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After Donatello assures them that he feels fine, Sam glances at Dean with a twisted expression on his face, says, “I’m going to go… get a drink,” and disappears. Dean stares after him for a moment, then shakes his head and turns back to the hospital bed. Donatello’s frowning at them, obviously picking up that they’re not in quite the celebratory mood you’d expect, but all he says is, “I’m actually pretty tired. Turns out coming back from the dead takes it out of you.”
Dean and Cas simultaneously hum in agreement, then Cas nods at Donatello. “We’ll leave you to sleep, then.”
“Appreciate it, fellas,” Donatello murmurs as he lays back.
Cas shuts the door behind them, leaving Dean and Cas alone in the hallway again. Cas is glaring at Dean, but that hasn’t really changed since they first met at the hospital. Dean sighs, and gestures down the hallway. “Is there somewhere we can sit here, Doctor?”
Cas frowns at him for a moment before he glances down at his lab coat and his face clears. Or, rather, goes back to glaring. “Yes,” he says, and starts walking, so Dean follows him on the presumption that he’s leading them to chairs rather than, like, a cage to trap Dean in and forcefully transport him back to the bunker. Which is possibly a naïve presumption, but his naïvety pays off when Cas leads them into a small and otherwise empty waiting room. Dean immediately takes the white plastic chair next to the little table filled with a water cooler and magazines from before the last apocalypse, but Cas just stands in the doorway. He’d look awkward and uncomfortable there if he was anyone else, but Cas has spent so much of the time Dean has known him standing exactly like that, stock still and on the cusp of something, that he looks entirely in place. Still, after a moment, Dean sighs and gestures to him. “Cas, come sit down.”
Cas purses his lips, but he does, taking the seat on the other side of the table. The water cooler looms between them, and Cas continues to face stubbornly forward.
“Cas, look, I- Sam’s been at me for the last two days, won’t let me say anything that sounds like a goodbye, but… I’m not scared of being trapped in that box with Michael.”
Cas does turn at that, squinting at him in mocking disbelief, and Dean half-raises his hands and drops them again. “Okay, I’m terrified of that. But I’m more afraid of being trapped in there with Michael and my own regrets.” He blinks, changes track suddenly. “I don’t want to face the kid with this. I can’t face Jack with this. But will you tell him… tell him that whatever Michael said to him with my face, it was a lie, and I’m sorry, and that… that I love him. Tell him I love him.”
Something behind Cas’s eyes softens slightly, but he only nods and says, “If that’s all…” before beginning to stand up.
“That’s- no, that’s not all!” Dean reaches out to push Cas down with a hand on his shoulder, leaving it there for a moment longer after Cas follows the movement and sits back down. “You really think I got nothing to say to you, Cas?”
Cas looks at him with that expression, the one that means ‘I think I know something about you better than you do yourself’, the one that should be smug but never is because it’s too fond and too concerned. “I don’t know what you would have to say to me, Dean,” he says, and it sounds genuine. “You don’t have to say anything.”
Dean half-laughs. “I really, really do.”
Dean doesn’t know what it is Cas hears in that, but he settles back in the chair, folds his hands in his lap. “Very well.”
“Cas, I- you- that-” Dean shuts up again and drops his head, staring down at his empty hands. He’s never even been any good at motivational speeches, let alone romantic ones. Stick to the facts. “I love you.”
When he darts a glance at Cas, he’s smiling sadly at him. “Yes,” he replies. “I love you too, Dean.”
“No, not like- don’t look at me like that, god. I don’t love you like I love Jack, or Sam. I’m-” and again, he cannot look at Cas as he says this, so he returns his gaze to his lap and tells the floor, “I’m in love with you, Cas. I have been for, the better part of a decade, I guess. And I know it’s not, and you can’t, and you don’t have to say anything, but I had to tell you before I- before.”
There’s a flicker of movement in Dean’s peripheral vision. All of a sudden, the only thing he can see is Cas’s face, and it takes him an embarrassingly long moment to realise that’s because the angel is kneeling between Dean’s legs, staring up at him. “Say that again,” he asks quietly, and Dean repeats, “Uh, I had to tell you before.”
