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When Dean wakes up on a sunny Monday morning, he’s greeted by the sight of Cas dead-asleep and curled up tightly against his side.
It’s a routine by now of course, a ritual that Dean’s grown to abhor and appreciate in equal measure. Once again, he’ll have to calm himself down enough to pry Cas fingers from his elbow, roll him to the farther side of the bed, ignore the delightful tuft of hair pressed flat to Cas’s forehead, and disregard the wiggling of Cas’s nose as Cas labors through another dream-- instead of grinding his dick shamelessly into the groove of Cas’s inner hip the way that he’s fantasized about doing every morning for the past five weeks since he first woke up to Cas snoring lightly beside him, unabashed.
At that exact moment, Cas moves to rub his face onto Dean’s arm, inching just a little bit closer. Dean basks in the realization that his life is ironic and cruel in a way that escapes humor entirely. He gets as far as laying his left palm over Cas’s shoulder, poised to push the other man away, before he sees Cas’s lips pressed delicately to the swell of his bicep, and chokes on his own spit.
The sense-memory of touching those lips, of tasting them against his mouth before a road trip back to Kansas and eight hours of refreshing sleep, injects Dean’s weary morning muscles with a shot of unexpected adrenaline.
He and Cas have kissed.
As in, they kiss each other now.
It’s totally fucking fair game.
And before he even realizes he’s moving, Dean’s got a cheek resting over Cas’s pillow, nose filled with the comforting scent of Walmart-brand shampoo and earth as he brings his lips to Cas’s widow’s peak at long last. He gifts it with the tiniest of kisses, right at the hairline, and reaches up to smooth several strands away from Cas’s forehead out of practicality (Cas doesn’t need hair blocking where Dean’s lips could be instead). When Dean reaches up a second time to brush his knuckles over Cas’s eyebrows, however, he does so purely because he fucking wants to.
Cas mumbles unintelligibly into Dean’s collarbone, eyebrows knit as if he’d just been told a nasty insult instead of kissed on the head. That scrunched-up scowl looks ridiculous on a grown man, but it’s there all the same: strange and out of place and utterly fantastic. Just like everything else about Cas tends to be.
Dean buries his burgeoning smile into the wild nest of Cas’s hair. Well whattaya know?
Fucking finally.
Monday ends with Cas pulling Dean against him just after they slip under the covers for bed. He searches for Dean’s hand in the dark and brings the palm of it to his lips with a whispered, “Good night, Dean,” tracing warmth and moisture pleasantly onto Dean’s skin. Dean starts, careful not to move too quickly unless Cas gets the wrong idea, and eventually rests that same palm over Cas’s chest, fingers tapping a beat on Cas’s collarbone that matches his heart rate as they fall asleep together in slow increments.
On Tuesday, Dean makes sure that Cas is awake before he kisses his forehead again.
Cas smiles, blinks all squinty-like at Dean, and returns the kiss with a sloppy peck of his own right on the dip in the middle of Dean’s chin. They spend the day smiling at each other like imbeciles, walking close, speaking in whispers even when it’s completely unnecessary to. Dean manages to kiss Cas again in a stolen moment between Sam going out for more groceries and Kevin taking an afternoon nap. He thinks, I can get used to this, and lets Cas pull him closer in.
Unfortunately (for Kevin at least), Kevin catches them standing between the bookshelves sometime in the evening, exchanging whispered opinions on some kind of appropriate séance procedure for locating the socks that they’ve lost in the dryer. He flashes them a look as he waits awkwardly to access a book that Cas’s ass is blocking on the shelf behind him. Cas, instead of being helpful and taking any initiative to move, waves at him over Dean’s shoulder instead. Dean laughs like that’s soooo hilarious.
Kevin doesn’t have the stomach to wait any longer and leaves without his book.
On Wednesday, their mouths actually meet when they wake. Dean gets up afterward to make Cas’s coffee while Cas showers, sporting a huge grin on his face that doesn’t go away until Sam returns from his usual morning run completely sweat-soaked and panting as he opens the fridge door to grab a cold water bottle.
“You’re chipper,” Sam comments after inhaling several massive gulps. Dean just shrugs, fiddling with the espresso machine settings to start a fresh pot.
“Got stuff to be chipper about.”
“What kind of stuff?” Sam walks over to the stove to steal a slice of bacon from where it’s still cooling on the counter.
