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Dean woke up easily, the kind of awake that happens when a person comes to consciousness without the aid of an alarm. Of course, that meant he was either up late or very, very early and, as a quick glance at the bedside clock told him, it was not the one he'd been hoping for. He groaned and mashed his head back into the pillow, willing his body to not actually be awake and ready to start the day at 3:45 in the morning... but to no avail. Christ, if anyone had told him getting turned into a demon and back again would be screwing with his circadian rhythms four months after the fact, he'd have put a kibosh on the whole mark thing out there with Cain and his bees! (Not that he'd exactly read the fine print in the first place, he thought reproachfully). Oh this was good: self-recrimination and insomnia. Excellent. Well, he could at least evaluate his terrible life choices over a piece of the pie left over from dinner. And maybe a finger or two of scotch to help him get back to sleep...
As the minutes ticked over from 3:59 to 4:00am, Dean sat up and scrubbed a hand over his face. The floor was cold under his feet, but the air was nicely warm so he decided to forego the robe as he trudged out towards the kitchen in his threadbare sweatpants. All of the lights were off, and he tried to be quiet so as not to alert any of Sam's deep-rooted “Trespasser” instincts with an unexpected loud noise. He made it all the way to the kitchen before he heard it. Paused mid-step halfway to the refrigerator, Dean tilted his head and closed his eyes, listening.
There was music playing in the living room.
All the speakers in the rest of the bunker were turned off, leaving only the speakers which surrounded the living area playing quietly. This wasn't Metallica or Zep or even that crappy pop Charlie had insisted on listening to since her return from Oz. No it was... familiar, but he hadn't heard it since he was almost too little to remember. It was old – like, classical music old, and mostly voices. A choral piece the likes of which triggered memories of when he was too young to work the record player at Bobby's all by himself. He crept toward the sound, curious, and as he got closer he started to make out the Latin being sung.
Cor mundum crea in me, Deus.
et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis.
Ne proiicias me a facie tua,
et spiritum sanctum tuum ne auferas a me.
Dean knew this... It was one of the Psalms, he was sure of it! But he couldn't place the music. Sussing out the specifics flew out the window, however, when he entered the living area proper.
Cas was sitting alone in the middle of the living room, dead center of the couch. His head was bent, his hands buried in the hair at the crown of his head, and both elbows were propped on his knees. He appeared to have discarded both his trenchcoat and suit jacket at some point, and Dean was slightly taken aback by the glow of his white dress shirt in the darkness of the room. All of the lights were off and the speakers played softly enough not to be heard from the rest of the bunker, but they echoed the dense sound throughout the room until the air was thick with soft, melodic voices. Dean approached the couch slowly, assuming Castiel must have fallen asleep. It wasn't until he saw the slightly irregular breathing pattern evident in the ride and fall of the expanse if back facing him he realized – shit, maybe he was intruding! The hunter took a deep breath and slowly attempted to retreat without notice.
Unfortunately, with his perfectly imperfect timing, Castiel lifted his head at that moment and glanced back towards the door. Dean was spotted. He was pinned to the spot, caught, a deer in the headlights. The hunter smiled hesitantly and waved (because this wasn't awkward enough, apparently).
“Hi, Cas.”
He tried to sound casual, like he hadn't been creeping around the darkened bunker like some kind of stalker.
Cas' shoulders slumped a little and he scrubbed viciously at his face. Dean decided to ignore the hitched breath and what sounded suspiciously like a sniffle because that would be fucking heartbreaking and...
“Hello, Dean,” was the gravelly response cutting off that particular train of panic-inducing thought. “I apologize if I woke you. I can turn this off.” He looked so damn deflated. Dean had to suppress the sudden urge to leap over the back of the couch and gather him up in a big hug. Instead, the hunter ran a hand through his hair nervously and slowly made his way over around to the front of the couch.
“Naw, man, you're good. I was just scavenging for pie... heard the music.”
