It's glorious. It's glorious and earth-shifting and in that moment the weight of the apocalypse on his shoulders that are sagging in the mattress are pressed next to another set of broad shoulders. Damp and intimate in a way Dean hasn’t been with someone for years. He’s starry eyed beneath his shut eyes, body still strumming with buzzing pleasantness, and he turns around to press a kiss to Cas’ lips.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Cas is lying there, a barely there smile on his lips, he looks like he feels sated, his rigidness absent and his body lax next to Dean’s. Fuck.
Dean had sex with an angel. Again.
The last time Dean fucked an angel, she died at the hands of an archangel in the guise of his father. The same archangel who’s pleading for his body since he remembers clawing his way out of his grave.
Panic sloshes in his stomach, something ugly, and he feels sick. Another down, Winchester. And no one ordinary, no, because you’re a stupid fucker, aren’t you. It had to be Cas.
A surge of righteousness and something he wouldn’t call affection creeps in and he thinks, of course it was Cas. Who else would it be?
Then it leaves, just as quick it came, and there’s just this sinking shallow feeling left in its place. He doesn’t deserve this. Not me, he doesn’t deserve me.
He’s so sorry, if he let himself be selfish he’d push away Cas’ hair from his forehead and card his fingers through them, but no, Cas deserves better.
“Uh, Cas? I think you should, uh. Go.”
Cas looks at him, something that Dean would bet was a mix of disappointment and anger flashing through his eyes, and then there he is. A blank face. “Yes. I should.”
In steps that are too slow, he gets up, puts on his shirt, his pants. Then his blazer, and his coat. “Goodbye, Dean,” and then he's gone. Dean’s not sure if he can sleep, but Cas tired him out. He’s out before he knows it.
Dean wakes up and the first thing he notices as he gets off the bed is Cas’ tie, lying there on the floor.
When he sees Cas again, which is unfortunately, just a few hours later, he’s wearing a different tie. Blue, but not striped. Still lopsided. When Cas catches him looking a second too long, he stares back. They don’t talk about last night. So it goes.
Months later, Sam is dead, and he is in Lisa’s bed, and a kid who might be his is sleeping in the room next door. Lisa gasps, and Dean thinks, she deserves someone better.
He can’t ask her to leave, doesn’t leave himself either, not yet. So he stays, and then Sam’s back, and he has to go, and there’s not as much guilt as he’d like but. It’s not like he's doing anything to make their lives better, if not worse.
Sam’s back, and then Cas leaves. Again, that bastard. Then Dean drives to an Emmanuel’s place, and he finds Cas, and they stare at each other a little too long, but Cas remembers nothing. And then he does, suddenly, when he looks at Dean a little too stern, and he says, “I remember you. I remember everything.”
Maybe he does, but they don’t talk about it.
Fast forward another year, and he finds Cas after twelve months, two weeks and two days later, crouching next to a stream of water. He barrels into Cas, who doesn’t hug back, but Dean doesn’t care. Cas is here. Cas is fine. They can go back now. They make their way back, but he shifts and shakes his head when Benny grabs him by the hips. Cas sees it, he’s sure he does, the three of them are huddled very close, and he doesn’t even sleep, so Dean knows Cas saw him pushing Benny’s palm away from his chest. Benny doesn’t ask again, not until they’re topside, and Dean and Cas don’t talk about it. Not in purgatory, and obviously, not when Dean makes it out of there without him.
Cas comes back again, but he’s different. Soon, Dean is kneeling before him, his mouth bloody, eyes swollen and he pleads at Castiel to stop. Tells him he’s family, and Cas holds him by the side of his neck, grace flowing through his body, healing him.
Dean thought he’d die by Cas’ hands that day, and wouldn’t that be a way to go? Instead he feels like he might die when Cas disappears.
Cas dies, again, and in front of his eyes, and Dean stabs the reaper with the same blade he takes out of Cas’ abdomen. Holds his face in his hand, cold with sweat and death, but he shakes him anyway. Sam walks over, but it ain’t Sam, and Cas is looking at Dean with wide eyes, his face bracketed between his hands, and he promises Dean he won’t die again.
A few weeks later, they sleep on the same bed again, and Dean can see a shiny drop of tear on Cas’ cheek. He reaches to swipe at it with his thumb, but Cas holds his wrist. Kisses his palm, then his knuckles, and then, turns his back to Dean.
The next morning, Dean drops him off at the Gas ‘n Sip. They don’t talk about it.
