Warnings: None

Rating: T / PG-13

Spoilers: None

Summary: Castiel doesn't understand love beyond his devotion towards his Father. Dean is the one to teach him a lesson about what love really means.

Author Notes: Oh well. This A/N might take a while. First of all, it's taken me nearly 6 months to finish this fic. Back in the day when the 'SPN Schmoop meme' came to life I saw a prompt that caught my interest and I started writing about it. Quoting Chuck "writing is hard" -specially for me-, so when I realized it was already November when I managed to finish the story (yep, all 2k words of it *snorts*). Then the lovely bellajayd did an amazing work betaing this thing (which knowing my tendences to never-ending sentences and the common crimes I tend to commit towards english grammar isn't a small feat and I'll thank her forever and ever for helping me). And after that, life happened and I couldn't really put everything together and finish it. But now, after such a long time sitting half-done on my hard drive I've finally found the time and the will to wrap it up and post it. I hope you like it :) (I tried hard to keep the angst away but it kind of snuck up on me :/)

A lesson that weighs on your skin

Castiel is doing the whole head-tilt confusion thing at him, eyes wide and terribly blue, and Dean wants to throw his hands up in the air out of sheer frustration because it's been no walk in the park to man up and finally bare his feelings to Cas and the angel isn't fucking getting it.

"But, Dean. How could I not know what love is? We, angels, are born with the sole purpose of loving our Father and carrying out his Will. You could say love is our very nature." The angel's usual monotone is devoid of any kind of uncertainty or doubt, words wrapped in the firmness of an unshakeable belief bred from an eternity of not knowing anything else. Of not knowing any better.

This unchallenged devotion makes Dean want to grit his teeth in ways that only Sammy's moments of petulance induced bitchiness have previously achieved before.

Dean does see where Cas is coming from, he truly does. Millennia of being God's lap dog, faithfully serving and never questioning anything has to lobotomize a guy, angel or whatever Cas is right now, that way.

But that he understands Castiel's reasoning doesn't mean he agrees with him, because in this, Cas is fucking wrong.

"There you go again! 'Sole purpose' my ass!" Two angry strides is what it takes to erase the gap between them and Dean is suddenly up close and personal with the angel.

Castiel's warmth reaches out for him like tiny tongues of heat that softly brush against his skin and leave a tingling path behind.

He can see every crack in Cas' chapped lips and the knowledge that it would only take one step more, the distance drawn by a breath, to be able to slowly run his tongue over them and taste that dryness is almost solid, almost physical.

If Dean, however, learned anything from the years he spent with his father on the road it was to understand and keep a strict discipline of self-control in a hunt.

He manages to bravely fight the urge to reach out a hand and run it over the front of Cas' white button down shirt.

Being this close to Castiel and not touching him started being torture quite a while ago is not something Dean relishes. Yet, now that he has finally admitted to himself that the feeling is going nowhere, there is a sense of anticipation always hanging in the air – like a low hum that softly vibrates against his skin.

But Dean knows when something is 'too much' and he doesn't want the angel to chicken out and take wing, leaving this conversation unfinished. In this Dean needs Castiel to fucking understand where he is coming from. So, he keeps his paws to himself and tries, one more time, to convey through words what the angel still misses. By a whole fucking mile. "What I'm saying here, Cas, is that the whole mindless devotion you feathery guys have going for the head honcho is not what we, lowly humans, see as love. Not by a long shot."

"I don't understand, Dean." Cas' brow furrows into a frown that makes little wrinkles appear between his eyes. Maybe, and only maybe, the thirteen years old girl that has lately taken residence in Dean's brain starts bouncing up and down, shaking her pigtails, and going a little 'aw' at the sight. "Love is love. Love is perfection. How could there exist a difference?"

Dean looks at Castiel a little helplessly and he is suddenly overcome with the nagging suspicion that he would be more successful talking with one of the motel room's poorly painted walls.

It's painfully clear that using words to make the angel see what he's trying to say is getting him absolutely nowhere. The fact that Cas seems only able to think in absolutes – absolute love, absolute obedience, absolute devotion – doesn't help either.

Well, fuck it.

"Ok, Cas, I'll explain. I'll fucking explain this to you even if it's the last damned thing I do."

He ignores the way Castiel narrows his gaze into the faintly disapproving look he always wears when faced with Dean's ease and understanding of the many forms of profanity. He hardens his resolve to chunk careful out the window and motherfucking go for it.

If Cas cannot handle what's to come and takes off with his feathered tail between his legs, so be it, but Dean has the firm conviction that there's a need for drastic measures here.

It's as simple as surrendering the fight.

To claim defeat to the physical need to touch Castiel that rides hard on his blood.

