They’re in the garage of the bunker, trailing out of the Impala, when it happens for the first time.
In all honestly, Dean shouldn’t be so aware of it. The touch is casual – everyday. Something that might happen when you pass a little too closely with a stranger on the street. Except it isn’t everyday (Dean can count on one hand the number of times someone has touched him in the last month) and it isn’t a stranger.
It’s Cas; it’s Castiel’s hand floating up to trail fingers along the middle of his back. Dean shouldn’t be so aware of it and he shouldn’t react like he does – which is a full-body shudder and a hitch in his breathing. He stops in the middle of a step, so that Sam behind him has to come up short.
His brother passes him an odd look, no doubt wondering if there was some lingering injury from the showdown they had with the wraith. Dean just passes him a Winchesters-patented “all good” smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. As Sam heads into the bunker, so does Cas. Dean watches the angel go, watches the flicker of his trench coat. His eyes track the curl of fingers from under the coat’s cuffs.
Later, Dean wishes it were further into spring, wishes he hadn’t been wearing his leather jacket, so the press of Castiel’s hand could have been closer to his body.
It starts happening regularly, is the thing. Cas’s shoulder against Dean’s chest as they maneuver through one of the bunker’s smaller storage rooms, Cas’s hand cupping Dean’s elbow to catch his attention, Cas standing so close as he reads the laptop over Dean’s head that Dean can feel the heat of him, smell that just-sideways-of-human smell Cas gives off – like metal melting and the milk from dandelions.
And then.
In the kitchen, beers open but untouched, Sam long-since asleep. Cas’s knee is against one of Dean’s but it has been since they sat down, almost an hour ago. They’ve been meandering through a conversation on the “future.” On what that could even mean for them, for Dean, and Sam. Dean can feel his heart beating in the swell of his knee, at the point where it connects with Castiel’s.
At least, until Cas’s hand comes up to fit over Dean’s cheek. The heel of his wrist is against Dean’s mouth and his fingertips are just brushing Dean’s hair and he lets out a truly mortifying, breathy noise at the touch. Like his chest has given out. His shoulders curl in a little and his eyes shut and without meaning to really he presses into the angel’s worn palm.
“You keep…doing that,” Dean roughs out after a moment.
“I’m sorry,” Cas says in that way, where he apologizes for the thing he’s doing, but doesn’t stop doing it. “You’ve been praying for it.”
Dean’s eyes flash open at that and he looks to Cas with a stricken expression. “No, I haven’t.” Still, he doesn’t pull away.
“You have,” Castiel insists. For all the panic through Dean’s system, Cas is calm. “Prayer doesn’t have to be words. This is more…intention.” His face does shift then and there’s an ancient sort of pain around his eyes. “I can feel…your longing.”
Thirteen years ago Dean would have rocked back on his heels and jeered out something about chick-flick moments but Dean is coming around forty and he’s tired and he hasn’t been touched in – well, he lost count. And this is Cas.
He swallows. Closes his eyes. Tilts his head. Murmurs into Cas’s hand, “What’m I longing for now?”
And Cas was telling the truth. He must be able to sense intention with crystal clarity because the next thing Dean feels is the warm press of Castiel’s lips on his own.
