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Nothing kills the taste of a burger quite like watching his brother kiss an angel.
He doesn’t really want to see his brother kissing anyone, granted, but least of all Cas and in a diner booth in Wichita of all places. It’s wrong and unsettling. It’s like he’s in some sort of strange nightmare, like they’re causing an upset to the natural order of the universe.
“Do you have to do that here?” Dean asks, appetite not quite killed enough to stop him from stealing fries off of Cas’s plate. Cas swats his hand. Dean gives him a ketchup-covered grin.
“It’s for the case,” Sam says, sliding his arm around Cas’s shoulder, “I don’t like it either.”
Cas, with endearing awkwardness, leans into Sam’s touch. He looks like a high schooler on a first date. Dean’s side of the booth feels suddenly empty.
“Besides,” Sam skewers a bit of egg and actually swallows it down before continuing, “ you were the one who put Castiel Winchester on the papers. If anything, this is your fault.”
“I thought people would think we were brothers !”
“Well, the clerk thought we were married.” And he just swallows another bite of egg, the bastard.
The girl behind the counter is small and has too much pep to be working at a Motel 6 on a Tuesday night. Sam, bleary-eyed and just woken up from a six hour drive, says yes, not really listening and on what he claims to be autopilot, when she asks if he and Cas are married and what was Cas supposed to do then, correct her? Things would get real awkward real fast. Especially with the way she’s gushing over them, telling them about her uncle or cousin or whatever who’s gay too and he’s getting married and blah blah blah you guys are just so cute! Sam nods sleepily along, too tired to even force a smile but awake enough to grab Cas’s hand. Their fingers find their way together.
Dean, the third wheel, gets stuck with the baggage and a hotel room all to himself (at least some sort of bonus, he thinks, taking a hot shower without someone pounding on the bathroom door, brushing his teeth with the whole counter to himself instead of crammed next to Cas because he can’t be bothered to wait his turn).
It’s deadly quiet when he slips into bed. He turns to his left and almost says ‘goodnight, Sam,’ on instinct until he remembers he’s speaking to a wall. Oh well. He clicks off the lamp.
He gets a good night's rest for once in his goddamn life in the cool air of the night, but he can’t help but feel unsettled in the solitude.
“Those bartenders believed we were married as well. I suppose that’s why they were so generous to us.” Cas wipes his chin with a napkin.
Dean seems to possess none of the luck that exists in the world. It just so happens that this week’s siren has a preference for the gay bars of Witchita, allowing the already ‘married’ Sam and Cas to do most of the research as faux-husbands while Dean was shoved into the side role of ‘supportive older brother’.
Thankfully a bar is a bar, and he has more than drunk his sorrows in whiskey and cocktails. They have some pretty decent bartenders in these joints, he thinks with fondness. Probably made the only half-decent drinks in the whole goddamn town. Which he needs if he ever wants to scrub the image of Sam and Cas dancing from his brain.
(It was really fucking funny, though, he thinks, because they both dance with the grace of an elephant. Sam spent the whole ride back to the hotel complaining about the number of times Cas had stepped on his feet. Dean said it served him right).
“No one ever thinks we’re married,” Dean huffs through a mouthful of fries. He doesn’t know why he sounds so pissed off about this. Maybe he is a little pissed off about this.
Cas mulls over his remark. It’s weird to see him across from him; he’s too used to him next to him in the booth, pressed together thigh to thigh. He has too much space now. “No, but I suppose we wouldn’t seem to make a suitable match.”
Not a sutiable match, that’s fucking wonderful. He’s even more pissed off than he was before. He steals a chunk of Sam’s eggs out of spite, even though he doesn’t particularly like eggs in the first place.
He never touches Cas throughout the whole hunt. He keeps his hands to himself and leaves enough room for Jesus and about twenty more angels when they’re standing together. It would be pretty fucking weird if Cas’s brother-in-law was all over him, he thinks. Brother-in-law. God, that sounds gross. He thanks god they're going home in the morning.
Sam and Cas share a hotel room. A hotel room like his own, with a single bed and a single shower. Do they share the bed? Dean pities Cas for a moment, remembering how well Sam’s long limbs can end up splayed across the bed and into your face in the night. He came very close to pushing him off the bed more times than he can count as a child.
Cas doesn’t seem to be the type to push someone away like that, the familiarity of it likely something he would perceive as rude. He probably lets Sam drape his limbs across him as he lays there in silence. God, why does the thought of his brother touching Cas make him feel so uncomfortable?
Not even uncomfortable; it’s more than that. Almost angry. Stupidly and unnecessarily angry. God, he cannot wait to get home tomorrow.
The Motel 6 in Illinois smells like stale cigarettes and wet grass. Groggy and dead-tired, they trudge their way to the front desk. The lipstick on the clerk’s downturned mouth is starting to bleed out at the corners.
The click-clacking of her keyboard, her muscular fingers tipped with sharp, deadly nails rolling across the old keys, sounds almost like an accustomed lullaby. He always felt the comfort of home in the strange loneliness of these places.
