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It was the third time that day that Dean had turned around and nearly walked right into Cas and he decided there and then that something needed to be done about it.
“Dude,” Dean said, a touch of exasperation in his voice.
“I’m sorry,” Castiel replied, frowning softly, “I just wanted to know if you... needed help with anything.”
“Yeah, I know. You keep asking and I keep telling you, I’m good. I’m just throwing together something for dinner, it’s no big deal.” He didn’t mean to sound annoyed, but... Cas had only been back at the bunker for a couple weeks, and while Dean didn’t completely mind Cas’s habit of trailing after him or that Cas wanted to help out... Cas had been doing little else except volunteering to pick up any task he could, even if it meant asking Dean every few hours to be given something to do.
And okay, maybe Dean really shouldn’t be angry that someone around here actually wanted to do chores. As much as he loved Sam, Sam didn’t really jump at the opportunity to do housework. Dean would never admit it, but he liked having domestic tasks to accomplish, and having Cas pitch in was great, but...
There was just something wrong about it. Cas just didn’t seem happy if he wasn’t helping. He seemed to have a really hard time just sitting back and taking a load off, even when Dean suggested he do just that. Relaxing only seemed to make Cas anxious.
Castiel adopted a rather dejected look and turned around as if to head out of the kitchen, but Dean stopped him, stepping after him, reaching out to touch his shoulder. “Cas, wait.”
The ex-angel turned back around to face him, a hopeful look on his face as if the greatest gift Dean could bestow upon him was some form of menial labor.
But Dean wasn’t going to give in. What he was going to do was get to the bottom of this. “What’s up with you, man? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate you helping, but... you know you’ve been doing more than your share of stuff around here. You are allowed to relax a little.”
Cas’s eyes fell from Dean pretty quickly, and that was never a good sign. If Cas wasn’t staring awkwardly at him, something was definitely wrong. He watched Cas patiently, waiting for him to speak up. The moment of silence drug out until Dean prompted, “Come on, Cas, you can talk to me. What’s up?”
“It...” he started, finally looking back to Dean, even if Dean could do without that heart-wrenchingly sad look in his ridiculously blue eyes. “It doesn’t feel right. It feels wrong to relax, especially when you’re working. If I’m here, I should be helping ease your burden, or...”
When he trailed off, his eyes fell from Dean again, and though Dean knew he wasn’t going to like the end of the sentence, he needed to hear it. “Or what?”
Even then, the silence carried on, until finally... “Or I don’t deserve to stay here.”
“Cas, no,” he protested softly. This was his own damn fault. He was the one to make Cas feel unwelcome here from the moment he’d shown up in the middle of the road last year after losing the angel tablet to kicking him to the curb on that fucking angel’s orders... Dean was the one that had made the bunker a place that Cas couldn’t call home and he was paying for it now, paying for it in the pain of that terrible look on Castiel’s face. “It’s not like that. I’ve told you, man, you’re family. You belong here as much as Sam or I do, and you don’t see Sam volunteering to do laundry, do you?”
It was a bad joke, Dean knew it, and the false curl at the corner of Castiel’s mouth flickered away after barely a second.
“I’m serious,” he said. “You don’t have to do anything to deserve to stay here. You just have to stay. I appreciate the help, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to help to stay.”
Dean wasn’t sure else he could say, but the look on Castiel’s face remained unconvinced, and it made Dean fear more than anything that... that Cas would leave. He’d leave because he didn’t think he was wanted or needed because no matter how many times Dean said it, Cas didn’t seem to get that Dean just WANTED him here. Cas didn’t need to work for anything, he didn’t have to pitch in, he didn’t need to earn the right to stay because as far as Dean was concerned, he’d earned that right years ago, just by being family.
“I just...” Castiel spoke up again, “don’t want to be useless.”
“You’re not useless,” Dean protested again, but it was clear that Cas wasn’t having it, and the threat of Cas leaving again loomed like an oncoming storm that Dean knew he needed to avoid. So, despite not wanting to take this route, Dean finally relented, “Would it... make you feel better if we found something you could do around here to help out?”
Castiel’s eyes looked back up at him, a spark of light in them that gave Dean his answer even before Cas replied, “I’d like that.”
“Okay,” Dean said with a little nod, “Let me finish dinner, and afterwards, we’ll figure something out.”
