Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dean shoves the shirts and jeans into the box as though the act of packing away his clothes will somehow excise every part of Cas from his soul – as though he could remove the mark of their time together from his mind and his body. Sam is reading in the living room; he turned the radio off an hour ago, and the silence makes every minute seem longer, another stark reminder that three days ago this house had been somewhere they lived. Now it's just a place where Dean drinks himself to sleep between shifts at work.

The suits in the back of the closet go in last. Cas has always tended toward generic, bland black suits when he needed them, and Dean mashes them into the box as carelessly at the jeans. He imagines Cas opening up the box and making that face he makes when he's disappointed, and Dean uses his dirty boot to shove everything down for good measure. There's a single hooded sweatshirt in the back corner – this frayed grey thing that Cas had been wearing when they first met. Dean closes the closet door.

He pulls the flaps of the box closed and seals it with packing tape. Cas had been so kind to attach mailing labels before he left, prepaid and all, made out to Castiel Novak, c/o James Novak. Cas is only staying with his brother and family until the end of the summer, then he's headed off to a better college and a better life than Dean was apparently able to provide here in Lawrence.

Dean piles it with the other four boxes beside the front door. He puts them all outside even though the wind is blowing rain right into the porch; he hopes everything is covered in mildew when Cas gets it. Their postal guy is usually by between three and four, so it won't be out for long. Done with the work of packing up Cas' shit, Dean joins Sam in the living room and turns on the television. He needs a marathon of something stupid and mind-numbing.

“You think it's a bit much, putting it out in the rain?” Sam asks without looking up from his book. He's got his gangly legs tucked up under his body, and he's completely engrossed in one of those books about legal precedents that he brought back with him from Stanford.

“No.” Dean stretches, and settles for the Doctor Sexy marathon on Lifetime. It promised at least six more hours of nothing but over-dramatic love triangles and an improbable amount of rare medical emergencies. He almost makes a joke about how when Dad got home he would lose his shit – Dad hates Doctor Sexy – but then Dean remembers that there is no more Dad to hate Doctor Sexy, and his mood is worse. “This summer sucks.”

Sam looks up from his book, and closes it slowly. “I'm sorry, Dean.”

“You're sorry? Shit, don't be sorry, Sammy – you're literally the only sane fucking thing in this house right now.” Dean pushes himself to his feet and finds the half of a bottle of scotch left over from John Winchester's wake. Their dad had been saving it for when Sam graduated from college, to celebrate his sons becoming men. It never made it that far. Dean pours some in the only clean mug left in the kitchen, and turns to find Sam staring at him from the doorway.

It's not like Sam isn't hurting. Dean doesn't know how to talk to Sam about grief; they fight every time they start to talk about their father. In truth, Cas up and leaving without any warning had actually brought some peace after three straight weeks of shouting punctuated with awkward silence. Not that Dean finds any solace in the fact, but at least they have a common enemy now.

The letter is still on the table, the envelope torn in two in Dean's haste to open it. It's turned face down. Dean can't see his handwriting, which is so completely him that it may as well be a photo. But Dean can't look away from it, the way the two folds make a sort of weird tent, and he can see each word as though it's imprinted on his eyelids. I cannot stay here just because you need me. You build me into your future like furniture, not like a partner.

Dean throws his mug at the table; Sam jumps back. it shatters on contact, shards skittering across the pockmarked wooden top and falling with audible clacks to the linoleum. The scotch stains the cheap printer paper.

Everyone at work knows, which would be concerning except “everyone” is three people in the human resources office of the linguistics department. Dean had been on the phone with Jo when he found the letter, and he suspects that she passed the word on to their supervisor, who had been more than happy to give him the rest of the week off – his job during the summer is comfortably flexible like that.

Either way, no one asks him how he's doing when he mans the desk on Monday morning and checks his e-mail. Jo drops off a cup of coffee and kisses the top of his head as she heads into her own little half-cubicle, her head still visible over the partition. Thankfully, she doesn't try to start a conversation. It's not until lunch that he finally says anything. “I should take a road trip.”

Jo smiles at him, chewing her sandwich and nodding as she swallows. “The Impala could probably stand to stretch her legs. You got a destination in particular?”

“I dunno, I just thought of it,” Dean admits, sipping his Coke and trying to work up the appetite as he stares at the pie Sam had brought back from the supermarket the night before. “Maybe I could crash with Bobby in Sioux Falls for a while.”