She asks for their names, their credit card, and how many rooms they might want. She eyes them curiously as he spouts out three of the same last names, as if trying to discern the possible relations between them but unable to ask out of propriety. She’s focused on Cas, mostly, the way he seems out of place beside them.
“He’s my husband,” Dean blurts out in a rush like an idiot, unable to stop himself. Fucking up his life seems to be the one thing he does best.
He gives the clerk his most charming smile. “Yeah. We’re, uh, married. We’re married.” It sounds weirdly like he’s trying to reassure himself. He has a hand on Cas’s shoulder even though he’s doing everything he can to not look at him.
“Okay? Will that be two singles, then?” The clerk is far less enthusiastic by this revelation than the one in Wichita was. It is also three in the morning and she’s got two empty Red Bull cans in the trash. He almost pities the poor girl.
“Yeah,” he says, grabbing the keys, “that’ll be great.”
“Rooms 105 and 106 are down the hall to your left.” Her voice has the monotone quality of a robot.
“Great, thanks.”
He grips an alarmed Cas’s hand, maybe a little rougher than he should, and half drags him down the hallway.
Dean shuts the door behind him and drops his bag at the foot of the bed. Cas is still hovering by the door.
“You told that woman we were married.” He states this like a fact, even though Dean knows it’s meant to be a question.
A question he really hoped he wouldn’t have to answer, mostly because he himself can’t figure out why the fuck he said that, either.
“It seemed like she wanted to know,” he says and feigns nonchalance in his shrug, “I guess it's kinda weird for three dudes to show up with the same last name.” It’s a stupid answer and doesn’t make sense, but goddamnit it’s late and he’s tired. He can figure out a better reason in the morning.
“Okay,” Cas says slowly and Dean knows he’s not buying a damn bit of what he’s saying. He has the grace, at least, to accept the lie Dean has given to him. “I’m going to go take a shower.” Good. Dean could use a moment to clear his head.
“Jesus Christ, are you almost done in there, Cas?” Dean pounds on the bathroom door. He swears he can taste the heat of the steam rising up from the crack under the door. He’s going to open that door to a sauna.
“One moment, Dean!” Cas yells back and Dean resists the childish urge to say something stupid in his frustration. He just sits on the old, dirty bed and stares at the wooden door. He listens to the showerhead hiss.
“Don’t use all the hot water!” He calls out. Cas says nothing in reply.
He rolls his eyes and lays down on the bed. He looks up at the ceiling and is pretty sure he spots mold growing in the corner. Yeesh. One day he’d like to stay in a hotel room that doesn’t make him want to wear flip-flops in the shower. Or not sleep on top of the bed sheets because god knows what all has gone on underneath them.
Oh fuck, there’s only one bed in here, isn’t there?
He sits up suddenly. He doesn’t know why this realization is only hitting him now. Shit. Why doesn’t he ever think before running his mouth?
The bathroom door opens and, just like Dean expected, a muggy warmth floods the room. The air is thick with condensation. He never understands how Cas can stand those unbearably hot showers of his, especially considering he doesn’t even need to shower in the first place.
“Finally,” Dean grumbles, pushing past Cas and intentionally not looking at him or the towel wrapped around his wet skin.
When he strips down in the bathroom his clothes are starting to stick to him. He feels like he’s sweating; breathing in the humidity is like trying to breathe on the peak of a mountain. If it was in the middle of summer Dean would have half a mind to kill Cas; he should consider himself lucky it’s only early January.
He looks in the mirror, all fogged up and blurring any possible reflection. He does a double take. There’s the faintest of lettering written in the fog, starting to fade away. Sorry for taking so long! It’s Cas’s handwriting. The blob at the end looks like it’s supposed to be a smiley face. He doesn’t give a shit anymore about the heat in the room. He carefully draws a heart next to it and then erases it all with a furious swipe across the mirror.
Dean steps out of the shower and Cas is sitting on the bed. He’s swinging his legs, his feet bare. He’s wearing a pair of pajama pants with bees on them that they found at a Target somewhere in Iowa and one of Dean’s old Rolling Stones t-shirts. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get entirely used to seeing Cas like this, but he can’t say he minds it.
Dean changed into his own clothes in the bathroom. They’re soggy and damp against him. He still smells the hotel bathwash on his hands. Strange, how they all smell the same— like laundry detergent and exaggerated soap. It leaves a dry residue on his skin.
Cas follows him to the bathroom when he goes to brush his teeth and like an unspoken ritual they crowd the sink pressed hip to hip. The water washes their spit down the drain, grimey and stained. Dean swishes a mouthful of saliva and toothpaste in his mouth, just about ready to spit when Cas ducks his head down to rinse his mouth out with the faucet. He leaves Dean waiting impatiently, the taste of Crest trickling down his throat.
“C’mon, man,” he mumbles through the mouthful and Cas finally steps back, wiping his hand at a smear of toothpaste on his cheek as he does so and succeeding only in smearing it even further across his face.
