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In Castiel’s defense, he meant to put down his knitting.
But he’d been a nervous mess all day, and he was so startled when he saw Dean, and…
Well, best to start at the beginning.
Knitting had always been one of the few things that calmed Castiel reliably. There was nothing quite like the swish of the needles and the rhythmic, familiar movement of his fingers to settle him into a kind of zen state where worries receded and anxieties faded away.
On the day of his first date with Dean Winchester, he needed his favorite coping mechanism more than ever.
As a rule, he was not the sort of man who was susceptible to crushes. He was perfectly content being a slightly boring junior-level accountant at Adler & Tapping. (Not the most prestigious firm in the city, but like Castiel, perfectly respectable and happy to be so. It suited him down to the ground.) He liked to read and do crosswords and meet up with his friend Hannah on weekends so they could watch TV together and eat popcorn in their pajamas.
He’d long ago decided he didn’t need a whirlwind romance to sweep him off his feet. He didn’t need cooing doves, dramatically crescendoing violins or the flutter of lepidoptera in his stomach. It wasn’t as though he’d never had sex, or never been in a relationship. He was neither asexual nor aromantic, as far as he could tell. He was simply… content to be exactly as he was.
But then, one day about two months ago, Dean Winchester had walked into his life. Or rather, into the coffee shop where Castiel liked to spend his lunch break either knitting or reading.
Dean wore steel-toed boots, a dusty, paint-splattered pair of jeans, a white t-shirt so tight as to border on obscene and, God help Castiel, a toolbelt.
Castiel immediately made a fool of himself by staring at this very agreeable view. He went on staring as this vision of a man walked to the counter and put in his order... until Dean caught him, flashing an absolutely ruinous grin his way.
Then he winked.
Castiel spilled his coffee all over the pink, blue and purple stripes of the socks he’d been knitting.
Dean rushed over to help him clean up the mess, dabbing at the table, seat and (again, God help him) Castiel’s pants. They got to talking, and Dean blushed beautifully as he said, “You know, um, that stuff you’re knitting? I’m really into those colors. They’re just like the bi pride flag.”
Castiel became so flustered then that he couldn’t get another word out, simply nodding stiffly in response. He just barely managed to thank Dean for his help in cleaning up before he fled from the coffee shop in utter disgrace.
Still, after that, Dean returned to the coffee shop with almost as much regularity as Castiel. He always had a smile for him, and usually a friendly greeting. On days where Castiel was very lucky, Dean might even share a small tidbit of personal information, such as his name, or the fact that he was employed at the construction site for the new office tower rising two blocks away from Castiel’s firm.
Castiel, in turn, nodded, smiled, and did his very best not to spontaneously combust from the sheer embarrassment of being unable to string more than two sentences together in Dean’s company.
But then, a few weeks after their first meeting, Castiel looked up to find that Dean, to-go cup in hand, had pulled out the chair on the opposite side of his table, sat down and was now looking at him with a slightly nervous expression that emphasized the lovely pout of his lips.
“Listen,” Dean said, eyes darting down to his hands, which were rotating the cup at a frankly alarming speed, considering its boiling-hot contents. “You might’ve noticed, but, um… the project’s almost wrapped up, so I might not be around much anymore after next week.”
Castiel watched, spellbound, as one of Dean’s hands moved upwards to rub shyly at the back of his own neck. Realizing an answer was likely expected of him, he said, “Oh.”
And then it sank in: Dean was leaving. No longer would Castiel be on the receiving end of his smiles and friendly greetings. No longer would he be able to (respectfully) ogle the extremely charming bow of Dean’s legs.
“Anyway,” Dean continued, squirming in his seat. “Fuck, I’m so bad at this, but I was wondering if you maybe wanted—”
“We should go on a date.” The words made it out of Castiel’s mouth entirely without his permission, an idle thought given voice due to sheer, unadulterated panic.
But Dean grew positively incandescent in response. He smiled wider than Castiel had ever seen him do before, and it caused the most charming maze of lines to appear on either side of his eyes.
