#wolfcas

  He hears Cas’ surprised mumble and the sound of the bed creaking as he stirs.

  “Stay where you are,” Dean orders, extracting his legs from the sheet inelegantly. “Don’t you dare move.”

  Cas makes a confused, defeated puppy-dog kind of noise. “What, Dean? What is it?”

  Dean lies where he is, arms and legs splayed out, suddenly feeling like a twelve-year old schoolgirl. “Um,” he says. “You’re not supposed to. You know.” He swallows, slaps a hand over his mouth and groans inwardly. What the hell Winchester? “You’renotsupposedtoseeme. Before the. Before the wedding.”

  He hears Cas’ silence and it’s the loudest fucking thing on earth. His cheeks are burning and he wishes he could sink into the carpet and never ever return.

  From somewhere above, Cas makes a soft, breathy noise that could really be anything at all. “Ah, yes,” he says. “We must preserve the virtue of the blushing bride.”

  “Shut up,” says Dean. “Oh my God. Shut up.” He groans, hiding his face in his hands.

  Cas laughs quietly and a hand reaches down, patting Dean blindly across the stomach. “I’m not looking,” he murmurs, finally locating Dean’s hand, which he clasps tightly.

  Dean still half hopes the floor will swallow him up, but then Cas squeezes his hand and he doesn’t feel so ridiculous anymore. He pulls himself to his feet, smiles lopsidedly at Castiel’s questioning glance. “I’m an idiot,” he says, kneeling beside the bed and face-planting into the mattress. “D’you really want to marry me?” Those last words come out as an incoherent mumble, but Cas, dear awesome Cas, understands.

  “Dean,” he says, sliding his fingers through Dean’s hair and massaging gently. “I would marry you a thousand times if I could.”

  Dean’s heart doesn’t skip, because that would be impossible. And girlish. But it sure does something inside his chest, and he sucks in a breath, inhaling dust from the bed pressed to his face.

  He turns his head, coming up for air, and Cas’ knee is right there, Cas’ perfect beautiful knee that has somehow become more familiar to Dean over the past few years than the back of his own hand. He reaches for it, slides his palm around the soft bend at the back and draws it closer so he can place a kiss right on the bone.

  “I can hear your pulse in your knee,” he tells Cas, smiling.

  Cas hums and rubs Dean’s shoulder. “How strange,” he murmurs, and Dean can hear the happiness in his voice, as loud as a freaking orchestra. Plus one cannon.

  “I would too, you know,” Dean whispers, resting his forehead against Castiel’s kneecap.

  “Would what?”

  “I would marry you. A thousand times.”

  “Mm,” Cas hums. “I know.”

  They lie awkwardly entwined for another few minutes, until the alarm is screaming for them to get up. To get married. Cas takes Dean’s hand as they stumble to the bathroom, holds it tightly within his own and smiles when Dean squeezes back. There’s a long day ahead. There’s a long life to come.

"You're right. I'm sorry," he sighs, and his toes twitch again; this time purposely petting Dean's upper thigh, "Carry on." 

"I hate you," Dean laughs, bouncing his knee so that Cas's petting is interrupted, but he continues with what he was going to say anyway, "What I was going to say was: I can't tell if I feel more like a twelve year old or a seventy-five year old around you," he sighs, pausing to set his beer on the ground beside his chair before resting his hand, palm open, on Cas's shin, "Because on the one hand I feel like I've been smiling all day and we keep sneaking kisses while Sam isn't looking and you've got your damn feet in my lap and everything is sunshine and fucking rainbows," he goes on, watching as a lone flower sways in the breeze—looking lost among its bean plant friends, "but then we're sitting on a porch in Kansas together and you're wearing my sweater and there's a fucking tray of muffins cooling inside on the kitchen table and I just—Dammit, Cas, I'm happy." 

It's a while before Cas says anything back to this, and Dean decides that he's okay with that fact. He's okay with simply smiling and watching as a returning grin blooms across Cas's face—okay with simply saying what's on his mind and letting that be that—content with the simple feeling of Cas's finger threading between his own; warm in contrast to the early autumn breeze.

But being okay with the silence doesn't mean that Dean's heart doesn't skip two (or twenty) beats when the next words out of Cas's mouth are, "I don't think I've ever loved anyone as much as I love you right now, Dean Winchester."