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Dean stared at Castiel over the body of the vampire they'd just taken down. Dean's knife, a familiar weight gripped in one hand, was clean. It was Castiel's blade that was bloodied, Castiel who had struck the final blow.
In the quiet of the house they'd busted into, they watched each other. Dean knew there could be more vampires upstairs or outside. Knew that right now, he should be leaving to go check on that. The house was a shambling mess, holes in the ceiling above them and jagged smashes through the windows, and he couldn't wait to be out of it. But there was something about the expression on Castiel's face that held him still, unable to look away.
It felt as though they'd been here a thousand times before. Reaching out for each other just by looking, unable to translate it into actual touch, however much Dean ached all rough and raw inside.
Castiel's eyes, those blue eyes that hadn't changed since the day they'd met, were still steady on Dean's own. And they'd stay that way, Dean knew. For as long as Dean could stand the unbearable almost, Castiel would stand it too.
The moment was poised like a sword over both of their heads. Dean didn't know if he wanted it to fall or hang there forever.
“Hey! Hey, you!” he said, finally, just to break the silence.
Castiel raised an eyebrow.
“I’m - are you talking to me?” he said. It wasn't what Dean had expected to hear.
“I mean - who else would I be talking to?” he replied, his tone making the words a question.
“I don’t know. I’m just… not usually who people end up talking to around here,” Castiel answered gravely.
A slight creak in the hallway outside broke Dean's concentration. He flattened his features, shifting his mind easily into the alertness he needed for hunting. He gestured for Castiel to get behind him, moving towards the door with a quietness that was instinctive, though probably unnecessary given that they'd been talking just a moment ago without bothering to whisper. Castiel hesitated for a moment, raising his bloody knife just a little as though to argue it should be him at the front – but then he seemed to shrug to himself and let it go, falling into place behind Dean.
“Oh, well. I just wanted to let you know that you dropped this,” Dean imagined saying to him.
“Oh! Thank you so much -” was the only thing he could imagine Cas would answer.
Dean's heartbeat picked up at the sound of another floorboard groaning outside the door. There was definitely another vamp out there, possibly more than one. For a second, Dean tasted the tang of fear on the back of his tongue. So many hunts over so many years, but he always knew any of them could be his last.
“Dean. I’m Dean,” Dean muttered.
“Dean, then. Thank you again, I don’t know what I would have done without it,” Castiel replied.
Just hearing him say the words was reassuring. Dean let his fear unwind. He wasn't going out on a damn hunt. And not to a bunch of vampires, at the bare least. He could do this in his sleep.
Standing behind the door, Dean debated with himself whether to open it and burst through, or wait for whatever sucker was on the other side to come in looking for them. Another squeak of wood from the hallway made up his mind: the vamp was on the move. He held himself still, breathing quietly, waiting.
The door handle turned, painfully slowly as the vampire tried to avoid making a noise and get the jump on them. Dean felt a little smirk cross his face. Nice try, he thought to himself.
The door swung open. Dean waited for the vamp to walk through it, his knife held ready in the gloom, hungry. He waited –
And waited.
After a few seconds, he threw a confused glance over his shoulder back towards Castiel.
“No problem, dude. Happy to help out,” he murmured.
“I’m Castiel - if - if you wanted to know that,” Castiel answered, almost as quietly.
“Oh yeah? That’s um - h - hold on. Is that like an angel’s name?”
With that, Dean steadied his grip on his knife, and stepped round to look through the doorway. He was expecting to be greeted by the sharp teeth of a hungry vampire, braced for it – but the hallway was empty.
Dean lowered his knife slightly, his forehead creasing. He glanced back once again at Castiel, who tilted his head to one side.
“Yes, I know it’s odd. My parents were very religious -” Castiel said.
And that was when all hell broke loose.
From above them, through the holes in the ceiling, came the vampires. Not just one, not even two. Three of them, big, burly, and muscular, with looks on their faces that told Dean how familiar and delicious they would find the taste of his sudden fear.
“No, I - huh. Okay this is going to sound weird. And I promise this isn’t a scam,” Dean said to Castiel, maintaining eye contact with the nearest vamp, watching its every move. It feinted left and then right, smirking through fangs as Dean matched its movements. It was playing with him, cocky, thinking he didn’t stand a chance.
“Not the worst start to a scam that I’ve ever heard,” Castiel replied, and Dean watched a sudden flicker of fear cross the vampire’s face.
Dean smiled, and nodded. He raised his eyebrows and his knife, and stepped forward, at the same time as he saw Castiel moving beside him.
