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Dean feels warm, and he feels fuzzy around the edges. It would scare him, maybe, if he were by himself, or if he were around lots of strangers.
But he’s not by himself, and he’s not around lots of strangers. He’s with Cas, who’s warm and fuzzy around the edges too.
The boy looks blurred and soft where he lies collapsed on the bed besides Dean, desaturated under the dim light that leaks into their little rented room. Far away, the day is ending in a distant hum, noise of the ever-spinning festival floating over them halfheartedly, like it knows there’s nothing it can do to tempt them back outside.
He’s been drunk before, but not like this. He’s never felt safe. He’s never felt good.
He feels good right now, safe and exhausted and taken care of, collapsed limply against Cas on their little bed after a day as big and bright as the sun.
The golden dusk-light spills in through the cracks in the closed shutters like the mug of ale Cas had knocked over on the street.
That had made Dean laugh, when Cas had stumbled into it. He’d laughed loud and long, unguarded.
It’s nice to laugh. It’s nice to be safe to laugh. It’s nice how Cas had laughed too.
He likes Cas so much.
He turns to the boy now, floaty and happy, squirming around on the bed until they’re facing each other.
Grinning dopily, his heart flutters as he watches Cas’s eyes crinkle at the edges.
“Hi,” Dean whispers.
Cas’s eyes crinkle further.
“Hello Dean,” he whispers back, smile in his voice.
Dean kisses him, impulsive and shy. Cas makes a surprised noise, and kisses him back.
Their mouths don’t fit together quite right, because the both of them are smiling too much, but Dean doesn’t mind. He likes kissing Cas, even when it doesn’t work so well. He likes how it makes Cas blush, and how it makes something flutter pleasantly in his own stomach.
It never felt like that before, with anyone else. But Cas is different than anyone else, like he always has been.
It’s a new feeling to have, feeling good, when doing something like kissing. He’s used to feeling bad, or just blank.
But he never feels bad or blank when he’s kissing Cas.
He always feels happy.
Warm and malleable on the bed, Dean feels Cas’s arms circle around him to pull him close, and Dean lets himself be moved, be embraced.
Cas likes to hold him when they kiss. But he doesn’t try to put his hands under Dean’s clothes, and he lets go if Dean starts pulling away.
So Dean…likes it.
He likes it, when Cas holds him. Likes how he pulls him in tight.
It makes Dean feel like he…belongs, in some sweet settled way. Not to Cas, but with Cas, maybe. Like they’re two parts of something that folds together just right. The wings of a bird, or a paper valentine. Creased and touching in all the right places.
Dean pulls back, to catch his breath at last. Cas kisses his nose as he goes.
“Cas,” Dean protests weakly, face red.
“What?” Cas says, raising his eyebrows. “I like your nose.”
“Oh my god,” he mumbles, but he’s not fooling anyone. He’s immensely pleased, and the evidence bleeds hotter onto his cheeks like roses blooming.
Cas kisses him again, and Dean lets him. His body goes limp, but it’s not out of fear.
It’s been a long time since he’s been afraid Cas would hurt him.
That makes his heart do some sort of flip in his chest, sort of melancholy but joyous all the same.
Pliant and loose, trust feels like a solid thing in his heart, dense and warm as the sweet pudding Cas makes for holidays in their familiar home. He feels a little dizzy, a little breathless. He’s not sure if it’s from the alcohol or the softness of Cas’s lips.
Either way, Dean is drunk off it in a way that sends him reeling. Pushing himself up on his elbow, he deepens the kiss, something stirring farther down as he feels Cas’s hands press hard against his shoulder blades. Cas’s body is hot and solid against his own, and Dean pushes against it, liking the way it doesn’t move.
There’s a knock on the door.
Dean jerks up, startled. Cas’s eyes shoot open, and they look at each other in mild alarm like two gangly legged teens caught kissing in the barn.
“Um,” Cas says flatly, hair mussed, face red, blinking up at Dean with wide eyes. He somehow looks incredibly handsome and incredibly silly to Dean at the same time, and he snorts involuntarily, before throwing a hand over his mouth.