~~~
True to his word, Dean sat down with Cas after dinner, and they started to brainstorm.
Part of the problem was that Dean didn’t really want to sacrifice any of his current chores. He really liked cooking meals for them, and cleaning up afterwards was good because it meant he could put everything away where he wanted it. Laundry wasn’t his favorite task in the world, but it gave him first dibs on stuff he wanted to wear, and it meant none of their laundry went to the wrong room (the last time Cas had folded laundry and put it away, Dean had gotten all of Sam’s underwear, and that was just one thing they didn’t share).
So he couldn’t just give his tasks to Cas and that meant they had to brainstorm completely new tasks around the bunker for Cas to keep busy with, things he could work on without needing to consult with Dean every ten minutes.
And Dean had nothing. He knew Cas was good in a fight, damn clever, quick, brutal, but that didn’t help much in everyday tasks around the bunker. And beyond that... well, not knowing what there was to be done on top of not even knowing what Cas could get done was a hell of a roadblock.
After an hour of quizzical stares and terrible suggestions, Dean finally burst, “Okay, this is ridiculous. Why don’t we just figure out what you know how to do, and we’ll see what fits in around here?”
Castiel raised an eyebrow at the suggestion, but... after a moment, he start listing the things he’d learned over his last months as a human. He’d helped customers, stocked shelves, taken inventory, made coffee, used a microwave, survived on the streets, picked up litter, changed diapers, operated a cash register, opened the store in the morning and closed it at night...
Dean let Cas go on for a while because it felt more productive than sitting there in awkward silence, but Dean knew that, unless he let Cas go get a job in town (or unless they came across a baby), that none of that stuff would give him anything to do around the bunker.
After a bit, Dean shook his head and it made Castiel grow quiet. “Why don’t we think further back, before you were human. I mean, you’re millions of years old, right? You learned stuff as an angel too. Other than how to be a dick, I mean. I bet you know tons of stuff.”
Castiel seemed to reflect on that a bit before he gave a nod. “That’s true. I’m not sure how any of it could help, but...”
Dean smiled and gave a little shrug. “Don’t worry about the details. The two of us’ll figure something out.”
~~~
Dean should have realized it, but millions of years was a lot of time to learn stuff. They said for humans that it took seven years to master something--if the same was even vaguely true for angels, Cas had had time to master a whole lot.
He wasn’t complaining though. Around the hunts and the chores and all the other shit going on in their lives, Dean and Cas would take a bit of time everyday they could to just... sit down and talk. They’d hole up in the library or one of the other rooms in the bunker and Cas would just talk to Dean, practically teach him, about one of the thousands of things he knew.
Dean liked the time they were spending together. Castiel seemed so enthusiastic to share the knowledge he had, and Dean got to spend an hour or more every day listening to Cas yammering on about one thing or another, an excited light in Castiel’s eyes, trying, to varying degrees, to impress his knowledge upon Dean, which worked better with some topics than others. They talked about music and math and insects and languages and history and the advancement of human technology and biology and weather patterns and mountains and plants and anatomy and...
The list went on and on, as did the lessons when Cas was feeling particularly dedicated to a subject, and if that meant Cas leaning in close to him as he pointed something out on a map or a graph, pressing their shoulders together as he made Dean trace his fingers over timelines or anatomy charts, well... Dean wasn’t stupid enough to even pretend to gripe about it. He liked being with Cas. He liked having Cas there. And even more so, he liked having Cas close.
They hadn’t found a practical use for any of Castiel’s knowledge yet, but after a week or so, that didn’t even seem to matter much anymore. Cas actually seemed happier than Dean had ever seen him, human or angel. Whatever sense of purpose he was getting out of his sessions with Dean must have been quite the mood booster, because when Castiel found himself sitting quietly and watching television, he no longer looked anxious or uneasy about not getting anything done.
Dean was happy to see it. His greatest fear had been that Cas would find some reason to split again and Dean knew he couldn’t stop Cas if that’s what the ex-angel really wanted, no matter what Dean wanted. Cas finally feeling like he belonged was the greatest relief to Dean and it cut through the terror of waking up to find that Cas had left. If Cas was happy here, it meant he’d stay, and that was all Dean ever wanted.
