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Dean Winchester was drunk. Again.
This wasn’t unusual by any means, especially not recently.
Not since two weeks ago, when he’d kicked his roommate out.
Castiel Novak had been Dean Winchester’s roommate and, even though he’d never said it out loud, best friend for two years. They’d met at Champlain College, had a few classes together but barely said a word to each other, and then, one day, when Dean was searching for someone to split rent with, he’d come across Castiel’s profile on a roommate site looking for the same thing. The first few weeks had been awkward. It was painfully obvious how different they were; Dean was there for the drinking and the parties, Castiel was there to study–and study he did.
“He's just so boring.” Dean complained over the phone to his brother, Sam, once. “The guy doesn’t do anything but study. I’m not even sure if he eats or sleeps. I’ve never even seen him drink Sammy!”
Dean could practically hear an eye roll as his younger brother sighed over the line.
“Wow, a guy in college who’s actually there for college. The man must be insane!”
It was Dean’s turn to roll his eyes now, as he took a swig of the beer he’d just opened. Sure, yeah, it wasn’t that surprising somebody would be at a school to, well, go to school. But it was the second year of college. How could anybody be that dedicated to anything, let alone school?
“But he never takes a break! Honestly, Sammy, sometimes I don’t even think he’s human.”
Sam responded with another sigh and something about ‘keeping an open mind about people’, before telling him he had to go help Dad with something outside. How incredibly Sam of him to say. Dean had kept an open mind! But this guy was just straight up impossible to talk to.
Suddenly, the door to his roommate’s room opened, and out stepped Castiel Novak. He paused for a minute, patting down his long trench coat for something, before pulling out his keys from a pocket and looking up to make eye contact with Dean. His eyes widened a bit and then blinked twice.
“Oh. I thought… you left.”
“Nope. Just taking a study break.” Dean gestured with his beer bottle, noting how Castiel looked between it and him before saying:
“Yes, well, I suppose you humans have to take breaks.” His lips curled into a smile, holding Dean’s eyes for another moment, before ducking out the door of the apartment.
So, he’d overheard. Dean grimaced a bit, thinking about how harsh he’d been. Of course, he hadn’t meant most of it. There was just something about the guy that made him nervous.
But… had he just made a joke?
That same night, once Castiel had returned from wherever he’d gone and tucked himself back into his room, Dean sat on the couch flipping through channels and sipping another beer. All that was on was stupid reality shows and something called “Gilmore Girls”.
Castiel emerged from his room after about twenty minutes of Dean scouring the TV. He headed straight for the kitchen, presumably to grab some sort of snack.
Dean thought back to his comment about Castiel not eating or sleeping. While it was half true–Dean could often see his light on at odd hours of the night—he still felt guilty about what Castiel had overheard.
“Hey, you wanna join me?” Dean asked before he could think twice. Internally, he cursed himself a bit. Of course he didn’t want to. He probably had to keep tracking down Atlantis or whatever the hell he was so busy doing all the time.
“Uh, yeah sure.” Castiel took a bag of chips from a drawer and moved over to the couch where Dean was currently sitting. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean noticed that his roommate looked more anxious than usual as he took a seat on the other side of the couch, as far away from Dean as physically possible.
“Hey man, I don't bite.” He joked, throwing a quick glance sideways. Castiel didn’t seem to lighten at that, which made Dean frown a bit. Where had the sense of humor from this afternoon gone?
They sat in silence for a few minutes while Dean kept surfing through channels trying to find something watchable, before Castiel finally broke.
“What’s Ghostfacers?”
“No idea.”
And so, he clicked on it, figuring it was better than the other trashy shows available.
He was wrong.
An hour later, Dean and Castiel were laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe.
It turned out Ghostfacers was a docu series following these two idiots named Harry and Ed, as they tried to hunt ghosts and werewolves and vampires and all kinds of other creatures.
The whole thing was just so ridiculous that one couldn’t help but laugh, and laugh they did. They could barely get words out in between fits of laughter, as Harry and Ed ran around with their hilariously low quality cameras.
“How-how is this show even, even airing?” Castiel choked out, wiping away tears of laughter from his eyes.
“Charity?” Dean managed before they both started snickering again.
It was such an odd feeling. Dean couldn’t remember the last time he laughed like this–like a little kid. That was an odd phrase in itself wasn’t it? Dean didn’t laugh all that much as a kid, he’d rather more gotten accustomed to the art of making others laugh. But here he was, keeled over with his roommate of all people, who he’d barely spoken two sentences to in all the time they’d known each other.
That was a Friday night in September, the night they both laughed so hard that they forgot to return to their rooms and slept on the couch together, shoulders almost but not quite touching.
Dean woke up first. He looked over at his sleeping roommate, watched his chest rise and fall as he breathed, and thought how different he looked when he was asleep. He looked like, for lack of better words, an angel.
Castiel’s eyelids fluttered, and Dean remembered that he was on the couch, watching his roommate sleep, on a Saturday morning.
Huh. Saturday morning. He couldn’t recall the last Saturday morning he’d woken up without a raging hangover or in his own bed rather than some random girl’s dorm.
Shaking the thought away, he got up, made coffee, and left before Castiel woke up.