruding foot. Unfortunately, the shift in weight makes him lose traction on the carpeting, and Dean is able to pull the door open just wide enough to squeeze himself inside.

"Oh, Jesus, I'd f-forgotten what heat feels like," he moans, attaching himself to the wall register blasting hot, dry air into the small foyer. "Mmmm. M' balls are f-frozen solid."

"I hope they break off," Castiel mutters, and turns and marches up the narrow staircase to the second floor.

"Hey, don't be like that," Dean says, following him. "At least this way you c-can avoid the negligent homicide charges you were angling for back there."

"No jury in the world would convict me," Castiel says, and honestly believes it. No one could fault him for wanting to kill Dean, not after the absolute horrors the man has visited on him and the Richards Hall residents in general. But mostly him. The goats alone should guarantee Castiel's right to an honor killing.

"Got any beer in this place?" Dean asks as they emerge onto the landing, and Castiel stops and whirls to face him so abruptly he almost topples backwards down the stairs. It's all Castiel can do not to help him along.

"I won't even know you're here, isn't that what you claimed?" he snaps. "Go sleep in the common room, or down by that heater you were molesting. Stay away from me."

"But that sounds so boring," Dean says with an easy grin, leaning into Castiel's space. "Wanna watch a movie?"

"I would rather drink bleach," Castiel says, and stomps away.

Dean actually laughs, the arrogant swine. "This wouldn't be half as fun if you didn't get so mad, you know," he says, still trailing after him— proving once and for all that the man has no sense of self-preservation, none at all. "Come on. Watch a movie with me."

"I don't have a television." It's true, technically.

"Board games?"

"No."

"Cards?"

"No."

"Good thing I brought some, then," Dean says blithely, pacing Castiel down the long hallway to his room. "You know, I've never actually been up here when the lights were on. It's just as tragic as I thought it might be."

He's referring to the dark paneling on the walls and the dim, dated lighting that hasn't been replaced since the seventies, the stained and ragged carpeting that was there even before then. Castiel, who harbors an intense dislike of the decor himself, finds a defensive retort on his tongue and swallows it down, reaching instead for the keys to unlock his door.

Castiel's room is at the farthest end of the second-floor hallway, the only room with a bathroom attached and the only one with more than 100 square feet of living space. It has three large windows, one for each exposed wall. The northfacing window looks out onto a parking lot. The southfacing one looks out on a busy street, and across to Tupman Hall.

The eastward window looks out onto the frathouse president's private balcony, where Dean likes to fuck the more adventurous sorority girls in broad daylight, in all kinds of improbable combinations and positions. The sloping roof, height of the building and the curtaining branches of the surrounding trees mean that Castiel is the balcony's only audience, and that he has very, very good seats.

Predictably, Dean forces his way in before Castiel can slam the door on his face, and it's that window he chooses to walk to and pull the curtains back from.

"Wow. Bet I could jump that," he comments, tilting his head consideringly.

"Oh, please, do try," Castiel says, kicking off his sodden boots and leaving them in a puddle near the door. "The window opens from the left."

"Eh, maybe later," Dean says, and starts peeling out of his clothes.

"What— what are you doing?" Castiel hisses, when it becomes clear that Dean isn't going to stop with just his coat and shirt and sweater, and yes, there go the wet jeans, right down over the tops of his sopping shoes and Dean looks up inquiringly at Castiel, bent double in skin-tight boxers with his hands around his ankles.

"Oh, no. No," Castiel says, and throws the sweatpants and t-shirt he'd intended to change into at Dean's head in pure self-defense.

It is an unfortunate and objective truth that Dean Winchester is one of the most crushingly attractive men on campus, if not in the entire state. Castiel is painfully aware of this, and has developed myriad methods of sublimating his awareness in order to not embarrass himself when Dean is in the same room.

None of these prove particularly effective when Castiel steps out of the bathroom to find Dean sprawled on his stomach across his bed, sweatpants just a little too small, shirt just a little too short. The waistband sits low on his hips and the hem has settled a few inches higher, leaving a wide swath of winter-pale skin visible across Dean's back and sides. Castiel stares at the twin dimples crowning Dean's truly magnificent ass and has to swallow hard against a whimper.