Dean was now standing self-consciously in front of the angel, who had yet to meet his eyes. “What, uh...hrm” Dean cleared his throat nervously, rubbed the back of his neck and tried again. “What are you listening to, anyway? I... I feel like I recognize it from a long time ago, but...”
He trailed off and ducked his head, trying to catch Cas' line of sight. The angel wouldn't look at him, and was still hunched over, staring at his hands between his knees.
“I never really understood,” Cas rumbled out quietly after a moment of silence.
“What?” Dean dropped next to him on the couch, leaning forward to hear the quiet words over the soft music.
“Music. We... it's... different. For angels. The sounds of heavenly choirs like those described in your holy texts – those are simply our voices. Music as a concept was abstract, the emotional connection humans had with it was a fact, but not relatable. Even when I was a human, I never took the time.... I didn't think to try...” Cas took a watery breath and looked at Dean, his eyes swimming and full of emotion. He looked so human in that moment, it was all Dean could do to stare back.
“Oh Cas...” he breathed, but the angel shook his head and looked away again, swiping at his eyes roughly with his forearm.
“Charlie made me this.” Cas gestured vaguely and Dean realized he was referring to the music. “She said, if I felt homesick, I should listen. The songs reminded her of angels singing. I didn't think it would work, but I appreciated the gesture. I was so... grateful. Touched by her kindness. It was very thoughtful.”
Dean chuckled. “Sounds like Charlie.” The side of Cas' lips flickered upwards in a ghost of a smile. He sighed and sat up, angling towards Dean but still not making eye contact. The music continued to play, and the hunter vaguely recognized “Jubilate Deo” before Cas began again.
“I was lying in bed thinking about Hannah in Heaven, wondering what was going on there. I thought, why not? I came out here to listen and... and I really listened. I never understood how the sounds can come together and become so much more. How they can make a body's heart beat in time and steal away breath. It didn't sound like home, but at the same time it did... It made me feel so empty and so full at the same time. Like the vibrations reach into my chest. And it makes me remember things for no reason at all, except that it seems natural to remember when I hear the those sounds together. I-I don't know how to...” He snorted impatiently through his nose, apparently unhappy with being unable to articulate his precise thoughts.
“Hey, Hey. I get it,” Dean interjected, placing a comforting hand on the angel's back and moving it back and forth in soothing motions. “You don't have to explain – I live it. Call it a perk of growing up homo sapien.” He smiled a lopsided smile and Cas sagged a bit into his touch, finally meeting his gaze.
The angel huffed a slightly defeated sigh, but Dean felt the frustration bleeding out of him like water under his fingers.
“I feel myself loosing more and more of my grace but I never considered how much more human I would become. Again.” He looked at Dean ruefully. “I'm not an angel anymore Dean, not completely. I'm starting to think I could never really, truly go back after the first time. I know things angels have no business knowing. It makes things... complicated.” He squinted into the distance. “Orders lose their clarity when one has experienced the ability to choose. When one has experienced friendship and sacrifice tempered with the threat of death. Angels shouldn't know how music can make them feel, or how peanut butter and jelly sandwiches taste. Why homemade cheeseburgers are better, or how fulfilling it can be to sit quietly, reading, with someone you care about while it rains outside. Love and hate and joy and grief - They're distractions and complications and counterintuitive to our purpose. But they're all things I know. Things I... feel.” Cas hung his head, then turned and pinned Dean with those blue, blue eyes. He had a line of consternation between his eyebrows, but the rest of his face had softened and something like acceptance hovered around the edges. He took a deep breath, like his next words would take more air than the rest of the conversation.
“I'll never be an angel again, Dean, but I don't think I'm as upset about it as I should be.”