He gives him a sheepish smile and a shrug before he leaves him alone in the flickering bathroom light. Dean spits and sighs. It’s almost annoying how nothing he does can piss him off tonight.
He hits the bathroom light switch, the whole room now plunged into a dim, lamp-lit light. Flimsy and stained almost yellow, it creates a towering shadow of Cas against the wall. It stands unmoving as Dean slips into the right side of the bed.
“You coming or what?”
Cas regards him with a frown. “Are you sure that wouldn’t make you uncomfortable?”
“You shared a bed with Sam, didn’t you?” He hates the way the irritation in his voice comes out like blatant jealousy.
“Well, yes, but…” Cas trails off, hopeless, looking more uptight and uncomfortable in pajamas somehow than he ever did in any of his awful suits.
“Just get in the damn bed, Cas.” Dean slips under the dusty bedsheet. The material is scratchy and starched.
Cas tentatively sits down on the bed beside him, the old mattress squeaking in their cautious silence. Dean studies his profile in the dim light, straight and unmoving, chin and eyes pointed with determination at the wall.
He sighs and rolls over, killing the lamplight, feeling both alone and like being watched under a microscope in the cool darkness.
He wakes up in the middle of the night. What time he can’t be sure, but it seems to still be dark outside. All he can see when he opens his eyes are vague outlines— the lamp, the door, the sheets at the foot of the bed. He can feel the rise and fall of Cas’s chest underneath him, his warm arm holding him close. Dean can feel his t-shirt under his own fingers. He feels like a child being held like this.
He knows Cas is awake. It’s not surprising, considering that he doesn’t have to sleep. Dean listens to him mumble something quietly under his breath, the faint tune of a song only half familiar in his somnolent state. He smiles when he realizes it’s one of the Zeppelin tracks he put on the tape he once gave him. D’yer Maker. A weird but welcome choice for a lullaby. He falls back asleep to it’s off-key melody.
When he wakes up again he’s still in Cas’s arms. He must’ve slept like that all night. He can’t tell what he’s dreading more— waking up and facing the embarrassment or waking up and leaving the comfort of it behind. Perhaps a little bit of both.
“Good morning.” Cas smiles at him and Dean suddenly feels lethargic; unable or at least unwilling to move.
“Morning, Cas,” he yawns with a drowsiness that seems to elicit some sort of fondness from Cas, his blue eyes smiling down at him. Dean feels the microscope gaze again and the embarrassment of reality begins to settle in.
“Did you sleep well?”
He rolls off of him then, back turned, the carpet cool and dusty beneath his feet. The curtain across the window is shut and he opens it just a crack to let some of the early morning sunshine through.
“Yeah.” He ruffles through his duffle bag for a pair of clean clothes, and seems unable to find a second sock. “Uh, sorry about using you as a human pillow. Angel pillow. Whatever.”
“I didn’t mind.”
He doesn’t want to turn around and see the look on Cas’s face. He walks with one sock on to the bathroom to change the rest of his clothes. Cas is back in his suit and trench coat when he steps back into the room.
It’s a warped dejavu in the diner booth. In a position reminiscent of a swapped Witcita, Sam is across from him, and his arm is the one around Cas. Cas leans into his touch, awkward as ever and making Dean smile. He can smile all he wants now that he’s married to him.
There’s a lot of things he can do now that he’s ‘married’ to Cas. He can hold his hand and put his arm around him and call him ‘sweetheart’ and ‘baby’ without anyone batting a fucking eye. It’s like living out some bizarre dream. He’s making heart eyes at an angel while pressed too close in a diner booth and the world keeps on turning like it did before. Glasses clink, forks scrape on plates, the jukebox is playing shitty old country music. Their strangeness goes completely unnoticed. The waitress smiles at them when she refills their coffee. There is an odd sense of liberation.
“How’s the burger, sweetheart?” he asks Cas, falling in love with the sound of the word the more times he says it, so much so that he’s probably called Cas ‘sweetheart’ about a thousand times since leaving the hotel that morning. He’ll hate himself later for the way it will always rest on the tip of his tongue whenever he looks at him.
“Decent,” Cas replies, wiping barbecue sauce off his mouth with a napkin. The texture of his trench coat is stiff beneath Dean’s fingers. He never thought about how it might feel before. He wonders, then, if Cas likes the feeling of the leather of Dean’s jacket on his neck. If he likes it’s worn and soft nature, if he can feel the muscle and bone of Dean’s arm. He finds no revealing answer in his face.
He marvels at how casual they all look.
He sloppily eats his own fries with his left hand. He’s not taking his arm off Cas, not even if it goes numb, savoring the moment like a masochist.
It’s with reluctance that he finally does take it away when the waitress brings out their pie. He’d ordered for Cas, getting them two slices of cherry pie without asking him first, but he never protested. In fact, there’s a childlike anticipation in eyes as he watches the waitress set the plates down in front of them. It makes Dean so happy he doesn’t know what to do with himself, like some sort of lovesick maniac.