Dean, for once, doesn’t chastise him about it.
“Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” Dean begins, “there comes a time in every boy’s life when he wakes up and realizes that he doesn’t have to just stare at his stiffy. I know manhood is yet ahead of you, but—”
Sam’s out of the kitchen before Dean finishes his sentence.
On Thursday, their mouths meet for thirty minutes straight. Dean gets up to make Cas’s coffee again, but Cas shakes his head, tugs Dean back into bed, and kisses him thoroughly for another fifteen minutes before their stomachs interrupt them with loud squelching noises. Sam stares at them strangely when they shuffle barefoot into the kitchen together for breakfast, Cas rubbing a suspiciously red mark on his neck, Dean smirking all smug.
On Friday, they don’t get out of bed until lunch time.
Kevin and Sam exchange grateful nods in the hallway.
Sam, with his infinite supply of patience and brotherly love, has more or less left Dean to his own devices with the Castiel situation ever since the man had wandered into the bunker exactly that-- a man. Not that he lacks interest in helping; it goes without saying that Sam would offer an ear and a shoulder to Cas were Cas ever inclined to approach him for comfort. Someone who’s dug himself so firmly into the crutch of the world once reserved for Sam and Dean alone is wholly privy to Sam’s attention, as far as Sam’s concerned.
Castiel cares for them, and vice versa. They share the camaraderie of a brotherhood born and fostered through battle.
It just so happens that Cas and Dean, in addition to said camaraderie, also share a bed now.
And normally Sam would indulge in a little bit of playful teasing. Dean makes it so damn easy: cooking breakfast for Cas, buying Cas’s favorite coffee, shaving Cas’s face for him (yeah, he knows about that—Cas likes to rub his cheeks and smile dreamily at Dean’s direction whenever he doesn’t think Dean’s looking. It doesn’t take much to put two and two together), walking out of his bedroom nearly every morning with a shirtless Cas in tow. Sam’s all for helping out whenever he can, but this particular situation? Is better left without his intrusion.
Still, his health has been improving, his cheeks have slowly but surely regained their reddish flush, and he’s eager to do something active again, something with the promise of endorphins and surging blood through his body that doesn’t also involve potentially lost limbs. Something that facilitates friendly bonding, maybe. Though the jubilee was nice, as was seeing Charlie again so soon, it wasn’t exactly the kind of activity he’d had in mind (read: work). He’s not sure how to pinpoint what he wants, but the craving in his muscles builds up for an entire week before he finally understands how to handle it.
He’s rifling through one of the storage closets in the bedroom hallway where he usually finds spare supplies like paper and linen and bottles of lamb’s blood, when something catches his eye. He reaches forward, pulls the object toward him, and is highly surprised to find that it’s a dusty, rust-orange basketball he’s holding. He bounces it once, twice on the ground to test out its flatness; it shoots easily back up toward him, landing as a comforting, heavy weight in his palm.
Then he gets an idea.
“Yo, Kev!” He jogs into the library where Kevin has three different books opened around him, biting on a hangnail as he reads. Kevin takes a delayed minute to respond, but when he finally turns his eyes up to see Sam holding the basketball suggestively in the air, he grins with understanding.
“Where’d you find that?” Kevin slams all of the books shut in one go.
“In the spare closet. Didn’t know the Men of Letters were the athletic types.” He bounces the ball again, just to hear it echo throughout the room. “You up for a game?”
“Hell yeah, dude! I haven’t touched a basketball in ages. Are there are any courts in the area?”
Sam opens his mouth to answer, but he’s interrupted by Dean sneaking up behind him, grabbing the ball right out of his hands and making several completely unnecessary dribbles between his legs as he winks at Sam and Kevin in turn.
“There’re some hoops on the elementary school playground,” Dean supplies, still dribbling. “You guys want to get embarrassed today?”
In retaliation, Kevin strides over to Dean nonchalant as you please, lunges forward to steal the ball back, and starts moving it around his body with a confidence only experience could warrant.
“I was gonna try to get recruited for the Princeton team, once I got accepted,” Kevin explains without prompting, “but mom wanted me to focus on my cello. Basketball took a back seat.”
Sam catches the frown on Dean’s face at Linda’s mention, and takes the initiative to nip the bad vibes in the bud by bumping into Dean with his shoulder and egging him toward the door.