Cas raises a hand to Dean’s cheek, resting soft along his jawline, and says, longsuffering, “Dean.”
“I’m in love with you, Cas.”
Cas makes a sharp, broken noise, like a barrier snapping. Before Dean has time to process that, Cas is as far into Dean’s space as he can get, his lips on Dean’s and his hands curved firm around Dean’s jaw, anchoring him in place. It’s fast, and hard, and rough, a decade’s buildup poured into it from both sides, more than one kiss can reasonably take so it spills out into Cas’s palm scraping along Dean’s stubble, and Dean’s hands, somehow on Cas’s waist, tugging him even further in, and biting, almost whimpering, murmurs that Dean suddenly realises are coming from him as much as from Cas. At some point, two minutes or two hours later, Dean’s head starts spinning, and he pulls back, gasping for air. Cas, of course, doesn’t actually need to breathe, only does so to keep up appearances, but his cheeks are flushed anyway, lips red and kiss-swollen.
“Dean,” he says, and this time it’s in that all-too-familiar way that he has never and cannot imagine hearing from anyone other than Cas, his name breathed out as if it is a reverie and a term of endearment all in itself.
“Cas,” Dean answers, then is suddenly overcome with terror that the utterance will somehow break the dream that this clearly is, and pulls Cas in again. It’s slower this time, the sensual onslaught muted, and Dean’s brain manages to pick out details. He anchors the way Cas’s lips part against his; the soft noises he makes that try to hold a hundred words and almost do; the warm line of his body. He pins them down, preserves them as spaces to run to and live in for the next, well, forever. And either Cas reads that thought in him, or he is simply travelling the same paths, because when he pulls away this time, there are tears on his cheeks. “Dean,” he whispers. “Why did it have to be like this?”
Dean has no answer for that, no answer that isn’t ‘when have we ever been allowed anything that wasn’t scarred by sorrow?’, so he just thumbs away the tear marks and marvels at his angel. “Cas, how… when… why?”
The look Cas gives him is almost pitying as he replies, “You care so much, and you are so oblivious to its return.”
Dean puffs out a half-laugh, and Cas tilts his head at him. “I think that was too obscure for my brain right now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Cas says, and leans in close again, resting his forehead against Dean’s. “Dean Winchester, I love you. To be entirely clear, I still think you’re an idiot for going through with this plan, and I wish you would reconsider, but I love every stupid, self-sacrificing part of you.”
The breath leaves Dean’s body entirely at that, rushing out of him and paralysing his chest and his legs and his arms, still touching Cas, one on his shoulder and one looped around his body. “Cas, I-”
“You don’t have to talk.”
Dean shakes his head, unsure what it is he’s rejecting, too caught up in the weight of Cas’s palms on his thighs and the warmth of his body between Dean’s legs. “Good,” is all he finally manages to say.
Emotion pulls at the corners of Cas’s eyes and lips as he lifts one hand to place it over the one Dean has resting on his shoulder. “I didn’t think…” He blinks slowly, then pulls Dean’s hand to his mouth and places a chaste kiss on the back of it. “You should go find Sam. I should check on Donatello.”
Neither of them move. A long moment later, Cas closes his eyes and deliberately lifts his hands from Dean before he stands up. Dean’s gaze follows him up, inexorably stuck on him. Cas brushes a hand over Dean’s shoulder, the briefest of touches as if any more would risk him falling back to his knees, and repeats, “Go find Sam. I’ll meet you at the Impala.”
Dean fixes eye contact with him, scanning his face for the promise as he says, “You’ll meet me out there.”
“I will,” Cas promises dutifully, then turns around and walks out of the room.
Dean stays sitting there a while longer, until he’s certain his legs will support him. Eventually, he pushes himself up and starts the long walk down the hospital corridors and outside, thoughts racing in slow motion. He wants to be able to do that again. ‘Why does it have to be like this?’. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe. He wants to be able to kiss Cas again.