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“I don’t understand the point of this,” Castiel says from the comfort of his recliner, the roar of the crowd blasting through the sound bar Dean had just installed in the Dean Cave. His brow is furrowed in confusion and his head is tilted curiously as he studies the football game. “They’re simply playing a game. Why do people watch this?”
“This, coming from the dude who was holed up in here last night watching a documentary about bees.” Dean looks over at Cas and huffs out a little laugh at the tense set of his shoulders and the little crinkle of annoyance between his brows.
“There’s colony collapse, Dean. Do you even know what could happen to our food supply if bees go extinct?” Cas grumbles. “At least my choices in television are educational. What does this teach anyone?”
“How not to get a concussion? Yeah, no… maybe not that,” Dean says just as two players crash into each other, helmet to helmet, leaving one of them lying all too still on the ground as the medical crew takes the field and the game goes to an injury timeout. He glances over to witness Cas’ ‘I told you so’ look before turning back to the El Sol commercial on the screen. “It’s just a form of entertainment, Cas. People like rooting for their teams or betting on the games. Then there’s the playoffs and the Super Bowl to look forward to. It’s fun if your team is doing good, and now that I have time, I'm gonna enjoy my Chiefs this year, thank you very much.”
On the screen the game has resumed and Mahomes is sacked in a brutal hit, the sound of him crashing to the ground audible through the surround sound. Castiel gasps a little at the crunch of the players’ pads smacking together. “This is barbaric.”
“Buddy, I’ve seen you lay hands on demons and smite the shit out of them in three seconds flat, and this is too violent for you?” Dean teases.
“Those demons hurt innocent people. This is for sport. I don’t understand.”
“Maybe you’d enjoy baseball,” Dean suggests with a shrug. It’s that perfect late-summer-melting-into-fall time of year when both sports are still being played, so Dean flips the channel, finding a baseball game on one of the cable sports channels. It's not the Royals, but it'll do. “There’s a lot less impact in this sport.”
Minutes tick by, and Castiel shifts restlessly in his chair, the swish of his too-tight borrowed-from-Dean jeans against the leather audible over the announcer on tv.
“Problem, Buddy?” Dean asks.
“It’s very boring isn’t it?” Castiel asks in reply, head tilting again as he watches the batter not even swing at the ball, as if he's trying to figure out what makes baseball so appealing.
“So football is too barbaric and baseball is too boring?” Dean teases, huffing out a little laugh when Cas nods in agreement. “Yeah, baseball is one of those sports that’s kinda hard to watch on TV. It’s better experienced live in the stands with a beer in one hand and a hot dog in the other,” Dean says wistfully. He hasn’t been to a game in so long, he can barely remember what it was like. John never took him and Sam when they were young… no he saved that for Adam, the half brother they didn’t know existed until they were all grown. He rolls his eyes and shoves the thought aside. “We should go,” he suggests.
“To a game?” Castiel asks. “Just the two of us?” His eyes are wide and hopeful and Dean feels a little lurch in his chest at the sight of him. He would say yes to anything as long as it makes Cas look this happy.
“Yeah, why not? Sam is at Eileen’s and it’s been quiet since Jack took over. We could take a little road trip out to see the Royals play, crash at a hotel, and come back the next day. Could be fun? And if it’s not, and sports still aren’t your thing, you can pick the next thing we watch together.”
“Even if I choose a documentary on the plight of honeybees?” Cas asks with a smile that puts a twinkle in eyes that haven’t glowed since Jack fucked off to Heaven and gave Cas back healthy and whole, but very human.
Dean’s breath catches at the sight of him, so beautiful and content. Cas shares his smiles so infrequently that one that reaches his eyes like that, well if it makes Dean’s heart flutter a bit, who can blame him? “I have faith that you’ll have fun, so yeah Cas, whatever you want. We can watch the world's longest bee documentary if you hate baseball.”
Cas smiles at the hopeful tone in Dean’s voice and nods. “OK, it’s a deal.”
Dean looks up the Royals’ schedule on his phone, then snags a couple lower level seats for the next day. “We’re in luck. It's the last few home games before the playoffs,” he says as he digs through his pocket for his handy, albeit fraudulent, credit card.
It’s been a bit tentative between them since the world turned upside down, and was subsequently righted again with Chuck’s downfall. Castiel’s deathbed confession hangs between them, but neither has brought it up, choosing instead to fall back into their friendship. A friendship that just felt easy now without the weight of one apocalypse or another hanging over them. Not that Dean hasn’t thought about Cas' watery eyes and 'I love you,' every minute of every day since the moment he watched the empty swallow Cas up, but things are easy and Cas is patient. One day, Dean tells himself as he steals a glance at Cas’ side profile and watches the play of television light flickering across the former angel’s sharp cheekbones and plush lips. One day I’ll be everything he deserves.