“Hey, why don’t you go invite Cas?” he asks, eyebrows wiggling. Dean’s face immediately turns two shades pinker as he reaches a hand up to brush nervously through his hair.
“Y-yeah. I’ll get him from the room. I think the lazy bastard’s still asleep.” Dean takes a moment to pat Kevin on the shoulder before he disappears through the hallway door.
Once he’s out of earshot, Sam meets Kevin’s eyes.
“So are they officially…?” Kevin makes an obscene motion with his hand.
Sam laughs. “Trust me kid, with those two blushing brides, it’s probably only gotten to kissing.”
Kevin gives him a dubious look but heads back toward the hallway without further comment, probably to change into more appropriate attire. Sam takes his lead.
Three hours later finds the Impala in the local public school’s parking lot, Cas and Sam sans shirts (though to be fair, Cas had already arrived that way), Dean and Kevin wiping the sweat off of their foreheads with their collars, several empty water bottles on a wooden bench, and all four men in the middle of a heated game of doubles.
When they’d first arrived, they spent half an hour acquainting Cas with the points system and the technicalities of ball handling. However, he didn’t need much coaching, as they learned shortly after Dean pulled him behind the free-throw line for his first practice shot. Cas had bent his knees, took three dribbles with his right hand, angled himself carefully, and tossed the ball with his extended wrist straight into the basket, all net. Sam couldn’t stop himself from cheering out a low-pitched: “Oooooooh!”
“What the fuck?” Dean cried, shoving Cas away from him as if he’d been betrayed.
Cas turned to Dean with a more severe squint than his usual. “Jimmy played on an adult league for over a decade, Dean. And he coached his daughter’s grammar school team. My body is used to this.” He punctuated it with a helpless shrug, but Dean jogged closer to Kevin anyway, still mock-affronted.
“Yeah, whatever. Since you know what you’re doing already, let’s play. Kevin and me against you and Sasquatch. Losers wash the Impala tomorrow morning.”
Sam smirked when Cas turned to glance at him. “Hey Cas, don’t worry about it. We’ll kick their asses.”
But looking back now, Sam shouldn’t have been so cocky.
Kevin can’t block for shit against him (being twice Kevin’s height helps), but the little twerp knows how to steal, and runs across the court like a cheetah when he wants to. Dean’s not as fast as Kevin, but he can shoot well enough from any position on the court, so he more than makes up for it with his offense. Meanwhile, he and Cas have few advantages against the Dean and Kevin combo. Cas can shoot, but he sucks at blocking. And Sam can block, but he’s not an amazing shot, nor can he outrun Kevin on any given play.
Basically, he and Cas are losing big-time.
And Dean’s being really obnoxious about it.
“Aww, come on Sammy. Ball in hoop! Ball in hoop!” Dean squawks as he stands in front of Cas, arms raised and legs shuffling from side to side. Sam is honest-to-god mere seconds away from chucking the ball right into Dean’s face. Instead though, he runs at the net and tries for a layup. He misses.
Of course, Kevin appears right beneath him to snatch the ball up and pass it to Dean, who shoots a successful three-pointer across the court, despite Cas’s earnest blocking attempts. Dean and Kevin whoop as they high-five.
When Cas jogs over to Sam again, a little short of breath, he looks livid.
“Sam, on the next play, try to keep the ball until I call for it. I promise I’ll make the shot, but wait for my signal.”
Sam isn’t sure how long he can hold Kevin off if Cas plans to take his time, but he answers with a confident, “You got it,” anyway, and walks back into the court mentally prepared.
Dean winks when he tosses Sam the ball. Asshole.
Sam dribbles once and sprints in. Kevin is immediately on him as Sam evades his scrabbling hands by a hair’s breadth. He plants a quarter of the way to the hoop and holds the ball over his head, eyes searching for Cas, who’s standing behind Dean’s outstretched arms, completely caged in. It doesn’t look like it’ll be easy to get out of, but Sam tries to trust Cas’s plan and stands his ground while Kevin circles him predatorily, swiping at the ball once or twice.
Then Cas makes his move. He side-steps Dean, turns so that they’re facing one another, waits for Dean to step closer to cover him, and startles Sam and Dean both when he leans forward and plants a kiss right on Dean’s mouth.
Dean freezes.
