Chapter Text
Castiel wanders into the kitchen to find Dean, Claire, and Kaia sitting at a table surrounded by various piles of string.
“You cross the right over the left,” Kaia is explaining patiently, her thin brown hands moving over Claire’s, who is holding what looks to be an enormous clump of pink and orange and white knots. Claire is trying valiantly to frown, but Castiel can see the heat in her face each time Kaia guides her wrist into a new position, and it makes him smile. Kaia smiles back with fondness.
Dean, for his part, is focusing so intently on his own string that he hasn’t noticed Castiel at all.
Castiel drapes himself over Dean’s back, arms around his shoulders, and drops a kiss to the tender nape of his neck.
“Hey,” Dean rumbles. He does not smile, but he melts back into Castiel, voice quiet with concentration. He tilts his face up for a kiss.
Castiel obliges him, heart quivering. “What’s happening here?” he asks softly.
Dean is smiling now, slight, and he lets the weight of his head rest back against Castiel’s chest. “Ladies’ Night,” he says, gesturing with an elbow toward Claire and Kaia, who are now giggling at whatever mess Claire has managed to make. “Kaia’s teachin’ us to make bracelets. Wanna join?”
“I’ll observe from here, if that’s alright,” says Castiel, refraining from mentioning that only two participants of Ladies’ Night seem to fit the bill. He has a feeling that Dean is intimately aware of this fact. He has a feeling that ten years ago, five, Dean would have scoffed at the very idea of joining in on something like this, with want in his eyes that would have made Castiel vaguely murderous toward whoever hurt him. He kisses Dean again, and holds him a bit tighter. “That looks beautiful, Dean.”
Dean scoffs lightly, but he’s looking at the bracelet he’s braiding together with a smile tucked up in the corner of his mouth that Castiel wants to treasure.
Castiel watches Dean’s hands move as he, Claire, and Kaia chat. The move slowly, but they move steadily: Dean’s long, blunt fingers are careful and nimble as they cross individual strands of multi-colored thread over each other, looping and knotting and twisting with the same level of devotion that he shows the loading of a gun. The pattern seems easy for him, and Castiel is not surprised—Dean is one of the smartest people that Castiel knows even if he doesn’t believe so, his brain made for working out patterns and problems before anyone else knows that they exist.
Castiel is so pleased that Dean can use that lovely mind for something as harmless as the making of a friendship bracelet. Castiel is so very pleased.
“Here!” Claire says triumphantly, holding up her striped bracelet with a ferociously proud glint to her smile. She allows Kaia to tie it on her wrist and then lifts it up to admire with a grin, showing it off in Dean’s direction. “Think you can top that?”
“Probably not,” Dean says honestly, and Claire laughs at him, startled, and Kaia does too. Castiel rests his chin on the top of Dean’s head. “Got old crampy hands.”
Claire moves a chair down to sit next to him, and joins Castiel in watching the gentle, rhythmic movements of his wrists and fingers and palms. “Well, I mean, it looks, like, ok, ” Claire says. When Dean looks up at her, eyebrows raised and a grin forming, she rolls her eyes broadly. “Shut up,” she mutters.
“Didn’t say anything,” Dean says.
“Asshole,” says Claire. When he looks down and away, laughing quietly, she smiles.
Dean finishes soon after Claire and Kaia have migrated to the living room to watch something on television, tying the last knot off with a crease of focus between his eyebrows.
He holds it quietly across his palms.
The bracelet is made of rainbow colors, in thick bright stripes that make Castiel happy just to look at. It’s much longer than Claire’s was, presumably meant for a thicker wrist, and Castiel does not miss the way Dean’s hands have only now become unsteady.
“Here,” Dean says, a much softer echo of Claire’s earlier statement, a more hesitant one. He lifts it up to Castiel, his eyes downcast. “This is for you.”
Castiel’s heart catches in his throat.
“I mean,” says Dean, talking before Castiel has a chance to answer, “only if you want it. I probably should’ve asked first, I just thought—uh, I just thought you might—”
“Dean,” says Castiel, stopping him gently before he can work himself up too badly. “Tie it on me?”
Dean nods, throat bobbing when he swallows.
He approaches this with care, too—because of course he does. That is simply who he is. His nimble fingers fold back the cuff of Castiel’s shirt, and make sure that the bracelet isn’t too tight or too loose. When he’s done, he sits back in his chair, and he smiles.
“I love it,” Castiel says sincerely. He would love it even if it was the ugliest thing he had ever seen. He loves everything Dean has ever given him. A mixtape, a seashell, a family. A home. Himself. And then, because he can never say it enough: “I love you.”
“Cas,” Dean murmurs. He pulls Castiel down. Close. Touches his cheek. “Love you too.”