Work Text:
Part 1: Suspicious Behavior
“This is the worst day of the year,” Dean stated and slammed his hands on the counter. His sister didn’t look up from the cash register.
He straightened up, cleared his throat, exclaimed once again: “This is the worst day of the year,” and slammed his palms harder on the counter.
“What is?” Charlie asked, still not looking up.
“This.” He grabbed the page he’d been reading through and shoved it in her face. “Valentine’s Day.”
She looked at the page, spaced out. “I think I gave someone twenty dollars more than I should have,” she said.
“Charlie. Focus. This is important. I’m bored.”
She shook her head and took the page from his hand. “’Show your loved one you love them today’,” she read. “’With fifteen percent off each purchase from February first to February fourteenth’. Is this our sale-of-the-month?”
“It’s so dumb. People spend a hundred dollars on this one day that has nothing special about it just so their partners would think they still love them. If we all just started trusting each other, Valentine’s Day would be obsolete.”
“I think it’s nice,” said Charlie. She frowned at the register and started to recount the bills inside. “Giving people flowers is nice.”
Dean looked around him helplessly. The shop was filled with flowers. It was a flower shop. Damn his sister and her idea to agree when he offered her to apply for a job together.
“Get a girlfriend and you’ll change your mind,” Charlie said.
“How would you know,” he muttered. The shop was nearly empty – as it was most of the time – which meant that he was bored out of his eyeholes, like he was most of the time. This Valentine’s Day sale ought to change things, though. People went crazy for this stupid holiday.
“I used to think it was dumb,” said Charlie. “Then I got a girlfriend. And changed my mind.”
“I don’t need a girlfriend,” he replied. “I know it’s dumb. If I’m spending money on someone I’m dating, at least let it be food. They can eat an entire Denny’s menu for all I care, but I ain’t wasting my money on getting them dead plants that won’t last a week.”
The door opened, and someone walked in.
“That’s the spirit,” said Charlie. “With this attitude you’re going to be employee of the month.” She looked up and nudged him with an elbow. “Check her out.”
His eyes followed hers to a girl standing at the front and looking at the chrysanthemums.
“What about her?” He asked dryly.
“She’s cute.”
"Then you should ask her out," he shot back. Charlie sent him a scowl.
"Watch me, dumbass. If only finding girls who like girls was that easy."
"She might be gay," he said. "And then me asking her out would be really awkward."
"She's not gay," said Charlie. "I can sense them." And she placed two fingers behind her head, sticking up like antennae.
What do you know, he wanted to tell her. He placed his elbows on the counter and pretended to read the monthly sale sign again.
"What about her?" Charlie asked, pointing her chin at some girl or the other.
"Not interested," he answered without looking up.
The door opened again, and Charlie fell silent. Dean glanced up.
He was a guy. A guy walking into a flower shop. Dean didn't judge; though a couple of the other patrons might, judging by the way their eyes slid towards him. He didn't seem to mind them, walking straight into the daisies area without a second thought. Looking pretty good, too, in his jeans and his hoodie and his mussed hair.
God, Charlie would flip if she could read his thoughts right now.
She was leaning forward now, taking the ten dollar bill the guy was handing her. Castiel. He was in their class.
“For someone special?” Charlie asked.
Dean tried to keep his eyes on the counter.
“My dead aunt,” Castiel replied.
An awkward silence settled between the three of them while Charlie processed the purchase. Dean couldn’t tell why he felt like something needed to be said to alleviate some invisible tension. He never even hung out with them in public – not with Castiel, neither with his annoying sister. Then Charlie turned to him.
“Don't you just wish you had a date sometimes?” She asked as she collected change from the register into her hand. “Not even a little bit? Someone to watch crappy romantic movies with, or someone who'll write you notes and hold you while you watch the stars on a rooftop?”
“Nope,” said Dean, and he was making a very concentrated attempt to keep his tone flat.
Charlie handed Castiel his change, and he picked up the flowers and walked out of the store.
“Don't you have even the tiniest part in you that wants that?”
The door slid shut behind him.
“Nah,” said Dean.
She leaned against the counter and looked into his eyes with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. “Not even a crush?”
“Nuh-uh.” His voice was a little high. But Charlie looked away.
“Okay.”
His shoulders untightened. He was out of the danger zone.
For now.
The corridor outside the school gymnasium was next to deserted in this hour of the afternoon. Sunset rays spilled into the hall through the wide windows.
Dean crossed the silent space with silent steps and a prayer for no one to see him. He checked the time briefly as he walked; he was late.
Down the stairs and toward the supply room. His steps echoed into the quiet. Step step step. Step step step.
Stop at the narrow door. Turn the knob. Slip into the darkness.