Dodge to the left, one arm to parry the vampire’s attempt at grappling him, and then Dean was bringing his knife up through the vampire’s stomach. It grunted, leaning into the blow to try to get its teeth closer to Dean’s neck; Dean pushed it back with all his strength, dislodging his blade at the same time. The vampire staggered, unsteady on its feet. Out of the corner of Dean’s eye, he could see Castiel was locked in a close fight with another of the vamps, but the remaining one was circling around Castiel’s back.
It was watching Castiel with an expression that was full of enjoyment for what it was about to do. Castiel didn’t seem to have noticed it was even there, his attention fixed on the vampire that was snarling right in his face.
“Do you believe in fate?” Dean shouted, but Castiel wasn’t listening, his attention fixed on the vampire in front of him. Dean let out a sharp breath as the vampire he’d wounded pressed in close again. With his lip curled in concentration, Dean grabbed for its hair, brought up his knife, and cut – decapitating it. By the time its body thudded to the ground, Dean had already moved in on the other vamp that was angling for Castiel’s blind spot.
“As in, the cosmos interfering on the behalf of the lives of humans and making it so that all aspects of freewill are meaningless? No. I can’t say that I do. I believe in strong coincidences and our brains finding patterns in the strangest things. But that’s a no to Fate with a capital F,” called Castiel to Dean, as Dean pushed at one of their attackers. Dean shook his head, disbelieving.
“Well then, would you believe that I had this crazy dream last night where I was minding my own business when something was dropped right in front of me as someone passed by and I just knew I had to get it to them. I had to. And when I finally caught up with that person, they turned around and they were an actual angel. And also smoking hot,” he replied, and with another quick flash of his knife, a second vampire fell to the ground. Across from him, Castiel finally managed to twist away long enough to get a good swing, and the third vampire was down.
Dean held still in the sudden silence, listening for any more rustlings or signs of life. He realised he was breathing hard – not because the fight had been long, or even particularly difficult, but something about having watched a monster creeping to attack Castiel’s back had Dean breathless with sudden anger.
After a few moments with no more bloodsuckers dropping out of the ceiling, Dean let his knife fall down to his side. He met Castiel’s eyes, his chest still heaving just a little. Close, he thought. Not very close, but still a little bit too close to never being able to feel Castiel’s gaze like this again.
“Do you use this line on everyone?” Castiel said, his expression wry.
Dean let out a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a sigh of relief.
“Just you so far. Did it work?” he said, moving towards Castiel – that other vampire had been so close to Castiel that he wanted to check him over, make sure one of those fangs hadn’t managed to scrape through skin. Castiel went a little wide-eyed as Dean came towards him and didn’t stop at their usual just-a-little-too-near distance, putting a hand on Castiel’s coat collar and pulling at it to check his neck.
“Could use some tweaking. Make it seem a little bit less out of the blue,” Castiel said, almost a mumble, as though shy under Dean’s touch. Dean tried to stay matter-of-fact, but he could feel his ears going red, and he ducked his head under the pretext of checking Castiel’s hands next.
“In my defense, you’re hot and I panicked,” he said.
Castiel went still.
“Oh. Well. Then it’s all forgiven, obviously. Perhaps I can give you some notes on how to improve that particular pickup line over coffee sometime?” Castiel answered.
Dean could feel his heartbeat beginning to pound again, but for a different reason, now. He met Castiel’s eyes, in the way that they did, the way they always did – and yet this time, after what Castiel had just said, there was something that wasn’t quite the same.
“Sure, but I don’t know what notes you could give me. Seems like it worked,” he said in a low voice. He realised that he still had Castiel’s hand in his own, even though he knew that the vampire hadn’t managed to cause any damage. Just holding it didn’t feel – it didn’t feel wrong, though. The way Castiel’s fingers were steady against his own, it almost had Dean believing that he didn’t want to let go, either.
“Only because you’re very lucky,” Castiel said.
Dean’s knife dropped out of his hand to the floor. And he should have been jerked out of the moment, should have bent to pick it up, moved clumsily away. But Castiel’s hand was still in his own, and they were so close, and Castiel was looking at him as though it was possible – as though all of it were possible, everything he wanted, all of it.
With a clench in his gut, knowing that this could be the worst or the best decision of his life, Dean let himself lean ever so slightly forward.
Castiel leaned in, too. And it was as simple, then, as just closing his eyes, and – and there was the touch of Castiel’s lips. Uncertain, aching, hopeful, all of it somehow there in the way he kissed Dean. And Dean gripped Castiel’s hand tightly as a wave of feeling rolled through him, almost too much to bear. It was here, then. Here in a vampire nest in the middle of who knew where. Here was where he figured out what it felt like to be happy in a way that felt free.
“It’s not luck. It’s. . . you know. Fate,” he said, quietly, when Castiel pulled away.
Castiel’s eyes were shining, his happiness bright against the gloom of the room around them.
“Well, tell Fate to pick me up at six, then,” he said.