#outdean

Pairings: Castiel/Dean Winchester

Summary:

“Dean,” John said. “Meet your angel.”

Blue eyes were fixed, calm and warm. Dean raised a hand nervously in an offer to shake it, but he just stared, confused.

“He doesn’t know much about humans, yet,” John laughed. He crouched until he and Dean were eye level. “It’ll be up to you to teach him.”

Start From the Beginning

Dean rolls over in his bed, for once not sweaty or gasping. Brain still soft with sleep, he sits up and cracks open his eyes. "Cas?" His garbled voice fills the empty room. He blinks a few times, searching, suspended by sleep and confusion and want. The part of his consciousness still soaked in sleep tells him to wait. Any second now the distinct rap of knuckles will sound on the door, the handle will turn, and Cas will let himself into Dean's room. He doesn't. Or, three weeks after the Empty takes Castiel, Dean starts to dream.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

“--And I’m not sure about the ducks,” Dean hears Cas say as he shuffles into the kitchen. Cas is already sitting at their table in the breakfast nook that overlooks the backyard, with its picket fence that Dean finally put up just last week, and the lake beyond. He’s got his phone pressed against his ear.

The person on the on the other end of the line says something, Dean doesn’t recognize the lilt of the voice, and Cas replies, “I mean, I’m not sure about--oh, okay. Okay!” He glances up at Dean, a smile spreading across his face. “I’ve got to go. Tomorrow? Okay, great. Thank you! Bye.”

“Who was that?” Dean asks as he fixes himself a cup of coffee--Cas already seems to have one. “And what’s this about ducks?”

“Nothing about ducks,” Cas replies.

“Really? Because I could have sworn--” Dean stops at the look on Cas’s face. “Alright, no ducks.” 

They’ve been in the old lake house since early summer, but in many ways, it feels like they actually started living here this winter. The early days of their time in the boondocks was marked by mosquito bites, uncomfortable inflatable beds, and hot air rushing in through broken windows. 

(Dean fixed the windows just in time for the first thunderstorm, but then they discovered that the roof leaked.)

Now they’re onto finishing touches, which means that he finally feels like he can start properly enjoying his time here, but he also misses those early days. He misses the calluses on Cas’s tan hands that came from trying to turn their front yard into something resembling a yard, misses catching himself right before he fell off the ladder while trying to paint the shutters blue, misses nights where the power would short out so instead of watching television, he and Cas would stay up late talking. 

Dean feels like he’s gotten to know not only Cas but himself better here. 

And now, tomorrow, it will have been a year since this whole thing became silver-ring, kiss-in-front-of-all-their-friends, go-on-a-beach-honeymoon official, and that just feels--

It feels--

Dean opens the fridge and says to Cas, “What do you want for breakfast?”

---------------------

The morning of February fourteenth dawns chilly, but warmer than most of the days out here on the lake. Even with the new insulation, there’s still a draft in the old house, but it’s aided by Cas next to him, an arm wrapped around his waist. Dean smiles to himself and brushes his lips against Cas’s forehead.

Cas’s eyes blink open slowly and then he smiles at Dean, one of those soft, broad ones that Dean spends half his time these days trying to coax out of Cas.

“Happy anniversary,” Dean says softly.

“Weird,” Cas replies.

“Gee, thanks.”

“I mean, it’s weird that it’s been a year. Already.” Cas props himself up to kiss Dean, and Dean kind of loses the thread of the conversation for a minute. “But it’s nice,” he finally says.

“What do you want to do today?” Dean asks. He has a feeling they’ll be fielding phone calls wishing them a happy anniversary, especially from Sam, who accidentally sent a card four days early (he and Eileen had both signed it, with Eileen adding in tiny print, I told him he didn't need to send this). Otherwise, though, they’ve got twenty-four wide open hours, and he’s thinking of something they could do right now without getting out of bed at all--

And then a horn honks outside.

“Who would be here this early?” Dean asks. They seldom get visitors, this far out, just left of the middle of nowhere. 

Cas’s cheeks turn curiously pink. “I never told them a time to show up.”

“Them?” Dean sits up. “Sweetheart, what did you do?”

They head downstairs in their pajamas to discover a truck parked in the gravel driveway and all sorts of quacking commotion coming from the truck bed. There’s a guy standing next to the truck with a clipboard. 

“...Ducks.” Dean turns to Cas. “Yesterday, you were on the phone with someone about ducks.”

“They’re from a wildlife reserve nearby where they take care of injured animals and then release them back into the wild...they like to do it near farms and things so people can watch the ducks.” Cas blushes more. “I read about it in the newspaper.” 

“And you got us ducks for our lake?”

Cas nods.

It’s the weirdest gift Dean’s ever gotten. He’s never been married until now, but in the movies it’s always jewelry or a trip or flowers for an anniversary. But he doesn’t really want any of those things (okay, he wouldn’t say no to flowers), and he loves the way they’ve turned this old lake house into their home, and he’s already imaging the contented look on Cas’s face while he feeds the ducks, and--

"I love you,” Dean says. “Did you know that?”

“You say it every day.”

“Well, bears repeating.” Dean takes Cas’s hand, kisses his cheek. “Let’s get our ducks.” 

(That afternoon, when Cas is by the lake’s edge, communing with the flora and fauna like he loves to do, Dean snaps a picture with his phone. The smile on Cas’s face as he plies the ducks with crusts of bread is even better than he could have imagined.)