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This is how Dean knows he’s in love and that
It’s serious.
It’s bad.
He lets Castiel get away with all this shit, all the time. Castiel says How come you let Sam drive but not me? so he parks the Impala and gets out of the car and lets Castiel slide across the front seat in front of the wheel. He hands Cas the keys. Sam is watching from the backseat, wide-eyed.
‘Fine,” Dean says. Castiel sticks the keys in the ignition. He’s smiling a little. And Dean knows he’s got it bad.
Dean’s got it so bad. This is how he knows.
Cas grows a beard and Dean hates it but he doesn’t say a fucking word about it. Then Cas shaves it off after a mouth, just when Dean had finally gotten used to it, and he doesn’t say a word about that either. And when Cas grows another bread, then shaves that off too, and leaves in its place a mustache that Dean hates just as much, that’s when Dean knows he must be pretty far gone, because when Cas asks for his opinion, Dean says he fucking loves it. He says, It looks great on you.
There’s no other explanation: Dean’s got it bad.
He lets Cas get away with stealing his jeans fresh out of laundromat. He lets Cas get away with changing the radio station on a whim, fucking NPR for four hours in a row, and he doesn’t even say a word because he’s got it so bad. He lets Cas convince him to shop at Cosco and lets Cas convince him to go on a roadtrip to see that world’s largest ball of twine and he even buys Cas a fucking t-shirt, and when Cas insists he buys one for himself, too. Dean wears it on the drive home, the whole fucking way, and he’s got no excuse, nothing to blame: He’s got it bad.
He lets Cas tell him, Not that shirt. That one, and he doesn’t even argue, he just does it, he lets Cas tell him spinach and brown rice instead of cheeseburgers and he just goes along with it, whatever Cas says, because Dean’s got it bad.
He lets Cas make him mad, real mad, lets Cas rile him up and when he cools off and starts to feel like crap he’ll go crawling back to Cas. He’ll go find Cas where he’s sulking in the basement and he’ll ask Cas to forgive him, he’ll do anything, and all because he’s got it so bad. He lets Cas sit him down on their bed and lets Cas pull a declaration of love out of him, and even while he's holding Cas's hand and telling him how much he means to Dean, he's thinking about all the things he would rather do than have a conversation about love but it’s Castiel who’s asking, so he’ll do this, too.
He lets Cas take the Impala out for a spin when he gets worked up with cabin fever, just lets him go out alone and he even suffers through Sam’s raised eyebrows over it. And when Cas calls him from a ditch on the side of the road, he doesn’t even yell, doesn’t even bitch at him, he just grabs the keys to Sam’s Honda and picks Cas up, and when he gets to the scene the only thing he says is, Tell me you’re okay, because Dean’s got it that bad.
Cas says, "I'm sorry," and Dean's not even mad.
And Dean knows exactly what's happening: He's got it bad.
Then three weeks later when Cas asks to borrow the car, he just fucking hands over the keys. Just like that.
There’s no other reason, there’s no good explanation. Just because it’s Cas who’s asking. Cas just asks and he jumps to it like a soldier on a mission: Get Cas what he wants, no questions asked. Just to hear Cas thanking him in that quiet, pleasant voice. Just because he’s a sucker for that smile that goes all the way to Cas’s eyes and shines there, steady, reflected right at him. He’s addicted to putting that look on Cas’s face and that’s how he knows, he knows way down deep in his soul that Cas has got him all wrapped up, that he’s way in over his head. Cas just smiles and he’s dead gone. It’s how Dean knows this is for real. He’s got it bad.