Castiel knew then that he would never encounter a more perfect specimen of humanity for the rest of his life.
“Yeah, let’s,” Dean said, and Castiel almost spilled his coffee again out of sheer surprise and delight.
So when the day of their date arrived — September 18, exactly one month after they’d first met — Castiel undeniably needed some sort of coping mechanism to keep his anxiety from spiraling while he waited for Dean at the coffee shop he was quickly coming to think of as “theirs.”
Knitting had never failed him, whether the issue was tax season or the prospect of a phone call to his mother, but his hands still shook as he retrieved his favorite set of size 0 metal double points and a skein of variegated fingering he’d picked up at his local yarn shop a few days ago. It just so happened that the merino blend was purple, blue and pink, and Castiel had thought that if the date happened to go well, he might give this pair of socks to Dean as a gift. (His stomach leapt at the idea that by the time the socks were finished, he and Dean might have kissed. Or more. After all, he’d need to get Dean’s measurements to ensure a good fit.)
If he hadn’t been so nervous and distracted all day, Castiel would have at least made a start on the sock before he came to the coffee shop, but, well, he was nervous and distracted, so he found himself struggling even to form a proper slip knot — normally a well-practiced, mindless motion that marked the first step of his favored long-tail cast-on — with hands that simply refused to cooperate. Working with four needles that were six inches long and barely two millimeters thick, arranged into a prickly square joined by thin lines of nylon-reinforced sock yarn, was nearly beyond him.
He’d just managed to twist his join for the third time when Dean walked into the coffee shop and greeted him with a gentle “Hey, Cas.”
Though Castiel had been waiting for Dean to come, he was still utterly unprepared for the fact that Dean was actually here. For him. For their date. He looked so lovely in a dark green button-up shirt that set off his eyes, and his smile could have launched entire armadas. The shocking impossibility of it all startled Castiel to his feet.
And again, it should be pointed out that Castiel really had meant to put down his knitting.
Unfortunately, he forgot. He rose to his feet still holding the tail of yarn in one hand and his double-pointed needles in the other.
Still more unfortunately, Dean interpreted Castiel’s getting up as an invitation to move in for a hug.
Perhaps as a result of some nerves of his own, Dean leaned in rather quickly, and Castiel… well, Castiel was holding a set of wickedly sharp metallic objects.
The first sign that something had gone wrong came when Dean froze. His arms had come halfway around Castiel’s shoulders, but their chests were still a few inches away from touching.
“Shit, what…” he said, pulling away from Castiel and looking down.
To Castiel’s absolute horror, the tip of one of the needles had penetrated the fabric of Dean’s shirt. And, judging by the resistance he’d felt, embedded itself in his midsection.
The other half of the needle remained accusingly clutched in Castiel’s hand, along with its pointy brethren.
“Oh my God,” Castiel said, his hands shaking more badly than ever. “Oh my God. I stabbed you. I stabbed you.”
He was going to be sick. He was going to faint. He was—
“Cas. Hey, Cas. It’s alright. It’s not even that bad. Here.” Much like Castiel’s hands, Dean’s voice was slightly unsteady, but he looked remarkably composed as he reached down, covered Castiel’s fingers with his and helped him withdraw the needle. (Dean’s hands were very nice, a distant part of Castiel’s brain informed him: strong and capable, rough with calluses, but gentle in their touch.)
The tip of the needle — half an inch, maybe a little more — emerged red from the tiny hole it had made in Dean’s shirt, and a corresponding dark stain bloomed across the fabric. With a shudder, Castiel dropped the unfortunate bundle of needles onto the table, where they would (hopefully) cause no more damage.
“It’ll stop bleeding in a second,” Dean informed him. “I just need, like, a band-aid or something. A napkin might be fine, actually.”
“You need to go to the hospital.” Once again, Castiel’s mouth had formed words without his brain’s permission, but he couldn’t seem to get over the idea that Dean was bleeding and he was the one who’d injured him.
