Dean smiles down at Cas, leaning back after bending down to hand Cas a bowl full to the brim with ice cream and to kiss his forehead, shamelessly taking full advantage of their closeness. He has waited to have this for long enough to keep himself from enjoying it now that it's his to have and to keep forever.
Castiel says that a lot nowadays, and it never stops feeling like it did the very first time.
Even the desperate pull of his grief couldn't tamper the warmth and rush he felt at those words. A loving embrace, the touch of the Sun all over his face in a warm afternoon in the middle of autumn.
Now that warmth, still accompanied by some disbelief, comes mostly followed by a joy Dean has never experienced before. The kind of feeling one reads about, dreams about, sure it can't exist in real life.
He says it back twice, like he always does,
" I love you too," for the one time he couldn't say it back,
and then once more, for the one Castiel has just gifted him,
The words hang between them, and nothing comes to end their world and take them away with it.
He makes his way to the empty side of the couch, not needing to see Cas to know he is smiling at him, as he always does when Dean replies to him in this way.
" If you had said it sooner" Dean turns to look at Cas once he has sat down, the other man, still an angel to Dean, always his angel, has rearranged himself on the other side of their couch in order to have his feet resting on Dean's lap, " If you had been able to say it sooner, I mean," he adds, " when would you have told me?"
Castiel looks at him, thoughtful, his smile faltering a bit, turning into a frown, like he has never wondered such thing himself.
He doesn't say anything for a while lost in his own memories, and Dean wonders when he would have said it himself, if he had been a bit braver...
He wonders if Cas is thinking about the second time they went to purgatory, if the relief of being together, of forgiveness, of a hug that Dean still thinks should have lasted longer, could have pushed them to that confession, to that single moment of truth shared in a land that had seen Dena in his knees, twice, praying for Castiel to find his way back to him.
He wonders if Castiel was thinking about those words, about a stolen kiss, in the parking lot of a motel, under the buzzing neon lights, during one of their shared hunting trips across the countries. Sam waiting for them to come back to their room, the both of them too lost in each other eyes and company to notice the vertiginous speed of the time flying past them.
He wonders if he could have told Cas when they met again that night, after Lucifer and the pyre, and he wonders if that's what Castiel was thinking, the words resonating loud and clear as a bell inside his mind, when he held Dean closed in front of Mary, after Amara and a darkness that wasn't as strong as the one that took Cas away from him.
He wonders if it could have been a quiet and intimate moment in the kitchen back in the bunker, a random tuesday night, while Dean cooked and Cas kept him company or if it was always destined to be a whirlwind of emotions.
All that wondering and daydreaming comes to a sudden halt when Castiel lifts his legs from Dean's lap, scooting closer to him, reaching for his hand, " I fear it was never the right time for us, don't you think?" Dean nods along, they were always apart, losing each other over and over again, both of them unable to find a moment for such a pivotal change, " since that very moment I asked you if you didn't believe you deserved salvation I, unconsciously at first, made it my mission to make you realize you were worth that and so much more, and I was happy, happy to be able to say that the last words I ever said were words of love to you, a celebration of our bond, a reminder of your worth."
Dean blinks rapidly, both of them pretending they can't tell there are tears forming in his eyes, Castiel lets go of his hand, reaching up to cradle the side of his face instead, Dean laughs, a wet, quiet sound, " I will only accept that answer because you came back to me so I could say it back to you."
stormborns
vaporwave