It was like someone had attached a hook to Dean's intestines and twisted. His chest hurt like the breath had been knocked out of him, but he couldn't for the life of him make sense of the murky storm of emotion bubbling beneath his sternum. He was angry at Metatron – for Cas, for himself, for everyone. It was unfair, it was cruel! But there was a bloom of irrational joy as the dying angel spoke, unexpectedly lightening his chest. Hope for happiness and a future and... and what? A tiny, self-centered voice couldn't help but fixate on the examples Cas had chosen, echoes of sitting with Cas – human Cas with his ridiculous omnipresent blue vest – and riding out a rainstorm in the Impala with nothing but a couple of Cas' books on bees and the sound of rain for company. Of cooking in the bunker with the slightly smaller man simply watching while he put together dinner.
The hunter took a shaky breath and shifted, breaking their stare-down to twist and wrap his other arm around Castiel's shoulders, clasping him in an unexpectedly solid hug. Cas stiffened for a moment before bending his elbows and clutching awkwardly but tightly to Dean's waist. The white shirt wasn't thick, and Dean was suddenly reminded that he himself was shirtless. His bare chest pressed against the buttons of Cas' front and he was able to feel the warmth and shifting of the man's back muscles through the material under his hands. But as Cas buried his face in Dean's neck, the hunter decided he couldn't quite bear to loose the feeling of mutual comfort quite yet and put any slightly strange fluttering of “you're being a total chick about this” behind a big, thick door in his brain labelled LATER. The strangely ethereal music continued to play around them as Castiel and Dean sat, calmly wrapped up in each other.
It was Dean who pulled back first, though not far enough to let go. Hands still on the other man's shoulder blades, he locked eyes with the angel – green to blue – and leaned forward to rest his forehead on Castiel's.
“You know I don't care if you're an angel, right?” he asked, a small smile playing at his lips.
From the look on Cas' face, he indeed had not known. He pulled away minutely, eyes widening almost comically and his lips slightly parted, though the only sound he uttered was a slightly startled-sounding “oh.” The startled confusion lasted only a few seconds, though, and was obliterated the brightest smile Dean could remember seeing in a long time, from anyone.
Seriously, he could power a small town with that thing.
“Really?" Dean laughed. "Everything we've been through and you need me to tell you that?”
Cas blushed a little in the darkness and looked down, but couldn't have tamped down the smile if his life had depended on it. “I had... hoped. That I would be permitted to stay for longer than initially discussed. That perhaps, somehow, I could be less burden than asset.”
“Of course you're an asset. Cas, Jesus, how could you think otherwise?” Dean chided gently. Somehow, his left hand gravitated to the dip in Cas' collar, fingers wrapping firmly around the back of his neck. He felt the muscles shift as the angel's jaw tightened.
“I was turned away as a human last time, Dean. As friendly as you were, it appeared you had no interest in me as -”
“Hey,” Dean tightened his fingers a little and nudged the angel to make eye contact again. “I'm so, so sorry,” he whispered. “I was so frickin' scared for Sammy, and I just...” The hunter closer his eyes and rested his forehead against Cas' again. “I listened to the wrong angel.”
“I understand, Dean. It's all right – I was never truly angry.”
“It's not all right, though. I was scared for Sammy and scared for you, scared of you even-”
Cas snorted, abrupt and unexpected in their small shared space. “Nobody was scared of me as a human Dean, certainly not you.”
Dean took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, contemplating. In the dark, wrapped in a cocoon of the warmth brought by proximity and the orchestral voices drowning out the world, he felt safe and slightly invincible. At the same time, this closeness with Cas made him feel as though his heart would beat out of his chest, or he had swallowed a bucket full of butterflies. The nerves weren't new, though, and he'd long since learned to enjoy the softly drunk feeling he got when alone with and close to his angel. The idea of putting a voice to thoughts and feelings that would leave him so exposed would normally be unthinkable. In the moment, however, the hunter couldn't imagine Cas using the information against Dean like so many others would.