Another set of hands found him immediately; waist, chest, up to his face, and sinking into his hair. He fell into the kiss.
“Did you get it?”
“Yeah,” he whispered back. “Double Stuf Oreos. The line at the supermarket was a nightmare.”
Cas pulled back to look at him, though Dean doubted he could see much in the dark. “My parents aren’t home tonight,” he said. “Do you want to come over?”
“Uh.” Dean scratched his neck. “What- what for?”
“Studying,” said Cas. “You said you’d help me prepare for my exam.”
“Oh.” Dean dropped his hand. “Right. Yeah.” He leaned in again, but Cas put a hand against his chest. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“What did you think I meant?” And he could tell – even though it was dark and he could barely make out Cas’ features – he could tell from the tone of his voice that Cas was squinting.
“Nothing,” he said, and leaned in, and this time Cas obliged. One more move, one more kiss, one more sigh – before the door opened and the light turned on.
They jerked away from each other. The old bulb above them shed light on the scene: on the walls, shelves filled with skipping rope, old gym sweatshirts and training weights; on the floor, waist-high containers of footballs, baseballs, basketballs and tennis balls. And within the chaos of the room, standing as far away from one another as humanly possible with all the mess, were Cas and him, watching the girl who stood at the door with poorly masked panic.
“What are you doing here?” Asked the girl.
“Looking,” Dean said quickly. “We’re looking.” But he couldn’t think of something to be looking for. “For the light switch. We were looking for the light switch.”
“To get rackets,” said Cas.
“Footballs,” Dean corrected, tugging at the ends of his shirt in an attempt to straighten it inconspicuously.
“Rackets and footballs,” Cas concluded.
“Rackets and footballs?” The girl looked from one of them to the other. “You play for both teams?”
“Yes,” Dean choked out.
“What- what are you doing here?” Cas demanded, if weakly.
“I just came here to grab some... balls.”
“We’ll be out of your way,” said Dean and started making his way above containers and out of the room.
“We can grab our balls later,” he heard Cas say behind him. They walked out of the room, glanced at one another, and turned in different directions wordlessly.
And as he walked away, from the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a wave of awfully familiar red hair round the corner.
Damn his sister and her insisting on catching him red-handed.
Well – he squared his shoulders and kept his chin up as he walked away. If she did see him – it wouldn’t be with Cas.
Part 2: Treacherous Hearts
Are you sure she didn’t see you?
I’m sure.
He grabbed his fork and took a bite of his mashed potatoes without looking up from his phone.
Really sure?
Dean. You said so yourself. We went in different directions.
“Dean.”
He looked up.
“No phones during dinner,” said his mother.
“It’s about school,” he replied offhandedly, and his eyes dropped again.
I know, he started typing. But she’s been looking at me weird the whole afternoon and now I’m thinking, what if-
And what if she did see me? Cas wrote before he could finish his message.
What if- He let an exhale out through his teeth. This whole thing with Cas, it wasn’t anything serious. They’ve both known it since the beginning. All they did was study in Cas’ house while his parents weren’t home and no one could see them, or make out in some deserted corner of school where no one could see them. It wasn’t with feeling, they both knew it. And he wasn’t going to risk so much, to put so much of himself out there, to let his sister in on what was going on for something that wasn’t with feeling.
Something about that made him uncontrollably irritable. Not just today, but for a while now. Something about the lack of feeling that they had both agreed on pre-relationship, if you could call whatever this was a relationship, like they’d signed some invisible contract to not make a big deal out of it. Something about that just pissed him off.
Dean?
If she did see you, he wrote, and he could feel his irrational anger pool in his stomach as he wrote it, then she’s going to find out, and then she’s going to be on my ass every hour of every day for every detail of what’s going on.
And as if she’d heard him write about her, Charlie craned her neck over the table and tried to sneak a peek at his phone. “Who’re you texting?”
At her words, Sam looked up with interest as well.
“No one,” Dean grumbled. “Butt out.”
His phone sounded the first few notes of his ringtone, and a name appeared on the screen.
“Gotta go,” he said and stood up.
“No one, is it?” Charlie asked, chewing on her vegetables.
“Yup.”
In his room, with the door closed, he answered the phone.
“What’s up?” He said, trying to sound casual.
“I just wanted to make sure we’re good,” said Cas. “You weren’t answering me. I was worried I freaked you out.”
Since when were they doing this? Calling during dinnertime to make sure they were good?
Dean sat down on his bed. “I dunno,” he said, and he didn’t know where he’d gotten the courage to say that. Where he’d gotten the courage to say anything that wasn’t, we’re good, case closed, now let’s go back to pretending I don’t mind losing you because if I don’t pretend, I might actually lose you.
On the other side of the line, there was silence. He couldn’t tell whether it meant Cas was bored or anxious.