“Now!” Cas cries. Sam doesn’t have enough brain power to hesitate as he tosses the ball over, right into Cas’s free space.
“DEAN!” Kevin tries to warn, but it’s no use. Dean’s doe-eyed and struck stupid right in the middle of the court; there’s no one chasing after Cas when he runs at the net and executes a perfect layup, and there’s certainly no one cussing him out as he heads back to Sam’s side, extending his hand for a high-five. Sam gives it to him instantly, his entire face engulfed by a ridiculous grin.
It takes Dean only a couple more seconds to regain his bearings. “Th-that’s! That’s fucking cheating!” he accuses weakly, voice quaking as he points a finger straight at Cas. “You can’t do that shit!”
“Yes he can!” Sam bites back with a hand slapped over Cas’s sweaty back.
Meanwhile, Kevin’s taken to falling to the ground on his knees and sniggering breathlessly at Dean’s misfortune. Somewhere between his gasping laughter and his many attempts at reestablishing a normal breathing pattern, he manages to say: “Dean that’s—dude—that’s so—oh my god, Dean, hahaha!”
Sam and Kevin both agree after Cas walks back to Dean and tries to initiate another apology kiss that there’s no way in hell they can finish this game without completely pissing their pants.
Unsurprisingly, Dean makes Cas sit in the backseat for the drive home.
“Please don’t be mad anymore,” Cas says again when Dean comes of out his shower red-skinned and smelling of Irish Spring. Dean pretends to ignore Cas just to watch from the corner of his eyes how Cas sits on the bed still shirtless, frown visible, shoulders slumped with disappointment. He’s horrifically cute when he thinks he’s in trouble.
But Dean doesn’t want to be cruel, so he turns around again and smiles.
“I’m not actually mad, Cas.” He’s in a fresh pair of boxers and a clean t-shirt, but he doesn’t mind getting them pressed up to Cas’s still-sweaty body when he leans down and kisses Cas on the cheek.
“Really?” Cas wonders quietly, unsure. He reaches up to touch Dean’s biceps. “So, you’re not upset that Sam and Kevin saw us being intimate?”
Dean is so unprepared for that statement that his jaw actually drops a bit.
“What?” He shifts down to sit beside Cas on the bed. This is a heavier conversation than he was bargaining for. He tries not to sound the least bit accusing when he asks, “You think I’m ashamed of that?”
Cas shakes his head. Dean doesn’t want to rush him, especially not about this. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to wait long for Cas to finally admit, “No, I just… I’m not sure, Dean. This is all very new to me. I’m sorry.”
Dean lets a bit of silence wash over them, fingers seeking out Cas’s against his jumping thigh (a nervous habit that Cas has acquired, he’s noticed). It is all new—not just that he and Cas are actually allowed to kiss each other now, but also that they’ve breached some unfathomable wall between them and finally established the elusive concept of more: more than friends, more than allies. ‘Family’ with that little extra kick. This is new on all sorts of complicated levels, within their relationship, and for them both as individuals.
But in addition to finally bridging this chasm that’s felt like an open wound between them for so long, Cas also has to deal with his humanity now, with figuring out who he is apart from Dean. Figuring out what to make of himself and the things he’s done on his own.
It’s a lot to handle for someone who’s been human all their life, not to mention a fallen angel.
“Hey,” he starts with a hand under Cas’s chin, “Look at me.”
Cas does so immediately, bottom lip sucked into his mouth. Dean smiles despite himself.
“I really like you.” He kisses Cas’s cheek again. “I’m talking, ‘I don’t give a shit what gigantor or my adopted Asian brother think about us macking in the middle of a basketball court’ levels of like you. You’re pretty awesome.”
Cas closes his eyes and sighs when Dean presses another kiss to the corner of his mouth. Dean’s getting jittery now, because this is extremely new territory. The talking about feelings and being super fucking honest about stuff territory. Not typically Dean’s modus operandi, but Cas is important to him, and Dean’s willing to be as honest as it takes, if that’s what Cas needs. They’re both new to this still, and though he’s a veteran at fucking things up, he won’t let himself do that here.
“This doesn’t have to be some massive thing,” he confides to Cas’s shoulder, “we’re still best friends, man. Now we just get to make out whenever we want to, too.”
