*~Former Gifted Child~*

Cas stares at Dean. Blinks. Stares. Blinks again. Tears drip onto the cold floor, leaving tracks down both his cheeks.

“No,” Cas says, “no, you can’t.”

The undulating pile of black goo emerging from the portal behind him stops. Death’s knocks on the door echo into nothingness. The dungeon’s stale air is stifling. It’s as if the room has become a void, a vacuum, a place free of both time and space.

“What,” Dean says, flat. 

Dean finally says it — it’s his last chance— and Cas says no?

Cas’s hand— still bleeding, still warm— tightens around Dean’s shoulder. “You can’t. You can’t because then— “

“What?” Dean gestures to the stationary mass of Empty tentacles halfway out the portal, looking like some kind of demented sculpture, and scoffs. “It’d make you truly happy?”

And it’s not fair to say. Dean knows it’s not fair to say but Dean’s mad, Dean’s furious, because Cas had planned to leave him. Again.

Sometimes Dean forgets he’s not the only being capable of anger.

“How dare you.” Cas seethes. He hisses his words. His fingers dig into Dean’s flesh through his outer layers. Cas is strong. Sometimes Dean forgets that, too, with how gentle he can be. “How dare you say that. After all this time. After—“

Cas cuts off and pulls away from Dean. Dean’s shoulder tingles. He already misses the touch.

Cas walks away from Dean but he doesn’t have far to go. There’s Death to the left of him and the Empty to the right. He’s stuck in the middle with Dean.

Racking his hands through his hair, the air around Cas crackles in light blue shocks of grace. He’s not just angry. He’s pissed.

Because Dean said he loves him.

Well, that’s one way to keep Cas from leaving.

Dean laughs— shouldering shaking, chest heaving, hands on his knees— because what else is he supposed to do?

Cas’s head snaps up. “What?”

Straightening his posture, Dean wipes the corners of his eyes dry. “This is all one big cosmic joke, isn’t it?” At Cas’s head tilt, Dean continues, “I finally say the three little words and I ruin your perfect moment of happiness.”

Cas rolls his eyes then throws up his hands. “Well, you weren’t supposed to reply!”

This time, Dean stares at Cas. Blinks. Stares. Blinks again. He opens his mouth with a gasp. “You were just gonna say that and— and die. You were gonna leave me here!”

Cas purses his lips and looks down at his shoes.

“You bastard,” Dean says.

“I’m the bastard?” Cas closes the scant distance between them, close enough that Dean can see the lines of anger pulling down Cas’s dry lips, feels the heat of his breath when he spits, “You let me spend a decade destroying my reputation among heaven, left me to— to—“ He stutters his way to a full word. “Pine for you all this time and now you want to call me the bastard?”

Dean reaches out, grabs Cas by the coat lapels, and catches a glimpse of red in his peripheral vision. He looks down at his shoulder and sees the shape of a bloody handprint, stark against the green canvas coat.

Cas’s hand. Dean’s coat.

Dean meets Cas’s eyes and he’s looking at him—  really looking at him—  with a mixture of hope, love, frustration, adoration and anger and fuck Dean loves him.

“I guess we’re a couple of bastards, then,” Dean whispers.

“In love,” Cas adds, his voice near silent, breathless.

Dean holds Cas’s face between his hands, strokes his thumb over Cas’s lower lip. “Yeah. A couple of bastards in love.”

When Dean kisses Cas, time starts again. The dungeon door cracks and splinters and Death comes calling. The dark shadows swirl through the portal, long tendrils groping forward.

Cas pays no attention to the chaos around them. He watches Dean.

“This fight is not over,” Dean says.

should have been holding hands…

DEAN & CAS → THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (6x20)

Say Cas shows up unexpectedly and Dean’s doing their movie night alone since Cas was away,  on some plot-relevant side quest. Cas arrives back unannounced because it’s movie night and what he’s doing can wait a day. Dean’s too thick to realise Cas has come back for him, and royally puts his foot in his mouth by asking why Cas is there, making the angel feel like he shouldn’t be because the course of true love never did run smoothly and when given the opportunity Dean will screw himself over when it comes to affection. 

Cas isn’t sure where they stand and wonders if he should stay and watch the film or leave. After awkwardly standing beside Dean’s armchair, watching the screen for longer than what would be deemed socially acceptable, Dean lets out a huff and says, ‘Just sit down,’ meaning, of course, for Cas to sit beside him in what Dean’s deemed ‘Cas armchair’. Cas takes Dean’s words literally and plonks down on the arm of Dean’s chair, smacking their shoulders together and settling in. 