“What?” Dean looked almost amused now, a wry twist to his lips as he studied Castiel. “Hell, no. I’ve had much worse than this on job sites. I’ll be fine, honest. I’ll just go and—”
He’d half-turned already, presumably to ask the barista for a napkin, when Castiel put a hand on Dean’s arm to hold him back. He hadn’t really meant to do it, but before he could mutter apologies and retreat, he became rather fascinated with the shift of Dean’s muscles underneath his skin. Touching Dean like this felt very, very nice indeed.
But then Castiel’s eyes once again caught on the dark, circular stain on Dean’s shirt. It was no bigger than a quarter, but it was undeniably there and just possibly a little bigger than when Castiel had last seen it.
Panic gripped him all over again.
“For all you know,” he insisted, “the needle pierced a vital organ. There could be internal bleeding. Or you could develop some sort of infection. You need to go to the hospital!”
Something softened in Dean’s face as he looked at Castiel. It was subtle: his lips slackened, his eyes grew warmer. “Alright, Cas. I’ll go, if it makes you feel better. You’d better come with me though.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Castiel nodded convulsively. “It’s the absolute least I can do.”
With hectic motions, he packed away his yarn and retrieved two napkins from the barista: one for Dean to staunch the bleeding, the other to wrap up the unfortunate needle. (He had some vague notion that it might be considered evidence or need to be dusted for fingerprints.)
“We can walk to St. Agnes,” Castiel said as he slung his project bag over his shoulder and they left the coffee shop together. “It’s only a block away.”
“I’m still not sure we need to do this, Cas,” Dean said. He inspected the napkin he’d used to dab at his wound, then crumpled it up and tossed it into a trash can as they walked. “I think it’s actually stopped bleeding already.” With a lopsided grin, he added, “‘Tis but a flesh wound.”
Castiel glared at him as they crossed the street. “This is hardly the time for Monty Python.”
Ignoring Castiel’s extremely apt observation, Dean said, “You got that reference? That’s awesome. You a Python fan?”
“Somewhat,” Castiel admitted reluctantly, as they snaked their way around various groups of pedestrians on their way to St. Agnes’ emergency entrance. “My friend Hannah and I love watching Flying Circus together. And I’ve probably seen Holy Grail ten times.”
“Thirteen times,” Dean said, pointing both thumbs at himself. “Would’ve been fourteen, but I fell asleep halfway through one time ‘cause I was fucking exhausted after work, so I’m not counting it.”
“Really?” Castiel asked as they stepped through the sliding doors into the hospital lobby. The smell of disinfectant and the low susurrus of waiting patients’ conversations enveloped them.
“Really,” Dean confirmed. The look on his face had all the smugness of a cat presenting a dead animal for inspection. “Impressed?”
“Not even slightly,” Castiel said, but he was, and he thought he might even be smiling.
The triage desk was staffed by a woman of perhaps fifty, with neat little curls framing her face. She had the sort of stern-eyed look that might have made an innocent man confess to murder. Accordingly, Castiel’s panic came rushing back, so he opened the conversation by gesturing at Dean and stammering, “I— I stabbed him. With a knitting needle.”
Dean lifted up his arms to show the quarter-sized stain on his shirt.
The woman, whose name tag read “Missouri,” glanced at the stain, then returned her disquieting attention to Castiel. “What manner of knitting needle are we talking here?”
“Metal DPN,” Castiel said, feeling more and more like a prisoner being led to judgment. “Size 0.”
Missouri hummed thoughtfully. “Lift up your shirt,” she told Dean.
Dean did, revealing a barely visible puncture that was very much no longer bleeding.
The purse of Missouri’s lips was eloquent. Specifically, it said, What have I done to deserve this?
Addressing Dean, she asked, “You had a tetanus booster recently?”
Dean nodded. “Couple months ago.”
A fathoms-deep sigh, and then Missouri pronounced, in a voice as dry as Castiel’s skin on cold winter days, “You’re fine.”
“Tell him that,” Dean said, the corners of his lips twitching in a manner that Castiel resented even as he found it irresistibly charming.