Because Cas does deserve more. He deserves to get out of a dark, musty, underground bunker and into a little home where he can do all the things he hints at wanting to do. Maybe he could start a garden and keep a little beehive. He could learn to cook, and they could spend domestic evenings together preparing a dinner they’d sit and eat at the table together. They’d talk about their days at their absurdly normal jobs and make plans for the weekends. Dean would kiss him goodnight as they climb into their shared bed, and wake in the mornings to find his head resting on Castiel’s warm chest, a very human heart beating beneath his drool slicked cheek. He’d wake Cas by slipping under the covers and wrapping his mouth around Cas’….
“Dean?” Dean snaps out of his daydream to find the subject of it looming over him. “I’m going to bed. Did you want to get an early start?”
Dean clears his throat as his cheeks heat up, feeling like he was just caught in the act, though he knows it’s been years since Cas has poked around in his brain. Not that Cas could do so anymore anyway. He nods his assent and watches Cas retreat from the room to go to his cold, impersonal room a few doors down from Dean’s, where he would sleep alone in a big empty bed. Dean sighs, and wonders what Cas would do if Dean followed and climbed in next to him.
One day, Dean repeats to himself.
.
.
.
The trip to Kansas City takes about four hours give or take with one stop along the way so Castiel can begrudgingly empty his bladder. Dean gases up Baby while he waits, since she guzzles gas faster than Dean guzzled whiskey whenever he’d been without Cas.
They check into a decent hotel, a place with multiple floors, a working elevator, and linens that don’t even smell like mildew or secondhand smoke. When they open the door, a king sized bed is staring them in the face, but neither mention it, just tossing their duffles onto the foot of their preferred sides. Dean takes a minute to marvel at the fact that they naturally picked opposite sides and thinks it’s just one more way the universe is trying to tell him to man up and tell Cas how he feels.
Instead he watches Cas disappear into the bathroom, once again grumbling about “urination,” and Dean not-so-quietly bitches at him for insisting on drinking that big gulp of honey-sweetened, iced green tea. "No one needs to be that hydrated, buddy."
It all feels somewhat domestic, and Dean once again longs for a home of their own. He allows himself to picture it, his mind constructing a little cabin by a lake somewhere. There’s a porch on the back where they can sit side by side and watch the sun set over the glittering water. Maybe he’d build a dock for fishing and they could get a canoe or small motor boat. He’d need a garage of course. Baby is a lady, and as such has grown accustomed to the massive garage in the bunker.
He’s pulled out of his latest daydream when he hears the shower turn on, and he grins. One of the human activities Cas fell into so easily had been his appreciation of a nice, hot shower under decent water pressure. He swears Cas sneaks off to take three showers a day, so it’s no surprise that he’s in there taking advantage of the huge, tiled walk-in shower that came with the room. No matter, they have a few hours until the game.
Dean uses the time to unpack his bag, which is another new development since Jack essentially fixed the world. He nests now. He doesn’t keep a knife under his pillow, or a bag under his bed packed with emergency essentials, and he doesn’t leave his bag packed when they go away for lesiure. He removes his clothes from his duffle and places them in a drawer, setting his toiletry bag aside to put in the bathroom when Cas is finished. He plugs in his phone to charge, and turns on the TV for background noise as he flutters about the room, turning down the bed before he settles down with the room service menu. He orders a couple burgers for an early lunch, knowing he can’t go wrong there, and waits for Cas to wrap it up.
A minute or two more passes before the shower turns off, and the door opens to release a plume of hot steam. Dean sits up a little straighter when Cas emerges, a towel wrapped precariously low on his perfectly cut hips. There’s water clinging to his skin, stray rivulets trailing their way down the dip between his pecs and getting caught on sparse chest hairs, and Dean’s eyes can’t help but follow their path as they make their way over soft abs, and further down to soak into the towel perched far below Cas’ navel. Cas’ cheeks are flushed from the heat of the water and his wet hair is sticking up all over, the ends dripping onto Cas’s bare, broad shoulders, and even from across the room Dean can smell the mint scented hotel shampoo he’d helped himself to. Fuck, has he always been this tanned and toned all over? And is that a freckle over his nipple?
“Apologies,” Cas murmurs as he reaches for his bag. “The shower looked so inviting that I didn’t even think to get my things before I got in. I can dress out here if you need the bathroom.”
