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Winter plodded along much less dramatically after that first snow, and once they’d made sufficient supply runs and squared things away with the new barracks, Dean felt like he could breathe again. He made a big show of eating regularly, even when he didn’t much feel like it (which was frequent), and that seemed to keep Hannah off his case, though he could sense her suspicion in the air between them sometimes. But Dean could be surprisingly patient, especially when it came to keeping quiet about things, and he found that Dr. Ng was placated easily enough by discussing his relationship with Cas, so much so that the other things never surfaced.
They’d gotten into a sort of routine, where she’d touch base with him at some point every Monday, and they’d talk about some snag he’d run up against interpersonally, and she’d offer some sort of basic suggestion to deal with it that Dean would privately feel ridiculous for not having considered already, and then they’d go their separate ways for the week.
It was the first Monday of December, a little over a month since that dreadful first snow, and Hannah showed up at his cabin before breakfast was even on offer for the day, the sun just barely having made its way over the horizon. Dean had only pulled his boots on a few minutes prior, was still deciding what layers to wear over his undershirt, when Hannah knocked.
“Bit early, don’t you think?” Dean grumbled as he let her in.
“Sorry, I have kind of a full slate today and I didn’t want to leave this until late, in case you had evening plans,” Hannah explained.
“Sure, yeah.” He went back to choosing between a thick thermal long sleeve shirt and a scratchy black wool sweater. Wool would be warmer, but the thermal would be more comfortable. Maybe he should wear a long sleeved undershirt, and then the sweater wouldn’t be so itchy?
“Dean? You listening?” Hannah asked, and he looked up from the shirts laying on the foot of his bed.
“Hmm? No, sorry, distracted.” He turned away from the bed and gave her his full attention.
“I asked if you’d tried any of the things I suggested, for bridging the physical intimacy gap?”
“Uh, yeah. Some, yeah.”
“And…?” She cocked an eyebrow. He leaned back, balancing his weight against the edge of the bed.
“It was uh…look. It just isn’t. I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”
“What do you mean? What did you try?”
“Doc, I brought up some of the stuff you suggested, I just don’t think he wants to try any of it. And I’m not gonna push him.” He hated the edge that bit through his tone. He didn’t want to snap at her, but there was this defensiveness in him, and it seemed to come alive at times like this.
“I’m not suggesting you ‘push him’ to do anything, Dean,” Hannah retorted. “Has he said anything about why he’s not interested in working on this?”
“No. And he doesn’t need to, he doesn't have to justify any of it.”
“That’s true. But you’re in a relationship. And if there are things that aren’t working for you, that matters, too.”
“Not this. My shit can be in the backseat permanently on this, for all I care. I’m not gonna push him. Period.” He picked the thermal, because he was already feeling too warm, blood rushing to his chest, his neck, his cheeks.
“Okay, okay.” Hannah raised her hands in mock surrender before crossing them over her chest, thinking. “But you should tell him how you feel. Even if you don’t ask for anything to change, he deserves to know where you are with all of this. How is he supposed to make any kind of decision, if you keep him in the dark about how you’re dealing with everything?”
“I…” Dean was poised to disagree, but she had a point. Hadn’t all this shit started because neither of them were up front about how they were feeling, what they were doing? “Fine. I’ll tell him. But it isn’t gonna change anything, and I don’t expect it to. He doesn’t owe me anything.”
“That’s all I’m asking you to do, Dean. Just tell him how you feel, and see where it goes.”
“Fine. I gotta go meet him for breakfast. I’ll see you around, Doc.”
“Yeah,” Hannah smiled, and he wondered if it was because he said he’d be eating breakfast or because he said he’d be meeting up with Cas. “Later, Dean.” She left, and he finished getting ready for the day, wondering how the hell he was going to bring up any of this with Cas.
+++
“Saw Hannah this morning,” Dean blurted before shoving a forkful of eggs into his mouth. Cas looked up from his plate and offered a placid expression.
“How’s she doing?” Cas asked, polite and a bit detached. Dean knew that Cas knew that he talked to Hannah about their relationship, but they didn’t really discuss that sort of thing.