And Dean really liked their psuedo-lessons. He couldn’t always wrap his brain around what Cas was trying to teach him (the day they spent going over differential equations was almost physically painful, and if he never had to hear the words “string theory” again, it would be too soon); Cas was clearly a genius by any human standard... but he never made Dean feel stupid for not knowing something or not understanding it and Dean really appreciated not feeling stupid.
One day, they spent hours listening to old records, everything from classical to classic rock, as Cas identified as the movements in the music, or the chords, or the keys being played in, and another day Cas chatted away about bees while Dean tuned up the Impala. At some point, Cas found a series of old maps, and decided to explain to Dean in great detail how humans had migrated across the lands beneath his fingertips, and one day Cas spent hours critiquing all the inaccuracies in the Bible (that was the day that Dean laughed himself to tears as Cas complained irritably that Jonah had never been swallowed by any large fish or sea mammal. He hadn’t chickened out on his way to Nineveh, he’d just ending up getting drunk and ignoring his responsibilities for three days in some whorehouse outside of the town. He’d made up the whale story to redeem himself when in reality the only danger he’d had of drowning was in his own puddle of sick in a dirty room in a den of iniquity. At first, Cas had seemed irritated about Dean’s laughter, until Dean did a bad impression of a drunken prophet and Cas ended up catching Dean’s sudden case of the giggles and joining in as they fell all over each other).
It did matter what they were doing or talking about, Dean just liked being with Cas.
~~~
They were making a late run to the store that night. They didn’t need anything urgently, but Dean had wanted to pick up a few things anyway, and he was in the mood for a drive. He loved driving at night, rushing down deserted back roads lit more by the moon and stars than by his headlights, and it was just two days before the full moon, bright enough to be pretty, but no risk of werewolves.
After cleaning up the dinner dishes, he poked his head into the room where Sam and Cas were watching something on television and announced, “Hey, I’m gonna make a run. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Sam gave him a little wave of acknowledgement as this was nothing new to him, but Cas... Cas looked over at him and asked, “Can I join you?”
Dean was a little stunned at first, not used to having company on these little trips... and not used to even wanting company, honestly, but the request immediately appealed to him. He gave Cas a smile and a shrug. “Sure, why not?”
The two of them were out of the room before either of them could see the little disbelieving, but pleased grin on Sam’s face.
The first part of the trip was uneventful. Dean didn’t change the back routes he’d planned on taking and the two of them drove in relative peace, the soft sound of classic rock on the radio and the purr of the engine keeping the drive from being silent. At the store, they grabbed a few essentials and a few non-essentials, then hopped back in the car for the purposely long trip home.
But just as they were driving down some dark back road that ran through the flat and empty plains in this part of Kansas, Cas spoke up, “Dean, can we stop for a bit?”
Dean glanced over at Cas curiously, calmed when Cas didn’t look upset or anything. “What for?”
“I...” Castiel spoke hesitantly, “want to look at the stars.”
Dean smiled. “Yeah. Sure, we can stop.”
At the next flat area that led off the road, Dean did just that. He pulled off into the grassy field, parked the car, then climbed out, his eyes instantly going upwards.
It was gorgeous. There were no cities for miles, and no towns either. There was almost no light pollution to block their view of the stars, and no clouds, and the entire night sky was a deep, rich purple, full of tiny white pinpricks of light.
Dean glanced over at Cas then, who had climbed out of the car at the same time as him and was now looking up at the sky with something very much like awe. He smiled and watched Cas watching the stars with fondness in his heart.
“Hey,” he said to get Cas’s attention. The man immediately looked over at him; Dean closed the car door, indicated Cas do the same, and moved to sit on the edge of the hood, laying down with his hands folded over his stomach. The night air still had a hint of winter’s chill, but the hood was warm beneath his back from the heat of the engine, and Dean felt the tension seeping out of him as he refocused on the night sky.
Castiel joined him a few seconds later, laying down so that there was an inch or two between them, though Dean could feel his presence next to him. The only sounds around them for miles was the soft chirp of crickets and the gentle movement of breath in and out of their lungs, and for a brief, rare moment, Dean felt at peace.
Castiel spoke up after a bit, his voice softer than normal, as if afraid to interrupt the fragile quiet between them. “I know all the constellations, as humans have named them.”