“C’mere.” Grinning and emboldened with the perfect nature of the diner or Cas’s cherry-stained lips or god knows what, Dean puts his hand up to Cas’s cheek and leans in for a kiss. It’s a messy landing and probably lasts too long. And he never feels Cas kiss him back.
He pulls back, a faux smile on his face. He’s cool, casual. His heart is beating so fast he’s amazed that no one else can hear it. He pretends to the diner and himself that going right back for another, better kiss isn’t the only thing in the world he wants to do right now.
Cas’s wide eyes shatter the serenity of the diner. He gapes at Dean, just momentarily, just barely enough to notice, before snapping back into character, back to eating his pie like nothing had just happened, like he doesn’t feel like every single eye in the diner is on his back. Like a zoo or a freakshow.
It’s only acting, Dean thinks, I just got too caught up in the performance, that’s all. No need for his hands to feel this sweaty. Though, he tries not to remember, there’s no reason for this charade to exist at all. It’s not like anyone here knows what he told a Motel 6 clerk at three in the morning.
Cas accidentally knocks his thankfully empty water cup across the table. Ice cubes splatter on the tabletop and he scoops them back in the glass with shaking hands. He didn’t seem so fidgety when Sam kissed him, Dean thinks. He’s also pretty sure he kissed Sam back.
Feeling a sudden and cold embarrassment, he shifts himself away from Cas and focuses on his pie. He feels like a damn fool for starting all this in the first place.
They eat in silence, Sam waiting on them with no dessert in front of him like the madman he is. Or maybe he’s saner, more controlled. More like Cas, he thinks, and less like him. Far more suitable.
He pays at the counter, sporting his best smile, receiving no response from the cashier. He tells her to have a good day and she turns her back in reply.
Oddly jilted, he makes his way with hands in his pockets towards Cas and Sam, irritated in the way they’re perusing the kitschy tourist crap at the front of the diner.
“Let’s get on the road,” he says. It sounds like a command and Sam gives him a look that says cool it , like he’s walking on dangerous ground.
He thinks, for one horrible second and with great shame, that if Sam were to touch Cas then he’d break his neck.
His fists clench in his pockets and he tries to keep his cool. He marches up to Cas, who is standing in front of the shop cashier, about ready to grab him by the arm and drag him outside so he can get behind the wheel and leave this whole awful experience behind him, when Cas turns to him on his heel.
“Look, Dean,” Cas’s smile is lopsided, “they have keychains. I found your name.” Sure enough, he’s holding up one of those cheap roadside keepsakes with his name written across it. It’s designed like a crappy license plate.
“I bought it for you.” He drops it into Dean’s hand. It feels like cheap plastic as he rubs his thumb across the lettering.
Ah, dammit. He can never seem to stay mad at him for too long.
“C’mon, sweetheart,” he says, a hand on his back as he guides him out the door, “we’ve got a long day ahead of us.”
Later, in the car, he slides it onto his key ring. It looks stupidly out of place. Cas grins in the rearview mirror when he waves it in front of him. God, it’s so tacky. He’s never gonna take it off.
It’s a night like any other. Tired to the bone, Dean waits as Cas hogs the shower, gasps like a fish trying to breathe in the steam left behind, washing himself with the filmy soap worn down to almost nothingness.
His wet feet mark the floor when they brush their teeth together. Dean beats Cas to the faucet this time and when he turns his head up he finds him glowering down at him, unamused in a way that always makes him laugh. Standing there in cheap pajama pants and Dean’s t-shirt he looks more like a pouting child than an angel of the Lord. He looks wonderfully human.
They slip in bed together without any hesitation on Cas's part, Dean’s hand killing the lamplight with a familiarity unwarranted for only being in this room for two nights. But all hotel rooms are set up the same. They just happen to be a lot nicer with Cas in them.
Though, his presence beside him makes him feel far more self-aware than is comfortable. He always gets the feeling that Cas is studying him.
He lays there on his side, not sure if likes the way Cas looks at him or if he wishes he would stop. Everything seems to be so delicate around him. He’s always felt remarkably graceless.
“Man,” he says in an attempt to lighten the tone, “can’t wait to get back to having my own bed to myself.”
That was the wrong thing to say and he said it anyways because he’s a fucking idiot. He tries a lazy grin at Cas, playing it off like a familiar joke, but it doesn’t seem very funny to him. He purses his lips and stares ahead. His fingers fumble together in his lap.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were uncomfortable. I can wait on the chair if you like.”
“Jesus, no. That’s creepy.” Dean shivers, imagining Cas staring at him throughout the night in complete darkness, like some sort of sleep paralysis induced vision. “And I never said I was uncomfortable.”
“If you say so.” Cas’s voice is a million miles away.
Dean stares at him, stiff and frozen like a robot. He misses human Cas, his childlike enthusiasm and wonder. Sometimes he seems like two completely different people, like he has two different natures at war with each other. He wonders if he’s to blame for any of that.
