Work Text:
Nothing like a good piece of ash, Dean thought. He hoisted the Louisville Slugger over his shoulder and tiptoed down the bunker hallway towards wherever or whatever the ka-thump had originated from.
In the doorway of Cas's bedroom, the baseball bat slid through his fist and made a clunk on the tiled floor. Dean stared, and stared, and tried with his hazy three a.m. brain to make sense of what he was seeing.
Cas was here. He had arms. Arms? Coming right out of those shoulders. So much shoulder. Broad. Had they always been broad? And then the aforementioned arms. Toned. Strong?? Colorful????
"Hello, Dean," Cas said in his normal voice, as though his presence was not unexpected and his current attire -- a pair of trousers and a plain white undershirt -- was not akin to public indecency.
He was fussing with his belt and not paying Dean any particular attention. No problem, because Dean was not available to come to the phone right now, please leave a message.
Could Dean wrap his whole hand around Cas's bicep? Not anymore, no, didn't look like it. Again, no worries. Why would he even want to? Ha ha, that was a crazy idea. Just because his hands felt like they might crack off his arms at the wrists and go zooming through the sky to grip said biceps, just to see, just to feel the musculature of them--
"Dean?" Cas said, a note of concern in his voice.
"Thought you were a couple days out," Dean said, some backup doppelganger version of himself jerry-rigging his mouth enough for speech.
"Claire found a case in Michigan," Cas said, finally freeing his tetchy belt from the pants loops and tossing it on the chest of drawers. "She didn't want a sidekick." At that, he looked a little disappointed.
Dean attempted to rally his sanity. "She doing okay?"
Cas hoisted his big duffel bag up onto the mattress and Dean watched the muscles in Cas's arms subtly flex with the effort. There was something in that bag that had caused the earlier noise that had awakened Dean, probably loose weapons lent by Sam; Dean processed this simple info without it actively swimming to the surface of his thoughts, because arms. ARMS. Cas had so many very nice strong arms. Two of them, even.
Was Cas saying anything important about Claire? Yes? Focus?
"She's enjoying staying with Jody and Alex more than she wants to admit." Cas sat on the bed to start removing the bag's contents, which included some dirty laundry and an orange plastic sack. From the sack, he fished out a pair of gray men's socks patterned with ghosts. "We went to a novelties and costume store after having lunch. Does $7 seem like too much to pay for fake vomit?"
Dean's brain snapped back online. "How much fake vomit we talking here?"
"About the size of a dinner plate?"
"Oh, yeah, that's armed robbery." Dean inwardly high-fived himself for a relevant pun only he would get for multiple reasons.
He did not sigh, dreamily or otherwise, as he watched Cas yawn and go through a series of arm stretches and bends that Dean knew Sam -- Sam who was snoring in his own bed and not in any way vexed or befuddled -- had taught him to do after long drives. Flexibility was underrated. The undershirt strained to contain Cas's body, and Dean's mind started to buckle again under the weight of the mere concept of Cas's body.
"Do you want to sit?" Cas asked. He was squinting at Dean. "You look very tired."
Dean sat. Was his decision to sit directly beside Cas unwarranted? Of course not. They were best friends, had sat next to one another plenty of times. Also, there were no chairs in the room.
Don't touch the arms, Dean thought. Don't touch anything.
But he'd no more than admonished himself to do this altogether normal thing of not touching his buddy, his pal, his fave angelic dudebro, when his index finger shot out and poked Cas's arm like Dean's hand was a transplant from a serial killer. A possessed hand. A hand with an agenda of its own.
"Yes?" Cas asked, the picture of tranquility.
"What is that," Dean said as he tried to make sense of the shape on Cas's arm that he (Dean) seemed unable to quit poking.
"It's a tattoo." Cas gently took Dean's hand to disarm it.
(Dammit, Dean thought. Someone ought to be appreciating these goshdang puns.)
"Maple leaf. See?" Cas pushed up the sleeve of the undershirt so the whole image could be revealed.
Dean stared at the leaf -- marbled in red, green, and orange hues -- for a very long moment. "You got a tattoo?"
"It's not real, Dean." Cas had not let go of Dean's hand. "It comes off with baby oil."
"I don't know what's happening right now." May as well just admit it, Dean thought.
"I don't think you've been getting enough sleep," Cas said without sounding too judgmental. "Claire's considering a tattoo. There were these packs of temporary ones at the store that she decided to buy as a trial, to see if she liked the size and placement of them. I liked the leaf one so she shared. Nice autumnal colors."
"Ohhh-kay," Dean said. He studied the fake tat. "Very realistic."
"Thank you." Cas squeezed Dean's hand. "Are you all right?"
A serious question. Dean realized he hadn't thought about Amara once in days, not in any obsessive way and especially not in the last ten minutes, where there hadn't been any room in Dean's cracked-up blitzed-out lust-addled psyche for anyone but Cas and his beautiful arms.
"You've been through a lot lately," Cas said.
Dean looked, really looked, at his face for the first time all evening. "Haven't we all."
He meant, a couple of months ago he'd scythed Death, Sam had almost been reaped while suffering from Amara-induced viral zombie-itis, and Cas had been whammied by the king of Hell's witch mom and gone rampaging around in full-on whacko mode. They maybe didn't lead average lives.
"I don't think about her," Dean said, "unless she's standing right in front of me." He blew out a breath. "And then."
"You can't stop thinking about her," Cas finished for him.
"Yeah, except." Except when Amara was near, she filled up his mind like blood leaking from a blow to the head. Dean wanted to look away and made himself not. Cas held his gaze gently; it brought something warm into Dean's throat. "Except even then, I don't wanna be thinking about her."
When she isn't right in front of me, I think about you too much, Cas. But I don't know how to stop.
I don't want to stop.
"Dean," Cas said, from somewhere far away.
Dean's eyes fluttered shut, exhaustion rolling over him like a fog. His cheek landed on a pillow. The lights were out again and no-one, certainly not Dean, was home. He felt Cas pull a blanket over him. Everywhere was darkness, but a safe one this time, the mattress dipping alongside him as Cas stretched out.
"Cas. You gonna get a real leafy tattoo later?" Dean mumbled.
Cas gave a small, pleased huff. "Probably not."
"Looks good, though, man. Real good."
Dean didn't hear what Cas said after that. He reached out his hand and let it land on Cas's arm, and then fell fast asleep, still holding on.