Dean smiled softly. “Yeah?” he prompted. Had Dean ever really thought about constellations? Not really, but he liked it when Cas told him stuff, so he wanted him to continue. “What are we looking at?”
“Well, that one there,” he said, pointing, “the brightest one in the sky is called Polaris. It’s part of Ursa minor, or what you also call The Little Dipper. And there is Ursa Major...”
He continued to use his finger to point out various stars and constellations, but after a few, Dean had to laugh a little and interrupt, “You know I can’t tell what you’re pointing at, right?”
Castiel’s head shifted towards him and they exchanged a look for a moment as Dean watched the gears turning in his head... until finally Cas moved, closing the distance between them until suddenly their shoulders were pressed together and Cas had shifted himself enough that their heads were lying almost right next to each other as well. Touching Cas made Dean’s face heat up softly beneath the cool breeze whipping over him, but even with the moon so bright, it was thankfully too dark for Castiel to notice.
“Let’s try again,” he said, raising his arm up to point once more, this time his finger landing much closer, from Dean’s perspective, to one of the brighter stars. “Right there is Canis Major, and you follow Sirius, which is that bright star, over to Muliphen, which is the top of his head...”
Castiel went on like that for a while, and Dean didn’t think he’d actually remember any of it, because he was far too interested in the warmth of Castiel pressed to his side. At some point, Dean found their arms laying next to each other on the hood of the car, and every time the backs of their fingers brushed, Dean felt a little shiver run down his spine. Dean wasn’t sure what possessed him, maybe the surreal peace surrounding the whole situation, but at some point, his finger stretched back to hook itself over Cas’s finger. Cas paused for just a moment, then continued on, like nothing at all had changed.
Eventually, Castiel explanations grew quiet and as they lay silently on the warm hood of the car beneath the brilliant sky, almost holding hands, they both dozed off.
They woke up a couple hours later, broke apart like nothing strange had happened, and by the time they got back to the bunker, Sam had already gone to bed.
~~~
From the time they started, it took almost two months to finally find something that Cas could use his vast knowledge for, which was long enough that Dean had practically forgotten what all their time together was supposed to have accomplished in the first place.
They had just wrapped up a hunt where these giant Greek birds were killing people and destroying crops in a small town in Nebraska and they’d had a hell of a time with it. Dean probably wouldn’t remember the names of them a year from now, and he’d vaguely remembered the things from his read of The Argonautica years ago, but Stymphalian birds weren’t exactly an everyday occurrence and it took days to figure out how they were supposed to kill the damn things.
The secret was finally discovered in a book in the bunker that was written entirely in Greek--and it was no surprise, of course, that Castiel was the one who found the solution, considering he was the only one of them that could actually read Greek.
Dean’s mind had drifted so far away from thoughts of finding Casy busy work around the bunker that the connection hadn’t even occurred to him, of course; it was actually Sam who came up with the idea. He’d known what they were up to for some time and though he’d never really made a comment about it, whenever he stumbled upon Dean and Cas tucked away together in some room of the bunker, he would smile fondly and quickly excuse himself from the room, as if he had accidentally intruded on something private.
After they had all settled down back at the bunker, Sam spoke up, saying that there were actually probably hundreds of books in the bunker written in languages other than English, all of which were currently useless to the Winchesters, no matter how valuable the information inside may be... and even then Dean and Cas just exchanged a glance, neither of them getting Sam’s hint until he finally came out and said that if they were still looking for something helpful for Cas to do, it’d be incredibly helpful if he wanted to start translating the texts written in languages of varying obscurity into English for them. Being able to use all the information that the Men of Letters had gathered could really come in handy.
Cas looked a little surprised, but agreed that it was a good idea and it was settled. They spent the rest of the day picking out a few of the most relevant looking books for Cas to start on.
The next day, Sam set Cas up with a laptop, because it made more sense to have the translations backed up digitally. Sam was actually working with Charlie to get all the information in the bunker backed up digitally, slowly gathering or creating digital copies of everything. That way if anything happened to the bunker they’d still have everything, but also, they could set it up as a searchable database to quickly find the sections of text over their thousands of books that might be most useful to any particular hunt. It was going to make future research ridiculously easy which was not something Dean was going to complain about.
