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A brother. Dean sees him as a brother.
Castiel stifles his first response, swallowing the words. All of the words. He goes for something simple.
“Thank-you.”
He can’t tell Dean how that makes him feel. At one point, back when he was still so new to these feelings and hadn’t learned to separate his response to Dean from his general love of humanity, he’d longed to have Dean tell him he was loved as family. Later, when he’d heard the words even as Dean turned his back on him, Castiel had ached. He’d have been grateful to be told he was Dean’s brother back when he realized the souls were corrupting him, but he knew then it was done with.
Now, it isn’t done with. Most likely, he should be glad.
He thinks for a few moments that what he feels is sadness, but there’s a flavor to it that doesn’t add up to being sad.
He’s been so tired for so long, and he’s spent the last few months forcing himself to stay down, refusing to even try to fight back. He isn’t sure when refusing became easier, or when fighting felt harder than not.
The exhaustion carries him through the rest of the conversation, and they’re partway back to the Bunker, no beer on board, when that flicker of something bursts into life.
Anger. He feels anger.
“No,” he says.
He’s looking out of the window, but he senses Dean stiffen, senses him glance at Castiel.
“What?” Dean asks. “No to what? You hearing something on angel radio?”
Castiel snorts.
“They’ve shut me out,” he says. “My brothers and sisters want nothing to do with me. They think I’m more tainted now than I was. God being on the same team as me doesn’t matter.”
Not ‘my father’. He refuses to think of Chuck that way, not after the deity rejected Castiel the way he did. He was aware enough during Chuck’s talk with Lucifer that he heard the claim to love Lucifer best. He doesn’t believe it. Being around Dean has taught Castiel a thing or two about lying.
He doesn’t need God. He thought he needed to hear Dean claim him as family, but it seems he’s learned to want too well. ‘Brother’ just isn’t enough.
“Then what’s the issue?” Dean asks.
He sounds…concerned. Actually concerned. That isn’t enough, either.
“The issue?” he asks. “What issue could I possibly have?”
He knows he sounds bitter. He doesn’t care. Subjugating himself to Lucifer, subjugating his feelings to what he thinks Dean can cope with hearing… There’s been far too much subjugation.
A tiny part of his mind tells him it’s unfair to blame Dean for Castiel’s choice not to speak up, but he’s rapidly becoming too angry to care.
“There’s something eating at you,” Dean says, as though that shows some massive insight.
Castiel tries, he does, but they might all be about to die and it’s not that he wants to hurt Dean, because he never wants to hurt Dean, but his father- Chuck is back and hasn’t even tried to talk to him, Lucifer has been ripped from Castiel’s body in a way that’s left him feeling violated and his siblings have told him again that they loathe him. It’s too much. It’s all too much. And he’s a soldier. Even beaten down the way he is, the way he has been for months, for years, anger is easier for him than tears.
“You think of me as a brother,” Castiel says, not even trying to prevent his lip from curling.
“Yeah,” Dean says. He sounds wary. “I just said that. And I mean it, Cas. You’re one of us. You get that, right?”
“You and Sam both feel that way,” Castiel says. His hands want to form fists. He stops them.
“Sam feels the same way I do,” Dean says, and he sounds relieved, like he thinks he’s worked out the problem and is all set to solve it. “Don’t doubt that. He looked for you, too. And he was cut up when Lucifer slipped up and he realized it wasn’t you.”
“Slipped up?” Castiel asks. “He didn’t slip up, Dean. He gave up pretending. Sam didn’t notice until he was told.”
And Castiel is grateful he was awake and alert enough at the time to see that Sam, and Dean, needed saving, but Sam not knowing, Dean not knowing, keeps playing over and over in his mind. He isn’t sure, if Naomi reappeared now and offered to take some of his memories from him, that he’d have the will to resist.
“Look, Cas, Sam was stressed, all right? And we didn’t even know an angel could say ‘yes’. But he was cut up, man. I promise you. Sam loves you the same as I do. You gotta believe me.”
“The same as you do,” Castiel says.
The words come out clipped.
“Yeah.”
Dean sounds relieved again. It occurs to Castiel that Dean Winchester, out of all of Creation, has always had far too easy a time persuading Castiel of whatever he’s set out to. Anna once told him he was the most stubborn angel in the garrison, and no-one disagreed. She wouldn’t say the same if she saw him with Dean.
“You feel exactly the same way about me that Sam does,” Castiel says.
“I just told you that,” Dean says. “Cas, I know you’ve got to be feeling like crap just now, but don’t go worrying about Sam. He cares. He does.”
“Yes. So you said,” Castiel says.
Dean huffs out a sigh. Castiel turns his head enough to see Dean open and close his hands around the steering wheel.
“What’s this about?” Dean asks. “You don’t believe me about Sam? Or you don’t believe me about either of us?”
And his anger spills over into something far more deadly than violence. It spills over into truth.
“I don’t believe that you feel the same way Sam does,” he says. “I get that Sam cares. He’s also Sam, and he’ll be ruthless if he needs to be. But that doesn’t make me doubt his affection for me. I just don’t believe it’s the same as the way you feel.”
This time, Dean looks away from the road, turning startled eyes on Castiel.
“You don’t believe I care about you?”
He sounds incredulous. He sounds hurt.
“I don’t believe you care about me as a brother,” Castiel says. “I don’t…I don’t care about you that way, and I’m sick of pretending. We might be about to die, for good this time, and I…I don’t…I can’t…”
He can’t get his words out. That’s what.