The sad reality is that however much Castiel hates Dean, he's still hopelessly in lust with him, to the point of brutally mangling sun metaphors when he smiles and thinking increasingly inappropriate things about his freckles, and eyelashes, and the thin skin at the back of his knees. There's a hole in the seat of the borrowed sweatpants through which even more freckles are visible, and life is just not fair.

Dean glances up from where he's sorting playing cards on Castiel's pillow and grins. "Hey, about time. You fall in or something?"

"No. Obviously not," Castiel says shortly, recovering himself. And that, that is why pinning Dean's thighs to the bed and fucking him with his tongue until he comes screaming is a terrible idea: Dean is an absolute jackass and a merciless prankster, and he'd never, ever let Castiel live it down if he knew how much he wanted it. 'It' being Dean, screaming.

Castiel currently wants Dean screaming more than he wants to keep breathing.

Oblivious, Dean rolls onto his back and stretches out with a low groan, and a large portion of Castiel's higher reasoning is summarily flash-fried. "I meant to ask, earlier," Dean says, relaxing into the sheets. "Is there anything to eat in here? I missed dinner. Too busy almost freezing to death."

"...I have peanut butter and bread that is probably not moldy," Castiel says grudgingly, after a moment of thought.

Dean wrinkles his nose, and even that is attractive. "I bet we can do better than that."

Castiel blames the utterly incapacitating glimpses of Dean's midrift for his participation in the expedition that follows, a slow comb through the deserted second-floor dorm rooms and the kitchen's deep, dark cupboards, which nets them a surprising variety of nonperishables.

"I think I'll have the chicken noodle with a side of roasted almonds and smushed Twinkie, garçon," Dean says, pulling them out of the pile, and Castiel almost smiles before he remembers that Dean is a jackass.

Castiel stubbornly sticks with his peanut butter, even when Dean waves a full-sized Butterfingers candybar under his nose. "Live it up a little," Dean coaxes. "It's New Years."

"No thank you," Castiel grumbles, and eats his pathetic, moldy sandwich with the hollow satisfaction of the morally righteous.

"And last but not least, the joker," Dean says, hanging over the side of the bed and pointing. There's a smear of chocolate at the corner of his mouth and it's slowly destroying Castiel's peace of mind. "It's the highest in whatever suit happens to be trump. So, if I laid down the ace of hearts-"

"I am not playing cards with you," Castiel says without looking up, attempting to bury himself in the latest of Steven Pinker's works. He's sitting on the floor, because there's six-foot something of stupidly beautiful jackass taking up every square inch of his mattress, and anyway the floor is quite comfortable. Preferable, even. Castiel ignores the pins and needles in his legs with grim determination.

"Sure you aren't," Dean says cheerfully, reaching out to snag a card from the pile he'd dealt to Castiel, fanned out face up on the floor. "So, I put down the ace, you put down the joker, and bam, you still win the trick. With me so far?"

"No," Castiel says mulishly. "I'm reading. Be quiet."

"My trick," Dean says smugly, and takes the cards while Castiel glares fruitlessly at his dreadful hand. "Again. At this rate you should have bet Nullo."

"What in the name of God is Nullo?" Castiel growls in frustration, tossing out a king. Surely that will work.

"When your cards are so awful there's no chance in hell of winning, so you bet on that instead." Dean lays down a jack of hearts. "Right-hand jack. My trick."

"You made that up," Castiel accuses.

"Maybe we should have started with poker," Dean says thoughtfully.

"Two deuces," Dean crows, splaying the damnable cards out on the wrinkled comforter and grinning at Castiel's enraged sputter. "Fork it on over, Cas."

"Do not call me that, you fiend," Castiel says, throwing his cards at Dean's head. "I can't believe you, I had a straight, a straight, and you had one pair?"

"Them's the breaks for those with no poker face," Dean says, ducking easily. The pot, which at this point has swollen to encompass a few handfuls of loose change, half the Butterfingers bar, two stamps, an agate from the upper peninsula of Michigan and the literal shirt off Castiel's back, is spread out over the sheets between them. Castiel jerks away when Dean reaches over to pluck demandingly at his sleeve. "Come on, off it goes."

"I'll just put on another one," Castiel grumbles, yanking it over his head.

Dean shrugs. "Sure, why not? At the rate things are going, I'll own your entire wardrobe before the ball drops in New York," he says, gathering the rest of pot to him. "Speaking of, what time is it?"