“Ha!” Jo coughs, and laughs a moment longer. “Oh god, he would get so sick of you within two days. I love it. You should give him a call.”

“I should.” His computer chimes to alert him to a new e-mail – he's been waiting for Mrs. Amand on the fourth floor to submit the time sheets for her student workers, but instead he has an e-mail from Cas. His stomach turns, and Dean clears his throat as he turns off his monitor. “The house gives me the creeps. Sam is too damn quiet. And if I leave, he can invite his girlfriend down. They could spend the summer playing house.” It actually brings a smile to his face. He had visited Sam and Jessica up at Stanford once. She had been baking cookies. “You want to come?” He forces a lecherous leer to his voice and waggles his eyebrows. “One wild summer before senior year?”

Jo frowns at him, her anger fake but the concern in her eyes real. “Do I look crazy? You stood me up freshman year, Winchester – no way that I'm going to go on a rebound road trip with you now.”

At the end of the day, ten minutes to kill before their office closes up, Dean forces himself to read the e-mail. I received my things. Thank you for packing everything.

“Dean?”

He looks over at Jo, clearing his throat. “What? Sorry.”

“I said it's time to go – what are you staring at?”

Dean deletes the e-mail and shuts down his computer. “Nothing, sorry.” He stretches as she packs up her things. They turn out the lights and lock up. On the way through the parking lot, he says, “I left his boxes out in the rain, and all he said was thank you for packing.”

“Ah.” Jo pats his shoulder as she stops her own car. “You should consider that road trip.” Dean walks on to his car, waving over his shoulder as he hears her car door close. His whole world is falling apart, and even his best friend is telling him to leave home.

The drive home is blissfully short; the traffic is more bearable with the students out of town. Dean pulls into the driveway and pretends for a minute that it's all been a lie. That Cas will be sprawled out on the bed with Dean's laptop, that Dad will be pulling the pick-up in behind him before too long, that Sam is back in Stanford with his girlfriend in their cute little apartment that smells like chocolate chip cookies.

When he walks into the empty house, the curtains drawn in each room, Dean decides. He has to get out of this place as soon as he can or he's going to lose his fucking mind.

Dean takes off on the fifth of July, three days after Jessica arrives in her adorable yellow Volkswagen with everything piled into the impossibly small backseat. It's amazing what a cheerful person can do in three days, really; within the first day she had the place tidied up. She opened windows to let in fresh air, even though it was humid and stifling outside. She ran the attic fan and sang cheerful off-key pop songs while she baked.

Jessica insisted that they have a proper barbeque for the Fourth of July before Dean took off, so they did – because for as little as Dean knew about Jessica, he knew that she was going to marry Sam someday and he wanted her to like him. They invited Jo and Ellen over and lit off fireworks in the road with their neighbors. It was a nice change of pace from the sullen darkness that had settled in the Winchester house since John's death in May.

And Sam is better for it. He's actually talking now that Jessica is there, and he smiles at Dean more. They're having conversations without drinking or yelling, and while it's not exactly deep stuff, it's a start.

With a single duffle bag containing his clothes and laptop, Dean leaves in the morning while Sam and Jessica are still asleep. He's headed up to stay with Bobby for a couple days while he decides where he wants to go from there. The open road is like heaven – the Impala drives smooth beneath him, and for once Dean is reveling in being alone. He's still haunted by the very idea of Cas, still feels keenly his presence missing from the passenger seat, but he can roll down the windows and sing along with Air Supply without anyone knowing. It makes the world seem a little less grim.

They met freshman year. When Dean looks back on it, if he hadn't nearly run Cas over on the way to pick Jo up from her Expos it was a very real possibility that he might have ended up with Jo, who had been so ready for Dean to notice her like that. He likes to tell himself that it was all about random chances, and not about how immediately enthralling Cas had been.

“Hey!” Cas had slammed his open palm down on the hood of the Impala at the same time Dean slammed on the breaks. Cas was holding his backpack over one shoulder and if looks could have killed, he would have burned a hole straight through Dean's head. They stared at each other for a minute before Dean leaned out the open window.

“Can I give you a ride?” When Cas' look turned from murderous to simply incredulous, he added, “It's the least I can do for nearly killing you, right?”

Cas looked around like he was considering it, before shrugging and climbing into the passenger seat. He tossed his bag into the back seat. “I live in Eudora.” He shook his oversized hoody sleeves away from his fingers as he set about texting someone, and Dean changed his route to K-10 without stopping to think that he was leaving Jo hanging. At the first stoplight Cas stuffed the phone into his front pocket and added, “Telling my cousin I don't need the ride.”