“I just-” he started, when he heard steps outside his room. “I have to go,” he said as his sister opened the door.
“Dean-”
He hung up.
“Start knocking,” he shot at Charlie. “What do you want? I’m in the middle of something.”
“Just some quality time with my bro.” She plopped down on his bed and crossed her legs, looking around with an interest Dean didn’t appreciate, like a police dog sniffing for clues. “We never hang out outside of school. And work. And home.”
“Go away,” said Dean. “I’m leaving.”
“Really?” Charlie raised an eyebrow and put a hand on her chin like she was a detective from the eighties. “Where?”
“The... soup store.”
“The soup store?” Her eyes narrowed.
“Yep.”
“Great,” she hopped up. “I’m in the perfect mood for soup.”
“You’re not invited,” he said and left the room before she could reply.
He didn’t even finish walking down the hall before he heard steps behind him.
“I think I’ll get tomato,” said Charlie. “Or maybe noodle. Do you think they have chocolate soup for dessert?”
He stopped at the door with a sigh. She wasn’t going to leave him alone until he either admitted his soup plans were fake, or got her some damn soup. He grabbed his phone and texted Cas.
Sorry, plans changed. Not going to happen.
And so, fifteen minutes after dinner, he was grabbing his keys and heading to the freaking soup store.
He’d never thought about Valentine’s Day.
He thought about that, lying on one of the empty benches of the school stadium.
He’d never thought about Valentine’s Day, not when he was single, not when he had girlfriends, so why was he thinking about it now? It wasn’t like he wanted to be one of those mushy couples who exchanged chocolates and flowers and expensive watches and went to expensive restaurants on February fourteenth.
He just...
God, this was ridiculous.
He just wanted the idea of it to not be so absurd. He wanted to be able to say, ‘Hey, man, let’s go eat pizza and maybe watch a horror movie while everybody else is being tacky and gross and sharing a dessert at a fancy restaurant’, and to know Cas wasn’t going to laugh in his face when he said it. And all throughout thinking that, he tried to keep his face blank. Eyes closed, skin warming in the treacherous, cool rays of the winter sun, head in Cas’ lap, who was mumbling to himself while reading. No one would see them here, not in this hour of the afternoon, not from this distance in the deserted stadium.
“What’re you reading?” He asked. He felt Cas close the book to look at him, or maybe at the open field.
“English lit homework.”
“Oh,” he said. “I didn't do it. Read it out loud.”
There was a pause. Cas took in a breath. When he read, he sounded somewhat nervous and vaguely guilty.
“Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword.”
Dean frowned slightly, eyes still closed. “That’s not homework.”
“It...” Cas cleared his throat and spoke with more confidence. “It is. You'd know if you'd have done it.”
He spared a moment to wish with all he had that Cas didn’t see through his bullshit as easily as he saw through Cas’ now. Then he said:
“Our homework isn't some poem Oscar Wilde wrote after he went to prison for fucking some dude. I doubt Mr. Zach even knows who Oscar Wilde is.”
“I thought you didn't read poetry because you've got better things to do,” Cas retorted, his voice perfectly calm now.
“I don't read it,” he replied, doing his best to imitate Cas’ nonchalance. “You talk about it too much. Maybe I should hang out with you less.”
This was their way, pretending to not care about each other at all, and Cas stuck faithfully to his role. And so did he; or, at least, he tried. Sometimes – and these were the most frightening moments – he felt that Cas was seeing through him, seeing that he really did care. And he couldn't think of something more frightening than showing feeling to someone who didn't show feeling to you.
If this doesn’t count as showing feeling, he replied to himself. This, sitting here, with his one hand resting on your chest holding a book, and the other with its fingers entangled in your hair. If making out in a dark supply room doesn’t count as showing feeling. But it didn't, not really. Passion wasn't the same as feeling.
Cas’ answer came out plain and simple. “Or maybe you should start reading it.”
It struck a nerve for two reasons. One was that Cas was reaching out, suggesting to meet in the middle and compromise, and that pissed him off for the same unexplained reason that Cas sending that And what if she did see me? text pissed him off. The second was that this had never occurred to him. Never had it occurred to him to read Oscar Wilde, neither to compromise. And now he opened his eyes, about to shoot back that poetry was stupid and confusing, and saw that Cas was looking out at the field, just as Dean had imagined him doing. His eyes were set on a spot far, far away; his jaw set, too, determined not to show feeling.
“Maybe I will,” Dean said quietly then, and looked away.
Part 3: The Suspicious Suspects
When Valentine’s day came, he found himself waiting by Cas’ locker before school. He wasn’t sure what he was doing there. They didn’t just wait for each other out in the hall where everyone could see. So he wasn’t sure what he was doing there, looking nervously toward the end of the hall, waiting.
