I'm always tired (but never of you)
word count: 1,207
A/N: happy holidays! this is my (first!) Squealing Santa fic, and it’s for @lucidcupid67 really hope you enjoy– i’m so in love with soft, touchy-feely destiel that when i got your cute little prompts i just had to indulge myself. also, a big thank you to @ticklygiggles for hosting this year! you’ve been nothing but kind and amicable. much love 💕
(also: in retrospect, i probably should have included at least one fuckin thing about the holidays, but, like, whatever, y’know?)
The sun is just beginning to rise when Castiel wakes, though “wakes” is a loosely applied term; he’s more warmed into consciousness by the sunlight peeking in through the curtains. He doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t check the time. Instead, his chest swells, limbs stretch, quiver, release, melt into the mattress. He has nowhere to be and relishes in that.
The room is cool, quickly warming under the aforementioned sunlight, which, when Castiel opens his eyes, he finds is casting everything in a golden hue. The white sheets are rumpled, pooling around him and the warm body pressed against him. Dean. He thinks the name like one hums a song.
It’s this– this person curled against him, this intimacy, this warmth, this moment– that makes Castiel appreciate the early morning (where fondness, on most days, tends to lack).
There’s a stir of movement somewhere beneath the sheets, and there it is: the slide of legs against legs. Castiel moves slowly to nudge his thigh in between Dean’s, and dips his head to press his lips to that wonderfully warm, freckled shoulder.
“G’morning, Dean,” he murmurs, voice rumbly and slurred with sleep.
Dean inhales, holds it as he arches his back, stretches, melts back into Castiel.
“Mornin’.”
Castiel trails his hand down the side of Dean’s body to come loosely sling an arm around his waist, hand resting easily on his bare stomach. He presses another slow, lazy kiss to Dean’s shoulder. He feels almost like he should say something, but decides against it when Dean hums softly and bares his neck, allowing Castiel more access to smilingly continue pressing slow kisses into sleepwarm skin, trailing upwards to his jawline. Dean is never one to admit his craving for things like this, no matter how inept the hiding of such desires is, so Castiel savors the openness while he can. He noses playfully at the bolt of Dean’s jaw, nips his earlobe. When he makes a delicious noise in the back of his throat, Castiel smiles. He can feel Dean smile sleepily too.
“You’re… active this morning,” he murmurs, and reaches back, slides his hand down the side of Castiel’s thigh.
“Am I?” Castiel whispers back. His lips brush that weak point Dean has– the soft point right below his ear, so often willingly exposed to him. Dean’s back arches gently, and he scrunches to the side a bit. “Mm,” he says. Castiel assumes it’s supposed to sound like a protest. (It doesn’t.)
He splays his fingers, the ones resting on Dean’s abdomen, dragging them slowly and teasingly light enough to where he feels Dean suck in his stomach, if only slightly. He furls his fingers into a fist. Kisses his shoulder. Splay, drag, tease. Dean sucks his stomach in. Castiel claws his hands into a fist. Splay, drag, tease. Repeat.
“Cas,” he whines, soft and unconvincing.
“Yes?” Castiel whispers.
Dean doesn’t respond. Castiel can almost hear him thinking, and it’s too early for such nonsense, so he puts his hands to use as a distraction. He curls his fingers into a claw, tips resting on Dean’s stomach, feather-light, and begins tracing patterns and swirls into the soft skin of his abdomen. He puts his lips to work as well, pressing gentle kisses into his shoulder and neck.
Castiel can feel Dean’s toes curl under the covers, can feel him trapped between melting into the mattress and squirming away. The conflict, he suspects, is delicious. It’s certainly so for Castiel– feeling Dean’s muscles clench and unclench beneath his teasing fingers is always an intoxicating feeling.
And so Castiel relishes in it like so many other things this morning. He drinks in the way Dean is slowly beginning to squirm, the way his lips are beginning to curve into a smile. Neither of them say a word until Castiel’s fingers brush the beginning curves of Dean’s hip.
“Ah,” Dean hisses, squeezes his eyes shut, bites his lip. “Wait.”
Castiel smirks into his shoulder. “Wait?”
The hand on his thigh– the one that had begun to grab a fist of his pajama pants– slaps him playfully. “Shut up.”
Castiel’s smirk grows. “You were the one that spoke,” he whispers, and nips his shoulder. Dean shivers, and then quickly turns into the pillow to hide a sharp gasp and a flustered smile when Castiel lightly tweaks his hips.
“Oh, fuck you,” he says, but it’s so muffled by the pillow that Castiel ignores him, draws his fingers into that feather-light claw again, trails it along the stretch of skin between those impossibly sensitive hipbones– back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
Dean, as expected, abandons the pillow to arch his spine, and releases a soft giggle. Yes, Castiel thinks, burying his nose into the crook of his shoulder. Yes. He chases that laughter, continues tracing slow, lazy patterns back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. The squeaks and giggling turn to a whine, and then a low, conflicted moan.
Yes.
That particular area between his hips, Castiel knows, does nothing but get him “riled up”, as some might say. (To be fair, though, this whole process– this tickling– gets Dean riled up. Just saying the word itself, he’s found, is enough to reduce Dean to a shivering, flustered mess.)
But, alas, it’s much too early for such endeavours. There would be time, later, to coax that smile into laughter into moans that Castiel would drink from his lips, his skin, his sex– but not now. So Castiel lays his palm flat, curling over Dean’s hip once more, and starts back in on his neck, trails his lips over Dean’s throat, suckles a kiss just under his jaw. Lulls him into a false sense of security.
And then he kneads once– just once– into Dean’s bare abdomen, and Dean folds back into him like a house of blushing cards with a shocked yelp, much too loud in the morning’s sleepiness.
“Asshole,” he whispers, but there’s no heat in his words. How could there be, with such a bashful smile on his face?
Castiel hums lowly, smirks once more. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, presses a kiss just below his ear. “Did that tickle?” Castiel accentuates the whisper with a playful nip to his earlobe and a slow drum of his fingers on Dean’s hipbone. Dean’s head flies backward and thumps into his chest. “Are you ticklish?” Castiel
“Cas,” he bites out, squirming, grinning, flushing pink, “I’m– I cahan’t–” he squeaks, squirms some more. Castiel kneads into his hips. “Ah! Wahait! Shit shit shihit–”
And then, just as he’s about to fall into laughter, Castiel relents. He stops tickling all together. In its place, he wraps his arm all the way around Dean’s waist, and in one swift movement, has pulled him impossibly closer. He knows that Dean, sleepiness aside, is disappointed, because a low whine rumbles in the back of his throat.
“Cas,” he sighs, and glances over his shoulder to send him a trademark Winchester glare, devoid of all real heat, “you’re such…”
“A skilled tickler?” he suggests.
Dean flushes and whips his head right back around. “I hate you.”
Castiel smiles, and he’s so afraid that his heart may burst from his chest in his joy that he presses another slow, lazy kiss to the curve of Dean’s freckled shoulder. “I’m sure you do.”
