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It's 11pm and storming biblically when Dean and Cas's apartment goes dark.
"Great," Dean mutters under his breath. "Fan-freaking-tastic."
From somewhere else in the apartment, his roommate asks "did the power go out?"
"What do you think, sunshine?" Dean replies sarcastically.
He has a half-written essay in front of him, but he knows his old-ass computer won't last long unplugged, so he saves the document before shutting it off. He leans back in his chair, stretching for the first time in an hour and running a hand down his face. He actually needed a break from the screen, he realizes, feeling his eyes relax as he rubs them.
The steady rain and strong winds outside make an overwhelming white noise track, interrupted only by thunder that goes from faint and distant to deafening in volume. If Dean wasn't stressed out of his mind and completely exhausted right now, he might actually find this kind of nice.
"It's raining cats and mice out there," he hears Cas say, his voice now in the room.
Dean smiles, still rubbing his eyes with the backs of both his hands. "Cats and dogs, Cas."
"Right. Cats and dogs."
It’s really no use correcting him; the entire animal kingdom could be falling from the sky right now and there wouldn't be much of a difference. The winds are definitely knocking things over, and the streets will certainly be flooded come morning. Dean wonders for how long the university will cancel classes after this (if at all, the heartless bloodsuckers).
A particularly loud clap of thunder startles Dean. He drops his hands from his face and opens his eyes, expecting to see pitch black nothingness, but the room is faintly lit by the flashlight Cas is holding as he rummages through their kitchen drawers. He approaches a minute later and sets a candle down on the small table.
"Smart."
"Thank you, Dean," Cas says, sitting down opposite him. Dean smiles again, this time shaking his head.
If anyone ever asked him to mention one thing he likes about Cas, just one, he'd probably say how genuine Cas is, how he takes everything to heart and speaks from it as well. Dean said just one word, smart, a simple comment on the fact that it occurred to Cas to light a candle instead of wasting the battery of their one flashlight, and Cas genuinely thanked him for the compliment. He's just ridiculously cute in his earnestness.
Cas is trying to light the candle now, but their lighter is tricky. Despite living together in that apartment for a year and a half now Cas has never really gotten the hang of it.
"Here, let me."
Dean means to take the lighter from Cas and do it himself, he really does. That is 100% his intention as he reaches across the table. Except he sees an opportunity, and Dean Michael Winchester is nothing if not smooth.
He wraps his hand around Cas's, gently guiding his fingers until they’re placed just right, and the lighter clicks on with ease. Cas meets his eyes, smiling, and Dean can feel the slightest brush of Cas’s thumb against his hand. It’s a small gesture, but clearly deliberate, and it sends Dean’s heart into overdrive. Cas leans away, puts the lighter aside, and starts leafing through a book he brought. Dean’s heart is still racing as he watches him.
Scratch that first thing. If anyone ever asked him what’s one thing he likes about Cas? His hands. God. Neat nails, slightly calloused palms, and overall larger hands than you’d expect. Cas is an environmental science major and he wants to get a Ph.D. in botany, so of course, there’s a small garden on their fire escape. He tends to those plants every day with more gentleness and care than Dean has ever seen, and Dean loves to watch him, even though he has no idea what Cas is doing with them half the time. He just knows that not a single one of their plants have died under Cas’s care. He names them too.
His attentiveness. That’s another thing Dean might say if anyone ever asked. Cas left to visit his sister Anna last winter break. He left Dean in charge of the plants, three of which died inside the week. (For Dean’s birthday a couple of months later, Cas got him a book. How Not to Kill Your Houseplant. Dean keeps it on his nightstand.) Dean went out and bought new ones, but he knew Cas would notice the difference, and he did. He wasn’t mad at Dean though, and he appreciated the effort, and as Dean apologized profusely over and over again, Cas looked at him in the eyes oh-so-softly and told him he was forgiven.
How could Dean possibly forget? If anyone ever asked, he’d say that Cas’s eyes are one of his favorite things about him. One of his favorite things, period. Dean is absolutely mesmerized whenever Cas looks him in the eye, and the guy loves making eye contact, which means that Dean lives in a perpetual smitten daze. He has never seen that shade of blue anywhere else on this earth. Or maybe he just hasn’t been looking, content to get his fill of that blue by staring into Cas’s eyes as much as he gets to on a daily basis.
“Are you alright, Dean?”
Dean blinks himself back to reality. “Hm?”
“You seem… spaced.”
Dean is staring. He’s been staring this whole time. Shit. Crap.
“Yeah, um. Just tired.”
Mr. Smooth, everybody.
“Maybe you should go get some rest. I doubt the power will be back anytime soon.”
Castiel Milton, always looking out for you. It makes Dean melt.
“Yeah, maybe.” I wanna stay here with you, though, he thinks. Instead, because he’s pathetic, he asks “what’re you reading?”
Cas shows him the cover. How Not to Kill Your Houseplant. Dean breaks out in laughter.
“So you’re going into my room and stealing my shit now?”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t touch your Vonneguts.” Cas puts the book aside, an easy smile on his face. “Just wanted something light to pass the time.”
“You done with your homework?”
A soft yawn escapes Cas. “For now.”
“Dude, why not just go to sleep? You look exhausted.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Dean tries to deadpan him. He fails, because around Cas, it’s near impossible for him to not smile.
“Besides, I might be done but you weren’t.”
“And you wanted to keep me company.”
Cas shrugs as if to say I guess, but he does it with a knowing smile. The smile doesn’t falter as he meets Dean’s eyes, and he doesn’t look away when silence settles between them, the only sound being the stormy white noise.