“I'm sorry, man,” Dean said as the turned. Rush hour traffic was congested but not overly slow, and Dean had to force himself to pay attention to the road and not the guy in the car. “I'm Dean.”

“Cas.” The rest of the drive was silent, with Cas checking his phone when it chimed. He smirked and stuffed it back in the pocket. When they hit Eudora, Cas directed him to a little family home with bright curtains and a blue porch light. “Thank you,” he said reluctantly. “I apologize for hitting your car.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “I'm sorry my car almost hit you.” They sat for too long, before Dean found himself talking again, quite unexpectedly. “Look, you want to get some dinner? Least I can do, right?”

“I thought giving me a ride home was the least you could do.” Cas sounded distinctly amused, and Dean knew in that moment that he was going to accept the offer.

“Well, best to go above and beyond the call of duty. Come on, we can hit the Burger Shack and you can tell me all about what the hell kind of name Cas is, and how you justify commuting to school from Eudora with these gas prices.”

Cas laughed. “You can tell me how you justify driving a sixties muscle car, and we can call it good.”

Bobby's with a customer when Dean arrives, but Karen is all too happy to usher him inside and feed him what's left of lunch when he arrives. “You look exhausted!” she says as she places the plate full of chips and largest pulled pork sandwich Dean has ever seen. It was a shame she and Bobby never had kids, because she had enough maternal instinct for a whole herd of little Singer kids. Then again, she and Bobby had spent a lot of time with him and Sam after their mother died. Perhaps there had never been time.

“I started out too early,” Dean admits before tucking into his sandwich. She sits at the table and leans her chin down her hands, watching him like she's waiting for him to talk. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and swallows. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“I'm waiting for you to spill the beans about this whole pilgrimage. You haven't called, but that doesn't mean Sam hasn't.”

“That bitch.” Dean takes another bite of his sandwich and tries to ignore the way she stares at him. He makes it halfway through the sandwich before he gives in, setting it down and getting a beer from the fridge before he starts talking. “You know Cas left, right?”

She looks off for a second before clearing her throat and nodding. “Yeah, we heard.”

“The house is just wrong now. For two years, it was me, Dad and Cas. We had this whole thing. You know, Dad was finally cool with it? And not that awkward, pretending he was cool with it thing he did for a long time, but really okay with it.”

With a hand on his forearm, Karen smiles sadly at him. “You know your dad loved you no matter what.”

“Yeah, I know, but he actually liked Cas, too. We had this really great month. We worked on the garage. It was like some stupid fucking sitcom.” Dean stares down at his half-eaten sandwich, unable to handle the sympathy in her eyes. She's just going to listen, because Karen has always been the best person to talk to when these things fall apart. “He told me in a letter.”

This seems to catch her by surprise, her eyebrows raising and her grip tightening on his arm. “What?”

Dean laughs, taking a quick draught of his beer. Bobby always buys the best beer, the surly old drunk. “Yeah. He was getting ready to go with Anna up to visit his brother in Illinois, right? He kissed me goodbye when I left for work and said he'd be back in a week. I get home and there's this letter on the table. He left four boxes, all paid for and labeled, and asked me to pack his stuff and leave it for the mailman.”

They sit quietly for too long, before Karen coughs and stands. She kisses his forehead and smooths his hair down. “I'm sorry, sweetheart. That wasn't right.”

It's nice to hear someone say it.

Dean was supposed to leave after a couple days, but Bobby is shorthanded in the salvage yard and Dean is always happy to pitch in. A couple days turns into a couple weeks, and as July drags on Dean finds he doesn't want to leave at all. Being elbow-deep in scrap cars is the most cathartic thing he's done since his dad died, and he considers never going back. Turn the deed to the house over to Sam, let him and Jessica take over the Winchester home good and proper.

It's a nice fantasy, but Dean knows it's a fantasy. He's due back to the work at the beginning of the school year, and he ought to finish his business degree – Bobby is going to kill him if he doesn't. Sam isn't going to stay in Lawrence when he has that full ride in Stanford, and the one time Dean joked that Jessica was the kind of girl who went to college for her MRS she had given him a black eye. But he can pretend for another couple weeks that this could be his life. Old cars and beers on the porch as hot summer days become hot summer nights.

It all still reminds him of Cas, but he finds the memories to have smoother edges. When he remembers the time he and Cas spent a month up here when Bobby broke a leg, sneaking off to have sex in the backseat of some junker in a garage, he can do it without feeling like a piece of his stomach is being ripped to shreds.