Dean feels the tight thread his control hangs from suddenly unfurl and expand, bringing everything about the angel into sharp focus and placing the heavily spiced taste of something he can only label as emotion on the tip of his tongue.

With slow, contained movements he reaches for Castiel and presses his hand to the center of the angel's chest, feeling the white shirt's material brush softly against his palm.

There's a flicker of surprise that quickly crosses Cas' expression and Dean files the sight away as the first victory in their little, private war. "You see, we humans? We are flawed, Cas. We can't really get your concept of perfection so we have to make do with the best we've got."

Dean is kind of proud that he manages to keep his hands careful and steady when he grabs the ever present dark-blue tie and tugs at it gently, pushing the fabric aside so he can make room for his fingers to curl around the button on the shirt's collar.

He sends a pointed look to Castiel, who remains motionless and deceptively calm under his touch and, slowly, Dean passes the tiny button through its hole.

When he finishes, the gap in the cloth shows a triangle of pale throat and, fuck, the single thought that runs wild in his mind is to lean in a brand that white flesh with his tongue, and mark Castiel as his.

Instead, he slips his hand inside, letting two fingers lightly brush against the slow rhythm of Cas' pulse and he finds his reward in the soft gasp he feels Cas swallow when their skins finally meet.

"When we love someone sometimes we are selfish sons of bitches." Dean makes his point by dragging his hand down and finding the next button, that shortly gets taken care of.

Fingers trail slowly over the hard angles of the angel's collarbone and Cas goes utterly still, as if fearing that by moving he would break into a thousand pieces and be scattered to the wind. "We want, Cas, we want so much we burn with it. We want satisfaction like we need the air we breathe."

Dean weaves a world of deliberation into his movements when, making sure the moment stretches a little longer than necessary, he finishes working the remaining buttons and pulls the white fabric out of the pants' waistband.

Just like that, Cas stands in front of him with his shirt wide open, the teasing blue line of the haphazardly done tie slashing down the exposed skin, and a bewilderment so deeply etched in his gaze that almost manages to make it look human.

Some other time Dean might have found humor in seeing Castiel's usually immutable appearance this disheveled – a joke on the ready and a smirk twisting his lips.

Right now, in the cheap motel room he's calling 'home' for the night, all he finds is an onslaught of emotions that arrange themselves into the frantic beating of his heart, the dryness that takes over his mouth and the shortening of his breath that makes him feel like a fish out-of-water.

This hand-made intimacy to which he has unmercifully dragged Castiel it's almost too much to bear. And at the same time nowhere near enough.

"You see, we're greedy too."

Dean's hands curl around Castiel's trench-coat lapels, grabbing both coat and the suit jacket underneath and, for a whisper of a moment, green eyes lock on blue. In Castiel's accepting gaze Dean finds all the permission he needs so, gently, he pushes the rough fabric past the firm frame of the angel's shoulders and follows the downwards line of Cas' arms until the garments slide off and falls on the motel floor with a soft thud.

"Greedy as fuck, Cas, because if you throw us a bone? We want the whole fucking skeleton."

It would be so very easy to take things a step further, to raise the intensity just another notch, enough to turn this calm sea of tenderness into a furious storm of passion.

There are embers of arousal that are starting to burn bright red deep in Dean's belly, weaving a heat that slowly crawls its way up his chest.

He knows it wouldn't take much – perhaps only the feeling of Cas' lips against his, of their breaths mingling into one – to jump head first into the sensation and let that heat flare up and burn, and burn, and burn.

But that's a lesson he'll have to teach some other day, so he mercilessly squashes those barely born flames and comforts himself with letting his fingers ghost against the back of Castiel's hands before removing any point of contact.

Contrary to Sammy's belief, Dean is no fool.

It doesn't escape his notice that everything that's going on within the room's four walls, this nearly blasphemous tactile exploration of the angel serenely facing him, is happening because Castiel allows it.

The apparent docility, the lack of movement and stony silence that wraps around the angel like an invisible cloak, all of it is Cas granting a tacit permission backed by the strength of the trust he's always put in Dean.

A trust that most of the time Dean isn't all that sure he deserves but that he nonetheless wouldn't betray it for the world.

He realizes that acknowledging this emotion that wells up slowly like a warm tide and rises inside until it spills and soaks his skin is far from what anyone would expect from Dean Winchester. The lines of his mouth curve upwards into a self-deprecating little smirk at the thought that, apparently, being a girl is something that runs deep in the Winchester family.

If wanting to take this moment in which Castiel solemnly looks into his eyes, still quiet but intent, and rip it away from time so it lasts a heartbeat longer – so it stretches for one more breath – is something worthy of the sappiest chick-flick ever, he is way past caring.