Dean is sure he could drown in that blue and die happy.
Before that train of thought gets away from him again, Dean tears his gaze away and stretches. “We should really go to bed though, I’m not getting any more done tonight,” he says as he stands.
“Of course,” Cas says, but he grabs the book again.
“You not going?”
“I want to finish this chapter.”
The seriousness in his tone makes Dean smile. Again.
“Well, g’night, Cas.”
“Good night, Dean.”
Dean thinks he detects a bit of shakiness in Cas’s voice but decides that he’s probably just tired.
He gets to his room and changes into something comfortable, the first t-shirt and sweatpants he finds as he rummages in the dark. He goes to set his phone on his nightstand and crawl into bed, but in place of the book he keeps there and puts his phone on top of– the book Cas has at the moment– he finds something else.
It’s paper. It’s folded into the form of a book, like one of those youtube craft tutorials with bad music, and it's no bigger than his own palm. The cover is handwritten, and Dean immediately recognizes it as Cas's. He smiles, expecting a prank or joke of some sort, Cas knows how stressed Dean can get with the start of the semester. However, his smile falters as he reads the cover:
How to tell your best friend you’re in love with him.
With a shaky hand, Dean opens the small book. The first page is the only one with any more writing on it, and it reads:
You leave him a note and hope it’s enough.
Dean is storming out of his bedroom (no pun intended) before he knows it. He barely even feels his feet moving, too focused on the pounding in his ears and the dryness in his mouth. He doesn’t go into the living room, not yet; his feet stop at the end of the short hallway and he braces himself against the wall. The room is spinning and he can barely breathe.
“Cas?” He chokes out.
Cas puts the book back down on the table in front of him and interlocks his fingers in front of him. He doesn’t look at Dean– Cas, who makes too much eye contact – and takes a deep breath before saying “yes?”
He’s nervous.
Dean takes a step forward, still keeping one hand on the wall just in case, and holds up the note. “What is this?” he asks, because his brain is just not there with him yet.
Cas stands, still not facing Dean. “Dean, do you know what day it is?”
He’s asking this now? ??
“September firs–”
Oh. Oh shit.
“Cas isn’t today the–”
“The night we met. Two years ago.”
Dean feels his brain catching up now as the memory starts coming back to him. Cas helps, starting to recount that night.
“Two years ago tonight, I was leaving my night course at the university, and it was raining. Not as bad as this,” –Cas looks out the window and lightning strikes, as if on cue– “but pretty badly, and I was an inexperienced freshman without an umbrella.”
Dean remembers. He was walking Charlie to her dorm when it started drizzling, and it was pouring by the time he made it back to his car. Dean had a night shift at the gas station and was about to head there.
“Two years ago tonight,” Cas continues, “you invited me into your car to shelter me from the rain.”
Dean saw this guy running in the direction of the men’s dorms, which were on the other side of campus. He felt bad, and he had a car, so he opened the passenger door and let him in.
Turned out to be the most gorgeous guy he’d ever laid eyes on. He was a bit awkward, but he had no filter, which made him weirdly funny. He asked about the music playing in the car and listened intently to Dean's rambling. He laughed at his jokes too.
At the end of the five-minute drive, he said his name was Castiel, and Dean asked for his number and saved it as Cas with a thunderstorm emoji. Because even if he didn’t know it yet, Dean was already whipped.
“Two years ago,” Cas says, finally looking up at Dean. His eyes are wide and vulnerable and he looks terrified and Dean can barely stand it. “Two years ago tonight, I started to fall in love with you.”
Dean can’t breathe. His ears are hot and he can’t stop fidgeting with the note in his hand and he can’t breathe.
But his feet start moving again, out of their own volition. They move toward Cas.
“If you don’t feel–” Cas starts, but Dean swallows his words.
Again, Dean’s brain isn’t all there yet, and he doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he’s already in it. He’s grabbing Cas’s face, digging his fingertips into the back of his hair, and the note is forgotten on the table, and thunder rumbles not that far away. He’s darting out his tongue, begging to explore Cas’s mouth as he’s wanted to do since forever, and Cas lets him. He tastes like toothpaste and coffee and honey and Dean never wants to taste anyone else ever again.
Cas is wrapping his arms around Dean’s waist and pressing his entire body against him. It’s making Dean weak in the knees but it’s okay because Cas is almost holding him upright at this point. There’s another clap of thunder, much closer this time, and the lightning probably illuminated the apartment, but it wasn’t enough to make them part. They’re moving and grasping and exploring frantically, and Dean is afraid Cas is going to disappear, or that he’s going to wake up and this will all have been another dream. But no, it’s real, and they’re playing catchup on two years worth of desire and longing and love.
They eventually pull away, breathless and giddy. The only sounds are the rain and the wind. Dean opens his eyes first, needing to see Cas and make sure this is completely, definitely, unequivocally real. Cas is smiling and taking deep breaths, and a weight seems to be lifted off his shoulders. He opens his eyes a second later, and even in the darkness, even with just the faint candlelight, the blue in them seems to shine. And even though there's no power, it feels as if there's electricity crackling in the air around them. It might be the storm.
No. It's the moment. This moment with Cas is what feels electric.
“Come to bed?” Dean asks, feeling brave and going out on a limb. The only way Cas responds is by interlocking his hand into Dean’s and kissing him again.
And after tonight, for the rest of his life, if anyone ever asks him “what’s one thing you love about Cas?” Dean won’t be able to narrow down an answer.
He’ll just say: “Everything.”