“She’s good. She uh…” Dean could still swerve, could still avoid this subject entirely. Hannah couldn’t just boss him about – this was his life, he didn’t have to talk about this shit with Cas if he didn’t want to. “She wanted me to be more open with you about. Uh. About how I feel.”
“I find you to be plenty open about how you feel about me, Dean.” Cas smiled, warm and a bit mischievous. It was the kind of smile he used to give Dean during their playful back and forths, usually a little tipsy, right before they’d start making out. They didn’t do much of that these days.
“Right, yeah. I think she more meant, um. Just more specific stuff. How certain things make me feel, like smaller scale.”
“Okay,” Cas nodded, thoughtful, leaning forward a few inches. Dean always felt a little overwhelmed when Cas did stuff like that, just gave him his full attention, like it was the easiest thing in the world. “What specific stuff is on your mind?”
“We don’t touch each other,” he blurted again, and he could have clapped a hand over his own mouth, for how frustrated he was with his lack of tact. Cas didn’t react much to the statement, though his eyes widened just a fraction.
“Oh, well. Is that an, um. Is that an issue?” Cas flicked his gaze away as he asked, and Dean could feel the conversation slipping out of control.
“No! No, no. It’s not an issue. I just, it makes me feel like I don’t know how to be close, you know? Or to comfort you, or show you I like being around you. I used to do all that by touching you, and that’s not really a good method, for obvious reasons, and I don’t need it to change, if you aren’t up for that. But um. Is there. Do you think there’s some other way I could. Jesus. Is this making any sense?”
“Yeah, it makes sense, Dean.” Cas was smiling again, to Dean’s immense relief. He was worried if he spoke now he’d fuck it up again, so he shoveled a few more bites of breakfast between his lips, realizing too late that he’d cleaned his plate, so that was the last time he could use food as an excuse not to speak. He chewed slow, to make the most of the distraction. “I think…I think there’s some things we could try. I also have to be honest with you, that I also miss touching you. I miss being close like that. I think I’m just worried that we’ll try it, and I’ll hate it, and I’ll have to confront the fact that I don’t get to have those things anymore. Right now, not having taken those chances yet, I get to live in a hopeful place, where maybe it won’t be a big deal. But once I try it, I’ll know whether or not it is a big deal. Sounds stupid, when I say it out loud,” Cas chuckled, then took a sip of his tea.
“It’s not stupid. It makes lots of sense. If you don’t try, you’ll never know, and sometimes not knowing leaves like, potential for a good thing. But knowing is so…”
“Concrete,” Cas supplied. Dean nodded.
“She suggested, uh. Maybe you think about the things that could be upsetting for you, and then tell me so I know what to avoid? I know you don’t like talking about what happened, or thinking about it, so if that’s not really – “
“It’s not really something I want to do, no.” Cas’s features pinched, and Dean took a deep breath to keep from saying some knee-jerk thing to try to back track. He’d been working on that, ever since Hannah pointed out his tendency to shift course under pressure.
“And you don’t have to. Maybe you could think about the things you want to try? Things you miss, or things we haven’t ever done, but you think would be nice?”
“I think that would be better.” Cas’s lips rolled into that pink soft smile, and Dean felt something flip in his chest. He took a sip of coffee to distract himself from it.
+++
Dean managed to stop worrying about their breakfast conversation long enough to get things done during the intervening hours. He was drafting plans for a permanent community hall, which they’d begin work on in the spring. It would be good to have a building like that, so that meals didn’t need to be served in a tent year round, and so that there was enough fully indoor space to accommodate everyone in case of emergency. Getting into the math and logistical rhythm of that kind of planning was a good distraction from the apprehension knotting his insides.
It sounded easy enough, to put the ball in Cas’s court, to have him come up with some things for them to try, but Dean knew from experience that it could be pretty tough. The last time they tried something like that (at Castiel’s insistence), it had seemed simple – just spooning! But as soon as Dean had his arm draped over Cas’s chest, as soon as he felt Dean’s breath against his neck, he started shaking and shivering, and of course it was Dean’s impulse to hold him tighter, to hold him close, but the more firm his hold, the more upset Cas became. It ended with Dean standing at the edge of Cas’s bed, feeling helpless, frozen with his hands up behind his head, like clutching his own skull would somehow make his brain work again. Cas had to walk himself through his own panic attack, alone on the bed, trembling. It was an incident that Dean would do just about anything to avoid repeating.