Dean just tears his eyes away and nods before escaping into the sticky heat and slamming the door behind him.
.
.
.
Cas is sitting patiently in his stadium seat when Dean returns with a paper tray full of hot dogs in one hand, and two beers in wide-mouth plastic bottles between the fingers of his other hand.
“I would have helped,” Cas says as he takes the burden of the tray off of Dean and sets it in his lap.
“No worries, man. Looks at these seats!” Dean says excitedly as he looks out over left field. They aren’t seats behind home plate or anything, but they’re just a couple rows from the field, so close he could distinguish between blades of startlingly green grass. “One day, I want a lawn that green,” he says before stuffing half of a hot dog in his mouth and chewing with puffed cheeks.
Cas looks at him far too softly for a man witnessing gluttony in action. “I think you deserve that,” he says gently, a smile tugging up at one corner of his lips and he takes a much smaller bite of his own hot dog.
“You too, man. I mean… maybe you can come with me when I finally move out… be my… roommate or something,” he stumbles through the words, feeling insanely stupid. That’s not the living arrangement he wants at all. He chugs most of his beer in a blind panic.
“Perhaps,” is all Cas says before the players take the field, and Dean can’t help but notice that the ghost of a smile has vanished from his face. They finish eating in silence, and the awkward tension between them slowly evaporates.
The game gets going and Cas seems to relax a bit, asking questions about the rules and breaking into a loud laugh when a foul ball flies right over his head to land in the mitt of a kid just a few rows behind them. Dean finds himself watching Cas more than the game, and he’s satisfied to find he was right. Cas is having fun.
“So I guess no bee documentary for me then?” Dean leans over to ask smugly between innings.
“You could be a good friend and watch it anyway,” Cas teases back, but Dean knows Cas would never truly coerce him into it if he doesn’t want to watch. Cas is just selfless like that.
The strains of “Kiss Me,” by Sixpence None the Richer ring out through the stadium and Dean’s eyes are drawn out to the massive, crowned screen in center field.
“Kiss cam,” he says, leaning into Cas’ space and pointing so they can watch all the happy, blushing couples smooch.
“That’s sweet,” Cas says, then after another minute he grumbles, “They’re all straight couples.”
“Yeah, we’re in Missouri, bud. There’s not a whole lot of rainbow flag waving in these par…. what the fuck?”
Up on the screen, in all its glory and ten stories high is Cas’ face. The problem is, he’s framed in with the female stranger on his right side. He hears Cas gasp and a look of sheer panic lights up his handsome features as he heavily leans away from the woman, who is laughing and waving her hands as she leans into her boyfriend. Dean is waiting for the kiss cam to swing over to the couple, but instead, it moves to frame him with Cas.
“So much for homophobia,” he mumbles, then seizes the opportunity before he can think better of it. He takes Cas’ face in his hands, chuckling when Cas’ eyes go wider than he’s ever seen them. He allows one hand to slip into the hair at the nape of Cas’ neck, and he uses the thumb from the other to lightly tug at Cas’ bottom lip. “I’m gonna kiss you, Cas.” It’s not a question.
Cas just nods sharply and leans in eagerly, and when their lips press together, the stadium erupts in applause that drowns out the few people who are bold enough to boo. Fireworks erupt behind Dean’s eyelids and he moans softly against Cas' lips. Cas kisses him back with enthusiasm that borders on possessive and Dean suddenly wants to be owned. He parts his lips to allow Cas inside and groans low in his throat when Cas takes the invitation and their tongues brush together. Cas is leaning into him hard now, hands fisted in the front of Dean’s shirt in an attempt to pull him even closer, and suddenly, Dean has an urge to crawl into Cas’ lap. It’s that thought that breaks them apart. Dean floats down from his high, and the stadium is still deafeningly loud. Somewhere nearby someone yells for them to get a room, and Dean just laughs as color flushes Cas’ cheeks.
“Got one!” Dean yells back before taking Cas by the hand and pulling him out of his seat and up the many stairs that would lead them up to the concourse and out of the stadium.
They reach the car, and Cas tugs his hand away gently. “What does this mean, Dean?” he asks, eyes looking anywhere but into Dean’s.
“Well, Cas. It means I don’t only want you to be my roommate. I want more than that, and I’m finally ready to get my head out of my ass,” he answers with a laugh. “It means that I… I love you too.”
It must be exactly what Cas wants to hear, because he just presses a kiss to Dean's lips, smiles at him, and slides into the passenger seat, ready to go wherever Dean takes him.
Spoiler alert, Dean takes him directly to bed.