#casthewise

“Do you want some help?”

Dean looks up, tightening his hold on the railing as his feet slip once again. How the hell does anyone keep their balance on these things? 

Cas gives him a sympathetic smile. “It takes a little practice.”

Dean wants to crawl into a hole and die. This is their first date, it’s way too early for Cas to see him look so pathetic. He’s not sure what he was thinking, saying yes to this idea.

Oh wait, yes he does. It was because Cas’ expression lit up when he talked about skating - apparently he used to practice - and Dean is already a sucker for that smile. There’s only one skating rink in town, and it’s only gonna be open for another couple of weeks before the season is over. 

“Might take a little more than a little for me,” Dean jokes weakly.

He’s not usually the most graceful person but out on the ice, he feels like freaking Bambi. 

-I’m not here to perch on your shoulder.

- Ah, techinically, Cas, you are. Kinda the whole point.

"I don’t have time,” Dean says dismissively, when Cas tries to recommend him new books, new movies, new things to share. “Not right now. I gotta work on the car.”

And then it’s, “I gotta make dinner.”

And then it's, “We kinda have a ghost hunt on, Cas, if you didn’t notice.”

Eventually, Cas just comes and sits beside Dean when he’s soothing the Impala’s latest aching joint; he opens his book, and starts to read aloud. Dean, stuck under Baby with nowhere to go and an exhaust pipe to fix, complains at first - and then listens.

And Cas keeps following him around, reading. To the kitchen, to the car on a trip (”I don’t get travel sick, Dean, it’s fine”) - anywhere Dean goes, Cas will follow after with his voice shaping words and drawing stories in the air.

One afternoon, Cas is sitting on his own bed, quietly - and Dean comes looking for him. “Gotta fix the car,” he says. “You wanna come or what?”

Cas wants to. They move through books fast, the days soundtracked by the soft rustle of pages turning. By the tilt and camber of Cas’ voice. By the quiet noises of surprise and happiness and horror that Dean makes as the tales unravel.

“Don’t stop,” Dean says one night, when he’s about to go to bed. “Just finish the chapter.” And Cas sits at the end of Dean’s bed, and reads.

The next night, he does the same.

At some point, he stops going back to his own room. He sleeps in Dean’s bed. They don’t talk about it - not until one day when they wake up, and both pretend very thoroughly not to have woken up, and carefully move with sleepy gestures, very very sleepy gestures, into each other’s space. Hand a little closer to chest. Hips turned towards hips. Forehead almost - almost - pressed to forehead. Sneaking glances under half-closed lids, measuring distances, until they catch each other looking and open their eyes all the way.

“Hey,” Dean says.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean smiles.

“We should get up,” Cas says.