When he met Cas at his cabin that evening, he did his best to keep his mind clear of that stuff, because walking into this pre-stressed wouldn’t help anybody. Inside, Cas was sitting on his bed, back against the headboard, pencil eraser perched on his lower lip, pressing enough to make it plump underneath its weight. He was beautiful, and it still managed to take Dean’s breath away.
He set down the piece of paper he’d had in his lap, smiling up at Dean in silent greeting. Cas scooted towards the side of the bed he tended to sleep on, making room for Dean beside him.
“Heya, Cas,” Dean greeted him gently as he sat down beside him. “What’re you working on?”
“Things I’d like to try.” He held the paper out to Dean for him to inspect. “And a few things I’d like to avoid, because it turns out it’s kind of hard to think of one without thinking about the other.”
Dean took the paper, somehow afraid to read it. Like that last bit of not knowing could keep him from fucking it up. He looked at the paper, somehow still intending not to read it quite yet, but that isn’t how human brains work, and looking at a word in a language you know is as good as reading it.
things i’d like to try
- hugging (standing up, eyes open, well lit room)
- kissing (standing up, no other points of contact)
- snuggling (no gripping/holding, no falling asleep)
things to avoid
- breathing on face or neck
- fingernail scratching
- tongue (during kissing or on skin)
- pressure on hips or lower back
- pressure on stomach
- pressure on groin
- pressure on thighs
- wrist gripping
- bicep gripping
- neck touching/gripping
Dean swallowed hard, not because either list had anything particularly difficult to navigate on it, but because it painted a picture out of negative space. Cas hadn’t wanted to discuss the things that had happened to him, and Dean completely understood that – who wants to relive their trauma for no good reason? Dean could think of plenty of things that had happened to him in his life that he would be hard pressed to dredge up, he wouldn’t begrudge Cas that kind of privacy. But for Cas, this shit wasn’t back in his childhood, it was stuff that had happened right under Dean’s nose. Stuff he could have and should have prevented. Stuff he couldn’t think about without thinking about the blame that naturally belongs to him, not only as Cas’s partner, but as the leader of this community.
The lists didn’t say what happened to Cas, what was done to him, but they gave enough information to let Dean’s imagination run wild. Some of the things he’d already tortured himself with, like fingernail scratching. The evidence of that particular transgression was written on Castiel’s body in clear parallel lines, skating down his hips and thighs. In another life, it would remind him of werewolves and their punishing claws. In this phase of his life, it brought far less spectacular, far crueler foes to mind.
Other things on the list spurred new horrible ideas, and they marched around in his brain, uniform and relentless. Pressure on hips, pressure on lower back, pressure on stomach, pressure on groin, pressure on thighs. They trampled heavy circles around his skull, and he briefly wondered if you could bruise your brain matter from thinking the same exact thought too many times in a row, the way you could fuck up a cassette tape and wear it thin by repeating the same song too often.
Every time he told himself not to picture the scenario that necessitated the rule, it only made the image appear in his mind’s eye that much more promptly, that much more clearly. The different ways they’d hold him down, the different ways they’d restrain him, the different ways they’d arrange him to get the best angle on the parts of his body they wanted to use.
He shoved the paper back to Cas, plastering what he hoped to be a neutral expression onto his face.
“What do you think?” Cas asked, calm as he always seemed to be.
“It, uh, looks good. Looks great. Thanks, for doing that.” Dean nodded, to add emphasis.
“Do you feel like trying anything tonight?” Cas asked, like Dean was the one they were doing all of this for. Dean picked at the edge of the blanket he’d sat down on top of.
“Do you?” He asked, because he couldn’t begin to pick apart his own desires, his own feelings. Not after reading that list.