“I was scared of you - human you,” Dean started carefully. “You were mortal, and... available. In ways I hadn't thought to account for when you were all...angelic. You couldn't just flap off in the middle of something. You had to eat and sleep and brush your teeth like everybody else. I looked at you and saw another man. But you weren't just another man. You were – are - Cas! And here you were, all feeling feelings and tasting food and you could die, all of a sudden. And I just... wasn't... prepared... for how completely that thought could... could break me. “ He took a slightly shaky breath and closed his eyes, shutting green to the blue staring so intensely as he spoke. “The idea of you dead because of me – or worse, some shell of who you had been, because of me. I just couldn't... I was... chicken-shit. Of you. Human you.”
Dean's last words hung in the air between them and he huffed a chuckle, desperate to continue the conversation. “Well, s'long as we're bein' all chick-flick about it...”
“Dean,” Cas breathed. Dean could feel the air across his face as he shook his head minutely. “I had no idea.”
Dean smiled and cocked an eyebrow, leaning back again so they could see each other's faces. “That was the point, fuzz-butt,” he responded archly.
Cas only narrowed his eyes at the hunter, extricating one arm carefully from around Dean's waist and settling it deliberately against the his jaw instead. The bravado immediately dissipated and he looked at Cas with wide, intense eyes.
“What'cha doin', Cas?”
If Dean didn't know better, he'd have qualified the smile and inquisitive head-tilt he received in response as coy. Since he did know better, he had to settle for incredibly-hot-in-an-accidental-way.
“Something I didn't think I'd ever do,” Cas responded cryptically. He clarified by putting just a ghost of pressure on Dean's jaw with his hand, pulling the blonde close. Cas' eyes darted to Dean's lips for a fraction of a second, before meeting Dean's eyes.
The press of lips was soft and dry. It was careful, delicate, and possibly the best first kiss Dean had experienced since Michelle Hatly, the senior he'd had a crush on for his whole freshman year before they finally...
Cas made a little noise somewhere in the back of his throat that sounded a little like he was going to cry and a lot like he was happy. There was suddenly a lot more tongue involved and screw Michelle, this was definitely the best first kiss Dean had ever experienced.
Cas still had one hand on Dean's jaw, guiding slightly and caressing the side of his face gently while the other arm, still wrapped around his waist, clutched at his bare back and pressed them together. Dean, for his part, had buried both of his hands in the dark hair at the back of Cas' head and was doing everything in his power not to climb bodily into the other man. (Hyperbole, maybe, but Dean was way too far gone to care). The hunter leaned back slightly and twisted, falling in slow motion and taking care Cas was following him, until he had them lying down across the couch. Cas was a comforting, solid weight on top of him as they slowly and deeply explored each other's mouths. Eventually, the hunter used their new position to press a soft kiss to the corner of the angel's mouth before moving down to nip lightly at the side of his neck. Head buried in the crook of Dean's neck, Cas decided to take up some exploring of his own, trailing light kisses and up to the spot just under the blonde man's ear before sucking a light bruise into the skin. Dean moaned and clutched at the man in dishevelled business attire above him.
“You're surprisingly good at this,” he mumbled with a shaky laugh, taking a deep breath to steady himself for the first time since this began. A deep chuckle rumbled beneath his ear.
“I did rebuild you, as you say, from scratch, Dean Winchester. One would hope I put everything back in its rightful place.”
Dean could feel the smile against his skin as Cas placed another kiss against the side of his neck and settled down on top of the hunter's solid form. Their legs entangled and both Dean's arms wound their way around Cas' waist, settling comfortably as Cas' own arms encircled Dean's head on the couch. They lay like that for a while, listening to the rest of Charlie's cd and breathing together until Dean felt his eyelids begin to droop. He shook himself awake and in so doing accidentally shifted Cas, who had apparently been as on the verge of sleep as Dean himself. The angel blinked blearily and set his chin on Dean's sternum.
“We should go to bed. It's late.”
Dean blinked rapidly for a moment before the innocent nature of the statement sunk in. He smiled warmly, not quite ready for the moment to end.
“My room or yours?” he asked quietly.
Cas frowned at him in confusion for a moment before hesitant realization dawned on his face. He smiled back and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He offered a hand to Dean, still lying on the couch and the smile turned into a sleepy grin.
“Yours.”