Dean's sitting crosslegged at the foot of the bed, while Castiel sits with his back to the headboard. On his bedside table is an alarm clock, and as Castiel, half-in, half-out of his shirt, tries to lean over to see it, he overbalances and almost falls off the bed. Dean grabs his leg to hold him steady, hand warm and solid through the thin material of his pajama pants, and Castiel barely stifles a gasp. "Seven— seven thirty."

He's not this easy. He isn't. Not even for someone as incredibly gorgeous and unfairly charming as Dean Winchester.

He's easy. He's easy, he's cheap, and he has no absolutely willpower to speak of. Not even the memory of goats is enough to kill the near-blinding arousal that a mostly naked Dean lounging in his bed inspires, though Castiel digs his nails into his palms as hard as he can.

"Man, I'm tired all the sudden," Dean yawns, casually tossing the shirt he's just removed into the pot and scratching at the fine trail of hair that disappears into his lowslung sweatpants. "You really don't have a TV?"

"The common room has one," Castiel says, suddenly inspired. "Why don't you go watch something? I'll stay here."

"Nope," Dean says, grabbing Castiel's wrist and dragging him off the bed with him. "What if I need help working the remote?"

"Surely you can handle a remote by yourself," Castiel says, stumbling over Dean's discarded shoes and clothes. They squelch unpleasantly underfoot.

"But I don't want to," Dean says over his shoulder. "C'mon, Cas, let's watch Ryan Seacrest douche it up for the cameras."

"Who?" Castiel says.

As it turns out, even Ryan Seacrest 'douching it up' is incapable of holding Dean's attention for more than five minutes. After that, he steals the remote from Castiel and surfs through the ten or so basic cable channels for several minutes, wrapped in a blanket on the couch while Castiel, again, makes do with the floor. He's very comfortable. Really.

"Lame," Dean announces, after the third time they see an infomercial for the same high-end juicer. "What about a movie?"

This turns out to be a wash as well, because the residents have apparently been smuggling in porn disguised as innocuous DVDs and Dean laughs for fifteen minutes straight while Castiel tears violently through the pile, growing more and more incensed with every Bouncing Booty IV and Titty Explosion! he finds.

"Is that, like, a literal explosion?" Dean chokes out, shoulders shaking. "Are they mined? Are there tripwires?"

"You realize this means that one or more of the boys has probably masturbated on that blanket you're wearing," Castiel says, spitefully.

Dean stiffens, then flings the offending plaid throw across the room. "Gross! Cas!"

"What? Should I have let you keep snuggling with their bodily fluids?" Castiel asks, quite pleased with his revenge.

"Fuck, I need a shower," Dean says, shooting to his feet and making for the door. "Right the fuck now."

"Of course, who even knows what's happened on that couch."

"Ugh!"

Dean is in the shower— Castiel's shower, probably using Castiel's shampoo and Castiel's soap, the jackass— for so long that Castiel eventually sits down at his desk and pulls out his laptop to get some work done.

After waiting patiently for the ancient machine to boot itself, he's halfway through a paragraph describing the early history of the Estonian speech community when he hears the bathroom door swing open. A warm wash of muggy air follows, then the subtle click of the light turning off, footsteps, and the creak of bedsprings.

"What time is it?" Dean asks after a minute.

Castiel glances down, then immediately refocuses on the page. "Quarter to nine."

"Hmm."

There's the rustle of sheets, more creaking, and finally silence. Castiel, deeply engrossed in articulating potential reasons for the retention of the final -n in the first person singular of the northern dialect, doesn't turn.

The laptop clock reads 9:28 PM when Dean says, "I'm bored."

"Entertain yourself," Castiel says, fingers flying over the keys. "You were doing such an excellent job before."

"Cas," the man whines, and Castiel turns in his chair, something scornful and rude on his lips.

Dean's hair is still in wet spikes, a little flattened where he's laid his head on Castiel's pillows. His cheeks are flushed and his damp skin gleams in the low light of Castiel's desk lamp. He's put on the same pair of sweatpants, now wet at the cuffs and riding lower than ever, and he is very definitely not wearing any underwear, framed like a pin-up girl or wet dream by Castiel's worn down comforter.

"Hngh," Castiel says instead.