Maybe he should have just let him be an angel, with his trench coat and wings. Maybe he’d be happier.
“Night, Cas,” he says eventually, sinking down all the way into his pillow in the estranged darkness.
“Goodnight, Dean.”
(He’s a selfish bastard, though, and he likes him better in pajama pants and his old t-shirts).
He lays there in silence waiting for Cas to touch him. He’s not sure how they got all tangled up last time but damn if he hasn’t spent the whole day thinking about it happening again. Did Cas bring him closer? Or did he move to Cas all by himself? He feigns sleep, hoping to feel a protective arm around him, but it never comes. The radiator kicks in with a low whirr. He never does feel the temperature rise, the stupid thing proving once again to be largely ineffective. It reminds him of sleeping on the floor next to it as a child, bone cold in a threadbare sleeping bag and waiting for the heat for so long he fell asleep dreaming about it.
After what seems to be like an hour of waiting, he rolls over into Cas’s space, still pretending to be asleep. His hand grazes the warmth of his arm. Cas shifts his body and moves away. Dean’s fingertips drop to the sheets. Even the shadow of Cas’s warmth melts away in the night and the sheets cool again beneath his fingers, any trace of Cas vanishing like a phantom memory or half developed photograph. He can hear the way the bedspread rustles when Cas pushes it aside. The lightweight thud of his bare feet on the carpet. His even, measured steps crossing the floor. For a moment light pours in through the open doorway. Dean feels a cold fury at the gentleness with which Cas closes the door.
You’re a fucking moron, he thinks to himself, turning his back away from the door, staring out the window above the fraudulent radiator. The room is so still with such a profound silence it’s as though time itself had stopped. He prays to god not because he’d rather be back in hell than stuck in this moment forever.
He’s in nobody’s arms when he wakes up. He’s also still facing the window and he wishes someone had bothered to close the curtains because damn is that winter sun blinding. He groans, pulling himself up, surveying the room with tired eyes. Cas is back and seated at the table in the corner, already dressed for the day and thumbing through a paperback left behind by a previous occupant.
“Morning,” Dean says, stretching out his arms and desperately wishing for coffee as his feet hit the hard floor. Groggy, he drags himself to the bathroom.
“Good morning, Dean.” Cas never looks up from the paperback. He flicks the page with noticeable boredom.
Dean slams the bathroom door behind him and brushes his teeth alone.
They’re walking through Walmart when Dean goes to grab Cas’s hand, but Cas pulls his hand away, so subtle anyone else but Dean would miss the slight. He doesn’t call him sweetheart anymore.
He wishes Cas would’ve held his hand because he ends up losing him in that stupid Walmart. When the fuck did he slip away? Was it in the grocery aisle by the fresh strawberries? The greeting card aisle that appeals to him way too much to be normal?
He heads there first, expecting to see him marveling over some birthday card with a golden retriever on it like he’s holding a replica of the Mona Lisa ( ‘you have cards for everything, Dean. It’s fascinating ’). He has such a weird obsession with them, buying one for every and any holiday that they sell. Even fucking Fourth of July cards. Who the hell sends out Fourth of July cards? Dean would be lying, though, if he said he didn’t keep every single one of them.
He’s not there, though. There’s just some older woman sifting through the ‘grandson’ section of the birthday cards.
He heads to the magazines next, thinking maybe he got stalled by one of those Life magazines that seem to get put out on a whim, about whatever artist or musical group or historical event struck their fancy at the time. Cas loves them. He understands them more, at least, than the gossip magazines in the checkout aisle. He always gives People a disapproving frown.
He’s not there, either. No, where he inevitably finds him, half frantic by that point, is in the goddamn sleepwear aisle of all places.
“Cas, what the hell?”
He’s crouched down, half hidden and rifling through a row of slippers.
“Look, Dean,” he says, those two words Dean has long since taken to mean he’ll end up either explaining or buying something for him, more often than not both, “they have a pair with bees on them. They match my pajama pants.”
They’re really, truly hideous. They look like someone murdered a child’s stuffed toy and slapped the severed head onto a piece of footwear with more fluff on it than a 70’s shag carpet. They look exactly like something Cas would love. He lets Cas keep them without any protest.
They wander the sleepwear aisle together, making their way down into racks of t-shirts and matching bottoms, Cas pointing out the ones with characters he recognizes from Dean’s movie collection on them. Their hands come so close to brushing but stay maddeningly separated.
“Look, it’s Led Zeppelin.” Cas holds up a large Zeppelin t-shirt, black with the iconic fallen angel in the center. It looks like one Dean bought years ago. Probably also from Walmart.
“Do you want it?” he asks.
Cas shakes his head. “No. You have a shirt like it already. I like that one.”
He desperately wishes he could hold his hand. Or at least just call him sweetheart.
They end up buying the slippers, a Life magazine (Dean knew Cas was going to sucker him into buying one), and the beer they originally came here for in the first place. The cashier rings them up, raising an incredulous and judgemental eyebrow as she does so. Dean matches her with a hard look of his own.