This changes, however, the one afternoon he overhears Bobby and Karen in the living room. He had dozed off in the porch swing, and he wakes up to hear Bobby say quietly, “It ain't any of our business, darling; they're grown men now.”

“Have you read this?” He can hear the crinkling of paper in her hands, and his stomach drops. Of course, Karen had done some of his laundry when he let it lapse – of course she would see the stained and crumpled paper folded in the bottom of his duffle bag. He closes his eyes as she reads aloud, “I hate looking at you and not recognizing who you are. I cannot stay here and make excuses while you become your father. Bobby, Cas played it off like they were just unhappy.”

Bobby grunts, and Dean just wants to go back to sleep, or wants them to stop talking, but really he wants to know when exactly Karen talked to Cas. She had folded Cas right into the family from the start, but Cas had always called his own family first in a crisis. “Karen, it's not like I ain't worried – but let's face it, he cut and run when Dean needed someone to keep him on track. He wimped out, and it ain't our business to play matchmaker.”

“I'm calling him.”

“Karen.”

“Bobby!” She stops and lowers her voice; Dean can just imagine her face, and he almost finds it funny. It would be very funny if this were about anyone else. “That boy is hurting. He deserves better than this.”

Dean isn't sure why he does it, but he still has Cas' number programed in his cell phone. He sends a single text message. Karen found your letter. Pissed off. Screen your calls.

Let it never be said that he didn't do anything for the bastard.

Castiel must have taken his text message, because Dean can tell Karen is getting more frustrated. She's got a terrible poker face, though she tries her damnedest to act like nothing is wrong when she's around Dean. It just leaves him wondering what she thought she knew.

He leaves to head home in the first week of August, though he tells Bobby that he's going to the Grand Canyon. Bobby pressed a couple hundred bucks into his hand and tells him to take it easy before he heads back to school. At some point Dean is going to have to meet with his advisor and actually get his classes set up, but the idea of continuing his old life still leaves him uneasy.

He's flipping though the atlas with the smell of Karen's apple pie filling the car, when he passes Illinois. He doesn't know why he does it, but he looks at Pontiac and decides he needs some answers. He deserves some closure – he needs some fucking closure if he's going to go on with his life back home, once Sam is gone and it's just him in that house.

The road is hazy in the heat as Dean heads for Illinois.

“Dean, I have to go to class,” Cas laughed as he tried to roll out of bed again, but Dean held him in place. The room was cold with the unexpected front that came through the previous night. No one had turned on the heat, and the idea of being alone under the blankets seemed unbearable. Dean nuzzled against the back of Cas' neck and hummed contentedly. Cas wasn't fighting it all that hard.

“It's cold outside,” Dean said, tangling their legs together and letting his eyes fall closed. “It's Wednesday. Nothing happens on Wednesday.”

“My professor in religious theory likes to give pop quizzes on Wednesday,” Cas replied. “I can't stay in bed all day.”

“Why not? Come on,” he protested when Cas tried to get out of bed again. “It's not like the world is going to end if you ditch classes.” He pressed closer to Cas, who relented and turned to catch him in a kiss. It was warm and comfortable, and Dean wanted to do this forever. He wanted a whole lifetime of this. “I mean, what are you even going to do with a history degree but serve coffee?”

Cas stiffened in his arms, and pulled out of his grasp in earnest; he didn't look it, but Cas had a lot of strength when he chose to apply it. “Don't be a dick, Dean. Believe or not, my classes actually matter.”

“I didn't say that,” Dean said, sitting up. “What are you so pissed off about?”

Cas shook his head, going to closet and pulling out some clothes. “You act like the work I intend to do doesn't matter. I'm not your mother, Dean; I have no intention of playing your homemaker while you take over your father's business. I got enough pigeon-holed expectations from my family, and I don't need you patronizing me as well.”

“Hey, what the fuck?” Cas left the room, and Dean climbed out of bed to follow him. Castiel had the bathroom door closed before Dean makes it to the hallway. “What is your malfunction?” he shouts. His dad opened his bedroom door by the bathroom, scowling at Dean. “Sorry, sir,” he says, quieter.

“Don't be sorry, but save your domestic problems for after breakfast,” John said. He padded down the hall in a robe and slippers, looking older beyond his years in the getup. Before Dean had the chance to tease him, though, John patted his shoulder. “We all say shit we don't mean before breakfast.” Then he was down the stairs before Dean even had the chance to mock his old man robe.