Cas hummed, thinking, and Dean let the warmth it sparked in him spread through his chest. It was something so intrinsic to Cas, that gentle reflective sound, and it was grounding to hear it now.
“I think I’d like to try the third thing. If you’re feeling brave.” Cas grinned at him, sharp like a cat. Dean needed to remember that Cas was sharp and hard and powerful. It wouldn’t do, to keep characterizing him so delicately in his brain, just because of everything that had happened. Cas was still Cas, still a badass ex-angel with a wild streak as wide as the Wabash River.
“Oh, I’m very brave,” Dean laughed, puffing himself up a little to carry the joke. Cas laughed, then regarded him with a contemplative look.
“Yeah, you are,” he agreed. Dean blushed.
“Right. So, how should we do this?”
“Well, you can just lay down. I’ll do all the work.”
Dean shrugged and scooted down the mattress so his head was resting on a pillow. He clasped his hands over his stomach and waited for further instruction. Cas looked at him like he was trying to carefully stack a cairn of rocks, evaluating the potential for collapse, testing the balance.
“Put your hands at your sides. And then stay just like that. Don’t move at all, not even to turn your head, alright?” Cas clearly had a plan, so Dean complied, laying totally still, waiting.
Cas took a deep breath, then another. He was still sitting up by the headboard, torso curved a bit to direct his focus toward Dean.
“You good?”
“Yeah, I’m just…I don’t know, psyching myself up? I’ve thought about this a lot.”
“It’ll be okay. Or you’ll hate it, but either way, you’ll know, at least.”
“Yeah.” Cas nodded, but his mind was somewhere else, Dean could tell by the look in his eyes.
“Take a minute. I’m not going anywhere. So don’t you go anywhere, either.”
Cas’s gaze cleared, and his eyes refocused. He reached a hand down and brushed Dean’s hair away from his forehead – it was getting a bit long, longer than he normally liked it, but he’d been too busy to get it clipped. It felt good, having Cas’s warm fingers skim across his skin, still a little cold from the walk over. A serenity bloomed inside him, and he felt suddenly that he could lay here forever, unmoving, staring up at Cas’s deep blue eyes, and he’d never get tired of it.
As if he could sense that ease, that patience, Cas chose that moment to slide down beside him. He turned so he was almost laying on his stomach, his arm draped over Dean’s chest, hand resting over Dean’s heart. His face was smooshed up against Dean’s bicep, and he could feel the hot puffs of Cas’s breath, even through his sleeve.
They lay like that for about half an hour, Dean so still that it stopped being a task and turned into a state of being. No one would compliment a stone for it’s capacity to remain still, and it was as easy for Dean to lay there unmoving as it would have been for any boulder.
“Thanks,” Cas mumbled into the soft fabric of Dean’s shirt.
“Right back atcha,” Dean murmured.
“I’d like to do this again sometime,” Cas added, pressing a little closer.
“S’okay if you don’t, you know. I’m glad you do. But if there’s something we try and you don’t wanna…you know? It’s okay, either way.”
“I know,” Cas assured him. “Thanks.” He sounded distracted.
“You done with this, for now?” Dean ventured.
“I…” Cas took a long exhale. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Hey, no ‘sorry’. Thanks for telling me. You, uh, you wanna get up first?” Cas just nodded, head grinding down against the hollow of Dean’s elbow, which felt weirdly intimate considering how little they’d touched in recent months. It sent a shiver up his spine. Cas pressed his free hand into he mattress for leverage and dragged his other hand back off of Dean’s chest. He rolled over onto his back so that they were laying side by side there, still touching along the edges of each other, like paper dolls, connected at the hand, the hip, the ankle.
Their pinkies were touching, just barely, and Dean knew it wasn’t intentional, but he couldn’t think of anything but that one flashpoint, that one epicenter of sensation. Tentatively, slowly, he flexed his pinkie, extended it out another inch or so, and curled it around Castiel’s. He didn’t move away. After a few seconds, he snorted a laugh.
“What’s with the pinkie, Dean?” Cas turned to look at him, but Dean was used to lying still, so he stayed staring up at the ceiling in the dim light of Cas’s lantern.