Missouri turned to Castiel. “He’s fine,” she repeated. “Now, I’m legally required to let you be seen if you insist. But I strongly suggest y’all fools get out of my hair and don’t make me tell my overworked, sleep-deprived medical staff that someone’s here to see them for a goddamn bee sting.”
“Hearing you loud and clear, ma’am. We’ll be getting out of your hair,” Dean said, with a polite smile and a sketched salute against his forehead. “Apologies for being a bother.”
Feeling exceptionally foolish, Castiel nodded awkwardly at Missouri and trailed after Dean, out through the sliding doors and back onto the sidewalk. When they reached the pavement, Castiel paused.
“Are you sure you feel alright?”
Dean stopped and pivoted on his heel to face Castiel. “Positive. No serious harm done.”
Of course, Castiel should have been glad, but all he seemed able to feel was exceptional embarrassment at his own idiocy. With a groan, he put his face in his hands.
“If it’s alright with you, I’ll just wait here,” he mumbled into his palms, “for a giant sinkhole to develop and swallow me up. I would love a giant sinkhole.”
With a sigh, he dropped his hands and faced Dean as best he could. “You should go. There’s no need to keep humoring me. This has been a complete and utter disaster and we don’t ever need to see each other again.”
If Castiel had expected Dean to leave immediately, he was mistaken. Instead, Dean scratched nervously at the back of his neck, much as he had done the day he’d attempted to ask Castiel out. (Before Castiel had so rudely interrupted him. Good grief. He’d been right to eschew romance after all. He was exceptionally terrible at it.)
“You know,” Dean said, a little bashfully. “You never actually apologized for stabbing me.”
Castiel opened his mouth to retort that he most certainly had, but as he cast his mind back on his (admittedly muddled) memories of the past twenty minutes or so, he realized that Dean was absolutely correct: Castiel hadn’t even had the grace to say sorry.
The least he could do was remedy that oversight now, but he’d no sooner opened his mouth than Dean interrupted him.
“‘Course,” Dean said, “apologies are great and all, but I was wondering if maybe you’d be open to making it up to me some other way.”
Hope stirred cautiously in Castiel’s chest, like the first blade of grass in spring peeking out of the soil.
“What do you mean?” he asked, frowning. It wouldn’t do to get too hopeful, in case he’d misunderstood. He already had a dismal track record to show for his day; he’d hate to add "awkward romantic misunderstanding" to the list.
For several seconds, Dean stared at him with an utterly unreadable expression. Then, he grimaced.
“You know what? This sounded really good in my head, but now I’m realizing I’m just sorta guilt-tripping you into kissing me, and that’s not really how I wanted our first kiss to go at all, so… can we just forget I said that?”
Ignoring Dean’s question, Castiel gaped at him. “You… you want to kiss me?”
Dean scrunched up his eyebrows in disbelief, as if asking that question was the most ridiculous thing Castiel had done today. “Well, yeah. Obviously.”
“I stabbed you,” Castiel said, just in case Dean had actually forgotten that fact.
Dean’s response was a shrug and one of those smiles that made delicate webs of lines appear beside his eyes. Others might have considered those lines an imperfection, or scoffed at the spray of freckles across Dean’s nose and cheeks; to Castiel, they were the finishing touches that transformed a competent work of art into a masterpiece for the ages.
“I mean, yeah, you did. But I’m fine, and I don’t remember the last time I had a date this interesting,” Dean said. An adorable streak of pink brushed across his cheekbones.
Castiel almost reached for Dean then, but at the last moment, he remembered himself. He set down his project bag and held out both hands, palms up, for inspection. “No sharp objects this time. See?”
“Good to know,” Dean said. “Can’t be too careful these days.”
They met in the middle, arms fitting around each other like old friends, their lips parting in welcome.
The kiss was many things, but it wasn’t cooing doves, crescendoing violins or even overexcited winged insects.
It was calm. Steady. It was worries receding and anxieties fading away into sweet familiarity and certainty.
It was, Castiel thought as he pulled Dean closer and swallowed his soft, eager sounds, just like knitting.