Things happen. Dean tries to kill Cas, Cas shepherds angels around to fight Metatron, Dean kills Death, Darkness gets out, Mary comes back, Cas says he loves everyone, Lucifer is freed, Jack is born, and Cas dies again.
Dean sits by his body until his knees give way, and then on wobbly legs carries him inside. Traces his face with shaking fingers, wincing at the touch, and kisses his eyelids. Cas doesn’t look at him through his eyelashes. He can’t. Dean ties him up, burns his body, for the final time. Stands there until the smoke is thin, to make sure Cas stays dead this time.
He doesn’t know if he can take it if he comes back again, because he comes only to leave. An hour after Billie doesn’t let Dean die, there’s a call. Cas is back, and Dean is really, really happy. His knees keep bumping into Cas’, and they look at each other with eyes wistfully hopeful, but they don’t talk about it.
Not until Cas tells him he changed him. Tells him he loves him. And then, in a tone that is so similar and yet so far away, so unbelievable, he says, “Goodbye, Dean.” And then he’s gone.
Just like old times. So it goes.
Twenty two days go by without him, and on the twenty third, Dean cradles Cas’ face, puts a knife to his throat, and carries his limp body out of the Empty. Rests him on the bed in his room, and sits next to him, placing cloth strips soaked in ice cold water, and tells Sam they’ll be alright.
They will be. Cas is back, and Chuck is gone, and now everything would be alright.
When Cas comes to, he holds a hand to his face, then breathes out a “Dean?”
Dean startles. “Hey. Hey Cas? You good?”
Cas touches his face, brows knitting in confusion and disbelief, and a few seconds after he’s checked, he nods. Dean gets up to get him something to eat. Something warm, he thinks, and Cas follows him into the kitchen. When Dean places a bowl of chicken soup in front of him, Cas looks at him, uncertain, and in a timid, soft voice, asks, “Can I eat this in my room?”
The room is not Dean’s, and Dean doesn’t push it. Knows he doesn’t deserve the goodness that is Cas, but it is Cas who wants him. Back. Cas wants him back, and without it, he’s not happy.
But he seems to be doing just well without. They still have movie nights and he wears ridiculous but very soft sweaters and hoodies now. Shares Dean’s admiration for burgers, but prefers frozen yogurt to pie. Cracks jokes, and stays with them, and he’s doing fine, Dean supposes.
So they don’t talk about it.
But he also does this thing, like looking at Dean like a teenage girl would look at Justin Beiber or whoever, like he’s the most beautiful thing his human eyes have seen. He’ll tell him things like, “You didn’t have to do this, Dean”, when Dean drives forty minutes outta town to get him some honey, as if Dean wouldn’t irregardless, and showers compliments like nobody’s business.
Dean often has in under control, walking out of the room if he feels his face heat up, or clenching his fist if he wants to hold Cas’ hands and say anything for you, and clearing his throat when Cas moans around his food. But not today. Not when it’s just Cas and him in the Deancave, as the credits to My Name Is Nobody roll, and Dean doesn’t think he’s had as much fun in fucking forever. Cas is still laughing at Dean’s really bad imitation of Henry Fonda, and Dean kisses him.
Cas stops laughing, still in his spot, in fact, and when Dean pulls away, eyes just as wide, asks, “Dean?”
When Dean doesn’t answer, Cas moves maybe an inch away, and says, placating. “You don’t have to do this for me, Dean. That wouldn’t- I don’t want that for you.” Then, almost an after-thought, adds, “Or me.”
“What if I want you too?” Dean’s voice is so quiet, he’s not sure he hears it himself. Cas does though. He always does. Cas reaches forward, and then his thumbs are on Dean face, and he’s crying, god, and Cas kisses his cheek, wetting his lips with the salty tear drop, and mutters an “Oh, Dean.”
It's glorious. It's glorious and earth-shifting and Dean’s shoulder is touching Cas’ clavicle, damp and intimate in a way Dean hasn’t been with anyone since then. He’s starry eyed beneath his shut eyes, body still strumming with buzzing pleasantness, and he reaches up to press a kiss to Cas’ lips.
Cas is smiling, and Dean loves him so much he hurts from the truth of it. “Cas?” He prods. “Stay the night?”
Cas surges to kiss him, and he lets him, falling pliant atop of him.
Cas will stay the night, of course, then the nights that follow, and one day, it will stop hurting and it will stop being scary and one day Cas will tell him he’ll really never leave again, Dean will whisper against him skin, I love you.
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