Dean raises an eyebrow. "What?" he says, rolling onto his back with an arm tucked behind his head.

Castiel closes his laptop with a snap.

Dean watches him approach, concern only just starting to show when Castiel looms over him, planting a hand on either side of his waist. "Cas?" he asks, lifting his chin. "Whatcha want?"

"Shut up," Castiel growls, and kisses him.

Dean freezes but Castiel is hungry, has wanted this for what feels like forever, Dean's strong body pinned under his and the tiny shocked noises working their way out of Dean's throat into Castiel's mouth. Dean's hands grab his hips and Castiel groans encouragingly, getting on his knees on the bed, his own hands cupping Dean's face and urging him into a better angle.

"Whoa now," Dean says weakly when Castiel briefly pulls away to tug his shirt off. "What. I mean, why—?"

"I find you infinitely more tolerable when you're not talking," Castiel hints, and leans down to bite Dean's lower lip, which is just as plush and welcoming as he'd always imagined it would be.

"Fuck," Dean hisses, fingers digging in hard. "Look, it's not that I don't think you're hot in, in an abstract kind of way—"

Castiel twists fingers in Dean's wet hair and pulls his head back, mouthing down the line of his jaw to suck a dark mark just over his pulse, and Dean appears to lose the ability to form consonants for several minutes.

Dean's skin is still warm from the shower, the faint taste of soap clinging to his earlobe, the hollow of this throat, the curve of his shoulder. His breath comes increasingly high and pitchy as Castiel's fingers, then tongue work his nipples into hard, swollen points, and at the faint graze of teeth he manages a garbled curse and suddenly rolls them, putting Castiel on his back and Dean on his knees above him.

"Wait just a frigging minute," Dean pants, "okay, just— hey!" He grabs for the front of his sweatpants with one hand while Castiel tries to pull them down with two. "Cas!"

"Yes?" Castiel asks politely, while he takes the opportunity to get a good double-handful of that magnificent ass. Oh, yes. That is even better than he'd imagined, and it has the added benefit of making Dean yelp and forget about his pants entirely, which is really for the best for everyone.

A few deep, exploratory kisses later, and Dean looks dazed and a bit surprised to find himself naked and straddling Castiel's waist, knees spread wide and Castiel's fingers splayed possessively over his skin, marking up him up and making him squirm.

"What in the fuck," he moans, hips moving with the rhythm Castiel is rubbing into his perineum just to watch his pretty cock bob and leak all over his stomach. "Oh fuck, oh, Jesus, Cas—"

Condoms, Castiel thinks hazily, enthralled by Dean's swaying, shuddering body and the way his voice breaks when Castiel's knuckles nudge further back along the cleft of his ass. Lube. Condoms. "Let me," Castiel starts, twisting towards the nightstand and please, please let there be some unexpired supplies tucked in a corner somewhere—

Dean pushes him off the bed.

Castiel is stock-still in utterly bewilderment for a moment, lying in an ungraceful heap on floor. He slowly turns his head up towards Dean, who's glaring down at him over the edge of the mattress.

"... did you just—?" Castiel starts, disbelievingly.

"Will you fucking listen to me for a second?" Dean demands, lips swollen and wet, cheeks a heated pink. "I was trying to tell you, I don't— I haven't, ever, I…"

"You haven't… what?" Castiel says, sitting up.

"It's my first time with a dude," Dean blurts, and covers his face with a hand. "Shit."

"Oh," Castiel says.

Dean glares at him through the cage of his fingers. "Fucking 'oh'? That's it? That's what you have to sa—?"

Castiel lunges and Dean squeaks, or something perilously close to it, and drawers get slammed open and dumped out in a rush before Castiel has Dean flat on his back, already lifting Dean's knee over his shoulder.

Dean's cheeks are glowing hot like coals under the hands still hiding his face, and he's almost too perfect like this, all flushed and shy-eyed and Castiel had never imagined, in all the time that he's imagined Dean like this, that he'd ever get to be the first. He wants, oh, he wants everything, all of Dean, he wants—

In a tone he'd intended to be conversational but which comes out hoarse and greedy, Castiel asks, "How thorough would you say your shower was?"

"What?" Dean croaks.

"Nevermind," he says, and tongues a wet kiss to the base of Dean's cock, earning himself a startled gasp and a full-body shiver.