But, as any other lesson, this one is already nearing its end.

"Humans are many other things too," Dean starts quietly, his voice a mere whisper cradled in the room's silence, words shaped like the trembling image of a desert mirage. "Possessive, Cas. We are so afraid of loneliness we want to own and be owned."

His fingers dance over the soft fabric of Castiel's open white shirt, brushing faintly against a button, delicately tracing a crease on the cloth.

Eyes soft and warm, Dean strips away all the masks he's worn over the years and bares himself raw before the angel so Castiel can read in the openness of his gaze the truth behind the lesson.

"We yearn to have someone of our own, someone to hold." The hand ghosting over Cas' button-down carefully pushes the shirt aside and slips inside, seeking the warmth that nestles within Castiel's chest.

It's greeted by the softness of pale skin and the light flexing of the muscle below. When Dean finally spreads his fingers over the angel's heart, his own heart beats with an overwhelming sense of belonging, with the certainty that there is no other place in the world he'd rather be.

"Someone to touch."

Under Dean's rough finger pads, the slow and unyielding rhythm of Cas' heart is composing music that starts an ethereal dance all over Dean's skin. Whispered chords craft an intricate melody that languidly curls itself around the sharpest of Dean's edges and carefully lifts the weight that the initial frustration at Castiel's incomprehension had stubbornly lodged in him.

It's done. It's finally done, Dean thinks in relief and the sigh he has not realized he was holding escapes slowly through his parted lips.

The angel's serious face tells a vastly different tale now, confusion banished from the blue depths and replaced by what seems to be a definite understanding.

He doesn't really know how long they stay like this, in this silence that brims with the unspoken words they offer each other in a look, in the tremble of a breath.

It could be a second.

Maybe a minute.

But somehow, if feels close to forever.

"Dean." Castiel breaks the magic with the sandpaper-like texture that lines his voice. A cradle of flesh and bone closes over Dean's fingers when the angel envelops the hand guarding his heart in the warmth of his own hold. "I believe I finally understand what you have been trying to tell me."

Life has been a harsh teacher for Dean, because instead of leaping in joy at the knowledge that he has finally gotten though Cas, he cannot help but ready himself for the other shoe about to drop. Because, for Dean, the other shoe always drops and he can read the 'but' in the angel's face as easily as if it were written in neon letters.

"Tell me, Cas. Tell. Me."

Castiel looks away, and the lingering sadness he sees in the angel's gesture leaves Dean feeling as if all the air in the room suddenly turned to stone.

He can't breathe.

"I don't know," Castiel starts quietly, "if I am truly able to offer you the same in return."

Floor, meet shoe.

There it is.

There it fucking is.

This is how some whispered words break him into sharp, little pieces and reduce his world to stillness. Life must be laughing herself sick at Dean – because that's what the bitch does best. At his unbelievable presumption and naivety. At the madness that must have taken over him when he dared think that Castiel could, maybe, love him back.

Fuck it.

He takes a staggering step backwards and wretches away the hand still resting on Cas' chest. His fingers are cold, as if the angel's skin had leeched off whatever warmth they had turning them into pure ice.

Dean jerks his head downwards, closing his eyes tightly because he cannot bear looking at Castiel. He is not strong enough to face Cas' sadness without lashing out to protect himself in the ways he's always done since he was a child.

Because, despite everything, Cas doesn't deserve his fury.

Dean needs to get out of the room that's closing in around him, raising a claustrophobia that tightens his throat and makes his heart beat so frantically that seems it's about to burst.

He has to get away from Cas, to put as much distance between them as possible so he can start rebuilding the layers he has used to hide himself behind all his life. The layers he discarded when he started his lesson and whose absence allowed Castiel's words to cut so deeply into him.

But Dean goes nowhere.

He is not even given the chance because suddenly he can feel Castiel move and the angel is right there, close and real, narrowing Dean's world to his presence and sweeping away bitterness and fear.

There're fingers against his cheek, light and gentle, a delicate brush of warmth that keeps him in place and Dean opens his eyes because as much as he wanted to erase Cas' sight from his mind barely moments before now he can't not look.

What he sees ignites a relief that's like fresh air for his lungs.

Castiel is looking at him, the same serious expression he always wears, but there's a new-born softness in the lines of his face, a determination evenly mixed with hope in his gaze that makes Dean's pieces slid into place once again.

The corners of Cas' mouth turn slightly upwards in the rare little smile that Dean has learned to cherish. The angel steps into him, invading his space as he has done so many times before, making their personal heat intersect, and then mingle, and finally fuse into one.

With a voice that's touched by emotion, Cas breathes into his ear six little words and Dean discovers in them a blessing that brings back life into his world.

"But I am willing to try."

* Fin *