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They pulled up to their ratty motel room and Dean spared two of his remaining brain cells to wonder why they were still doing this. Not hunting, but the whole skeevy motel bit. Sam had long since settled down with Sarah, safely tucked away near Bobby’s old place with his wife and son. He still got a regular weekly phone call, the majority of which was spent trying to convince his brother to haul Cas’s ass back home and settle down; they could still pick up the odd hunt and road trip like Bobby used to. Dean just internally laughed each time because he didn’t really need any convincing. But God damn if something wasn’t pulling him back, making him wonder if that really was the right thing to do. Doubts swirled through his exhausted brain like dead leaves in murky water. What I they couldn’t find any jobs, what if he had to get a regular job, what if they didn’t like the neighbors, what if he couldn’t do it, what if Cas didn’t… what if he and Cas ended up like Lisa… He pulled into the spot in front of their room and killed the engine, the clicking of the engine cooling down wrapping him up in the sound of familiar comfort as he sighed and rubbed his temples. Because that was the problem, really, the 5-something not-quite angel staring at him with a familiar worried expression from the passenger’s seat. What if Cas didn’t want that? Didn’t want the house in the ‘burbs (or the middle of nowhere, since they’d probably end up by Sammy) and the stupid white picket fence and the 2.4 kids and the dog or whatever the hell it was Dean wanted? That was Dean’s issue.
“Dean.” He still hated how chick flick it made him, but Dean wondered seriously how so much concern and care could be put into one word, and hell if it didn’t feel like some sort of cozy blanket being wrapped around his shoulders.
“It’s nothing, Cas, I’m just exhausted and beat up. That shtriga was hell, man.” He chuckled wryly at that, because, well. “Come on.”
They made their way into the room, the ugly paneled walls and vaguely 70s décor a blur of browns and kinda gross orange that he barely took in before making it to the bed sinking down onto it, slumping forward and apparently hoping his boots and coat would magic themselves off. Through blurry eyes he saw a hand reach into his own and pull the car keys from his unresisting fingers, and he heard them jangle against cheap wood a moment later. Cas came back a moment later and knelt in front of him, skooching forward until Dean’s head rested on his shoulder, and began to unzip his jacket. Vaguely Dean thought that he must really be tired, because a sex joke or some stripper moves would have been long said and done by now, but he just turned his head into Cas’s neck and breathed.
Cas gave a dry little chuckle, apparently thinking the same thing, before sliding his hands across Dean’s chest and down through his sleeve’s pushing the jacket off before leaning over Dean to toss it to the other side of the bed. He leaned back and cupped the back of Dean’s neck and pressed a lingering kiss into his temple. Dean thought about how this sort of thing would have freaked him the fuck out before, this intimacy, but now he just leaned into the embrace, taking the comfort while his eyes slipped a little more closed.
“Be right back.” Cas’s hand slid away from his neck and Dean could hear him rustling around in the kitchen, the pipes protesting when the water turned on, before he shuffled his way back, a towel draped over one arm and a large pan of water clutched carefully in both hands. He must have looked confused, because Cas answered him before he could even ask; or they just knew each other that well. “Relax, Dean. I’m going to wash your feet.”
“My what?” Dean’s poor brain couldn’t even think about this right now, because really, how did he end up with this particular angel.
“Your feet, Dean, you know, those lovely appendages on the ends of your legs?” Cas just stared at him with those big blue eyes, and Dean had to chuckle.
“Damn, I should not have taught you to snark. But seriously?”
“Yes, seriously, now stop talking and relax.” Cas gave him one of those looks that was a step down from an I-am-an-Angel-of-the-Lord-do-what-I-say-now-or-I-will-end-you but a little more severe than one of his hey-do-this-for-me-please kind of looks. Dean sighed and fidgeted a little as Cas kneeled in front of him again, setting the pan of water next to his boots.
“This is weird, dude. Who does this?” Cas glanced up at him through his lashes, his fingers deftly pulling the laces of his boots free, amused exasperation shining from his eyes.
“It’s funny how uncomfortable this is making you. Just let me do something for you.” Cas slid off one boot and moved to the next one. Dean clasped his hands together in his lap, one thumb rubbing absently over the other in an unconscious movement that he’d picked up from Sammy years earlier, fighting the urge to fidget or stop Cas with a word or a kiss. He glanced down to watch Cas’s deft fingers pulling the laces of his boots free and caught the movement of his own hands out of the corner of his eye.
God. He grinned tiredly when he remembered Sam as a kid, bangs all in his eyes, sitting terrified but determined, ready to give their dad a piece of his mind. Christ but that kid was an annoying seven year old. And the last time he visited them he’d seen little five year old Robbie doing the same thing.