Yeah, I’m buying a grownass man bee slippers and a Princess Diana Life magazine. Go fuck yourself.
He lets Cas’s shoulder bump his and they walk through the parking lot.
There is an unnatural silence in the room. They’re both walking on glass around each other, delicate and fragile. He is so desperate to make it shatter but is afraid to cut himself on the edges.
They move around the small room on their self-made glass, refusing to touch or look too long or even look at all; they’ve come so far they’re now denying each other’s existence.
Dean expects the silence to continue even while brushing their teeth. But the thought of his touch, no matter how small, sets him on fire.
He uncaps the Crest, wiping the edges clean because he knows Cas hates it when the hardened toothpaste makes the cap stick to the tube. The water from the faucet sounds like a waterfall.
His feet tap with impatience on the cool tile.
“You coming?” he asks Cas with a mouthful of toothpaste. The glass begins to crack.
Cas just sits there on the bed. “No, it’s alright. I’ll wait for my turn.” His eyes are busy with the tacky pattern on the bedspread. Dean gives him a long look.
“Okay.” He spits the toothpaste out with a glob of saliva. He watches the water wash it down the drain.
He finishes, caps the Crest and leaves it there on the counter.
“Your turn,” he says.
“Thank you.”
Their shoulders brush as Cas steps into the bathroom.
Dean sits on the bed, watching him, remembering with fondness his initial awkwardness as he struggled to get a grip on things so mundane Dean hardly even thought about them at all, like brushing his teeth or taking too hot showers.
Cas is wearing the bee pajama pants again. They hang low on his waist and the bottoms pool around his feet, just a little too long. They’re getting wet touching the bathroom floor.
“I like the slippers.”
He’s got the Walmart slippers from yesterday on and they, too, are probably getting wet on the bathroom floor.
“They are very comfortable,” Cas says, looking down at them with the first honest smile he’s seen him with all day. “They fit perfectly too, see?”
He shuffles his feet awkwardly, modeling the slippers for Dean. Dried toothpaste cracks at the corner of his grin. He’s got Dean’s AC/DC shirt on and Dean has no idea where the fuck he keeps getting his shirts from but he really, really doesn’t mind. His hair is still wet and messy from the shower.
Dean can’t stand it anymore.
He gets off the bed with deliberation and the glass shatters completely. “They look good on you, sweetheart.” He says it against Cas’s lips, one hand on his cheek and the other fiddling with the hem of the t-shirt, brushing the warm skin right above his hip bone, kissing him right then before he loses the nerve.
There’s the familiar, minty taste of Crest toothpaste on his mouth and it makes Dean smile against his lips. Their noses bump against each other. He changes the angle of his mouth, trying to deepen the kiss, pulling him in close by the waist like he never wants to let go. He could do this forever, he thinks.
He could, except Cas never responds to the kiss, never moves once. Dean drops his hands, taking a big step away from him, and Cas is standing there still as a statue.
Dean might actually be the biggest idiot in the world.
“Oh god.” Panic rises in his chest and eight hundred alarm bells ring in his head all at once. “Oh god, I’m sorry Cas, I thought—”
What did he think? Fuck, was he even thinking at all?
“Dean?” Cas’s first movement is to bring a hand up to his own mouth. He touches his lips with a curiosity that makes Dean want to vomit.
“Fuck, I shouldn’t have— I’m sorry, Jesus, it was stupid—”
“Dean, why did you kiss me?” Cas makes a step toward him and Dean stumbles back like he punched him in the face.
Because you’re a dork and my best friend and I’m fucking in love with you.
“I don’t, I mean, it’s just—” There’s not a damn thing he can say except “I’m sorry!” before he slams the hotel room door behind him.
We’re not a suitable match. Jesus, he’s so fucking stupid. Did he actually ever think he was going to marry Cas or some stupid shit like that? Angels don’t even fall in love, he thinks, and if they did it wouldn’t be with guys like him. It would probably be closer to guys like Sam. Sensible, practical, cool-headed. For the first time in his life he wishes he could be more like his brother.
He paces the halls, feeling somewhat like he imagines a ghost might feel like— weightless, invisible. Immune to time but not to human emotion. That’s the real tragedy of this whole fucking thing. He’s not sure where he’s going; he only knows he can’t go back to their shared hotel room.
He contemplates the very real possibility of sleeping in the hotel hallway. The carpet smells like cat piss or worse and old cigarettes. He wrinkles his nose. It’s so dusty and worn, too, that it makes the idea of a park bench seem inviting, though that idea doesn’t exactly thrill him either.
That leaves only one other option, and he almost dreads it more than the floor or bench.
He knocks on his door with the resignation of a rejected man. No answer. It is, after all, almost three-thirty in the morning now. Still, he knocks again.
“Sam,” he whispers harshly to the wood.
The door swings open with reluctance. Sam is standing in his boxers and yawning, leaning against the doorframe to keep himself upright.
“Dean?” he asks with confused sleepiness, swiping at his eyes.