Cas seemed pretty pleased to have something to contribute to their team beyond the hunts, and Dean was all for that... but there was an abrupt end to the time he’d been spending with Dean and Dean wasn’t anywhere near as enthusiastic about that. Now, instead of finding Dean and talking his ear off, Cas’s face was buried in a book, making little notes here and there and typing things slowly into the laptop in front of him, and Dean saw Cas at meals and sometimes in the evening if they all gathered to watch some television but... there suddenly weren’t any more lessons or time spent alone together or little brushes of their hands or shoulders or... any of it. Dean had to spend his time alone again and he wouldn’t admit it, but he maybe even resented Sam a little bit for suggesting the task that now occupied Castiel’s time.
~~~
Two weeks of this put Dean in a particularly grumpy mood. He tried to suppress it as best he could (which of course meant hardly at all), because he knew he was being childish about the whole thing. Cas wasn’t HIS; he wasn’t required to spend time with Dean of course, but... it didn’t change the fact that Dean had been really happy to get so much of Cas’s attention and now that it was gone, Dean felt empty and maybe even a little used because... had Cas really liked being with Dean or... had he just liked teaching Dean because it gave him purpose? Because it seemed, now that he’d been given new purpose, he really wasn’t trying to give Dean a second thought.
One afternoon, as Dean was stewing over such bitter thoughts, sitting in front of the television, but definitely not paying attention to it, Castiel walked into the room and moved towards where Dean was sitting on the couch. Dean was determined not to look at him (bad moods made him make stupid decisions), but after a moment, Cas prompted, “Mind if I join you?”
There was a tense pause before Dean, eyes trained on the television, replied, “Go right ahead.”
He felt the couch sink down next to him, felt the warmth of Cas’s presence just a couple of inches away, but he didn’t look over, pretending to be very interested in whatever stupid thing was on the screen.
“So,” Cas started up again awkwardly after a long moment, “Sam said it would be a good idea if I talked to you.”
“Well, don’t feel obligated just because he told you so,” Dean replied bitterly. The sharpness of it made him wince a little, even if part of him felt vindicated in the idea that Cas wouldn’t be doing this except for Sam telling him to.
“I don’t,” Cas replied, amended, “I’m not. I mean... I wanted to talk to you. I just wasn’t sure if I should. If you wanted to talk. I feel like you’ve been avoiding me since I started translating.”
Finally, almost against his will, Dean’s head snapped towards Cas as he asked, “What?” How could Cas think that?
“I’ve barely seen you,” Cas explained, “The conversations I’d tried to start always ended very abruptly. I thought perhaps that you didn’t want to talk anymore, since I’d finally found something to do in the bunker.” Cas must have understood the horrified look of protest in Dean’s eyes because at that point Cas smiled a little and said, “I’m glad to see that’s not the case. I didn’t know that before though, so it wasn’t until Sam said this would be a good idea that I really thought I should talk to you.”
The smile on Cas’s face eased Dean’s tension and he suddenly began to consider that they had had the same thought, the same fear about the other no longer wanting to talk, even though they both very much wanted to spend time together. Wow, that was really stupid; he’d basically been tormenting himself for weeks over nothing.
“I guess it’s not always bad that Sam doesn’t mind his own business then,” he replied with a little smile of his own, his eyes meeting Cas’s for a long moment, before they both broke the eye contact and turned their heads away. “What did you... wanna talk about?”
“It was...” Castiel started slowly, as if still trying to put together what he was going to say, even as the words were leaving his mouth, “About something else I’ve learned.”
Dean... wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He wanted Cas back in his life, back into his daily routine, but... the lessons suddenly didn’t feel like enough. He didn’t just want Cas to want to teach him, he wanted...
He just wanted Cas.
But he held his tongue, let Cas speak.
“It’s actually the first thing we were taught, as angels. We were taught so long ago, I fear most of us have long since forgotten... but the first thing we learn as angels,” Castiel said, taking a little breath before finishing, “is to love.”
Dean’s heart throbbed a little at the word, his shoulders tensing, finding it not at all funny how just one word could so effectively tear him apart. He struggled away from that and listened to Cas instead.
“It was a structured sort of love, of course, but... we learned to love God, and when the humans were created, we were told to love humanity as well. Love was the most important, love was why were were supposed to be obedient and listen to God. I don’t know how many of us actually remember this anymore, but... I do.”