It takes him two days to get Pontiac, even though it only should have taken him about ten hours. Dean is willing to admit that he slowed down as he got closer. What was he going to say? With enough time to think about it, he gets it. He understands why Cas felt the way he did, but he doesn't understand why they bypassed the 'talking it out' part and jumped right into the 'never seeing each other again' part.

Once he rolls into town he remembers the route to the Novak house; he had visited a couple times in the past couple years, and it's uncomfortably familiar. The house shows no signs of life when Dean parks on the curb, and he sits in the front seat for ten minutes after he kills the engine, watching. Jimmy works during the day, of course, and Dean knows that Amelia helped out at a daycare downtown when Claire was in school. He has no idea what Cas has been doing all summer.

“Well, don't puss out now,” Dean mutters to himself as he climbs out of the car. He crosses the suburban street and feels completely out of place. He rings the doorbell and shoves his hands in his pockets. Maybe Cas is already gone; maybe he started a new lease at the beginning of the month, and already had a new life in a new town.

Instead the door opens, and Cas peers out at him. They stare at each other for a long time, and Cas looks genuinely wrecked to see him there, like he'd rather give a vital organ than find Dean Winchester on his threshold. “What'd you tell Karen?” Dean asks. “Because, I mean, I pretty much get why you hate me now, but exactly why was she so surprised to see that letter?”

Cas looks around the neighborhood, as though Dean's causing some scene just by standing there. “I told her that we came to the mutual decision that it wasn't working.”

“Is that what you got from our last exchange? Somehow, when I said I was going to miss you while you were gone and you said that you'd be back as soon as possible, I didn't realize we were speaking some sort of code that said that things weren't working.”

Cas is averting his eyes. “Look, it seemed better that way. You had enough on your plate with your dad's death, and what was I supposed to do – draw the whole thing out? You'd had enough. You deserved an easy out. It felt like the right thing.”

“Oh, well, that's good. Because it felt like pretty much the shittiest thing ever to me, but whatever. Sorry to ruin your afternoon.” Dean turns to leave, but finds he's not quite done. He turns again, and Cas is still standing there, staring. “No. I built you into my life like furniture? You don't recognize me? Because I didn't realize that I was so fucking different because – what? Because I teased you about your major? Because I don't take the whole world as fucking serious as you do? What the fuck kind of family do you come from Cas, where you just discard people like that?”

“Every word I said was true,” Cas says; his voice has gained some strength in anger. “You made all these plans without even considering what I wanted to do. I want to go to grad school – ”

“Because you want to teach, I know! Did you think I wasn't listening? I didn't think that me taking over dad's shop was going to make that so impossible.”

“Dean, stop it.” Cas turns to go inside, and Dean follows uninvited, closing the door behind him. Apparently getting the door closed was all Cas really needed to let loose. “As we get closer and closer to graduation, you shoved me into this weird hole where I don't fit. We kept talking about the future without talking about the whole future. You kept acting like what mattered was your plan, like my plan was just peripheral to yours! It was not our future, it was your future. I am not just some quiet little thing for you to lean on.”

“I get that,” Dean says, and finds himself strangely calm. “Look, I get that. Believe me, I read the fucking letter enough times that I get it, but you didn't think talking about it was a better idea than just leaving me without any warning? Because you have no idea how badly I needed you.”

“You always need me, and with your dad dying... I needed to grieve too, you know. I couldn't just be there to help you feel better. I'm not your guardian angel.”

“You don't think we could have done that together? You don't think that I would have dropped everything if you had just told me that you were unhappy? All I got were these pissy silences and outbursts. I don't speak your weird fucking code. I thought you were stressed about senior year.” Dean rubs his face, and adds, “And I sold the fucking shop. It was up for sale before you left, but apparently you were too wrapped up to realize it. I thought I wanted it until I had it. I've got bigger dreams too, you know. I just thought you were in them.”

Cas stops with his mouth open, like he was just about the say something, but now Dean is done. This is all he has in him, this is all the fucking feelings he can deal with. At least he gets it now. He leaves, slamming the Novak's door behind him as he stalks back to his car. Now he understands that they're both self-centered and failed to think of each other. It feels good to know that he wasn't the only one.

The house is quiet when Dean gets home every day. It's lonely, and Dean almost considers getting a second job just to keep busy. Alone all the time, he gets his homework done too soon and feels like there's nothing but free time. He can only watch so many reruns before even Doctor Sexy loses his luster.

