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“What’s your favorite color, Cas?” Dean asks, out of the blue as they sit stretched out in the grass on a small knoll. In the distance, the horizon paints a picture of the early dawn hours, the moon and the stars retreating home, leaving nothing but an empty dark purple sky.
They had ended up on that grassy knoll because of a spark of the moment idea from Dean; he had cut the engine to his car, and turned to Castiel with a look on his face. It was mischievous, one eyebrow raised and lips quirked to the side. Dean was too full of adrenaline from the hunt to sleep, he claimed, as he took Castiel’s hand and led him to the small hill to sit. Together, they would wait to watch the sunrise over the spanning hills, just enjoying each other's company.
The grass was slightly wet, Castiel could feel water seeping into his pants. In fact, he had offered to lay out his trench coat, but Dean just tossed him a lazy smile, and told him "a few grass stains never killed anyone."
Dean’s question had come as a surprise, both the essence of the question and the fact he spoke. There had been nothing but a calm, amiable silence between them.
“My favorite color?” Castiel echoes back, curiously tilting his head in his familiar fashion.
“Yeah, like, I dunno know,” Dean pauses, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I guess, it’s just that we’ve fought demons and angels and even God together and I don’t even know your favorite color, man.”
Castiel takes a moment to think about it, he isn’t necessarily partial towards one color in the universe. He’s seen thousands– even millions of colors and their shade variations over his millennium of existence.
From the unearthly grey scales of the first fish to heave itself upon land, as his brother instructed him not to step on that fish, big plans for that one after all.
To the orange-reds of burnt bricks used to build the doomed tower of Babel, the colored bricks mixed with red mortar that eventually crumbled, all 37 feet of it.
He’s seen the vibrant purple dyes derived from snails of the Ancient Rome royalty, the bright blue– or irtyu– on the columns of the luxor temple from Ancient Egypt, the rich pink dye called cochineal from Ancient Maya civilization.
Castiel has seen many colors created from the hands of humanity with assistance from nature’s organic beauty. Even with Naomi’s desperate attempts to make him forget, he will always remember the colors.
Colors are all so beautiful and unique in their own way from the orange of the asclepias tuberosa, or known as butterfly weeds to the orange of campsis radicans, the Trumpet vine, that borders on the salmon color, how could he possibly choose one?
Castiel has seen nature’s colors, not only from its plants but the animals too. The striking gold of the now extinct Golden Toad to the bright and colorful feathers of a rainbow lorikeet, a very fitting name for the species of parrot. He has enjoyed viewing the black stripes of a Siberian tiger that clashed with its bleached white pigmentation and its brother species, Caspian tigers, black stripes and orange fur.
He’s seen the ugly side of these colors too, the dark celestial black of the Empty and the crimson red blood of a cut or gunshot wound that pours out of poor fragile humans. But he’d rather focus on the dark black of the tulip variety called “queen of night” and the crimson red of a ladybird beetle, or simply a ladybug.
He’d rather focus on the beautiful.
“You there?” Dean asks, staring at Castiel; still waiting for an answer.
Castiel looks away from the grassy knoll’s view and right into Dean’s eyes. Before he can even second guess it, he blurts out “green.”
Dean nods slowly at that, taking the answer at face value, turning his head back to look out into the distance.
What Castiel doesn’t add is, the type of green he likes is the color of Dean’s eyes. Not the unripe green of olives grown in Sicily. Not the bright green of tenodera sinensis, or the Chinese Mantis. Not the pale green of helleborus viridis that grow in February.
It’s the green that can only come from Dean’s eyes, the ones that radiate warmth towards his loved ones, that have a cheeky sparkle when he’s about to tell a joke, that are full of determination when he meets an obstacle, the ones that Castiel can look into and feel at home.
They’re the ones he wants to look at for the rest of his life.
“Hey,” Dean nudges him playfully, almost sending Castiel sprawling into the grass.
(Not even the grass can compare to Dean’s eyes, the slight morning dew reflecting off of the deep green color of the grass blades; it barely holds a candle.)
“You’re supposed to be watching the sunrise.”
Castiel fights the urge to reply back, “There will always be sunrises, I have watched many for my whole angelic existence, and there will always be colors, but there will never be green eyes like yours.”
Instead he reaches over, placing his hand on Dean’s cheek to tilt his head to look towards Castiel again. Dean’s eyebrows furrow, curious to what Castiel is up to, but a goofy smile graces his face when Castiel leans in.
His eyelashes fan the apple of his cheek when he closes his eyes and Castiel kisses him.
They kiss for a while, giddy like two love struck teenagers, and the sun rises over the horizon.
Castiel pulls away, to let Dean catch his breath, and he studies Dean’s face, his brown freckles on the rough bridge of his nose, the rose pink of his lips that match his flushed cheeks, and the light brown of his hair, a strand falling in front of his face.
And those pretty green eyes that look back at Castiel with nothing but love.