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“You can’t,” Dean says, sitting at the first table of the library. It’s expansive in front of him in his solitude. It’s too big for a single person.
Cas looks over at the words. Across the room, he frowns.
“I don’t understand,” he prompts, voice low and gentle. Quiet, like they were in a real library. He does that a lot now, talks in a way that’s almost paternal like he used to with Jack. Still does with Jack, most likely, just in a place where Dean can’t see it anymore.
But his eyes are narrowed. His eyebrows drawn down in suspicion. The book he’s holding stays opened at chest level, and Cas doesn’t lower it when he speaks.
“You know,” Dean says coldly. He can’t meet Cas’s eyes, so he watches his clasped hands on the table. “What you said. You can’t.”
Dean doesn’t make himself repeat the word. It turns to static in his brain, and then to sulfur in his mouth. The way it is supposed to be warm is obnoxious to him.
But he wants to rub his hands together over it. He’s so cold. Limping and freezing and left for dead. Cruel. And Castiel can’t mean it. Because Dean isn’t even human, anymore, not even a monster, but a creature. A writhing, screaming form that turns to coal and burns cities down, holds other people underwater until they drown, and then watches as the bodies bob back up like apples.
Dean doesn’t look up when he hears the book being set down at the end of the table he’s sitting at, or when the chair across from his is pulled out and someone sits down in it. He knows he’s being a child, but his gnarled knuckles are much safer than the blue eyes he can feel trained on him.
He waits for Cas to say something, waits for at least thirty seconds in silence warped and bent, before he realizes that Cas isn’t going to. Finally, Dean raises his head.
Cas is staring at him blankly. Just staring. His lips are pursed, only a little, like he’s trying to come to a decision, but the rest of his face is vacant. It’s unnerving to see the expression on the angel now, an expression Dean hasn’t seen in years.
They bore into each other across the table. Cas doesn’t say anything and Dean grunts in annoyance. He pushes up out of his seat, his hands holding his weight against the table on locked arms. “Right,” he scoffs and pushes away.
He makes it a few steps, almost to the stairs, when Cas says, “Sit down, Dean.”
Cas’s tone is controlled, a command. It makes Dean’s shoulders tighten and his jaw clench. He keeps walking.
Until, suddenly, he’s not, and his ass is right back in the wooden chair across from Cas at the table. Dean blanches, and Cas glares. “I told you to sit down.”
“Fuck you,” Dean spits, but when he goes to stand again, he finds that he can’t. It’s like his body is glued down to the chair, as if the gravity in the room had multiplied by one hundred until his body was too heavy to lift. “What the fuck?”
Cas just continues to stare at him as if he had never stood up in the first place. Dean scowls back.
Finally, Cas sighs, his eyes closing with it. It’s a long, exhausted thing that almost makes Dean feel guilty. Almost.
“I can’t,” Cas says, opening his eyes again to look at Dean. They’re softer this time, and it’s worse than the blankness. “You said that I can’t. But in what context? Of course, I can. ‘Can’ implies capability, and I am very capable of loving you, Dean. It is, so it seems, the only thing that I can do correctly.”
Against his will, Dean feels his face heat up. His eyes drop back down to the table. There’s silence again as if Cas is waiting for a reply, but he’s not going to get one.
“So, what exactly do you mean by, ‘You can’t’, then?”
God, why did Dean even have to bring it up? His stupid fucking foot in his mouth, because of course, he should have expected this. What did he think was going to happen? For Cas to just shrug and smile at him, Whoopsies, you’re right, Dean!
Before Dean can even decide whether he’s going to bullshit his way through this or just wait the conversation out in silence, Cas hums in his throat.
“I see.”
Dean’s head snaps up and he feels pinned in place. He wants to stop whatever words are about to come out of Cas’s mouth, and he doesn’t even know what they are yet.
Cas’s expression isn’t blank, just unreadable. “It’s not my capability to love that’s the problem. It is your capability to receive it.”
“Cas,” Dean growls like a warning. “Let me go.”
But now Cas turns away, won’t meet Dean’s eyes as looks around the library. Dean watches his throat work over and over again, and before he can figure out why himself, Cas is facing him again with unshed tears in those big, blue eyes.
It makes Dean falter, and he feels his scowl melt right off of him without his permission.
“I think that I understand,” Cas says, watery. Dean’s gut plummets, and suddenly he wants to take all of it back. Of course, he knew he was right, that he was unlovable, but why did he have to bring it to Cas's attention. Why couldn’t he have been selfish enough to let Cas try to love him anyway? Dean’s bottom lip trembles.
