Don't Ever Change

Dean really doesn’t want to lose his internship. He’s worked so hard to get it and the promise of at the end is tantalizingly close. He only has to do six months unpaid work (which sucks) and then he’s home free. He’ll get a contract, his own little office and his foot on the ladder. 

There’s just one problem and he’s currently in Dean’s lap, kissing Dean like there’s no tomorrow. 

Castiel is sixteen and he’s the boss’s son. 

It’s so bad and Dean knows he’ll be instantly fired if anyone finds out about them. He wants more than stolen kisses with Castiel, but he also wants this job. 

Dean thinks that makes him the worse man in the world, but Castiel doesn’t seem to mind. He likes hiding. It makes it more fun for him. 

“Good morning, Sam.”

“Hi, Cas. Want some bacon?”

“Yes please.”

Dean walked in moments later in his normal morning garb of boxers, white T and robe. He sat down at the kitchen island without a word and flipped open his laptop in an agitated fashion.

“Bacon, Dean?” Sam offered.

“Humph grr,” Dean grunted in reply.

“What’s up with you?”

Cas sighed and rolled his eyes. “He’s grumpy because he caught me watching him sleep.”

“Aww,” Sam mocked, “Deanie’s grumpy because his boyfriend loves him.”

“He!” Dean exclaimed, now pointing a threatening finger at Cas, “was not watching me sleep. He was watching my butt as I slept.”

“It’s the same thing, Dean.”

“His butt? Seriously Cas?”

“It’s a cute butt and he gets annoyed when I watch him while he’s awake,” Cas shrugged. “This seemed an ideal solution.” 

“That ain’t the problem, the problem is you unwrapping yourself halfway through the night, lifting up the blanket, and exposing my poor tuchas to the cold air in there.” 

“Ah.”

Dean sighed heavily. “I can’t believe I’m about to suggest this, but, how about I just give you a photo?” 

“Of your butt?” 

“Yes. Then you can do whatever it is you do–” 

“Try to count the freckles,” Cas added helpfully. 

“Sure, fine. You can do it in your own time, and you won’t keep waking me up and making my butt cold.” 

Inspired by the gag reel pics. You know the ones I mean.

Dean’s in the garage giving his Baby a good scrub-down when Cas sidles up behind him, wrapping his thick arms around Dean’s waist, rumbling, “What are you wearing?” into Dean’s ear. Dean immediately stops what he’s doing, leans into Cas’s embrace and huffs out a breathy laugh. “You know what shorts are, Cas.”

Cas damn near purrs as he noses along Dean’s hairline. “I like these,” he confesses, his soft mouth and scratchy stubble teasing the sensitive skin of Dean’s neck. “I can see so much of you,” he adds, and his hands are already everywhere, one snaking up Dean’s t-shirt and the other wandering down to stroke high on the back of Dean’s leg, fingers toying with the fraying hemline of his shorts.

That’s how Dean ended up in a dive bar at midnight, pretending that he wasn’t waiting for Cas to come through the door. It was spooky how easy it was to turn the clock back ten years and shoot pool like he used to. Maybe he hadn’t changed that much after all. Just subtract a couple of apocalypses, a dead dad, and coming out as bi, and he was right back where he started, more or less.

“Would you allow me to buy you a drink?”

Dean jumped. Because twenty-five-year-old Dean would have jumped, and also because Cas had, as always, managed to genuinely startle him. “Sneak up on a guy, why don’t you?” But then he turned to look Cas up and down and… damn. Twenty-five-year-old Dean might not have had the balls to take Cas up on the offer, but would have wished he had. “Whiskey, neat,” he said with a grin.

Getting to meet Cas for the first time sans barn and sigils and exploding lights was kind of bizarre. He didn’t even get tipsy no matter how many drinks Dean bought him, and he was an absolute wizard at pool. He kept looking at Dean with those big, blue eyes full of fondness and longing. And he was hot. Damn, he was hot, especially when Dean convinced him to leave his coats hanging over the back of a chair and play pool in his shirt and tie.

Twenty-five-year-old Dean wouldn’t have taken this strange man home. Twenty-five-year-old Dean would have flirted with him, maybe kissed him, maybe sucked him off in the alley behind the bar. But right-now Dean wanted more than that, so he and Cas followed the script they had decided on earlier.

“Where are you staying?”

“Nowhere, currently.”

“It’ll be a pain in the ass trying to find a hotel this time of night. I’ve got a room. You can crash with me.”

Cas looked Dean in the eye with a smile that was at once innocent and knowing. “I accept.”

Twenty-five-year-old Dean didn’t invite strange men back to his room. But with eyes like that, even without the script, twenty-five-year-old Dean might have made an exception.

The script ended at the hotel room door, because they pretty much knew what to do after that.

They tumbled inside, already kissing, hands already all over each other. Dean dropped his coat and his button-down shirt somewhere between the door and the bed, and he was working on his t-shirt as he let Cas push him down until he was sitting on the mattress.

But instead of joining him on the bed, Cas took Dean’s face in his hands and said, “I’m sorry, Dean.”

Dean fumbled with Cas’s belt buckle. “What for?”

“For everything that will soon be asked of you. For the weight that will soon be placed on your shoulders. Your burden is too heavy already, and I regret that I will find myself playing a part in adding to it.”

“Cas…”

Cas ran his thumbs over Dean’s eyelids, his cheekbones, his lips. “I can see that you are in pain, Dean. I wish I could tell you that it will get better, but I can’t. All I can tell you is that I will be here for you, in whatever capacity you need me, as often as I am able.”

“And,” said Cas. “That now, and ten years from now, and one hundred years from now, you have the most beautiful soul that I have ever seen walk this Earth.”

None of that was in the script. Neither were the tears that stung Dean’s eyes nor the vice that gripped his chest.