“I don’t know. Just wanted to feel connected, just a little,” he whispered through a smile. Taking things so glacially slow, it made Dean feel innocent, childlike. Which was exceptional for many reasons, considering that even in his own childhood, he’d felt neither innocent nor childlike. These little stolen touches, the way he got anxious and giddy at the mere suggestion of contact between them, it carried a sweetness he’d never known, that he hadn’t really even known he was missing.
“Well, let’s add this to the list of things I like to do.” Cas squeezed his pinkie around Dean’s.
“Yeah?” Dean did turn to look at him this time, grinning.
“Yeah.”
Dean considered the very real possibility that Cas didn’t know what a pinkie promise was, didn’t know that what they were doing at this very moment had exactly one kind of social precedent. It was achingly sweet, to think that this could be the first time he’d ever done this particular thing with his body.
“You ever do this?” Dean asked, like that would make sense to anyone who couldn’t read his mind.
“Do what?” Cas asked, squinting a little in confusion.
“Lock pinkies like this, you ever do this before right now?”
“No?”
“You know it’s a thing, right?”
“No?” Cas had one of those amused smiles brewing, the ones that start with his lips pressed tight together, but the lips keep drifting toward one corner or another until it’s asymmetrical, and then the upper lip keeps lifting up and up until just his upper row of teeth are visible, and a pink stripe of gums over them. Dean loved those smiles. They were one of the good things about Cas becoming human. He never smiled much as an angel, and never like this.
“It’s what people do when they make a pinkie promise, like a way to finalize it. Kinda like a handshake.”
“What turns a normal promise into a pinkie promise?” Cas asked, and Dean, who’d never needed to consider such a distinction, laughed in surprise at the query.
“I guess, uh, it’s something personal? You wouldn’t pinkie promise something boring, or something professional. It’s not like, something you’d see a businessman do. It’s uh…I don’t know, it’s sorta something you do for secrets, or stuff that’s just between you and the other person. And it’s very serious – probably the most serious kind of promise you can make, as a kid at least?”
“So it’s something children do?”
“Well, I think they probably started it, but it’s not like you can’t make a pinkie promise as an adult.”
“Have you ever made a pinkie promise, before right now?” Cas asked, echoing Dean’s earlier question.
“Yeah, plenty of times. Not much in recent memory, but yeah.”
“What kinds of things did you do pinkie promises about?”
“Just dumb kid stuff.” Dean felt a lump in his throat. He could only remember having done this kind of thing with Sam, as kids. It wasn’t like he knew a lot of other people.
Cas seemed to sense that this was a thorny subject, all roads leading to Sam eventually, so he merely hummed in understanding, gave Dean’s pinkie another squeeze.
“Then we should do one. Since we’re already halfway through the whole process. Might as well,” Cas mused. Dean chuckled.
“You wanna make a pinkie promise?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Okay, what do you want to promise me?” He said, teasing in his tone, but both of them felt the way the air shifted.
“I promise,” Cas began, playing up the sincerity a little for humorous effect, which had Dean smiling in anticipation, “I promise…” He trailed off, realizing he had to actually think of something to promise to do, or not to do. “I promise to keep trying, as long as you want.” As if for emphasis, he squeezed Dean’s pinkie again.
“And I promise…” Dean started his own, even though he was still processing Cas’s, the gravity of it. “I promise to be patient, as long as you need me to be.” Since it seemed like the thing to do, he gave Cas’s pinkie a squeeze.
“So there. We can add pinkie promising to the list of approved conduct,” Cas said at last, in that dry voice he used to deadpan his jokes nowadays, the same voice he used to use to say just about everything, dead serious, as an angel.
“Sure, man. Gimme a pencil, I’ll do it right now!” Dean laughed, and Cas wiggled back up to a sitting position, reaching for his discarded pencil, because of course Cas was committed enough to the bit to take it literally.
When he handed Dean the pencil and the paper, he flipped the paper over to its blank back and he started a new third list – things we like to do. It would be the best of the three lists, he was sure – how could it not be, with something as perfect as ‘pinkie promising’ smack dab at the top?