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It was an ordinary Friday afternoon, perhaps a little more pleasant than most, as Monday had some faculty thing going down; Dean didn’t remember exactly what it was, but he knew he had the day off from school, and a three day weekend was nothing to sniff at.
For the most part, his routine had remained the same for most of the day: homeroom, government, trig, gym, lunch, physics, study hall, lit. Typical Friday for a senior. He’d kind of hoped he could blow off lit entirely and skip out after physics, but Cas had been adamant they stay for the lecture on The Old Man and the Sea.
“It’s going to be on the cumulative final, Dean,” he had warned, even though it was only October, and Dean had relented. He couldn’t have left Cas without a ride home, after all.
It was two weeks out until Halloween and with Cas’ parents gone for the weekend to celebrate their anniversary, Dean was camping out at the Tippens household, ostensibly to keep Cas’ parents from worrying while they were away, but most honestly just to see what sort of stupid shit he and his best friend could get up to during an unsupervised weekend.
Thus far it had consisted of double pepperoni pizza, a miniature bottle of Bacardi split between two cans of Coke, and a few hack and slash horror flicks on the flat screen in Cas’ basement.
Pleasantly buzzed (not that he’d admit it – Dean had cultivated the image of a hard partier and couldn’t let word out that a couple ounces of airplane rum had him happy), Dean was slouched against the leather of the old couch the Tippens had relegated to the basement rec room after Cas’ mother had gotten a redecorating bug a few years back, watching a man in a mask walk very slowly after a screaming blonde in heels on the screen.
He snorted when the blonde tripped, rolling his eyes at her high-pitched and mostly unconvincing shriek of terror, and tipped back the rest of his can of soda. It was only then he noticed that Cas, sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, was speaking.
“…So I think you should fuck me,” he was saying, and Dean choked.
The mildly alcoholic and extremely carbonated drink sluiced up through his nasal passages, burning and making him cough. His eyes were watering by the time he looked up at his friend, who was waiting expectantly for some sort of response.
“You want me to do WHAT?” Dean sputtered, eyes wide. He had to have misheard; that was really the only possible explanation.
For his part, Cas just squinted, cocking his head to the side and surveying his friend for a long moment, before repeating the words that had sent Dean gagging.
“I think you should ‘fuck’ me,” he repeated, making a point to use actual air quotes as he spoke. On any other day, such a gesture would have earned an eye-roll from Dean, but he was too confused to even react.
“I think I missed somethin’ here,” Dean spoke up, leaning forward on the couch so that his elbows rest on his knees. “Wanna catch me up, Cas?”
The other boy huffed in annoyance, then pulled himself up off the floor. With a wobbling step, he collapsed onto the couch next to Dean, only narrowly missing landing in his friend’s lap.
“I said, I think you should ‘fuck’ me,” he said once again. “Honestly, it makes perfect sense, if you think about it. You would, wouldn’t you?”
“I… fuck, Cas, what the hell?” Dean sputtered again, turning a bright rosy shade of red.
It had been midway through their sophomore year that Cas had confided in Dean, his best friend since the sixth grade, that he didn’t think he was all that into girls. It had been a little bit of a surprise at the time; Cas had been dating Meg Masters for several months at the time, and Dean had caught them more than once making out hot and heavy. It had been clear as he spoke the words that Cas was more or less terrified, and Dean had done everything in his power to make his friend feel better.
There was nothing wrong with it, he had said.
Not everyone digs chicks, it’s all cool, he had said.
Even he found that one dude on NCIS kind of hot, Dean had said.
After that, Cas had calmed, and went about his newfound sexual awakening as pragmatically as possible. He very gently broke it off with Meg, who more or less shrugged and moved on to fresh meat. Cas then announced it to his parents over breakfast just after school had ended for the year, and being the ridiculously supportive people that they were, they just nodded, and asked him to let them know if he needed anything from them.
All in all, it had been a very calm and collected sauntering out of the closet, if that’s what it really way. Two years later and Cas hadn’t dated at all, and seemed to be questioning himself more than when he had started.
And now this.
“Cas, man, where is this even coming from?” Dean asked, frowning.
Cas sighed. “I was reading an online forum for teenagers who are questioning their sexuality, and the point was made that one should explore all possible facets before making a singular decision. It makes perfect sense, of course. And my time with Meg made it clear to me that… that, in particular, was not something that I… that I wanted.”
Dean nodded, still not quite following. Cas had a way of using too many words when something had him really amped up, and it seemed he was barreling full speed down that track. Dean reached out and patted the other boy’s shoulder, leaving his hand there when Cas shot him a grateful look.