Cas looked up as he set Dean’s boots aside, answering Dean’s grin with a small smile of his own. “What is it?”
Dean lifted his hands in explanation. “I was just remembering Sammy, he used to do this whenever he was nervous about something, and I saw Robbie picked it up the last time we were in. I guess I picked it up too.” He chuckled a little, but then sighed. “God Cas, I miss them. I…” He stopped before he could get started. Sammy congratulated him regularly for finally growing a pair and learning how to talk about his feelings, at least a little, but he felt like if he opened the gates a whole flood of nonsense would come rushing out, and hell if those stupid doubts still weren’t strong enough to keep his lips sealed.
Cas sat back on his heels. “You know I’ve been thinking about this recently. I know we both would never give up hunting and I, well…” He looked a little sheepish, but glanced down at his hands before looking back at Dean, apparently determined to continue. “I miss them too Dean. I think we should move by them, and perhaps continue to rebuild Robert’s old home. They’re relatively close, and we could continue to hunt, I would never ask you to stop, but I think it would be good for us.”
Dean just stared into Cas’s eyes, because seriously? Here he was getting his undies in a twist over this and he was thinking the same thing. Dean took a second before to wonder how in the world something like a worry could feel like a physical burden, because it felt like someone had just unstrapped a backpack of rocks from his shoulders, before chuckling weakly.
“C’mere.” He waved away the quizzical look. “I’m too tired to lean forward that far, I’ll fall off the bed, come here.” So Cas leaned forward and met Dean in a soft kiss, his hands coming up to press against the sides off his face, his thumb brushing absently over Dean’s cheek bone. Dean pulled back a little. “You idiot, I’ve been wondering how to bring up the same thing to you for months, and here you just come out and say it.”
“Well I am the smarter of the two of us.”
Dean ruined his offended look by placing another soft kiss on Cas’s lips. “Okay. Yes, let’s do it, the whole apple pie, white picket fence shit. I’m in, Cas. But tomorrow, because I’m wiped.”
Cas knelt back on his heels and pulled off Dean’s socks. Dean felt a vague embarrassment but chuckled. “Dude those have to be rancid, we haven’t had a chance to slow down in two days.”
Cas didn’t even bother looking up from where he was tucking them into Dean’s boots before sliding them around them end of them bed. “I assure you I’ve smelled worse things. I can also tell you that some of those worse things belonged to you. I will never, for instance, get over the stench of that swamp mud. How you, of all people, could fall for fairy lights, I will never know.”
“Hey! I was drunk Cas and let me tell you, those little fairy ladies had some rockin’ bodies.” Both men chuckled quietly, their familiar banter as much a comfort as their hands on each other.
The chuckles died away as Cas moved the bowl closer, some water sloshing over the side. He dipped a washcloth in the bowl and gripped Dean’s ankle lightly with his other hand. At the first swipe of the cloth Dean hissed a little at the heat, but shook his head when Cas asked him if it was too hot.
“You know this place has a bath right? I mean, we could both get a little dirty and then a little clean at the same time.” Dean wiggled his eyebrows and Cas huffed, peering up through his lashes at the man above.
“Thought you were a little too tired for that?” Cas dipped the towel back into the water, wringing it out before moving back to wipe at the side of Dean’s foot. Dean wiggled his toes a little in embarrassment, but kept his foot still.
Dean nodded in agreement. “Yeah, but still dude, this is weird.”
“Dean, you know I don’t like being referred to as dude, and this is not weird.” Cas lifted Deans foot to his eye level, rocking back farther on his heels, to wipe the bottom of Dean’s foot. He continued more quietly, “I’m doing this for you because I want to do something for you. Jesus did this for his disciples, Mary did this for Jesus. I just wanted to do something for you.”
Dean could hear it in Cas’s quiet tone, the slight embarrassment, but overpowering that the love and affection. “Cas,” he whispered back. Here he was joking like an asshole when Cas, as always, was thinking only of him.
“Dean.” Cas said it with a smile and met his eyes, dropped his foot gently back to the ground.
“How the fuck did this happen Cas, I mean-“
Cas knows him, and before Dean could get another word out surged forward to kiss him firmly, cutting off the words.
“Don’t, Dean. I’ve heard it all, we’ve been through this, and I will tell you until the day you die that you deserve every good thing you get, and then when you die and we meet again in heaven I’ll tell you that you deserve that too. If you count me among those good things then the millennia I spent before now in relative darkness were worth every second. I will be your Good Thing, as you are mine.”
They fell into each other, into bed, too tired to do anything more than exchange a few more kisses, Dean with one foot still dirtied. Tomorrow they would call Sam, tell him what they were planning, and within the week they’d be standing on the ruined porch of Bobby Singer’s home, sad, but hopeful. And they would be content in each other, in their Good Things.