And he really wasn’t sure about the note.
It was a stupid idea. Stupid; and it was stupid to think it wasn’t stupid.
He tapped his fingers on his leg impatiently. Cas would come round the corner any moment now, and his face would light up just a little like it always did when Dean’s presence took him by surprise, and then maybe they could walk to class together or something.
He tapped his leg some more. He watched people go up and down the hallway.
The note thing was stupid.
He was making a bigger deal out of it than it was.
He took a notebook out of his bag and tore a piece of paper from it. He used the side of the lockers for support and started writing.
Hey.
I know we’re not the cutesy icky sort of people and we don’t really do this kinda stuff, but I guess I wanted to say have a good day and stuff. Happy Val Day.
Thinking about you.
He read it again and started to cross out the last sentence when someone said behind him,
“What’re you doing?”
He turned around and shoved the note into his pocket. “Nothing,” he said to Charlie. “Do you just manifest wherever you’re unwanted now?”
She ignored him and leaned against the wall. “Who are you waiting for?”
“No one,” he said.
“Great. Am I finally gonna meet this no one you’ve been talking about for days?”
“Nope.”
Charlie’s phone buzzed, and she looked down. He took the chance to slip the note into Cas’ locker.
His phone buzzed, too, and at that moment Cas showed up down the hall and walked toward them. Dean was too busy looking – and then too busy trying not to look – to notice his sister taking concerning interest in Cas’ appearance.
“Why is Castiel wearing your shirt?” She asked then, and Dean’s head shot up.
“He’s-” not, was his first instinct, but he cut himself off. It was a black tee that read ‘Led Zeppelin rocks’. Not exactly something Cas would wear under regular circumstances. He changed tactics. “I’m doing him…”
“I knew it!” Charlie called.
“A favor,” Dean finished sharply. He didn’t let himself dwell on her comment for one second, otherwise she would have seen it in his eyes. That she was right. “I ran into him at the gate and watched him drop a can of coke all over his shirt. And I had a spare one, so.”
That was the truth. His secret sort-of-boyfriend was a total buffoon.
“Huh,” said Charlie.
His eyes dropped to his phone, trying to avoid further questioning. He had one message from Cas; a time and a place, later this evening, after his shift at the flower shop.
Great. Another no-strings-attached makeout session. Or worse; studying.
If only he had the courage to say something without getting all sweaty about Cas’ reaction.
Cas passed by them and unlocked his locker.
Charlie folded her arms over her chest. “Who is it, then?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” From the corner of his eye he could see Cas notice the note in his locker, open it, read it, and glance at him with a flicker of something intense and warm in his eyes.
“Your mystery date.” Charlie looked into his eyes fiercely, as if she could pull the answer out of his brain via telepathy, or via his nose. “The one you text eighty times a day and sneak out to see every other night.”
Cas shoved the note in his pocket, then took his things and left.
“I can have mystery friends,” Dean said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His palms were starting to feel damp.
“I heard you say ‘baby’ on the phone last night.” Charlie grabbed his shoulder, and it seemed her eyes could bore a hole through his head and into his mind. “Who is it?”
She had him. They both knew it. She had him, and so, there was only one thing to do.
He leaned back, away from her hold, and pulled up the most confident smirk he could muster.
“Guess you'll never know,” he said, and left her by the lockers.
God, he should get an Oscar for this.
Dean stood in front of a building and checked his phone. It was half past ten.
This was the address. Which was weird, because it was Cas’ house, but at the same time it wasn’t.
It was his building. But instead of the second floor, the text said ‘sixth floor’. Dean walked in and started climbing.
He didn’t want to do this, not today; but his mind wouldn’t give it a rest. You’re rethinking, it said, don’t lie, you’re rethinking. You’re afraid.
On that, he would admit, his mind was right. He was afraid. He was afraid because this has been going on for months and neither him nor Cas had ever made a move to make it something more than a longlasting fling. He was afraid that to Cas this was something meaningless, because that was how it had started and they'd never spoken about making it anything more.
He got to the fifth floor, somewhat breathless from the exercise, and looked up.
There was no sixth floor.
There was only a ladder leading to the roof.
As he climbed up the night sky engulfed him, stars sprinkled into it like freckles. The wind held a chill. And there was Cas, sitting on the floor, looking back at him when he entered.
“Hey,” he said, and there was softness in his eyes. He didn’t say, we need to talk. He didn’t say, this was alright, but I’m over it, so goodbye now, or, please hold on to me and never let go. He didn’t say anything when Dean came to sit beside him – just leaned his head on Dean’s shoulder and let out a quiet sigh. And this was enough. This was good enough, in the best possible sense.
It was the kind of moment that didn’t need words.