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After, when Dean is beautiful and exhausted and glowing, Cas lies down beside him and lets his fingers trail easily across Dean’s chest.
Dean closes his eyes and says, in a tone probably aiming for sardonic and landing much nearer the genuine, “Thanks.”
There’s no way Cas can explain how little he needs Dean’s thanks for performing this, a duty of such pleasure; he presses his lips to skin shining with sweat, just above the protective tattoo. Dean’s collarbone is firm beneath his mouth, and Cas wants to bite it, but he refrains. Dean sets a hand on the back of Cas’s neck as though to keep him in place, which is a self-flattering assessment of his own power, but also an entirely accurate understanding of what it would take.
Just ask, thinks Cas, but the request doesn’t have to be spoken. Dean’s touch is enough. Knowing he’s wanted here is enough.
When long-ago humans felt this level of devotion, they erected temples to the objects of their attention. Cas could build monuments if he chose; he could twist stone and metal and clay into a structure visible from space and it would still be insufficient. He could rewrite the galaxy, as seen from Earth, into the pattern of Dean’s freckles in warm sunlight, and it wouldn’t be fair tribute.
“You are become my altar,” he murmurs, and Dean huffs out a small laugh.
“You’re so weird,” he says, fond, and Cas smiles at him.
“Yes. And you are my altar and more, altarpiece and eternal flame and ark.”
Dean’s eyes flutter shut. “Weird,” he repeats, quieter, and Cas hears his unspoken, Tell me more. He knows when Dean wants him, now that he’s learned the signs.
“If I constructed a temple,” he says, and wets his lips. “If I served at yours. I would ask to be bound rather than spoil my gift to you, if that were something you asked of me.”
“I wouldn’t,” says Dean immediately. “Cas, I’d never.”
He knows that. It’s a hypothetical. But he loves Dean for the reassurance, and kisses his shoulder to tell him. “Yes,” Cas says again, and taps under Dean’s chin until he opens his eyes, just for the pleasure of seeing him: the light behind brilliant green, the lazy happiness Cas has had a hand in putting there. Castiel has never been an artist, but he admires his own work in these moments.
Dean sees his admiration and preens a little bit, which is also good. Cas loves him entire, vanity included. “Like what you see?” he says, ridiculous.
Cas scoots closer and presses a kiss, light and quick, to the bridge of Dean’s nose. “Exceedingly,” he tells him.
Dean’s arms wrap around Cas’s waist as he whispers, “Good,” and Cas would set himself on fire if he ever thought Dean would want it. He’s done worse for the sake of this man.
He rolls so that he rests on Dean completely, then thumbs at the corner of Dean’s jaw, lightly stubbled, and says, “If you are the temple altar, then I am what’s atop you.”
“Fucker,” says Dean, grinning, and then in a more worried tone that doesn’t quite pass for a joke, “This is a sacrifice for you?”
“Not a sacrifice,” Cas says. “An offering.”
For a moment, he considers explaining the etymology of korban, burnt-offering: how the root means “close,” something to narrow a gap, to bridge a distance. So different from kadosh, holy, with its root of “separate.” The sacred is set apart in its sanctity, and the offering brings the giver close again. Dean Winchester does not consider himself holy, and so he lets Cas share his bed and his life; Castiel was once called holy, but he has made of himself an offering, and tired of distance.
And then Dean sniffs wetly, and Cas stops thinking about linguistics as the world narrows to tear tracks and the kissing thereof.
“You’re too much,” Dean murmurs, and Cas tries not to take it the wrong way. His trueform is beyond comprehension; his love is unfathomable, even as it is wonderfully mundane. He loves Dean the way any man might love another; he loves Dean with the power of black holes and supernovas. When Cas kisses Dean, the lights still flicker occasionally, and at the same time his affections lead him to browse home improvement catalogs for novelty lamps and cozy armchairs.
“Sorry,” he says, hushed, just in case, and Dean grabs his wrist.
“No.” Okay. Okay, then. Cas breathes easier. Dean grips him tight. “Don’t — that’s not what I… You’re fucking perfect, Cas, alright? It’s me that’s the problem here.”
Well, Cas isn’t going to stand for anyone insulting the guy he’s in love with. “Dean,” he says, and brushes his mouth over furrowed eyebrows. “You don’t need to earn me. You, yourself, deserve anything I offer. And I can’t love you any smaller.”
Dean wrestles with this; he’s always taken issue with conversations where the word deserve comes into the picture. But at last he says, in a very quiet voice, “Okay. Thanks, man.”
Cas kisses the curved sweep of hair beside Dean’s forehead, where he’s going to live to go gray if Cas has any say in the matter. Whatever linguistic quirk was responsible for giving this spot the same name as a house of worship was serendipitous, Cas thinks; Latin tempula versus templum, but finding the same endpoint from convergent paths by way of various Romance languages, concluding (insomuch as language ever concludes; at this time, at this point, it is so, for an indeterminate stretch of time towards the wondrously unwritten future) in such a way that Cas can literally worship at Dean’s temples, with the touch of his lips. Unbearably tender skin stretched over fragile bone, a monument to human breakability, but not with Cas to guard him.
“I love you,” he tells Dean, mouthing it against him with the faintest whisper of breath, like prayer accused of drunkenness, unspoken because it feels too true, too achingly large to speak aloud. The description of this act called it speaking not m’liba, from her heart, nor even b’liba, in her heart, but al liba: literally on her heart, meaning of her heart. Cas is accustomed to praying to a higher power which never answered. This quiet confession against a damp forehead feels like holding out his beating heart in one hand and saying, I have poured out my soul before you, and Dean’s answering smile is the hand covering his to say, Go in peace, I grant your request. The only request Cas has ever made of Dean has been to stay.
Dean stays. His hands are on Cas’s hips and his lips are parted, just slightly, like there’s something he’s trying to say but can’t. He’s not practiced at the words, not fluent in their language, but Cas doesn’t mind. He’s not a native speaker of any human language anyway; Dean doesn’t have to use words to tell him anything. He’s very good at saying it in other ways. His thumb rubs along Cas’s skin, back and forth, a quiet confession of its own. Cas gives in without prompting and kisses him, gently.
“I know, Dean,” Cas whispers against his mouth, the name milk and date honey on his tongue. “I know.”