In his old life, he would have been terrified, knowing there would be hell to pay for laughing at a client. Even a year ago, he would have been frightened, might have started babbling apologies to Cas right away.
Now, though, he’s tense for only a moment before Cas cracks a smile, and Dean relaxes into the comfort of it like lying down in bed after a long day.
“Who is that?” Cas hisses at him, trying not to laugh, trying to stay quiet.
Dean, for no particular reason, dissolves into a fit of giggles behind the hand slapped over his mouth. He tries to smother the noise of it, but his shoulders shake hard enough to make the bed tremble.
As if being quiet now will make whoever’s knocked go away. As if they can pretend they’re somehow not here anymore, from one heated moment to the silent next.
It’s so funny to Dean all of a sudden that another laugh bubbles out of him, and Cas tosses a pillow at him, eyes bulging.
“Shhhh!” he shushes, and Dean splutters trying to keep the sound in, grabbing the pillow and burying his face in it as the giggles push their way out of him, uncontainable.
“I can hear you two in there, you know. You aren’t being subtle at all.”
The flat voice comes from outside the door, sounding unamused. It’s Ellen, and Dean cracks up.
He laughs loud, everything seeming so much funnier through the loopy way his mead filled mind interprets it. Dropping the pillow, he collapses back onto the bed, flat on his back, and lets himself shake as drunken amusement pours from his mouth in peels.
He hears Cas laugh besides him too, and watches as the boy sits up, smoothing his hair back into place.
Dean admires him shamelessly, and glows with pleasure as the boy grins down at him.
“Sorry Ellen,” he calls, and then slips from Dean’s view, pushing himself off the bed.
Staring up at the ceiling, Dean watches the patterns on the wooden beams spin slowly as he listens to Cas pad over to the door.
“Are we being too loud?” he hears Cas say, a moment after the creek of the door swinging open.
“Are you doing something that might lead you to be loud?”
Ellen’s voice is dry, and Dean can almost hear the way her eyebrow is raised. He snorts again, and grabs the pillow besides him, throwing it back over his face.
“No, no!” Cas says, way too innocent. He’s a terrible liar, and Dean’s stomach shakes at how bad he is at convincing people of absolutely anything.
I love him so much, Dean thinks helplessly, and the thought bursts like light in his chest.
He throws his arms over the pillow on his face, hugging it like a friend and half smothering himself, tipsily wondering if he can just breathe happiness instead.
But he can’t, and a moment later his arms release their squeeze over the fabric, laying loosely over the puffy thing like his body against the bed.
Smiling into the scratchy linen, Dean wonders if he’s the luckiest person in the whole wide world.
He thinks he probably is.
“You ain’t bein’ loud,” Ellen’s voice says eventually, after a staredown Dean’s absolutely sure just happened and doesn’t envy. “Was just wonderin’ if you were ever gonna come get the food you ordered damn near 30 minutes ago.”
Their food!
Dean sits up abruptly, letting the pillow fall off his face.
Everything spins wildly, but he ignores it, gripping the bedsheets to keep himself steady, forgotten meals suddenly seeming like the most important thing in the world.
He’s hungry. He wants to eat!
“Cas!” he yelps, but Cas ignores him, seemingly knowing he’s just yelling about their stew.
“Sorry, Ellen, we got distracted,” the boy says, sounding embarrassed.
Ellen looks over to Dean, flushed and half dressed on the bed.
“Yeah, I bet,” she says, and Dean splutters, indignant, quickly giving up on coming up with a coherent answer in favor of scowling childishly down at the bedspread.
Distantly, he’s aware that he maybe should feel genuinely ashamed. Being seen like this, hair mussed, tunic falling off one shoulder, lying loose on the bed like a slut.
What must Ellen think?
The thought comes vague and thready, and Dean easily waves it away like a spiderweb.
Something about the alcohol loosens the stress in his chest, easing the anxiety out from inside of him like firm hands offering to carry a heavy load. Something about having Cas standing in the doorway, equally mussed, equally happy, makes him feel like maybe it’s ok.
Maybe he’s not a slut for kissing Cas and liking it.
