Chapter 4: The First Communion
The water clung to them as they waded toward the bank, a second skin of coolness against the furnace of their bodies. Dean’s legs felt untethered, his muscles liquid. God’s arm stayed around his waist, less a support now than a statement. A claim. Jesus walked beside them, his fingers trailing absently through the water’s surface, cutting a silent wake.
The moss of the bank was a shock of emerald softness, cool and alive under Dean’s knees as he hauled himself up. He sprawled on his back, chest heaving, staring up at the first stars piercing the violet veil. The world had a new sharpness to it. The scent of jasmine was a physical touch. The whisper of the leaves was a language he almost understood.
“You’re shaking,” Jesus observed, kneeling beside him. He didn’t sound concerned. He sounded fascinated.
“Adrenaline dump,” Dean breathed, closing his eyes. “Happens. After.”
“After what?”
Dean opened one eye. “After you stare down the barrel of a god.”
God stood at the water’s edge, a monumental silhouette against the fading light. He was looking at his own hands, turning them over as if seeing them for the first time. “There is no ‘after,’” he murmured, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in the earth beneath Dean. “There is only continuation. A note sustains, or it fades.”
He turned then, and his gaze pinned Dean to the moss. The awe was still there, but beneath it now ran a current of focused, terrifying want. The curiosity had found its target.
“You taste of fading,” God said, taking a heavy step onto the bank. Water sheeted from the powerful lines of his thighs. “A beautiful, desperate decay. It makes the note… urgent.”
Jesus’s hand settled on Dean’s sternum, a calming weight. “He’s saying you’re alive, Dean. Finite. It’s what makes you compelling.”
“Yeah, I got the memo,” Dean said, but his voice lacked its usual edge. The fear was gone, replaced by a dizzying, reckless pull. He pushed himself up onto his elbows.
God came to him. Not with the world-bending power of before, but with a deliberate, almost hesitant stride. He loomed over Dean, a mountain of muscle and intention, then sank to his knees. The moss gave way beneath his weight. He cradled Dean’s face, his thumbs brushing the high bones of his cheeks. His touch was no longer just exploratory. It was possessive.
“I want to know the hunger,” God stated. “Not the concept. The mechanism. In you.”
Dean’s mouth went dry. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”
In answer, God’s hands slid down, fingers digging into the meat of Dean’s hips with a strength that would leave bruises. He lifted him as if he weighed nothing, adjusting him on the soft bed of moss, positioning him. Dean went with it, a surrender that felt like its own kind of power. He found himself on his knees before God, who now sat back, a king on an emerald throne.
The sight was mythic, humbling, obscene. God, fully revealed, glowing with that inner light, proud and heavy and utterly mortal in his need. The air crackled.
Jesus shifted close behind Dean, his chest a warm line against Dean’s back. His lips found the shell of Dean’s ear. “It’s an act of communion,” he whispered, his breath hot. “To serve, to partake. There is no hierarchy here. Only offering.”
Dean’s heart hammered against his ribs. He’d done this before, sure. But never like this. Never as a prayer. He let out a shaky breath, the last of his resistance leaving him in a rush. “Okay. Okay.”
He leaned forward, guided by the hands on his hips and the quiet encouragement at his ear. The first brush of his lips against hot, silken skin was a shock system-wide. God inhaled sharply, a sound like a continent shifting.
Then Dean took him in, fully.
The taste exploded across his tongue—not a single flavor, but a cascade. Ozone and petrichor. Honey so dark it was almost bitter. The copper-tang of a split lip. It was the taste of a forge, of a vineyard, of a deep, untroubled sea. It was overwhelming. Divine.
A groan tore from God’s throat, raw and unrestrained. His hands flew to Dean’s head, not forcing, but holding, his fingers twisting in the short, damp hair. “Yes. That… that is the point of contact. That is the transfer.”
Dean moved, tentative at first, then with more confidence as the feedback loop ignited again. He could feel it—the pleasure he was giving, reverberating out from this nexus point, echoing through the being before him and ricocheting back through the man behind him. Jesus was murmuring against his shoulder blade now, fragments of Aramaic that sounded like both praise and pleading, his own hips making slow, unconscious circles against Dean’s backside.
God began to move, a slow, deep rhythm that Dean followed. The world narrowed to heat, taste, sound. To the tight ache in his own jaw, the prickle of moss on his knees, the crushing, wonderful pressure of those divine hands in his hair. It was work. It was worship. It was the most honest thing he’d done in years.
“Look at him, Dean,” Jesus whispered, his voice ragged. “See him.”
Dean forced his eyes open, looking up the formidable plane of God’s torso. God was watching him, his golden eyes wide and unfocused, his mouth slightly open. The expression on that timeless face was one of shattered revelation. Here was the Creator of All, brought to the trembling edge by a mortal’s mouth. The power of it was a drug, headier than any whiskey.
The rhythm fractured. God’s back arched, a silent cry seizing him. His grip on Dean’s head became immobilizing, and Dean took everything he was given, the taste shifting, deepening, becoming a final, shocking burst of star-bright salt and endless, spinning light.
For a long moment, the only sounds were the water and their shredded breathing.
God’s hands fell from Dean’s head, landing limp on the moss. He looked spent, hollowed out, more human than Dean had ever seen him. Dean sat back on his heels, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, the taste permanently etched into him.
Jesus pressed a soft, lingering kiss to Dean’s shoulder. “Beautiful.”
Slowly, God’s gaze focused. He looked at Dean, really looked at him, and something softened in the cosmic architecture of his face. He reached out, his thumb wiping a stray drop from the corner of Dean’s mouth. His touch was tender.
“The bruise,” God said, his voice wonder-struck. “It’s… sweetness.”
Dean huffed a breathless, incredulous laugh. “Yeah, well. Don’t get used to it.”
“I want to,” God said, with devastating simplicity. He leaned forward, his forehead coming to rest against Dean’s. The intimacy was staggering. “I want to get used to the bruise.”
From behind them, Jesus stood. He moved around to face them, his own need evident, but his expression was one of profound contentment. He looked at his father and the mortal tangled together in the aftermath, and he smiled. “The door is open now,” he said softly. “It won’t close so easily.”
A cool breeze swept through the oasis, rustling the palms. It carried a new scent on it—not jasmine, but dust, and gasoline, and rain.
Dean knew that smell. It was the smell of back roads. Of home.
He tensed. God felt it and pulled back, his eyes searching Dean’s face.
“What is it?”
Dean listened. Beneath the oasis’s hum, a faint, mechanical growl threaded its way into the paradise. An engine. A very familiar engine.
“My car,” Dean whispered, the real world crashing back in with the subtlety of a shotgun blast. “That’s my car.”