The thing is, Dean lets him. He might grumble, but he doesn’t get Cas to move. He’s had a long night, having also returned from a hunt hours before and he’s beat. Before Cas knows it, Dean’s face is smooshed up against his shoulder and he’s open-mouthed snoring. Cas still thinks he’s the most beautiful human he’s ever seen and is in awe because Dean’s being vulnerable with him. He knows the man has trouble sleeping, plagued by dreams of Hell and hunts. Cas knows Dean doesn’t sleep with just anyone, even when he has casual sex, he rarely stays long after the act, so Cas looks down at the sleeping man and for the first time he thinks, ‘maybe’. Maybe Dean likes him back. He has no idea what to do with that possibility. He sits there quietly for the rest of the night because Dean’s an angry sleeper (like a bear) and Cas isn’t going to wake him up. 

He decides to tread lightly and toy with the idea of trying to flirt with Dean, without overtly flirting with Dean. He has no idea how to do this. After all his years on earth, there are still a lot of things that confuse him. While he and Dean are on a hunt sometime later, they pull over to a gas station. When Dean’s paying Cas mindlessly flips through the magazine stumbling on some shitty Cosmopolitan article about romance and flirting. They mention one way to show you are interested in someone is by showing curiosity in their likes and dislikes. 

So for the rest of the journey, Cas becomes almost insufferable with questions. He knows Dean’s top 13 favourite Led Zeppelin songs, but is Led Zeppelin Dean’s favourite band? What are Dean’s top 13 favourite bands? What is Dean’s favourite number? Does he have a favourite colour? Why is that his favourite colour? He rattles off questions for the entirety of their 14-hour trip cross country and Dean is confused as hell but decides to humour Cas because he does love talking about bands and movies, plus it’s not like anyone’s ever taken so much of an interest in him. 

Sometime towards the end of the trip, Dean realises he has no clue what Cas’ favourite anything is- do angels even have favourites? Wasn’t that meant to be the whole thing  about angels? All men are created equal and all that. Still, Dean asks. For the most part, Cas doesn’t have answers. He’s not sure who his favourite band is, though he can hesitantly say a few songs he likes better than others. It’s like they discover his favourite things together, unearthing them. Cas says with conviction his favourite colour is green and when Dean asks why he simply says, ‘Because it reminds me of you,’ and moves on. Dean goes silent for a long time after that but Cas is still left thinking that maybe Dean could love him. After all, he showed interest in Cas’ likes and dislikes as the magazine suggested. 

Something Cas learned from Dean’s movies was that humans showed affection through nicknames, strange terms of endearment that reminded them of sugary foods or woodland animals. Dean reminded Cas of neither, so he was unsure what kind of word to use to show his affection. Dean shortened his name. Perhaps this was his way of using a term of endearment, maybe Cas had missed some sign and should have given Dean a nickname of his own.  In the end, he settles for something in his mother tongue, because he’s better at expressing himself in Enochian. 

He uses a word for Dean which is both very intense and oddly specific, something that translates roughly to ‘Evergreen lover, formed of star ash’. Like a golden retriever, after having the stilted cacophony of consonants and vowels thrown in his direction for long enough Dean simply shrugs his shoulders and answers to the name. I’m talking a name that trembles like a sub-bass and causes stray dogs to howl and Dean just looks up of a morning from his bowl of Fruit Loops and goes, ‘oh yeah that’s me. Mornin’ Sunshine’. Bonus points if others around him know exactly what the name means, other angels, demons, maybe even Sam when he gets curious and looks through the bunker’s archives for an Enochian Dictionary. 

After all this, Cas is no closer to working out if Dean harbours affection towards him or not. So after some exasperated brainstorming, Cas decides to meet Dean where he’s at and attempts to express affection the way he knows Dean does. He cooks Dean’s breakfast and makes his coffee every morning because Dean expresses his love through security, caring for others and he especially loves food. It should be noted the bacon is burnt, the egg is raw and the coffee tastes like dishwater, but each morning Dean gives Cas a goofy, lopsided grin and thanks him. He’s grateful, Cas realises but he still has no idea if Dean’s in love with him. 

With his one last-ditch effort, Cas decides to try physical touch. Dean’s a tactile creature. He loves touch. So Cas tries to give it to him. He rests his hand on his shoulder or his side as he walks past Dean. If they are parting ways Cas pulls Dean into a hug. He’s stunned at first, but he lets it happen and even gets used to it after a while, so Cas gets more brazen. He wraps his foot around Dean’s ankle when they sit together at the map table. He pushes his palm into Dean’s when they’re sitting alone in their armchairs for movie night and that’s what finally pushes Dean over the edge. 

“Look man, I know you’re not human and you don’t get how stuff works but you can’t do junk like that. It’ll give people the wrong idea,” Dean would warn because his self-loathing, self-deprecating, still very closeted self would never in a million years dare to let himself think Cas knows what he’s doing.

“And what is the wrong idea?” Cas would ask. 

“You know, dude. That you like me. More than a friend like me,” Dean would explain and Cas would give him the most world-wearied, withering look and  sigh, “That is very much the idea I’ve been trying to get across,” He’d explain. 

And Dean would need about an hour for his brain to stop short-circuiting, long enough for him to reply,