“The problem is that while… while I do feel attraction towards… other males,” Castiel went on, beginning to bloom a blush to rival Dean’s as he spoke, “I’ve never… that is to say, while on occasion I would have liked to… I haven’t… with… you know.”
“Cas, man, you tryin’ to tell me you’ve never been with a guy?” Dean asked, moving the conversation forward. Cas blushed even deeper and nodded; that much, Dean had expected. He was certain that if Cas had even shown interest in any of the boys at their school, he would have heard about it from the start. “Okay, so where do I fit in here?” he asked.
Cas opened his mouth to speak, and then stopped. He produced a second airline sized bottle of booze from his pocket – Dean made a mental note to punch him for holding out later on – and unscrewed the cap, downing half of it straight before handing the bottle to Dean, who quickly finished the other half.
The world spun a little for a moment then, and the boys both gripped one another to stay on; they should seriously have rethought their exercise in recreational drinking.
Dean tried not to notice how hot he felt, or how close Cas had gotten; the other boy really was in his lap now, gripping the front of his t-shirt with both hands as though any sudden move might shake him off the couch and send him tumbling to the floor.
“It only makes sense, Dean,” Cas explained, blue eyes wide and only slightly red-rimmed. Dean tried not to think about them, about how sometimes he thought that Cas’ eyes, bright and blue and always so animated, framed by thick dark lashes, were prettier than any girl’s he’d ever seen.
Dean swallowed hard. “What makes sense?” he asked, trying to ignore the way he saw Cas’ eyes track the movements of his lips as he spoke. He swallowed again, pausing and licking his lips, and watched as Cas’s already wide open eyes seemed to widen just a little more, his pupils to dilate and darken.
“You could do it,” Cas said, and his voice had dropped to a whisper. He was so close now that Dean could feel Cas’ breath against his own lips as the boy spoke.
“I could do what?” Dean whispered back. He knew the answer, of course; he just wanted to hear it again.
Cas shifted his body forward, moving so that his thighs bracketed Dean’s on the couch, pressing their foreheads together and letting his eyes close. Dean reached up without thinking, pushing his fingers through Cas’ dark brown hair.
It was always a mess, that hair. Dean had always kind of loved that about him, always reached out to ruffle it further just to annoy him, or so he claimed. Maybe he had always kind of liked the way Cas would reach out and shove his shoulder in response. Maybe he had always thought Cas’ hair was so soft, had always liked the way it tickled his finger tips, liked the way it made Cas duck his head and blush when he reached out for it.
Maybe he had kind of always liked the feel of Cas’ lithe, lean body against his own, when he’d bunk over and Cas would roll his eyes at Dean’s over-masculine platitudes about sleeping on the floor, insisting the other boy share his bed, and they’d wake up in a tangled mess among Cas’ sheets and blankets, never mentioning it after it happened, again and again.
Maybe his hands were gripping the other boy’s waist not to steady him, but to feel, to creep up beneath the thin material of Cas’ t-shirt and feel the burning skin beneath, to rub calming circles there with his palms and pull Cas just that little bit closer.
He was biting his lip now and Dean could practically see the wheels turning in his head, wondering if this was too far, wondering if this would ruin everything, wondering if it meant the end of years and years of friendship. It could be better, Dean wanted to say. They could make it even better, taking it there.
“Ask me again,” Dean breathed, and couldn’t stop himself from closing the distance between them for one chaste perfect kiss. “Ask me,” he repeated, licking his lips again, shivering at the taste of soda and rum and Cas that had been left behind.
“Dean,” the other boy whined, stealing a kiss back, no longer chaste but deep and full of longing. “Dean, please. Want you. Always wanted you.”
“Say it, Cas,” Dean replied, and he couldn’t deny that they were making out now, words coming between heavy breaths and deep kisses, hands wandering and bodies beginning a slow grind. “Say it for me, baby. C’mon.”
Cas shivered. “I want you to fuck me, Dean,” he said, and seemed to change his mind about being polite, and decided to just take what he wanted.
It was some eight years later when Dean went the whole nine yards, decked their place out in candles and rose petals and pulled out the ring that had been burning a hole in his pocket for more than a month.
He was surprised and horrified when Cas’ initial reaction was to widen his eyes and ask, “You want me to do WHAT?” When the other man grinned, the words finally clicked into place in Dean’s mind and he barked out a laugh, sweeping Cas into an embrace.