Word comes at the beginning of the month that Sam has been accepted into law school, and that he and Jessica are officially engaged. While Dean isn't glad for his father's death by any stretch of the imagination, he's glad for the nest egg that life insurance and the shop sale created – at least that way Sam and Jessica can have a nice wedding without having to scrounge for it. Dean even kind of looks forward to it.

He and Cas had talked about getting married, once – not right that second or anything, but in some idyllic future where it wasn't going to be some hassle. It had been a nice conversation, and Dean even manages to smile at the memory. That said, he still makes sure any lingering mementos of Cas are packed away where he can't see them.

It's not perfect, of course. He still thinks he sees Cas around their old campus haunts, sees the back of some scruffy-haired dude or when he see someone dressed in the same sort of oversized shirts, with the sleeves too long. He occasionally walks too close to areas designated for smokers and remembers the way Cas always smoked when he was stressed during midterms or finals week.

Then one day it happens. It's raining, and Dean is filling out the paperwork for his graduation – choosing not to walk, because honestly, he couldn't stand the idea of the fanfare – and his cell phone bleeps. It's a text message from Cas. Can we talk?

Dean considers it carefully. It's been more than a month since their little blow-up in Pontiac, and Dean had assumed it was over. He took the silence as the metaphorical “The End” pinned on the story of their relationship. The idea of talking now felt like a postscript. It would be tacky. He deletes the message.

Except he gets another one. You still have my sweatshirt. You never sent the grey one.

Dean shakes his head and laughs as he deletes the message, before he remembers that Cas is right. He heads upstairs and looks in the back of the closet where the hoody is still hanging lop-sided on a blue plastic hanger. He stares at it until the doorbell rings, pulling him away from the memory. He heads up the down the stairs and opens the door.

Now he knows how Cas felt in August. Cas is standing there, damp from the rain with his hair sticking to his forehead. He's wearing that ridiculous overcoat he stole from Jimmy years ago, and Dean wants nothing more than to hug him until he's warm. “You drove all the way from Illinois for your hoody?”

“No, I drove from Illinois for school,” Cas replies. “Can I come in?”

Dean hesitates before he steps out of the way, letting Cas in. There's the wafting smell of cigarette smoke as Cas passes, and Dean thinks back on every time he thought he saw Cas. Now he wonders if he actually had – if when he had averted his eyes and talked himself out of it, if Cas has been staring at the back of his head and willing him to look up. “You came back for school.”

“I never got around to applying to the new school,” Cas admits. He hangs his coat and slips his shoes off, still moving with the ease of someone who lived there for years. Dean leads him into the kitchen, and starts making hot chocolate to keep his hands busy. “You were right.”

“I know.” Dean pauses. “About what?”

Cas nearly laughs, but the joy never reaches his expression.. “I was angry about you not talking to me, but I didn't talk to you either. It wasn't fair for me to assume that I knew what was best for you. You made it sound very simple.”

“If it's any consolation,” Dean says, setting the timer on the microwave, “I really did get why you left.”

Cas is staring out the rain-streaked window. The room is full of the sound of rain on the side of the house and the whirring of the microwave. “I regret it.”

“Me too.” When the microwave beeps, Dean mixes in the instant cocoa and brings the mugs to the table. He sits across from Cas, but they can't quite seem to keep eye contact. “Where are you staying?”

Cas rolls his eyes and blows on his cocoa. “I'm crashing with that guy from my psych class – you remember him? British guy, sort of snooty, really good taste in suits?”

Dean laughs. “Yeah, I remember that dick. Oh man, that must suck. Your suits are terrible.” They laugh together for a moment, and Dean clears his throat. “Look, come crash on the couch here. I'm not getting all girly on you here, but we can do this whole talking thing and play it by ear from there, right?”

Cas smiles sheepishly. He has the best sheepish smile, like he's embarrassed by the very act of being there. It makes Dean smile in turn, and he's glad when Cas finally answers. “Sure, we can play it by ear.”

"Good." Dean rubs a hand over his mouth, because this is bigger than Dean ever expected. He had thought maybe in a couple years they might maintain a cautious friendship, but this is -- this is hope. Dean doesn't often deal in hope, and he doesn't know if he should guard this secret close to his chest or scream from the front porch: it might be okay after all! Instead he clears his throat and finally manages, "Dinner? I mean, do you want to talk it over while we go get some?"

"Sure." Cas stands and stretches, and he looks like he might be entertaining hope as well. "It's the least I can do."