If he had his wings, fully functional and feathered, he’d fly from here and take out his rage somewhere Dean couldn’t see. But he can’t do that, either. All the knowledge does is make him angrier.
“Can’t what?” Dean asks.
There might be an edge of fear there. Usually, that would be enough to stop Castiel in his tracks.
“Stop the car,” Castiel says.
“Cas-”
“Stop it!”
Dean pulls over, the engine cutting out and leaving echoing silence in its wake. Castiel barely waits until the car’s stopped before he’s out of the car, slamming the door behind him. He hears Dean follow a few seconds later.
“Sam said to get back,” Dean says. “What are we doing?”
“I have no idea,” Castiel says. “I should have asked myself that earlier.”
He can practically feel Dean’s confusion, and his tension. They do have to get back. They have to go back and try, again, to save a world that has left Dean so tangled up, so full of feelings of unworthiness and self-loathing that he can’t accept Castiel loves him. Surely, Dean has to know…
“Cas, you need to tell me what’s going on,” Dean says.
Or maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe the idea that Castiel can feel the way he does has truly never crossed Dean’s mind. Going back to the Bunker and back to the fight with things as they are sets disgust shivering through his skin. His very much human skin. He has no idea if Dean even knows how changed Castiel is, how far he’s fallen and how much he’s learned, and the thought that Dean, if he does know, might assign it to feeling brotherly…
Castiel has made choices based on his love of humanity and his sense of duty, but he’d be lying if he said Dean had nothing to do with it at all. And in this moment, Dean’s part in the equation looms large.
“What’s going on…” he says. Turning, he narrows his eyes and stares at Dean. “What is going on is that I’m sick of hiding. We’re going up against God’s sister. We’ve fought the Devil and Leviathan and everything else thrown at us, and you’re going to stand there and tell me you feel exactly the same way that Sam does? That there’s no difference?”
Dean’s lips part, but he doesn’t get any words out.
“I don’t believe you see me as a brother,” Castiel says, stalking back towards Dean and refusing to break eye-contact. “I don’t catch Sam looking at me the way you do. Sam isn’t the one who reaches me first when I fall. He didn’t slaughter half of Purgatory to reach me, and I don’t believe he would. The way Sam loves me isn’t the same as the way you-”
He cuts off and clamps his mouth shut, but he holds Dean’s gaze.
“The way I what?” Dean asks. His voice is quiet, and it could be anger, or a threat, but it’s not. It’s shock. Castiel has made a study of Dean. “How do you think I love you, Cas?”
Castiel is a soldier, and he’s spent years planting doubts in his heart, feeling them grow and choke him, but right now his anger burns through it. He senses an advantage, and he presses it.
He takes another step towards Dean.
“I think you love me,” he says. “I think you love me more than Sam loves me. Differently, at any rate. I love Sam, but he’s a friend, a brother. You aren’t.”
Dean rocks back like he’s been hit.
“I…what? I’m not your friend?”
“You, Dean, are my heart.”
He’s close enough now that he could reach out and take hold of Dean, and he moves closer.
“I love you,” Castiel says, and if he’s going to die, again, completely, at least he won’t do it knowing he’s keeping that to himself. “I’ve been human, Dean, or as good as. Don’t you dare tell me I’m confusing what I feel. I’m not.”
Now, he’s close enough he feels Dean’s breath on his face. Dean’s eyes are wide and wary. Castiel takes the time to carve each word separately.
“I am in love with you.”
He never meant to say it with such anger. He never meant to say it at all. Still, it’s said, and can’t be unsaid, and he thinks, after everything, he has the right to say his piece. Dean may reject him, his fear and his front making him deny his own feelings even now, but at least Castiel has said it. It’s out there. It’s no longer pressing hard against the inside of his ribs.
“You…you’re in love with me?” Dean asks.
It isn’t an immediate rejection. Dean makes no attempt to back away.
“Yes.”
Castiel has known doubt, oceans of it, since meeting Dean, but he feel no doubt about this. And in any case, once committed to an action, he sees it through.
“You’re in love with me,” Dean says.
This time, the words are more certain. Dean’s expression shifts, and it’s regret.
“Cas, man, why would you tell me that now?”
“Because I might not be able to tell you later. And I’ve had enough of not telling you.”
Dean licks his lips. The sadness is still there, but there’s something like determination rising on his face. Castiel is only slightly surprised when Dean moves, when Dean grabs hold of him, one hand fisted in the front of his coat and the other round the back of his head, and Dean’s lips press against Castiel’s.
A kiss. Something physical. Easier, for Dean, than words.
Castiel lets his eyes shut, lets himself lean in to the texture and pressure of Dean’s kiss. It’d gentle. Maybe some people would be confused by that, with how Dean got hold of him, but Castiel isn’t. And it’s pleasant. Very pleasant. But it isn’t what he needs right now.
“Dean,” he says, pulling back as the kiss ends. He doesn’t try to dislodge Dean’s hands. “You don’t have to say it, but I know how you feel about me isn’t brotherly. I don’t know if it’s…if it’s the same sort of love I feel for you, or lust, or-”
“Shut up,” Dean says. His thumb caresses Castiel’s cheek. “Just shut up, Cas. You ain’t my brother, man. All right? I give in. You’re nothing like a brother.”
And he leans in to kiss Castiel again.