Dean shoves his hands into his pockets. “Can I crash here?” He asks the question more to Sam’s feet than his face.
“Wh– aren’t you with Cas?”
“Sammy,” Dean pleads.
Sam must sense the desperation in his voice or in the use of his childhood nickname because he pushes the door open wider and doesn’t ask any more questions.
“Yeah, yeah,” he dismisses with a sloppy wave of a hand, “You can sleep on the floor.”
He lets Dean shut the door and is already back in his bed before Dean can thank him. Dean grabs a pillow and lies down on the floor, on the filthy carpet that is just as comfortable as it looks. The dark sky is fading away, the day almost dawn. He falls asleep bundled up into himself like a child, blue-tinged shadows from the window sweeping across him like a blanket.
The clerk in Colorado wants to know how they’re all related, too, and Dean wonders what’s so fucking weird about three guys checking in with the same last name. Maybe hotel clerks are just nosy.
“We’re brothers,” Cas answers for them, adjusting the duffle bag on his shoulder, and why does Dean’s heart feel like an elevator plummeting down a twelve story building?
They book a single room for Cas and a double for him and Sam. They’re finally back to at least some semblance of normalcy.
They walk down the hallway with the world righted again and it’s goddamn lousy.
“Goodnight Sam, Goodnight, Dean.” Cas gives them that little nod he had that always seemed as solemn as a preacher, and slips away behind his door. Why did they bother renting a room for a guy who doesn’t even need to sleep?
“Bathroom’s all yours.” Sam comes out of the bathroom with wet hair and brushed teeth. It’s strange how wrong the familiarity seems, how out of place he is even though he’s gone through these steps so many times it’s like reciting lines from his favorite movies.
The mirror is only slightly foggy when Dean steps in, already starting to melt away as the temperature in the room finds itself in equilibrium with air outside. He takes a deep breath. It’s easy to swallow. No humidity, no heat.
He brushes his teeth by himself. He has to uncap the toothpaste because Sam always puts the cap back on, unlike Cas who always forgets, even though he complains every time someone else doesn’t put it back on.
He stands there in the bathroom for a moment, under the flickering lights. Maybe, he thinks, if he stands there long enough something will happen. It never does; he just stands and stares at his own reflection. He hates this. He wants his fucking angel back. He kills the lights and steps away.
Cas adjusts the sleeve of his trench coat in the doorway of the hotel room. Dean is still in bed. He slept in, Cas tells him, and missed breakfast. Apparently there are excellent waffles if you get to the cafeteria on time. Cas says Sam is bringing him up a croissant. That suits Dean just fine.
“Dean, why did you kiss me in Illinois?”
“What?” Dean startles on the bed, still thinking about waffles and croissants and whether or not they’ve ever taken Cas to iHop for chocolate pancakes.
“Do you remember? You told the clerk I was your husband and you kissed me in the hotel room.”
He remembers it pretty fucking clearly.
He slips off the bed, away from him, fiddling with the curtains and trying to fix the goddamn radiator because it’s Colorado and it’s fucking freezing outside. “Why are you asking about this now? I’m sorry, okay? Can we just forget about it?”
“Dean—”
“Forget about it, Cas! Jesus, I already said I was sorry.”
He turns around and he wishes he didn’t. That frown always makes him feel like the world's biggest asshole.
Cas’s voice is cold enough to shame the Colorado winter. “If that’s what you would like, Dean.” It’s nothing I would fucking like and you know it.
He focuses on his footsteps as he walks out the door. The door clicks shut. For a moment he can still hear his feet in the hallway and with stubborn hope he waits for them to come back. The door in front of him reminds him of his own stupidity. He stands and stares at it and Cas never comes back.
“Fuck!” He kicks the door and listens to it rattle in the frame. The damn thing might as well as go ahead and break.
Cas is pissed at him for the rest of the day. It irritates him, because he didn’t do anything wrong. Yeah, he fucked up kissing him like that in Illinois, but that was weeks ago and he’s apologized for it about a hundred times. What the fuck does he want from him?
Seeing Cas sitting alone is depressing and somewhat laughable. He’s eating a waffle piled high with god knows what kind of sugary mess, a steaming cup of black coffee next to him, full to the brim and sloshed a little on the table space around it. Funny and sad. Childish and serious. What a walking contradiction he seems to be. Only, that’s what makes Cas Cas .
Cas always thinks he gets human shit wrong, and he does, but in a way that is so like him that it doesn’t feel wrong at all. Sure, every other man who looks his age here has just the cup of black coffee and Splenda beside him, but Cas isn’t every other man and Dean never wants him to be. He rather have Cas. He wonders if he’ll ever work up the nerve to tell him that. In his dreams, probably.
“Whatcha got there?” He asks, standing over his shoulder. Up close he can see the more than generous amount of whipped cream coating his waffle and the drizzled strawberry sauce, all topped off by what appears to be Fruity Pebbles. It looks nauseating, even to Dean, who once ate half a strawberry pie for breakfast.