“When I was human,” Cas continues, and Dean is lost on where any of this is going, “I remember what that hunger felt like. When you’re so hungry that it- it hurts, and the idea of eating makes you want to be sick. The thought of food is unfeasible. You- You’re starving, and it is so painful that even the cure to the problem feels worse than the suffering.”
And Cas is staring at him across the table, his lips pressed into a firm line. His throat bobs again. Dean wants to curl up into a ball and hide. The chair holds him in place with its magnetic force, so the most he can do is close his eyes and pretend that if he can’t see Cas, Cas can’t see him either.
“It’s not that you can’t be loved, Dean. It’s that you’re starving for it.” Cas says it so gently, something wounded in every word. Not pity, but empathy so deep that it cuts to the bone, as if Dean’s emotions were his own.
Dean shakes his head back and forth and doesn’t stop, his teeth grinding together. He doesn’t know if it’s in denial, if he’s trying to rattle the feelings away, but his nose moves side to side against the tears trying to fill up in his own eyes. He doesn’t like being seen very much at all.
“Well,” Cas’s voice is stronger now. Dean wonders what his face looks like. He still doesn’t open his eyes. “I refuse to let you starve.” There is the sound of the chair across from him squeaking, and Dean assumes that Castiel has stood. The sound of footsteps confirms his suspicion. But when Dean tests the invisible binds holding him in place, they don’t budge.
Cas’s footsteps are getting closer and it sounds like he’s rounding the table, closer yet until they stop directly behind Dean. The hair on the back of Dean’s head stands on end. He finally opens his eyes and stares unseeingly at the empty chair across from him that Cas had abandoned.
“Let me go, Cas,” Dean tries again, but even he can hear the exhaustion in his own voice. There’s a certain resignation to it all.
Two hands fall onto either of Dean’s shoulders, and it makes him flinch in surprise. “No.”
And even though Dean is thoroughly unhappy with the way things are going, he also knows that Cas isn’t going to hurt him, so the fight seeps out of his body to make way for something much older, much more tired. He’s been tired since he was born.
The hands on his shoulders start to grip, moving closer to Dean’s neck where he feels thumbs press into the tense tendons there. They start to rub in circles, and Dean finds himself relaxing in spite of his frustration.
“What are you doing?” It comes out weary.
“Feeding you.”
The thumbs continue to press in, to move the skin and the muscles underneath. It aches a little bit. Dean’s not sure if he’s ever gotten a massage before, even casually like this. Maybe Lisa had at some point, but Lisa exists in a different lifetime, one that Dean has since realized that he never really wants to go back to.
Cas’s hands move up further, putting pressure in the soft flesh that gives just below the solidity of Dean’s skull. It feels good, and Dean finds himself sighing against his own volition. Of course, Cas notices, because he redoubles his efforts on the area. His fingers are deft and succinct, lingering only as long as they’re welcome before pulling away to move to the next spot.
It’s a dance, a tango between what Cas is pushing for and what Dean will allow, and Cas is an expert. Dean lets himself acknowledge that it’s Cas’s hands on him. They’re strong and big and capable and fascinatingly agile. Something like a shiver tries to work down Dean’s spine at the thought.
And then they’re in his hair. Blunt fingernails run featherlight across his scalp, and it’s heavenly.
“Love comes in many forms, Dean, and presents itself in many different ways. I know because I have had to learn them. Love isn’t innate to me, quite the opposite. It is a foreign substance that has wiggled its way in, an invasive species that has irreversibly changed its environment. But I have learned that touch, real touch for the sake of experiencing the feeling of another person’s skin, is the simplest form of showing love.” Cas’s voice is a deep rumbling, as serious as a heart attack.
The fingers in his hair draw circles in the soft resistance of Dean’s hair. The fight is leaking out of him like liquid underneath it, where it almost feels too good to be touched like this.
“And I regret not showing you more often,” Cas continues. “I am… deeply saddened that no one has showed you when you needed to be shown. That even the most basic form of comfort feels unattainable.” The fingers dip on each side to stroke at the soft, shaved hair over Dean’s ears. It’s one of the most pleasant sensations Dean has felt in his life.
“Cas,” he says because he doesn’t know what else to say. This body wasn’t made to be touched gently. Pain is something this bag of bones understands well, and Dean gave up on the pipe dream of touches meant to soothe a long time ago. “I didn’t exactly make it easy.”