Though the floor was hardly interesting, Dean’s gaze was trained on it as his pulse raced with each word Castiel spoke. Silence hung between them until Dean nearly jumped at the heat of Cas’s hand settling over his own where it was sitting on the couch, his eyes jumped to Cas’s again immediately, caught up in the blue of them, remembering strangely in that moment how those eyes had once been the most defining thing he thought he could say to a stranger to describe Cas.
“But, these last few months, being human...” Cas finally continued, “human love is so different from angelic love. Angelic love is duty and devotion and rigidity, but human love... it’s wild. It has... no rule, no boundaries, it doesn’t listen to reason, almost as if it’s a living thing. It’s... intense and overwhelming and consuming. It... almost escapes true language. I understand why your poets struggle so much with it.”
Dean managed a small quirk of a smile, but nothing more because all he could do was listen, hang on every word that fell from Cas’s lips and hope against hope and dread that he was trying to say what Dean thought he was trying to say.
“Dean,” Cas said, and the way Cas said his name always seemed to ground him, pull him back onto a solid surface from the dizzying heights this conversation was taking him to, “I’ve learned more about love since... meeting you, and even more since becoming human. And I’m still not sure I understand all of it, but...” He smiled, and as he leaned in, Dean felt himself mirroring the action, closing the distance between them that was hardly there to begin with.
“But if I understand anything,” he said, his voice softening, “it’s that I was the happiest I’ve ever been when we were together and I want that. I want to be with you. In every sense of the word, I want you.”
And at that point, there was only one thing left for Dean to do as Castiel’s face hovered barely inches from his own, as his heart threatened to burst out of his chest, because Cas was speaking words that Dean had wanted to hear so desperately that he hadn’t even dared dream of it, and it somehow took hearing them to realize how much he’d wanted this all along, despite his fears and his doubts and his self-loathing, he’d wanted this so much.
He leaned in and kissed him.
The instant their lips connected every terrible fear Dean had ever had about this moment withered away. He suddenly couldn’t give two shits about why it should have been wrong for him to kiss Cas, why it should be wrong to want this, how everything and everyone he loved died, why he didn’t deserve this or deserve Cas and why this could never happen... none of that mattered so long as he had Cas’s lips pressed against his own, Cas’s hand gently squeezing his as Cas’s mouth pressed back. In that moment, Dean felt overwhelmed, bursting with love and affection for his best friend turned... whatever they were now, whatever Cas wanted to call this, Dean really didn’t care so long as it meant he got to kiss Cas like this again.
At some point, Dean’s hand came up to cradle Cas’s face, the texture of scruff foreign beneath his fingers and far from unpleasant. Cas leaned into his hand and pressed into the kiss, and Dean lost track of how long they spent like that, moving their lips against each other as they indulged in something they’d both apparently wanted for a very long time.
When they finally did break apart, Dean felt dizzy and breathless, and his forehead pressed gently to Cas’s, the skin to skin contact electrifying and perfect in that moment as they huffed softly against each other’s lips and tried to catch their breath; Dean couldn’t help but smile over the fact that Cas was just as breathless as him.
It was a long time before either of the broke the silence, but finally Cas spoke up with a breathy, “Dean.”
The sound of it made a shiver run down Dean’s spine.
“I know talking about this isn’t... what you do the best, so I don’t want you to feel pressured to talk right now. It’s...”
“Cas,” Dean said softly. This was almost too much, too kind. Cas shouldn’t just accept his glaring personality defects, and it certainly wasn’t okay or... however Cas was going to end that sentence.
“No, Dean,” Cas replied firmly, quieting him, “It’s enough to know you want this too.”
“I do,” Dean replied as his fingertips moved gently back into Castiel’s hair. He could at least give Cas that. “I... don’t know what I’m doing with... this, this... love - stuff, but - “
Castiel hushed him with a quick peck to the lips, and the tension melted away. “If you’re referring to how human relationships work, then we’re on the same page, Dean.”
And Dean felt so happy, he couldn’t help but laugh and kiss Cas again if for no other reason than he could (though the real reason was because it felt fucking amazing), and when he pulled back, still grinning, he said, “Then I guess it’s something we can learn together.”