“A waffle. They have a machine over there.” Cas makes a vague jab of direction with his fork.
“I can see that. But uh, what’s all this? You think you got enough sugar there?” He teases, putting a lighthearted hand on his shoulder.
Cas shrugs it off. “ I like this,” he says, glowering down and looking at the waffle like he wants to smite it. That or smite Dean, whichever one. Dean gets the feeling he isn’t the first person to look at him strangely this morning. He can sense the disapproval of the other guests out of the corner of his eye.
Dean leaves Cas stabbing at the waffle with a rueful force, stepping into line for his own breakfast.
Dean’s a goddamn fool, he really is. He’s still taking looks back at Cas while his waffle cooks. He looks small and lonely. With a brief moment of hesitation that always comes right before doing something you know is incredibly stupid, he grabs the strawberry syrup and thinks fuck it , smothering his waffle. He then grabs the whipped cream and piles it up to the heavens. Sam gives him a look, crossed somewhere between curiosity and amusement, when he reaches for the Fruity Pebbles.
“Dont,” he warns and Sam holds his hands up with a smile.
He sets it down next to Cas and slides into the seat, crushed Fruity Pebbles still stuck on his palm. It looks truly disgusting. But also identical to Cas’s own half-eaten (and half stabbed to death) waffle.
Cas looks at him then with furrowed brows, and then down at the waffle. Dean takes his first bite as if nothing was amiss, watching Cas's curiousity turn into something else as the start of a smile creeps up on his mouth. Dean chokes his way through another chunk; it’s a sugar overload and he barely swallows it down. He wipes his mouth and Cas just sits there beaming at him. He goes back to finishing his own waffle with gusto then, seeming not to give a damn anymore about anyone else in the cafeteria. Which is good, because Dean can’t promise he wouldn’t start a fight right then and there if anyone dared say anything about it.
Yeah, he’s a goddamn fool. But he’ll do just about anything to keep Cas looking at him like that. Even if his stomach is going to hate him for it later.
“Cas?”
He’s standing in Dean and Sam’s hotel room with his duffel bag held limply at his side. He surveys the room with nervous, skittering eyes.
“I,” he starts, straightening his shoulders in that soldier’s way of his he reverts to whenever he becomes uncomfortable, “I asked Sam if he wouldn’t mind switching rooms with me for the night.”
“What's wrong with your room?” Dean is sitting down on the bed, kicking his shoes off, peeling away his socks and chucking them on the floor. His bare feet feel good in the cool air.
“Nothing. I should go.” Turning sharply on his heel, Cas makes a beeline for the door.
“Don’t!”
Cas’s hand stops on the doorknob.
“You don’t have to go, Cas. Stay the night.” He hopes he doesn’t sound like he’s begging. Even if he is.
Cas takes his hand off the doorknob. “Okay.” His smile is small, but at least it’s something.
They brush their teeth next to each other. Cas doesn’t have the bee pajamas, he thinks sadly; he’s wearing a pair of plaid pajama bottoms that are way too generic for him. But he still has Dean’s Led Zeppelin shirt. Cas beats him to the faucet again and he doesn’t care that he almost swallows his mouthful of spit and toothpaste waiting for him. He misses the warmth of Cas against him when he leaves the bathroom.
It’s strange to see an angel of the lord look this terrified.
The yellow lamplight is hazy in the dark blue of the night and even with the curtains open and the world outside it feels like they’re the only people on Earth. Cas stands there, the wall painted with his shadow, poised by the foot of the bed like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff. He just needs to figure out how to jump. Or maybe he just needs the bravery to.
Dean does, too. He’s stuck leaning against the bathroom door.
In the end it’s Cas that takes the first step.
He stands on his tiptoes, his hands shaking as he tries to cup his face. The kiss misses, just barely grazing the corner of Dean’s mouth. Cas looks mortified.
Dean laughs and Cas doesn’t get the chance to step away before Dean has him in his arms, pulling him close, smelling his own aftershave, the one that Cas had borrowed. He has a lot to say but he doesn’t think he can wait another second to kiss Cas, so he kisses him again.
It’s the best kiss by far. Probably because Cas is actually kissing him back. He’s a terrible kisser and he doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands; they can never seem to get the right hold. Dean loves him all the more.
Cas pulls away first, flushed and grinning, almost triumphant. “You taste like toothpaste,” he says.
Dean laughs.
Darkness swallows the room whole. The moon is wide outside the open window. The radiator whirrs but the room is still too cool. They lay there in the winter-chilled sheets, Cas’s chest warm beneath his cheek and his arm on him more comforting than any blanket could be. “‘Night Cas.” He can hear his heart beat beneath him; he’ll probably fall asleep to it.
“Call me sweetheart,” Cas says, “I like it when you call me sweetheart.”
Dean looks up at him then. The room is too dark to tell for sure, but he’s pretty sure he’s smiling. “Oh yeah?”
Cas nods. Or at least Dean thinks he does.
He grins. “Alright then, sweetheart. Whatever you want.”