Dean's hands are tentative at first, creeping down to slide through Castiel's hair in more of a petting gesture than anything else. Castiel rewards him with another suckling kiss and licks his own fingers, making a slick fist for Dean to fuck while he hitches Dean's hips higher. "Relax," he says.

Dean chokes out a laugh, muscles flexing restlessly under Castiel's hand. "Relax. Sure, right, says the guy with—fuck, with his hand on my dick and my, ah fuck, my balls in his f-fucking mou— holyjesusfuck, stop, Cas, stop!"

Dean is trying to wiggle away and Castiel lets him to a point, pulling his tongue back from bloodwarm flesh and the soap-sweet taste of him. "Problem?"

"You— that— what the fuck?"

"No, then," Castiel decides, and pulls Dean open with his thumb so he can rub the flat of his tongue over him, broad, sloppy licks that make Dean's back arch and tear a moan from his chest.

Castiel spares a thought to be glad they're alone in the dorm, Dean's voice rising to a shout when the point of Castiel's tongue breaches him, shallow flicks that tug lightly on the puckered rim before thrusting in deeper. Castiel has never counted this as one of his greatest talents in bed, but it's hard not to feel smug when his partner sounds like he's losing his mind, head flung back and his eyes screwed shut while a constant stream of, "Fuck, Cas, fuck, please," spills out of his open mouth. Dean's hips are rocking up and his hands aren't gentle anymore, all but grinding Castiel's face into his pelvis, and finally Castiel grabs them and pins them under Dean's straining thighs.

"Behave," he husks into spit-slick skin, following it with a blunt scrape of teeth.

Dean sucks in a shocked breath, then gives a low, inarticulate whine and rolls his hips again, heel knocking pointedly into the back of Castiel's shoulder. Castiel hums in satisfaction, and keeps his fingers wrapped tight around Dean's captive wrists.

When Castiel has worked his tongue in to the root, releasing one of Dean's hands to keep him open wide with two fingers that twist and stroke, Dean's head suddenly comes up and he gasps, "Shit, Cas, I'm—"

Castiel indulges in one last, long suck before he lifts his head, breath feathering over the purpling crown of Dean's cock. "What?" he rasps, flicking Dean's prostate with a light fingertip.

Dean makes a noise of utter mortification and comes all over Castiel's face, back bowing as he spasms fiercely around Castiel's fingers. His free hand grabs Castiel's shoulder and holds on bruisingly tight through the long, drawn-out pulses, fucking himself back onto Castiel's still fingers.

"Oh," Castiel says after Dean collapses against the bed. He licks up some of the come that coats his lips. "Yes, that would have been good to know."

"Sorry," Dean sighs, all the tension in his body draining away. His fingers drag through the tacky mess on Castiel's cheek, and he grins almost drunkenly down at him. "It's your fault, anyhow."

"Yes," Castiel murmurs, returning the grin with a small, pleased one of his own. He curls his fingers deeper, watching Dean jerk and his cock twitch feebly, feeling his own neglected arousal throb in sympathy. "Yes, it is. How will I ever make it up to you?"

"Hey," Dean slurs, another shower and two additional orgasms later. He's a loose sprawl of warm, naked limbs wrapped around Castiel's body, Castiel's head tucked firmly under his chin. "Hey, look. 'S midnight."

Castiel, sated and sleepy, peers over his shoulder at the clock. It reads 12:04 AM. "Midnight," he confirms on a yawn, turning his face back to Dean's chest. "Mmm. Happy New Year."

"Woohoo," Dean says softly, drawing Castiel closer. "Hey. Gonna be ready for a diner run in a couple hours?"

Castiel cracks an eye at that. "Not Maryanne's."

Dean makes an inquiring noise. "Why not Maryanne's?"

Castiel cracks the other eye. "Because the last time I was there I saw a cockroach militia poised to take the men's room?"

Dean snorts out a laugh and nuzzles into Castiel's hair, fingers stroking along the back of his neck. "I'll cook, then."

"You cook?"

"Don't sound so surprised," Dean mumbles, getting quieter as he drifts off. "I cook. I am a motherfucking... cooking machine. You'll see."

"I guess I will," Castiel says, a bit bemused by the idea. This was not how he saw the year beginning.

"Damn straight," Dean grumbles, and Castiel closes his eyes and smiles.