Cas starts sinking backwards to rest on the bed, which Dean takes as an invitation. Cas plants a kiss to the top of Dean’s head, motions for him to scoot up, and pulls Dean over him until their legs are tangled together, Cas’s bottom lip pressed flush between Dean’s.
It’s only been two weeks or so since their first kiss, and they haven’t gone much farther than making out lazily in the mornings, but Dean likes how good it all feels this way. The lazy meeting of their mouths, the way that Cas’s skin feels beneath his fingertips whenever Dean outlines the shape of Cas’s lips with his tongue, Cas’s trembling hands grasping at Dean’s shoulder blades. Cas feels so soft, smells like warm cotton, kisses like he’s never tasted anything as delicious as Dean before in his life. Their intimacy sparked in soft, easy presses of lips, like their bodies were waiting for one another all along, no rush, no fanfare. Few things in Dean’s life have ever come this effortlessly before.
It’s a little bit terrifying.
Dean moans when he feels Cas’s hands wandering down his spine, palms resting on the jut of flesh where Dean’s lower back turns into ass. Cas tries to distract Dean by sucking on his tongue, but Dean knows exactly what he’s planning when Cas finally gains the courage to go the extra mile and clamp his fingers down, squeezing firmly.
Dean laughs into the kiss. “Woah there. Handsy much?”
Cas blinks up as if he has no idea what Dean’s talking about.
And Dean, in what will no doubt foreshadow his indulgence of Cas henceforth, only kisses Cas again, fits his hands along Cas’s sides, and holds on tight.
Cas continues moving his way down Dean’s neck, muffling the beginnings of laughter with every sloppy, open-mouthed kiss against Dean’s throat. “I’m glad,” he suddenly says, after Dean pulls away to match him hickey for hickey along his collarbone, “that we can do this now.”
Dean noses his way back beneath Cas’s chin and hides a massive smile. “We can do way more than this later on.” He savors Cas’s sharp inhale.
Cas lets Dean finish another hickey on his jaw before he says, “Really?”
Dean can’t help but laugh again. “Yeah Cas. We’ll go at our pace, and it’ll be good.”
He’s not the type of man to make promises he can’t keep. He doesn’t know a lot of things for certain: not about how to get Cas back his mojo, not about how to fix the angels falling, not about what the demons are doing now that Crowley and Abaddon are massive unknowns, and especially not about where they’re all supposed to go from here. There are so many things ahead of them that have no point of reference, no precedent to follow.
But he knows enough to promise Cas that they—Dean and Cas the best friends, not the piss-poor excuses for superheroes—will still be cool at the end of the tunnel.
If family doesn’t end with blood, it certainly won’t end with Cas’s poor ass groping technique.
Smiling, he kisses Cas one last time before pulling him up from the bed without warning. “Alright, Cassanova. Go take your shower.”
Sam walks into the kitchen just in time to witness Dean whistling in front of the stove, spatula in hand. The freckles along the back of his neck are extra prominent after yesterday’s basketball game, but even they hold no candle to the deep, blotchy red marks peppering the parts of Dean’s shoulders that Sam can see below his t-shirt collar.
And so, in the fashion of a respectable younger sibling, he sneaks up behind Dean and pokes a hickey.
“FUCK! What the fuck, Sam?!” Dean yelps, splattering pancake batter all over the counter.
Sam chuckles as he finds a seat at the counter. “Fun night?” he asks, pouring himself a cup of orange juice from the carton that Dean left open.
“It’s none of your business,” Dean snaps as he pours another circle of batter into his pan, “but for your information, yeah. Cas and I were plowing it till like five in the morning. Eight hours of non-stop athletic gay sex, dude. Great for the glutes.”
Sam nearly drops his glass to the floor. “Dean!”
“Hey, you asked.”
Dean continues making stack after stack of pancakes while Sam stews in his own horror—he thinks Dean’s just kidding, but he’s not sure.
He finally regains the ability to speak when Dean slides a plate of pancakes in front of him, already smothered with butter and syrup, the same way that Dean used to present him with pancakes when they were kids and left alone in cabins for days at a time.
“I am happy for you,” Sam says around a bite, staring at Dean’s back thoughtfully, “Like seriously, Dean.”
Dean rolls his eyes, but the smile on his face is so obvious that Sam doesn’t mistake Dean for anything other than pleased.
“Yeah, yeah. Just eat your damn pancakes.”