Or maybe he is, and it just doesn’t matter.
It’s not like Cas is gonna start pimping him out because of it. It’s not like he isn’t safe all the same.
A smile starts to tug at his lips once again.
“Sorry, Ellen,” Cas repeats. “I’ll come get it.”
It takes Dean a moment to process what Cas’s words mean, but when he does, he reaches out his arms, betrayed.
“No!” Dean protests, wanting to hold Cas again right away. “Don’t leave!”
Cas glances back at him, perplexed, and Dean makes grabby hands at him from across the room.
“Dean, I was only going to get-”
“No,” Dean demands, deciding he isn’t hungry after all.
Food doesn’t matter. Not if it means Cas will leave him by himself. It’s much more important that Cas is here, right now and forever, and that he comes back to bed and kisses Dean again.
“Come kiss me!” he insists, self-consciousness having fled like his desire to eat. Cas looks back at Ellen uncertainly, apparently startled by Dean’s blatantness, and oh yeah, weren’t they just trying to keep quiet?
“Um,” the boy says brilliantly, and Ellen purses her lips. There’s a twinkle in her eye, though, that tells Dean she isn’t entirely unamused.
“I see you are otherwise occupied,” she quips, and Dean nods in agreement, glad Ellen is backing him up. “How ‘bout I just send Jo up with it in a bit?”
“That would probably be best,” Cas agrees, sounding bashful. Then Ellen leaves, shutting the door, and Dean smiles at Cas with his arms out.
“Come back!” he begs, and Cas’s puzzled face softens, into something sweet and gentle and kind.
“Of course, Dean.”
Of course, Dean.
Like there’s no reason Dean should ever have to worry that Cas would leave him. Like it’s inevitable that he will return to hold Dean once again.
Arms still extended, Dean shuts his eyes, and shivers, listening happily to the sound of Cas approaching, waiting, waiting to again be touched.
And it happens, just like Dean thought it would, just like Cas promised, and Dean breathes out in pleasure as he feels Cas wrap him in his arms again, as he’s lowered back down to the mattress like he is fragile and loved.
“Cas,” Dean huffs, and his eyes flicker open to see the beautiful boy hovering over him, arms coming down to cradle his body like a protector.
“I’m here, Dean, don’t worry.”
“Wasn’t worried,” Dean mumbles, and Cas strokes his face all soft and nice.
He really wasn’t. He’s never worried around Cas.
…That’s not true. But he’s never worried because of Cas. At least, not that the boy will somehow cause him pain.
He never has, and Dean is starting to believe he really never will. Just like he’d always promised.
Cas’s expression eases, but there’s still some concern in his eyes, even as he continues to smile down.
“I didn’t realize how drunk you are,” he says, brushing Dean’s hair out of his eyes.
“‘M not drunk,” Dean insists. But even as he says it, he knows it isn’t true. He’s well beyond tipsy, at this point.
It’s strange to realize, that he’s even more vulnerable than he thought he was, and that he’s so unafraid he hadn’t even noticed.
It could be an unnerving feeling, but instead it feels nice. It feels nice, to be here with Cas.
I used to hold my liquor better, he thinks. But the truth is maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he had just been scared, back then, fighting to think straight against the waves of confusion.
And now…he isn’t. Now he’s just letting himself be lost, knowing it doesn’t matter, knowing he’s in no danger from the sea of love that surrounds him.
“Love you,” he murmurs. “Kiss me? Please?”
He likes Cas. So much. He wants to kiss him more, and be held.
Those are his two favorite things in the world.
“I like to be kissed,” he continues, when Cas seems to hesitate. “By you. So much. I don’t care that I’m drunk. I love you.”
That seems to do the trick. The furrow between Cas’s eyebrows fades.
“You’re alright?” he asks, and Dean starts tugging on his collar, impatient.
“Yes, ‘cept you’re still not kissing me.”
So Cas does, soft and gentle, and then he does it again, and again, and again. And Dean feels like he’s floating, warm and fuzzy and huffing through waves of joy, and he knows that he is so lucky, that there’s no one luckier than him in the world.