“No,” Cas agrees on a sigh. His fingers move back and forth just over the tops of Dean’s ears. “But there comes a point where you are denied something so many times that you start to deny it yourself to save the trouble of even wanting it at all.” The hands move back up to the crown of his hand to continue their motion.
Dean frowns and doesn’t respond.
“You deserve to be touched with love.”
The twigs that are holding up Dean’s fragile heart snap under the weight of Cas’s warm hands and warmer words. “I don’t know about that, Cas,” he confesses, voice more watery than he’d like to admit.
“I do,” Cas says like it’s that simple, like he’s stating that the sky is blue. “Does this feel good?”
The answer is yes, but Dean’s not sure if he can make himself say it. There’s an anxiety to admittance. Things that feel good don’t last, especially if you acknowledge them. If he convinces the universe that he hates the way Cas’s hands work through his hair, then maybe the torture will never stop.
When the silence stretches on a little bit too long, Cas says, “It’s okay if the answer is no,” and before Dean can protest, “but it’s okay if the answer is yes, too. I won’t stop if the answer is yes.”
A delirious part of Dean’s brain says What if I never want you to stop ever again?
“It’s nice,” is what Dean finally lands on.
“That’s high praise,” Cas replies, not an ounce of sarcasm in his voice. “I’ll have to do this more often from now on.”
Dean feels like falling apart. He swallows down the rush of emotions, at the thought of promised touches and planned comfort.
True to his word, Cas doesn’t stop, and slowly, slowly, Dean melts back into the chair and into Cas’s gentle hands. They trace patterns onto his scalp, straying down to linger on Dean’s neck every so often. It flips the overheated engine in Dean’s brain into stasis.
The hands are on his neck when Dean feels the air above him displaced, and then there is no mistaking the feeling of a chin and a nose pushing into his hair. The sound of lips parting. Dean freezes where he sits and the shiver that he’s been suppressing races up his spine. Cas pulls back.
Did you just kiss me? Obviously, but maybe Dean wants to ask just because he already knows that the answer is yes. The patch of his scalp that Cas’s lips had been pressed into tingles.
“Kissing is another way to show love,” Cas breaks the tension, and his voice sounds unsure for the first time. “Mothers kiss their babies, a person kisses their lover, the French kiss to say hello. Sometimes, saying hello is a form of love.”
Dean’s hands tighten around the ends of the armrests of the chair. “You might have to try again. I don’t think I got it the first time.” His voice is weak despite the bravado of the words.
But Cas is leaning back down, and there’s the press of chin and nose followed by lips against Dean’s hair. The sound of a kiss being pressed. This time, Cas doesn’t pull away, but moves a few inches to his right to press another kiss. It continues, another, and then another until Dean feels smothered in it like a blanket pulled all of the way up to his nose in the wintertime.
“I couldn’t kiss you enough times to describe how much I love you. I could touch you so caringly that it removes any doubt and it would never be enough. I- I feel insatiable with love that wants to make itself known.” Cas’s voice comes out next to Dean’s right ear, something bruised on the end of it like an admittance.
The chair across from Dean goes blurry around the hot wetness welling up in his eyes.
“I don’t deserve that, Cas.” His voice breaks on the truth of his words.
But Cas’s lips press to the shaved hair on the side of his head, the feeling of his lips even more pronounced without long strands to get in the way, and whispers, “Too bad.”
And Dean makes a noise that’s more of a hiccup than a laugh, something delicate and filled with disbelief.
The hands on his neck are pushing and pulling, gently, gently, until Dean’s head is tilted back to look at the ceiling, and subsequently, Cas’s face.
He hadn’t realized how much he missed those blue eyes. Dean thinks maybe he misses them all the time, any time he’s not looking at them. They’re matte and fleece and warm where they peer at him upside down from the angle. Cas’s face is all hesitant hope.
“Tell me again?” Dean asks, and he doesn’t think he’s heard his voice this soft since the year he picked Sammy back up from Stanford.
Cas smiles. “I love you,” he says like it’s a privilege, like it is a relief of the best kind to say those words out loud. Dean gulps.
“Hello,” Dean replies in light of Cas’s earlier comment. It doesn't feel like enough, but he can’t get his lips to form around the words he actually wants to say, not yet anyway.
It doesn’t seem to matter, though, because Cas is beaming down at him now, and Dean doesn’t think he’s ever seen something so beautiful in the low light of the Bunker.
“Hello,” Cas repeats. The angel leans in over him and presses his lips to Dean’s forehead like a mother kisses her baby, then to either upside down cheek the way that the French greet each other, and then, finally, to Dean’s lips the way that a person kisses their lover.